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Tag Archives: covid
When not to Excel
Back in about 1993, I was doing the bookkeeping for a big project being undertaken by my local church. Donations were flooding in, and we needed to keep track of everything, send out receipts, forms and letters of thanks, and note whether each donation was eligible for the UK tax relief known as 'Gift Aid'.
I was keeping track of this using on a PC running the now long-gone Microsoft Works, which, for those less familiar with last-millennium computing, was a software suite incorporating basic and much cheaper versions of the things you found in Microsoft Office: a word-processor, database, and spreadsheet. If your needs were simple, it worked rather well.
Anyway, at one point I was printing out a list of recent donations on my dot-matrix printer, and I noticed what appeared to be some data corruption. In the midst of the sea of donors' names, there were a couple of dates being printed out. Was this a software bug, or was my database file corrupt? I started investigating, while wondering just how much data I'd entered since my last backup and whether I could recreate it…
In the end, the answer was simple, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I tried recreating the entry for one of donors and the same thing happened again, at which point I dug a bit deeper and discovered a 'feature' of the app. The lady's first name was 'June', and, though it displayed just fine on the data-entry screen, behind the scenes, it had been turned into 1/6/93! I skimmed quickly through the congregation to find the other problematic record, and found it was for a donation from a lady named 'May'!
When I came back to doing some scientific computing in academia a few years ago, I was surprised and slightly worried to see several of my colleagues processing their data with Excel. It's a wonderful program and very appealing, because of the ease of viewing, checking and plotting graphs of your results, but it comes with lots of problems of its own and shouldn't be used as a substitute for a proper database (if you're a church accountant), or for something like Jupyter Notebooks, if you're a scientific researcher, unless you're exceedingly careful. Last year, more than a quarter of a century after my issues with May and June, 27 human genes were actually renamed because of the number of errors caused in scientific papers by the use of Excel by researchers. The genes' previous names were things like 'SEPT1'.
All of this came to mind when reading Tim Harford's enjoyable piece in yesterday's FT, The Tyranny of Spreadsheets. Harford follows the origins of spreadsheets, double-entry bookkeeping and other ways of keeping track of things, up to the famous case last year where 16,000 people weren't promptly told they had positive Covid test results, because somebody had used Excel's old XLS file format, which can only store about 64,000 rows of information, instead of the newer XLSX. That's not really a problem; the problem is that Excel doesn't give you adequate warning when it's discarding data, or changing it in an attempt to be helpful. And the results can be serious.
To quote the article:
Two economists, Thiemo Fetzer and Thomas Graeber … decided that no catastrophe should be allowed to occur without trying to learn some lessons. They combed through the evidence from Public Health England's mishap. And by comparing the experiences of different regions, they concluded that the error had led to 125,000 additional infections.
Fetzer and Graeber have calculated a conservative estimate of the number of people who died, unknown victims of the spreadsheet error. They think the death toll is at least 1,500 people.
Think about that, as you click 'Save As…' and pick your data format.
(Thanks to my sister-in-law Lindsey for the link to the Harford article, which also traces some of the origins of spreadsheets from the 14th century; that's before even I was using them!)
The problem of improved road safety Now here's a downside to self-driving cars that I had...
[untitled] Bob Metcalfe's law states that the overall usefulness of a...
OpenOffice 2.0 preview released This Inquirer article lists some of the good things coming...
[untitled] Thoughts after reading a good article at The Register about...
Covid: Destiny and Density?
It always seemed probable to me that Covid infection rates would be closely related to population density. When you walk down the street, how many people do you pass? Are you in a house surrounded by fields or in a tall vertical apartment block where you share an entrance and staircase with many other households? How big are the schools? And so on.
At a country level, though, this is difficult to test. I plotted the very latest total number of Covid-related deaths per million population against the population density per sq. km. for some countries similar to my own (UK), and it didn't show a clear correlation.
Sources: Statista and Wikipedia.
(As usual, whatever they're doing in the Netherlands is good. Why do the Netherlands keep doing that with everything? Please stop. It's very annoying to the rest of us.)
Depending on your political persuasions, or whether you're a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of person, you could interpret this in various ways!
My own view (at present), for what it's worth, is that our government and senior civil servants didn't put enough emphasis on lockdowns in the early months, and that cost us a lot. But they did put much more energy and resources than most other countries into securing vaccines on a huge scale, very early, and we're now reaping the benefits. So depending on the time period you examine over the last year, the picture relative to other countries can look very different. (The sadly-missed Hans Rosling would have had some nice animations, no doubt!)
At present, if you take the long view of total Covid deaths per capita, we're a bit higher than the average for similar countries, but our rate of new deaths is lower than almost anyone's, so we will probably look better over time. So it could have been much better, and it also could have been much worse.
Anyway, back to population density. The problem is that density is far from evenly distributed. If I plot England on the map, as distinct from the UK as a whole, it appears in a very different place: the top-right:
England is up there with the most-afflicted other countries from my list — Italy and Belgium — but it does have a notably higher population density than any of them.
Anyway, the results of my quick graphs are that I was probably wrong: it's not clear that population density is a useful metric, at least when done at this scale.
What we really need, if we want to compare the situation in different countries, I think, is statistics about both Covid cases and population density across Europe on a 20km grid. Then we could compare them more usefully, and one day, perhaps, we'll know whether I'm wrong in the details too, or only on the larger scale!
More good analysis tools from the FT I've talked before about some of the nice statistics the...
Mid-life Covid crisis? I'm a middle-aged computer geek, but my iPhone is too...
Spare a thought for the politicians I am constantly bemused by the number of naïve people...
Inverse Covid-19 protection? For the last two or three years, I've been getting...
Introducing the Windowizer
Introducing…. the book! I found a link to this lovely video clip on...
Office Meeting 2.0.1
In my post yesterday, I forgot to mention the final twist to my open-air Teams meeting, which made it even more surreal.
Just after pressing the 'Leave meeting' button on the app, I walked through our village churchyard and fell into conversation with a gravedigger. No, really. He was filling in a hole, and, leaning on his spade, told me that the heavy clay around here was nothing compared that that around Lavenham. It was a strangely Shakespearian encounter; I half-expected him to bend down, pick up a skull and ask if I recognised it.
After a brief but cheery discussion, I bade him good day and departed, thinking that I should probably have tossed him half a crown for good luck, or something.
Definitely not my typical office meeting, I thought to myself, and Tilly and I walked home debating the whims of Lady Fortune in iambic pentameter.
Office Meeting 2.0 Every Wednesday afternoon during term, we have a departmental meeting...
World meeting planner Here's a site which does a simple job but does...
Turn your iPod into an office? Rui Carmo says his iPod Shuffle has been my faithful...
In which we (don't quite) serve… Some people have been asking how my jury service (which...
Office Meeting 2.0
Every Wednesday afternoon during term, we have a departmental meeting for the senior staff, which used to take place in an efficient but not-very-inspiring and rather windowless room in the Lab. There are typically 50-100 attendees, and so, when it moved into the virtual world, we don't in general use video; most people only turn on their cameras when they're talking.
Well, this week, a rather wonderful thought occurred to me.
Since this meeting is essentially an audio-only experience, I realised I didn't need to postpone my dog-walk until after it had finished. Why not do them at the same time? Especially since I was more likely to be in the role of audience than presenter for the duration of this one. Much more efficient.
So I fired up Microsoft Teams on my phone, put it in my jacket breast pocket where I knew the speaker would be clearly audible (since that's how I normally listen to podcasts and audiobooks), and headed out.
Now, it's rare for me to say anything good about Teams — actually, it's rare for anyone to say anything good about Teams, as far as I can see — but on this occasion it performed beautifully, the audio quality was excellent and the video, when people did turn on their cameras, was excellent too, albeit slightly blurred by the raindrops.
At the end of the meeting, as people were saying goodbye, I turned on my camera to reveal that I was in fact wrapped up and squelching through the mud in pursuit of my spaniel, something nobody had been aware of up to that point. And for me, it had been a thoroughly enjoyable meeting. Just imagine what it would be like in sunshine!
Anyway, strongly recommended, if you have the option. Combine your meetings with your daily exercise. Go and watch the rabbits. I promise you it'll be a more pleasant experience than sitting in your average office meeting room.
And remember, there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.
iChat and USB cameras Apple's iChat AV allows you to make video calls. I...
Experimenting with a Sony ZV-1 while walking around Barrington I've been experimenting with a Sony ZV-1. This is a...
No, sorry, you can't Zoom in that far
Having been a big fan of Zoom and extolled its virtues in the past, I thought it only fair to share a current criticism. (I'm talking about the videoconferencing app, of course. I'm an even bigger fan of the other Zoom and have relied on their products for years… definitely recommended!)
Anyway, back to video calls. I was playing recently with virtual cameras in OBS so I could do fun things like adding lower-thirds titles to my video stream…
or blending multiple video streams into one….
and my friend Nicholas commented that it was very clever, but any text was not actually that readable. At which point we delved into the Preferences > Statistics menu on the Zoom app and discovered that the video resolution was only 640×360; definitely lower than it used to be.
Now, this is perfectly fine for having a conversation with somebody, so for the vast majority of Zoom use, it's not an issue. And if you turn on screen-sharing, your screen image is sent at a much higher resolution, so that's fine too.
But it is an issue for some of my colleagues who like using pointing cameras at whiteboards or documents while giving remote lectures, or even if you're just trying to hold something up to your camera for the person at the other end to read.
If you search online, you can find various references to 'Enabling HD', or to different resolutions being possible for Business or Education accounts, but as far as I can gather, these are all currently disabled or have no effect. I think Zoom may be restricting things to manage the load on their servers, which makes me wonder how much actually goes through their servers? At least for a 2-person call, like the one Nicholas and I were in, it really ought to be peer-to-peer. (Like Skype used to be in the early days before Microsoft bought and ruined it.) Still, to be fair, even the otherwise-abominable Teams does do a much better job at the moment when it comes to resolution.
Well, this may resolve itself in Zoom, but bizarrely, in the meantime, if you care about resolution of your camera more than you care about framerate or latency, the solution is probably to show it on your local display in high resolution, and then share your screen.
Quentin's Zoom Webinar Checklist What are Zoom Webinars? Most of us are pretty familiar...
FTP is so 20th-century I'd been having some troubles uploading this site recently –...
One man and his vlog Yesterday I realised I was looking particularly suave and debonair,...


