Dear Visitor --

Just want to let you know why my site may be acting a bit flaky today.  I'm trying to figure out how to use pictures in my blog.  Because I'm not a web developer or an XML coder by background, it's taken me a bit longer to piece this together.

Finally solved for X today for the first time and embedded a picture on my site, only to find out I know must acquire more photo editing skills before I go any further.  That'll be the easy part, but it means another 24 to 48 hours before I can post anything "pretty".

Oh, not to worry, I do have a couple of written entries in the cupboard I'm going to post over the next couple of days.  Just no photos as yet.

Thanks for your patience,

~Rayne

P.S. Just a little note to the Userland Radio folks: Your documentation is incredibly lame.  While the software itself could be an empowering tool to let anyone publish on the internet, the documentation is an enormous barrier.  If the documentation gets cleaned up, you might find your sales-to-trials ratio improves dramatically.  There's no reason why the documentation can't make using Radio closer to PTBD (push the button, dummy).  Even Microsoft's figured that out.

7:21:03 PM    comment []

ThinkingAhead: 10 Technology Predictions from World Future Society’s The Futurist

Each year WFS' The Futurist editors prepares a list of its Top Ten predictions for the coming year.  For 2003, not only did they pick their Top Ten but they listed the following 10 predictions as a single entry under their Technology forecast:

Some of these predictions are fascinating, some are downright scary, and others are, well, huh?

Like number 1 on the list – confessions to artificial intelligence “priests”.  Huh?  What for?  Why would any Catholic do this, confess to a machine?  Who predicted this, a Catholic man, who feels confessing to an A.I. agent is somehow better than admitting women to the priesthood?  Did this predictor feel an artificial priest is somehow in keeping with the Church’s dogma, that this will address the shortfall of priests?    Will this prevent abuse of church members at the hands of human priests?  Who wasted their time, our time with this one?

Others, number 4 and number 6 are rather intimidating; would you let a nanobot enter your body?  What about inside your kids?  Would you trust robots (most probably nanobots) to do ONLY crop pollination, or could they be diverted into some horrible misuse in terrorist warfare?  Scary, scary stuff.  I love technology as much as the next geek, but I’m not convinced we’ll be ready for this in a mere 10 years.  20 years or more might be more likely for both predictions 4 and 6.

Prediction number 7 is rather interesting and amusing.  If it truly comes to pass that other’s thoughts can be read, blogging will become passé.  Ah, why didn’t they just come out and add the corollary, 7a. Blogging and other diarist activities become history.  Imagine it...

11:19:06 AM    comment []

You Googled Me?:  BloodRayne and “Cheats”

BloodRayne continues to draw a lot of Google seekers to my blog; while many are looking for information on the artwork or on the storyline behind this game, a substantial number are looking for help with the game (or outright assistance with cheating, naughty-naughty!).

Can’t tell you if this will help since I don’t own the game, never played it – but the following site offers “cheats” on many games:

http://www.game-revolution.com

Use this appropriately, in good sportsmanship.  No actual cheating, please, only for hints on playing better.

Site appears to be chockfull of information on many games, across multiple platforms, including pricing information.  Again, I haven’t checked this stuff out (we’ve only just gotten a PS2 and we’ve got little kids – kid games only in this household).  But Game-Revolution does look like a good place to browse and learn.

One note of caution: Game-Revolution is loaded with popup ads, very annoying.  I’m going to check my system for spyware, too, now that I’ve visited and been barraged with so much marketing crap.

Drop a note here in comments if you think Game-Revolution is worthwhile, thanks.  It'll help me in the future as I come across more BloodRayne information.

9:36:27 AM    comment []