u l t r a m o o k i e

The iPhone’s face is 98% glass.  The iPhone’s back is 100% not glass.  Drop your iPhone on the back and it has a good chance of surviving.  Drop your iPhone on its face and it has a pretty damned good chance of dying.  Guess which side my iPhone fell on today.
My iPhone (lovingly named mookiPhone) [...]

The iPhone’s face is 98% glass.  The iPhone’s back is 100% not glass.  Drop your iPhone on the back and it has a good chance of surviving.  Drop your iPhone on its face and it has a pretty damned good chance of dying.  Guess which side my iPhone fell on today.

My iPhone (lovingly named mookiPhone) did a face-plant and its face was covered in spiderwebs.  Sigh.

After some mourning, I decided to research other phones to see if I could get something different — and I did.  I ended up picking up a Moto Q9H (or as AT&T names it Moto Q Global).  Decent phone running Windows Mobile 6.1 (wonko adds, “Welcome to 1997.”  I retort, “Hello, cut & paste”).  Sure, WinMo is not as slick as OS X.  Sure I can’t swipe, pinch, anti-pinch, or any other stuff.  But, still it is a decent device — cut & paste, full tactile keyboard, expansion slot, and a very useful Home screen.  JR says that I have lost my cool.  I agree, no longer am I in fashion.  Oh wells.

If phones were Humvees and they lived in the Iron Man universe… The iPhone would be the Funvee.  Any Windows Mobile device would be the Humdrumvee.

I’ll write more about the new phone as I start to use it more.

Ain’t nothing like an honest muppet.
I had a long post about how the fanatical-Christians should not complain about others trying to push their “moral values” onto them…when the fanatical-Christians are pushing their own “moral values” onto others.  But, then I found this excellent Sesame Street video.  It puts the Prop 8 argument to rest and [...]

Ain’t nothing like an honest muppet.

I had a long post about how the fanatical-Christians should not complain about others trying to push their “moral values” onto them…when the fanatical-Christians are pushing their own “moral values” onto others.  But, then I found this excellent Sesame Street video.  It puts the Prop 8 argument to rest and all it took was a kid and Grover!

I’m sure that the fanatical-Christians will write off Grover as an instrument of Satan, preaching the Devil’s blasphemous words to the vulnerable children of America.

Vote NO on Prop 8.

This month’s Wired arrived in the mail today.  Yup, I still subscribe because I still like the magazine.
There was an interesting essay in it, titled Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.  The assertion from the author is that blogs are a relic of the past because the personal blog will never gain any [...]

This month’s Wired arrived in the mail today.  Yup, I still subscribe because I still like the magazine.

There was an interesting essay in it, titled Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.  The assertion from the author is that blogs are a relic of the past because the personal blog will never gain any attention.  The personal blog, as the author theorizes, is being overrun by corporate blogs (think Engadget) with professionals posting “30 posts a day”.  There’s no competition.  Personal blogs will never get any attention from Google or Technorati.  And because of this, the author encourages bloggers to “pull the plug”.

Great idea, if you’re looking at blogging from the standpoint that it is a venue for getting rich, or famous, or both.  But really, if you’re looking at getting rich or famous from blogging, stop thinking about it.  You won’t.  To that extent, I agree with the author.

There are other reasons for blogging though.  Mine is to express myself.  If people read my blog, awesome.  If no one visits and reads my blog, that’s OK too.  In the past, I used my blog as a way of letting people know what is happening with me, but that has changed.  Twitter (via mindof) is where I do that now.  My blog is now only used for longer compositions — reviews, long commentary.

The author also talks about how blogs are being replaced by more media rich formats:  Pictures (think Flickr) and video (think YouTube).  True?  A bit.  Pictures and video are cool, however words are still a great way to express oneself.

The author talks about Twitter being the replacement for blogging.  It is, for a certain group of people.

Is blogging dead?  If you blog, why?

The lower the MPG, the lower the IQ of the driver?  I can understand that not everyone can afford to replace their previously purchased vehicles with one that is more fuel efficient.  But, when I look at someone driving an Escalade or Hummer or some other monstrosity, I have to wonder:  What the hell is [...]

The lower the MPG, the lower the IQ of the driver?  I can understand that not everyone can afford to replace their previously purchased vehicles with one that is more fuel efficient.  But, when I look at someone driving an Escalade or Hummer or some other monstrosity, I have to wonder:  What the hell is wrong with this person?  Did they take a second loan out on their house to pay for the car?  These cars are not inexpensive by any means.  Did they even look at what kind of mileage that the SUV gets?  Do they really need it?  Because most of the time, I see these vehicles driven by a single person.

