Chris has posted some really nice emoticon ideas for Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Take a look and see which ones you like. These are my favorites.
| Icon | Text | Description |
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<^> | Give someone the finger |
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:-# | Cut throat smiley |
F1 2002 is a lot more fun than F1 2001. The driving is a lot more responsive and overall it's a lot more enjoyable. The interface has been cleaned up, there are new challenges, and a few new in-game features. I'm especially enjoying the SlipStream feature.
I just noticed that this site is a frameset. The content of the page just changed to the eBay homepage. I looked at the source and noticed that the original page and this new page were both framesets. I'm wondering if this site is an exploit of a frameset bug or something similar?
Does eBay know that this site is still active? I couldn't find an easy way to send them a heads up. I wonder, if I couldn't do it, how many other people tried and gave up. It seems crazy that it hasn't been taken down yet. I read about it on Scripting News this morning and have checked in a few times to see how long it would take before the site was removed.
The scary thing about this kind of fraud is that a lot of users don't even use the address bar. People like my parents, an even some of my siblings just look at the content of the browser. My friend Tom says that his eBay username even shows up in the form from the cookie on his machine.
I spent a little time cleaning up some of the bronze medals in Challenge Mode. The Race Craft | Failures element was not too bad. I tried to stay just under 140mph through the whole section and that seemed to work, 84% is better than nothing I guess. The Pit Stops | Barking/Empty Tank was very difficult. I cleared it with 91% by waiting to brake until the middle of flags 1 and 2. A well timed cut through the chicane, riding both brake markers on the way through. Full throttle over the hill and braking early before the pit lane entrance to maximize my acceleration out of the last turn.
“A radical rethink“, this article from The Economist calls for an old spin on the copyright mess. They propose the lowering copyright protection to a 14 year term with one extension. That's a good start but I'm in favor of 7 year term with one extention.
Which side are you on? Do you want to foster creativity, encourage innovation, and stimulate growth? Or do you want to encourage the create once, get paid forever, stop others from creating mentality? My sentiments clearly support creativity. In the digital age the creativity cycle has been accelerated, yet the entrenched and litigious copyright owners (read: non-creators) are looking to Congress to protect and extend the window of time they have to sell a previously created piece of work.
I feel it is important to make a distinction between creating a piece of work and trying to sell it. The extension of copyright protection and reduction of fair-use does so much to hurt creativity. When copyright protection is extended the focus shifts away from creation while moving closer to commerce. When this happens the incentive is to stifle the creation of new works in order to sell more of what already exists. While this may be good for copyright owners, it does little to create incentives for the creation of new works.
It's been a wacky day today. This song just about sums it up.
One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more.
Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
Comin' to bring you the Banana Split show
(CHORUS)
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la
Four banana, three banana, two banana, one
All bananas playin' in the bright warm sun.
Flippin' like a pancake, popping like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper an' Snork
(REPEAT CHORUS)
Two banana, four banana, one banana, three
Swingin' like a bunch on monkeys, hangin' from a tree.
Hey there, ev'rybody, won't you come along and see
How much like Banana Splits ev'ryone can be
(REPEAT CHORUS)
Makin up a mess of fun
Makin up a mess of fun
Happiness for ev'ryone
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la
One high point for the night was finally getting a handle on the Pit Stop Challenge. I've had the worst time with the pit stops due to F1 2001's inferior manual.
How to make a great pit stop:
Pit Lane Entry Speed
Look at the graph! There are two elements displayed, one is your current speed, and the other is the speed you need to be under before the graph finishes it's animation. If you've entered the pits very fast you will have to bring the car's speed down quickly, but be careful, it's also not a good idea to take off too much speed. However, I think the penalty for not getting under the pit entry speed is worse than taking too much speed off.
Pit Box Entry Speed
The next phase of the pit stop is very similar to the first. This time you are bring the car down from pit lane speed to pit entry speed. You wouldn't want to crash into your pit crew, would you? For this phase I try to wait until the animation is 1/3 to ½ complete. You want to keep your speed up, but use caution and make sure you don't enter the pit box too fast.
Turn-in
Turn, turn, turn! As soon as the pit speed animation is complete you need to turn into the pit box. This phase always seems to come in fast because your attention has been focused on decelerating the car to the pit box entry speed. Make sure you are ready to turn as soon as the previous animation is complete.
Gear-up
This phase is pretty straight forward, just make sure you know what button on the controller is the gear-up button. Make sure you press only that button and press it only once.
Accelerate Out
If you've made a clean pit entry you will see the Accelerate Now indicator. Get on the gas and you've made a great pit stop.
Lots of progress tonight, I finished Challenge Mode. Well, not finished, I really need to go back and clean up a lot of the low percentage elements. Still, it's a good feeling to clear everything with at least a bronze.
I sailed right through the Track Experience section. Bronze or better for all of the following; Sepang, Interlagos, Imola, Barcelona, A1-Ring, Montreal (yuk), Nurburgring, Magny-Cours, Silverstone, Hockenheim, Hungaroring, SPA-Francorchamps, Monza.
I also went back and cleaned up a fw of the really low percentage elements from the other 4 sections. Nothing special, just basic clean up. I've updated the Current Game Status to reflect the improvements.
Ok, that's enough for tonight. I've redone most of the challenge mode. I even got a few of the Track Experience elements out of the way. I'm actually feeling that the wheel is making the full lap elements a lot easier than I remember them being when I was using the standard controller.
The following is my current progress, all of these have been done on simulation mode.
CHALLENGE MODE STATS