This just in. The elusive Mushmouth has been captured in the vicinity of Acton. Please lock your doors. 

New Phones

I picked up a new pair of headphones today since mine had finally died and gone to headphone heaven. The old ones were great, but I've had them for at least 5 years, if not longer. The pleather on the headphones themselves was gone, the head strap thingy was cracked, stiff and twisted beyond recognition and the wires connecting to the computer were frayed from my running over them multiple times. The final straw was finding the plastic on left earphone cracked on Sunday. It felt wierd when I wore them and so I looked closely and saw that the plastic had cracked and was on its way to snapping completely. I duct taped them up, but they were still broken and just felt wierd.

So I picked up a pair of Mirai Open Air headphones at Best Buy today for $39 and they're dreamy.

I'm off to try them out!

13 Things That Don't Make Sense

This is an interesting article about the 13 Things That Don't Make Sense with regards to scientific findings of late.

Please pardon (or applaud) the brevity of this post as I'm trying out the e-mail posting aspect of Blogger what with the online post thing acting rather stupid today. I also apologize for duplicate St. Patty's Day things. Sigh...

This one's just for E-fett

It's a little website I just like to call:

How To Draw Boba Fett

(in 8 easy steps)

Enjoy!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Now go celebrate your Irish heritage by getting drunk.

Found this great recipe for an Irish Car Bomb. Sounds... interesting, to say the least.
---
Alright, apparently a whole lot of you don't know how to make an Irish Car Bomb. Allow me to enlighten you.

Take a shotglass. Mix about half Jameson Irish Whiskey with about half Bailey's Irish Cream. Layer it in the shotglass so the Bailey's is on the bottom.

Take a pint glass and fill it 3/4 of the way with Guinness. Let the beer settle, and then carefully drop the shotglass into the beer and chug it all like there's no tomorrow. If you don't drink it fast enough, it will curdle and taste worse and worse.

Only attempt this drink if you are of legal drinking age in your country. And drink responsibly!

Best of luck!

I take no responsibility for your actually making this and dying from some Guinness/Baileys explosion a la a high school science fair-style baking soda and vinegar volcano eruption.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Now go get drunk.

This gives me hope for Episode 3

As I alluded to in my previous post, I finished Star Wars: Republic Commando last night. I really enjoyed the game, although it was insanely short. I finished it in about 8-10 hours tops. I started it on late Friday and played most of Saturday. By that point I was 2/3rds of the way through. I did play a lot of WoW Sunday and Monday evenings which is why I didn't just finish off Republic Commando on Sunday.

Shortness aside, it was a lot of fun. It was a neat take on the Star Wars universe that didn't involve any lightsabers at all. Just lots of down and dirty squad-based fighting. I loved the squad AI and command system too. I've always liked games like Rainbow Six from a distance, as I just get too twitchy when I play them and end up killing my whole squad. Republic Commando had an awesome command interface for directing your squad to do their various duties and the fact that the other 3 members of Delta Squad actually could make decisions for themselves helped reduce frustration.

Pretty much, if you direct them to stand near a bacta tank and they're injured, they'll heal themselves on their own without you telling them too. Same with their various movements during a firefight, etc.

The only thing that was kind of annoying was that if you directed someone to plant a demolition charge or hack a terminal, it wouldn't default to the squad member that actually had specialization in that area. So I'd have my sniper hacking a mainframe while my hacker planted demo charges and my demo guy sniped. It was kind of annoying, but ultimately didn't matter that much.

The game has the coolest helmet cleaner ever. You get rain and blood and goop on your visor and this nifty energy wiper cleans it off. Little touches like that make the game neat.

I'm hoping that Episode 3 actually is going to be as cool as the trailer and the teasers in this game make it look. The game ends with the invasion of Kashyyyk (home of the wookies, for those in the know) by the Republic forces, which looks really cool. That, and Greivous looks neat and I can't wait to see the bodyguard robots in the movie. The game also really makes you hate the Geonosians. Man, I hate them.

BEWARE PLANET HERCOLUBUS

This is the most amusing spam I've received in quite some time. Give me prophets of doom over people selling me pharmaceuticals any day.

---

Our planet earth is under threat of being destroyed by the fast approaching of Hercolubus, also called 'Red Planet'.

Hercolubus is a gigantic planet, several times bigger than Jupiter, whose massive gravitatory power will provoke in earth plenty of terrible earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc., which will increase in intensity until they bring humanity to an end.

Those are REAL facts, they are not fictions, they will happen in the short term and are described in detail by V.M. Rabolu in his work 'Hercolubus or Red Planet', where humanity is warned about that next catastrophe and told what to do in order to avoid it.

Yours sincerely,
Ediciones Humanidad

More information:

Free PDF:
http://canada.hercolubus.net/Hercolubus_Canada.pdf (on line)
http://canada.hercolubus.net/Hercolubus_Canada.zip (donwnload)

Hee hee. Frankly, if there's a giant planet coming that's bigger than Jupiter, I don't see what we could do to 'avoid the next catastrophe' other than building rockets and zooming off this giant bullseye we call Earth.

---
What I'm Reading: America: The Book
What I'm Playing: Republic Commando (beat it last night), WoW, not sure what else
What I'm Watching: My resume go off into the ether...

The Ultimate D&D Table

I've been talking with James about how we both want to get back into Pen & Paper gaming (ie. D&D) and I came across this on slashdot.

It's (in my mind at least) the ultimate D&D setup. You use a ceiling mounted projector to show your maps on the table and remove layers and such from a photoshopped map as you play. It's pretty cool.

Hmm... I have a pool table downstairs already... I just need to clean it up and get some friends over to play...

The Littlest Birds

I have a whole post I'm working on that details the secret lives of people who are home during the day based solely on the commercials that incessantly air during the day.

However, this is not that post, though it does have something to do with commercials.

Zellers has a new ad for spring stuff and there's a really catchy tune that plays through it. Garrett loves it and gets a big smile whenever it comes on the TV.

Anyway, I was listening to it for the 80th time today and I thought to myself, "Self, that sounds like a really familiar tune. I think the artists are Canadian... but who!?"

Thankfully I have l33t G00g13 sk1llz, so I was able to find out that it's none other than The Be Good Tanyas and the song "The Littlest Birds". I love it.

I just thought I'd point that out in case anyone out there has seen the commercial and liked the tune.

All I want for my birthday is...

A gold and diamond encrusted PSP.

Go forth and make it happen, my peons!

Now I really want to see this anime

This is cool.

Some people with too much time on their hands sat down and redid the opening sequence of Full Metal Alchemist using graphics from FFXI. I should track down that series and give it a watch. I like the concept from what I've read of it.

I Don't Heart Brampton

Due to it being really sunny out today, Garrett & I went and did some errands for most of the day. We went down to Georgetown and dropped off ol' Blurry the monitor off at the Wastewise recycling center (good riddance) and then headed into Brampton to pick up The Incredibles at Future Shop.

Man, I hate Brampton. I don't want to go back there until June, if then. I used to not mind Brampton, but after today it reminded me of all the things I hate about the sprawl surrounding Toronto and reinforced the fact that I haven't really had to deal with it since I went on leave. It's not as bad as Kitchener, but still...

On the upside, I got a cheque from Ipsos-Reid the other day for $15 for doing surveys and was able to cash that and use my remaining gift card and get a new kettle for our place from Canadian Tire. Yay! No mystery buildup in my tea. Unfortuately, I got distracted by my kettle purchase and forgot to look for some new headphones, what with mine having been broken a day or two ago. Ah well. Duct tape should hold for another day or so.

Oh, since I got The Incredibles today it was only $21 and came in a funky metal tin. Woo!

Garrett was wowing the ladies with his funky new sunglasses that are still a shade (pun intended) too large and kept sliding down into his mouth. Ah well.

---
What I'm Reading: America: The Book
What I'm Playing: WoW (Level 20!), Republic Commando
What I'm Watching: 24, What The Bleep Do We Know?

