Escapism Artist

Awesome Word of the Day

2010-04-23T13:21:00.002-04:00

Hydrofracking

According to the New York Times, hydrofracking is shorthand for a technology called hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting water mixed with chemicals into rock at high pressure to extract natural gas. The NY DEC has decided not to permit the drilling practice in two Catskills watersheds.

We acknowledge that there’s a separate subset of issues that are independent of the safety of hydrofracking.
- Stuart Gruskin, executive deputy commissioner for the environmental conservation department

Hydrofracking is an awesome word, and a term that I think perfectly encapsulates the intersection of resource exploration and watershed management.

Bad Fortune

2010-02-11T19:57:00.002-05:00

NO, it ISN'T.

Ignorance on Fire WOULD, however, make a great name for a prog rock band.

Game of the Year

2010-01-31T03:58:00.000-05:00

On Voting

2010-01-19T11:35:00.004-05:00

Given no other options, I will choose reliably mediocre over dangerously stupid.

Unfortunately, we do not get to choose who we want to put in office, only between the options presented to us.

Pretending that we ever have the opportunity to do otherwise is a prescription for misery or revolution.

Paradigm Shifts

2009-12-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

Dance is the new Pop

'Shawty' is the new 'Baby'

Auto-tune is the new sampling

Sampling is the new falsetto

Electronica is the new Jazz

Jesuscore is the new Alternative

Alternative is the new Classic Rock

Country is still country, but it's much more profitable now and they'll let just about anyone in.

Rock is dead.

Personal Request

2009-12-01T22:30:00.001-05:00

To everyone I like and respect:

Please do not suddenly reveal your secret fandom for Sarah Palin. I wish to continue liking you.

I will pretend she does not exist if you will.

Notes: Transformers 2

2009-11-21T23:29:00.001-05:00

This movie sucked so hard I could dryvac my floor with it.

Notes: Champions Online

2009-09-14T10:45:00.005-04:00

A good friend hooked me into this against my better judgement, and so far I'm really enjoying it. I know that MMOs are inherently bad for both one's wallet and mental health, so I'm going to try to very carefully manage my investment of resources - short subscription periods with no auto-renew, doing my homework before playing, etc. That micro-payment store they're setting up looks awfully dangerous, but we'll leap that building when we come to it.

All that aside, Champions is proving to be quite a lot of fun. Made by Cryptic, it is essentially City of Heroes Only Better. While the previous franchise has fallen into subscription retention mode, eschewing further content development for easing player limits and offering free goodies, Champions revisits the whole superhero game genre and adds a lot of new functionality we haven't seen before. There are some embarrassing similarities, to be sure. Cryptic seems to have retained the rights to a lot of CoH's design assets - suspiciously familiar textures, meshes, sounds, and animations that pop up all throught the game. Luckily, the impressive sweep of original content and customization more than makes up for the legacy content.

Despite the similar paint job, under the hood, Champions runs very different from its predecessor. Gone are the cookie-cutter map tile door missions with the repetetive "defeat all" requirement. While there are a handful of missions like this, they are usually quick filler, generated dynamically when a citizen runs up to you asking for help. Most of the content is delivered in more traditional MMO style (think World of Warcraft), with parameters, locations, and rewards varying greatly. There is an admirable focus on scripting, which allows for a lot of interactivity and variable NPC behavior. There is also a lot of great writing, and plots tend to be engaging and spread out over discernible arcs. I particularly enjoyed coming to the rescue of the Action News Team (with Ron Mahoghany). Classy.

Game mechanics are fairly predictable - approach hostiles, unleash various attacks, manage aggro, win, recover, move on. Champions focuses primarily on energy management. Rather than forcing you to wait for regen or rely on a specific power to replenish your energy, as in CoH, Champions starts every hero out with a simple energy building attack power that you can fall back on between big blasts. Your energy also aturally recharges to an equilibrium state determined by your stats. The result is a very frenetic, flashy fight dynamic (as advertised) with very little downtime between action scenes.

This doesn't work out well for all builds. Melée heroes have trouble building energy until they can get in close, and have to really focus on defense if they intend to take on groups. Champions seems geared toward small squad battles instead of big street-sweeping mobs, which is kinda disappointing but it keeps things balanced. Holds and crowd control seem to become more and more important as you advance, as you face more and more singularly dangerous villains that need to be neutralized quickly. I haven't yet been able to make anything other than a well-rounded blaster work yet. Experimentation is key.

PvP is fun and fits seamlessly with the rest of the game - a first for superhero games, I think. There are lots of rewards just for playing, many inside jokes, and a lot of little features to keep players happy. You can throw trucks at bad guys. There are also some now almost standard MMO launch problems: driver issues, server crashes, balance changes, lag, forum drama, etc. Hopefully all of that will be ironed out soon.

But I do have some big complaints:

1. No documentation. They sell the game as something you can pick up and play without a lot of study. That's true, but there is also a very dense complexity under that "casual" veneer that becomes really engaging once you dig down into it. The problem is you have no clue how anything works. Every power framework has a gimmick. If you don't know the gimmick, you are likely to make some poor decisions that may go unnoticed until much later. Compounding this is the respec/"retcon" system, which forces you to backtrack character levels one at a time to make changes, and becomes prohibitively expensive more than 2 or 3 levels back.

2. Broken economy. The devs are starting very conservatively in managing the nascent economy, which means very little money going in. They have acknowledged that this is a problem, and will be adding more soon, but the rest of the infrastructure is also lacking. The market interface is poor, comparative values of items are hard to assess (see item 1), and most excess items get recycled into skill grinding. And crafting is basically its own reward - there's not much you need to buy unless you are ignoring the skill system entirely.

3. No need to team. The Ogre and I met up on Saturday to bust some suckahs up in game. In 5 hours or so, Foxy Chocolate and the Iron Ho each advanced 8 levels, stuck it to the man and kept it very Kung Fu funky. Very fun, but not very different from soloing. Missions to not appreciably change with more team members, and most of the very few team-oriented missions can be solo'd with a little work. Maybe team content gets fleshed out at higher levels.

So overall, a solid game with a lot of potential, some lessons learned from previous outings, and assets quietly stolen from the Marvel Online development cycle. Plus you can launch rockets at a robot cowboy and then bash it over the head with a snowmobile. Sold.

Ghost Shark Communist

2009-09-08T13:58:00.002-04:00

I would like to produce a cable news show called Ghost Shark Communist. Every week's episode would feature 3 shocking stories about one the titular topics, but here's the gimmick: you don't know which fearsome terror you're learning about until halfway through the segment. Then, the big reveal with a loud splash page and a scream of GHOST, SHARK, or COMMUNIST!!!

So maybe we start by showing a Caribbean ocean scene, with beaches and sunbathers and innocent, meaty children playing in the surf, but then we pull back and see an old pirate ship run aground nearby. GHOST!

Then we have a story about a dying grandma whose pension is being seized by the progressive socialist government... of Atlantis! SHARK!

Back to the ghost pirates... They've invaded a sugar plantation and started a co-op garden! COMMUNISTS!

We'd get expert commentators and secret documents and all sorts of exclusive content that we made up on the spot, and every week would feature hushed portentious suggestions that these 3 forces were colluding to undermine the United States, or take away your freedoms, or put iodine in name brand cola or something. And we'd encourage you to phone your congressman.

Oh, it would be grand.

Binary States

2009-07-20T23:17:00.003-04:00

1

On

Positive

Clockwise

Live

Married

Pregnant

Girl

A Classy Thing That Will Never Happen

2009-06-26T10:40:00.002-04:00

Here's an idea for the age of digital media that will never, ever happen:

When a popular artist, author, or entertainer dies, for 24 hours after his passing, his entire body of work becomes available for free download. Just an idea.

Big Changes

2009-06-21T19:57:00.005-04:00

So, as some of you already know, I'm about to make a huge change in my life that I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for. It's something my wife and I have been talking about for a while now, but I was never sure it would really happen. I admit to being torn on the issue. I mean, it's something we both want - we've talked about all the benefits, the highs, the lows, the advantages and the perils. It seems like you're not truly an adult until you have one. But the expense can be considerable, and frankly a little intimidating. Let's face it, it's a serious commitment.

Still, everyone says the advantages far outweigh the sacrifices, and life will never be the same once you have one. So, Courtney and I took a long hard look at our life, and finances, did some soul searching, and decided to go for it.

Now that it's upon us, I don't blame her for being a little dubious - probably more so than myself - about the decision, but I'm confident that in time she'll come to view this as a great move for our family. Some of the benefits I don't think we'll even fully appreciate until it's staring us right in the face.

So there's nothing left to do but wait. A delivery date has been set, and before long that little bundle of joy will be on our doorstep. I can't wait to hold it in my hands for the first time, caress it's face, and call up the AT&T activation number.

Seriously, this is a choice upgrade we're talking about here. I was never really entranced by the first iPhone or the 3G, but there are a lot of great new features that just tipped the scale in favor of buying it. Plus, I've been using the same RAZR since 2006 and I'm getting tired of watching the battery fall out every time I grip the housing too tight. This is gonna be great.

Also, Courtney is pregnant.

31

2009-06-02T19:25:00.003-04:00

Still here.

Collective Memory and the Rule of Awful People

2009-03-27T19:40:00.002-04:00

One could hope that in the age of the Internet, our national memory would be a little bit better than in times past - that past errors and successes would be handily recorded and remain available to the masses for their consumption, and that the people involved in those decisions would be justly rewarded or shunned for their performances.

(nicked from BoingBoing)
From The New York Times, November 5, 1999:CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.
---
The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.
---
'The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

Guess which ideology is still calling the shots. Brilliant.
(nicked from BoingBoing)

Bad Words

2009-03-19T08:37:00.002-04:00

We are not allowed to use bad language at work, which to anyone who works in a technical field, I imagine, is like not being allowed to urinate for 24 hours. If I don't cuss at an inanimate object or use a colorful adjective to describe a key concept at least 3 or 4 times a day, I start to do a little uncomfortable dance and cover my mouth. But my boss is conservative in ways I never expected to see this side of 1965, so we live with it, which is to say everyone in the office ignores this rule when he and his wife are both absent.

I like to be the first one to break the rule in any given day because of the cascade effect. The first person to drop the F-bomb gives the green light to everyone in earshot. Suddenly I'm in a room full of sailors. If you listen closely, you can hear the release ricochet down the office corridor, like lighting a string of firecrackers. Fucking fun as shit.

Fish in a Barrel

2009-02-28T21:24:00.003-05:00

Rush Limbaugh at the Wingnut Convention:

"We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independent. We believe that the preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom. And the pursuit of happiness," he said, pausing several times for enthusiastic applause.

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Regarding Vista 64 Home Premium

2008-11-20T18:14:00.004-05:00

Let's say you're in the market for a new toaster. You got to the store and look around, and you find a really good one. It's all shiny and new and has a lot of great features - some of which you don't need, but what the hey, it's the biggest and best one out there and you might as well get it.

One of the nice things about this particular toaster is that it has both a light and a dark setting. You think, hey, that's pretty handy. I'll probably want to make dark toast quite frequently. So you plunk down way too much money for this new toaster with its light and dark settings, and the cashier hands you a box. You take the box home, because dammit, you have bread to toast, and it's not getting any toastier all by itself.

Now, when you get that box home and open it up, I suppose you expect to find a nice toaster with a little dial on the front that says light and dark. That would make sense. But what you actually find is a toaster with a dial on it that just says light. No dark. Well, hell, how do you make dark toast then?

In the bottom of the box is a very politely-worded note explaining that you are a dumbass, and couldn't possibly be serious about making dark toast. It is a much too advanced process. But, if you really want to try to make dark toast (which is awesome, by the way), just mail in a check for $10, and they will happily send you ANOTHER TOASTER, which you technically already own, but which was not included in the box. This one will have a dial set to dark.

Oh, and the toasters both share a single unique power cord, so you can only plug in one at a time.

And everything else in the kitchen is powered by the toaster.

And if you lose or forget the serial number, the toaster dies.

And the toast tastes shitty.

Just in time for 4th Edition

2008-06-13T10:16:00.002-04:00

Found via Boing Boing:

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE
Circa 2nd Century A.D.
Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with a distinct symbol on each of its faces
2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm.) wide

Gaslamp, Steampunk, Dragonsteel

2008-06-10T20:47:00.006-04:00

I stumbled across Shaun O'Boyle's collection of Modern Ruins Photography the other day, and it got my, ahem, gears turning. There are some fantastic photos of industrial complexes, shipyards, and decaying facilities there in evocative black and white. The Big Steel and Bethlehem Steel sections are particularly haunting for me, as they perfectly visualize the echoing metallic caverns of Ashworld, from my Technologist short fiction. They are images of stark, mechanical, frequently claustrophobic environments - deep, echoing places where the works of man take on their own twisting jungle-like quality. I think they've shaken loose a few jammed cogs - maybe I should pick up writing those shorts again.

30

2008-06-03T21:18:00.005-04:00

Sunday was my birthday. This is a milestone year, particularly if you count in hexadecimal. Saturday was my birthday (observed), and featured friends and cake and board games and swords with meat on them. I got all sorts of nifty gifts, including a cold, which I naturally blame on Marc.

Courtney's birthday is on Friday, but I gave her her present early because we needed extra Wii controllers.

Thank you to everyone who came or sent gifts.

A lot of people seem to think that 30 is some sort of magic turning point, beyond which one is expected to settle firmly into whatever static form one's life is expected to take. Get hitched, buy a house, start seriously investing your excess income, shave or grow a beard depending on whether you plan on going into sales or academia. Well, I've got the marriage thing all planned out, but I think that mostly that sense of post-30 stability is an illusion. At some point you figure you'll be a "grownup", but that never seems to happen. Life is constantly in flux, and we compose mental snapshots of our lives as they are and as we want them to be in order to ease the nagging sensation that we're not doing as well as we could have, or not doing what we were destined for.

I don't feel any different today than I did at 29 (except in the strictest technical sense, what with the sneezing and the coughing), nor would I expect to. However, the one thing I really didn't expect at 30 is having to go job hunting again. It's like that line from Fight Club about furniture:

"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled."

I feel the same way about careers. Which, now that I think about it, is probably part of the problem.

I am not a number. Oh wait...

2008-05-17T11:41:00.004-04:00

Just so you know, my face is now in the book.

I expect government agents and/or marketing drones to arrive on my doorstep any day now. Not that I even have as doorstep, as far as They know.

The Pitfalls of Publishing

2008-02-04T19:28:00.001-05:00

On the Passions of Competition

2008-01-21T18:10:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know, I live in Patriot's country, which means that not a day goes by that I don't get to hear about the awesomeness of Tom Brady. This has spawned a new emotional response I have chosen to dub:

Fantrarianism (fān-trâr'ē-ən-ĭz'əm)
n. The condition of becoming an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc. in opposition of the majority, because the majority is rooting for an asshole team.

[Origin: Americanism/Me Fandom + Contrarianism]

Which is not to say that I wouldn't root for Big Blue, anyway. But it does make it all the sweeter to say go Giants. It's nice having a horse in this race for a change.

Define Politics

2007-10-24T19:28:00.000-04:00

Rudy Giuliani Rooting for Red Sox

"I'm an American League fan, and I go with the American League team, maybe with the exception of the Mets," he said. "Maybe that would be the one time I wouldn't because I'm loyal to New York."

Masshole Report: Special Edition

2007-10-11T19:42:00.000-04:00

Three words:

Motor Excise Tax

Fuck Massachusetts.

She Said Yes!

2007-10-04T17:45:00.000-04:00

Yay!

Quote of the Day

2007-09-27T19:18:00.000-04:00

"And then there's pie..."

-Giant Animatronic Buffalo Head

Sidebar

2007-09-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

Some changes to the "Daily Escapism" list this week. The casualties include A Softer World for losing it's edge, Megatokyo for losing the plot, and Overheard in New York for losing my interest.

New additions:

Rice Boy - A rambling adventure in a surreal and continually surprising world.

Minus - Tales of a magical girl, another Koala Wallop masterpiece.

Pictures for Sad Children - A gem of a find from Dresden Codak's favorites.

Perry Bible Fellowship - A Daily Orange alum. I am shamed by comparison.

Masshole Report 9/24

2007-09-24T14:03:00.000-04:00

[No data for 9/20-9/23]

Events

Area: East Arlington -> Arlington Heights (Mass Ave.)

Temporary 4-lane jumble in 2 westbound lanes at Lake St. Rating: 2
Abrupt lane change, no signal. Rating: 1
Double-parked delivery truck (10+ minutes). Rating: 1

Total outing time: 1 hour (1)

Masshole Rating for Monday, September 24, 2007: 5

Masshole Report 9/20

2007-09-20T16:02:00.000-04:00

Events

Area: East Arlington -> Fresh Ponds Mall

Hatchback changes right signal abruptly, makes left hand u-turn on Mass Ave. Rating: 2
Minivan, unsure of how to approach clogged exit, stops in middle of traffic circle. Rating: 2
Car speeding through cross traffic in parking lot. Rating: 2

Area: East Arlington -> Winchester

Illegal U-turn on traffic circle ramp. Rating: 1

Total outing time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (1.5)
(Note: For the purposes of outing time, the secluded parking lot in Winchester is considered a "safe" place.)

Masshole Rating for Thursday, September 20, 2007: 4.67

Massholes

2007-09-19T14:28:00.001-04:00

For the past few months, as I've slowly become acquainted with my new home, one topic that frequently comes up in conversation is the experience of driving in this state. As many of you know, I hail from New Jersey, widely regarded as one of the most difficult places to drive, known for its aggressive commuters, high speeds, and punitive traffic laws. For a long time I've held that these factors were in fact advantages for a skilled and aware driver, as they train one to stay alert, drive defensively, and respond quickly. Further, the frequency of truly dangerous incidents is low enough to make the whole experience educational rather than punishing. Plus, most of the casual annoyances of driving in NJ, I have found, are offset by the frequent acts of courtesy I witnessed just about every day.

Connecticut, now those bastards are crazy. I've come closer to death, dismemberment, or insurance Hell on the roads of Connecticut more times than I care to remember. I had assumed until recently that the gentle Nutmeg State contained the most insane people driving cars on major highways per capita than any state in the nation. And in many ways, my interstate experiences along the New York to New Haven I-95 corridor continue to support this thesis.

But nothing, NOTHING could have prepared me for the nightmare of navigating the streets of the greater Boston metro area. Let's not mince words. The charnel houses of Hell overfloweth, and their rivers of gore seep out into the realm of men to form the pitted arteries of misery that make up the Massachusetts highway system. Each and every outing into this twisted, diseased labyrinth of hate drives me further down the path of madness, and makes me loathe the very clay from whence humanity was molded.

I recognize that bad drivers abound in all corners of the world. There is no geographic locus which draws bad drivers into its sphere of influence, or corrupts the minds of those who would take to its roads. But the sheer number of events, frustrations, near-misses, and heart-bursting moments I have seen on a daily basis just within a 10 mile radius of my apartment is truly mind-boggling.

In an attempt to prove I am not crazy, I have decided to begin chronicling every instance of massholery that I witness or am a victim of for one whole week. Each day I will record every negative event and rate its severity on a scale of 1 to 5:

Minor infraction; no action required.
Lesser infraction; minor inconvenience or corrective action required
Significant infraction; evasive action or noticeable danger to person or property
Major infraction; significant danger, evasion, or inconvenience involved
Extreme massholery; immediate danger of collision or injury, massive inconvenience, blatant illegality or just totally fucking stupid driver who deserves to be shot

And don't think such offenses are restricted to cars. This is a fruity liberal commie blue state, so there are plenty of people on mopeds, bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades, and dumbass segways out there acting like total jackasses, too. As the bumper sticker says, same road, same rights, same responsibilities.

I will then add all points gathered for the day and divide them by the total number of hours that my car (or the car I am traveling in) has spent not parked in my driveway or similarly safe place.

So, for example, today:

Masshole Report: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Events

Fuel truck making a left fails to yield to oncoming traffic. Rating: 3
Woman waiting to parallel park stops directly alongside car exiting parking space, holding up traffic and preventing said car from leaving the very space she intends to occupy. Rating: 2
Bicyclist cuts in front of oncoming car and then rides very very slowly for about 50 yards. Rating: 2
Hatchback misses turn into parking lot, stops, reverses at high speed up active roadway for 30 yards, directly in front of people trying to exit said parking lot. Rating: 3
Huge-ass Buick found parked inches from my driver's side door, forcing me to enter through passenger side. Rating: 4

Total Outing Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (1.25)

Masshole Rating for Wednesday, September 19, 2007: 11.2

Over time, I hope to assemble some sort of index to quantitatively establish just how bad it is to drive here. Truly a noble enterprise, I can hear you say, in that admiring tone you take when speaking of me.

What Space Horror Movie Am I Watching?

2007-08-19T11:09:00.000-04:00

1. The primary spacecraft featured in this film is
A. Long and skinny with a big thingy at one end.
B. Long and skinny with a big thingy at both ends.

2. The spacecraft in question appears to have been designed by
A. NASA
B. H.R. Geiger

3. The ship is crewed by 8 multicultural astronauts, including
A. Asian people
B. Black people

4. In the cryptic message left by the previous mission's commander, the viewer is left staring into the insane man's
A. Eyes
B. Eye sockets

5. There is an airlock explosion. The crew attempts a rescue in the vacuum of space with
A. One guy in a spacesuit and two guys without
B. One guy in a spacesuit and one guy without

6. The death toll from this rescue is
A. 1
B. 0

7. The naked psychotic villain that kills everyone is convinced he is communing with
A. God
B. Satan

8. His body is disfigured by horrible
A. Burns
B. Scars

9. He kills people primarily using
A. One knife
B. Some crazy assortment of knives

10. In the end, the ship's big science machine is activated. This is a
A. Good thing
B. Bad thing

If you answered A to all or most of these questions, you are watching Sunshine. If you answered B, you are watching Event Horizon. There is a slim, non-zero chance that you may be watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and just not paying very close attention.

A Proud Tradition

2007-08-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

For those of you who thought my last post was a little overly critical, let me just qualify that observation by saying that a) the critique is by no means restricted to Americans, or even westerners, as we all have our comparatively frivolous obsessions all over the world - and b) I wasn't the only one who pointed this comparison out. CNN spent Harry Potter Day talking about both the lines at bookstores and the lines at Iraqi gas stations in such a pointed fashion that I assume the producers there are not incapable of recognizing parallels.

