What are they THINKING?

For all I love my little Netflix Player box, it does have some drawbacks. For instance, discs you receive in the mail have a link on the website to report problems, while no such mechanism exists for streamed movies (a lack I noticed when trying to check out Shinbone Alley, a cartoon from the early '70s... somehow, they managed to get some "making of" material where the movie should have been). The biggest drawback, though, is that streamed content has to be made available through a licensing agreement with the owner/publisher... normally, that just means that the latest and greatest isn't available online, and, sometimes, content that was available gets pulled back (so if I feel a sudden urge to watch, say, Clan of the Cave Bear ,or Amadeus, I'll have to go to disc for now).

So, it's a pleasant surprise that the current season of Heroes is available as we speak (I gather they release each new episode on Tuesday). In exchange... season 1 of Heroes (which I had in queue for eventual perusal) is scheduled to go offline tomorrow. Never mind that it's the third most popular thing they've had available for the past three months, and second for all time... as of tomorrow, I'll have to schlep discs if I want to start the series. I suppose it's marginally possible that it's some capacity problem at Netflix, but it sure smells like something cooked up by the publisher to me (maybe they're getting ready to release a "collector's edition" of season 1?). Oh well... hopefully, it'll come back one of these days... and hopefully, I won't get a series yanked on me when I'm part-way through.

UPDATE: Season 1 is back, as of 04OCT08... except for episode 3. I watched the first two, and it looks like fun... so I guess I'll just have to find episode 3 online on the computer screen before I revert to the comfort of my living room for the rest. Again... what are they thinking?

At long last, my very own robot

I finally broke down and did it... Big Lots advertised a Roomba for less than $100, so I snagged one. I spent a fair part of today, erm, "testing" it around the house... for those of you thinking about getting one yourself:

• Uncarpeted floors are not its strength... it did a fair job getting the bigger bits up, but left a fair bit of dust behind.
• Regular-pile carpets and open rooms are its strength... at least, it did as good of a job as any amount of vacuuming I would be willing to perform on a semi-regular basis.
• Cluttered rooms and longer-pile carpets tend to take longer... in my case, the brushes actually bound up on cat hair before it considered itself "done", but it still did a more-than-passable job.

As an added bonus, it's somewhat quieter than a normal vacuum cleaner... which, among other things, means that cats won't necessarily run as soon as it turns on. The braver of mine was actually doing the "wading birds at the shoreline" bit with it... you know, "I could probably take it, I'll just stalk it a little... oh hell, it's coming right for me", that sort of thing. A little cheap entertainment plus some fire-and-forget cleaning, I'm calling it a good buy... :)

Presidential Debate #1 in the books

UPDATE: If you're interested enough in the debates to read the following post, might I suggest first taking a look at Statler and Waldorf's take? :)

In years past, I've pretty much steered clear of election-year debates, since I could glean enough of the character of candidates through other means to make a worthwhile decision. This time around, between surrogate talking heads and more-questionable-than-usual ads, and with the whole "economic crisis" fun in play, I figured it might be worth a look. It was much as I expected, including, sadly, both candidates' inability to stay on the question put to them by the moderator. Some of the bits I found worthwhile include:

• Happily, Obama's not dead-set against nuclear power.
• Sadly, McCain does seem to be focused hard on Iraq these days, to the detriment of other problem areas in the world (like Afghanistan)... in spite of his self-touted years of international crisis experience.
• While Obama's willing to say outright that he'd take on targets within Pakistan if need be, McCain just can't make that leap of... honesty? I mean, yes, it's good strategy to stay mum about your intentions, then spank the enemy when they're not looking... but the flip side of that coin is announcing your intentions, then not following through fully, if at all. In this case, what would Pakistan do... move more troops to the area in question to defend against an attack, and possibly catch raiders headed into Afghanistan before they caused problems, or on their way back... or openly support the Taliban? Either would be an improvement, of sorts, over "yes, we'll take your money to fight the Taliban, then not do so" (and yes, I know, this is an oversimplification, and there is public opinion among Pakistan's people to consider (what there is left after supporting Musharraf for so long, at any rate), but looking at different angles to solve problems in times of trouble isn't necessarily a Bad Thing).
• On the behavior/body language front, the moderator tried to get the debaters looking and talking to each other... and, after some obvious reluctance, Obama gave it a go, while McCain seemed dead set on not acknowledging Obama's presence any more than necessary. At the end, Obama headed for McCain for the obligatory post-debate handshake and congratulations... while McCain circled around his podium the other way and made a beeline for the moderator. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that on what level... but it doesn't make me think of McCain as being more likely to "reach across the aisle" to the other party if he gets the top job.

