“The possible ramifications of my actions are endless.
Do you want half of a ham sandwich?”

— The Jam

Endgame


So, I guess what happens in Aincrad, stays in Aincrad.

An amusingly trollish article at Sankaku Complex suggests that the end of the first arc in Sword Art Online has angered all the folks who thought they were watching a different story. Yes, it’s true, they didn’t meticulously document the leveling grind, the steady attrition of the player base, or the ruthless boss fights, and we’re all better off for it. As Kirito said, 「他人のやってるRPGを傍らから眺めるほどつまらない事はない」, “there’s nothing more boring than watching someone else play an RPG”.

In related news, desperate Democrats are imagining an Eighties-movie training montage set to the theme from Fame in which Barry the underdog overcomes all the weaknesses that got his ass kicked up between his ears in the first debate. Unfortunately for them, the real soundtrack may end up being Scandal’s Goodbye To You or Johnny Hates Jazz’ Shattered Dreams.

Best T2 drop so far


I’ve had a hard time finding an upgrade for my Engineer’s primary weapon:

Torchlight 2 Blackfang Bludgeon

Security, Convenience; pick one


In the break room just now, someone was trying out the facial-recognition security feature on his new phone. So we took a picture of his face on another phone, and held it up to the camera.

It let us in.

An Offense Against All Americans


Jamie Zawinski reports, but graciously allows the offenders to escape unnamed.

Anonymous Pro (still) FTW!


Adobe has released an Open Source coding font, appropriately named Source Code Pro. I tried it out, and while it’s mostly nice, a side-by-side comparison of the fixed-width fonts on my machine reconfirmed that the also-free Anonymous Pro still beats them all.

Of course, if you don’t write Perl, you might not need expressions like “$K[$i%@K]” to look good, but I still can’t be comfortable with any font where “00” looks like it’s staring at you…

And my test sample, if you’re interested, consisted of Andale Mono, Anonymous Pro, Consolas, Courier, Inconsolata, Monaco, Osaka, and Lucida Sans Typewriter.

Um, thanks?


Got a package from Amazon today, that wasn’t the one I expected this week. And wasn’t something I ordered. It had a standard receipt, with no hint of who bought it for me, or why. Equinox present, perhaps?

It’s the classic Basic Machines and How They Work, by the Naval Education and Training Program Development Center. Good stuff, so thanks to whoever.

The one I’m waiting for? 8 feet of birch veneer edging, of which I need approximately one-third of an inch.

Torchlight 2 review


“No time to write, must get back to playing.”

Apple's QA department: the customer


As usual for a new release, Apple is demonstrating how not to do QA. This time the results are more hilarious than crippling, since they made a huge fuss about dumping Google Maps for their own solution, “the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever”.

Yeah, about that…

“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”