Waiting for books is actually a proud American tradition - one that I have no interest in participating in or disparaging in and of itself. Legend has it that American fans of Charles Dickens would wait on the docks of New York harbor for the ships bearing each edition of Master Humphrey's Clock in hopes of hearing the deckhands shout out the fate of poor little Nell (SPOILER ALERT: She dies). Or so it has been described to me by a fellow purporting to be both my father and Very Knowledgeable in These Things™.

Perspective

2007-07-25T09:17:00.000-04:00

Americans wait in line 24 hours to learn fate of fictional boy wizard.

Iraqis wait in line 24 hours to learn if gas station has fuel to sell them.

SG- Done

2007-07-18T16:10:00.000-04:00

I meant to post this back when it was not embarrassingly out of date (my obsessive geek cred is down the drain), but here it is now anyway.

Stargate: SG-1 Speed Synopsis

Thor: Hey humanity, we're dying. You want all our stuff?

SG-1: What?

Asgard: *boom*

*A series of improbable events, in which SG-1 becomes trapped in a plot bubble and isolated from the rest of the cast.*

Sam: We're screwed

Everyone: Crap.

*Time passes in montage form.*

Vala: Do I make you horny?

Daniel: No.

Vala: *cries*

Daniel: Yes. Totally. Let's do it.

*Twenty years pass, during which they either have a lot of fruitless unprotected sex, or replicate a constant supply of contraception options in order to avoid a potentially tricky moral equation involving time distortion and the rights of sentient life at the end of the show.*

Beau Bridges: Sam, don't lose hope. You've been like a daughter to me.

Sam: And you're like the father I never had - the one that didn't become host to a hyper-intelligent space lungfish.

Beau Bridges: *dies*

*Thirty years pass, during which the cast members are shown (via montage) to have chemistry.*

Sam: I figured out a way out, but someone has to stay old while the rest of us regain our youthful good looks and remain viable characters.

Teal'c: I'll do it. I'm like a Vulcan. *pushes reset button*

Everyone: Yay. *exchanges poorly-written half self-aware wrap-up dialogue*

Review: I know they're setting up for the movie, and I know that SciFi canceled them essentially mid story arc. But seriously guys, that was lame. I could see this as a one-shot throwaway episode, but as the SERIES FINALE? WTF? They should have gone out on Wormhole X-Treme!.

Stargate: Atlantis Speed Synopsis

Military Guy: I'm going to do something stupid.

Everybody: No way, dude.

Military Guy: Yes way, and you're going to help. So there.

*They do something stupid.*

Dr. Annoying: We're so doomed, Now I have to start the doom clock. We have 36 hours to live.

Dr. Annoying: Now we have 28 hours.

Dr. Annoying: 16 hours

Dr. Annoying: 4 hours

Dr. Annoying: 10 hours again.

Dr. Annoying: 2 weeks!

Weir: I quit. Samantha can take my place. *boom*

Samantha: Sweet! Employment!

Dr. Annoying: Ok, 1 hour to live again. Sorry, my bad.

Review: Why do they keep Rodney around? He does the job of like 20 different scientists and engineers and he gets half of what he calculates dead wrong in every damn episode. Replace him with a bunch of bored MIT grad students and they'd have the replicators building giant bongs in Kendall Square and terraforming Mars by now.

Thoughts From the Boston Metro Area

2007-07-14T00:24:00.000-04:00

Whose bright idea was it to build a one lane ramp at the busiest exit on the biggest interstate in Massachusetts?
The furniture places here are fiercely competitive, not just for my furniture and housewares patronage, but also my movie-going, walking tour, and freakshow money.
Some guy just pulled up in front of my house and declared that we "all need hats." Specifically Red Sox hats. From his trunk. For $3.50. "Eh? Eh?" ... Just keep walking.
Ikea has the worst warehouse organization in the universe. The brown table tag points to the white table storage area. The white table is not on display, and the box is not labeled as white, so you have no idea that the brown table you want is actually 2 aisles over in a properly labeled box.
The realization of this fact is exponentially more frustrating when it occurs at your apartment 40 minutes later and 30 miles away.
Also, the cutesy Euro sounding names stopped being clever in 1998.
That was the turn back there.
Why does my kitchen floor have what appears to be a chemical stain with white footprints running through it?
Is this a turning lane? I think this is a turning lane. Do I actually want to turn here?
I like the subtle feud between municipalities expressed as passive-aggressive and shoddy civil engineering right at the town borders. No one is going to pave that last 3 inches.
I'm at a jazz club and I am eating breakfast. Weird.
Where is the Mass Pike? The sign says left, but the road goes right. Am I reading this map right?
Kendall Square looks like it was built in the future... of 1982.
Why are Bostonians proud of the fact that they don't have some of the nice things that you can get in New York? A lack of bagels is not a virtue.
According to the map, you can't get there from here.

The Scion

2007-07-14T00:08:00.000-04:00

The wind changes.

The earth sighs.

The waters churn.

At sunrise, the world hums softly with fey energy.

The reigns of the world have been pulled.

It begins.

Pimp New Ships

2007-07-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

New Galactic Civilizations II ship designs (well, from May anyway) posted at the official forums. Reply #346, towards the end of the page.

Warning: very large downloads.

Recommended Product

2007-07-13T23:34:00.000-04:00

Arctic Silver 5

This stuff rocks. So a while back I noticed some really problematic slowdown in my computer. Those of you who have been around here awhile may remember that back in the day I had a similar problem with my otherwise high-end machine. At the time, it was under warranty, and a quick trip back to the manufacturer for a new CPU took care of the problem. Now, that same repair would be astronomically expensive, so I did a little research to see if I could fix it on my own.

First, I gave it a good cleaning. Downloaded the repair guide, stripped it down, blew some air in, cleaned some dust clogs very deep in the machine. I felt very manly. Or at least geekly. Meekly?

Anyway, that worked for about 5 days, and then it started to slow down again. Like Windows 3.0 slow. Very bad. So I did some more digging. I thought back to when I had pulled out the CPU - it had made a very loud sprucking sound, and popped off the board still attached to the heat sink. The thermal paste (a substance whose existence has only just recently been revealed to me) had hardened into a dry film on the CPU backing, effectively rendering its heat dissipation powers useless.

So a week later I went in again with some rubbing alcohol and a new vial of Arctic Silver 5. One rice-sized dollop later and it was all back together and powering up. Now, aside from swapping RAM chips and AGP cards, I haven't really gone digging into the guts of a computer since they came with an -86 attached to the end of their names. Going into an out of warranty laptop had me a little nervous. But you do what you have to when the alternative is $4000 planned obsolescence.

I was expecting to see a little improvement, but nothing major. Happily, to my surprise, the change was instant. As soon as it booted up I could see the difference, and within minutes I was flying through Paragon City at top speed and playing quicktime files without the fans spinning up like hydroelectric turbines. So it really works. I highly recommend it.

Speed Posting Engage

2007-07-13T23:28:00.000-04:00

Vroom.

I Am Made of Meat

2007-06-02T08:29:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again. A quick update for those of you playing along at home:

I'm 29, in love, and moving to Arlington, MA on July 14th.

So things are going pretty good.

GENTRIFICATION!

2007-06-01T10:56:00.001-04:00

Maybe it's because I've been apartment shopping recently, but Cat and Girl whacked my funny bone pretty hard today.

Demo Reel

2007-05-06T17:05:00.000-04:00

If you were thinking about hiring me, or knew someone who was thinking about hiring me, or was thinking about finding someone who might think about hiring me, this may be relevant:

UPDATE: Added a few clips and moved to Google Video for better playback.

Renovations

2007-04-18T00:05:00.000-04:00

Experimenting with Blogger's new design features. Just as much of a pain in the ass to customize as before, but now with more interactive buttons. Please hold...

Nothing is New

2007-04-17T22:23:00.000-04:00

Continuing in the vein of received wisdom regarding teh Intarwebs, this shiny bauble from Making Light:

Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse. To be specific, it’s the same old trashmouthed bullying we all know from junior high and high school. Putting it on the net doesn’t cause it to develop any novel complexities or interesting emergent behaviors. It’s just the same old sh*t.

If you have a weblog or live journal, or you administer a website that has comment threads, stand up for yourself and your readers. The jerks are never going to like you, or praise you, or admit that you’re doing the right thing. And if you’re waiting for someone to give you permission to suppress and thereafter ignore malfeasants, you have it right now. If you want, I’ll make up a certificate. Go forth and civilize.

Mostly in reference to the recent calls for civility from Tim O'Reilly, a man who convinced the world to produce free content for him to drive his investment capital business, and Jimmy Wales, best known for creating the foundations for the largest repository of questionable information ever assembled.

What's a Cubit?

2007-04-16T18:26:00.001-04:00

All relevant parties are fine, by the way. Just kind of hemmed in at the moment.

Simple Truths

2007-04-13T20:18:00.000-04:00

It disturbs me how frequently Tycho over at Penny Arcade will perfectly and unexpectedly articulate some deep thought rumbling deep within my own musings.

People seem to think that by posting in threads and agreeing with other people they are changing the world. They are not. They are posting in threads online. The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. Being outraged online is a form of entertainment, and refreshing a thread to receive a hit of consensus packs the thrill of genuine activism without requiring any sweat. I'm afraid this test may require more from the community than a sardonic jpeg.

Similarly, James Wolcott has a comment on the futility of the vox populi or, more frequently, the vox cognoscenti.

Oh god, not another national dialogue... National dialogues are a wordy ritual doomed to rhetorical stalemate and eventual exhaustion, since so few minds are ever changed;--a pretext for the usual roundup of pundits and thumbsuckers to leap aboard a moving controversy and hijack the stagecoach for their own purposes.

It is my sober and sacred duty to bring you these gems of wisdom as they surface amidst the shifting sands of the Innerwebs.

Ready to Rock

2007-03-17T11:06:00.000-04:00

If you like sim games, and you are not familiar with Galactic Civilizations II, head on over to the site and check them out. It's from Stardock, which produces a lot of great third-party software - inventive and useful stuff you've probably never heard of but need right this minute.

Anyway, GalCiv2 is a middling-to-good sim, not quite on par with Civ4, but stable and challenging enough to hold your interest for the 20-30 hours or so it takes to play a complete game of galactic conquest. Where it really shines, though, is the shipyard. GalCiv2 allows you to design your own starships from a host of components. Here are a few asteroid-themed ships I put together using a mod that allows you to do that sort of thing.

That's just the colony ship. Here are some others:
Deep Sounder Recon Craft
Iron Determination Mining Tower
Terminus Station
Steel Workshop Construction Platform
Meteos Cataclysm-class Troop Transport

And here a few older ships from a previous version:
Starseed Colony
Stardust Merchant
Quasar Defense Drone
Ion II Escort Fighter
Echo Drone
Sunflare Destroyer
Nova Mk1 Battleship

Brimley

2007-03-02T10:59:00.000-05:00

Found at I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

Driving Sick

2007-02-21T11:40:00.000-05:00

Courtney and I spent the long weekend in Boston. She interviewed for two post-docs and I chauffeured. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of driving in Boston, I have only this advice: know someone there with a keen sense of direction, and have your cell phone charged. Like many cities, Boston has a beltway that circles the city, with a series of spokes that extend into the city center like a wheel. Except that in this case, the wheel has been damaged in a fire, or possibly the apocalypse. Major roads do not go in the correct directions, intersections become "rotaries," and signage is plentiful, but incorrect. 2A in particular has a nasty habit of appearing and disappearing at random, materializing along various vectors determined by a set of arcane and ancient Masonic laws.

