Month: May 2002

2600 Fever! Can Breakin’ 3 be far behind?

Slashdot: Atari Announces Official Portable 2600. “Portable” is an exaggeration; the unit has no screen or batteries. It’s just a joystick that plugs into your TV and plays 10 classic Atari games. It’s also an exaggeration to say that Atari is making the thing; they’ve licensed the rights to JAKKS Pacific, a company that have already made a similar product. Press release here; get it before it succumbs to Yahoo bit-rot.

Personally, I would only consider such a monster if it had the entire Atari library in it (considering that each game was only a maximum of 4K in size, that should be feasible) and if the “joystick” were identical to the old Atari 2600 joystick. Super retro kid stuff…
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It all comes together in the end

This is the second to last day of classes here at Sloan and I’m feeling a bit pressured. I had a semester paper due for Technology Strategy, a final paper for Power and Negotiation, and a final “quiz” (they couldn’t call it an exam by Institute policy because it was given before Finals Week), and I have one last final paper due tomorrow.

And after tomorrow I’m done. Then comes graduation, the move to Seattle, and the new job (along with the resumption of an income). I’ll probably have more thoughts about all of the above shortly; right now I’m still kind of in shock that it’s almost over. I feel like I just blinked while two years went by.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “Relative Ways” by And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead on Source Tags and Codes. Sadly, while this song sounds a whole lot like really good Sonic Youth a la A Million Leaves or Washing Machine, the rest of the album sounds a whole lot like… a lot of other bands. I might think better of it after another listen.

I have to get out of here!

A few days and three papers left, and I can’t finish one of them yet because the landscape is moving too quickly. Our technology strategy paper on the video game console industry has been hit hard in the last two days—between Nintendo finally deciding to go on line (News.com) and Sony and Microsoft preparing to go into a price war (New York Times), we can’t update the paper fast enough to keep up. Thank goodness it’s due tomorrow. I can only imagine how the analysts feel.

Programming humor ahead

So I’m really a geek. I have a set of Fridge Code (think Magnetic Poetry, but for geeks) that used to adorn the outside of my locker at Sloan (yes, world, you too can return to the high school experience with your very own locker! Just send us your GMAT scores and pony up your tuition!). People kept moving it around and I finally took all the words down except for one that I would rotate in and out. This weekend I grabbed one at random and put it on the front.

I looked at the word today after I completed my transition with the new leadership of the E-52s. What word had I picked? Deprecated. It’s perfect! Much better than lame duck or short timer. “Sure, you can ask Tim to do that, but he’s a deprecated interface these days so don’t count on him to actually finish it.”

The power of the blog

I was contacted yesterday by an individual who was able to fill in some of the blanks in my ongoing search for information about my wife’s family. You may recall that we hit some dead ends in Calitri searching for her great grandfather, as his name is very common in the family. We were also unable to find information about his wife. This was because, my source tells me, she was actually born in another town.

What’s cool about this is that I never would have found this person and his information without this blog. It’s a two way communication tool. The part that makes it two way isn’t necessarily the technology, although things like comments and discussion areas help; it’s more about asking the question in the first place.

Back again…

I was in Calais, Maine this weekend—and in St. Stephen in New Brunswick Province of Canada. They’re separated by a few hundred yards of river and a time zone. We stayed with Lisa’s childhood friend Kelley in a former hunting cabin that’s undergoing extensive reconstruction. It was a really good time… albeit a bit cold.

It’s amazing experiencing currency exchange shock so close to home (disclaimer—this was the first time I ever visited Canada). Our hosts told me that it’s pretty common to tell jokes about the exchange rate (sample: “The lottery is up to $35 million Canadian! That’s, what, about $300 US?”).

Bug announcements for OmniOutliner2OPML

In the spirit of full disclosure, faithful reader Oliver Wrede pointed out that he had problems using my script OmniOutliner2OPML with certain outlines. I don’t have a fix yet, and it may be a while, but I wanted to report what’s up for other users that may run into the same thing:

  • If a cell in your outline is a pop-up list and has a non-blank value selected from the list, the script will error out with a NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError: 3.
  • The exported text in a given outline element in the OPML file will be truncated if it contains international accented characters (e.g. é).

As I say, I’m still working on both these issues. If anyone has suggestions on how to get around the problems, I’d appreciate it.

Free a cappella in Cambridge

In concert tonight, in the lobby of Building E-52 (50 Memorial Drive in Cambridge for the MIT-impaired), the Sloan E-52s. Featuring lots of fine a cappella stylings. And stuff.

This is by way of apologizing for the lack of blogging today. I have things to say, but I’m saving them for my group.
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Best viewed with Lynx!

Brent: Best viewed with Lynx:

And now we’re returning to simple HTML, not unlike the HTML of 1994. More structural markup, less of that complex and weird junk. Layout is done through style sheets.

Sites designed that way look good in Lynx. You don’t even have to try. I didn’t go out of my way to make this site work in Lynx.

This site looks pretty good with Lynx, too. And it’s a Manila site. The secret is in the CSS. There’s still navigation, but except for the calendar it’s way down in Lynx; the content stays at the top.

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