I didn’t honestly expect this to work, at least not as well as it did, but I grabbed a data cable for my cell phone tonight and gave it a try for using my phone as a CDMA modem. But it worked! It really, really worked! The company that makes the cable made a big deal out of how it required their software (sold separately) in order to work, but I didn’t think it was worth having to get a cable and software. Fortunately as it turns out, you can use the cable just fine with regular good old windows networking. Nice. Now I’ve got an anytime, anywhere (ok, anywhere inside of Sprint’s network) internet connection for my laptop, lack of Wi-Fi hotspots be damned! I seem to get about 14-17 KB/sec which isn’t bad at all. Plus as part of my cell phone contract, I have unlimited PCS Vision (Sprint’s data plan) usage so it shouldn’t cost me anything extra. This brings me so very very close to my all time number one geek fantasy of being able to stream my music collection from anywhere. Unfortunately, all my music is at a higher bitrate than this connection would be able to handle. If I could find a streaming server that could re-encode files to a lower bitrate on the fly though, I think I’d be in business.
Monthly Archive for March, 2004
Ok this is going to be my last zombie related post for a while, really. I just wanted to point out that the original Night of the Living Dead is available in its entirety, for free, over at the Internet Archive. Apparently, when the film was first distributed there was a mistake made and the copyright notice was left off of the film, which meant it entered the public domain and George Romero never saw dime one for it. Raw deal for him, free movie for you. (via BoingBoing)
Jolayne’s finally back from her week long Disney cruise for her mom’s birthday. Not a minute too soon either, last week just kinda dragged by. Of course I’m thrilled she’s back, but it doesn’t hurt that she came back with gifts either. She picked up some coconut patties (shaped like Mickey Mouse, naturally) for me, and this book about Miyazaki from the Epcot center. It looks pretty interesting. Apparently she still feels like she’s on a ship and hasn’t gotten used to not having the ground moving under her constantly quite yet. It probably doesn’t help that I keep yelling out things like “Aye aye, sir”, “Hard to port!”, and “We’re taking on water, cap’n!”
Take for example, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow which I just picked up today. The single player game has a just few minor improvements over the original, plus another captivating storyline (at least so far). The new multiplayer mode though is, well, awesome. Pitting 2 vs 2 teams of spies against mercenaries in a game of hide and seek with guns, this is the best application of stealth based gameplay I’ve ever seen. In all single player stealth games, you can always fool the AI and hide out virtually in plain sight from time to time. When you try that against a human opponent, not so much. Every one of the gadgets available to both sides are critical to play, so there’s a pretty steep learning curve but it’s insanely fun. The very first time I played was as the mercs, and one of the spies dropped down out of the darkness behind my teammate and grabbed him to use as a human shield, gun to head. After a few tense moments of staring at each other and dodging around I did the only thing I could: I took the shot and nailed him in the head (the spy that is). And things like that that I’d never experienced before in a multiplayer game just happen all the time. It’s brilliant.
When I initially switched to MovableType, I began using this clever trick with TrackBacks and the DoSomething plugin for WInamp to build a list of recently played tracks. Then I came across this tutorial for using some MT plugins and the overlib javascript library to display album info from Amazon in a hovering popup. I had to do a little extra work myself using the MTPerlScript and MTTagInvoke plugins though, since when I’m streaming my music from home at work it doesn’t send the ID3 tag info needed to search Amazon so I had to pull it out of the song title. I think the end result is pretty cool. In the process I found that there are plugins for MT that will do pretty much anything. Seriously.
Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office. Now see, that’s one of those combinations of words that you never thought you’d see in the English language, much less coming from a respected international news service. And yet, there it is. Meanwhile, I’m now eagerly anticipating the release of “Shaun of the Dead”, which looks like its going to be a fairly clever and entirely British zombie comedy. (trailer here). It looks like it opens in the UK on April 9th, but I’m not sure when it will be released over here.
One of my favorite games of all time is the orginal Deus Ex. It was a conspiracy theory riddled masterpiece that blended RPG and first person shooter elements plus stealth action in an utterly addictive way that I’d never seen before. Its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, has been out for a while now but due to hearing some negative reviews and also having completely no time to devote to it, I hadn’t gotten around to trying it until I rented the Xbox version this weekend. After playing it, I’d like to offer some tips to anyone that’s looking to make a bad sequel to a game. The basic idea is this: take all the best things about the original game, and “fix” them in the sequel. For example, if the original had unconfined environments that made you feel like they were part of a living and breathing world, replace that in the sequel with spaces that feel completely contrived for the purpose of shuffling you back and forth through the game world. If the original had a great experience and skill system for building and customizing your character, remove that completely in the sequel. If the original had a unique and creative system for “hacking” in-game computer systems that required some strategy and skill from your character, replace that with a system that involves hitting a button and watching a progress bar move. In short, don’t add anything new and interesting to the game and dumb down what make the original a classic. The thing is, Deus Ex: Invisible War is really not a bad game at all on its own merits. But, as a sequel to the original it fails in pretty much every aspect.
As most people who know me are aware, I loves me a good zombie apocalype. So given that a remake of Dawn of the Dead was released today, it’s none too surprising that I immediately went to see it. (Jolayne’s out of town on a cruise with her mom and grandmother for her mom’s birthday, so she lucked out of getting dragged along by my zombie mania.) Also not very surprising is that this was not a “good movie” by the standards that one would use to label a “good movie” (i.e. The Royal Tennenbaums, lets say). However, it was very satisfying. You see, there were shotguns. Also, it was great to see zombie mobs of a more epic scale than I’d ever seen previously. I’m just not sure though if I’d say it was a good remake or not…
It’s good to know that deep inside, I am still apparently a 12 year old. As soon as I saw this in the Target pharmacy I made Jolayne give me her camera phone so I could record it for posterity. What would people do in the age before camera phones? I don’t think that words alone could do justice to the quirky charm of this obviously miraculous paste. And if you’re curious, no I did not purchase any Butt Paste though I was sorely tempted. I assume it would be used for reaffixing buttocks that have become loose or fallen off, so it would obviously be a good idea to have some on hand. You know, just in case.
Once again, ThinkGeek has tormented me with their selection of wonderful geek goods at ridiculous prices. This may well be the best doormat idea ever, and is bound to perplex many a non-geek neighbor. But really, $50 for a doormat?? What with all the outsourcing going on nowadays, is there really anyone left of the sort of people that would be inclined to get this that has pockets deep enough to drop $50 on a piece of vinyl and carpet to wipe dirt on?
Elsewhere