This is just a small example, but it's scrolling past as soon as you turn on your Wii! If you actually enter the News Channel it's all rapes and murders from across the globe. Dark and terrible things happening all the time... It just doesn't seem very Wii.

I really like the conversational way that verification is handled here:

Just remember, verification doesn't have to be boring and difficult. It can be clever and fun.

Josh noted that "Video gaming 2008 seems to consist primarily of walking in the woods."

I wanted to make a list of the games that interest me based on these screenshots as a reference to look back on later. I'll use the NetFlix system of 1 to 5 stars.

Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures: ***
I'm not really that interested in Conan, but I really liked the horse-riding of Assassin's Creed and it seems like this could be fun if they don't make the combat system stupid.

Alan Wake: ****
An image of the forest is all we get? YES PLEASE!

Alone in the dark 5: **
I'm just not a survival horror fan. But I'll give it an extra star because I think it will be fun to watch someone else play it.

Army of two: *****
A game designed for co-op mode!

Banjo kazooie 3: *
Just have no interest in this.

Battlefield: Bad company: ***
I love shooting people. I would rather shoot a person than an alien or a monster or a zombie. This looks like it's about shooting people and flying helicopters, and that seems like a fun game.

Bionic commando: ***
Why just three stars? Because while I loved Bionic Commando I was also never that good at it. I'm just not good at hard games.

Borderlands: ****
Cyber-Ninja's in the post-apocalypse? Yeah... this could be fun.

Brother in arms: Hells Highway: ***
WW2 games get boring. Yeah, you get to shoot people... but it just seems so done!

Brutal legend (psychonauts dev): *
This looks like the characters in Rock Band. It also looks and feels like a game I have seen a thousand times.

Burnout paradise: *****
I will be buying this game.

Civilization Revolution: ****
I am glad these games are coming to the XBOX. I like them.

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath: **
I prefer turn-based strategy to "real time".

Command and Conquer: Tiberium: ***
FPS? This could be neat.

Condemned 2: bloodshot: *
Yawn.

Crash time: **
I'll probably be good with Burnout.

Culdcept saga: *
Nope. No interest in this.

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic: Elements: *
I like 3rd person more than 1st person, and I don't like magic and swords much.

Dark Sector: **
Eh... not for me.

Dead Island: *
Blah.

Dead Space: ****
Whoah, this looks neat.

Destroy all humans 3: ***
I've been somewhat interested in the havoc you can wreak in these games, but never played any of them. Might be fun.

Devil may cry 4: **
Maybe my roommate will get this and I can watch him play?

Dynasty warriors 6: *
Nope.

Elveon: *
I like lasers more than swords.

Endwar: ****
Now this looks good! Boom! Boom!

Fable 2: ***
I played a little of Fable 1, and it was okay. Maybe this will be better!

Farcry 2: ****
Farcry was really fun! I bet this will be as well.

Fallout 3: **
You'd think I'd like this, but it just doesn't feel/look original to me.

Fifa street 3: *
Nah, I like to be able to set the concession prices in my sports games.

Fracture: ***
This game looks like a million others, but in a way I find appealing.

Frontline: Fuel of war: ***
I think it would be fun to shoot Josh in the face in this game.

Ghostbusters 3: ***
I want my roommate to get this so i can watch him play it!

Grand theft auto 4: *****
I thought I was done with GTA, but this looks great!

GTR: *
Realism and driving don't mix.

Guilty Gear 2: Overture: *
I have no idea what this is about.

Hail to the Chimp: *
Title alone, no thanks.

Halo wars: ***
Interesting. I'm guessing this is a RTS in the HALO world...

Haze: ***
Maybe, as long as there are no monsters or stupid thing.

Hellboy: The Science of Evil: **
Not my fave comic.

Highlander: ***
I like Highlander, but I bet I won't like this game.

Huxley: ****
This looks terrible, but in a way that makes me think it would be fun to play.

Infinite undiscovery: *
Nope.

Iron Man: ****
PLEASE! be a good game!

Just cause 2: ****
Woods. Running. Okay... I'm intrigued.

