Out of The PIT

I recently came across these two youtube videos on how Episode 1 and Episode 2 could have been good.

Laz and HKL came over to play some Artemis yesterday. I wanted to try out the new version which included some new submarine type 3-d maneuvering. We tried to get MJO connected with us but we had some technical difficulties and he was never able to connect to my network for some reason. That was unfortunate, as we could've used the extra pair of hands. After our session, we decided to change gears and play some cards. I suggested that we play 8-5-3 since it was a great game for three people. HKL and I were a little fuzzy on the rules, but Wikipedia came to the rescue. They had the rules there, like the optional rule of looking at the kitty before discarding your card which we used, but there were a couple of rules that we had at Woburn that we implemented to try to make the game a bit more balanced. I was mostly Mahesh, LXC and I who came up with these rules after thousands of hands - yes we played this way too many times. The first new optional rule involved the first round of

Okay, it seems like there is already an LED globe in Tokyo , but it is obviously much larger than the one I was thinking of. It does do all the stuff I thought about for the personalized globes, but one more thing to add while I was thinking about these guys: It doesn't have to be just the globe it displays. We could also use it for displaying video for video conferencing, for true 3-D displays of objects. Problem of course is that a single camera would be unable to show off that type of information. You need multiple cameras at least to get a true representation of the object, but it just might be feasible.

Is there an app out there that will allow me to play my voice so that others can hear my voice as I would hear it myself?

I was at Home Sense yesterday and found that someone had left a small globe in the linen section of the store. I took a closer look and noticed that the globe was manufactured incorrectly: some of the maps got overlapped and so countries were either cut off or not even present! That was terrible, no wonder why nobody purchased it. I also took a close look to see if the globe was out of date, and it was (as most globes are). In this case, it was missing South Sudan. But this got me thinking: Why don't we have globes that are always up to date? We have the technology do we not? We already have LCD photo frames, why not have a LCD (or LED) world globe? Power requirements are not really that high, and it should be a snap to update with the latest maps. In fact, that could be your support stream. You can even sell more by including historical maps, or atlas information and even making it a touch screen so that the user can focus on a specific area to get more information. Cool.

For those of you folks interested in checking out any attractions around Ontario, there is a web site that is offering coupons that will reduce the price of your tickets by more than most general coupons. The place is called Attractions Ontario . We used it to get a 20% discount on our Ontario Science Centre tickets, and I think we'll be using it again for our Art Gallery of Ontario tickets..

It has been a pretty busy long weekend. MJNL and I took Friday off to go to a friend's wedding. Saturday was spent driving out to Brampton to pick up some pies before driving back to a clan gathering. Sunday was spent back in Brampton with MJNL's family for lunch and dinner. On Monday I went with Laz to the Ontario Science Centre to check out the Game On 2.0 exhibit. We both had high hopes, but were a little saddened to discover that for the most part it was a glorified video arcade. We were also shocked by the blatant sponsorship of just about every part of the centre. Come on, the escalator was sponsored! Last night MJNL and I had a nice anniversary dinner at Epic, which had really good food and service. We just ended up dinged with a $30 parking tab because we didn't know that parking was free at the restaurant..