Yearly Archive for 2008

Surprise TF2 Update!

Bless those handsome devils at Valve!  Looks like the Demoman is nerfed a little, and spies (I hate them so much!) and engies get a little boost.  Here are the official changes (I’ve bolded the ones I found interesting):

  • The Engineer’s teleporters can now be upgraded to level three. It will recharge faster the higher level it is
  • The Engineer’s dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded
  • Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground or from health cabinets
  • Some changes to the second part of the first stage of Goldrush to give the attackers more of an advantage
  • Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper’s machine gun, heavy’s minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman’s stickybombs
  • The icon on the HUD for a person calling for Medic will now give more information to the medic (if the target is low on health, on fire, etc.)
  • Added an achievement tracker that will allow people to choose specific achievements that they are trying to get
  • There is now a custom icon for death messages when the player was killed from a critical hit
  • Added a new particle effect for when a player enters the water
  • Added smoke to the feet of a rocket jumping soldier
  • Players will now have some particles swirling around them so other players can see when they are overhealed

Kudos to the guys at Valve for sneaking a nice little update in.

The Irony of the Open X Package Opener

P1010519 I was shopping on ThinkGeek the other day, and had some points to have this thrown in with my order.  Either that, or it was cheap enough that I thought I’d throw it in the cart.  Me no remember so good none. 

Anyhoo, everyone hates those crazy impossible packages, right?  Here’s where the IRONY attacks.

The device designed to save us from this terrible packaging comes in exactly the packaging it decries.  Looks like I’ll be using my poor teeth once more, like the lady seen here.

I See You…

It’s not a great picture, but I got a phone snap of a Google Street View car on the freeway the other day.  Nothing special, just thought I’d share.

20080418_022

Analog USB Gauges How-to

A clever blogger for diylife.com has posted a really nice how-to for adding analog gauges to your PC, including the needed USB hardware and some great advice for finding old gauges to work with.  If that’s something of interest to you, check out the full post for all the details.

Grammar for Bloggers: Possessive or Plural?

Today’s article comes from Autoblog.  Here’s the line that prompted a post:

The economy appears to be swooning, and before we land softly (or crash hard), company’s have begun to circle their wagons and reduce unnecessary spending.

Leaving aside the questionable sentence construction, let’s address the apostrophe problem in the word "company’s".  The correct plural of "company" is "companies".  You can, if you want, use an apostrophe to indicate plurals of letters or numbers: mind your p’s and q’s, x’s and o’s, crazy 8′s, and so forth.  That’s not a hard and fast rule, however; there’s some disagreement among the Masters of Grammar (such as they are). 

Grammar for Bloggers: "Line Up" vs. "Lineup"

Welcome to a snarky new series.  A beautiful thing about the advent of blogging is the availability of so many sources for getting news and information.  The trouble is, many of our friends in the blogosphere have some difficulty with the written language.  This can be a barrier to adoption for the snobbier sections of the community, so I’m here to help.  The goal is not to aggravate or annoy; I’m hoping to provide some tips that will be helpful.

Today’s example comes from Engadget: "Zealots lineup for Jobs’ keynote".  The word "lineup" is always a noun; it could define a company’s range of products, or a viewing gallery of suspects at the local precinct.  When used as a verb, the words "line" and "up" need to be separated.

The apostrophe at the end of "Jobs" is correct; you could get away with "Jobs’s" as well, but I agree with the poster here.  We’ll probably have to get into apostrophes at some point, but not today.