2009-02-10 03:11 UTC
Bike light recommendation: BR Lights C2-K
I cycle a lot, including at night, e.g. on the way home.
The problem with cycling at night is that you can't see where you're going. Sure, you can get a $50 bike light, but frankly the moon gives more light than those silly lights. Indeed they are hardly even worthy of the name "light".
I have finally found the light to end all bike light debates.
The BR Lights C2-K.
It puts out a crazy bright ONE THOUSAND LUMENS. This is on the order of the brightness of car headlamps (they are typically around 2000 lumens as far as I can tell), and almost as bright as a mains-powered 100W incandescent.
This light costs $400 and comes with a ridiculously sturdy foam-padded carrying case and a charger. It runs for over two hours on high beam, and about 5 hours on "low" beam (still 400 lumens, brighter than any light at a comparable price!). It charges from about three-quarters full in less than an hour. The light itself is nigh on indestructible, and water-proof.
I can also vouch for the quality of service — I had an early version which wasn't quite as water-proof as the current one, and they repaired it without any complaints. I've since bought two more units and had my first unit upgraded to the new model, that's how happy I am with this light.
I cannot overstate how happy I am with this light. Every cyclist should have one. In fact, everyone who ever goes in the dark should have one. This light is the best flashlight I've ever had — mine survived Burning Man, for instance, and was great for finding my way around deep playa. It's also great for finding things under beds: where an ordinary flashlight would merely dimly light up a corner of the darkness, this light will light up every last piece of lint under the entire bed at once.
Today marks what seems like a milestone in my life that I never thought of even attempting to reach: the first time, to my knowledge, that I am actually mentioned by name in the employment contract of someone not in any way affiliated with me or my employer.
I'm not really sure what to make of that!
Sadly for me, it seems like the offloading of work from me suggested by that contract extract isn't actually going to happen. Instead, DanC is apparently going to work on tutorials, which frankly is probably a far more useful thing to work on.
Meanwhile, work on HTML5 itself continues, and the spec should be on track for Last Call in October of this year, at which point the text will be stable enough for a final thorough review by anyone who is interested in reviewing the draft.
2009-01-22 23:15 UTC
Different perspectives in the Web standards community
From the HTTP working group mailing list today:
CSRF is not a security issue for the Web.
— Roy T. Fielding
If you really care about GTAⅣ spoilers, stop reading. I keep this pretty vague, though.
GTAⅣ, in the tradition of GTA games, is very non-linear. If you can find a better way to do a mission, then that's a-ok. Prefer to land on the target building's roof with a helicopter and then infiltrate from the top rather than entering from the basement? Go ahead. Prefer to escape from the cops through a more distant exit from the subway than the default suggestion, no problem. I love this about the game. GTAⅣ even goes further than earlier incarnations by giving you specific choices sometimes, kill or don't kill, pick a side, etc.
So. In the mission "Out of Commission", I figure that instead of fighting my way through the hoards of minions, chasing the target with the bike, and so forth, I would instead sneak in through the back of the building, chase the target out of the building, sneak back out onto the road, and then fire at the target, who for some reason is waiting patiently in his boat, using a sniping rifle.
He didn't die. He barely flinched, though there was some blood. What is this? Our target, a major character in the plot, is actually an undead? Well then. Rocket launcher. That will sort him out. Rocket away, boat explodes... "You have abandoned your bike." Mission failure.
What?
The bike hadn't moved. The goal was to kill the now dismembered guy. I achieved the goal. What has the bike to do with anything? Why didn't it work?
Look, I love the GTA series, and GTAⅣ has fantastic levels of detail. But please, keep the missions non-linear. Let me solve them them the way I want to solve them, don't make me jump through hoops to satisfy your desire for a particular set of mission points.
The gameplay is ultimately far more important than the rest of the game. The missions in GTAⅣ aren't as flexible and as varied as in previous games, they almost all consist of either driving somewhere and shooting someone, or just going through a set of hoops that the mission designer came up with.
It's sad, but as detailed as GTAⅣ is, it loses on poor mission design.
Here's an idea for GTAⅤ: instead of having specific missions, have characters with motivations, and make the missions be generated based on that just like the cars and pedestrians are driven by simulation. If I shoot a major character, don't fail the mission, just continue from there. If a particular building is some gang's stronghold, then it should always be that stronghold, whether I'm in a mission or not. If I kill them all, they should stay dead, and I should find their stash. If I call the cops while in the middle of a giant shootout, the cops, if they aren't being bribed by someone, should turn up and start arresting people (including me), just like they do if a shoot-out happens outside of a mission.
If I want to play a linear game, I'll play a game like Half Life.
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Sometimes when the cats go out we leave it ajar but held to by a door stop (typically a plank of wood). We do this because otherwise the door will swing open. The easy way to open the door then is just to push on it. This is what Pillar does. Hedral on the other hand has two techniques. His first and favourite technique is to call to Pillar and get her to open it. His second technique is quite clever. He leans on the door until it is barely open enough for him to put his paw through, and then he grasps the door and pulls it shut, then lets go of the door, letting it swing open again, hitting the door stop. This pushes the door stop a tiny bit. He then repeats this, and slowly the door opens more and more until it is just enough to squeeze through.