Musings...

The next insult for Fable

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:52:57 GMT

I just heard about Community Call: Insult the hero up on the Fable 2 blog. Looks like they're looking for a replacement for the insult from the last game. Could be fun! If only I could think of something interesting

Quote:

We need a replacement for the tired old "Arseface" from the original Fable, as the Hero Title which you receive when you get enough NPCs to hate your guts. So, if any of you chaps and chappettes have some abusive and derisive ideas, now is the time to shout and share it with the team! Or rather post them in the comments of this blog (we are going to regret this aren't we?), and who knows, if it's enough the title might make it onto our shortlist!

Procrastination!

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:20:42 GMT

I ran across this interesting article on procrastination, and had to share.

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

Interesting things from the article:

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.

That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

Anyway, had to share, since I do tend to procrastinate a lot - sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. It did make me think

Name a star after your mom?

Wed, 02 May 2007 16:28:45 GMT

I just heard a commercial on the radio for http://www.starregistry.com/ - apparently you can go there and name a star after your mom and they'll send her a certificate or something.

That's just weird. I don't think my mom would appreciate it, anyway. I still do have to get her something, though...

60+ hours without power

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:18:21 GMT

Washington and other places in the pacific northwest recently suffered from a large windstorm that left over 1 million people without power. (here's one article on this)

I also lost power - from Thursday night to Sunday night. I didn't end up having to spend most of that time in my own house (thank goodness - it was cold), since we've got friends with power, a perfectly good car with gas, and several malls, etc. within driving distance.

I'll take a picture of my trees that fell down once it gets lighter out and put them up, too. Update: pictures are up.

Things I learned:

If you don't empty out an ice dispenser in your freezer in a power outage, it turns into a puddle generator.
You can't run a furnace, even a gas furnace, without electricity.
It won't kill you to go a few days without a shower.
I wasn't really all that attached to anything in my fridge or freezer

Things I'm thankful for:

Heat!
Friends in a different power grid
My pets don't need special care in near-freezing weather
Neither of my trees fell on anything important

Things I got to see:

My breath in my own house
A minor house fire
Coming across the 520 bridge on Friday evening, the entire east side of Lake Washington had no lights. It was eerie. And I knew I didn't have electricity yet

I still don't have cable - I'll have to call somebody to see what's up with that. But I don't think it will kill me not to have TV for a few days.

It's been an exciting few days - but I'm glad I took next week off so I can recover and finally get around to cleaning my house before my parents get here. I think I'll get started on that.

Windows Live Spaces!

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:27:37 GMT

I spent a lot of time fixing up the look and feel - so I hope you all love it as much as I do

One of the other cool things we're doing is opening up the way to put gadgets on your space. It might be a bit before there are any up there that are compatible with spaces - so build one! Check out this post to the SpaceCraft to learn about building gadgets - I even have an idea for one I think I might try my hand at. I'll post here again if that ends up happening.

And yes, we are aware of some issues that we're currently working to fix. The SpaceCraft has a post for this too, and that might be a more appropriate place for comments since I have been known not to check here frequently at times

You know you're having Internet problems when...

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 04:32:59 GMT

cmd > ipconfig /renew
Local Area Connection: An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.

Cool.

New Spaces stuff!

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:28:39 GMT

Spaces is live with some cool new features! Mike has a good list, check out his entry BIG update to MSN Spaces.

I worked on the Amazon list integration (add a book list and actually see the cover art!), new blog paging, improvements that prevent the loss of blog entries while composing (this one was specially requested and championed by Jason), and of course themes. Try them out and choose a new favorite theme!

And in celebration, on my way home, I got a ticket for expired car tabs. Yay!

Random ASCII Art!

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:52:51 GMT

Today's Random ASCII Art is an Xbox controller, in honor of the Xbox 360.

    ___              ___
   *   **---.....--**   *
  '         .-**-.    o   `
/  __     /  \/  \     *  \
/  /  \    \  /\  /   Y     \
|  \__/     '-..-'    X B   |
|                       A   |
|    __               __    |
|   /  \    _   _    /  \   |
|   \__//  (_) (_)  \\__/   |
|      /*-...___...-*\      |
|     /               \     |
\____/                 \____/

Ray Ozzie's theme!

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:27:19 GMT

When Ray Ozzie's space went live with his custom theme (no, we don't give those away, I'd want one too ) I saw a lot of buzz that people wanted to be able to use his theme. Well, with the TweakUI Powertoy, you can! Sort of.

Here are some directions:

Put the TweakUI Powertoy on your space. Steps to do this are here.
Put in E9F0F7 for "Background Colors" "Inner"
Put in 738899 for "Background Colors" "Outer"
Choose hide under "Background Image" "Display"
Put in 014982 under "Font Color" "Link/Bullets"
Put in 000000 under "Font Color" "Text"
Put in FFFFFF under "Module Background" "Color"
Put in 100 under "Module Background" "Transparent"
Put in A3C7E2 under "Module Borders" "Color"

Ta-da! You have most of Ray Ozzie's theme. Minus the header that says "Ray Ozzie" (you didn't want that, anyway). Also, the module header area will still be dependent on theme. Luckily, the powertoy settings will remain even if you pick a new theme, so play with choosing different themes to see which ones fit best. I recommend picking a blue theme, with the Mountain biking, City skyline, and Blue circles themes as my favorites. The Snowflake theme is also interesting, but then I like purple

Try this page if you have questions about what the TweakUI Powertoy is, what it does, and what it doesn't do, or this page if you want to see more powertoys.

