My copy of Beatmania IIDX 3rd Style came in today. This means I now have a copy of every IIDX home version, and the majority of them are legitimate, too. My second controller is “Heading To Warehouse”, which is confusing because a few days ago it was “Ready, In Stock” – but oh well, I’m used to the YesAsia shuffle by now. I have decided that I’m finally going to make a central IIDX information repository; not because it hasn’t been done, but because it’d be nice to have a central location in English again. And also I have a ton of info in my database that’s just waiting to get dumped into more tables. Birthday is coming up on Friday; I won’t make a post with what I want you all to buy me because I know damn well no one will buy me anything. Not that you don’t love me, but that you’re all so cheap. And I love you all for that. More later, I guess.
BitTorrent 3.2.2 Official
EDIT: Apparently this release is extremely broken. Might not want to grab it. So that OS X BitTorrent 3.2.2 I linked to last time? That was a beta. This is the final. Thanks again to Rura.
Friday Five
Good questions this week. [FridayFive.org]
1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
I want to be remembered as the guy that helped people when they had little nagging questions, had a joke ready at the appropriate times, and was above all else, reliable and trustworthy.
2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
I GOTTA BELIEVE! Seriously, look at PaRappa. He always had insurmountable problems in his life, but when he put on that damn hat and put his mind to things, everything was solved – normally with a fun rap. Essentially, if you believe in yourself, you can get anything you want done.
3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
I’m very proud that despite everything that happened before hand, Katie and I managed not to be mentioned in the news for a brutal double homicide/suicide right before the wedding.
4. What about the past ten years?
While the above is a close second, I’d have to say surviving Cornell.
5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
I’d tell him in life that the point of life is not to constantly be wrapped up in self-hatred, stress, doubt, and conflict – but to making yourself and others happy. So keep your priorities straight, never get bogged down in fear and loathing, and always eat a shitload of candy.
Touches Of Art
Got two links that need pimping.
First, Brian Witkowski has an enjoyable photo gallery of things from his everyday life; I recommend the greyscale and the nil lumina artwork in particular.
Second, Benjamin Birdie left me a comment today, and under bloglaw, I went to his website and promptly discovered an amazing treasure trove of content. Not only is his comic, Genre City, excellent beyond belief, but he’s got some genius short stories. I can’t get over the ‘Rolling’ series – where he takes a New York Lotto Cashword card, and makes a coherent short story out of it.
Both will be appearing on the blogroll once I finish reorganizing it again.
A Different Take on iTunes 4.0.1
Looking around at the headlines on various blog friends…
“iTunes 4.0.1 Goes Straight To The Top Of My ‘Blow Me” List’ – Corey Tamas
“iTunes 4.0.1 = ass” – Peter Cohen
…you’d think Apple has pulled the biggest boner in history with iTunes 4.0.1.
For you non-Mac users (and it’s required by bloglaw that I describe the situation), iTunes 4.0 had the ability to stream music over the Internet, as a offshoot feature from the Rendezvous sharing. The community bit into this like a rabid dog, and immediate there were twenty ways to steal MP3s via this manner, never mind huge listings of places you can stream off of people. iTunes 4.0.1′s biggest change is that you can only stream off of people on your subnet.
Before I start off on my little anti-anti-Apple rant, let me just say that I agree with Peter that it’s silly to try and use technology to police human nature. And I agree with Corey that Apple trying to push this as some sort of great, positive upgrade is hugely boneheaded.
But honestly, what’s the option for Apple here? Their product is getting exploited for uses that it wasn’t designed for. Are they supposed to ignore that? Are they supposed to just leave the feature in and go, “Hey guys, cut that shit out”?
And needless to say, we are talking about Apple here. The company where every move they make is followed by a flood of criticism, no matter what the decision is. Faster machines? Well, they aren’t cheap enough. New OS X upgrade with tons of new features? Well, shit, we shouldn’t have to pay $130 for it, we should pay $20 instead. Losing support for my machine from 1996? Those bastards, how dare they. Won’t get Quartz Extreme to run on my Rage IIc with 2MB VRAM? I hate Apple, I’m going to go buy a PC.
This isn’t a forced upgrade, although I would imagine things will break as much as Apple can make them break if you’re still using 4.0 – which isn’t very much. You can’t stream on a LAN between 4.0 and 4.0.1. Maybe somehow they can disable the IMS for 4.0 users – but to the people that are really fighting this upgrade (the ones who quite possibly might’ve been abusing the internet streaming), is that really going to matter?
I think that given all the options, Apple made the only decision they really could – and I’m not going to begrudge them of that just because they took away a feature I barely use.
