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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. The fans speak, and Bungie delivers. Word came down today that on April 17, two new Halo 2 multiplayer maps go live for download. Initially, talk was that Microsoft was going to release these new maps as Xbox 360 exclusives, an announcement that fans responded to with a great deal of animosity. Bungie quickly stepped up and said they would go to bat for their fans and urge Microsoft to release the maps to everyone with an Xbox Live Gold account.
Personally, I think Microsoft made a wise and fair decision in releasing these maps to everyone who owns Halo 2. It would have been patently unfair to release them any other way. The two maps - Tombstone, which is a remake of Hang 'em High, and Desolation, which is a remake of Derelict - are maps I never got to experience in Halo: Combat Evolved. I'm pumped about being able to finally play these two popular maps and try them out in Spartan-vs-Spartan combat.
Good choice, Microsoft, and thanks for loving your customers so much, Bungie! We owe you one!
 If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. I use a lot of portable applications. At last count, I have 22 of them sitting on my flash drive. I use about half of them nearly every day, and the other half get used often enough to warrant their continued presence on my flash drive. Part 1 of the Portable Applications section will cover the programs that are, for me, daily essentials. Part 2 will cover the ones that I consider to be my 'support' programs.
- Firefox Portable - I have long held disdain for Internet Explorer,1 and Firefox has been my replacement browser of choice. When computer account limitations at work prevented me from installing Firefox on my work PC, I went hunting for alternate solutions. What I found was Firefox Portable. It was my introduction to portable applications nearly a year and a half ago, and I've never looked back. I now run Firefox exclusively from my flash drive, which allows me to keep all my settings, bookmarks, and addons with me at all times. I'll be talking about Firefox addons in a later part that will make this browser even more powerful and versatile.
- GAIM Portable - What computer and web geek would be without his Instant Messaging client? GAIM Portable gives you the power of several of the most popular IM clients right on your flash drive. No more worrying about getting logged off on another computer or having to import your settings (or installing the software) on a new computer. Launch it from your flash drive and your good to go. It also allows you to run multiple AIM(link) accounts, which is a huge advantage if you have different screen names for different groups of people.
- FileZilla Portable - Web developers rely heavily on their FTP clients. I use mine literally every day for moving files back and forth on my webhost. FileZilla has become my FTP client of choice - it's free, and it's extremely easy to use.
- metapad - Who needs Windows Notepad when you have something as powerful as metapad? Granted, Notepad has become a bit more powerful with recent editions, but in my opinion, metapad is still far superior. It offers up more options than does Notepad and handles certain types of files (like .php and .css) much better than Notepad does. metapad has been a staple program for me for several years now.
- GIMP Portable - Photoshop is still my graphics editor of choice, but since it is also still prohibitively expensive to buy - and since I've not yet seen a portable version of the software - GIMP fills the gap for the kinds of basic graphic manipulations I generally need to do. It's relatively small, as programs go, and lets you do quite a bit of the same things that you can do in Photoshop. It's not as user-friendly or as intuitive as Photoshop,2 but it generally does what I need it to.
- MWSnap - I frequently need to quickly and easily capture screens from my computer. SnagIt is a great capture software for doing just this, but it's also relatively expensive to buy. MWSnap does exactly the same thing that SnagIt does, but it has the bonus of being both free and portable. It's very easy to use and makes it very simple to capture the entire screen, individual windows, or custom-sized rectangles from your computer screen.
- 7-zip Portable - I work with compressed files a lot these days, so I have to have compression software at the ready all the time. WinZip is fine, insofar as it goes - but it only handles .zip files. Sometimes I need to open up a .tar or a .tar.gz file. PowerArchiver does these and more - but it also costs money to buy (unless you're purchasing much older versions with fewer features). 7-zip opens just about every kind of compressed file out there.
- irfanView - Periodically, I need to resize some pictures, especially ones coming down off a digital camera. The main thing that I use irfanView is its ability to process entire batches of images. I simply select all the images I want to resize, tell it how big I want them, and within a moment or two, everything is down to a manageable size. It makes sharing digital photographs or maintaining a photoblog that much easier.
