Great, here's yet another way in which my World of Warcraft character is superior to me:
If that's not clear, it says "Tip: Your character can eat and drink at the same time." At the same time! I know I can't handle a crossbow like he can, but now this? How many more ways can I be inferior to that stupid digital guy?!
Showing posts with label tech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tech. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2007
Another Failure
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Maybe Cingular Should Start With the Goat Sacrificing
Remember all those times the flight attendant came on and told you to turn off all electronic devices because they might endanger your flight? Apparently they're full of crap:
Air traffic controllers were forced to use their personal cell phones to reroute hundreds of flights Tuesday after the Federal Aviation Administration's Memphis Center lost radar and telephone service for more than two hours, snarling air traffic in the middle of the nation.
That's right, your Razor might crash that Southwest Airlines junket to Vegas, but it's ok for air traffic controllers in Memphis to coordinate all the flights at the entire airport via Cingular Wireless for two hours with no problems.
You know, there was a story a while back about Nepal Airlines sacrificing a goat to ensure their one plane made the next flight successfully, and everyone laughed at them. At least, everyone not in Nepal -- you don't want to mock the guys who might be dropping unused goat parts on your head as they fly overhead.
But I think our own good-old-fashioned American flight system is no less full of hooey and woo. No electronic devices during takeoff and landing. No liquids allowed on board. Confiscating corkscrews, for goodness' sake. The fact that none of this does any good at all makes no difference.
I think next time I fly I'm going to use a cooler full of cabrito as one of my carry-on items. It ought to do about as much good as most of the other "safety measures" we're subjected to, and unlike cell phones, it makes for a great taco.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Top Ten Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Life
Many people decry games like "World of Warcraft" as vast, bloated time sinks that suck away the lives and personalities of its subscribers, giving nothing of value in return.
Not unlike America's political parties!
But seriously. I think these people are wrong, and as evidence I present the "Top Ten Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Life":
10. No matter how much time, money, and energy you put into making something, there's no guarantee anyone will want to buy it.
9. Hot girls can dance to make money. Even if they're really guys.
8. Where you choose to make your home (whether a neighborhood or a server) can make a huge difference in how enjoyable your time is. Nothing's more frustrating than having to constantly wait on construction when all you want is to get home.
7. Some people are just plain ass-holes and there's not a lot you can do about it unless you have powerful friends. Preferably friends with really, really big swords.
6. If you want a sweet ride, you better save your money.
5. Short people have feelings too. Even gnomes. Probably.
4. You can go a lot farther if you have a group of friends watching your back.
3. I've been rich, and I've been poor, and believe me -- rich is better.
2. That fancy, over-engineered mechanical gizmo might look neat and cost a fortune, but odds are it'll let you down when you need it most. Sometimes the simple, reliable things are better.
1. You might think of The Other Side as absolutely evil, soulless, cowardly scumbags with no heart ... until you actually step into their shoes and experience the world from their point of view, understanding their history and outlook. Don't be surprised if "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys" are interchangeable labels sometimes.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
How Much of a Geek Are You?
My mother will be so proud. And Han shot FIRST, I tell you. FIRST!
79% GeekMingle2 - Free Online Dating
Gamer YinYanginess
I present the good and bad I recently experienced of being a gamer:
Good: Your sister trusts you enough to ask you to talk your nephew into giving up some of his "World of Warcraft" addiction.
Bad: Instead your nephew ends up talking you into reinstalling your World of Warcraft game so you can start playing again, too.
Good: The flame of addiction newly-lit, you rush to the store to buy the "Burning Crusade" expansion to the game so you can do all the new stuff that's come out since you quit.
Bad: The day you buy the expansion pack, lightning strikes your internet receiver, and you can't get online for a solid week.
Good: Your internet service gets fixed so you can now reinstall the original version of the game!
Bad: You have to download more than 1GB of patches and updates to complete the install. This takes three days.
