You’ve probally heard about Journalspace’s end. If not, read about it here.
I just wanted to reiterate some points I’ve made earlier to several friends:
Here’s a nifty reference card for Texas Hold’em Poker. Print on A5 and laminate, and you’ll never be in doubt whether a straight beats a flush. Also included are denominations for the poker chips. At least the denominations that we usually give them.
Finally some breakthroughs have been done for the Wii version of Guitar Hero 3. Some smart guys have modded the ISOs of the game, and changed the songs to those from the other Guitar Hero games. Here are some forum posts with instructions on how to do the modding. I should warn you, however, that the work involved is quite hard and takes a lot of time.
You will also require note charts and separated audio for the guitar, bass/rhythm, and band tracks. I guess that is why people are reusing the songs from the older Guitar Hero games, since they already have the required audio tracks. For the opensource game Frets on Fire, which is more or less a clone of Guitar Hero, you can obtain hundreds of tracks ready for inclusion to Guitar Hero 3.
If you look hard enough in the usual spots, you can find a version of Guitar Hero 3, modded to include the songs from Guitar Hero 1, and Guitar Hero Rocks the 80’s. Here are some screenshots of the song list.
After having played this for the past few hours, I can verify that these tracks indeed are those advertised. There are some things that doesn’t work, though, like co-op career (the lead guitar and rhythm/bass guitar tracks are the same), and practice mode.
But it is really nice to be able to play some other songs, than the 70 included on the retail version. Modded versions will do, until the Wii gets DLC.
I have received some questions about the Star Trek Marathon I previously posted, most of them are asking about how long that Star Trek marathon is compared to other popular scifi-series. Well, I can’t disappoint you, so here is a nice, pretty diagram:
There you go, I had to stack several other scifi-series to match the total runtime of all the Star Trek series. As an interesting note, the slim, orange Firefly-sliver is smaller than the Star Wars-sliver. Firefly could really have used a longer run. The total timespan of all the chosen series are 65298 minutes, or 45 days, 8 hours and 18 minutes.
Back again with another installment of “Other stuff on the web”. Again, don’t spend too much time on these parts of the web, since this blag really is all you should ever need. If you somehow, deep down, believe this to be not true, I recommend you see your therapist again — but don’t take too long, you are needed back here for mindless mind slavery.
I’ll meet you back here when the next installment is out. “When is that,” you might ask, after which I point you to the RSS feed for this blag.
I’ve sat up a repository to dump files in, using my newest creation: Flocker. This is essentially an online file locker, where I can place files and control who can see them. I’ll use this to dump files I want public, but also for files only a few people should have access to.
Flocker is created on top of CodeIgniter, mostly as a test of this framework. So far it looks good. I have not hit a wall with it yet, like I frequently did when I tested out Ruby on Rails.
I’ve taken a closer look at the price of the Wiimote in Denmark. It is really expensive in my opinion. The cheapest price I can get online is 349kr, which is 50-100kr. cheaper than in stores. That might sound cheap, but compared to the price of the console itself, it isn’t. The console is about 2000kr, including one Wiimote (and a nunchuck). To fully equip yourself for multiplayer fun, you need three extra Wiimotes. That is 1047kr, or half the price of the console. That is not counting the nunchucks, which you’ll probably need as well.
I’m seriously considering importing a bunch of these, if I can find enough people that will buy a few each. I think I can do it for 270kr per Wiimote, all duties and taxes paid. I will have to look further into this.
Owning a Wii is great. Everybody can play it, even your grandma. But, no rose without thorns – or no rose without missing thorns. The Wii needs some features to turn it into the greatest gaming console I have ever owned. So let me present to you, The Wii niids™:
Of cause, I want all of the above for free.
A local wind mill broke today. Here’s a video. If viewed in slow-motion, you can see how it actually are the wings that breaks due to the high speed. The first wing breaks and flies away, leaving the remaining two wings unbalanced, which quickly makes one hit the beam of the wind mill. This happens with so much force, that the beam breaks, and the mill collapses completely.
This is what happens when you don’t regularly tests your wind mill brakes. The owner of the mill is rumored to have said, that the power generated while it ran at this ludicrous speed, covers the cost of a new mill.
I recently got the idea of finally watching all episodes of Star Trek. Not just the original series, but all episodes of all the series, spanning from the original series from the sixties, up to the latest one: Enterprise. Including the movies. But before boldly embarking on this mission, I have one simple question: How long would it take to watch all the episodes and movies of all the Star Trek series?
Wikipedia to the rescue!
| Part | Episodes | Avg. runtime | Total runtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Original Series | 80 | 47 | 3760 |
| The Next Generation | 178 | 45 | 8010 |
| Deep Space 9 | 176 | 43 | 7568 |
| Voyager | 172 | 45 | 7740 |
| Enterprise | 98 | 44 | 4312 |
| Star Trek: The Motion Picture | 1 | 136 | 136 |
| Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | 1 | 116 | 116 |
| Star Trek III: The Search for Spock | 1 | 105 | 105 |
| Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home | 1 | 119 | 119 |
| Star Trek V: The Final Frontier | 1 | 107 | 107 |
| Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country | 1 | 113 | 113 |
| Star Trek Generations | 1 | 118 | 118 |
| Star Trek: First Contact | 1 | 111 | 111 |
| Star Trek: Insurrection | 1 | 103 | 103 |
| Star Trek Nemesis | 1 | 116 | 116 |
That is 32534 minutes total! 22 days, 14 hours and 14 minutes nonstop Star Trek. Assuming an average life expectancy of 77.96 years, that would be 0.079% of one’s life spend watching Star Trek. Alternatively, a single episode or movie can be watched each day. Then it would take 714 days, or almost two entire years.
Maybe Star Wars is a better alternative? Just 6 movies. Those can be dealt with in a day or two. But I’ve already seen them, and it is Star Trek I would like to watch. Next question popping up is how to actually get to watch all this Star Trek. At the moment only TNG is being broadcasted on the channels I can watch here in Denmark, so I might have to purchase the DVDs.
A quick look around at the online stores to find some cheap prices for the boxsets gave this:
| Part | Seasons | Price (DKK) | Price (Euro) | DVDs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Original Series | 3 | 1797 | 241 | 22 |
| The Next Generation | 7 | 1799 | 241 | 49 |
| Deep Space 9 | 7 | 2093 | 281 | 48 |
| Voyager | 7 | 2093 | 281 | 45 |
| Enterprise | 4 | 2396 | 321 | 27 |
| Star Trek: The Motion Picture | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek III: The Search for Spock | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek V: The Final Frontier | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek Generations | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek: First Contact | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek: Insurrection | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
| Star Trek Nemesis | 1 | 49 | 6 | 1 |
1425 €! That is a lot of money. But it buys approx. 200 DVDs of Star Trek, covering almost 23 days of footage, not including the extras. Double the time required if there are commentary tracks on each episode.
Next interesting thing would be to figure out, just how much shelf space is needed to store all these boxsets. I couldn’t find the dimensions of the cases online, so that will have to wait.
