N64 tunes...
I’d always loved the music from Tetrisphere for the Nintendo 64 (no interest in the game, just the music), but the only copy I had was recorded from my PC’s line-in port (noisy). Tonight I discovered that I didn’t even have that any more.
Looks like the clever folks on the emulation scene have come to the rescue with the USF file format, which records N64 music from an emulator. And some kind soul ripped Tetrisphere!
http://www.zophar.net/usf
Here’s the Winamp player plugin:
http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=146609
And though not directly related, here’s a plugin to encode to MP3 (also useful with MODs and other game audio):
http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/
Read more...JAXB is evil...
Well, or maybe the Open Travel Alliance is.
hc.getFacilityInfo().getRestaurants().getRestaurant().get(0).getCuisineCodes().getCuisineCode().get(0).getCode()
//KILL ME NOW, GOD! hc.getPolicies().getPolicy().get(0).getGuaranteePaymentPolicy().getGuaranteePayment().get(0).getDescription().get(0).getTextOrImageOrURL().get(0)
Read more...JavaBeans says that if an object has a boolean attribute Foobar, then the getter method for that attribute must be named “isFoobar()” rather than “getFoobar()”. That makes sense, I guess.
But when objects were designed without the intention of making them JavaBeans (such as XML Schema types that were converted to Java through code generators), you wind up with lovely names like “isOfferBreakfast()”.
Well, I suppose “getOfferBreakfast()” is misleading too. :P Maybe this whole notion of accessor methods is just plain wrong. What we need is a language where you can specify onGet() and onSet() events for object attributes, and only in the rare cases they’re needed.
Read more...I wanted a dead-tree version of my LiveJournal, because I want my kids to be able to read it someday, and I know a soft-copy will go poof well before then. LJ’s own export feature excludes comments, and I’m not about to download one month at a time, so I had to keep looking. Fortunately, a quick Google produced this:
SourceForge.net: ljArchive “ljArchive is a tool for downloading, browsing, and analyzing journal entries and comments from LiveJournal (or LiveJournal clones).” http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/
I was able to export the entire journal (comments included) to both XML and HTML formats. One single file for each. A couple more clicks, and the whole thing was printed (well, I also had to refill the paper tray - it was 117 pages).
Read more...The invasion of sensible thought by video games...
As I passed a pay phone today, my first thought was: “Hmmm, a hard line. I’d better remember that’s there.” (I’ve been playing The Matrix: Path of Neo.)
As I may have mentioned to some of you, I’ve also caught myself considering what Tom Nook would pay for various items while walking through the produce section at the grocery.
Read more...Ah, that’s why I’ve been in such a blue mood lately! I forgot to listen to The Campfire Headphase for, like, a whole month! I feel much better now.
Either that, or I had my first productive day in a few weeks. It feels good to be out of programmer’s block.
Read more...If, like me, you haven’t played Animal Crossing: Wild World in 4 months (the critters all reminded me exactly how long I’d been gone), you may want to pay your town a brief visit. I found a ton of fish and insects that I’d never seen before. I also found a ton of weeds, but at least there was a four-leaf clover among them. I even found a ton of cockroaches in my house! (Actually, there’s no upside to that.)
Read more...Getting distracted by too many e-mails during the day, but don’t want to close the client in case your boss wants something?
Create a rule in Outlook (or a filter in GMail or Thunderbird) that finds e-mails from your boss/wife/friend’s address. Have it forward them to the SMS address for your cell phone (usually number@provider.com). Then just ignore or turn off the new mail indicator for your mail client. You won’t have your workflow interrupted just to read about new specials in the cafeteria, and you can impress your boss by responding immediately to his e-mails at 8 PM on Sunday (from the comfort of home).
Read more...The Bhagavad Gita in two lines...
Be cool.
Be nice.
Of course, if you don’t know what “cool” or “nice” are exactly, or why you should be cool and nice, you may want to read the Gita:
Jack Hawley - The Bhagavad Gita: a Walkthrough for Westerners
I heard it is one of the core texts of the Hindu religion, and encapsulates the wisdom of all India over thousands of years, so I picked it up. And as long as you filter out the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo (“Atma”, etc.), it really does seem like a recipe for better living.
But in an effort to drill that wisdom into harder-headed readers, the Gita does repeat itself quite a bit. So if you don’t purchase it, meditate on the above two lines. No, seriously, close your eyes and think really hard about them, preferably once a day. You’ll come to many of the same conclusions the book does.
Read more...In the next decade or so, I expect humanity to discover whether the same forces that gave rise to life on Earth exist on other worlds as well.
If we find that they do, then the fact that we haven’t discovered intelligent life on other worlds (or rather, that they haven’t revealed themselves to us) is rather worrisome.
Here’s why: humanity is developing several technologies that could conceivably wipe our entire race out. I’m thinking specifically of custom-engineered viruses, but experiments in super-hot plasma and miniature manmade black holes are worrisome too.
Now if life arises naturally everywhere in the universe, the question is, where are the other sentient races? My fear is that the natural progression of technology is such that, around the time a race develops weapons of mass destruction, someone somewhere loses control of theirs. Poof. Another civilization gone, around about the time they would have made contact with the others.
One encouraging sign, though, is that we haven’t seen any debris left by prior advanced civilizations on Earth. If there had been one, we’d have seen something by now. But what if planet-eating black holes or plasma or self-replicating nanomachines are the culprit on other worlds? Those wouldn’t allow future races (or any life) to evolve on the same planet twice.
Read more...