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*T&C apply. Apps & content shown are for representation purpose only and are not necessarily embedded in our product, although it may be downloaded/side-loaded from the app store (if made available by the respective app/content owners) and played on our Product. CloudWalker does not guarantee flawless working of any third-party app on its product and some apps may or may not work on certain devices depending on the app producers desire. All product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks featured or referred to within our product are the property of their respective trademark holders. These trademark holders are not affiliated with Cloudwalker, our products, or our website. They do not sponsor or endorse our Products. Android is a trademark of Google LLC. Due to continuous R&D, features & technical specifications mentioned may vary time to time, without prior notice. Product images are for representation purpose only and may differ from the actual product. Smart TV requires a recommended speed of minimum 2 MBPS to stream any content or apps.


Sci-fi action sequel starring Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldbum and Bill Pullman.
Two decades after the alien attack on planet Earth, the world has pooled together to form Earth Space Defence (ESD), a global organisation designed to protect the planet from any further attacks.
With ESD personnel stationed on Earth, the Moon and Mars, they have spent the last 20 years developing technology that was salvaged from the previous attack.
Before their defeat, however, the aliens sent a distress signal back to their planet asking for assistance in the form of a more powerful army.
When the aliens receive the message they prepare for attack, and this time they are taking no chances.
Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Ent.


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Restored "Spartacus" ranks among finest achievements in Blu-ray history
"SPARTACUS: RESTORED EDITION"
Blu-ray widescreen and HD Digital download,1960, PG-13 for battle sequences and sensuality
Best extra: a new interview (in HD) with the great Kirk Douglas
HE'LL BE 99 in December and a stroke interferes with his speech, but when Kirk Douglas looks in the camera and says, "I am Spartacus," who's going to argue?
A new interview with the acting legend is one of the two big bonuses on this sweeping multi-Oscar winner in which he gave the performance of his career -- as the Thracian gladiator who led an army of slaves against the Romans in the Third Servile War.
In a too-short 10 minutes, he talks about working again with director Stanley Kubrick (they'd made "Paths of Glory" in 1957), the perks of being executive producer (he and Kubrick disagreed on a key scene; guess who won) and, especially, about getting Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay.
A victim of Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, Trumbo ("The Brave One," "Roman Holiday") spent 11 months in prison and, unable to get work, was living in Mexico. Douglas had him use a pseudonym, but his involvement soon became an "open secret." As the film's release neared, "I made the decision to give him back his name. The blacklist was broken," says Douglas, the fire still in his eyes.
Trumbo's attachment, he adds, also brought co-stars Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and Oscar-winner Peter Ustinov on board.
"it's one of my favorite roles," Douglas says. "Every actor is grateful if he has made a picture that endures."
"Spartacus" endures, all right (it's No. 81 on the AFI's list of the 100 Greatest American Films) and, with a newly restored print -- that's the other big bonus -- its run isn't about to end anytime soon.
In a new feature, film preservationist Peter Schade explains that "Spartacus" was shot in Technirama, a format in which the image was exposed horizontally at twice the size as traditional 35 mm. Working with original film elements that had been considered unusable, it was scanned in groundbreaking 6K resolution, then processed in 4K. Scenes were repaired, cleaned up and color-corrected.
Amazing, stunning, incredible. Pick one. The color is (see beginning of paragraph) and the detail is (ditto), from the finest thread and sheen of sweat to the pitched battle sequences. A nice, true grain ties everything together. You can see why Russell Metty won the Oscar for his cinematography and why the film struck gold for art/set decoration and costume design.
"The film hasn't looked good since it was first screened,' Schade says. "And i daresay it probably looks better."
No argument here. Plus, there's more to see: the new print includes 12 additional minutes.
The audio -- a new 7.1 lossless soundtrack -- keeps pace, too. With a sonic field that is as wide as it is deep, it's completely immersive, with every element meshing perfectly. The nuances of Alex North's Oscar-nominated score are enveloping.
Other extras include deleted scenes, archival interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and vintage newsreels, leading one reviewer to conclude that "Spartacus" is only a more thorough package of supplements away from being included among the finest achievements since the Blu-ray format's been around.
You could make a solid case, though, that it's place has been secured.
"I made 90 movies, and everyone can't remember 10 of them," Douglas says at the beginning of his interview. "I think I can remember 10. But the one everyone can remember is 'Spartacus.' "
Who's going to argue?
- Craig Shapiro

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I'm not just talking about this particular question but this type of question takes me more than 15 mins to understand what's happening. Would that be wise to skip it in the real test but also practicing?
If it comes to that, yes. But in the meantime, I'd love to see you adopt the structural reading discussed here, precisely so that you can do this question in 1 minute, not 15.
What about C? C seems attractive .
Yeah, but the problem is that we're not told in the passage how nucleomorphs are formed; certainly some organisms are formed through endosymbiosis, but what's true of some organisms isn't necessarily true of nucleomorphs.
One part of my issue is that nucleomorphs don't seem to be organisms.
However, even if they were, we couldn't be certain that they belong in the group of organisms that originate from endosymbiosis.


2000 Upper Deck Orioles card autographed in blue marker by former star Harold Baines, a Maryland native who spent the latter part of his stellar career in Baltimore. With certificate of authenticity from AutographsForSale.com. ONLY ONE AVAILABLE FOR SALE.


We believe a great game graphics are more advanced than the previous data, we make our site more active. We declared war against the zombies dominant in an area that looks like a farm. Weapons given to us and try to survive until the time used in the best way. Thus, the next eligible to take the more challenging sections. Good games.


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Q: How to only display the time in UIDatePicker? I need to change the code so that we will only display the time in UIDatePicker.
func textFieldDidBeginEditing(textField: UITextField) {
    if textField == TextfieldDataSelection {
        let datePicker = UIDatePicker ()
        textField.inputView = datePicker
        datePicker.addTarget(self, action: "datePickerChanged:", forControlEvents: .ValueChanged)
        }
    if textField == TextfieldDeadline {
        let datePicker = UIDatePicker ()
        textField.inputView = datePicker
        datePicker.addTarget(self, action: "date1PickerChanged:", forControlEvents: .ValueChanged)
    }
    }
func datePickerChanged(sender:UIDatePicker) {
    let formatter = NSDateFormatter()
    formatter.dateStyle = .MediumStyle
    TextfieldDataSelection.text = formatter.stringFromDate(sender.date)
}
func date1PickerChanged(sender:UIDatePicker) {
    let formatter = NSDateFormatter()
    formatter.dateFormat = "MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm a"
    TextfieldDeadline.text = formatter.stringFromDate(sender.date)

A: You need to set datePickerMode property of UIDatePicker to Time
var datePicker = UIDatePicker()
datePicker.datePickerMode = .Time

A: Set
datePicker.datePickerMode = UIDatePickerMode.Time

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Journey from the streets of Paris to the heart of a superb exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, whose extensive collection of Degas' works is the most representative in Britain. With exclusive access to view rare and diverse works, this film tells a fascinating story of Degas' pursuit for perfection through both experimentation with new techniques and lessons learned from studying past masters. It uses written accounts by friends and commentators, and the narration of letters written by Degas himself, to reveal a complex truth behind one of the most influential French artists of the late 19th century.


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Catholic Priest Arinze Madu abducted in Nigeria, released after church pays ransom
On October 28, Father Arinze Madu, was abducted by gunmen while leaving the Queen of Apostles Seminary where he is the vice rector. The abduction of Father Madu is just one of many that have taken place across Nigeria involving clergy. These types of abductions often target the teachers as they have congregations who can help raise money for ransoms. Thankfully, it appears that Father Madu's family and church were able to raise the funds to ransom back the priest as he was released just two days later.
Rev. Fr. Arinze Madu
Though Father Madu was freed without harm, not all of the clergy who have been taken are this lucky. Over the past year, several other pastors and priests have also been taken in Enugu State. Father Paul Offu was shot just two months prior to this abduction, and did not survive. Father Clement Ugwu was also abducted and killed earlier in March of this year.
The trend has also been increasing across Nigeria, not just in Enugu. Though these attacks have an element of criminality to them, they are persecution, as these individuals are more likely to be Christian when targeted. Most of the time, ransom demands are met, and the abductee is released, however, there are also cases when they do not survive. So far, the Nigerian government has failed to stop or even slow down the occurrences of these attacks. This has allowed the kidnapping of Christian leaders to become a sort of business in Nigeria. It will not stop until the government decides to punish those committing these crimes and protect those who are targeted. Please pray for the Christian leaders in Nigeria who have suffered or are likely to suffer these types of attacks.
photo/Etereuti
AfricaCatholicCatholic ChurchCatholicsislamic StateKidnapkidnappingMuslim extremistsMuslims attack ChristiansNigeriareligionReligion Newsterrorist
Catholic Priest Arinze Madu abducted in Nigeria, released after church pays ransom | The Global Dispatch | Houston News says:


