A recent preview of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, sheds some new light on the next chapter of the Half-Life story. It sounds like the next episode will clock in at between 8 and 9 hours, which is about twice as long as Episode 1. I'm glad they are increasing the game time, since Episode 1 felt very short. The Source engine is also being updated to include lots of new eye candy, which should be a real treat. A "Previously Seen in Episode 1" game montage will open Episode 2, which I find very disappointing. Part of the charm of a Half-Life game is being dropped into the world with no idea as to what's going on. Being force-fed a recap is going to feel a little jarring, in my estimation.

Another bit of sad news is that the Black Box edition of the game has been canceled. The only version that will be made available is the Orange Box edition, which includes a full copy of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. Why would I want to pay for products that I already own? I find this decision most disappointing.

I just read an interesting article over at Wired that essentially asks "Is Firefox Getting Bloated?" The article compares Firefox to SeaMonkey. I was a Mozilla browser user well before it was named "SeaMonkey", and well before Firefox 1.0 was released. During that time, I really came to despise the bloat in the application. Firefox was an incredible breath of fresh air when it was released: light-weight and responsive.

Personally, I feel that Firefox still exhibits both qualities. But I can see the argument made by the Wired article. Additional features, some of which many users may not actually care about, are creeping into the code base. Built-in support for microformats (something that I still don't fully understand) is coming in Firefox 3.0. Do users really need this? Mozilla apparently thinks so. Many users may disagree.

There are certainly areas where Firefox could improve (in-browser support for both Java applets and PDF files are horrible). But I think Firefox is in great shape now. One thing I know for certain is that I'm never going back to Internet Explorer. (Side Note: I recently installed IE 7 on my work laptop ... man, is it horrible.)

What do you think? Is Firefox too bloated? Too lean? Just right?

Version 2.2 of WordPress has been released. One of the changes in this release is the reinclusion of the Preview and Edit links on the Write Post page (although it sounds like the preview now appears in a pop-up window instead of an iframe). This fixes a bug I griped about when 2.1 was released.

I will probably update this blog to 2.2 at some point, though updating WordPress is always a colossal bother. Seeing as I skipped over 2.1, it's probably time to move to the latest version.

Having been born and raised in The South (the southern United States for any international readers), I'm a fan of NASCAR. In fact, it's the only sport that I follow regularly. I know that the sport doesn't appeal to many people, but I have enjoyed it greatly since I was little. There are a few things I've had on my mind recently about the sport, so I'll present them here.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and DEI I'm not an Earnhardt fan (I prefer the Hendrick Motorsports stables of Gordon and Johnson), but I think it's great that Junior is leaving DEI. His step-mother Teresa really screwed Junior by refusing to give him a controlling share in his dad's business. So Junior has decided to turn the tables on his step-mom and walk away from the team. Once he leaves, DEI will no longer have any "star" drivers. I predict that DEI will die out in another season or two as a result.

Leadership I hate Mike Helton. Under his dictatorial leadership, NASCAR has lost several historic tracks, including Rockingham speedway. It has seen idiotic rules changes, such as no driving below the yellow line on certain tracks and no finishing under caution (attempting a green-white-checker finish instead). And it has become increasingly contradictory, throwing debris cautions in some cases and not others. Being family controlled is such a shame; the sport needs a commission like most other sports, made up of people who don't solely profit on the direction of the sport.

The Car of Tomorrow NASCAR introduced the "car of tomorrow" this year in an attempt to level the playing field for all drivers. So far, only Hendrick Motorsports seems to have figured out the new package (something I'm not complaining about). But it seems more like a move towards the IROC style of racing, where everyone drives the exact same car. There is less room today for teams to tweak the car itself, which is a shame. NASCAR is clearly losing its roots, but that's apparently what they want.

I haven't been posting much recently, due to a number of factors:

• I've been busy at work
• The Shivering Isles expansion for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (totally fun!)
• Puzzle Quest for my Nintendo DS Lite (also totally fun and highly addictive!)
• My sister is graduating from college (!!!)
• Insert most any other reason here

I hope to rectify this problem very soon. A number of topics have crossed my mind recently, and I hope to get to them over the next week or so.

