mgroves

Archive for July, 2007

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of July 27th – 29th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

Sorry for the sparse posting lately…just haven’t really found must to blog about I guess…

Ali & I are going to the Reds-Cubs game on Sunday afternoon with some friends (coworkers, whatever). Right now it’s shaping up to be the rubber game of the series, so that makes it kinda interesting. Belisle/Zambrano could be a good matchup, and Zambrano seems to implode when he’s in Cincinnati. We’ll be in right field, look for us on TV, we’ll be the ones in Reds-themed clothing!

I spent a good deal of time cleaning this weekend (again). There are still pockets of ant resistance in the kitchen. I tend to get carried away when cleaning, a trait I probably inherited from my father. I bought oven cleaner, magic erasers, glass cleaner, degreaser, some Swiffers, and went to town. I even did some laundry. My wife gets mildly to severly irritated when I do this, but I don’t think excessive cleanliness is a bad quality, do you?

I watched a lot of Fullmetal and Arrested Development (season 2 loaned by Jonny). These shows are only getting better as the overall themes and messages are really starting to fill out. Fullmetal presents the conundrum that “equivalent exchange” doesn’t always apply. That is, life isn’t always fair. Arrested Development is a great show because I think everyone has felt like the world is one big Bluth family and they are Michael Bluth, trying to function in a world gone insane. Plus the pseudo-chicken dances are hysterical.

I got Superman Returns from Gamez’n'Flix. I still think it’s a serviceable game; I don’t know why it gets such a bad rep. It’s not the best game of all time, but it’s certainly not as bad as the reviews make it out to be, I think. There must be a Superman curse on games too.

Missed the last Tuesday Tube? Head over to the tag search for ‘tuesday tube’ and browse through the archives.

The misfortunes and blunders of others are always hilarious. Watching someone else screw up makes me feel better when I screw up. Enjoy, laugh along, and feel better about yourself when watching these videos.

Ryan Stiles is one of the greatest improv comics the world has ever seen. He is able to keep his composure even after nearly electrocuting himself.

Probably should’ve done a little better job on the pre-interview…

Chuck Storm would be an awesome name for a TV weather guy. Or a porn star? I bet this is the last time he does a non-stationary remote.

I don’t know what was going on with this video in the first place, but these next 34 seconds are funnier than the all the Scary Movie movies put together.

That’s all for this week’s Tuesday Tube.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of July 20th – 22nd.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

Another boring weekend. I worked on a case for strategy class about the toy industry: which segment should my new firm enter into: preteen/teen action figures or infant/preschool large playground equipment. That was kinda interesting since I have a passing interest in toys, especially video games. Since this case takes place in 1980 and mentions Nintendo and Sega, I think I was able to come up with a decent strategy for licensed video game character action figures. We’ll see…I’m not very good with this strategy stuff.

The kitchen was still a mess from the cake making and pork pulling from earlier this week, so we set to work cleaning it up. One of the main tools of cake decoration is fondant, a hard playdough-like substance that is essentially pure sugar. A lot of it ended up on the floor and what not.

As we cleaned up, I noticed a huge amount of tiny ants marching around on the floor and sink area. Ridiculous amounts of ants. Ali asked me, “do ants like sugar?” I had a good laugh about that, and then explained that, yes, ants liking sugar is a defining stereotype of ants and that there are cartoons with ants carrying around sugar cubes and what not.

I then spent a good deal of time thinking about if ants are offended by this stereotype in the same way that the fried chicken/watermelon stereotype is offensive. I wondered if I would be considered a “speciesist” or “specist” or what not for perpetuating the stereotype. I imagined a particularly angry and vocal Hymenopteran-American shaking 5 fists at me, saying “Just cause brother’s an ant, you think I like sugar, you cracker-eating mammal? Typical!”

I wiped out all the ants from my kitchen in one huge ant holocaust. These were really tiny ants, but the amount I killed could probably fill a teabag or two. I wondered if I was at that moment considered The Ant Hitler or Ant Saddam or something. I wondered if the Ant U.N. would send me a strongly worded letter or the Ant U.S. would take action against me.

Fortunately, before I could start thinking about the Ant version of Harry Reid, we were finished cleaning up the kitchen.

I put a whole bunch of Fullmetal Alchemist episodes on the Game King. It is really a great series, but like Arrested Development, suffers from the need to watch from the beginning and not miss an episode in sequence. Watching these shows on Adult Swim and G4 respectively does not do them justice.

