Funniest thing on the Internet today:
During a lighthearted discussion of some Transformers CGI test footage, an individual gripes about the coloration on the truck, prompting this reply:
I’m beginning to think Jesus isn’t going to have His Second Coming because even He won’t be able to live up to the fanboy hype.
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It’s a little intimidating: Walking into the gargantuan building that makes the little mom and pop equivalents we’ve been visiting look like cramped strip mall cell phone booths. The place has its own attached parking garage, although curiously the concrete structure seems to waste a lot of space with no parking zones and unexpected loading bays that look rather unused. Still, any place where you can enter from a front door on the second story and requires gigantic signage to instruct you how to shop is going to create an atmosphere that is a bit overwhelming for your Standard Earth Guy.
The place is Ikea, the pseudo-discount home decorating/furniture store that has a somewhat unusual series of reputations. On one hand I think most people are familiar with the self-assemby meme that runs through the store’s merchandise. This seems to be okay with most folks because the prices do seem to be a bit more reasonable than places that offer a lot of free delivery, no down payment, no interest for a year financing and pre-built furniture so in general you’re doing a trade off between convenient sucker buying or hassled commonality.
And make no mistake, Ikea’s popularity is one of its detriments. Perhaps it’s just me, but the thought of that many people with that much interest in the same kinds of products I was looking at (don’t let the size of the physical Ikea stores fool you; there are only a few dozen varieties of any given item type) wasn’t too thrilling. Not that I am so obsessed with appearances that if I went to someone else’s house and found they had the same chair as I did I would die of some sort of social embarassment, but I do like to think that the stuff I might pick out would be unique enough to not have to look at the same stuff on every TV show set and magazine pictoral for the next seven years. You’re not going to get that with Ikea.
But for every bad part of Ikea there is a corresponding good and in this case they mostly get away with their popularity/ubiquity by having several basic styles of their key products and then going above and beyond to make them modular and customizable. For example their primary line of shelving units (“Billy,” they have weird names for stuff) is pretty standard and were in just about every showcase on the upper floor of the store. But it didn’t really get tiring or overwhelming seeing all those roughly identical shelves because they have dozens of variants from height expanders to corner units to glass doors and when you assemble them in various different ways you end up with something that has enough uniqueness to it so you aren’t thinking, “Everyone else in the world has this exact same thing in their den.” Plus we’re talking about wooden boxes that hold books, so individuality is probably going to come from what you put in and on it.
In any case my overall impression was favorable; in this case we’re primarily looking for a couch and though we’ve been to about eight different stores, Ikea was the first place where we actually sat on a few couches and went, “Man, this is comfortable.” I don’t know when comfortable couches went out of vogue, but I’d like to humbly request that we bring them back. Most of the other small furniture stores we’ve visited have offered a wide array of what I call “Gradma Couches” which are ornate and perhaps well crafted but were never designed to accept human buttocks and their associated weight. They seem designed for their appearance alone and honestly that appearance is some gross hybrid between classic elegance and modern ugliness which results in things like dark stained heavy oak frames with far eastern print fabrics and floral pastel throw pillows. Looking upon such monstrosities can kill a man dead, such is the affront to good taste, and while my taste is somewhat questionable to begin with I manage to escape with only a mild headache.
In the end we found a few options we’re considering for our purchase at Ikea. I still want to investigate further since we’ve only been shopping for a week or so (the time spent doing price comparisons I believe to be proportional to the amount of money one intends to spend; Nikki likes to tease me that when we start looking for a house we ought to be “looking” for roughly six and a half years which means what we should have been doing from the moment we got married was price shopping homes so that at this juncture I might just now be ready to buy). Still, it was a trip I didn’t mind making, although I’m glad we brought the Honda: Nikki’s earnest insistence that an unassembled bookshelf which in all reality could crush our Civic like a stepped-on soda can just might fit in the trunk suggested that the Swedish consumer magicks running through that place had captured her very soul.
HB was in rare form last night as we watched the Sharks play their latest home game versus a surging Edmonton team. He griped and predicted the end to the Sharks playoff run, which honestly irritated me more than it really had a right to. Our collective frustration with our favorite team culminated in a brief and not necessarily unfriendly exchange of grouchy banter. I think what annoyed me the most was that I knew he was right.
The Sharks can’t score on the power play. They can barely score five-on-five. They miss little details. Toskala is slipping. They don’t shoot nearly enough. Now I hear that the San Jose fans booed the Canadian national anthem. I’m ashamed at the moment to be a Sharks fan.
They could be a Cup-contending team. They aren’t at the moment. They’ve showed it before and maybe being on the verge of playoff extinction will spark them back into gear. I sure hope they make Wednesday’s game in Edmonton more than just a win but a statement that they aren’t going to go out like chumps and that they can actually step above the abysmal officiating this series and the cheap shots by a dirty team to, if not win, at least go out with dignity.
But when their fans can’t even separate the Oh, Canada! sung by probably half their team and coaches from their frustration with the opponent, I fear the worst.
I think I’ve gotten most of the bugs ironed out here. An unexpected bonus: I saved the archives! Anyway, it’s not the prettiest site on the net (like it ever was), but it’ll get the job done. Hopefully I’ll get some improvements made over the weekend and we’ll be all shiny and new come Monday.
If you see anything truly wonky happening, drop me a line, but use my alternate email address because I think paul@ironsoap.org is still non-functional.
