Thursday, December 17, 2009
Games Requiring Strategy Guides? Boooooo!
Friday, December 11, 2009
Nit quicks - console A/V cables and insulting promotions
"To receive the cash credit, you must open a new Power E*TRADE account by January 15, 2010, and deposit funds or securities from an external bank or brokerage account within 45 days. Deposits of new funds or securities from existing E*TRADE Bank and E*TRADE Securities accounts are not eligible for this offer. Credits for deposits of cash or securities will be made as follows: Accounts depositing $250,000 or more receive $500; accounts depositing between $100,000 and $249,999 receive $250; accounts depositing between $25,000 and $99,999 receive $100; accounts depositing between $1,000 and $24,999 receive $1."
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
"Unlock Xbox" Flops
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What can I get for a dollar? A proposed experiment.
Women of Year...say what?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Amazon Has a Sense of Humor
Monday, October 19, 2009
The WiiMotion Plus - A Prophetic Essay Released Too Late
How Nintendo Almost Started a Revolution
As a recent college graduate hoping to eventually be gainfully employed, I’m in the midst of my search for a career. Video games are my passion, and it has always been a dream of mine to work as a game developer, so I began applying for positions in the industry, only to discover the age-old Catch 22: “Must have experience to get job, must have job to get experience.” Time for Plan B: Find a way to get experience without a job. For that, I needed an idea.
I had often said that I was disappointed with my Wii due to the lack of any games taking advantage of the Wii's unique capabilities. Don’t believe me? According to Metacritic.com, the top 5 best-rated games at the time of writing, in order, are: Super Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Resident Evil 4, and Metroid Prime 3. Galaxy doesn’t make any real use of the Wii controller outside of some pointing capabilities (no, I don’t count “shake-the-controller-to-attack” as a technological breakthrough). Brawl is actually best-played with a Gamecube controller, and both Twilight Princess and Resident Evil 4 were in fact released on the Gamecube itself! Metroid Prime 3 is just a first person shooter – perhaps with innovative controls for a console, but PC-gamers will laugh at anyone who finds a pointing device to be truly innovative.
The only ways that we’ve seen developers actually do some cool stuff with the Wiimote is through mini-games, or what I’m going to term “micro-actions”. Wii Sports, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, and Rayman Raving Rabbids are the only good games that stand out in my mind as really taking advantage of the true innovation of the Wii: motion sensing. In all of these cases, we have little micro-actions that the Wiimote senses and then projects to the screen. Pump your hands quickly. Swing your hand to hit something. Drop the remote at the right time. Fun? Sure. Huge-innovation-enabling-totally-new-types-of-gameplay-experiences-as-was-promised-to-us? Hardly.
My mission was clear: I needed to show these developers what they should be doing with Nintendo’s brilliant new hardware. Mini-actions are fine, but macro-actions - large, continuous movements over long periods of time - were the future. I had grandiose plans. I would develop a mind-blowing technology demonstration, submit it for a presentation at the next GDC, and then stun the audience with the amazing new gameplay I had created. After the presentation there would be thunderous applause, a shower of job offers falling from the ceiling like confetti, and Shigeru Miyamoto himself would come on stage and bless me.
Step one of course was to develop the technology demo.
I set out to find a good API that I could use to create the demo. After a bit of online research, I found one to my liking and began to delve into the details. I found a nice list of all of the motion data available to the programmer. It had acceleration in 3 axes, the X/Y coordinates of the IR pointer, and an estimate of the distance of the pointer from the TV. After reading this list, my jaw dropped. My dreams shattered. Miyamoto would never bless me in front of thousands of adoring game developers. Why? What’s missing from this list? Any sort of rotational acceleration! It turns out that Nintendo didn’t bother to include any gyroscopic sensors in their formerly (and now ironically) codenamed Revolution.
