2006 Alt Rock

i figured it'd be a good time to take a break from video games and post my personal picks of 2006 alt rock, as i did last year. these are basically my top ten favs from what iTunes returns for year 2006 and genre Alternative Rock:

1) silversun pickups / well thought out twinkles
2) regina spektor / fidelity
3) wolfmother / woman
4) zebrahead / back to normal
5) arctic monkeys / fake tales of san francisco
6) secret machines / lightning blue eyes
7) rise against / ready to fall
8) yeah yeah yeahs / honeybear
9) muse / knights of cydonia
10) the raconteurs / steady as she goes

hey, it's my list. never heard of a track? click the link.

--j

All-Time Favorite Games (4th in a Series of 7)

sorry for the long gap between posts, been battling health issues (a post for another day) and bought a house (yet another post for another day). my favorite games of all time post #4 calls for the second half of my personal favs back on the SNES.

Super Mario Kart (1992)
i love SMK for entirely different reasons than the other SNES games i've mentioned -- sheer replayability. there wasn't exactly a huge wealth of goodies to unlock in this game, you could basically get better and better as you went along unlocking courses and modes. once you get everything open and unlocked, the game is awesome to play with friends. all the modes were fun to play with others -- whether it was a match race, GP with the whole field or battle mode.

historically, this is probably the game i played the most with my friend kevin and my sister. while it's plenty of fun to race, we spent the most time by far simply battling. the object was basicallly pretty simple, pop your opponents 3 balloons with items and win. my sister and i, in an effort to make the game more of a 'pure' sport, would make each other burn our red shells off so we couldn't knock each other out with the one homing weapon available. we quickly fell in love with a particular arena and basically wrote off all the others. the same thing happened with characters, we just got used to playing those that we were the best with and didn't even consider the others.

it's a funny thing when you play a game so much that you don't even really utilize all the features of the game. once you were good enough, you would just play at the 150cc level because anything lower was just painfully slow. like i said, you fall in love with certain modes and characters and that becomes the entire game to you, cuz that's what you like. you end up getting to the point where you ask your friend if you want to play, and you can turn on the game and choose all the settings without so much as a word. it becomes automatic, and yet remains entirely competitive. SMK would go on to produce a great series of games for the next decade plus, which i'll discuss further down the road.

Star Fox (1993)
i've never really had much interest in flight simulators, or any type of flying games, so buying star fox and betting on liking it was a bit of a gamble. it's a bit difficult to explain what i liked so much about the game, but it was a nice change to like a flying shooter. it was quite unlike a game like Super Mario Kart in that it worked extremely well as a pure single player game.

looking back, the overly polygonal graphics don't look so great, but at the time they were a big change. to have all the objects on screen look more 3D than they had in the past felt like a big upgrade from more cartoony mario games. i remember the game being relatively short, but going through and beating andross was always satisfying. i liked that you could take different routes through different planets and asteroid belts to make it to the final boss, with varying levels of difficulty. it was cool that you were part of a team, yet you had to take on stage bosses by yourself. something about your teammates constantly bugging you at least gave you a bit of company in such a single player type game.

the original star fox might not be entirely unforgettable, but it was responsible for launching yet another solid series of games on the later nintendo consoles. i recently bought Star Fox Command for the DS based on the nostalgia i had for the original star fox. hopefully another version will be produced for the wii to keep the franchise going.

Donkey Kong Country (1994)
i think Donkey Kong Country sort of came out of nowhere for me. honestly, i've kinda always hated the donkey kong character. he was never really used much by nintendo and just never had much good-guy appeal. so i was surprised that my sister and i latched onto this game so quickly.

it was basically the same concept as Super Mario World, for the most part. what really set it apart was how you traveled throughout a level, such as shooting through barrels, riding in mine trains, etc. released at a time not too far from when the playstation would hit the streets, the graphics looked far better than any of the initial SNES games had. the enemies were somewhat forgettable, but the music was fantastic. it was cool that you could play as donkey kong or diddy kong, since each character had slightly different abilities.

the game was pure platformer, but it brought a lot of great ideas to change up the genre a bit. after the first game, we gladly bought the next couple sequels in the series and enjoyed those as well. it would be nice to see nintendo try to continue the series on future platforms, such as the wii and DS. hopefully this game could be a hit. we'll see.

next time i'll delve into the playstation era.

--j

All-Time Favorite Games (3rd in a Series of 7)

i'll continue with my favorite vidgames to no one in particular. now that i've moved beyond the NES era, it's time to get to what i'd probably consider my favorite console thus far, the Super Nintendo. here are three of my favorite legendary early SNES games:

Super Mario World (1991)
i think i could easily say i love SMW better than any NES game i've mentioned before. it was still a straight-up 2D platform mario game, but the added capacity (for both storage and graphics) of the SNES game really made the series into something that felt completely different. the music for the varying levels was fantastic, as well as the changes in atmosphere.

super mario world, despite being a launch title for the SNES (thus an early 16-bit experiment), just did everything right. i even loved things like the digitized effects when entering a particular level, the music adding drum beats whenever you rode yoshi, etc. even the addition of yoshi himself, with different colors and abilities, added a completely new element to the game. the world map concept did well for the mario series, which had been started in SMB3, but expanded even more in SMW. the castles & ghost houses usually succeeded in creeping me out somewhat, and loved how the doors/keys would swallow mario into them.

like i said, the game just did everything right, basically. SMW, since it was much less linear than its NES counterparts, had a lot more replayability to it. my sister & i spent a ton of time playing it over and over, which was kinda funny cuz it'd be like 1994 and we'd play the 1991 game that came with the system. with that kind of replayability, i felt particularly obligated to note super mario world.

F-Zero (1991)
f-zero was one of those games that i never actually owned myself. my childhood friend kevin had it when the SNES first came out, and so i was constantly over at his house playing it. i'd say it really says something that a game i didn't even own myself would appear on this list.

f-zero is probably the least celebrated game i've put onto my all-time favorites so far. i don't know if the common gamer today is entirely aware of it, even. but it came out before Super Mario Kart did, so it was basically THE racing game for the still-young SNES. i think at that time console racing games weren't really all that popular, so this was really my first exposure to enjoying a full-on racing game.

it was kind of just a coincidence that it was a great racing game and also futuristic, which i was into as a kid. the idea of driving (well, more like flying) around in hovercrafts instead of cars was appealing, as well as the illusion that you were travelling at ridiculous speeds. i liked that the game was relatively simple as far as no item collection or brilliant AI, just trying to beat the rest of the fields. just like the majority of my all-time favs, the music was great as well. i particularly liked the mellow tune it would play when you'd crash out and die. at the moment, i actually have the start-up and GO!!! sound as my 'new text message' sound on my SLVR cell phone. old school, kids, old school, indeed.

i'm convinced it was the original f-zero that paved the way for me enjoying the hell out of later futuristic racer Wipeout XL, as well as the gamecube iteration of the f-zero series, F-Zero GX.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992)
okay, i don't wanna blow my load on this whole all-time favorites list, but i'll just say that of all the games i've listed and probably will list later on, this is my absolute favorite game.

with that short disclaimer out of the way, i'll try to come even close to explaining why that fact is true. you could basically throw down two different genres on the table, platformers and RPGs. somewhere in the middle of those two radically different types of video games are straight-up, vanilla adventure games. i've already discussed the original Legend of Zelda here a bit, so i've touched on what i like about the genre, but obviously LttP just expanded on that concept even more. nintendo achieved a perfect mix of purposeful quests to get through the game with whimsical and intriguing side quests to further advance link's capabilities.

i loved how it borrowed magic and item elements from RPGs, yet didn't really bother with levelling and turn-based actions that slowed the game down too much. i loved how the further you went on in the game, the more your items screen had so many useful items in it. often times the later parts of the game would require you to use all the tools you'd acquired throughout the game to achieve something, which piqued the puzzle enthusiast deep inside me. the inventory list of items you'd collect would only expand further in future iterations of the zelda games.

the idea of having both light and dark worlds, and the interesting contrasts between both, was especially cool to me. as the game went along you'd become aware that you could go back and forth between these worlds, something that enhanced gameplay even further. the light world that you start in already seemed huge compared to the NES version, so obviously it seemed downright massive once you realized the world was actually twice as big.

i dunno, moreso than the often-frustrating and occasionally-empty platformers like mario and the like, the zelda series has always appealed to me. i like the mythology that they create with the zelda series, because they successfully create the type of fantasy world that an average gamer can grasp without feeling like a bit of a dork for being so into it. possibly moreso than all other zelda games, LttP appealed to a large audience with the initial SNES crowd once the mystique of Super Mario World wore off. i recently bought a used copy of the GBA version of LttP just cuz i wanted to go back and play it again on my DS whenever i felt like it. i figured for $10 it was better than fiddling around with an emulator version of it, which i'd tried and never felt natural. so far i've loved the nostalgia of playing my all-time favorite game some 14 years later and yet still enjoying it just the same.

