July 31, 2003

OneWord: Save

Saving is very important in video games. Especially mobile games. Take that Iridion game for example, it has no save feature other than a code you have to write down and then type back in when you want to play again. Then you have the RPGs that only allow you to save at “savepoints” throughout the levels. This is equally annoying because I don’t always have 20 minutes at a time to make it from one save point to another. Note to all mobile game developers, let me pause and save the game anywhere! I might have to change lanes or something while driving, and I need to be able to pause the game, not have to wait until the end of a cutscene to put the game down long enough to stop at that stop sign!

July 30, 2003

Sony PSP Pictures

Update: Here’s a good link to the some hi-res photos of the official Sony PSP. (updated on 5/11/04)

Gizmodo has posted pictures of the new Sony PSP. I haven’t seen them posted on any of the major sites like Gamespot.com or anything, so I don’t know if they might be fakes or not. Looks a lot like the GBA SP though. I wish they had dimensions on there. I’m feeling pretty good about this little thing as long as it isn’t too big…

Update…

Sony has released real pictures of the PSP which you can see here.

OneWord: Bond

James Bond is getting pretty old… That last one with Halle Barry was pretty terrible in my opinion. They should really try something new with the series rather than the same old kill badguy, use special watch, sleep with women formula. Maybe I’m just spoiled on newer better movies like the Matrix and stuff, but that last one just seemed pretty darn boring.

I also didn’t like that Goldeneye game on the N64, but mostly just because my friend Kevin was so good at it that it made it no fun to play because I died every 10 seconds.

*Yawn*

Scientists have discovered that yawning really is contagious. It’s found to be more common in empathetic people, according to the researchers. So I guess it’s more of a psychological thing than physical. They also say that you yawn because your brain is trying to stay awake and alert, not because you have a lack of oxygen in your body. Which is why you yawn in the mornings when you are trying to wake up, and at night when you are trying to stay awake.

Who else yawned while reading that article? I know I yawned several times… But it is 12:06am, so maybe that has something to do with it.

July 29, 2003

Iridion 3D Review

I got Iridion 3D from amazon.com the other day for $5.29, and thought I’d post a little review of it.

In short for the skimmers, I’m having more fun writing this review than I did playing the game.

The story of the game goes something like this:

• Show picture of city
• Show picture of battleship
• Show 1, no… 2, no…. 3!! blips on a radar screen
• Show distressed guy in control room
• Show city again
• Show UFO over city!
• Show 3 evil space ships shooting city!
• Show two buildings of the city on fire!!

Yes, that is literally how the introduction cinematic plays out, scene by scene. But before you see that, you watch 20 seconds of logos by the companies that made the game (they are non-skippable of course).

After that you are given a menu with a couple of options:

• Start
• Options
• Password

Yes, that’s right, the game has no memory at all. It doesn’t save your options settings, and it doesn’t save your progress in the levels. When you complete a level you are given a 9 digit code to write down in order to start the game from that level in the future. Amazingly, when you turn the game off and on again, that code still works, so it is obviously hard-coded into the game. But who is going to carry around a pad of paper with them so they can “save” and “load” their game? This may have been acceptable back in the days of the NES when you sat at home and could actually write down numbers, but the GBA is a portable game machine.

So after you press start or enter your password to start where you left off, you enter a level. The level names are quite creative… here are a few of them:

• Dogfight above the Ocean
• Air Combat above the Clouds
• Escape through the Disposal tunnel

Yes, those are the real names of the levels. I think they fit in nicely with the storyline, don’t you?

Upon entering a level, you begin moving forwards through the tunnel or over the ocean or above the clouds. You hold down the A button to start shooting, then you move up, down, left and right randomly. Repeat until you finish the game.

By holding the A button down, you reach the maximum firing rate of your ship. You don’t even have to tap the shoot button really fast to shoot faster. Just holding down the A button is as fast as you can get. Then you move around, trying not to get shot by the other ships. The only problem with this is, your ship is so big and the angle so wrong, you can’t even see the bullets that are coming at you half the time. In order to shoot an enemy ship, you have to position your own ship directly in front of them because of the perspective of the game, but in doing this, you completely block the enemy ship out of view and can’t tell if you are hitting him or not, or if he is shooting at you. After 30 seconds of this, you quickly realize that it isn’t worth it to try and shoot the other ships, so you just start hiding in a corner of the screen so you can actually see the bullets before they hit you.

However, this raises another problem. The field of depth in the game is completely wrong, and it is quite nearly impossible to tell when a bullet is about to hit you. When a bullet looks it is 300 “game feet” away from you, it is actually about 2 feet in front of your ship, and is about to hit you. Plus because your ship is so big, you don’t even see half the bullets before they hit you.

Needless to say, this all makes the game terribly unfun to play, because you really have no way of avoiding a bullet that you can’t see, or that looks like it should not hit you for another 2 seconds.

The boss battles are a little more varied, but still revolve around you trying to dodge their bullets while strafing back and forth enough to hit them until they die. But at least they are different, and allow you to see a few more visual tricks and treats.

The game is actually pretty easy once you realize that you should just focus on dodging bullets rather than trying to shoot at anything. I got to the 4th level out of 7 in less than 10 minutes. Sadly I don’t think I will beat the game, because it is simply too boring to waste time on.

