NSFW

Scarcity Ahead

2009-06-20T15:27:00.003-04:00

So nobody reads this, but fuck it. I'm switching my public blogging over to my tumblr account, because I have a twitter now, and it integrates, and lots of other reasons, but the main one is that it's time for a change.
We go through phases, and I've reached the end of one and the beginning of another. So without further ado, I will see you all on the flipside, if there is one.

I know, because I've seen it.

2009-06-03T19:15:00.003-04:00

If she loves you, if she really loves you, you’ll know it. If you can wake up to her staring at you and it’s not even mildly creepy, if you catch her smelling the shoulder of the hooded sweatshirt you lent her for an autumn walk at the beach, and not for B.O., if she makes you a pancake in the shape of a shark, if she calls you drunkenly at four in the morning “to talk,” if she laughs at your jokes when they’re funny and makes fun of you when they’re not, if she keeps her fridge stocked with Guinness tallboys for when you come over, if she tells you how she wishes she were closer to her sister and that her dad makes her sad: She loves you, of course she loves you.
From Katie West's Tumblr

This is true. Every word.
Once, I had someone like this. I loved her, too, very much. Maybe she's still reading this blog. Probably not.
I loved her for a very long time - several years. We endured separation, troubles in both our lives, huge changes for both of us, what seemed like everything. We made it work for a long time, and when we were together, nothing could touch us. We were so happy, it felt like we outshone the sun.
Mere weeks before our four-year mark, it all fell apart. I still can't say whose fault it was, I don't want to. I tried, though, and I'm sure she did too. It just wasn't enough.
I still love her, a little. I'm pretty sure she still loves me, just the same. But nothing will ever bring us back to those years we shared, and we both know that, so it's better to go our own ways.
If you're reading this, my dear, know that you are forgiven. I will always love you.

I'm wrong. There, I said it.

2009-06-01T21:00:00.003-04:00

I’m a big fan of pretension. It means “an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment.” It doesn’t mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow.
-- Warren Ellis

Hearing / reading someone I admire so much say this, realizing it's true, and looking back on my own usage of the word... it makes me feel like a complete ass, really.
I always used "pretentious" as a blatant insult, as a descriptor for overly intellectual blowhards and theor vacuous discourses. I still think that those people are a gargantuan waste of space and Hampshire's educational time, but I'm not going to describe them with that word anymore. That word, pretentious... it describes what I am, actually. I'm trying to exceed the grasp I have on narrative, on characters, on the making of the story. When I set out to become a game designer, I KNEW it was above me, then. It still is, now. I'm not too much closer than when I started, but I am closer, and that's the part I hold to be important. It's a struggle, learning all this intellectual information, all this psychological research, trying to ferret out what it's telling me. It's tough to play a game and always be asking- What makes this fun? What makes me keep playing? It takes the fun out of it, for sure. It's also much harder than saying what sucks about it- complaining, finding fault, that's a sucker's game. Anyone can play. But when the creator says "Ok, so it sucks. Can you do better?" the complainers sort of shake their heads, sidle away, look uncomfortable. I want to be able to say "Yeah, yeah I can. Watch." and then DO IT.

To everyone who asked me when I was little "what do you want to do when you grow up?"
It's that. That's what I want to spend my life with- Making progressively more awesome things.

Waving Goodbye

2009-05-23T11:51:00.002-04:00

Saw Nine Inch Nails in Mountain View last night, at the Shoreline Amphitheater. My first concert, by the way, and it was pretty cool.
Got there early, while Street Sweeper was still playing. Boots is a good rapper, but Tom Morello tries to steal the show from him with his "fight the power"bullshit. I fucking hate Rage Against The Machine and their stupid "we're gonna stick it to the man and change the world" crap. They obviously have no clue how this kind of thing works.
Anyway. NIN started late, at maybe 7:20, and it was pretty good up until 8pm, when it got REALLY GOOD, because full dark had set in the and light show was pretty awesome. I was pretty much blind by the end of the show at 9:45. Notables included "Head Like a Hole," "The Hand That Feeds," "Disicpline," and I went nuts over "Survivalism". The last sing was "Hurt"... and it was especailly poignant, knowing that this is Trent's last tour with NIN. He'll still be producing, but no longer actually going on stage with them after this. So, when the last part of "Hurt" started-- 'If I could start again, a million miles away' -- Everything got really quiet, because I think everybody was remembering how much of his life Trent has given to NIN, how long he's been doing this, and how tired he must be, sometimes. And then the next part-- "I would keep myself... I would find a way..." -- And the guitar cuts in, loud and awesome, and the lights all snap on, and everybody was cheering like there was no tomorrow. Trent steps up, bows, and says "Thank you." And then he walks off, followed by everyone else. The guitar feedback keeps going until the mixer cuts it off, and bam, that's the end of the show.
Truly epic, an amazing ending. Simple, yet fitting.

Literally the worst possible time

2009-05-11T20:01:00.000-04:00

I am (slightly) late to work at the diagnostic center, today, and decide to drop my possessions off in the care of my fellow techs before searching out nutritive items.
Except the student store is closed.
So is the bridge cafe.
And the vending machine won't take money!

There is not a single bloody place on the entire college campus, as of now, that I can purchase a caffeinated beverage from. Not one.
Of course, it's my last week of finals. This is going to be AWESOME.

Impossible? Sounds like an invitation...

2009-05-09T02:29:00.001-04:00

I bought another copy of Dead Space, used, at my local GameStop. Yes, I actually bought the same game twice. I also started my "Impossible" run earlier this morning (1am or so).
Death count so far is at 7, I think. Impossible difficulty is actually very tough. More enemies show up, I think, and they hit MUCH harder. One swipe is now enough to take you to death's door! They aren't any tougher, though, so thank goodness for small miracles. I've decided to One-Gun this playthrough, also. That means no other weapons, at all, EVER. Just me and my Plasma Cutter. I figured, hey, why not turn EVERYTHING up to 11 while I'm at it. The likelihood I'll play through this game a third time is... well, I was going to say small, but actually I might do it. We'll see, after this run. If I finish. If I do go through a third time, I will definitely LP it.

Le sigh

2009-05-04T20:04:00.003-04:00

Up and down day.
I wanted to play Killer7 earlier, this morning, and discovered it's gone. Not in my room, not in the lounge, gone. That makes 2 games missing in a week, the second being Dead Space. Maybe it's lost.
Right.
So that sucked, but I did get to sleep in. Then I learn during lunch that my professor for one of my classes is deciding to be an asshole and hold to the shcedule he gave us at the beginning of the term that he has told us, numerous times, is completely incorrect. So I get to run around like a chicken with my head cut off collecting all my shit for that class, and print it so I can turn it in. When I go to print said documents, I find the stapler broken and raped, again. So I spend ten minutes fixing under the apathetic eye of a stoned idiot of a lab monitor, and exit telling him to please for the love of god SAY SOMETHING WHEN YOU SEE PEOPLE ABUSING EQUIPMENT IN THE ROOM YOU'RE MONITORING.
I turn in my work, and you better believe I am angry enough to spit. So I go to the back of the library, procure a defunct printer, and take it back to Dakin, whereupon I lay waste to it with my warhammer, breaking it in the process. The warhammer, and the printer too. So, a double K.O. That was fun.
Then I saw my friend's Div3 movie- very good, an enjoyable experience.
And that, dear internets, that's been my day.

2009-05-01T12:14:00.001-04:00

Also you can all go die, I'm getting twitter.

On Bells

2009-05-01T12:11:00.002-04:00

Interesting, that at Hampshire, "ringing out" is a sign of triumph, of victory. In the Navy SEALs, any candidate can "ring out" at any time, but it means that you're done with the program, that you couldn't handle BUD/S, that you're quitting. It's not a mark of shame, but it's a recognition that you'll never be a SEAL.
I've had numerous friends ring out, these past weeks, and every time I hear the bell, I cannot help but shake my head and think "There goes another sailor who'll never be a SEAL." When my time comes, though, I'll ring without fanfare.
It's a sign of done-ness, I think, and at that point I will definitely be done with Hampshire.

The Lady of Pain

2009-04-19T09:16:00.000-04:00

I think the deity and I have a very special relationship- he makes me hurt so that I know I am not yet dead. The satisfaction one obtains from awaking and feeling a multitude of bruises and abrasions is a odd breed, but I enjoy it greatly. It is rich and filling, and smells of a job well done.

Brainjuice

2009-04-15T21:03:00.002-04:00

Holy crap, they actually put Warren Ellis' first column for Wired UK up on the web!
READ NOW, PLZ, KTHX, and avoid violation by badgers and angry stoats.

Whoring oneself

2009-04-13T13:09:00.001-04:00

There are few things I hate more than a professor in a class I'm taking making us read one of his own works. I categorically refuse to comment on someone's work in an unequal setting.
Also this guy's a total screwhead. *sigh*

No bridges included, actually.

2009-04-07T10:01:00.001-04:00

My friend just got around to putting up the ModDB site for his senior project, Waterbridge. Give it a look, it's got a lot of potential that has a very good chance of being realized.

Free is a relative descriptor

2009-04-01T22:06:00.004-04:00

Carelessness, more so than anything else in New Eden, is what will kill you.

The mission had started so well, I thought, grabbing my drink off of the bar and finding a table against the wall, in the dark. I was in no mood for companionship right now.
It was a simple one-- Minmatar terrorists were smuggling bioweapons into Khopa, and I was the right man for the job. My agent tossed off the description like it was nothing, just another say for the Ministry of Internal Order. My first clue that everything was going haywire was when the coordinates I had were wrong. Very wrong. Very wrong, in this case, was the business ends of many an autocannon trained on the Foe Hammer, as I exited warp. They posed little threat- six frigates to a cruiser is hardly fair- but I had been compromised, that was for certain.
I should have left right then and there, found something else to do, I though, glumly swirling the beer in its tankard. I uncharitably eyed the bubbles coming to the surface and made a face. Swill, just like everything in this dammed backwater. Six jumps from Amarr itself, and all you get are broken-down systems expanded away from generations ago, backwaters next to the capital of a rotting Empire. My rotting Empire. I took a deep swallow of the beer and tried to think happy thoughts. The bad taste didn't help, though, and my mind wandered back to the mission.
I warped to the coordinates stolen from the computer of a shattered frigate, and my sensors went crazy. The surrounding space was crawling with Minmatar frigates and cruisers, swarming around three identical transports. I cursed and cut my drives. They hadn't noticed me... yet. I shrugged, and kicked everything to full. They'd die like the rest.
Ten sweat-soaked minutes later, I had to acknowledge that they were good. They'd waited until the last second to expose their EW ships, webbing me well within my minimum range, and pounding my shields flat in seconds. My armor repairers were already up and running, though, and they were holding, barely. I powered towards the transports, determined to end this once and for all, deploying my drones. Abruptly, I noticed the blinking red in the bottom of my vision. My armor repairer, inexplicably, was not staving off the damage. In fact, as I watched, the last of my armor crumbled, damage bleeding through to my hull. I was so close to victory, and now this? It was then that I made my fatal mistake. To give myself more capacitor power to run the second repairer, I flipped off the afterburners. Normally, this would be fine- I'd slow slightly, but momentum, distance, and the second armor repairer would keep me safe. Now, though, I was in the midst of a swarm of fifteen angry frigates... two of whom had stasis webifiers locked onto me.
The result was predictable, in hindsight. I slowed to a crawl, and every weapon pointed at me was suddenly hitting. Hard. Even with the second repairer, my armor only lasted about 5 more seconds, giving me just enough time to realize my mistake, try to correct it, and then, in a blind panic, try to warp out. The next thing I knew, my pod was spinning crazily through space, still half-embedded in the wreckage of my cruiser. I sat, watching the Minmatar pick off my now-quiescent drones and close ranks around their last, battered transport. I sat and fumed, cursing my lack of attention and foresight, waiting until I drifted out of sensor range, and then fighting my pod free and jumping for the nearest stargate.
Two hours later, I was back, in my Maller. The Foe Hammer, had been much more advanced, relying on drones and missiles for firepower, a fast, sleek design. My Maller, the Nuke and Pave, a holdover from my early days with the Ministry of War, was not. The Maller was a big, heavy, blunt object, designed to smash enemies from the sky with sheer weight of firepower. It mounted five batteries of lasers and an energy vampire to sap the shields of enemies, feeding its own capacitor at the same time. I had fitted it with 2000 millimeters of the finest titanium plating I could find, an upgraded afterburner, and various other hidden extras. As I jumped in to the system again, I was not smiling. I keyed my comm, general broadcast, letting the old soldier's ice fill my veins: "Minmatar terrorists. This is Rukhato Deveronus of the Ministry of Internal Order. You are violating Amarrian space, and transporting prohibited cargo." The enemy squadron leader came on the com. "Whaddya gonna do about it, chupa?" I smiled, stretching the skin across my face, and keyed the video, leaning in close. "I'm going to cut you from your ships and watch you boil out into space. And then I'll do the same to every man, woman, and child in that transport you're guarding. Last, I'll take the corpses back to my Captain and hang them in the canteen, for target practice." His face paled, and the feed cut.
I was not true to my word. After losing over 60 million ISK worth of equipment, I just wanted what I could salvage from the Foe Hammer, the cargo from the transport, and my payment. And after a pathetically short, brutal fight, I got them all. I had gone to the bar immediately after signing the cargo transfer order for the nerve agents, the rancid taste of negative income fresh in my mouth.
Abruptly, a reflection in my beer signaled a new occupant at the table. My Agent, Hepepta Bis, sat down next to me. "Interesting tactics you show, Rukhato Deveronus." I sat up, silent. He smiled and shook his head. "You served in the war, Rukhato. It shows. The Empress's latest proclamation must not sit well with you." I shrugged. "I doubt it sits well with most." Hepepta Bis shook his head. "No, it does not. I simply wanted to remark... There are so few of us who know the old ways. It is good to see one who still knows how to make the slaves fear him." He smiled again and rose. "The Empire thanks you. We will have need of ruthless men, in due time. You have shown yourself to be among their ranks, and for this, I commend you." He turned, and left the bar, abandoning me to my drink and my conscience.

