Wonderland

Nearly back up..

New laptop arrived today, running Vista out of the box. Oh my god, what a total disaster Vista is!

The first thing I tried to do - and that it asked me to do - was to register the machine. OK, I thought, I want my warranty nicely set in stone, so I fire up the registration... which takes me to CLUB SONY! in Internet Exploder 7, which tells me that Club Sony's certificate is invalid, which crashes IE.

You laugh, right, because otherwise the tears would short circuit the keyboard?

So I'm downgrading (most would say upgrading) instantly to XP, but if, like me, you're getting a new Vaio, don't let Sony tell you that "it's just a matter of getting online to our website" in order to downgrade. Sony no longer ship actual OS installation disks it seems, so you have to create your own recovery disks... which requires two DVD-Rs. I dunno about you, but I backup to either solid state or externals, not DVDs, so I had to schlep myself and the kid down to the stationers pronto to buy these curious things for an extra twenty quid.

So here I am on the EEE, watching the progress bar of Vista creep along as it writes the backup disks. Look at all those drop shadows, and glowy bits, and swooshes. Gosh it is just gross. Be off my machine, crufty crap! Away wi' ye!

EEE PC

I gots one. Sod me but the keyboard it TITCHY i cant type for the life of me on this thing.
Heyelp!

UPDATE: Okay, learning to cope with a) keys for child fingers and b) Linux (woo!). So now a question: anyone got any tips for must-have software or add-ons? (Yep I have the 900)

More folding proteins.. but this time a game too

Folding@home runs on idle time, as I understand it, as does rosetta@home. I haven't got a PS3 yet which runs the former - waiting for LittleBigPlanet before I splurge (and have to remove the gamecube to make room).  But this, Foldit, is a game, designed to get players to develop actually-useful proteins for use in designing new vaccines.

Solve Puzzles for Science! is the strapline. How can you resist?

Technology Review says:

The game, called Foldit, is part of Baker's vision for the future of protein engineering. His algorithms are good at the nitty-gritty of generating completely novel protein sequences for a particular purpose. But humans, who are better at seeing the big picture than computers are, could improve computer-designed proteins by playing the game.

Some of the proteins could go towards helping to design a vaccine for HIV, even. This is double plus good.

(Thanks to Kim!)

NES coffee table

Oh this really is awesome, from the aptly named Ultra Awesome blog:

Also, it works!:

Brilliant. There's even a how-to if you fancy making your own...

(Thanks to Brian for this one)

Instant HD failure

.. my vaio has suffered. It is dead as a dodo. I've lost perhaps 5 days worth of bits n' pieces, although most mail is online, etc, but my carefully kept-as-unread emails that I'd been saving up to reply to, well.. no idea which ones those were now. So sorry if you're waiting on a reply from me and you don't get one.. ?! :)

Now to find out about warranty and repair. Ugh.

Eye-tracking used with WoW

This is pretty neat, even in this very basic form:

Changing modes looks like it happens by magic, but from within the YouTube comments, the creator says:

Mode changing works by the eye tracker detecting eye glances, in this case a glance off the screen. So, a flick off the top gives you one mode and so on. The cursor changes to show what mode you are in, e.g pair of feet for walking. However, WoW takes control of the look of the cursor so it doesnt quite work. This was originally designed with Second Life as the testing platform, but we designed it such that could be used with other games. WoW was the first we tried and it works well for a start.

Nice job! Now to invent an eye-tracker that'll work at 5-10 ft; I could play WoW on the PC while reading a book on the sofa. This is the future, I tell you.

(via TechCrunch)

Little Brother

Cory's new book is out, and even accounting for my bias, it's really good.

Bad Uncle Neil thought so, see, and  I would think you will too.

Boing Boing's TF2 server..

.. probably a harbinger of things to come, this: Boing Boing Gadgets tagged a Team Fortress 2 server this past weekend, as Valve was having a play-for-free promotion over the same period.

The new boys at BBG seems to be well into their games; of course, John Brownlee you may remember as Florian from Kotaku, so that makes sense...

R2D2 DVD/games projector

So while artoo is usually repro'd in cheapo plastic and turned into a shampoo dispenser / wastebin / flip-top laundry basket, in this way more expensive and extremely realistic artoo you get a DVD/game projector that can display a picture up to 260 inches!

The remote control is shaped like the Millenium Falcon. Sriously. He's also compatible with all the next-gen consoles:

Points if you can identify the game there, and he's all yours for three thousand bux.
Oh well.

(Thanks Nick!)

Pixel pot plant

It's Flickr group nite, clearly. There's another interesting pixel group out there, this time called 8-bit. It's small at the moment, and it's got those famous Mario cup cakes there already, as well as this lovely thing:

Brilliant. Print-out on cardboard, you reckon?

Pixel cookies made using Play-Doh tools

Kim sent me to this picture of pixel cookies, which led me to - via the Flickr Pixel Cookies! Group - to this set of beautiful pixel cookies ...

... which is a set of how-to photos showing how to make said cookies using the Play-Doh Fun Factory. It looks like serious work, but what a result!

I used to love play-doh; I think it's why I have such a marzipan fetish now. It's a good group, that group - there are Tetris cookies too, amongst other pixel cookie deliciousnesses. Mmmm cookies!

(Thanks Kim!)

Famicom towel

A measly 13 or so bux would have got this handsome red-and-gold Famicom towel over at NCSX - except they're all sold out, forever.

Until Banpresto re-releases them at some point in the future, of course.

Age of Conan

Brian C's favourite upcoming title, I think, this. I must say, when I heard there was going to be a Conan MMO, I did groan. Loincloths? Leather bikinis? Arnie accents? Hoi.

But wait. There's some proper horse riding going on in there, in an environment that's looking pretty bloody good.

They used horse mo-cap too!

Avatars are interesting: there seems to be a ton of customisation options - and they're super realistic, like Star Wars Galaxies (although not as handsome). The demo here shows only male characters though, and the single woman in it is a damsel in distress needing rescuing. Ho hum. Where's Red Sonja, eh?!

Overall, this one looks like it'll appeal to Conan fans, Gladiator fans and anyone who wants their epic a little more realistic (but only a little) than WoW. Presumably the lore is going to be way better too, although I'm not sure how important that actually is to the overall success of a game - after all, WoW's lore is frankly diabolical.

I wouldn't mind a gallop about that land, though. Hoo, it looks good.

EA Land closing already

It's only two months old in this incarnation, but EA-Land (what was once The Sims Online) is closing. I'm not sure why there was a huge push and rebrand and relaunch on Feb 27 2008 to only close the service a few months later. Weird eh?

CNet reckons it might be because - as a commenter points out - because EA doesn't want to shut anything down with "the sims" in the title...

(via Evil Avatar)

Wor1d of Tucows

We dropped by Tucows yesterday to take Elliot out to lunch (roti! mmm). Elliot's US guild and my US guild are raid partners, so we had the occasion to hang out in Azeroth every now and then too. Here's Tucows' current schwag tee:

My new sleepshirt, ftw.