I already needed this game
Now, thanks to the trailer it is simply pounded further into the stone tablet that is the List of Games I MUST Have. I think it was pounded so hard the tablet cracked. Go watch, you will see.  ¶ 6:38 p.m. 0 comments

  Please let there be only two shoes.
I don't know if I could handle a third one. Warren Ellis never fails to freak me out, and today's a double play.

1. Boy has fetus removed from gut.

   “After the operation we found a dead foetus weighing two kilograms (4.5lbs) in his abdomen,” Doctor MA Mazid said, the AFP news agency reports. “Apart from the head, all other limbs of the baby were developed.”

2. Zombie dogs.

   US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

I figure there'll be one more today that tops both of these. This is why I won't check again until tomorrow.  ¶ 6:35 p.m. 0 comments

  Well if that ain't gosh-derned spiffy
I've always felt that Douglas Adams laid out the best solution to the cause-and-effect messyness of time travel. He put forth that history can't be changed; everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle and it's all taken into account. The only trouble left is figuring out the grammer to describe it all.

He might not be that wrong. Seems that quantum mechanics may rule out the "Grandfather paradox" all by itself, since quantum particles can behave both like particles and like waves.

Quantum theory allows time travel because nothing prevents the waves from going back in time. When [physicists Daniel] Greenberger and [Karl] Svozil analysed what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place (link). "If you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see those alternatives consistent with the world you left behind you," says Greenberger.

It's totally bizarre, but then again most of quantum mechanics is. Of course, now there's no reason to be surprised if Scott Bakula shows up out of the blue in a dress and helps you out.  ¶ 6:34 p.m. 0 comments

  Well if that ain't gosh-derned spiffy
I've always felt that Douglas Adams laid out the best solution to the cause-and-effect messyness of time travel. He put forth that history can't be changed; everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle and it's all taken into account. The only trouble left is figuring out the grammer to describe it all.

He might not be that wrong. Seems that quantum mechanics may rule out the "Grandfather paradox" all by itself, since quantum particles can behave both like particles and like waves.

Quantum theory allows time travel because nothing prevents the waves from going back in time. When [physicists Daniel] Greenberger and [Karl] Svozil analysed what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place (link). "If you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see those alternatives consistent with the world you left behind you," says Greenberger.

It's totally bizarre, but then again most of quantum mechanics is. Of course, now there's no reason to be surprised if Scott Bakula shows up out of the blue in a dress and helps you out.  ¶ 6:34 p.m. 0 comments

  The Grokster Decision
So a bunch of folks around the inter-nets have been talking about this Grokster Decision that the Supreme Court of the States has come up with. Most news sites will boil it down to "Hollywood wins, File-sharers can be sued", or "Entertainment industry prevails against P2P" or something like that. It will be framed as total victory for Hollywood, and although the decision was unanimous, it isn't quite that bad.

The way I understand it, what the mighty SCOTUS declared was that it is indeed illegal to promote a device/technology/thingy with the purposes of copyright infringement. From Ars Technica:

Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses.

Basically, instead of a question of copyright, the questions are shifting to intent. Are you, as an inventor of something that can copy something into something else, intending for this invention to be used to infringe copyright? Have you missed a spot in ensuring that your device can never be turned to evil? If you can't convince everyone that the answer is no to both questions, you could be sunk like battleship. Cory Doctorow gets it pretty good in his editorial at Popular Science:

But what today’s decision will kill is American innovation. Chinese and European firms can get funding and ship products based on plans that aren’t fully thoughtcrime-compliant, while their American counterparts will need to convince everyone from their bankers to the courts that they’ve taken all imaginable measures to avoid inducing infringement. This is good news if you’re an American corporate attorney worried about job security, but not if you’re about to invent a new way to enjoy content. Both sides went to the court hoping for clarity on what is and isn’t legal in P2P, and instead, the Court tipped a fresh load of claymores into the decade’s most perilous legal minefield.

I like the use of the word thoughtcrime, myself.

Anyway, the whole shebang is going back to court (again) with this bit clarified so that it can be decided if Grokster was indeed intended for illegal distribution of files. So again, not good, but not cause for panic in the streets or anything. Even Hilary Rosen chimed in, saying that her former co-workers shouldn't get all uppity now that they've "won"--just look at what happened following the Napster decision. Legal victory does not instantly win back fans and customers. (In fact, if you read the post, it's almost has though Ms. Rosen has finally figured this whole thing out. Too bad she's not in power anymore.)

I am of the opinion that all this will change very little. It will not kill P2P, that cat's out of the bag (and if you've ever tried to bag a cat, you will know that the reverse is nigh-impossible). It will not kill piracy (same argument, only this cat was never in a bag to begin with). If I had to spell out the future of file-sharing and copyright, I think a few things could happen:

1. the industry will gradually realize it was wrong and start getting out of the persecution business and back into making and promoting music, movies and the like, OR
2. they will continue to try and exercise draconian control over everything they make, driving more customers away and demanding more legal crutches from the government until the industry collapses Great Depression-style, OR
3. same as above, only the government wises up and takes the crutches away, easing the industry on to a stretcher and into the morgue.

One way or another, we (the free, slightly-loopy copyright reform folks) will win, of that I am certain. What is left to decide is how long this victory will take to arrive, and what the casualties will be. Things could still get pretty nasty before they get better.  ¶ 6:33 p.m. 0 comments

  Why must it be mine?


