May 2004 Archives

I picked up the Foo Fighters' new CD, One by One, last week and MAN does it kick ass! Those dudes have been kicking out great music for quite a while, and it's brought me to quite a blasphemous conclusion. I suppose now that I live in Redmond, the Lake Washington buffer should keep me safe from the Seattle grunge-ites. So, here goes... I think it was probably for the best for the alternative rock scene that Kurt blew his brains out. I mean, Nirvana did what they came to do, but I don't know if I would have been up for 10 more years of the Nirvana sound. And, Cobain's death allowed Grohl to form the consistently excellent Foo Fighters. Though, maybe if Kurt was still around he could have kept his crazy wife in line...

I’m just about to hit the 20 hour-mark in Final Fantasy X (22 hours according to the game clock, but 2 of those hours were it just sitting there paused). I’m still enjoying the game, but I do have some complaints… But right now I’m just going to talk about the good stuff: The fighting is the most perfect turn based fighting I’ve ever played. The elemental rock-paper-scissors system isn’t overly complex, and it’s clear which members of your party are good against which monsters. Also, you can switch in and out other characters at every player’s turn, so you don’t have to micromanage your party BEFORE battles.

Apparently a new system added to this installment of the Final Fantasy games is the Sphere Grid. Instead of just leveling up after you get enough experience points, you gain sphere levels fairly frequently (also based on experience, but just lesser batches of it). The sphere levels then let you move around this giant board (the Sphere Grid) and activate nodes which in essence level up your characters bit by bit. Some example nodes might be +200HP or +4 strength, or even new abilities or spells. As you start off with your standard collection of characters (fighters, black mage, white mage, etc) they all start off on different sections of the grid, with their own abilities to activate. The really cool thing is that the board is all connected, so down the road it’s possible to break your black mage into the fighter section of the grid and beef her up physically. There are locks on certain nodes that prevent you from doing this too early, but I’ve got one character that was clearly meant to do this, he didn’t have much of his own grid, and he was very close to 3 other grid sections. So, I’ve got this so-so fighter that also knows the low level black magic spells AND thief moves AND he’s on his way to the white magic section of the grid. This system is nice because it gives you more control over the development of your characters (there are branches that you must choose whether or not to take) and it also gives you the joy of leveling up far more frequently than most other RPGs.

Maybe soon I'll post about the BAD things of FFX...

I finally got around to watching The Hulk tonight, and I have to admit I was sorta impressed. The main reason I avoided the movie in the first place was because I thought the CG Hulk looked SO FAKE in the trailers. In fact, I couldn’t understand what the creators of the film were thinking releasing the movie with such crappy animation. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I realize that the context of the surrounding story provides the ‘realism’ the animation was lacking. There were still moments when I thought he looked fake-y, but by then he was a character to me, not an animation demo.

So, the animation was passable, but what really impressed me was the comic book pane presentation of the scenes. I remember a few years back, it seemed every music video director you’ve never heard of was given the shot to direct a movie, and how the critics complained about the onslaught of quick cuts. It’s what the MTV generation was raised on, they said, kids have no patience to sit through a full scene, and on and on… They were probably right, I don’t recall ever seeing a movie and thinking, “No, those quick cuts made the movie better!” Who would have thought that even MORE quick cuts could be a good thing? However, The Hulk blasts you with multiple shots of the same scene at once and the effect is thrilling. With so many different shots on the screen, the viewer is forced to constantly shift his focus to try to catch all the action. This makes the frenzied combat all the more exhilarating because you feel a bit frantic yourself just trying to keep up with all the visuals. I really wish I had seen this on the big screen, because I can only imagine the size added to the experience.

This was, by no means, a perfect movie (or even near perfect in my opinion). In fact, if it weren’t for the presentation I don’t know if I’d even recommend it. But, taking the movie as a whole, it’s definitely worth a rental.

