Busy Busy

Been busy of late. On Sunday, I have a  2-3 page paper that I still haven’t even really started, though I think I can finish that tomorrow. I have a 15-minute presentation due on Monday which i’ve just barely started but have no idea where I’m going on it. And the following Monday I have a 5 page paper due that I’m still figuring out a topic for.

On top of all that this week I have been suffering from a major bleed in my left elbow that has been keeping me on Oxycodone almost completely non-stop for the last 3 days. I took my medicine on Wednesday morning and that stopped the throbbing, but it is still painful so today I am going in for a second infusion. Being drugged and in pain, not to mention the constant sleeping due to the drugged bit, has made it difficult for me to start on these projects which is part of the reason that I haven’t really started the two first projects until now. I also missed my day of study on Tuesday because I needed to come home and take some oxycodone cause I was in too much pain and that often puts me behind on homework.

To make matters worse, my roommate is going on a date tonight in which the guy will be coming over to get ready before hand so we have been cleaning the house a lot the last couple of days, taking up even more of my time. And tonight I get my daughter which will make working on my projects difficult, and I need to stop and get lunch I think before I go to get my medicine because I’m starving and don’t really want to make something. Though I’ve been going out to eat a lot lately which I can’t afford to do so I think I just need to make something here and eat it. Would be healthier that way anyway.

When it rains it pours.

Side note

As a side note for my site today… I had totally forgotten about my colour for this week and because of that wrote the previous post. I had then considered that I would work on it today, but instead have decided to put it off for a week as I try to get caught up in classes and get a paper that is due next Friday done today instead so that I can get started on another paper further out that is more important. I am starting to think I need more time than the last couple of days to write a paper just to ensure that I get a chance to proof read and make it better than average.

Bloodline Chronicles

I recently bought Bloodline Chronicles for EQ2. This was SOE’s first adventure pack and I never really bothered because SOE made a point to say these weren’t necessary, and it launched toward the end of my first stint with EQ2 which by the time I got back Splitpaw was out and that was far preferred at the time. Well recently SOE has revamped a little of this adventure pack, adding Vampire Master and I felt that this was a worthy thing to have for EoF raids (which are Vampire intensive at times) so I went out and bought it.

Now I have played through the main quests with one character and almost done with them on a second, I have decided that I fairly like the pack. The zones themselves have a fairly simple layout, but the pinkish caves with blood red crystals throughout are different and interesting. The addition of vampires are boring due to their look being very near identical to the elves or dark elves, but other creatures used in the zone are lesser used models such as the blue goblins, the hellhounds, the big giant snakey looking things. I’m not sure if these were invented for this pack, and later used in future expansions as the vampire were, but they are all very interesting in use given how little you really see them elsewhere.

The two big features touted in this pack were breakable walls and single shot items such as wands that do dmg and potions that heal or give power. Both I think were rather minor. I like walls here better than splitpaw largely because I don’t have to find a barrel to break them, but overall unimportant. Overall, I still think this is badly designed… something like this should be obvious to the player how to deal with it… I kept looking for a barrel due to splitpaw and took awhile to figure out that I could just hit it. There wasn’t any tutorial or anything to rely on, which I suppose is more realistic, but I’m just too stupid to really figure it out on my own, and considering how small a feature it was it seemed odd to me that it took so much effort.

The one shots too were bland. It was a good idea, and they may work well for a level 35, but they don’t scale and SOE dropped it. I mean at level 70 gaining 10-15 power isn’t much use in reality, and thus this aspect is completely lost. Which is too bad as it seemed like a focus to SOE for this.

To Commence or not…

So it is getting to the time where I really have to decide whether I want to go to the UW commencement ceremonies and get a yearbook picture taken and the whole nine yards or not. This has actually turned out to be a rather difficult decision on my part. At first, I was just giving a flat no to any who asked… fully intending NOT to do it. It isn’t my style after all… I think graduation ceremonies are boring as heck and far far over rated. I never really have felt a desire in all my life to go to these things…

But then, I only get one chance here, and ever since I was a little kid I wanted to go to the UW Madison. In fact, to this day it is one of my proudest moments, that I not only made it in, but that I am doing a fairly good job at being here. I love being at this college. So I sit and contemplate it because I wonder if I will regret it. It is a huge accomplishment of one of my very first goals in life and maybe I should take a moment to be proud of it. Yeah it’s a retarded thing to have these ceremonies… they are always overly pompous and sitting and watching 5000 students graduate leaves much to be desired… but still…. will I regret it if I don’t? Who knows what man I will be in 20 years… I may appreciate looking back at all things I did in my life and knowing that more than just I recognized it….

