Archive for the 'rants' Category

Lost in Blue: sexist game ever?

Published at 7:08 am on July 25, 2010 in Geeky Stuff, Random Stuff, rants and reviews.

No, that isn’t a typo, up there in the title. It really is the most sexist game I’ve ever played, not the sexiest.

The premise, in a nutshell: you are a teenage boy who gets thrown from a cruise liner (or it sinks, it’s not stated either which way). You wake up on a deserted island — but wait! It’s not totally deserted, because who washes up on the beach next door but a teenage girl from the same ship! She’s looking for her glasses, which you promptly step on. Whoops. So, taking her by the hand, you lead her to the conveniently located cave nearby.

She weaves. She feeds the fire. She braids rope. And, of course, she cooks. Here’s how it plays out: you talk to her. She says something like “Hi! How was your day?” or, “Did you hear my stomach growling? ^_^” (the emotion is basically how they drew that bit of artwork.) Then you tell her that it’s time to eat, you hand over all your food, and she says… “I’ll do my best! ^_^” Then while your character sprawls out in front of the fire, she goes over to the corner and cooks your meal.

The girl is useless. She serves an in-game purpose, I understand that, but they could have made her just tiny bit less like an ideal 1930s housewife.

You can take her for a walk outside if you want. There’s no leash, so you’ll have to hold her hand the entire time. Why? Apparently because she doesn’t have her glasses and is therefore completely blind. When you get to a knee-high ledge, your character has to pick her up, swing her around, and set her down. Then he jumps up beside her, takes her hand, and pulls her to her feet. She can’t climb any high ledges, like the boy can, and she can’t wade through swamp (maybe it’ll ruin her dress? Who knows!).

In short, she’s useless. And because of the game designer’s half hearted attempts at a plot, it’s hard to ignore her simpering brainlessness.

Dear game developers (and while I’m at it, Hollywood execs): we need more female heroes. Real heroes. Not a damsel in distress, not a love interest, not pure sex appeal. Heroes.

Thank you, that is all.

1 Comment
Tags: , .

I shot JFK

Published at 1:16 am on June 5, 2010 in Deep Thought and rants.

To many people, the words “JFK assassination” are almost synonymous with “conspiracy.” The event and the aftermath sparked off a debate that continues to this day, and has been the subject of many books, research papers, and a few movies. It’s also been referenced in countless works of fiction. For example, in Alan Moore’s famous Watchmen comic book series, it’s strongly suggested that one of the main characters was the shooter on the grassy knoll.

Though the Warren commission determined that there was only one shooter, many alternate theories postulate a second gunman, firing from either the grassy knoll or the Dal-Tex Building, across from the School Book Depository, or somewhere else entirely. It appears to me that the reason for the popularity of these theories is a basic unwillingness to believe that Oswald could have made the shots he did in that time span. I decided to test that out myself.

First I looked up the timespan. To my surprise, it has yet to be conclusively narrowed down. It’s estimated at 4.8 to over 7 seconds. I decided to use the lower number as a benchmark. I don’t have a Carcano rifle like Oswald, so I had to make do with a bolt-action .22 rifle.

My first test was seeing if I could fire three shots in under 4.8 seconds. I stood about 80 feet from my target, a 9×11 piece of paper. I was using an un-scoped .22. I performed the test three times, the first two standing, the final one kneeling, using a wooden bench rest (much like the window sill Oswald probably used).

First result: 2 out of 3 hits (same as Oswald) in 3.14 seconds. Second result was 2/3 in 3.2. Third and final result was 3/3 in 3.6 second.

I now knew that the firing speed, at least, was easily doable. But what about accuracy?

For the next test, I set up 3 targets at 250 feet. The targets were 2x4s, about 8 inches long, standing vertically. I used the same .22 rifle as before, only this time with a 9X magnification scope. I used the same wooden bench as before for a rest. The result was 2 hits out of 3 shots in 5.2 seconds.

