I treated myself to a couple of new Xbox 360 games back in March–Crackdown and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I played Crackdown for about three hours that first night, addicted to the rich environment of the game. You can pick up and move quite a lot of the in-game objects like propane cylinders, cars, dead bodies, live bodies and more.

Now that I’ve had some time to excel in the game’s three island neighborhoods, my character has some really ridiculous abilities like lifting semi-trucks over my head and throwing them 100 feet or so.

What a way to end the day…

Matt Mower: “Diffly is designed to make it easy to browse a Subversion working copy and see all the changes, across all the files. You can filter out files you don’t care about (e.g. externals) and sticky-select files for checking in. When it comes time to check in it’s easy to review the changes for the files you are working with and assemble a detailed commit message and check-in.”

Eric Zachrison, owner and creative driver behind Agrario, Patton Alley Pub and Hickok’s, let loyal patrons and regular folks taste his Spring 2007 menu last night. A reservation only affair, Eric treated us to four small courses with portions of his signature dishes. The appetizer course was garlic shrimp, spanekopita (sp) and a Moroccan chicken skewer–all good ways to get started. The salads were perfect for spring with just enough spice and flavor to wake up the taste-buds but not spoil you for the main course.

This tasting, the main course was a generous sample of three dishes–chef’s choice. Tammy and I got lucky and scored a portion of the new halibut dish. It was amazing! I am ready to move steak down on the list and this halibut at the top. It was so good that I asked for another portion–offering to pay, of course–and it was out in a flash.

The halibut will go for $26.00 and it’s well worth it. The spice combination is beyond what most semi-pro chefs could pull of and the quality of the fish far surpasses anything us mere mortals can access.

I can’t leave off desert. An orange citrus crème brulee was Tammy’s lucky draw and she loved every bite.

Stop by Agrario today in it’s original downtown location before it heads south later this year. The atmosphere and service make the drive well worth it.

EMI and Apple announced higher cost, higher quality DRM-free downloads. What I’ve seen missing in most analysis pieces I’ve read is what this does for the iPod and the AAC format.

1. It ensures that larger hard drives in iPods are need for the non-video crowd. That means upgrades in the near term, say over the next year or so.

2. It spreads adoption of the AAC format to other players, helping to push mp3 into the background and (tries) to marginalize WMA.

3. It sets up the iTunes Music Store for amateur content for sale.

Call me crazy…

Dave Winer’s [Scripting News](http://scripting.com) turns 10 years old today. The screen shot at the left is what you see today, a snapshot of the weblog on it’s birthday. Dave even took the time to refresh the links–some going to the [Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org) and others still up and working.

Dave Winer has been a web leader, pushing people and technology in a direction that sometimes only he can see. While several people were working toward or on technology for weblogs, I list Dave Winer as the father of the modern weblog. He encouraged an older generation of technology professionals to build and maintain weblogs, helping to establish the credibility of the environment. In turn, services like Blogger and MovableType and WordPress reinforced his foundation.

Thanks Dave and Happy Birthday to Scripting News!

I posted this as a comment on Dave Winer’s Scripting News comment blog hosted at WordPress.com but I’m also doing it here in case it gets deleted.

A couple of quick notes:

1. The code to build a Radio UserLand version of the kernel already has been released by Dave Winer as part of the Frontier Kernel project. At one time, while working with Scott Shuda and Scott Young, I had a working Universal Binary of “Radio”. That went a long way on the Mac side but nowhere on the PC side.

2. The kernel relies on some hard to replace/debug code to do string manipulations. I had always understood that this was one of the major roadblocks to solving problems like kernel speed, threads and more.

3. There is no other tool I know of that is shipping and mature, that offers a scripting language, a database and a consistent user interface across Mac and PC platforms. The barrier to entry is low and the “weekend geek” can get things done quickly. I miss writing UserTalk code every day for that one reason.

4. There is an intellectual property issue that which only Dave Winer and the owners of Radio UserLand, Incorporated can control. It’s my understanding that the IP of Radio and Manila are not owned by Dave Winer or the old UserLand Software so parts of this conversation might be moot.

5. Talented software programmers have tried for *years* to get people excited about writing outlines and have failed to build enough interest to reach the tipping point. Writing in outlines is like owning a Jeep–if you don’t do it, you’ll never understand. That’s why it will take an evangelist to do it. Dave can’t for a variety of reasons, especially his health. I tried to do it once and was stymied at every turn by people outside the company. I would be willing to try again–that’s how much I love the software.

Regards,

Steve Kirks

Red Sweater Blog: “Hopefully the icon makes it pretty obvious that this is an application for solving crossword puzzles. In fact, Black Ink is the successor to the most popular crossword solving application on Mac OS X: MacXword, formerly available from Advenio,LLC”

Boing Boing: “We Come In Peeps.”

Buying old records at a swap in KC

Drinking coffee reading the paper