--j

All-Time Favorite Games (2nd in a series of 7)

alright, now that i've gotten the first few NES classics out of the way, time for my next few games that i'm sure you're probably just as familiar with. this is still NES era games, so i have to remember way back for these.

Mega Man 2 (1989)
i spent a ton of time playing mega man 2 as a kid, and i'm pretty sure i know why -- it has to be in my top 3 hardest games i've ever played with any consistency. when i was like 8 years old, i guess that's something that i liked. i liked the challenge of trying to beat something that was truly difficult, just to say that i had done it.

the mega man games were fun because they were simple. combine the simplicity of "keep mashing the fire button until the enemies die" with a kid's imagination of creative bosses and mechanical environments and you (apparently) have a hit on your hands. the different worlds in mega man were different, each stage almost felt like you were playing a different game. it varied a bit from mario games, where levels in each world could get a bit repetitive after a while and cause you to lose a bit of interest. it helped that you could go through the stages in whichever order you desired, meaning you could use the weapons gained from the bosses you beat on other enemies, possibly in a different fashion every time you went through the game.

while i loved the game so much as a kid, i have to say that enjoyment was somewhat short lived. i remember playing some of the sequels that followed the game and they were still good games, but capcom just kept churning them out, year after year. once the SNES came out, they still kept pushing the games out, even branching into the X series all the way to the PS2. in my opinion, the games just kinda ran out of gas after the first handful were made. once some solid 3D work starting to be done on games, the side-scrolling simplistic shooters just didn't cut it as much anymore.

i tried out a PS2 copy of the mega man anniversary collection and damn if i didn't just hate it. i went back and tried to enjoy mega man 2 and found the game way too damn hard. i dunno if it was cuz of the PS2 controller (face it, NES shooters just don't need that many buttons) or that i'm much older and don't have the patience to keep dying and trying over again, but i just couldn't see much appeal in it other than reliving the classic music. i guess there's just no replacing the original, especially decades later.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
as young as i was at the time, i remember 1990 and the ramping-up to the 3rd iteration of the super mario bros. series as being a big deal in the relatively juvenile gaming world. there was that cheesy movie the wizard that served as a bit of a preview for SMB3 for american kids, so we were all anxious to play it.

once it came out, it basically didn't disappoint. the original SMB was already seen as legendary, but SMB3 was really miles above the first from just 5 years prior. SMB2 was seen by most as being just too weird and unique to be considered especially memorable, so SMB3 felt a bit like returning to mario's true roots. the game was vastly more wide-open than the previous in the series, so there was plenty to do. particularly novel at the time were the different suits mario could wear for different purposes. the ability to take off and fly and reach upwards in the stages changed the dynamic of the side-scroller genre a bit as well.

the beauty of SMB3 was that it launched in 1990, when everybody who was ever going to get a NES had gotten one by that point, and so the game was a huge hit. it felt like at the time everybody had it and played the crap out of it until super mario world (and the rest of the early SNES games) came and blew everything out of the water.

that rounds out my NES favorites. next time i'll get into my personal favorite console of all-time, the Super Nintendo.

--j

All-Time Favorite Games (1st in a Series of 7)

a few months ago i jotted down a few notes on what i considered were my personal favorite video games. i based my selections on the consoles that i've had throughout my life, which chronologically were the NES, SNES, Playstation, Gamecube and Playstation 2. i've set aside 7 posts to run down my experiences with 20 of my favorite games, including 4 NES games, 6 SNES, 6 PSX, and 4 for the Gamecube. starting back as far as i can go, here's 2 of my favorite NES games, which should be of no surprise to anyone.

Super Mario Bros. (1985)
i know, i know -- no originality, huh? doesn't really matter if it's the #1 selling game of all time, on all the top 10 games of all time as decided by whomever, whatever -- it has to be on the list. these older games are a lot harder for me to remember, as i was playing SMB when i was like 5-6 years old. as you'll see a lot on my list, i spent a whole bulk of time playing this game over at my friend kevin's house. i remember kevin's sister wasn't at all a gamer, but she was a typical teenage disaster of a chick who scared the crap out of us. she'd come steal the game from us and play for hours while we just watched waiting for her to tire of it and then we could play as long as we want.

as i'm sure most people would agree, it's really the music that's the most memorable about SMB. most people in their 20's and 30's, even if they don't play games, immediately recognize the classic overworld and underworld themes. for some reason any time i hear those classic themes in modern-day mario games, i'm instantly glad that the designers chose to include it.

as mario-based games evolved over time, the games obviously got better and better, but it was really SMB that started it all. the game might have been simple and linear, but it held our attention like no other at the time.

The Legend of Zelda (1987)
another no-surprise for sure, but had to be mentioned. this was a totally different style game to mario, and the beauty of it was being able to go anywhere on the world's map to accomplish tasks. back then i found LoZ to be a lot harder than SMB, but that also made the game more rewarding when you accomplished something. the music was just as classic as well, with the dungeon music being particularly frightening to a young kid like myself.

i remember getting a giant fold-out map of the entire LoZ world and holding onto it like grim death. that annoying beeping sound telling you you were running low on hearts just made you play even harder to avoid the dreaded game over sound. just like with Super Mario Bros., this game was merely a framework for more great Zelda games to come. although i was always disappointed with the direction they took with the second NES Zelda game, with all the side-scroller shit.

i pretty much hold Legend of Zelda to be responsible for starting my love for a good mix of adventure and RPG elements. i loved the idea of the character not just dying when an enemy touched you, but rather having a certain amount of life (hearts) and gaining more life as the game went on. just another great nintendo-developed game that went on to produce a hugely successful franchise.

as i said, these games were kind of no-brainers, but they certainly had to be mentioned, as i remember immensely enjoying them in my earliest gamer days. i'll fire off 2 more of my favorite old NES games in my next post.

--j

A Next-Generation Shrug

with all the hype that we've had for this being the year where all the next-gen video game consoles have finally been released, there's been plenty of time to decide which system/games one would be interested in investing in for this generation. i use the term "investing in" because despite some consoles being cheaper than others, either way the console plus the games is still a semi-expensive hobby.

i think for me personally, this onslaught of gaming goodness (with the entire generation starting now, this really should be the most exciting time since the PS2, xbox and gamecube hit the streets) doesn't come at an advantageous time. despite the obviously correct move in releasing the Wii and PS3 just before christmas, it doesn't work entirely well with my wife and i throwing down the most money in our lives yet in moving out of our apartment and into a house. so because of having to part with thousands of dollars in the next few months here, i can't really focus too much on buying up a next-gen system and just stocking it with games right out of the gate. i'm not really sure yet, but i'd say it's a fairly good chance that i won't buy a next-gen system for another 6 months, just to see how things are selling and what's popular.

i suppose just like with the last generation some 4-5 years ago, i see pros & cons to each system. i wouldn't rush to judgment and claim that one of the systems is a clearcut winner. regardless of how much one may like one of the consoles, each one has certain drawbacks. my take on each console --

Microsoft Xbox 360
i was never really down with microsoft's decision to try to beat everybody by releasing the 360 a year before the other consoles. so far, while it's gotten a decent foothold in american living rooms, it actually hasn't been a runaway success at all. you could say that people were waiting for the other consoles to come out to compare, and if they didn't like the wii or ps3 they could go back and buy the 360 anyway. but i don't totally buy that, i think if people wanted the 360, after the initial shortages were over, you'd have probably gotten a 360 by now.

the 360 looks fun, there's no denying that. with how much people rave about xbox live, i'd have to warm to playing online, cuz that seems to be a huge perk of the system. i'd make good use of the high-def for sure, and my 50" DLP would be great for it.

what i don't like about it as that a lot of their games just have too much of a PC-ish feeling to them, not enough well-known franchises where you can't wait to play the next in the series. i wouldn't be one of those people buying the system for halo 3, cuz i just don't care enough about the game to drive my entire console purchase. while they're obviously well behind given microsoft's always-coming-to-the-party-late personality, they don't have the franchises that sony and nintendo do, the marios, zeldas, gran turismos, etc.

