Well, it’s finally happened.  Even though I applied and was accepted into a masters program in Human Computer Interaction this past spring, I didn’t find out what prerequisites I actually passed until it was too late to enroll in any classes.  Then, the courses I needed (a basic design course and a stats course) were either not being offered over the summer or already full so I kept waiting.  I finally got enrolled in my design class today and pending a tiny bit of paperwork I’ll be in my stats class as well.

I used to pat myself on the back for having made it through undergrad without taking stats … now that decision is coming back to bite me on the ass.  I’ll be wasting money and 2 nights a week at class making up for it.  I’m actually interested in my design course though.  I always wanted to take more design/art classes in college but never really had the time (I took a bunch of Chinese instead and now I never use that junk … Ni hao communist overlords!).

It’s weird to think I’m going back to school.  Especially considering the thing I did when I got out of school was thank the crap out of finally being done with class and swearing that I wasn’t going back … unless it was because I needed an MBA so I could be rich.

Back when I was first attending college though, I never really appreciated how much the foundation you get in school can help you professionally.  I don’t know how many times those concepts we covered in that ’stupid’ algorithms, machine intelligence, or compiler class has cropped up.  Heck, even algebra/geometry/trig stuff crops up fairly often.

For me, what’s interesting in going back is that this time I’m not just trying to get done so I can get a job and quit sitting in a classroom, it’s because I actually want to understand and excel in a different area.  I’m not promising I’ll care about statistics … but the rest of it, I’ve really got an appreciation of how often the fundamentals and even more esoteric concepts can come up in a profession.

Remembering those concepts and experiences can be the difference between floundering around and having to change course mid-development or picking the right approach from the beginning and easily meeting deadlines.

Of course, the first day of class does have to be my birthday.  Worst part about the late August ones. Blah.

With the 4th of July just hours away, I think it’s time for the crew (me!) at WRN to get the patriotism going STAT.  Besides World War I & II, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, and the Mexican-American War, the Cold War is the most important and nebulous war in American history.

Unfortunately, in our post 9/11 world we’ve started ignoring that great Cold War tradition and chosen to instead focus on places that obviously were not at all related to that conflict like Afghanistan and the Middle East.  In order to help keep our victory over Communism (as depicted in the historical drama Rocky IV) seem relevant today there are a number of approaches that educators and parents can take to keep kids interested.

While some techniques such as friending the Cold War on Facebook, requiring mandatory viewing of Red Dawn/Red Heat/Hunt for the Red October/Red Sonja, and even requiring reading of history textbooks have done a little to help the cause, today’s world requires something more.  Something magical.

The answer: COLD WAR UNICORNS

Crafted by skilled tradespeople in communist China, you can be assured that every person making this educational tool was fully aware of the mythology and legends behind the history of both Unicorns and the Cold War.  Being magical people themselves, the Chinese manufacturing facilities that created these items help provide a sense of authenticity that is often devoid in American crafted resources like books and movies.

Finally a tool that combines the intricacies of foreign policy with mythical monohorned creatures.  In case you were wondering, there are other similarly fantastic items that depict other great moments in US history like:  Good Vs. Evil (make sure to use Freedom unicorn to represent ‘good’ when re-enacting to ensure historical accuracy), Unicorn Vs. Narwhal and, most importantly, the landmark Supreme Court decision, Unicorn v. Mime.

As may have been noticed, I’m not posting a lot.  I think that’s primarily related to the fact that here in beautiful Madison, WI we get 3-4 months of great weather and then it’s back to winter.  I’ve been busy trying to do some biking. Thanks to our amazing number of bike paths/lanes it’s really easy to go a different route every day and not be worried about getting killed by some cars.

I’ve also been busy trying to work through some more games (Stranglehold, MGS4, Blue Dragon) after having given up on GTA4.  That game is just too huge for me to make it through without taking a break.  I’ll probably go back to it this Fall as the weather starts to cool off.

Anywho, I guess I’ll try to update this more.  Chuckles keeps sending me emails asking what his password is so that he can make a post but then after I email it to him he never does.  Maybe he’s busy brushing up to retake his college entrance exams?  Word of advice, they added a horrible essay section to it so uh, it sucks way more to take now.

Well, that’s it for now.  I’ve got something lined up for tomorrow though.

So I’ve been playing GTA IV for over 2 weeks now and I have to say, this game is still a blast.  It’s making it hard to play anything else.  I’ve downloaded 3 demos over the past couple days and I just get bored in the middle of them and want to head back to GTA.

Sometimes I just wander around trying to get achievements (finally lost a 4 Star Wanted level and survived 5 minutes a 6 Stars) other times I do one of the many missions available to me and other times I just go around blowing the crap out of things.  Even the multiplayer is fun (if not more intense than I generally need).

I’m afraid GTAIV will end up like GTAIII or Oblivion where I just kind of quit about 30% into the game.  Oh well though, I’ve gotten plenty of hours of entertainment out of the thing.

Anyway, if you’ve got a console and haven’t picked this up yet, what’s your deal?  Go do it already.

What’s the deal with that? Is it boring or exciting?  Frustrating or empowering?  Useful or useless?

