delRhode's disTractions

For any of you Spokane sci-fi/fantasy readers...

2012-02-08T15:20:00.001-08:00

On the off chance you don't know about it, there's a neat little used bookstore by the name of Cal's Books. It has a couple of nice features...

It has a fair-sized stock of fantasy and sci-fi books available (as well as other genres for those of you who are into those sorts of things)
It's got a fairly decent trade-in system... you get some percentage of the cover price of your books' value as credit, which you then access for a pittance per book. End result: books for about $0.40 each, so long as you have credit at the store
It's at the other end of the block from the Donut Parade, so you can have handy access to good donuts without explicitly making a trip to get donuts.

I've been going to Cal's off and on for years... and honestly, that's why I'm writing this. You see, it had been about 5 years since I last dropped in, between work and other hobbies interfering, and I have hundreds of dollars in credit there. Many places would have found a way, in that time, to quietly 'lose' my record or otherwise erase that credit... but everything was as it should be, all these years later. For that alone, I recommend taking a look into Cal's... worst case, it'll give you an excuse to go get donuts.

El Shaddai

2012-01-08T13:51:00.001-08:00

It might sound like the setup for some sick joke, or maybe a disaster waiting to happen... but El Shaddai is a game based, however loosely, on a story from a book in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've played a ways into the game now... it's a mildly interesting mix of 2d and 3d platforming and beat 'em up elements, without any obvious heresies to set off those so inclined. Game-wise and story-wise, it's decent, and that's about it.

However... it is visually unique, with a style that changes throughout. Anybody that wants to debate whether video games can ever be art needs to see this game. Myself, I'm quite taken by it... enough so to recommend that you rent it or check out a demo, at least. If you like it, it's down to about $20 new now, so you can almost certainly find it cheaper used.

Well, that's that...

2011-12-14T11:24:00.001-08:00

For regular readers, this should be the last time I feel the need to mention Sony and their unfortunate business decisions, so read or skip as you like.

The final hope I had for Sony getting told that their shenanigans with the PS3 firmware from April of last year were wrong is gone. The class action lawsuit brought against them (and which Sony has shielded themselves against with changes to their Terms & Conditions since then) has been dismissed. Basically, the judge says that, since the users have the option of not upgrading the firmware on their PS3s if they want to keep the functionality they want, there's no foul on Sony's part.

The only problem I have with that line of reasoning is that it doesn't apply strictly to Sony's online services... you can use the same line of reasoning for games on disc that include a mandatory firmware update if you want to play them solo on your own machine. Don't want to accept the update? Don't play the game. Never mind that the system you bought was specifically designed to play those games, it's not on Sony for requiring an update, it's on you for refusing an update that strips away features you paid for.

So, apparently, the state of the law now is that your right to use your game consoles (and what else?) in a feature-complete state as of the time of sale is strictly dependent on the goodwill and immediate business concerns of the seller. That said, I simply can't trust Sony, based on past behavior, so they're still off my purchase list... and the bar for every other console seller has been set that much higher.

70 years since Pearl Harbor

2011-12-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

Today marks 70 years since the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, starting our fight against a dedicated foe that lasted for years, and was only finally brought to an end with atomic bombs. Now, we get good-quality electronics and cars from them, eat sushi and teriyaki without batting an eye, and, in my case, I get to enjoy subtitled anime and translated manga on a regular basis. So, thanks to the veterans of that war for doing what needed to be done, first off... but, especially in troubling times like these, it's worth remembering that change is a constant, however slowly that change may happen.

Skyrim!

2011-11-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

I've seen enough games hyped over the years, only to fall far short of their hype once they launch, that I consciously do my best to disregard the over-the-topness of such hype, and see if what's left is likely to be worthy of my time. Skyrim (or, more properly, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) certainly fell into that category, but, as the fifth entry in a decades-long series of games, which have (mostly) improved with each new version, I'll admit to having higher-than-usual hopes... and, now that I've got a solid day's worth of play under my belt, all I can say is... believe the hype.

If you like role-playing games, I think it's safe to say that you will like this game. It looks wonderful, even on XBox360, it plays smoothly, and, unusually for a Bethesda Softworks game, I was able to play it on day one without any major glitches or program lockups. It simulates a portion of its world down to a level of detail that's most games never approach, and lets you play the way you want to play. That's because, unlike most other RPGs, this game doesn't revolve around a concept of player "classes"... rather, the skills you use (or get trained in) determine how your character grows. Oh, and, unlike prior entries in the Elder Scrolls saga, it includes some truly massive opponents along with the run-of-the-mill people and animals... everything from bears, HUGE spiders, and mammoths, all the way up to dragons. You know, bigger than an elephant, flies, breathes fire, dragons... and hopefully, you've got a bunch of people with bows or other ranged attacks to help you out in taking one down.

For those of you that played Oblivion, here's what's changed, systems-wise. Like I said above, classes (or build-your own classes using "favored skills") are out. All skill advancement counts towards level advancement, and the magicka/health/stamina raises therefrom. Also, the "perks" are handled differently... instead of automatically picking up skill-related improvements every 25 skill points, you get a "perk point" to spend each level, to choose from a perk tree for each skill, limited by your actual skill level. Beyond that, the "automatic difficulty adjustment" from Oblivion is either gone or greatly reduced (got my ass handed to me by a bear I unintentionally provoked, for instance), armor/weapons repair is gone, and there are some subtle changes to skills, crafting skills in particular (smithing covers creation and enhancement of armor, weapons, and jewelry, while alchemy has some minor changes in how you work out what reagents deliver what effects). In fact, crafting is only done at fixed crafting stations now... sorry alchemists, even if you want to, you can't load yourself down with alchemical lab bits to craft potions and poisons on the road.

Long story short, Skyrim looks to be a wonderful RPG, that fixes the biggest issues from Oblivion without introducing new major issues, and what I've seen of the "main" storyline so far is quite good. I already paid full price for this game, and, if you like RPGs, I don't think you'll be sorry if you do likewise.

VIM turns twenty

2011-11-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

It's fun, the things you run across on the 'net. As detailed by this Ars Technica article, today's the 20th anniversary of the release of VIM to the public. All I can say is hooray, and I hope it keeps going and getting better for another 20... I use this editor pretty much every day, whether for programming or systems administration, and it's a pleasure to have something that doesn't assume that you have a mouse handy, yet is still efficient to use. Didn't know that it started out on the Amiga (my first computers), and the article also points out to me that I've barely scratched the surface on this program... might just have to remedy that.

Death notices from computerland

2011-10-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Anybody who takes in almost any form of mass media these days knows that Steve Jobs died recently, and there have been enough "what a great CEO/computer pioneer he was" stories that I just don't see the need to link to them. Not that what he did was easy, or that it didn't have some impact on the world... but still, he did what he did pretty much for self-enrichment, and most of what he did was recognize the value of design and quality in consumer gear.

Contrast that with the recent death of another computer luminary that you won't hear much about in the mass media: Dennis Ritchie. He helped create an operating system still in use in various forms today, and created a little thing called C, a programming language still in use today, whose influence is felt in pretty much every programming language developed since. He is greatly responsible for much of the infrastructure the modern Internet uses to run, among other things (including the current foundation of Apple's software for their Macintosh computers). All that, and not a profit motive in sight, just pure intellectual curiosity.

All in all, well... I'm not one to put my heart on my sleeve and publicly mourn people I don't personally know... but I have to say, Ritchie is the greater loss in my book.

Qwikster - true to its name

2011-10-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

So, right, forget about that "separating Netflix DVD rentals into a separate company" thing, says Netflix. They'll still do the separation/increase of billing, but at least you won't have to track what you've watched on two separate websites.

I can't imagine how loud the howls of indignation must have been to get them to reverse course... I mean, it's one thing for a company to screw up and hold course until the noise dies down (e.g. Sony and the PS3 silliness), but it's quite another to admit that you screwed up badly enough to say "You know what? Maybe we don't need another company after all". Still, now that I've used Sony as an example of the alternative, good on Netflix for recognizing and acting on their error... I just hope they're not too hobbled by shooting themselves in the foot like that.

Netflix and... Qwikster?

2011-09-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I glad that I made the decision to drop DVDs when Netflix changed their pricing. If you somehow missed the news, Netflix is spinning off their DVD operation into a separate company and website. Netflix's CEO is saying that this was planned all along, but he never got around to telling the customers about it until now... personally, I think it's more like they planned to fully split things out eventually, but the rapid divide/drop of their customer base since their pricing announcement pushed them to take this step sooner than anticipated. I mean, really... Qwikster was the best name they could come up with? Sounds like something that Nestle might have come up with to promote their powdered milk-flavoring stuff... and, better still, they can't exactly do much "social network" marketing with that name either, since that Twitter account is already owned by a guy with a weed-smoking Elmo avatar.

So, Netflix is basically putting DVDs out to pasture, and maybe they think they can sell that side of the business (and its user data) to somebody else to make a quick buck in support of their streaming business. It will be interesting to see how this pans out... but I'm glad I chose one side, and the side that Netflix thinks is worthy to keep the company name, for now.

The new crack: Disgaea 4

2011-09-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been almost a year and a half since I made a rule for myself about buying nothing Sony, but every rule has its exceptions... Disgaea 4 just came out, and I snagged a brand new copy on launch day. What can I say... an upgraded game in the same vein as one I managed to spend well over 300 hours playing is just irresistible, when I still own the hardware to run it.

This version has the same quirky humor and detailed, turn-based strategy engine... but now, it has improved graphics and animations (so it no longer looks like a transplanted PlayStation 2 game), plus additional combat options (like fusing some of your monsters into mega-monsters, temporarily of course) and Internet features, like the ability to have some of your crew cause grief in other players' games (not while you're controlling them, sad to say). All in all, I expect I'll get more than my money's worth of entertainment out of this game.

X-Men: First Class and the Garland Theater

2011-08-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Now that it's hit the bargain circuit, and looking hard for a reason to go someplace air-conditioned for a couple of hours, I went to see X-Men: First Class. It's a good little superhero flick, and doesn't try to do too much with too many characters... but it's not my favorite superhero movie of the summer (that would probably be Captain America). Still, I'd say it's generally worth bargain theater price, or DVD/streaming rental, when the time comes.

Of course, that depends on the bargain theater you have in mind. I've been a long-time fan of the Garland Theater in Spokane... sure, it's always been a little run-down, but, generally, it's been an enjoyable experience. This time, not so much... never mind the bits that they don't have much control over, like the genius parents who brought a fussy baby to an action film. The price has gone up since last I went, to $3.50, while the general quality of the theater has gone down even more than in years past. The seat I got, at least, was so swaybacked that I couldn't sit in one position through the whole movie, or else I would have damaged my back. The projector sync was off, so "still" scenes were all but unwatchable. Heck, even the popcorn (at full movie theater popcorn pricing, of course) was considerably south of fresh. All in all, in its current state, I couldn't recommend the Garland to anyone these days.

So, another nail set in the "going to the movie theater" coffin... I'm still in the market there for some good first-run movies (for all those are fewer and farther between than in recent memory), but, especially at the price, it just makes more sense to wait for something to hit a streaming service than bother with the bargain theater, in my book.

The (d)evolution of the mall

2011-08-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Since I had to wait for an inspector to check out my newly-installed sewer connection (all done but they paying, finally...), I took the morning off from work. It was a pleasant surprise when the inspector came relatively early, leaving me with a few hours of prime mid-workweek normal-business-hours time to burn. I decided to get a much-needed haircut, then hit the food court at Northtown Mall and have lunch like a normal human being (as opposed to my regular routine of snagging something at a drive-through to scarf down at my desk).

That done, I still had some time left, so I decided to meander the mall. Now, I know we've been in down times for a while, and I fully expected a number of vacant storefronts, as I've seen elsewhere. More interesting, though, were the odd "stores" that have taken root under these adverse conditions. Coffee-bars are barely worth mentioning, except how many there were. The gym was a bit odd, but suitably clean and "up-scale-looking" to not throw me too hard. The storefront that, I believe, serves as a staging area for indoor paintball games, that was more than a little odd. The strangest, though, had to be the convenience store right in the center of the mall.

Things have changed at Northtown, and are likely changing all over... what used to be a somewhat-exclusive locale for a shop, where shoppers were welcomed while loiterers (read: teenagers) were discouraged, is now desperate enough for foot traffic to set up an entire, manned soda-and-snacks convenience store in the heart of the mall to encourage loitering, on the off chance that somebody might decide to buy something. It's seems strange to me now, but I guess time will tell whether it's a strategy that pays off for the mall in the long term.

The great Netflix pricing kerfluffle

2011-07-13T14:25:00.001-07:00

It's old news by now... but Netflix has decided to separate out their streaming service from their DVD rental service in September, and charge extra in the process (up to 60% more, for people with the current unlimited one-DVD-at-a-time service). This has, of course, set off much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Internet, because the old setup was a Good Thing for consumers... but, of course, all good things come to an end.

In my case... well, right now I'm on the two-DVD-at-a-time service level, with an extra charge for Blu-Ray discs on top. The thing is, most of my reason for having DVD service at all is to get at some older content (especially anime) that simply isn't available on anybody's streaming service legally, to the best of my knowledge. I toss in some more "normal" fare between those discs, and sometimes I stumble across something more than "just OK" that way, but few and far between... and, more and more, the old discs are slowly fading from the Netflix library, which can be really annoying if you've watched the first few discs of a multi-disc series.

So, barring a sudden reversal by Netflix, I think I'm going to go on an anime binge, and round out any disc-based series that I'm mid-way through. After that, I'll likely hold on to the streaming account for the time being... so long as the price on that doesn't start creeping up needlessly, and the available selection continues to work for me, and streaming quality through Comcast doesn't go back downhill again, it's a reasonable price. Of course, should Amazon improve their selection and give better queue-management tools, or some other service comes out that I can use my Roku box with and that I think I'll like better, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat.

More games to waste time you dont have

2011-07-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

And here I thought it was going to be a fairly sedate, relaxed sort of weekend... instead, I find myself sleep-deprived and desperately wanting to play on the PC, but not daring to, lest I miss my regularly-scheduled Sunday afternoon activities.

First, it's worth mentioning that CivWorld has entered open beta on Facebook. It's nicely set up to let you either obsess over it throughout the day, or come back every so often for a longer play session... in my case, it comes out to about an hour a day to take care of things there. It's still not quite ready for prime time, but it's worth your while to check out, if you're into Civilization-style games with little mini-games attached.

Then, there's a little slice of evil called Terraria... I picked it up on sale from Steam the other day for $2.50, so my expectations weren't all that high. Next thing I know, it's after midnight, and I'm considering One More Trip into the depths... so, if exploration and crafting are up your alley, this game is for you, even at the regular $10 they usually charge. Most people think of it as a 2-d version of Minecraft, and they're right insofar as working out what to do to get started is pretty well impossible without referring to online help... but to me, it's more like that Miner Dig Deep game I blogged about earlier this year, with a huge world to play in, build in, and fight various monsters in to boot.

Suffice it to say, I'll be playing CivWorld most evenings, after I get home from work... while Terraria falls into the category of "early weekend only" games, so I can continue to be a somewhat-productive member of society.

