Someone took the time to create a solitaire Scrabble game using just CSS, XHTML and Javascript. The resulting is SSCrabble, and it’s fuckin’ unreal. Good addictive fun for everyone trying to burn those last few minutes of work away.
Archive for January, 2004
The wonders of board games
Friday, January 30th, 2004Remember those things we said they had? Well they didn’t. Ooopise!
Friday, January 30th, 2004For those of you still trying to find ways to justify the war in Iraq, your task has just gotten that much harder. According to this pleasant little article, when it came to juding a nation’s weapons threat our intelligence community truley knew nothing. Pakistan, Libya and North Korea were far greater risks with their weapons development than Iraq was since the end of the Gulf War.
Said the CIA’s former chief weapons inspector, David Kay:
.”The regime was no longer in control. It was like a death spiral.”
Yeah, that sure sounds like the summation of the greatest threat to organized freedom the world has ever known. Some are saying the president was fed bad intel which helped influence his decisions to go to war, but I find that to be total horse shit. Seems to me more like they just turned a blind eye to the things that didn’t backup their planned forceful intervention and blew out of proportion those things that could help their cause. I am personally ashamed that I too fell for the exaggeration of information.
And even if bad intel is the reason the president pushed us into battle, it’s still shame on him for not making sure on his facts before taking the steps. Cursory glances of morning briefing agendas aren’t good enough when the course of history and the lives of your citizens are at stake.
Short-sighted steps into the world of tomorrow
Friday, January 30th, 2004The cosmos are twitching and that’s sending everything here on Earth into full blown flux. It’s a world that heralds the death of exstacy and birth of liberal talk radio. A world where winters are once again cold and snow is brutal (so much for global warming!). A world where Mars is under attack from the Earth and the president is pimpin’ dads plan from 1989 to land humans on the surface.
It’s this last bit of sound bite fodder that I want to address. Personally, I’m all for exploration and I think revisiting the moon and going to Mars are noble goals. NASA has for far too long been spinning its wheels and the private sector is on track to catch up sooner instead of later (see the X-Prize for proof of that), not to mention Europe and China wanting in on the action. Having lofty goals will serve the agency well, will give the youth of the nation something to set their minds to wonder and interest when talking about space instead of just boredom, and will give us a whole host of new compounds, gadgets and doodads that will need to be developed for the missions and will eventually filter down and become intwined in with our everyday lives. The only phenomena I’ve seen throughout history that can spur on technological development at the same feverish rate as lofty goals such as these is war, and I’d much rather have space be the midwife of invention instead of the bullet.
But Bush’s $1 billion extra to the NASA budget is just not going to get us there. It’s the hydrogen car all over again: a token addition to the budget so he can get his positive sound bite, but never to be heard of again. In addition, the rearranging of NASA’s budget is going to come at the cost of things like the Hubble Telescope, which has done far more to promote learning about the creation of the universe then many other programs. Hubble is set to be de-activated by 2010 and this half-assed attempt to curry favor with the public is the last nail in the coffin.
I like the notion, but I’m afraid the execution is going to lack much in its current state. Another case of this administration living far too short-sighted, even with their ultra long term goals. How would I do it better? To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest at the moment, but I do know when I hear something that won’t work and this plan certainly falls into that category.
Siamese scream and the parking lot shuffle: Ponderings and tales of woe abound
Friday, January 30th, 2004I have been feeling f’en ponderous today and figured I should get something about it all down for personal reflection and public consumption purposes. So what’s it all gonna mean to you when push comes to shove? Not a whole hell of a lot I suppose except for a few minutes of your time and infinite patience. Relax, let the musical fluxuations take hold and follow the bouncing train of thought.
Well, start at the top I suppose. The fates certainly conspired against me this morning as I had to try and find parking in not one, not two, but four of the North Jersey Coast’s finest train stations because there was just a severe shortage of it at my usual departure point of Red Bank. I drove from point to point getting more and more bewildered at how utterly over full the parking lots were and wondering at times if I was gonna have to drive all the way into the city or just call out due to transportation problems, both very unappetizing problems.
The rest of the day just went. Little hiccups every now and again and a slight lingering of suspicion were in the air, like some kind of gremlin resting on my shoulder. Bide your time and wait for your shot and then *BAM*, you pull your headphones out and nearly take out the computer in the process. The work itself ads no real pressure to the day; in fact this is one of your better days for actual productivity and clarity of design. Far too often you’ve been feeling the nag of consistency trying to guide your design on your main project as you write your first style guide for it. This nag should be ingrained into your work, but you’ve finally realized that the more you add to the puzzle you’re putting together the more it changes. Like rolling out dough, you have to go back over the whole mass to get all the lumps out and make it all nice and smooth.
The night has proved much more relaxing. Clearing the mind and digging through some artistic memories to find pieces I need to finish some puzzles I’m building for this beast. If there’s only one thing my short tenure at Drumbeat Digital has taught me, it’s management. The wheels are quite nicely oiled in this machine and while I do yearn to have the cowboy days reign again I’m leaving that for my future. Learn all you can for these artists and busnifiles — they are some of the best and brightest. Get healthy in the bank book. Save up for those little trips you want to try and make in the near future.
Eye on the prize Danny Boy!
The ultimate lounger
Friday, January 30th, 2004The comfort of a bean bag chair, but with more form: it’s the Easy Bean chair and oh how I want one! Never mind the fact I don’t have room for it just yet…. ^_^