Dark Reality

Upgrading your computer. Easier than you thought.

2010-12-18T10:37:00.000-05:00

So, you want to upgrade your computer, but you don't want to spend a lot of money? It's easier than most people think. You already have a lot of parts that can be salvaged for a new computer. When most non-technical people think about computers, they think of the entire tower as the "brain" and the monitor as the "screen". Truth is, if your screen still works, you don't need a new flat-panel one -- they just look nicer. (Actually, in practice, a CRT monitor is capable of higher resolutions than an LCD monitor.) And your "tower" (or case, or chassis) is good as well, along with the optical drive (your CD/DVD reader/burner) and hard drive. Your power supply may or may not be.

The first thing to do is to open your case. This can be scary at first, but you're not going to break anything that wasn't right about to break on its own. Before you open the case, disconnect everything but the power cord. Leave the power cord plugged in. If there is a power switch on the back of the power supply, turn it off. Typically there are four or more screws on the back, along the sides and top. Note that there are a few screws around the power cord. Do not unscrew these as these hold the power supply in place. (You don't want that falling and busting up the inside of your computer.) With the case screws out, you should be able to remove the "top". If your tower stands up, it's technically on its side. The bottom of any case is the "side" the motherboard is on. That's going to be the right side of your standing tower, so what you think of as the left side is actually the "top". The "top" may slide off or lift off. In some cases, a shell will slide off the top, bottom, and side. In any case, removing the cover should not be a problem.

Now let's take a look inside the case. Rotate the case so that where you plug everything in, is facing you. This puts the front of the computer (where you put the CDs/DVDs in) away from you. That big circuit board in the middle is called the motherboard (or the "mobo" in geek culture). You don't need to replace it, but if you want to upgrade your computer, you're going to have to. You really don't want to take it out unless you have to, it's a real pain in the ass to put one in (geeks reading this are nodding), but never mind that for now. To the left, but sometimes to the right, is a block where the power cord goes in. This is the power supply, and it's your best friend right now. Because it's still plugged in, it's electrically grounded. Work on a computer on a high counter, standing, and keep your feet in one place. If you have to move, to get something, touch the power supply for a second to "ground" yourself. This will prevent you from "frying your mobo" (discharging static electricity onto a circuit board, short-circuiting it). On the far side of the chassis are your drives. That big 5" wide one is your CD/DVD reader/writer (they all look the same -- even Blu-ray drives, they all look the same). Hard drives are 3" wide. Depending on their connection type, they'll either have a 1.5" ribbon cable (IDE) or a 3/4" plug (SATA) plugged into them, and a four-wire plug. The former is data (either way), the latter is power.

Now let's look at the motherboard specifically. Basically they are all the same. On the right is the PCI cards. If you were to add something like a modem or a TV tuner, or a USB hub, to your computer, you'd plug it in here. It would slide in like a Nintendo cartridge to one of those slots, and its ports would face out the back of your computer. The leftmost one is either AGP or PCI Express and would support a video card, for playing games equivalent to what an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 can play. To the left of that is the processor, which you won't see under the fan and heatsink. This is the actual brain of the computer, a giant calculator, and it needs direct cooling. Beyond the processor and a little to the left is the RAM. One to four sticks that also plug in like Nintendo cartridges. This is your computer's memory. If someone says they have "four gigs of RAM" they mean they either have a 4GB stick, two 2GB sticks, or four 1GB sticks. Your crappy computer you're upgrading may only have two slots. That's a sign of a "value" mobo. It probably sucks in other ways. The rest is stuff you don't need to worry about... and where the power, drives, and front ports plug in.

Special note here: A monkey can probably upgrade your computer. Anyone can swap out the stuff, it's not exactly rocket science. Nothing can be plugged in wrong, it all goes in only one way. There is an exception though: USB and IEEE1394 (Firewire) plugs look exactly the same. You have to know which is which. If your case's front panel doesn't have Firewire, never mind. But you'll still need to not plug your USB line into your new mobo's Firewire port. That would be really bad and could fry your mobo.

Buying the parts: This part is easy. And you would do this before opening the computer, but you should know to read a guide before following its steps, so...

Start with the processor. The processor should account for about 60-75% of the speed increase in your computer. Make it count. Unless you have cash out the wazoo, don't even think about Intel. Intel spends a lot of money making pretty ads, and their customers pay for those ads for the priviledge of displaying the "Intel Inside" sticker on their case. I'm talking hundreds of dollars more. So go to Newegg.com, and under the logo, under the left, point at Computer Hardware and click on CPUs (or is it Processors?). Narrow your search to AMD processors. You can get a quad-core AMD Athlon II for about $120, a triple-core AMD Athlon II for about $80, or a dual-core AMD Phenom II for about $100. (Why is the dual more than the triple? It's a Phenom, they're better.) All three are good choices. Get the quad if you can afford it. If you really want to upgrade your computer, its processor probably only has one core. A dual core processor is two processors in one... basically. A triple is three and a quad is four. Yes, newbies, your computer can have four brains. They don't all work at once, but say you're booting up... One core is handling the basic Windows stuff... your antivirus comes on... another core takes that. Then you open up Firefox, because you're not a complete newb and you know how to block ads... a third core can take Firefox. Sort of. One last note: DO NOT BUY AN OEM PROCESSOR. It won't come with the heatsink or the fan. You need these. And no, your old one will not work. Retail isn't gonna be much more than $10 more, if that. And it comes with all you need.

Next pick the motherboard. I'm pretty sure all the processors I mentioned use AMD Socket AM3, but once you've picked the CPU, double-check in the specs. Open a new tab, back to Newegg.com, and motherboards under Computer Hardware. You want an AMD motherboard with an AMD chipset (not NVIDIA). The latest AMD motherboards all seem to come with HDMI (High-Def Multimedia Interface) as well as your typical VGA (old monitors) and DVI (newer monitors) ports. This is good for most users. There are a lot of choices here. I like Gigabyte; ASUS is a popular one as well. MSI isn't bad either. Can't say about the rest. Price-wise, you get what you pay for. You can get a really nice Gigabyte board for around $140. That isn't bad for really good stuff. ATX, if you see it (and you will) is just the motherboard standard. They're all ATX unless they're mini-ATX, which is smaller (and you may need that, check the measurements of your current mobo). There was a BTX but it failed. Anyway, you want to make sure the motherboard has onboard video (unless you're a gamer, in which case you won't want that... but this guide isn't for gamers anyway) and onboard audio.

Now pay attention to the kind of RAM the motherboard you want, takes. Search for that in a new tab. There will probably be 2-3 kinds (speeds) of RAM it takes; they should all be taking DDR3 RAM at this point. (If not, you're looking at an old and/or crappy motherboard.) You're pretty much shooting for quantity here. 2GB is fine if you're sticking with Windows XP, but that's not a wise idea at all as Microsoft has stopped supporting it. Windows 7 is great and it's good for pretty much everybody. For Windows 7 you should get 4GB. 2GB is okay... but you want 4GB. 8GB if you can afford it. Also, the more sticks the merrier, but it'll limit your upgrade potential. The bigger a stick is, the slower it is, generally, so four 2GB sticks would be faster than two 4GB sticks, even though both configurations result in 8GB of RAM. The only advantage the latter has is you can add two more 4GB sticks for a whopping 16GB of RAM (which would be epic). Anyway, the absolute best brands for RAM are Corsair, OCZ, and Patriot, pretty much in that order. Kingston is okay as well.

A note on brands: I've given my opinion based on my experiences... I haven't been paid a dime by any of these companies to drop their names here. If you want to save a couple bucks and go with something else, just pay attention to the reviews. If it's good (or bad), the reviews should tell you.

Building it... okay, now I'm assuming you've read this guide and you have (at least) a motherboard, a processor, and some RAM... and your old case.

First... I don't wanna say "rip everything out" but that's basically what you're doing to your old motherboard. Everything but the RAM and CPU. Leave those on the board (no reason to remove them). Start with power cables. These come from the power supply. There's a 20- (10x2) or 24-pin (12x2) (or possibly a 20-pin and a 4-pin together) cable going to the motherboard. There may be a 4-pin (2x2) going by the processor as well. The power supply also connects directly to fans and drives, but leave these alone. Next disconnect drives. Follow the data cables back, they should plug in somewhere on the motherboard. Now disconnect your front-panel stuff. Lastly, your expansion cards. These are typically screwed into the case on the metal part. Unscrew it, and pull the card out. Remember, hand on the power supply. And they come out like Nintendo cartridges, but pull back a little, as the little "bar" thing can get stuck between the motherboard and the case.

Now unscrew the old motherboard. Keep the screws in a safe place, you'll need them for the new one. Once you have all of them out, you can lift the motherboard up and out. Mount it on your wall or something. I think they make great decorations.

Under the motherboard will be a bunch of pegs. These are called "standoff screws". Screw hole in top, screw in bottom. They can be taken out by hand, or with needle-nosed pliers. Hopefully you will not have to remove any.

Take your new motherboard (again, hand on the power supply) and hold it over the standoffs. Keep in mind where they all are. Make sure you can see all of them through the screw holes in the new motherboard. Also keep in mind that you will probably not use all the screw holes. That's fine. You primarily want the four corners, under the processor (stability for the fan), under the RAM, and under the video card if you're installing one. This guide doesn't call for one though. You do not want a standoff to come up where there isn't a screw hole; that can fry your board. Remove/move any standoffs you do not need.

Once the motherboard is in place, most of the hard work is done.

"Seating" the processor is the easiest step you will take BY FAR. I'm dead serious. Next to the processor socket there is a lever. Lift it up. Look at the socket, the processor can only sit on it one way. (Look at the corners -- it'll be different in one corner by one hole.) Look at the bottom of the processor -- same thing. One extra or less hole. Line it up. Set the processor down. Push the lever down. It's stupidly easy.

Installing the heatsink is among the hardest, though. You will either get a dallop of thermal paste, or more likely the heatsink will just have it on the bottom, and you'll have to pull off a paper (like on a bow, when wrapping presents). Do not touch the grey stuff, it smears easily. You'll notice the heatsink has links, and there should be hooks on two sides of the socket. Or vice versa. The trick is to set the heatsink square on the processor and get the hooks in the links. This is real tricky. But it's not rocket science.

Now for the RAM. Look at the bottom (where the RAM will go into the motherboard. There's a "gap" in the chip dividing it about 60/40. Look for the same on the slot. That'll tell you what way the RAM goes in. Pull the hooks out either end and insert it as straight as you can. And give it a good hard push. When you have it right, the hooks will snap in and grab the gaps on the ends of the stick. Do this for each stick you have. If you have two sticks, you have to leave a gap between them. For example, if you imagine the RAM slots are 1, 2, 3, 4... insert the RAM sticks in 1 and 3... or 2 and 4. Your choice. If you have four, fill 'em all. You can't do 3. It won't boot.

Then you just have to connect your drives, power cables, and front panel connectors. The plugs may have moved a little, but they should all be there. You'll have to refer to the paperwork that came with the motherboard, it should tell you where everything plugs in.

If you have done everything right, connect all your peripherals and turn it on. Windows will go batshit crazy with all the new stuff, but it *should* be fine. You may have to restart a couple times. Once everything is good to go, you can put the cover back on.

Did you want a Blu-ray reader/writer, or even a DVD writer? DVD burners are all around $20 on Newegg, and Blu-ray burners start at $100. They're piss easy to install. Simply unscrew the old optical drive and pull its cables, then mount the new drive, and put the old drive's cables into the drive... unless you had an IDE drive (fat ribbon) and upgraded to a SATA drive, in which case you will need a SATA cable and a SATA power cable (or adapter). Bigger hard drive? Pretty much ditto, unless it's your C (Windows system) drive you want to replace. In which case, bad idea partner, just put it in as a secondary (or tertiary) drive. Mount it, find a free data and power cable, and plug it up.

Do you need a new power supply? They run about $100 for good ones. It's too big to fit in your little case? The power supply can actually sit outside the case (the case is actually optional -- wrap your noodle around that), just cover the hole so mice don't get in.

It should be noted that this guide does not guarantee your success at upgrading your computer. A bunch of stuff can go wrong -- this is why 99% of people pay Dell to build them a piece of junk from value parts what I pay to build a premium computer. No amount of reading will compensate for experience, and you can't read enough. This guide is only intended to show how easy it is. And it is easy if you know what you're doing. But the best favor you can do yourself is watch the newsstands for Maximum PC. Great magazine, and unofficially and without meaning to, perhaps, at least once a year they publish a guide to building your own computer. It'll just be an article, and it'll be mentioned on the cover. For the love of all that is holy, buy the damn mag, yes, at $10 or whatever (toss the disc -- all the software on it is 3 months out of date and free to download) and read the article a dozen times over. It was such an article back in 2004 that inspired me to build my first rig. And it worked perfectly on first boot and for six years thereafter.

So, I had $20 to spend on the Android Market

2010-11-23T20:59:00.000-05:00

Four months ago, my wife finally decided enough was enough with her Motorola RAZR 2, that ultra-thin flip phone with the touch screen on the outside. Motorola makes nice phones (my ROKR Slider was still in top condition) but this was a real piece of crap. So we went to US Cellular (where you have to go to get service outside of town out here) and told them she needed a new phone. She didn't want a free phone, she wanted something at least as good as the RAZR 2 when it was new.

We both left with new phones that day. The best deal they had on decent phones was a BOGO on the Samsung Acclaim, a touch-screen slider running Google's Android Linux operating system. This wasn't a proper cell phone, it's a handheld computer with, among other things, a phone program. And in addition to a cell phone antenna, it's got GPS, a camera, an accel... uh, it knows it's moving and in what direction, and a magne... uh, it knows which direction it's pointing. And a 3 megapixel camera.

But the really neat thing about an Android phone, like an iPhone, it has a Market where you can add new apps. Most of them are free, but there are some that cost real money. The best things in Android are free, just like anything else, I suppose, but US Cellular gave each of us a $20 gift card to use on the Android Market. Because it's a Google Checkout gift card, the first thing I did was try to buy The Beatles: Rock Band on a Google Checkout site. It didn't work. So I started buying apps. And not just any apps, stuff I wanted for various reasons.

Here are the apps I bought, in the order I bought them, what they do, and why I paid for them.

Aldiko Premium ($2.99)
This paid version of the Aldiko eBook reader removes the ads that would show up in Aldiko from time to time. The ads never showed up in the books themselves, or even your bookshelf. It only ever showed ads when you were browsing its virtual bookstore. So this paid app is really a donation, but when you consider how awesome it is to have your books on your cell phone (handheld computer, whatever) I think it was worth donating to the developers.

ASTRO File Manager ($3.99)
My most expensive purchase. The "File Viewer" that comes with Android sucks balls, and I previously tried the file manager by EStrong. It had some nice features, but once I tried the free ASTRO, I was converted. Unfortunately, while EStrong is free, ASTRO displays an annoying banner ad on the bottom all the time. This gets in the way, but more importantly, I just wanted to support a good product. This file manager lets you move files around, and includes a task manager. Good stuff.

Overkill ($0.99)
The first of two games I bought, and the price is misleading. I bought it on sale. It's a side scrolling space shooter that you can control by tilting the phone. It's hell hard and I bought it on a whim. I rarely play it, but it runs great on the Acclaim (which I understand is an entry-level phone), which can't be said for Angry Birds, a more popular phone game. So part of this purchase was impulse, and another part was to reward the developer for making efficient code.

TxtPad ($1.00)
Finally, an app that doesn't have a price ending in 9. Does anybody even fall for that gimmick anymore, or is it just expected? Anyway, for being a handheld computer with a hardware keyboard, Android doesn't have a text editor. The free version of TxtPad is very nice and doesn't have ads, but I bought TxtPad for the extra features (editing stuff, nothing essential) and because I figured I'd get a lot of use out of it.

Solitaire for Android ($0.99)
One of the first things I did when I got this thing was download a ton of Solitaire apps. There were a lot of stinkers, but this one stood out. I kept the ad-supported one for a while, always intending to pay to remove the ads. After a few purchases, I wanted to get this one before I ran out of money (which wouldn't happen for weeks).

Droid Talk Pro ($0.99)
This text-to-speech toy has been a hit with every child I've shown it to and even a few adults. Type in some text and it will say it. You can add a British accent, and a slider controls the pitch. It never sounds unlike a robot, but it's decent. The free version had an ad, I think, and the paid version will let you make anything it can say into a ringtone. Both versions have common phrases you can tap to make it say, I suppose if you have a sore throat. The app also features a translator, anything you type into it can be translated into a dozen or so (maybe more?) languages, and it will speak them. It also has speech-to-text (-to-speech) so you could carry on a conversation with a foreigner, if they speak into it and you translate it back to English. So this may be the most useful app here. (Not sure if the translator is available in the free version or not.)

Ultra Keyboard ($2.79)
Pro-tip: The default touch keyboard sucks. You want to replace it ASAP if you want to use your screen to type anything. I tried SlideIT, which lets you trace across the keyboard, and I didn't like its accuracy. I then tried SwiftKey, which claimed to predict the next word you were going to type. That was nice, but it didn't work in some strange places, e.g. text messaging. So that got uninstalled in a big hurry. Ultra has all the features. It has the keyboard tracer, and it actually works! I have yet to warm to the feature, but it being accurate helps a lot. It has text prediction, which isn't as accurate as Swift's, but since it's dictionary-based and not habit-based, it pulls stupid guesses a lot less. I mean it may not be as accurate, but its guesses make sense. Oh, and they come up when using the physical keyboard as well. It has another feature the Acclaim isn't powerful enough to use: It'll activate your camera and let you see what's in front of your phone, I guess so you can text and walk without running into stuff. Also, it will calibrate your screen, have you type something, so it can correct your mistakes better. I can't say enough nice things about this app. It's the one keyboard on Android Market worth paying for, and it isn't even the most expensive.

Spark ($1.50)
The only other evenly-priced app I bought. Spark is an Xbox Live client for Android that lets you send and receive messages from fellow gamers. You can also see their gaming history (and your own). It's very nice. It used to be free, but Microsoft changed the way Xbox Live worked (around the time they released the new Dashboard for the console) and it broke the app. Since the new Windows Mobile phones do Xbox Live stuff, I imagine Microsoft is gonna fight this guy some more. I don't know how successful he's gonna be keeping this app running, but I enjoyed it before and wanted to help out. (Didn't have a choice -- there is no free version. But I would have paid either way.)

Tapatalk ($2.99)
A forum interface for Android. This replaces the frontend you see on Internet message boards with one familiar to Android and lets you read and post messages through it. A free version lets you read, but not post. The catch is that the forum owner has to specifically enable Tapatalk access, and 99% of them haven't. And I can't find any forums worth posting on in its directory. Still, I've been calling for an app like this for the better part of a decade (albeit for PCs) so I felt obligated to support somebody who was trying to make that happen. Hopefully it works out for him.

Chandroid ($0.99)
Like Tapatalk, this is an Android frontend to various image boards (channels, as they're known in Japan, where the concept apparently originated), including the infamous 4chan. I really only got this for shits & giggles because I had $1.47 left and nothing to spend it on. /b/, the "random" board on 4chan, is literally the crotch of the Internet, but 4chan itself has its purposes. I like to look on /wg/ for wallpapers, for example. (And no, I'm not above looking to see what's on /s/.) Anyway, Chandroid provides access to another app called Meme Maker (memes are Internet fads) that makes funny pictures. I see great things in this app's future. Chandroid itself is kinda slow, but do the math... image board... cell phone Internet... it's not a smart combination.

Whew! I didn't do a very good job selling some of these apps, did I? Well, the money wasn't really mine to start with, and I couldn't do anything else with it, but buy Android apps. If I didn't have the gift card, would I have bought any of these? Probably not. However, I did buy LauncherPro Plus, which wasn't listed because it's not on the Android Market. Google takes a third of Market purchases, and either LP didn't want to share, or they didn't want to raise their price to include Google's take. In any case, it had to be bought with PayPal, and I actually ponied up $3.99 out of my checking account to buy that.

For those of you with Android phones and thin wallets, here are some cheap alternatives:

Aldiko Premium >> Aldiko. The free version does everything the paid version does. Just spread the word about it, they ask for that more than they ask for donations on their Facebook page.

ASTRO >> EStrongs. EStrongs isn't a bad file manager by any stretch of the imagination. Or get ASTRO and deal with the ads.

Overkill >> Any Android game, there are tons.

TxtPad >> TxtPad. The free version is fine.

Solitaire for Android >> Solitaire for Android. Deal with the ads... or use one of the other Solitaire apps.

Droid Talk Pro >> Droid Talk. The free version still talks and is just as big a hit with the under-five-feet-tall crowd.

Ultra Keyboard >> Ultra Keyboard Demo. I forget what the limitations are. But if the demo doesn't convince you that $2.79 isn't too much to upgrade your keyboard, you're probably fine with the default or the slide-out keyboard anyway.

Spark >> Xbox.com in your web browser.

Tapatalk >> Forums in your web browser.

Chandroid >> 4chan in your web browser.

Now, that being said, here are Android's heavy hitters that are just free, in alphabetical order:

Catch (free!)
This app takes notes, pictures, and scans barcodes, and syncs with Catch.com so you can see the stuff on your PC. You gotta tell it to sync though. Never mind the pictures and the barcodes, just imagine your favorite multiplayer game and imagine "Notepad multiplayer" and you'll have a good idea.

Dropbox (free!)
Lets you download files on your computer's Dropbox folder. It's not a proper sync app though as you can only upload and download, and it's not automatic. (Not that you'd want it to be, but some people...)

Google Sky Map (free!)
My second-most-impressive app. People just love this thing. Point it at the sky and it will tell you what stars are what. It's a planetarium in your hand. You can even see what stars are below the horizon. It's pretty f***ing amazing.

Our Groceries (free!)
Multi"player" shopping list. You make a shopping list, and your partner can see it as they shop. You can even watch as they cross stuff off. Loads of useful features. Ads. Shame there's not an ad-free version. I would have paid for this.

Photoshop Express (free!)
What costs about a thousand bucks on the PC is legitimately free on Android. Okay, this doesn't have even 1% of the features of the real Photoshop, but it lets you touch up photos, and once you learn it (doesn't take long) you can turn crappy cell phone camera pics into pics that look like they were shot with an expensive camera. I do this by bumping up the saturation a hair, the exposure up or down a hair depending on the image, and messing with contrast. It does a lot!

Scoreboard (free!)
Sports fan? This app from Google asks you your favorite teams from each sport/division and notifies you when they start a game and the final score. I'm not even into sports, but I do have opinions on certain teams, and I like to know if they win or lose. (Does that make sense?)

Simple Spreadsheet (free!)
Another app I'd pay for. I use this for data entry at work. Think Microsoft Excel minus all the bells and whistles.

The Weather Channel (free! came with the Acclaim!)
Weather data for as many cities as I want. Need I say more? Oh, and with GPS enabled, it'll follow you on the road, giving current and future weather info wherever you go.

TweetDeck (free!)
I saved the best for last. Or the alphabet did. Whatever. Anyway, forget Twitter and Facebook apps and forget about accessing them in the Browser. TweetDeck rolls your social networks (Twitter, Facebook... and a couple others if you use them) into one social timeline. You get a second timeline for Mentions/Directs (Twitter) and Notifications (Facebook) and you can add timelines based on searches (e.g. I could search for Rockband and add the result as a timeline, and every time somebody mentions Rockband, it shows up. This is a resource hog so I don't do it, though).

So, as I said, the best apps are free, but if you have money to burn, hopefully this helps!

Android song identifier testing: Shazam vs. SoundHound

2010-09-28T23:57:00.002-04:00

Test Purpose:

Song ID software for Android devices, head-to-head competition. Both programs allow five IDs a month for free, and cost $4-5 for the full version with unlimited IDs thereafter. (Shazam came with a 7-day trial of the unlimited tagging version, actually.) Both programs will be tested with the same five songs, the same section of each song played for as long as the program requires for identification.

The Android device used will be a Samsung Acclaim, on US Cellular's EVDO (3G speed) network. Voice signal strength is good, 4-5 bars, and the data signal should be good. The Acclaim is running Android 2.1, and is plugged in on its charger for optimal power.

The songs will be played on a generic Dell office computer, the kind that has just one speaker... somewhere in there... this will simulate the poor listening conditions of being in the car or the supermarket or some other awkward situation where identifying a song can be challenging. (The quality of the sound isn't really all that terrible, it's just far from optimal.) The computer runs a 3GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM, Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3, and Windows Media Player 11. Volume all the way up.

The songs:

GOODNIGHT TECHNOLOGIST by The Main Drag. The drummer for this independent Boston rock band works for Harmonix, who make the Rockband games. "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter," featured in Rock Band 2, might have been too easy. This is the last track on the album "Yours As Fast As Mine". Identification will begin 2:40 into the song. Watch this song performed in Rock Band 2 on YouTube.

JUPITER by Holst from The Planets. I decided to include a classical piece, and this was the first I came to that didn't make me think "a-ha! I know that one!". I don't believe that this is necessarily obscure, but it's not really common, either, at least not in the sense that Beethoven's Fifth (or even Ninth) are. Or "1812 Overture", or "Ride of the Valkyries" or any of that cool stuff. Identification will begin 5:20 into the song. Listen to this song on YouTube.

LOVE ME OR HATE ME by Lady Sovereign. This is a remix featuring Missy Elliot, and I'm going to play her part of the song. I like Lady Sovereign, mostly for her accent, I think, but her songs are fun... her album's pretty easy to hate, and I have to be in a certain mood to listen to it, and I can only listen to a couple songs. I don't think her album or singles were ever very popular, but I expect this should be the least challenging for the software to ID. Identification will begin 0:33 into the song. Listen to this song on YouTube.

MELODY (SALVA NOS VERSION) by Yuki Kajiura. This song was on one of the Noir soundtracks, and is one of the five studio versions of her song "Salva Nos". A song sang in Latin, from Japan, should provide quite a challenge. Identification will begin 1:20 into the song. Listen to this song on YouTube.

STILL ALIVE by Jonathan Coulton from the Portal game, only this is a .mid of that song that somebody played on a MIDI keyboard. This promises to be challenging because its similarity to the original varies. (This is the equivalent of the "hum-it challenge" that people say I should do for SoundHound. I was gonna hum the synth part of Europe's "The Final Countdown" but changed my mind.) Identification will begin at the very start of the song. Listen to this song on YouTube.

I would like to point out that while I may look like a real bastard for picking such obscure songs, the fans of each of these programs make some pretty outlandish claims about their favorite in the Android market -- and when I proposed a few of these songs on an Android forum, I was told by both sides that these choices were "too easy" for their favorite app. Let's see how they fared, shall we?

The test:

Song: Goodnight Technologist
Shazam ID: No match
Notes: none
SoundHound ID: No match
Notes: none

Song: Jupiter
Shazam ID: No match
Notes: Gave up several times immediately after the song started, but it let me retry until it actually did its "Listening... Sending... Matching..." gig.
SoundHound ID: No match
Notes: none

Song: Love Me or Hate Me (Missy Elliot Remix)
Shazam ID: Love Me or Hate Me
Notes: It didn't react at all to Missy Elliot's singing, and only tagged the song after Lady Sovereign came on with the chorus. Also, it tags it as the original, not the remix, and it got the album wrong.
SoundHound ID: Love Me or Hate Me
Notes: Also tags it as the original, but it didn't wait until Lady Sovereign came on to make the tag, so it actually recognized Missy Elliot's singing as the Lady Sovereign song, so technically, it did tag the remix.

Song: Melody
Shazam ID: No match
Notes: It came to the conclusion that it didn't recognize this song a lot faster than the first three tests.
SoundHound ID: Salva Nos
Notes: It tagged the third or fourth version of Yuki Kajiura's epic as the fifth version, I assume based on the lyrics.

Song: Still Alive (MIDI)
Shazam ID: No match
Notes: Refused several times to try this song -- must have told it to retry a dozen times.
SoundHound ID: No match
Notes: None

Shazam final thoughts: This thing is a real piece of work. Half the time it doesn't even attempt to tag the song, it just says no. But at least it doesn't force close or anything, one click makes it try again... and again... and again. Since I have unlimited use of this thing, I'm going to throw some more popular tunes at it. This is not officially part of the test, I just want to find its limits... because I can. Played Europe's "The Final Countdown", and after refusing a dozen times, it showed me the correct artist and title, but it got the album (and album cover) wrong. OK, "Crazy B***h" by Buckcherry, it didn't refuse, and got all the facts right, so far as I can tell. It similarly got "Prayer of the Refugee" by Rise Against. And it recognized what is probably Yuki Kajiura's most popular song, "Key of the Twilight", but did not know the album name (of the version I have, or the soundtrack the original comes from -- .hack//SIGN). This app is kinda pretty, but it likes to vibrate a lot. (Ringer is on full.) It vibrates randomly as it listens, and it vibrates when it's got something (or nothing) for you.

SoundHound final thoughts: SH is a little nicer than Shazam in presentation; my only gripe is that I like Shazam's blue theme better than SH's yellow. SH's pie chart is nicer as well, as it starts from the 12 o'clock position rather than the 1 o'clock (WTF's up with that?) and it finishes its test before the pie chart fills, as opposed to well after. And SH never flat-out refused to make a match. Lastly, it shows a volume meter that shows how well it can hear the source, so you can adjust your positioning if you can. SH doesn't give an unlimited trial, but it doesn't count its failures against the user, so I have 3 more IDs left before I have to wait 30 days (or until October, however it does it), so I'm going to throw some songs at it. I'm going to be harder on it, because it has already proven itself to be more resourceful than Shazam. It recognized "Cry Little Sister" by Seasons After almost immediately, a song I haven't heard of, but my wife got. It recognized "Sing Along" by the Blue Man Group featuring Dave Matthews (though it didn't identify Dave Matthews as being involved). It failed to recognize an early demo by Evanescence called "You" that was the subject of some controversy when some fans built a hoax around it, saying the band didn't want people to hear the song, or some such mess (which was later proven false). But that was a cheap shot at the program, I would have had to have been very impressed if it identified that. Lastly, it identified "Atonement" by Parabelle, an independent lite rock group fronted by former Evans Blue vocalist Kevin Matisyn. Also, after the fifth successful tag, it prompted me to pay for the full version, or continue using the lite version, which would be reloaded with five more credits "next month" (in four days? Or 30? 31?), but until then, could be manually searched for lyrics.

Conclusion: Shazam can identify popular songs, but it utterly fails to recognize anything remotely obscure. It does give you seven days of unlimited tagging for free, so you have plenty of time to play around with it and see if it's worth your money. SoundHound is a little more resourceful, and has a nicer interface, although Shazam gives you more things to do once you've ID'd a song. Emailing, Tweeting, or Facebook'ing the information, there's a whole list. SoundHound pretty much links to the lyrics, if they're in its database, and YouTube, though the rest may have been buried in the menus. I cannot wholeheartedly recommend either app, and would go so far as to say that many of the posts on the Android market in the comments for these apps in support of the other one are false, and possibly planted by people with something to gain from the other one being purchased. Neither of these apps are nearly as good as people say they are. Then again, their phone's mic could have better noise cancellation, or perhaps other conditions were different. But mine were more than fair considering the magic some will say these apps can work. Based on what I have seen, if someone told me they were walking down the streets of Manhattan, and saw a guy whistling a tune across the street, and they held up their phone, and either Shazam or SoundHound identified it as Frank Sinatra, I wouldn't believe them even if their tongue were made of solid gold and notarized. If I buy one, it's going to be SoundHound, just because it's more resourceful. But it's not going to be because I think it's worth the money; Googling the lyrics has always worked for me. It's going to be because US Cellular gives customers who buy Android phones, $20 gift cards for the Android Market. They don't work for anything else -- I tried. If, by November, when my gift card expires, I may buy SoundHound. No promises though.

PS -- I rated each app on the Android market a number of stars equivalent to the number of songs it got right. I show up there as Nathan or Dark Reality, I forget which, but I mention the test, and will update my comments with a bit.ly to this post.

Does Ridley Scott hate Robin Hood?

2010-09-18T08:52:00.000-04:00

According to IMDb, the only Robin Hood movie Ridley Scott enjoyed was Robin Hood: Men in Tights (source). Not the 1973 Disney cartoon. Not the 1938 Adventures of... with Errol Flynn. And not even the 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which, in my opinion, was the best of the lot. I'm also fond of the other two. Of course, I like Men in Tights as well, it's a great parody. Anyway, why do I care that some d-bag has taken a crap all over a great legend that has spawned many good movies? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that he tried to make one of his own this year.

Here's the thing: Robin Hood is not supposed to be "great". It's a fun story about an archery nerd who fights the law and gets the girl. The rest is just details, and is probably not well known and/or made up, as each Robin Hood film deviates from the others on these points. The big difference is that the Disney cartoon, Men in Tights, and the 2010 version have a Prince John, a brother to Richard the Lionheart, who seeks the throne. Other details are more minor.

When it comes to criticizing Prince of Thieves, it always comes down to Kevin Costner not having a British accent. That is the only flaw in that film, and frankly, it's so damn good, it's hard to notice. Not to mention the great cast supporting him. It looked good, it felt good, and aside from Mel Brooks' parody, it really didn't need to be messed with, as Kevin Reynolds had created, pretty much, the perfect Robin Hood film. With or without the directors cut that came later (which only added to the Sheriff's backstory, though, the more Alan Rickman the better).

So where did Ridley Scott's version go wrong? Well, right from the beginning, you know this movie has no soul. It's dark and dreary and everything kinda looks the same. It's like they really wanted you to know that this movie takes place nearly a thousand years ago. Because the color TV colorized the world. Yep. And thank God for HDTV, we really needed those extra dots, the world was so blurry before. Yeah. I mean "Amen".

But is looking like crap enough to tarnish a movie? Not if it's excellent. Which this isn't, but giving it a pass -- okay, King Richard is done with the Crusades (a holy war to get the Infidels -- the Muslims -- out of Jerusalem) so he's sacking all the European countries on his way back, specifically France -- wait, what? This has to do with Robin Hood how? Oh, and then instead of staying back and commanding the armies, he's earning his Lionheart title, he's out there playing catch with arrows, blocking them with his shield, making an ass out of himself. Spoiler: He misses one. Catches him right in the throat, too. So right in the middle of battle, he asks for, and receives, wine. Under fire of arrows, his trusted men who didn't have his back before are right there with the wine. I don't think a single one gets shot. Oh, and the guy who shot the King is bragging about it. France and England/the UK have been allies longer, historically, than they've been enemies. Do you really want to be known as the guy who killed the King of England? No, you don't. So shut the f**k up and keep shooting. At most you just wanna say "I got one!" and then go about getting another one.