Marc did what I think in the industry is referred to as a "solid" and stayed on the phone with me for the better part of an hour as I traversed Cambridge in search of Courtney's hotel on Friday. Thanks, Marc. I'll get you back one of these days.

Saturday we spent with Marc, Stephanie, Katie, and Rob, doing our usual thing. Many thanks to your hospitality, gang. We'll be back again before you know it. And we both apologize profusely if any of you come down with a crippling disease in the next few days.

Courtney and I returned each with massive head colds. We spent Monday lounging around her apartment in pajamas and moaning, which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Today I'm at work, although I probably shouldn't be. She's about a day ahead and feeling a little better, so maybe we're almost out of the woods. Bleagh.

Update: Apparently the woods have tonsillitis. So does Courtney.

New Games 2007

2007-01-19T10:29:00.000-05:00

Well, new to me, anyway. I long ago fell off whatever wagon drives you past the game store on release days. Here's a quick rundown of what I picked up over the holiday season. "Holiday season" being defined as the last 4 months, for convenience's sake.

Company of Heroes

PC: Picked up over the summer, a highly detailed WWII real-time strategy game. Gloriously rendered to the point of murdering my computer. I really don't know when I'll have time to play it. Never even done multiplayer yet, because I like to live.

Dynasty Warriors Vol. 2

PSP: A near perennial favorite from Koei's rich garden of franchise delights, adapted for portability. Graphically, it stands up to the standards of past installments, although lacking the resources to render huge armies on massive battlefields, this new format breaks the terrain down into bite-sized chunks on a larger grid. You clear and claim areas of the map a bite at a time, jumping back to the grid to navigate between strategic goals. Interesting, and an excellent waste of time.

Guitar Hero II

PS2: You've seen it, and if you haven't, get your ass to a Best Buy right fracking now. This one hurts. If your rock-fu is strong, and you think you have mastered Guitar Crane style, play Medium. You will enjoy the marginal challenge of getting 5 stars on every song. However, should you climb the mountain of Hard Mode, the zen master that resides there shall break your will before agreeing to train you in the higher arts. Only ascended beings should attempt Expert. Still... Trogdor.

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

PS2: This one slipped under the radar of a lot of die hard RPG fans. Not sure why. Gorgeously rendered, well voiced, detailed in the extreme, excellent story. Unfortunately, it's also a massive time sink. And I still haven't finished VP:Lenneth for the PSP, because... well, because it's HARD.

Dynasty Tactics 2

PS2: Thank God for gift cards and discount bins, or I would have forgotten about this. Basically an update of the last one, with more tactics, more storylines, more hidden content, and you can play as Lu Bu. Also a massive time sink.

MGS3: Snake Eater

PS2: You know, I just don't know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. You eat frogs in this one. No really.

Carcassonne

Big-ass table: In my heart of hearts I really didn't want to do it. Courtney and I, I fear, have taken that first faltering step into the abyss of couples entertainment with the acquisition of this classic tile-building game. I don't want a games closet, I really don't. I'm much happier mooching off the entertainment of my couple-friends, since that's who I play with most of the time anyway. Sure, we dabble in Scrabble, but now where do I find myself? Placing a meeple on a potentially valuable farm and angling to link it up with a vast tract of already claimed territory. And currently in the pipeline from Amazon? The River 2 and Inns and Cathedrals expansions. I fear that the grace of God has failed me, and there, as they say, go I.

I'm also still playing EVE Online (4 significant characters now), and City of Heroes (ungodly number of insignificant characters). What the hell is wrong with me?

More Love for Tycho

2007-01-05T09:47:00.000-05:00

Today's Penny Arcade:

Entitled "Moral Kombat," the trailer for it is mostly a sensationalist sort of hook whose urgent piano strains to convey the unrelenting danger of the coming Cyber Game War.
--
I haven't seen it, though I would love to. We did, however, approach their trailer with our characteristic scorn as is required of us by the Penny Arcade Charter. There's a lot of strange quotes and received wisdom I don't especially have any use for, and to dredge up that fruity "9/11 Terrorists Trained On MS Flight Simulator" stuff to score rhetorical points in a completely unrelated discussion is (I have chosen to be polite) weak sauce. You'd better have a Goddamn good reason for invoking that day, and "so I can sound like a smart motherfucker on the teevee" ain't gonna cut it.

A sentiment that I have been harboring, like a falsely-accused fugitive from the law, for some time now.

Merry Fracking Christmas

2006-12-19T16:35:00.000-05:00

Fall Flickr-Bomb

2006-11-02T22:02:00.000-05:00

Hi there! Been a while, I know. Nothing complicated to post right now. Just thought I'd toss up some photos from our trip back to the cabin in October.

You can see the change in the leaves from the previous post here. What you can't see clearly is the change in the cabin itself. This shot is about 10 feet to the right of the old one, and the intervening space is an all-new enclosed deck with beatiful full-length double pane windows. Jim did the whole thing over the summer and it look great. It almost doubles the size of the cabin. Quite a homestead up there.

The pond looks pretty, too.

We also went up to Mt. Belleayre, the public ski resort, for a craft festival. Lots of hemp, beer, skis and painted rocks. We took the lift to the top, where I used the mosaic function of my camera for the first time.

More stuff later.

Public Service Announcement IV

2006-06-30T09:54:00.000-04:00

Zoom Zoom

2006-06-18T11:14:00.000-04:00

Old and busted:

New Hotness:

Mazda3 S Touring
160hp 2.3L I-4
5-Speed Sport Automatic
17" Wheels
4-wheel Independent ABS

Woodsy

2006-06-16T16:08:00.000-04:00

I know this is crazy late, but Courtney and I spent the first two weekends of June up in the Catskills at her family cabin. Very very rustic. I dropped a Flickr-bomb of shots from the first weekend, when we were joined by her sister Meghan and her beau Alvaro.
It was a lot of fun up there. They have running water and a gas supply, but no power. No phone or telephone reception, either. Bears, though. And one country-western station. While the combination of those last two might have negated the negative aspects of both, it was not to be.

We rode ATVs around for a few days, dodging rocks and trees and hanging caterpillars. The Catskills are currently being devoured by three seperate species of moth, at least one of which travels by hanging from the trees at about eye level on silk strands and riding whatever animal comes by. I hate nature.

I also totally kicked my girlfriend's ass at Scrabble. I'm awesome! One day, they will build a statue of me.

Seriously, it is beautiful country up there - an excellent place from which to watch the fall of civilization. Hey, it never hurts to plan ahead.

The next weekend we went to Courtney's class reunion at Yale. It was extremely wet and muddy for most of the time we were there, but I got to see some of the fancier bits of campus and meet many of her friends. She has pictures of that weekend here and some shots of Memorial Day here.

28

2006-06-01T10:03:00.000-04:00

*click*

Send booze.

Notes: Nightwish

2006-05-26T09:37:00.000-04:00

In honor of Lordi's triumphant victory at Eurovision, let us delve for a moment into the world of Scandinavian Metal.

Hells yeah.

Now, I know some of you are familiar with the entertaining stylings of Therion. With their symphonic thunder, they had such promise, yet left so much unrocked. Don't get me wrong, I love Vovin, Secret of the Runes and that one song, Thor the Powerhead. But Therion is usually a mixed bag. You have to choose carefully.

Enter Nightwish. If you're looking to get your Epic Raging Gothic Metal Fix, look no further. Find me another band that has Val Hallen, Viking God of Rock on bass.

I just picked up their 2004 album, Once, along with a few singles from iTunes. Fronted by opera singer Tarja Turunen (who has sadly since left the band), Nightwish presents a gigantic soul-shattering sound. Imagine a full symphony orchestra dominated by a brushed chrome bass and an unholy elven chorus with assists from a burning harpsichord. It is a sound to get lost in. I've read some reviews that compare the band favorably to Evanesence. I can understand that - the female leads are similar, Nightwish also has some distinct Christian overtones, and the styles occassionally brush lightly against each other.

Dark Chest Of Wonders and Planet Hell are good hard rock monsters to get you started, with rampaging bass work backed up by flowing orchestral themes trying desperately to keep up. Relax for a while with the sweet and ghostly Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan, an easy competitor for inclusion on any Lord of the Rings soundtrack. The Siren, Dead Gardens, and Nemo are all good secondary tracks, although somewhere in there is the single longest headbanging bass solo with hellscream in the history of music. I'm not saying it's good, I'm just pointing out that it's there.

The gem of the album is of course the ten minute Ghost Love Score, which in my opinion is worth the price of the album (apparently iTunes agrees). As if someone had soulforged Danny Elfman, James Newton Howard and Jim Morrison into a living wall of theatric sound, the piece is an epic cascade of strings, guitar rifs, chorals, and saintly vocals. Listen to it. It is nothing short of legendary.

Highly recommended.

Say it with Google Image Search

2006-05-24T16:06:00.000-04:00

When a forum post starts to go bad:

Beautiful Things

2006-05-07T19:44:00.000-04:00

Courtney and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is much better than the MOMA, because modern art blows. It had been a long time since I set foot in the Met. Abouth the only thing I remembered was the armor exhibit (go figure). This time I could look at several of the pieces with some actual working knowledge of history, which was a nice change from my usual "blundering" form of museum-going.

Aside from the permanent exhibits, of which I have some pictures, we saw some interesting special features. One was a very cool look at Tibetan arms and armor. Some very difficult to find pieces in there, since we don't really associate Tibet with warfare. It is, of course, a very turbulent area, where sword and musket were actually useful combat implements well into the 20th century.

The other special was Anglo Mania, an examination of English fashion and its influence on the world. The exhibit consists mostly of "traditional" elements - dresses, coats, furniture from high eras of British history - set against "transgressive" pieces - recent modern avant garde crap. Very silly.

The Sackler Gallery, part of the Asian Art Exhibit, was probably my favorite.

Public Service Announcement III

2006-05-05T11:12:00.000-04:00

My God, it's True!

2006-04-25T11:33:00.000-04:00

Back from Vegas. Pictures will be up sometime tomorrow. But I wanted to talk about something else first.

I have just seen something extraordinary. A vision of universal harmony and order. Something so unlikely that it must be the result of an intelligent creator. In the parlance of my more herbal, euphoric brethren, this video blew my fucking mind.

I took a certain short elective course in college - it's purpose eludes me today - wherein we were each tasked with proving a supernatural belief. Or something. It was fairly early in the morning and there were "auras" involved, so don't count on a comprehensive account. Suffice it to say, I chose to prove the existence of God. What's more, I chose to prove the existence of the divine via the property of mundane items. Namely fruit. How was I to know then that I was on the very cutting edge of theological science?

I could explain to you the logical pathway that allowed me to divine the existence of God from the mere physical dimensions of a certain yellow fruit. However, against all scientific principle and norms of human behavior, I no longer have to. Enter Kirk Cameron and associate:

The relevant bit is at 3:31, but you should watch a bit more. Some awesome stuff about eyes, Darwin, and the divine nature of patriotic soda cans. I was right! I was so damn right! And when Kirk fucking Cameron backs you up, you know you're on the right path. Hallelujah!

