Whistle your way through life

It's been eight days since my last blog? Seems like it's been twice as long. Anyway, I'd like to share a video of Crayon Physics for the iPhone/iPod touch that I saw on Kotaku.

How you say? Ah, yes: WANT!

I'd also buy SimCity and Rolando from the App Store if they were reasonably priced. $10 is too much. I think $5 is the maximum I'd pay for an app. That's what I paid for Tetris and that seems about right (although free is still best).

Maybe later I'll do a writeup on some of the apps that I found useful or entertaining. Really, if you browse the Top 25/50 section in the App Store, you'll find most of the ones I've used. I will offer a few thoughts right now though.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of applications that are more than just "make fart sounds." I really enjoy Mint, but it's data is several days out of date. (It seems I have to go to the actual website to have the data actually refresh itself, which kind of goes against the point of the application.) Having the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on tap is both patriotic and informative (the "notes" section houses some fun trivia). Reading books using Stanza is surprisingly pleasant.

There are several applications that do the same thing that I wish would merge however. DrunkDial has the handy option of checking off which ingredients you have while 5,800 Free Drinks has a greater portfolio of drinks as well as an interface that is slightly better in some respects. Then there are two YellowPages apps that are useful in different situations.

One app that I'm hoping works as intended is WiFinder. I thought for sure that McDonald's offered free Wi-Fi, but when a friend and I parked outside of one to look up bars to find drink specials, I was surprised to see a page telling me that I had to buy this service. WiFinder's purpose then is to tell me which available networks have passwords and which are truly free so I don't have to waste time thinking that I'm getting internet access only to find out 30 seconds later that they want you to pay for it.

So instead of going off on a rant about how Wi-Fi should be free and national, I think I'm going to go and play with my lovely gadget some more. It's been a real treat so far. Kudos to you, Apple.

"Ret" him into your heart

This is just too cute.

I think this little boy (?) provokes the loving, peaceful message of the Beatles better than that awfully saccharine film Across the Universe. On the subject of the Beatles (and if you felt a bit cheated somehow), here's a very interesting animated video of an interview with John Lennon.

I told that Kraut a fuckin' thousand times, I don't roll on Shabbos!

I saw this on Gizmodo and I just had to share."This is a kosher vending machine located at the E-Walk Theatre on 42nd Street, in Manhattan, NY. It sells hot tasty nosh, but only 24/6. Why? Because it's Shabbos, that's why."

Acorns and Lightning

I was reading Jeff Green's blog about how he had just watched Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and I thought I might re-watch some Miyazaki movies for myself. I remember Princess Mononoke was the first one I had seen, and it's probably my least favorite. I think Nausicaa delivers the same theme but better/weirder. So I decided to go with Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

I watched Spirited Away yesterday morning with a very mild hangover. It was perfect, actually. The movie provided a workout for my imagination that I desperately needed and it made me feel like I was an observer to events within a dream instead of just watching a movie. It's probably my favorite movie of Miyazaki's.

Then, last night I watched Totoro before I went to bed. It's the kind of movie that I want to show my children someday. It's also a portrait of the kind of father I'd like to be. If I could make it so that nothing scared my kids and make everything seem like an adventure, I think I would be very satisfied with myself. But as for the movie, I think it's only flaw is it's ending. It kinda seems like the team ran out of money and they had to abbreviate things considerably. Still, it's a wonderful movie. Even Roger Ebert loves it.

Now I've got plans to watch Howl's Moving Castle, which I have not seen before. A point of contention that I wanted to bring up, though, was wondering if people watched these movies subbed or dubbed? I believe that Studio Ghibli's dubbing quality is of the highest caliber, so I completely enjoy watching the dubs. I'm not so anal retentive that I have to watch everything in it's "purest" form. I mean, I love Pan's Labyrinth and Amelie, so subtitles do not deter me from watching a movie at all. But I also think that if you're going to be watching these movies with children, it'd be stupid of you to call them "n00bs" because they can't read subtitles.

But as for why I'm writing this (I certainly don't need to evangelize Miyazaki anymore than creepy nerds already have), I'm not really sure. Ever since the semester ended, I've felt like I needed a project to do. First off, I need to get my exercise bike fixed. Then at least I could waste my time with movies and get a bit of a workout in the process.


Last night I also saw the trailer for Guitar Hero: Metallica. Now, I have to come right out of the closet and say that I loved metal from middle school to high school. Megadeth, Opeth, and Dream Theater were my favorites, but Metallica (specifically James Hetfield) was one of the reasons I picked up the guitar and why it continues to be a passion of mine. Now, I don't want any haters on here saying that Metallica sucks ever since they cut their hair. (That'd be a misnomer. It was actually on the Black Album that they starting "sucking.") They do have a lot of songs that are great fun to play. Granted, I could play most of them on a real guitar, but this new Guitar Hero SKU is making me ponder buying some more stupid plastic instruments.

The plan is to get the full bundle for Guitar Hero: Metallica since I hear that World Tour's drum kit is superior in build quality to the Rock Band 2's and I also hear that it's quieter to boot. Then, I'd get rid of every plastic instrument I have except for my Guitar Hero III guitar and I would pay the $5 to transfer Rock Band 1 to my 360's hard drive and buy a stand-alone version of Rock Band 2. So then I would have Rock Band 1 & 2 along with Guitar Hero: Metallica until Rock Band's Beatles game came out. I believe with that setup I'd be completely satisfied with rhythm games for years to come.

Speaking of silly plastic drum kits though, at work we had one of those crazy $300 Ion kits for Rock Band 2. The thing is, it's broken now, because some stupid kids decided to use it as a chair. Just thought I'd throw that out there: teenagers are idiots... Well, most of them anyway.

It's pronounced uh-NAL-ruh-pist

Clips of some of the best moments from one of my favorite TV shows, Arrested Development.

Demetri Martin - If I

Here's Demetri Martin's 2004 stand-up special If I. Demetri is one of my favorite comedians and I had not seen this special previously (I think because it was aired on the BBC?). Enjoy. I think it's probably his best stand-up routine I've seen.

Also, here's a 224-word palindrome Demetri wrote:

Dammit I'm mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I'm in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I'm a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I'm it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I'd assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I'm a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I'm mad.

1UP's Game Night: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

The "Versus" series seems to back with a vengeance in this video of the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom tournament held within the 1UP offices.

It looks like a lot of fun... Fun that probably won't be coming to our shores (I guess it would be kind of hard to sell Americans on what the hell a "Tatsunoko" is, plus I heard there were legal troubles with that brand). It's a shame.

Someone commented at the tournament that Capcom could make a "Hanna-Barbera vs. Capcom" game. Scooby vs. Rush sounds like a good match-up to me. I don't think Yogi Bear could throw out a Shoryureppa though. Hmm... Hanna-Barbera does mean that you could potentially play as Harvey Birdman, Johnny Bravo, Dexter, Space Ghost, and the Powerpuff Girls though.

If Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was brought over to the States on 360 or PS3, it'd be a purchase I'd consider. Along with Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter II HD Remix, Capcom is doing something wonderful. I appreciate it, really. Now Street Fighter Alpha 3 HD Remix, please?

The Return of Leggy Blonde

Flight of the Choncords Season 2 Online Premiere!