Just a quick note to say that we’re about to have some changes ’round here. After years of being hosted by the kind folks at eggsites, we’re moving on. This means I need to switch webhosts and I’ve selected (with a quality recommendation from Ryan) Dreamhost.
Here’s what this means:
Before I start babbling about video games again, I feel compelled to mention that I went to the Giants game last night and despite their sad, sad loss to the previously slumping Chicago Cubs, it was a nice night to watch a ballgame. We had killer seats about 30 rows back right off of first base (which in Pac Bell SBC AT&T Park is three rows under the second deck so we weren’t in great position for foul ball retrieval) and it was a pleasant evening, weather-wise.
Of course seeing the Giants game meant missing the Sharks play, so Nik watched the game for me (although they played some highlights on the JumboTron during the seventh-inning stretch and the old guy sitting in front of us kept giving score updates). The triple overtime loss was disappointing, but they had won six games in a row and were bound to come back to earth eventually. I’m glad that Toskala was as sharp as can be expected but I’m starting to get a little concerned with the Sharks relative lack of offense. They’ve played over four and half games against these chumps now and they’ve only managed to get six pucks in the net? Come on, where’s the love? If the Sharks manage to get past Edmonton and end up playing the Ducks, they’re going to need a lot more than two goals per game to beat those guys.
So more as a follow-up to yesterday’s discussion of my plans for the “Next Generation” of console gaming than anything else, I present Exhibit A and Exhibit B for why I was on the right track about thinking Sony’s PS3 was the weakest of all offerings. Peter Moore even points out that by the time all three systems are launched you’ll probably be able to get both the 360 and Wii for the price of the PS3.
Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony either rethinks their pricing strategy based on that fact or does more incremental price drops (for example instead of waiting a year or so until there is enough production cost saving to warrant a $50 or $100 price dip, they do a $20 price slash every four or five months).
I also find it interesting that everyone was so wound up after Nintendo announced the Wii name but like three days later they were showing off the system’s capabilities and letting people give it a shot and now you can’t find anyone still whining about the name, it’s all “Ooh, check out Mario! Whoa, did you hear that Solid Snake is in Super Smash Brothers?”
Also, add one more notch in the Rope of Resistance that I figuratively dangle from trying to resist the urge to buy a 360. That notch is cut by the emerging details of Bioware’s new game Mass Effect. Good gravy that looks (and sounds) sweet.
If you are to believe the proselytizing around the Nets, Sony hasn’t really come out as a strong contender in theis generation’s console wars. Someone pointed out that Sony has had shoddy showings in the past at events such as E3 but when they needed to bring it, it was sufficiently broughten. Still, based on sheer textual giddiness you can say that Nintendo has captured the Webosphere’s imagination although it’s hard to fault Microsoft for not generating a slew of buzz since, aside from Halo 3, it’s not like they have a gangload of first party titles people were really hoping to hear about.
I’m just saying I don’t know that you could compete with details and playable demos of new Zelda, Metroid and Mario games.
Of specific note is Ubisoft director Clint Hocking’s Sony-directed diss where he accuses Sony of playing the “me too” game and irritating developers with their focus on the technology drive.
To an extent I see what he’s saying and a lot of people, especially Nintendo, are bagging on the press for ever-better graphics but the problem with that grousing is that graphics do need to get better at some point. You can talk all you want about gameplay and while it is the most important part to a game’s overall enjoyment, no one who plays games at a level at all above casual can resist marvelling at a really great-looking game. Resident Evil 4 got loads of acclaim because of it’s much-needed improvements to the control scheme but without the slick visuals no one would have even considered offering up the coveted Game of the Year awards if it had looked like, say, Indigo Prophecy (oh, how I love to rag on that game).
Which is not to say I dislike Nintendo’s strategy of doing more reasonable tech upgrades and trying to balance the horsepower advances with the price point (something Sony obviously doesn’t care about), but to blast Sony for pushing their whiz-bang specs and harping on HD is a little silly when they’ve been getting gripes for the last year and a half for falling behind the XBox in terms of system potential. It’s almost like they can’t win with some people. Which is probably the case.
I mentioned yesterday that I wasn’t sold on the directional sensitivity thing for games and I’m still not. In fact I was less enthused about The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess when I heard it was Wii-only (which turned out to be false and supposedly it will be a GameCube/Wii crossover title) and as much as I like Metroid Prime, I’m a bit disappointed to see that you have to do the Wiimote thing to make it work. I guess I was still kinda hoping for a few of these games to stick with the old school. Obviously I haven’t tried any of these so I’m basing my reaction on pure conjecture but I was more excited to hear that Resident Evil 5 was going to be available for the XBox 360 than I was to hear that there was about to be a Wii-itized RE.
At this point I’m thinking that as soon as a couple of killer games hit the 360 library (and they’re already pretty close since PGR3, Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Halo 3 and StarCraft Ghost all seem or look like the sort of thing I’d be into) I’ll wait for the first price dip to pick one up. After that I’ll have to try a few of these Wii titles and see how they stand up to the test drive to decide if I want to risk another console purchase that may be for first-party titles alone. The PS3 is going to be one of those things that I buy only if the number of must-play games for it reaches a critical mass and it’s price point has gotten much more reasonable.
Actually writing that paragraph above kind of surprised me since up until this very moment I was thinking that this generation I might stick with more of a one or two console decision rather than trying to juggle all three of the major players but I sort of assumed I would run with the PS3 as my primary choice.
