That’s probably my proudest gaming achievement of all time. I was twelve at the time. It’s up there with beating Zelda: Link to the Past in one sitting with a friend (we tag teamed the game); getting half of all the Final Fantasy VI characters up to level 99 (oh I once was a Squaresoft fanboy, long ago in the 16-bit days); one creditting Gradius (though it was, by far, not the hardest of shooters); and beating Metal Gear Solid on easy, medium, hard, and extreme within a two week period. I was a poor kid then and the game was borrowed from a friend, so I had to make due with the little time I had with it. As such, I got to know the game very well and that is why I thought that Metal Gear Awesome was awesome.
I have attentively watched every Olympiad since Seoul 88. Probably even Calgary 88, but I can’t remember those. I’d say “probably” to 84 were it not for the fact that I was four at the time and living in Olympic boycotted Poland at the time, so even if I were to watch then there wouldn’t have been much to see. Let’s just say “since Seoul 88″.
All through that time the winter version was always my favourite of the various Olympics. When the IOC adjusted the schedule in the early 90s, which resulted in the Albertville and Lillehammer Olympics being a mere two years apart, I was ecstatic. Two Winter Olympiads in two years? Fuck yeah!
There are reasons why I prefer them. Most simple of all, I live in a winter nation and I’ve always enjoyed the winter. I might not ski or skate myself, but the thought of cool winter air and snow covered mountains appeals to me. 30 degree (Celcius!) weather does not. Secondly, I find the winter events more compact and not as overwhelming. For all that flak events like Biathlon (which is great — there was an exciting finish today) and luge and curling might get, I wonder where those same people are when they are Sailing and jumping around on trampolines and playing ping pong and archery in the summer. For one dubious sport you can name in the winter, I can name two or three summer equivalents.
Most important of all, the soul of Canadian sports wears a hockey jersey. Everything rides on that. Since hockey is at the Olympics (and now with NHL players), the games are always going to get the collective attention of this nation. Sad as it is for the other athletes, hockey’s Team Canada arriving at the Games garners as much, if not more, attention than any medal on that day. Above everything else — including Donovan Bailey’s world record win — the one Olympic memory that stands out the most to me (and many others) is the Sweden vs Canada gold medal shootout in 1994. Twelve years ago.
That is why I like the winter games. I can understand if they have no relevance to people that live in places where a single snowflake is enough to declare a national disaster. I can (marginally) understand testosterone driven objections to the mere sight of figure skating. I can understand the overall disenchantment with the “Olympic movement”. And I can definitely understand why someone wouldn’t like the games if all they had was coverage by NBC! But I really can’t understand this idiotic Bryant Gumbel opinion:
So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won … So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin.
Sheer lunacy. Not even worth responding too. Ignoring the retarded race card that he throws into the argument, you’ll have to excuse me if I, as a Canadian, don’t give a fuck about minor league American college sports — regardless of what the background of the athletes is.
The only white I care about is the white of the snow. There’s not a lot of that going on this season in Toronto so, if anything, it’s nice to see some of that powder on the ground this year, even if only in Torino. And in our northern nations, it’s also nice to celebrate those sports that can only be played for four or five months of the year. It’s what we have and we enjoy it. It’s hard to swim when the lake is frozen.
The one frequently used consumer product that annoys me the most is razors. I don’t like shaving and I often accumulate a lot of stubble between shaves, but I hate the bullshit marketing even more. While watching the Leafs lose again on Hockey Night in Canada tonight, I saw the most rediculous commercial ever for Gillette’s new “Fusion” razor. The advert was building hype for the “coming song” Fusion by making it look like the second coming of a well-shaved Christ. It’s the ultimate advancement in human technology ever and forever!
The amount of hyperbole is crazy. I mean, seriously. A Huge day in the shaving world. HUGE!? Give me a break. There’s a good reason why the “bait and hook” is often known as the Razor and blades business model. What is sad is that there’s enough people being ensnared by its nets.
So I say “NO” to it. I might be a luddite when it comes to shaving — I use a freaking two blade Sensor XL and that’s more than enough — but at least when I cut myself I don’t do it with five blades at once.
