While Zero Punctuation sums up Dragon Age nicely, as usual, Ben never mentions that it should actually be called Baldurs Gate: 2010. By stepping away from the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, leveraging 12 years of game and user interface progress, and retaining their same emphasis on storytelling, Bioware has created another masterpiece.
Cheers, Bioware. I normally refuse to play any single-player game, much less play it to completion. But since 2007 you are 3 for 3* with me.
*I have not completed Dragon Age at the time of writing but I expect I will within a few weeks.
Enjoyed the movie but loved the book. It carries a lot more depth, asks a lot more moral questions of the reader, and develops the plot in a completely different manner and direction.
While I don’t think Deckard’s version of the earth will ever come to pass, it’s still a relevant book for all the questions it asks the reader about what defines a person/soul.
It’s also funny to see science fiction age, i.e. Deckard reading smudged carbon copies in a hover car, and using a pay video phone because no one has mobile phones.
First, QR codes are similar to barcodes but are square, hold more information, and are easily scanned with a digital camera lens like the one in your phone. No cumbersome laser scanner needed.
Just download the QR Scanner application that’s commonplace on Japanese phones and catching on here in the states.
is capable of reading a QR i.e. three stickers on a rental movie box. One for good. One for bad. One for ok.
From 2001 to 2009 I had only a single unused facebook account. Now I have http://twitter.com/robertpateii, http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpateii, http://www.facebook.com/robertpateii, and an encrypted journal. Oh I also have wordpress installed on my own server, and another install on my girlfriend’s domain, and of course various forums. All these services do the same way but in different ways: they let me talk to one or more people without having to call them on the phone.
I refuse to use all the different services all the time though. I need one portal where I can just speak and be able to select where those words go. My plan is to make wordpress that portal and find, tweak, or code plugins to give me the rest. One of the major features I was planning to get my butt kicked trying to code was post visibility . . . which it looks like has already been added to wordpress since the last time i logged in. Awesome!
With everything transfered over to flickr, it’s high time to pick out an update to my online album. Unfortunately, the next image set chronologically is in 2005, during my study in Milan. Further, all the pictures are essentialy party pictures, which aren’t that entertaining for anyone who wasn’t at the party. They’re pictures of friends nearby other friends, or nearby booze, or nearby ancient artifacts of the roman empire, or all of the above.
I had too much of a good time to skip over the rest of the trip completely, but damn if I can find pics that deserve to have my name attached to them on the internets. “A good time” doesn’t do the trip justice. I’d actually like to trade a week of this for a week of that, now that I think about it. And that’s something for which I never wish. Well, I’ll have to go back. Can’t go with the same friends, but I could still go with one and meet a few others there (since they live there.)
“Yar:”
Our cheez-it supply rarely lasts the week, and I have to force myself to eat the crackers one at a time instead of eight at a time. These cheez-its, they always recall nap time during kindergarten year in Mrs. Shoemaker’s class. That was a good year; about as good as every year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad year, but I’m not the type of person to divide my history into emotional categories.
Judging by the frequency of posts here, I’ve either been really busy at itzbig, or given up on writing all together. It’s honestly mostly the former, and some of the latter. I’ve three other blogs that are far more idle than this one, but new habits come gradually (I suppose).
There’s a new release in the works here for us, and (typically) it’s big, real big. As always, there will be significant UI improvements. The other major part might still be considered a corporate secret at this point, but it will be public soon enough so I’ll just bite my tongue for now. Just note that it will be radical, it will be something few others can do, and we might even be the first to actually do it.
In other news, I’ve been doing tech support since I started here, and in all that time I’ve received only three actually disgruntled emails. The third one came in yesterday, and it hurt a little inside. I think I know what the problem was even though the user wouldn’t tell me, and today we fixed it. Little things like that satisfy.
This is no ordinary pitch and putt, like the kind you see on golf courses with 60 to 80 yard half-ass holes. This is mini-golf in the truest sense. With 80-120 yard holes, your first shot is always a full swing, albeit with a pitching wedge. Then you try to pitch a few times because you missed the green, next you take a few putts because the bastard always puts the holes right on a ledge, and finally you take a long guzzle of your beer with your buddies because that hole sucked for all of you.
That’s right. This place is BYOB right in the middle of downtown Austin by Town Lake Park.
So it’s a pretty regular haunt for us on sundays.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Qb-DNqKoM]
we shall see how this business turns out.
Photography’s just too expensive once one reaches a certain level of dedictation. But I’ve taken some impressive shots in the past and I admire an art so heavily constrained to real world. So I worry I might be wasting some of my potential creativity. Who knows what paradigm shattering images will never be captured because I put photography off?
But writing can be so much grittier and darker. Honestly, how many photographers have died from alcoholism?
Moments ago, I leaned back in my chair to stretch and peer out my window. I never noticed it before, but there’s a tree coated with autumn orange that I can only see at a very specific angle. I did some more peering around to verify that it is indeed the only autumn colored tree within sight. I think it’s a nice touch.
http://www.freerice.com/
I grill hotdogs on the george foreman for lunch sometimes.