My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings...
If I had this trophy, I think maybe one person aside from me would ever get the joke. Maybe that's why I need to own one.   ¶ 5:45 p.m. 0 comments

  I so very much want to enter.
The Chap Olympics:

What, dear friends, has become of our culture? Was not this once a country where jazz beatniks rubbed shoulders with aged philosophers in smoky cafeterias? Did not dapper men in horn-rimmed spectacles once explain the mysteries of the world to us via our crackling wireless sets? Were not public libraries the places where all human knowledge was to be found, at the fingertips of avuncular librarians swaddled in tweed? Where has all this gone?
[...]
But fear not, dear hearts, for there is something in the air… Can you smell it? It is a blend of bergamot, old leather and Cavendish tobacco, and it smells of Revolution. The Tweed Revolution. The web site you are about to enter contains words and images that may induce excessive languidity and an increase in levels of panache, leading to an overall rise in self-esteem. So sink into your deepest armchair, pour yourself a gin and tonic, light a cigarillo, and prepare to join the sophisticated world of The Chap

Seriously, how can you not want to get involved? They have events such as Vulgarity Hurdles and Ruffian Vaulting!

Now where's my tweed?  ¶ 7:00 p.m. 0 comments

  FUCK YOU WINAMP
Ok Winamp. We settle this here. I love your ability to play music. I like the smart views and the jump to feature and the media library. You are a nice, lightweight program that for the most part kicks ass.

HOWEVER.

You pester me for weeks about having to upgrade. I finally take the bait like a chump, lured by the promises of over 15,000 (!!!) fixed bugs and all that bullshit, and I uninstall the last version so as not to overwrite my install with multiple versions. This is not an uncommon practice, and yet on uninstall, you do some curious things. You leave your fucking skins and your plugins on my hard drive for future installs (the plugins I mind less, because they are useful; the skins are a waste of electromagnetism) and yet you blindly abolish all trace of my playlists, my settings and my song ratings. SONG RATINGS WINAMP, I HAD A LOT OF THESE.

In fact, I had a good chunk of my SXSW collection sorted according to suck/good, and now it's gone. I also had a nice list of good singles that made for brainless music, now gone too. The loss of my playlists, mostly my podcasts, is slightly less painful (except for my PERFECT playlist of Monster Magnet; seriously, this was the best Monster Magnet CD EVER) but it still hurts. Lastly, all my preferences are gone, so I need to rebind all my global hotkeys.

I HATE YOU SO HARD RIGHT NOW WINAMP. And no, you can't go and blame this one on me for having an elaborate setup. Mine is rather modest compared to some of your power users, and all this could be preventable with one of TWO simple things.

1. You WARN ME that I will lose my playlists. My ratings. My preferences. (But not my fucking skins, of which I have exactly one: the one you come with. ARGH!) On uninstall. Instead, you just say that Winamp will be removed. GEE THANKS.
2. You keep those things around. You keep the plugins and the skins, I know you can do it. You're a big girl now.

It will take so much more than flowers and chocolates to patch this up, and if I weren't lazy, your ass would be on the pavement outside as soon as I found a suitable replacement. Fortunately for you, XMMS is the only one I know of that does what you do, and it's not for Windows. So I am stuck with you. You can stay, but don't think for a second we are back together.  ¶ 7:29 p.m. 0 comments

  All hail the spaghetti monster!
Open letter to the Kansas School Board: Flying Spaghetti Monster should be taught alongside evolution and Intelligent Design

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it.

We loves it. Needless to say, I expect the joke to be totally lost on those who need to understand the most.  ¶ 7:29 p.m. 0 comments

  It's fun to use learning for evil!
Ah, the words of R. Stevens have not been more appropriate. Rick Mercer is up to mischief. Seems that there was a bit of a debacle in Parliament recently in which MP Don Boudria complained that www.donboudria.ca had been registered and subverted. He was immediately admonished by Conservative MP Jason Kenney for being ignorant. This rubbed the Speaker the wrong way, so Kenney then clarified this, meaning ignorant of the Internet. This was further clarified again to mean unaware of the process of registering a domain name. Phew.

So, the short story:

1. Rick Mercer has a blog.
2. He also owns www.jasonkenney.org, purchased within moments of this whole exchange happening on CPAC.
3. All of this is really funny to me and had me laughing evilly to myself at work.

  ¶ 7:28 p.m. 0 comments

  Movie industry, or theater industry?
So it seems that despite hits like Batman and Star Wars, movie industry is still in a slump.

Compared with last year, box-office receipts have been down every weekend since late February; the last time comparable business was off for such a long span was in 1985.

This summer's movie season has been especially brutal. North American theater attendance from early May to June 19 was off nearly 11% from a year ago, tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. estimated Monday. If the year's overall weak admission trend holds, it will mark the lowest number of moviegoers since 1996 and the third consecutive year of decline, a skid that hasn't been seen since 1962.

My question is, which industry is really in the slump here? Are DVD sales slumping as well, or is it just box-office returns? Maybe if the industry were willing to analyze their business practises and try to make going to the theater more enticing, they might be able to recover. (Rather than the current goal of getting the government to prop them up with bad law.) The Chinese theater industry has already started doing this, what will it take for Americans to do the same?  ¶ 7:28 p.m. 0 comments

  My sentiments exactly.
Neglected Child Dies While Parents Played World of Warcraft.

