Month: October 2003

Electronic Gaming Monthly has an interesting article, guaranteed to make most of us feel old:

Your average gamer these days is in his late 20s—young enough to still find new ways to destroy brain cells, old enough to worry about bills and 401ks, and wise enough to reminisce about the good ol’ days of videogames. But was the age of Pong, Atari, Mattel handheld football, and Donkey Kong really all that great, or are we just blinded by fuzzy, warm nostalgia?

That’s the question we asked—and answered—back in the November issue of EGM, in which we rounded up nine children of the PlayStation generation—ages 9 to 12—and forced them to play a variety of titles from the late’70s to the mid-‘80s. Now read what the little scamps had to say, plus check their comments on a bonus game—Super Mario Bros.—that got cut from the EGM article. If you grew up with these classics, prepare to feel very old.

Indeed. Check out the article and see how young ‘uns feel about such classics as Pong, Donkey Kong, Tetris, and more. Sigh… As the great Jedi Master Yoda said, “Look I so old to young eyes?" 

In a widely anticipated move, Apple has announced that it is releasing iTunes for Windows. This is pretty big news, as the popular online music store was previously only available to Apple users. I still think $1 a track is still a bit high to pay for music, but iTunes is one of the only online music services (possibly the only, actually) that has a clue. If I remember correctly, iTunes is the only service that lets you burn unlimited mix CDs with the music you download without charging you extra, a concept that should be common sense but which most of the music industry still doesn’t seem to get.

I think I may have to swallow my kneejerk, admittedly slightly irrational bias against Apple and try this out. As much as I love it, Kazaa has gotten harder and harder to deal with, although it still does very well with older songs. However, I should probably put my money where my mouth is, as I asserted some time ago that I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for high-quality downloadable music that did not infringe upon my rights to fair use. Reading the comments at MetaFilter and Slashdot makes for a mixed bag of rants and raves, but that’s not too unusual for something like this. I think I’ll give it a try, and I’ll be sure post a review if and when I do…

I was even taking a hard look at the new 40GB IPod MP3 player, which would fit my entire collection, with some room to spare even (for now :-). Besides having a cool way to listen to all of my music on the road, I would really like a way to back up all of my MP3s, as I’ve spent way too much time tagging all of the artist, album, and cover art info into the files; this would do very nicely. On the other hand, hard drives are pretty cheap these days, although they would obviously not satisfy my desire for music portability. I guess I need to add some more things to my ever-growing wish list…

Check out Queer Eye for the Straight P.I.M.P., a hilarious albeit very NSFW Flash video. Somehow I don’t think 50 Cent will approve…

In addition to my previous links on high speed photography, I recently came upon this cool gallery entitled High Speed and Photoinstrumentation Photographs. The photos of playing cards being split in two are particularly impressive…

I’m getting sick and tired of the lack of imagination in Hollywood. The recycling of old movies and ideas has almost never resulted in something worth watching, and this latest development is certain to be no exception. Apparently producers are working on a sequel to Sixteen Candles entitled 32 Candles which “update[s] the lives of Sam Baker, Farmer Ted, Long Duk Dong and the rest of the gang.” This is just sickening to me. Sixteen Candles is one of the iconic trilogy of John Hughes/Molly Ringwald movies in the ‘80s, the others of course being The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink, and I can’t imagine this “sequel” doing anything but tainting the memory of the original.

Update: Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I read this post that noticed something that I had previously overlooked: this project will not be on the silver screen but is instead intended as a “made-for-television special.” So not only will this suck, but it will suck even worse because it won’t even be good enough for a release in theaters. Lovely…

To the continued dismay of Cubs fans everywhere, the Marlins won the NLCS 9-6 in game seven last night. The Cubs lost three straight games to the Marlins, dashing hopes for their first World Series berth since 1945 and further perpetuating the idea of a curse afflicting the team. I imagine Steve Bartman is looking to get into the Witness Protection Program right about now, even if he never meant for any of this to happen…

grouphug confessions is a quite addictive form of voyeurism. No, not like that… :-p

Mozilla has outdone itself this week, with three new releases: Mozilla 1.5, Mozilla Firebird 0.7, and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3. With everybody eagerly downloading the new versions, servers have been a little slow this past day or so if you’ve been trying to join the crowd, unfortunately, but there some alternate sites and mirrors listed here.

All three releases are significant improvements over their predecessors (read the linked articles above for all of the details), but I am particularly pleased with Mozilla Thunderbird, which is the stand-alone e-maill application that evolved from Mozilla’s integrated Mail function. Earlier versions were a little rough around the edges, but 0.3 (despite its I keep on saying, if you haven’t ditched M$ Internet Explorer and tried out these applications yet, now is the time! You just don’t know what you’re missing…

Last night the Cubs lost game 6 of the NLCS to the Marlins after the Marlins pounded in an eight-run eighth inning, winning 8-3. The turning point in the game was when Chicago fan (!) Steve Bartman interfered with left-fielder Moises Alou’s attempt to field a foul fly at the wall. OK, so this wasn’t as cut and dry as Jeffrey Maier’s blatant interference in the 1996 ALCS when the Orioles were most egregiously robbed of Game 1, but it was pretty damn close.

As you’d probably expect, Bartman had to be escorted out of Wrigley Field by security amidst the pelting of beers and obscenities, although one fan was heard to say, “You could tell we’re better than Boston or he’d be dead already.” He has definitely turned into quite the pariah in Chicago, and I can’t say I disagree with long-overdue Chicago fans hoping for their first World Series bid since 1945. More than likely he wasn’t thinking of anything but a souvenir when he tried to grab the ball, but you need to have some kind of situational awareness when you’re at the ballpark, especially when you’re sitting at the wall like that and want your team to win. If he somehow makes it into Wrigley Field again I’m sure he won’t make the same mistake again…

Talk about your pretentious cocktails… The Wall Street Journal reports that some bars are offering mixed drinks with very unusual ingredients, including bits of food:

Blue cheese, cucumbers and pieces of ham are showing up in cocktail glasses. Chili peppers, avocados, figs, truffles, cream cheese, graham crackers, fish, gelatins, foams and flowers all are swimming in gin or cognac or champagne.

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Other bars garnish with everything from olives stuffed with prosciutto or caviar, to pickled okra, apple slices and ramps (wild leeks).

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a Bloody Mary made of lemon cake with horseradish sauce, celery sorbet and jellied vodka…

One explanation given is that with the recent increase in new types of flavored liquor and cordials, companies are trying to come up with exotic drinks featuring their new products, hiring “bar chefs” to incorporate food into drinks in some cases. Also, restaurants are serving “dessert cocktails” that are featured on both their bar and dessert menus in an attempt to increase profits. I guess I can see how some experimentation in the “mixology” world is a good thing, but I think taking it to this extreme is just too weird…