The Hacker Ethic - Pekka Himanen

Latest iteration of literary adventure. Thoughts coming soon

Street Kings

It's kind of like Training Day except it's not. I thought Training Day was a much better movie. However, the Hugh Laurie plot twist at the very end is a nice touch. It serves as sort of retribution for the predictability of the entire film.

The plot seems fairly typical of the cop movies, and very in line with what David Ayer has been writing for Dark Blue and S.W.A.T

Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut

I haven't read a Vonnegut book since 2004-5. I really like this collection of short stories. Vonnegut follows his 8 rules of short stories and I feel it works out great. 

I haven't had much exposure to short stories but I like the general concept : works great with a short attention span, readable in a subway ride, and are generally amusing.

What I like most about the format is that making the story 'short' keeps the writer focused on making it 'to the point'. Often times books will come up with a 'point' or a central theme and continue to expand on it throughout the book though various literary deviced. Some books really take to 'beating a dead horse' for a while. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a good example. The short story format, at least in K. Vonnegut's case, does not permit this.

Resident Evil 5

I've traded Resistance 2 for Resident Evil 5. Well worth the trade.

I'm mass murdering zombies like no tomorrow.

Edit 4/7:  This game takes the 'zombie' idea a little to far. The goons attacking me are not quite zombies, although they display zombie-like behavior. They are, however, able to engage in tactical combat with high power rifles and chuck spears. CAPCOM : That's not how zombies work !

The MyCheats walkthrough is here

Fallout 3

Next on the roster is Fallout 3.

maybe I should read a book or something ?

Update 4/1 - I don't like RPG games. ZeroPunctuation has good things to say about this game. I find it boring. 

Craigslist and Google Reader

I've been using it and it works wonders. The basic idea is:

1. go on Craigslist and do a search
   
1. such as PS3 Game less than $40 http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=PS3+game&minAsk=min&maxAsk=40
2. get the RSS feed version ( bottom right corner )
1. http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=PS3+game&minAsk=min&maxAsk=40&format=rss
3. Subscribe to the RSS feed via Google Reader

This automatically will keep track of what items you have read and allow you to tag your content.

Here is a more detailed tutorial from SeattleBubble.com : How To: Use Craigslist & RSS to Find a Great Rental

Israel Birthright

I'm going to Israel with Birthtright Israel Outdoors March 8th to 19th. I will attempt to blog as I go here. Stay tuned. maybe.

Edit: 3/19/09 - no internet connection = no blogging. I'll try to post thoughts here

Prince of Persia

$30 on CL. A weaker version of Assassin's Creed.

The game feels like a giant artwork gallery. I like the running on walls.

Edit 3/23/09

I grew very bored of this game and CL traded it for Fallout 3 today. That stretches my initial investment of $30 pretty far.

Resistance 2

fbeatifully rendered but very short. took me less than a weekend to beat. well worth the $25 I paid for it on CL

Death Race

This movie was terrible.  Even as a senseless action movie it was still terrible.

I should reconsider my Netflix queue.

booooo.

Hennessy 44 New York Map

As can be read on Luxist or nymag.com there's a limited edition Hennessy 44 bottle to commemorate the 44th president. They can be purchased here:


View Larger Map

5ive: posts I don't have time to write

• Summary of gumption from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence
• Thoughts and latest developments on work project mentioned below
• 5ives #3 through #5

Metal Gear Solid 4 : Guns of The Patriots

I'm working my way through the game.

So far the graphics are amazing and the I'm liking the action and story line. I thought Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was going to be it for me but I guess I was wrong.

Apperently there is Multiplayer in MGS4 as well.

Edit 1/26/09:

Unless I've missed something the game is a little too easy and a little to short. The bosses do not require that much effort and the action is pretty weak.

It's still very well rendered

Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

I thought this was a great book. It was a bit odd and a bit difficult at times but overall it's very enlightnening. I would consider re-reading this.

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

 I don't have much original thought on this book. It is well written and thoroughly amusing on a cruise.

I'll refer the reader to Michiko Kakutani and his review of the book in the NYTimes. Joel Spolsky seems to agree as well. 

Ski Season

This season is starting off right. Killington, VT for 4 days of weekday skiing

Organically grown software

I've come up with a pretty good idea (at work) and I have been working on it on-and-off since March '07 now. I'm going to chronicle my experince here for mostly my own amusement. 

The timeline for the project is something like:

• September'07 - faced with a problem I decided to come up with a generic solution that a few of my coworkers can use
• October '07 - Priorities/focus shift and the problem I am faced with is no longer urgent. I put this on the back-burner and drift off to several other side projects
• Oct'07  - March '08 - a few code contributions here and there. The project is overengineered to the point where the focus is kind of lost
• Febuary '08 - talks with another co-worker from a different group spark some interest and I do a 30 minute presentation for about 15people from 3 different offices
• after the presentation I realize exactly that this project is way to ambitious and over-engineered to be feasable, useable and stable so spent some time ripping out bad features
• March '08 - I hold an office-wide naming contest to come up with a name for what I'm doing
• July '08 - more refactoring, test cases, and narrowing of focus
• August '08 - the problem from Sept '07 comes back into focus but is assigned to an employee on my team. Since I am able to dictate the terms of the project, my side-project comes into play
• August '08 - Another employee is confronted with the same problem and succumbs to using my work as well
• October '08 - I woo yet another potential user

My immediate goals are these

• release into production a working version as soon as possible 
• leverage the oodles of existing code that others have written for similar tasks
  
• elicit as much feed back as possible
• advertize the product - entice more users
• keep the design flexilbe and robust

Assassin's Creed

Just beat Assassin's Creed on my PS3

The plot was a little weak and slightly predictable. The protagonist aggressible alluded to something being wrong and thus the plot twists were fairly obvious throughout the whole game.

The fighting action is a little mundane and only gets hard in the last 3 missions. The jumping and climbing is fun but also very repetative.

As negative as the above sounds, the game has some pleasant predictability and is visually pleasing enough to play. 

Overall I'd give it a B+ and would buy the sequel after a year. 

By the way, the trailers on YouTube for Assassin's Creed 2 are fake

Netherland - Joseph O'Neill

New Yorker book review seem to speak favoribly about this book. I picked it up from @fanatoly.

It offered a glimpse into Dutch / English upper-middle class culture, rare glimpses into early 2000's i-banking and talked alot about familiar to me parts of Brooklyn.

There were 3 different tracks of thought in this book.

A portion of it discussed cricket, a large parf of it involved divorce and brooding over life, and some slight bits of a Londoner's impression of Brooklyn

Semi-Pro

This was just a terrible movie and a big waste of time. It had none of the Anchorman funny I excpected.