Traces of Geek

I got an article published: Disable the Windows Firewall in Windows XP SP2

2009-07-09T06:27:00.002-04:00

If you have a chance, please take a look at the article I just recently had published. It discusses:

* How to disable the Windows Firewall with REGEDIT or from the CMD line
* How to disable the Windows XP Security Center

Are Free-To-Play MMOs Really Profitable?

2009-06-10T11:00:00.001-04:00

Gamasutra - Features - What Are The Rewards Of 'Free-To-Play' MMOs?:
"Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from micro transactions

In February, 2005, James chose to launch a free-to-play version of Puzzle Pirates alongside the original subscription model (which contributes an additional $70,000 each month from subscription fees)."

"that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month."

D&D Online Offers New Free-to-Play Option

2009-06-10T05:38:00.003-04:00

Announcing Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited!: "DDO Unlimited introduces a new Free To Play option to the game! Players can download DDO for free and enjoy many free adventures. The new DDO Store allows players to purchase even more adventures, special items, and account services! The best part is - as existing subscribers, you're automatically enrolled in our VIP program for DDO Unlimited and will enjoy all the benefits that come with being VIPs! You'll continue to get unlimited access to all of the game's content, plus get some extra perks as our thank you just for being a VIP"

Here's a link to the differences between the VIP and Free accounts: http://www.ddo.com/vip. It looks like the biggest difference for Free players will be access; you can only adventure in and around the main city, and you will have access only to the basic classes, races. You are also limited to 2 characters, whereas VIP's get 10.

50 Things Every Geek Must Know

2009-04-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

Maximum PC this month has an article on 50 Things Every Geek Must Know, including basic HTML tags, beating Quake in under an hour, and counting the digits in pi. (Preview only available at the link).

Gmail CADIE

2009-04-01T08:59:00.002-04:00

Introducing Google's newest invention: Gmail CADIE

Blockland!

2009-03-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

Blockland is a free LEGO simulation environment in which you can create... well, just about anything. Check out some of the screen shots below for examples.

Free Audio Books

2009-03-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple of sites that offer free audio books.

Project Gutenberg offers both human-read and computer-read audio of classic works.

At Librivox you can download or record public domain audio books, in multiple file formats.

Arimaa - Not a Game for Computers

2009-03-16T11:57:00.002-04:00

Here's a game you can play on a standard chess board, based on the idea of "push-me,pull-you".

Arimaa is a very deep strategy game with simple rules. It was designed to be:

Playable with a standard chess set.
Easy to learn.
Fun and interesting for humans.

Difficult for computers.

You can learn more about Arimaa here.
And for those wanting to try out a quick game against the computer, check out Smart Games and download the computer version.

Firefox addon: SnipeSwipe: last second ebay sniping

2009-03-15T13:00:00.001-04:00

Here's a new Firefox addon that automatically places bids on ebay with 2 seconds remaining in the auction. Try it out for free.

(Cnet review | Product download page)

Now, I'm not really advocating using these kinds of tools. I don't shop on eBay enough to need such a tool. There are definitely other services out there, some of them pay-to-use, which all but guarantee winning that auction. Really I wanted to talk about it because it is a Firefox addon, which I find rather novel. The fact that this tool is free might appeal to some people. If that's your thing, give it a shot.

Build your own paper rocket

2009-03-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

"Build your own little paper rocket - it comes complete with a pneumatic launch pad.

Using pressurized air as it's only fuel, the rocket might rise as high as five meters. No fire and no explosives are used - it's perfectly safe for indoor use. "

http://www.groeg.de/puzzles/rocket.html

Brutally Difficult NES Game

2009-03-14T11:36:00.002-04:00

Read about this video here.

Free Pinouts (DIY cables)

2009-03-13T13:00:00.002-04:00

For your DIY needs:

"This is a collection of pinouts that I've gathered over the years and umpteen hours of buzzing out cables. Since others are bound to find some of this information useful, I've cleaned it up and html-ized it, but hopefully in a non-obtrusive way so that it is still usable from an 80-column dumb terminal."

http://www.meadow.net/pinouts.html

Quake LIVE!

