Finals Absence

Due to finals, I will not be blogging for a couple of days. I think that is a reasonable excuse.

Eboostr Review

 

I recently have been trying out a copy of eBoostr, software that allows XP (and now Vista?) users to emulate the ReadyBoost feature in Vista, a feature that allows you to use a usb flash drive as a type of quasi-RAM. 

 

I have been pleasantly suprised with this software; I have seen a noticeable boost in my PC’s boost since I’ve been using it. I’ve read that this boost is not as easily noticed in more powerful machines, with more than 2 gigs of RAM, but on my half-gig machine, the system feels much more stable.  Explorer, iTunes, and other memory hungry apps feel much smoother and all for a 1 GB usb thumb drive!

 

Here are the different programs and their prices (but a free trial version is available on the eBoostr website):

Select your license type		Price (USD)	Price (EUR)	Price (GBP)
	PRO Version Includes all available functionality: RAM cache, exclude list, cache viewer, power saving mode, up to 4 devices.	$39	€29	£25
	Laptop Edition Includes: battery saving mode, exclude list, cache viewer, up to 4 devices. No RAM caching functionality.	$29	€22	£19
	Desktop Edition Includes: exclude list, cache viewer, up to 4 devices. No RAM caching and power save mode.	$24	€18	£15
	Lite Version Limited to single USB thumb drive. Does not contain cache viewer and exclude list functionality.	$19	€15	£13

Tremulous Review

Due to finals, this review is going to be a little thin. The game i’m reviewing is called Tremulous and it is a FPS where it is humans vs aliens in an epic deathmatch. Aliens have the task of destroying the human base and humans have to defend it. Humans can build turrets to defend them and aliens evolve to become stronger.

Anyway, it’s free and from my limited play time, I’d definitely play it again!

Our 6.7 pound netbook

I installed puppy linux on an old Dell Inspiron 3000 notebook; it is still extremely slow. So we’re gonna trash it. Not even Linux can save this one!

More Force Unleashed

The game is addicting! Gameplay is definitely not extremely challenging, but the huge extent of your power is intoxicating.

Oh, and I finally got the force choke to work. I wasn’t holding the nunchuck properly. You have to point it straight out, then turn it upside down.

Edit:

Now I beat it. The game is not long, but is satisfying. With the proper cheat codes, you can be many characters from the star wars universe. I enjoy bring a sith stalker. You can also customize the lightsaber color, powers, and hilt; making your character almost completely customizeable.

Boy Survives Moose Attack Using Videogame Skills

 

Hans Jørgen Olsen, a 12-year-old Norwegian boy, recently survived a moose attack by feigning death, “just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft.”

In WoW, “feign death” is a skill acquired by hunters at level 30 that allows them to take a page from the possum playbook, collapse to the ground, and convince their enemies — who lose all ingrained animosity in the process — that they’ve died.

According to Norwegian site Nettavisen , Hans and his sister apparently enraged one of the local moose (mooses? meese?) during a walk in the forest near their home. After shouting at the gigantic creature to ward it away from his sister, Olsen dropped to the ground, and presumably his lifebar plummeted to zero.

Moose have never been known as the wisest creature in the forest, and the boy’s show of necrosis seems to have worked, as both he and his sister survived intact.

It’s easy to decry video games as a menace to society but in a world where MMOs save adorable, tow-headed Norwegian children from a deadly moose, can they really be that bad?

 

Source: Feigning Death

The Force Unleashed: First Impressions

As you may have guessed, I got my copy of Force Unleashed for Wii yesterday. Here are my first impressions:

1. The box: Looked great, couldn’t wait to play it. (Unfortunately, my schedule was arranged so that I couldn’t play it until late last might.)

2. So, I read the manual. And it was in black and white. I expected cool pictures, but you couldn’t see ANY of the pictures.

3. The game: the sense of unlimited power you get is exciting. “Hey wookie, MOVE! Oh, so I have to do it for you? (Wookie than flies off of the structure hurtling to it’s watery grave hundreds of feet below).”

Yep, it’s that awesome. More later..

1994’s Most Bizarre Suicide

Don Harper Mills

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Sciences, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story…

On March 23 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a gunshot wound of the head caused by a shotgun. Investigation to that point had revealed that the decedent had jumped from the top of a ten story building with the intent to commit suicide. (He left a note indicating his despondency.) As he passed the 9th floor on the way down, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, killing him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the 8th floor level to protect some window washers, and that the decedent would not have been able to complete his intent to commit suicide because of this…

Ordinarily a person who starts into motion the events with a suicide intent ultimately commits suicide even though the mechanism might be not what he intended. That he was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not change his mode of death from suicide to homicide, but the fact that his suicide intent would not have been achieved under any circumstance caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands…

Further investigation led to the discovery that the room on the 9th floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. He was threatening her with the shotgun because of an interspousal spat and became so upset that he could not hold the shotgun straight. Therefore, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went through the window, striking the decedent.

When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. The old man was confronted with this conclusion, but both he and his wife were adamant in stating that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. It was the longtime habit of the old man to threaten his wife with an unloaded shotgun. He had no intent to murder her; therefore, the killing of the decedent appeared then to be accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded…

But further investigation turned up a witness that their son was seen loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal accident. That investigation showed that the mother (the old lady) had cut off her son’s financial support, and her son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that the father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus…

Further investigation revealed that the son became increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to get his mother murdered. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a 9th story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

Stop Making Fun of Us!

A funny Mac-PC spoof:

Robot thinks people taste like “bacon”

So, apparently the guys at NEC thought it would be cool to make a wine-tasting robot. The robot — pictured above — fires a beam of light into the wine, and then uses an infrared spectrometer to analyze the reflection. It studies the chemical composition of the wine and delivers an instant verdict about how good it is. It’s a neat trick, and it has other health-related skills: It can determine whether an apple is sweet or sour, or could even warn its owner if a food is too salty or fatty.

But the NEC guys decided to show off the robot to the media, and that’s when it revealed its morbid secret. As the Associated Press reports:

When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

Yeah, we’re screwed. The robots think we taste like crispy breakfast treats.

 

source: http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2006/09/robot_thinks_pe.php