It sort of comes down to my experience in the last/most recent gen where I ended up with all three systems. On one hand I probably got the most overall enjoyment out of the GameCube, that was due to the quality of games I played for that system. But it is probably worthwhile to note that while I either liked or pretty much loved about 95% of the games I played on the GC, I only actually played about a dozen titles on the system. 11 out of 12 doesn’t sound quite as impressive as the percentile equivalent. I enjoyed the XBox probably the second most, but I played a lot more clunkers on that system. Then again, I played a lot more games. I probably dropped 35-40 games into the black behemoth and liked maybe as many as 20. Of course a lot of the fun came from XBox Live which I still believe is a huge selling point for the XBox and allowed even some mediocre games (Mechassault, Full Spectrum Warrior) to have sufficient enjoyment due mostly to the online play. The PS2 got probably as much attention as the ‘Box if not more (35-50 games played) which may have been because I had it longer, but I enjoyed a lot fewer of the games. I don’t know if that was just a matter of quantity or what, but I did note that some of the games I had really high hopes for didn’t pan out (Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2/3, Silent Hill 2) from my perspective so maybe there is something to be said for the Sony hype machine?
Still, if I had to live without one of the previous gen systems it would probably have been the XBox despite the fact that it pretty much took over my gaming attention in the last couple of years there. If I had only gotten one system I think I would have been the happiest with the PS2 (which is why I bought that one first). It only follows then that my inclination was to figure the PS3 as my best bet. But somehow it dropped to last on my list and I think that has something to do with the fact that it’s hard to compare what Nintendo is doing this time ’round with the others, leaving MS and Sony to pretty much duke it out for the median gamers’ attention. Overall I may not be a huge fan of either company, but while I aspire to have as much choice as possible I feel somewhat compelled to reward the XBox franchise for their overall better execution last time and what I feel is the better strategy going forward.
It’s E3 time and my interest in video games has begun to creep, ever so slowly, back into the realm of significance. You might have noticed, but I’m just making it easy on you by saying it outright. Anyway the point is that with all the news related to gaming flying around the Webs for the next week or so don’t be surpised to hear me yammering on about it for some time.
No, that’s not a threat. A warning, maybe? I’m not sure where you stand on the topic. Wherever it is, you might want to sit instead. Your comfort does concern me, regardless of how my writing skills may make that seem.
Anyway so Sony announced that they were ripping off taking a page from Nintendo and doing the motion-sensitive thing with their new controllers. Also, or perhaps as a result of, they have removed the “Shock” portion from their Dual Shock moniker and cut out the vibration feature.
This is a disturbing development to me. I admit that when the “Rumble Pak” feature for the N64 first appeared, I was unimpressed. It seemed excessively gimmicky at the time and I didn’t understand what the point was. Since then it has become fairly standard and I have to admit that it’s become a pretty integral part of most modern gaming experiences. Sure I can live without it: The Gamecube doesn’t have such a feature by default (at all? I never bothered to find out; I’m certainly not married enough to rumblin’ to go out and purchase something to give me the capability) but it has been done extremely well in some cases.
I remember the first time I played Silent Hill and your life gauge was given a tactile sense by putting a heartbeat-style thump in the feedback when you were low on health. Of course, it has been done poorly: I hate to keep harping on Indigo Prophecy but buzzing the vibration when your character picks up a bottle from a table? Huh? Lame. Still, well-designed force feedback can add to a game’s atmosphere, offer game status info without HUD elements and improve a game’s immersive qualities. So I’m not too happy to see it disappear from these newer controllers.
I’m also unhappy about this new directional sensor approach to games. I’m not discounting it outright because it’s something I’d need to try (recall that I more or less discounted the DS’ touchscreen thing but I’ve obviously changed my tune in that regard) but I find it hard to believe that this is something that’s going to really make gaming more fun. It’s interesting, sure, but do we really want to be standing in front of the TV waving our arms around and gesticulating wildly trying to rescue the princess or whatever? Because I’m kind of thinking no, not really. I’m sure things like EyeToy and other physically interactive control mechanisms have a certain novelty appeal, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it is just a novelty or else we’d be seeing the next Metal Gear Solid use the EyeToy or tilt controls and I really don’t see that happening. I’m kind of with Microsoft on this one in thinking that it’s interesting, but not really the way to go.
Especially for Sony. I can see Nintendo pulling it off because they’ve always been about making things that are just fun regardless of how hard core they may be. But Sony really only excels when it comes to catering to the baseline gamer crowd and I’m guessing this isn’t part of why that demographic is looking forward to the PS3.
Also, pricing the PS3 at $599 for the decent configuration… ouch. Especially since fairly logical rumors abound that around the time the PS3 is hitting shelves the XBox 360 will dip down to around $399 or $450 for the non-Core (ie non-nerfed) system, that means consumers will be presented with gift giving options of either the “good” PS3 for six bills or the “good” 360 for $150-200 less. Oh and don’t forget the PS2 rarity fiasco which we all should fully expect to be par for the console-launch course which means you’ll probably actually be able to find 360s. And one more thing: Launch titles are generally bootypants so the 360 should be sitting pretty come November.
I want to take a quick second to say that I’m tired of the officiating in the playoffs this year. They’ve gotten so much back-patting from the media and I honestly can’t tell if these pundits are watching the same games I am. They were supposed to call the games the same way they did all year, right? Ha. They have swallowed their whistles and are letting things go right and left; the difference is that they’re letting them go disproportionately.
