Categories: Top :: Arts :: Day By Day :: Entertainment :: Living :: Personal :: Silly :: Technology

Day by Day: A Quick Review of Field Commander for Sony PSP
Wed, 31 May 2006 Field Commander

May 22nd

Few things are better then the smell of freshly cut grass or the spring breeze in your hair; the tree and bushes have been neatly trimmed, the grass edged, the railing brushed, sanded and rust-painted. Last and most importantly, the barbecue - like the Death Star - is fully operational so I sit here smugly before you after the first burger-and-dog weekend of the season.

A week passes; no time to finish that blog post but no way I'll let a Deathstar reference slide into bit-bucket-oblivion.

May 31st

The tired mind wanders, but it is thankful that life has more or less gotten itself under control again.

As Popeye might say (were he not up on steroid charges), I yam what I yam. And whats I yam [sic] is someone who once played far too many tabletop wargames as a kid and as such must pay taxes to Sid Meiers for Civilation at every opprtunity; life being what it is, those opportunities are months or years apart so I'm always hoping something will come around and let me scratch the old itch - but sadly without the need to get together a crowd of people over a table in a dank basement, or consume 12 hours of time per game. I'll buy every new version of Civilization that shows up (and yay for Galactic Civilization II my friends) and dream about finding a group of people for Axis and Allies, but we all must settle for the table scraps we can get. So a moment of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri here, or Thief III there.

Field Commander for Sony PSP

As all know, mobile gadgets will always have a special place in my heart (I blame Batman.) and the Sony PSP is no exception; sure, while I wish my Treo 650 could simply do everything, no PDA or smartphone to date can really pull off mobile-gaming so we must always fall to carrying a Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS or PSP around should we wish to indulge on the go. (I do enjoy sticking it to the man once in awhile by cracking out Sega Genesis emulation on a Zodiac during a meeting.)

Field Commander, the latest rock-paper-scissors game, scratches the itch.

See more ...

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Philtech: What's Cool?
Sat, 06 May 2006

When my family long ago picked up a Commodore Vic-20 home computer, I was a changed boy. I'd been bugging my father to get us a Colecovision console (as I was adoring the one a kid down the street had; I am ashamed to admit that I was using that kid just so I could see this technical wizardry that was video gaming in its youth. Sorry Raj!) I remember when my father came home with the Vic: "Now you can learn to make your own games!" he proclaimed, and my life was forever changed.

In those formitive years I spent every moment devouring whatever I could get my hands on.. from the BASIC Programming Language manuals included with the device, to books acquired from the computer store after mowing the lawn for allowance (book stores didn't carry anything but 'literature' at the time), to program listings I dumpster dived for while walking to school, even listings copied down with pencil from an overhead projector at a user group meet - thats where I learned how to convert to Celsius! Later of course we obtained our beloved Atari ST computer, which got me into running and writing a BBS, demo coding and game hax0ring (again, sorry folks, I was young!), and eventually into the good stuff that finally turned me into a professional coder. (A note for history, I sold my first shareware back around 1988 or 1989 - an email (Fido echomail) client for the Atari ST!)

In short, when I was young, computers were fricking cool.

See more ...

[ Category: / day_by_day / philosophy ] [link] [Comments]

Paranoia: Have they already won?
Thu, 04 May 2006

The following is for the paranoid post-modern who reads reactionairy web-news too much :)

Some folks I know have abandoned news websites and the daily paper altogether and they're probably happier for it. Myself, I love to sit back on the weekend and catch up with a good dead-tree newspaper. Heck, like everyone else I browse a few news websites every day or two - CBC, Slashdot, CNN etc - but usually come away with heightened blood pressure one way or another. Mostly I'm just relieved that in Canada our government is pretty lazy and so fewer problems erupt here - though I do fret knowing inevitably that any whacky Big Corporation Lobbied bills passing in US usually will gradully occur here. We must be vigilant to prevent the recording industry from making us pay to open our mouths, and to prevent the government from requiring cameras in our doormats. (Do I jest? Considering the FBI spies on vegetarians...)

See more ...

[ Category: / day_by_day / rants ] [link] [Comments]

Quote: A quickie from Brian Kernighan
Wed, 03 May 2006

I've been too busy to keep sane or write up blog entries, so please accept this fine nerdy quote in my absence:

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

[ Category: / day_by_day / quotes ] [link] [Comments]