April 2006

Catchy tune, great video, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are showing their long term relevance like few bands seem to be able to do these days . I enjoyed this song so much when I first heard it that I went to iTunes to purchase a copy, but sadly, my account info was garbled from a recent hard drive crash, so I didn’t buy it. I am oddly glad of this though, as it seems that this great song is destined to be overplayed on EVERY station I listen to, to the point where I will likely hate it before the full album is released May 9th. Hopefully the rest of the double album will live up to this single, yet somehow not get turned into jingles and get the Phil Collins era radio saturation that can ruin even the best album.

I love a good gyro, and I love Arby’s fast food, but damn, their new gyro is just not good. I am sure that there were some skinny people in California that used words like fabulous or delightful to describe it in taste testing, but they were wrong. It is none of these. Now, the cheese filled potato things with bacon chunks were GREAT, but I would probably enjoy cheese filled cat turds with that much bacon mixed in. Can’t understand how a place that gets so much on there menu so right could drop the ball on a gyro!

For some reason, I like this song. Could be because of the huge “wife approved” crush I have on Keira Knightly, another chick from the UK (though that is about all they have in common). You can find more info on her website, itunes, or whatever on your own.

As an added bonus, follow the link for more Masterchief musical mayhem!
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Living in a world that constantly occupies and stimulates our minds
with color, sound, action, motion, etc. it occurs to me that many of
the truly obvious things in life are not being captured, stored in
our organic, transitory brains (What *does* happen after the brain
decomposes?? Where do the stored memories and abilities go?? I’ll
address that in a future thread). There are so many obvious truths that
have been learned, discovered, realized by CT members that is seems a
shame to let them go to waste into the thoughtless void of oblivion.

Which is why I am starting this series of ‘obvious’ articles. Given
my preferences, I’ll start with obvious movie facts. Mind you, these
are not opinions; these are facts which have been backed by the combined
might of the human mind and endeavour. If you haven’t heard of them yet,
then you are the perfect subject for the ‘…for Dummies’ series.

Since these articles may be full of spoilers, I will give fair warning of the
spoilers to come. Let’s start with the very popular “Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” If you have not seen it yet, it is now
available on DVD. Purchase the 2-disc set and avoid the movie-only set. You
will be very pleased.

[spoilers follow]
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The marketing people at Gamefly probably are trying to figure out how to send me a check for that one, but anonymity is far too important for an ass like me to give up contact info on a public forum. Instead, I would ask that they donate the money to a young aspiring nurse, cuz the world needs more nurses. I suggest going to a local strip club, cuz I met a bunch of ladies there who were going to college to be nurses, naughty, sparkly nurses.

If you own an XBOX 360, with the exception of Call of Duty 2 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I haven’t found a single other came that required more than a few days of my time to be finished with them. In the 3 weeks I had Oblivion with Gamefly I saved an assload of cash (though I am sure I will buy a used copy some day to play it again). For all the other games I got on Gamefly, there was not a single one that had any replay value in my opinion. Most of them I would have actually been quite mad about if I had purchased them at full price. Before Gamefly I researched purchases quite a bit, and was much more cautious with the games I tried, so on the plus side I guess, I tried some games that I would not have considered otherwise, and, of course, they sucked.

This is leads me to what really what makes Gamefly rock. See, most reviewers are soulless whores of the gaming industry. Then only decent reviews I have read in quite a while were at Penny-Arcade, while reading their comics. Seriously, their comics are one of the only sources of decent game reviews I have found, which is kind of like watching the daily show for news. For some reason, the idiots at all the major game sites figure you won?t remember the steaming pile of crap that they gave an 8.5 out of 10 to when you are reading their next ?review?.

The bottom line with Gamefly is that it saves a ton of cash. For $15 a month, I avoid buying $60 games. Simple math is that in 4 months I have spent what it would have cost for a single game, but I played 10 of them, which would have put me back $600. I would have played fewer games if some of them had been a bit better, but that hardly makes the service less compelling. The only ?downside? of Gamefly is that it is a bit slower than NetFlix, but then I live like 40 miles from a regional NetFlix center, so I usually have single day shipment from them (yes, I send a movie on Monday, it gets to them Tuesday, and I get my next one on Wednesday, which is pretty cool).

In the extended entry (if it works) are some mini-reviews from some of the games I played from Gamefly (not all were for the 360, but I need to fill in between their release schedule):
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Finally picked this up, and am just getting the hang of it. For a more detailed review by far better gamers than I (Masterchief and Zbalance) read these comments. Haven’t had much time to play, but was disappointed with the lack of online help and the pamphlet of a manual. Yes, I’m one of those geeks who reads the manual before he does something.