Back in February, I mentioned a few games that I was planning on purchasing this year. Two of the titles, Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles and Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific, have already been released. So what's preventing me from rushing out the door and picking them up? Sadly, each has a host of problems.

The primary Shivering Isles bug causes saved games to become corrupt, causing gamers to lose all their saved progress. After investing literally hundreds of hours in the game, that's not exactly a risk I want to run. Sure a patch is available, but it's in a 'beta' state. I didn't sign up to be a beta tester here!

Even after a couple of patches, Silent Hunter apparently still has a number of lingering problems, several of which result in crashes to the desktop. A number of the most critical bugs in the initial release have supposedly been fixed, but I hear that not every bug has been squashed. And I've read that saved games aren't compatible after applying the latest patch. What?!? If I'm going to put time into a game, I don't want to lose my progress after applying a patch.

I really want to play these games, but I also don't want to be disappointed by half-baked products. So I'm going to wait a little longer in the hopes that these issues get ironed out.

Taking a screenshot of an application is a simple task: the "Print Screen" key can be used alone (to grab the entire screen), or one can use the "Alt + Print Screen" key combination to take a snapshot of only the active window. But taking a screenshot of the active window, while an application menu is opened, is a little tougher. Sure you could use a third-party solution to do it, but suppose you don't want to (or cannot) use such a tool. What is one to do?

One option, which isn't very appealing, is to take a screenshot of the entire screen (using the "Print Screen" key) and then crop out the active window using some image editor. Again, this involves using a third-party application to do the cropping (although Microsoft Paint can be used to some minimal effect).

The better answer, as I accidentally discovered myself, is very simple. Any application worth its salt uses keyboard accelerators (access keys, to be exact) to allow keyboard users to access application menus. The problem is that most applications make use of the "Alt" key to invoke these access keys. For example, "Alt + F" in Windows Explorer will open the File menu. Suppose I want to take a screenshot of a highlighted menu item within the File menu. If I open the menu and press "Alt + Print Screen" to take the screenshot, the menu is dismissed, since the application thinks I'm trying to invoke another menu. But we can work around this limitation!

1. Hold the Alt key down and press the corresponding access key to open the desired menu.
2. Keep the Alt key pressed!
3. Move the menu selection (using the arrow keys on the keyboard) to the desired menu item.
4. Press the Print Screen key.

Voila! An active-window screenshot with a highlighted menu item, using no third-party application. Here's an example:

Matt Cutts has posted a short collection of improvements he'd like to see over at Amazon.com. I agree with him on all counts. There are a number of areas that Amazon could do way better on; hopefully some of these ideas will see the light of day.

Judging by the comments on the post, it also looks like I'm not the only Amazon Prime junkie. :-D

It looks like the next generation of the Thunderbird e-mail client has been released. Although I have not yet updated my client at home, I will certainly be doing so tonight. Thunderbird is a fantastic client, and I am really looking forward to all the new features (not to mention the boat loads of bug fixes).

It looks as if Windows XP will be phased out by the end of the year, despite a continued strong demand for the operating system. Though Microsoft claims that sales of Vista are high, this rush to stop shipping Windows XP seems to say the exact opposite. In a recent Harris poll on over 2200 US adults, only 12% showed any interest in actually upgrading to Vista. This is bad news for Microsoft, and might be one reason why they are rushing XP out the door. My attitude is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As such, I intend to stick with XP for several more years. There are far too many problems in the current release of Vista than I'd like to deal with (not to mention all of the overhead for those fancy transparent windows).

I've noted over the past few weeks that my computer at home has picked up a vibration. Every so often, it gets to be so bad that the case actually rattles. The only possible cause is one of the many cooling fans, and I'm guessing that my Zalman VGA cooler is the culprit (though I'm not completely certain). When I installed the Zalman, I opted not to use the variable fan speed control, choosing instead to run the fan at full speed all the time. What's odd is that my last video card, which also ran with a Zalman cooler, didn't have this issue. Perhaps this second cooler isn't as well balanced? Should I install the fan speed control to throttle down the fan speed? Or could it be another fan altogether? Whatever it is, I've certainly got to spend some time troubleshooting the issue; it's driving me crazy!

