2005 November | The Tlog - a technology blog

Monthly Archive for November, 2005Page 3 of 4

Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2

Published

3 years ago

in Browsers, Unix / Linux / *BSD software and Windows software

. 0 Comments

It’s out. Auto-update (really “auto”, I didn’t even use “Check for Updates”) worked perfectly this time: this morning I fired up Firefox, browsed through a couple of usual sites, and after a couple of minutes I got a window saying it had downloaded an “important update” and needed to be restarted to complete the update (though I could optionally keep using the older version for any time I wanted until I restarted it, of course).

According to what’s on the FTP site, the upgrade from RC1 to RC2 was 390 KB. Not too bad.

New games: first impressions

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Console games and PC games

. 0 Comments

Those 3 games have arrived, 2 days ago, but due to work (and work and work), I haven’t had almost any time to play them. Still, here are a few initial impressions:

Civilization IV

I love the new interface, presentation and music. And the new technologies narration by Leonard Nimoy is fantastic. However, I haven’t had much time to dwell into the game itself. Most of what I know about it is from reviews.

Civics come from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, though it was called “Social Engineering” there.

Religion is a new concept in the Civ series, and it basically works these way: the first civilization to get to each of 7 particular technologies (e.g. Meditation for Buddhism, Polytheism for Hinduism, and so on) has one of its cities become a “holy site” for that religion (think Mecca or Jerusalem). The religion then spreads through trade routes, including to other civilizations. Cities can have citizens of several faiths, and you can build temples. You can also build missionaries to influence other cities (especially those of other players) more directly.

Both civics and religion are used in diplomacy - civs tend to like other civs with the same state religion, or using the same civics, more - and the other way around. They may even suggest changes to yours - such as Mao asking you to change to State Property. And you can also suggest changes to them.

Religions are, in game terms, the same. Political correctness and all that. Not like Europa Universalis 2, where each religion had particular bonuses and penalties…

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion

Looks extremely promising, but my puny PC can’t really handle R:TW decently. Although load times are better than Medieval’s, the battles are much less smooth. And I have to lower the detail a lot for it to be playable - which, oddly enough, makes it look worse than M:TW (with maximum detail).

One to “devour” when I get a newer PC. Must… get… rich…

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Only played through the first 2 missions (including the training one), so I have seen virtually nothing of the game. It’s like Final Fantasy Tactics / Shining Force - either a tactical RPG, or a tactical strategy game with heavy RPG elements. Lots and lots of classes, weapons and so on, with a nice story, and turn-based. Looks great, but I’ll only have anything to “report” after I spend some more time with it. Work, work, work…

Open source, companies and stupidity

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Software and Work

. 3 Comments

Why is it that IT managers, and companies in general, will put up with anything from software that costs millions of euros / dollars (including insecurity, instability, lack of certain features, user unfriendliness, etc.), but refuse to even consider an equivalent piece of open source software, free (as in beer), unless it’s absolutely perfect in all those respects?

If a piece of software was free and is almost perfect, but has a problem, “we must replace it”. If it did cost millions, “we must learn to live with those problems, and hope they’re solved in the next version”.

Morons.

The evil Google Sandbox strikes again! :(

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Blogging, Google and Search engines

. 2 Comments

Remember a post of mine, less than 2 weeks ago, where I mentioned how this blog was in the Sandbox (and so almost nobody came here from Google, and those that did, came because they searched for stuff the blog is not about, like a misspelling of Sudoku), but my “Games of my Life” blog wasn’t, and actually got great Google results?

Well, in the last couple of days, I’ve noticed in the logs that the number of hits from Google searches almost stopped rising.

So, I went to Google, and googled for the same search terms… and nothing. The blog’s articles are nowhere to be seen in the first page of results.

I’m all for stopping splogs (spam blogs), but I think the Google guys (or their algorithms) are being overzealous. I mean, that blog is 100% original content, and hasn’t suddenly got an avalanche of links from other sites (which is always suspicious).

Oh well… I guess I’ll just have to weather it. It’ll pass, eventually.

A Communist game!

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in PC games

. 3 Comments

No, I don’t mean Tetris. Nor do I mean most of the city-building games, such as the Caesar series, where every building is built by, and owned by, the State (have you ever noticed that?).

I mean a game about Communism. A game that promotes it. Made in China.

If you think this is a joke, here’s the article: Game aims to make vintage Communism a hit with children.

Excerpt:
To advance in this game, players won’t gun down their enemies. They’ll mend socks, lots of them, and gain points by getting appreciation letters for doing good deeds such as helping old ladies home in a rainstorm and stopping people from spitting on the sidewalk. The prize is a signed virtual copy of Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book.