The one good thing I can comment on about the game is the graphics. They really are quite amazing for a GBA game, especially considering it was a launch title. The framerates are extremely smooth, and the graphics, though they are all 2D bitmaps, really give an excellent illusion of being 3D. Each level is unique, and matches the level description perfectly (Air combat above the clouds, for example).

Overall this is easily the worst GBA game I have played, and I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had payed any more than the $5 I paid for it, I would consider suing the company that designed it to get my 10 minutes back.

Sony PSP

Earlier this morning Sony released more details on its upcoming handheld game unit, the PSP. It will feature:

• 7.1 Digital Surround Sound
• MP3/AAC support
• A 4.5” 16:9 Widescreen LCD screen
• Embedded 802.11 wireless networking
• A rechargeable Li-Ion battery
• USB 2.0
• An infrared data port
• A memory stick port
• A bunch of crazy graphics specs that I don’t understand

While all of that sounds pretty damn impressive, considering my computer doesn’t support half of that stuff, I hope they don’t forget the most important aspect of a portable gaming system, the size. Fitting all of that into a small enough package to still remain “portable” sounds like quite a challenge to me. I was never interested in the GameBoys until the SP came out, because it was finally small enough to really be mobile. I even had an original GameBoy Advance but never took it with me anywhere because it was just too big, plus you had to take an entourage of accessories with you just to make it playable.

If this PSP ends up being as big as a laptop or something, I can safely say I won’t be very interested. And some of the specs just don’t make sense… Like 7.1 surround sound… Do they expect people to carry around 8 speakers with them everywhere?

Maybe I’m missing the point here and this is supposed to be something more like a semi-portable PS2 that could fit in a brief case or something. If they can put all of those features into a machine small enough to fit in my pocket however, that will be interesting indeed. Especially the built-in Wi-Fi.

But hey, if I get one of these, it won’t really matter how big that thing is!

Treasure Planet

Though this movie has been out quite a while, I saw it for the first time last night after borrowing it from my wife’s boss.

The story follows a young boy that was abandoned by his father at a young age, and became rebellious and arrogant as a teenager. He even has a ponytail, an earring, and a flying skateboard/hovercraft/wind surfboard! He is arrested by the robot police for skate/flying in a restricted area, and his mother is upset at him for ruining his future by getting into so much trouble.

A space ship crashes close to their house, and the owner of the ship gives the boy, Jim, a small sphere before he dies. The sphere turns out to be a map to Treasure Planet, a legendary planet that contains the plundered treasure of 1,000 worlds.

Jim saw this good fortune as a way to turn his life around and prove his worth to himself and everyone else, while also becoming terribly rich in the process. He set off with long-time family friend Doctor Doppler who used his life savings to commission a boat for the long trek across the galaxy to Treasure Planet.

The crew of the ship they end up on is rather questionable at best, and it is quickly apparent that they are not the friendliest bunch one could hope to be aboard a ship with. Regardless, Jim becomes friends with John Silver, the cook on the ship and eventually comes to see him as a surrogate father figure.

There are a few twists and turns in the plot, but you have to remember this is a Disney movie, so it’s pretty easy to see them coming from about the first ten minutes of the movie.

Cliche’d storyline aside, I thought the movie was pretty entertaining. The animation is great, with a combination of impressive 3D renders for the backgrounds and environment, and hand-drawn 2d animation for the main characters.

The “world” of the movie is interesting as well, combining elements of the traditional pirate universe with space ships and cyborgs. This allows the artists quite a bit of freedom to come up with whatever they can think of, and makes for a visually rich movie.

The best part of the entire movie however was the little side-kick character Morph, who, in my opinion is quite possibly the cutest cartoon character ever. He’s basically a pink blob that can float and morph into any object he wishes. He provides most of the comedic relief in the movie by morphing into objects and illustrating certain jokes. He generally brought a smile to my face every time he was on the screen.

Overall the movie was entertaining in a Disney Cartoon way, and as long as you don’t watch it with the expectation of an engrossing and original storyline, I think you can find some enjoyment in it. Heck, I’d watch it again just to see Morph.

OneWord: Comfort

Comfort Eagle is a pretty good album by Cake. I was going to make a fan site for them several years ago, since I liked them a lot at the time. I had collected a lot of info, but never got around to making it. There aren’t very many good Cake fan sites out there. Most don’t even have lyrics, which seems like a pretty basic thing to have on a fan site. But now I have way too many other sites going on to even think about making that site. It’s too bad, ‘cause they are a pretty good band and need a good fan site.

July 28, 2003

OneWord: Delicate

I always wondered why my mom washed the “delicate” clothes in a little bag in the washing machine, then I figured it out after I got married and washed my wife’s “delicate” clothes. All those little straps and stuff can get wrapped around that big thing in the washing machine, and cause quite a bit of trouble. They can also get torn up on zippers of jeans, get stuck on velcro, etc. It’s a good idea to put your “delicate” clothes in one of those little bags. That’s your Laundry 101 class for today.

Mailblocks Update

Mailblocks, the web-based, spam-free email system I signed up for a while ago, posted some major updates today.