WiiWare & other fun stuff

Last night Nintendo announced their new WiiWare lineup (as well as showing off some of their normal software that is coming up). I must say I am pretty impressed over all, however I think pricing may be interesting to say the least. The games that I can recall off hand include a Pokemon Farm which allows you to upload pokemon to the wii from D&P and raise them in a farm… this one sounds pretty cool and I will likely take a look at it when it launches. A new Dr. Mario… A new version of one of those popular Turbo Grafx Games (i can’t remember which). And a new Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles.

Now this last one was really quite a surprise. We knew since launch that Square was working on it, but we hadn’t really heard much from it since the launch came. Now we can assume the reason for this was because they didn’t want to talk too much about WiiWare until it was closer to being ready. They seem to be having two different types of WiiWare games. One is the traditional small puzzle game not unlike what is on most of X-Box Live… the other type is a full game (likely smaller) like FFCC. I think they announced the price of FFCC to be somewhere around 1600-1700 Wii Points (which is $16-17), which actually if it is a more full fledged game isn’t a bad price and may be the answer to those lesser games that I’ve been talking about for months being too expensive (like trauma center, cooking mama, and big brain academy). Perhaps a reason they are not releasing Brain Age yet on Wii is because it will be a WiiWare game instead later down the line for $20 instead of a disc for $50. I don’t know…

Now the real question remains is how much will the smaller games be? I could see pokemon go for maybe 1300 points, while a new Dr. Mario could go for 1200… I think for the smaller game these would be fairly acceptable prices, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go up to 1500 for bigger games. After all, I think the N64 & SNES games are a tad overpriced as it is… wouldn’t be at all surprising if they overprice the rest of their WiiWare games… but so far the news is good on WiiWare.

They also announced that their Everbody Votes channel will be updated in the future to allow you to rate games and then have the channel tell you similar games that you may be interested in. I have a feeling that this is an advertising ploy for WiiWare in particular, but I think it is still a good idea. One problem that is out there with something like X-Box Live is that many of the games you may not even look at because you don’t even KNOW if you would be interested in it, and this will help sift through the junk. I think it will also play big in helping with finding the right VC games as it is starting to get crowded in there and I think Nintendo is doing a good job at putting in off the beaten track games.

Speaking of the VC… they have recently been adding a lot of new types of games of late which really make me excited for the variety it’ll provide. Two weeks ago they added what I think is called the Super CD which I think was a CD add on for the Turbo GrafX. Last week they added an import section bringing over the long wanted Mario: Lost Levels and Sin & Punishment (Mario I am considering buying only for the fact that I feel it is a game lost from my youth). And this week they added in NeoGeo games (which was a system known for porting arcade games, so it has a lot of fighting games on it… it is a tad pricey but then I think the actual console was too). I am particularly interested in the imports… as I said I am considering Mario… but there are also a ton of games that never really made it over here such as the other Earthbound/Mother games, or Fire Emblem… Japan has had a history of really cool games that never made it over here because they were believed to be too “niche” to be worth the translation costs (I hope they actually translate these games though!!!!!). All these new systems and such make me wonder what they will launch next week but I bet this is it… still… am I the only one who thinks it would be pretty kick ass if they brought over 64DD games?  There weren’t many games for it but, some of them were pretty cool in how they used the disk drive and since the Wii has the flash memory, this feature could easily be duplicated (after all there was only 64MB of space on those discs anyway).

New Feature: Colour Meanings

I’ve lately been taking an interest into colours (I use the -our variation of this word as I just kind of like the spelling for various reasons and have taken to using it of late). Because of this I’ve decided to start taking a casual look at the meaning of colours and their symbolic values in texts. One reason is just so that I get a better meaning of it, but also because I haven’t really found a really good guide for such a thing online. This I will try to make a regular feature on Tuesdays as I have a bit of time in between classes in order to work on it, but be warned it may come a day late as I try to finish it up. To go with this I have created a category for Colours for these posts to reside in to make it easy for those who wish to go and look up only these posts. To start this out I will start with the oddball colour of gray.

