kayray.org

First of all, did you know that you can still watch all three acts of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on http://hulu.com? And, although hulu usually lets you view their programming only if you live in the states, I hear you can watch Dr. Horrible from anywhere in the world! Hope that’s true. We can hardly wait until the dvd comes out!

So they say he saved her life
They say she works with the homeless
and doesn’t eat meat
We have a problem with her
(This is his hair!)

Yesterday Bob and Chloe came over in the evening and we had the best time talking and hanging out! We played with the new Check Mii Out channel on the Wii — voted on some contests and made a Surfer Dude to enter in the Surfer Dude contest. And we watched a few episodes of Spaced, and all of Dr. Horrible (which I enjoyed even more the second time through).

Today I poked around around at the new Nintendo Channel, watched a ton of game previews and downloaded a couple of demos for the DS. Crosswords DS was fun — but even “hard” wasn’t very hard, kinda like a NYT Monday puzzle, and there were a lot of stupid clues. Not sure if the full game has a more challenging level. The interface rocks, though. I’m pretty excited about WiiWare, but I want to read a few more reviews before I decide on a game to buy :) Magnetica looks fun (I love Zuma) and the Dr. Mario Online one looks great too, and maybe My Life as a King, LostWinds, Toki Tori, and of course Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People (which is supposed to be released in this month). Any opinions, fellow Wii-owners?

Edit: I just did a little research and found that there are two different Crosswords games for DS - “Crosswords DS“, the one I tried today, and also “The New York Times Crosswords”. Yep. That’s the one I want to try next!!

Arghhhh twitter.com is down, and http://identi.ca (an exciting new open-platform microblogging thing that just went live yesterday) is down. I’ve been beta-testing identi.ca for a while and doubted that it was sturdy enough to go live already, and now half the people I encouraged to try it will be frustrated and give up. Sigh. Poor identi.ca. I’m sure it will be back soon and then everyone should try it. The plan is, someday, that it will read stuff from twitter and all the other microblogs so you don’t have to convince your friends to switch. You can find me on both twitter and identi.ca — I’m “kayray” of course.

So anyway, since all my microblogs are down:

So tired.

Off to drop Henry at Kung Fu. Was planning to shop tonight but will put it off till tomorrow or Saturday.

Watched two episodes of Nova on hulu.com with Henry today — one about reconstructing an ancient Chinese bridge and one about trying to erect an Easter Island statue to see how it was done. (oooh more than 140 characters there!)

Anyway. Come back, microblogs!

How do you explain Twitter to a non-Twitterer? It’s really hard! Roogles just mentioned this excellent video: Twitter in Plain English.

Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but show it to your non-Twittering friends and maybe they’ll finally understand.

I just found Wikihistory, a hilarious short story by Desmond Warzel. It’s in the form of a wikipedia-type message board for time travelers. The noobs keep on killing Hitler…

http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

It’s very short and extremely funny! Go read. I especially enjoyed BarracksRoomLawyer’s contributions to the discussion ;-)

Yay, now you can follow Pandora on twitter! http://twitter.com/pandora_radio.

(Pandora is one of the greatest things ever invented. Period.)

Spent the day working on the brown and cream mittens (Top-down with a really fabulous thumb! Photos soon!) and watching the third season of The Office with Henry. He’s feeling a lot better, no more temperature and just a slight cough, but he’s definitely still recuperating and is still droopy and tired. But his appetite is coming back!

Let’s compare and contrast games from two software companies, shall we? Both sell games for OS X, though GrubbyGames also offers their games for PC and Linux. Yes, LINUX! :)

Company A, http://freeverse.com/ offers a demo version of their 6-game suite, Big Bang Brain Games. The demo works for one hour; that’s one hour total for all six games. Yeah, um, right. That’s ten minutes to try each game, theoretically, if you move fast, but the clock keeps ticking down even while you’re in menu screens or waiting for slow-talking AIs to STFU. I like to play in a window, but when the game goes non-fullscreen the menu options are cut off at the bottom of the screen. The full suite costs $30, which isn’t too bad for six games but I only had time try two of the games, and one of them was lame. Both had pretty graphics but annoying music and AI characters. I had to turn down the volume completely. Sorry, freeverse, two thumbs down.

Company B, http://grubbygames.com/ sells three games at $20 each. Their demos are extremely generous, allowing you to access all features and play a very good number of levels. There’s no time limit at all, just a level limit. I don’t like to feel rushed, so this system makes me happy! All three of the GrubbyGames games are adorable, clever, and unique, with charming graphics, sounds, and music. Playing in a window works as it should. Each has “kid” levels as well, which are very nice when you’re feeling easily frustrated :) I bought FizzBall last year, and it was worth every penny. It’s given us all hours of fun! I asked if I would be able to run the game on my two macs and Henry’s PC, and they said it was fine to download as many copies as I needed for my family. Of course, since they were so generous and trusting, I’ll never violate that trust by downloading more copies than we need or sharing them illegally. (Note to other companies: don’t assume your customers are criminals.) Thanks, GrubbyGames, two thumbs up for you!

