Fallout Shelter

Well, that was amusing. Maybe we should have read the instructions.

I don't think I have a way to embed here yet, so:

http://bennylava.robertnlee.com/jesus-im-an-idiot

A world-spanning filesystem from your Palm Pre...

... or how Alf got AFS running on his smartphone.  :)  Be sure to follow the rest of the thread. 

Google Wave, Voice, &c

So I'm waiting on a Google Wave invitation, which I may or may not get, but it looks pretty cool, and sounds like some stuff I had ideas for as unified messaging a long time ago.  Maybe I'll get the invitation, and maybe not, but in the meantime, I got a Google Voice invitation is signed up for a long time ago.  It's pretty cool too (it's not necessarily a VOIP client, but go look for yourself).  But one of the optional pieces it does — optional voice transcription — is a missing link I was hoping I'd see in Wave: the ability to take a voice stream and transcribe it, so (for instance) a phone call could be sent to someone as plain text.  It's not perfect, but it's a nice big chunk.

BTW, the YouTube clip above is about 80 minutes long.  But earlier today, someone else (thank you) directed me at a nice synopsis of the Google Wave presentation.  So you can just watch the clips if you don't want to watch the whole thing. 

Soliciting recommendations for...

1. VOIP software client for a relatively recent M$ Win Vista laptop PC that I'll probably be using in conjunction with Google Voice, and
2. a separate headset/mic for use with the above, and also for use generally as headphones with the same machine, so
3. compact but sturdy (I'm hard on stuff, unfortunately), and
4. not much money, as I'm still jobless.  :(

Any ideas? 

Sysadmin appreciation day

I think it was System Administrator Appreciation Day three years ago when I lost my job.  :(  But were I working, I'd be planning on attending local geek beer at a minimum, which I may do anyway.  :)  It's the last Friday in July: this year, that's 31 July 2009, or 2 weeks from tomorrow.  Go hug your sysadmin, if they'll let you, :) and buy them a beer or a new car or something.  Or go point them at the official web site — if they don't know about it, they'll probably be appreciative. :)

Plurk and Twitter

http://www.plurk.com/jhv

http://twitter.com/jhvilas

They're both under "ME ME ME!" in the sidebar.

Boilerplate

...why would anybody pay more attention to Facebook's terms of service than to the other contracts we casually accept? Who reads the roughly 17,500-word "terms and conditions" contract governing Apple's iTunes Store before buying a song? Who digests Microsoft's nearly 5,500-word license for Windows Vista before booting up a new PC?

For that matter, how many home buyers read in full the terms of their mortgages before signing stacks of settlement documents?

From "Facebook Backs Into a 'Bill of Rights'" by Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post.

MS Windows Vista -- focus follows mouse

This works:

"Start" -> "Control Panel" -> "Ease of Access Center" -> "Make the mouse easier to use" -> Check the "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse" box under "Make it easier to switch between windows".

This will also raise the window with the focus move, and there's a delay between moving the mouse pointer and having the raise/switch.  One can change those too by editing the registry directly.  But if you happen to move the pointer over the desktop, focus will stay in the previous window.  For more information:  An X-Mouse - Windows Follow Mouse feature for Vista and "focus" follows mouse -- possible with Vista?? - ltwally. 

If you're using Win XP, I gather you can use TweakUI from PowerToys as noted elsewhere.  If I get a WinXP machine I'll probably check that out.  :) 

Woo-hoo!

FB minutia

The Facebook "Shite Gifts for Academics" app currently has 129 "gifts" to be given.  Hm. Seems like a lot.

Google Trends (by xkcd)

Had to share this one.  Please note the title text (by hovering), or click through: