January 2006 Archives

As I discussed in a review of another small digital camera, I wanted something to replace my cell phone camera, something small enough to fit in a pocket and inexpensive enough that if I lost or damaged it I wouldn't be as upset as I would if I damaged my $800 Nikon.  The first camera I acquired was one from some Chinese outfit called "DigiGR8".  It worked if there was a lot of light (like at high-noon outdoors) but with less light its photo quality rapidly degraded.  While that made it adequate for some of my uses, it didn't work for all.  Based on my experiences with the DigiGR8, I decided that I'd need a flash to do any indoor shooting.  Since that camera also connected to the PC successfully only once in about a 10 attempts, I decided to get one that used some kind of removable medium (SD/MMC, CompactFlash, etc.) so I could just drop that into a card reader and not have to use the buggy USB interface.  This led me to the "Generic SQ908 MEGA-cam" at Geeks.com. Some web searches tell me this camera is made by "SQ Tech Co., Ltd." out of China.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

 
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.

I often wonder what alternate reality the nation's political leaders live in.  What possessed the Republicans to run Dan Quayle, the Democrats to run Al Gore, and Ralph Nader to think he ever had a chance?  But recently I got one of the funniest alternate reality glimpses I've gotten in a long, long time.

If I say the words "State of the Union Address" to you, what images come to mind?  Go ahead, think about that for a minute before you read any further...  No really, think about the images that come to mind... 

When I do that, the image that comes to my mind is the President sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office, blathering on about how he's leading our nation proudly forward, how he's made the economy stronger, how he's done this or that, etc.  I think of myself wanting to change the channel or watch something else entirely.  That's about it.  If you're someone who didn't vote for Dubya, you probably have even less pleasant thoughts than mine.  Heck, you might have voted for the guy and still hate the idea of sitting through that speech.  Don't blame you.

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.

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.

I've ranted about online customer disservice before on this site, but visiting Sprint's PCS site today riled me up enough to complain again.  I received a billing statement by email and took a look at it.  I noticed my wife and I are being charged about $20 a month for the "PCS Vision" plan.  We're not really using it.  I don't browse the web with my phone that much (my wife never does) and the camera's pictures are so poor that I haven't used the camera that much either.  So that's $20 down the drain each month on services we're not using.

Noticing that there is a link on their site to "change plans", I figured I could probably go there and tell them to drop the PCS Vision plan.  I clicked the link and then read what was there.  All you can do from this page is LOOK AT the plans.  You can't actually CHANGE them.  To change them, you have to call an 800 number.  That's just plain stupid.  You ought to be able to request changes to your plan online.  What if I was in a real hurry and wanted to increase my plan's number of minutes?  What if I was somewhere I had web access but not cell access?  If a web site is good enough to take my order for a new phone, it darn well ought to be good enough to take my change in service plans.

Interestingly, if you want to pay your bill, order a new phone, etc., you CAN do that online.  Sprint's message to its customers is clear:  If there's a chance we can get some more money from you, we'll make it really easy online.  If there's a chance you might decide to stop sending us as much money, we'll make you call us instead, so we can try some high-pressure sales tactics on you to convince you to keep unused services.

This makes their customer service web site a "one-way" site.  It's very easy to give them your money, but unnecessarily difficult to get it back or try to reduce your spending.

And that, quite simply, is wrong.

Most of the pictures you're going to see in this review come from my Nikon CoolPix 5700 camera, scaled down to fit this weblog's format.  The Nikon is a great camera and I have gotten some really incredible pictures with it (just click the "Photos" link here and you'll see plenty).  But there are two things that keep me from carrying it around every day.  First is that it's big and bulky.  With it strapped around my neck, I feel like the stereotypical Japanese tourist.  You'd have to have a pretty large pocket to stuff it in.  I also spent close to $1,000 for it when I bought it, so I'm not too keen on carting it around anywhere that I might drop it, lose it, get it wet, or otherwise risk losing it.  My cell phone has a digital camera in it, but it pretty much sucks and the pictures are hard to get out of it.  So I decided I'd keep an eye out for a "mediocre but inexpensive and small" digital camera I could keep with me regularly.  A while later, an email from Geeks.com advertised the DigiGR8 SY-2180 digital camera.  For about $10, it seemed like it would be worth the risk to try, so I bought one.


As you can see above, the camera ships in one of those really annoying plastic "bubble packs" that take a sharp knife and a fair amount of surgical skill to open.  Even at that, there's always the risk of cutting yourself on the sharp edges of the plastic.  I think whoever invented these packages ought to have to eat their every meal out of one for the rest of their lives.  They should have to go through the same hell the rest of us do dealing with these things.