The crime isn't sensational, it's the addition of the video game that makes people react. Now everyone who has preconceived notions about video games get to cluck their tongues and realize they were right all along, games are addicting and terrible and cause nothing but pain and misery. In truth, this isn't gaming news. It's the story of bad parents. It's not a cautionary tale, neglect happens daily across the world for an infinite amount of reasons. It's sad that the story is getting pumped up and reported simply because the couple played a game while they were out, and it's even sadder that it's being reported as gaming news just for the shock value.

I motion we start doing this to everything. Kid has accident while you were talking on a cell phone? Cell phones are evil and addictive. Car crashes while you had the radio on? That damned devil-music again.

Great story to start a Wednesday with, ain't it?

Update: Good grief. Not five minutes after seeing that last story, I get hit with this one.
Russian Schoolboy Dies After 12 Hours of Computer Gaming

A 12-year-old schoolboy from Russia's Urals city of Yekaterinburg has died of playing computer games. After spending 12 hours at a local computer club, the boy fainted and was taken to hospital, where he died of stroke eight days later, the Novye Izvestia daily reported on Tuesday.

So not only are you going to murder your children from playing games, you'll have a stroke too. BAH.  ¶ 7:28 p.m. 0 comments

  Oooh shiny!
I like new things. New games, new toys, new stuff. This is new:

In Uncle Roy All Around You, a player has just one hour to find the Uncle Roy of the game's title using clues or instructions fed via text messaging. But with every move tracked via a GPS locator in his cell phone, other players in the game have the ability to track and hunt him down. Meanwhile, a group of performance artists shadow the player in an attempt to interact and manipulate the quest. Sounds interesting, right?

Well, ok. I concede it's only slightly new. I have seen accounts of things like this before, (in Sweden I believe) but they're not one of those things you get going every day. I guess the whole thing does have some problems, like finding people to play, or unforeseen logistics issues, but I'd love to play in a game like this if one comes to town.  ¶ 7:27 p.m. 0 comments

  Hey, I have a podcast!
It's even updated again! Hooray?  ¶ 7:53 p.m. 0 comments

  I seem to have forgotten
What year is it? I have been operating under the assumption that it is the year 2005, well into the 21st century. We are not supposed to have governments of free nations quashing information that disagrees with them, because that is the sort of thing one expects from an inquisition, right? We don't have those anymore, right?

Sigh. This is not the first time I've heard about the current U.S. Administration mucking about in science, and I suspect it won't be the last.

Abortion: “The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”

The unofficial slogan of John Rogers comes to mind: "Everyone who wants to live in the 21st century, over here. Everyone who misses the 1800s, over there. Good luck with that." (via Sivacracy)  ¶ 7:16 p.m. 0 comments

  Go see Batman Begins.
Seriously, that's basically what any review should say: go see the movie. It's not perfect--there are a number of things that could have been done better and a few plot holes, (Scott Kurtz brings a number of these to light, and he more or less nails them all) but Begins is still the best Batman movie made to date. It draws on the same source material that Burton did for his first Bat-flick, (ie. Frank Millar) but it does so in a more believable way.

I think everything boils down to Christian Bale and how he manages to perform all the aspects of Batman and Bruce Wayne. The other Batmans, they did this not so good. Keaton got the brooding Wayne and the Batman bits not too badly, but fumbled the rest of the Wayne persona. Kilmer got the playboy bits of the Wayne persona down, but muffed the rest. Klooney, well, the less said about that disaster of a film the better.

Having the right Batman is good, but it wouldn't really mean much if the rest of the flick fumbled the ball. Fortunately, the supporting cast was picked perfectly, and they can all act, something that does not go unnoticed. (Ok, ok, we'll make an exception for Katie Holmes.) Gotham was also portrayed nicely, mixing both the grungey grime that it requires for the Batman bits with the elegant grandeur that it requires for the Wayne bits.

Finally, the action bits were done exceptionally well, with but one exception. The idea of Batman fighting from the shadows like a ninja is drawn wonderfully from the comics and makes a lot more sense than the obviously staged fights from prior films. The above-mentioned exception is that the camera is crammed up against the action like a dog's nose is to a stranger's crotch. Mr. Nolan? For your next action bits, just take ten steps back and go from there. Your audience will thank you for letting them see the action and not get motion sickness. Other than that, it's all gold.

If you skipped all that stuff above just to get to the bottom line, this is it: Nolan pulled it off and delivered a film that belongs on the same shelf as Superman, X-Men and Spider-Man 2. Go see it.  ¶ 6:54 p.m. 0 comments

  I think this speaks for itself.

We are clearly doomed. (from... uh, this site)   ¶ 7:56 p.m. 0 comments

  On drawing
Penny Arcade today is quite funny and entertaining, as usual. Scroll down on the front page, however, and you see the following as written by Gabe:

Growing up I used to watch Commander Mark on PBS. He had a show called the Imagination Station that was on right when I'd get home from school. He used to show kids how to draw things in 3D and I'd sit there in front of the TV with my sketchpad just eating it up. I was even a proud member of his Draw Squad.

