brandonrobison.net

Check out this game, World of Goo. There’s a downloadable demo for the “first level”… which actually consists of about a dozen or so sub-levels. The first few are easy. But then it gets pretty challenging. This demo will probably take most people an hour or so to play through. But if you like puzzle games, especially physics-based puzzle games, then really — check it out!

My question, for those of you who have played it: Is the last sub-level beatable?

I know I’ve written a few leftist sounding posts lately and I have a lot of my friends and family  worried for me that I’m turning into a hippie, liberal commie. At least Ben (my older brother) is worried I am.

So I’ve been trying to think of a topic I could write about that would help assuage those who are worried about me. Politically and socially speaking, I think the only area where we’re on common ground has to do with economic policy. Yet, even there, I think there’s enough of a difference that I’d have people fighting against what I’m saying, even though they should agree with me on the issue!

I’ve decided I would post a few possible topics to write about and see what people think about them. Please let me know which of them sound particularly interesting. Specifically, which would you like to hear about first, second, etc? (Note: A couple days ago I posted a very short blog stating that selfishness is a virtue. That topic is off-limits for the time being, because I feel like it’s delicate enough that it will require a lot of step-by-step explanation to get my point across, and I don’t have time to write all of that… at least until the semester is over.)

• The free market would manage police departments better than the government
• The free market would manage the court system better than the government
• Roads should have no speed limits; furthermore, the free market would manage roads better than the government
• We all know FDR was the worst US president; but Lincoln comes in close second! (I could explain either of those evaluations, though I’m guessing most of my “conservative” readers will openly agree with my first statement and probably disagree with my second)
• The Sovereign Kingdom of Brandon Robison should be a feasible concept
• The only monopoly we should fear is one created by government.
• The best form of government has no branches (I don’t want to talk about that one just yet…); the second best form has one

That seems like a good start.

To my computerly-nerdy friends, especially the ones more computerly-nerdy than me. Please help me figure this out!

I got hit with some malware tonight. Malware, for those of you not in the know, is short for malicious software, eg. viruses, spyware, etc. I won’t go into how I got infected with said malware, but rest assured it was not porn-related. Anyway.

My computer almost grinded to a halt. I tried force-quitting several applications that didn’t look familiar, but to no avail. I figured I would restart and try it again once Windows rebooted. Well, that didn’t work: Windows wouldn’t reboot. It would get about halfway there and just pause indefinitely. And thus the inevitable began: a reinstallation of the Windows Vista Operation System.

Luckily, I had enough foresight to set up my file system in such a way that I would only lose about 1% of my data in the event of such a crash. All of my personal data (documents, pictures, music, etc.) are stored on a separate drive. Specifically, all of my stuff is located in D:\Users\Brandon. The default for Vista is C:\Users\Brandon. I know… not very original.

So I got Vista all reinstalled and I went into the Users folder, right-clicked on the different folders, and told it to “move” the location. I then went into the registry editor to find any other spots that this “automatic” method hadn’t affected. Once I was finished, I restarted.

When Vista rebooted and asked me to enter my password, I did so. It said “Loading” … and then a few seconds later, “Logging Off”. It wouldn’t boot into Windows. Unless I did it in Safe Mode.

I thought maybe something weird had happened by my doing the move location method mentioned two paragraphs previously. So in Safe Mode, I looked at the registry. I found dozens of new keys pointing to D:\Users… which had not been there before. Well, I mean, they had been there before I had reinstalled Windows. But now they were back again. Where had they come from? This only made me suspect the move location method even more. So I decided to format and reinstall — again.

This time I did everything manually in the registry editor. Before I started changing the Users folder location, I checked to see if there was anything pointing to D:\Users. There were no keys. I changed the couple dozen C:\Users… keys, restarted, and BOOM. Same freaking problem. Again, checking regedit in Safe Mode revealed a bunch of “old” keys.

HOW ARE THESE THINGS RESURRECTING???

The third installation is now about to finish, but it’s also almost 1:30am and I have to wake up early for work tomorrow. I’m going to play with this a little bit more and then go to sleep. But if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

UPDATE: Victory! I got it to work… and I will explain how later, in the comments. Now, I’m going to bed.

The Constitution is 221 years old today. Let’s all sing happy birthday to it.

I realized today that we in Las Vegas have a few streets which are said a specific way, and while outsiders would understand us, they might not say the street names in the same way as a person who has lived here for a while.

Most, if not all, of the streets in this city have a suffix — Ave, St, Blvd, Way, etc. When giving directions or stating the location of a landmark, no one ever says “Oh, it’s located on Rainbow Boulevard” or “You’ll turn left down Tropicana Avenue”; these suffixes are dropped.

However, there are a few streets in the city for which one Must Always affix the suffix. The three that sprang to mind today were:

Maryland Parkway, Boulder Highway, and Las Vegas Boulevard. You’ll never hear a Las Vegas native say just “Maryland” or “Boulder” or “Las Vegas” — you just won’t.

We also refer to I-215 as “the two-fifteen”… but I’ve heard other cities do this with their freeways. Sometimes we call US-95 “the ninety-five” and I-15 “the fifteen,” but I don’t think I have ever heard “I-215″ in colloquial speech. It’s always just “the two-fifteen”

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that we do that, and wondered why. Does anyone know? And are there any other streets around town with similar “rules”?

The gist: Some guys with too much time on their hands analyzed a bunch of songs and figured out which body parts are sung about / referred to the most. The results are interesting. I found out about it from Tyler Cowen’s post on Marginal Revolution, but he apparently got it from Wired. Both links are below:

Marginal Revolution

Wired

Once upon a time, when I’d have a few spare minutes, I would sit at my computer and think, “What sites do I like to visit? I’ll go visit them now to see if there’s anything new.”

…Such sites including my friend Brian’s, Marginal Revolution, Original Sound Version, and about fifteen others that I don’t read quite as religiously, but enjoy checking out every once in a while.

The only problem with checking a couple dozen sites is that it’s time consuming, and you have to sort through what’s new and what’s not. This made the site-checking-out become a chore at times, especially if I hadn’t had free time in several days. The task of looking through all the material would become daunting.

And then I learned about RSS feeds.

What is an RSS feed? you ask.

Well, without getting into too much technical jargon, an RSS feed is a small file that a program called an RSS reader can scan to let you know what new things have been posted since your last viewing of the site. In even simpler terms, by using an RSS reader, you can go through posts made on your favorite sites as easily as you go through your email. And that’s really what it comes down to.

I use Google Reader. If you have a GMail account, all you have to do is login to check your mail and click the “Reader” link/button at the top of the page. It loads up Google Reader, and from there, you can add and manage all your favorite sites. It takes about five-ten minutes to set up, and then… no more wearisome site-checking! Just go into Google Reader!

I Google “star wars” and get this. WTF?