Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

A New Class of Games

ICv2 News: A New Class of Games - Warchon Is the First PBG (Playmark Book Game)

This sounds like a more advanced Choose Your Own adventure book. Those were a lot of fun (when I was 10 years old )!

If you try this out, please let me know what you think.

Mad Elk Disease spreading

BBC News: Mad Elk Disease spreads across N America... this is horrible horrible news.

InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH

Oh my god this is the coolest thing!!!!

InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH: VirtualPC for OS/2

I just wish I had a machine that I could get OS/2 installed on. I can't even install it under VPC on my PowerBook because I don't have a floppy drive... the installer boots from 3.5" disks.

Drafting a petition

I'm drafting a petition to go on the PetitionOnline.com site demanding that the NHL force Microsoft to improve it's QoS of broadcasting hockey games.

If you have any ideas, please reply to this message in the discussion group or email me privately.

Once I'm happy with the draft I'll post it here so people can comment on it and help me shape it into something powerful that we can present to the NHL by the end of the playoffs.

Microsoft still sucks

I want to listen to the Vancouver vs. Phoenix game tonight, but OF COURSE it is not working. The stream claims to be playing but I just get silence. Doesn't matter if I choose the Vancouver or Phoenix radio station.

Something must be done.

A couple links from the Top-40

Kenny is really dead this time. Seriously.

They actually killed him off for good. Turns out they hated the mumbly little lemming. I thought he was hilarious, but good for Butters!

Boston Globe: Professor's time travel idea fires up the imagination

Hm. Time travel was always cute and interesting when it was sci-fi, but if it's for real (not saying I totally believe this guy but let's just imagine for a moment) this is very scary stuff. The ramifications are beyond distressing. What if someone changed something in the past that led to one or both of my children not being born for some reason? Damn.

Tonight in the NHL

A number of cool things happened tonight:

1) Jarome Iginla, and Edmonton-area born player for the Calgary Flames scored his 50th and 51st goals of the season tonight in a 3-2 loss to Chicago. Back in the 80s, scoring 50 goals wasn't so uncommon, especially on the Oilers' roster, but nowadays with such strong defensive play in the NHL, it really means something again.

2) The Ducks beat Dallas! Go Ducks Go!

3) The Avalanche beat the Blues! Go Avs Go!

4) Vancouver is leading Phoenix in the 1st period. Um... the best I can hope for here is a tie. Failing that, a Vancouver win.

Things are looking a little better for the Oil' tonight.

15 reviewers dump on Radio 8. I might as well too.

CNET Software Reviews: Radio UserLand 8.0.5... that link goes to the negative comments section.

I sure hope UserLand actually takes those negative reviews to heart, and does something about the issues that are repeated over and over again.

To me, the scariest part about investing in a UserLand product is worrying if it's going to fall off the map in a few months when Dave Winer comes up with a new world-changing idea. The outliner interface (Clay, Frontier) to browser interface (Manila) to outliner interface (Pike/Radio7) back to web interface (Radio and now back to outliner interface (Instant Outlines) mood swings over the last 4 years have been very disturbing. If I was an $899 Frontier subscriber over the last 3 years I wouldn't feel too great about having funded the development of two versions of Radio, a tool that now does little or nothing to improve Frontier's web application system or Manila's content management system / workgroup tool.

UserLand might think bootstrapping is great, but it's left a graveyard of half-implemented and/or poorly thought out and then forcibly improved patchwork-style features in its path. Perhaps its less frustrating to think of UserLand as a think-tank (no pun intended) of internet futurism than an actual software product company. In that respect they are amazing. But the perpetual lack of professional documentation and bare-bones support (no offense Lawrence, you rock but you're only one man) makes it hard to take them seriously as a product company.

That said, what Radio 8 does right now, it does quite well. There are some warts, like the flaky upstreaming daemon that badly needs rewriting (use the Queue suite please!), but overall, it does what it claims to.

I feel good about having paid the $39.95 for a license and a year of updates, but honestly, I doubt its weblogging, news aggregation or static publishing features will see much serious improvement over the next 6-12 months as the pendulum swings to the Outliner side of UserLand's attention span. You might see more of Frontier's 6-year-old HTML framework's features (glossaries and multiple templates for example) incrementally exposed to Radio's web interface, but little new ground. Perhaps if their revenues dip it'll cause them to work in the directions their customers are begging for rather than what they're personally interested in.

I like the world outline concept, I've been saying that for two years now. Instant Outlining is basically just weblogging in the outliner, and really only demonstrates maybe 10% of what it can do. I guess that's the whole bootstrapping thing again.

More rollerblading… ouch, my sore plantar fascia

I went Rollerblading again today, sort of. I only went out 12 minutes today. That's so little that it hardly counts. My back was aching early this time, and so were my feet... perhaps they're still tender from yesterday's first outing of the year.

It doesn't help that I have plantar fasciitis, which makes my feet ache a lot to begin with. (I was diagnosed last week in Victoria) The catch 22 is that losing weight is a treatment, and in my case probably a significant treatment, but it's hard to lose weight when my feet hurt whenever i try to exercise on my feet.

PLANTAR FASCIITIS, HEEL SPURS or when the heel is a heel

I've looked into joining a health club here but they're so darn expensive! I haven't found one that is reasonably priced. (ie: $20 a month, max.)

Johnathon on Australia’s old boy’s club

Johnathon Delacour: Last gasp of the Anglophiles

An amazingly well-written piece. And for me, another reminder that I'm missing out on a lot of great weblogs.