Here’s the thing. In that crash, investigators found a copy of Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the XBox 360 on the front seat of a suspect’s car. Naturally, as Clickable Culture noted, the finger of blame was pointed at the game. The link was later downplayed by the investigators, as it should be since a videogame was not behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop them from considering using the title as evidence in the upcoming court cases. Nor did it stop the media from making the connection.
A lot of the criticism is that a street racing game like Need for Speed: Most Wanted inspires street racing. You can call NFS’s makers, EA, a lot of things, but you can never accuse them of being on the forefront of culture, being inspirations for it. EA regurgitates fads and trends and culture (both from within the game industry and outside of it) more often than a decadent Roman in a vomitorium.
Street race (rice) culture has been around for years. It was around before EA’s bandwagon games and before Juiced and SRS and Midnight Run. It was around even before the TV show Fastlane and the movie The Fast and the Furious. So when you consider that timeline, which is more likely: a video game that came out months ago inspires, out of the blue, some moron to race his parents’ Mercedes down a city street; or, some moron kid that thinks street racing and rice culture is cool and was likely to speed anyway would be interested in a game that reflects his preconceived interests? Correlation is not causation.
I would bet that amongst football players, you’ll find a higher percentage of EA Madden players than you would amongst non-football players. That, however, does not mean that Madden caused them to play football. It reinforces their interests and it can further them (what I know about football plays I learned from NFL Blitz), but a single videogame isn’t going to turn anyone.
Prosecute the driver, not the passenger.
Thankfully, Toronto police can make the distinction between a game and reality.
“A game is a game,” Toronto Police’s Det. Paul Lobsinger told CTV Toronto. “And when you get behind the wheel of a car it’s not a game anymore. And when something tragic happens in a huge crash with a lot of smoke, there is no reset button. You can’t start over with a new car and a new life.”
There’s not much to say. Same shit, different smell. There was change in the air, and it came. Not as resolutely as some might have predicted, since the Conservatives have captured a very tenuous minority, but still a shift in the Canadian political landscape. Martin’s stepping down from Liberal leadership certainly adds to that, and it contributes to what will be a very interesting year in politics. One with plenty of positioning and politicking and strategy, from all the major parties. There’s a lot at play with how the votes turned out and how the parties will deal with that (the possibility of a coalition hasn’t even been ruled out yet), but I’ll leave analysis to the experts.
Minorities have a half-life of about 18 months, give or take a few, so for all we know we might be going back to the polls in 2007. In the meantime, who knows? At least Bulte wasn’t elected, so I did my part.
That said, I’m going to leave a joke I posted elsewhere that I made up and is kind of lame: Harper is going to feel really, really uncomfortable since he’s going to have to deal with a visible minority. harhar. GET IT? HE DOESN’T LIKE IMMIGRANTS AND HE ONLY GOT 124 SEATS! CLEVER.
Today is the federal election. The second in two years, following the last government’s short and ineffectual minority. The bad news is that, save for the possibility of some drastic last minute vote swings (not unfounded, it happened last time,) our politics are guaranteed to swing hard to the right. Not good. On the plus side, unless there’s some drastic last minute momentum, we are going into yet another minority. That should make it a lot more difficult for them to try to pass any unfavourable social pullbacks or anything drastic. And if they do try to push that agenda, something they have downplayed on the campaign trail, hopefully the public will remember it and will force them out early. Again.
Either way, it doesn’t look too good for the near future. Having the Conservatives seize the most seats would mean that politics would be dictated from a western, prairie point of view. That’s something that Ontario would not like. It would be akin to New England being under the shadow of Southern/Texan politicians… and we know how that is working out.
This time I’m voting for NDP. I don’t like the NDP much, especially their very strong union politics (even if the head of the Canadian Auto Workers is backing the Liberals), but for my riding it is the best choice. It is the first time I’ve been in a riding in which the choice of MP has felt so important to me since, for the first time, issues that Icare about are on the forefront in a big way. It has engaged me more than any previous federal election ever did (in my eligible life span). Especially since, for the first time in that period, there seems to be a genuine shift in politics on the horizon, whether for good or for bad.
