Rock Band 2: Gaelic Fishwife on hiatus

While my friend Ish was staying with me out in Seattle, we created a fake plastic band called Gaelic Fishwife. And now with Ish heading off to complete some testing and look for bigger boats to sail, it had to come to pass that the band needed to be retired. That doesn't mean it is over and we will have some reunion shows whenever he is up for it.

Good luck Ish on your tests, and keep rocking!

Various Game reviews

Well I haven't been doing many reviews as of late, mostly cause things have been a bit busy. As for books, I have been reading Godel Escher Bach for the last 2 months. It just takes a while to get through it, but I am looking forward to putting up a post about it. I also recently picked up a blu ray player in the Sharp Aquos BDHP21U. I will probably review that as well once I have used it more. So far, I have not been impressed. The menu system is no intuitive and the boot time on it is horrendous.

Rock Band 2

Wow. What an improvement. The basic mechanics of the game has not changed. What has improved is single player mode, calibration, and online band mode. First off the calibration mode is much improved in that now you calibrate the video separate from the audio. It really makes it easier to find your timing while playing when both the video and audio are in sync. The single player mode is essentially band mode. You can go on tours or invite your friends in to help. Also introduced is challenges which are reminiscent of the first Rock Band's single player mode. Complete a challenge to open up more challenges and new songs. And best of all, the online band tour mode which should have been in the first one comes together so well in this release. I got the chance to play with Skidge who is in Germany and everything ran super smooth from my side and it sounded like it ran well on his side as well.

This is the game they should have made in the first place, even when the first one was fun. Get it.

GTA IV

Again, wow. GTA IV is another spectacular installment in the GTA series. The story telling is absolutely fantastic and by the end it really bothered me that the situations I was in, put Nico in such bad situations. The game play is well done. Player control is easily done and combat is very strategic if you want it. The cover system of combat is very well done and just makes it fun. None of the plot missions were painfully difficult. The side missions and support characters are full of flavor and fun. This is however *not* for kids. In fact, I couldn't even do Taxi missions while my daughter is around due to the swearing.

One point that made me a bit upset was in the last mission you are forced to follow the bad guy who is in a boat while you have a dirt bike. I didn't follow the shore, but cut cross country. I was still able to follow the boat, but failed to initiate a game trigger. I did hit the necessary ramp and would hang in midair from a rpg before the game would lock up. I did this over ten times before realizing you could actually follow the shore.

Either way... get the game.

Madden 09

Look it is time for the annual release of a franchise that owns all the licenses to professional sports programs. This was was heading straight for mediocrity in my book. I have played 5 of the Madden games in the last 9 years and in most cases there has been little improvement (which 2kSports was doing some incredible advancements in the few years before the EA lockout). However the dynamic difficulty setup they implemented really has made it very fun. I haven't tried it in multiplayer but in single season of career mode, it really made the games close and challenging. I give this my seal of approval.

Footnote to NFL

Highlights containing the Lions don't really count.

What is the cost of IP loss?

An excellent article by Ars Technica.

Favorite quote:

In economic jargon, charging anything for pure IP—which has a marginal cost approaching zero once it has been produced—creates a deadweight economic loss, at least in static terms. The actual net loss of IP infringement is an allocative loss that only appears in a dynamic analysis. Simply put, when people pirate IP, the market is not accurately signaling how highly people value the effort that was put into creating it, which leads to underproduction of new IP.

Put down the rusty pipe...

If you don't read Penny Arcade, I forgive you. It really isn't for everyone.

However, I do feel obligated when there is something noteworthy or even mildly entertaining, to give it a bit of linkage for its contributions to gaming society.

DRM is harming your best customers.

On the firing of Millen

I haven't really said anything yet, as I wasn't really sure what this meant for my sports team. So going into our bye week, the team finds out that their GM has been released. I have seen quite a few different articles but they all seem to take one of two attacks.

1) Bought darn time. Millen has taken a team that was mediocre for decades and transformed it into one of the worst teams in the history of the NFL.