What does this mean? Developers have no way to track true position through 3D space. Instead, they must make assumptions about the way the player is holding the controller. Does this sound familiar? Yup: micro-actions. The motion-sensing only feels realistic and accurate when the developer can tell the player how they’re “supposed” to hold the controller. If we know that the player is holding the Wiimote like a steering wheel then we can make an assumption about the tilt of the Wiimote based on the acceleration provided by gravity. But this is a cheap hack, and doesn’t work if the assumptions are broken. For example, try playing Mario Kart holding the Wiimote like a big rig wheel and rotating it about the vertical axis. Nothing happens! The implication is that the Nintendo Wiimote is likely to never move past pointing at the screen and the use of contrived micro-actions.
Suddenly my blame shifted from the developers to Nintendo. How could you do this to us? You were on the verge of completely redefining video games, but you were too cheap to put in a couple of gyroscopes? I would happily have eaten the cost for the incredible possibilities that they would have enabled. Allow me to paint a picture.
Remember that rather absurd commercial for Red Steel with the guy hiding behind his couch to avoid enemy bullets? Perhaps it’s not quite so absurd. With gyroscopes, you could strap a second Wiimote to your chest and the Wii could calculate the position of you, and even your body orientation. You could actually be forced to dodge incoming fire in your living room! And heck, with a couple of positional clicks you could tell the Wii the exact location of your couch in real 3D space, which could then act as a barrier and provide cover for you as you fire from behind it. The possibilities are, or were, endless.
Fortunately, not all hope is lost. A little internet searching turned up a new product called Darwin from Motus Corporation that does have the proper sensors. It is aimed specifically at non-Wii hardware, and if it gains popularity (and more importantly, good games), it could drive quite a knife into the back of Nintendo’s newest child. Historically speaking though, a peripheral is not generally going to attract a large number of games that require it, but at this point I can only hope that this new device, or something like it, will give us the “Revolution” we were once promised.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20150/?a=f – Darwin
Friday, October 16, 2009
Yahoo! Answers a little too optimistic
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Movie Rant: Quarantine
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Recommended Daily-Deals Sites
Monday, October 5, 2009
Shameless Plug For My Game Blog
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Amazon Finally Drops Forced 1-Click
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
I'm Batman!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
How to botch a great idea: Xbox Live's Indy/Community Games
Friday, September 4, 2009
Holy crap I have a follower!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Movie Review: Chocolate
I will go ahead and say that this is a martial arts movie first and foremost, and if you don't enjoy the genre this one isn't going to have the wider appeal of some of the more beautifully-shot imports like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. However, if you're like me and can watch a martial arts movie the same way as a ballet, then this movie certainly delivers.
Like most martial arts movies, the plot is inconsequential and contrived to lead to a series of increasingly improbable but awesome fight locales. In this case, we have an autistic girl with a goofy but well-meaning friend and a sick mother who was previously involved in organized crime. The girl is fairly low functioning, with the exception that she can pick up martial arts moves by watching kung fu movies. The premise probably would have felt somewhat exploitative (especially in a certain autistic kid vs. autistic kid brawl) if it wasn't for a heart-felt message at the opening of the movie dedicating itself to "the special children of the world". I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. In any case, the plot was serviceable, slightly more interesting than a Jackie Chan movie, but nothing to write home about.
As expected, where this movie really shines is in the whole kicking-the-crap-out-of-people department. I don't feel qualified to judge the 24 year old actress on her autism portrayal, but she does a bang-up job on the crap-kicking. The choreography puts American action movies to shame, featuring longer uncut sequences and some very clever interactions with the environment. It's not quite as funny or over the top as a Jackie Chan flick, but in this case it worked well because it felt slightly more realistic and gritty while still being completely insane.
Watching this movie, along with Tony Jaa's films, has made one thing very clear: Thailand has the best, and absolutely craziest, stunt teams in the world. The stuff these guys do with few (or perhaps no) wires or CG effects is absolutely amazing. In fact, in true Jackie Chan style, we're "treated" to a montage of outtakes at the end of the movie. Honestly, this sequence made the rest of the movie somewhat disturbing when as you begin to realize how many people were injured (at least one ended up with a neck brace and was hospitalized I hear) during the filming of this movie. I hope these guys are paid well, because they produced an incredible product and really put their blood, sweat, and tears into it. Except the tears part. There's no crying in Thai martial arts movies.