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos

You make me sick, I make me sicker

These screenshots of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on GAF must be seen.

It's a bit funny hearing that Uncharted 2 concerns Marco Polo and Kublai Khan after I had just read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino for class. At any rate, I'm glad that Uncharted is getting a sequel. I mean that's better than getting a followup to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, isn't it? I just wish I just wouldn't have stopped playing the first Uncharted after it started to get a bit "supernatural."

Sí, Paloma

I encourage everyone to read this excellent article from Popular Mechanics: Finally, Bring Home the Hollywood Classics in HD. Here are a few interesting excerpts:

To understand the mammoth effort it takes to transfer a classic film, Popular Mechanics visited the facilities where the Criterion Collection restores its movies. Criterion is legendary for its painstaking remastering jobs. These days, most of what we refer to as “film restoration” isn’t done on film. “There could be multiple copies of film elements, original negatives or duplicate negatives,” says Lee Kline, Criterion’s technical director. Criterion gathers the best it can find, then transfers those elements to the digital domain. Most are transferred using high-definition DataCine, where film is scanned in near real time (24 frames per second) directly to uncompressed data files. But in the case of fragile negatives, restorers often choose the more painstaking method of digitally scanning individual film frames using a scanner synchronized to sprocket holes at the edges of negatives. After it is scanned, each movie is sent to Criterion’s facility on HD CAM cassettes at full 1080p high-definition resolution and is uploaded in the company’s central machine room.

Then the fun begins. A technician in a small office sits in front of a computer monitor with a virtual pen and touchpad and goes through the movie frame by frame, fixing scratches, removing dirt and schmutz. Take, for instance, Criterion’s painstaking restoration of art-house favorite Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express. The film’s opening sequence is in slow motion, but rather than create that slow motion in camera, Wong Kar Wai did it in postproduction, duplicating each frame three times with an optical printer. Every single frame—the original and the three dupes—and its imperfections must be dealt with individually. There are automated methods of cleaning up digital transfers, after which technicians can assess the results and backtrack in case of error. But Express is getting an exclusively human touch, with hands-on techs making all the decisions on what stays, what goes and what replaces what goes. And that’s just the visuals: In another part of the facility, an audio technician goes through the film’s soundtrack, using Pro Tools and other software to remove extraneous pops and other forms of sonic distortion. The cleanup of the 1-hour 42-minute film will take 480 hours.

...

By any measure, the transfer of Sleeping Beauty was an epic job. Lowry had access to the original negative from the Disney archives. The film was originally shot in the Vista Vision format, in which a single frame is the size of two 35 mm frames. The negative was also in what is called sequential color—first frame red, second green, third blue. Since each frame of film produced three scans, that meant three times the restoration work. As a result, the digital restoration of the film took eight months instead of the typical six. “You scan that kind of material carefully and you get incredible results,” Lowry says. “Beautiful color. Excellent resolution. And what little grain there is can be cleaned up, along with dirt and scratches, to create the ideal version of what the designers, animators and colorists intended.”

...

Compression, though, introduces a whole new set of technical challenges. This process squeezes down the size of a film’s digital file by applying an algorithm that trims redundant picture information, hopefully with minimal distortion. Despite marketing claims to the contrary, there is no such a thing as “lossless” digital compression. Most video compression is “lossy”—that is, it loses information that the eye presumably can’t discern. The algorithms are incredibly flexible, and there is no standard for hi-def compression. Consider, for instance, that the uncompressed digital master of a typical Hollywood movie requires 5 to 15 terabytes of storage space. To fit it onto a Blu-ray disc, it is compressed by 100 times or more to 50 gigabytes. For distribution over an HD rental download service, it is reduced to 6 gigabytes or less. Yet all of these versions of the same movie are considered hi-def.

To save space, mastering engineers get creative. One trick is to apply a lot of compression to dark backgrounds—thereby reducing the bit rate (the amount of video data presented each second). But too much compression can create blacks that look like dark clumps instead of a natural part of the overall picture. Picture information with a lot of motion in it, such as flickering flames, needs to be handled carefully in compression, lest the result be a bleary, unrealistic rendition.

That's how we make it right

This mix is both a further procrastination of writing essays and also a love letter to my local college radio station, KCSU, with DJ Macondo (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1 - 4 pm) being the target in particular. This mix is going to be longer than usual and contains songs that I've discovered through KCSU, songs that have been popular on KCSU, requests for songs I had made, and then just some songs I like thrown in for good measure.

So here it is immortalized: the Fall semester of 2008 in a 19-song playlist. There were two songs I really wanted to include, but Googling the lyrics yielded no results, which I'm very sad about.

To bring things down even more, it doesn't look like I'll be making any more mixes. Mixwit is shutting down and apparently I can't even embed a tape on my blog anymore. There's really no point in finding a similar service, since it will most likely be shut down just like Muxtape was. It's too bad. They were cool and useful services.

1. Noah and the Whale - 2 Atoms in a Molecule
2. The Boy Least Likely To - Be Gentle with Me
3. Miniature Tigers - Like or Like Like
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
5. Caribou - Melody Day
6. Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
7. Minus the Bear - Guns & Ammo
   
8. Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook
9. Seabear - I Sing I Swim
10. Sun Kil Moon - Carry Me Ohio
11. The Walkmen - On the Water
12. She & Him - Sentimental Heart
13. Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
14. Ratatat - Shempi
15. Neon Neon - I Lust U
16. MGMT - Kids
17. A Faulty Chromosome - Jackie O
18. Modest Mouse - Out of Gas
19. The Real Tuesday Weld - Last Words

House of Cards

Penny Arcade sums up Sony's Home in one paragraph:

The Beta for PlayStation Home is now available to everyone, and now you know what I know: this is what happens when your marketing department tries to make a game. Here is everything you need to understand about Home, if you should accidentally launch it from your XMB: press and hold the PlayStation button in the center of your Dual-Shock or Sixaxis controller. From the menu that appears, select Quit.

I can't think of a worse use of money from either Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft. Having a Wii peripheral that would make your Wii into a toaster or a toenail clipping jar would be more useful and entertaining.

What Sony should have done with all that precious time and money is make the PS3 as good and easy to use as the 360 in terms of a social experience with friends. Just because it's free doesn't make the PlayStation Network good.

Also, Netflix -- which I'm hoping will be the next console "must have" like analog sticks and force feedback were.

Ah, but at least Sony hasn't fucked up as bad as Nintendo. The only game that came out this holiday season for the Wii was Animal Crossing? I guess I'd take an impotent Second Life clone over that.

The best of the crap

Time is slipping slowly into a safe, and the moment when you most want into your cache of memories, the vault is locked, the combination a mystery. ... Or at least that's what a night of drinking will do to you.

Anyway, I wanted to give a quick blurb of praise to Electronic Gaming Monthly's best writer (or its funniest, at least... Sorry Sharkey). Tucked away in the back pages of every issue lies a true comic genius that I'm hoping you're familiar with. His name is Seanbaby and each month his comedy gets more and more ferocious -- like a Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouse kick to the face that increases in intensity with each repeated blow.