When life gives you shit...

2009-03-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

You, um, can't really do much, sometimes. This has got to be the most unlucky guy in the world. Either that or he's a cyborg.

Babblestar Galactica

2009-03-23T18:30:00.000-04:00

Title link contains spoilers.
The sad part? I saw this coming when the series started. In fact, I saw every major plot twist in this series coming. Lame. The only thing that makes me kind of like it is the "lol spacebrawls" factor. The storyline? Crap, pure and simple. Macross Frontier has a better one.

Fuck my neighbors.

2009-03-17T22:15:00.002-04:00

I hate them. One of them decided to crack my wireless network last night and as a result, I had to spend 8 hours today trying to get things back to the way they were, unsuccessfully. Apparently my hacked Airport Express is now broken, irrevocably, and will no longer boost my network. Which means I am basically holding everything together with spit and duct tape, and it will no doubt break as soon as I leave. I hate life.

PANIC BUTTON

2009-03-16T13:41:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting at my family computer, enjoying some music on my old speakers I donated to the family, catching up on gaming news and webcomics, when a notification catches my eye-- "Wireless connection 2 is now connected to *****[SSID blanked for security reasons] (unsecured)"
Eh, whatever, my wireless is hiccuping. It does that, since I run a rather odd topology at home-- a router bridged to a hacked airport express, so I can get around the amazingly non-802.11-friendly walls in my house.
Wait. "(unsecured)"? I run WPA!
I sit there for about 5 seconds, my mind blanking. Someone is trying to subvert my network! I jump to my feet and dash through the house, up to my room, where the router is. Diving onto the floor, I smack the powerstrip's on/off switch in a blind panic. Blessed silence as the router and DSL modem die.
I grab my cell phone and keys, put on shoes, and dash out the front door, murder on my mind and a wardriver to find.
No luck, unfortunately. That means it's one of my asshole neighbors. Sigh.
And now I'm off to change the WPA passphrase and enable MAC filtering again.

So you died?

2009-03-13T22:17:00.003-04:00

There's something very disconcerting about getting an email from your former self.

There I was, sitting pretty, blasting through the interstellar black at 5 AU per second, and slowing by the second. The stargate was ahead of me, gleaming in the wan light from the system's primary, and I was working my way through one of the latest holodramas: "Station On Station," a classic medical drama from the early post-gate era, about a frontier starbase doctor. I had a Asteroid Brewing Corporation 'Amarrian Heritage Stout' open next to me (virtual, but it was almost as good as a real beer), and I had my legs up on the control panel, just enjoying the starscape and Doctor Station's occasionally cruel but entirely justified antics on-screen.
Then the holosim blinked out, abruptly, and tactical data started blasting into my retinas. I was locked up, hard. I swore and pivoted, tasking a camera drone, but he had me cold. I was still decelerating from warp, unable to do a thing, and he had obviously been following me for a system or two. I cursed my carelessness and locked him back, just as his first volley hit me, punching through the Uncharitable Remark's shields and armor. A Hyperion, I noted. Gallente blaster boat. Definitely overkill for a tiny frigate like mine. A priate, then, I thought, triggering the afterburners in a last vestige of hope. Maybe I could...?
The answer was a resounding no, as the second volley blew through my now-paper-thin armor and ripped into the reactor core. I sighed and hit the ejection command sequence, my pod exploding out of the wreckage of my ship, twirling in space as I cursed and resignedly replotted my course. But the targeting alarm did not abate. I checked it, and swore, vehemently. This was no simple pirate. He had targeted my pod, the thin meter of tritanium between my body and the cold void. I triggered my comms, trying to get through: Silence. As I saw his blasters charging for the killing blow, I couldn't help but wonder-- what would death feel like?

I woke up, feeling like I had forgotten something.. but it was so hazy, like an old dream. Then I realized I was in a clone tank, and I remembered the events surrounding my awakening all too clearly. Accessing my reno's email function, I saw a small, inoccuous mesage from... myself. Dated sixteen hours ago. I opened it.

2009.03.14 02:12
So you died? Well, you have a Clone Grade Eta at Akhragan VIII - Moon 5 - Ministry of Internal Order Logistic Support station. Enjoy your afterlife.

Shivering, I climbed out of the tank of gel, shrugging off the attendant's attempt to help. I had a life to reclaim.

Occasionally I'll post in-character stories from my travels in EVE Online, of which this is the first. I hope you enjoy them.

GIB STEW!

2009-03-10T21:02:00.005-04:00

So, I was going to log in, write an angry emo post about hate and wage wage wage, but then I accidentally went to the shack and found INTERNETS JESUS staring at me, offering me a long island iced tea in one hand and an amazing Russian call-girl in the other, and some cocaine on a mirror at his feet. I partook, and it was GOOOOOOOOD.
So, now that thou hast partaken of the awesome in the title link, bear with me.
A 2000% INCREASE IN PLAYERS? One free weekend. That's all. Oh right, and an expansion pack that substantially buffed the content offerings of the game.
Now UT3 has CTF, vCTF, DM, TDM, Greed, WAR, and my personal favorite, Betrayal. If you read my blog at all, you know how much I relish being a dick to people online. This gametype is made JUST FOR ME, AND NOBODY ELSE.
The gist of it is so very simple- You are on a team. Everyone else is fair game. You shoot them, you get frags, they go into the team pot. The twist? To KEEP the frags, and add them to your personal total, you have to KILL YOUR TEAMMATES.
Excuse me while I go laugh evilly in the corner.
Muhuhaha. Muhuhahahah. MUHUHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Ok, better now.
In addition, when you kill a teammate, you become fair game for everyone in the game. If one of your former teammates get revenge on you, they get a bonus! If you avoid revenge for a full minute, you get a bonus! This gametype rewards not garden-variety asshattery, but STRATEGIC, CLEVER, PREMEDITATED asshattery. I LOVE IT!
The bots suck at it. But people, oh they are a joy. It is so satisfying when you suddenly realize that you have 20 frags in the pot, and you haven't seen a teammate in about 30 seconds. Suddenly, you get this evil smile and start thinking, "oh hai mister teammate, let's team up and... yeah... you go first." BLAM. +20 frags. And then the announcer roars "ASSASSIN!" in the most badass voice ever.
The crowning touch? In the scoreboard, and on your teamlist, you can see how many betrayals someone as committed as little knives next to their name. That really good nice, quiet teammate of yours? Yeah, he also happens to have SEVEN knives next to his name. Guess you should just tag along behind, huh?

In addition, Penny Arcade has now become funny again.

In addition, here is my rant from before, short though it now is after hearing the good news of internet jesus.
So, here I am in the Airport Lounge, working, and I see some devastatingly cute girl with short hair and a low-back top trying to get the print to work. Being the pathetic wretch I am, I immediately think of helping her. And this is where my troubles begin.
See, I have to wonder: Should I do something? It is so totally NOT my job. The monitor is sitting right there, but she's not doing jack. I could diagnose and fix it, I am sure. But I would have to go and DO it, and I am supposed to be doing my own work right now. But I cannot bear to see people, mostly just pretty girls, having trouble with computers. But if I do go and do it, how pathetic does that make me? Very?
I did it anyway. She was thankful. In one ear, out the other. I can't help but think of something I heard once- What's the difference between a friendless misanthrope and the life of the party with a steady non-crazy girlfriend?
Care to guess?
9 months of conscious behavior modification.
The only question that I have is this: Can the life of the party still live with himself when he's alone at night?
If it were me, the all-too-familiar answer would be "no," I think.

Surprise.

2009-03-08T03:46:00.000-04:00

I managed to stand three hours in a room with her without passing out from anxiety. Go me. Also, she's so wonderfully pretending nothing's happened between us.
Vile. Just vile.

It still stuns me...

2009-03-04T20:30:00.000-05:00

How, after so much, someone can still have such a strong effect on me. Except now it's fear and loathing, not love. It's astonishing how much her very presence disturbs me now. Ugh.

Shock and Awe

2009-02-16T22:47:00.002-05:00

Good god, I thought it was impossible to shock or awe me, a longtime IT worker, in the annals of user stupidity.
Warning, profane rant ahead.
The people at my college-- Jesus. You'd think they have the Midas touch, except everything turns into cowshit. We give them their drive with their backup data on it,and they are back in not a day later, with this confused, bovine look on their faces: "It's not working." Well, what did you do to it? "I put it on my desk."
Really. Really? OH COME THE FUCK ON. You desk, last I checked, could not POSSIBLY have the static electric potential of Latvia, because that what it would take to reduce your drive to the utter mess it's in right now.
90% of computers we get in... "It just stopped working." If it's a Mac, I run my fingers around the edge of the case like I'm petting a kitten, and what do I find? Dents. Blemishes. Bends. Distortions. IT HAS BEEN DROPPED, NOT ONCE, BUT MANY FUCKING TIMES. Do they mention this? No, never.
PCs? Never dropped, actually. Never seen one with physical damage. But the hard drives... jesus. It's like spyware satan has been using it as a combination toilet and gas chamber for six months. Do you, perchance, download one or two gray-area-legality pieces of music or software a month, we ask. "Maybe." OH REALLY. Because, see, I see a folder here labeled "Warez lolololol" and it is 89GB big, and staring me in the face. Do you know what it says? It says "I BELONG TO A FUCKING IDIOT THAT THINKS THE WORLD LOVES ME AND EVERYONE IS A GOOD-HEARTED NICE PERSON." There are people out there who get their kicks from making your computer shit blood and die in your arms from Ebola. They laugh every time a user is told "Sorry, this was a no-recovery." They HATE YOU. And they seed P2P networks, torrent trackers, and file upload sites with horrible, horrible viruses and spyware because they love to make you miserable.
Every time a computer comes in, and already has AVG or spybot, or something on it, I feel like screaming and shaking the owner until I can find out how much their brain sloshes. YOU HAVE THESE PROGRAMS! USE THEM! Good god, it will take an hour to scan your hard drive and clean it of viruses. Holy fucking shit, have you really never watched a movie you hated before? That was TWO hours of your life you wanted back, wasn't it? Whatever shall you do? It isn't like you didn't spend Saturday night stoned half to unconsciousness, giggling like a complete fucktard on some mod's couch. I have never regretted a virus or spyware scan, but I guess I don't value my time very highly, since I spend it fixing the problems of FUCKING IDIOTS LIKE YOU WHO WON'T EVEN HELP THEMSELVES.

