Off Topic: Templates & Cool Stuff

Tweaked the template for the blog a bit. It was way too narrow for my taste and the sidebar wasn't floating like it should have. I hope this version makes better use of screen real estate.

(I read almost 200 pages of Jakob Neilsen's Designing for Web Usability today while waiting for Windows Vista Beta 1 to install. I've been infected.)

(You know, you'd think a book subtitled "The Practice of Simplicity" would have less than 400 pages.)

Added links to my Furl and my Stumbles in the sidebar.

In other news, I'm currently downloading the 800MB "Facade" at the BitTorrentastic rate of 11KB per second. I read about this game (?) in a Gamasutra article today and saw that it was co-developed by a fellow Ramblin' Wreck, so needless to say I'm curious to see what it's like.

Another interesting article on Gamasutra about storytelling in video games. I've been thinking lately about whether to add story elements to Vyde out-of-the-bo... um... bitstream... ? or whether to leave it a "sandbox" that players can build and distribute stories for. More on that in future posts.

Everybody should read Donald Knuth's Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, a very entertaining read. I'm actually reading it before reading 3:16: Bible Texts Illuminated, and it gives me something to look forward to.

Also, have fun with the Zombie4. :) My friend Eric found this one after I showed him the Zombie Infestation Simulator. It made me think that Vyde might have some plague elements that could be fun. >:)

And a new favorite of mine: Interactive Buddy. What's cool about this toy is that there are so many places you can go with it. I can think of at least a dozen things I'd like to add to this one, including stick-figure skeletons, armor, and physical fitness, complete with exercise equipment.

I use Bloglines to read my RSS feeds. I imagine adding Vyde to it would be very simple. :)

Also found Aardvark today, a CSS inspector for Firefox. Very cool.

The Windows Vista Beta 1 would not install on Virtual PC today. It crashed five times in three different ways throughout the day. Gave up on it finally when somehow the installer got confused on how to format the drive (which it didn't have a problem with the first time I tried it).

If anyone can point me to last week's episodes of SG-1 and SG-1: Atlantis, please do. My stupid cable box reset while I was out and my TiVo recorded 2 hours of high-quality black.