Update: It looks like the Zalman cooler is not the culprit (score another point for Zalman!). I installed the FanMate speed controller, turned the speed all the way down, and the vibration was still present. I'm now suspecting my stock CPU cooler (the one that came with my AMD processor). Also, when I was inside the computer, I noted that the case's side panel supports were bent out ever so slightly, so I bent them back. Now the vibration has turned into a constant hum! Perhaps it's time for a new case?

An article over at Slashdot mentions the news that Apple, Mozilla, and Opera have requested the adoption of HTML 5, a successor to HTML 4 and XHTML, both of which are aging. The draft spec for HTML 5 is courtesy of the WHATWG, a group that formed for the very specific purpose of creating a successor to what we use today. It seems that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been wasting time working on an incompatible replacement to HTML and XHTML, a decision that I feel is destined to fail (backwards compatibility is a definite requirement in moving the web forward).

Adopting HTML 5 is a great idea (HTML does need cleaning up), but unless Microsoft climbs aboard, we might as well start building the HTML 5 coffin. As much as people dislike hearing it, the fact is that Microsoft owns this kind of thing. If it doesn't get into Internet Explorer, you might as well forget it. And I doubt that IE will migrate to something like this anytime soon. I mean, they just fixed their CSS box-model bugs! How many years did we wait for that? And after all that time, the rendering engine is still broken.

Perhaps Firefox will continue to take share from IE, giving the 'little' guys like Mozilla a voice in what direction to take the web. I've certainly got my fingers crossed.

I've recently been listening to some music by The Mamas & The Papas, and it got me thinking. Cass Elliot, one of "The Mamas," was rather heavy-set to say the least. Would a person like this make it in today's music scene? I'm inclined to say "no" since so much of music today is visual. As I see it, Cass just doesn't have "the look" to compete in today's market.

She's not alone. Roy Orbison is another candidate in my list of performers least likely to make it. Anyone who's listened to any of Roy's work can't deny that he has an incredible voice. But he's certainly nothing to look at. He would most likely be overlooked if he started today. Who knows how much great music we're missing out on because the artists aren't the Ken's and Barbie's that producers want them to be?

Several weeks ago, I purchased Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, a role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. Though I have yet to finish it, I feel like I have a good enough grasp to give a short review.

I've never played any of the Dragon Quest games, but the protagonist in Rocket Slime is apparently one of the characters from that series. The story line should be familiar to every gamer in the world: an evil group invades a peaceful land, captures its inhabitants, and only the brave hero can save the day and restore order. Although formulaic, the story does have some charm. The writing is witty; puns are scattered all over the place.

There are two phases to game play: dungeon crawls and tank battles. The dungeon crawls are reminiscent of the classic Zelda games: top-down affairs where you run around battling bad guys and collecting items. Tank battles are somewhat different. Each team (yours and a member of the evil Plob) has a tank with a certain amount of hit points. Both tanks have two cannons, one which shoots straight out and one that shoots in an arc. Ammunition randomly spawns at a number of spots in your tank, and you must ferry it to the cannons to be shot at the enemy. The early battles are fairly easy, but the later ones (where I'm at now in the game) are very difficult. As such, this part of the game can get a bit frustrating. Every item you find throughout the game can be used as ammunition, and each one deals a differing amount of damage. The amount of strategy to be used in the tank battles is more than meets the eye; I have yet to master this part of the game. As the game progresses, you can even direct up to three other slimes in the tank battles, assigning them to various roles.

I can only think of two down sides to the game. First, the action gets a little repetitive, especially in regards to the tank battles. Second, the music isn't nearly as varied as it should be, nor is it as catchy as the music in similar games (such as Zelda).

I could expand further on Rocket Slime, but there are plenty of other sites out there that have done that already. Overall I'd definitely recommend this game to all Nintendo DS owners. My final rating: B+

An article posted yesterday at Slashdot mentioned a new way to break 104-bit (aka 128-bit) WEP keys in less than 1 minute. What's more, this new method requires capturing less than 10% of the packets required by the previous best method. This kind of discovery should hopefully help people move to more secure schemes, like WPA.

My family and I still use WEP around our house, but we're thinking about changing to WPA instead. One benefit of where we live is that our neighbors houses are fairly far away from ours. So, if anyone is using our access point, they are likely to be sitting out in our front yard, something we are likely to notice pretty quickly.