Reflecting back on the movie, I really genuinely enjoyed it and would watch it again. I give it an enthusiastic 8/10, though with the asterisk that it really is a movie for people who enjoy martial arts movies. If you were unimpressed with The Protector and didn't love Legend of Drunken Master then you might as well skip out on this one too.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Movie Review: Severance
One thing I didn't anticipate was just how funny this movie would be. It spends its opening act introducing its cast of characters in something closer to The Office than any sort of horror movie and has quite a few laughs to go along with it. The cast was stereotypical, but in a good way. You have the slightly incompetent boss, the rebel/slacker, the player, the liberal/hippie girl, the hot chick, the token black guy, and the hopeless brown-noser. They go on a trip, hilarity ensues, and then terrible things happen, which are still hilarious.
What I enjoyed about (most) of the movie was that the characters generally maintained a fairly level head. It was rare that I found myself yelling "No, you idiot, don't go upstairs!!", which was nice. The scary/gory elements of the movie were pretty par. I won't spoil anything about who the bad guy/gal is, but it's not a movie that's full of plot twists and double-crosses - you're aware of the villain pretty early on and you track the non-villains' attempts to survive. There are some tense moments, a few jumps (though not many), and some gore (though not nearly as gory as some horror movies - I think it hit a happy medium of appropriate but not over-the-top). Really, fairly standard fair for a scary movie.
What elevated this to a really enjoyable movie though was the humor. I found myself laughing harder and perceived it as more often (though I imagine part of that is contrast with the scary parts) with this movie than with many comedies (including the previously-reviewed Pineapple Express and Darwin Awards). Granted, the style of comedy is not for everyone. If you didn't think Fight Club was hysterically funny you probably won't like this type of humor either - it is exceedingly dark. For me, this was comic gold. It caught me off guard and had me hooked throughout. Now, it's not all fun and games. Somewhat like Shaun of the Dead, there are some legitimately serious parts of the movie, but if you're looking for a nice combination of pitch-black comedy and horror movie you can't do much better than Severance. I think I'll go out on a limb (and against IMDB and Metacritic's mid-6 reviews) and give this one a solid 8/10. Might not be for everyone, but I loved it thoroughly. (Did I go overboard on the parentheticals today? (Yes)).
Thursday, August 27, 2009
3.5 Pounds to Arkham Asylum
Anyway, the "diet" is going relatively well. On the food side, I'm primarily trying to watch portions a bit, make some smart decisions when eating out, and drink primarily water with meals. I still treat myself fairly regularly, especially on weekends, and I get a desert after most meals (which I just carefully choose to be low-fat, low-calorie ice cream and frozen lemonade and such). Which is the great thing about this diet - it doesn't feel like dieting.
For the exercise portion, I've been keeping up my running very well. I'm averaging over 4 days a week, at 30 minutes a day. I have a very important piece of advice for anyone starting any exercise regimen: keep a log. I have a spreadsheet for this diet, but for my first one, a few years ago, I just wrote it down on paper. This is crucial. Record your time, your distance, what settings you used on your machines, how many calories, any kind of statistics you can. You'll be amazed at your progress over time, and if you don't record it you'll likely not notice how much incredible improvement you've shown in even just a few weeks.
For example, my first day I only did 20 minutes, but after that I started at my 30 minute runs. That first 30 minute run I did 1,888 revolutions on my elliptical, burning an estimated 562 calories. Just a few days ago, I hit my record of 2,620 revolutions, at 744.6 calories. That's quite a large improvement. :)
Additionally, at the beginning of March, I weight 205.5 pounds. As late as July 6, I was still 203.5 pounds and hadn't really started my Netflix Diet. Now, only 7 weeks later, I was at 193.5 pounds this morning. 12 pounds in 7 weeks is a healthy, steady progression that I can happily keep up for months.