Baby-Proofing 101

Garrett taught us today that our house needs a bit of work in the baby-proofing department.

We had a nice little wooden tray on our end table in the living room that had our candy dishes, mug with pens, etc on it.

Notice the operative word 'had' in that sentence.

Garrett was cruising along (I just found out that that's the correct term for his style of locomotion) and in the split second when we weren't looking, *CRASH*.

Down came everything. The worst part was that the candy dish was full of cinnamon hearts and cinnamon balls that went EVERYWHERE.

At least we had an incentive to vacuum.

Garrett somehow didn't have anything land on him aside from some Christmas cards. He was more surprised than anything.

Our end table is really tidy now :)

---
What I'm Reading: America: The Book
What I'm Playing: Xenosaga 2, WoW, Republic Commando
What I'm Watching: Saved

An interesting read

This is an interesting article from the latest GDC which is pretty much a lot of the big game developers sitting around on a panel griping about the state of the industry.

I myself am wondering what the game industry will look like in a few years if the current EA-ization continues apace. Nobody wants to take risks with games anymore. Why do you think Katamari Damacy was such a hit? It was a breath of fresh air in a sea of Halo clones and GTA wanna-bes. Sigh.

A few pictures from the birthday party

Mason didn't realize that his dad was a demolitions expert until he tried to eat his cake... AND IT EXPLODED! 

Here's an old-timey picture of Garrett the Leaf Fan. 

This was a cool cake for Mason. The best part was that the dinos did the Godzilla roar when you fiddled with them. At least, they did till Grant washed them... 

I dare someone to tell me these two don't look alike. 

A couple pictures for tonight.

Garrett's getting pretty good at the standing and walking thing. I'll be calling him Rory Calhoun soon. 


And if you're wondering why I called him Rory Calhoun, it's a Simpsons reference.


Burns: There you are...there you go, little fellow...and you.
[one of the puppies stands on its hind legs]
[gasps] Smithers, look: he's standing up. I've never seen
anything so adorable! Do you know who it reminds me of?
Smithers: Benji?
Burns: No.
Smithers: Lassie?
Burns: No, no, no, a person. You know who I mean.
Smithers: Snoop Doggy Dogg? Bob Barker? David Brenner?
Burns: No, no! The person who's always standing and walking.
Smithers: Rory Calhoun?
Burns: That's it!

Monty picks up the obedient dog: "You stay with me; you're the pick of
the litter."

If in doubt, give your baby Coke. 

Must Review More Books

There's an interesting column over on Dave's Help Desk about how to become a Featured Amazon Reviewer. It also delves into WHY someone would want to become a Featured Amazon Reviewer.

Hint: It involves getting free books :)

Speaking of books, I finally finished Grass For His Pillow. It's a good book, but a little dry, hence my easy distractablility. I'm reading America: The Book now and it's hilarious. A perfect antidote to a sombre tale set in feudal Japan.

---
What I'm Reading: America: The Book
What I'm Playing: Republic Commando, FFvs3R, WoW
What I'm Watching: Saved, The Yummy Revenge Of The Sith Trailer (this Star Wars might actually be good!)

Jak 2 & 3: The Games That Almost Got Away

I just finished Jak 3 mere minutes ago and so here's my review/commentary on both Jak 2 and 3.

Jak 2

First a bit of backstory on my history with this game. I'd played the first Jak & Daxter game and it was a fun little platformer but nothing special. Jak 2 came out and after reading this scathing review on Gamespy, I had no real urge to play it.

Fast forward about a year and with a special deal at Best Buy, I was able to get Jak 2 for $9, so I figured I'd give it a try. That try resulted in about 5 minutes of play and my sworn oath never to touch the game again. The controls were loose at best, the city hub was a nightmare to navigate in and the vehicles made shopping carts look like F1 racers. Not only that, I then started to play Sly 2 which is like the platform game designed by God Himself, which further emphasized how crappy the controls in Jak 2 were.

So I traded the game in and got $20 and actually made a profit, so I was happy.

Jak 3 came out and while the commercials were interesting, I remembered how much I disliked Jak 2 and dismissed Jak 3 out of hand.

Now when the end of year awards were being handed out by various websites, I started to notice a few of them commenting on how much they liked Jak 3 and how they loved Jak 2. These were from a few sites whose opinions I tend to respect so I decided that maybe I was too quick to judge Jak 2. I picked it up with Jak 3 for about $50 for the both of them, which was a great deal.

So a couple weeks ago I decided to sit down and actually work on Jak 2 & 3 and boy, am I glad I did.

Jak 2 is at once one of the most fun and most infuriating games I've played in some time. There is a streak of humour which runs through the admittedly darker tone of the game that makes getting to each new cutscene a real incentive.

Unfortunately, the controls were still somewhat sloppy, but after spending a bit of time with them, I got used to them and was not cursing the TV quite so loudly.

Here's the thing with Jak 2. It's my definition of what a game based solely on pattern recognition is. It's almost impossible to get through any mission on the 3rd attempt, let alone the first. Add to that the fact that most missions had no mid-point restart spot and you're looking at elevated blood pressure and air blue with curses during some of the latter stages of the game.

Oh, and did I mention the compulsory race sequences using those shopping cart vehicles? ARG!

But after 8 attempts, you get the pattern of a mission down and can usually blow through them with no problem. And you want to, because the cutscenes are all incredible to look at and funny to watch.

So I slogged through Jak 2 and actually finished it, not realizing that I'd accomplished something up there with beating Ninja Gaiden. I just thought I'd had a hard time, but it turns out that it's actually one of those games you use as a definition of a punishingly difficult game.

So, with Jak 2 under my belt, I started in on

Jak 3

Now this game rocked. Gone were the compulsory shopping cart races. Gone was the maddening city hub. Gone were the 8 attempts to beat the simplest of missions. I was able to finish Jak 3 in about 14 hours, as opposed to the 20+ that Jak 2 took me. I realize now that Jak 2 probably would have clocked in at around 14 hours but I must have spent a good 6 hours just redoing each mission. Sigh.

Jak 3 is a lot more forgiving than Jak 2. The graphics are even better and the variety of environments and missions made it zip along a lot quicker when playing. I never really felt like I was just treading water, like I did with Jak 2 at times.

Starting Jak 3 seconds after finishing Jak 2 probably helped too, since my Jak skills were still fresh.

Add to that the fact that there are some great weapons, new moves, smart puzzles that aren't just pattern based and a lot more mid-mission restart points and it's not hard to see why I enjoyed this game more. Also, most of the characters had been established in Jak 2 so I was able to enjoy a meatier story with even more hilarity mixed in with its end of the world scenario.

The story for both Jak 2 & 3 was a lot of fun to watch unfold, even if you could see what the major plot twists were from about a mile away. It was told with such style and wit that I just really enjoyed it.

So I guess I'm glad I took a second crack at the games. Sure, they take a bit of time to get used to the controls but once you have them down, you're set. I think the two games are actually incredibly fun and are going to live in my permanent collection now.

And the best thing was that they were short. I'm so used to RPG's so having two games I could finish off in the course two weeks is refreshing.

Now to go play some Brothers In Arms or Republic Commando.

If you made it this far, I salute you. I mostly wrote this little blurb for me, so I could remember when I finished the game and also because these games had such a weird history for me. It'd be one thing if I'd been a huge fan of them and loved them. It's the fact that I went from hating them to absolutely loving them that really inspired me to blather on.

I promise it won't happen... till the next game.

Now to see if Blogger will eat this!
---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow (30 pages left! WHY WON'T IT END!?!)
What I'm Playing: Jak 3 (duh), Freedom Force 2, WoW, Republic Commando
What I'm Watching: The OC for the Star Wars 3 trailer that DIDN'T AIR ON CTV.

That was fun.

Garrett hasn't been sleeping well this past week and last night took the cake. He woke up no less than 3 times, screaming his fool head off and being rather inconsolable.

I think he's going through a growth spurt or something. He has actually been in a great mood all day today, which is a nice change, but Julie & I are zombies today.

