the tomgrom blog

I spent most of my time playing this awesome game last weekend, staying in to get rid of the last few stinkin’ germs that were still hanging on from the horrible cold of the previous week.

Stellar gameplay, nice choice of powerups, and lots to explore in this unique shooter.

[via Good Experience Games]

Google has been digitizing thousands of otherwise out-of-print books for years now, but due to a lawsuit they’ve been unable to offer us anything other than snippets.

Today they announced that they’ve reached an agreement with authors and publishers, which means that they can finally offer the full text of these out-of-print books online.

Fantastic!

The New York Times tells us what we don’t want to hear … or won’t be able to unless we’re careful.

[via The Daily Swarm]

The 90’s was my time for gaming.

I had both the time and the income to waste hundreds of hours, computer hardware was getting good enough to create incredible, immersive gaming environments — and the market was big enough to bring some brilliant creators into the field.

Now, with Good Old Games having gone into public beta this week, a ton of these classic Windows games are once again available, for dirt-cheap prices.  I’m talking $6 - $10 here, with no DRM, no monthly subscriptions, and full manuals.  Plus, they’ll work on PC’s that aren’t bleeding edge (and super expensive).

If you can get beyond the more limited graphics, you’ll find some of the smartest, most compelling gameplay ever conceived in games like Fallout, Freespace, and Descent.

I bought Freespace and tried it on my VMWare XP install — it worked great, but the Apple keyboard kept messing me up.  I’m actually considering Bootcamp for these games, now…

[via MeFi (watch out, the language gets coarse in the discussion)]

Lawrence Lessig gives us another fantastic explaination of how current copyright laws need to be rexamined in light of current technology.

I couldn’t agree more!

[via The Daily Swarm]

If you don’t mind a BIG download and have a relatively new computer (Mac, Windows, or Linux), check out this free virtual tour of China’s Forbidden City, courtesy of IBM.

Oh, and the Chinese Government probably has something to do with it, too, because $3 million and three years went into developing it.

Beautifully crafted, intricately detailed, and massive in scale, you can walk throughout the city with other visitors, go on virtual tours, and witness activities and artifacts from Imperial China.

[via MeFi]

I found this October 10th conversation between Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hall Jamieson particularly enlightening, and troubling.

Sadly, both sides are lying in this presidential election.  Surprise!  I’ve been told it’s naïve to think otherwise.  But why must this be so?

As much as I’d like to consider one side “good” and the other, well, “not so good”, I remain convinced that whether a Democrat or a Republican wins, it’s going to be more of the same.

Perhaps our system of government will be somewhat better or worse with one or the other, but I’m very afraid of it ending up fundamentally unchanged.

I do have more hope in this election than in any other in which I’ve voted, but we have to hold the people we elect accountable to what they say and what we need.

Again, why are these falsehoods necessary?  There are brilliantly positive things like the Obama video below being circulated.

Surely, there’s no real substance here, but it features an uplifting message that looks and sounds great, and, most importantly, spews no lies.

This article, from the November issue of The Atlantic, is the best indictment of the problems we have with our airport’s security “theater” that I’ve found thus far.

Once again, Bruce Schneier comes through with absurdly overt flaws in the TSA’s nearly 7 billion dollar per year system.

Simply shocking.  And the way we treat foreign visitors hoping to spend their money here is equally ridiculous.

[via /.]

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own video game, check out this great step-by-step tutorial on making a side-scrolling shooter in Flash from Kongregate.

[via Waxy Links]

It’s a reality that we hear about a lot, but it’s often easy to avoid facing its terrible and very human impact on our communities.  Unlike other great causes like global warming, right now poverty is acutely affecting the lives of people just like us who don’t have access to adequate nutrition, education, medical care, and employment.

In my recent trip to South Africa, I was struck by the fact that most of the poverty was shunted away in townships that were far away from richer neighborhoods, and it hit me that it’s the same way back home.  The poor Hartford neighborhoods I drive by on the way to and from work are easily dodged with a slight change in route.

Our poverty in the United States is very different from the poverty in some other parts of the world, too.  It’s so easy to get overwhelmed, and not know where to start or what to do as an individual.  This is why I particularly liked the page linked above, which features things that we can all do as individuals to help fight poverty — there’s even a video if you don’t feel like reading.

Freakonomics posted this incredibly thought-provoking query by Paul Kimelman.

What do you think?

This is a very interesting Ars Technica article that delves into the truth behind statistics frequently used to bolster heavy-handed anti-piracy laws in the US.

While I’m not pro-piracy by any means, I think it’s important that we use facts when figuring out the best way to distribute intellectual property using current technology.

It’s too easy for self-interested parties to whip up FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) with bad or misleading data.

[via /.]

When one of the smartest, funniest, most perceptive, and all-around greatest writers I know starts a blog, it must be shouted from the cyber-hilltops!

Congratulations on the new project, Doug!  I’m looking very forward to the delights to come.

[photo by hagit]