Though this is not a review for the book and tv show with the same title, it is about some of the topics portraid in both: The colonization of our planet and how our socio-economic make-up came to be as influenced by “guns, germs, and metal.” I had thought of writing about it before and have been procrastinating it for quite some time. I believe the reason behind this delay was because I wasn’t confident I’d be able to properly express my ideas in writing without making it sound boring or without proper foundation.

Have spent the last 3-4 days re-designing Wicked Reader. I completely got rid of the RSS.NET backend and wrote a brand new one from scratch. RSS.NET is a great library to get you started and may even be just what the doctor ordered depending on your project. However, I found myself tweaking it and completely taking it apart in order to get what I needed. Last Friday, frustrated of doing so many modifications and spending quite some time writing code to conform with the library, I decided enough was enough.

Here I am on my second attempt at installing World of Warcraft into my virtual Windows XP computer (through VMWare) on a Gentoo Linux. So far I have been able to bypass the first obstacle I had encountered on my first attempt and things seem to be moving along… Will post future developments later… Update: The installation borked on CD 4 of install… Back to doing some more research… WoW 2 x 1 Me.

Funny write up comparing the 3 most used web search engines to world countries: [snip] Microsoft is Germany. They did some pretty evil things a while back but you don’t remember the details, you just know that you really hate them… [snip] Yahoo is Japan. It had an economic crisis that almost destroyed it and it plays too nice with all of the other evil empires, supporting the most evil endeavors…

Forgot to post a screenie for my last changes to WickedReader: Buttons to refresh, add, and remove (this one yet to be added mainly due to lazyness from my part) feeds, and a Sage-like html rendering of all posts for a given feed or individual posts. I have done so many changes to the underlying “engine” (RSS.NET) that I’ve decided to re-write it from scratch. Have spent these last 2 days elbow deep into the new code.

Very amusing play-by-play recount of Nat Friedman's adventorous attempt to travel from his hometown of Boston to the very tip of Cape Cod by bike! The reason: Insanity could be a great part of it, but apparently he just wants to prove someone wrong. Apparently Nat has to make it back to Boston for a party later the same evening. Updated every so often with pictures, videos, and witty comments. A must!

My first attempt to install and play World of Warcraft on a virtual Windows XP pc (through VMWare) running atop Gentoo Linux has hit its first obstacle. Haven’t really done any research but it seems to me that accessing the CD-ROM at the “raw” level is the culprit. More to follow.