Vista won't run Freedom Force? Oh no, that's one I always meant to get back to!

Supposedly it will if you install patch 1.3.  Haven't tried it myself though.

Spike Jonze does another children's book adaptation:  Everyone Poops.

Lets hope "reboot" means something more like "Thief Anniversary".  Recreating Thief 1 with updated graphics like they did on Tomb Raider would be far more enjoyable than what Eidos Montreal could come up with.

Finally watched the last two episodes.  Wow, that was a terrible way to end it.  It looked like they were on their way to a satisfying conclusion that tied everything together but then they just threw it all out the window and turned it into a Star Trek Holosuite episode.  I had watched the original BBC series and thought that the US version had held up well in comparison up to that point.  The BBC ending is substantially different, it left room for interpretation of whether he really was in 1973 or it was all a dream or some form of afterlife.  It was also clear that for him the time period was a key point in his his childhood and by experiencing events from it as an adult he was able to understand and give meaning to them in a way that he could not as a child.  The American ending makes setting it in 1973 completely unnecessary with no real connection for him, an accident.

Very disappointing.  If anyone still hasn't seen the finale, when you watch it turn it off at the point that Tyler hugs Hunt.  You'll be better off thinking he decided to stay in 1973.

Oldie but a goodie, Peanuts by Charles Bukowski.

“There was this one guy, Linus.  He had found religion and would never shut up about it.  Every time you turned around, it was The Great Pumpkin this and The Great Pumpkin that.  On and on, it was enough to drive you crazy.  Branaski often found himself dropping the nickel on a shrink just to rant about how nuts this guy was.

“Every day the same thing!  If I have to hear about this Great Pumpkin one more time I’m going to wring his scrawny neck!”

I love the Irish Spring stuff, though I don't use it in my hair. The only problem is buying a "poof" to use, primarily because it's difficult for me to buy something named "poof."

Real men use exfoliating gloves.  It's like scrubbing with sandpaper.

Glad that Nathan Fillion is getting new roles, but what about Morena Baccarin? 

ABC is remaking 'V', the alien invasion show from the 80s.  She's playing the alien leader.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40353

I know.  I was thinking, "Aren't screws usually pointy?"  Since the answer is no I was just being pedantic instead of funny.   

Bolt you?

Do not misunderestimate the power of the dark side!

Minotaur in a China Shop

Help the Minotaur realize his dream of owning a fine china shop.  Bring customers the items they request from around the store.  But watch out, the Minotaur is clumsy and is prone to knock things over which will cost him.  Luckily you have rage insurance.  Knock over too much and become enraged.  Breaking things while enraged will earn you money from insurance payouts.  You have five days to see how well you can do.  Each day you can use your earnings to upgrade your abilities, your inventory and your insurance policy.

Here's a trailer video to give you a better idea of the game.

Peer Guardian.

 

Oh! I can see my house from here!

No specific recommendations but check Jay is Games, all they do is list and review casual games.  On the weekends Giveaway of the Day has free games that usually fall into the casual category.  They're not all winners but I've picked up a few good ones from time to time.

The VH1 Classic channel replays 120 Minutes shows this on Sunday nights at 11pm.  I've caught it a few times, good stuff.

Sorry, my vote went to The Headshakes.  Don't worry, they're no threat.  With my vote they're now up to 54 .  Really, out of all the bands there were only three I played all the way through:  The Headshakes, Bicycle Thieves and We Were Pirates. 

One other thing, Telograph.  Think they want to be U2 much?  The singer does a pretty good Bono and that song sounds like a Joshua Tree outtake.

Good luck to your brothers band.  Of the top 3 they do sound like the better ones.  Definitely better than Fools & Horses, no idea why they're coming up number one.  But I liked the dead last band so what do I know.

Another person dies and I have never heard of them.  I really need to get out more-or stay in more.  Whichever it is.

Really?  This guy.  Really?

Here's more for you then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkTQwP2gFxU&NR=1

Get well soon 

This one's even better:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTA9oLekoUc&feature=related
Luke and Leia 

I just went outside to check on something and noticed that the moon is a really deep red.  I've never seen it that color, not even during an eclipse.  Anyone know what's going on?  Smoke from a grass fire maybe?  There have been some recently but as far as I know there were none in my area tonight and I didn't smell smoke in the air.