Edmonton is a bunch of dirty cheaters. I said it. Those guys hook and paw and act like whiney babies all night long. They get a handful of penalties called and the announcers are like “those officials sure are taking care of business this year!” Sure. The Sharks are getting away with a few as well but we’re talking about the difference between getting away with a minor holding the stick call versus getting away with attempted murder on Milan Michalek (which should have been a five-minute major if not an ejection).
I mean come on, Ekman gets a 2-minute sit for not hearing a whistle and as a response he gets a pile driver from a tag team and they only get a two-minute roughing call? What? Unreal.
But I have to say, that penalty kill was astounding. I totally jinxed it afterward by mocking Edmonton mercilessly (I think I said something about grandmothers that could have scored in that situation) and they responded by laying down on Toskala’s leg and cheapshotting it in the net, but whatever. We still won.
I do think the Sharks need to just open up the hurt on these sissies and do an eight-goal whipping tomorrow night in Edmonton or something just to show them what losers they really are because I don’t like anyone the Sharks have to play but I forgot what it was like to have utter contempt for an opponent until now.
Man, I love the playoffs.
Interesting article over on Wired about video game boss fights. I think my favorite bosses are probably the ones who taunt you openly. Best boss fight of all time has to be Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid, though. The worst boss of all time is the beast from Resident Evil: Code Veronica who cannot be killed and you have to run in terror from. One or perhaps two hits is all it takes it to kill you and it is literally luck that keeps you alive. Both HB and I gave up on this game after being slain by this stupid, stupid “boss” forty bajillion times over and finally giving up for mental health considerations. Neither of us have ever actually finished the game as a result.
On an only semi-related subject as I was sort of browsing around Wikipedia reading about video game bosses, I started thinking about older games that I never got around to playing but often wish I did. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which everybody says is the best Zelda (or the best game) ever. They even have a version I think for the Gamecube that I’m just too lazy to track down.
Which got me thinking about games I wish would be either remade or re-released for current systems as ports because I would like to give them a shot sometime.
Weekend Bulletin:
I’ve watched a bunch of movies lately, partly because I’ve been sick but I’ve also just slipped into one of those moods. I mostly wanted to ruminate on horror movies but I realize that the number of people interested in such a subject is probably 1/32 the number of people who actually read this site which means roughly -25 people. So before I start talking to less than nobody, I should point out a movie that does not involve teenagers being stabbed in the spleen with a crowbar or whatever. I’m talking about “An Unfinished Life” with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez.
I realize I kind of have to sell this movie because for one thing it has J.Lo in it which I fully understand would turn some people off to it right away but if you can forget all the Jenny From the Block–Bennifer–”Gigli”–Tabloid stuff for a second you might recall that she first hit a lot of people’s radars with a fine performance in a pretty good movie called “Out of Sight.” So regardless of anything else she can, when she bothers to, actually act. For another thing it’s a very low-key, quiet sort of movie that I can best describe as old-fashioned. There’s not a lot of high intensity happening here, the performances don’t involve people channeling dead celebrities and the most action you get is a short scene of an old man kicking a domestic abuser around a bit. It’s not even your average emotional drama where they play the tearjerker card half a dozen times to get the wimmin folk to break out the hankies.
And yet, it’s absorbing and it’s subtly funny and a bit touching but most of all it’s entertaining and—how’s this for a shock—when it’s over you just might feel better than you did before you started watching. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll love it, I’m just saying you might want to give it a shot because you might be surprised, pleasantly, like I was.
Okay, now let’s talk about movies with axe murders.
There was a time when I would have gone as far as to say I was a fan of horror movies. Somewhere between my youthful fear of pretty much everything and my adult cynicism for everything else I absorbed cheesy slasher flicks and serials with a pretty impressive appetite. Part of it is that I really like special effects. Of course my favorite special effects are more of the Sci-Fi variety with spaceships and robotic warmachines but SF movies are usually expensive and tend to be event pictures which really don’t get made that often. But I like make-up effects, too, and since latex suits and red corn syrup are cheap, lots of horror movies get made. Special effects geeks have to either get used to droughts of new material to pore over, learn to live with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal or learn to appreciate horror movies.
The other part is that I think scary stuff is fun. The psychology of horror fans has been discussed a lot since people started paying to get frightened and it usually comes down to something like “we’d rather do it voluntarily in a way we know isn’t truly dangerous” and/or “the adrenaline rush from fear is addicting in a similar way to the pain of eating spicy food.” Whatever it is that makes people like to be safely frightened, count me among their number.
But lately I’ve gotten tired of horror. More than tired really, I’ve gotten just about downright sick of it. And it isn’t that it started scaring me more or even that it started scaring me less (although that’s sort of true—I’ll make more sense in a minute) it’s that horror has changed in recent years. Horror isn’t horror anymore, movies that are billed as genre flicks are becoming almost exclusively murder pictures. And that’s the opposite of what I like about horror movies.
I think about it like this: Graphic gore doesn’t really bug me in movies. It’s all special effects. And like I said before, I like the special effects. The thing is, I want there to be at least a passing stab made at giving those effects some kind of context. I want them to be the climax of a building suspense. I want them to be shocking or frightening or something—anything except for what they’ve become which is numbing. I’m going to annoy some horror fans here and say that gore is not scary in and of itself. Gore without a sense of psychological fear is just… well, gross. And I’m going to take another stand and say that psychological fear wrought by putting some human villain behind the machete or scalpel or whatever is a different kind of horror than what I’m looking for.
