I thought maybe he was the guy behind the Half-Life mod Ricochet.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

'twas nice to know you while we did!

Thanks to Gopher on YouTube for lots of awesome modding advice and hundreds of play-through videos!

I really like my WD TV Live. It plays a lot of formats and has a simple but usable interface. It definitely passed the "wife test" for ease-of-use. But it has one glaring omission: no Amazon Prime streaming (see: "Online Services"). They just released a 2.0 firmware update with a bunch of new "supports [service]" notes, but Amazon is not one of them. Western Digital, I am disappoint.

At least in my world it's been declining. I was once an Ubuntu fanatic. "It's so easy," I would tell people. It passed my girlfriend test. It passed my parents test. I used Ubuntu every day for years. After 10.04 LTS, things started going downhill. Once 12.04 LTS hit the streets, things started going downhill faster. I have since switched to Ubuntu's upstream parent, Debian, with LXFE for the desktop. Clean, simple, elegant. I'll keep this.

This is how zombie movies always start. Some new "universal" vaccine that induces growth of one type of cell. No thanks. I like being un-undead.

They're a few decades early... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waters_of_Mars

Develop hobbies and spend time with your family.

Programming (or learning to program if you don't already know how) is a productive hobby. Get a train set. Repaint your house. Buy and restore a classic car by hand (although that can be quite expensive). Go hiking/kayaking/skiing/biking/fishing. Learn to play the guitar/bass/drums/piano/sax/trumpet/sousaphone. Have a barbeque. Build a barbeque. Go geocaching. Go geohashing . And get your kids/parents/spouse/siblings/friends/neighbors involved.

I only wish I have free time for these things

We're on a big 50 Mbps pipe from a major provider in Toledo, OH.

Considering I suffer from dichromacy [wikipedia.org], I'd surely like to be able to see a "normal" range of colors.

Also, "specturm" really?

Yes, because this free market will somehow manage to write its own books. There will never be a need to generate new content, ever.

C and/or C++ will get you further than any other "modern" language.

Join an open source project that strikes your fancy, or find a niche and start your own.

These are my top three franchises...

- Fallout 3 & New Vegas
- Borderlands 1 & 2
- BioShock 1 & 2 (and Inifinite, coming soon!)

Well, plus the entire Valve catalog, but I guess that goes without saying.

It's too bad Resara shut down. Hopefully someone will pick up its pieces.

We have a particular software from a particular vendor who only pushes an update once a year. We've already pointed out several bugs and quirks in the software that have become "feature requests" for the next release (due in January 2013). On the other hand, we also have software from a vendor who pushes an update every six weeks, and then we have to get that update installed for every user that has the software because every update changes the file format and it isn't ever backward compatible! . So, if you're a major software vendor, my suggestion would be to favor structure and stability over frequent and minor patches or releases, but not so infrequent that it doesn't seem like you're paying attention to your market.