Oh wait. It gets better. Maid Marian lives on a farm (except it's Marion now, because Ridley's cool like that) and some little kids in masks come and steal all her grain. From a barn two miles from where she's sleeping. But she gets woken up, and she fires a flaming arrow two feet from where one is standing -- and two feet from the barn, which is covered in hay and straw. Good thing she's as good a shot as Robin Hood. She should have fired a second one to split the first one to show how awesome she is.

All the while the movie throws a bunch of characters at you. They may or may not be important. They may or may not be named. An hour later... oh and he's not Robin of Locksley anymore, he's Robin Longstride now. And he meets a fallen knight named Robert Loxley -- yeah, "Locksley" was too much for Mr. Scott -- and takes his name. You would think this would be an issue, that people who knew Robert Loxley would know that Robin Longstride isn't him -- but not only do all but Loxley's wife (Marian) and father not notice, but his father insists he continues to pose as his son, and gives him carte blanche at Marian. Marion, sorry. Marion plays along begrudgingly at first, but then starts to fall in love with him. Because he's played by Russel Crowe, and Loxley was played by some nobody. (I don't know who played him.)

That's just the first half of this 150-minute monstrosity, but that's about when I stopped watching. I usually don't quit movies, but this was bad.

OK, by contrast, my favorite Robin Hood movie...

* Looks great. Who'd have guessed that in real life, medieval England looks beautiful?

* The whole King Richard stuff is backstory. All of it. Because it doesn't f**king matter! King Richard shows up at the end, played by God... I mean Sean Connery... and it's awesome. He's not a pompous ass who gets shot for being a dick.

* Maid Marian's an actual lady. She can take care of herself, more or less, but she's not an expert archer.

* The story is simple. You can follow what's going on. It gets out of the way of the awesomeness. It doesn't feel like a long movie. You get to know the characters very soon after they're introduced (except, perhaps, for Wolf -- the boy chased by the Sheriff's men early on). Oh, and in addition to Sean Connery, it's got Morgan Freeman in it -- as a badass with a scimitar! Also as previously mentioned, Alan Rickman as the Sheriff. That's Professor Snape to you younger kids, and the bad guy in Die Hard to you older folks. Well, that'd be my generation, but damn, I forgot his name.

I give it a solid 2/10 for some decent archery and the potential to be a cool medieval film, and for actors that probably tried real hard to make the best of a crappy movie. Maybe I'll force myself to finish it at some point, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Why haven't I wrote?

2010-09-18T08:06:00.000-04:00

Why haven't I wrote? That's a very good question, one which is likely to be pondered for some time. That is, assuming I ever become a famous author and every little nuance of my life is pored over by ravid fangirls. Or fanboys, but I prefer fangirls, if you catch my drift.

Was it because I attempted and failed NaNoWriMo (the, write-50,000-words-in-the-30-days-of-November challenge)? Nope... circumstances, actually, failed me. I would have finished, if A) I didn't have to babysit newbies at work, and B) my motherboard didn't fry at home. So, no way to write.

The truth is much simpler. To quote an often-wiser man than I, my brother... "fuck it". I just felt no desire to post. I had plenty to say, just chose to express it in other ways.

There's really nothing else to be said, which is why I've taken the rare action of disallowing comments. That will not be the norm.

Jollys' Mix 2009, Disc 5

2009-12-09T04:47:00.001-05:00

Wasn't planning on doing this... I had some new songs from a CD swap I took part in through the NaNoWriMo forums (which three people backed out of after receiving their CD...) and some new stuff kicking around... turns out I had more than I thought.

A lot of stuff not on the previous mixes, so it's kinda fresh. Not all brand-new stuff, but that's not always the case anyway.

The usual disclaimer: I'm not selling this. If you want it, get the songs yourself and build it yourself. I don't own the copyright to any of these songs, I only burn these mixes to have good CDs with a high killer:filler ratio (the latter figure being as close to zero as possible).

That said:

1. Hold the Door (Armor for Sleep)
2. Alexithymia (Anberlin)
3. If You're Wondering (Weezer)
4. Mess of Me (Switchfoot)
5. Black-Eyed (Placebo)
6. Medicate (AFI)
7. Audience of One (Rise Against)
8. Jars (Chevelle)
9. Overcome (Creed)
10. An Dich (Revolverheld)
11. Put Your Death Mask On (Wednesday 13)
12. Losing His Touch (Jack Off Jill)
13. Mummy Can't Drive (Angelfish)
14. ISIS (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
15. Quietus (Epica)
16. Pyramid (Wolfmother)
17. New Fang (Them Crooked Vultures)
18. The Crow & The Butterfly (Shinedown)
19. Back Against the Wall (Cage the Elephant)
20. Dead Man's Ballet (Live) (Sixx:A.M.)

Nine of those came from the NaNoWriMo CD swap. Six of those bands I had not heard of before. And probably for the first time, I can say that only two songs appear in Rock Band, and that's the Them Crooked Vultures song and the AFI song. For all the Rise Against and Wolfmother in the game, I picked one from each that is not in the game. Weezer is also pretty well represented in the game, but as of yet, this latest single (?) isn't up there yet. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sixx:A.M. only have one song each in the game and Shinedown has two.

So yeah. New tunes for the car.

Failed NaNoWriMo

2009-12-06T02:54:00.013-05:00

As promised at the end of October, I said I was going to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days. 50,000 words is about 175 pages, or how long "The Great Gatsby" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" are. 40,000 words a novel does make (so I've heard), but 50,000 is a more well-rounded number, I suppose. That works out to 1,667 words a day, which sounds like a lot, but is really no more than a solid 2 hours of typing.

The NaNoWriMo.org site features a word count tracker I used daily to update my word count. I wrote in Firefox, actually (yes, the web browser) in a personal wiki. I would then copy the text to a text editor, which did the word counting.

I stayed ahead of the daily quota for the first half of the month. At home, my computer's power supply gave out, so I had to do all of my writing at work. Then, they had me babysitting rookies at work, including one who refused to do anything but look over my shoulder, so I actually got next to zero writing time for the whole last third of the month. The following chart shows my daily quotas, and you can see where not having a computer at home and people hovering over the one at work nearly halted my progress. Still, I wrote when I could, and finished November at 40,090 words.

I do not intend to make excuses for why I didn't finish. I did not really set out at the beginning of November to write 50,000 words. Realistically, I could have done 50,000 by the middle of the month, before all that BS. NaNoWriMo.org discourages quality, favoring quantity. I could not accept that, and was constantly editing. But I was over quota each day, sometimes over quota well into the week. I wanted to make the 50,000, but the 50,000 will get written, and then some. And when it's done, I won't have 50,000 words of crap, I'll have a marketable first draft I can possibly sell to a publisher. Publishing, not word count, is my goal. Money isn't really the goal, either. If I can pay off all I owe and get my finances into the red, hey, that'd be awesome. I've just had this story in my head since 1992, and I need to clear room for other stuff. If I can make some money off it, that'd be cool. I'm not sure I have what it takes to make a living off writing. If I can find a publisher to disagree with me, maybe I'll take less hours at work and make writing a full-time gig, but that's not really what I'm going for, though I do have a few other story ideas.

I'm going to keep many of the details under wraps, as it is a somewhat secret project, as I do intend to publish this someday. I will say that the story will not be finished when I reach 50,000 words. Where I am in the story, it looks like it will be around 75,000 words. So like, 263 pages in a paperback. Still pretty weak, but I can always go back and pad it some. Many writers do this; as I understand, most start with an outline and expand it gradually until it's a story. Me, I started from the top and worked my way down.

Each chapter is one day in the present events of the story, but it can, and often does, include flashbacks and recollections going back days, weeks, years -- even decades. The genre is fantasy, but I'm trying to focus less on the cliche magic and mythology stuff and more on human issues and interactions. Also, I'm not trying to rewrite Lord of the Rings or anything. I have a pretty unique idea, and it'll be easy to follow, or at least, no harder than necessary.

Anyway, I am still working on the novel. NaNoWriMo pushed me to write 1,667 words or more each day, and without that push, I've fallen off a little bit, but I'm still committed to finish. Eventually, I will finish.

New on PortableApps.com: Freeware

2009-10-22T17:43:00.002-04:00

PortableApps.com has begun distributing freeware apps in addition to open source apps on their site. Today: Skype and Chrome (and others). Coming soon... a whole lot more.

"But wait, Dark," I hear you saying, "isn't open source free as well?" Well, sure it is. When we say "freeware", what we mean is closed-source freeware. While it's free to download and use yourself, you don't get the source code, so you can't modify it, and more often than not, you're forbidden from redistributing it as well. That doesn't mean you can't put it on a CD/DVD with a bunch of other freeware apps and pass it to a friend (well, actually, it does, but nobody will care), it just means you can't put it on your web site. Web sites like filehippo.com that seem to collect the best freeware (and open source) get permission to redistribute freeware.

"But isn't open source freeware?" No... it's not. Open source, per definition, doesn't have to be given away for free. Not only do I have no good examples of successful open source software that cost money, I don't know why anyone would open the source and charge for the software. Seems contradictory to me, but it's not. At least, it's possible. But no, open source is a different kind of license. Open Source, as defined by the Open Source Initiative, is defined here and explained here. It's all very complicated stuff I'd be more than happy to let them explain while I just move on. The open source software you know and probably love, from Firefox, to Pidgin, to OpenOffice, to Linux, is free to download and use and modify and redistribute, although Mozilla opens a hell of a can of worms over open source by retaining trademark to their name and logo, so if you do modify and redistribute Firefox, you have to do so under another name, and you gotta change the logo, too. (See Blackbird, Orca, and Iceweasel for three browsers which did exactly that. PortableApps.com actually acquired Mozilla's permission to keep the name and logo, but that's rare.)

So what does this mean? (Yeah, I know. I say that a lot.) For the past couple years, when portable applications really started to get big, the only legal way to make something portable was to start with an open source program, because freeware can't be legally modified. Portable freeware was often illegal, with very expensive software such as VMWare ThinApp (itself virtually profanity over at PortableApps.com) or Xenocode used to do the work. You could get these programs at a variety of warez sites, sites that distribute various illegal programs, and typically infect their releases with viruses and other nasty stuff. (You don't think they blatantly break the law and advertise it as a favor to you, do you? Don't ever think that they don't want something in return, that they won't lie about their motives, and that they have anyone's best interest at heart but their own pocketbook.)

Now, some popular freeware programs are going to be available in a portable setting. Which is ironic, because all software starts portable. It's got to be tied to the registry or something like Microsoft's .NET Framework for it to not be portable. But once it is, the wizards over at PortableApps.com design launchers that make the programs think they're installed, when they really aren't. This virtualization adds very little, in some cases nothing, to the resources required to start and run a program. Unless you have a slow flash drive over a USB 1.1 connection, you won't see much of a difference. If you run portable apps from a regular hard drive, you will not see a difference.

Why run portable apps from a hard drive? Well, say Windows messes up. For any reason. It's Windows. Messing up is what it does best. Now you could take it to the repair shop, you could fight with it, but wouldn't you rather just solve all your problems in one hour flat? Yes, you can. You need a second hard drive. Merge to portable applications. You don't need the PortableApps.com Platform (menu) but it can be helpful. (It would be more helpful if it had categories/folders, but that's not a feature that's being planned, though maybe with the application directory expanding with freeware, maybe it'll be considered in a future version.) Start using the second hard drive for all your pictures, documents, music, and video files. Get yourself to where you have nothing on your C drive but Windows, your antivirus, your firewall, your drivers, and your programs that aren't available portable yet.

Once you're at that point, once Windows really starts acting up, just ensure everything is off of C, put your Windows CD/DVD in, reboot the computer, and follow the prompts to erase the C drive. Reinstall Windows. Reinstall your drivers (including DirectX), then your antivirus and other security software, then your non-portable programs. Your portable programs will be in the same place you left them, ready to go as ever.

You weren't planning to sleep any time soon, right?

2009-10-20T21:17:00.001-04:00

Creepypasta

Fun blog I found somewhere, they post scary stories and creepy images.

For the past, however long I've been online, I've been collecting pictures that are basically creepy to downright scary. The most effective one I have is actually one of my mother making a face. Out of respect, I don't post it, but I think anybody who saw it would agree that it is scary.

This will be my first blog entry with a jump break. If you don't want to get the bloody wits scared out of you, don't click "Read More". On the other hand, if you're feeling brave, go ahead and do so now.

This first picture will make you think of the 1980s horror movie franchise "Predator". Those aliens were never named on-screen, but Star Trek changed up the design just enough to not get sued and introduced them as the Nausicaans. They're a race of thugs, enforcers, bodyguards, and are never portrayed as being nice in any way, shape, or form. Like the Predator, they are quite scary to look at:

Next we have a production still from the film The Ring -- not the Japanese Ringu, but the American remake. Early on in the film, a pair of teenage girls share a story about a killer videotape. One saw this tape, and was called and told she had seven days to live -- seven days ago. After a spooky scene with a television, the doomed girl goes upstairs. She turns the door handle, and the camera goes inside the room, and zooms in as she opens the door. The below effect is meant to show her both scared to death and having been in a well for seven days. I have a stillframe from the film -- it only lasts a third of a second or so -- but this production still is a bit clearer. This frame never appears in the film, as such.

STILL gives me the chills! Though not as bad as a few years back. Now I can joke about it. Liv Tyler, bad hair day? OK, OK.

Now I know you've seen this guy. Sam, the Chinese Crested, has been named the World's Ugliest Dog a few years before passing away last year? May his ugly, but I'm quite sure loyal and lovable ass rest in peace.

As you can see, they cleverly put his back paw in his mouth for added effect. Makes you wonder, did they really need to do that? He's a bald dog with ratty ears, messed-up teeth, and Gizmo hair. Not to mention he could stand to gain a few pounds -- or he's old. He doesn't look amused in either. I'd like to see a happy picture of him. And if I met him, or a dog like him, I'd have no problems petting him, playing catch, whatever. A dog's a dog, and a dog's man's best friend -- even though I'm more of a cat person.

Mannequins are creepy, but these two go out of their way to be weird. Is it their heads leaning forward? Is it their dark eyes, or the way their hair frames their faces? I don't know, but whoever found these mannequins attractive enough to sell their clothes is weird.

Kangaroos are alright with me, but I've never seen one in real life, just pictures. I'd love to hang out with a domesticated one sometime. Them and koala bears. Aussies just get the coolest animals. I know it's gotta be the red eye that makes this marsupial frightening. It obviously just looked up at someone taking its picture; the result completely unintentional.

Last but not least, if you were a fan of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, you probably recognize these:

These (and the Cat's Eye one, which I haven't got) used to scare me so much when I was younger. They're just creepy images. It's like, you can tell they were once beautiful young ladies, and at this stage of decomposition some of that's still there, in a sense. Also, it's almost like they kind of have eyes, deep in there, like a vengeful spirit that wants to get back at whoever did this to them.

I hope I haven't scared anybody too badly. If you have any creepy or scary pictures, please leave them in the comments.

I dare you to try this (NaNoWriMo)

2009-10-20T07:47:00.003-04:00

I dare you to try this.

Write a novel. Well, a novella. 50,000 words. Works out to about 175 pages in MS Word.

In 30 days.

Back in 1999 a guy issued this challenge to all his friends. A lot of them tried. Some succeeded, some failed. They've been doing it for ten years now. It's grown each year, and some of these books have gotten published, a couple have even hit the New York Times bestseller list.

You may have read a 50,000-word book in school. F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is about that long. So is "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. And "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. If you're a Dean Koontz fan, his early book "Shattered" is about that long. But I don't think any of them wrote their books in 30 days.

Here's the rules: You start any time after 12:00 midnight when the clock rolls over to November 1 in your local time zone. Yes, that means North Carolinians get a 3 hour head start over Californians. You keep your own hours, write using whatever means are available to you, and sometime before 12:00 midnight your local time, you copy and paste your efforts into a script at their web site, and they count your words. If it's 50,000 or greater, you win. You win a printable certificate that says you did.

They don't keep your story, and they don't help you publish it. They don't give you anything if you win. They pretty much tell you how to cheat to win (well, they tell you how to turn your work into gibberish that can't be turned back into your story, for if you're paranoid and wrote porn or something you hope to publish) but discourage cheating, since you don't gain anything. It would be really stupid to cheat, though.

If you're at all interested, or if you want to see what they're all about, head on over to NaNoWriMo.org -- it stands for National Novel Writing Month. If you want more information, read this wikiHow article on how to participate in NaNoWriMo.

You know you want to do it. Everyone's got a story to tell. You got nothing to lose... except maybe your sanity.

Cell phone wallpapers #2: Space & Nature

2009-10-15T21:22:00.003-04:00

A week ago, I posted some cell phone wallpapers I made. I won't explain again how to use them; refer back to that other post for instructions. Or, contact me. HowardForums is the best resource on the Net for asking for help on phones of any kind; I can really only help with Motorola phones (not smartphones) with a USB connection and/or a microSD card slot. Anyway, here is Series 2 of my wallpapers for cell phones, focusing on space and nature.

(A) (B) (C)

(D) (E) (F)

(A) Basic but quintessential "Earth and moon" wallpaper. A must for any phone.

(B) A nice space photo I retouched to a bluish color.

(C) I've had this wallpaper for ages on the computer, and the crop is really cool.

(D) One of my latest acquisitions, it's just a really nice picture, but not as nice as you might think on the phone, for some reason, but your mileage may vary.

(E) For the anime fans out there, this Japanese tree captures the beauty of a Tokyo night.

(F) Waterfalls. Real basic, another "good but generic" wallpaper.

Warning for Amazon customers buying online Microsoft Points

2009-10-11T17:47:00.002-04:00

Just thought I'd throw this out there.

If you make a new Amazon.com account, register your credit/debit card, and expect to buy an Online Game Code for Microsoft Points, you're sorely mistaken.

Amazon.com will charge your credit card and then withhold the code for "up to four hours".

They are also experiencing a glitch where you can't add a new credit card with a different billing address (e.g. your friend can't buy stuff with their card on your account) but this shouldn't affect many people, and they're probably/hopefully working on fixing it.

For those willing to read a bit, here's the full story:

My brother-in-law wanted Microsoft Points, and his girlfriend and I came up with this brilliant idea: She'd put her credit card on my Amazon.com account, and we'd buy the points code with her credit card. Well, the glitch in their system prevented that -- it wouldn't accept her card with her billing address, it required her card to use my billing address, which caused it to be declined -- so she made a new account.

With her new account, she tried to buy the points code, but was told since her account is new and the credit card hadn't been used (successfully) there before, they would hold the points for four hours. For some reason she tried again, and ended up making a second transaction, which was also held, but that's on her.

You never experience this feature if they mail something to you, because the four hours, at worst, causes a one-day delay in shipping. They always estimate a day late anyway, so you don't see it.

So anyway, since he had the Xbox at my place, he wanted his code Right Away. Well, turns out his girlfriend had the cash, but she left it at home for whatever reason. So I followed them home, he got his money, we went to GameStop, he got his code the old-fashioned way, and we started loading his Xbox up with songs and Geometry Wars.

Come to find out Amazon still charged their card for $40. His girlfriend's called and tried to get it reversed, but they're actually fighting her on it. They can see that the code wasn't revealed (you have to solve a CAPTCHA to see it) and it definitely wasn't redeemed with Microsoft. Best case scenario, Amazon does the right thing, worst case scenario, he's got another 3200MSP (that they really can't afford) to play with.

Don't get me wrong -- Amazon.com is still the best way to get Microsoft points. What you do is, only spend cash (paper) money. Keep the coins in a jar. When you get enough, take the jar to a Coinstar and redeem for an Amazon.com gift code -- this also means the 8.9% coin counting fee gets waived. Depending on how long you saved, the coins could cover the entire code, or at least a good part of it. Nice way to gradually save up for points. Even if it is your first transaction, just be aware that you will have to wait four hours to get your code. (Or if you don't mind waiting, spend $25 or more in one transaction for free shipping, and have them send you a physical points card.)

DLC Week of 13 Oct. 09 - Brütal Legend

2009-10-09T22:15:00.002-04:00

This week's a slow week leading up to QUEEN the following week, but there are a few gems in there, depending on what you like. One each by Motörhead, Tenacious D, and Testament from the Brütal Legend soundtrack, one by Black Tide, one by blink-182, two live tracks by Kansas, and one by L7. Oh yeah, I forgot. And two by Joe Satriani. Yes, you read that right. Joe Satriani is bringing his unique brand of guitar pwnage to Rock Band.

Let's have a closer look at the songs, shall we? Click the name of the song to find the best YouTube video I could find for that song.

"We Are the Road Crew" - Motörhead
Pretty good song, nothing that stands out though. Motörhead's stuff all tends to sound the same, but it's usually pretty good. Like Ace of Spades (which comes with Rock Band 2) this will probably be a challenge, but I think we will pass on this.

"The Metal" - Tenacious D
I can't be held responsible if you click on the above link. Tenacious D are some silly dudes, I don't really get it, or like it much. Jen likes it, so we might get it.

"More Than Meets the Eye" - Testament
Wait, this isn't from the soundtrack to the new Transformers movie? Never much cared for Testament, but this will be another good heavy song for those looking for a challenge. Definitely a skip, at least for now.

"Show Me the Way" - Black Tide
Not sure what's going on here. Sounds like hair metal. Annoying at first, but it kinda grew on me. Probably skip, but we may get it.

"What's My Age Again?" - blink-182
Here's some good fun pop-rock. This is a definite buy. Still holding out for "Pinch Me", damn good song, criminally underrated. Their songs are kinda hard to sing, but fun, and fun on the bass as well.

"Satch Boogie" and "Surfing With the Alien" - Joe Satriani
Joe Satriani is such a showoff, but one can't deny that he knows his way around a guitar. It would be interesting to see how it translates to a plastic guitar. Obviously hard as hell, see also "Rude Mood", which apparently nobody's gotten 100% on Expert Guitar yet (and proven it), but this video I linked comes pretty close with 99%. Two words. In. Sane.

"Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)" and "Point of Know Return" - Kansas
Not really digging either of these songs, but "Point of Know Return" sounds clever. Probably skip both of these.

"Andres" by L7
Believe it or not, that's the best video of that song. Jury's gonna have to be out on that one. "Pretend We're Dead" is a cool song, but this sounds kinda bad. I'll have to hear a better copy.

So it looks like just the blink-182 track next week, but we'll get at least 3-5 of the Queen songs the following week.

Also "What's My Age Again?" would make track #400, if I don't first delete the covers of "Tom Sawyer" (Rush) and "Number of the Beast" (Iron Maiden) as we have both the cover and the master recording, and there's no point in having both. So that would knock us down to 397, and a Queen song would be #400.

As always, the complete, up-to-date list of all our Rock Band songs can be found at the link at the bottom of the blog, or right here.

Blog update: Links, Twitter, no MySpace

2009-10-09T17:09:00.004-04:00

Did a little housekeeping on the blog page today and yesterday.

The links (at the bottom) were hard to read and mostly outdated. The only one that survived is my YouTube channel. The rest are now irrelevant and as such were removed. I've added the link to my account on MyRockBandSongs.com that shows all the songs we have, and how many, sortable by song title, artist/band, year of release, genre, difficulty on each instrument, and the date it was added to the PlayStation Network (the owner uses those dates, I guess he has a PS3).

Also, the colors made the links hard to read. Just tweaked a couple settings to make it easier.

MySpace updates gone and replaced with Twitter. Only three tweets displayed at the moment, but I don't update it much. Also a link to "follow" me. I don't do "follow quid pro quo"; rather, I only follow interesting Tweeters. Follow me if you like but don't be surprised if I don't re-follow or whatever. I'm not really into the numbers, anyway.

Cell phone wallpapers #1: Trippy

2009-10-08T20:06:00.002-04:00

I've been doing cell phone wallpapers for a while, ever since my last phone let me make my own. I'll never pay for another one, since the first and last one I paid for was of pretty low quality. It was a Mustang, I think (the car, not the horse), and when I was able to make my own, I made a few better ones. For free. Now on this phone, I haven't even got one Mustang wallpaper (yet my Xbox 360 profile has the free 2010 Mustang theme).

My wallpapers are formatted for my phone and I'm not offering them in other resolutions. Motorola RAZR/ROKR wallpapers only need to be an aspect ratio of 5:4 in Portrait format, so that's pretty much the only standard I follow. These wallpapers look great on my ROKR slider, and they look better on my wife's RAZR 3 or whatever it is. The flip with the touch screen on the outside that only does like, 2 things. It's a flip, it's basically worthless, but I do gotta say, the screen is sharper. Battery only lasts like half as long, so who cares?

Anyway, here they are. This isn't the whole collection, but it's a start. I'll post a few more later. To use them, click on them to open the full sized image, and then right-click that, and choose Save Image As.

Optical Illusions

These will make you think your wallpaper is animated, but it's just an illusion. They are also quite likely to give you a headache if you look at them long enough, so be careful with that. I can't just post these though, I have to post some quality ones you might actually want to use -- though these are great for sending to your friends as a joke.

Just Trippy

Now these, I'm proud of. The first one doesn't have a name, but it's old as hell. My brother was playing around with various image programs, and I tried a couple. Using effects filters, I came up with this. I don't recall what the original looked like. It's cool though, ain't it? In a unique way devoid of all focus. The second is obviously a Mandelbrot, it was originally orange and red, I think, but using color filters, I got it to greens and blues. The third came up on a Google Images search for "celtic wallpaper", only it was orange and gold. I rotated it, cropped it, and used color filters to get it green.

For making and touching up cell phone wallpapers, I currently use XnView Portable and run it off my USB flash drive. If you want to install XnView on your system, whether you've got a Mac, or a PC running Windows or Linux, go to XnView.com. Making them is pretty easy. Find an image you want to use. Could be a personal photo, a logo, or a wallpaper. Open it up in XnView. Right click on it, go to image aspect ratio, choose 5:4. Drag the selection box around what you want - if it's Portrait and you want Landscape, just hit Tab to change it. Get it how you like it and crop. Save it on your phone in the right folder.

The wallpaper folder in Motorola phones (not smartphones) is motorola\shared\picture.

Found something to agree with FOX News on

2009-10-05T03:27:00.002-04:00

Normally, I tend to disagree with much that is on FOX News. It's not hard to do really; the network favors the rich, powerful, and white minority of this country so much they don't even try to hide their distaste for the rest of us anymore. And it tears them up, it kills them that a black man was elected President of this country. However, slanted as they may be (fair and balanced, my ass), there is truth to be found in what they say, you just have to look for it. Sometimes when I'm watching the news, I'll watch their channel a little bit, it's not terrible. I just don't agree with a lot of it.

But this I do. I've been following the capture of Chinatown director Roman Polanski in the news. I heard about this story a few years ago on the Net, and never really had an opinion on it. Way back in '77, this guy rapes a 13-year-old girl and flees the country, hiding in France, which doesn't extradite violent criminals to the United States. As the victim got older, she urged the charges to be dropped, I suppose to get on with her life. Now, 32 years after the crime, he's been caught in Switzerland, and may very well be returned to the States to face the music.

Where FOX News comes in is, on the talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg excused Polanski's actions as "not rape-rape", implying that it was just statutory rape. The article then goes on to define consent laws in various countries, to show that Whoopi was wrong no matter which country's laws she may have been talking about. One part of the article sits wrong with me: where it says "Other forms of rape include 'date-rape' in which a victim is so heavily intoxicated with drugs or alcohol that they lack the ability to consent", I've always believed that forcible rape includes physical force, mental duress, as well as chemical restraint. And that "date rape" is pretty much when the girl changes her mind in the middle of the deed and the guy doesn't stop. And I disagree with the article author's claim that "the distinction was never meant to imply that statutory rape or date-rape are any less heinous than forcible rape." Yes they were. They're taking lesser crimes and tacking "rape" on there just to make it seem more heinous, by implying that it's the same thing as restraining a person and assaulting them sexually in a penetrating manner against their will. If the person's willing, or was willing to start with, yes, it is less heinous. Pretty much by definition. Still wrong, of course, for different reasons, but not *as* wrong.

What I do firmly agree with is this:

"Roman Polanski diabolically lured a 13-year old child to a remote area where he knew she would be powerless. He used his mental and physical advantage over her to intoxicate and drug her and then sexually violate her in every possible way that the law prohibits.

He deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

Let's not forget that he fled to a country where he knew he wouldn't be extradited. He knew that even with all his money, he could not afford a defense in the country with perhaps the fairest justice system (see the article for why), and knew that he would be convicted regardless. So he tucked his tail between his legs and ran. If that ain't a full confession, I don't know what is.

Stupid people do stupid things...

2009-09-25T04:45:00.003-04:00

...and then blame others for their stupidity. It's sad, really. I have two stories courtesy of our local NBC affiliate, WITN, which show people doing incredibly stupid things most of us would not think twice about, and they're looking for anyone to blame but themselves.

This first one should be an easier sell than the next one. Down in Florida (surprise surprise) a teacher spiked her soda with hot sauce. The parents of the kid who stole the soda are all upset. I suppose it would do to point out that the kid is autistic. OK, he has a learning ability. OK, the teacher knew he'd steal the soda, which is why she spiked it. Still, hot sauce never killed anybody. And still, if he hadn't stolen the soda, he wouldn't have gotten - wait, the kid wasn't even harmed. He was embarrassed. That's it. Anyway, this actually went to trial, and she was found guilty, and faces up to five years in jail. And in 10 years when this kid's legal, he'll be behind bars because, first, his parents taught him it was OK to steal, and the system taught him that if you try to protect your stuff from getting stolen, you can do some serious time even if nobody gets hurt. Freakin' stupid.

Might not be able to convince those of you who have kids, but a couple down in Arizona took some nudie pictures of their kids - three young daughters, it says, ages aren't given - and then tried to develop the pictures at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart called the FBI, I suppose, and the state brought them up on charges, and took their kids. Now they are countersuing the state as well as Wal-Mart for defamation and some other crap. First of all, naked pictures of kids are contraband in the United States, with some exceptions given. Typically parents are allowed a few of their own kids, up to a certain age. Usually a judgment call is made at the photo counter. But it is the policy of any photo lab - and I worked at one, so I know this firsthand - to call the FBI for pictures including any child nudity, and then they make the call. (There is another number for bestiality photos.) Now, I know anyone, say 15 or older, knows their parents have naked pictures of them. It's a given. My mom even sent my wife a couple. Insert eye-rolling emoticon here. But let's be serious. People know that crimes against kids have risen in the last 15-20 years. It's all over the news. More people are aware, and more people are sensitive to rights people never attributed to kids before. And one of those rights is the right to not be photographed in the nude. Pictures don't get lost or disappear anymore. Did I mention that they used a digital camera? They could have printed these pictures at home. Digital cameras are the new Polaroids, they're great for those taboo sex pictures and videos you don't want to take to a lab to get developed. They could have emailed those pictures to all their family members and the FBI likely would never have found out. But no, they took them to Wal-Mart. So they got caught, got busted. But rather than plead their case, they're suing. First of all, Wal-Mart is in the clear. They did their job. They did what they were supposed to do. Now, the state may have overreacted. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure these people aren't going to win their lawsuit. Then again...

Anyway, if you look through the comments on those articles, I post as "Nathan" from "Eastern NC". I pretty much said what I said here, just in 1000 characters or less per comment.

Dexter Season 4 teaser, other season premieres

2009-09-23T19:19:00.007-04:00

Even if you don't know what Dexter is/all about, have a look at the trailer for Season 4 or just watch it right here. Pretty damn cool.

The Wikipedia article is full of spoilers but will tell you more than you ever wanted, let alone needed, to know.

Long story short, Dexter Morgan is a forensics analyst for the Miami police, and a serial killer by night. Trained by his father, a veteran cop in the same department (but now deceased), to kill anonymously without the cops being able to figure out who did it. His sister's also a cop, but doesn't know about his secret. Through his sister, he met a woman he's dating now, who was abused by her husband. Dexter only kills bad guys, people who have escaped justice somehow. He researches them, using illegal methods, to be 100% sure they are guilty before killing them. The show is seasonal, with each season being a complete story. Seasons 2 and 3 were sequels, not a continuation, of the first season. So it isn't necessary to watch all the seasons, but it does help with back story, and it's neater. Still, Seasons 1-3 were all good.

In other news, Jen and I watched the House Season 6 premiere, and that was really good. The ending could have been better (not to spoil anything, but I was hoping he'd spend the whole season institutionalized - whoops, I guess that was a bit of a spoiler) but the first part was very, very good. I'll have to watch it again, maybe I'll get more out of it. Personally, I'm waiting for another Doctor - more accurately, a Time Lord - the fifth season of the Doctor Who reboot should be starting early 2010, but we have two more specials - a Halloween special, and a Christmas special, before season 5 begins properly. And LOST will begin its sixth and final season soon. I'm just at the end of Season 3, so I hope taking a break to finish Potter 7 and the Dexter books Jen bought me for my birthday will allow me to watch the last three seasons at my leisure, and not have to wait a week for the new ones.

Creative Commons licensed & what it means

2009-09-22T19:10:00.002-04:00

If you don't know what all Creative Commons is -- and for the longest time, I didn't -- in basic terms, it's a new level of copyright and licensing for the Internet age. Copyrights and trademarks are highly restrictive and philosophically go against what the Internet is all about. Accepting that, some people got together and made a handful of licenses with simple, visual-cue logos, that someone can glance at and understand.

Take the one on this site, for example. The (cc) part is the same on every license, so you can quickly identify it as a Creative Commons license of some kind. The BY part, "Attribution", means that while you are allowed to reproduce any article on this site, you can print it, put it on your own site, whatever - you just gotta credit me by name and include the URL back here. You don't have to ask permission to use something, which is the whole point of a Creative Commons license. If I post a recipe and you like it and want to share it, you just gotta say where you got it, even if it's a discreet note at the bottom. No further permission and no payment is required. The NC part, Non-Commercial, means you can't sell it. You can't download a bunch of articles and put it on a site people have to pay to access. Or sell them for any price. Not that someone feasibly could, the point is that if they could, they can't. And the ND part, Non-Derivative, just means you can't change it. This part's important. It means someone can't take an article I write, change what I said, and post it somewhere else. They can comment on it (e.g. to say "This is the recipe I found, blah blah blah, but I use 2 cups of this instead of 3 and I add this other ingredient", to use an example) but can't change it.