Here's an excerpt from EGM's January 2009 issue:

Everyone loves to delude themselves about how much self-improvement they sneak into their lives. I've got some bad news, though. Swimming through triple-cheeseburger drippings to get your Diet Coke isn't a healthy meal. Watching pornography in ankle weights isn't a workout. Conan with French subtitles is not learning a second language, and sticking a baby in front of Mozart only takes jobs away from puppet musicians. And most of all: High-speed, second-grade math on your DS is not making you smarter. More to the point, I also put my brain through a battery of tests with every brain videogame I could find.

I remember reading that intelligence is traditionally measured in five different ways: Arkansas capitals, shot put, ham glazing, TV/VCR repair, and necromancy. I threw out these outdated, culturally biased categories and came up with two of my own. The first is Reasoning. This is a very measurable standard of intelligence based around arithmetic and logic. The other is Practical Intelligence.

Reasoning is easy to quantify; it goes from one to five. Practical Intelligence is much more difficult to measure, so pay close attention. Smart people in the wild show off their intelligence through the inverse of their knowledge of culturally shared experiences. You'll find that the smarter a person is, the less applicable knowledge they have. To explain anecdotally, people were asked if they enjoy watching VH1's Rock of Love with Bret Michaels. Their answers ranked, with five being the smartest, and one the dumbest:

• 5 - I'm sure I don't know. In fact, I'm so smart that I don't even know what a Bret Michaels is.
• 4 - Blarg of Blarg? I don't watch much TV, and my intelligence makes it hard to even remember what you asked.
• 3 - I've seen it, but only because I taped Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire all those years back, and now my damn TiVo thinks I watch game shows where the prize is people.
• 2 - I never miss it! I even caught hepatitis from sharing a drifter with a chick from that show!
• 1 - Enjoy it?! Man, I'm withholding emotional support from my daughter so she'll grow up and give future generations her own Rock of Love!

Now that you're fully briefed, I'll rate each game on how well it improves my brain in the two categories. Some games that didn't make the cut to clinical trials were Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, Mega Brain Boost, and Best of Tests DS. Best of Tests DS is by far the best adaption of traditional IQ tests, but I refused to review it because I kept pronouncing it "Best of Testes, Yes." This was not only the exact opposite of the spirit of the article but also impossible to prevent. I apologize to the makers of Best of Testes, Yes -- recipient of the coveted Official Nintendo Seal.

If you'd like to learn more about Seanbaby and his charitable organization, please donate to his website linked here.

Proposition 8 - The Musical

Saw this on Wil Wheaton's blog:

Featuring Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, Maya Rudolf, Craig Robinson, Andy Richter, and many more.

According to Wikipedia, final results will be available on December 13th.

I'm deeply touched

My "big" Christmas present for this year came in the mail the other day -- a lovely, new 32 GB iPod touch. I convinced my mom to let me futz with it so that I could put my music on it so that I could actually use it on the day I get it. (You see, I'm having Christmas at my sister's house, so I wouldn't have access to my stuff.) Of course, I couldn't just sync music and put it back... No, I had to have some fun first.

As the device has been out for a while and virtually every other nerd on the internet has already jizzed themselves over the iPhone, I don't think I need to reiterate the device's many amazing uses. That said, I am thoroughly impressed by many of the free applications that are available in the app store (Google Earth, UrbanSpoon, AIM, 5800+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes, Free Translator, Stanza, last.fm, and AroundMe are some of the most useful ones) and using the device is fantastically brisk and easy.

So yes, short of not having phone functionality, the iPod touch is one of the funnest and most useful gadgets I've ever acquired -- it really is a nerd's panacea! Syncing took forever, but hopefully it only hurts the first time...

I'd still like more storage space since my digital copy of Juno weighs in at 1.5 gigs and I'm expecting Wall-E and the Dark Knight to be the same. Add to that the video podcasts that I watch regularly (Tekzilla, the Totally Rad Show, Diggnation) and there's still a far cry from enough space. Plus, there's still a lot of music that I wish I could carry around with me. My library is almost 50 gigs and I'd like to think that at least half of that is worth listening to most of the time.

So, in an alternate reality where the iPhone came in 64 GB or 128 GB flavors and service month-to-month wasn't $60, I'd hit that so hard my pelvis would shatter into dust. But as it is, I'm very happy with just a 32 GB iPod touch. Heck, I even found a video on YouTube that tells you how to text for free using the AIM app, so now the touch really is just the iPhone without the phone.

R-66Y's Got Soul

Just when I thought I might never hear Rick Astley's sexy voice again, someone made a mashup video of "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Robo's Theme" from Chrono Trigger.

It goes fairly well together, although Yasunori Mitsuda claims that he had never heard of Rick Astley before someone brought this video to his attention.

It's the new hotness...again.

Fallout 3 Character Guide

This is my own personal map for my idea of the "perfect" character in Fallout 3. I used this build for my second character and I was very happy. There are small changes that you can make to suit your style, but I don't think you'll find anything more effective than a combat shotgun to the face.

Starting SPECIAL:
Strength 4
Perception 7
Endurance 4
Charisma 5
Intelligence 8
Agility 7
Luck 5

Perks by level:
02 - Intense Training
03 - Intense Training
04 - Educated (Requirements: Intelligence 4+)
05 - Intense Training
06 - Toughness (Requirements: Endurance 5+)
07 - Intense Training
08 - Commando OR Strong Back (Requirements: Strength 5+, Endurance 5+)
09 - Commando OR Strong Back (Requirements: Strength 5+, Endurance 5+)
10 - Finesse (Requirements: Luck 6+)
11 - Intense Training
12 - Sniper (Requirements: Perception 6+, Agility 6+)
13 - Intense Training
14 - Master Trader (Requirements: Charisma 6+, Barter 60+)
15 - Cyborg (Requirements: Science 60+, Medicine 60+)
16 - Better Criticals (Requirements: Perception 6+, Luck 6+)
17 - Intense Training
18 - Concentrated Fire (Requirements: Small Guns 60+, Energy Weapons 60+)
19 - Intense Training
20 - Grim Reaper's Sprint

SPECIAL total at the end without equipment mods:
Strength 6
Perception 10
Endurance 6
Charisma 6
Intelligence 10
Agility 10
Luck 7

You could also consider taking a few points away from Perception and applying them to Charisma or Luck.


General Tips:
If you didn't know, there are 20 bobbleheads in the game that will increase your SPECIAL statistics by one each and your skills by 10 points. These are crucial. You can get the Strength bobblehead at the start of the game when you come to the town of Megaton, which is why I put Strength at 4. The Medicine bobblehead is also found in Vault 101 and is available from the start. I would recommend making getting as many of these as you can one of your primary objectives.

The quest line "Them!" will give you the choice of increasing your Strength or Perception by 1 as well as giving you a slight resistance to fire damage.

The "Oasis" quest gives you the option to get a permanent +1 to your Endurance and gives you extra damage resistance. Coupled with Cyborg and Toughness, you'll be laughing off a Super Mutant minigun to your face like it was nothing.

Power Armor will increase your Strength by 1 or 2 depending on if you use the Brotherhood or Enclave variant. The Enclave helmet will decrease your Charisma by 1 while it's equipped, but I wouldn't worry about that too much.

I personally find Sneaking to be useless in Fallout 3, but if you like to steal a lot of stuff, Silent Running might prove to be useful at level 13 instead of more Intense Training. Getting a bonus to your damage output by sniping a character that's unaware of your presence can be useful, but I found getting up close to be just as effective at eradicating most everything.