Getting past those questions, it always seems to me that the person driving these fuel inefficient vehicles are the same people that do the most fuel inefficient things.  An Escalade gets terrible mileage (13MPG city, 19MPG highway), but I always see them with one tiny little woman in the drivers seat and that is it.  To make things worse, they are doing 90MPH+ on the freeway.  What?  Hello.

The same little woman is also the one that I see in the mall parking lot.  Usually, my family and I hit the mall early to get shopping done.  This means that at the local mall, we park on the second floor of a four floor parking structure — usually pretty close to the entrance.  The mambo SUV is always the one that is sitting there with their blinker on, waiting for us to leave.  It is obvious that we are going to take time.  Two babies to strap in, two strollers to put away, shopping bags, etc.  That takes time.  Nevertheless, the mega-SUV is waiting patiently, with its engine running, waiting for us to leave.  There are four floors and our mall is never busy enough that the fourth floor is full.  Why burn $3.50 to $4.00 a gallon gas waiting for a space?  Are they that lazy that they are willing to burn fuel?  I don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong, I drive an “crossover” (I call it a “wagon”, some call it an SUV).  It is a Lexus RX350, non-hybrid.  It gets decent mileage — real-world for me is between 20-21MPG.  I try to drive it nicely and if I focus on driving fuel efficiently, I can get past the 21MPG mark for a tank of gas.  Yes, it hurts to fuel up, but driving rationally usually results in decent mileage.

So, returning to the original question.  MPG relates directly to IQ?  Probably not because I also see Prius drivers racing along at 90MPH+.  What are your observations on the road?

I have been consuming too much stuff lately and not really producing anything.  Sigh.  Stuff that I’ve consumed recently:

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull:  Not as bad as Wonko thought it was, but still not as good as an Indy movie should be.  My problem is that George Lucas continues to dredge [...]

I have been consuming too much stuff lately and not really producing anything.  Sigh.  Stuff that I’ve consumed recently:

• Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull:  Not as bad as Wonko thought it was, but still not as good as an Indy movie should be.  My problem is that George Lucas continues to dredge up good stuff from the past and ruining it in the present.  Star Wars, it was fine with the original trilogy, why did he have to make the “new” prequels?  Same with Indiana Jones.  In The Last Crusade, Indy rode off into the sunset and for many of us fans that was a fitting end.  Unfortunately, Lucas brought Indy back for another adventure and ruined the trilogy.  Please George, stop it.  The refrigerator incident is a bit too much to swallow.  And I don’t like Shia Lebeouf, he is the Shorty of this film.  In order from best to worse:  Raiders of the Lost Ark; Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade; Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull; and finally Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.
• Torchwood Season 2:  Boy, this season got off to a slow start.  And when it got its footing, it did not have enough time to develop what could have been great:  Tosh’s character being fleshed out; the Tosh/Owen relationship; the Gray storyline; and the John Hart storyline.  They were all pretty superficial and that was ashame because of what happens to Tosh.  What happened to Owen about halfway through the season was a weird twist that I could have lived without.  It seemed very arbitrary.  I like how they delved into Jack’s past with the overarching Gray storyline, but it was introduced in the begining and then forgetten until the end.  Still, this show is one of the better written sci-fi shows and I do enjoy watching it.
• Speed Racer:  Ok, I only watched the first thirty minutes and stopped.  What a horrid film.  Why did the Wachowski Brothers have to go and ruin Speed Racer?
• Life:  Life is one of the better shows on network TV.  Well-written and funny, yet grounded in reality.  Damian Lewis is great in the show.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:  Long name, great show.
• Chuck:  Watching Chuck on NBC.  It is funny and sometimes actually heartfelt.
• Burnout Paradise:  The last patch introduced trophies.  The only drawback is that the trophies could not be retroactively given (silly Sony).  So, I reset my save game and started over.  Still having lots of fun with the game.  The bikes in the game are tremendously fun and fast like squirrels on cocaine.
• News:  The elections, the implosion of the world economy, layoffs in tech and the crazy stock market.  It all makes for a constant need to consume more and more news.  My news joints include Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, San Jose Mercury News and the New York Times.

