2005 News Archive

Current news

December 11, 2005

Merry Christmas, two weeks early. Luminesweeper, a puzzle game for GBA that simulates everybody's favorite PSP game, is now free software.

December 10, 2005

I'm getting an early Christmas present ready for the world: the source code to Luminesweeper. When the package is ready, Luminesweeper will become a Pin Eight project.

October 8, 2005

The movie trailer you are about to watch is not about the shining example of a family comedy that you might think it's about. (QuickTime or compatible media player required.)

September 27, 2005

The PSP has been downgraded. Now everybody can join in on the homebrew fun. It still doesn't change my decision to buy a DS though.

September 24, 2005

My birthday is in a week. If you want to help me buy a Nintendo DS so that I can add one more platform to my skill set, please make a donation.

September 11, 2005

The fourth anniversary of the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center towers has come and gone without any significant terrorist activity. Praise the Lord.

September 4, 2005

Oil prices are skyrocketing due in part to Hurricane Katrina's destruction of refineries in the Mississippi Valley. But Shell is exploring a new process for mining the oil shale fields in Colorado that, if it pans out, may bring crude oil down to 30 USD per barrel.

September 2, 2005

The Sony PSP handheld video game system just came out in Europe. If you haven't been following it, Sony had been aggressively fighting firms that had been importing North American PSP systems and (unfortunately) winning. But now that the PSP is officially available in Europe, the problem shouldn't continue. Still, it's up to you to decide whether the PSP is worth the price that Sony is asking.

Here's something else that may or may not affect your decision: For the last few months, I've been working off and on on a GBA game called Luminesweeper. If you have a GBA or Nintendo DS and either a flash card or a GBA Movie Player, and you're curious about Bandai's Lumines but not curious enough to plunk down $290 for a PSP and a game, give Luminesweeper a try.

On another note: CareerBuilder doesn't seem to turn up many job leads anymore. Know anyone who wants to hire a programmer in an entry-level position in Fort Wayne, Indiana? Show them my resume.

July 15, 2005

A lot of the spyware on many PCs that run a Windows operating system comes in through Microsoft Internet Explorer's tendency to install any software it sees on a web page, through a mechanism called "drive-by download". To help keep drive-by downloads from infecting your computer and slowing it down, you can install the Firefox web browser and use it instead of the blue 'e'.

July 14, 2005

Don't buy J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. If you do, you fund publishers who support the notion that people do not have the right to read books that they purchased. If you can't live without your Potter, then I'd suggest checking your public library in a couple weeks.

July 11, 2005

While I update my resume, you can read my latest article about the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP and decide for yourself which to buy instead of blindly following the fanboys.

June 16, 2005

The distributed computing project Seventeen Or Bust has discovered the largest known prime number that is not a Mersenne number. This makes eight primes down, nine to go.

June 12, 2005

Don't get carried away (SWF game; safe for work).

May 28, 2005

If you can see this, you're on the new server.

April 11, 2005

I want to play a freakin' PSP. I don't even want to own one; I just want to play Lumines, if only for fifteen minutes.

Oh, and I've caught all the Weebles.

April 1, 2005

Halo 2 for GBA. Make of it what you will.

February 17, 2005

As I write this, there are π decifortnights (3.14 * 0.1 * 14 = 4.40 days) until the release of Playskool's direct-to-video animated title Welcome to Weebleville. But for those who want pie now, you can watch the Wobbl and Bob videos online or buy them on DVD.

February 15, 2005

Turns out I was running out of space on my site. The 8ad binary demo and some Bono Act items are no longer available.