Archive for November, 2007
Dude, WTF?!
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Music, Random, Work, YouTube on 2007/11/28
Our build manager, Bryan, likes to freak my out with weird music videos. They’re usually strange 80′s-era rainbow colored things that mainly confuse, but this time… Well, see for yourself. I think I’m going to have nightmares after this video. (The video is after the jump: I really don’t want that thing on the main page.)
Faith as a crutch?
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Politics, Religion on 2007/11/25
Blair feared faith ‘nutter’ label
In an interview for BBC One’s The Blair Years, he said that his faith had been “hugely important” to his premiership.
His ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell once told reporters: “We don’t do God.”
Mr Campbell has now acknowledged to the programme that his former boss “does do God in quite a big way”, but that both men feared the public would be wary.
But while it was commonplace in the US and elsewhere for politicians to talk about their religious convictions, he added, “you talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter”.
British voters imagined that leaders who were informed by religion would “commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say ‘Right, I’ve been told the answer and that’s it’”.
Wow, that’s quite a different take on religion and politics from what we’re used to: if an American politician doesn’t “plug” their own beliefs, which better coincide with those of the majority, they’re burned in effigy.
Isn’t that ironic, though? Here’s a country that is based on the principles of the separation of church and state, it’s one of the main articles of the Constitution, the founding fathers left England in search of religious freedom and now our friends across the pond embody more of our principles than we do.
Given a few years, will Americans be making the “return” journey to the British Isles?
You take the good, you take the bad…
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Blog, Random on 2007/11/21
So, for a bit of good news: I’m in Chicago. Which means that I’m not pulling 14-hour work-days, I get to hang out with my pug, I have time to read Mark Twain and program a Java-based 3D engine and generally relax.
The bad news? Well, there’s not much, but there’s still some: I’m in Chicago. Which means that it’s cold, rainy, the lights went out last night for an hour and it’s generally of cold in the house. I also had to endure a late flight on my way here. Then, when I got here, I was a real idiot and got stuff on my camera’s sensor, which really sucks. It’s not visible with a large aperture, which is good, but it’s still an issue. Add to this the fact that no local stores are selling cleaning supplies or can clean the sensor in a hurry, and I basically have to wait until I get back to Washington before getting any work done on the camera. Back to the list of “bad”, I don’t have my Xbox 360 with me, and this is the week that “Mass Effect” comes out. Argh! The one game I have been waiting for (not counting GTA:IV), and I can’t play it until I come back.
Umm, I realize that the last few posts have been just me bitching about life, and I aim to change that. At the moment I am working on some Java code (not the 3D engine) that could be useful to fellow Java graphics nuts. Here’s hoping I get it done and post it on the blog at some point.
More on Mass Effect
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Games, Gaming, Sci-Fi, YouTube on 2007/11/16
First, the bad.
Singapore’s Media Development Authority (which I will henceforth address as Henry, a single, human-like, entity) is acting like a closed-minded idiot: Henry has banned “Mass Effect” over a same-sex sex scene. Umm, let’s rephrase that: the game has been banned by Henry because a female character controlled by the player (if the player chooses to be female), has some steamy sex with another female. The funny thing is, none of this is actually true. Yes, there is a “sex” scene, but (a) the other “female” is not a female, but a female-looking alien who comes from a species that has only one sex, so the question of lesbian relations is void, and (b) the sex scene in question is so innocuous, and, frankly, boring, that without watching that sex scene from Titanic (where Rose’s hand touches the inside of a steamed-up car), the player has very little indication that anyone is having sex.
Here’s the offending video. Some prudes have labeled it NSFW, but as I said, it’s incredibly boring and shows absolutely nothing of interest to a heterosexual man, a lesbian woman or an Asari.
Now, the good.
And now, more good.