I don’t really know.  I will say that it’s good for Democrats throughout the country to get to have some say in the nominee.  It’s pretty cool that even in these last weeks that people are still getting excited about having a chance to go out and vote.

I’m pretty sick of pundits talking about crap at this point but I already don’t watch the news or political shows (and actively discourage others from doing the same thing) so I don’t really know what else I can do.  It’s hard to believe that the first ballot was cast just a little over 4 months ago.  It seems much longer than that.

Still, with the changing of the seasons hopefully we’ll get a nice clean start and a nominee here in the next couple weeks, letting the general campaign can begin in earnest.

Either way, I hope we don’t end up hosed for another 4 years because people are pissed off at each other from the primary.  There are so many things that happen just based on the letter next to whoever is president that we can’t really afford another term of the status quo.

Who am I kidding, at this point in my life I’m more invested in GTA IV than I am in the political process.  Cops ‘n’ Crooks is a lot of fun though so I think you’ll understand.

So Iron Man comes out today (or came out yesterday or whatever) and I’m debating going to see this movie and the truth is that while it looks cool, I just can’t really muster the energy to care that I usually do.

I’m not sure why that is (the carpet advertising done here maybe) but I just feel like, meh, I’d be happy to just sit around and chill out with friends.  I don’t need some huge bombastic movie for to distract me for 2 hours and $10 dollars.

In fact, I’m more interested in seeing There Will Be Blood on DVD or playing some GTA IV or other game online with friends.  What does it say about my ‘nerd-cred’ that I wasn’t lining up at the 8PM showing last night and instead went to the gym and came home and did some more work?

Is it simply that it doesn’t feel like summer yet (damn you Wisconsin weather!) or is it simply that I don’t get the joy out of watching brown people get blown up by a dude in a suit.  I’ll be honest and say I’m not that interested in Speed Racer, Indy 4, or even The Incredible Hulk.  The only movies I’m interested in this summer are the summer comedies like The Foot Fist Way, Step Brothers, Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express.

Of course, I saw Rambo in theaters over the winter and loved it and would gladly go see it again, so maybe I’m just looking for something that’s more straight up action and lest crazy CG junk.  Have an old guy with a 50-cal machine gun destroying dudes and I’ll probably show up.

Either way, I find it weird that I’m not more excited for the summer movie season.  If anyone wants to try to convince me that something decent and big budget is coming out though, feel free.

[Update]

Just thought of one ‘bigger budget’ movie this summer that I’m interested in seeing, Hancock. And while it may be a superhero movie, it is more interesting ground than just the standard ‘defeat the bad guys stuff’ than Hellboy, Hulk, Iron Man, or The Dark Knight.  Plus as I understand it, it’s more darkly comedic than the previews would have you believe.

Well, got a great email today saying that the company I work for has been acquired.  I’m supposed to be getting a phone call at some point explaining how this is going to affect me but who knows.  Working from home and not having any contacts at headquarters anymore I’m pretty much out of the loop.

Judging from the email, I don’t think anyone is getting laid off or anything (at least not immediately).  They can’t really talk about what will happen until the deal officially goes through in the next month or so.  Maybe those stock options I have will finally be worth something though.

[UPDATE]

Well, the higher up guy who was supposed to call me never did that so I don’t really have any new information.  I did learn a valuable lesson though: I am apparently not very important!

Well, I ended up going to the midnight launch of GTA IV last night.  I’m pretty excited about the game but nothing fevered or anything.  Best Buy is right down the street though and my friend had preordered it and wanted to get it RIGHT AWAY.  After playing some Army of Two while waiting for midnight to roll around, we headed out to the Best Buy and got in line.

We got there about 2 minutes before midnight and there were maybe 40 people there.  There were 2 seperate lines, one for preorders and one for non preorders.  I didn’t bother to preorder it since I figured they’d have about eleventy billion copies.  I was right.  And judging from my experience with Halo 3 and GHIII, I thought that it would be faster to just show up and pick it up rather than having to wait for them to look it up in the system (and wait in the line for them looking up everyone elses games in the system).   I ended up being right and saving about … 20 seconds.

Still, I’m now the proud owner of GTA IV for the 360 and have played it for a grand total of one hour.  I won’t really get to play it tonight until I get back from the gym though (look at that, actually not sitting around!).

Besides sit on my ass video games though,  I’m also in the process of trying to find a new bike.  When I moved I didn’t bring it with me and instead borrowed an extra one my parents had.  They ended up needing it back though and now I am currently bikeless.  Luckily the weather here has been so crappy it’s not an issue but I’m back on the market and looking.  I haven’t really bought a bike since I was 12 though so it’s a bit of an experience.

I think I’m looking for more of a hybrid/commuter bike (certainly not a road bike and I doubt I’ll be doing any mountain biking) so if anyone has any suggestions I’m willing to listen.  Right now my short list is something like this:

• Fuji CrossTown
• Fuji Absolute 2.0
• Trek 7.3 FX
• Trek 7.2 FX
• Giant Cyprus DX
• Giant Sedona DX
• GT Nomad LTD

I’d be open to suggestions though, so if anyone knows a $500-ish bike that’s good for mostly on road/trail riding let me know.

