No more Playstation Portable ID

Regular readers might notice the lack of that big, black box that used to be on the right side of the page, showing the "trophies" I had earned on my PS3. It was always a little kludgy to begin with, requiring me to log in to their site to manually update information that could have been updated automatically quite readily... then, a few weeks back, the update feature stopped working entirely, at the same time as they redirected people logging in to a splash page advertising the game of the moment. I tried waiting it out, figuring somebody would notice and get it fixed in a timely manner, but it never happened.

So, anybody interested in what I'm playing on PS3 lately will have to just see what comes across on my Facebook feed... and, for you programmers out there, here's a concrete example of the importance of testing everything your code touches.

Merry Christmas

Yes, if you haven't gotten presents for people by now, it's TOO LATE... :)

Here's hoping you and yours have a merry Christmas this year... mine's already mostly done, nothing left but the optional socializing and plying kitties with catnip-filled socks. Good, clean, wholesome fun... :)

Movie o' the day: Avatar

I know, I know, I don't usually catch movies on opening weekend... but a slow day at work combined with the hype-storm around this movie got me into the theater.

So, first things first... Avatar is a very pretty movie. It pulls off the "you are there" vibe as well or better than the Lord of the Rings films did, which is all the more impressive considering the alien landscape and critters involved. However, it's not a very deep movie... it's a pretty standard representative-of-the-outsiders-goes-native sort of flick, just a bit more so than you might see elsewhere, thanks to the sci-fi nature of the beast.

Wait, strike that... sci-fi it ain't. Yes, it's in a futuristic setting, and technology is involved in getting the hero "in the wild"... but, in truth, this is a fantasy film. I understand that they had to do some things in service to the story, and to make this alien world acceptably palatable to the mass audience it hopes to draw, but there are just too many such concessions to call it anything but fantasy. Heck, they could likely have replaced the sentient aliens with elves, set the scene in the faery realm instead of an alien planet, and not had to change a whole lot else in the process.

I'll just add one more niggling point before I conclude... and that's how, for lack of a better term, uneven the alien-ness of things are. Plants are as you might expect, with analogues of ferns, trees, and the like. Animals tend to be of the "add bits on to make it alien" school... so you end up with "horses" that have extra legs up front, but still move like horses. The sentients are the most human-like... down to neural interfaces that are made to look like long, braided hair, to add to the "native" look they have. Beyond that, there are the "cute" bits, things added solely for visual effect (like mosses that light up when you step on them) or, again, in service to the story (floating, fairy-like "seeds" that act as a "sign" when they clump about the hero). I guess I'm still stuck at Darwin, wanting my alien life to be different not just to be different, but for a demonstrable reason.

So, my final take: if you're mainly looking for something pretty to watch with an enjoyable-enough story that won't tax you intellectually or emotionally, catch this film... heck, do the IMAX 3D if that's your thing. Otherwise... well, it's still worth watching on the big screen, because it's that pretty, but I'd save it for matinee fare, after the hordes have passed.

Gift desparation time

So yeah, Christmas is less than two weeks away, and I've got presents pretty much "wrapped up", so to speak... except one. What the heck am I going to get for my mother?

This is a trickier proposition than it might appear on the surface. I have a few simple rules for procuring presents:

1. Get at least one present for each person at the gift-giving event
2. Each person's total gift should meet a minimum monetary value (this year, about $15-$20), but feel free to spend more if it "makes sense" (e.g. the ever-elusive "perfect" gift for someone)
3. Gifts should be enjoyable, but shouldn't be needful things... toys, games and food are all good gifts, while knives, cookware and appliances are not so much. This rule has the most wiggle room... cookware for somebody who makes a hobby of cooking is fine, as it might be for somebody setting up their own house for the first time

My mother is getting on in years, and may well end up putting her house up for sale shortly to move into an assisted-living sort of place... but her house has 40+ years of accumulated "stuff" squirreled away in odd places, so the last thing she needs is more stuff. Consumables would be the obvious second choice... but she is significantly overweight, and tries to combat that as best she can (mobility problems, in part due to weight), so the box o' chocolates is right out. She's already told us all that we don't need to get her a present, but that's not right, either... I've been on both the giving and receiving end of no/cheap present, and neither feels particularly good.

I suppose there's always the gift certificate route... but I hate giving something like cash, but less useful... and, of course, cash gifts are taboo, unless you're a shut-in due to health (as opposed to a hermit by choice, like I am). Oh well, here's hoping I come up with a good gift idea before the big day hits.

Plushie

OK, so this post is going to be a bit out-of-left-field for regular readers, but what the heck... cool knows no bounds, and, if it's good enough for the ACM (saw a story on this in their print rag), it's good enough for us.

I've always had a touch of the artistic bent, and I routinely take a stab at combining that with my other skills... but 2d and 3d art on a computer always strike me as needlessly complicated, especially 3d variants. What should be as simple as molding something out of clay and painting the results always seems to devolve into exacting placements of polygons and splines, followed by "texture maps" of 2d images over the top, a counterintuitive process if ever I've seen one.

Enter Plushie, software from Japan built for the sole purpose of letting average users get a handle on another non-intuitive crafting process... making stuffed animals (be sure to check out the vid). It's cool enough on its own (I've got a niece, in particular, who would likely love the idea of designing her own stuffed animals), but I think it could become more, with a little work. You've already got real-time generation of 3d bits from simple drawing, and separation into a minimal number of 2d parts... make it where you can add colors and/or textures, either to the parts themselves or directly to the 3d representation, and you've got a nice, primitive tool for creating a 3d model, for whatever use you care to put it to.

I'm going to have to check out the demo one of these days... maybe make some nice, Lovecraft-inspired monstrosity, just for kicks... :)

A new DNS alternative... Google?

It's been a few months since I last posted about DNS, when I justified switching to OpenDNS from the servers Comcast provides, even though they both play a similar, non-standard game with some of the results. It appears that Google has decided to enter the fray, without pulling those tricks. I'll likely switch after a couple of months... but, for something as essential as DNS, I'm willing to wait for the inevitable first round of problems to crop up and get solved.