New Addictions

Chain Factor ScreenshotSo part of what helped keep me occupied this weekend (other than my friend Donald’s wedding) was Chain Factor. Compared to DTD, it’s more of a traditional puzzle game, but no less addictive.

My current top score is: 191,449 in Basic mode. Since there’s no groups standings on the Chain Factor site, feel free to leave your high scores in the comments.

My other preoccupation has been Rock Band. You’ve been a Guitar Hero, and through the Karaoke Revolution, but now you can play the drums! Too cool. I’ve always wanted to pick up the drums, but this may be close enough. 🙂

To make matters worse, now that I’m on a “next-gen” console I can order additional content online. I’ve already bought 5 new songs for Rock Band (3 Police songs, My Sharona, and Junk Box Hero) at about $2/song. Bloody leeches. But it is fun, and the ability to pay for only the songs I’m interested in might keep me from buying future expansion packs. I’m not counting on it though.

Buy Nothing Day

For the second year in a row, I decided to avoid the crowds, traffic, and pain of Black Friday in favor of enjoying some time at home. This involves forgoing some “doorbuster” deals used as loss-leaders to get you into crowded stores, but it’s not much of a sacrifice.

I only now realized that there is an official campaign called “Buy Nothing Day“, and an associated campaign called, “Buy Nothing Christmas“. I’m totally on board (those who know my situation well, will realize that this isn’t much of a contest).

So this year I’m done. No Christmas presents. No tree. No decorations. Just a little peace and good will towards all.

Addicted

Desktop Tower DefenseWhatever you do don’t play Desktop Tower Defense. I’m totally addicted. If I don’t graduate next year, I’m betting this is the reason.

If against my advice you decide to play anyway, post your scores to the “cs.umd.edu” group. That way I’ll know I’m not alone in my addiction.

Some scores:
Finished the Easy levels
Finished the Normal levels: 5623 points

Update:
Finished the Hard levels: 6828 points

Maybe now I can stop playing…

Late Nite Catechism

the SisterI had the great pleasure of seeing a production of Late Nite Cathechism at the Olney Theatre tonight. The one woman show casts the audience as the students in a “Sunday School” class on Catholic belief. Covering everything from chewing gum in class (don’t) to the ramifications of Vatican II (the Church will never be the same), the show is uproariously funny and irreverent.

For those who are concerned that you have to be a practicing (or lapsed) Catholic to enjoy the show, rest assured that our party ran the spectrum of belief, and everyone had a great time! If you have the opportunity, do not miss this show.

A word of warning though, no one is safe, and you had better be on your best behavior.

Comment Spam

The photoblog is being hit with a massive storm of comment spam. Most is being filtered by Akismet, but quite a few messages have gotten into the moderation queue this weekend. What’s odd about this is that I have comments “turned off” for old articles (and everything in the photoblog is old.

Even weirder is that this blog isn’t being hit as hard, even though it’s far more frequently updated.

I’ve set the photoblog to require registration and login to post comments for the time being. I’m looking for more good tools, any advice is appreciated.

MythTV vs. TiVo

I’m hooked on TiVo. If you’ve never used one, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, the company’s insistence on charging monthly for TV schedule information, means that I turned to other sources when I got an HDTV and wanted TiVo-like features.

Specifically I turned to MythTV (or MythTVHD if you prefer). Being a bit of a do-it-yourself geek, it made total sense. I have plenty of experience with Linux and open-source software. After buying the appropriate hardware, I put together the internals of a MythTV setup. It took some tweaking, but I got the entire system working with over-the-air HD recording last March. I had intended to build a custom case and wireless remote control setup over the summer, but then two things happened.

Zap2It labs cancelled free schedule service for hobbyists (including MythTV users). While I’m sure they had good reasons, but I decided to wait and see what was going to happen with schedule service for MythTV. Then a couple of weeks ago TiVo offered to sell me a brand new TiVoHD unit, and transfer the lifetime service from my old (standard-def) TiVo for a total cost of $498. I pretty much jumped on the offer.

So after 6 months with MythTV, I’m now using a brand spanking new TivoHD box. How do they compare?

    MythTV:

  • supports playback of DVDs
  • can rip DVDs to the hard drive
  • unencrypted HD signals only
  • can detect and skip commercials
  • works with whatever size hard drive you install
  • scheduling now costs only $2/month

    TiVoHD:

  • better user interface
  • two tuners built-in
  • supports encrypted HD via 2 cablecard slots
  • can fast-forward through commericals
  • can hack it to work with any hard drive
  • scheduling costs $5-$13/month
  • it just works

Truthfully, it’s that last bit that’s the clincher. It took me days to get the MythTV setup to where I wanted it, it took me no time at all to setup the TiVo. With lifetime schedule service from TiVo, the benefits of MythTV are minimal.

So I think I’m going to punk out, and dismantle my MythTV box. I suppose I could just turn it back into a gaming rig, but I don’t really need one of those anymore…

Existential Freak-Out

I feel like I have a deep case of depression that’s having a knock-down, drag’em out with a bunch of caffeine–somewhere deep down in my soul.

I’m thinking that this is some sort of reaction to whatever happy-juice they pump into the water in the Magic Kingdom… This sucks.

Crowd Adverse

Sometimes I manage to seem like a completely normal person (stop laughing). But occasionally, I go into full freak-out mode.

Increasingly, large groups of people (or even small but dense groups) cause me enormous amounts of stress. The phenomenon seems to have been getting worse since high school, and I’m probably starting to avoid certain places and events because of it. Most recently Disney World triggered this response. I’m fine if I’m distracted (but that gets harder the larger the crowd), but in general I hate crowds. The noise, the movement (or lack thereof), it all just feels like pressure building up in my head.

It probably why concerts don’t really work for me anymore. It might also explain why I’m avoiding bars and clubs more and more (that and getting old). I wonder if this is just a symptom of getting older in general?