Less than useful

Another post, another blog category.  Totally inconsequential too, but hey, it’s a hobby.

IGN has reviewed the new portable Gran Turismo game, and assuming the reviewer didn’t miss something painfully obvious, gave it a fair, relatively low 6.8/10 score.  The main complaint is that the game lacks a “career mode,” instead making all 800 cars available to be purchased, and all 35 tracks open from the start,  rather than making/allowing you to work through events in a steady progression.  ¹

It seems to me that the design philosophy behind this is to just turn it into a portable ‘pick-up-and-play’ game, while if you want the real experience you need to buy a Playstation 3 and the full version of Gran Turismo 5 whenever it too is finally released.  A problem with this is that the huge selling point of major-release PSP games is that they offer  full-console-game-like experiences, and are all packed with anywhere between 25-50 hours of gameplay.  Even Locoroco, a game about rolling a big blob around has surprising amounts of depth and things to do.

I can understand that kind of philosophy from a commercial standpoint, trying to make gamers double/triple-dip, but it seems horribly unfair to be charging nearly full-price for a seemingly crippled game that fans of the series and PSP owners have been waiting for for four years.  [4-4-4!]  Alternatives, the PSP game would be probably be outstanding value and make for an excellent game if it were priced just as a budget title.  The high expectations would vanish.

While this isn’t a deal-breaker for me, $40 isn’t even too much, this seems extremely unfair to fans of the series.  A PSP is affordable vs. a PS3 and the necessary HDTV to do it justice.  This portable release ought to be a complete title, building on the name and reputation of the series.  The Gran Turismo games has historically sold staggeringly huge numbers (GT3 & GT4 selling a combined 25 million copies on PS2), yet it appeals to a very different segment than the stereotypical gamer.   I personally didn’t give a crap about them until I tried the PS3 GT5: Prologue version, and now I’m obsessed.  It’ll have been five years when GT5 comes out, since GT4 was released.  I can see there being a huge segment of adult gamers now who keep a PSP around, but have otherwise aged-out and lost interest in doing the whole console thing.  I think I’m on the cusp of it myself, owning just a PS3 with a very small selection of games this generation.

This is one of those posts where I hope random Googlers find it and may be able to offer some insight. Alternatively, hopefully I’ll be able to fix this eventually and offer a solution.  [While writing this post I discovered it was in fact iTunes that broke my drives.  It just adds to the hatred I have of that programme.]

My DVD and CD drives are missing.  They used to work fine, but I noticed yesterday that they had vanished.  I thought maybe a reset would fix it, but when I turned my PC on this morning, they were still missing.  I’m not sure when they stopped working.  I keep the old CD-ROM around because it’s excellent for getting a good rip out of scratched CDs with EAC.  (It doesn’t cache audio…)

Device Manager showed this:

Opening one of these reveals:

It got me thinking that something had ‘damaged’ the drivers.  I thought back and remembered I had installed The Settlers II: 10th Anniversary Edition a week ago, but not gotten around to playing it again.  I knew that game used Securerom 7 copy-protection, so I reasoned that maybe it didn’t play nicely in Windows 7, seeing as it’s an XP or Vista-era game.  Uninstalling and restarting didn’t fix anything, though that didn’t really mean anything since these copy-protection schemes are notorious for staying on a PC even after the title they’re supposed to be protecting is removed.

I went back to the “Uninstall a program…” dialogue, and had the insight to sort the programmes by the day that they were installed.  This revealed that since Settlers, I’d also upgraded iTunes to the much-ballyhooed version 9.  Uninstalling that, and all four of its forcibly-installed components also didn’t fix anything.

I started Googling more actively, and came across this blog post of Farhan Ahmed’s where he points toward a fix on Microsoft’s support pages.  The fix worked great.  The only thing was that it needs to be run in compatibility mode (right-click on the installer file and select “Troubleshoot compatibility”.

This fix is pretty old, so interestingly there have been iTunes issues for some time, not just anything new with version 9.  I’m stuck with the programme, for all its headaches, because I cannot find any other way to manage my otherwise mostly-decent iPod Touch.

In the late 90s I’d started getting extremely sick of the alternative  (“alternative to what?”) rock I’d been listening to through middle & high school.  My older brother had a friend working at a major record label who’d flip him extra promo copies periodically.  These would sometimes filter down to me, especially if my brother had no interest in it.  One of these albums was Praise the Fallen by VNV Nation, an electronic British band.

