A Heartwarming Tale of Incredible Brilliance

The great Ubuntu experiment is over. I used it for several months. In the end, my familiarity with Windows killed Ubuntu.

I was having some problems with Ubuntu freezing here and there. I knew I could probably fix it, but I just didn't feel like ferreting through message boards begging smug linux nerds to spell out arcane lines of text for me to type into a terminal (sudo grub -a apt-get ttir, etc.).

I knew in the time it would take me to figure out the Ubuntu problem I could just install XP.

So I installed XP. And it works really really really well.

I know my many readers are wondering when I will again experiment with Ubuntu. It's a good question and it's one I am prepared to answer. The answer is 8 to 14 months.

Sadly, the fact that twitter is just far less work than writing a long journal entry will likely mean that I will use it more.

My wife has become a zen master of the Tivo. She has figured everything out so we can basically sit down at any time and watch something good. She's especially good at getting movies.

We watched The Notebook last night. I'd never seen it before. I like this review quote from RT:

"One gets the sense that director Nick Cassevetes and writer Jan Sardi would spray the audience with teargas if they could."

Pretty accurate. I was definitely choked up by the time the credits rolled. I can't see how anyone could be emotionally unaffected by this movie.

I kinda liked it, actually.

This is a blog entry written by the CEO of Stardock, who has launched a game service competitor to Steam. He really drove the point home for me when he speaks of Microsoft and EA:

Do you really want Steam to be your only option? Are you sure?

He doesn't leave room for different game services that rely on a single delivery/drm/communication standard but compete against eachother for fulfillment. I think that would be the happy middle ground.

Update: By the way, I really want to try Sins of a Solar Empire, Stardock's A-list title. IGN called it their game of the year.

My Steam profile reports 26.7 hours of gaming over the last 2 weeks. Oops - did I really spend that much time shooting zombies (Left 4 Dead) and shooting everyone in general (Grand Theft Auto 4)? In my defense, A has spent the last 2 weeks almost exclusively working on report cards so I've had a lot of "me time".

Seriously, I couldn't get through it. This offends on multiple levels.

I made this:

After spending the better part of Sunday (literally) updating my computer and fixing crashes, GTA 4 finally ran perfectly.

I played from about 10:30 last night until 1 in the morning or so. All I can say is "holy crap". Rockstar has done it again. I was a bit concerned about whether or not GTA 4 would grab me, as the two previous releases (Vice City and San Andreas) were good but didn't inspire awe like GTA 3.

I spent the first 2 hours just driving and walking around looking at the environment and drinking in the details. Just awesome. I may have punched a guy sitting on a bench, which unfortunately created a situation that escalated out of control very quickly. There were a few other incidences that were, regrettably, partially or fully my fault.

Seriously though, I am amazed. The developers improved almost every aspect of the game. The environments look and feel more real. Everything is more detailed. The car physics are hugely improved (although harder). I have never played a game that created more of sense of immersion. Only certain parts of Half Life 2 and it's sequels come close.

Can't wait to get more into it. I've only played the first 2 missions but so far that part of the game looks great too.

I am officially retiring Far Cry 2: Malaria Adventures.

I got GTA 4 last night... and by that I mean I bought it on Steam and it downloaded all night long. So, I thought it would be nice to give it a try this morning. Little did I know I'd have to sign up for 18 different "Rockstar Social Club" and "Windows Live Gamer" accounts, link these accounts, install other software, etc., etc. 40 minutes after clicking on the "launch" button, I'm still buggering around. There'd better be some good shootin' in here once I get in.

Update: 20 minutes later, still nowhere close to actually getting into the game. Now I am being forced to install Service Pack 3.

It may not seem like much, but I'm seeing more and more of this. I think Obama is the real deal.

Update for non-web-nerds: Bush's team kept search engines out of 2400 areas on the whitehouse website. Obama came in today and reduced that to 2 non-content areas.

I will continue to play Left 4 Dead here and there, but the time has come to get something new (for the PC). I think I've narrowed it down to the following:

Grand Theft Auto 4
Fallout 3
Crysis & Crysis Warhead (they sell both in a package)
Prince of Persia (the newest one)
Assassin's Creed

Of course, I will also take recommendations. But, this is my shortlist right now. What should I get?

Various numbnuts are designing a next iteration of the USB standard, called USB 3. They are improving USB 2.0 in almost every way, except FOR THE MOST OBVIOUS AND SINGLE LARGEST PROBLEM WITH USB. It's the plug, damn it! It's a perfect rectangle. So when you are hunched way over, trying to stick a USB plug into a dark corner of your computer, YOU CAN'T TELL WHICH WAY THE PLUG IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Stupid stupid stupid. Fix that and then I'll be excited.

