Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Katamari Damacy game is finally coming to the PS3
Joystiq had a story the other day that a Katamari Damacy game was finally going to be released on the PS3, and now they have a trailer:
New trailer confirms that animals love Katamari Damacy Tribute
I think the cel-shading looks just plain weird more than anything. It stinks that all the levels in the trailer are from the previous games, with the obvious exception of the flowers growing where you roll level (which reminds me of the Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke).
Still, between that and the other PS3 exclusives like WipeOut, Ratchet & Clank, God Of War, and to a lesser extent the downloadable stuff like Noby Noby Boy & Flower, if they lower the price to $300 or less (or keep the price the same, or even raise it, if it includes full PS2 backward compatibility), that could possibly be enough to sway me to getting one of the current generation video game consoles.
New trailer confirms that animals love Katamari Damacy Tribute
I think the cel-shading looks just plain weird more than anything. It stinks that all the levels in the trailer are from the previous games, with the obvious exception of the flowers growing where you roll level (which reminds me of the Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke).
Still, between that and the other PS3 exclusives like WipeOut, Ratchet & Clank, God Of War, and to a lesser extent the downloadable stuff like Noby Noby Boy & Flower, if they lower the price to $300 or less (or keep the price the same, or even raise it, if it includes full PS2 backward compatibility), that could possibly be enough to sway me to getting one of the current generation video game consoles.
Probably the best product review I've ever read.
What the title said:
The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ by Anand Lal Shimpi
The 64GB version of the OCZ Vertex is currently only $170 after rebate at Newegg, so barring anything major, I think I'll be buying that, or maybe the Summit, along with Windows 7 when it's released later this year.
The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ by Anand Lal Shimpi
The 64GB version of the OCZ Vertex is currently only $170 after rebate at Newegg, so barring anything major, I think I'll be buying that, or maybe the Summit, along with Windows 7 when it's released later this year.
One could buy a lot of ice cream for 180 billion dollars.
A couple months ago I bought something or other on amazon.com and was able to get a year subscription to Rolling Stone for $1. The other day I got my third issue in the mail. Here's the cover:
At first I thought Gossip Girl was a band, but apparently it's a TV show. Anyway, on the inside is just about the last thing I expected to find based on the cover: A thorough and easy to understand article about the downfall of AIG. Here's the link to the article:
The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi
ETA (2009-03-27): Matt Taibbi responds to Jake DeSantis's op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times.
At first I thought Gossip Girl was a band, but apparently it's a TV show. Anyway, on the inside is just about the last thing I expected to find based on the cover: A thorough and easy to understand article about the downfall of AIG. Here's the link to the article:
The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi
ETA (2009-03-27): Matt Taibbi responds to Jake DeSantis's op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
When green tea isn't tea at all
After trying numerous brands, Yogi Tea brand "Simply Green Tea" has been my green tea of choice for several now. Since no local stores sell it, I have to buy it online. A couple weeks ago I placed my semi-annual order from a different online store than the one I normally buy from, and in a moment of gross negligence on my part, I bought the wrong tea.
What I wanted to buy:
What I mistakenly bought:
I didn't notice my mistake until after the tea arrived, and noticed the different packaging and the list of ingredients having, instead of just 1 ingredient, "Organic Green Tea Leaf," a blend of 10 different things.
Of course, only tea made from Camellia sinensis leaves is actually tea, and different preparations of Camellia sinensis leaves result in the different basic teas, such as white (least processing), green (medium processing), and black (most processing). Any "teas" made from other plants, commonly called herbal teas, aren't teas at all. While no detailed content proportion details are listed in the "Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant" ingredient list, from the listed caffeine content amounts of the two teas, 58 mg per bag in Simply Green Tea, and 21 mg of caffeine per bag in Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant, I would guess that only about 1/3 of Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant is actually green tea, and the rest is the non-tea herbs. Considering this, it would be a lot more accurate if they changed the name to "Super Anti-Oxidant Green Tea Blend" or something which emphasizes that it's a blend, and de-emphasizes the green tea part.
