29 December 2007
26 December 2007
21 December 2007
RSS Reader Quest (do not buy U3 flash drives!)
My quest for the holy RSS grail continues. I tried Google Reader and several other web based feed readers, and they're just not convenient enough. I am addicted to feedreader.
A new version of it does support synchronization to some specified location, which is sort of what I wanted. But now I am hindered by my poor upload speed, and find that this synchronization is extremely slow.
I turned to look for U3 solutions - just install some reader on my U3-enabled USB disk. Guess what? There is no U3-compliant RSS reader (if you don't count Mozilla Thunderbird, which is too cumbersome). Feedreader claims to "work with U3", but it doesn't.
Finally I read in Wikipedia that the U3 format is about to become obsolete, just two months after I bought it.
20 December 2007
19 December 2007
Recovering Corrupt Doc Files
Today Word 2007 corrupted a doc file Aya was working on. The repair function from inside Word failed to work, and a Google search revealed a myriad of word repair tools - some of them don't work, and some of them not free.
Gmail managed to easily convert the doc to HTML, and then opening this HTML with Word provided a version of the document. The problem was of course that all the hebrew and symbols got misplaced (text direction problems and the like).
Finally I found the perfect solution - OpenOffice. A quick download (~120mb) and install, and I managed to easily open the original corrupt doc and resave it.
17 December 2007
Got damn bitch!
I was happily using Google, when:
Ok, I thought, let's give it a try:
Seems innocent enough, let's proceed:
Scroll down, WTF???!
It just got sent to my blog, alongside everyone I ever talked to on Gmail.
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16 December 2007
איך משיגים תואר בביולוגיה
עדכון - אחרי שראיתי היום שמישהו אשכרה חיפוש "תואר בביולוגיה" בגוגל והגיע לדף הזה, החלטתי להעביר את המשחק לשרת יותר נורמלי מהמחשב הישן של ההורים שלי. נו שיהיה.
משהו שהכנתי מזמן בשביל איה.
עשוי לשעשע אתכם, אבל לא מובטח.
כנסו אם בא לכם
Movie Recommendations
First of all, Bee Movie is a good one.
Second, you can view my movie preferences at this page or stay updated on them by this RSS feed.
Third, regardless of my preferences, you should use MovieLens to recommend you of new movies matching your taste. It's a simple recommender system for movies.
P.S.
For me, the link for my movie recommendations does not work on Firefox. It does work on explorer, and the entire site works well on Firefox. Weird.
14 December 2007
Future of Real Time Strategy
I think RTS games are currently wrong. What do I mean by that?
Current RTS games do test strategy and tactics, but they also require a high degree of micro-management. Top Starcraft players are measured by their APM, and a player with high thinking skills but a less than agile hand is at a disadvantage. The anticipatd Starcraft 2 doesn't seem to hold great promise to change this.
What I want is this: In addition to the point-and-click action we all know (and love), I want RTS games to offer me strategy/tactics menus. I want to be able to order the computer AI things like:
- "build the base, 10 drones, and the entire tech tree up to Guardian . Then build 10 of these and 25 Mutalisks and send them after the nearest Terran opponent.
- "Organize all my troups into battle formations while leaving 10% on defense and go search & destroy all opponents"
- "Build up to 3 overlords and scout for Vespene gas. Once found, take a drone there to build a base. Once the base nears completions, send other drones there to mine the gas".
Such commands should be easily programmable in the game as it ships. Special player-made commands could be added before and during a game. The player's major role should be to select and define strategies, not to gather up individual drones to build structures or to micro-manage an attack. Of course, as I said, the micromanagement can stay, but it must not be how you spend the better part of a game.
Note that most of the "strategy commands" I want are probably already present at some form inside the computer's native AI player. As a player, I want to have access to this AI and parts of it. Once this is developed enough, I can imagine different Starcraft tournaments where players are only allowed to pre-program the strategy.
Now I wonder how long till these ideas become reality and how difficult it would be to program a extension for the existing Starcraft that accomplishes something like this.
13 December 2007
Recent Events
After some posts containing only links I thought I'd update a bit on other recent events:
1. LAN Party at Oren's place. Great games of Starcraft and UT. I still hold it again Zelner for dropping out 2 minutes after the start of a game, where him, his brother and I were against 4 players. That left only Ari and me vs the other four players. We fought bravely, but lost as expected. This was the first LAN party in which I actually somewhat enjoyed a game of Call of Duty. Next party should be held sometime after Starcraft 2 and UT3 are out.
2. A week of diving in Eilat with the family. Well, we dived only a small portion of the week due to the cold water running nose. Aya started her 1st star diving course, but unfortunately failed to complete it because of an ear infection. BTW, except for weekends, Eilat is a ghost town in the winter (and with good reason :).
3. In January I'm going to snowboard in France for 8 days, with Jonathan, Pisnoy and more.
4. A small breakthrough with my thesis. After about a month of being stuck, I managed to prove something :) Huzza for me.
5. I joined Facebook, but am still very neutral/ignorant towards it. Luckily I refuse to install any applications or causes. I do like its image tagging mechanism though.
That's it folks. After a long time of being away from Herzelia, Aya and I are heading south for the weekend. CYA.
Lemmings and Other Lies
My entire childhood is based on a lie. From A List of Common Misconceptions, "Lemmings do not engage in suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating".
... Just read the next sentence - "Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff using a broom". Horrible.
