Game of the day

Death Jr and the c4 Hamster challenge. Cute game, I can get the occasional 7000+ points with one hamster, but my average is more like 3000 to 4000.

Finally some Rain!

Weather wise this time of year is supposed to be the wet. The past several years, the wet has failed to happened, and so the area has been suffering quite badly from lack of rain. In the past three days, we've finally had serious rain. In fact, the official total yesterday was 170 mm. Jan 2005 there was only 216 mm for the entire month, so in a day we recieved nearly as much rain is in a month last year. Our total rainfall for Jan up to the 27th is 428.4mm which is much more like a proper wet season.

Things that would be great

There is an XML conference in Prague. I've been to Prague, it's a great city to visit. I'd love to go back. Unfortunately, I doubt my small Uni can afford to send me.

Doggy house rules

The rules. Our poor dogs are mistreated. They never did get past rule 6 "Dogs are not allowed on the furniture." Mind you, they do have special doggie furniture (bean bags for dogs) just for them.

I've had enough

I play rather a large number of Adventure and RPG computer based games (see complete review list). And needing to swap in and out CDs when you want to change games just gets maddening. And so, I'm trialing BlindWrite and Daemon Tools. BlindWrite creates a 1 to 1 copy of a cd. Daemon Tools allows you to mount a cd image as though you just put it in the drive. Between them, I should be able to make cd images of my games and not have to swap disks just cause I want to play a different game.

Interesting online games

Start with this game. When you finally solve this one, try the other games on the site. They require some observation and careful mouse use.

New Years Resolution

I don't usually bother with this, but this year, I have resolved to lose 10 kg. Should be possible, that is less than 1 kg a month. The combination of working a bit harder at the gym and eating just a bit less food should do it. We'll see.

The Edge Annual Question

The Edge specialises in asking controversial questions and selecting answers from some leading thinkers in the world. The question for 2006 is "What is your dangerous idea?". There are some fascinating answers for that like "No More Teacher's Dirty Looks" about closing public schools and "Free will is going away. Time to redesign society to take that into account." Each answer is accompanied by a short essay with an explanation of the reasons for that answer.

The 2005 Question What We Believe But Cannot Prove.

Found this web site via Userfriendly.

Web site visits

I always find the first couple of days in the month to be the most interesting for web statistics. Over the course of the month, the same 5-7 pages will always end up in the top ten. But the first 2-3 days, different things can be at the top. Last month, Doodle Monsters made an unexpected move to the top. This month, the review of a game called Luxor is in the top five. Will it become like the Snood review and always be there?

Watching this also shows how easily a statistical survey could be flawed. Short term trends can be very different from the long term results. A snap shot of the most used pages over only a couple of days may have very different results than a longer month or two of compiled results.

Happy New Year

And Welcome to 2006. Well, that's enough of that, can I go hide now?