An Apple Conspiracy Theory
Matt Given pointed out to me the same product placement I was seeing in "Blade:Trinity" and "Flight of the Phoenix", was prevalent in TV, where all you see of a computer person is the top of their head, with the back of the computer screen in full view (and of course, that bright shining apple on the back of the screen).

This got me started thinking about what Apple's doing in Hollywood. It's easy to say that they are doing the same product placement that everyone else is doing, but I don't think that's true. I've seen lots of TV shows and movies where people only use Apple computers and Apple hardware (like IPods). There seems to be an inordinate amount of Apple hardware, as compared to others. How many times have we seen a guy on CSI show his forensics report on his computer with a penguin background? How many recent TV shows have shown a person listening to music on his walkman?

Now I should point out that all of this is guesswork based on observations made of the end product (the movie or TV show). I have no inside knowledge, and do not speak from a position of authority (hell, I'm just an out-of-work programmer. I get all my info from the web).

The first stone to throw is the Microsoft analogy. Why do you not see any AMDs or IBMs in movies? Because Apple pays big money to be the sole supplier to Hollywood.

The second stone is related to that deal. How did Apple get such a sweet deal? Well, there's two sides to that one. The first is, most computer suppliers don't want in on Hollywood. They don't figure that people are going to buy a laptop because it looks like the one that Vincent D'Onofrio uses on "Law and Order: Criminal Intent". The major computer industry is hoping that people are going to do more research, and buy the system that best suits them.

However, there is another side to this: Hollywood wants Apple. The MPAA is seriously interested in Digital Rights Management (DRM). For those of you who don't know what DRM is, it's a way of limiting users abilities to preserver the copyright of the producers. While that sounds very logical and magnanimous, DRM itself has become a monster that it's creators can't control.

The very first ability that content producers tried to limit was the ability to copy content. This means that, while you can make a backup of your VHS movies, you cannot make backups of your DVDs (they call that stealing). Next, they tried to take away the ability to skip over sections you didn't want to watch (because that leads to skipping over commercials). Of course, that lead to the discussion of removing the Fast Forward button, and now, oddly, they are trying to remove the Pause button (I don't even understand the rationale behind that). They want to use DRM to control how many times you can watch media. If you store information on a PVR, they want to control how long it stays stored before disappearing. And of course, you can't copy anything from one place to another.

So basically, the MPAA is becoming demonized (just like the RIAA) by the intelligent people who pay attention to the media landscape, and fight for their rights. DRM itself is now becoming a buying feature for hardware:
"Well, I really like this HDTV, and I love that it's tied in with the PVR, but I can't buy it because it's built by Time Warner. I've already read about how they take away viewing rights after a sale. Maybe I'll just buy this other TV instead. It doesn't have as many cool features, but at least I know I'll be able to watch the things that I buy for as long as I want."

So, with DRM demonized and the MPAA trying to figure out how to get people to buy the stuff, they turn to a white knight, Apple. Apple agrees with DRM, they have closed formats for audio and video. They have already limited their IPods after the sale, and have forced people to get ITunes "upgrades" that limit their media rights. So we end up with a culture where Apple needs the advertising that TV and Hollywood can give them, and the MPAA needs people to buy Apple products so they can limit viewing possibilities.

It's like a match made in heaven!


- posted by BrandG @ 12:07 PM 6 comments

 
Painful night of Mainstream Film
So, I just got back from mainstream movie night. It doesn't happen that often, but occasionally, the missus and I will go out and watch what Hollywood wants us to watch. No "Donnie Darko", no "Equilibrium". This is just a night to watch the kind of mindless pap that Hollywood has been gleefully spooning out.

We always go to the Alamo Drafthouse, because they've built one near us, and it's always a great experience. For those who don't live in Austin (which is to say, nearly everyone), I should let you know that the Alamo Drafthouse is the single coolest movie experience you can have. They have all kinds of promotions (like, everybody gets a free beanie cap if they come to the opening night for "The life Aquatic"). They show avant-guarde stuff (like a montage movie called "The 100 greatest kills" which features 100 movie film deaths). Best thing about the Alamo Drafthouse is taken from a line in Pulp Fiction,

"Well, in Amsterdam, you can buy beer in a movie theatre. And I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer, like in a bar."

At the Alamo, you can have pizzas, beer, wine, cheesesticks, deserts, and a movie. It's just all kinds of cool.

The very first time I went to the Alamo drafthouse was when I was on a job interview for Kinesoft, and the lead programmer took me to see "Fight Club" at the Alamo. At least, I think it was "Fight Club". Either way, I'm straying from the point.

Tonight, we were able to see these hallowed halls profaned by "Flight of the Phoenix" and "Ocean's 12". Wow. I mean, really, wow. I've seen worse films, and that's about as kind as I can be.

[ spoilers follow ]

Let's start with Ocean's 12 (about the worst movie sequel title possible, I suppose we can expect to see Seth Green in Ocean's 13?). I remember Ocean's 11 was pretty bad, largely due to the almost unbelievable theft plans. However, it did have one saving grace in that the interpersonal relationships were very strong, and they evolved in the course of the film.

None of that in Ocean's 12. We have apparently added Catherine Zeta Jones and Bernie Mac to the cast, and by having such a huge ensemble cast, everybody gets no lines. This is really a movie about Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta Jones, and George Clooney. Everyone else is a walk-on.

Bernie Mac is especially underused, and I have to thank the filmmakers for that. Check this out, Bernie Mac gets five times as many lines as Eddie Izzard, but Izzard shines over Mac. How is that possible? One of them is a stand-up comic, actor, and genuinely funny person. The other is Bernie Mac.

However, that is probably the only kindness the filmmakers deserve. The storyline is atrocious, the characters are either two-dimensional or bored silly. Brad Pitt and George Clooney sit and look bored through most of the film. The only scene that has any energy in it is when (and it pains me even to relate this concept to you), Tess (played by Julia Roberts) creates a distraction by pretending to be the famous movie star, JULIA ROBERTS! Get that? The only scene with any energy to it is the one where Julia Roberts pretends that she's meeting Bruce Willis for the first time, and she's pretending to be Julia Roberts. Seriously, it was painful to watch.

I mean, once you've broken down the fourth wall there, why not just go all the way, have Bruce Willis turn to the others and say, "Wait a minute, you look just like that kid from 'Good Will Hunting'! And you over there, weren't you in 'The United States of Leland'? And my God! You're comedy legend, Carl Reiner, aren't you?"

Pathetic.

Moving on to "Flight of the Phoenix", I honestly don't think it was as bad as "Ocean's 12". It was pretty bad though. From simple logic problems (like, "I found bullet casings next to a man's corpse. He must have been used for target practice." If they were using him for target practice, the shells would have been at some distance away from the body, wouldn't they? Not much practice shooting a guy who's half a foot away from you.) to much larger story problems (like all of them getting shot at while hanging onto a wing, and nobody getting hit, or having them doing stunts with an experimental mock-up of a plane).

