I’ve been playing this game called Tranquility on and off for the past 2 years or so. Lately, it’s turned into a different way to relax, hence the title! Here’s the short story: you’re essentially floating in a 3D space, and you maneuver around different strings and patterns made up of individual shapes flying around, and you have to find this “spinner”. You can bounce on the shapes, or float up through them, to get you where you think you wanna go. When you find, and therefore collide with, this spinner, things change in the environment, and you have to look for another spinner. You have to find seven spinners in order to complete a room, three rooms to complete a level, and seven levels to complete a realm, of which there are at least 20 or so. Oh yeah, and relaxing ambient computer-generated music is piped in to the player’s computer to help in relaxation (it puts my wife to sleep… awwwwww!). Here’s a screenshot:

(Click on the picture for full size. Warning: the image is BIG!)
(The game actually looks much better than this picture; Capturing was slower than the game!)

Go to TQworld.com to learn more about it. It IS available for both Windows (XP) and Macintosh (OS 9, and all versions of X). Trying out the software is free and they offer a free limited-capability membership, but a full membership costs $24. I actually paid a while back, and I haven’t regretted it yet. Hey, my GameCube games cost more than that and, while being fun, aren’t as original or challenging as this! It looks simple on the surface, but once you go deeper in the game… let’s just say it really makes you work on your observation skills!

Earlier last week, I disclosed what my iPod’s top 20 played songs were. Now for the disclosure of the (current) specs so far in regards to storage…

Used space: 6.86 GB
Free space: 11.75 GB
Total songs: 1,143
Total playthrough time: 3.9 days (3d:23h:07m:05s)

… and the best part about the playthrough is that the shuffle feature is very good. It will not play the same song twice during a playthrough of the entire library (so far nearly four days worth of music!).

Man, talk about getting kicked in the netherlands! Read this Q&A from trade group RIAA, The Recording Industry Association of America, about webcasting. Enough to stop anyone in their tracks!

I had some big problems with the software I’m testing to broadcast my own radio. Eventually I learned to configure the ports on the firewall to PROPERLY allow for this. Tricky business, especially if youre using a wireless router! But, in the end, this morning marked the successful test of Esoterik WebRadio! It’s listenable to anyone with either QuickTime Player, iTunes, or (as far as I know) RealMedia Player. I didn’t have success listening with Windows Media Player, and I didn’t test out RealMedia, so use these to listen at your own risk!

I’m not going to be running something like this on a grande scale, nor will I be running our computer as a server 24/7 ! I already have a listener limit put at 10 listeners at a time. I will be making plans for this blog to have an “On Air“ sign with a link to the URL in the nearby future (and maybe a “What’s Playing Now” sign similar to the Progged Radio banner you see in the sidebar). Don’t ask when it may all happen. I may have it going just on weekends, or during evenings, or during the day when we’re at work! Let me know what you all think…

Update!! I thought I knew the legalities of “webcasting”… I now know just how much I knew, which is not much! (read these articles HERE and THERE) I will still follow suit with what I stated earlier. However, I will stress that since this is mainly for us and our friends and family, there shouldn’t be much of an issue here. There is an ongoing battle with the webcasters of the internet world versus the RIAA about the fees involved in these endeavors. The greediness (of which I’ve been reading up on) of juggernaut monopolistic corporations like the RIAA is making my stomach topsy-turvy! It’s corps like these that don’t care about the listeners, internet hobbyists, free radio enthusiasts, independent artists, or even big time artists… they just want to make sure their own way of business isn’t compromised by the Internet and that they can still keep their accounts filled to the brim. I may expound on this later…

Well, today I had a procedural audit performed on my department at work. Not just my department, but ALL the departments in the store! Everybody from regional personell, management trainees and the like were going through and checking to see if all the departments do and not do things properly. I was extremely nervous on how me and my team would pull through; I always get nervous before a big test!! The anxiety was for nought… my team and I passed very well, if not with flying colours. This rounded out a hectic, but sane, week for me! This week coming up: overnight on Sunday!!