Here’s a simple bit of flash based nostalgic blastemup fun for a friday – berzerk+robotron+smashtv+stylized graphics= Boxhead == fun.
Great tutorial on how to use handbrake to rip DVDs
I’ve mentioned handbrake in the past – it’s a great DVD ripping utility with an easy to use interface. Despite being easy to use you might still find this great tutorial on how to rip a DVD using it. It’s published on a mac site and uses Mac screenshots to demonstrate, but Handbrake is available on all platforms and the basic steps remain the same no matter which platform you’re on. Free, open source, cross platform, and easy to use.
Microwave that sponge
An odd observation from me, but there’s a short article over on sciencedaily the gist of which is: wet your sponge and microwave it for 1 minute on high power to kill 99.99999% of the bacteria in it. A nice simple household tip – healthier dishwashing and no more smelly sponges will be the result.
Great writeup of metabolic syndrome over on kuro5hin
This piece could have been written by me, and if you collected all my musing on type 2 diabetes over the past couple of years you’d have something pretty close to what’s covered in it, but it’s well worth a look for anyone interested in the issue or worried that their diet will make them susceptible to the disease. As I’ve harped about, diabetes is an epidemic in the west and there’s a growing body of evidence that excessive high fructose corn syrup is a/the significant contributing factor to this increased incidence. The linked article touches on this and other details.
Things that suck: having an accident on your new bike
So I’m cruising home from work on my bike on friday. I have a pannier with a shoulder strap now to hold my laptop and sundries. I take a sharp turn at speed, maybe 15 miles an hour, and intentionally lock the rear tire to make it skid out, which it does. As I finish the turn I go to apply power again and there is a horrendous clanging noise and I skid to a stop. The shoulder strap got sucked into the chain, which caused the plastic buckle to pop free. The plastic buckle got caught up on the spokes on the opposite side from the chain, making a perfect loop around the tire, wrenching off the bike computer sensor, destroying the expensive rubber dust protector grommet on the rear hub, bending the fender and fender mounting hardware, and generally making a nuisance of itself. It sucked! It took me a while to work it out of the bike. The good news is it doesn’t seem to have damaged the rim or spokes, which I was sure it had done at first based on how tightly it was compressed against the rim. The tires are inflated to 75psi (that’s no typo – I was surprised too), yet the laptop strap had compressed the rubber tire flat against the rim. The bad news is I have to bring the bike in to get the grommet replaced, which will take a while since the part has to be ordered from Germany. It also ripped off several bolts that hold the rear fender secure, so now it rattles like an old jalopy. I tried several hardware stores and Walmart on Saturday morning but had no luck. I’m going to try another tonight.
All in all a major bummer. It could have been much worse so I guess I should count my blessings and move on. I can’t ride it in the wet until I get that part from Germany either.
Greatest baseball photo ever
Bat slips out of batter’s hands and flies into the crowd. Crowd reacts.
Inexpensive multi-track audio editing software
So, this is pretty slick.
Friday fun: 2D riff on Tempest
One of the classic 80’s arcade games, Tempest, has had innumerable remakes and riffs on the general concept over the years. Today’s fun link is a 2d take on the core Tempest gameplay elements – a grid, enemies that make their way down it towards you, and spikes that can block your shots and your ability to escape the level. Great graphics, decent sound, and nice tight fast paced gameplay. Check it out! (pc only, tiny download).
Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine are no more
Wow, talk about an end to an era – Paizo, the publisher of Dragon and Dungeon magazine, has announced that they will cease publication shortly after at least a 30 year run. While I haven’t opened a Dragon magazine in at least 10 years, there was a period between jr and sr high when I anxiously awaited the latest issue’s arrival at my library, and I periodically campaigned with my mom to get me a subscription. She wasn’t having it since Dragon was always ridiculously expensive. Despite this I ended up with quite a collection of issues that I picked up over the years, and they’re still sitting in a crate amongst my game collection.
The Dungeons and Dragons brand is still going strong (they’re at version 3.0 and rumors of the announcement of version 4.0 abound), so it’s not clear why the magazines are being killed off. There are rumors that Wizards of the Coast is planning to build a paid online service, so maybe this is related to that. Or maybe in the age of the internet it’s about younger gamers not reading magazines about their hobby. Whatever the cause, it’s a
The linux distro family tree and timeline
Check out this excellent Linux distribution family tree and timeline. It’s been making the rounds so chances are you’ve already run across it but this is so cool I couldn’t pass up mentioning it. I’m currently running the Debian-derived Ubuntu, but for years this site ran off of Redhat 4-5-6-7. For a good part of the Redhat years I tried to get going with Debian but always failed to get x up and running on my video cards. Knoppix was the first Debian-derived distro I could run, and I almost switched to it from Redhat at one point back in ~2003. Looking over that chart brings back a lot of memories, too, of me tinkering with all the different distros over the years trying to find the one true distro to rule them all.
Anyway, worth a look, Linux fan or no, just to get a sense of the history of it all.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 