I read this and immediately when all "OMG! Commander Mark! Imagination Station!" because I totally dug that series too. He had it all: a mustache, suspenders, a list of Renaissance words (they were very complicated, like PERSPECTIVE), the strange habit of getting enthusiastic about something by dragging a thumbs-up across the screen and going "yeeeeeeeeeeeah!" and of course, the drawing. The show was on at something like noon, a time that simultaneously restricted my viewing to the summer, as well as get me hooked on The Price Is Right.

Anyways, the following paragraph made me crack up today:

Years later when I was just starting High School Mark did an assembly at the elementary school my mom worked at. I took my sad little portfolio over and after the assembly I stopped him and asked him to look at it. He told me I was doing really good work and he ended up asking if he could buy us dinner that night. We talked for a couple hours about how I had watched his show since I was little and how some day I wanted to be a comic book artist. then I sat there and watched the man I'd grown up idolizing chain smoke cigarettes and stuff himself with pie. It was like seeing Mr. Rogers doing lines in some filthy bathroom.

It's hard trying not to laugh at work, because it's pretty obvious that you're not doing work. System diagrams and operational processes are only so humorous, and it's not the kind of humor that makes beverages vent out your nose.  ¶ 5:58 p.m. 0 comments

  To all you haxx0rz out there
Nifty little book on Reverse Engineering for anyone out there who happens to like that sort of thing. I think it's a shame that discussion of specific reversed engineering attempts is often illegal. (via Make)  ¶ 5:58 p.m. 0 comments

  Unreal...
So hypnosis is pretty neat. You get to have people acting like fools on stage and then not remember it, kind of like a twisted parlor trick. However, it looks like hypnosis has been taking up a notch, so to speak.

Guy hypnotized and dropped into real-life zombie shooter. Seriously.

Hypnotist makes game. Guy plays game, shooting zombies, having some fun. Game sends guy into trance with flashes of light. Hypnotist moves in, picks Guy up, and puts him down into a set built exactly like the one in the game. Guy is given gun, and wakes up with nobody around. Actors playing zombies start attacking.

Guy freaks the fuck out. If this is fake, it's quite well done. First he tries to run, then he starts threatening the zombies (to no reaction; they're zombies!), then he starts shooting. Now Guy had friends with him that just dumbly play along with the whole thing. They were probably having a similar reaction to mine: this stuff does not happen. This is just too bizarre.

Yet, it does, assuming the video's real, and it's just nuts. I highly recommend watching it--throws the whole concept of the way games are played and why right on its ear.  ¶ 10:23 p.m. 0 comments

  That's the stuff
I have just made and drank one of the best cups of tea I have ever had. If Earl Grey tasted any better, it would be made illegal.

I am so not in the mood to work now...

(Update: I did it again. Partly because I needed to know if I could, partly because that last cup broke my brain it was so amazing. I must say, it's cups of tea like this that only reinforce my beliefs that once you start making good coffee or tea, you just can't go back to that Tim Horton's swill. Being an elitist beverage snob rocks.)  ¶ 2:35 p.m. 0 comments

  Agape
This just in from the WTF? department: EA shutting down BF2 servers.

Today EA has confirmed that servers have been removed from the BF2 server list, because changing the time limit and unlocking weapons is against the EULA that server operations have to accept upon installing the software.

So let me try and understand: you have a game coming out, and presumably you want people to buy it, so naturally you are inclined to shut down servers? You want to stop people from playing the demo, making it less likely that they will go get the full game, and you're doing this because they aren't playing the demo "properly"?
Um, what?  ¶ 7:13 p.m. 0 comments

  Get your global freak on
I watched the leaked pilot to Global Frequency this morning, as referred by the almighty KFM. I must admit, it's pretty spiffy.

The concept is that you have the bad-ass Miranda Zero, who knows a bunch of dirty secrets about stuff, and she's created this guerilla network of super-spies to beat off the unpleasant stuff that nobody knows about (the pilot involved an ex-CCCP psychic bomb). The trick is that these super-spies that she's recruited are really ordinary people, scattered all over the world, communicating through cell phones. Kind of a 5-minutes into the future sci-fi meets Mission Impossible meets The X-Files sort of thing.

Either way, I thought the pilot was quite excellent, and I highly encourage you downloading and watching it. As far as I can tell, there's probably going to be a Save GF movement showing up at some point, probably with internet petitions, all trying to get this show on the air. It'll be difficult--this isn't Firefly or Family Guy, which had the backing of either media darlings or DVD sales to keep them going--but if Warner Bros. has some sense, and if the movement is big and vocal enough, it just could work. I really hope it does.  ¶ 7:12 p.m. 0 comments

  A most humourous coincidence
OMG UML. LOL. WTF?  ¶ 7:12 p.m. 0 comments

  Wow, that's funny
I've often claimed that World of Warcraft is just one giant in-joke with a fun game attached. Alice has noticed that there's more down the rabbit hole:
  ¶ 7:06 p.m. 0 comments

  I toldja!
Homebrew PSP on firmware 1.50 No longer is it just the Japanese early-adopters who can run "hello world!" on their Sony handhelds. Now the whole world with un-updated PSPs (the 1.51 and 1.52 firmwares are still to-be-broken) can enjoy Doom, e-books and emulation.

