Mike Salsbury’s Blog

When I was younger, it was commonplace for local television
stations to air old monster movies on Saturday nights.  On a given
Saturday night, you might catch Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent
Price, or any number of other famous actors.  You might also catch
a Japanese monster movie, like Godzilla.  Somehow, I don’t think I
ever caught Rodan until now.

Rodan
is a “cautionary tale” that attempts to warn the world what
will happen if we continue to create and test more devastating nuclear
weapons. 

Read more…

admin Movies monster movie, Rodan movie review, Rodan review

As mentioned in my review of “Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse”, the background music in the game was one of its most endearing aspects.  The developers and musicians did a great job of fitting the music to the game’s environment, which was sort of a mix of 1950’s era style combined with what “science fiction” would have looked like to a 1950’s era person.  The cars looked like 1950’s cars, except they hovered.  Gas stations were still full-service, with robot attendants pumping the gas (and the car).  The music on the soundtrack captures this image well.  It consists of 1950’s style songs recorded by modern artists.  Either intentionally or accidentally, the songs also have a sort of twisted sound to them that somehow seems right at home in a zombie movie/game.

The soundtrack album is a great listen even if you aren’t interested in the game.  It features a number of songs you’ll quickly recognize, by alternative artists like The Raveonettes, Death Cab for Cutie, Cake, and The Dandy Warhols:

• Ben Kweller – Lollipop:  The opening of this song sounds a good bit like the original, but quickly takes on the sort of “twisted 50’s” feel of the other tracks. 
• The Raveonettes – My Boyfriend’s Back:  This track sounds little like the original, but it’s a great remake and definitely one of the stand-out tracks on the disc.
• Death Cab for Cutie – Earth Angel:  Since I’m a fan of Death Cab for Cutie, I appreciate this track because they’re the ones doing it.  It sounds very little like the original, but has kind of an eerie feel to it that goes great with the other tracks here and the game itself.
• Rose Hill Drive – Shakin’ All Over:  This is probably my least favorite track on the album.  It is somewhat out of place with the others, sounding more grunge-ish than 1950-ish.
• Cake – Strangers in the Night:  Cake does a great job with this song, and it’s definitely one of the better tracks.  The vocals are perfect for the kind of song this is.
• The Walkmen – There Goes My Baby:  This is one of the weaker tracks on the album, though it’s not terrible.
• Rogue Wave – Everyday:  The first time I heard this song was in an entertaining movie called “Mischief” starring a young Kelly Preston (who spends a decent stretch of time, shall we say, “indecent”).  This version is good, above average among the tracks on the disc.
• The Dandy Warhols – All I Have To Do Is Dream:  This is a very kitschy version of the song, but it is well suited to the point in the game where it appears, and it’s fun to listen to out of the game.
• Oranger – Mr. Sandman:  This track starts off sounding a good bit like the original, then kicks into a decidedly alternative sound that fits in well with the rest of the soundtrack.  Overall, it’s one of the better tracks on the disc.
• The Flaming Lips – If I Only Had a Brain:  This track from The Wizard of Oz has an amusing double meaning when played in the context of a game where you go around eating brains.  It’s well-performed here and fits in reasonably well with the other tracks.
• Clem Snide – Tears On My Pillow 
• Milton Snapes – Lonesome Town
• Phantom Planet – The Living Dead

Once you’ve actually beaten the game, the song selections here provide a good tongue-in-cheek reminder of the storyline in the game as they echo it quite well.

I enjoy listening to this album almost as much as playing the game, which is saying something.  I’d give it an 8 out of a possible 10.  Definitely recommended if you secretly like any 1950’s era music and/or any of the artists listed above.

admin music

Australian plasma television owners currently have a major beef against two sports channels there.  It appears that those small logos the sports channels place in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen are being burned into the plasma screens.

 Owners of the damaged TV sets are threatening legal action against the broadcasters, saying that their use of the constant, bright on-screen logos is burning the images permantently into their plasma screen TVs.  The channels in question are refusing to acknowledge any responsibility for the damage.