Your primary stats are Agility and Intelligence for the following reasons: First, more Intelligence = more skill points. If you can get Lockpicking, Science, Small Guns, and Energy Weapons to 100 after skill bobbleheads, then you're in great shape. The other three important skills are Barter, Speech, and Medicine. Those you should be able to get to around 70.

You want more Agility because a higher Agility gives you more points to spend in VATS, which lets you slow down the action and aim for specific body parts equaling more damage.

Another Perk you might want to consider is Bloody Mess. Not because of the increased violence factor, but because of the +5 to damage that it gives you. As for Scrounger and Fortune Finder, I would skip those. Fallout 3 is the type of game where ammo and money is scarce in the beginning, but plentiful later on.

Well, what about...

Film and videogames? If the last.fm post was concerned with 2008 and music, what about the other two forms of entertainment I partake in? The quick and dirty is this:

My favorite movies of 2008:
1) Wall-E
2) The Dark Knight
3) Forgetting Sarah Marshall

My favorite games of 2008:
1) Fallout 3
2) Tales of Vesperia
3) Metal Gear Solid 4

Now, what made me put Wall-E above the Dark Knight? I didn't give it much thought, actually. I just thought about how much better Wall-E made me feel and how much wonder it instilled in me as compared to the Dark Knight. While I was impressed with the Dark Knight, coming out of it, the two things I had on my mind where what villains could possibly be in the sequel and that it wasn't as good (to me) as Batman Begins. Wall-E on the other hand, made me want to dance.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall was probably my favorite comedy of this year, although Pineapple Express and Step Brothers deserve attention as well. However, to me, Forgetting Sarah Marshall surpasses those because of its heart.

If I were able to put BioShock as my game of the year again this year I totally would, but seeing as how that's unfair, I went with what I enjoyed the most. Fallout 3 may have missed the mark with the Fallout universe in a few important ways (humor, other solutions besides combat), but its world was so completely engaging that I couldn't help but fall in love.

Tales of Vesperia I was impressed with because it was the first great Japanese RPG of this hardware generation and it made me remember why I loved them so much in the SNES and PS1 days. While there are plenty of "better" games with more polish, Vesperia brought out the obsessive in me and made me spend more than 100 hours in its world, which should say all that needs to be said about it.

The Metal Gear Solids have always proven to be important landmarks in gaming, and Metal Gear Solid 4 was no different. The production value was stellar and it actually succeeded in making sense of the sordid and confusing Metal Gear plotline, which many thought to be impossible. I still like Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence better, but MGS4 has many merits of its own. Really the only complaint I have is that you can't install the entire game to the PS3's hard drive, only the current chapter you're on.

The saddest part of gaming in 2008 for me, however, was the downfall of the music game genre. Sure, sales will probably still be big for this year, but unfortunately, I think I'm completely over it. There's just too many SKUs (Guitar Hero disgustingly so) and too many new plastic instruments. If Rock Band where the only music platform out there, I'd probably be much happier. Rock Band 2 does lots of things right like having a "no fail mode" and being able to install Rock Band 1 to the hard drive, but the fatigue is still there. And let's not even talk about the embarrassing Wii Music or Rock Revolution...

Really, I'm a bit disappointed in 2008 for gaming in general. There were a lot of good games, but to me, there weren't a lot of great games. Or maybe if I stopped comparing everything to BioShock and how it blew my mind, I'd be having more fun. So I guess Ken Levine = slayer of happiness.

Last.fm's Best of 2008

Trolling around my last.fm page like the obsessive that I am, I couldn't help but notice that last.fm has it's own "Best of 2008" list that was generated from actual listening habits of its users instead of editorial opinion.

The song list is utterly boring since the top 10 are all Coldplay and MGMT. The album list is okay, but I found the artist list to be the most intriguing. The top 10 reads so:

1. MGMT
2. The Ting Tings
3. Sara Bareilles
4. Fleet Foxes
5. Katy Perry
   
6. The Last Shadow Puppets
7. Foals
8. Bon Iver
   
9. Does it Offend You, Yeah?
10. Santogold

It seems to be a pretty diverse list and it would have me believe that most of last.fm's users are probably European and more than likely British. I'm quite happy to see some of those names on the list (congrats MGMT, it is truly your year), and I was even happier to learn that Owen Pallett of the Arcade Fire and his own project Final Fantasy had contributed to The Last Shadow Puppets, whom I was previously unaware of.

Being that the top 10 song list was so monotonous, however, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite songs from this year (a few might actually be from 2007).

• Band of Horses - The General Specific
• Bears - Dolphins
• Death Cab for Cutie - Your New Twin Sized Bed
• Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Dawn of the Dead
• Elias and the Wizzkids - The Dance
• Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
• Friska Viljor - Arpeggio
  
• Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor
• I Was a Cub Scout - Pink Squares
• Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
• Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
• M83 - Kim & Jessie
• MGMT - Kids
• Miniature Tigers - Like or Like Like
• Minus the Bear - Guns & Ammo
• Noah and the Whale - 5 Years Time
• of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance
• The Spinto Band - Summer Grof
• Teitur - Catherine the Waitress
• Television Room - Coffee Houses
  
• Wild Beasts - His Grinning Skull
• Yeasayer - 2080

And that's just a few that I could think of. It's years like this that make me hopeful for music -- I couldn't think of something that's currently as heinous as nu-metal or the boy bands of the late nineties. Then again, I'm not around teenage girls and young bucks out to prove their superior testosterone levels that much anymore...

At any rate, happy listening.

Thus Spake Zarathustra

So now my good friend is borrowing Fallout 3 and I feel like I've got nothing to play. (Can you imagine? A problem like that at this time of year?)

I beat Fable 2 the other day and couldn't have cared less about the plot. I'm not sure what the point of the game is after beating it. (I'm not sure what the point of the plot was either. It was so cold and distant that I scarcely felt a part of it.) You can buy more property and do some sidequests and earn more gold that's ultimately pointless... I don't know. Maybe it just doesn't "jive" with me completely. I don't really understand the purpose of playing it more. So I can make my character even more hideous? Seriously, get a good look at your character when you start, because they'll never look more attractive than they do then.

I don't really want to play Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts either. If it was a platformer, that'd be a different story. Guess I'll just have to wait until GameStop gets my preorder code in so I can play a Banjo game I enjoy.

I thought about playing some Orange Box and finally finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but right now I want to play a game that I can ignore the specifics of so I can catch up on podcasts. I played a few Portal challenges, but gave up when I remembered how frustrating it was to get gold medals (I sincerely hope the console versions are more lenient with time trials than the PC version).

Next I decided to play some XBLA games. I got new personal high scores in Hexic and Geometry Wars and then I tried the demos for Bomberman Live and Age of Booty. Neither of those where bad, and had I a copious amount of pretend Microsoft money, I'd purchase them. Bomberman could potentially be quite fun online (as I'm sure anyone who played it in the NES days knows) and Age of Booty was like an even more simplified Civilization Revolution. Now there's a game I'd like to play right now... It has the perfect balance of involvement and not-having-to-pay-attention for listening to podcasts.