So, while originally a Haloween themed deal a few years ago, I’ve gotten the idea that I don’t really feel like waiting until October to talk about pictures of random crap I take with my cell phone.

This case has to do with a hotel I was staying at in Austin last week for meetings.  When I first arrived, it seemed like there were an inordinate and varied number of cop cars.  There were cop Hummer H2’s, cop Impalas, cop Chargers, cop Tahoes.  I was afraid that possibly someone had been shot in my hotel or something.

It turns out it was something far worse:

The Homicide Investigators of Texas.

That’s right, throughout the week I was subjected to mustachioed beer-gutted middle-age white guys with too-tight blue jeans and cowboy boots who all parked full size vehicles in a garage that looked like it was designed for a fleet of Geo Metros.

They also spent some time in the hot tub not too far from my room.

And (in case they read this) good times were had by all!

Ok, so it’s been a bit of a break here at WRN.  Fulsome has apparently given up the bloghost (I don’t even see him on GMail anymore) and Chuckles has got his commitments to freelance geniusing  so I guess it is up to me to Frankenstein this baby.

I’m sure part of the reason that Fuls gave up on the blog have to do with the non-rounded nature of the posts by some of us (me).  Part of this has to do with the fact that I don’t have the philosophy or science background that these other guys do.  I’m a programmer who likes video games and dumb movies, proving that I’m not actually as well rounded as these other guys.

Still, I guess I have my niche.  Besides posts about crap I want to buy (what have we covered so far in that category?  video games, tv’s, cell phones, pizza, oompa loompas, etc.) I talk about going the gym.  Since I haven’t been going to the gym lately, it’s been a little bit harder for me to post exciting stories at the YMCA.  Well, no longer hopefully.

In the past several weeks I’ve begun a campaign to return to regular YMCA visits.  My girlfriend has joined with me (Hint: that means no more hitting on me while I’m on the elliptical machine) and we’re going and having fun.  Now that the weather here in Wisconsin is getting nice enough to leave my apartment we should have some good times ahead.

I have gotten a little fat the past year and a half as I’ve tried to deal with moving, working from home, being a lazy bastard, and acquiring an obscenely large TV so (partially inspired by the blogging on 3Bulls! and partly as a desire to document either my success or failure), I may try to collect data samples about my progress in either losing weight or injuring myself at the gym.

Also, this YMCA I now go to may have different inspirational posters.   A full investigation will definitely be required.  So YMCA and Internet, take this as notice.  I (potentially) am not going to be ignoring you anymore.

P.S.  If this post is not followed up regularly for the next 3 months then this latest endeavor has resulted in failure and you’ll be more likely to find me on the PLAYSTATION Network as dontEATnachos or on Xbox Live as imSERIOUSguys.  With GTAIV coming out next week, you’re bound to find me on one of them so feel free to friend me, just mention WRN in the request.

Games Workshop, the maker of the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer tabletop wargames, has posted losses for the last year and did not issue a dividend this quarter. I play Warhammer 40K and have purchased many of the supplemental materials and games in that science-fiction universe and I am not at all surprised by this news. The prices on the product available has risen to exorbitant rates but the product itself has also vastly improved in the fifteen years I have been playing these games.

I wonder if they have finally priced themselves out of the market. This also explains why they are shutting down the lower profit margin aspects (Specialist Games and Black Industries) of the umbrella company. The funny thing is that their main product (minis) have been getting better and better. Miniature quality and variety has been improving consistently throughout my experience with the hobby, with the notable exception of the Dark Eldar. The printed matter is more durable and much better looking than it was when I started playing in 1993. The art and flavor of the universe continues to amaze. I wonder if they just over-bloated themselves or if they are losing actual sales revenue.

“…£192,000 loss, compared with a £127,000 profit in the same period of 2006.”

That sentence indicates two things: either they grew too big too fast, which I have no data on, or they lost sales. Given my bias about their price gouging style of raising prices every year, I am inclined to side with the fact that the hobby has simply gotten too expensive for most of their market. I wonder how much they have lost on Apocalypse alone. It would be refreshing to see former head of sales Mark Wells take the salesman stance and drop prices. I have worked in a variety of sales environments and competition generally means lower prices for the same quality item, except in health care apparently.

For a long time, Games Workshop was operating in an era of unprecedented monopoly-through-no-competition. There simply was no other game or game company like them in the world and there still isn’t. But now that there are miniature based games and companies flourishing (seemingly everywhere on the internet) for a fraction of the price of GW’s materials, there may be actual competition, not from a single corporate entity, from all of the smaller games like Infinity, Confrontation, Ragnarok, Hordes, War Machine, the various Clix games, and even video games.

Another aspect of this situation could be the fragile and crumbling economy of the United States. In the last ten years, the US has come to dominate the consumption of this hobby. In White Dwarf magazine’s US and UK edition, the editors have stated repeatedly (if I remember correctly) that the US is the largest market for their product. The US does host a growing number of Games Days and Grand Tournaments every year. Perhaps the money is being saved for slightly rainier days expected in the future. Perhaps Moms and Dads just aren’t willing to finance the ever-expanding defense budget of Altair 7 either, despite how much Planetary Inquisitor-Governer Kevin really wants a phalanx of Battle Tanks and Super Heavy Titan Walkers.

