Presentation given to the Puget Sound ISSA in September 2008.
Author Archives: Ian Gorrie
Spore
September 9, 2008 – 7:34 pm
It turns out that one of my favorite authors, Walter Jon Williams, wrote the space portion of the game Spore:
“Spore” (Electronic Arts)
At the time of my writing this, the Amazon reviews are still abysmal because of the retarded DRM they’ve put in place.
I’m sure they’ll loosen up sometime soon.
In the meantime the reviews are pretty [...]
Wii firmware upgrade and Apple Airport Extreme - unhappy together
September 9, 2008 – 12:53 am
So I hadn’t given my Wii much love lately, so I turned it on last night to try out the recent Prince of Persia port for a bit. I played for a bit and I turned it off.
Interestingly enough, the normal “off” with the Wii, is actually more like “standby” and is live on the [...]
The vacation laptop: ASUS EEE PC 901
August 31, 2008 – 3:09 pm
So I went and picked up a 0day piece of hardware. The ASUS EEE PC 901.
Since it’s so new, it’s not very well supported. Even the new chipset ethernet drivers (as of the beginning of August ‘08) are not yet in the linux kernel, so a simple install is problematic.
If I wanted to hack something [...]
Real Estate
July 28, 2008 – 4:08 am
Since I’m a general know-it-all, and like unlike most people do not have problems managing finances, people ask me about real estate issues a lot.
If they have a decent attention span and live in Seattle, I point them to the Seattle Bubble Blog. It does a great job of debunking a lot of the fluff [...]
Just what I didn’t know I needed
July 25, 2008 – 3:41 am
Because I hate going to a gym in the mornings, I decided I would give Wi Fit a try so that I can supplement my normal training schedule with some extra effective morning mild exercise. I’ve been checking intermittently to see if Amazon had them, because I really don’t care enough to go and hunt [...]
Twitter, Defcon, Geotaging
July 23, 2008 – 5:25 pm
So I caved and succumbed to the lameness of Twitter mostly for the purposes of attending and coordinating things at large events. It’ll be hard to flow of people and places at events like Defcon without it.
Mostly I view twitter as a noise application. It posts “microblogging,” a term which people with near zero attention [...]
Downtown for Linux
July 23, 2008 – 3:05 pm
I had the pleasure of attending one of the GSLUG [Greater Seattle Linux Users Group] on the 12th.
I was really surprised at the quality of the event. Allow me to explain.
I’m used to these type of occasions being hosted in a filthy classroom or basement of a university or community college and attended by unwashed [...]
The DNS Drama
July 23, 2008 – 1:03 am
Dan’s Seattle Toorcon 0day keeps going and going and going and going.
If you’re looking for details, the details that were leaked, confirmed, retracted, and denied, here’s a description and a mirror.
So if you run your own DNS, upgrade already as you should have some time ago when you were first told to do so.
Perhaps I [...]
Playstation update: Your ps3 is now a brick
July 7, 2008 – 2:23 am
I had a gamer friend ask me why I didn’t have any trophies yet for Super Stardust HD, one of my favorite PS3 games.
I had no idea what she was talking about, so naturally I searched for “stardust trophies” and found that the Playstation network has finally added achievements, much like the xbox people have [...]
