l-dopa

I initially resisted watching “Battlestar Galactica“, dismissing it as yet another opportunistic rehash of a nerd show. Plus, no Moffet? WTF. Then I heard some friends of mine were watching it, friends who I don’t normally associate with rampant and ravenous television watching, so I decided to check it out.

And: it’s great. The actors who play Starbuck and Apollo are merely OK, but what really makes the series pop is the supporting work of Mary McDonnell as terminally ill President Laura Roslin. I just watched the episode last night where they christen and dedicate the newly-constructed “Blackbird” stealth ship to her, and honestly, I choked up a bit. Again: I choked up a bit while watching a show produced by the Sci-Fi network. I didn’t believe it either. She’s just. that. good.

Also, the roiling erotic tension between McDonnell and the also-very-good Edward James Olmos (a.k.a William Adama, a.k.a. “Wrinkle Farm”) is almost too much to bear. You know I’m right!

~jeff

Happy birthday, Jeff.

An interesting game that stands without much explanation.

Honda makes nice commercials.

This weekend I checked out the nifty Kororaa Xgl Demo Live CD on my PC. XGL is a rendering technology that allows linux OS machines to get some of the cool OpenGL effects possible in Mac OS X, or similar to the “Aero Glass” effects of a Windows Vista machine.

The long and the short of it: the XGL graphics are certainly cool, and anything that moves linux closer to the desktop and further from looking (and acting) like Windows 98 is wonderful. Many of the effects — the cube, the Expose function — are “inspired”, cough, directly by OS X. However, right now the technology only serves to provide eye candy, and does not signifigantly enhance the UI in any real way. I remember when OS X’s “genie effect” was introduced, and critics slammed it for being a “because we can” kind of technology. But the fact remained that it does serve a purpose: it shows you where your window just went. None of the wobbly, jelly windows in XGL can lay claim to anything of that merit.

I’m still waiting for a bunch of talented artists and usability experts to wander by and create the kick-ass version of linux that will become the One True Desktop Linux Distro; Ubuntu currently has by far the best “look and feel” of all the linux distros out there, but that’s faint praise when you consider the incredibly weak competition for the desktop linux space.

~jeff

I wasn’t that into “The Sims”, but Will Wright’s new project “Spore” looks outrageously cool; the player starts the game as a single cell organism and end up invading other planets, and this all takes place in an environment collectively designed by players of the game. I was at Electronics Boutique the other day and even though there’s no release date whatsoever, people are already asking about this game. Anyway, check it out:

• video.
• summary.
• screenshots.

~jeff

I can’t really think of any other major television show which would use William Burroughs’ / Material’s “Seven Souls” for a montage like The Sopranos did last night. Kudos to the writers.

I find it somehow inspiring that M.C. Hammer uses Firefox (and Google Desktop!) because you know he doesn’t have “people” around to set this stuff up for him.

~jeff

click this menu item, go to jail.
In a stunningly idiotic court decision, a man who used a secure delete program on his laptop to erase his own files was judged to have “destroyed company property” under violation of federal hacking laws.

You know who make the best laws about computers? Old people.

~jeff

Doesn’t anyone realize that he deliberately sounds like a snake-oil salesman? That he calls his right-wing crackpot show “the greatest show on radio”… clearly referring to P.T. “Sucker Born Every Minute” Barnum?

Anyway, good for fucking him, he finally got around to making a podcast so now people can pay to have him make shit up and make believe he’s got a right to be angry, the drug-addled, entitlement-demanding criminal (at least by his own reckoning) that he is.

Anyway, the reason I posted this is because of his mode of speech:

Well, that didn’t stop us. That didn’t stop us, ladies and gentlemen. No siree, Bob. We have been working with the powers that be at Apple, and we have reached via technological advancement and software the point to where Monday, and I just tested this. We’ve been feverishly working on it; I just tested it, and it is flawless and it is so easy that if you are not a member you’re going to become one and just be able to access the podcasts this way.

Look how many words he uses to say “I have a podcast!”

Well, OK, that’s not how many words he used. He used 870 words to say it. Is this what his listeners need? The right-wing crackpots that listen to Rush Limbaugh need the painfully, un-newsworthy spelled out with lots of “Nosiree!”s in there to make sure he sounds like One Of Us?

This folksy, “I’m just one o’ you folks” trick is really wearing thin. The Yale Bushes with their “Texas” twangs, their repetition, their “you kin trust me”isms — why aren’t the people of Texas and folksy places everywhere (like, say, Western Massachusetts) deeply offended at their pretension?