Thus, I am voting for the issues that matter to me and that means ensuring that Bulte does not get re-elected. It might not stop the problem of copyright reform for good, I’m sure others will take her position and CIRA will try to grease their balls too, but at least it will slow it down. For now. I was going to vote Green Party, as I did last election, but stopping her, for now, is the bigger priority.
Oddly enough, this means that in my seven years of voter eligibility this will be, provincially and federally, the fourth different party that I have voted for. Maybe third. I can’t remember if I ever did vote for the Liberals. They have been forgettable.
Yesterday afternoon, one of her cronies canvassers came to my door. This is the first time someone from the Liberals came to my door; the NDP has stopped by twice already in the last week (I ignored them the second time they knocked on my door). Perhaps there’s less need to rush if you’re incumbent.
Anyway, the guy knocks on my door, I open it, I see the Liberal pamphlets and paraphernalia, and before he says a single thing, I preempt with “No thanks, I’m not going to be voting for her.”
“Will you at least take some reading material to look at?” He extends the propaganda to me.
“No, I’ve done enough reading about her copyright supports.”
“Oh,” he pulled the pamphlet back towards himself, “you like to download music?”
“No.” I was taken aback by his bluntness. “No, no. That’s oversimplifying the issues.” He didn’t care anymore. He was already picking up his gear and eyeing the next door.
I was in my robe and in the middle of doing something, so I didn’t press the issue. His body language showed that he didn’t want anything to do with the subject anyway. The door shut. She wasn’t going to get my vote before this, so this mere distraction changed nothing, but it showed to me what her campaign’s stance on copyright reforms was. Oversimplified.
I have had a long standing feud with id3 tags. They made an inconsistent mess of my music files and I called them stupid dummies. I ranted about them two years ago.
Having some spare time this weekend, I decided to clean up various file dumps on my computer. Regroup years of photos, move images and videos, delete useless installation files (I don’t need installers for ten different versions of Firefox!) and downloaded demos and, most daunting, clean up the mess that is my music library. Everything up to the music library was easy. Delete, move, unzip, new folder, done. There was a lot of garbage there (holy hell, how do I accrue all of this shit? I think I moved around 20gigs and deleted 20 more), but it’s all clean now. Except for the music library.
I can’t say how much Tag and Rename has changed since I dismissed it two years ago, so it might be a far better product than I remember it to be. I was going to try it, but I figured it was worth a shot to try the freeware Mp3 Tag Tools. I’m glad that I did. I love it. It batch renames files based on their id3 tags and batch retags files based on their file names. It is simple to use and it does what it’s advertised to do with ease.
The last update for Mp3 Tag Tools came two years ago. It doesn’t matter. It’s stable and feature complete. It does everything I need it to. So the lingering question is that if the final release came two months before my rant, why did it take so long for me to discover it? If I knew of it then I wouldn’t have been in this id3+filename mess to begin with.
With this tool at my disposal, I hope that I will never fall into that mess again.
A woman’s torso was found less than a block from my building. Yes, just the torso. It happened two weeks ago but today was the first time I heard of it.
I discovered this little news bit when two police officers solicited in my building. Two officers came to my door and told me what happened, they said that they’re looking for information and asked if they may take a quick look inside my apartment.
I agreed.
They asked for my id. I gave it to them. They asked for consent. I signed their form. Then they asked for my phone number. I said I’d rather not give it. He looked at me with suspicion but didn’t press the issue. He had no right to anyway. I’m a bit anal about giving personal information away (most people should be) and apart from confirming which apartment they checked, I wasn’t about to give them more.
The two cops looked around briefly. One of them checked my freezer, which I found odd until I discovered — later — that a torso had been found and that the head remained unaccounted for. A macabre thought.
When they came in I was watching an old rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I was already a little self-concious of my geekdom. Then one of the cops noticed my DVD towers.
“That’s a lot of games you have there. He perused through the many titles looking for something, “do you have the best one? An NHL game?”
“Yeah, I have an older one.”
He glanced at my console set-up and then asked me “which is best, the Xbox or Playstation?”
I gave him the non-aligned neutral answer. “Depends on what kind of games you like.”
He said “sports” so I said “Xbox”. He nodded at me, nodded at his partner, thanked me and left.