Zzzz...

Stupid Blogger

Grr... I had a post up this morning but I think Blogger ate it. Here's a general wrap-up of the posts eaten by Blogger today.

HUMAN NEWS
I just got word today that my grandpa is in the hospital under observation for chest pains. Any and all prayers would be greatly appreciated.

I was apologizing earlier for not updating for the last couple days because I was still recovering from my karate lesson on Tuesday. I'm actually very glad I couldn't go on Wednesday because I was still sore today. Thankfully I'm pretty much mended now so I'll be ready for next week. *shudder*

Garrett has been getting up at 6:30 or so each morning this week. For some reason I'm falling asleep while playing World of Warcraft each night at midnight. I wonder if the two phenomena are related...

Garrett has also been falling asleep either sitting up or standing up in his crib. It's funny because he really wants to stand/sit... only problem is that he keeps bonking his head when he nods off and gravity takes over.

Pictures from the weekend have been uploaded to my computer and should make their way to the internet by sometime mid-solstice. Hopefully tomorrow.

I'm trying to finish the book, "Grass For His Pillow" as you may have noticed from my little 'What I'm Reading' bits. I have read about 8 graphic novels since I started the book and I'm THIS close to finishing it... I just haven't spent as much time reading this week as I'd like. At least, not reading novels.

GAME NEWS

Just got Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich. Should be a hoot to play.

90% done Jak 3. I'm going to go see if I can knock off the last 10% right now. I'll post a double review/summation of Jak 2 & 3 once I get Jak 3 finished.

World of Warcraft is still a hoot to play, 1 month in. It's awesome to solo and hooking up with Tony to go hunting with our warlocks is a lot of fun.

I think that's about it. I'm going to go beat Jak 3 now.
---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow (50 freakin' pages left!)
What I'm Playing: Jak 3, FFvsT3R, WoW
What I'm Watching: Blogger eat yet another post

Just in time for my birthday

Ok. I am calling all anime buffs to join me in seeing Steamboy on my birthday or shortly thereafter. It opens on March 18 and hopefully will be showing somewhere in Toronto, if not on a wider release. I've been looking forward to this film since I saw the trailer on my Metropolis DVD. Mmm...

I expect no less than Yvette, Noel and James to be in attendance. Anyone else who can make it should as well :)

A REALLY Cold Case File

This is neat.

They've done a CT scan of King Tut's mummy and determined that he likely was not murdered, but instead died of infection caused by a broken leg. It's not definitive, but they seem pretty sure of it.

Speaking of colds, whatever I had on the weekend was gone by yesterday morning. Seems that Suzie has something somewhat similar to what I had, but with more severe symptoms. Ah well. Hopefully it was just a 24 hour bug that was going around.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow, Ultimate Spiderman V. 1 & 2, I Never Liked You
What I'm Playing: Jak3, WoW, LoZ: The Minish Cap
What I'm Watching: Dawn Of The Dead (2004 Remake), Collateral

Kill Me Now!

So yesterday we drove down to visit Grant and Suzie for Mason's birthday party and about halfway there (coincidentally after my second coffee) I started to feel really sick. I have been feeling ill ever since then and the 3 hour car ride each way hasn't helped. Thankfully the blizzard that greeted us when we got up today at Grant's place was more or less over by the time we finished breakfast and were on the highway home.

I still feel like crap though. I thought maybe it was just that Kingston had a physiological effect on me much like Kitchener does, as I was feeling pretty good by the time we were back in Toronto. Alas, I've got the cold sweats and general queasiness again now that we're home. Bleh.

We did have a good time, illness aside. The babies had a lot of fun, we got to watch some slides of myself and Dave as a baby (and they weren't on Powerpoint!) and Grant & I had a good long chat about the nature of good and evil and binge drinking and Benny Hinn late into the night :)

I'm going to go curl up on the couch and play some Jak 3 or something and try not to die.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow, instructions on the side of the Pepto bottle
What I'm Playing: WoW, Let's Not Throw Up, Jak 3
What I'm Watching: My life flash before my eyes.

Does anyone really care?

I beat Jak 2 last night at around 1:30am. Woo! I'll write up a little blurb about the game when we get back from Mason's birthday party. Woo!

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow
What I'm Playing: Minish Cap, Jak 3
What I'm Watching: The miles go by on the 401.

WoW!

I command anyone who enjoys cool CGI cinematics to go here and download the opening movie for World Of Warcraft. It's absolutely gorgeous and now you don't have to hire your own private treasure hunter to find a copy of the game in order to enjoy it!

I'm attacking the darkness!

I'm sure most of you will have seen the version of the D&D skit by The Dead Alewives that used the characters from Summoner and Red Faction. This is the 8-Bit Theatre version. It's still pretty funny and this version has the opening and closing bits of the skit that aren't on the Summoner version.

Beat It!

On a less wonkish note, here's a cool little music beat game you can play on your browser using Flash.

BEATERATOR!

Kind of fitting that it's actually by the same guys who do GTA and Manhunt, both whipping boys of the insane nut of the post below this one.

Here we go again...

Just when you thought it was safe to play videogames, along comes another nut proclaiming them to be little more than murder simulators.

It's actually an interesting read because they're letting a few gamers who happen to be prominent web cartoonists respond and rebut the claims of this nut job. The link to a point by point breakdown of the crazy man's ramblings is pretty interesting too.

I personally loved this little exchange which shows how truly screwed up this guy's logic is (and that he's just trying to twist any question to his little script of wonky answers).

Q:Does age or sex play a factor in violent, aggressive behavior?

A:Sure, the sex and violence centers of the brain overlay one another, which is why the increasing mix of sex and violence is troubling.

Sigh.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow, crazy stuff on the internet
What I'm Playing: Jak 2 (almost finished), WoW
What I'm Watching: Just finished Angel, nothing on TV since our cable's been going on and off all day.

Wolfram & Spig

I picked up Season 5 of Angel yesterday, marking the finale of my Buffyverse collection, aside from owning the original Buffy movie.

Anyway, this last season of Angel is amazing and easily my favourite season of all the Buffyverse. I mean, I watched almost the whole thing in one day. That's gotta say something :) I'm on disc 5 of 6 and I've only had it home since around 1pm yesterday.

I think the biggest thing this season has going for it as opposed to all of the other Buffy and Angel seasons is that I knew nothing about it. I made a point of not watching Season 5 on TV at all, so as not to spoil it when I got the DVD set. This means I actually don't know what will happen at the end, which has made it much more interesting.

That, and the episode "Smile Time" is one of my favourite episodes ever. Best werewolf vs. vampire fight ever.

It's yet another thing that I've been reading/watching that deals with the nature of Good and Evil and the lovely little grey area inbetween. More importantly, it deals with the concepts of when doing good causes more harm than allowing evil to continue, and whether the good should still be done regardless. It's interesting, to say the least.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow
What I'm Playing: WoW, Jak 2 (stupid racing missions suck)
What I'm Watching: Angel Season 5, Garrett climbing up everywhere he can reach.

Take that, Fluffy!

There's a new webcomic that's been up for the last, oh, 2-3 weeks now that I have come to really enjoy.

It's called The Pet Professional. And no, it's not about vets. It's the ongoing saga of a hitman with very special targets. I really like the artwork and it's amusing to see how he's going to dispatch the latest pet each week :)

If you've ever been a cat owner, you can probably sympathize with this comic.

Yeah, I'm a sicko. I'm going to stick a link up on my sidebar in a week or so as long as the comic keeps updating. You never know about these new webcomics...

Now this takes guts

A family in Japan is suing the Yakuza for accidentally gunning down their son during a gang war. This would be like suing the mafia over here. It's interesting to see that someone is trying to go after organized crime through litigation, but you've also got to wonder if they've got a bit of a death wish.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow
What I'm Playing: WoW, Jak 2
What I'm Watching: Angel: Season 5

FINALLY!

I just checked my webstats and Oceans 12 is FINALLY off the list of keywords that have led to my site. Sheesh. Only took about 3 months.

