The Shoebox Game

Sorry for such a strange concept, but Think Secret has a rather mundane write up on Mac Expo happening in 2 weeks. It outlines all the major changes to Apple software to be introduced by Steve Jobs. The information is pretty thin, with Apple only revealing the minor changes and keeping the most interesting stuff secret.

What I LOVE is the totally random code names each app has been given by Apple Engineers. Maui, Storm, Spellbound, Sphere, Asteroid, Hermann, Crossbow, Slingshot, and Sugar. They are like the call signs of femail fighter pilots. And they each have a vague connection to the product they are referring to, but the logic for those connections is rather unique and very creative.

Monkeylaw

My friend MonkeyBrad (not his real name) has a cool website with some funny comics on it. Check it.

NOW I finally understand

I've always liked the Lord of the Rings books, and while they have very moving moments of friendship and sacrifice, I admit I looked down on the books as fairy tales for the obsessive. I like Peter Jackson's movies even less, Jackson spent too much time on false drama and unnecessary action scenes, letting the character development become secondary. Return of the King seemed way over-praised, not nearly good enough to sweep the Oscars, IMHO.

The ROTK extended edition DVD has humbled me. Not for the new scenes, but the documentaries are a mind grenade. It's like the filmmakers saved all their favorite insights and comprehension for this one film. First is begins with a very intelligent and heart felt look at the languages that Tolkien wrote and some of the intense tradegy that he experienced in his life (like losing 3 close friends in WW1). Then the theme moves to the deeper themes in Tolkien's work, and draws back to examples in all his books. Then they talk about the structure of the films and some of the great ideas that Jackson had but rightly dropped. Then they move on to the amazing craftsmanship of the sets and props. I could go on and on, the documentaries do go on and on, there is over 8 hours on these 2 disks. Check it.

My friend Kristen showed me this great Middle Earth website, The Encyclopedia of Arda.

Roooooxane!!!

The internet takes singing in the shower to all new levels. I particularly love the intercutting of this guy's friends, who are trying to look cool and actually end up looking dumber than the singer. BTON, I know a friend from high school exactly like this. We used to make movies just like this.

Othello! I am your father!

More Shakespeare. This is a picture of a young James Earl Jones playing a brilliant Othello in his youth, in 1956, only 7 years after he graduated from high school.

Half-Life 2 Review (5 of 5 stars)

I can't tell you how much I love good science fiction, and I mean good science fiction. When I read something like Ender's Game, or Rendezvous With Rama, I am right up there with Shakespeare. Star Wars and the Matrix are great examples, same with the Terminator.

And video games have some surprisingly good sci-fi as well. Their combination of visual and music and interaction, plus the obvious fact that this is a computer after all, gives us a unique twist to sci-fi. Alpha Centauri proposes that men have reached the next planet and we split off into different extremist factions, each with more atmosphere than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. The music is electronic and makes the Blade Runner seem akward. Homeworld does more than any other work I've seen to express the strangeness of space, it's pure insanity and madness. It's music also fits in a masterful way (anything that quotes Agnus Dei is special), another common thread in my favorite sci-fi. Quake and Doom also have ground-breaking music for their times.

Half-Life is also one of the great sci-fi masterpieces. It makes the claim that Area 51 is the greatest government conspiracy of all, and it makes it believable by putting you in a first person view of these events, you never break that 4th wall to this experience. It introduced scripted sequences to games, little events that you could watch from any angle, and made FPS games more than mindless shooting. People ate it up.

Half-Life 2 came out this holiday season, and it trumps the first game in every way. I especially like the sci-fi elements again. There is an artist beauty to the enemies in this game, they look like cyborg machine/creatures and yet they are beautiful and graceful. Even the mindless human-converts have this interesting look that you want to study. And the game still refuses the break the fourth wall, offering no explanation for the time between the actions of the last game and this one.

Plus it's fun as hell to play. It is said that Half-Life is the greatest game of all time and Half-Life 2 is merely the greatest First Person Shooter of all time, but i think time will prove that HL2 is the better of the 2. The gravity gun, like scripted sequences, is something we are only beginning to comprehend. I wrote a beautiful post about how each physical object in gravity DM has its own strategy, how the desk does something completely different than the car or the shelves. Also how a game in a certain map seemed to naturally rotate around the center of the map, until ppl were fighting over one specific area in the middle.

I like Valve, I think they have had an amazingly intelligent run of games and can see no signs that they will slow down soon. I think they're like Pixar, they'll make masterpieces for a while.