Update:

As requested, check out the color pickers that Karen mentioned if you're having problems figuring out what hex codes (the weird A3C7E2 things) to put in.

I also added a picture of what the tweak UI powertoy should look like when you're done if using the Ray Ozzie theme.

Owning a house is a lot of work

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:00:46 GMT

I don't think I really realized how much work owning a house would be... there is a lot to do, and as I have just moved in the last month, there's a lot I still want to change. And we still need to touch up the paint.

This weekend I went to IKEA and bought 5 bookshelves and a computer desk. Bookshelves are heavy. There is some advantage to being a lone woman trying to move bookshelves, though, as some random guy (who didn't even work there) saw me trying unsuccessfully to move them and put them in the cart for me. We finally have a place for all of our books, and shelves for a pantry. Yay! I can finish unpacking the kitchen.

This was the first year for Christmas lights (which don't look so good, especially compared to the neighbors, who even strung lights up the streetlight), and will be the first year we buy a real christmas tree. We have an artificial tree that is about 3 feet tall that we used to put on the coffee table, but now that we have a house I want a real tree at least once. There's a tree lot right near our place and one of my friends just acquired a truck so getting the tree won't be too difficult. I'm not even sure how to move a tree without a truck. Or with a truck, for that matter.

On top of all of that, we still haven't ever mowed the lawn (or even bought a mower). It's a good thing it's winter

MSN Nicknames, again

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:43:17 GMT

So I'm not sure why but MSN Nicknames is popular for searches :) Apparenly people want to know about nicknames! I don't really know very much but I'll take a crack at it since I keep getting requests in comments.

Pick a good name, and then you have to mangle it. Misspell it or switch out or add letters with accent marks or numbers. The nickname service also will recommend adding adjectives to the beginning.

Here's a good link of special characters to use: http://home.earthlink.net/~awinkelried/keyboard_shortcuts.html These are great since the nickname service doesn't see most of them as punctuation.

You can also use the special characters on the side as decoration - I see a lot of people do this with their space titles.

I have revamped my own lame nickname and now I will actually use it to post comments

Moving + cats = ... hmm

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:16:03 GMT

I just moved.

I have cats.

Moving with cats is fun, or perhaps fun isn't the right word

I've heard some stories about cats not taking moves too well. I have a couple myself, actually. The first time I remember moving, we left our cat behind sleeping in his cat-box (wooden box with a hole in the side), so while he was asleep all of the furniture disappeared. He never used that box again and he hid under a bed for a week after.

Our cats seemed to be OK with the packing and moving process, they didn't freak out too much. We did end up moving them nearly last but didn't end up having to leave them in our empty apartment which was good. They did whine pitifully the whole way over in the car but that isn't unusual for car trips.

When we first got to the house and were unpacking we stuck them in a bedroom with their cat tree. That was fine, it was new, there was lots to explore.

Since the litterbox is not in the bedroom, the next thing we tried is to show them the litterbox. Maybe we went about it the wrong way, but we picked them up, took them down the hall, down the stairs, and into the garage where the litterbox is. One of them took that OK but the other freaked out in the hallway - must have been too much new space. Do cats get agoraphobic?

So we left them in the garage for a while and when we came back later they were both hiding under the car. I felt bad for them so they got to sleep in the bedroom. The next morning was better; they got to exploring the house without freaking out so much and found some food. They'll still freak out about little things like how people are so much noisier (we have squeaky floors) and toilets flushing but hopefully they'll settle down after we've been here for a while.

They've also been successfully trained to use the cat door. It's funny, the only way we could get them to go through was to teach them to open it with their paw and then stick their heads through, and they still do that a week later. I wonder if they'll ever learn they can open it with just the head. Maybe I'll try to get a picture.

One of the other things we managed to do when we moved was find all of the lost cat toys. We'd buy packages of little fuzzy mice and they'd just disappear. There were seven-ish each under the fridge and oven, under the washer/dryer, and under the door to the furnace that we couldn't open, so now our house is full of cat toys liberally sprinkled all over. I wonder how long it will be before they're all under the oven again.

Sick

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 15:36:46 GMT

Today I'm home sick from work, again. I got up this morning and felt so much better than yesterday that I almost decided to go in to work, but after my shower I sat down and realized that even though my fever was gone, my entire head was still congested, I still have that "sick" feeling, and on top of that I think I have 2 ear infections. To the doctor I go!

Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Have you ever noticed how weird your dreams are when you are sick? Every time I woke up in the middle of the night these last few days I've been really confused... and it happened a lot; I got 11 hours of "sleep" last night.

