Normally, I’m not one to randomly link to another blog without having something useful to say about it, but I thought this rebutal to Cory Doctorow’s latest anti-DRM rant was worth flagging. It’s proof that the internet can be used for more than flame wars.
And another piece of history one gone. This didn’t even have enough context in the URL to look for it elsewhere in the web.
Well, it’s taken a full week, but I’m finally starting to relax. Man, was I ever stressed before I left on vacation. So far, it’s been exactly the kind of vacation I like: lots of computer games, cello playing, cycling and reading. What more could a man want? 🙂
This site and the Deblog have both been upgraded to the latest WP (2.0.4). Let me know if you see any problems.
… where every character got their own story. Where the server would create an individual “path to glory” built around choices you make during character creation. You could factor in race and class (assuming the game had these notions), as well as other data you would provide, such as:
Of course, the game would still be built from pre-canned collections of story arcs, but the designers would make sure that they could be mixed and matched in many ways, and the details could be subtly altered, so that it would really not be possible to build a hint site that showed the one true path through the game.
The amazing thing about this game would be that other players, as in real life, would be driven by motivations that didn’t exactly align with yours. Nor would they necessarilly be fighting over the same loot drops. Very cool.
Of course, in practice, I suspect that detecting all the possible ways that the variant quests could interact, and preventing bad interactions (or even deadlocks) would be NP-hard, but I can dream, can’t I?
She’s off on her yearly pilgrimage to Meg Swanson’s Knitting Camp (“RETREAT 2.75”) in Wisconsin. As usual, she and her friend Mable are driving down in Big Red (our mini-van). The trip takes two days, and Deb called last night to say that they had stopped at their traditional half-way point in Sault Ste. Marie.
Deb brought her laptop with her, so she may do some blogging while she’s gone, but if not, I’m sure she’ll give a full report when she gets back. In the meantime, Dennis and I are in bachelor-mode. Booya!
It’s a ViewSonic VX922. It’s only 1280×1024, but it’s (theoretically) extremely fast; they claim a 2ms response time. I currently have it connected to my laptop at work, but the real test will be with my gaming PC at home. Sounds like a reason to play WoW tonight!
In any case, it’s bright, it has no stuck pixels, and even at 19″ it’s a *lot* bigger than my old 17″ CRT. I paid $329 at Best Buy. There are probably cheaper prices.
It’s out. Get it while it’s hot at the Callisto home page.
As always, I am totally amazed at how much dedication and effort the teams all put into getting this to come together. Way to go, all! Congrats! WOOT!
Anyone else noticed the resemblance between:
Tom Hanks versur R. J. Lorimer
It’s amazing what changing the packaging on a device will do for its perceived quality. I picked up a Ninto DS Lite a couple of days ago…
Somehow, playing with the case design and materials took it from being a “grey plastic kid’s toy” to a “dual screen micro-iBook”. They also changed the surface of the touch screen to give it a more paper-like feel. All in all, I like it.
Of course, my only real reason for getting it was because it’s new tech, but I also picked up Electroplankton. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s not really a game, but more like a musical toy. I expect to waste hours playing with it.
Ok, so I have finally figured out how CSS works.
As a test, I bashed the main Great Castle Wilson site to use CSS for all structure and formatting instead of the old code, which was a bunch of nested tables and embedded text attributes. The new version of the site is quite similar to the old one, with a small number of “upgrades” to the appearance, such as rollovers in the nav bar.
What they say about how using CSS reduces the size of the files is true, even for small pages. The old index.html file was 4,068 bytes. The new index.html+style.css files together are only 3,121 bytes.
Anyway, for reference, the old index.html file can be found here.