‘Electronica’ like The Prodigy or Chemical Brothers were popular, and I was casually into bands like Depeche Mode,  but VNV Nation were something different.  It was electronic, but probably owed more to the likes of Industrial giants such as Skinny Puppy or Front 242.

Leading from that album, I got into other bands like Covenant, Assemblage 23, Apoptygma Berzerk and Seabound.  It’s Seabound who really got me into the genre.  That said, one of the top albums in it was 2000′s Welcome to Earth by Apoptygma Berzerk.

The production was tight, the songs and album were cohesive and consistent throughout.  I loved the X-File-like theme of the album, about alien life visiting Earth and moving on.  The cover of Metallica’s Fade to Black was awesome.

They then had a live tour which produced a DVD and live album, APBL2000.  This was excellent.  That tour, and the subsequent recordings, were the best example and use of electronic music mixed with live guitar I’d seen and heard up to that point.  (Now I think that this live Trentemoller clip surpasses it…)  The live mix really seemed to be pushing the band and genre forward, and made such a great case for mixing guitars and electronics.

The next album however, 2002′s  Harmonizer, was back to being purely electronic.  It still sounded “good;” it was just boring.  It was intensely personal for the writer I suppose, but I couldn’t relate to it, and therefore it wasn’t particularly interesting.

2005′s You and Me Against the World was a total travesty and made me completely lose interest in the band.  It was a crappy lo-fi throwback to 80s rock I suppose.  Never mind the slick electronic production of Welcome to Earth and Harmonizer, this album sounded like a crappy cock-rock guitar band got drunk in the studio and WHOA DUDE happened to stumble upon a synthesiser.  They then decided to add some “ironic retro shit” to their album.  Don’t get me wrong, I love guitar bands too; just not Apop’s approximation of one.

Yet, it was apparently their most successful album.

This year’s Rocket Science is similar to You and Me Against the World in style, but even worse.  It even features a member of Good Charlotte on it.

So finally getting to the point:

[flickr id="3898512533" thumbnail="medium" align="right"]
I went to see Apop live two nights ago, and they were fantastic.  Completely unexpected.

They almost played my favourites exclusively, only four newer tracks.  The newer ones were far better live than the album versions too, for the most part.  The only still-horrid track was the Good Charlotte one.

They played so much of their ‘old’ stuff it got me thinking.  Do they know that their new music sucks?

And if so, that begs the question, why do they make it?  Maybe they’re actually insidious geniuses,  crafting perfect tunes that are palatable to ‘mainstream’ pop audiences, suckering them in, with the express purpose of then exposing them to the ebm/electro/electronic/futurepop/goth/synthpop subcultures…

Yes.  Clearly that is why the last two albums are such horrid departures.

I was running a touch late this morning, skating to work.  At about 8:05, arriving at Victoria & Dundas, I looked over my shoulder for a split second to check for traffic, and in that moment a guy on a yellow Vespa-like bike wiped out 20′ in front of me, apparently cut off by a woman in a green Saturn SUV (license plate AHKY 402).

She tried to drive off, but he weakly said, “don’t leave.  This is your fault.”  Her window was down and she denied being at fault.

She continued to drive, maybe planning on stopping at the curb, but several other witnesses moved to stop her anyway, one telling her, “I wouldn’t leave if I were you…”

The guy on the street tried to get up, but wasn’t able to.  I called 911, as nobody else seemed to have a cellphone out.  While I was on hold though (maybe 10-15 seconds), a paramedic had already run over from somewhere, and 30 seconds later a police cruiser arrived on the scene.  After giving the 911 operator my name & number, I left.  There were plenty more people on the scene, who presumably actually saw the event occur.

Frick people are stupid.  The driver seemingly assumed she wasn’t at fault because technically she didn’t hit him.  And really, it could have been his fault for all I know.  But don’t leave the scene you stupid, stupid, person.

Thinking about it on hindsight, judging from where they were, and the fact that I was slowing down to approach the intersection, I think she must have rushed a light and he was already in the intersection.  She was northbound on Victoria, he was westbound on Dundas.  I’m hardly a reliable witness in this account though.

I hope he’s okay, and I hope this doesn’t ruin the woman’s life, just teaches her a lesson.

—

Early evening edit:

Bad day for commuting. Almost went splat myself courtesy of a Beck taxi that unabashedly ran right through a red light.

—

Later evening edit:

Searching Twitter, this came up for the appropriate time:

@KatieSimpson24: Cp24: Cyclist struck at Dundas & Victoria. No closures yet. Possible leg fracture. Cp24 for updates.