I will try to reverse the flow and produce more content.  OpenOffice.org 3 is out and I will be playing with Writer and seeing if I can finally write something more substantial.  I will blog more.  I will work on mindof more (still needs search and archive functionality).  I will tweet more.  Or maybe I should just go dark…

It is always about redemption.  Whether it takes six episodes or just one fantastic game, it is always about redemption.  By green-lighting the huge multimedia project (game, book, comic) Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, George Lucas maybe asking us Star Wars fans for redemption.  After all, he messed things up completely when he released Star [...]

It is always about redemption.  Whether it takes six episodes or just one fantastic game, it is always about redemption.  By green-lighting the huge multimedia project (game, book, comic) Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, George Lucas maybe asking us Star Wars fans for redemption.  After all, he messed things up completely when he released Star Wars Episodes I, II and III.

I finished The Force Unleased last night and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the story — which was not penned by George Lucas, though from what I read Lucas had a good deal of say in what happened in the story.

The gameplay was a bit of a mixed bag, so I am glad that the story was so strong that it carried the game along to the end.  There were some serious twists that came out of nowhere for me and the ending was very satisfying.

The game’s story was so engaging that my wife actually got into it.  “I knew he would do that!”  She exclaimed once.  “Of course that happened he is a Sith!”  She blurted out another time.  And this is from a woman who is by far not a Star Wars fan.

For the story alone, I would recommend this game.  Be forewarned though, there are some very frustrating bits about the game.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This is your warning.  Do not read any further if you plan on playing the game.

Going back to redemption:  There are a lot of plot points in the game that feel like Episode IV, V and IV plot points.  The story itself is one that follows the basic Darth Vader arc — a guy that embraces the Dark Side, then figures out that things aren’t what he wants them to be, sets out to fix things and eventually redeems himself.  This is not a bad thing, but it did feel oh-so-familiar.

Lets start with the good stuff (outside of the story):

• The Force:  I loved how they amped up the Force powers for the game.  It just feels so visceral when shocking a Storm Trooper.  Force Repel has a rewarding “woosh”.  And I just loved Force Gripping a Storm Trooper and throwing him down a canyon — priceless.  All the Force powers just feel powerful and that is very cool.
• Make Your Own Character:  The experience and upgrade system of the game makes it very playable.  I can upgrade the powers that I want, I can upgrade my moves and I can upgrade my skills.  I love being able to build my own character as I progress through a game.  After finishing the game, I took my more powerful character and played the first level again.  Storm Troopers that took multiple slashes of my Lightsaber to kill the first time around were now butter to a hot knife.
• Special Moves:  There are some pretty wicked special moves that are activated with specific on-screen led button pushes.  I particularly like the one where I can cut an AT-ST in half.  Whoa, cool!
• The Graphics:  The graphics are pretty fantastic.  There are times when the graphics suck bad (the Wookie level felt really flat).  But, otherwise the graphics in the game are fantastic.
• The Sound:  This game sounds awesome, especially when played with a 5.1 surround setup.
• The Twists:  The twist where Vader takes his Lightsaber to Starkiller was quite shocking.
• The Rebel Alliance:  Showing how the Rebel Alliance was formed, especially showing how it was formed by Vader and the Emperor, was something I never would have thought up.  And after it was revealed, it’s something that makes complete sense.
• The Length:  I played the game on Apprentice level (the easiest one) so that I could see the story.  It took me just shy of seven hours to finish.  This was with me half-heartedly looking for the extra stuff hidden throughout the levels.  Some may say this is a short game, but I think it is just right.  I am going to go through the game once again on the next difficulty level using my more powerful Starkiller — I want to find more of the hidden stuff throughout the levels and see how powerful I can make Starkiller.  Maybe it is just me, but I don’t like 40-hour games.
• The Cinematics:  The kinematics are very well-done.  What really helped them was the wide array of facial expressions that the characters achieved.
• The Cameos:  Obi-Wan and Darth Maul!  Holy crap!  Darth MAUL!  That was awesome being able to fight Darth Maul.

