Rub a rabbit
What’s going on here? My friend Tweeder over at Digital Welfare ran an article about DeSmuME (Nintendo DS emulator) and it’s ROM compatibility. What caught my eye was release #0328: Rub Rabbits. This is a real game, and that’s a real title.
The guy in the below picture is playing Rub Rabbits, you’ll have to take my word for that. So, yeah. Rub Rabbits. Pretty much.
Empire at War
I am so addicted to Star Wars: Empire at War it’s not even funny. I haven’t enjoyed a Star Wars video game this much since the original X-Wing PC game. Imagine owning a boatload of Star Wars action figures–all the movies, all the releases, etc. Now imagine getting them to move around and fight each other. Sound nerdy enough for ya?
Yeah, it’s pretty much a Blizzard rip-off, but there’s enough different and interesting elements that make it more than just a Starcraft-mod type of game. For crying out loud, you can use AT-ATs, Star Destroyers, and the Death Star. Tell me that isn’t awesome!
One very cool thing I liked: you can have a “hero” like Darth Vader, Han Solo, etc. Darth Vader is ridiculously powerful: he can crush any target vehicle–basically a free instant kill. He can do a “force push” and destroy gobs of infantry surrounding him. Also, he’s practically invincible since he deflects more blaster shots with his lightsaber.
If you have a TIE Bomber squadron in orbit, you can do “bombing runs”. Basically, you pick a spot on the map and a squad of TIE Bombers come down and strafe the whole area, destroying gobs of troops, vehicles, and buildings at no resource and little time cost to you.
If you are a Star Wars nut, you must play this game.
Ohio in the 2004 election
I gotta defend “mainstream” media on this one. From Drudge:
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was outraged that the TV networks refused to declare Bush the winner on Election Night, even after all the votes were counted in the pivotal state Ohio and it became obvious Kerry could not win.
‘Some of the talking heads,’ Card said, ‘were rooting for a crisis in Ohio. It wasn’t just that they were afraid to admit we had won.’
Card became particularly incensed when Bush’s Ohio lead reached 120,000 votes, which was mathematically insurmountable.
‘Nobody wanted to call it so that we had won,’ he said. ‘It was like, c’mon, are they just afraid to say it?’
The reason they held off on calling Ohio right away was because they didn’t want to look like idiots like in 2000 when they called Florida way too early. That’s the reason. I’m not denying that there’s a lot of liberal bias in “mainstream” media, but I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with why they didn’t call Ohio right away. I don’t think Fox News, the evil right-wing fascist Bush-controlled network even called it on election night, but I could be wrong.
Flicker
One of the reasons Audio Adrenaline is my favorite band: their songs can take me from a bad mood to a good mood, and give me encouragement:
Flicker, by Audio Adrenaline
Have I become... a target that some people can't resist? My flaws have become a greater risk If my name... is a synonym for love and happiness, Then why am I bombarded with distress? My old friends... Haven't seen them since I don't know when But I can send them a signed 8x10 My sweetheart... She understands why I'm away But still it gets harder every day But it's my delight, To sing all night Till the sun comes up Again After all my cross isn't hard to bear It is heavy, I am weak, but you are there There are times when I am down and feel undone You pursue me like I am your only son My old flaws you've overlooked and put to rest They're farther than the East is from the West But it's my delight, To sing all night Till the sun comes up again Yes it's my delight, To share a flicker Of your light Just a ray of hope to a friend I've spent about 24 hours in a flying J truck stop I haven't had a shower and I'm 'bout to drop It really doesn't matter if we make it all up
Good one, Screech
TV’s Screech from Saved by the Bell has helped a 5 year-old boy to become Saved by the Spa. You may remember Dustin Diamond from Saved by the Bell, and other notable shows like…Saved by the Bell: The College Years…and Saved by the Bell: The New Class. And who could forget his memorable “coming out of the hole” scene from the Trivial Pursuit: 90s Edition commercial? Personally, I think his best work was Dustin Diamond Teaches Chess.
Apparently, Dustin “Screech” Diamond is taking the money he’s saved by not buying razors, and spending it on children through a charitable foundation. When reached for comment, Lisa Turtle was touched, but still will not go to the dance with him.
Digg this storyWorld Baseball Classic coverage
If you are excited about the WBC as I am, then you will be glad to know that ESPN and ESPN2 will be covering 16 live games. ESPN Deportes will be covering all 39 games. I don’t have ESPN Deportes, but if I did, I would just watch on mute or something.
If you have ESPN Deportes, you can always turn on your XM radio, because XM will be covering all 39 games on channels 176-189 (their normal MLB channels). If you are considering signing up for XM, you can get the best deals at MyRadioStore.us. This isn’t affiliate advertising or anything, they really just have the best deals.