Beyond that, just a few notes about the presentation of the debate... since I'm all over-the-air-digital these days, I picked the station with the strongest signal at my house to watch the fun... which, in this case, was the local PBS station. I'm sure the actual debate would have been quite similar to watch over any station... but the commentary after-the-fact was quite different. I know this because I switched between PBS and CBS a couple of times during that time period. PBS... well, there's no "polite" way to put this, but their news types are universally "funny-looking" compared to their corporate counterparts... what combination of people with a drive for journalistic excellence shunning the corporations versus corporations weeding out non-beautiful-people types produces this effect, I don't know. What I do know is that I'll take those funny-looking people talking seemingly honestly with each other based on their past experience over the pretty talking heads employed by the networks and parties (and their surrogates) any day... heck, CBS even used part of their after-show to go to "Spin Alley", where they give more air time to hacks for the two parties... because that's what they really need for free these days, right?

So, it wasn't a total waste of time, I suppose... I guess I'll have to see about tuning in next week to see the matchup between Caribou Barbie and the Combover from Hell... :)

No, Sweeney was a murderer, not an usurer

Boy, it seems like I've got nothing but complaints lately... but I never tire of ridiculing TicketsWest, so what the heck.

I got a flier in the mail today for upcoming events at the Fox Theater (and no, I won't refer to it by its new "paid" name), including a production of Sweeney Todd, a piece I have some fondness for. However, I'm a cheap bastard, and the minimum listed ticket price of $32 gives me some pause. Just for fun, I check out the website... and the minimum price there is $30, a pleasant surprise. However, the act of selecting the ticket you want takes you off to a TicketsWest website, where $6 in unspecified and unnamed fees are added to the line item for the ticket... after which a $3 "order fee" is added to the total order. There's also a spot for a "delivery fee", if you want to actually get the tickets you ordered for the order fee I suppose.

Last time I looked at a ticket through TicketsWest, they were only trying to double-dip on the fees, and they at least had the minimal honesty to state what all the fees were for... and I still went around them and bought directly from the Symphony, in that case. I'm sure as hell not going to tack on a third again the price of a ticket to line their pockets with yet more, unspecified fees, no matter how tempting the show. I wonder if there's a feedback link on the theater website...

Sales Weasels

There are certain types of people I simply dislike... more often than not because they give no weight to the concerns of anybody beyond themselves. In my experience, people in Sales are much more likely to fall into that group. Just to illustrate, let me tell you about a chance encounter at a local mall.

I was at the mall for lunch, and to see if I could track down a key kiosk that I had used long ago... so, while I'm strolling along with more purpose in my gait than usual, a comely young lass in a mobile phone kiosk calls out to me, asking about the shirt I'm wearing (the "Danger, may geek out with no warning" shirt, for those that have seen it), then asks where I got it... then asks about my mobile phone, and my land line, and starts into a sales pitch for her phone. I politely decline, and... she instantly transforms, her eyes going dead, obvioiusly having mentally dismissed me on the spot.

Now, a more experienced sales weasel might have made a more nuanced exit, on the theory that I might come back after thinking about the offer a bit, or might mention the pleasant weasel I met at the mall to one of my friends or coworkers... but in that single instant, the young lady in question illustrated one of two things. Either she had a genuine interest in the shirt and, having found out what she needed, had no further use for polite conversation, so segued directly into sales banter... or she had no interest in the shirt, and started out on the topic as a sales gambit from the beginning. In either case, my reasons for being in the mall were irrelevant to her desire to make a buck, never mind that I had given no sign that I was looking for anything resembling a phone, never mind that I was hurrying along looking for something not in her kiosk.

