mgroves

Archive for 2007

Hollywood can be a cruel mistress. You start out with nothing, eventually land a job in a humiliating commercial, maybe land a guest spot on Newhart, and work your way up from there.

Maybe someday you’ll land a major role on perhaps the best sitcom of all time.

Hopefully, when you do land that role, no one will remember the embarrassing work you did in the past (if, in fact, you are embarrassed by that kind of stuff). If I was Morgan Freeman, for instance, I wouldn’t be too embarrassed by this Listerine commercial.

But if I were Jason Alexander, I would be a little red in the face if someone brought this old commercial to light again.

Would you look at that hair?

Though to be fair, Jason Alexander has much more to be ashamed of than this commercial.

Yeah, it’s Wednesday, the farthest possible day from either weekend, but I’m calling this a “Weekend Update” so you know that it’s completely personal news and you can skip over it if you like.

Also, I’ve set BlogRush to filter out posts with “weekend update” in the title.

Here are the latest ultrasounds for my son (it was confirmed that he is, in fact, my son).

Because of the way these ultrasounds were taken, the bones stand out more than any other facial feature, which is why he looks like some sort of alien monster:

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

This weeks’ Tuesday Tube is all about bettering yourself through education. Pay attention and you just might learn something.

The root of all knowledge: a question. If you’re blue, and you don’t know where to go to,
why don’t you go where fashion sits?

Next, learn what not to do:

This next video is for all you women out there (both of you)!

And here’s a quick primer on Rocky movies.

I still haven’t learned how this guy does this.

Okay, so I lied:

Er, well, this whole “education” angle is kindy flimsy. It feels like a Showcase Showdown theme. So just enjoy Darth Vader playing the harmonica.

And here’s what 24 would be like if it took place in 1994.

And finally, I really don’t know what inspired this show, but it makes me tired just watching it.
Also, I think it’s friggin’ brilliant.

The green screen work leaves something to be desired, but what a hilarious, frenetic show!
It’s genius!

Aperture Science

Portal deserves consideration for game of the year.

Yeah, you heard right. It’s such a fantastically crafted game experience that I played through the game three times in two days.

Portal is nearly flawless.

• The level designs and escalation of complexity make the game accessible to just about any gamer.
• The character(s) and storyline are very rich, but you hardly drown in story.
• The challenge to the game comes almost 100% from thinking and not from action, a huge plus in my book.
• The voice work is stunning. The game is worth playing for the song at the end alone.
• The extra features make this game very replayable: commentary, advanced levels, challenges. Yes, this game is short (perhaps it’s one minor flaw), but not short to a fault, and these extras more than make up for it.
• The portal device itself.

The last feature listed cannot be stressed enough. You will not understand the sheer coolness of this device until you play the game. Yeah, the concept is easy to grasp, but until you fling yourself across chasms, through the air from pedestal to pedestal, and make gun turrents suddenly sink into oblivion, you won’t understand.

The weighted companion cube. What can be said about him that hasn’t already been said?

GLaDOS. Such an atypical computer game villian, but so memorable, unique, and entertaining.

The only two very minor problems with this game: it’s too short, and you have to get the whole Orange Box to play it (if you are like me and not very interested in Half-Life or Team Fortress).

The cake may be a lie, but the hype around this game is not. Get Portal by any means necessary and play it immediately.

Verdict: Good. Really, really good.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of November 30th through December 2nd.

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

Busy weekend!

We tried to cut a Christmas tree, but we couldn’t find a farm. We will try this weekend. The Christmas party is coming up and we need a tree!

I did lots of Christmas shopping; while I was out, I finally rented Orange Box and played a lot of Portal. More on that in a future post, but suffice it to say, Portal now ranks pretty darn high on my all-time favorites list.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the baby room. The last thing to do is a hang a new entrance door. Right now I have one coat of paint on each side, so that should be done by this weekend. I made a Flickr photoset of all the photos I took of the work in progress. It’s far from perfect, but pretty good, considering it’s me who’s doing it.

Exams coming up this week, or rather, singular: exam. Shouldn’t be too bad.

Don’t ask me why I have so much Juicy Juice, but I do:

I’ve been reading a very intesting piece of research about school choice/vouchers, public/private schools, and public policy therein. I have more than a passing academic interest in this topic because I am fast approaching the time where decisions about my child’s education need to be made, and I want to be as informed as possible. The research is called Forging Consensus (PDF link), and while it doesn’t spend a lot of time in the public vs. private debate, it does give a lot of detail (backed up by a lot of stats: this is not a fluff piece that can be scanned in 2 minutes) about various different policies throughout the world regarding the issue of vouchers and tax credits for private schooling.

I created a simple Excel spreadsheet with random numbers to determine the winner.

The winner of the Brutus Buckeye Coffee Mug is…

Minywheats!

Congratulations, sir. I will email you to arrange delivery. I might even arrange to get video of the prize ceremony.

Thanks everyone for participating and stay tuned to future contests where I give away stuff that I don’t really want!

This is a sketch from Kids in the Hall, episode 10 of season 1.

Mark: Hey, see that moon? No, that one there.

Dave and Bruce: Ahh.

Mark: I think that moon is a bit of a spy. Yes I do.

Mark: There was a moon like that on the summer of my sixteenth year. Some say
I was sixteen but, heh, I don’t know. And there was a girl, too; her name was Marie. At night
together, we would walk down by the sea, and, oh my God, if you could’ve seen the body on this woman! The
way at night her long legs would stick into the moist night sand like God’s own barge poles! You
know? And I longed to tell her the feeling I had in my, heart for her, but the words would not
come; they would not come through my spotty adolescent face; they would not come through my
angry hair or my sweaty feet or any other part on this body that I now call a man! So the words
je t’aime were never passed between us. But, that moon, yeah that one there, it spied
on us then, as I think maybe it spies on us tonight, no?

Bruce: The moon is bright, over Lebanon tonight! The Lebanese moon looks down.
Shim! Sham! Shikam! Cattle explodes! Cow shrapnel drips off a tree, cascades into mother’s tear, for
little boy. Who goes on into battle and comes back dead or worse, comes back a man. Why don’t you
warn them moon? Why don’t you say “duck” or “scram?” But the moon will not. The moon just sits there
grinning, like a corpse at a Dean Martin roast. What are you laughing at moon? Why don’t you share
it with the whole class moon?

The moon laughs knowingly.

The moon laughs.

The moon.

The.

Dave: Gee, I wonder who owns that moon?

Mark and Bruce: Yes…yes…yes…yes!

If you recall, the first Xbox 360 game that I bought (besides XBLA games) was Blazing Angels. The game got average-to-poor reviews, but I really enjoyed it.

I also tried to rent Blazing Angels for Wii multiple times, but was thwarted. However, I recently picked it up on sale. So yes, I now own two copies of the same game for multiple systems.

I think if you like Blazing Angels for 360, you’ll like it for Wii. Ubisoft made bad decisions on both versions, so I guess it’s a “pick your poison” situation, since both versions have weaknesses. Here’s a brief rundown of the differences of the Wii version as compared to the 360 version:

