I’ve been playing with Google+ since I got an invite a few days ago. My first impression was that it was a much simpler version of Facebook with a few major differences. The most obvious is the procedure for adding people to your network, which involves circles. Read their site for details about all the features.

What I like about Google+, at least in its current state, is its simplicity. It doesn’t have a bunch of noisy apps that I have to hide. It’s simply people talking to each other using words, which is how I think it should be on a social network.

I don’t know what to think about the circles yet, since I don’t have a lot of people on there yet to sort. I do like the fact that you can use it like Twitter by adding people to a circle to follow their public posts, or like Facebook where they also add you to make it a two-way connection. I also find the interface fun to use…

What I don’t like about Google+ is that there’s barely anyone I know on there yet, and a social network is less useful if you don’t know anyone. Hopefully that will change soon.

People are referring to Google+ as a Facebook replacement. However, that can only be true if the majority of your Facebook friends make the switch. Most mainstream users aren’t going to want to maintain two social profiles, and I just don’t see the majority of these users abandoning Facebook right away. I think a lot of the less technical users are perfectly content with Facebook, and will require much motivation to make the switch.

By the way, my profile can be found in the links on the right. Also, comment here if you want an invite!

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Super 8 is a film about these kids who are making a movie for a film festival or something. They are faced with many challenges during production including casting, budget, equipment failure, and an alien monster thing. Will they finish the movie? See the movie (Super 8) to find out.

This movie had a style that reminded me of many classic films such as E.T. and Stand By Me. It had a good mix of mystery, action, drama, and comedy and good pacing throughout. I never grew bored of any scene or felt that any part was dragging on. I also liked that it took place in the 70′s which seemed like a fun time.

The focus was on the main characters, so the alien monster thing actually wasn’t that interesting. There was also at least one scene where multiple lens flares took over the screen (how you know it’s a J.J. Abrams production). Other than that, Super 8 is an excellent film and I will probably see it again some time. I give it an arbitrary rating of 92/100.

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Here is a super scientific comparison of the land speed of various Minecraft wildlife:

Also, here is a giant hole:

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I’ve been inundated with requests to explain what “Noty” means. Well, I have finally been authorized to release the following information, which will hopefully satisfy the public by explaining who or what is Noty.

Noty is the culmination of decades of scientific research and billions of dollars in funding. The greatest minds in the world have been working in secret since 1973 to come up with the breakthrough technologies behind the Noty device.

Noty stands for Notation Orifice Transitional Yacht. However, despite common misconception, Noty is not actually a boat. While it is incapable if floatation on water, it does have the ability to store information much like a sheet of paper which can be placed on a boat, hence the “yacht” in the name.

Noty takes advantage of the patented process of “making notes.” Many of the details of this process are highly classified, but the process involves quoting parts of text and/or supplementing text with original commentary relating to said text. The Noty device can facilitate this and more.

You can get your own piece of this space-age technology or see a live demo of it in action. That site says it costs $6 or something like that, but I have lots of functional prototypes I’ll give away. Just ask…

Disclaimer: The above statements are not guaranteed to be factual in nature.

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The latest update to Team Fortress 2 added Replays. This allows you to save a recording, much like a SourceTV demo, of your current life on servers that have the feature enabled. What separates this from SourceTV demos, however, is that replays are automatically delivered to the client over HTTP.

Once you save a replay, you can view and edit scenes using the built-in editor. The editor is very simple and easy to use, and allows you to capture the action from any angle and save different takes of the same replay. Once you have a take, you can save it as a video or image sequence with several options for quality. This really simplifies the process for making simple TF2 videos without external programs.

The server-side implementation of replays is very unstable currently, with blocking and crashes, but hopefully that gets fixed soon. Setup requires a web server, which can be local or accessible via FTP, and there are example configs provided that make setup very easy.

Below is my incredible entry to the Saxxy Awards. Obviously there is not a chance this will not win…

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The following chronology of events is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by Death Bat 4, in theaters some time in the late 70′s.

Sunday 4/24

It all started Sunday when Dog noticed the Left4DoD server hosted on my server was lagging horribly. I checked the graphs on server stats and saw nothing unusual. There were no increases in load or network usage anywhere. Very curious…

Monday 4/25

I noticed the same game server lagging horribly again. Curiously, no other services were affected, including other game servers. It’s also doubtful the Left4DoD plugin is to blame since other servers with the same plugin were fine.

Tuesday 4/26

The entire server locked up for about an hour. All processes were being blocked. The graphs showed a huge spike in load, memory, processes, and everything else immediately before the freeze. It kind of looked like a DoS attack. I put in a ticket with the datacenter asking them to investigate, but they didn’t find anything.

Wednesday 4/27

While poking around the server, I realized it was running Fedora 11, which is very old. So I decided it was time to upgrade to Fedora 15! The process of remotely upgrading Fedora remotely via yum is messy to say the least. So after hours of updating, resolving dependencies, and removing old junk the upgrade was complete!

