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    Popular blog posts

  • Total Share: Personal Computer Market Share 1975-2010
  • Celebration
  • Monarch Thing-A-Day Challenge!
  • I love Korean Starcraft
  • Why HTML 5 sucks!
  • Recent forum posts

  • Online Assignment Help in Ireland
  • Micro History Episode 2 is up!
  • My article on the history of public messaging is up on Ars Technica!
  • Micro History Episode 0 is up!
  • How to find the best fiction ghostwriter?
  • Discussion Forum

    Discussion forum

    Lee Jae Dong Fighting Poster!


    Post #: 88
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2011-06-25 23:28:56.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Gaming Starcraft

    I’ve been a huge Jaedong fan basically since I first saw him play. I watched him win the Golden Mouse (three OSL championships) live and watched his rivalry with Flash in finals matches many, many times.

    I drew this poster as part of the "A Zergling for Jaedong" thread on Team Liquid:
    http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=215652

    Hopefully it will become part of a package that will be delivered to him personally!



    Views: 8344


    Knotty Geeks Episode 14 - Starcraft beats University


    Post #: 85
    Post type: Podcast
    Date: 2011-04-04 15:57:13.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Knotty Geeks

    In this exciting episode, we brave the cold outdoors again to bring you the exciting battle of Big Truck vs. Even Bigger Truck, and the heart-stopping drama of tiny little loud birds!

    Oh, and we also touch on how our entire society is changing right before our eyes, from the collapse of the venerable British University System to the fall of traditional publishers. It’s all part of the theme of Acceleration, marked out by Data Points!

    All this, plus the rise of Starcraft!

    Links from the show:
    http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm - The decline and fall of the British university
    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/the-dawn-of-starcraft-e-sports-come-to-the-world-stage.ars - The Dawn of Starcraft: e-Sports come to the world stage
    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/tech-giants-to-enable-ipv6-on-world-ipv6-day-in-june.ars - World IPv6 day
    http://www.the-gutters.com - good comics about comic industry
    http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/ebooks-and-self-publishing-dialog.html - Self publishing beats traditional publishing
    http://www.pvponline.com/2011/03/26/rube-goldberg-de-vicing/ - Scott Kurtz gives up on National Cartoonists Society
    http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1139619&start=120 - Great discussion on the cloud and open source goals






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    Views: 6852


    My Starcraft article was published on Ars Technica!


    Post #: 84
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2011-04-01 12:20:43.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Gaming



    The lights of the metropolis shine brightly on the clear summer night. Down on the bay, a crowd gathers around a giant outdoor screen. Spotlights flood the area as the audience, now exceeding 50,000 people, work themselves into a fever pitch. The two teams come out on stage to deafening cheers. Teenage girls scream as one idol from each team is chosen for the first round of combat. They each enter a booth. The music swells, and the video game begins.

    It sounds like a science fiction story from the future. But this event actually happened in the past, in a place where such things have been commonplace for over ten years. This was the 2006 Proleague finals held in Seoul, South Korea. The game being played was StarCraft.

    The Dawn of Starcraft: e-Sports comes to the world stage

    ----

    The article got tweeted by GSL Starcraft II commentators Nick "Tasteless" Plott and Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski. Artosis even briefly mentioned it on the air at the 37 minute mark here:

    The GSL game where Artosis and Tasteless mention my article

    I’m so excited!

    Comments (1)

    Views: 7064


    Pirate Bird!


    Post #: 82
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2011-03-23 21:41:39.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Gaming

    Those of you who watched the GOMTV GSL Team League games last night will know what this means.

    The rest of you, well, it’s a Pirate Bird.

    (I drew this, so it’s my fault)




    Views: 9636


    Why HTML 5 sucks!


    Post #: 81
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2011-03-11 16:29:26.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Software

    The idea behind HTML 5 was a good one: make sound and video clips a part of standard HTML code that anyone can use on any platform without having to use Adobe’s proprietary Flash plug-in. Great! Long overdue, in my opinion.

    Then, sadly, everything went wrong.

    I already knew that the video tag in HTML 5 was a complete train-wreck. Some browser manufacturers had decided to support H.264, others Ogg Theora, and then Google came along and started pushing WebM. But that’s video, something where new codecs are still being created and the state of the art is still very much in flux. I could forgive things for not being all sorted out.

    Audio, I thought, would be trivial. So when it came time to include a podcast playback control in my Monarch blog engine (you’re reading through it right now!) I decided to test out HTML 5’s audio support to see how well it would work.

    The answer is worse than not at all.

    Internet Explorer 8, of course, ignores the tag and displays nothing, but that’s forgivable because honestly, who uses IE any more? Only dinosaurs and old people who really like things to be extra-slow. IE9 will supposedly support it, assuming the sun hasn’t become a red giant and consumed all life on Earth by the time it is released.