You know you've been to the library a little too often when...

You can take books out without having to take your library card out of your wallet.

Seriously.

I went in tonight to get some books that I had on hold and I wasn't even up the stairs to the check-out desk when the librarian said, "Ah, we were wondering if you'd be in since we just called you."

That's fine. I like the librarians here in Acton. The creepy part was that she scanned the books I was getting out and handed them to me without my having to show her my library card. Well, it wasn't that creepy. They probably had my ID number on the hold slip so she just punched that in.

What confirmed that I've been to the library a wee bit too often is that when I went off, found another book and came back, she just scanned it in and handed it to me without my even having to get my card out. And it's not like it was on my previous check-out screen. At least one or two families checked books out between my check-outs.

The fact that they know my name and absolutely LOVE Garrett is a good thing. However, it's sad when your social circle in town consists of the staff at the local Subway restaurant, the lady who sells peameal bacon and eggs on a bun at the Trunk Sale and the entire library staff.

I could kill a man using only my pinky and a jar of Nutella

Today I took the first step to balancing out my World of Warcraft addiction with something helpful. I went to my first Karate class. Well, it was more of an orientation thing tonight. I called into one of the two local dojos last week when I got a flyer in the mail and it turns out I got myself a free month of training.

I've wanted to go out for Karate lessons since we moved here but I've never had weekday evenings free, so I'm going to take advantage of my free month and see how it goes. It's interesting how it's a lot like CPI mixed with my old swim team warm-up routine. Granted, I just got a few very basic training exercises to work on for the week, but when I go in next week I'll either be in a lot more pain or maybe a bit more limber.

The Sensei (I know that's not his real title... it's Sanshan or something like that) is also an Army officer. He's not very tall, but man, he's fast and not someone I want to get mad :)

Now to get my Eyetoy hooked back up and do my Groove training too.

---
What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow, The Ultimate series of Marvel graphic novels
What I'm Playing: WoW, Jak 2
What I'm Watching: The bubbles in my cappucino pop.

It's about time I put up some screenshots from WoW.

I make no apologies about this just being some screenshots from a game. Just wait be thankful I haven't written a big long ode to World of Warcraft... Yet :)

Anyway, on with the shots!

I love this shot. It really shows off the detail and art style of WoW. That, and it looks like a giant stone dwarf is about to smash lil ol' Guboo into paste. 

Here's the deady duo of Guboo the gnome and Malfuran the Night Elf, better known as Brock & Tony. 

Anyone up for some underwater mining? Yes, you CAN collect ore from the bottom of a lake. Ask me how! 

Beware the Undead Spig of DOOM! And come visit me here at Castle Greyskull. 

This game is stupid

How long can you hold it? HoldTheButton.com

I didn't hold it very long. I had to go help Julie do the dishes. Yeah.

---
What I'm Reading: The Dark Knight Returns, The Tomorrow People
What I'm Playing: Jak 2, WoW
What I'm Watching: 24, my CPU overheat and crash when I play WoW, my new vid card cooler fan buzz along happily

Finally, a use for those LARPing skills

A company in Germany put together a feature-length adaptation of Terry Pratchett's 'Lords & Ladies' for all of 300 Euros. According to the website, they used a lot of Live Action Role-Players because they had their own costumes :)

Beware the killer special effects!

---
What I'm Reading: Fray, some other graphic novels
What I'm Playing: WoW, Minish Cap, Jak 2
What I'm Watching: Daily Show, Dilbert

Doo Doo Doo De Doo Doo Dum

This is cool.

Some guys down at UCSC made a 4-storey tall mural depicting scenes from Super Mario Bros. on the windows of one of the buildings. It's pretty cool, especially concidering they made it out of Post-It Notes.

Old Man Garrett

Garrett's 8 months old tonight!

To celebrate, he's been pulling himself up all over the place. He just started doing that on the weekend. Sigh.

We let him have a couple french fries at Wendy's tonight to celebrate. Of course, he hasn't quite grasped the concept of not crushing your food before eating it, so it got kind of messy when we let him hold the fry. But still.

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What I'm Reading: Fray
What I'm Playing: WoW, Jak 2
What I'm Watching: The Dilbert DVD set.

Drool...

Here's how good my new monitor is, compared to the old one.

I was booting it up for the first time and there was a black screen with just an arrow cursor on it.

It was so crisp and bright (but not washed out) that I called Julie to tell her how much I loved my new monitor.

Suffice it to say, I'm glad I went with this rather than sticking with that broken 21" monitor. It's so nice to actually be able to read websites and online comics without squinting and guessing at the words based on what the shapes of the letters vaguely look like.

And the games. Oh, the games look marvelous. Heck, because this is a flat-screen with anti-glare and anti-reflection stuff on it, I can even do the unthinkable... Play Thief during daylight hours! AH!

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What I'm Reading: The big stack of graphic novels I took out from the library.
What I'm Playing: With my monitor settings, WoW, Thief 3, Jak 2
What I'm Watching: The NFB Animation Greats DVD that I got from the library... and I'm watching it on my computer!!

IT HAS ARRIVED!

Well, I just got my new monitor home. It's a Viewsonic E90f+SB, it that means anything to anyone. It's actually a good monitor according to Newegg, so that's a step in the right direction. According to Luke, I've got a reputation now for buying crappy computer products. Sigh.

The fun part was trying to load the box into my car. I tried getting it into the back seat, but it wouldn't get past the door. I tried getting it in the front seat, but I couldn't close the door. I actually contemplated driving home with the front door open (I'd drive slowly and on the back streets) but then I was able to wedge it into the back seat after some gentle 'persuasion'.

I'm off to hook it up. Expect a ecstatic post in the next few minutes once it's set up!

How Fast Are You?

I'm sure most of the techy people know about this already, but there's a cool little bandwidth meter over on Cnet.com that lets you find out exactly how fast that high-speed of your's really is.

It's kind of cool to see that my DSL is faster than a T1, but not as fast as a T3. Ah well.

Federal Finance is Fun!

CBC.ca has a fun little flash game that lets YOU decide how the federal government should spend the inevitable surplus that will follow tomorrow's budget announcement.

It's actually a very witty and informative little game. I didn't put any money into tax cuts and the government didn't fall, but I got a little sound blurb about our GDP to debt ratio that taught me something I didn't know.

The Odd Sleeping Habits Of Babies In The Wild

We'd put Garrett down for the night in his crib and when Julie went to check on him a few minutes later, she found him trying to make a break for it. 

Luckily we were able to set off a flashbang grenade and stun him, thus allowing us to get him back into his cage, er, crib for the night. 

I walked in the other day while Garrett was having a nap and found him like this. It doesn't look like the most comfortable position to snooze in, but whatever works, I guess... 

The continuing saga of Brock and his Monitor

Well, I couldn't fix my 21" monitor so I took it back and thankfully had little difficulty getting my money back. Even the guys at the store where I bought it were surprised at how bad the burn-in was after they tested it.

So I went to the local computer store and now have a 19" CRT flat-screen monitor on its way here tomorrow. The nice thing is that it's brand new, so I won't have to worry about something wonky going on because it's used.

Unfortunately, I have to use my old monitor for another day. Yuck. Just going back from the 21" to the 17" was a bit of a step, but I can handle it. Having to try to squint to make out the words on the screen isn't fun. I didn't realize this monitor was as bad as it was till now. Yuck!

I also picked up a USB hub so I can have my digital camera and MP3 cables plugged in at the same time. I also picked up a funky new LED mousepad. Garrett loves it. He keeps trying to grab the colours :) Plus I think it looks pretty cool. I'm just debating whether or not to put my old mousepad on top so I'll still have the wrist support or not.
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What I'm Reading: Not much. I want to read, but I've been too busy fighting with my computer and playing WoW.
What I'm Playing: WoW, Jak 2, Zelda: Minish Cap
What I'm Watching: Battlestar Galactica, my eyes going fuzzy from this crappy monitor.

My monitor needs warning labels.

