nosuch.org

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction

2007-11-11T20:56:00.000-05:00

I want.

Now if they'd only hurry up and make the companion cube available.

If you haven't played Portal, this will not make any sense.

Embarrassing

2007-10-23T16:30:00.000-04:00

It is a sorry state of affairs when my Xbox 360 is blogging more than I do.

That gives you a rough idea of how I am spending my free time these days.

Dead again

2007-08-19T19:23:00.000-04:00

My Xbox 360 has once again failed and is displaying the red ring of death. For those playing along at home, this is the second failure my Xbox 360 has had, and I just got it back from the first repair at the end of February. That repaired unit lasted a whole six months.

I'm glad that Microsoft has owned up to some quality issues in the 360 and extended the warranty to 3 years. I know that this decision cost them 1.2 billion dollars. It is going to cost them even more if they can't fix the damn problem the first time.

I know I shouldn't reward Microsoft's quality screw ups by handing them more cash, but frankly BioShock is coming out this week, as well as Two Worlds. Being without an Xbox for three weeks while a clearly awesome game and a potentially fun Xbox Live game are out of my reach is simply too much to bear. It's also clear that having a failover Xbox 360 isn't a bad idea. I've ordered an Xbox 360 Elite as a replacement so I can also have a bigger disk as well.

My Elite should be here tomorrow. Hopefully it will stay operational until my other 360 is repaired. I'll treat it very gently for the next three weeks just to be sure.

A Wind Blows Through the Big Brother House

2007-07-30T21:21:00.000-04:00

Even in these times of Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo and Fox Television, the original television networks still try to come off all wholesome and decent. Things may have changed, with the occasional fart joke, but generally farting itself is usually not shown and is considered taboo.

So hats off to CBS and Big Brother 8, for their honest and candid depiction of farting. This has to be one of the best, most authentic reality TV moments.

Evel Dick is my new hero for showing all of America a man respectfully farting while in the middle of a conversation, as he would in his own home, without shame.

His technique is so masterful, it warrants further analysis.

What's been on the Xbox lately

2007-07-30T19:46:00.000-04:00

The Darkness

A gimmick game with a very fun gimmick. Basically it's Chronicles of Riddick with the sci-fi prison motif replaced with a supernatural gangster one. Not deep, nor innovative, but you do get demon tentacles that sprout out of your back and eat the hearts of your enemies. The graphics aren't great, and the story is fairly typical video game fare, but it is done competently enough for its brief length. Still, I had a good time with it. I haven't tried the multiplayer, mostly because it's just the usual deathmatch and capture the flag nonsense.

Mad Tracks

Here's a cute, fun racing party game for Xbox Live utterly destroyed by a completely broken lobby, or more correctly, the absence of a lobby. One good patch to this game could redeem it, but the developer made it pretty clear it's not a big priority to fix it. So while this one had a lot of potential, with two packages of downloadable content with more maps and mode, I wouldn't bother.

Catan

Settlers of Catan, the classic board game, arrives on Xbox Live in this close to perfect version. While true Settlers' fans might complain that their favorite expansion pack isn't available, the original game is where it's at anyway. My only minor nit is this is a game that screams out for Xbox Live Vision support, and oddly, it's not there.

Carcassonne

Another great boardgame comes to Xbox Live. While generally a solid implementation, it could benefit from better player tools to help predict final scoring (which always was the hardest part of mastering the game.) The current tools are awkward to use, and buggy (I've crashed twice using them), but hopefully that'll get patched. At least there's Xbox Live Vision support.

Bomberman Live

A solid version of Bomberman, a classic game I had heard about but never played until now. Conny, a veteran from an earlier Bomberman back in the early 90's, gives it a thumbs up. Supports multiple guests on one console, so up to 4 people can share one Xbox Live account to play online (for a total of 8 players in a game.) Clever use of the camera for the after-game summary (the "Gloatcam"), and the ability to customize your Bomberman with outfits is a nice touch. We played for almost 3 hours last night, which is impressive when you realize one game lasts less than 3 minutes typically.

And when we aren't playing board games and party games on Live, we've been spending our time with some old standbys made a little fresh: terrorist hunts on the new Rainbow Six: Vegas maps and getting re-familiar with Chromehounds, which has been patched to adjust game play (twice since we were actively playing.)

Plenty of good stuff to hold us all over until the great games rolling out for the holiday season start hitting the shelves.

Bless This Big Brother House

2007-07-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

I don't think I keep it secret that on my cynical days, I'm an atheist, and on my more humble days I'll cop to being agnostic. I do respect other people's religions, as long as they don't try to spill any of it on me, and I do know a few people who are truly deeply spiritual and devote themselves to good works, and I admire them for it.

