A Moment of Wisdom

Recently Slashdot revealed to me: Using a Treadmill and Wiimotes To Run and Fly in Aion

Now I know that MMORPG’s can be highly addictive and can even cause rather interesting interactions between the physical and virtual worlds. However, this is the first time that I have heard of people attempting to get a workout whilst playing these games. I just close my eyes and imagine a single guy in his apartment running on a treadmill flapping his arms up and down so he can move his Level 23 Elvish Mage across the virtual landscapes of WoW.

WoW.

First off, the title of this software totally reminds me of the show Pimp My Ride.  With a cool name like “Tweet My Mac” this little gem of technology has got to be cool … right? Well, let’s take it for a spin and see what it can do.

I found this tricked out article on LifeHacker and figured that I would give it try on my home iMac. The fun part of this application is that it can take pictures via the iSight or grab a screen capture and post the result over to TwitPic so you can see who is in front of the computer and what they are doing … sneaky huh? Then, my favorite, is the ability to make the computer say any phrase at your bidding. I actually got lucky and caught the wife and kids at home during breakfast and had the computer say, “Logan, get your finger out of your nose!” Within a minute I had a phone call asking why the computer was nagging our son!

If you currently use Twitter and have a Mac (or PC) then I recommend downloading and testing this software which is really simple to use. That is as long as you follow Google’s motto!

I am loving the headline of this story over at Slashdot. Apparently the guy died after working with a weakened strand of the bacteria that causes “The Plague”. Look, I understand that medical research is a good thing and all … but it’s the freaking plague!!! If I were the guy I would have avoided the thing.

From Slashdot:

A company called Lok8u (“Locate You”) has come up with a clever watch that serves as a GPS tracking device for your kids. Now, we can quickly ask the question of “how paranoid are we as a society?” but at the same time we can say, “Man, I wish I had something like this in my watch whenever I misplace the darn thing!” I have little ones and ponder over whether investing in something like this makes sense or not. I probably won’t wind up getting any of these but it’s neat to see ideas like these come along … I’m sure they will do well in the market.

Funny excerpt from the Slashdot forum on this topic:

Personally I wouldn’t use this for teenagers because at that age, they have matured enough that they deserve a little privacy

Exactly – if you put the wristwatch on a teenage boy, all they’ll find is that he’s spending most of his time in the bathroom rapidly jumping back and forth about 4″ at a time.

Ahh, nothing like a little potty humor on a Monday morning.

I love underdog stories.  When it comes to browsers, Google’s Chrome web browser is definitely the underdog as compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer in terms of popularity and market share.   But in terms of JavaScript speed, Google’s got them all beat.  Case in point:  Someone has written a pure JavaScript NES emulator that runs very well in Google Chrome and very slowly in Firefox and not at all in Internet Explorer.    I expect to see good things coming from the Google camp in the browser wars.

Download Squad

via Play Contra, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and more in Google Chrome.

Google does … just search for time. Personally, I trust Google’s answer on the simple question of “What Time Is It?” But then they start weirding me out a little when they tell me where I am. They list the city and state right by the time display which is cool but how accurate are they in locating my actual position? My guess is that they use the IP lookup and resolve that back down to the ISP. Does anybody out there know the inside scoop on this technology?

I found this article over at Instructables:

When  I was growing up I loved playing games in the local arcade for hours on end.  There were always a great variety of games and with just a few dollars I could play a whole bunch of them … and then Nintendo came about.  Once that wonderful system hit the market I spent hours on end in my basement playing the latest 8-bit games and never really looked back at the video game arcade scene.

Now that I am “all grown up” I get to play games with my kids on the Nintendo Wii.  It’s a great system and you can download most of the nostalgic games and reminisce whilst sharing 8-bit glory with the kids … but it’s just not the same as playing them in front of a six foot tall video game arcade box!  How in the world can you recreate this beloved memory of old school arcades for yourself and share it with your children?

Well, if you want spend a whole bunch of money you could actually purchase these arcade machines and designate a room in your house to truly make a real deal arcade of your own.  On the other hand, you could follow the wonderful instructions from this Instructable and make your own miniature/portable arcade box that could emulate all of the games in one box. Genius!

Over at Slashdot,

They mentioned that The Register reported on Richard Egan killing himself (a.k.a. committing suicide) with a shotgun blast to the head.  First off, this was mentioned at Slashdot because Mr. Egan was quite a techie who worked on the guidance computer system for the Apollo operations and went on to co-found the company EMC which was a leader in electronic data storage.  Quite an impressive sounding individual … so why did he kill himself?

Well, back  in May of 2009 Egan was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and he was already suffering from a list of health issues.  So, on August 30th, 2009, Dick Egan decided to end his life on his own terms instead of letting the cancer slowly take his life away.

This story begs of talking about health care reform in the United States and what we can do on issues such as what Richard Egan was facing and his options on dealing with the matter.  Given such grim circumstances and his personal view on life I can understand the choice that he made but there should be much more civil or humane options available for an individual.  In a time when technology in the information world is screaming into the future our ways of dealing with policies and true ethical matters we appear to be stuck in medieval times.

I saw this over at SlashGeo:

Basically, a guy walks into a green screen room and is rendered on the fly as polygons with textures and then placed into whatever 3-dimensional environment desired.  Ok, that’s cool.  Then they go on to show that this not-too-shabby rendering of a person can interact with with this virtual environment by kicking over some vases and beating up a clone of himself.  Now that’s pretty darn cool.  I wouldn’t say amazing yet but still a rather neat accomplishment.

I would say that amazing would be when the virtual world can start to interact back with the real world.  For instance, if I could enter the virtual world with that other guy and pick up one of those vases and throw it at him … and he would feel it hit him.  Now that would be awesome!

September 11-13 marks the 27th Anniversary of Hampton Bay Days this year with special musical act Bruce Hornsby Grammy Award winning musical artist and local Williamsburg native. Come and join this local festival in downtown Hampton full of special activities for the kids, funnel cake, fried fish, burgers, music and rides, fun for the whole family.