I’d actually like to see it, though I’m sure it’ll be in Chinese…

Search Engine Optimization and Accessibility

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Blogging and Search engine optimization (SEO)

. 5 Comments

In João Craveiro’s blog, I’ve just found a link to a very informative article: High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization.

It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it a little. What’s accessibility? It’s making sure your blog or site is readable even to people with some kind of disability - sight, hearing, etc.. How do you do that? Consider blind people - they’ll be using a browser capable of reading text out loud. Note the “text” part. Their browser won’t interpret Javascript or anything like that, won’t show Flash animations, or read text inside images - it can, however, read the “alt” tags in those.

Have you ever tried a text browser, such as Lynx? Try browsing to your site with it. Can you still read the content? Navigate around the site? Use most or all of the options? Post new content, if the site allows it?

Because, if you can’t, neither can a blind person.

Or what about a cell phone browser? Opera 8.0 in my Nokia 6630 is almost like a “normal” browser, but what about an older version, like Opera 6.2, or even worse, the browser that came with the phone. How’s your site in it? A complete mess? Or still usable?

And now think about search engine crawlers. What do they do? They “read” the text, and follow links. Nothing more. Hmm, isn’t that a lot like what a browser for blind people does? Or a text browser?

I won’t give a list of tips here, because I’ve already mentioned a lot of them in my Blogging Tips series, and also because the linked article itself has a list of such tips. But now you know that I wasn’t just being pedantic when I said that <img> tags must have the alt=”description” part.

Is the Xbox 360 the second coming of the Sega Dreamcast?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Consoles

. 6 Comments

Ricardo has already mentioned it in his blog, though I saw the article on 1up mentioned on Slashdot initially.

It’s a very nice comparison, which makes a lot of sense, although some of the points are stretching it a little (rich bald guy spotted at promotions!?). In fact, the original Xbox was already seen by many as having a lot to do with the Dreamcast, including, among other things, the controller. Now, apparently, it’s even closer.

The article also mentions how the Xbox 360 will probably not be a failure, unlike the Dreamcast (which wasn’t really a failure, it just couldn’t make Sega recover from their losses, and loss of confidence, created by the Mega 32X, the Mega CD and the Saturn.) I’m guessing it’s true - MS has the money to throw into it to make sure it sells, even if they sell it at a huge loss and costs them billions (like the first Xbox did). They’re not doing it to make money, but to get a piece of “your living room” - and Sony is after the same thing. Nintendo, of course, is still about games and nothing else, which is why I love them.

Thunderbird 1.5 RC 1 released

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Email, Unix / Linux / *BSD software and Windows software

. 0 Comments

Ricardo got there first this time. Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 RC1 is out, and can be downloaded here. Or you can try the auto-update.

I’m using it right now, at work (on Linux).

New feature: email subscription

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years, 1 month ago

in The Tlog (site)

. 0 Comments

See the new email subscription page for info. Basically, if you don’t want to use an RSS reader, you can get new posts from this blog by email (just one email message a day, even if there are more posts).

New games ordered

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years, 1 month ago

in Console games and PC games

. 9 Comments

Just ordered from Amazon.co.uk:

Civilization IV (PC)
Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion (expansion for R:TW) (PC)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GameCube)

Yes, I’m in a strategy mood.
They should be here next week or so…

SUSE 10.0 at work

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years, 1 month ago

in Unix / Linux / *BSD

. 1 Comment

Since a few hours ago, I’ve moved from SUSE 9.1 to SUSE 10.0 at work. Didn’t have much time to “get my hands dirty” with it, but so far so good - the installation is simple and easy, everything looks and feels “polished”, and the default KDE theme is beautiful.

Also, I don’t know if it’s just me - I don’t think so… - but everything feels “faster”. And no, it isn’t because the system doesn’t have a lot of installed software yet - it does. It’s just that some fraction-of-a-second pauses that I’ve got used to in the last year using that same computer (with SUSE 9.1)… simply aren’t there. New versions of some software? A kernel better tuned to interactive usage? Maybe it’s several things at the same time.

Oh well, more to explore tomorrow. I’ll also post a screen capture here, hopefully.

Exploiting :) family and friends

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years, 1 month ago

in Blogging

. 0 Comments

Eric has a nice post on his blog, called Engaging friends and family in site/blog promotion. Go read it.

It’s something that, oddly enough, I haven’t tried for myself - not only do I tend to be a bit anti-soc… I mean… reserved, but, also, my friends and family, for some reason, don’t tend to be much interested in blogging, or in my blogs for that matter (except maybe the personal one).

But it’s something to think about. Hmm… whom shall I ruthlessly exploit?