Sony Playstation 3
somewhat surprisingly, sony has by far been shit on the most of all 3 major manufacturers in the next generation. many of their decisions when it's come to the ps3 have been questionable at best, such as the high price tag and controller design. outside of gaming, sony is looking more and more behind the times, failing to catch on to their proprietary formats and technologies tanking in the market.

despite all that, it's still a playstation for christ's sake. the ps1 was all i did gaming-wise from like '96 to '02. it was a fantastic system for its time and really helped things evolve away from the mentality of all things mario and zelda. i ended up getting the ps2 as my second system (to the gamecube) in '04 and never regretted the decision. so naturally given sony's track record of the last decade, one would think they have a great system with great games ready to launch with the third iteration of the playstation.

as far as what i don't like about the ps3, i'd like to see a bit more fresh ideas from the sony team all across the board. i mean the playstation name itself, i can see it as a brand name, but can't we come up with something else by now? after trying out the boomerang controller design, they were ridiculed for a terrible idea and subsequently scrapped it entirely. it's like they've gotten burned for certain relatively rogue concepts and immediately retreat to either something safe and played out or borderline blatantly ripping off somebody else's idea just to stay in the game.

i hope that sony comes to their senses a bit and drops the $500 price tag sooner rather than later, cuz i think that's really gonna keep parents from buying the console for their kids. i realize the average age of the gamer is certainly on the rise, but that doesn't mean we all have loads and loads of disposable income to throw at gaming. i know we've seen it in the past, but i'm not much of a supporter of $60 MSRP for next-gen games, which the ps3 (and xbox 360) seem to be pushing. as a big fan of modchips, used games, greatest hits and renting games, i already know i won't be buying too many games at that $60 price point. i wouldn't want to buy a ps3 and 5 years from now only have 10 games for it.

with microsoft pushing xbox live hard, and nintendo already showing some promise with the "nintendo wi-fi connection," i'm a little nervous that sony hasn't really shown us much with what they plan to offer for online gaming. a lot of people think the gamecube would have been more successful had they offered some semblance of an online gaming network. at this point, you basically can't be taken seriously without it.

Nintendo Wii
i have to admit, in the last few years, of the companies mentioned, i've had the biggest soft spot for nintendo. the gamecube was a fantastic system that just didn't ever sell enough consoles or games, and many terrific games went largely unnoticed by the hardcore gamer community. 4 years ago, i chose the gamecube over the xbox and ps2 and never regretted my decision. a year ago, i bought a DS on a whim, despite not entirely needing a portable system. since then, i play my DS far more than my consoles and have been encouraged by the success nintendo has had with it.

because of my recent fanboyism for nintendo, i'm automatically intrigued by their next console offering. like the rest of the general population, i was initially thrown by the concepts nintendo hinted at in the revolution/wii. it was only after we started to see real gameplay videos that the idea didn't seem too ridiculous to have people waving controllers around in the air instead of solely pushing buttons like we have for over 20 years.

nintendo has a lot going for it with the wii, at least for me personally. as an avid gamecube gamer, it's encouraging that all the gamecube games i grew to love and those i have yet to play could still easily be played on the next system. the wii comes in significantly cheaper than its competitors, so it's easier to justify the cost of the new console. the games will also reportedly remain $50 and below, so it should be easier to buy a wider array of games. because of the success nintendo has had with their DS wi-fi network, i have a bit more confidence at this point in their ability to bring an innovative network to fruition with the wii. not to mention, the idea of the virtual console to allow play of past NES/SNES/N64 games is surely an added bonus, and at times i certainly get bitten by the nostalgic bug to play games of my childhood.

all those positives aside, oddly enough, i might actually have the most doubts of the wii of the 3 systems. there's no denying that nintendo isn't afraid to be different, and sometimes that's helped the company, while other times it's caused disaster. i'll admit when i first heard about the DS, with its touch screen controls and dual screens, i thought it'd flop for sure, with the sony PSP being a massive hit. instead, the DS has done extremely well, with the PSP has only enjoyed a lukewarm american reaction. like i've stated above, the gamecube was a great console that just didn't live up to its expectations, so it's hard not to see it as a bit of a flop.

this entire concept of waving around your television remote style controller and using a separate attachment for other controls -- it's certainly a gamble. you watch the gameplay videos, watching people try it out and laugh it up and have a good time, you wanna play it yourself and see how it works. but i wonder if the novelty could easily wear off rather quickly, simply because that level of control is certainly a lot more work than the style of gaming we've gotten used to for decades now. if people start to form the collective opinion that it's kind of a neat concept, but after a month you've got massive carpal tunnel and you're too tired to bother waving a virtual sword or serving in tennis with a wrist flick yet again.

i realize nintendo decided to skip out on high-def level graphics to save costs on the consoles production, but i really wonder if that's gonna come back to bite them in the ass a couple years from now. i read that US HDTV sales are supposed to outnumber standard CRTs starting in 2008, and that's awfully soon for nintendo to write off HD support to the next generation, which could be a good 2011 or so. it's true that most people (even high-tech gamers) don't own an HDTV to even take advantage of increased resolutions, but as a high-def owner myself, that doesn't exactly matter to me. i have no doubt the graphics will still look great (hell, 480p gamecube output on my DLP still looks great) but the high-def outputs on the 360 and ps3 are always going to look better.

moreso than microsoft and sony, nintendo really needs to work on their marketing scheme starting with the wii. now and then in years past you'd see fairly cool gamecube commercials on niche networks and shows, and a lot of the DS commercials have been well done, but they have to really make the wii something that both 8 year old boys and 30 year old men want to buy. i'm talking tv commercials, trailers before movies, men's magazines, bus stops, etc. turn on a hockey game taking place in canada and you'll always see a huge bold playstation logo along the boards -- that's something that nintendo needs to push into the american public. as weird as "the wii" sounds, the console has to become a household term like the NES was back in the 80's for this new control phenomenon to really soar.

-----

all in all, i think each console has its strengths and weaknesses. i honestly don't know if there really is a best choice, it just might be based on what you want specifically as a gamer. if it were up to me, for the following purposes, i'd choose the following --

Microsoft Xbox 360 - i'd pick it if i really enjoyed online gaming, as well as high-def resolution. instead of focusing on established series, i'd enjoy more unique one-shot games with incredibly graphics and the ability to play my friends online. i'd take advantage of the fact that a year's worth of hardware and games have come out already.

Sony Playstation 3 - i'd go with the ps3 if i trust sony based on what they've achieved with the previous playstation iterations, which by this point is certainly plenty. i'd put faith in sony's ability to draw a diverse selection of 3rd party developers, and for exclusives that the lesser-powered wii couldn't handle as well. i'd have to convince myself that the price of the console itself is only a one-time cost, and shouldn't be treated as too big a deal.

Nintendo Wii - i'd buy a wii if i'm ready for a whole new way to game, with the idea that the new control scheme brings a new level of excitement to a hobby i've been doing since i was in kindergarten. i'd put confidence in nintendo's ability to push their ideas despite what the norm is doing, and obviously a large selection of exclusives based around the custom controls.

i really think given the difference between the wii and the other two that most people could well buy a 360 or ps3 and use the wii as their second console. i don't entirely see the need to buy both a 360 and ps3 as they will largely be receiving many of the same major titles. there will be some overlap on the wii as well, but i'd rather be able to play the latest hot RPG on the 360 or gran turismo on the ps3 as well as the latest mario/zelda on the wii.

with all the major gaming events about to happen, i think the next few months will be very exciting, no matter how things unfold.

--j

Baseball and SOMETHING Else

with the world series in full swing, i decided to make a baseball-related post. i saw this article the other day and wasn't at all surprised that baseball tv ratings have just plummeted.

i used to kinda deny it a bit, but c'mon, an entire baseball game is, well, fuckin boring to be honest with you. even when you go to a game, if you don't go with a group of friends or something, it can really be agonizing. and i say this as having only ever gone to texas rangers games myself, and usually they just suck. but even playoff baseball games that actually matter, watching the entire game is a real chore. commercials between innings, on pitcher changes, injuries, etc; pitchers with slow pacing, games with very little offense, boring matchups.

i've found the best solution is to actually have the baseball game on, but to have something else you're interested in to turn to when the game gets in a lull. for me i usually go with a selection of games on the NHL Center Ice package, or have my laptop at hand when the game's on. i don't know how that would count in a nielsen ratings entry, but i don't really blame the people that just don't bother to watch at all anymore.

you look back at the ratings soaring back in the late 70's early 80's and you can tell people just had a lot less options for what to do with their time. i mean i'm a baseball fan, and if it was 1978 and there was no internet, not a huge selection of channels or choices for sports coverage, of course i'd be watching a world series game. i think that's basically all the ratings say, is that now we've got a lot more options for what to do with our spare time. the same guys that are blowing off a world series game now to play video games online for a few hours were the same ones that would have been watching the game at home 20-something years ago.

and if MLB makes streaming highlights of every game available at the end of every night, what's so bad about tuning into see the highlights of the game? even if you looked at highlights and some in-depth analysis following along with a preview of the next game, that's what, maybe 5 minutes to get you up to speed? if you had something (read: anything) better to do with the 3-4 hours the game took, who can blame you for saving yourself some time and keeping up with baseball in a highly condensed form?

