Home again.
Hospital stay, completed. Baby = home.
With the living room under construction still, I need to find space for the two year old to hang out in. Time to set up the Wii upstairs...
T-F-2 F-R-E-E
Team Fortress 2 is going to be free to play this weekend on Steam. It's based upon the Source engine from 2004, so you don't need the world's most expensive computer to play it, and it is a quite fun multiplayer experience.
TF2 is included in the "Orange Box", a collection of Valve's Half-Life 2 based games, which I can't recommend highly enough. As I've said many times before, Portal alone is worth the price of admission. And it's available for you Xbox 360 & PS3 folks, too.
Dad. Redux.
I'm a dad again. Crazy!
Alana entered the world this morning, 04:24, weighing 8 pounds 1 ounce.
Why 8.04?
Lifehacker has an excellent article up about some the great new features of the latest Ubuntu release; definately worth a read.
The new tool Wubi is particularly tool: it allows you to truly run Ubuntu from your Windows disk, without modifying your system. Perfect for testing it out.
I don't know about angels, but it's fear that gives men wings.
Bill:
I meant no offense towards you, and most certainly think of you as nothing but manly. Assuming they don't change, your beloved company's advertisements and product design will still continue to elicit my criticism; please don't take it too personally.
And no, I'm no less excited about my beloved Open Source software. Tonight I registered at Ubuntu's launchpad.net to join in the California Ubuntu Local Users group. Proprietary systems have their advantages, but I can never believe in them the same way I do about Free software. My previous reference to being a sellout was half-joking; supporting Apple at all is somewhat of an ideological transgression for me, but I really just want to be as familiar as possible with all systems. So far, my conclusions haven't changed: all OSs suck, as do most companies.
But who knows? There could be a Quadra or whatever in the future. Somehow I doubt it.
In any case, while it irritates me that they've created an artificial unfair advantage, I really like the (unmatched) functionality of VMWare Fusion. In it, I can run Windows specific applications (through my "boot camp" partition) in a window or using the mac window manager. Rebooting is all well and good, and I'll continue to do it for the more demanding Windows apps, but the functionality that Fusion provides in running both platforms seamlessly is unmatched and amazing to see. (EDIT: Apparently VirtualBox, an open source virtualization program, does match the features of Fusion that amazed me so much. I'm sure the configurization isn't as user friendly, but I can live with that and I'm going to have to check it out.)
Speaking of which, if you've never played 2001's Max Payne, you're missing out. If you at all enjoy over-the-top film noir/dark comic book styling, it's truly a gem. The dialogue will stay with you like very few stories do.
The snow fell like confetti on the devil's parade:
Thinking Differently
I installed Mac OS X 10.5.1 on my PC this weekend; it's amazing how easy it is using the custom installer by Kaly @ the insanelymac forums.
It's neat. I'm still probably more excited about the two Ubuntu releases this year (September's is getting a UI redesign); Mac OS may be polished, but Ubuntu means so much more to me. Probably the same way that Apple helps define the identities of metrosexuals.
Obligatory screenshot:
Work is awesome
I returned to my desk today, after having been away for a number of hours to find this hanging from my cabinet:
Thank God for my penchant for unpopular technology.
We rock so hard.
Man, Rock Band parties just don't get old.
I'm so tired now. Must rest the voice.