I can’t begin the colour gray without first mentioning a very interesting aspect of the colour… it is spelled both grey and gray. This has actually troubled me as a writer for quite some time as I’ve never been able to figure out which I should be using, which is more appropriate, even though both mean the same thing. I went to the Oxford English Dictionary to find out why it is that there are two different spellings for this word and what is proper, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why it is the way it is. One guess is that perhaps gray used to refer to a darker shade, while grey used to refer to a lighter shade. It does seem to make the distinction though that -ay is used predominately today by the U.S. while -ey is used by the U.K. I also noted while looking at the historical use of the word that back in 1000 A.D. it was spelled græy which could explain why it got split off into two separate words the way it did.

Looking at the list of meanings from wikipedia, I noticed the big meanings they gave as mourning, elegance, March, neutrality, and Wisdom. The rest of the list I sat there and looked at wondering if people actually thought that certain things meant these things, such as Urban Sprawl. I mean who really has a colour that symbolizes Urban Sprawl? As a personal addition to this, I would say gray can also be represented as a sense of melancholy or depression as well as storms or rain.

Wikipedia also notes in the section on gray that mythology generally associates goblins with gray, and Norse mythology in particular tends to dress their gnomes in gray largely due to their association with dusk. So I guess we could also include dusk in our meanings of grey as well as a couple of interesting mythological creatures.

Another interesting side note comes from Dreammoods.com. I am largely interested in the symbolism of things in dreams and they note the meanings of gray in your dreams as indicating fear, depression, ill health, ambivalence, confusion and an emotional detachment. These meanings I think go along with what I would think the meaning of gray would be a little more, with a couple of associated meanings in addition to it. So I suppose a question that I would bring into this is do we give colours a more contextual non-existant meaning in texts, and is the dream meanings more correct to our actual associations with colours, or is dreammoods just a rather faulty source to be looking at for such info?

Mario Party 8

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to do with my sister’s family because they were coming down for my daughter’s birthday. I decided to go out and buy Mario Party 8 and Wii Play. I decided to get Wii Play, like most people, because I wanted another controller (brought me up to 3) and I was willing to pay $10 for the mini-games. I will talk about the game in a future post.

Mario Party 8 was actually a bit of a hard decision for me though. I wanted it because it is my room mate’s favorite series of games, and I like buying games that she will play with me. But I heard a bunch of bad reviews saying this game really should have had wifi connectivity of some sort, many of the games are the same that have always been in the game, the implementation of the controller seemed forced and rushed, etc. So I was going to wait for Mario Party 9 in order to buy it on the theory that this was likely just a modified gamecube game ported to the Wii with weak controller use.

Now i have owned Mario Party previously. I have Mario Party 4 for the Gamecube so it has been a long time since I’ve gotten one. In fact, I generally don’t think you need more than 1 per system unless there is an overwhelming upgrade (as I assume there will be with the wifi in the next couple of years) and have long felt that Nintendo’s biggest mistake with this franchise has been to make it a yearly game. I think they would have been much better suited had they just put out 2 per system with a year or two between games to protect the franchise. However, that is not what they’ve done and as such this franchise has gotten worse and worse scores as it has continued and become less relevant, even for party games. (Most people would prefer Rayman now instead of Mario Party although they could create the same mistake as Rayman 2 is coming out in just a year from the previous).

I was pleasantly surprised by this game however. The graphics were much nicer than 4, the new characters were  a welcome change (to me.. I love dry bones, boo, birdo and hammer bros. as additional characters). The Donkey Kong board is a brilliantly designed board, and I wish the others were to this quality but there are some interesting designs in each. Such as the train cars being mixed and moved, the random generation of rooms in the haunted house, or the monopoly like purchasing of hotels for stars. Many of the games seem fresh to me, even if they aren’t really, and the controls seem very appropriate and well done for the most part.

That isn’t to say it is perfect… controls in particular seem to be a constant annoyance. Twisting to turn or rotate in some games doesn’t seem to work all that well and everyone ends up annoyed that the computer consistently beats us because he doesn’t have to deal with the controller. Another trouble some game is where you have to flip the controller to the side in order to flip the monkey to a different side of the rope to avoid dropping coconuts, however, more often than not flipping the controller just doesn’t work at all and is an early prime contender to be taken out of the rotation if we can’t figure it out because this game will only work with 4 players being equally bad at the controller.