--j

Telecommuting like it's 1999

with a lot of code to write, little to test on hardware and not needing a lot of one-on-one time with other engineers, combined with the ailing back and riding painkillers the last few weeks, i've worked at home a lot lately. of course, with approval from the ol' boss.

there's obviously pros & cons. i can't really complain about working from home on a nice 70 degree friday afternoon. i've got a nice setup with work running on one computer, and fun stuff like IM and iTunes on the other. windows (that would be like real windows, y'know made out of glass?) open, and i've got an iTunes smart playlist shuffling what i call "AltRock Middle School" which for me means only playing alternative rock from 1993-1995. now and then i'll have a song come on that instantly takes me back to riding the bus in 8th grade, heh.

the screenshot from my yahoo! traffic dashboard widget you see included with this post reminded me of one of the definite perks of working from home -- not having to drive. i only live 15-minutes-on-a-bad-day away from work, so traffic doesn't impact me that much. still, traffic sucks, and i'm glad i'm not dealing with it. i guess all in all, i'd take a pain-free back and 15 minutes of traffic over what i've got at the moment, but eh, whatever.

happy weekend.

--j

Any excuse to be on the couch...

i've written some lately about my back problems, and as part of that i have to make an active attempt to avoid uselessly (meaning not being paid for it) sitting at the computer. whether it's gaming, tv, whatever, as long as i can relax a bit more on the couch it should be beneficial for me.

since the new NHL season started up last week, i've been quickly reminded how much i love my direcTV Center Ice package, which gets me all the league games. it's great when there's like 8 games on in a night and you can just pick and choose which ones to switch between based on rivalries, scores, etc. it kinda sucks that more teams are in the northeast and insist on starting at 7pm local (so 6pm for me) so those games are done by 8:30. because of that, i end up unconsciously following the more western teams since more of their games start at 8 and 9 o'clock.

i've been impressed that we've had some decent HD hockey coverage lately. between thursday and saturday night games on HDnet, monday or tuesday HD games on versus and direcTV showing one regional coverage game in HD most nights with the CI package i can get a decent amount of high-def eye candy.

between paying roughly $130 a season for the satellite package and several hundred for our 10-game stars season tickets, i think we're pretty firmly cementing that we're hockey fans over other sports. since i started dating alayna i became a lot more of an NBA fan, so i'm definitely a big fan of basketball in the last few years (obviously fixed finals series NOT included, of course). i've always been a football fan, but for some reason lately i've soured on it a bit. i still sloth it up most sunday afternoons on the couch flipping between several HD games, but i'm so often annoyed by the circus element that the NFL carries these days. the NHL might be reduced to the 5th favorite sport in this country at this point, but i don't really care. it sure doesn't carry the same bullshit theatrics that the NFL does.

it is baseball playoff season though, and i haven't forgotten about that. the games have looked good on fox, and they seem to have toned down some of the godawful graphics and sounds they used in the past. and as i said before, any year in which the yankees won't be winning it all can't be THAT bad.

--j

Another Stab at PC Gaming

so a couple years ago when i was putting my HTPC together, i was all excited at the idea of running PC games on a 50" DLP display in the living room. i tried out several en vogue games, like doom 3 and call of duty. i was proud of setting everything up to have a great time gaming on the PC, which i hadn't really done since counterstrike in my college freshmen days.

the experiment... kinda worked. the same ol' shit from years past plagued me yet again -- hardware instability. most games despite playing with display settings i'd have random game crashes and all-too-frequent reboots where the graphics card couldn't even show the screen for ten minutes after. one of the few games that didn't cause too many problems was halo, which is really the only one i got even serious at all about. of course it was just a ripped copy, so i just played the single campaign.

well i had decided i'd heard enough good things about a few PC games lately, i'd try out a few again. mind you, i've still got largely unplayed stuff just sitting on the HTPC already, like c&c:generals and doom 3, but i figured i could try out some new stuff. i had heard that you could have endless fun with oblivion, as well as the civilization series. so naturally, i went and grabbed a DVD image of oblivion and some CD images of civilization IV. i was all geared up to try something new...

oblivion's installation instructions popped up in french. i figured there was some kind of language settings i could mess with to change that, but i never found anything. i fumbled through the menus and got things installed. i load up the game and it's the same thing, it's all in french. no language control to be found anywhere. in frustration, i uninstalled the game and threw the useless DVD in the trash.

i figured okay that was just bad luck, let's try out civilization IV. i got it installed, and was instantly reminded of all the shit you have to go through to get a PC game to work properly on a custom HDTV display. i searched forums, tweaked settings, edited .ini files and finally got the game to load up. an hour later, i come to find that the game is unable to run widescreen 1280x720, the highest my DLP TV supports. i'm not gonna play it in a window, it's distracting. so basically, another failed experiment.

so i guess i can try to alleviate these issues my downloading a different oblivion rip and seeing if that one's in english. i could run civilization IV on my office XP box, but i just changed up my office setup so that both macs are using the side by side monitors and i just login to the XP screen whenever i want. the whole appeal was to be able to play on the comfort of a couch with a sweet big display. maybe that's a bad idea for a strategy-type game though, i dunno.

the point is within like a day i remembered why when people ask me if i play games, i make sure i answer "yes, console games."

--j

Breakfast Anytime

hmm, well apparently i'm in quite the posting mood lately. i think it's funny how i read gaming blogs more often than CNN, so i get random news like mcdonald's considering offering breakfast all day long from 8bit joystick instead of ABC news. not to mention like two weeks later, heh.

not that that's necessarily a healthy idea, but alayna & i were quite disappointed one night in allen when our 1am request at the local mcdonald's for the delicious #4 breakfast was denied, as breakfast didn't start till 4:30am. i guess we were spoiled by the all-night breakfast the college station mcdonald's across from a&m offered. there was nothing quite like having an egg mcmuffin at 3:30am while all the chairs were stacked on the tables and a guy was mopping the floors. thus, i approve of this proposed all-day idea.

--j

Watch TV Show, Write Essay

y'know i'm as excited as the next guy that Lost has started back up, but i've never seen a show cause so much over-analysis in my life. you can tell the writers do their absolute best to only move the plot along as little as they can to keep viewers coming back, and because of that avid fans spend gobs and gobs of time analyzing what they saw and what they speculate could happen next.

a post like this is exactly what i'm talking about. it's like people are typing up little paragraphs generally voicing their opinion on the episode and somebody like this just drops this friggin essay in the middle of the thread. what's sad is that you just know as they're watching the show they're taking notes on a yellow legal pad to rush over to their computers with 3 minutes after it's over. what's even worse than that are the people that post opinions as the show's still in progress, like 20 minutes in.

i've come to enjoy the TiVo Community board more than others i've seen cuz the people are generally pretty down-to-earth, but i've noticed my post count is ridiculously low cuz sometimes i can't believe what giant losers these people come across as. i may enjoy television and i may be an analytical person, but jesus, sit down on your goddamn couch and just enjoy being entertained without telling everybody else what you thought about each minute after it ends.

got that little rant out of my system.

--j

Rick's HFCS Diet

so after hearing so much bad buzz about high fructose corn syrup over the last few months and seeing rick's successful shedding by giving up cokes, i've tried myself to avoid HFCS as best as i can.

it's actually more difficult than i had originally thought, because so many things these days seem to have it. i'm not exactly the type to go scouring through food labels looking for ingredients or calorie counts or anything so sometimes i won't even realize something has HFCS till i stop and think to look. i was surprised that stuff like cans of country time lemonade and a V8 smoothie bottle had it. it almost seems like you have to find something that's specifically marked as healthier (such as including splenda) to avoid it.

i don't wanna act like it makes the biggest difference in the world, but i think avoiding HFCS is something that's relatively manageable for me. i can't pretend like i have a "weight problem" so i'm not looking to really diet hardcore or start massively portion controlling or anything like that. but i had gotten to a point where i was usually drinking one 20oz. coke at work, a 12oz. can with dinner and another 12oz. can before midnight everyday. that's 44oz. of coke a day, which is obviously waaay too much. i started to get better by subbing in other drinks like juices and sugar-free lemonades instead of the cokes, as well as trying and liking coke zero.

with the exception of occasionally getting "real" cokes at restaurants, i've largely stopped drinking real soda with HFCS. when i can find coke zero (which can be dodgy at work) i always go for that. i'd say at this point it tastes about 90% as good as coke, and still has caffeine, so it works for me. i've basically found that if i avoid real cokes for several days, i'll generally be 4-5 pounds lighter on the scale, as long as i'm doing cardio a few times a week. that basically puts me at my goal weight of 195, and i've even been a few pounds below that a bit.

in truth you kinda never want to achieve your goal, because then you don't have a goal left. as long as i'm hovering around 195 i guess i kinda don't care that much how things go. i've actually done a great job at cutting way back on fast food, although i can't really say it's dropped much off of me. i think the only realistic way i'm gonna flirt with maybe 190 is to work out more, but 4 times a week is realistically the best i can't hope for, which also isn't gonna gain me much.

so i don't really know what my new year's resolution's gonna be, at least food-wise. but i guess that can't be too bad a predicament, hey?