Hugh, founder of LibriVox and all-around great guy, has come up with a fantastic new site: earideas.com.

From their front page:

Earideas is a collection of the best thoughtful audio available on the web. We’ve got shows from public and other broadcasters, magazines, newspapers, museums, as well as individuals. You can find it all here (to subscribe, download, or listen on our site), updated daily with the latest shows, organized by category.

There’s a lot of high-quality, interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking audio out there on the net, but it can be hard to find. And although I know of a lot of great podcasts, I don’t tend to subscribe to them because I get overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff I end up with and feel like I ought to listen to. Earideas is pure genius. They’ve selected the cream of the podcast crop and organized it by category in a nice clean interface. There’s a download link for every episode that they list but if you want to listen online there’s an easy to use flash player, too. That’s what I use, so I don’t have to remember to delete anything from my hard drive!

I subscribe to their “Featured Shows” rss feed, and I just let the hundreds of items stack up in my feed reader until I’m in the mood for some listening. Then I scroll down through their feed, and always find something that catches my interest, whether it’s Fresh Air, NPR movie reviews, an episode of The Onion news, or some other random thing I never would have found otherwise. Last night, for instance, I bumped into an Australian book review podcast and heard an interview with the author of “Queen of Fashion“, which I then found in my library system and had sent to my local branch. You can also follow earideas on twitter. Cool!

Forgot to mention photogamer.com!

Everyday in January, there will be a prompt that will prompt you to take a picture. It may be a prompt to take a picture of a your next meal or a tree. It’s your job to make it interesting. If it goes well, we’ll keep going.

You can also follow @photogamer on twitter to get your assignments.

Here are my contributions so far, but you’ll want to look at the entire flickr pool to get a better idea.

Fun! Yesterday I helped Henry make a flickr account so he could play, too.

Take the Geek Quiz: http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

I scored 31.75542% which ranks me as a “Total Geek”, but only a few points away from “Major Geek” (highest is Dysfunctional Geek at >75%)

My lovely sister pointed me to the Free Rice Vocabulary Game. Lots of fun! Their FAQ explains how the game works.

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

Here’s a screenshot of me hitting level 50:

I did not cheat, by the way, though I did have to guess quite a few, or use my deductive powers. It helps if you’ve read a lot of really old books. Trilby? Caleche? No problem.

Murrain means plague, in case you care. I stayed at 50 for a while, then missed a couple, then got back up to 50. I rarely drop below 48. Some of the definitions are odd. I would not, for instance, say that “colobus” means “monkey”. It’s a type of monkey. But whatever :)

Got Leopard? It took a few days for the google coders to bring sshfs and macfuse up to speed, but it works now! I’ll just paste my instructions from a few months ago. They’re all the same but the Finder in Leopard does not show mounted servers in the sidebar automatically anymore. I thought sshfs wasn’t even working! The solution is to go into Finder preferences and tell it to show connected servers on the desktop. Then drag the server from the desktop to the Devices area in the Finder sidebar. Drop it when you see a nice blue line and wait a few seconds for it to show up. Voila!

How to install sshfs on your mac:

Do you have a mac? Do you use ssh, scp, or ftp frequently, perhaps to and from your personal server? If so, you’ve got to try MacFUSE:

MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above).

Ok, I know that sounds pretty dry, but stay with me. When Dan first told me about MacFUSE I was not particularly interested. It doesn’t sound nearly as useful as it is! He installed it, and sshfs, on my Macbook and I started using it and fell in love. If I need to copy a recording over to my webspace, I just drag it over in Finder. When I need to update a podcast feed, rather than ssh in and use vi to edit (or worse, to ftp the file back and forth), I just double-click the file in Finder and it opens in my local texteditor (SMULTRON). (And next time I can just Open Recent from the File menu!) I can’t tell you how useful it is. Today I installed it on my iMac, and, though it may sound a bit daunting, it’s easy — anyone can do it.

Go to http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list. Download the MacFUSE Core Installer Package dmg and the sshfs filesystem dmg. Install the MacFUSE core first, and then sshfs. Run sshfs. It’ll ask you for a server and a username, and then a password. Once you’ve connected to your server, it’ll show up as a drive in Finder, just as if you had an external hard drive plugged in. You can quit sshfs now. Now you can use your mounted server just as if it were a local box!

