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I’ve been playing Rock Band for a few weeks now and I’ve concluded that it’s a great social game. However, it could be improved. Here’s how:
1 Multiple instrument support. If a song has two percussionists we should be able to use two drum sets. Same for two guitar songs and especially for backing vocals.
2 Different peripheral support. I don’t just mean the keyboard device. I want dance pad support for dancers. Light gun support for security, it could be a taser to keep the crowd from rushing the stage. Camera support for gratuitous groupie flashing. Rob the Video Robot support for… well… I don’t know but you get the idea.
3 More diverse music. After looking at many of the forums about the downloadable content for Rock Band I’ve determined that I’m the only person on earth excited for the Grateful Dead pack (all 18 songs–I’d even take different live versions of each). I still want more diverse stuff though. Especially the BEATLES. I want every song recorded by the Beatles. They could be released chronologically, a couple songs at a time or as one giant pack… whatever, just give me every Beatles song.
As a wii owner for nearly a year now I’ve yet to feel like it’s a solid video game console. Sure I still have fun with people playing wii sports and to a lesser degree wii play. I even like to pick up some single player monkey-ball once in a while. I’ve yet to try some of the sports games like The Bigs (baseball) and Super Mario Strikers (soccer) and I expect them to be passable but I’ve never defined my gaming experience by sports games and I doubt I ever will. So where are the wii games that I want to play?
I had very high hopes for Metroid, I’ve always loved first person shooters (even on consoles) and I was psyched to use the nunchuck wii-mote as the natural fps controls that they are (I liked the controls of call-of-duty wii, but the game was lame). So along comes Metroid and I was expecting something solid, and maybe it is, but it certainly isn’t fun. I suspect I had too high of hopes, I really expected multi-player. It was on the DS Metroid, why wouldn’t the wii have it? I have no idea. I’d have rather had a multi player only Metroid than a single player only, alas.
Metroid is a puzzle game disguised as an action game and with out a really fast puzzle-solve-time an fps is a terrible interface for puzzles. Apart from the anti-intuitive design concept the game is full of other crappy game things like back tracking and looking for differences in textures to identify hidden shit. I want to shoot things not spend my time combing levels through a black and white filter that requires me to hold a button for about three seconds every time there is something that might be necessary to complete the next section but usually isn’t. Please. In the review by Game Informer (a Minnesota grown gaming magazine) the editor had the balls to suggest that there wasn’t enough back tracking in this game and that the backtracking is what made Metroid special… I’m canceling my subscription.
I guess there’s still some hope. There’s a new resident evil coming, a shooter on rails that looks promising. There’s also a new Fatal Frame being made by Suda-51 the guy who gave us Killer 7 one of the strangest games I’ve ever had the opportunity not to finish. Apart from that powder is of importance.
Since I’ve been biking to work I’ve found that when wearing business clothes during the commute it’s helpful to apply a powder to strategic areas. At first I used some powder I found laying around–Goldbond. I liked the effect but Goldbond has a distinct mediciney smell that I’m not fond of. Sometime later my significant other was heading to the drug store so I requested that she pick up some powder that was a little less mediciney, a little more manly and a little more sexy. She brought me a big bottle of Vagisil powder. She still claims this meets my criteria… I disagree.
Let’s say you had a one gigabyte MP3 player full of music. Using encryption one could take all of the information contained on the MP3 player and turn it into a string of numbers based on the key and equation used for the encryption.
Consider that your DNA is a string of numbers in base 4.
If one had a device that could analyze the data contained in your DNA and determine the proper encryption method necessary to result in the exact same data contained on the MP3 player one could create a storage free MP3 player. It would be some thing that decrypted your DNA is such a way that resulted in your desired playlist.
Of course this would involve reverse encryption, or encryption cracking, which we can’t do effectively yet. It may even be slightly more complicated than that, but I still think it’s a cool idea.
Shinders is done. They had a good run for eighty-seven years but it only took one drugged-out fiend three years to run the company into the ground and destroy it. I am not a business expert, but I would hope I could figure out a way to stop spending $100,000 per month if my business was tanking.
Maybe tell your vendors to stop sending you stuff?
We are in some very difficult times for printed newsstands and book sellers but it is possible to remain in business. Barnes & Noble is figuring it out. As is Border’s. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of those companies purchases the name Shinders. Well, that could be wistful thinking on my part.
