Category Archives: GeekStuff


GeekStuff

Punt A Tarutaru

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Petition: Add Tarutaru punting to the next Final Fantasy XI expansion pack. […] Please included a Tarutaru punting mini-game in the next expansion pack to Final Fantasy XI. Everyone was disappointed to learn they could not punt a Tarutaru, they are nearly the size and shape of a football, and should be punted. Thank you for your time in considering the matter.

Couldn’t resist this one… true, I don’t play “much” FF, but in my experiences punting is a worthwhile addition to any video game. Just look at Yeti Sports… who knew that throwing, punting, and twirling penguins could be fun?

Well, true I did, but no one asked me about it, so pft.

Imagine if you could punt a grunt in H2: stick a grenade to one of them, scoop’m up and *punt*… whoo!

GeekStuff

Dvorak on CSS

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PCMag: Why CSS Bugs Me – As we move into the age of Vista, multimedia’s domination on the desktop, and Web sites controlled by cascading style sheets running under improved browsers, when will someone wake up and figure out that none of this stuff works at all?!

Well, duuuuuh.

Welcome to the party.

GeekStuff

Where’s My Royalty Check?

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ZDNet: Last week I decided to install a new operating system on one computer in my lab. Not a big deal, really. I install, uninstall, and reinstall various Windows versions all the time. But this particular installation was just a little different. See how much of this sounds familiar: […] Even though I had installed the very latest version, I saw that there were 98 separate updates available, designed to “correct errors, eliminate security vulnerabilities and provide new features.” It took approximately a half-hour to download and install everything over my high-speed connection. […] Sounds like a typical Windows installation, with all the usual complaints: too many security updates, forced restarts, hardware that can’t be configured easily? And it must have been Windows Vista, because of those annoying User Account Control prompts.

Right?

Wrong. I was installing Ubuntu Linux.

I want a royalty check; I said all of this first!

GeekStuff

Manglish

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JeanSnow: Manga lovers rejoice! A never-seen-before approach to manga made its debut on the Mainichi Daily News on Monday, July 3, 2006. Manglish takes some of Japan’s hottest young manga talents — showcased in the Mainichi’s MangaTown site — and places their creations on the MDN in their original Japanese format. But, by simply dragging a cursor over the top of the manga, it’s also possible to read them in English.

Now that’s pretty freakin’ neat!
Continue reading Manglish →

GeekStuff

Faith Is A Funny Thing

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TUAW: Daniel Jalkut has discovered that the Mac OS X 10.4.7 update released last week is causing his computer to phone home to Apple. Every eight hours, a process called “dashboardadvisoryd” is contacting two different servers hosted by Apple, ostensibly to verify that the Dashboard plug-ins you have installed are the same versions as the ones provided by Apple. While this certainly isn’t as insidious as Microsoft’s much-maligned Windows Genuine Advantage program phoning home to verify the authenticity of your operating system’s license code, I find myself agreeing with Daniel that Apple should provide us a way to turn this feature off.

“certainly isn’t as insidious”? Talk about blind faith in believing what a company tells you… Or is it the obvious bigotry that is more blind here? Would it be “OK” if Microsoft said that they too were “verifying the OS files that you have installed are the same versions as the ones provided by Microsoft”? After all, I would expect Apple to be checking for illegal copies as well or better yet for people running OSX on a non-Apple x86 system. If you have legal software there’s no worry… ah well.

Won’t be the first time that the criminal element’s voice had more sway than the populous – look at our own founding fathers :)

GeekStuff

Bar Is Open!

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We’re having an open house at work tonight. You heard me, an open house. At work. As in Tools and Technologies within Microsoft Game Studios. Yeah, you read it correctly: that means game previews and demos. I don’t even know which demos yet. I mean, I know what my team works on, but there’s a bunch of teams under the TnT umbrella. One of which had a hand in part of this May 9th press release, but I won’t tell you which one.

I’m sitting here now, watching people bring out dead boxes (in an effort to clean up) and bringing in balloons. In our green, black and white team colors, no less. The BBQ should be here shortly. Beer, of course. Can anyone get in? Nah. We’re letting outsiders in obviously, but you have to be invited by a team member.

Jealous? Come work here and won’t have have be!

GeekStuff

Crossovers?

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What in the hell is going on at Hasbro? I saw a blurb the other day that a Toys’R’Us in Canada had a Transformer version of the Millennium Falcon. I said “uwaaaah?” A quick search on the domestic Amazon site showed me that it’s not alone:

Darth Maul Sith Infiltrator

Boba Fett Slave 1

Luke Skywalker X-Wing Fighter

Is this the crossover of all crossovers?

GeekStuff

Shall We Play a Game?

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…or would you rather help people build them?

My team is hiring and we’re looking for some excellent SDET to join us – can you code? Do you like C++? Are you proud to find bugs in code? Are you willing to dig into source code and say “Hey, look, here’s the problem on like 1502”? Want a business card with Master Chief on the back of it?

We’ve got two different positions: one in our SDK/Tools product teams and another for our Server technologies. Interested? Give the links a click and apply!

And yeah, he’s on the back of my card already, or I would have applied before you could!

GeekStuff

Homage To Piro

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I brought my Jetta in for servicetoday… should be the last trip before I my lease ends and I turn it in, so that was all whoo hoo and stuffs. I also realized that I’m going to have to renew my registrations, even if I haven’t gotten a reminder yet… meh. Anyway, I dropped the GLI off with instructions for “just an oil change” – whenever this dealership touches something else for service (i.e. the tires) I end up making three to five follow up visits – and decided to wait for it over at Tully’s. After an hour I walked back in, past a customer at the counter, and went to the cashier to pick up my keys. She looked up at me, and then my t-shirt and say “Whoa.”

I had to look down because, frankly? I forgot what I was wearing…
Continue reading Homage To Piro →

GeekStuff

Want. One.

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YouTube: Jeremy Clarkson on the Top Gear Ariel Atom

Custom built, under 30K pounds, 0-60 in under 3 seconds, over 600hp, and goes over 120mph. Uses a Honda Civic Type-R engine, so millage should be OK, not that you’d care. Needs an iPod tho, as there’s no radio…

Oh for God’s sake, it gets an English man excited – what else do you need for proof that it’s cool?

GeekStuff

Testing Native C++ in Visual Studio Team System

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Whoa, Randy has a technology post about technology, coding and testing? Yep, I do. And if you’re neither tester nor developer, don’t bother reading the rest of this – you’ll just get pissed at me for wasting your time with techno-babble.
Continue reading Testing Native C++ in Visual Studio Team System →