Topics, Reviews, Opinions

Both Michelle and I are big video game addicts, and spend a fair amount of our free time (especially when the weather is crappy) playing games. In case anyone is interested I thought I'd try to post now and then what we're currently in to.

We both play games on our PC's: I'm slowly working through Orange Box (Portal was a blast, and I never did play Half-Life, so thats been new for me), and Michelle mostly plays games like Soduko(sp?) and tile games.

Most of my game time these days is on the 360 though. I'm currently playing Oblivion or Mass Effect. I also put in Rainbow Six Vegas when I want more action. I'm not really into playing online, I guess I had my fill of that a few years ago. I have Gears of War sitting there unplayed, I'll get to it soon. I use Goozex.com (user name Hike20) to trade games, so I currently have more games than I have time to play.

Our Wii is mostly sitting there alone right now. There's not much available for it yet that grabs our attention. We're waiting for the Lego Indiana Jones to come out and we'll probably get it on Wii because it's more fun to play the Lego games with two people, and the Wii is better suited for those kins of games.

Michelle plays mostly on her DS Lite. I'm not really sure what she's playing so you'll need to ask her...

Randy

October 18th and 19th we were in Bayfield, WI again for the 2006 Apostle Islands Sled Dog Symposium put on by the Northern Wisconsin Dog Musher's Association. Eric (and others) always puts a lot of time in to this event and it's been interesting these first 3 years.

This year's theme was “Dryland Mushing”, which is basically mushing without sleds. While this sport is huge in Europe, and growing on the east and west coasts, it's still relatively unknown here in the Midwest. That's really too bad since it's much more accessible than traditional mushing. Dryland mushing easily be experienced using simpler equipment, fewer dogs, and it doesn't require snow! What's more, just about any breed of dog can participate in the fun.

With as few as 1 to 3 dogs you can have fun using scooters, small carts, or even just biking or jogging with your dog. Carts, or “rigs”, can handle teams up to about 8 dogs. Common fall training for larger teams usually involves a 4-wheeler. Dryland races are starting to pop up in more and more places, and I hope it really takes off. I had no idea it could be so much fun or be so easy to get started.

I've got a scooter by a company called Diggler on order, and I can't wait to get started. I had tried bikejoring with Alex when she was young, but it didn't go over too well. I was laking in experience, she was too interested in stopping to sniff everything, and I found it took a little more patience and coordination than I had at the time. Now Alex is older and calmer, and the scooters are very easy to handle. If you need to you can just step off to get control of your dog(s).

Amy Cooper was the keynote speaker, and she shared her experiences running, biking, and scootering with her dogs. Those of you who red our newsletter (www.redpawfeed.com/newsletter.htm) may recall her article on traveling to Belgium for an international dryland competition. Jim Benson was next and talked about all the different equipment options and gear available. He brought along quite a few examples for us to look at and try out. In the afternoon we heard from Nick Vukich, DVM; he gave a great talk about canine health issues related to dryland. Everyone there found his talk especially informative. Finally, Lloyd Gilbertson shared some advice on interval training.

Many companies were very generous in donating items for door prizes, and everyone went home with at least one. Michelle entered and won a raffle for a fabulous Russian fur hat donated by Cindy Erickson.

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Link: http://alexaco.com/blogs/index.php/a/2006/07/16/required_reading_for_omnivoreshttp://alexaco.com/blogs/index.php/a/2006/07/16/required_reading_for_omnivores

Read my review of Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals". Summary: good food for thought!

This is something everyone should check out. WARNING: it may be dangerous if you have an easily addicted personality! You can kill hours there without even realizing it.

The Library of Congress is making the effort to archive as much information as they can. I’ve assumed for a while that wouldn't didn’t include the internet, because the scale of that undertaking is mind-boggling. I was wrong, they ARE doing it, and you won’t believe what can be found there. Just point your browser to http://www.archive.org.

The first thing I want to point out is the Wayback Machine. It’s a search engine and a time machine combined. You can actually search the web as it was at any time practically back to its beginnings. This is really cool if you just want to be nostalgic, but it can have a far more practical side too. How many times have you looked for information on a web site that you swear was there a year or two ago but it seams to have disappeared? Most web sites are updated pretty frequently and the information on them changes all the time.

The second thing I want to point out is... everything else! They are not just archiving the internet; they are also using the internet to make all kinds of works available to everyone.

Here’s just a sampling of what you can find: Books you can download and view or print, video files from all sorts of sources such as old TV programs to old instructional films like many of us saw in school, and get this...live concert audio from a growing number of groups that have agree to let them be shared. Grateful Dead fans have now found the mother load!

Keep in mind that a lot of this stuff really needs a broadband internet connection to really take advantage of it. All of the materials on this site are free for anyone to download. The collection is huge and growing all the time. You can also submit your own materials to the site for archival.

