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I'd have thought one of the more diehard Apple folks would have responded to this by now. Since they haven't, I'll offer what I know, but I'll defer to anyone who has had more experience with this situation.

You have some right to be worried. Apple's procedure for connecting iOS machines to PCs is maddeningly opaque. (If you have two computers on the same network and want to switch sync from one to another, there appears to be a procedure. Try this.) There doesn't… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 4:18 PM on March 7, 2012 marked best answer

I learned using a book called Core Python <- Amazon link. I don't know if there are better books out there, it was the only Python book in our local bookstore, but it worked for me.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2012

The thing about Python to remember is, it's not hard. You almost don't need a book to learn in, there are plenty of websites that offer beginner-level information on it. Here's PythonInfo Wiki's list of guides for those without prior programming experience, and here's the list for people with programming experience.

Of particular note: Khan Academy now teaches Python!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:52 PM on March 7, 2012

Most things by Kurt Vonnegut.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 9:05 AM on February 17, 2012

Just chiming in that I have had that specific problem gjc mentions before, if you try to install Windows XP from a sufficiently old install CD to a computer with a SATA drive the install will fail. The solution is to have a CD with SATA drivers on hand and supply it when Windows requests it during the early, text screen portion of Install.

If you are installing from an OEM copy of XP that came with your machine you probably won't have this problem, because the drivers… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:32 AM on February 11, 2012 marked best answer

If Ubuntu works, can install, and present no issues then your problem almost certainly is SATA drivers. If you picked this moment up upgrade to a newer version of Windows you'll probably have no problems since versions since Vista have all included the drivers. I think later service packs of XP have them too -- if you can find an install disk with SP2 you should be good to go.

However I should emphasize that the problem still might not be SATA-related, or that the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:49 PM on February 11, 2012 marked best answer

How-To Geek has this page that might be useful. Note however, that it says SATA drives simply aren't found if your XP disk is too old -- it sounds to me like it IS finding the drive but it's erroring out while installing.

The problem could be bad install media too. There are lots of niggly little things that could go wrong with this. I can suggest that, if you're burning an install disk, that you do it at slower burn speeds, and don't give up if the first disk you… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:58 PM on February 11, 2012

(Actually, above I said that you needed a CD with SATA drivers. I was wrong -- it actually wants a floppy disk with the drivers at that point. Yes, in the 21st century. It's because of that requirement that one needs to slipstream in the drivers into a Windows XP install disk as described in the How-To Geek page.)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:00 PM on February 12, 2012

I've been to a Loving Hut in Atlanta, and it set off my personal cult alarms too. There were signs up saying the employees were volunteers, which considering the price of their food seemed very strange.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:10 PM on February 1, 2012

(Thinking about it, it might not have been signs but a friend of mine who claimed they were volunteers. Let's get this as accurate as I can make it.)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:11 PM on February 1, 2012

A middle ground between Arkham Horror and Elder Sign is Mansions of Madness, although it is a little pricey.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:38 PM on February 1, 2012

Excellent! Does just what I need, thanks!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:50 AM on January 31, 2012

If you do this, you may gain some personal satisfaction for having "made your point," but elections are about outcomes.

Not entirely, no. Voting third-party expresses dissatisfaction with the system -- in fact, it's damn near the only thing that does politically. If Obama had to worry about shoring up his base then maybe he'd be more willing to fight hard fights instead of rolling over for the Republicans so often.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 7:55 AM on January 20, 2012

Many articles that appeared in the paper form did not appear in the Kindle form. I didn't read reviews for Readers Digest though, so you may wish to look into that.

If this is true it is dishonest of them, since no abridgement is mentioned on the magazine's entry in the Kindle store.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:34 PM on December 11, 2011

Went and looked at the reviews in question. From my experience with the magazine, I have not noticed any missing content. The main complaints from the top two reviews on the site were: lack of cartoons (unlike what the reviews say they are there, they're just moved to the end of the issue), difficulty in navigating (that's been fixed somewhat since 2009 when the top review was written, thanks to a Kindle software update), and a single missing article that may well have been a one-time error.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:43 PM on December 11, 2011

Thirding GoodReader. I've used several such programs and it's the most complete of all the ones I've tried. It has excellent Dropbox and FTP support and also support for Box.net.

Box.net had (may still have?) a promotion going where if you logged in to their service with their iOS client during a limited time they would increase your account space to 50GB for free. If you can still get into that, then you could use GoodReader with it and have that much more space for… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:26 PM on December 11, 2011

If you don't mean psychic visions but just something that's bound to happen, then this comes up in several of H. P. Lovecraft's stories, that the Great Old Ones will someday return and it would be good not to be alive then. This is true to varying degrees depending on the story, and may or may not be true depending on what precisely you mean by "couldn't cope with that knowledge." Sometimes it's outright insanity, sometimes it's a powerful sense of dread, at the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:59 PM on December 8, 2011

Hark A Vagrant
Everything2 (requires some digging)
The Laugh Out Loud Cats
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:34 AM on November 30, 2011

I've written a few stories of varying quality (some of those comment fables on the blue), and I think I know the problem you're having.