Good: You finally download and install the last of the seemingly interminable patches and can install the "Burning Crusade" expansion you bought!
Bad: After you install the Expansion, you have to re-download the last five patches before you can log in. Which you already downloaded once. After agonizing through three days of downloads before THAT. And the week of dead internet before THAT. All while fighting the urge to put your fist through your router to force it to go faster, dammit!
Good: Finally, after a week and a half, you get to log in. Your brother-in-law kindly jumps in his high-level character and helps you out with some in-game money and items. Life -- virtual life, anyway -- is good.
Bad: It's going to be many months before you can get to a high enough level to thank him properly. Maybe beating his son with a hose for getting you re-addicted will be payback, though. Maybe.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Big Worm
As part of my recent transition to working from home (or NOT working as the case may be) I switched computers. In the course of doing that I uncovered some old images I'd thought lost forever, which is kind of like finding twenty bucks in your coat pocket you forgot about last winter. One of my favorites is this black and white ink sketch of a giant rock worm creature rampaging through the scenic downtown of your average Midwest American hamlet.
See, in the same day I get beautiful rainbows and giant rampaging rock worms. Life in Nerd Country keeps you on your toes, that's for sure.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Earth Two
"One of the hardest lessons for an artist to learn," one teacher told me, "is knowing when to stop."
I still haven't figured it out, so after the jump I'm going to post the latest version of my super-hero creation, "Earth".
First, for comparison's sake, here's the last version of the character I drew:
I liked the basic black drawing, but I think I dropped the ball on the coloring. The textures used for Earth's arms and such looked flat instead of contouring along a three-dimensional form. So I recently got motivated to re-imagine the character a bit, in the process changing the human aspect (Gandalf Jones) from a pre-teen to an older man. The nice thing about having done the illustration digitally is that both the human and the creature are complete, separate drawings. That meant I could just delete the young boy and replace it with the older man, while being able to leave Earth exactly the same. Furthermore, since the color and the ink are also on separate layers, I could recolor the black and white lineart without having to redraw it.
Anyway, here's the most recent version:
I like the color work much, much better. I think the chest area on the creature works much better as a solid black than as discrete plates as well -- it's a more dramatic lighting situation, and it echoes the black turtleneck of Gandalf. I also like the glow around the human figure, I think it plays off the creature's glow well.
I also think this treatment conveys much better the concept I was going for, of an ambulatory pile of rocks and dirt, animated by an elemental spirit. I wanted it to seem like he grew up out of the ground, incorporating whatever materials happened to be there where he spawned.
See? This blog's template isn't the only thing I tinker with excessively!
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Worst. Logo. Ever.
Courtesy of "Clicked", I bring you a link to "The Worst Logo Ever". It brings whole new -- and disturbing -- meaning to the phrase "Jiggle your mouse":
(Edited: The original image got taken down for some reason, this is an expanded thumbnail.)
Friday, March 23, 2007
Military Mindreading Computers
Since 2000, Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm, has spearheaded a far-flung, nearly $70 million effort to build prototype cockpits, missile control stations and infantry trainers that can sense what's occupying their operators' attention, and adjust how they present information, accordingly.
Strangely, as soon as the new systems were turned on and hooked up to actual soldiers, the only thing any of their monitors would show was pornography.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Buffaloed
So I was driving home yesterday after a long ten hours of laying out a new user registration interface for our company's web site and on my lunch hour debugging a Flash script that loads up the super-heroes kids have designed online. I left my office, which is just across the highway from the largest computer maker in the world, passed over forty miles of Texas highway, and on the last curve before my house I saw this:
Unlike last week, when I saw a zebra on the side of Highway 29, this time I had my camera with me and was able to take a photo. I swear, sometimes the cognitive dissonance that is my life confuses even me. At this point I'd not have been surprised if the buffalo had iPod ear buds in place.