• Two new missions (Georgia & North Sea). The Georgia mission is a really good idea (protecting and assisting multiple ground divisions on multiple islands), but Ubisoft either biffed the programming or made a bad decision here. Because of the sheer amount of targets in the Georgia mission, there is noticeable slowdown, which sucks. I haven’t got to the North Sea mission yet.
• 10 new planes. This includes the awesome F-82 Twin Mustang.
• There are subtle differences in many of the other missions. For instance, on Guadalcanal, when you have to land and switch planes, you get hit by flak (part of the mission) which makes it much harder to land. The first Normandy mission is considerably harder with faster advancing ground targets.
• I didn’t think it would be possible to make the “sandstorm” mission any more annoying, but Ubisoft did just that with the Wii version. Instead of listening to the Germans banter (in English) over the radio, you get a wonderfully loud, piercing stream of morse code for the whole mission that cannot be turned off. I turned off my stereo. In exchange, it’s easier to find the German bases with an on-screen indicator/radar thing. And thankfully, I achieved Ace rank on the first try, so I will never, ever have to play it again. Honestly, this mission should have been excluded from all versions of the game.
• In most campaign missions, you can choose which plane to use. Why anyone would turn down the Spitfire V and/or P-51 for any campaign given the opportunity is beyond me. So yeah, you can fly Spitfires and Stukas against Zeros if you want.
• The controls are obviously the biggest difference. You can choose between 5 control schemes. My favorite is the Wiimote motion to control direction with the nunchuck for throttle/weapons. Additionally, I switch hands because I was so used to the 360 controls. This seems to work fine, though it takes a half-dozen missions and ace battles to really get the hang of motion controls.
• The graphics are significantly worse than the 360. The planes still look fine, but in general the game looks more jagged. I probably wouldn’t have noticed this if I hadn’t played the 360 game first.
• There’s no online play. (The 360 version has online play, but good luck finding opponents).
• The voice acting was redone, for whatever reason. The script is largely the same, but now Germans speak German and Japanese speak Japanese. So there’s less stereotyping, and more realism. Fine. Your wingmen have less exaggerated accents as well, and your player has a large speaking role in this game as a sort of narrator, as well as an in-game persona.
• There’s a cockpit view. I found this completely worthless as I do with every other air combat game, but some people like it.

So there you have it. I highly recommend it if you like air combat and have a Wii.

Just a quick reminder that the Great Coffee Mug Giveaway of 2007 is coming to an end soon.

Head on over the Coffee Mug giveaway blog post and leave a comment to enter.

The contest ends on November 30th, so you don’t have much time left. It’s free to enter and free to win, people, so just do it already!

Recently, Zogby and the Norman Lear center did a survey to find out the entertainment tastes of conservatives and liberals.

First off, note that Norman Lear is an outspoken liberal and friend of Meathead, but also that Zogby is a credible source of statistics and polling.

Let’s go over the concept of correlation and average, briefly. As you should know, correlation is not causation, it’s simply the statistical strength of a relationship. So for instance, just because 85% of people who drink beer are healthy, doesn’t mean beer makes you healthy. It could mean that being healthy makes you drink beer, or that some other factor external to the data causes both.

The data for the survey is attached. The sample sizes were statistically pretty good (n around 1000 for each political grouping). However, there are no confidence intervals or anything like that (I’m sure they were calculated, but they aren’t in the data), so there’s no way of knowing how accurate these point estimates are.

With that quick preface, here are some interesting points from the survey:

• Dr. Gregory House apparently unifies us all with his cynical cruelty. Conservatives and liberals all enjoy his show.
• Of all the movies surveyed about, The Departed was the only apolitical/irreligious movie that was preferred by one group (liberals) — I guess because it’s R-rated? C’mon adult conservatives, this is a good movie!
• Conservatives don’t seem to play a lot of video games, what with being employed and all.
• Out of 15 TV and film genres, “arts” emerged as the one with the highest positive correlation to liberal viewers, “arts” being a codeword for “gay”.

(Those last two are jokes, people, jokes!)

And here are some interesting things that weren’t talked about in the article, but were hiding in the data:

• People polled were all likely voters. So there are hardly any non-voters. I think this is a potential bias, as a non-voter isn’t necessarily apolitical in their opinions.
• Liberals surveyed believed that government generally solved problems (69.7%). I’m going to assume they think that liberal government generally solved problems, not government in general. Whereas conservatives (89.5%) think that government doesn’t solve problems (it doesn’t matter WHO is in there). This is strange given that the data also suggests that 80% or more of all surveyed (including liberals) were cynical about the motives of elected officials. So what’s up liberals, something doesn’t jive here.
• Nader got most of his survey votes from so-called “moderates”. Interesting.
• Liberals were observant enough to say they lived on “planet Earth” but were unable to specify any further.
• The “global economy” issue was close to split 50/50 among liberals. I’m guessing 50% are in “dey took our jerbs” camp, and 50% are in the “every other country is superior” camp?