2) Millen is a good guy. Don't grind him into the ground if he couldn't make the team better.

I think that Millen probably is a good guy. He talks straight. He tries to do what he says. The problem is that Millen really isn't the type of leader needed for a large organization. A leader in the NFL needs to know his strengths and weaknesses and then to get folks to help them where they need it.

1) Millen completely fails in identifying talent. Or even correcting this lack ability to find talent.

2) Millen was never in touch with his team. He lived in Philly and commuted into Detroit. If this is not a bad thing, why was there not an effective leader on the ground? Fire the VP of operations and the assistant GM on this one.

3) What is with the hiring process on coaches? Seriously. It seems like they have locked on to a guy and not really evaluating all the options.

There are some other issues as well, but really comes down to an inability to manage the impact of your shareholders (i.e. don't draft Harrington just cause a shareholder says to) as you should know your business and stick to it. The other part is how do you lead from afar?

So now what do we have. The assistant GM and VP of football operations are going to lead through the rest of the year. Stop. These guys should be gone. Get a GM in now. Start interviewing, get hiring. Why? The season is probably a loss. I could be wrong, but everyone is pretty disgruntled in the locker room by the sounds of it. Also that way you can get some folks in, evaluating talent and see what you can get moving before the trade deadline. Also you can get some of the 3rd string players getting some time and see if there is anything down there. Also start dropping some of the folks that don't belong there and take a cap hit early.

Please, if you are going to rebuild, don't waste any time.

Buying Rock Band 2?

I bought it. It is a huge improvement over the first one. I just saw that there is a deal on it through October so if you are going to buy it, click over to Amazon and get a free 1600 point card so you can get some more songs downloaded.


Rock Band 2 Promo

Sports Fan Divorce Papers

It just doesn't make sense to me that the Detroit Lions can be doing so poorly. It goes beyond the fact that they are losing, which is bound to happen. Instead is because they lost these games in such a spectacular fashion.

Where does this leave me as a life long fan of the Lions, every year praying that they can start a new path of winning football games. In my lifetime, I have seen a playoff visit (and loss), but otherwise it just painful. This year however might be the worst and we are only 3 weeks into the season.

We have moved to balanced attack and we did have a balanced attack, but you are talking 116 passing yards and 116 rushing yards which isn't going to win you a game unless you have a defense like maybe the Bears or Titans. The defense is just not stopping anything and an offense that is unable to eat any clock to give the defense a chance to rest.

My original guess of 5-11 season is completely off. If I look at the teams that they have to win week to week, I am sure that they are going to lose every game this year, but they will probably win one at the end of the year when some other team doesn't care if they win or lose.

At some point, sports teams are like your family. You can't chose them or divorce them. I got lucky with my family, who are completely awesome, but right now, I feel no pride or love for my team.

ATC: An other girlfriend

I decided I needed to start another series. I am not sure how many of these I will be able to do as they are completely dependent on my train ride. Hence the beginning of Awkward Train Conversations. I might a side series which would be funny train conversations if ATC doesn't supply enough content.

Across from me sat a rude man and his girlfriend. I call him rude as he would ram his knee into mine and not say anything and also spread out way too much.

Rude man across from me(Rudy): Remember when we went to Greece.

GF: I never went to Greece.

Rudy: I could have swore that I went with you.

GF: No.

Rudy: It must have been a different girlfriend.

Awkward silence...

Phone companies are evil

Having to prune who I am following (stalking) on Twitter these days. I had set a number of friends that have generally low volumes of tweets per day as ones I would like device updates on. This however did not pay off as my latest bill showed 119 text messages over my 200 text message plan. Not good.

This however got me a little bit upset as I am paying ~10 cents to transmit 160 bytes. I mean seriously.

I think it might be cheaper to send my messages into space.

Bulk August family update

I actually meant to put this into a couple of posts, but things didn't really work out how I had planned. The middle of August we flew back to Snow-town to go to Michelle's sister's wedding. We spent the first half of the vacation prepping the family house for the sudden influx of 300 people and then spent the last half cleaning up after 300 people. Overall it was good seeing family and taking part if an absolutely gorgeous wedding, but boy was it exhausting.