I wonder if anyone has done any market research to see how many new players have been recruited by the Dawn of War video game and its expansions or the various novels from the Black Library. I wonder if anyone has seriously considered lowering prices. Why would I buy a Super Heavy Baneblade Tank (literally a foot or so across) for $95 when I could purchase $95 worth of plasticard and bits and make two or even three scratchbuilt models?* My limited economics education did teach me about price elasticity. I wonder if the people in charge of Games Workshop would consider lowering prices on some of their basic model kits in reaction to the losses. Given the history of the company, I doubt it.

*In all fairness, that sentence is totally unproven but I would be willing to try it out. There are numerous fan-made pdf templates for making your own scratch built baneblade and I could be convinced to find the time in February to try it. At the moment, I do not have the finances to spend on such a project.

So over New Year’s I acquired this new little music game called Rock Band. And while it’s totally cool and has lots of cool tracks, there’s something about it that’s just not quite as good as Guitar Hero. It’s not the looks, Rock Band looks better than Guitar Hero in about every way imaginable. And it’s not the options, Rock Band lets you customize your character in so many cool ways that GH can’t even look directly at Rock Band without feeling ashamed. And it’s not necessarily the tracks either, Rock Band has a number of good tracks and absolutely zero Slipknot. And it’s certainly not the unholy blight that is boss battles, someone should repeatedly punch Neversoft in the crotch for coming up with that gameplay mechanic.

Still, there’s something about Rock Band that isn’t quite as good as GH3 … oh wait, I figured it out. Rock Band’s guitar sucks. While I don’t mind the removal of the clicky strum bar (GH guitars click when you strum up or down while Rock Band Guitars do not) the instrument itself seems poorly designed. Looking at the back of it, there are screws everywhere. You even have to unscrew the back panel to put new batteries in. Plus, instead of having one large bump on the middle button on the neck, the Rock Band guitar has little bumps that are hard to feel on 3 buttons on the neck (1, 3, 5). This makes it a lot harder for me to tell what button I’m actually on. And while I haven’t played the guitar portion of the game enough for it to happen, I’m pretty sure that my guitar is going to fall apart at some point here and I’ll have to get it replaced by EA.

All of this is my way to say, if I’m playing by myself and it’s just the guitar part, I’m probably going to try to play it on GH3 for now. Their better constructed guitar and massive set list make for a generally better solo guitar experience. The one area they’ve been behind in though was the downloadable track list section. Rock Band gets 3 new tracks a week (from which you can buy songs individually or as a pack) while Guitar Hero sporadically gets new 3 song track packs. Often they contain 3 songs by the same crappy pop/emo artist.

According to the GH leader boards however, there’s a new set of songs coming out that look to be awesome:

• Journey - “Any Way You Want It”
• Foreigner - “Jukebox Hero”
• Boston - “Peace of Mind”

Unfortunately there isn’t any information on which are covers (I’d assume all of them but who knows). Still, these would definitely be fun and a great set of songs to add to the game. If only they had a World Tour mode like Rock Band that would randomly through groups of songs (including ones that you’ve bought online) into sets that you have to play through to get money and fans.

As most everyone who reads this blog knows by now, I’m pretty into video games. I spend a lot of time talking about them and my need to spend money on them. One of the first games I played on any system, though, was Bionic Commando.

With its sweet theme music awesome, grappling hook mechanic, and your eventual face-off (literally and figuratively) with Hitler, you know that this game is a classic. That’s why when I heard rumbling of a PS3 port/polish of the original game last year, I got really excited.

A few months went by and there was no news. Eventually I read a rumor on Gamespot that the polish/redo of the original game was going so well they were actually going to make it into a whole new game. Not that long ago, screens and video started coming out of the new game. It looks alright but not really anything like the original (besides using the grappling hook/bionic arm concept).

I was afraid that they’d given up on the remake to do the whole new game. It turns out that my fears were unfounded as IGN now has a preview trailer for it up and it’s apparently called Bionic Commando Rearmed. Supposedly Rearmed will be coming out sometime in March and it looks awesome. I’ve watched it at least 4 times today and I don’t stop wanting to make sweet, sweet love to it. So glorious!

That’s the way I feel: maybe I ought not to have eight that. Of course, however I did. Hams, cookies, pizzas, cookies, pies, soup, hamburgers, and more cookies. It was a pretty relaxing and relaxed two weeks that let me re-energize and get back to work.

What else to say?

Well besides the usual and extremely prolonged absence, not a whole lot. Anyways, call this an invitation to share your tale of festivus gluttony and a hopeful prelude to an actual resumption of activity.

Since the last two music posts I have written went straight down the tubes, as these things are wont to do, I am not too worried about this post being read at all. It might have something to do with the new version of Wordpress, but after Repoohblic of Dogs was stricken with some mighty affliction I am not eager to switch to any new version of Wordpress. As I am not an administrator I know it isn’t my choice, either.

