Well, yeah. Something like that. Sorry I’ve been absent from the blawg. I’m on a new work schedule that, while it has the advantage of making my home life a little bit easier (i.e. I actually get to see more of little E than just 45 fussy minutes in the morning before he gets hauled off to day care), also completely sucks the life out of me. I’m working hours that wouldn’t have fazed me in my 20s, but I’m around the corner from 40 here. I’m tired beyond comprehension by the time I get home.

And once I am home… well, let’s just say we’ve run into some behavior problems with the little guy. The tail end of the terrible twos is going to be the death of me. I try to reason with him, but in the end it just seems like I have to become the Acme automatic spanking machine rather than being dad. He winds up wanting me to get the hell away from him. I wind up wanting to get the hell away from me too, for that matter. And after I’m doing being worn down by that whole experience, which seems to be turning into a nightly visit to hell… well, then I’ve got to go back to work, and I’m already pretty much fried.

One of the behaviors we’ve had to try to correct is the little guy’s tendency to get out and wander during the night when he’s supposed to be in bed sound asleep. Coming home from work and finding the following picture on my digital camera pretty much sealed the deal:

…so now there’s one of those little things on the doorknob inside his bedroom that keeps him from opening it from the inside. At least until he figures out that there is, in fact, a way to do it. I give it about three weeks tops before we have to just give up and attach a live electrical wire to the other side of the doorknob as a deterrent.

Still, both of little E’s grandmothers’ fathers were professional photographers, so someone, somewhere, is probably fiendishly pleased with the above development. This also explains why the previously monthly ritual of getting a new daddy-and-Evan picture has dried up for right now – it’s hard to get us both in the same shot, in a decent mood, at the moment.

Outisde of that, I’m devoting whatever time I can to getting Vworp! ready in time for OVGE this October. Given the schedule I’ve described above, it’s going to be a very tight squeeze. Whenever I get “Vworped out”, I try to put a little time into laying the groundwork for the next book, which will be – prepare to gasp in surprise here – Phosphor Dot Fossils. PDF is going to be a very “designed” book; I thought Vworp met that description enough as it is, since I put a heap of prep time in on the layout at the same time as I was writing text, but PDF will be even more “designed.” The design will owe a little something to the screen layout on the DVDs, but will be more print-friendly. The first PDF book will be a combination of the encyclopedic review format that everyone might expect from the DVDs… and something else entirely. Vague enough for you? I might have some preview material at OVGE… emphasis on might. There’s this whole other book that I need to have ready first. :shocked:

As for where I’ve been, Ive been putting in a lot of time talking to myself in theLogBook.com Forums …or at least it seems that way sometimes. First sign of madness, they say. I haven’t really consciously given up blogging in favor of the forums, but some of my geekier observations are better suited for the forums. At my 20th class reunion a month ago, a lot of people commented on how they missed me blogging more often, Facebooking more often, etc. etc.; I appreciated that. Being dad always comes first, but I will try to make more of an effort to post a few things here. The geekier side of the stuff I used to blog about – upcoming soundtracks, action figure collecting, that sort of thing – will likely be a creature of the forums in the future, while the blog will revert to being more about what’s going on in my life outside of all that stuff that I can’t really afford.

That’s what’s going on for right now. Stay tuned.

Wait, OVGE? What? Here’s my thought process. The only science fiction convention I’d have a shot at hitting from this particular location is Tulsa Trek Expo, which is this weekend. (The book will not be ready this weekend.) There’s also OKC’s SoonerCon, which has already happened this year – and which I had never heard of until after it had happened this year.

OVGE isn’t exactly a science fiction con, but it is an event that I have been a long-standing exhibitor at (it started in 2003 and I’ve only missed one year of it), and let’s face it: with a retro-skewing video game convention, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to have some spill-over into other areas of geek magnificence, such as science fiction. OVGE’s probably a pretty safe bet, actually.

And here’s the other neat thing: debuting VWORP! at OVGE also decides what my booth’s going to be about this year! I’ll still be carrying the usual DVDs (Phosphor Dot Fossils, Classic Gaming Expo), but the focus of the display this year will fit in with the book. I’ll be bringing some classic Doctor Who video games, as well as the latest ones, to show off and display. I’ve already begun testing the older games on the older laptops that otherwise sit around the house and collect dust, and I think we’re in pretty good shape.

