Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

Joel on great design

Joel is another favorite of mine.  Like Paul Graham, almost anything he writes I find interesting.  His specialty is design.  Or at least, most of his writing that I read is about design.  If you do interface design, Joel’s latest column should be of interest to you.  I don’t do interface design because I stink at it.  Thanks to Joel, though, I can at least recognize bad design, and sometimes even make suggestions to improve things.

Here’s a great part of his column:

Here’s why I’m afraid to turn off my cell phone: because I can’t always seem to muster the brain cells necessary to turn it back on.

It has two buttons on it, a happy green button and a scary red button. They have funny icons on them that don’t mean very much to me.

You might think that the green button turns it on. Green means go, right?

Wrong.

[tags]Joel, Software, design[/tags]

Paul Graham:How to do what you love

I’ve never seen a Paul Graham article that wasn’t a great read.  His latest, as noted in the above header, is “How to do what you love.”  As always, he covers lots, and it does take a little while to read.  But it’s as good as all his other stuff.

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

[tags]Paul Graham, work[/tags]

Bush presidency as an adventure game

Sure to offend some, I looked at it as not to serious a post.  Over at DefectiveYeti, there is a fun post covering some highlights of the Bush presidency as an old Infocom-style adventure game.  The comments reflect both sides of the political spectrum, but no one seems to get too upset by the post.

[tags]Bush, Infocom, adventure, game[/tags]

Oblivion nearly ready

Nice write-up from Bethesda on what’s going to be in the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion packaging.  The important part for fans is to note that whether you get the regular or collector’s edition, you are getting the game on DVD.  That’s right – it’s only available on DVD.  Almost everyone I know has a DVD drive, so I doubt that people who have a computer capable of playing Oblivion will have an issue with this requirement, but it needs to be pointed out, just in case someone wants the game and hasn’t gotten a DVD drive yet.

Indie games of the year.

According to GameTunnel, here are the independent developer games of the year.  Some of these I know, and love.  Some I haven’t ever seen, but plan on checking out.  The soccer game (#10 on the list) looks really cool.  Sorta Sim-Fifa.  And Darwinia made the list.  It’s a cool little game, too.  Check all of the listed games out.

Calvin moment

I like Calvin and Hobbes.  I got the complete collection for Christmas.  I still subscribe to a daily strip update.  It’s some of the best writing ever, and it’s in an easily digestable daily format.  Here is a recent one that tops my list of funny strips.

Snow sharks

A real geek test

If the regular geek test isn’t geeky enough for you, check out this geek test. Why is this one better? Well, check out some of the questions:

  • ROT13 this:trrxfnerterng
  • What does this do: echo $dorks==$geeks?”yes”:”no”;
  • Convert this from ASCII to English:49204561742046726F6773

Now, let me know how that worked out for you. Any one with a score they’d like to share? Let me know in the comments. Personally, I scored an 88:


My computer geek score is greater than 88% of all people in the world! How do you compare? Click here to find out!

Very clever virus?

Whoa!  Just read about the Feebs virus over at F-Secure.  In addition to normal distribution by web download, this virus stays in memory, watches for outgoing mail connections, and when it sees one with a large MIME attachment injects itself into the attachment.  This won’t make for a fast spreading virus, but it will make for smarter and more difficult to detect virus spread.