Unfortunately, the solution arrived at here isn't exactly elegant. It's a complicated setup involving external applications and TWO memory cards. Yeah, the trick to the whole thing is to pull the ol' switcheroo on your PSP. Verrrrry sneaky! (Thanks, but I'll wait until this sort of stuff can be embedded in the apps.)

Of course, none of this is kosher according to Sony. Indeed, to bust open your PSP to unlock its potential is akin to terrorism, and is most emphatically frowned upon. You don't want to be a "terrorist" do you?  ¶ 7:03 p.m. 0 comments

  Now with aggravation!
I was reading the ever-uber Overcompensating! this morning and followed Mr. Rowland down the rabbit hole to the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento Penal Code Presumptive Bail listings. Here, I find many things, such as the fact that if you throw a rock at a bus window and konk someone on the noggin, you need to pay fifty grand to get out of jail.

I am confused, however, as to what aggravation means in a legal sense. For example, the crime of "mayhem", whatever that is, has bail at $30,000. If the mayhem is done whilst aggravated, however, (or perhaps with aggravation) the bail shoots up an order of magnitude to ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (MUAHAHAHA!) The same thing applies to arson: regular arson is between 10 and 30 grand, depending on what you burn, but just add aggravation, and again, ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Those seem to be the only instances of doing anything aggravated though, so my conjecture kind of grinds to a halt there. According to Google, "aggravated = made more severe or intense". Does that just mean that if you do something with aggravation, you're just trying really, really hard? Or is it more like doing the same thing, but worse? In that case, I can't really understand why there would be a jump of $70,000 in bail monies. (Or am I under-estimating things? Maybe there should be three or four reallys before the hard?)

(Updated! OC is asking the same sort of questions!)  ¶ 7:03 p.m. 0 comments

  Lessig explains all
Over at Technology Review, there's a superb essay by Lawrence Lessig about the free culture movement. If you've ever heard me rant on about copyright or free software and just didn't get what I'm on about, Mr. Lessig can explain things far better than I can.  ¶ 7:03 p.m. 0 comments

  A theory
There are a number of ways of referring to a schedule. Some people avoid the word altogether and go with "agenda", "itinerary" or "timetable". Others go with the method of tracking and refer to "calendar" or "daytimer". As for the original flavor itself, there are two camps:

Sked-jewel vs. Shed-jool.

What I would like to know is the personality types behind these pronunciations. I know of but a couple of folks who say "shed-jool", and both of them are the types to remain rigourously on task. They make their plans, stick to them, and by golly if they aren't going to get done before they said they would. Furthermore, they need to know everyone else's "shed-jool" to be sure to account for them in their own. After all, one simply cannot plan to head out to the hardware store to get some lumber if the car is in use by the spouse, right?

As for me, I fall into the second camp, pronouncing it "sked-jewel", and I don't really give a rat's ass. Neither do other people I know who refer to "sked-jewels", which is what brought about this line of thought to begin with.

Alas, my sample size is retardulously small. A study just isn't a study without the teeming masses participating, you know. And so with that, I ask: is there a connection? Do you, or anyone you know, say "sked-jewel" yet meticulously plan around it, or do you say "shed-jool" and then toss it out the window at the first opportunity?  ¶ 7:45 p.m. 0 comments

  Say what?
For the longest time, I've had mixed feelings about Batman Begins. It seems like for everything that looks good about it, like the Scarecrow, Ra's Al Ghul or the new Batmobile, there's something to turn me off, like the fire-breathing horse or the rubber suit. I have been predicting thus far that while it will not be a turd like certain other (coughLeague!cough) comic book (coughExtraordinary!cough) movies that have sucked total ass (coughGentlemen!cough), it probably won't live up to the Batman legend, or raise the bar for movie in any significant ways.

Now, the reviews are coming out, and it's looking more and more like I've erred, and that this will indeed be a flick worth watching.

Let's just hope that the tie-in videogame still sucks, or my understanding of the universe might be irrevocably shattered!  ¶ 7:45 p.m. 0 comments

  Whine!
Current gadget-lust of the moment: the DS. Yeah, that silly new Nintendo touchy-console-thingy. This, after getting a PSP not three months ago. Don't get me wrong, I really like my PSP. My time with Lumines was almost worth the price of admission alone, and watching Trailer Park Boys and Doctor Who on the bus is gravy--hot, thick, meaty gravy, possibly with a potato. I am sure that in the long run, I made the right choice. Over the life of the console, I think that there will be innumerable great games for it, and I refuse to believe that Sony won't change their tune on the firmware thing. Within a year or so the PSP will become not only a decent little game console, but an emulator and media player extraordinaire. Heck, even if Sony doesn't do a thing, the same thing will happen, but it'll be lightly more skullduggerous.

None of this, however, changes the fact that I want to draw rainbows for a little marshmallow-puffball thingy. Combine that with some Castlevania, some Advance Wars... maybe even rub in the fact that the DS had some games at E3, whereas the PSP didn't quite get that far. Nintendo might be down, but they're not out entirely. While I predict that they will remain in last place for some time, it will still take a fair number of blows to get them to drop out of the race altogether. They can still make a good game or two, and their consoles, despite being weak and under-supported, are still troopers in their own right.  ¶ 7:43 p.m. 0 comments

  My feet are twin loci of ache
I would say pain, but I'm not in that bad of a state. Climbing a dang mountain is tricksy, but not suicidal. I don't entirely subscribe to the theory that the view and the ability to truthfully say that you have completely the task validate the effort expended in the act, but given the choice between sitting at the campsite on my own doing nothing and being extremely bored, versus sucking it up and stomping up the trail anyways, I side with the doing something.

