STG's

The Athena Project, by Brad Thor, is a sci-fi thriller. The Athena Project of the title is a group of Delta Force female only operatives, which take on the hardest assignments. On the book, they have to unravel the plan of an evil group, which is using nazi super technology that had been (mostly) lost in the end of WW2. Overall, the action was fun. But I couldn't help but feel that the ending was a big anti-climatic...

I've just finished reading  The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman - by Tim Ferriss . It's an interesting guide that contains a lot of techniques to improve your body - such as a diet, exercises and concepts for gaining muscle, strength, speed, and improving you swimming, running or baseball performance. I thought it was quite interesting. Do the ideas make sense? Many seem to, and confirm published studies. Other seem a little crazy. The diet he proposes, the slow-carb diet, which has plenty of protein and vegetables, but no carbs with high glicemic content (rice, bread, etc), seems to make sense. There a few interesting ideas I'm already trying: You might have heard of drinking 500 ml of cold water when you wake up. I had, but since I didn't heard a good explanation I completely ignored it. According to the book, in at least two studies this increased resting metabolic rate 24-30%. Cold Showers: at s

Another semi-generic retro game. Cute neon wireframe graphics, somewhat annoying music. In a variation on the classic 2D racer, you have shields and a few different weapons. Not worth the time of trying it out, unless you specifically like this sort of game.

Rush is based on a classic computer puzzle game - some sort of entity (in this case, colored cubes) are released or start from a point in the puzzle, and you must use some sort of tool (here arrows, teleports and conveyors) to make them go safely to a specific spot. As usual, you get the exact type of tools you need to complete the level (at least for the levels I played). The graphics and sounds are nice, but I can't say that the super abstract style seemed to help.  I just didn't like it. However, I'm not a big fan of this particular puzzle type. If you are, you might want to get their demo.

System Protocol One is another tower defense game. The game world is based on cool looking grids and components representing a server, in the glowing wireframe of the now classic retro look. The game has a competent tutorial, ok soundtrack and an interesting theme. It seems to have all the classics of tower defense games, both on attackers and defense, and a few interesting twists. If you are a fan of tower defense games, it's worth taking a look at this one.

Bejeweled 3 was released today. While I didn't like Bejeweled Twist - and I rarely bother to review casual games - Bejeweled 3 is a big enough release that I had to mention it. It's also pretty fun. Basic gameplay is very similar to the original (and oh so many other gem match games) - match 3 gems. As usual, there are many special gems, and the music is superb. What I found most interesting is the variety of modes. There is the classic mode, of course. Other modes: a lightning mode where you have a time limit. Kind of generic. Relic mode - which has a whole bunch of match-gems mini games - for example, on one of those you have to match on butterflies, on another you have to match on the bottom to dig for gold (?!?!?), on another you have to cover the whole gem grid. Zen Mode - an unlimited time mode supposed to relax you. It has a bunch of different relaxing features - nature sounds, breathing sounds and visual indicator, binaural pulses.  It all sounds pretty silly,

Children No More - by Mark L. Van Name - is the latest book in the Jon and Lobo series. Jon and Lobo is a SF series on a not very near future where humanity is spread across the galaxy, mostly through instantaneous travel gates (in a very deus-ex machine way they come from nowhere - I hope it will be explained eventually) . The main character is the only man with nanobots in his cells, who is an ex-soldier with a heart of gold that keeps getting into trouble, and his sentient ship, Lobo, which is one of a kind, again because of nanobots experiments. This book is in many ways a manifesto against using childrens in war - the plot is based on Jon saving ex-children soldiers so that they can be just children. Several characters from the first two books appear, and there are a lot of flashbacks about Jon's own experience as a child soldier, in Pinkelponker, which were hinted at on the other books but never fully fleshed out. Overall, pretty good even though there was a lot less ac

I am a fan of the TV series and I really liked the first book - Heat Wave  - so I was fairly happy to see Naked Heat - by Richard Castle on the Kindle store. Now that I've read it, I'm not disappointed. The story was pretty good, and the mini tie-ins with the series, such as a body being robbed, really add to the fun for the fans. Quite recommended for the series fans.

Jump Gate Twist - by Mark L. Van Name was a very quick read for me - it's an omnibus volume with the first two volumes of the Jon and Lobo series - A Jump Ahead and Slanted Jack - and two short stories. I've recently read the two books, so I naturally only read the short stories. They were interesting - one has the pre-fix Jon, and the other is an absurd and interesting Christmas tale with Lobo (before he met Jon). If you plan to read any of the other books, then this should be cheaper. Getting it only for the short stories would make it a bit expensive - I only got it myself because it came on a Webscriptions package.

Dexter is Delicious was the first book I finished on my new Kindle. I did get it just after it was released, but reading in the notebook is a very different experience, so I ended putting off. I've enjoyed all the other books and the TV series (and the two first years of the TV series - I didn't get around to watching the rest) , so it's probably no surprise that I liked this one too. The main topic of the book is Dexter's new baby, and the ways in that it affected him, as well as his, let's say "hobby", of killing serial killers. I don't want to spoil things, but I did find the new "enemies" quite interesting, as well as the return of his brother. I read some complaints about how soft Dexter is in this book - it is indeed true, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable for me.

Just after the release of the new Kindle, I got an e-mail from Amazon about it. Being an avid e-book reader (since 1994, on notebooks, passing through many palmtops and smartphones), I of course knew all about the previous Kindle models. And quite frankly, I thought they were very reasonably priced - before Brazilian taxes, that is. I also wanted to see how the iPads did - and mostly important, iPad clones based on Android - before buying one. Now that I've seen how the Samsung Galaxy tablet is going to be priced in Brazil (about 5 times the price of the new Wi-Fi Kindle), and with the new, much cheaper release, I bought one. I received it about 4 days later, which I think is awesome fast, although not surprising - I got books from them regularly in about this time years ago, when I bought books from them via DHL. The box itself is surprising - it is tiny and very light. Clearly Amazon wanted very much for the packaging to be cheap, light and ecologic. The Kindle box is alr

Since it had a 30% discount this weekend on Steam, I finally got around to trying the Global Agenda demo. It's supposed to be a MMOFPS - I'm not aware of any of those succeeding. While the beginning is reasonable enough, I found the starting missions quite boring and repetitive. You'd have other people show up clearly doing the same mission as you, and enemies respawning  all the time. Of course, I'm not a big fan of MMOs. But I really didn't like this one... Maybe MMO fans would find the initial grinding fun - I really didn't.