Or what would also be really good is a version of Tetris Attack for XBLA. Queue up the music for Poochie's stage and I'd buy that for a dollar... Or five.

It makes no sense that I feel like I have nothing to play at this time of the year -- not to mention all my old games I could enjoy. Listening to the Retronauts podcast on Chrono Cross/Radical Dreamers makes me want to play those, even though I sort of despise them. (To put it succinctly: As a standalone game, Chrono Cross is fairly good. As a sequel to Chrono Trigger, it's terrible.)

Or maybe I'll just fire up some Yoshi's Island or Super Mario Bros. 3 and have at it. Those are always fun.

And to anyone that has to work on Thanksgiving/Christmas: Fuck your employer. Bunch of greedy pricks... I bet your CEOs aren't working those days, are they?

The future, ladies and gentlemen

... is sort of here. I downloaded the "New Xbox Experience" this morning and I'm damned impressed. Now, I haven't been galavanting around looking at everything yet. No, the part I'm impressed with is the new Netflix integration. Simply put: I'm sold on the future of streaming video. Putting HD (and even SD) films and television shows into my instant queue is slicker and easier than I could have imagined. Plus, it's practically instant when putting items in the queue on the computer and those items showing up on my 360.

The quality for SD content seems to vary a bit. Most of it seems sub-DVD quality though. I mean, that's about what I expected. And that's not bad for a two week free trial. The HD content, however, seems to be on par with over-the-air broadcasts, which is good. (Netflix does throttle the quality back if you don't have adequate bandwidth though. Even on some of the lower settings when I had bittorrent running, the quality was still very good, however.) Having access to both seasons of 30 Rock and all four seasons of the American Office at my beck and call makes me feel warm and fuzzy. This is how people's video libraries should be in the future. We need less clutter. Instead, what we need is more hard drive space and faster internet connections.

While this is hardly revolutionary for some of you (or even most of you, given the "niche-ness" of this site), the ease of integration between Netflix and the 360 has convinced me utterly that wasting shelf space on physical discs is going to go the way of the dodo in about 5 years. Granted, for the films I really love, I wouldn't be averse to buying a copy on Blu-ray or keeping some legacy DVDs and whatnot that will never appear on Netflix (instructional guitar material comes to mind), but for most everything else, I need to just rent or stream it from Netflix.

The only thing that needs improvement is the selection of streaming HD content. Right now, there's only six pages of material and hardly any of it is stellar. Indeed, the only notable items I could find where the Office, 30 Rock, and the King of Kong (which, if you haven't seen it yet, is an absolute must!). I'd love to have more streaming television shows and more notable movies available. That would make Hulu and bittorrent pretty much obsolete for me then.

The other big feature that comes with the New Xbox Experience is the ability to install games to your hard drives. If you've got a somewhat older Xbox 360 like me, then this is crucial for two reasons. One is that doing this shortens load times by as much as twenty seconds for some games (Oddly, Halo 3 seems to be the only game that's load times got worse). The Orange Box benefits greatly from this and now I don't dread loading it up as much and waiting for the menu screen to switch to another game.

The second reason that this is important is that that loud fucking disc drive isn't spinning while you're playing! How many late night sessions have you had where you just realized how amazingly loud your 360 is? Now the only thing you're going to hear is the fan. And noise-wise, I'd say it's almost on par with my PlayStation 3 now. Rejoice!

So now that I'm off of work, I'm going to tool around with the "NXE" some more before I start watching the second season of Lost. (Yes, I've been ashamed to pick it up for so long for fear of people saying that it starts to suck like Heroes supposedly did.)


Update: I'm watching the SD version of Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion and the quality is superb. I was saying that the streaming SD quality seemed to vary. The British Office didn't look too hot and the streaming version of Ratatouille was definitely inferior to the DVD, but ZG: LATPO looks just as good if not better than DVD quality. It's also one of the funniest stand up movies I've seen in a while. The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie is like comfort food to me and this is proving to be another good one.

"When you look like I do, it's hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese."

I am a sexy guy... A very sexy guy

I always thought Sweden was pretty cool. It's known for its beautiful women, bikini teams, neutrality and its amazing music (see: Friska Viljor, Jens Lekman, Elias and the Wizzkids, the Bent Pen Project, Suburban Kids with Biblical Names, José González, Lykke Li, etc.). After viewing the following link, I'm not so sure anymore. All that I know now is that Sweden is fucking white. Also, their women may be hot, but their fellas certainly ain't. Of course, a couple decades of copulating could have rectified that, but I'm not so certain.

So without further ado: Swedish Dance Bands of the 1970s: A Pictorial.

Link courtesy of Jeff Green.

A family of trees wantin' to be haunted

Maybe I was a bit harsh on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts earlier. It's true that it's not the game that I wanted it to be, but it's not terrible by any means. I mean, I'm somehow still a little compelled to play it. And I've got Fallout 3 and Fable 2 just sitting around... I guess I needed a break and it does an okay job.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this exploit is known or not, but you can levitate to many places that you're not supposed to be able to get to by using my little trick. First, get the cart that you drive around town and put a box inside of it. Other objects (such as chairs) work, but boxes are best since they are flat (if the object isn't flat, there's a high probability that you'll crash before you get the the place you want). So put the box in the cart, and stand on top of the box inside the cart. Your R2 power should now focus on the cart (it will glow yellow). Hold R2 and you'll levitate upwards with the cart underneath you. You can control the direction you go by facing in that direction with the left stick and you can throttle R2 so that you don't just keep going.

This trick will help you get a lot of parts boxes and stuff like Jinjos before you're able to legitimately. I've gotten a lot of stuff that way (getting a small rocket engine early helped with a lot of races). Plus, it's more interesting to me than entering another race. So I broke the game, have at.

I still wish this game was "Banjo-Threeie", but I guess I'll just have to deal. At least I can play the original with up-rezzed graphics, widescreen mode and achievements in a couple of weeks. Banjo-Kazooie is still my favorite Nintendo 64 game -- more so than Super Mario 64 or Space Station Silicon Valley or Ocarina of Time or Blast Corps. or Mischief Makers. I'm going to use a speed run video to help me get all the notes and jiggies and see how fast I can beat it. I'm not going to submit my run or anything, I think it'd just be kind of fun.

I'm starting to jones for Left 4 Dead a little more now. I'll probably just wait until my birthday or something to get it. It'd be nice to have a PC that could run it too. I'd get that and STALKER: Clear Sky in a heartbeat. I never imagined myself to be a "first person shooter guy", but they've just gotten so much better in recent years (remember the days of Doom, Duke Nukem and all their clones? Not a fan). I think a big part of that is that we've started blending more genres together so that "first person" is more of a camera style than a game type.

Also of note, my boss called me tonight at work to ask for help in BioShock. It probably doesn't interest anyone else, but I thought it was funny. Like the days of giving my middle school science teacher advice in Ocarina of Time... Geeking out with other people is fun.

Angry Fists

I'm still venturing through the wastes in Fallout 3 and I'm still enjoying it immensely. I might post my formulated character plan later on. Hint: Agility and Intelligence are still the most important statistics in Fallout.

I booted up Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts the other night. First, this game needs to be installed to the hard drive because the load times are long and frequent. November 18th will bring the "new Xbox experience" and you'll be able to install games to the hard drive then. This game needs that badly.