I know, it seems like a petty thing to be complaining about to the world at large in a blog... but it's one of those petty evils that, left unchecked, could grow into a much bigger evil, like Amway or used car sales... :)

Fun, annoyance, and downright stupidity

Just three quick observances:

• This be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, for you lubbers not in the ken (link)
• I thought I had the delivery schedules of shippers arriving at my house down pretty well... but I forgot how far down the economy's gone, so shippers are light on work, so FedEx arrived early, while I was still out at the office. No biggie, since they do home delivery Saturday too... but I figured I'd head down to the depot (which is maybe two miles from my house) and pick up there while I was out and about... but that depot doesn't handle home deliveries anymore, so they were on the phone for 10-15 minutes with whoever does handle home delivery, wherever that is... long story short, easier to have it dropped by tomorrow.
• While the nice FedEx person was on the phone with her counterpart, I looked at the counter, where there was one of those pen-on-a-chain things for signing... except it was no ordinary pen on a chain. Rather, it's an antimicrobial pen on a chain. Do you mean to say that you routinely have such nasty customers come in to fetch packages that you're afraid of them spreading their nastiness to your customers and employees through the pen they use? Somebody at FedEx corporate needs to get a grip, methinks... harr...
  

Curiosity is a terrible thing...

I don't know what possessed me to go looking... but, after a little conversation last night, I wondered whether anybody had taken on hamsters in Spore yet... and not only is the answer yes, but one in particular looked oddly "cute"... turns out the creator made it for a machinima paying homage to various internet "memes", including the dreaded "Hamster Dance". Take a look at the silliness here.

Spore - in brief and with broad strokes

Somebody mentioned to me that they were wondering whether Spore was worth picking up, but they couldn't find a review that wasn't overwhelmingly about the "digital rights/restrictions management" (DRM) that Spore uses. Now that I've run two distinct races from cell stage into the space stage (that's my Foosbeast from late civilization days to the left), I think I know enough to give a review a shot.

So, let's get the distasteful bits out of the way right off... first, it's distributed by Electronic Arts (EA). I'm pretty sure that this is the first game I've purchased from them since the days of Ultima Online, when I swore off EA after seeing how shabbily they treated some military members in their test programs. Not that keeping away from EA has been all that hard... the company that started out as a gathering of game programmers that pursued unique and entertaining ideas (Starflight comes to mind) has devolved into a corporation that is loathe to take on any risk, content instead to crank out endless revamps of sports titles and Sims properties. If this game had been proposed by anybody other than the original creator of all the SimMadness, EA wouldn't have touched it with a 10' pole.

But EA did take on the game... however, being the consumer-fearing types that they are, they have locked down the game as rigidly as they dare (they were going to be even more draconian, but community outrage made them scale back... but that's a story for another time). The current DRM scheme makes you register an account with the central office and tie your copy of the game to that account... it's a minor annoyance that's offset by allowing you access to the many creations that people are constantly coming up with, so, in and of itself, it's tolerable. One interesting side effect that doesn't affect me, but that you might care about... apparently, this linking of account to game means that you can only have one account for your registered game, even though the printed manual says otherwise (EA, if I recall properly, is calling it a "misprint"). If you want to have your batch of critters, and your roommate/SO wants their own corral, you'll have to buy another copy, as things stand right now.

OK, with that out of the way, let's get to the game... or rather, let's get to the toy. If you go into Spore thinking it's going to be five great games all rolled into one, you're going to be sadly disappointed. The best way I can think of to describe the whole is a couple of 'casual' games to help you with the creative process for your creatures, a couple of forgettable 'real-time strategy' (RTS) games to give you an excuse to play dress-up with your creatures and build some cars and houses for them (in all fairness, I'm no fan of RTS, so keep that in mind when we get there), and a HUGE space-exploration game to round out the whole. As much as anything, the first four games act as tutorials for later games... except that some of the rules/controls of earlier games change radically, so not so much.

Taking things in order, the game begins with the "cell" phase. Gameplay is simplicity itself... float around a 'flat' world, eat what you like eating, and don't get killed too often. As beasties die in the tidepool around you, sometimes they leave behind useful traits that you don't possess yet... snag those, and use some of the "genetic diversity" you've consumed to add/remove bits from your blobbie (as a side note, I can't help but think of Primordial Soup when I play this stage). The more you eat, the more you grow... get big enough, and you can plop some legs on your blobbie and head for land. Personally, I found the mouse to be the simplest control to use for this stage, but your mileage, as always, may vary.