- OpenOffice Portable - Microsoft has a relatively solid office suite with their MSOffice package. However, like most things Microsoft, it's also rather expensive. It's also not portable. OpenOffice provides an alternative office suite to Microsoft's version that runs every bit as good as, if not better than, the MS version. It has also now been made portable so that you can load it up on your flash drive and run it from anywhere.
- RoughDraft - Now, from a writer's perspective, RoughDraft is one of the best utilities in my toolkit. I have two writing programs that I use with regularity. RoughDraft is the one I use for writing flash fiction and short stories. It works exclusively with .rtf files, which is actually a pretty good thing because it's a versatile file type that is available to a number of different word processing programs. RoughDraft allows you to open multiple documents in tabs right inside the main window, so there's no worry about having too many things open in your Windows taskbar at the same time. This is a slick little program that is must-have for any writer.
- yWriter - For longer writing project I use yWriter. This is quite possibly one of the most powerful little writing packages I've ever seen, allowing you to easily create chapters, break them into scenes, and move pieces around as you need to adjust chronology. It also allows you to create character profiles and keep track of notes. This is another must-have for any writer who is serious about getting that novel written.
All of these programs of free and easy to use. These are the programs that I use nearly every day and thus serve as the core of my tools for writing and maintaining my website.
Part 2 of Portable Applications will cover another group of portable apps that get used less frequently but in some ways are just as important as my daily essentials.
Note: When leaving comments for this series, you may receive a 302 error and not immediately see your comment. Rest assured that your comment has been logged and received. Simply refresh the page, and you'll see it. This is a bug with the series plugin I'm currently using and will hopefully be ironed out soon. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: geekware
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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. I use a lot of portable applications. At last count, I have 22 of them sitting on my flash drive. I use about half of them nearly every day, and the other half get used often enough to warrant their continued presence on my flash drive. Part 1 of the Portable Applications section will cover the programs that are, for me, daily essentials. Part 2 will cover the ones that I consider to be my 'support' programs.
- Firefox Portable - I have long held disdain for Internet Explorer,1 and Firefox has been my replacement browser of choice. When computer account limitations at work prevented me from installing Firefox on my work PC, I went hunting for alternate solutions. What I found was Firefox Portable. It was my introduction to portable applications nearly a year and a half ago, and I've never looked back. I now run Firefox exclusively from my flash drive, which allows me to keep all my settings, bookmarks, and addons with me at all times. I'll be talking about Firefox addons in a later part that will make this browser even more powerful and versatile.
- GAIM Portable - What computer and web geek would be without his Instant Messaging client? GAIM Portable gives you the power of several of the most popular IM clients right on your flash drive. No more worrying about getting logged off on another computer or having to import your settings (or installing the software) on a new computer. Launch it from your flash drive and your good to go. It also allows you to run multiple AIM(link) accounts, which is a huge advantage if you have different screen names for different groups of people.
- FileZilla Portable - Web developers rely heavily on their FTP clients. I use mine literally every day for moving files back and forth on my webhost. FileZilla has become my FTP client of choice - it's free, and it's extremely easy to use.
- metapad - Who needs Windows Notepad when you have something as powerful as metapad? Granted, Notepad has become a bit more powerful with recent editions, but in my opinion, metapad is still far superior. It offers up more options than does Notepad and handles certain types of files (like .php and .css) much better than Notepad does. metapad has been a staple program for me for several years now.
- GIMP Portable - Photoshop is still my graphics editor of choice, but since it is also still prohibitively expensive to buy - and since I've not yet seen a portable version of the software - GIMP fills the gap for the kinds of basic graphic manipulations I generally need to do. It's relatively small, as programs go, and lets you do quite a bit of the same things that you can do in Photoshop. It's not as user-friendly or as intuitive as Photoshop,2 but it generally does what I need it to.
- MWSnap - I frequently need to quickly and easily capture screens from my computer. SnagIt is a great capture software for doing just this, but it's also relatively expensive to buy. MWSnap does exactly the same thing that SnagIt does, but it has the bonus of being both free and portable. It's very easy to use and makes it very simple to capture the entire screen, individual windows, or custom-sized rectangles from your computer screen.
