My lease runs through May. I’m already beginning to watch the real estate market here in Saratoga Springs. My plan is to buy a house in the very early spring. I have a number of options – I can buy right in Saratoga Springs and walk to work, but I’ll be in a very crappy house in a very suburban ‘jammed up against the neighbors’ setting. I could live with this – the ability to walk to work and to dinner in town is really compelling, I was very envious of my peers at Bowdoin who could do this. I could also buy in the surrounding region and, as with Bowdoin, commute for 20 minutes or so to work. This could possibly get me a waterfront home on the Hudson, but it would put me far away from the conveniences like shopping and dining, and while I lived with a 20 minute commute for at least 7-8 years (4+ heading north to Bowdoin and 3-4 heading south to Portland), I would love to be rid of it. Or there’s one other option – I could build my own house after buying some land in Saratoga Springs or right near it. If I chose this latter route I could choose to do something really interesting and build a really unique home, say something like this (that site is great btw, they post all kinds of interesting and novel stuff). I’d definitely go for the double unit if I went with that model.

I’ve ordered the book I linked to, and over the next couple of months I’ll need to decide how I want to do this. The wrinkle with buying the land is that I probably can’t get that done and the house built by May when my lease runs out. My landlords are pretty cool and might let me stay a bit longer if I need to but I’d rather not have to go through that if I can avoid it.

So. More as things develop. I have to say right now I’m leaning towards the $150k house inside the city limits, with the walk to work, and use it as an investment, it’s bound to increase in value and I can move in a few years into a house I build, or onto the water up north somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m honoring the Independent Games Festival by talking about a bunch of excellent free and or open source games. Another example is one one I’ve linked to in the past namely The Battle for Wesnoth. This is an excellent turn-based strategy game. The game has continued to evolve at a rapid pace since I first linked to it in February of this year – it’s much refined and the included campaign is vaslty superior. If you like games like Heroes of Might and Magic or Warlords I can basically guarantee you’ll like Wesnoth. Check it out, it’s well worth a look.

I have this minor fetish for maps. Several of them are hung as posters in my cottage, and I’ve gotten quite a few somewhat rare maps as gifts over the years. I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across map24.com, which has a fantastic mapping engine. While it seems a little less accurate than mapblast, the dynamic nature of the maps more than makes up for it, and it’s much faster at showing you adjacent regions of the area you’re looking at compared to other systems, plus it has the unique ability for you to plot your route directly on the maps. This last is the best feature – you can generate precise mileage estimates for everything from cross-state trips to your local jogging route.

Even if none of the above interests you, I’d still encourage even the casual browser to check out the site at least once. Among other things it’s a great example of a rich web app with a fantastic interface – the shape, one hopes, of things to come.

I should also note – you need Java on your system and functioning within your browser, and if the maps don’t appear to be dynamic to you, make sure to click on the ‘interactive’ link at the top if the interface.

This one’s for Andrew, but anyone who grew up watching the Transformers will probably enjoy this obsessively researched timeline of the Transformers. A pop-culture history lesson in 15 minutes – who can resist? Note that this is an angelfire.com link, so engage your popup blocker at its highest setting if you’re going to cick on the link.

I needed to order a few things at Amazon.com this weekend and when I was checking out, I noticed I was getting a small discount on my order. It turns out if you use the new A9.com search engine, you’ll automatically get a discount on your Amazon.com orders. My order was around $60 and I saved a little over $1. This undoubtably uses cookies so you’ll need to have cookies enabled in your browser for this to work, and you’ll probably need to first log into your amazon.com account (to set the token for your identity) then go use A9 to search for something. While that sounds cumbersome it’s a relatively painless way to save a little money. And the search engine’s not bad, especially if you’re looking for images.