2009-03-13T09:00:00.006-04:00

Quake live is a free online game you can play from anywhere with web access. It scales to your skill level, so you (probably) won't be trampled by h4x0rz. It features CTF, Clan Arena, Team Death Match, FFA and Duel modes, so you should be able to spend some amount of time mastering all of the intricacies.
You have the ability to play matches only against friends who are online, pick a game based on your skill level, or just play against bots. You can also earn achivements, ala TF2.

EDIT 3/14/09: I have played the game a few times now, and here's what I can tell you:
1.) If you figure out how to "sprint" in the tutorial, please tell me. From what I've read so far, no one has been able to figure that out. (Possibly not implemented yet?) I figured it out. You don't really "sprint". (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)
	2.) The game itself takes up nearly 300MB on your hard drive, so if you have less than DSL, good luck downloading it. You need to have a broadband connection to play this game as well.
	3.) Since this runs through your browser, it's going to eat your processor. I have a dual core 1.9Ghz system and the game was using 43% of my CPU.
4.) YES, you can play the game full screen, at maximum resolution.

Tiny apps

2009-03-12T11:59:00.001-04:00

Here's a great list* of tiny apps for Windows and Linux

50k web server
1MB client for remote execution, even over the internet!
Do almost anything in Active Directory from the command line with these apps.

More here.

*Note: some of these programs can be exploited, so be careful! Good for home use, not very good most likely in a production environment.

Change IE7 and Firewall settings with a REG key

2009-03-11T13:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a couple quick how-to's for you geeks out there.

Disable Firewall with a REG key:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=422503

Change IE7 settings with a REG key:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-4_102-0.html?threadID=228203

Replacement Docs

2009-03-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php

Welcome to replacementdocs!

- Have you ever rented a game that came with no instructions?
- Have you ever bought a used game and found out later that the package you received didn't come with an essential map or answers to copy protection questions required to play the game?
- Have you ever bought a re-released game and then realized that they only included an Installation Guide, no game instructions at all?
- Has your wife (or husband!) ever just thrown out all your game manuals because they thought "you didn't need them anymore"?

If so, replacementdocs is here to help! We're here to provide you with those manuals for situations when you really should've had them to begin with.

More Portable Apps for your USB Drives

2009-03-10T08:14:00.001-04:00

PortableApps.com is a freeware launcher for your portable apps. No spyware, no ads, no "free-trials". It's free. You can use it to launch portable Firefox, Open Office, Dosbox, and more!
http://portableapps.com/node/3041

Automate your garden!

2009-03-09T13:00:00.000-04:00

Do you have trouble knowing when your plants need watering? Maybe you need a soil moisture tester. Better yet, why not hook one up to a computer and make it water your plants for you? That's exactly what this guy did. Using nothing more than picture-hanging hooks and some Plaster of Paris he made a soil tester. The moisture in the soil conducts electricity; if the soil gets too dry, the circuit breaks and the computer knows to water the plant. His entire indoor grow box is automated -- he virtually never has to check on his seedlings.

Of course, everyone knows that if you don't talk or sing to your plants, they won't grow nice and green and leafy. Maybe he should put in a speaker system.

SheevaPlug: Tiny Linux Server

2009-03-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

	This is just... amazing. This little device is a server. It only uses 5 watts. Starting price is $99. Suggested uses so far are as a tiny server (obviously), IRC client, home automation, VPN server, NAS, networked webcam, port ahem sniffer, or my personal favorite: attach a 1TB external HDD and DL torrents 24/7 through it. Read the Hack-a-Day review here.
From the official website: The platform is built using Marvell’s Kirkwood series system-on-chip (SoC) design with a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva™ CPU processor equipped, 512Mbytes of FLASH and 512Mbytes of DRAM. The plug also features a 2.0 USB port to allow users to run applications that require a hard disk or other peripheral.

Clear IE7 History From The Command Line

2009-03-03T11:58:00.001-05:00

If you want to delete all of your browsing history, cookies, etc without having to navigate IE7's menus, here's a short BAT file you can create:

RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351

Put the above code in a text file, save it as ClearIE.bat and you're good to go.

Courtesy of How To Geek. You can find other examples, like how to clear just your cookies at this site too.

