the-inbetween.com

Toronto to Montreal

Jets Go is offering a deal that will get you from Toronto to Montreal (or vice versa) for one dollar. The only catch is that you have to book before the end of the month and you can only fly between May 10th and May 15th. Other than that, one dollar to Montreal.

Though if you were to look at your calendar, you would notice that that period spans Monday to Saturday -- so no weekend getaways. In fact, no weekend time at all as Saturday is out as all the (but one, at this moment) return flights for that day are booked solid. Still, if you can get some spare time during the week, it's a really good deal. It'd be nice to just fly in to Montreal for lunch and fly back for dinner. What a snobby rich person thing to do that'd be.

Midway Arcade Treasures II

Midway recently announced the full list of games for its second Arcade Treasures, and it's... subpar. Half the games I've barely heard of ("Timber"?), three are Mortal Kombats (have been ported and made available like crazy already), and others are... meh ("Primal Rage"). Now, you can't really blame the current Midway for this crop of selections as, thinking back, there wasn't much else to pick.

Well, excluding the then-popular NBA Jam.

If anything, this collection emphasizes the different periods in the life of Midway. Apart from the popularity of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat, these games come from an era of decline. And while there were some decent titles to come out in the mid and late 90s (Area 51 wasn't amazing, Cruisn' USA was a fun coin waster, and NFL Blitz was a great arcade game, even for those that don't like Football), they were mostly surrounded by junk. A lot of junk. Especially on the console side.

Even if Arcade Treasures II records amazing sales, it should be the last of the series. Otherwise, Midway Arcade Treasures III might become the worst game compilation ever.

Searching for Ottawa Fans

This explains it all. A Google search for Ottawa fan yields an interesting result. Now I understand.

Speaking of search engines, the new Amazon-powered Google-like one seems fairly decent. Haven't used it too much, and it fails the "Mike Nowak ego search" test, but there's strong potential there. It's good to have an alternative again; the world was being viewed through Google-coloured glasses for far too long. Well, far too long by internet standards.

At least it's consistent with Google on the Ottawa Fan query.

LJ Images Revived

Seems like the original LJ Images has been overloaded (the link spread like wildfire), so here are two replacements: perurb and n0wak (mine. Please don't kill my server too.)

One of the problems with posting the original link at a place I can not mention (first rule) is that my account there is old and I'm using a stupid username. So when that username gets referenced in thanks on other sites (which, obviously, also can't mention the source -- first rule and all), I cringe. "singularity." ugh.

A Case of the (Easter) Mondays

The LiveJournal Images page is an endless source of amusement. Apart from the random cat pictures and online quiz results and, ugh, occasional goatse-esque imagery, there's a large cache of personal photos. Personal teenaged emo-kid photos. It's amusing to see just how cliched they make themselves out to be. The same old angsty, cheap webcam, half-a-face looking down shots over and over and over again. These kids are parodies of themselves.

Eh, I'm amused. I'm also cruel.

For the first time in my life I did not sleep in on Easter Monday. Schools were out. Government workers had the day off. The highways were smooth. And there I was, sitting in a cubicle at 9 in the morning. I was so tired. So so tired. It was going to be the lousiest day of the year, by far... but then this happened:

Booyah!

0MFGLMA0 NEW D0MAIN!!

Eggs and Spam, FFXI style

There is an Easter event going on in the world of Final Fantasy XI. A moogle has appeared in the town squares giving away lettered eggs once a (virtual) day (one hour). The right combination of these eggs (based on your characters name), when traded back to the moogle, will award you with a rare non-transferable item. This has created an egg market, so to speak.

One aspect of this is the giant mobs of people around the moogle. It gets so crowded there, my latency literally pentuples while walking through the main square.

The other result of this market is: SPAM. There are many people hawking their eggs, most of them quietly through their bazaars -- but a very vocal, attention seeking minority shouts its latest deals. Multiple times. Over and over. While the "eggstravaganza" is in effect, the signal to noise ratio gets out of control and any communication in the main square is nearly impossible to follow.

After trying to resolve my own email spam issues this week*, I go to Vana'Diel only to be greeted with the same old shit. sigh. The inevitable conclusion is: so long as there is a market and there are buyers, spam will exist. Period. It will take on many forms and levels of annoyance, but it will always be there. Real or virtual, it doesn't matter. Annoying but true.

* I have abandoned my old email address(es) and created a new one. The basic idea is that email spam is specifically targeted and so long as the spammers don't know that you exist -- by having your email on file -- they can't send junk to you. So I have configured all my old aliases to redirect to a new junk mail account, saving all the real stuff for my new primary account. So far it's worked. I still have to check the junk every so often to make sure I don't miss something important (ie. something that I have forgotten to change my contact email for), but apart from that... I'm free!