As I've written before, I hate letting things I buy go to waste, and sending the 3 little boxes I bought back was impractical, so I decided to drink it if at all possible. After all, how bad could it be?
Pretty dang bad. Not as bad as Choice brand Bancha Toasted Green Tea, which is the worst tea I've ever tried, but still pretty bad.
Avoid at all costs.
The tea has an overwhelming lemon flavor, presumably from the lemongrass. The tea would still be drinkable if it was a good lemon flavor, but it's not. I don't know how to describe it other than it's very bad.
What I wanted to buy:
What I mistakenly bought:
I didn't notice my mistake until after the tea arrived, and noticed the different packaging and the list of ingredients having, instead of just 1 ingredient, "Organic Green Tea Leaf," a blend of 10 different things.
Of course, only tea made from Camellia sinensis leaves is actually tea, and different preparations of Camellia sinensis leaves result in the different basic teas, such as white (least processing), green (medium processing), and black (most processing). Any "teas" made from other plants, commonly called herbal teas, aren't teas at all. While no detailed content proportion details are listed in the "Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant" ingredient list, from the listed caffeine content amounts of the two teas, 58 mg per bag in Simply Green Tea, and 21 mg of caffeine per bag in Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant, I would guess that only about 1/3 of Green Tea Super Anti-Oxidant is actually green tea, and the rest is the non-tea herbs. Considering this, it would be a lot more accurate if they changed the name to "Super Anti-Oxidant Green Tea Blend" or something which emphasizes that it's a blend, and de-emphasizes the green tea part.
As I've written before, I hate letting things I buy go to waste, and sending the 3 little boxes I bought back was impractical, so I decided to drink it if at all possible. After all, how bad could it be?
Pretty dang bad. Not as bad as Choice brand Bancha Toasted Green Tea, which is the worst tea I've ever tried, but still pretty bad.
Avoid at all costs.
The tea has an overwhelming lemon flavor, presumably from the lemongrass. The tea would still be drinkable if it was a good lemon flavor, but it's not. I don't know how to describe it other than it's very bad.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Winamp 5.551 Is Awesome
After 7 months since the last update, Winamp has finally been updated again, to version 5.551. This is actually a very tiny update to version 5.550, a release which I missed, but must have been sometime in the last couple weeks. Even though so far I've noticed only 2 important differences from the previous version I had installed (5.541), I think this update might just make Winamp perfect. The key differences:
1. They finally fixed the bug with "Add to Winamp's Bookmark list" appearing in Windows context menus even when you deselect it in the options. This bug has been around for a while (since version 5.35, maybe?), and for a while I was able to edit the registry to get rid of it, but with the last few versions, either I've been deleting the wrong registry entries, or the errant registry entries have been respawning every time Winamp is opened.
2. The MilkDrop 2 visualization plugin by Ryan Geiss has been updated with some new presets, and holy crap are they gorgeous. There were already so many presets I'm not 100% certain which ones are all new, and which ones are just new to me, but some of the ones I've seen since updating, such as the water ones, the bouncing geometric shapes ones, and some other ones that I don't know how to describe, are incredible beyond words.
Just for fun, I decided to do the old load my entire music library into the playlist, set it to random play, and post the first 10 songs that come up, no skipsies:
1. Edson Cordeiro - Ave Maria
2. Alanis Morissette - You Learn
3. Ben Folds - Selfless, Cold And Composed
4. Hooverphonic - Frosted Flake Wood
5. Bob Dylan - Just Like A Woman
6. The Decemberists - July, July!
7. Tori Amos - Purple People
8. Saul Williams - WTF!
9. John Williams - The Millennium Falcon, Imperial Cruiser Pursuit
10. Lamb - Softly (Bota Remix)
1. They finally fixed the bug with "Add to Winamp's Bookmark list" appearing in Windows context menus even when you deselect it in the options. This bug has been around for a while (since version 5.35, maybe?), and for a while I was able to edit the registry to get rid of it, but with the last few versions, either I've been deleting the wrong registry entries, or the errant registry entries have been respawning every time Winamp is opened.