Discussion in 'Transformers Toy Discussion' started by Knightdramon, Mar 6, 2008.
Not long ago I found a picture of the movie Ironhide toy, all stickered up, spotting a BT\Alt Swindle head and passing as a very believable Classics Trailbreaker.
With some spare time I decided I'd try my luck with a similiar custom. I snapped the head off my spare BT Swindle and tried to take Movie Ironhide apart to see how things fit. All went well and after detaching many parts from Ironhide I was able to take the head off...only to find out it wasn't on a ball joint. I thought that the ball joint was so snug it wasn't possible to move the head up or down, but was there.
And then there I was, spending a good hour trying to find ANY part from any Gundam model kit I had, assembled or not, to pass as a ball joint in order to connect Swindle's head to Ironhide's body. Needless to say, I did not succeed. No revoltech joints could connect that I had and the closest I got was with a combination of parts from MG Strike Freedom that could fit well, provide swivel articulation but could not secure Swindle's head.
Try asking in the kitbash forum they will know.
It depends on how Swindle's ballpoint is connected. I managed to do a simple swap with Classics Magnus and Alt Prime, Magnus of course not having a balljoint.
Basically, see how Swindle's neckpost is connected to the rest of the chest. On Prime, the post is connected with a pin. If Swindle's neck is the same, just heat the pin and pop the neck out. If the neckpost and chest are all one piece, cut the post at the base and drill a hole from the bottom maybe. . . half way up the post?
From there, you just unscrew Ironhide's head from his neckblock and screw in Swindle's post.
Yup, that's the one I remember seeing.
He's very unluckyly to be made.
It can be done, but you need to post it in the General Discussion forum in the Radicons section. I can't move this there, its basically a different site, so you'll just have to post a new thread about it there. I'm closing this one.


There's not only one Type of Sensitive Skin.
Hisiris differentiated treatments for sensitive skin.
Depending on the situation that determined it, sensitive skin requires specific interventions with different treatment by category and dedicated protocols.
The value of the new HISIRIS range is that it has identified three categories of sensitive skin, plus 1 shock treatment, defining for each of them a specific approach.
HISIRIS combines together Dermatological Culture and Cosmetic Research, to offer solutions that were previously unimaginable.
Sensitive skin is a complex condition that unites different manifestations of discomfort and malaise, accompanied by visible signs such as tingling, warmth, redness, roughness and dryness. Recent studies have found that episodes related to skin sensitivity have drastically increased in recent years, but the result is not always up to expectations: there is no specific protocol to treat different types of skin sensitivity, until this moment.
Hisiris is a real and proper revolution in the treatment of sensitive skin. Histomer developed with Hisiris the first professional specialized line for the differential treatment of sensitive skin, to be done at selected Histomer beauty salons. Thanks to the professionalism of qualified beauticians and the use of specialized products, we guarantee the customer great results!
Download the new HISIRIS manual from here.


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Castellnou de Bassella – miejscowość w Hiszpanii, w Katalonii, w prowincji Lleida, w comarce Alt Urgell, w gminie Bassella.

Według danych INE w 2020 roku liczyła 4 mieszkańców – 3 mężczyzn i 1 kobietę.

Liczba ludności w latach 1996–2020

Przypisy

Linki zewnętrzne

Alt Urgell
Miejscowości w Katalonii

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: Unable to play Vimeo or Dailymotion video in Android Webview I am unable to play Vimeo or DailyMotion Video in android webview.I still get thumbnail and play button for video.But when I click on play button nothing happens and video does not play.However,I am able to play Youtube videos perfectly.Does Vimeo or Dailymotion videos require Adobe Flash Player plugin?I have also implemented WebChromeClient.
I am testing on Android 4.1 device.
Thanks

A: Finally the videos are working fine using the below code implemented:
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < 8) {
            contetView.getSettings().setPluginsEnabled(true);
        } else {
            contetView.getSettings().setPluginState(PluginState.ON);
        }


The Port of Degrad des Cannes lies on the north banks of the River Mahury, about 12 kilometers southeast of the Port of Cayenne and about five kilometers from the river's mouth on the Atlantic Ocean in French Guiana.
The Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de la Guyane operates and manages the Port of Degrad des Cannes. The country's main port, the Port of Degrad des Cannes was built in 1974. This international port covers 12 hectares.
The Port of Degrad des Cannes contains a container terminal with three berthing stations and ten hectares of quay levels for handling containers. The port also includes a carrier station, an oil station, a station for oil tankers, a hold for coastal traffic, and a marina for pleasure craft.
All ocean-going traffic must use the Port of Degrad des Cannes, so it handles 90% of all vessel traffic in French Guiana. The port offers three quays, two of which are undergoing renovations. A new quay for passengers is under construction.
The Port of Degrad des Cannes does not yet offer heavy cargo-handling equipment, so ships must load and unload using their own cranes and tackle. A restaurant is near the port facilities, but shopping opportunities are found in nearby downtown Cayenne.
In 2007, the Port of Degrad des Cannes handled about 700 thousand tons of cargo, including over 39 thousand TEUs of containerized cargo.


After another epic season of racing, MCN's sports team of Michael Guy (Sports Editor), Simon Patterson (MotoGP Reporter) and Oli Rushby (Superbike Reporter) sat down to discuss who impressed them the most in each race series we cover to establish MCN's top five riders in each category.
And after a hectic year of World Superbikes, it wasn't an easy call to decide who deserved what spot in our top five riders of the year in the class. Here's what we think - but feel free to disagree with us in the comments!
2018 proved to be a tough season for 2013 World Superbike champion Tom Sykes. Battling personal issues at home, the Kawasaki Racing Team rider admitted his mind was often elsewhere other than racing and the growing rift between himself and Jonathan Rea's side of the garage at KRT made things even more difficult for the Yorkshireman.
Finishing fourth in the championship with his lowest points haul since 2011, there wasn't much to celebrate for Sykes but the Kawasaki star was able to remind the world of his brilliance on a number of occasions.
His sole victory of the 2018 campaign came in true dominant style at Assen, where he wiped the floor with his opposition in a style reminiscent of the rider who so gallantly fought for the world championship in previous years.
While it was a poor year for his win tally, Sykes did however make it into the history books with his pole position at Donington Park bettering Troy Corser's all-time pole record. Adding a further three poles before the end of the season, Sykes now sits five clear of Corser and a whopping 32 poles clear of the next current World Superbike racer in the all-time standings, Jonathan Rea who has 16 poles to his name.
Sykes will be hoping for a reboot in 2019 as he joins the new, official BMW Motorrad World Superbike effort, leaving Kawasaki after a nine year tenure.
WSB: What next for Tom Sykes?


The Monks Retreat has hundreds of pubs across the United Kingdom offering food menus (all day food and breakfast), hot beverages, ales and other soft drinks. More than that, the company's pubs have free access to the internet so you can eat and drink while surfing the internet. The Monks Retreat has also a recycling centre.
The Monks Retreat was established in 1979 and is a pub chain with branches throughout the United Kingdom. The Monks Retreat focuses on the customer and strives to provide high quality customer services and a great customer experience in the pub. Visit your local pub in Reading at 163 Friar Street, RG1 1HE and you can choose from a large variety of food and drinks.
Be the first to write a review for The Monks' Retreat Pub!


Margaret Cunneen SC was a Crown Prosecutor and Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor for many years and, before that, in the 1980's, was an Industrial Officer at the Public Service Board of NSW. Earlier in her career she held positions in the Attorney General's Ministerial Office and in the Parliamentary Counsel's Office of NSW.
Margaret has extensive experience in all aspects of criminal law, having appeared in hundreds of criminal trials and appeals over 30 years.
Margaret was the Commissioner of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into the investigation of child sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, and handed her Report to the Governor on 30 May 2014.


