This song always reminds me of Silence of the Lambs.

I just ordered something extraordinarily special for next weekend’s Fucked Up Movie Night…. I mean special… I just hope it arrives in time…. I am so god-damned excited!!!!!!!

I am very tired today, and I am not quite sure why…. Actually, I really do: My sleep schedule is still completely twisted from my vacation, and I am very slowly reacclimating to this quasi-rigid schedule (although it isn’t really rigid, my 10am start time is self imposed).

In case anyone was wondering, my last journal entry painted a rather glowing picture of WinXP, but I do definately have my gripes with it. I will summarize them in the near future for all to see…

When I got back in Boston I finally got to play with many of the goodies I got for Christmas. One of those goodies was a copy of Windows XP Professional (non-upgrade), which I have been dying to play with for some time. When I originally heard about WinXP, I shrugged it off as yet another bloated version of Windows (and to some degree, it most certainly is) and I really had no plan to let it replace Win2k on my Windows partition. But then my father had to go ahead and purchase a license for himself, and after going home for Thanksgiving, I found myself strangely excited about the new OS. Of course, we aren’t talking nipple-hardening excitement, but possibly “making my forced time in Windows suck much less”.

But those few days of playing with XP didn’t give me a real feel for the system, so I mentioned to my parents that a copy of XP Pro would make a dandy Christmas gift. :) Well, Santa came thru, and here I am running WinXP on my machine, and you know what? I really like it.

Let’s start with the basics; The reasons Microsoft has stirred up so much animosity in the past few months:

• Windows Activation - Despite all the nonsense FUD generated by people in the geek press, I totally support Microsoft’s copy protection scheme. True, it means that for the first time since owning a machine I had to purchase a valid license for Windows, but then again, it is also the first version of Windows that is remotely worthy of my money. Windows Activation seemed really anonymous, and was done without having to enter any personal information at all. One thing to keep in mind is that Windows Activation is completely separate from Registering your copy of WinXP. Sure, the Windows Activation doohickey asks you if you want to register at the time of Activation, but it was very clear how to activate without registration (which is what I did). This all occured in seconds, and I really haven’t thought about it much since.
• Microsoft Passport - I hate the idea of passport, but WinXP doesn’t force you to create one at all. While WinXP does start MSN Messenger as part of the default startup, and MSN Messenger does bug you to set up a Passport, once you disable MSN Messenger (as any right-thinking geek should) you aren’t pestered any longer. There are even tweaks out there to allow you to Uninstall Messenger. The only other place I have seen a mention of Passport has been in the Error Log Tracking section where you can log in with a passport to receive feedback on your submitted error logs, but again, the option to remain Anonymous is very clear. Passport is evil, but it doesn’t render XP evil by association.

Enough of that, here is a list (INPO) of what I think is cool about WinXP:

