Flash

Awesome new update for flash - now flash video doesn't exit fullscreen when you're working on a second monitor. I've been waiting for this update for years, this is great!

Ugh

Just want some time alone and my roommates want to hang out in my room for hours, coughing without covering their mouth even though they're sick.

Idiot Roommate

My idiot roommate thinks he cleaned the bathroom last week. Uh no, I think I would remember cleaning the bathroom since I had to do it with a broken foot. Just look at the schedule I made for you, goddamn moron. He was supposed to clean it Sunday and it's almost Wednesday now. He's got no fucking excuse. He doesn't have a job, he skips his classes, he has no other engagements... you'd think he could manage to do a half-hour of work every two weeks.

This guy is such a douche.

TV Tuner

My TV Tuner works half the time, literally. Every other time I turn on the computer the TV Tuner gives me a blank screen. Why? WHY?!!?

Roommates

I think I've been unfortunate with the roommates I've ended up with so far.

My latest roommate is a 30-something Columbian student. He recently moved into the room beside mine. He used to live on the floor below mine, and he'd come to me for a favour several times, in which I gladly helped. He has helped himself to my cleaning supplies and toilet paper, etc. Simple stuff but it would be nice if he offered to supply some of his own.

I went on vacation a couple weeks ago. Prior to leaving, I put up a cleaning schedule that he agreed to. By the time I came back, he was supposed to have cleaned the bathroom twice. Instead, he hadn't cleaned the bathroom at all, except maybe the toilet, and he had used up all my toilet paper and left nothing but the cardboard roll. The mirror, counter, floor, and shower were dirty. He had also swept all the dirt in the kitchen into a corner of the room and just left it there. I was annoyed and told him so. He said that he had been using the gym shower for the most part and thus shouldn't have to clean it, but said he would clean the bathroom the next day. Two days passed and he hadn't cleaned it at all. I brought it up with him and he got angry. He told me that the bathroom was clean.

I was flabbergasted, the bathroom wasn't clean at all. All I could say was "That's... not clean" and he said he disagreed. Then he started sighing heavily and starting slamming the drawers and stomping his feet, having a mini temper-tantrum. I didn't say anything, but is it really so much to ask that once every two weeks you spend 10 minutes to clean a small bathroom properly? This is a grown man. This was the schedule that he agreed to. I've never asked him to do anything else. All I want is him to follow the schedule. And cleaning a bathroom doesn't mean cleaning what you want to, it means cleaning the entire bathroom. When you're done cleaning, the mirror shouldn't be covered in backwash, the floor shouldn't be covered in dust and hair, and the shower shouldn't be scummy. I don't care if you don't mind the dirt - clean is clean.

So I ended up cleaning the bathroom instead and it looks like I'll be the one cleaning the bathroom the next 4 months. What adds insult is a) He used to complain to me about his old roommate never cleaning the bathroom, and b) He was using my new dish sponge I had just put out while arguing with me.

UPDATE: Just noticed my knife missing. Had to find it in his drawer. Coincidence... maybe. I'd like to believe he's not that childish.

Materials

"1 1/2" copper coupling, 1 length of ABS pipe, 1 Moon Troll, 1 co- wait, what the fuuuuuu...."

HP

HP has the worst business practices. I'm trying to get a somewhat older HP printer - the HP PSC 2410 - to work. All I want to do is fax. But the ink cartridge in the printer has a built in expiry date. Now the printer won't let me do ANYTHING unless I replace this cartridge. I don't even NEED ink for scanning and faxing. I don't intend to buy HP products in the future.

Inception - Movie as Metaphor for Dreaming

We've seen in Nolan films that he likes to structure the movie in such a way that the medium becomes the message. In "Memento", the backwards dynamic recreates the protagonist's short-term memory and confusion. In "The Prestige", the film itself plays out like a magic trick. In "Inception" the movie itself brings to light how many movie tropes are like a dream. Consider:

- In movies, like in dreams, we don't see how the characters get from place to place. Often the scenes start in the middle of action. We don't see characters go to the bathroom or sleep.

- In movies, like dreams, which take place in real time over several hours, entire months or years can transpire. Time is perceived differently.

- In movies, like in dreams, the reality is not quite right, details sometimes don't make sense, but we suspend our disbelief and make the world feel real. We take our own preconceived notions and projections into movies and dreams.

- The irony of this is that even if Cobb did wake up in the end, the world is not real because it transpires inside Nolan's movie.

Stupid Commercials, Part 1

Just saw a commercial for "Extra" gum where a woman kept trying to clean her teeth by putting Scotch tape over her teeth and ripping it off. Could you spare us "Extra", this is disgusting.

Customer Service

I called WSIB to get a clearance certificate and the women who answered on the phone was surly and I'm pretty sure chewing bubble gum as well. She was being uncooperative so I just said I'd call back. The next woman who answered was extremely polite and helpful and didn't make me jump through hoops. If you ever get a terrible customer service agent on the phone, just hang up and call again.

Go to hell, Rogers.

Great article on Wired explaining why ISPs like Rogers are total money grubbing assholes. You Don't want ISPs to Innovate.

Get Off My Lawn

I was walking my dog earlier this evening. As I was passing by a house, an old woman sitting on a lawn-chair started yelling at me to move my dog off her lawn. Actually, she was yelling at my dog.

"MOVE DOG! GET OUT OF HERE DOG, GO! STUPID DOG! I'M AN OLD CUNT!"

