Archive for May, 2007

The latest addition to my Nintendo DS gaming library is Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Although the name is a little hokey, the game is incredibly addictive.

Built around the Bejeweled game play premise, Puzzle Quest is a puzzle / role-playing game combination (one of the first of its kind, to my knowledge). You build a character using one of four character classes (Wizard, Knight, Druid, or Warrior), and travel around the game’s world taking on quests. The game purely makes use of the stylus, and it does a remarkable job in the process (though I might argue that the stylus controls aren’t quite as finely tuned as I would have liked).

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The English language has been sliding down the quality charts for a number of years now, and today it’s at an all time low. People’s grasp on grammar and spelling is tenuous at best. Take this story, for example. Note the sign in the picture (”Let are kids walk”). Are people really so ignorant that they would confuse the words ‘are’ and ‘our’? Sadly, this isn’t just a problem that surfaces in the general public. Professional editors are letting more and more errors slip by as can be found in this New York Times article on Jonathan Coulton. One sentence in the article reads “They pore over his blog entries…” Do you see the error in this sentence? I certainly hope so. I got this one wrong folks. Thanks to Kip for correcting me! The very next sentence should explain why I made the mistake.

I was taught somewhere between little and no English grammar in school. At certain points, I’ve tried to better my use of the language on my own, through books like The Elements of Style. But self education for this kind of thing just isn’t good enough (at least for me). I really wish I had been given a decent education on this stuff, and judging by the way people are failing to use English every day, I really wish educators took it more seriously.

Last Thursday, Google unveiled their new universal search, complete with a change to the look and feel of their website. Now when a user searches Google, not only are web results returned, but other search results (e.g., news and product results) are also returned. What’s most convenient is the fact that these additional items are inserted quietly amongst the web results, not directly above or below them. This new search paradigm is interesting, and it will be interesting to see if it holds on. I particularly like the subtle changes Google made to their look and feel, with that slick little menu bar running across the top of all pages. Having direct access to all the various search types is very handy.

I try to avoid blogging political stories here at this site, but Jimmy Carter calling the Bush administration the worst in history is so awesome. A Bush administration spokesman immediately fired back, dismissing Carter as ‘increasingly irrelevant.’ Huh?

Quick trivia question: how many US Presidents have a Nobel Peace Prize? Answer: only one (Jimmy Carter).

In short, President Carter is the man. And I whole-heartedly agree with his statement.

It’s funny because it’s true.

A recent preview of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, sheds some new light on the next chapter of the Half-Life story. It sounds like the next episode will clock in at between 8 and 9 hours, which is about twice as long as Episode 1. I’m glad they are increasing the game time, since Episode 1 felt very short. The Source engine is also being updated to include lots of new eye candy, which should be a real treat. A “Previously Seen in Episode 1″ game montage will open Episode 2, which I find very disappointing. Part of the charm of a Half-Life game is being dropped into the world with no idea as to what’s going on. Being force-fed a recap is going to feel a little jarring, in my estimation.

Another bit of sad news is that the Black Box edition of the game has been canceled. The only version that will be made available is the Orange Box edition, which includes a full copy of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. Why would I want to pay for products that I already own? I find this decision most disappointing.

A brand new version of CoLT is now available to download. Here’s what’s new in this release:

• CoLT now supports an unlimited number of custom formats for the ‘Copy Link Text and Location’ action.
• When only one format is available for the ‘Copy Link Text and Location’ action, it appears as a menu item, rather than an item in a sub-menu.
• Custom menu separators can now be added to the ‘Copy Link Text and Location’ sub-menu.
• Added a new Czech (cs-CZ) translation.
• Added a new Korean (ko-KR) translation.
• Added a new Lithuanian (lt-LT) translation.
• Added a new Chinese Simplified (zh-CN) translation.

I just read an interesting article over at Wired that essentially asks “Is Firefox Getting Bloated?” The article compares Firefox to SeaMonkey. I was a Mozilla browser user well before it was named “SeaMonkey”, and well before Firefox 1.0 was released. During that time, I really came to despise the bloat in the application. Firefox was an incredible breath of fresh air when it was released: light-weight and responsive.

Personally, I feel that Firefox still exhibits both qualities. But I can see the argument made by the Wired article. Additional features, some of which many users may not actually care about, are creeping into the code base. Built-in support for microformats (something that I still don’t fully understand) is coming in Firefox 3.0. Do users really need this? Mozilla apparently thinks so. Many users may disagree.

There are certainly areas where Firefox could improve (in-browser support for both Java applets and PDF files are horrible). But I think Firefox is in great shape now. One thing I know for certain is that I’m never going back to Internet Explorer. (Side Note: I recently installed IE 7 on my work laptop … man, is it horrible.)

What do you think? Is Firefox too bloated? Too lean? Just right?