And then, maybe once a month, there is a user who gets it. Once came in today, and I swear I felt the touch of an angel, because you know what? She had everything of hers labeled. She had already written out a problem summary with a detailed history, and gave us a drive to back everything up to. I could have wept. You know something? She is getting preferential treatment. Very preferential. As in, I refuse to do another damn thing at work until her computer is in perfect shape.

I have vented. You know, I have another job like this. Except it isn't like this at all, because I get paid three times as much, am half as bored, and never have to deal with this many idiots.
Hooray for the white-collar life, eh?

3rd Strike

2009-02-13T10:11:00.002-05:00

I seem to be blogging a lot lately, maybe because I'm finally getting back to working.

Anyway, watch this. Dead Space, on the original Xbox. Anybody think that it looks just as good now as it did then?

Yeah.

That's kind of... horrifying, actually. See, back when Dead Space wasn't even a twinkle in the media's eye, I got to play the Alpha on the 360, at EA Redwood Shores. I was blown away. Michael Condrey told me that him and his team had put this together out of nothing, that it was going to be a totally guerrilla project, a real end-run around EA's management or something. So I was appropriately impressed-- It was fun, scary, and I liked the concept.
But come on! If they had the game THAT MUCH DONE on the original Xbox, it means most of the things he told me were lies! This game had been in development FOREVER, and had a team working on it and the concepts for YEARS before he stepped in! Hell, I like the footage above better than the actual game-- it's grittier, darker, more jury-rigged...
One of the main things I didn't like about Dead Space was that it was too shiny and techy for its own good. The Necromorphs didn't contrast very well with the technology-- too similar in terms of highlights, phong shading, edge shine, et cetera. They lit up too similarly. Same with the weapons- with the exception of the ripper and the cutter, they were just too high-tech, not jury-rigged enough.
Oh well, if I'd never seen this footage I never would have known. But I still feel lied to, and that's bad enough.

WHEN it's done, not IF.

2009-02-11T21:56:00.001-05:00

I fucking told you all so.
See, they ARE working on it. It'll totally be finished by this Christmas. Really.
/whimper.

Firefox User PSA

2009-02-11T20:46:00.001-05:00

Having trouble playing Windows Media files in your browser? Tired of muttering "fucking Microsoft..." every time someone tries to embed a WMA file into a webpage? Curse no more! Turns out that VLC player and a bunch of other popular media players destroy Firefox's normal Windows Media plugin. There is a replacement, though.

http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx

Plzd to be downloading and installing ASAP.

There goes the neighborhood.

2009-02-08T12:47:00.004-05:00

This is how the world ends.

So, if you know me personally you know I've been bitching about Shacknews, my favorite game news site and community, and their acquisition by GameFly. If this is strange and fearful and new to you, get yo'self to school.
With the background out of the way, read the first link. Read the comments. Read them all. This is how a community dies, readers. This is how, bit by aching bit, everything that is good and right and fun is leached away.
In my view, this is how communities work, online--
It starts with an event. Hype forms around the event, and like minded people try to connect with each other about the event. They use existing places: Forums, BBSes, IRC, social networking sites, et cetera, but find them inadequate after a while. They want somewhere that caters to THEM, makes them feel unique and special, flatters their ego, something THEIRS. So, they take their community and put up money, server space, domain names. They turn the talented among them to web design, forum design and customization, the making of their online home. This home goes live, and now the community has a place to be. They love it. They are proud parents, extolling the virtues and cleanliness of their special bubble-place, and they are high on life.
Assuming the core event or product the community formed around is doing well, this continues for a while. Newbies join and are hazed by the old guard, before becoming old guard themselves and in turn hazing the newbies. Debates sometimes cause rifts and splintering, but the community at large remains stable and well-formed.
Then something changes. There are two ways it can go: From within, or from without.
If the cancer is within, it probably starts with leadership that's getting too big for its britches, or failing to listen to the users, or refunding to excise the dead weight. From there it degenerates into infighting, factionalism, and finally, outright war within the community. It's big, it's ugly, it's nasty, and it's completely harmless to everyone outside.
However, if the change is without, it's subtle. Someone outside the community figures that he or she has a vested interest in somehow changing or altering the community. This outside force sways some leaders, and insinuates itself into the community. Sometimes it is still subtle, sometimes... it's blatant, like a hostile takeover or a buyout. After that, the community is in an interesting state. If it can fight hard enough and convince the outside force to merely own and not dig into every dark corner of the community, then it has a fighting chance, under new management. If not, though... the community loses its closeness. Newbies come in and aren't inducted properly- they have no respect for the community norms and customs. Trolls appear and can't be dealt with. Nonsensical or idiotic rules and regulations are passed with no opportunity for debate or consensus. The community loses ownership of itself, and degenerates into a disgusting pool of slime and human waste, a mere shadow of its former self.
I am doing everything I can to make sure the shack doesn't end like that.

Embiggenating my appendices

2009-02-04T13:26:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I bought my second set of Skullcandy Smokin' Buds. They're the best headphones I've ever owned. I bought first set over a year ago, and I've had them with me EVERY SINGLE DAY ever since, using them, abusing them, kinking the cables, tying them, untying them, squashing them, stretching them, EVERYTHING. They only just died. If you can be tougher on your headphones than me, you must use them to strangle bison on a daily basis, because I am a horribly abusive electronics user. Computers, no. Anything smaller, I abuse it like a drunken sadist in the midst of a 'roid rage.
So. Go buy a pair if you like earbuds. They come with different-sized earcups, too, three sizes. And only 25$! What a bargain.

Some things that are cool, Part THE NEXT

2009-02-01T13:10:00.001-05:00

1. Battle Pope, the comic. Sex! Violence! Jesus! Popery!
2. LittleBigPlanet. The reason you should own a PS3.
3. Netbooks.
4. Unreal Tournament 3 and modding it.
5. Snow.
6. Energy drinks.
7. Internet Jesus.

Postal: The Movie

2009-01-28T22:30:00.001-05:00

Oh god. I just watched it. I am so, so sorry. I could have gone my entire life without seeing that. But I saw it anyway. Never again.

THE SUPER F.E.A.R.FUL FORTRESS: Do you remember fear?

2009-01-22T17:39:00.002-05:00

In case you don't get the joke in the title, scroll to the tl;dr.

4 years ago, we got a game from Monolith Productions, a venerable game development studio.

They started out in 1997 with Blood, a game that drew some pretty harsh criticism for some of the ads (The one I remember drawing the most vitriol is the one of a guy sitting in a bathtub full of blood, holding a gun. It looks like he's shot himself in the stomach, and he's smiling evilly), to say nothing of the actual criticism of the game itself... which was twistedly brilliant, just like several other post-Doom Build-Engine games, like Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior. Among other things, you could light people on fire with a flare gun, use a pitchfork as a melee weapon, and voodoo-doll people to death. All the weapons had a secondary fire, too, which was new. The success of an alt-fire would not really be exploited or noticed until Unreal Tournament, in '99.
After Blood, they released Shogo: Mobile Armor Division (a hybrid FPS/mech shooter, anime-inspired), Blood 2, Sanity (A 3rd-person adventure/ shooter about psychic powers featuring Ice-T as the main character's voice actor), No One Lives Forever (A swinging-60s/70s pulp spy FPS with oodles of style and polish), Aliens Versus Predator 2 (the first one having been handled by Rebellion. People still play AvP2 online today, it's that good), No One Lifes Forever 2 (A competent sequel, nothing new), Tron 2.0 (One of the best-looking games of all time, still. My favorite game of all time, pretty much). Afther that they stumbled a bit with The Matrix Online, which I alpha and beta tested, and continued to contribute to after release, even after Monolith kind of folded and was subsequently revived and bought by WB Interactive.

The same year, 2005, the newly revived Monolith released F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon. The game cast you as a new operative of a paranormal investigation and neutralization force under the purview of the U.S. Army (my personal conclusion, since you work in concert with Delta Force personnel during the game). The story isn't important here, but suffice to say the game was highly acclaimed for many reasons. It was scary, very scary; it had intense, non-repetitive tactical combat, an inventive array of weapons, and was graphically advanced and pretty. The story was satisfactory, too. Nothing great, but good enough to carry the game and two expansions, developed by TimeGate Studios. In addition, the game's multiplayer component was released as a standalone game, F.E.A.R. Combat, which is free to download and play.

So what to we have today? The single-player demo of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Dumb title, yeah, but that's what you get for letting fans choose your game's title.
Very simply, it is excellent. The engine is updated and all shiny... not that the original looks dated, actually. By today's standards, the first game is a little sparse and bare, with slightly odd lighting, but still looks quite acceptable. The new game looks stunning, with refractive water, bouncing particles, big explosions, and other graphical effects. The lighting is even better than before, and that's saying something considering how well it was done in the first game.
The gameplay is just as good, too. I felt a little restricted and cramped in the demo environments, but I'm willing to bet that they'll mitigate that in the retail game. The enemies are not quite as smart as the used to be, but again, I feel that'll be corrected. In addition, you get to pilot a suit of power armor, tearing up city blocks and blowing people away with heavy machineguns and drunk missiles, always a crowd pleaser. Most, if not all of the weapons from the full game are in the demo, including a pistol, SMG, shotgun, assault rifle, missile launcher, sniper rifle, and a tactical laser (!) that slices through enemies with the greatest of ease. All the weapons are well-detailed, excellently sound-designed, and fun to use, which is a good thing. The surprisingly detailed melee combat from the first game returns, as well, adding weaponless punching to your arsenal. You're a regular Bruce Lee without your guns, able to wreak all kinds of satisfying havoc on unsuspecting enemies. The grenade selection has been improved, also, adding electric, incendiary, and autonomous proximity grenades to the standard frags.
After playing through the first F.E.A.R. and all the expansions less than a year ago, it's like coming home again to find that the house has been remodeled and upgraded in my absence to be totally awesome.

tl;dr-- F.E.A.R 2 Demo is out. Play it. It's Really Good (TM).
Click the title for its explanation.

Reversion

2009-01-11T22:29:00.001-05:00

I think I look better with a beard. But that's just me.

First Post!

2009-01-03T15:25:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year.
This post is coming to y'all, live, from my new MSI Wind netbook. I love this thing. It's only .5" larger than the eee in every dimension except thickness, and the screen is MUCH bigger. Keyboard also. And, best of all, it runs Windows. God, how I have missed having an OS that just works. I tried to show my dad how to use the eee this morning, and it did not go well. Linux is unintuitive at the best of times, and catastrophically contradictory at the worst.
So, anyone want to buy the eee? :P
Been loading the Wind with apps yesterday and today in preparation for the flight tomorrow back to Hampshire. Figures-- just when I get comfortable and start enjoying myself here is when I have to fly back.
Well, this coming semester and Jan Term promise to be fun and educational, in all the best senses of the words. Here's to a better 2009 than my 2008.