I'm paraphrasing there but you get the picture. I didn't say anything. She was likely afraid that my dog would take a shit on her lawn. I just kept moving. After my dog had done his business somewhere else, I bagged it and headed back. When I reached her house I lifted the bag up and yelled "WAS THIS WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR?" and threw the bag at her. It hit her squarely in the face, leaving a streak of shit on her forehead. She rose up to chase me but her kneecap buckled and she fell on her lawn... where she lies to this day, quietly crying about her sad pathetic life.

This comedian is about to die

Gabriel Iglesias is on the Comedy network right now. This guy is going to die of a heart attack. In fact, in researching for this post, I googled "fat mexican comedian going to die of heart attack" and Iglesias' name showed up. At least he won't be gracing us with his horrible comedy for much longer.

Troubleshooting

I have Ubuntu and Windows installed on my old computer, and just for funsies I decided I would do two things:
1. Back up all my old documents on to an external harddrive.
2. Update Ubuntu to the latest distribution (9.04)

Unfortunately, I decided to update Ubuntu first. The update went fine, but when I rebooted my computer I couldn't boot up Windows. A startup file was missing. Turns out I left Windows in hibernation mode - bad idea. I started up Ubuntu to try and fix the problem from there, but Ubuntu won't let you access hibernated drives - or so it says.

I used the Windows recovery disk to fix the master boot record, but guess what that did? Now I couldn't boot Windows OR Ubuntu. I had to take out my trusty Super Grub Disk to repair the MBR. I was finally able to get back into Ubuntu, and it turns out you can enable access to hibernated disks.

Quick sidenote; it's absolutely asinine that you have to use the terminal to do anything useful in Ubuntu. This is why Linux is not catching on - everything should be accessible from a GUI. Also, if I'm the only user, I should have full privileges, I shouldn't need to be "root". There are all these levels of security that seem redundant and confusing.

Anyway, I somehow enable access to the harddisk and I'm able to drag the necessary file from the Windows CD on to the harddrive. So it only took about 4 hours, but thankfully I was able to update Ubuntu, back up my documents, and get full access back to Windows and Ubuntu.

Braid

I recently bought Braid on PC, a game I've been looking forward to ever since it was first released on XBOX Arcade. I had heard great things about it, from its stunning hand-drawn art to its thoughtful narrative. I purchased and downloaded the game from the Steam gaming platform.




Steam, I should add, is a great platform for independent game developers. It eliminates a lot of the overhead associated with game sales and has a large user-base in which to advertise and sell to. Steam does an excellent job of advertising games on its service through special "weekend sales" in particular. I have frequently been suckered into buying games I otherwise wouldn't because games are on sale anywhere from 5% to 90% off. I bought Bioshock, the most critically acclaimed game of the year, for 5 dollars!

Unfortunately, whenever I wait so long and so excitedly for something, I'm ultimately dissapointed (e.g. Watchman). Braid is not perfect. The breathless praise and admiration for this game is unwarranted. However, it is still a great game, and I appreciate what it brings to the gaming scene. Maybe this is pretentious, but I've noticed that independent developers are bringing a thoughtfulness and artistry to the medium that for some reason the big gaming development houses lack and ignore. Whereas big gaming developers tend to churn out similar aesthetics and gameplay mechanics (generally dark WWII first-person shooters), the smaller developers, who are constrained by a lack of staff and finances, are able to succeed because they are innovative and offer people an experience that is genuinely fun or exciting.

Braid's art is truly beautiful. I'll just let the artist himself describe it: David Hellman's Art of Braid Blog. Suffice it to say, the graphics are stunning. The music, also beautiful. Very moving pieces. The presentation of the game is flawless. The gameplay mechanics are familiar - up, left, down, right, jump - similar to games like Super Mario Bros. we've all been playing for years. The time shifting mechanic is where things get really interesting. Each of the 6 worlds presents a new time mechanic in which to solve puzzles - rewinding time, slowing down time, etc. Solving these puzzles and figuring out how to properly manipulate time is very rewarding.

Now, the point that was stressed to me through my reading of reviews and stories about Braid, was that this time distortion was a reflection of the story's narrative. I did not get a strong sense of that. I was dissapointed with the story. There are several elements in the game that help tell the story - the puzzle pieces you find throughout the game, the prose found in journals between worlds, and through the actions in the game itself. First, the act of putting together puzzle pieces is an interesting concept - the main character, Tim, is seemingly trying to solve what went wrong in his life. But who is Tim? What are the pieces really saying? What's the significance of the journal passages beyond some kind of regret of a ruined relationship? It was all so maddeningly vague and... I suppose its my fault for being so used to conventional storytelling, but it just seemed incoherent. I felt no connection to Tim, which seems like a weird problem, because often shouldn't the first thing you do as a storyteller is have your protagonist be relatable or sympathetic in some way?

The funny thing is, in the process of writing this post I found myself going back to Braid despite myself. There really is something interesting there that needs at least a second run-through to really appreciate. I was first skeptical when hearing the game's developer, Jonathan Blow, say the game's story "avoids direct analysis" (unfortunately cannot find the quote) or something of that nature, but I grudgingly accept this now.

With all that being said, I highly recommend Braid. It is a step in the right direction for the future of gaming. We need more thoughful work that tries to instill emotion and thought into people because I do feel that games can be as relevant as books, movies and other storytelling mediums, and even moreso, because games can be engaging in ways no other medium can.

For those interested in independent games, I also recommend Nifflas' Games, an independent developer who makes great (free!) games, or simply check out Indie Games. I find the evolution of games as a storytelling medium absolutely fascinating and will continue to comment on it in the future.