ModStomp - Games & Gadgets & Stuff!

The Irony of the Open X Package Opener

Zarch — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:11:28 +0000

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…

Rudeboy — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:58:31 +0000

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.

Analog USB Gauges How-to

Zarch — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:05:44 +0000

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?

Zarch — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:54:37 +0000

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"

Zarch — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:49:26 +0000

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.

Uniden PCW100 Driver

Zarch — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 23:21:32 +0000

A company that limits access to driver downloads is a company that doesn’t appreciate its customers. Today, I was trying to find a simple driver for a little USB 801.11b network card to patch a hole in my network. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I finally had to go to Uniden’s website, where I was forced to register, with mailing address being a required field. Um, no. Anyway, if you’re looking for a driver for your Uniden PCW100, it’s right here. At least until they send a C & D.

Office 2007 Color Schemes / Themes

Rudeboy — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:14:39 +0000

In an effort to keep all us little monkeys up-to-date, we were all just upgraded to Office 2007 here at work and the first thing I noticed was the nasty default “toothpaste” color scheme. Don’t get me wrong… blue is one of my favorite colors, but that shade was just plain offensive. And so I proceeded to search for the “Themes” option to make a quick update. Unfortunately though, Office 2007 is different enough that even if my very existence had depended on it updating the color scheme, I wouldn’t have been able to locate where to make the change. Luckily for you though, I’ve now located this elusive option and I now share this information with you (it’s much easier than I was making it).

First, open any Office 2007 application (besides Outlook) and click on the nifty new “Office Orb” in the upper left-hand corner.

Second, at the bottom of the menu that appears, click on “-application name- Options” (where -application name- equals the app you happen to have open).

Third, on the default “Popular” tab of the new options window, select your color scheme from the drop down menu on the right. Please note that this option changes the color for all Office 07 apps so you can’t set each to a separate color scheme.

There you go. That’s it! You can choose from one of the follow schemes so hopefully you can find one that works with your windows theme. I’m just glad to be rid of “Zesty Cresty Blue”.

Peter Venkman Is The Man…

Rudeboy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:20:46 +0000

I don’t speak Dutch so I have no idea what they’re saying in the video below, but I do know that the game footage excites me. I can honestly say that the original Ghostbusters movie was one of my favorites growing up (along with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the original TMNT movie). If you understand Dutch then this video will make more sense to you, but even if you don’t, it’s pretty easy to see that this game has potential. It could just as easily be total crap, but at least it looks good at this point. You can check out the details released so far HERE.

Sorry about the stupid player and the ads. The vid loads pretty slowly, but just give it a few minutes. You’ll be glad you did.

More Steampunk Goodness

Rudeboy — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:20:16 +0000

Someday I’ll have the time (but never the creativity) to build something like this. I’m not sure what it is that draws me to these steampunk creations, but they touch a special place in my nerdy little heart. Anyway… check out the entire Gizmodo gallery here.

Those Silly Japanese…

Rudeboy — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:59:43 +0000

I admire the Japanese for many things… their technological prowess, their ability to produce most of the worlds electronics and of course, their ninjas. But sometimes they do things that we Americans just have to shake our heads at. Heaven knows I wouldn’t ever want to be trapped in a room with a single tv showing Japanese game shows.

Take, for example, the “invention” in the video below. Some enterprising individual in Japans department of transportation was able to take something that seems to be a mundane safety apparatus and turn it into something amazing. Although I can’t say that I’d want to drive on this road any more than once. I’m not a real fan of headaches.

As you can hear, they’ve modified a road with musical “safety grooves”. Here in the US we use these grooves to notify sleep deprived travelers that they should probably turn the music up a bit more, but in Japan they’d rather just use the grooves and cut out the radio altogether.

AWESOME-A-POWA!!!