While I was typing up this post, Henry has stopped being a dick and lifted the ban on “Mass Effect”. Good job, Henry, but couldn’t you have waited until I voiced my indignation? Also, what was it that made you double back like that? Was it the idea of how idiotic it is to regulate rishathra content in video games, or did you realize that the objectionable scene was about as exciting as watching interplanetary dust collect in the Earth-Sun L4 point?
Minor note
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Movies, Random, Work on 2007/11/16
You know that scene in “Braveheart” where Gibson’s character does the speech and yells “FREEDOM!” Well, imagine me in a kilt, my faces painted, riding a horse and screaming the same line, and that’s a pretty accurate picture what I look like right about now.
Minus the bit about the kilt and the face-painting. And I’m not really screaming, I’m sort of mildly-shouting.
What the hell?!
Posted by FuzzyGamer in News, Random on 2007/11/14
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7094387.stm
A US judge who lost a $54m (£26m) lawsuit against his dry-cleaners over a pair of missing trousers has not been reappointed, it has been confirmed.
Roy Pearson’s term as an administrative law judge in Washington DC expired on 2 May and the selection commission voted not to reappoint him.
In 2005, Mr Pearson sued his cleaners after they refused to pay for a pair of lost trousers.
He said they had failed to honour a pledge of “satisfaction guaranteed”.
In his lawsuit, Mr Pearson had demanded repayment for the lost trousers as well as damages for inconvenience, mental anguish and attorney fees for representing himself.
Lawyers are assholes. And apparently judges are twice that. “Attorney fees for representing himself”?!
Pondering
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Random Thoughts, TV on 2007/11/13
So, here’s a question: who watches the tapes made by the documentary crew of “The Office” (American version)? I mean, if someone from The Office actually saw what cameras see and what the other employees say, there’d be… I don’t know a word for it. But, think about it, the cameras see so much more than the characters do. The cameras saw Dwight and Angela making out and discussing their relationship, Jim completely in love with Pam from episode 1, everyone hating Michael, the countless times that Jim and Pam pranked, and continue to prank, Dwight, and everyone generally hating their jobs. Who watches it?! In the case of the UK version, we saw in the Christmas special that the public saw the tapes and were aware of the characters. But the characters were largely unaware of it. And in the case of David Brent, the one person who actually was aware of the show and watched it, he attributed the prejudice against his character to bad editing.
But, that’s just a minor complaint. “The Office” is a great show and I don’t particularly care that the documentary isn’t 100% real. There are other problems with that, such as camera angles and such, but, once again, in the face of good television, all is forgiven.
On a slightly different note, this new season of “The Office” isn’t on par with the previous three. OK, maybe only the previous two, as season one was barely a season and was struggling to establish itself. But, anyhow, the problem with this season is that a major source of plot, or at least the part of the plot we have all fallen in love with, namely the always-impossible relationship between Pam and Jim, is now a reality. Pam and Jim are what “The Office” is about. The entire show revolves around what these two characters have and what they can be, but never achieve. The constant on-edge tension of “is this the episode where Jim tells Pam how he feels?” is now gone, and with it we lost something special. It’s a new season of “Gilligan’s Island”, but the castaways have been rescued. It’s “24″ and nobody argues with Jack. It’s… OK, look, I’ve spent an hour trying to come up with a good example and I don’t have anything, so pretend I said something good and we’ll all be happy.
Anyway, this season of “The Office” is sort of a disappointment. Pam and Jim’s relationship was sort of quietly squeezed in in-between the stories about the rest of the gang. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never been particularly interested in seeing whether or not Michael can survive in the wilderness or if Andy can get to second base with Angela. I don’t care. I want to see the tension between Pam and Jim, and now that it’s gone, “The Office” is a step closer to that abyss, to being just like every other sitcom on TV: bland and brain-dead.
I really HATE Vista
I can’t stand Windows Vista. I absolutely hate it and I’m considering upgrading to Windows XP.
(Note: This may seem to be a conflict-of-interest post, but these are my opinions as a user, not as a Microsoft employee.)