Hugh Cook

That website I referrenced in my Shakespeare piece deserves it's own write up. Short end of it: Hugh Cook is amazing, his writing is so simple it disquises and even distracts from what Hugh is writing about, which is weighty stuff. He has a number of complete novels on there, but what got me was a verse by verse comparison of a Shakespeare sonnet and a Spencer sonnet.

People who understand Shakespeare

I love a person who gets Shakespeare. My friend Jason says Shakespeare is so good because a lot of very smart people understand him in very different ways. I like seeing so many correct intrepretations, this means that the playwright knows some deep mysteries of the Human Element. I just watched a brilliant Charlie Rose interview with Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino, the two most improbable actors to play together in Merchant of Venice. Pacino is the jew, no less! Jason being a jew was amazed at this. The film itself is supposed to be spectacular, as they read the dialog very naturally, is if it were everyday speech. Pacino had a great answer to why Shakespeare was so brilliant: "You just had to be there," simple, but Pacino nailed that particular question perfectly. Jeremy came back with a nice observation that no one spoke in Iambic Pantemeter in 16th century England any more than they do today, yet people knew in Shakespeare's time that he was genius. His plays still entertained.

Found this site with a great explanation of iambic pantemeter.

A Letter from Courtney Boyer

A strange woman I have never met just sent me an electronic coupon for a discount on a Psycho DVD. Basically, if you read someone's review on their website and like it, you can recommend them for a discount and they earn money for the money you save. The weird thing is that this is a psychotic thing to do to a total stranger. The whole email is psychotic, but the discount on Psycho is completely random. It could have been any movie randomly selected.

Worming Your Way into Apple

No, I'm not referring to myself or anyone I know who works at Apple Austin. I'm talking about a new article on Wired.com about an Apple engineer who got fired before his special project was complete, and how he snuck in to work for 6 months to finish it, convincing other non-fired employees to test and document it, and even paying other contractors out of his own savings to help him. The app? The Graphing Calculator. It ships as an OS 9/Classic app, and will ship with Tiger as an OS X native app.

Just goes to show you the incredible spirit at Apple and how corporate red tape can sometimes work against that. I once talked to an employee at Microsoft's Apple division, the people who write the Mac version of office, and they have some of the same rebel spirit, wearing T-shirts that say "I Don't Do Windows" in the heartland of Win.

His briefs were two sizes too small

Here is an impossibly funny court briefing about a lawyer's stupid request for Christmas day court appearance. You just have to read it that's all I can say, if you don't this blog will go away!

The Grinch hated Christmas!
The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his arguments weren't going quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his client's wallets were too light.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his briefs were two sizes too small.

Snopes.com has an article explaining the whole thing.

Merry Christmas!

Home for the Holidays

When I say home, I mean my apartment, not with my family. Southern Missouri right now has -15 degree weather and 10 inches of snow... I wish I was there right now. I don't mind being alone at Christmas, actually. I have plenty of friends to hang with, a couple of parties to go to on Christmas night, but Christmas Eve is still very personal to me and I want my alone time tonight.

I'm getting into online dating right now, too. It's fascinating, much more positive experience than I first thought. Other people's profiles are a blast to read, no 2 are alike. I just finished my own profile to a reasonable state just this week, and sent off some notes to a few ladies without thinking that this is in fact the Holiday season and people have zero time to talk or date. Still, it is addicting, and from what I can see a lot of other people feel the same way.


Merry Christmas, everybody.

A Glimpse at our sexual past

India is going through a national identity crisis at the moment. Seems that a young couple put their sexual escapades on video, on the internet. The video is of oral sex, definitely x-rated, but not as unheard of in this country as in India. I can just feel the old generations there getting upset, but the consensus in the news article was more of "I had no idea." They don't like it, but they understand that it's coming and you can't stop it. And it's a part of life!

iLife and Mac Life

Found a cool website, MacLife, which is a great "digital hub" site, digital hub being Apple's iLife suite for music, photos, and video. The site creator, Jim Heid, also has a great book on iLife, which Wired.com reviewed favorably. My only problem with the website is that it leaves out Garageband, a key app in iLife that has been out almost a year. What's up with that?

Anyway, that led me to check out the Cult of Mac blog, which is always a trip to explore.

I also saw this great site of an artist and his porfolio. I really liked his menu the most, actually, but the photography and websites are also fantastic.

There there is this website based on an ipod menu. You just gotta see it to understand it.