The Federal Reserve is a group of bands and musicians or musicians and bands. I am not really sure how many people are involved in this fantastic endeavor but there are eight bands and their relationships have been described to me as “kind of incestuous, really.” On the first Monday of the month, The Federal Reserve and many other local indie darlings/rockers/wannabes gather at Iota Club and Cafe for an evening of music. The atmosphere is relaxed and fun and seems more like a house party full of musicians. A guy may be up on the stage playing a slow rambling song about his horrible family with only a backing guitar at the start of the set and have a drummer, bass player and backing vocals by the end of a song. A lot of the music can be described as indie-americana, despite the cringiness of that term, but how else would you describe a sound created from a blend of bluegrass and rock without being country?

Last night, my ladyfriend and I arrived shortly before Anchorage started their set. Though not part of the collective, they are pretty good and I am looking forward to seeing them again. John Bustine came next and he started with an awesome song about people called “Tough Shit.” I didn’t catch the name of the last group of three guys but they^* The Moderate went on next and were also good. The guitar was more blues inspired. My ladyfriend and I had to take off because it was getting late and work ruins our fun rather consistently. The exhaustion I feel now is totally worth it.

I hesitated to write about this wonderful event because it has become one of the highlights of my month and feels almost like this little secret place I know that none of the cooler than thou indie bitches from my side of the river would dare go. I like being able to ask a musician a couple questions while I get a beer. I will freely admit that I am a complete wannabe and the closest I get to rocking is air guitar and the medium setting on Guitar Hero.

*I am a frigging doofus. I was reminded that these guys are The Moderate by the lovely ladyfriend and the band only had to say that like four times for me to totally space on it less than 24 hours later.

I’m a big fan of Scrooged (possibly my favorite A Christmas Carol adaptation) so I love that you can watch the original trailer in full YouTube glory.

I’ve got this OnDemand but haven’t managed to stay awake for more than the first 10 minutes yet (I always have that problem when watching movies I’ve already seen).

Ok, so I’ve been kind of out of the listening/buying music scene for the past couple months.  A lot of this is due to the fact that when I moved out to Wisconsin recently I didn’t bring my CD player with me due to space issues and its general sucktitude.

Without a CD player though, I find that my desire to buy music is greatly diminished.  It just sounds so much better when it’s coming uncompressed off a CD and going directly into the receiver.  Lately though, I’ve been kind of jonesing for some new music.  As I was browsing a Best Album of the Year at CHUD message boards that I came across the suggestion of Apartment - The Dreamer Evasive.

I headed over to their site to see if they had the album online for streaming and they totally do.  I’ve been listening to the thing as I try to get some work finished up tonight and I’m just really loving it.  It’s exactly what I was looking for and a great bunch of songs.  I highly recommend giving it a listen.  I think even Fulsome would like it (if he were still capable of typing … he tragically lost his fingers in a fingercuff mishap).

Activision does want money from Harmonix to let me use the PS3 GH3 guitar with Rock Band.  Activision, you suck.

Anyone want to buy a copy of GH3?  I think I’ll be trying to sell this and get Rock Band instead since they are apparently not complete jackasses about how you use their controller.

As most of you know, I’m a big fan of games that I get to play with fake plastic instruments.  I’ve been a Guitar Hero fan since the first one came out over a year and a half ago.  In fact, we’ve got some pictures of the controller on the design for this very site.  As you may also know, I bought a PS3 last winter and am a big fan of the machine.

So when I found out that both GHIII and Rock Band were coming out for it this year I was pretty excited.  The fact that I’d get twice the music fun and a couple new ways to play (and DRUMS!) I was really excited.  So, after getting hooked on the demo for GHIII in late October, I bought the game at launch–I even went out at midnight and picked it up (since my girlfriend was sitting around playing Viva Pinata I didn’t have much else to do).

Unfortunately, when Rock Band came out, I didn’t pick it up.  Mostly since I still had one fake guitar game that I hadn’t gotten around to beating but also because I had heard that the PS3 GHIII guitar  wasn’t going to work with it.  That turned out to be true and I was glad that I hadn’t spent $170 on a game that I was missing a peripheral for.

Then, last week I heard some good news.  Harmonix was going to release a patch to enable the GHIII guitar to work with Rock Band.  This was definitely good news.  Now, I could go out and buy the bundle when I was done with GHIII and get some new music game excitement.

Sadly the scheduled release date for the patch came and went and it was never released.  I (among many others) started to wonder what had happened to this great new functionality.  Well, it turns out that the culprit is Activision, the company that owns the rights to the Guitar Hero name and bought plastic guitar manufacturer RedOctane.  Apparently, Activision (which will soon be the worlds largest video game publisher thanks to an upcoming merger with Vivendi Games to become Activision Blizzard) is afraid that their colored plastic guitar cash cow may go away and are doing everything they can to prevent that from happening … including being complete jackasses by threatening Sony to not actually release the Rock Band patch that enables compatibility.  Supposedly they’ve threatened platform support on upcoming Activision titles (like Tony Hawk, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, etc.).

Let me just be the level headed one here, Activision, and say that you guys are complete morons.  I know you’d like to be the only plastic guitar game in town and it was a good run but you can’t hold onto a monopoly forever.  Denying that and trying to lock people into your bullshit isn’t going to make it any better.  In fact, I’m now less likely to buy your future games with peripherals since I know that they’ll only ever work with your game.  When I’m going to waste a bunch of money on a novelty peripheral, I’d like to know that if I wanted to, I could use it on almost any game.  The fact that you seem to think a $50 device that I paid for should be useless unless I keep giving you money makes me think that you are jackasses.

