I’m all sick and whatnot. I was sick before I went back to Nebraska for Christmas, and got sick AGAIN when I returned. Whadda crock. I would probably feel OK, except for the fact that my nose exploded a few times today, the first two of which were in shopping-style areas. I had to make my purchase extremely quickly, then get out before I bled all over myself.
In alternate news, I found my cache of backup CDs back in Nebraska, dating back to around 2000. Old school! One of the discs also has content from my original form of data backup: namely, Zip 100 disks. On there are such things as my first evar webpage, plus random junk I collected when the Internet still had that ‘zomg’ factor. My idea is to take all this digital junk, categorize it, and slap it all up on the web as kind of a virtual exhibition, if you’ll pardon the cheesy expression. I’m not sure who will be interested aside from my close friends, but I think it would be moderately interesting to see 10 years worth of junk from anybody. The page’ll probably be hosted on nathandemick.com, so I’ll post a link when things get moving. They probably won’t get moving very fast, though. (as you can see, comments still aren’t working here… yea, I’m lazy… and sick… back off!)
Man, I wouldn’t get anything done at all if it wasn’t for CakePHP. I built myself a time-tracking/invoicing tool by basically just creating a database schema, then telling Cake to create my program. I’m so freaking lazy that the program wouldn’t have gotten written otherwise. It’s crazy easy to make functional changes in your database, too. I had to add another table representing my clients, and relate it to my projects, which literally took all of two minutes. I think that tomorrow morning I’m actually going to give this page some of the long-overdue functionality that I’ve been avoiding. I thought that I would build a blog-style program with Rails, but I just can’t justify memorizing more Ruby syntax when Rails still isn’t supported on the host I’m building lots of sites on.
By the way, the Linker is back up, for those who care.
I was musing today on a “100 Best Games” list published by EGM a couple years ago. The surprising thing at the time (or maybe it wasn’t so surprising) was that it ranked Super Metroid as #1.
Sadly, I haven’t even played a number of games on that first list. I don’t particularly like, for example, sports games, so I’d probably never play any of those. There are also a smattering of games from Sega consoles (which I never owned as a child) and even more obscure ones (TurboGrafix-16) which, while compelling in their time, are probably not going to interest me now. It might be interesting, however, to go down the list and check out the games I haven’t played. They’re on a Top-100 list, so they must be at least decent, right?
Well, my laptop problems are seemingly over, but not without a final hitch at the end. I got my Gateway, and it’s very nice, except for the fact that the battery it came with sticks out from the back of the computer, making an unsightly protrusion. Sure, it has double the battery life of the one that looks nice, but it’s ugly and weighs down the machine. Since the sales rep who sold me the computer told me that the default battery doesn’t stick out, she offered to sell me the smaller battery at half price. I figured I might as well, since I got the computer so cheap to begin with. So, finally, I’ll have a decently portable laptop that I can do work on.
I noticed that finalists for the 2007 Independent Games Festival have been announced. I figured that I might try a few o’ these games, since they are of a length which I can appreciate, then post my thoughts here. (I’m losing it on Final Fantasy XII… it’s so long, and once the combat/leveling system loses its novelty, there’s little reason to keep playing.)
Faugh. A few weeks ago I decided I needed a laptop, so I shelled out for a refurb MacBook Pro. The first laptop I owned, a refurb iBook, came in great condition, so I didn’t think twice about getting another refurbished computer. This time, however, the laptop came with physical damage: there was a protrusion in the actual case, right above the latch-release button. I send it back for a replacement (after driving out to the Apple store and being told that they can’t do anything, after the support rep told me to take the damaged unit there) and the replacement has the same disfigurement!
At this point, I was pretty fed up. I’m dropping large sacks of cash for a used, previous-gen machine… and they can’t even ship me one that isn’t messed up. Where’s the “ease of use” on the ordering process? So, I got a refund. Or will, five business days after Apple gets the MacBook back. Jerks.
I eventually remembered what I promised myself (a couple years ago) regarding purchasing new laptop: get something small. To that end, I grabbed a Gateway NX100X. It’s small, good-looking, decent-performing, and ridiculously cheap. Due to some specials, I got $400 off the list price, plus free shipping/handling. I figure that I can get my feelings of superiority from installing Linux on there, as opposed to buying overpriced hardware. ZAM!