Congresscritter sleaziness, as expected

2011-06-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I laid out where I stand on this whole bombing-Libya-isn't-hostility line that the current administration is passing off. I can understand that some opinions might differ on that issue, wrong as I think they are. However, it should be a pretty straightforward decision, one way or the other... either the President is doing the right thing, and should have every means at his disposal to do it, or he's doing the wrong thing and should be reined in. The House of Representatives was given the opportunity to say where they stood with a pair of bills: pass one, what the President's doing is A-OK; pass the other, and he's in the wrong. Somehow, they managed to pass neither bill (link).

In order for neither bill to pass, there had to be a significant number of representatives that voted against both bills. On the face of the argument, I don't see how anybody, much less a significant number of anybodies, could say they have no opinion on this issue with a straight face, given the facts. Whether they chose this path on party-solidarity grounds, or with an eye towards re-election, these representatives have simply failed in their duty to their country on this issue.

Oh well, like I said in my last post, I wasn't really holding my breath that Congress would do the right thing as a whole, although I didn't expect something as blatant as this... rather, finding some way to distract attention and let the question die away from the spotlight seems to be the norm. I guess it's up to the Judiciary to do something... maybe... sometime...

Back on the government beat... bombings aren't hostilities?!?

2011-06-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Ever since the US started bombing Libya in defense of civilians (depending greatly on your definition of 'civilian'), and somebody brought up the Vietnam-era War Powers Act, which limits the President's ability to conduct hostilities without Congressional consent, I've been waiting to hear how the executive branch could possibly justify their seemingly blatant violation of said act. Now, under duress, they're releasing their rationale to Congress (link). Basically, it boils down to "it's not hostilities if the other guy can't fight back".

There are all sorts of reasons I could possibly stomach as the basis for a fight over the War Powers Act... top of the list, of course, being a challenge to its constitutionality, but nobody seems to want to go there. This excuse, on the other hand... it doesn't even pass a basic sniff test. It's the equivalent of a high-schooler hitting elementary school kids, then arguing that he shouldn't be suspended for fighting because they couldn't fight back.

For the meanings-of-words-challenged, let's cover "hostility" in a nation-state frame of reference. If you are using military force within the borders of another country without their government's consent, you are acting in a hostile manner to that country. I know, that may be inconvenient, what with all the fun we've had with unmanned drones and precision-guided munitions, but inconvenient doesn't equal wrong. Heck, I might even give you a pass on something like Pakistan, if the government there is giving the OK "under the table" while publicly denouncing your actions to save face with their people... but that's nowhere near Libya's situation, is it?

Well, maybe Congress will call bullshit on this pitiful excuse as a whole... I can only hope, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. At the very least, a few Congresscritters are filing suit (link)... maybe the Judiciary will decide to get involved and (hopefully) do the right thing.

OK, enough about Sony for a while

2011-06-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, in theory, they finally got the store on PSN up and running today... haven't checked, since the free games promised aren't quite available yet. Best of all, they only missed their self-pronounced deadlines twice to do it. I'm sure I could beat this dead horse for a while, but, honestly, it's just sad... and sadder still, since this whole mess started, multiple Sony divisions have been hackerly-messed-with as well. Much as I don't care for Sony, I can't point and laugh at every little issue of theirs that crops up... barring some big, new, unexpected news (and at this point, another Sony property hacked doesn't count as unexpected), I'm swearing off Sony rants for now. I guess I'll have to come up with something semi-relevant to blog about, if I want to keep adding to this one... :)

Sony online PS3 systems back up... somewhat.

2011-05-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

Here I was, kind of looking forward to being able to snark at Sony for their PlayStation Network being down for a full month... but the most important parts, account management and online play, are back up now, a few days shy of the mark. Yes, even though I don't use the PS3 much anymore beyond watching Blu-Ray movies, I've logged in, patched the machine, and gone through with the mandatory password replacement on the service... I don't need somebody trying to use my "dead" account to cause grief down the road.

Of course, their online storefront is still down for "maintenance", so maybe I'll get that snark in yet...

Government Corruption

2011-05-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Wow... some officials don't even seem to be trying to hide it any longer. Today's case in point... one of the FCC commissioners who strove mightily to prevent Internet network neutrality from getting traction there, and who, more recently, helped approve Comcast's merger with NBC, is leaving the commission to become a lobbyist for Comcast (link). Elapsed time from closing that deal as a government worker to starting a job with the corporation she was supposed to be regulating... four months.

Sony - PSN Hacked

2011-04-26T18:48:00.001-07:00

Well, this is something I didn't expect to see, and it's rather unfortunate to see... but I can't help but feel a bit of the old schadenfreude just now. PSN (the PlayStation Network) is Sony's proprietary on-line gaming and digital content download system for the PS3... it's been down for the better part of a week, and now it appears that's because Sony shut it down in response to their systems getting hacked. It appears that personal info, including names, addresses, birthdates, usernames and passwords got accessed... and they're not ruling out credit card info being gotten either.

The odd bit in that list above is passwords... basic security practice is to never store passwords in plain-text, but, if they're saying passwords are "in the wild" now, that's exactly what they must have done. If I were still a Sony customer, or had given them my credit card info, or had any other important services that used the same username and password, I would be thoroughly torqued... but I could never justify handing over my credit card info when I could buy cards for the PSN elsewhere, so I certainly wasn't going to reuse a payment-related password there. It will be interesting to see what comes of this as time goes on, and it's unfortunate for all the active PS3 users out there... but it sure sounds like Sony had it coming, never mind their past transgressions.

Portal 2

2011-04-24T11:11:00.001-07:00

OK, so, first, if you haven't played the original Portal, which I blogged about earlier, stop right now... play that game first (which is available on even more computer systems than it was back then, thanks to the growth of Steam onto other platforms). You'll get a good idea of the mechanics of the game and the sense of humor involved, and, should it appeal to you, will also be good background for some of the fun to be had in Portal 2... and for under $10 on Steam (and possibly cheaper elsewhere), it's the safer bet to start with.

Now, as far as Portal 2 goes... I wondered, when blogging about the original game, whether a longer game would be any better than the original. In this case, the answer is absolutely, unequivocally yes. The single-player game comes in at about twice as long as the original (in my case, something over 11 hours front-to-back). Much of the added length is due to additional puzzle mechanics based on various substances and technologies researched at Aperture Science, so, while it's still a Portal game, it's not just a rehash of the game play from the first game.

The rest of the added length has to do with the story of the game. While the original story (such as it was) was about you matching wits with the testing facility's governing AI, it was pretty minimal, just providing an outlet for the game's off-beat humor. In Portal 2, something more closely resembling a complete story gets told, thanks to additional characters, along with "time travel" of a sort... I'm not going to go into great detail on that, since it's such great fun to experience as you work your way through the game.

Add in some well-done graphics (especially considering the sheer scale of some of the environments, as compared to the original game) and sound work, and I have to say that Portal 2 is one of the best-made games I've seen in a long while. Yes, it's still short, compared to many titles out there, and doesn't have any real replay potential, but in terms of sheer fun-per-minute played, it's pretty well unmatched. Since I only paid about $35 for my copy, after discounts and deals, I think I got my money's worth out of this game... if I had paid $60, I might not be as well pleased, I suppose.

So, final verdict... if you've played and enjoyed Portal, watch for a deal on this game and get it. If you haven't played the original Portal, spend $10 there first... this game will still be waiting for you once you finish there.

Another Sony update

2011-04-17T11:08:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Sony settled their lawsuit against on of the PS3 hackers... apparently, the terms are that the hacker won't further distribute the code he already made, won't make any more PS3-breaking code, and won't help anybody else to do so, either. In exchange, both parties avoid trial, which would be financially ruinous for the hacker and more bad PR for Sony. Of course, it's unfortunate that the basic issue of what a hardware owner is allowed to do with their own hardware won't get its day in court, but I can't fault the hacker for taking the bargain, either... after all, that's the very reason I'm not going anywhere near existing hacks until the question is settled.

More random bits

2011-04-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Once again, nothing worthy of its own post has cropped up recently... how much of that is due to the sudden influx of game-scavenging goodness I've had recently, I can't say for certain. Here's what I do know:

I don't expect much out of either local morning news shows (which are mostly fluff) or local weekend news shows (which are mostly reruns), and local weekend morning news shows are the worst of both worlds. That said, KHQ set the bar to an all-new low over the weekend, with their anchor holding up a copy of the local paper to display the printed headline, then telling viewers to read the paper for details. I'm pretty sure both the station and the paper are owned by the same company, but still... that's just a bit too pathetic.
If you own an XBox360, Full House Poker is a nice little Texas Hold 'Em game, which you can play online against others. Just be aware that the "Texas Heat" events, in particular... well, the servers are still a bit dodgy, for all they've improved from launch day.
I think I can officially call myself a "manga addict" now... I've already pretty well filled a small "media storage" shelving unit with books, I'm partway through a couple of different series, including some that I know the release date of the next book in the series, and I even subscribed to Otaku USA, to help me sort through the vast quantities of material out there and weed out the craptastic and excessively pervy. Amazon Prime is going to be very handy for me for the foreseeable future.

Hey, news critters...

2011-03-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, Japan's unfortunate nuclear issues continue... having been involved in nuclear power in the past myself, I had a pretty good guess as to where that situation would evolve over time, and, sadly, I was pretty well right. Of course, a fair deal of that guesswork was in spite of news coverage, not due to any great illumination it provided... which is why I felt the need to post something.

Now, I'm sure that many of you one-time journalism majors didn't fare especially well in your college science courses, and I didn't start ranting at you as soon as you started covering the story. I'm aware that the pressures of getting fresh news available to the public ahead of/in tandem with your competitors can cause you to lose focus on some of the details a bit. However, we're now in the realm of weeks of coverage time, and every major outlet has provided an animation or info graphic of what a boiling water reactor is and how it works... I think it's high time you took the time to get your terminology straight, so that you're handing out useful information to the news-consuming public.

For starters, if you're going to talk about "increased" radiation levels, you had best include actual measurements... we can detect radiation levels well below the level where they have any impact on humans. Also, get the difference between "radiation" and "radioactive contamination" straight in your heads... for example, the water leaking out of some of the reactors and fuel cell storage pools is likely contaminated, but isn't in and of itself radioactive. That means that it could, in theory at least, be purified, leading to much less radioactive waste to be cleaned up and kept track of later.

It would also be a good idea to get the names of the parts of a reactor down, as well. Whatever other problems they may be having, I'm quite certain that the "reactor core" isn't leaking on any of them... or, if it is, then it's leaking liquefied radioactive metals from the meltdown that's going on inside. The reactor vessel might be leaking... that's the large, pressurized metal enclosure that holds the reactor core and all that water that's been contaminated by radioactive materials from the core while trying to cool it down. While you're at it, you might want to look into "pressure relief valves"... those are the things that kept letting steam and hydrogen (and any entrained contamination) escape from the pressure vessel and/or the coolant loop. Since those have operated as intended (as evidenced by the hydrogen explosions at a few of the plants), it's fair to say that those reactors have lost "containment" of some of the materials that they were supposed to be keeping bottled up inside... mind you, it's not as bad as it could be, but it's still the source of all that contamination (NOT radiation!) that's cropping up in airborne samples, food, and water from the region.

I'm sure there's more that I could find to nitpick about, but those are the examples that I see Every Single Day that coverage of this tragedy continues. If it's too hard for you, maybe you can spend your time covering the earthquake and tsunami victims instead... that's much more photogenic and easier to understand anyways.

Still here!

2011-03-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been almost a month since I posted anything... but that's mostly because the things I like to post about seem so banal compared to what's happening in the world around us. Just as a for example, yeah, Despicable Me was entertaining enough (especially the sequences dealing with the Bank of Evil), but stack that against either the current Libyan fighting or the earthquake/tsunami/nuke plant failures in Japan, and it doesn't even rate for distraction purposes.

One thing I will mention, on the off chance it passed under your radar... the last IPv4 Internet addresses were handed out to the regional authorities last month. Long story short, you can expect change to come to your Internet connection, one way or another, in the next few years.

DVD pick: Summer Wars

2011-02-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

For once, it's a reasonably new release I'm talking about... Summer Wars just came out on DVD and Blu-Ray a couple of days back. It's a nice anime movie, concerning a high-school computer/math nerd and the popular girl that convinces him to accompany her to a family gathering in the countryside, where she expects him to pass himself off as her fiancee. Of course, the family turns out to be "landed" family from several hundred years back that, while no longer rich, still has influential contacts all over, which poses its own set of problems... and there's a standardized, worldwide computer architecture that covers everything from gaming to mission-critical systems (which, for any budding computer engineers out there, would be a Bad Thing)... and something gets let loose in that system, so additional chaos ensues.

Now, having read that, it would be fair to assume that the movie is an impenetrable mish-mash of story lines from a group that couldn't make up their mind as to what sort of film they really wanted to make. Nothing could be further from the truth... whether it's the mix of real life and online activity, or the ratio of funny to sad bits, the one word that best describes this movie is balanced. Yes, there are a few characters who stand out, but it's not in the sense of "here's the anointed hero coming to save the day" that is so common in anime... rather, there are a few necessary roles needed to give the story the gentle nudges it needs to get started or keep going, but, outside of those moments, it's really a case of everybody doing what they feel is the right thing. Sometimes, that "right thing" turns out to be terribly wrong... but, that's life, isn't it?

So, long story short, it's not a perfect film, but it's definitely worth your time to watch. I think the DVD version, at least, is available through Netflix... if you can get your hands on the Blu-Ray, all the better.

As always, caveat emptor

2011-02-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

So, early last year I mentioned Comcast's bandwidth caps and measuring bandwidth usage... specifically, what their newly-released tool reported versus what my router reported. No, this isn't another anti-Comcast screed... the target of my ire (erm, mild disgust?) this time is the router manufacturer, Netgear.

You see, in order to get the bandwidth monitoring features I needed, I had to buy their then-top-of-the-line consumer router, the WNDR3700. It promised all sorts of bells and whistles beyond what I actually needed (wireless-N networking, expanded range wireless-G networking, and the ability to plug in a USB drive to serve up audio and video content on the network, to name a few). It worked... mostly. Sure, the bandwidth statistics collection wasn't bulletproof, and the USB connection was flaky, and you might need to reboot the router if the DHCP server locked up, but I figured all of that might be fixable in firmware.

Time passed, there was a firmware update or two, and things got better... but they never got right. Finally, once Comcast got their own metering solution in place, I went back to my old wireless-G router (another Netgear model, but version 9 of that product line... pretty well bulletproof). I figured I could check occasionally for a new firmware for the high-end router, and give it another go when that day came.

It's been roughly a year since that time. I saw a brief reference to an updated firmware file in my Google search, and started digging a little deeper. The Netgear website doesn't have any available firmware to download for my version of the WNDR3700, but does have for the next version up... the first time I've ever seen a router manufacturer pull that particular trick. Further searches on the Internet provided tales of tech-support woe, links to briefly-released beta firmwares, that sort of thing... in effect, it appears that Netgear has decided to abandon my router, while continuing to build and sell routers with the same model number, and hope nobody notices.

So, I'm not nearly so torqued with Netgear as I have been with the likes of Sony... they sold a product in seeming good faith that didn't live up to expectations. A better company might have issued a recall, or a trade-in program of some sort, but that sort of company is few and far between these days, especially in the realm of consumer electronics. I'm not blacklisting Netgear for future purchases... however, you can be certain that I'll be carefully weighing the pros and cons of buying any gear of theirs in the future before putting money down, supposing there isn't an equivalently priced/available piece of gear from a reputable competitor.