2. The MilkDrop 2 visualization plugin by Ryan Geiss has been updated with some new presets, and holy crap are they gorgeous. There were already so many presets I'm not 100% certain which ones are all new, and which ones are just new to me, but some of the ones I've seen since updating, such as the water ones, the bouncing geometric shapes ones, and some other ones that I don't know how to describe, are incredible beyond words.
Just for fun, I decided to do the old load my entire music library into the playlist, set it to random play, and post the first 10 songs that come up, no skipsies:
1. Edson Cordeiro - Ave Maria
2. Alanis Morissette - You Learn
3. Ben Folds - Selfless, Cold And Composed
4. Hooverphonic - Frosted Flake Wood
5. Bob Dylan - Just Like A Woman
6. The Decemberists - July, July!
7. Tori Amos - Purple People
8. Saul Williams - WTF!
9. John Williams - The Millennium Falcon, Imperial Cruiser Pursuit
10. Lamb - Softly (Bota Remix)
Monday, March 16, 2009
Choke (The Movie)
I watched the Fight Club movie before reading the book, which turned out to be perfect since while the book was very good, the movie was extraordinary.
That said, my expectations for the Choke movie weren't very high. It's been years since I read Choke, and I always remember it as being my least favorite Chuck Palahniuk book I had read to that point (it along with Fight Club, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters).
Even with my low expectations, I was disappointed with the movie.
In the movie, the three main story lines - the sex addiction stuff, the mother stuff, the colonial times stuff, and the choking stuff were all out of proportion (although it's been so long since I've read it, it might be like this in the book for all I know), with way too much of the sex addiction stuff, slightly too much of the mother & hospital stuff, about the right amount of Denny & colonial times stuff, and not nearly enough of the choking stuff. It's pretty ridiculous to relegate the thing that gives the book its title to the D story with only 3 scenes. This would be like if Fight Club had only included 3 brief scenes of the fighting. I guess maybe they thought the choking scenes were too similar to include more? Even worse than that, thoguh, was the decision to exclude the big payoff of the choking stuff, the "stoning" scene, which was probably my favorite part of the book, where all the people who saved Victor find out it was a con. This stoning scene was included in the deleted scenes section of the DVD in 2 versions, a regular and extended version.
I think the movie would definitely have been better if it was 10-15 minutes longer, keeping everything in it, and adding 2-3 more choking scenes, and a version of the extended stoning scene, but instead of Denny telling Victor that the crowd had figured it out, we see the crowd figure it out, perhaps between a few of the people from the choking scenes in the movie.
In a conversation on the DVD between Palahniuk and the director, Palahniuk mentions that he gave the director permission to do whatever he wanted, as long as he inclcuded the stoning scene scene and also the hypnosis part. It's been so long since I've read the book that I had no memory of the hypnosis part, so I had to look it up. It's chapter 20 of the book, and I didn't think it was that great. Also, I have no idea how they'd film it and get the point across. It's kind of hard to tell if Palahniuk was joking about him wanting those 2 parts kept in, but if he was serious than the director most certainly should have followed his wishes. And serious or not, Palahniuk was definitely right that they should have included the stoning scene.
That said, my expectations for the Choke movie weren't very high. It's been years since I read Choke, and I always remember it as being my least favorite Chuck Palahniuk book I had read to that point (it along with Fight Club, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters).
Even with my low expectations, I was disappointed with the movie.