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A blog on technology and web culture
See my: @guy on Twitter guymal on Facebook Me on Google+ RSS Feed
Posted by Guy
Get ready for a walk down memory lane...
Neave games let you play 9 classic video games like Pacman, Frogger, Tetris, and even an online version of Simon.
Although these aren't the original versions of the games they are very similar to what we used to play.
And the best part: you don't even need any quarters :)
Fax Toy
I was sure that fax machines are pretty much gone from this world (or at least I would like to hope so) but Fax Toy proves me wrong.
The front page of Fax Toy displays about 50 images of pages that people have faxed them. You can fax something interesting to 1-510-545-0990 (your boss will never notice... maybe) and it should appear there within a couple of minutes.
Interesting idea...
This one is really cool:
You ever hear a song and don't know what song it is?
Tunatic is a small (free) program that you install on your computer (PC and Mac) that can listen to a song and identify what song it is.
Tunatic has a very simple interface and all you need to use it is a microphone and an Internet connection. Tunatic hears some music and quickly identifies what song it is.
Let me let you in a little secret: you know how in the movies you see people jumping through a glass window or breaking a glass bottle on somebody's head? Well it turns out that those wusses in Hollywood don't use real glass!
(I also have a feeling that the blood isn't real too but I don't have any proof of that yet...)
This site explains how to make sugar glass that you too can smash on your loved ones (without going to jail afterwards).
If you decide to make your own sugar glass let me know how it comes out...(just don't try to eat it).
BTW: there are a few other useful resources on independent movie making over at stormforcepictures.com.
This site takes you through the changes that are made to a girl on a magazine cover.
The demo shows you different parts of the girl's photo, how they looked originally, how they look on the final magazine cover, and why they changed them.
The number of changes and their quality is quite amazing.
Nature sucks, ah?
Moo.fx
Moo.fx is a tiny JavaScript library that weighs only 3KB of code (sorry for totally geeking out here :).
The guy who wrote it describes it as "easy to use, fast, cross-browser, standards compliant, that provides controls to modify height, width and opacity".
Check out the demos page and the tutorial on "how to create a custom effect".
1984: Introducing the Mac
Check out this video from 1984 of Steve Jobs introducing the Mac.
Unreal ah?
Homes Of The Billionaires
Forbes has an article about the homes of the billionaires.
The most interesting are the homes of multi-billionaires like Warren Buffett who is worth $44 billion but for nearly 50 years he's been living in the same Omaha house he bought for $31,500.
Same for Ingvar Kamprad, founder and former chief executive of home furnishings giant IKEA, who drives a second-hand Volvo!
But don't worry, as expected, you can also see the "modest" houses of people like Bill Gates (who's house is worth $140 million, and this year's local tax bill came to $1.1 million), Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Steven Spielberg.
Eat your heart out...
I ran across another cool online game that I just had to share with you guys: Zuma is the name and shooting balls out of the frog's mouth is the game.
In this game you shoot colored balls at a winding line of balls. Once you line up 3 balls of the same color they disappear (surprising ah?) and the line shortens.
You need to clear up all the balls before they reach golden skull at the end of the line in order to advance to the next level.
Give it a whirl but I gotta warn you that it's pretty addictive so make some time in your calendar for this one...
How to Ship Anything
Joel Spolsky wrote up an[other] great article on his blog.
This time it's about how to ship anything.
The whole thing started when the guys at Fog Creek needed to ship a few thousand copies of their new movie "Aardvark'D: 12 Weeks With Geeks" (excellent flick by the way) and they discovered that packing and shipping so many DVDs is much harder than they had expected (since there are many small manual tasks in order to get the package on its way).
So what does a geek like Joel do when he runs into a manual process that is long and frustrating? He builds a system to do it better, of course (and names it FogShip) .
His article describes how he setup FogShip and the different components that it contains.
This thing really makes me wish that I had lots of things to ship just so I would have an excuse to set one of these babies up (I'm sure the Fog Creekers really love shipping things now).
Falldown
Time for another online game!
Falldown is a very simple game where you control a ball that is constantly falling and you need to move it so that it doesn't hit obstacles in its way and can continue falling.
Very simple concept but fun nonetheless.
I actually played Falldown one time and my score was 52,920.
If you play it then let me know if that's a good score or if I just plain suck.
Konfabulator 3.0
I've been using Konfabulator since it came out for Windows and now, after Yahoo! bought them a while ago, they have come out with version 3.0.
The big deal about version 3.0 is that the popular widgets like the stock ticker actually work properly (weird "new" feature, ah?).
Another big change is that as of this version it's called Yahoo! Widgets and has Yahoo's brand all over it. But hey at least it's free now and works properly (and still looks very cool).
Currently my favorite widgets are:
Picture Frame (for displaying either random Flickr photos or photos from my Flickr account)
Weather (probably the most useful widget)
Joy Of Tech Latest Cartoon
I also have Wifi Signal, 8-Ball, and Yahoo! Mail Checker installed but don't really use them so I'll probably get rid of them soon.
Aquarium Sink
What goes better with your Aquariass than an aquarium sink?
Just $5,500 and it's yours.
Calm/Angry
If you look at this image from your seat in front of the computer, Mr.Angry is on the left, and Mrs.Calm is on the right.
Get up from your seat, move back 12 feet, and PRESTO, they switch places!
I believe this illusion was created by Phillippe
G.Schyns and Aude Oliva of the Univ. of Glasgow.
Rsstroom Reader
A crazy new product out of Taiwan seems to be aimed at those of us who can't take a break from the real world, not even to go to the bathroom.
The 'rsstroom reader' is a bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto your TOILET PAPER!
The best part is the "biometrics" toilet seat that'll figure out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want - not your roommate's tabloid garbage.
Ok ok, this isn't real it's just a concept design, but you can be pretty sure that you'll soon be able to get news while you're on the crapper.
Stand in line Ballmer
"The Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet. I'm in the same boat as many of you," said Microsoft Corp.'s Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "Thanks to the wonders of Sarbanes-Oxley, management does not get a free Xbox 360," he quipped at a meeting of technology industry executives.
Under financial disclosure rules, Microsoft would have to classify a free game console as income for Ballmer.
And who said there's no justice in the world? :)
The Music Genome Project have developed technology that can define music by it's traits (similar to how DNA defines traits in humans).
What good does that do you ask?
Well, they recently released Pandora which is an online radio player that lets you rate songs and artists that you like and then recommends songs with similar traits that you will probably also like.
You start off by entering the name of a song or artist that you like and immediately you start hearing a song with similar traits.
You can give a thumbs up or thumbs down for every song that Pandora throws at you so that the system learns what kind of music you like and becomes more and more tailored to your taste.
Pandora is an excellent way to discover new artists since the songs that you get are not necessarily from bands that you already know (although it will give you some songs from bands that you've said that you like).
The interface is pretty sleek and fun to play around with (it's basically a flash website so you don't even need to install anything) and any song that you hear in Pandora you can buy directly on iTunes or by its entire album on Amazon.
Pirate Maps
All the popular online map systems (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) offer ways for software developers (aka geeks) to integrate their map system into other applications (they encourage these kind of uses).
Well, this one guy (or girl?) took Yahoo maps and created a pirate style map of the United States (mainly as an exercise).
The result is quite impressive (especially the telescope for zooming in and out).
If a picture is worth 1000 words then 10 By 10 is worth, um, 100,000?
Anyway, 10 x 10 shows you 100 pictures of things that are going on now.
"Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time."
To see their current 10x10 picture then just click on "This is Now".
You can also choose a date and browse through the history of previous 10 x 10 images.
Aquariass
For just $1100 you can get yourself the Aquariass, an aquarium/toilet.
Don't worry the toilet has a separate tank from the aquarium so you don't have to worry about releasing Nemo every time you flush.
New Navigation
Well, I couldn't hold back after my redesign and leave the sidebar navigation the way it was, so I pulled an all-nighter (ok it was just a few hours) and updated the entire left sidebar (navigation, search, random quote...).
The update was not as simple as it seems since the other parts of the site still use the old design and since I didn't want to duplicate any code I had to resort to some PHP tricks.
Eventually I got it working the way I want (for now at least :) so I can go to sleep in peace...
I know lots of people who use Windows Paint for many, um, painting tasks (the virtual kind at least).
Although Paint gets the job done it has remained more or less the same since Windows 95 (wow 95 was more than 10 years ago!) and is missing quite a few basic features.
Paint.net is an excellent free replacement for the default MS Paint image editing application.
It gives you the basic features that you are used to from Paint but adds many useful features (like layers and magic wand for example) that are only available in commercial photo editors like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.
The interface is pretty cool and it's not nearly as "heavy" as Photoshop.
And since it's free you have nothing to lose by checking it out (it's even open source code so you can be sure that there's nothing bad going on there).
New Blog Design
Hey it's been over a year since my previous redesign of the site (July 2004) so I guess it's time for some change around here.
This time the change is only in Guy's World and I tried to clean up some of the mess here and go for a more minimal look.
The biggest change is the post borders (that you've probably noticed by now unless you're reading this via RSS) that are a simple rounded border instead of the previous bulky frame.
I also reduced some of the colors on the page and tried to stick with the blue/orange theme.
The ads have also changed a bit mainly to match the color theme and the ads at the top are in a new format that seems much more useful.
They are now links to ad categories instead of actual ads so you get more relevant results although it takes two clicks by a user for me to get paid (one click on the ad category and a second click on the ad itself).
Hopefully the increased usefulness of the ads will make up for the extra clicks that it takes.
I'm still not fully satisfied with the way it looks (I never really am :) especially since the old navigation links at the left look like the old design but it may take me a while to update those too.
Enjoy the new look (until next time...).
Chitika eMiniMalls
You may have noticed the new "eMiniMalls" on the main page of guymal.com.
I'm trying it out and it seems pretty cool.
The eMiniMall displays information about a product, according to criterions that I've determined (so a gardening site for example will show gardening products), and shows you best deals to get that product if you're interested.
If you click on one of the deals then, of course, I get a few pennies, very similar to the AdSense ads that you see all over the web now (and on my site :).
Here's an example of what an eMiniMall looks like:
Nice ah?
So far the AdSense ads on this site have pretty much paid the bill for hosting it and I'm hoping that this new addition will increase that, while providing a useful service for you guys.
If you want to sign up for an eMiniMall for your own site then follow this link (hey this also helps pay the bills :) :
Let me know what you think of this...
iDump
One of the biggest problems with the iPod is that officially you can't get your songs off it (amazing ah?).
There are a few ways to get around this limitation but one of the easiest is iDump.
Forget this program's awful name (actually it's pretty cool :).
It allows you to easily transfer your songs off your iPod to a PC.
All you do is connect your iPod and run iDump and you'll have access to all your songs and even your playlists.
Just select the songs you want to transfer (you can even use your playlists to select songs) then pick a destination directory and how you would like your songs to be named. And then sit back and transfer all the selected songs to the PC.
Dump away...
This guy (girl?) totally got carried away with the holiday lights on his house.
Talk about having the coolest Christmas lights on your block!
(that video is a bit long and you kinda get the point after a minute)
[via Engadget.com]
Origami Boulder
Who doesn't like Origami? Everybody loves the ancient Chinese art of paper folding.
Now for just $10 you can buy a very impressive Origami Boulder
Britney's Guide
Ok, you can admit that you don't know much about semiconductor physics, right?
Now, thanks to everyone's favorite pop idol, you can stop being ashamed that you're semiconductor illiterate and become an expert in semiconductor physics!
That's right, Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about semiconductor physics and were afraid to ask.
It is a little known fact, that Britney is an expert in semiconductor physics and now she's sharing her knowledge with the world.
Thank you Britney!
Scamming the Scammers
You know those Nigerian scam emails?
This guy got one asking him for $2000 in order to open an offshore account and get access to a fortune of 30 million dollars. He decided to reply and drive the sender nuts.
For 9 months he kept going back and forth, telling the Nigerians that he wants to help them, send them money, have them come live with him in his Florida estate... He even tried to scam some money out of the Nigerian (and almost succeeded!).
You can read the entire email correspondence (including a few voice mail messages) on the site. Although it may be a bit long, it is totally hilarious.
Eventually he created a two person "multi-media" comedy show about the correspondence that is apparently quite successful.
Xbox 360 vs. Sega Dreamcast
This article shows 23 eerie parallels between the Xbox 360 and the Sega Dreamcast.
(in short bullet points so it's not hard to read :)
It also continues to explain (again in bullet points) why the Xbox 360 will succeed while the Dreamcast failed.
Using Gmail to...
If you're interested in finding out some interesting uses of Gmail then check out this article.
It'll show you how to use Gmail as a to-do list (together with filters), search through your favorite RSS feeds, use Gmail to find torrent files, use Gmail as a Notepad (actually now it can even be more like Word since they have rich-text editing capabilities), use Gmail as a spam filter, and use Gmail as storage for a photo gallery.
Save My Ass
Guess what Save My Ass is about?
Survival techniques?
What to do if a bear attacks you or if you are stranded on a deserted island after falling off a cruise ship?
Guess again...
Save My Ass is a personal assistant that helps you make your girlfriend or wife happy by sending her flowers on your behalf, on a regular but semi-random basis.
You can schedule flowers for all obligatory dates she expects and you'll score major points by making deliveries she doesn't expect.
Don't you just love the Internet?
2600 Link
I just discovered that Edward Stoever from the database-expert.com wrote an article in 2600 Magazine about Hacking Encrypted HTML (warning: pdf link, here's Google's HTML cache of it).
What does that have to do with me?
Well, I'll quote from the article:
My personal favorite way of encrypting text strings can be found here:
http://www.guymal.com/nospam_email_link.php
Guymal's utility is easy to use, quick and free.
Another rung in the ladder towards being the king of all media... :o)
Cool Kids Talk
Thanks to Microsoft I can finally be like all the cool kids (oops I mean l33t |<1D5).
You can too, just read their parent's primer to computer slang!
Finally I can rock with all the kewl d00dz.
Webdeveloper FF Extensions