That's three irreverent God posts in a row, to be followed shortly by Vegas pics. I may be asking for trouble here...

BF2 Jesus

2006-04-20T16:03:00.000-04:00

From a Tactical Gamer discussion that got.... wierd.

Meal of the Damned

2006-04-05T09:32:00.000-04:00

For future reference, the Value Meal of Satan is the Double Cheeseburger combo (large) with 6 pc Chicken Fries.

Maalox or Holy Water recommended, particularly if you opt for the barbeque sauce.

Touchdown, Cynics

2006-01-11T11:40:00.000-05:00

James Wolcott, in discussing the Frey-Oprah book flap, says a few things that needed to be said about dime-store sap.

I'm just automatically suspicious of every tale of woe that's peddled as a tale of redemption. The whole concept of redemption seems fishy to me, another form of sentimentality.

Americans love a born-again hero. It's almost pathological - the romanticization of the fallen seeking forgiveness. It pervades every element of our culture, from religious texts to secular psychotherapy to every branch of our literary heritage. Trite, easy to digest, and just as easy to fake.

Wikisdom

2005-12-16T12:33:00.000-05:00

Some days, I love Tycho so much it hurts me inside:

Reponses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this: the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament. If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don't have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment.

Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions. The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.

The second response is: the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect. To which I reply: that does not inspire confidence. In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous. What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.

Quiet

2005-12-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

Yeah... I know.

Badass

2005-10-28T08:59:00.000-04:00

The Pork Chop Express.

Which B-Movie Badass Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Public Service Announcement II

2005-10-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

Public Service Announcement

2005-10-26T20:03:00.000-04:00

HillTV, Spawn of UUTV, is Dead

2005-10-22T22:59:00.000-04:00

I just got a call from the inimitable Mr. Proctor with some sad news. Apparently, the Syracuse University Chancellor has dissolved the student group HillTV, formerly my own dear UUTV, over a matter of offensive content on one of their shows. The Post Standard has an article from the 19th on problems with the show "Over the Hill."

The show's description on the station's Web site invites people to "watch, get informed and get offended," and it seems to have hit its mark when it comes to being offensive, making light of issues such as eating disorders, date rape and lynching.

"We've had an unusually high number of problems regarding content sensitivity with their shows," said Rich Levy, HillTV's general manager and an SU junior. "I have seen some of the most recent episodes . . . I found a lot of their content to be highly offensive. A lot of it was just wholly inappropriate."

Levy took over the general manager position about three weeks ago.

I feel Rich's pain - we had to deal with a series of ill-conceived and problematic shows when I was General Manager. Hey, college is the time of your life when you get to fuck around. In our case, however, we were seen by maybe 12 people on cable access and the clunky, unreliable campus feed, so we were generally safe from scrutiny. Not so much now, it seems. From the Daily Orange:

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor disbanded the student-run television station HillTV on Thursday.

Cantor spoke to former HillTV General Manager Rich Levy, the department heads and the former sports director at 4:30 p.m. to tell them of her decision to disable the station. Cantor also told the HillTV representatives of the administration's decision to create a new student-run television network on campus.

The HillTV Web site, HillTV.com, was removed Thursday evening.

Cantor did not allow the former HillTV members to speak in defense of the station.

This is the letter that has been floating around among alumni:

Dear HillTV/UUTV Alumni,

Many of you may already be aware of the recent activity at SU involving HillTV. As of tonight, Chancellor Nancy Cantor has shut us down. All production has ceased and HillTV as a recognized student organization NO LONGER EXISTS.

One of the entertainment programs, “Over the Hill” produced racially and sexually offensive content in a series of their programming. The Executive Staff members were in the process of reviewing their content and status of their show. No episode of "Over the Hill" has been approved by the Executive Staff since issues regarding the show's content were first brought to light this semester. We cancelled the show and were in the process of reworking our content sensitivity standards to make sure future programming did not have this kind of effect.

The members of HillTV, and in particular the Executive Staff, have sat through a series of town-hall meetings as well as internal meetings over the past few days. We wanted to solve the problem and move on, to continue working as a student-run organization.
However, we were not given the opportunity to work through this issue, even after the show was cancelled.

The future of our station, as well as the past, is gone.

The Orange Television Network and its general manager Andy Robinson now control the “Watson Studios” facility. We plan on working with OTN on an interim basis, but are planning to appeal the decision to permanently shut down HillTV.

Right now, we are asking for your encouragement, thoughts and guidance. It is important to us, as past and present members of HillTV to support the student organization we loved so much.

Katie Frey

There is media and administration contact info, too. I'll email that privately to anyone who would like to comment to the powers that be on this issue.

I'm going to reserve final judgement until I learn a little more about what exactly went down, but just from the above it seems that the faculty decided to take visible decisive action to cover for a potentially embarassing problem, so they punish the entire station for the sins of a few.

I don't know what the content of "Over the Hill" was, but let's assume it was bad. Like National Socialist Movement bad.

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor Shut down the student run television station Thursday night. A packed house in Syracuse's Hendericks Chapel applauded the decision.

Yeah, that bad. So you've got a patently offensive and terrible show that people are complaining about. So the HillTV execs cancel it and start working on ways to prevent the National Socialists (that's Nazis, btw) from sneaking onto the schedule again. Now, AFTER the show has been cancelled, the SU faculty disbands the TV station entirely, apparently because the organization was far too flawed or corrupted to be trusted with making more shows.

But wait a minute. Then the chancellor asks the staff of the now defunct station to join the committee to form a new station? Uhhhhh... does anyone else see a logical conflict here? This sounds like classic CYA from the University.

I'm going to have to think about the best way to respond to this - letters, phonecalls, etc. Either way, the alums really need to go to bat on this one.

Update 10/23:
The wingers are out in force on this one. Apparently this, along with the banning of the BSA from campus earlier this year, is playing into the hands of the "poor oppressed conservative" crowd. Supporters of the HillTV staff will need to carefully avoid being forced into defending "Over the Hill" on the basis of freedom of speech. That's not the issue. The staff agreed with the public and (I'll say this as many times as I can) CANCELLED THE SHOW. The chancellor then arbitrarily disbanded the station without a review process. I'm pretty sure that's against the bylaws governing student organizations, but we all know that as far as student rights are concerned, those kinds of rules aren't worth the binders they're stacked in.

If David Horowitz gets involved, we're fucked.

We ♥ OCD

2005-10-04T11:32:00.000-04:00

The summer heat gives way to the newness and the oldness of fall. Such wonderful pandas! It makes me want to dance!

Oh, hello. We did not see you there. We have been busy rolling! Rolling rolling rolling, rollling everything up together in beautiful style. We quite enjoy it.

We enjoy it so much, in fact, that we have been staying up late. Far, far too late. Too late to make any appearances without looking very stiff and tired. That is the curse of the Katamari. The curse and the joy.

What's that? Your talking dog is also cursed? That is highly unlikely... Perhaps he would enjoy some rolling. Being cursed is not a very agreeable pasttime. Wouldn't you agree? Of course you would.

Why deny it?

2005-09-26T09:39:00.000-04:00

You are a
Social Liberal
(65% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(28% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

ARRRRR!

2005-09-19T15:48:00.000-04:00

Avast, mateys.

'Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Notes: Iron Sunrise

2005-09-18T21:14:00.000-04:00

The work of Charles Stross fell into my lap unexpectedly last year. Jason gave me a blind recommendation of Singularity Sky over the phone while I was searching the local Borders for a book to read on a plane. Happily, that exchange also netted a copy of Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. Both excellent reads - really the sort of Slipstream meets New Weird births Infernokrusher eats your head kind of stories I had been looking for. Unfortunately, the shine has come off the further works of these two authors - they seem to fall a little flat.

I could do a whole post on Vinge's crap-out in Deepness in the Sky but the only thing worthy of note here is that the flaws in that book closely echo those of Iron Sunrise. Stross and Vinge were drinking buddies, so I guess that makes sense.

The key problem with Iron Sunrise is that it reads like a studio-scripted sequel. It has all the style and flavor of the first book, but no strong plot of it's own. Stross falls back on what were once delicious details of the bizarre post-singularity universe but are now stale reiterations. Recurring characters are static and uninteresting, prone to moments of "my God, we're doomed" realizations and long dramatic pauses. The villains are comically villainous and pointlessly perverse. The new characters are inconsistent in their personalities and rarely distinct from the "fuck everything, I'm a good guy everywoman action hero" attitude that pervades the book's dialogue.

The story is your basic save the universe tale, complete with Nazis. There's a bit of spaceship blueprint porn, some explosions, some sex, some Warren Ellis style shock perversity, and various explorations of the essence of the Singularity trope. Characters explain how the sciencey things work and snub their futuristic populist noses at the rich and ignorant. Then cap the whole thing off with a terribly amateur cliffhanger ending - equivalent to one where the seemingly dead villain jerks back to life long enough to take a potshot at the hero - and you're done.

This is the most phoned-in book I've ever read. Not only that, it was phoned in to the editor's angry spiteful messaging service. I may still pick up Accelerando, in the hopes that Stross zipped past this one to get to the book he REALLY wanted to write, but this outing leaves a lot to be desired.

Ideology with Fries

2005-09-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

I just realized something.

Free-market Capitalism is pouring your ketchup directly on your fries. Some get nothing, but the lucky ones on top get a huge, disgusting dose.

Socialism is putting your ketchup on the side. Everybody gets a little, but you leave a lot of ketchup stuck to the plate.

Thoughts from the Left Coast

2005-09-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

The fish here on the coast is awesome. Wait a minute, I live on a coast. Why can't I get good fish there?
A preponderance of antique shops is the surest sign that a town has nothing more to offer the world than its own discarded junk.
Hey, look, a Starbucks.
The park ranger said the lighthouse and the beach would be good places to stop, but it's fifty degrees, foggy, and everything is closed for the season. That ranger misrepresented the situation. What's his angle I wonder?
The menu says "pizza" but there's nothing even remotely like pizza listed there. Coconut pesto? I am frightened.
Where do they keep the really BIG redwoods?
They toss the term "deli" around pretty lightly here. Apparently if you have some meat in a fridge or just in a box somewhere, you're allowed to put up a sign.
I feel a sense of pride in not stopping at every huge eyesore meant only to get my attention, but a few miles later I wonder - maybe I should have at least considered what the 20 foot anorexic wooden panda had to offer my vacation experience before gunning the gas.
Hey, look, a Starbucks.
Oriental Cuisine. Oriental. Oriental? Didn't they retire that word in the late 80s?
The scenic bridge hiking trail does not actually lead to the bridge. It leads away from the bridge. More deception from the national park service.
I like driving around with Oregon license plates. It's like I'm in stealth mode.
Hey, look, a Tully's. And a Starbucks.
Your sign says free wireless Internet, but I have to stand next to the hotel lobby counter to use it. This kind of defeats the purpose of it being wireless.
Bendy roads are fun. 40 miles of dangerous rocky switchbacks littered with fallen trees and the occassional patch of intentionally-placed road oil are fun only in retrospect.
I'm not sure what made me think, "hey, why would I need to bring a jacket to the Pacific Northwest?" Thankfully, Seattle has convinced me of the error of this assumption.
Let's see, gate C12 is this wa- Crap on a cracker, it's a Starbucks!