With that being said, I'd like to say to all of you people competing on Big Brother 8 (or any other reality TV game), that if there were a God, He wouldn't give a shit about whether you win or lose. The outcome of any head-of-household challenges, veto competitions, or elimination voting is not in God's hands. It's in the hands of the producers, maybe, or even your fellow players, or perhaps in your hands. But I'm pretty sure even if the Pope were playing Big Brother, he wouldn't be mistaken in thinking that the result of food competition was God's will.

Going on some reality show and claiming that the Almighty is tuned in and rooting for you, or perhaps should even intervene on your behalf, doesn't make you look spiritual, or even religious, it makes you like a self-centered ass who thinks God is nothing more than a Fairy Godfather who grants wishes to his favorites. Not exactly the deepest spiritual or philosophical model to base your faith upon if you ask me.

Yes, I'm looking at you Amber, and you too Kail. But, I've spoken to the Flying Spaghetti Monster about both of you, and His Noodliness has assured me he'll take care of it so that neither of you win.

Privacy please

2007-07-26T12:36:00.000-04:00

I've helped a couple of friends host blogs, and one of them needed to convert to a private, members only blog. It was pretty clear the right way to do this was to have each user have their own account and password, and ideally, the users could simply register and get approved, minimizing administration time. Unfortunately, this was a Blogger blog being hosted on my own server, and there's just no way to do that without doing a lot of work.

After looking around, it seemed like WordPress would be the best platform to use for a private blog. Even though WordPress doesn't support a private blog model natively, it can be done with just two additional, easy to install plug-ins, without making any template modifications. Here's how I did it.

Install WordPress 2.2.1.
Install the Bouncer plug in. This will add a facility to Wordpress requiring an admin to approve new accounts.
Install the Post Levels plug in.
Make sure you turn on the "Anyone can register" and "Users must be registered and logged in to comment" options under Options - General in WordPress.

Now whenever you post, make sure you set the post level to "0" instead of public to make a post that only your approved members can read. People who aren't logged into your site will only see public posts. People who log in (with an account that you authorized) will see all posts.

This also seems to keep the feeds private too, requiring authentication to get the full feed set, which is what you would want for a private blog.

There was one other thing I discovered in the process if you are trying to migrate from a "new" Google Blogger weblog. I learned that the magic import from WordPress can sometimes spaz out depending on your publishing options. So if your import stops after a certain number of posts, screw around with your archive settings, date header format and template a bit. I can't be more specific, because I did all three (monthly archives, different date header format, and simple blog template) and suddenly the import worked.

I can't really help with other migration issues, since in this case, because the site is going private, we didn't care about maintaining permalinks and such. But I did find some good tips about what to do in that case.

I may just finally get my ass over to WordPress myself one of these days.

Where boredom is the excitement

2007-06-27T00:31:00.000-04:00

After watching some Ice Road Truckers, it's clear the folks at the History Channel are hoping to strike some extreme blue collar reality TV gold like the Discovery Channel did with "Deadliest Catch."

While Ice Road Truckers is interesting, apparently it's not interesting enough. The producers are always trying to amp up the danger angle to the point of hyperbole. And truth be told, even when there are real risks involved, it's hard to make one guy sitting in a truck cab driving 15 miles an hour for 20 hours over monotonous terrain all that exciting. Even when you keep cutting to the same under-the-ice shot and play the same ice cracking sounds.

A handful of men in a boat out upon an unforgiving arctic sea, braving the elements to hopefully score a good catch of crab is natural drama. A guy in a truck on a road, not so much. Even if it is an ice road, it's really really cold, and there's a lot of snow.

But the good news with this being a History channel show is their relationship with Activision. I can already see the awesome tie-in.

Immerse yourself in the intensity, drama, and danger of the most extreme freight logistics experience on the entire planet!

Put your life on the line as an Ice Road Trucker on a grueling and treacherous 350 mile dash for the cash through the unforgiving Northwest Territory. You will haul tons of equipment and supplies across a desolate white landscape at speeds averaging 15 miles an hour, all while dealing with the constant risk of jackknifing, breakdowns and accidents.

Ice Road Truckers has TrueImmersion technology, allowing no pausing and no in-game saves during the 20 hour run, giving you the full-action experience of an Ice Road Trucker. Also has full support of Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel.

Screenshots from Ice Road Truckers

I hear it is best played if you turn up the air conditioning a lot while you play.

Ready to die

2007-05-20T21:04:00.000-04:00

It's official. I'm a grown up.

