The same people who redid the Gmail front end have also decided to go out and redo Google Calendar as well.  This color scheme follows the same design cues as the Gmail version.

Google Calendar Redesigned by Globex Designs

This site is amazing, as the title of the blog tells you they post at least once a day about some great architectural thing.  Some of the stuff out there is amazing!  The picture to the left is a picture of Japan’s Storm Sewers.

Arch Daily

So I just purchased the Nyko Charge Base 2.  This allows you to charge your PS3 remotes without having to use a USB port on the PS3 and the main reason I got it is because it charges using an AC adapter.  This is nice because then you do not have to leave your PS3 on to charge your controllers.

The unit is well designed and comes with little dongles that you see in the bottom right of the picture.  You plug that dongle into the USB port on the remote and then you can just place the remote up-side-down into the charger.  The LED’s indicate if its charging are done, Red means charging Green means done.  It takes 2 hours to fully charge the remotes.  This will be a nice add-on to my PS3 so that I can make sure my remotes are fully charged, nothing worse then running out of power when you are playing.  Especially since I only have one DualShock Controller while the other two are not.

I bought mine at Microcenter because by the time shipping and handling was done from the Internet it was the same price.  Plus nothing like instant gratification!

$29.99 Nyko Charge Base 2

Well we finally got our hands on a golf game for the PS3 but it wasn’t Tiger Woods 08 it was Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds.  With all the updates to the PSN store and all the buzz about this game I figured it was work a try to check it out.  So Laura and I fired up the PS3 and put this game in.  I kinda knew what I was in for graphic wise but not so much game play wise.

My assessment of the game is that it is a dumbed down version of Tiger Woods.  After 18 holes that was a very good conclusion.  No more having to worry about flop shots or what angle to hit the ball at it’s basically a hit X to start swing hit X to stop and hit the ball.  As you are playing the other play can press and button on the controller and either shout confidence boosting comments or make the crowed boo and make fun of you.  We found this basically to be an annoying feature but something very addictive to do while waiting for your turn.

When it came to putting the game really gets simple compared with Tiger Woods and is a synch to master.  Once you figure out the power bar and how to use it the game is pretty easy.  Obviously this game is made for a younger generation of gamers.  Which is just fine, but nothing that interested me.

So in conclusion we were not impressed and only played 18 holes and returned the game back to Gamefly this week.  Still waiting on Tiger Woods 2008 as we are a little partial to that game, and we like being able to create our own players with their own looks and play actual golf courses with a little bit of challenge.

This past weekend I was able to finally spend some time playing video games again and in about 8-9 hours I beat Army of Two.  This was a great game is had a very well developed story line.  Basically the gist is that you work for a private military contract company that is used by the US government.  The president wants to make it so that the entire army is contract for hire but there is one senator that is not on board.  In one of your missions you are asked to kill the leader of a terrorist group but you soon find out that it was actually the senator that you killed and then everyone is after you while you try to clear your names.

Game play is a blast and I was very very happy to see that with Firmware 1.36 forced feedback for this game was added and my controller started vibrating.  The main idea of the game is that you are controlling two people, one person you are in full control of and the other you can tell to run forward, stay back, or fallow you.  This is great because finally you can draw fire and attention off yourself and then sneak up behind the enemy and shoot them from behind.  This makes a FPS much easier as the game is smart enough to divert attention.  However, you only have one shot before everyone realizes where you are and starts shooting at you instead.  There are lots of controls in this game to master especially the ability to control the other player while still changing weapons, reloading and shooting and ducking for yourself.  Although they come pretty naturally after a while

Throughout the game you earn money for completing jobs and with that money you can buy additional weapons.  The cool thing is you can buy a ton of weapons because there are two of you and you can switch weapons in the middle of the game.  So if you want the sniper rifle you just tell your partner to come here and then you exchange weapons.

The only thing I think they could have done to make this a better game is add a map and a compass! I spent a lot of time running around in circles on a few levels because after we killed everyone I wasn’t sure how to get to the next checkpoint.  Other than that this was a very enjoyable game and kept my interest well and had some amazing graphics.

Below are three options on how to change FireFox’s new Awesome Bar settings.  Personally I love the new URL bar and actually use bookmarks and tags now and thanks to Foxmarks all my computers have the same bookmarks.  However in the case of my girlfriend she didn’t like the new feature so below are your options if you fall in the same boat:

Option A: Disable autocomplete drop-down entirely

Use this if you don’t want Firefox to display any kind of suggestions in the Address Bar be they from your browsing history or from saved bookmarks.

Open the about:config page and set the value of browser.urlbar.maxRichResults as –1. Restart Firefox and your Firefox 3 address bar will behave just like that of Firefox 2.

Option B: See web addresses that you have typed

In this option, the drop-drop remains enabled but it will only suggest website addresses / URLs that you have previously typed in the location bar.

Open about:config and set the value of browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to False. Now none of the entries from your browser history or bookmarks will appear in the ‘awesome’ address bar.

Option C: Remove Bookmarks Completely from Address Bar

This is probably the option you are looking for. Firefox 3 uses the Frecency score to determine sites that should appear in the drop-down. We can set frecency value for bookmarks to zero and thus they won’t appear in the location bar.

Open the about:config page, and set value of places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to zero.

Setting places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus to 0 will prevent bookmarks from appearing that you have never visited while places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus will prevent display of bookmarks that you have visited since the last time you cleared private data in Firefox.

This website is really cool.  It allows you to just drag the three colors Red, Green and Blue and adjust their concentration and it will suggest a good contrasting color scheme.  This is very helpful for creating websites or dashboards for work.  It takes the guessing game out as to what the contrasting colors would be with the help of the preview section shown to the left.

ColorMixers

[Show as slideshow]

This little gem is just 5 mins from my office in Boulder.  It is a nice little 17.5 mile lollypop with some nice technical parts but allows for quick easy bail out if you run into issues.  I did manage to fall on this ride last week while trying to close one of the cattle gates my foot was still clipped in my bike and I mis-stepped and fell flat on my butt.  The hardest part is coming up the hill after passing Eldorado Canyon entrance.  It is really steep with lots of rock but I can make it about 2/3 of the way up before I have to walk.  This is a great little quick 2 hour ride after work to blow off some steam.

  Chainlove.com is a site that sells biking stuff for 40%-80% off retail price.  They have brand name products that are brand new and of very high quality

  SteepandCheap.com is like REI online with only one product at a time.  They sell everything related to the outdoors and are the parent company of Chainlove.com.

 Woot.com I believe is the originator of this type of website as they are the first ones I ever heard of.  The only difference is that Woot is one product per day until they sell out.  Every once and a while they have a wootoff where they do multiple products in a day.  You have to be quick because these products typically sell out very fast (<10 mins) depending on the product.

Another AdobeAir application lets you run Pandora without having to dedicate a tab in Firefox.  This one has a big application because it allows you to continuously listen to music without having to keep your browser open.  As I said this is very similar to the idea of Prism but seems to be taking off a little better.

Pandora Desktop