I don't even know if there's any recourse for violating a Creative Commons license. I've never heard of such a thing. I could be wrong, but it may just be an idea with no real legal backing. Probably so, but it's a good idea, and it's a cut above contacting someone and having to ask for their permission to use something you wrote/made, if you don't intend to profit from it.

As for what it means, nothing new to just read the site. And if you want to repost something, it's easier and clearer how. That's all.

Saying Goodbye to My 20s

2009-09-21T00:02:00.001-04:00

So, in 20 minutes, I turn 30 - at least, according to the calendar. At midnight it will technically be the 21st of September, and I was technically born on the 21st of September in 1979, so that'd make me 30, right? Well, not exactly. Close enough. See, I was born at 10-something at night in California. Here in North Carolina, when I was born in CA, it was already the early morning of the 22nd of September. Jen hates when I bring this up. If I had been out here for my 21st birthday, technically I would be able to drink a day early, legally. In another day it won't matter anyway.

I'm always thinking about statistics, the first this, the last that. Jen was the first one to drive the new car. Our niece and nephew (her brother's kids) were the first kids to ride in it (and probably the first people to ride in the back seat). I think we made "Beg" by Evans Blue the first song we listened to in it. That or "The Pursuit" (also by Evans Blue). First place we ate after getting it was Cracker Barrel. Just useless trivia. In January of last year, I promised myself I'd lose a whole lotta weight by around this time. Didn't happen. Diet didn't last long, but I'm eating better. I've given up soda and alcohol almost altogether. I still love some pizza, and macaroni and cheese, but I'm eating the mac & cheese less. And I'm eating salad every now and then. So small changes definitely beat fad diets. The results won't be as quick, though.

When I started my 20s, I had no car and no drivers' license. I was either working in retail or manufacturing in a clean room, but I was either about to change jobs or had just done so. I can't remember where I was when the world was supposed to end, but didn't. The geeks said the world was going to end at the year 2000 to sell computers. The Mayans only wrote their last calendar until December 20, 2012, and they weren't selling anything, but there could be any number of reasons why their calendar stopped so close to the end of this decade, but the guy who did Independence Day and the American Godzilla remake is making a 2012 movie, so somebody's making some bank.

In 1999, I hadn't even had a steady girlfriend, or any for that matter, or any chances with girls and women who were just friends. I'd watched my brothers hit and miss in love and relationships, but never had any of my own. Got plenty of female attention, but only at family reunions and whatnot where every kid in the room wanted to be carried around. So not the kind of attention I needed. Ten years later, I'm happily married. In 1999, I hadn't even been outside the state of California. Now, not only do I live on the other side of the country, I've visited 18 states plus DC and including the state I moved to (North Carolina). I spent almost 60% of my 20s in CA and almost 40% in NC - the move was around my birthday. In just four years here I've had a couple locals tell me I know my way around their home state better than they do. I had nearly shoulder-length hair in 1999, but since 2003 I've kept it buzzed within half an inch.

In 1999, I was using a computer my father - who passed away in 2002 - gave me for graduating high school (in 1998). Now I'm using a computer (at home) that I built myself in 2005. Four and a half years later it's still a solid machine. Tech breakdown of the two computers:

Processor: 200 MHz vs. 2 GHz (2,010 MHz)
System memory: 32 MB vs. 2 GB (2,000 MB)
Video card: 16 MB vs. 256 MB
Total available hard drive space: 18 GB vs. 1.4 TB (1,400 GB)
Optical drive: CD Reader vs. CD and DVD Burner
Floppy drive: Yes vs. No
Memory card support: No vs. Four multi-readers
Display: 15" vs. 19"

So the computer has gotten better, and I was still using VHS for movies in 1999. Now I've replaced my entire VHS collection with DVDs and I'm looking at a move to Blu-ray.

Well, there's midnight. And, life goes on...

Guitar Hero 5 reviewed

2009-09-20T20:34:00.001-04:00

The days of Rock Band games being clearly superior to Guitar Hero games are finally over. When Harmonix went to EA and MTV to make Rock Band, Neversoft tried not once, but twice to hold onto the "old" formula of guitar-only play, in both Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (which came out before Rock Band, to be fair) and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Neither game was as good as Rock Band, let alone the last Harmonix GH, Guitar Hero 2. When Neversoft made their full-band game, Guitar Hero: World Tour (aka GH4), which came out around the same time as Rock Band 2, it seemed like they didn't bother looking for what didn't work in the first Rock Band. They kinda just threw something together, and it was a train wreck. Guitar Hero: Metallica, the second full-band game from Neversoft, had better music, if you like Metallica and '80s metal in general. Worse if you didn't, but the gameplay was about the same. Bad. Now Neversoft is stepping up the game with Guitar Hero 5, but have Neversoft learned from World Tour/4 as well as Rock Band 1 and 2? In short, oh yes. In detail, read on.

First impression
It's still Guitar Hero. Sign-in issues that shouldn't exist, do, and will annoy you to no end. Your "band" will develop stupid tricks for doing this stuff "just right". For example, it pays to have the same person sign in first (to be the "leader") every time. Stupidly stupid stuff happens when you don't, but some cool things happen when you do. More on that later. The menus seem bloated with too many entries. However, to its credit, the game goes into a "demo" play when you're at the menu, some song will play, and you can press a button (Y or yellow on the Xbox 360) and you jump right in. If you're on a guitar, you choose guitar or bass, lefty or standard, difficulty, and you're playing. Instantly. Anyone can press Y to join in. Just like that. This is the party mode you've probably heard about. It is quicker than quick play. No loading, no nothing. (No failing, either.)

Quickplay/Playlist
The Quickplay playlist is far more advanced than Rock Band 1 or Guitar Hero World Tour by a long shot. Like Rock Band 2, difficulty is given, on a scale of ten. (RB1 had a scale of 9, RB2 has a scale of 7, and World Tour had no difficulty notation.) Like other games, a sample of the song plays as you hover over each song. Album covers are not shown, as in Rock Band 2, but the length of the song is given. You can sort by "intensity" for each instrument (intensity is difficulty), total running time, year the song came out, name of the song, name of the artist/band, and maybe a couple others. You can make a playlist of as many songs as you want, it would seem. (RB1 had no playlist, RB2's playlist is seemingly unlimited, but WT's was limited to 6 songs.)

If you're the band leader, you can load and save playlists, too. But you can only load playlists saved when you were the band leader. If someone else was, everyone has to exit out, and that person must sign in first to become the leader, and then load the playlist. You can name the playlists, but Neversoft continues to not support the chat pad; you must enter text arcade-style.

Gameplay
The first thing you may notice is that Guitar Hero 5 lets you play as your Xbox 360 Avatar. Doing this, in fact, unlocks an achievement. In the first hour, too, don't be surprised if you get half a dozen achievements, if you're any good at all. Neversoft's plan thus far seems to be to lure Rock Band loyalists in with achievements and the promise of more to come. I think I have 135-185 Gamerscore with it already?

Anyway, a lot of the "band play" mistakes that World Tour made are gone. Star Power is no longer confusing. Like GH:A and previous, and both Rock Band games, each band member now has their own Star Power. (World Tour tried to "pool" Star Power, and it was just confusing.) Everyone also has their own crowd meter, as opposed to Rock Band's "shared" crowd meter on the left. The score now shows a sort of "band streak" I don't fully understand. GH5 introduces a new feature called "Band Moments", which is like the Unison Bonus in RB2. During a Band Moment, everyone's notes burn in flames for a few seconds. Hit each one and you get a big band multiplier. The band multiplier goes up to 11, between Star Power and Band Moment, if everyone's on the ball.

As such, scores tend to be a lot higher than in Rock Band 2. Expect a million plus points for a decent performance. For a long song with a great performance, don't be surprised if you get a few million. Also, for the first time, you can see each musician's individual score, in addition to the percentage and note/phrase streak. Score-wise, vocalists still get the short end of the stick. An expert guitarist scoring in the low 90s percentage-wise is going to get many times more points than an expert vocalist scoring in the high 90s and getting FCs. Jen complained about the vocals, but not as much as she did with World Tour. Even RB2 has sloppy vocal recognition, in parts, so vocals is bound to be a mixed bag anyway.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack is pretty damn good. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana is finally playable. John Mellencamp is finally in a rhythm game, for better or worse, with "Hurts So Good". All kinds of rock, from the 60s to today, is represented in this game.

If you have downloaded songs for World Tour - we do, but only 15 - they will play in GH5, but not right out of the box. You must download a 300MB patch (I have no idea why it's so big, but it IS FREE) which allows downloaded songs for WT not by Jimi Hendrix to work. (Maybe it just re-downloads your DLC in one patch, I don't know.) For $3.50 (280 Microsoft Points) you can export SOME but NOT ALL of your World Tour songs, specifically 35 of them, plus an additional 21 from Guitar Hero: Smash Hits (no, the DragonForce song is NOT one of them, dropping the ball becomes a regular thing at Activision). Still, it sounds like you can get a lot of songs in Guitar Hero 5. And, songs exported from World Tour and Smash Hits will also work as DLC in the upcoming, family-friendly Band Hero Neversoft is putting out later this year (to compete with Harmonix's kiddie offering, LEGO Rock Band).

Conclusion
All in all, Guitar Hero 5 is a good game that, for once, allows Guitar Hero and Rock Band to compete directly. Both Guitar Hero 5 and Rock Band 2 have good features I miss in the other, and they both have a lot of room for improvement. Rock Band will probably always have the larger library, even if Neversoft does figure out how to get the soundtracks of the previous games into the latest one. But Guitar Hero will probably always have the better exclusives. When playing the same song, on the same difficulty, on the same instrument, the track still differs from Rock Band to Guitar Hero, so even the same song is a different playing experience from one to the other. So it is definitely worth buying. And as an added bonus, they're going to give you Guitar Hero: Van Halen when it comes out in December? That's a great deal. And this is coming from a Rock Band loyalist.

Eight years ago today...

2009-09-11T08:46:00.002-04:00

...the world changed forever. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy, everyone who lived through these events will never forget where they were or what they were doing that day. Had I been living on the East Coast, I might very well have been awake when it happened, but I was still living in CA, and I remember being home alone, and the phone kept ringing. I wanted to sleep longer, but to do that I had to silence the phone. So I got up, and just as I was about to pick it up to silence it, it rang again. We didn't have Caller ID so I had no idea who it was before I answered.

It was my brother's ex, though they were still together at the time. Later, she'd leave him for another guy, who, as I understand, would later leave her for another girl. Turnabout being fair play and all that.

Anyway, she told me that we as a country had just been invaded and bombed. I told her we were alright, got off the phone, and went to look on the TV. I was pretty sure she had said the World Trade Center in New York City, but all they were talking about on TV was a plane crashing into the Pentagon. I had to go online to get the story in New York.

Since then, I've been distrustful of televised news. They tell you what they want to tell you, with more information after a word from the sponsors. You go online, you set up Google News or a similar service the way you want, and you do it right, and you get the whole story on one page. You use Firefox and Adblock Plus and there are no sponsors, just the facts (and no ads means it loads faster).

We also - Americans in general - learned a lot about the Middle East. I can't be the only one who didn't give it a second thought. It also put the attack in perspective - one attack (well, four - four planes) was such a culture shock, but the Middle East sees attacks like this weekly. Daily, some weeks. So we have to think, if 9/11 was really as bad as we make it out to be, it must be really sad to live in the Middle East, and have this happen all the time. But two factors are in effect: First, we haven't had a terrorist attack on our soil by a foreign power outside of wartime before. This is a new thing. When it happens every day, it's less of a shock. Still sucks, but it's not the epic shock 9/11 was and continues to be. Second, too often Americans think of themselves as worlds better than the rest of the world. Too many of us figure terrorists blowing up terrorists is OK, tending to overlook the fact that, too often, children are caught in the crossfire. Far more children die in their bombings than died on 9/11, that's for sure. Of course, any child killed or harmed needlessly (or at all) is a tragedy. Still, we overlook it when the child isn't American.

It was also former President Bush's finest moment. Never mind that bin Laden and the Bush family go way back, with ties in oil, as well as military (specifically, when Bush's dad, who ran the CIA then, assisted the Taliban in getting the Russians out of Afghanistan) and it was quite convenient that Bush was in Florida at the time. I still think he expected Flight 93 to hit the White House and that his old Saudi buddy told him to be elsewhere. And never mind that Bush gave his Saudi buddy a full month to get out of Afghanistan (and his Taliban crew a month to decide to tell him where to shove his demands). And of course never mind that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. The idea of cleaning up the Middle East was not entirely a bad one. Saddam Hussein was a bad man who deserved much more than he got. He and his sons, if an article I read in Time can be believed, raped women, molested children, and killed whomever for fun. I am glad that he and his sons are dead and can only hope that their victims can move on. I do believe we spent a lot more time and more money there than we needed to, and that it was a big part of the recession that the Republicans engineered, but some of the aspects of the war were justified. If only Bush hadn't spent so long over there and tanked the economy doing so, but then again, I wasn't sitting in his chair for eight years. He did what he felt was right based on the information he had, and that's what he'll be remembered for. I only hope Obama can fix it before too long, because I know McCain had no interest in reversing any of Bush's failures - he thought the recession was this country on the right track!

Anyway, I don't want to get too (much more) political. That's all fact, though, if a little biased, based on what I've read and heard. The last bit is straight from McCain's own mouth on the debates, though, which I watched.

So I suppose the point that I've arrived at is that eight years ago today, we all woke up and realized there was more going on in the world that we were aware of, and that we had to recognize our voices, our place in the election system.

Amazon Kindle: Strike Two

2009-09-07T02:53:00.001-04:00

Last month or the month before, I wrote in general about the reasons I don't use an eBook reader like Amazon's Kindle, in a response to the controversy surrounding Amazon deleting eBooks remotely (which they weren't authorized to sell in the first place). Aside from that silly mess, my main gripe is that you must pay full price for a book, you can't buy it used, and you can't sell it secondhand when you're done, or even loan it to a friend without loaning out your $300 Kindle, and if you do, obviously you yourself can't read on it until your friend is done. It's a mess.

Now there's a new controversy around the $300 device (and yes, I love going on about how expensive the bloody thing is). If they get stolen, Amazon has the technology to see who stole it, and even to shut it down completely, but in the name of good business (as in, the thief paying for books), they're protecting the thieves' personal information, until ordered to release it by court order.

Talk about stabbing customers in the back, eh? $300 for the device, $25 for books (or whatever hardcovers cost these days, I know they vary), and if it gets stolen, even though they know who did it, they're just going to leave you hanging like that?

Enough's enough, people who have had this happen really need to lawyer up and sue Amazon. They're charging an insane amount of money for a service, basically encouraging theft ("if you steal one, you're just as good a customer as if you'd bought one"), protecting thieves, thereby encouraging it more, and basically they're obstructing justice. Sure, they comply with a court order, but if they know who has your Kindle and they're not telling you, they're an accessory, and at the very least, they ought to replace the Kindle, if it is such a big deal to them to keep the thieves' business.

Seriously, if your Kindle got stolen and Amazon won't help you, call your lawyer. At the very least, file a claim in small claims court. It's under five thousand dollars. If Amazon doesn't send a rep, they forfeit the case... at least, I believe that's how it works. And if they do send a rep, that rep's gonna have a hell of a time explaining to a judge why they're protecting a criminal and, at the same time, why they won't compensate you for your stolen property, when they make millions of dollars, and they're profiting from a crime against you.

...And this is coming from a fan and loyal customer of Amazon.com who has spent probably a few hundred dollars there on books, music, movies, games, Microsoft Points cards, and other stuff! But hey, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em - and this is bullshit.

Playing Rock Band on the computer

2009-09-06T05:30:00.000-04:00

Anyone who's been reading this blog any amount of time knows I like Rock Band, and to a lesser extent, Guitar Hero. I love music, and for someone who doesn't have that level of personal connection with music that many people have, I do enjoy listening to music as much as anybody. Though I've never felt the inclination to pick up a guitar/bass or drumsticks, and the less said about my showering and driving singing the better, but there's something about the simulated playing these games offer that I like. I've always liked puzzle games, particularly Tetris and its variants. Manipulating blocks in certain ways to clear them. There was one cool Tetris knockoff for the Super Nintendo that came with the Super Scope - Nintendo's bazooka-looking gun controller, circa 1993 or thereabouts. You got so many shots per block - like 2-3, and if you didn't use all of them, they rolled over. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are kinda like that. You have to destroy the blocks or spheres that come at you - and sure enough, they burn up (GH) or explode (RB).

But a question that has always puzzled me is this: Why can only home video game consoles play these games? Rock Band 2 is available for the PlayStation 2, as well as the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii. Scaled-down versions of Rock Band are on the PSP, and coming soon (December, I think) to the Nintendo DS. A PC is many times more powerful than a PlayStation 2, to say nothing of the PSP and Nintendo DS. (In fact, while no PSP emulator to date has been made that plays commercial games, there are a couple DS emulators out there, so the DS version will be playable on the PC, albeit... less than legally.) All either Guitar Hero or Rock Band are doing is this: They draw models of four main characters, which are fairly detailed. The crowd is kind of in the dark, it probably takes less to render the entire crowd than it does to render the four band members. Then you have the stage, which is relatively complex at times, but it's still no more advanced than a sports game. (Nothing against sports games, but they don't work as hard to draw characters as shooters.) As for the actual... action, you have a multi-channel Ogg Vorbis file playing, with one or more channels tied to each instrument. There's a backing track that always plays, and if one instrument is not being used (e.g. nobody is singing) then that track plays uninterrupted through the whole song, but missing a note causes that track to mute for a second, and failing causes the track to mute until the failed player can be saved. This is all very simple to do behind the scenes. Then it draws the note highway, and colors the fret board for various events. When a bassist reaches a 5X or 6X multiplier or a guitarist is doing a solo, the board glows blue. When anyone's in overdrive, an animated yellow border is applied. As complex as it sounds and as pretty as it looks, the fact remains that the PlayStation 2 can do it, which boasts a mere 300MHz processor, or the equivalent of a mid-range Pentium II. Its other specs pale in comparison to average PC specs as well. So the evidence of the PlayStation 2 clearly states that any PC manufactured in the last six to seven years should be able to run Rock Band 2 without a hitch - if it were compiled for Windows, that is.

So why isn't it? The reason is pretty simple. Video game consoles have copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) PC manufacturers simply cannot get away with. Microsoft and IBM have both tried to force DRM on consumers, and the backlash both times was pretty overwhelming, to the point where they pretty much just gave up. Digital music stores, such as iTunes, are giving up DRM for freely-copyable MP3 files their customers are demanding. Consoles have always been so protected, and gamers have never complained. Console game piracy is very low compared with PC game piracy, though it does happen. The Nintendo DS is probably the easiest to do, as all you need is a microSD (memory card in cell phones - not the SIM card, the other one) to Nitro (Nintendo DS cartridge) adapter. The adapter looks like a DS game but has a memory card slot. Put ROMs on memory card, put memory card in adapter, put adapter in DS, and pick your games from a list. Couldn't be easier. PlayStation 2 hacking requires taking the unit apart and sautering. It's risky, it's tricky, and a lot of people don't do it. Xbox 360 hacking is very tricky and very risky, and all it lets you do is play burned games. However, the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can trip remotely that fries the console. Better yet, they'll know why it's broken if you send it in, and won't fix it for you. So it's very much not worth it. So while people do pirate console games (and I have seen Rock Band 2 on torrent sites), it's a minority. Downloadable content, on the other hand, has never been stolen. Not once. DLC for Rock Band 2 is encoded and protected. There is no way to get it for free. If Rock Band were on the PC, hackers would find a way to crack the DLC and share it. Simple as that. Harmonix pays more for these master recordings than Apple does to license simple MP3s and AACs, so they need to protect their investment.

Still, the desire to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band on the PC has not escaped some hobbyists. The most common way to do that is by using Frets on Fire, which is free and open source. There is even a portable version which will run from a flash drive over at portableapps.com. Frets on Fire is no Guitar Hero, let alone Rock Band, but it really doesn't try to be. By itself, it's more a parody of those games. They instruct you to hold your keyboard like a guitar (keys facing away from you, backed up against your chest) and use F1-F5 as the fret keys, and Up and Down as the strum bar. Other keys activate the Overdrive/Star Power, and serve as the whammy bar. Trouble is, some songs have power chords (two or more fret buttons must be held while you strum - like red and blue, or blue and orange) and many keyboards can't process more than two keys hit at the same time. You hold F4 and F5 in preparation for a blue-orange chord, and when you go to strum... oops, it doesn't register. Sorry about your bad luck, Padre. The solution is rather amusing. You get a Guitar Hero controller for the Xbox 360, one of the old ones that plugs in via USB, and you plug it right into your computer. Windows will recognize it for what it is and will download drivers from Microsoft.com/Windows Update, and then the guitar will work as a standard controller. You can even play other games with it. Then, just configure Frets on Fire to work with a joystick/gamepad, and set it up.

Still, Frets on Fire is ugly as sin, but that is not hard to fix. With the FoFix mod, actually a fork of Frets on Fire (it replaces FoF entirely), you can add themes that change how Frets looks and feels. With the Rock Band 2 theme, it tries very hard to look and feel just like Rock Band 2, to the point of being eerie. It should be noted that this is illegal as hell, because it violates Harmonix's trademarks. It uses the Rock Band 2 logo (hell, it uses the whole damn title screen) and much of the graphics. When you're playing, it looks almost exactly like Rock Band 2. I think somebody reverse engineered the PlayStation 2 or Wii version. It's not the game and contains none of the RB2 game code, just the graphics.

Songs are tricky to find as well. Many forums that carry them require you to register, so they can track what you download. You can bet your ass that if they get busted, they'll sell you out in a heartbeat - why else would they make you register? You can probably find some free songs for it, for example Jonathan Coulton is a recording artist who releases his songs under a Creative Commons license. Last year or the year before, he released a song a week for a year. It's silly humor, but it's pretty good. (Check out "Re: Your Brains" - it's coming to Rock Band next week - "Skullcrusher Mountain" is already there.) Anything he's done would be legal to use in Frets on Fire. Other artists... not so much. Some songs come with just the notes, and you supply your own MP3 file. If you hit up torrent sites, you'll get complete tracks. But Frets on Fire doesn't use master recordings; like Guitar Hero, it just mutes the entire thing and/or belches/buzzes at you when you miss notes. Problem is, Frets doesn't un-mute the song after the missed note has passed, as Guitar Hero does. With FoFix and the Rock Band 2 theme, this isn't a problem.

Improving on Rock Band...

2009-09-04T02:00:00.001-04:00

Last month, a couple weeks before Summerslam, I posted an article about what the WWE could do to improve its product, primarily for those of us fans, such as myself, who came into the program knowing it's fake, and enjoy it for its technical and production merits as well as the entertainment. I was contacted by a representative of a promotional firm representing the TV station WGN America and WWE suggesting I watch Superstars, WGN-A's hour-long WWE show. I watched and reviewed one episode (and continue to watch it - it's good), then Summerslam comes and I can't help but feel that one of my suggestions - that rules should be respected more - was taken personally by someone high up. Could be coincidence (and probably is - matches are planned and practiced well in advance of pay-per-views) but when I saw that match with Randy Orton and John Cena, and Orton kept cheating, and kept getting called on it... I couldn't help but notice something.

Maybe my luck, coincidental as it may be, will hold for another round. This time I'm taking aim at the music simulation/puzzle game Rock Band 2, having long held that it's not so much a game as a multimedia platform. Harmonix's Rock Band 2, preceded by Rock Band, Guitar Hero 2, and Guitar Hero (more recent Guitar Hero titles were made by a different company), have revitalized the ailing music industry, moving from a scene where pirates stole music online to one where people paid $200 each for a game disc and plastic instruments, and then $2 for additional songs, to play along with them on the screen. But it has been nearly a year since Rock Band 2 came out, and Harmonix is not producing a Rock Band 3 this year, instead focusing on the Beatles-themed Rock Band to come out next week. So one year in and people are still playing this game - is Harmonix just sitting back and letting the money roll in? Actually, no they're not. They put out half a dozen new songs each week, and that takes work. They're building a community of artists and programmers called the Rock Band Network which will allow musicians to build their own Rock Band tracks for inclusion into the game. This should exponentially increase the size of the Rock Band store, which Harmonix hopes to have stocked with 1,000 songs by year's end. Also, there is a rumor of a fabled "Gold Star patch" which notes which songs a player has Gold-Starred (beyond a five star performance rating is five gold stars), and possibly adds support for these new wireless microphones coming out... but little else.

While I certainly don't intend to suggest Harmonix isn't doing enough for its fans, I do have some ideas that would freshen the game up, make it feel new longer, and bridge the gap between Rock Band 2 and the eventual Rock Band 3.

1. Real-Life Rockers
Following the latest Dashboard update, Microsoft is now selling virtual clothing for your Xbox Live Avatar, at $1 for hats and glasses, $2 for shirts, pants, and shoes, and up to $5 for full costumes and "toys" - e.g. your avatar can now wield a lightsaber, or play with a radio-controlled ATV from Halo (yes fanboys, I know it's called a warthog).

Where is Harmonix on this? When you go to play, you have two categories of characters. The ones you've made, and the generic ones that come with the game (I prefer Ol' Smokey). You should be able to buy "Real-Life Rockers". When you own one of these avatars, and you play a song with them as a member, whoever has their instrument defaults to them, unless they've chosen a character they made. (Example: You buy a Nikki Sixx avatar, and select Ol' Smokey as your avatar, and play bass. You play "Saints of Los Angeles" by Motley Crue, and instead of Ol' Smokey, you get Sixx.) Or you can make your own supergroup. Deceased musicians would definitely be used, so for the recently-released Janis Joplin single "Piece of My Heart", you could have Janis herself singing it, and other songs you choose for your set list.

And where's the damn avatar support, anyway? Guitar Hero 5 jumped on this. To be able to use your Xbox Live avatar is trivial. While I'm at it, why can't I use my guy from Oblivion? Microsoft needs to make any company that lets you customize your character export the character in a universal format that any game can use, just because that would be beyond cool. And why can't you use your Oblivion mage or your Madden football player as your virtual rocker? If Rock Band's aim is to let anyone with a home game console be a rock star, why not a mage from an RPG or a sports star? Why even pick up the pen to draw that line? Sure, it's silly, but pick up a plastic guitar and tell me how seriously you take yourself. We don't play games to be serious, after all.

2. Real expansion sets
The Beatles should never have gotten their own game. Neither should Nirvana, No Doubt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Foo Fighters, and others. What's that you say? Only the Beatles did? Therein lies the problem.

The other bands I named each got whole albums in Rock Band - in Nirvana's case, with the exception of "The Big Three" - "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Lithium", and "Come As You Are", which are probably being held for Rock Band 3 and/or a slow DLC week. $20 for an entire album, which is a good deal, because it's more than the 10 songs that $20 would ordinarily buy you. Well, it's still not enough. If I'm laying down $20 - one-third the cost of the game itself - I don't just want songs. I want Real-Life Rockers (see above) of the entire band, and the opportunity to earn the 250 Gamerscore that paid DLC often adds to a game's total Gamerscore allocation.

That said, the Beatles could have just been an expansion set, albeit a much bigger one. Or they could have done volumes. In fact, Harmonix has said that the Beatles game will be a closed platform - it won't work with downloadable content, and its downloadable content won't work with other games. Have they not been listening to the Guitar Hero fans who have complained about this fatal flaw in the Guitar Hero franchise? It would be unwise to lean towards any of the disadvantages Guitar Hero has when compared with Rock Band; rather, it should be looking at the two or three things Guitar Hero does better, and integrate those features.

3. Unpause countdown timer
The most requested feature in Rock Band - how can I not throw my voice behind it as well? When you resume Guitar Hero World Tour or Guitar Hero: Metallica from a pause (presumably Smash Hits and 5 as well), you get taken back to the paused note highway(s) and you get a countdown timer, so if you had to pause in a hurry, the number of notes you will actually miss is minimized.

Or, hey, how about doing Guitar Hero one better and rewinding 10 seconds? Sure, it could be abused, but maybe scores from songs paused and resumed would not be added to the leaderboards or something.

4. Turn "No Fail Mode" into "Studio Mode"
"No Fail Mode" is stupid. Let me just put that out there. The point of the game is to hit notes, and the penalty for that is the crowd loses interest, and eventually boos you off stage. "No Fail Mode" makes it so if you abandon your controller or the song is just that damn hard (see "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx:A.M. or "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads) you get booed, but you never get kicked out. So I say, drop "No Fail" and rather, have an option to drop the crowd. You get no crowd meter, and no feedback - positive or negative - from the fans (who aren't even there). You can't fail, either, even if you abandon the song from the start. The song just plays, and gives you your score at the end. "Studio Mode" is the best name I can think of; "Basement Mode" works too.

5. Custom Difficulty
If you've never played Rock Band before, could you tell me the difference between Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert? Many veteran players can't, either. They just know that Easy only uses the first three fret buttons, Medium the first four, and Hard and Expert all five. And that the speed increases as you go up. Fewer notes does make things easier, but slower? Not always. I was playing on drums - doing badly as ever - and my wife suggested I go up to Hard. I was on Medium and couldn't hack it there. Reluctantly I tried - and got twice as far. On drums, Easy and Medium are just too slow. But Hard and Expert have too many notes. There are some good reasons why I can't play the drums right that have to do with my hand-eye coordination and other mental capacities, but part of that also has to do with a hastily-designed difficulty setting. How about letting the player choose the frequency of the notes and the speed they're delivered? The learning curve could be lowered quite a bit without sacrificing gameplay.

6. Better vocals!
This one's below the belt, because until voice recognition technology advances quite a bit, singing in any music game is not going to be tracked accurately at all. It's been said by quite a few on ScoreHero and other Guitar Hero and Rock Band communities: "Either I can sing the song correctly, or I can get points". Some songs require you to scream, others require you to wail, sometimes when the singer himself - or herself - is doing no such thing. Take "21 Guns" by Green Day - does Billy Joe whine and scream? No, he doesn't - it's a very calm song. Yet, you've gotta make yourself sound like a pissed-off Bob Dylan to sing it. It's flippin' stupid. Guitar Hero is far behind Rock Band in vocal tracking, but that's little consolation when Rock Band's sucks to start with. Still, they made a game that incorporates singing - it's on them to make it work right. As opposed to just sweeping it under the rug and letting people just "deal with it".

7. Music video mode and MP3 export
You can actually hack this together in Rock Band 2 with a couple cheats (game modifiers). Turn on No Fail Mode and Performance Mode. Enter Quick Play as a vocalist, and pick your songs, make a setlist. Choose whatever difficulty, it doesn't matter. Start the "game", then go into the pause options and take out the crowd noise, turn the mic volume all the way down and the vocal track all the way up. Resume, and the game will play the songs you've chosen as mock videos. But this should be available from the main menu as "Music video mode" or "Jukebox mode", and rather than letting you choose the difficulty (which means nothing), it would let you choose the arena, and configure other options as well. I mean, iTunes charges $0.99 in the US for songs. The Rock Band Store charges $2, $1.01 more. It's not a lot to be able to jam along with the song, but it should do a bit more, I think. I also think it should export songs you buy - if you like - if you have a 20GB hard drive, you might not prefer this - to the console's hard drive, so you can listen to them in other games. At $2 a song and considering you can't get music off the console, why not?

8. Rock Band Online
What's really hurting Rock Band right now is the fact that, not only is it not a bestselling or top game (program), but not everyone gets online with their game console. But above all that is the fact that Xbox 360 players cannot play with PlayStation 3 or Wii players. None of the three work together on their own networks. So to make online play work, Harmonix needs a central server to play games on. The only problem is that that is not free. Good online play vs. what I hear is shoddy online play is the difference between paid online gaming (Xbox 360) and free online gaming (PlayStation 3). Not dissing Sony, but a lot of people say that. Regardless, Harmonix aren't gonna do it out of the kindness of their hearts at a loss, and we shouldn't expect them to. A nominal fee is reasonable. And this fee would let you play online, not just with owners of the same console as you, but with owners of the other two, as well. I'm not at all sure Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo would support it, though, but it's something worth suggesting. But being able to compete with owners of other consoles wouldn't support the makers of the other consoles, specifically, but would in fact make all of them better. Just ask Activision why they didn't continue their policy of "you can only use OUR hardware" that they used in Guitar Hero 3. It's like the representative said, "How many drum controllers should you need?" (or something like that). Such limited interoperability can only benefit them.

All that being said, while Guitar Hero never attempts to be more than just a music game - and it's a pretty good one, at that - Rock Band is much more - it's a music platform. And I cannot reasonably say that it is "pretty good" at that. Much more than Guitar Hero, but as such, it should strive to be so much better than it is.

So here's my open challenge to Harmonix: Stop competing with that silly little guitar game and shine on your own as something much better.

Oblivion: A closer look at Fighters

2009-08-30T01:16:00.001-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I finished Oblivion, did everything in the game worth getting points for (which is a good distance short of doing everything doable in the game). Now, being that I'm pretty good with it, I thought I'd pass along some helpful hints on how to play the game better. Now, this isn't a guide - go to GameFAQs for those. A guide is strict and technical. This'll just be a casual read, an overview.

-Your Character-
First of all, the key to beating any RPG, with little exception, is to use a fighter. Mastering an RPG requires you to be a little more creative, and use a rogue (thief) or mage/wizard, and that's where the challenge is. Fighters don't need to be all that creative. Now, Oblivion is very great with character creation. For race, which you choose at the start, look very closely at Nords, Orcs, and Redguards. These guys are built for action. Look at their bonuses and penalties and see which fits you better. (Unlike in Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, and other media, Orcs are not villains in this game. They're like Klingons in recent Star Trek series - rough but still civilized. And socially acceptable.)

As for class, which you choose after the Emperor dies, go custom. For focus, you can choose between offense, defense, and sneak. Maybe not those exact words... choose offense. Then you get to choose a couple stats to get bonuses in. Strength is obvious. Look at Endurance and Speed and pick one. Endurance for being a stronger fighter, and Speed for being a quicker one.