Psychonauts

2011-01-30T10:54:00.000-08:00

OK, Psychonauts is a bit of an older title (released in 2005), but don't let that keep you from trying it out... it's one of those rare cases where it really holds up well over the years. I expect that's because of the art style of the game... since it doesn't take itself too seriously, they use an offbeat, not-quite-cartoony visual style that I wouldn't expect to change much if the game were remade for today's consoles.

As far as what the game is, it's a 3d platformer, following the exploits of the young protagonist Raz, a budding young psychic, starting with his break-in into a government-run summer camp for psychic children, and running from that odd starting point to progressively stranger encounters. All the while, Raz improves his powers and adds new ones along the way, which he can use however he wants thereafter to get past the challenges he faces.

Of course, a good platformer needs a variety of levels, if it doesn't want to bore the player through repetition. In the case of Psychonauts, this is accomplished by having Raz enter the minds of various people to meet his goals (well, mostly people at least... I guess it depends on how you view giant mutated lungfish, for example). Their personalities, histories, and, in some cases, mental health problems, shape the worlds you explore... and, if you care to look around hard enough, you might find out things that, while not strictly necessary to the overall story, make the individual characters more than the bare-bones stereotypes they play to move the story forward.

Overall, it's a unique little game, and I mean that in a good way. It's a solid platformer, a fun world that doesn't take itself too seriously, and mostly avoids the trap of send 'em back to the start if they don't do well (although, some of the final levels of the "meat circus" had me cursing the designers for not spacing their respawns to my liking). It's a $15 (1200 point) download on the Xbox360, probably less for one of the legal PC-version downloads, or you might even find the original disc floating around a used game store for Xbox or PS2. If you have the hardware to support, I think you'll find it worth your while... play time for me was about 15 hours front to back.

FCC ISP regulation battle part 2: Verizon joins in

2011-01-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm mildly surprised it took a whole month... after the FCC put forth new restrictions on Internet providers, Verizon has gone to the courts seeking to have the FCC slapped down again (link). I'm sure Comcast would have been happy to jump in again, but they had that whole merger with NBC in front of the FCC already.

Oh well, no great skin off my back... I don't use Verizon, and had no plans of jumping to them with the disgruntled AT&T iPhone lemmings. I'll just sit back and watch the fun for now.

Time for a new toy: Kobo e-reader

2011-01-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

When I was younger, I used to, almost literally, devour books. I was an avid enough reader, especially of fantasy and science fiction, that I routinely read while walking from place to place, during church services, and so forth. That changed a fair deal when I was able to afford my first computer, and my more obsessive qualities transferred to that medium, but I still read with great regularity. In recent years, though, I have definitely lost the drive to read... there are too many games, cartoons, movies, etc. to take up large chunks of time. The most "reading" I've done of late has been manga, usually in snippets here and there, occasionally getting sucked into a volume long enough to finish it at one reading... and even then, that takes about an hour, tops.

Over the weekend, Borders held a sale on their Kobo e-reader, bringing the price down to about $100 from its regular $140, which was enough to trigger some thought on my part... what kept me from reading at home? Paperbacks of the sort I tend to like have a fair degree of heft to them, and, while bookmarkable, require some manipulation to get back to where you left off... and, if you have a short reading window, remembering exactly where you left off in a couple of pages of text can take a bit as well. An e-reader takes care of most of those issues for you, plus you don't accumulate physical books all over the house... and the Kobo is a bare-bones device (which warms my engineer heart), supports standard publishing formats (so you're not locked into one store's goods), and comes pre-loaded with 100 books.

So, yeah, I bit... and so far, I'm not sad I did. Those pre-loaded books are "classics", of course, which works for me. I tried out the intended store mechanism to download another free book, which was straightforward enough... but, especially at first, I'm likely to take full advantage of some of the legal, free sources for books online. For example, Project Gutenberg, for some older titles like The Devil's Dictionary... or the Baen Free Library, when I'm looking for a new sci-fi series to get lured into. It may take me a bit longer to get through some of these titles than when I was younger, but even 5 or 10 minutes at a shot should get me some good entertainment value for the money.

Sony, digging their hole deeper

2011-01-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much about my ongoing displeasure with Sony's PS3 shenanigans, and nothing since August of last year... mostly because developments I've seen have had that icky "pirate aftertaste" about them, and I held out some sliver of hope, however small, that Sony might see (or be forced to see, thanks to the class-action lawsuit against them) the error of their ways. That hope is pretty well gone, since they seem to have lost even the basic concept of how the Internet works, now that they're trying to sue a group of hackers, including foreign nationals, in a California court... not for monetary damages, but just to get them to stop posting how to jailbreak your PS3 (link).

For those of you less-obsessed than I, here's a brief rundown of how we've gotten to where we are today: Sony's first-generation "fat" PS3 consoles came with an "Other OS" option, useful for hobbyists (such as myself) who wanted to play with things like Linux on their consoles... in part, at least, this option was likely included to help dodge tariffs on importing dedicated videogame consoles. Years down the road, Sony releases redesigned "slim" PS3 consoles that lack this feature. All fine and well, until April of last year, when Sony retroactively removes Other OS from the fat consoles, in response to a hacker working out how to access some hardware Sony didn't intend Other OS to have access to, alleging security concerns.

In removing Other OS, Sony managed to annoy some of the most technically-savvy customers they had, including people who don't like being told there are arbitrary limits on what they can do with hardware they purchased. First, somebody came up with a USB dongle that used, if I recall properly, a Sony-provided "service mode" to let you install programs on your PS3, bypassing their security checks that way... Sony made relatively quick work of that problem by getting the dongles seized by customs through court order. More recently, hackers have discovered a "master key" Sony uses to verify software as valid for install, posting video proof and key details on the Internet... details that Sony apparently can't fix without breaking their own systems.

So, for those of you so inclined, with PS3 systems of any age... the details are now out there to install whatever you want or can find on your PS3, and I don't expect that to change, no matter what legal tactics Sony employs, because the details are "in the wild" on the Internet. Myself, I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to large corporations in US courts... since Sony started the legal ball rolling today, I'm willing to wait for a bit and verify that this does, in fact, fall under the jailbreaking exception of the DMCA. If it does, by that time, I'm sure the tools will be available to back up my current firmware and programs (just to be on the safe side), then wipe my PS3 clean and see what fun I can find in the way of operating systems, media center software, and the like. This should be fun to watch, from here on out.

Miner Dig Deep

2011-01-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

If you own an Xbox360, and have a spare 80 points lying around your account, you could do much worse than to spend it on Miner Dig Deep. Yes, for $1, you can get a dirt-simple mining game, with graphics, sound, and gameplay much better than you might expect for that measly sum. Just be warned... it's an addictive little toy. For all you can do a trip down into the mine in 5-10 minutes, I've got one game I've been playing for about 5 hours or so, with no end in sight... it's got that nebulous "one more round" quality that only the best games bring up. I'd write more, but... I've got some digging to get back to... ;)

Internet Neutrality is a reality... sort of

2010-12-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a long time coming... the FCC finally roused itself enough to put something resembling basic protections of the way the Internet has historically worked into the form of an enforceable rule (in theory, anyways). I have yet to see a link to the raw text of the rule, so I can't pick too many holes in it personally yet, but the gist I get from reading multiple stories is that landline-based consumer Internet providers can't block or artificially slow legal content from reaching their customers, and they have to be transparent with their customers on how they're managing network traffic on their networks. All fine and well, I suppose, but I don't think that will keep Comcast and the rest from improving their in-house networks to support their own services, while letting their connection to the 'net at large get clogged naturally by increased demand for services, or charging different amounts for different tiers of data usage or transfer speeds... time will tell on that, I suppose.

Wireless is less of a concern to me (what can I say, that's "last resort" territory for me getting data)... so, I guess it's no surprise that I'm not particularly perturbed that wireless 'net access doesn't get the same protections as wired. Providers still have to tell us how they're messing with the connection, but I gather they get to at least slow content from the world at large. Considering the physical limitations of open-air transmission, it makes sense enough to me.

Still, this game isn't over yet, I'm sure... intentionally or no, some provider (or group thereof) is going to get in a legal argument with the FCC, and it'll be at least a couple of years before this round of fun is settled. That is, supposing Congress doesn't find a way to cause grief first... oh well, at least we've finally gotten on to this stage of the play, rather than still be waiting for somebody to rein in the ISPs.

One reason I love the Internet... Competition

2010-12-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

As you might have read from my last post, I'm less than impressed with Hulu Plus on my Roku, between $8/month to access, commercials in videos, and a selection of limited interest to me. Yesterday, a new channel came out for the Roku, from a site called Crunchyroll... with it, you can watch most of their vast anime library for free, commercial-free... including two of the three anime series I intended to slog through on Hulu's system. As an added bonus, Crunchyroll even has more episodes for those two series than Hulu Plus does... so, I'll be burning through that third series on Hulu Plus before ditching it.

Of course, I did say most of Crunchyroll's anime library was available for free... they do have a paid plan, if I want the absolute latest episodes for some animes, or one of a few series reserved for paying members. Even so, that would be about $7/month, and still without commercials. Yes, "numbered" is a good description of Hulu's days on my box.

First impressions... Hulu Plus on Roku

2010-12-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

So, the free trial period for Hulu Plus is over, and I'm now (for the time being at least) a paying customer... so, obviously, I'm not entirely dissatisfied with it. However, I'm still thinking of this as a short-term subscription for the purpose of catching up on some longish anime series, rather than a long-term viewing source... let me tell you a few reasons why.

First and foremost has to be the ads. Yes, even though you're paying Hulu for the stream, you still get ads. In and of itself, that's a nuisance... but the volume of ads is really a bit much. Here's a brief example of what watching an episode of anime is like:

Start with a "this program is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by" message, usually followed by an ad.
Anime title animation
1-2 ads (15-30 seconds each)
First half of anime episode
1-2 ads
Second half of anime episode
1-2 ads
Anime credits/preview of next episode

I'm guessing that by "limited commercial interruption", they mean that they don't hit you for 5 minutes of ads at each break.

Apart from that... well, there are a number of smaller issues, but I can't say with certainty whether they are Hulu Plus specific, Roku specific, or something to do with Comcast, but they're still worthy of note. I have run into a number of occasions where the stream "lost sync", dropping the audio and advancing the video in short bursts. On one occasion, the video locked up on return from commercials, and had to be restarted to continue. Even so, it's generally rare enough that these glitches occur that they are (so far) endurable.

Then there are the Roku-specific issues with Hulu Plus. I'm guessing that the "channel" was created by folks at Hulu with little or no experience in actually using a Roku... how else can I explain some of the baffling exclusions from the interface? For example, you can "subscribe" to a series, which gives you access to all the shows in that series Hulu carries, thankfully broken out into seasons... but, from what I've seen, it doesn't remember what the last episode you watched was. There is a "star rating" displayed for each episode, and you can rate episodes yourself... but it always displays the aggregate rating (or, at least, doesn't visually differentiate between your ratings and overall ratings), so you can't even use that as a workaround. Better still, the standard "use the fast forward/reverse buttons to jump a page of selections" feature isn't available... so if, for example, you want to see episode 25 in a 50-episode season, you get to mash the right arrow button 24 times, waiting for the Roku to respond to each press, before you can get started on your show. Thankfully, you can "wrap around" from the first to the last episode by going backwards, so it's not as bad as it could be... but it's plenty bad as is.

But enough negativism... what about the good stuff? Well, you do get original-language shows with English subtitles, which I count as a plus, although not everyone will. It is faster than waiting on Netflix discs with four episodes apiece to work their way to your door... and it's certainly less expensive than going out and buying disc sets of these animes. And... that's about it, really. So, yeah, I'll burn through the series I really want to see, and, barring something exceptional cropping up on Hulu in the meantime, I'll drop Hulu Plus like a hot rock once I'm done.

And so it begins... Comcast tries its hand at gatekeeping

2010-11-30T15:18:00.000-08:00

Comcast and Level 3 Communications are getting into a pissing match over Internet traffic, and who pays how much to let Netflix-streamed content get to your eyeballs. I've seen a few brief news items about the mess, but this link to an Ars Technica article is the best, most thorough walkthrough of what the issues are, based on publicly-available information, that I've seen. Even so, it's not as clear-cut as I might care for... but it sure has the whiff of Comcast trying to charge Netflix for the data I've already paid Comcast and Netflix for. As usual, here's hoping somebody works out a decent alternative to Comcast for Internet access in my neck of the woods, soonest. Heck, I might even have to look into what I can get through commercial channels, once the car's paid off.

Kirby's Epic Yarn

2010-11-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for some truly innocent fun in a game, especially something to play with younger children, you could do far worse than Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii. Visually, it's a wonderful game, and a fine entry for the debate on "are video games art", with every element defined by the concept of a world made entirely of fabric and yarn (well, and the occasional button or zipper, but you get the idea). Gameplay-wise, it's that rarest of game types, a relaxing platformer... I suppose there might be some challenge for the youngest of players early on, but I'd put it about a notch down from the various Lego games, maintaining the "you can't really die" feel while eliminating the odd camera angles that sometimes result in your untimely demise. Story-wise... well, that's pretty straight-forward, your basic "rise of the villain looking to take over the world, until you stop him cold" line, as told by a narrator with a definite reading-to-children bent. I played through the story line in single player mode, and had a fair deal of fun, but there is also a two-player simultaneous mode that could be quite fun, again especially for younger children. All in all, I'd say it's a worthwhile play for all gamers under 10, and any older gamers that can don't think a game has to have a BFG to be worth playing... but it's only about 10 hours to get through, so whether it's worth full-price to you, well, that's entirely up to you.

Imperfect, but worth a shot... Hulu Plus

2010-11-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting something resembling Internet TV for a while now... movies I've got covered by Netflix instant streaming, and sports, what little I watch of them, I can get over the air or through ESPN's widget on my Xbox360, but recent, episodic content has been a dead space to date. That changed today, with Hulu Plus going live on my Roku box, with a price drop to $8/month. Mind you, the vast majority of what they offer is of little to no interest to me, and much of the content I do care about is already available to me through Netflix streaming... but I did see a couple of longish anime series in the mix which are available only by disc through Netflix, at least one of which I'm part-way into already, so it's not a total waste of time to give it a go. Still, I'll probably hold off until just before Thanksgiving to start the week-long free trial period... nothing like a long, holiday weekend to get some serious vegetation out of the way... :)

We now interrupt your regularly-scheduled shooter...

2010-11-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

Looking back, April's the last time I talked about Activision... the short reason being that, by and large, their style of games aren't the ones that make me reach for my wallet. Add to that the ongoing legal mess with their past developers, and my urge to buy is that much less. However, just because I'm sworn off their software for now, doesn't mean that I can't recognize their developers' good works... such as the recently-released Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Mind you, I'm still not a huge shooter fan... but, last I looked, it rated over 90 at Metacritic, which is unusually good for starters. More interesting to me, though, is a little "easter egg" they hid in the menu screen... allowing you to play Zork, a text-adventure game from the last century, and even earn an achievement for doing so (link). Oh well, I guess I'll have to check it out at some point down the road, likely used by then, and cheaper to boot.

DVD pick: Stardust

2010-10-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Wow... this movie's only three years old, so I don't know how I didn't notice it come through the theaters. Maybe I did, and dismissed it as kiddie fare, but the PG-13 gives the lie to that.