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.

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?

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):

1		The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad I'm fond of this disc for one reason, the very maniacal expressions on Mr. Toad's face as he drives his motorcar around like a madman.  I don't know that I've even watched the Ichabod part since I was a kid.  Another reason I'm fond of the Mr. Toad cartoon is that it's the basis for my favorite ride at Disneyland in California (and formerly in Disney World in Florida).  Family friendly fare here, in case you're wondering.
2		The Adventures of Wallace and Gromit This "claymation" creation is another personal favorite.  The lovable dimwit inventor Wallace and his steadfast canine companion Gromit visit the moon for some cheese, do some window washing, and even get into trouble with "techno-trousers".  This is also very family friendly stuff.
3		The Itsy Bitsy Spider short film on the Bebe's Kids disc The Bebe's Kids movie was cute but in my opinion nothing special.  Its companion on the disc and VHS, however, is awesome.  Jim Carrey voices a Rambo-like exterminator out to rid a piano teacher's house of a troublesome arachnid.  In the end, it's the exterminator and the house which are eliminated.  In between, it's lots of laughs.  You'll wish it was the 2-hour movie instead of Bebe's Kids.  I enjoyed it enough that I bought this disc for the short feature alone.  That should tell you something.  The voice acting, animation, and writing are all dead-on perfect here.
4		Cool World Not strictly an animated film, this one contains live-action performances by Brad Pitt, Kim Basinger, and others alongside animated characters by Ralph Bakshi.  The gist of the story is that there are two realities in the universe, one where cartoons ("doodles") live a life of their own, and another in which we "noids" (humanoids?) live.  Residents of the worlds generally don't cross between them, and there are serious consequences when they do because both realities are jeopardized.  The biggest crime is for a "noid" and a "doodle" to engage in physical relations, because it upsets the balance of realities and makes the "doodle" become "real".  As you can imagine, this happens and things go crazy in both worlds.  While watching this "non-family-friendly" film, pay attention to all the silly cartoon characters in the background.  Sometimes they're more interesting than the main characters!
5		Fritz the Cat The first animated feature ever to get an "X" rating from the motion picture rating authority, Fritz the Cat is the tale of a young feline who indulges in drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, and about every other sin or vice you can imagine.  It got its X rating from the rather graphic nature of some of the scenes in the film, though today it would probably get an "R".  This is another Ralph Bakshi film.  It suffers at times from going into psychedelic rants about the establishment, society, etc., but offers some genuine laughs and pokes fun at just about everything.  And yes, in case you haven't guessed, it's NOT family friendly at all, unless you've got one REALLY liberal household.
6		Heavy Metal This is a series of loosely related stories about the evil "Lochnar" corrupting a variety of people and ruining their lives.  The stand-out piece to me is the trial of Captain Sterrn.  It features a number of very family-unfriendly themes, so don't watch this with the kiddies.  A couple of the sub-stories are snoozers to me, but they're overshadowed by the good ones.
7		The Iron Giant I love the animation, voice acting, and sound effects in this one.  It's family friendly, tells a decent story (even for adults), and is fun to watch.  What more do you need to know?
8		One Crazy Summer This isn't really an animated film, but animation plays a fairly large role in it, so I'm listing it here.  My favorite part of this film is the animation attributed to John Cusack's character, especially the stories it tells of the lonely guy who gets revenge on the "cute and fuzzy bunnies" who are ruining his life, a parallel for his character getting shafted by the cool and popular people around him.  It features performances by Eugene Levy, Demi Moore, Bobcat Goldthwait, and a variety of others you'll recognize.  Probably not family friendly if you have anyone in your family under the age of 16, but probably OK otherwise.
9		Titan A.E. This film tells a story of Earth's distant future (the "A.E." stands for "after Earth") when mankind has become a third-rate power in the universe, with aliens hunting down and killing humans where they can find them. In typical Hollywood fashion, one unlikely hero changes all that, and this is his story.
10		Wizards This Ralph Bakshi film is a classic. The storyline is nothing especially exciting. A wizard named Blackwolfe is looking to take over the post-nuclear holocaust world. His brother, a good wizard named Avatar, wants to stop him. Along the way, Avatar encounters various groups that want to help or hinder them in their quest. The movie features some very unique animation techniques, great voice performances, good music, and memorable dialogue. Although it's tenth in this list (arranged roughly alphabetically), it's my favorite film of this entire lot.