In the middle of what is currently a pretty busy workweek, I suddenly felt the need for a side project that wasn’t about videogames, the best links on the whole internet for perverted technophiles, and growing the most stylish chinstrap in the world. And then I realized that I already had one.

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Average on food [expensr], originally uploaded by sangsara.

I eat almost as much as your average man and woman combined! Rawr!!

Actually I think this is happening because the average is in US currency (although I’ve specified I use SGD in my profile), and because I consider alcohol to be part of food expenditure.

It’s been kinda quiet here because I’ve been hard at work not being at work (don’t let them tell you it’s easy), and also because I’ve been making an effort to not talk about games here on my blog. All game talk and game reviewing has moved to rgbgamer.com, which I’ve set up specifically to cover only the most interesting game-related news items each day (generally the universe creates two), and talk about what I’m liking now and then. I hope you’ll go over and take a look, maybe even subscribe to the feed.

And with all the daily link cruft being swept under the rug at blast!, my tumblelog, I’m not entirely sure what to do with this original blog.

I guess I’ll have to make a return to horrid personal matters, details on how I eat… badly, stories about my home life and how my dog hates me but that’s ok because I hate her too because her breath really stinks, and other miscellaneous things that a future employer might come by and see, and then decide not to hire me on the intensity of my airheadedness that I do try so hard to hide from you, my loyal readers.

*If anybody wants to contribute material to RGB Gamer, the door’s this way.

EDIT: I’m on Leopard now and Connect360 works. Just had to rescan and add a new ‘Computer’ on the Xbox side.

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According to a blogger named Jeff Henshaw, upgrading to Leopard breaks Nullriver’s Connect360 software. Connect360 lets Mac users stream video/music/photos to an Xbox 360, sort of like what Windows Media Center Edition does.

This article at Ars Technica includes Connect360 in a list of software reported to work. So, does anyone know for certain?

Hopefully Nullriver confirms or patches this soon, because there’ll be no Leopard for me until then.

Macrumors has a wiki list of all the apps reported to have problems with Leopard. Entries of interest include: Azureus (with MBPs), Sogudi, Peerguardian, and of course there must be one app from Roxio on there… Popcorn.

Q&A page over here.

Does this signal the beginning of the end for Twitter? How might this integrate with Gmail in a useful manner? Or perhaps Orkut is due for some tweaks and a relaunch to compete with Facebook.

How does Jaiku currently differ from Twitter? On the plus side, it has ‘channels’, which are like chatrooms or public streams that everyone can contribute to. It also has a separate status field for Location. So you can let people know what you’re doing/thinking, and also where you are. This comes in handy when, let’s say, you’re out in town and would like to find nearby friends. It also supports comments, without having to reply with something like “@dude I totally agree” and bothering everyone else. It works just like leaving a blog comment on the main website.

The philosophy behind Jaiku is more of creating a “Presence Stream”, optionally aggregating your blog posts, flickr, and other RSS feeds, giving your friends a single point of contact for seeing what you’re up to. This is functionality I originally intended for my tumblelog (blast.sangsara.net), but over time it became less personal and more about posting amusing links. Well, Jaiku might be the one service to draw all these parts of my online activity together, and STILL publish 140 character bits with every now and then. The question is, how do I get everyone to move off Twitter?

Are you currently on Twitter, and feeling Jaikurious? Sorry, sorry. Sorry. That was a bad one.

Further reading: Jaiku vs Twitter @ smartmobs.com, A Matter of Taste @ Pronet Advertising

From the first link above:

For me Jaiku is about:

1. Silent sociality – checking up on what my friends are up to when convenient, and posting my own state knowing that I won’t be disturbing others (unless they have explicitly asked to be alerted).

4. Background sociality – Jaiku allows me to integrate other online identities and feeds (including delicious, flickr and any RSS) into my single jaiku presence feed. This is done in a way that doesn’t confuse these background posts with my explicit state messages.

Yes, “The Joni Letters” is an album of Joni Mitchell covers and interpretations with guest vocalists (including Leonard Cohen and Tina Turner!)

About a month back, I quit my job. I meant to write about it sooner, but then personal matters have long been absent on this blog (along with new content in general). I largely enjoyed working there, but that’s a story for another time.

In the week just gone, my first sans emploi, I’ve become one of those annoying people who like to drop some French now and then – no, I’m just kidding – in the past week I’ve still been waking up in the morning with vague memories about dreams that involved getting work done. Last night I was working on my Mac in the office, but it was in the 1920s if you can wrap your mind around that, not doing my actual job but instead transcribing dialogue from old movies. So they could be made into subtitles, of course. From English to English. It sure made sense at the time.

It was a tedious and slow process, using some badly designed software, and I had barely gotten three lines done when a friend called asking me out for a drink with another mutual friend (they do not, and will never, know each other in real life but dreams are strange). I said alright, and then realized it would be impossible to transcribe the rest of that goddamned spaghetti western or train robbery movie given a whole, much less an hour. I was seriously stressing it, and then an email came in with EVEN more work from one of my freelancing clients.

Ah yes, that was the point I was finding my way towards. I’m now doing an experimental break/career calibration/freelance writing thing. Although probably not a viable long-term option, I’ve found that it’s possible to make enough, as much, or very much more money this way. Depending on how much time you want to put into it. And I get the added benefit of finally being able to work from home, on the large iMac I once blew most of my savings on. It helps with the guilt.

So now is a time for reading all the books on my shelves, going out whenever the urge strikes, getting to know Hyrule a little better, and maybe even populating this blog with regular posts again. If you look at my stats, the point at which all traffic went downhill was the exact time I started at my job last year.