Portable Applications

2009-02-28T14:00:00.002-05:00

I love programs that don't have to alter the Windows registry. They're so... simple. Like The Waltons. I already knew about PDF Maker, uTorrent and portable Firefox. And then I found a compiled list of portable applications. There are dozens of these things! You could literally plug in a flash drive and run your OS, Office suite and browse the web without ever installing a single piece of software. Cool.

(Note: the link above is dated 2006, so I'm sure there might be hundreds more by now.)

Make Blog, Hack a Day, The Genteel Recessionista

2009-02-28T09:00:00.002-05:00

It only make sense that during a Recession people would want to try to fix what they have rather than buying new. I don't own a soldering gun, but man these sites really make me want one.

MAKE publishes a magazine, podcasts and has a blog. The blog is great, with all sorts of neat articles on robots, mini-computers and DIY projects. Recent posts include how to make a capacitor, creating a HUD for your RC airplane and even making rockets from office supplies. They also cover various MAKEer Faires, where creators come together to show off stuff in real life.

Hack A Day's name probably says it all. Actually, the blog often has three or four different featured projects every day. Unlike MAKE, instructions are usually not provided -- this site is really just for showing off cool stuff. Like this home-made CPU for instance.

One last DIY blog of note is The Genteel Recessionista. This blog offers tips on recession life, such as cooking, gardening and fixin' stuff. I especially like the post entitled "ZOMG!! WTF!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!" about putting together a fix-it kit.

Giving up Facebook for Lent?

2009-02-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

If you had to give up something for Lent, what would it be? Most people say chocolate, alcohol, swearing, or some other vice. But Facebook? Apparently some devout souls think that it's worth abstaining from. I guess I could see that. Broadly speaking, during Lent you are supposed to give up something that is important to you, or that you feel you need. Considering how many Facebook junkies spend all day on the site, maybe it's better if they do give it up for a while.

Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music All Sounds The Same

2009-02-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

"In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of vocal cords."

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html

From the article: "when track after track has perfect pitch, the songs are harder to differentiate from one another"

15 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials

2009-02-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

Here's an excellent compilation of Illustrator tutorials. These look really professional! (Now if only I owned a copy of Adobe CS3.)

Chinese Labor

2009-02-23T06:30:00.001-05:00

CNN just recently ran an article about 20,000,000 Chinese losing their factory jobs due to the global economic downturn. Most of these employees produced goods that had been exported to the US; now as Americans are tightening their belts, our desire for imports has lessened.

In the past months, about 70,000 factories nationwide have closed. Beijing official Chen Xiwen estimates about 20 million migrant workers have lost jobs. Tens of thousands of villages in the countryside depend on migrant workers' income.

Last year companies like Dell, HP and IBM felt the pinch when a series of natural disasters rocked China. An earthquake in Chengdu, China wiped out a key battery factory, creating a shortage of batteries for the laptop industry. China has had a competitive edge so far, thanks to its undervalued currency which makes goods artificially cheaper than they really are. US companies need to reevaluate their supply chains in light of the recession.

Really, I'm not sure what's worse: those who lost their jobs, or the millions of Chinese who are working under conditions that we outlawed in this country a century ago. Workers in these factories reportedly make only $0.41/hour. Overtime is mandatory; they work 12 hour shifts; they eat at the company store -- er, I mean, company cafeteria -- and sleep at the factory too. These are the people who made the keyboard you are probably using right now.

And yet US companies are unwilling to pay Americans a fair wage for the same work (or invest in machines that could easily do low-skill jobs).

Something has to give.

Escape From City 17 - Part One

2009-02-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

Check out this fan vid! It was listed in the Steam update news page. That's how good it is.

IE7 Pro

2009-02-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

I mainly use Firefox, but at work I have to use Internet Explorer. And anyone who has browsed the web recently knows that ads are evreywhere. Google Ad Words, banners -- and let us not forget those annoying flash pop-ups (and pop-unders, and nether-pops, and pop-betweens, and pop-throughs). I'm sure you will agree that the web has become rather hard to read.

Firefox has Ad Block Plus; now IE7 has IE7 Pro.

It blocks flash, ads, scripts, cleans your browsing history and claims to even make IE run faster.

I've tried it out, and can attest that the ad blocker works. I can actually read help articles again! I can browse without seeing Sponsored Results (sorry eBay).

Give it a try, see if you like it.