I might bring an Odyssey2 to play Attack Of The Timelord! just for giggles too. Even though, yes, I know, it’s not that kind of Time Lord. But people would start checking my pulse and wondering if I’m a pod person if I didn’t bring an Odyssey2 to OVGE.

Kent’s already demanded OVGE weekend off from work, so of course he’ll be there with me. And he and I can both talk your frakkin’ ears off about Doctor Who.

So that’s the plan: to have the book finished, printed, and have copies of it for sale at the show. If you want it signed for some unknown reason, I can probably do that for you too. (Not going to be in Tulsa in October? Don’t worry – I’ll probably have things set up with Lulu.com or another similar entity to handle ordering.) Updates about this project can be found in “theLogBook.com Media / Other Projects” area of theLogBook.com’s forums. But I’ll probably blog about ‘em too.

So there you go: you’re wondering who the guy is who’s daft enough to debut a book about a science fiction show at a non-science-fiction video game convention? That’d be me.

It’s June 24th, I’ve got ’till October 23rd. I think I better quit blogging and get to work.

As I’ve got a funeral to attend on April 10th, I’m obviously not going to Oklahoma City for the OEGE (Oklahoma Electronic Gaming Expo) show on the same day, which I had been planning on doing. As an admittedly slightly weak way of compensating for that, I’ve revived the Christmas special pricing – and the amusingly Christmas-y graphics! – on my documentary DVDs; the special ordering page can be found here. Feel free to spread that link around anywhere you think it might be welcome and relevant (i.e. don’t spam the world with it). These bundles are actually a hell of a price break on these if you’re looking to get the whole collection(s) in one short, sharp shot.

At this point I’m uncertain if I’ll be able to make it to CGE in July/August or not. I put in for the time off from work months ago, but still haven’t heard back on that request. Given the recent string of bad luck at home, not the least of which is an entire heating/air conditioning unit which has to be completely replaced, and my wife replacing the car she wrecked in January with a similar car that, ahem, Needs A Little Work, I’m just not sure that funds can be freed up for something as relatively “frivolous” as CGE. Sales of the existing DVDs haven’t been spectacular for several months. One might think “Hey, taking a chance on shooting material for a new DVD will result in a new product that everyone’ll want to buy,” but given the relatively low adoption rate of the CGE ’03 and ’05 DVDs (neither of which has been out for a full year), I’m not sure I can afford a blind gamble on going in the hopes that a new CGE DVD would sell. I’m also still waiting to hear back on whether or not I have a machine on which I could theoretically edit a new DVD project; I may not have gotten out of that incident as unscathed as I thought. (While I’m at it, let me give a huge shout-out to Karl Luedke for sending me a new power supply for the aforementioned editing system; I’m biting my nails and hoping that’s the only thing that needs replacing.)

Everyone take lotsa pics at OEGE this weekend. Oh, and tell Ralph Baer I said hi. For the record, the inventor of home video games remains awesome, and I heartily recommend going to see his presentation via Skype at the show.

A Doctor Who video game always struck 8-year-old me as a no-brainer. Now that I’ve added 30 years to that number, I know now that it’s an incredibly difficult proposition. Let’s take this quote from the article linked above:

The game will be closely monitored by the BBC, which does not want anything too violent. Former Doctor David Tennant said the game had struggled to get off the ground as some developers had wanted the Time Lord to beat up his enemies and blow things up. David said: “The video game was quite actively developed, but it’s difficult to nail as the Doctor doesn’t blow things up. He’s not Batman, who goes around smacking people in the head.”

Now, allowing for a moment that David has apparently witnessed some BatHeadSmackage that I’ve somehow missed, this raises a very good point. Anytime the Doctor has been seen to use a weapon in Doctor Who, it’s been a last-resort, life-or-death thing. More often than not, he’s faced down those with weapons, armed with little more than words, and he’s lamented others taking up arms countless times. How do you make a game out of that?

It hasn’t been easy going. I’ve chronicled several attempts at Doctor Who games before, from the very first one (released on cassette in 1983 for the BBC Micro) to the most recent PC game, which was a Doom clone, and everything in between.

Let’s take the 1997 PC game Destiny Of The Doctors as an example. It’s a first-person shooter – eek! That violates the whole canon of the show right there. But in this game you’re not the Doctor, but rather some strangely amorphous “champion” fighting for the Doctor. Therefore you can get away with the shooting and so on. But any fan of the show will tell you that this is a gigantic cop-out: what any player invested in the show really wants to be is the Doctor himself. The “champion” character – never mentioned in the TV show before or after the game – is a proxy, and a cheap one at that.