In general, I think video or sound that starts playing on a website without the user's consent is an abuse of the Internet and a slap in the face of the visitor. So, I don't want you to think I am condoning Futureshop's design choices. However, load up the Futureshop website and enter "are you gay?" and "how old are you?" into the "your question here" box underneath the obnoxious "ask an expert" box in the upper left. It's funny.

Wow. Microsoft has finally admitted, albeit indirectly, that Vista sucks. Just look at the timeline of releases.

XP and the Vista beta were released 5 years apart. Vista and Windows 7 beta were released less than a year apart.

While I don't think Vista is as bad as many say, I'm definitely one of those who going to hold on to XP until I see that 7 is a viable upgrade.

Of course, I only use Windows at work and on my gaming box at home, so none of this is of much consequence to me. Did that last sentence make me sound like one of those assholes who types "M$" instead of "MS"? Sorry. I actually have a fond spot in my heart for XP. We've spent a lot of time together and we get along pretty well most of the time.

Damn, I can't find that hilarious PennyArcade strip where they make fun of people who type M$.

I remember when Steam launched. I remember thinking to myself "I'll never use that - I'll always want a CD/DVD and box". Ha!

Nowadays, it is a huge disincentive for me to purchase if a game ISN'T offered on Steam. I don't want all kinds of out-of-date CDs/DVDs lying around, collecting dust. I love having all my software launchable from a single menu and all updating by itself. I like not having to worry about patches. I like not having to drive to the store.

...except this time, there's no rant!

Yes, I have performed my bi-yearly Ubuntu install and actually got everything working. It's a good thing I got it working too, since I accidentally blew away my XP partition during the install.

Anyways, I hit the same old problem immediately - wireless drivers - and decided I would give it exactly one minute of my time before giving up. Luckily for Ubuntu, I found the simple fix on my first google hit and I was online.

Sound and power management (hibernation, etc.) also worked immediately this time around.

I then proceeded to install DVD and Divx/H.264 playback support via VLC, upgraded my OpenOffice to 3.0, customized Firefox, installed a GMail notifier and IM client, and got my work email hooked up via IMAP in Thunderbird.

CD/DVD burning worked out of the box. As did the VNC and Remote Desktop software. I can stream movies/music from my Mac right into Ubuntu. The included Bittorrent client works like a charm.

The software installation/upgrading process is easy-as-pie with the built-in graphical package manager.

The windowing system is much more advanced than XP and rivals OS X in it's efficiency and eye-candy. The coolest part is that I actually got this fully working on my 5 year old *first generation intel integrated extreme graphics* (translation: 8 megs of teh suck). Seriously, I can do almost everything in that video and it was all included in the default Ubuntu install.

So far, I'm quite impressed. I'll use it for a month and then write a follow-up review.

It's pretty rare that I get to give my thoughts on a movie before Rottentomatoes has a single review posted. Luckily, my brother scored a couple of sneak preview passes and I was able to see it last night.

First of all, casting Tom Cruise as a German is like casting this guy as an American. Cruise is just so flamingly American. Maybe it's Top Gun's fault. That being said, he does a fine job. He's good at playing "intense" and "determined" and that obviously works here. For authenticity's sake alone, I would have rather seen a talented German actor like Ulrich Mühe play the lead and have the film entirely in German with English subtitles. Obviously, though, that's a box-office killer.

Despite being a big studio movie with a famous lead, Valkyrie comes off relatively understated. There are no sweeping flyovers of one of Hitler's famous Berlin rallies. We never see Panzers rolling down the Champs-Élysées. It's mostly a story of conflicted men, struggling to summon the courage to break free from their Nazi-imposed brainwashing. The problem is, in Cruise's case we never get to see much deeper than the odd furrowed brow. When the movie starts, he has already made up his mind to assassinate Hitler. He briefly and dispassionately states his reasons at the start but we never see or hear much else. I suppose that isn't much of a problem as we witness this struggle in many other characters. The best scenes involve the resistance debating what actions they should take. The tension coming from the incredibly high stakes of what they are discussing comes through the screen very well.

Visually, the movie is beautiful. Amazing reproductions of the opulent Nazi-era homes and government buildings are everywhere and are used to drive home the utter domination of the Nazi rule. Spectacle was a big part of Hitler's rule and uniforms and flags and other decorations are used effectively to show this. And yes, the eyepatch works.

Overall, engaging and definitely worth at least a rental. I give it a 7.

Yet I keep going back. Anyways, look at this headline:

Foreclosures dip - but hold the applause

This makes my blood boil. Half the problem with this financial crisis we're in has to do purely with confidence - how people feel. CNN and the other news networks love their big front page headlines reading "Market Plunges Again" or "Dire Housing Results" or whatever. But god forbid some good news... that certainly doesn't sell ad space. Better temper that shit with some doom and gloom so nobody gets too positive.