I have a will. It's notarized and official. I even did a living will in case I get turned into a turnip by the M42 while I cross the street.

The folks at Legal Zoom made it pretty painless and cheap, and they provide the will in Microsoft Word format. A few search and replaces later and we have Conny's will as well.

Now we know Leo will be looked after if our plane falls from the sky.

Women's Town Longshuihu

2007-05-02T08:23:00.000-04:00

It's probably one of the last nations I would think would embrace sex tourism, but I would be wrong:

Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction -- the world's first "women's town", where men get punished for disobedience, an official said on Thursday... When tour groups enter the town, female tourists would play the dominant role when shopping or choosing a place to stay, and a disobedient man would be punished by "kneeling on an uneven board" or washing dishes in restaurant, media reports said.

It's not quite the Other World Kingdom, but I suppose they have to start somewhere.

The motto isn't very snappy though, so they might need to work on that. But at least the bowling court and fishing spot seem like big attractions too. Odd that official website doesn't mention any of the "women's town" in the history.

Thanks to Kirk for calling this tidbit to my attention.

Zap

2007-05-01T17:06:00.000-04:00

I should probably be a little disturbed by getting several hits from someone from an army.mil address Googling for "cattle prod" with "balls".

Please let it just be some kinky, horny soldier. Please.

Catan, at last

2007-05-01T11:03:00.000-04:00

Of course, Catan, the Xbox Live Arcade version of the boardgame classic "Settlers of Catan" would finally be released the night before I leave for a 5 day weekend trip.

I guess going away to Turks & Caicos isn't so bad compared to playing some Settlers on the Xbox. Maybe.

For those you without such travel plans, have fun. If I get all my packing done early tomorrow night, perhaps I can sneak on, even though I have to get up at 4:30am the following morning...

Shitibank

2007-04-30T20:27:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I was a Citibank customer. I was lured in by their shiny ATMs and their appearance of being technologically forward, I suppose. Since my banking needs are pretty modest, it was easy to overlook the occasional sloppiness and ineptitude for a time. As my irritation grew and it became clear that Citibank was a bank of bunglers, I realized that changing banks is a big pain in the ass.

Faced with a steady stream of small pains in my ass over time, or a big pain in my ass once, I copped out and just left things alone, and hoped for the best.

This all changed the day Citibank told me I could sign up for their "rewards program". If I enroll, all debit purchases could be used to earn points that could supposedly be used for cool stuff and services. I figured since it didn't cost anything and I'm going to use my debit card any way, why not sign up? So sign up I did.

I got my first "reward" in less than 24 hours. My existing debit card ceased working.

What the enrollment process didn't say, nor the promotional literature, is that enrollment would require a new debit card. Once you sign up, your old card is turned off and Citibank sends a new "rewards" debit card with a new number. While my new card was in transit, I was left with no card. I was told I couldn't reactivate the old card, and if I needed ATM access, I could show up at a branch for a temporary ATM card, but which wouldn't be a debit card. While this might seem like a minor thing to geniuses at Citibank, for those of little people who have various recurring charges set up, a new debit card (and number) is officially a big pain in the ass.

Faced with this unavoidable pain in the ass of changing all my recurring charges and bill payments, I decided I might as well do it with a new bank. I told Citibank what they could do with their rewards debit card and spent the next month moving everything over to Commerce Bank. That's how I became a very happy Commerce Bank customer.

Citibank, of course, managed to screw up my account closures as a parting gesture of their usual incompetence. They even tried to charge me fees for their mistakes, but I was prepared and kept all my documentation. It took an extra visit to the branch and few phone calls, but I didn't pay them a single extra nickel.

Even as an ex-customer, Citibank still finds a way to remind me they are still a bunch of bozos. Citibank will send an email to me 2 or 3 times a year about exciting features and promotions for my account, like paperless statements or no ATM fees, all for an account I closed over a year ago.

I've called them 3 times to stop these emails, the last call being today. I have to call, since there's no unsubscribe option, and I don't have an account to log into to change my email preferences. Each time I call, a cheerful little Citidrone acts very helpful, assures me I have been removed from the list, and thanks me for choosing Citibank, even though I don't. We will see if the last one got it right, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Using Blogger with a Sidekick

2007-04-23T11:13:00.000-04:00

Ever since I migrated my Blogger account over to a Google account, I haven't been able to log in with my Sidekick. It's been a huge disappointment to have a great portable Internet gizmo with a decent keyboard, but no hope of actually blogging with it.

All in all, I have found using a Google account to authenticate for Blogger to be a glitchy mess. It even causes issues with my laptop and Safari sometimes. But on my Sidekick, it isn't glitchy, it's just broken.

