Linucks

Jonathan Blow interview: Do you believe social games are evil? “Yes. Absolutely.”

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:23:58 -0600

Jonathan Blow interview: Do you believe social games are evil? “Yes. Absolutely.”:

Jonathan Blow: Well, they’re not very social. A game like World of Warcraft or Counter-Strike or whatever is way more social. Because you actually meet new people in clans or guilds. You go do activities together and help each other out, right?

[With certain social games] it’s about the game exploiting your friends list that you already made, so it’s not really about meeting people. And it’s not really about doing things with them because you’re never playing at the same time. It’s about using your friends as resources to progress in the game, which is the opposite of actual sociality or friendship. Maybe not exactly, but it’s not the same thing, right? They’re really just called social games because they run on social networks but they’re way less [social] – like sitting down and playing a board game with friends at a party is a way more social game. That’s an intensely social experience, right? So, like whatever. I hate that name.

PC Gamer: Do you still think social games are “evil” then?

Jonathan Blow: Yes. Absolutely. There’s no other word for it except evil. Of course you can debate anything, but the general definition of evil in the real world, where there isn’t like the villain in the mountain fortress, is selfishness to the detriment of others or to the detriment of the world. And that’s exactly what [most of these games are].

iPhoneSender.com - free and easy way to send a street address to your iPhone.

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:44:49 -0500

iPhoneSender.com - free and easy way to send a street address to your iPhone.:

I’m still looking for ways to recreate the entire Dash Express experience, but this gets my iPhone one step closer. Now, if only it could send Navigon formatted links…

New Apple Bluetooth device gets FCC approval, could be rumored Magic Trackpad | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:20:40 -0500

New Apple Bluetooth device gets FCC approval, could be rumored Magic Trackpad | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews:

I often find myself using the trackpad on my laptop instead of the mouse just because I’m use to the gestures. I may actually be interested in this.

Time to start my donut garden. via i.imgur.com

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:31:49 -0500

Time to start my donut garden.

via i.imgur.com

iPhone 4 Wallpapers

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:40:20 -0500

iPhone 4 Wallpapers:

If you’re looking for iPhone 4 wallpapers, you can get your fix here.

Crashes Weren't Squeeze After All

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:10:43 -0600

Last week I issued a caution about Squeeze possibly causing kernel panics. Well, it turns out that Squeeze wasn’t the root cause, but it probably just made my problem more evident. If you want to give Squeeze a shot, go for it! Don’t let my experience scare you off.

The problem was that one of my 4GB SODIMMs was bad, and that was what was causing all the kernel panics. I had previously tried testing my RAM with TechTool Pro, but it didn’t find any issues. A friend of mine suggested that I tried Memtest OS X. Low and behold, it found issues left and right! I tried removing and swapping sticks and narrowed it down to one specific stick. The RMA is in and while I’m temporarily down to 5GB of RAM (long story) instead of 8GB, I can at least run stably now.

Concerns with Squeeze (and a fix)

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:46:00 -0600

EDIT: I found that Squeeze wasn’t the root cause of my problems. If you want to try Squeeze, I think you can do it safely. However, I’ll leave the instructions below for how to “uninstall” Squeeze.

So after Saturday’s install of Squeeze, I’ve had some issues with my Mac. Here are the issues I’ve observed so far:

Random hard OS X crashes
CrashPlan engine crashing
Spotlight indexing never completes

Of course, I can’t say that Squeeze caused all of these issues, but I think that it’s not worth the risk to save 600MB on a 500GB hard drive. If anything, I’m going to say that Spotlight issues were the root cause of the CrashPlan issues, and I have no idea about the OS X crashes. However, I was able to fix it pretty quickly. After removing the directories from the Squeeze interface, just run this command from terminal for each directory you “squeezed”:

mac:~ myhome$ afscexpand Dropbox/

The command will complete after a minute or so (depending on size), and you’ll be left with your files in the original uncompressed state.

So That's Where they Go...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:38:34 -0600

@markomni:

lol RT @paultakahashi: Lame. … RT @tdkyo: Somebody just has purchased northwesternrejects.com

I saved over 600MB in a matter of minutes with Squeeze. Make...