Now loading…
I have no idea if this is the norm for PSP games, but here’s a video of UNBELIEVABLE loading times in “Raw vs Smackdown” by THQ for the PSP. How unbelievable? How about the length of the Benny Hill theme song times 4? The loading screens have loading screens for crying out loud!
Blackwell and the 11th commandment
I’ve mentioned the 11th commandment before, in reference to Sean Hannity. Here’s a very different example from my home state: “Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has stepped up his offensive against Jim Petro, his opponent in the Republican primary for governor…”
First, I am a very enthusiatic supporter of Blackwell. After all the shenanigans that Bob Taft’s crowd has pulled off, the last thing I want to see is one of his buddies take the office. That being said, Blackwell has strictly violated the 11th commandment. Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett:
Ken Blackwell should have a better strategy for winning this primary than simply burning down the house. A man who models himself after Ronald Reagan should have a little more respect for winning on ideas and vision…
No question Blackwell has spoken ill of Petro. The question is, does the 11th commandment apply to RINOs like Petro and Taft?
AJAX username availability checking
For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I decided to create a simple example of AJAX, based on the framework I layed out in an earlier post.
The goal of this AJAX example is to allow a user who is registering for your site to see if the username they want to use is taken already or not, without having to submit a form and reload the page. I believe Digg uses this, and I hear it’s all the rage for Astronomy-based dating sites. You can skip to the implemented example in action here. Yeah, I did it in ASP this time, instead of PHP…FOR NO RAISIN WHATSOEVER, except maybe to show that the same JS framework works for both ASP and PHP.
First, I constructed the ASP page that will do the dynamic checking. It should take one querystring (GET) parameter, in this case “username”, and print out a message regarding whether or not that username is taken, or if it’s invalid. Here’s the gist of it:
'if there's a space in the username, it's invalid
if InStr(request("username")," ") then
response.write "TakenOrNot|Spaces are not allowed in usernames, please try again."
else
'database stuff
dim strConn, dbConn, RS
'...set up your connection string here (MySQL, MS-SQL, whatever)
dbConn.open(strConn)
'query the database
set RS = dbConn.execute("SELECT count(*) AS cnt FROM blog_comment " &_
"WHERE username = " & request.querystring("username"))
'is this name taken or not
if RS("cnt") > 0 then
response.write "TakenOrNot|Sorry, " & request.querystring("username") &_
" is already taken. Please try a different one."
else
response.write "TakenOrNot|" & "Congratulations! " & request.querystring("username") &_
" is available for you to use."
end if
end if
So, depending on the username, this ASP code will print 1 of 3 possible strings.
The next thing I did was to write a new function in my ajax.js file. This is very similar to the sndReq() function from before:
// this function should be called for user input
// it opens up the usercheck.asp page with a querystring of 'action'
function sndUserCheck(action)
{
http.open("get", "usercheck.asp?username=" + action);
http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
http.send(null);
}
So, whenever this function is called, it will send an XMLHttpRequest to usercheck.asp using whatever username string was specified by whatever is calling this function. Not much different than sndReq(). One could probably abstract this function out even more to make the ASP/PHP page name a parameter as well, but for simplification, I won’t do that.
Finally, I set up the interface page:
<HTML> <TITLE>AJAX Username Checker Example</TITLE> <!-- AJAX functionality --> <script type="text/javascript" src="ajax.js"></script> <BODY> <form name="FormAccount"> <input type="text" id="formUserName" name="formUserName"> <input type="button" value="Check" onclick="sndUserCheck(document.FormAccount.formUserName.value);"> </form> <br><br> <div id="TakenOrNot"></div> </BODY> </HTML>
Again, not much different than the original example. We have one text box, where the user types in the name they want to check (formUserName), we have one button that will they will click to do the checking (formCheck), and one div object that will display the response message. Note that we grab the user’s text input for the sndUserCheck function like so:
document.FormAccount.formUserName.value
Note the use of the FormAccount (the name of the form) and formUserName (the ID of the text box)
That’s all there is to it! Users are now able to look up a username in your database and give a response to the user without a refresh. You can download the source code for this example below.
New Bond
The best Bond (in my opinion), Roger Moore is supporting the new Bond, Daniel Craig, despite a bunch of Bond fans threatening to boycott Casino Royale. In an odd move for an actor, when presented with a political pulpit, Moore declined:
He also dismissed suggestions that Bond is obsolete in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world.
“Bond is fantasy, there’s no real substance to it,” he said. “It’s a figment of imagination. … (It’s) sort of crazy, you know, a spy who is recognized wherever he goes. Spies ain’t like that.”
You mean actors don’t have expertise in politics & national security just because they play a character who does?
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