Ok, first off DoomRL -- the doom roguelike. Available for Windows and Linux. It's like it was my birthday on some epic plane of existence.

Korg DS-10 stuff and personal injuries inside. Probably some other garbage too. Maybe even a poll, you decide.

Get  a clue.

I want to like Wired and I enjoy it when I can, but then you go and say stuff like this.

Agreed, your model is wrong. Unfortunately, it's not useful either. Abandoning it will increase your chances for success, but you should not have generalized that particular logic to the whole realm of models simply on the grounds that you can't come up with an applicable idea in the first place.

The tone here might seem a bit over-invested. It`s intentional.

Inside: some (hopefully) interesting observations about DRM and the current piracy climate. Reviewing the past decade draws an unexpected conclusion.

http://ghosts.nin.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/user/NINOfficial/ (legal download)

So I started programming for the Nintendo DS. I can happily say that, while perhaps most of the time my code hasn't done what I'd expected, only 3 times out of hundreds has the code actually crashed, locked up or otherwise failed to run.

Also, something about perl failing at bitwise operations for those who are into that sort of thing.

The state would like to remind you that while it encourages citizens to make their own decisions, it does not necessarily endorse those decisions.

Though we endeavor to protect our people from malice and provide support in times of need, please remember to practice responsibility when faced with any risky decision or situation.

Thank you.

And not how you'd expect.

It came to me while watching The Number 23. Nothing that follows should constitute a proper spoiler.

It's an FPS, which is a style I don't have much love for, with a few exceptions. However, a game that periodically distracts me from the action by making some beautiful things happen has to have some merit.

This is a Western FPS with some real style points. It's all in the details.

or: how I developed a sense of optimism.

In a recent diary, I'd mentioned that I'd acquired an early sense of optimism about the world because of a sense of progress that I'd been exposed to while growing up in the '80s. Metatone had questioned this, and I responded without really providing any specifics.

For a few days I wondered what they might be, because they certainly weren't available to me at the time. Worse, the more I thought about the history of the time, society on the global scale had established a steady downhill pace, and I wondered where this sense could possibly have come from, had I wholly misunderstood the global environment at the time?

The truth is, the cold war was wrapping itself up in the eighties. I didn't fully understand why it was put up, but when the Berlin Wall was being dismantled I did fully understand what it meant.

Or: why do mirrors reverse left and right, but not up and down?

Valence is a term commonly used in chemistry, roughly describing the amount of promiscuity in its electrons. These form bonds and so on. But is has some common place usage (ambivalent) and math/logic (equivalent.)

The truth is there is no deep seed of (formal) logic that is inherent to anything, and we're just using metaphors -- the way we teach abstract things to kids¹. Even math traces its fundamentals down to instructions for operating a pencil.

1: this is a good thing, afterall it's the foundation of our teaching and our understanding. If these didn't coincide, we'd obviously be wasting our time in schools.

For a while now I've had a Nintendo DS, with homebrew hardware.

After having owned a DS for about a year, I'll say with confidence: if you don't have one, get one.

After having the homebrew stuff for a few months, I'll say the same: if you have a DS (if not, see above) without homebrew: get an M3, R4DS or a SuperCardlite or something. It's worth it.

The DS is a wicked platform and the homebrew scene is very active (and imaginative.) Doubts? http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/ (Scroll down while watching the for the left nav. section titled "Homebrew Games.")

Some of my picks inside.

I got lazy with this and stopped doing it. Better to press on than beat myself up.

I've decided I want a metroid(!), so here's a quick and dirty concept render.

Poll (mostly) unrelated.

Coffee.