Next you can choose seven attributes. You can raise the others all you want, but raising the main seven is what gets you up in levels, so choose wisely. While you can raise Athletics just by running and swimming and Acrobatics just by jumping, you want to think about balance. The higher your level is, the better the loot will be, but also, the stronger NPCs, including enemies will be as well. Don't make worthless choices (like Alteration - useful for a wizard, but not a fighter) but don't make easy choices. Look at Armorer. You get experience by fixing your weapons and armor. At high levels you can fix magic stuff, which you'll get a lot of. If you repair after every encounter, you will go up quickly, but you don't need to. So you have good control over your leveling. I recommend Armorer, if you couldn't tell. Next pick one kind of armor. Heavy weighs more and protects more. Light, same in reverse. It does you no good to pick both because you'll want to wear all light or all heavy to get bonuses in the skill. If you picked Speed as an attribute, pick Light; if you picked Endurance, go for Heavy. Now pick a weapon type - Blade or Blunt. Swords are quick, axes and hammers are slow, but do a little more damage. Blade gets my recommendation. (There's also Marksman if you want to use a bow and arrow, but a Fighter shouldn't rely on that.) Blocking is good to have. Despite what I said earlier, Acrobatics is not bad, but it does tempt one to jump everywhere (which is faster than running anyway). Even if you're not a wizard, Alchemy is great. Not only can you sell potions for profit, but you can make poisons you can apply to your weapons for one use. Just "use" the poison and it will coat your current weapon with it (but only for one strike, so make it count).

A Redguard with a custom class specializing in Offense, getting bonuses in Strength and Endurance, and having Acrobatics, Armorer, Heavy Armor, Blade, Alchemy, and two others that you think you might use will give you a good place to start.

-Starting Out-
In the beginning of the game, you've got to escape from the dungeon. It isn't too hard if you're a Fighter. The hardest part is the little Goblin community. Rogues and mages must be clever, but Fighters just roll on through. I didn't even know it was hard until I brought a rogue through. Remember, take out the shaman (mage) second, archers third, and everybody else last. First? Well, anyone who gets in your way you take out first. You don't need somebody hitting you from behind.

Once you're out of the dungeon, the main quest should not be hard. However, understanding its effects on you and the world are important. At some point after you start it, gates to Oblivion will begin opening all around Tamriel (the country you're in). At some point, Martin (the Emperor's bastard son) will ask you to complete one of the dozen or so Daedric (demonic) quests and give the reward to him (so he can complete a ceremony -- he won't give it back). Lastly, once you complete the main quest, all of the Oblivion gates close. Those Oblivion gates are annoying, so if you'd rather not mess with them, set the main quest aside. Just know that it will be harder at higher levels.

The best place to start is the Fighters' Guild. Fighters' Guilds in any city not called Anvil or Cheydinhal will send you to those towns. Cheydinhal will send you to Anvil. So make your way straight to Anvil. (The Mages' Guild can be joined in any city that has one; if you're on the Xbox 360, you might as well join Anvil's and get your 10 Gamerscore.) Around Anvil, talking to people will get you various quests from the townspeople. Go ahead and take them. An early Fighters' Guild quest will earn you the permanent respect of a dockside merchant, but he can only give you up to 800 gold per transaction. Get in good with the guy in town, the Peacemakers place, right inside the north gate and to the left. He only deals in weapons and armor though, but he will also train your Armorer skill. The second-cheapest house in the game is in Anvil, too. 5,000 gold and it's yours, do a quest to get it fully furnished. Using Anvil as a base of operations will carry you through much of the game, though if you stick with the Fighters' Guild, you'll eventually move your game northeast to Chorrol. The house there is much nicer, but worth it. (Also, the shop to the left of the south gate has a quest that will get you in good with the owner, so there's that as well.)

The Dark Brotherhood, a fraternity of killers, is also a good place for a Fighter to learn, and has some of the best missions in the game. Simply take one innocent life to get started. Go to sleep, and you'll be visited in the night and given a dagger. Kill who they tell you to and sleep again. You'll be told how to join. That's all easier than it sounds. Killing anybody gets you an immediate bounty of 1,000 gold, whether anyone saw you do it or not. The only exception is when the game tells you to take a life, and those kills will not get you into the Dark Brotherhood. If you can't pay the bounty, you go to jail and lose a lot of skill points, so that is not good. Raid a few forts, Ayleid temples, or caves, loot what's worth something, and sell it to the stores that like you and have a lot of money to spend. Save up 1,000 gold. Find somebody and get their name. Look them up on UESP.net and make sure they don't have a quest associated with them. Kill them creatively, then turn yourself in. Pay the gold and be on your way.

Being a Fighter does not exclude you from joining the Mages' Guild or even becoming Arch-Mage. In fact, the "last boss" in the Mages' Guild story is very easy if you're a Fighter. He's a good spell caster, but a few good hits brings him down. He wears a robe. Just hack him down. If you're on the Xbox 360, this gets you about 130 Gamerscore (from joining to becoming Arch-Mage). The Mages' Guild is the slowest to allow you to advance, at first, as you have to do a quest for each town before advancing in rank once. Still, once you join the Mages' Guild, you can steal anything you want out of their Guild Halls (with the exception of one desk in each, I think) and make a ton of money. Really, there's no reason not to join. (Don't steal at all from the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood though. Or from individual Mages.)

-The Arena-
The best part of being a Fighter is the Arena. Travel to the easternmost district of the Imperial City, the Arena District. Go into the Colosseum, hang a left, go into the training area, and in the "side" training area, talk to the guy on the far right. The really rude guy. Join and fight. None of the fights will challenge you if you know how to fight. Once you'll fight two sisters, and twice you'll fight three people. Not a problem. The only challenging fight is the very last one, against the Grand Champion. My rogue beat him, so it's not hard, just harder than the others. However, if you get in good with the Grand Champion early, he will give you a quest. I won't spoil it for you, but if you do the quest for him, he will train you in three fighting areas (Block, Hand to Hand, and Blade, if I remember right) and when you go to fight him, he's a pushover. Easiest fight by far. But only if you do his quest, which is not hard.

The Arena will teach you a lot about fighting. It's simple really. Get a one-handed sword and a good shield. Come into the center of the arena and watch your opponent. Do the opposite - if he comes in swinging, block. If he doesn't, get him with a quick jab, but block early in any case. Once he hits you and you block it, lower your guard and wail on him. 2-3 hits is good. Once he's ready to deliver another blow, block again. Rinse and repeat. You'll get a feel for how many hits you can get in before needing to block again. Once you win, if you lost more than a third of your health, rest for one hour. That will refill your health. Healing magic and spells are good, too. Bear in mind that blocking and getting hit will increase your blocking skill, and getting hit without blocking will increase your armor skill, if you're wearing all heavy or all light armor. (You must wear Arena armor, which includes footwear, but you can use whatever helmet, gauntlets, and shield you like.) And naturally you will increase your blade or blunt skill with each blow landed.

If you are low level when you start the Arena, you may likely gain 1-3 levels just doing the Arena. Also, the Arena is open from 9am to 9pm. If you get there right at 9am, and don't do the Grand Champion's quest, and never rest, it is entirely possible to complete the entire Arena quest in one day in game time. In real time, about 30-45 minutes. (130 Gamerscore in 45 minutes, vs. my wife getting 25 Gamerscore for playing all 84 of the songs in Rock Band 2 on Expert Vocals for six hours without a break is not a bad deal! Just don't tell her I said so.) However, the Grand Champion's quest is worth doing for the training alone. Never mind that he throws the match.

Be warned, however, that completing the Arena gets you a groupie who will pledge his allegiance to you and follow you anywhere you like, and stay anywhere you like. (Search YouTube for "oblivion adoring fan" for creative ways people have killed him.) However, later, when you're building an army for the main quest, the Adoring Fan comes in handy - as cannon fodder.

-In closing-
The Fighter is the easiest way to play Oblivion, but don't let that stop you from playing a rogue or a mage if that's what you like. Each class has its advantages; the Fighter's are just more straightforward and obvious. This is also the first in a series of "closer looks" at Oblivion. I mainly had this, and a guide on illegal activities planned. Maybe I'll do another one, like on side quests or something. If you liked this and/or it helped you, please drop me a thank-you in the comments. If you want to host it, in full or in part, you can do so as long as you link back here and don't change anything. (I'm going to license the text of my blog under a Creative Commons license (BY-SA-NC) soon, but until I do that, well, that's pretty much what it is. Not interested in submitting it to gaming sites (they probably have better guides) but if you run or represent one, I don't care if you do it, just don't charge for access (ads are fine).

Meet .mogg

2009-08-21T05:43:00.001-04:00

And you thought downloading .mp3 files, compressed digital audio tracks, was bad. "Bad" as in illegal, you shouldn't do it. Obviously I don't mean legal Mp3 downloads, just the illegal variety. Anyway, meet .MOGG, or Multi-channel OGG. Whereas MP3 is actually a closed format (despite it being widely traded), Ogg Vorbis is a free alternative. Legally, MP3 decoders (players) and encoders must pay royalties to use the format. Ogg Vorbis doesn't have this stipulation, so it gets used in games. Games that have music, games that have sounds - that covers all of them. Anyway, an OGG is just another kind of music file; see also: MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, etc.

MOGG is different, though. Sidestep for a moment: When you miss a note in a Guitar Hero game, what happens? The game kind of belches at you, to let you know you messed up. That's because all Guitar Hero does is play the song, and it makes a sound effect (I think it's supposed to be a guitar string breaking?) if you miss a note. That's easy. But what happens if you miss a note in Rock Band? That *note* actually *doesn't play* but the rest of the song *does*. How exactly does that work? Well, Harmonix, the game studio that makes the game, actually licenses the master recordings of the songs, which are a bit more complicated than regular MP3 files. They have all the instruments separated, and that's how Rock Band works. It plays all the channels at once, and if you miss a note, it briefly mutes that channel.

Well, suffice it to say, some .MOGG files have "become available". If you're clever, you should know where to start looking. I cannot say more than that. Legal issues and all. I also know that efforts are under way to reverse engineer the game - I don't think it's so much that people want to get songs for free ($2 is more than fair for a song, considering how the game works) as that they want to import songs into the game that Harmonix hasn't brought out. (If I were involved in the project, some Nightwish would be going in there for sure.) Anyway, without the original master recordings, importing new songs won't be happening - unless people involved in the project are in bands themselves and can supply their own masters. A Rock Band downloadable song, it would seem, is one of these .MOGG files, plus the data files. 12 tracks - three instruments at four difficulty levels. Difficulty doesn't scale, so each difficulty does in fact get its own track. Plus the vocals and pitch/tone levels. Difficulty does scale for vocals (in terms of how far off the mark you can be) so that's its own thing. And the 30 second or so sample that plays when you're looking at the song on the list.

Anyway, I hear that these .MOGG files are quite fun to play around with. Not being much of an audio engineer, I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I imagine it should be trivial to mute channels. You could take out the vocals entirely and have an instrumental song. Be warned, they don't sound as good as you might think, vocals contribute a lot. Someone with Disturbed leaked pre-vocals MP3s of their first album, and when David Draiman is supposed to be singing, it sounds very... simple. Music with lyrics is, it's the solos that sound good because they're designed to be heard without the voice. The entire song is not like that when you remove the vocals. Anyway, you could also listen to just the vocals. Or the vocals plus the drums. Or, if you play an instrument (a real one, not a game controller that looks like one), you could just play that channel and jam along with it.

Your average audio-playing software (e.g. Winamp) won't play these files, but an audio-editor (e.g. Audacity) will.

WWE Superstars reviewed

2009-08-18T18:10:00.003-04:00

Last month, I wrote about my thoughts on what works and what doesn't with WWE. A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a representative of a kind of marketing group representing WGN America (a TV station) and WWE. They suggested I check out WWE Superstars on that network. I looked for the station when the show was first announced and couldn't find it, and was about to reply back saying that I didn't get the channel, when I thought to look on their website, which pointed me to the right channel. (We have DirecTV, and I still don't understand the need to have hundreds of channels when you can't find the one you want - and they still don't carry MyNetworkTV, which broadcasts WWE SmackDown.) So I set the DVR to record the show. I just watched it last night, four days after it aired. (Better late than never, I guess.)

WWE Superstars advertises itself as a show which matches up talent from all three brands (RAW, ECW, and SmackDown). Because RAW tours by itself and ECW and SmackDown tour separately, I knew there was something fishy about Superstars. There was no way, I figured, that they could do a separate show. And I'm sure this is a no-brainer to anybody who's gone to a taping of any of the three brands' shows. It's relatively common knowledge among fans who look at the WWE from the "backstage perspective" (I really hate to use the term "smark", which means "smart mark", a mark being someone who takes the product at face value (they believe it's real) and a "smark" being someone who knows it's fake but loves it anyway) that these tapings tend to have a "dark match" or two that is not taped, I suppose to justify people paying $50 a seat when they could have just as easily watched the show on TV, not to mention the other perks.

What WWE Superstars does is, it takes the dark matches from all three shows and puts them in a one-hour timeslot. If you're there watching the show live, I imagine the show starts out as Superstars for one match, and then becomes RAW, ECW, or SmackDown. (Fun fact: Did you know that, for ratings purposes, RAW is only one hour long? The second half is rated as "RAW Zone", so if you see "Zone" tacked onto the logo... that's why.) As far as scheduling, I'm still working on the details. I know for RAW, they use the previous Monday's RAW, because I recognized a sign ("Less Big Show, More Gail Kim") that I saw last week on RAW. That's kind of a no-brainer, though, because RAW is always billed as live, so if they shot on Thursday and delayed most of it till Monday - that just wouldn't make sense. ECW and SmackDown are taped together, and I don't know what their road schedule looks like. It's a safe bet to assume that their segments are from the previous episodes as well.

As a show, Superstars is pretty cool, actually. It sounds like it would be a mess. It kind of is. It has three segments - last Thursday had SmackDown go first, ECW go next, and then RAW at the end. For each segment, the announcers from that show call the match. You'll also notice the ropes change color as well. Oddly enough SmackDown used red ropes Thursday; I could have sworn they used blue in the past, but I could be mistaken. ECW's, the middle segment, were silver, and RAW's were the usual red. If it weren't for that sign, I wouldn't have noticed that the second half of the show, dedicated to RAW, was at a different arena than the first half. You probably wouldn't if you weren't looking, but I look for stuff like that.

Superstars isn't any different, really, from ECW, SmackDown, or RAW, as far as the basic idea. It's mostly a recap show, highlighting the drama from the past episode of each show, and one match from each that didn't make it to TV. That being said, what's good about Superstars is that it seems to avoid the stupid "joke" matches. On RAW, there are always a couple matches that either end badly or end with a joke, or are just a joke altogether. Perfect example: the Home Alone ending to the Hornswoggle/Guerrero match. When I watched Superstars, all three of the matches were good.

The SmackDown match featured John Morrison and David Hart Smith, and it was a good match, lasted at least 10 minutes, and showed good performances from both performers, particularly Morrison (who it's hard not to call by his last character's name, Johnny Nitro - he's always been good, though). I did call out his current character in my other blog entry as being a cheap ripoff of a deceased rock legend, but that doesn't make him any less entertaining.
The ECW match had newcomer Sheamus and Goldust (Dusty Rhodes' son; Cody Rhodes' brother). Pretty good match, a little above average, but not bad at all.
Lastly, the RAW match was a mixed tag-team match, with Kofi Kingston and Mickie James against Carlito and Rosa Mendes. Normally, I don't like tag teams, especially ones with lax rules, for example when one team tags out, the other team has to switch up as well (so men can't fight women), but this was alright. Kofi Kingston's good anyway, and I can never look at Mickie James enough. (Yes, my wife knows - she says the same about Jeff Hardy.)

All in all, I have to say that WWE Superstars is a good show. I didn't expect to like it for a few reasons, but it's surprised and impressed me. I wouldn't have taken the time to write about it if I didn't like it, but I probably wouldn't have given it a chance if it hadn't been suggested to me. I don't like the idea of bloggers being paid or otherwise compensated to write articles (and I was not), but if somebody wants to recommend a show or something, chances are I'll give it an even chance and write up what I think about it.

Terminator Salvation... is not bad.

2009-08-16T03:02:00.000-04:00

After Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines a few years back, I was completely let down by the Terminator franchise, but I had to take a look at this fourth installment desite the teen-aimed PG-13 rating and the lack of James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dubya's lapdog may be embarrassing the state of California, but in the 80s and 90s, he was actually useful, and made some pretty good movies. Who doesn't like the first two Terminator movies, or Predator, or even Kindergarten Cop?

The first Terminator was a pretty cool movie, but it wasn't exactly great. A plot hole near the end left the possibility of a sequel open, but after 6-7 years, it was kind of a surprise when one was made. Despite being a special-effects showoff, Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out as one of the best action films of the last century. It had the best action sequences out of all four films, and it had the most heart, which really pushed it past just being a good movie, and made it great.

Then Terminator 3 comes out, and they seem to pretend that the second movie didn't happen, or that the ending happened differently. It's less like "this is what happens next" as is common with sequels, and more like "this is what could have happened if what our heroes did in the last movie didn't work". Like the new Star Trek movie, it's best to just classify it as an alternate universe in which the story's not over and the producers can milk the franchise for still more millions of dollars.

All that being said, it's about damn time they made a post-apocalyptic Terminator film. I would have liked to see more of the day-to-day living, how people get by in this new world than just straight-up action, but that isn't bad either. Instead of worrying about the paradoxes of time travel, instead, we have a Terminator who doesn't know he's one who buddies up with Kyle Reese, the hero from the first Terminator, who John Connor sent back to help his mother (and sire him at some point). Also, because it's a PG-13 movie and we're trying to appeal to kids, there's a 9-year-old girl with a funny haircut thrown in pretty randomly. And she has not one line in the entire movie, though Reese says that's because Judgment Day traumatized her. Right. Oh wait, she wasn't entirely useless. She bandages Connor's arm when he cuts it at one point and at another, hands him a flare. (And at least she didn't make the viewers wish her dead, like what happened in the War of the Worlds remake with Dakota Fanning's character.)

Still, Terminator 4 seemed to mostly weave itself into the first two films rather than do anything on its own. Reese's back story is explained, sure, but nothing is accomplished. We have a couple cool chases. The hundred foot high Terminator was cool, as well as the ones built into the motorcycles. All of the cool lines get recycled: "I'll be back", "Come with me if you want to live", etc. They even play Guns n' Roses' song "You Could Be Mine" during one scene. We even have Linda Hamilton's voice as Sarah Connor on a tape John listens to, and everybody doubts his prophecies about the future (and the past now). So it's got all the elements of the Terminator movies, but mostly it's just another action sequel. Still, it's worth watching at least once.

Oblivion, my first completed Xbox 360 game

2009-08-14T05:30:00.001-04:00

Just yesterday, I completed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. As in, I earned all 1,250 Gamerscore associated with the game. 20 years ago, it used to be that grabbing the axe to retract the bridge and kill the dragon and save the princess was all that was required to beat a game. Now there are so many more definitions. I like the Gamerscore answer. I actually beat the main game a couple weeks ago, but I had more Achievements to unlock - each Achievement is like a trophy and worth so much Gamerscore - 10, 20, 30, 50, whatever. So I pressed on until I had my 1250/1250. Xbox 360 games are supposed to only have 1,000, and Oblivion is no exception - the expansion, Shivering Isles, adds another 250. That was what I had to do to get all 1250. The scary thing is that I am actually a long way away from doing everything Oblivion has to offer. More on that in a bit.

Oblivion is a beast of a game, and very open-ended. You start in prison, and the guy in the cell across from you is sure you're going to die. Future uncertain, you wait - not long, even - and then the Emperor himself, Uriel Septim VII, voiced by none other than Patrick Stewart (Star Trek's Captain Picard; X-Men's Professor X), opens your cell and then opens a secret exit. He's being chased by assassins, and must escape - through your cell. He recognizes you immediately - he saw you in a dream. This tells him that today is the day he dies, and he confides in you that whatever you did to get locked up doesn't matter; that isn't what you'll be remembered for. Rather, you have a grand destiny ahead of you. He charges you with the task of finding his bastard son, who doesn't know he's the only heir to the throne. However, once you get out, the world is all yours to travel as you please. The game will point you toward your next objective, but only because the main quest is the active one. Once you receive another - and you can have as many open as you like - you can make it your active quest, and you will be pointed toward that objective.

Aside from helping Martin Septim regain the throne, there are two Guilds you can join. The Fighters' Guild does odd jobs for people, from pest control to personal defense. Basically what you'd expect out of security guards to mercenaries, everything in between. The Mages' Guild will make you think of Harry Potter, perhaps. Same basic idea, except you've got to travel the land, visiting the Mages' Guild Hall in each city to get a "recommendation" from the local Guild Master in order to actually join. Some of these are more straightforward than others. On top of that, there are two "secret" Guilds - to join the Thieves' Guild, you have to read a wanted poster for and then ask around about famed thief the Gray Fox; this leads you to an associate of his. This guild works a little differently; in addition to doing jobs for people who want things found, you move up through the ranks by stealing things from others and selling them to "fences", members of the Thieves' Guild who buy stolen property (legitimate shopkeepers will not). Then there's the Dark Brotherhood, a fraternity of assassins - led by a vampire, no less. To join these guys, you must take an innocent life. Murder is hard to get away with, but the punishment isn't even death. You can either pay a fine of 1,000 Gold, or go to jail. You don't even stay overnight, but you do lose a few skills. You don't have to get away with the murder to be accepted, however, and even if nobody witnesses the murder - or it's an accident, as was the case with me - you'll be noticed. Then, next time you go to sleep, you'll be visited by a member of the Brotherhood, who gives you a dagger and assigns you a kill. Do this, and sleep again. He'll visit again, and tell you how to actually join. The Dark Brotherhood offers some of the best quests in the game. And each of the four Guilds has a finite number of quests, which all end in you ultimately running that Guild.

In addition to all of that and the main quest itself, you can buy a house in each town, except for Kvatch, which is destroyed at the start of the game. And Imperial City, because that house is actually just a shack on the waterfront. And the unmapped villages you come across - they don't count. Just Chorrol, Anvil, Skingrad, Lleyawin, Bravil, Cheydinhal, Bruma, and the Imperial City. The price of each house varies, from the cheap shack in the Imperial City to the mansion in Skingrad. Each house comes with little more than a bed or bedroll, but you can buy "upgrades" for each house in the same city, usually in total for the price of the house again. Fully upgraded, the shack is not really nice, but better than it comes. Fully upgraded, the mansion is very nice, and you can even buy a maid. You can get quests all over the game, from hearing gossip and talking to people of interest, to talking to counts and lords, it seems like every other person has something for you to do. None of them conflict, so you can do everything. Scattered around the land are shrines to Daedric lords - essentially demons - where you can make an offering and do one quest for each of them, for a substantial reward (and in fact, you will have to do one of these, and then give up the reward as part of the main quest).

And then there's the downloadable content. Oblivion gets a lot of flak online because the first downloadable content cost $4.25 and all it did was allow you to buy armor for your horse. People were not amused at what they got, let alone what they had to pay. Then four properties came out - Battlehorn Castle, for fighters; Frostcrag Spire, for mages; Deepscorn Hollow, for assassins; and the Thieves' Den, for thieves. These were $1.89 apiece and, like the houses, came pretty bare until you bought all the upgrades (with the in-game money, not real money). Each also included a quest or two apiece and various other things to do. And Mehrune's Razor, the largest dungeon in the game, which includes an underground village, and ends with you getting a relatively weak sword. Weak compared to what my character currently has, anyway. It'll look nice in my castle, though. But those are the little things. There are two large downloadable expansions. The first is Knights of the Nine, which costs $10. You travel the country looking for shrines to the Nine (the good gods) and you must pray at one of each. Then, you form an ancient brotherhood of knights to oppose a god-killer. This is huge and worth every penny, but don't - and I mean DON'T - do it before finishing the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild. The reason is, you get some good equipment, but do one bad thing (well, two bad things) and all the stuff you get from KotN - falls right off you. You must be a righteous character to use those things. And the first thing you do, the pilgrimage quest - forgives all your sins. Then there's Shivering Isles, which costs a whopping $30, but it adds a whole new country to explore, so it is worth it as well. The Shivering Isles are home to and the creation of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, and his world reflects that. It's divided into two sections, Mania and Dementia. You end up working for Sheogorath, working to stop the invasion of another Daedric prince named Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, who Sheogorath describes as "boring".

Anyway, that does sound like a lot of money, but if you buy the "Game of the Year" version of Oblivion for the Xbox 360, it comes with a second disc which installs Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles to your Xbox 360 hard drive (takes up about 1GB). That's $40 of extra stuff, and this pack is only $30. The thing is, it adds 30 seconds to the start of the game to "load" the "additional content", so bearing in mind my warning about Knights of the Nine and its conflicts, it pays to actually not install the expansions until you're completely done with the original game. You're also on your own for the four extra properties and Mehrune's Razor. Also, Xbox 360 games start out costing $60. This is one that is completely worth that, so getting it for $30, plus $40 worth of expansions, is really a steal. It really is $100 worth of game. It's more, actually, I've put 120 hours in and I still want to play.

So is this game perfect? Near about. It's not without its pitfalls, however. Like I said, the $10 expansion quest Knights of the Nine doesn't play fairly if you choose to be a bad guy later. That's stupid. It makes sense, being as that you're an agent for the (good) gods, but for a game that gives you this much freedom, it counts against it. Then there's the extra 30 seconds of loading. That gets old. On top of that, the game itself lags in places it really shouldn't. Around the Net, they say if you press A/green while the game is starting, it "defragments" the "disk cache" which should fix it. It really doesn't. Or maybe I'm doing it wrong, the instructions aren't clear, and everbody's got a different way of doing it. There are a couple of bugs which will halt your game right in its tracks, so save often. Fortunately the Xbox 360 version does this for you, but some crashes like to take the last few saves with them. Some instructions are unclear and you'll find yourself hitting up a site called UESP - it's like the Wikipedia of Oblivion. The game's menu icons are never explained, but they're mostly self-explanatory. A couple of caves are death traps - fall down a hole and you're stuck. Whoops. A dead goblin drank himself to death in there. If you have about a dozen paint brushes on you, you can sort of get back up through the hole - paint brushes don't fall when dropped. Drop one right in front of you and it floats. On top of that, you can stand on it. There are also a lot of useless items you can find, so when going through loot, you have to know to separate trash from treasure. And speaking of treasure, nothing's actually worth what it shows up in your inventory as. First of all, shopkeepers only give you 39% of what something's worth, though you can usually haggle that up to around 55%. The more business you do with a merchant, the more they like you, and you can work it up into the 70s and 80s percentage-wise, but you'll never be able to sell stuff for what it's actually worth. And merchants have a cap - if a merchant's cap is 800 gold, your Daedric warhammer is worth 4500 gold, even if you haggled him up to 75%, he's still going to give you no more than 800 gold for it, because that's his cap. There are a lot of factors, but the most you can get for something is commonly accepted to be around 3,000 gold. Yet they will be glad to take 5,000 or more gold for items they sell, and their cap doesn't go up to reflect their newfound wealth. The most expensive item I saw cost nearly 20,000 gold, and I think it was a ring. But on the other hand, once you've bought all the properties and their upgrades, all you use money for is to repair your equipment. And you can buy spells, I guess, but that's trivial when you get up around 50,000 gold in no time. You stop picking up glass, Daedric, and Ebony weapons and armor to sell for top dollar; you end up only picking up gold and stuff you'll actually use. Because you can only carry so much.

Still, this game has gone above and beyond the Grand Theft Auto games for making a truly open world where you can literally do anything you want. Actually, if fans of GTA (which does include me) can get over the lack of cars, cops, and explosions, Oblivion is actually a very attractive game to that crowd. It is a role playing game, however, and while you can actually control the battles (unlike Final Fantasy's infamous menu-based fights), it's still rolling dice in the background, and of course you have a ton of stats and proficiencies. What works here, though, is that your character learns by doing. Fighting with a sword builds your Blade proficiency, and just running and swimming raises Athletics (jumping raises Acrobatics). Every transaction in a shop raises Mercantile. You have seven major proficiencies; level any/all of these so many times, and you go up a level. Stats (strength, dexterity, intelligence, luck, etc.) can raise zero to five points per level gain depending on how much the proficiencies they govern (e.g. Strength governs blade and hand-to-hand, dexterity governs athletics and acrobatics). If all you did to gain a level was jump and run, you have the option of raising dexterity by a full five points. So it's all very clever.

While I highly recommend Oblivion for the Xbox 360, I can't recommend it for the PC, unless you have a very expensive beast of a computer. Oblivion is very demanding for PCs, and does not look as good. With an Xbox 360 and even a 720p HDTV, as we have, it looks fantastic. You would need a computer costing a couple thousand dollars to play this game, not something you can get at Walmart or even Best Buy. For that price, you might as well buy a nice TV and an Xbox 360 and not have to worry about getting it to run under Windows. PC games used to dominate, but that time has passed. Maybe it will come again, maybe not, no one can say. Then again, if you do have a PC capable of playing Oblivion, there are a lot of homemade mods for it. New weapons and items, new quests, changes to the game itself (for example, one I saw added muggers to towns at night). What most PCs can play, however, is Oblivion's predecessor, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. While not quite as intuitive as Oblivion, I fully intend to play through Morrowind now that I've beaten Oblivion, and now that I feel that I know how an Elder Scrolls game is meant to be played. Also, not to come off as an Xbox 360 fanboy, I hear that the PlayStation 3 version of Oblivion, while just as good, does not have the downloadable content available. I'm not sure if there is a "Game of the Year" edition which adds the big ones or not, but I'm pretty sure the downloadable stuff is unavailable to PlayStation gamers. Still, as it's among the best Xbox 360 games, I'm sure it's among the best PS3 games as well. And hopefully PS3's stronger processor eliminates those slowdowns. One can only hope. Best thing is, Oblivion came out in 2006, and the fans are expecting a fifth Elder Scrolls game next year or the year after. They just made Fallout 3, a futuristic RPG that is said to be a lot like Oblivion. While I can't see myself enjoying a game with guns and radiation as much as Oblivion, I owe it to Bethesda Softworks to give their new game a try, given how much I enjoyed their last one.

YouTube to Block Internet Explorer 6 Users

2009-08-02T03:07:00.001-04:00

Hold up now. I did not say that YouTube was going to block Internet Explorer users. They are going to block users of Internet Explorer 6 (and presumably prior versions). Internet Explorer 6 is the version of IE that came with Windows XP, and it's the last "Classic" version of IE before Microsoft threw the GUI in the blender. IE 7 and IE 8 are both ugly as sin, but that's the least of my concerns with Internet Explorer. IE specifically does not block ads and cannot be made to do so - that's my biggest beef. But I'm using Firefox (actually Portable Firefox) and encourage others to do the same. Or if Mozilla creeps you out (their funky licensing or their rising popularity) and for some reason Google doesn't, they offer a browser called Chrome. There's also Opera, which scared people away by being the last paid web browser (it's since been made free). Fifthly, there's Safari, made by Apple, recently released for Windows. So there are five major choices there. IE 7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari.

The real story here is that many people actually still have or still use IE 6. It actually isn't a bad browser, compared with IE 7 and IE 8. It just needs to be configured properly to be safe (or relatively so). It's not going to do the tricks Firefox can do, but it's not bad to just hit the Net real quick for something, in a pinch, or if that's what's installed at work. The fact that YouTube is not a safe site to be accessing at work is entirely beside the point. I don't know what your job is. Maybe you have a lot of down time and YouTube keeps you sane. I don't know. Don't really care, either.

'Cash for Clunkers' caveats

2009-08-01T01:55:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago today, I was at work, as I am now, with my last car. On the way home, it died. I later found that it was the head gasket we had just had repaired three months ago. We hadn't even finished paying on the prior repair. That is what you call a lemon: a car that, no matter how much you put into it, keeps costing you more than it's worth.

This past Monday, a new economic and environmental stimulus package took effect, called "Cash for Clunkers", and it's been getting a lot of attention lately. Because of the death of my car, we took my wife's car in. We didn't know about the program, but when we heard we could get $3500 or $4500 off a brand-new car, it sounded like a good idea. A "Clunker", according to the rules and regulations of this program, is a car made in 1984 or more recently and gets less than 18 miles per gallon. Jen's car qualifies; it gets close to 15 miles to the gallon. Or at least we thought it qualified.

Appropriately named "Chuggy" (by me, no less), aside from getting below-average gas mileage, the spedometer did not work (as soon as you started it, it would climb to, and then past its maximum level), there was no panel on the driver's door (to let yourself out, you had to grab the linkage inside the door and pull), the front windows did not go down, the roof was just a sheet that hung down and could not be tacked up, the doors could not be locked, the A/C didn't work due to a missing belt, the car had to be warmed up for at least 5 minutes in the cold, the shifter knob for the transmission kept falling off (we had to put a bag over it to at least catch it), while the gas tank had a cap, there was no cover, the car was white, rust, and steel colored, the bumpers were barely hanging on. Oh, and it didn't like going over 45-50 miles per hour. (For all that, though, it was a very reliable car. Neither of the cars I've had since she's had it have lasted as long.)

But, according to the federal government, Chuggy isn't a clunker. Being a "Clunker", by their definition, isn't actually about fuel economy. The reason Chuggy isn't a clunker is because when it was "brand new", it got more than 18 miles to the gallon (probably about 20-22). 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, V6, automatic. In fact, most standard passenger cars manufactured since 1984 got better than 18 miles to the gallon when they rolled off the lot. So what is a "clunker"? It's mainly big trucks and sports cars, cars actually designed to get low mileage in favor of performance, whether it's workload or racing. Before the Bush Administration, bad fuel economy did not a bad car make, if it made up for it in other ways. Now fuel economy is first and foremost.

Lastly, you don't get any cash. What you get is a voucher for $3500 or $4500 towards the purchase of a new vehicle, and this is all handled with the dealer. It acts as your down payment, if you haven't got one, which is great for working-class folks who have bills to pay and can't save, but can afford a monthly payment. I'm sure we all know folks like that. ;-) (You read the blog of one...)

So here's how it works. If you want to trade your car in under this program, you need to find out what the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rated the fuel economy of your car's make, model, and trim when it was brand new. Aftermarket modifications and wear and tear do not count whatsoever. Find this out, because the dealer will find out, and if it's 19 or higher, your car will not qualify, regardless of what it gets now. If your car or truck does qualify, $3500 is taken off the total cost of the car if the new car gets 5-9 miles more per gallon than the car you're trading in. An additional $1000, for a total of $4500, is taken off if the new car gets 10 miles more per gallon than the trade-in. Futhermore, the trade-in must be in the name of the person buying the new car, and it must have been in that person's name for a full year or longer.