Look, I know that people are sick and sadistic and twisted and capable of revoltingly unspeakable acts of cruelty against each other. I got it. If I need reminding, I can watch the nine o’clock news. So thanks but no thanks when it comes to movies whose only idea of what might be scary is some dude with a pitchfork or an axe. That’s not really all that scary, it’s just depressing. It’s also about as uncreative as you can get. As clear as I am on how stupidly evil people can be, I know everyone else is, too, including Mr. Screenwriter. So if that’s the best you can come up with: Spare me. Spare us.
Give me some supernatural terror. Give me Jason. Give me Freddy or zombies or ghosts or vampires or something. Come up with something new. Make a twist on something old. Bring me a giant mutant termite or a living doll or a rampaging possessed washing machine, anything. Let those things spatter fake blood all over your set and give you a reason to cast decapitated molds of your actor’s heads, but I can’t stand to watch another pointless murder shown without any hint of subtlety or even fun (quick hint: extra sadism does not equal fun) just to put another point on the make-up guys’ resume. Seriously. Count me out.
If you want to have a human killer, it’s called a mystery. Give me some suspense. Make me guess. Show me a character I can root for who is trying to figure out who it is or why they do it so they can stop it from happening. Don’t toss in some fourth-rate teen idol on the way to a career making bad Japanese soap commercials as a hapless stooge just running away for 45 minutes. If you want to do real horror then do it right, come up with a monster. Give me some camp, a little cheese and a few laughs. Make it fun and then turn off the lights and give me a creepy score as the pajama-clad heroine goes the wrong way up a flight of stairs.
Or do it good and give me some fiction I can sink my teeth into. Move me to the edge of my seat like in Alien. If you can’t write it well enough to suspend my disbelief then head back to community college and pick up your accounting degree ’cause this just ain’t your bag, man. Write me something scary, not something sad. Not something sick. I’m tired of it.
Okay, deep breath. Rant off. I feel better. Now maybe I should go work on that possessed washing machine story. Someone’s gotta show these idiots how it’s done.
My medicinally-slowed brain forgot the other reason I fired up the ol’ WP Editor: The Sharks.
So we now know that the Sharks are the top seed still standing in the West. You will note that this is the first time such a thing has transpired since the current playoff system was established where the four bottom seeds all upset the top. So the Sharks play Edmonton and the Ducks play Colorado. Edmonton isn’t a bad team by any stretch but they didn’t look too good against the Sharks a couple of months ago (which is the only thing from the regular season I tend to take into account since the Oilers beat San Jose their other three meetings, those were early in the year and two were in shootouts which are a non-factor in playoff games). I will be heavily disappointed if the Sharks don’t take care of business in five games or less.
Colorado/Anaheim? I have no idea. Anaheim beat a very sound Calgary team and they even made the Flames look pretty silly for a big chunk of last night’s game (the Flames went for like 13 minutes without a shot on goal… in their own building) so they have good momentum. But Colorado beat a pretty solid Dallas team quickly and have had a lot of rest (the Ducks get one whole day). I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another seven game series and I wouldn’t mind at all if the Ducks came out on top which would bring a weary Anaheim team into San Jose for an all-California Western Conference finals.
Out East the opposite came to pass where the top four seeds did as expected and since I don’t follow Eastern teams that much you can apply liberal sodium to my predictions but don’t be surprised to see the Senators continue their playoff choking ways and bow out to the Sabres and I fully expect the Devils to make short work of Carolina. San Jose/Buffalo for the Cup? Yes, please.
Also the finalists for the NHL hardware were announced today. The Sharks have a few possibilities: Thornton for the Hart (MVP) and Pearson (Peer-voted Best Player) trophies and Marleau for the Lady Byng (Best Sportsmanship). Considering how rare it has been for San Jose players to even be considered for prestigious awards like this in the past, I think it’s pretty cool regardless of the outcome.
Still, I think the Thornton/Jagr race for the Hart trophy is an exact 50-50 toss up. I might have been able to make a case for Thornton over Jagr until New York’s meltdown in the postseason once Jagr got hurt and proved once and for all what he meant to that team. The Pearson will probably go to whomever doesn’t get the Hart so call those a wash. As for the Lady Byng, Marleau had 86 points and 26 penalty minutes while Datsyuk from Detroit had 87 points to 22 minutes in the box. Brad Richards from Tampa Bay had 91 points to 32 PIMs. I don’t know how the winner of the Byng is determined but mathematically speaking Datsuyk ought to win with a slightly better points to PIMs ratio than Patty.
Back to the playoffs, the best article I’ve read about the upcoming Oliers/Sharks series is the one on NHL.com, but the thing I think they missed is that San Jose will take Edmonton down provided Toskala is better than Manny Legace was for Detroit. The Sharks will score on Roloson, and Edmonton doesn’t have very many terrifying offensive weapons. They try to make up for this with a balanced, consistent attack across all their lines but as long as the young Sharks blueliners don’t make idiot mistakes and Vesa stays sharp, it should be too much for the eight seed to handle.
I’ve spent the last couple of days suffering through some sort of bizarre springtime cold/flu thing which has been not just uncomfortable but put me far behind in terms of work and other things that need to get done. And I’m still not much better than I was yesterday, but I’ve dumped my workload on my co-workers enough this week that guilt alone dragged me out of bed and into rush hour traffic.
