Categories
Misc

Upgrades ahoy

Sometime today, I plan to upgrade to WordPress 3.0… and also will probably be moving database servers. Expect glitchy behaviour until further notice.

Edit: Upgrade to WordPress 3.0 complete. I’ll poke around for a bit, but won’t do anything big until the database migration. That is scheduled to begin midnight PST (er… 5pm Sydney), and my host advises that it may take several hours.

Edit 2: Don’t even ask what happened to the theme over the last 30 minutes. After upgrading to 3.0, I was informed that there were updates to the Motion theme, so I unthinkingly pushed that out without realising that my widget settings would be lost. There was a detour. We are now back to a semblance of control.

Edit 3: Database migration is done, and everything checks out. Judging by the confirmation e-mail, it only took 6 minutes, which is pretty awesome. Let me know if something looks pear shaped, but in the meantime, I’m declaring this a success.

Categories
Books Movies and TV

A Game of Thrones teaser

Those of us who don’t get HBO (eg, Australians) probably missed this recent teaser for the commencement of George Martin’s A Game of Thrones series. It doesn’t give away much, but I definitely heard Sean Bean say, “Winter is coming.” He is going to be awesome as Ned Stark.

Categories
Video Games

Rock Band 3 details

There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s come out of E3, but given my fixation on Rock Band, this one sort of requires its own entry. The big news, of course, is the official announcement of Rock Band 3 features.

Gameplay

Some pretty nifty stuff here. Harmonix has recognised that RB and GH excel most as party games, and as such are adding more social dimensions. Although not bleeding edge, drop-in/drop-out will be helpful for those Endless Setlist sessions that I keep trying to organise.

There will apparently also be a party mode which includes playlist management, party shuffling, and mid-song difficulty adjustments.

With the new instruments (below), there will also be a new “Pro” mode where those of us bored with poor plastic simulations will get a much more authentic experience.

Continue reading “Rock Band 3 details”
Categories
Tech

Paranoia and Google

If you’ve been following my Twitter or Facebook accounts you know that I’m more than mildly alarmed by their cavalier attitude towards privacy. Let it not be said that I unfairly and blindly focus on one target. I use far more Google services than I do Facebook, and they’ve had many more years of practice at collecting and collating personal information.

I will occasionally go through a privacy binge and find things to remove from my account. For those of you of a like mind, I found this thoughtfully put together article on Computerworld: The smart paranoid’s guide to using Google.

There’s some generic stuff in there about blocking ads. Overall, I have no issue with ads on the web, because they’re the only thing keeping it free. However, these ads do track our behaviour and build identifiable profiles, so it may be worthwhile using a browser plugin to block them.

Likewise, you may want to review exactly what Google is remembering about your searches:

Google uses this information for a number of benign purposes, such as fine-tuning its search algorithms and determining wider patterns in Web searches for its Google Trends page. But however useful it is to the company, it’s probably a safe bet that you don’t want anyone to see every search you’ve ever done.

I strongly recommend a good read, and applying at least some of the recommendations.

Source: Lifehacker

Categories
Movies and TV Video Games

Mass Effect on the big screen

Mass Effect

Film School Rejects is pointing to a press release that Legendary Pictures is developing a Mass Effect cinema release. Legendary are the folks behind Dark Knight, 300 and Watchmen, so the franchise would be in good hands.

Obviously it’s still early days — no director has been attached — but I’d be curious to see who could potentially get cast for the film. Would you go with the game’s voice actors, or someone else?