Probably the thing that bothers me the most was the IPod commercial. Now first, let me say, I love IPods and I love Apple for making them. They make it really easy to carry what feels like an infinite supply of music with you. However, this is the second movie where I've seen a really blatant IPod commercial.

In Blade:Trinity, we find out that the girl from Seventh Heaven likes to listen to hard rock while she kills Vampires. It's not like you need to hear them sneaking up on you or anything.

You know that scene where they do extreme zooms on a team as they get their gear ready? We see Wesley Snipes sharpen the blades of his Katanas, we see the "Van Wilder" guy loading clips in his nine, and we see Jessica Biel messing with ITunes so that she has just the right playlist for that night's hunt. It makes a person cringe.

In "Flight of the Phoenix" we are treated to a scene where the whole crew dance to "Hey-Ya" while fixing up the plane. It's not quite the worst scene in the movie, but it still makes a person cringe. I was fully expecting something like this:

"We're lost in the desert, with almost no water or food. All our flashlights have gone out, but the IPod batteries still crank out the fresh tunes!"
"You're right. And as long as we've got this party started, I should tell everyone that I found a cache of ice cold refreshing Pepsi in the plane!"
"Woo-hoo! You're right! This is gonna be some par-tay!!"

I think the thing that really bothered me about "Flight of the Intruder" was the lack of Karma. They've got a character in there who is genuinely vile. I mean, totally lacking in kindness, charity, human decency, anything. He's so broadly drawn, that he's almost a Montgomery Burns, cartoon villain. You have to assume he's the bad guy, and will get what's coming to him.

However, by the end of the film, they only show that all people can get together. They teach that heroes can work with total bastards to make a better life for everyone. By the end of it, I felt cheated that the nameless Asians didn't kill him (I can't come up with a better name for them, because the movie didn't think it was important enough to identify the largest potential threat to our heroes.)

Now here's the weird part. I love it when people throw out cliches and conventions, and make movies more spontaneous, original, and alive. Therefore, this slight deviation from the standard, this lack of Karmic retribution, should please me greatly. But the thing is, it pissed me off because I wasn't in the arthouse mindset. If you're going to do a truly artistic movie, then yes, throw out conventions with abandon. If, on the other hand, you are going to make a standard Hollywood crap film, you'd better stick to the cliches, or everyone will get mad.

When I walked into that theater, I made a deal with the movie makers. We may not have discussed it, but I agreed not to argue about the incredible story gaffes, plot flaws, bad writing, or any of that. In exchange, I expect the good guys to win, the bad guys to lose, some minor plot twist that I could see coming a mile away, and lots of pretty explosions.

Somehow, the fact that they broke our unspoken contract was the biggest problem with an otherwise barely passable movie.

Sorry about this long post, I just had to get it out of my head.
- posted by BrandG @ 12:09 AM 3 comments

 
Whoa, this is weird
Okay, so I've been away for a bit. What with Christmas, and the textbook, and stuff, the only substative entry I've made so far was the dog stuff. So naturally, I expected readership and interest to wane.

But here's the weird thing. Every possible indicator says that my blog is doing gangbusters in my absence. I've had lots of hits this week. I've had more people blogmark my site in the last week than I did in any previous month. I've even been making money on the Google AdSense ads!! Get this, in the first three months of operation, I made about a buck fifty on AdSense. In the last week, I've made three bucks!!! That may not sound like much to you guys (it doesn't even really sound like much to me), but if it's an indication of acceleration rather than speed, this blog could take off!!

So tell me, faithful readers, what made you stick around? Or perhaps a better question, what would make this blog more interesting to you?

Here are some blog standbys that I've tried to avoid:

1. Big News. If it's big news, there's a good chance you've already seen it, and I don't expect to scoop CNN on my little blog.
2. Political Commentary. If I have a choice between reaffirming your current beliefs and writing the same contrarian viewpoints you've already seen, I'll choose silence. When I've got a truly original opinion I'll gladly use this forum to piss off half of you, and please the other half.
3. Day-in-the-life posts. God, I hate those. I know I've done a couple of those in the past, but I really, honestly hate them. I'm not talking about the ones where something happens that makes you seriously think, and you use the blog to explore those thoughts and share them with others. I mean the ones where you talk about the things that you did during the day, when the day is no different from any other day. God, how I hate those posts. But I digress.
   

When I've seen something cool on a blog, I've cribbed it (which is how I got the blogchalking and bloginality and stuff). But is there something I'm missing? Something you guys would rather see here?

Of course, this gets back to the first comment I ever got, which was, "The posts are to long." In that vein. . .


Video for the day: Matrix Pong

- posted by BrandG @ 11:53 PM 4 comments

 
Dog Stuff.
Don't worry, this isn't one of those "Look at what my cute little doggies did" post. I generally don't do those.

However, my wife has an eclectic sense of humor, and a hawk's tunnel vision for e-bay auctions. And one day, she bought two very cool dog toys. The first was called the BowLingual (the dog translator). The way it works is that you strap a wireless microphone onto the collar of your dog, and you hold the cute little receiver. When your dog barks, the microphone picks it up, relays that bark to your receiver, which completely ignores all inputs, and rolls a 20-sided die to tell you what your dog is thinking.

At least, that's the way it seemed to me. I put this one on of my dogs, powered up the system, and in the first setup menu, it asks for the breed of dog. It had a huge list of dogs, many of which, I'd never heard of (like the Bovier de Flandres, voted breed most likely to have it's milk money stolen.) Well, crap. My dogs are both shelter rescues, mutts, so it was pretty tough to guess what breed the dog was. How do you tell it, "It's a black dog, about the size of a lab, but definitely not a lab because of that thin snout, and those thin legs. Also, it seems to have a greyhound's powerful back legs, and a terriers tail."

I went with "Mixed breed, Medium Size, large snout".

After setting up the rest of the dog's "profile", I went to "Bark Translation Mode". The system waited for a moment, processed and analyzed an incoming bark, then told me that my dog was threatening me. It showed a cute little picture of a dog growling. Now I thought that was pretty odd, because the dog hadn't even barked yet. I noticed that after a few minutes of the dog not barking, there were angry messages queuing up. My guess is that the problem was one of three things: 1) The system was totally random. I'm not discounting that one yet. 2) The ID tag, Rabies tag, and name tag were jingling enough to make the translator think that the dog was barking, or my personal favorite 3) The BowLingual was reading my dog's mind.

Now suddenly I found myself sitting not three feet away from an animal that clearly wanted to kill me, and it was only through the power of BowLingual that I was able to see into the dog's dark intent. Oh, you can hide a lot of hate behind cute, sparkling eyes, and a lolling tongue. If only Cujo's owners had been armed with a BowLingual.