Some of the new features are exactly what I asked for when I originally signed up, such as putting the number of unread emails out to the side of each folder like this:

Inbox (25)
Friends (21)
Work (14)

They also added a spellchecker, and customizable “reply-to” fields so that you can keep a branded email address like john@yourdomain.com. Plus once a person is approved by anyone on the Mailblocks system, they are approved for everyone. So if Ted sends and email to John, who is a Mailblocks member, he can also send mail to Sue, if she is a Mailblocks member, without being asked the challenge question. You can write your own challenge page now, which is nice because the default Mailblocks one wasn’t that good in my opinion.

However a couple of bad things came along with this update, mainly that the service is now pretty much crap in Opera, which is my favorite browser. The listing of folders on the left side of the screen is completely invisible now. Which makes it impossible to navigate to any folders other than the Inbox. I can still move messages to the folders via a drop down menu, but I can not view them once they have been moved there. Why don’t they make all of the folders accessible via a similarly standard and universal drop down menu? I have no idea.

The service is now also extremely slow. It’s at least 5 times slower than it was before, even though they mention this version being “much faster” in the press release. I can tell you that it is most certainly not faster. They even sent out a second announcement email later in the day, telling people how to speed up the site by emptying your browser’s cache. I am guessing that they sent out that email because of thousands of complaints from people saying the site is too slow. I emptied my browser cache (which is only set to use 2mb anyway) like they said, just to see if it helped, and it didn’t.

The site uses a ton of javascript to hide divs, play a sound when you have new mail, etc. Each message is apparently in its own div, which enables you to delete just one message or move a message without reloading the entire page. This seems like it would reduce the time it takes to do something like delete a message, but it apparently doesn’t. Not in Opera or Firebird anyway. In fact Opera gets so slow from bogging down in the Javascript that it is virtually unusable for a few seconds after I try to do something like open a message or click the checkbox beside it to delete or move it.

Now of course the catch here is that when you login to the service, it says that the only browser that is supported is IE, and the site might work in other browsers, but they don’t support it or care about what it looks like at all. So technically it’s my own fault that I’m having problems because I’m using a “non-supported” browser.

However, the main problem I’m having here is that I paid $10.00 to sign up for this service thinking that I would be using it for the next 3 years or so, and at the time, it worked perfectly well in Opera. Now that they have “upgraded it”, I can’t use it at all. So my choices are either use another browser that I hate, or cut my losses and look for another email solution. This sucks because if I had bought a stand-alone program like ChoiceMail and it worked on my computer, I could be guaranteed it would always work. Sure I may not have the newest features if they come out with something new that doesn’t work with my computer, but at least I would always have the version I paid for. With an online based service, you don’t have that control. The service provider can change anything they want at any time and there is nothing you can do about it, even if it means the service is no longer usable to you.

So now I have a couple of options for my email because of this change…

• Keep using Mailblocks but use another browser, IE for “full support” or Firebird because it works slightly better than Opera with the Mailblocks site.

• Use Mailblocks with Opera, which is basically unusable and affects all other computer tasks and web browsing by slowing down the browser to an unusable level.

• Use IMAP to access my mailblocks mail in Opera’s M2 mail client, or Outlook or something similar. Except that the IMAP support from Mailblocks sucks. You have to log-in to their site to delete email and stuff anyway, plus you don’t have an address book or anything which kind of defeats the purpose of web-based mail.

• Stop using Mailblocks and just setup a pop3 account and turn on SpamAssassin or something and deal with the spam that gets through.

Right now I am leaning towards the last option, because I am doubting that Mailblocks will fix the issues with Opera, and will probably create even more in the future, which would be even more frustrating. I’m not going to use an inferior browser just to check my email, and like I said their IMAP support is crappy at best, so I think it’s time to think of a better solution for my email.

July 27, 2003

Redesign

As you can see I have redesigned the site. The archives and comments pages are not done yet however, and will look weird for a while until I can fix them. I might have time today to fix them, or I might not. The site is in CSS and XHTML for the most part. Should be completely actually, but I haven’t checked to see if it validates yet. It looks good in Opera, Firebird, and IE. But if you notice any weirdness please let me know in the comments.

The guy in the picture to the left is not me. I found that picture on iStockPhoto after searching for socks, and thought it would be a pretty cool focal piece for the site.

Let me know what you think of the design. I may still tweak a few things here and there, but for the most part I like it a lot. :)

Final Destination 2

We also watched Final Destination 2 last night, which turned out to be pretty disappointing. I generally don’t like scary movies, but I must say I liked Final Destination pretty well, for a scary movie. It was well done and had a good feeling of tension throughout the whole movie, in my opinion.

The sequel however, felt like little more than a series of gross-out CG effects strung together by pieces of the story from the first one.

The story is basically identical to the first movie… A teenager foresees a tragic accident in graphic detail and then somehow saves a group of people from dying in that event. This changes death’s plan however, which pisses him off so he goes after them one by one, killing them in the order in which they were originally destined to die. The difference is that in the first one, the teenager was a boy, now it’s a girl. And instead of an airplane explosion, it’s a massive pile-up on the interstate.