FREE: Books from O'Reilly's Open Books Project

2009-02-05T05:30:00.001-05:00

Tech geeks, rejoice. O'Reilly has put a number of books online, for free.
http://oreilly.com/openbook/

Here are some of my favorites:
The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog - Pretty self explanatory.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar - a history of computers and hacking.

FREE How To Guides: Tech-Recipes.com

2009-02-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

I stumbled across this website a while ago and find it to be a handy site to keep bookmarked. The guys over at tech-recipes.com have some great walk-throughs that explain in step-by-step detail how to do stuff with XP, Vista and Office that might not be immediately obvious.

Today I sought them out to figure out how to find duplicates within an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. And there it was! Saved me a lot of trouble.

As a side note, do not EVER go to one of those other "expert" sites *cough*. They claim to have the answers to some rather escoteric questions... but you have to pay to view the solutions. Yuk.

Free tutorials are the way to go. Viva la informacion!

Dawn of War Player's Guide

2009-02-02T05:35:00.001-05:00

I was recently clued into the great game that is Dawn of War. While I am a huge Starcraft fan, and can't wait for Starcraft II to come out, I do appreciate the level of detail and complexity of combat in the Dawn of War universe. (Gotta say: Multi-meltas ROCK!)

As a relative n00b, I scoured the internet for tips and tricks. Here's a great resource for Dawn of War fans:

The Dawn of War Player's Guide

Free Education

2009-01-21T23:32:00.001-05:00

In these tough economic times, you might consider going back to school. But what's that? Down on your luck and low on funds? Consider some of these free learning alternatives.

Free courses at Yale

Berkeley Webcasts

Harvard online courses

CrossLoop: I can help!

2009-01-17T11:30:00.001-05:00

CrossLoop is a remote control software package that allows experts to offer help to other users. Say you wanted help with getting a nasty virus off your computer, or wasn't sure how to configure your firewall. Maybe you need help with a bit of CSS or programming. You can search for experts via crossloop.com by keyword, or even find one near you. Many experts offer free estimates and consultation. Neat!

With that in mind, I decided to put my experience fighting the virus hordes to good use. If you want me to help with popups, spyware, or just speeding up a slow computer, click on the link below.

FREE Downloads: Zork I, II, III

2009-01-17T08:33:00.001-05:00

Zork has been released for free to the general public. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

USB Storage Carosel

2009-01-16T08:06:00.001-05:00

Get yours here.

About the Ads on this Site

2009-01-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

I know I don't get a lot of visitors here, but if you were wondering about the ads on this site all I can say is: I'm sorry. And also, don't click on them. :D

No really! JD over at Get Rich Slowly has a really good article on why you shouldn't click on ads. He argues that clicks which do no lead to sales actually hurt advertisers in the long run. No sales means it was a bad campaign, which means that the advertiser will not use that method of promotion in the future. This leads to fewer dollars in the pocket of site owners over time. Supply and demand, survival of the fittest and all that.

So, IF you see something you like, please do click. If not, don't.

And if you want to be more like me, and browse the web ad-free, get Firefox and Ad Block Plus. I don't even see the ads when I visit a site anymore.

In the future I might just use targeted advertising -- maybe just links to Think Geek and the like. But for now, we'll see if Google can help put money in Matt's ramen fund. (Full disclosure: to date, I've earned a whole $0.85 off of these stupid ads. And I don't actually get a check/deposit until my total hits $100. Doesn't really seem worth it.)

God Kills A Lolcat

2009-01-08T07:36:00.000-05:00

Show your distain for LOLcats with this fancy t-shirt!

(Link here)

And if you like that, you'll love this:

Brought to you by the number ~3.14 and the letter µ.

New Flash Game: Manifold

2009-01-07T07:30:00.001-05:00

Check out this cool little physics game where you navigate each puzzle by creating "gravity bubbles"! Cool!

Manifold - Create gravity wells and get to the exit

New Flash Game: Mytheria

2009-01-07T05:33:00.001-05:00

If you liked Magic: The Gathering, give this flash game a try.

Mytheria

iTunes Tax and Twittering From the Wonb

2008-12-22T16:23:00.001-05:00

iTunes Tax - our forefathers rebelled over tea and stamp taxes. Imagine if they had an opera tax.

