I feel like I may have covered bits of this here and there, but I couldn’t find it after a cursory check through my blog.  Fanaticism is fanaticism, whether it’s religious or technological it follows the same path.  Witness anyone who has just become an evangelical Christian (and it probably extends to other religions) as they return to life after their conversion.  For the first chunk of time after doing so they will likely do some or all of the following:  get a new wardrobe, get rid of all CDs/MP3s that aren’t by Christian bands, preach the Gospel to anyone within earshot, read the Bible daily, pray in public spaces (sometimes boisterously as possible), go to church every day, and other things.  With time they may soften in some of these aspects.  They may realize that, for example, it’s probably OK to listen to most of U2 and many other bands that don’t have profanity or sexually explicit lyrics.  But the biggest change anyone outside of their family/best friends will notice is that they realize it’s probably not a good idea to go around telling everyone that their worldview is wrong.  It turns out to be better for everyone if the member of the proselytizing religion waits for others to ask their opinion.  At that time, the person asking is receptive to hearing about this new religion.  (Unlike when they’re ambushed and on the defensive)

I forgot the September calendar!  (Whoops!)  Here’s the October calendar.  Click on the image for your monitor’s resolution and then set it as your desktop.

[caption id=“attachment_3659” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Oct 2010 Desktop for Square Monitors”] [/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_3660” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Oct 2010 Desktop for Widescreen Monitors”] [/caption]

?At first I ridiculed achievements/trophies.  The idea that grown men and women (and, heck anyone over 12 years old) would care about getting these achievements enough to continue playing through their games until they earned them all seemed ludicrous.  Then, I acknowledged it was a fun way to compete with friends in games that are otherwise single player experiences.  In time I came to understand the idea behind achievements, both for compulsive people and regular folks.  From my non-scientific observations, it appears that people who play video games tend to be more likely to be compulsive people.  The video game companies figured this out and then realized that if they created trophies for all kinds of situations in a game, that most people would keep playing until they got all of them.  Perhaps this would keep them from trading in a game long enough that it would kill the market for used games.

[caption id=“attachment_3621” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civ 5 tells me I need to set some city production”] [/caption]

Interestingly, the game appears not to pop up and tell you to choose city production, you have to notice that in the bottom right, same for science and so on…..At least it doesn’t let you skip a turn before you worry about that.  So I actually like it better.  It was far too easy to say you’d deal with something later and then forget.  And all the messages queue up there for you to read.  I used ALWAYS lose track of those in civ 4.  Especially since they used to appear when I was busy on something else and disappear before I could act on them.  And here’s what it looks like when you decide to what to build.

[caption id=“attachment_3606” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civilization 5 choosing the game to play”] [/caption]

The opening movie is AWESOME.  Most of the visuals were from the trailers, but the frame story was great.  Best intro thus far.  I decided not to play the tutorial first since it appeared to be for those new to the Civ franchise.  I chose Wu Zetian of China since I’ve been playing the Chinese almost my entire time with Civ IV.  She has the “Art of War” which makes Great Generals spawn more often.  Also the Cho-Ku-Nu unit (like Civ 4) and Paper Maker.  I did a small continents map.  And I made myself Settler, marked “for learning the game” so I figure it’ll be tutorial enough.  And a standard game pace.  I REALLY like the new menu system.  It’s very well done.  Sounds like Leonard Nimoy is still the narrator.  I love how it describes my ruler and China in history.  Pretty awesome.  I let the wonderful narration read out before I “begin my journey”.  I take a while to look for the screenshots and it comes up with hints.  Pretty awesome.  The Chinese music is great.  Here are some screenshots.  Another post later.  Right now I want to play and the game gets annoying (freezes cpu) if I alt-tab out of it to get the screenshots.

By order of the Governor of Maryland, have a happy Sid Meier’s Civilization V Day!

This is the first time in nearly 10 years that I’m moving to a new version of WIndows.  I pop the CD in and boot up.  I see a text screen as Windows “loads files”.

Nothing here different from a Linux distro.  Then the Windows logo pops up.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Everything but the RAM”] [/caption]

14 Sept Sometime in my junior or senior year of college I came across a book about building my own computer and resolved to do it.  My tribulations with my Dell computer were enough to convince me that building computers with generic parts was the way to go.  Later experience with my Emachine and the inability to tack on a DVD-writer (because they had blocked the slot with a metal mesh) confirmed this was the case.  Just under five years ago I was finally able to do this and built my [first computer](/2006/01/03/new-computer-built/ /2006/01/07/building-the-computer/).   I can’t believe it took me four hours to put that first one together.  Nowadays, if things go well, it takes about an hour.  In the time since then I’ve built 8 other computers.  Of course, those weren’t all for me.  I also built Dan and Dave’s newest computers, my father-in-law’s computer, his sister’s computer, and a bunch of others.

I’ve been slacking a bit with these, so here are two photojojo entries.  The first one is from 25 Aug to 8 Sept.  Apparently only my 365 was interesting at the time:

[caption id=“attachment_3556” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Barnes and Noble Nook and the a case for the Nook”] [/caption]

As you may remember, a few months ago I decided to rethink the issue of ebooks. I was going back and forth about buying the Barnes and Noble Nook just before my recent flight to Florida. I had been looking forward to the flight as a chance to read through some of Cory Doctorow’s fiction. In the end, I decided I didn’t want to spend the money on the device and read it on my laptop. This was less than ideal. The laptop only had about 20 minutes of charge on the battery and so I had to split up reading the book between the outbound and inbound trips. Sometime in the near future Danielle and I are going to be taking a much longer flight, so I caved and decided to buy the nook.