We did not qualify, but we were still able to trade Chuggy in for a fraction of what we would have got under the program. Our payments went up a bit and we got a lesser car, but there are things about it I like more, too. (On top of that it gets a little better gas mileage!)

"Cash for Clunkers" started this past Monday. I wondered why Nissan made us sign everything for the 27th on the 24th. I guess that's why. $100 million has already been paid out to car dealerships around the country for Clunker trade-ins alone, and the goverment appropriated $1 billion. So the fund has $900 million left; at this rate, that's another 9 weeks. Maybe less, as word of the program gets out. And Congress is reportedly seeking another $2 billion for the program.

//Update: 3 August 2009: They got it - so there is now roughly $2.5 billion, I'm guessing, available for this program.

This may be what it takes to get the economy working again. Stimulus checks are not the answer, because people either save them, or use them to pay for goods and services that are not financially threatened. Like the light bill - the power company is not going anywhere. So stimulating them is a waste of money. People may buy booze with it, or drugs - or, to be fair, food. Food manufacturers aren't hurting either; neither is the spirits industry. And I shouldn't need to explain why the drug trade doesn't need money. The auto industry however, does need stimulus. And the banks who underwrite their loans. They need help as well. People need to buy expensive things they need because they need them, and they need to buy them from large companies to keep these businesses doing business, and paying their employees, keeping their families fed, their kids off the streets, not committing crimes with their friends. I know all that's a stretch, but that's how a capitalist system works. The only problem is that due to the problems the Republicans left us, people don't have the confidence to make these big purchases, because they'll be worse off if they lose their jobs. The Republicans (and the rich) say "Buy, buy, buy, the more you buy, the more industry will make, fewer people will be laid off, your job will be more secure" and the working class wants assurances. Well, sometimes life doesn't come with guarantees, and you just have to make the most out of what you got. We can make this work.

Xbox 360 Summer Update

2009-07-27T04:05:00.001-04:00

It's been 8 months since Microsoft's last update to Dashboard, the operating system of the Xbox 360. My wife's brother incorrectly believes that the old "blade-style" Dashboard is in fact Windows XP and the "New Xbox LIVE Experience" Dashboard (often abbreviated NXE) currently out is Windows Vista. Let me tell you, once a Southern boy gets his mind made up about something, even if it's incorrect, it's best to just leave it alone. Her sister's ex believes that Metallica started as a country band in Greenville, NC, and that their "crossover album", "Enter Sandman" was their first rock album. ("Enter Sandman" is the title track to their 1991 self-titled album, and while it may be their first rock album, they had four metal albums out before it, and no country albums, although vocalist James Hetfield has been known to sing in country bars.) Anyway, NXE put a lot of Xbox LIVE customers off LIVE for up to three weeks, depending upon when they updated (the problem was resolved on November 19 of last year with another update). But once they sorted out all the bugs, as was the case with Windows XP, it turned out to be a gem.

This update makes fewer important changes than NXE, and does not contain the Twitter and Facebook components featured at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) last month. Twitter is an interesting website, but they can keep Facebook. If they had announced a MySpace integration, that would be noteworthy, but for social networking, I haven't seen anything that can unseat MeatSpace just yet. I have maybe four friends on Facebook - meaning, only four people I know have Facebook accounts. One of them is my wife. On MySpace, I have about 40 friends. I'm not a collector; other than a couple bands, it's just people I know in real life. So it is actually useful to me, though lately it's been much more "potentially useful" than useful, but it's nice to have one for what I do (or rather, don't do with it).

The main thing about this update seems to be the addition of a Marketplace for paid clothes and accessories for your Avatar, the little digital character which represents your profile, introduced in NXE last year. Up until this update, Microsoft have released free clothing and accessories to the pool of free items you can choose from every couple months, and I hope they continue to do so. This time it's Kanye West shades, last time it was beach-wear. Usually it's just a couple items sharing a theme; once they added over a dozen shirts for all the soccer teams. My Avatar still wears England's. Not because I watch soccer. I just like the look. (Matter of fact, you can always see my Avatar on this blog over on the right, below the About Me section.) Every update, I check the newest gear against what I already have. Will I pay $1-4 for gear for my Avatar? Probably not, unless it was something really cool. But a lot of people will, so this will make Microsoft some money against what will probably be a very minimal investment. Halo 3 and Fable II accessories are already confirmed, and Microsoft owns those franchises, so they don't have to pay anybody for the rights. They offer a telescope, which C|Net attribute to the LucasArts game "The Curse of Monkey Island", but LucasArts doesn't own the rights to a generic red telescope. The implication is there, but that's it. The telescope, and a rubber chicken, are $2 (160 Microsoft Points) each. Your Avatar can play with a remote-control toy of a Warthog, an off-road vehicle in Halo games, for $4 (320MSP). Other pricing is to be announced.

Other features include savegame timestamping, an improved Achievement browser (not shown at the C|Net link, but seen elsewhere), and a feature to let you watch movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style, with friends online. The library is limited, though, and all participants must not only be Xbox LIVE Gold members, but also Netflix subscribers as well.

This update was initially planned for a week ago, the 20th, but was pushed back to the 11th of August. Way I see it, that's over 3 weeks. Hopefully LIVE works when it comes down the pipes.

//Update: The update is out, and we got it. I believe it is out for everybody now, but at first, only Xbox LIVE Gold members could get it. It didn't offer it to me (my account is only Silver, as I don't play online) and I'd been playing Oblivion for three hours. As soon as Jen signed in, though, it sent it to us. Took about five minutes to download, and installed with no problems. Surprisingly, LIVE worked following the update. The avatar accessories are cool, and there are a ton of designer clothes you can buy as well, from Adidas and Quicksilver, if you're into brands. I want a lightsaber, but it's $5 - for a lightsaber for my avatar to play with. Right... Also, the stormtrooper and Obi-Wan Kenobi outfits are cool, too. Nothing I'd pay for. Avatar clothes and accessories for sale start at 50¢ and go up to $7 (though that's a $5 outfit and $2 helmet sold separately). They say you can win them in games as well, but I'm not sure if old games will be retro-patched to allow the accessories to be won, or if it's new games only. The only other feature I use is rating games. I promptly gave Oblivion my only 5-star rating. I rated Rock Band 2 4-stars, and Guitar Hero: World Tour and Grand Theft Auto 4 3-stars. (And caught some hell from Jen for rating Rock Band 2 below Oblivion, but she can rate 'em both whatever she likes under her own account.)

Amazon vs. 1984

2009-07-26T21:48:00.001-04:00

Just yesterday, I wrote about the growing trend of Xbox 360 gamers artificially enhancing their Gamerscore, and Microsoft going into their machines and resetting their score to zero. Before that, however, and certainly more popularly, Amazon.com is catching hell for remotely deleting books from their own electronic book reader, the Kindle. What's worse, the book in question is none other than George Orwell's classic story of totalitarian government oppression, 1984. Sure, they refunded peoples' money, but is that enough? Amazon, some customers, and the owners of the distribution rights to 1984 seem to believe so. Others disagree.

First of all, this is not about censorship. 1984 is, as a novel, but that is beside the point. (Fahrenheit 451 would have been a much better platform to cry wolf on, had it happened to digital copies of that book, as it's about firemen who burn books.) No, it's just a matter of copyrights. Amazon, like any book seller, has the rights to sell new and used copies of virtually any book they like, from Dr. Seuss to Stephen King and from cookbooks to the Kama Sutra. (A note for young people trying to sneak into R-rated movies and play M-rated games, your local Barnes & Noble has far juicier content, including stuff you can't even see in movies and video games, and they won't stop you from reading it.) Their first copyright problems surfaced a few years or more ago when they started letting you read the book right on their web page. Not all books qualified, but for those that did, you could look at the first few pages. Some let you read a random page, up to however many pages. In any case, however, the rights of the copyright owner were always respected. And that's all this is. They thought they had the rights, and between that and learning they didn't, they sold so many copies. Remotely deleting the books, while distasteful, was just an attempt to avoid copyright infringement, which could have made them liable for millions of dollars. If I, or any of you reading, were in Amazon's shoes, you would have done the exact same thing.

Now, I've always been leery of "eBook readers" like the Kindle. You pay a couple hundred dollars for this thing, and all it can do is read books? Where's the benefit? The books still cost roughly the same. And you can't loan or give the book to a friend when you're done. You can't buy a used eBook for half the price. An eBook reader presumably takes batteries; that, or it has a rechargeable power supply like a cell phone. An eBook reader is discreet; without seeing the screen, you can't tell a person reading de Sade from somebody reading Shakespeare. On the other hand, though, you give up any claim to any kind of distinguished look you might have earned from reading classic literature if you're reading it on a screen, you look no better or smarter than somebody reading John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks on an eBook reader, so that goes both ways. Personally, I'm used to paperback books. I don't like hardcovers; they're too big. I barely tolerate the Harry Potter paperbacks, which are nearly the size of hardcovers. (Speaking of which, Book 7, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" finally came out, last week, after 2 years exclusive in hardcover. While I did read spoilers, I have actually held out and have just started reading it.) I have tried to read eBooks on a laptop computer and on a modified Nintendo DS, and it just did not work for me. The one advantage I can think of is that with an eBook reader, you can set a digital bookmark which will not fall out. While a Kindle might combine the portability and ease of use of the DS with the large screen of the laptop, I'm not about to spend $200 or more to find out.

So, what am I saying? Should I have to spell it out? $200 (or more!) for an eBook reader, plus $9.99 for a book that's inconvenient to read that can be remotely deleted... or just $9.99 for a book they can't take back, with the option to get it less secondhand, and/or resell to get some of my money back? (Amazon has a flat shipping rate for sellers of $3.99 per book, and I know it doesn't cost half that, so I'm guaranteed at least $2 back if I sell it for just a penny.) And considering that a book is still the best value in entertainment (though Oblivion on the Xbox 360 is quite a contender; I've got 85+ hours into that sucker and I still ain't halfway done), that ain't bad. eBook readers just screw it all up. This issue though, it's nothing, at the most it's just icing on the cake, or rather, the final nail in the coffin.

Do you care about your Xbox 360 Gamerscore?

2009-07-26T05:00:00.002-04:00

If you have an Xbox 360, do you care about your Gamerscore?

If you don't have an Xbox 360, this video game console has a new system not seen previously in video game systems. It has a system-wide system of tracking Achievements from game to game. An Achievement is a kind of trophy given for accomplishing a certain feat in a game, and it comes with an icon, a name, a description, and a point value of one Gamerscore or more. Every Xbox 360 game has at least 1000 Gamerscore total (some have more), and each game can have up to 99 Achievements. Some games are more generous, with huge rewards for finishing the game and certain milestones, while others are more conservative, instead offering dozens of Achievements for finding various secrets in the game.

Most people earn their Gamerscore by playing games, but others cheat to raise theirs. You can give somebody you trust your username and password, and they can "recover" your profile to their Xbox and earn you achievements; usually they do this for Microsoft Points (the currency on Xbox Live, which costs $1 for every 80 points) or other online currency. Some do it for free. When they're done, you recover your profile back, and, if you're smart, change your password back. I have never done this, I've only heard. There are also various hacks which will raise your Gamerscore exponentially. One, as I understand it, figures out the total possible Gamerscore one could have if one bought every single Xbox 360 game and unlocked every Achievement for each one - something like a quarter-million points.

However, Microsoft not only disapproves of Gamerscore manipulation and outright hacking, but they will reset your Gamerscore if they catch you at it. They will also revoke your online privileges, even if you're paid up a full year in advance. In the worst cases, they will blacklist your entire Xbox, so if you had, say, six accounts paid up for a year in advance (a cost of $300) you would not be able to play online, and you wouldn't be able to recover any of that money.

The thing is, do we care enough about Gamerscore that this is such a big deal that we approve of Microsoft cheating people out of their money? More importantly, how do we feel about Microsoft having that level of control? Mind you, these people are not (necessarily) cheating in online matches. They're simply raising a score, which hurts nobody at all. You cannot buy anything with Gamerscore; it's worthless except, maybe, for bragging rights. But if you have a quarter-million Gamerscore, is that really worth bragging about? I would say anything over 100,000 is evidence of manipulation of some kind. I would say that a Gamerscore of 25,000 or more belongs to somebody who has absolutely no life. My wife's brother has about 13,000, he's had his Xbox 360 for three years, and he hasn't had a job in that time. His girlfriend had a good job, and was able to support his gaming habit while he (read: his friends and family) looked after the kids. He has that plan with Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, you can rent one game at a time for as long as you like. He rents a game, plays it until he beats it, and then returns it for the next game. He doesn't seek all 1000 (or more) Gamerscore from a game, but he does complete the main objectives, which get him between 40% and 75% of the total Gamerscore.

I have about 2900 Gamerscore; Jen has close to 2200. And we've had ours nearly a year and a half. I would not care if Microsoft reset my Gamerscore. It means nothing to me. Sure, it's nice to get the Achievements, and it's extra nice when they're worth more (like 50, as opposed to 10), but it's never more fun than actually earning the Achievements. If I wanted to jack up my Gamerscore, I could rent Avatar: The Last Airbender (a fighting game); I understand it's not only possible, but very easy, to rack up 1000 Gamerscore inside of about five minutes from the start of the game. But I don't want that game on my profile; I don't want it known that I was willing to put a stupid game from a stupid franchise on my Gamertag's profile just to raise my Gamerscore. I'd rather earn fewer points by playing games I'm proud to have on my record. Not that I've never played a stupid game; Dash of Destruction is a free Arcade game sponsored by Doritos worth 200 or 250 Gamerscore. I got it for Jen to help her catch up, but it actually looked fun, so I played it until it wasn't. I got some points from it, but nowhere near the total. Jen got all the Achievements but one, so she got more from it than I did. And that's fine, she wants a higher score, but she mostly sticks to games with "Guitar" and "Band" in the title. I've played through The Orange Box and Oblivion, and those games hand out Gamerscore like candy. Assassins Creed and Mass Effect were also both good for Gamerscore, but they bored me, so I stopped playing them. Grand Theft Auto IV is a little more conservative, still gives Gamerscore, but not as much as the others; it bored me as well, so I put it down. I am going to strive for all 1250 Gamerscore associated with Oblivion, but not because I need the score to stroke my ego, but because I love the game and want to get everything out of it. But I'm also doing things that don't get me Gamerscore, too; I'm going for 100% completion, which just happens to result in getting 1250/1250 along the way.

So that brings us back to Microsoft. How comfortable are we with Microsoft policing video games? Sure, crack down on people cheating in online matches. I'm fine with that. If people want to cheat, though, don't take away their access if they want to pay. Just create a new Gamerzone (e.g. Pro, Recreation, Underground, Family) called Cheaters, or perhaps Hackers, and lock them in it. Make a new option in the profile called "Play with cheaters?" and set it to NO by default. Cheaters would thus only be able to play with other Cheaters, and with those brave souls who enabled play with cheaters (which is what their friends would have to do to play with them). Sure, crack down on people putting offensive language in their profile. I'm fine with that, too. The Xbox 360 is a family-friendly console, and people actively undermining that are threatening Microsoft's financial situation. Sure, crack down on people modifying their Xbox to play copied games. I am fine with that as well. Video games cost millions of dollars to develop, just like films. I do not agree that Microsoft should be able to remotely kill an Xbox 360, if their employee they laid off can be believed, but Verizon does something similar with their phones, they can remotely disable a phone's ability to charge its battery, forcing you to buy a new phone. That ain't just crazy talk, either, they did it to me in 2004. I couldn't afford a new phone, either, and they said they'd rather I just cancel my service than let me continue charging the battery until I could. So I guess when you're at the top, you can set the rules like that. But Microsoft's video game competitor, Sony, is no better. Sony put a nasty computer virus on music CDs with the understanding that anyone who puts a CD into their computer is probably intent on distributing it online. Meanwhile, thousands of people, perhaps millions, downloaded the album on BitTorrent and other networks, courtesy of Linux users who were unaffected by the virus, which affected Windows and Mac OS systems only. Playing by the rules is no safe harbor either; users who updated to Microsoft's new Dashboard for the Xbox 360 last November were blocked from Xbox Live for up to three weeks if they were not part of Microsoft's beta team. Too bad the download and the installation didn't say that. Whoops. Not to mention the whole Verizon thing, or fans of music on Sony's BMG label who just wanted to play music on their computer that they'd bought legally.

So again, how important is Gamerscore that it's worth making such a big deal out of?

Bought Our First New Car

2009-07-25T05:53:00.004-04:00

Pretty sure I didn't post about my last car, the 1996 Ford Contour, going out back in March or April. For reasons unknown, it blew a head gasket and was in the shop for a full month getting fixed. Well, despite being "fixed", it blew the head gasket again a week ago, last Saturday morning as I got off work. Granted, I left the water cap off when I put water in it, but that couldn't have been the only thing, as it had been acting up for a while. Plus, when we got the water back in it and the reservoir covered, it continued to act up, so either something wasn't done right before, and/or the guy who owned it before was overly rought with it. It's probably a bit of both.

The problem with buying a used car, whether you buy it from a private citizen or a dealership, is in ten out of ten cases, you are buying somebody else's problem. They had some reason for getting rid of it. OK, there's the occasional story about the widow who's selling her husband's car, which works perfectly, just to rid herself of the memory... but that's also a one in a million shot. If you buy a used car, you can expect that something is wrong beyond what you're being told, if you're told anything at all. And I wasn't. I was told it was normal for Fords to idle so roughly; I was told that it didn't need a thermostat or an oxygen sensor; I was told that it was OK for the "check engine" light to be on; I was told that it was "all in my head". Clearly it wasn't, as the car can't be driven five miles without inexplicably dying. But, it served its purpose. My 1987 Acura Legend was a good car, and lasted me just over six years, before the engine jumped timing and bent the valves. I didn't expect to keep that Contour long, but it lasted me until I was able to get something better. No hard feelings in any case, but it is what it is, it isn't what it ain't, and now I do have something better, so it's all good.

So, we decided to see what it would take to get a new car. I've driven a lot of cars, mostly for work, but also through rentals. In 2006 we rented a 2007 Subaru Impreza to drive to Connecticut and back. In 2008 we rented a Dodge Grand Caravan for the same trip, a 2008 or 2009. In 2007, when we visited California, we rented a 2008 Nissan Versa hatchback, and I really liked it. So we made our first stop Greenville Nissan, just to see what we could do. Well, we met with a salesman, he showed us the lot, we looked at Versa sedans and hatchbacks, and we picked out a black hatchback. My credit was ran, and yes, he said, they could put us in a new car, especially if we participated in the recent economic/environmental stimulus plan "Cash for Clunkers" the government just started doing this week (great timing, eh?). If the new car gets 5-9 miles to the gallon more than the trade-in, it's worth $3500. If the new car gets 10 or more miles to the gallon more, it's worth $4500. And the trade-in must be 25 years old or less, it can't be a classic. We qualified for the first tier with Chuggy (Jen's car). (The Contour would not have qualified.) But we were told to come back the following morning, as they were about to close.

Well, we managed to get out of bed at 9AM (a previously unheard-of feat for us) and get to the dealership by 10, but we ran into a new problem. They wouldn't let me do the Cash for Clunkers program myself because Chuggy was in Jen's name. She couldn't sign it over to me, either, because it has to have been owned and operated for one year. And Nissan didn't like Jen's credit score. Oops. So what they had to do is, put us both down as co-owners, but still, one co-owner having a score under the level they like (and the other just barely over it) didn't look good. When we had to leave for me to take Jen to work, however, they let us take the Versa, and told us the car had to be back by Thursday, at which point they should have it finalized. They woke me up the following morning (as I kept the phone in the room with me) and told me to bring it back Friday, and the paperwork would be finalized then, as Nissan had approved the credit. But the paperwork said Thursday, I told him, so we went to Greenville just for them to change one digit on a piece of paper.

The car has a 13.2 gallon tank, and it was full when we drove it off the lot Tuesday. Thursday night when I had to go to work, I'd put over 250 miles on it, and the tank was around a quarter tank. So I put $20 in. About filled it up, too. Shouldn't have put so much in, I later learned. Hindsight, 20/20 and all that. Anyway, yesterday morning, I get off at 7, I'm home by 7:40, in bed ten minutes later, and up with the alarm (or maybe just before?) two hours later. On two hours' sleep, I got dressed, and we went back to Greenville. Thankfully, Jen drove. She got a full nights' sleep, or close enough to it. Or at least she could have, having gotten off work at midnight the previous night. Three hours of waiting, finally we go into the office to sign the paperwork. 45 minutes or so later, we're the proud owners of a black 2009 Nissan Versa hatchback... that we'll be paying on for the next six years. Still, it has a 100,000 mile warranty, everything's covered except the gas and maintenance (oil changes are free, but we gotta pay for things like tire rotation, alignment, etc.).

So what's this bad boy got? Black exterior, cream interior, partial leather or pleather trim (don't care if it ain't real, it looks nice), cruise control, air conditioning (haven't had either in years), a six-disc CD changer with auxilliary input (for Mp3 players, or my phone) and six speakers (sounds good, too), rear-window wiper, his-and-hers keyless entry/power locks/keys, power windows and mirrors... Generally a nice car, but not fully loaded, either. But not the base model either, it's an SL. Oh yeah, automatic transmission, and a CVT transmission, which means "constantly variable transmission". You can't even feel it shifting, and when it's stopped but running, you can't even feel the engine running. It's also the first car I've owned with drink holders, so that's a big plus, as I drink a lot of coffee, soda, bottled water, etc. I intended to install deer warning whistles on the front, but they have to be glued on, and I just can't bring myself to do it. And I want a steering wheel cover, but I want a hard rubber one like I had in the Legend, and then the Contour, and the only cream-colored ones Walmart has are soft. I'll have to check Auto Zone and Advance Auto Parts. Maybe the Greenville Walmart. And we got a litter bag to put over the passenger seat. No more throwing trash on the floorboards in the back like we've done with previous cars, this car's staying nice as long as possible. Wish us luck with that one, we live in a swamp, just about, but I think I can keep it clean if I keep on it. It's a very nice-looking car, unlike, well... the Legend was classy, if you like the boxy 80s style, which I did, and still do. The Contour wasn't ugly, but it was boring. It was just OK. Looked like any other mid-90s Ford. Escort and Taurus looked the same, just shorter or longer.

Now we have a Reliable Car. Not one that we get in and hope it starts. We definitely have to worry about making the payments, but they aren't bad. What's gonna hurt is the insurance, since we have to have full coverage on it. And we don't know what that will be yet. Also - while I love this car - in a couple years, we'll both have built credit with Nissan, plus they have an automatic approval for current customers, so if we want, we'll be able to trade up. Maybe we'll get an Altima Hybrid. I don't know. It's too far ahead to think about. I'm just thinking, when this car is paid off, we'll have just celebrated our ninth anniversary, and we've just been married 3 years now. Hell, six years means 2015, and half the nuts in the world are sure the world ends on December 12, 2012. Just like it did on January 1, 2000, I suppose.

Anyway, this means we're down to one vehicle. One blew up, and the other is getting recycled, to put a huge dent in what we owe Nissan. Well, Jen told her mother, and her mother's giving her her Jeep, since she recently picked up a new Dodge Caravan, very similar to the one we rented, perhaps a couple years older. It's just got a leaking transmission pan, cracked windshield, and the driver's side door does not register as closed, so either that fuse has to be pulled, or the battery must be disconnected, because the "you idiot, you left the door open" beeper will actually drain the battery. Her mom went with the latter, not sure why, maybe she couldn't find the fuse, maybe the problem's more than that, I don't know, but it'll be a cheaper and quicker repair than the Contour, and Jen's never been a Ford fan anyway. So we're selling the Contour back to our mechanic, who we bought it from, for an "open" sum (he's going to forgive what we owe on it, plus do some of the repair work on the Jeep for free, and sell the Contour for parts).

Oh yeah. Wanna see it? Here's our new baby:

As usual with pictures here, click on them to see them full-size.

PortableApps.com Sweeps SourceForge.net Awards

2009-07-24T04:54:00.001-04:00

How about some actual NEWS on this blog, eh?

PortableApps.com has swept SourceForge.net's Community Choice Awards 2009, taking four awards in the following categories: "Best Visual Design", "Best Commercial Open Source Project", "Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything", and "Best Project".

"Best Visual Design" is sort of a vague category. How a program looks, I would think, to those who follow open source, is entirely secondary to how useful it is. If a program isn't worth a damn but looks good, it's worthless. If the program is good and it's ugly, it doesn't matter. But if it can look good and be useful, well, that's just nice. The PortableApps.com Platform (PAP) isn't all that pretty - unless you like red, that is - but skins can make it very nice. The latest PAP, just in time for CCA '09, includes a half-dozen color schemes for the same skin. Green, my favorite color, is more of a teal. Black, my second choice, is just a dark grey. And on top of all that, the lighting in the skin is just funky. Thankfully users can make their own themes, and there are some very good ones out there. On top of that, the developers' apathy (one such topic, they usually wind up deleted) towards the community's requests to add folders makes the visual design feel weak (though I'm not sure if that would go under design or function), and still, the menu can display 20 programs and it can put your favorites on top. So while I have plenty to say about the visual design, I still voted for PortableApps.com out of loyalty, and I'm not unhappy to see it snag this one. Not a lot of programs look great "out of the box", but PortableApps.com does try.

"Best Commercial Open Source Project" doesn't make sense, since the menu and programs are free. However, I'm told that it qualifies because PortableApps.com is seeking alliances with flash drive manufacturers to brand their drives with the PA logo and include the Platform and several of the apps, and this is a commercial venture. It hasn't happened yet, and I don't know why; what good is a flash drive other than running portable applications? A giant floppy disk? You can use the Internet for that. For storage, DVD-ROM is cheaper and more reliable. Even though I can probably do it for less, I would buy flash drives with PortableApps branding, both to support the project, and as a gift. But they better team up with Corsair or OCZ, because portable applications aren't worth a crap on slow flash drives. USB 2.0 is pretty much a must, and the flash memory inside must be fast. As it is, VLC Media Player and OpenOffice take a minute or more to open, and some of Firefox 3's security features must be disabled for it to work at all, otherwise it will just halt for several seconds at a time, every few seconds. It's a mess, but hopefully PortableApps.com's wins at CCA '09 will push for faster flash drives.

"Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything" is the category I was most excited about, and, to be honest, the only category I cared about PortableApps.com winning. The other contenders included a Linux distribution, an audio editor, a media player, a password safe, and some stuff I'd never heard of. Nothing worthy of such a title. PortableApps.com, on the other hand... you can't get closer to what that title stands for than running programs on a flash drive which run in a virtual sandbox and run the same from computer to computer. They're not limited to flash drives, either: if you can plug your phone into your computer, you can use that, too. Same for iPods and other portable media players, digital cameras, the Sony PSP... pretty much everything that you can plug into a computer and is recognized as a drive that you can store files on. Just carry the cable. Or install it on a second hard drive, internal or external. Then, should you choose to upgrade to Windows 7 (bad idea) or Vista (worse idea), or you're using one of those and you're going back to XP (smart move), your portable applications will work just the same, no need to reinstall them, no need to configure them. Get a big external hard drive, and keep all your multimedia on it, put the portable apps on that, and then when you go somewhere, carry it all with you. It's great. I believe application portability is even more important than netbooks and other small laptops. You go somewhere, you don't need a tiny computer, you just need portable applications, because most likely, where you're going, there'll be a computer. Nearly all the benefits of having your own computer can be gotten by having portable applications on a flash drive.

"Best Project" is a hell of a shocker and I don't think anybody actually expected PortableApps.com to take it. When you think open source, you think Linux - for over a decade the terms were virtually interchangeable. Then there's Firefox. Some might even know OpenOffice.org, the free alternative to Microsoft Office. Or VLC Media Player, the all-playing media player. You can load it on a computer with a DVD-ROM drive but that will not play DVDs, and VLC will play the discs, no problem. Or if you have movies stored on your flash drive, that works just as well. So there are a lot of great open source projects out there. I suppose what sets PortableApps.com apart is that anybody can take advantage of it. OpenOffice might be great for businesses, but what does it do for media junkies and web surfers? Probably not much. Likewise with Firefox and VLC Media Player. But PortableApps.com's Suite includes all of it. Or you can do what I do (and strongly recommend, as the Suite doesn't get updated, like... ever) and just download the Platform and get your apps a la carte, just get what you want. And on top of that, PortableApps.com isn't the only place to get portable applications, it's just the best, they stick to open source, and their stuff is tested. I know of a portable warez site that churns out over 60 portable applications a month, but can the same quality as PortableApps.com be expected? Maybe some of them don't need PA's attention to detail, but I'm sure some do.

Other winners include: phpMyAdmin (Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins), XMind (Best Project for Academia), Audacity (Best Project for Multimedia), Notepad++ (Best Tool or Utility for Developers), ScummVM (Best Project for Gamers), Firebird (Best Project for the Enterprise), OpenOffice.org (Best Project for Government), and eeebuntu (Best New Project). Notes: Audacity is the audio editor I was making a dig at in the "Most Likely to Change..." category, though I use it to make ringtones. It's really a great program, and ironically PortableApps.com is shunning the latest version, despite it having clear advantages over the one they do offer. The official reason is that it's labeled as beta software, which is not only common for open source in general, but it's also the state of the current PortableApps.com Platform. ScummVM is a neat program which loads games created in LucasArts' SCUMM engine, most famously used by Maniac Mansion, but also for a game I grew up with, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. What ScummVM doesn't do, however, is break the clever copy protection in these games. Zak, for example, constantly asks for codes which were printed in black on a dark maroon sheet that came with the game, and copies of that document just don't exist anymore. Oh well, I suppose it's the thought that counts.

"Firefly" reviewed

2009-07-22T06:38:00.001-04:00

Is it Serenity, or Firefly, or...? This point had me confused for a while. Let me spell it out for you. Serenity is the name of the ship used in the show and the film. It's named after Serenity Valley, a famous battle two of the main characters were involved in. Serenity is the name of the pilot (first episode) and the feature film which follows the end of the series. Firefly is the name of the show, and Serenity the ship is a Firefly-class vessel. Clear? If not, see all the things Firefly refers to on Wikipedia.

Anyway, Firefly, as well as the first Serenity, the pilot (but not so much the feature film) is a Western which happens to take place in the future - over 500 years, to be exact. The United States and China pretty much ruled the world in peace, but due to overcrowding, they exiled much (if not all) of the population to the stars, to a new solar system where they found a dozen or so planets, all capable of sustaining life. They terraformed the planets, and tried to start an interstellar parliament, but the outer worlds wanted to stay independent, and a civil war broke out. The Independents lost, and its members generally make up the lower class in the new world (galaxy) order.

Unlike the other space-faring sci-fi shows (Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica), Firefly doesn't feature any fancy technology, other than space-faring vessels. Faster-than-light travel must exist, but it's never discussed. At all. Ships don't have weapons to shoot each other with, or at least Serenity doesn't (it's a cargo ship). No teleporters whatsoever. Guns fire bullets. There are a couple laser guns, but they're fancy and rare. The bad guys are kind of like the Empire in Star Wars, and the good guys are outlaws. Kind of like in Star Wars, I guess, but without lasers. And no magic, either, although they do have a latent telepath, and they do have some pretty impressive fighting, though mostly only in the feature film.

The Western element shows in how people dress and act, at least on the outer worlds. And the sort of code of honor among the band of outlaws. A newcomer to the crew tells the captain (a real cowboy) he's afraid he'll shoot him in his sleep. The captain says to him, "If I shoot you, you'll be awake, you'll have a gun in your hand, and you'll be facing me." Scenes and lines like this define most of the characters, at least the main crew. In the pilot episode, the crew picks up a priest who is more than he lets on (though they never fully explain him) and a pair of relatively young siblings, a genius doctor who rescued his sister from a research lab, and now they're both on the run.

The show only lasted for one season, but was followed by a good feature film, and, though short, is definitely worth watching. A couple issues are left unresolved, but it isn't anything major; they wrapped up all they wanted to wrap up, being aware the show was being canceled before they finished making it, so anything left open by the show is mostly answered in the movie.

$2M for 24 songs?

2009-07-21T01:56:00.002-04:00

By now anyone not spent the last week in a cave has probably heard that a jury somewhere in the middle of Nowhere (Minnesota?) awarded that modern Mafia, the RIAA, nearly $2 million, to be paid by a working mother of two or four, depending on who you read, because she or her kids downloaded 24 songs on KaZaA. On iTunes, in America, songs go for 99¢ apiece, but I've heard in Europe they go for what amounts to $1.29. I pay 160 Microsoft Points ($2) for songs in Rock Band, but those aren't just songs, they include nine instrument tracks (3 difficulties times 3 instruments), a vocal track with lyrics, a couple facts about the band for the loading screens, and sometimes, custom band gestures for the virtual band on the stage (though Guitar Hero is bigger on this point). Even at $2, 24 songs are only worth $48. 24 into the $1.92 million award means each song got paid for, at the $1 rate, 80,000 times. Given the way file sharing networks work, you're not going to share a song you downloaded 80,000 times. I guess it depends.

Impulse or nonpayment?
The RIAA would like the general public to think that every song downloaded is a sale lost. Just ask yourself, of all the songs you've downloaded, would you have paid a buck for each one if you couldn't get it for free, or are there some you got just because? (Everyone downloads, including the "high and mighty" on Internet forums who say they've never downloaded - 9 times out of 10 those are the biggest pirates, testing the waters or somesuch.) So while every download represents a kind of interest, it doesn't exactly translate to a lost sale. Besides, it's clearly not lost sales they're concerned about, per se - how many sales will they lose with a $1.92 million fine? I'd say all of them; she's not going to be in a position to buy a CD for quite some time, and people all over are calling for boycotts of music from RIAA-represented labels.