Once on land, you're in the "creature" phase. Your view switches to 3D, but you're still basically running around in a mostly-flat world (you can jump and glide, but there's no "true" flight that I've seen so far). Collect traits to add to your critter from skeletal remains, creatures that you kill, or from befriending other creatures. Combat is very MMO (for better or worse, depending on your point of view), while "socializing" is a weak flavor of Simon Says... and your success at both depends greatly on what parts you've attached to your critter. As you deal with more and more of the surrounding wildlife, your brain grows and grows, until you finally become (at least minimally) sentient. For controls, you can use the mouse to point and click your way... but I found using the WASD keys for running around to be very helpful.

With the discovery of fire (and side note time... there are some very cute cutscenes starring your critters in their current form between stages), you enter the "tribal" phase. Once you have reached this phase, your physical form is locked down, and has little bearing on gameplay from this point forward. Instead, you now get to deal with clothing your critters for style or gameplay advantage... as well as a couple basic technologies to outfit your people with. Your basic currency is food, used to feed your people (duh!), gift to other tribes (right...), and build more people and tool shacks (???). As more creatures evolve to sentience, you need to either make them your allies or exterminate them to gather their technologies and advance. Since you have no "direct" control over any of your people, you're pretty well stuck with using the mouse to control them... although you can use WASD for some basic camera controls, which I found useful.

With all the lesser races subjugated (it's odd... even if you "ally" other tribes, you never seem to see them again...), your people reign supreme... and it's time for the "civilization" phase (side note time again... for all its simplicity, this is probably my favorite cutscene of them all). Clothing no longer has any substantial effect on things... because you're all to civilized to get your hands dirty fighting each other in person. Now, it's time for cars, boats, and (eventually) planes to rule the day... and, you guessed it, how they're outfitted affects their "worth". No need to worry about tracking down all those parts or anything, though... they're all right there for you to use from the get-go. Instead of food, cash is king... used to build vehicles and buildings of your own design (the insanity's reined in a bit here... there are only 4 major types of buildings to build or import, and their design is purely cosmetic). Use economic, religious, or military means to bring the other cities over to your way of thinking, uniting the planet under your rule... and you'll be ready for space. Controls are pretty much identical to the tribal stage.

One thing I glossed over from those prior four stages... how you get past them matters as much as getting past them, because the choices you make strongly influence how the rest of the game plays out. Each stage has three "bands" of "what you're trending towards", usually as two "rail" cases and one you have to work to accomplish. For example, in the cell phase, you start out with either a carnivorous mouth or a filter-feeder (herbivorous) mouth... you can easily eat your way to either extreme, but you have to carefully balance things if you want to raise an omnivore for the creature phase... and I tried it out, little Rhoddy will, in fact, puke if he tries to eat fruit. It's nice that there's an extended influence for your behaviors... but the influence is strong enough that you have to fight hard to overcome it (e.g. as a carnivore, you have to kill to eat... if you kill too many of one nest of critters, you're headed down the path of aggression whether you like it or not. I don't think it's impossible to work all the way back up to loved by enough people to pass by that route, but it sure wouldn't be easy.).

So, that leaves the space game. Early reports said that this was going to be a 4x style game, but it just ain't so. Yes, you can (and will) explore and expand. However, you are not playing the "grand emperor" of your empire in this stage... rather, you are the captain of your ship, period. As you advance, you can add more ships to your armada, but your focus is irrevocably fixed on your current position, your current situation. You can spend on building up colonies and terraforming planets, but only the one your at, if you're close enough to the action and are so inclined to notice. Luckily, you're not responsible for building anything more complex than the cities you built in the civilization phase, or you would quickly go mad trying to keep track of it all.

As is, you could still have some problems keeping track of it all... you go from flying around on planetary surfaces (I found WASD with mouse wheel for altitude works for me) to zooming out to a solar system view (using your mouse to investigate/fly to different planets) to zooming further out to a galaxy view (similar controls to solar system). The galaxy view's probably the "worst" of the lot, because of the sheer number of stars to deal with, and the fact that, while it's a "disc" galaxy, there is some significant thickness to that disc, so two stars can look to be next to each other, while one is much "deeper" than the other in your screen. Personally, I like the look... but it could be just a bit disorienting for somebody who's been coddled along by the prior four games.