Here's a list of some excellent Firefox extensions for web developers.
I discovered a few extensions there that seem invaluable (I haven't checked them all yet): View Rendered Source, View Formatted Source, MeasureIt, and of course the must-have Web Developer Toolbar (that's I've been using for quite a while now).
Some Japanese guys developed a new sliding door that automatically opens according to the shape of the person who is passing through it (in order to minimize the size of the door opening).
I guess the idea is to keep out dust and save on air-conditioning.
Check out this video of it.
Free DivX Create Bundle
Just like Opera offered their browser for free for a few hours on their 10th anniversary (and since then have changed their model to make it free for everybody), today you can get DivX Create Bundle for free (it's their 5th anniversary).
The offer lasts for only a few more hours so jump on over there now (if you're into that kind of thing).
(you can see some details about DivX Create Bundle here)
Nintendo Revolution Controller
You really can call it a revolution all right!
For those who don't know, Revolution is the name of the next generation Nintendo game console (that competes with the PS3 and the XBox 360) and Nintendo keeps claiming that Revolution will not be following the traditional path of a new console.
This week they at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed the new Nintendo Revolution controller.
It's a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire.
It looks kinda awkward to me but according to the reviews by the people who got a chance to play around with it, it's pretty good.
Can't wait to see what else they have up their sleeve...
Losing It
Check out this CNN weather man who loses his cool on air.
[via WhippetGood.com]
Fog Creek Copilot
I just tested out the new service from Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek, Copilot.com.
Here's what it is:
The Fog Creek Copilot service allows people to help their friends, relatives, and customers fix their computer problems by connecting to their computers via the Internet.
Unlike other remote assistance services, Fog Creek Copilot is secure, easy to use, works through any home or office firewall , and requires no installation or configuration.
In one word: amazingly simple (ok, that's two words, sue me :).
In about just two minutes and 4 clicks (two for the helper and two for the helpee) you can control the other person's PC, without any configurations or them having to have any technical knowledge.
You just enter the email of the person you want to help and run a small program that you download from copilot.
The person who is being helped gets the email, clicks on the link to download a small program and that's it, you're controlling their computer!
You can try Copilot out for a two minute session for free but if you want to use it for longer you need to buy a day pass (that costs $10). I know, that's pretty expensive but they say they'll be coming out with other pricing schemes soon.
BTW: Copilot was created entirely by 4 summer interns at Fog Creek and version 1.0 took them 10 weeks to get out the door. Great job guys!
Rate My What?
Warning: do not go to ratemypoo.com unless you are ready to loose your lunch...
You've been warned.
Le-Building
Le-Building is a short online movie.
Just watch it.
Google Maps Logic
Here's a weird one: search for Hitler in Google maps and then zoom in on the result.
Strange ah?
David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.
Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of bigger clouds are called scuds.
The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.
Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living under one roof'.
Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.
Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.
U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.
The tune for the "A-B-C" song is the same as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.
The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'
I didn't know that stuff either :)
There are a LOT more things on that site that I bet you didn't know...
Google Maps Game
Playing the Google Maps Game is pretty simple.
Load up the site and you see a map of the United States (using Google Maps technology, duh) and the name of a random landmark.
Your goal is to find the landmark on the map as fast as you can.
For the geographically challenged (like yours truly) you can turn the hints on which then basically makes it a game of hotter colder.
You start clicking on the map in various places and the site tells you whether you are getting hotter or colder.
Fun idea but can get frustrating at times.
Spaced Penguin
Guess what Spaced Penguin is...
No, it's not the next NASA experiment in Antarctica but another online flash game.
In this one you have to fling Kevin the space penguin using the GPS (Giant Penguin Slingshot) so that Kevin lands in the space ship.
There are various objects in the screen that make this increasingly difficult (or sometimes helpful).
Fling away...
Just another day in the life of a software developer...
PSP Where?
Check out where this dude mounted his Sony PSP.
Talk about cool!
There's nothing like playing Grand Theft Auto while you're riding a motorcycle...
I really have a funny tshirt fetish.
Tshirt Hell offers lots of funny and crazy t-shirts (they have over 200 designs).
Here are some of my favorites:
You can't have manslaughter without laughter
(Front) there's a fuckin' asshole looking at me (Back) ...still looking at me
The funniest thing about this shirt is that by the time you realize it doesn't say anything it's too late for you to stop reading it you dumb fuck
I'm what Willis was talkin' 'bout
I only support gay marriage if both chicks are hot
I may have alzheimer's but at least I don't have alzheimer's
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Yes, I have plenty of change you homeless piece of shit. Thanks for asking.
I fucked the Olsen twins before they were famous
I'm pretty smooth with the ugly chicks
(Front) Please turn me over so i don't choke on my own vomit (Back) thank you
I'm ugly on the inside too
To: women - from: God
Plain Clothes Cop
Thanks to Or for this one.
Color Perception
This site demonstrates how much our perception of color is influenced by surrounding colors.
Like the sites states, illusion 3 is absolutely amazing!
I just ran across another cool extension for Firefox called Aardvark.
(if you aren't a web developer you can skip this one, it probably won't interest you...)
Aardvark will let you move your mouse over different elements of a web page and it will show you information about the element.
You can expand and contract the selection that you are currently viewing (if, for example, you have selected a table cell, pressing W will select the table row...), remove elements from the page, isolate an element, colorize elements (this one could be pretty useful), view the source of your selection, and more...
Kiss This Guy
You know the scene: you're driving along with your friends and TLC's "Waterfalls" comes on the radio.
So when it gets to the chorus you start singing along: "Go, Go, Jason... water calls" ...screech, what did he say???
You'll never hear the end of it...
KissThisGuy.com is a site filled with archives of misheard song lyrics.
People basically submit their stories of misheard lyrics and their embarrassing moment of revelation.
Just to quote from the famous Deep Purple song: "Slow, cousin Walter"...
BTW: the name of the site is after the famous misheard line by Jimi Hendrix from Purple Haze: "Excuse me while I kiss the sky"
Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character is a game where you choose a dictator or sitcom character and the computer asks you a bunch of yes/no questions while it tries to guess who you are thinking of (very similar to 20 questions).
Some of the results are actually quite impressing, it almost always guessed who I was thinking of, sometimes quite fast. It gave up on me just two times (and I then contributed a question of my own to help it guess the next time).
PairOn
The PairOn is THE chair to have for eXtreme Programming :)
(for those who are familiar with eXtreme Programming: one of its concepts is that you always program in pairs)
* orders taken only on April 1
Google launched another amazing hit: Google Earth.
It's basically Keyhole 3 (a company that they bought a while ago) except they dropped the subscription rate so now it's totally free (there is a pro version that you can buy if you really feel like it).
The concept is very similar to NASA's World Wind but the user interface and speed are MUCH better.
And the download is only 10MB (vs. a couple hundred for NASA's program).
This totally cool program lets you zoom around a 3D representation of Earth that is constructed out of satellite photos.
It lets you fly around the globe and zoom in to just about any spot in the world. Many areas have high resolution images so that you can even see cars on the streets.
In addition to viewing 3D images of your favorites spots in the world you can also overlay different information on the map like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, restaurants, gas stations, atm machines....
It will also let you pick two spots and it'll show you the driving directions between them.
Totally amazing!
The Bowline (bo-lin) is considered an excellent knot that is perfect for tying a loop in a string or rope.
The bowline's benefits are that its loop will not slip once drawn tight (which makes it ideal for dog leashes) and in its ability to be untied easily no matter how tight you've pulled it.
This site shows you an animation of how to tie a bowline.
Gotta Know
Here's a cool list of 100 things every guy must know.
These are some of the highlights:
How to win more coin tosses: Always call tails. On U.S. coins, the heads side, with its big, solid portrait, weighs infinitesimally more: In the course of 10,000 tosses, the lighter tails side will come up an extra 50 or so times.
To ward off diseases, wear gloves, not a face mask. Handshakes transmit viruses seven times more effectively than sneezes do.
Chocolate screws up dogs' hearts. It can be lethal to our canine pals—one Hershey's bar is more than enough to kill a puppy.
You flip a steak one time-and one time only.
If you hurt yourself in the wild, clean your wounds with your urine When it leaves the body, it's sterile, which is more than you can say of any water you're likely to find.
How to pick a ripe watermelon: Color's the key. Look for a melon whose dark bands are wider than its light bands. The higher the ratio of dark to light outside, the darker the color (and the sweeter the meat) inside.
How to gauge the doneness of a steak without slicing into it: Press your forefinger into it lightly, as if picking up ink from a fingerprint pad, then touch your head and compare their firmness. A well-done steak should feel as firm as your forehead; a medium steak, as firm as your chin; and a rare steak, as firm as the end of your nose.
Now we really know everything :)
Today guymal.com is 5 years old!
We've come a long way baby (that's a cached version of guymal.com from May 2001, almost one year old).
Abandonia
Abandonia.com is heaven for old school gamers.
It offers information about tons of abandonware but mainly old games (abandonware is software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder).
You can see the year that games were released, screen shots of different levels, and the best part (get this): you can download the old games!
I went over some of the categories and ran across LOTS of games that I spent hours playing.
The list of familiar games (games that I played for at least several hours each) was so long that looking back makes me feel like I spent too much time on the PC (and I can remember at least 10 more games that I used to play but didn't find there).
Check out this list of games that I used to play back in the day (and I found there):
Bumpys Arcade Fantasy
Cd Man
Dangerous Dave
Prehistorik 1
The Simpsons - Bart vs the Space Mutants
Airborne Ranger
Prince of Persia 2
Simcity Classic
Michael Jordan in Flight
California Games II
Budokan
Skate Or Die
Bouncing Babies
Hitman offers a variety of assassination services and contract killing options.
They are the industry leader in innovative killing techniques and manage a network of freelance assassins on five continents, available on short notice, around the clock.
Their tagline is "Permanent Solutions to Common Problems!"
And don't worry, Hitman is a cruelty-free organization. None of their services have been tested on animals.
Check out their site, they have testimonials, a page where you can donate organs, and they even have gift certificates!
Age Project
Wanna know how old people think that you are?
Just submit your photo to the ageproject and people will be able to say how old they think that you look in the picture.
You can, obviously, rate random pictures of people who've submitted pictures of themselves (anybody can rate other people's pictures, you don't need to sign up for it).
I'm sorry to inform you but I'm dying.
Well, actually we all are, the only question is when is it going to happen.
Hop on over to Deathclock, enter some details about yourself, and your lifestyle, and the death clock will tell you when you are going to die (and how many more seconds you have left to live).
My personal day of death is Sunday, September 4, 2050.
That leaves me with about 1,426,230,327 seconds left to live.
Nice knowing ya'...
iGuy
I don't own an iPod (at least not yet :) but if I did then the iGuy would be for me.
I don't really care what it does, it just looks cool.
Remember when you were a kid how much fun it was to burn ants with a magnifying glass?
(ok, at least the boys remember)
Now you can take it up a notch and play god with a magnifying glass.
This game gives you a view of a city from above and all you need to do is focus your magnifying glass on people and cars and burn them.
Heh heh, fire...
Attack Of The Wasps
Take a look at my home page.
Wasps have taken over!
Time for another online flash game.
Curveball is a remake on the old classic Pong only in 3D (well sort of).
It's very simple and a lot of fun: you and the computer take turns hitting the ball back and forth each time trying to put a spin on it so that the opponent misses.
There's also a speed element so that you get more points the faster you win your opponent.
Give it a run.
I made it to level 7 with 23,670 points.
The Internet speed test does just that: it tests the speed of you Internet connection.
Not something that you'd visit daily but could come in useful every once in a while to make sure that you're getting good download speeds.
Ear Wax Candy
Ear wax candy is a plastic ear filled with yummy candy ear wax.
The wax looks totally real but it's really fruit-flavored gel.
And you scoop up the ear wax with a lollipop "Q-Tip".
Looks tastey ah?
RAD Video Tools
Since my Olympus digital camera only outputs video in mov format I was looking for a way to easily convert mov files to a better format.
And along came RAD Video Tools.
RAD Video Tools does exactly that: choose a mov file, click on "Convert a file", choose the output type (I use avi, which is also the default), and click "Convert".
The one small annoyance is that it installs something called "Bink and Smacker" that you don't really know what to do with and seems confusing.
If mov converting is what you want then just ignore it, use the "Convert" function, and you'll be fine.
Oh yea, RAD Video Tools is absolutely free so you can't go wrong.
Is it just me or is the designer of this thing a bit psychotic?
If you're the type of person who can never have enough fonts (you guys know who you are) then I'll do my duty and feed your addiction with searchfreefonts.com.
As the name suggests, searchfreefonts.com gives you access to tons of free fonts (and some commercial ones that I didn't even bother checking out). According to their claim the site contains over 7,000 free fonts and over 12,000 commercial fonts.
You never know when you might need a Gothic font so bookmark this one...
A Sudoku is a number puzzle that is currently taking over the world (at least my neck of the world).
Websudoku lets you play tons of sudokus (sudokais, sudoks?) online, at three different game levels.
The rules of a sudoku are pretty simple: you have a grid of 9x9 and you need to place each digit from 1 to 9 into the grid so that every column, every row, and every 3x3 square must contain one of each of the nine digits.
Totally addicting...
Squares is one of the simplest online flash games that I've run across.
But that doesn't make it any less fun.
The game rules are simple: using your mouse catch the black squares without touching the red ones.
That's it, game on...
Scooba
Those cool folks at iRobot, the company that brought us the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, now have a new robot to help us decrease fights with our spouses: the Scooba.
While the Roomba would buzz around our floors and vacuum up all the dirt, it's new younger brother, Scooba, skids around and vacuums, washes and dries in a single pass!
It even leaves a dry floor after it.
Check out that link for a short clip of the Scooba in action.
Who ever knew that cleaning could be so cool?
The Sith Sense
