Recently I had a teeny tiny taste of faux-fame in one of the most low-key ways possible. Still, I'm oddly proud.
I like to play the online version of Magic, the collectible card game. Since my brother Tim and I discovered the cardboard version of the game years ago, it has grown into a big business for the publisher -- pro tournaments, global sales, and a website with thousands of readers.
One of the columnists on the Magic website plays Magic Online to gather material for his columns. One night a few weeks ago, he happened to drop into a pick-up game with me. The next week, I found that I made it into his column.
You'll find me just above the half-way point, in Game 3. My online handle is MadDocPants (it's a long story, but not a very interesting one). I won the game we played -- quite convincingly as I recall. It was mostly due to luck of the draw, but at least my luck came through at the right moment.
It just goes to show that if you work half-heartedly at a somewhat pointless fringe hobby, you might just end up mentioned in an obscure online column that doesn't even use your real name. Kids - stay in school!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Great free stuff, part 1
One of the things I find the coolest right now is all the free software and services I get can on the Web. Some of the tools I find most useful don't cost anything. Here are some of my favorites:
Picasa is the great photo organizing program that everybody is using. Now that it has been updated with Picasa Web Albums, it's ridiculously easy to share photos with everyone. And it's free.
Google also makes available the excellent Google Desktop. I'm not a fan of having weather reports, sports, and stocks on the desktop, so I disable that stuff. Instead, I use the desktop search feature on my computer at work. I can find any one of the zillions of documents, emails, articles, presentations, etc. that are scattered around in there. I constantly amaze my coworkers even though they know how I do it.
Video conferencing and chat has also become free and easy. Google Talk is ridiculously cool, the talk is higher quality than my phone, and when you add the free Festoon plug-in you can do video conferencing for free (saving me the monthly conferencing fees!) I'm experimenting with SightSpeed, which only offers one-to-one video conferencing but has excellent video quality and very low lag time between sound and picture. Did I mention it's all free?
Serif software offers older versions of their products as free downloads in hopes that you will love them and want the new ones. I use the free version of Serif PagePlus SE for all my desktop publishing needs, and it works like a charm.
Screen capture is something I do a lot of at work. I use ScreenPrint Gold which allows me to take screenshots of any part of the screen and save them in a wide variety of formats. Again, the trial version is free. (This one I plan to buy.)
Wikipedia for quick information, Google Scholar for literature searches, Dictionary.Com for spelling and pronunciation reference. Crazy. And after you get done with all that work, you can zip over to 4games.com to wind down with a little gaming foolishness.
Got a good freebie? Let me know about it!
Picasa is the great photo organizing program that everybody is using. Now that it has been updated with Picasa Web Albums, it's ridiculously easy to share photos with everyone. And it's free.
Google also makes available the excellent Google Desktop. I'm not a fan of having weather reports, sports, and stocks on the desktop, so I disable that stuff. Instead, I use the desktop search feature on my computer at work. I can find any one of the zillions of documents, emails, articles, presentations, etc. that are scattered around in there. I constantly amaze my coworkers even though they know how I do it.
Video conferencing and chat has also become free and easy. Google Talk is ridiculously cool, the talk is higher quality than my phone, and when you add the free Festoon plug-in you can do video conferencing for free (saving me the monthly conferencing fees!) I'm experimenting with SightSpeed, which only offers one-to-one video conferencing but has excellent video quality and very low lag time between sound and picture. Did I mention it's all free?
Serif software offers older versions of their products as free downloads in hopes that you will love them and want the new ones. I use the free version of Serif PagePlus SE for all my desktop publishing needs, and it works like a charm.
Screen capture is something I do a lot of at work. I use ScreenPrint Gold which allows me to take screenshots of any part of the screen and save them in a wide variety of formats. Again, the trial version is free. (This one I plan to buy.)
Wikipedia for quick information, Google Scholar for literature searches, Dictionary.Com for spelling and pronunciation reference. Crazy. And after you get done with all that work, you can zip over to 4games.com to wind down with a little gaming foolishness.
Got a good freebie? Let me know about it!
Monday, August 14, 2006
Photoshop goofing
I'm making yet another attempt to increase my Photoshop skills. I'm still not any good, but at least my feeble skills work to amuse my son.
Return of the Blog
Today (hopefully) marks the return of fairly regular updates to the Team Mast blog. The latest news regarding the boys: Samuel has started kindergarten, and Benjamin has started to talk. Samuel is having a great time. The hours are pretty long, but he has been doing well. He is in the same class as his buddy Zach from across the street. We took him to school and got him settled into his classroom on the first day of school. Here are some pictures from the big day.
Benjamin's talking is a little harder to post, especially since I didn't think to record him while he was still awake. New words pour out of him every day, albeit with his own special brand of pronunciation. Tonight while reading an I Spy book we got "fork". No way to predict.
Benjamin's talking is a little harder to post, especially since I didn't think to record him while he was still awake. New words pour out of him every day, albeit with his own special brand of pronunciation. Tonight while reading an I Spy book we got "fork". No way to predict.
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