EA to release games on Valve’s Steam completely free of DRM. - Steam is increasingly impressive. shocked msft hasn’t purchased.

OK it was all cute and everything the first day and we got some nice pictures. But now I’ve had enough. A frozen pipe. A tree that failed under the weight of all the snow. An epic driving trip to the airport last night. Time to move on.

Oh and huge thanks to all those who didn’t take snow days and kept on keeping the world running. Our paper arrived every day. The mailman was always here. Our lights, heat, water, phone, TV, internet service all worked like champs. The roads were plowed. UPS showed up. Grocery always open. Starbucks usually open. And many many more – hats off to everyone.

“What Was Lost”:amazon by Catherine O’Flynn. One part Harriet the Spy, one part ghost story, one part 30-something angst. Kept my attention. The child character is appealing.

Eleven Warriors » Know the Enemy: Texas Newspapers & Blogs

As much as I like these LED bulbs – New LED Light Bulbs Can Replace 100W Incandescents » MetaEfficient Reviews. – they are probably going to have to evolve a lot further in physical design before I can adopt them – like these CFL bulbs that look like incandescents – the incandescent shape is going to stay with us forever, just too many fixtures and designs have evolved around it.

• “Vacuum Diagrams”:amazon by Stephen Baxter. A pastiche of short stories, many in classic pulp style, strung together with some connective narrative to make into a somewhat interesting whole.  Diverting but ultimately kind of hollow, the main character is pretty thin.
• “Meat Market”:amazon by Bruce Feldman. Nonfiction, Bruce sits inside the Mississippi team for a year following primarily their recruiting travails under (now former) head coach Ed Orgeron. Life on the margins of bigtime college football is tough for the players and the teams, gives me new appreciation for coaches that are able to lift programs up from the doldrums.
• “Nothing To Lose”:amazon by Lee Child.  Another Reacher tale, this one is one of the weaker in the series, or maybe I am just Reachered out.  This book starts to feel like it is heading toward Stephen King territory with Apocalyptic cults which seem to have possessed whole towns.
• “The Watchman”:amazon by Robert Crais.  A Joe Pike thriller, this one is far more satisfying than the Reacher tale above.  Characters are more human, and thus resolution of plot is far more satisfying.

CrunchGear » Archive » Rogue for iPhone: nerdgasm. Installed.

Late 1982, I am killing myself chasing two degrees at CMU. In the mornings I was at the business school, classmates all wearing power suits and reading the WSJ and the Financial Times during breaks. Afternoons spent in the EE department with classic geeks.

After midnight in some lab deep in the bowels of the EE department, debugging some realtime ASM code for speech processing, and this lank-haired guy next to me asks “Hey, do you know how to kill a 12th-level necromancer?”

That was my intro to Rogue.

• Brett on Stuff » Distilleries of Scotland. A reason to hike Scotland
• WOW – stronger authentication than your bank. What does that say about the world.
• Running DC thru the house. An idea whose time has come again?
• Indie games DB. Often way better than mainstream games
• Guided Bullets. Why not.
• Thingiverse. Kind of an open source design site.
• Denhaus – awesome pet furniture
• Nitrogen-infused golf clubs. Golfers will buy anything.
• Dutch 5 Euro coin. Awesome, wish I could order. Not the first time I have been blocked from ordering a euro product, wish I could sign up for a forwarding PO box in Europe.
• Mini Magnetosphere. Maybe we all need one of these

• Tangle of Wires: Jack o’lanterns in the tree. Does look nice.
• Zoybar. Seems like it might be a nice way to build some sound fx
• Tinker Store. I kind of like the firefly kit
• Prop Documents via Makezine. Nice to spread around possibly
• Extreme foam cutting. Learning how to work with foam is job one for halloween construction
• Vintage poison labels. Very useful for mad scientist labs
• Kurt’s handiwork this year. All his stuff is awesome
• Paintings that watch you. One way to build this.
• Free sound mod software. May be too late on this one

Looking for a place.  Homeaway, VacationRentals, Vacation Rental By Owner, OnlyInLaguna, SBBeachRentals, ParadiseRetreats seem to have bunches of listings.  Lots of overlap, obviously owners crosslist anywhere they can.

* “How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read”:amazon by Pierre Bayard. A great treatise on what the act of reading is really about – how books enter your brain, how they are retained, how they enrich you, how you connect with others about what you’ve read. If you are a thoughtful reader, this is an excellent book.

* “Deal Breaker”:amazon by Harlan Coben. I am not sure what it says about me that I immediately read a formulaic series thriller after the Bayard. But Coben’s books always please. This is the first in his Myron Bolitar series and as good as all the later in the series.

“The Black Prince”:amazon by Iris Murdoch. An aging retiree plans to head to the country to restart his writing career; family and relationships intrude and events spiral out of control. It is not clear what truly happens in the story and what is a fabrication of the narrator and other characters. Quite interesting.

* “Persepolis”:amazon by Marjane Satrapi. A very quick read, graphic novel format. Excellent true tale of growing up in post-revolution Iran, presents a lot of stunningly tough situations but in a way that is readable.

* “Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery”:amazon by Patrick McManus. Great yarn about a smalltown sheriff and murder. Great characters throughout, I would happily read more.