Twittering From The Womb - How soon is too soon?

Firefox Most Vulnerable Program of 2008?

2008-12-20T13:05:00.004-05:00

In a recent study, the guys over at Bit9 have released a report claiming that Mozilla Firefox is the most vulnerable application of 2008. You can read the report here (PDF).

It would have been more accurate to say, “Besides Internet Explorer, Firefox is the most vulnerable application of 2008″.

The report is aimed at IT professionals working in an enterprise environment. It mainly takes issue with software that is difficult for IT departments to make sure is updated properly. The fact that Internet Explorer (any version) is not on the list at all seems highly suspect. While it is true that administrators *can* push out updates for IE, that’s assuming you are operating in an enterprise environment where everyone is on the network. Given how many users have laptops these days, the idea that you can keep your users patched easily is a pipe dream.

Looking at their conclusions, I have issues with the “Criteria for the Vulnerable Applications List”. Two of their criteria make bad assumptions about Firefox, namely
“5) Relies on the end user, rather than a central administrator, to manually patch or upgrade the software to eliminate the
vulnerability, if such a patch exists.”
AND
“6) The application cannot be automatically
and centrally updated via free Enterprise
tools such as Microsoft SMS & WSUS.”

These two points are false.

Firefox has an automatic update feature. This feature is on by default. Updates are automatically downloaded in the background and then installed when the browser restarts. (The same can’t be said for IE.) In fact, if you were to compare IE versus Firefox in a home environment, you would probably find that more Firefox installs are fully patched when compared to IE.

If we run IE through their six criteria, we get some interesting results:
1.) Runs on Windows - yup, installed by default.
2.) Well known - yup, installed by default and still has a majority market share (over 89% last time I checked).
3.) Not classified as malicious - nope, IE is "well trusted".
4.) A: Contains at least one vulnerability reported after Jan 2008 - yes; B: registered at NIST - yes; C: given a severe security rating between 7-10 — not sure, tool looked too complex.
5.) Relies on the end user for patching rather than the administrator — Enterprise users can patch, but home users are on their own. (Given how often people click “cancel” when asked to run Microsoft Update, this seems like a poor metric).
6.) The application cannot be centrally updated via tools like Microsoft SMS - well, yes, IE can, but again you’re assuming an enterprise environment. Home users are on their own to make use of Microsoft Update. Or what about remote users, professionals who are not always on your network? You would need some pretty strong IT policies to force laptop users to update on a regular basis! Good luck with that.

In my opinion IE, while it can be managed effectively, often falls short outside of a LAN environment. Given that IE has a larger market share, AND that there are more exploits reported overall, I’m really not that concerned about Firefox.

In fact, the more I learn about IE, the scarier it is. A quick search of the vulnerability database at http://nvd.nist.gov returns the following statistics: IE: 696 results, Firefox: 400 results. Make of that what you will.

These reports make me laugh. In fact, I'm posting from Firefox right now. Ohh, scary.

Stupid Users: IT horror stories

2008-12-17T05:55:00.000-05:00

Here are some funny, and sometimes sad stories of users run amok.

Stupid User Tricks

More Stupider User Tricks

Stupid Admin Exploits

Firefox Users Targeted by Rare Piece of Malware

2008-12-12T05:30:00.000-05:00

In what is surely mixed bit of news, Firefox has become so popular that hackers are actually starting to target the browser. This one attempts to collect passwords for internet banking sites.

The majority of people who have their account information stolen are often victims of their own carelessness. Don't click on unknown links. Don't download strange files. If you are redirected to a page that looks suspicious, close the browser immediately. Never click "OK" on a dialog box without reading it!

This probably goes without saying, but if you're in a public location, don't check your balance online. Wireless sniffers are everywhere. Furthermore, don't leave your computer unattended if you are signed in to your bank's website. If you're really concerned about security, make sure you are using the features included in Firefox! Clear your private data, empty your cache, delete your cookies. You can even set Firefox to automatically do this when you close the browser.
That's just common sense.

Be safe!

Script Kiddies on the Rampage

2008-12-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

The internet has brought us a lot of good things, in my opinion. Online banking, digital newspapers, alternatives to TV.