Since I need to make better use of my time, I really want the ability to blog on-the-go. I figured there had to be a workaround.

The good news for my fellow Sidekick and Blogger users: there is an easy fix. As easy as a bookmark:

https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?service=blogger&naui=8&continue=http%3A%2F%2F
www2.blogger.com%2Floginz%3Fd%3D%252Fhome&alwf=true&skipvpage=true

You don't even need javascript on. Just click that link, log into Google, and you'll be redirected to the Blogger dash. And I am pleased to report that almost all of Blogger works fine on the Sidekick. (Any interface niceities that need Ajax, like typeahead look up on tags, won't work.)

If you plan on blogging from your Sidekick, or any other mobile device, may I strongly urge you to not compose your posts in the web browser. This is good advice no matter what device you are using to blog. Always use an editor application to write your posts, and paste it into the Blogger form to post it. (In the case of the Sidekick, I use the Email client as an editor.) It is much too easy to lose text in browser by accidentally navigating away or closing the window. And noone wants to lose a brilliant post before you manage to share it with the world.

Diversions

2007-04-16T19:58:00.000-04:00

Ooops. How did a whole week go by?

Diversions, that's how! Here's what I've been up to:

Completed the Crackdown campaign and started chasing all the achievements. Almost done with this one, and it's been a fun ride. I was a little annoyed at the lack of imagination for the rooftop races though. I mean, come on, three races basically involved climbing to the top of the agency tower, and two of them were almost identical. All in all, my initial impression of Crackdown was spot on, though I hear some additional coop modes are in the works.

Started playing Prey mostly to have some brainless fun and scoop up some easy achievements. Prey is basically what you get if mash up Chronicles of Riddick, Doom 3 and Carlos Castaneda. I can only take it one or two levels at a time though before it gets a little tedious.

Saw The 300, in all it's bloody war-porn glory on an IMAX screen. Official terse Nosuch review: longest cutscene ever. It did, however, remind me of some development projects I've been on. Surprisingly the "Leonidas Method" of project management isn't that unusual in the corporate world.

Climbed back into the world of Oblivion to explore the Shivering Isles expansion. Oblivion is a truly great game, and it's been fun to go back there and have some new experiences. It didn't hurt that there's 250 achievement points to be had as well.

Finished watching the 1st season of "Top Design," which frankly, was crap. Let us hope Bravo won't pick up this turd for another season. This show sank on its inane and poorly executed challenges, and for the most part, useless judges. We stuck with this one mostly so we could make fun of Jonathan "Pee Wee" Adler and Kelly "Freakshow" Wearstler.

Began building a roller coaster in my living room. More precisely, the K'Nex Vertical Vengeance Coaster. Why? Because it's cool, that's why! It combines the fun of Lego, with the challenge of a puzzle, and the fun of a working, albeit tiny, rollercoaster.

I'll try to be less of a stranger.

The filth on TV

2007-04-09T19:32:00.000-04:00

We have television sets all around the floor at work that are constantly tuned to CNBC. The one near me is unfortunately placed right in my field of vision, above and behind my computer monitor. Even with the sound off, I find the motion so distracting that I erected a cardboard blind on the top of my monitor which manages to eclipse the idiot box when my seat is in just the right spot.

When I roll over a little to the left, though, I can still see it. Sometimes, I do it just to peek at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which CNBC shows every 10 seconds or so in the upper left corner. Other times, it's just because the current task is on my left monitor, and without realizing, I'm slowing sliding over a bit.

For whatever reason, I know I did not need to look up today and see on the screen a teaser that read "Coming up: CEOs Gone Wild." All of a sudden, my head was filled with visions of flabby old men with bad comb-overs pulling their shirts up and flashing their chests.

At least I saved myself a few bucks on lunch, since I wasn't hungry after that.

The bunny wore snowshoes

2007-04-09T19:23:00.000-04:00

High temperature for this past Easter: 41F.
High temperature for last Christmas: 45F.

We also got more snow on Easter than Christmas.

We were going to put the winter clothes in storage and pull out our spring/summer wear, but alas, looks like we have to postpone that. Perhaps the weather will be a little warmer in July or August. Maybe.

Where Sam Fisher would get a steak

2007-04-04T21:34:00.000-04:00

To celebrate the end of my company's fiscal year and damn fine year-end review, Conny surprised me with dinner at the Cub Room. She got the chicken under brick (though we did not actually get to see the brick) and I went for the classic Wall Street hot shot dinner of steak, or to be more precise, filet mignon.

Everything was amazing. The cocktails were perfect, the entrees delicious, and the dessert, an apple tart, was a religious experience. I've never encountered a pastry as compelling as the one I had tonight.