The Sith Sense is a fun site that was created by Burger King as part of their Star Wars promotion.
They basically took the old 20 Questions online game and created it so that Darth Vader is reading your mind.
For those who aren't familiar with 20 Questions, you need to think of any object and Darth Vader will start asking you questions about it.
Darth Vader can ask you 20 questions and at the end he (usually) can know the object that you were thinking of.
The game is quite impressive since it's a learning machine, which means that the more people play it the smarter it becomes and the more accurate its guesses are.
Don't forget to turn up the sound.
Don't Click It
dontclick.it is an interesting experiment in user interface.
Throughout the entire web site you won't find any buttons or other items that you'll need to click on. Instead you navigate using several different methods of moving your mouse over interface elements.
Once you play around there a bit you start to get the hang of it and learn more about the different concepts that are demonstrated there.
BTW: so you forget that you aren't supposed to click then every time you accidentally do click on something you get a "subtle" reminder that you shouldn't.
Something's Starting
If you haven't noticed, the major search engines have constantly been looking for new and innovating ideas to increase their usefulness (and stickiness).
Just a few weeks ago Google announced that you can now customize the main Google page (very similar to what all the traditional search engines did a few years ago when they became "Portals").
Yahoo has, of course, had this for a while with their My Yahoo!.
Well now, you guess it, MSN is coming out with something similar.
It's basically an online RSS reader and you can access it (the beta version for now) at: http://www.start.com/3/.
It seems that everybody's working hard on adding drag 'n drop to organize the layout of your custom page (very nice interfaces BTW).
Nerds Make Better Lovers
This one has been posted all over the net (cuz we all know who controls the net) but I still couldn't resist: The New York Daily News has an article claiming that Nerds Make Better Lovers!
And to quote from the article:
"A nerd is an excellent provider and a guy who puts you first...","He'll turn out to be a great father and a great husband."
633|<z r|_|l3!
[Via Slashdot]
Yahoo! Mindset
Yahoo introduced a new twist to searching called Yahoo! Mindset.
The idea is that after you search for something you can view the results according to your mindset: whether you are looking for something more commercial or more informational.
They let you choose your mindset by a slider that dynamically changes the search results according to the position of the slider (very cool and intuitive).
This thing is not available on the regular Yahoo site, it is still in Beta and is part of the Yahoo Research Lab.
Nintendo DS Ad
Check out this cool Nintendo DS ad that was spotted on a Japanese subway car.
[Via Portagame]
Dry or Die
This hair dryer is for all those cheery folks (you know who you are) who feel like killing themselves every day.
BTW: that's a real hair dryer
Just point and click...
[Via Engadget]
Joel On Wall Street
It turns out that Joel (on software) can insightfully write not only about software but also about Wall Street.
In his latest post Joel Spolsky explains about a clever scam Wall Street uses to rip off retail bond investors.
And, as usual, he does it in a way that even dumb asses like me can understand.
Here's the gist of the "scam":
You $100,000 to invest and have 3 bonds to choose from:
Bond A pays 4.15%. If you buy this bond, you'll get a check for $4150 in interest at the end of every year for 10 years. With your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.
Bond B pays 4.5%. You'll get a check for $4500 at the end of every year for 30 years, then with your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.
Bond C pays even more! It's 4.75%, w00t. You will get $4750 at the end of every year for 10 years, then get your original investment back, unless the government decides they want to keep your money for a little longer, in which case you'll get another 20 years of $4750 before you get your money back.
Bond C is a little more complicated so let me explain. On the tenth anniversary, the government gets to decide whether to pay you your $100K back and owe you nothing, or keep your $100K for another twenty years and keep paying you the interest. The point being, the choice is up to the government.
But either way, with Bond C, you're getting MORE interest every year, whether they decide to keep your money for 10 years or 30.
So, it's stupid to buy bonds A or B, right? Bond C is obviously the better choice.
I won't go into the explanation here but Joel does it splendidly in his article (it has to do with the changes in interest rates).
Backup Trauma
Backup Trauma is another excellent example of an advertiser that knows how to successfully capture the power of the Internet (like Honda and American Express did).
These guys created a funny segment starring John Cleese that is basically a commercial for their information backup service.
Check it out and whatever you do: don't click on the third button...
Tricycle?
Remember how you learned to ride a bike?
You would start around with training wheels then after a while you removed them (or removed only one) and somebody would run after you holding the bike till you could stabilize yourself.
Those days may be over thanks to this new invention by three Purdue University industrial designers.
The bicycle/tricycle, called SHIFT, slowly transforms from a tricycle to a bicycle as the rider pedals faster.
When the rider slows down the bike transforms back to a tricycle.
The Image Quiz is a quick online game that shows you several images that are the result of searching Google images for a specific term and you have to guess what the search term was.
So if, for example, you see lots of different clown images you guess that the search was for "clown" (pretty simple concept ah?).
You have 3 guesses (after each guess you see different result images) and after that you are shown the correct search term.
Great just what I need, another way to waste time...
Pixar Headquarters
This lucky guy had a chance to take a tour of the Pixar headquarters.
He wrote up a piece about what he experienced there including a few cool pictures from the inside.
If you don't feel like reading everything that he wrote then at least scroll down and look at the pictures of the offices there.
It turns out that the animators can do whatever they want with their spaces and a lot of them didn't want cubicles so instead Pixar found little cottages that they bought for them.
Talk about a dream job...
Netfirms Hosting
If you're interested in knowing what web host I've been using for guymal.com (for the past 5 years) it's: Netfirms.
They've been pretty much flawless throughout the years and their support has been good in the few times that I've needed it.
I've tried out quite a few web hosts over the years and totally recommend Netfirms for their great web hosting plan (at a reasonable price).
Save Toby
For those who didn't run into SaveToby.com yet: the guy who created the site found this cute bunny that was attacked and injured by a cat. He nursed Toby the bunny to health but unfortunately Toby will die on June 30th, 2005.
He's threatening to eat Toby unless visitors donate $50,000 to him!
The site has several bunny recipes (with some pretty graphic images), has a "Save Toby" online store, and accepts donations via PayPal.
He's currently raised $20,375.18!!
And just to balance things out (how typical for the Internet) there's even a Kill Toby site made by a group who wanna see the little bunny die.
You gotta love the Internet!
[via EdAdkins.com]
Cool Contraption
These guys were inspired by the Honda Cog ad and created their own cool contraption.
You can download the video clips of the contraption in action from here.
They could improve their video skills a bit but the machine they built is quite impressive.
Snooze This
Here's an invention that I could use:
Scientists at MIT have invented an alarm clock called Clocky that helps people who have problems waking up since they repeatedly hit the snooze button.
The way it works is that after the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room.
That way the next time the alarm sounds you're going to have a hard time just finding Clocky in order to hit the snooze button again.
How come it took them so long to come up with something like this?
It's been a while since we've had an online game so here's the time waster du' jour: plastic balls.
This game is a variation on the classic Breakout, aka Araknoid, aka Popcorn....only here the playing "board" is a round arena where your paddle is in the center of the screen and you need to guard your ball from falling into a hole in the middle of it.
Like its predecessors you get special bonuses (like a larger paddle, double paddles, several balls...) when you hit some of the bricks and catch the power ups that drop from them.
Just don't let your boss catch you :o)
New Site Feed
Site Update:
I've changed all the RSS feed links on the site to use FeedBurner.
FeedBurner does several things (for both you the reader and me the publisher).
First of all it simplifies subscribing to the RSS feed (via various supported RSS readers) so that people who want to read the feed can do it easily (whether they use FeedDemon, MyYahoo!, Bloglines, or any other reader).
Second it gives me stats on how many people are subscribing to my RSS feed (so that I can get a feel if this is even worth my while :).
In addition it enhances the content of the feed by incorporating any feeds that I have into one feed. That way you can see any pictures that I post in addition to regular posts that I make to Guy's World.
And finally, it also saves you the trouble of having to understand the difference between different versions of RSS and Atom, there's just one link that supports all formats!
So if you want to subscribe to the new and updated feed here you have it:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GuysWorld
and here's the icon that you can find around the site:
(if you're already subscribed to the old version I recommend that you switch over to this one instead)
World Wind
I run across quite a few programs and very few of them actually make me go "wow" when I check them out.
Even less make me go "yeee haaaa, wadda wadda wooooooo!"
World Wind not only did that but made me play around with it for more than 3 hours straight (till I forced myself to go to sleep since the sun was about to rise soon and this thing called "my job" would be bugging me soon).
World Wind was recently released by NASA (that's right, the same dudes who create those cool astronaut costumes) and gives you a 3D mapping system of earth.
It lets you spin the globe around, select a spot, and zoom in and see satellite photos of any spot on earth (similar to Google's Keyhole, but much better and free).
It also uses elevation data to show you the landscape in 3D and displays place names and borders!
Although it does weigh ~170MB it's totally worth it.
After you install it you can use these link to view some cool spots:
Bill Gate's House
some other hot spots...
Ever wanted a costume that would win first place in a costume contest?
I think that dude has found the secret formula to always win with his amazing Transformer costumes.
These are full size, working, costumes of different Transformer robots.
Yup, you got that: these costumes actually transform from car/dinosaur/plane...to robot!
It takes this guy an average of about 6 months to create each costume and you can order them from him (starting at $1500).
Certainly "more than meets the eye"!
Nice Mellons
Check'em out
You gotta appreciate those...
Star Wars Kid Tony Hawk
If we're already on the topic of the Star Wars Kid (again) then check out what I found: the Star Wars Kid made an appearance in the Tony Hawk game!
Talk about becoming famous...
I'm not a big sports fan (to say the least) but the one sporting events that I do look forward to is the Super Bowl because of the awesome commercials.
Click on that link in order to see all the commercials from Super Bowl XXXIX including the ads that they banned from broadcasting.
As usual, the Bud ads are great but there are some other very funny ones (like the Ameriquest ads).
Winter Post
This year winter is SOOO damn cold so here's a wintery site to go along with the cold harsh weather: hi resolution pictures of snowflakes.
Quite amazing how intricate and symmetrical these things are.
Next Star Wars Kid...
The Internet loves "heroes" (like the Star Wars Kid) and now it's this hilarious dude's turn.
Don't forget to crank up the volume before you click on that link...
Face Morpher
The Face Morpher lets you upload a passport-style image of yourself and then lets you change your age, race or sex.
It also lets you transform your picture to the style of a famous artist, to make an exaggerated caricature or even make an ape of yourself.
It does take some playing around in order to get good results but it's a lot of fun.
Here's what I look like as
an older adult
a West Asian
an Afro-Caribbean
an East Asian
Artsy Tanks
Artistic Tanks is not about the kind of tanks that kill people but about those butt ugly propane,oil, and water tanks that can be found all over the country.
Instead of keeping them the standard gray color, people have painted these tanks to look a bit more amusing.
Some of the tanks just have smiley faces painted on them while others have done more elaborate work and painted their tanks like a Pepsi can, a watermelon, and even a pig.
Polo Ad
Volkswagen said it was outraged by the spoof commercial featuring a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Polo car.
The clip had been shot on 35mm film, not something an amateur would usually do, and cost £40,000, not a sum an amateur could afford.
The maker of the film refused to say who funded it but, due to all the publicity that it is getting, I have a feeling that VW is behind it...
How Tall Are You
This site lets you compare your height to the height of various celebrities.
Not very useful but an amusing way to waste a few minutes.
Who knew that I'm the same height as Brooke Shields!
Shoes News
How many pairs of shoes do you have?
3,4...10,15...20?
How about this dude: he has 2100 pairs of Nike shoes!
He doesn't wear most of them (he usually wears the same beat-up pair of New Balances) so most of the shoes in his Nike collection are in perfect condition sitting around in those orange Nike boxes.
And people say that I'm nuts...
Teen Bill
Check out these pictures of your favorite teen hunk...
These were taken in 1983 for Teen Beat magazine.
Hubba Hubba!
Pooh Toast
Get this: a 54-year-old man from Wisconsin who was missing for more than three months, discovered his identity on the Internet.
The man who has amnesia and had been wandering around for 3 and a half months found out his identity after he logged on to the Internet and saw a "missing" picture of himself.
He had left his wallet at home so he had no clue of his true identity. With the help of a psychiatrist and a priest, he logged onto the internet and went searching for information on himself, only to discover that he had been missing for months.
How the hell did we live before Google?
[Via TechDirt]
Monster Delorean
Ever since Back To the Future 1 I've had a crush on the Delorean.
Now somebody created a monster Delorean that looks like a combination between a Delorean and a Hummer.
Let's see if that thing can hit 88 miles per hour...
Ignore This!
No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster
SD Card with USB
SanDisk has come out with an SD card that comes with a built in USB adaptor
It's basically a standard size SD card that folds in half to reveal a USB plug that you can just plugin to your computer (click that link for some pictures that demonstrate it).
Very cool that you can transfer data from your digital camera or PDA without having to mess around with adaptors and cables.
I just hope that it's sturdy enough because according to those pictures it seems like it could break easily.
Mnemonicizer
The Mnemonicizer, the Mnemonic Device Device (that's what its called) is a site that will help you remember stuff by creating mnemonic devices for what you need to remember.
A mnemonic device is a sentence that helps us to memorize a string of words. For example, music students use "Every Good Boy Does Fine" to remember the order of notes on the treble clef. (E, G, B, D, F). Math students use "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" to remember the order of arithmetic operations (Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract.).
So if you have a list of items that you need to remember the Mnemonicizer will help you create a sentence that is easy to remember.
The idea is cool but the user interface needs some work.
It's quite confusing how to use the Mnemonicizer (and it's mostly manual).
Vroom Vroommm
I just happened to run across these cool looking cars so I decided that I'd share them with y'all.
Hmmm shiny...
And if you're looking for something a bit more modern and with some more power then check out the Renault Radiance truck.
Guy Malachi
Co-founder & CEO at TalkSparks
Follow me on Twitter: @guy
Mystique theme by digitalnature | Converted by Theme Craft