But this is where I get excited that this thing’ll be on the Wii. Hello? Wiimote = sonic screwdriver. It can even make the noise any everything. How freakin’ cool is that? What’s scary is that, according to the article, it’s taken years for anyone on the game-development end of things to make that connection:

Firms had been coming up with ideas for the last three years in a bid to tap into the show’s success. The insider added: “BBC Worldwide, which licenses BBC shows, has been trying to find some way of doing it. But you can’t have Doctor Who blowing things to bits with a laser gun. That would massively change the nature of the show.”

Obviously the wrong people have been trying to crack this particular nut. Do they even watch the show? The Doctor outthinks his opponents rather than beating them to a pulp; putting that into game form is difficult. The Wiimote-as-sonic-screwdriver is almost certain to be the key to cracking that particular puzzle, however.

I’ll be the first to admit that the screwdriver is overused in the show itself, but it could be a lot of fun in the game if implemented properly. And sonic or not, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to shoot things up, since:

It will also feature key Doctor Who baddies including the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Silurians.

Can we say: “Doctor-less, all-baddies death match mode”? Thought we could. As long as that mode isn’t the end-all and be-all of the game, I have no problem with it being incorporated as an option.

And finally, I’m so excited that I’m nearly shaking at the article’s implication that this is a Nintendo first-party title, not farmed out to someone else. One need only look at Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort – and the fact that folks like the head of EA have spent so much time bitching about the fact that they can’t seem to get the general game-buying public to adopt any non-first-party sports games for the Wii – to see that Nintendo has the best handle on making unique games for its own system. Naturally they do, but in the case of the Wii, the gulf in fun and playability between first and third party games is, at least in my experince, vast. Nintendo integrates the Wii controller into its game play where it seems that a lot of other developers cash their checks after using it as little more than a glorified mouse pointer or light gun. I’m elated at the thought that Nintendo is doing this, because, again as the article quotes a BBC insider:

“We’re delighted to have finally nailed down a deal. We went with Nintendo as they have huge appeal for families and Doctor Who is very much a family brand. The Wii console is key for us as it’s something families play together.”

…and that, in the end, is what it’s all about. I look forward to boarding the TARDIS with my own little companion.

Don’t forget to release this in North America, guys.

I understand that OEGE isn’t, and can’t be, a “retro” video game event, unlike OVGE and CGE, but with their school backing they have some unique opportunities and some unique advantages; these guys could actually get some guest speakers and charge it to the glorious cause of Educating People. Last year I was suggesting folks like Richard Garriott, who are reasonably close to OKC, but this year’s show already has a guest speaker lined up, and I have to say I’m impressed – they really seem to be going for the gusto, lining up Ralph Baer, the inventor of home video games, to speak via Skype during the show.

Okay, I’m interested now – and seeing as my chief product for sale is a series of DVDs on video game history, which includes Ralph Baer’s wonderful invention, it’d be just this side of stupid for me to not be there selling this stuff. I’m also well known for setting up shop at both of the Oklahoma shows every year with a working Magnavox Odyssey – the first home video game system, which Mr. Baer invented – so, yeah, I think it behooves me to be there so that the “video game history” angle is out there on the show floor as well as in the lecture hall. Because this stuff isn’t dry history, it’s all still fun.

Unlike years past, I’m not going to break my back trying to get a new DVD ready for this show. I just don’t have the time right now, I don’t think I could crank out anything worth anyone’s time in just 47 days, and frankly, I still have plenty of copies of Phosphor Dot Fossils that I burned for last year’s OEGE and OVGE that still haven’t sold. I’m not planning a hugely elaborate display – just a TV showing the usual loop of the various Phosphor Dot Fossils and Classic Gaming Expo DVDs, a TV where folks can see and play the Magnavox Odyssey (not something you get to do every day), and so on. My DVDs also deal heavily with the Odyssey and its descendants, with actual footage from the machines. It makes sense for me to be there.

Hopefully all of this good news means it makes good sense for you to be there too. (If not, you can always order DVDs from me directly, hint hint!) (Previews of segments of the DVDs can also be seen if you become a fan of Phosphor Dot Fossils on Facebook – just sayin’.)