DVD list

Sun, 17 Jul 2005 00:04:31 GMT

So I decided to make a list of all of the DVDs I have because it's birthday season and I am hoping to avoid the awkward moment where I pretend to love a movie only to exchange it because I already have it Besides, I thought it would be an interesting idea. So I wrote up the list and discovered I have 3 types of movies: new movies that I liked, movies that I bought because I remember them from childhood, and random movies other people have bought for me.

Anyway, check it out and if you feel like commenting on the list go ahead and do it here.

The Atari is back!

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:12:48 GMT

I remember playing games on the Atari... apparently they're re-releasing. Cool! I wonder which games they're going to put out for it, there were a lot of not-so-good ones but I hope they do Frogger.

Quote:

Atari has recently revived the 2600 as part of a game system called, aptly enough, the Atari Flashback, which is pitched at 30-somethings hungry for a taste of their childhood.

There was also this competition they sponsored to hype the new system, where people designed Atari games. I wish I had been able to do something like that... it looks so cool. My favorite game idea was the "princess fights back" game, yay for breaking stereotypes!

Quote:

you are the princess and the princess is angry that she has been made this helpless character for so long and now she wants to take revenge on all the video games of years past.

Read the article and be sure to click on the image on the first page to see the screenshots.

More new stuff in Spaces!

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 06:54:13 GMT

The biggest thing everybody is talking about is new themes, which I can say I helped with I didn't design the themes, but I did add some new capabilities for themes and helped get them into Spaces, and of course I fixed a few bugs. I also modified the theme chooser popup dialog. Enjoy your new theme options!

Also see Karen's blog where she talks a bit about what we were trying to do with our new theme options and where we might be going in the future.

Oh, and if you want a full list of what's new with Spaces, check this out. Mike has a much more complete list of all of the features (in more than one entry).

I would also love to hear about which new/old themes are your favorites. I have picked mine, what's yours?

Death of the playstation??

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:18:48 GMT

I doubt this will kill Sony, but still man that's got to hurt.

Quote

In a ruling affecting a hit videogame machine that is a crucial source of profit for Sony Corp., a federal judge ordered the Japanese electronics company to halt sales of its PlayStation videogame consoles in the U.S. and to pay a California company, Immersion Corp., $90.7 million in damages.
Read the rest of the article

MSN Nicknames

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 22:32:58 GMT

I just created a new Hotmail account, made a new Space, and set up my profile...

I understand why the MSN Nickname you have to create as part of your profile needs to be unique, but it's sure not very easy to come up with one without a ton of numbers at the end.

Just for kicks, I put in "IHateNicknames" and "IDontWantToHaveANickname" and they were both taken

Blog list: Product blogs (cool idea)

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:57:05 GMT

Product blogs (cool idea)

MSN Messenger blog
Live.com blog
Live.com: super customizable homepage. I love it!
Internet explorer
Read about IE 7
The SpaceCraft
Official Spaces blog.

Book List: Favorite book series (first book is listed)

Wed, 02 May 2007 17:23:55 GMT

Favorite book series (first book is listed)

Piers Anthony: A Spell for Chameleon
The Xanth series is fun, not at all serious or deep. Don't readtoo much past Demons Don't Dream, the author starts to put too much of his own weird morality into his books.
Robin Hobb: Assassin's Apprentice
These are a good example of the kind of books that you just can't put down.
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman: Dragon Wing
The Deathgate Cycle is an interesting series involving a benevolent race that ruined the world.
Anne Mccaffrey: Dragonflight
The Pern series starts out with a fantasy bent and ends up beingmore sci-fi, which is definitely interesting. My favorite books in the series are the ones about the harpers.
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman: Dragons of Autumn Twilight
The Dragonlance series was originally based on some early D&D sessions... so if you've played you may be able to hear the dice rolling throughout ;) If you haven't, the series is still a great fantasy read.
Isaac Asimov: Foundation
The Foundation series is one of my favorites of the "old" sci-fiI've read. Definitely read to the last book to see the various solutions to the government problem.
Terry Pratchett: The Color of Magic
The Discworld series is another series written by a british author, great sense of humor. The books are still entertaining at book 30 which is rare.
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The movie didn't do it justice :) The humor in this series is similar to the humor in the Discworld series. Only read in the last book until you get to the sandwich part - it's downhill from there.
Barbara Hambly: The Silent Tower
I think there are only two books in this series, but it's one ofmy favorites regardless. It's got everything a sci-fi / fantasy novel needs - magic, love, and programmers :)
Harry Harrison: The Stainless Steel Rat
Terry Goodkind: Wizard's First Rule
The Sword of Truth series is one of those where you wish the author would stop putting the hero through all that, but of course then there wouldn't be anything interesting to write about.

Blog list: Spaces People

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:41:45 GMT

Spaces People

Mike
possibly the most popular space
Karen
I'm jealous of the space alias
Scott
DHTML guru
Jay
MC
Moz
Solomon
Greg
Thanks for taking the MessWeb :)
Nikhil
We used to share an office
Bill
Charlie
for some reason, Charlie is associated with power tools in my mind
Ernie
James
John
Xbox 360!
Neel
Tom
Keeps Spaces going
Jason
Jeff