So if Katie Simpson at CP24 is to be trusted, it’s just a “possible leg fracture.”  Except that she also called him a “cyclist” and said he was “struck.” Either she’s a lazy journalist (I have no reason to believe so), or “eyewitness” testimony really is that unreliable.  I couldn’t find any other mention of this in the media, CP24, or anywhere else.

I had a big long post written out, but decided it was too wordy and whiny.

The crux of it

Rollerblading in downtown Toronto I feel like I’m the bastard child of of all commuters.  Cars, pedestrians, cyclists: everyone hates us.

Yesterday though was something special.  I was skating in the bike lane, and a cyclist flipped me off.  Never mind that he was biking on the left-hand side, against traffic.  Hey, he’s on a bike in the bike lane.  Everything is right in the world except for the jackass daring to skate in the bike lane.

(For the record, I skate faster than most cyclists in Toronto.)

I’ve had bad acne-ridden skin since I was 12 or 13.  I learned to shave by watching TV commercials.  As far as I was concerned, the only way to do so was with Gillette Mach3 blades and “canned goo,” so to speak.  Eventually though, I became dissatisfied mostly because of the high cost of new cartridges.  As well, I always had bad irritation which seemed to aggravate my acne.  October last year, I started researching electric razors because I hated shaving, and figured it’d be easier, faster, and more cost-effective to invest in an electric razor.

The reviews I read however were not too favourable.  I did come across “classic” wet-shaving, defined as using an animal-hair brush with soap or cream, and an olde-tyme-style  double-edged razor.  With razors available for $30, blades a mere $0.20, brushes and soaps available for similar costs, it seemed like it was worth a try at least before investing in a $100-200 electric razor.

I was an instant convert.  Within a week all the irritation had disappeared.  Within two weeks, my acne completely vanished.  I had perfect skin for almost the first time in 14 years. (I’d actually had some success with “The Regimine,” but it was too difficult to maintain permanently.)

The first few weeks it was probably taking me a good 15-20 minutes each morning to shave.  I learned the craft from this SomethingAwful forum thread (may need a $10 account to view), occasionally referring the Badger & Blade wiki, FAQ or forum, but most important were mantic59′s YouTube videos, particularly his amusing introduction.  Nowadays it takes less than ten minutes.

I quickly became obsessed.

If you’re interested in checking this stuff out, the best store, hands-down in Canada, is Fendrihan.  Shopper’s Drug Mart has some decent consumables at reasonable prices.  The American Amazon store is worth a look too, but keep in mind import/shipping costs.  In the USA, some great stores are Classic Shaving and West Coast Shaving.

I started with the Merkur 1904 Classic myself, but general wisdom online is that the Merkur HD is the best ‘starting’ razor.  I’ve been using the Merkur Futur for six months, but my skin started to rebel again (because of the humidity?), and I stopped bothering to adjust the razor mid-shave.  I’m considering switching to a HD, or Sledgehammer, because I like the weight of the Futur.

I’ll post later about soaps & creams, and in yet another one, discuss aftershaves.

I’m already behind on posting.  I’ve just had every moment used up between Wednesday and Sunday, between a barbecue, a couple of birthdays and a wedding.  Much of Monday evening was spent posting Andy & Alison’s wedding photos.

So to sum up with two pictures per day:

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Hi there,

This here is my first real attempt at a public blog.  I’ve written online for almost ten years, (been online for fifteen,) but have kept it restricted to my social circles for a myriad of reasons.

I work for a B2B market research firm.  I work in project management, and assist in marketing — implementing online initiatives.  My post-secondary is a B.A. in Psychology.

One of the greatest and most frustrating things about me is that I’m interested in everything.  That said, I have a certain number of topics I’d like to cover in blog format at one point or another.  The main reason I’ve wanted to have an online presence is to document various hobby projects I’ve worked on and how I’ve solved the obstacles.  I found that often when I’ve been stymied by something, the only solutions I’ve found have come from Googling some random blog that’s been updated once or twice in five years.

There are a lot of topics I’m interested in blogging about: layman’s relationship with technology; North American economics, daily NA life routines; pre-cartridge shaving; weight-loss/dieting; beer;  photography; right-wing blogging; daily-life design failures; Psychology; post-secondary education; ADD/ADHD; etc.!  That is to name a few.

I think this blog will be more of the ‘stream-of-consciousness-brain-spaz’ variety, but ideally I hope it will evolve toward finding focus or a real purpose.  I’m not looking for popularity as a goal, but I hope my friends at least can be kept interested.

Cheers,

Mark