So, what's that title of the blog post all about? Well, I decided to promise myself rewards over this process. At 190 pounds, I get to open up my pre-ordered copy of Arkham Asylum, which is apparently an amazing game. I've very excited. :) At 175 (my end goal), I get to go on a shopping spree for new clothes. I'm not sure if I'm going to set any goals in between those, but I think one at 182.5 might be good too. Maybe Knights In The Nightmare? I've had my eye on that game for a while... Anyway, 3.5 pounds to go!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
TranslationParty.com - and what a party it is!
In any case, www.translationparty.com is simply an English -> Japanese -> English -> Japanese -> ... translator. You give it an English phrase and it keeps translating back and forth until it reaches an "equilibrium" (or as the math geeks say, a "point of convergence"). This may sound boring, but it's surprisingly addictive and funny. For example, Theresa, our graphic designer, discovered this gem:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
becomes
"The score of 47-1 to China, free and fair, we were created under the guidance of our ancestors."
And you just thought to yourself "Where did China come from?!" Yup, that's the great fun of this website - you never know what'll happen.
Sadly, it sometimes stalls out, and I'm not sure if this is due to traffic or translation timeouts or what. But in general it's quick and easy fun, and it lets you communicate with people entirely through URLs, which is a skill we clearly needed in this world of typing as few characters as possible.
Movie Review: Pineapple Express
It starts out like a...typical?...pot movie, follwing a twenty-something stoner in a crappy job with a how-the-hell-did-he-end-up-with-her? love interest and a goofy drug dealer. Then a crime gets committed, some people witness it, there are chases, gun fights, a lot of stoner jokes (many of which were quite funny), and a somewhat bizarre over-the-top action sequence near the end. There's a buddy-badguy duo that tries to be Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction but never quite reaches that goal, though Craig Robinson seems to be some up-and-coming talent between this, The Office, and Zack and Miri (which, by the way, is a much funnier comedy, nothing against this one).
I actually don't have a lot to say about this movie. It's not deep or life-changing, and I'm writing this review about 2 weeks after having watched the movie and I'm having a hard time recalling a lot of details, so it obviously didn't make that lasting of an impression on me. None the less, I know I had a good time with it and would certainly recommend it to anyone who is up for a goofy movie with a good heart who doesn't mind a lot of swearing and a little bloodshed. Not the best comedy ever (heck, not even Rogan's best, which would be Zack and Miri or The 40 Year Old Virgin, depending on how you define a "Seth Rogan movie"), but still worth a watch. 7/10.
By the way, have you noticed that almost everything I've rated so far has been right around a 7/10? My theory is that I'm successfully picking movies that I like, but nothing that I love since most of those I would have seen by now or am waiting to watch with Shelly. Something tells me that streak will be broken with my next review... which way will it be? Actually, since almost everyone reading this is probably reading in the "reverse blog order" with newest posts at the top, there's really no suspense at this point. Oh well.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Seeing Jesus on a Toilet
I recorded this off of this morning's local news program. I'm having some difficulty coming up with things to say about it because it just seems too easy. This isn't meant to mock Christians because I feel confident that most Christians (i.e. probably everyone except this woman's boyfriend, who has no choice) would look at this and say this woman is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. In any case, there is just too much wonderful irony / WTFness involved in this video to ignore.
A woman who is having financial difficulty sees an image of Jesus and feels uplifted and gets renewed hope. Ok, that's not so bad. Except the "image of Jesus" is exceendingly hard to make out (even by normal "I see Jesus in some toast" standards), it's on a I [Heart] Las Vegas bumper sticker, and that bumper sticker is plastered haphazardly on the underside of a toilet lid. I feel like this one just speaks for itself.
Somewhere, Andres Serrano is cackling madly.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
A study in efficiency: Microsoft and the RROD
*showers to get rid of that dirty feeling*
So, where was I? Ah, yes - Microsoft. Many of you geeky types are probably familiar with the famous "red ring of death" on the XBOX360. For those who don't know, it looks like this:
If that doesn't look ominous and horrible, I don't know what does. At least it's more appropriate than the famed blue screen of death - the XBOX360 doesn't joke around. When it's toast, it let's you know.