I find, when I'm writing a story, it helps above all if there's a point to it, that exists even before you start writing. Storytelling is communication; if you have nothing to communicate, it will naturally be directionless. By illustrating some argument, the structure of your story will match with the structure of… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:17 AM on November 30, 2011 marked best answer

Don't just go by the result of a single program. In my experience there is malware that some programs will catch and some won't.

Malware has gotten much worse in the past few years. Not only can it be maddeningly difficult to catch and remove, but it can update itself over the internet and even download and install new malware. I've known even Microsoft Security Essentials to miss things, and after your program says the malware has been removed, make… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 7:17 PM on November 19, 2011

As luck would have it I had it rescue a friend's system today.

The first thing I did, besides basic information gathering (asking him what happened) was to run the Kaspersky rescue disk on it. I had some trouble connecting to the internet to update it; apparently the Gentoo Linux distribution it ran on didn't recognize the wireless card, so I had to go somewhere with wired internet I could connect to. It took a while for it to update, and about two hours to run through… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:32 AM on November 23, 2011

I think jbenben might be right. When they had the vet look at the cat, they couldn't have thought they would ever recoup that investment. You've acted on good faith. If you come clean with what happened, the moral debt clearly resides with your friend. There is no guarentee that they'll give you the cat, and it could end up being very awkward, but they also may appreciate knowing the story of the cat, and you are agreeing to pay their adopting fee anyway which isn't slight.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:16 PM on November 21, 2011

I've had good experiences with DVD Flick in the past.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:52 PM on November 19, 2011

Here's something to think about concerning investigation-based campaigns:

In my experience, they don't work all that well in non-historical settings. Call of Cthulhu has the advantage of being in a historical setting that really isn't all that different from our own, and that fact carries tremendous subtle advantages for investigation. Investigation is about the finding of clues and piecing together of facts. Both are problematic in an invented… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:25 AM on November 9, 2011 marked best answer

"comprehensive" should be "comprehension" of course. There are probably other typos in the above, but I presume you can still understand it all.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:32 AM on November 9, 2011

With the caveats I gave before still in place, I'll quickly answer the questions you offered:

1. What tips do you have for building homebrew adventures?

Think of what happened first, the thing being investigated, then think of the ways this occurrence affected the world. Write those down, then think of ways players can discover them, starting from zero information. One clue should lead to others, in a kind of web-like… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:29 PM on November 9, 2011 marked best answer

Should be "Investigation is able to truly DISPLACE combat". Gah. I write these comments fairly quickly, sorry about that.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:30 PM on November 9, 2011

One more thing you can do about magic is enforcing spell components, even adding them to many spells that don't ordinarily have them, and leaving traces of them when they are used.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:49 PM on November 9, 2011

Recorded Live scared the crap out of me as a kid. It's framed as a sort of comedy, but it isn't, it's just creepy as hell.

Dear god is evilcupcakes correct about this one. I can see it as being a comedy because the premise is silly, but it's filmed as a horror story, and a kid is unlikely to see any silliness in the premise. I certainly know I didn't the couple of times it turned up on HBO when I was little. The events in this film are definitely… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:10 AM on October 2, 2011

liquidindian is correct about Race for the Galaxy, except it isn't like an advanced version of San Juan, that's exactly what it is. Really, they're both distributed by the same company, and the creator of RftG even credits Andreas Seyfarth in the instructions. I think the best way to teach RftG is to first teach San Juan.

So many core game concepts are the same between those two games, far too many to be accidental. You're building to twelve cards… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:28 PM on September 21, 2011

This might not be what you're looking for, but: lots of computer games, including nearly every early CRPG. Wizardry and Bard's Tale especially; the first has lots of things to wear you down as you explore, Bard's Tale pulls out all the stops to make mapping difficult. I take the view that these are games about mazes, and to play them you absolutely must make accurate maps. The maze is the game far more than the combat, which is mostly to give you a reason to explore… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:04 AM on August 31, 2011

Since the Gawker fiasco, I use Dropbox with a text file myself. Since Dropbox is out for you, maybe you could just use a thumb drive containing a text file with your passwords?

The biggest threat to most people are automated password stealing techniques. Keeping your passwords in a separate file that you have to manually open to get your password is an annoyance for you, but it makes those passwords largely immune to automated password harvesting techniques. These… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:36 AM on May 5, 2011

I also work at Dominos.

