Loyal Taskboy Readers,
Markdown is an open source text filter written in God's Own Perl. Even though the taskboy blog is written in PHP, I can shoehorn this fitler into the comment system to allow greater markup. I may write a primate forum for taskboy built on the comment system. Stack Overflow uses this system, which is what brought it to my attention.
I ask you, readers, is it desirable that I add the Markup filter to comments?
UPDATE: Thanks to the Internet's feature of building applications before I need them, I have just run across Markup for PHP.
Last Defense is a game that should be familiar to most of you. While playable, the game is about 80% done. It plays fine on my macbook (60 fps), but simply crawls on my windows box (14 fps). I'm not sure that the problem is. Use at your own risk.
I developed a framework around pygame to "rapidly" develop this game. While I didn't spend a lot of time fooling with pygame, I did spend a ridiculous effort on the basic game logic. It's amazing how complicated space invaders really is.
Graphics continue to elude me, so I borrow those from existing free projects. I have found a pretty decent pixel editor called Pixen for Mac OS X. Of course, that program does not magically imbue me with graphic talent.
The framework needs, er, work. It doesn't not help me manage different game "scenes," which is the metaphor I use to describe the various game screens. In the case of this game, I'd say there are perhaps 2 scenes.
Sigh. Programming is hard!
Just a reminder from Tech Recipes:
- T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
- Virgin Mobile: [phonenumber]@vmobl.com
- Cingular: [phonenumber]@cingularme.com
- Sprint: [phonenumber]@messaging.sprintpcs.com
- Verizon: [phonenumber]@vtext.com
- Nextel: [phonenumber]@messaging.nextel.com
Where, oddly enough, [phonenumber] is the 10-digit phone number.
Behold: Ubuntu Linux on the XO laptop!
Since I already had an 8GB SD disk for my XO, I had the storage capacity to handle the new distro. I did need to apply for a developer key, which is needed to unlock the openfirmware "BIOS" system build into the XO. For reasons that aren't clear, it took 24 hours to generate the key.
While I appreciate the accomplishment of the default Sugar interface (I've got the latest 707 build running), I find that it gets in my way more than not. And it seems a little too pokey.
Ubuntu has a build just for the XO that uses the lightweight XFCE shell and comes with Firefox. Aside from that, there's not much in the way of apps for this system. For instance, no Flash support for Firefox. Also, I'm sad that I lost the camera functionality. And pygame isn't installed. All of these things are correctable, of course. The XO makes a pretty servicable netbook.
Ground Zero allows users to see the blast radii of various historic atomic weapons on the city of their choice. It's a mash-up with google maps.
This is what Web 2.0 is about!
Sam Huntington, political scientist and Harvard professor, died today. Although gaining wide recognition for his ideas about the necessity of civil leadership oversight of strategic military decisions, his more lasting contribution to modern and future political discourse may well be in his concept of the Davos Man.
...global elites who "have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations"
These Davos men are the forces driving world politics and wars. It's good to have a name for them.
Normally, I don't dwell too much in the past, but there were a few notable celebrities passing this year that mark personal milestones for me. This list is in no particular order:
Allan Melvin: Sam the Butcher is as good a representative as any for blue collar labor.
Issac Hayes: Doctor Soul, Hayes was responsible for a good bit of the musical background of my childhood.
W. Mark Felt: Deep Throat ignited the Watergate scandal that would lead to the kind of paranoia that birthed PseudoCertainty.
Betty Page: Really, is there any need to dig deeply into this one?
Paul Benedict:
As the deranged number painter on Sesame Street, Benedict helped infect me with dada-ism.
Paul Newman: Food magnate and actor, Newmie's Own Lemonade is a winner in my house.
Jerry Reed: As a child, I seemed not be able to swing a dead cat without hitting a TV with Reed on it.
Don LaFontaine: LaFontaine is the voice of movie trailers. What will Hollywood do without him?
Estelle Getty: ESTELL GETTY WAS STILL ALIVE THIS YEAR?!
Tony Snow: The Mouth of Sauron and oddly good blues harmonica player
Jesse Helms: Racist, Luddite and general cretin, Helms on his death bed, mostly likely dissolved into a cloud of acrid smoke leaving a greasy residue on the sheets. I believe that's the typical way an incubus leaves this plane of existence.
Kermit Love:
He made the Big Bird costume. Can you get more iconic than that?
George Carlin: I'm only now understanding the jokes he told in the 70s. Next up: Bill Hicks. Then I'll be all caught up.
Jim McKay: The Wide World of Sports announcer was a fairly constant voice of my youth. This is the only person on my list even vaguely associated with sports.
Tim Russert: One classy newscaster. While still guilty of giving into popular consensus, he at least made a good show of pressing fat, self-satisfied politicians.
Charlton Heston: As influential to me for his acting as for his crazy defense of gun ownership. Soylent Green, indeed!
Arthur C. Clarke: A consummate nerd who made it big. The movie 2001 is still impressive thirty years later.
Gary E. Gygax:
After achieving 36th level in all available professions, Gygax's petition for apotheosis was granted.
William F. Buckley: While I didn't agree with his politics, I did feel he came by his beliefs honestly. A conservative who could change his mind -- go figure.
Roy Scheider: He will always be my idea of an action hero.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: As a student of transcendental meditation, I certainly owe this dude some thanks. But his creepy beard gives me the jibblies.
Barry Morse: While I never understood the premise of Space: 1999, Moorse did a fine Spock-clone impersonation.
Heath Ledger: Best Joker Ever.
Suzanne Pleshette: Through The Bob Newhart Show, Pleshette introduced the meaning of the manifestly important term "MILF" to me.
Bobby Fischer: Chess guru and crazy racist, Fisher didn't record ENOUGH madness to last me the rest of my lifetime. Boo!
Sir Edmund Hillary: EDMUND HILLARY WAS STILL ALIVE THIS YEAR?!
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