I just read how Robert V. Dvorak and William A. Higinbotham created the first video game in 1958. What a trip! Not sure why Higinbotham gets more focus than Dvorak since Dvorak was the one who built the machine and even Higinbotham admits it was a collaboration. I couldn’t even find a picture of Robert Dvorak. Turns out he died in 1969 though.

Another Dvorak toiling in obscurity.

But that leads me to the weekend which has me finishing tiling my kitchen and master bathroom….woohoo!

I’d rather sit around and play Painkiller especially now that I’m running with a 3GHz Prescott chip! I was forced to upgrade when my efforts to squeeze 2.9 GHz from my 2.4GHz Northwood ended in a fried L2 cache and that big beautiful screen o’ blue. The message, as always, was extremely informative and helpful: “Machine_Check_Exception.” Microsoft’s KB article was just as helpfull. Seems, according to them, that “…specific diagnosis of machine check exceptions is difficult, and there is no general solution.” SWEET!

Luckily I found some information about using Prime95 to stress test the system. This program is very nice in that it has specific routines that tax different parts of the system. You can choose to run functions that use the CPU mainly or primarily RAM or both. This and Microsoft’s Memory Diagnostic Tool let me rule out RAM as an issue. So I bit the bullet and went to Fry’s and came home with Señor Prescott! (speaking of Fry’s, I recently realized that I am a major geek when I, visiting Las Vegas, was thinking about how I could better spend my money at Fry’s than gambling..)

A couple of things about Señor Prescott.

1. He’s a bit hot under the collar: around 50°C at idle
2. 1 MB of cache comes in handy for games, but not much else as far as I can tell.

Let me also point out that if you have made it this far in this post, you either have A) nothing better to do, B) Believe good things come to those that wait, C) Are a really big geek too or D) All of the above.

After deciding that my eyesite was exceptionally precious to me and spending weeks researching, I broke down and gave the good folks at Samsung (via Fry’s) my hard earned cash in exchange for a 193P 19″ LCD monitor. It is exceptional in every way!

It’s 1:00 am and I just finished painting some of the living room. I’ve also just seen that Mozilla is releasing a v1.0 preview of Firefox tomorrow (today). WOOHOO! Seems like some new features have crept in from 0.9.3.

Check out SpreadFirefox.com for the details and how they hope to log 100,000(edit: 1,000,000) downloads in 10 days! Sounds like a tall order.

A look at the gallery page at Complexification.net is certainly a mind blowing experience.

One in particular is quite interesting. Entitled “Offspring”, this java applet graphs the life history of a theoritical colony of robots (*blue collar workers*). WOW!

Without further ado…

1. Install Linux

   I’m not a Linux evangelist. I happen to use Microsoft products and actually don’t find them to be a deep source of discomfort.(UPDATE: scratch that…I have experienced extreme discomfort lately due to IE6 and its flashing neon welcome sign for spyware/malware/adware) However, it is widely accepted that Linux has much better security features and less hacking zealots doing all they can to tear apart and expose it’s flaws. Besides, with all the time you’ll be spending just getting the OS to recognize your printer or install your network card, you won’t have to worry about getting on the internet at all. Which brings me to my next tip…

2. your network cable or telephone line
   Any connection to the internet, be it a DSL, Cable or dialup account, is like a giant open door through which any variety of nasty bits of code can come hopping through. Even spyware tools by trusted names such as Yahoo can’t protect you from their nefarious payloads. Best to unplug and be safe!
3. Uninstall Your Operating System
   I know in the first tip I suggested switching to the Linux OS. Scratch that. Don’t use any OS, they’re much to dangerous.