Kingdom under fire: Circle of doom: *
Nope.

Left 4 Dead: ***
Will it be as good as the zombies in a mall game?

Lost odyssey: *
Lost on me.

Mafia 2: ****
Yeah! I love a sandbox driving and shooting game!

Mercenaries 2: *****
I will love this game.

Midnight club: Los Angeles: ***
Extra star for L.A.

Ninja gaiden 2: *
Nope, these games are too hard!

Operation darkness: ***
Hrm... Maybe. Maybe.

Operation flashpoint 2: ****
This looks fun to play!

Postal 3: ***
This seems to take random shooting people too far. I bet it's not good.

Project offset: **
Eh... this seems off to me. Fantasy?

Prototype: ****
I don't like monsters, but I do like running really fast and being able to throw cars and stuff.

Quake wars: *
I am bored of Quake.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: ****
I like these games where you just get shot and die. No re-spawning, no being all gung ho. Cautious and careful is more fun.

Resident evil 5: ****
I'll probably just watch, but it will be fun!

Rise of the Argonauts: *
Oh, God no.

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy: **
I just can't imagine they could make this game any good.

Rogue Warrior: ***
This looks fun to me. What is hook I wonder? I mean, this could be any game in the world.

Sabotage: **
Something about this title and screenshot makes me think this is going to be gimmicky. If that gimmick is fun, then I might like it...

Saboteur: **
WW2 again. Ugh.

Sacred 2 : Fallen Angel: *
Nope.

Saints row 2: *****
The original was SO FUN!

Sega Superstars Tennis: *
I just see how I can get excited about tennis video games that aren't on the Wii.

Silent hill 5: *
Survival horror... I always die.

Soul calibur 4: *
More like Bore Calibur. Get it?

Splinter cell: Conviction: ****
The fact that he is throwing a chair at that man instead of shooting a gun makes me very excited.

Starwars: Force unleashed: *
I have no patience for RPGs, and I hate Star Wars now.

Street fighter 4: ***
As bad as I am at Street Fighting, this looks fun!

Supreme Commander: *
Come on, let me do this in a city and crush things!

Tales of vesperia: *
Wow. No. No.

The club: ****
I don't know what it is, but I'd like to join.

The Last Remnant: **
I'm mildly intrigued, but I bet I won't like it.

T0mb raider: Underworld: *
Nope.

Too human: *
Nope.

Top Spin 3: **
The design looks nice. But no thanks.

Turok 5: *
Dino hunting is too close to monster hunting.

Universe at War: Earth Assault: *
This looks like Command & Conquer.

Unreal tournament 3: *
Nah. Competitive shooters are made to be watched, but this does look fun.

Viking: Battle for Asgard: ***
The viking hook makes the whole fantasy thing more appealing.

Warhound: ***
Again? The woods, the gun, the FPS? Man...

World in conflict: ****
I like conflict!

Wait.

What the? Where can I put text so that it shows up on my iPhone? You can't do it!! You can't write anything on your computer and then move that text to your iPhone. That is crazy.

Your dear friend Notes McNoterson to the rescue! Who is Mr. McNoterson you ask? He is your an entry in your Address Book where you paste notes. This entry is then sync'd to your iPhone and you can view and even edit the notes.

Let's see it in action!

Yesterday on the Belmont Station Blog they mentioned Lakefront's Fuel Cafe Coffee Stout, a beer with caffeine! YES PLEASE! I want to remember that the next time I'm there, so I copy the text and paste it into the notes section of Notes McNoterson:

(I did a Google Image Search for "fancy man" to find an image.)

Next, sync your iPhone with iTunes:

And then look up Mr. McNoterson to see what you want to be reminded of:

Pow! There you have it. You now have a notes field you can edit on your iPhone or your computer and they will sync. (But really Apple, how hard would it be to just make "Notes" work?)

1. Who Are You?

I am Daniel Craig Giffen of Yakima, WA. I go by Craig. I didn't have hippie parents, so I think the reason I'm called by my middle name was to get more free ice cream cones on my birthday from Baskin Robbins. (I'd get birthday coupons as "Daniel Giffen, Craig Giffen, Craig Griffith, Daniel Giffin, etc). I drove a Camaro in high school, with Van Halen in the cassette deck.