--j

A Rare Shot at Self-Discipline

i've decided to try to enforce some rules upon myself to help be more "entertainment productive" at night so i don't get stuck reading whatever blog or site bloglines tells me has a new post, or scrolling through fanboyish posts on digg or slashdot or reading TV episode discussion at TiVo Community for way too long every night. when i say "entertainment productive," i mean knocking out movies and TV eps, logging a few hours on a game, reading a book, etc. my reasons for this include both aiding recuperation for my still ailing back as well as just plain making more significant progress on getting other things done in life.

i came across a few GTD-related programs that might help self-discipline a bit. one is this simple little OS X program called Fob that simply puts a countdown timer in your dock to remind you how much longer you have till [x] event happens. in my case, i'm using it to countdown how much longer i should be sitting at my computers.

the other piece of software i came across today is called DailyLogger, which is a ridiculously simple program that simply keeps a log of everything you enter into it. for my own purposes, i intend to enter into it what specific tasks i got involved with online, to justify why i spent a few hours in my office when i've already spent hours sitting upright all day at work.

hopefully a little discipline could maybe help me alter my still-weird-after-all-these-years hours just a bit.

--j

The Most Game for Your Money

i was intrigued recently by a wired news post that expressed the opinion that a lot of games today take too much longer to fully complete than advertised or suggested online. other outlets like joystiq, kotaku and slashdot had plenty of voices representing each side of the argument on whether that was true or not.

i see both sides. frequently on here i write about how i can't ever find enough time to devote solely to games and how that often prevents me from picking it up and playing it all the time. i sympathize entirely with the wired author, with so many games out there for a variety of platforms, it's difficult not to go out and buy loads of games without having properly finished a game you've been working on (and enjoying) for a while. if you're trying your best to be an adult and an avid gamer, it's almost impossible to devote proper time to a well-crafted game as well as your loved ones, job, etc.

on the other hand, what is this guy complaining about? so the game was advertised as providing 20 hours of entertainment, and you got 40 hours of fun out of it? doesn't that sound like a good deal for your money? if you think about it, if you get enough entertainment out of a game, it's really a lot more cost-effective than something else like going to the movies.

i agree that at times developers could do a better job at making games a little less redundant, so that you don't end up completing a game in 40 hours when you really hated the middle 20 hours of it. i'd say overall i enjoy a 20-40 hour adventure-type experience over something that you pick up and play for 10 minutes and get nowhere. that's probably why, despite liking both games, i play paper mario a lot more often than say, katamari damacy.

currently, paper mario is my best example for the topic of getting the most out of a game to justify its cost. i would imagine most people could finish the game in probably 25-30 hours, but i'm currently on about 38 with just a little left to go. it's been a great, surprisingly fun game, but of course, i'm ready for it to be over with. i feel like i've mentioned it on this blog way too many times and i just need to get it over with and spend time on something else. funny thing is, i bought it in october 2004 when it had just come out, and basically let it sit on the shelf for a good year.

i read about some of these hardcore RPG types putting in well over 100 hours into a game and just think "wow, i'm staying clear of that game." there's definitely a happy medium somewhere between 5 minutes and 100+ hours.

--justin

Macintosh > Mac > PC

after seeing this screen that pops up in iTunes 7 when you connect your iPod, it kind of occurred to me -- do we ever really use the term "Macintosh" anymore? i have a "mini mac" and a "macbook" but nowhere in there does it really call it a "macintosh." i think even the operating system is referred to officially as "mac os x." so, if macintosh means nothing at this point, why call it a mac at all? why not just a computer?

--justin

Thrashed Bod

i'm not much of a complainer when it comes to physical ailments and whatnot, but i think i finally gotta cave a bit. i've been working out 3 times a week since mid-2002 and it might have finally caught up with me. more and more lately i'm just racking up too many aches and pains all the time, and it really starts to take its toll on me after a while.

i've had several months of varying levels of mid and lower back pain, but it's gotten worse in the last month. i finally had to bite the bullet and schedule a doctor's appointment even though i don't have anything much more than "uh yeah my mid and lower back hurts all the time, and i'm tiring of taking painkillers daily." i go in tomorrow, so i'll see if i'm just given a few weeks' worth of stronger pain killers or actually get referred to a specialist.

it actually kinda sucks cuz i'm at a point where everything's going well for both cardio and strength training. running has been better than it was last year (in which an attempt at training for a 5K ended with a month of physical therapy sessions for shin splints) although i've started pretty slow. i've seen some recent gains for certain muscle groups, after some pretty long plateaus. upon finally finding a solid opponent again, i've started back up with competitive racquetball once a week as well.

but despite all that, i can't really ignore that i can't seem to go a day anymore without popping an aleve or tylenol and gingerly moving around all day. lately what happens is i'll play an hour and a half of racquetball monday night and for the next 2 full days my right shoulder's completely fucked and my legs are thrashed. then things will get better further in the week, but the usual arm and chest workouts are hampered by the bad back. i've barely even been able do actual back workouts for the last couple months anyway.

it'd be easy to say that since i'm a software engineer having lingering soreness and back pain would be relatively easy to manage, but that's certainly not the case for me. i actually feel a lot better when i'm active or working out than when i'm just sitting. while i'm at work or at home on the computer it's hard not to think about my back being so stiff. god forbid i have to get up and limp to the bathroom gingerly, heh.

i dunno, i don't wanna stop. i wanna keep doing what i've been doing for the last 4+ years, cuz most of the time i actually enjoy it. but, while i may only be 24, i gotta start listening to the body and at least see the doctor about this. we'll start with the back, but off & on i've had issues with both wrists (another lovely bi-product of being a software engineer AND trying to bench press more), right shoulder (really should be iced after all racquetball sessions), still the lingering shin splints at times (should go away over time...) and neck (certainly from too much computer dorkery).

recently, i've found this health-related blog fairly interesting. spend 5 minutes and read about his attempts at losing weight.

--justin

I am entirely pro-new Facebook.

yes, as my title suggests, i am entirely for the new facebook. i'm not gonna explain facebook if you're not familiar, if you don't know what it is, this post doesn't really concern you. if you're a facebook user, you'll know what i mean when i mention the new facebook.

i seem to be in the minority by supporting the new format. i think it makes the site/social network that much more useful. people complain that too many incriminating items are listed right on everyone's home page. i've got news for ya -- everyone voluntarily adds information to the facebook community. whether you joined a group proclaiming your political affiliations, made friends with someone, commented on someone's photo, or added a favorite movie to your profile, YOU entered the information into the system. why are you suddenly so embarrassed that facebook pushed this info into all your friends' laps, instead of having them come find it on your page? isn't this more effective than having people come find information you found important enough to list on a social network?

facebook isn't out to embarrass anyone. if you post embarrassing information on a social networking site, and suddenly everyone knows about it, who exactly is to blame here? if anything, maybe this new system will help prevent people (typically the younger Gen-Y demographic) from posting too much incriminating information from now on. people have certainly gotten lax about what they'll post online, but as soon as they realize other people can *god forbid* see it, they're offended.

what's with the supposedly more mature facebook crowd now claiming that they're a stone's throw away from myspace now? explain to me how a pane in my home page telling me so-and-so made friends with what's-her-face and the guy down the street joined a certain group is the same as the most unprofessional networking site on the planet? myspace pages are famous for being uncontrolled over-abundant distractions rather than anything useful or interesting. how is facebook even close to that?

i just don't understand why all of a sudden everyone who's against these facebook improvements are so goddamn high and mighty about their privacy? what the fuck rights do you supposedly have on a website that you voluntarily add information to? do you own stock in the company? do you contribute to the software development of the site? no, you're a user who agreed to some level of licensed agreement when you joined the site. if you're so embarrassed that everyone sees your every move on a website, uh, how bout you just don't participate in the website at all, and let those of us that enjoy the feature do so without your complaints?

i'm convinced this is yet another bullshit argument in a long line of people my age trying so badly to convince themselves that they don't live a great deal of their social lives online. if you choose to live a portion of your life online, be prepared for the consequences.