I loved Fallout 3. Sure, the story was a little silly at points, and the interface wasn't perfect - specially for inventory - but it was a great game and I spent a lot of hours playing it. So, when Fallout 3: New Vegas was about to be released, I bought it right away. It's pretty much the same as Fallout 3. I've heard criticism on some reviews that the graphics could be better, and I have to agree, but that isn't very important - the graphics are very reasonable. What is important is HOW BUGGY IT IS! Argh! Not only have I lost plenty of time till I realized that Auto and Quick saves didn't always work - and for some people, even the manuals saves have problems - but the map geometry is often messed up. This seems to be particularly bad for scorpions - I've already seen 4 or 5 get stuck on the ground. Something that annoyed me terribly is that now drops aren't completely fixed. So a couple of times, I got awesome items at a vendor or random location,

I've just finished reading One Good Soldier - by Travis S. Taylor. I've previously reviewed book 2 in the series - The Tau Ceti Agenda  . This is one mostly more of the same. It's military sci-fi, they are still fighting the separatists, and mostly the tech is still the same. So not that much worth noting. Overall, it is quite entertaining, although there is what seems an overuse of  "quantum"  this and that on the tech, clearly to make up stuff without having to come with much of a theory behind it. As usual, it's also available on Webscriptions .

I just bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this weekend - there was a 33% off sale on Steam. I finished the single player campaign yesterday. Just like the other titles on Call of Duty, it was good and had some pretty intense moments. The difficulty on Regular seemed a little easier than on Call of Duty: World at War. The SP campaign took about 8 hours, counting some minor Spec Ops play - a bit short for the price. Of course, the series has multiplayer firmly in its design. I really liked MP on Call of Duty 4 (actually a bit rare, as usually I don't like MP). I guess I'll see how I feel about this one later. The Spec Ops missions are an interesting addition. I've played through several of them, and some were pretty good. My favorite so far is from Call of Duty 4 - the sniper mission. I guess it's a nice way to take content you already have and sell it again :-)

Tron Mouse - that might be a little silly, but it's pretty cool looking!

I've just finished the latest book in the Jon and Lobo series - Overthrowing Heaven, by Mark L. Van Name. Less than a week ago I read the first book in the series, One Jump Ahead, and read the second book last month, so they are both fresh in my mind, and the latest is my favorite. I particularly liked the explanations about the nature of Lobo - which is Jon's sentient PCAV (predator class assault vehicle) - which always was smarter than other AIs, but for no apparent reason, till this book (to be fair, the existence of a difference in its nature was well hinted on the other books) One thing I noted on this book is that Van Name isn't afraid to have an unhappy ending - which is uncommon on oh so many books, no matter how forced the story gets as a result - and on a personal level for Jon Moore, he seems to insist on it. The base story is, as usual, a mission that only Jon can take, and this time it's personal - for Lobo. Overall, quite entertaining.

An interesting answer to question I've thought about before - How to make Windows load the Desktop before you log-in? If you have a lot of programs that start up automatically, that can save you a lot of time.

This is a pretty cool looking attempt to make cookies that can't easily be erased, by spreading the data across multiple storage options. Particularly unexpected is the PNG based cookie...

I've just finished One Jump Ahead - by Mark L. Van Name, which is the first book of a series. I've already reviewed the sequel  , about a month ago. This book is more of the same. It explains how he gets his ship (a little phony sounding, though), he goes on missions (that either involve being a great guy or survival), uses a thrill-seeker thing for one of the missions, and uses the nanotech in not very impressive ways. There is a bit of funny, silly dialogs with machines, just like the sequel. Overall, it's quite entertaining. And as chance goes, just as I finished I erased it from my cell phone and the next book I picked (out of 80), based on the name alone, was the sequel to Slanted Jack...

I was just trying to boot a GParted ISO volume into VmWare, and it's next to impossible...  The delay between the Post and Windows starting is just too fast - and if you happen to get it by pressing Esc several times quickly, you might get out of the boot menu with another Esc press. Thankfully, there is a simple solution. Just edit the VMX file and add this line: bios.bootDelay = "5000" (this gives you 5 seconds) Unfortunately, GParted failed, and now my partition is (somehow) the right size, but Windows won't recognize the extra space. Argh! PS: (A few very angry minutes later) Resized the partition using vmware-vdiskmanager again for a little more space, ran GParted and this time it worked. Not completely - for whatever reason the mouse mapping was very messed up, but it was still usable with the keyboard.

A cool conceptual interfaces video from Tat - which apparently is a much bigger deal than I could have imagined. Almost nothing here is conceptually new. The stretchable screens were featured in Earth: Final Conflict, back in 97. Transparent touchscreens have been all over the place (although I can't remember the flipping windows trick). Sharing news is quite commonplace. Sending apps between devices has been done a lot on CSI:Miami. You could buy a mirror TV years ago (although not with a wave-based interface). Nevetheless, the video still looks pretty cool, and is worth watching.

I've left two of the games with a weekend discount on Steam downloading yesterday. The first was Booster Troopers, which I didn't like and already reviewed. The other is Altitude. Altitude, by Nimbly Games, is a nice little side view plane game. It reminds me of Sopwith, which I played a lot back in the early 90s. Like Sopwith, you use little planes to shoot each other. Altitude, however, has a bunch of different modes - simple/team deathmatch, an Air ball game, a mode where you bomb your enemies' base, and others. It also has different plane types, from the nimble to bombers. These planes can be customized with different boosters, too. Stalling is a big part of the game. And it happens not only from flying up, but also from shooting some of the weapons, and bumping into deployable traps. On the actual game, you have to earn planes and boosters by gaining experience (on the demo everything is available right away). Overall, I found it great fun for the price (onl

This is a very quick review, since I only bothered to play the game for a few minutes. Booster Trooper is a side-view (plataformer) shooter. It reminds me of Soldat, but I liked Soldat a whole lot more, while I really hated this one. Maybe the tempo of the game is too fast, or maybe it's because I'm older and slower :-) . The graphics and music are nice, but the gameplay didn't work for me.