So, what's it like? Well, it's a "cross-worlds" fantasy tale about a young English land entering a magical realm in pursuit of a gift for the girl he thinks he loves. It's also a tale of the remaining scions of a newly-dead king vying for the throne. It's also the tale of a lady escaping the clutches of a group of evil witches who want to sacrifice her for their own ends. It's all these, intertwined, plus a couple of side stories, nigh-on-perfectly meshed, sprinkled with dark, wry humor, with some great actors in key roles to boot. Particularly memorable to my mind are Robert de Niro as Captain Shakespeare, whose position and circumstances are difficult to describe at best, and Peter O'Toole as the dying King of Stormhold, deliciously wicked and somewhat disappointed that his sons haven't "worked out" the succession yet... oh, and of course, the ghosts of the sons that died, who serve a great spectator/color commentary role on the whole proceedings.

I enjoyed this movie immensely, and I can think of very few people that I wouldn't recommend it to... if you're not sure, here's a link to the IMDb page for more details.

What's Cookin': Belgian Stew

2010-10-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

OK, so this isn't one of those "OMG it's so tasty, you need to make it right now" sort of recipes, but it's one I go back to at least a few times a year... which is to say, posting this recipe here is as much for me as it is for you. As far as the question of "what makes it Belgian?" goes, I'm going to have to guess it's primarily the beer. Now, on to the recipe:

Ingredients

1/4c. flour
1T salt
Fresh-ground pepper
2lb. stew meat, appx. 1" cubes
1/2 large onion, diced
1/4c. cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, whole
1lb. mushrooms, sliced
12oz. "dark" beer (you may need to experiment here for taste... I find stouts leave a bitter aftertaste when cooked, but most darker/more flavorful beers will work for this)
1T Soy Sauce
1T Worcestershire Sauce
1T Steak Sauce
2t. Thyme
1 bay leaf

Equipment

Shallow bowl or similar for dredging meat
Dutch Oven
Wooden spoon, suitable for stirring/sauteing

Procedure

Combine flour, salt, and pepper in the shallow bowl.
Dredge the stew meat in the flour mixture, to evenly coat the meat cubes, discarding any excess flour mixture.
Heat the cooking oil over medium heat in your dutch oven.
Add stew meat and onion, until the meat is browned and the onion has softened.
Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine.
Bring the contents of the dutch oven to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 2 hours.

The source recipe I'm working from suggests boiling up some potatoes, tossing them in butter and parsley, and serving the stew with a little ring of potato bits around them... but, for my purposes, it's just fine to quarter and boil a potato, drop it in a serving bowl, and cover with stewy goodness. Either way, this recipe should handily serve 6-8 people... personally, I tend to just cook a half-batch, portion it out, and refrigerate or freeze what I'm not using that night.

Out with the old shinies, in with the new

2010-10-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while since my last post... too much fun being had both at work and at play, I suppose. At any rate, here's a quick run-down of my gaming changes, and their effects on this site:

I've dropped playing my PS3 entirely of late... it's main use now is as my DVD/Blu-Ray player. Maybe, someday, Sony will make good on their sins... until then, well, they're pretty well dead to me.
My Wii use is slacking off, too... as I guessed earlier, it's pretty well just some exercise equipment for me now. I know that because I switched to a backup wireless router after some odd behavior from my most recent router, which broke its Internet connection... and I just haven't been motivated enough to troubleshoot that problem. Maybe, when Kirby's Epic Yarn comes out, I'll give it some "real" use again, but we'll see.
The Xbox360 has been good to me, but it's going to get less use for a little while... I finished the storyline on Viva Pinata and Just Cause 2 (both decent enough games... the story line on Just Cause 2 is good in a MST3K-meets-James-Bond sort of way, but the gameplay will keep me coming back for a bit longer), and I don't have any really consuming game needing played there. I suppose I would have gone for Fallout: New Vegas on that box, but...
Just got me a new gaming computer. As a by-the-by, this is the first time I've bought a system pre-built, because I was able to find it online for less than the individual components would have cost me. "Shout out" to NewEgg and iBuyPower on this one... good price, and no issues beyond my own blindness... :)
Of course, with a new computer, there must be a new game... so, I finally snagged Civilization 5. Interesting, what I've played of it so far... definitely a heavier tweak of the base mechanics since, well, Civ3, I believe, but I think we're going to get on just fine, based on the 7-8 hours of "just one more turn" that I endured last night.
And, since I've got a new compy, and new games that Xfire hasn't updated to track, I've got a new widget on the sidebar from a group called Raptr. It should track not only my PC gaming, but any XBox360 stuff as well, in theory (heck, it could do PS3 as well, but, well, Sony and all that). If I were so inclined, I could rig it into Facebook, Twitter or the like... but I'm not quite up to that level of integration of online personalities at this point.

So, there's the quick/huge update... 'til next time!

Sewer adventure update: painful, but not fatal

2010-09-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

So, I think I've got a handle on everything for my upcoming sewer connection... between trenching, laying pipe, re-plumbing my basement, taking care of the old cesspool, permitting, and taxes, I figure I'll be out something short of $5000. That's still a healthy chunk of change, but well less than what I feared. Of course, there's still likely months yet before all's said and done, so plenty of time for unexpected extras to come into play... but hey, I'm feeling optimistic, for the time being.

DVD pick: Sita Sings the Blues

2010-09-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

OK, Sita Sings the Blues is odd, even by my standards... but it simply works. Basically, through a rotating pack of art and animation styles, the old Indian story Ramayana gets told (in a couple of different ways), interspersed with both a story of the film creator's own breakup and "musical numbers" set to 1920s-era recordings. The musical numbers in particular caught my attention: the art and animation stylings struck me as the sort of thing that cartoon studios back in that era might have done, if color were available/affordable... and are especially fun to watch when they're depicting fight scenes in cute counterpoint to the lyrics in play.

I list this as a DVD pick because you can get it that way (especially fun if you care about extras like subtitles, including LOLspeak subtitles)... but, if you just want to check it out now, it's available online through its own website, here. You won't miss that hour and a half anyways... :)

Recettear

2010-09-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

There are certain words that I just don't use often, for one reason or another. One such is "charming", but that's truly the best description I can come up with for Recettear. It's a fine example of the sort of offbeat game that you just never get to see in "mainstream" gaming... in this game's case, both because it's an indie game and because it's a translation of a Japanese game.

If you've ever played one of the many RPGs on computers and game consoles, you're familiar with the concept of the "item shop", where your adventurer/party converts their unwanted loot into cash, then buys wanted loot. The idea behind this game is that your character runs such a shop... but, to prevent it from becoming just a market simulator, they involve a couple of other features. First, the reason you're running the shop... it turns out that your father went and got a large loan to kit out for a life of adventure, then disappeared, leaving you to make payments on the loan or lose your home. It's not as grim as it sounds, but it's still a good rationale for why you set up shop in the first place.

The other odd feature... while there is a "merchant's guild" where you can buy and sell stock for your shop at a discount, the smart money is on hiring an adventurer. Basically, in exchange for a small fee and whatever equipment you care to loan them, they clear out a dungeon for you, keeping any cash but giving you any items they run across. Of course, you get to accompany them on their task, totally protected from harm, able to use items in your inventory to help them out... but, should they fall, you only get to keep one item from the various stuff you brought along or found.

All in all, if you've got a Windows machine to play it on, I'd suggest you follow the link above and download the demo from Steam. If you decide you like it, it's only $20 to buy the full game, or $18 if you pre-order before the full game releases on the 10th. Me, I've already pre-ordered, which is something I Just Don't Do, so that should give you some idea of how well I like what I've seen so far.

Everybody has their sickness

2010-08-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is something I use to remind myself that everyone that I have ever met has some quirk that will consume time and/or money doing objectively useless things... and to remind myself not to judge them too harshly, since my primary sickness is games. What I sometimes forget, however, is that being possessed of one sickness in no way inoculates you from other sicknesses...

Last month, I wrote about the Negima! anime series, and that I'd try out the manga source material... boy, talk about your "gateway drug" experience. Here's a brief rundown of my time with Negima! so far:

Before July: Start watching the series on Netflix. Price: $0 (beyond what I was already spending on Netflix)
Early July: Oh, Netflix doesn't have disc 3... but Amazon has the whole 6-disc series available for cheap! Price: about $15
Mid-Late July: That was pretty good, but I want more. Oh hey, Amazon has used copies of the first five volumes of the manga from various vendors for under a buck (plus a few dollars shipping each... still a lot cheaper than new, though). Price: $20-$25
Early August: Hm... consumed those volumes in one night. Most of that batch of manga matched the anime, in broad strokes, but had better story development... and it just started to deviate from the anime in ways I like. It was a real pain waiting for shipments from all those vendors, though... think I'll try getting used copies of the next five volumes from "fulfillment by Amazon" sellers. Price: about $35
Mid August: Showed some restraint, and managed to make those volumes last all weekend long. Time for five more volumes... but it looks like the used prices aren't much off the new prices for these. I guess I'll pony up for new copies from Amazon this time. Price: about $50
Today: I can't believe I stayed up until midnight on a work night to finish those books... and they left me with a cliffhanger ending! I may as well face it, this series has me hooked, and I'm so very weak... luckily, I converted some credit card rewards points into an Amazon gift card, so this won't hurt too much. Amazon, send me the last 12 volumes that are out in print so far... I can take it! Price: about $110

So yeah, in a week or two, I'll get my last shipment of books, likely will consume them over the course of 2-3 days tops, then likely will wait with bated breath for volume 28 when it drops in late October... oh, that will be some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms time, I'm thinking. Any of you Spokane friends care to jump on board the plague cart? I'll gladly lend you DVDs or early manga volumes... :)

A new adventure begins: Sewer Hookup

2010-08-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I need a reminder that you can't quite do everything on the Internet yet. Even so, it can still come in handy in those limited cases. Today's case in point, finding somebody to hook up my house to the sewer system.

I still have the better part of a year before I must be hooked up, but I can't comfortably endure knowing there's a pricey expense in my near future without knowing how pricey, so I started the search. Googling up "Spokane sewer contractor" brings up a few hits on the map, but... few, if any, of the companies listed have a website. Also, most of the Street View shots of the business addresses tie to residential addresses (or, in one case, a vacant lot)... which says, to me, that most of these contractors are just a guy with an earth mover. It's nice to keep in mind, if I'm looking for somebody to do a passable job on the cheap, but I really want to start with knowing what it will cost to do the job "right" before I fall back on that level of work.

So, I revert to the phone book. I find a place that advertises having been around since the '50s, and find it on Google Maps (it was in my initial search results, but didn't make it onto the main list, for some odd reason). It's fairly close, and Street View shows a commercial building/lot... which is pretty much what I expected for a "real" business in this vein. One phone call later (and oh, how I do hate phones), and my request for quote is in... but, of course, they're backlogged, so they'll get back to me, in theory. We'll see how this goes...

More Sony wrongness

2010-08-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I'm still in a snit about Sony's PS3 Linux disabling from back in April, but, last I heard, there's class action lawsuits being pursued there, so I'm not obsessing over that at the moment. Rather, it's another PS3-related change that has me fervently hoping that they're overestimating what their "core demographic" will tolerate.

Every two weeks, a new episode of a "show" called Pulse is made available on the PlayStation Network for free. I quoted-out "show" in the last sentence because what it is is a run-down of the various games, movies, etc. that are coming out on PSN in the coming weeks... or, to put it bluntly, it's pure advertising. I'm not aware of any games that I'm going to want to purchase for PS3 any time soon, but it's a low-effort way to keep abreast of what's coming out soon. At any rate, this week's episode was preceded by an ad for a new movie theater release, before the show itself got going... or, to put it in other words, you had to watch an ad before you could watch the ads you came there to watch.

I was going to title this entry something along the lines of "More Sony consumer cluelessness", but I fear that too many people have gotten used to watching ads before what they came to watch online, and won't even bat an eye. As for me, it's just another little piece of PS3 that I won't be using any time soon... good thing it's still a decent Blu-Ray player.

Movie o' the day: Inception

2010-07-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

I'll keep this brief, because, as many have said before me, trying to describe this movie adequately is a fool's errand. The basic structure is a "heist movie", but dealing with secrets and beliefs in dreams (and dreams within dreams, and...), but, much like the action in the movie itself, there are multiple layers beyond that. All in all, it's great sci-fi, or maybe fantasy, without devolving into space opera or swords and sorcery. Better still, I only left the theater with one hole in the mechanics of the film, which could have been explained away with a throwaway line of dialogue, but they chose to focus on the action at hand instead, and I honestly can't fault them for that. So, if you're looking for action, intrigue, sci-fi, or a nice dense mix of the above, go see this film.

DVD pick: Negima!

2010-07-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

If I had to choose one trait about myself that stood out beyond all others, it's my capacity for suspension of disbelief. In day-to-day life, that trait pairs nicely with my intelligence to let me find ways to do things, system-design-wise, that others would deem impossible, impractical, or only feasible with large teams and layouts of cash for software. In relaxation, it allows me to enjoy some truly ridiculous things... like this anime series I stumbled across called "Negima!", thanks to Netflix.

The premise is bizarre enough, to be sure. The main character is a ten year old boy named Negi, who is a wizard-in-training from Wales. He is sent, as part of his training, to an all-girls academy in Japan, where he is to serve as a teacher for junior-high students... and, of course, keep his magic a secret from his students. It doesn't take long for him to slip-up in front of one of his students, at which point damage control, and hilarity, ensues.

As the series progresses, you discover that few, if any, of the students in Negi's homeroom class are "just" junior high students. While many present initially as broad stereotypes, you get to discover more about their true personalities (and true natures, in some cases) along with Negi, which makes a charming addition to the individual episode storylines.

Of course, suspension of disbelief isn't without its hazards, either... Negima! is a six-disc series, and the first five are reasonably happy affairs, with a fair share of comedic bits and action sequences. By the end of disc 5, they appear to be setting up a storyline about one of the central characters getting sick from overworking herself, but, in the general flavor of the series to that point, it shouldn't be anything too terrible, and it will all work out in the end. In disc 6... it turns out that the character knows the time of her approaching demise, which she doesn't look forward to, but, believing that nobody can do anything to help her anyways, keeps quiet about it to the very end. They go through an entire sequence of holding a funeral for her, nailing her coffin shut, then cremating her remains... which, in my case at least, hurt a lot more than it had any right to. The follow-ons of watching the class try to get back to normal, with different individuals blaming themselves for her death, and Negi basically suffering a breakdown while trying to figure out how to make her not dead, and the lengths he contemplates and attempts to meet that goal... well, it's much darker than what came before, but all the more powerful for that. As an added bonus, everything does turn out alright in the end... but that would be way too much detail for this review.

So, overall, Negima! is a worthwhile watch... but, be forewarned on a few issues. First, on content... as I stated above, it's not entirely a happy show. Also, given the general type of anime involved and the cultural differences between Japan and the U.S., there's some material that might be a bit risque for some (e.g. somebody threatening Negi getting "pantsed" accidentally when he sneezes), but the "perv factor" is really very low. Second, getting the show... "Negima!" is the show I watched, while "Negima!?" is a "reimagining" of the original material... I haven't watched the other one, so I can't say anything about the show's quality or perviness at this point. Also, as of this writing, Netflix apparently doesn't have disc 3 of the series any longer... but, if you watch the first 2 discs and want the rest, I was able to find a box set of all 6 discs for about $15 new on Amazon.

If you're still on the fence as to whether you want to explore this show, here's a link to the Wikipedia page. As for myself, I think I'm going to hunt down the manga source material... knowing there's more to the story, I want to see where it goes, for a while at least.