I don’t believe it will crash. I think it will slump (like it already has in Japan) and it might be a hard slump, but I don’t think it will crash. There might be a shift of interests and focuses — hopefully towards the quality products rather than the industry rehashes — but no crash. I might be arguing semantics but I think it’s a distinction worth making. Gaming is too ingrained in our generation and the one to come to go away. After all, gaming now spans from the Star Trek watching geek to the beat cop and everyone inbetween. It’d be really hard to disenchant everyone.
Though maybe I don’t give the games industry enough credit. Pun intended.
Speaking of appalling songs: there’s a “grassroots” campaign to Help Teach American Youth That “Bush Was Right!”. They wish to do that by getting a shitty song from the “Right Brothers” on MTV’s TRL. If you aren’t a fan of the Right Brothers (you should be!) the I suggest hitting their site and checking out their videos, like this quality number of Tolerate This. It’s “kicking”! Take that you punk listening non-voting fourteen year old bastards!
It’s hilariously misguided, just like the “LIES” they oust (there are clear, uncontested, proven links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda?!?)
If they DON’T – then we’ll hit the media in a BIG way, showing how MTV plays left-wing videos while CENSORING conservative videos!
I think we’re all in agreement that MTV plays a lot of shit, but if they think that this “song” is worthy of being played, regardless of politics, then I can see why they would believe some of these LIES.
Guys. Seriously. We’re starting to get a little worried about you down there. Sincerely, your northern neighbours.
The month of futility is upon us. I would like to participate in the novel writing. I really would but I know I won’t manage it. Perhaps it would be best if I just quit before it starts. I’d have more time to finish Castlevania DS and Shadow of the Colossus.
In a month, the Dr. Mario / Panel De Pon (locally known as Tetris Attack) bundle that greeted the Japanese GameBoy Micro launch will get a domestic release, as Dr. Mario and Puzzle League. Panel de Pon. Tetris Attack. Puzzle League. Whatever it’s called, it’s finally (officially) available in portable form. It will be a good pickup that might get lost in all the 360s and Mario Karts and gun shoot kill games of the season.
Just wish that they bundled something other than Dr. Mario with it, which has been released two hundred million billion times already.
It wasn’t a complete loss, though. I won my first match against some cute asian woman. It’s just that each round requires two wins to advance, and it was during the second match that I was defeated, losing to some guy that got an automatic bye because of an absentee. Lost in three sets. It was close, but obviously not good enough. With the bye, he was better and, since I did not see him play, I didn’t have a sense for his tactics. Excuses, yes, but valid points.
For competing (and for signing up), all registrants received four RPS bucks. Basically, the idea was that you’d go around the floor challenging people to RPS and betting the bucks on it. The person with the most at the end of the day would win a thousand dollar prize.
So, I started with four. Whenever I challenged someone, I would challenge them to one round only, which deviates from the official three round rules. This was street RPS — unsanctioned by the referees — so anything was game. The one round format (best two out of three throws) was perfect for me because I’m stronger rushing out of the gates than I am at finishing someone off. With the early game, I am hard to predict and fast with the throws. It works to my advantage.
Thanks to an infusion of a five buck bill into my money cache thanks to my past RPS allegiances, I began to work it well. Challenge, win. Challenge, win. Double or nothing? Win! Within a short time, I was up to 81 RPS bucks. Then I challenged Team BJ.
That’s Team Blue Jays, you pervs.
I was all cocky with my wad of cash — a rather large wad for a solo, teamless competitor (I had no team-mates to pool money with) — and challenged them to a thirty buck match. They wanted a best of three match. I hesitated, but agreed. After a hard, long battle, I lost.
My ego then got the best of me. I wanted my money back so I challenged them again. This time for fifty. It was close, but I lost again. After all that work and all those battles, I was down to one dollar. I donated it to their cause with the hopes that my lost money would at least end up with a winner. That is what I get for being too cocky and for letting my guard down by going for a three rounder. Next year will be different.
After the loss I managed to acquire a few more bucks, but my success with those just wasn’t anywhere near as good. However, I then encountered Team Easy, who were reeling it in, and got them to challenge Team BJ. Figured it’d be interesting to get these big teams to fight each other. The stakes were high, in excess of a hundred, so I volunteered my past experience as an official RPS Championship referee to the battle. I called some fierce competitions in my life, but never any like these. For two long, super competitive matches, I stood as the voice of judgement between the two heavy-weights. It was my sole consolation for losing so early this year.
