So, we have joined the Clown Sweater meme. "One of us... One of us..."
Amazingly, when I was ego-surfing iTunes the other day, I found that a track by my old band Attrition, featuring none other that my own talented sister, is available on the iTunes Music Store already.
It's only 99c - you know you want to...Since they're shopping for a new label, perhaps they should just go exclusively direct.
Atomizer (Custom Mother) - Attrition [Darkness and the Machine Vol.2 ]
Attrition
Here's a very handy tool that allows you to upload images really easily for posts: Imagewell. It's a menu bar item that you can pull down, drop a picture onto, edit, resize, and post all in a couple of clicks. Sweet!
I was just about to leave the house this morning on a weekend home improvement trek to IKEA when I had one of those marvellous moments when the web presents an answer to a problem you weren't even aware of. My final 'reload' before tearing myself away revealed this: The IKEA WALKTHROUGH v2.3.1 - an hilarious survival guide to the a trip to IKEA by treating it as a real life RPG:
"IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings...Your goal is to successfully traverse the five awesome worlds of IKEA before your patience runs out. On your first few tries this may seem like an impossible task, but with practice (and this IKEA Walkthrough!) you will soon be able to muster the sense of numb resignation necessary for victory."
Needless to say, I quickly printed it and read it to Susan in the car. Thanks to this we were able to successfully complete the game in a single afternooon, including the extra 'restaurant' sub-level.
Thanks to Susan's new cameraphone, I snapped this great example of Ikea's shameless naming scheme, above.
The IKEA Walkthrough 2.3.1 [via The Morning News]
Last week a friend-of-a-friend was raided by the FBI looking for the stolen Half Life2 code. It just so happened that the DSL line shared by him and the houseful of other San Francisco Hungry Programmers was in his name. He lost 9 computers, and by the sound of it, won't be getting them back any time soon, innocent or not.
Immediately there's a flashlight in my eyes. "Are you Chris Toshok?" "Uh, yes" "Mr. Toshok, we're with the FBI. We have a warrant to search the premises."
Toshok's account of the raid
Slashdot Story
The Hungry Programmers
Due to my Sims connection, I enjoyed playing The Sims Online from an early stage. As with most games, the novelty inevitably wore off quickly. But some people and some companies take these things very seriously indeed; seriously enough to make the front page of the New York Times. It seems that despite the game being PG13 that - shock horror - sex is frequently discussed and acted out. From this promotional screenshot of The Sims2, I can't imagine why people might think there's anything like that in the game. Will someone please think of the children?
The Alphaville Herald
A Real-Life Debate on Free Expression in a Cyberspace City [New York Times] (registration required blah blah)
Blood on the virtual carpet: tempers flare as 'editor' is thrown out of online town with 80,000 inhabitants [The Independent]