Seattle: City of Layers

2005-09-11T23:57:00.000-04:00

Cold. Warm. Hot hot hot! Cool. Damp. Cold. Clammy. In short, your typical Seattle day.

I got as far as Lincoln City, OR before deciding that I'd had quite enough of the whole driving-to-a-thing-and-looking-at-the-thing element of tourism. So, grabbing a crab cake and an iced tea, I veered sharply right, powered across rolling plains of cattle and grapes, and jumped on I-5 via Portland. And away north to Seattle! I toyed with stopping at St. Helens, but apparently it's not smoking anymore. It used to be cool, but it's changed, man.

Seattle is strange. Every joke about Starbucks there is true. Jason pointed out a corner where you can see two of them at the same time. And there was a Tully's between them, just to be safe. The signs in the airport include Baggage Claim, Restrooms, and Espresso. These people are ill.

We went to the Space Needle, which is kinda dingy up close, and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, which was very cool. They had a lot of props and interactive displays about the history of Skiffy. I actually learned a few things, although the navel-gazing self-absorption of the SF community made the museum as a whole a little... breathless. For what it was, it was good.

The weekend was very laid back, as Jason mentioned, it was the end of the vacation season for both of us. After a week on the road my own operational day was severely reduced and neither of us were really up for heavy duty sight-seeing. We went to Pike's Place to see the fish throwing and the giant shoe museum, and we went up into the crazy Seattle public library, which gave Jason vertigo. Overall it was a good experience and I'd like to go back sometime to see the Asian Art Museum and some of the markets we missed. For now, though, I'm glad to be back on the east coast, where I can be assured that people will curse at me and treat me like dirt.

But I will always remember you, Seattle Harbor Granola Girl. With your cargo pants, longsleeve t-shirt, pigtails and exposed midriff. Your yin-yang headband and Lance Armstrong bracelet. Your Doc Martens covered in muck as you dutifully sweep the kayak docks clear of debris. You may be destined for Slacker Health Food Store Boy, I know, but you will always be Seattle to me.

Family fun

2005-09-10T12:21:00.000-04:00

Wheeeeee!

Local time:

You can't NOT stop

2005-09-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

Local time:

Endor-rific

2005-09-10T12:15:00.000-04:00

Avenue of the Giants, Redwood National Forest

Coastal trail in southern Oregon

Local time:

I am not Ansel Adams

2005-09-07T22:01:00.000-04:00

This trip has really illustrated to me the limitations of my camera. Bad weather aside, I'm just not getting a lot of great shots out of what could have been prize-winning museum pieces, the sale of which would fund the purchase of several private islands. Alas, blame my lack of global photographic chops on my little Elph.

You just can't do without an F-stop. Shooting a forest floor requires a level of shutter control that you're just not going to get with an automatic camera. And don't get me started on telephoto lenses. I shot elk from half a mile a way for ten minutes before I realized how ridiculous it was.

The shots that I hate missing the most, however, are the impossible moments. Like hitting a coastal switchback and having your vision rotate 270 degrees in ten seconds and seeing something beautiful at every point. Or having a gull hover five feet from your face in dewey fog for a split second before drifting away. Or catching the reflection of distant blue sky in a river while the rest of the landscape lies cloaked in grey.

Worst of all, today I hit Gold Beach just before sunset. Imagine skating past giant upthrust rocks on wide open sand lit in glorious golden hour sunlight. The diffuse atmoshperics would have made the camera choke and spit out a whitish blur - it could not capture the subtle mesh between ocean and land, where golden brushstrokes blurred the line until only the texture of the waves marked the division.

There are masters of photography that can capture that, and they do so in their own time, but most of us must be content with the experience alone. Leave the image to the calendars and postcards and concentrate on the moment as it happened to you personally. Some moments cannot be captured.

Local time:

That's why they build them

2005-09-07T21:46:00.000-04:00

Morbid amusement is an easily sated hobby. Have you noticed that lighthouse-intensive coastal towns are often famous for their deadly shipwrecks? Point Arena (Punta Arenas) once boasted a two-mile spit of sand extending far out into the Pacific. It had been washed away by the time the town was founded. Unfortunately the rocky outcroppings the sand concealed had NOT washed away, and the California coast went for some 400 years of regular wrecks before someone finally put a beacon on the cliffs there.

It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and rebuilt. Decomissioned in the 70s (along with all the other lighthouses) to make way for GPS. The Coast Gurad is restoring it to working order this year as part of a big lighthouse renovation project.

The building itself is kind of shabby, but the view from the nest is cool.

The rocks in question. There's a devil's cauldron cut into the top of the rock near the fog house.

Huge kelp beds line the coast here. You can see some of the locals swirling between the rocks.

Local time:

The Edge of America

2005-09-07T21:29:00.000-04:00

Artillery sighting perch, south of Stinson Beach. There are hilltop bunkers all around the Golden Gate area.

Pt. Reyes Lighthouse, closed. The fog you see is moving right to left at about 50 knots. It was cold.

Promontory and beach north of Stinson.

Beach at Humboldt State Park's "Dry Lagoon." I couldn't find the lagoon. I imagine because it was dry.

Tourist trap totem pole

Fog cloaked bridge near Eureka, CA.

Local time:

'Frisco

2005-09-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

Ran out of relevant Rocketman lyrics.

One of the annoying things about doing a travelling vacation, as in you don't spend more than a day or two in one place, is that you're left with a very long list of stuff to do next time. I only got to a small portion of the things I wanted to see today, so next time I'll have to make room for Golden Gate Park, the Japanese Tea Room, Telegraph Hill and the Presido coastal bluffs.

Also Alcatraz. I really wanted to get to it this time out, but all of today's tours were already booked before the first ferry left. Only got to see it from Fisherman's Wharf. Oh well. I'll have to get my historical penal system fix some other time. Instead I wandered around the waterfront, saw the Aquarium, ate at new and exciting tourist traps, and watched the Sea Lions hork at each other in the marina.

I was surprised to find a very good tour of a WWII submarine, the USS Pampanito. Unlike the Intrepid, the boat has been restored very close to WWII conditions and has an excellent audio tour made with the commentary from the original crew.

After that, it was Sushi for lunch (West Coast Sushi rules!) on Chestnut Street, a siesta while the camera batteries recharged, and then off to the Fine Arts Palace.

Theremin!

The palace is a World's Fair relic they use to host regular civic exhibits. Right now they have the Exploratorium. It's like a more mobile, modular Liberty Science Center with more magnets and biohazard signs.

They had a lot of nest things for kids, too.

Uh... hitting the road tomorrow.

Local Time:

High as a Kite by Then

2005-09-04T23:48:00.000-04:00

Snob ho! Drove out to Napa Valley with some of the BBQ crew this morning. We visited St. Supery winery, which turned out to be less scenic and more snobbish than expected. Very small tour, lots of bizarre nonsensical California art scene, big luxurious wood-appointed tasting center, elderly yet oddly aggressive bouncers to keep out the riff-raff. That sounds critical, but we did get to try some very fine wines and tour a few hundred feet of vines. I would have liked to ask some questions, talk to a sommelier, be treated like a human, but that's what I get for wearing khaki shorts with white socks and hiking boots. Next time I'll remember to look like imported eurotrash from L.A.

Grapes, Vats, Naturally Occuring Do-Wop Trio

It's a pretty good racket they have going there. Get a little wine in people, then shuffle them over to the wine shop just a few feet away, with full options available for shipping, gift-wrapping, and club discounts. Thankfully, I'm far too intellient to be taken in by such cheap manipulation.

By the way, every good thing you hear about the beauty of Napa Valley is probably true. Rolling hills, bright sun, blue sky, cool damp air.

Actual Napa Valley Sky

Beautiful California

This evening, Dan (Atherin), Jen and I drove down to the Golden Gate Bridge to catch the view at sunset.

Tonight I found a cheap little Econo Lodge room overlooking Lombard St. Unfortunately it's too late and quiet to hit the local pubs/restaurants (they are creepily empty). Tomorrow I'm going to try to see Alcatraz and the Palace of Fine arts. Japanese Tea Garden and Golden Gate Park if there's time.

Local Time:

Zero Hour

2005-09-04T23:05:00.000-04:00

The air over middle America was crystal clear on Saturday, making for a very smooth and timely flight. If only ground travel were so relible. Regardless, made it to the BBQ relatively on time and in one piece. It was a blast getting to meet TCON and friends face to face. It was also disorienting. Imagine seeing an alternate reality draped over your perceptions like a color slide show. That may LOOK like a hotel manager from the midwest, but its actually a deadly Outer Rim rifleman and hunter. That military contractor? Hairy-faced Bothan merchant. And the lady over there seems to have misplaced her Lekku. Pics:

General Hijinks

Spawn of Jaden and Aaura

We ate, laughed, argued politics. Some people pit bunnies against each other in bloody combat. Wren and Jen gave the non-believers a lesson in EQII. And a good time was had by all. Although the last few hours are a little hazy, since my brain is still firmly rooted in another, more bagel-intensive temporal dimension.

Local Time:

Packed my Bags Last Night, Preflight

2005-09-02T23:40:00.000-04:00

Early Saturday I will be winging my way out of JFK to the lovely San Francisco for a week of rambling. I'll be meeting with some Internet friends, travelling the Redwood Highway, and ultimately making my way to Seattle. With a hefty new 512MB flash card for my camera, I'll take lots of pictures and hopefully get to blog a good chunk of the trip (They have the Internet in California, right?). Since that will eat up bandwidth on the front page, I'm reducing the number of days displayed.

Keeping in line with my personal history, I started packing about two hours ago. Because, you know, I don't like to be rushed.

Seven hours to wheels up. Wish me luck.

Mythological Creatures

2005-08-29T21:47:00.000-04:00

It is the third age of Man. From out of the West come strange beasts atop the scions of Saturn and Mercury. Haunting mortals with their bizarre ways, they prey upon the time of the employed and thus cause their feet to ache and heads to spin. They are the Ogre and Jason.

They come bearing intoxicating ethers that bring forth a cavalcade of light and sound, forming visions of epic battles and incessant wasting of time.

Lo, the Ogre did return to regions west atop his mighty Saturn, and Jason has ventured boldly to the land of Phil-on-the-Delphia for a brief rendevous, but their curse of slack shall remain. I swear I have more fiction in the works, including some stuff about iPods. iPods are still cool, right? I'll get right on that.

Say it with Pixels

2005-08-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

Posting in forums. One day all human communication that does not involve ordering satellite service or magazine subscriptions will be conducted through this nascent technology. But posting is such a trying process - full of thought, introspection, careful reasoning, literary eloquence, and ultimately banging out whatever dribble spews from your head between looking at pictures of Jessica Simpson and googling your own name on lunch break.

So how can we further reduce this monumental intellectual burden? Forum graphics!

When you need to say something snarky, and you don't have a lot of time to think it up, fall back on a handy graphic that more or less gets across the kind of thing you were thinking of. Sorta.

If you are the posting type, feel free to use these wherever you deem appropriate.

Weekend in Connecticut

2005-08-10T23:24:00.000-04:00

The Canny Mr. Summerer sums up the weekend quite succinctly, but I would like to add three points to the account.

Eric and Stephanie are the nicest, most pleasant people I know, and I take every opportunity to point this out. Why? Because their qualities transcend most casual observation of humanity. It's not that they are "nice" so much as that they are a living mathematical proof of karmic balance. I am always very happy when good things happen to them because it brings a sense of wholeness to the universe.
Their house is in the woods just north of Lake Waterous and it is huge and scenic and they should have parties there.
Connecticut still holds the world's record for most clinically diagnosed morons driving automobiles.