Just another day in Nerd Country, I suppose. I do wish I'd gotten a picture of that zebra, though, I suspect Annie is starting to think I've gone off the deep end ...
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Reality TV Meets Nerd Country
Jessica and Nick, and Ozzie and Sharon, eat your hearts out. Because there's a new Reality TV star coming from Nerd Country, and she's a bona-fide hoot.
A hoot owl, that is. Eastern Screech, to be precise, and thanks to some friends of ours this wild owl is the star of her own Internet reality show.
I blogged a few months ago about an "Owl Prowl" led by our Aunt Sharon out here at the ranch. An attending couple named Pat (both the husband and the wife are named Pat, deal with it!) really took a liking to the whole concept, and Pat (not Pat the dental hygienist, but Pat the engineer) in the finest Bubba Tech tradition has now put up his own owl box complete with infrared and visual cameras. And because even that wasn't awesome enough, he took it to the next level by connecting those cameras to the Internet via a SlingBox, so they can check on their avian buddies from any computer in the world.
Now that's kickin' it Nerd Country style!
All I can say is, the project has really laid an egg. In fact, if all goes well it's gonna lay a bunch of eggs! Miss Cleo (that's the owl) has laid her first official egg in what The Pats hope will be a clutch of 3-5. It's pretty amazing to see how far they've run with this idea and it cracks me up that this owl now has a web cam and I don't!
Anyway, head on over to PatnPat's place for more on this cool story.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The "50 Most Significant Science Fiction Novels of the Last 50 Years" Meme
One of those infernal Internet memes has been making the rounds, but this one has a redeeming feature -- it talks about Science Fiction books. So below the fold, I'll post the list of the (allegedly) "Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years". The ones I've read before in bold and I'll include a bit of a note for the ones that I think warrant it.
I'm a little puzzled why this one is on the list (for one thing, it was published in 1953). It's a solid enough novel and quite readable, but hardly earth-shattering. I can only guess it's on the list because it was the first full-length robot novel that Asimov did in which the Three Laws of Robotics were featured. On the other hand, if you want to include the definitive book about the Three Laws, then Asimov's collection of interlinked short stories, I, Robot would be the one to get.
I think I probably read a few others on this list, but can't remember for sure -- at a certain point they all blur together, especially since some of them I last read 25 years ago or more. Good stuff, though. Counting them up, I've only read 28 out of the 50, which is fairly disappointing. What the hell have I been doing with my life?!
Much more satisfying is perusing my personal list of the most moving sci-fi & fantasy I've ever read is here on Amazon.com. That's a bit different from a "Best of" list, though.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Character Illustrations - Hero City
While I was combing through my hard drive to upload the "Toxico" illustration, I came across some others I did last year for the same Uberworld campaign, "Hero City", which is based on a team of supers hired by the Walt Disney Company and themed on their characters. The campaign creator is Rob Rogers, a great guy whose blog you can find over on the ol' blogroll. I thought you might like to see some more super-hero-themed artwork, so without further ado I post them after the jump.
"Beast".
"Mister Toad". I like this one because it's fully painted, without the usual black ink lineart. This was my first crack at such a format.
Josiah Gold, head of the training academy. I like this one because he's just a regular guy, which I don't get to draw very often.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Bad Super Hero Entertainment
I write too much and too long, a point brought home to me after reading my father-in-law's punchier, newsier style on his "Blog of Ages" site. So here's the short version (with thanks to my friend John for forwarding the original "Ain't It Cool News" story to me):
It's so easy to make bad super-hero entertainment that sometimes I want to ban Hollywood from ever trying to do so again. As just one truly painful example to prove the point, I give you this pilot for a live-action "Justice League" television show, which is so awful it makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a spoon:
The long version is after the jump, but really, that clip about says it all: few things are as bad as bad super-hero entertainment.
I didn't go to see "The Fantastic Four" live-action movie when it came out, which shocked a friend of mine who knows my love for super-heroes. "Why wouldn't a fan want to see everything in the genre?" he asked incredulously.