After heroically jumping up and scrabbling away from the dog in, what now seems like, a awkward and cowardly way, I monitored the BowLingual from my post on the chandelier. My dog seemed to move through a series of emotions, through jealousy, anger, joy, and sorrow, all while staring up at me with her head cocked to one side.

When someone knocked on the door, and the dogs started barking at her, the BowLingual did relate threatening messages, but I just didn't trust it given how sensitive the microphone was.

I should point out that later, when we tried it on a purebred collie that belonged to a friend, the BowLingual performed like a champ, giving accurate (at least, context-sensitive believable) answers. So, maybe it just couldn't handle either of my mix-breed dogs.

You know what we discovered from hearing exactly what the dog was thinking? We found out that we already knew pretty much what the dog was thinking. They are apparently pretty good at getting their intentions across, without needing a common symbolic representation of ideas and things. When a dog puts his nose in your food, he wants your food. When a dog growls at you while you try to move it from your seat, you don't need a translator for that.

The other nifty invention that my wife found for our dogs was a bark inhibitor. It was a little battery-operated thing that you strapped onto the dog's collar. It also had a microphone, but whenever it heard a loud noise (like a dog bark), it would emit a high frequency sound. Now, I must say, that sounds fairly painful and inhumane, but after listening to it for a few days, it's really not a big deal. You see, the frequency wasn't any higher than human hearing, so whenever it heard a bark, it would emit a loud noise that was more annoying than the bark.

This microphone was also more sensitive than it needed to be, so any time the dog's collar would jingle, there would be a high-pitched screech. Every time the dogs barked, played, or moved, there would be a painful beep.

For a few minutes, the dogs were surprised by this. And, for the first few hours, it might have even stopped them from barking. Soon, though, they got used to it, and got to where they would ignore it. Now, I could hear the dogs barking outside with a loud beeping to accompany it. The dogs got so accustomed to it, that they would bark and play freely in the house, while their collars beeped incessantly. So, we got rid of that one.

The obvious social experiment was, what if you put the BowLingual on to translate barks, and the bark inhibitor to stop the dog from barking? First of all, I'm sure I was giving my dog cancer by putting so many battery powered things on its collar. It must have been pretty heavy, too, though the dog seemed not to mind. And, the first time she moved, the bark inhibitor went off, and the BowLingual caught it. A little picture of a dog holding it's paws over its ears came up, with the message, "Ow! Turn that stupid thing off!" So ends the grand experiment.

So now, I've got a new idea. This one should be cool. I'm thinking the real problem is that I don't have a way to just contact the dogs while they're out barking. Usually, by the time I get to them to stop them, they've already seen me coming and stopped on their own. I need a remote control to contact them, and that's what gave me this idea.

I'm going to sign up my dog for a cel-phone. I'm going to set it to vibrate, lock the buttons, and strap it to her collar. I'm going to set the custom ring tone to my voice shouting, "No! Stop! Bad Dog!"

This way, next time the dog starts barking, I can just ring her up and give her a shock!

Video of the day: DUI Stop
- posted by BrandG @ 12:40 PM 0 comments

 
Missing a vowel.
Short, funny moment:

When I heard about the TV show "Lost" I set up the TiVo to record them all, but I hadn't watched any until yesterday. My wife and I have been watching all the episodes in one big block, and we got up to the last one today.

So I walked into the kitchen and said, "You wanna watch the last Lost in the list, lest we lose it?"

She slitted her eyes at me, and said, "You're trying to fit the word 'lust' into that question, aren't you?"

- posted by BrandG @ 1:44 PM 2 comments

 
Too busy to think funny.
I've been working on these chapters pretty much non-stop today. I'm so freakin' tired.

Unfortunately, I've been to busy to even read the news or pay much attention to current events. One thing I saw did really burn me up. Apparently, a seventh grader was booted from a school "holiday dance" for wearing a Santa suit.

The principal defends this decision by saying that there are many children who attend the school who are not Christians, and he didn't want to upset them. Because, as you know, Hindi children are stricken dumb with fright at the sight of Santa Claus.

I'm not religious, and I'm not arguing in favor of Christians, but dammit, Santa isn't religious either! Apparently, the offending seventh grader was going with a friend who wore a green hat and elf ears. Why they didn't throw the other kid out on his elf ass, for Christmas by association, I'll never know.

This could be a really slippery slope for people. Last year, we banned Christmas as a separation of church and state. This year, we're banning people who try to look like Santa. Next year, we're banning anyone looking jolly or giving gifts to one another. And the year after that, we take out the Clydesdales. One day, we will finally be able to abolish snow, and then we will have finally wiped this horrible season of kindness, generosity, and joy.

My wife says I'm taking this too far, but I think snow has as much to do with the religious celebration of Christmas as Santa has.

A better solution? Allow all the kids to dress up as whatever the hell they want, as long as it's not religious. I agree, the state has no place telling people what religion to follow, but again, Santa's not religious!!!

By the way, we do kick kids out of school for wearing burkas, right?

Video of the day: Red Sox

- posted by BrandG @ 9:30 PM 0 comments

 
3D Willy
Okay, I'll admit that title came out a lot more lewd than I'd intended, but at least it does describe the content.

First off, I have to apologize both to you, the discerning reader, and to myself, because I promised I wouldn't let this happen. It's been more than two days since my last post. Sorry about that, but I actually have been really busy recently.

I have already mentioned that I was working on a video game textbook, and that's kinda fun. However, I'm working with an engine that I had never even seen two weeks ago. I've had to immerse myself in this engine (the Torque engine, if you care), so that I can write intelligently about it. The downside is, while I'm writing, I'm constantly second-guessing myself.

It takes three times as long for me to write a sentence like "Dynamic objects must be instantiated through script or through code." Because I keep thinking to myself, "Is there some way to do that with the editor? I should check the forums to make sure. Nope. No listing. But, does that mean nobody's done it, or that it can't be done?". Then I dive back into the documentation and forums to check again.

My wife says that I'm worrying about it too much, then adds that she's proud of me for being so thorough. Somehow, I feel like I'm being thorough in a Woody Allen sort of way, where I'm overanalyzing every minute detail, giving each two minutes of angst, then going ahead with it anyway.

So anyway, I was thinking about a game, combination FPS and third-person shooter. I'd like to combine the environment of Willy Beamish with the gameplay of GTA (where there are lots of little missions to choose from). Picture this: You play an ordinary kid in the suburbs. You want to go to the local QuikMart to get a smoothie, but the entrance is blocked by three big bullies. You know that the only way to really stop a bully is by getting a bunch of your friends with you (positive proactive message saying that friends working together can always beat the bad guys). So, you have a list of icons on your map that tell you where you can find each of your friends.