Gamer categories, strategy guides, etc.

according to parks associates, gamers fall into certain categories, at least in a business sense. the article states --

" -- Power gamers represent 11 percent of the gamer market but account for 30 cents of every dollar spent on retail and online games.

-- Social gamers enjoy gaming as a way to interact with friends.

-- Leisure gamers spend 58 hours per month playing games but mainly on casual titles. Nevertheless they prefer challenging titles and show high interest in new gaming services.

-- Dormant gamers love gaming but spend little time because of family, work, or school. They like to play with friends and family and prefer complex and challenging games.

-- Incidental gamers lack motivation and play games mainly out of boredom. However, they spend more than 20 hours a month playing online games.

-- Occasional gamers play puzzle, word, and board games almost exclusively."

i understand that it's important to break down the market to better capitalize financially, but in agreement with joystiq, you can't really exclusively put most people in these categories. there's a lot of overlap for sure.

according to these figures, i'd definitely have to label myself a really casual gamer. there's no way i average even an hour a day usually, and i've even been proud of myself for playing a wider array of games lately. so i guess i'm a cross between leisure and dormant cuz i like to really get into the games i play, but i also don't have ridiculous amounts of time to play them. not like i'm out coaching little league baseball with all my free time or something, but shit i do have other hobbies.

another heavily blogged item lately was the notion that strategy guides yield increasingly difficult games. i could see that as being true, although i don't think it's some giant industry secret that should keep us up at night. personally, i used to be more of a purist and think any guides to help you through a game were a cop-out, not necessarily cheating, but taking some of the fun out of it. i've certainly changed my tune on that now. in fact, most adventure-type games i play, i end up consulting either a purchased guide or GameFAQs at least to get me through ridiculously obtuse parts quicker.

it comes back to my argument above. when you're an adult, you've got, y'know a "real job" and "a wife" and "bills to pay" and "things to clean." you don't have time to run around in circles to figure something entirely unobvious out just to advance further in a game. call me lazy, i just don't have time to essentially "hump every wall" or read through ridiculously general clues to have a good time. based on what i've read online, many others seem to agree.

The Office wins best comedy, but...

hmm, well the office won best comedy series tonight at the emmys, but haven't we seen this before?

you can't help but notice the parallels between the two offbeat comedies. i'm a huge fan of both, but part of me worries the office looks almost entirely like arrested development did two years ago. i'd say that they each appeal a lot more to the younger demographic rather than the baby boomers for sure, which typically seems to mean trouble somewhere down the line. that's pretty clear to me just in watching my parents' reaction to an episode sampling of each, heh.

i'm hoping NBC will do right with the office where fox did wrong with arrested development, as well as ABC dropping the bomb with sons & daughters earlier this year. i think it's all about marketing, really. good things are happening surrounding shows being released on iTunes, as well as web-only features and promotion. i think it's important to note that fox's devotion to MLB playoffs often times hurts the network (and its struggling programming) as much as it earns them money from baseball fans. often fox would show a handful of AD episodes, only to go on a 6 week hiatus to allow the MLB postseason to play out, which largely abandoned non-baseball fans long enough to make them forget about coming back.

i see them having enough content with the basic framework of the office to last a solid 5 seasons. i say that because the writers are creative and versatile enough to keep the show fresh long enough to keep us coming back again and again. for me, scrubs is the best example of a quirky offbeat show that has exhausted its ability to be consistently funny. if the office starts to sell out to achieve larger, more mainstream traditional sitcom type crowds, audiences will see through it quickly and change their opinions on the show entirely.

all told, winning the best comedy series emmy at least bought arrested development more time, and i'm sure the office's win will do the same for it. huzzah.

--justin

Used Games

i found this post at joystiq interesting. gamers discussed in the comments section whether they prefer to buy games used or new, and what their reasoning behind each was.

personally, i probably buy more new games than used, but that trend might change a bit. growing up i don't think i ever would have considered buying used games, but back then mom & dad were typically the ones paying for occasional games. now that each $50 game hits closer to home, i certainly think twice before mindlessly shelling out cash.

whether you buy used games through amazon, ebay, half.com, etc i've found that most of the time the games' condition meets my quality standards just fine. granted, i don't think it's a great idea to buy a typical $50-new game for $45-used. when i've bought used in the past, i'm typically saving a good 50-75% off the MSRP.

there's such a huge bulk of games on so many platforms these days that you're bound to miss out on all kinds of great games in virtually every genre. i'm 24 years old with a steady job and plenty of other hobbies, so i don't exactly feel the pressure to get the latest coolest game on the street, so being a few years behind actually saves me a ton of money. when a game came out 2 years ago, you're almost guaranteed that you can find it either new (greatest hits, heavily discounted, etc) or used (just from sheer volume used shops have) for a much cheaper price.

when i was a kid, my sister and i devoted several hours after school and on weekends to one game, so if we kept at it, even the longer games we'd be done with in a few short months. present day, i don't have the kind of time where i can just burn 4 hours every night to get through a game. not to mention there feels like such a steady flow of quality content (admittedly, in parallel to a much longer steaming pile of terrible games) that you're rarely left feeling like you have nothing to play until that next great game you're anticipating hits the street.

it's actually gonna create kind of a weird situation when the wii and PS3 come out, cuz i've still got enough to keep me entertained on my gamecube and PS2. luckily, both new consoles (well, all 3 actually) are backwards-compatible and will play my games for the previous console. but even with the gems yet to play in the past, most people (including myself) would prefer to boot up a game where the trademark year on the startup screen matches the current.

i haven't decided yet which console(s) i'd like to purchase for the next generation, but i know i'm not interested in plunking down $50-60 for each game that often. i may have more disposable income now than when i was 16, but it doesn't mean that i feel justified paying full price so often. thus, the entire concept of buying games secondhand benefits me greatly.

--justin

I'm a Switcher?

it's funny, something finally came up that made me wonder if i'm actually a switcher. a "switcher" being one who's gone from using a PC (and typically, some variant of windows) to a Mac with OS X. the truth is, i wouldn't say i'm a bonafide switcher. i envision a switcher to be someone who got sick of their spyware-infested dell, tossed it, and got a Mac instead. i've only kind of done that. i scrapped my old HP box from college (after it had been relegated to a secondary box running some flavor-of-the-month linux) for a mac mini april last year and immediately started using that for everyday tasks instead of my much more powerful XP box. in addition to that, just a few months ago i decided to finally get a laptop for portable usage, so i picked up the brand new MacBook.

i got an oil change over the weekend at my dealership, and given that i knew last time it took a good hour, i brought my MacBook to bide my time. as there didn't seem to be a wireless network to connect to, i went with my backup plan of watching a home movies episode with the commentary on. so i'm sitting in the corner of the room with my sleek white laptop, my matching white earbuds (not my usual choice, but that's what i had with me) and my matching white remote watching my movie. when i'm done and kind of milling around, this guy asks me out of the blue "were you using a mac?" and so i said sure, and he follows with "are you a... creative?" that's what he said, nothing after the normally thought-of-as-an-adjective word "creative," just using the word as its own noun i guess. i hesitated and told him no, but told him i'd made the switch about a year ago. he confirmed that he had as well, and we shared a moment of general yes-things-are-better and nodded in silent agreement. that was the first experience i've had where there was some kind of unspoken between two mac users.

i did find that funny though that it was a real world example where apple users are cast into being the creative types, which i would imagine would include graphic designers, architects, publishers, etc. given that lately i've been daydreaming about my innocent adolescent days of caring about nothing but comic books and video games, i found it an interesting coincidence.