Another issue I have with the game is the general lack of boards. I have always found it curious that Mario Party has stuck with 6 boards since its inception on the N64. Despite growing disc size (now on DVD), they just refuse to put in more boards. Even if they didn’t want to totally design new boards, it would be nice to throw in 3-4 “classic boards” that could be unlocked in the game not unlike what you got from Mario Kart DS. This would reduce the onus of having to design new boards, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason that they don’t do this is because they later want to sell the classic Mario Parties on the Wii Shop Channel.

Overall, it was a pleasant purchase though I still believe Nintendo needs to start a low cost line of casual games in it for $39.99 instead of the traditional $49.99 as they do with the DS. This line should contain Mario Party, Big Brain Academy, Wario Ware, Cooking Mama, and other such games. The problem with many of these types of games, Mario Party included, is though it is a quality game, it often doesn’t feel like you are getting your money’s worth when you compare it to similar priced games such as Metroid, Zelda, or Mario Galaxy. I think at a $10 lower price, it would encourage more people to pick up these games in order to give them added value.

Why Ahman Green was never good for the Packers

Don’t get me wrong, I think Ahman Green is a talented running back, I really do. Obviously he has the ability to be a solid running back. And I was always more than happy to have him on our team more than others, because at times he was a difference maker for us. However, I was never quite happy with him as our running back despite his obvious talent for a number of reasons. After watching the Packers offense so far this year, I actually feel somewhat justified by this now.

I know the Packers currently rank last in the league in rushing in every category. However, if you look at the Packers over the past two games, they are getting better and better. This week will probably prove to be our best defense we are facing since Philly came to town so it will be a good mark as to how good they really are progressing, but they seem to be really getting into a stride. They have become much more controlling offensively over the last 6 quarters than they ever were with Green. So why is this when they are doing it with virtually no running game whatsoever? (In fact, last week they didn’t even bother to run most of the time).

Well first of all there is the fumbilitis of Green. Everyone knew it, we knew it, our opponents new it, he likely dropped the ball and lost it in at least 50% of the games, more than that usually. Now normally I think a decent team can cope with it, but when you are a team who has a QB like Favre who throws from 1 to 2 interceptions per game, you are looking at nearly 3 turnovers per game through these two players alone… this is harsh and most defenses can’t overcome this kind of deficit that the team is facing almost from the start. I think having one of either would have made a better team, but overall Favre is the better player.

Second is that I think the Packers just relied on Green far more than they should. The team was predicated on the run. Sherman was in love with the guy and he became extremely predictable with many of his plays that were used with Green because it seemed like their running game was essentially a one-trick pony (the U51). Even Favre I think became reliant on him which was bad, I will note that his best season with Green came when he had Walker… he no longer could carry the team anymore, he almost seemed to force the ball more when Green was around than was without… Green became Favre’s crutch and when Green inevitably became injured in the season, Favre was lost without him. In fact, I could point to the first game and the preseason as further proofs that Favre just forgot what it was like to be Favre without Green… I can almost point exactly to those scramble plays in the middle of the Giants game as the point that Brett Favre returned from his slumber because since that point, he has been stellar… he looks BETTER now than he did in 96-98 when he won 3 straight MVPs.

Another reason I never really cared for Green was that he never really was a west-coast guy. I mean he was a great back, but not in a west-coast system. In the west coast system, you need a more complete back… someone who can not only run but also catch passes and block if need be as well. Green could make some pretty good chip blocks, but he wasn’t great against it… likely cause he was scared of being injured. But he didn’t catch worth a lick, if it was thrown at him he’d miss half the time and fumble the other half. As such, the screen game died completely. I found it interesting that against the Chargers the screen made a come back and in a pretty large way. It was often a difference maker just like it was under Holmgren. Really for the type of system west coast is, you need a more complete back like Dorsey Levens (who I think would have been a lot better had it not been for the injuries), Marshall Faulk, and Reggie Bush (does NO even run a west coast offense for him?).

Again, it is no slight against Green. He is a great back, he just never fit in with what our offense was about. It is no surprise to me that our offense is doing better all around despite the fact we are with a worse offensive line than when he was around with nil of a running game… go figure.

