SpaceRodent

Some astute readers of my blog (I think a total of two people) might have noticed I started reading a new book but didn’t put Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress in the “Just finished reading” section. I liked DaVinci Code even though it read like a screenplay – it was fun. However since I am in computers I couldn’t stand all the little mistakes Dan made in Digital Fortress. Furthermore after reading DaVinci Code, which came after Digital Fortress, I felt I already read the book. I asked a good friend at work about this. I basically said – “Is it alright not to finish a book” to which he replied that yes it was. He told me earlier in his life he couldn’t stop reading a book even if it was bad but now that he is older he will just put it down. Life is too short for bad books.

I stumbled across the following video via my new favorite site, reddit.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uv45y6vkcQ&search=bump%20key

Its a video from Germany talking about “Bump Keys”. Bump keys are normal keys cut to the maximum depth. You then put the key in the lock and tap it with something hard like a screwdriver handle. 90% of key locks can be opened in under 10 seconds with this method.

Even better I found a link in the comments of the story to this pdf which explains the whole process in detail: http://www.toool.nl/bumping.pdf

Furthermore I found a link to a Bump key auction on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=003&item=130014477789

Sure am glad I got mine before they ran out…

Blogging from TextMate is possible. I was getting tired of the WordPress editor and googled for Macintosh blog editors and came across Blogging From TextMate. I being a longtime TextMate user was embarrassed I didn’t know about this feature already. Just goes to show I should explore all the bundles after every update.

Well I just spent the last hour on the phone with GameTap technical support and we figured out the problem. It was my video cards running in SLI mode. Turn off SLI and everything works great. I don’t know why previous versions worked okay with SLI but the newest update doesn’t like it. Luckily it is real easy to turn off SLI. The tech support guy was real nice and while GameTap was loading again we were talking about our favorite games. I like that real gamers work there.

I feel bad that I blamed GameTap right off and didn’t even attempt to call tech support. I guess being burned so much in the past by other services and companies I didn’t expect anything could be done. So glad to be wrong.

So I got a free month and am happy again:)

UPDATE: Easiest way to avoid this is run in Windowed mode

I got an e-mail from somebody at GameTap explaining they read my blog and wanted to see if I would work with them to solve the problem. How cool is that? Obviously I said yes because I really do love the product. I will update when I know more or the problem is fixed.

I loved Gametap. I wrote about it more than once. Today I got an update that added all these “great new features” and effectively broke it. In the Arcade simulators there is now a pronounced stutter effect that makes playing the games an exercise in frustration.

So I haven’t posted in forever because I haven’t had anything to say.   Today I got an e-mail from google asking if I was interested in working for them.  I don’t know if this was a truly directed e-mail or not but I still was flattered.  I have a phone interview with them on my birthday.  I will update with the results of that.  I am really happy at Amazon but I think I would regret if I didn’t at least talk to them.  They use a lot of Python in house, which is what I am currently working with so I hope that helps me out a bit.

My wife and I saw Thank you for smoking with some friends and it was really good – very funny.  At the end your cheering for big tabacco – must see.

Well my wife and I saw the movie this morning and we both liked it.  It followed the book well.  The music was horrible though but it was easy to block out.  The way Ron Howard filmed the flashbacks was really sweet – I think you’ll see that style copied in the future.  The book has a lot of speaches explaining different things to the reader and the movie did a great job with these.

In short the book was enteraining and the movie is too – go see it.

Well I still really like www.gametap.com I just hope they can stay in business. I would pay more than the $10 a month too. My wife is now playing games. She loves Bubble Bobble. I got an itch to play Splinter Cell recently and I saw that GameTap had it – so cool.