General

The War Z just doesn't want to die and go away. The developer's behind this game have announced that their servers were hacked and all their customers data was taken. I've contacted Steam to see how this affects those of us that never created an account at The War Z, but apparently the War Z people did have my email address. Read more for the full message from OP Productions LLC.

Stroz' ASCII Side Scroller Platform Shooter is a free game written in C++ that runs in a Windows console. I've compiled out the game for all the non-geeks to try. I'm also including the source code.

I recently purchased a Colormunki Display screen color calibration tool. It worked great. The problem was, that after the computer went to sleep, or restarted, or sometimes after a minute or two of being idle, the factory default cool colors (sort of a blue / pink tint to everything) would return.

After a few hours of web surfing, and trying different courses of action, I was able to find two very simple things to permanently fix the color corrected profile in place.

The Berserker's Daughter web comic is brilliant.

An unofficial Netflix app for Ubuntu.

They could change the name to, "The Hiking to Die Game - where you work really hard, and walk for hours of real world time, to acquire a few items, only to be shot by other players that have been on longer than you." 

Then everyone would know exactly what they are paying for.

On a new Intel core i7 laptop (ultrabook actually) running Windows 7 64 pro, I installed Avast! Free. A few days later I installed Intel Anti-Theft Service (provided by McAfee). A free one year subscription was included with the new laptop. It was like opening the proverbial can of worms. The final solution was to uninstall Intel Anti-Theft Service. To be helpful to the Internet at large, I'll layout some of the problems that occurred after activation of the Intel AT Technology.

In response to @DISQUS via twitter; since it's tough to give case examples in less than 145 characters.

Darrick contacted me because he was having problems running XAMPP on Windows as a development server. I suggested he try a WAMP stack instead. WampServer, Server2Go, and EasyPHP are all much easier to use when starting out.

Rai contacted me with a problem. The newly installed Zen-Cart opened in a sub directory but Rai wanted it to open as the main public_html directory. So here are some possible solutions.

Realm of Atland, my favorite webcomic, has a new blog. The best part? Nate is going to photograph the entire process from pencils to finished, of the next Atland episode. How sweet is that?

Even a simple mobile optimized site is better than no mobile optimized site. I created a rough mobile template, and even though I threw it together in about 30 minutes as an experiment, I've seen the unique mobile visitors climb about 261%. I did it by adding: one style sheet, a mobile browser check script, and setting some mobile exclusion if statements. Read more for details.

Buzzwords, while there are millions of people who insist on using them, maybe because they think it gives them an "out of the box" aura, can actually hurt their chances when a potential employer comes a knocking. LinkedIn has some advice to fix this problem and gives us the 10 most over used buzzwords.

Today Hard Boiled Vampire Killers (HBVK), was released to the public in two variations, the Signed leather-bound Deluxe Thirteen Hardcover w/ slipcase, and the Signed Limited Hardcover. I purchased the Signed Limited Hardcover, as the official release of the trade paperback for Hard Boiled Vampire Killers will not happen until the end of the year, possibly to late for Christmas gifts this year. In this post I'm going to lay on you why I am so very stoked to receive my copy of HBVK.

Wasn't very interested in the "virtual ticket" coverage of BlizzCon 2010, but then I read you could get special StarCraft II in-game items. In game exclusive items for Starcraft 2 freaking sweet.

This is a simple tool written in PHP for the translation of binary to text and text to binary. Just a little programming exercise to keep me on my toes.

Starcraft 2 is just as addicting for me as the original Starcraft. I played the original so much I started having dreams about playing Starcraft, and now those dreams are beginning again with this sequel. Just to prove how addicted you are to Starcraft II you can get your very own Starcraft 2 signature that has your most current stats to use in blogs, forums, websites, or where ever.

The funniest Deepwater Horizon BP spill video I've seen, as of the date of this post.

Just finished watching Paranormal Activity, which has been proclaimed to be, "one of the scariest movies of all time."

The news as of late has made a big deal about the amendments to the FTC's Endorsement Guides, as can be read in this cNet News article, with the news media focusing the one aspect of the changes and how it affects freebies for Bloggers who write reviews. Most of these reporters have missed a bigger point. The Endorsement Guides affects more than just Blogs. The actual scope of the new amendments could also carry over to boards and forums, social networking sites, Twitter, consumer product reviews left on eCommcerce sites, and for that matter any emerging communication technology.

I have been reading ATLAND (http://www.realmofatland.com) for years now, and I highly recommend it. New strips are released every Thursday. Each episode is filled with lowbrow PG-13 humor.

MC SpandX delivers a funny video portraying the conflict between road bikers and hipster fixie crowd. Now that I know some road bikers and some fixie hipsters, I find this video extremely funny.

Independently developed games can have some of the most innovative game playing techniques. I always enjoy a high quality shooter, or in depth RPG, but nothing beats playing something with a little freshness to it. Mightier delivers with some good playability. Part platform puzzle game, part pen and paper, and totally free.

Once Upon a Time I used Google AdSense, and I have just added Google advertisements back into my site. I am doing it in a much more elegant way this time than just throwing them up on every page.

I watched Coraline, in RealD (3D), and man was it great. A creepy nightmarish story of alternate worlds. I highly recommend it. Take note of the PG rating as it may be inappropriate for children.

I added a Lightbox powered newest images box to the homepage, and polished up the portfolio artwork galleries. Plus my old ComicBook MOD for Subdreamer.

A 60 foot slip-n-slide ramp and jump combo. The video says it took seven days to build.

The little robot tries so hard, but without words he has to find another way to communicate. Watch online now.

The Old People News video is comedy worth watching. Provided me with a good laugh.

I DoFollow. For those of you who leave comments and supply your URL then your site will receive Google Juice.

Don't be a software pirate this holiday season. Get yourself OpenOffice.org and save yourself $400. In addition to not breaking the law, it is way better than the Microsoft Office suite.

The Studio-Owens.com blog, written by Stephen Owens, is back online.