OK, yes, Massachusetts voted for Kerry last time around. But a lot of people here voted for the right-wing crackpot we now have in office, too. Why don’t they feel like they’re being talked down to by this horseshit?

Anyway, if anyone would like to join me in a Googlebomb of “Right wing crackpot“ing Mr. Limbaugh and Dubya, I invite you to join me.

Aha! Now I have proof for my growing suspicion that Katamari Damacy is actually a reference manual about Earth for aliens.

It has been long known that Katamari Damacy is a very strange, very excellent, video game which has unusual effects on human populations. In addition to making no sense whatsoever, it is highly entertaining and causes stunning gender switches.

I once polarized a party by innocently introducing the group to the game. The mostly non-video game people (let’s call them “ladies”) were instinctually drawn to its eerie glow while the normally video game-oriented (”guys”) escaped to buy snacks and retreated to talk about relationships and feelings in the kitchen while they waited for us to end our new puerile obsession with rolling up all the world’s objects into a giant ball.

Most pertinent to the formation of my burgeoning conspiracy theory, my suspicions were aroused by the incredible detail of the game: every (Japanese) object one could possibly imagine had been modeled within, from batteries, to talking welcome mats, to crabs, to ferris wheels, clouds, and aquaman. Furthermore, all of these objects have been assigned a fairly accurate mass and have been completely logged in relationship to each other, thereby enabling the user to pause at any moment and find out what multiple of mosquitoes, or mermaids, or rocket-swan-cars, or anything in the world, is equivalent to the size of the ball you’ve made.

But there’s more. I have just discovered an additional out-of-game feature that allows you to select any of the thousands (perhaps millions?) of kinds of objects you have ever rolled up in your games and there is an explanation of the object provided for each.

Proof positive.

from Pitchfork:

…I’m impressed that Pitchfork writers continue to churn out turgid prose such as this excerpt — a music review that casually presupposes general knowledge of geometry and ballistics — even after being called out on their bullshit by David Cross over a year ago. Well played, Pitchforkmedia.com! (slow clap)*

~jeff

* …having said that, Keith Fullerton Whitman’s “Playthroughs” has proven to be a wonderful ambient set for long car rides, and is overall one of the best albums I’ve ever picked up on Pitchfork’s recommendation. So I kid — because I love.

On Tuesday, I performed a revolutionary act.

I clicked on Start, hovered on Programs, and then I did the unthinkable. I dragged and dropped the entire Games folder into the Recycle Bin. Then I right clicked, emptied the Recycle Bin, and said goodbye to the horrible affliction of Spider Solitare addiction.

I have been 5000% more productive and 2.7 times happier over the last two days.

Excerpted from the UMASS Amherst MFA list:

We’re joyously celebrating our great good fortune of hearing back from Chris Bachelder that he’ll be joining us in the fall of 2006. Thanks to everyone who participated in welcoming the candidates to campus and who generously spent time with visitors at readings, in workshops, and all.
We’re thrilled!

This is great news; Chris Bachelder is a funny and talented writer and UMASS Amherst is lucky to have him. I recently reread “Bear v. Shark”, and while capital-D Depressing, it still manages to keep a Vonnegut-style wit and self-depricating humor throughout. Highly recommended*; I’m excited about his new book, “US!“, as well.

~jeff

* …but out of print, so you’ll have to find it used somewhere.

As a service to our readers, and because I’m a huge fan of the “General” category tag, I would like to share the technique I just made up* and beta-tested for an enjoyable vendor show experience.This is how you do a vendor show:

• travel no more than 10 minutes to be there.

• allot only 10 minutes for the whole trade show.

• find the booth with the tote bag and take that first.

• tour the room very quickly. Eat the food you find. Focus especially on water, fruit, and cake, i.e. anything that isn’t just pure sugar. If you are too shy to grab the pretzels because they’re at a booth with a guy you don’t want to talk to, forgive yourself and move on.

• pick up cards for people you should talk to but don’t want to. Pick up pens, too. Don’t take anything mildly useless, like small non-regulation frisbees, keychains, etc.

• speak to anyone you’ve already been meaning to speak to for your own purposes. Make sure they know you’re a purchaser, and ask them only the pointed questions you need answers to. Ignore anyone else.

• leave without a shred of guilt while licking your lips.

That was fun!

*Technique may not work under any other circumstances, for example, a non-tiny vendor show not held at your place of work.