Marathon: The Ultimate Trilogy

There was a good writeup about one of the classic FPS games of all time. For anyone who gamed back in the mid-90's, Marathon on Macintosh was cutting edge entertainment, especially with LAN play. Ahh, those were the days sneaking up on somone from behind and blowing them to smithereens. I still fondly remember downtime at the office of my first job where we would blow off some steam teaming up against each other.

Rose of Sharon: Hibiscus Syriacus

Earlier, I was seeking the name of this flower which is growing outside next to my garage. It turns out that it's called the "Rose of Sharon" with the scientific name of Hibiscus Syriacus.


Big with hummingbirds and bees, it's a perennial woody shrub that blooms in the late spring all through summer and into early fall. Gorgeous flowers in large abundance; good thing I didn't cut the bush down when I first thought it was a dying one!

OS X: Image Tricks

BeLight Software released Image Tricks for OS X as a free download. It's a basic image editing application that takes advantage of Core Image technology from Apple in OS X 10.4. I'm about to give it a shot, especially since it says "iPhoto integration" as part of its feature set.

What Is This Flower's Name?

For the life of me, I don't know what it is, but the small tree next to the house is blooming like crazy and the flowers are simply gorgeous... if you happen to know, please leave the name in the comments.

Fun: Shooting Sheep

Test your reaction times at Reaction @ BBC by trying to tranquilize sheep as they make a run for the meadow.

I got down to 0.175 then had to make a run myself for home.

OS X: The Mouse That Roars

Today, Apple announced today that they are shipping the next-generation mouse, aptly titled "Might Mouse", that features a revolutionary "Scroll Ball" that replaces the all-too-common scroll wheel which allows you to roll not only up and down, but left, right, and diagonally. Gone are the old-style buttons that 'click'; instead, the mouse now features touch-sensitive buttons (much like the iPod, I imagine) for both left, right, and side buttons. Optical tracking is a given, but throw in the internal speaker that will make the click and ball rolling sound effects for those that find it disconcerting to work in silence. And of course, it works for those lost PC users as well...