Anyway...some past projects include:

http://www.pctplanner.com
I finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada in 1996. I wrote a planning program for it in 1997. Basically it is a glorified web-based Excel spreadsheet to help you figure out how much food to mail to yourself between resupply points. I've had a new version of the site on the back burner for about seven years now.

http://www.ilikeboobs.com
A "presidential boobittude" voting site. Basically during the 2000 election I made a site where you could vote for the biggest "boob". The whole entire site was done in scanned color crayon drawings. Currently the domain ends up at my Australia travel site, so I guess I have an Apache setup misconfigured somewhere.

http://www.lunky.com
A travel site I built when I biked around Australia in 2002-2003. The site is very basic, but keep in mind, I wrote an entire system so I could update the site with floppy disks since I couldn't get my laptop online too much while I was in Australia. ("wiFi" is/was unheard of there")

http://www.humanclock.com
A photo for every minute of the day that changes every minute. There are about 15,000 photos in there right now. So if you go to the site and the current time happens to be 4:35 PM, you might see a piece of cardboard with the time on it below the Woody Guthrie statue in Okemah, Oklahoma.

2. What is HumanCalender.com?

Ah Mike, it is humancalendar.com. Humancalender.com is a mispelling I should have registered way back when. Currently it goes to the website of some guy in India who is good about telling you what day of the week a given date falls on. Anyway, humancalendar.com is a calendar of people all looking at the current date. Picture a grid of 40 people posing for DMV photos, but instead they are all looking at the current date. So as the date changes, everyone's head position will change.

3. How Does it Work?

Basically every day is a static image of the calendar. I have a script that I wrote that goes out and figures out what photo it needs for a given square, then glues them all together. I had to use a lot of that math that I learned in Mr. Garrison's 9th grade geometry class. I took all the photos in my garage in a makeshift "studio".

4. Why Did You Make It?

I made it mostly because I though of the idea and it hadn't been done before as far as I knew. As I was building the site I was thinking it would be cool to retake everyone's photo in 2027 when everyone has grey hair and gets to work with jetpacks.

5. When Did You Get The Idea?

I came up with the idea in 2002 and didn't start really working on it until 2003. I had a working version in 2003 but still needed to take photos of several different people. I tried several times to get something rolling but was never in the correct living situation to setup everything I needed photo-studio-wise. (I moved about 5 times between 2003-2005,etc). Finally when I bought a house I was able to setup a photo studio in the garage. (although that still involved a lot of work, my Dad and I had to chain the garage to my pickup and pull it towards Mt. Tabor to get it a little more square).

SwitchPlanet.com has it's own internal currency called "SwitchBucs" (where did the 'K' go?). Since "One SwitchBuc holds a value of $1" I don't see why they need an internal currency at all. Why not just call them "Dollars"? (I guess that way they never have to refund a person's "real" money.)

Much like the similar Peerflix.com, the problem with a concept like SwitchPlanet is that everyone has a lot of crappy things, and no one wants to trade the really good stuff they have. SwitchPlanet makes it a little hard to see what is out there, and there is the annoying aspect of them listing items people own but don't want to switch! In the DVD comedy section there is a LOT of television series up for sale, and the prices seem very high. The lowest listed price for "Fun with Dick and Jane" is 13 SwitchBucs (which is also $13.00) and the highest is 67!?

Just as another test I checked to see if there was any Nirvana in the CD section. The only available item is "With The Lights Out", which retails for $59.98 on Amazon (there is an affiliate link on every page) but is 70 SwitchBucs. This system is very odd. The same thing happens with Call of Duty 2 for XBOX360, the Amazon price is $39.99 but even with six people offering it, the prices range from 40 to 77. On the blog, there is an entry about the Switchbuc Calculator, which implies the price is anywhere from $1 to $0.30.

It's an interesting idea, and I love an alternate currency as well as the idea of trading instead of buying, but I don't find it a compelling service. You can earn SwitchBucs but you can never convert them back to cash, so once you invest some time into the system you are trapped in it. The only way to "cash out" would be to get some items and then sell them for money somewhere else.