The success mantra behind the sustainable growth of an organization lies in efficient operational efficacious within. An organization has a lot of departments and requires a keen observation over every one of them. But, for a smaller organization, a proper supervision of each and every department is not an easy task when your core functional operations are of a different division. With the pitfalls faced by an organization from time to time, many businesses have adopted to outsource their business segments. Outsourcing accounting services has seen a major splurge within a decade and on observing the growing market demands, it will definitely be an essential part of every firm.
Many institutions such as healthcare, software development, retail and manufacturing firms have adopted the outsourcing of their accounting services because of the ease it provides in the working of an enterprise.
Outsourcing your accounting to another firm definitely saves you a lot of time which you could utilize in your pivotal tasks. They help in streamlining your work process and boosts your business performance in a steady manner. Outsourcing your accounting to another firm will save you the headache of mulling over the transactional and monetary processes that the experts can take care of.
If a novice is handling your accounts, he/she is bound to make mistake or two during some transaction. But, letting the professionals handle this task can definitely prove beneficial, who will be supervising all the aspects of your account in a plaintive and systematic manner. The service providers have great experience in handling the risks involved and mitigate if an error is supposed to occur or has taken place.
The real reason behind the use of outsourcing accounting service is that it is done at a reasonable cost. The company has full visibility of its transactions and proceedings because of the transparency provided by the service provider to their customers. Thus, the entire process is beneficial in terms of cost and efficiency.
If a business is seeing growth or suppression within its domain, it would definitely overpower the accounting processes to keep it at par with the current business situation. A third-party bookkeeping service can help you in scaling up and down with your native services.
A company that provides the service of outsourcing the accounts uses the latest and top-rated accounting software to perform the bookkeeping for the company. This saves the service seeker from buying their own software and even saves the time in training their employees over them. Accountants and bookkeepers are the experts who have the hang of working on these software and possess the necessary license to work on them.
With the accounting experts at work, the chance of experiencing a human error is almost negligible since these people have great expertise on working with the complex glitches of accounts. The accuracy of the data is maintained as these professionals are trained in this field. The experience offered by these service providers keeps your business on track and provides a framework that befits your organization.
A service provider definitely ensures complete security of your transaction, sales, purchase and other accounting aspects. With the poised rules and regulations on the company, it ensures an overall security. The advanced security automation and risk analysis helps the provider in determining any possible threats or vulnerabilities before its occurrence.
When you are not carrying the burden of working on an accounting software system then you are definitely saved from the continuous hassles of calling the company for every other problem you face. Outsourcing your accounting sector is the fairest decision when considering these cases.
By outsourcing your accounting you get to observe some latest and trending methods that are in vogue and are recognized on a global platform. These methods are readily adopted by the professionals and can be implemented on your accounting structure with ease.
With the world going digital, paperwork has taken a back seat. With your outsourcing service provider doing the business for you, you get in touch with your daily accounting activities in a simplified manner as all the operations are transparent to you. Moreover, you stay connected with your service provider through the feature of cloud which keeps your data intact even after the hardware failure or system crash.
With the surveys conducted on several of the non-accounting firms, it has been concluded that they are outsourcing their accounting in a bulk and it seems that with the ongoing trend, outsourcing activities will definitely grow into leaps and bounds in near future.