Here's a bad pic, I shot it hand-held on a point and shoot camera then blew it up 2x.

Have you tried entering your serial number on Gateway's driver download page?  http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/dlcenter.asp

Sailboat?

It wouldn't be a bad first movie.  Chances are she'd be like my daughter at that age and fall asleep ten minutes in.

Saw it today with my kids.  Pretty good story and better than average animation design than most Dreamworks movies.  Plenty of good kung-fu action with with some wire-fu and anime style moves thrown in for good measure.  It's definitely a kids movie but adults should enjoy it too.  The audience actually clapped at the end of the movie, something I haven't seen in a while.  Ratatouille was probably the last one I saw where that happened.  Might have just been because it was opening weekend.

I'll be expansive and say that I think that people vote for candidates that, to them, understand and value their personal experience as Americans.  We obviously have a long history of racism in this country, and as a consequence, African Americans may want, in part, to vote for someone who has experienced those issues firsthand.  It's not, as small-minded people might think, because he "looks like them" - it's because he's lived like them.

Doesn't anyone remember when african-americans weren't voting for him because he wasn't "black" enough? 

Circuit City's availability checker says it's in stock at my local store.  Time to do some shopping.   

I'm still wishing for a sort of SOTS/SOASE/GALCIV lovechild - to be named "Alphabet Universe".

GALOATSE?   

(Poor SEV! Not even a contender - except with me and even then...)

I should give it a try if the patches have fixed the bugs.  I'm not much of a strategy gamer though and I keep hearing how micromanagement heavy SEV can be.  I've gotten the impression its a sort of "fan's only" type of game.

The demo has finally been released.  It's 338MB and games are limited to 150 turns.  It should give people a better idea of how much the game has improved over it's initial release.  Another good way to get a feel for the game is to watch the tutorial videos that Rorschach, who maintains the SotS Wiki, made for the game.  They're pretty good, good enough that Kerberos included them in the CE.  You can watch them here:  http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8117.

If anyone is interested in buying, Newegg has it for $24.99. Circuit City has it for the same price but it isn't available in stores yet.  I'm waiting for that, I'd still rather buy in a store if I can instead of buying online.

Go to Control Panel and choose Network Connections.  Right-click the active network connection (probably Local Area Connection unless you're on wireless) and choose Repair.  That will clear out the DNS cache and reset a few things.  If it's a DNS problem that will probably take care of it.

Have you scanned for spyware? 

Anyone had QT3 pop back up again?  Usually my ISP seems to get updated pretty quickly so I'm not sure if it is still not up or if it's new address has yet to filter out.  I do think it's weird that Tom never mentioned anything about it, and even the front page (which is still up) doesn't address it.

It's back up.

See, I think if you are standing simply on beliefs you have likely long passed the time to do that.  Don't fool yourself into thinking that you aren't already allowing people to look at and scan your PC all the time.  Do any online banking?  I just built a new PC and two of the three credit card companies I deal with online recognized that fact and required me to confirm my identity.

And what exactly do the online banks use to confirm that it's your PC? IP address? MAC info of your wi-fi/ethernet? I know that when I've taken my laptop to other locations and tried to log in, it bitches. Nothing has changed short of the IP info the bank is expecting.

Probably just a cookie.  Try a different browser and you'll probably get the same result.

It was The Decemberists that did the free concert before Obama came on.  [link]

I think the patch and demo delays and shipping problems are on their publisher, Lighthouse.  Kerberos supposedly sent them the patch weeks ago yet nothing's been released.  There was an announcement on the Lighthouse website that they are being acquired by another company.  I would guess that that's causing some problems while the deal goes through.

There's also supposed to be a second expansion in the works.  Rumors of space stations and more diplomacy options have come up.  Should be interesting to see where they go with it.

Yep, that's them.  But they bit their tongues, started listening to the players and fixed the problems.  They've actually got a really good game here after the patches and expansion.

I just found out about this.  SotS + BoB + new content (which will also be released in a 1.5 patch) and some other goodies listed below.  It's supposed to be out although really hard to find (big surprise).  The patch and a new demo haven't been released yet.

SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION CONTENT

- 75,000 word Novel. The Deacon's Tale, by famed writer Arinn Dembo!

