Category Archives: Entertainment

Expected HTC Dobleshot/MyTouch 4G Slide: Purchased. Time to getting irritated and deciding I needed to root it: Approximately 20 minutes.

Posted on 2011-08-20 by pappp | Leave a comment

Quote Widget

Posted on 2011-08-15 by pappp

I has a quotes widget. Hopefully appearing over there -> in the right side bar. It’s picking from a selection which has been growing on my primary machine for years — I’ve been meaning to put a copy online since I accidentally wiped part of it out, then discovered my backup script hadn’t been saving dot files for months, and just found a suitable WordPress plugin to manage them. I think some of them are inappropriately long passages for the widget, but if I was interested in web design I wouldn’t be using the default WordPress theme tweaked only for functionality.

Posted in Entertainment, Literature, Meta | Leave a comment

NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy

Posted on 2011-08-05 by pappp

At Systems Lunch earlier today one of the Professors brought up NPR’s Science Fiction And Fantasy Finalists list, which kicked off a fabulous discussion of favorites and extended the already ridiculous list of things I’d like to read. There are only a handful of things I consider appropriate for the list missing (like Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia Trilogy, mentioned in my last post), and a surprising number of things usually excluded for one reason or another (Like Timothy Zhan’s Thrawn Trilogy which is tainted by association with the Star Wars franchise, and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s under-appreciated dystopia novel We) present.

Posted in Entertainment, General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Just read.

Posted on 2011-07-30 by pappp

I just snapped out of one of those particularly idyllic afternoons, when I finished the remainder of this year’s Jonathan Strahan edited “The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year” after I put it down a couple months ago and forgot about it. This was complimented with kwxx stream bringing me ridiculous but relaxing island pop. I hadn’t spent an afternoon just reading in too long.

I’ve picked up every previous volume of the collection and am going to post up a couple quick notes like I did for previous volumes in the preceding link, to give credit where due and make it so I can find them later.
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Posted in Entertainment, General, Literature, Music | 3 Comments

Humble Indie Bundle, Again

Posted on 2011-07-26 by pappp

The Humble Inidie Bundle folks have a new set available, labelled #3. (I guess the last one was “Humble Frozenbyte Bundle” and thus not numbered). I liked Crayon Physics when it was an experiment on Maemo, and the collection of puzzle platformers that make up most of the balance look worthwhile. Once again, I’m in for $15.
EDIT: My mistake, the Maemo physics game I was thinking of was a contemporary play-alike called Numpty Physics

Posted in Computers, DIY, Entertainment, General, Objects | 1 Comment

Minecraft Survivalism

Posted on 2011-07-25 by pappp

While looking for something idle to do after I was out of patience for code the other day, I came across the Survivalism mod of Minecraft. Minecraft is a good sandbox, and a fair social activity, but isn’t terribly interesting as a game due to lack of objectives. Survivalism adds requirements for drinking, eating, and rest that make the game considerably more urgent and challenging, and gives the player a limited number of lives which changes the dynamic by keeping games finite. It lends a kind of rogue-like feel, which makes it way more interesting as a game. As we all know, Dying is Fun.

Posted in Computers, DIY, Entertainment | 2 Comments

Google Plus

Posted on 2011-07-07 by pappp

I’ve been playing with Google+ for the last couple days, and am finding it pretty interesting. To share some observations that will be tedious to anyone not interested in plus, UI design, and such geekery:
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Posted in Announcements, Computers, Entertainment, General | Leave a comment

Happy 10th BitTorrent

Posted on 2011-07-02 by pappp

Happy 10th birthday to Bit Torrent.
In 10 years, the technology has come into all kinds of interesting uses, legal and otherwise, eliminated the idea that any central authority can make content unavailable, and given inertia to the social understanding that replication cost for digital media is asymptotically close to zero, despite legal posturing to the contrary.

Posted in Computers, Entertainment, General | Leave a comment

Just fiddled with Alice: Madness Returns for a bit. The mechanics may actually be clunkier and more cliche than the original, but it looks like it’ll again be more than made up for by the setting, art, and writing.

Posted on 2011-06-17 by pappp | Leave a comment

Mobile Emulation

Posted on 2011-05-22 by pappp

As promised, some poking about with emulation for mobile OSes. The big take-away is that MeeGo is in bad shape, and that WebOS is brilliant, and if HP can get their shit together with real availability of competent hardware and regular software updates, deserves to be wildly sucessful.
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Posted in Computers, Electronics, Entertainment, General, Objects | 1 Comment