It's Snowing in Downtown Toronto...

Ack!

As if the earlier sunsets were not enough. Another clue that winter is on the way. Time to clean out the garage for parking inside and stow all the summer gear away.

Hoping to get the girls skating quite a bit and maybe even skiing this winter. Hopefully that will be more successful than bike riding was this summer. Time slips by so quickly and steadily...

Online Privacy

In my last post I pledged to overthrow the evil FalconPain from his perch atop the Metroid Prime Pinball leaderboard.

My battle strategy, should I want to include social engineering tactics in my warplan could have started with a quick web search. How easy the mighty can fall. In less than 5 minutes I had FP's real name and birthdate on my screen. That needed cross checking for verification but was very much contextually valid and I would say 85%+ likely to be the target of my conquest.

PEOPLE - WATCH WHAT YOU POST ONLINE. Sorry for screaming. But geez...

I like to play Canasta on Yahoo Games (let me know if you play) and as a public service I often warn people when they are revealing too much online. One unsuspecting opponent was shocked when I asked her how disturbing the noise was from the local airport. Her id included a part that I guessed was her zipcode. And so it was. I found a map of her region and narrowed her location to within a small area in < 10 minutes.

This day of personal publishing / blogging / online resumes has its advantages, but we must remember to not go over the line. At the very least, never display your birthdate in a public profile. Identity thieves and other scoundrels are on the prowl...

Not to mention, pinball wizards on a mission. So BEWARE!

Metroid Prime Pinball High Score - Pirate Frigate Single Mission

Updated: 2007-02-27

It took a few months and many attempts (glad I was not paying by the quarter, or is it loonie these days?). But - MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (where's my flight suit?).

Woo Hoo!!!

And not just by a little bit either, smacked it out of the park baby :)

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Originally posted on 2006-10-09:

Metroid Prime Pinball High Score - Pirate Frigate Single Mission, originally uploaded by michaelbd.

Step way back to the mid - late 70s and early 80s on any particular Tuesday night and you'd likely find me hanging out at the local bowling alley. While my Mom or her Parents were knocking down pins in their league I was often chocking up points on the old classic pinball games.

Other than Galaga - which still rocks on the Nintendo GBA / GC, pinball was my thing. Something about the tactile feedback and sequence missions satisfy my compulsive stimulation requirements (OCD posting coming as soon as I perfect it with an even word count and balance the sentence symmetry).

Some of my friends participate in a pinball league which I dare not try as I'm sure to get sucked in beyond rescue. But I'm there in spirit and kicking your butts: John + Tom :)

The best of form factors for me is the Metroid Prime Pinball (http://www.metroidprimepinball.com) on the Nintendo DS (Lite). A combination action packed pinball game with embedded mini-game challenges from the Metroid shoot'em up series. All in a package easy enough to keep my brain from exploding from contemplation of germ sources and distribution patterns on my daily Subway commute.

I generally stick to puzzle type games that I can get in and out of very quickly with little if any back story and deep command sets to learn. E.g. tetris, galaga and f-zero are some of my longer running GBA favourites and now sudoku and metroid pinball on the DS.

Watch out falconpain - I'm coming after you.