Happy Birthday, Corey
Happy birthday to Corey Tamas, who today turns really goddamn old. And by “really goddamn old”, I mean 34. His birthday present is that I won’t dredge up embarassing photos or videos of him. But I will dredge up one of someone else for his iCard.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Interview with Microsoft’s CXO
Yes, CXO – Chief Xbox Officer. A ridiculously long interview done by canada.com with Robbie Bach yields a number of gems. Emphasis is all mine. On the sales in Canada:
Canada and Australia are our top two markets. Having a good product that fits with the culture here works very well. We could make it profitable today, but this is going to be a long investment business for a while.
So it fits the culture of Canada…okay. On the idea of making a profit:
We are being smart about bringing the cost of producing the Xbox console down. We can decide to not make it a long investment business and price it to get a better return, but this is a 10, 15 and 20 year investment.
So Microsoft expects to stay in the red for at least 10 YEARS with the Xbox. That’s a great business decision. On handhelds:
It took Sony eight years to decide to get into the hand-held space and Nintendo is pretty much demonstrating there isn’t any leverage between GameBoy and GameCube.
Right, which explains why the GBA is outselling the GC nearly everywhere. Because Nintendo has no leverage. On Bill Gates’ take:
He looks at the whole concept and says how do we bring console gaming into the mass market. How do you enable the 90 per cent of women who don’t play games, want to play?
Obviously by making more games like DOAXBV! On the difference in business models between Sony and Microsoft:
Sony basically is a hardware company that runs on very tight hardware margins with software (games) margins driving business. Microsoft on the other hand is a software driven business.
On the other hand? IT’S THE SAME DAMN HAND.
Boy, I could sure go for some Kool-Aid right now.
Lucky Wander Boy
Salon posted a review of Lucky Wander Boy today, and that made me realize it was about time I did the same, since I’ve been done with the book for about a month now. Lucky Wander Boy‘s premise is interesting, and certainly familiar to some of us – guy spends too much time obsessing about retro gaming. He starts looking for deeper meaning in the games, and begins cataloging his thoughts.
WarioWare Competition, Sort Of
So Sl1p and I decided that this would be a jolly good time to have a little WarioWare competition. It’s on the honor system, and only people with GBAs can compete (read: no emulators), but it should be an enjoyable time that is had by all. So mash that A button! Also, most of the ridiculously large debate in the comments for the last post was for naught; the consensus seemed to be Fusion, except that when I got to Gamestop, they didn’t actually seem to have any. This narrowed it down to Aria of Sorrow and Pokemon – and I wanted something that wasn’t being described as “extremely short”. So Pokemon Sapphire it is, as well as a GC->GBA link cable. I don’t get to crack open either until my birthday, though – Katie claims I’m “too spoiled”.
Gaming Happens In Cycles
Those who want to help me out with this without reading the goofy ruminations, skip to the bottom. In any case, it’s interesting to see how my portable gaming has gone over the years. Right before Sophomore year of Cornell, I got a Palm V. The Palm V was good. This was back during the big Palm software boom, so there were tons of games to squeeze in on my 2 megs of ram. During Junior year, on a complete whim, I picked up a Gameboy Color. I did enough emulation to know there were some quality titles. I grabbed Super Mario Brothers DX, Mario Tennis, and Pokemon Gold. Things were good. But it wasn’t enough. Right after Junior year, the Palm was starting on its last legs, and I realized that if I moved up to a GBA, I wouldn’t lose anything – so I did. I loved my GBA, didn’t have a problem with the lighting thing (my room had a great overhead light), and things were good. I would rotate through titles – selling back ones I was done with, picking up the new ones. It was fun. Unfortunately, there was that big game drought in early 2002. There was nearly nothing interesting released. I think the last game I bought was Wario Land 4, which was fun but didn’t really feel like a complete game. For my graduation/birthday, I received a PS2; I was desperate for games, my GBA was getting underused…so in it went for store credit, along with all the games. So for a good 9 months, there was no portable gaming for me to do. Then Katie picked up her Clie; nice and color and hi-res. I nabbed all my old games back and that’s been fun for some good puzzle-based gaming. Then for my birthday this year…well, I got a GBASP as my main present, and I got it about two weeks before my birthday (June 6th, for those playing along at home). Why go back to the GBA? Well, they fixed the game drought. And the connectivity to the Gamecube certainly looks interesting, although we’ll see how it works out in actuality when I get a link cable. Okay, so now, the dilemma. I’ve already picked up the most compelling reason to own a GBA right now (Warioware). I can pick up one other game as part of the birthday present. I have it narrowed to three titles, BUT I CANNOT DECIDE. So help me pick between:
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
- Metroid Fusion
- Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire
Help me, fair reader, for I cannot make up my mind on this potentially life altering decision.