I’m taking copious amounts of photos and video, will post later. TV Death Squad is playing right now – cool stuff, but I can barely hear myself think.

I’ve also gotten confirmation that the DVDs have arrived in Ohio for CCAG; if you’re going to be in Cleveland this Saturday, go see everyone at CCAG. There’ll be old video games aplenty, up and running (and for sale too, of course!).

I’ve spent this week and much of last week getting ready for OVGE full-time; literally all that’s left to do on my end is print the above price lists for folks to pick up from my table, pack up the car, pick up Kent at some ungodly hour of the morning, and head west. I guarantee plenty of fun for those who head west at a marginally more godly hour to visit the show.

Leave your troubles and your swine flu paranoia behind, and catch some Pac-Man fever. See you there!

The MobilePro does have Windows Media Player, but I haven’t seriously entertained the notion of using it to play music or movies; I doubt it has the memory overhead for the latter, and its mono speaker makes the thought of playing music on it a little unappealing. Also unappealing is its on-board entertainment software: Solitaire. And that’s it.

NEC MobilePro 900 – one of the last models made before the line was discontinued because nobody knew what to do with it just yet. Jutting out of the right side slots are a 2gb thumb drive and a wi-fi card.

I had tried to get MAME CE (a build of the MAME emulator for the Windows CE OS) to work on my old MobilePro 750, but it never did and I forgot about the emulator for a long time; I recently tried it on my new MobilePro more or less on a lark. It turns out that it does work: the 900 series MobilePros had an ARM processor, while the earlier models were build around MIPS processors, which MAME CE simply didn’t work with. The installer program chugged away for what seemed like five minutes, eventually adding a new Start Menu category – Games.

For reasons unknown – though I’m going to guess that it probably has to do with having to keep the memory overhead required by the emulator apps manageable – MAME CE is split into “Red” and “Blue” versions; they each play different games (though all the ROMs are stored in a single directory, in this case on my 2 gig thumb drive). It’s not as simple as one version playing shoot-’em-ups and another playing cutesy games; Red and Blue are probably geared toward emulating different central processors.

A lot of ’70s and other early games appear on MAME CE Red…

…and yet MAME CE Blue plays older games as well, including early Namco games like Bomb Bee and Cutie Q.

One of the biggest liabilities I’ve run into is the somewhat counterintuitive arrangement of the arrow keys on the MobilePro. As with the full version of MAME, MAME CE will allow you to reconfigure the keys to your liking; the problem is that I really haven’t found a better combo that solves my problems. The action/fire keys start with A, then S, and onward from there.

Another issue is, with the MobilePro’s horizontally-oriented, half-VGA display, how big is the screen? This gives you a good idea. It looks great close-up, but a typical square display for a vertically-oriented game takes up less than half the screen.

Horizontally-oriented games like Lode Runner fare somewhat better; it still doesn’t occupy the entire screen, but it takes up well over half of it.

Pole Position is a good case study here; I found that while it occupies less than half the MobilePro’s screen, the resulting display is still larger than I’d get playing Pole Position via Namco Museum on my GBA SP. The game itself, however runs a bit slow – there are games to which this platform is better suited than others, and once you start getting into heavy-duty, full-screen 3-D graphics like Pole Position or I, Robot, there is a noticeable slowdown in game play.

I’ve also noticed that MCR (Midway Cart Rack – i.e. Kick, Satan’s Hollow, Tron, Discs Of Tron, Domino Man, etc.) games are stretched out to the point that they nearly fill the display – great if you absolutely demand that all of your screen real estate is part of the game, but not representative of how the games are meant to look. The horizontal exaggeration can also cause you to misjudge movement during a game.

For analog controlled games, MAME CE on a MobilePro is a lost cause, moreso than trying to control these games at a desktop machine. The MobilePro’s keyboard is, out of necessity, engineered a bit differently than a typical 101 keyboard, and it makes controlling games with somewhat subtler movement extremely difficult, almost to the point of no longer being enjoyable. Centipede is off the table. Games with simple control schemes revolving around a four-way joystick and one or two buttons are your best bet.

Depending on how you feel about it, another big plus – or minus – is the lack of sound. The MobilePro does have a speaker and isn’t afraid to use it, but MAME CE produced no sound. Midway Cart Rack games and Exidy games display sound hardware errors as the ROMs “boot up”; a few other titles do this as well. Considering that I’m most likely to play MAME CE in a public place, or in the passenger seat of a car, or – let’s face it – on the can, the lack of sound doesn’t break my heart. For some gamers, however, it might be a deal-breaker.

