I guess I'll finally link the old blog to the new.

Check it out: XyzzyBlog.

Livejournal will be adding ads for non-paying readers and terms of use that restrict the use of adblocking software.

17. Employ tactics and/or technologies to prevent the full and complete delivery or display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Making journal style changes, customizations, or overrides that effectively block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on a Sponsored+ account's Content or other pages within the Service.

2. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.

It might be time for me to jump back to my own hosting. I've been wanting to stretch my web programming a bit too and livejournal (while having some great html/css features) just doesn't cut it.

A Level 1 plan from Dreamhost looks like it would do the trick though. Hmm.

Re: Brent's latest post on relaxation: "My beef with relaxing".

Here's a relevant quote from Alan Watts. He's referencing scholastic learning but the principle applies. The grammar and structure is odd because this is actually a transcription of a lecture.

Do you know what Scholarship means? What a school means? The original meaning of a scholar? Leisure. We talked of a scholar and a gentleman because a gentleman was a person who had a private income, and he could afford to be a scholar. He didn't have to earn a living. Therefore he could study the classics and poetry and things like that. Today nothing is more busier than a school! They make you work work work work work because you have got to get through on schedule. They have expedited courses and you go to school so as to get a union card or PHD or something so that you can earn a living. So it's a whole contradiction of scholarship. Scholarship is to study everything that's unimportant. Not necessary for survival. All the charming irrelevancies of life. But you see the thing is this. If you don't have a room in your life for the playful, life's not worth living. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But if the only reason for which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwards he's not really playing. He's playing because it's good for him. He's not playing at all! To be a true scholar you have to cultivate an attitude to life where you're not trying to get anything out of it. You pick up a pebble on the beach and look at it. It's beautiful. Don't try to get a sermon out of it. Sermons and Stones and God and everything be damned. Just enjoy it. Don't feel that you've got to salve your conscience by saying that this is for the advancement of your aesthetic understanding. Enjoy the pebble. If you do that you'll become healthy. You become able to be a loving helpful human being. But if you can't do that... If you can only do things because somehow your going to get something out of it. You're a vulture." - Alan Watts, The Tao of Philosophy

The entire book (or audio lecture) is chock full of wonderfully insightful quotes like this. I highly recommend it and all other Alan Watts books to anyone.

This is the day the Internet goes crazy. Here's a list of some of the funnier items I've found.

We may someday be able to buy dragons! - The Economist

Lucasfilm announces "Adult" Star Wars Novels. - Locus Online

The UK Government plans to shutdown GSM networks and replace them with gambling and citizen surveillance. - Mobile Gazette

Google announces Google Romance (beta). "When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution." - Google

Thinkgeek is, of course, crazy today. Offering, among other things, a Grow Your Own 1-Up Mushroom Kit, and a caffeine inhaler.

Finally, just for laughs, a wet kitty. Aww, poor wet kitty.

I've posted more photos from the Outer Banks. Not limited to a theme (like the Sunsets) this is just a bunch of shots from Bayside that I like.


Link to the OBX photoset.
Link to the OBX photo slideshow.

Animal Crossing for the DS is a seriously amazing game. I didn't think it would be this addictive. But Sarah and I are having a delightful time running around our respective towns making friends, catching fish, finding fossils, growing trees, decorating our houses, and generally having fun. While we both thought the game was nifty at first, the more we get into it the more amazing depth we find. How much detail does it have?

It has a built in calendar of dozens holidays and special events. The bugs and fish you can catch are seasonal and some only come out at certain times of day. The game runs in real world time, so 2:53PM on March 31st, 2006 is the same date and time in the game. It's fun to see message board postings in the game talking about stuff like a flea market coming to town this Saturday and the game really means this Saturday. But the coolest bit of detail: you can feng shui your house and it has a noticable effect in the game (you get more money, find better furniture, and are essentially luckier). Tell me that isn't just crazy awesome. You get to start your own fruit tree empire. Fruits from other towns sell for five times as much as "native" fruit. So kafeinuhai and I swapped a bunch of fruit and started planting so now we are both raking in the dough. :-)

After listening to two "pod"casts (they aren't actually podcasts, but just mp3s on the website) by Jerry and Mike of Penny Arcade I am left extremely jealous of their work environment. Both podcasts consist of them essentially just having a microphone on while they hash out the comic idea for that day. Reading the gaming news, playing videogames, and making fun of it all...that would be teh awesome.

This month Wired magazine has a fantastic collection of articles on games and gaming culture. One author postulates the existence of Generation G, or the Gaming Generation. This concept I heartily agree with, gamers share a variety of cultural experiences unknown to non-gamers. But I would extend this concept to include sub-Generations within Generation G. Obviously a young gamer that first played games on a Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast wouldn't have the same formative experiences of gamers that started with Infocom and Atari.