So, where do I begin? Ah, yes, the ubiquitous bullet-point list to sort out my grievances.
- Memory hog: Vista uses memory like nobody’s business. My computer at work started out with 2 Gigs of RAM. I decided to upgrade that when I noticed Vista routinely taking up 3 or more Gigs, even when I had only Firefox, Outlook and Remote Desktop Connection Manager. So, 2 Gigs later (for a total of 4 Gigs), I find Vista using 5 Gigs of RAM. And the same thing happens at home. Ahh!
- Folder settings: This is one of the most frustrating things about Vista. It’s especially frustrating because it’s hard to explain the problem, so St. Google has no idea what I’m asking. The problem is that every time I open a folder in Explorer, the folder’s settings have magically, and randomly, changed. Example: I open a folder, see that the files in it are shown as thumbnails instead of as a list and that the columns don’t have “Modified”, “Type” and other information. So, I make all of these changes, do my work and close Explorer. Fast forward half an hour. I open that same damn folder to find that instead of a list (or thumbnails) the files are shown as tiles. And they’re grouped by extensions. And the columns once again don’t have “Modified” or “Type”. So I scream obscenities, say yet again that I’m going to switch to XP and go on setting the folder to look as it should. Repeat 1-6 times per day.
- Audigy 2: I have an Audigy 2 sound card, and it doesn’t exactly play nice with Vista — the damn thing makes constant crackling noises, like static from a radio. The only way to minimize the effect is to turn down the volume, but then I can’t hear whatever it is I’m listening to. Ridiculous! Yes, yes, it’s not exactly a Vista issue, but it does take two to tango. Or, in this case, to work together.
- Compatibility: Compatibility of software, as well as hardware, sorta sucks. Yes, I have mentioned this above, and yes, I am running x64 Vista, a potent combination of new technology, but still, if the thing is available in stores and is selling like hotcakes, you’d expect either Microsoft or device/software manufacturers to step up and provide the necessary updates, but no, ain’t happening. What is happening? Well, I can’t use my webcam, my wireless access point, my e-book software (that’s a BIG problem), TaskBar shuffle, the graphics drivers are having problems (Nvidia at home and ATI at work), the above-mentioned Audigy 2 issue, “Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones” refuses to run, as does “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow”.
- “Error detection”: Vista has this horrific feature that if it thinks that a program has crashed, it actually closes it. Maybe that avoids crashes, but a few times I’ve seen programs behave in a way that was expected (I’ve seen programs do that in XP) that I know won’t result in a crash, yet Vista just kills them. This actually happened while I was writing the post: I started another application that I knew would require lots of memory, which would force Firefox to be off-loaded onto disk, so that when I came to Firefox, it would take a few seconds to restore. Well, Vista noted those few seconds and thought that Firefox was crashing. In this case, Firefox came back soon enough, but there have been instances when Vista closed the browser, saying that it crashed. Hmm.
- TrustedInstaller.exe: Where to start with this one. Well, first things first, its name. I mean, come on, if you wanted to give somebody a good reason not to trust a program, you name it “Trusted”. At first I actually thought it was a virus or something, but it appears to be part of Vista (and no jokes about Vista being a virus!). TrustedInstaller is a program that pops up at random times and tries to utilize 100% of the CPU for something like 5 minutes at a time. AFAIK, the program starts up randomly.
- Not being an Admin: I’m not an administrator on my computer. When I run a program, I want to know that it has all the privileges it may need. WinRar, for some reason, has serious problems running if User Account Control (the thing that asks me to authorize every little thing) is enabled. Like, it may not start at all or, on a good day, I’ll have to actually authorize WinRar to start, something that I don’t have to do for other applications. Better yet, some programs don’t even make it so apparent that there’s something wrong: they run, without errors, and never bother to inform you that because you didn’t run them in Raised Mode (as Administrator) they are unable to complete a specific task. Argh.