Notes: Battlefield 2

2005-08-02T23:17:00.000-04:00

Travel the world, meet interesting people and shoot them.

Within my circle of friends, I seem to be the only person with a lasting interest in the "shoot real people with virtual guns" form of video games. Many have dabbled here and there, tossing a grenade or shotgun blast in my general direction before moving on. Ah, harken back to the glory days of my cracked copy of Quake! (This one time, I totally owned this guy in CTF by hooking him with the grappling hook and zooming up to him, switching to grenade launcher and... hey, come back!)

I myself have skipped over a generation of FPS here and there, unwilling or unable to meet the preposterous computing or network demands of today's modern twitch monsters. But like a brainwashed illuminati operative unaware of his compulsive tendency to hoard shiny objects, I scurry back every so often to the genre and indulge in it's dark dissociative mechanics.

Enter Battlefield 2. I will spare you the detailed content rundown, as you can get that in myriad places. There are squad tools, multi-person land sea and air vehicles, a command communication system, huge maps, up to 64 player slots, a friendly rank and award system, built-in VOIP, well-balanced weapon kits, all that good stuff. And you can play it comfortably on a variety of systems without blowing out your processor. All that is great, but what really impresses me is the overall effect this detail has on the play experience.

Stopping to take pictures is ill-advised (I died here)

BF2 has really hit home as an immersion game. Playing counter-strike, there were always moments of forced tension - times when the counter-terror squad would slowly creep down the hall, sweeping for enemies, guns clutched loosely in sweating palms - but those were usually contrived elements. When it got right down to it, CS was a Doom deathmatch with more crouching. You don't actually have to stop, put your back against the wall, and peer around the door frame when you're advancing. It may look cool in the movies but the game is far more condusive to running around the corner hopping up and down and shooting wildly.

When an army is really functioning as a team, BF2 is not like that. As much as you hear about it in war stories, I've never actually been "pinned down" in a combat game. Pinned down means you're on your belly in the dirt behind a wall of low rubble watching tracer bullets fly overhead and hoping to God a ricochet doesn't make it through and take off a piece of your ass. It means not being able to move or stand without being shot. That happens here.

When you see an enemy down the road, and he sees you, you both have a split second to react. Do you run? Dive for cover? Unload your clip in his direction? Or do you drop to the deck, switch to single-fire and try to nail him somewhere soft before he can get a good shot? I suck at shoot-offs, but in guerilla combat I understand that they are fairly common.

In Dragon Valley, I often take the Spec Ops route, parachute onto a ridge at the edge of enemy territory, sneak through dense forest and plant C4 on their artillery stations.

The other day I was riding in a blackhawk when we were hit by anti-aircraft fire. The guy next to me was shot right out of the cab - the rest of us bailed to safety as the pilot brought the craft down in a smoking heap.

On Monday our squad got caught in a bloody line battle across a sun-parched beachhead. I peeked my head over an embankment to see a stretch of sand strewn with fallen soldiers. Bullets and anti-tank rockets flew everywhere.

Although the immersion factor is as much a function of smart teamwork as anything else, and there are lots of video game caveats (shock paddles can be used to instantly treat any kind of life-threatening injury), BF2 really does come remarkably close to war movie battle tactics without losing the central element of casual play.

Oh, they also have the F-35. Which is awesome.

Postscript:
In the interest of fairness, here are the cons:

There are bugs and glitches that are still being tested and fixed, par for the course with modern gaming.

The flying vehicles handle like crap and can't go very far outside the very small mission maps before they are shot down.

The rank system is friendly at first, but becomes brutal once you get to Lance Corporal. They expect you to play about 250 hours before you get any further rewards beyond the initial cookies.

Most people on public ranked servers are unreliable cheeseheads.

I die a lot. Clearly this is a major flaw in the game design.

One Way Ticket

2005-08-02T10:03:00.000-04:00

"I'm not even supposed to be here today."

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Geeks with Free Time

2005-07-26T18:24:00.000-04:00

If you are a rampant video game freak and are over 22, you will probably enjoy this. Grab a drink, it's about half an hour long.

Fictioneering

2005-07-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

In the second half of the twenty-first century, the world ran out of stories to tell. The burgeoning Western entertainment industry of the modern age, combined with the emergence of robust new literary economies in the former Third World, stressed the planet Earth’s reserves of fiction to a degree unimaginable just decades before. The cornucopists could argue long and breathlessly that the world would never run out of imagination or creativity, but the numbers spoke for themselves; ratings were down, book sales lagged, and across the globe the same dreary tepid movie plots were repeated ad nauseum.

Economic and political conflicts erupted the world over as governments and companies scrambled to control the remaining reserves of literary talent and originality. Wars were fought, empires fell, and fortunes were made. As the conflicts of the age began to abate, humanity found itself gradually adapting to the new scarcity. Like oil, coal, and water, the planet still possessed an abundance of fiction, but extracting it had become costly and difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. And very lucrative.

---

“No good,” said Director John Hitherby. “It’s caught in a self reflexive loop.”

He crumpled the sheet of synth-paper in his hands, letting the soy ink of the rejected text add to the already impressive mosaic spread across his leathery palms. He tossed it into a waste receptacle and turned back to the tech that had handed the parchment to him.

“Cut the feed and reset the filters to New Weird. Maybe we’ll get a lucky break from that vein. And no Gibson! We’ve been getting complaints.”

The tech nodded and jogged away, wasting no time with small talk. Director Hitherby ran a tight operation at Time-Sony Content Generation Facility 36, one that could not afford to fall behind on quotas. When he gave an order, one did it without question or commentary.

Director Hitherby marched up the rattling steps to his office above the central control room. A dozen techs and stenographers sat at monitoring stations, typing furiously away as new data streamed into the control room from the processing floor far below. The great bay windows let the warm glow of the extraction chamber fill the room, but for reading, the Director preferred the colder, clearer and more efficient halogen lamps in his office.

There was someone waiting for him there – a thin man dressed smartly in a company suit and tie.

“Director,” he said cheerily, extending a hand. “Tom Johnson, Facilities Review Team. Wonderful operation you have here.”

The Director stared at the suit for a moment, then held up his ink-stained hands in what one could interpret as an apologetic gesture. He walked around the man and sat behind his desk, upon which rested an improbable amount of paperwork. Tom Johnson eased into one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caught you at a bad time, but scheduling during work hours is always problematic,” said the suit. “However, the company has some urgent matters to discuss with you.”

Director Hitherby moved some reams of paper about. He looked coolly at Tom Johnson.

“First of all, we are very happy with the quality of the product to hit the distribution centers in the last month. Excellent work, some of the best we’ve seen. However…”

John listened to the corporate speech training and personnel management techniques slither through Tom Johnson’s voice like copulating snakes.

“Given that this is the last and largest facility of its type to be built, management is somewhat disappointed in the unexpectedly low quantity of output. The networks need material, Director. Our clients need content. The company would like to increase your set quotas by 20%.”

The Director perused the hourly samples. He could have had them remotely transmitted to the monitor on his desk, but he still preferred old fashioned paper in hand when reading. Company policy be damned – he had a job to do, and he did it well. He began to speak aloud. Tom Johnson could have assumed the Director was addressing him, but he could have just as easily been talking to the walls.

“Rewrite of Shakespeare’s MacBeth, set in a zoo, wherein Lady MacBeth is portrayed by a four hundred pound gorilla speaking in sign language.”

“Three hundred and twenty-two unrelated images of giant robots fighting, with Japanese and English dialogue.”

“One’s a film critic, one’s a biochemically enhanced clone of Adolf Hitler. They fight crime.”

“Medieval period piece about the betrayal of a 16th century Scottish general, fifty two thousand four hundred and seventy-eight words, including such culturally appropriate terms as ‘dingbat’ and funkalicious.’”

“Detailed narrative of an interactive 3D video game session in which one of the author’s friends is a notorious ‘teamkiller.’”

“Four hundred thousand pages of unsorted slash fiction. Buffy/Willow, Buffy/Spike, Zander/Spike, Yoda/Angel, Luke/Han, Han/Chewie, Han/Jabba, Kirk/McCoy, Kirk/Sulu, Kirk/Uhura, Kirk/Spock, Spock/Mirror Spock, Spock/Angel, Spock/Optimus Prime – that’s a new one.”

As if on cue, a tech entered the office. The Director tossed the voluminous stack of slash fiction to him. “Clean this up and send two copies up to Distribution, one tagged ‘cool’ and one ‘ironic.’” The tech left in a hurry.

“Tell, me, Tom. Which one of these scintillating samples of human creativity do you think would make the biggest splash on the central networks?”

Tom Johnson paused as the snakes took a moment to get back in the mood. “As Director, that’s your concern, Mr. Hitherby. The company only wishes to properly motivate you and your staff. Given the complexity and expense of this operation we have the utmost confidence in your ability to meet a higher standard of output.”

The Director abruptly stood and walked to the door. Tom Johnson, a look of consternation on his face, followed. They stepped down into the control room, between the monitoring stations with their loud clacking, and looked out the wide windows into the extraction chamber far below them.

The massive dome enclosed a central shaft – the Zeitgeist tap – surrounded by three dozen psychic feed arrays. Each array pumped away rhythmically, moving bell jars full of cloned neural tissue up and down in the energy flow provided by the central tap. Technicians in protective gear and heavy shielded helmets monitored the machinery and piped the collected data up to the control room. From there the processed data went to Central Parsing for analysis before being printed and hand-delivered to Director Hitherby’s desk.

“Tom, unless you’ve work on a rig like this there’s something you can never understand. It doesn’t matter how many pipes you lay or how big you build them, you’re still pulling from the same vein.” He pointed to the tap. “90% of everything is crap, no matter how much you pull up. But the company doesn’t want crap, it wants gems. And if you want that 10% that are gems, you have to let us do our damn jobs down here.”

“Sir, I’m getting multiple infallible protagonists,” said one of the monitors. The Director leapt to the tech’s station and scanned the readout. Even unparsed, he could see the plots forming into predictable lines, watch canon characters fall by the wayside to make way for an artificially superior persona.

“Mary Sue! Mary Sue! Egocentric contamination on arrays five, eight, and thirty three!”

John grabbed the facility microphone and shouted. “Disengage Zeitgeist tap! Purge those arrays now! I don’t want that crap to spread to the unaffected feeds!”

As technicians scrambled to stem the potential damage, Tom Johnson walked over to the monitoring station and placed a friendly hand on the Director’s shoulder. “I can see you have your hands full down here, Director. We can discuss this at length tomorrow. I’ll need a full incident report sent to the Facilities Review Office, of course. Thank you for your time.”

Tom Johnson left. As the Director seethed quietly over the monitor, the tech who had sounded the alarm leaned over to him.

“We always get a contamination when management comes sniffing by, chief,” she said. “Maybe we should give them helmets.”

The Director released his murderous grip on the microphone and slumped forward, laughing bitterly to himself. “You’re probably right. We could also stuff them in the feed jars. Since they’re so eager for more content, maybe they’ll pick up material better than the vat brains.”

The whole control room laughed at that.

“Ok, people back to work. We have a quota to meet, and the day isn’t getting any younger.”

