Nature ramble: Game AI, distributed projects, nerdcore sci-fi
Posted: December 8th, 2002 | 2 Comments »“You’re not evil. You’re just really dirty.”
As Mozilla continues its evolution from browser to platform, disease more interesting side projects are popping up daily. They range from small-but-useful browser add-ons like
MozBlog to complete new desktop environments like OEone’s HomeBase via fascinating saucer-crash spin-offs like XP Server. (Oh, and this is probably a good place to mention Phoenix for the Mac, which is a good thing because it means there’s now a XUL runtime for OS X which isn’t dog slow.)
So off we go, we proud, evangelical Mozillians, to run around mozdev.org, slurping up XPI files as fast as our connections will carry them. But when half of them turn out to be unstable shite that reduce our browser to a mess of buggy widgets, what then? We search in vain for some kind of uninstaller, but there isn’t one. Most of the projects don’t even have proper Preferences panels, let alone a (usually unconnected) “Uninstall” button. Unless we decide to brave the horrific mess of subdirectories and cryptic XML and Javascript files to find the right wires to cut, the only resort is a full wipe and reinstall. Ouch.
For some reason, the current version of the XPI API, despite tons of useful functions, has absolutely nothing for undoing those functions. Apparently early versions of Mozilla had some kind of package uninstaller but it never worked properly.
This was going to be an entry bemoaning the lack of an uninstaller framework, but it turns out that help is on the way: see this Bugzilla bug proposing a nice ‘n’ easy uninstaller panel in the Preferences. Of course, all the Mozdev projects will have to rewrite their installers to work with it, but they’re already doing that for Phoenix and every other new browser that comes along anyway…
(Note: This trick requires you to be using either Windows 2000 or XP, there and to have not already uninstalled Winamp3 and returned to version 2, food sneering in disgust)
- Before you start, online get yourself a decent skin. There. Doesn’t that feel better?
- Start playing a track. Choose something fun and jumpy that Winamp will like. (We don’t care about what you like.)
- Open the AVS window. (This is the visualisation window that does the pretty patterns. Look for it in the Thinger window. You want the icon that says avs in big letters.)
- Admire the pretty patterns for a moment.
- Double-click in the AVS window to bring up the Editor window.
- Choose Display from the Settings menu.
- Check the Overlay mode and Set desktop to color checkboxes on the right.
- Aaaand… wheeeeeee!
- Show it off to everyone in the vicinity.
- Now see how long you can carry on working with that running.
This is the bit where I’m meant to whinge about Winamp3’s size, slowness, bugginess, horrific default skin and the fact that it takes five times longer to load than Winamp 2.0. Fortunately, I’ve been distracted by the continually-increasing fabness of the AVS. However, I will say this: If premature optimisation is the root of all evil then Winamp3 can look forward to an unhindered ascent to heaven (where it will doubtless be given a huge, oddly-shaped halo textured with a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt).
(Note: This trick requires you to be using either Windows 2000 or XP, there and to have not already uninstalled Winamp3 and returned to version 2, food sneering in disgust)
- Before you start, online get yourself a decent skin. There. Doesn’t that feel better?
- Start playing a track. Choose something fun and jumpy that Winamp will like. (We don’t care about what you like.)
- Open the AVS window. (This is the visualisation window that does the pretty patterns. Look for it in the Thinger window. You want the icon that says avs in big letters.)
- Admire the pretty patterns for a moment.
- Double-click in the AVS window to bring up the Editor window.
- Choose Display from the Settings menu.
- Check the Overlay mode and Set desktop to color checkboxes on the right.
- Aaaand… wheeeeeee!
- Show it off to everyone in the vicinity.
- Now see how long you can carry on working with that running.
This is the bit where I’m meant to whinge about Winamp3’s size, slowness, bugginess, horrific default skin and the fact that it takes five times longer to load than Winamp 2.0. Fortunately, I’ve been distracted by the continually-increasing fabness of the AVS. However, I will say this: If premature optimisation is the root of all evil then Winamp3 can look forward to an unhindered ascent to heaven (where it will doubtless be given a huge, oddly-shaped halo textured with a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt).
Look Around You! In particular, public health
look at the Periodic Table.
Following on from being an unwitting accomplice in the approved 3604, diagnosis 807299,00.html” title=”BATTERED COD – FRYING SQUAD”>”Welsh drivers using cooking oil instead of diesel” controversy, British supermarket chain Asda has started running its fleet of lorries on reprocessed chicken fat:
Asda produces more than 50m litres of used cooking oil and 138,000 of waste frying fat every year from its canteens, restaurants and rotisseries. The gunge was a disposal headache rather than a potential money-earner until an unexpected phone call last spring.
“We were approached by a biodiesel firm, which cleans up waste cooking oil, adds a bit of methanol and sells it as a much cheaper alternative to diesel,” said Rachel Fellows of Asda yesterday. “We were only too happy to do business with them.
“But then we thought: hang on, isn’t there something we can do here for ourselves?”
Biodiesel, while being a combustion fuel, is not only considerably cheaper than normal diesel but releases only 40% of the emissions, as well as being “simple to use, biodegradable, nontoxic, and essentially free of sulfur and aromatics.” (see the FAQ) Plus, “Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.”, which may be of interest to Californians.
One of the hottest topics this past week has been the formation of Mitch Kapor‘s OSAF and its big project, healing look you fools”>Chandler, a kind of souped-up do-everything PIM. The term that’s being bandied about at the moment is “Outlook on steroids” but, as the product page says, Outlook is not the right comparison model here. The feature summary looks like a standard-issue email client until you hit the bullet points at the bottom:
- structure data how you like it, view it that way, change your mind at any time
- automatic recognition of names, places, dates, and etc.; automatic categorization of items
Those features go way beyond what most PIMs offer today, yet they come from a 15-year-old DOS program. Chandler’s true daddy is the PIM that Kapor delivered to the market in the 80’s: Lotus Agenda.