From lost sales to sales
The recording industry's biggest challenge right now is converting lost sales, real or imaginary, to real sales that bring in money. CDs alone are pretty useless; since so many people play music on portable devices now, "ripping" a CD is almost too much work, so acquiring digital files is now the new thing, but the early players - mostly iTunes, but others as well - loaded the music with copy protection, which the industry demanded to keep piracy in check. Problem is, CDs remained more convenient - you could still rip a CD. But more cars play CDs than Mp3s, and more home stereos play CDs than Mp3s as well. So, though CDs can be burned from digital audio files, CDs remain relevant. But it's not just a convenient format - music has to be desirable. The packaging is a good place to start. When I was a kid, albums and tapes came with lyrics, and liner notes, and pictures. You can download that stuff, but the original packaging, back then, was special. They don't really do that anymore. All you get now is just the track listing, and that leads some to wonder, "why not just download it?" On top of that, so many people are saying the quality of music is deteriorating. Perhaps the labels should be listening to these prospective customers? But by far, the most ambitious method they've used to get sales, to get people buying music again, is the Rock Band franchise. This "game" lets you play along with music on plastic instruments, and it's available for all gaming consoles, even the last-generation PlayStation 2. It's not very demanding as far as games go and really only amounts to a puzzle game, at best, but it's getting people buying music. We've spent more on songs than we have on both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. We have 332 songs on our Xbox 360's hard drive. More importantly, not one downloadable Rock Band song has been pirated yet. You can pirate the game disc itself, which includes 55 songs (Rock Band) or 84 songs (Rock Band 2), but you need a modified console to do it, and not that many people actually do. And since it came out that the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can flip if they catch you modifying that console, it's a really stupid thing to try.

Computer security
In the 1990s, we learned that a computer must have antivirus. In the later part of that decade, anti-spyware became the next big security measure to take. Now, a computer must additionally have PeerGuardian. The developers of PeerGuardian track the RIAA and other anti-filesharing companies and maintain a list of the IP addresses of these computers, and prevent these computers from even seeing your computer. So say you're downloading a song that is hosted by the RIAA. Your filesharing client will basically act like nobody who has the file is actually sharing it, when, in truth, all of the peers are blocked. You can see them but they cannot see you, so they are not going to share with you. Now, once some poor schmuck who isn't using PG downloads the song, you can download from them, and when they catch a C&D letter, you won't get one at all. Welcome to the third tier of computer security: anti-spy. A secure machine must now protect against viruses, malware, and online spies in order to be safe. Because now they don't just want to damage your computer. They don't just want to use your computer as a slave to attack other machines. Now they want to get to you through your computer and attack your economic situation; essentially, they want to rob you through your computer. "Don't they have the right..." No, they don't have the right to take away our Fourth Amendment rights, which protect us from unlawful searches, which is what this amounts to.

What comes next?
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the RIAA is not going to collect $1.92 million from this case. The RIAA traditionally offers a settlement in the neighborhood of $3,000-$5,000 to keep the case from going to trial, and they haven't ruled out closing the door on that offer, even though the case has been decided for much higher. That would stem any argument that the woman would never be able to pay the fine. It would be a huge economical hardship, but not impossible. Still, it would be a huge loss for the RIAA, twofold at that. First, the case has cost them a lot of money already, money they're not going to fully recover regardless. And second, if this woman has to pay anything above her means, she's probably never going to purchase a CD ever again. (Would you?) On top of that, people across the Internet are calling for a boycott of RIAA-backed labels' music. There is really just no easy solution for the RIAA. If they don't go after people for downloading music, more people will do it. The more they do, however, the more people hate them. And if you go onto an Internet forum populated by members of sites like The Pirate Bay and isoHunt and ask them what the RIAA should do, the unanimous answer will sound something like "roll over and die". Of course, if they disbanded tomorrow, and the record companies they represent all folded, the impact on the economy would be severe, as they do employ thousands. And of course, if they go under, who will bring us the popular music we like? Radiohead was able to offer their album "In Rainbows", I believe it is, for "whatever cost you feel like paying, including nothing" because they're already an established act. Millions of unsigned bands have been giving away music on MySpace and through other venues for years; it hasn't gotten them signed, let alone Radiohead-level fame (which, I admit, is quite a ways away from, say, Metallica fame, or better yet, The Beatles fame, but I digress).

In short, the recording industry needs to look at what's working and what isn't. Some things they're doing are effective, such as songs in Rock Band; also, microSD cards for phones which contain full albums in MP3 format. That's brilliant. Services like iTunes and its competitors are a good idea, moreso now that they're using regular MP3s, not copy-protected AAC and WMA files. Financially wrecking otherwise honest Americans is not working, however, and especially in this recession, amounts to both class warfare and economic terrorism. It's that serious. It's $1.92 million serious.

Portable Applications, and Right & Wrong

2009-07-17T06:28:00.003-04:00

A few months ago, I wrote about this great new technology in PC computing called "portable applications" by which applications were not installed (to Windows and its Registry), as usual, but rather installed (to a flash drive, usually, and set up for portability) and then could be used on any computer. Normally, when you install a program, the old way, it is tied to that Windows installation. You can't move the program's folder to a flash drive and run it on another computer, because it hasn't got those roots. Likewise, you can't reinstall Windows and expect the program to still work, for the same reason. And why should it be this way? Why should a program which has nothing to do with Windows be tied to Windows? The most practical reason is file associations. Generally, you want your media player to open your music and video files when you double-click on them. Nevermind the fact that, if you're not careful, a Windows Media Player upgrade will steal those associations away. Also never mind the fact that virtually every media player has a means to open media files themselves. Most also let you "drop" media files on them to play them. The double-click method is the most convenient, sure, but you can set this up without having to tie a program to the system. Internet Explorer wasn't even part of Windows initially, but since the third edition of Windows 95 (colloquially referred to as "Windows 97" but more lengthly titled "Microsoft Windows 95 Microsoft Internet Explorer" on the loading screen) it has been. Before that, it was its own program and Windows Explorer, the file manager in Windows, was completely different. Does anybody remember Windows Explorer before it was married to IE?

All in all, portable applications are great. You can take your favorite programs and their settings you've fine-tuned over the years from computer to computer. And all portable applications are free and open-source, right? Well, that's what their chief proponent, PortableApps.com, might have you believe. Well, another advantage to a complex installation is that if your program is commercial, it can also be tied to one user and steps can be taken to ensure it isn't being shared by all your friends. Of course, software piracy is even older than music and movie piracy; it's been going on for years. Software that's controlled by alphanumeric codes (like Windows) is shared with a code that works. Software that's controlled by online activation (like Windows XP and newer) is shared with altered files which have been tricked into believing they've been activated. But not everybody can follow often simple instructions to get a downloaded version of a commercial program (such as Adobe Photoshop, one of the biggest targets of software piracy) to work. Portability to the rescue. Once an application is thusly cracked, it can be made portable, and then the process is automated for everybody. Make no mistake, this is illegal as hell, but it's done every day and fewer than a thousandth of a percent of software pirates are ever convicted of a crime or sued. If that.

But while most people honestly know that pirating paid applications like Windows and Photoshop are illegal, did you know that it is also a violation of many free programs' end-user license agreement (EULA) to redistribute them without permission? Technically, while you can download and use programs like Winamp (a media player) and CCleaner (a computer maintenance program) free of charge, you can't burn them on a CD and pass them off to your friends. You can tell them where to get the programs, or email them the links to the official webpage, but you can't just redistribute them. But wait, you say, what about sites like Download.com, Softpedia, and FileHippo? These sites get permission, and that's OK. If you, a nobody on the Internet, email AOL (they publish Winamp) or Piriform (they make CCleaner) and ask for permission to share their programs with your friends, your emails will probably go unanswered, or you'll get a nice form letter thanking you for your interest and directing your questions to the program's homepage. On the other hand, if you pass off the programs, nobody will care, most likely. But what about Firefox and VLC Media Player (formerly known as VideoLAN)? These programs are open source, which is supposed to be the big savior of software. While open source is freer than freeware, there are still some caveats. For open source, you have to share the source as well. Firefox, despite popular belief, is not 100% open source. The logo and name are trademarks of Mozilla. You can redistribute Firefox the program, but you cannot call it Firefox, or use the logo. People do do this, of course - Iceweasel is one, and Blackbird is another. Both are basically Firefox, but they have a new logo and name. I don't recall what the story is with Iceweasel, but Blackbird has a black theme and is set up with bookmarks and extensions which, as a complete package, are supposed to make it the ideal web browser for African-Americans, whatever that means. Sounds separatist to me. As a "white boy", I'm highly tempted to use it, just for laughs. "Hey, I'm rockin' BLACKBIRD..." Heh...

So anyway, they tell me over at PortableApps.com that it is in fact illegal to redistribute closed-source free programs like CCleaner and Winamp (CCleaner is the more usual target of these discussions, Winamp is just my example) and that it is illegal to redistribute open source software without the source code. And they get pretty serious about these things, too! While I admire their dedication to righting wrongs, I find hypocrisy in the fact that they publish portable versions of emulators, programs used to play old console games. Specifically, they carry programs which emulate NES, Super NES, and Game Boy Advance games. Now, personally, I have no problems with emulators or people who use them. I really don't. I've in fact used two of the three programs they offer - the NES emulator I used was another one. Not too sure about the one they have, but it must be good if they chose it. And here's the thing I've tried to explain to them: Nintendo has never authorized the use of those games on personal computers, and in fact they speak out against it at great length. Some console games were available on other systems, including PCs (MS-DOS, usually). Some were ported to newer consoles (the Game Boy Advance has a "NES Classics" series, for example; also the Nintendo DS features a Nintendo 64 game). Konami even released both Contra and all three Castlevania games for the NES on the PC, using what amounted to an emulator. That's all fine and that's all legal, but at the end of the day, Nintendo has license agreements in every game manual saying the game is only licensed for use on the console it was designed for.

In their defense, members of the PortableApps.com forum have offered a couple defenses. First, they argue that emulators don't violate any licenses, it's the ROMs (the game files) that do, and they don't offer them. True, but the emulator is good for nothing other than running these ROMs. They argue that programs like VLC can be used to play pirated music and video files. This is also true, but they have many legal uses as well. There are no legal uses of emulators. Second, they've argued that they use emulators for "homebrew", software written by others to run on consoles. That's cute on the console, but running console homebrew on a console emulator is pointless. The point of homebrew is to extend the features of the console. There's no console homebrew which beats the equivalent software on a PC. Furthermore, they failed to name any of any merit. They've also argued that they play games they still own, but the consoles have fallen into disrepair and have been given or thrown away. When I asked if they actually kept all those games in a drawer, that question went unanswered as well. Essentially, they were blowing smoke, covering up the fact that they have no respect for Nintendo's licenses of paid software (games). Also, most of these defenses are answered by Nintendo's legal FAQ. Yet they will go to war over freeware, and open source, particularly Firefox.

Now, I know I sound like a real bastard saying all this. The truth of the matter, actually, is that I really don't care if people use emulators. I've used them. They just don't make games like they used to. Games used to be fun, so fun we didn't care how bad they looked. They looked good to us not because they did, but because they were fun and we genuinely loved playing them. Now it's all about polygon counts and frame rates. Games push people to buy a new computer every year just to keep up, but are the games actually getting better? Quite the opposite, in fact. There are some great games out there, but they're so few and far between. Deus Ex (2000). Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004). The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). Rock Band 2 (2008). Deus Ex: The Nameless Mod (2009, independently produced!). There are more, I know I'm forgetting a few, but this decade, compared with the last, is quite shameful for gaming. Those are some of the shining stars, though. So yeah, emulation is fine by me. But so are sites that redistribute Firefox and other free programs. They're fine by me. I do not see the problem. I do not see the problem with people downloading old console games they have no legal business playing on their PC, for a good many reasons, so who bloody cares if somebody passes along free software to a friend? Not I, that's for sure.

What Works (and Doesn't) With Pro Wrestling

2009-07-12T01:32:00.001-04:00

When I moved out here, I hadn't seen a total hour of pro wrestling in my life. Once I saw my youngest brother watching WCW Monday Nitro back in the 90s. On commercials, he'd flip over to the other channel and look at WWF Monday Night RAW for a while. Later I found out my wife used to do the same thing. I started out following her favorite wrestler, Mick Foley, on Monday Night RAW (now WWE) watching with her sister's boyfriend at the time, letting her know what was going on with the soap opera side of the show as I had Mondays off and she had to work. Didn't take long before I was hooked, and now it's almost four years later and I can't help but fancy myself a bit of an expert. I know there's a lot I haven't seen, though I've been watching RAW for a quarter of the 16 years it's been on TV (which is kinda scary). It's getting to the point where I feel like there's nothing new and it's time for a drastic change. So I have a few ideas I'd like to throw out there.

1. The WWE really needs to stop using the commercial breaks as a plot twist. It's extremely lame and screams to the audience "if you still don't think wrestling's fake, you're a bloody idiot". Here's what'll happen. The good guy (the babyface, or face, in backstage terminology) will build a good momentum against the bad guy (the heel), and typically knock them under or over the ropes to the outside area, between the ring and the crowd. Fade to black. Four minutes of commercials. Fade in from black. Face is on his back in the ring and Heel is beating the crap out of him. RAW isn't live anyway (despite them saying it is - half the time they don't even tell you where they are) so why not simply pause the broadcast at the commercial and resume where they left off? And it happens this way all the time. Another easy solution would be to plan the commercial breaks around the matches. Sometimes, toward the end they'll have an ad break, then an interview or sponsored segment (e.g. a "Just for Men" ad on the bottom half and a recap from last week on the top half), then another ad break, then one of the combatants will go to the ring, then a third ad break, then the other combatant will come out, the match starts, and we get a fourth and sometimes fifth ad break in the middle. I don't mind the frequent ad breaks near the end, but I'd prefer them not in the middle of matches, and then used as a quick reversal.

2. Characters, characters, characters. The Undertaker is one of WWE's most valuable assets, and most fans don't know the man's real name is Mark Calloway (or that he's in a serious relationship with Michelle McCool - I forget her real last name). They don't care, they love The Undertaker, and that's fine. Nevermind that from when his music hits, you can order a pizza, smoke a cigarette, take a #2 bathroom break, pay for your pizza, and have the pizza mostly finished by the time Taker removes his hat. No, I can't say anything bad about The Undertaker - he's a character done right. What I'd like to see less of is characters modeled after and/or named after real people they aren't related to or movie characters from movies not made by WWE. If WWE wanted to make a movie with one of their wrestlers and then incorporate the movie character into the wrestler's character, that's cool. They kind of did that with John Cena and "The Marine". Before the movie came out, he went from being a rapper/thug to being a Marine, or at least a generic army guy. And that's fine, too. But John Morrison (a parody of The Doors' Jim Morrison) and Evan Bourne (a parody, possibly, but more likely a tribute to Jason Bourne, of the Bourne trilogy of books and movies) are just ridiculous. And they're both great performers, but they're cheapened by these pop culture references that they really don't need.

3. I'd like to see more respect for the titles. Most notably, "distract the ref and cheat to win" shouldn't fly. Or assaulting the ref to be disqualified, or walking away from the match, should not constitute a title victory. A title should carry prestige and represent honor and should only be won honestly... otherwise it doesn't mean a thing. And if it doesn't, that's fine, I suppose, but then why have it in the first place? Currently both world titles were ill-gotten. RAW's WWE Championship was won fair and square by Batista, but was vacated and awarded to Randy Orton when Orton and his two lap dogs came out and broke Batista's arm. More on "injuries" in a bit. And CM Punk retained SmackDown's World Heavyweight Championship in a match against Jeff Hardy by kicking the referee. He'd tried everything, couldn't get a win, so he turns around and kicks the ref. It's a disqualification, he loses, but a title can only change hands if the title holder is pinned or made to submit. In a real sporting event it would be unfair, but since WWE is not a real sport, it falls to lazy scripting. It's a cheap copout. And that's entirely apart from my personal opinions about the matches and their contestants. Furthermore, when they call themselves an X Time World Champion, they're really shooting themselves in the foot, because if they're not holding the belt, all that means is they've lost it that many times. If they are holding the belt, they've lost it that many times minus one. Wouldn't it sound better to say that collectively they held a title for X Days? (They actually did this a while back, Santino Marella was Intercontinental Champion at the time, and every week, he'd announce that the Honky Tonk Man famously held the title the longest, for however many weeks, and he'd display how many weeks he'd had it.)

4. Injuries vs. Fake Injuries vs. Silent Absences and Departures. While it's nice that the WWE is bringing back its "PLEASE Don't Try This At Home" (or as John Cena says, "Please don't try this"), the fake injuries only undermine that point. Now, we know that all these guys get along backstage. There are a few real-life problems, but nearly all on-screen rivalries are pure fiction. The last on-screen rivalry with any basis in fact was between Matt Hardy and Edge over Lita, who was dating Matt but left him for Edge. The three agreed to do a short feud on-screen but have since settled their differences. Amy Dumas (Lita) has since retired, but Matt and Edge (Adam Copeland) still work together, and Matt even helped Edge in a feud against Matt's own brother, Jeff. In addition to that, we know that Randy Orton, Triple H (Paul Levesque, while I'm dropping real names), and Batista (Dave Bautista) all trained under and were mentored by Ric Flair (close enough to his real name). So seeing Randy Orton and his lackeys break Batista's arm on stage with a steel chair, while disturbing, didn't come across as real, at all. Think about it: If there were an unscripted all-out assault by three performers on another in a live event, security would be all over it. That's what they're there for, to prevent things from getting out of hand. So one must conclude that things were entirely under control.

5. Lastly, I'd like to see some semblance of order and more respect for the rules. I'd like to see win/loss records introduced, even if it's not genuine and subject to change (e.g. records wiped clean when a wrestler changes characters, such as when Johnny Nitro became John Morrison, or when a wrestler changes brands or alignment (heel/face)). I'd like to see the refs' authority and presence mean something, and I'd like to see some decisions reversed "upon closer examination of the footage". I'd like some matches to even possibly have rounds, e.g. have one person challenge another to a boxing match or an MMA-rules match. Of course, the outcome would still be scripted, but I think it could work out well.

All in all, I enjoy watching the WWE because they know how to put on an entertaining show. I've tried looking at real fighting (such as UFC) and it's just not as fun. What does impress me about the UFC is the sportsmanship and respect that UFC's fighters display. You know the WWE does it as well, it's just off-camera. And that's a shame, because I think that's the best part of UFC. That these guys can beat the holy hell out of one another and still respect the rules, and one another's skills.

Not all terrorists wear turbans

2009-07-07T20:59:00.002-04:00

The Bush administration did a fine job of convincing the American people that terrorists and Muslims, or Arabs, or turbans are all the same thing, but it wasn't always so. When I was a kid, nobody cared about the Muslims, it was the Russians we feared, and the terrorists were Irish (the IRA). But regardless of whatever freedom fighters our government wants to vilify, all a terrorist is, is somebody who spreads terror. Someone who willfully causes mayhem. Blowing up buildings certainly qualifies, but it can be done on a personal level as well. It's not politically correct to say so, but many American citizens are guilty of terrorism. Maybe not at the same level of top al-Qaeda operatives, but they fit the dictionary description just the same. Observe:

As you might have seen on my status update thingy on the right, it's our 3 year anniversary being married. On the honeymoon, we went to Tennessee. On the first anniversary, Myrtle Beach, SC. Second, Connecticut. Third... we both had to work. And Jen had to take her mom to a doctor's appointment earlier in the morning, so she didn't even get to sleep, so she wanted me to bring her a soda and some water, since she had no money and her mom bought her a sub from Subway.

So I'm driving out to her workplace, which is almost to the end of a dead-end road. It didn't always used to be a dead-end, it's just being worked on, but for all intents and purposes, it's a dead-end road. There are a few posh houses before you get to her job, but between them and where she works is just a field. Past her job, there's a church of some kind.

Anyway, I get behind this dark SUV. The guy drives past the houses, but stops about halfway between them and the driveway to my wife's job's parking lot. Just stops. He glances at me in the rear view mirror like he expects something out of me. I figure he wants me to go around, like he wants to turn around. Like he didn't see the signs saying "Road Closed Ahead" and is just now realizing his mistake.

So I pull around him, and just as I get alongside him, he hits the gas and swerves into me. Well, not into me, rather at me, as I saw what he was doing and dodged him, tapping my horn to get his attention in case it was accidental, like maybe he was trying to turn around. I got out in front of him and continued on. Well, it wasn't accidental, and he wasn't trying to turn around - he followed me into the parking lot. I parked, but didn't cut the engine. He pulled in behind me and stared at me, but made no attempt to communicate. Didn't get out, didn't honk, didn't run into my car, nothing. Just sat there and stared.

Jen hadn't come out yet, so I left. Sure enough, the guy followed me. Ironically (or maybe intentionally?) when I got to the light, it was green, but another SUV, this one beige, was just parked there, making no move to go through the light. With the other guy coming behind me, I went around the parked SUV and sailed through the green light. I actually didn't see the dark SUV go through the light. Worried that he might smash some windows in some cars at my wife's job, I doubled back, ready to call 911 if I saw him again. I didn't.

So I met my wife, but kept an eye out for this American terrorist, but he never came back. I am hoping that he did not make the connection that I was waiting for somebody, and didn't start drinking, only to return and smash up the two cars I parked between in case one belonged to somebody I know. I'm hoping he assumed that I had no business in that parking lot and was just hoping I'd leave, so he could follow me to my true destination (which started to play out, but he may have been caught at a red light, which may not have deterred a terrorist hell bent on running people off the road in broad daylight, but oncoming traffic would have stopped him).

Maybe I should have reported this to the police. Maybe he had recently been fired from that place, maybe he drank on the job or something, and maybe, in his twisted mind, if he incapacitated a few people who worked there, an opening would have allowed him to get his job back. Who knows. But I sure felt like a character in a Dean Koontz book, like the nerdy Odd Thomas chased by beefy, faceless villains with murder on their mind.

In any case, I got home safe, I didn't see the guy as I was leaving, and my wife's reporting it to her boss. Apparently they have cameras, so if a car or two do wind up smashed up, they can hopefully review some footage and get an idea of who this guy is. Meanwhile, bin Laden's protoge got maybe a tenth of a gallon of gas extra out of me, but hopefully will get his sooner or later. His type usually do. Meanwhile, I am going to play some Oblivion!

36? Better make it 37.

2009-07-06T21:39:00.002-04:00

Well, as you may know, as of tomorrow, Jen and I will have been married 3 years.

We originally wanted to go to the Outer Banks for our anniversary; we knew money would be tight, but we figured we could do that trip on the cheap, for $200 or less. Gas isn't getting any cheaper, of course, but it's not too far out there. The lodging would probably be the most expensive part. Between a room for the night, dinner, and gas both ways, and maybe a souvenir or two, we figured we could get out for a bit. Just one night.

Well, money was tighter than usual, so we put off making our plans until the last minute. Then, when Jen went to put in for the time off, she found out a backstabbing coworker she made the "acquaintance" of had heard about her anniversary, saw she hadn't put in for it, so took the day of, plus the day before and the day after off. So I guess as some petty, catty angry-woman kind of thing, she's celebrating my wife not being able to go anywhere for her anniversary. I tell ya, there are some messed up people in this world, but I'm not too worried, because aside from all the old adages about Karma (e.g. "what goes around comes around"), people who live on and feed off negative energy tend to have it follow them. I guess that's another adage about Karma, but it seems to be fairly true. Everyone has good days and bad days, but you can look on the brighter side of a bad day if you count your blessings and try to make the most of something.

Anyway, I got to thinking. Three years is 36 months. After the wedding, on the 7th of every month, we'd celebrate the anniversary to the month, though it got kinda old after 2 years. Well, she's one of Kevin Smith's biggest fans, and, as any of his fans will tell you, he has a certain affinity for the number 37. He wears a sports jersey, I forget what team or sport, but most likely a New Jersey team; it's where he's from. Anyway, the number is 37. It goes back to his first film, "Clerks.", and it's kind of a crude joke. If you don't get the reference, you can find it here.

So our 37-month anniversary is August 7, and that's a Friday. I have to work Friday nights, but I can get the night off if I ask far enough in advance. Even if I can't get the night off, I don't have to be at work until 11pm. Worst case scenario, they say no, and I go out to dinner, have a great evening, and then go to work. Not a big deal. I'd like to have the night off, but anyone who's punched a time card in the last year knows you can't mess with work, not in this economy. So if they tell me I gotta work... I gotta work.

(No, I didn't get the title wrong. The title is a reference to a line in another movie, Road Trip, just with the numbers changed. The correct quote is "Two fingers? Better make it three.")

Would you play this game?

2009-06-28T05:10:00.000-04:00

Among many others, one thing that sets the Xbox 360 apart from other home entertainment consoles today is the Achievement system. For years past, we've been able to brag about our accomplishments in video games, but there really hasn't been any way to consistently prove this. Computers have screen recorders, but none are very reliable. You can record gaming footage from a console, but there's no way to prove you did it, as opposed to having downloaded that video from the Internet. With the Xbox 360, you have individual profiles; when you use it, you first sign into your profile (or use it as a guest), and your profile keeps all of your information separate from everybody else's, much like an account in Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. Your profile has an avatar, improved upon but nonetheless based on the Mii on the Nintendo Wii, a 3D character of your own creation, which can be made to look sorta like you, or it can be something entirely different. Then you have your gamer picture, a square icon which predates the avatar, but is still used to represent you in a smaller capacity. After that, you have your gamer score.

Traditionally, and though there are exceptions, retail Xbox 360 games come with 1,000 gamerscore that you can "unlock" by doing certain things in the game. This 1,000 gamerscore can be divided up into 1-99 Achievements, set accomplishments which net a predetermined score. Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games come with 200 gamerscore and must have 12 achievements, no more, no less. Exceptions include a couple huge games which have 1,200 gamerscore, and the expansions to the Rock Band franchise (e.g. AC/DC Track Pack, Track Pack 2, Classic Rock Track Pack) only come with 200/12 as though they were XBLA titles. How a game gives gamerscore depends entirely upon what the developer of the game wanted to do with the feature. Most games will give you a substantial award for completing the main objective. Many will give awards for completing important milestones in the game. Most award you for winning online matches. Some give you tiny awards for losing, as a sort of consolation prize. Many award you for finding secrets or by doing something creatively. For example, in the beginning of Half-Life 2 (from the game The Orange Box), you have no weapons, and you're being escorted through security checkpoints. A black stormtrooper guy knocks a soda can off the rim of a trashcan and tells you to pick it up, and throw it away. This is part of the tutorial. However, if, instead of throwing it in the trashcan, you throw it at HIM, well, he comes after you with a cattle prod. If you can get around him and away from him, you get 5 points for "Defiance". Later, in the course of normal game events, you're given the character's trademark crowbar from the first Half-Life, and you receive an award for this landmark.

Achievements and their associated gamerscore awards have become a point of pride for many Xbox owners. My account currently has 2405. My wife's is around 1800, and her brother has close to 12,500. But that's chump change; some people have 25,000 or more. A quick Google search lead me to a YouTube video showing a gamerscore of 237,355, but it's implied that this was obtained through an exploit in the system. On a given day of Xbox Live gaming, you're likely to see scores in the 40,000 to 50,000 range from time to time, but those are rare. Gamers in the 20,000 range are more common. What my brother-in-law does to get his, besides actually being very good at the games he plays, is, he has that membership at Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, he can rent as many games as he wants for as long as he wants, but he can only have one out at a time. Like us, he owns Rock Band and a handful of other games he plays just for fun, but he gets new games, and he beats them, not for all 1,000 points they're worth, but just to the end of the main story. He has 55-60 games on his profile (it keeps track of every game you play, as well). So that would be 50,000 gamerscore if he'd gotten all 1,000 from each. So it got me wondering: Would Xbox 360 gamers play a game which could take gamerscore as well as give it? This got me thinking, and I came up with an idea:

An auto insurance company and a car company team up to make a realistic driving game focusing on safety. While this game would seem boring, they'd map an entire state (New York or maybe California) and you'd be able to drive anywhere. The game itself could give you missions to drive people around, kind of like a tame Grand Theft Auto. The game's initial appeal would be that a total of 2,500 gamerscore could be obtained by unlocking all 99 of its achievements. However, there's a catch - there are a total of 99 "red" achievements which total NEGATIVE 5,000 gamerscore. Speed through a small town 10 miles per hour and get docked 10 points. The game could feature local trouble, you'd have a chance of getting a ticket and your insurance rate going up, creating an additional challenge to overcome within the game. You wouldn't get docked 10 points the next time you went 10 over, because the achievement was already unlocked, the penalty already imposed, but you could still be punished in-game if you were caught. However, maybe you go 15 over, you get docked 25 points. And so on until every green (normal) and red achievement were unlocked.

If you really went for all achievements, you'd have 99 green ones and 99 red ones, and you'd have 2500 gamerscore less than when you played the game. But, having accomplished this, would you really consider yourself worse off? In other words, is it the number of the score, or is it the sum of the accomplishments of playing and completing the games?

Jollys' Mix 2009, Disc 2

2009-06-21T05:01:00.002-04:00

I actually finished up this mix a couple weeks ago, but I've been so busy listening to it lately that I never quite got the chance to write about it. As usual with the mixes, we have a mix of songs from the musical puzzle games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, songs from sports events, and songs on the radio, as well as a good genre mix: we have rap, we have metal (some really heavy stuff, too), glam, a cover of an 80s classic, and college rock.

Click the name of any song to view the video on YouTube. I tried to get the "official" video wherever possible, not one uploaded by "just anybody" so none of these should get taken down for copyright violations, since the copyright owners put them up. If I couldn't get the "official" video I just went with whatever I could get.

1. Let it Rock (Kevin Rudolf, Lil Wayne)
This was used this January by the WWE for this year's Royal Rumble, based around that big match where 30 guys try to toss one another over the ropes, last one standing gets a championship match at WrestleMania a few months later. (This year, the Rumble was more entertaining than Mania, but never mind that.) This song's fun to listen to, sort of a cross between rock and rap with dance elements. It sets the stage for the rest of the album. From the earliest "beta" of the album, with just five songs, it was always the first track.

2. Magnetic Baby (Semi Precious Weapons)
This glam-rock song is hard to listen to at first, but it's really good. This is one of the 20 free songs that comes via a code with Rock Band 2, and it's fun as hell to sing and play on bass. Yes, that's a dude singing, if you were curious, though I can see (hear) how it's hard to tell. I went from putting this song on the mix (and it was one of the original five as well) as a joke, figuring I'd drop it by the final build, but it grew on me and I had to keep it. I'm also more apt to pick it on Rock Band. Watch it played on Rock Band 2; bass is the left track.

3. I'm Gone, I'm Going (Lesley Roy)
Another of the "20 free" Rock Band 2 songs, and more of a surprise. Think Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, but heavier. There isn't enough chick rock in Rock Band, and this one is worth paying for (not that I'm complaining that I got it for free).

4. Lifeline (Papa Roach)
I love putting Papa Roach songs on these mixes. Their songs are just consistently good. Seems like there's two kinds of Papa Roach songs. There's the hard-hitting ones like "Last Resort" and "...To Be Loved", and then there's these solid, semi-inspirational songs like this and "Scars". I never thought I'd like another of their songs as much as "Scars", but this one's pretty damn good. And with "Last Resort" and one other (drawing a blank here), it's part of a 3-pack on Rock Band. (It's not "Time is Running Out"; that's been up there, was released before.)

5. Life is Beautiful (Sixx:A.M.)
My favorite song on the mix and current favorite song, period. It's from the album "The Heroin Diaries" based on Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx's beating his addiction to heroin. I got the album after hearing this song, expecting it to be like this song. It's not, this song is pretty unique to the album, but it's a great album nonetheless. I remember getting this song. We had just bought a $50 Xbox Live card and had a party, and we were passing the controller around the room, letting people pick songs, whether they were playing the game or not. We just wanted to get a lot of variety. Somebody picked this, said it was a good song. I didn't notice it for the longest time, then we just started playing it. (When you have 332 songs, it's easy for a couple to get lost in the shuffle.) It's not an easy song to play on bass, harder to sing, but I'm fine just listening to it. Good stuff.

6. Young (Hollywood Undead)
Hollywood Undead's debut album is called "Swan Songs", but this is the only song that qualifies. "Undead" is a cool song and "Everywhere I Go" is funny, but "Young" is the only one that is genuinely good. And it was one of the free 20 songs. Fun to sing, really fun to play on bass. A nightmare on guitar, since the guitarist gets stuck with the keyboards as well.

7. Careless Whisper (Seether)
Anyone who has lived through the 1980s probably knows this song, even if not by name, or who did it. I can almost guarantee if you're 25 or older, you've heard it. "I'm never gonna dance again, cuz guilty feet have got no rhythm, though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool. I should have known better than to cheat a friend, and waste the chance that I've been given, so I'm never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you." Sound familiar now? Yeah. That one. Sorry for that reminder. The orignal performer was George Michael, by the way. Seether render a faithful cover that's amazing to hear the first few times, but after the novelty wears off, you may find yourself wishing you were listening to something else. Still, it's worth having on the mix. (And no! It's not on Rock Band! Though RB could use some Seether, but I'd prefer they do "Broken", their song with Amy Lee of Evanescence.)

No official video for this one, so rather, I linked to a live performance that can be viewed in HD. Enjoy!

8. I Don't Care (Fall Out Boy)
It's easy to make fun of Fall Out Boy, but this song's fun to listen to. Another song in Rock Band, boring as hell on bass. Haven't tried singing it yet, though I'd like to soon.

9. Something in Your Mouth (Nickelback)
Yep, he's talking about what you think he is. A little too crude for the quality of the song, but it's fun if you're in the mood. Sometimes I am, sometimes not.

10. Too Drunk (Buckcherry)
Now this is college humor rock done right. Catchy, quotable lyrics (though not in mixed company), a real fun song.

11. Scream (Avenged Sevenfold)
Pretty good hard rock song, supernatural themes, kind of reminds me of Godsmack.

12. Re-Education Through Labor (Rise Against)
Rise Against seem to be the new political-angst metal band, after System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine before them. Fans seem to agree this song is about China, though some say it's about their sweatshops, others say it's about their prisons. Either way, it's good.

13. Two Weeks (All That Remains)
I'll sing this song on Rock Band, but I won't mess with playing it on any instrument. Fast and heavy, but not as much as "This Calling", also in the game (and also fun to sing). Jen's current "favorite song ever", or at least that's the latest she's told me.

14. Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now (Evans Blue)
It'll be a while before I run out of Evans Blue songs for these mixes. They fired vocalist Kevin Matisyn, and they kinda blow now, but we got two great albums out of their doomed union. The exact meaning of this song is vague and evades me, but the lyrics sound powerful, and the instruments are. One of the songs I'd kill to play in Rock Band.

