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PSP: Quick review of Brando's PSP d-pad replacement, Or, Celebrating Canada Day with Gradius IV
Fri, 30 Jun 2006

As far as mobile gaming hardware goes, the PSP is pretty sexy - Bender in a pretty dress sexy. Some might dispute its software collection but to the casual wanna-be gamer like me, its good a lot of goodness that I'll never have time for. Now now, hold your horses, Sony need beatings for releasing a rootkit, making low quality audio/video components, the entire PS3 being late and seriously overpriced fiasco, and eating babies - but the PSP is itself an island of calm within an otherwise filthy ecosystem. Anyway, as with anything else when you have time for something you want it to be well spent -- we consumers should nolonger tolerate noise in the TV signal or the junk that Terry Brooks spews out onto paper, or any sequal to Highlander. The PSP is sexy, but it has its flaws - and Brando Workshop has found a way to fix one of them. (Alas no, they did not bomb Sony HQ.)

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

Techphil: Jeff's Law
Wed, 28 Jun 2006

I'm sure this has been stated before, but I shall attempt to coin in anyway and let Crom sort it out. Jeff's Law states the amount of time available to work is inversely proportional to its importantance -- that is, the higher the importance to fulfill some task the lesser the amount of time available to work on it. I'm sure Fred Brooks must talk about it, but in IT terms one could point to the common: the more projects you have, the more meatings you will have to 'manage' them, where the rate of increase in meeting count is faster than the increase in number of tasks.

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

Review: Atari Gothica DVD collection
Sat, 24 Jun 2006

I stumbled across this DVD-set on ebay and being the Atari-ST-wanker than I am it was only a matter of instants before my willpower broke. I've already acquired a prodigious collection of old ST junk and built up a respectible archive of BBS-related software in my little attempt at software preservation, but its been up to the pirates of yesteryear to have kept alive some of the great software from the platform. No one, but no one would have kept their copy of Word Perfect for the ST, so in a way the pirates (yar!) from 1986 have really achieved something. But these barrel-chested fellows didn't archive the free software, artwork and audio that made up such a large part of that precious 16-bit culture -- since it was freely available and distributed by BBS, Fidonet, and user groups already. No effort was made to especially preserve it, so only the pro-tools such as Notator MIDI-notation (still used by some few) or applications that have grown even today (Calamus graphic layout suite) and games live on. Emulation can provide a platform to fire up Gauntlet and Dungeon Master.. but <SallyStruthers>won't someone please think of the culture?</SallyStruthers> Without effort, no one but I will remember the DEGAS Elite version of Elric some anonymous artist rendered...

A few various Atari ST collections can be had online, mostly disk images of the games for feeding to various emulators. Atari Gothica is a collection that (from my quickly looking through it) is not made up of that -- instead it is SIX DVD's of Atari software, music files, picture files, textfiles and other jetsam from the era. This my friends, is Atari gold! Atari nerds among you will know you can head over to a few FTP sites that existed back in the day through to now, but how long will they remain?

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[ Category: / technology / atari ] [link] [Comments]

Day by Day: Good news every-one! Futurama is back!
Sat, 24 Jun 2006

Another few weeks without a post; life has certainly become interesting of late..

Sources all over the net are confirming an article in the New York Post suggesting our beloved Futurama will be returning from the void (that place where Superman banishes his foes to.) This has come up a few times in the past but usually the rumours get squished. Course, only Family Guy has ever performed this miraculous trick.. but so far this seems legit. The original voice talent is apparently returning, so its only a question if they can keep up the devilish writing from the original series, and somehow tie into the ending without going all to hell..

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

Anxiety: Rock. Hard place.
Fri, 09 Jun 2006

There are many flavours of stress - varied shapes, sizes and textures. I'm fortunate to be generally low stress (or perhaps have a really high threshold - not sure which :), and I'm the sort to just let kruft roll on off. Still, after months of too much and too hard work I find its the little things that add up; when stupid things don't go as you expect (toss something onto the couch and it bounces off or you get cut off in traffic); worse still are the minor interuptions when you just want to have 5 minutes to set your mind straight. The phone will ring, someone will ask or need something, the doorbell bongs -- that stuff will cave your skull in left unchecked. Fine. But thats not what I'm writing about. No my friends, for today I'm just whining. Okay? Indulge me, or stop reading now :)

Sometimes things stress both of us out; you know the sort of thing, we all go through it -- bad news, or difficult decisions -- heck, everyone whose ever bought a house, moved, or changed jobs knows what I'm talking about. Whats funny is that my wife is my rock, and I'm hers, but if we're both stressed out -- who is our rock? After a tough day I can always come home and the rough edges wash away just by getting nearer to my wife and home.. but what if we're both stressed? She comes to me for help, of course, since I'm her guy.

But who do I get to dump on?

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

Day by Day: A snip from a /.er
Thu, 01 Jun 2006

I sort of liked this little comment someone made; short and to the point:

We've become a management culture since the Cold War ended. The emphasis on science and technology has been replaced with an emphasis on managerial skills and the joys of outsourcing. And since the amount of money being spent on educating our young has diminished, and you often get the proverbial gym teacher teaching chem lab, is it any wonder why science scores are down?

Courtesy of 'monkaduck'

Every time I read a posting or news item about education in the US or Canada being down, about outsorcering, about a technical person having a hard time finding work or recently losing his job it makes me wonder; I suppose its the same old problem tech people have always faced inside the workforce -- that it is assumed that techies become managers once they've become good techies; Non-techs seem to think management is a step up, but we techs know the truth -- that most of us do it because we like to play with things, blow stuff up, and create. Maybe the Matrix brought in a few new recruits, but with enrolment in computer science down, and people entered trades in smaller numbers than ever before.. I think we're heading for a crisis. We're the society Douglas Adams was talking about, full of hair dressers and managers...

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