Big Bang Theory tie-in

A poster similar to this can be seen on Wolowitz's bedroom wall in the übernerd comedy series Big Bang Theory.

Oddly enough, if you never knew or can't remember the extreme parkour based Mirror's Edge, the name of the game, there's no way to find the image on the Cortex.  I had to browse used ps3 dioramas at our local videogame stores.

Mirror's Edge is attractive to look at, but at first blush only teenagers have the reflexes to play it. The game is also fast-paced, and needs many iterations and some patience to get through tetchy difficult passages. Running on walls, e.g., is not natural even for real life parkour nuts.

Halloween Costume

Maybe I'll go as clone 17 of my 66th annual clone. That would explain the anomalies I've been wondering about lately...

Professor Layton and the Last Specter

London Life

Fans of the first three Professor Layton games may be disappointed by the fourth.

The new game is a prequel.

The voice acting is "off" -- Layton is not the original.

The story is linear.

The artwork varies from clever to amateurish.

There is a "London Life" mini game embedded on the same chip as the game proper, which suggests not enough space to develop either game fully.

So... At first blush, "Last Specter" earns a B- for tedium and lack of effort.  Buy the new Terry Pratchett book instead.

Mac "gestures"

One thing I despise about the new Lion Mac is the way the screen suddenly slides out of sight to left or right, or else evaporates up or down. I think they call this behavior "gestures".

I hope so. I have a gesture to add to the Lion repertoire. Middle finger. Straight up.

Fortunately, the Mouse settings under System Preferences can turn the most obnoxious bits of this "feature" off.  Which I blame on Steve Jobs.

Another Pratchett book??!

My wish list just got longer...

Pratchett has an interview with Neil Gaiman you might like to get into.

The last gorgeous day of Fall

We played bocci with friends in Bever Park under a sapphire sky, a gentle breeze flurrying leaves of a topaz maple. I sat in a cloth foldaway chair in the warm sunlight, basking in the inexplicable regard of actual friends and family.  (I'm the philosopher with the doofus sunglasses on me fore 'ead.)

Full fathom five, thy father lies

Apple Lisa

As I recall, the Apple Lisa we sold out of Beacon Microcenter in Ames, Iowa shipped with SCO Xenix and our sales staff had to make a big deal about "Yes, Xenix really is Unix." I knew as much when I first heard those SCO daemons chuckling softly to themselves. A new experience for me, but if Linus Torvalds did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent him.

This was back in the Eighties, after the death of SOS /// (which couldn't support Corvus networks without picking up aviation radio signals and crashing in financial ruin), before the  1984 girl hit our screens with the revolutionary Mac.  All Steve Jobs, whose vested interest in forgetting about Lisa is a bit murky, at best.

Unlike the real Apple innovators (Steve "Woz" Wozniak, Andy Herzfeld, at al.), who could be optioned into obscurity, SCO's claims to bits of the Apple venture were owned by the California Board of Regents.  Jobs dissociated himself from failure faster than a speeding bullet.

Sanctions against American citizens

So, we wiped out the fugitive Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen who advocated terrorism and was no fan of his own country.

There's precedent. We did the same to John Wilkes Booth.

What a mess!

I poured a 12 oz glass of orange juice on my Dell Inspiron laptop's keyboard the other day. The keys are stuck, the motherboard is fried, and I am both livid and depressed by own ineptitude.

We bought an iMac to replace the laptop, and I am cudgeling my brains to remember various logins and passwords which were, courtesy of Mr. Murphy, not backed up.

I have to say, I am no fan of Safari, the new dock, or "Spotlight". Years of Ubuntu have trained me to a particular Look & Feel, and this ain't it.