Barring that technical hurdle, my feelings can be summed up by the text in one of the load screens. It says that if you don't enjoy the vehicle-based gameplay of Nuts & Bolts (I don't), then you should buy the original on Xbox Live Arcade. Yeah, you're game isn't fun like the original was. So thanks for admitting that this game isn't as good and thanks for shilling your other product... Assholes.

Good thing I've got a code to download the original Banjo-Kazooie for free because I pre-ordered Nuts & Bolts. I wanted a platformer, not a racing game based on the Kingdom Hearts Gummi Ships. There's hardly any personality in the world and all of the worlds are too large and don't really encourage exploration. They're basically just large, empty race tracks.

I don't hate it, but it's not really for me... Nor is it for kids either. I mean, none of the dialogue is voiced and (as I'm sure you've seen reported on the internet) it is unplayable on SDTVs.

What I was surprised with was Left 4 Dead. The demo just floored me. It was fast, fun and free of frustration. It was pretty cool to see a huge swarm of undead start coming at your party and you can't help but think "Oh shit! ... This is gonna be fun!" If I had money, I'd definitely consider purchasing it.

I got access to the Home Beta this morning and tried that out. What a monumental waste of money and time on Sony's part. What reason do I have to ever use this? Boring and pointless.

Still haven't picked up my copy of LittleBigPlanet though... I don't have the money yet.

Time is just a room without space

A quick update (knowing me, that's probably going to be a lie):

Fallout 3 is amazing. I love you, Bethesda. Rats off to ya. I'm now replaying Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. After that, I'll restart Fallout 3 and the cycle will be complete... Well, I might dig out Fallout Tactics (yeah, I'm one of the few people who like it). Anyway, here's some great advice for those playing Fallout 3: You should probably stop doing the main quest after you get Power Armor training, because once you beat the game, there's no going back to do sidequests.

I watched Kung Fu Panda on Blu-ray last night (it's release date has been pushed to this Saturday, by the way). It's one of DreamWorks' best films. Yes, it is super predictable. Yes, it has a stupid message about believing in yourself. Yes, one of Pixar's short films still has more heart and imagination in two frames than the entire DreamWorks library will ever have. Still, there are some funny moments and it does look very nice. Especially the intro, which is presented in two wonderfully stylish dimensions. I kind of wish the whole film was done like that... it was almost like Samurai Jack in HD.

I began watching Hellboy II: The Golden Army this morning (now pushed up the 11th). Now, it could just be the beautifully rich and saturated colors speaking, but this is the most fantastic looking live action Blu-ray I've ever seen! It's also refreshing to see something so original for once (every other film looks like it's ripping off the same few sources by comparison). The creatures and the effects are brilliant and make it feel much more like the comic than the first movie. Still, I haven't finished it yet.

I rented Young Frankenstein on Blu-ray the other day too. I was curious to see how a black and white film would look in high definition, and it's really quite incredible for something that's nearly 35 years old. There's still film grain and small defects (whatever you call those vertical lines and cigarette burns), but it is vastly superior to the original DVD pressing. I remember seeing that on an HDTV a couple years ago, and it was hideous. This new version is sublime, however. And of course, it's still freaking hilarious. My favorite Mel Brooks movie by far.

What else? Oh yeah, I watched Get Smart (speaking of Mel Brooks, I guess). I enjoyed it, but didn't love it. Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway's chemistry is by far the best part of the film. Worth seeing? Absolutely. I love Steve Carrell. Whether as Produce Pete (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Dan Burns (Dan in Real Life), Michael Scott (The Office), or Frank Ginsberg (Little Miss Sunshine), I just love the man. He's like this decade's Mike Meyers to me. Of course, their comic styles are vastly different, but I think it's the same sort of love.

Moving on to television... I started watching and am now (unfortunately) caught up on Chuck. Now I'm waiting for new episodes like a sucker. It's not the spy parts I like, it's the geekiness of the Buy More (their version of Best Buy) and the relationship between Chuck Bartowski and his lady spy friend Sarah Walker. The last episode featured Rush, Missile Command, and Stan Bush's "The Touch" for Christ's sake! How can I not like that?

I'm also caught up on Pushing Daisies. I love that television is now able to create something so artistic and charming with production values that rival movies. Pushing Daisies is something every sane person should instantly fall in love with, but I hear it's not getting good ratings. It's a crying shame. If the brilliant It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia can continue on FX, then there's no reason that Pushing Daisies should vanish from existence any time soon.

Other than those two shows, the Office and 30 Rock are really the only other things I watch regularly on television. I hear the Wire is good, but I'm not sure if I want to be sucked into a drama... Plus I still haven't finished Six Feet Under.

In the realm of music, of Montreal's Skeletel Lamping is pretty good and I've become a bit obsessed with Denver indie folk band Paper Bird. They're almost the kind of band I wish I was in (I have day dreams about having girls with pretty voices harmonize the lyrics to Nine Inch Nails' Closer and Big Man with a Gun... I guess I'm pretty sick). Too bad I can't sing... I'm still enamored with Minus the Bear's Guns & Ammo. I'm a bit sad that I had to miss a Boulder Acoustic Society show in Fort Collins tonight because of work.

Well, I guess that's about it for my brain dump tonight. Back to Fallout and whatnot.

The Return of Killian Darkwater

After flirting with Fable 2, the day of Fallout 3 is upon us, so don't expect me to write much for a while. After work, I'm bringing my collector's edition home, and I'm going to ravage it. Or, rather, I'm hoping to be ravaged by it. As the old John Donne poem goes:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Kinky, no?

But before I get to the whole business of ignoring everyone and everything, I'd thought that I'd offer some brief thoughts on Fable 2. First, it is a fine game. Not utterly life-consuming, as it lacks a lot of detail and depth that I would require from it. So, it's Oblivion "super lite edition" within a Zelda framework.

I hate that I picked a female character, however, because by pumping up the ability that increases melee damage, I am now buffer than the Hulk -- it's utterly disgusting! I also hate how everything effects your appearance, and none if it is for the good. Seriously, none of it makes you look cool or pretty. I have these ugly, glowing blue veins all over my body and a giant birthmark that I guess is a tattoo, plus almost all food except celery makes you obese. Also, there's no armor in the game! Only clothing, which is lame.

That aside, combat is fair. It's not truly "one button combat" (X is melee, Y is ranged, B is magic), but it's nice and easy without feeling super-mashy. I've already figured out what are the most powerful attacks, but I'm not bored with it yet. It's not "reactive" like it was said to be in previews -- and in fact, animations look fairly rote -- but it's a fine system that does its job.

I just wish there was more to do and more places to go. Doing the same quests over and over again is starting to wear thin, and having everyone in town love you is bloody annoying (I would set them all on fire if I weren't a good character). The game definitely needs a large dose of new weapon and clothing types (as well as armor!), as the few selections you have can be found everywhere. It could also use a crafting system or something similar to give your weapons a real feeling of customization (the current system is very bland and seems to hurt more than help).

So, Fable 2. Good, not great. If if were more epic and had more depth, I'd love it. As it is, it feels a bit like an "Act 1" to a greater adventure. Still, it has some good ideas and a fairly polished execution, so it's something you might want to try. Lets just hope there's an expansion pack or something to flesh it out more.