Do you know what's wrong with you? Nothing.

At first, this seems like your typical corny internet sound clips page, but the focus on Cary Grant transcends all that. It's genius, actually. They even saved the best clip for last. My compliments to the creator.

BTW, listening to Don Henley's solo work, Boys of Summer, All She Wants to Do is Dance, etc, and I'm realizing that it's the only pop music that is genius and still corny in that way that only 80s music can be.

Return of the Flash Games: Alien Hominid

This little game is the true testament of the power of the internet. Check out Alien Hominid. They even made it into one of this year's best Gamecube games.

XBN closes doors

Sad news for game journalism, XBox Nation (XBN) has shut down for undisclosed reasons (i.e, it wasn't making money). Too bad, it was the best magazine out there right now, for any system. I miss the PC Gamer of old, when it was more than a huge ad. Also check out IGN's new format.

EA grabs exclusive NFL rights and makes Microsoft look soft

This is big, big news: Electronic Arts, makers of the power house franchise Madden Football, has grabbed the exclusive rights to the NFL for the next five years. This means that only one company will be making a pro-football game next year.

This definitely goes down as the most evil thing I've heard of from an entertainment company, bar none. I can understand the record and movie companies taking people to court, even if their tactics are ridiculous. But this move absolutely destroys any competition, especially close compeditor Sega Sports. It's a smart business move for EA, Sega has been closing in for a few years now, and this year ESPN Football was very, very close in sales. So EA eliminated them.

EA also snagged up the rights to NASCAR racing, and destroyed the best stock car video game franchise EVER. They have exclusive rights to PGA Gold and FIFA soccer, 2 sports that are arguably secondary, soccer can be seen as conutries, not teams, and Microsoft is doing very well with their Links series. But what if EA grabs the rights to MLB or the NBA? Competition is stiffled, gamers lose. What company is going to pour millions into development of a game if the league pulls their franchise license out from underthem. This has sent shock waves through the entire sports gaming industry.

And it's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard of from a sports league. The NFL is treating video games like some minor merchendising, like jerseys or something. They are sending a major, negative message to their younger audience.

BTW, EA's stock (ERTS) is a great buy right now.

Blizzard painted themselves into a corner?

Blizzard has an amazing track record, everyone knows that. They are also known for perfecting other people's work instead of doing something totally new. What's more, a large core of their founding brain pool left during the creation of World of Warcraft, meaning the company has moved more into the hands of their corporate slave-drivers, Vivendi. All signs point to a sequel as their next game, but what could it possibly be?

They just made World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 before that. This has tapped the entire company, I highly doubt we're gonna see anything other than a WoW expansion for a long time. Diablo 2 is looking very dated, but we won't be seeing a sequel to that soon, because WoW is basically Diablo Online, only set in the Warcraft universe. It wouldn't make sense to make the same kind of game twice. Then there is Starcraft. We have SC:Ghost coming soon, that should be amazing, but it's not fully a Blizzard game. How about Starcraft 2? Another RTS, though, so soon after Warcraft 3? Let's hope so. Or even better, a completely new work, a FPS, or an adventure game, or something else. A return to their vikings game. I don't know.

Digital Libraries, thanks to Google

The Google-ares continue to amaze me. They have a simply motto for their company, "Don't Be Evil," and right now anti-evil seems to be anti-Microsoft, but they are truly doing people some good, and I think they deserve their success. Their lastest idea is digitizing books and making them available online. This is a precursor to having all of great literature online and searchable, a long predicted goal for the internet that is only starting to take shape under Google's direction. If Google does this with the usual non-invasive approach they always have used, I think the service will be well-trafficed and they will rightly reep their large costs back. "Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today." All the libraries in the US, hopefully the world, with their collections online and connected in one place, Google. (and speaking of pure evil, the NYT's registration process is the exact definition of the term)

Then there is gmail, a wonderful service that forced other webmail services to up their stingy online storage (Apple and Microsoft still make you pay for the stuf gmail gives you for free). I hate how in Hotmail I was innondated with junk email from the first day. Microsoft was obivously selling my contact information. I've been on gmail over 3 months now and haven't seen a single bit of junk mail, the filter has been perfect. It loads without all the adds, too.

