richardirvine.com

Category: geek

  • Unplugged in Opito Bay

    opito

    I went off the grid for a few days with my girl. As I left the office on Friday, I wrestled with my conscience – does the laptop come or stay? With my T3G card, I get reasonable  connection pretty much anywhere – but that’s not really a holiday is it? It wound up staying.

    So, apart from a couple moments of PDA email weakness, I was unplugged. And it was great. Spent quality time. Got loads of reading done. Ate well.

    Learnings? NEVER check work email while you’re away, it’ll only stress you out – there’s not much you can do about it, is there? And what about returning to 500+ unread RSS items? Time for a good old trim, methinks, going through that seems too much like work.

  • Dungeonista

    Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, a rope from the rowboat of social interaction for young nerds the world over, died today. Here’s a long article by a guy who went to meet Gygax in his lair.

    My own role-playing innocence was shattered when Mum arranged a playdate with a fellow D&Der. He had an amazing array of characters with mega ‘experience points’, the hard won currency of this murky little world. When I wondered about the amazing LOTR-style adventures he must have embarked upon to amass such bounty, he replied matter-of-factly “I cheat”.

    Bastard. It never crossed my mind that in this game of fantasy, you could just make shit up. Kids, eh? I didn’t play so much after that.

    Those 20 sided dice did come in handy years later for drinking games, though.

  • Links

    As children we all loved Garfield, only to grow up and realise his “cynical” take on the world appeals mainly to people who live alone with only a freezer full of ice cream for company. So, you’ll love Garfield minus Garfield. Do you think this would work with Wal and The Dog?

    Portishead are back, and The Observer reckons they’re better than ever.

    Spin The Black Circle is a very frustrating game. It reminds me of the games you used to get on fish and chip shop walls, kind of a cross between the golf and the ball pinging ones.

    Popless is Onion AV Club’s Noel Murray documenting a year where he refuses to listen to any new music, instead documenting his (extensive) record collection. He’s a very experienced reviewer and great writer, which is lucky, ‘cos it’s almost March, and he’s only up to C.

  • New Toy

    New Toy

    My place of work has been so goodly kind to shout me a shiny new Okta Touch.

    First thoughts: It’s sexy. Real sexy. Sexy as really cold beer on a hot day. This is my first real PDA, and all my ‘I just want a PHONE, man’ thoughts melted effortlessly away in no time.

    It’s got a touch screen, and despite not having an ‘I’ in front of its name, its really well put together. The OS is more complicated than my old Nokia, but it’s not bad. I can do everything with my thumb, pretty much, I was worried I’d have to use the stylus the whole time, which is less than ideal for tapping out a quick SMS. It’s got touch-screen Qwerty keyboard, it’ll be interesting to see if I can get any actual writing done with it.

    Here’s the Stuff and Geekzone reviews. I’ll post more thoughts as we go.

    It IS missing a bottle opener, though.

    140208 UPDATE: Hmmm yes, I still like. The TouchFlo (many, many manhours would have gone into that name, team) bit where you phone, text and email contacts in a few strokes is magic. Flipping this nicely animated menu around with your thumb makes you feel like Buck Rogers ordering a pizza. A pizza from the future.