- CE Edition Badges for each race
- 3 new map shapes. Barbell, Galactic Clouds, and Real Space, a map using the real co-ordinates of earth and the surrounding 350 stars.
- Built in tutorial movies by our own lead Cleric, Rorschach!
- Special SotS server program. Set up your own server game and leave it up indefinetly for your friends and yourself to come and go from as you please.

- Bonus Disk containing...
-collected load screen art and proposal sketches,
-full collection of SotS trailers and Kerberos Electric Playground Interviews
-CD quality versions of ALL SotS/Bob Music including alternate versions and unused tracks...27 tracks in all!
-Full races appendix.


SotS 1.5 FREE Update

Fixes

1) - Trickling AI reinforcements in combat.
2) - Rare bug where saved games could blow up in file size.
3) - Insta death caused by ships bunching up in combat.
4) - Pursuit mode bunching up in combat.
5) - Grav and implosion mines not working correctly.
6) - Bug in Hungry Children AI processing.
7) - Mouse wheel not scrolling list in tutorial.
8 - Range select (shift key) not working in fleet manager.
9) - Incorrectly disabled fleet manager repair button at own colony.
10) - Bug where some in game warning dialogs about moving STL were not centered in the screen.
11) - Mousewheel zooming in tech tree and star map at the same time.
12) - "Autosave" and "Autosave Endturn" filenames backwards.
13) - Locust nest world dying immediately when entering combat.
14) - Potential AI crash when assessing other players.


Changes

1) - Increases in durability of non-storm asteroids to make them more useful as 'cover'.
2) - Delimited command bonus from numerical superiority/ship to reduce "cheap destroyer" spamming.
3) - Allow player to observe encounters even if they have other combats queued up. (Other combats will then be auto-resolved.)
4) - Ship sections can now override default command point values by supplying "command_cost x" in their ship file.
5) - Adjusted turret arcs:
- Hiver Medium DP and Torpedo Platform.
- All DN War sections.
6) - smarter AI targeting during mass missiles launches.
7) - Zuul recieve one additional colony no matter what map settings are and recieve a free bore ships at every initial world.
8 - Build queue is now visible from the trade tab in empire summary.
9) - Tweaks to prevent AI from surrendering too early
10) - Ship sections can now specify which entity class the ship will be based on (chosen first come/first serve by section order: mission, command, then engine).


Additions

1) - new AI player names, badges and portraits to reflect characters and references from "The Deacons Tale".
2) - 1.5 new encounters
3) - hotkeys for toggling various display modes on the political map
screen.
4) - additional visual feedback to polygon targeting an enemy in combat.
5) - drag & drop multiple ships from side list into fleet manager.
6) - fleet and trade sector notes.
7) - species descriptions and data now available in gamestart lobby.
8 - flashing plague icons over top of infected colonies (in lists as well).
9) - option for custom star maps and a support system to broadcast the map to all players in an MP game. (along with example custom map in the Maps folder).


Note #1- There will be a 1.5 release demo released alongside the CE edition that will allow for humans, tark and liir play for a limited number of turns into the full cruiser and fusion era.

Note #2- Rorschach's Tutorial movie pack will be available as a free download and will auto integrate into the 1.5 general update AND the 1.5 Tutorial.

For more info look here:  Kerberos forum announcement thread

If you want to do game programming in Python you might want to look at PyGame.  It's a Python code library for creating games.  I'm no programmer but I've messed around with a number of languages and Python is one of my favorites.  If you've never programmed before it's a good place to start.

TGB bought both games and didn't like either one.  The design looks good on paper and initial play seems interesting but it doesn't hold up for very long.  Last I heard the developers closed down operations a couple months ago so I wouldn't rely on there being much support for it.

Who should be responsible for setting the minimum wage if not the government?  If the government doesn't do it then I can only imagine that there would be NO minimum wage which would only lead to bad things.  Do you think it's wrong for poor people to make at least 7 bucks an hour?

I dont think the federal government should be setting wages for the entire country.   If a specific state wants to do that for their own state, I would still disagree with it, but at least the state has the actual authority to do so.

Well then this map should make you happy.  It shows that the states are free to set their own minimum wage laws.  There are 3 that have lower than federal and 5 that have no minimum wage at all.  Only 10 follow federal, the remaining 32 have theirs higher.

1.  Copy your Steam directory to the new PC. 
2.  Delete the "ClientRegistry.blob".
3.  Run Steam. 

It will do some updates then you're good to go.