Books I'd liek to write--

2008-12-12T23:24:00.002-05:00

Punching People for Fun and Profit: My Life as a Fundamentalist Christian Minister
Alternatively titled, "Be Healed!: How I learned to get paid to hit people."

Fava Bean Dreams: Tales of Misguided Youth

Actually it kind of sucked: When fun isn't fun anymore.

JUST BLOW IT UP ALREADY: Civil Engineering for the Undecided.

Repo!

2008-12-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

So I saw it on Saturday night. Drove to Boston for a midnight showing, got back at roughly.... 6AM. Yeah.
It was AWESOME! Probably the best movie I've seen this year, and my new mostest favoritest movie EVAR, or something. They cut a LOT out of the feature, so I cannot wait for the blu-ray director's cut... And best of all, Terrance and Darren were BOTH there, at the theatre! We got to do a Q+A, and they signed autographs and everything. Oh wow, it was amazing. I got a cool little Repo-man scalpel necklace and everyone squeed a lot and a good time was had by all.
So, if you get the chance, SEE IT! If not, buy the DVD! Buy the soundtrack! Do something to support this movie that so many people wrote off as having no audience, when in actuality it has a BIG one.

2 Weeks After Infection...

2008-11-18T11:39:00.002-05:00

It's just gotten worse. There's nowhere safe, not anymore.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning... My name is Louis Caulfield. I was a floor manager at the Circuit City in Pendleton, before... before the outbreak. It was a Friday. I was moping around the store, liquidating the last of our HDTVs, XM Radios and the like to uninterested customers, just waiting for the call form HQ that would tell me we'd all been laid off. Yeah, it was a shitty job, and a worse "thank you" for the years I'd put in, but hey... job's a job. Besides, my friend knew the manager of the local Best Buy, said he'd put in a good word for me. I was practically already trained for it, anyway.
So, closing time on Friday night. I was locking up the store, front doors first, and heading out the back when I heard something. So I walked back to the front, hearing the banging, like someone pounding on the glass. And y'know, I saw all these people... all out front, like 10 of 'em. Standing around, shuffling, and one of them was trying to open the door. So I walked up and tapped on the glass, pointing at the "Closed" sign... and he just stood there, head down, swaying. And then he looked up. Man, that scared the Christ outta me- No jaw at all! Just a red ruin of a throat and mouth, blood spattering all over the glass as he lunged at me. I'm not ashamed to say I fell ass-over-teakettle backwards trying to get away, and he just kept going at it, pounding on the glass with every bit of himself. That was when the rest of them turned and started helping. Hell, I RAN to the back room, and called the cops... but it was busy. Busy. 911. On a Friday night? Something was fucked, I knew that for sure. Good thing I had been planning on going to the range tonight, before I got called in for overtime... because my Springfield XD9 was in the car, locked in its case in the trunk. If I coudl just get to it, I'd be safe until the cops... did something, I don't know, I was panicking at that point. I just up and ran the hell out the store.
Nearly got me killed. If it hadn't been for that homeless guy that always hung around the dumpsters, scavenging packing peanuts, I'd have bought it right there and then. Y'see, I ran out back and he WASN'T there, and I stopped, just for a second, and they just walked by. A horde, about 60 of them, all just shuffling and moaning past me. Well, I hid behind the dumpsters and prayed to good Jesus to save me because I knew it was over... but I guess they didn't see me, and I got to the car, got my gun, and started driving.
The next several days were kind of a blur. I remember hearing on the radio at one point that the "infected" were the result of some kind of rabies, or something. I don't know, that doesn't explain the wierd ones. Doesn't explain anything, actually. I lost count of how many I ran over, just driving all over town to try and save some people... but didn't find any. But on the third day, I was poking through the wreckage of a biker bar, the Polecat Saloon, and I found Francis and Zoey. We found Bill at the firing range, where I'd been trying to get for days... but I just couldn't seem to remember how to get there.
So now there's four of us. Just four. Probably the only four left in the city, judging from the number of infected walking around. We've decided to try and get out of here, though. Nothing great about waiting for the hordes to find us and put us under... may as well take the fight to them. We've heard helicopters for the past day, so we might be able to hitch a ride, or something. Zoey thinks the hospital is our best bet, and I agree. We're setting off tonight.
As good as having a plan is, though... this city that I used to love, it just creeps me out now. Every corner is a trap, every car's a fort, every alley a chokepoint. And the worst part is, where the hell is everyone else? It's like they just left... left us for dead.
-- Louis Caulfield, Survivor.

So yeah, Left 4 Dead is freaking amazing. Advanced difficulty is quite hard, we didn't even make it through Act 1 in 3 hours last night! I am looking forward to playing the CHRIST out of this game... I have a feeling it will provide many, many hours of awesome.

HA!

2008-11-11T12:02:00.003-05:00

It's official! I was right! I am vindicated! WIZKIDS IS NO MORE! Clickbase is banished to the nether-realms of hell forever! The tryanny of pre-made, prepainted, shit-plastic miniatures is forever vanquished!
I said I hoped it wasn't the future, and I said it wouldn't last, it was only fit for 5-year-olds and idiots. I was right. YES!
Where is your god now, clickbase-lovers?\
OWNED!

And yet...

2008-11-09T22:46:00.002-05:00

Despite my best efforts, I have managed to realize that I am still where I was a year ago. Alone. Terrified.
Perhaps that's an overstatement, but still. It's what I say right now.
So much has happened, and yet... I still feel everyone and everything slipping away. Congregations of people I can't enter, unfamiliar images on the TV, static in my mind. What's wrong...?

Your karma has increased.

2008-11-09T13:14:00.002-05:00

I have officially done good today-- I saved a kitten.
He was sitting around behind Saga, and Callan, Morgana and I went to go look at him and try to feed him. He wouldn't take any food, so we chased him around the front, and I caught him. I carried him on my shoulder to Pub Safety, where we waited with the little pooky for the farm center people to come and take him off to the farm, where he would have a good home with the rest of the barn cats. I think he went to sleep a few times on my shoulder during the wait. And now I have fleas. Small price to pay for an act that is unequivocally good and right.
He was so CUTE, all fuzzy and tiny and warm, reminded me of Zorro... except he had grey eyes, where Zorro had green. Mr. Z, where-ever you are, please spare a moment of your time to comfort a fellow pooky in spirit... tell him it'll be alright. Then you can go back to guarding my parents. ^_^

Get off my lawn.

2008-11-04T23:06:00.002-05:00

Well, election season is finally over. As of now, Obama is at 324 electoral votes. He has won.
8 years of a nightmare are over, and I am nothing but irritated that it took so long. I'm going for a walk. And I could use some whiskey.

2008-10-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

Good news! I WAS just depressed last night. But of course... that doesn't mean everything I said wasn't true.

>_<

2008-10-19T03:10:00.001-04:00

So, this so-called 'fun event' I did this/last night... sucked. Weeks of prep, and the best thing I did was something tossed off of the top of my head, something unfair, railroading and ridiculous. I was just thoroughly disappointed.
And yeah, I have other things in my life to make me happy... not really. Fun has turned into work for so many things I like, and I ain't had a thing twixt my nethers in over a month that don't share my DNA, if you get my drift.
It could just be late, I could just be depressed, but my life is just not going how I want it to. It looks fine from the outside, but it's not. It's just barely there. I don't even know why I do anything anymore, just from memory or some vaguely remembered sense of duty.
Everything I touch begins to hate me, sooner or later. I wish I knew why.

I should be working, but...

2008-10-04T18:24:00.000-04:00

Every so often I get a chance to look at my life... And right now, it's not at all what I wanted.
I hear tell that I can get a boring-ass internship at Intuit in San Diego over the summer, do nothing, and basically get paid enough to drink myself stupid every night and never want for money.
But instead? I want to intern a game developer, which will be STUPID amounts of work and probably pay next to nothing.
There are fun things going on outside of Hampshire that I'd love to go to.
But instead, I'm stuck inside here playing to the whims of a plan I never agreed to, working for a so-called 'fun' even that's going on in two weeks, and I realize that I have NEVER once made it to an event off campus with my girlfriend, and I feel like a total shit. I haven't even had any really good reasons NOT to! Just work! Screw that.

I feel like a complete and utter failure right now because I can't even write a god-damm summary of an article I've read 5 times.
This would be a really good time to have antidepressants, but unfortunately, mine don't seem to be working anymore! Woo fucking hoo.

CliffyB :(

2008-09-30T11:12:00.001-04:00

Well, my favorite developer went and did it.

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

Before I go and tear him a new asshole, I will say this. Yes, he's right. But what he doesn't see is that tons of people who don't know how to upgrade their video cards, who aren't "enthusiasts" per se STILL know how to use bit-torrent and how to pirate a game! Most of these people are script kiddies, whiny little lamers who don't have any ethical or moral standards. The enthusiast community, by contrast, is actually MORE likely to buy the game. If they have 300$ to spend on a video card, they have 50$ to spend on a game. The only thing Cliffy is accomplishing with this is alienating his core fanbase that's stuck with him since UT99...
Add that to the comment about how Gears is now Epic's main franchise, and you've got one very sad Ben.

Spore'd?

2008-09-17T08:35:00.001-04:00

Your pack now has room for two animals!

Ridiculous ++

2008-09-08T15:45:00.002-04:00

I love being in a class where I can quote Robert Heinlein to make an ethical point.

Welcome to Hatesville.

2008-09-02T18:35:00.002-04:00

So I'm officially back at Hampshire now... and boy, things are f'ed up, as usual around here.
Number 1-- I got an email some time ago, informing me couerteously (so I thought) that my ID picture was officially out of date (it is) and that as a result, I needed a new ID. Ok, fine. So I pick up my keys only to discover that everyone ELSE got a new ID with their keys, an ID that works ith the stupid new RFID cards that we use to open doors to the dorms... and I don't have one. What's more, they DISABLED THE DOOR LOCKS. Yes, you read that right. Not only did they install an untested, brand-new entry system on the dorms, they disabled the old system right away, blithely assuming that everyone was going to come out of this shitting roses. Yeah, right. So, of course, I am now locked out of all the dorms. Sweet.
2. I got my new card from Blair Hall the next day, only to discover that we've outsourced the card encoding to some douches in Florida. This means that instead of actually being able to program the cards on campus, we have to use some shitty web interface in IE7 to REMOTELY VNC into a machine in FUCKING FLORIDA, which then transfers the card encoding to us. So if there's ANY problem in the webapp, the connection to Florida, the server in Florida, or the Hampshire network in general, it all goes pear-shaped... and of COURSE nobody here knows how to fix it. Fucking medieval times, people. I'm good on free refills, thanks.
3. Also, some douche between here and California managed to lose two of my boxes for a full day. Fucking A. Now I have to do the first day of classes without my main computer. Woo.

Other than that, Missus Lincoln, I think the play was fine. Not that you cared.

ReArmed.

2008-08-14T16:15:00.002-04:00

https://www.sumthingdigital.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=3664

Pleased to be visiting the link above. Play the song "One Man, One Bionic Arm."
Tell me this is not the funniest advertisement for a game, EVER. I dare you.

Spoilers below (highlight)--
"They lost their hero to the enemy. They went looking for the perfect soldier to rescue him. They found... some guy who couldn't even jump."

Bionic Commando Rearmed is now out on most major platforms, (360, PS3, PC) so you have no excuse not to buy it. It's really that good.

ArmA2 == Awesome.

2008-08-05T17:29:00.002-04:00

This is just about the COOLEST, shortest game trailer I've EVER seen.

But master, why should I not simply import the entire library?

2008-08-04T14:21:00.003-04:00

"Master, please tell me... is it truly wrong to use from [module] import * ? Isn't it just a very powerful import statement?"
"More powerful... no. Easier, more seductive, yes. That way lies the dark side of python, my young padawan learner."
"But then how will I know what to import, when, and why not to use it?"
"You will know when your code five years from now you try to read! Mmm! Yes."