There is also one other difference from the first movie, in this one there is apparently a way to stop death completely from trying to carry out his master plan, which is made evident to the teenagers with the help of the creepy undertaker from the first movie. He gives them a cryptic answer of something like “new life is the only way to defeat death” which they first assume means that the baby of the pregnant lady that was supposed to die in the crash has to be born to end the cycle. However later in the movie they discover this isn’t the case, and another type of sacrifice must be made to stop death.

But like I said, all of that is just an excuse to string together the very over the top and graphic death sequences of each cast member. Out of the maybe 10 people that are featured in the movie, all of them have died terribly gruesome deaths by the end of the movie except for 2 of them. One gets a fire escape ladder smashed through his head, another is decapitated by an elevator, another it sliced into 3 sections by a flying barbwire fence, etc. No matter the method in which they die, they all seem to somehow explode into blood and guts. One guy just has a piece of glass dropped on him, but somehow that causes his entire body to disentegrate into a shower of blood spread out in a thirty foot radius.

Unless you really like computerized death sequences, you will do well to seek your scares elsewhere.

Donnie Darko

Just watched Donnie Darko last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m going to watch it again though, because we had to pause the movie several times while watching it, and this is a movie where you really have to sit down and watch the whole thing and pay attention if you want to understand what the hell is going on.

I would try to explain the story and meaning behind the movie, but I found another site that explains it much better than I ever could.

It’s a very thoughtful movie though, so if you don’t like movies like Requiem for a Dream or Memento, you won’t like this one.

July 26, 2003

Your geek is isn’t showing

Just read about this Scott eVest in Entertainment Weekly magazine. It has up to 24 pockets, a built-in key ring, a “Personal Area Network” for you to run wires from the devices in your pockets to headphone loops at the collar of the jacket, a bottle holder, a place to put your laptop, secret credit card/money compartments, and more.

Looks pretty cool to me… I’d like to be able to carry around my GBA SP, a cellphone, and other stuff without looking like I have a brick in my pocket. Or wearing it on an übergeeky belt clip. You could even fit a camera in there, some bottled water… It would be good for hiking, concerts (save money by not buying the $5 bottled water at shows!), and just everyday wear. I wonder how warm it is though. Looks more like a windbreaker than a jacket. I’ll have to look into it this fall when it’s jacket wearing time.

Gnoosic.com band recommender

This is a pretty cool site that is similar to the 20 questions game that I posted a few days ago, in that it is an artificial intelligence that learns as you use it.

You enter 3 names of bands that you like, and based on past responses it has received, it recommends new bands that you may or may not have heard of. You then tell the site if you like or dislike that band, or if you’ve never heard them before which teaches it even more.

It worked pretty well for me, but it would be cool if you could enter a list of your favorite bands and save them as a profile or something on the site for future use. I can’t help but think you would get better and more varied results if you could list more than 3 bands, but maybe that is a limitation of his algorithm or something.

Try out Gnoosic.com

July 25, 2003

GIANTT Name Tags

Since I make name tags at work this caught my eye… An organization called Group for Increased Average Name Tag Type (GIANTT) has just uh… organized a movement to promote the increased type size of name tags. The founder thinks men use her hard to read name tag as an excuse to stare at her boobs.

The group believes that the average size of the name on a name tag should be 24 point, or about 3/8ths of an inch. However some extremists like Hank Trisler seem to think that name tag type should be at the very least, 1 inch high.

As a “name tag designer” I can say that it is pretty difficult to get text much bigger than 24 point on a name tag and still have room for the logo, company name, and employee’s title while keeping the tag small enough and light enough that it doesn’t pull your shirt off or look like you are wearing a place mat on your chest. If a metal name tag gets much bigger than 3.5” wide and 1.5” tall, it’s just way too big. Especially when you add a back-up plate, epoxy coating, and magnet fastener, the tag can weigh a couple of ounces which is much to heavy to wear on a silk blouse or other light shirt because it would weigh it down quite a bit. Plus a lot of people say the big name tags get in the way, get caught on things, and get ripped off.

But if you happen to agree with the larger average name tag type initiative, feel free to say so when ordering from NameTagCountry and I’ll be happy to make some super-big text for you.

OneWord: Solid

I prefer solid deoderant to gels. Gels tend to get messy, and they are cold in the mornings. They also seem to run out faster than a good solid deodorant. I use Old Spice… Fresh scent I think. It’s blue, and solid. But also moist at the same time. It’s not a powdery solid like some. I don’t like those because of clumpage and white residue. I always thought the deodorants with the rollerballs were cool though. Kind of like a giant ballpoint pen.

July 24, 2003

The Swedish Thumb Player

This little beauty is quite possibly the coolest thing since the iPod.

Designed and sold by a company called Jens of Sweden, this thumb-sized mp3 player holds 256mb of data and also has a built-in FM tuner. But the cool features don’t stop there…

Unlike most solid-state mp3 players, the MP110 can hold any kind of data, and plugs into your computer just like a normal USB thumbdrive. It works on Windows, MacOSX, and has even been confirmed to work on some linux distributions. It requires no drivers or special software, just plug it in and go.

The device itself is about the size of your thumb, around 3 1/4” x 1” x 1/2” and could easily be put on a necklace or in your pocket.