I bought a lot of my comics at Shinders. Some porn. All of my Fantasy Football needs were met by Shinders. A ton of my D&D dorkiness was fulfilled by Shinders.
It is a drag to see them go. Especially in such a humiliating way. When history is written about this era of time, there will be a lot of examples of once-proud businesses that fail unexpectedly due to mis-management at the very top levels.
I hope Robert Weisberg gets disbarred and goes to jail. He’s only got a $500 donation listed over at fecinfo.com, so there is a chance he may actually go to jail. Of course, that doesn’t include the bags of cash or the hookers and blow he sends out to political candidates - so there is still a good chance he won’t do time.
If your only tool is a microwave, everything looks like a bag of popcorn.
If your only tool is a lever, everything looks like a fulcrum.
If your only tool is a Happy Meal, everything looks like a chubby 10-year-old.
If your only tool is a stapler, everything looks like a stack of papers.
If your only tool is the internet, everything looks like porn.
If your only tool is a flux capacitor, everything looks like a delorian.
If your only tool is a flashlight, everything looks like the dark.
Scientists have announced that a new rock floating through space, Gliese 581 c may be a habitable planet. If this is the case, we will need to start thinking about ways to get there. Hell, we’ve been thinking about it as a species for years but we need to put aside social and political differences and really work toward finding a way to migrate to a new habitable planet. We don’t even need to live there really. We just need to be able to grow food on the planet until we find more planets capable of sustaining life.
Once we discover a planet capable of supporting farming, we can send our robo-workers to do do all the heavy lifting and humans will make future livings as Teamsters. Only we’ll all be piloting space ships delivering foodstuffs and repair parts back and forth. Ice Pirates anyone? It may have been an entertaining farce in 1984, but if we as the human race want to go out with a bang, not a whimper, then we really need to start making real progress into deep-space exploration and migration.
We need inter-galactic spaceships capable of traversing millions of miles a la Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek.
Think of it as science fiction if you must…but things change. Sometimes, fantastic stories that were once considered fiction lead to discovery.
Beware the ides of March he says. Well maybe in your lifetime Billy, but in my life I beware the ides of April more. Today is a day to be wary. Happy 420 all! And an unhappy anniversary of so much more. I have always heard 420 is the day it is because 420 is the police code for marijuana possession. But we must take the good with the bad I’m afraid so here’s a little list of what to remember to forget about today.
Do me favor, enjoy your holiday and forget what you’ve seen here today, but remember to be careful. And to smoke with a special friend today.
HAPPY 420!!!
Kasparov was just arrested for posing some sort of threat to the Putin regime. What I don’t understand is how they expect to keep him in. I’m sure he saw this coming, even if he isn’t at the top of his game he’s probably playing 30 moves ahead. I expect that he knows that by getting arrested he’s guaranteeing that his party will upset the status quo for the next election. Either that or he can just get out and elude capture until he stealthily sneaks into the Kremlin and takes the crown himself (they still use a crown in Russia don’t they?).
CHECK MATE PUTIN!
Here are a couple Blogs that everybody needs to visit occasionally:
The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society
This site is all about natural/scientific curiosities and it’s wonderful.
XKCD
The best comic online since The Masked Mushroom. Make sure you read every single one.
The Last Psychiatrist
Not sure how sound his medical advice/observations are but they are entertaining and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.
1up Yours
This is the best video game podcast, give it a couple of episodes–it grows on you. Also at this site: 1up Podcasts there are some others by the 1up/egm/gfw teams includint a World of Warcraft specific podcast and the GFW (games for windows) podcast. The latter of which has some of the best voice work you’ll hear on any podcast (dude does a nerd voice and the whiskey nerd–also “heroes of the web” is always great).
Girl Talk. Download - pay what you can. - #
Phish reunites to tour in 2009. - #
Here's a helpful and depressing tutorial on the current financial crapstorm, in cartoon form. I'm having a hard time figuring out who did the video, but it was linked to on Cosmic Variance. - #
MoveOn.org is giving away free Obama buttons. Almost 2 million ordered so far. - #
If I had married Tea Leoni and starred in film and TV with Gillian Anderson, I would have the exact same problem. How many love children do you have David? - #