Ah, the lovely things reddit can bring. XKCD wrote a recent comic that turned out to be a premonition, and then I came across this flash game. It’s a throwback to The Incredible Machine game I used to play back in high school. Enjoy!
It’s also very awesome.
I spent Canada’s 141st birthday at Granville Island, taking in the sights and sounds of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. My tastes in music have morphed over time; I find I enjoy the small 3-6 piece ensembles a lot more than the booming big band music that first attracted me to jazz music. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the off-beat bass pulses of Dave Brubeck and the eclectic piano riffs of Count Basie, but there’s something more intimate about a jazz trio or quartet that lets you connect more with the music. Besides, if you can do that while consuming some awesome beer in the Granville Island Brewery Taproom, all the better!
As I was walking around today between sets at the Taproom, I stumbled upon an actual honest-to-God dixieland band, complete with tux shirts and bow ties. Once I process the pictures off of my camera, I’ll post them. The harmonies, brisk bass line and some wicked cool clarinet riffs made for quite an interesting set. This kind of thing makes me annoyed that I forgot about the Jazz Festival until mid-week last week. All these different styles of music, whether it be new kinds of fusion or revived styles, come together at the Jazz Festival, and it really is pretty neat to see and hear them all. Next year I’ll have to write myself a reminder so I can catch stuff like the Gastown Jazz that happened two weekends ago. There’s also usually really good groups performing at the Roundhouse.
On a funnier note, I saw Gordon Campbell walking with who I assumed was his daughter when I was heading out of Granville Island to the bus stop. In a way, I was kind of surprised he didn’t have some kind of security contingent with him. For one, he’s the premier, so it’s probably in the budget. Today was also the day that the gas tax kicked in, adding another 2.4 cents per litre to the price of gasoline. Then again, the worst thing ever done to a Canadian politician was a pie to the face, so I guess he really didn’t have a whole lot to worry about.
Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry, has decided to become a lapdog of the recording industry by proposing a new DMCA bill, worse than the American one if you can believe it. This would make copying a song from a CD you bought onto your MP3 player to listen to completely illegal. You can’t even make a backup of it. It pretty much throws fair use straight out of the window. I’m not entirely sure how Prentice expects this to pass in a minority government with so much public outcry over it. He’s already tried to pass this through before and failed, trying to bypass public consultation then too. Michael Geist is a law professor that explained all the fancy legalese into plain English.
To end on a less negative note, I wish could happen at my office. It would be all kinds of awesome.
I came across this commentary by a professor at an art & design college. He posits that the problem with sex in video games is that there isn’t enough of it. That is, the sex that there is in games is exploitative, rather than artistic. Therefore it is not considered acceptable, unlike the movie industry and other forms of media. It’s a pretty good argument; it’s rational, unlike the ubiquitous “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!” hysteria that currently grips western culture.
Because my sense of humour derives from some kind of combination of sarcasm, geek interests and my job as a programmer, I often find myself laughing at the geekiest things ever while others look at me funny. Not that there aren’t other aspects about me that make other people look at me funny, but given the number of geek friends I know, at least I’m not alone. Case in point, this is one of the funniest jokes I’ve heard in a long time.
I kinda want this on a t-shirt now. If you haven’t seen this comic before, it’s called XKCD. In a similar geek vein, any of you who are geeks in any way (or are some kind of science nerd) should watch The Big Bang Theory. It’s geek humour and doesn’t apologize for it. Plus, the theme song is by the Barenaked Ladies.
On another note, another one of my co-workers came up with an awesome quote the other day: “Bacon is like the superhero of meats.” That it is, that it is.
Back in an earlier blog post I wrote about a possible Ghostbusters game being developed. Turns out it was an independent studio doing it without the proper licensing agreements. Sony Pictures sent them a cease & desist, yadda yadda, boring lawyer stuff, long story short they stopped. However, Sony seems to have thought it was a really good idea and are now in cahoots with Vivendi Games to release an actual Ghostbusters game scheduled for a Fall 2008 release.
Awesome part #1? The guys from the movies will be voicing their roles for the game!
Awesome part #2? Aykroyd and Ramis, who wrote the original script for the Ghostbusters movies, are going to write the story for the game.
Awesome part #3? Looking at the screenshots, Stay Puft has roast marks. ROAST MARKS!
I can’t wait to see what happens when you cross the streams.
So for all the things you can screw around with, tesla coils hooked up to a computer produces some pretty awesome stuff. Here’s Mario Brothers:
And other game themes:
So as it turns out, people don’t like the new jersey. Cluttered design is bad, who knew? Anyways, I regularly visit the Something Awful forums, and there’s a good hockey discussion group there. Courtesy of some Photoshop skills by some of the posters over there, they churned out some alternate designs using the new jersey. Behold the no wordmark and centred logo look and the text only Rangers ripoff look. I think if they absolutely insist on having the wordmark (bloody marketers), then put it on the goddamn away jersey. The home crowd knows it’s fracking Vancouver. I’d buy a non-wordmarked jersey, but as it stands right now, Reebok’s not getting any of my money.
Speaking of Reebok, here’s the pricing scheme. There are going to be 3 levels of pricing: authentic, premiere and you-don’t-want-this-crap. Authentic will cost $250 USD (~$260 CAD), so not much change from last time around. Premiere will cost $114 USD (~$120 CAD), about a $20 markup from previous replicas. The third tier will be about $80 USD or something. So what’s the difference? Authentics are the same: fight strap, ice quality stuff. Premieres are the current replicas, except if you want it personalized, it’ll be HEAT PRESSED. That’s right, you shell out over $100 for a jersey and if you personalize it, you get the iron-on crap you can buy at a dollar store. You can only buy stitched numbers and a nameplate if you go third party or buy authentic. The third tier? Fracking screen prints that go on t-shirts. I guess if the league can’t get expansion fees, which completely screwed up any financial sense they had left in the 90s, they’ll get it through merchandise. It’s a wonder how these owners got rich enough to buy a team in the first place. Their sheer ineptitude at running the team as a business cannot possibly seem to translate well into life as a successful businessman. But then, sports teams are pretty much a rich person’s toy, so the rich guy doesn’t really take it as seriously as he would the business. Either that or at least with a company there’s the board of directors to answer to.
In other news, everyone needs to go watch Hot Fuzz. It’s a Hercule Poirot meets Bad Boys kind of movie. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you’ll like this one. I’ve been watching movies most of this weekend. I feel like I should’ve been more productive somehow. Oh well.
Go see it.
They took a good creative angle to make it different enough to not destroy my happy childhood memories. A good balance of action and cheese.