Later that night, Dog and I noticed the Left4DoD server lagging again. Restarting and disabling the plugin had no effect, so we started suspecting a DoS attack. After changing the port, the lag immediately stopped. That all but confirmed our suspicion and we went to work hardening the server against the various DoS vulnerabilities in srcds. Dog technologied an anti-DoS plugin and I scienced together some iptables rules, and the problem hasn’t occurred since.

Thursday 4/28

I noticed no emails were getting through the server since the upgrade to Fedora 15. The email services were all managed by ISPConfig, so I thought I’d update that. Well that didn’t go well and I’ve been dissatisfied with it before, so I decided to replace it with Webmin. Installing it was easy.

I set up my main websites and copied the files to the new directories. Most systems were fully operational. However, the email situation was only made worse by these changes.

Friday 4/29

I spent most of the day fixing the email situation. Everything relating to emails seemed to be failing. First I fixed postfix somehow (I forget; something about the hostname) to allow the server to send and receive mail. Meanwhile, I got the rest of the website stuff set up again.

The next step was to get Dovecot working again so I can get my mail out of the server. It was not accepting my credentials. After figuring out how to fix the logging, I was able to see that Dovecot couldn’t find where the mail is kept. A small change in the configuration solved that and everything was happy again in email land.

However, there seemed to be some DNS issues. I think everything is right in that area after lots of BIND tweaking, but I’m not sure. To be continued…

Conclusion

Comment if you notice any problems accessing this site.

In closing:

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…is that they help people forget about the terrible diseases they prevent.

Some people have an unfounded fear of the vaccines that outweighs their fear of the diseases. This is illogical and borders on insanity. All of these diseases have a risk of death, while the vaccines have a risk of minor adverse reactions like rashes. I don’t know about you, but a rash sounds better than death.

From what I can see, the anti-vaccine argument is based on beliefs rather than facts, with oversimplified pseudoscience used to back up those beliefs. The argument is treated like a religion to believers and no amount of evidence will convince them that it is wrong.

Based on my observations, when the anti-vaccine parent is presented with too many facts, they put up the “my child, my decision” defense. When it comes to issues like violent video games, the internet, and curfew I can respect that. However, when it comes to matters of life and death, that defense simply does not work.

Not vaccinating an individual not only exposes that individual to unnecessary risks, but also exposes the surrounding population to increased risk. To justify this, there better be strong evidence that the vaccines are unsafe, and that evidence has yet to be presented.

To be honest, I found this topic difficult to research and I don’t claim to know all the facts. I’m still not sure how much risk all the vaccines actually have. I do, however, know that the scientific consensus is that the benefits of the vaccines greatly outweigh the risks, and I trust science over paranoia.

Sources (of inspiration):

• Measles outbreak hits Europe, most cases in France; WHO blames lack of vaccinations
• The anti-vaccine movement as a religion with Andrew Wakefield as its prophet?

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Portal 2 picks up where Portal left off, preserving the same original concepts and attitude. This time, however, there are more portals, more physics, less portals, more flubber and other goos, and other new surprises. This game is longer and more story driven than the first.

The main attraction here is the puzzles, which at times require some creative thinking. If you have played Portal, you may find Portal 2 puzzles less challenging simply because you have practice. The good news is that there are some new mechanics added in to change things up, like the gels. Also worth noting is that there seems to be less emphasis on perfect portal placement in many puzzles, since valid portal surfaces are limited, and more emphasis on putting all the provided pieces together. Some good news for casual gamers is that there is also low reliance on quick reflexes.

The game also features a co-op mode, extending the game with puzzles requiring cooperation between two players to solve. This drastically increases replayability since you can get a new experience with a different partner. For example, you can find fun and creative new ways to kill your partner. This part is very well done, with gestures, signaling (such as a synchronized count-down), and voice chat. It also appears easily extendable, which might mean more content being added later.

Portal 2 is an amazing science-fiction comedy first-person puzzle action adventure game. The story is brilliant and absolutely hilarious, with lots of unexpected turns. Definitely recommended!

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Well my internet connection was down yesterday so instead of the usual internet stuff, I wrote a few movie reviews.

The Adjustment Bureau is a story about a mysterious group that oversees everyone’s fate, making subtle adjustments as needed to ensure things go as planned. A mistake is made, exposing the group to rebellious politician David Norris and causing him to attempt to defy fate by being with a woman he loves. It’s a constant struggle between the bureau and Norris. It’s a very unique film with an interesting concept. I rate it 89/100.

127 Hours is a true story about Aron Ralston, a rock climber who becomes literally trapped between a rock and a hard place via his arm. He’s stranded there for several days until he manages to amputate his own arm with a dull knife. The movie is almost entirely James Franco, stuck in one place, but he does a good job conveying his helplessness. I found the film slow at parts but it manages to stay interesting with some hallucinations. Be warned, the amputation scenes are fairly graphic. I rate it 107/127.

Snatch is several stories all intertwined in interesting and unexpected ways. It’s a comedic account of organized criminals doing various bad and crazy things in London. A large stolen diamond seems to play a part in all of these activities in some capacity. The film is very well crafted with a satisfying ending. I give it an A+.

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So a group of people told me things to draw and I used my amazing skills to art some drawings together. Then I used science to create this:

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