Archive for June, 2008

On Saturday, Blizzard officially announced Diablo III, the next in the highly popular role-playing game series. Although the first Diablo was fun, it was Diablo II that put the series into the upper echelons of gaming. It has been over 7 years since the one and only expansion pack for Diablo II was released, enabling the game to run at 800×600 instead of a paltry 640×480 (those were the days).

I highly recommend the game play trailer on the official website (linked above). One of Blizzard’s employees shows a number of new game mechanics (destructible environments that you can use to your advantage), as well as one of the new playable classes (the witch doctor, which looks super cool). I am super excited about this title, and I’ll definitely be picking it up once it’s released. Blizzard, like Valve, seldom disappoints with their releases, and this is one to definitely watch.

It’s no surprise that the internet, along with 24-hour news channels, are killing off newspapers as a whole. But it seems as if the end of newsprint is nearer than expected. Earlier this month McClatchy Company, the group responsible for publishing our local Raleigh News & Observer, slashed over 10% of its workforce. This cut leads to the inevitable: less news in the newspaper.

When I read the newspaper, I mainly look at the local news section, the business section, and the comics (the most important part). The News & Observer will be merging the business section with the local news section, cutting coverage in both sections in the process. Happily, the comics section is (for now) being left alone. But these changes are leaving less for me to look forward to. I can only see this change as a snowball effect. Provide readers with less content and they’ll leave. Have readers leave, and then cut back even more as a result, causing yet more readers to leave.

A brand new photo album has been posted, showcasing a recent trip to the Life and Science Museum in Durham, NC. Several new exhibits have opened in recent times, greatly increasing the size of the museum. This particular album focuses on these new attractions (we didn’t visit any of the indoor exhibits on this trip). Enjoy the photos!

How do you purchase your music? Does anyone still buy CDs, or has everyone moved to digital music? And where do you purchase your music from?

Call me old school, but I still purchase CDs through my favorite retailer Amazon.com (I gave up buying music from brick and mortar stores long ago). Seeing as my musical tastes are outside of the mainstream, it’s not surprising that many of the albums on my radar are difficult to find. For example, I recently picked up a few albums from 1970’s progressive rock band Camel, and both were imports (and therefore more expensive than the domestic albums might be). But the imports were the only thing available. One other album I’m seeking is currently marked as shipping in ‘4 to 6 weeks’ which, in Amazon speak, means that it’s unlikely to ever be available again. This isn’t an isolated case; I’m finding that it’s increasingly difficult to find certain albums on CD.

As a result, I’m wondering whether it’s worth buying CDs anymore. I primarily listen to CDs on my way to and from work, though I listen to my iPod exclusively at work and on the occasional trip somewhere. When I’m at home, I listen to my music through either iTunes or WinAmp. Having a CD gives me something tangible as well as a backup (in case the digital rip gets destroyed or corrupted). But CDs have their own problems. The jewel cases are bulky (they way a ton en mass), and they’re always a bother to open up after purchasing them (what’s with all those stickers and cellophane wrap?).

The Amazon MP3 Store seems very appealing, in that all the offered music is DRM free. But, not surprisingly, not every album is available. So what do you do?

The fine folks at Valve have updated Team Fortress 2 once again, bringing new achievements, unlockable weapons, and a core change to the Pyro class. Along with all of these changes come two new community maps: one control point map and one capture the flag map. If you’re interested in checking out the new content for free, you can do so this weekend, from June 20 to June 22. As always, friend me up if you jump into a game; my nickname is jgbCodeMonkey.

On June 18, 2005, Year of the Code Monkey opened for business. Of course, the only business being transacted was boring you, the gentle reader, to tears. I like to think that this site has improved since that time. You should now only reach a state of hopeless bleak despair. Maybe one day, that will disappear.

How things have changed in these three short years! Back when this site opened, Firefox 1.0.x was the current release and my new browser of choice. Games like Unreal Tournament 2004, Microsoft Train Simulator, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were my current picks. I had also purchased my first MP3 player (which I no longer use) and a nice new notebook mouse (which still gets used every day, though it’s definitely time for a new one).

My web presence has shifted radically over the lifetime of this site. Prior to having a blog, my entire online existence comprised of nothing more than Born Geek and all of its many wonderful features. Blogging caused the site to fall into a state of sad disrepair, though its recent revival has helped a little. Interestingly enough, Born Geek is still by far the more popular website. I’m sure that says something, but I’m not sure what.

If you’ve been a reader since day one, I’m deeply sorry, but I thank you nonetheless; your perseverance is most commendable. To you, I raise my imaginary glass and offer this toast: here’s to another three years!

Update: I also forgot to mention that this is post #500!

I recently noted in Firefox 3.0 RC 2 that the sort order for autocompleting input fields is broken. In Firefox 2.x, items are sorted alphabetically (different from the insertion order scheme used in Firefox 1.x, if I recall correctly). Now, it appears that the items are sorted according to how they were inserted, with the most recent entries appearing on the bottom. This strange result unfortunately affects Googlebar Lite, beginning with Firefox 3 builds. I haven’t received any complaints about this at the moment, but I’m guessing that most people haven’t switched away from 2.x, so no one has caught it yet.

It’s possible that this issue is a valid Firefox bug. I see that bug 418343 has been written against the search autocomplete results, though I’m guessing it applies to all autocompleting elements (with the exception of the AwesomeBar).

The autocomplete textbox inherits the sortDirection property from the base XUL element, but I have yet to try setting that manually to see if it has any effect. And I’m not sure whether to set it on the textbox itself, or on one of the child elements that lives inside.

Hopefully setting this property will fix the issue, though I’m only given three sort options: ascending, descending, and natural. I’m guessing that the natural option is what I’m seeing now in Firefox 3, with newest at the bottom. One of the largest feature requests that I get for Googlebar Lite is to sort search history items in the order they were inserted, with newest at the top. While I may not be able to easily sort things like people want, I might at least be able to return to the behavior seen in 2.x.