As one might have surmised, I was camping this weekend, and on the whole it was grand. The weather played along, aside from a few short bouts of moistness, and the locale was certainly acceptable. Highlights of the weekend included the majesty of a retardulously huge tent, the stringing up of some impressive tarp architecture, and the destruction and resurrection of several fires. Also, the thundering reverb of laughter at those running around drunk in their underpants, shacked at the ankles by pants.

The sole low of the weekend incidentally had nothing to do with the camping whatsoever, and more to do with the fact that the shower was out of commission for a couple of hours when I got home, and I had to wait. Oh noes (!!!1!) indeed.

(Wait, let me rephrase. The sole low of the weekend was having a flamethrower next to my head. That's fucking terrifying.)  ¶ 7:41 p.m. 0 comments

  On names
I personally think that December would be a pretty cool given name. It would need a reciprocally cool last name to make the whole think work, but right there you have a pretty good start. In a weirder-than-usual-especially-for-me discussion at lunch today, it came to my attention that an associate of mine wants to name his kids Chaos (or maybe it's Kaos) and Havoc. The third member of our discourse proposed the name Asskhole, a name to be pronounced with a silent K, and which was bizarre enough to make us laugh nearly to the point of tears.

(Really, that name needs to be followed up with the first day of school, the teacher reading attendance, getting the name wrong, and the child putting up their hand and saying "It's s'posed to be pronounced "asshole"!)

Still, truth is stranger than fiction, and while December, Kaos, Havoc and Asskhole probably won't see the light of day on real people, Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette is real, and the daughter of the larger half of Penn and Teller. That kid's on the road to superheroing right from the get-go. I almost envy her.  ¶ 6:56 p.m. 0 comments

  Shocked and appalled
Every now and again on the internet, you come across something that defies categorization. Whether it's a guy nearly pulling himself inside out, or just an ordinary news story, every so often you come across something that evokes nearly every emotion.

Reading the Kung Fu Monkey today, I came across something like that. In the words of Rogers, "this story is so weird, so sad, so broken, so goddam terrifying that it's happening in this country in the 21st Century." And he's right.

Here is is. In a word, horrible. The bit that disappoints me most is that I'm reasonably sure that this is not the first news story I've seen about the Texan Abortion Catch-22.  ¶ 6:55 p.m. 0 comments

  Oh my.
Some people talk about tests of will, of faith. The idea that God is simply seeing whether or not you are strong enough... for whatever, I suppose. Personally, I think it's really quite silly. What could an omniscient being possibly get out of "testing" us?

Still, it's worth considering when I see things like the Flybar.

When the guy at the bike store first told us about the Flybar, he said "Man, that thing bounces twenty feet!" It doesn't, but I understand why he exaggerated. The Flybar has an amazing Boing Factor. Instead of a standard spring, it uses rubber-like bands which make the bounce feel more like a trampoline and can give you a real workout. It's bulky, but sturdy. You can adjust to handle adult or kid weight. My 13-year-old son saved up for months to buy one and he's never been sorry, because when he takes it to the local park, the little kids stare at him open-mouthed and the big kids try to keep their mouths closed and hide the fact they're staring.

It's taking a lot of willpower to not buy this thing immediately. Just the concept of a pogo-stick that can give a big person such as myself SIX FEET of lift... let's just say that if I were a gal, there would be references to moistened underwear. The sheer potential for the Flybar in terms of fun and mayhem are staggering. I mean, it would be like having a trampoline just about anywhere. The Flybar is all but screaming in my ear, "BUY ME! BUY ME NOW! YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME!"

Let's be realistic though. Would I really use this thing, or would it be fun for a day or so and then just sit in a closet? Honestly, I don't know. I guess it would depend on whether or not the Flybar is a viable form of transportation or not. If I could really pogo to school, I'd be there faster than you can say "fractured ulna". Even the opportunity to bust it out at parties might make it worth it. And it's not like I haven't spent 300 dollars on sillier things...

If I decide that I should not buy one, my only hope is that my short attention span forgets about the idea, just like I forgot about the kangaroo-boots. Otherwise, the only thing holding me back is having to explain such a purchase to my parents, and that roadblock is only a few months away from evaporating itself. Oh, the tension!  ¶ 6:55 p.m. 0 comments

  On Trailers
Happy Endings: I have a hard time figuring out what this one's about, but it doesn't look too bad. Kind of a love rhombus (like a love triangle, but more complicated) involving Maggie Ghyg... Gyggh... Gyll-oh you know who I mean.

Murderball: Documentary about wheelchair rugby, which was not quite what I expected from the title.

The Island: Because if they called it Logan's Run, it would be obvious that they've made an identical movie. Doesn't look that bad though...

Chronicles of Narnia: It's like they took all their visual cues from Jackson's Lord of the Rings, only applied to C.S. Lewis. Provided I can suspend all my fond memories of the BBC series from when I was a kid, and not associate Aslan with Jesus all the time, I should be able to quite enjoy this one. (Unless, of course, it's total modern Disney Suck...)

