About damn time! Looks like they already have a good bit of work done on it too.
Pretty pictures and videos - www.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/index.xml . The game play trailer shows just how polished the game already is. Impressive how secret blizzard has been about it while already having this much production finished.
So stay a while and listen
Patrick and I got some serious sculpting done for Muriel's birthday presents.
I made the pipe smoking lizard and Patrick crafted the Hippopotamus with down syndrome.
Her Birthday isn't til tomorrow so don't tell.
After much incubation, bug-fixes, theme tweaks, and other neat things that I don't even know about, Firefox reached it's third iteration yesterday, June 17. I must say, it was sad to let my Minefield (Mozilla's name for pre-release nightly builds) go, but it'll be nice to use a finalized browser for the first time in months. Some fairly significant changes under the hood should hoist this browser as top dog for the foreseeable future.
Maida's favorite new features (aka the only new features Maida has noticed, uses, or understands):
1) It's prettier.
The Vista theme looks way nicer than the default ugly-as-shit Firefox 2 and 1 themes. It's more integrated into Vista's native look, and frankly, it's just shinier. No word on whether Mac, Linux, and XP users are pleased, but I have a feeling they prefer this to earlier native appearances.
2) It just runs faster.
Firefox clearly loads web pages with greater speed, beating previous firefox versions and Internet Explorer 7 in just about everything. I'm not sure if it beats Safari 3 in Javascript, however.
3) It uses way less RAM.
Maybe I should lump this guy into point #2, but then I'd have a smaller list.
4) Add-ons Manager way better.
Like way better. I can check which ones I'm using, disable/enable them, and find new ones within a much more streamlined interface. Maida cheers silently.
5) A Password Manager that actually works the way it should!
No more saving of wrong passwords! Hurray!
Today was a good day. This morning, around 9 o'clock, my dad and I set out for a river adventure. We had decided the night before that it might be fun to try a long ride in the kayaks (weather permitting). The forecast looked good so we packed lunches and set off to paddle around Grindstone island. This was to be an adventure in three legs.
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Leg 1 was fairly uneventful and fell between the hours of 9 and 10. We started off from the house and paddled straight across the channel to Picton island. Hugging the eastern shore, we made our way North and completed the first leg of our trip by stopping at Canoe Point for a banana. Hurray for potassium.
The second leg proved equally as calm as the first. We came around the North-East point of Grindstone and made our way West through crystal clear water. We'd started to develop a steady rhythm in our strokes that made miles pass without notice. We ended the second leg by beaching the kayaks at Potter's Beach to enjoy our sandwiches in the sand.
I wish I could say the the rest of the trip was just as pleasant and peaceful but I'd be lying through my teeth. After we left the beach, the wind had decided to ride in from the West. To clarify, the westernmost edge of the St. Lawrence is bordered by Lake Ontario which is very large and provides many miles of open water for wind to build up speed. We did not anticipated the difficulty of our next challenge.
The last leg was one hell of a paddle. We turned the South-West corner and met rolling white caps in the channel. Since we weren't going exactly with or against the waves, the boats kept turning off course. The two boats have a skeg and rudder but we were afraid to deploy them should the waves grab hold of either and tip us over. We put the meat to the paddle (as they say) as we navigated our way down river to Bluff island. We got to Bluff well after noon and the midday boat traffic was in full swing. Now, in addition to maneuvering the waves, we were constantly reminded of the speedboats, cruisers, and barges flying past our bows. Upon reaching Bluff, we rested for a moment, turned the corner, and started the last section home.
Minutes after 3 o'clock we reached the dock for a total time of just over 6 hours. The round-trip distance was estimated at approximately 14 miles. We cracked open a couple beers at the water and rested for a few moments before heading back up to the house. The next feat of strength (and arguably the toughest) was entertaining extended family for a father's day dinner.
Today was a good day.
Been planning my garden a while. Landscaping is finally over so I started getting my plants this weekend. Didn't actually put anything in the ground today because of the rain.
Anyway, Ma' wanted a nice annual flower garden in this strangely barren spot in the back yard. So yippee I get to plan and plant.
Here's the before pic -
And I've picked out the flowers for the 1st row so far. Here's an idea of what they'll look like.
From center out - Melapodiums,(sore spot for the sprinkler), Zinnias, Vincas. I plan on having it kind of layered so each rowish/clumpish thing will be taller than the one in front of it. Friends come in all sizes. For my awesome garden, we had the landscapers plant the Butterfly Japanese Maple. Before-
This is what I have so far-
Bougainvillea's and some Fernleaf Hedge Bamboo. One old school azalea budding in the corner too. With some luck from mother nature I can get this all planted tomorrow and spend the rest of my week ruminating about what to plant next. Spaghetti
Some of you guys know Molly and I went to Tennessee a little while ago but I never posted any pictures. If you're the depraved type who likes to live vicariously through other people's enjoyment you might take a look (Flickr).
I would display them on this site using my custom image gallery code but Flickr is just so handy. The free photo sharing service doesn't allow porn (or does it?) but it is very intuitive and works well enough. Plus, I wouldn't want everyone feeling left out since I haven't implemented an easy way for people-who-didn't-build-the-site to do it.
As a reminder to anyone who is interested or simply forgot, I'm coming back to Tallahassee from June 23rd to the 30th.