Of course it hasn’t been all bad. I played my way through Resident Evil 4 for a second time since after finishing Indigo Prophecy I was disappointed enough with the last 2/3rds of it that I needed to remind myself how video games can be, you know, good. Not that RE4 is flawless, but on a general comparison scale we’re talking about a stack of fifty dollar bills versus a bit of lint culled from one’s bellybutton.
The strange thing about that is I hardly ever play through games twice. Especially if I went all the way to the end the first time ’round. And you know, I wouldn’t be opposed to doing again. Part of the fun is that the game is roughly 6,000 times easier each time through since you keep all your weapons and money from the previous completion which in my case means I have fully upgraded shotguns, sniper rifles and .357 Magnums plus ample cash to burn on rocket launchers pretty much whenever. All of that means that the tough bad guys are, uh, not so much. The comedy of the week came when I wandered into a cave-like area and the game went to a cutscene of a vicious-looking baddie leaping down from a platform weilding a chainsaw that I just knew was going to be aimed at my neck. Normally these guys take several shots from the most powerful of guns, but as he approached me all Texas Massacre-style, I put one lone round into his shoulder and just happened to spin him off the cliff in a pirouette of anticlimax.
Comedy gold. Or, possibly the DayQuil. Take your pick.
Anyway, I didn’t stop by to ramble about games I beat a year ago, I actually came to express my enthusiasm for the announcement regarding the DS Lite. I had heard since the Lite was essentially flying off the shelves in Japan that NOA might take that as a sign that they had sorely underestimated the profit potential of the device and would introduce it to us with a price tag in the $200 neighborhood. That caused some consternation because as much as I’m eager to try some of these games I’m thinking that $200 goes a long way toward an XBox 360 or a Playstation 3. Heck, that’s even a pretty nifty dent in the price of a decent games-playing PC. But Nintendo proves once again that they really understand the handheld market and offer this tasty treat for a mere $129.
I have nothing but rampant speculation to back this up but I’m thinking the original DS will dip to $99 and by Christmas you will be able to snare one for $79 or so. Not sure why you’d want one of those clunkers, but to each his own.
Also, I’d like to point out that this is my favorite picture of Joel to date. Sleepy nephews are awesomely adorable.
I was reading the lamentably sparse postings on Websnark the other day when I saw this entry about how Palladium games is in big trouble. As in, if they don’t get some cash to pay their debts in a hurry they may be out of business.
I should clarify a bit here. Palladium games makes an eponymous fantasy role-playing game and back in the 80s/90s had licenses to Robotech and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which were both really big at the time. (As an aside, you might be tempted to think that a TMNT role-playing game would be really lame but in fact it was quite a lot of fun for one-off adventures and character creation was a hoot as you weren’t limited to turtles, you could be a mutant of pretty much any animal.) Palladium also had a superhero game, a horror-themed game and a pretty popular game which touched on some Alias-type themes long before Sydney Bristow was ever a gleam in J.J. Abrams’ eye called Ninjas and Superspies.
As the license agreement time began to expire, Palladium introduced the Rifts game which promised “Megaverse” settings where magic and technology were combined in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future where there were portals (the titular Rifts as it were) that granted players access to other dimensions. Ideally this meant that players could put their characters into pretty much any setting as you could simply write it off as a Riftworld. This more or less drew all the original Palladium games under one umbrella since they could claim that the TMNT setting was a particular Riftworld and so on. Plus Palladium games used a company-standard system so in theory all games were compatible with each other.
Now, Palladium games weren’t my first foray into role-playing. In fact my friends and I used to play a diceless variant of Dungeons and Dragons during recess (yes, we were total geeks waaaay back) and the first actual game system I owned was Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes. After that I think I picked up some Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition books before finding Robotech. Robotech was our preferred game for quite some time because for one thing we were total Robotech nerds and for another it felt like a more advanced game than DC Heroes in terms of mechanics. It sounds stupid to say it out loud now, but at the time the fact that it used more than just a couple of ten-sided dice (which were essentially used as percentage dice) made it seem like a more “mature” game.
Robotech begat some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, we dabbled with Ninjas and Superspies a bit and got accustomed to the Palladium system enough that by the time Rifts was announced we were pretty hyped to check it out when it was released.
The problem with Rifts, in the end, is that it does neither of the two things that I feel a good role-playing game should strive for: It isn’t a really solid universal system nor is the setting detailed and unique enough to really act as the primary draw. If you recall this is my same general beef with Dungeons and Dragons although I at least concede that D&D is good in that it is the sort of baseline standard for role-playing gaming in general so it’s perfect for putting together a one-off adventure or as a starting point for a group of players who may be relative strangers since if you collect 100 role-playing gamers I’d put money down that 99 of those are familiar with D&D and at least 95 of them have played it at least once. Which is generally enough to get a game going.
Rifts’ problem is that it doesn’t even have that standard of familiarity going for it so in order to play and enjoy Rifts you have to put up with or modify the game mechanics or you may just really like the general direction the game designers decide to take the setting. I suppose there are people who like the Palladuim system and I admit that in my younger days I thought it was pretty cool but in retrospect I note that my Palladium campaigns tended to have a lot of pretty generic combat partially because I was unimaginative but also because generic combat is pretty much the only really fleshed-out part of the system.
These days I prefer a system more like Hero where the game mechanics are enjoyable even if the party never even finds any combat to get into. If nothing else I prefer a game like Shadowrun where the combat is among the weaker points of the system and the skill checks or character creation is better. Combat in role-playing games is easy since as the GM you can pretty much guide it whichever way you want anyhow (“Oh, these guys just got an order to disengage—miraculously saving your lives”).