Mix and match - my ideal game system

2010-07-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

So, I've had one of the new Xbox360's for a couple of weeks now, and both the PS3 and Wii have been my toys for a couple of years now... and I've been exposed to home videogame systems of various stripes for decades, all the way back to the old Pong machines (gosh, I'm old!). I got to thinking, what should an "ideal" home videogame system look like these days?

Start with the box itself... small, quiet, and unobtrusive should be the order of the day. It seems that most game manufacturers get that right on the second major physical revision of their systems (the exception being Nintendo, who got it right the first time). Since optical drives are still the method of choice for physical game sales, slot-fed drives are the way to go, in support of the pursuit of quiet (it surprised me how much noise the drive on the new Xbox360 made... then heard that the old one was even louder). An internal hard drive is almost a must... and best good would be to be able to install games from disc onto the hard drive, to minimize noise from and wear on the optical drive (my Wii drive makes odd noises on occasion now, and I dread the day that happens on my PS3, since it's my Blu-Ray player). Wireless networking for multiplayer gaming is now standard, thankfully, so stick with that. Finally, since we're talking about an ideal, build a high-efficiency power supply into the box itself, use a standard power cord to supply AC (your standard PC power cable would do nicely), and vent waste heat to either the front or rear of the box, where you can expect a cabinet-installed box to either have open access for cables or the optical drive and power switch.

Controllers are a trickier matter... if you go by sales figures, the masses like the simplicity and full-body-motion use of the Wii's primary controllers, while "dedicated gamers" still prefer the standard handheld controller style. To add to the confusion, Microsoft is ramping up to push their Kinect system, eliminating the hand-held controller entirely, and there are a slew of game-specific controllers out there for things like Guitar Hero. Since Kinect is still an unproven concept, I'm going to work on the theory that an ideal system would still need a "standard" controller, and try to get the best of all worlds while I'm at it. That said, here's a breakdown of what I think an ideal controller should be:

No Wires - one of the few hardware design pieces on the PS3 that always made me question the designer was needing a USB cable to connect a controller to the PS3 for charging... and charging only works when the console is turned on. Contrast that with the Xbox360 or Wii controllers, which both never need to touch their console to work properly. Of course, the Wii doesn't get a free pass on this one either... that cable between the Wiimote and Nunchuck was a necessary design evil at the time, I'm sure, but there has to be a better way.
Motion Sensing - I recall, a few years back, letting my brother (who has owned an Xbox360 for years) know that the controller on the PS3 was motion sensitive, which blew his mind a bit. Even without the on-screen-cursor fun of the Wii, motion sensitivity can add greatly to a game, or even be the heart of a good game (Flower for PS3 springs to mind).
Rumble - physical feedback, even as crude as controller rumble can be, generally helps with game immersion. Even on the Wii, I can't help but think how much better a sword-fighting game would be if you got that little physical nudge when you crossed swords with your opponent.

With that in mind, here's what I think would be about an ideal standard controller. Start with your basic PS3/Xbox360 style handheld controller, use the PS3-style analog stick layout (the Xbox offset version was just a patent dodge, if I recall correctly, not an ergonomic decision), but use the Xbox-style sticks, plus the Xbox-style bumper/trigger controls. Then, for your Wii-style pointing-and-flailing games... I don't know if you would do this with a physical or magnetic lock, but set up the controller with a twist-lock down the center of the controller, letting you separate it into two roughly chicken-drumstick-shaped parts that still work in tandem, much like the Wiimote and Nunchuck on the Wii. I know there's some serious ergonomic work to be done to make such a multifunction controller comfortable to use in both configurations, but it would start to rein in the Wii's problem of too many controllers, especially when it comes to things like their "classic" controller, which plugs into the Wiimote, and initially came with only the bumper buttons, until they released a version with triggers for a specific game within the past year. Oh, and I'm not even sure if it's possible, from a gameplay-feel perspective, but it could be pretty cool to make those analog sticks into "paddle" controllers as well... there are a fair number of games from the past that analog sticks, as they are now, simply don't handle well... and, if the controller supported that feature, there could easily be some new games to take advantage of the control option.

Well, there's my ideal game system. Note that I didn't get into certain details, like graphics power or how it connects to your TV, because that all tends to be "what's the best we can justify cramming in, price-wise, at the start of the console's life-cycle". Of course, there's at least one service starting up now that's aiming to replace the home game console entirely, so we may not even get the box in years to come. It'll be fun to see what comes along next.

A mixed day for individual liberties

2010-06-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

So much of what the Supreme Court does passes with hardly a mention in the press these days... but, sometimes, you get something "big enough" to break through. Today was such a day, with SCOTUS stating clearly that, yes, the second amendment to the constitution applies not only to the federal government, but state and local governments as well (link). Of course, they didn't get into little matters like how broad that constitutional right is (at least, I haven't heard any ads for full-auto weaponry for sale yet)... but, in general, people who want to buy weapons for self-defense (and haven't had their rights revoked for felonies) should be able to get them now, even in major metropolitan areas.

Of course, nothing's perfect (including, many would argue, that last item)... but SCOTUS made another decision (or rather, punted on another decision), wasting a golden opportunity to fix something that's been broken for some time - the patent system. You see, at some point, patents got away from "here's this new thing I made, and intend to profit from", creeping into the territory of "here's this nifty idea I had, which I might or might not make use of in something I'm making, but I don't want anybody else using my idea". In this particular case (link), somebody was trying to patent a way of deciding whether a risk was worth taking for a business... and SCOTUS, thankfully, threw it out. However, they didn't go all the way back to limiting patents to "machines or transformations", apparently thinking there's some more nebulous case where there's no physical change, but patent protection is still applicable. The pisser on that is, a lot of that grey area covers business method and software patents... meaning, in theory, I could come up with some nifty new way of doing things for my company, and end up putting us in legal jeopardy, just because somebody else had the same idea some years back. I mean, it's one thing to scour the Internet or the patent office's files to see if somebody came up with, for example, a peculiar fishing lure... it's quite another to find, again for example, an odd search algorithm.

Oh well, one can only hope that, in time, those answers will be worked out, and, possibly, code will be protected the way I think it should be, by copyright. In the meantime, if I ever get an itch to get into guns, it's likely to be a bit easier, in time.

The shiny, it burns!

2010-06-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

First, a tip of the hat to Ars Technica... I wouldn't be linking to you so much if you weren't so damn cool.

It's that time of year again, when all sorts of goodness flows out from and around the E3 Expo. I'm used to seeing multiple things that catch my fancy, but this year outdoes anything in my recent memory.

First, in the answered-prayers department, comes news of a new XBox360. Back in April, after Sony made a business decision I disagreed with strongly, I posted a half-hearted hope that Microsoft would come out with a new hardware revision soon, so I could "switch sides". Only with new hardware, I felt, could the issue of their well-publicized hardware failures be put behind them, and, just maybe, they would include a wireless network interface without charging obscene amounts for an add-on. Well, both those prayers were answered in the new model, along with some aesthetic and engineering changes, such as quieter operation and a smaller power supply... and, since Sony went ahead and announced their own online subscription service similar to Microsoft's, they effectively killed the last thing that could have conceivably held me back. Long story short, when next I stumble across one of these new XBox360s, it will almost certainly be mine.

Second, in the oh-heck-yes department, Apple decided to release a new revision of the Mac Mini. My current model is about two and a half years old now, and was never built for anything more than "light" computing tasks, certainly not games (as my experiments with Steam verified). The new version not only replaces the anemic video hardware that limits my gaming, it also has HDMI output for home-theater use, and a fully-internal power supply, despite being even smaller than its predecessors. Of course, at $700 for the base model, it's not quite the gimme-gimme-gimme that the XBox360 is... but I was already thinking in terms of a new "gaming" computer later in the year, when Civilization V comes out. This just might be a strong contender for getting away from having a separate Windows box, when the time comes.

Third, in the wait-and-see department, Nintendo let the wraps off their 3DS. I know, 3D is all the rage these days, but I still haven't seen a single movie in the theaters, mainly because I have no use for glasses, goggles, or anything else getting between me and what I'm watching (especially since I already wear my own glasses). The trick here is 3D without any such encumbrances... which, depending, could be a very nice trick indeed. Still, I've played with a basic DS, which is really too small for my hands... if the hardware's a workable size for me, and there's enough software that appeals, this could be a Christmas or birthday present to myself, come the time.

All that... and it's only the first day of E3. I wonder what other goodies will come to the fore in the next couple of days?

Movie o' the day: The Secret of Kells

2010-05-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Spokane has this little art-house theater that's come and gone over the years, called the Magic Lantern. I normally don't pay it much attention, since the majority of its fare tends to be small foreign films and documentaries that, if they grab my attention, I can generally catch on Netflix in short order, in the privacy of my own home. However, they do also occasionally show some piece of animation that had escaped my attention earlier, and isn't currently available on DVD, and may never be, for that matter... such was the case for The Secret of Kells.

The story itself isn't anything earth-shattering... during Viking times, our young hero Brendan lives in an abbey where his uncle is the head abbot. The abbot is doing his best to make his abbey defensible, and shield his flock from the northmen... in his nephew's case, to the point of forbidding him from leaving the abbey. A master limner, who survived another Viking raid on his abbey, comes to the abbey with his cat, Pangur Ban, and a book that generations of limners have been working on, the Book of Iona... and proceeds to lure the hero away from the path of the abbot's choosing. In the end, the vikings come, the abbey is razed, but the limner and his new apprentice survive and complete the book, now called the Book of Kells. In and amongst all that, there's a fair bit of Brendan sneaking out of the abbey, befriending a local faery who's the guardian of the surrounding woods, and battling a dark pagan god in the process. It's a passable tale, but not something likely to grab the imagination of young children, I'd wager.

That said... the animation is oddly beautiful, in its own way. The main art style is influenced by anime, but also looks to draw on time-appropriate European artwork (it wouldn't surprise me if that influence came from the real-life Book of Kells itself). When they deal with the Norsemen, the color palette shifts extremely dark, and the motion they use to imply their implacability and unstoppability is inspired. At times, they split the behavior of a character and their shadow, to better portray mood or shadow something they're describing. The one time the faery does actual magic involving Pangur Ban is understated but simply outstanding. Oh, and Pangur Ban is one of the better mostly-normal cat portrayals I've ever seen.

So, overall, if you're an animation geek, get thee to the Magic Lantern before this goes away (or check your own local art-house to see if it's coming or already gone), or at least get it saved in your Netflix queue and pray that a DVD release is forthcoming soon. For those of you looking for something to take the kids to... it's not bloody, it doesn't have any bad language or other naughty bits, but neither does it have enough action to keep real young kids enthralled. If it still sounds like something they'd enjoy, by all means go, or stow it away in your Netflix queue.

Something good, for a change: The Maxx

2010-05-21T21:45:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I've been doing a lot of focusing on the craptastic side of our life and times here of late, so it's high time I highlighted some of the cooler things about living today... to wit, The Maxx.

The Maxx is a short cartoon series from the mid-90s, with a unique concept, entertaining voice-work, and a wide range of artistic styles. For those not in the know, here's a link to more details... but, suffice it to say, that it was never mainstream fare. In years past, if it ever made it to a home recording, it would have been released shortly after the series ended, while whatever interest it held was still 'hot', then quietly stuffed into the archives, never to see the light of day, except in odd corners of video stores or even odder private libraries of cartoon nerds (and yes, I did get a VHS tape for myself back in the day).

Fast forward fifteen years, and we find ourselves with the Internet in full swing... and on the Internet, nothing is truly obscure. On the small scale, that means you could likely do a search on YouTube and piece together this series, or many others, with a little time and effort. On a larger scale, there are plenty of movies and series that have been resurrected in DVD form, the vast majority of which you can get through Netflix... unfortunately, The Maxx isn't quite "big" enough to do a full production run of DVDs, it seems, so Netflix doesn't carry a copy. Not to worry, though... we've also entered the age of on-demand publishing, which has reached into the realm of DVDs as well as books. As such, you can get The Maxx made, legally, just for you... and who knows what other "marginal" goodies are out there, waiting to grace your shelves, the better to spring on unsuspecting guests?

So, yeah, obviously, I bought a copy... here's a link to Amazon. $15 for two DVDs, and they threw in streaming copies of the episodes as well. If you've never been exposed to the series, well, check out that IMDb link I tossed in earlier, maybe do a little online research... but, if it draws your interest in the slightest, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the buy.

A study in human nature - the Humble Bundle

2010-05-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

Funny how you can watch a wide swath of human behavior over the course of a week. Last week, a group of independent game developers got together to offer a limited time offer... five developers, five games, one week, pay as little as you want for the games, and donate as much of what you pay as you want to one of a pair of charities. They called it the Humble Bundle, and, as of this writing, with about 15 hours left on the offer, they've gotten over $840,000. All things considered, not too shabby.

Of course, it's not all a feel-good story. Having to pay for the bandwith to let all those downloads happen, they get tracking reports of how much bandwidth they've used... and, despite offering the option to pay as little as $0.01 for the games, it appears that about 25% of the downloads were made without any payment or contribution whatsoever (link). There are a number of people out there who, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't pay anything for the games, even to charity.

So, there's your portrait... faith in humanity on the part of the developers, mostly decent people willing to play by the rules, and a pool of scum that can't be bothered to dig a penny out of their pocket for a little entertainment.

Bloomsday

2010-05-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

For any of you without a Spokane connection, today was Bloomsday. Naturally, I didn't participate (not much of one for exercise, especially with 50,000+ of my closest strangers), preferring instead to sleep in... but I thought that it might be a fine time to snag brunch and hit Costco before the hordes hit.

Naturally, things didn't work out quite that way. I drove out to the Old European on Sprague, only to find it closed and converted to some sort of Japanese establishment (still one on Division, thankfully... much prefer eating aebelskivers to making them myself)... so I settled for the evil of IHOP (not terrible if your expectations are low... but man, those were some greasy sausages). I then hit Costco, to find things even more crowded than usual for a weekend, with all the Bloomies clustering around the sample stands, clogging flow through the aisles better than the greasy breakfast I had just eaten ever dreamed of doing to my arteries. Foolishly, I pressed on... it wasn't quite Christmas-at-Walmart levels of people packing, but it wasn't pretty, either... it's never a good sign when I breathe a sigh of relief on managing to exit a store.

So, lessons learned... be damn sure, if you're going to try to take advantage of an event to get something done, that you get what needs done done while the event is still in play. I might have spent more shopping Costco while I was still peckish, but my sanity would be in better shape, I believe.

Google Street View surprise

2010-04-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

It's nice to know that I can still be surprised, I guess... the story's from Germany, but Google's not a company to do things differently in different places if they can help it, so it almost certainly applies here in the U.S. as well. Google's car that's used to generate those images for their Street View service does more than just take pictures... it's also scanning for wireless networks, and recording any MAC addresses it finds (link). The best "why" I've heard so far is to assist with geo-location... your IP address can and will change, but your MAC address is constant and unique (unless you take the time and have the know-how to change it yourself, of course).

My initial reaction on finding this out was unpleasant... after all, on a visceral level, there seems to be a big difference between filming the neighborhood and snooping into what electronic gear you may have stashed in your house. Thinking on it, though, most people who have a wireless router don't go to any great lengths to disguise the fact, and "hot-spot finders" have been around for years... the big difference here is that a data gathering company is pinpointing large numbers of such hot-spots, for purposes that aren't exactly clear, but it's not like any of these people were taking active measures to protect themselves.

