“Forward...”

I am still working on the game I mentioned last Early Afternoon Local Time Before Leap Day. The game (to quote another part of the FAQ I wrote so far)...

is an arcade-style, vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up implemented in SVG 1.1, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, and ECMAScript 5 (a standardized version of JavaScript). It requires a browser (or some other agent) with support of those languages, as well as DOM Level 2 Core, HTML, and Events, to run. A pointing device (mouse, trackball, touchpad, etc.) is almost certainly needed to play, and a keyboard might be as well. It plays music and other sounds with XHTML objects, if supported by the agent, but sound is not necessary to play."

(What is perhaps my longest Blogger post ever follows. In short, the game is nowhere near complete or ready, and I haven't released any source or playable part of it.)

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Program updates! ... except not.

I've had Apple Software Update for a while to get updates to the Safari browser. I saw it pop up not too long ago:

I have neither an iPhone nor any earlier version of the Utility, nor do I have QuickTime.

There has been earlier controversy about how new programs are placed in the updater. I think the separate "New software" list was the right thing to do (they have largely stuck to it in my experience), and I can't imagine they can accomplish monopolist goals with an "iPhone Configuration Utility", but vigilance is key to keeping programs from becoming disingenuous. (For those curious, Windows Vista doesn't list e.g. Windows Live Essentials separately in its Windows Update either, and I've set to "Ignore" the two Apple updates.)

Nvidia drivers.

I am not a fan of the Nvidia display driver installer's old-ish look: it covers up the screen with a faux-maximized window and prints the software's name in big bold-italic Times New Roman. It always installs quickly, though, and much more so when I upgraded my card's driver from version 185.85—to my pleasant surprise (and as Microsoft has promised Vista would allow for years), installing 186.18 didn't restart the rig, as a few others have noticed.

Well, sort of. It does restart Windows Explorer, at least, and that nukes taskbar icons of programs that don't know better. A simple logoff and logon (relogon?) fixes that in a flash, and lets me finally enjoy Vista's "no-reboot" boast.

Dear eB_y users...

Stop putting your _x digital zoom digital cameras in the _x optical zoom categories. It pisses me off.

Sincerely,

gk

P.S. Please, eB_y, make your URLs decent. You know, readable, like those new "MyWorld" sites. Not like the search pages. Change those URLs between now and quickly.

P.P.S. The blanking is mine, not by Blogger or Google. If they did something like that, why I'd...I'd...make a ytmnd about it or something. No free lunch et cetera.

Winds of change.

Neave plans to redohas re-done his website, but I can already see hints of change in his Flash Earth. Gone are some of the soft fonts of old, replaced with a more Courier-ish title on the welcoming dialog, and a slightly different logo and favicon.