h.i.e.p. karma

Mood: Solemn

Michael Crichton passed away several days ago from cancer. It's a sad loss. Interestingly enough he played a tiny part in my life.

Many years ago while I was in college I made a small little Macintosh shareware game called "Concentroids from Planet X". Yes, a pretty lame name. It was basically a "memory" game, with customizable tile dimensions. I asked for $5 donations. I think I ended up getting around $300 total from it (not bad if you think about it).

One day I received a large somewhat-anonymous yellow package. I opened it up, and it was this book:



"Cool", I thought. Then I opened up the book and I saw this:



In Michael Crichton's handwriting, he wrote:

To Hiep Dam -
With best wishes from an admirer of "Concentroids"!

I thought that was extremely cool. And I still do. Way better than any kind of monetary compensation. Thank you, Michael. That book is something I will always cherish... Rest in peace.

Mood: Highly amused.

Mood: Lawlz.

I stumbled across this site via a paid text advertisement on my gmail page - Obey The Pure Breed!. In particular, their Chairman Meow stuff is quite clever and just hilariously awesome! I definitely have to get some of this stuff, once my wallet recovers from this past weekend's trip to Vegas...

I'm a big fan of naps. Now it seems that researchers have found that naps can be GOOD for your health!

According to a study, meditation can help increase alertness - maybe I should start meditating?

Now I'm not much into Flash games, but recently I've found one that's pretty cool and quite amusing: Line Rider. Basically you draw lines. Then press play, and a small man rides a sled down the lines you just drew. The key is to keep the slopes manageable enough so your little sled guy doesn't fall off his ride.

It sounds kinda lame, but check it out. It's quite fun!

You tell me which seems more backward...

Muslim wife needs one-day marriage after drunken divorce

or this...

Sunday School Teacher Dismissed Because She's A Woman?

I say both.

The median price of a home throughout Los Angeles (county, not just city) is now over $500,000.

Who can afford a home here nowadays?!??!?

Here's a very informative and well-written article on HDTV and 1080p

Edit:
Here's another article. And in some aspects it contradicts the previously mentioned article. So yes, HD content right now is a big mess.

Some very cool pictures of Tokyo and such. These are real pics, but manipulated.

Tiny Tokyo pics
Tokyo Gotham

This country has totally gone craptastic...

Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies

Here's a little snippet:
"Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy."

Well, does aspartame cause cancer?

Probably not

This guy took 40,000 pills of ecstasy over 9 years... AND smoked marijuana.

An awesome writing on the making of SoTC (technical):

http://www.dyingduck.com/sotc/making_of_sotc.html

Freaky but sad too...