Not only does it have a FM tuner, but you can also record live radio directly onto the device at the push of a button. Could be great if you don’t know that name of a song, just record it and take it home to research it on the ‘net later. There is also a built-in microphone for recording voice memos.

The battery is rechargeable, unlike most other mp3 players that use AAA batteries. It charges directly through USB when you plug it in to the computer, and there are other charging devices available as well. According to the manufacturer it takes about 3 hours to charge the battery and then it will last 14 hours on a single charge(!).

I haven’t seen one of these devices personally yet, but this is by far the very best looking solid-state mp3 player I have ever seen, after researching them quite a bit. Sure it doesn’t hold 30gigs of stuff like the iPod, but it’s certainly not bad considering it’s the size of your thumb and has an FM tuner built-in. I will certainly be considering it when I am ready to buy an mp3 player. Hopefully soon…

Buy it in the states from Outward Sound for $199.95

OneWord: Pitch

I can’t think of anything related to Zelda for the word pitch, so I’ll have to talk about when I was helping build my mom’s house in Arkansas, and was working on their really steeply pitched roof. That was some crazy business. Roofers are pretty hardcore guys, working on almost straight up slants 40 feet off the ground with only a couple 2×4’s keeping them from sliding off to their imminent death.

July 23, 2003

Fun with Hitchhikers

I picked up a hitchhiker for the first time in my life last night. Mostly because Jenee’ said that he comes into the store where she works all the time, so we felt ok about picking him up. Plus he just needed to go like 3 miles. But still, it was quite an event for me, living on the edge like that. He had a bag, and for all I know he could have had something other than bible pamphlets in there. But no, he really just had a bunch of bible pamphlets in there, and made sure to give us a couple before he got out of the car. You gotta love small religious towns…

Goodbye Comcast Hello Netflix

We’re cancelling our Comcast cable package (actually we are keeping the $7 a month basic package) because they are charging us twice what we were originally told they would charge us. So now we have signed up for Netflix.com which will be nice because we rent a lot of movies, and this way we can just pay a flat $20 a month and get all we want.

I signed up last night and rated a couple hundred movies… One thing that I found odd is that the “new releases” section shows some pretty old movies like Equilibrium as being new even though it was released a month or two ago. My wife wanted to see Final Destination 2 however, which was released yesterday, so I searched for it and it came up as rentable, even though it wasn’t shown in the new releases. Perhaps they do that to keep down the rush when a new movie comes out? I don’t know. But it said it was available to ship and that it would be shipped today, so hopefully everything will go as planned.

Also since I’m now a Netflix customer, I can now use the MTNetflix plugin to show all of you what movies I am currently renting, isn’t that interesting? Probably not… but I’m going to install it anyway.

Iridion for GBA: $5.29

Amazon.com is having a clearance sale on the game Iridion right now, for $5.29! I’ve never played the game, and it was a launch title so may not be that great, but hey, it’s cheaper than a happy meal and has free shipping! I will probably buy a copy to see if it’s any good, then just sell it at McKay’s for probably more than I bought it for. The game is rated a 6.8 by the readers of gamespot.com, so I guess that makes it pretty “average”.

(Update)I bought two copies, because I realized I had $3.50 saved up from clicking on the amazon.com trivia nickel questions, so I ended up getting two copies of the game for $8. Which isn’t too bad. I also went to the video game store and saw that same game in cartridge only, used form for $15. I’m going to be rich!

OneWord: Cave

Well I already wrote about spelunking in another OneWord entry, so since Zelda has caves in it, I’ll write about Zelda again! After you get the ice arrows you can go to the fire island and freeze the lavaflow, allowing you to climb inside the volcano. Once in there you jump across some lava pits and move a giant boulder to gain access to the thing you need. But make sure you have the power rings before you go in there, or you won’t be able to move the boulder!

OneWord

July 22, 2003

BuyMusic.com

BuyMusic.com, the latest in an inevitably long line of online music distribution services, launched today. Their main gimmick seems to be that they offer $.79 songs and $7.95 albums. However very few of their songs and albums are actually at that price. Only old back-catalog releases that most people probably already have are at that price. Most new release albums range from $9.99 to $13.00 which is not any better than Apple’s iTunes Music Store (actually it’s more expensive) or even buying the physical CD at your local Best Buy.

In addition to the deceiving pricing scheme, every DRM Scheme is different. Some songs can only be downloaded one time from the server, others can be downloaded 3 or 5 times. Some songs can be transferred to an MP3 player type device, others can’t. Some can be burned to CD unlimited times, some only 10 times, some not at all.

Every song is tied to the physical computer that you download the song onto, not to you as a person, or a special key entered into your computer. So if you sell your computer and buy another one, you can no longer play any of your music files, unless you were allowed to burn them to a CD, and did so.

Even after all these restrictions, they chose to put all of the files into Windows Media format, making it impossible to use quite a few mobile MP3 player devices, including the iPod.

The site itself is confusing to navigate, at least for me. Mainly because the navigation seems to be geared towards individual songs instead of albums or artists. Plus whenever I try to search I just get a server not found error as if the “search server” doesn’t even exist.