I did have to pause for a moment, though, when I hear "El Cargo" playing, which is music from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. At that point, I kept wondering if someone was sneaking up behind me, ready to break my neck. I told Conny when she went to the ladies' room that if the lights didn't work in the bathroom, don't go inside.

A great meal and a moment of video-game soundtrack nerd zen. What more could I want?

Thanks for asking

2007-04-03T19:47:00.000-04:00

When I walk home from work, I mean business. I move swiftly and with purpose, maneuvering around lollygaggers, tourists and bozos who shuffle along while gabbing on their cellphones. Tonight, a man stood off to one side of the sidewalk, and intently watched me approach.

Just before I passed by him, he asked, loudly and clearly: "Did you color your hair?"

Without turning my head, I simply replied "No."

The rest of my walk home, I was wondering if somehow, my hair had turned green on the subway ride.

Truth in advertising

2007-04-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

Our firm uses a few different agencies for getting technical consultants. Occasionally, they send token gifts to us, like a bag or a mouse pad, or even snacks, like these pretzels:

While I understand the value of these gifts has to be small due to regulatory reasons, I don't think they have to look like someone picked them up from a dumpster behind a supermarket.

Here's how Utz advertises the barrel on their own site.

Of course, they do make it clear on their site: "Please note: BREAKAGE WILL OCCUR DURING SHIPPING."

My suggestion is to replace "breakage" with "complete and utter destruction".

Up to my eyeballs

2007-03-29T20:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the quiet, but where I work closes the fiscal year at the end of this month, which means I'm as busy as a one-armed paper hanger. I don't generally talk about work here, because I need my job, but I will say this much: SOX sucks.

Routing around Twitter

2007-03-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

I've found Twitter to be almost useless without the Twitter IM bot running. During the day I've been using the AIM client on my Sidekick to do my Twitter updates, but lately, that's been impossible. I stumbled across a generic IM bot service called IMified that offers several hooks to various Internet services (like blog services, calendars and such) and one of the available services is Twitter. Here's how you can add Twitter to IMified so that it's almost as easy to use as the Twitter bot:

Add IMified as a buddy to AIM, Google Talk, MSN or Jabber.
Send your new IMified buddy a message to create your IMified account.
Send IMified a message of "M" for the menu.
Send the number of the "My Account" option from an IM client on a desktop computer. This will provide links to open up a web page on IMified with your account configuration.
Click on the "My Services" tab on IMified.
Click the "Twitter" icon under the "Add a New Service".
Name the Twitter service "Twitter" (or whatever you like if you are going to use multiple Twitter accounts from IMified.)
Enter your Twitter username.
Enter your Twitter password.
Click the "Add to Menu" button.
Click the "Shortcuts" tab.
In the shortcut field, put the prefix you'd like to use for Twitter messages. I use "tw".
Select the Twitter service you just created.
Under "Action" select "Update Status".
Click "Add Shortcut"

Now, to test it, go to your IM client, and send IMified this message:

/tw I am using IMified to update my Twitter. Cool!

Of course, you can use what ever message you like after the "/tw". You need to put a slash in front of shortcuts for IMified to recognize them.

If you'd like a fast way to toggle notifications on and off, add another shortcut. I use "twn". Then to toggle notification, you can type "/twn". You can also just use the IMified menus and not use shortcuts, but the shortcuts make it much faster.

Sadly, IMified doesn't support Blogger using the "New" Google authentication yet, so I can't test that. But for those you hep cats using Wordpress or Movable Type, you can use IMified to update your blog. I also like that I can peek at my Google calendar with IMified. IMified makes my Sidekick that much more useful.

But for being able to reliably update Twitter on the go using AIM, IMified seems to do the trick. You won't receive Twitter updates through IMified, but at least you can send your tweets.

My drug of choice

2007-03-26T21:26:00.000-04:00

I saw one of these stupid "Walk Yourself" Above The Influence" anti-drug print ads in the recent issue of Game Informer.

I find it ironic that the ad is in a gaming magazine, as while I don't neglect Leo because I'm high on pot, one could argue that I might be under other influences.

So cute! Now kill them!

2007-03-22T20:31:00.000-04:00

I thought for sure Conny would just love Viva Pinata. Turns out I was very, very wrong.

I could explain why, but this VG Cats comic pretty much explains the aspect of the game that she just couldn't overlook.

Is it about the hedge?

2007-03-22T19:43:00.000-04:00

I can't be the only one out there that can't get the Grim Reaper sketch from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life out of his mind whenever he sees the poster for the new Hillary Swank horror flick "The Reaping."