--justin

hmm, i don't even really know what to say after not posting for over 3 months, by far my longest dormancy. it's just one of those things where big things in life happen, bigger than blogging. as anyone who's at all close to me already know, i got married july 22nd and left for the honeymoon shortly after. everything's gone great, luckily, and i look forward to a long life with my beautiful wife.

we were obviously incredibly swamped with events leading up to the wedding, although i had ample time to post here. i feel like i just didn't have anything more to add, and i really admit to this entire concept being increasingly difficult given that i have no idea how many (read: few) people are reading any of these posts.

i don't want to take the blog offline, i've valued using this as a good space to vent life's frustrations, provide updates on life happenings (in lieu of emails) and link to interesting/funny sites since 2003. i don't know if it's just a trend with my small circle of friends lately or more of a widespread phenomenon, but people just don't seem to be blogging as much these days, at least nothing that really holds that much interest consistently. i certainly enjoy reading my friends' blogs, but it's kind of hard not to get discouraged and wonder if any of it's really worth it.

i admit that i don't really ever know what to talk about here. typically i find something i like writing about and post strictly stream-of-consciousness comments about it, although most posts don't really relate to each other. i'd say that's probably the case because there's no one particular topic that i'd like to solely base this site on. maybe some kind of tag system would help that, i dunno.

i'm willing to bet you could look at college students' online habits before and after they graduate and notice that things really fall off post-graduation. i felt like in 2003-04 i had so much to just rant about (sometimes to my own detriment) related to college life and how frustrated and emotional i was at the time. now with the exception of the excitement in getting married, working life gets to be very mundane quickly. at times you have to just create interesting things to bother typing up a post about seemingly nothing, simply to have something to put online in hopes that it keeps some semblance of an audience entertained.

i don't want to draw this post out too long so soon, so stick around for more posts here soon.

--justin

well, the stars are out in 5 games. 3 of the 4 games we lost were in overtime. not too much analysis you can really put into it, just nothing we did was good enough. it's really not so bad that we're out, cuz we didn't even look good enough to make it past the semis anyway, so what's the point in even getting there?

the only thing that makes it better is that the mavericks rock lately, up 3-0 over the grizzlies. a quick sidenote -- when the grizzlies moved from vancouver to memphis a few years ago, did they not consider changing that team name at all? i mean are there really a lot of grizzly bears around memphis? there might be some, no doubt, but as many as the pacific northwest forests? unfortunately laynie's spurs are sitting at 2-2 with sacramento.

back to hockey, i've sure never rooted for the edmonton oilers before, but i'll do it if it means that the goddamn red wings are out of it. stop being good every damn year, like the yankees and whatnot.

and on a different note, at 24 i'm already overly cognizant of catering my video game tastes per my audience. how are people gonna take me seriously when i tell them i'm buying a game for my nintendo wii?

--j

alright, so i made my NHL picks, might as well throw out NBA too. i'll do it with a helluva lot less fanfare though, heh.

west
(1) san antonio vs (8) sacramento - kings are rather upstart, but spurs are way too good to make too much out of this one. spurs in 5.

(2) phoenix vs (7) LA lakers - kobe's still fun to watch and the suns have struggled a bit. i don't think they're what they were a year ago, but they can still pull this one out. suns in 6.

(3) denver vs (6) LA clippers - i wouldn't have guessed the clippers finishing ahead of the lakers like, ever, but... kind of a nothing series, doesn't really matter who moves on, they'll get trashed in round 2 probably. nuggets in 7.

(4) dallas vs (5) memphis - cuz of the weird seeding rules the mavs are way down in 4th since the spurs took the division. i don't think this is really that close of a matchup, i'm gonna go with mavs in 6 since there are some lingering injuries on the team.

east
(1) detroit vs (8) milwaukee - kind of a joke. i'll say pistons in 4.

(2) miami vs (7) chicago - bulls are surging a bit, but too shaky. heat aren't as good as they should be, but they'll win the series in 6.

(3) new jersey vs (6) indiana - i'm actually kinda surprised the pacers even made the damn playoffs with their problems. nets have looked strong lately. NJ in 5.

(4) cleveland vs (5) washington - lebron is fun to watch. i'll say cavs in 6.

i'm not even gonna mess with brackets though. i'm not too thrilled that NHL and NBA first rounds are overlapping either, that's not gonna help anything. especially with BB06 australia starting sunday too. there goes *all* my free time. yay.

--j

consider this my hockey fan post.

it's been great having hockey back this year. i've made the most of my directv center ice package, which gave me access to a ton of games i otherwise couldn't have seen. alayna & i have been to 6 stars games this season, whereas in the past i've never been to more than 2 games in a season. there's a great article at yahoo! sports that kinda sums up the return pretty eloquently. fox sports has a great season recap as well.

so this friday the playoffs start. two years ago here on my blog i made my picks for each series, so i might as well do the same again. cbs sportsline has their latest power rankings up, with the stars at #5. yahoo! NHL has their power rankings with best and worst case playoff results for each team.

as far as team matchups, sportsline has a handy bracket. ESPN has terrific western & eastern playoff recap sites. the best all-around playoff schedule i could find was this one at sportsline.

and in the spirit of my april '04 predictions...

west
(1) detroit vs (8) edmonton - edmonton, schmedmonton i say. red wings are just too damn good. detroit in 5.

(2) dallas vs (7) colorado - the stars had kind of a lacking end to the season, but sorta for good reason since they had next to nothing to play for. i think the avs are pretty over-matched here, and i can only hope that the stars don't get torched like we did in the first round 2 years ago. the avs aren't the same team they were... stars in 5.

(3) calgary vs (6) anaheim - the ducks made a late surge but fell off a bit. it's easy for the flames to get stale now and then, which i think will keep the series closer. the experts are picking this one to be the most entertaining west matchup of the first round, which i'd agree with. i say calgary in 7.

(4) nashville vs (5) san jose - the preds lost their top tier goalie in vokoun and the sharks have been on fire lately. nashville just drew a bad hand being matched with the sharks. san jose in 5.

east
(1) ottawa vs (8) tampa bay - just as easy to call as the western 1-8 matchup. if i had to pick a sweep i'd go for this one. senators in 4.

(2) carolina vs (7) montreal - carolina had a shitty end to the season, but unlike the stars they still had plenty to play for. i think they're built for the long run though and the canadiens just can't match 'em. hurricanes in 6.

(3) new jersey vs (6) NY rangers - the devils were down 3 goals in their last regular season game and came back to win and capture the atlantic division title. they're even hotter than the sharks lately and the rangers have been slipping. new jersey in 6.

(4) buffalo vs (5) philadelphia - this one's probably the toughest to call. both of these are northeastern teams that are done with most of their games by 8:30pm local time, so i haven't gotten much exposure to them. the sabres have been more consistent over the year and have better goaltending, so i'll say sabres in 6.

so i guess that would make my bracket having the wings, stars, flames and sharks moving to the next round. i'd say wings over the sharks and stars over the flames. then the wings overs the stars. in the east the senators, hurricanes, devils and sabres move to the semis. the senators beat the sabres and devils over the canes, then devils over the sens. so with the red wings and devils in the finals... red wings win the cup.

as a diehard stars fan i hope detroit is overrated.

--j

haven't had much out of the ordinary going on lately. i've actually sat and thought a bit lately what i could post about and not much has come to mind.

i've done a much better job lately at getting off the computers (less blogging, eh?) and doing something else. i took a break after alias season 2 and watched showtime's sleeper cell, which was great. i've picked alias season 3 back up now.

i've gotten hooked on gran turismo 4 lately, which is the first time in a while where i've had a game where i'll actually play it for a couple hours at a time. it's just one of those games that has a ton of stuff to do in a mostly non-linear fashion so there's a lot of freedom just to do whatever you want however you want. i've actually made more of an event out of it lately where i'll grab a drink & a snack and just sit down with it for a while. some weird combinations such as iced tea & pop tarts and coke & sour patch kids.

it's becoming more and more apparent to me the further from college we get the more i'm in the minority of still living like a punk college kid at times. i dunno if it's expected from me but i can't stop being a night owl. in a month alayna will have been living with me for a year now, and in that time i've never really gotten any good at shutting down for the night at reasonable times. i think for a while i got a little better at going into work earlier, but that was relatively short-lived and i've returned to later hours. i've basically adopted a policy of going into work at 9:30 when i'm working out at the end of the day and 10 or 10:30 when i'm coming straight home.

i haven't really improved at all on the bedtime side, either. i think for a while i was doing better at hitting the sack a little after 2am, but i've now slipped even further that i had before. i'd say i average 3:30 most of the time, but occasionally i'll scheme things where i only sleep 4-9ish and go into work at 10. i used to be better at being tired from the week friday nights and going to be early enough to actually have a bit of a saturday morning. for some reason i've backslid on that as well and typically friday & saturday nights collapse into bed between 5 and 6am. then alayna tries to wake me up at noon and i either convince her to go away or get up and each lunch, only to go take a 1-2hr nap after.

lately i've tried to hit the sack between 2 and 2:30 and for the most part it hasn't gone well at all. it almost always takes me a good half hour to fall asleep and often i'll fall asleep and wake up 20 minutes later to some kind of confusing dream. that kinda stuff makes me not even wanna try it the following night.

what makes things worse in a way is that on some days i can easily get away with working from home. that doesn't exactly motivate you to start working right at 8am or anything. i've found that i usually get as much done from home as i ever do at work, and that's even with taking 10 minutes here and there to do various odds & ends.

i can't really say i have much of a plan to change any of this. i'm simply observing that i'm knowing less and less people lately that can sympathize with this sort of lifestyle.