NBC Mondays

I was going to just put a quick little review of one of last night’s new shows, but I decided instead that I should write up a little bit on each program just to kind of sum up my thoughts. So with that in mind… my review of the new NBC Monday night programming schedule. ***Spoilers may be coming if anyone wants to avoid them, in particular… Heroes***

First up on the night is Chuck, the unfortunately named new action-comedy. The premise of the show is pretty good, take an average “nerd herd” employee and have him somehow stumble into being needed by the government for the information that is somehow encoded into his brain. From the previews of the show it seemed rather humorous, but as is often the case, it isn’t as funny as it looked. It had its moments, but in the end it wasn’t incredibly hilarious. I think the show was ok still, it certainly isn’t a show that is worth missing something great, but it is on in a time slot that doesn’t have anything else really playing and this is actually a pretty nice brainless show that is still entertaining to watch.

Next is the return of Heroes, was hugely excited for this and overall I would say it was a little bit of a let down. The new “virus” plot line isn’t very excited and was also done pretty well in the previous Heroes (aka X-Men). I think the new plotline of them trying to get rid of The Company is a much better plot line, as well as the member of the original Company who is going around and killing everyone else in it. The explanation of how each of them became so rich (a man with a midas touch), was also pretty cool. Hiro’s new story is a bit disappointing, was it surprising to anyone else that his hero was actually a bandit that stole money from people? It didn’t even entirely surprise me that he was British in an attempt to lower the amount of reading that the average viewer has to do.

Lastly was Journeyman, a show I honestly didn’t even remember seeing commercials for, I remember seeing and hearing about a new Quantum Leap type of show, and sure enough this was a lot like that. This show was completely amazing however, I don’t know who the main actor was, but he was great and completely carried the show which is what he needed to do. You felt his confusion, is yearning for his former fiance, even the awkwardness that he has with his wife and brother (who used to be dating). He is a phenomenal actor and kudos to him. The premise of a show about this guy who can travel in time and change events has worked well in previous shows like Quantum Leap and even Early Edition, and it works well with this one. The twist at the end with the family he was helping was really good, and so was the kick ass way he used this ability to prove it to his wife. It was a special show. My only two complaints about the show is that 1) Heroes as a lead in is awful, I don’t think it is going to attract the same people even though it has similar science fiction like qualities. It also is a little disconcerting moving from a show where one of the main characters time travels, to a show where the main character time travels.. these shows need to be split up if for this alone. 2) The added in the mystery of “what’s happening here?” that Lost added into television a few years ago and honestly, it feels forced here. I am a fan of the style, though Lost has Lost interest in me long ago.. but it really just feels tacked on and I think Journeyman would be better off without it. Still, this show is worth a watch for anyone… the fact that I can honestly say that Heroes was on last night and all I can think of today is Journeyman does this show lots of credit because the episode of Heroes wasn’t THAT bad.

Laptops

I have long hated laptops. They have been a huge fad over the past few years where more and more people are getting them for apparently no reason. I mean unless you actually travel a lot, most people don’t actually need a laptop. I mean, in this age you do need a computer, but you get a much better computer for a comparable price when you actually buy a real computer… laptops are essentially a waste of money for all those who aren’t hardcore travelers… and a lot of people buy them even though they aren’t. So now, I am thinking of being a lemming and buying a laptop… but why?

Well the initial reasoning is to help my note taking… a lot of people these days bring laptops into class to take notes in class, and even record the class on webcams and microphones. I cannot deny that this in itself would be worthwhile, especially considering I have about 4 hours between classes on Tuesdays in which I am sitting doing homework. Well if I had a laptop I could be working on essays as well. However, this logic is very low as I am in my last semester of school and the purchase of a laptop is more worthwhile when you have more than a year left.

The secondary reason I’d buy one is to help me with my writing. Now let me explain. When I am home, I get super distracted. Something that I don’t think is uncommon for writers. I sit around and play games or watch TV or other things when I’m home and before I realize it the day is gone and I haven’t done anything.  My thought process is that I could bring the laptop out to lounges or coffee shops or libraries, or even take vacations out of town where I could more easily work on my writing without getting distracted by household things.

So the idea is appealing to me… but it is $600 I don’t have to spend on frivolous things. On the other side, if it helps write books which make me more than $600 can I afford not to? But what if I don’t use it ever? What if, even though the thought is good, I never go out of the house to use it as I say I would. After all, I am very good at making promises to myself (like going out every day/week to go exercise) and not fulfilling these promises. So what makes this one different?

It doesn’t help any that my roommate has decided to quit her $18 an hour job because she doesn’t like her boss and now I may need to help pay for more of the rent than we originally planned….

Still… it could help me get a book published…