Nobody knows what that even means

As per usual, Penny Arcade is right on regarding the LittleBigPlanet recall.

Sports!

1UP has an article on retailers that are going to carry the KORG DS-10 Synthesizer. Unfortunately, it's a very small amount. However, Amazon will carry it. The only problem is that I don't have money right now, and by the time I do, it'll probably be all sold out, never to return (just like Tetris DS). But hey, if you've got $40, then on November 4th you could potentially rock as hard as these guys:

Also, for comedy purposes, you can subscribe to an rss feed of Is xkcd shitty today?

Dave Coulier was in Tears for Fears

Another literal music video from the '80s. This time it's Tears for Fears "Head Over Heals."

I wonder what's next? Karma Chameleon?

Man, if I was built like Will Ferrell, I could go as Janet Reno to a Halloween party... 'Cause that's what the world needs: more of the Knack and more dancing. Does anyone even remember what I'm talking about? I guess it's sad when some politicians go away. Just think of how different the world would have been if Bob Dole was elected president. Would Norm McDonald have a more successful career? Well, I guess it didn't really work for Darrel Hammond. Anyway... Why can't I find clips of Canteen Boy anywhere on the internet? My shirt's not gonna fall off on its own!

Edit: Nevermind.

You're doing it wrong!

Frustrated with poor download speeds and the slow speed of streaming video content from my computer, I decided to try and set up my wireless network on my PS3 again. Lo and behold, it actually fixed a lot of problems I've been having with my PS3!

Perhaps it has something do with the firmware? When you first get the PS3, you don't have the latest firmware, so perhaps something's been fixed since then (although you'd expect the MGS4 bundle to be pretty up-to-date).

[You can download PS3 firmware to a USB drive by the way.]

Now fast forwarding through video content from my PC is almost up-to-snuff with the speed I get out of my 360 using TVersity and Revision3 shows now work perfectly. The only thing that's still slow is the square button, which makes chapters in minute+ increments for you.

I'll have to test downloading content from the PlayStation Store to see if all of my problems are truly alleviated, however. Downloading the Resistance 2 beta would have been a good test, but I already suffered with getting that through my old settings.

Edit: My problems are back and it's still as shitty as ever. I'm getting 100% signal and my 360 is still way faster. This makes no sense! Plus BD-Live still refuses to work even though I can access the PlayStation Store and play games online. NO SENSE!

Blu-ray Bargains

Blu-ray.com has a list of bargain priced movies through Amazon. Beerfest, The Road Warrior, and A Clockwork Orange for $14 each is fairly good. Bad Santa, Training Day, Big Fish, Blazing Saddles, Blood Diamond, The Corpse Bride, and Batman Begins are $18 each. You can also get all three seasons of Weeds for $65 -- that's what I'd expect to pay for the first two seasons on DVD alone!

In the spirit of the season, you can also find the original Halloween for $13 as well as Dawn of the Dead (original), Day of the Dead, and Evil Dead II. Not my cup of tea, but maybe it's yours...

Not amazing deals, really, but it beats the $25 standard that I seem to see elsewhere.

Also via Blu-ray.com, Roger Ebert claims that the movie Baraka is "the reason to acquire a Blu-ray player." I have no idea what it's about, but looking at the screenshots, it looks to be some sort of nature/Asian culture movie.

Metaphor-Free Radio

What if musical lyrics skipped the metaphors and just went straight to the point?

Incredible Hulk Blu-ray impressions

Watched The Incredible Hulk last night. From the intro, I thought it was going to be amazing. I was really into it until the government tracked Banner down and then he Hulked Out™. It was really interesting and then it started to become a movie I wasn't too interested in seeing. That said, I think some aspects of it were better than Iron Man. And from someone who hates Liv Tyler (Have you seen the Lord of the Rings? She's terrible!), she was tolerable enough for a static character.

Also, the villain was tremendously lame and had no real motivation. I think a wise man once said "Don't make action happen -- let it happen." And then the villain that's hinted at near the end is probably going to be worse, especially if they keep the same actor.

That said, I thought PS3s could utilize BD-Live? How come I can't access any of the features then? Is it because the movie isn't officially "out" yet? It just shows a four-step process to set it up over and over (which is completely useless, by the way). Is BD-Live not allowed with a wireless connection? Only Ethernet? I Googled the problem, and I tried two suggestions and neither worked. I'm sure the extra material isn't something I'd want to see, but I'd still like access to it. That's a pretty fucking lame problem if you can't use BD-Live with a wireless connection.

I did upgrade to the 2.5 firmware last night though. I re-tested TVersity with it, and now fast forwarding/rewinding video is more usable. Still not perfectly smooth, but it's getting there. I don't think they added an option to skip a great deal ahead in a video like in my last blog post though. Skipping 10% ahead with the 360 is super useful. Also, I hate that I have to press cancel at the end of every video so it goes back to the video select menu. That should be automatic by now, dammit! Plus, Revision3 content still does not work.

A lull in the festivities

I recently handed off my copy of Tales of Vesperia to my friend Sean so that he could borrow it. I believe 120+ hours was enough (although I enjoyed it very much). However, now I've nothing to do until Fable 2, Little Big Planet, and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia come out in a week... And even then, I'll have to wait until Friday to get my check. One of those games should have came out this week... (I'm looking at you Fable 2!)

I'm also kind of desperate to utilize my PlayStation 3 again for something other than video. I've experimented a bit more with using it with TVersity, but for the most part, I think the Xbox 360 is still better at handling videos from my computer.

For one, all of the Revision3 shows stutter terribly when played on my PS3, but work perfectly fine on my 360. The PS3 has been able to play only one or two files that the 360 hasn't been able to, however.

Also, the PS3 lacks functionality similar to the L1 and R1 buttons on the 360 controller that let you skip ahead in the video. The normal fast forwarding function on the PS3 is very slow and inaccurate with videos from my computer, whereas on the 360, they're perfectly smooth. The news I saw on JoyStiq today about a 2.5 firmware upgrade seemed to have suggested that this feature was coming though. (Sony's still playing catch-up, unfortunately...)

On to demos and whatnot, I played the demo for Mega Man 9 last week. There's nothing really positive to say about that. It's a trend I don't support -- it seems a bit like a ROM hack made by sadists. And I, for one, don't appreciate the difficulty level because not one bit of it was fun for me. I'll stick with Mega Man 2, 3, and 7 thanks.

I played the demo for BioShock and it's the same demo from the 360 version. Granted, it made me realize how much I still love that game, but I'm definitely not going to buy it again.

The demo for Valkyria Chronicles was interesting and kind of fun, but I think that's something that I would have probably loved back in the PS1 era... Now it's not really something I'd seek out.

As for other PS3 games... It still seems that Metal Gear Solid 4, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune are still the only disc-based games worth playing.

Now, on to Tokyo Game Show!

I'm completely over Halo 3, so Recon doesn't interest me in the slightest. The multiplayer for Halo 3 is still fair, but the singleplayer campaign is embarassingly bad. I can't believe that people actually care about the story for that series... What a bunch of nerds! (I say this with irony, of course.)

