There are a lot of guides out there about going to Disney World on a small budget. We've explored how maximize ones Orlando Florida experience on the cheap in the past. There's camping, there's time-shares, there's low cost hotels. But what about at the high end? If you put in the bucks, how well does Disney scale up? Based on recent Disney commercials, the implication is that Disney can also serve as a pretty impressive upscale destination if you want to put in the dollars. So this time a...
When I was 23, I could work 80 hours a week for years on end. Now I'm 33 and I can definitely feel the hours wearing. In March, according to my daily planner, I worked 256 hours. There were 23 official work days in March so that comes out to about 11 hours per day. Of course, I don't usually work 11 hours per day. Instead, I work more days per week (typically 6 days per week). But still, working 55 to 60 hours per week over the course of months and months will wear a person down a...
After a long search, I finally bought a new car. I will be the first to admit I'm not much of a car enthusiast. Ten or so years ago I was driving a 1984 Chevette. 5 years ago I was driving a Grand Prix. And my last car was a Pontiac Bonneville. I've always bought American made cars -- until now anyway. What I was looking for was a mix between a pure sports car such as a Corvette and a pure luxury car like the Cadillac STS. I wanted to have a bit of both.&n...
<P><SPAN class=postbody>The latest Gamespot preview of Age of Empires III is most impressive. <BR><BR>This year could be quite a good year for strategy gamers (now if we could just get a Total Annihilation 2) with Civilization IV and AoE 3 coming out (not to mention some of the others liek EE2 and such). <BR><BR>I don't know about the rest of you, but 3D in ground-based strategy games have often had mixed results. On the one hand, 3D engines provide ...
It is very common on-line to see people debating passionately about a given topic despite the fact they know next to nothing on the subject they're talking about. I recently wrote about this issue here. Passion is good. Passionate ignorance is not. For economic discussions, here are some useful charts, courtesy of the congressional budget office. They're not "spun". They're just figures that help people know how tax dollars are collected and spent. How th...
One has to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would, the day after April 15th (tax time in the US) argue that we aren't paying enough taxes. I invite those who think they're undertaxed to write a big old check to the government so that they can pay their share. Because in my experience, the people who scream the loudest for more taxes aren't paying their share. The ones yelling that the "rich" should pay more taxes are typically people paying trivial amounts of taxation already.&n...
Will Wright, the designer of so many of the greatest games of all time (Simcity, The Sims, etc.) has a new game concept that could potentially blow them all away. But it's not just a game idea, it's also a philosophy on making games. Let's talk about the former before talking about the latter. The game idea sounds incredible. In fact, I could imagine it being potentially the best game ever made (for people like me anyway) if it can live up to that potential. Given ...
OS/2 is a lesson every ambitious game developer needs to know about. OS/2 in 1994 was so much better than any alternatives that it should have been the defacto OS. It ran DOS, Windows, and OS/2 programs side by side. It was very stable (rarely crashed). It had a very easy to use, object oriented interface (Similar to what we finally have in Windows XP) and it had preemptive multitasking and a DirectX capability called DIVE. Yet, despite all that, despite being from IBM, Wi...
Long long ago there was a hyper-advanced civilization that had colonized the galaxy. They are called the Precursors. Eventually, they split into two races who went to war with one another. Just as the final battle between the two was being fought, they disappeared. This was hinted at in the first game but not truly explored. Thousands of years later, new civilizations slowly started making their way into space. But they lacked the ability to travel great distances.&nbs...
Sony Pictures is in the process of digitizing its 500 most popular movies of all time in anticipation for making them available for sale electronically for download. The goal, it seems is for Sony to develop a program and back end similar to what Apple has done with iTunes but designed specifically for movies. The timing couldn't be better -- with the next generation DVD technology still in flux -- Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, one things is consistent: They both use the same video format, it's j...
The Terry Schiavo cas has certainly stirred up many emotional reactions in people. I know that I was deeply troubled by what has happened. Even though I consider myself militantly pro-choice on issues such as abortion and believe that Assisted Suicide should be the law of the land, these things still have one thing in common - individual choice. Terry Schiavo has been severely mentally disabled for over a decade. How disabled she is is a matter of debate. The law states that if a person...
In the recent Presidential Election the exit polls showed something very interesting: Married people with children voted for Bush at a rate of 60% to 40%. That's landslide numbers by any means. Which brings such to the Terry Schiavo case where some believe that the divide is amongst conservatives and liberals. But is it really? From just casual discussion with friends and neighbors it seems that the married people I know who have cihldren are much more likely to be horrified about wha...
Here's some interesting links I came across while surfing tonight: Military use of nanotech: http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2005/03/military_uses_o.html Slashdot review of a game design book: http://books.slashdot.org/books/05/03/29/1926206.shtml?tid=206&tid=6&tid=10 Return of the Mac: http://paulgraham.com/mac.html Revenge of the Sith Comic book covers: http://www.theforce.net/episode3/story/Revenge_of_the_Sith_Comic_Book_Covers_90657.asp Today's Best of the W...
As far as the law is concerned, it has spoken. Many courts have heard Terry Schiavo's case and concluded that Terry would not have wanted to be kept alive through artificial means. That is what this case boils down to. People have the right to decide whether they want to be kept alive via artificial means. And the courts determined that there was sufficient evidence through testimony that Terry would not have wanted to be kept alive this way. However, it's the "evidence" that is prob...
During the early 90s the American right came to be seen as dominated by its zealots, bigots and extremists. It was the high-tide of people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and David Duke. The Republicans (rightly) paid a political price for it. The blindly ideological right is always ready to take center stage. Those of us who consider themselves socially moderate but fiscally conservative (that also includes not just me but Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, Steven Den Beste,...