Nothing and Some More

Hello world... again! Am I Ugly in Grey, or what ??

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Looking for the The Google Font? It is Catull, but found out more about the Google logo by reading the Google Font Page

Fancy reading my Looking for the Spam collection ? It's even getting multilingual

Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux... want to try it ??? Knoppix is really nice. And easy. Download, burn, reboot. Et voila, Linux is running...

If You Want Me to Stay - 19/08/2002

Top 21 PHP programming mistakes (part I) Part II and Part III (via Milov.nl)
One of PHP's greatest strengths happens to be one of its greatest weaknesses as well: PHP is easy to learn. A lot of people are attracted to the language because of this, not realizing that it's a lot tougher to learn how to do it right.
Talks about templates: GOOD! These php templates benchmarks are a good way to decide which package suits you best. Still, my favorite advice is Set the error_reporting level to E_ALL in your php.ini file.
Also via Milov.nl, interviews with individuals within the videogame industry (see also the Dave Arneson interview and the Start of ID)

Chris Crawford: Most people insist on viewing everything through the lens of past experience, so when you do something completely new, they just don't get it.

[...]

h0l: What do you think of the recent move backwards from point and click interfaces to text parsers?
Larry Ahern: I can't spell; I think it's very danjerous.
Johnathan Ackley: Seriously, I think it's a little silly. When you make a modern game, you're not competing with old text games from the 1980's. You're competing with the memory of old text games from the 1980's. People remember all the fun they had banging their head on their computer desk trying to figure out the proper input for the game's two-word parser. But if you play those games now, you enjoy the nostalgia factor for the first ten minutes and then you realize why interfaces have evolved in the way they have.

[...]

h0l: What was/is the attraction for you in making games?
Marc Laidlaw: I've been aching to do something pioneering. Storytelling is such an ancient form that it's rather hard to break new ground in terms of content-but presentation is a different matter. Our means of relaying stories keeps changing over the ages-from oral traditions to written glyphs and characters, to films and now...computer games. I think we are now passing into something like the "silent movie" era of computer game storytelling. The opportunity for making classics is very exciting. Twenty-five years ago I was writing about and trying to envision forms of 3D entertainment in my earliest science fiction stories; now I'm actually working in a field that I liked to dream about before it existed.

A few more gamelinks: Erasmatron (Mac Only) is an authoring tool to create interactive electronic storyworlds, which is patented (an overview and a review)
ScummVM, a SCUMM clone project, is quite usable ( and the LucasArts lawyers think so too!). Now all is needed is writers+artists to make new games.
Speaking of storytelling, 'Nuff Said by Marvel was quite impressive: a comics without any word in it. And, since you get the the script just after the story, I really enjoyed to see if I got all the graphical information (not everytime).
Chris Crawford: "The laws of dramatics are very different from the laws of the real world. In the real world, people have to go to the bathroom. In the dramatic world, that never happens." The Pro, a one-time comics from Image, is a PCless view of superheroes (include swearing, blowjob, joke number 4 from the Superman Sex Life and the obvious 9/11 reference).
More Patent trouble: Pixar patent and other CG things. Like the end of BMRT
And now, for the french quart d'heure, first, Slap her, she's French, a movie trailer (QuickTime).
Then Ira Einhorn's long, strange trip
After two decades on the run from a horrific murder, the counterculture icon is home and headed for trial. But in France, he's still a human rights hero.
And What's It Like In Your Neck Of The Woods ? Note to Hendrik Levsen: you're wrong, mate, some do.
Mind Garten :: Memoirs of a Mad Scientist (in Korea),experience of living in South Korea
Who is Luther Blissett? I'm sure he could become friend with Alan Smithee (via comp.lang.python)
Douglas Coupland's All families are psychotic is out in paperback. I liked it. On the backcover it reads: "This book will make you want to phone your own psychotic family and tell them how much you love them." (from a Daily Telegraph review. The end of the quote is "but Coupland is the sort of writer who suspects that you won't.")
She stood up for a stretch. Around her, she saw a few Bryanish loser types furtively glued to their screens, doubtlessly ferreting out porn. Some of them bothered to hide their screens as she neared them; others couldn't care less. Janet saw images that to her were more gynecological than pornographic; she could only wonder how it was that men craved these identical, repetitive snapshots, as though one day these men were going to hit upon the ultimate shot that whould render all the others unnecessary. Some years back, when she'd first begun tromping about the Internet, she'd been flustered at how even the most innocent of words placed into a search engine triggered an immediate cascade of filth. Apparently there existed no unsexed word in the language.
An old (2000) TechnetCast on The Technology Behind Google (via A Frog in the Valley) At one point, Jim Reese said that Zeitgeist results are filtered: sex and mp3 are first (almost) all the time (see, I didn't spoil the joke!)
Label Bleu was founded in may 1986.
As a subsidiary company of the Amiens Maison de la Culture, label Bleu produces numerous albums, all remakably appreciated by the press and the international public. Privileging a family spirir and produ of its independence, our house keeps listeing to the greatest music masters passionately accompanying the most crazy ideas without forgetting to leave its door open to all thous wishing to share our ambitions.
MicroCameras: the Blink vs L'Espion
L'espion got a timer and works with Mac (Samples photos)
But the Blink (Sample photos) can take bigger pictures and has more memory. It does not work with Mac nor Linux (Linux drivers are in the work, but there are still some work to do) - A review
Perfect tools for a photolog!
If You Want Me to Stay - Sly & the Family Stone
If you want me to stay
I'll be around today
To be available for you to see
I'm about to go
And then you'll know
For me to stay here I've got to be me
You'll never be in doubt
That's what it's all about
You can't take me for granted and smile
Count the days I'm gone
Forget reaching me by phone
Because I promise I'll be gone for a while
more
Originally published as jemisa.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$429
19 août 2002