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D: Sometimes I wonder if Robert Rodriguez honestly doesn't know why Hollywood has trouble taking him seriously. For every Sin City or Desperado, there's a Spy Kids or, well, this. However, if there was a summer movie purely designed to be seen while under the influence of psychotropes, this is probably it. Where else will you find a movie where 90% of the "action" is CGI props rushing at your face?

Herbie: Fully Loaded: Reasons to see? Lindsay Lohan and a VW bug that can beat up Matt Dillon. Reasons not to? Probably everything else.

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit: If you need a reason to see this movie other than just because it's Wallace and Gromit, I'm going to guess that you probably won't think it's all that awesome. For the rest of us who just want to see a penguin with a glove on his head walk around in mechanical trousers, I'll see you at the theater.

The Greatest Game Ever Played: I have no interest in this movie. It's the same as every other bloody sports movie, only with golf this time. I only mention it because it has as much CGI in the trailer as that Shark Boy flick three links back, and I find that to be just plain sad.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Angelina Jolie. Lots of guns. I think I've presented all the justification I need to see this one.  ¶ 8:45 p.m. 0 comments

  Blizzard is a doodyhead.
Well, not really, but them not being able to keep their BitTorrent tracker server up whilst I attempt to download their mandatory patch for their addictive-like-crack game is starting to rankle me.  ¶ 7:53 p.m. 0 comments

  The Willowz
One of the inter-nets radio shows (colloquially known as "podcasts") that I like to listen to on the bus is the Daily Sonic. Every show they do a sort of spotlight on some band that you have most likely (99% chance) never heard of. Crazy bands like the Clogs, or Low, or (aww, you guessed!) the Willowz.

The Willowz are a garage-punk band out of Anaheim that have been around for a few years now and have a couple of albums out there, and I can't recommend their self-titled debut enough. On the 'Sonic, Aaron claimed to not be able to listen to the Willowz while at a computer. Their music has so much energy that it just makes you want to go out and do stuff, he said, and for the most part, he's right. The album is only about 20 minutes long, but it feels more like 5. This isn't such a bad thing, though, because I always find myself listening to it several times in a sitting.

Aaron also said that the Willowz's (how do you pluralize things that end in 'z'?) music was for those that don't care. For those who just let life take them whereever they end up; for those whose idea of a fun time would be getting a mohawk, smoking 10 cigarettes at once while surfing the Big Kahuna with a monkey on a leash and singing at the top of their lungs. The word I would use would be aloof; it's not quite happy, nor is it particularly rebellious, but it has a feeling like the band is just there to have fun and play music, and if shit happens, it happens.

The album is like a little placebo of fun. Each track gets slammed into your ears, rapid-fire shotgun style, from the opening chatter of "Meet Your Demise" and through the boppy "Get Down". While things slow down a little bit halfway through with "I Wonder", the music gradually gets right back up to the speed it started at by the end of the disc, leaving you ready for another go around, like a good rollercoaster.

I picked up this one over at eMusic.com, but I hear tell it's available in dinosaur media as well.  ¶ 6:56 p.m. 0 comments

  Once upon a time
...there was a guy. His name was Bruce, and he knew a thing or three about security. One of the things he said was that just because something was secret, doesn't mean it's secure, and just because something's secure doesn't mean it has to be kept under layer after layer of secrecy. In fact, he said that better than I can.

Last time I checked, Mr. Schneier was in no danger of being seriously listened to by The Man. All the things that really need to be kept safe, like voting trails or social security information, are still kept under big, heavy wraps by the guv'mint and there is remarkably little chance of you legally finding out how they're stored or encrypted or anything like that.

In Florida, however, it's starting to be shown that this sort of attitude may not be a good thing. Here's how it is: Bob may have gone drinking, then Bob goes driving, then Bob gets busted. Whether he was in fact drinking, and whether he was rightfully busted is irrelevant. Bob shows up in court, and being the informed citizen he is, gets the idea that maybe if he knew how the breathalyzer that busted him worked, he could defend himself better. The company that makes the breathalyzers, however, doesn't think this is so good. They consider the way that the programs that run their breath machines to be a trade secret, and don't want other folk to know about it. The State of Florida, unable to deliver this key bit of information at the request of the defendant, then dismisses the case.

So here's the question to be asked: is it better to let some companies try to make money off of the stupid and irresponsible actions of others, or should we try to make a more transparent judicial system that allows people to find out just how they got caught? A detective needs to state his or her case about how the clues point to the suspect, and as far as I see it, a breathalyzer is just a computerised detective. Friends of mine have vented to me about those commercials you hear on the radio for legal defense against DUI charges and how much it pisses them off that these no-good scumbag lawyers are putting alcoholics behind the wheel, and to an extent I agree. Drunk driving is not good. I don't care if you down a few at the pub and then go crash into a tree and die--you deserved it--but odds are you're more likely to crash into another car than into a tree, and that puts other, less dumb folk in danger. However, those no-good lawyers have a point: a breathalyzer can be wrong, and the only way to make them better is to be able to take a look at them and see how they work.

