So over on the superb boardgamegeek.com there’s a long list of free computer implementations of boardgames. This is a great resource and there’s plenty to choose from, from old classics like risk to more recent games like settlers of cataan. Many of these are windows only, but just as many are browser or java based and thus run on all platforms. A few I’ve played and enjoyed include Pioneers (a settlers of cataan clone), SpaceHulk-SP, Invade Earth (a risk 2210 AD clone), and Heroquest, an amazingly complete clone of the old Heroquest dungeon adventure game. There’s tons more at the link above and the chances are good that there’s a board or card game to your taste.
Adult version of the Big Wheel
Remember being a kid and getting your big wheel going fast enough that you could pop the brake and spin out like mad? Check out the KMX Karts series of tadpole bicycles. I’ve been looking into getting a tadpole bike of late and found these folks while researching. There are some great quicktime .mov files of the bike in action offroad, jumping, and powersliding. The thing looks like an absolute blast, and the entry level model is actually really inexpensive relative to the normal $1200+ other tadpole bikes run. This is not what I’m going to buy for myself, I’m getting a touring/commuter bike, but man these things are tempting as a second bike.
Lord of the Rings online beta: good stuff!
So there is now a public beta for the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG. I signed up a couple of weeks ago and got my access key last week, and I spent a good bit of this weekend playing it. If you’re interested, you can sign up for your own on this page.
While it’s definitely still rough around the edges – there are periods of intense lag that I can only resolve by logging out, there are tons of little scripting errors which lead to ‘general error!’ messages while doing quests and investigating things, and the character animation seems off and somewhat disconnected from the world, it’s still very fun. It’s also cool just to be able to run around inside a 3D version of middle earth, and the graphics are very good, definitely a step above Worlds of Warcraft from a technical perspective. Art direction on the other hand, I’d still give a very hearty nod to WoW.
I can sum the gameplay up with: it’s a competent copy of WoW and the diku-derived gameplay that preceeded it. It doesn’t add much new to the experience but the setting and the competent execution make it worth checking out.
I guess the highest praise I can give it is this: I’ll be buying it, preordering in fact, to take advantage of the $9.99/month subscription offer if you preorder, versus $14.99 if you don’t.
You need a PC to play. If you decide to download the beta, do yourself a favor and use the torrent link. Their downloader stinks.
Handy little windows utility – System Information for Windows.
Check out System Information for Windows (SIW), a free, very handy little system information tool. It’s tiny and standalone (no installer needed), meaning you can tuck it on your thumb drive. Next time you’re at a friends house and need to know the specs of their machine, pop this up and you’ll have everything you need.
Originally spotted via downloadsquad.
I have a rotator cuff injury
Another in a long line of oddball health issue for me. This time around it’s a rotator cuff injury. It’s kind of funny – I’m pretty sure I sustained this by using the long version of the 
stick which I use to throw the ball for Soolin. In warmer months I use that thing for a half an hour twice a day and it’s done in my arm. I get sharp severe pains when I move my arm to certain points in an arc, and most especially if I try and lean on my right elbow or lean back on my elbows. It sucks. It also means I can’t use my rowing machine or weight bench. I made a trade for an elliptical trainer with a friend of mine to help deal, meanwhile though in the past 2 months I’ve gained ~7 pounds or so.
Meanwhile I have no way to throw the ball for Soolin. I’m going to stop at a sporting goods place on the way home and pick up a lacrosse stick and see if my arm can handle it.
First major project at the ‘new’ job is launched
So, we launched a week and a half ago. My time is starting to become my own again after about a month and a half of super busy, super stressed, work till 7 every night activity. I’d link to it but I don’t want to show up in the referrer logs and besides, without an account it mostly just looks like a website. What we launched was a heavily customized instance of drupal designed to serve as the core of the college’s new web content management system. The customization involved a lot of work around managing hierarchical web content and managing the permissions on that content on a very granular level. We also spent a lot of time on a collection of features designed to facilitate social networking amongst the alumni of the college. ~21k new accounts were added to college systems as part of the launch, and we’re storing a ton of data about these folks and providing them with a set of tools that allows them to choose who can see what information about them on a very granular level.
So. Overall I’d give us a ‘B.’ The launch went reasonably well considering we had absolutely no testing period, and considering that a week before launch I uncovered an ‘oops we crashed the database server and hosed the data’ bug that I thought was going to kill me.
This is just the first phase and there’s a lot more to come. Figure on me disappearing again into a hole of ‘too busy for anything else’ starting mid-late July as we launch services for academics at the college.
Revolt is the mirror in which greed is forced to see itself.
I love working in higher ed. The title of this piece was scrawled on the bathroom stall I was standing next to while washing my hands this morning. No ‘call so and so for a good time’ here, thank you very much.
Sorry about the infrequent posting
A brief explanation – I am consumed with work right now. The first phase of the project I was hired to work on at my new job is scheduled to go live for ~34k users in just a couple of weeks and I am completely swamped with things to do. By the time I get home at night I’m sick of computers and at best will play some zoomie games. More often I curl up to watch a movie or read. I’m also too busy to keep up on my regular RSS reading which is where a lot of the content on this site comes from, so…bear with me through mid-February, after which things should settle down a bit and I should return to my more regular posting habits.
Friday fun link: open arena
Got that new game jones? Check out the Quake 3 engine-based Open Arena, a free, cross platform, open source first person shooter. I think I mentioned some months ago that the Quake 3 engine was going open source, and this is one of the better examples of the kinds of games folks are releasing now that they have that code base. Anyone up for some action tonight? Send me an IM if you are.
Let the record reflect that first snowfall of the year was today
Today, January 19th, is the first time this winter that snow has actually accumulated on the ground. This is by far the latest I can ever recall this happening in my lifetime of living in the northeast. We also had a 70 degree day the first weekend of January, which I can not recall ever happening either. Is it global warming? Who knows, all I know is that to the best of my recollection nothing like this has ever happened before during my lifetime.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 