But Rifts had some interesting ideas. Clever character classes like Juicers and Glitter Boys were inspired and the attempt to include a mechanism for combining Big Robots with spellcasting fantasy characters and modern combat type archetypes was admirably ambitious if nothing else. I think that generally speaking I would prefer to try to implement something like this in a GURPS-style system instead but you can’t casually disregard the inspiration they provided.
I guess part of what casued the company to have trouble was a poor licensing decision to grant the Rifts license to a developer making a game for the (snicker) N-Gage. Now I’ve heard the game is good, which may well be true. But no one cares because the N-Gage was a horrible platform from the very beginning. It wasn’t some big secret either. I think it must have been Nokia and Palladium that were the only people who though the N-Gage wasn’t DOA before it even shipped. And once the reports came back after the E3 where it debuted in all its battery-covering-cartridge glory, it was all but settled that the thing was going to tank.
My point is that I don’t think that poorly managed companies should be rewarded for their mistakes just because they have done some interesting things in the past and I don’t think I’ll be helping with the drive to help keep them afloat. However, I don’t like to see game companies die. I still sorta hope they pull through just because of that, but I have little hope.
Pity.
So the Sharks made it 3-1 despite making it way more tense in the third period than was strictly necessary. One thing people keep forgetting in their exaltation of Patrick Marleau’s hat trick (not that it isn’t worthy of praise) is Patrick Rissmiller’s initial goal. If there was ever a dude who earned a goal, it was that guy. He pushed for that to happen about three times on that shift, working hard, forechecking, staying with the puck and not giving up. It wasn’t as pretty as the Bernier to Marleau dish, but it was more impressive from a strictly work ethic perspective.
Also, after looking like they might pull the upset for a moment it seems likely that Edmonton won’t be able to hang on against Detroit anymore. Since Colorado all but has its series in the bag that means that Detroit will likely play the Avs in Round 2 leaving the Sharks (assuming they can finish the Predators off, which they certainly should—I’m predicting they do it in six back at the Tank) to play the winner of the Anaheim/Calgary series. At this point it’s probably closer than most people thought between those two teams but I’m pulling for Anaheim because playing them in Round 2 would make for an easier series and the Sharks would get home ice advantage.
Let’s talk about the Sharks for a second. Wait, what?
Oh. Yes, again. We’re talking about the most legitimate Cup-contending team San Jose has seen yet. What else are we going to talk about?
So I was fairly harsh a few weeks back on several Sharks players. I got into a discussion with Lister and HB about some of these players the other day after the Anaheim game HB and I attended. It was your typical guy/sports conversation in which guy A posits controversial theory 1 and guys B and C argue vehmently over theory 1, possibly suggesting counter-theory 2 and generally questioning guy A’s sanity at every turn.
In this case my beefs were with Scott Thornton, Nils Ekman and a general mistrust of the Sharks’ defense. I understand Lister’s indignation: He’s been a Scott Thornton fan since he turned some guy’s face into hamburger a few years ago. They made a fairly strong case for Ekman’s role on the top line as being all about skating away from the puck and opening up ice for Cheechoo and Joe Thornton. And they suggested that I was being too hard on the young D.
My approach to sports fandom is with great cynicism. I’ve been that Great Believer sports fan in my younger days only to watch teams stumble and fail, often spectacularly. My response has been to continue hoping for the best while building a careful protective layer of criticism so when my team finally does succumb to idiocy all I need to is point and say, “See? Called it.”
But I must admit that Scott Thornton has had a quietly impressive series thus far and Ekman—aside from business as usual taking the worst possible penalties—has looked pretty good as well. In fact, since the first game the Sharks as a whole have looked good. Tuesday night they essentially ran amok on Nashville, only rescued from a blowout by some early acrobatics by Chris Mason. You could point to the short handed goal as a sign of weakness on the Sharks part, and indeed it was a boneheaded play but a couple of things rang true about it to me. One is that the Preds executed that 3-on-1 rush flawlessly. They took the D-man out of the play and used the late attacker to simply burn Toskala with a shot he had no chance to get. Second was that it looked more like a case of exhuberance to get on the board in front of the home crowd than a seriously broken play. Had the pinch not been quite as deep or the bounce not come right at that moment and things might have gone down differently. I’m not saying they deserved commendations for the play in the least, but aside from that play and two, perhaps three slip-ups behind their own net on defense and I thought the Sharks looked pretty unstoppable the whole game.
A couple of additional notes:
Not had enough? Okay, check out this site with some of the year’s best goals. Note Jason Spezza’s slick move (and the utterly useless defense trailing the play) in the “October” clip.
So I was listening to the local sports talk station on the way to work the other day and they had this… “band” in there. It was pretty much two dudes with guitars and I think one of them was the co-host of the show. Anyway, they decided to do this cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Suzie Q” only they changed the lyrics to “Jon Cheechoo.” I was seriously embarrassed for them.
I stumbled across an interesting comparison image showing the various iterations of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. If nothing else it gives one a pretty good appreciation for the graphics advancements in modern games. I was also interested to note that Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (IV) had the most unrealistic looking Lara of them all, in terms of her physical dimensions. Note how stupidly thin her waist is compared to her, uh, upper torso. I’m thinking spinal fracture city.
Here’s an article on the BBC (featuring dubious science) about cow farts. No, seriously.
