Seems that I’m not the only one who’s miffed at the science fiction not daring to think big enough.
And yeah, being a card-carrying member of Stross’ fanboy squad, Halting State is definitely on the shopping list already. And considering that the NYT article was the second recommendation for Bacigalupi’s Pump Six in as many days, that’s a pretty good reason to investigate.
South Park goes free.
Every episode will be available on the web.
And the logic behind this move (by Trey Park and Matt Stone, the show’s creators) is nothing short of genius:
[we got] really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.
Yeah, it’s seriously ad-plagued, but still a better way of catching up with the new episodes than trying to figure out when the finnish channels broadcast them.
Back in 2005, I took Jakob Nielsen’s test on blogging sins. And came off with four and a half. Some of which were rectified in the intervening years, but now, with the new engine, it’s time to revisit the list, which appears not to have been updated since.
There, that was easy: .75 sins, with one new entry-listing to launch. Got off much easier than three years ago.
Martian headsets, or a roundabout way of saying that “standards are good, mmkay”.
Today marks the fourth anniversary of Lavonardo (as a blog, that is).
The blog is now exactly 2366 entries old.
The biggest news of last year is obviously the long-resisted change to a real blogging engine – the switch to WordPress went smoothly, and I’m happy about how things have turned out to be. Whether this baby makes to to the ten year mark, like Jason Kottke’s blog just did, remains to be seen. No bets are taken on the subject.
There are no concrete plans for world domination for the next year – just more entries, more photographs and hopefully more interaction with the audience.
Previous annual updates available: 3, 2 and 1. The original humble beginnings have been saved in museum-quality environment as well.
This entry attempts to catalogue the open digital photography challenges in the web.
| Day | Name | Description | Participation |
| Monday | Moody monday |
In english. Single-word subject. No registration. ~50 participants. Exposure date not set. | No. |
| Monday | JorjDotOrg PhotoHunt |
In english. Competition, consists of multi-week seasons. Single-word subject. Registration needed. ~20 participants. Exposure after the challenge (not enforced). | No. |
| Tuesday | Tuesday challenge |
In english. Competition. Single-word subject. No registration needed. ~40 participants. Exposure seems to be after the challenge (not enforced). |
No. |
| Wednesday | Lensday |
In english. Single-word subject (seems to be, the 4 year archives were wiped in february). No registration needed. ~50 participants. Exposure seems to be after the challenge (not enforced). |
No. |
| Wednesday | Photosharks |
In english. Single-word subject. No registration needed. ~50 participants. Exposure seems to be after the challenge (not enforced). |
No. |
| Wednesday | ABC Wednesday |
In english. Subjects whose name begins with a given letter (multiple images per participant OK). Manually administered in a blog (seems complex). ~100 participats. Exposure date not set. |
No. |
| Thursday | valokuvatorstai |
In finnish. Very variable subjects. No registration needed. Not competitive. ~150 participants. Exposure date not set. |
Almost every week. |
| Thursday | Thursday Challenge |
In english. Single-word topics. No registration needed. Competitive. ~100 participants. Exposure date not set. |
Occasionally. |
| Friday | Photo Friday |
In english. Variable topics. No registration needed. Competitive. ~400 participants. Exposure date not set. |
Occasionally. |
| Saturday | Shutterday |
In english. Usually single-word topics. No registration needed. Competitive. ~50 participants. Exposure date not set. |
No. |
| Saturday | Unique Exposures |
In english. Variable topics. No registration needed. Competitive. ~30 participants. Exposure date not set. |
No. |
| Sunday | MacroDay |
In english. Usually single-word topics, always macro-related. No registration needed. Competitive. ~30 participants. Exposure date not set. |
A few times. |
| Sunday | See It Sunday |
In english. Usually single-word topics. No registration needed. Competitive. ~30 participants. Exposure date not set. |
No. |
| Multiple days | DPChallenge |
In english. Vey variable topics. Registration needed. Seriously competitive (disqualifications happen). ~300 participants. Exposure date set (and enforced). |
No. |
Original idea taken from Kameravene.
Corrections, content suggestions and information about further challenges welcome.
Once the challenge-specific archive-pages are up, I will link them here as well.
Finished the first episode of Forumwarz, the massively single player online game of forum domination and pwnage.
Had plenty of fun, was impressed by the implementation, and will definitely be back for episode 2, as soon as it is released.
The troll was probably not the easiest character class to play (having to rely on lots of supplies on harder runs puts a crimp on the wallet), but conceptually it was way more appealing than the other choices.
Considering that it’s ten minutes to midnight on thursday, it’s high time to participate in this week’s photo friday challenge. The topic is found objects.
The attached photograph has a beautiful white seashell, deposited by the tides on a log high on a beach.
The picture in full-size (this has been moderately cropped) is available by clicking on the image.
One of the causes for the epic megafail of Sampo/Danske Bank reunion has been neatly dissected in Kuolleiden Koodareiden Seura.
Hail Metalmania, the 9€ / cd is not a price you’ll often see in a brick&mortar-store. At least Anttila seems to be well-equipped with cheap discs right now.
Interactive fiction – that is: games that use pure text for input and output – seems not to be the topic of a snazzy movie.
But against all odds, GET LAMP, a documentary film on the very subject looks to be very interesting indeed. Jason Scott, the director, has previously put together a well-received documentary film on the bulletin board systems communities.
The recently released trailer for GET LAMP is not exactly action-packed, but a neat dissection of the first ever internet community I actually participated, back in the early nineties, when USENET was king of the hill.