--j

screw convergence.

my senior year of college i bought a PDA cuz i thought it'd help for organization and taking notes or just messing around in class. well, it did. i bought a $100 SD wi-fi card for it, and it worked well throughout campus. if i was bored in class i could surf CNN or check/compose my email.

i put all my contacts on it. their cell numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, etc. for the better part of 2004 i used it a lot at work to look up contacts, surf offline (cached) webpages in boring meetings, keep track of personal/work tasks, schedule appointments.

fast forward a year and half later. i've run out of reasons to use my PDA. it's not even really outdated or anything, i just don't have much use for it. all my contacts are kept in my mac address book and synced out to my cell phone, so i don't need it for that. the wi-fi access at work is secure and needs extra software to work properly, software i don't have for the PDA. for a while at work i was using my PDA exclusively as my mp3 player. i got a 20gb HD mp3 player instead, and later a 30gb iPod to replace that. i was using it to play videos on flights for a while, but it was a giant pain in the ass to downsize videos to it. now my iPod could hold its own fine for a portable video player.

i'm not saying i'm tossing the thing in the trash or anything. i'm just saying that while a PDA is supposed to be capable of achieving a little bit of everything, i have separate devices that do the trick just fine. if i had to run out the house and entertain myself for 2 hours, i'd grab my SLVR, my nintendo DS and my iPod.

just a thought. back to a sunkist, GT4 and sampling music.

--j

we really didn't do all that much for spring break, but hey, that's just how we like it sometimes. we've knocked out some more necessary wedding tasks, alayna's bridal portraits, honeymoon planning and tuxedo rentals.

we watched a ton of archived tv, so we seized the opportunity. alayna decided she did like entourage as much as i did, and luckily the 2nd season (ahem) became available so we've been grinding through that pretty quickly. my complete series of significant others (pictured at left) dvd came in as well, so we watched that first 6-ep season as well. luckily we're caught up (well we were) with grey's anatomy and 24. we're also starting to really like the new abc comedy sons & daughters, but we'll see how long it sticks around.

between all that, we/i saw kevin nealon with alayna's parents at the improv, got soaked every time we went outside, played paper mario and gran turismo 4, watched anchorman, etc.

it's this kind of thrilling lifestyle that creates a self-imposed 4-post limit a month. ;)

--j

well, i write this sitting in a hotel room in hesperia, california, listening to veruca salt on my newly-purchased-as-of-last-weekend iPod while snacking on starburst.

i've spent the entire week out here in the high desert about 80 miles northeast of los angeles. saying that i'm travelling to california for a business trip sounds good, but this isn't exactly glamorous at all. we travel daily to the testing facility in the middle of the nowhere, 45 minutes away from our hotel. the area around the hotel is all civilized, but out where we're working all day (been clocking 12-14 hour days) it's nothing but blowing sand and cacti.

it's got its pros & cons, for sure. it's good to get travel experience, makes you a little more marketable and somewhat wizened. you get a little sick of the people you're with for about 16 hours a day, but that's to be expected. you rack up hours like nothing else, which in my case, is kind of a break from the norm. the whole thing is kind of a break from my usual workdays, so i can't really complain about that.

it's a little tough trying not to miss home & alayna at times, but time flies pretty quickly. it's my theory that some of the single folk that travel a lot for us don't seem to mind being gone nearly as much cuz they don't miss anybody back at home specifically. everybody misses their creature comforts at home, but it's a little harder missing somebody that you spend every single day with. that's the part i'd have to get used to a bit more if i'm gonna travel at all frequently. luckily i'm heading home tomorrow.

so yeah, last weekend i bought a 30gb black iPod with a nice 17% work discount at the grand opening of the northpark apple store. i was trying to hold out for the next round of iPods coming out, but i kinda figured with the trip upcoming and the work that i've put into getting everything iTunes happy (for both my shuffle at the gym and mac at home) it was time to buy one, even if there was technically nothing wrong with the iAUDIO player i'd been using for over a year. it ended up being the terrible organization (all manual based on whatever directories i created) that forced me to have to abandon the perfectly-good player for something more suited to my needs. i add a lot of music to iTunes fairly often, and 75% of the time i wanna listen to that at work or on the road, so i need good, quick access to the newest stuff added. simply playing the iTunes' playlist "Recently Added" on the iPod is by far the easiest way to achieve that. so far i'm pretty happy with the purchase, as long as the battery life doesn't suck. i love the album art display on the screen though, i'm in the process (well, when i'm back home) of updating iTunes with as much album art as i can track down.

and before i go, the 10 most common albums/songs i play at home and on the road lately... (hey, i'm bored in a dark hotel room at 11pm PST)

zebrahead - waste of mfzb
last.fm zebrahead fans = 11,258
5-6 fantastic tracks from an '04 japan-only ZH album.

hellogoodbye - shimmy shimmy quarter turn
last.fm hellogoodbye fans = 23,432
their EP is absolutely terrible, but this one track hasn't gotten old yet.

the new pornographers - twin cinema
last.fm new pornographers fans = 37,469
great indie stuff, on a lot of top album lists of 2005

radiohead albums OK computer & hail to the thief
last.fm radiohead fans = 245,754
for a long time i've had a lot of trouble classifying radiohead into any specific genre, so i've sorta slacked on playing them at all. but sometimes their stuff (while at times quite weird) is perfect for the setting, such as passing in & out of consciousness on a 3-hour flight. ;)

black eyed peas - the boogie that B
last.fm black eyed peas fans = 124,897
i never really heard this track before an entourage episode i watched a couple weeks ago, but it's one of their top 5 best i'd say.

sons and daughters - the repulsion box
last.fm sons and daughters fans = 9,602
more great indie music nobody's ever heard of, heard them first on showtime's weeds.

the decemberists - her majesty
last.fm decemberists fans = 84,749
i grew to like their 2005 album, now i like their 2003 album just as much.

third eye blind - out of the vein
last.fm 3EB fans = 41,738
somehow i really overlooked their 2003 album and it got almost no airplay, but it's actually pretty good, in that mainstream radio-friendly way.

the magic numbers - (self-titled album)
last.fm magic numbers fans = 26,238
more indie shit, but catchy.

queens of the stone age - (self-titled album)
last.fm QotSA fans = 124,256
waaaay overlooked greatness from waaaay back in '98.

long post, but it made up for a lengthy absence...

--j

this is the greatest and best post in the world.

alright, no it's not, i just wanted to reference tenacious d.

it suddenly dawned on me lately that the movies (as in y'know, the theater) are starting to actually kinda seem old-fashioned, if that's possible. without really realizing it, i don't seem to even follow movies that are coming to the theater soon that much anymore. now and then i'll check apple's trailers page when i can remember, but that's about it. i don't watch that much stuff live anymore, so i don't see a lot of 30-second TV spots too often, maybe during sports.

alayna and i soak up TV shows all the time, but we really don't hit up movies all that much anymore. nothing really comes out that intrigues either of us all that much. now and then something will come out that one of us kinda wants to see but usually we don't give a shit if we see it 4 months later at home. i still keep movie stubs... i've seen 3 movies in the last 6 months. that's pretty terrible.

i can't really point to a particular reason i guess. sort of a combination of factors. for one, less and less movies seem to appeal to us in general. another part of it is just having better things to do at home, whether it's computer stuff, vidgames, TV, socializing, etc. she usually has trouble staying awake in the theater and it almost always causes a temporary rift between us for a few hours. but i think for the most part, it's just an overall lack of desire to actually bother going to pay higher & higher prices to spend 2 hours with the coolest 14-yr olds in plano.

that's a good part of it, going to the movies has just turned into this annoying hassle. i don't wanna sound like too much of an adult, but by 24 here the allure of being "out" at the movies kinda fades. the teenagers that fill the area theaters we go to don't have anything better to do, i don't blame them for using every possible chance to get away from their parents and socialize in the limited environment they have access to without a driver's license and the ability to drink.

i'm not part of some social network of friends that just raves about movies constantly. most of the time i think it's word-of-mouth that will push us to go to the theater, but i'm not consistently subjected to an inner circle of contacts pushing their movie picks & pans on me. i don't come into work on mondays with people making me feel like a loser for not seeing the latest junk that grossed $23 million over the weekend. i have the luxury of getting around to seeing a movie months (although in my case, more often 1-2 years) after everybody else with little consequence. so why not stay at home and watch what i want?

--j