- 7-zip Portable - I work with compressed files a lot these days, so I have to have compression software at the ready all the time. WinZip is fine, insofar as it goes - but it only handles .zip files. Sometimes I need to open up a .tar or a .tar.gz file. PowerArchiver does these and more - but it also costs money to buy (unless you're purchasing much older versions with fewer features). 7-zip opens just about every kind of compressed file out there.
- irfanView - Periodically, I need to resize some pictures, especially ones coming down off a digital camera. The main thing that I use irfanView is its ability to process entire batches of images. I simply select all the images I want to resize, tell it how big I want them, and within a moment or two, everything is down to a manageable size. It makes sharing digital photographs or maintaining a photoblog that much easier.
- OpenOffice Portable - Microsoft has a relatively solid office suite with their MSOffice package. However, like most things Microsoft, it's also rather expensive. It's also not portable. OpenOffice provides an alternative office suite to Microsoft's version that runs every bit as good as, if not better than, the MS version. It has also now been made portable so that you can load it up on your flash drive and run it from anywhere.
- RoughDraft - Now, from a writer's perspective, RoughDraft is one of the best utilities in my toolkit. I have two writing programs that I use with regularity. RoughDraft is the one I use for writing flash fiction and short stories. It works exclusively with .rtf files, which is actually a pretty good thing because it's a versatile file type that is available to a number of different word processing programs. RoughDraft allows you to open multiple documents in tabs right inside the main window, so there's no worry about having too many things open in your Windows taskbar at the same time. This is a slick little program that is must-have for any writer.
- yWriter - For longer writing project I use yWriter. This is quite possibly one of the most powerful little writing packages I've ever seen, allowing you to easily create chapters, break them into scenes, and move pieces around as you need to adjust chronology. It also allows you to create character profiles and keep track of notes. This is another must-have for any writer who is serious about getting that novel written.
All of these programs of free and easy to use. These are the programs that I use nearly every day and thus serve as the core of my tools for writing and maintaining my website.
Part 2 of Portable Applications will cover another group of portable apps that get used less frequently but in some ways are just as important as my daily essentials.
Note: When leaving comments for this series, you may receive a 302 error and not immediately see your comment. Rest assured that your comment has been logged and received. Simply refresh the page, and you'll see it. This is a bug with the series plugin I'm currently using and will hopefully be ironed out soon. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: geekware
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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. The writing bug has struck me again (apparently what I said in the previous post about not wanting to writing lasted all of about 20 minutes). I'm finally working on completing my flash fiction pieces for the Voices in the Night project. Over the past two days, I've completed two more of my stories, leaving me with just two more get done. I'm shooting to have them finished up by this weekend, so I can then focus on getting everything pulled together, edited, and revised to think about getting it headed toward printing.
Personally, it's just nice to be in a frame of mind to write again. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until this past week, and now that I'm back into it I almost can't remember why I put it away for the winter. 1 Once I get these stories done, though, then it's back to the novel I'm writing for my wife (which may or may not ever see the light of an actual publisher's desk) and the Gunslinger story arc I'm writing for my Halo clan. Beyond that, it's short story time again for magazine submission and - hey, why not? - maybe even beginning work on a novel. We'll just have to wait and see how things go. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: writing & authoring
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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. I really don't feel like writing much today - it's just one of those kinds of days. So, instead I've been monitoring my progress in Ogame - a resources management game that puts you in command of interplanetary fleets as they fight for dominance in the universe. You start out planet-locked with a starting complement of resources to begin building metal mines, solar plants, and a lot more. The idea is to collect resources, build an organization on your Homeworld, build a fleet, and set out in the galaxy to populate other planets, destroy other fleets, mine debris fields, form alliances, and more.
I swore I'd never play this game, but here I am anyway. And it really doesn't require that much of my attention. I can start putting buildings up and walk away while the processes complete. Some processes - which I haven't gotten to yet - take several hours to accomplish. I've also been fortunate to join up with my Halo clan in an alliance in the Ogame universe, two members of which sent me shipments overnight last night (one took a real-time seven hours to arrive, the other six) to help me get on my feet and get buildings put up. I still haven't built and ships or satellites - those are coming just as soon as I can get enough deuterium collected to fuel everything.
It's a pretty interesting game, and I know that once I get my fleets into the sky I'm going to have to start keeping an eye out for raiders. We'll just see how things go. This is kind of fun at the moment.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
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