A breathless tech ran up to the Director and handed him a small sheet of paper. “Sir, this came in just before the shut down. I think you better have a look.”

John took the paper and began to read.

In the second half of the twenty-first century, the world ran out of stories to tell. The burgeoning Western entertainment industry of the modern age, combined with the emergence of robust new literary economies in the former Third World, stressed the planet Earth’s reserves of fiction to a degree unimaginable just decades before. The cornucopists could argue long and breathlessly that the world would never run out of imagination or creativity, but the numbers spoke for themselves…

Notes: In Your Honor

2005-07-09T11:32:00.000-04:00

Foo Fighters

Normally I don't give in to impulse buying, but I spotted this dual-disc album at the Border's checkout while I was getting my Lewis Black fix last week. Whenever a band releases a two-disc album for the price of a regular it signals one of two things: 1) We're so big now we can do these huge experimental projects and be kind to our fans, or 2) We're on the long slow spiral to obscurity and need a hit something bad. In Your Honor splits the difference between these two options.

First off, the title track sucks. I mean seriously, it's dreary, pointless, and thankfully short. There's lots of droning and whining and feedback, which I guess fits in with Dave Grohl's new "I need a shave and a lozenge" neo grunge look. They may be shooting for some sort of Dark Side of the Moon or Quadrophenia style storytelling setup with the first track, but I'm just not hearing it materialize.

Fortunately, whatever they were going for in terms of continuity evaporates and they drop into some good old Foo Fighters high speed rock and roll, starting with No Way Back and their current hit single Best of You, both of which sound great while hitting the accelerator on I-95. The rest of the first disc is nothing but hard core driving rock reminiscent of the best elements of There is Nothing Left to Lose and The Colour and Shape. DOA and The Deepest Blues are Black are particularly good if you enjoy high-energy sound juxtaposed against dark, bitter, mournful lyrics (which I do).

They do something a little strange with the arrangement of the two discs; the first is, as I said, all hard rock. The second is all ballads, epics, and torch songs. The shift in Grohl's voice from grunge pop scream to resonant crooner is absolute. The guitar work on Over and Out and On the Mend are particularly good. However, I'll pass on Virginia Moon's bossanova lounge duet.

The hard/soft split of the album makes the second disc a bit of a sleeper and breaks up what could have been an excellent narrative flow for the album. It's as if you arranged the books of Lord of the Rings alphabetically. You can hear some tracks on the second disc that would resonate beautifully with some of the hard rock tracks if they were mixed together in sequence. In Your Honor as a whole could definitely benefit from the guiding hand of a fan's personal playlist, mixing the two discs into a seamless, well-paced storyline.

Which brings us to the chief complaint, the grand offense: the album has an aggressive copy protection scheme (the Suncomm stuff, I think). There are ways to bypass this, of course, but not being able to PLAY the thing on a computer unless you install their piece of crap media manager software is insulting. This is the first CD I've ever bought that I would rather rip whole cloth onto a drive and never play the disc itself again, purely because of the bullshit copy protect. What's so frustrating is that anyone serious about ripping and burning copies illegally will have absolutely no problem with the disc's defenses, but average users will be frustrated that they can't play music that they paid for in the method of their choice. Why the hell wouldn't you download tracks if this is the crap they put you through for doing the right thing?

Anyway, music industry rant aside, this is a pretty good album with twenty full tracks and a lot of variety.

Frickin' Lasers

2005-07-07T19:12:00.000-04:00

Gimpy McGimpenstein

This post will be disgusting. I had a medical procedure today, so those of you who don't enjoy hearing about that kind of thing may want to skip down to the thrilling steampunk fiction below.

For those of you still here, this is the gist of it: Plantar Warts. Sounds tasty, huh? And I had a lot of them. Fifteen acording to the surgical waiver, but by the time the podiatrist actually got in there, he said there were more than he remembered from the initial exam. There were only two or three a few months ago, which is why I had let them go so long, but recently they just exploded in an orgy of viral reproduction.

Still with me? Ok, so how do you get rid of that many? We've moved beyond the home remedies and topical treatment phase (duct tape is one suggested option). That leaves laser surgery. And we're not talking pansy-ass low-wattage bladeless eye surgery here, we're talking about a giant red laser beam that burns the fucking flesh from your body, old school.

So I go in, get my foot pumped full of three full jars of anasthetic. This causes me to almost faint, which seems to be a chronic problem with me and needles in the last few years. They leave me there to wait for my foot to slide into an alternate dimension. One issue of U.S. News and World Report later and we're good to go. The doctor pulls the laser into the center of the room, and right away I get a Mr. Bond moment. The thing is huge. The actual control unit is about the size of a dentist's drill, but it's attached to a piece of machinery that looks like it would be more at home on the dorsal turret of the Millenium Falcon. To my right is a large vacuum with a big warning sign: DO NOT USE IN THE PRESENCE OF FLAMMABLE ANASTHETICS. The nurse will use this to siphon off the smell of cooked flesh.

Disinfectant, paper shield, ointment, tap tap, feel anything? and here we go.

The whole procedure took about half an hour. Every now and then the doctor would set down the blaster and switch to a good old fashioned scalpel. At one point he had to dig a little hard and a piece of my foot came flying across the room like a stray toenail clipping. Then out came the wire cutters. No kidding - stainless steel head, black rubber handle. I'm sure they were medically sterile wire cutters, but they were definitely just as useful for installing phone lines as conducting surgery.

When it was all over they bandaged me up, gave me care and cleaning instructions and sent me on my way. The doctor actually told me not to be afraid of the foot. Whatever it may look like, it's not actually that bad. It looks like Rocky Balboa, but he won a boxing match looking like that, so I guess I'll be ok. Driving is certainly more interesting now, and I walk like Torgo, which will surely amuse my co-workers.

In three weeks I go back for the other foot. Because I am a man of science, and I live to entertain.

Paths of Logic

2005-07-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

Gavin Larkspur's lab - this one, at least, for he had many - provided an intimidating backdrop for an intimidating man. Built into one of the largest support columns in one of the oldest parts of the citadel, it was not lit particularly well. Steel grated floors and hanging chain-link barriers divided the expansive chamber into distinct work spaces where giant machinery of inscrutable purpose cast strange shadows. The illumination from the vapor lamps hanging overhead barely reached the outer walls of the chamber, so that while each area was well enough lit to conduct experiments, the overall effect was of standing in the center of a void. Gavin claimed the atmosphere helped to focus one's concentration.

Larkspur himself was standing before the central table where most of the critical experiments were conducted. Seth himself had spent many hours there, but as he watched his master review reports of the previous day's events, he very much wished to be anywhere but in this dark laboratory.

"How is Lieutenant Brandeis?" asked Gavin.

Seth, already at attention, snapped to further readiness. He was eager to answer a question with a clearly positive response. "Recuperating, sir. The chirurgeon says he'll need a few days before he can return to duty, but he'll be all right."

"And yourself?"

"No worse for wear, sir."

Gavin tapped his fingers lightly on the workbench. "And these criminals? Did you apprehend them?"

Seth swallowed, but remained at attention. Gavin had read the report - the question was not for his benefit, but for Seth's own. "No, sir."

"But you found them, fought, and spoke to them."

"Yes, sir."

"What did you learn?"

"They claim to have nothing to do with the bombings."

Gavin paused, as if expecting something more. "Does this make sense to you?"

Seth examined his logic carefully before responding. "No, sir. We did find a Kait body at the site of the last attack, we found the campsite where they had prepared explosives, and ultimately, they were moving through the sewers, as I had theorized."

"And these claims of humanitarian intentions, if you pardon the phrase. Do they seem credible?"

Seth tried his best not to mumble, "The avian seemed very sincere, sir."

"Speak up, Aspirant! Were they carrying medical supplies?" Gavin took several steps toward his charge. With each motion, he seemed to grow larger in Seth's eyes. "Did you find provisions? Food or building mnaterials?"

"No, sir."

"And the guards that collected you from the scene, they also searched the area, and also found nothing. Correct?" Gavin was very close now.

"They found nothing, sir."

"What does this lead you to conclude, Aspirant?"

Seth laid out the facts in his mind once again and came to the same unpleasant result. "That after we had stumbled into their hiding place, the avian and her bodyguards used guile and Lieutenant Brandeis's injury to prevent me from pursuing them further. There was no mission of mercy, no peaceful group of non-humans. The avian Kachina simply wished to prevent further injury to her guards and facilitate their escape by playing on my desire to interrogate them without having to severely injure them." Seth bowed his head. "I apologize for my failure, sir - I should have pressed the attack."

"No, you should have left the situation to the city watch to begin with." Gavin's tone was softer, but still critical. He paced. "I know you want to make a difference in this conflict Seth. You are young and full of vigor. You see possibilities where others have given in to mediocrity. You see a chance for peace when others crave bloodshed. These are noble merits.

"But there are limits even to the Exemplar. We cannot do everything, and even we must admit there are those better suited to certain tasks. You will get your chance to prove yourself against the Empire's foes, of that I am certain. But for now, you must concentrate on the efforts you have already begun." Gavin put a friendly hand on Seth's shoulder. "I want you to turn your attentions to your current projects and let Roland and the city watch do their jobs. Understood?"

A slight grin spread across Seth's face. He was expecting a harsher rebuke, even a demotion or further punishment, but Gavin seemed to understand. "Perfectly sir. I won't let you down."

"That's my boy. Get some rest. Exemplar Yves will need your assistance tomorrow."

As was often the case after one of Larkspur's lessons, Seth left the lab properly schooled in the days teachings and with a renewed sense of purpose.

---

"You've invested an awful lot of resources in him by now. Are you sure you trust him?"

Gavin sighed. "Seth I trust implicitly. His absolute dedication to Tarsis is a little quaint, actually. But his judgement in many things politic is, shall we say, suspect?"

"An Exemplar who wavers in the face of adversity is of no use to us."

Gavin waved his hand with a dismissive noise. "He will do fine. Provincial idealism or not, he has already moved our plans forward by months, if not years. The council is delighted, and I'm not going to let such a confluence of talent and political opportunity go to waste. If it comes to an issue of control, leave that to me."

"As if I had a choice," said the voice with good humor. "When will you complete the preparations?"

Gavin ran a hand along the gun barrel mounted on the workbench. He traced the many ornate contours of its silver surface - the Ethershot Rifle Mk VI was coming along nicely. "By mid-fall everything should be in place. Toriande will be less likely to react once ice begins to creep into their harbors and the first snows touch their southern barracks. At the moment our schedule hinges on Mr. Delocke. I will do my best to keep him focused."

"Keep me informed." The voice crackled in the air and then fell into a low droning buzz. Gavin reached over to the baroque metal disk on the edge of the workbench and twisted one of it's many flanges. The sound faded as the device turned dormant.

Larkspur looked over the field reports again, especially the insurgents' invocation of the Whistler. Floating there in his laboratory at the center of a man-made void, he pondered the implications of the rise of a new Captain of the Underworld.

"I shall endeavor to keep us both informed."

Da Fourth

2005-07-05T21:57:00.000-04:00

Pulled a long commute today - from Boston to Boonton. It took five hours, not counting the exceptionally slow McDonald's server who made my breakfast bagel. Had a great time, but forgot the camera again. I love Boston. I think I may move there.

Recuperating now. In the mean time, here is a bunny who loves his country.