Inspired by this article.

IT sucks.

2008-08-04T03:43:00.002-04:00

Now Playing-- 'The IT Crowd' Theme.

So, note to all aspiring IT professionals or people good with computers in general... DO NOT OFFER, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TO DO ANY KIND OF TECHNOLOGICAL WORK FOR YOUR FAMILY. DO NOT EVEN DO IT IF THEY PAY YOU.
Seriously. As if being a sysadmin in training isn't enough, I am also now a fully-fledged one at home, apparently. Do you know what happens when a problem comes up in your network and you're on the other side of the freakin' country? That's right, gentle readers, they CALL YOU. And beg. And plead. And sound so pathetic that you want to heap scorn upon them with a dragline until they choke and suffocate from it. But what do you do? They ARE your family, the only one you've got, so you fix it, because it really is Your Problem And Nobody Else's (TM).

Also, when you're trying to diagnose a gimpy wireless network, do go and update the drivers on everyone's machines, while simultaneously resetting the router to the simplest possible configuration (without compromising security, of course). Now to re-implement the MAC Address filter...

"A sysadmin's work is never done, which is why we've always so much time for fun!" -- Anonymous BOFH.

>.<

2008-07-30T13:04:00.002-04:00

Oh crap, oh damm, of doom on me. I bought an iPod again. HALP. Even though I spent only 130$ on it, which is the same I would have spent on an equivalent same-capacity 3rd party mp3 player, ARGH. I was weak. I needed music playing without constant turning off and syncing incompatibility. Oh well. At least it's green...

On Backdating

2008-07-27T21:35:00.002-04:00

When you do it to stock options, it's criminal. But when you do it to a blog post, I wonder if it helps or hurts. A blog post (IMO) is supposed to be a sort of snapshot of one particular thought or feeling that you feel is interesting enough to be recorded for posterity. If you write it down then, but save it for later, is that somehow profaning the "immediate-ness" of the blog? Or worse, what if you retain the idea but write it down later, trying to recapture the feeling that you had before? By the time you write it again, you're another hundred thousand miles around the sun and another percentage of a rotation of the planet beyond who you were then.

Lebowski -- "What makes a man? Is is a willingness to do what is right, no matter the cost?"
The Dude -- "That and a set of testicles, yeah."

Not especially poignant, but I think it serves. Even though The Dude may be searching for meaning in his life by debating existentialism through a haze of bong smoke, he has a point.

Am I the only one around here who's playing by the rules?

2008-07-26T20:00:00.003-04:00

That's it! I give up. I have now abandoned all my pretensions regarding elitism. It seems that I really, truly, cannot tolerate the state that so much of this world has fallen into. Accuse me of living in an ivory tower if you must, but I point out that my tower is not covered in excrement and suffused with poor taste, although the streets leading to it are indeed awash in corpses and lepers.
What prompted this? My aunt was over for dinner this evening, and she was telling my father and I about the trouble she's having with her photography assistant, who is really supposed to be her studio manager. This woman (the assistant) is making elementary errors on ever third piece of writing that goes out of my aunt's office. She routinely misspells things. She miscounts pictures. She names attachments incorrectly. She underlines or italicizes incorrectly. It's so painfully obvious that she's never touched a grammar or style manual in her bloody life, or if she has, she's long since forgotten everything in it. The worst thing, though, is that she just seems incapable of being detail-oriented. In fact, that's probably her entire problem.
And, of course, this woman wants to be a professional photographer. Please excuse me while I go laugh until I throw up, because it makes me that angry and sad.

Is she joking? Is she mentally disabled, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or manifestly stupid? She's got to be one of them, because in any day and age, that behavior is inexcusable.

You do not misspell in an email-- that's what spellcheck, the dictionary, and EVERYTHING you learned in primary school were for.

You do not send an email with incorrect formatting or grammar. You read it twice, right? This is NOT an IM!

You pay attention to details, because the second something leaves your virtual hands, it's archived and frozen in time. You know what happens to people who let a website go live with errors still present? THEY GET FIRED.

Measure twice, cut once. Do it once and do it right, It is truly as Steve Yegge put it-- 'Smart, and gets things done' is no longer sufficient. 'Done, and gets things smart' is now what is require. If being intolerant of things like this makes me an elitist, fine. If firing someone who can't do the job he or she was hired to do makes me demanding, insensitive or cruel, I reluctantly accept. I do care how people see me, yes. But more than that, I care about holding people to the social contracts they make with other humans.

Will there? I think so. I mean, there was plenty at the end.

2008-07-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Finally finished There Will Be Blood and found it very interesting. Without a doubt, it has the oddest pacing and soundtrack I've ever seen in a film. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing as usual, takign to his role is frightening ease and intensity. And now, the obligatory meme-fest: DRAINAGE, I drink your milkshake, and I AM THE THIRD REVELATION.

Google tour today at work was interesting -- the first group looked like they'd be
far more at home with a Rock Band controller or doing jagerbombs in a
club, but the second group upped the geek quotient respectably-- one of them even had the 'dead hex' shirt on.

Of course, I got a comment on the eee. This thing really seems to be a coveted item, a real symbol of the Internet / Web 2.0 age. (which one are we living in now? I can never get it straight.) Everyone seems to want one of these, and NOT for the reasons I bought it. I bought this thing because:

It was cheap, cheapest laptop on the market (.350$)
It was very portable.
I needed a backup.

People now seem to be buying it because it's cute, or it's for browsing on the go, or because it's small, or any number of other superficial, silly reasons. This was the cheapest computer on the market when I bought it-- still is, actually, if we're talking about something that's actually functional for day-to-day use. Heck, even Warren Ellis bought one and that's saying something. That man never buys something he doesn't need when it comes to tech. I am truly in awe of his mobile prowess-- bow down before Internet Jesus, indeed.

Sad, but oh so true.

2008-07-03T13:25:00.002-04:00

Every OS sucks. It's a fact of life. OS X Leopard sucks. Windows XP sucks. Linux sucks. Vista sucks. Plan 9 sucks. BSD sucks. Windows 7, when it comes out, will suck.
But some suck less than others.
Ubuntu, bless the dev team's black little withered hearts, sucks less than a lot of other linux distros. Not because it's pretty. Not because it's especially usable or useful. But because it installs easily, it's easily procured, and it has many premade flavours that all WORK out of the box.
Arch Linux sucks a lot less than Ubuntu in the cleanliness, simplicity, and speed departments... but the driver support blows.
Linux Mint is prettier and flashier, but even less comprehnesible than Ubuntu.
Windows XP is flawed, yes. Clunky, yes. But everything I need runs on it and I understand why something crashes, when it does (which is not often, actually).
OS X? When something crashes, it could literally be ANYTHING'S fault. Preferences, other apps running, the underlying subsystems, the filesystem, the desktop graphics engine, ANYTHING. And of course, there's no way to turn the baubles and beads off without savaging the plists in the terminal, untraceably.

All the OSes I use suck. But I like one more than the rest, and it ISN'T because it's the one I've been using the longest, that would actually be MacOS, I think, in terms of pure time. XP sucks the least out of all the OSes I use, and continues to suck the least. That's why I'll never switch.

Stalking the Shadow of Chernobyl

2008-06-30T02:40:00.001-04:00

I recently got the ability to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl without crashing every 10 minutes. This game is VASTLY underrated, IMO.
The only thing I did to it was install the aliVe (sic) AI mod and go to it... and I have to say, this game can bring a smile to my face.
Tonight, at the end of my session, I was a bit cheesed off at the lack of variety in the dialogue paths for the game. I could either be a freedom-loving guy or a hidebound, evil duty-loving prick. I chose both. I betrayed my erstwhile Duty comrades to the leader of freedom (quicksaving beforehand) and then, as he was radioing in the strike on the farmhouse where they'd taken up residence, I unlimbered my OC-14 Groza and put 20 rounds through his skull. His guards were so stunned that they forgot to shoot me.
Imagine the scene-- a dark, dank room smelling of stress, cigarettes and moldy concrete, in the midst of a slovenly, muddy camp of freedom fighters. A tall man in a once-green isolation suit has walked into the camp, not moments before, claiming urgent information for the man who inhabits this room. As he speaks, there is nothing to betray his murderous intent. As the words leave his lips, the rife swings up and hammers, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. The guards are frozen, shotguns half at the ready, jaws hanging open as the strangely silent man reloads with cold precision, emptying the next magazine into the just-moving guards. Three bodies lie still on the floor, and the man turns, smiling evilly inside his suit. The slaughter is only just beginning.
After putting an end to the Freedom movement, I decided to see how much of the camp I could slay, Brandon Lee-style, before I was taken down. So I went downstairs (four more freedom guards met a messy end at my rifle muzzle) and broke into the armory, where I found first-class armor, ammo and a rotary grenade launcher. Being the sporting fellow that I am, I eschewed protection in favor of more firepower, and helped myself to all the ammo and grenades I could carry. After several frags tossed into the corridoor to dissuade entry, I made a grand exit, rifle spraying wildly into the darkness. At this point (two more door guards had fallen to my frags) I unlimbered the rotary grenade launcher and proceeded to paint the town an interesting new shade of red and green that I call "chunky christmas salsa with extra pancreas bits." After blowing through 13 frag grenades, 230 rounds of 5.45mm ammunition, 60 shotgun shells, five energy drinks, and 24 rounds of contact-fuzed inciendary grenades, I decided to call it a day and headed back to the bar, my path lit by the burning camp behind me.
Strangely enough, nobody saw fit to remark on the cacaphony coming from the Army Warehouses the next day. You'd think that a 20-minute-long string of explosions, screaming, yelling and maniacial laughter would engender at least some reaction.... but no.
(And yes, my esrtwhile friends at Duty were NOT pleased with my clever strategy and ended up shooting me in the face. Oh well, can't please everyone.)

Random Crap, morning edition

2008-06-27T13:18:00.004-04:00

ICANN haz new domains? (comma ell-oh-ell)
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TEC_NEW_INTERNET_NAMES?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-06-26-19-01-44

Steampunk noodlings (comma WANT)
http://vladislausdantes.deviantart.com/gallery/

"Put my hand out the window. Sun seared flesh off my bones. Fuck you, Rosemont. I stay indoors and cheat your death rays." --Warren Ellis' Twitter Feed from Chicago.

Facts gleaned from this morning's readings--

If you're over 30, forget swinging. Facebook blocks the "random play" and "Whatever I can get" options from profiles aged 30 or older at signup time.
Unexpected quantum happy can result from cuddling cats early in the morning.
Also, taking a picture of your breakfast causes an existential debate over the validity of your so-called life philosophy, and causes you to change the kind of caffeinated beverage you buy that morning. More after these messages?
Dongles are in short supply at work. WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF BITS OH GOD HELP US PLEASE
I think I need more caffeine, it's going to be a LONG day.

Experiments in Healthy Eating, Part 1

2008-06-21T15:14:00.002-04:00

So I woke up this morning and found that there was no readily accessible protein in the house. So I made coffee (didn't drink it, stomach is a little delicate right now unfortunately) and played TF2 ^_^.
At about 1130 I realized that I should probably eat, and so began my quest to try and make something for food. I wanted pancakes, so I cam up with the following recipe--

You need--
lemons
sugar
bisquick
protein powder
almond milk
an egg

You do--
measure out about 2 cups of almond milk into a large mixing bowl. It's less dense than regular milk so you need more.
dump 2 scoops of protein powder in there too and mix.
dump in 2 cups bisquick and mix again.
dump in egg, mix again.

heat pan to where water dances on the bottom, measure out ladles of batter and make pancakes.

as they are cooling off, make your topping-- squeeze lemon into a cup, scrape out the pulp too. add sugar and maybe some rose's lime juice/ lemon juice/ whatever citrus you've got handy. pour over pancakes, consume with gusto.