But that's the point -- I love super-hero stuff so much, it's painful for me to watch it when it's done poorly. It's like loving Bruce Springsteen's music and refusing to go to a "Celine Dion Sings Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits" concert -- when you love something, you don't want to see crappy versions of it.
Creating good super-hero fiction, either in comics or on film, is hard. Really hard. It looks easy because hey, it's just guys in tights beating up stuff, but that's exactly where the studios and comics publishers so often go astray -- if you treat it like silly kids' stuff, it's going to suck. Period. The super-hero movies that have succeeded -- "Batman Begins", "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman II", both "Spider-Man" movies, "X-Men" and "X2" -- have done so because they take themselves seriously. You have to understand the genre, you have to love it, and you have to treat it for the unique art form it is.While the live-action "Justice League" movie referenced earlier hasn't even been written yet, I dread its production exactly because I loves me some "Justice League". I collected the comics series when I was a kid and George Perez gave it his amazingly detailed, action-packed, unbelievably busy style. I even TiVo the animated series, one of the high-water marks in the franchise's history.
Classic George Perez "Justice League" style (pencils -- Alex Ross painting)
As hard as it is to do good super-hero entertainment, it's exponentially harder to do good super-hero TEAM entertainment. Off the top of my head, only the live "X-Men" movie series and the animated "Justice League" have gotten it right. There are a couple of others that didn't suck, but they weren't exactly good either ("Teen Titans", I'm lookin' at you).I think the reason "X-Men" succeeds is because "X-Men" was a team book from the very beginning. These weren't established characters artificially thrown together, the very franchise is predicated on their being interdependent. The universe these characters inhabit is hostile to their very existence, and alone they are victims of persecution and hatred. Banding together isn't a fun thing they do on the weekends over a few beers, they do it for basic survival. That's a compelling reason to have super-heroes team up, not on a one-time basis but as a genuine, persistent group. It's not an afterthought or a clever marketing gimmick; in their world, the "X-Men" team exists because without it, its members might possibly end up dead.
X-Mean, a team
Justice League, a team-up
Not so with "Justice League", which is more of a social club and branding concept than it is a real team. Trying to invent a reason for Superman to need Batman is crazy -- he's freaking SUPERMAN! Why would Batman, a character whose very core is that of an anti-social loner, spend time in the company of those he would consider to be fools? Green Lantern already HAS a super-team in the Green Lantern Corps, millions of galaxy-spanning heroes of all different alien races who bear the Guardians' rings of power. What the hell is he mucking around with Aquaman for?
"Justice League" is a series not about a team, but rather about a team-up. Team-ups are by nature ephemeral, temporary affairs, which makes it even harder to get a movie-going audience to invest enough emotionally in the characters to accept the fact that they're wearing spandex and capes. Team-ups are based on marketing, teams on need. Team-ups take established characters and bring them together on some pretext, but a team is its own pretext.
Team-up comics were invented by publishers who thought it would be a great marketing idea to put all of their most popular characters in the same book, each established figure brining its own fan base to the table to plunk down their ten cents. It's the "If one is good, ten is better" school of thought, and one that is as irresistible to Hollywood as it was to the original comic books companies who applied the "All Star" concept to their lines.
But sometimes, more is bad. I hope the producers of the new live-action "Justice League" project understand this, and do the hard work necessary to overcome the limitations inherent in the concept. Done well, team-up stories can be extremely entertaining. But done poorly ... well, let's just say I'll have my spoon ready, just in case.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Technology Kryptonite
Even Superman was vulnerable to Kryptonite, so I shouldn't feel shame that I too have a weak spot. In my case, it's not glowing rocks from my doomed home planet that sap my super strength, but rather the simple telephone that destroys my geeky mojo.