And while right now this is only a PS3 issue, I’ve heard rumblings from a 1UP podcast that Activision is actually looking to break Rock Band compatibility from the GHIII controller on the Xbox 360 as well.  So yeah, no matter what system you’re on, Activision would like to screw you over.

Hope you guys like the fact that I’m not going to buy your crappy music game again (I’ve got an idea for a boss battle … it’s me giving you the middle finger).   With your crappy downloadable content system (3 packs, really?), inability to get quick-play co-op in the game, the continued lack of a rhythm/bass career track included, and your complete misunderstanding of why Guitar Hero was fun … see Boss Battles you have managed to quickly run a great franchise into mediocrity.  It takes real talent to do that AND make EA look like the good guys and yet somehow Activision, you’ve managed to do it.  Bravo. ::slow clap::

I was reading Savage Chickens today and they had a comic that I think deserves special highlight.

I know I’ve been a little slow in dealing with this year’s war on Christmas. Mostly that’s thanks to my newfound inspiration by this compelling and patriotic Christmas tune by Pat Benatar. It came out that wonderful Christmas immediately following 9/11 and I think I might have been to busy singing the national anthem to notice it the first time.

It’s awesome and making me consider giving up the War on Christmas.

This wasn’t really the post I wanted to do but this thing won’t stop annoying me so I guess I’ll talk about it. As everyone knows by now I’ve got a TiVo (thanks to Fulsome). Anyway, I like it [although it’s not the HD one, it still is quite useful] and used to also enjoy the TivoToGo functionality. Unfortunately, for the last year I’ve been having sporadic success getting it to work.

At one point last winter I’d gotten it working fairly reliably only to upgrade to a newer version (that had some more advanced download capabilities) only to have that break it. Then at one point I sent my laptop in to get repaired and they reformatted the drive. I took the opportunity to start fresh and installed TiVo Desktop and managed to get it working again. The same thing happened again though … at some point some upgrade came out that had a feature I wanted and now it’s not working again.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to get it to work. My firewall is disabled, all of my other network adapters are disabled (VPN, Wireless, Bluetooth) and I still can’t get it to find the TiVo’s on my network. It’s so infuriating because the only thing that doesn’t seem to work is the auto-discovery. I was talking to my dad over Thanksgiving and he’s got a Series 3 TiVo (which finally got a service update to allow TivoToGo on the HD models) and he’s having the exact same problems. We can easily browse the TiVo with my web browser and download shows that way. That’s not really an acceptable method though, I want to streamline the process so that I can queue them up and have stuff auto-get episodes. As an added bonus, I’d like to transcode them out of encrypted TiVo format and drop them onto a network share that my PS3/Xbox 360 could then see and play.

Right now, I think my solution may be to write my own custom app that goes and gets what I want (there’s another Java-based one called Galleon that I don’t really want to deal with). I’ve found that there’s an XML based way to interact with the TiVo so I’m taking the opportunity to try to write my own little C# thing to connect and queue/download shows from as many TiVos as I want without ever having to deal with the firewall hassles of the current setup. Who knows if I’ll ever finish it but it’s so annoying that I have to do this since TiVo won’t just let you manually specify an IP address for your TiVo box in the Desktop application.

Anyway, if anyone else has encountered this problem and figured out a solution I’d really appreciate some feedback. Otherwise I’ll just go back to working on my XSD for parsing the XML data that TiVo can provide.

To those who don’t like C++ syntax, I will suggest you avert your eyes, this next post will be a little bit messy. To those not weak of heart, I’ll start talking about the one technical thing I’m good at (I’m no liberal arts fancy pants philosopher or cancer curing molecular triologist). I’m just a guy who’s OK at programming.

Sometimes though, programming gets ridiculously esoteric. Take this instance at work the past couple days. I’ve been trying to integrate Google Earth into an application at work. This should be relatively easy, Google Earth has a COM API and it’s made by them so hey, it’s got a massive database behind it, and even better, it’s free.

However, when I started looking for info on how to put the Google Earth COM object into my existing MFC C++ application I felt like I was taking crazy pills or something. You see, on the Google Earth API page they don’t provide any instructions and apparently when most people are using Google Earth for fun and internet posting, they use Managed .NET stuff or Java not something as unsexy as MFC C++.

I found helpful hints about downloading the IDL which describes the interfaces available to the Google Earth COM object and I found all kinds of stuff about using it in .NET. I even found people kind of talking about how they were using it in C++ and others asking the same questions I was.

Eventually, after hours wasted trying to figure out how to reference the stuff properly, I ended up with the very simple code below. You can ignore the IDL, MIDLing into a TLB, any of that junk. All it took was this little bit of code to get me access to the ApplicationGE (main Google Earth application object).

It’s a 2 step process really, instead of including a header file or importing a TLB file I actually just needed to import the Google Earth EXE file. This line takes care of that:

#import "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth\googleearth.exe" named_guids

Then, all you need to do is instantiate the COM object using the following code, and you’ve got your ApplicationGE and are all set to rock.