Basically, this is a problem that comes from over-heating of the 360. It has been a persistent problem for Microsoft, who even admits themselves to a 3%-5% failure rate. Other studies have put this problem at anywhere from 10% to 30% of all 360s. So, while very angry, I was not terribly surprised when I booted up my 360 one day and saw the menacing red glow staring me down.
I was able to easily find Microsoft's support request page through a quick Google search and I promptly registered my problem. I immediately printed out a pre-paid shipping label for UPS and packed up my 360 to get sent out. A mere 9 days later I have my 360 (or most likely, another refurbished one, but whatever) in my hands. Fast shipping, quick service, and even a 1-month XBOX Live Gold card (worth about $6) taped to the system as an apology for my troubles. I am very impressed with how efficient they've been in handling this rather large and pervasive problem. So, bravo Microsoft - you made the process quick, easy, and relatively painless.
I'm a little surprised that you have a typo in your apology letter, but whatever. The core experience was excellent and I'm very pleased with your service. Though I have attached an intercooler (and one of the ones with it's own power supply) to my 360 just to make sure this time. :)
Now to get back to the Netflix diet that I had to go for a week without.
A brief poetic play on words
I, in sin, sing Sting.
String staring...
.
.
.
Starting?
.
.
.
$@!%#!!!
Startling!
Strange what we think up in the shower, isn't it?
EDIT: I changed the opening line so that now I'm singing a Sting song, which makes much more sense. However, the "string" is fairly nonsensical. Everything else makes perfect sense, so that's a little annoying. If you have any ideas of how to make the string make sense, lemme know!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Dr. Some-Assembly-Required or How I Learned to Stop Reading and Loathe Directions
This all started in an effort to have some better organization and storage space in the kitchen (due to not really having much of a pantry). We bought 3 short shelving units with doors to put side-by-side as a wide unit along the back of the bar. Granted, these are cheap units from Target that were on sale for college, but that means I'd expect cheaper wood, not impossible directions.
The first bookshelf had a number of brilliant moments. For example, the first step says "Gently tap hinge pins into holes in top panel, and bottom panel as shown." Ignoring the runaway comma it sounds fine. Except it's not actually shown anywhere. It's not in the picture to the side, nor are the "hinge pins" even listed in the relevant pieces needed for step one.
Next step, we get "Attach strike plates to top corner of doors to create left and right doors...Strike plate holes are not pre-drilled." Great - no holes (unlike everything else), nothing that says you need a drill (or at least a hammer and nail to make a pilot hole) - just twist this screw into the wood. Better yet, there's no indication of where exactly to do it or how to measure it. Icing on the cake, which was only delivered as a punch line after the entire construction was finished, is that the image showing the installation is upside down, so now I need to re-attach the plates.
*facepalm*
As much swearing as that induced, it only got worse when I got to the third one (the first two were identical) which now has a drawer to install as well.
First step and we're already off to a brilliant start. "Attach drawer glides to left side and right side in holes shown using 4 drawer glide screws." Sounds easy enough. Wait a second...there aren't 4 drawer glide screws. Well, there kind of are - but there are 2 of one and 2 of another. They're very similar, but clearly not identical. After enough searching, I've decided to just run with it.
Now, to attach the glides to...wait, there are two sets of holes. Which one do I use? Nothing in the directions. Nice. Oh, and the holes are ever so slightly off no matter which set I use. I can tell this is going to be even more fun than the last one. Oh well - I'll just guess and pick the set of holes that looks better.
Next brilliant point: in the image in step two I'm shown a picture of screwing the magnetic clasps into the "top panel", which is all and good, except that's what it is in the non-drawer model of this unit. The drawer model, which is what I'm working on, has those screwed into the fixed shelf instead. Confidence is not rising...
I'm glad I don't only speak French, because Step 8 has an entire section of the French translation in English.