Dan’s been talking about Leopard, the soon-to-be-released update for Mac OS X, for quite a while. Last week he showed me the page which lists 300+ new features, and some of them seemed really neat! For instance,

Quick Look:

Look inside any document without launching an application. Use Quick Look with documents, images, songs, and movies and get a large-size preview of the file. Flip through multipage documents, preview movies, even add images to iPhoto. You can use Quick Look in Finder, Mail, and Time Machine.

Spaces:

Organize your activities into separate spaces and easily switch from one to another. Make a space for work or play. Choose from a number of convenient options that make moving from space to space fast and easy.

(I haven’t had proper workspaces since I ran linux)

Scroll Non-Active Windows:

Scroll any open window, even if it’s not active. Simply position your mouse over the target window and scroll.

Path Bar:

See the path of a file when you view it in the Finder. Just choose Show Path Bar from the View menu and the path is visible at the bottom of the Finder window. You can also drag files to any location in the Path Bar.

So I got a little more excited about Leopard. And then, a few days ago, Dan downloaded the Guided Tour and we watched it together, and my head exploded and I became a rabid fangirl and now I can’t WAIT for LEOPARD! LEOPARD LEOPARD LEOPARD!!! Features that didn’t seem that interesting in print (stacks, time machine, new Finder layout, search shared Macs, etc.) look fantastic in use.

Only 5 days to Leopard! Yay Apple!

The Aeropress coffee maker! OMG! OK, yeah, I try to avoid coffee, generally. But every couple of months I give in. I might as well make that rare treat as good as it can be.

Watch as Nerd God Mark Frauenfelder demonstrates the awesomeness:

Dear Santa, this is available at thinkgeek! Hint, hint :)

The long-awaited Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo DS was finally released last Tuesday. Phantom Hourglass, YAY!!! Henry and I were at the store before it opened to buy two copies. We’ve been playing all week. It’s a fantastic game. Here’s an in-depth review on Gamespot: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

It took me a little while to get used to the stylus control. I kept wanting to steer Link around with the d-pad, but now I’ve got the hang of it, and the control system is flawless. The ability to make notes on the maps is fantastic. The puzzles and bosses are perfect — not too hard, not too easy. I really enjoyed the boss fight on the Ghost Ship — yeah, I died the first time but by then I had figured out what to do and I won the next time. The graphics are beautiful. The music is perfect.

If you have a DS, buy this game. If you don’t have a DS, buy one and then buy this game.

Did you know that you can subscribe to feeds of your friends’ flickr photos? It took me rather a long time to notice this feature. Here’s how you do it. If you don’t already have a favorite feed reader, get one. I like Google Reader.

Ok, now go to your flicker page. Click “Home” at the top. Click “Photos from your contacts” on the right. Click “Contact List” near the top.

Now, click one of your contacts. Scroll to the bottom of his first page of photos, and look for the small orange square. It’ll say, for instance, “Subscribe to DigiSage’s photos”. Now you’re kind of on your own because I don’t know what feed reader you’re using, but you’ll probably either right click and copy/paste the url into your feed reader, or left-click and follow instructions.

I really like being notified when my friends upload new photos!

Dude steals macbook pro, accidentally takes photo of self with photobooth, photobooth automatically uploads said photo to owner’s flickr account, hi-jinx ensue!

Oh hai, I bott it frum a frend, honnest

I’d heard Dr. Drew say that Flight of the Conchords was hilarious, and then I bumped into a few more mentions online somewhere, so over the weekend I gave it a try. Apparently they perform live and have had a BBC radio series, as well as the recent 12-episode HBO series (and another season coming up in 2008). Here’s their HBO page.

It took me two or three episodes before I began to love the show, but now I’m fairly obsessed. I’ve been looking forward to watching episode five all day. It’s sort of a The Office/Mighty Boosh kind of thing… Not as funny as Boosh but not as painful as the Office. The characters are nerdily appealing, and the band’s only groupie, Mel, is a riot and reminds me very much of the obsessive fans of a certain local band.

Over the weekend, Dan and I worked on the OK GO song, Do What You Want. I can sorta drum (and sorta sing/bray at the same time), and he’s pretty good at the guitar. He found some mediocre tab online and desuckified it, don’t think he posted it online yet though. All we need is for Henry to get good at the bass! It’s a really fun song.

I started Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker over again on Saturday. Twilight Princess is awesome, amazing, beautiful, thrilling, don’t get me wrong, but I think for sheer fun, the Wind Waker wins. It was the first modern console game I ever beat, back in, what, 2003? I had a heck of a time back then, even the with beginning quests and dungeons, but now I’m a much more skilled gamer and I blew through Outset, Forsaken Fortress, and Windfall in just a couple of hours. Today I did most of Dragon Roost in an hour, and am ready for the boss battle. No walkthrough for me (yet)! It does help to have Henry or Dan sitting near me to point out the things I miss. :) We were reminiscing that when we first got the GameCube and LoZ: WW, it was quite difficult for Henry and we had to read the text out loud for him! And he dressed up as Link nearly every day (when he wasn’t Legolas or Frodo), complete with pointy ears. Awwwww :)

Finished the three-color mitts this evening at karate. They’re blocking now — photos tomorrow!