So, I guess, if you're concerned about somebody tracking your Internet smack-talk back to your home thanks to Google, it's time to wire your house for Ethernet and drop all the wireless bits. Otherwise, it's business as usual... but with an extra piece to keep in mind, just in case.

Watching the Activision train wreck

2010-04-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

It's not fun for the people involved, I'm sure, but it sure is entertaining to watch... in the week since Activision filed their counter-suit against the developers they fired for insubordination, at least ten more employees of that studio have left of their own accord, from reports I see on the 'net. The most notable bits I've gleaned on that:

Mostly, it's "leads" that are leaving, it appears... but they're not all going straight into the welcoming arms of the new studio set up by the fired developers under EA's wing.
"Anonymous source(s)" from inside Activision report exceptionally low morale, even calling the studio "dead".
Activision and business analysts seem to be of the mind-set that they're likely to see more developers leave, but they'll just replace them, and will still be able to put out "competitive" products in the future.

How can I best put this... creative types aren't interchangeable parts. At some level, even Activision must realize this, when they replace terms similar to "industry-leading" with "competitive" as the best they can look forward to on an ongoing basis. To use a car-dealing analogy, it's like Lexus losing significant portions of their engineering and design staff, then telling anybody that will listen "not to worry, we'll get more workers, and still be able to compete with Chevy." I'm not going to be sad to see most of Activision wither away over time, but I do feel some sorrow for the coders that don't have the option to jump ship early, for whatever reason.

Of course, I did say "most of Activision"... there is one piece that isn't going by the wayside anytime soon, and that's Blizzard. Best evidence of that: they started selling an in-game mount for their World of Warcraft game yesterday, at $25 a pop... and sold enough to make over $2 million in a day (link). It'll be... interesting... to see how the power struggle over that cash cow plays out.

Brief catch-up post

2010-04-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

All sorts of fun being had, and nothing quite worthy of a post of its own... time for another three-fer.

My Roku box died! Well, to be more precise, the wireless and HD display parts died... so, after hours of consideration and reviewing the state of Internet players out there, I gave the old box to my younger brother (as much for the niece/nephew to watch as anything) and snagged the Roku HD XR. On the plus side, I've got dual-band wireless-N now, so I can run on a different frequency and avoid any issues with other wireless devices in the house. On the minus side, the USB port on it doesn't have any use (yet), and it seems to be a bit more sluggish to respond than my old box. Still, it's a lovely toy, and should only get better as more channels/new firmware comes out.
On the Sony front, I decided to re-partition my PS3 hard drive, eliminating my Linux partition, on the assumption that I would be wanting to upgrade to the new firmware eventually... unfortunately, even though I backed up my downloaded software, it wouldn't work when restored, because it couldn't "phone home" during the restore, because I was using old firmware. So, to get things working again, I had to accept the new firmware and re-register my PS3 with their network. Not entirely unexpected, but it sure doesn't make me any happier with Sony.
On the Activision front, it only took them over a month, but yesterday they filed a counter-suit against their ex-employees (link). There's two bits I like from this... first, Activision's assertion that employees were looking to steal "one of Activision's most valuable assets", namely the studio employees these guys presided over, as they jumped ship to a competitor. Note to Activision: no matter how hard you try, you can't "own" your employees... you can disincentivize them leaving by contract all you want, but, at the end of the day, it's their choice whether to stay or go, with or without their leaders. The second bit I liked? The rep for EA, where the jumping-ship-to was alleged to be imminent, replied to a request for comment "We don't have the time to comment on the many lawsuits Activision files against its employees and creative partners." You know, I think he rather enjoyed that... :)

Comcast vs. FCC - round 1 to Comcast

2010-04-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

So, old news as I write this, but Comcast got a court of appeals to rule that the FCC overstepped its bounds when it forced Comcast to stop throttling BitTorrent a couple of years back (link). Has it really been that long ago? At any rate, I was perturbed when I first heard this, being the staunch backer of 'net neutrality that I am... but I'm at least as staunch a supporter of the rule of law, and, in truth, the FCC's order was based on something closer to the Pirate Code from Pirates of the Caribbean (more like guidelines, really). While the goal was seemingly noble, government shouldn't get in the habit of claiming power it doesn't have, lest less-noble goals get the same treatment.

Of course, the question becomes "what now?" The FCC could pursue the appeals process higher, and get spanked by the Supreme Court, more likely than not. They could seek to classify Internet access as equivalent to phone service, bringing regulation and common-carrier requirements solidly into play, and trigger legal battles on a grand scale. They could wait for Congress to pass legislation giving them more nuanced/neutered powers over 'net providers... but good luck with that, since Internet access isn't even remotely sexy, even in political terms, and the big-business-friendly Republicans are already in an obstructionist mood. All I know is that there's no clarity right now as to who has how much say over how rabidly Internet providers can pursue their profit motives at the expense of their customers... customers that don't have the wealth of choices necessary to let the market truly dictate winners and losers. Here's hoping things get figured out quickly.

Another company for the no-buy list: Sony

2010-04-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

Could it just be me, or are companies pushing the boundaries of appropriate behavior more cluelessly these days? The most recent to cross a line that shouldn't be crossed is Sony... they decided to try to remove a feature from my PS3 that has been there since I bought it, for vaguely-stated "security concerns", with only a few days notice (link).

Luckily, this doesn't appear to be as bad as I initially feared... none of the games I currently own, on disc or downloaded from their online service, appear to have been shut down. Of course, some games, like Noby Noby Boy, are pretty useless without an online component, and, unless I upgrade my firmware, I can't use their service. Even so, strong-arming your customers into giving up a feature they paid for without any compensation under questionable pretenses (whose security are we talking about, for starters?) falls under corporate behavior that I want no part in supporting... and, since this is the same company that tried to install a rootkit on their customers' computers using their music CDs, I honestly can't think of any action they could take to restore my trust.

Of course, for all that I have moral standards, I'm also a pragmatist... I'm not about to scour the entire house for Sony-provided products and start a bonfire in the street. I'll continue to make use of my PS3, with the games I already own... but I'm definitely no longer buying any PS3 game on disc "new" (wouldn't do to let Sony collect their slice, after all), and I'm going to resist buying any downloadable content from this point forward. Oh, and, of course, I'm not buying any of Sony's music, movies, computers, etc., and especially not any further hardware for this game system, nor any future game system they put out.

I find it hard to believe I'm writing these words... but I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft comes out with a new hardware revision for their XBox360? After all, they may overcharge for their components, and nickle-and-dime you in other ways... but at least they're straightforward about what their intents are.

Movie o' the day: How to Train Your Dragon

2010-03-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Slow day at work, an early show of a new, animated film, you know I'll be there. Today, How to Train Your Dragon sucked me in.

It's a pretty straightforward story, which I'll outline in broad strokes: smart Viking lad constantly gets into trouble trying too hard to prove himself as much a Viking as anybody else in the village, which is constantly raided by dragons; he discovers dragons aren't just rapacious raiding machines, ends up (somewhat) taming a dragon in secret; when he tries to demonstrate what he's learned to his village, they assume he's turned his back on the Viking way, taking the side of the dragons instead; hasty words set up a 'final battle' situation, the Vikings get in over their heads, the lad and his friends save the day, and an imperfectly happy ending wraps the whole thing up.

I'm not going to go into any more detail than that... I'll just say that the story isn't quite as grim as the broad strokes would suggest, and the imperfection of the happy ending actually serves the story quite well. My only quibble with the film is the hero himself... as a "smart wannabe Viking", they cast him as excessively sarcastic, and almost world-weary when things are going wrong for him, which I can't see the Vikings putting up with without a few well-placed cuffs, chief's son or no.

So, my verdict... I liked it, and wasn't sorry to shell out $7 to see it in 2D... but then, I'm an animation fan. If you're on the whole 3D kick, I can see how this could be a good one to watch that way on the big screen... otherwise, unless you're a fan like me, or are looking for a film to take older, grade-school children to (I did hear an anguished "NO!" from a young child towards the end of the film, thanks to the lead-up to the imperfectly happy ending, so if your child still takes movies excessively seriously, be warned), you might want to hold off for a matinee, or even wait for the DVD. Still, I'd say it's worth seeing.

GOP: screw you guys, I'm going home

2010-03-24T14:51:00.001-07:00

So, this is what politics in Washington have devolved to.

Unable to stop the passage of health care reforms, the GOP has decided that the best policy they can take... is to shut down all the committees they can at 2pm daily. Thanks to a Senate rule (which the best explanation I've seen so far as to its existence is that it might date back to the days before air-conditioning), the majority and minority leaders have to agree to let committee hearings go past that time... so today, several hearings got cut short, including defense, judiciary, and veteran's affairs hearings.

Will this happen on an ongoing basis? Or, maybe, on random days of the GOP's choosing? It's beyond petty... the very essence of "the game's not going the way I want, so I'm taking my ball and going home".

New games section

2010-03-19T17:59:00.001-07:00

Yep, love me some lists of links... if you look to the right, there's now a list of games that "have my attention", games that I'm actively playing or keeping an eye on their release. Your tastes may vary... but now, you can at least know what I'm playing, without waiting for me to post a review after the fact.

Spot on!

2010-03-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

I try not to just link off to other sites' stuff without some personal commentary, but this one's got the topic covered, with humor, so there's not much for me to say... except that it's a must-read for videogame-philes and -phobes alike. Why Your Loved Ones Hate Videogames

EA's "crown" falls to Activision

2010-03-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

Yep, I've been pretty constant in my disdain for Electronic Arts... in fact, I'm pretty certain that I've successfully avoided buying any product of theirs for years, with the one exception of Spore (which was as much a reward for trying something different and rewarding the efforts of the founder of Maxis as anything else). However, it looks like I have to take EA off the top of my "game companies to avoid" list, since Activision's management has taken things to a whole new level.

Here's a link to a better description of what's going on in Activison-land, but here's the basics... Activision bought a game developer some time back, and part of the contract for that promised royalties on that developer's products to their founders. As pay-up day approached, Activision let their investors know that they were going to fire those founders for "insubordination" (the nature of which hasn't come to light to date), which, I gather, would mean that they wouldn't have to pay out those royalties, and that they were likely to get sued in the process. Sure enough, those founders are suing, and the detailed descriptions in their legal filings of the thuggish behavior they endured on approach to firing speaks volumes, compared to the bland accusations of insubordination by Activision.

I suppose it could be argued that I should wait until all the facts of the case come to light, etc., but calling people in on a holiday weekend for a 6-hour interrogation session, and demanding they turn over their personal electronic equipment to company lawyers for review, never mind any of the other items alleged in that filing, crosses way over the line of appropriate corporate behavior for any company. As such, no more Activision games for me... luckily, I haven't played World of Warcraft for years, so I don't have a major addiction to give up to "do the right thing". I'll just have to check my collection of recent games when I get home, and see how guilty I should feel for helping Activision grow to the size it is today.

Minor annoyances

2010-03-01T19:17:00.000-08:00

Nothing here's big enough to warrant a post on its own... but, since they all hit within about 24 hours of each other, might as well round 'em up and get them off my chest.

My PS3 was one of those taken out of commission by the glitch referred to on at least one site, in standard Internet overreaction, as the ApocalyPS3. It's working now... just from what I could see, I'm pretty sure it was some conflict between the on-board timer and the firmware (outage was over 01MAR10 by GMT, possibly due to the timer thinking 2010 was a leap year, somehow). The fact that only older models were affected implies that a hardware change in newer models eliminated the problem... which raises the question of why the hardware change was made. It could be Sony just replaced an obsolete part with a functionally-equivalent, properly-working part... or it could be that this was a known problem, at some level in Sony's hierarchy, but they decided to try and pass it off as as much of a surprise to them as to everybody else. Either way, somebody's got some 'splaining to do... it'll be fun to see how that comes out.
Got a mailer from Comcast today, touting their Xfinity upgrade thingy... in particular, faster Internet speeds and "basic" cable for $5 more a month (intro rate, of course). From what I read, it appears that Comcast is going to artificially limit the speed of their existing users' connections to something approximating their current speed, so they can charge more from users for a higher-speed connection. Some days, this might be sufficient to send me off on a Comcast rant, but not today... it just means that, if I see my service quality suffer (primarily as measured by my ability to watch 720p streaming video from Netflix, since nothing else I do these days really taxes my connection in a way I would notice), they have that much less room to beg off on the grounds of concurrent users bogging down the system, since they're extracting extra cash to support that user base, which would likely trigger a serious round of "who else can I get decent Internet connectivity through at a decent price?"
This one actually hurts a bit... I don't dine out that often (for all I'm a tech geek, I'm fairly frugal), but I do have my favorites when I'm in the mood for food X. I thought I'd stop off on the way home from work tonight to pick up some Happy Family from my favorite local Chinese restaurant, Tasty House... only to drive up to an empty storefront. I don't even know if anybody else does Happy Family in Spokane... here's hoping there is, and they do a decent job of it, and it's not way on another side of town from anywhere I go normally.

Get your OCD on: Disgaea 3

2010-02-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm going to say, right off the bat, that this game is definitely not for everyone... first, because it's only available on PS3; second, because it is not nearly as "pretty" as you would expect most PS3 games to be; third, because it will let you be as OCD as you want, which can be either a major turn-off for some folks or an extreme hazard for others. In fact, that third part is a big part of why it's taken so long for me to write about this game... so far as I can determine, I have had this game for nearly a year, the playtime tracker on the save games says I just went over the 300 hour mark, and I just recently completed the "main" storyline in the game. So, yes, it's a long game, but it held onto me well enough to get me through the story, too... which is by no means certain in a video game, even these days.

For those of you looking for a proper review, I'd suggest taking this link off to Metacritic, to see if it's your cup of tea. The highlights... it's a "tactical RPG", which means a role-playing game where you control a team of characters and fight out your battles in a turn-based game. The setting is quite unusual... "demon high school", with a strange cute/anime mix to the blend. Beyond that, there are multiple story tweaks and game mechanics to spice up the adventure... and, being demons involved, they pretty well invite you to game those game mechanics as hard as you can.

Speaking of game mechanics, there's one basic concept that I find missing in party-based RPGs in general that Disgaea 3 nails spot on... if you have multiple people ganging up on a single person, the effect should be more than simply additive. Better still, this game gives you multiple ways to embrace that concept, whether it's team attacks, combos, linked attacks, tower attacks, characters wielding other characters as weapons... there are many, many ways to bring great amounts of hurt to your opponents, often in visually satisfying ways (well, given the limitations of the game engine, at any rate).

But now, here's the kicker... like I said, I managed to spend 300 hours over the course of a year getting through the main story. What I've come to realize, especially after sniffing about online, is that the main story line is there, as much as anything, to get you accustomed to the behaviors of the game engine and advance your characters to the point where they are, tactically speaking, interesting to work with. There are extended story lines to pursue after the main story line, if you are so inclined, or you can just play randomly-generated battles if that's your thing. Any way you look at it... I've just completed a 300 hour tutorial on the game. Off and on, I'm going to be playing this game for as long as I use my PS3... and liking it, a lot. What can I say... between what I've written here, and the reviews available through Metacritic, if this game sounds interesting to you, pick it up... if it gets its hooks into you, it will be one of the better game purchases you ever make, especially in terms of playtime to dollars spent.

Corporate charity?