EARTHLib::IApplicationGE * geApp;
CoInitialize(NULL);
HRESULT hr;hr = CoCreateInstance(EARTHLib::CLSID_ApplicationGE,
NULL,
CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER,
EARTHLib::IID_IApplicationGE,
(void**) &geApp );
if (hr != S_OK)
{
::MessageBox(NULL, "ERROR: Can't create Google Earth object.", theApp.sSystemError, MB_OK);
return;
}

It really is that easy, and somehow it took me many hours of fruitless Googling to find it. Once you have the object you can start calling other functions listed in the API. It was just getting to this point that was so frustrating for me.

ETA: Wow, I really need some better code snippet CSS Formatting.  Also, trying to put code in standard WordPress editor is nearly as frustrating than trying to write VBScript without a debugger.

All Songs Considered has free downloads of a recent show at the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC by John Vanderslice and Bishop Allen.  If you’re into that sort of thing.

In an attempt to defibrillate this website that hopefully won’t be eaten by an internet tube snake, I present some shitty jokes about even shittier costumes. Don’t expect more than a couple jokes here as these costumes hang even lower than my prodigious gonads.

Halloween Express: I think these are the same people that sold the Dregolas costume last year with the dude that sorta looked like me. I still want to punch him in the nuts for that. I have had some really shitty jobs when I was poor but I have never sunk that fucking low. Modeling must be a tougher gig than I thought. The “Otis House of 1000 Corpses” costume reinforces my firm belief that Rob Zombie should be eaten by his namesake, sucky or sweet zombie, it doesn’t matter to me. “Cain the Vampire Tyrant” looks like it belongs in some goth’s fan fiction wank fest and the model seems to agree with me. These are supposed to be from classic horror movies but is House of 1000 Corpses really on the same level as Frankenstein or The Wolf Man? Is it even on the same level as Chucky? Oh god, I hope there isn’t a Chucky costume in the kid’s section.

The costumes in the Premium section look like they came off the set of the really shitty movies playing on the SciFi channel. The movies they don’t advertise. The lack of imagination in these costumes frightens me more than the “Out of Stock” symbols beneath some of them. What the hell is the difference between these two ghostly gents? They look like they walked off the set of the stupid episodes near the end of the original Battlestar Galactica series.

How about some misogyny? The Sexy Costumes - Fantasy ought to fulfill your yen for mind-numbingly pathetic costume ideas. The “Gold Digger” could have been called the “Bored Stripper”.

The “Cuddly Lion” will allow you to fit in at any anime convention for the next year, so it has versatility, but it will also attract people who want to have sex with you while wearing a giant bunny suit. Unless you enjoy being sodomized by the Easter Bunny, I recommend you avoid this one.

“Slave Princesses” would be better off shopping at Victoria’s Secret or Night Dreams and buying something that might survive your paramour’s grabbing hands. And by paramour, I mean every drunk guy at the party.

“Captain Booty” is probably the best costume idea ever and so clever. Did you know that pirates called their loot ‘booty’? I wonder how much digging it would take to get to her buried treasure? Depends on the size of your shovel. I had another joke about her chest but thought it was a little obvious.

“Princess” seems to have gotten herself confused with Snow White because I doubt she has ever seen the inside of a toadstool or been kidnapped by some sort of giant lizard-inventor-guy.

“Funky Cat” is actually better than Halle Berry’s Catwoman outfit which is no complement to this getup. If you want to be that one woman who wears the same costume as 47 other women in the bar, by all means, spend 45 hard earned dollars on this.

Ladies, unless you want me to hit on you until you punch me in the face, don’t buy “Indian Girl” or any of the other “indian”-themed costumes on that page. I may have said too much there.

“Bad Kitty” really says it all. The designer didn’t give a shit (and may have been forced to sit through that horrible movie) and the model wishes she had never left that job at Starbucks. I wouldn’t smile if I had to wear that either.

“Heidi Ho”, “Manhunter”, “Neverland Elf Chick”: The AG ICBM is being aimed at you as I type. Expect a firestorm of incoherent fury to land on you in approximately 90 seconds. I expect nothing but a large smoking crater after our patented Shenanigan-Class AG Warhead impacts your content factory.

As for the “300″ page under Current Movies, Snyder should fucking sue.

Under TV & Movies - Men, we find a trove of trash, a heaping helping of hellish mediocrity. “Batman” looks more out of shape than Adam West. Joel Schumacher called and wants his dignity back.

“Wolverine” looks about as threatening as a goddam Lolcat.

“Miami Vice - Tubbs” explains where that career went. Compared to the rest of these costumes, this one is spot on. Compared to reality, he looks like a Little Richard impersonator with twice the sleaze and half the style.

“Hulk Muscle Chest”: Don’t forget the frontispiece. The head piece looks like an Original Series Klingon or a really lame Frankenstein painted green.

“Animal House Toga”: Are you fucking kidding me? 35 bucks? Jesus Titty Fucking Chocolate Christ. A quick trip to the Salvation Army or even your building’s laundry room would get you a white sheet and then rip out some English Ivy from some chump’s yard on your way to the party. If I see anybody wearing this costume, I will give my love a chicken with no bones. Or dance with their dates.