Here’s some useful and/or fun and/or interesting stuff for you:

WebbAlert is Morgan Webb’s daily videocast (M-Th), covering the day’s developments in tech news, video gaming, gadgetry, and digital culture. Henry and I love Morgan’s show and watch it together every day. At first I found her a little too perky, but now I think she is adorable. Her vidcast is very entertaining and informative.
*******

Do you have a mac? Do you use ssh, scp, or ftp frequently, perhaps to and from your personal server? If so, you’ve got to try MacFUSE:

MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above).

Ok, I know that sounds pretty dry, but stay with me. When Dan first told me about MacFUSE I was not particularly interested. It doesn’t sound nearly as useful as it is! He installed it, and sshfs, on my Macbook and I started using it and fell in love. If I need to copy a recording over to my webspace, I just drag it over in Finder. When I need to update a podcast feed, rather than ssh in and use vi to edit (or worse, to ftp the file back and forth), I just double-click the file in Finder and it opens in my local texteditor (SMULTRON). (And next time I can just Open Recent from the File menu!) I can’t tell you how useful it is. Today I installed it on my iMac, and, though it may sound a bit daunting, it’s easy — anyone can do it.

Go to http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list. Download the MacFUSE Core Installer Package dmg and the sshfs filesystem dmg. Install the MacFUSE core first, and then sshfs. Run sshfs. It’ll ask you for a server and a username, and then a password. Once you’ve connected to your server, it’ll show up as a drive in Finder, just as if you had an external hard drive plugged in. You can quit sshfs now. Now you can use your mounted server just as if it were a local box!
****

And now, some games:
Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 2 (sound will start when you load the page, turn down your speakers!) — Mash the buttons along with the arrows and letters. I have gold medals for Hollywise, This Way, and Super Mario World Rock, and silver for Zelda. Those button combos kill me. I just tried one of the Pro songs and got about 4 points.

Desktop Tower Defense — place and upgrade units and defend your tower. Or whatever. Cute artwork, cute sound effects. Horribly addicting, try it at your own risk. I am an ace at Easy of course, but I still can’t get very far on Medium.

Speaking of addicting, we discovered Travian a few weeks ago. I started on US server s2 and Dan followed me, but we discovered that there are a few enormous, powerful alliances there that bully other players, so we switched to another, newer server in hopes of forming our own alliance and, possibly, standing a chance to play a more balanced, more peaceful game. We have a 13-player alliance there with some of the LibriVoxers.
***********

Ok, that’ll do it for now. Have fun :)

PC magazine lists us in their Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. Librivox is in the left column, about halfway down. Cool! Lots of other good sites on that list, especially kiva.org and the extremely useful ZAMZAR (you just have to capitalize a name like that).

They even wrote a nice blurb about us:

Audiobooks are ridiculously expensive: The latest “Harry Potter” title lists at $80 on CD. Librivox, however, provides pod fodder for free. The site features a collection of public-domain books read by volunteers—and anyone can volunteer. The audio quality is good (MP3s at 64 or 128 Kbps, as well as OGG Vorbis files). Some narrators are better than others—some may have listened to a little too much NPR—but almost everything is at least decent, and some performances are quite good. The collection (a bit more than 800 Project Gutenberg works so far) is a bit of a hodgepodge, with everything from Walt Whitman to Edgar Rice Burroughs. You’ll have to wait about a hundred years for The Deathly Hallows, though.

Thanks, PC Mag!

While I was writing the previous post, I found myself once again wishing for some way to keep a few snippets of text on a permanent clipboard. I type the same strings over and over and over, especially when doing LibriVox work or setting up blog posts full of photos.

So, on a whim, I googled “permanent clipboard” and the very top link pointed to a way to use my beloved quicksilver for just this purpose!!

It took a bit of poking about to make it work, so I thought I’d document it and save you some time.

1. Go to quicksilver -> plugins -> recommended and enable “shelf”
2. Go to quicksilver -> prefs -> actions and scroll down to “put on shelf” and enable it
3. Invoke quicksilver. Type “.” and type or paste your text string into the window. Press tab, then down-arrow until you see “put on shelf” and hit “enter”
4. invoke quicksilver, type “shelf” (choose “shelf”, not the “shelf & clipboard catalog” thing), hit “enter”, then down-arrow until you see your shelved item. Drag it into your document (or whatever). Voila!!

Oh, wonderful wonderful quicksilver! No mac should be without it. Did I mention that it’s free?