Well, today we went out and in the midst of our shopping Julie got me my early birthday present.

I got a replacement monitor. Granted, my constant complaining about how my old one was making me blind helped speed up the process.

Anyway, I got a new monitor. It's a used IBM 21" Trinitron Flatscreen. It only cost $249! I love it so far. I can actually read websites and surf around without going blind from the fuzzy text. Not only that, it's freakin' HUGE!

I swear I'm going to need a new support leg for my desk just to keep it propped up.

World of Warcraft looks amazing on this new puppy. I'm going to fiddle around a bit more. It is a little bit washed out, but I'm going to tweak some more of the settings first. On the whole though, my complaints, such as they are, are very insignificant compared to the improvement over my old monitor.

[Editor's Note (updated around 8:45pm):

To prove that I have THE WORST LUCK IMAGINABLE when it comes to computer products, this monitor, which I loved at first, is now giving me a migraine.

It's a pretty snazzy monitor, but I've spent about 3 hours now trying to get it so that I have a true black background, as opposed to a kind of grey thing, and nothing works. I've tweaked every setting I can find on the monitor. I've fiddled with my Nvidia software till I can quote RGB values at passersby. Nothing works. If I were to use this monitor to just surf around, I'd love it. But games are all looking washed out, which I could have done on my old monitor, thank you very much.

Sigh. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to Georgetown with Garrett tomorrow to take this thing back. I try to buy a used product and look what happens. Sigh. At least the local computer store has a brand new 19" for roughly the same cost. So help me if the guys I bought this monitor from don't refund my money!

Bit Torrent strikes back

This is a nice little site about how to fight back against the MPAA and RIAA and any other bunch of litigious monkeys who like to shut down bit torrent aggregation sites.

And it's a nice tweak of the 'You can click, but you can't hide,' schtick that the MPAA put up on lokitorrent the other week.

Worst... Drive... Ever...

Julie & I decided to drive home in that lovely little storm that decided to dump on us the entire drive home from Sarnia yesterday.

It was horrible. The snow itself that was falling didn't really affect us (except for around Woodstock/Kitchener). It was the fact that even though the storm had been going for about 3-4 hours at the time we left, the entire stretch of Eastbound 401 hadn't been plowed!!

It wasn't so bad from Sarnia to Kitchener. Sure, we were going about 60 km/h at our top speed, but there were actually spots where the wind and traffic had worn the snow down enough so that you could find a good groove and not shimmy all over the road.

But man, from Kitchener to Milton... it was horrendous. I don't think a single plow had been down that stretch. We passed about 8 plows heading west, but the eastbound 401 was horrid. I was going from one side of the road to the other and not even realizing it unless I had a car behind me that I could use to get my bearings. Even then, they usually were following my tracks, so it wasn't a pretty sight.

Suffice it to say, my hands, arms and shoulders are rather tense. What normally takes us about 2 1/2 hours tops to drive home took us about 4 1/2. Bleh.

But the good thing is that my fear of changing lanes in a blizzard on a snow covered road is pretty much gone. And we proved that if you don't drive like a yahoo, you can do fine in winter storms.

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What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow
What I'm Playing: WoW, Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
What I'm Watching: All the stuff we taped last weekend.

Best Anti-PK Quote Ever

I love this line that I found on Gamespy's review of WoW. It sums up my feelings about PvP on MMORPG's perfectly.

"In my own case, I don't really care much for PvP; it may not be implemented well, but it's not going to affect my enjoyment of the product one whit. I'll be over on the PvE and role-playing servers having fun and meeting new people, not squatting in my basement planning the digital equivalent of hitting kittens with rocks."

You know your MMORPG is desperate when...

Ok. The fact that Everquest 2 is getting its butt kicked by World of Warcraft (and rightfully so) is bad enough for the people at Sony. Heck, the fact that there IS an EQ2 is bad enough.

But now they've gone and done something that is either really desperate or a sign of incredible genius.

They've added a /pizza command to the game. So while you're sitting around, spending 8 hours waiting for the Grand Fuzzy Hat Of Retribution to respawn, you can just type in /pizza and order a pizza from Pizza Hut without even leaning over and picking up your phone.

Sigh. It's so pathetic, even I'm not impressed.

Now, if WoW had a /thai or /sushi or /chili button, that'd be nice :) I should start a restaurant called The Chili Hut. Mmm...

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What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow, the World of Warcraft backstory
What I'm Playing: Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap on the GBA. Cool game!
What I'm Watching: Not much. The shows I want to watch on G4 aren't on until later.

Sickos

Garrett is sick now. He seems to have some kind of version of whatever Julie's got. His fever seems to be going down now, but he is still relatively warm. He slept most of today and isn't too happy when he's awake.

Sigh. I hope I don't get this. At least not until everyone else is over it. It's not fun, whatever it is!

Coolest Drive To Sarnia... EVER

Today we headed to Sarnia after Julie finished her half day of work. She'd been off sick since Wednesday and didn't want to get a doctor's note so she dragged herself into work today. Silly policies...

Anyway, we were able to get on the road at around 4pmish today. Now the cool part of the drive happened just past Kitchener on the 401. The traffic was slowing down and pulling into the far left lane. A big cloud of black smoke was in the air and Julie said that she could see a fire up ahead.

I thought it was an ambulance on fire, from the looks of the doors at a distance. It turned out that it was no ambulance...

IT WAS A WELDING SUPPLY TRUCK!

I've always wondered what would happen if one of those bombs on wheels ever ignited. Now I know. It was pretty spectacular. No explosions or anything (at least while we were there) but the entire back end of the truck was in flames. There were a couple cars that had pulled over ahead of the truck and the driver seemed to be with them, but it must have just happened as there were no emergency vehicles in sight.

We listened to the radio to see if they'd report it in their traffic reports and it wasn't until about 40 minutes later, as we were nearing London, that we heard anything. Turned out they'd shut down both the East- and West-bound lanes of the 401 at that spot. Phew! Good thing we got past before we'd gotten stuck there!

We also had an interesting drive, weather-wise. It went from sunny to cloudy to blizzardy and back to sunny as we went through London. Crazy snowbelt.

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What I'm Eating: Yummy Thai food... IN SARNIA!!!
What I'm Playing: Not much. Just looking for something to play on my GBA while I'm here in Sarnia.
What I'm Watching: Satellite TV! Gotta love the G4 (well, not really, but still)

I've been mugged!

I love surveys. I keep getting cooler things.

I filled out a Reader's Digest survey a little while ago and today a package arrived with a really nice stainless steel travel mug. It even has my name on it (well, it says, "SUPERHERO", so that's close enough).

This fits in nicely with the instant coffee I broke down and purchased yesterday. I have a huge tub of ground coffee in my freezer, but I rarely brew a pot of coffee because it makes too much. Since Julie doesn't drink coffee and my friends all live on the internet, it's hard to e-mail a cup of coffee and I end up drinking it all and being wired for 3 days straight.

So I figured that if instant coffee was good enough to drink at work, I could drink it at home. I'm also going to stop going to Tim's for a while now since I have my handy travel mug.

OH! And I picked up a container of Southern Butter & Pecan creamer. Yum. It's like drinking butterscotch coffee...

As Teen Girl Squad would say, "SOOOO GOOD!"

---

Smart People Listen To Electronica

What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow: Tales of the Otori Book 2
What I'm Playing: Thief 3 (Storming the Keeper Compound tonight!), Xenosaga 2, WoW
What I'm Listening To: Amon Tobin: Out From Out Where AWESOME ALBUM!

What Winter's All About

Today was one of those days I dreaded. I didn't want to go to swimming lessons with Garrett because the roads would be all yucky from the rain and snow we got in the last day and a half.

Well, I'm so glad I went out. By the time I went to swimming lessons, the roads were clear. However, today was one of those perfect winter days when the snow is heavy on every tree and everything is covered in a fuzzy coating of white. It's the kind of day that winter postcards are made of.

Sadly, we only get a couple of days like this down here in SW Ontario. Bleh. And people wonder why I want to move up north.