BuyMusic.com’s ads are even blatant rip-offs of Apple’s, featuring a single person on a white background singing with the music… There is also an ad showing Tommy Lee smashing the iTunes Music Store Guitar to pieces while wearing a Get Loaded t-shirt which seems like a pretty juvenile attack on the success of Apple’s music service. Why is BuyMusic.com so threatened by Apple when they don’t even market to the same audience? Apple’s music service currently only works on the Mac, and BuyMusic only works on the PC. So they really aren’t even competitors. That is until Apple releases the iTMS for Windows anyway… Then BuyMusic can smash all the guitars they want, but it’s not going to do them a bit of good.

Nice try BuyMusic.com, but I think I’ll be waiting for the iTunes Music Store to come out on Windows or for me to buy a Mac, whichever comes first, just like everyone else.

July 21, 2003

Reason #5: No Pop-up Ads

That’s right, when you use Opera as your browser you can turn off all pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-behinds, and every other kind of pop.

To do so, all you have to do is press F12 on your keyboard, and choose “refuse pop-up windows” from the menu that is displayed. Or you can choose to have them open in another tab in the background so they don’t disrupt the web site you are actually trying to look at. Or you can tell Opera to only open the pop-up windows that you request to open. This is my setting of choice, because this way if I go to a web site that includes their entire layout in a pop-up window so that they can control the size of your browser, Opera will open this window because I have clicked a link asking it to open. However if I come to a page that wants to open its own pop-up windows just because I came along to view their site, Opera will not open them because I have not specifically asked them to open by clicking on a link.

Reason #4: Reload Every…

By right clicking anywhere on a page and choosing Reload Every, then an increment of time, Opera will automatically refresh that page every X amount of time. This can be great for stock market sites, web-based email clients (to automatically notify you when you have new mail), forums, frequently updated news sites, etc.

I recently used the feature during Steve Job’s Keynote speech when he released the PowerMac G5. I logged into a low-traffic mac forum that was covering the event, and set Opera to refresh the page every 15 seconds. This way I could keep up with the announcements in close to real time, without having to watch the choppy quicktime stream or bog down one of the major mac news sites.

OneWord: Lava

There is also lots of lava in Zelda: The Wind Waker. It will kill you on contact until you get the fairy in Mother & Child island to give your bow superpowers which gives you the ability to shoot fire arrows and ice arrows. The ice arrows can turn lava into solid rock, among other things. And of course the fire arrows burn stuff.

I’m such a nerd.

OneWord

drink BIG win GAS

Now seriously, how does stuff like this make it through the proofreading department… It just seems like a pretty easy one to catch, an ad where the two largest words are BIG GAS, and it just happens to be for a restaurant that serves mainly beans and cheese? And shouldn’t it be, “Buy a bean burrito and win gas instantly”? I giggle inside every time I go to Taco Bell thanks to this marketing campaign.

Rustboy Book Details Out

Brian Taylor has posted details on the upcoming Rustboy book on the Rustboy web site (likely to be very slow for the next few days), and it is looking great. He is offering a limited number of signed copies from the first order (details available on the site), so be sure to visit the site soon if you are at all interested in that. He says the price of the book will be between $50 and $85 USD which makes it a pretty darn expensive book, but something I would be willing to pay to learn more about the process he is going through to make the movie. It’s really quite incredible that one man is creating this thing in his house completely from scratch…

July 20, 2003

OneWord: Sail

You do a lot of sailing in Zelda: The Wind Waker (Buy it on amazon.com) on the Gamecube. That is until you get the bow and arrows, then you can shoot the wind god out of his tornado, and he will then teach you a new song to conduct with your wind waker, then you can teleport around the map by way of little tornadoes. It saves a lot of time, because sailing from one end of the “world” to the other takes like 10 minutes of real-time, which can get a little boring. Still it’s probably my favorite game ever.

Web Site Voodoo

I found this site from a link from Squidfingers a few months ago and just came across it again, so I thought I’d post it here.

It’s a game of 20 questions that you play with a computer AI. The more people play it, the more it learns, and it is absolutely astounding how good it is at the game. Out of the 100 or so things I have asked it, it’s probably gotten 95% of them correct in under 20 questions, and even if it doesn’t, it gets it in the next few after 20. I’ve only completely stumped it about 2 times.

20 questions

July 19, 2003

OneWord: Arrow

I remember taking archery class when I was at Indian Creek Camp. I was probably like 14 or 15. Archery is pretty fun, though we just had those play arrows that look more like cue sticks than killing devices. And some cheap little plastic bows. The worst part about archery is that if you don’t shoot the thing right, the string on that bow will smack your forearm and hurt like everything.

July 18, 2003

Great thing about the internet #1,284,845

My boss asked me to total up my time card for the past week this morning, so I sat down and started trying to figure out how to do it. It took me only about 15 seconds to realize that figuring time cards is really difficult. It’s not like normal math, you can’t just use decimals or anything. Everything is in those pesky minutes and hours and so forth. So then I searched online for a while and found some physical time card calculators that cost like $40. That wouldn’t do, because I know my boss won’t pay for something like that, and it would take a couple of days to get here even if he would.

I decided to keep looking, knowing that what I needed had to be out there somewhere, and once I found it, it would save a ton of time for our whole office. And then a couple of google pages later I did find it.

Online Time Card Calculator.

