Robots Will Be Our Superiors

It may seem like a lot, but one of them (Jen’s old Mac) is bricked, and my old Compaq is getting a little long in the tooth.  Still dual-boots Linux and XP like a champ, though.  Not pictured: The Monolith.

Jen Posts About Her New Baby

Firefox Personas is another variation on the Firefox “theme”, that allows for easy modification of the visual aspect of the Firefox GUI.

The Persona plug-in and system is pretty slick, much nicer than the old method of managing themes.  Making a Persona over making a Theme is much, much easier.  Their interface for creating a theme comes with detailed instructions on how to make the picture files and inline color pickers for choosing font colors.  Slick!  Being able to mouse-over and preview the personas?  Brilliant!

My only complaint would be that one has to wade through 50 lame/hard on the eyes personas to find one good one.  Ah well, such is life.

I personally go for the abstract/gradient/just different enough to make the browser look slick without looking annoying type.

It’s things like these that make me both incredibly happy and incredibly sad at the same time.  In case you can’t tell by my Favicon, the background for my site, and the avatar I use for most things, I loved Chrono Trigger.

When I heard about Crimson Echoes, I got very excited.  I am making it my mission to find the beta version of this game.  Here is the brief summary from their site:

Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes was a fan project modification of the Chrono Trigger ROM begun in late 2004. Development continued thanks to a dedicated group of fans through 2009. By May 2009, the game featured ~35 hours of game play, 10 multiple endings, and 23 chapters, much like the original Chrono Trigger; it was around 98% complete. The plot featured the original cast as they struggled against a new villain risen from the legacy of Zeal.

The team planned to release Crimson Echoes on May 31, 2009 as the first feature-length fan Chrono series game, and an unprecedentedly exhaustive work in the ROM modification community. On May 8, 2009, Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes received a cease & desist letter, along with all other game modification activity (even research) at the Chrono Compendium. In compliance with the letter, the development team ceased development on the game, and existing modifications (including Prophet’s Guile) were taken down.

That’s fucking DIY Ethic right there.

I’ve seen several movies lately that I’ve enjoyed, including, but not limited to: Sunshine Cleaners, Helvetica, and District 9.

I also learned that in the upcoming version of Gimp 2.7, you can finally rotate brushes.  I’m… I’m just so happy.  I’m also pretty excited about the fact that text editing is no longer done in a separate window, but inside the actual project.

Chrome is supposed to be the new rock ‘n roll.  I’ve been using it on and off for the past few weeks, trying to give it a fair shake as to why I should be using it instead of Firefox.  Unnecessarily rapidly advancing version numbers aside, I am fairly excited for the fact that a 64 bit version is being developed for Linux.

Honestly, though, while it’s a pretty slick piece of software, I don’t think I’ll be switching away from Firefox any time soon.  I likes me my extensions, and it seems as if there are enough extensions written than any of the features that I like about Chrome can be added to Firefox easily enough.  Separate processes for each tab is cool, but I don’t really run into enough crashes for that to be a big deal.  I haven’t really noticed any speed differences, either.

The Monolith lives!  Today I booted up my machine for the first time.  ~Insert maniacal laughter here~

Right now I have two 80 GB hard drives each holding their operating system and the accompanying software (Linux Mint and Windows).  In the near future, I’ll be picking up a 1 TB hard drive that will serve as storage for media, etc.  I saw a  1 TB 7200 RPM drive on Newegg this weekend for $54.  What a time to be alive!

I had a short-lived moment of panic when the first boot attempted didn’t work.  Everything fired up, but nothing showed up on the monitor.  It turns out that the old CRT monitor that I hooked up is useful only as a paperweight these days.  I think it’s about nine years old.  In any case, I unplugged everything and ran to the living room.  My motherboard has an HDMI out, and once I got it hooked up to the TV all was well.  I currently have Linux installed on one hard drive, and will soon be running Vista on the other.  I’ll probably spring for 7 later this year.

I’m just happy it all worked.  I had visions of smoke and explosions the first time I hit the power button, but from start to finish it was all much easier than I would have guessed.

Here’s my ultra-temporary setup (click to enlarge):