Poll #701774 Your First Videogame
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

What was the first videogame you ever played?

My first game? jeerudoesntknow and wootini played videogames a lot, but I don't recall which one they first introduced me to. I fondly remember Ms. Pacman at Starky's Pizza. Running away from Dragons in Adventure. But I think my first real gaming experience where I felt like I was actually in charge of the game (and not just running around having fun) was Zork. The warm blue and rich full white text coming off the tv with the Atari plugged in; the delightful "thunk" noise that it made for every letter typed; and the sheer open-ended adventure of it all was just amazing. After Jeeru handheld me through the first bit of the game I was left to my own devices. Of course I didn't make it through the entire game without help from my older siblings, but I had a great time figuring out what I could. That first revealing spark of possibility after I typed "move rug" in the living room I knew I was hooked on games for life.

kafeinuhai defended her thesis Monday (woo!). So now that the bulk of her gradual school career is over, I broke down and bought her a Nintendo DS with Tetris DS, Animal Crossing, Nintendogs (the one with the Welsh Corgi), and a game that has Monopoly, Boggle, Yatzee, and Battleship (obviously bought for the Boggle).

The really great thing about us each having a DS is that every one of those games supports wireless gaming. We can play several types of multiplayer Tetris (with just one copy of the game!), visit each other's towns in Animal Crossing, play Boggle against each other (with just one copy of the game, but we are going to get two to make the game connection faster), and our Nintendogs can meet each other. Fun!

Aside: Animal Crossing is addictive. After checking our Sarah's copy I had to get one for myself.

Boggle is a blast on the DS. You trace along the letters to make words and at the end your word list is matched against a standard dictionary in the game and we get to vote on words that it doesn't recognize.

Since completing her thesis kafeinuhai has: bought a Welsh Corgi named Ein and taught her to sit and shake, bought a house and began to decorate it (by stealing flowers from her neighbors I hear), resoundingly kicked my ass at Boggle (she beat my score by a factor of three in one game today!), and played through Star Wars: Episode III with me. Have I created another videogame addict? :-)

Other videogame news? The Godfather game is quite good. Think Grand Theft Auto III but with more extortion, more brawling, more 1940s, and a much better story and you'd be pretty close to the mark. It's enormously fun to walk into a store and demand protection money, roughing them and their store up should they not be immediately forthcoming.

So What has metaball been up to?

I saw V for Vendetta with kafeinuhai, wildchild121085, justonemileleft and his roommate. It was enjoyable and the Wachowski's made a valiant effort to change the story to relate more to current events; but unfortunately their efforts altered the cunning story of the graphic novel and as a consequence they had to wrap up many loose ends they unintentionally created in a very rushed and all too clean ending. All the story elements that they changed (even slightly) had greater and greater ramifications by the end of the story. Appropriate metaphor? Change a few domino pieces and the entire intricate chain is completely altered.

Lego Star Wars: addictive, fun, and hilarious. If you have an XBox and haven't played this hilariously cool game, then you're missing out. It's only really fun with two people to play though. It's easy enough to just play, but entertaining enough that I don't care. Premise: take highlights from Star Wars Episodes 1-3 and let people play them...in Lego. After beating a level you can replay it and constantly switch your character to be any that you have unlocked. Run around Naboo as C3P0, or Darth Maul, or Mace Windu, or Yoda, or Luke. For some oddness be both Young and Old Anakin, or be both Anakin and Luke. Or just run around as destroyer droids, complete with bubble shields. Justonemileleft visited for a videogame night at the end of his spring break and we stayed up very late laughing our heads off with this game.

Last Monday we ate fried chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, and gravy all cooked up under Lance's watchful eye. That's good eatin'! Then we had a videogame playing session wherein Kafeinuhai defeated many challangers as Nightmare, and Justonemileleft and Lance ran around Episode 2 in Lego Star Wars.

So ansatz just wrote a post about an unintentionally funny Duke student, but he didn't mention a key bit from the article. I give you two quotes:

[Rant about how Duke women are hot.]
Now, I know you are saying to yourself, I've watched some Duke games on TV, and I have yet to see those smoking hot girls that you speak of during basketball games. No argument here. Do you think those girls are waiting in the cold for 14 hours, so that they can be five feet away from J.J. Redick for two hours? Then again, I don't see any supermodels in the stands when I watch Maryland play in the Comcast Center.

Right. The hot girls don't go to games because they're too pretty to be interested in basketball. Smoking hot girls just don't wait in the cold for 14 hours.

But note the "about the author" text:

Melissa Moriarty is a junior at Duke. She is studying Economics and Arabic. Melissa goes to every basketball game in Cameron and likes the Blue Devils chances of winning the national title this year.

Who to believe? Try to decipher that logic.