Tuesday, 16 November 2010

Underwhelmed by iTunes Beatles announcement

As an Apple fanboi, color me "underwhelmed" by the announcement that the Beatles catalog is now on iTunes.

But you say, "It's a historic moment." Yeah, if you think that a settlement in a decades old law suit about the ownership of a company name is historic. I guess if your a trademark or copyright lawyer its historic.

How many ways do you need to own the White album? Haven't you already ripped your copy to your iTunes library?

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Posted by caffeinated at 3:10 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Saturday, 16 January 2010

The Burning Land

Bernard Cornwell has a new title in his Saxon Stories series of historical novels that piques my interest, The Burning Land.

The WSJ reviewed it this weekend and I got chills, thinking, "right up my alley." Fodder for grim and perilous gaming in the Old World me thinks.

Here's a link to the WSJ review by Tom Shippey, A Saxon War Story: Imagining the Battle for England as Vikings neared conquest.

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Posted by caffeinated at 4:02 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Saturday, 26 December 2009

Keep Circulating the Tapes

I just shipped my aging collection of MST3K, sold via eBay.

I didn't make anything. It wasn't a collector's collection, more like a collection for a collector that wanted a "watching copy." The hoped for bidding war did not occur, but I made sure to cover shipping.

The collection included these classics and all the nostalgic TV commercials from the 90s you could shake a stick it:
  1. Tormented
  2. Indestructible Man
  3. Hercules vs. The Moon Men
  4. She Creature
  5. Giant Spider Invasion
  6. Parts: The Clonus Horror
  7. Terror From the Year 5000
  8. Leech Woman
  9. I Was A Teenage Werewolf
  10. The Mole People
  11. Horror of Party Beach
  12. The Thing That Couldn't Die
  13. The Beatniks
  14. Girls Town
  15. Crash of the Moons
  16. Magic Sword
  17. Hercules and the Captive Women
  18. Manhunt in Space
  19. Teenagers From Outer Space
  20. Being From Another Planet
  21. Attack of the Killer Leeches
  22. Incredible Melting Man
  23. Alien From L.A.
  24. Giant Gila Monster
  25. This Island Earth (Movie)
My wife promised to refresh the collection with the DVDs now available. Here's to keeping the fire... and keeping the fire to "circulate the tapes."

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Posted by caffeinated at 10:51 AM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Cigars

I treated myself to a humidor and cigar sampler today.

In the past I have enjoyed the occasional cigar. Now, I can enjoy some more. And keep some handy in the 20 cigar humidor.

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Posted by caffeinated at 9:46 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Sunday, 29 November 2009

100 Pots of ...

The subtitle of ACD is "100 Pots of Coffee". The suggestion at the time was that I would post something for 100 days, or until I ran out of the pack of coffee filters I had just started on.

Fail.

2010 promises to be different. For ACD certainly.

Lots of distractions have decimated ACD blogging time. I'm the lead steward of the open source project that is the engine driving this blog. My work as a Web Application Architect for an international "old money" bank. Family. Holidays.

All of these things are also huge demands on my game time. I think that bothers me a lot. ~o)

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Posted by caffeinated at 8:20 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Sunday, 22 November 2009

Google Wave, Gaming

The Google Wave invites are gone.

Gaming seems to have been hamstringed by life. Ugh.

Life does that a lot I think. I have not lost interest. I have become something of a pest with my core group, but will lighten up some I think. They can approach me too. The wiki helps a lot in picking up where the group left off as well.

One thing I'm considering is going digital. The "elf" suggested it, though for something else he was planning on executing. Unfortunately, there are two things he knows about me as a gamer, what I would play or what I would run:

  1. I would play WFRP 2nd Ed. or Twilight: 2000 1st Ed
  2. I would run WFRP 2nd Ed. or Twilight: 2000 1st Ed

Yeah, not much variety there. But the reality is this is an important hobby to me. Knowing and owning a cornucopia of systems is a luxury few afford after college. Less so when there are commitments to family. I'm vested in both systems and understand them deeply.

I think I'm going to be soliciting players for a Skype WFRP game soon. Really. The rough outline will be: 1 to 2 sessions a month, 9PM til. Sessions longer on weekend, shorter on weekday. Short sessions might lead to more sessions per month. Podcast? Maybe. Recaps more likely. MapTool a must.

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Posted by caffeinated at 9:40 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Saturday, 11 July 2009

Twitter long time

I have been on Twitter for a year.

Readers of ACD would not know, because for some reason I never bothered to provide a link. Even a "recently on Twitter" roll. Today, I fix the first part. The second part is on the way.

My twitter stream is a mixed bag of programmer meets WFRP nerd. Right now, some angst too over the rumor of WFRP 3rd Edition.

Enjoy.

www.twitter.com/gefahrmaus

Oh, all followers are approved, so you're part of an exclusive club. ~o)

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Posted by caffeinated at 1:06 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Monday, 24 March 2008

YUI and the missing 25-50-25 grid

For a while now I have struggled with the lack of a "25%/50%/25%" grid template in the YUI. It seems like such a natural template, one might say it is ubiquitous on the web.

Alas, the developers of the YUI have conspicuously left it off. There is a hack out there that provides the said 25/50/25 template, but nothing official. There is only silence in the last minor releases since I began wondering about the absence.

Recently it dawned on me why it is absent, in the context of a larger design decision built into the YUI Grids: the IAB factor.

You will find templates specific to all the IAB standard ad sizes. You will find grids and nested grids that are built to accommodate the IAB ad sizes. In fact, one might argue that the absence of the 25/50/25 grid is because, for Yahoo!, such a template does not make sense in the context of what the IAB, and so many web advertisers, define as standard.

This actually goes to another criticism, tangental to YUI Grids, said about YSlow: "Yahoo!'s problems are not your problems."

True enough.

Yet I would counter and say, why should you consider the need for 25/50/25, or Yahoo! consider, given Google Ads and other click revenue options likely to be employed on the most personal or the most commercial website you can fathom? You should be building your sites with the IAB in mind.

Maybe Yahoo! is quietly prodding you, and me. By design.

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Posted by caffeinated at 10:50 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Sunday, 9 December 2007

Boston, WDW and Blockbuster

I am leaving shortly for WDW in Boston.

Three days of web development nerdery. I plan too to play with my Parallels Fedora 8 install and such. Maybe a pickup game of Warhammer FRP (maybe not, no bites on my earlier post; though I’m bringing my MAGE).

And a stop at the Blockbuster on my way to the airport to pick up The Messenger. Not for the history, or the story, but for the mood.

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Posted by caffeinated at 3:51 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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Sunday, 28 October 2007

YUI-ifying ACD

Frustrated with my homebrew’d v1.0 creative for ACD, I’m finally tackling v2.0 using the YUI.

v2.0 is 70% done and it “feels” much better, more cohesion in the design elements and colors. The ACD “espresso header” will at least remain, initially. I have some ideas for something more sinister—I am left handed after all—maybe something sinister, with dice, coffee, and code. Hmmmm…

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Posted by caffeinated at 9:20 PM in Bohemian Breakfast
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