:: Randomized Wisdom
  
Bigger Words
Zaibatsu -

a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed for control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of the Pacific War.

Quoted
"Thinking burns calories..."
~ St.Ego


:: Status
View History  |  Playlist  |  Follow on Twitter  |  St.Ego's Austin
St.Ego is thought it was Thursday, not Friday; where did I miss a day? (15 hours ago)
While In a anxious mood
St.Ego is listening to Doyle and Toby work out the details of their divorce... (1 day ago)
While In a amused mood
St.Ego is packing up my desk and getting ready to relocate the office to Doyles today... (1 day ago)
While In a anxious mood
St.Ego is just now wrapping up a great call with Steve Johnson and anxious to get busy working on ideas with my creativity recharged! (1 day ago)
While In a excited mood
St.Ego is re-outfitting my Myrmidon Battlecruiser with more shield-power relays so that I can shield tank better... (2 days ago)
While In a determined mood
St.Ego is waiting for the flux capacitor on my spaceship to finish recharging... (3 days ago)
While In a hungry mood
St.Ego is noticing that, in Eve Online, Homeless are classified as Livestock... (4 days ago)
While In a amused mood
St.Ego is banging out the last of the last of Karo's change requests for the month... (4 days ago)
While In a anxious mood
St.Ego is seeing the girls off to Barton Springs for a swim day while I catch a break after babysitting yesterday... (6 days ago)
While In a hungry mood
St.Ego is terminating my Amazon Web Services account for their Elastic Cloud due to the lack of savings based on their pricing model... (1 week ago)
While In a aggravated mood
:: What's Hot
What's In: Winnie the Pooh - What's Out: Goofy

Why would someone wish to risk association with Goofy? Among the Disney cast, he's "that guy", the one whom friends refer to as "good people", about whom nothing positive comes to mind, but they are tolerated for their endearing stoopidity.

That's Goofy.

I was once given a pair of silk boxer shorts that featured Goofy on them. I was so mortified that I had them returned.

If I wanted to identify with any of the characters in the Disney cast, it would be Winnie the Pooh. Oh, I know that he was originally A.A.Milne's creation, but Disney pirated him quite thoroughly. Regardless, that is the character I would choose to identify with.

Winnie the Pooh is so laid back and chill that he has inspired such works as The Tao of Pooh, which portrays our silly 'ole bear as a hidden zen master of taking life as it comes. There is something to admire in Pooh-bear. At the very least, he isn't as stoopid as Goofy...

:: Media Review
  • Atlantica MMO

    This game came out of nowhere and took the MMO community by storm. It is currently rocking the top of the charts over at MMORPG.com. I downloaded it in-between client checks, since it was free, initially based on the glowing reviews it was being given over on Ten Ton Hammer. I was not disappointed.

    Atlantica takes traditional MMO play-style and turns combat upside down by going back to a turn-based system. At the same time, they also provide the player mandate to populate an entire party of custom selected mercenaries of various abilities that function like additional characters with full enventory and equipment sets. Combining the re-simplification with the excessive complexity results in some strategic gameplay that is reminescent of Final Fantasy.

    If you played the Final Fantasy MMO and found it to be a boring grind, Atlantica's inclusion of up to eight mercenaries will very likely provide what you felt was missing.

  • The Love Guru

    Mike Myers outdoes himself in yet another brilliant satire. I started the film with modest expectations, but finished it in stitches. The movie is still pretty damned funny the second and third times through, so rewatchability looks good too.

    Get your own!

:: Another Good Read...
  • Midnight Blue: Sonja Blue Collection

    It must have been a first edition of Sunglasses After Dark (the first of the three books in this edition) that I first read so many years ago. I picked it up off the dusty shelf of a discount bookstore, wedged anonymously onto a shelf with dozens of other books in horror fiction. After losing it as a loaner, I would return again and again to the same bookstore as if it was the magical author of the book I would grow to love.

    We are in an era of multiple television shows all struggling to depict the sexiest leather-clad blood-sucking night-fiend, but all were inspired by the story of Sonya Blue.