Our anchovies arrive in little tins, and we do have to cut the pre-packaged chicken. We don't put plastic forks into boxes if there's a special order, but I'll mention this to management tomorrow. We don't have a laser printer for labels; it's thermal, proven by the fact that labels left in my hot car in summer tend to blacken. Other than these things, I can largely confirm what anonymous says.

There is one major… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:25 PM on April 21, 2011

Well, you're no longer a giant target for viruses and other malware that you are on Windows variants. Granted, Windows 7 is a lot, lot better on that front than XP, but it's still really easy to pick things with with little to no interaction on your part.

THIS. Gone are the days where you could be perfectly safe just by watching what you downloaded. Multiple times now my machines, including one running Windows 7, got infected simply by visiting some… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 4:00 PM on April 6, 2011

Is anyone still reading this? Some strategy ideas follow.

So I wrote an article on this game some time ago, and as part of my research I read every card and made notes about how often some things happened. I discovered something interesting about the Mythos cards: the gate sites are not evenly distributed among the cards!

In the base game: Science Building, Historical Society, Silver Twilight Lodge and Hibb's Roadhouse each only come up twice.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 4:05 AM on January 11, 2011

Hmm, now I wonder why you're looking for a copy of Cold Print....

(Say hello to Y'Golonac for me!)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:24 PM on January 1, 2011

I've never read Infinite Jest, but all this about projecting events outside the novel sounds a bit like what happens in Shirley Hazzard's novel The Transit of Venus, although maybe not so obfuscated as in Infinite Jest?

There is still some obfuscation going on though, I think it kind of has to be that way if you're to going to ask the reader to deduce something that takes place outside the literal text of the book.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:45 PM on November 7, 2010

It seems like it happens like clockwork. I'll use a paint program for around five minutes, then I'll try to do something perfectly reasonable, something that has always worked before. Only this time, it won't. Sometimes it was something I just did in the same document.

Most of the time when it happens, it's because there is a selection or mask in effect I didn't mean to apply. Most paint programs, if anything in the document is selected, will… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:35 PM on September 27, 2010

This page over at Microsoft's Support site describes how to turn Hibernation on in XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

Hibernate is great.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:47 AM on September 12, 2010

I've seen it spelled "Cooky" exactly one time in my life, in a For Better Or For Worse comic strip.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:31 AM on September 12, 2010

Open Source isn't always the best solution.

Weird editorializing in an AskMe thread, but nevermind that--

If it's Firefox, the very first thing you must do is check your extensions. Some of them can slow you down surprisingly much, and some may even have memory links.

One thing you might want to try right now, if you can do without your extensions for a while, is to try the new Firefox 4 beta,… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:30 PM on September 11, 2010

Memory LEAKS, sorry.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:31 PM on September 11, 2010

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Puerto Rico yet. The game is awesome. Arkham Horror's pretty good too, although quite long.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:15 AM on August 3, 2010

One game that often gets overlooked in these lists is HAL's NES game Air Fortress, possibly because they're interspersed with shooter levels. Once you get past those however, they become heavily exploratory and quite atmospheric.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:36 PM on July 12, 2010 marked best answer

One thing I've not seen addressed here so far is roguelike tactics. How to move and fight effectively, a skill that can carry over, to some extent, between all these games. If you're dying a lot in early Nethack even with Barbarians and Valkyries, that leads me to believe you could be spending a bit more time playing carefully.

We don't have any knowledge of your playing style so all we can do is suggest things scatter-shot and hope one of them hits your play style… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:42 PM on September 25, 2009

I wrote the above when I was in a hurry. I noticed, after hitting Submit, that you were mostly playing Crawl these days. I've not played as much Crawl as Nethack, and I've yet to win (although I've come close, and not really after many games).

Crawl is a somewhat harder than Nethack, not the least reason of which is that it's designed to eliminate places where the player can gain advantage through repetitive tasks, and also the Stone Soup is undergoing heavy… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:55 PM on September 25, 2009

If the weather is nice, I would suggest the Med Hens game.

Klinger, is that you? How's that Section 8 coming along?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:53 PM on May 9, 2009

God, I've used the "which" thing before. I feel like such a nerd now.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 11:01 AM on April 29, 2009

It's worth noting that automobile maintenance is an important profit center for car companies these days. There's a reason they don't make 'em like they used to.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:08 AM on December 31, 2008

Pope Guilty: Hmm... I feel I need to remark on this.

The page you link to claims that dnd is "arguably" the first computer RPG. It is not, and neither is this the original version of DND, which is playable on the cyber1 PLATO system I mentioned before.

The history file on the game identifies a couple of earlier-still RPGs, one of which. "pedit5" (they were named to system administrators wouldn't suspect they were games), is… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:29 PM on December 29, 2008