Sony are launching an escrow/auction service for Everquest 2, whereby players can sell in-game items, coinage and characters for real-life currency. They are applying it only to certain servers (to be decided via an in-game poll, and with the option for players to move servers). It’s a $200m-a-year industry, apparently,…
"London, England"
Bill Bryson was right. The “London, England” effect is everywhere in the US; the media dumbs down everything to an absurd degree, hence “London, England” – as opposed to London, where exactly? To be fair there are plenty of other Londons, but I think it's pretty unambiguous in a story…
MySQL 5!
MySQL 5.0 almost ready, reports ZDNet. Stored procedures. Triggers. Views. Welcome to the world of real databases, MySQL!
TRN Magazine reports that researchers from MIT have developed a tool (“Metafor”) for turning English into code. I am immediately reminded of the aphorism, “Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English.”
Jury duty
I got a jury summons. I'm not eligible. Whee!
Movies I have seen recently
Wimbledon. Not bad. An enjoyable 90 minutes. But a) I don't think that's the way to Brighton from London, and b) nobody runs 10 miles during a tournament, even less so while wearing Converse All Stars! Clueless. I'm a sucker for teen movies. Plus, it's got Alicia Silverstone in it;…
Easter weekend
Easter sort of crept up on me, but what the hell, I don't observe it anyway, and the US doesn't either (no 4-day weekend here)! So it was just a normal weekend, but a pretty good one. Visited Griffith Park on Saturday, but the zoo was, well, a zoo. Didn't…
Hypnotic sort of game…
The grid game. Sort of like Conway’s Life: less of a game and more of a fascinating thing to watch, as the patterns die out, then suddenly start to spread again. My best “score” is 813.
How to Destroy the Earth…
That is, actually destroy the physical earth, as opposed to merely making it uninhabitable. It turns out to be a) quite a difficult task to achieve in reasonable time, but of course b) a very easy task if you have an awful lot of patience. My favourite methods: Destroyed by…
Tiddlywinks no more at Cambridge?
The Guardian has a story about the impending demise of tiddlywinks. That would be a sad day. Even though I haven’t played in a while because of geographical reasons, I did remember to join ETwA this year.