Thanks to TGS, I'm now pretty certain that Square Enix either hates its fans or that Final Fantasy XIII is in a shitload of trouble. Another slightly tweaked trailer? The fact that Square probably won't be able to deliver more than one of it's flagship titles this hardware cycle is worrisome. The NES, SNES and PS1 each had three Final Fantasies to their name and the PS2 has two (Final Fantasy XI doesn't count). Now we're apparently down to one every four to six years? Then again, once they supposedly get this one out the door, the next should be easier, yes? And hey, if it's that Final Fantasy VII remake that everyone wants, then that'd make things easier still!

Even though Star Ocean: Till the End of Time's ending pissed me off something terribly, I still don't want to give up on the series. I do look forward to Star Ocean: The Last Hope as well as White Knight Chronicles, but the Japanese RPG doesn't have as much sway as it once did -- and I don't say this just for myself, I believe a lot of people would share my sentiments. Maybe we all just wish that eastern developers would try and take a few evolutionary steps forward. Maybe we're all tired of the sickeningly cute anime characters. Maybe we're all tired of the same few plots. Or maybe we all just don't have quite the same amount of time anymore (although my 120+ hours with Tales of Vesperia would contest that).

Other than that, I couldn't really tell you what else came out of Tokyo Game Show -- it seems like all the same stuff over and over again (I guess we can all thank/blame the anime pederasts out there for that). I suppose it's nice that this kind of stuff is still out there, but I'd like for Japan to be able to "wow" me again. I'm sure it's hard to amass the needed capitol to push out triple-A RPGs like we where used to a generation or two ago, and that's unfortunate.

Well, at least I have Chrono Trigger on the DS to look forward to...

By any chance did you see Battlestar Galactica last night?

Did you also see the funniest moment on this week's episode of the Office? Also, because it was insisted to me that these particular clips of the BBC version of the Office needed to be on my blog:

Take On Me: The Literal Version

It's things like this that make me love everybody. a-ha: international champions of peace and love? Perhaps...

Every fruit that ripens has exactly just three parts

A new mix. Feeling sad again and what not. The José González song is the impetus for this, and I wish I could have found more songs like it for the mix, but I think it works. At many points, there were going to be Elliott Smith songs, but I had used Angel in the Snow before and I couldn't find a good version of the original Miss Misery. Then the playlist was going to be almost completely different when I wanted to use songs that reminded me of someone. Exciting stuff, I know.

1. José González - Heartbeats
2. Psapp - Sad Song
3. Matty Pop Chart - Thailand
4. The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses
5. Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
6. Neutral Milk Hotel - Naomi
7. The Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples
8. The Zombies - The Way I Feel Inside

Artistry

Look at these screenshots of the Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray release:

The backgrounds in those screenshots are just gorgeous! Unfortunately, I don't think my store got the Blu-ray release of this, just the DVD version. I'm also wondering why the very recent release of The Sword in the Stone is still in a 4:3 aspect ratio, even though it was originally in 1.37:1 [Edit: In the comments, my friend Robbie set me straight on this]. Hopefully Sleeping Beauty is setting a precedent for future Disney re-releases. (On a mildly unrelated note: FUCK the Disney Vault!)

My store didn't get Beetlejuice or Young Frankenstein on Blu-ray either... Oh, well. I wouldn't have had time to watch them anyway. I didn't have time to watch Don't Mess with the Zohan or The Happening either, but those are films I didn't really care to see anyway.

Also, I found Jenna Fischer in a screenshot for the 40 Year Old Virgin Blu-ray release (look on the extreme left).

The bird that thinks it can fly

I've finished season one of Flight of the Conchords, and I can say that it grew on me more. I still don't know about "love", but for people that like dry dialogue in situations where characters don't realize what they're really saying, it is recommended. And really, I think that's still the best part of the show.

(Also, does anyone else think that Bret McKenzie looks like he could be Dan Trachtenberg's brother?)

So after I finished that, I started watching Penn & Teller: Bullshit! again. I think you have to admire that they admit that they're "biased as fuck" -- which is not to say that I disagree with them (most of the time). For those that would like a sane, yet libertarian view on issues (if that's a bad thing to you), it's an excellent show. Also, fuck PETA.


So now is the time of year that movies that you actually want to see are coming out on DVD. And since it's the season, I would like to say that Iron Man is just okay -- although it has to be said that I saw the Dark Knight first. Next week is a bit dry, however. I've got Don't Mess with the Zohan and the Happening lying around, but I'm not entirely sure if I want to see either. While I can't see Zohan being worse than Mr. Deeds and the Happening being worse than Lady in the Water, I'm still not in the least enthused to see either.

On the point of movies on DVD/Blu-ray, I would like to say that I want this very much. And this.


On the subject of games, I'm still infatuated with Tales of Vesperia. I mean, I got the achievement for playing the thing for 100 hours! That should say everything that needs to be said about that. I do wish that Fable 2 came out a bit earlier since I'm not sure if I can finish it before Fallout 3 comes out the week after that. And I'm sure that Little Big Planet and Castlevania: Order of Ecclasia will be lost to the tides of Fallout as well.


And finally, on the subject of school: Why the fuck does attendance matter? It may be different elsewhere, but here, if you have more than 3 unexcused absences, your grade will go down. Okay, so I'm paying you to attend school here, so shouldn't I be able to determine if attending class is worth my time from one day to the next? Take tomorrow: I'm ditching because the class is not in the least intellectually challenging or interesting (even though the teacher is pretty hot), and I know exactly what we'll be going over. So isn't it a waste of my time? Not to mention gas money?

C'est la vie.

Justify your block quote

As a general representation of evil, Adolph Hitler is the number one go-to guy for metaphorically applying negative karma unto those people with whom we disagree with. (And of course, Nazis are the plural.) Yes, he was a bad person, but I believe that he is overused as a representation of evil. Instead, I propose that we use Rene Descartes as the new jumping-off point.

Yes, he is nowhere near as evil as Hitler (and yes, "evil" is too strong a word for Descartes), but I think that for most examples, we don't need something filled with quite so much hyperbole. So, think of Descartes as a modicum of terrible that we can use in day-to-day comparisons.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking to yourself "Why Descartes? Who the fuck is he?"

Descartes was a French philosopher who was most famous for "I think, therefore I am." Nothing wrong with that -- it's a wonderful sentiment. Instead, what I have a problem with is his idea that animals don't have souls. Now, that's something that can be debated, but here's the gruesome bit: Descartes was reported to have kicked his dog every so often so that he could "hear the machine squeak." His argument (as I understand it) was that animals don't have emotions; they know only basic operations and that anything else (such as affection) is human rationalization for their actions.

It's a very elementary story that most students of philosophy know. Maybe I'm coming off as a hippy, but think about taking the general sentiment and applying it elsewhere. It is a statement that those unlike you are lesser for it. So let's go back to Hitler. Jews are lesser beings, so it is okay to torture and kill them, etc. Now apply it to a more modern sentiment that homosexuals are lesser because of their personal practices.

Now, let's finish off this little trek into bullshit (that's not entirely meant to be taken seriously) with another section from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears.

That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break from mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, "the master and proprietor of nature," marches onward.

There are several other ideas floating around there as well, such as Kundera's concept of the Grand March and man being administrator (instead of master) to all he surveys. But those are neither here nor there...

Now that I've established myself as pretentious idiot, on with the buffoonery!