Slanted Jack - my Mark L. Van Name - is an old purchase. It sat on my cell phone for a couple of years until I got around to reading it. I'm glad I found it, however - while not great, it was quite fun. The story passes on a galactic (human) civilization that has found jump gates - the very common magical device that allows FTL travel. These are a little more convenient than usual - they only exist on systems with planets that support human life. The main character - Jon Moore -  is an ex-bodyguard with an interesting past - he's the survivor of a planet where mutation caused humans to get "powers". He also got infected by experimental nanotech, and can heal fast, doesn't age, and can unleash deadly nanotech clouds and talk to machines (the whole thing reminds me a bit of Jake 2.0 ) The machines all have embedded AIs, down to panes of glass. That does cause the addition of a number of silly dialogue between them, as they seem to chat all the time. The bulk

Mission of Honor, by David Webber is the latest book in the Honor Harrington series. I'm a fan of the series and have read all the books, including the ones with short stories from other authors - some of which were surprisingly good. Mission of Honor follows the disastrous altercation with the SLN which ended with an overwhelming victory for Manticore. Meanwhile, the Mesan Alignment has a little surprise for Manticore... Eventually Cachat and Zilwicki, the super secret agents emerge after their Green Pines adventure from a previous book (ok, I am too lazy to look them up, even though I blogged about them). And thus comes a long revelation about the Mesan goals, that were never properly explained before. The relationship with Haven changes by the end of the book, in a mildly surprising way, that nevertheless shows where the next story arc of the series is going. It's looking pretty good. As always, recommended. The book does feel to have large segments cutting into the

My latest book was WWW: Watch - by Robert J. Sawyer. On most places, he is mentioned as the author of Flashforward. I've read many short (and longer) stories from him on Analog over the years, so that is the last thing that comes to mind. The book is a sequel to WWW: Wake, which was pretty good, too. The main events are  a blind girl that gets to see with a special interface that fixes the signals of her retina, a side-story about a painting, chimp-bonobo hybrid, and the main setup for the series - an emergent intelligence from aberrant TTL on packets (yes, I find it a bit hard to swallow either). I'm a bit of a sucker for AI stories. The first two that come to mind are Ring, from Emerald Eyes: A Tale of the Continuing Time  (one of my favorite books)- a lisp AI that evolves itself and breaks out into the net, and the Jane , AI from Ender's Game series, which also evolved from an AI program. I don't find the "emergent" stuff as cool, but given how little

I've just finished reading Fortuna - by Michael R. Stevens. I came across the book from an Amazon e-mail. I checked out the sample on Kindle for PC and immediately bought it. The book is mostly about Fortuna - a fictional (maybe for now?) online game that takes place in Renaissance Florence, and were ruthless players will do anything to get ahead. The description of the game makes it sound quite impressive, although at times the author's mechanics seem weird (for example, it presumes that video is rendered on-line - certainly possible, but very unusual to say the least). The first part seemed a little slow to me. I liked the book most after the flashback of the father, although the final "surprises" were kind of of obvious. Overall, a good book, but not great. It's worth checking the sample and reviews to see if it's something for you, however.

As usual, a game was on sale on Steam so I went and checked out the demo. This time it was Power Of Defense, which is a common theme on flash games - you choose certain units, which will be sent to attack the enemy. You can usually choose the units for specific effects against the enemy types. That is basically it. Except that I've seen a dozen flash games that were better than this...

I've just started playing Resident Evil 5. When I start, I get bothered by Games for Windows that I need an account to save my games. Ok, I decide to make an online account and get it over with. It then proceeds to send me to a IE page (Chrome is my default browser, but it's not like they care). They open a windows without the regular address bar, so I can't tell WHERE I was sent. And then they ask for my Windows Live login. I can only imagine that they love phishing. I mean, how long is it going to take till some hacker makes a game that pretends to be Games for Windows Live and steal my Windows Live ID  - and have access to e-mail (not mine, I surely don't use Hotmail) and a ton of other attached services?

To Outlive Eternity - by Poul Anderson - is a very old (1967 - older  than me!) collection of short stories. It was a wonderful book, full of memorable stories. I find it a bit hard to comment on the stories, since I'm afraid to give away any spoilers. The first story - To Outlive Eternity - is a awesome story on a ramscoop that can't stop - and will have to go beyond the local eternity to stop (I realize the phrase is a bit dorky, but, again, I'm trying to avoid spoilers). The sequence after the big wars (starting with the second story) goes through some military sequences, through the UN-man super-agent stories. They aren't only good as stand-alone tales, they also fit very well together. The tale of the Earth destroyed and the remaining man seeking vengeance is hardly unique, but it was pretty good too. As with many of the other stories, the fact this is an old book shows (no mixed gender crews!), but I felt that the prediction mistakes were far outweighed by

I've just finished reading For The Win - by Cory Doctorow. It was preempted by The Fuller Memorandum  while I was reading it, but it was pretty interesting too. As quite usual with Doctorow's books, it is both sci-fi and contemporary, as well as having some social lesson implied. The book focus on poor, developing countries (specially India and China) and the exploited workers, focusing mostly on the gold farmers. The games are imaginary, but the description of their mechanics, characters and battles is pretty cool by itself. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Zombie Mecha (a Zombie and Mechs MMORPG in the book) style game in the future. The economy scams are particularly cool, too. The ending is a bit on the dark side, but quite adequately so. It was nice of Doctorow not to chicken out and have a forced happy ending. As usual for his books, you can download this one for free  . If you want a paper book, you can use the link to Amazon above.

