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

JSTOR copying

Posted on 2011-07-20 by pappp

Open-Access Advocate Is Arrested for Huge Download
I’m pretty sure I don’t have a big problem with this kind of radical openness, especially with regard to journal publications… although that was a disgustingly unsubtle technique. I’ve always pictured a distributed project of the “Share your documents (and possibly your subscriptions)” darknet forming style… all the contacts are already in place, since that is how academics have been sharing harder to get publications for as long as those terms have had meaning, we just need a protocol to streamline finding and swapping over the ‘net. There is no excuse for journal access still being so closed and expensive.

Posted in Computers, General, School | Leave a comment

New CentrePointe design includes 30-story bundle of ‘tubes’ Hey! At least this design isn’t a giant phallus.

Posted on 2011-07-13 by pappp | Leave a comment

Driven off the Road by M.B.A.s (Rana Foroohar for Time)
THIS. This this this this this. (Except for the detail where the apple example is mostly wrong)

Posted on 2011-07-09 by pappp | Leave a comment

While being a guinea pig for a software test, watching several groups try to coordinate for a tutorial via conference call and Skype makes me appreciate just how much better Google’s new hangout feature is — that said, they seem to need screen sharing, and google isn’t doing that (yet? please?). On the other hand, neither does Skype in the real world, and VNC (for fuck sake) and and old school conference call is the only thing working.

Posted on 2011-07-08 by pappp | Leave a comment

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:
Continue reading →

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

It is 2011 and UK Healthcare still can’t accept electronic payment. I spent a couple minutes going over a bill trying to figure out how to pay online because I couldn’t believe it wasn’t an option, but no, snail mail both directions to pay by credit card. Pathetic.

Posted on 2011-06-29 by pappp | Leave a comment

Google Plus?

Posted on 2011-06-28 by pappp

Google is trying again with social networking with Google Plus. It actually looks pretty interesting; the group management (“cirlces”) looks reasonable, the platform-independent n-party text/voice/video chat (“hangouts”) looks spectacular, and the interest grouping (“sparks”) would make a good standalone feature. I’m going to wait and see before I deal with it, but the “Google already knows all there is to know about me” reality gives it a leg up on the competition, and if they rigged it together with standard technology (they way Google talk is a good Jabber/XMPP implementation with some extensions turned on) I might at least peer some of my “on the real god damn internet” identity into it like I do with Buzz.

Posted in Announcements, Computers, General | Leave a comment