• Cleartype - This is by far the best improvement to Windows out of the bunch, giving Windows something it has been in desparate need for for some time: Anti-Aliased Fonts. Cleartype looks great on a CRT, but it really shines on an LCD panel. Hard to fully describe this, you kinda just have to see it. One of the nice things about Cleartype is that by visiting this page (using IE) you can tweak how Cleartype renders the text to your liking.
• Luna - Some people absolutely hate it, some people absolutely love it, and I am definately in the latter category. While I can’t stand all the animated doohickeys flying around the new UI introduced in XP, I really like the overall look and feel of it. After some tweaking (and disabling lots of animated shit) though, I was able to come up with something I feel is an improvement over the UI we have been dealing with since Win95. I have always been a vocal proponent that the Win95 UI was something special, so my love for Luna is surprising. Here is a screenshot of my desktop, and from that you can see that I am using the “Silver” color scheme and have also made the titlebars of windows significantly smaller than their default (they simply look better this way). In addition, that image shows you the new incarnation of the start menu. As you can see, it was easy for me to replace the IE/Outlook items with Mozilla (top left column), MS even provided a UI for changing them. Below them is the most recent apps I have used, and the right-hand column is pretty self explanatory. Both the Overall UI and the Start Menu can be reverted to the old-school, but I really like the new-school.
• Crash Detection - Much like the Talkback technology used in Mozilla and Netscape, Microsoft has included a Crash Detection system with XP that allows the user to send the crash log back to MS for analysis (and as I said earlier, if they supply a Passport, they can even get responses). I think this is a good idea, but the only time I see it is when my video card’s (TNT2 Ultra) driver flakes out on boot. Overall the stability of XP is fantastic, so I really haven’t seen much trouble. One annoying thing that this feature does introduce is that by default it is configured to capture all crashes, so when an application like Mozilla crashes, you see both the Talkback window appear and also MS’s crash handler…. I reconfigured it so it only intercepts Windows crashes and all is well…
• Boot Time - Windows XP boots really freaking fast. BeOS fast? No. But fast. From “end of BIOS” to having a mouse pointer on the screen takes about 15 seconds, and a login window is only a few seconds past that. If you only have one user (and therefore no login screen) you can get to desktop in about 30 seconds (from “end of BIOS”, assuming you don’t start alot of crap on login like me). Shutdown is very fast as well, taking about 10 seconds on my machine (depending on just how many applications are left running when I shutdown the machine). I played around with some different tweak tools to speed up boot time even more, but this only shaved a second or two, which wasn’t even worth the price of admission….
• Fast User Switching/New Login UI - The new UI for selecting users and logging them in is definately geared towards home usage, and I kinda like it. While it is definately “tarted up”, it isn’t ugly, and it is definately more comfortable than the sterile Win2k login window (which can return at your request). Another nice new feature is the ability to “Switch Users”, which means leaving one user logged in (and leaving all their applications running) while another user logs in and does whatever. In fact, you can have many users logged in at any given time. I imagine this is very useful in homes with children: You’re logged in, you step away. When the screensaver comes on, switch back to the logon screen, leaving my stuff running. When little pubey comes around wanting to play Super Ultra Mega Street Fighter SX14 Pro, he just logs in as himself and doesn’t affect your stuff. A nice feature, but obviously sucks down the virtual memory. :)
• System Restore - System Restore allows you to create restore points in your system’s configuration and revert back to them in case of malady. In fact, Windows does this automatically (creating of the point) when you install a new driver/new hardware. This seems terribly useful given the sometimes notoriously bad drivers that are available from some hardware manufacturers.
• Windows Update - Windows Update received an overhaul which removed many of the gripes I previously had with it (like I don’t seem to find any of those silly updates that are mutually exclusive, not allowing you to install any other updates if you were installing that one).
• Virtual Desktops - Ok, so this isn’t exactly part of XP OOTB, but it is part of the XP Powertoys. Right click on the taskbar, select toolbars, and then “Desktop Manager” and you get 4 virtual desktops. With some configuration you can even get them to be “real” virtual desktops (so the taskbar only shows entries from the current desktop, not all of them). There is also a “desktop manager” screen that has some really cheezy animation (that I turned off right away) that allows you to see the contents of all 4 desktops. Definately a much needed addition, but still feels clunky compared to BeOS.. Also, it appears that the desktops all share a common screen depth/resolution, another one of BeOS’ shining features
• Remote Assistance - A VNC/PC Anywhere dealie integrated into the system so you can help mom fix her machine when she can’t find the “Any Key”. I haven’t used this too much, but it seems like a good addition.

That list isn’t comprehensive, but it hits the “Big Wins” in my eye. I look forward to being able to use XP when I “need to use Windows”. If you “need to use Windows”, definately give it a shot.

Don’t feel like laying out 7500 bucks for Maya? How’s about free?

Me want.

My cold has all but subsided, but my sinuses are in this almost need to sneeze thing that has kinda rendered me a bit dizzy… That’s ok, I don’t need a clear head to work… (Oh, right, I forgot, sarcasm died, didn’t it…shit.)

Arrgh.

