] This is a corrected version of the interview at:
] http://www.star-interviews.com/Rayma-Alfred.html. On the
] Star Interviews site, there is a confusing page where
] Rayma Alfred's name and picture are incorrectly listed
] with the interview of another dancer, Eliset Lobato. This
] page here attempts to untangle things.

As a favor for a friend, I set up a couple webpages with corrected interviews for some Vegas showgirls. I just did it for free (and for fun), but since the favor was for the girls' publicist, looks like I'll be getting some free tickets to shows next time I'm in Vegas for Def Con.

Elonka :)

Rayma Alfred - Corrected Interview

] CHICAGO (CBS 2) Wireless Home Computer Networks, called
] Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity), are very popular. Internet
] access without wires sounds like a good idea, but you'd
] better protect your computer network from Wi-Fi Spies.

Short but accurate and easy to understand article about how mainstream America needs to protect their home wi-fi networks. The attached video features the reporter doing a wardrive around Chicago with Mike Dahn, who some of the Memestreams regulars may recognize from Def Con and PhreakNIC.

CBS 2 Chicago: Protect Your Computer From Wi-Fi Spies

] Neurosis: a form of psychological suffering involving
] unconscious inner conflicts around basic anxiety and
] partially determined by cultural factors. All neuroses
] include anxiety, the defenses against it, numerous fears,
] a dissipation of energy, pretense, and impairment in
] vitality, spontaneity, freedom, enjoyment, and
] achievement. "The neurotic personality of our time"
] refers to the similarities in neuroses in a given
] culture; in ours, they include an excessive dependence on
] affection or approval, feelings of inferiority or
] inadequacy, inhibited self-assertion, hostility,
] inhibited or compulsive sexual activity, and
] competitiveness. Origin: lack of warmth and affection in
] childhood (children who feel wanted can healthily endure
] trauma and frustration) kept alive and urgent by
] present-day defenses.
]
] The essence of a neurosis is the neurotic character
] structure whose focal points are neurotic trends
] organized around the central inner conflict between
] neurotic and healthy dynamics. These in turn constitute
] three early relationship-management strategies: moving
] toward people (emphasizes the helplessness aspect of
] basic anxiety), against people (hostility), or away from
] people (isolation). The first tend to be dependent
] personalities, the second narcissistic, and the third
] schizoid. These attempts at solution gradually harden
] into personality traits and pervade the entire character
] structure.The healthy counterpart is growing with people.

I was surfing around the web today looking for a definition of "neurotic conflict" (I'm dealing with a couple friends here in St. Louis who have some serious emotional problems right now). While surfing, I found this page, with a variety of definitions. The "neurosis" definition in particular I found interesting, because of its perspective on the most common modern-day neuroses.

Glossary of Psychological Terms

Excellent search engine for nutritional data.

This is the best online database I've found for food info. It has not only the basic foods, and nearly every item from the fast food chains, but also many exotic items from restaurants. Chef salad, miso soup, tuna sashimi, movie popcorn with and without butter... It's all here, and frequently with multiple listings from different sources, so it's possible to compare different sets of information.

CalorieKing Food Database

] The food log shows your daily food intake broken down and
] subtotaled by meal.
]
] * Simple direct spreadsheet entry
] * Searches as you type
] * Full undo and redo
] * Make new foods from marked lines
] * View daily calorie breakdown and carb-prot-fat percentages

I've been reviewing various calorie-counting programs lately. Most of them are pretty pathetic. Small or nonexistent databases, tedious and difficult to use interfaces, etc.

This one, DietOrganizer by MulberrySoft, isn't perfect, but is the best I've found so far, and I may well buy it when my free trial runs out. It's extremely easy to use.

For example, when I'm entering in the list of everything I eat over the course of a day, I just type in a few letters of whatever I want, and it automatically suggests what it thinks I'm trying to type **even if the letters aren't consecutive**. And then it gets even better -- if I didn't have a full portion of something, like I ate a quarter of an apple, 2.5 strips of bacon, or drank 1/3 of a cup of orange juice, I can just enter in my best guess of the quantity, and it'll automatically calculate the correct relative percentages of calories, protein, carbs, etc., based on the other values that have been entered for "full" servings. And any items that it doesn't already have in its database, can easily be added, along with completely customizable "portions" suggestions. Like I've been entering in my favorite types of sushi, and I can set it to suggest portion sizes of "roll" "ounce", "piece", "serving", or anything else I want.