And then there is google desktop, a search engine for your computer that leapfrogs Microsoft and even Apple by allowing you all the power of Google search on your files on your hard drive. I haven't tried this one yet, I only use my PC for games. However, if it has half of the search capacities of Apple's Next Big Thing it should be great. Apple's spotlight is genius, you type search terms and they appear instantly, type "S" and you get everything with "S", type "So" and it narrows instantly, and so on. Whats more, the search is highly intelligent. If you type Paris, it's look in all your emails, all your documents, even maps. It'll find the people in your address book who where born in Paris, if that information is there. Google desktop doesn't go this far, but it's a huge step up from what Microsoft has now.

Then there is Google News which is the news, done right. Also, the google toolbar was the first IE bar that added a google search on the interface and blocked pop-ups. Simply great things. I think google would make an excellent stock to buy.

Oh, and Google also runs Blogger.

Japanese culture thingy, I can't explain it....

This is funny and weird and perverted and innocent all at the same time. This could only come from Japan. After a pillow with the fake arm of a man sewn on it sold like hotcakes, a japanese company has introduced the pillow shaped like a woman's lap. Bi-zarre.

Notice how we hear about the weird loving querks of another society only if that society is also wealthy?

Also, I realized that the English language has racism and rigidity sublty ingrained in it. The word for a foriegn culture, the adjective, such as "japanese" or "mexican" or "american" - the correct grammer is lower case. "french fries." Yet new concepts like the Internet or Generation X, these words have capitalized letters. Only after the word reaches common use (it has become accepted) does it become familiar, the literal grammer structure "familiar" can it be written in lowercase, like the internet now is. Familiar has its roots "fair knowledge", something commonly known because it is so easily understood. New societies, new concepts, these are capitalized, drawn special attention to, we prounce them a little more clearly as to draw attention to their newness as a word and the object of that word. Forced by spotlight under the harsh attention of the other members of our society as an outsite to be examined, mistrusted until accepted.

And if cultures had a character, why is the character of a world leader like Rome or America always mistrusting. Why isn't it artistic or peaceful, or racist or rageful, for that matter? What is it about the calm quiet glance of mistrust that allows people to succeed? I think I'm stoned.

National Lampoon & Moveonplease.org

My favorite comedy site of the moment is National Lampoon and their spin-off site, Moveonplease.org. Check out this hilarious headlines:

"Jesus Christ: Democrat Candidate for 2008?
Liberal Scientists Hope to Have Bisexual, Left-Leaning Christ Fully Lab-Grown for Next Election"

This Nov 3 post election article: Because of You There is No Hope:
Screw You America Screw You America Screw You America

The MoveOnPlease Ten Point Plan for a Better America:
So Efficient, We Only Need Seven Points

Wrong in so many ways...

This American Life

A friend got me hooked - in one night - on a radio show called This American Life, which, being a public radio show, is available for free on the internet. (Realplayer required). This show does jsut what its title says, provides interesting stories of America and the strange people in it. For example, check out the 3 shows I listened to tonight:

Episode 127 (1999) Pimp Anthropology - an Oakland pimp from the 1970s talks about his rise and fall in pimp-hood, and the rules of the game, the language and code of the girls, the cars and the dress, how they introduced girls to the life.

Epsiode 206 (2003) Somewhere in the Arabian Sea - life aboard an aircraft carrier during the Afghan war after 9/11. As you can guess, a public radio show stays away from the workings of the weapons and focuses on the social life of the sailors. Fascinating, they begin from the sheer size of the ship and the 5000 people living on it, to the bizarre stories of how people joined the Navy, to the gossip and love life on a ship, and on and on.

Episode 254 (2004) What I Should have Said - 2 fascinating pieces, the first where a rather timid fellow who seems to get no respect from his friends "for once in his life, gets to suspend time itself. He gets to freeze the hands of time, and finally come up with the right thing to say in all sorts of situations." Basically, he records his conversations all day. The 2nd is the true story of a young, dumb peace activist who confronted President Bush Sr and got hopelessly school. (and he still hasn't learned from the experience). Then there's a 3rd story that I was too bored with to remember.

Ukraine Presidential Candidate poisoned

When I look at Ukraine's election debacle, I can't help that think all these Bush election-conspiracies are just immature tandrum-throwings. In the Ukraine, the election was clearly rigged against the people's will, then declared void and the real winner was poisoned. Things like this would never fly in the US. Never.

But aside from my ranting against anti-Bush blogs, this is an important issue for Europe and Russia. If Yushchenko becomes president he will move the Ukraine towards alignment with the EU and farther away from Russia. Russia will weaken even further as a nation. We have always counted on Russia to offset China as a superpower, a sort of neighbor you wouldn't want to trespass on. They are fast becoming just a speed bump. Of course, this is assuming that China is evil. But it is a change in the balance of power that could have extreme consequences on the whole world.