You go talk to Skippy who says, "Mom won't let me go until I pick up all the trash in the front yard. Thing is, she wants me to get the whole yard done in the next thirty seconds, or I'm grounded!" So now, you go running through the yard, picking up all the trash, and when you beat that level, Skippy will follow you.

Next you go to Butch's house (BTW, you could pick which ever missions you want in whatever order, I'm just using this as an expedient). Butch says, "I'd love to help, but my Dad wants me to help with fixing the car. He gave me these four tubes, but I don't know where to put them to fix the car. Can you help?" So now we have a puzzle game.

You get the idea, you gather up all your friends, go to the QuikMart, and have a quick FMV not-violent confrontation. You and all your friends are enjoying your smoothies when suddenly there's a bright flash of light from inside one of the freezers. A weird, wacky alien (picture Doc Brown from "Back to the Future") comes out of the freezer and says, "You must help me, the future of your planet is at stake!"

He explains to you that there are enemy aliens pouring onto your planet. He says they can camouflage themselves to look like anything, and the only way to see their true nature is to look at them through these glasses (hands you a pair of "X-RAY specs"). The alien tells you that the "bad" aliens are deathly afraid of water, so if you shoot them with a water gun, they will retreat to their spaceship.

So now, armed with your new specs, you go out and start looking for the bad aliens. Thing is, there are adults all over the street, and when one of the adults looks in the direction of an alien, it turns into something else (a tree, bush, fire hydrant, mailbox, etc.)

You should be able to walk into any house on the street (although people will indignantly shout, "What are you doing in here?"), and there should be other hidden games/puzzles all around the street.

Of course, there would be more storyline leading to more environments (Downtown, Airport, Spaceship interior). It's just an idea that's stuck with me for the past few days. It would certainly be fun to do.

Video of the Day: Talking Dogs
- posted by BrandG @ 1:12 AM 1 comments

 
Game / Life Ratio
The electrician came by today because we seem to have destroyed a 50 amp fuse. As I plug in the third space heater between the six desktop systems, the big screen TV and the three game systems, I'm pretty secure in blaming that space heater.

He started talking about how he spends all his time on Dark Age of Camelot, and how he is a really high-ranking GM. At one point, he told me that he had instructed two of the clerics in his guild to cancel their holiday plans, because he didn't intend to be missing any buffs over Christmas. On the outside, I'm smiling and nodding. On the inside, I'm shaking my head in pity. He reminded me of another soul I'd encountered briefly about a year ago.

When I was visiting my parents in Vegas, I was going through the obligatory hotel/casino walk. While I was waiting for my parents (I forget what they were doing, shopping, maybe), I saw this girl standing listlessly on a Dance, Dance Revolution machine. I say she was a girl, despite the fact that she was probably as old as I was. She was as thin as a crack whore, pale, and gaunt, with stringy blonde hair tied up into a short ponytail. She was wearing gray baggy sweats, and an oversized dark blue hoodie. She had her hands in the front pocket, and she just stared down at her shoes. For a moment, I wondered what she was looking at, then I realized she was just waiting, as suddenly her legs started pistoning under her.

Her torso didn't move at all, her hands never left the pocket of the hoodie, but her feet touched the pad with precision, timing, and grace. I watched her go through three levels like that, rarely looking up at the screen, and only taking her hand out once to scratch her nose.

Later that day, I saw her again, this time dressed in a blackjack dealer's suit. Her hands moved with deft precision and light swiftness, but again, her expression never changed. She never looked up from the table. She had the practiced ease of an experienced game player, but almost no joy at all. It seemed unbelievably sad to me.

She was an extreme example, there probably aren't many out there like her. However, the world is full of people like my electrician. People who honestly, seriously live for the game, not out of a sense of fun, community, or even accomplishment. To them, it's a job. He talks about how he gets a certain amount of XP per day, while it takes others a week to do it. He talks about his buff bots, and speed bots, like a craftsman showing off his favorite tools. I picture him listlessly skimming through forums every night, trying to find new tips, tricks, and God forbid, exploits.

There are a lot of people out there like that. They live for the game, then they live through the game, then they just game without living. I don't want to call it an addiction, because it's probably just as easy for them to stop as it is for a person to switch jobs. Still, it's really sad because it is more like a job than a game.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Video of the Day: Dangerous Place

- posted by BrandG @ 11:24 PM 3 comments

 
I love bad Eggnog
It's not a popular sentiment, I'll grant you, but I just love the stuff. I could drink it all year round. No kidding.

I should point out that I'm not talking about the "good" eggnog. You know, the stuff that's basically just a way of thickening a whiskey drink, so you don't get drunk as fast. I mean the "bad" eggnog. The non-alcoholic kind that you can get from any corner store. The kind that Californians wrinkle their noses at, and turn away from you in disgust.

It tastes like butter, sugar, milk, and just a little bit of egg (to make the drink thicker). It's so thick you can sip it and still feel full. You can warm it and have a sustaining bracer against the winter wind. Myself, I gulp it down cold until I get an ice-cream headache. I'm just weird like that.

It looks horrible, yellow and thick, with tiny seeds in it (that I dare not inquire about). The taste is a sugar rush that puts Mountain Dew to shame. Were it not for my increasing waistline and the fact that they don't stock it all year, I would drink it with every meal. And between meals, while I'm working. And as a midnight snack. . .

Video of the Day: Snow Blind
- posted by BrandG @ 9:40 PM 4 comments

 
Busy Day
Okay, I just started work today writing a few chapters of a textbook on Video Game development, so I'm going to be a little busy for a while. I'll try to write in when I can, but it will probably be a little less often. It should only be a couple of 10-day jobs, so I expect I'll be back to full unemployment by mid-January at the latest.

I've got details on the Austin Acclaim Auction, but I'll have to transcribe my notes later.

Video of the day: Two-legged Dog.
- posted by BrandG @ 3:50 PM 0 comments

 
Video Blog Test
I don't have a camera or anything, but I get a lot of short video clips that are usually pretty cool. Anyway, I wanted to try using my server to start offering these movies to you guys. Here's a couple:

The new Citroën C4

5 Drums

What do you guys think? More of this kind of stuff?
- posted by BrandG @ 3:20 PM 4 comments

 
Acclaim Austin Auction - The Precursor Legend
So I went back to Acclaim for the first time in about a month. We were viewing all the Acclaim property up for grabs before the auction tomorrow. I saw a few friends there, but a lot of angry looking, older people who seemed to be there for the sheer mercenary pleasure of the auction. I try not to be angry with them, because really, they're just doing the same as everyone else. Still, it feels like a family member just died, and we're watching people go through their clothes, digging through delicates and arguing about how much they're willing to pay.

The whole place was gutted worse than last time, with everything moved into rooms devoted to their items. I walked into a room that was full from floor to ceiling with a wall of phones stacked on top of each other. Standing just in front of the phones was a woman talking to someone on her cel. Man, sometimes I wish I had a camera phone just for those unintentionally ironic moments.