So, that's the game... except it's not. Clever monkeys that they are, EA or Maxis included some other features to draw you in... access to all the builders (so you don't have to play the games if you just want to build something), a "social" page on their servers to keep track of your friends and what your creations have done in other peoples' games (and to look up creators to snag other bits from them if you found something you liked earlier), and a "badge" system that gives you little rewards for meeting certain conditions in your game(s), for all the obsessive-compulsives out there. There may be even more, but that's plenty.

Overall, I'm liking my new toy, and expect to get hours of enjoyment from it... especially since they did such a nice job with the behavior/motion modeling on the critters. I wouldn't use this to introduce anybody to computer gaming, certainly, but, especially for builder-types, I think you could do far worse for $50.

What's this? OVERSIGHT on mobile communications?

I don't do texting... and it's not just because I'm some crotchety old fart, either. My phone supports texting, but I have it locked down to where I only receive messages from my phone provider... because texting is absurdly expensive. Even back at 10 cents a text (I didn't know general prices had gone up until just now), the rate, compared even to still-too-pricey data transmission rates, was so much higher that I couldn't see how it could be justified on technical terms. Now, I gather, the cost of texts is closer to 20 cents per... whatever the market will bear, I guess.

The funny thing is, if the cellular providers had just stuck with 10 cents, they might not have drawn the attention of one of Wisconsin's senators (link). Now, he's asking the major carriers to send him their justifications, by October 6th, of how the price on texts needs to double, in spite of all the network improvements they've been touting recently... oh, and include comparisons to your per-minute voice and per-kilobyte data charges, while you're at it. Mind you, the timing's a bit suspicious... I don't know if his seat is up for election this cycle, but a month or so of "I'm defending you against the big, bad telecoms" could do wonders for a re-election campaign... however, it could also be the beginning of something good, from a consumer point of view. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

Spore's out!

...so far, it's shaping up as a fine toy for me. Note the profile image change over on the right... that's little Rhoddy, as we enter the Tribal stage (note the gold nose rings and other accoutrements that say he's a real, thinking predator now... :)). It's just about time to go wreak havoc on some other settlements for the clan... and you can join in the fun, if you have about $50 to spend, and either a relatively recent Windows machine or a "real" Intel Mac (unfortunately, my Mac Mini doesn't count, because of its bargain-basement integrated graphics chip... although the same chip's supposedly OK for the Windows version... what's up with that?).

The only problem I've run across so far is unlikely to affect most... Spore complains about my dual-graphics-card setup, telling me that my drivers are out of date... even though I just updated them from the manufacturer's website last night, so it's likely a bug in their detection routines. It's a minor annoyance, all in all... besides, it gives me something to play while waiting for Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball... :)

Video Pick: Last Exile

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my Roku Netflix box? This series is a prime example as to why... rather than clutter up my DVD queue with a 7 DVD set, I put it in my instant queue and watched the 26 half-hour episodes one by one, at my leisure.

At any rate, the series... well, it's anime, so take that how you will. The setting is pretty interesting... two nations at war (think pre-Napoleonic concepts of the "proper" way to war) under the watchful eye of a Guild that controls the skies, with steampunkish technology the norm... except for flight, where the technology supports, literally, flying battleships. It's an interesting backdrop for the intertwining stories of the characters... while there are several, the main focus is on a young, dirt-poor pair of couriers-for-hire that get swept up in the events as they unfold, touching on the various strata of society as they go. The story is a bit convoluted, but that's to be expected, given the scope it covers.

Another thing I like about this production is the use of technology. Both 2D (hand-drawn) and 3D (computer generated) animation are used, but they co-exist much more smoothly than in any other animated feature I've seen to date. To be honest, I didn't realize that there was any 3D used until I saw the credits early on... I can only hope that future projects use the technology as well as this one.

Of course, it's not a perfect show by any means... in particular, the ending is just a bit too tidy for my tastes... but it's a fun ride while it lasts. Give it a shot, if anime works for you.