15. Becoming the Bull (Atreyu)
If you've heard the name of this metal band before but you can't place it, it's likely you've seen "The Neverending Story" when you were a kid. He's the Indian teenager with the horse. You wouldn't expect a metal band to be named after a character in a kids' movie (ten years from now there'll be a band called "Harry Potter" - mark my words). This song is fun to listen to, though, and heavy enough.

16. Burn You Down (Opiate for the Masses)
The last of the Rock Band songs on the album, this also comes from the free 20. Toss-up between this and "Young" for the best, but like the last five songs, it's heavier. Doesn't really sound like it at first, but the chorus is a beast. Not as easy to sing as I'd like, and the bass is just how you'd expect. Boring during the verses and hard, though not too tricky during the chorus. And here's that bass track, you can see what I mean.

17. Dead Memories (Slipknot)
Ever since Stone Sour, the horrible secret has gotten out that Corey Taylor can actually sing, but in my opinion, Slipknot's only gotten better since. They're not as heavy, not quite as scary as the nine masked men who came out in the late 90s, but they make some good music. Not quite as heavy as "Psychosocial" from the last mix, this one's alright though.

18. Helden (Apocalyptica with Till Lindemann)
I have no idea what "Helden" means, or anything else Till Lindemann says in this song. It's all in German, so it sounds cool. Well, except "ja", that means "yeah" or "yes". And "Ich" (sounds like "ish"), which means "I" or "me". So I know a couple words in German. But I got no idea what he's saying. I like it, though. Video is real special because it's got translations. So if you want to know what they're talking about, you can find out.

19. What Have You Done? (Within Temptation)
In 2004, after I'd listened to all the Nightwish albums a hundred times apiece, I went looking for similar bands. Within Temptation were the most promising, but their "Mother Earth" album, a theme album about Mother Nature, was a little tacky. Some good stuff, but kinda silly. Then they put out "The Silent Force" which kicked all kinds of ass. The album this song is from (the name of which escapes me at the moment) is kind of a let down, but the chorus of this one is fun. I mentioned Guitar Hero in the first paragraph. Usually I make fun of Guitar Hero, but they got this song as downloadable content, and I was all over it. We hardly ever put GH in, but I killed this on bass. Not so easy to sing, but the singing is broken in GH anyway. Nobody sings good in Guitar Hero. Broken. Does not work.

20. Death to All But Metal (Steel Panther)
Who the hell are Steel Panther? I have no idea, but this song is funny as hell. It sounds like 1980s hair metal - fine by me - and then proceeds to rip on all kinds of music in the most vulgar way possible. Who all gets burned? In order of naming, Goo Goo Dolls, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Papa Roach, blink-182, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, MTV, record companies in general, Britney Spears, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, 50 Cent, and Kanye West. Well, Def Lep and Crue aren't really burned, but they're called metal, and... they really aren't. Maybe a case could be made for Crue, but not Def Lep. If they wanted to talk about 80s metal, they could have said Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, or Motorhead. Funny song, but it actually sounds good - good as in, it would be challenging to play on Rock Band.

And as always, this mix isn't for sale, but feel free to buy or otherwise acquire the songs and compile it yourself. It's great in the car, we've had it in the car for a couple weeks now, and I'm almost ready for a new disc, but it's been entertaining.

331 songs on Rock Band: Evanescence, Iron Maiden

2009-06-18T05:44:00.001-04:00

I'm so used to writing Evanescence as Evanuisance because, well, that's kind of what they are. My Firefox spell checker even recognizes "Evanuisance"; yeah, I got that bitch trained. "Evanescence" is actually a real word, just not commonly used; it basically means the act of evaporation. (Sadly Evanescence didn't evanesce, and now they're in Rock Band. C'est la vie.)

Anyway, we got 3 tracks by Evanuisance: Bring Me to Life (feat. Paul McCoy of 12 Stones), Call Me When You're Sober, and Weight of the World. The latter I don't think is even a single; all I've heard from their new album is "Call Me" (and the radio station goes nonchalantly back to their first album... sure sign the new one sucks) but it sounds fun, so we get it. And they give you a break when you buy the whole pack, so some smart shopping there.

As for Iron Maiden, these guys kicked your grandpa's ass so many years ago and they still rock to this day. However, they do kinda suck live, Bruce Dickinson has mostly lost his voice. Doesn't stop me from getting the live version of "Hallowed Be Thy Name", probably their best song after "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which is too long for Rock Band anyway. So we've got Hallowed, and the studio versions of "Run to the Hills" (a cover was on Rock Band 1, and did not export with the others, so it'll be nice to have that again) and "Number of the Beast" (a cover we've had as DLC for a while). Rounding out the four is the semi-poppy "Two Minutes to Midnight", which should be fun to sing.

Anyway, "Midnight" is about to finish, and that's the last of 'em, so I'm gonna go get my ass kicked on vocals (I'm up to Hard now) and Jen's gonna get her ass kicked on drums.

A culture of perversion exposed

2009-05-23T03:21:00.003-04:00

The night before last, I came into work and was appalled by what I saw on television in a cubicle. A 51-year-old North Carolina man from Morehead City was on "paid suspension" by the Carteret County school system, most recently as a school counselor at an unspecified school, and also in some capacity at Morehead City Primary School and Newport Middle School before that, for taking nude photos of young boys. Unmarried, this man has five adopted "sons", who are likely the subject of the photos, though that was never specified. The oldest boy, 18, has moved out quickly enough, but defends his adopted dad's activities, saying that he believes strongly in nudism, and that nakedness is not bad. Further investigation reveals that he was planning on taking two of his "sons" to a pedophile resort in the area, which has photos of nude children with nude adults on its website, but hasn't been shut down due to vague laws over what is artistic and what is pornographic.

I understand nudist colonies are fairly popular, particularly with the college-age crowd. Now, I have nothing against nudist colonies in general. I think it's a novel idea, but they become labeled "pedophile resorts" by me when they force children to participate as well. I have no problem with consenting adults in a closed colony practicing nudity. I don't care if they have mass orgies, either. It is not something I would choose to do, but hey, life's short and all that. If that's how they want to spend their life, that's all good. It's when they want to bring children into it that I have a problem.

I remember a few years ago I read an article in TIME about a pedophile resort, highlighting a young girl whose parents had been taking her there for years, every summer they'd rent a cabin or apartment or something, and I guess it was only during the summer, because clothes were forbidden. She said that as a kid she didn't mind, it was fun, and she says she was never touched by anybody or forced to perform any sexual acts, but she says as she reached puberty, she wanted to cover up, and not only was it not allowed, it was not tolerated. The resort made a huge deal about it, threatened sanctions against her parents. Being a clever girl, she got ahold of the rules, and found a loophole that said towels could be worn, for example to dry off after coming out of the pool. So she began wearing a towel. And that was all she was allowed to wear. Now what kind of adults would tell a child she can't wear clothes? That pretty much sums up a pedophile to me.

Nude photos - Art, Nature, or Pornography?
A WITN poll, from the same site, asks readers the following question: "A local nudist resort has pictures on its websites of naked adults with naked children. Do you think this practice is appropriate?" Of the 428 who answered yes or no, 77 said yes, this is OK, or appropriate. While I don't doubt some of them were pedophiles, as this story would certainly attract their lot, especially an anonymous poll, I'm sure a good portion would have no sexual attraction to children, yet would answer yes for other reasons. When I was a child, back in the early 1980s, there was no grey area. Parents took nude photos of their children, but it wasn't explicit, and it wasn't in excess at all. It was common practice to have one or two pictures of baby's first bath, in those blue baby tubs they had. My mom sent my wife a picture of me, just having gotten out of the tub, at perhaps age 5 or 6, fully nude from the front. Or was it the one sliding into the kiddie pool? But back then it was considered cute, and innocent, and when I reached school age, the practice stopped immediately, but practice is too strong a word. It wasn't like my parents practiced taking them. But back then, you had to pay for film, and then you had to pay to have the pictures developed and printed. And in being printed, somebody got to look at each one as it came out of the machine. So you couldn't take explicit pictures. Well, you could if you had a Polaroid, but those were specifically low resolution images that did not last long.

Now, it's so much different. Just a couple years ago I remember hearing about a woman who tried to shoot a home video of her 11-year-old daughter in the shower. Took her by surprise and was trying to take closeup shots of her chest, backside, and private areas. The girl was so disgusted, she told her teacher, who called the law. When confronted, the mother said the video was just for family. Family, right. I'm thinking Uncle Craig. As in Craigslist. Yeah, she needed money and was trying to hawk the video online. Family wouldn't want closeups of her chest and private areas. That's not nature, that's not cute or innocent, that is patently pornographic, and it's porn because it focuses on sex. Now, you take - imagine, in your head, a naked girl of about that age, just standing there. Being a decent human being, you don't look her up and down, you look her in the eye - it's not a pornographic scene, it's natural. We're born without clothes, so there's nothing wrong with it. However, same girl, but now she's on her back with her knees up and her legs spread wide open. That isn't natural at all, that is patently pornographic. And there's the difference.

Having not seen the photos this school counselor was busted for having, I can't judge just the photos, but I can say they were sexual in nature. First of all, he's a single guy - no girlfriend or wife to speak of. He lives with five young boys, and forces them to practice nudity in the home. He hasn't adopted any girls, just boys, which shows a preference. Now, nudity in and of itself does not perversion make, and child gender preference does not sexual orientation determine. But when you add them together, what it adds up to is that this guy is a homosexual pedophile. He prefers children, and he prefers them to be the same gender. Homosexuality is a hot issue these days, and I have nothing against homosexuals who prefer adults. That's all good with me. But homosexual pedophiles, I hate just as much as heterosexual pedophiles. Because it doesn't matter if they abuse boys or girls, or both, I hate 'em just the same. But because he prefers, possibly requires that they be male - he hasn't adopted any girls - that makes it sexual. Now that doesn't mean that if he had adopted kids of both genders and forced them all to strip for him that it wouldn't be sexual, but the addition of a gender preference does help to quantify things. There are undoubtedly bisexual/omnisexual pedophiles out there.

Art as Safe Haven for Pedophiles?
When I got home the next morning, I fired up my Firefox browser, and saw Google's response to the controversy. They say a picture speaks a thousand words; worked into the Google logo was a painting of a woman holding a nude girl of about 8 or 9 years old, with just a cloth covering her lap. I'm sure it's a coincidence, Google being a Mountain View, CA company, some 3,500 miles from Morehead City, NC, but their point is made just the same. Porn isn't pornographic sometimes, if it's art.

When I was a young teenager, I had a few Penthouse magazines hidden away in my closet. I got them from my best friend, who stole them from his dad. His dad kept them in the bathroom in a cupboard without a lock. We were 13, he'd sneak them over to my place in his backpack, and he and my brother and I would gather in my walk-in closet, which was like a fort back then, and we'd all giggle over the bare breasts and genitals. It was great. And he'd let me keep some, too. One, I remember, weirded me out because it had a little history article where it was talking about how in the 1800s, it was common practice for the wealthy to have nude portraits done of their children. Nothing explicit at all, and the one they had featured a girl of about 10 or 11, sitting on a rock, like at the beach, with her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms around her knees. Her arms covered her chest, and she was sitting at an angle, so you couldn't see between her legs. I was glad the picture was small, maybe a square inch at the most.

A few years later, one of my cousins became obsessed with anime, and to this day he, his brothers, and my aunt still are. Very strange lot. Anyway, one of my cousins puts in this videotape, it's an anime about three crime-fighting sisters, and all I can remember is their names started with A, B, and C, and they rhymed. Anyway, this scene he thought was so cool, had this girl of about six get out of a swimming pool, go into the changing room, strip out of her bathing suit, and get dressed. Of all the ways I could think of to do it tastefully (aside from not doing it at all), they avoided, and I was pretty disgusted. I thought he had something illegal on his hands, but it turns out that because it was animated, and not involving real kids, while distasteful, it was legal. And that makes sense. Nobody's really being hurt, freedom of speech and all that. "If you don't like it, don't look at it" and all that. Fine. I don't like it, so I don't look at it. As a more popular example, I hear the original Japanese Sailor Moon got away with the same stuff. (Well, OK, I've seen it, an anime music video I've seen shows a clip. It's bad. Worse, I bet I could find it on YouTube. Yep, I think I see it. Search YouTube for "Jerry Springer Weird Al" and look for the boy with the dazed-out eyes. I didn't want a clever IT nerd at the servers seeing a search for Sailor Moon in my net history, otherwise my search would have been more specific.)

Lastly, I saw a program on Showtime named "Sex and the Silver Screen" in which they covered the crackdown on underage sex and nudity in the late 1970s. Reportedly, movies made before this time featured children in nude scenes to softcore sexual situations, and this was stopped by the 1980s. However, because the films in question were made before the law was passed, the movies are legal, and are still available to this day, even remastered on DVD. And every now and then, those movies and movies with similar content produced in other countries (including a popular one from Italy) are discussed on movie forums, and one has to wonder about the fans of these movies. I called some out rather recently, actually, and these guys got pretty defensive, their arguments basically boiling down to "you normals wouldn't understand". I've come to believe that topics like, "Hey, anybody like (such and such movie)?" are generally a sort of gathering call, I don't know if they're swapping email addresses to trade the "real stuff" (meaning the hardcore porn), or what, I don't know, but it's a good bet it's a gathering of perverts.

I've always thought of myself as an advocate or ambassador to kids, and I certainly like spending time with them, and listening to what they have to say about various topics, and I love helping them learn, but no, I don't understand the attraction. Even if you can justify the attraction, it has to go both ways, and then you have to have consent. The consent must also be informed, and a preteen is incapable of making the level of informed consent to engage in sex. Furthermore, there are physical dangers, not just risks, certain internal parts which are not developed enough, not large enough, to handle sex. So there is no way, shape, or form that it can ever not be abuse, and abuse of the worst kind, and while these perverts may try to tell themselves (or others, e.g. on forums) that they love the kids, they're not fooling anybody, probably not even themselves. And I've always thought of it as natural, as human nature, to be somewhat defensive of kids. So when I hear of people advocating abuse in any form, or saying it doesn't matter, I wonder if they're somehow less than human.

324 songs and counting! Alice Cooper and Social D added

2009-05-21T06:55:00.002-04:00

"Poison" by Alice Cooper and "Story of My Life" by Social Distortion added. I think the Social D song was on Guitar Hero 2 or 3, but it sounds great and I'm glad to have it. Axel, our drummer, ALWAYS picks "I Was Wrong" by Social Distortion, I don't know if he digs the tune or just loves playing it, but it's a real SOB on bass. I can hang with it half the time, but I'd pick something else if it were on me. Good song though.

Gonna do something a little different with this bulletin. I'm now gonna play 'em and post my scores. Not tryin' to brag, unless you're a freakin savant, your first play ain't gonna be all that special, but if you know the kinds of scores someone gets on songs of the same difficulty tier, maybe it'll help you figure out your own chances at it.

Difficulty is out of 7. Zero filled circles on the difficulty chart is first tier. One filled circle is second tier. All five circles filled is tier 6, and 5 devil heads is the hardest tier, Tier 7. These are both pretty easy in comparison to, say, the Yngwie Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Dream Theater stuff.

Regarding ratings, you're given a points score, a "star" rating out of six, the percentage of notes that you hit, and then the longest unbroken streak of successful notes. Here's how the new songs stacked up, and here's how I did:

STORY OF MY LIFE by Social Distortion from "Greatest Hits" (2007) (originally 1990)
BAND 2/7 GUITAR 2/7 DRUM 3/7 VOCALS 1/7 BASS 1/7
59,132 3 stars 91% 56 note streak
Notes: "Story of My Life" is long and tedious. It starts with one green note, a long green note, and then 2 together, and then repeats a similar pattern on seemingly random colors, with an occasional burst of, like, 6 notes in a row, real close together. There are maybe four orange notes in the whole song, they're not close to other notes, and you can see 'em coming a mile off. Bassists, keep your fingers green-to-blue and take the orange ones as they come. And don't stay on red-to-orange, just hit the orange note and then come on back. This song felt like it was ten minutes long, but I'm just out of practice. It ain't a short song; I'd guess six minutes; Wikipedia gives it as 5:48. Close.

Oh, and though my guitar reported half battery strength, the batteries died partway in. I just turned the guitar back on and kept rockin. After the THIRD death, I changed batteries - and started over. So it's not a true sightread, per se. Close enough though. And it ain't like I did great. Onto "Poison"...

POISON by Alice Cooper from the album "Trash" (1989)
BAND 3/7 GUITAR 5/7 DRUM 2/7 VOCALS 2/7 BASS 2/7
22,892 3 stars 79% 30 note streak
Notes: "Poison" starts out easy as hell, with two sets of two green notes and then a series of long notes on the red-to-orange track, so switch down as soon as the green goes away. Once the long notes are gone, it gets kinda random, with a lot of jumping around and then a long series of notes, with every seventh or eighth just a little off. I got up to half my overdrive, but was afraid to use it, because all the overdrive notes were on those one-off trick parts I couldn't nail. After getting up to 75% on pure chance, I went ahead and went, and even with overdrive (each note counting double) I dipped into the red, but held on for the whole song, which thankfully wasn't long. I could perhaps do better with practice, but this song's really for the real fast-fingered guitarists who can just fly all over the controller, being where they need to be on a split seconds' notice. There were a couple cruel tricks, but mostly it was just straightforward.

Now it's onto bed... I actually intended to follow up those sorry performances with me owning all over "Say it Ain't So" or "Orange Crush" but my wrist is so damn tired (and you'd think being single for 25 years, that wouldn't be a problem...).

In other news though, got some new equipment. Our Xbox 360 got the dreaded Red Rings of Death, so we took it back to Best Buy. Now, Best Buy is the best place to buy electronics, and they're not paying me to say that or anything (they don't know, and probably don't care). The trick is to always spring for the protection plan. Long story short, my camera goes out, and they give me a newer one, since it was actually the bottom of the line of the same brand, but still much better than the one I had. I did however have to buy a new memory card as it used another format. And a new warranty - that's always the gotcha. More recently, we took in a broken wired guitar, they replaced it with a wireless one. Sweet!

So we bring in the Xbox 360 - and now, we paid $350 for the old 20GB "Pro" model. They have the new 60GB "Pro" for $300. After the exchange, since the Xbox is now $50 less, that $50 actually went to us. It covered the warranty renewal (which gives us another year, since it starts now, or rather last week) and they gave us a gift card with the remaining balance. It's like $12! So we got a brand new Xbox 360, a 2-year warranty, and $12 to spend there (most likely on song credits for Rock Band). If you ask me, the Red Rings of Death aren't so dreaded! I think we came out alright!

A couple weeks before this, Jen and I both upgraded our guitars with authentic albeit entry-level guitar straps from First Act - they make a bunch of entry-level musician equipment, most of which can be used by Rock Band and Guitar Hero players. Guitar straps, drumsticks, a drum stool, guitar stands, a lot of nice stuff. (No, they're not paying me to type either - nobody is.) So we got their straps, and while they are sturdier, they still scrape my neck on long setlists. Here's what I did: We're in Walmart last night, and I got this thing meant for seatbelts. It's like a wooly sock thingy that goes around the strap for comfort. I put it on my guitar strap and it feels great. It does tend to slip as I adjust the guitar, so I'll have to work on something to hold it in place. Axel Steel - again, our drummer - is pretty demanding during practice. I'm talking about playing for 4-5 hours straight (well, with breaks - him and Jimmi Rivers (think Bret Hart), our guitarist, are pretty heavy smokers, they can't go too long without a Newport, which works great for me when I'm out of practice.

Now, I hope you realize these band names are made up. Well, they're the names we use in the game. I'm Ben Sisko, named after the captain on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Kinda look like him, but younger and with Costello glasses. Jen's Aura Jo, and the other guys, well, I haven't asked their permission to name them publicly, so they get called by their stage names up here. And Aura Jo on vocals, Jimmi Rivers on guitar, Axel Steel on drums, and last but not least Ben Sisko on bass, we're DysS\MemB/EreD. Don't laugh, either, dammit, we came in 3rd place at the Carolina Gaming Summit Rock Band 2 tournament in Goldsboro, NC this past February, and the 8 guys who bested us couldn't be nicer guys, even though the ones who came in 1st got their ticket to the finals by beating the event promotor's kids. A little bit of backstage trickery there, but they beat us fair and square, so it's all good.

Disturbed for Rock Band DLC next week

2009-05-08T16:12:00.002-04:00

Downloadable content (new songs) just announced for Rock Band; we're getting "Stupify" and "Stricken" by Disturbed.

"Stupify" has got to be one of the best jokes in radio. Most radio stations play the song uncensored, even during the day, even though he's dropping the almighty F-bomb after every other line. I guess because it sounds more like "rock!" or even just a grunt. I wish I saved it (and Jen probably did somewhere), but on the old Disturbed board, in the "Ask the Band" area, someone asked of vocalist David Draiman what he was saying at the end of the lines. His answer was short, sweet, and to the point. He basically said "X fuck, one luck, no rock" where X was the number of F-bombs in the song, and "luck" ends the line "shit outta... luck". It better be uncensored on Rock Band, long after the cat's been let out of the bag. But it probably won't be. If it were just me, I wouldn't get it, but Jen loves 'em, and I gotta admit it would be fun to sing.

"Stricken" on the other hand is an awesome song. Disturbed stuff is hell hard to play in these games. The four we have in Rock Band ("Inside the Fire", "Indestructible", "Perfect Insanity", and "Down With the Sickness") are no pushovers and I've played "Stricken" on Guitar Hero 2 or 3, and it wasn't easy there, either.

Also on deck next Tuesday is "My Old School" and "Black Friday" by Steely Dan. I'd never heard either - where's "Reelin' in the Years"? "My Old School" doesn't sound all that great, but "Black Friday" is a cool song - I might pick it up.

There's also a few songs by Social Distortion. I don't really care for punk, but it's always fun to play in the game, including Social D's other song, "I Was Wrong" included on the Rock Band 2 game disc.

And a song by Elvis Costello, "Radio Radio", but I've never gotten into Costello, and his song on Rock Band 2, the name of which escapes me at the moment, isn't anything special.

...And maybe another obscure song or two, I don't know. Jen left the post up for me and I didn't grab the URL. There's a small army of folks on Twitter who post the updates, you can follow any of them to be kept in the loop, or if you prefer to kick it old-school, you can hit up the announcements page on RockBand.com.

Note: Lot of links here. Clicking on song titles will take you to a YouTube video so you can hear it (most always not the official video). Clicking on artist names will take you to their Wikipedia page. The word "Twitter" goes to my boring-ass Twitter page, and the three links immediately surrounding it go to Twitter pages that post Rock Band updates. The last two are kind of self-explanatory.

Digital TV is really cool

2009-05-08T02:51:00.000-04:00

For a few months prior to the original analog/antenna TV cutoff date in February, I've posted a few articles praising the move and shaming efforts to delay it, but I've never actually talked about digital TV itself, at least not from experience, as I'd never seen a TV with a digital converter box and antenna. Until last week, anyway.

Here at work, we have about the ugliest and crappiest TV you can imagine. Well, maybe. It's white, it's got a roundish screen, a very odd-shaped back, and I think it's an RCA, but I can't tell, there's a sticker over the logo. I can only see a hair-wide bit of grey on the bottom of it. Prior to the digital converter box, it got 5 channels, if you count getting the same one twice on two different channels, with one almost unwatchable. The picture was grainy, had a lot of static, faded in and out, the volume fluctuated... it was crap.

Digital TV has gone beyond impressing me. One article I wrote criticized someone who said DTV has less channels. That's an outright lie. We have no less than a dozen channels, and I work out in the middle of nowhere. The picture is stunning. Even on the crappiest analog TV, it looks good. It's DVD quality. It's like a DVD player was hooked up to it. (I have hooked a DVD player up to it, before I discovered PortableApps and learned to watch movies/episodes on the computer. So I know what DVDs look like on it.)

The only problem I have is that what it doesn't letterbox (bars on the top and bottom) it zooms out (bars all around). I guess the only way to get a square or rectangular picture on a round screen is to zoom it out, but surely they don't need to zoom out that far. On a screen that's 14" at best, having a full inch taken off from all four sides is a lot.

If for whatever reason you have a TV that doesn't have digital or satellite, and it's not a digital TV (it's not rectangle, but rather more square), you'll need to get one of these converter boxes by June. June 12 I think it is now. They'll probably delay it again, but at some point, the companies who bought those airwaves (Sprint and AT&T I think) will push for the date to stay, and your TV will no longer get signal over the air. I don't appreciate the government selling everyone out like that any more than analog/antenna TV owners, but they are offering vouchers which cover $40 worth of equipment. The cheapest converter box is $50 at Walmart, so you're still out $10. Plus you have to buy an antenna. (They don't tell you that.) It's worth it. It's not HD (you need a digital TV for that) but it looks good.

For some things, like the news, it's comparable to HD. HD has its advantages, and it's true that it has more dots, but to the naked eye, it really does not look that much better. Unless, of course, it's digital to start with. Digital animation (Pixar for example, like Wall-E; or Japanese anime) and video games (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but not Wii or PlayStation 2) look absolutely stunning in HD. Real people don't look much better in HD; in fact HD is good for revealing flaws which were more easily covered up with conventional television. Until they replace news anchors with computer-animated, voice-acted avatars (not an impossibility at all), your news is good either way.

Why not to trust Firefox

2009-05-01T06:32:00.001-04:00

I typed the name of this article very grudgingly, but a point must be made. Over the past week, the second-rated security extension for Firefox, NoScript, went behind its trusting users' backs and slipped malware into the code. They were quickly caught, of course, because like Firefox itself, the extensions are open source. More to the point, the .xpi files are really fancily-named .zip files and can be unpacked very easily, their code laid out plainly before anyone with the wit to understand what it does. Of course most of us don't, so we just trust our security software to keep us safe online.

NoScript is an interesting extension. As its name implies, it blocks scripts that can potentially harm your computer online. Scripts are used legitimately 99% of the time, so for sites that use them, you'll have to tell NoScript they're fine. Presumably, after a couple weeks of surfing, you should have your NoScript trained. Then, when you happen upon a site you don't know (in other words, you're surfing for porn or warez) and it tries to run a script to take over your computer. NoScript stops it, and makes it ask permission. Since you don't trust the site, you say no and it does nothing.

The #1 security extension is AdBlock Plus, which does that plus it blocks the regular ads, too. Before a week or so ago, they could be used together for extra protection. The authors of NoScript wish people wouldn't use AdBlock Plus at all, however, because their site is allegedly loaded with ads. Ads that make NoScript's developers money and fund development. And recently, the NoScript team has been pushing out updates left and right, sometimes unnecessarily, because when you update NoScript and restart Firefox, it loads up their page to remind you that you're protected. And as a coincidence you get to see all their ads, and they make more money.

Unless you're using AdBlock Plus, that is, in which case you see no ads, and since they never tried to justify the updates, you're probably just wasting your time and their bandwidth.

Until recently, however, when a new version of NoScript sabotaged AdBlock Plus by inserting a filter for ABP which allowed the ads on NoScript's site. (This is nothing new: the most popular filter for regular AdBlock back in the day was Pierceive's site, and he sold whitelisting to Yahoo!, which meant AdBlock/Pierceive users saw ads on Yahoo!.) Well, a lot of people threw a fit.

There's another, much lesser-known Firefox extension called GameFOX. If you've ever been to the GameFAQs forum, you know that besides it being a cesspool for everything that's wrong with the Internet, it's pretty ghetto by forum standards. Founder Jeff Veasey (username CJayC) famously coded it himself. It's not Invision, it's not vBulletin, it's not a paid forum package which is routinely updated, it's a hackjob which Veasey maintained and is now maintained under the guidance of his successor, SBAllen (I forget his real name). Though SBAllen is much more liberal, where CJayC was fairly conservative, it's still short on updates. Features users of other forums take for granted are unavailable, while, ironically, practices on most other boards are allowed. GameFAQs is one large contradiction. Anyhow, this extension basically modernizes it though scripting, and GameFAQs has been waging a cold war against its authors for a couple years now (basically, since it got popular). Among stunts which are too mind-numbingly stupid to name, they say in their Terms of Use that "third party modifications" or some such bull might "steal your account info". Trouble is, they're quite right. GameFOX could very well be programmed to do just that. And GameFAQs has reason to fear, because their little secret society, "Life, The Universe, and Everything" (rumored to have all sorts of illegal stuff, but also alleged to just be something people can say they're a part of for the sake of it) might be compromised, if a user with LUE access (or, presumably, worse, a moderator) were to have their account compromised, immeasurable havoc could be wreaked across the site.

And that's the thing about open source. It lowers the bar for new programmers. Before open source got big (thanks Firefox!) aspiring programmers had to write their own code and learn from examples which were just that - worthless examples that did a whole lot of nothing. "Hello world" for example. Now anyone can peek at the source and study it, and learn like that. A malicious user can take an open source program of some repute, alter it slightly, and offer this altered version. (Though, to prevent against this, Mozilla trademarked the Firefox name - an altered Firefox must be called something else - Iceweasel is a famous example of this - and Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition by PortableApps.com is a famous exception.)

...Or at least that's what Microsoft and others would like you to believe. Internet Explorer 8 is newly released, and to some pretty generous fanfare. Internet Explorer is a professionally designed software application whose source code is not open to review, let alone malicious tampering. It's also no big secret that Microsoft has a cozy relationship with advertisers. For $30 you can buy a pass which will block some ads in Internet Explorer, but won't block all of them - I guess some pay a premium to keep their ads from being blocked, I suppose. And therein lies the problem with NoScript. They just decided to override the end users' choice and force their ads through in a quick grab for cash. But where Microsoft succeeds, apparently, NoScript failed. Hard.

Update: 4 May 2009: It would seem that NoScript couldn't take the heat, and have not only released a new version of NoScript which does not attack AdBlock Plus, it also removes the malicious whitelist, if you had one of the versions of NoScript in question. I'll proudly point out that I never said NoScript was a bad extension, only that it didn't do anything for me. I hope the authors have learned their lesson and have found a more honest way to make money for their hard work, and that if their apology is genuine, that those who previously found their extension useful will do so once again.

Tech News: March 2009

2009-04-24T20:01:00.000-04:00

Haven't done one of these in a while. Pick a few news stories and pick 'em apart. There have been slim pickings in the news as of late, but I was able to find a couple at a glance tonight.

India unveils world's cheapest car
Ooh, I want one. The good news? For $2000 (or $2200, sources differ on this) you can get a four-door car, seats four, and in addition to being the world's cheapest car, it's among the smallest as well. "Smaller than a Mini Cooper" small. And it gets 47 miles to the gallon. The bad news... no heater, no A/C, no automatic transmission, and no radio. Top speed of 65mph... and you might get teased for driving what's being called a street-legal lawnmower. But the good news in that is that for the higher-end model with all of those features is still only $3800.

It must not ever get real cold in India. No heater? You probably couldn't sell a car in North Carolina without a heater. You get in your car which is covered in ice, you scrape the ice off the windshield, what stops it from reforming? And as you race down the road, even if it's only at 45mph, that actually lowers the perceived temperature. You go numb, your little car is now a liability, a hazard to every other car on the road. I can only imagine the problems with selling one up in Wisconsin or somewhere like that.

Still, a little car like that is all most Americans need. Now I'm not one of those Republinazi "do it my way or you're going to hell" types, but most SUV drivers really don't need an urban assault vehicle to carry them to Starbucks for a latte. But, people have issues, and they feel the need to compensate for something, maybe they got picked on in school, maybe they just have underdeveloped genetalia, and need to feel like they're on top of the world. One of these popular celebrities really needs to endorse these small cars, make "small" the new "big".

Oh yeah... they've received over one million orders, but they're only going to make 60,000. Smart, business-wise. Stupid overall, but par for the course. I mean, it's not like we're in a recession or anything.

Rock Band Track Pack: Classic Rock: Coming in May
Good news for those of you playing Rock Band who haven't got your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 connected to the Internet (or have a Wii or PlayStation 2, the former of which hasn't got a hard drive and the latter can't get online). Depending on your system, Harmonix is releasing the third or fourth track pack, 20 songs you can play independent of the original game and its songs. Track Pack 1 was only released for the Wii and the PS2. The first real track pack, available for all four platforms, was Track Pack 2. Then they put out the AC/DC track pack, only 18 songs but all of them top-dollar songs.

Here's how a track pack works. Rock Band isn't just a game, it's really just an interactive media player. Rock Band and Rock Band 2 have three elements: The media player (Quickplay), the songs, and the game (Tour). The track packs are simply the media player and 20 songs. Unfortunately and stupidly, it's the first version of the media player, not the second. That is, it's the Rock Band 1 engine rather than the updated Rock Band 2 engine. Not a big deal, but it's silly that the track packs don't represent the latest and greatest.

On the business side, Rock Band downloads go for $2 apiece, except in special cases where it's an independent artist and the song's only $1, though there are plenty of independent artists up there whose songs cost the same $2 as famous artists. The problem with downloads is that only two of the four consoles Rock Band is available for support them, and the lower-end Xbox 360 doesn't, either, unless it gets upgraded with a hard drive. (You can buy them separately, or in my younger brother-in-law's case, you can have an older sister who sprung for the 120GB drive and wound up with a spare 20GB drive in need of a happy home.) Then, not all PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles are online. Furthermore, for whatever reason, not everyone who can download, does. But they will buy track packs. Harmonix knocks $10 off the price of the 20 downloads, which would be $40, nevermind the cost of the disc and packaging, shipping and handling (to the store) and all that. Because not all the songs on the track pack are songs you'd pay $2 for. They give you some good ones and some not-so-good ones. It depends on your taste, but anyone can look at the list of songs and see songs they'd swap for something else. Some boil down to opinion, but some are just plain fact. Like the Lenny Kravitz song, "Let Love Rule". How about "Are You Gonna Go My Way"? I could do this all day, but instead I'll just post the list and let you decide if it's worth $30 for the lot:

Boston - Peace of Mind (1976)
Boston - Rock and Roll Band (1976)
Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles (1987)
Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia (1987)
Free - All Right Now (1970)
George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Bad to the Bone (1982)
James Gang - Funk #49 (1970)
Jethro Tull - Hymn 43 (1971)
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule (1989)
Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot (1980)
The Police - Can't Stand Losing You (1978)
The Police - Truth Hits Everybody (1978)
Rush - Closer to the Heart (1977)
Rush - Red Barchetta (1981)
Siouxsie and The Banshees - Kiss Them For Me (1991)
Steve Miller Band - Take the Money and Run (1976)
Steve Miller Band - The Joker (1973)
The Stone Roses - Love Spreads (1994)
The Who - Baba O'Riley (1971)
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes (1971)

Some of those are pretty good. Both of the Who songs are excellent. Bad to the Bone and The Joker are evil if you're a bassist. Pat Benetar's song is fun as hell - for a bassist, at least.