I wish I'd had my camera to take a picture, but most of you can just look outside and appreciate the view.

Quarantine Zone

Julie was home sick with something today. You know she's really sick when she actually takes the day off work.

This meant that I could go to Guelph and pick up my copy of Xenosaga 2 without having to drag Garrett along. That was nice. I also went to the library. The librarians know us too well there. They asked me where my little buddy is. I think they just get a kick from Garrett being the youngest library card holder in the system :)

So, Julie's sick. She seems a bit better though, so the CDC doesn't have to get involved... yet.

Speaking of sick, I picked up a package of Piller's pepperettes yesterday at Giant Tiger and I think there's something wrong with them. They smell like they've been in a house fire. I mean, smoked meat, I understand. However, they shouldn't smell like SMOKE! I guess I'll just chop them up and put them in omelettes or something. Sigh.

This blog brought to you by the nice people at EB Games

There's a great article in this week's Maclean's about the blurring line between advertisments and television shows.

It's a pretty indepth look at the pros and cons of letting advertisers incorporate their products directly into a show and the balance that writers have to strive for to keep their shows from becoming pure 'advertainment'. Granted, reality shows can do this with impunity, but not every show wants to go so far.

There's a neat story about how Miller was the official beer of Rescue Me until the show started getting into storylines about alcoholism and bar fights. The neat thing is that the writers actually stood up to Miller and refused to write wimpier storylines. Of course, Miller is no longer a sponsor, but at least the show maintains its integrity.

I also liked the followup article about the death and rebirth of online advertising and how it's teaching TV advertisers new tricks. Both articles are rather interesting reads.

I personally don't mind product placement like the Ford/24 relationship because it makes sense. I don't pay attention to the fact that Jack Bauer drives a Ford, but if it helps them make money, go nuts.

It's when the reference to the product is extremely blatant and draws you out of the 'reality' of the show that I don't like it. If they had Jack saying, "Gee, I wish I could get a new FORD TRUCK to help battle these terrorists." Well, that's going too far. As it is, they just have him get in and drive around in it. Woo.

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What I'm Reading: The final bit of Thief Of Time
What I'm Playing: WoW, Xenosaga 2
What I'm Watching: Lost!

Yet another reason I won't be getting a PSP for a LONG time.

According to this little article on Ars Technica, the 1 GB proprietary memory devices for the PSP are going to likely run ~$300 US. Granted, you can get cheaper ones, but they're not big enough to do much in the way of storing movies or MP3's, let alone game files. You can get 3rd-party mem cards, but 3rd-party stuff and Sony are usually not good mixes.

Sigh. So let's see. The handheld is looking to retail at $250 US, the memory units that'll be big enough to do anything with it are going to cost another $300 US... sheesh. Not even the PS2 was that insanely expensive at launch.

Add to this the lovely news that the square button on the unit might not work right, and that Sony has pretty much said, "Deal with it." Yeah, let me fork out $500+ at the bare minimum for a product that is kind of wonky from a design standpoint.

Well, suffice it to say, the earliest I'd get a PSP would be about a year or so down the line, hopefully after they fix the button problem and the price drops a few hundred bucks, Canadian...
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What I'm Reading: Thief of Time (will this book ever end?!)
What I'm Playing: Way too much WoW, Thief 3, Blood Will Tell
What I'm Watching: Scrubs (first episode I've seen since Christmas)

Mmm... Spicy

I got a sub this afternoon for lunch from Subway and heard the greatest news of all time.

Due to a rather large number of complaints, they now will have this pseudo-Frank's hot sauce as a permanent addition to their sauce rack. That means I can actually start eating there again.

After they got rid of the jalepenos, Frank's sauce and baja chicken sauce, there wasn't anything left at Subway to spice up my subs. Sure, I have about 3 kinds of hot sauce back at the house, but it's just not right to have to add my own condiments.

Ok. So it's not the BEST NEWS EVER, but from a gastronomic standpoint, it's rather splendid. Of course, if Quiznos was cheaper, it'd be a moot point. They've got the best sweet chili hot sauce ever invented.

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I play games so you don't have to.

I'll take Conditioned Responses for $2000, Alex.

Tonight Garrett was playing on the floor with his blocks and his big dump truck when he leaned a little too far on the truck and it went scooting out from under him.

Of course, he bonked his head on the 6" strip of hardwood floor that didn't have the big foam mats on it. Suffice it to say that he was rather upset at his bonked noggin.

I was calming him down when the Final Jeopardy! music started. All of the sudden he started squirming around in my arms until he was turned around and could watch the TV as the music played.

Then the music stopped and he started crying again.

Sigh. At least he has good taste in TV shows :)

He was pretty happy a few minutes later when he was able to take his truck and bash it on the ground a few times. I think he's had his revenge.

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What I'm Reading: Thief of Time (will this book ever end!?)
What I'm Playing: World of Warcraft, Blood Will Tell, Thief 3
What I'm Watching: Garrett fall asleep in his high chair at least twice today.

Cabin Fever

Today was one of those days that has been rather rare of late. I'm talking about a cloudy day. Not just a cloudy day, a really dark and stormy kind of cloudy day.

I love these kind of days. They're the perfect winter day because they give you every excuse in the world to just hunker down and hibernate indoors and not feel guilty about not going outside.

So of course, on today, the most perfect of days, I started going all squirelly and HAD TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Thankfully the sheets of ice outside had mostly melted by about 2:30 and we just went down to Milton to walk around the mall a wee bit until Garrett got fussy and smelly and I brought him home. But it was nice to get out of the house.

I wonder how people who don't like hibernating in the house all day handle things!

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What I'm Playing: Thief 3

Stupid Superman

This is too funny. I found this site while checking out the latest happenings on Memepool.

It's hilarious. It's a bunch of doctored covers of old Action Comics and such showing just how much of a dork Superman is. Love it.

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What I'm Reading: Thief of Time
What I'm Playing: Blood Will Tell, WoW
What I'm Watching: Corner Gas, Degrassi: TNG, Monday Report

Beware The Roboctopus!

This is a neat article about how scientists are studying how octopi are able to keep their limbs from getting tangled up.

But wait! There's more!

Not only are they trying to figure out how an octopus keeps its limbs organized, they're also hoping to use that data to help build robots that can keep THEIR limbs organized.

Spiffy stuff.

The sad thing is that National Geographic, of all people (organizations, whatever), actually uses the word 'OCTOPUSES' instead of 'OCTOPI' in their article. Sigh. I should get a job as an editor. I'd do a heck of a better job than the trained monkeys they have bashing away at the typewriters of most of these publications.

And maybe it's just me, but I think this would be the perfect way to spend Valentine's Day.

"The Oregon Coast Aquarium has a unique outreach program for you: On February 14, Valentine's Day, you can hold hands with an octopus."

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What I'm Reading: Thief Of Time
What I'm Playing: Thief 3, SMT: Nocturne
What I'm Watching: Garrett's butt lifts

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

So today I was walking out to my car when I had my deep thought of the day.

Is the Milky Way galaxy really just a big accretion disc for the super black hole cluster that resides in the bubble in the middle? Are we doomed to be sucked into the vortex of doom that lies at the heart of our galaxy (albeit in about 80 trillion years)?

Wouldn't it be better to live in a galaxy that didn't have mega-black holes in the middle?

These are the kinds of things that my brain has started to pump out. AHHH!

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What I'm Reading: Thief Of Time
What I'm Playing: Thief 3, SMT: Nocturne
What I'm Watching: Zatoichi, Napolean Dynamite

Shake your rump!

Garrett's been doing this quasi-butt wiggle/crawl attempt for the last couple days. It's kind of cute because he'll get his butt wiggling so much that his knees slide forward of their own accord. The scary part is that he's started propping himself up on one leg and is climbing the Exersaucer in the living room when left to his own devices. 

*Spig bangs head against wall*

While this gave me a big of a chuckle, it also highlights just how stupid people are.