Team Easy was the victor and, by proxy, they had my money. I wished them luck with the competition and, head shamed by defeat, I left the event.
Last night I discovered that they didn’t win the thousand dollar prize. All my hard earned money was squandered. Team Norway, which featured the two youngest competitors (something that, for a fact, helped them amass large amounts of “donated” RPS bucks), took it.
However, the main prize of the event — the World Championship — went to a man that I competed against: Andrew Bergel of Team BJ. Congratulations. Enjoy it while you can, cause next year I’m gunning for the title.
I was watching the trailer for Match Point because it was pointed out elsewhere and because it has Scarlett Johansson. It was pointed out in the context of “watch this trailer and guess who the director is” (if you didn’t know ahead of time.) I suggest you do the same. It’s a funny game.
It gets a bonus point for using Koop music in the trailer, though.
One of the things keeping me away from the computer and the internets lately has been NHL Centre Ice. I ordered it just before the start of the season (not knowing that there was a free preview for the first few weeks! ARG), and since then I’ve watched more hockey than throughout all of last year. Note the sarcasm.
Regardless of the lockout, I have watched a hell of a lot of hockey this season. I’d be just about getting sick of it now were the game not so drastically improved. I still hate the shootout — always had, since Lillehammer, always will — but everything else has been working out great. The removal of the red line along with the larger offensive zones, combined with less clutching and interference, opens up the game to a degree not seen since the early 90s. The free-wheeling era marked by the sudden influx of European players (thanks in part to the Soviet collapse) that ended with the sudden influx of European defensive strategies around 94-95. The emergence of a number of great goaltenders in that period (Brodeur, Hasek) didn’t help the offensive game much either.
It’s cyclical, though, and this year sees a lot of emerging and up and coming offensive players. With the new rules and an emphasis on a more open game, this should be a good omen for the NHL. For, maybe, five years. Then it’ll slow down again.
Anyway, some observations from watching Centre Ice.
You can tell how big of a hockey market a place is by the commercials its local broadcaster shows. Lot of cars and beers? Big market. Lot of car dealers and beer distributors? Small market.
Man, it is amazing how many attorney/legal help commercials are shown in the US. Especially in the Southern areas. I was watching a game broadcast from the Phoenix region, and like every third commercial was for a law firm. Wow. That’s mind-blowing.
Today’s Calgary+Phoenix game was a good one. Despite the lack of wins, I think Gretzky’s coaching debut has been going well thus far — his team plays hard and competes every time.
Despite being a joke for years, the Rangers are a good, *gasp* hard-working team again. One that is fun to watch. They’re not the greatest team in the league, but they have a lot of upside. I said this just before the start of the season (after seeing a preseason game), but I’ll say it again. I like the Rangers. It’s shocking after all the ridicule, but there you have it.
Nashville has been off to a great, great start. There’s a good reason why I drafted their goalie, Tomas Vocoun, in the first round in the Sportsfilter hockey pool, and that reason was that I expected the team to do well. Yes. Eat that McGuire. Now if only my ProLine prognostications were a little more… accurate.
Despite not having won a single game, the Pittsburgh Penguins are a fun, fun team to watch. They have the fire-power to take on any team (and Crosby has been living up to the hype so far), but they lack the finish to seal the deal. The biggest proof of this was their game against Philadelphia. They tied the game 5-5 after trailing 5-1 (!), their goalie made an amazing game saving stop at the end of regulation to keep it tied, and then they get two penalties and lose it, short handed, in overtime. No finish.
Ottawa is tearing it up, but after two meetings, they have not proven that they can beat the Leafs at hockey. They can beat them at arbitrary shootouts, but not at hockey. If they meet in the playoffs (again), they won’t have the luxury of a shootout to settle it. hah!
About
This is the weblog of Mike Nowak, a freelance web nerd and digital nomad. I write mostly about games, music, film and tv, the web, and anything else I find of interest. This weblog has existed in some form or another since 1999.