Unfortunately it has also made life easier for malicious individuals. There are now numerous virus-creating programs out there. The people over at Panda Labs have been keeping an eye on these no-goodnicks. Here are some articles about the programs that are commercially available.

"Constructing" bad things...again

Another Trojan Creator

Trojan 2 Worm

"Constructing" bad things

I especially don't like the "Delete all files in My Documents" check-box option.

The best way to protect yourself is, and always has been:

Keep your computer updated
Maintain an antivirus program
Don't open suspicious emails
Don't click on strange/weird links (always check the website address!)
Don't download plugins, especially if you know you already have it
Empty your browser cache

Be safe!

Shoot to Thrill: Bio-Sensory Reactions to 3D Shooting Games

2008-12-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

Here's a neat article about the level of excitement gamers feel when playing games. The researchers came to a few "well, duh" conclusions, such as cut scenes are more boring than assaulting an enemy base. Still, a good read.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

2008-12-07T10:04:00.003-05:00

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

A Whole Mess of Links in One Tidy Little Package!

2008-12-07T09:34:00.002-05:00

Now that NaNoWriMo is over (and I'm 50k words richer, thank you), I thought I would share some of the links that I've been hoarding.

50 Financial Skills Every Person Needs to Know:
This one is great. No, I don't know how to day trade, but I do know how to set up an online savings account, mail in rebates and sell stuff online. I scored 29/50.

Photoshop Disasters:
A site where you can view some of the worst attempts at "correcting" a photo. I especially think the "extra hand" shots are hilarious. You can call me crazy, but I laughed at this one for an hour.

Life Magazine Releases Entire Photo Archive to Google:
Talk about a time sink. There are shots here going all the way back to the 1860's.

Digital gold: Turning techno-junk into cash

2008-11-14T03:50:00.003-05:00

MSN has a neat story about companies actually PAYING you to recycle your old electronics equipment. In some cases, you might get $15 for that old cell phone. (Hah, and to think that your carrier offered to recycle that old phone for free when you got your new one -- clever.)

Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27668152/

Staples has been doing this for a while: bring in an ink cartridge, get #3.00 in store credit. They also recently started offering in store credit for printers and computers, as long as you are buying a similar item from them.

NaNoWriMo

2008-11-02T05:30:00.003-05:00

Indianapolis is holding its own here. I included a few surrounding regions for comparison.

Treadmills and Pancakes

2008-10-27T22:06:00.003-04:00

Americans love to make stuff themselves. The do-it-yourself mentality is addictive, and a great way to spend a few afternoons. Have you ever wanted to make a robot? (I know I have.) Sadly, small apartments and soldering guns do not mix. So, I get to live vicariously through these people.

Here's a Instructable on how to hook up a treadmill to your World of Warcraft game. Your character doesn't run unless you run. I suspect this would dramatically improve the health of many gamers.

If all that geekiness made you hungry, you might want to make some pancakes. Laser-etched pancakes! Or just use a template and spray them with syrup, that works too. (I really want to try this now.)

Addicting Games

2008-10-20T20:59:00.003-04:00

XKCD has it exactly right. There is just something about Flash games -- really good flash games -- that makes them irresistible. I have played a lot of games, most of them only once. It is rare to find a really, really good game. A game that people enjoy, is easy to learn and like to play over and over. Perhaps the draw lies in the fact that you can play them anywhere, without fear of hardware requirements. Here are some of my favorites.

Name (Addictiveness, out of 10)

Desktop Tower Defense (10/10) -- I have played this... way too many times. Try out all the challenge modes. I've beaten most of them, at least once.

Fantastic Contraption (9/10) --This is a creative game, in the spirit of the old Incredible Machine games. It took me two weeks, but I beat every level in this game, some of them a couple of different ways. I wish there were more levels, it was amazingly fun to figure out each puzzle.

Flash Element TD (9/10) -- This game is easy to beat once you get Combo towers, but rather difficult to get a high score. I play this one a lot.

Portal 2D Flash (9/10) -- Based on the 3D puzzle game by Valve, this one pushes the envelope of what Flash can do. This one took a long time to beat, but I'd love to do it again.

Cookie Tycoon (8/10) -- OK, I know it looks cutsie, but this can be a difficult game. There are two ways to win, really: you can either charge ridiculously high rates for your cookies, or you can buy and sell ingredients like a mini-stockmarket. (Yup, I beat it!)