I've just finished The Fuller Memorandum - by Charles Stross. I'm a big fan of Stross, and I've enjoyed many of his series and short stories. This book is the latest in the Laundry Files series. The Laundry Files were described as a mix of Lovecraft horror and spy series. I guess it also has a little geek mixed in - magic works on large form by computation, which is a large part of how things work in the Laundry's universe. When I first heard about the book, I decided to download a sample for my Kindle for PC software on my notebook (I don't have a Kindle - there were iPad rumors when the international version was released, and I'm waiting for the Android/Linux/Windows 7 pads to be available to be able to decide what's best). After reading the sample, I was hooked and immediately bought the Kindle version - my first purchase at Amazon in about 7 years  (there was a time when I bought 30-40 books a year from them, but them I started switching to e-books

Another game that I got at a discount on Steam was Left 2 Dead 2. I played the first one, and found it reasonably fun, although it didn't have any lasting power to me - I find it fun for a few minutes, but I tend to get sick of it after a while (say, more than 30 minutes). The feeling is the same with Left 4 Dead 2. It looks great, and it is fun - but only for short periods.

I've recently completed the single player campaign of Bad Company 2. I got it from a Steam special offer (which is how I get most games these days), and I wasn't really aware that it was a regular, Call of Duty like campaign, instead of the Battlefield style multiplayer-with-bots maps. It was a pleasant surprise. The game was pretty good, with great battles and very fun destroyable walls. The M60-S is pretty awesome - you can snipe with it and seriously clear enemy groups in seconds (just like Modern Warfare MP). The story isn't particularly good, but I don't feel it was particularly bad for a FPS. I believe the campaign took about 8 hours. I haven't looked much into it, but at first glance I really didn't like the MP section. AFAIK, there is no way to do as in BF2 and BF2142 and just play the maps with bots. BTW, in the few games that I played, I can't help but think that the group coordination of the bots is actually better than the players... My

I've had Multiplicity for years, but I just got a new computer, and thus have been using to try it out and copy my software over. One thing I didn't know is that it works well for games. I didn't have any problems nor noticed any lag, even on new games such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Another thing I didn't know - but didn't like either - is that if I turn off my secondary computer while it has the keyboard focus, everything gets locked up on the main computer. Turning the secondary on does make it go back, however. PS: That last problem depends on how you are doing the computer switching. I was simply switching with the mouse, with shift pressed. If you configure shortcut keys, those do switch back fine...

And Another thing... - by Eoin Colfer is a new sequel (Part Six of Three) for the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. That might be surprising to some, as the original author of the series is dead. However, there were a few cases where new authors did very interesting additions to existing series. Looking up into my bookcase, the new Foundation books (by the 3 B - Bear, Brin and Benford) and the new Dune books by Brian Herbert are fine examples of books I've enjoyed. As you can imagine, not everyone felt the same way. And Another thing... is a very fun read, in the continuous insanity style of HHGTTG. It continues where the last book left off, and in the traditional way of the series, the Earth is about to be destroyed by the Vogons. Again. The guide notes was profusely spread throughout the book. It was a bit on the boundary between fun and just annoying. In a very uncommon occasion for me, I actually read this one on paper - it's been a few years since I

I use CIS (Comodo Internet Security) for a couple of my computers. I decided to install v4 because, well, it is a firewall/AV so it is a good idea to keep it updated.  Plus, v3 has been enormously annoying because it ignores installation modes and keeps asking me dozens of times whether to allow this or that. I'm getting Zonealarm flashbacks - inability to recall previous choices is one of the main reasons I ditched it (I used it from v 1.0, for about 8 years). The auto-update fails after a few seconds. So I went to download it manually - without even a link, which would be a nice touch when the auto-update failed. The install was a bit annoying and needed two reboots. After the second reboot, the program installed. Well, sort of as their interface simply wouldn't start. It also proceeded to sandbox a bunch of my programs in a way that they wouldn't work. The whole sandbox idea is pretty good, and has been done for years on other programs. Of course, many virus are ca

Pioneer one is a seriously indie movie. Not only it was made for US$6000 through kickstarter , it can be redistributed and downloaded for free. I've just watched it and it was interesting. It's surprising to see how close some of the production values are to regular series, although it's obvious that they put some thought on how to need minimum locations and props. They are now seeking donation to make the next 3 episodes for US$20000. Depending on how much you donate, you get different extras, starting with the music for US$5, and getting credit on an upcoming episode for US$100.

I've just noticed the demo for Iron Grip: Warlord on Steam, and checked it out. It is a mix of RTS, FPS and a tower defense game. The graphics are so outdated it's silly. The level design is barely ok. That said, I just loved the gameplay... I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a demo so much. And if you have an older computer, it should still play fine (an advantage for those outdated graphics). I've sometimes thought of RTS/FPS hybrids. This one is everything I dreamed of. After playing a level I went and bought it - it's pretty cheap at US$9.95. Totally recommended. Drop by their site  now, and download the demo.

Alien Breed: Impact is a third-person shooter, on a spaceship invaded by aliens. The game uses Unreal Engine 3.0 and it's graphically beautiful. I've found the gameplay - full of aliens that pop out of nowhere and explosions that happen just as you arrive - to be incredibly annoying. The demo constantly stopping to show you a cutscene didn't help either. Really NOT recommended.

Interesting article on how Unity is using the Native Client Google system to run without plug-ins on Chrome (as I understand it, this is currently on the beta Chromium only). The Native Client is going to be huge, if they can solve all security problems.

Tom's Hardware posted an interesting review of the latest Ubuntu, Lucid Lynx. I don't use Ubuntu (or any other Linux distribution) much myself, but I have used previous versions to test my software under Wine, and it worked pretty well. There are many details on the changes. One I found quite annoying is placing the windows controls on the left... Seems nonsensical to me.

I just loved the basic idea for this concept for getting gesture-based computing cheap. This one just uses a webcam, a custom glove with colored shapes, and software. Pretty cool!

I just tried out Bob Came in Pieces - the demo. It's a fairly neat physics puzzle game, which involves a spaceship, a whole bunch of parts, and a ship builder screen to apply those parts to your ship in creative ways, to face a lot of physics puzzles. The graphics and sound are very good. Even the intro is clearly well made. The gameplay was nice, but not great. It is well worth trying, if you like physics puzzles.

