Sunday, July 31, 2011

Xbox gamer dies

Sad story:
From 3tk
The family of a budding computer programmer have on Saturday launched a campaign to raise awareness about the health risks of playing online computer games after their son died following a marathon session on his Xbox.
A post-mortem revealed that 20-year-old Chris Staniforth -- who was offered a place to study Game Design at Leicester University -- was killed by a pulmonary embolism, which can occur if someone sits in the same position for several hours.
Deep vein thrombosis normally affects passengers on long-haul flights, but medical experts fear youngsters who spend hours glued to their consoles might also be at risk and have urged them to take regular breaks.(link)
When we play Xbox, we take regular breaks (she smokes, I just get up and walk around; fix a drink or whatever). It's not because of this, simply take breaks because of the need to move. I guess that tingle in your legs is telling you to do something.

I hope that the campaign the parents are starting will help; but ultimately it will be up to the gamers (and their parents) to fix this problem (that shouldn't exist).

Friday, July 29, 2011

Man it's Hot Today

I blame 'Global Warming{tm}':
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
Examiner
Read it all heh, the Forbes writer is clearly an 'denier'.

Of course climate change is happening; it always happens. Now maybe we can start to see some of the foolish AlGore-ish stuff go away (we can wish).

Warzone

 Recently played a few games on Caldera (warzone) and then... Lots of luck in this one, but satisfying