- Taskbar ordering: Vista has a tendency to, for some stupid reason, rearrange the programs in the Taskbar whenever a program “freezes”. See, Vista has this great sixth-sense kind of thing where it knows that a program is taking too long to run, so it does some weird voodoo with the program window, highlighting it in a specific way. Well, that’d be nice and all, except that 9 out of 10 times, the program unfreezes and keeps on working just fine, so you’re distracted every time a process takes a bit longer than Vista thinks it should. But, that’s not all. When this “freeze” cycle happens, the program moves in the taskbar from wherever it was to the very end, making it seem that it was the last program to be launched. It’s really annoying when Outlook moves from the spot it was in for the last three days to some random new location, all because it “froze” and made Vista crap its pants.
- Same content, new locations: Vista offers very little new functionality over XP, but you’d be hard-pressed to confirm that, as everything has been shuffled around: menus are in places, the control you were expecting in this tab is actually in a completely different form, etc. It’s like someone (Microsoft, in this case) took a book, let’s say a chemistry text book, swapped a few chapters around, put a “BRAND NEW” sticker on the cover and sold the whole thing for double the original price: it looks pretty, but there isn’t much new and now I can’t find the old stuff.
- GTA: SA: When I play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at work (after hours, of course), 3 times out of 4 my play is ended when the game crashes. This happens if I press the escape button to see the menu: there’s a chance that the game will freeze. Just from going from the game to the menu! I checked this at home just now and gotten the same results, that if I go from the game to the menu, eventually the game will crash. The odds of a game crashing on a single transition are fairly low, but considering that I have to pause the game a few times and will usually play for a lengthy period of time, the chances of the crash occurring before I’ve had my fill of fun is fairly high.
- Copying files: Try to copy a large amount of data, like a few gigabytes of photos from one disk to another, and Vista slows to a damn crawl. It’s horrific: applications stop responding, everything slows down, simple things like IE take 10-20 seconds to switch tabs, etc. If you’re planning on moving data, make a sandwich, cause you won’t be able to do much else. At least, not with your computer.
- Basic Theme Mode: If you’re using an application that needs 3D acceleration (I think…), Vista switches into a Basic Theme Mode, which is basically a prettier XP look, lacking the newer Aero interface. The problem with this mode is that it causes slower graphical performance in Firefox, IE, a Java IDE and some other applications: the mouse doesn’t move smoothly, it’s slow and jumpy. (What I mean by “I think” is that this happens when I use such applications as the in-browser Divx player. I remember there being other cases in which this happened, but can’t recall the exact circumstances.)
- Resource hog: Vista requires, and uses, a lot of resources. It’s not really an issue for me and everyone in the world is already aware of this little fact, so I don’t even know why I’m writing about. Bah.
- Sony Reader: More compatibility woes, but whatever. Sony’s atrocious software and e-book store require XP. 32-bit XP. And nothing else! You can’t buy books from the Sony Connect Store without the client software, and you can’t install the software on Vista! Argh! Until I flattened an XP server at work to install Vista on (need I say that that was a mistake?), I used that computer to buy books, but now I don’t even have that. I have a second partition with XP on my home computer, but that version is x64! Here’s hoping Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters” will last until I’m in Chicago next week: my dad is running XP x86.
But, to be fair, there are things about Vista that are good:
- Vista is necessary to run “Halo 2″ and “Flight Simulator X”.
- Vista Ultimate x64 can reference 128 GB of RAM, while XP (x86) will only go as high as 3-3.5 GB.
- It looks nice.
You know, that’s it. I wish I could say something more, but I just can’t think of many reasons to use Vista.
Anyway, I think that’s about it. I started writing this post about a week ago and have been adding on items as I remember/encounter them, and I think it’s about time I posted this thing.