I like Netflix because it's so easy, and I don't have to own all the DVDs. This service creates the burden of more stuff you have to deal with, and there is that barrier of having to deal with postage and packaging. It's nice that they are just facilitating the transactions (with guarantees!) and earning money via ads and affiliates links. I think these swap-sites are limited. You'll get a few super-users that supply the most stuff, and a lot more people who hardly ever use it. You might be able to pull in some nice income that way via ads and such, but I don't think it will be able to grow beyond a small community.

Cut & Paste has partnered with Adobe to bring our digital design tournament series to six cities in the US (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Francisco) and five cities across Europe and Asia (Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Sydney, Tokyo). (see the Cool Hunting Video.)

The Portland tournament will be held on September 21st.

Eight designers will have the opportunity to showcase their talent and compete in three, single-elimination rounds. Their work will be webcast globally and projected in real-time for the live, Cut&Paste audience. Onsite and offsite viewers may vote online or by SMS to award an Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection Suite to the winner of our Audience Prize. An all-star judging panel will decide our C&P Champion, who will receive our Jury Prize, a newly released Wacom Cintiq interactive display. Judges this year include:

Kristan Kennedy, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Joshua Berger, PLAZM magazine
Jose Cabaco, Wieden + Kennedy
Jason Bacon, UNKL/Big Giant
Eric Lawrence, Ziba Design

Our call for entry deadline is July 17th, 2007 and we'd like to invite you to enter to compete online at www.cutandpaste.com.

Buggy Saints Row - LIVE! from kmikeym on Vimeo

(original on www.cabel.name)

Jimmy Wales -- commonly known around Wikipedian circles as "Jimbo" -- wants every person in the world to have total access to the sum of all human knowledge, in their own language, for free.

"That's free as in speech," he specifies, "not free as in beer."

During his very Web 2.0 Power Point/laser pointer talk at Reed College this Monday, Wales skipped the explanation of what Wikipedia, which he co-founded in 2001 with money he made running the erotic ("guy oriented") search engine Bomis.com, is all about. After all, every single college student in the packed-to-capacity lecture hall, by a show of hands, claimed to have edited the website at least once.

Of course, that's not just because (mostly) everyone in the room was a hellbent Free Culture Reedie. It's because Wikipedia is the 9th most popular website on the Internet. On the entire Internet. More people visit it every day than the BBC and CNN combined. The mainstream media, Wales pronounced proudly, is us.

Despite his arguably softcore-porn roots, Wales was instrumental in creating the self-replicating massive global community based on shared principles of neutrality we call Wikipedia; a culture of sharing, he explains, based on intellectual exchange, not market exchange. Of course, it isn't perfect, and Wales was remarkably open to criticism, detailing several recent scandals (there was the prominent Wikipedian claiming to be a religion professor, for example, who turned out to be an unqualified 22 year-old), and discussing how the website stacks up next to, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, which has one less mistake per article, on average, than Wikipedia. Not bad, Wales stressed, for an encyclopedia edited largely by laypeople -- and while it's not that surprising that Wikipedia has 4 errors per article, it is surprising to hear that Britannica has 3.

Why is Wikipedia such a decent reference when it's so open to vandalism? It's a combination of many factors, and "Jimbo" used an interesting analogy: just because you're given a knife when you order steak doesn't mean that people are always flipping out and stabbing each other in restaurants. Most of the time, people are trustworthy; "Don't design around worse-case scenarios," Wales said, adding, "let people do what they can, but include an accountability model." Giving the public free reign over ideas, while still allowing others to go back and fix their mistakes, is a lot like allowing people to eat with potentially lethal steak knives in restaurants.

Besides, if an encyclopedia entry is going to survive in an open community, it's got to be broadly appealing and inoffensive, a truism that pushes Wiki-editors towards quality and thoughtfulness. Despite the occasional squabble, Wikipedia is free from the flame wars which so define much public discourse on the Web, so something must be working.

