Archive for the ‘general’ Category

metallica… are they new?

Monday, July 24th, 2006

A friend sent me this comic earlier today. Funny stuff.

It occurred to me after reading it, that I do in fact have an inordinate amount of my musical knowledge from video games. While on vacation last week, I realized that the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein pinball machine in the game room (it was an awesome house) played “Frankenstein” from the Edgar Winter Group and proudly told my whole family. Thanks Guitar Hero! I know of Motorhead from one of the Tony Hawk games. I’m pretty sure the first time I heard Jurassic 5 was on another Tony Hawk game. And so on and so forth. I’ve heard of more new bands and introduced to more classics in video games than if I just listened to traditional radio and MTV. (Freezepop on the other hand I heard first on Achewood.)

Between games, the Internet, Adult Swim and Quentin Tarantino movies, do we even need radio and MTV anymore?

It makes me wonder how many other good bands I would hear if we were a little more liberal with copyrights and file sharing. If content creators on YouTube could easily use the music from their favorite bands in their videos, how many new good bands would be discovered?

Just a thought.

barcampRDU…

Saturday, July 22nd, 2006

I’m here at RedHat attending the illustrious unconference, BarCamp! It’s basically a conference where the attendees decide what will be presented or taught. Very informal but it somehow works. Throughout the day I may be updating this post with anything interesting I might learn….

Yes, I realize that this isn’t game related at all, but it’s something to blog about and this is the only blog I own.

- Best session so far (and we’re not halfway through the presentations): juggling.

- My first session: Google Web Toolkit… as I’m not a java programmer, most of it went over my head, but the crowd consensus felt that it was mostly an unknown or a toy. I thought it was fairly interesting.

- Second session: Sex and the Death of Advertising.

- Third session: Maim the Music Industry.

- Forth session: Intro to Ruby on Rails.

- Fifth session: Ajaxifying w/ Dojo.

greetings from the beach…

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Hello everyone.  I’m relaxing in beautiful N. Mrytle Beach, stuck on a Windows machine with a Firefox browser that doesn’t work.  And considering that my machine is currently on it’s way back to Apple for some repairs, I have to do everything through IE6.

I’m not very happy about this.

Anyway, just a quick question to anyone who might be paying attention and has a gmail account: is it working for you?  Everytime I go to the site it says it’s unavailable.  Anyone else having this problem?

sports chic…

Monday, June 26th, 2006

Turns out that I will be writing a bit for the Sports Chic too.  Sports related posts will probably start moving over there instead of the intermittent placement here.  But will adding me take away the “chic” from the Sports Chic?  Only time will tell.

playing this weekend…

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

Um. Same thing I played last weekend. Get off my back! I’m slow!

Because you wanted it…

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

There’s a new sport blog out there that’s tearing up the streets! It will completely revolutionize the way you think about sports. That other way you thought of: crap! Get ready, because this blog might be too extreme for even the hardest sports fan.

This blog it’s got passion, a girl writing, and um… it’s pink. It’s the Sports Chic!

(can i come back into the house now honey?)

Canes win the Cup!

Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

Not quite exciting for me as UNC winning the NCAA basketball championship, but still pretty awesome. Ray Whitney agrees with me. So what does this mean? Is the Triangle (or at least Raleigh) a hockey town now? I hope so. This area gets shafted so much with all the big-time events going to Charlotte (they even took away the CIAA championships from us), so it’s nice to see that Raleigh got the first pro-sport championship for the state of North Carolina. I admit that I haven’t been the greatest fan overall. I’ve kept tabs on the team since their last Stanley Cup run a few years ago, but I’ve had a hard time paying attention since a few other sport seasons happen around the same time as them. But next season, I’ll definitely put the Canes on the same list as the Tarheels and the Panthers. I hope the Triangle will join me.

I just hope my liver can handle it.

What do you think of that Ray?

wordpress upgrade…

Sunday, May 21st, 2006

Upgrading wordpress to 2.0.2 right now. If you see any weirdness, that’s probably why.

Edit: And it’s done.

Glacial Game Review…

Saturday, May 13th, 2006

Guitar Hero LogoYou. Yeah, you. What are you doing? Stop it. Do you have a Playstation 2? Do you like rock music AT ALL? Yeah? Then why the hell aren’t you playing Guitar Hero right the hell now? Seriously, go. NOW. Go to the store, buy this game, grab some beer and rock the hell out.

Why? All right fine. Awesome tracks from Black Sabbath to Jimi Hendrix to Franz Ferdinand to Boston - I could go on - grace the game. All great guitar songs. The learning curve is excellent with the easier levels grouping notes together and letting you use only three frets. The harder levels separate those sounds out and make you use more frets until your fingers catch on fire. It has perfect timing and I hear that playing with the mini-guitar mimics playing an actual guitar rather well (to the point where an actual guitarist wouldn’t have to start on the easier levels). I can’t vouch for this myself as I don’t play guitar but dammit, now I want to learn. It’s that much fun.

What I think makes this game so great as compared to other rhythm games is that you actually get a sense that you’re playing the song. When you miss a note, it doesn’t play. So you start really getting into hitting the right notes and cords. You worry less about getting a high score and more about just making the song sound right. And once you really nail the song, you start really getting into it. You’ll be tilting the guitar on longs notes, banging your head, and just having a good time.