The Sharp End came on a Webscription.net  bundle. I didn't think much of it, but I put it in my smartphone, along with the others. After finishing the last book (The Tau Ceti Agenda), I picked it out of the list. I was quite surprised by how good it was. I'm a bit of a fan of military SF, and I read several of David Drake's books before. This one focus on a small group of infantry - a survey group for a mercenary outfit. It starts with the backgrounds on how each of the soldiers got out of their last assignments - usually in some impressive battle. Then it goes to the actual survey work, where they are trying to get a contract with either of opposing, low-level, drug syndicates on a backwater planet. But things don't go that way... The book was pretty good. The end felt a little forced, but it did get set-up to a reasonable level in advance. Very recommended for fans of military SF.

The Tau Ceti Agenda, by Travis S Taylor, is clearly a book in the middle of a series. Since I've started the series on it, it changed my perception and enjoyment of it. The tech and situation introductions do suffice for a newcomer, but for me large parts of the book were a bit annoying. I liked the "President under Attack" story line - the park sequence reminded of me of the Simpson Episode Itchy & Scratchy Land. I did like some of the tech, particularly the embedded AIs. The transformer fighters were ok, but seemed to push the credibility envelope a little. While the start of the Oort Cloud battle was *very* slow, by the end it was pretty exciting. That description also applies to the book as a whole.

The Humble Indie Bundle is an interesting experiment, you get 5 indie games for whatever you want to pay. The money is divided between the developers and the charities - EFF and Child's Play (unless you choose differently). I haven't actually played any of the other games, but World of Goo alone is worth it.

Sony has an interesting table with projection and multi-touch, similar to Microsoft's Surface. It should be into mass production by june. One interesting justification on one of their videos is how it can be used on medical application with pure hand gestures (no touching) - thus not being a problem to sterile conditions.

I've just downloaded the Flotilla demo on Steam. If I remembered how the game was actually played (which I had read before), I probably wouldn't. The biggest control gimmick for the turn-based spaceship fights, is that the rear and bottom of ships are poorly defended. So a great part of the game is about positioning right. I thought I'd find that to be annoying. I was SO very right. The graphics are adorable, in a retro way, and so is the sound. But I really don't like gameplay, so it is getting uninstalled after a few minutes...

I've been a fan of Steam for years. But their interface has always been a little sub-par. I was doing my first download with the new interface, and I really like it! Very clear, and a lot of extra information.

MadBalls in BaboInvasion is free this weekend on Steam, and with a 75% discount too, so of course I downloaded the game and tried it. It's an interesting little shooter, where the main character and most enemies are well, balls. With faces and nice graphics. They just roll around, shooting, throwing grenades and Molotovs. Rolling ball games used to be popular - I remember playing them back in the 80s, but nothing particularly memorable. There seem to be a lot of unlockable weapons, among other unlockable items. One thing I found quite interesting is that you can buy the unlocks as a pack. Not a very common way to monetize a game. Overall, only vaguely interesting. The graphic and sounds are good, and I found the gameplay barely okay, but nothing worth spending time (or money) in for me.

Just now, I have installed Wordpress on my site (thanks to CrystalTech's help - had a bad upload the first time!). I plan to blog about my products, as well as my normal business book, software or sites posts. I'll be keeping the game and fiction books here, however.

My Life Story is clearly a remake of Jones in the Fast Lane , made by Sierra in 1990. Sadly, some of the graphics of the original were actually better! (specially the simple videos they included). Other than that, it's very similar to the original, with a few minor add-ons. I liked the original, so it's not surprising that I like this one too. Of course, both of the games can get pretty boring after a while. Still, worth taking a look, if you can get past the silly graphics.

Very interesting article of quotes from SES London 2010. There were a number of interesting items, well worth your time.

I'm a bit tired of the various limitations of PHPList (some caused by the host I have it installed on - Dewahost), so I'm looking at various autoresponders and newsletter services (my list is all opt-in, of course). GetResponse has a number of interesting features, such as their API, various analytics, split tests, etc, so I'm trying them out. One thing that really struck me when I started doing a newsletter with them is that their editor sucked. It sucked so much I tested it in Firefox too, at which point the REAL editor came on. I e-mailed them about how it failed on Chrome, and they answered that it worked fine on their end. At this point I remembered to turn off Privoxy, and now it works fine...

I've just finished the last of the Percy Jackson books - The Last Olympian. It was by far the best on the series so far, with the conclusion of the big Titan war arc established in the rest of the series.

Very interesting Google seminar about Google Website Optimizer. I've been stalling for ages, but now I guess I will get around to doing some testing :-)

Since I wrote well of Foxit PDF Reader, I thought I should warn everyone that it installs an extra toolbar (Ask Toolbar) AND changes your home page, without asking and without any check boxes you can deselect (I went through it several times, just in case). Very uncool! Even worse, Ask Toolbar won't even uninstall here...

Excellent performance from Foxit. After a very dangerous exploit was found that allows specially made PDFs to run executable content, they took only a week to fix the problem. Congratulations!

I've just noticed a new (?) feature on Adwords. It is called remarketing, and it allows you to make special ads for people that went to your site and then left, in an effort to get them back. They have a page with explanations , as well as a video about it. Pretty cool conceptually, although I have no doubt that some will think it's creepy - you've gone to a site, and now it can "follow" you through the web :-)

When you say the title, it sounds stupid, but the video is pretty cool to watch!

I've read another of the Percy Jackson, the 4th book in the series. It still felt short, but so far it was my favorite in the series. A lot of the series arc is coming into full effect, and the descriptions of the labyrinth and Deadalus mythology were particularly interesting.

I was checking out CoffeeCup's site for easter eggs and decided to get the free mini report about my site optimization. The whole thing is fairly generic, full of links to the full report. The one thing I found interesting - and funny - is that one of the extra pages they have on the report is the EXE file for my main product, STG FolderPrint Plus... And my order page has 0 bytes according to their report. Kind of hard to take it seriously after that! On the other hand, an excellent web based FREE page speed report is http://www.webpagetest.org/ . I've tried it yesterday, from an old Google blog post, and it has a lot of detail. And no incorrect information I noticed .