When I worked at Dell in Technical Support, I was in "The Swamp", the only (at that time) overnight crew. We took calls on everything Dell sold, from servers to laptops to modems and graphics cards. If Dell stocked it, we supported it. This was in marked contrast to the daytime techs (or "Weenies" as we called them) who could punt all the hard calls up the tech hierarchy and only had to troubleshoot easy stuff ("Yes, the power in the house has to be on for the computer to work, that's not a design flaw").
Hell, I even remember trying to help a guy fix the trackball on his Latitude notebook computer, and I had never even seen a trackball. "Trackball, trackball," I was thinking frantically, searching for an image on the internal web site. "Surely he's not using a piece of sports equipment for a pointing device ... " But I fixed it, along with all of the other calls on equipment I'd never seen before and knew only from spotty and incomplete online tech manuals.
All the other equipment, that is, except for anything involving phones. Phones have hated me for as long as I can remember. In high school I was trying to woo a girl on the phone, and she fell asleep on me. I blamed AT&T and not my sparkling wit. My cell phones keep leaping out of my hands to dash themselves on the pavement, desperate to escape my clutches. I'm on my fifth modem in my home computer as the others keep flaming out -- they hate me, I know it. I even got a vicious cut on my hand once trying to replace one of the little bastards, and although I can't prove it I am pretty sure it was faking an injury and packing a shiv.
Phones are Evil
My incompetence extends to anything with a phone type of device in it, as well, which has led to some nasty tussles with fax machines. They keep eating my originals, shredding my documents, refusing to transmit, and flash the date at me in defiance of every effort to program them. They're even starting to get proactive on me -- I had a fax machine calling my house every hour for three days once. Tell me that was an accident!
I've learned to accept this chink in my armor over the last decade or so. Just as Superman coats himself in lead to resist Kryptonite rays, or sends a surrogate Super-Robot out to handle the deadly stuff, I too have become adept at negating telephony's nefarious hold. I simply refuse to answer the phone most of the time, under the assumption that if I don't open myself up, I can't be damaged. Letting the cell phone run out of electricity is also a good maneuver -- if it can't ring, I'm at no risk.
Sadly, this entire week I have been held helpless in the thrall of my age old enemy, as the wireless modem we use for Internet access has up and died on us. It took a year for it to figure out it was, in fact, a modem and that it should thus hate me, but it's certainly making up for lost time. In fact its loathing cascaded all the way up the line, knocking out two relay stations further along the chain in an effort to make me buckle. And buckle I have, my friends -- I haven't been able to get online from home in a week now.
I suspect that phones are actually not just my personal technological Kryptonite, but are in fact RED Kryptonite, the variety that has unpredictable effects on the Man of Steel. Once it even made him grow super-fat -- I bet that's what is happening with my phones. Somehow they're not only robbing me of my super tech support abilities, but they've made me put on forty pounds and go bald. If I can blame them for my back hair, too, I'm pretty sure I've got a rock-solid case for a lawsuit against Ma Bell.
Monday, February 05, 2007
iPod Country-Musical Mashup-a-Palooza
When I sing, I don't just limit myself to the notes and the key from the song I'm singing -- that's so repressive. No, being the free spirit I am, I let the notes careen up and down the scale from the original like a drunken man on greased stilts.
And if I can do that with the notes, I asked myself, why not with lyrics as well? Being an agreeable fellow, I immediately saw the wisdom in what I had proposed to myself, and thus I now bring you a new creation -- the first ever Nerd Country iPod Country-Musical Mashup-a-Palooza. I've taken verses from various songs on my iPod and assembled them into an all-new narrative song of drinking, loving, and losing that I feel confident will rocket its way up the country charts.
We move from unadulterated sinful excess, to slow recognition that perhaps his significant other has also strayed, on into acceptance of an addiction problem, eventually into rage, and finally reaching an understanding that the doomed relationship, now broken, is likely not going to be resumed.
Bonus points for whoever can identify the most songs making up this Bubba Tech Frankenstein Monstrosity!