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us (Brett, Jess, Sara, Ben, Ritchie, Kara & I, to be exact) decided to go hiking up at Snow Lake. We didn’t realize until we were up there that it wasn’t named that just because it sounds pretty. There were still feet of snow on the ground (even though it was in the 70’s). It was ~45 minute drive to get out there, so there was no way a little snow was going to turn us back. We started hiking, but it was kind of hard to follow the trail since you couldn’t really see one! We ended up following footsteps in the snow (because whoever walked there before us MUST have known where they were going!) Periodically someone would throw a snowball and we’d all stop hiking and break into a full-on snowball fight! We made it about one mile up the trail before we got to a waterfall that we had to cross... It seemed like a good place to turn back. On the way back we started feeling a bit more adventurous, so we started hiking off the trail. The only problem was the snow was covering holes so you’d take a step and your foot would go right through the snow! It was a lot of fun, but now I actually want to see the stupid lake! Hopefully we’ll all go back sometime this summer when the snow’s all melted.

Warhammer 40k… ever heard of it? I have too, but I had no idea on the specifics until Sunday. Kara and I went out for a nice dinner at The Keg in Factoria, and while leaving my eyes spotted a store sign across the parking lot “Games Workshop.” I thought the ‘Games’ might refer to European boardgames, so we drove over there and I went in. As soon as I came through the door I realized that this was a store that sold ONLY Warhammer 40k miniatures, books, etc. It was quite a weird experience to walk into a store and suddenly realize that they sell NOTHING you’re interested in. A friendly (and nerdy) employee came up to me and:

Him: “Do you collect?”
Me: “No, I’m more into European boardgames.”
Him: “Oh, um, like Settlers of Catan?”
Me: “Yeah, do you guys sell anything like that?”
Him: “No, we sell Warhammer 40k only; it’s like Settlers without the emphasis on resource collection”

I knew without any explanation of the game that it was nothing like Catan, but I never was able to understand how moving painted figures around on a mock landscape could be considered a game, so I decided to continue the conversation. He proceeded to walk me through a round of the game (Kara was sitting in the Jeep, so I checked to see if she was shooting me a “c’mon, let’s go” look… she was reading something, so I was good). First he showed me how you move your units around; they have a special measuring stick that shows how far units can move. Then the fighting begins, which consists of rolling an assload of dice. 3’s or higher on a d6 (six sided die) mean a successful shot was fired. Then you roll again to see how many ‘wounds’ were inflicted (again 3’s or higher). And THEN, the opponent rolls a number of dice equal to the number of wounds to see how many shots were saved by armor. That, my friends, is what we call a dice-fest and not a good time. After a few more details (which I’ll save you from) the store was closing so we had to wrap it up. It really couldn’t have worked out better, I got enough info to know that I wasn’t interested, but then I was able to leave without having to say “thanks, but that sounds boring.”

It’s time once again for me to rave about Movable Type. I love how totally customizable the system is, AND since so many people use it, there are usually solutions already out there just waiting to be found. My latest thing was links in comments, I think it’s SO annoying how links people leave in comments get opened in that dinky comment window. I tried adding target=”_blank” to my links, but Movable Type kept filtering it out. A quick search (BTW, do I also need to rave about Google?!? It is seriously to the point where you can just type a sentence on what you want and Google will give you a page that will contain your answer!) and I was on my way to getting it fixed. First I had to change the settings so that “a href target” wasn’t being filtered out. This turned out to be a simple 1 line change in mt.cfg. Voila, users can now specify target=”_blank” on their links and all will work as expected. But, I wanted to go one step further, make ALL links left in comments open in new windows (even when the person didn’t specify the target). For that, I needed to “install” mt-regex, add 1 line, and change 1 line in my comment template. There, now any links left by peeps will launch in a full-sized browser. AND, since the site is being constantly rebuilt, these changes are automatically applied to any comments made in the past!

Y’all might have noticed that I’ve had Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit listed as my current book for quite a while now. I borrowed it from the library three months ago, and I’m STILL not done with it. The library lends for 28 days and only allows one renewal, so I actually had to take the book back and get a different copy of the same book one month ago! Yesterday the second book was due, so I renewed again…

What does this say about the book? I guess it’s a little slow… but I wouldn’t say it’s boring. I’m more than halfway through the book and there has been literally NO action so far. And the problem is, the expected climax doesn’t sound like it’ll be all that exciting (though, obviously, I could be way wrong). I still plan on finishing the book, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it before the current 28 days is up.