Gamez ‘N’ Flix is sending me Hidden Fortress, the Japanese movie that inspired Star Wars. So I got that going for me…

I’ve talked on this blog before about my hair-brained “fractional” theory of choosing who to vote for. My theory is that there are, say, 50 issues which define one’s political beliefs. In any one election, the best you could do with any major candidate is probably 25/50. An obscure third party candidate might be significantly better, but has a next-to-nothing chance of getting elected.

And the reason he probably won’t get elected is precisely the reason he matches you better. It’s basically another way of saying “least common denominator.”

But anyhoo, someone has put this theory into a big HTML table for probable canidates for president in 2008. (By the way, I believe this site is extremely biased in their definitions and labelling, but that’s not the point of this post).

Someone else took this grid and created a pick your candidate form. Again, because of the very simplistic, biased, and potentially flawed nature of these sites, take it’s accuracy with a grain of salt. There are many issues missing, ill-defined, or framed with bias, and sometimes there are complex answers other than “yes” and “no” at this high of a level.

I believe I already have a favorite candidate (though he’s not officially announced yet), but I wanted to see if I would pick him in a blind “taste test.”

It turns out I matched Duncan Hunter the best for a score of 41, which is great, except that I’ve never heard of him until just now. And I actually matched three other candidates (two of which I’ve not heard of) better than the one I expected, which I only matched for 30.

What does this ultimately mean? Even with a wide array of candidates, I don’t match a single one greater than 41 (though I’m not sure what the max score would be). Dennis Kucinich, who I would consider my anti-candidate, matched with -48. So guess I didn’t even pick a perfect anti-candidate. Or it means that the form is inaccurate or can’t accurately capture the complexity of the issues, which is a possibility.

So I guess the point of what I’m saying is that unless I’m voting for myself, I’m always voting to compromise to some extent.

Herein is a brief 50s-style instructional film about male restroom etiquetee, made with The Sims.

While I mostly agree with the instructions within the video, I think it’s also important to mention urinals with partitions between them. The “minimum space” rule still applies, but if there are partitions, the urinals can achieve maximum capacity. I also think flushing should take place after every individual use, but that is a matter of personal preference I suppose.

Additionally, “noise” should be acceptable (though always undesirable), as it is a bathroom after all. However, any noise that does not pertain to functions that can only be performed in a bathroom are strictly forbidden! This includes talking, singing, humming, grunting, cell phone ringing, and even telepathy.

Otherwise, the video is 100% factual and accurate and based on real events…

This week’s ROMSs of the week features two of my favorite puzzle games: picross and boxxle, both for Game Boy.

I didn’t know I was a fan of Picross until I stumbled on Mario’s Picross for Game Boy many years ago. I was so addicted that I played every single puzzle of the game within a one-month period (around 200 total puzzles).

If you’ve never played picross before, it’s a puzzle game similar in nature to sudoku, but I think much more enjoyable. You get a grid that could be 5×5 up to 15×15 or whatever. Next to each row and column is a series of numbers that describes that row/column. For instance, for one column on a 15×15 grid, you might see “4 5 4″, which means in that column, there will be 3 series of filled boxes of length 4, 5, and 4 with at least 1 empty box between each series. Your job is to use logic to figure out exactly what boxes those series will be in. “4,5,4″ is an easy example, and so is “15″, but what about “1″?

I enjoy Mario’s Picross especially because of features it has that other picross games (or even picross books) don’t have: instant feedback if I fill in a wrong square, hints (revealing of one row and one column at the beginning of the puzzle), and the ability to mark spots as “empty” if you are sure that it’s not a filled space.

If you want to download this ROM, you can probably find it someplace on Google.

One of my favorite Game Boy games has always been Boxxle. It’s another puzzle game, similar to The Adventures of Lolo (if you’ve even heard of that) in which you have to push boxes from wherever they are to the “target” spaces on the board. The boards can be just one simple obstacle to a complex design that takes multiple steps to get each box to where it needs to go.

Imagine my disappointment when Boxxle and Boxxle 2 could not be emulated on the Game King-II. I was so sad that I cried for days. Fortunately for me, I stumbled on a public domain homebrew version of the game called “Boxes”. It plays almost exactly the same, except with slightly more modest graphics (no big deal, we’re talking Game Boy here).