It’s quite simple and easy to use, and even has a space to enter your hourly wage so you can see your total earnings for the week. Plus fields for the date and your name so you can print it out. And because it’s all HTML and Javascript, I just hit save on my browser and saved the file to the desktop. Now I have a stand-alone time card calculator to use in the future, even if the maker of that page decides to take the site down or our internet access goes out.

Hooray for the internet!

July 17, 2003

2advanced launch party coverage

Schavitz.net has hilarious coverage of the 2advanced launch party (which didn’t really happen). Definitely not funny to non-web designers. But if you are one, it’s pretty darn funny.

I have been bored with 2advanced for quite a while now myself. They were “cutting edge” about 3 years ago, but unfortunately they have not changed since then. At all. Sure their style has been very influential and is probably one of the most ripped/copied on the internet, but that should encourage them to do something even more new and groundbreaking, not just the same old thing over and over again.

Like I said I would be impressed by this if it was the first flash site of this caliber I had seen, but even though the site is technologically advanced (2advanced?) it still comes off feeling like the same old thing.

The site is very difficult to navigate in my opinion. Instead of labeling things clearly they come up with clever codenames for everything like sub-system, auxillary-system, feature-system, etc. Also since nearly everything is constantly blinking, it makes it difficult to actually concentrate on anything. I guess you could say 2advanced is the MTV of the web design community, sticking to the same old formula but slightly changing every couple of months to keep kids interested.

I really don’t mean to sound so critical of the design, it is definitely very polished and I’m sure they put tons and tons of work into it. Plus their clients must still be buying it like crazy, or they might have done something different by now. People that don’t look at web sites and designer’s portfolios all day are probably still impressed by all the blinky lights and moving pictures and buttons. But it’s not like I have any better ideas, I can’t use Flash at all. I just think a lot of people are moving beyond the trendwhore phase, and it would be nice to see pioneers like 2advanced continue to innovate rather than just sticking with what made them famous.

But, if they hadn’t hyped up the launch so much with a count-down timer and everything, people would not be being so skeptical and critical. If they had instead chosen to just quietly redesign and relaunch the site, you wouldn’t see every design related messageboard lighting up with flames right now. A victim of their own success perhaps.

OneWord: Player

The Game Boy Advance Player for the Gamecube looks pretty cool. You sit it under the Gamecube, then put in your GBA games, and you can play them on the big screen. I haven’t seen it yet, but I would imagine it makes the graphics look like a SNES game, which isn’t bad, considering they are releasing all the old SNES games for the GBA now. I’ll probably pick on up someday.

OneWord

July 16, 2003

Reason #3: Mouse Gestures

Mouse Gestures are pretty much the best thing since the back button. There is a full list of the mouse gestures supported in Opera at the Opera web site. Right-click and drag left has become so natural to me that when I am forced to use IE to test a site, I am constantly very frustrated at having to move the mouse all the way up to the back button just to go back a page. Sure most of the modern input devices have forward and back buttons for browsing now, but not all of them, and as long as your mouse has at least two buttons, the feature will work in Opera.

I would really like to see a small program that would allow this functionality to be in place system-wide. When browsing through files on my hard drive I still instinctively right click and drag left to go back a page in the directory structure. This could be used in the windows explorer quite easily, as well as in other applications to do things like undo, or cycle through open document windows.

And quickly going back is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also go foward, open new windows, load a duplicate copy of the page in a new tab, scroll through open tabs, etc.

My other most used mouse gesture is right-clicking on a link and dragging down, which opens the link in a new tab. This way I can always insure that the following page will be opened in a new tab instead of taking the place of the current page I’m looking at. This can be accomplished in other browser’s by holding shift and clicking, but who wants to use two hands just to do something so simple?

Note: The excellent Firebird browser also supports mouse gestures (and many other features) via an extension.

More than blogging

Matt Haughey has posted an article with some good tips for using MovableType as more than just a blogging tool. (Be sure to follow the links at the bottom to more articles on the same topic from other authors like Brad Choate and Douglas Bowman)

I’ve been planning to use MovableType for two future sites of my own as well, that are not blogs, so these articles couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve also been looking into the MTExtraFields plug-in a little, though it looks like there may be more downsides than upsides right now. I’ll really be looking forward to MovableType Pro which will feature custom entry fields so you could make much more flexible database applications right in MovableType.

When I have time to work on those other two sites I will definitely explain how I used MovableType to create them, even though it’ll probably be using the methods outlined in the articles linked above.

Always say thank you

I am always a little irritated when I let someone into my lane while driving, and they don’t give me “the wave”. You know the wave… The quick flick of the wrist to acknowledge that you did something nice for them, and they appreciate it. It’s easy to overlook sometimes, and seems insignificant, until someone doesn’t wave, then they immediately become an asshole and you memorize their license plate, vowing to never let them into your lane again!

It’s similar to approaching a speedtrap, and one car flashes his lights to warn you, but the guy in front of him didn’t. The guy in front is then immediately some goody-goody that is trying to screw you over.

