Ars Technica.

Okay, signed up for Ars Technica. It's kind of interesting that I've decided to subscribe to a couple of boards. I think I'll be committing more time to them as a result.

I also checked and found that the Morrowind4Kids site is up. I feel rather proud, although my part in making it happen was rather small -- I just contributed the setup fee for the hosting. I like the feeling of having supported a cool project, though.

In case you're wondering what MW4K is, it's a mod for Morrowind, which is one of my alltime favorite games.

Hmmm, feeling rather rambly today, so I think I'll take a stab at a list of my alltime favorite game, or at least those I can remember off the top of my head.

Not in order, because that would take too long...

Sam & Max: Freelance Police - Hit the Road
Fallout
Baldur's Gate
Diablo II
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls: Arena
Doom
Quake
Quake II
System Shock
System Shock 2

Still feeling chatty, apparently.

I signed up for a subscription to the Straight Dope message boards. It's all of $4.95 for a year, and is something that I enjoy. I've been lurking there since 2000, so I guess it was time to get active.

I find the amount of agonizing over the decision to charge a subscription fee to be pretty amazing. There's a fair amount of "the Internet is supposed to be free!" nonsense, which I find tiring. Regardless of your take on whether information itself is or should be free, or whether you're interested in sharing your opinions in a free forum, the simple fact is that the act of hosting a forum costs money. And when that forum gets a lot of traffic, it costs a lot of money. You (or the Chicago Reader, in this instance) need to decide whether you want to continue losing money or not. And if you decide not to lose money, then you need to either shut it down or find a way to generate revenue.

This simple process seems to elude a fair number of people, though.

Ah well.

It occurs to me that the only external link to this blog is in my signature on SDMB, so there's a significant possibility of circular reference.

So, I'm off to add my blog link to other signatures. And to give some money to Ars Technica while I'm at it, as long as I'm giving money to web sites I frequent.

Wow, two updates in less than a month. I must be feeling chatty.

Today's obsession is World of Warcraft. MMORPG goodness. Highly relevant newspost and cartoon at Penny Arcade.

My short take:

Dang, this is addictive fun. As can be expected from the fine folks at Blizzard, it's very very well done. Look for it to be a major smash in late fall or so.

Been a while since I updated.

Latest news in the Lab is the Iriver IHP-120. Man, this is a neat toy. It's a 20GB hard drive, USB-capable, which can play back MP3, OGG, WMA and WAV files. Yeah, it's an MP3 player, but it's a lot more than that.

I was trying to decide between this and the Ipod. I went with the Iriver for the battery life and the compatibility with WMA. I'm very happy with the choice.

Battery life has been outstanding. Yesterday I started at 8am with full charge, and spent the whole day with it on. Active listening was about 4 or 5 hours, including an hour in the car (Belkin Tunecast II transmitter turns the jukebox into a car accessory!). I went to about 50% charge at the end of the day -- somewhere around 9pm. I did have it off for a couple of hours over dinner, but still -- I got a good 8 hours of active time on half the battery (assuming the display is semi-accurate).

And it has a nice remote with LCD display and good controls.

I'm a happy guy.

I have about 9 gig of music loaded. That's somewhere around 100 albums, mostly in the best quality WMA files I can create.

In other news, check out MusicPlasma: http://www.musicplasma.com/