Style Change and Camouflage

I can't help it. I always fall back on a grey and blue combination. I find shades of grey to be easier on the eyes than full on blacks and whites. Maybe it's because of my high contrast laptop monitor -- I might need to tweak levels a bit once I check it out on a CRT -- but this is it for now. As for the style: eh, maybe it's a bit overdone. Maybe a bit tired. But it's something new for me, so it was worth trying out.

The best part of it? It's all css changes -- didn't touch the underlying structure at all. And, of course, the style sheet can still be changed by hitting "config" (or "alt+c").

New Metal Gear Solid 3 gameplay footage [large file]

Footage showcasing the new camouflage meter and stealth moves. The camouflage meter seems like a variation to SC's light/dark meter, but with extra consideration for your surroundings and what camouflage (both clothing and facial paint) you are wearing. Seems weird that you can switch between different camouflage outfits on the fly, but it's not like the Metal Gear Solid series hasn't been weird before.

The graphics don't look quite as dynamic as Splinter Cell's, but the environments feel a lot more alive and a lot more open. I haven't played Pandora Tomorrow, so all my comparisons are to the original game. If any of that has been fixed in the sequel then it's news to me.

Seven of Eight

Four months into the new year, resolution number seven of eight is complete:

Got SEGA Rally Championship and Fighting Vipers along with it. Vipers is an interesting fighter, a good fighter, but one that hasn't aged with grace. SEGA Rally is good clean arcade fun with little substance, no comparison to modern sims. Now I just need to acquire NiGHTS...

The other completed resolution is number one. No progress whatsoever has been made on the other six. Oh well.

Stupid, stupid validation

So I'm trying to register a domain name, but failing thanks to this error:

Stupid, stupid American-centric registration system. It allows me to pick Canada, it has a list of provinces, but it can't seem to understand that maybe the whole world doesn't use zip codes. So I can't register because it won't let me progress with my perfectly valid postal code. Stupid.

NHL Playoff time! My lousy picks.

Post-FlashintheCan

Holy fuck I'm spent. FitC 2004 was a good show. Didn't get to all that many presentations (a physical impossibility, as there were often five running at the same time), and some of the ones I wanted to check out were over-booked (Josh Davis being one, expectedly. Though I've already seen him speak before, so no major loss), but despite that, it was worth the price of admission. *cough*

The highlights of the show include WeFail's humorous showing, and getting to briefly chat with Andries Odendaal, formerly of Wireframe and creator of Whizzball (amongst others).

Now I sleep. The long weekend just isn't coming fast enough.

Hello April

There's been a constant gray ceiling over the city for the last week. Lots of rain, lots of moisture, very little sunlight. I like it. Most don't. So, for these darker days, here's an end of March contemplation: April precipitation brings May pollination.

In my management system there's a queue of things to write or comment about. Those will have to wait as I'll be at FlashintheCan this weekend. You know, it's funny... in the booklet and on my pass my name is mentioned three times. It's spelled differently every time. sigh. That's what I get for being... obscure.

Anyone using Flickr? Orkut?

Day Nothing

What? You were expecting something more than a five day work week? Perhaps some Contra, Metal Gear, Castlevania, or, hell, even Lethal Enforcers love? Well, they still get that. The admiration those games receive is expected, even though maybe not Enforcers). So, really, there's nothing that can be said about them that hasn't already been said already.

Besides, my free time is being devoured by my entry into the MPORPG world with Final Fantasy XI. That's Massively Packaged Online Role Playing Games.

Massively Packaged Online Role Playing Game

PlayOnline seems like a decent enough service -- lots of messaging options and so forth -- but the interface could use some work. It feels as though they put some decent effort into it, but somehow missed the obvious problems, like inconsistent tabbing and text-field selections. Small but very irksome things.

The actual game's interface is good enough for a controller, though. Everything outside of messaging can be easily accomplished with it, and while certain actions might be slower to do than with a keyboard, the fact that you can just recline, controller in hand, is benefit enough. That's something that can't be done with a keyboard and mouse combo. Not on a couch. At least, not without getting serious cramps.

The gameplay is as expected. Far, far slower and more tedious than the single player Fantasies. That's a given as these games are meant to be time sinks, but it is quite the adjustment. You put in five hours into the game and you essentially move up from punching random rabbits to hitting them with sticks. Even then, though, you have to be extremely careful -- because after playing the game for five hours, it's rather humbling to be slain by a hare or a sheep.

The rabbit that I almost drove over last week wasn't quite so fierce.

There are plenty of options, though, and a high degree of freedom to do what you want so long as you are willing to put in the time. And that's exactly what games like this are meant to be like. The more time the developers make you spend, the more jewellery and gold the developers get.

Anyway, if anyone cares, my Playonline handle is n0wak (with a zero.) My current character, "Gefion" (at the moment a Level 10 Mithran Thief), can be found on server Fenrir.