The pancakes were a little heavy and bland, but that's what I get for trying to turn them healthy ^_^. All in all, a surprising success.

Miniatures Review-- Corvus Belli Haqqislam Starter Pack

2008-06-15T16:31:00.005-04:00

Just picked up these little beauties at my FLGS, and wow, are they something. The pack gives you 6 dudes in desert gear, resembling a cross between Lawrence of Arabia extras and the House Van Saar Gangers from Games Workshop's Necromunda.
Molding-wise, these guys are excellent. There's NO flash whatsoever on the actual figure bodies, just bits hanging off of the sides that are easy to remove. The detail is excellent, too, better than Games Workshop white-metal figures of a similar size, although the facial features are not great. The figures' poses also suffer from a bit of anime-like pidgeon-toed-ness... Seems like the sculputor took the concept art a bit TOO literally.
Connectivity-wise, the figures are only fair. Three of them are solid-molded, while the other three require gluing on of arms and suchlike. The pieces sort of fit together, but they're fiddly and require coercion. I'm still not sure how well they'll stand up to extensive play and transport.
For basing them I tried something new-- using E6000 epoxy/adhesive goop to fill the gaps in the base. I left them in the sun and the stuff appeared to cure nigh-instantly. It cures to a rubbery finish, and it's self-leveling too, meaning it invades cracks and such... Five out of five so far.
Value-wise, though, these figures die a horrible screaming death. Corvus Belli is based in Spain, land of the euro, and that means I paid 45$ for this box, which is WAY too much. However, these dudes are about all you need to have a starter force for Infinity. Including the additional 45$ layout for the rulebook, that means you can play the game for 90 bucks, which is not too bad for a miniature tabletop wargame. Far better than 40K, at least.
The game itself is recoommended-- good ruleset, cool background, and nice attention to realism and detail.
Overall? Hell, I'd buy these guys again in a second, who am I kidding. Besides, this faction gets spidertanks. Look for one of those getting reviewed in the future.

And now you find yourself in '82...

2008-05-22T03:49:00.001-04:00

The disco hotspots hold no charm for you...
You can't concern yourself with bigger things...
You catch the pearl and ride the dragon's wings...

It was the heat of the moment...
Telling me what your heart meant...
The heat of the moment...
Shone in your eyes...

Yeah, it's an awesome song. And I'm back in business, back in California. Time to rock out with the hawk out.

It lives!

2008-05-19T14:29:00.001-04:00

Woohoo! My Sansa e250 is ALIVE! I thought it had died about a year ago, before I left for school... but it appears it was just in hibernation or something, because it turned on and synched and eveything. Excellent, now I have a REAL MP3 player again.

Splendid Dreams!

2008-05-18T15:24:00.002-04:00

It's here! From the makers of the acclaimed Off-Road Velociraptor Safari comes a new game, still in alpha. It's called Jetpack Brontosaurus: Splendid jetpack dreams of the Apatosaurus named Brontosaurus. And boy, is it cool.
All it is now is flying around inside the dream world of an apatosaurus, controlling him via the large, clunky jetpack he wears. You can land on platforms and do challenges, but right now, the visual aesthetic is the biggest thing it has going for it, as the controls and sound design leave something to be desired. Of course, I STRESS that it is only alpha, and I have no doubt that it will significantly improve before release. For an alpha, it is very good, I think.

But I just GOTTA...

2008-05-06T20:39:00.004-04:00

I REALLY should not be posting now, because I have a paper due tomorrow, but HOLY SHIT.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52539
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=792

It's Mirror's Edge. They just released the first gameplay teaser.

It's PERFECT.

Please, realize that I do not, as a rule, say this kind of thing about games. I never says that a game is 'perfect,' because until today, that game did not exist.
Now it does.
I have never seen a game to so perfectly captures every single thing believe in so well, and integrates it into a package that I cannot help but love. ME has the art direction, the style, the music... everything. And most importantly, it is IMMERSIVE in a way that I have never before seen in a game-- you feel like it's YOU in Faith's head, helping her through her job every second of the way. You are a gestalt with her, a team that is going to make a difference... and boy, doe she need the help.

Ok, enough drooling, back to to work. But you owe it to yourself to watch the trailer.

Gone for now

2008-04-24T10:17:00.002-04:00

Just shaved off my beard. I had it for a bit, and it was indeed interesting... but meh, dunno. I think it's a little overrated. I also now know why they're referred to as 'soup-catchers.' I may go with it again sometime, but for now, back to being clean-shaven and more professional.

What's Really Good

2008-04-19T15:18:00.002-04:00

In the benighted tradition of my High School, I decided to post a brief list of some things that are really good.

- Typing this post on my eee while I download a TF2 map as I connect to the server.
- Unlocking crazier and crazier ships in R-Type Final.
- Not completely panicking about my final papers. (Hah, I can actually do them! Maybe.)
- Watching Meet the Scout this morning before breakfast... ("Hey, you. Yeah you, listen. Me? Kind of a big deal.")

Probably to be continued throughout the day.

Farewell, R-Type

2008-04-15T17:36:00.007-04:00

For the title-linking impaired, pleased to be watching this youtube playlist in its entirety.
I am currently in posession of possibly the most emotionally charged shmup game in history- R-Type Final. The R-Type series, for those of you who don't know it, is a 21-year-running series of side-scrolling shooters where you take on the role of a human pilot fighting the horrible bio-weapon known only as The Bydo. This translates into a large amount of blowing up stuff, followed by boss battles, etc.
Some areas where the R-Type series differs from other shmups, though, are in the continue and weapon systems. Firstly, when you die, you must re-start the level (or go back to a continue point, at least in Final). Secondly, you have something called a Force, which is an indestructible ball that can latch onto the front or back of your fighter, and acquires one of three different shot types- red, blue, or yellow. In addition, you can charge up your fighter's wave cannon to fire a huge death-ray if you forgo shooting for a while.
As you can probably guess, most of the strategy in R-Type games centers around clever use of the Force- ejecting it, manipulating it to fly into enemies and kill them, using it to block projectiles fired at you, et cetera.
Where R-Type Final differs from all previous R-Type games is in the number of ships- 101, to be exact, all with at least three different choices of two different lines of accessories. Some ships can even use more than one Force, opening up the selection even further. Every single ship from every R-Type game ever is present, along with a host of newcomers, all beautifully rendered and with adjustable color schemes. The R-Museum mode is a work of art, letting you zoom in to the point where you can see each individual ship in all its glory, arrayed amongst its fellows in a gigantic family tree. There's commentary for each ship, and as a little easter egg, each ship's inception date is relative to the clock on your PS2- that is, when you unlock a ship, the inception date is shown as X + (some number of years), where X is the current date! If you unlock 10 or so ships in a day, this gets quite humorous ^__^

General: We need more ships to fight the Bydo! What can you give us?
Engineer: Well, we all got horrifically drunk last night and took lots of psychadelics, and came up with this totally awesome new ship! It's got a Wave Cannon that I came up with while I was totally blazed at the carnival in Rio, so I'm going to call it the Carnival Wave Cannon!
[Door bangs open, another engineer rushes in.]
Engineer 2: Never mind! I just came up with an EVEN BETTER ship! Instead of a Wave Cannon, this one has a GIANT SPEAR!
[Door bangs open, again]
Engineer 3: I got one better than both of yours! My ship is even AWESOMER! I took a tank and put a drill on the front, then gave it wings and a tornado cannon! Beat that, punks!
General: ... You what?
Engineer 3: It's called the Kiwi Berry!
General: ... I need a drink.
(Note: These are all actual fighters.)

There is also one thing I forgot to mention- this game, like all R-Type games, is SADISTICALLY hard, even on normal difficulty. It's one of the few games that can actually make me scream fuck-words at the TV, which is quite rare nowadays. Despite that, though, it is still criminally fun to play, and it is nothing if not well-designed-- and it should be, because here's the saddest part-- R-Type Final, like its name suggests, is the last R-Type game ever. There will be no more. Hell, the design team even wrote themselves out of the storyline! (Yes, they wrote themselves into the storyline in the beginning)
But what a swan song this game is... The last three ships you unlock are the Last Dancer, the Curtain Call, and the Grand Finale. These three ships' information texts are as follows-

R-99 “Last Dancer”
[Ultimate Interchangeable Fighter]
There is evidence that it was developed to fill the strategic needs of today.

R-100 “Curtain Call”
[Ultimate Interchangeable Fighter Ver. 2]
The R-99 ended R-fighter development, but this unit was made to transmit the technology to future generations.

R-101 “Grand Finale”
[Ultimate Interchangeable Fighter Ver. 3]
The final fighter. After this, no other R-fighters will ever be developed.
After building this masterpiece, the design group known as TEAM R-TYPE disbanded.
 Farewell, R-Type. We knew you well. Hopefully, someone else will step up to take the crown you left behind.

Level Up!

2008-04-04T13:51:00.003-04:00

Just dinged 21 yesterday. I guess that's all my important birthdays done, then.
In my 21 years on this Earth, what has happened? Wow, I can't even begin to say... But suffice it that I feel more like I'm 21 than I have ever felt like I was my age ever before.
Got to see Johnathan Coulton at the Iron Horse last night, and two guys by the name of "Paul and Storm" opened for him. Oh boy, were they great.
I'm feeling kinda taciturn today, for some reason. At least it waited until today to rain, heh.

Oh yeah, and this blog has now been around for four years! Amazing, isn't it?

__ Or, emoticon post titles are fun.

2008-03-29T15:47:00.002-04:00

In regards to the last post, that asshole actually came and said he was sorry. Victilly!
In other news, Deathfest is coming up... so I'm working madly on characters. It would be easier if I didn't have lots of work to do and a case of writers' block. Multiple essays to do and a high caffeine tolerance are exactly what I DO NOT need right now... but it's what I have. At least I'm going to have an independent study in level design as of next semester! See, I don't actually need to go to one of those fancy, jumped up design colleges... I can do this on my own, dangit, and do it just fine.

-_-;;

2008-03-25T12:24:00.002-04:00

I let my big mouth (read, typing) get ahold of me and wrote an internets rage email to someone... who, it turns out, is a college staff member. Oh well, no law against rage and free speech. I gave him my contact information, so we'll see if he's courageous enough to come yell at me to my face. Drama!

Anime Boston, Part 3.

2008-03-25T12:22:00.002-04:00

Sunday--
Sunday was the big day. I had my plush Tachikoma with me all day, riding on my shoulder, and he was quite popular. Also, I got free art- I had recently purchased a shirt with the Dune mentats' spice mantra on it, except with spice replaced by caffeine. I was kicking around artists' alley, gandering at prints and such, when an artist all but glomped me. She was 'the BIGGEST Dune fan EVER' and absolutely HAD to have the shirt. So I told her where they were selling it (and its compatriot) and that's when she made me an offer I couldn't refuse: Go and get both of them for her, and I would get 6 free postcard-sized prints. Heck yeah! So I did. When I was choosing which ones I wanted, we discovered a common love of shooter games like Gradius, Ikaruga, R-Type and suchlike... an excellent experience, and I found another artist I like! After that, we all ventured into Boston's Chinatown for a late lunch/ early dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, where I got some pho, AKA god's gift to hungry people. We quickly hustled back to the hotel, having already checked out, and I performed yet more geometry to get the van out of the parking garage. And then we were on our way back, only a little late. We arrived back and trucked everything back to our rooms, and then crashed.
Wow, what a weekend. So happy I went.

Anime Boston, Part 2.