Wales concluded his streamlined keynote with a rallying cry: "People love to talk about decentralization and the power of ordinary people," he espoused. "I say, let's do it!" It was a little weak, of course, but his point got across: a Wiki-based community is a social model, not a tech innovation, and there's no limit to where it can go.

drinking_buddy 1.0 was a perl cgi script that I wrote years ago that would estimate your blood alcohol content (BAC) based on how many drinks you had in a given time. It was extremely crude, you entered a number of drinks (increasing your BAC by 0.02 for each drink), and the number of hours it took you to consume said alcohol (there weren't even any minutes). But alas, this was in a time before free WiFi spots were available at just about every pub.

drinking_buddy 2.0 was a Palm Pilot basic script that was a little more sophisticated. You could pick different beverages (glass of wine, shot, beer, mixed drink) but each one just raised your BAC by 0.02 anyway, so I don't even know why there were options. It also took into account your gender, as men tend to metabolize alcohol slightly faster than women. drinking_buddy 2.0 would also factor your weight into the equation, and would round the total time to 15 minute intervals. The algorithm was so sloppy it was embarrassing.

Since HotSpots still weren't an option, and I always carried my Palm pilot (sharing the app with whoever I met at the pub with a palm pilot), drinking_buddy 2.0 was far superior to it's web-based ancestor.

Now that you can't go anywhere without finding a hotspot, I thought a web based application was in order. As I was writing the back-end, I realized that not everyone carries their laptop around with them everywhere, like I do. And I also though, I don't want to pull this thing out, power it up, log onto someone's network, EVERY time I get a drink. What a hassle. Then I realized what EVERYONE had, all the time, no matter where they were: a cell phone with text messaging capabilities.

Enter drinking_buddy 3.0. Without comments and whitespace lines, this snip of bash script weighs in at 40 lines. To use it, simply send a text message (or an email) to drink@colossalman.com with one of the following words as a subject line:
can
pint
shot
wine
101
151
200
check

These words are not case sensitive, so capitalize them if you must (my phone does it automatically), it should still work. Here's a breakdown:

can: Hi. I am drinking a 12 ounce can of beer.
pint: I am drinking a pint of beer.
shot: I am drinking a shot of 86 proof liquor, or a mixed drink with 1 86 proof shot in it.
101: I'm enjoying a shot of ice 101, or some 100(ish) proof shot or bevvy.
151: Everyone loves Bacardi!
200: I am so pathetic I'm drinking rubbing alcohol straight up.
check: I'm just checking to see how I'm doing here.

The gender specific-ness is gone, "guess my weight" is also gone (just seemed too complicated for a text message app) And of course, the rule of averages apply, the script is assuming a lot.

Beers and Pints are considered to be about 5% alcohol, which is what Pabst has (while Guinness is a mere 4%) wine, shot, and can increase your BAC by the same amount (0.0200), a pint increases it 0.0266, 101 increases it 0.0234, 151 increases it 0.0352, and 200 increases it 0.0465. 200 should probably call the local authorities and let them know all hell is going to break loose. Instead it raises your BAC 0.0465. check won't increase it at all, but will report your estimated BAC back to you. (drinking something will also report back to you your new BAC). Anything else just gives you a bit of usage info.

The algorithm is pretty simple. On average, human beings metabolize 0.02 per hour. Naturally this differs from person to person, but it's a good rule of thumb. That's about 0.00000555556 per SECOND (that actually comes to 0.0198 per hour, so you are possibly metabolizing slightly faster than drinking_buddy 3.0 will tell you) so it's accurate enough for our needs.

DO use this to have fun and play around with your friends and have contests about "who's drunkest". DON'T use this to determine if it is safe for you to drive home. If you need to ask a computer if you're OK to drive (or who you should date) then you are obviously too drunk to get behind the wheel, unless it is way behind the wheel, like in the back seat.

This is a multi-user application, it stores your current BAC and a time-stamp in a file specifically for you, based on your email address. It does not keep a running total, I won't be able to look through the logs and see what you've been drinking at what time, and no one else will be able to either. I will be able to, if I wanted to, which I don't, see how drunk you were the last time you checked in, if I know your phone's email address. But I promise not to abuse my power.

