Civ4 poll from Firaxis

Firaxis is looking for feedback on Civ 4 with this poll. It's a good chance to ask for features in an expansion pack, but it's even a better chance to point out that the game still needs patches to fix the many bugs in the game.

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GROW ORNAMENT ver.0 Flash Game Planet___EYEZMAZE

GROW ORNAMENT ver.0 Flash Game Planet___EYEZMAZE

Huzzah! Finally a grow where I could find the solution easily.


Spolier Alert!


The solution is gifts hearts, cloud, lights, garlands then star.

Nintendo Recovery Centre

Nintendo has launched the website that ties-in to their Canadian advertising campaign (hence it's "centre" and not "center"). You may remember a while back the mouse-maze tv ad for the GB Micro posted to Digg from this campaign. Yes, it is advertising, but it's very amusing advertising that many out there may not otherwise see.

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Nintendo will replace buggy Pokemon Blue Rescue Force

It turns out that the new Pokemon has a nasty bug, and so quite unlike every other games company, Nintendo will freely replace this game with a new version that has the bug fixed. Huzzah for Ninendo's customer service!

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White or Red with Kraft Dinner?

Is it white or red wine with Kraft Dinner?

It is a pasta with a cheese sauce, so logic would indicate that it should be a white wine. But, the accompnying wine should have a peppery bouquet to compliment the Kraft Dinner taste, which suggests a red wine. I'm confused.

Civ IV Patch finally available!

OK, it's not on the website yet, but you can use the 'Check for updates' on the Advanced menu to get it. Download the patch and pray this fixes many of the bugs in this otherwise fabulous game.

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IT Conversations: Robert Lefkowitz - The Semasiology of Open Source (Part 2)

IT Conversations: Robert Lefkowitz - The Semasiology of Open Source (Part 2)

About 9 minutes into this presentation, Lefkowitz talks about literate programming, a critically important coding philosophy.

The Music of Civilization IV

Wow, it just sunk in for me just how amazing the soundtrack for Cvilization IV is.

After playing awhile, I started to recognise some of the music that was woven into the background music. Then, I started recognising a lot of the music. So, I decided to hunt in the program's directories to see if the music was accessible; it is.

It turns out that all the music are just regular mp3 files, and there's a lot of them. Some of the music pieces are original comppsitions, but most is selected pieces representative of the great works over many musical eras. There's Bach, Brahms, Dvorak, Palestrina, Mozart, &c (no Schubert?) and the treatment of each is quite excellent.

Thus, there's a new batch of 75 mp3 files running through my iTunes library. Not a bad little bonus that comes with the game.

Silver Springs

Silver Springs Panorama, originally uploaded by smithco.

I have a set of photos from a walk down the ravine in Silver Springs. This is the ravine in which the natural springs that our community takes its name from are.

Despite the warm weather, there was already snow coverings and ice formations in the shaded areas at the bottom of the ravine. And the combination of the snow melt and the natural springs sure had the falls and streams flowing strongly.

(link to the photo set)

Play me on Mario Kart DS

My friend code for Mario Kart DS is 313592195617. Enter it to you cart, share yours with me and look for me on the race tracks.

A nicely nostalgic day

Some days are simply a part of the best that life gets; today is definitely one of those days. Firstly, the candy shop at the Currie Barracks Market had cola balls. I havn't had those things in years. Secondy, and this is the big one, I found the old View Master. It's a 1950 model (I think the original model) in the original box and lots of reels with original packaging all in great shape. That's a lot of originally packaged fun. And it amazes me how good the 3D effect on those reels are. I can't produce anything that good on my computer.

Vatican promotes science

Once again, there are indications from the Vatican to support science education. The message this time is that a good understanding of science helps prevent ugly fundamentalism (i.e. the silly evolution debate in the USA). Note: The story pointed to is the SciAm blog, but it saves going to through the registration to get the NY Times article.

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A photo of bees thinking

A national geographic article of bees working at colour puzzles. The article isn't anything surprisingly new over previous articles on the topic, but the photo is really nifty.

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More Revolution rumours confirmed

It's now confirmed that, amongst other things that the downloadable content for the Revolution will not be limited by region and that the launch will be near-simulatneously worldwide. Yay!

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Nintendo WiFi in Canada

Nintendo has signed on with FatPort to supply free WiFi in Canada. This means that that DS's will be able to connect for free in more places than just McD's.

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Video of hornets attacking bees

A cool National Geographic video about hornets and bees doing battle in Japan. They don't destroy Tokyo in the process, but it's still an interesting watch.

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An interesting take on the obesity debate

An interesting take from an American Libertarian on the obesity problem in Canada. The article's a bit light on the science, but it's still a good read.

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IT Conversations: Jason Fried - Basecamp

IT Conversations: Jason Fried - Basecamp

A very nice podcast on software design philosophy. There's a lot of good ideas in here.

Particularly, Fried intruduced the idea of managing debt. It's kind of like my idea of do it right the first time, except that when a hack or shortcut is taken, mark it down and make sure it is revisited later. It's sort of what I was doing anyways, but it's nice to hear the idea verbalised so well.

My new journal on advertising

State of the Advertising is my new on-line journal about my thoughts on the state of advertising. Essentially, whenever I come accross an ad that annoys me to no end, or in the very, very rare case, one that I appreciate, I'll comment on it there.

I'm on Google Talk right now.

My gmail account is smithco@gmail.com. I presume that this is how you'll find me on Google Talk.

Google Talk = Google's new IM service that they're announcing tomorrow. All you need is a Jabber client, and a GMail address... read this and hop on the service today! (I'm not sure how long this will work, though.)

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Triskweline: A new fixed-width font for programmers

Triskweline: A new fixed-width font for programmers: "Triskweline"

Huzzah! A fixed width font that I can comfortably read at 10pt. Too bad it only works at 10p though; it would be just right at 12pt on my monitor.

A bit of work on the look

Changed the fonts and titles, hopefully a bit of an improvement. Eventually, the style should be an update of my CPSC page.

Create a Southpark Character

Saw the SP creator on digg; the good one is at http://spstudio.linda.hosting-friends.de/spstudio.html. See the previous post for the picture of me as an SP character.

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If I were a South Park character.