2010-02-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

While attending a family get-together the other night, I got into a bit of a spirited discussion with my younger brother. Somehow, the topic came around to corporate-sponsored charity drives in general, with the center of contention being a local Thanksgiving dinner-generating/food-bank-filling event sponsored by Rosauers supermarkets and heavily pushed on KREM (our local CBS affiliate), especially on and around their news broadcast, for about a month before the two-day event. While most at the table thought the month-long lead-up was just overdone, I took the darker view (as I often do) that those two corporate entities had effectively hijacked the whole proceeding, taking it from the realm of "let's help the needy" to "see how good we are, getting all of you to help the needy". My brother took umbrage at that, and argued the position that, since corporations can't be expected to act altruistically (which I fully agree with), they should be lauded for whatever charity work they do engage in, no matter how much they profit from the exercise (which I emphatically do not agree with).

Of course, as always, the possibility exists that I'm playing the ass, with respect to the norms of society... so, what do you think? Where do you draw the line between corporate charity and corporate self-aggrandizement? Is there such a line at all?

Yes, please.

2010-02-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I've ranted once or twice here about the lack of Internet competition provided by Comcast and Qwest, my local cable and phone companies... the problem being, short of one or the other improving their service and/or lowering their prices (none too likely, in either case), I couldn't see any "viable" third option coming to play. That changes today, with Google deciding to run a test project on entering the fray with true fiber-to-the-home Internet connectivity (link).

In brief, Google wants to run 1 Gbit connections to homes in its test area (at least 50 times faster than the fastest cable Comcast provides these days), and let you choose from a variety of Internet providers to get your service through their hardware... you know, kind of like in the old days of dialup, where there was active competition for your Internet dollar, and smaller providers were able to survive and, in some cases, thrive. The downside, of course, will be what Google's going to charge for that line to your house, I'm sure... but it's still a test program, so I can dream. Heck, while I'm dreaming, come over this way to run your test... I won't mind, honest... :)

Subscription TV via Internet - so... close...

2010-02-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

Yep, Roku just added another channel to their box, for Skitter.tv. Unfortunately, it's not just "subscribe with us, and get content via Internet on the cheap"... rather, they partner with local Internet providers to stream content, including local broadcast stations, that their users would otherwise have to get via cable or dish. Being on a cable company's Internet service, that means that I won't be seeing this particular feature any time soon... but, patience is a virtue, and all that. One way or another, a la carte programming will make its way online... eventually... I hope... please? :)

The latest fly in my ointment - "alarm registration"

2010-02-03T14:55:00.000-08:00

This is a small issue, but one that illustrates a basic flaw with most governments I've seen... the basic disconnect between "for the good of the community" they were set up to serve, and "for the good of the government" that they evolve towards.

Until this year, my city has had a simple, straightforward system for dealing with alarm systems, specifically for dealing with false alarms... the first one in a given year's free (accidents will happen), after which escalating fees and other requirements kick in to fix your brokenness. The end result of this setup (according to the numbers quoted in the notice I received): slightly over 1000 false alarm responses by the police, at an estimated cost of slightly under $45,000 over the course of 2008. If my math doesn't fail me, that's a per-alarm cost of $4.50... so, let's be generous (inflation and all that), and call it $5 per false alarm.

Now, being the rational sort that I am, if I considered this to be a problem (which, honestly, I don't... responding to potential property crimes in progress is part of the job of the police), I would look at either increasing the fines for false alarms (or, if that revenue stream wasn't reliable enough, a small fee on all alarm owners), and use that money to hire on more police help (with the numbers we're talking here, that's maybe only half or a third of a full hire... but I don't think most alarm owners would get too bent out of shape about hiring on added police capacity to ensure their alarm was responded to in a timely manner). Oh, but wait, that would involve administrative overhead to collect those piddling little funds, and might be portrayed as "raising your taxes", so we can't do that, can we?

Instead, the city has decided to bring in an outside company to do the administrative work, charging every residential alarm customer $25 a year ($15/year if no false alarms in the past year), and even more for business alarms... or, to put it another way, everybody who dares to own an alarm system gets to pay 3-5 times more (or even more for a business) than it cost, on average, for any false alarm they responded to in 2008... which, in and of itself, is a nuisance. However, they then take that money, and... wait for it... use it to make sure that your contact information is correct. That's it. The theory being that, if we can call you when your alarm goes off, you might tell us no, it's OK, I tripped the alarm myself, no worries, no need for the police to get involved.

But now, hang about a moment... if you have an alarm company, they're supposed to do that already. I mean, that's part of the purpose of having a monitoring company for an alarm... alarm goes off, they call to make sure it's not a problem and, failing that, call the police. So, the end result of this new system is, rather than improving public safety by hiring on additional police, the city is extorting funds from their citizens to fund a private company that duplicates what the alarm monitoring company is supposed to do for itself, on the off chance they're not... all so no elected official "looks bad" for raising taxes.

Now, for the part that really chaps my hide... I'm a homeowner, I have an old alarm system still mostly doing what it's supposed to do, but I don't have a monitoring company (haven't for years, and it's disconnected from the phone line entirely), just the audible alarm. It's been tripped a couple of times (usually when I'm out-of-town and have somebody drop by to feed the cats), and I haven't seen or heard from any police officers in that time, so the "false alarm mitigation" argument doesn't really fly for me... but, unless I uninstall the system or disable the klaxon, I'm still liable for the fee. Worst of all... I'm actually going to pay the fee, rather than muck with the system, because I'm reasonably certain I get more than $15/$25 off my homeowner's insurance over the course of a year for having a local alarm system. Well, at least they'll have my phone number right, when they need to call me about that alarm they happened to drive by and hear going off, I guess... :/

Ultima? Nooooooo!

2010-01-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Let me give you a brief explanation behind this post's tile first... for practically as long as I can remember, I've always liked computer and video games, but they were always brief distractions, to be played for a while, set aside, maybe come back to later to be played from the beginning. Then, in the mid-80's, a friend of mine who actually owned a computer (now that's aging me, innit?) showed me Ultima III. We played that game for hours on end, the same game, and had a blast... to this day, we can still crack each other up with a properly-delivered "Oh no! Orcs!" line.

That experience molded me more than I would often care to admit... first, showing me that a computer-based role-playing game was feasible, and that games, in general, could be worth spending more than a single play session on... to put it bluntly, I was hooked. When I got my first computer, fresh out of boot camp, one of the first titles I bought for it was that self-same Ultima III. Then, Ultima IV came out, and introduced me to the concepts of games with deeper interaction with their characters (you actually had something resembling conversations with characters in IV, instead of the canned replies in III) and an ethical component in games (I had to restart my game after cheating a blind shopkeeper too often/thoroughly, because games, up to that point, didn't enforce any penalties for such actions). And so on through Ultima V, VI, and VII, each expanding the story of Ultima's world, improving the technology used to tell the story, and so forth.

Of course, nothing good lasts forever... I don't recall whether Electronic Arts had gobbled up Origin Systems by that time, or completed their mutation from art-house publisher to soulless corporate monolith, but Ultima VIII was a severe disappointment, mixing platform-game mechanics with Ultima's RPG roots, and placing it in a separate world entirely (I was overseas at the time, and got the game from a local shop in the Arab lands for something like $5, and still felt overcharged). But it takes more than one game to break a franchise... so Ultima IX put the nails in the coffin. IX could have been passable, but they attempted to make it a 3d game, and never really got the glitches worked out of their engine... I kept the box for that game on my shelf for a long, long time, as a reminder to let reviewers and others take the plunge on brand new games first. Finally, the main creator behind the Ultima games, Richard Gariott, left EA for another company, but wasn't able to take his games with him... there have been a few other "side-games", and abortive attempts to create something new, but Ultima has been effectively "done" as a brand since the end of the '90s, with only Ultima Online still kicking around... and that as more of a footnote of the evolution of MMORPGs than anything else.

Apparently, EA just can't leave Ultima to rest in peace, though. They've snagged the name for a free, web-based strategy game they're ginning up, trying to cash in on the casual/free-to-play craze of the day by melding it with a mostly-forgotten franchise from the ancient past (well, ancient in Internet terms, at any rate). Here's a link to their closed-beta game... I'd like to believe that they're going to do something interesting or worthwhile with the franchise, but I'm getting the vibe that they just needed a name to toss on their medieval-styled game, and, hey, we own this one. As my brother would put it, they're probably raping my childhood... but then, I expect no less from EA.

A good day to be an independent

2010-01-20T10:39:00.000-08:00

So, the news is ringing out across the land... Ted Kennedy's senate seat has been claimed by a Republican. News greeted with shock and finger-pointing by Democrats, glee and visions of resurgence by Republicans... and simple contentment by yours truly. Giving either party full, no-holds-barred control of both sides of Congress and the White House is a rather bad turn of events... and, if my experience was typical, not quite what I expected out of the last election.

Mind you, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, I suppose... the filibuster-proof majority the Democrats hoped to use relied on the support of some independent senators, including the mixed blessing of the mercenary Joe Lieberman. As such, they didn't get to run as roughshod over the other side of the aisle as they might otherwise have... but now, hopefully, there will be less kowtowing to Mr. Lieberman's specific corporate interests (like, oh, say, the medical insurance industry), now that they'll have to bring at least a Republican or two on board.

Of course, I don't think either the Democrats or the Republicans realize what a gift this really is for the Democrats, either. Rather than get their rude awakening in the mid-term elections, the Democrats got it now, with plenty of time to restore their image (and demonize the Republicans as do-nothing obstructionists, of course) before the big show... it could easily be the difference between keeping control of Congress and losing it, come the next election. Time will tell... but, short of a whole slew of Independents getting elected (which I don't expect to see in my lifetime), it's about the best I can hope for, what with the current crop of Republicans.

Good on ya, Comcast!

2010-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

It's not often I say good things about Comcast, but they appear to have rethought a decision I disagreed with. Ever since Internet providers started talking about capping and/or metering traffic, my basic stance has been that, sure, that's your right, but you'd best make those traffic measurements available to me to view, contest, what have you... which Comcast saw no need for, but compensated by making their cap quite high (as they would put it, 99% of users never approach their 250GB cap).

Now, at least in my area, Comcast is running a pilot program to let end-users that care to look view their data usage (link). Mind you, you still have to dig a bit to find it, if you don't know where to look already, but it's a big step forward... I can only hope it "sticks", and everybody gets to use it.

Best of all, I compared their numbers to what my router tells me I've used... right now, Comcast lists me at 11GB for the month, while the router says 14GB. I don't know whether the difference is due to a lag in data collection, or if there's some data they are discounting, accidentally or on purpose... but, at the very least, they're not saying I'm using more than I'm seeing, so that's a definite plus.

Lost trumps Obama?

2010-01-08T16:57:00.001-08:00

Boy, I'm not sure exactly what this says about society today, but I'm pretty sure it's not good. I know there are some people who are obsessed with Lost, and some portion of those were fretting that the President would schedule his State of the Union address to conflict with the start of the new season of that show. Apparently, they don't need to worry... a White House spokesman said so.

Mind you, I'm aware of how much of a mummer's play the State of the Union address is these days... but still, when the government has to go out of their way to reassure people that their favorite escape won't be inconvenienced by a once-a-year report on where we are, as a nation... I can't help but cringe.

Derrrp

2010-01-04T19:17:00.001-08:00

So, how appropriate is it that, less than a week after taking Sony to task for not testing their login process thoroughly enough, I take down my company's mail server for the weekend, due to not thoroughly enough testing the new installation? Oh well, at least I had a feedback process in place to let me know to fix what I broke...

No more Playstation Portable ID

2009-12-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-25T10:06:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-13T11:04:00.001-08:00

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:

Get at least one present for each person at the gift-giving event
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)
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

2009-12-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-03T13:54:00.001-08:00

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.

Subscription TV via Internet - almost there...

2009-11-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Time for another Roku post... in case you didn't hear elsewhere, they've now come out with a whole slew of channels for their little box. As you might expect, some are pretty cool (I see myself making good use of that Revision3 channel), some just aren't my cup of tea (TWiT looks like nerd talk radio, which is a disturbing combination to consider), and others are real head-scratchers (bring up my Facebook photos on my TV? Really?). The best part, though, is that these new channels are available through a "channel store", so you don't have to have hundreds of channels you'll never use cluttering up your interface.

One thing that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, based on the currently-available channels, is that you now have to sign up for an account with Roku to get these extra channels... and then, on some sites, you have to sign up with an account for their site, as well. Unless Roku is setting itself up to accept payments for sites that don't stream publically otherwise, it just doesn't make sense... but, if that's what they're setting up for, things could get a *lot* more interesting in short order (paying a monthly fee to Roku for a few "premium" (i.e. only available on cable/sattellite otherwise) channels could be a tack that providers will support, while keeping out of the actual payment-collections end of the business).

If you've got a Roku box, these new channels are available to you right now... but your box might not know it. Apparently, there may be some glitch in the updater, either on the box end or the server end... but, if you run the update once, then immediately run it again, it should come through for you.

DVD Pick: Hot Fuzz

2009-11-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

This film's premise is pretty straightforward: top cop gets shuttled off to a sleepy little village, mainly because he's making the rest of the local force look bad, where he runs afoul of the more "relaxed", rustic atmosphere expected by the locals, before discovering that all isn't well in the village. Of course, if that were the entire story, I wouldn't be recommending it...

The funny thing about this film is, for all it's set up mimics any of a number of "cop working outside the system" films, it lulls you throughout the majority of the film into thinking it's just a comedy about a big city cop trying to cope with the "rigors" of working in a small village... then it lulls you into thinking there's just one madman out there causing havoc. Only in the final half hour do you get the "big reveal"... and, honestly, it's something irrational to somebody who hasn't been watching the film up to that point, but makes sick, perfect sense in context... enough so that I wondered, more than once, whether the hero was suffering some kind of psychotic break, instead of finally digging up "the truth". Beyond that point, all sorts of fun ensues, including some takes on standard action-movie tropes with a small village bent to them... it had me laughing out loud more than once, which is really quite rare for a film.

So, if you've got a couple hours to spare, and are looking for a laugh (especially if you liked Shaun of the Dead, which is where some of the players came across my screen first), give Hot Fuzz a go... if you stick it out to the end, I don't think you'll regret it.

Great idea! Err... maybe not.

2009-11-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

As a tech guy, I'm generally attracted by new, shiny things, even while they're still in development. As an engineering type, I immediately consider how useful the new, shiny thing can be, and pick out any glaring problems with the idea. Rarely, the engineer in me shouts down the tech in me... this is one of those times. Somebody's working on adding circuitry to contact lenses, to allow image overlays on the real world... think heads-up display without any obvious equipment, that sort of thing. Here's a link to an article about the current work.

So, cool idea, augmented reality and all that, maybe a neat gaming interface... but then there's the problems I see. Start with the basic interface... it's light-emitting, but inside your eyelids, so there's no way to get away from it, short of removing the things from your eyes. Also, if you wanted to be able to read text, your software has to track your eyeballs and head motions to match up what you see in the lenses with what you see of the world outside, unless you want a truly hurl-inducing experience.

Suppose you take care of those problems... it's still a powered circuit on your eyeball, so, if you overload the power to the circuits, you get heat generation, quite possibly beyond what your eyeball will withstand comfortably. Contrariwise, you could use some sort of fuse circuit to limit the power... but, unless they're exceptionally cheap to produce, you're going to be pissed about your new toy breaking because you got too close to your power supply (or somebody was actively trying to shut down your toy...)... and, if they're cheap, I don't know of too many cheap things you want sitting on your eyes.

