Archive for August, 2007

It’s Labor Day weekend once again, which means that it’s time for the Old Fashioned Farmer’s Day in Silk Hope, NC. Last year I took a number of pictures of the event, and I plan to do the same again this year. If you’re located in central North Carolina, and you’re looking for a good time this weekend, I recommend checking it out. It’s just good ol’ country fun!

There have been some recent reports that Bioshock installs a rootkit onto one’s computer. The 2K Games developers decided to use the SecuROM copy protection scheme, which installs a process with administrative privileges, allowing those users who do not have such privileges to run the game. A registry branch that happens to contain an asterisk also gets created, causing some rootkit detectors to flag the software. The service is apparently difficult to remove (which disappoints me), but it’s questionable as to whether or not this is actually a rootkit. I’m definitely going to keep my eyes open on this issue, especially since I’m so excited about this game. Here’s to hoping that things are as bad as people are making them out to be.

It appears that WordPress 2.3 has been feature frozen, and has now entered the bug hunting and fixing phase. The listing of what’s new seems pretty bare bones, but I guess that is to be expected on a shorter release schedule. One of the big new features coming is tagging, something I’ve neither been impressed with nor interested in. Does anyone here make use of that on any other website? I don’t see too much difference between tags and categories, so why include them? What I really wish they’d get around to adding is an automated updating feature; migrating to a new version is really painful.

For what seems like an eternity now, I’ve been trying to decide whether to purchase an Apple iPod to replace my Creative Zen Micro (I’ve outgrown the 5 GB of storage). And wouldn’t you know it? Just as I seriously start to move towards purchasing one, my favorite retailer quietly stops stocking them.

A UBS Investment Research analyst recently speculated that Apple might refresh their iPod lineup in the next month or so:

In his note to clients, the UBS analyst also said he expects Apple to refresh its iPod video and iPod nano lines sometime next month. Among the expected introductions are higher capacity iPod nanos at aggressive price points, as well as a flash based widescreen video iPod likely using multi-touch technology for less than $300.

Will all the large iPods go to flash based technology? That would be a surprise to me. The largest flash drives I’ve seen on the market are 16 GB, far short of the 30 GB size of today’s iPods. And what about this price increase? Quoting a price point of less than $300 indicates to me that the new device will cost somewhere between $250 (the current price) and $300 (I’m going to predict $299). It just so happens that $250 is about as much as I’m willing to pay, especially since I still have to buy a separate wall charger (which I still contend is highway robbery). I just wish Amazon would stock the 30 GB players again at $225 ($25 off). If they did, I’d be sold.

I’ve recently been wrangling with some Perl code for a project at work, and have been putting together a Perl module that includes a number of common functions that I need. As such, I had to remind myself how to create a Perl module. During my initial development, I ran into a number of problems, but I eventually worked through all of them. In the hopes of helping myself remember how to do this, and to help any other burgeoning Perl developers, I’ve written the following little guide. Hopefully it will help shed some light on this subject.

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One of the first reviews of Bioshock has been posted, and it paints a really exciting picture. The verdict? 10 out of 10! I’m a big fan of the System Shock series, and seeing that Bioshock is a ’spiritual successor,’ really gets me pumped. The screenshots evoke memories of Myst, System Shock 2, and Oblivion, all rolled together. I simply can’t wait!

I’m going to try out something new here at the site; how well it does will determine if I continue to keep it up. Every so often (and I’ll only do this on an occasional basis) I’m going to post a list of ten items pertaining to some topic. Consider it a “top ten” list if you will. This is just for fun, and is intended to foster some discussion. The inaugural topic: favorite television theme songs. I got the idea for this specific topic from a recent episode of The Jay and Jack Ramblecast (hat tip: Dustin). Here are my personal top ten, complete with links to each theme:

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