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Tell us how many people you require to take the training, and provide us all of the names and their respective email addresses. We will then do all the hard work. Each user will be invited and enrolled in the course of your choice, each receiving an email from Explore Secure with a link to start the course. Two clicks and they have started the course and are underway.
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Blink and you'll have missed it: Daybreak actually hinted at the return of an official Fan Faire this year, something the studio hasn't done since 2014, when it was still called SOE.
Early Anthem buyers were also treated to their first weekend of demo/testing, which didn't exactly go to plan.
Meanwhile, we saw layoffs at NCsoft, Daybreak delayed PlanetSide Arena, RuneScape's studio is up for sale, SWTOR players are petitioning BioWare for love, and Facebook is still pure trash.
Next articleThe Daily Grind: What's the best example of wasted aesthetics in an MMO?
I didn't bother with the Anthem demo I had a busy weekend so didn't really have the time available to give it a good go . My friends from my Rift guild tried it though and all I have received is glowing reports from them about the game so I will try it next weekend .
i think i actually like the demo, although i did go into it with very low expectations. it seems alot the people disappointed with the game from the demo were probably super hyped for it.
i love the beam laser that shoots out of your arm, does plenty of nice destruction. only had 1 go of storm and damn it can do alot of damage but its like a glass cannon. the interceptor is pretty good but need be good getting in and out fast with the meelee stuff and i like the ranger more than the other 2.
ill have to have a go of the colossus on friday when the open beta starts. hopefully they put in way more servers for that one.
Just a heads up GW2 players there is a new API that was developed that runs GW2 in DX12 and Multicore, people are reporting MassivelyOP (I couldn't resist) performance increases across the board. This API was made Open Source and has been vetted by multiple Redditors that claim to he programmers (so take from that what you will be wise I could always claim to be Bill Clinton).
One important thing to note is that ANet has not said anything about this API yet so naturally until its green lit it's on you if you get banned for some dumb reasoning.
I tried telling Massivelyop about this in a tip but they didn't seem interested so I figure the weekly recap would be a good place to inform on my own.
Saw it, I was hoping you guys would look more into it because it sounded as outlandish and promising as a man in a trench coat handing out ice cream, candy, and kittens to kids; I wanted to make sure it was looked at with your optics.
Slowly crawling my way through Anthem's apparent main city was pleasant and its graphics appealing, but the first mission stalled on the load screen and refused to load. Nvidia 1080 with current drivers, 32GB DDR-4, water cooled i-7700k 4.2 all well within acceptable temperature ranges, so not sure what happened. I guess too many players just overloaded their servers.
I have been pleasantly surprised with Anthem. Despite the issues, the 95% bug being the worst, I have liked what I've seen.
I have the same rig you do, and it is beautiful scenery especially in Freeplay mode where you can explore.
The combat has been fun too, although I need more time to sort out which javelin best suits me.
So, now comes the interesting part. Let's see how that beta fairs. Hopefully it will be very polished and we get a taste of the way the story elements really work.
None of the issues were client side, so you don't have to worry about if something was wrong with your rig.
Don't they need fans for a fan faire?
Probably banking on desperation of the Everquest playerbase to get in one last get together before Daybreak mothballs the franchise.


text:
Xena: Warrior Princess - Season Five TV Show
Own it on DVD Now.
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Lucy Lawless reaches new heights as Xena: Warrior Princess in all 22 thrilling episodes from Season Five. After facing a terrifying death, Xena goes to Hell and back to save those she loves most. But even as she battles powerful deities and intimidating armies, her biggest challenge may actually be growing inside her. With her devoted and trustworthy ally, Gabrielle (Renée O'Connor), by her side, it's a gripping return for the world's most beloved Warrior Princess.
Language & Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Subtitles: English SDH
Xena: Warrior Princess - The Complete Series
Xena: Warrior Princess - Season One
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Xena: Warrior Princess - Season Three
Xena: Warrior Princess - Season Four
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - Season Two
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - Season One
Battlestar Galactica (2004): The Complete Series


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