Line Rider (7/10) -- Another creative game. Draw a track and go sledding! Physics gone wild! (Nothing to beat, really... but man it's a lot of fun)

Pandemic 2 (7/10) -- A VERY difficult game to beat. Mostly because Madagascar is almost impossible to infect, unless you start there. I like the game, but after beating it twice it gets a little old. (Kinda sick, but challenging!)

Roller Coaster Rush (6/10) -- Pretty simple: make sure the riders have fun. The first batch of tracks is free, but if you want to play the European tracks you gotta pay. (Beat it!)

Space Invaders (6/10) -- YES, it's a remake of the old-school classic. Can you beat this game? No, really, I'm asking. I really don't know.

Shift (5/10) -- This is an odd puzzle game. I only rate it low because of the lack of replayability. I've played it twice, and it hurts my head to play. Still, it's a novel concept and they made two sequels. Worth a look.

Work Out To Be a Better Gamer

2008-10-19T10:14:00.000-04:00

Really, this is good advice for anyone who types/games/uses computers at all every day.

Geek Links

2008-10-18T19:07:00.000-04:00

Here's a collection of geeky links I have found this week. Enjoy!

40 Free Games For Vista You Can Download Right NOW!
http://vista.blorge.com/2008/10/04/40-free-games-for-vista-you-can-download-right-now/

Paperbackswap.com
http://www.paperbackswap.com
(Trade and keep paperbacks, only costs you shipping!)

Make Your Own Household Cleaners:
http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2008/10/guest-post-maki.html

Star Trek: The Original Series
http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/
(Note, this site is Hulu-like, but does not work as well as Hulu)

Free French Lessons:
http://www.frenchpodclass.com/
(I never took French, so this was kind of fun. I would like to visit Europe one day, and it would be so satisfying to be able to speak the native languages. As they say, tout bien ou rien.)

Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin Halloween masks here: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/headcandy/

23 Surprising Things You Can Get For Free:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/11/roym.rs.free/index.html
(Has some good advice on free stuff -- contains some of the links above.)

Robocopy

2008-09-25T05:36:00.000-04:00

When Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was released, they included a neat little feature called Robocopy. This command line tool is similar to XCOPY, but with additional features.

I was recently able to pull 95% of the data off a damaged hard drive. The computer had been in a fire, and every attempt to read information off the drive resulted in failure. Windows knew there was a drive hooked up, but could not read the file table. Robocopy to the rescue!

Warhammer Online Beta

2008-09-18T22:11:00.000-04:00

I had the recent fortune to play in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Open Beta. Here are some screens from my experience.

Basic Quest	Tall...
Character Creation	Goblin strapped to a cannonball (hehe!)
Quest givers in town.	Scenery shot of two moons in background.
Basic combat, and title unlock.	Tome of Knowledge: titles.
The brooms sweeps the steps, by itself!	Lob it Good This quest involved you loading yourself into a catapult and launching yourself to the dwarf encampment. Awesome.
Lob it good #2	Lob it good #3
Hydra. Also note here that, like in many online games, the evil elves seem to show how evil they really are by not wearing any clothes.	Clutivating, my least favorite skill. Look at the timer: 3 minutes? Most of the skills are instantaneous, but with this one you actually have to click on the water and fertilizer icons as the plant grows. Kinda silly.
You can fall off a lot of cliffs. Both of these shots are in the newbie area.	I had some amount of humor about the situation. :-D
They still had some graphics errors to iron out.	Dinosaur standing on the water
Boots on my hands	No image available for item icon.
Public Quest rewards

Bandwidth Caps

2008-09-07T10:30:00.000-04:00

How fast is your internet? How much internet does your ISP want you to use?

Slate has an article asking, Why is the internet so slow? The article demonizes downloaders, and people who play online games as network-hogs.

ISP Limits
On solution from the cable providers is to limit the amount of GB transferred. Time Warner has rolled out an experimental plan to limit its customers to 10GB per month, and allow them to pay for more usage beyond this limit. Comcast meanwhile has implemented a more reasonable, yet still restrictive 250GB limit.