I realize there are problems with this test, due to my inability to rent a sixth floor snipers nest and a moving target. However, these things are trivial. The fact of the matter is that accurate, rapid fire can be achieved with a bolt action. I may not convince anyone else, but I’ve surely convinced myself: Oswald acted alone, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to make things more complicated than they really are.

3 Comments
Tags: , , , .

Land of the Dead: a review

Published at 6:42 pm on January 30, 2010 in rants and reviews.

Somewhere in between Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, George Romero was bitten by a zombie. It’s the only way to explain it.

Here’s some issues, big and small, that I had with the movie. There are spoilers, but that doesn’t really matter since you should avoid this movie like the plague — watching it will lower your IQ.

  • Skateboards. A few different people skateboard in this film. Problem: at the start of the movie, someone is skateboarding in a zombie infested town. Have you ever skateboarded? If you have, you know that you can’t skate gravel. Or dirt. Or mud. Or on a mass of leaves. In other words, all the things you’d except to find in a town that’s been abandoned for ten frigging years! (Or however long it’s been — it’s never actually stated in the movie.) But nope, I guess they’ve got functioning robot street sweepers!

    And let’s not forget when there’s a guy waiting in a shack. After he hears a noise, he gets up, jumps on his skateboard, raises his gun (does he not know about Newton’s third law?) and skates the five feet toward the door. He gets what he deserves.

  • Automatic weapons. It’s common knowledge that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head, so what does everybody do? They fire on full auto toward’s the zombies’ torsos, and act shocked when nothing happens.
  • So this dude steals a APC-like vehicle that’s armed with middle launchers, and says he’ll blow up the city unless… he gets two million dollars in cash. The only thing I can say to that is: WHAT! THE! FUCK!

    What the FUCK are you going to do with money in the middle of zombie infested America, huh? Even IF there still was a functioning economy in the city itself (a pretty big if — more on that in a bit) he can’t exactly go back to the place he just threatened to destroy. Completely illogical.

  • Economy. Oh man, I’m not sure where to begin… In fact, I don’t think I can write anything on this subject other then “what the fuck!?” because it is just 100% the opposite of anything remotely plausible.
  • Leadership. The city was manged by a board of directors that did… absoultley nothing? Along with an upper-class group of citizens that likewise did nothing except sit around and drink fine wine? Another WTF is called for.

    • And then there are countless incidents where characters act like utter morons for no good reason… and by “incidents” I mean “the whole damn movie.”

    I’ve heard many people say that the “…of the Dead” movies are a metaphorical, satirical take on life and society.

    If they mean that life really, really SUCKS, then I guess they’re right.

4 Comments
Tags: , , , .

Death Troopers sucks.

Published at 12:40 am on January 30, 2010 in rants and reviews.

Should of posted this a long time ago, but whatever: Death Troopers is the worst Star Wars book ever. Well, maybe a close second to the Tales of the Empire (or was it New Republic?) short story collection, which was SO FREAKING BAD I puked all over it. Then quietly put it back on the bookshelf and slipped out of the bookstore. (Slight exaggeration.)

Death Troopers had a lot going for it. Well, ok, just the cover… but the cover alone was enough to make me go blind from the sheer awesomeness of the thing. If I could get that thing as a poster, I would.

And the book even starts alright — the first chapter is pretty creepy. Then the characters open their mouths and it all comes crashing down. On top of bad dialog is the fact that everyone seems to be holding the idiot ball and not noticing when corpses start disappearing and shit. (The whole thing was a terribly contrived way to add suspense. I’m supposed to believe that these zombies are going to sneak around, carefully remaining hidden and avoiding the survivors just in order to… what, inflict psychological harm? Yeah.)

And so then some stuff happens, some people die (not as awesome as it sounds — I think the Lucasfilm people might have edited it down, or the author just sucks) some more stuff happens, and the escape, and everyone lives happily ever after. Mhm. Dawn of the dead this is not.

