Oh, randomness

• I installed Haystack. It looks amazingly intriguing but it’s slow as hell (on my 1.1Ghz Celeron + 512MB RAM laptop) and doesn’t come with a decent tutorial (there are links to sample data but they 404) so I just spend a while clicking randomly on stuff. It’s an interface that tries hard to be polished and friendly but betrays its academic, geeky origins in the total-information-overload layout. I’m not giving up on it by any means, but I think I’ll just put it aside for the moment…
  
  Incidentally, if you try it, be warned that the first time you run the app it precompiles everything, which takes a good ten minutes. However, you are treated to some fantastic component names in the “Loading…” box: “Navigation Ontology”, “UI Continuations”, “Natural Language Annotation UI”. Reminds me of “Balancing Domestic Coefficients” and “Calibrating Personality Matrix” from The Sims.
• … speaking of which…
• … I’m currently going through the temporary addiction to the latest Simcity, something that grips me for two weeks with every version before I get suddenly bored. One thing I’m finding odd about the new one is that, due to the automatic road-planning help it gives you when zoning, traffic problems are almost non-existent. This would be a good thing except that there seems to be no motivation for providing public transport – I once made a bus network and it went totally unused. But it sounds like this’ll be addressed in the Rush Hour expansion pack.
• A ton of DAAP clients and servers. DAAP is the streaming protocol that Apple introduced with iTunes 4 and then hurriedly restricted with 4.01. (Sorry, make that “tried to restrict”).
• BitTorrent is suddenly popping up everywhere. (I’ve become a rabid advocate.) Documentation on the home page is sparse but this FAQ deals with most questions. I currently use the burst! client, but this Java all-in-one deal looks cool too.
• I was trying to explain the Korean Starcraft scene to someone. This is a good overview.
• What the hell’s wrong with me? I see the new Archos wonder-toy and the first thing I think is: Does it do Bluetooth?
• If the previously-mentioned Media Player Classic (updated!) isn’t shiny enough for you, JetAudio looks like another good everything-player. (I haven’t tried it. Shinyness and shitness seem directly correlated in media players. You have been warned.)
• In last night’s profession-teamed University Challenge, Paxo asked, “Which programming language was created by Guido van Rossum at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica in the Netherlands and was named after a 1970′s British comedy series?” (The team of vicars guessed “Porridge?” But they still beat the lawyers by 150 points.)