Movie o' the day: The Dark Knight

Normally, I don't bother writing about movies unless I really like or (rarely) dislike them. This movie... well, I liked it well enough, but, frankly, I was underwhelmed. Between a Batman in need of a good gargle, a Scarecrow cameo that doesn't even begin to live up to what the character's capable of, and a grisly Two-Face that dies too soon and too privately (I'll come back to this later), the front-line supporting cast is pretty forgettable. Combined with "toyetic" tools for the Bat (a sticky bomblet shooter? An emergency-escape motorcycle in the Batmobile?), all the makings of a dreadful movie are in play.

Enter the Joker. I don't know why, but, every time a new Joker rendition comes forth, I'm always prepared to absolutely loathe it... yet always get won over in the end. Maybe it's because the base concept of the Joker is just such a rich mine for material that, while different, each interpretation just fits. At any rate, this movie provides another fine Joker, one without the obsession about his appearance of Nicholson's Joker... in fact, he just makes it part of his killing shtick, telling different victims different stories as he sends them on their way. In fact, if I had to choose one defining element of this Joker, it's his utter lack of self-consciousness over his acts while he performs (and I do mean perform... no other Joker that I've seen would have pulled his introductory "magic trick", because it takes the focus off the Joker to the trick).

Of course, the Joker has to play with the other characters, otherwise there's not much of a movie to be had... and he plays all too well the "twisted" portion of his persona. It's nothing short of amazing, however, as to how long it takes anyone, including the Batman, to look beyond "twisted" and "crazed" to see that there's method to his madness, that he has quite the capability for planning and forethought. In spite of his protestations while turning Harvey Dent to the dark side of Two-Face, he is indeed a plotter and a schemer... just one who's more mentally nimble and adjustable than his rule-bound opponents.

This is as good a time as any to bring up the short and hidden career of Two-Face. He kills a dirty cop and a gangster, kidnaps Gordon's family, then prepares to kill again before being taken down by Batman... but, because he used to be the pretty-boy DA who took the mob to court, the public can never know that the Joker broke him? Instead, Batman and Gordon take it upon themselves to martyr Harvey Dent and demonize the Batman? How is this a noble act on anybody's part? For all that the Joker may be wrong about showcasing the "truth" of human nature under dire circumstances, you really want the final message of the film to be that authority lying to the public, and police altering evidence, is a good thing and for the public's own protection? Honestly, especially in a property with the background of Batman, you simply should not reduce the lifespan of a major villain to a backroom deal, even between the "good guys".

So, as you can tell, I'm a bit mixed on this movie. It's worth watching in the theater for the size and sound of it... but it's been run so heavily for so long that you might see some effects on the prints. At this point, I'd say catch it at your local bargain theater, once it starts making the rounds there... they'll probably be able to cobble together a workable print from the whole mess.

Governmental Two-fer

Another one of those neither-is-worth-a-post-on-its-own days... but both of these caught my eye:

• California claims a copyright on their state laws (link). It seems Oregon does too, but I haven't found anything about Washington doing the same, at least. The reason appears to be so that they can charge over $2300 for a full print copy, or over $1500 for a digital copy. Comments I've seen defend this practice on the basis that you can still access the laws for free through your local library (on their schedule) or through the state's website (when it's functioning properly)... but really, why shouldn't a .pdf version be available for download for the actual cost of the download, or be available to on-demand print shops for the cost of printing at the quality level the buyer wants to pony up for? This information is supposed to be as readily available to the general public as possible, right?
• This is really more electoral than governmental, but... I've always had a soft spot for Penn Jillette, loudmouth and blowhard that he is. Here is his take on the current presidential cycle... and it's closer to right than not, in my humble opinion.
  

Google Chrome browser?

In theory, Google has unleashed a beta, Windows-only version of their new browser, with nice features like an engineer-spartan interface and tabs that run independent of one another, so that one crashing doesn't take down the whole browser. I just did a quick search on Google... while their introductory/explanatory comic shows up, no link to the beast itself does at this stage. Just as well... I'm using Firefox at this point, for one overriding reason: I use Windows, Mac, and Linux, and like having a program that behaves the same no matter what foundation I'm running it on. Google says they'll be doing Mac and Linux versions in short order... when they do, I'll check it out.