I'm one click away from loading spyware? Hmm. First I stop using my Mac. Then I have the sort of total brain transplant that prevents me from saying "neither of these sites are safe; in both cases you would download smileys! And finally, I lose the ability to choose software by looking on the web to see what other people recommend.
metacritic.com is useful. But what I really need is a trigger in the shop to tell me 'don't buy this title'. Atari Retro Classics is unbelievably bad, one of the worst games I have ever bought for any platform. Not even the slightest attention was paid to making the ports either reflect the original games, or work as games in their own right. And you know, I know this. I have bought bad ports of Tempest at least six times before over the years. (Plus of course, I legally bought the Rom from Star Roms when it was available, so my perfect Mame version is legit at least). But I see the game there... and something in my brain goes "Ooh! Tempest on my DS! Suspend all critical circuits and open wallet now!"
I'd recommend YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates
on
Getting Off NetHack?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Puzzle Pirates has lots of recovering Nethack addicts. Plus it's a very soothing sort of an MMORPG. The game even sends you little messages saying you've probably been playing too long and perhaps you need some fresh air.
Of course, it's also quite addicting. But you can't have everything.
The difference is that if one day I have no time to take the nofollow tag off a genuine comment, little harm is done. If, on that same day, I fail to clear out 500 comment spams from my blog, the entire place is polluted.
Links in the main body of the blog post will be fine. Blogs of course, have high page rank because bloggers comment on each other's blogs. This tag may have a side effect of generally reducing the page rank of blogs.
As for useful links in comments; if they're really good sites, people are bound to blog about them more generally. And my poor blog gets few enough hits that it will be no problem for me to manually edit genuine comments to remove nofollow tags.
LJ and Six Apart complement each other quite well. Six Apart clearly wants Brad's personal skills -- his ability to scale LJ is legendary, and LJ also managed to design a payment structure that made them profitable while keeping the site free for normal use and without irritating their user base. (LiveJournal users pay extra for things like access to faster servers and extra user pics; nice to haves but not essential features).
Contrast Movable Type, which upset exactly everybody with their licenses; a basic MT installation for, eg, a couple posting pictures of their cats, is $70 now. LJ is also essentially free of comment spam, while Movable Type is beset with it. On the other hand, Movable Type and TypePad are beautiful, elegant systems, easy to use, extensible and customisable. LiveJournal, well, isn't.
If I just do DDR, and don't diet as well, I don't lose any weight. However, I do feel better, feel happier, look better, and I'm much fitter. If I also diet, then I lose weight.
I've been doing DDR at home for about 18 months now; I rarely play in the arcades (I have small children). I'm not a great player, but I have a lot of fun and work up a sweat. I have a PS2 (bought, essentially, specifically to play DDR on -- cheaper than the gym), several games, and ignition-type dance mats (the ones with padding in them and easily feelable edges to the arrows).
I'd take issue with the chap who said 'just run'; running's way harder on your knees than DDR (as long as you use padded mats), and it's harder to integrate into your lifestyle than in-house exercising. Plus, as a result of the DDR, I can now run when I need to -- to catch a bus or catch my kids -- without getting out of breath. And my walking speed has gone from 'slower than most people' to 'faster than most people'; I'm only 5'1", so catching most people up when walking is a really good feeling. Plus it makes you feel more empowered when walking alone at night.
Although you can get DDR working on your PC, you risk using up tons of time that you could be exercising in finding songs, getting the set-up working, sourcing exactly the right sort of adapter (I recommend Lik-Sang), and so on. You need to be careful that you're not attempting to find a time-spinning exercise-avoidance strategy. Getting a console's not expensive; you can pick up a second-hand PSOne for only a few dollars, and get a mat and game bundle.
If you're doing DDR for weight loss, then I picked up a tip from an occupational health specialist, who explained to me that exercise that shifts your body weight (like walking or running) is better for your general health than exercise that doesn't. Ordinary one-mat DDR is pretty static. But if you do double, where one person dances across two mats, you have to shift your body all the time. Result; it's much harder exercise. It's also a greater intellectual challenge, which I like. (DDR is as much work for your brain as your body; something that isn't true of most exercise). If you're a beginner, you should probably leave double until you can do four foot dances straightforwardly.
Home DDR is better for exercise than arcade unless it's easy to fit a visit to an arcade into your routine. Even so, the home versions have more and better non-stop features, and the key to making an effective exercise routine from DDR is to increase the time you spend dancing and reduce the time you spend fiddling with the controls, choosing songs, checking your records and so on.
DDR's not the only video game that gives you a workout. Eyetoy and Eyetoy Groove exercise your upper body, as does Samba De Amigo. And we found that playing SSX on a snowboard controller was great for balance.