The BBC has a great collection of quotes from russians about these events.

Hilarious Links of the Moment

Gotta love Blue's News if you wanna find quirky, funny links you'd never find otherwise. Fark is another good place that specializes in links, but it's a bit trailer-park.

National Lampoon's Safe Toy Shopping Guide is only for people with a sense of humor. They will warn you away from toys like "Anatomically Correct SpongeBob Squarepants" and "The Care Bears Iron Smelting Furnace." Great quotes include: "The Jedi Choke device may cause choking." and "The only way we were able to score points (with the Harry Potter Quidditch Set) was by aiming the catapult at the goal and firing the children through the hoop with a ball taped to their chests."

Jump the Shark is a website that tracks when TV Shows have "jumped the shark," or reached that high point when it will never get better, only get worse. For example, for Friends the most popular moment was when Rachel sleeps with whats-his-face, for NYPD Blue its when whats-his-face dies, and for ER it's when whats-his-face left (I really know my TV, can't ya tell?)

It's official: Mars once had water. "Definitely. Probably." The link itself isn't funny, it's just the scientific buracracy that took so long to verify the obvious. The funniest thing is that this article came from College Station. Go Aggies!

Not funny, but I'm a Matrix freak and wanted to keep this link: Mother of the Matrix Victorious. Looks like the movie ripped off someone else's work.

Senfield Dictionary

I'm on a Senfield addiction right now, so I got a huge kick out of this Senfield Dictionary. For example,

Non-Sexual Crush - when a non-cool person has platonic infatuation for a cool person (usually a stud) of the same sex

Vomit Streak - when a person has not vomited in a long period of time (such as ten years or longer)

Shrinkage - 1) what happens to a man's genitalia after being in contact with water (especially cold water) 2) what to tell a woman who mistakenly sees a man's genitalia in the shrunken stage, and finds it humorous

Forbidden City -1) a place where a socially unacceptable, short, stocky bald man might go to meet gorgeous (model caliber) women 2) a place where attractive women hang out that also doubles as a meat-packing plant

Fudge Distribution - the idea that one should eat a sundae from the bottom up (knowing full well that the fudge drips to the bottom), so that there is an even amount of fudge and ice cream eaten in every bite

Blog Changes

I've started a new blog and closed down an old one.

I closed Connect: The: Dots, or at least stopped posting to it. This was my idea of a news site, it went beyond objective reporting and also investigated the economics, politics, even historical connections between events. The really cool idea I had was a world map which drew lines between places as kind of visual representation of these connections. First, though, I had to write the content, and I found researching so much information was a lot of work. So, sadly, I had to put the ol' boy down. I'll still have the link on the right if you want to check out the experiment.

My new blog is something I've been thinking about for a long time, DVD Commentary Review, over at Blog City. The name speaks for itself, I review audio commentaries on DVDs. Lots of them are really boring, and it's nice to know before you waste 2-3 hours. Or some of them are fabulous, almost required listening. I don't particularly like Blog City, but they have a really good setup for writing quick reviews. What I hate is that I need to pay for all the things that Blogger offers for free, I can't customize the layout and add links so that you can see all the titles and go to the one you want without searching randomly through the archives.

Gay Robots Lose Weight and Pick up Poodles

-Our Terminator nightmares are right around the corner. The future of the robotic battlefield will be nothing like what you've seen in movies. The bots will be clumbsy and limited, and we'll be more at risk to hackers taking control of our own weapons than the computers "waking up" and trying to kill of the humans.
-You're All Gay.
-Lose weight with Poodle style. Creepy, but tastefully done.

Comedy and an Apology

Sorry I haven't written in a while. Along with a heavier load at work, I'm spending more time IMing than surfing right now. I'm still seeing lots of hilarious stuff, but am just too lazy to post it. Check me out on AOL Instant Messenger (AOL Instant Messenger, my aim name is souldaddy@mac.com, and I'm on most of the time.

Anyway, got a new car, had a long vacation, visited the folk for Turkey Day, and am spicing up the apartment with some beautiful old posters my parents got in Italy in the 60s, like hand-drawn italian restaurant menus and such. The circle of friends is growing quite large, as are our list of adventures (return to Big Bend coming soon!) although I don't think I can quite share my dating exploits on a public website, that's just asking for trouble. And if you are one of my ex's, stop cyber-stalking!

Blah blah blah. On with it!