The broadcasters claim that the damage can be reduced (not eliminated) by turning down the contrast on their televisions.  This, in my opinion, is a poor solution.  The use of watermarked logos that change color to match the on-screen images behind the logos can prevent this from happening entirely.

Personally, I hope the TV owners sue the networks and win, not because I really care about the damage to their sets.  What I would rather see happen is all networks getting a wake-up call that their constant use of these annoying little logos in the corner of the screen is inappropriate.  I don’t object to a television station identifying itself by TEMPORARILY putting a small logo in the corner of the screen.  What really ticks me off is seeing a logo their during the entire broadcast, which amazingly disappears when the commercials come on.  Why is it acceptable to interfere with the “content” by displaying watermarked (and even animated) logos on the screen but unacceptable to interfere with the advertising?  Simple.  Money.  You and I don’t “pay” for the programs we watch, and the advertisers do pay to put their messages up.  As a result, the networks are afraid to anger the advertisers by slapping a logo over their ads, but perfectly willing to tick off the viewers by putting a logo over the programs the viewers want to watch.

For that matter, broadcasters are trying their best to get a “broadcast flag” measure through Congress.  The Broadcast Flag would prevent television audiences from recording, copying, fast-forwarding, rewinding, re-playing, or otherwise using the broadcast content as they see fit.  No more time-shifting if the network doesn’t want you to.  No more fast-forwarding through commercials.  No more watching a recorded program a second time because you happened to miss something when you went to the bathroom without pausing. 

TiVo already did an experiment with this over the Christmas holiday.  I was given the option to have my TiVo download certain content from CNet and play it.  I couldn’t transfer that content to my PC to watch there, move it to my other TiVo where I had a bigger television, or transfer it to the PSP to watch later.  I could do that with the programs the TiVo had recorded for me, just not these particular ones.  (Realistically I could have copied them using some analog approach, but why bother?)

Mark my words… there will come a time when the freedom we enjoyed with VCRs and DVDs is taken from us by the greedy jerks in Hollywood.  They’ll charge us to rewind, fast-forward, play a show multiple times, etc.

Pushing back on little issues like this one will send a message to the content creators that the audience isn’t willing to just sit there and take what they want to throw at us.  And for that reason, I hope these Australian TV owners win their suit.

admin Cool Electronic Gear

Something I don’t think I’ve talked about on this site, and I’m not sure
why, is that I lived in Brazil between the years of 1978 and 1981. 
My father was helping to build a nuclear power plant for Westinghouse,
who had sold the plant to the Brazilian electric company Furnas. 
We lived about 3.5 hours outside Rio De Janeiro and about 4 hours away
from Sao Paulo.  The village we lived in was specifically built to
house the people working on the plant (and 1-2 others being built in the
area).

My best friend from those days contacted me recently
(Jack Ludwig, whose site appears under the “Featured Links”
section on the home page).  He shared the following picture of our
old village:

As you can see, we’re
right on the edge of the jungle (and the ocean).  It was a nice and
safe place to live.  As kids, we could walk around, ride our bikes,
and explore pretty much to our hearts’ content.  We got to spend a
decent amount of time on the beach, bodysurfing, collecting shells, and
snorkeling.

Hard to believe it was 24 years ago.

admin Life Brasil, Brazil, Mambucaba, power plant

 
I purchased a Creative Nomad Zen
Xtra 60GB MP3 player approximately this time last year.  I’ve
really been pleased with it.  It delivered 60GB of capacity (enough
for a good chunk of my music collection, at least all the stuff I cared
about), great sound, excellent battery life (I’ve never run it out),
decent ease of use, and great value ($255 for a 60GB player beats
anything Apple’s offering in the iPod line).

