mgroves

I just read a hands-on review of the Nintendo Revolution. The article implies that the reviewer was only playing tech demos–it was really a review of the new controller. The author and I share a similar complaint about standard console controllers when it comes to FPS games:

When it comes to console shooters, I’m terrible. I can finish them, but I’m nowhere near as competent as I am with my mouse/keyboard setup for the PC.

I’m not saying I’d be a whole lot better at Halo 2 on PC than on the X-Box, but I think standard console controls hinder FPS games more than they help. That’s why it was encouraging to hear this:

“I’ve never been able to control a first-person shooter, but as soon as I used the Revolution controller, I found it very easy to control the game. So, I think that’s a genre that’s particularly well suited for the controller.”

That is the rumor of the day. It makes sense to me. There’s been rumors about Google releasing their own browser for a while now, and Opera and Google certainly share similar hippie ideals about their companies and products. As a faithful Opera user, I would not be upset by this at all. It would probably increase Opera’s desktop market share (can you still call it ‘market share’ even though they no longer charge for it?)

The rumor doesn’t seem very likely though. I still believe that if Google were to release their own browser, they would probably release some flavor of Mozilla/Firefox.

Since I have nothing better to do, I thought I might occupy my copious amounts of idle time by writing some code for my blog that tracks visitor activity.

Here’s an idea of what I did, mostly based on this article.

First, I created a MySQL table to track each time one of my pages was loaded. I decided that I wanted to know the visitors IP address, page they are looking at, what page referred them (if any), when they loaded the page, and what browser they used. On to the code:

 	$track_ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
 	$track_page = "http://" . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
 	if(!empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'])) {
 		$track_page .= "?" . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
 	}
 	$track_referrer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
 	$track_useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
 

Pretty self explantory. We can even pull the query string (if any) for the page the visitor is viewing. For my site, this is very important, since I use the same page with different querystrings to pull up articles. All that remains now is to insert this date into our MySQL table:

 	$strSQL = "INSERT INTO whatever_table
                    (IP_Add, PageURL, Refer, theTime, Browser) VALUES ("
 				 . PrepSQL($track_ipaddress) . ", "
 				 . PrepSQL($track_page) . ", "
 				 . PrepSQL($track_referrer) . ", "
 				 . PrepSQL(date("Y-m-d H:i:s")) . ", "
 				 . PrepSQL($track_useragent) . ") ";
 	if(!mysql_query($strSQL)) {
 		echo(mysql_error());
 	}
 

Where “PrepSQL” is a function to sanitize a string and prevent SQL injection (though it be far fetched in this case, it never hurts). I just put this code into the header file that I use for each page and voila!

Now, what to do with this data? In part 2, I’ll show some interesting reports I generate using this data, including: Most active IPs, current page views, browser statistics, and most popular pages.

…in comic form. Telltale Comics has release what appears to be Page 1 of a new Sam & Max online comic. This is great because:

1. Sam & Max are funny
2. It means that a new Sam & Max game is definitely maybe going to happen

I’m an Ohio citizen. I was born in Ohio and I’ve lived here all my life. While no state is perfect, I think Ohio is the perfect mix between the convenience and opportunity of major urban centers with the tradition and values of rural life. There are those, however, who are ashamed and embarrassed of where they live. I would like to believe that this person’s views aren’t representative of my state, and I would like to believe that this person’s response is.

No state is perfect, and I’m not going to claim that Ohio doesn’t have its share of problems. But to claim that it’s the worst state in the union, where corruption, racism, and ignorance run rampant like some sort of isolated medieval serfdom is ludicrous. I think every state in the union has its unique strengths and weaknesses.

I attended a school band/chorus recital for my sister tonight at my alma mader of Fairfield Union. She is in both chorus and band. Here are some photos and a video of the band.

If you took my suggestion and installed Ubuntu on one of your PC’s, here are some essential tips to get your configuration up to snuff. And don’t forget that the Ubuntu forums are mighty valuable when you’re trying to figure out how to do something in Ubuntu.

Last night, I checked with my wife, Ali, on how Ubuntu was going so far. She mainly uses it for her eBay business, but her only two complaints were that there wasn’t a calculator or paint program like on Windows. (I had initially stripped most of the programs from the application menu to reduce confusion). I fired up Synaptic Package Manager and had Calculator and GNU Paint installed in less than a minute. It’s really amazing how good Ubuntu is.

Here’s some positive news in the world of politics: tax cuts!

I suggest writing to your congressmen to thank them. Here are the voting records in case you have one of the 4 congressmen who didn’t vote for them:

• H R 4440 – The Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005
• H R 4388 – Tax Revision Act
• H R 4096 – Stealth Tax Relief Act of 2005

I’m a huge fan of Sean Casey: his attitude, work ethic, and meaningful community involvment and charity work. That’s why I’m shocked and disappointed to see him being traded to the Pirates. I’m happy that he’ll get to play for his home town, and I know he’ll always get a huge ovation when the Pirates come to Cincinnati.

Good luck, Sean. Even if the pitcher the Reds get in return turns out to be the next Roger Clemens, Sean Casey’s heart alone makes it an unfair trade.

Gamespot did a feature on the “greatest games of all time.” These types of lists are, of course, always very objective, but they got at least one game right: Mega Man 2. My favorite game of all time, and, in my opinion, the greatest game of all time.