The Kindle for Mac application is crap. Not in the sense of “limited functionality and poor UI” (although those are true, too), but in a more serious “corrupts user identity every time it does its (weekly?) auto-update”. I had originally thought the problem was with the version available in the Mac App Store (which, thanks to Apple, is much, much older), but no, the direct download from Amazon does it as well.

Basically, if I open the app and it asks me to accept terms and service, I know that it just wiped out my account credentials, and I’ll have to delete:

~/Library/Application Support/Kindle
~/Library/Preferences/com.amazon.*

then deregister it on the web site, launch the app, register it again, and then re-download everything (painfully slowly, thanks to the poor UI).

I note that no one ever responds to people who have this problem on the Kindle support forums, and the last response I got to a direct email report was “gosh, we’re sorry; I’ve forwarded your message to the team!”.

[Update: and again! This time when I finished re-downloading everything, I made a tarball of the known good copy. Next time it blows up, I’ll have a before/after to send them. Grrr.]

The Rick Brant adventure novels are scarce and tend to be priced for collectors. I hadn’t realized until just now, however, that nearly half of them have fallen into the public domain and are available through Project Gutenberg. Cleaned-up versions are also available at Manybooks.

I’m pleased that this includes the first one I read, The Egyptian Cat Mystery, which does an excellent job of introducing the real science of SETI, unlike, say, every other boy’s adventure novel I’ve ever seen that dealt with aliens. Why? Wikipedia says, “During the 1960s, Goodwin served as Special Assistant to the Administrator of NASA…”

I didn’t actually finish the original Portal, mostly because when it first came out, I didn’t want to buy The Orange Box for Xbox 360, and didn’t have a Windows gaming setup. When they gave away the Mac version as part of the Steam release for that platform, I got it, but ended up playing a lot of Torchlight instead. I knew the concepts from playing the Flash version, and of course I heard the song and watched a number of videos of the hilarious dialog and interesting puzzles.

Portal 2 was a day-one Mac release, so I bought it, played it all the way through, and loved every minute. Even the relatively few places where I got stumped (generally because I missed a subtle visual clue or got myself turned around and jumped back the wrong way). My biggest complaint would be not being able to locate the [spoilers] in the one and only timed section; the scene is sufficiently visually chaotic that I didn’t see them arriving, and then only had audio clues to work with, which weren’t terribly directional. And, of course, it was timed, so I had to do it again.

Sadly, there’s an entire second game that I can’t play at all until I get one of my friends to buy the damn thing and finish the single-player campaign. It’s great that they made a two-player co-op game with a real story, but quite frustrating if you don’t have anyone around to play it with. And the idea of playing it on Steam with a stranger just repulses me. The thing I hate most about online gaming is making my fun dependent on the maturity and intelligence of a stranger, going all the way back to the unrestricted griefing and player-killing of Ultima Online. There are non-sociopathic gamers out there, but if I want to be social in a game, I prefer to be in the same room.

Now, as for the common speculation about how you can “scientifically” explain how portals work, well, after the end of the single-player story in Portal 2, you’d not only be killing catgirls, you’d be committing furry genocide.

Oh, wait, some people might like that idea…

(and, yes, after finishing it, I went back and played the first game all the way through, including the advanced maps; it deserves all the praise it’s gotten)

I’d like to improve the quality of the recommendations I receive from you. Unfortunately, it’s been clear for a long time that I’ve given you Too Much Information, causing the system to produce basically random results.

The Real Reason For The Civil War because of Slow Cooker Revolution? Amusing. Bacteria-filtering disposable face mask and a watch toolkit because I buy Cajun salame? A bit odd, don’t you think? Hemorrhoid cream because I bought a folding screen? Downright peculiar. Murder on the Links and The Photoshop CS5 Book For Digital Photographers because I bought Soups and Stews 2011? Uh, yeah, right. A ten-year-old Sony 5-disc CD changer because I own Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook? WTF?

And that’s just today; I’ve seen far worse in the past. There’s still some wheat mixed in with the chaff, so I haven’t given up, but every time I use the system, I mark more items “not interested”, and make the problem a little bit worse:

I wouldn’t mind cleaning that list up a bit, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to go through 1,353 pages of recommendations in reverse chronological order. By the way, while writing this, I added another 300 items to the list, so make that 1,373 pages…

[Update: a SOG Tactical Tomahawk because I bought rechargable batteries! Paco Rabanne Lady Million perfume because I own a 1 TB external hard drive!]

…May Day celebrations will feature an entirely different crowd.

Must. Buy. Now.

I always thought the next one should have been called “A Sky Full of Fire”, but I guess he’s not ready to write that sequel yet.

I don’t know why people say Perl is hard to understand…

$=$/ and print join $”,reverse map scalar reverse,qw,foo bar baz,

Quoting ArsTechnica:

Here is the data that Sony is sure has been compromised if you have a PlayStation Network Account:

Your name
Your address (city, state, and zip)
Country
E-mail address
Birthday
PSN password and login name

“​…although Sony is still unsure about whether your credit card data is safe.”

If they got the credit cards as well, Sony is in for a world of hurt.