ModStomp – Games & Gadgets & Stuff!

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

Published by Zarch January 15th, 2008 in Gripes and Random. 0 Comments

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.

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Uniden PCW100 Driver

Published by Zarch December 25th, 2007 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

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

Published by Rudeboy December 20th, 2007 in Gripes and Software. 3 Comments

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”.

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Peter Venkman Is The Man…

Published by Rudeboy November 16th, 2007 in Game Vids and Games. 0 Comments

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

Published by Rudeboy November 15th, 2007 in Case Mods and Hacks. 1 Comment

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…

Published by Rudeboy November 15th, 2007 in Geek Fun and Random. 0 Comments

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!!!

Amazing Wii-mote Hack

Published by Rudeboy November 12th, 2007 in Hacks and Nintendo. 0 Comments

I’ve seen a few Wii-mote hacks over the last year, but this one takes the cake I think. This dude is pretty genius and his creative use of the Wii-mote makes me wonder what fun new tech we’ll see in the next 10 years. Freakin Amazing!

I’m A Sucker For Steampunk…

Published by Rudeboy October 29th, 2007 in Hacks and Random. 0 Comments

So I was just hangin’ out at work today preparing for the annual Omniture Halloween bash when this slick bit of Steampunk goodness unexpectedly arrived in my inbox courtesy of my good buddy Andy.

“What is it?” you may ask.

Well, let me tell you. It’s the most essential piece of equipment for any 19th century time traveler. Behold the Steampunk Flux Capacitor! This unique piece was apparently part of some nerds Halloween costume last year. And although he doesn’t have any pictures of the complete costume posted, you can only imagine how sweet it must have been by looking at the rest of pictures in this set.

It’s just unfortunate that I don’t posses the necessary set of skillz to create masterpieces such as this. I suppose I’ll just have to continue admiring the work of others.

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The Sad State of Smartphone Software

Published by Zarch October 17th, 2007 in Gadgets, Random and Software. 0 Comments

I was going through my blogs today and stumbled on a note from the guys at Smartphone Thoughts. I like these guys, but again, it was a plug for a piece of software they hadn’t tried, in the vein of “looks kinda neat – anyone try it?”. This brought me over to the best-seller list on their site, where the current top dog is a clock program. Yeah, a freaking clock program.

<rant>
So what’s going on here? We’ve got a reasonably powerful device with web connectivity, and a clock is the best we can come up? Surely the other top sellers will be better. Let’s see; we’ve got a mediocre home screen customizer with really tiny Windows 95-style graphics. There’s CorePlayer, which is decent, but it used to be free (back when it was still TCPMP). There’s a tweaking app which makes tweaks to the registry for you and may have some other useful features. Next is a notes management app, and then ANOTHER STUPID CLOCK.

I can’t put money down for this stuff, especially when I see some very nice free apps on the market. Google Maps is very well executed. Windows Live Search is very functional and simple to use. Yahoo! Go is a pretty good piece of software, too; a little slow, but it’s a beta still. These are all free.

Where are the professional, useful applications? Where are the real developers hiding?

What about all the wonderful Web 2.0 (forgive me) web apps available? I’m talking about Google Docs, Mint.com, and similar. Where are useful apps like those in a portable format? So far the only strides have been online versions of Gmail and Google Reader ( and a few others). Where is the creativity? Where’s a blog tool that supports WordPress? Where’s an IM tool that works? Where’s a real replacement for Microsoft Reader (MobiPocket really sucks)? Nah, we don’t need that; we need a ringtone manager or seven different weather apps.
</rant>

Here’s my point, in case I haven’t hammered it in enough. Before developing another alarm clock or home screen plugin, step back and see what would REALLY be cool. Until then, I suppose we could always take our agendas to the eXtreme.

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Zarch’s Gear: Garmin nüvi® 360 GPS

Published by Zarch October 13th, 2007 in Gadget Reviews, Gadgets and Reviews. 0 Comments

I know the question you’re all asking. “Zarch, you live 1.3 miles from your job. You live in Utah, where all the streets are laid out as a numbered grid. You have two other means of GPS navigation. WTH?” To that, I answer, I am a gadget admirer, and I constantly seek the gadget that performs its function perfectly. Enter the Nuvi 360.