In the movie, the three main story lines - the sex addiction stuff, the mother stuff, the colonial times stuff, and the choking stuff were all out of proportion (although it's been so long since I've read it, it might be like this in the book for all I know), with way too much of the sex addiction stuff, slightly too much of the mother & hospital stuff, about the right amount of Denny & colonial times stuff, and not nearly enough of the choking stuff. It's pretty ridiculous to relegate the thing that gives the book its title to the D story with only 3 scenes. This would be like if Fight Club had only included 3 brief scenes of the fighting. I guess maybe they thought the choking scenes were too similar to include more? Even worse than that, thoguh, was the decision to exclude the big payoff of the choking stuff, the "stoning" scene, which was probably my favorite part of the book, where all the people who saved Victor find out it was a con. This stoning scene was included in the deleted scenes section of the DVD in 2 versions, a regular and extended version.
I think the movie would definitely have been better if it was 10-15 minutes longer, keeping everything in it, and adding 2-3 more choking scenes, and a version of the extended stoning scene, but instead of Denny telling Victor that the crowd had figured it out, we see the crowd figure it out, perhaps between a few of the people from the choking scenes in the movie.
In a conversation on the DVD between Palahniuk and the director, Palahniuk mentions that he gave the director permission to do whatever he wanted, as long as he inclcuded the stoning scene scene and also the hypnosis part. It's been so long since I've read the book that I had no memory of the hypnosis part, so I had to look it up. It's chapter 20 of the book, and I didn't think it was that great. Also, I have no idea how they'd film it and get the point across. It's kind of hard to tell if Palahniuk was joking about him wanting those 2 parts kept in, but if he was serious than the director most certainly should have followed his wishes. And serious or not, Palahniuk was definitely right that they should have included the stoning scene.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Portal, Portal: The Flash Version Mappack, and Portal: Prelude
Portal
I didn't get to play Portal for over a year after it was released since my ancient computer didn't meet the minimum specifications. I knew it was going to be great from all the press and people talking about it, and I wasn't disappointed. One thing that was cool was sometimes I'd get stumped for a little bit and then I'd take a break, and then when I came back I figured out what I had to do in a few seconds. That happened several times, and I finished the game without having to look up anything online. This is currently my favorite PC game (not that I've played that many), and GLaDOS is on my short short list of favorite video game characters.
Grade: A++
Portal: The Flash Version Mappack
Based on Portal: The Flash Version, this mappack features great new puzzles and more GLaDOS goodness. The only thing I didn't really like was the boss fight. The first time I beat the boss I didn't know what I had done to defeat it.
Grade: A-
Portal: Prelude
In Portal the main challenge is figuring out how to use the portals to finish the level. Once you've figured it out, actually firing the portals correctly is pretty easy. I didn't appreciate how awesome this was until playing Portal: Prelude, where figuring out what you need to do is pretty easy for the most part, and the main difficulty is chaining together portal falls and building up speed to eventually reach where you need to go. In Portal it's awesome trying to figure out the puzzles, but in Portal: Prelude, quickly figuring out what you need to do, and then spending what seems like hours actually getting it is the opposite of fun.
The plot stuff after challenge 19 was probably my favorite part of the game. The easter eggs were pretty cool too.
Portal: Prelude has an awesome soundtrack. It's not original, but great music is great music. My favorite tracks are Silence - Larmes, Adrian Charkman - In The Beginning, and the Still Alive remixes and alternate versions by Jarrett Heather, Morgani, Razor Red Noise, TaVeRiC, and Valentin Brunn.
One last thing that sucked was that while making my way through the game, it hard froze my computer 3 times. I played version 1.1, and there's now a version of 1.1.5. Hopefully that's been fixed now.
Grade: C-
I didn't get to play Portal for over a year after it was released since my ancient computer didn't meet the minimum specifications. I knew it was going to be great from all the press and people talking about it, and I wasn't disappointed. One thing that was cool was sometimes I'd get stumped for a little bit and then I'd take a break, and then when I came back I figured out what I had to do in a few seconds. That happened several times, and I finished the game without having to look up anything online. This is currently my favorite PC game (not that I've played that many), and GLaDOS is on my short short list of favorite video game characters.