    Nancy A. Collins

    Get your own!
: : Latest Blog News

Getting at Mailman with PHP and Xaraya
Jun 24, 2009

For some time now, I have been picking away at the idea of connecting the Mailman mailing list server to Xaraya. If I could get Xaraya to read Mailman data, including the list of members and the archive of posts, I could provide a powerful (and free) listserv to Xaraya members by automatically adding them to a mailing list in Mailman that is associated with membership in a specific group in Xaraya (ostensibly the default Users group, but any group could ostensibly be used for various purposes). Furthermore, I could automatically establish user accounts in Xaraya for all listserv members in Mailman, run via CRON to keep a Xaraya group and a Mailman list in sync together.

However, it's been an uphill battle getting at Mailman from anything but the command line... until now!

Slashdot Slashdots the Internet, Featuring Your Site!
Jun 14, 2009

What happens when the inbred nature of the internet gets into bed with new and media? They feed on each other. Right now you can see it happening as Slashdot virtually erupts a stream of meta-data traffic over an article about sniffering browser history without javascript, and references to the NINE YEAR OLD bug that continues to remain exploitable, as obvious references in the comments will tell you, quite hillariously:

When the internet gets slashdotted...

What is the sound of a billion souls crying out in the dark "how did I get here?"

Up-Coming Sci-Fi MMO's To Watch For
Mar 03, 2009

Since the market has become virtually flooded with fantasy MMO's, the focus of the gaming community is beginning to move towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum. For years, EVE Online has dominated the sci-fi MMO market, remaining viable for years with a growing loyal fan-base while other aspiring sci-fi MMO's flared briefly before fading away.

However, EVE Online is not a game for everyone, heavily featuring PvP action. I've personally tried playing twice only to have the experience ruined by bored griefers with too much virtual artillery. As a result, I have been on the watch for something new to play, specifically in this genre.

Reviewing the unreleased games that are anticipated, I have selected three that appear to be worth investing some time in, once they are available.

After the jump, I will cover the primary features of interest for each game, detailing exactly why it is worth looking into. In expected order of release, they are Jumpgate Evolution, Earthrise and Infinity.

St.Ego in xarPolitics: Xaraya Project Management Committee Elected
Feb 22, 2009

Over the years, various people have scoffed at my aspirations of political involvement. Astrologically, I am a Leo, and I fulfill that stereotype quite well, if I do say so. Leo's are typically attributed with leadership skills and a strong inclination to use them. I am no exception. I was a supervisor almost as soon as I was hired on in many of the jobs that I have held over the years. Let's say that I just... have a tendency to take over.

As of this month, I am now officially a member of the Xaraya PMC (Project Management Committee), the body responsible for maintaining and supporting the Xaraya platform and it's developer communitee. Together with Marty Vance and Chris Powis, we will be responsible for ensuring that Xaraya continues to be the most viable web platform available.

Xaraya is free and Open Source software (FOSS) licensed under the GPL. 

Stay tuned for details about the Xaraya PMC and what it will be doing to start building the community. Not all of the developers have to work on the code; some of them have to work on the bigger picture.

It is my privilege and pleasure to serve alongside my fellow committee members. I look forward to posting here about my many successes with inspiring other leadership within the Xaraya community. This incredible tool is available to give web developers what they will find missing in any other FOSS platform on the market today. Welcome home and thank you for voting!

Bootstrap Podcasting
Feb 05, 2009

After listening to some of the other podcasts that are out there, I decided that the time has come for me to give it a try.

I recently downloaded Audacity, which offers voice-activated recording features and accepts the line-in that is currently carrying the mic from an old over-the-ear gaming headset I had sitting around. I have to increase the Gain quite a bit to hear myself after recording through such a low-end mic, but it gets the job done.

In order to run a podcast, however, you need more than just a few mp3's.

In about two hours, I worked out a way to run podcasts from Xaraya using only Xarpages, a new articles pubtype and a couple of templates. Continue reading to see the actual templates and get started setting up your own podcast using Xaraya!

My Ping.fm Auto-Cross-Poster w/Snippets!
Feb 02, 2009

A while back, I posted about how I was using Ping.fm to cross-publish my articles from Xaraya to my various social networking profiles.

I had been experimenting with direct use of the various API's made available by Facebook/MySpace/etc., but it was becoming a long and arduous process.

Then I discovered Ping.fm and have been using it ever since.

However, I was not able to publish the code snippets that I used to accomplish this for you, my readers... until now.

More News
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