Anyway, there was a room devoted to Wacom tablets, a room devoted to PS2 Dev systems, a room for XBox dev systems, and room after room of systems. Man, I had no idea there were that many. I'm hoping to pick up a dual Xeon 2.4ghz machine, like the one I was working on in my office. It was sweet. If I get it, it'll be the first system in the house that can run Doom3. Hah!

Still, I'm over Doom3. By the time you get to hell, the game just seems all downhill. I'm really more into creating a better server for FTP, Apache, and other stuff. What I'm using right now is entirely capable, but it is getting old.

Back to the auction. For the first time, I was allowed to go into the main server room, where we had racks of systems from floor to ceiling. It felt like an Intel ad, or one of those ads that's trying to convince you that Windows makes a good server. Now, I'm not as tech as some people there, so maybe this makes perfect sense, but I saw an oscilloscope in the middle of one of the server racks. Is it just me, or is that really old school?

The thing that really got me was one box that was clearly made up of stuff taken out of somebody's office. I happen to know it was Bruce Cooner's office, and I'm tempted to win that box of stuff just so that I can send it back to Bruce. Well, maybe. I might keep the Vexx doll.

Anyway, we'll see what happens tomorrow. Tomorrow, they're having the actual auction.

- posted by BrandG @ 5:18 PM 0 comments

 
Disneyland Senior Trip
True Story.

When I went on my senior trip, we went to Disneyland. Now, this is not the uber-cool DisneyWorld on the East coast. This is the smaller, paler, cramped version that you find in California. Almost every ride that was in DisneyWorld was mirrored in a smaller, dirtier version in DisneyLand.

I had already been to DisneyWorld, so I'd seen the good stuff already. We had rented rooms at a hotel just a block or so from DisneyLand, so when I got bored, I just decided to walk back to the hotel.

Now, there's an interesting phenomenon about DisneyLand and the world around it. In DisneyWorld, they own all the land around the park, so they can maintain the same level of cleanliness, and make it look like the park is the only thing in the world. However, in DisneyLand, there is a sudden division between the park and the world around it. When you step just outside of the park, you are suddenly surrounded by gas stations, sex shops, newsstands, and general urban development. It's actually a very weird feeling, and I looked back a couple of times to relish in the contrast.

I was about half a block away from the park when a prostitute walked up to me. I guessed she was a pro based on her outfit, and the fact that she was approaching a total stranger. But what really convinced me was when she said, "Hey, you want to sleep with me for fifty bucks?"

Now, you have to understand that I was just a seventeen-year old virgin, a nerd in the classic sense of the word, from the big thick glasses to the acne riddled face. I had absolutely no experience with women, so I had no idea how to respond.

I went with the first thing that popped into my head, "Well, I'd have to see the money first."

Before she could figure that one out, I continued walking back to the hotel.
- posted by BrandG @ 11:08 PM 3 comments

 
The Cardinal Sin of Gaming
There's a part of GTA: San Andreas that involves "capturing" hoods. You go into an enemy's territory, start up a gang war (by shooting several of the enemy gang members), then survive through three waves of attacks. If you survive all three waves, the hood is yours and marked with your color on the map. You first learn how to do this after a mission called "Doberman" and you are encouraged to take over as many hoods as possible. Each time you take over a hood, you gain money and respect. Perhaps more importantly, when you take over a hood, your gang members show up there, and the enemy gang members don't (at least, not nearly as many).

Of course, I tend to take over all the hoods, which takes several days of gameplay, but it's a great feeling. Once you've taken over all of Los Santos, you can drive around anywhere, and know that there's almost no chance of running into an enemy gang, or getting shot at as you cross the street.

However, when you progress in the story far enough that you reach your first betrayal (you knew there had to be betrayals), you leave Los Santos, and the whole game changes. Instead of fighting in the urban jungle, you now have access to the "Badlands", a large open area surrounding Los Santos, full of forests, lakes, hills and mountains.

The game goals also have completely changed. All the missions you are given are in that open area, and although you can drive back to Los Santos, there's almost no reason to do it. After all, you lost all of your hoods.

That's right. Days of gameplay gone in an instant. Suddenly, as you drive down the street, Ballas or Vagos will shoot out your tires. They are all around, everywhere you go, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. You couldn't even start up gang wars and win back the territory (even if you wanted to go through the whole egregious procedure again).

Now, I haven't finished the game, and for all I know, I win back the hoods. Perhaps, at some point, they just blink back in and show that I've still captured all the hoods. But for now, that is supremely depressing. I lost a huge source of income, but more importantly, I lost security in my home town.

I know why Rockstar did this. They want the story change to be poignant and noticeable. They want it to hurt. All the same, I can't help but think this is the most horrible sin a game can commit.

Once a person wins something, let them keep it. When Mario gets to the castle, don't tell him, "Sorry Mario, but the princess is in another castle". Make sure that the player has a sense that what he's doing matters, that it makes sense, and that he is truly earning what he has. If something has to be taken away, make sure that it's a bad guy who takes it, and make sure that the player knows he can get it back.

There's a social contract between the player and the game. One of the unspoken laws is that, if I follow the game's rules, I should get the rewards the game promises. Of course, there are exceptions (for instance, taking all of a player's weapons away when he's put in prison), but there should always be a way to recover from that (by letting him find his weapons in the prison storage area, after he has broken out).

You see, the game holds all the cards. It can define at any moment how many weapons I have, how much ammo I have, how much health I have, even which direction gravity is leaning. With that much power, we have to have faith that the game will only make those changes when absolutely necessary for gameplay. Without that faith, we can't respect the game itself.

I worked on a game once called Turok:Evolution, and I was responsible for the weapons code. When the designers noticed that certain weapons would give the player an unfair advantage in certain levels, they set up a system that would make the player just lose those weapons in those levels. You would just have the weapons at the end of one level, then not have them at the beginning of the next. There would be no explanation for it (but then, there was damned little explanation of anything in Turok).

I said at the time, and I still believe that this is a big mistake. It should be taboo, this cavalier asset theft. Every status change should have a reason, and should be recoverable. To ignore the game's responsibility is to commit the greatest breach of faith; and as such it should receive the greatest punishment.

Obscurity.

- posted by BrandG @ 6:22 PM 4 comments

 
More Experiment Results
On day one of my experiment, I shut off all BlogExplosion promotion, and found that I got about ten visits, with an average of one page view per visit. This makes sense, because people who come to the site without advertisements, have probably already read the background stuff, and are probably just reading the new day's story.

Yesterday, day two of the experiment, I turned on the banner ads, but left the normal surfer promotion starved for credits. On that day, I got around forty visits with around eighty page views. And, looking at the data, it was a more consistent two page views per person. So, it could be argued that the banner ads provide more "real" viewers.

