A1

Well, it has been interesting to watch what has been happening with the Android platform the last 48 hours. Makes me kind of glad I decided to switch my focus to programming Flash games. That has the advantage of being playable on more platforms - and being a lot easier to send people the link to play rather than having them have to DL something first.

My first game is a Holiday themed one where you play Santa saving the Christmas Penguins. From the aliens. Using your heavily armed sleigh. Kind of a "different" holiday theme :-)

Anyway, feel free to take a few minutes to play my game, Santa Slays. If you like it, please be sure to leave a rating. Either way, please drop a comment here or at the site to let me know what you think.

Here's a couple interesting numbers to consider when you think about the current financial crisis. First, the outstanding consumer US debt at the end of 2007 was $14 trillion dollars - source for that did not specify if that included mortgages...

Second, the world GDP for 2007 was $60 trillion dollars. That's for everybody in every country (though I heavily suspect some rounding).

Looking at those two numbers, you can get a feel for how bad and how long things may be bad assuming that there aren't major changes quickly. Hence my suggestion for a Partial Jubilee. As far as what a Jubilee is (or at least what I'm referring to), in Old Testament times there would be a Jubilee year every X number of years (changed over time) where all debts were forgiven (and slaves freed and such).

While I don't think writing everyone's slate clean is practical, I do think a program to wipe out the first $5K of debt on each credit card and credit line would be incredibly helpful to get consumer confidence up and to give consumers some buying power to go out and get things rolling again. That still would be a huge amount of national debt we would be adding to be paid off, but given the likely alternatives, there's at least a chance it WOULD get paid off eventually.

Still seems better to me than Bernanke's quote a few years ago that in a worst case scenario the government could send out helicopters dumping sacks of money.

Article courtesy of Digg that announces a new, rapid prototyping 3D printer that can build models that include working parts within.

Of course, the first thing I thought of was how well this would work for making models of Anime characters... :-)

Was reading an email from Jim Thompson off of Dave Farber's Interesting People email list, and saw the following:

"The point of Android is not that you can write your own apps. (Yes, Lauren, *we* will, but "Joe Sixpack" is only interested in his NASCAR screensaver, from whatever source he can obtain it.) "Write your own apps, replace whatever of ours you like" is essentially "let 1,000 flowers bloom." Google (unlike Apple) is declaring that it is (indeed) not smarter than the rest of the world (combined). Joy's law states that the vast majority of the smart people will be found outside your organization.

The point of Android won't be realized until some enterprising soul releases a re-compiled version for laptops and those rising stars of ubiquity, the nettops.
Once this happens, the Android marketplace for apps will mean that you can run the same code on your phone and other mobile computing devices."

I added the italics to emphasize the point. For folks who have been wondering when Google would create a desktop OS to replace Windows... well, with a little more work they effectively have done so. After all, Android is based on a Linux core...

A while back I mentioned how I turned my laptop into a netbook by setting up Ubuntu on a Class 6 16 gig SDHC card. One of the things I mentioned that was keeping me from using it as much as I wanted was the lack of Broadcom support in Ubuntu.

I just DL'd the Intrepid Ibex (8.10) Beta CD and installed it, and the problem remained. However, by copying the files from here into /lib/firmware, and then telling Ubuntu to go ahead and use the restricted B43 driver, I was able to have my wireless up and running.

Of course, to make that happen I had to have my notebook plugged into my wired hub to DL the B43 driver, and I had to do the su passwd hack to give me root access so I could copy those files into /lib/firmware. Just in case you decide to try this at home.

Unfortunately, I can't stay in Linux full time as all three printers we have at home are Lexmark X2350s. We got them on sale for $15 each, and so it would be hard to replace them with anything Linux friendly that's comparably priced. I have two network drives that also would be a bit of an issue, but I'm fairly certain I could eventually get them configured.

Oh well, it's always something :-)

Just a quick note to let folks who read this blog know that there's an article at the Android Game blog covering the outline of an Android Platform application.

Just in case you're thinking about supporting that platform. What I've been reading so far leads me to believe there will be more interesting stuff (and possibly more junk as well) on Android than on the iPhone. However, it looks like developers who can get past the Apple entry bar are more likely to actually make money developing for the iPhone. Since I don't have a Mac, that's somewhat of a moot point for me. Particularly since my first app is going to be free anyway :-)