Here's a link to all the pictures from the Snow Lake trip. I just dumped them all into one long page, so deal with it. BTW, the second to last picture is pretty cool, Sara fell into a huge hole and climbed down there for a picture.

Today’s my 26th birthday, which means what? I can already smoke, drink, gamble, rent cars, and get a substantial discount on my car insurance! However, there IS something special about 26; I’ve escaped from the clutches of Selective Service (a fine euphemistic name for the government agency that’ll ship your ass to war). I actually wasn’t all that worried that they’d reinstate the draft, but what if WW3 broke out, then what? The draft kind of boggles my mind, I suppose the “land of the free” propaganda worked on me, but I just can’t imagine America forcing its people to go kill other people, especially for wars that aren’t vital to the survival of our country (Vietnam comes to mind, as well as the current Iraq situation). But, America DID do this, and it was only 31 years ago!! Well, different times, right? Maybe…

Speaking of different times, check out all the other stuff (besides me) happened on May 22nd in history. I mean, c’mon, Windows 3.0 shipped? I was destined from birth to work at MS!

I had a Matrix “question everything you know” moment a few days ago. I was browsing Channel 9 and came across the following video. In it, Bill Hill says that thanks to the wonder of computers, double spaces after a period are no longer needed. Somehow I was totally oblivious to this fact! Everyone I’ve talked to about it since seemed fully aware of this issue and had an opinion on it one way or another. I, on the other hand, had no idea that I was doing it any different than everyone else in the world! However, even now that I know I’m doing it ‘wrong’ I don’t think I’ll be able to change. That double-tap on the spacebar is so ingrained into my fingers’ brains that I can’t stop doing it! There, I just did it right there without meaning to, and I was just talking about it!

Well I’ve unofficially stopped playing FFX… I was playing last Friday and I died after ~45 minutes of playing since my last save spot. That just BITES and really puts a damper on the desire to go back to the game (since I’ll just be replaying what I’ve already seen). I plan on returning to it soon (I’m really nearing the end), but I’ve also got new games to play… I bought a new PS2 game called La Pucelle: Tactics the weekend before last, but avoided putting it in my PS2 as long as possible (since it’d make FFX take a backseat). After the whole FFX die incident, I decided it was time to pop in La Pucelle. I’ve since put in around 3.5 hours on the game and I’m pretty intrigued by the possibilities. It seems to be a pretty standard tactical RPG, but it has a pretty original system with magic portals and stuff… I’m not gunna go into it, go read reviews if you want details.

I also picked up the GBA game Mario vs. Donkey Kong last night and this is a pretty neat game. I picked it up at EB, and since I traded in Harvest Moon, Metroid Prime and Jak & Daxter, I got the game for “free.” The game is basically a puzzle platformer that does a really nice job of hitting all the nostalgia buttons. You play as Mario, and you’ve got most of your N64 acrobatic jumps at your fingertips. You can also pick up baddies (ala Mario 2) or go completely old school and grab the original DK hammer (even the song is the same as the original arcade game). It’s really a perfect GBA game, because you can turn it on, play one level and then turn it off… no looking for save spots or worrying about missing cut scenes if someone starts talking to you, etc. My only problem is I don’t think I’ll be able to save it for the road. I played through 2.5 of the 6 worlds last night on my GB Player and then later, in bed, on my GBA SP. Supposedly there are additional levels once you beat the first 6 worlds, I just hope this game lasts longer than the last GBA game I bought (Metroid: Zero Mission, I’m looking at you).

Violet by Hole was playing on the radio this morning when I turned on the car. I don’t think I’ve heard a Hole song for a couple years, so it was like a reunion with a forgotten friend. I don’t remember being all that fond of their songs in the past, but hearing Violet made me realize that I do miss hearing them. I remember, back in the day, Micah had a guitar magazine that had the music for Doll Parts, so he’d play and I’d sing that wonderfully weird song. I think Courtney said it all, when she said:

i am doll eyes
doll mouth, doll legs
i am doll arms, big veins

Words to live by my friends… words to live by.