ReidNews > 2003 > December

Boxing Day Gaming

Posted by rae in friends
at 11:55 pm on Sunday, 28 December 2003

Jeff (from behind), Mark, Kaarel, and Andrew (with pssibly someone behind him) playing.. well, something

Friday night we had our seemingly annual gaming night. Originally we thought not too many people would be interested, so in my mind I thought we would have about 5 to 8 people show up, play a few board games and then, as the late hours arrived, ajourn to the basement for some computer fragging fun!

Computer fun in the basement

Well, as you can see, we had quite a few more people than just 8. There were 11 under the age of 16 alone! That was the big surprise I think. John and Kristin brough along Kristen’s brother-in-law, Jason, and his kids Rebecca, Anna and Owen. Andy and Christine brought Elspeth, while Jeff and Gail of course brought Jennifer and Megan. Tiny little Jamie Chew was very quiet and well behaved all night, and Tom single-handedly amused Daniel, Ross and Ronnie, too! Aside from one incident early on (everyone involved got over it very quickly), the kids got along famously all night! Ronnie and Anna had a good old time drowning their poor Sims in the swimming pool by taking away the ladder out while they were swimming! Rebecca was very interested in the telescopes and drawing with the tablet on the G5 downstairs (after watching Ruth at it for a bit).

Ruth sketching on the G5

Millerses and Beatonses were aboard for the night, with the almost-better-but-not-quite Bronwyn making a brief appearance. Debbie managed to catch me in the act of taking a picture of myself with Bronwyn in the kitchen.

One-handed shot of myself and Bronwyn

Debbie’s perspective on the same shot

We only really had one gaming table this year, unlike previously, when there was always at least two I think. I think there were three different games played, although not being one of the players, I’m not sure. Feel free to drop a comment off with the names of the games played.

In the basement there was much Halo playing to be had. Being the latest and greatest game, we don’t have a lot of experience with it. I don’t think we experimented with the different game types as much as we should have. Now, Friday and Saturday are a bit of a blur to me, but I think we played Halo all Friday night, and only played a bit of Urban Terror when we got Halo-ed out on Saturday.

The party broke up on Friday by around 3am I think (well, I guess that’s Saturday morning), while the succedding day saw an end to the fun around 2:30am. A couple of late nights, indeed.

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iPod/iSight video camera

Posted by rae in hardware
at 10:32 am on Monday, 22 December 2003

If they just slapped an MPEG2 or MPEG4 encoder chip into an iPod, you should be able to plug your iSight firewire camera into your iPod to record digital video, or just audio if you want (flip the iSight over with the lens closed and hold it like a microphone).

Judging by this job posting at Apple, I think someone agrees with me.

Well, okay, probably not, but still, if they went that route, they would prolly have to upgrade the display on the iPod so you could preview what you record. Pretty silly not to.

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Instant messaging

Posted by rae in software
at 11:28 am on Thursday, 18 December 2003

I am at work and while I’m waiting for a DVD to burn, I’m chatting with Luisa on MSN. I just paused and realized that this is a fundamental difference from how things were when my parents were working (circa 1970 say). The closest approximation is talking on the phone, but.. that just isn’t the same. An internet chat is much easier and less intrusive to your work.

Email is up there, too of course, but chatting is a much more intimate contact. Once video is well integrated with it, I suspect internet chat will end up replacing the telephone in many ways. When will we see the first IM client that records video messages when you’re away? ICQ already records text messages when you’re not logged on. I doubt the central servers could handle the storage for saved video, so you would have to have some sort of “answering machine” running to accept messages when you’re not logged on, probably running at home, while you might connect anywhere.

Another bright idea from ReidLabs, Inc.

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Playing Halo tonight..

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 4:51 pm on Wednesday, 17 December 2003

Well I *was* hoping to play Halo with Ronnie and Michael and others tonight, but it appears that the Mac version does not play nicely with the PC version. :-/

I’ve posted about it on MacSlash (as clith), and on MacGamer.com’s forums (fora?). I guess I will wait for Ronnie to go to bed and then play on my PC. My PC and his have the same CD Key on them..

Bah.

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Woo! New IE/Win exploit

Posted by rae in the Net
at 3:51 pm on Thursday, 11 December 2003

Click here to see what all the excitement is about. It will open this site, “rae.tnir.org” but the address bar will look like it says “www.microsoft.com”. Funky stuff.

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Working at Alias

Posted by rae in Reid
at 11:11 am on Thursday, 11 December 2003

In January I will be working on contract at Alias Systems downtown. (Hmph, I liked “Alias Research” better.) I have to decide if I’m going to drive to Kennedy and take the subway or walk to the end of the street and take the Go train. The walk would certainly do me good, and I could leave the car at home.

The old Alias Research logo

It’s going to be strange working downtown again. I’ve been working around Leslie and Highway 7 since I left Alias in June of 1997. It will be a bit of culture shock, I imagine.

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Ugh .. no sleep

Posted by rae in Reid
at 10:33 am on Wednesday, 10 December 2003

I was up until 5:30am working, and then got up at 6:30 to fix something for about half an hour, and then again at 7:30 to finally get up, take a shower, and take Ronnie to school. I went back home after taking Ronnie in since I had left a test running, and also I had heard over the radio etc. that the 401 westbound was clogged because two lanes were closed in the express lanes around Vic Park..

I hope to be out of here (work) soon so I can go home and get some sleeeeee e e e e p. Zzzzzzzzzz z z z z .. … … .. . …

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Erasure party — woo!

Posted by rae in friends
at 12:57 pm on Tuesday, 9 December 2003

We had some people over on Friday night to watch Erasure videos and generally enjoy Erasure music. Michael says he was glad he missed it! Boo hisss.

I will have to give Michael an Erasure CD in his stocking.

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Busy weekend!

Posted by rae in family
at 4:34 pm on Monday, 1 December 2003

Between Luisa’s birthday on Sunday, Ronnie getting sick, and a visit from Carm and Phil on Saturday, it’s been a pretty busy weekend. I had intended to rave on and on about MythTV, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. All I will say for now is that in order to get DMA working with my Serial-ATA in Linux, I have downloaded and compiled a 2.6-test11 kernel. Without DMA, MythTV (and the OS in general) is pretty much dog slow.

Tonight Luisa and I are off to see Kill Bill, volume 1. We’re going with Nicola, a friend from enTrac who is now at IBM. I’ll be sure to give you my impressions of the movie afterwards!

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Boxing Day Gaming

iPod/iSight video camera

Instant messaging

Playing Halo tonight..

Woo! New IE/Win exploit

Working at Alias

Ugh .. no sleep

Erasure party — woo!

Busy weekend!