Two Microsoft Related Thingamajigs

First up is the Microsoft iPod box. rofl!
That rocks. Seriously. It’s almost sad how true it is.
I love the music. Anyone know where it came from?

I’ve said was not interested in the Origami Project in the past, but this ad has sparked my interest. Not only does that not look half bad, it actually looks pretty cool. Of course, one of the first things I’d do to it would be to install Linux, but still.

I’m hoping the section showing the college student implies that it’s gonna be reasonably priced.

Could it be? Is Microsoft actually making cool stuff again?

An excerpt from the bill of materials…

Zip ties – 66

Wow. Seriously. Keep in mind, this robot is only about the size of a breadbox. And no, we have not replaced all the screws with zip ties – yet.

Do you like donating money to worthy causes? Does your company make little black zip-ties? Contact us today for information on becoming an official FVC-40 sponsor!

And work on the robot plods onward

Slowly. We’ve worked on it all evening. Our ball basket it much lighter, we may or may not have a way of dumping balls now, and we have consumed massive amounts of junk food.

Our main problem now is that no one feels like building said ball dumping mechanism because to test it out, we’ll have to integrate it with the chassis. That’s the problem with having a small, light robot. It’s not very modular.

Our other problem involves the beater-bar. It’s great at grabbing balls, but it’s getting in the way of most of our ball-dumping ideas.

Jeremiah and I have been practicing our driving skills by playing Wild Metal Country. With the proper control layout, playing the game is very much like driving a Vex robot equipped with four wheel drive. I dunno if I’m gonna drive or not, but I figured Jer needed to be took down a few notches.
He drives OK, but I’m concerned about his strategy & game theory abilities. If confronted with a catapult rolling bombs off the side of a cliff, he’ll try to drive right up the cliff. Never mind that a 20 second detour would put him on level ground with his nemesis and the rolling bombs destroy him every time.
In multiplayer, even if I take his shield down to almost nothing, he’ll attack head on, driving right into my barrage of missiles. Not to mention when I was afk, he hunted down my non-responsive bot and blew it to bits. Nice gracious professionalism, eh?
Like I said, I’m not too sure about him. I dunno if I wanna drive again this year, but I’m hesitant about Jer representing our team’s robot and strategies on the field.

easyC 2.0 has been obtained, installed, patched and registered. I’m too tired to explain exactly what happened, but you can figure it out from this ChiefDelphi forum thread.

Someone said something funny earlier this evening during the build session, but I don’t remember what it was. My tired mind has begun to filter out what people say. That’s what I get for staying up till 2:30 AM working on this thing. Meh.
I’m gonna go to bed.

*yawn*

Katamari Damacy 2

Yep, you read that correctly. Apparently, for some completely random reason, We love Katamari was not Katamari Damacy 2.

The developers, upon realizing the horrible mistake they had made by not including “2″ in the title, began to panic. I imagine it went something like the following.
“We can’t release Katamari Damacy 3! There has not been a 2. What will people think?”

But then, there came a man. A man with a copy of Macromedia Studio. Actually, it was probably several men. Possibly women, too. They slaved away to create the work of art you are about to see.
Check it out: Katamari Damacy 2

It’s pretty much what Katamari would look like if it was made twenty years ago. As a little web game. In Flash. Or something.

…It’d really help if I could actually read Japanese.

Update: It’s gone. Sorry. I’ll post a link here if I find a mirror.

Ten Reasons Not to Buy Windows Vista

In response to the Slashdotted article here, I give you: Ten Reasons Not to Buy Windows Vista.

1. Security
Long-overdue User Account Protection, blah, blah, blah. Every single UNIX varient on the planet has had this for over twenty years. Starting to catch up, ay Microsoft? What are the odds that this will happen without more new holes?

2. Internet Explorer 7
Firefox is avalable now. With better tab handling. And better rendering.

“But IE7 has “protected mode”–a limited-rights mode that prevents third-party code from reaching your system.”
So? It’s all just a fancy name for turning off ActiveX. And you can turn ActiveX back on…

3. Righteous eye candy
Allow me to call OS X, e17, X.org, etc. Plus, you can make the Unix interface look like anything. Even something that lets you get work done.

5. Better updates
Y’ know something? Windows is the only operating system that updates using a web browser. It’s stupid, it’s always been stupid. Need I mention that OS X and Linux don’t do it?

6. More media
Wow! Microsoft can copy Apple by making clones of the iLife stuff. Not even good clones.
Use this handy chart to figure it out:

Windows Media Player – iTunes
The Windows Photo Gallery – iPhoto
Movie Maker – iDVD

Did I mention that everything will be DRMed?

“There are even some nice new games tucked into the bundle.”I’ve seen some of those new games. Solitaire, even when rendered in 3d, is still boring.

7. Parental controls
Third party software has been able to do this for eons. The sad thing is that, knowing Microsoft, the third party software will still be the way to go.

8. Better backups
Already have good backup software on Windows, already have good backup stuff on UNIX. Heck, you can back up all your stuff using cron, if it came down to it.

9. Peer-to-peer collaboration
This is called a “wiki”. Yeah, we all know how great it is. Having in embeded into the OS, though, you just *know* it’ll be a great way to spread viruses.

10. Quick setup
In the words of someone on Slashdot; “Why am I running setup more than once anyways?”

And, finally, here is reason 11 – Digital Rights Management [slashdot.org]
Do you care if your computer is spying on what you do and reporting it? Do you care that Windows Vista supports this crap? It’s amazing that people are even considering using this stuff.

So, what should you do instead of getting Vista? Install Ubuntu. If you don’t want to use Linux, get something from Apple.
But seriously, for your own good, don’t use Vista!

Triglav

Do you like Diablo? Are you too cheap to buy it? Are you running Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows 2000 or above? Then check this out.

It’s a neat little Diablo clone written entirely in JavaScript. Not very useful, even by JavaScript game standards, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Disease Rampant

And then I got sick. With the flu. Not fun.

Gmail adds Gtalk to interface

The time is coming when I’ll have no reason to visit any website other then gmail. I won’t even need to launch my IM client.
Check it out: Gmail and Gtalk integration.

Seriously. The last thing they need to do after this to achive perfection will be to ditch that silly web-clip bar and give me a folder for RSS feeds.

Gmail + Gtalk + RSS inbox == Perfection

Pbwiki Review

Before I get started, I feel it is only fair to warn you that this is a dual purpose post. Aside from the fact I’ve been meaning to blog about pbwiki for a while, the guys behind it now have a new promotion – review pbwiki and get free upgrades for your account. Whatever works, I guess.