Meh.
Was looking forward to a new challenge already this week, but the site’s break is actually two weeks long.
Come visit the growing municipality of Suur-Haaga, a small town with big opportunities!
[ via Pinseri. ]
I seem to have ended up with TWO copies of Mondo’s Paris guidebook. Haven’t paid for either, so it would be only fair to pass on the book.
So the first one to comment this with “Me!” or to send equivalent e-mail gets the book. To be picked up in person or somehow transferred for free, I don’t intend to fork over shipping costs.
Countdown starts right now.
Matt Barton started his history of computer roleplaying games in GameSetWatch, bartered it to Gamasutra to expand the readership, and has now expanded the subject into a 450 page book.
Dungeons & Desktops just went on top of my Amazon stack, and based on what I’ve seen on the web, will be good reading.
Links to the history in three chunks (I’ve covered them before, but cannot be bothered to look them up now): Early Years (1980-83), Golden Age (1985-1993) and Platinum and Modern Ages (1994-2004).
A very relaxing easter weekend is drawing to a close, and what would be a better way to finish it off than bunnies.
A doubleheader of them, to be exact.
Useless Creations’ screensaver puts a group of rabbits on screen, and manages not to get annoying in the first fifteen seconds. In screensaver-land, that’s a plenty.
The second item is a triplet of songs from the second best episode of Buffy ever, Once More, With Feeling. There’s just no beating the Hush, but as a source for peppy songs, this award-winning sixth season episode comes up tops.
Based on uncovered evidence, it would seem that Days of Wonder’s Ticket to Ride is headed for the Xbox Live Arcade.
The two first XBLA takes on board games (Catan and Carcassonne) have been pleasant indeed, and there’s no reason to doubt this wouldn’t succeed as well. After all, there’s already a successful digital adaptation of the game, created and hosted by the company behind the boardgame.
After the second upset in the playoffs, Haagan Hakkapeliitat made it to the final in Yahoo! 76191.
Apart from negligible output from goalies (Tim Thomas is having a really bad stretch in Boston), the team played in solid fashion, and most of the categories had very comfortable margins.
But it’s a whole new game (two weeks in length) in the finals. Hakkapeliitat will face the #4 seed, who went an upset the regular season winners in the semis. The biggest worry in the home camp is Ryan Getzlaf’s ability to play, he’s been the most prolific player of the season.
Added a sidebar-item on popular search terms, with which casual browsers have ended up here.
By far the biggest item on the list is the mysterious “singhiozzerebbe”, which is the biggest scoring word ever in Scrabulous. When played with the Italian dictionary, obviously.
The attached image is the other massive attractor – an image of crepuscular rays piercing deep cloud cover that was used for “grace”-challenge in photo thursday. Somehow this brings in lots of folks from google’s image search (but the actual queries behind the hit are not revealed).
Celebrated payday by going shopping.
Refrained from picking up anything significant (like a new television, camera or an apartment), and concentrated on music.
The theme was definitely metal, of a retro-ish kind. Not of the spandex-wearing kind, but metal that can be respected even while completely sober.
The first discovery was Death Angel‘s new Killing Season. First old school thrash album I’ve bought in ages. The record was sold with a fifty-minute dvd of a gig in Strasbourg back in 2003 – definitely a nice bonus.
Since I’d been quite impressed by Electric Wizard‘s Let Us Prey, just had to check whether Keltainen Jäänsärkijä had anything further from the Dorset doomsters. Certainly, and there’s still a few albums to be purchased on subsequent visits.
Encouraged by the availability of old doom, just had to check out two old favorites of the genre whose output has been recently re-released… The store was sadly sold out of Solitude Aeturnus, but had plenty of Trouble. Bought the second album, the Skull, and have been very pleased with it (especially since it, too, contains a bonus live dvd).
Capped the day consisting mainly of random wandering around by enjoying an excellent stuffed squid in Empire Plaza in Kamppi. Perhaps the place is not as authentic as Dong Bei Hu, but it sure is conveniently close.
A couple of things of interest:
The real spring cleaning will occur once the WordPress 2.5 is formally released.
Yeah, it would seem that the oddities of the 2007-08 winter never cease.
Easter is white, whereas christmas was mainly green.
Seems that this blog (and the whole site as well) endured a spot of serious bandwidth loss this morning.
Excess traffic is definitely not the cause, and the ISP’s explanation of “miscellaneous firewalling issues” seems to be on the vague side.
… they want their “irrational exuberance” back. Right now.
No other explanation seems to be fitting for the rumored $400 million valuation for RockYou! (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the company name).
After all, providing an facebook-application that allows easy posting of static and live images just is a sure recipe for gigabucks.
The fourth season of Lost kicked off on finnish television last week.
And continues directly where the third season ended, with a rift-inducing arrival of “rescuers” and flashforwards. The identity of the former is very much under wraps, but seems not to be of good news to all inhabitants. As to the second point, the main storyline still seems to occur on the island, I’m using that as the zero-point in the timeline.
For new arrivals on the scene, the production company has put together a nicely compressed view on the first three seasons. Its duration, at a mere 8:15, should not deter any viewers.
Via Domus, the Lost video game is out in Finland also (seemed to enjoy a rather delayed release), but following mainly lukewarm reviews I’m in no hurry to pick this up. With the sizable backlog that doesn’t diminish by itself, this wouldn’t get much playtime right now.