Put those problems aside, suppose the things work perfectly. How long do you think it will take for somebody to decide they want to watch a movie... while driving in the dark? I mean, a cell phone, you can at least see the handset... if you look closely enough, from the right angle, you can even see most hands-free earpieces. Unless these things light up your eyes with an unholy glow visible from a few feet away (which, mind you, would be another point in their favor...), nobody's going to know you're using them until it's much, much too late. No... there's some fun potential with this idea, but it just needs to go away, the sooner the better.

Windows 7 Starter netbook

2009-11-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

Back on Windows 7 launch day, I snagged myself a shiny new netbook, so I could play with the new Windows (especially so I could check for installation/operation problems with software out at work). On the whole, I'm well-pleased with both the netbook and Windows 7... but, as is often the case, there's some niggling little annoyances.

I understand the theory of tiered pricing, not that I entirely agree with it, but, in the case of netbooks, there's good sense in keeping the cost of Windows low, what with all those Linux distributions looking to get a foothold. Microsoft did a pretty good job of paring things down, too... no DVD playback (which, without optical drives, is not an issue), and no shiny new display tricks (which, with the limited graphics hardware, is no great loss) as examples. But then, they also cut support for streaming media (on a network-oriented device...) and even spent the resources to restrict users from personalizing their desktop colors and wallpaper. That last bit is just downright petty on Microsoft's part... and Asus (the maker of my netbook) apparently agrees, since they put out a tool to let you change your wallpaper.

What I can report, after a few weeks' use, is that Windows 7 seems to work well on the limited hardware a netbook provides... so long as you don't try anything too graphics-intensive, like games. That may even change, as newer graphics hardware takes over the market... but, for simple tasks like web surfing, email, and typing up documents, a Windows 7 netbook is a viable option. Just make sure to get some hands-on time with one before you buy... the limitations of keyboard spacing and screen size may be too much for some to endure.

Netflix on PS3

2009-11-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog have likely gotten sick of hearing me praise the Roku box, which started out life playing Netflix streaming content, and has since expanded its repertoire to other video sources... so, for a change of pace, let me introduce a new alternative.

In this generation's seemingly endless struggle of competing video game consoles, I've stuck with Wii, for it's unique user interface, and PS3, for its power and adaptability, while steering clear of the XBox360 for a variety of reasons... but one item the 360 faithful always tout is its ability to stream Netflix video (so long as you pony up for Microsoft's annual network service fee). Roku has me covered there for now... but Netflix just made available a way for PS3 owners to use their service, using a disc you can request from them, at no additional cost, so I decided to give it a go.

Setup is at least as easy as on the Roku... insert the disc, which gives you a code to enter at the Netflix website, and up comes the interface. At first glance, the interface is a dead ringer for the interface on Roku's box (and why not, since it's Netflix on the other end in both cases), with your streaming queue laid out pictorially, where opening up any item gives you controls to start a movie or episode, select an alternate episode, rate the item, or remove it from your queue. However, that is where the similarities end... going "up" from the queue display on the Roku takes you to a screen where you can choose other channels to view, but, on the PS3, you get additional options, including a couple of "what's new" sections, category breakouts, and "recently viewed" sections, which you can use to browse items not already in your queue and view them immediately or add them to your queue, a feature that the Roku box currently lacks.

As far as viewing goes, I didn't notice any great difference between Roku's regular output and the PS3 when I watched an episode of South Park (apart from the lack of "quality dots" when the stream was getting set up), but, admittedly, that's not the most complex video to display... but I would still say the PS3 does the job as advertised. All in all, if you already have (or are in the market for) a PS3, this looks to be a fine way to get your Netflix stream to your TV. Myself, I will still be sticking with the Roku box for my regular viewing... it's quieter (no moving parts), and plays more than just Netflix (and adds more to view all the time). The categorized view of items on the PS3 is a nice touch, but I already have well over 100 items in my queue... and, if I was wanting something specific, the lack of an actual search feature means I would be getting on the Netflix website to find it anyways.

Another Halloween in the bag

2009-11-01T11:00:00.001-08:00

...and again, 3 bags of candy for 3 trick-or-treaters. One of these years, I'm going to have to start picking up some good, dark chocolate for handing out instead... :)

On the bright side, I found that Disgaea 3 (a PS3 game) is fine fodder for Halloween night... it's turn-based, so you can set it down on a moment's notice, it's theme-appropriate, what with all the little freshman demons you control... and, at the rate I'm making progress through it, I may well still be playing it next Halloween. It's a fun game, to be sure, and you'll definitely get your money's worth out of it if turn-based strategy-RPGs are your thing.

Internet neutrality, the fun continues

2009-10-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

The FCC has begun the process of making 'net neutrality a requirement for Internet providers, something I agree with wholeheartedly. You would think that preserving the established, expected rights of consumers (read: voters and taxpayers) would be something your average elected official would be all over... which means John McCain is something other than average. As soon as the FCC started the gears turning, he's attempting to bring the process to a halt, introducing a bill to prevent the FCC from pursuing the issue (link). My favorite part... he has the gall to call this bill the Internet Freedom Act (that's freedom for the Internet providers, not you, citizen).

Oh well, I can at least find a little glimmer of hope... the various reactions to this act detailed in the article I linked to fall mostly where you would expect (rights groups and Democrats against, corporate executives and "free-market think tanks" against), but there's one Republican senator listed on the consumer-rights side. It's not much, but if one senator can see past the campaign contributions to take the side of the end user, maybe enough will to shut this stupidity down.

Marketing and honesty (as if!)

2009-10-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've seen a slew of ads on TV lately from various grocery companies, each to the tune of "in these tough times, we're going to be nice guys and lower our prices for you." Funny how none of them are put forth as "sure, we've been gouging you for months/years now, but we decided that we couldn't survive doing that anymore, so we're dropping prices a little to try and suck you back in to our stores." Gotta love spin... why just say "new lower prices" when you can try to sell it as something you're doing out of the goodness of your corporate heart?

The fate of bad pizza

2009-10-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

I was driving around town yesterday, and found myself driving north on Division, something to be avoided if you want to get where you're going in a timely fasion, when I saw a sign up ahead for Eatza Pizza. It's a chain (apparently nationwide, scarily) that has Spokane written all over it... an inexpensive, all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. I tried it once myself, at a location out in the Valley... once. Suffice it to say that, in my humble opinion, it was the worst pizza I have ever had the opportunity to eat, bland and bready... heck, the cheapest supermarket freezer pizzas are a step up.

I knew the Valley location had closed some time back, so I was curious as to how this site was holding up... and, since traffic was stop-and-go, I chanced a glance, figuring I'd see an empty storefront or maybe a few cars in the parking lot. What I saw was a lot scraped clean, down to the dirt, with the signpost still in place at the street. I'm sure it was just done for tax purposes by the property owners... but I can't help but imagine the owners deciding that the site was irrevocably tainted by the bad pizza, razing the structure and parking lot to the ground, and leaving the sign behind as a warning to other restaurateurs of the fate awaiting bad food.

Comcast - fixed, I think.

2009-09-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

It's only fair that I close out the whole overbilling thing with a final report... I've got a bill in hand that shows that I got reimbursed enough to more than cover an entire month of charges, and that my ongoing charge for Internet access has been reduced. I've also been told that my cable modem is no longer marked as Comcast-owned... and I believe them, based on the fact that I had to reset my connection (and go through all the initial setup steps again) in order to receive that news by email. Apart from that minor glitch, it was well worth pursuing this problem with the Comcast Cares team... and I heartily recommend that, if you're using Comcast and have a problem with their service that normal channels cant handle, that you give them a shot. Of course, best good would be for their mainline tech support to improve to the point where a separate, special trouble-shooting team isn't necessary... but it's good they're there in the meantime.

Begun, the Net Neutrality Wars have

2009-09-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

Wow... it's practically lightspeed for any branch of FedGov to move this fast. It's only been since July last year, when Comcast and the FCC got hot and bothered about what "reasonable" means, in a network-management sense, that I've been waiting for movement on the whole Net Neutrality issue... and Monday, it came, with the chairman of the FCC announcing the start of a process to enshrine in regulation the core tenets of NN, then going a step beyond and saying that he wants the new rules to apply to all Internet connections, including wireless phones.

Of course, it didn't take long for members of the Republican party to try and throw a spanner in the works. Their first attempt is to try to amend a bill in such a way as to make the FCC unable to spend any money on implementing these consumer protections (link). The ever-popular "tread lightly when it comes to new regulations" is quickly followed by "could stifle investment incentives", as put forth by one of the senators involved.

OK, now here's a fine example of why I am not a Republican (for the record, I'm not a Democrat either). I truly believe that companies providing a service have every right to price their service according to demand and the cost of that service. Where I differ from these Republicans is that I don't believe that service providers should be allowed to "water down" their offerings (without informed consent, at least) for users that abide by the rules of the service, in the name of protecting said users from those that break the rules. Neither do I believe that companies should be allowed to secretly interfere with the service they provide, especially when they do it to prop up other divisions of their company (VoIP and Internet video, to use Comcast as an example), in the name of safeguarding investments. If you want to invest in the current market leaders as a "safe" investment, great... if you want to invest in the Next Big Thing, hoping to make a killing, good on you. However, just because you're an investor, you have no right to assume that both investments are with the same company... or, if they are, that the investments in the future will allow for anything more than the continued survival of your cash cow.

Right, just a bit off-track there... let's see, wireless companies, of course, are also up-in-arms, complaining that open access rules will swamp their networks. I don't know first-hand, but I hear that's already pretty true for AT&T with the iPhone in some areas... but it's also a pretty moot point. We're back to that whole cost/demand equation (and side note: I'm sure texting is still insanely out of line with that concept)... if you have so many people using your service that you can't keep up, raise the price and invest (if possible) in improving your infrastructure. Will that mean that you lose some customers? Sure... but they will bog down your competitors, if they are still offering lower rates. Unless, of course, you're worried that your competitors will do the right thing, upgrade their infrastructure, and leave you in the dust... that's not your concern, right?

Wow, off-track and mildly combative, all in one post... OK, quick summary and finish. If you're offering Internet access, it's right that you be held to offering the whole Internet, unless you tell us in advance what you're not offering, and why. Companies have failed that test in the past, which is why regulation is needed (and please, no "it's just a few bad apples", you want to control problems before they become widespread, or worse, ingrained). If you can't operate under those conditions, be afraid... even if this change doesn't make it through FedGov this time, technology is changing ever faster, and your service will become obsolete someday soon. Whether you survive depends greatly on your ability to keep pace while keeping your customers content... and there's a whole new generation of tech-savvy types out there, waiting for you to disappoint them.

Comcast update

2009-09-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

So, in case any of you were wondering, and since I don't have much else relevant to blog about this week, here's where the whole cable-modem thing sits right now: I did get a reply the very same night I posted my last entry, which was unexpected. The next day, we got down to the meat of the issue, verifying serial numbers, MAC addresses and the like... and I've been credited (so I'm told) the $3/month charge for the period I was charged up to this point, and should continue being credited for as long as necessary (expecting "a couple of weeks") while they update their inventory records to reflect that I actually do own my modem. I suspect that time frame includes looking for any physical evidence at the local office that I don't own the modem, but that's understandable enough.

What's not-so-understandable is that their chat technician got confused about when I started getting charged this rental fee... it wasn't March of last year, it was 28JUN08, which, if you look at the history of this blog, was just after I turned in my TV equipment. It was probably just an error on the part of some data entry critter... probably. At any rate, now it's just a little limbo-time while the wheels of bureaucracy grind away, if things go the way they should. If not, I'll be sure to rant some more another day! :)

From out of the blue, a Comcast rep!

2009-09-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

I've heard of this sort of thing, but never seen it first hand... if you check the comments section of my prior post, there's a comment from a "ComcastCares1", offering expedited assistance. Being the cautious sort that I am, I checked the profile view (it's been around since Feb. '08) and sniffed around the edges of the proposal for potential scamminess... but I don't see any likely attack vector there. So, I've given it a shot... stay tuned for further developments!

Sneaky little bastards, Comcast are...

2009-09-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

So, happy Labor Day, first off... what better day to deal with Comcast's "24/7" chat support service?

Not that dealing with that service should have been necessary... a little over a year back, I grumbled about Comcast billing me for cable TV service when their own bill showed that I wasn't signed up for it, a fight I won. Little did I suspect that, buried in the price for Internet service, was a line item for "modem rental"... which, considering I have always owned my own modem, is more than a bit odd.

No worries though, a quick email to their support people should put that right, right? I mean, fill out their form, tell them who I am, what the problem is, and their people will look into it and either fix it straight away, or let me know why they think I'm wrong, right? No such luck... two days later, I get emailed back (to paraphrase), "Oh, you've got a billing problem? Well, you'll need to use our live chat system to get that fixed."

So I do the chat, where I'm informed that they've been charging that fee on my account since last March (yes, I'm sorry I didn't notice it, since your online billing service doesn't provide a full breakout of charges unless you download a .pdf of what your paper bill would look like), and am I sure that I really own the modem I'm using (which I still have the flippin' retail box for, so yes). Of course, the chat rep can't do anything about it, but has to kick a ticket upstairs for review, so they'll get back to me on it. Honest.

Oh, how I wish I had another viable option to jump ship to right now. Unfortunately, DSL in my neighborhood is still stuck at (theoretically) 1.5Mbps, which might be fast enough for my needs, if theory and reality were well-aligned (but, knowing the phone system here, they certainly aren't). Oh well, grit those teeth and bear it a while longer, I suppose... although I may have to look at wireless options before terribly long.

Note on the window

2009-09-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Work let us all leave early yesterday, so I drove downtown to check out Ponyo (fun, innocent film... maybe I'll blog it properly later) and Pig Out in the Park (disappointing variety/quality of food offerings this year). I went ahead and parked in the River Park Square parking garage, since the movie validation would affray the cost a bit... and parked a bit to the right of center in the space I found (since the van to the left had done the same), but still well within the lines. That's one of the little joys of driving a Yaris, because they are in no way a Large Car.

Once I was done, I came back to the car, only to find a note on the window, which read "Thank you for parking so close :) I love climbing over the passenger side to get tiny my car :)". Now, admittedly, I hadn't paid much attention to the car to my right, beyond making sure it wasn't over the line marker for the space I was getting into... but neither should that be necessary, that being the purpose of those space marking lines being painted on the ground in the first place. So, in effect, the lady in question (judging mainly by the handwriting and tone of the note) was attempting to make me feel bad for daring to occupy the parking space to the left of her car. Of course, being the sort that I am, it had the exact opposite effect, making me happy to have inconvenienced such a self-centered person sufficiently to compel them write their note for me.

There's still the chance, certainly, that I'm being more of an ass than usual, so let me know what you think... was there some unwritten rule of etiquette that I violated, or was climbing over the passenger seat a small price to pay for the other driver's lack of planning?

Halloween?!?

2009-08-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

Before the weekend started, I saw signage on one of those shut-down big-box stores for the annual infestation of seasonal costume/accessory shops... but I didn't think too much about it, since they still had "hiring now" signs up, and it could easily be a few weeks before they have everything in place to do the whole Halloween shtick. Tonight, I was walking through the aisles at my local supermarket, and... there's the Halloween candy, etc. That's over 2 months before the event, which, for most people I know, consists of making sure they have some candy on-hand to dole out to costumed children. Holiday creep just blew past the ludicrous zone right into pathetic.