Childhood movies as Videogames

March 19th, 2008

I’d almost forgot about it. With as often as you hear of games being made and then scrapped, or that they have a long time until release, it happens. Anyhow Ghostbusters is going to be a video game, and I’d forgotten about it. I do remember hearing about it when the some demo on the 360 popped up and it looked like a Ghostbusters game, but it wasn’t. It looked a heckuva lot like it thought. Turns out it was just a tech demo and a different studio was making the game. Thankfully it will be launching on each of the major systems so I can look forward to it. If you’re curious or want to see a few more links by all means check the wiki on it.

I’m going to have to find my copies of that movie now, haven’t seen it in awhile.

You Take, You Give

March 18th, 2008

So we all take pictures right?
**yes you all nodded didn’t you**

Do you know your rights when you take a picture? If you’ve ever stopped shooting when told to than I’m going to guess you don’t. Well please go read your rights and use them. Also extrapolate on them. Remember that if it can be photographed than you are IN PUBLIC and should you do something stupid you cannot relay on any form of privacy to protect you. Also the same rules would apply to cops. If it can be legally photographed you can be busted for it.

At the same time when dealing with pictures remember the license that you grant them. Please read the MySpace TOS, Flickr (pretty easy), or YouTube (tell me, a google gives a high SNR). Thing is, you should look at the liscense that you use to put you pictures on the web. Pick the one that is least restrictive and host there. If you must, host them your self. Hide the copy right using CSS. Don’t let yourself get sued because you used something that you shouldn’t have. Don’t let fear keep you from using something you could have.

Save the Idiots

March 17th, 2008

I don’t understand how ’survival of the fitest’ went to ’save the fat, dumb, lazy’.“- A buddy

He’s right though. How DID we go from survival of the fittest to protecting and prolonging the life span of the dumb and dieing. If you look at the rest of the animal kingdom you notice something that for the most part is normal among the. They let the weak die off. You don’t see a pride of lions keeping the old ones alive, you see the old one wonder off and die. Same way with the sick ones. They leave, and go die alone and in piece and don’t infect the rest.

Then you have us. the ‘intelligent’ beings of the plant. The ones that have become the top of the chain. We some how can’t learn this simple lesson from the rest of the animal kingdom. In our finite wisdom we have decided that we need to protect the stupid with warning labels. We need to protect the lazy with all forms to enable them to be lazier. The horrid twist is I’m typing this while finishing McDonalds and on the back of the fry box is this little icon that reads “it’s what i eat and what i do“. I’m sure there is a mess of phrases that you could add to that to make it funnier.

Simple fact of the matter is that we have gotten to the point that we reward laziness. That we reward stupidity. We really might be headed towards Idiocracy some day soon. Sad thing about that movie, I loaned it to someone. They watched about 10 minutes of it and couldn’t stand it because of the stupidity.

Humans, the only time we think it’s ok to kill is out of malice, anger, and spite. We seem to forget that sometimes it can be done out of love, care, and hope.

Green Fuels

March 14th, 2008

For some reason today there was a wealth of news about bio fuels and the “green nature” of them. Living in Nebraska you might think that I’d agree with ethanol. Sadly I don’t. Can’t say that I find it wise to trade our food for our fuel. Can’t say I agree with allowing lazy lardo’s to drive around while people go hungry. Or that food prices go up so our transportation costs stay low and allow us to be lazy pigs.

Since ethanol is a crop based fuel and further it is alcohol based you’re going to need water. Makes sense right? You have to water the crops. You have to use water to ferment the sugars and organisms to convert food to alcohol. I think that means yeast and it’s stripping of sugars for oxygen and the by product of that being alcohol is how that works. Then you need heat to drive the alcohol out of the water, and more water to cool and condense the vapors for collection. Some people aren’t so game for this, and would like to keep their water where it is.

The bio-fuel of using waste oil from fast food seems like a good idea too. Unfortunately it seems to have draw backs too. Honestly I think this one has a bit better use than the ethanol idea. Simply because it’s using waste products that are already being used. But it appears that it is just as polluting as using straight gas, so that’s really not a solution at all now is it?

Then you also have strange things like robust solar cells made of dyes. You could help a electric car with that, or provide n add on to your your house. Unfortunately it’s a long shot and will likely be expensive when it does happen. But imagine if we could some how coat just about anything with photocells. It’d be great, it really would.

In the end though, the best and easiest answer. Simply reduce your usage of energy and resources. I know it sounds hard, but it’s worth a shot isn’t it? What can it hurt other than your pocket book.

Your Poo and You

March 12th, 2008

Several months ago a friend told me of a book. This book was a simple book. Small and brown, hard cover. The title “What’s your poo telling you“. I ordered it off of the Amazon. The Book arrived and I found it funny as sin. What’s not funny about poo? We all do it, most don’t like to talk about it. This is a book about it. A book you can open to any page and read the description and KNOW that someone else in the room has had that poo. That someone has experienced that feeling. The book spent some time in the bathroom as reading material. No it sits on my table and is picked up and thumbed through by damn near anyone that comes over. Never fails to get a laugh.

