Jan 27
If you ant to add DVD Shrink to the Autorun menu in Windows, here's a link:
This works fine for the 32 bit versions of Windows but I needed a 64 bit version.
Here it is. Works for me on Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate. Your Mileage May Vary.
WARNING: as with any registry change, you should back up your registry before applying this.
Use at your own risk. You've been warned..
Jan 6
If you need to convert a lump sum of minutes into something a little easer for humans (people) to read then here it is:
Comments welcome.
private static string MinutesToHumanTime(int minutes)
{
const int MINUTES_IN_DAY = 60 * 24;
if (minutes >= MINUTES_IN_DAY)
{
var days_as_string = (minutes / MINUTES_IN_DAY).ToString() + " days ";
return days_as_string + MinutesToHumanTime(minutes % MINUTES_IN_DAY);
}
else if (minutes >= 60)
{
var hours_as_string = (minutes / 60).ToString() + " hours ";
return hours_as_string + MinutesToHumanTime(minutes % 60);
}
else
{
return minutes.ToString() + " minutes ";
}
}
Dec 21
Why would you play a MMORPG solo?
Disclosure: I only played
one MMORPG because a friend at work convinced me.
I did play a hunter. Actually it was my second character. I shopped around for the best Solo class. Forums recommended Hunter. (in the article above, Hunter is the Solo/Newby class)
My list of reasons for playing (mostly) solo:
- Tried to recruit people to help in quests but they were all stupid 13 years olds who can barely type, let alone spell, who want to jump around in their underwear.
- Played quests with my real life friends. My friends were not online all the time, so soloed most of the time (because of reason 1 above)
- I like exploring and seeing things at my own pace. With others I always have to either speed up or slow down. I didn't have time to experiment.
- When I died (which was often because my higher level friends were taking me to areas above my ability) I had to catch up. After too much of this everyone gets annoyed. Trying to retrieve your body from a beast's den is no fun, especially when aforementioned nasty is standing on your carcass.
- In a game you want the player to feel like the hero. You want to be Strider. Not player 15623 of 23490834. I remember at one of the low level boss spawns. There was a line to kill the boss. WTF, talk about suspension of disbelief or total lack thereof. Up until that point, I loved WoW. Then it just kind of occurred to me that this is dumb. Standing in line for a boss encounter. Why am I paying to stand in line? Why not have the whole game world to myself?
- When I game, its usually to escape. To escape stress of work of relationships but most of all the stress of dealing with people. Games are a fun little puzzle box. Something I can control. I turn it on an off. I can figure it out. Not so with people or the real world. Games are a great escape and stress reliever just likes movies and books. Would you read a book with 5 people? You see a move with friends, but that's a passive experience.
I quit WoW after 3 months. IMHO it was not worth $15 a month. I was tired of flying across the world just to go skin 15 more crocodiles. Too many pointless fetch and carry quests. I had a stack of more interesting games waiting for me,.
What could you do to entice more soloists to your MMORPG?
Good question.
- Make everything accessible to single players.
- Make group play suck less (or just don't require them, see 1).
- Segment servers by age? I fear that I may be talking to some 13 year gothopotamus on the other end. I don't want that. I don't want to hear about some adolescents problems with his teacher, etc.
- Value gamers time. Teens have unlimited time. I don't. I want to get in and get some playing done. Wasting my time with travel, fetch and carry or skin 15 kittens is anathema.
I think you can have a living breathing world with multiple players. Just relax the whole group thing. Forced social shit is overdone/overrated. It's like school with the stupid group projects. Nobody really works that way in the real world.
Let me trade with my friend, go on raids, stuf
f like that, but let me have some ME time. Let me explore, be a hero. I'm paying $15/month to be player 13435 of 123453234 and stand in line to kill an Imp.
Dec 21
The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.
Victor Hugo
Les Miserables
Dec 8
This is one of the best coverages of the blog business I've seen. He sums up everything pretty well.
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/12/hamburger-casse.php So the question you're all asking: are you making any money off of this? After about ten sites, yes, we are. Would I recommend this as a hobby business for others? No, I would not. It's a freaking lot of work, to begin with, if you are really looking to provide useful and quality information.
It's also getting to be a highly-competitive business. Companies are using advanced algorithms to determine exactly which subject areas have the most lifetime value for advertising and creating lots of material around them. It really has the feel of the stock market when computers got in and changed everything. Yes, you can still have a very profitable niche. Heck, I have several ideas about moving up to the next level. But these guys play hardball over pennies-per-day. Any newcomers should know that before getting in.
Of course he's not giving up:
Having said that, we're probably going to keep it up. Every week we get emails from people we have helped with our sites, and that's really neat. There's something about having recurring income that makes you go "Wow!"
It's a good feeling.
Nov 19
Wow,
Started reading Real World Haskell this week. Working my way through it slowly.
It's amazing when you start to understand it.
I've seen code samples of Haskell before and I was always a little put off buy it. But now, with some understanding I have to say that it is one of the most (if not the most) beautiful languages I've used.
I can't wait to get unto some real coding with it.
Nov 12
I’m not affiliated with either party. But I am curious.
How strong is the correlation between the margins of victory for Democratic candidates and the current level of unemployment?
Current Levels of unemployment
Red State/Blue State map
Visually there seems to be some correlation. New York seems to be an exception. Maybe Alaska too. So it might not perfectly correlate.
I’m curious if the strength of public sector employee unions matters. Does a Democratic state allow strong public sector employee unions to grow? (yes). And if so what is the long term prognosis for those government entities (state and local)? I think the answer is obvious. The coming collapse of the Municipal Bond market might give some indication of the level of crisis in the spend more than you tax states.
Again just wondering what voting for “Big Government” does to a state in the long run. Obviously California is the poster child for socialist welfare state disaster. But how does New York fare? Our relatively poor state of South Dakota has very low unemployment. If you discarded the data from the Native American Reservations our unemployment would be significantly lower (employment on the reservation is always low).
Disclaimer: I’m a social and economic libertarian.
Nov 10
I installed another 2 1.5TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives.
Total size is now 6TB (really less than that like 5.4 or something).
Yes I need that much storage. I've been filling up the server with movies, software, pictures and backups of all my machines.
I have to say that I'm impressed with Windows Home Server so far.
Nov 5
Storage
So I ordered 2 more
WD 1.5 TB Green drives for my Windows Home Server.
I'm backing up 3 pc's and have all of my pictures and movies on it. So I'm using quite a bit of space already.
3 TB should give me plenty of room to grow. If I'm going to dig my server out of it's obscure location in the furnace room, I might as well make it worth while.
Network
I might need to run CAT 6 to my media streaming locations. Most of the time it's fine. However, I've noticed a couple times where the movie has skipped/slowed. This mostly happens with the 1080p mkv files.
Otherwise the media streaming/Windows Home Server experiment is a success. Ben enjoys watching Dora from any location in the the house.
I'm still looking for a new TV. Might wait to see if prices drop after christmas. The prices already seem really good, but they might get better.