It also displays a very easy to understand color-coded bar chart that instantly shows the relative percentages of fat/protein/carbohydrates on each item, as well as how my total day's intake is looking, or it'll chart out the last week, or any other range I want.

Where it still needs improvement, is in the category of tracking exercise levels (it has a few basic categories, but I'd like to see something with more detail). On the plus side though, it does factor in what it can. For example, if I spend 30 minutes on an exercise bike, the software correctly calculates probable calories burned, and can factor it in to my daily total to see how my day is balancing.

Another area where the software gets confused has to do with combining foods. It does have excellent copy/paste functionality, and I can shift-click to select multiple different individual foods and then easily combine them into a single menu item (which is *very* handy for frequently-eaten sandwiches), but parts of the charting system break when I do this -- For example, it can easily tell the food groups of bread, tunafish, and mayo if they're entered individually, but when I combine them into a sandwich, it just shows up as "undefined" on the daily food group chart.

Overall though, the rest of the interface and functionality is head and shoulders above everything else I've looked at.

- Elonka

DietOrganizer - Diet software for calorie counting and weight loss

Fun idea. A dating site targeted specifically to gamers.

I just heard about it over the weekend so haven't checked it out yet, but anecdotally I've heard that it has thousands of members. On the downside, most of them appear to be on the West and East Coast, and not too many where I'm located in the Midwest yet.

Registration is free. Contacting someone has a cost (I think it's $19/90 days).

It might be worth it though to have a more focused search. I find that in my own quest for compatible dates, I tend to gravitate towards gamers, or at least geeks. :)

MMODating.com

] This Health and fitness calculator from Fitwise.com Includes:
] Blood Pressure, Body Mass Index, Heartrate Zones, Ideal Weight,
] Percent Body Fat (Circumference), Percent Body Fat (YMCA), Risk
] of Chronic Disease.

I've been surfing around the web trying to find free exercise resources, like how to properly use gym equipment, count calories, etc. You'd think that as diet-obsessed as our country is, this would be easy to find. Quite the opposite though, the vast majority of stuff out there is nearly 98%+ advertising, "buy my book before I tell you anything" or "lose weight fast" BS.

Every so often though I find something useful -- Free sites that are relatively low on ads, which actually have some useful information or tools. This is one of them, with a webpage that has several handy little utilities for calculating various fitness percentages.

Other sites with relatively good information to ad ratios: (I'll get around to meme-ing them at some point):

http://exercise.about.com
http://sportsmedicine.about.com
http://thepumpingstation.com/beginner.html

Health and Fitness Calculators

Decius wrote:
] ] SHA-1 has been broken. Not a reduced-round version. Not a
] ] simplified version. The real thing.

Well, "Broken" is relative. I'd instead use the term "somewhat weaker than expected". From what I'm reading, the old chances of collision were 2^80, and now with the "break" they've been reduced to only 2^69. Still pretty hefty.

Lots of good discussion on this at Slashdot:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139602

RE: Schneier on Security: SHA-1 Broken

I saw a link to this in Schneier's latest Crypto-Gram newsletter, and it made me laugh. It's a beautiful visual representation of why security needs to think about the "weakest link" principle.

Security: The Weakest Link

Yes, it's that time again . . .

Nominations are up, and I'm one of the selected voters again this year. Of course, most of the nominated games, I've never played.

So I'd appreciate if anyone reading this could take a look at the nominees, and let me know your opinions?

Oh, and my usual caveat: I'm not interested in comments such as "This game was really cool," or "Everyone I know plays this game." I'm more interested in things such as production values, best original game character, excellence in audio, level design, and so forth.

If you'd like to throw in your $0.02, please have comments to me, either by posting a reply here or sending an Email to elonka@aol.com, by February 21st, 2005.

Thanks much,

Elonka :)

-----

Best Game

Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games / Electronic Arts)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

New Studio

Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes)
Crytek (Far Cry)
inXile entertainment (The Bard's Tale)
Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)
the Behemoth (Alien Hominid)

Audio

Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Spark Unlimited / Activision)
Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
Halo 2 (Bungie Software / Microsoft Game Studios)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)

Character Design

Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft)
Sly 2: Band Of Thieves (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Game Design

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Pikmin 2 (Nintendo)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Technology

Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games / Electronic Arts)
Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
EyeToy: AntiGrav (Harmonix Music Systems / Sony)
Far Cry (Crytek / Ubisoft)
Half-Life 2 (Valve / Vivendi)

Visual Arts

Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Entertainment)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Writing

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (High Voltage Software / Vivendi)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Obsidian /
LucasArts)

2005 Game Developers Choice Awards - Assistance Requested