A Correspondence in Recommended Articles
There's a thread here in people's consciousness, I'm just going to try to aggregate it all in one place today and maybe discuss it in a few days or so. In the order that I read them:
The Sign of the Pasta
"May the Great CEO bless you with full benefits, good sir," the old cashier crone crooned as she deposited the change upon my palm. I pocketed it, hoping she couldn't see me subtly shaking my head as I wandered, groceries in hand, to the lot outside. I guess one of His Marketing representatives must have come through His Favored Market recently, once again inciting in even the lowliest and dirtiest clerk the Good Fortune Shared By All Whom Shall Work. The bright sun belittled my meager cynicism as I came out into the lot, His minor torment upon me, perhaps.
Three of His Lost Employees were scattered across the lot, doing what little they could to scrape a living off the droppings of the more fortunate, to eke change from the few that they could. "It is their own misfortune only because they cannot or will not work when His Magnificent Society asks that of them," spoke the parody Marketer in my head, looking at least a little bit like the current President, our current head of His Earthly Affairs. I still don't understand how people can always be so close to such depressing desolation and not wonder why in "His Benevolence" he can't seem to feed or clothe so many that wander His Cities homeless and desperate.
His Preferred Market across the street glittered in the wonder of His Holy Writ, proclaiming sales in produce and home appliances. His Fabulous Furniture Emporium next door letting all know the great fortune of how His Machines have delivered unto us nearly unprecedented savings! Just like last week. Just like every week...
A man of rather imposing stature made a rather whimsically meek cough just behind my left shoulder. "Excuse me, good sir, but do you have a few ...
Firefox Tricks
Recently introduced to Vimperator, an addon for Firefox that makes Firefox more like Vim, which is amazingly useful for keyboard-based browsing. Nothing like being able to navigate pages from the home row (unei style for Colemak, with a bit of remapping). Try it, but because it completely mangles Firefox's keyboard shortcuts and some of Firefox's UI you may want to try it in a separate profile first.
Which is my second trick: Firefox Profiles. I used to think these were a vestigial organ from Netscape used only by corporate types. Then I realized that I had two good uses of them and that shut me up. First I've become one of those people that have an extremely long running session and keep something around 10-20 tabs open that come back when I relaunch Firefox. I actually find that useful, but there is one scenario where that becomes an issue: roaming wireless. Many wireless networks have "welcome" or "sign-in" pages that redirect you on first connection. I created a "clear" profile that opens to a blank page specifically for unknown wireless networks where I want to wait to pull up my long running session until after I know they won't be redirected. The other use is that I decided to move my addons like Firebug and YSlow to a separate profile to keep them from taking up memory when I'm just surfing.
To set up a new profile run firefox -ProfileManager which gives you the normally hidden profile GUI. To start Firefox with a different profile you can create a shortcut with firefox -p <profile-name>.
Blogs of the Round Table: Love is a Story I've Been Encouraged to Finish, or What We Need Is Little More Voodoo
April's Topic
The topic for this month's round table is on the personal core mineral that you most love or hate in games. My answers here probably won't surprise anyone that even briefly knows me, but I'll try to make the journey interesting. I'll start closer to what I dislike and then work my way from there. Keep in mind that everything is relative and there are no "hard" feelings here.
I've played a lot of games. I've played a very diverse swath of games. I've beta-tested games, I've reviewed games, I've bought more games than a reasonable person might and have a number of crazy opinions about games. I've built crappy little games since High School and I'm currently in what some friends have regarded as "the crazy state of mind" that maybe I want to work for some cool game company or another... [1]
I've learned a lot of things from games. One thing that I've learned from games, for example, is that I suck at playing them. Or at least that's the easiest way to say it in today's vernacular. More apt is the admission that I'm not and have never been a "hardcore" player. In gaming I've tried a wide variety of games and very much am a "jack of all trades, master of none". I've never beaten a Mario game. I can't beat most FPSes without coop help. I managed to snag 100% of the collectibles in Psychonauts on my second play through, but still have yet to best the evil meat circus. I have no qualms about cheating or referring to GameFAQs when I get frustrated and fewer qualms about shutting off a game ...
Darcsforge v. GitHub
Interesting... GitHub has a few of the features that I've always intended for Darcsforge (some of which already exist as skeleton code in the repository)... Possibly more reason to go ahead and push Darcsforge further down the stretch...