In summation: could have been so frigg’n awesome. Later on in my life I would not mind funding a low budget indie adaption of this, in the vein of Alien. With the script completely reworked my yours truly, of course.

0 Comments
Tags: , , , , .

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Published at 5:19 pm on January 14, 2010 in Games and rants.

Trains? THEY SUCK ASS! It’s the most literal definition of “on rails” as possible, and it is mega un-fun. Phantom Hourglass was way better — and, of course, the Game Boy’s Link’s Awakening was the pinnacle of handheld Zelda games. It so deserves a remake.

2 Comments
Tags: , , , .

Christmas time. Bah humbug.

Published at 11:25 pm on December 19, 2009 in Deep Thought, Life, Random Stuff and rants.

Man, Christmas is just not fun as a 19 year old when you compare it to when you were younger. The magic is gone.

And now they’re telling me Santa Claus doesn’t exist? Fuck this, I’m building a time machine.

1 Comment
Tags: , , .

The synaptic touchpad driver utilities SUCK

Published at 5:35 pm on December 3, 2009 in Geeky Stuff and rants.

synclient randomly seems to reset itself to the wrong values, and syndaemon –t is pretty much useless, as the touchpad turn back on if you hold down a key for more then a second, or if you hit another key within that time. So if you want your touch pad to auto-turn off while typing, you’re limited to < 60 characters per minutes. Fuck that.

3 Comments
Tags: , , , , .

Firefox doesn’t suck — Ubuntu does

Published at 12:05 pm on November 24, 2009 in Deep Thought, Geeky Stuff, Linux and rants.

“Firefox is bloated.“
“Firefox sucks!“
“Firefox runs faster in Wine, ZOMG!“
“WTF, FX?”

Complaints like these are quite common. A number of people are convinced that Firefox runs like crap on Linux — so slow that even the Windows version running via Wine goes faster.

I, too, was one of those people. When I ran Ubuntu on my laptop, Firefox would take ~5 seconds to switch tabs. It would hang while scrolling. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire took about as long as Firefox did starting up.

It sucked.

I thought Chromium was a gift from the gods when I found it.

But then I switched to Sidux, and last night I gave Firefox another try. And guess what? It’s fast! Not quite as snappy as chromium, but pretty darn close!

The only conclusion I can come to is that Ubuntu is doing something terribly wrong. What, I haven’t a clue.

4 Comments
Tags: , , , , .

This is what I think about when I’m bored.

Published at 9:56 pm on July 9, 2009 in Deep Thought and rants.

So I was on the Grayhound, chill’n out, trying to sleep… and I my mind flashed on the thought that, hey, even if Obama is secretly a Muslim trying to take over the US — so what? There is no way the United States could be conquered my a Muslim nation that would try to enforce its laws. The people would rebel. America likes its booze, its porn, its drugs, its video games, its movies, its gambling, its skimpy bikinis. In short, everything the Sharia law would forbid.

It’s not the Muslim religion that the American people would be objecting to, really — it would be change. I think this applies to pretty much every first world country in existence; if the people are generally happy and well-off, they will object to anything that tries to restrict their freedoms.

Some people might be like, “but omg dude amerika is like a fascist killing machine” or “london is like a police state orweel was right lol.”

I call bullshit.

The patriot act, Guantanamo bay, whatever draconian laws are popping up elsewhere… they suck, yeah but in the long they mean nothing. Answer me: have you been affected directly by the patriot act? Are you currently an inmate of Guantanamo? Have the laws against bittorrent really preventing you from getting your free movies? I don’t think so.

Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I believe that everything is pretty peachy right now. Could it be better? Hell yes. Should you work toward a better future? Hell yes. Should you bitch about police states and muslims and 1984? Fuck no! Shut the fuck up already, dammit!

0 Comments
Tags: , , , , , .