You can download the Boxes ROM here.

Keep those suggestions coming for next week’s ROMs of the week!

One of my favorite economic and political pundits, Jonathan Hoenig, apparently makes a brief appearance in Sicko, the latest film from Michael Moore.

He writes about his appearance and also his thoughts on socialized medicine.

He breaks it down to basically two reasons why one would be against socialized medicine:

1. It’s impractical; it doesn’t work.
2. It’s unethical–it’s wrong: This is what Hoenig mainly subscribes to.

First, why is it impractical? Well, there’s always the evidence of outcome: “The reality is that from Canada to Cuba socialized health care’s record is appalling. It’s impossible to tally how many patients die waiting for routine preventative procedures or how many innovations go undiscovered because precious resources are squandered.” It’s interesting to note that we can’t measure the true impact because there’s not only the people who definitely weren’t helped, but also the people who might have been helped by innovations.

But more importantly, as Hoenig says (and I agree) is the ethical reasons that socialized health care is a bad thing. It’s hinged on a fundamental view of what a “right” is: “a right is a right to action, but not to a freebie owed to you” (like health care, housing, food, etc). If I have to impose on someone else in order to obtain it, it is not and should not be a “right”. That is the idea of “man is not born owing thy neighbor anything.”

Another key point to make is that some would look at current system of healthcare in the U.S. and claim that a free-market, capitalistic solution has failed, and thus socialized medicine is the answer. This is a bit of a logical leap, I think, but let’s examine it.

First, I think this begs the question of “failure”, as while it is certainly not an ideal system, I think there’s lots of data to suggest that people are generally healthier and living longer than any other period in history. By some estimates, only 7% of the population of the US does’t have coverage and probably can’t afford it[*]. Is 7% high enough to be considered failure? I would challenge anyone to come up with what “failure” means in US health care other than “a big doctor bill” or “more than 1 person doesn’t get coverage.”

Which is worse: 7% not getting covered, or 100% getting crappy socialistic coverage?

But even given that the current system is a “failure” or even just too expensive, Government spending accounts for at least 40% – 51% of all health care spending[*] in the U.S. That means more health care spending is controlled by bureaucracy than by private individuals and companies. So to suggest that the private sector has failed is ridiculous.

This may be the most epic win in the history of 4chan.

This is what happens when a car made of diamonds (the hardest metal known to man) crashes into a wall of diamonds (again, the hardest metal known to man).

If you don’t understand any of this, move along…

Nintendo’s announcement of the WiiFit game and corresponding “balance board” device seemed like a great extension to Nintendo’s casual gamer strategy. After all, there are lots of people using Wii Sports as an “exercise” device, and there’s even a blog that was started with the goal of losing weight and getting in shape with the Wii.

But is the WiiFit something that people might buy and use, or is it just a hunk of plastic selling for close to $60?

I’m not sure at this point, but I was reminded of an MST3K “invention” sketch called “The Square Master.” It was intended as a parody of exercise equipment commercials (and also was making fun of the soundtrack of the movie featured in that episode).

There’s basements full of unused exercise equipment all over the world: is this another one of them? Or is this a legitimate device meant to enhanse the immersive experience of the Wii? Will skateboard/snowboard games support it? Dancing games?

Ali entered 4 cakes into the Franklin County Fair this year: her first time entering an actual cake competition. Her entries were completely about decoration, not flavor. Nevertheless, everything had to be edible, with the exception of wedding cakes.

Unfortunately, I do not have any shots of the Christmas cake, maybe I will post those later. Also note that these shots were taken in most cases before the cakes were completely done.

Here’s the other holiday entry, Halloween:

A huge fondant spider was later added to the top of this cake. My lone contribution: I informed Ali that spiders have eight legs, not six.

Ali entered two wedding cakes. The first one has a sash of flowers leading up to the heart-shaped topper. This shot is before the top of the cake was completed:

Finally, this is a wedding cake with a picket fence theme. Each slat of the fence was painstakingly crafted out of royal icing (and some other icing I think), causing hand cramps. Flowers were later added to both levels of the cake behind the fences.

They are all quite lovely, and I couldn’t be prouder of her! The cakes are all on display for the rest of this week, so feel free to go see them. Ali has already started making very expensive plans for next year’s competition as well.

[Photos provided courtesy of the Game King-II]