Step 9. Got the main unit assembled, now I just need to put together the drawer. Uh, wait - why is the drawer now pictured in Step 9? I haven't touched the drawer yet! What the Hell is going on here?
*flips back through previous steps looking for when I missed the drawer construction*
Nope, nothing. Oh - it's in Step 10. I can almost hear the piece of paper yelling "Psyche!" at me.
Step 10. Gotta find 4 of these strange little round pieces. Ok...there are only two. These are really obvious, I can't possibly be missing them. Please tell me they didn't forget to include some pieces...
*checks inventory on front page*
Oh, there's only supposed to be 2. A typo. I'm shocked, truly.
Still in step 10. I quote: "Align drawer bottom on all sides and gently nail drawer bottom to [it]." Has this person ever used a hammer before? "Gently" nail it on? If you are using a hammer gently, not only are you doing it wrong, you're probably not doing anything at all. Gently nailing something is a physical impossibility. I can imagine some poor person trying to follow these directions precisely and spending hours trying to drive a nail through wood without hitting it. It's an exercise in futility that would be daunting even to the WMD search crews in Iraq.
Ok, just about done. Drawer is assembled, all I need to do is slide it onto the rails. Sweet! It worked! Now hammer in the drawer stops and...it's done! Finally done!
*slides drawer all the way in to unit...hears unfriendly clack*
Hmm...the drawer's not closing...that's odd...why is it not...oh. Oh, that's so not cool. So uh, remember that first step when I just had to guess which set of holes to use? All the way at the beginning? I apparently lost the coin toss. Serves me right for...wait...I didn't do anything wrong at all! I'm going to hunt down the children of whoever wrote this, grind them into a paste, and make burgers out of them. Rare burgers. Because I need to taste the blood of innocents.
By the way, ClosetMaid is not a brand I'd recommend purchasing if you have high blood pressure. Also, I'm having a cookout next Saturday. Bring your own beer, I'll provide the burgers.
Friday, July 31, 2009
A Sinister Plot Against Left-Handers
Included in this list is the Nintendo DS.
I would really like to understand how freaking difficult it is to enable your game to be left handed. In some cases perhaps it's non trivial if you have to move your entire UI around, but the ones I'm talking about are generally simple button-remapping. And this isn't a trivial part of your audience. Wikipedia states (yes, I cited Wikipedia - deal with it) that a British study in the 70s found that 11% of people aged 15 - 24 are left-handed, and a separate study in the US found 12% of 20 year olds to be left-handed. So, that's a core age demographic for you, and at 11% of all of your gamers you'd think it'd be worth noting the fact that your game is nearly unplayable for left-handers. Hell, how do you not have at least one left-handed on your dev team? It's unbelievable.
Yet we end up with games like Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings that map all scrolling to the left D-pad and a few low-priority buttons on the right hand. So, anyone using their left hand for the stylus is stuck trying to also control the camera with that same hand. And it gets even worse with Ninja Town. You know what the 4 buttons do on the right side? NOTHING! Not one damned thing. They're dead buttons. How hard would it have been to map them to the same movement as the D-pad? The answer is it would have taken the programmer about 30 seconds. If he were a slow typist. I can't really think of a bigger "Screw you!" to left-handers than just killing the buttons that are so easily accessible to them. And yet I purchased this game, only perpetuating the idea that it's okay to give lefties the finger if you're a game developer.
And yeah, sure, in the grand scheme of life left-handed oppression is really not all that important or even really oppressive. The original study that showed a 9 year decrease in life expectancy for left-handers has been debunked repeatedly. But these are people whose job is to make a fun, enjoyable game that people will buy, and yet they can't seem to get basic interface principles down. It truly boggles the mind.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Verizon - America's Largest Network, Most Archaic Practices
I remember first being annoyed with them when I realized how locked-down their phones were. No Java apps here - everything must be BREW, which means they have tight lock and key over any installations. Want to use Gmail's cool, free mail app? Too bad. You have to instead pay a ridiculous $15/month to use Verizon's email service. Want to check out some cool free games? Not gonna happen. Only games purchased through Verizon's store will work.