Coming from WOW, I’m used to automated updates and tons of UI mods. Oblivion has many content mods built with their construction set, but very few UI mods. No nifty Lua scripting engine to make UI tweaks easy. Another interesting file type available, surprising because it’s been forever since I’ve played “adventure games”, are saved games! One useful one puts you right after the tutorial (with all possible loot) and right before you choose your final stats. I’m also used to many dedicated strategy sites, including a few professional ones. There are far fewer for Oblivion, and IGN has decided to charge a subscription for their guide. Booooo! Anyway, I found some useful links that I thought I’d post. If you have more, please let everyone know by commenting. Thanks!

Oblivion Character Creation Tips
Lockpicking Made Easy!
The Alchemy FAQ

I could really use a guide on magic. And a game that didn’t hang when you switched to window-mode.

Edit: The game now crashes my system, apparently due to some video driver or performance issue (and I have a decent card: Radeon X800 Pro). I recommend others hold off until a general bugfix patch is released.

My latest work “Thing-Kinda-Thing” is up on http://www.myspace.com/zerobalance if you’re bored.

So,…
I cried while writing this song.
True story.
It happened last Wednesday while writing the lead guitar solo. (at the end, during the song’s fade-out.)
I’m not talking about Waa Boo Hoo bawlin’ here. But I DID shed a tear in my right eye.
It’s the equivelant of watching your children on the playground and suddenly it hits you…”Wow, those are my beautiful kids (notes) right there on the swings. They came from ME!”
Although it’s the first time it’s happened during one of my OWN songs, it’s not the first time it’s happened at all.

One particular moment it occurs is during a melody from the movie The Good The Bad and The Ugly. It’s when the “Ugly” fellow first stumbles upon the graveyard.
It’s called “Ecstacy of Gold” by film composer Ennio Morricone, if anyone wants to check it out.
Anyway, there is something about certain rare songs, the way the notes fit JUST right, that turns me into an emotional little girl inside.

So my question is:

Does this happen to anyone else? With music or any other artform?
I don’t understand the reason for the feeling.
It’s pretty pointless…

A couple years ago I attended the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive and Film festivals, and they were a blast. Austin is a cool city, and everyone at the conference is really friendly. I don’t know if it’s because everyone is happy to be there, or they’re playing it safe in case you’re someone who can get them a job or financing.
     Well, I didn’t make it this year, but they have posted videos and podcasts of the events. Notable videos feature Craig Newmark (craigslist), Henry Rollins, Sleater Kinney, The New Pornographers (I just saw these guys open for Belle and Sebastian - good band), Harry Knowles (Ain’t it Cool News), Peter Bart (ed. in chief of Variety), and many more. The podcasts cover the moderated discussions and have more of a techie/business slant. It includes people like cybepunk author Bruce Sterling (who gives really cool “State of the World” rants), and reps from companies such as Six Apart (they make Movable Type, which runs this blog), Zimbra, Adaptive Path, Yahoo!, 37Signals, frogdesign (they design cool Apple gear), and others. If you don’t recognize those companies, they’re pioneers in stuff like AJAX, which is used in really slick web apps like Google Maps and Gmail. I still wish I could have gone, but this eases the pain a bit.

It has recently occurred to me that I have forgotten enough about World of Warcraft (WOW) that I am probably at the point of no return. In other words, the time I’d have to spend remembering how to play the game, customize the interface, optimize my character, etc., feels like more effort than its worth. So I’ve been thinking about finding a new game to waste time on. As a couple people have pointed out, Elder Scrolls Oblivion is out, but I’m not sure I’d like the play style. Since there’s no demo available, I’ll pass. (I’m guessing that a game that takes up 4.6GB of hard drive space can’t be easily shrunk to demo size.) In reading the description, they are really after casual WOW gamers, as they list short challenges as a primary selling point; big challenges (that require 5-40 of your friends to be online and up for the same challenge) is one of the biggest complaints about WOW.
     So I was pretty happy to hear that they are making Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2). I was a little worried when I read that they’re using the same game engine as NWN (Aurora). But the full truth is that Bioware is just providing Aurora to Obsidian, who is modifying it significantly and has renamed it Electron. Yes, that means Bioware is not actually developing NWN2, just helping a little.

The Good:
+ Follows D&D 3.5 rules
+ All races and classes from NWN, plus new ones like Duergar, Drow, Aasimar, Tiefling, Wild Elves and others that aren’t as cool (meaning evil).
+ All classes and prestige classes, plus new ones like Arcane Trickster (rogue plus wizard/sorcerer)
+ Improved graphics based on DirectX 9 and Pixel Shader 3; old game engine != old graphics

The Bad:
- No epic levels, at least to start with; cap at 20 again
- No psionics, unless you’re an illithid. And you can’t play an illithid. Boo!
- No mounts, gotta run everywhere on foot, just like in real life. Because horses weren’t invented back then… Boo!

So overall, pretty cool, except it’s not due until 9/1, according to EB. That means I’ll have to find another game, or stay productive until September. I’m pretty I sure won’t make it that long.

P.S. I got most of this info from the Wikipedia entry.