The Bad:

• The Camera:  The game camera and lock-on system sucked in wide open spaces (and there’s a lot of them).  Trying to activate Force Grip on something usually doesn’t work because the system doesn’t know what to lock onto.  This is tres frustrating.
• The Jumping Puzzles:  Oh come on LucasArts.  Jumping puzzles are such a last century Tomb Raider gameplay mechanic.  The junk world was particularly bad with jumping puzzles.
• The Star Destroyer:  This sequence could have been one of the coolest video game sequences ever.  But, it fails because of multiple things.  First, the onscreen control guides are flawed.  The don’t tell you the right thing to do most of the time and the way the controls look onscreen are different than what should actually be done.  Second, wave after wave of Tie Fighters gets old really quick.  To make matters worse, the stupid Star Destroyer moves back into its original position when you let go.  WTH?  There are no words for how much I hated this sequence and how sad it makes me feel that a potentially awesome sequence was completely ruined.
• Special Moves:  Ok, while the special moves are cool, there aren’t enough of them.  What I mean is that in one long sequence, there are four Rancors to kill.  The ending special move on each one was exactly the same — leading to my wife asking, “How come you keep using the same move on those things?”  There are also special moves for killing off Jedi and fighting Darth Vader and the Emperor.  The only issue here is that I had to concentrate on the lower part of the screen to see which button to push.  This distracted from watching the cool moves being done.
• The Moves:  There is a laundry list of moves that can be unleashed by Starkiller on normal enemies.  The problem is that they are usually a long string of button pushes that need to be memorized.  This means that the game is a lot of button mashing when there are many enemies on the screen.
• Extras:  There are not many extras outside of being able to play key cinematics, look at concept art, and watching some trailers.  I would love to see an online aspect to the game.  Maybe some trophies also.
• Load Times:  There are load times all over the place for The Force Unleashed — including going in and out of menus from gameplay.  This would not be bad if not for the fact that The Force Unleashed installs itself on the hard drive:  An almost 3GB install.  The only time that the load times get frustrating is when you die.  It takes upwards of two to three minutes for the game to reload the level so that you can try again.
• Unbalanced Enemies:  I hate Purge Troopers.  Let me say it again:  I hate Purge Troopers.  Why?  Because these guys are seemingly more powerful than an AT-ST.  WTH?  Why?  The enemies in the game are very unbalanced at times and some of them (like the Purge Troopers) are illogically more powerful than they should be.

But, overall, still loved the game.  Was quite an experience.  If Episodes I, II and III did not exist and this game defined the opening for Episodes IV, V and VI that would have been fantastic.  Unfortunately, Episodes I, II, III and Jar Jar Binks do exist and this is not enough for me to forgive George Lucas for that mess.

At the risk of being completely insensitive…
I watched the Vice Presidential debates last night and I saw a winner.  That winner clearly was not Sarah Palin.  She was ambiguous.  She was completely scripted.  She did not answer questions, rather she steered them back to the scripted talking points that she memorized.  I am reading the [...]

At the risk of being completely insensitive…

I watched the Vice Presidential debates last night and I saw a winner.  That winner clearly was not Sarah Palin.  She was ambiguous.  She was completely scripted.  She did not answer questions, rather she steered them back to the scripted talking points that she memorized.  I am reading the papers today and the media is saying that the debate was a tie.  They are saying that the debate was “close”.  People are saying that Palin did great.  What?  Huh?  Did we all watch the same debate?

Reading further, I was horrified.  The only benchmark for Palin “winning” was that she did not screw up badly.  What kind of benchmark is that?  If I were Palin, I’d be embarassed.  Is that all people think of me?  Am I so bad that people have to set the bar extra low for me to be able to jump over it?

The way — and this is where insensitivity may kick in — I see it is that the comparisons are completely on different scales.  Biden is running a sprint in the Olympics.  Palin, on the other hand, is running a sprint in the Special Olympics.  Sure, they both can win their respective races.  But, that’s comparing apples with oranges.

And lets get something straight.  Only unintelligent dopes would fall for the whole “I’m great because I’m a hockey mom” bit.  Look, you’re second in line to run this country.  The man you’re running with is 72 years old and may kick the bucket at any time.  I don’t want a “hockey mom” running the country.  I don’t want a “hockey mom” dealing with Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on issues of nuclear (not noo-cu-lar) weapons.  I want someone who has foreign affairs experience and that is not Sarah Palin.  Hell, she only got her passport in 2006 and I’ve traveled to more foreign countries than she has.

I’m sorry.  But, those of you who thought Palin did well, you are all die-hard Republicans who are unwilling to look past the partyline.  She’s a kindergardener playing in a college football stadium.  If you can’t see that Biden knows what he’s talking about and follows up with facts, you are not being objective.

Go ahead, flame away.