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:41:00 -0600

I saved over 600MB in a matter of minutes with Squeeze. Make sure to grab your copy soon before they’re all gone!

Perhaps the only hospital you’d ever need. Why go...

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:04:06 -0600

Perhaps the only hospital you’d ever need. Why go anywhere else? What’s the worst that could happen?

Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:48:03 -0600

Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?:

This is exactly why I don’t like GeoTagging. I’m glad that they’ve made this site to show the craziness of it all.

Belarus rips off “The Big Bang Theory” in “The...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:54:00 -0600

Belarus rips off “The Big Bang Theory” in “The Theorists”. You can read more information here.

Did you know that QBASIC Gorillas was created by IBM, and not...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:11:54 -0600

Did you know that QBASIC Gorillas was created by IBM, and not Microsoft?

What'd It Take to Kill the iPhone?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:09:00 -0600

What'd It Take to Kill the iPhone?:

Answer: a device just as capable as the iPhone, but the same price as an iPod touch and comes completely unlocked. It appears that’s exactly what Google may be doing.

School Done, What's a Saturday?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:13:05 -0600

Okay, now that I’m done with school for the year it’s time for me to find something fun to do on this Saturday. Any ideas?

Also, I should now resume my regular blogging/tumbling/twittering/facebooking schedule. I’ve got lots of ideas up my sleeve for topics so I should be able to keep at least a little busy here.

Still Alive?

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:24:00 -0600

Yes, I’ve been silent the last couple weeks. Work and school has been kicking my butt, but I’m about wrapped up. Poker on Friday, then I’m not going to know what to do with myself on Saturday!

I’m still working on my Marketing final, but I have until 11:59pm on Friday, so what’s the rush?

Quake 3 is 10 Years Old Today

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:49:46 -0600

Quake 3 is 10 Years Old Today:

I remember when this first came out and playing it in college. This definitely makes me feel old.

Hackintosh is going Bye-Bye

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:34:07 -0600

I’ve recently had some flakey behavior with my Hackintosh, and some of that has been traced back to incompatibilities between my Drobo using USB (FW800 is REALLY slow on it for some reason) and the version of OS X I’m running (10.5.7). The best fix would be to do a reinstall and get it back on 10.5.6. Even then, I know that it’ll just be a matter of time before something else pops up.

Luckily I was able to grab a refurbished 1GB 2.0GHz Mac Mini off of the Apple Store for cheap. Even better is the RAM I just took out of my MBP will bring it up to 4GB.

I’m looking forward to having a Mac server that will do everything (Bonjour, Back to my Mac, working video, fast FW800, security updates) and won’t require constant babysitting. Also, this now frees up the Atom hardware from the hackintosh to do my firewall project. It’s a win-win!

I’ll probably do another Hackintosh at some point in the future, but I won’t have it be something that I rely on daily, as it just requires too much care and feeding.

Look for some future posts on using the Mac Mini as a server and setting up pfSense on the Atom hardware.

An End to VM Frustration

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:25:00 -0600

Last week I hit a wall of frustration trying to run several VMs and always being at or near 100% memory and the swapping that resulted. Usually just one VM and the typical applications I ran in OS X were enough to bring everything to it’s knees. Well, I decided enough was enough and placed an order for an 8GB kit from Newegg.com. This is the result:

Just testing it out, I launched 2 XP VMs and a Windows 7 VM, along with every app I typically use. I didn’t hit 100%, but I did make it over the 6GB barrier:

Before doing this, I was really torn between a SSD drive and this upgrade. However, this appears to have solved all my woes. I’m sure SSD would be even better, but this is amazing as is.

Would I recommend this upgrade? If you use VMware Fusion heavily on your Mac, and especially if you do demos in VMs with your Mac, I would say with no reservations.

Drobo expands line with Drobo S and Drobo Elite

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:44:55 -0600

Drobo expands line with Drobo S and Drobo Elite:

I love my Drobo. If you’re in the market, the new models look like excellent additions.