Some interesting SEO tips at CSE HTML's forum . Very much worth taking a look.

I've read another (very short) book on the Percy Jackson series. This one was possibly a little more entertaining than the others. As always, interesting new greek mythology monsters and locales. A little extra development on the series arc too. Spoiler: I think Thalia's return and departure from the main story line seemed a bit short. Of course, she might return...

I've just finished reading Heat Wave - by the fictional author Richard Castle, of the TV series Castle. I really like the series, so upon hearing that a book was made as if written by the author, I went and got it right away at Fictionwise.com , in which I rarely can buy books anymore, due to country restrictions, but now and then they have one of them unrestricted. (Entering Big DRM Rant) To the Kindle fans, I'd probably buy there (I obviously read a lot - just look at the blog posts), but it has two problems - no reader software for my cell phone (not that bad, albeit a bit annoying) and really excessive DRM compared to eReader. eReader just requires you to enter your name and credit card number to read the book in any device. If they stopped existing, I'd still be able to use my backups to read it in any device. On Amazon, when the new Kindle was released, people with books that weren't available on the new version (as well as magazines and newspapers) simply

Reading the Gamersgate newsletter, I learned there was a discount for Colony Defense, which I had never heard off. So I downloaded the demo. It's pretty awful. The design was clearly made for use with a gamepad. For example, instead of clicking on a tower to select it to upgrade, you rotate the world to place it. The 360 view looks cute, but is pretty annoying. The overall result is awful. You can probably do much better going to a flash game site like Kongregate.com and choosing one of the top tower defense games.

Amongst my regular fiction, I'm also going over back issues of Communications of the ACM (I'm a member). One very interesting article was A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World . It details the various ways Coverity had to adapt from being a research tool to a commercial tool. I found particular interesting how they have to dumb down certain bug detection, so that users could understand them instead of thinking it was a false positive. Also, I liked the little table of various transforms they have to make between compilers to make sense of their code - QNX has lowest count, while Metrowerks is the worst . Having a comment from Bjarne Stroustrup (designer of C++) is pretty cool, too!

I've just finished The Sea of Monsters - by Rick Riordan - the second book in the Percy Jackson series. It was fairly fast (about a day) since it's a bit short. The story follows the same format as the first book - Percy is at the end of the school year, monster attack, he goes to camp, then goes on a quest. In the middle several references to Greek mythology are inserted. There is a bit of an arc about Percy's destiny and the horrible plot to bring a previously "dead" evil character to life (very Harry Potter ), but it doesn't feel like a strong part of the story. Overall, very enjoyable, but nothing special.

I've been using Amazon Associates for years, although not in a very meaningful way - just a couple of pages on my site, and occasional post here. One big reason is that it takes a long time to go Amazon Associates, find the book, and add the link back here. Well, no more - with the gadget (available on the Monetize link, for Blogger users) it takes only a few seconds! So I'll be adding links and images on the relevant posts.

I've just finished reading Shadow Unit - Season Two. I've commented on it several times before, and for those that didn't see it, it's like Criminal Minds, but the serial killers are super-human monsters affected by what they call the anomaly . I've read it on my cell phone and notebook (because my eyes can't take much of cell phone reading anymore), using this Kindle version (thanks, Arachne!) and Mobipocket reader. Season 2 was pretty good. Of course, the season finale felt pretty weak after the awesome Season 1 finale. Still, I'm dying to know what happens to Hafidha next! Shadow Unit is free, please consider donating, there is a link on their page. I did, it's totally worth it!

Sol Survivor is another tower defense game. I'm particularly fond of them, and played oh so many over the years (and still play Desktop Tower Defense regularly at Facebook!). Some I loved, some I hated. Sol Survivor is definitely in the hate category. Which is a pity, because it's the best looking tower defense game I've ever played. The models and the terrains are quite spectacular. But somehow the gameplay doesn't work for me... It just feels annoying and like a chore.

Shatter is a new arkanoid-style game, with plenty of physics and that stylish retro-scheme. I've just bought it from checking out a video trailer, since there isn't a demo - from Google, looks like the used to be one but they removed. I imagine after playing the demo users might be less likely to buy than just watching the trailer. I'm not a fan of Arkanoid games overall, but the trailer was enough to convince me. There are a few differences from most classic breakout games. In particular, you both blow and suck (not at the same time), you have shields, you can shoot and the particles can behave in interesting ways. The "shatter" part is about the little pieces in which bricks get. You can suck those to get energy, which you can use to shoot shards, or with the shield. Also, there are boss battles! I've just won the first, and I can tell it wasn't as easy as I'd expected! This boss was made from a large number of segments, and could both ram

While I initially expected this comment to my MS Pivot post to be spam (most comments this size would be), this turned out to be quite interesting. It's certainly one of the better thought out graph systems with a time component I have ever seen.

Continuing my read of a bunch of SEO/conversion articles on Avangate, this a very interesting concept - SEO Microsites. In essence, it's about making a semi-neutral authoritative site about a specific segment, which has important keywords for your software. That makes it easier to get a good SEO ranking. You wouldn't push your product heavily, however - just have a regular mention and some side banners or descriptions. Very interesting, I might try it eventually... If I ever get the time. PS: This is my 100th post!

Some interesting tips on this article. One I particularly agree with is watermarking output. I've gotten several times the purchase/download rates when I added it to my folder print application - on the main print and titles of reports - and my thumbnail/album/slide show generator - on both thumbnails and html. One other point I need to think about is about adding samples on start. It was easy to do on Clipfast (just add a few clips) and STG Cache Audit - just do a scan, it's fast enough. But I'm not sure what the best way would be for STG FolderPrint Plus or STGThumb. Scanning the whole drive is a serious no-no - it could take hours for larger drives with millions of files. Even scanning the My Documents folder could take a while. For STGThumb I have a similar problem. I guess I could add a sample folder and scan that, but I don't see it as that helpful. One other option would be scanning the My Pictures folder, but I wonder how many actually use it as storag

I've been reading the Kindle pack file for Season 2 of Shadow Unit in my cell phone. While I didn't bother to comment on individual episodes, Getaway was a wonderful Chaz centered story. Chaz is having bad hallucinations and decides to quit the unit. Falkner won't let him, implies that as a beta, they will hunt him down if he leaves (!!!), and makes him take a medical leave. He decides to go to Vegas to disappear, but instead gets involved on a case... Nice side-stories too.

