I was reading my email this morning and I got a note from Microsoft telling me that they are trashing Windows Messenger and keeping Skype in it's place.  The truth is that I haven't used messenger in quite some time, but with Windows 8 I was looking forward to having it run in the background so I could use it for messaging (sort of how I have iMessage logged into my Yahoo, MSN Live, and AIM

[Spoilers] A week of so ago I completed Red Dead Redemption on the XBox. This was a game that I had borrowed from a friend.  I had heard quite a lot of good things about it, but - honestly - the cover art really didn't sell the game for me (enough to buy it with my own cash) - so I traded with a friend.  They do say don't judge a book by its cover, and I guess this holds true for video

Happy new year to all! Just in time for the new year,  I completed Assassin's Creed III which I got as a Black Friday deal on Amazon this past Thanksgiving (warning: spoilers!). I put Red Dead Redemption on the side for this game and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot! I had seen the previews where the main character (ancestor) was an Algonquin Indian, so I was quite surprised when I started

Πριν κάτι χρόνια, που δούλευα στην βιβλιοθήκη τα πράγματα ώρες ώρες ήταν βαρετά γιατί περίμενες να έρθει ο πελάτης και δεν ερχόταν (ίδια όταν τελείωνε το τρίμηνο και όλοι οι φοιτητές πήγαιναν σπίτια τους).Εκει λοιπόν, δεν

The other day one of my long time friends and colleague posted on Facebook a quick pondering: is LinkedIn the right place for academics? The underlying thought is that LinkedIn is very instrumentalist and positivist in how it represents someone. Essentially what this means is that we setup profiles that represent a reality that we want to market to others, and we want to pass on that reality (our

Well, this one crept up on me. OpenFeint, a cross-platform social network for gaming is closing its doors in a few weeks.  It started life on iOS, as far as I know, and later on got onto Android and Windows Phone.  Initially the pitch was global leaderboards for games, something that I really didn't care for much in my iPod touch days...but then came the achievement badges for games and

Alright! I finally made it to Vice Admiral on Star Trek Online ("3 Stars" equivalent to real military) and thus I have reached the highest rank in the game (level 50).  Too bad, because I was looking forward, with Season 7 just being released, having the capability of going up to full Admiral. Oh well! I got my Vice Admiralty while completing Season 4. Not bad at all! I am currently mostly

It's been three weeks since I got the Enterprise edition from our friendly help desk (those guys rock!) and I installed it on my work computer, and aging Dell Optiplex GX620, which runs on a 3.4Ghz P4, 2GB of RAM built-in graphics and 500MB of hard drive space. Yes, I know, you must be wondering how I can get work done.  The truth is that this is my backup machine where I undertake specific

With the release of Halo 4 everyone seems to be talking about it.  In one of the video game podcasts that I listen to there was mention of the Anniversary edition of Halo which contains hidden terminals that augment to story (give you some background) and if you've watched all of the terminal videos (supposedly) your enjoyment of Halo 4 will be greater.  I did, just by accident, find one

OK, so this past weekend I made Rear Admiral (lower half).  I suppose that by next weekend I will make Rear Admiral upper half the way I am going.  I am actually quite surprised at how quickly I am leveling up!  It seems as though the number of experience points required to reach higher levels is linear and not exponential in nature. Oh well, I am not complaining ;-) I just wish I