But We Had A Contract!
Now, the argument among Internet buffs goes like this: I paid for a 3/6/10Mbps connection, I should be allowed to download at that speed, 100% of the time. That is A LOT of downloading. Here is somewhat details examination of what it would take to hit Comcast's limit.

Reality
I used to have a wimpy 756Kbps down/128Kbps up cable connection through our apartment complex. It was sold as "speeds comparative to other ISP's". I was paying $45/month for this pathetic connection, and was locked in to a year-long contract. Actually, even the above speed is misleading; that was on a good Saturday morning, when everyone was still asleep. On average I could get around 300Kbps out of it. I could not watch YouTube or Hulu videos without waiting for them to load, had a lot of trouble downloading updates for Windows, and found it not worth my time to try out game demos. You could practically forget about even buying and downloading music (legally!).

I have a 3.0 Mbps connection now for the same price. It is very nice. As far as I know, our ISP does not set download caps. If they did, I would be very upset. The best I have ever gotten out of this connection is 2.6Mbps down, 415Mbps up. Even if I did download 24/7 for 30 days, I would have trouble reaching my apparent limit. Let's look at the math:

3.0Mbps = 3000000 bits (assuming my ISP uses a binary calculation of file size); divide by 8 and you get 375,000 bytes per second.
((((375,000*60seconds)*60minutes)*24hours)*30days)= 972,000,000,000 bytes/month. That's 972 Gigabytes!. I would have some amount of trouble downloading that much information.

Some Observations
I could definitely hit the 10GB per month limit. Since the beginning of September I have downloaded 2.29GB. (I have kept track of this with Bit Meter). This morning I was streaming a 2-hour movie from Hulu. All told, this was between 450-600MB worth of streaming Flash. If I watched movies online a lot, I could definitely see how a person could hit their limit. I would be hard pressed to utilize my connection 100% of the time.

I suppose it helps that I buy games and play them two or three times. I am happy with my music collection, and my copies of Windows are legit. There are a lot of people on the internet who can't say the same about themselves. I feel bad for them if their ISPs come down hard on bandwidth limits, but not too bad.

Chrome

2008-09-05T22:29:00.000-04:00

Google's new browser, Chrome, has made some amount of news. For one thing, in a very short amount of time they have managed to grasp a 1% market share. (The numbers are slightly higher on sites like woot.com; also note the high percentage of Firefox users.)

Chrome is slick. I like the interface, though the lack of support for RSS and other advanced features are a drawback. Geeks will enjoy reading the Chrome comic book that the developers put together. It does a really good job explaining their new approach to how the browser handles memory.

Here are some screen shots from the new browser.

Most recently viewed pages:

Drag-n-drop tabs as a new window.

Operate incognito; Chrome will not write any data to your hard drive.

Unobtrusive pop-up blocker:

Task manager -- showing tasks running in Chrome!

Stats for Nerds:

Woot! Is the Fastest Growing Company in the US

2008-09-05T05:54:00.000-04:00

From the Woot! blog, Woot.com has been ranked as the 25th fastest growing business in the United States. What's more, Inc. has ranked them as the number one fastest growing retailer on the Inc. 5000.

Very impressive, and not too surprising. Heck, I've bought from them. My brother regularly buys t-shirts from them.

You and Me and DVR Makes Three

2008-09-05T05:48:00.000-04:00

The results from a neat little survey today coming in from Hollywood Reporter (via Yahoo) says that people rank DVR's as the most essential appliance in the home. In fact, out of 1,000 people surveyed, over 79% said that DVR's helped keep the peace in their relationships.

I can believe that. Of course, any smart guy would know this already. Always watch Gilmore Girls first with your significant other; watch G4 TV later.

Spammers Are Getting Clever

2008-09-05T05:42:00.000-04:00

Some of these spam techniques are getting quite clever. This one fooled my spam filter (not hard, but unusual).

Click image for higher-res view.

XKCD Is Art; Watching The Grass Grow

2008-09-04T05:54:00.000-04:00

If you have not been to XKCD.com, you need to go. Every day. Here are some of my favorites:

Also, if you have a lot of time on your hands, consider visiting http://www.watching-grass-grow.com

Into: Warning, May Contain Traces of Geek

2008-09-04T05:52:00.000-04:00

I find a lot of fun stuff on the internet. View my discoveries here.