Just a few things
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures, Random on 2007/11/12
Not much to say today, really. Make way for the bullet-list good ol’ paragraph format:
In reference to my last post – I really like the idea and am contemplating plagiarizing it. And here’s why. First of all, Piglet is damn adorable. Honestly, who doesn’t want to see a cute little pink pig travel around the world and get into shenanigans? There you have it, no one. Second, Piglet is an improvement over the usual pictures that people take when they go places: “Oh, and here’s Uncle Steve once again, posing in front of a monument, blocking most of the view and once again reminding the world that if you have such blue-tinted chicken-legs, it’s a good idea not to wear shorts. And here he is again…” At least with Piglet we get a break from having to look at the same group of idiots smiling and giving a thumbs up in the usual idiotic tourist way. Third, and this is one appeals to me quite a bit, Piglet can be the photographer’s alter ego, a sort of emotional proxy, and photo subject. About using Piglet as a photo subject instead of yourself: it can be quite hard to take a good self-portrait and you also risk committing the above-mentioned crime of narcissistically making every picture about yourself.
Last weekend I was taking pictures in Magnuson park and I met someone. I didn’t get a name or much personal information, so I’ll stick to calling the mystery guest Sam. So, there I am, taking pictures of the mountains across Lake Washington (facing east from Magnuson Park) and from an area across the water (I think it’s Kirkland) I see flashes of light. At first I think it’s headlights, blinkers or something else related to automobiles, but I quickly realize that the pattern isn’t quite as simple as a regular ON-OFF-ON-OFF sequence. OK, one theory down. Maybe it’s just some cloth waving in the wind and blocking a street lamp. Seems logical enough. But if that were the case, I’d expect to see the light dim when only half of it were covered, or something of the sort, but no, this light clearly comes on and off, it isn’t being covered up. Damn, one more theory down the tubes. And then it hits me: Morse code! Sure enough, there are two distinct styles of flashes, long and short. So, like the diligent geek that I am, I take out my Treo, Google for a Morse code translator, skip a few content-heavy sites and settle for something simple yet functional: Boy Scouts website. I translate the first series of flashes and get the following: “this is W9GFO CQ this is W9GFO here come back”. Real funny. A moment of inspiration washes over me: I remove the memory card from my camera and begin taking pictures with the flash on. Using this crude method, I start transmitting prime numbers across the lake. By the time I get to 13, the other light tells me to quit it. I guess they got the message. We then get chatting about sci-fi movies, specifically that it is a shame that so few are being produced, and whatever is actually made is largely crap or watered down to be easily-digestible by the masses. It’s quite an interesting discussion. Pretty soon I packed away the tripod and my camera and went home. I could have stayed and talked with Sam longer, but it was getting late, fairly cold, and… damn, I swear there was something else. Oh, right, right, I decided to leave just about the time I got the following message “V1agra 20 P1lls 100 mg 99.95 dolrs”. Damn spammers are everywhere!
Night.
That is awesome!
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Art, Blog, Pictures, Random on 2007/11/11
I really love this idea: Traveling Toys.
The Piglet photos are my favorite.
PostSecret of November 11th
Yes, I’ve got comments on a few cards from this week’s PostSecret, but first off I have comments about PostSecret itself. In the past I’ve voiced some negative opinions about the blog, primarily over the lack of an archive and Frank’s annoying habit of deleting user-submitted comments about the week’s cards. All of that still stands, I’m still pissed about those issues. And I have one more to add to the mix: Frank just can’t stop plugging his books, can he? Every single week (or more often? I’m not sure, I don’t check the blog during the week.) he keeps putting up e-mails about how people find secrets someone left in the books. OK, we get it, people have secrets to share and stick them in your book, which is sort of appropriate, I guess. Do we need to hear about every Tom, Dick and Harry who’ve found a load of “bonus” secrets in their copy of the book? Argh.