Have fun
Three of us used Hydra extensively this weekend, preparing editorial material for the next issue of our fanzine, Plokta. It's certainly much more than a demo, as some have suggested. We found it very straightforward and effective to use, and much simpler than any collaborative editing tool I've previously encountered. We were working in a single room on a wireless LAN.
Hydra is a relatively simple text editor, with syntax colouring for a range of languages (as it has HTML, it satisfies my limited requirements in a text editor, too). Document owners can choose to share them (and whether to control user access to shares), and LAN users can see a list of all shared documents and ask to join those they're interested in working on.
Once shared, text created by each participant is separately coloured. Participants are handily identified with iChat icons and the position of their cursor is noted. It works as advertised; it's possible to work fully interactively and edit simultaneously, which takes some getting used to.
When editing editorial text, we would have found it helpful for deleted text to be indicated with strikethrough rather than just deleted. Otherwise Hydra was extremely handy. It both sped up and simplified the process of writing and re-writing material, and version control risks were eliminated. When material was ready to be imported to the laid out document, it could be cut-and-pasted from Hydra, rather than the usual process of saving a copy to the server and then opening on the machine on which the layout was being done.
Only other drawback; those of the team not using Mac OS X were disenfranchised (it's taking advantage of Cocoa), and we just can't afford to buy those PowerBooks fast enough.
We've also done a test session over the Internet; sharing documents (through our various firewalls) is slightly more fiddly. Once participants and documents are identified, the program remains as easy and straightforward as on Rendezvous.
Our wishlist item; that this collaboration system is fully incorporated in Apple's rumoured forthcoming OS X native word processor.
Bottom line; it's very useful indeed, and it's free.
Occasionally these things are honoured. When people were chasing the Wharfedale DVD around Tesco's (a UK supermarket chain), someone spotted one with the shelf price marked at £1.79 instead of £179. Tesco's has a policy of honouring shelf price markings; and they did. Gave the chap his DVD player for £1.79, and the 1 reward point he was entitled to.
When I took delivery of my iMac, I was astonished to discover that the brushed metal underside of it was more beautiful than any part of any computer I'd previously owned.
In the sense of googling on a potential partner, I think you'd start with a Google search, but if that came up blank, or didn't give you enough information, you'd probably use other search strategies and still consider it to be 'googling' on them. So I think the verb is referring to a slightly broader practice that strictly a Google search; but views from people who do this sort of searching all the time would allow us to check the usage more precisely.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm one click away from loading spyware? Hmm. First I stop using my Mac. Then I have the sort of total brain transplant that prevents me from saying "neither of these sites are safe; in both cases you would download smileys! And finally, I lose the ability to choose software by looking on the web to see what other people recommend.
metacritic.com is useful. But what I really need is a trigger in the shop to tell me 'don't buy this title'. Atari Retro Classics is unbelievably bad, one of the worst games I have ever bought for any platform. Not even the slightest attention was paid to making the ports either reflect the original games, or work as games in their own right. And you know, I know this. I have bought bad ports of Tempest at least six times before over the years. (Plus of course, I legally bought the Rom from Star Roms when it was available, so my perfect Mame version is legit at least). But I see the game there... and something in my brain goes "Ooh! Tempest on my DS! Suspend all critical circuits and open wallet now!"
Puzzle Pirates has lots of recovering Nethack addicts. Plus it's a very soothing sort of an MMORPG. The game even sends you little messages saying you've probably been playing too long and perhaps you need some fresh air. Of course, it's also quite addicting. But you can't have everything.
The difference is that if one day I have no time to take the nofollow tag off a genuine comment, little harm is done. If, on that same day, I fail to clear out 500 comment spams from my blog, the entire place is polluted.
Links in the main body of the blog post will be fine. Blogs of course, have high page rank because bloggers comment on each other's blogs. This tag may have a side effect of generally reducing the page rank of blogs.
As for useful links in comments; if they're really good sites, people are bound to blog about them more generally. And my poor blog gets few enough hits that it will be no problem for me to manually edit genuine comments to remove nofollow tags.
LJ and Six Apart complement each other quite well. Six Apart clearly wants Brad's personal skills -- his ability to scale LJ is legendary, and LJ also managed to design a payment structure that made them profitable while keeping the site free for normal use and without irritating their user base. (LiveJournal users pay extra for things like access to faster servers and extra user pics; nice to haves but not essential features).
Contrast Movable Type, which upset exactly everybody with their licenses; a basic MT installation for, eg, a couple posting pictures of their cats, is $70 now. LJ is also essentially free of comment spam, while Movable Type is beset with it. On the other hand, Movable Type and TypePad are beautiful, elegant systems, easy to use, extensible and customisable. LiveJournal, well, isn't.