Now if you don’t think I’m serious about this book and that it is actually a good read for you, Salon has a nice 2 page jot of the book. Along with a video of “man on the street” questions. So i encourage you, the next time you go and drop a deuc to look before you flush. When you take the cosby kids to the pool, check on them before you leave. When the brown bear has left the cave, take a look and make sure he is healthy.

Seriously… look at the crap that comes out of yer butt and make sure it’s ok and there are no issues. Your health will thank you for it.

Things to note:

  • Blue food coloring will make yer poo green.
  • Fire Hot CheetosĀ  will give you red tinted poo.
  • Spicy food might give you burning poo.
  • Keep your diet in mind when looking at it.

Digitally Restricted Media

March 11th, 2008

Also known as DRM or by the proper name it is Digital Rights Managment. Or maybe it is just a Damn Retarded Method of annoying your customers and unless you work for a media company you’ll probably agree. They like to argue that DRM is a must for digital media since you can make perfect 1:1 copies and a copy of a copy doesn’t degrade the quality. Also with the advent of the Internet you can share them at a really nice speed. Now that we’ve got the “but what about just coping tapes” argument killed we can move on as to why DRM and this mess is suddenly a problem and a waste.

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Where My Mp3’s at?

March 10th, 2008

Time and time again I get asked about mp3s and how to deal with them. This might have something to do with having a sizable mp3 collection and the fact that I keep it very well maintained and clean. What will happen typically is someone will get a new mp3 player, and not surprisingly want to add music to it. Now I love mp3 players, I really do. I just hate how they deal with media most of the time. For me it has always made sense to organize my mp3s as follows.

\Artist\Cd\Track-Title.mp3 -or-
\Artist\Cd\Track-Artist-Title.mp3

Thats how they’ve always lived on my hard drives, it makes using just about any media application a snap. I can quickly and easily locate and load a cd. Now when it comes to things like iTunes, Windows Media Player, and the newer Winamp you get these nice library functions. This can make for a mess if your mp3s are not organized or were not ripped properly. You see these application rely on the ID3 tag to get info about the file, and (possibly) the file name to some extent. Or course when you throw things on your mp3 player, they like to use the ID3 tag.

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SSBB: Disc Read Error

March 10th, 2008

Ok, just so that I don’t have the comment run and mess in the other post here is more on what I’ve gathered. As I said before a Google shows up that this is a fairly common error. Now while I don’t have my browser history to find the exactly link I had came across last night, I do have a fair bit of memory, and found a few of them again.

Kotaku had a little blurb about it and points you to the Nintendo Repair Form to get the forms. Now keep in mind that Nintendos official stance on this is “A very small percentage of Wii consoles may have trouble consistently reading data off this large capacity disc if there is some contamination on the lens of the disc drive.”

Let us ponder this for a moment. At one time the slot loading drive of the system was a selling point as a method of keeping the discs and internals clean. I for a fact know my discs are clean and scratch free, I really do tend to take care of my games. Also I have a launch system, so it’s old. I have no problems with any other discs…. but I’m drifting here. IF it is as they say caused by a dirty lens, then ALL Nintendo Wii systems will at some point develop the problem of not being able to read dual layer dvd discs. Sooo either they need to develop and sell some little Wii cleaner disc, or let us know what is really wrong.

My own personal idea for the source of this problem is simple. The potentiometer isn’t adjusted right or a focal motor isn’t set right. When you send it in, they fix this and send it back. Or as some have stated, they replace the machine. Now I’m not really to keen on the idea of shipping my Wii back to Nintendo for a fix (yet). However if getting the disc to read is causing more ware on my Wii than it should, perhaps I should send it in.

[UPDATE] Here is the link I couldn’t find earlier @ Destructoid

Smashy Smashy

March 10th, 2008

After having the pre-order slip sitting in my wallet for oh so damn long, Super Smash Brother Brawl released. For some reason I’ve been looking forward to this game and awaiting it’s launch. After a few delays… I has it. Get home toss it in my Wii and “Disc Read Error”. First thought, call Gamestop and ask if anyone else has had issues and about swapping discs. This really is out of the question for a few reasons. One being that I always give them crap for trying to sell me a disc warranty. I don’t like the pre-order crap they push and let them know that I’ll pre-order when and what I want. Lastly I think the strategy guides are retarded and have no issues tell them that.

Anyhow a quick Google later and SURPRISE! Turns out that the Japan release had the same issue. Sometimes the game just don’t work. The solution, send it back to Nintendo and get it fixed. There are a mess of guesses as to what causes this issue, but they seem to center around it being the first dual layer dvd disc game. Well given the abuse my Wii has taken… I admit I giggled there… I’m surprised it plays any discs. I have occasionally had disc read errors. But Brawl has given me more than any other disc has.

Didn’t stop me from playing the game with a few buddies for about 8 hours though.

Sick World

March 6th, 2008

100 Photographs that Changed the World, take your time and thumb through them. Now what did you notice?

How many of those photographs where of violence, of pain, of suffering, and how many were of awe, beauty, and joy. Kind of a sick world really. These are photos chosen by Life Magazine (that is apparently a sub of Time Magazine). What is it about the negative side that is so life changing? What is so fundamentally wrong with us that it takes something wrong for us to act. I really wish I was kidding, but from what I’ve seen we are a very negative group of beings. Our news, our entertainment, our actions at times.

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