I have upgraded this website to WordPress 2.0.10, so let me know if anything is broken.

I'm avoiding upgrading to WordPress 2.1, based on a single point raised by Matt Cutts in a recent blog post. The oh-so-handy "Preview" and "Edit" links on the write post page have been removed, which really stinks. There's apparently a plugin to put back what the developers have taken away, but that seems like such a hack. I've heard of a few other problems with 2.1 as well, so I'm going to spend more time on the 2.0.x branch for a while. Maybe 2.2 will fix some of these issues; I guess we'll see later this month.

A story over at Slashdot reminded me that the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV was recently released. I took a look at it, and I have to say that I'm glad to see a substantial graphics improvement. I own all of the major GTA games (GTA III, GTA: San Andreas, and GTA: Vice City). All three games were great fun, but the game's graphics always seemed to be "dumbed down," no doubt to support the console systems they were ported to. Sandbox games like GTA have always appealed to me. Hopefully GTA IV will continue the fun and open-ended play while improving the look and feel. It's certainly a title I will keep my eye on.

I stumbled across a story today at Digg that blew my mind. Scientists have discovered a method for moving fluid using nothing but a beam of light (a laser, to be specific). The attached photo in the story demonstrates the effect in a soapy liquid mixture. Even though the picture was taken at 50 micro-meters, the resulting effect is quite astonishing.

One "feature" of Windows XP is the built-in support of what Microsoft likes to call "compressed folders." But nothing new was introduced here; the zip file format is all that's being used. When I first learned of this feature, I was fairly excited to see that Microsoft was actually trying to make life easier. No longer would I need a zip tool like WinZip to do my extractions. Instead, I would just use the features in Windows Explorer to do my compressing and uncompressing as needed.

That was an idealistic view if there ever was one, and I'm not too surprised to say that it was grossly mistaken. The zip support offered in Windows XP is utterly horrible. My work place is fairly strict about not having shareware applications installed on our personal workstations, so WinZip isn't an option for me. As a result, I'm relegated to using the native support offered by Windows. What I'd like to know is this: what the heck are they doing when unzipping a file? We package stuff up in zip files all the time around here (since we often have tons of source code files to deal with), and unextracting them through Windows literally takes 5 to 7 minutes. Literally! WinZip could chew through these files in less than 30 seconds (I know, because I've tried it at home). Is the Windows stuff just horribly inefficient? Are they doing more complex file system stuff than WinZip? Whatever it is, it makes file extraction very slow.

I use the Cygwin package all the time at work, and so I occasionally use their command line zip utility. It's way faster than what Windows provides, but it has the occasional problems with file ownership, which is why I use it sparingly. For instance, I've encountered the case where I extracted a zip file using the Cygwin tools, then tried to open a subsequent file for viewing. Windows then tells me that "I don't have the authority to open that file." I'm the freaking administrator of the machine! I should be able to do whatever I want, right?

If anyone has tips on how to improve things in the "compressed folder" world, I'd be glad to hear them.

Ever have the experience where something that you were sure was right turned out to be wrong? Last night, while browsing the web for some new jazz fusion albums, I happened to read the Mahavishnu Orchestra article over at Wikipedia (MO is one of my favorite jazz fusion groups). I have always assumed that Jean-Luc Ponty was the violin player in the classic line-up of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (the line-up that I prefer; the later incarnation of MO isn't nearly as good, in my opinion). This assumption led me to buy a number of Mr. Ponty's albums, all of which I thoroughly enjoy.

It turns out, however, that Jerry Goodman was the violinist in the original line-up! Jean-Luc was the violinist in the later line-up (ironically, the one that I dislike). All this time I've been mistakenly attributing the awesome musicianship in the group's first albums to Jean-Luc Ponty (that being said, Jean-Luc is an awesome musician). Needless to say, my mind was blown at how wrong I was. I'm really surprised that I have lived under this illusion for so long.

Several videos of the band are on YouTube, strangely enough (the original line-up was only together for a few years in the 1970s). The audio in the videos isn't the greatest, but it's definitely cool to see the guys in action (Billy Cobham on drums is phenomenal). Here are a few links for your enjoyment:

• You Know You Know
• One Word (one of my personal favorites)
• Resolution