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
Need a little bit more of my twelve-ounce nutrition.
One more helpin' of what I've been havin'--
I'm takin' my turn on the sin wagon.
The moral of this story is sad but true,
I love to drink, and she loves to screw
Hobo’s got a better life, out riding on the rails
I’m at home getting hammered while she’s out getting nailed!
I'd fall down and say "Come help me, honey!"
You laughed out loud, I guess you thought it was funny.
I sobered up and I got to thinkin'
Girl, you ain't much fun since I quit drinkin'.
Women are irrational, that's all there is to that!
Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
They're nothing but exasperating, irritating,
vacillating, calculating, agitating,
Maddening and infuriating hags!
Is it still over, are we still through?
Since my phone still ain't ringing I assume it still ain't you.
This started out as just a set of funny lyrics from songs I've been listening to, but then I realized it kind of all hung together. There are five different songs this was drawn from, four country tunes and one from a musical.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Great Super Bowl Ads
Peter Hartlaub on MSNBC.com writes about what he considers the "The 10 best Super Bowl ads of all time". Unfortunately Peter seems unaware of a new technology all the kids are talking about these days, this "YouTube" thingie, so while entertaining, his column misses badly by not providing links to all of the commercials in question. Luckily, Jeff's Home For Teaching The Aged About Technology is here to remedy the lapse. Below the fold, I present Hartlaub's list of all time great Super Bowl ads, complete with videos, in order from #1 to #10. Personally I'd have put the Reebok "Office Linebacker" ad at number two, but Peter forgot to check with me. The nerve! Anyway, hope you enjoy the stroll down memory lane.
Apple Computers "Big Brother" (1984)
Coca Cola "Mean" Joe Green (1979)
e*trade Dancing Monkey (2000)
Terry Tate - Reebok Office Linebacker (2003)
Monster.com "When I Grow Up" (1999)
McDonald's "The Showdown" (1993)
EDS "Cat Herders" (2000)
Tabasco "Exploding Mosquito" (1998)
Xerox (1977)
YouTube doesn't have this one, but you can get to it here.
Budweiser Frogs (1995)
Friday, January 12, 2007
She Make It So
A friend of mine (Jeff the Evil DM) just posted this video featuring an old gaming friend of his and their band, Warp 11. The name of the song is "She Make It So", and coming from a family where my brothers could point at the exact spot on the screen where the USS Enterprise would appear in the opening credits, this really hits the spot.
I don't usually like rockin' type music like this, but I actually like the song itself, in addition to the obviously cool Star Trek stuff. Thanks for the tip, Jeff!
Thursday, December 07, 2006
We Did This
This photograph (courtesy of the Houston Chronicle and NASA), took my breath away:
It shows the nighttime launch of a shuttle mission (STS-92 to be exact). When I see images like this, what I think is "Holy crap, that's awesome." But the SECOND thing I think is, "We did this." No alien species landed and gave us the answer; Zeus did not reach down, take us up in his hand, and fling us into the heavens; and this wasn't an accident of nature.
No.
Human beings imagined the possibility of flinging ourselves off this planet that gave us birth, worked their butts off to engineer it, shed blood and sweat to build it, and then took their hearts in hand to ride it into the heavens. Human minds wrestled with the rules of the universe, and we conquered gravity. And then we did it again. And again. And again.
We did this.
Be proud.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Christmas Gift Idea
For anyone out there wondering what to get me for Christmas, wonder no more. Behold the ESG and Freesky Gryphon Flying Wing (courtesy of Popular Science and Gizmodo:
The mission starts when the brave soul wearing this birdman outfit takes a flying leap out of an airplane at 33,000 feet—hopefully equipped with warm clothes and oxygen—and flies the jet wing wherever he's going until he gets to an altitude of about a mile. At that point, somehow our intrepid hero sheds his wing and opens a parachute, letting that wing dangle below him as he floats to the ground.
Pardon me while I drool.
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