2008

I've had more than my fair share of USB key drives over the years. Unfortunately, because of the way the downtown computer stores do things, they only seem to have drives with both the qualities of useful size (1+ GB) and decent manufacture about one third of the time. So the last time I had to replace a (stolen) key drive, I was stuck with one from Dane-Elec.

I had to go downtown today for a meeting with one of my college professors (or from some perspectives, ex-college professor, but I digress). While waiting for the GO Train back from Union Station, I saw a book, sitting all alone on one of the benches. Curious, I stepped closer, to find this sticker on the cover.

Considering that the first Thursday of the month was only two days after New Years, it's not surprising that the IGDA Toronto chapter moved the January gathering to a different date. It's more than just a regular meeting this month, however – there's a quartet of presentations this month, including Jason Della Rocca (the IGDA's executive director) and a guy from the OLPC project.

It'll be a blast. Come on out!

If you've been paying way too much attention to my website lately (and I'm sure you haven't) you might have noticed that I've been fooling around with different themes, looking for one to replace the current Garamond theme that currently defines the look and feel of coldacid.net. The thing is, while Garamond was okay when I first started using it, it's lately started to feel somewhat of an albatross. (And it doesn't help that almost every LCD monitor I've ever dealt with more or less washes out any of the theme details, either!)

Has well-known tech publisher CMP ceased participating in the Canadian magazine market? As someone who has (or had) a subscription to Game Developer Magazine and often bought Dr. Dobb's Journal off the shelf, it's pretty scary how I haven't seen a new issue of either since December.

I can't say the same for other CMP magazines, but for the two I already mentioned, I was able to get confirmation from within the company that they are no longer on newsstands, anywhere. What gives? I'm not just surprised that the magazines have been made subscription only, but that there was no notice of it, anywhere that I had seen.

Those in the know, know that I was away this past week, on a cruise with my girlfriend. I'll eventually be putting up a review of the cruise on Cruise Critic, if you're interested, but in short, cruising is fun, and I certainly enjoyed my first time outside of Canada. Oh, and more important: I don't have a girlfriend anymore, but rather a fiancée. Yay!

Sad news comes to us from Rock Paper Shotgun: Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away. He was 69.

It was that great creation of his that helped open my eyes to the possibility of gaming. And not only my eyes – many of the RPGs we play on the computer and consoles these days owe much to Dungeons & Dragons, and ultimately to Gygax and his collaborator Dave Arneson.

After far too long with no software released, I've finally gotten together the Perl scripts which I use to manage a software repository on the computer I'm currently using. (I will neglect to go into the backstory here; just read the older blog posts.) I've been running Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft on said computer, but since I don't have an internet connection at home right now, I've had to ferry packages from the library on a USB key drive.

It's finally spring, and that means Spring Cleaning. coldacid.net is no exception. I need to get this thing faster and with a better looking design. Any suggestions on Drupal themes to replace the current one?