Paul McCartney's yawn-o-rific half-time show this year has actually received complaints to the FCC.

I like the fact that "of those, two people complained that McCartney's performance wasn't racy enough.

The complainants said that the show put on by McCartney was boring and didn't entertain them."

It just goes to show you that people will complain about everything and anything. The article even says that there were people complaining this year about the 'wardrobe malfunction' from LAST year's Super Bowl. Sigh.

WOOSH!

Thanks to Noel for the link to this quiz.


You are Form 0, Phoenix: The Eternal.

"And The Phoenix's cycle had reached
zenith, so he consumed himself in fire. He
emerged from his own ashes, to be forever
immortal."

Some examples of the Phoenix Form are Quetzalcoatl
(Aztec), Shiva (Indian), and Ra-Atum
(Egyptian).
The Phoenix is associated with the concept of life,
the number 0, and the element of fire.
His sign is the eclipsed sun.

As a member of Form 0, you are a determined
individual. You tend to keep your sense of
optomism, even through tough times and have a
positive outlook on most situations. You have
a way of looking at going through life as a
journey that you can constantly learn from.
Phoenixes are the best friends to have because
they cheer people up easily.


Which Mythological Form Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Lost in the Office

Did anyone else catch the reference to The Office on Lost tonight? I got quite the chuckle.

"He's off somewhere, buying a paper company in Slough."

That is all. Go back to Lenting!

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What I'm Reading: The Ultimates V. 1, Thief of Time
What I'm Playing: Thief 3, SMT: Nocturne
What I'm Watching: Lost, the last bit of the Xenosaga DVD

Tough Choices, At Least For Me

I went out to Guelph today with Garrett to see A Very Long Engagement at the Bookshelf for their Diaper matinee.

Alas, there was no parking anywhere near the venue. Sure, there was a half-empty parking lot RIGHT NEXT TO THE BUILDING, but there was a security guard from the Royal Bank standing in the middle of the parking lot to ensure that only banking-related parking happened there.

Ah well. I'll just wait for the movie to come out on DVD in a few months.

Anyway, instead of going to the movies, Garrett & I went down to the mall and I traded in a bunch of games and pre-ordered Xenosaga 2, Jade Empire (Limited Edition) and also had enough credit left over to get Second Sight (Xbox) and Harvest Moon (Cube).

Now here's where the tough choices came in. Since I had no money, I had to trade in some games. Alas, I'd already traded in all of my b-list games back when I got my PS2 replaced.

So I have to say a profound sorry to Noel & Yvette and also to Grant who probably wanted to borrow a bunch of these games, but I traded in Fable, KOTOR 1 & 2, San Andreas and RE4. I got $150 credit for them though, so that was nice.

I figure that while I loved each and every one of those games, I did finish them all as well and I may as well trade them in for some good credit while they're still worth a pretty penny. I'll probably get them again in a year or so once the new systems are released and all of these games are greatest hits and only $19. That'll be my collection building phase. But for now they were just sitting on my shelf, gathering dust.

The nice thing about trading in games like those is that they will definately be around in a year or so if I decide to go get them again for my permenant collection. Games like Katamari Damacy or Nocturne or Rez though... they tend to disappear once you buy them the first time, so I never trade them in. The wierder and more Japanese the game is, the less likely you'll find it 6 months after release.

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What I'm Reading: The Ultimates: Vol. 1
What I'm Playing: Thief 3, Nocturne
What I'm Watching: My Xenosaga pre-order DVD with all 4+ hours of cinematics from the first Xenosaga! Woo!

Happy Pancake Day!

Yup, it's Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Flapjack-o-Rama, Le Jour Des Pancakes. We had our annual meal o' pancakes tonight. I love chocolate chip pancakes!

Garrett had a little tiny piece of apple that Julie had cut up for her apple-cinnamon-blueberry pancakes and much like me, he threw up while trying to eat it. We stuck to cheerios after that.

DUCK! Incoming baby pictures!

And here we see that Garrett has successfully squished the last of the rice cookie monsters that live on the floor of our living room. What would we do without him? 

M.C. Garrett is ready bust a rhyme. 

Garrett has tamed the wild Brock and will ride him into battle! 

Net Troubles

Is it just me, or is Penny Arcade not loading up? I just keep getting 'We'll be back shortly...' on their main page. I know they were going to do a server swap one of these days, but it could be something else...

My net connection seems slow today in general though. Anyone know if there's a DDOS attack going on somewhere in cyberspace? Or is it just a return of the rainy-day slowdown I used to get on my DSL line in Mississauga?

Oh, go check out the Peasant's Quest movie trailer on Homestar Runner while you're waiting for the various sites around the net to come back up.

Drool...

I had a Ghost in the Shell double bill today as Garrett seems to have spent most of the day sleeping (and I've been up since 7:30am!!).

Watching Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence right after the first one is highly recommended. Not only are the story and characters still fresh in your brain, but the contrast of the then cutting edge CGI of the original to the almost entirely rendered in a computer graphics of Innocence will blow your proverbial socks off.

I would LOVE to see Innocence in a theatre, but alas, that won't happen. It is definately one of the nicest looking anime I've ever watched, and I just finished pouring (poring?) over the entire 2 DVD's worth of content for the Final Fantasy movie.

I found it interesting that in GitS:I, the robots and environments looked more realistic than the humans. I'm sure that's an intentional statement. The story was pretty good too.

The only thing I didn't like in Innocence was the subtitling. Script-wise, it was fine, but they seemed to think that it was like subtitling for the deaf as opposed to normal anime subtitling. You'd get helpful subtitles like, "Door Closing", "Rain Falling", "Bell Ringing", etc. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be from the start, but it still was a little annoying.

Having the character's name before their lines helped since half of the characters didn't have mouths that moved or else communicated over the 'net', but the superfluous sound-effect subtitles were a bit distracting. Ah well.

Now to watch the whole GitS: Stand Alone Complex series I have on my computer...

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What I'm Reading: Thief Of Time
What I'm Playing: SMT: Nocturne, Mercenaries, Sims 2
What I'm Watching: GitS 1 & 2, Warriors of Heaven & Earth, Napolean Dynamite

Sci-Fi sucks.

This is too funny.

A publisher put out a press release last year saying that authors who write sci-fi/fantasy have the bar set a lot lower, quality-wise, than 'real' authors because their stories are so far-fetched.

Of course, the Sci-Fi Writer's Guild didn't want to take this crap so they got together and intentionally wrote the worst 'real' story they could and submitted it to the publisher.

It was accepted with glowing praise and attendant fanfare.

Of course, when they revealed in a news conference that they'd intentionally written a horrid novel and it was accepted for publishing, the publisher suddenly found problems with their work.

I'm almost tempted to pick it up. I love their tagline over on the preview site.

"The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? Atlanta Nights is a bad book written by experts."

And for sheer gut-busting hilarity, go read the preview text and the 'reviews' that were submitted.

"Maybe once in a lifetime, there comes a book with such extraordinary characters, thrilling plot twists, and uncanny insight, that it comes to embody its time. ATLANTA NIGHTS is a book."

FEAR ME!

I always knew I was powerful, but never this powerful! I'm a major player in Norse mythology!

Brock, the most spiteful of all the Dwarfs.

I think I'm going to print this off and just start quoting it at random.

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What I'm Reading: Thief Of Time (finally a good Discworld book to cleanse my reading palate!)
What I'm Playing: SMT: Nocturne! IT ROCKS!
What I'm Watching: Not much of anything. What happened to GOOD Saturday morning cartoons? It's just crappy teen dramas and knockoff 3rd-rate anime

Fantastic Doom

Here's a question for you comic book nerds who happen to know your FF history more than I do.

Was Victor Von Doom ever one of the 'good guys', as it were? I was watching the horrid trailer for the upcoming Fantastic Four movie the other day and it looks as though they've got Dr. Doom as one of the crew on the spaceship that gets bombarded by the rays that transform the lot into the Fantastic Four.