A really cool offshoot of this is a project to modernize the way libraries work, especially for bookmobiles. They can set up a mini-van with a satellite internet connection, laptop computers, printers and binders. You go to the bookmobile and instead of borrowing a book, you get a book to take home and keep. The cost is about $1 per book for short books like children’s books. It actually costs libraries more to handle books the traditional way! This is a great thing, especially for poorer areas. They can even set up satellite libraries this way. Imagine having access to thousands of books instead of collections of a few hundred!

Anyway, I think everyone should check it out. It’s a great example of the good things we can do as a nation if we put our minds to it.

Randy

Many of you have heard me rave about how great Tivo is. Finally I can record any show I want by just selecting it by name, instead of tediously entering time and channel info. The best thing, however, is that I can find the shows I've recorded just as easily. I no longer have to search through hours of recordings on VHS to find what I want. There are lots of other neat features, but that is not the point of this entry.

Now you can get the same convenience for lots of media sources on the internet as well. Podcasting is a method to make audio content easily accessible. Most podcasts are radio shows, but lots of websites are starting to produce their own content since it is really easy to do.

There are several radio programs that I enjoy listening to. But I hated trying to remember when they would be on and I'd frequently miss them because I needed to be somewhere (like work) when the show aired. Sometimes it was hard to find a local station that even carried them. Well quite a few shows have been making their programs available for download on the internet. This is great because I no longer have to listen live. I still have to remember when new shows are be available, however, and then go and manually download them.

With podcasting, I just tell a small application to automatically check the websites of the shows I want and download new programs when available. Then I can listen to them on my time. I use a free program called iPodder. You can download it from their website. Shows that support podcasting will have info at their website, and more and more are becoming available all the time.

A method called RSS (really simple syndication) is quickly making just about all internet content just as easy. This is great for newspaper articles, blogs like this one, and just about everything else. You can usually subscribe by topic or author, so you only get the things you want. Imagine having a newspaper edited just for you so you don't have to waste time on the stuff you aren't interested in. Here's an article that gives a good introduction.

Again, you need a small application, called an aggregator, to download and organize the content. I use RSS Reader and just downloaded SharpReader to try out. RSS Reader works fine but I've heard good things about SharpReader so I'll give it a try.

Ever since reading David Brin's "Earth" years ago, one of my all-time favorite books BTW, I've longed for the ability for have the net deliver to me any information I wanted at my demand. I think we may almost be there!

Of course, you can also subscribe to our blog, so you can autimatically keep up to date with what is going on in our lives. If any of you set up your own blogs (hint, hint) I'd love to subscribe to them as well. If you need help getting started just let me know. (Friends and family only please, I can't help the whole world!)

Randy

In case you haven't heard, one of the latest threats to your computer is a group of nasties called spyware. Most get installed on your computer by bad web sites, emails, or by downloading seemingly harmless software from the internet.

The most common ones simply track your movements around the internet. Cookies are a common method for this but there are others as well. A little nastier are the ones that use this info to cause ads to continually pop-up. At the other end of the spectrum are key loggers that record and steal passwords, and backdoors that allow hackers to do whatever they want to on, or with, your machine. A common trick is to install a tiny app that connects, jumps on the internet while you are connected, and without your knowledge starts downloading all kinds of nastier stuff. Hackers can then use your computer, combined with lots of others to do all kinds of stuff, such as do mass spam campaigns. In addition to the outright harm these things can cause you or others, they will bring your computer and internet connections to a crawl.

The tools I currently recommend for battling this trend are programs that work a lot like virus checkers. They scan your machine for spyware and eliminates them. Here are my favorites as this moment:

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE. This free program is one of the most reliable. The first time you run this and scan your computer it will turn up all kinds of stuff you didn't know was there. You can download it here.

Microsoft is also attempting to battle this trend and have released a beta (test program) of their own. As with many of MS technologies, they chose to buy out another company to get a head-start. Anyway, you can also download this one for free, at least for now. I don't know if they will make this another update for Windows or what. You can get it here. This one can run on your computer all the time to check all incoming traffic for known spyware.

Another tool worth installing is a firewall. Firewalls keep you protected from hackers by making your computer invisible to the internet. Good ones not only block incoming threats, but also prevent any spyware that has gotten through your defenses from getting a connection back out. So even if you are infected they can't share information about you or open backdoors. A good one you can get for free is Zone Alarm. You can download it here.

Finally, the last thing worth doing is closing some of the vulnerabilities in Windows to begin with. Make sure you download the latest updates from Microsoft using Windows Update. If you are using Windows XP, it may be set to automatically download updates as they become available.

That's all for now, I'll add more info as I think about it or discover new info.

Randy