Enjoy!

Republished from cmerrill.com under a Creative Commons license.

A while back my digital camera stopped working properly. I had it in a plastic bag with a leaky water bottle and it ended up getting wet.

I let it dry for two days but when I turned it on, the buttons on the back didn't work right. One or two did what they were supposed to, but the others did what other buttons should have done. The net result was that I could take pictures with my camera as long as I was happy with the settings as they were (macro active, flash on) -- which I wasn't.

Since I couldn't really use it, I decided to take it apart.

I got the front cover off, but couldn't really get it apart beyond that. The circuit board and other pieces seemed to have been glued to the back piece, and I didn't want to break it completely. I noticed some sticky gunk on one of the ribbons, which I swabbed clean with a damp paper towel.

As I was turning the exposed innards around in my hand, a small piece fell out. It looked like the pin of a hinge, but I couldn't figure out where to put it back, so I just reattached the face plate without it.

Once the screws were back in, I turned it on to see if I'd messed it up any further.

Lo and behold, all the buttons worked normally. I was able to change all the settings and it took photos and video as it had before the accident. I suppose maybe it was the sticky gunk causing the problem, but I prefer to think I'm like Micah on "Heroes" and have a gift for electronics.

Nerd.Blog presents Things You Shouldn't Do, a new series chronicling the things that nerds do that other people should never try. The first in our series is installing linux on your MacBook.

Via Cory Webb: Here are some pictures of my WiFi bridge. Sorry for the low quality. It works rad and looks even radder, like some kind of... I dunno, scifi thing or something. It's awesome. If I can get the airport working I can re-broadcast paid-for WiFi for free! Yay.

I installed Ubuntu on my Macbook because I heard it was a simple matter to get the Airport card to work properly. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case, hence the WiFi bridge hack. I plan on removing Ubuntu and re-installing Fedora Core 6, my Linux of choice.

Why install Linux at all may be your next question. In my work environment I use Linux on a daily basis. In my home environment I have used only Linux (shunning Microsoft products) for the past 6 years. Basically, that is the environment I am more comfortable in. However, I am learning to love the Mac Interface for day to day use, but I am still getting used to the Command-C copy and Command-V paste. I'm used to highlighting the text to copy it, and middle clicking to paste.

Some of the projects I work on simply work better out-of-the-box under Linux. For instance stop animation is very simple using the dvgrab utility. Open source gnu software compiles a lot easier (I don't even know how to get "make" for Mac OS), and web development (while not connected to the internet) is simple on Linux as it's easy to install my own local webserver. Other software projects (Multicade, Interjuke, Quizbox 3000) work better under Linux because I can use whatever I prefer as a shell, instead of being roped into Aqua. Robot development is a lot nicer under Linux because the mini-itx mainboards are cheap and robust, and far more expandable than a mac mini.

Oh yes, and I'm a geek.

Spent today installing Windows XP on my MacBook Pro. Only watch/read this if you are into nerdy stuff. Here's the details:

First of all, the funniest line from the Boot Camp instructions, just in case you don't read the rest of this:

"5. Follow the instructions for any other wizards that appear."

I installed XP using Boot Camp so that I would be able to boot natively into XP in case I ever needed to do that.

Previously, if you wanted to be able to use the Parallels software to use XP at the same time as OSX, you had to install XP twice, because Parallels required its own "hard disk." However, the newest version of Parallels can use the Boot Camp partition as its hard disk, so now you only need to install XP once to have the best of both worlds.

After getting XP running in Parallels, I downloaded VirtueDesktops, which is the software that lets you smack the MacBook to switch between the OSX and XP fullscreen modes. I demonstrated a few different transitions, because they're pretty rad!

Another cool thing about the new version of Parallels is the "Coherence" mode, which is what allows the XP windows to mingle with the OSX windows so that it looks like you're running XP programs in OSX. In reality what has happened is that the XP desktop background has been made transparent.

You can drag files between XP and OSX and it will copy them just like magic!

So there you have it.

Music: Birdman & Lil' Wayne - Stuntin' Like My Daddy