    Firefox, on the other hand, commits an even more unforgivable sin: it CLAIMS to support it, but then won’t play MP3 files! Ogg Vorbis only! Look, Mozilla people, I understand this Noble Crusade For No Patents in Codecs, but MP3 is supported by every other sound playback system in the entire history of time. Five dollar portable music players support it. I think my breakfast cereal supports it. This is ridiculous!

    Now, we get to Chrome. Great browser, Chrome. Supports HTML 5 audio tags and plays back MP3s. Great, right?

    Yeah, until you put more than one on a single page. Then it tries to play them all at once, ignoring the autoplay settings, and freezes the entire web page. (EDIT: It's worse than that, actually. It freezes the ENTIRE BROWSER! Not even sandboxing can save it!) Great, Chrome. Nice job.

    I downloaded a Flash audio player (the same one that the audio module in my old blog running Drupal used) and everything ran fine. Multiple instances, no problem. Runs on every browser, too, except the iPhone/iPad, which don’t support Flash.

    The idea of replacing Flash is a good one. It was neat seeing the Knotty Geeks podcasts load up on my iPad in a web page and being able to play them. But freezing Chrome and not working on Firefox is a complete deal-breaker, and this doesn’t show any signs of improving any time soon.

    Flash is here to stay for the time being, folks.

    Comments (5)

    Views: 20999


    Knotty Geeks Episode 13 - The Lights in the Tunnel


    Post #: 80
    Post type: Podcast
    Date: 2011-03-04 16:40:50.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Knotty Geeks

    In this episode we invade a Starbucks in Surrey and drive people away with our incessant commentary on the FUTURE! Will it be a bleak, dark, apocalyptic future where everyone is unemployed, or will it be a happy future where everyone is unemployed?

    One thing is for sure: the computers are coming to take our JERBS and there’s no stopping them. Best to be prepared.


    The Anybody Story:

    This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
    There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
    Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
    Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
    Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.

    It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

    Reading list:

    What Technology Wants
    Where Good Ideas Come From
    The Lights in the Tunnel

    Apache Solr search engine: http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

    Why does work not happen at work: http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work.html

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    Views: 6676


    I love Korean Starcraft


    Post #: 77
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2011-01-13 12:01:53.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Starcraft

    I can’t get enough of it. Whether it’s the new GSL in Starcraft II or the classic Starcraft I MSL, OSL, or Proleague, I’m completely addicted to watching it.

    And I’m not the only one. People are making pilgrimages to South Korea just to hold up epic signs like this for the TV cameras:

    Comments (17)

    Views: 22923


    Monarch Thing-A-Day Challenge!


    Post #: 75
    Post type: Blog post
    Date: 2010-12-13 11:34:59.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Monarch

    Now that Monarch has been released to the public at version 0.24, I’ve decided to crank things up a little bit.

    Starting today I will add one feature per day to the system. They may not always be big features, but they will address missing functionality that the old system (both Drupal and PHPBB) offered.

    I have no particular order that I plan to do these in, but I’m trying to hit the most obvious ones first-- the ones that you would use all the time.

    Monday’s feature is a Last Post link, to let you instantly jump to the last post in a thread by clicking on the name/date in the "Last post" column.

    EDIT: Testing smilies in blog posts. :D :D

    Comments (38)

    Views: 26328


    Knotty Geeks Episode 12 - I made something!


    Post #: 73
    Post type: Podcast
    Date: 2010-12-11 11:44:34.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Knotty Geeks

    It’s a pretty big episode this time, with big announcements for the future of Knotty Geeks!

    We start off talking about our latest and greatest iGadgets, briefly discuss our trip to Sacramento for Amiwest 2010, review the amazing new book What Technology Wants, and then get into my big news: the release of my brand-new, written-from-scratch forum/blogging system called Monarch, written in newLISP!

    The new system includes a podcast module, on which Knotty Geeks has found its new home.

    Links from the show;

    AmiWest 2010 Report:
    http://www.amigafuture.de/kb.php?mode=article&k=3628

    What Technology Wants (also available on Kindle)
    http://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/0670022152

    Monarch Content Engine - Jeremy’s new blogging application!
    http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/main

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    Views: 6815


    Knotty Geeks Episode 11 - Bad Coders At Work


    Post #: 72
    Post type: Podcast
    Date: 2010-12-11 11:03:15.000
    Author: Jeremy Reimer
    Tags: Knotty Geeks

    In this episode, we get scared of the wind and venture inside Wick’s Cafe, only to find ourselves face to face with eating and drinking noises, light reggae, and... ourselves.

    We talk a little bit about creating art in 2D and 3D, the current state of smartphones, and then get into the history and future of programming, a subject we know virtually nothing about.

    Links from the show:

    Jeremy’s new "Star Gamer" 2D comic, made on a Bamboo tablet:
    http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/comic?c=Star%20Gamer

    Malcom Gladwell’s "10,000 hours to become an expert" book Outliers:
    http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html

    Coders at Work - the most entertaining book about programming you’ll ever read:
    http://www.codersatwork.com/

    The Dunning-Kruger effect, where you are too incompetent to know you are incompetent (maybe that’s us?)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

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    Views: 6775