Price Of Gas Around The World

Here is a great chart that shows the price of gas around the world. America, take note! Of all the western industrialized nations, the US even now pays the lowest price per gallon!

This is something I’ve been telling people over the past few months: gas is expensive, especially in Europe. It should be expensive, so that we appreciate it and don’t waste it. Growing up in Germany, I got used to paying $2 per liter (and the current price is over $9/gallon in Germany). So the current price adjustment in the US, regardless of how much hardship it might create for some people, is a good thing. It drives innovation. Those 30mpg cars that everybody is hawking now came from somewhere. They came from nations that have been paying $10/gallon for several decades, and who put a high premium on fuel economy. Nobody should argue the value of that – not in a time where the global warning scare is moving front and center.

Attention Dogs!

Hehe! More here.

Now Playing: Etrian Odyssey

The Gamestop in Petaluma is a weird little shop: when I couldn’t find Etrian Odyssey a year ago because it had sold out everywhere, I found that the Petaluma shop had several copies in stock. Now that Etrian Odyssey 2 is out,  I once again couldn’t find the game anywhere – until I went to the Petaluma Gamestop. The curious thing is that now that I own Etrian Odyssey 2, I’m playing the first part again, while saving the new one for an undetermined upcoming vacation.

I was hooked on Etrian Odyssey last year. Played it night and day, ignoring the big consoles and all books I’d been reading at the time. After many years, I was addicted to an oldschool RPG again. I mapped out dungeons, I killed monsters, I leveled up. Etrian Odyssey’s gameplay is a tried and true formula that appeals to our basic need to explore – something that Clint Hocking explained much more eloquently than I ever could in his 2007 GDC talk.

[Read more]

Page Status

Wow, this page has turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. In a fun way, though – WordPress is making it so easy to add content that I’m going pretty crazy with all the stuff I’m putting in the database. As of this weekend, I have transferred over about two years of blog posts (and comments), written five of the game pages (the Unreal page just went up), and added all downloads from my old page. Things would be going even faster if I didn’t keep tinkering with the layout and sidebars of the page! After that I still have 7 years of blog posts to add, but that’s all backlog and can probably wait for a while.

Windows Vista, Part Deux

Glorious! Half the time when I close the laptop lid, Vista shuts down and reboots instead. When I choose “Shut Down” button after that the computer restarts instead. Reliably. On factory Dell hardware with proven hardware/driver combinations.

But even more fun, as I was working just now, Window all of the sudden closed one program after the next and shut down the computer with no warning, rhyme or reason. It then rebooted the computer.

W.T.F.?

Dear Green Bay Packers…

Just let Brett Favre play, whereever he wants, on his own terms.
You owe him.
End of story.

Victoria’s Page

We spent part of the weekend updating Victoria’s webpage with a new, modified theme (Vanilla Mist). Looks pretty nice, if I may say so myself Go visit her!

This Weekend

NHRA Drag Racing. Looks coolest on Friday night, when the sun is setting and you can see the fire coming from the engines:

Stupid CSS!

See that search box, the search icon and the RSS icon on the top right? They are the bane of my existance. Those elements display differently between Firefox 2, Firefox 3 and IE7. That’s three different ways of CSS interpretation, all with slightly different results! Funnily enough, the Internet Explorer interpretation is actually the closest to the “truth”. Aren’t web standards great?

Update: Hah! I got rid of the search image and now it is working everywhere

Windows Vista

You know that the honeymoon with Windows Vista is officially over when the laptop frequently (but of course not reliably!) crashes when you close the lid – and theoretically enters sleep mode. And when, upon reboot, the layout of all sidebar apps often (but not always!) has changed and you have to rearrange everything. Why am I not suprised by this? Vista is just another typical Microsoft OS: Always usable, never inspiring. I had some hopes when I first got the laptop and didn’t want preconceived notions guide my judgement, but it’s still the same old same old in new clothes.

Speaking of inspiring, though: this is the first post I am submitting through the new WordPress iPhone app. And that is very cool indeed! Can’t wait to blog from remote places with no computer in sight. Hmm, I should test out the photo upload functionality as well, but I’m already in bed. Well, I guess a shot of the nightstand will have to do!