News Tuesday - 1/15/08

With Sci/Tech Filter:

• Hasbro Sues Scrabulous For Being Too Scrabble-ish (2008-01-12)
• Images: Linux gets a taste of Windows and Mac (2008-01-11)
• Rogue Black Holes May Be Wandering Through Galaxy (2008-01-09)
• Rain and shine hit Google Maps and Google Earth (2008-01-09)
• New Line Confirms It Will Move To Blu-ray Exclusively As Well (2008-01-08)
• Apache Wicket 1.3 set for Java Web development (2008-01-04)
• [+1380] Stop-Motion Human Tetris (2008-01-02)
• 'Conan,' 'Pirates,' 'Warhammer': Three New MMOs Challenge 'World of Warcraft' in 2008 (2008-01-02)
• Mac market share breaks 8% mark in 2007's final days - Computerworld (2008-01-02)
• A roadmap for ending the high-def format quagmire (2008-01-02)
• New Dell PC Design Rivals the iMac (2008-01-03)

Somehow Related?

Here's an interesting problem we faced this morning at work: We are currently using an LDAP directory for user authentication, and we authenticate using Samba for Windows Logins and a generic LDAP client for Unix logins. Well, when I came into work today, instead of the 1-2 seconds it normally took to log into Unix, it took like 120 seconds. Now, the only problem we had that we knew of was that our Internet connection was down. About 30 minutes later our Internet connection came back up and we were able to log in again with the 1-2 second delay... OH, one thing to mention -- Authentication through Samba for Windows worked normal the whole time. So, the question is, what relation is there between Unix, LDAP authentcation and the Internet?

News Tewsday (A week plus a day late) - 1/2/2008

With Sci/Tech filter applied:

• Junk Science: Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007 (2007-12-27)
• [+2068] Lego Portal (2007-12-27)
• [+3945] The coolest animated .GIF tiled background perhaps ever (2007-12-27)
• New Dell PC Design Rivals the iMac (2007-12-28)
• Apple Stock Breaks the $200 Barrier for First Time (2007-12-26)
• Apple Rumor Site to Shut Down in Settlement - New York Times (2007-12-21)
• Shave time off your Web searches by using operators (2007-12-20)
• Microsoft co-founder looks to add to spectrum cache - MarketWatch (2007-12-22)
• South American Ants Eating Way Across California (2007-12-19)
• Fantasy Real Estate Game Lets You Play Realtor (2007-12-19)
• The 7 most annoying developments in software (2007-12-19)
• New Net neutrality proposal planned for January (2007-12-19)
• Is Apple in danger of becoming Microsoft? (2007-12-19)
• CNET's Top 10 games of 2007 (2007-12-19)

Text-Based Games...

So, I have made it a life goal of mine to create a 3D game of some kind at some point in my life. Realizing the size of this daunting task, I've decided to start a little bit smaller. I think that I want to make a web-based, text-based game that's kind of like a choose your own adventure. I figure that it'll be a good place to start... see how it goes and then move forward from there.

In any case, my plan is to use PHP/MySQL to accomplish this, since I think it will work, but mostly because it's the two web-based technologies (besides HTML) that I'm most comfortable with. Does anyone have any other suggestions that might make my journey a little bit easier?

If I make some decent progress, I'll be sure to post updates here. Or, if it's something you think you'd want to participate in, let me know as well...

News Tewsday - 12/18/07

With Sci/Tech filter applied:

• GarageBand 4.1.1 Offers Custom Ringtones for iPhone (2007-12-14)
• Google develops Wikipedia rival (2007-12-14)
• Celebrating 60 years of transistors (2007-12-14)
• No download needed: OpenOffice beta available as Web app (2007-12-12)
• The most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about (2007-12-13)
• Word-of-the-Year Ritual Pauses for Puzzlement - New York Times (2007-12-13)
• Celebrating one of the best-selling PCs ever (2007-12-12)
• Get DivX Pro for free (2007-12-12)
• Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever (2007-12-11)
• Honda unveils robots that 'talk' to each other, work in pairs - USA Today (2007-12-11)
• December MacUpdate Software Bundle Sale [11th App Added] (2007-12-11)
• Top Sellers of the Year on iTunes Revealed (2007-12-11)
• Firefox 3.0 beta 2 due by year's end (2007-12-11)
• NBC hitches onto download service from Apple rival SanDisk (2007-12-11)
• Zune vs iPod: The Results Are In (2007-12-10)
• Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows (2007-12-10)

Questions? Comments?

PHP is Magical?

I was looking through the differences between PHP4 and PHP5 this morning, when I noticed something amazing. PHP5 is magical! The screenshot on the left is taken directly from the PHP5 manual, and can be viewed here if you really don't believe me. I love how the last sentence warns you that you can't have these functions in your class "unless you want the magic functionality associated with them." My question is, who wouldn't want this magical power within their script? I know I would.

There's No Place

There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1