Grade: A++
Portal: The Flash Version Mappack
Based on Portal: The Flash Version, this mappack features great new puzzles and more GLaDOS goodness. The only thing I didn't really like was the boss fight. The first time I beat the boss I didn't know what I had done to defeat it.
Grade: A-
Portal: Prelude
In Portal the main challenge is figuring out how to use the portals to finish the level. Once you've figured it out, actually firing the portals correctly is pretty easy. I didn't appreciate how awesome this was until playing Portal: Prelude, where figuring out what you need to do is pretty easy for the most part, and the main difficulty is chaining together portal falls and building up speed to eventually reach where you need to go. In Portal it's awesome trying to figure out the puzzles, but in Portal: Prelude, quickly figuring out what you need to do, and then spending what seems like hours actually getting it is the opposite of fun.
The plot stuff after challenge 19 was probably my favorite part of the game. The easter eggs were pretty cool too.
Portal: Prelude has an awesome soundtrack. It's not original, but great music is great music. My favorite tracks are Silence - Larmes, Adrian Charkman - In The Beginning, and the Still Alive remixes and alternate versions by Jarrett Heather, Morgani, Razor Red Noise, TaVeRiC, and Valentin Brunn.
One last thing that sucked was that while making my way through the game, it hard froze my computer 3 times. I played version 1.1, and there's now a version of 1.1.5. Hopefully that's been fixed now.
Grade: C-
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Science Of TV Watching
Today in the New York Times there's a story about a study on how interruptions affect our enjoyment of TV shows:
Liked the Show? Maybe It Was the Commercials by Benedict Carey
The study's finding of increased enjoyment with a break makes a lot of sense for comedies. The interruption gives you a chance to catch your breath and reset your comedy threshold, and remember the best laughs in the previous segment.
But I would think the difference is either much smaller, or more likely the opposite, for drama shows, most notably LOST. Now that LOST is answering so many mysteries (or at least filling in information necessary to understand them) the commercials seem two or three times longer than they actually are. If they did a study using a first run new episode on 100 Lost fans I think they'd find the interruptions diminished enjoyment of the show. Or maybe not, and the breaks let the new information sink in, giving you a chance to think about the new information and try to piece things together.
One major thing not mentioned in the article is how if you skip the commercials you can watch an hour-long show in less than 45 minutes, which gives you 15 minutes to do something else that makes you happier than the happiness lost by not sitting through the commercial breaks.
Liked the Show? Maybe It Was the Commercials by Benedict Carey
The study's finding of increased enjoyment with a break makes a lot of sense for comedies. The interruption gives you a chance to catch your breath and reset your comedy threshold, and remember the best laughs in the previous segment.
But I would think the difference is either much smaller, or more likely the opposite, for drama shows, most notably LOST. Now that LOST is answering so many mysteries (or at least filling in information necessary to understand them) the commercials seem two or three times longer than they actually are. If they did a study using a first run new episode on 100 Lost fans I think they'd find the interruptions diminished enjoyment of the show. Or maybe not, and the breaks let the new information sink in, giving you a chance to think about the new information and try to piece things together.
One major thing not mentioned in the article is how if you skip the commercials you can watch an hour-long show in less than 45 minutes, which gives you 15 minutes to do something else that makes you happier than the happiness lost by not sitting through the commercial breaks.
I didn't realize states had official rock songs...
But Oklahoma sure picked a good one!
Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” Voted Official Oklahoma Rock Song
According to wikipedia, only 2 other states have state rock songs: Ohio, with Hang On Sloopy, and Washington, with Louie Louie.
Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” Voted Official Oklahoma Rock Song
According to wikipedia, only 2 other states have state rock songs: Ohio, with Hang On Sloopy, and Washington, with Louie Louie.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)