Opera Party

It's Opera's 10 year anniversary and they're having a party. If you've been using their free version but didn't want to pay, head over to their party site today for a free registration code.

Opera Party

Source: Forums @ 4 color rebellion

Random Thoughts

• Bob Walsh isn't happy with Google. Apparently, they aren't giving the development community the support they need to make the best use of their API's. Bob smells a new Netscape.
• The 37 Signals blog links to the amazing story of how the Graphing Calculator made it into the PowerPC install.

My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up.

I had many sympathizers. Apple's engineers thought what I was doing was cool. Whenever I gave demos, my colleagues said, "I wish I'd had that when I was in school." Those working on Apple's project to change the microprocessor in its computers to the IBM PowerPC were especially supportive. They thought my software would show off the speed of their new machine. None of them was able to hire me, however, so I worked unofficially, in classic "skunkworks" fashion.

• Also from the 37 Signals blog, A List Apart, a great source for articles on all aspects of web design, have a great new look. Completely new design, but still the first place I'd look if I wanted to know how to do anything with CSS.

Normal Service Resumes

The Oriador server is back up and running as normal now. Thank you for waiting.

Server Problems

We seem to be having some server problems at the moment. The Oriador.com server is down right now. Hopefully everything will be back up and running soon.

Sorry about that.

If you want to download our trial software in the meantime, you can get it from Download.com:-

Oriador Rota on Download.com

If you're looking for information, you can email me using gavin at webhelperbrowser.com. Finally, our payment processing service is still online if you're trying to buy.

Oriador Rota sales pages

Update: Everything is back to normal.

Regular Monday Sniping

My latest article is up on CodeSnipers.com. I'm still with the mistakes for now, so head over and read Micro ISV Mistake #3.

Also of interest on CodeSnipers is John Haren's latest, The Notorious J.O.B. Posted on Friday, it really struck a chord with me, and I've been trying to figure out what to add to it ever since. I think it basically boils down to the awkward relationship between elitism and self-confidence. The web tends to multiply the problem. If we compare ourselves to the people we know or can physically see, we can probably find something we're the best at, or the most obsessive about. Using the web we can compare ourselves to the whole world, which tends to land us in categories or groups, rather than out on our own. This should be a great thing, because it means we can connect with all kinds of people who actually know what we're talking about. To 99% of the people I meet, I either write software, or sometimes even just do "something with computers". Thanks to the web, I can talk to thousands of people who actually know what I mean when I tell them exactly what I'm doing, talk about what I did that day, or try to discuss my problems.

It's at this point that elitism and self-confidence (or lack of) come along and mess up the whole thing. I don't know which comes first, and I don't know which does the most harm, but I do know that the combination of the two can do real damage inside your head.

Like John, I love this work, but I don't want to do 80 hour or 7-day weeks of coding eternally. I want to produce beautiful software without killing myself or neglecting my family. A 12+ hour coding day might seem like a good idea at the time, but rarely do you look back on the resulting code with fondness. The majority of the times I've overworked myself it's only resulted in more work later, it's usually just not possible to force it and still produce something of quality.

Also like John, I like to think I'm good at what I do, but it would be so easy to let the acheivements of others have a negative impact on me. Do I take pride in the software I've produced, or do I get all insecure because some 12 year old wrote a new compiler in his sleep, while I've been doing this for 10 years and have barely touched C++.

The answer is easy, I feel good about everything I know and everything I've acheived. It's easier said than done, but it's important to try.

Blogger For Word

I’ve created the last three posts using the new Blogger For Word add-in. It hasn’t exactly wowed me, but it has done exactly what it said it would do, so at least I have an easy option next time the web-based html-editor refuses to work.

It adds a very simple toolbar to Microsoft Word, and then you can just quickly create your posts as Word documents and upload them as drafts or live to the site. I guess it’s a little quicker working with Word vs the web interface, so if you have a Blogger account it’s probably worth a look.

Step back in time

Raymond Chen, of The Old New Thing, has been posting some insider information about the Windows 95 launch. It was 10 years ago this week... does it seem like longer, or less?

In summary

I've had a lot to say in the last few days, so I thought I'd just round up the important stuff and give a quick summary.

• We’ve extended our offer of free copies of Web Helper Browser.


• We’re trying to improve Web Helper Browser and are looking for feedback.


• Neil Main is going to take over as Product Manager for Web Helper Browser.


• Oriador Rota is now my #1 priority, and I’ll be focusing all my efforts on improving and marketing the product.

There’s a lot going on here, but it’s all very exciting. I feel very positive about the whole situation and can’t wait to see both what Neil does with Web Helper Browser, and how much my work on Oriador Rota benefits from my new focus, renewed energy, and clearer mind.

Introducing Neil

Yesterday, I outlined our development re-organization. Specifically, that my co-director, Neil Main, would be taking over as Product Manager for Web Helper Browser, freeing up my time to focus on Oriador Rota. As I signed off the post, I wrote "More on Neil tomorrow...", so, a little later than planned, here goes.

Neil and I met many years ago when he was thriving as a freelance contractor to my previous employer, developing various databases and applications. Neil's example sparked my curiosity in the independent life, and he was largely responsible for me getting started. A few years after we met, his offer to send some surplus freelance work in my direction gave me the perfect opportunity to break free from the 9-5 world and head out on my own. After surviving another couple of years, crossing paths on occasional projects, we decided to formalize our relationship by creating V4 Solutions. It wasn't all plain sailing, and it took us another couple of years to figure out that an ISV was the best type of company for us to run, but we managed to keep it together.

Neil and I are very different. Where I'm essentially a young Windows child, Neil is a grizzled Unix veteran. When I'm looking for something to do right now, Neil will be looking off into the distance for a big picture. Where I can handle written communication and email conversations, Neil is much more effective in person and over the phone. When Neil gets excited about some new idea or technology, I think I'm still young enough to learn it quickly and get something working. When Neil has 10 new product ideas before breakfast, I'm there to crush his dreams with the practicalities and point out that we have enough on our plate already.

I don't fully understand why we work well together, we rarely agree on anything, but we have managed to craft a situation in which we both have enough authority to push ahead our better ideas and a perfect devil's advocate to weed out most of the really stupid ones.

I'm sure a fair share of you would rather be reading what Neil has to say about all this, so you might be wondering where you can find his blog. This presents a great opportunity to link to a post on Guerilla Consulting, the excellent marketing blog. Neil is one of those consultants who shouldn't blog, so for now you'll have to make do with me (if you ever decide to give us a call you'll probably end up talking to Neil, and I'm sure you'll like him). Actually, reading the comments on that post brings up an interesting idea, I'm sure Neil could be an effective audio or video blogger. Maybe I'll suggest he think about producing podcasts or videos as he stamps his mark on Web Helper Browser.

Switcheroo

Following on from my recent posts about our strategy for Web Helper Browser (summary: we're giving away copies, we're looking for more feedback), we're also finally acknowledging and reacting to the fact that there isn't enough of me to do justice to both of our products at the same time.

For various reasons, I've been responsible for development on both of our products, while my fellow director Neil Main, also a developer by trade, has spent his time trying to compensate for our lack of marketing staff by chasing offline deals and sales.

The situation has worked reasonably well, but lately I've felt like I've been spread too thinly, and as a result have found it very difficult to achieve anything. My return from LA provided a great opportunity to discuss and plan our structure, future direction, and division of responsibilities. The net result is that Neil will keep his hand in our offline operations, in a scaled down form, but will start to contribute to the development by taking over as Product Manager for Web Helper Browser. I will stay focused on everything online, but will step away from Web Helper Browser and concentrate my development efforts on Oriador Rota.

I'm extremely happy about this, I'm sure it will immediately benefit all our Oriador customers, and should also (within a few months) have a positive impact on Web Helper Browser. It's taken a big load off me personally, I really couldn't see any other way that I could keep everything moving without burning out. Neil seems happier too, he's always wanted to be more involved, it was just never quite possible. I thought it would be difficult to back away from a product, but in actual fact I feel really comfortable about it. Aside from knowing it will be in safe hands, I think it's because I'm handing it over at a stage where I'm happy, I have achieved much of what I wanted to do with the software. My interest lied in the base features, and in making it feel like a real browser. Now that I can use it as my browser, automate it, manage my links, save my web pages, and keep notes, I feel like some fresh eyes will do it good.

Neil has always been a driving force behind the development of the product, so his direct involvement is sure to push it forward and lead it into new areas, I'm looking forward to trying his version. Briefly looking around the web, I can only find advice against changing development staff on a product, but this feels like a positive step and a good decision. I guess only time will tell, but what do you think?

More on Neil tomorrow...

Need a new start page?

I found Protopage.com via WorkHappy, and I like it.

It lets you create a single page of links and reminders, and you create the whole thing in little windows that you can drag around and use like an online desktop. I think the backgrounds need work, they make it seem too busy, but you can specify your own. It's a pre-release product at this stage, so it's going to be interesting to see what they do with the idea and the technology.

It's well worth looking at, even just to marvel at how far web applications have come in the last year or two. Create a new protopage linked to my blog.

So if there's no catch, why give it away?

In case you missed my previous post, we're giving away copies of one of our products, Web Helper Browser, until further notice. If you've been following my recent CodeSnipers posts, you might have guessed that I'm in an introspective mood, and one mistake I know we made with Web Helper Browser is that we didn't try hard enough to pin down exactly what it was or who it was for. We had a general concept, saving web pages, and a repository for notes, links and web fragments. We also had a few cool features, the multi searching, the automatic link following and the floating drag and drop window. What we lacked was a target user, aside from ourselves.

Internally we've been using some version of Web Helper Browser every day for at least 6 months, and I know that I miss it when I don't have access to it, so I know we're onto something. But, I also know that you need to have more than just features and concepts to make a successful, marketable product.

Giving copies away seems like a reasonable way to effectively step the product back into a beta phase. I don't know if it will work, but right now I don't see what harm it can do. We need to get more radical with the product development, find it a place or niche in the market, and connect with more potential users. It seems like it should be easier to do that if we're open about it, rather than trying to do it silently through incremental updates.

I'll be posting more on our plans for the product over the next few days.

More free copies

Following on from the success of our free software promotion back in June, we've decide to extend the offer and continue giving away copies of Web Helper Browser until further notice.

To take advantage of the offer, all you have to do is download and install the software, then email your machine ID to promo-key@webhelperbrowser.com. In response to your email you will receive an activation key which will de-activate the 90 day trial limitation. The machine ID can be found via the Enter License Key option in the Help menu.

There's no catch, we just want you to use it, and if possible, tell us what you think. There's a feedback form on the website, or you can tell us about it in the support forums, by email, or even as a comment here. To encourage feedback, your free license key will be valid for all 1.x versions of the product, so even as it improves, you won't have to pay.

Understanding Personalities

Rusty Devine, another of my fellow CodeSnipers, posted a great introduction to Myers-Briggs Personality types yesterday.

I wasn't familiar with the Myers-Briggs theories, but Rusty did a great job of introducing it and provides a good list of links for further reading. If you've always wanted to know why you can't get along with that guy from marketing, or why you're always arguing with the technology geek, this might help.

Do you know your market?

My latest post is up on CodeSnipers, the second in my series on Micro ISV mistakes.

Read: Micro ISV Mistake #2

Played Planarity?

You might have seen this one before, it's been on most of the big gaming sites, and I can't even remember where I saw it first. I've been meaning to post a link for a while now, but never got around to it until now.

Planarity is a great puzzle game that seems simple at first, but gets difficult very quickly. You have to move the points around until none of the adjoining lines intersect.

Play Planarity.

Sage advice from Seth

Seth Godin republished one of his own forgotten articles, and it contains a great zen-like pearl of wisdom:-

Smart organizations ignore the urgent. Smart organizations understand that important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself.

I can't read it without imagining it as a lesson being taught to trainee samurai... it seems like one of those fundamental truths that everyone kind of knows, but can't quite live up to. Seth explains it in more depth, with some great examples:-

Read: Hurry!

Contact Details

My fellow CodeSniper, Duane Gran, posted his thoughts on sites that don't show contact details, and companies who don't want to answer the phone. I couldn't agree more, I try to include email addresses and telephone numbers prominently on our web pages and in emails I send. I also don't think he's the only one who only calls as a last resort. Usually the people who pick up the phone have already been through our website and have a few extra questions, or quite openly just want to make sure we really exist. An automated call handling system to fob off callers by telling them to check our website wouldn't be a major benefit to us or our customers. If you can't find what you want to know on our sites, I hope you do call, we'll be happy to hear from you.

I'm planning to continue that policy through our next round of web site updates, and following Michael Pollock's lead, I'm thinking of adding Skype contact details.

Also from Duane today is On writing good (er, well), which links to a great guide to writing. One of the things I hope to get from blogging is an improved writing style, so that's probably exactly the kind of thing I need to read. I saved the link for study later, and look forward to finding out exactly how many of the rules I've broken in this post, or in my CodeSnipers article. If you're not already familiar with Duane's blog, it's well worth checking out. I hadn't seen it before the CodeSnipers adventure started, but it's already a likely addition to "Blogs I Read" next time I get around to updating it.

Finally, I'm sorry there hasn't been much to read here this week, but with the lack of sleep and the CodeSnipers launch I've been all over the place. Hopefully I'll be back on track next week and there'll be a bit more variety.

Micro ISV Mistakes

My first post just went up on CodeSnipers, there was a backlog of articles yesterday, so it took a little longer than I expected to go through.

Read Micro ISV Mistake #1

Glorious Sleep

Finally I managed to sleep through the night, the lag from transferring back from LA had left me in a total mess. At the weekend I visited my house and saw that work has begun on the rennovations, I was thinking of starting an occassional series of flood recovery blog posts so you can see pictures of the progress; watch this space.

I've also posted my first article on CodeSnipers, it's still queued for publishing as I write this, but it should pop up on the site soon.

Codesnipers are Go

I've been invited to contribute to a new group software development blog, Codesnipers.com, launching today. The other founding contributors are a great group, with a nice mix of backgrounds, skills and interests, and they've already posted some interesting topics. There's also a great blog roll of development resources, and I'm sure that between us, and with the help of all the readers, we'll get some great discussions going in the future.

I'm really excited, flattered, and not to mention a little nervous to be involved with something like this at such an early stage. Regular readers here will know that I tend not to stick to the whole software company topic that I'm supposed to be blogging here, so one positive side effect of being a codesniper is that I have to write at least one on-topic post each week. Another positive is that I haven't tended to read a lot of software development blogs or resources, focusing instead on marketing and general business, so just reading the other posts and checking into some of the linked blogs is opening up a whole new world of information to me. Focusing on marketing and business has been by necessity rather than choice, it's where I need and have been able to find the most help, my heart has always been in the software.

I'm going to be starting my regular posting there later this week with the first of a short series on common Micro ISV mistakes. So far, I've made all the ones I have on my list, so hopefully I can add a personal perspective!

Did you want to grow up?

One of the new blogs I was checking out on my flight home (Scott Berkun), linked me into ChangeThis.

What a great site, a collection of well written and persuasive manifestos for a better life. You could do a lot worse this afternoon than spending a little time reading Scott's manifesto, Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas.

But, it's Sunday, so why not relax, read Escape Adulthood, then kick off your shoes and relax some more. Forget about that new car you want, that memo you need to send, that new programming language you think you really need to learn, or that soon to be released video game that your life seems incomplete without, and go enjoy yourself. If you have kids, turn off your laptop and play with them, if you live near the ocean, take off your shoes and go stand in the waves,

Go ahead, you might just like it.

Poor Ray

I'm sure we've all met Ray. From BigPictureSmallOffice.com:-

Ray is one of the accountants in General Ledger’s white shirt brigade. I cannot question his competence since, in the years I have known him, I have not seen any. To be generous, he has few skills. He is certainly not adept at spreadsheets; in his hands, Microsoft Excel doesn’t.

Big Picture Guy's typically awesome style effortlessly captures the essence of the sub-par accountant. If you're not reading BigPictureSmallOffice, start now... seriously, if you only ever follow one of my link suggestions, make it this one.

Killer Lag

My body has no idea what timezone it's in at the moment. A couple of hours ago when I woke up from my first sound sleep since Tuesday night, I couldn't have told you whether I'd slept for two hours, eight hours, or even longer. As I strained to read one of the many clocks that are just too far away to see without my glasses, I had no real way of knowing whether it was closer to 8am, 2pm or 7pm. So I probably have a couple of weird days ahead of me, but it's not a big deal, for some reason I kind of like being out of sync, and at least I can set my own schedule.

We had a nice fast (if 23 hours door-to-door can be called fast), smooth trip home, no delays, no problems. And, yes, I'm very glad we didn't fly British Airways.

The Last Teabag

Well, that's it for my Californian adventure. I'm down to the last of the teabags I brought along from home (it seems that everything Americans have heard about the English and their tea is true), I've done the last of my shopping, and I'm all set to fly back to the UK in the morning. An afternoon at Huntington Beach yesterday with my wife and brother-in-law proved to be a fitting way to spend our last non-packing day.

Overall, I've had a great time here, and although there are a few things I'm looking forward to back home, I could have happily stayed here much longer. My only half-hearted regret about the time I've spent here is that I should have taken more advantage of the weather and the beaches back in June, but that would have meant skipping a lot more work, and I think we would have burned through our cash reserve much sooner.

Aside from no-brainers like the weather and the beaches, there are a lot of things I'm going to miss about LA. In no particular order:-

• Glorious American junk food. I know it's wrong, but without Krispy Kreme donuts, Auntie Anne's soft jalapeno pretzels, and Pink's hotdogs, the junk food landscape back home looks very bleak indeed.
• Late openings. I love that you can do almost anything you want at any time you want in LA. The UK generally closes down by 6pm, which tends to put a real dampener on any evening plans you might try to make.
• My second family and new friends. Everyone here has been great, I hope we can repay some of the favours we've put on our tab when they get around to visiting us in the UK. And I think I'm going to miss people getting a kick out of my accent.

As I said above, no matter what impression I might give, there are definitely some things I'm looking forward to back home.

• Seeing my family. It feels like it's been a long time, so I'm really looking forward to catching up.
• Match of the Day. I can't wait to settle down with a big cup of tea and get a healthy dose of English football.
• Seeing our home. The rumours from home last week have been confirmed: I've been reliably informed that work on rebuilding our house has finally begun and I can't wait to see how it's coming along. The rumour of my brother moving in also turned out to be true, so I'm looking forward to seeing him happily back where he belongs.
• Getting back to work. I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping things moving while I've been here, and managed to avoid a lot of temptations, but as I explained a few posts ago, this impending move has completely killed my flow.

So that's that, the next time I write I'll be eight hours ahead and 16-hour flight lagged. Until then...

Who owns the fish?

Try to solve this puzzle, apparently written by Albert Einstein. The answers have already been posted, so no peaking until you're done!

Source: Signal vs Noise.

A change from the corporate

Whether they focus on traditional corporate environments, start-ups, consulting, or post-corporate musings, most of the blogs and websites I read on a regular basis tend to rotate around similar themes.

That's why it's always so great to get linked into something completely different, and to get to see the world from a different perspective. David St Lawrence posted a link to the Phantom Professor blog last week, and it's a great read. So great in fact, that the writer, Elaine Liner, apparently lost her teaching post when her subject matter caught up with her.

David introduces the Phantom Professor much more effectively than I ever could, so if you need any more background before you jump in, check it out on his blog, Ripples. Be warned, though, once you read Phantom Professor you'll be looking for "Brad's" and "Ashley's" everywhere you go.

"I scoff at difficulty"

Maybe you have to be a special kind of geek to be impressed by (or even interested in) this stuff, but a visit to Ben Heck's site always leaves me in awe.

Ben makes portable versions of all our favourite games consoles, he has even written a book about it, but he's moved on. Perhaps bored with typical run of the mill home consoles, Ben has now built a portable based on a Neo-Geo arcade board. 100% authentic arcade gaming in your (very large) pocket? Read all about it here.

Source: Kotaku

Red Lobster

Well, it's been almost 3 months, and I'm going home next week, but yesterday I finally succumbed to California's relentless sunshine. After all this time walking around in the sun, wondering why I wasn't burning, it was a last minute trip to a beach near Santa Barbara that finally proved to be my downfall. I'm trying to make the most of the last days we have over here, knowing that once I get back to the UK (aside from a lot of personal things we have to take care of), I'll have very little to do but work.

It might not sound like it, but a pretty large part of me is looking forward to getting back. When it comes to working on our software, I'm a stability junky. I'm going to link here to one of Joel Spolsky's older articles about getting in the zone (and about how you shouldn't read Upside magazine!), in it Joel talks about how it takes time to get into the Zone, and how easy it is to be pulled out of it by any little distraction or question. The Zone is that wonderful place where everything makes perfect sense, where you're in charge, and where, no matter how hard it is, you're going to get your job done. The article talks about the Zone only on a day by day basis, what I'm going to suggest here is that there's also a similar, possibly outer, zone that you also need to be in if you're even going to have a chance of finding the Zone, lets call it the Groove. Being in the Groove is just as delicate as being in the Zone, except that it runs on a larger scale, you can stay in the Groove for weeks or even months, you can take the weekend off and not lose your place in the Groove, but if something does pull you out, you're going to have to fight to get back in.

This is where my stability addiction comes in, instability tends to pull me out of the Groove, making the Zone a difficult thing to find. I was deep in the Groove on 7th January, finding the Zone had been easy for weeks, each day I just had to sit at the PC for a few minutes with no distractions and I just clicked in. The following day our house flooded, and we had to move in with my parents. My Groove was shaken, I spent a week without any contact with a PC, not knowing how much, if any, work I had lost. Once I got myself back up and running in my new temporary home (and verified that I hadn't lost a single days work), I managed to hop back into the Groove pretty quickly. This actually lasted for 2-3 months, at which point the Groove was shattered by our impending shift across the pond to spend some time with my wife's parents and give mine a bit of a break. I think I spent the 3 or 4 weeks before the move struggling to find the Zone... every morning I'd sit at my PC and try to work, but the Zone wasn't having any of it.

After a week or two of settling in here, I was back in the Groove, I had maybe 6 weeks of real productivity, until the reality of having to move back to the UK again started to kick in. Right now I couldn't find the Zone even if it was right in front of my face, my only consolation is that I'll have a few more months of relative stability when I get back to the UK, before the fourth and final move of the year (putting us back in our home) creeps up on me.

Thinking back, the least disruptive instability (neglecting the fact that it was responsible for all of the others) was the flooding of our home. The fact that it was unplanned and completely surprising actually eliminated a lot of disruption prior to the event. All of the planned instabilities have brought about the same amount of disruption afterwards, but also a large amount of anticipation disruption beforehand.

I'm not sure if there's a lesson here, except to remind me that I definitely need to work on being less disrupted by forthcoming distractions. Here's hoping for a quiet, stable 2006...

Is that a builder I see?

Anyone unfortunate enough to follow my flooding & insurance saga will no doubt be happy to hear that we seem to finally be making some progress. Even if you're only happy because it means I might not be whining about it so often from now on.

The latest news from home is that a contractor has finally been appointed, they know what they're going to do, and they'll either have started by the time I go back to the UK or soon after I arrive.

This is great news for us, things had been dragging for so long and it's really picked me up. Even if things go completely to plan, we're still probably not going to have a habitable home for much more than a month of 2005, but knowing that we should be back where we're supposed to be when 2006 rolls in is a major comfort. Big smiley face.

And in related good news, my brother, who's been through exactly the same thing (downside of living close together!), should be moving back into his home any day now.

Googling Grow?

One of the coolest things for me about having a blog vs a static web site, is seeing what the web does with the various subjects I write about. For example, I liked it when my Homesick Blues post was only generating Adsense links for Bob Dylan merchandise (despite no mention of Dylan outside of the title), and I liked it when I first set up Adsense and couldn't get it to display anything but ice cream ads, despite the fact that I only mentioned ice cream once in Local flavor and a glimpse of home.

Lately, I've seen a lot of visitors from Google looking for tips, solutions and walkthroughs for Eyezmaze's Grow. If you haven't already checked it out, you really should, it's a great little puzzle game where your success is based on the order in which you add the various objects to your world. I think the reason I'm getting all the traffic is because I mistakenly called Eyezmaze Eyemaze.com, so far everyone who's landed here has been searching for some variation on Eyemaze Grow. If you found your way to this page and you're struggling with the game, I'll spot you the first four items, highlight the following blank space to see... The Sun, the Cube, the Ladder, and then the Egg (I've heard there might be an alternate solution with lava, but I can't help you with that).

I'm not going to post a complete solution, there are plenty of those out there on the web if you need one (email me or request one in the comments if you're really stuck), but I am going to let you know that there's a whole new challenge on their site in the form of Grow RPG. Fans of the first game will be pleased to know it's very similar, those who struggled with the first will be pleased to know there's only eight items this time around, meaning a lot less possibilities.

Comfort Stylus

As I said a few posts ago, I recently acquired a Nintendo DS. Now I'm going to tell you about a great accessory I found, which I think should be an essential buy for any DS owner, and which PDA users might want to take a look at too.

The biggest problem I had with my DS at first was that the bundled thumb strap isn't too great, and it's practically impossible to play Mario 64 well using the standard stylus. I immediately started looking around the web for alternatives, and found the Comfort Stylus:-

It's basically a bendable padded wire stylus, which you can twist around your finger or thumb to whatever position feels most comfortable. For the DS, especially games like Mario 64, this can translate into a feeling which is similar to having a little joystick under your thumb. It's hard to describe it any other way... the best thing I can say about it is that it almost makes Mario 64 feel as good as it used to feel using a control pad. Given that IGN just put the original at 5th place in their best all time games list, that's very high praise.

The Comfort Stylus won't solve all the world's problems, it's probably not going to be perfect for every type of game, and if you straighten it out and try to fit it in the DS's stylus slot, you'll find it's a little bit too long (although you can just bend the excess over the back), but I haven't found any significant downsides.

Overall, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, I take it everywhere I take my DS, and if I lost or broke it I'd order another right away.

The picture post

I've never done a straight-forward "look at this photo, it's funny", post before, but when I found a couple of pictures on Patrick Ansari's blog yesterday, I couldn't resist.

First up, this flawed security system from his critique of intrusion detection systems made me smile. Then I saw this safety notice in Please Mind the Bullet. As Patrick says himself, that one doesn't need any words.