I always thought he was their archenemy, but had a completely different backstory from their creation myth. I'm hoping that I'm right and that this is yet another reason for me not to bother with the movie, but I'm curious.

And I'm pretty sure that Doom doesn't have the power to control electricity, at least not outside of his crazy armour.

My Monitor Needs A Big Kick In The Teeth

I hate my monitor.

It's an old Daytek 17" monitor that my mom got for me for my birthday, oh, 6-7 years ago (at least).

It's been giving me a lot of problems for the last year or so. The last couple days have been the tipping point though. Not only do I feel like I've got glaucoma when I use it because it's alternately way too dark or way too washed out, it's now starting to die on me at random intervals.

It was acting up last night when I fiddled with a couple settings but I got it working fine. Then today, as I sat down to finish up the powerpoint presentation for this week's church service, BAM!

The monitor decided to just turn off whenever Windows loaded up.

Thankfully Tony was still home and was able to remind me how to get into safe mode in XP (which I've never had to do!) and I was able to get my system working again, but it's still giving me grief.

I figure Luke will be able to help me out the most here, but I need some help picking out a new monitor. It has to be at least 17", preferably some kind of flat-panel display and not too expensive. If NCIX has way better prices than the local stores, that's fine, but since Julie will likely be getting it for us, she's not as willing to order stuff online.

If anyone can recommend a good monitor that I can game/watch movies/surf/do graphic stuff on without going blind, and preferably is flat-panel of some kind... let me know! I can price them out after that.

This Beno model looks like the creme de la creme of flat panel monitors, and it's not THAT expensive, but it's not cheap either. Are there any good alternatives to this one that are close to the same quality but cheaper?

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What I'm Reading: Grass For His Pillow: Tales of the Otori Book 2
What I'm Playing: Around with my monitor settings
What I'm Watching: A black screen for far too long.

ROAR!

I just finished Resident Evil 4. Fantastic game. I clocked in just shy of 20 hours. Just read any of the online comics or the reviews and you'll get a good feel for just how good the game is. I can't really say much more than what they already have.

Suffice it to say, if the Resident Evil series continues to be as good as this one was, I'd actually be excited to play more of them. I've never been a huge RE fan, though I do have 4 of the games (RE2, RE1 (remake), RE Zero and RE4), so it's not like I HATE the series. It's just that compared to, say, Silent Hill, it's rather juvenile and dull.

Until this iteration. RE4 completely broke the mould and was not only one of the best play experiences I've had in quite some time, it was also extremely gorgeous.

The thing that the RE series has going for it is the backstory. It's grounded more in pseudo-science than it is in incantations and magic. RE4 made a clean break with the zombies but still kept it grounded in quasi-realism.

Now, on to my world changing adventures in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the game that starts when the world ends...

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What I'm Reading: The last couple pages of Across The Nightingale Floor
What I'm Playing: RE4 (FINISHED!), SMT: Nocturne, The Monitor Refresh Rate Game
What I'm Watching: Garrett's nose ooze lots of goo.

It's about time I unload the digital camera!

The Microsoft Sidewinder: The Gateway Drug of Game Controllers. 

This shot is creepily reminiscent of my dad... 

Garrett: The Kimball Murderer. I walked into his room the other day and found him like this. Poor fella. Goes to sleep one night and wakes up an arm short the next morning! 

"Let's go Blue Jays! Let's go!" 

Here's a picture of Garrett's handiwork (pun most definately intended) on Julie's birthday cake last month. 

Mmm... Asian Food...

Twice this week we've had some excellent stir fries.

On Monday we had singapore noodles with peas and tofu. Tonight we had pad thai with chicken and peas.

I've been using these Asian Home Gourmet stir-fry 'kits' that we picked up at Sobeys the other day. They're great little kits. They just have the noodles and the SAUCEPASTE(tm) for whichever dish you're making, but it only takes about 30 minutes to cook everything up and it makes at least 3 helpings and they're DEEEEELISH!

The scary thing is that I've got Julie hooked on them now. But for $3.50 for the noodles and sauce and maybe another $3 in meat or tofu, you can't go wrong.

Sick Baby!

Garrett's got a cold today. He's actually been waking up a bunch in the middle of the night for the last couple nights, but today he's had the epitome of a runny nose, so we actually stayed home from our small group because he's sick and we're tired from his restless nights.

This is his first real cold. I wonder if it's from his first trip to the nursery last weekend... Hmm...

Hopefully he'll have a good sleep tonight and be all better soon. We're supposed to see my grandparents this weekend so I don't want him to be ill then.

Horse of Frying Ladders

I wanted to have a whole post about House Of Flying Daggers.

Suffice it to say, it's my new favourite 'kung-fu' movie. There have been several good movies lately (Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Iron Monkey, etc) but this one is a step above all of the rest.

For one thing, it is one of the most visually arresting movies I've seen in ages. The detail on the costumes, the colours in every scene... They just pop off the screen. I'm very glad I saw this in the theatre as it just would not have been near as vibrant on my crappy TV.

The House Of Peonies set is worth it just for the extravagant set and costumes and that's just the first 10-15 minutes of the film! There's a part of that first set-piece that struck me as being a live-action version of the bath house in Spirited Away, only with less demons. The bamboo battle and the final summer to winter transition is amazing as well.

It also was a very cool movie to watch from an action perspective. Not only was it less floaty compared to many recent 'wire-fu' movies, it also had some really cool projectile-cam shots that were really cool. It was almost like a live-action anime in some scenes. The Echo Dance sequences were both stellar.

But on top of everything else from a technical standpoint, it was just an interesting movie to watch. The story wasn't terribly complex but there was a lot going on under the surface. Everything flowed from start to finish without having to derail the action for exposition, or vice versa.

All in all, it was like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without the sudden train-wreck of a stop in the middle... Like Hero, but with more than 4 sets. I loved it.

Something's Very Wrong Here...

Something is VERY wrong here. This week marked my having something actually approximating a social life.

First off I had my little Wintereenmas celebration here on Saturday evening. Yvette & Noel came down for an evening of Katamari Damacy, Mercenaries and Burnout 3. By the end of the evening (1:30am!) we had tried out pretty much every game I'd picked up in the last year or so. Fun times.

Then on Tuesday I went to see House Of Flying Daggers in Guelph and put that little post up. Well, who should appear at the theatre to watch it with me? Why, Yvette & Noel!

AHH! This is dangerous. They're even talking about stopping by during Yvette's Reading Week, which means I'd see them 3 times in a month which is one of the definate signs of the impending apocalypse. Don't say you weren't warned.

It was neat to see that if I put something up on my website people actually show up :)

I guess it also shows what you can get up to if you actually have evenings off to do normal people stuff. AH!

Phone me, will you?!

I just received a very odd phone call. Someone with an english accent just called me. It sounded like they were calling on a cell phone and at first I thought maybe it was someone from work who I didn't recognize, until they called me a son of a bitch. Then, thinking maybe it was one of my friends who was being a goof, I asked them who it was. They kept rambling incoherently for a bit until I just hung up.

Wierd.

If it was any of you, well, speak clearly next time and identify yourself with your callsign. If you haven't been assigned a callsign, let me know and I'll start the paperwork.

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What I'm Reading: Across The Nightingale Floor
What I'm Playing: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
What I'm Watching: Battlestar Galactica Mini-series, Garrett ooze copious amounts of snot from his nose.

HIYA!

Anyone want to go see House Of Flying Daggers with me tonight at the Bookshelf Theatre in Guelph? It's playing at 9pm and is only $8.

I'm going to see this movie by myself if I have to. I almost went to see Million Dollar Baby at the Cineplex this afternoon, but I'd much rather see crazy kung-fu. If anyone can make it out there though, I'll see ya there!

BTW, the Bookshelf has the coolest moviephone-type thing ever. He is obviously a student of the Brock Wager School Of Rambling Voicemail Messages. Crazy stuff.
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What I'm Reading: Across The Nightingale Floor
What I'm Playing: Mercenaries, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Sims 2
What I'm Watching: Krazy Kung-Fu Akshun