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Playing D&D on Microsoft Surface

When Microsoft first unveiled their Surface Project I thought, like so many, “Nice toy but what will it actually be used for?”. Well I just came across a nice Video of a Project by Carnegie Mellon University playing D&D on Surface. I’m a huge fan of RPGs and this ranges among the coolest accessories I’ve ever seen:

While looking around on their site I also found an older Walkthrough Video of the system which explains a bit more on how it works:

I hope the Project stays alive and hopefully RPG producers jump on the train too. Only thing I’d change is the rolling of the dice, I just love having real dice to roll instead of virtual dices.

Oh and do a Das Schwarze Auge and Shadowrun version, please

Thanks CrunchGear for pointing this out.
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How to fix Google Buzz

fix_google_buzzWhile I’m not quite sure on what to think about Google Buzz, just like I was ambivalent when it came to Twitter, I am quite sure that there is room for improvement. And I’m not the only one, there is an entire site dedicated to Digg style improvement idea collection called How To Fix Google Buzz created by Jyri Engeström, a former Google employee. So if you’re not happy with Buzz, just head over there and propose or vote an idea :D
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ShowRSS down

I’m a huge fan of Broadcatching because it allows me to catch up with the latest news and watch my favorite shows when I got time, and not when they are scheduled, and a nice side effect is that I don’t need to own a TV.

When I wanted to find out if there is something new to watch today I noticed that my favorite service, ShowRSS, is currently down, which would explain why I’m not getting my shows. I hope it’s nothing tragic and that it returns soon.

Update: and it’s back, apparently it was just a small problem, and not the so feared takedown.

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Distro-Upgrading from openSuSE 11.1 to 11.2

One of the features I always enviopenSuSE 11.2ed the Ubuntu people for is the ability to do a distro upgrade without tearing down my whole system and doing the CD-Dance. While that may still be needed from time to time to ensure a nice and compact system, it is just incredibly time consuming. With the latest version of ZYpp openSuSE now has the ability to just do that. It’s not yet as comfortable and staightforward as in Ubuntu, but it definitely improved from what I tried manually when upgrading from 11.0 to 11.1. First of all we need to update to the latest patch level from the update repository:
zypper addrepo --check --name 'openSUSE-11.1-Update' http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.1/ repo-update
zypper refresh
zypper update
If you already have the Update repository in your list then the first call will fail, but the others should work just fine.
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Bootchart

Bootchart is a neat tool to analyze and optimize the boot process, all with a nice simple poster:

bootchart

As you can see my boot process is far from optimal, but now I have a pointer to where to go next :D
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