Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Web Design Book Review: Community Building on the Web
June 05, 2007

If you know me well enough, you’ll know that I’m a book nut, but not for novels. I like reference books and books on how things work. I’m wired that way.

My latest kick is on web project and interaction design. This incorporates “design” in both common definitions: Designing the layout and graphics of a site to achieve certain goals, and designing the way a site works from behind, including everything from organization of page to software construction. I’ve recently ordered a pile of books covering these topics, because no single book covers the topics I want all in one volume.

Ear Force!
June 04, 2007

I bought 2 pair of new headphones from Amazon recently. They are Turtle Beach’s model Ear Force X2 headsets.

The primary purpose of these headsets is to connect them to an XBox 360 controller as the microphone source. What happens is the headset’s base station, while connected to the Xbox, transmits the game audio to the stereo headset, and the headset’s microphone connects to the controller to send Live chat sound back to the game. It’s a pretty nifty idea, but not why I bought them.

Paper Games
June 01, 2007

We’re going on a trip to Disney World this month where we’re likely to be standing in a lot of lines waiting to get on rides. Because the kids have such great potential to be annoyed at this, and at the suggestion of a travel book, I have considered what it would take to keep them occupied while waiting. The book specifically suggests notepads and paper for particular kinds of lines, and I got to wondering what kinds of games we could play to stay occupied.

There are a few other games we could play that don’t involve paper at all, and those are fine. I worry that Riley will be inconsolable standing in wait for everything, and that we’ll constantly need to attend to him to keep him appeased. In that case, having some activities to keep Abby entertained would probably be a good idea. So what pen and paper games can we play? What sort of games can you play with just pen and paper?

Invasion of the Snails!
May 30, 2007

snailsI had previously written about the new aquarium that we had set up at our house. We’ve had some recent events that have had all of the fish scared out of their little minds.

Sometime shortly after we put the creatures into the tank, our two snails died. Such is the nature of home aquariums - sometimes things just don’t make it. The first one went early, the second one some time later, both to be found just bobbing in the water, shell-down. We were sad. At first.

Pool Openings
May 25, 2007

Are shops still closing early on Sunday in your area? Most do here. This is due to a set of colonial laws, the Blue Laws, that were meant to restrict certain forms of commercial business on the holy day. But that was back in the days with the Quakers and Puritans, when each colony was essentially the same religion, seeking freedom from persecution in their home country.

With so many people observing so many religions in this country these days, and everyone intermingled, there isn’t a good reason to employ these Blue Laws to cause businesses to close early or entirely on Sunday. Not that a retail worker wants to give up that early closing time on the weekend, but it’s fairly easy to believe that a business that is open normally on Sunday is going to do more business than one that’s not.