Since I
subscribe to Real’s Rhapsody music service, and it offers the option to
download tracks to “PlaysForSure” music players, I was pleased
when Creative offered a firmware upgrade to the player that enabled the
PlaysForSure capability on my Zen Xtra.  I downloaded the update
and tried to install it.  I got an error, so I rebooted the player
and the computer and tried again.  This time the update seemed to
be installing fine, until it got to a point where it said it needed to
reboot the player.  The player’s screen went dead, and that was
it.  It never came to life ever again.

I searched the
Creative knowledgebase online but none of the solutions there quite fit
my situation.  I emailed them to open a problem ticket.  I got
some suggestions to try, none of which worked.  The technician sent
me an RMA request form.  I filled it in and sent it back. 
They gave me an RMA.  Took about a week to get it boxed up and
shipped back to them, which was the week of Christmas so shipping was a
pain and slow.  Creative’s repair facility, according to the US
Postal Service, got the player on December 27.  Their online RMA
status page didn’t show receipt of the player for a few days after
that.  Late last week, it showed that they had tested the player
and couldn’t power it up.

Today, they updated the information
with an indication that they shipped a replacement player (different
serial number) to me by UPS.  Given typical UPS shipping times, I
don’t expect to see it before Monday or Tuesday.

Overall, I was impressed with how
this whole thing went.  They didn’t make me call anyone and sit on
hold for hours.  They worked with me by email and offered usable,
intelligent suggestions.  The RMA request was processed very
quickly (though it asked the same information I had pretty much already
provided in the problem report, which was a tiny bit annoying). 
The player arrived in their hands on December 27 and they shipped it
back on January 18.  They quote 10-15 business days for turnaround
on their web site.  Assuming their holidays compare to my
employer’s, Dec. 27 wasn’t a business day, Dec. 28 also wasn’t, 
but the 29th through the 13th were, plus today.  That works out to
13 days.  Even if you count the two days in December and MLK Jr.
Day, that’s still 16 days, which is quite reasonable.

The
cost?  The player was still under its 1 year hardware warranty but
not labor warranty.  I had to pay them $24.95 to diagnose and test
the player, plus around $5.00 to ship it.  Compare this to Apple’s
$59 or $99 repair fees for their (already overpriced) iPod player. 
Even the third parties doing iPod repair aren’t as cheap as
creative.  iPodResQ charges $29 for the initial estimate and return
shipping.

admin Cool Electronic Gear creative labs, mp3 player, zen xtra

I’ve been organizing my MP3 collection, off and on, for several months now.  A while ago I managed to get them all organized by artist and album, weed out duplicates, get the ID3v2 tags in place, etc.  (Then, of course, my MP3 player went south on me, but that’s another story.)  The first thing I noticed when I started listening to some of them was that I didn’t have a playlist file (*.m3u) for some of them.  I didn’t really care to make one of those by hand, so it was time to make a script!

That led me to develop the following script (for Windows systems with VBScript installed, which is most of them after Windows 98):

The script works like this… Double-click it and you’re presented with a Folder Selection Dialog box by Windows.  Use this dialog to navigate until you have selected a directory that contains a group of MP3s you want in the same playlist.  The script will parse the MP3 files out of that directory and build a playlist file for them.  The playlist file will be named to match the parent directory.

For example, imagine that I had a directory named “They Might Be Giants – No!” which contained the various tracks from the album “No!” by They Might Be Giants.  When I select that directory with the script, I’ll end up with a file named “They Might Be Giants – No!.m3ui” which contains a playlist with all the MP3 files’ names in it.  That M3U file will be compatible with Windows Media Player and (hopefully other media players, too).  Because I’ve designed the script to use just the filenames (instead of the whole path) it should work even if you move your MP3 directories around.  If you rename your files, it’ll break.

