Via BoingBoing, the Library at Alexandria has been uncovered! This is really exciting, although I doubt any of the missing books will be uncovered. I heard once that the Alexandrians would confiscate any books from visitors to the city to make copies of them for their own library. Piracy has a storied history! The Library at Alexandria was one of the earliest attempts to compile the complete knowledge and science of mankind.
Carl Sagan had good section about it in his book, Cosmos. I found that complete passage here.
General
13
May 04
Discovery of the Library at Alexandria
12
May 04
Shots in the dark
I like making predictions to myself, which is especially satisfying due to my intense and general cynicism. Prediction: I think Israel will use the recent deaths of eleven Israeli soldiers as an excuse to step up the conflict and fully annex the Gaza Strip. This could also remove some attention from the US torture scandal.
11
May 04
Impulsive declaration
I was going to make some impulsive declaration about having some sort of blogging ennui, but I decided that would turn out to be a very temporary feeling. I do feel like I should have something important and/or profound to say, but I really don’t. I don’t even feel remotely self-promoting. I do feel a duty to a few individuals who expect the text here to rearrange itself from time to time. I feel like I’ve been pretty busy at work and everywhere else, especially with E3 coming this week. I’ll be working with people at the show… over the internet… via voicechat… while in game. That should be interesting for the first hour and then tedious, I would imagine. I’ll be helping demo one of our games from Austin to convention attendees in Los Angeles.
13
Apr 04
Battlefield Vietnam, the game
I don’t play many video games, but I do enjoy fps (first person shooters) because of their low commitment level and fast-paced gameplay. You don’t have to mess with levels and raising character stats. You just get in when you have fifteen minutes or more and play.
The one I’ve been playing lately, produced by my former employer, is Battlefield: Vietnam. It’s a lot of fun and has a lot of features that make it different enough to be worth purchasing.
Just like in Battlefield 1942, there are vehicles and different character classes. However, in BF: Vietnam you have at least two different variants for each class per map. For example, there are two different engineer kits, one with mines and one with a mortar. On the North Vietnamese team you have “pungi sticks” and boobytraps, or mortars and mines or explosion packs. It makes it pretty interesting. There are also lots of neat new vehicles; helicopters like in desert combat but easier to fly. Temporary spawn points can be created by each team, the NVA can make tunnels and the American team can drop mobile spawn points from helicopters. Some vehicles also function as mobile spawn points. All in all, it’s a great game. If you can muster the minimum system requirements you should definitely get it.
09
Apr 04
Sadr situation
Despite my black and white interpretation events in Iraq, there is a lot more nuance here, and it makes it difficult to really understand what exactly is happening. Here is some additional context to what is happening from people who spend their time studying the complexities of the situation there. Juan Cole * Informed Comment * blog
01
Apr 04
Napoleon Hill and Pat Conroy
Last night I was feeling a little lonely after work and wanted to read and throw myself into someone else’s story. I had finished reading Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline the day before and wanted to read something else by him. Before I read anything of his I had this prejudice against his books as being tacky or something, but then I read The Great Santini and then The Lords of Discipline, which both really spoke to me. During certain parts of the book I was really struck by feelings and experiences that were familiar to me. I felt like it was the kind of book I could have written in an alternate universe of my life, and it made me really want to write and express myself in the same way to other readers.
So, I went to the Half-Price books on Lamar looking for his other books. I found a copy of The Prince of Tides and Beach Music which I sheepishly bought. I also purchased a copy of Napoleon Hill’s Grow Rich! : With Peace of Mind. I am interested in “success literature”, and Napoleon Hill is a pioneer of this peculiarly American form. I think it would be nice to write a book about the genre.
When I cracked the book open for the first time, I noticed a chapter titled: “How to Transmute Sex Emotion Into Achievement Power” which has peaked my curiosity by virtue of its absurb seriousness. There are a lot of ideas common to success literature: noticing and seizing opportunities, acting in the moment, setting goals, and taking responsibility for your situation. The ideas and lessons put forth by success literature are dynamic and purposefully simplistic. Many times, the authors will refer to their ideas as “practical philosophy”. The idea being that these are self-evident laws of success that you can absorb, and if you fully grasp the significance of the lessons and apply them to your situation you are guaranteed to become more successful. I think there is a lot to study there, and a lot that is seductive and compelling especially because of the magnitude of its popularity. It is also interesting in its total contrast to most other types of literature due to its rather short shelf-life and target audience.
Napoleon Hill quotations:
- First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
- Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
- All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.
- Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
20
Feb 04
God Lives Underwater
Here are some of the channels I watched in Nullsoft Streaming Video:
- Cesko’s Room: A webcam, music, and a mic brought to you by some guy in Italy. He seemed to be working at his computer but would occasionally look into the camera and start chair dancing to the eight or so viewers watching.
- A video stream comprised solely of BattleField1942 videos. Mind you these are videos taken in-game usually involving stunts with jeeps, tanks, and planes with a group of players as the stuntmen. There are also people producing movies using the setting, props, and models of the game as the visual pallette of a particular story or plotline with a soundtrack, sound effects, and voice acting edited into it. This is really interesting to me since it puts filmmaking in the hands of almost anyone. Not surprisingly, most of these films deal with the subject of war. By the way, this game is awesome.
- Another channel showed commercials from the 50’s. That got old fast. Another played educational films from the same time period dealing with issues like ‘acting your age’. They also had some Dragnet episodes on the same channel.
- There are lots of streams for music videos, many are techno while some are Korean and Japanese pop. XRM is probably my favorite of this bunch probably because he has it set up where the chat from the XRM irc channel appears on the screen using the subtitle function so that while you’re watching a music video someone will chime in about how hot someone looks in the video or making an incredulous remark about how old Paul Oakenfold is.
- There are a few live TV feeds as well, people using their TV tuner cards to broadcast to the internet. Live Headline News, Pakistani TV, Polish TV. One guy was just rebroadcasting his local NBC affiliate from San Francisco.
The best part about all of this is that there are basically no commercials and it is international in aspect. Anyone in the world can broadcast their video this way which could ultimately democratize video broadcasting.
20
Feb 04
Good goth radio
I found a good streaming mp3 station for goth/punk music. It’s really gotten me interested in that and related genres. Try it out.
That reminds me, I really encourage people to use Winamp 5.0 (which is free) to listen to their mp3’s. I have seen a few friends using other programs like Windows Media Player, Real Player (evil, pernicious), MusicMatch Jukebox (eh, unless you’re a subscriber), or Quicktime Player for Windows to play their mp3s. Now, hear me out and just trust me that it is better and full of the important features you need and will use. Winamp version 3.0 was bloated and crap compared to versions 2.xx due to AOL rushing development and pushing crap features after they purchased Nullsoft, but in interviews I’ve seen with Justin Frankel (the developer) they’ve gotten their act together, skipped version number 4.0 and have put out a good full-featured yet sleek player again. Download it.
Oh, another cool thing they’ve released is Nullsoft Streaming Video…so I may be getting together a little internet TV project going here soon. One more project to add to the pile, but it’s exciting to consider the potential. In the current version of Winamp you can view ‘Internet TV’. Earlier this evening I was watching a channel with Japanese Pop Music Videos (jpop). I saw a jaw-droppingly absurd rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ by a girl who obviously does not speak english. She was singing phonetically, but the part that made it so horrible was that the video was so earnest and schmaltzy. I wish I could show you.