I spent about an hour compiling a kernel and wrangling drivers so I could hook up my Quickcam up to my fileserver. It’s working now, but the image seems a bit “chunkier” than I get from the windows software I have used (even though the image resolution is the same). I also discovered that there is a clear lack of simple (a.k.a not-dependent-on-X) command-line utils for grabbing frames from V4L (Video for Linux) video sources… Whatever, it sorta works now, but I just see myself needing to write my own capture software… What a pain in the ass…

I woke up around noon to a call from Jon Whitney… We had talked about doing something fun today, but he called a little earlier than I expected (which was fine, just a surprise :P). He picked me up around 1:30 and we headed down to Newbury St. because he had to sell some CDs. I found a cheap used copy of the 3-Disc “Bowie at the Beeb” limited edition, which was cool. We then headed to Kendall Sq. to drive by theater and see what time The Royal Tenenbaums was playing. We had to wait for awhile, so we went to a nearby place for a snack (since we couldn’t get dinner reservations until 9pm at the restaurant, more on that later).

We saw the movie around 4:30, and it was quite fun, and afterwards we headed over to the Museum of Science for a Laser Light Show (which we got into for free)… I had never been to one of those deals before, and now I know why… I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was cool, but door price was \$7.50, which is kinda expensive… We had to leave early so we could catch our reservations at The Helmand, an Afghani restaurant. The food was outstanding, although I felt a little dressed down for the atmosphere of the place, but whatever… My money is good, right? :) It turns out that the guy who owns the restaurant (and another one in San Fran) is the brother of the new Afghani interim leader… Small world, eh?

I got my copy of the game Uplink in the mail after I returned to Boston, and last night I installed it and played it for a few hours. I had played my way through the timed demo a few weeks ago and was so impressed by the game that I decided to order it.

It was developed by an independent software house out of the UK, Introversion Software, who also distributes the game themselves, similar to the old school photocopied manual/brown-bag software of the early 80s (you know, back in the day, when every piece of software was good and I had to walk uphill to school).

Uplink is a fictional “hacking"1 role-playing game in the vein of the classic Activision/Mastertronic game Hacker. In reality, I am abusing the term simulation, as this game is pretty far from reality (but who ever said reality was fun, anyway?). The game is set in the year 2010, where you become an agent for the Uplink corporation, which is a consulting/outsourcing computer espionage agency. Uplink pimps you out to corporations who may want you to steal or trash a competitors files, launder money, create identities, alter academic records, erase evidence, etc. You do all of this from your “gateway computer” ( screenshot), which provides a GUI for you to manage your computing resources. Your gateway computer can run/store applications to assist you (such as a Dictionary Hacker, Log Deleter, etc), but your computing resources are limited, and upgrades will cost you (as will the software). So, as with most games, you have to work your way up the ladder, allowing you to afford better software, faster processors, more storage, and the like.

Getting caught doing the deed will cost you, though, either financially or jail time, so you had better be sure to clean up after yourself. Fortunately, the tutorial does a decent job of getting the ball rolling, and the “Uplink Internal Services” machine also has some documents to help you learn new techniques. As far as documentation goes, however, other than these two things and a Readme (which covers the basic “how can I make the game go” type of questions), that’s about it. This game leaves it up to you to figure it out, and there is quite a bit to figure out. I remember when I thought of hacking into the criminal database and “cleaning” my record after getting caught, I was enthused to find out that this was possible. For this game, a lack of documentation is a blessing, as it serves the nature of the game well.

Graphically, this game isn’t very intense, a simple 2D WIMP interface, which can actually seem slow at times (although I think it is intentional slowness), but it is very enveloping. Between last night and my time with the demo I have played it quite a bit, and the game does do a good job of building suspense and excitement. It does feel a bit surreal to feel a sense of tension when rushing to delete logs before your connection is traced, but it all works.

The best part? The game is only \$25USD, after shipping. In the mail you get a jewel case (that actually contains a few secret goodies, as well as the old-school copy protection system, a good old dark-text-on-dark-paper lookup table…) containing the CD with Windows and Linux binaries. There is also a demo available for those of you who want to try it on for size. I highly recommend at least playing with the demo, and if you enjoy it, support the Introversion by laying out the cash for the game. I think it would be great to see the return of the independent (commercial) software developer, so I try to support them when I can.

Uplink is a fun, cheap, and fresh new game that harkens back to the “old days” of Wargames, and I think it is a bargain in today’s landscape full of trashy games selling for \$50+.

1really, it’s a “cracking” RPG, but we all lost the “hacker” vs. “cracker” battle to the media long ago, time to adapt…