2008-03-24T19:29:00.004-04:00

So, Saturday.
Woke up without a stiff back or neck (surprise of surprises) and actually got a shower, what with 9 people in one hotel room. Will wonders never cease? We headed to the convention, and got to walk around the dealers' room and artist alley... One thing people will never really admit to you about cons is that you go for the walking around and the people-watching, really. There actually isn't that much to do at a con, per se. But the moments you have in line, talking with the people behind and in front of you, or chatting with that cute cosplayer of your favorite character, those are what you're there for.
So after walking around for a while, we went and had food, then got in line for the pillows concert. After waiting in an increasingly loud line for quite a bit... we got in! And holy shit of holy shits, I WAS IN THE SECOND ROW! So we sat through Luv & Response (some Japanese quasi-rap act, they were ok) and then came THE PILLOWS! The only way I can describe it is religious. These guys were AWESOME. They opened with High Risk, and it just got more and more awesome from there. When they busted out Blues Drive Monster, people went wild... and Ride on Shooting Star and Little Busters had the ENTIRE AUDITORIUM on their feet, jumping around and screaming. For their encore, they played Funny Bunny... and also, there was an unreleased track from their new album tucked in there somewhere.
I think my hearing is permentantly damaged, but who the hell cares. It was the coolest thing I've done all year.
I'll write up Sunday sometime Later(tm).

Anime Boston, Part 1: @_@

2008-03-24T10:00:00.003-04:00

Wow is the word of the day.
Here I am, back in my room after three days at Anime Boston, my first Anime Convention. When one of my friends asked me if I'd like to go, I was thinking "Oh yeah, a con. I've been to several gaming cons, so I know what's up. That'll be fun. We'll go, hang out, chill, buy cool things, et cetera. Sounds like a great end to the break." Ahehe, NO.
I had to get up at 7:30 on Friday, becasue we were leaving at 9AM so we could get to Boston at around 12, when the lines should have died down. The drive was pleasent enough- I found a new flavor of Monster that I hadn't tried yet.
When we got to the hotel we had a lovely 30 minute adventure with geometry trying to park the van in a VERY cramped underground parking garage... Ford E350s SUCK. We finally got checked in (10 people in a room, lol) and headed off to the con at 1pm or so... And then I proceeded to wait in line for the next 10 hours. No, I'm not kidding. It really was 10 hours.
I FINALLY got registered, and then hung around the late-night panels for a bit before heading back to the room and passing out on the floor.
I have to get to class now, so more Later(tm).

BSG: WTF Edition

2008-03-13T15:57:00.002-04:00

The title links to a summary of seasons 1-3 of Battlestar Galactica, SPOILERS AHOY.
Here's the link again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6yL_tMUDps
...
...
...
Watched it? Good.
Ok, wow. I have just lost ALL respect for that show. People on the Shack were into it when it started, and I pooh-pooh'ed it. I was not ready for another rehash of an old TV show, I said. Recently, I managed to watch most of BSG: Razor with a few of my friends, and was pleasantly surprised by how fun and well-done it was.
Enter this summary video. I already knew the first half of it, but the second half was one solid WTF from start to finish. The shit they pulled... just wow. They took every single last shred of credibility that they EVER had, and threw it away with the stupid bullshit storyline that belongs more in Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time then in a science fiction TV show. Resurrection, fucking with established characters, having characters do things for NO REASON AT ALL, pulling a 'big reveal' that makes less sense than then ending of MGS2... Fuck BSG. I am never watching that show again.

BSOD :(

2008-03-07T14:42:00.000-05:00

There it was, the second BSOD I've gotten on this Windows install. Second one in... several years. I think my motherboard is dying (likely) or my RAM is giving up the ghost (also fairly likely).
Well, I told myself I'd be upgrading for my birthday... it's just a month away now.
Yay me.

Social Commentary, Part whatever

2008-03-04T17:00:00.002-05:00

Hi, kids. I'm your friendly neighborhood IT person. I can fix your computer!
Contrary to popular belief, I am not grossly overweight, nor obnoxious (most of the time). I can actually hold a conversation with anyone without spouting technobabble, and I have *gasp* had a girlfriend!
However- there are some things I do that you might not think about.
I shoulder-surf. It's a natural impulse, I want to see what's going on on the screen. I will not read your AIM conversation, emails, facebook messages, et cetera.... unless you make them SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS that I can't help but see them. And if they're about me, well... I consider it preventative maintenance to read them.
Here's a social tip, folks. Wait until someone's not in the room to bitch about them on Facebook, send a nasty email about them, whatever. CERTAINLY don't do it while they're in the room, and ESPECIALLY not when your screen IS FACING THEM.
Because, y'see, that's just disrespectful. And respect is very important. Because if I do not respect you, it is all too easy for me to make your life a living hell.
All those documents that you needed recovered? Well, that hard drive was unrecoverable... after a conference call with my hammer.
Your passwords? They're mine now.
Your AIM buddy list? Mine.
Your tender emails? Mine.
You chat logs? Mine.
Guess what I'm going to do with all of that?
Yup, I'm going to send it to where it can do the most possible damage to you. And when you log in to where-ever you log into, tomorrow... say your livejournal... you're going to see the results of my handiwork. And it's going to be subtle, too. I will slowly poison your digital life until there's nothing left but sludge.
And you know what the best part is? I'm not stabbing you in the back. I'm stabbing you in the FACE, because I'm telling you that I will do this.

Of course, you'd really have to piss me off to have this happen. How far along are you, do you think?

All you have to do is ask...
Remember, honesty is the best disinfectant.

O SHI-

2008-01-21T17:43:00.000-05:00

Art. Lebedev Studio (an internet-famous group of balls-crazy and ridiculously talented Russian designers) has done it, AGAIN.

First there was the Optimus Maximus. The critics snorted and called it vaporware, the geeks (like myself) drooled in anticipation but were still skeptical, and the designers waxed poetical and starry-eyed.
A year or so late, and at five times the original price, it was finally released... and boy oh boy, was it cool. They also released several other projects and concepts based on the same design in the intervening time, too.
Now they've pulled out THIS monstrosity.

They call it the Optimus Tactus.
It's all one big display, touch-sensitive, TOTALLY configurable.
Ho-lee-shee-it.
The future is HERE, folks. And it's made in Russia...

DSL Woes... (Happy ending)

2008-01-16T00:57:00.000-05:00

Ho-lee-fucking-shit.
So my DSL connection went out about a week ago. Called AT&T, they sent out two techs who messed around with the phone box out in the jungle behind my garage, and fixed it.
Everything is fine for three or four days, just enough for me to get back into EVE, and THEN, everything goes pear-shaped. I call AT&T again, go through the same dumb 'smart' menu system as before, get some techs to come out.
The get here at 6PM, (typical) and proceed to check the box again. The box is fine. So they check the furnace room, (where some mad leprechaun carpentar put our DSL splice) and the cable to the phone box is fine.
"\0_o/" says the tech. So we go and begin the arduous process of tracing every god-damm phone line in the house... which was built sometime in the late 60s, I think, and was retrofitted with a second phone line about 8 or 9 years ago.
So we spend an hour or so tracing the three wires that connect our two phone lines to the phones in the house, one of which goes through three walls, (!) one of which is lying across our roof, (!!) and one of which is simply a winchester mystery wire. That is, it goes nowhere. (!!!)
By this time, the other tech has gotten there, and they both spend the next hour replacing and rewiring all sorts of crap, moving furniture about (with my hepl) and generally tearing the house apart to mke things work.
At 8:10, they leave, having fixed the DSL line... but having gotten QUITE a bit more than we all bargained for. I'll tell you what, these guys deserve every cent of overtime pay they get.
tl;dr- AT&T's tech people fucking rock. I am a damm happy DSL customer.

Presenting...

2008-01-10T21:10:00.000-05:00

My new cat! His name is Captain Spicy, but I think I'll just call him Captain or Cap. He's a brown tabby shorthair, 8 months old, which means he shares my birthday, more or less :)
He's a sweetie, very cuddly, and I think he'll get along just fine with Lily. We'll see in the coming days... he's based in my room for now, until he gets acclimated to me and others. Then we might try introducing the two of them.

Futurist fixation

2008-01-10T18:14:00.000-05:00

An article in today's NY Times grabbed my attention:

"Analyzing the New Hampshire Surprise"
Pollsters and news organizations asked themselves how they failed to foresee Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New Hampshire victory.

Excuse me... but forsee? What day and age are we in where people think that they should be able to look into the future at any given moment and know what's coming? It's called the future for a reason- We CANNOT see into it. We can make a reasonable guess, but at the end of the day, we don't know for sure, and never will.
Pundits and pollsters alike have no reason to accept some kind of onus, there's no fault here. We shouldn't expect predictions to be laser-accurate, only best guesses based on whatever knowledge the predictor has.
Besides, quantum mechanics essentially proves that reading the future will be impossible, anyway. The closest we'll likely ever get is something akin to the 'combat-prediction' algorithms Batou mentions in "After the Long Goodbye".

Time to say goodbye.

2008-01-02T20:03:00.000-05:00

One of my cats, Zorro, just died. He was hit by a car, on the street, very near my house. When I found him he was already dead.
He was a medium-sized, black, shorthair-siamese cross. He had green eyes, and was afraid of people in general... but not me or my family.
We gave him a second chance when we got him- he was really sick, and almost died... but we saved him, and we gave him a taste for chicken, which he always loved.
He slept with me on my bed a lot, and I scratched his stomach and let him get hair all over my polarfleece blanket, which he loved.

We're taking him to the vet for cremation in a bit, and then he'll go on the mantelpiece near my other two cats, who were with me for 17 years, from birth until 3 years ago, when we got him.

I hope his spirit finds happiness in the next world, because it's gonna take a lot to live up to the great life he had.

Completions

2007-12-07T19:07:00.000-05:00

I noticed I only post here about once a month. Better than not at all, I suppose.

I finished watching Berserk today... wow, major WTF. (SPOILERS AHEAD)
I liked the first 20 episodes, and then... blah. The last 5 or so episodes were just a complete mindfuck, bringing back a minor plot element from the 7th or so episode and turning it into the be-all and end-all of important things. Everyone dies in the last episode, everything gets turned on its head, and it ends on a VERY unsatisfying note.

On the other hand, I just started Witch Hunter Robin. I am VERY happy with it so far- even though the art style is a little vague for me, it is aesthetically quite pretty and cohesive, and the plot is detailed and interesting. The characterization is also good, too, insofar as the Japanese mindset seems to be willing to display emotion. Robin-chan <3 ^_^ Very cute in her glasses, I must say.

That was detestably otaku-ish right there, but whatever.
I'm finishing up my classwork this week and next week, and then that's it. Nothing more but christmas between me and the return.
I think I might bleach my hair before I go back... I need the confidence.

Impressive

2007-11-26T16:25:00.000-05:00

I can't stop listening to Imogen Heap's "Speak For Yourself" album. That girl can SING, wow. First album I've really LOVED on first listen... makes me want to check out her stuff as Frou Frou.

Oh yeah, and my UT3 Collector's Edition got here. Anticlimactic, after the UT2004 Collector's Edition being so awesome... the UT3 Collector's Edition was pretty pathetic. But whatever, I'm happy to have it. Time to get fragging!

Took me long enough...

2007-11-11T02:50:00.000-05:00

But I finally finished Bioshock, after starting it on release day and leaving it untouched, 3/4 done, for months. My verdict? Exactly like System Shock 2, including the way it falls head over heels down a staircase and turns absolutely RETARDED near the end. The last 2 hours of that game were the most boring and least fun, just like System Shock 2 (Rickenbacker + BoTM). The ending cinematic was a little cheap, too, for a game I had just sunk quite a few hours into. The thing that bothered me the most was character advancement, though. It felt like I never really progressed at all, despite getting weapons upgrades, plasmids, etc... I never felt a sense of progress. Enemies were still laughable, and the wrench was STILL the best weapon, except against the final boss, who I might add, was piss-easy. Circle-strafe is all it takes, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes.
Oh well. I expected something better, I guess, but right now I'm just glad to be done with it. Too bad I'll never play it again.