Despite my comments about some songs not being as good as other offerings by the same artist, if I wasn't on Xbox Live, I'd get this in a heartbeat. But at the same time, if I had $30 to spend on Xbox Live and had no downloadable songs, I could come up with 15 songs I'd rather have than these 20 (though the 15 would include some of these). But since I do have DLC, I'll point out that I have all the songs on this list I want, though I don't have Closer to the Heart (Rush) and wouldn't mind having that. We have the Who songs, we have the Steve Miller songs, the first Boston song, the Free song, Bad to the Bone, Funk 49, and the Benetar song. Plus a bunch of other great songs.

Review: El Tapatio, Washington, NC

2009-04-17T21:30:00.003-04:00

It would appear that MySpace's new Local service is for Corporate restaurants only. I tried to review an independently-owned Mexican restaurant closer to where I live, and it pretty much said no. It did, however, give me the option to suggest a restaurant, so I suggested it, and I will copy this there when, and if, they decide to add it. If not, well, I'll have reviewed it here anyway, and that's fine.

Washington's El Tapatio restaurant, conveniently located on Highway 17 in Washington, next to Taco Bell, is the best place Jen and I have found for Mexican food in Beaufort County. In fact, I asked her, and we both agree that if we lived in Greenville, it would be worth it to drive 25 miles or so to Washington for El Tapatio if we were craving Mexican. In fact, when we're craving Mexican, El Tapatio is automatically assumed.

When you see the place, it's not impressive at all. It could be anything, and in fact used to be a Golden Corral before GC moved to the Walmart shopping center, just a quarter-mile to the north. Two cheesy fake palm trees (which light up at night) stand between the restaurant and Hwy. 17, but the parking lot is spacious and easily accessed from either the northbound or southbound lanes, even in rush hour, as the nearby McDonald's light (yes, Washington has a dedicated traffic light for McDonald's) often provides cover. The building exterior could use a paint job, and the little lobby is littered with fliers advertising mostly local Mexican music and wrestling/fighting events.

Once you come inside, it's much nicer. Murals inside show Mexican revolutionaries, and are nicely done. They have one of those new Internet jukeboxes which can download all kinds of songs, and you're liable to hear just about anything in there. Oftentimes it's Mexican music, but a lot of times it isn't. Either way, it isn't loud, so you can hear it, but it won't overwhelm you. I haven't sat at their tables, but their booths are all pretty nice, and they can be moved if you need more or less room, depending on your size. From the door, the entire right side is non-smoking, and the entire left side, with the bar and jukebox, is for smokers, so it's well separated.

I cannot stress how fast the service is. As soon as you're seated, you'll be asked what you want to drink. Drinks are brought out very promptly with freshly made tortilla chips and homemade salsa, both of which are very good. Once you order, they can have your meal out in as little as five minutes. We have fast food restaurants out here that can't serve you in five minutes (mostly Hardee's). You can't make a decent meal at home in five minutes, but El Tapatio can have good, hot Mexican food in front of you in five minutes. Unless you are extremely impatient, and they are very busy, you will not find yourself wondering when your food will arrive.

The food itself is great. It's served hot, and you'll often be advised not to touch the plate. The portions are generous, even when ordering side items. When I'm not very hungry, I just order three enchiladas. They come covered in sauce and the ground beef just falls out of them, no shortage of food. When I'm really hungry, I order their special nachos without guacamole (I'm allergic to avocados) and it's always more than enough. I have never once finished it. Jen usually orders lunch or dinner specials, of which they have a couple dozen. Chances are they'll have a combination you'll like, otherwise you can improvise with the sides. Neither of us have ever been disappointed with their food.

The service is also very good. Everyone we've seen there speaks fluent English. We never feel like they don't understand us, and everyone is friendly. After our food comes, within 5 minutes, the server will return and ask if everything's alright. After that, however, they tend to leave you alone for a while, so if you need a drink refill or more salsa, you might have to flag somebody down, and Jen said I should note that, but at the same time, I like to be left alone when I eat. Plus, I order my soft drinks without ice, so they don't get diluted and they fill the glass. I really don't need a refill - the cups hold 16-20 ounces. They are shy about bringing the check, but have no problem finding your order in their computer if you just walk up to the register to pay. We've never paid more than $20, including a good tip, for both of us to eat and have soft drinks. We have drank beer and/or mixed drinks there once before, and I don't recall the prices, but I do recall that they were fair.

All in all, El Tapatio offers a great Mexican dining experience; the best we've found in eastern North Carolina. If you're in New Bern, Williamston, or Greenville, or anywhere in between, and want something good that won't break your wallet, give them a try. If you're near Hwy. 17, just head up/down the road. Look for the Taco Bell; they're right next door. If you're in Greenville, take 264 to Washington, turn left on 17 (there's a Kangaroo Express gas station on your left) and it's about a mile up the road on your left. Here's a map:

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Review: The Olive Garden, Greenville, NC

2009-04-15T22:19:00.002-04:00

This week, MySpace launched a new service called MySpace Local. There doesn't seem to be anything for my neck of the woods, so as a project, I'm going to review restaurants in and around Greenville, North Carolina (including Washington and Chocowinity) to represent my (current) part of the world. From this blog you can read all of my reviews (though, this is just the first one) by browsing my labels and looking under Review. The review follows:

Greenville's Olive Garden restaurant, on Greenville Blvd., is nice, but the overall experience is not all that spectacular.

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The building itself is very nice to look at, and it's nice and cozy inside. The waitstaff are all clean and sharp, and I've never seen anything damaged or worn inside. However, as it's very close to the mall, plus it's in a badly designed parking lot, the lot immediately surrounding the restaurant is almost always full. If it's cold, don't forget your jacket, you might have a fair walk to and from. If it's raining, forget about it. (And it rains hard in North Carolina.)

The service is well organized, but it's not good for handling large loads. On Valentines' Day, for instance, customers were asked to wait outside in near-freezing temperatures. They were telling people 2 hours. (In the cold. With no offer of breadsticks or anything. We waited about 50-55 minutes. Not quite an hour. On a given Friday or Saturday night, you can expect a wait of 15-30 minutes, and they have those coasters which double as pagers, and you can usually wait inside.

Seating is conservative, meaning they will try to seat you at a table first. The chairs are not very comfortable; I've sat in worse but also much better. Upon request they'll seat you in a booth, but as these are in higher demand, you'll have to wait a few minutes.

Once you're seated, you can expect to get your drinks in relative short order, provided you know what you want when you sit down. If so, they'll ask as soon as you sit, and they get them out quickly. That's for soda and sweet tea, anyway - for fancy beverages, your mileage may vary.

One of Olive Garden's "big things" is the free breadsticks. They are quite good (if a little salty) but you have to ask for them sometimes. You can usually get them soon after you get your drinks if you have a nice server, but most likely you'll have to wait until you have your soup and/or salad.

I have only tried one soup at Olive Garden, and it's the single best thing on their menu. I'm not lying. I can't say enough good things about their Zuppa Toscana soup. It's potatoes, sausage, and spinach in a broth. As we sometimes say on the Internet, it's made of pure win. My wife has never complained about their salad, however.

Olive Garden has two menus. The first is their regular menu, subject to change but almost always the same stuff. The second is the seasonal menu; this changes every month or two. Their regular menu doesn't offer much variety. Their seasonal menu, however, will often have at least one good thing on it, but that depends if you like the theme. Last time we went, it was seafood, and I'm not a seafood person, so I wasn't attracted to a single thing on that menu.

Mostly, their food is as good as you can expect for Italian food. It's hot, just the right amount of spice, and very flavorful. The portions are generous; if you're not a big eater, after the soup and breadsticks, you'll be likely asking for a to-go box. As such, we don't often try the dessert, but last time, I got a tiramisu, and it was good. Not great, but good. The white chocolate cake (cheesecake?) with the raspberry drizzle is also very good.

The prices are high, but not unfair. Two people can expect to run up a $40-45 bill between two soft drinks and an entree each plus the breadsticks and soup or salad, and that usually comes to $50-55 after the tip. So we go to Olive Garden and plan to spend "about sixty bucks". As such, we don't go often, but we do go a few times a year when we can.

This Olive Garden can't help its location, at least not in the present, but if there's one thing it can do, it's increase accuracy. The servers pride themselves on remembering your order (at least until they get to the back, and can jot it down for the kitchen) but this doesn't always work. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, it's kind of annoying considering what we pay to eat there. When we say something, they're good about fixing it, though.

This review came out a little longer than expected, but that's fine, I gave a lot of good information that I hope helps you, the reader and restaurant seeker, make a better choice about where you want to eat in Greenville, NC. I do recommend this Olive Garden, but I'm not hesitant to point out the caveats. I give them an 8/10; or in school grades, an A-.

Music Mysteries #1

2009-04-11T06:52:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like a good mystery, especially when it's about something cool, like music, more so if it's about a band we like. I'm sure there are a lot more, but I'm going to look at three of varying degrees of importance.

1. November Rain
The most interesting music mystery I've found is the secrets of the "November Rain" video by Guns n' Roses. A brief history lesson, if you don't mind: In the mid-1980s, Guns n' Roses exploded onto the rock scene with "Appetite for Destruction", still considered a great album 23 years later. Between that and the lesser-known "GnR Lies!" album, Guns n' Roses rose above most hair metal bands (though not enough to be pretentious). That changed with their double album, "Use Your Illusion", volumes 1 and 2. Three videos were done for the double album that were a little different than the other videos, and they were sort of linked, though it wasn't clear why. The strangest one was "November Rain".

Summary of the November Rain video: Tossing and turning in bed, Axl Rose wakes up from what seems like a terrible nightmare. He takes a drink of water and settles back down into bed. We see a symphony playing in an opera hall, and then a wedding, Axl Rose marrying real-life girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. Immediately after the kissing of the bride, guitarist Slash gets up and leaves, performing a wicked solo in the desert. As the couple leave, the newlywed bride looks unhappy. There's an afterparty, which is washed out by rain. Back in the opera hall, Axl, who was playing piano, changes the tune, and Slash gets up on top of the piano to jam. All of a sudden we're back in the church and there's a funeral - for the wife. A quick shot of the open casket shows nothing wrong, makes you wonder how she died, and why. The video ends with Axl crying over her grave, and the ominous note, "Based on the short story Without You by Del James".

Here's where things get interesting. Del James is a friend of Axl's, and as it would come to turn out, they worked together on the video. "Without You" is a short story about a band which is based on Guns n' Roses. Problem is, James' book, "The Language of Fear" was never published widely. After a run of just a couple hundred copies, the publisher went out of business. eBay was new then, and the few existing copies of the book went for hundreds of dollars. For the better part of 15 years, the meaning of November Rain remained a mystery. Axl wasn't saying anything, and the people making a killing on eBay weren't about to threaten their own livelihood by letting others in on it for free. To know, you had to pony up the cash and buy the book, read it, and then hope to make some of your money back. Every few months I'd search for it, and always come up empty.

Well, finally, somebody broke the silence and posted the entire short story online, including Axl's introduction he wrote for the book. The story follows a band called Suicide Solution and its crazy vocalist Mayne Mann, based on Guns n' Roses and Axl Rose. The band's success story mirrors that of GnR - crazy hair metal band puts out a rock ballad which changes everything for them - GnR's was November Rain; Suicide Solution's was Without You. In the story, Mann is newly married (like in the video) but the band is on tour. Mann calls his wife and asks if she'll come along for the last leg of the tour. She says no, she has a life of her own (she's a model or something). Last show on the tour, Mann's got a couple groupies in his bed, and there's a knock at the door. His wife thought to surprise him, but got a surprise of her own. So she went home, put "Without You" on on the stereo, and blew her brains out. Mann gets home, sets the place on fire, and plays along on the piano as his home burns around him. It's a really cool story, actually, and it's told from his point of view.

But wait, Stephanie Seymour didn't blow her brains out in the video. She was clean in the casket - it was an open casket funeral. But here's where things get interesting. Watch the best quality copy you can find of that video, and freeze-frame on the open casket. You'll notice there's a mirror installed. You can only see half of her; the other half is behind that mirror. Funeral homes can do a lot for a corpse, but sometimes damage is too extensive, and that's why we often have closed-casket wakes and funerals when the deceased died a violent death. However, for celebrities, public figures, open-casket is ideal, so they have reconstruction technologies which will pass a passive examination by grieving relatives. The mirror clearly indicates only that half of the body (most likely the face) was able to be reconstructed at all.

So there you have it. The November Rain mystery solved. There was more to the story than the video let on. The wedding and funeral were not on the same day. They were shown as such to illustrate the importance of the two events and to show that what happened in between doesn't matter (as much). He cheated on her with a groupie or a pair of groupies, and she blew her brains out. (Like Axl's worth it! But that's another matter.) And somehow, "Estranged" and "Don't Cry" tie in as well.

At some point I'll do #2, and it concerns a more recent band, though a significantly less important one.

WrestleMania 25 Reviewed

2009-04-06T23:35:00.000-04:00

For the second year in a row, Jen and I ordered WWE WrestleMania on pay-per-view and held a WrestleMania party. This makes the third WrestleMania I've seen live, and the second one I've bought and paid for and seen start to finish. (In 2006, I saw the second half of WrestleMania 22 at Jen's brother's place. We didn't see 23 live.) While it wasn't the best 'Mania I've seen (I still favor 22), it had some moves which still blow my mind as I think about them. Jeff Hardy, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Shelton Benjamin, Kofi Kingston, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and others all brought their best game to Houston, TX this past Sunday and put on a hell of a show.

The first match was probably my favorite match; it's an annual match that started at WrestleMania 21 called the "Money in the Bank ladder match". In a traditional ladder match, an object is suspended about 20-30 feet over the center of the ring, and the only way to win is to climb a ladder and retrieve it. Anything else goes. As such these are historically title matches, with the object being the belt itself. In this case it's a suitcase which contains a contract which guarantees its owner the right to create a championship match with any champion at any point in the next 12 months. The champ can be knocked out, or injured, it doesn't matter, the challenge is automatically legal. Every cashing in of the contract has resulted in the title changing hands. Edge was the very first winner, and smartly cashed his in when his longtime rival, John Cena, had just been beaten bloody, but had still - barely - won his match. Edge easily scored a victory and left as the new champ.

Money in the Bank V featured Kane, Mark Henry, CM Punk (last years' winner), MVP, Shelton Benjamin, Finlay, Kofi Kingston, and Christian. The two superheavyweights were targeted from the start and were largely a non-issue in the match. We saw two men fighting at the top of one ladder, four men fighting on the tops of two ladders, and something I've never seen in a ladder match. With the main ladder erected in the middle of the ring, another was carefully wedged between two steps and the ropes of the ring. A third ladder was then erected outside the ramp, going down to the floor. We saw someone go up the traditional way and someone - Kofi perhaps, maybe MVP or Shelton - go up the unconventional way, from the outside. Up a leaning ladder, across the "bridge", and then the rest of the way up the main ladder. Speaking of the "bridge", you know someone had to take a fall on it. That someone was Finlay. That Irish bastard can take a beating. Didn't seem to phase him. At one point one of the big guys (I'm thinking Kane) carried a tall ladder into the ring, closed but upright, and one of the lighter guys (most likely Kofi) ran up the closed ladder and almost got the briefcase! And speaking of Kofi, Kane and someone else (Henry?) were trying to clothesline Kofi with the ladder. He jumped over it twice, and then dropkicked it, knocking them both over. You get the best aerodynamics in pro wrestling out of ladder matches, and when it comes to ladder matches, MVP, Shelton Benjamin, and Kofi Kingston are all a lot of fun to watch. I was pulling for Kofi, but CM Punk took the victory for the second year in a row, becoming the first person to win Money in the Bank twice. (Edge had it twice as well, but the second time, he won it from Ken Kennedy, who actually won it at WrestleMania 23.) Jen's brother, who looks at pro wrestling from a technical point of view (he's managed an independent, amateur wrestling circuit), said that there were a lot of mistakes in this match, and I understood a couple of them, disagreed with one, but in any case I maintain it was still a fun match to watch.

Immediately following CM Punk's victory at Money in the Bank, the man himself, Kid Rock, came out and belted out a half-dozen of his biggest hits in a medley, starting with Bawitdaba, going into Cowboy, All Summer Long, and others, and finishing with So Hott, while 25 divas ran out to the ring. They weren't identified, but this was the 25-Diva over-the-top battle royal for the title of "Miss WrestleMania". Perhaps halfway through the match, if one didn't notice that divas weren't being named and divas who were pushed out of the ring but not over the top ropes were eliminated anyway, one certainly noticed that one diva looked out of place, avoiding conflict. This "diva" was really Santino Marella in drag - no joke - and when it came down to him, his girlfriend Beth Phoenix, and Melina, he eliminated both of them to win. When accused of being a man, he swore he was Santino's twin sister, Santina, and was crowned Miss WrestleMania with no further investigation into his identity. Cute, but what a waste of time for WrestleMania. Also, as this was the only event to feature women, it was a missed opportunity to show off the WWE's female talent. Though the departures of Trish Stratus, Lita, and others have dminished "female talent" overall in the WWE, it's still present and shouldn't have been made a mockery of.

Then there was the "Chris Jericho match". No other good way to say it. Handicap elimination match; Jericho had three opponents, and he had to beat each of them in succession to win; for their side to be victorious, any one of them only needed to beat Jericho once. Since the movie "The Wrestler", Jericho has made it his crusade to expose wrestling legends who used their past fame to profit from their career long past their prime. Ric Flair, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, and "Supafly" Jimmy Snuka all took offense to this, and the latter three challenged Jericho to this match, with Flair in their corner. Jericho first beat Piper, and then Snuka, each victory sadder than the one before. Only Steamboat offered a real challenge, but after a good match, Jericho finally got him. Flair tried to intervene but was punished as well. With no legends left to bury, Jericho extended his challenge to "The Wrestler" lead Mickey Rourke, who was in attendance. After much coaxing, Rourke got into the ring, and following some dancing, KO'd Jericho with a couple good lefts - turns out Rourke knows a thing or two about boxing.

Next, and the last of the non-title matches, was the Brother vs. Brother match, contested under Extreme Rules - in other words, a hardcore match. Matt and Jeff Hardy worked as a tag team, real-life brothers from just outside Raleigh, NC, but went their separate ways in the early part of this decade. Both returned to the WWE in the past few years but were kept separate, and when younger brother Jeff won the WWE championship after a campaign lasting nearly half a year, Matt was jealous, and turned on Jeff; first secretly, and then openly, in the form of a steel chair to the face. Jeff was reluctant to fight his brother until Matt revealed that he had set the fire destroying Jeff's artwork and killing his dog. Then it was on. We saw a great match with two of the most talented young(er) performers in the WWE who also happen to be brothers, but it was also predictable for a lot of it, and while the stunts were cool, the payoff wasn't quite what it should have been and we were left with a mediocre match that could have been a little better.

The first championship match of the night introduced JBL, the oilman from Wall Street who used to be known as Bradshaw, defending his Intercontinental championship from Rey Mysterio. Now, Rey Mysterio is almost never seen without a mask, though unmasked pics do exist online, and his masks vary by color, but never really by style, always adhering to a particular design he's used for years. There's no better way to say it; he pretty much came out as Heath Ledger's Joker character last night. It was great. He had a hell of an intro, came to the ring, where he was bullied by JBL. The referee requires the combatants to start a good distance apart, and as soon as he could get JBL to back away, the bell rang, at which point Mysterio took JBL completely by surprise and had him pinned in 21 seconds (announced) for the victory. As Mysterio left with IC gold, JBL didn't know what had hit him. After looking around the crowd aimlessly for a minute, JBL announced that he was quitting, and stormed out of the arena. Of course, a pro wrestler doesn't announce that he's quitting. Bobby Lashley, perfect example, quit after WWE released a black woman (aka she was fired). Lashley thought it was discriminatory so he left on principle. He was cleverly phased out and not heard from since. When someone announces they're quitting like that, either they're going on vacation, going to shoot a movie, or changing roles. Jen's brother, our resident expert on pro wrestling, both believes and hopes that JBL will return to being Bradshaw. "JBL, but not a wuss"? Sounds good to me.

Following JBL's embarrassment was the annual Undertaker match. The Undertaker has won every WrestleMania match he's competed in, and for a few now, he's been maintaining a streak, which was 16-0 when the match started. 2009 was the first year that people actually competed for the opportunity to face Undertaker, as opposed to just putting Undertaker up against whoever he was feuding with at the time (which at this point was really nobody since his feud with Big Show was resolved). Shawn Michaels and JBL (then not yet Intercontinental champion) had a match to determine who'd face Taker. Then, Smackdown's Vladimir Kozlov announced his interest, so he challenged Michaels for the right, and lost, leaving Michaels to contend with the Dead Man. Undertaker pulled out all of his tricks, but Michaels stayed one step ahead of him leading into WrestleMania. At nearly 31 minutes, this was the longest match of the night, and one of the best. The Undertaker threw a chokeslam or two, a Last Ride, a Devil's Gate submission hold, and two Tombstone piledrivers at Michaels, and Michaels superkicked Undertaker at least twice. Finally, Undertaker barely beat Michaels, boasting a new 17-0 streak.

And then we came back to championships. Big Show vs. Edge vs. John Cena for the WHC. John Cena lost his title to Edge at No Way Out when Edge, having lost his own title in his Elimination Chamber match, inserted himself in Cena's to win. Big Show was the number-one contender; however, John Cena blackmailed Edge's on-screen wife and general manager to let him into the match, on the understanding that he wouldn't air certain video footage of her cheating on Edge with the Big Show. After getting into the match, Cena released the video anyway to stir up tension between Show and Edge, which Vickie countered by saying that she would stay with the winner of the match and leave the other (unless, of course, Cena won; nobody planned for that outcome). Show and Edge were introduced as usual, but Cena's original music hit, and 200+ John Cena lookalikes ran down the ramp, lining both sides. They all then proceeded to do Cena's "you can't see me" salute as the real Cena charged down the ramp to his modern theme. It wasn't as cool as 2 years ago, where he drove that new Mustang into the arena (reminiscent of JBL with the limo, or more accurately Stone Cold Steve Austin with the truck), but it was entertaining as hell. After Cena's brilliant entrance however, the match quickly became average, with the highlight seeing Show tangled up in the ropes and Cena and Edge squaring off for the thousandth time (but, to be fair, they work well together so it was good). Rather predictably, Cena took the victory here by pinning Show and bringing the World Heavyweight Championship back to Monday Night RAW.

The last match, the so-called main event, featured Randy Orton challenging Triple H for the WWE Championship. The roots of this match go way back nearly 5 years to 2004 where, at the age of 24, Randy Orton won the World Heavyweight Championship (becoming the youngest performer to do so to date), and Orton's mentor Triple H sacked him in jealous rage. Orton won at the 2009 Royal Rumble, the victory from which guaranteed him a title match at WrestleMania with a champ of his choosing. Following a verbal assault on Stephanie McMahon, Vince McMahon intended to fire Orton on the spot, but Orton knocked him out with a boot to the head. Shortly after, Vince's son and Stephanie's brother Shane sought retribution for his father and was similarly knocked out. Stephanie ran to his rescue and found herself on the wrong end of Orton's signature move, the RKO. Following this, Triple H acknowledged publicly what we've all known for years: that, in real life, Triple H is Stephanie McMahon's husband, making him Vince McMahon's son-in-law. His relationship with the McMahon empire has up until recently been secret, and separate from the product as sold to the fans for various reasons; however, it's in the open and part of the storyline now. In any case, a series of escalations led to this match, but when it finally happened, it was mostly boring. With a strict disqualification policy in place, neither of Orton's lackeys Cody Rhodes or Ted DiBiase Jr. were on hand to help him cheat; nor were Vince or Shane present to give Triple H the upper hand. And the fans got left with a dreadfully average match.

Last year, WrestleMania was awesome. This year, something was off. Two of the three main events were mostly boring. The two best matches were Undertaker/HBK and Money in the Bank, and the latter was cooler in concept, but in execution, botch after failed botch. It wasn't a bad show, but could have been so much more. For the 25th anniversary of WrestleMania (actually the 24th, but WWE insists otherwise) they could have done better. Vince McMahon needed an active part, at the very least. A lot of talent was shelved for this event. And it doesn't compare to WrestleMania 22, so far, my favorite.

The big three zero zero

2009-03-30T06:19:00.000-04:00

As opposed to the big three zero coming in just under six months, that is... No, Saturday night (or rather, Sunday morning) we got our 300th song on Rock Band. At the time of this writing, there are 614 songs available for the Rock Band platform. We've got 300 of them. And that's a good thing, because we don't want most of the other 314. There are a few I wouldn't mind having, but all in all I'm proud to say that we have the best of the lot.

For the curious, #300 was "War Zone" by Rob Zombie. It's the only song of his in the game. I passed on it when it came out because I'm not too fond of the song, but admittedly, it's fun to play. We let Jen's brother pick the 300th song because he got us into the game.

We still have enough for one more song, which will most likely be "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benetar when it comes out Tuesday morning. That'll put us at 301.

Update: 9 April 2009:
We never got that 301st track, so we still have enough Microsoft points to get another one. At this point we're trying to decide between "Heartbreaker" and one of the Toby Keith songs. I could go either way on that one. However, a friend of Jen's from the Disturbed board bought Pearl Jam's "Ten" album, which came with a code to download 3 of their songs for free, so we used that, and got a couple songs I've never heard of and a live version of "Alive", so, thanks Herb for that! And that puts the official count at 303.

Update: 1 May 2009:
The official count now stands at 316 (Steve Austin reference FTW) with "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction and "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother. And we have points to buy nine more. Tuesday (5 May - Cinco de Mayo) it's "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Ant Farm (covering Michael Jackson), "Naked Eye" by Luscious Jackson, and "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Bros. band we'll be getting. That will leave us with credits for six more. Maybe a couple more Stevie Ray Vaughan?

Two games Harmonix needs in the Rock Band family

2009-03-19T05:33:00.000-04:00

Last week I wrote about five songs that Harmonix needs to license for Rock Band. One of them was "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce. A day or two after I posted that article, I heard about Activision's forthcoming offering, "Guitar Hero's Greatest Hits" which will combine the best of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (those two previously only available for PlayStation 2), Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock into one big game. What's more, all of the songs will be master recordings, not cheap covers. (The covers were OK, but the masters are preferrable.) And what's best of all, "Through the Fire and Flames" is confirmed!

Oh yes. We will be getting that.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather than simply suggesting more songs, I now write about two expansion sets Harmonix needs to bring to the Rock Band family:

1. Rock Band: Adult Edition
One of the biggest problems with the Rock Band franchise is that, in order to get the coveted T rating which allows kids to buy games without parental permission, they censor songs and a lot of good songs would be impossible to do, because of the censorship. Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" was completely butchered, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Sir Psycho Sexy" was just a mistake. The T rating affords them the ability to use songs with suggestive themes ("Sir Psycho" is about a sex fiend who, among other things, rapes a "lady cop" who pulls him over; "Sickness" is about a guy killing his abusive mother); they just can't use most words. Every now and then they do something cool. On the Rock Band 2 disc, "Man in the Box" substitutes words that are phoenetically similar enough to credit you for singing the original lyrics. "...buried in my shit" becomes "buried in my pit", and "...shove my nose in shit" becomes "...shove my nose in spit". And they let Weezer get by with saying "bitch" (rather, "beotch") in the downloadable song "Troublemaker". Why they don't go the Battlestar Galactica route and replace "fuck" with "frak" (hey, it worked for the Sci-Fi channel on cable) is beyond me.

So they can't taint the main games, but as far as I can tell, nothing at all stops them from making an adult edition of Rock Band. First, redo the songs that were butchered with their original lyrics. Second, include songs that aren't just profane for the sake of being profane, but rather good songs that would never be usable on a T-rated Rock Band title, so that groups of adults who play Rock Band (like me, my wife, her brother, and our friend, and many others) can enjoy some more adult-oriented songs. And since some of these songs have hidden joke songs that can be unlocked near the end (e.g. "Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld" from South Park on the first Rock Band), throw in a few overly profane songs for shits & giggles. That new "Death to All But Metal" by Steel Panther, for example, sounds fun to play on all instruments (especially sing) but it's way too obscene to even consider. Another good "joke song" would be "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello. Borderline able to go in the T-rated game, it's still kind of harsh. Or how about going all out and doing "Fuck the World" by Insane Clown Posse, just for the line, "Don't bother trying to analyze these rhymes. In this song I say 'fuck' 93 times!" I haven't counted, but I don't doubt him.

The new GTA game on the DS drops two F-bombs in the intro movie alone. I thought I was being so funny modding my DS just to watch a porn clip on a Game Boy, and then Nintendo goes and proves that adult content isn't entirely outside the realm of what they can do with their handhelds. Kind of moots my point, but it was still fun to make. So if the Game Boy can swear, what makes Rock Band so puritan? There's nothing puritan about any rock star's life... unless your band is called Petra... so why not drop the pretense, at least for one game that, sure, kids won't be able to get at, but older players will eat right up, and of course like all the other games, you'd be able to integrate it into your master setlist by exporting the songs to the Xbox hard drive.

2. Rock Band Pro
Rock Band games are fairly balanced across the board. You've got easy games and hard games, and on the disc, it all balances out. While most of the downloadable songs lean toward the easy tiers, Rock Band's hardest songs, namely Yngwie Malmsteen's three, and Rude Mood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, are downloadable. But these games tend to wear out quickly for the best gamers out there. People who can master songs in no time. You see them on YouTube and score-tracking sites like ScoreHero. The top 100 or so scores all have 100%; once they can hit all the notes, they work on gaming the system to score the most points possible (overdrive timing). Even if you can top the high score by just a point or two, it's worth striving for.

My second suggestion, therefore, is to release a collection of the hardest downloadable content, plus some new stuff sidelined under the excuse that it would probably be too hard for most players. Songs that shouldn't be in the game because they'd just be stupidly hard, but a package that would appeal to the best of the best. I like telling people who are good, "You think you're good at Green Grass, but could you hang with Nightwish if Harmonix released some as DLC?" And then I'll put on the live version of "Wishmaster" and blow their minds. The song itself is a beast, but the live version is something else. Absolutely not to be fucked with. Might as well create a new difficulty tier in and call it "You've already failed". And then throw in some speed metal, and thrash, some death metal, in addition to the symphonic metal. And, as Stevie Ray Vaughan's DLC shows, songs don't need to be metal to be hard to play. Now that we have Yngwie Malmsteen, we need some Steve Vai. We need some Joe Satriani. We have blues. How about some jazz? Jazz is easy to make fun of, but try playing it.

The premise would be simple. In Rock Band, you start out as a garage band and end up touring the world, but even as you do so, the quality of the songs you're playing doesn't increase much. Rock Band Pro would put you in the shoes of a gifted musician, and your rise would not be in terms of venues played, but rather more like the respect of other musicians.

It seems like Harmonix answered Guitar Hero: Aerosmith with AC/DC: Rock Band Track Pack. Are they really answering Guitar Hero: Metallica with The Beatles: Rock Band? Sure, the Beatles are a good band, but will any of their songs offer a challenge? How about Nightwish: Rock Band Pro?

The Pope is an idiot.

2009-03-19T03:07:00.002-04:00

"Is the Pope a pedophile?" is the meaner variation on "Does a bear shit in the woods?", itself a dirty and sarcastic way of saying "yes". I don't know the true answer to that first question, but I do know that the Pope is an idiot.

Never mind that he's the patriarch of a religion which adamantly opposes marriage between two men (or women) who love one another while at the same time protecting pedophile priests with equal resolve. I mean, anyone who says love between consenting adults of the same gender is wrong, but if it's a man forcing himself on a boy, it's alright, must be a rational individual, right? There's the world's self-appointed moral authority - it's no wonder so many people enjoy being bad!

But that's just traditional Vatican hypocrisy. It's not just the atheists who can see it; some of God's followers take the Catholic Church with a grain of salt as well. I wouldn't have anything to say if the Pope were just continuing the Church's storied tradition of hypocrisy and abuse. Downright stupidity shouldn't make a headline, either, but hey, it's a slow news day, you know?

Apparently, as reported by the BBC, the Pope flew down to Africa and told this AIDS-ravaged continent that condoms aren't the answer, and that contraceptives are part of a decline in morality. He stopped short of including homosexuality in his list of immoral contributors to this decline, and also stopped short of saying that people who got AIDS through sex deserve it, but that's what he was getting at. So condoms not only prevent unwanted pregnancies, which the Church has always taken a hard line with, but they prevent disease as well. Seems the prevention of disease is not a good enough benefit to offset the "atrocities" of not wanting to start a family just yet, though AIDS prevention, not family planning, was the focus of the article.

The Pope's solution? Don't have sex. Oh, really? Is he serious? If people want to get down, they're gonna get down. Besides, every time a girl has her period, including when she's 9 or 10 or whenever they start, that means an opportunity to bring a new life into the world was passed by in favor of not wanting to raise a little taxpayer. Ultimately, fundamentalist Christians and hard-right Republicans want to rescind womens' rights and turn women into breeding farms as soon as they're old enough to have children as inferred by their opposition to contraceptives and abortion; take their remarks on those subjects to the farthest logical conclusion, and that's what you wind up with. Pure stupidity and a lot of steps backwards.

And forget about preventing AIDS, it's not that big a deal, is it, Your Holiness? Someone ought to contract the Pope with AIDS and see how important he sees it. Of course, they don't choose Popes that are more than a few years from their deathbed anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter, AIDS might not work fast enough for him.

A signature on the GameFAQs message boards says something like: Religion is to the poor true, to the wise false, and to those in power useful. It's true. I mean, I believe, despite logical arguments telling me the entire Christian mythos is false and explaining where it all comes from. But a part of me still believes. Not enough to go to Church... organized religion is crap, more often than not these days a congregation of idiots, stupid people gathering and preaching hate and intolerance. Fifty years ago it was blacks, now it was gays, the Church always seems to need some group to villify, no matter how good that group's members themselves may be. Some are even Christians themselves! What ever happened to sin and temptation and Satan being the bad guys?