I give you a free win32 conversion of the classic old games workshop game Heroquest. It runs much better than the other available version, which was written for DOS over 10 years ago. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Heroquest is a poor man’s Dungeons and Dragons, played on a board with miniatures, and was originally published in the UK by Games Workshop then brought to the US by (Hasbro? Milton Bradley?). You can review the boardgamegeek.com entry if you’re interested in more background, or just grab the download from the link above if you want to tinker with it, it takes 5 minutes to review how it works and get down to playing.
Help for your music collection
If you’re like me, you’ve got gigs of mp3 on your hard drive, and perhaps you’ve been a little lax in terms of making sure the id3 tags are accurate when you ripped the music from your cd collection. Or maybe you’re grabbing a lot of it off of edonkey/dc++/usenet/caracho/whatever, where the metadata quality is all over the map. If you’ve got a portable mp3 player this can be a big hassle, since without accurate metadata the files won’t neccesarily play in the correct order or even let you know the artist and song title of the individual tracks. There are solutions to this, like itunes, mexp or the builtin media browsers in players like QCD and winamp, but each has its issues. My favorite tool up until now has been Tag & Rename, but it’s a little spendy for a one trick pony. Enter The Godfather. It’s donationware – give them what you think it’s worth – and it works great, integrating with the CDDB and Allmusic.com. The interface is equal to Tag & Rename’s, and it’s speedy. Check it out of your mp3 collection is starting to get unwieldy, it’s well worth the effort to clean now and then.
Verizon appears to ‘get’ it
Longtime readers have been exposed to my rants about how the telecom and cable industries are trying to turn the internet into a broadcast medium by limiting the upstream bandwidth they provide their subscribers with, this despite the fact that they try and market services like digital telephony and videoconferencing that to one degree or another require upstream bandwidth. A few months ago Verizon announced it would be rolling out new higher-speed data services, and while I was in ‘extended away mode’ during my move to Saratoga Springs, some of the details were announced. $35 a month for 5Mbps down and 2 up is Verizon’s initial offering, with up to 30mpbs down/5 up to come (prices not announced). This is 8x faster upstream than my current time warner account permits, and since you’re reading this weblog, you know how and why I would use the increased upstream bandwidth (the streaming music server would return for example, as would the dedicated NWN server and possibly even and EQ emulator server). This is fantastic news. I’m not in their initial markets but this brings great hope for the future. Oh, and Time Warner? Wake the fuck up and bring me back my upstream, or lose my business, it’s that simple.
Customizable vanity stamps
Check out this customizable stamp service – you can use any photo you like and they’ll make a sheet of stamps you can use to send mail in the US. They’re not cheap, at just under $1 a stamp once you factor in shipping, but what a cool idea and well worth the price it seems to me. These would make a good xmas gift for the folks.
Ru roh shaggy!
News like this really freaks me out. The article covers how a chemical used in the manufacture of teflon which is very likely a carcinogen is in all of our bloodstreams to a troubling level. Did you ever chuckle at the romans, who used lead pipes and drinking vessels and got addle-brained as a result? 1000 years of technological advances and we’re not much better apparently. But hey, go ahead and vote for the republican agenda with it’s preference for reduced government oversight of big business. Who knows what other lovely cocktails they’ll manage to expose us to.
I’m back redux
Ok….so maybe I am enjoying 6 weeks off from work a bit too much 😉
I just got back from a kayaking clinic in western MA at Zoar Outdoors paddling instruction and sales. It was fantastic – I took a 2 day introductory whitewater paddling clinic with Nick. I have 5-6 years of sea kayaking experience and I still felt like a total novice. I only came out of my boat once but there were numerous times where it was a near thing, and while I could paddle in a straight line and turn my boat effectively, some of the other critical skills like leaning and bracing were difficult for me. I want to get a boat and get out on the water and practice now, there’s some moderate whitewater within 10 miles of my new place so my next mission is to find a way to get the boat in and out, which is tough since I don’t yet know a soul up here.
I can’t say enough good things about Zoar – they instructors were great and the whole experience was really really positive.
One aside about Zoar – they’re located on Route 2 in western MA. Driving Route 2 west of them towards NY is fantastic – I intentionally got up at 4:30 AM so I could have the road to myself, and it was one of the best driving experiences I’ve ever had – the road winds itself through the Berkshires and if you have a car that’s fun to drive it’s just an awesome experience. Taking 30MPH turns on the side of a mountain at 75MPH? Get yourself a Mazda 3 and try it, if your sense of fun is similar to mine, you’ll have a grin pasted from ear to ear for the rest of the day. 😉
I’m back
Hey all,
Yes, I’m back online, been that way for 48 hours, roughly. I’ll get back into the swing of posting shortly, I still have some niggling issues to deal with on the server end plus I am in vacation mode here. Short version of the last 3 weeks – I moved, major hassles including a uhaul truck that wouldn’t start. I unpacked in the sweltering heat, and I went camping on Lake George and once again it poured on us (though for only 1 day of the 5). I’ll get some pictures of the new dwelling and the area up online this week and get back in the posting groove as time permits, which still may be a week or so off due to other vacation plans and the start of the new job.
One more day
Just a head’s up – tomorrow, Thursday the 15th, the server is going down. I will be down at least a week and possibly even longer. This website and its domains, as well as the other services running here, will be unavailable while the server is down. Wish me luck in the move and hopefully the server restart will go smoothly 😉
Moving Friday-Saturday
I’m moving my household to Greenfield Center NY starting this coming Friday afternoon, the 16th of July. As a result metamusing.net will be going down for at least several days and possibly for as long as a couple of weeks as I relocate the server that runs this site and get internet access up and running at my new house. Keep your bookmarks – either:
or:
will be back up and running by the end of July, geek gods willing.
Infinite boardgaming fun
Check out Piecepack.org. Some clever boardgaming fans have designed a set of universal boardgaming components you can print out on your inkjet printer, and then held a series of design contests for games that use the components. There’s also a wiki that lists all the games available for the system as well as hosting a ton of other info. It’s all free – the only requirement is a printer and some toner or ink, and some friends to play with. If you’re not the type to spend the time to make up your own pieces, you can even buy preprinted sets and even sets made out of wood.
