Remember the 3d sugar printer I wrote about a few months ago? No? Fine. No big deal. But this is even better: Fab at Home, Open-Source 3D Printer, Lets Users Make Anything! As long as you understand that “anything” in this case means “any solid freestanding object of homogenous materials” then this is pretty cool. It has the same goal: Take any arbitrary 3d mesh you design on your computer and realize it as a physical object. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fab at Home”
I follow all the links to my site that Technorati picks up. For example, the last several links have come from Back Home, Science Fiction Brewed Fresh Daily, How Many Miles to Babylon?, Rusty Badger, and Haibane.info. (Although I’d actually seen a couple of these already by the time Technorati picked it up. There is often an odd delay between the time someone posts something and when it shows up on TR. Sometimes days, and they often are not listed chronologically.)
I heard about “reposter” blogs years ago, but I’d never seen one in action before. Then last Thusday I was cruising through the incoming links and found one. It was a blog that had simply taken one of my posts and reproduced it, content, title, and all. Even had my name on it. I’m not going to link it, but for the curious, blog.avyakta.net/?p=124 is the address.
This is a very strange thing to see. It’s not particularly upsetting, but it is hard to understand why someone would do this, or what they hope to get out of it.
I can tell this was done by an automated script. The other site replicated the links to the previous / next in the series, which no longer make sense when transplanted to the other site. A human most likely wouldn’t do that. Another curious thing is the fact that the post in question wasn’t all that interesting. It’s not linked elsewhere. It’s not talking about a topic likely to draw a lot of hits. It’s just some totally random post from my archives. (This one, actually.)
What is the point of this? The site doesn’t even have ads on it, so this person isn’t trying to build up a bunch of traffic for ad revenue. It’s just random strangeness.
The week of UT3 blather continues. You should know that I have abandoned any concept of self-restraint. I see that almost nobody is reading these posts, which is fine. They’re huge rambling things full of speculation and ruminations on a niche game that isn’t even out yet. I am under no illusions about the usefulness of these articles. I write this stuff because I must, not because I expect you to read them. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Unreal Tournament 3: Weapons”
Here is a guy who takes modern laptops (and other gadgets) and rebuilds them to look like steampunk devices. He’s an odd* fellow, but his work is brilliant.
I’d like to see him do his thing to a cellphone. What would that look like?
* By “odd” I mean “unconventional”. I mean this in the nicest possible way.
I’m not the best guy to review the graphics technology of a cutting-edge game like this. I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to technology enhancements. If you want to know how the game looks when run at 3072×2048 on a 28 inch LCD using an array of overclocked GForce 8800’s submerged in liquid nitrogen you’re looking at the wrong guy. Still, I can’t resist doing a little armchair quarterbacking on what they’ve done. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Unreal Tournament 3: Technology”
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It feels like a sort of credit card where you can borrow energy that must be paid back later. You can keep making payments every day to maintain the debt, but as soon as you stop paying (taking caffeine) the borrowed energy is repossessed. Abruptly. You’ll pay back the energy, and then some, in the form of a prolonged crash. Just like with a credit card, what you pay back is always going to be a good bit more than what you borrowed in the first place.
I knew all of this, but I fell for it anyway. I’d been incrementally increasing my coffee intake over the last year. When a rough day came along I’d have an extra cup, which then became my new minimum payment. When the weather turned cold, I foolishly started drinking a little more each day because hot coffee is great for keeping warm. (A contributing factor to this was getting a coffeemaker with an opaque pot. It’s insulated, which saves energy, but it allowed me to up my intake without noticing. How many cups have I had again? Three? Yeah. Probably three. Hey. Why is the pot empty?)
A couple of weeks ago I realized I was in trouble when my wife woke up and found the coffee pot was empty. I’d demolished our entire 12-cup pot on my own. Oopsie.
I knew I couldn’t do anything about it right away (aside from brewing another pot of coffee) because I was knee-deep in a major project at work that was already demanding overtime. So I just maintained my habit. Last week I finished that project, and this weekend I got rid of the coffee. I hate being in debt, and by this point I’d run up quite a bill.
I replaced the regular coffee with decaf and endured the crash. I’m now on day four of the process. I’ve gone from having 1350mg of caffeine to about 50mg a day. (Even decaf has a bit of caffeine. ) My body has filed numerous protests in the form of headaches, lethargy, drowsiness, and a sort of generalized state of non-specific suckitude.
Yesterday I dashed off the snarky bit about the writer’s strike, and then as I read the comments I wondered WHAT IS EVERYONE’S PROBLEM TODAY?!?!? It was one of those, “everyone else is driving like a jerk” moments, where I realized everyone else was (probably) normal and “everyone’s problem” was that I was in a state of perpetual agitation.
I’m in a mess of my own making, the result of being careless with a habit-forming psychoactive stimulant. This is easy compared to quitting smoking (not that I would know, I don’t smoke) but it still sucks and I’m kicking myself for letting it go this far.
Other amusing symptoms:
Interesting experience. I think I’m passed the worst of it now, but if I seem unusually grumpy please humor me. I’m not really an awful person, I’m just punishing you for my mistakes. Is that so wrong?
I didn’t think I’d be excited about this game. I didn’t think I had the capacity to be excited about this game. Understand that I’d more or less written off subsequent entries in the UT series a couple of years ago, and I didn’t think I’d be coming back. Now that UT3 is near release, and now that I’ve learned that it may attempt to cater to my particular tastes, I’m finding myself drawn to learn more and see exactly what sort of game Epic has for us here. I spent most of the weekend playing, studying, swearing at, and thinking about, the demo. A whole bunch of UT3 posts this week are the natural byproduct of this behavior. Starting with this one. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Unreal Tournament 3: Interface”
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
T w e n t y S i d e d