Google Apps Marketplace is Google's way of integrating cloud-based apps into their apps system. There are a few videos about it that explain quite well how it works, for developers - part 1 . Among other features, you get single sign-on (using OpenID), data sharing, and single point admin on Google Apps Control Panel. Developers do need to pay US$100 (for any number of apps) and 20% of the revenue. Personally I consider it pretty reasonable. It's not much more than software registration companies charge (except for start fee, of course), and given their total monopoly on the particular topic (Google Apps) it's not like you could go around and choose someone else. There are several other interesting videos. I really liked the data connection integration with GMail .

DevExpress had an interesting movie about Sunk Costs. In the movie, Julian talks about Sunk Costs, and how they relate to software development - i.e.: whatever you spent into developing something (time and money) is gone. If it's not ready, you should only consider the cost going forward when comparing it to potential opportunities. Certainly something to think about...

Since it was on sale on Gamersgate, I decided to check out the Cogs demo. It's touted as an steampunk puzzle. The basis of the game is a tile slider system - much like the kid toy available since 1880 ( wikipedia ). If you like that kind of thing, you might be interested. If you are sick of them, like me, you very probably won't like it.

I just finished reading The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. It was a very fast read, because it was quite fun and I couldn't put it down. It's another greek-mythology-really-exists-today series - another I've enjoyed (with a heavy hacking/magic as computing angle) is Webmage. This one is clearly more targeted at kids (with the 12-year old protagonists) but still very nice. I'm looking forward to the movie.

I've recently watched Quantum of Solace, the latest bond movie. It was pretty good, although the ending felt a little awkward to me. One of the things I really thought was cool was the interface the MI6 computers used in the movie. Movie of one of the segments Interesting letter from the makers A couple of stills

I've just finished reading the whole season one of Shadow Unit, an experimental short fiction effort I've mentioned before. The first few episodes were good. The final episode was worthy of any TV series. It was incredibly tense, and I ended up sleeping about 2-3 hours later than usual, because I just couldn't stop reading! Pretty awesome. It also had tons of follow up, in small hyperlinked content. That is a characteristic of Shadow Unit I've never seen anywhere as well done - now and then, there are links for small side stories, character background or sketches, links to various web pages and huge playlists. It adds up to a huge amount of extra content. On the truly unexpected side content, there was a made up transcript of the commentary of the actor about a scene. Pretty cool.

I like to check out Kongregate once in a while for flash games, and once in a while, I find one that is really great. Infectonator is a silly pro-zombie flash game, where you infect the whole world, one city at a time. You start with a weak infection tool, which can barely turn a few people into zombies. They will hunt other people down, and each time have a small chance of infecting them. There are heroes that will kill your zombies. After that, you can use your money to improve your zombies. They can last longer, infect more, be fast, stronger, etc. You can also have multiple infection shots per attack, bombs and better infection features. Along the game you can get your own zombie heroes, which are quite funny. For example, you can get a Michael Jackson zombie that is very similar to the Plant vs Zombies one, a large zombie named tanker (I presume that it's a nod up to Left 4 Dead), something similar to Ronald McDonald, Coronel Sanders,etc. Overall, it's very much worth the

Microsoft comes up with some cool research. Some become products, and some don't. One cool looking piece of research tech is Pivot. It provides a way to see new relationships and reorganize large collections of data. It is looking very interesting so far and the video is well worth looking at.

The new Street View feature with visualization of user photos is pretty awesome. You can view a nice example here . It's similar to Microsoft's Photosynth, but the integration with Google Maps is much better (and it doesn't require Silverlight). Also, as I understand, Photosynth only took user submitted pictures, while this is based on automatic extraction from sites such as Panoramio, Flickr and Picasa.

Just installed and played Gridrunner Revolution. Llamasoft is a name that instantly brings to mind a shooter in the early 90s (not sure if it was theirs or a clone of one of their games). Gridrunner Revolution reminds me a lot of that game, but not completely in a good way. The gameplay would be probably be very nice in the early 90s, but now I'm not impressed at all. The graphics are interesting, but together with the sound it's just too loud for my current taste. Not recommended.

I've recently finished reading Exodus - The Ark , by Paul Chafe. This is the continuation of Genesis, which I recently blogged about, and is from Webscriptions too. Genesis speaks of the creation of a human multi-generation ship to another star, in a ten thousand year voyage. One of the practical effects of that time frame is that (in the book, at least) almost no technological artifacts will survive this long - thus they must fall back to an agrarian society. Thus all of this intermediate book takes place with minimal tech (for us), in the middle of high tech world. What I found most aggravating was the constant rise of the crazy religious dictatorship, which happens more than once in the books so far. There are a few hopeful moments (SPOILER ALERT), such as when the previous religious order converts to a natural history society, or the very ending of the book. I'm not complaining about the lack of realism - in fact, the awful turn of events that happens more than once in the

Just read the first episode of the Shadow Unit - Breathe. It's a free experiment in fiction on the web, or so they say. It looks like they have LiveJournals for the characters, and plan to add more stuff in time. The first episode was pretty good. I've just learned that they have Season 1 in Mobipocket format, which means I'll probably read the rest in my cell phone.

Yesterday, I watched a very interesting seminar about Adwords by Dave Collins, of the recently renamed Software Promotions (it used to be Shareware Promotions, but unfortunately, the shareware name has fallen into very hard times). Several ideas were interesting, these were my favorites: - run a Search Query Report. Google sees Broad matches a little too broadly for most people. My campaigns are tiny, but still I found a dozen or so clicks of meaningless terms, which I added to the negative word list in my campaign. - Geographic Performance Report - useful for figuring out which countries are working best for all. He mentioned one should probably use a pivot table - after checking the report out, he is completely right, otherwise it is too much data to be useful. - Content Network: using competitor's product names to piggyback in their promotion. - Segmenting campaigns per country can get you cheaper clicks. I've started a tryout of this for UK/Canada as opposed to the USA. - L

This is a very cool looking interface concept. I don't think it's very useful (I mean - how inconvenient is having to look on multiple faces of your device for regular use?!?!), but it's still worth checking out.