As a side note, the experiment gave me a chance to see where a lot of my visits were coming from. Most were from the banner ads, but I also saw a few from "Preponderance of Ponderings", SEV's blog, and a couple of new ones. I'm apparently listed on Swift's blog, and del.icio.us, so that's cool too. I'll be putting up buttons to their sites soon.

So, anyway, when I was applying 100 credits to the blog every day, and funding the banners as well, I was getting about 100 to 130 visits a day, and only 110 to 150 in page views, so that comes to about one page view per person. Now most of that can obviously be seen as the 100 credits I had put into the blog, but I think the blog's "popularity" is growing more through the banners than the surfers.

It makes sense, because people who click on the banners are people who are already curious about my warped imaginings (as compared to those who are just 'doing time' for their thirty seconds). I'm seriously thinking about just paying for the banners, and ignoring the surfing credits.

Speaking of banners, hey, click on the picture of the IPod, and help me win it, so I can get rid of that red banner up top. If you sign up for the Video Professor, you can immediately cancel and you can be on your way to getting an IPod of your own.
- posted by BrandG @ 2:35 AM 4 comments

 
Had a kinda weird moment there.
Have you ever been caught by an idea, something that you just had to think through, no matter how unimportant it seems?

This morning, I had a problem with a very simple set of functions. All they had to was convert a pixel coordinate to a tile location. See, in this graph:



You're given a pixel location, and you want to find out what tile that pixel coincides with. There are easy brute force ways, but of course, programmers want the math ways. And besides, the math isn't that tough. The basic formula is:

TileX = (PixelX / TileWidth) + (PixelY / TileHeight)
TileY = (PixelY / TileHeight) - (PixelX / TileWidth)

But for some reason, in my squirrelly little head, I thought that I could come up with something more optimal. I decided I would take the X pixel component, find out what row that coincided to, then subtract that height from the Y pixel component, and get the distance in TileHeights from that, then just add this new distance to both the X and Y components to find my new location!

Simple, huh?

Actually, it was a really stupid way to make something easy into something really complex. But I just couldn't get it out of my head. I mean, what if, after reducing this complex setup, it actually was more optimal?

So I sat down and built the formulas, reduced them as much as I could, coerced them and massaged them, until I finally came up with this:

TileX = (PixelX / TileWidth) + (PixelY / TileHeight)
TileY = (PixelY / TileHeight) - (PixelX / TileWidth)

Great. It took me three hours to build a mathematical formula that had been around for, oh, I don't know, about a thousand years.

And people tell me I'm smart.

So then, resolved and frustrated, telling myself that Edison found a thousand ways to not make a lightbulb before he found out how to make one (maybe I just found another way not to derive a 2D transformation?), I decided to take a short walk outside.

The leaves had fallen fairly recently (remember, in Texas we get our winters late, and light), so I decided to rake the leaves. At night.

Well, it was physical exertion, and that's what my tired, stupid mind wanted right then. So I raked leaves in the dark. I was guided only by a flickering, tired porchlight.

I managed to rake the whole front yard, and as I gathered all the leaves into one big pile, I noticed that I was subconsciously fretting with the pile of leaves. I didn't mean to do it, but I formed the leaves into a pile about six feet long, three feet wide, and two feet tall. It was weird, I felt kinda like Richard Dreyfuss with a plate of mashed potatoes. And when I was done, I looked at what I'd made.

It was a grave. I don't know why, but I'd managed to make a pile of leaves look just like a freshly dug grave. Suddenly, I had images of Freddy, Jason, or Evil Eddie jumping out of the leaves and grabbing me.

I think I'm going to go lie down for a while.
- posted by BrandG @ 4:20 PM 0 comments

 
Experiment results
Wow, did I nail it or what? I got 10 unique visits total, with a page view count of 20. I found out about a blog out there () that I didn't know was linking to me, so that was pretty cool.

Most of the page views were from SEV, but I'm not too worried about that because I figure any return business at all is probably just looking at the main page to see what I'm going on about today.

On the whole, pretty much the results I expected. Now I'm going to try loading up the banners, but nothing else, and see if that changes anything.
- posted by BrandG @ 11:32 PM 6 comments

 
Is it just me?
I'm not normally political, but I see a caption to this picture as, "Okay, guys. On three, get him. One, two. . ."


- posted by BrandG @ 4:57 AM 0 comments

 
Running a little experiment today.
Since I've started working with BlogExplosion, I've been using a really simple strategy for credits. I'll buy about $30 in credits each month, and use around 100 credits per day on my blog. Any credits I get from surfing go directly to the blog as well. I also give my two banner ads about 100 credits whenever they run out (which fluctuates pretty wildly).

So, that means that I'm getting about 110 to 140 visits a day, with about 120 to 160 page hits per day. So, if we assume that 100 of those hits are the ones that are just surfers who walk on by after their 30 seconds, then what about those extra visits? Are those the banner ads? Or are they that holy grail of all blogs, the repeat customer?

Recently, my banner ads ran out of credits, so, instead of topping them off, I've let them run out, and today, I won't add any credits to the blog itself. In theory, this will show me how many "real" viewers I've got.

I expect that there will only be about five or ten of you reading this. But understand that if you're reading this on December 8th 2004, then you've got a special place in my heart.
- posted by BrandG @ 3:07 AM 2 comments

 
Don't Blame Me, Blame Society
There's a part of GTA that my wife really hates. The player has a bunch of random phrases that he spouts off based on the context of the moment. For instance, when you pick up money off of a dead enemy, he'll say something like, "I'll take that paper" or "Thanks, I like to share, too".

The thing that pisses my wife off is one of the phrases he uses right after killing someone. The phrase is, "Don't blame me, blame society." Every time she hears it, she asks me to drive off a cliff, or somehow punish the character.

I think the thing that she hates about it is that people are willing to do bad things as long as they think they can blame it on "society". There's a lot of that thinking going around, and it's applicable to all kinds of situations. "I eat a lot because people judge me and call me fat", "I steal because the man won't give a brother a break." That kind of thinking is inherently irresponsible, and leads to irresponsible actions, which degrades society, which gives more people an excuse.

I gotta segue here to something else for a second. The networks are starting to shift their schedules around by a minute or so, adding a minute here or there. The idea behind it is, if you watch a show until 9:01, then you won't change the channel to watch another show that started at 9:00.

I've got a TiVo, and I haven't watched live TV in three years. This means that when they pad the time out, I end up getting a minute clipped off of my shows. Now TiVo may not be an international norm, but there are tens of thousands of people who have a TiVo. Or if not TiVo specifically, then some other kind of PVR; And there are still the people who use the timers on their VCRs. So I can't help but think that a lot of other people are dealing with the same problem I am.

Now, let's look at another data point. BBC Tech news points out that people are spending more time on the Internet, which is eating into TV viewing time.