Now, for a second complaint: PostSecret won the 2007 Bloggies award for “Weblog of the Year” (in addition to “Best Topical Weblog” and “Best Community Weblog”). I really don’t think PostSecret should have won that award, or have even been nominated for the category. Why? Well, a number of reasons, really. First, from a technical (or a somewhat objective) perspective, PostSecret barely qualifies as a blog: it is a single page, lacking distinct entries, is only updated once a week (with the exception of sporadic e-mailed comments), lacks a formal comment section, has no archive system to see previous entries. If the URL of the “blog” wasn’t http://postsecret.blogspot.com, it would be just another personal web-page. Whatever content the page does have is either submitted by the public or is advertisements for speaking events or merchandise. Frank doesn’t even create his own content, the content for the blog and the books come from the users, all Frank does is choose what goes online and what doesn’t. Compare PostSecret to LifeHacker: the latter has original content, archive system, comments, is updated on a regular basis, etc. Now that’s a real blog.
PostSecret is referred to as a community art project, and with that I have absolutely no qualms: it’s art, it’s produced by a large community, what more can you ask for?
OK, anyway, the rant part of the post is done with, now we can get to the analysis of this week’s secrets.
House put it best, “These cancer kids. Can’t put them all on a pedestal. It’s basic statistics. Some of them have got to be whiney little fraidy cats… If there’s not one yellow-belly in the whole group then being brave doesn’t have any meaning.” Simply being thrust into a horrific situation does not make a person brave.
Yes, the pastor is an idiot, but what is the term for a person who takes scientific advice from an asshole who says the world is 6,000 years old? Let’s hope no diabetic or TB patient listens to this mental giant.
Curious solution
Interesting suggestion from a discussion on the “Atheists at MS” discussion group. The whole thing started with school vouchers and escalated to a government-is-bad debate.
If you want to take down the KKK, find a membership roster and post it online.
I don’t think this is a great plan, but it certainly is an original one.
Of gods and things
I’ve recently finished reading “American Gods”. Gotta say, one of the longest books I’ve read. Not specifically in terms of (electronic) pages, but just how long it took. You know what I mean: a short book can go really slowly, while you can be sprinting right along through a tome. For instance, “1984″ is going by very quickly. I’ve just started on it and already I’m about half-way through. But, back to the matter at hand.
I’ve said before that “American Gods” was a great book. And, at that time, it was. But toward the end I realized that, while it was still great, there was just too damn much of it. You know how that is: you like ice cream, but a whole pint of it is just pushing it. Same thing here. “American Gods” could have been half as long and still have been just as good. The prose was excellent, the descriptions wonderful, the conversation snappy, the gods… somewhat boring. The thing was that Gaiman spent so much time describing the gods, in their original locales or here-now, that I simply got bored. There was no action whatsoever, and considering that the subject was a war between the new and the old gods, I was expecting, well, something! Generally speaking, the energy level never rose above a 6 (out of 10) and almost constantly hovered at 4. There just wasn’t a lot to get excited about. Gaiman managed to bore the crap out of me at even the most lively parts of the book, nevermind the long periods of recounting step-by-step the events of Shadow’s mundane existence in a small Wisconsin town.
But, anyway, now that the pitiful excuse for a book review is done with, I can get down to the mini-rant for the evening.
How come all the cool gods have been forgotten while the wimps remained? The old gods were something cool, something I could even get behind. Not in the way of believing in them, of course. But something like having a drink to thank Ares for a good head-shot in ‘Halo’, that’d be interesting. Of course the attribution in this case is done purely for the hell of it, for fun: I know that I made that head-shot, I know that there are no all-powerful gods on Mount Olympus who give a rat’s ass of how I do in a game. Or that there is a Christian god who deems one baseball team more deserving to win another silly game. Just saying, those are equivalent.
So, how come we lost the cool gods, gods who like a bit of sacrifice here, a little feast there, only to be replaced by gods who deem it necessary for people to be boring and mundane? Why did gods change to desire passive sheep as followers? Did this change happen because the religious following has increased with time? Certainly it seems that streamlining worship to one god would increase “efficiency” (read: brain-washing), while a more passive audience is easier to control. But these are just theories, I’m not sure what the truth is.