This is the first emulator I’ve tried on the MobilePro that’s worked; now that I’ve gotten MAME CE more or less figured out, I’m going to try a few others, starting with Atari 2600 and Apple II emulation, to see what works and what doesn’t. MAME CE is a neat little distraction, but not something I spend gobs of time with: I still spend most of my MobilePro time writing stuff, checking e-mail, reading news, and annoying people on Facebook. But it’s nice to finally have something other than Solitaire to play (though I’ll still admit to playing Solitaire sometimes: when I’m staring down the barrel of insomnia and need to go to sleep, for example).

I’ll probably have my MobilePro with me at OVGE in a couple of weeks, so feel free to hit me up for a MAME CE demo in person.

Metal machine music. After years of work (as in upward of 15 years) and months of renewed speculation, Silva Screen is releasing the surviving music tracks from both of the 1960s Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies on a single CD, with a lavish booklet to boot. The track list (posted at the Doctor Who News Page) is:

Dr. Who and the Daleks

1. Fanfare And Opening Titles
2. TARDIS
3. The Petrified Jungle
4. The Petrified Creature And The City
5. Four Return To TARDIS
6. The Medicine Box And The Climb To The City
7. City Corridors
8. Captured By The Daleks
9. Susan Leaves The City
10. The Jungle At Night
11. Susan Returns To The City
12. Escape From The Cell
13. The Trap
14. The Swamp
15. The Mountain
16. The Cave
17. The Jump
18. The Thals Approach The City
19. The Countdown
20. The Countdown Stops
21. Finale And End Titles

Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

22. Smash And Grab
23. TARDIS Departs (Sound Effects)
24. Opening Titles
25. TARDIS (Sound Effects)
26. London 2150 A.D. (Music And Sound Effects)
27. Daleks And Robomen
28. Message To Grandfather And The Dalek Saucer Takes Off (Music
And Sound Effects)
29. The Mine Workings And The Cottage
30. Preparing The Bomb Capsule (Music And Sound Effects)
31. Smash And Grab (Reprise) And End Titles

The Singles

32. The Eccentric Dr. Who
33. Daleks And Thals
34. Fugue For Thought

Dr. Who And The Daleks – Bonus Tracks

35. Fanfare And Opening Titles (Soundtrack Version With Effects)
36. TARDIS Effects
37. Dalek City Effects

According to Mark Ayres, who cleans up sound on everything from the classic series DVDs and CDs to the much-lamented extinct classic series music soundtracks, there was no source material for the second movie that didn’t have the sound effects mixed in with the music – it was unavoidable. The real prize, however, is that the music from the first movie is free of effects; for those who haven’t done their reading up, Dr. Who & The Daleks (the 1965 movie adaptation of the second story from the TV series, which introduced the Daleks) was a key influence on Austin Powers, maybe second only to In Like Flint and Our Man Flint. This soundtrack will be coming out on October 5th, and I’ll definitely be getting one. Oh yes, I will.

Final Yamato…again. Here’s a trailer for Uchuu Senkan Yamato Fukkatsu hen, coming out in December in Japan. What the heck is this? The English translation is, roughly speaking, Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth Chapter, a continuation of the original animated series and movies (which we in the English speaking world know as Star Blazers). Before you ask…I have no idea if this is going to be dubbed or brought to the English-speaking world in any form, or when.

I’ve gotta say that this is looking really good. Color me very interested… as soon as it’s dubbed or at least subbed. I’m heartened by the use of the music of the late Hiroshi Miyagawa in the trailer; I do not, however, envy whoever winds up scoring the movie. The thought occurs that they could track the whole thing with Miyagawa’s existing works (the awesome-sounding Symphonic Suite Yamato, a.k.a. possibly the best CD I’ve ever imported from Japan in my life, might actually become the official score to something after all). Anyone new coming into it will have to strike some kind of awesome balance between referring to the existing Yamato musical canon and adding their own voice to the proceedings. And while the transitions between traditional-looking animation and CGI are a bit jarring – almost as jarring as the ol’ BBC “video-in-studio, film-on-location” look – that shot of the Yamato blasting out of the ice is just effin’ awesome.