So, putting these all together, this is what I see happening:

A user is watching his favorite TV show, which is cut off just when the detective says, "You're all wrong. The killer is right here in this room and . . ."

Anguished, the user turns off his TV, and goes over to his computer. He tries to find a synopsis for his show, asks on boards, "I missed the last minute, does anybody know what happened?"

Two posts later, a BitTorrent link pops up. The user clicks on it, maybe not even knowing what BitTorrent is, and about ten minutes later, he sees the whole episode sitting on his desktop.

He gets back on the board, "Thanks! Where did you find that?"

And so, the user finds out about suprnova and newsreaders. Looking through the index, the user sees that he can download an entire season of this show. He finds shows he remembers from his childhood (Wow! Every episode of "The Greatest American Hero"! The pilot episode of "Automan" and "Manimal"!) HDTV quality video! No commercials ever!

At this point, the user has gone from consumer to leech, and by some definitions, a pirate. But in his mind, it's okay, because the networks were the ones who did this to him. The networks put twenty minutes of commercials into every hour. The networks time-shifted their episodes so that his favorites got cut off.

As the networks add one hurdle after another to their shows, aren't they guaranteeing more piracy? Aren't they shooting themselves in the foot and inviting piracy by doing this?

Or, and here's the big question, are we just taking a page from GTA and saying, "Don't blame me. Blame society."
- posted by BrandG @ 2:20 AM 1 comments

 
A Jewish Credit Card
I know, it sounds like the setup to a bad joke, but this is real. One of the largest banks in Israel has started using a credit card that respects the Orthodox Jewish Sabbath.

Now, a little disclaimer here. I'm not Jewish, so if I'm wrong about any of the orthodoxy, please feel free to correct me. My knowledge is just based on a general interest in comparative religion.

Apparently, the credit card will be refused if it's used on the Sabbath. For those who don't know, it is forbidden in the Torah for Jews to work on the Sabbath, and they have a pretty comprehensive description of 'work'. The description is "Any act in which man interferes with nature and shows his mastery over it." For instance, you cannot turn on a light on the Sabbath (however, if a light was on before the Sabbath, you cannot turn it off).

So obviously, you cannot buy or sell on the Sabbath. The interesting thing is the questions that this credit card opens up. For instance, why not take this a step further? Every time you use the credit card on the Sabbath, the bank would refuse the card, and at the same time, send a letter to your rabbi?

My wife pointed out that this would have to be based on the bank's clock, which poses a problem for people outside the city. You see, the Sabbath begins on Friday night at sundown. But what if you happen to be vacationing in Spain? Local sundown is going to be at a different time (good thing they aren't sending a letter to the rabbi, then). Or, and this would be even cooler, have the bank's computer find out where the charge is coming from, look up that local time online, and check weatherchannel.com to find out whether the sun has set where the charge has been made. Now that would be really cool.

- posted by BrandG @ 1:43 AM 0 comments

 
Sworn Enemies
Did you ever notice how many games just start off by handing you a sworn enemy? In GTA San Andreas, they start the game by dropping you in 'Ballas' territory, and the first time you run across one of those gang members, the game tells you that they are your 'sworn enemy.' What I don't get is, Why?

Why are these guys my sworn enemy? Because they killed some of my gang? Sure, but I've killed a whole slew of them, so it's kinda a wash, right? I mean, either we actually keep score, or we just assume that we have to kill everybody. Either way, we've got no real reason for all the hostility.

Some games will start out by giving you a reason for hating the bad guy, and that works out a lot better. You are a simple peasant going about your simple life of collecting mushrooms, when suddenly a boulder destroys your entire village, and as you look up, you see the evil troll grinning down at the smoking crater of your home. . . now that's motivation!

But lots of of the games start you off with a 'sworn enemy' just as an expedient. If you play Sudeki, you start off with them handing you an enemy. An ancient enemy, the Aklorians, who have been at war with your people for some time, and seem to attack you for no reason. At the beginning of any game, I've got nothing but love for all God's people. I find myself more interested in their motivation than angry with them. I kill those that attack me, but I just can't buy into calling them enemies. Then, about half way through the game, you find out that they are not your "real" enemy. In fact, someone else is manipulating both sides to attack each other. Well, how . . . underwhelming. Sorry, it just doesn't feel like betrayal when you don't really love or hate either side.

What's worse is that most games will foreshadow this situation. Look, if you are told to attack somebody, and you aren't given a reason for it, and people actively avoid questions which might mitigate the hatred, chances are you're being manipulated. If you really want to make the players believe a story, you have to give them a believable motivation for both sides. We hate the bad guys because they want to take over our world. Okay, but if you don't tell me why they want our world, then it just doesn't quite gel. These days, it's hard to accept general greed as a motivation, unless you make your enemy so cartoony in his manner that people accept him as generally shallow and two-dimensional.

Now, this would be a great betrayal. The troll destroys your village, and you see him dancing on the mountaintop, gleefully enjoying the destruction. You hear him say, "Boy I really do hate all humans. I just love smashin' em." Okay, at this point, you accept that your story and motivation are going to be two-dimensional, and you just play the game normally, trying to stop, or kill, the troll. Along your jouneys, you pick up a pal who tells you that his village was destroyed by the troll, and he has been following the troll ever since. So, cool. Now you've got a party in the standard video game sense.

But then you notice, in the middle of one of the battles, that the latest village the troll destroyed was a troll village. You notice that your new friend always seems to know just where to go next to head off the troll. Through cutscenes, you notice all kinds of intricate little details (like the troll is always rubbing the silver band around his head, like it was giving him a headache).

If games can do that, start with a simple two-dimensional story, and slowly evolve it through small, incremental clues, it would keep the player's attention, and build them up for a much better betrayal. For instance, the game leaves clues that lead you to believe your new friend is controlling the troll, but does it in a way that seems like the game is trying to keep that secret from you. Then, just when you're expecting the betrayal scene, where you are ready to confront him, you get stabbed from behind by a huge, new enemy with his own army of controlled trolls. You wake up in a jail cell thinking, "What the hell just happened?" Now, that's a sweet setup.

Any story that leads you subtly into building your own idea of which side is good and which is evil, then completely obliterates those beliefs in climactic storyline changes, will be heralded and loved.

- posted by BrandG @ 12:00 AM 2 comments

 
Waste of a Sunset
So I watched "After the Sunset" yesterday. Yes, thank you, Ms. Hayek. They are very nice. You can put them away now.

I watched the movie because it had all the trappings of an Elmore Leonard film. A cast of criminals and thieves, one big score out there, backstabbing, betrayal, and lies. I'm a huge fan of Elmore Leonard, books and movies, because I like to think. I like movies that let me think, and I love movies that force me to think.