I hate driving…

OneWord: Bumper

I’m glad for bumpers on cars… it has saved my wife car from more serious damage several times, though it is still damaged in other places. But what’s with new cars having these “designer” bumpers? They are all round and pretty, just like the rest of the body of the car. That kind of defeats the purpose of a bumber. They should make huge 100lb steel bumpers on all cars, so that they will really be protected from grandma letting off the brake behind you at a stop light.

OneWord

July 15, 2003

The World as a Blog

This is one of the coolest uses of the GeoURL tags that I have seen so far: The World as a Blog

If you put the GeoURL tags on your blog (which basically gives your latitude and longitude coordinates to any GeoURL-aware bot coming to your site) and ping weblogs.com, your posting will show up on this map with your location. You can also see recent postings from other bloggers near you, or on the other side of the world. It’s updated every 1-3 minutes, so it’s nearly real time. Very cool stuff.

GeoURL itself has something slightly similar on its front page showing locations of all the sites that are including the tags, but it’s not real time and it isn’t limited to blogs.

If you click on the little green GeoURL icon on my site, you can see all the sites that are near me, including several other bloggers that are less than 10 miles from me. Pretty amazing stuff. I’m going to start putting the tags in all of the sites I design.

OneWord: Road

I really don’t like driving. It takes such a long time, and there are crazy people on the roads… I don’t know why we can’t teleport people yet. That would be ideal. Or even a vacuum tube system like they have in Futurama. You just stand in the tube, and are whisked away at hundreds of miles an hour to wherever you need to go. If only reality were a cartoon…

OneWord

July 14, 2003

OneWord: Stone

Stone reminds me of the rolling stones, who I’ve never really heard. They were before my time I believe. It also reminds me of people being stoned back in bible times, which must have been pretty terrible. I don’t like getting hit with one rock, let alone hundreds until I die!

OneWord

July 13, 2003

Yoshi’s Island for GBA for sale

I’m selling SOLD my copy of Yoshi’s Island for the Game Boy Advance through Amazon.com. It’s a really fun game and it’s in mint condition. I just took it out of the box to play it, beat it, and now I’m selling it. If you liked any of the other Mario games, you will enjoy this one, even though it is slightly different.

The story starts with Mario and Luigi being carried by a stork to their parents, until they are attacked by a bunch of Bowser’s men. Luigi is kidnapped, but Mario falls into, you guessed it, Yoshi’s Island. The Yoshi’s decide to help keep Mario safe and take him to rescue his brother Luigi.

In the game you control Yoshi instead of Mario directly. Mario rides on Yoshi’s back, and when you are hit by an enemy, Mario is knocked off of Yoshi’s back and starts floating around the screen in a bubble. A timer then starts counting down, and if you don’t get Mario back before the timer runs down, you lose a life. This makes the game a little easy, because you never really die unless you fall down a pit, or you aren’t able to reach Mario in time before the timer runs out. Normally the counter lasts for 10 seconds, but if you collect stars throughout the level, you can have up to 30 seconds to reclaim Mario.

Not only do you have the normal jump-on-enemie’s-heads move of most Mario games, Yoshi can also swallow enemies and turn them into eggs, which trail behind Yoshi as he moves throughout the levels. By pressing the R button on the GBA, a crosshair appears onscreen to help you guide the egg. When you release the button, Yoshi fires the egg like a gun towards the crosshair. You can kill most enemies this way, as well as getting coins and keys that would otherwise be inaccessible by banking the egg off of walls.

Boss battles are quite fun, and each one is unique with a different way to beat it. Most bosses are simply extra-large versions of the normal level enemies, as they have been enlarged by a flying magician Koopa.

As is always the case in Mario games, the levels are very inventive and there are many clever ways to use your abilities to progress in the levels. Most levels have at least one unique obstacle or puzzle to solve, plus a ton of hidden areas and entrances to secret levels.

The graphics are very good, with bright crisp colors and never any slow down or choppy frame rates. The bitmaps almost look like they were drawn with chalk or charcoal, and most objects have a thick black outline to give the game the feel of an animated coloring book. There are a lot of tile sets for the different levels, insuring that you will never get tired of seeing the same level graphics over and over again.

The sound is great, with the typical catchy Nintendo theme songs. The music changes to a more dramatic up-tempo track during boss battles, to heighten the excitement. The sound effects are varied, and you will never really get tired of hearing the same “jump sound” over and over again.

In addition to the normal gameplay in the levels, there are plenty of mini-games to mixup the game a little and give you a break from the traditional run and jump levels. There are memory games, match games, a game where you throw a water balloon back and forth and try to keep it from popping on you, etc. The reward for these games is usually an extra life or a power-up of some kind. The power-ups can be used in the normal game levels and usually give you extra stars (which also increases your timer when you lose Mario) or a variety of other power-ups. You will have no problem completing the game without ever even knowing about the power-ups however.

There are a variety of items to collect during each level, including 5 flowers, 20 red coins, and 30 stars. You are then given a score at the end of each level, depending on how many items you have collected. After you have beaten Bowser at the end of the game, you can go back and try to get a score of 100 for every level in the game. I didn’t take the time to do this myself, so I’m not sure what the reward for doing this is, if there is any at all.

One excellent feature Yoshi’s Island has that many GBA games do not, is the ability to press Start, and the L and R buttons at the same time to put the game to sleep. It pauses you in the level, and turns the screen off on the