Enjoy.  Use at your own risk.

admin VB and VBScript create playlist, M3U, MP3 playlist, MP3s, VBScript

As you could determine from the game reviews on this web site, I’m not that much of a “twitch” gamer.  I don’t care for first-person shooters as a general rule, unless they deliver something more than a “shooting gallery” experience.  Half-Life 2 did that, in its challenging puzzles and interesting story line.  Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse did that with humor and interesting twists on weapons and strategy.  Need for Speed: Underground 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted (not twitch games but not really strategy games) deliver in a sort of “wish I could do this in real life without hurting anyone or going to jail” kind of vein.  To a lesser extent, even the “Battlefield” and “Star Wars: Battlefront” games provided a strategy experience in that you have the chance to play cooperatively with someone else to achieve your mission goals.  Unfortunately, the gaming industry seems to want to deliver more and more “twitch” gaming and less strategy/simulation gaming (aside from the latest, greatest Microsoft Flight Simulator release).  I miss good strategy/simulation games.

The last really addictive strategy game for me was Capitalism II.  There were a ton of opportunities to play the game from different perspectives and in different scenarios.  I could try to corner the market on a raw material and gouge the computer players out of business.  I could focus on research and deliver products that were far better and much cheaper than my competition.  I could buy them out in the stock market.  There are seemingly endless ways to attack the problem of dominating the business world in that game.  True, there were arbitrary limits on the size of shopping centers and factories, but that became a part of the strategic problem (how to maximize space).  It’s such a good game, in fact, that I still dust it off occasionally and play it – over four years after its release date.

Read more…

admin Games game industry, simulation games, strategy games

For those of you who like short reviews, I have three words “Buy
this game.” For those willing to read a bit more, continue
on…

You crave the taste of brains, specifically
the brains of the living.You’ve just found yourself in a strange city
which combines the 1950’s with futuristic technology (the cars look like
old 57 Chevy coupes, but hover, and there are robots around).There is
(or rather was, until you came along) virtually no crime.It’s a sort of
utopian society.

In typical
zombie-horror-film style, when you eat someone’s brains, they become a
zombie and crave brains themselves.Thus, the more people whose brains
you consume, the more underlings you have at your disposal.And you’ll
need them, since this society believes in defending its way of life at
all cost.

Read more…

admin Games game review, stubbs review, stubbs the zombie, stubbs the zombie game review, zombie review

Make no mistake about it, the United States is obsessed with
sports.  It may well be one of our biggest industries:

• We have multiple sports networks on television and radio.

• We publish magazines and books about sports, sporting
  events, and athletes.

• We manufacture clothing,
  toys, appliances, food items, and anything else we can think of with
  sports themes, sports team logos, and athletes’ photographs.

• Our state and local governments sponsor the creation of giant
  sports arenas for professional teams to play in.

• People talk about sports on a regular basis.  For many,
  it’s the bulk of their conversations.

• We idolize athletes,
  paying them a lot of money to endorse our products and services.

• Athletes get scholarships to college, stipends and
  other compensation while in college, and special treatment by teachers,
  professors, and others.

• We create video games to
  simulate playing and coaching sporting events.

• There is an entire industry of “fantasy” sports
  leagues for sports fans to engage in.

• People can
  bet on various aspects of sporting events and sports-related activities,
  legally and illegally.

That’s just what I came up
with quickly off the top of my head.  On the one hand, it can be
argued that this is all just harmless fun.  No one is
“required” to participate in or watch sports.  Some
athletes contribute time and money to worthwhile causes.  Sports
teams bring lots of money into local economies and/or schools. 
It’s entertainment.  Where’s the harm?

Read more…

admin Life crime, obsession, sports

Welcome to my “top 10 list of cool animated movies you may not have seen”. For the record, I’m not an “anime” fan.  The superfluous use of shadows, the “big eyes, small mouths” art style, strange movie titles, bizarre story lines, etc., in anime simply turn me off more than the clever animation techniques draw me in.  As a result, you’ll not see much here that an anime fan would appreciate (I’m guessing).  Still, I think these are all amusing films that you should have a look at if you get the chance (and since most of them are a bit obscure, you can pick them up for about as much as it would cost to rent them at your local Blockbuster Video):

admin Movies animated films, animation, cool animated movies, good animated movies, good films, top 10 list