“Batman 1997″: This is the costume for flashers. I would expect to see someone wearing this costume when I glance down an alley. The pervert would then show me what his miserable parents gave him. I can already hear him snickering and giggling behind a dumpster while masturbating furiously. Dude, when it is chapped and bleeding, its time to stop.

“Superman Supreme”: If this is their idea of supreme, I’ll take the Burrito Normal, thanks. This costume looks as cheap and ill-fitting as the rest of the drek. It isn’t even bad enough to be supremely awful. Pathetic.

“Aragorn”: You got this one mixed up, morons. Dumbledore is the gay one and he isn’t even in the Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is the last descendant of Isildur and also many generations removed from Elros Tar-Minyatur. He is the bearer of Anduril forged from the shards of Narsil and wears the Ring of Barahir. He is the king of both Arnor and Gondor. He is a ranger and warrior without equal, not some mincing medieval muttonchop. Have some fucking respect.

“Captain America”: You forgot the bullet hole.

“Spongebob Squarepants”: I didn’t think they could top the 1997 Batman costume for sheer creepiness but this one screams pedophile. How can you market this one to adults? The model has taken the ‘Removable Pants’ option to another level and simply left the pants at home. Warning: If you wear this outside and are over the age of six, you will probably be arrested and given lessons in Good Touch/Bad Touch by the other residents of your stay at Hotel Drunk Tank.

Ooooo heynow. What the hell is this? Ummm. I’ll be right back.

Moving on to other websites:

American Apparel: I respect a person that does not take themselves too seriously, but these costumes seems to cheapen a company that I really want to like, even more than their deliciously porny newspaper ads. I mean, I love their ads and can’t wait for them to just give up and start publishing with Flynt Corp or whatever, but these costumes take the fun out of Halloween. When you’re a sexy office worker all year long, does being a sexy office worker on Halloween really count ladies?

Sorry I drifted off into the other shopping areas of the American Apparel site. I was only checking out the ladies clothing because I was gonna get something for someone. Or whatever.

There we have it folks, the Well Rounded Nerds Halloween Costume Roundup.

I saw some news on Kotaku today that will make 2/3rds of the nerd herd here sad. The Warhammer Online MMORPG has been delayed for another 2-5 months.

The game was originally supposed to come out in February but has been pushed back until some time in Q2 2008. Apparently this is not actually a delay but rather them taking more time to get the RvR stuff right (Realm Vs. Realm … not that those words will clear anything up for you non MMORPGers).

Included in the update is some news that Mythic, who is developing the addictiongame, was impacted by the most recent round of layoffs announced by EA (who gobbled them up like a delicious treat sometime last year). This makes me glad that I never actually applied for the jobs there that I was thinking about (not really).

Anyway, those who want to can feel free to lament their sorrows by LARPing about it in the privacy of their own home.

Also note, it has not yet been specified weather you’ll be able to virtually paint your own character’s figure in the game. Crossing my fingers!

Ok, typically when I read about product recalls in the news it’s something like, “Lead paint makes Happy Meal toy toxic to some mongoose(s)” or “The Forge Chargenator has an issue with its right rear socketonomatrix valve and needs to be replaced.”

Since my car is 7 years old at this point and I don’t play with a lot of toys (I got rid of my Voltron and Transformers when I moved!) I typically ignore this.  Even the “finger in the chili” or “tainted spinach” thing didn’t really affect me since I don’t eat either of those that often or generally expect fingers in my food anyway.

Ok, I’m done news-promoing you (telling you that something really common could actually KILL YOU but then not actually telling you what it is even though I had plenty of time in the little 15 second blip).  Frozen pizza could have E. Coli.  FROZEN PIZZA.

Why have you forsaken me so Pizza Deities?  I love the crispy crust you get from my pizza stone and I even own multiple pizza cutters for those instances where I haven’t had time to wash it before I need to eat your delicious tastiness again.

Oh wait, it’s just Totino’s and Jeno’s.  Those taste like ass.  Never mind.

There are a number of songs on GH3 that are a blast to play. There are two though that even when I’m doing something completely different (like sitting at work) I’ll get struck by the urge to play.

Lay Down by Priestess

My Name Is Jonas by Weezer

Anyone who tried to view the site for the past 10 hours only to be met by an annoying ‘Renew Your Domain’ notice, I apologize. There was an issue with me no longer using the email that the domain renewal notices were sent to.

Also, once I did renew it, it seemed that the registrar didn’t actually start redirecting my traffic until I manually went in and edited DNS names.

Anyway, I’ll try to get a real post out sometime today. In the meantime, succumb to Chuckles wit.

Although I just had a great idea for a return of “The War on Christmas” posts of yesteryear, I (unlike the shopping centers around me) know that Christmas is still a long ways off. As a result, I’m going to be trying to make this post about something more thematically correct.

On Wednesday my GF and I carved some pumpkins. Now, I’m not a huge fan of carving things (be it pumpkins, wood, ice sculptures, whatever) but my GF loves this stuff so I wanted to do something fun with her. After the process all I can do is strongly urge you to avoid pumpkin guts. These are gross. They smell bad, feel really weird and look disgusting.

All that said, here are the results. Mine is the one that doesn’t look like it took over an hour to carve: