Vancouver

I’ve now completed my tour of Vancouver, British Columbia. Like Seattle to the south, Vancouver is an active town with an abundance of gorgeous waterfronts. Popular stops include historic Gastown, Chinatown, Granville Island, Grouse Mountain, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

Seattle

I’m currently in the middle of a week-long tour of the Pacific Northwest with my parents. We recently finished the first leg of our journey in Seattle, Washington. Seattle has some great waterfront views with its proximity to Lake Union and the Elliott Bay.

Farewell to Azeroth

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve given up on the World of Warcraft. At times, I found the game to be a supremely entertaining way to spend time with a small group of friends. But the closer I got to the lofty level 60 plateau, the more I became aware of the discontinuity between the early-to-mid game and the end game and the havoc it played with the game’s established social order. I played witness to a disconcerting exodus of experienced players from our small, tight-knit guild to the sprawling raid and PvP guilds.

Progress report

I’m skipping the April Fool’s shenanigans this year in favor of regular content. Here’s a quick summary of a what I’ve been up to recently.

• I’ve cancelled my subscription to the World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s take on the MMO was a refreshing break from the pack in the beginning. Though the game opens strong and holds interest through hundreds of hours of play time, it loses momentum at the end game. I watched the disturbing spiral of a once-strong guild hemorrhaging members as players scrambled to stay interested with life after 60. I’ll add more on my experience later.
• Barco sent me to Washington D.C. on business. It was only my second time in the capitol, though I expect another opportunity in the near future. A smooth demo Monday morning freed up time for sight-seeing Monday night. I enlisted the help of friend and local, Jane, who proved to be an excellent guide. (Many thanks!) Dinner at the Raku Asian diner in Bethesda and a comprehensive night-time tour of historic downtown rounded out a very pleasant evening.
• With tax season in full gear, I decided to file electronically for the first time this year. For all the IRS, Intuit, and the like are preaching the benefits of e-filing, I wasn’t impressed with the experience. After the $30 fee to TurboTax and extra follow-up paperwork, I feel like conventional filing remains a better value.
• Mom and Dad both celebrate birthdays within a week of each other in March, so I took the opportunity to pay them visit. I treated everyone to a nice dinner at a local favorite, La Bamba, in honor of the occasion. We also took time to renew old Cribbage fueds and discuss plans for a summer trip to Vancouver.
• The fourth installment of the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion, was released in late March. After a solid week with the game in hand, I’m confident that the game lives up to its pedigree. Bethesda has successfully enhanced and streamlined almost every facet of the game. Now, if they could only do something about those ugly faces in character generation.

That’s all for now. See you again soon.

Manga: Scrapped Princess, Vol. 1

Scrapped Princess #1 (cover)

Before we get started, I should say that I’m a big fan of the Scrapped Princess anime. I was originally exposed to the series through a set of fansubs released shortly after each successive Japanese air date and it quickly rose to the top of my short list of good fantasy anime. I was naturally interested if the Scrapped Princess manga could also live up to the expectations set by the anime series.

MacBook Pro thoughts

Like many other technology fans, I have eagerly awaited the keynote speech from Steve Jobs at the annual MacWorld Expo and the slew of product announcements that come with it. Last year, Apple announced that it would take up the Intel line of processors and integrate them across the entire line of Mac products starting in 2006. Naturally, there was plenty of speculation that the Expo would see the first Intel-Mac products unveiled.

For my part, I have been most interested in seeing a new generation of the Apple’s PowerBook line of portables. As a happy Titanium G4 owner myself, the rumored dual-core Intel PowerBook sounded like an enticing upgrade. The promise of portable multiprocessing alone seemed like enough to drive an immediate upgrade. Now, with the PowerBook replacement unveiled, I can finally step back and take an objective look at what we’ll be getting in the MacBook Pro.

Feature-wise, things are pretty much what we were expecting. An Intel Core Duo should bring much-vaunted dual-core processing and a generous performance improvement across the board, though it’s too early to say by just how much. The Apple Remote and integrated iSight camera should nicely complement the growing iLife suite. The surprise MagSafe power connector addition has good ergonomic implications, but it’s not a sales driver for the new portables. A brighter display is also promised, which likely means a new panel with other improved attributes will accompany the MacBooks. The rest of the changes are your standard incremental upgrades.

I’m already noticing discussions targeted at the pricing of the MacBooks. The announced price points don’t strike me as particularly unreasonable. Compared to when I bought my PowerBook three years ago, the high-end offering has shifted down by a good $500. The quality and quantity of software bundled with all new Macs seems to have improved substantially during that timeframe as well. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the iBook replacements receive a price break when they are announced later this year.

For now, I will wait for the Mac community to deem whether or not the MacBook is ultimately a worthy successor to the PowerBook. I still have great expectations of the Apple-Intel partnership. But after surviving expectations of a MacWorld product announcement, I think I can ride the transition for a while longer with an old G4.

Published photographer

I just noticed that the Fall/Winter 2005 ASMS Update newsletter, a publication distributed to those affiliated with the Alabama School of Mathematics & Science, features my pictures from the Class of 2000 Five Year Reunion. That makes me a published photographer! Turn to page 12 to check it out or see my earlier post from the Reunion if you don’t get the newsletter. I’m not credited in the article, but seeing something you did put out for others to see is gratifying in itself.

IE expanding box bug

I’ve added a CSS fix to the site to work around the Internet Explorer expanding box bug. In a nutshell, IE will incorrectly expand a fixed-width block element if the block is populated with oversized content. On this site, that means that the sidebar can drop below the enter content block.

I employed the overflow:hidden workaround on my left-hand content block as described in the linked article on Position Is Everything. Thanks go to Titus for reporting the problem.

Fahrenheit 451

I recently had occasion to finish Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury’s haunting vision of a dystopian society has aged remarkably well over the past 50 years. There’s already a wealth of literary analysis concerning his work, but I’m not seeking to repeat such efforts here.

One thing I did find very interesting, however, was the coda added to the 50th Anniversary printing of Fahrenheit 451. The coda contains comments from Bradbury following the revelation that his most famous work had been, amazingly enough, edited for expletives in earlier, school-bound printings. He also responds to the mass of individuals over the years that have sought revisions of his works more favorable to particular aesthetics (gender, ethnic, etc.). Bradbury’s remarks really put the absurdity of such requests in perspective for me.

Lest we forget, “There is more than one way to burn a book.”

Toulouse

This past week I traveled to Toulouse, France, on business to receive training and discuss plans for a near-term integrated display system project. It’s essentially a display with a PC attached to it; think rugged iMac. It’s a sure bet that the system will run a flavor of Linux and utilize an embedded monitoring module for thermal management. I will be responsible for integrating the operating system, drivers, and our in-house applications, which may require modification for the project.

Our French hosts were very courteous and easy to work with. All business was conducted in English and I had no problems communicating my thoughts. Even so, it was satisfying to note my high school French coming back little by little. Every day we were treated to lunch in the Thales cafeteria several blocks removed from the BarcoView Texen site. Dinner was typically at a local restaurant of our choosing. I tried a number of interesting dishes including fondue savoyarde, magret du canard, and cassoulet, one of the local specialities.

Toulouse itself was mostly untouched by the Industrial Revolution so it managed to retain a great small town charm despite its recent growth into an industrial center and the fourth-largest metropolitan area in France. I had ample opportunity to roam the city on Saturday so I took my camera along and tried to capture some picturesque views of Toulouse. You can browse the results using the gallery link below.