Hey folks –

Thanks for visiting!

I’m still blogging, but this blog has been moved to my personal Web site: go to kenstonge.com/blog for more

The first computer I ever used hooked up to what was then — around 1986 or so — a 20-year-old TV that we kept in my brother’s room. It was a TI99 my mother bought on clearance at Zayre in Worcester. And it was awesome.

It came with a bunch of games that I really loved and over Christmas, in a fit of auld lang syne, I decided that I just had to play them again. Of course, by now, the ancient hardware was lost to antiquity (read: “parents’ attic”).

Hope was lost. Until, that is, I discovered what is quite possibly my new favorite software.

It’s an emulator that mimics the TI99 and comes with a couple of games, most of which were the ones I wanted.

Parsec was the one that got me going on the TI99 kick to begin with. It’s a side-scrolling spaceship game where you shoot alien ships. I remember it being a lot more fun than it actually was.

But there were two others that I really wanted. One was The Attack, which is basically a game where you pilot a miniature spaceship around and shoot this genetic-looking material before it turns into 4-legged creatures; a creepy idea, in hindsight. And of course that one wasn’t included with the emulator, so I had to find a version of it that someone else had hacked. (Note: The game is included with this one.)

The other was a game that I remember being a lot less fun than it actually is: Hunt The Wumpus. The goal of the game is to deduce where inside of a maze of rooms the wumpus hides. When you begin, you don’t know the shape of the maze. You have only a single arrow with which to kill the wumpus. If you miss, he eats you. If you land in his room, he eats you.

Oh yeah: There are pits inside of these mazes that, if you walk on them, will result in your plummeting to your death.

Of course, there are clues to the wumpus’s location. It leaves a trail of blood (read: “a single red circle”) in two rooms preceding him from any direction. Pits have slime on the walls (read: “green circles”) in any room adjacent to them. Heed the warnings, or perish.

It’s pretty much a dangerous life, that of the wumpus hunter.

And I can’t get enough of it. I have been playing this game for about a week now. It never gets old. At least, not in the first week.

Try it.

I put in a few links to some blogs that I like, admire or in some cases just know the authors of. In several cases all three. I’ll add more soon.

You might have noticed that my blogging has been scarce the last few weeks. It’s been a real kooky time for me, not least of which was because of the writing I have been doing.

In the last few weeks, I have wrapped up a few columns for the Hartford Business Journal, as well as a few economic forecast pieces for its sister publication, the Worcester Business Journal.

Here’s a wrap up of the forecast pieces:

• Biotechnology: Oh how the Worcesterites love being a translational research mecca.
• Technology: Have you heard of virtualization? The folks in Metrowest sure have. And they think it will make them a bunch o’ money.
• Manufacturing: Look out! The dollar’s falling! Good thing, at least if you’re a manufacturer…
• Health Care: A big hiccup could await The Bay State’s experiment with universal health care.

And some columns..

• Have you ever been in a public restroom when the lights went out? Well the light switch probably wasn’t made by this company.
• Do you know who Rube Goldberg is? Well this guy is the manufacturing world’s answer to him.

Oh how guitarists loathe it when others try to rip them off on craigslist. (Note: He’s right, the dude’s asking way too much.)

Harlan Ellison wants to be paid, man.

Well folks, It’s been a few days since I’ve written anything and here’s why: I was busy putting together a little project called NutmegMachine.com

It’s intended to be a blog, a news service and a resource for manufacturing in Connecticut, a topic I have been writing a column about (“Industrial Strength”) for the Hartford Business Journal since April. I wanted to take some the things I was doing in the column a little bit farther — maybe some pictures, a video or two, links to manufacturing resources, etc. This will be my attempt to try and do that.

It’s based on WordPress and right now I have the Classic theme up on the site. I haven’t done much updating because my brother and I (mostly my brother) have been doing all the back-end work to get it ready. Now I have to tweak it, so that might take a little time.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how it comes together over the next few weeks. I’ll let post again about it when things get more interesting.

If anyone has a good suggestion for which theme I might base the site on, let me know.

Here’s what I’m thinking right now.

• Prosumer
• Breaking News

E-mail me if you have any suggestions.

Hey folks. In case you were wondering what I have been writing lately (other than my blog), here are some new stories for this week:

• These pesky Broadway and Hollywood strikes are creating an interesting ripple in the insurance world. (Via Insurance Journal)
• The head of the Connecticut Workers Compensation Committee group warns that changes could be afoot in that state’s workers comp system. Why? Because most of the legislators are newbies. (Via Hartford Business Journal)

Via Lifehacker. One of the tedious parts of being a journalist is finding ways to track down the people you want to talk to. Lifehacker puts together a nice little 101 on how to find folks beyond merely googling them.

If you don’t feel like visiting the link, here are the highlights:

• To find a person’s home address and phone number: Try Zabasearch. This is a search tool that can be done on a state-by-state basis, e.g. John Smith, Anytown, Mass. It also pulls up birth date information, although sometimes it’s conflicting. I use this tool often to track down the home addresses and phone numbers of businessmen and businesswomen I write about — particularly when their PR flacks and secretaries give me the runaround.
• To find background on a person: Try Pipl. This is a tool I haven’t tried much yet. You need the name and city address for a person you are looking for to make it work best.
• To find out what a person says about himself on social networking sites: Try Wink. Once you know the name and address of the person you’re tracking down, see if he is a member of any social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn. A lot has been written about the info on these sites damaging people’s job prospects. But in researching the backgrounds of alleged criminals, it can be a gold mine. I know a certain reporter who found this type of tool very useful when breaking a story about a high school teacher who had sex with a teenage student: Sure enough, the teacher had a racy MySpace page, which was taken down the day after the story came out.
• If you’re a Firefox user: try the “Who is this person?” extension. This feature will allow you to instantly run a name through Google, Zabasearch and a few other sites. Could be useful, but I prefer doing these by hand.

I just got around to sorting some of the mail and magazines on my desk. I was reading through the most recent issue of Bostonia, which is the alumni magazine of Boston University. There is a profile of WBUR, the NPR-affiliate based at B.U. At one point in the piece, the writer makes this awkward reference to an alumna, considering the story is running in a combination marketing and journalism mag.

As recently as two years ago, newspaper stories about WBUR described the station as troubled. They noted its growing debt to BU and the cancellation of The Connection, then the station’s flagship program, with a huge national following. Prior to that was the October 2004 resignation of longtime general manager Jane Christo (CAS’65) amid accusations of mismanagement, many eventually deemed not credible by a BU investigation.

Does that strike anyone else as weird, knowing this is a puff piece promoting B.U.? I can’t quite decide if it’s very bad marketing or very good journalism.

[BTW, the things an internal investigation found that Christo did were not all that interesting.]