I've recently had an annoying problem with Winamp. Everytime I run it, and also on every wake-up from an hibernate, I'd get a message about how CEUTIL.DLL couldn't be loaded. While it did run fine afterwards, that was still annoying. Looking at the Winamp forums, it seems like it's caused by a confluence of the Plays for Sure plug-in, WMP 11 and ActiveSync. I didn't like their suggestions much - installing ActiveSync (which I didn't like already when I needed it for my only CE device, a VERY troublesome iPaq) or uninstall WMP 11 and runtime. I tried uninstalling the pmp_p4s.dll plugin. That didn't work, but just going to Winamp's plugin folder and deleting it solved the problem.

I've just noticed Galcon Fusion on Steam, and downloaded the demo to check it out. I've already played the original Galcon, and some other clones. Galcon is a "simple" game - you own planets, each with more or less ship production capabilities, and you move ships around to conquer other planets. I quoted simple because it can be quite complex to play well, as it is easy to lose planets by leaving it too uncovered, or not send enough ships on a conquest and waste them. Galcon Fusion seems to be exactly the same, except with much nicer graphics. It does have a few other modes, but, alas, they are not included in the demo...

I've recently purchased Zuma's Revenge, when PopCap was holding an Haiti donation of 100% sales of the day. I did play the trial, and wouldn't have bought it without the donations. I was a big fan of the original, and played it through several times, as well as a few of the clones. The new Zuma is very similar to the original. There are a few extras, but they don't have that much impact. One thing that is considerably changed is the graphics. They are quite beautiful, particularly the water and the volcano levels. Overall the game seemed a bit easier, specially the ending. There a few extra modes. So far, they seem almost identical to the main story. One funny thing in Heroic Frog mode - the bosses (at least the first one) openly remark about the rematch, and not doing any better than the first time when they lose. Pretty funny. And if you thought the main game was too easy, you will probably like Heroic Frog mode - it's MUCH harder. Overall, if you like the ball-s

I've recently read Genesis, by Paul Chafe, the first book of the Ark series. The main focus of the book is the creation of a gigantic multi-generation starship, on a ten thousand year voyage. While the overpopulated and in serious trouble Earth is easy to visualize, I find it hard to imagine a project on such a scale being done, specially given the lack of a return in the investment. It's also hard to imagine it actually working without any human maintenance for the whole trip - it's supposed to fall back to a simpleton agrarian society, because there isn't enough people to maintain an industry, not to mention the lack of extractable resources. The whole space elevator arc of the story sounded reasonable, though. There are still real projects looking at the feasibility of the concept with current materials, I can't help but hope that eventually we'll be able to make it work. Some of the religious outrage reminds me of Exit Earth, by Martin Caidin - an excellent,

I've recently finished Honor of the Clan, by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane. This book is part of the Legacy of the Aldenata series, and, in fact, I read it out of order, after Eye of the Storm. Because of that, some pieces were less shocking, since I already knew it would happen - - particularly the death of a major character. Nevertheless, it was quite enjoyable, with all the usual fun battles the series have.

One book that was a pleasant surprise was Diamond Star, by Catherine Asaro. I got it on one of the excellent book packs from Webscription.net . While I'm a bit of of a fan, specially because of Fool's War, from the description I really didn't expect to enjoy the book much. Fortunately, I was very wrong and really liked it. It's part of a saga, which I'm pretty sure I've read some of the stories before, but have no real recollection of. The story is about a prince with empathic powers, held as a hostage on Earth, which ends up a rock singer. There is plenty of action, and the style of AI/EI and mesh tech was quite enjoyable. Very recommended.

On the paper Evolution of Adaptive Behaviour in Robots by Means of Darwinian Selection there is a very cool section on Predator/Prey Coevolution . It's pretty short and well worth reading.

Browsing Steam, I noticed a new(ish) demo - Magnetis. It's a dropping block game where instead of forming lines, you form lines with Magnetis. It's cute and well done, as far as I could see in my limited play time, but I didn't find it very interesting or fun.

Eye of the Storm is another book in the Posleen series. After the posleen storyline is pretty much gone, here comes another invasion, of even more dangerous aliens... And the Galactics are very unprepared, due to the greed of the Darhel. The preparation for the war is a very large focus of this one, although there is a nice (if a bit short) battle in the end. If you liked the rest of the series, you will probably like this one. Recommended.

In the Stormy Red Sky , by David Drake, is the latest books in the RCN series. As usual, Daniel Leary (now Captain), goes around wreaking semi-unbelievable havok on the enemy, with very creative plans. Silly, but quite fun.

I've just downloaded Zombilution demo, after hearing about it on Gamersgate. However, I just uninstalled it, because I really didn't like it. The base concept is cute - not so much the pro-zombie part, which has already been done several times, but the air photo level style. I don't believe I've seen it done before for desktop games, albeit there were a few browser games. However, the graphics other than the levels were tiny and the difference between zombies and the people shooting at the zombies was hard to see. I didn't find the gameplay to be any fun, either.

I've just finished reading the latest book in the Honorverse - Torch Of Freedom. This is another Zilwicki/Cachat/Torch story. It does cover interesting pieces of the Manpower/Mesan Alignment events, and of course, has a nice battle at the end, with technology surprises on both sides. It wouldn't be an Honorverse book otherwise . There were some overly verbose sections, as usual, too. One tiny side story I liked was about Brice and the gypsy clan. I would be surprised if they didn't appear again in other books. The revelations about the alignment gained at the end of story (not to mention the tech) should have large consequences for the whole series. Definitely recommended for fans of the series. PS: I've added the Amazon link. It is a US$17 hardcover. I feel compelled to mention that you can get it as an e-book at Webscriptions for just US$6 or potentially even better, as one of their monthly bundles (I say potentially because the bundle only makes sense if