Why the Wall Street Journal can be fun.

2007-09-21T13:45:00.001-04:00

It might surprise some of you that I enjoy reading the Wall Street Journal. I enjoy its front-page news summaries and economic speculations, but my favorite part is in the business section. Hidden on the bottom half of a random page, in 9-point font, is the FBI's weekly list of Asset Forfeitures.
What's an Asset Forfeiture? It's what happens when you get arrested by the Federal Government- they take all the stuff that could have possibly been involved with your crime, or purchased with the spoils. The forfeitures are listed by district of state, so it's easy to find out what's been seized in your area lately. My favorite ones are the genuine WTFs. Take this one that I stumbled on a few months ago as an example.

Location: Central District of Florida
Assets seized: 2006 Maserati Quattroporte, 2001 BMW X5, 2003 Suzuki motorcycle (indeterminate model), 6 assorted shotguns in varying illegal capacities, 4 assorted semi-automatic rifles in illegal calibers, 2 IMI Desert Eagles in .44 Magnum. 600,000 dollars in cash, distributed between several safes and mattresses.

The above is an approximation based on my memory of the entry, but I think it's pretty accurate. You also see a lot of things like "40,000 dollars in cash seized from the person and vehicle of *** ***." Somebody flunked a routine traffic stop. These criminals, they're not very smart. They walk around with tens of thousands of dollars in cash on them, they leave their illegal guns in plain sight at their homes, they buy vehicles and luxuries far beyond their means... and then they get caught, and the Feds get it all.
Of course, one can't help but wonder where all this stuff GOES, and the FBI ain't telling. They even say so, right at the bottom of the list, "This property is NOT for sale." I'd pay good money (like I could) for a crack at some of those spoils... Hell, a lot of people would.

Coming Soon!

2007-09-03T16:22:00.000-04:00

Coming Soon (TM) from Widowmaker Games...

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live under the iron fist of an interdimensional occupation force? Have you ever wondered what it's like to be stranded in a dark, hopeless future, a future where humanity may soon disappear forever?

Tales from the Citadel is an attempt to recreate, through music and dialogue, the feelings of City 17 in the aftermath of the Combine invasion.
Tales from the Citadel is your look into this all-too-familiar world- Hear Combine radio chatter as they coordinate to arrest and execute Anticitizens. Hear the mournful songs of a city oppressed: actual recordings taken from public places in City 17. Hear music inspired by the plight of humanity's darkest hour.

Tales from the Citadel- your look into the dystopian future.

Here's a short sample of some of the radio drama pieces, including several of our recurring Combine enforcers- Dagger 15 and Reaper 3.

2007-08-15T17:34:00.000-04:00

Oh god, discussion forums make me sick. I'm not going to link, but I just read a post on some forum entitled "Steve Jobs doesn't care about Mac gamers." And wow, it degenerated fast. Within 20 comments, someone had come up with that timeworn saw "gamers != real people, fuck the couch potatoes who don't have a real life."
If I had a dollar every time that's come up in discussion that I personally have had, I'd be rich and possibly in prison for spending that money on an assault rifle and blowing away every single one of those inbred, narrow-minded, luddite smacktards. But that's neither here nor there.
The real point here is that I cannot believe there are still people like this alive today. How can you use the Internet, let alone all the other conveniences of modern technology, and not realize that gaming has been an integral part of the evolution of technology that we benefit from today? Gaming drives computing hardware- not from the front, but from the side, the grassroots area. What's the first thing that gets written for or installed on your stonking new server? The OS or some critical utility app. What gets written later that night when the graveyard shift sysadmin gets bored? XTank, BZFlag, or a Doom clone. Gaming is the second line that pushes the envelope in the ways that first-line software cannot and will not. No other application type demands the type, quantity and quality of resources like a game- the need for processing power, real-time 3D rendering power, disk space, memory space and bandwidth, all at the exact same time, in great quantity. Nothing can deliver quite the experience that a game does, either. Sound, Light, Motion and Interactivity- Full-immersion VR is really the only further step we can take.
So when I read, hear or see someone disparaging the people who make our modern world possible... I get the urge to dispense some caveman justice to them.
So here's a message to them- My fist, your face. STFU and enjoy your pretty world, a world brought to you by the sweat of those you so casually disparage.

What if...

2007-08-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

The Cool Cam

Simultaneously the most horrifying and touching story I've ever read about game design.

It better stop bullets for that price.

2007-08-10T13:02:00.000-04:00

http://laughingsquid.com/timbuk2-hacker-bag-the-ultimate-vertical-laptop-bag/

So, in the above link, Scott Beale writes about his totally awesome new laptop bag that he got from Timbuk2. He cleverly omits mentioning that it costs 150$. Now, I managed to get my current backpack (some nondescript brown thing from DaKine) for around 60$, and I thought that was a little expensive. That said, I also think that paying 60$ for a pair of jeans is ridiculous, that 15 dollars might be a bit steep for a designer t-shirt, and that 300$ is just right for a video card that will last me a year and a half. So I might have a warped sense of cost versus return.

BUT! This is not what I originally intended to bring your attention to, gentle reader. Waht I wish to point out, is that inside this 150$ bag is residing SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AMERICAN DOLLARS worth of technological gear. That's a 7, a 5, and two zeroes.
For some reason, this makes me vaguely sick. I can't even conceive of spending 2000$ on a PC, let alone a Mac... nor could I ever imagine spending roughly 5000$ on a camera and accessories. I say I'm a consumer whore, but when I say that, I think of obsessively buying every book a particular author writes, or every game a company makes, or pre-ordering games just to get shiny boxes and such. Not this, nothing like this...

In conclusion: Mood- 0_o

End of an era?

2007-06-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

Short but sweet: Today the reign of Justin Wong has come to a messy end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tjbVlnKEjM (Match 1) and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG3OGD1JNDo (Match 2)
show the the devastation wrought by Nestor on "The man with perfect execution." Perfectly executed indeed, but all it brought him was the agony of defeat. Daigo, stand tall. You have been avenged. Justin Wong has lost an EVO.

0_o;; Or, "With Eyes Disbelieving"

2007-06-22T16:54:00.000-04:00

As of this fine day I'm employed by a very nice company in a guild-ish industry, as IT staff. Part of my job is to help the engineers crack open any tough nuts (read: password-secured machines or storage) that come our way. To this end, I was installing some "security tools" on a company laptop that was running Sybantek (name altered so as to finger the guilty) Antivirus, Corporate Edition. As I finished installing Cain and Abel, a VERY fine password-auditing utility (see title link), Sybantek popped up a warning- "The following items are harmful to your computer and have been quarantined." Of course, the offending item is non other than cain.exe, the main program that I just finished installing. So, I head to the Sybantek control panel to un-quarantine the file. When I get there though, I find that "The original directory that this file was located in cannot be found." WTF? I look, and sure enough, the ENTIRE directory that I installed to is GONE. Flat-out gone. I hope there was nothing important in there. What if I had installed Cain to "My Documents"? Would it have erased or quarantined the ENTIRE folder? It took me three reinstalls of Cain and four trips to the exclusions window of Sybantek before I could get it to ignore Cain and go on about its usual business- clogging up the system. It's ridiculous, Cain isn't even a virus, nor is it malware. Instead, Sybantek freaks out because "it could be potentially harmful." Excuse me, antivirus definition writers. A program does not deserve to be treated as a threat if it requires willful human intervention to do a task that is constructively applicable to system security.
For the record, it treated John the Ripper like this too, but not Nmap. Not only are these definition writers paranoid, they're sloppy. If you ranking John and Cain as dangerous, Nmap is even more so.
People ask me why I stick to my copy of Norton Antivirus 2003... This should be more than enough proof as to why. It may be old, but at least it doesn't try to Big-Brother my software installations.

Moonstruck

2007-04-20T18:29:00.000-04:00

Well.... for the zero people who read this- I've embarked on the groundwork for my first game. I'll throw in a very rough Photoshop mockup of the HUD, becasue I just finished it today. Maybe a logo design later.

Revel in the glory that is your newfound knowledge, insect. Revel, for your existence will soon end.

Coinned

2007-04-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

I'm coining a word- Cewebrity. Allows youto seem both plugged in and impudent in the same breath. Used to describe internet celebrities, like justin.tv. Bugger Justin. It's a dumb idea, just like American Idol.... and predictably, because people are stupid, it works.

Darkness Dawning

2007-01-03T10:14:00.000-05:00

I'm back. And it's Jan Term. Expect dark days ahead.

Guy Fawkes Day

2006-11-05T14:20:00.000-05:00

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot,
I see of no reason why the fifth of November
Should ever be forgot.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! Don't forget to burn the guy!

Space Filler

2006-10-26T12:55:00.000-04:00

Knocking old posts off. Move along, nothing to see here.

HAVE YOU SEEN HIM??!?!?

2006-10-25T08:20:00.000-04:00

Lost Hamp ID
I lost my Hampshire ID somewhere between Saga and Dakin they name would be Isabel Amador. e-mail ifa06@hampshire.edu or call ext. 4779

HAVE YOU SEEN MY FROG? HIM NAME HOPKIN GREEN FROG.
SOMEONE
I LOST MY FROG
HAVE YOU SEEN MY FROG?

Plus ca change...

2006-05-17T19:04:00.000-04:00

Some things never change. That makes me happy, in a sick, twisted way. I loaded up Tribes 2 for the first time in a long while, and started getting back in the groove. I was doing my thing, sniping away to improve the ol' reaction times, and I make a headshot on some dumbass standing around. Suddenly, BAM, Admin warning. Of course, I am confused. What did I do wrong? "o sniping" is the response. What's that? Offensive, sniping, of course! In my 9 years of playing Tribes games, I have never heard of sniping on the offense to be prohibited. I ask again what I'm guilty of, intending to start a legitimate conversation. No, I am correct in what I just thought. Apparently, the proper place for a man-portable sniper rifle is in the base, trying to hit targets travelling at around .1C that are shooting back. Riiight. I mention that in 9 years, I've never heard of such a rule. I am immediately met with vigorous hostility and declamations that I am an "ignorant ass" and that offensive sniping is to devil worship as boning sheep is to lonely kiwis, etc, etc. I mention that since the weapon is in the game, isn't a bit silly to try to codify when it can and cannot be used? More hostility. As a last resort, I offer to let them show me where it says I can't offensively snipe- sever rules, competition rules, etc. I am promptly booted from the server.
Some things never change- the online gaming world is still full of slack-jawed scrubs who are never going to learn to play the game, except by their own little set of "rules" that makes sure than any tactic they couldn't come up with is banned.
And I will remain a faithful devotee of trying to have a legitimate, calm argument with these people, in the face of all their opposition.
That's me- dragging scrubs to water, but I can't make 'em think.

Musings

2006-04-19T01:22:00.000-04:00

Just occurred to me, while animating, how much I miss having a second monitor. More is definitely better when it comes to animation, multitasking, gaming, paying attention to the important things, monitoring torrents... everything. Two monitors makes me more productive for the simple reason that I can get what I need, (exactly) when I need it. You might think it strange that I'd be too lazy to open thunderbird to check my mail, but realize this- every step I have to perform is one step that pulls time away from what I'm actually doing, breaking my flow. Every step is another excuse not to do something, which is why I endeavour to make everything I do a simple or entertaining as possible.
I multitask... it's impossible not to, with a personality like mine. I get ideas, half-formed things that flit through my head at the speed of thought, and if I don't grab them and act on them then and there, they fly away, never to be seen again.
That's why.

Speedycat

2006-04-08T15:03:00.000-04:00

MxO shots up here. Look, enjoy, marvel, await more or decide that it sucks.