A great deal on a great game

XM Presents… Lewis Black! Sweet!

The latest update (version .35) to the outstanding Battlefield 1942 mod “Desert Combat” adds a sweetener that’s practically addictive: a new map called “Lost Village”. Lost Village addresses the greatest problem with DC to date: how to address the overwhelming advantage in force the “Coalition” (aka Americans) has over the “Opposition” (aka Iraqis). LV’s solution […]

SixApart, the folks behind the terrific Movable Type weblog software (the package that runs this site), have just made their public launch of TypePad, their new hosted service. TypePad is a sort of Movable Type Plus — all the creamy goodness of Movable Type, with some extra features, and minus the need to manage a […]

I saw The Matrix Reloaded this weekend — and, despite what you may have heard from some misguided people, it rocks. It’s a worthy successor to the original that provides eye-splitting visuals and new twists on the story. Definitely worth your time.

Looks like Diego Doval has finally taken the wraps off the public beta of his Java-based PIM client, clevercactus. It’s come a loooong way in a very short period of time. Of particular interest is the snappiness of the interface, which provides a serious challenge to the old saw that you can’t write client apps […]

Hey, my colleague Ginger Ammon has a blog! Welcome Ginger! 🙂

The new album from the Blue Man Group, “The Complex“, kicks some MAJOR ass. Consider yourself warned!

Interesting stuff: Metaphor and War, Again.

Now here’s an interesting idea — StumbleUpon is a “Web site discovery tool” that lets you rate sites you like with a TiVo-style thumbs up or thumbs down, and then it can connect you with new sites that people like you enjoyed. It may sound a little like Alexa, but unlike Alexa, StumbleUpon doesn’t track […]

Jeez, Mark Pilgrim is a smart guy… He’s come up with a nifty script that can take any site on the Web and slice ‘n dice it into fun-to-play-with magnetic poetry tiles. This is a neat combination of cross-browser dynamic HTML (which is hard enough to do well by itself, Lord knows) and smart text […]

The leading program to protect your PC from spyware, adware, and other nasties, AdAware, has just been updated to version 6.0. If your PC runs Windows, and you’re connected to the Internet, you should consider AdAware a mandatory download.

If you’re a Windows user looking for a terrific news aggregator, you can’t go wrong with Wildgrape NewsDesk. It’s got more features than you’ll ever use, and the developer, David Peckham, is incredibly responsive — I sent him an e-mail reporting a bug, and he turned around a fix so fast it made my head […]

Been listening to the newest album from Morcheeba lately. It’s called “Charango” and it’s fantastic; each track has its own unique style, ranging from earnest soul to creamy lounge music to wry hip-hop, but they’re all tied together by a singular sensibility. Give it a listen, you won’t be disappointed. (Want a sample? You can […]

So I finally got around to seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers today. (I was supposed to see it the night it opened — but I kinda hit a bit of a distraction on the way…) All I can say is: wow. Director Peter Jackson somehow has managed in three hours of […]

Have you ever been to a concert, or movie, or show, or any other event, and had something happen there that led you to save the ticket stub, as a way to call back the memory of what happened? Maybe it was the movie you saw on your first date, or the last gig your […]

What could be funnier than the continuing adventures of an extra-large milkshake, a flying sack of French fries, and a talking meatball? Nothing! NOTHING, I tell you! Aqua Teen Hunger Force: #1 in the hood, y’all.

Over on her blog, Jen Klyse is working out an interesting idea — a way to pipe all official information about the activities of our elected officials out to citizens via Web syndication formats like RSS. This is something that, if done right, could really change the democratic process — imagine being able to tell […]

If you’ve ever wondered what the Big Deal about blogging is, check out this excellent overview of the subject by Sebastien Paquet. It’s a good read that makes some interesting points (such as citing Tim Berners-Lee’s, and then NCSA’s, What’s New on the Web pages as the first blogs — a connection I’d never made, […]

In the pantheon of Great Voices, before James Earl Jones, before Barry White, before them all was the first Great Voice of the Airwaves: Orson Welles. Welles had a voice that was made for radio: rich, velvety, simultaneously seductive and commanding. It’s no wonder that he was able to convince a nation of rational men […]

Man. Oh, MAN! You have no idea how much I want this!!! What a great idea. What a KILLER idea. If there is ever a contest for “best computer game ever”, Wasteland would have to be in the top ten. It’s the only RPG I ever was compelled to play to the finish not once, […]

I’ve just finished reading Michael Frayn’s outstanding play Copenhagen, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s the story of two men, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg — both eminent physicists whose work formed the basis for our modern understanding of atomic physics — and a meeting they had in 1941, after their collaboration had […]

OK, this entry is a little behind schedule — I’ve been buried under work the last week, which has kept me from posting — but I definitely want to share this with you all. Over the 4th of July weekend, I saw a great movie. It’s currently playing in art houses only, which is a […]

Check this out — some developers at IBM have developed The Glass Engine, an interactive browser that lets you go through the works of composer Philip Glass in a whole new way. This thing is a trip! It requires Microsoft Internet Explorer (grrr) and the Microsoft Virtual Machine (it wouldn’t work for me when I […]

Over the last week or so, I saw two movies that seem destined to become prime examples of the dreaded cult classic — movies that a small slice of the population loves rabidly, while the rest of the world scratches its collective head in puzzlement. Which is a shame, because both are visionary entertainments that […]