Oh, and here’s a pretty nifty collection of links worthy of a bookmark featuring freeware to solve common computing problems. If you’re into the whole frugality thing.
Lastly, it seems that Nintendo has given the official name of their next-gen system: Wii. It’s pronounced “we.” I’m so not making any of this up.
A couple of months ago I wrote about totally insane technical support customers. The condition continues. Witness this email service request I received from a customer:
Hello Support,
We are trying to configure our application servers to use our local authentication method. Using this method our users would log in with their network credentials which would map to application users that are configured to be guest accounts. Below I’ve attached instructions for the technical engineer to use with our requirements. That programmer/engineer will work with our analyst in order to set up our application to use the described authentication procedure. They will (shadow the database ID values in order to) configure this to allow employees to access the application. Then your analyst will do the testing of this system.
I need to receive the contact information for this programmer/analyst so that we can have our analyst contact them to develop an action plan. Please respond as soon as possible as I will be out of the office tomorrow (I’ll be returning Tuesday, September 6).
Thanks,
In case it wasn’t stupefying enough, let me clarify the point that this was sent to me. My role (in fact my job title) is Technical Support Analyst and as far as any customer is concerned, I’m the only person they should expect to deal with when they contact our support center. Sure, some issues get escalated to senior engineers, but there is no such thing as a “programmer/engineer” or a “programmer/analyst” who would ever contact a customer to implement a customized login routine.
We do have a consultation team which charges like any other on-site consultant to do this sort of work, but it most definitely isn’t covered under anyone’s support contract. Also note that of the five or so different support contracts we offer, they have one of the two cheapest which means that their expectations ought to be miles below what they seem to be expressing here.
Most baffling is the last line. September 6th? As in four and half months from now? I had a very hard time not replying with, “Hey, we’ll work on this when you get back from your trip to the moon.” And she prefaces the statement with “I’ll be out of the office tomorrow.”
I mean, that’s like saying, “I’m taking a fifteen-minute break. I’ll be back next Thursday.”
We often have problems on the support floor because our product is massive and it interacts with so many other products. For example, the team I work on is charged with supporting the web client portion of the software, but in order for it to work it requires a Webserver capable of processing Java Server Pages (JSP). This server must then be accessed by a web browser. So at minimum the product I support requires the use of a third-party webserver, a third-party servlet engine (JSP processor), the OS the webserver is installed on, and a third-party web browser. Oh, and the server needs to run Java (also third-party). On top of this we support a variety of each: Apache, IIS, WebSphere for webservers; Tomcat, ServletExec, JBoss for servlet engines; Red Hat, Solaris, Windows 2000/2003 for server OS; Mozilla and IE for browsers and the list actually goes on.
Technically we’re not required to troubleshoot other companies’ products, but we often do it when it’s clear that the problem isn’t really a bug with the other software but a configuration issue between their stuff and ours. This translates into a necessity for support personnel to understand a lot of various software packages. But sometimes customers don’t quite see the distinction.
Me: Tech support, how can I help you?
Customer: Hi, I’m having trouble with one of our applications. It looks funny.
Me: Okay, what are you seeing?
Customer: Some of the tabs are overlapping. You can’t even click the ones that are behind there.
Me: Hm, I see. Do you have any customized stylesheets applied to your IE settings?
Customer: Oh, I don’t use IE.
Me: Ah. I understand. Well, you can still use custom styles in Mozilla. Do you have any of those applied?
Customer: I’m not using Mozilla, either.
Me: …Okay. What are you using currently?
Customer: (proudly) Opera!
Me: Uh, yeah. Sir, we don’t support Opera.
Customer: Why not?
Me: Honestly, sir, I’m not sure. Probably because it has such a small market share that it’s not economically feasible for engineering to—
Customer: I don’t care about your economics! I’ve been using Opera for years, and I’m not about to stop now! We’ve standardized on Opera!
Me: I sympathize, sir, but—
Customer: I’ve never had a problem with your product and Opera. Don’t tell me it’s not supported!
Me: But I thought you just called because you were having a problem with Opera. And it isn’t supported.
Customer: Can’t you just download Opera and test it out to see if you get the same glitch?
Me: Well, I suppose I could, but—
Customer: Great! Let me know what you find out.
Me: The problem is that even if I confirm the problem, there’s nothing I can do about it. Engineering won’t fix anything to correct a problem with an unsupported third-party application. That’s what unsupported means.
Customer: Just look at it. You’ll see what I’m talking about.
Me: Couldn’t you have just shot me in the chest instead, sir?
Of course, sometimes it’s not just the customers that lose their bearings. We have a system that interfaces our telephones with our computers so we can track and correctly assign incoming calls. It works by doing a call transfer to the extention set via software preference whenever we pull a live call from a community queue. I worked from home last week so while I was there I had to change the extention preference to my home number so calls I pulled would come to me.
A couple of days later I was back in the office and a call came in. I pulled it from the queue and sat patiently with my little headset ready, waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing.
Several minutes later I got an IM from Nik:
nchamilton: There’s someone on the phone for you.
ironsoap: Uh, take a message?
nchamilton: It’s one of your customers.
ironsoap: ??
nchamilton: His ticket number is AC1566012.
ironsoap: lol
When I finally got it all straightened out, I waited for the call to show up in the queue. Finally it did and the queue info listed the call had originated from a contract number associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.
When I pulled the call and talked to the guy, he acted like nothing at all had happened.
It was like he already knew.