Seriously, you have no idea what you’re missing. Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous - jumping around like a mad man in front of your TV and playing a plastic guitar in time with classic rock songs. Well suck it up. It’s fun. Now get out of here dammit, and play.

you should ban them from being in public too…

Friday, May 12th, 2006

I’m not much of a politics guy as I have an equal hatred towards all parties for some reason or another but this bill, as described, is amazingly ignorant. Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania wants to ban all minors from using social networking sites such as myspace and facebook because “child predators” use them to find victims. Isn’t that kind of like banning kids from the playground because they might get kidnapped?

Anyway, I’m not one these armchair pundits so I’ll just let you read the article yourself and form your own opinion.

Update: Here’s another story about it at C|Net. It would seem that Fitzpatrick just wants to band school and libraries that receive federal money to ban access, not just a general banning.

well now…

Monday, May 8th, 2006

Hehe…. All right, Sony. You already pissed me off with the whole rootkit thing. Now you’re selling the PS3 for at least $500. I guess I know what my next two consoles will be.

A smart playlist for all your purchased iTunes songs…

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

I would like it if that “Purchased” playlist they give you in iTunes actually listed all the stuff I purchased in iTunes. That would be nice. Then I could just select that list to backup all those purchases on a DVD. Unfortunately it doesn’t do that for me as I keep messing around with it, and changing computers, and *cough*. Whatever. It’s Apple’s fault. Right.

It would be extra nice if Apple added an obvious choice to pick iTunes purchased music when you’re making a smart playlist. But it doesn’t. Oh well, after searching in vain for a solution on Google and messing around with iTunes for a bit I finally just opened up the iTunes library XML file in BBEdit and looked for something in the protected files that would identify it to the smart playlists. Lo and behold there was.

To list all your iTunes purchased songs, do this:

  1. Select File » New Smart Playlist…. (or use Command+Option+N)
  2. Select Kind from the first drop down box.
  3. Select Contains from the second drop down box.
  4. And type Protected AAC audio file in the text field.
  5. Hit OK and you should have a new playlist with all the iTunes purchased songs that are in your library.

Now I’m sure someone has figured this out before I have, but I couldn’t find it so I thought I’d share.

Edit: Corrected some grammar mistakes.

monday awesomeness…

Monday, April 24th, 2006

Check out this awesome piece of artwork. Take equal parts of 2d fighters of yesteryear and pop culture (”You’re entering a world of pain!”), throw in tons of nasty gore, and a little bit of nudity (also nasty) and you get Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006. Seriously fun to watch and makes me wish someone would actually make a game like it. I’d play it.

It makes me think: I know we all get caught up in the glitz of the 3d rendering and all that, but someone (besides capcom) should get back into making some 2d stuff. I’m all for making games “experiences” but what about making it a game? Scroll that sucker left to right (or bottom to top) and let’s see who can get the highest score in the arcade…

time to waste your day…

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

All right, this is just awesome. Jack Pendley’s av1d. Take odd looking (mostly) Japanese commercials and add your own subtitles. Brilliant. So many good ones, but I think this one is my favorite so far.

Makes you wonder if Japanese folks sit around a make fun of how funny our commercials look…

I think I have an idea for my master’s paper…

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006

Sex in the MRI.

graduate school update…

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006

Sleeping is for chumps.

escapist…

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

Apparently, this site has been around since the middle of the year but I’m just now finding out about it so dammit I’m posting it.

The Escapist features the one thing that a lot of gaming sites lack, stories. More of a magazine than a game site, it features articles written around a central theme each week more about he experience of gaming rather than just reviews and rants. I would like to write a piece like this sometime.

And hey, the web designer in me LOVES the site design (though it could be more user friendly).

Check it out. And let me know what you think. Do we need more stuff like this?

dan, master of updates…

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

Sorry folks. Things have slowed down around here. You see I’ve been spending my time trying to get back into school and strangely enough they let me back in at UNC. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me back into my old dorm room but they were gracious enough to let me attend some SILS classes if I don’t make too much of a fuss about it. So lately my life has revolved around finding jobs and other means of gathering cash so I can live in student poverty for the next two years. Also, I’ve complimented that with heavy drinking around various Carolina games because really that’s what higher education is all about.

But no worries, I have still found time to play games. Why just last week I managed to waste plenty of my life playing the dreadful Shadow the Hedgehog. The idea of on-the-fly allegiance to good or bad is an interesting idea… too bad the game is too frantic to let you make that decision. And could we please decide whether you want me to be fast, or to defeat as many enemies as possible, cause the two don’t really mesh well.

Luckily, I also picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted from Gamefly which is a lot of fun although the AI of the cops and other racers can be a little spotty. Sometimes you’ll mess up and they’ll run a perfect rolling block on you, other times they’ll take a wrong turn for what looks like no reason. Odd. I also like the wide open levels. While you can just go to a menu screen and pick your next race, I prefer to just drive around the city and follow the map to the next challenge. Trying to get to your next destination while the cops are on the lookout for your best ride really enhances the experience.

So you see I’m not giving up on this blog yet. As long as I can still afford that Gamefly subscription (and if they can stop pissing me off… that’s for another entry) I’ll have something to talk about. Even if I’m just talking to myself…

back from vacation…

Tuesday, July 26th, 2005

Oh. Hi. You’re still here? Great! Yeah, I was, um, off to the beach. Getting a year older. Catching up with some games I’ve been meaning to play. Watching summer movies. And basically relaxing. Sorry I didn’t tell you.

What’s that? Posts? Well okay, maybe later. Still celebrating birthday right now…

michael forever…

Tuesday, July 12th, 2005

Um…. okay.