Rehearsal and Christening Set


Wedding Set


Reception Set

After we got back Miranda came down with a cold. We kinda figured this would happen. That many new people and that much time in airports and airplanes that it was bound to happen. She had a pretty high fever on Saturday with no other symptoms so we called the doctor who recommended an ER trip just to check for Strep. We came out with just a case of the Flu and proceeded to catch the same things ourselves.

Unfortunately this also coincided with my favorite event of the year in PAX. So unfortunately I was only healthy enough to go to one day day. I am pretty upset about it actually. There were some things of note during this year. There were TONS of people, lines were incredibly long. Fallout 3 looked absolutely incredible. I didn't think I would buy it, but seeing it in action (as played by other con goers), I ended up pre-ordering it. Wii Music looks like it has some potential to be fun the way Mario Paint's music creator was fun. Rock Band 2 looks like more of the same, which is to say fun. Guitar Hero World Tour's drum set looks to be on par with Rock Band's, but the singer's display was oddly compelling for me. Dawn of War 2 talk was amazing. It looks amazing and it feels like people who are really passionate about it are working on the title. I missed the Keynote because the hall was full. Wouldn't even let me in the door. Wizards of the Coast had a huge booth that was packed. Bought my required PAX shirt for the year. Overall it was fun.


PAX08 Pictures by Reverend0

Review: Watchmen

First off, I am not by nature a comic book guy. I have enjoyed the occasional comic book that I have picked up. I have not really read any series regularly. With the upcoming movie for the Watchmen, I decided to take a look at this graphic novel. The trailer to the movie definitely looked interesting, but really what was this all about?

The color and imagery are vivid. The writing is good. The story is mostly good. I am sure that just pissed off quite a few people on that one... that is if anyone reads my entry. The basic premise of the story is you have a world where masked vigilante heroes exist. They are not super in terms of power, but truly super in their desire, drive and training in their fight against evil. This has created a story where many of the pivotal events in our world have changed since their emergence. The cold war is stronger than ever. The US won in Vietnam. Public riots eventually led to the downfall of these masked vigilante's and the public soon began to fear as there was indirect conflict with the police.

As this world unfolds, the story starts with murder of someone and how one masked vigilante, who refused to put away the mask attempts to track down the killer and determine who is behind it and what it all means. It really is a murder mystery/conspiracy tale at its heart.

I found the story excellent through most of it. It created a world that was interesting. At several points in the story, it is told next to the telling of a popular comic of that universe (Tales of the Black Frigate). Where what was happening to the characters in this book were a reflection and sometimes counterpoint to the actions in the tale of the Watchmen. I am sure many comic aficionado's found this as brilliant, I found this ploy difficult to read. And without given away the end, you feel as if you are building to something brilliant and enlightening or terrible and frightening, when suddenly the story twists into something less interesting and oddly like a forced closure. I felt there was more to explore in the world, but it was closed down because of a print limit or disgruntled artists, or some other reason.

I do recommend this to adults. It is a tad on the dark side. Enjoy.

Date Night

Well, for all my hard work, I was given a gift card at work to take the family out for dinner. Of course we excluded Miranda, instead giving her the treat of running around with a bunch of other kids, since really we wanted the ability to eat a meal and not have to eat as fast as possible cause she is bored.

So on Friday night, Michelle and I went down to one of our favorite restaurants in the area, Salty's at Redondo Beach. Since we had plenty of time, we went about meal at a casual pace. Michelle really wanted the mussels and clam appetizer, we got that. It was steamed and sauced in a wonderful pesto sauce. It was definitely very good. Michelle also got a Mango Alcohol slushie (can't remember the name). For our main course, Michelle got the Salmon with a dill cream sauce and I got the Halibut with tomatoes and capers on asparagus. I thought the dishes were cooked perfectly but were slightly underseasoned. Both of these fish have a strong flavor but need very strong pairings. Still, the dish was very good.