I wonder who will be the first anti-DUI group to point at these contractors and say "Your trade secrets cost lives."  ¶ 6:55 p.m. 0 comments

  Reflections on the moving picture box
I've been watching a fair bit of television lately, far more than I usually do. Of course, when I say TV, I really mean the programs that air on TV that I either purchase in bulk installments via DVD, or the individual episodes that I download. My tolerance for the broadcast mentality of TV as most people know it is far too low for me to consider waiting for a given time to enjoy a show, especially if it has the added value of sponsored stops in the show every 12 minutes or so.

Firefly is my currently favored fix. It seems that nearly everyone who watches this sucker ends up indoctrinated into the Cult of Whedon, espousing the virtues of crew of Serenity at every chance they get, and I believe I am no exception. It's seriously great stuff, even when measured against "real" television, something that is markedly different from the "it's good for sci-fi" label that usually gets chosen. I would wonder why it got cancelled originally, but then I remember that it was on Fox, a network that seems to alternately cultivate and dismiss quality work, neither for any particular reason. I also recall that the "space cowboy" genre, which seems in my mind totally logical, could also be considered too niche to be forcibly pumped full of money and dragged out onto the airwaves in the same manner that other television programs get produced.

Another gem in my new-found oeuvre is Samurai Jack season two. It's more or less a continuation of all the awesomeness of the first season, and I am greatly enjoying it just like I did that first one. The fact that Mr. Tartakovski has managed to combine the best elements of nearly every niche film genre, in a package that is both suitable for all audiences and immensely stylish, nearly blows my mind. That he can get away with episodes in which the dialogue can be summed up in three or four lines, just takes my blown mind and scatters the pieces even further to the winds, leaving me transfixed in front of the screen. Heartily recommended.

The Office is yet another programme that is sure to keep me captivated. It's labelled as a comedy, and I've heard that there are those who think it's funny, and yet when I watched the pilot, I just sat in a state of total shock and perplexion. It is like one's private window into a lesser circle of Hell. The one they reserve for people who really do live like this. The boss character is such an ass, and the rest of the cast are so neurotic, that I probably would find it quite funny if I weren't so afraid. I suppose this is largely due to the fact that I would literally hang myself by my tie if I were forced to seek employment in such an environment. I am hoping that things get better and that I won't have to worry about shitting myself in terror when I get to later episodes, but I hear that the boss just gets worse and worse. My gut is telling me that this show will be like a scab that bears constant picking to the point of painful insanity, but it is my fingers that do the scratching, and they also control the remote.  ¶ 7:11 p.m. 0 comments

  Now this is kind of interesting
I never realized it before, but the original Playstation controller owes a lot to the design of the SNES controller. Likewise, the Xbox is modelled more on the Dreamcast than anything else. I found all this out from the console controller family tree.

If anything else, it's interesting just from a video game history point of view, and it's neat to see how some controllers were clearly inspired from others, and the various dynasties of controller design (Nintendo, Sega, Sony...).  ¶ 7:46 p.m. 0 comments

  Hammer of God
The Hammer of God is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It's about a giant asteroid that is hurtling towards the Earth, threatening to destroy all. If you took this novel, moved it from the future to the present, added some stars and syringed out any last drop of intelligence, you would have Armageddon.

Do yourself a favor and read Hammer of God instead. It's a million times better and a fairly light read, with at least half of the novel more about conjectures about the future than the plot with the asteroid. Also, Michael Bay is not involved in any sense, and that's ALWAYS a good thing.  ¶ 8:06 p.m. 0 comments

  Have I plugged the Crimson?
(Ok, that sounds far dirtier than it probably should.)

The Crimson Editor is one of the software programs I've found via Clean Software. It's a directory chock full of programs for your computer that contain no malware (ie. spyware, adware, all the nasty stuff that sometimes tags along with downloaded software) and they're all free. A number of the items on the site are open-source, but probably just as many are just plain old freeware or shareware.

One such gem is the Crimson Editor, and it's possibly the best text-or-equivalent editor that I've used, with the sole exception of good ol' vim. Since I use a Windows box more than I use Linux though, Crimson makes for a very acceptable substitute to the arcane complexity of Visual Editor Improved.

As far as features go, Crim covers all the bases:

• tabbed windows for multple documents,
  
• window splitting,
  
• built-in directory and project browser,
  
• syntax highlighting,
  
• macros.

All the body needs to be able to edit text, code or the like. It even has a few nifty skills that set it apart from the crowd like

• FTP functionality,
  
• column marking,
  
• column/"square" highlighting,
  
• and tabs/spaces translation

The editor I would most likely compare it to is UltraEdit-32, which is a bit of a hit with some friends of mine, and the only thing I think that Ultra can do that Crim can't might be SSH, but I'm not even too sure about that one. Still, UE32 requires either monies or skullduggerous cracks or keys to use willy-nilly, whereas Crimson only comes in free flavour.

I've essentially abandoned the use of Office for my personal use, using mainly plaintext* for anything that I need to take down. On Linux, this means the use of vi since I'm a masochist that way, but for Windows, give me Crimson Editor or give me... well, death is kind of harsh. Notepad, I suppose. Ick.

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* There isn't really any such thing as plain text on a computer. One way or another it needs to be encoded, and while ASCII is sometimes the result, it's not always. Just because it looks like unformatted letters doesn't mean it isn't marked up in cryptic Unicode or something. But this is really just a formality--I don't know how to use Asian characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, so ASCII is more than enough for a whitey like me.  ¶ 7:28 p.m. 0 comments