Young Gamers
I have enough problems competing against the hair-trigger reflexes of twelve-year-olds online. Now I’m going to have to worry about two-year-old children as well? Oi.
Giving Twitter Another Chance
While I’ve admitted before that I just don’t get Twitter, I thought I’d give it another chance, at least for the next couple of weeks. So, if you’re using Twitter and if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “what’s John doing right now?”, then add me to your Twitter friends:
In a couple of weeks I’ll let y’all know what I think of Twitter after actually using it for a while.
Sun Frustrations
Back in October 2006 I received a Sun Ultra 20 M2 as part of Sun’s Try and Buy program. Having a Sun workstation running Solaris helped a lot when I ported Geekbench 2006 to Solaris. Plus, it enabled me to run some benchmarks on a proper Solaris workstation.
In late November I received an email from Sun informing me that I didn’t need to return the Sun Ultra 20 M2 since I’d won the machine as part of Sun’s Open Performance Contest. Exciting news! It’s not everyday a major company offers you free hardware.
Unfortunately there have been some problems since I’ve accepted the workstation. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it; it’s running just as well as the day I received it. The problems are the lack of organization within Sun itself. I’ve been contacted on a number of different occasions by a number of different people from Sun who seem to have no idea what’s going on with the machine they sent me in October.
Usually they’re fairly innocuous; someone isn’t sure whether or not I’ve received my prize, and where they should ship it if I haven’t received it. No big deal.
This week, though, was the first time I received a message from someone at Sun asking that I either pay for or return the Sun Ultra 20 M2 I won in the Open Performance Contest. I’m still in the midst of trying to resolve this, but I’m starting to get frustrated by the incompetence and the apparent lack of communication inside Sun.
I hope I managed to get this issue sorted out. If you’re thinking of giving the Try and Buy program out, be forewarned that you might experience a fair amount of confused and redundant communication from Sun about it, and that it might be wise to keep documentation for everything.
Eidos and Valve, sitting in a tree
There was a time when I held disdain towards Steam but that was pretty short lived. Ever since I bought my first game through steam (which was Day of Defeat: Source) I’ve freaking loved it. SO easy, so convenient. And now I can get Eidos games through it too!
This first agreement includes complete franchise sets of classics such as Tomb Raider, Commandos, and many of the Hitman titles. In addition, Eidos is bringing some of this year’s most highly anticipated releases to Steam, including Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Championship Manager 2007, and more.
Arriving today, the first wave of Eidos titles available to Steam gamers around the world includes many of the Hitman titles, Battlestations: Midway, Just Cause, and the entire Commandos series. Pricing information is available at Steamgames.com, and news of additional Eidos games heading to Steam will be announced in the coming weeks.
My personal favourite thing about Steam recently has been that I can get old games I missed when they were new for cheap, and I don’t even have to get off my lazy butt and root through a discount bin to do it.
Good stuff!
Todd Levin on Twitter
Todd Levin has the following to say about Twitter while while writing about South by South-BEST:
Every year, SXSW Interactive attendees collectively discover a piece of social technology that quickly becomes integral to the SXSW experience. A couple years ago that technology was the photo-sharing site Flickr; this year it is Twitter. Twitter is a very simple concept to explain. Imagine there is a tiny invisible girlfriend sitting on your shoulder, constantly whispering in your ear, demanding to know what you’re thinking at that precise moment. Now, imagine you decide to answer every instance of her question by sending a text message to her, and all of your friends. That’s kind of what Twitter is like, and we’re positive it’s here to stay!
I don’t get Twitter. Sure, I’ve got an account, but I don’t get how it’s useful. Maybe I’m not social enough? Maybe I’m too old?
How Do I Hit People?
Yesterday I downloaded something called Second Life. It is like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, except you can’t shoot anyone, and you can’t hit people. You just walk around. There are no prostitutes, and everything costs real money, and you can’t rob anyone to get money. You have to use your credit card, with real money, to buy fake money to use in the game. It’s not actually like Grand Theft Auto at all.
Second Life is free to play, and I keep seeing people referring to it in the news, so I had to take one for the team and just dive on in. I knew it probably wasn’t going to be intriguing when I got to the signup part and couldn’t even make a one-word name. I had to use some fantasy-ass last name and I couldn’t even use cusses. The best I could do was call myself Wenis.
Panasonic Commercial from 1985
Panasonic’s portable audio products from 1985. They all look so horribly horribly dated, which makes me wonder how well the iPod (and the iPod ad campaign) will age; when we look back on it, with the iPod look this cheesy?
Geekbench 2 Released
Geekbench 2 has been released into the wild. A big thanks to all of those that were involved in the private beta for Geekbench 2; you guys rock!
There are a couple of changes that come with this release. The most noticeable is that Geekbench is now developed and released by Primate Labs instead of Geek Patrol. Geekbench still has the same development team; Primate Labs is just a “fork” from Geek Patrol (so to speak). We’re hoping that moving Geekbench development over to a different website helps us focus Geek Patrol back to being a blog, not a blog and a software company.
The release of Geekbench 2 also marks the end of development for Geekbench 2006; from this point forward we’ll be focusing our energy on Geekbench 2.
Entries