For dessert, Michelle ordered the Triple Chocolate Cake, while I ordered the Ultimate Nudge (coffee drink). My coffee drink was ... potent. The cake was very heavy and dense (and far too large a portion).

Overall, it was very relaxing.

At some point, I am hoping to put together a decent review of the Watchmen graphic novel that I just completed. If I run out of time, I will drop off a half-assed one...

Woodland Park Zoo

Last Saturday, I decided to do something I had yet to do with Miranda. A friend from work suggested a daddy and kids day out at the zoo to let the moms get a break. So, Miranda and I made the 30 minute drive into the zoo to meet Jeff and Nathan. I have to say, I was very impressed by the zoo. Yes the animals looked bored, but that is universal for zoos that I have found. You could see though that the staff really tried hard to make things good, though. The worked with feeding and cleaning. They talked to visitors. Overall it was a nice experience.

Miranda explicitly told me, "No Stroller." I should have overrode her, but generally I let her make all the non-critical decisions. This became critical after about 90 minutes of walking and she was getting tired. We had a bit of a meltdown, but really it was a combination of tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty. We got all that remedied when Jeff suggested a nearby mexican restaurant that had awesome quesadilla. Miranda consumed a lot of the chicken and cheese, but avoided the shell.

So I did get some pictures of the zoo. Feel free to look at them.

Useful widget that may make you a buck or two

Thought I would take a moment to promote the Amazon Page Recommender Widget. First off, as disclosure, I do work for Amazon.com and might have had something to do with the widget. First off, it gets you the power of Amazon Recommendations to try and earn a percentage of the income. On top of it though, will provide recommendations for other pages on your site. Given my traffic here is pretty low, the recommendations for my pages tend to be based on the couple posts before or after the one you are on. It just happens to be how my readers are going through my site. But after crawling through my pages every once in a while something interesting pops up.

That said, if you have a site and an Amazon Associate account, you should try it. Also be sure to check out the helpful FAQ and performance tips.

Stress...

I hate where I live. I don't know if it because of the economic climate or what, but it feels as if people are getting crazier. A couple months back, at the end of the block, there was a break in. Plus there was a car break in a week later. Lately it has seemed to be quiet, but then I found out that someone had tried to enter one of the vehicles on my property at about 3 am mid-week last week. I also just found out that a neighbor down the block had his gas line on his truck cut to siphon out the gasoline.

The stress of worrying about my family and their safety is starting to get to me. With all this I wonder what I can I do to protect what we have. I can't afford anything better. Is it just Seattle? Is this a city problem? I don't remember this from when I lived in Michigan.

Stupid laptop

Looks like my repair job isn't holding. It is making if awfully tempting to solder the power cable right to the board. Seriously. At this point, I don't really plan on replacing any of the batteries or doing any serious spending on this thing, but there is a point at which the time I am spending making it work is very detrimental to the actual operation of it.

I would prefer to not buy myself a new on. I mean for the primary case which is to remote into another machine, it just doesn't make sense to spend even $100 on a small laptop. Now the next question would be where would one ever find a $100 laptop. So with that, I am pretty sure that I am stuck.

So probably on Sunday, I will rip it apart again (wanted to reattach the touch pad anyway) and try and do a better job at applying the glue. I figure I want to give it one more change before I start cutting wires and breaking out the solder iron. Which also means I have yet another reason to postpone Ubuntu. But that you can chalk up to lazy.

Maybe Ubuntu will wait

Well, it look's like ubuntu is going to wait a bit before I tackled installation.  Reason 1 is that I am still waiting for it complete downloading.  That is blazing fast Comcast for you.  Pay for "Powerboost" and it takes 28 hours to download 650 meg.  Honestly should have take a few hours but seriously... why to I pay the extra.