I'll be up-front - for the most part I've been reasonably happy with Verizon's customer service. I don't recall getting screwed over too often, except a recent event that involved an accidental activation of their $10/month GPS application. Now, I love their VZ Navigator app - it's very effective, updated with new features fairly regularly, and even has voice-recognition built-in. I've happily paid $10/month for it for years, as has one other person on my plan. A few months ago, I noted that a third Navigator app was being charged though. I realized it accidentally got turned on on my brother's phone.
So I called them up on July 24 to see if I could get it turned off. Now, my billing cycle ends on the 23rd of the month. So, I'm calling on the first day of the month to cancel a monthly service. I did not request refunds for the two months that I had missed - all I wanted was to cancel this coming month and not have to pay for it. Apparently, this was completely impossible. "There's no way it could accidentally be turned on" I was told, and therefore they are completely unwilling to return my subscription fee for the month that just started today. Unbelievable.
But during this conversation I discovered the real gem of their WTF-policy-making-department. They've switched to a megabyte-usage system for internet use. Previously I had been charged $5 a month to connect to the internet. Now it's $2 per megabyte. Considering I only check my mail and occasionally wikipedia or amazon, I figured I might even save a buck or two. However, I started noticing charges when I hadn't been on the internet. Turns out, those megabyte charges apply to any apps you download from their store. So, buy an app, and pay an additional megabyte or two of download charges. Apparently they're taking their pricing lessons from airline backage-check policies. But it gets much, much worse.
You see, apparently, in order to view their store on your phone, you have to connect to this thing called the internet. Yes, that's right - they charge you for the mere privilege of oggling their wares. Can you imagine if stores charged for window shopping? What kind of moronic, backwards, I-got-an-MBA-but-know-nothing-about-people kind of marketing decision is that? Not even the elitist fashion boutiques on Fifth Ave. in New York charge to look around. They know that the best way to get customers is to let them see what you have and covet it. And not only that, but to add insult to injury, apparently adding up parts of megabytes is too complicated for the Verizon computer system, so each time you connect to their store you have to pay at least a $2 fee. I'm just flabbergasted at this policy. I've bought numerous games from them in the past, but now I'm never going to look in their store again. There goes any more revenue for them from games for me. Nice job guys. Pat yourselves on the back for being complete marketing idiots. You wholeheartedly deserve it.
On a related note, the only reason I'm staying with Verizon at the moment is the Friends & Family calling circle thingy that they stole from Alltel. I have a couple of calls (most specifically my daily conference call for work) that eat up a lot of my minutes, and if I don't have a couple of landlines that I can call for free my minutes skyrocket (specifically, my personal monthly minutes dropped from about 700 to about 150 when I added just 3 numbers to my plan). If I can figure out a way around that I will be very seriously giving the new iPhone a thorough look-over.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Movie Review: The Orphanage
I was thinking "Wow, Guillermo del Toro did a horror movie! This should be aboslutely amazing." Because really, if you think about the gorgeous cinematography and incredible creature designs of Pan's Labrynth, or of the over-the-top but still inspired and original creatures from the Hellboy movies, you have to think that del Toro would be most at home in a true horror movie. Unfortunately, this movie is not that movie, but if that movie ever happens I'm totally there.
That's not to say the movie is bad - it's really not. But when you're expecting del Toro creatures and you get typical horror movie small-scary-children it's more than a little disappointing. Still, let's look at the movie for what it is: a good, though not great or inventive, horror/mystery movie. I hesitate to call it a horror movie outright because it really lacks the gore, scares, or general terror to really fill that genre (and is a rather mild R-rating). But it's more than just a mytsery or a thriller because it does genuinely have a few very creepy scenes.
The rough plot is that a woman now lives in the orphanage she grew up in (already the audience gets a little bit of a wtf from that one). She has a husband and a young, sick boy who likes to play with "imaginary friends". One day, he decides to go off and play and disappears. Anyone not see that coming? The movie then follows our herione's efforts to find her lost boy. A common theme in the movie is the concept of a clue-hunt where one clue leads to a location where another clue is found. These hunts come across like The daVinci Code in fast forward and without the code-breaking, and really to me seemed kinda silly. I won't spoil the ending, but don't hope for anything too shocking or ground-breaking - it falls into one of the few stereotypical endings for these movies, while still leaving you will a few unanswered questions.
On the plus side, the movie has a few genuine shocks in it, some creepy characters and scenes, and the single most terrifying game of "red light, green light" I've ever seen. I will say, watching a scary movie on an elliptical can certainly motivate to run a little harder at times. In any case, I'll give the movie a 7/10. Competantly acted, a decent though somewhat derivitive story, and some good scares. If you like horror movies but have a very jumpy date, this might be a good one since it's often tense but only jumpy a few times. If you're looking for a better horror movie, I'm still partial to The Ring (thought primarily on first viewing - it gets weaker each time you watch it) and probably my favorite horror movie: The Descent.
On a related note, my Netflix Diet is going well. I was down to 197.5 pounds this morning, which considering I was at 203.5 less than 3 weeks ago that's pretty encouraging. I'm sure that'll fluctuate naturally a bit and I'm probably on the low end, but still progress is progress. :) I'm also keeping a daily log of the duration, calories burned, distance, etc., which I find to be encouraging and would recommend to anyone on a new exercise routine since it gives a good sense of accomplishment and progress.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Movie Review: The Darwin Awards - A semi-cute comedy quickly eaten by better movies
As a forensics investigation movie, it pretty much flops. Some (perhaps all?) of the cases were actual Darwin Awards, which was cute, but meant that it was bloody obvious what was going to happen to anyone who's heard about some of the most famous ones. The ones that were less obvious were just too ridiculous for the viewer to have any hope of guessing, yet somehow Fiennes manages to intuit this absurd sequence of events. It all comes across as unbelievable, while at the same time spending far too much of the plot on showing us how these events came to be. The Metallica concert scene was just painful - a very unpleasant 10 minutes that felt more like 30, and I'm a big Metallica fan.
Instead, the movie shines more as a comedy, with Fiennes showing off some mad slapstick skills. It wasn't a roll-on-the-floor comedy, but it managed to elicit a few of chuckles, a couple of good laughs, and one hearty guffaw at the "shower scene" (which is much funnier and less sketchy than it sounds). Still, as a romantic comedy I feel that it fell flat thanks to Ryder's character being fairly unlikable, having me feeling like Fiennes could do better the whole time. It's hard to enjoy a "romantic" comedy when I don't want to root on the unlikely couple.
All in all, the movie isn't great, but it doesn't suck. It has some slow parts, and seems almost insultingly obvious at times. The ending is silly and stupid, even though they managed to reference a popular fabricated Darwin Award, which I enjoyed. The film student who follows Fiennes around (whom I'm sad to say I didn't recognize until I saw the credits) filming his every move is a pretty funny foil for Fiennes' straight-man character, but ultimately feels like it's the same joke over and over. There are a number of impressive list of cameos though (David Arquette, Chris Penn, Metalica...), including a real surprise (that I won't ruin here) as the pair who own the army surplus shop. Honestly, seeing that cameo alone made the movie worth it to me, but if you're less geeky you might not appreciate it. I enjoyed the movie, but I wouldn't watch it more than once. For a movie touting Darwin, it fails to really stand out as a dominant fish in the sea of comedies. 6/10
*Chomp* - The 40 Year Old Virgin
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Poor ad placement #1
Church of Treason
His name is on our greatest Monuments, and all our money too,
And when we Pledge allegiance, there's no doubt where we stand,
There is no separation, we're one Nation under Him.
And erase His name from everything, this country's all about,
From the Schoolhouse to the Courthouse, they're Silencing His Word,
Now it's time for all Believers, to make our Voices heard."