Three Inconvenient Red Rings

Yes, I've finally joined that club. My Xbox 360 Elite gave up the ghost Saturday after just shy of a year's service. No big deal - I've still got a great list of games to play on other systems - but the Fall Avalanche of Goodness is nearly upon us, and I haven't even received my shipping box from Microsoft yet.

Just this morning for instance, I received the LucasArts Insider email newsletter announcing the September 16th North American launch date for Star Wars: the Force Unleashed.

Yes, I'll have just as much fun playing it later. No, I'm not happy about having to wait for it.

Zork on a Blackberry?

Several of us on the Crackberry forums are trying to drum up interest to get a developer to write a Z-Machine interpreter for Blackberrys.

What am I talking about? Remember the Infocom text adventures (interactive fiction) from the late 70s / early 80s? Games like Zork and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Z-Machine is the program that runs all those old adventures, and a lot of new public domain ones.

If you're interested, click here and sign the poll!

JoCopedia, or Why the Internet Gives Me a Boner

First, a little background. I haven't really played guitar much at all since my son Zack was born 12 years ago. I'd sold my cherished Gretsch electric and amp due to lack of free time (and impossibility playing with sleeping babies around). Before that, I'd been playing since I was 13.

Back to the future, I happened to watch Live Free or Die Hard on Sunday (edit: see below). The movie ended with Creedance's Fortunate Son, a personal fave, and I thought, "hmm, I bet I could play that." I picked up the acoustic that my sister had given me a few months back and started diddling.

Wasn't able to get it all right away, and started to feel silly rewinding the DVD credits repeatedly, so I Googled for the tablature, and sure enough it's WAY FREAKING EASIER to get music than it was when last I played guitar...

So, I learned both Fortunate Son and Around the Bend, and sat the guitar down an hour later, with sore fingers and a sense of satisfaction.

Fast forward two more days, and I'm at work listening to Jonathan Coulton. That same little bug starts chewing and I Google for Coulton tabs - surely a much more elusive goal. "No, no, you silly man," Google says, "you have made the classic mistake of underestimating the fervor of the modern geek, and the great Jonathan Coulton specifically. Behold: JoCopedia!"

I'm so sorry, Jonathan - I will never again doubt you.


Edit: I forgot to give a shout for Len Wiseman's directing chops. Underworld and Underworld: Evolution are way high on my list, and with LFoDH Mr. Wiseman has proven that his Action Fu is indeed impressive. Can't wait for January 23rd!!!

Writing for Recon

I am very excited to announce that I am getting published! My product review of the Dangerous Power G3 paintball marker will be included in the forthcoming issue 4:2 of the quarterly woods paintball magazine Recon.

New Layout

Well, I finally got sick of the old "Snapshot Tequila" template screwing up the header, so I made a switch.

In this age of expansive flat screen real estate, I also decided to avoid a fixed-width layout. Unfortunately, Blogger only has a few "stretching" templates, so this one will have to do for now.