Second off, part of development effort is taking a look at Microsoft Live Writer and seeing what it would take to put together a plugin that would allow one to add in associate links to their blogs via this tool.  It may work out that the current plugin set that is available is sufficient, or that the services available from Amazon are inadequate and those would stop me.  But, I think Amazon's APIs will be rich enough and the other plugin's to be good but missing features.  The only other thing is that it is likely to take a decent amount of programming time as I am definitely rusty and .NET programming.

My other concern is that I am not getting any sort of funding for this.  Many of web development efforts come with the side incentive that I could make some money via Google AdSense or via Associates.  I know it is delusional, as I have made a whopping $1 off all of my projects.  Granted I don't do many.

Basing this project on many past projects, I give it a 7% chance of survival.  Web based projects usually run in the 70% chance of survival, but I guess you do what you know.

Also to be noted I am working on updating my template to support 3 column again. This time without tables.  Oh how I hate floating div's.

Downloading Ubuntu for Alienware Sentia

A long time ago, I bought an Alienware. At the time, Alienware was one of the edgy companies that was producing high performance machines. I ended up buying what was considered their business series laptop, the Sentia. This was really before they started tacking on numbers after Sentia so as best I can tell, it is a model 223. It's not a terribly fast machine, but it did set me back some serious cash and add on to it the problems I have had with it, I really regret purchasing it.

First and foremost the battery for the CMOS has never really worked. It is always dead. This would be less of a problem if the CMOS settings from no power would allow you to even use the laptop. Nope. Everytime I power on, I have to blindly go through the bios settings and restore to defaults as the LCD screen doesn't work otherwise. I would replace it, but the model number on the CMOS battery is non-standard. I could use a CR1220, but this is a ML1220 which is supposedly rechargeable. I am afraid if I use the CR series, it will burst into flames.

Second problem as of now is the main battery is dead. Although the laptop is now roughly 4 or 5 years old... I guess it is to be expected minus I haven't really used it much.

The third problem was one I created. The power plug had gotten kicked at some point and the power connected liked to emit blue sparks or not work on occasion. This with the lack of battery rendered the laptop completely unusable.

However today, I decided that I must restore this laptop to working condition. I removed 25+ screws and multiple panels to expose the inner workings. Wouldn't you know it, I had to disassemble pretty much everything to just get to the power connector. When I got there I was expecting a broken solder point so I had the solder iron all ready to go. Not to be the case, as the plastic housing that holds the connector in place was the culprit and cracked good. After applying some Loctite Super Glue, and holding for 20 minutes, I was able to reassemble the laptop. Unfortunately I had one extra screw and the touchpad isn't hooked up anymore. Overall though, it has been restored to usable, I just can't power it down.

So now, I have decided that I would drop ubuntu on it. I have Redhat 9 on one of my desktops but it rarely gets used. Right now I am looking for something that I can do a little development work while I wait for Miranda to go to sleep while I sit in her room. It looks like I have 11+ hours of downloading before I can attempt an install so it may end up waiting till next weekend for installing.

So hopefully, in the future I can share some of the mini projects I am working on.

Potential solution to puking

Michelle may have figured out one of our puking problems. Basically Miranda has a tendency to puke. Many things can cause it, but one stumped us. Some nights she would just suddenly start whimpering and puke was going to be coming soon. Well it turns out that if she eats dinner well, and then follows it up with her normal cup of milk, it exceeds the capacity of her stomach. Yup, that's it.


Sigh.


That doesn't stop her from throwing up when she gets too upset so I will likely still be spending every evening hanging out in her room. But at least one mystery solved.

Joss Whedon

So there has been a little bit of a buzz on teh intarweebs about Joss Whedon's latest endeavor, Dr. Horrible. Basically it really hits on one of my personal favorite songs by Jonathan Coulton called Skullcrusher Mountain. What happens when a super genius villian is in love? Well I can say it is terribly interesting. You should definitely check out the video for Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Seriously. First off it stars Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. Second, the music is good. Third, it is definitely bite sized at under 14 minutes per act (so far as Act III hasn't gone up yet).

I watched some of Mr. Whedon's early TV shows, but I didn't recognize genius until Firefly. But this really is a wonderful work and quite enjoyable.