My friend Isaac and I were chatting about computer games and what I grew up playing on — he’s a console/joystick kid, I was a keyboard kid. I had the TI-99 Texas Instruments personal computer. Boasting 16 colors and 16 kb of RAM, this powerhouse of a computer played cool games (like Parsec, Hunt the Wumpas, and some other game I played alot). I also learned a little BASIC programming — but you couldn’t save the scripts unless you were fortunate to have the full system. We didn’t.

Check out this link on old-computers.com. They’ve got photos, ads, and even links to emulators. How funny is that.

January 7, 2006, 11:19 pm

Filed under: Websites, \\\ ETC ///
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Per the BBC World News in Technology…

A third of software worldwide is fake, according to industry group, the Business Software Alliance.

“Sir, I’m sorry to inform you, but your software… it’s fake.”

“What??? How can that be!?!?! FAKE????”

“I know, sir. Just remain calm. We’ll find you some real software around here somewhere.”

July 26, 2005, 9:01 am

Filed under: Applications, \\\ ETC ///
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My friend Pete sent me a link about getting free CAD software from X-CAD. Catch is, you have to be one of the first 100,000 people to sign up on their email list. As of right now, there at about 93,000 people or thereabouts. Sign up and get your free CAD software.

…course, if I get it, what on earth will I use it for?

July 19, 2005, 9:58 pm

Filed under: Applications, Websites, \\\ ETC ///
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So I’ve been using Firefox/Mozilla pretty zealously and only use IE when I have to—simply because I hate using the browser now. But now I am totally sold on Firefox for one simple tool that I didn’t realize existed until now…

Live Bookmarks

When you browse to a blog (or even any website) that has an RSS feed of some sort, a little orange icon (in Firefox) appears in the bottom right corner of my browser and invites me to add that site as a live bookmark to my bookmarks. If I click it, it gives me various RSS options and then where to keep my bookmark stored at.

Here’s the cool part… if I click through my bookmarks and get to that live bookmark, it gives me the last few posts from that RSS feed and allows me to quickly see at a glance if there are any new posts. If there are, I can get to it in a SINGLE CLICK without having to type in anything or whatever.

PURE GENIOUS.

If you haven’t switched to Mozilla or Firefox, what are you waiting for?

June 29, 2005, 8:37 am

Filed under: XML / XHTML, \\\ ETC ///
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Came across a great color mixing utility—web-based and cross-browser compatible. Saved a copy over at my website:

http://www.designbymichael.com/colormixer/

Another cool one that actually has built in simulations of various color-impairments (i.e. color blindness):

http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

June 28, 2005, 1:03 pm

Filed under: Applications, Websites, \\\ ETC ///
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