Saturday, October 31, 1998 — Halloween
Well, I ran out to the store today and got both a UPS (no, I didn’t buy a package carrying company — a battery-backup power supply), plus a few games. LucasArt’s Grim Fandango is excellent, though rather difficult (I’m spending a fair amount of times flailing my arms around looking for the next thing to do). I really enjoyed the demo of MGM’s WarGames, which is yet another Real-Time Strategy offering. At least, this […]
Friday, October 30, 1998
The Prince of Egypt website has been updated now, with a complete story outline, downloads, etc. It looks like they’ll be offering a straight-faced adaptation of the Biblical story — God is part of the story, but no more. On the whole, it does look like a pretty good flick. The site is organized nicely, too, with links across the top of the page. It’s clean, it’s pretty, and it’s easy […]
Monday, October 26, 1998
And suddenly, my web browsers die out on me. “Cannot locate server: www.yahoo.com.” Sure. Well, that was always such a small, unused site. Yahoo! has a very good category devoted to wearables. Then again, they’ve got a category devoted to building your own hovercraft (they’re reeeeeeal cheap too, oh yeah, you bet). And I want to announce two new addictions for me: The Red Green Show (of which at least […]
Sunday, October 25, 1998
My new-found interest in wearable computers has started me thinking about the realities of a wearable computer. I’ve decided that I would want to minimize the “Borg look” and go for something that’s as invisible as possible (thanks to Tramm “Foo” Hudson’s recent post to the wearables discussion list). A key-glove would be OK, with a computer system in a backpack (or possibly in a hip pouch, thanks to the new PC-104 standard). That takes care of the actual system, and input. […]
Friday, October 23, 1998
Been reading The Jargon File lately (click on the Lexicon to go straight into the dictionary). I’m glad someone’s trying to keep up with this online language. I particularly liked Godwin’s Law. I’ve decided to bag my organized tendencies and update this diary each day as I feel like it, rather than trying to wait until all the important stuff is done before updating. So, I may post half of an entry […]
Thursday, October 22, 1998
Well, I was finally able to put up a page for a celebratory effort for User Friendly‘s first anniversary, which is coming up on November 17th. I’m trying to get each of the fans to send Illiad (the creator of the strip) $5 on the anniversary day. Nicely enough, Illiad’s asked that all the checks be made out to his favorite charity, the SPCA. We’ll see how the effort goes. I’ve been looking into Play-By-E-Mail […]
Wednesday, October 21, 1998
A potpourri of news today. The first level of my VB class ended last night, with the next level to start next week, same time. User Friendly is continuing apace, gathering more support and so forth. It’s even got a very lively mailing list. I ran across dice.com recently — an online directory of tech-related jobs, searchable by part of the U.S., technology, experience, full- or part-time status; you name it. […]
Sunday, October 18, 1998
Finally updated The Library with my most recent read — Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors. Actually, I also read Robert Silverberg‘s Hawksbill Station several weeks ago, but as it’s out-of-print, I can’t very well link it to Amazon.com. A week ago, on Monday, I had an entry regarding the book Digital Mosaics. Well, I read through most of it, and found a very interesting section where the author discusses what […]
Saturday, October 17, 1998
I’ve gotten very interested in wearable computers lately. It’s not just SF anymore; these things are being built by hobbyists for not much more than desktop systems. The main issues are buying a display unit for the eye or to sit at waist-level, and battery life. They’ve been solved, but you have to be willing to sauder a few wires together. In particular, I’d like to try building a KeyGlove, a glove with […]
Monday, October 12, 1998
Just got finished reading (most of) Steven Holtzman’s Digital Mosaics, a book about the aesthetics of cyberspace. The main gist of the book is about what, really, cyberspace is, and what it can do. Fortunately it doesn’t go on about incredible technological changes and so forth (like another book I definitely didn’t buy that predicted “Someday mice and keyboards will be replaced with voice-recognition technology!” Wow! […]