If I just do DDR, and don't diet as well, I don't lose any weight. However, I do feel better, feel happier, look better, and I'm much fitter. If I also diet, then I lose weight. I've been doing DDR at home for about 18 months now; I rarely play in the arcades (I have small children). I'm not a great player, but I have a lot of fun and work up a sweat. I have a PS2 (bought, essentially, specifically to play DDR on -- cheaper than the gym), several games, and ignition-type dance mats (the ones with padding in them and easily feelable edges to the arrows). I'd take issue with the chap who said 'just run'; running's way harder on your knees than DDR (as long as you use padded mats), and it's harder to integrate into your lifestyle than in-house exercising. Plus, as a result of the DDR, I can now run when I need to -- to catch a bus or catch my kids -- without getting out of breath. And my walking speed has gone from 'slower than most people' to 'faster than most people'; I'm only 5'1", so catching most people up when walking is a really good feeling. Plus it makes you feel more empowered when walking alone at night. Although you can get DDR working on your PC, you risk using up tons of time that you could be exercising in finding songs, getting the set-up working, sourcing exactly the right sort of adapter (I recommend Lik-Sang), and so on. You need to be careful that you're not attempting to find a time-spinning exercise-avoidance strategy. Getting a console's not expensive; you can pick up a second-hand PSOne for only a few dollars, and get a mat and game bundle. If you're doing DDR for weight loss, then I picked up a tip from an occupational health specialist, who explained to me that exercise that shifts your body weight (like walking or running) is better for your general health than exercise that doesn't. Ordinary one-mat DDR is pretty static. But if you do double, where one person dances across two mats, you have to shift your body all the time. Result; it's much harder exercise. It's also a greater intellectual challenge, which I like. (DDR is as much work for your brain as your body; something that isn't true of most exercise). If you're a beginner, you should probably leave double until you can do four foot dances straightforwardly. Home DDR is better for exercise than arcade unless it's easy to fit a visit to an arcade into your routine. Even so, the home versions have more and better non-stop features, and the key to making an effective exercise routine from DDR is to increase the time you spend dancing and reduce the time you spend fiddling with the controls, choosing songs, checking your records and so on. DDR's not the only video game that gives you a workout. Eyetoy and Eyetoy Groove exercise your upper body, as does Samba De Amigo. And we found that playing SSX on a snowboard controller was great for balance. Have fun
Three of us used Hydra extensively this weekend, preparing editorial material for the next issue of our fanzine, Plokta. It's certainly much more than a demo, as some have suggested. We found it very straightforward and effective to use, and much simpler than any collaborative editing tool I've previously encountered. We were working in a single room on a wireless LAN. Hydra is a relatively simple text editor, with syntax colouring for a range of languages (as it has HTML, it satisfies my limited requirements in a text editor, too). Document owners can choose to share them (and whether to control user access to shares), and LAN users can see a list of all shared documents and ask to join those they're interested in working on. Once shared, text created by each participant is separately coloured. Participants are handily identified with iChat icons and the position of their cursor is noted. It works as advertised; it's possible to work fully interactively and edit simultaneously, which takes some getting used to. When editing editorial text, we would have found it helpful for deleted text to be indicated with strikethrough rather than just deleted. Otherwise Hydra was extremely handy. It both sped up and simplified the process of writing and re-writing material, and version control risks were eliminated. When material was ready to be imported to the laid out document, it could be cut-and-pasted from Hydra, rather than the usual process of saving a copy to the server and then opening on the machine on which the layout was being done. Only other drawback; those of the team not using Mac OS X were disenfranchised (it's taking advantage of Cocoa), and we just can't afford to buy those PowerBooks fast enough. We've also done a test session over the Internet; sharing documents (through our various firewalls) is slightly more fiddly. Once participants and documents are identified, the program remains as easy and straightforward as on Rendezvous. Our wishlist item; that this collaboration system is fully incorporated in Apple's rumoured forthcoming OS X native word processor. Bottom line; it's very useful indeed, and it's free.
Occasionally these things are honoured. When people were chasing the Wharfedale DVD around Tesco's (a UK supermarket chain), someone spotted one with the shelf price marked at £1.79 instead of £179. Tesco's has a policy of honouring shelf price markings; and they did. Gave the chap his DVD player for £1.79, and the 1 reward point he was entitled to.
When I took delivery of my iMac, I was astonished to discover that the brushed metal underside of it was more beautiful than any part of any computer I'd previously owned.
In the sense of googling on a potential partner, I think you'd start with a Google search, but if that came up blank, or didn't give you enough information, you'd probably use other search strategies and still consider it to be 'googling' on them. So I think the verb is referring to a slightly broader practice that strictly a Google search; but views from people who do this sort of searching all the time would allow us to check the usage more precisely.