This is not one of those movies. It makes me think of a frat house, where in a drunken stupor, the whole fraternity decides to make an intrigue movie, "So, look, all we need is, like, a thief and a cop trying to catch him, right? And the thief's trying to get this one big diamond, and they are, like, outwitting each other. That would be righteous." Somehow, I have absolutely no trouble seeing Woody Harrelson playing the drunken frat member.

Seriously, 'National Treasure' had more intelligent theft plans. The whole thing was written poorly, from Salma Hayek's constant display of sex (SFW sex, if it matters), to Woody Harrelson's idiotic blundering.

Speaking of Salma Hayek's assets, I noticed something kind of odd while watching the movie. As any male in a civilized society, I recognize moments of weakness that I should look away from. For instance, if there's a woman in a low-cut V-neck blouse standing in front of you, and she drops her pencil, you are consciously aware of your line of sight. Maybe you're into that kind of voyeurism, and you blatantly check her out. Myself, I deliberately avert my eyes, the same way I do when the person in front of me at the ATM is typing in their password.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against appreciating the female form. In fact, I like it quite a bit. But I can't bring myself to take advantage of a moment of weakness. It's like violating whatever tenuous relationship you already had with that woman. If she doesn't mean to flash me, I'll look away. If she rips her top off and says, "Hey, whaddaya think of these?" Well, that's a whole different ballpark (a nice ballpark to play in).

If you do that often enough, avert your eyes to avoid mutual discomfort, you get to where it's second nature. You don't even recognize that you're doing it. One minute you are looking at the woman in front of you, and then you're checking your watch for no reason. The funny thing is that, while I was watching "After the Sunset" I found myself subconsciously looking away from the movie because of Salma Hayek's "accidental" displays of cleavage. The best example was when they opened up the hood on a SUV, and she climbed on top of the engine, with her shirt hanging open. Suddenly, I'm looking through my bag of popcorn. Sad, really.

Back to the movie: This was the biggest waste of Don Cheadle since "Oceans 11", and the biggest waste of Pierce Brosnan since, Hmmm . . . let's see, the "Thomas Crown Affair". In fact, that's what this whole movie reminds me of. The Thomas Crown Affair was another example of atrociously stupid writing in one of my favorite genres.

I don't want to keep ranting, so I'll just leave you by saying, it failed to reach the lowest common denominator, and that's coming from an American. I believed "Armageddon" more than this, for crying out loud.

- posted by BrandG @ 11:53 AM 8 comments

 
An Excess of Freedom
Okay, with my back feeling a lot better today, and now that I seem to be seeing the last of whatever cold has been bugging me, I am now able to consider what to do with the rest of my life. To be honest, I've spent the last few weeks just agonizing on how sick I've been, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with my dynamic new lifestyle.

Basically, I can do anything. My wife is making money now, so we're not in any dire need for funding. I don't have a job, so my day is pretty much free. Now, I have spent the last seven years of my life as a video game programmer, and I've spent the last twenty-five years of my life programming, so it's a pretty good guess that I'm going to fall back in with programming. But at least, I have the chance now to consider alternatives.

For instance, here's a brief list of the things I'm currently working on:

• Children's story based on Grimm's fairy tale format.
• Novel based on cryogenic freezing.
• Treatise on the state of ethics in video games.
• Small Civ-clone for the PC/Pocket PC.
• Web-based (using Laszlo) MMORPG City builder game.
• This blog.

So, there's a lot of stuff there, and most of it is writing (wonder if I should put Linux on my laptop, if I don't need MSDev), but even that is just scratching the surface of "what should I do". For instance, I want to get back into Tae Kwon Do, I want to take guitar lessons, I could be a damn fine actor (character actor, probably).

Here's the really weird part. This freedom scares the bejesus out of me. I'm almost paralysed with fear, not the fear of doing the wrong thing, but just the fear of the decision itself. That's why I think I've spent so much time wallowing in sickness, rather than doing anything.

So, little help here guys. What would you do if you could reinvent yourself today?
- posted by BrandG @ 7:09 AM 5 comments

 
Sadly, lacking in lesbian video clips
This is kinda cool. If you hang out with Blog stuff long enough, you find a lot of stuff about SEO, meta tags, and generally how to make search engines find your blog. Personally, I never submitted my blog to any search engines, because I just don't think my blog fits any category that somebody's going to go searching for.

All the same, I got a hit today from somebody who was using Yahoo search to find "video clips two girls massage".

Now, first, how does my site get linked to lesbian porn? Guess you'll have to check Yahoo search to find out. Second, I can only guess how disappointed the reader was when he got my ugly mug on the screen instead of Jenna Jameson & friends.

But third, and this is really cool, he read multiple pages. Now, the shallow pragmatist in me guesses that he was just trolling the site, looking for the hidden porn; but the optimist in me says that he (I'm assuming it's a he) found something interesting and funny in these pages that made him want to stick around and read.

Well, doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy inside.
- posted by BrandG @ 6:54 AM 0 comments

 
My Apologies
I really hate those blog entries that are just fluff about what someone's doing during the day. The ones that go, "Nothing to report. Went to class today. Don't you hate Mondays? Etc."

I promised myself, when I started this blog, that I would adhere to two cardinal rules. Rule 1) Never write a situation report without anything to say. Rule 2) Write every day.

In theory, this would force me to write something interesting and worthwhile every day. In doing so, this would force me to think of something interesting and worthwhile every day.

So on to my apology, I'm about to break both rules. I have to explain why I'm not writing that much, and in order to do that, I have to give you a situation report.

About a year ago, I screwed up my back pretty good when somebody kicked me during a Tae Kwon Do test. At the time, the doctor said it was all musculature, and gave me some meds to relax the muscles. It worked great, and my back got all better, until July, when I picked up a 55 lb. bag of dog food. Suddenly, my back started giving out on me again. Not terribly, I could still function, but it was always there as a nagging reminder that I should never pick up anything again.

So, today I had an appointment scheduled with a Massage Therapist, and I came down with a cold. It wasn't a bad cold, not enough to cancel the appointment, but enough to make the world a little swimmy.

During the massage therapy, he tells me that by loosening up the muscles, they will be dumping a bunch of poisons into the bloodstream (because the muscles had previously been to pinched to circulate normally). He tells me that I should expect to feel a little sick for a few days.

Did I mention I would also be sore after the therapy? Of course, I knew that going in. But, see, here's the thing. I'm currently suffering from the following issues 1) Bad back, 2) slight cold, 3) sore back, and 4) muscle poisons. The cumulative effect is that I'm completely wiped out, and I can't even think of anything funny to say. Not even with an obvious joke like "muscle poisons".

I was actually watching Jim Henson's "The Storyteller" earlier today, and I started thinking about how easy it would be to write my own children's stories (after all, if Hillary Clinton can write a children's book, surely I could). But that's going to have to wait for the walls to stop spinning.

- posted by BrandG @ 5:07 PM 1 comments