2003.12.21
Carambola in Waltham has some mighty tasty Cambodian food, even if it took my mom about 10 listens to remember how to say that name....
Cartoons and Games of the Moment
Slashdot mentioned a series of cartoon shorts that tell more of the story of the Star Wars "Clone Wars". I got to watch the first 2 sets at Sawers and Cordelia's holiday party. They were made by the same teams who made Power Puff Girls, Dexter's Lab, and Samurai Jack, and while sometimes they threatened to get a little too "cartoony", overall they were excellent. So good I was led to give the Clone War videogame (had to buy it to get a deal on a PS2) another try....and it turned out to be much better than I remembered, lots of giant land battles with tons of troops, really giving the feel of large armies clashing. So now I'm more into this whole section of the Star Wars universe, and am more actively interested in seeing the third movie of the prequels.
Anyway, the Cartoon Network site has some simple but fun Clone Wars games itself. The basic games are the same whether you choose to play for the Light or Dark Side--there's a cool overhead jousting game, a simple little 2D fighting game, and an old-school sidescroller shoot-em-up, set underwater.
Link of the Moment
I think it's safe to say that in general, half of any given "Top-10" list is filler, which is why this Merlin's Lists of Five Things makes so much sense. (No relationship to Merlin of King Arthur fame, so far as I can tell.) Funny and sometimes thoughtful stuff, although sometimes I wish it it was clearer when he was just making a funny and when he was being serious. Overall it reminds me a little bit of my biography in lists, which is probably in need of some updating soon.
Scam of the Moment
There's some web advertiser who has this really lame and evil scheme....they popped up a javascript message box that said "press the enter key and hold it down for a surprise". If you just click slowly, or just tap enter, it nags you and says "no no no - you have to hold it down so the auto-key-repeat kicks in". See, what happens with that is you clear a bunch of regular message boxes, and then one of them is going to be the confirmation for "do you want to change your startpage to [insert name of crappy spam portal here]". And they do some timer checks to guess whether you are or aren't gullibly holding that key down. I did some experiments, as your reward for playing along, you get a lame web reproduction of that old "flying through space" windows screensaver.
Yeesh. These guys have no shame. Beware. I got some crap so that when I reboot my machine, I get some lame search portal sidebar, and the reset some of the aspects of my carefully arrange IE toolbar...oddly adaware doesn't find something wrong.