Good deal! After quite a lengthy stretch with few updates due to a number of family crises, my friend Michael Thomasson is back in business as Good Deal Games. He’s revamped the mission statement though: instead of keeping a large collection in stock, he’s become a clearing house for homebrews for every system imaginable. At some point a while back he seemed to be considering selling the whole kit and/or kaboodle, and I’m glad he didn’t. Michael is one of the rock-steady pillars of the retrogaming hobby: he’s been there since before I popped my head into the hobby, and he’s still there now that I’ve become a slightly reclusive cranky old bugger (see actual photo above). What he says, he does, and if there’s a more reliable person in the hobby to do business with, I’m not sure I know who it is. And let’s face it – the idea of an all-in-one-stop homebrew shop is a brilliant idea. There have been too many fragmentations and schisms for such a small hobby, and a lot of stuff gets “lost” because it’s an exclusive on one site and isn’t welcome to be advertised on another. Good Deal Games can now serve as a kind of retrogaming Switzerland – completely neutral territory, everyone’s welcome. And if that’s not incentive enough for you, Michael’s carrying Odyssey2 and Videopac homebrews that I’ve done the artwork for, and even a 2600 game or two that has the same dubious honor. (Just checked, yeah, he’s carrying the version of Backfire that has a heavily-photoshopped picture of me on the label looking like I’m about to be hit by a bus. Doesn’t that make you want to go and buy one?) They’ve even got repros of an unreleased Star Trek V: The Final Frontier NES game that I’ve never heard of before. Somebody hold me back. What does God need with an 8-bit cartridge?

The long and short of it is that GDG and Michael get my highest recommendations. The place chugs along on the pure love of the hobby – it’s hard to go wrong getting stuff from them.

Goodbye, farewell and amen… I saw in the news that Larry Gelbart, who developed M*A*S*H for TV and was its showrunner for the first few years (i.e. the Trapper / Henry Blake years), died of cancer last week. The number of other things Gelbart wrote in his long career would not only take up its own blog entry but, in all likelihood, its own blog. I’m a second generation M*A*S*H fan – my mother was a huge fan of it, and wouldn’t miss the nightly strip syndicated version of it or the new shows until it went off the air. I’ll be the first to fess up that I didn’t “get” it at the time; my own deeper appreciation for it would have to wait until the years that I spent – ironically – running tapes of it at another local station that had it in strip syndication. Great stuff, and at times difficult to swallow; I suppose M*A*S*H was to my mother what the new Battlestar Galactica was to me. Probably no coincidence that their respective series finales were structured somewhat similarly. (Actually, having made that statement, the more I think about it, it’s very similarly, not somewhat similarly.) M*A*S*H may be one of those shows that’s about a specific historical event, but has only gained more significance with time.

OK, enough geeking out from me for a while. I have kitten bellies to tickle.

This year’s Vintage Computer Festival East will be held September 12-13 at the InfoAge Science Center located in Wall, New Jersey.

VCF is a public event celebrating the history of computers from the 1940s – 1980s. The morning schedule is for lectures and workshops; the afternoons are an open exhibit hall where everything is turned on and working.

Among this year’s highlights are the keynote address about RCA computers in the 1950s, an 8-bit musical concert, BASIC programming challenge, and the build-your-own terminal workshop.

Details are posted at http://www.vintage.org/2009/east/ where you’ll also find the latest VCF news. A 2-minute video montage of last year’s show is on YouTube. Or refer to the simple event brochure. Tickets are $10 for one day or $15 for both days; 17 and younger get in free.

The event benefits the InfoAge Science Center, which is a 501c3 non-profit.

RCA computers from the ’50s? Does that include the Studio II? Oh…wait. Studio II was the ’70s. Not that you could tell by looking.

I also wanted to draw everyone’s attention to the August edition of Le Geek – Ben may not get his site updated as often as he’d like, but it’s always worth the read. I also like the fact that the site is now in gamma – screw being in beta, we’re going straight to gamma! I look forward to the delta and epsilon editions.

With a not-even-remotely-heavy heart, I’ve decided to close my long-dormant MySpace account. I think tonight was the first time I’d logged into it in 2-3 months. Since almost everyone in my friend list over there is in my Facebook friends, I doubt anyone will be too disappointed (in fact, I’ll be surprised if anyone even noticed without me mentioning it here).

Still. No. Kittens.