All posts by dick
The Summer of Grogan
I’m done with college. For now and ever more. So, as a projects blog, I’ll give you now a rundown of my situation and what I’ve got on my plate, or at least planned.
The Fucking Champs, Philadelphia 2005
A full set of mp3s (pretty damn good quality for a bootleg, I have to admit) of this show can now be found here. It didn’t seem like they played for 52 minutes. Time must have flew since I was enjoying it that much.
A crappy recording of the Washington DC show the day before can also be found here.
The consensus on the internet about The Fucking Champs is that no one can really make up their mind about The Fucking Champs . Just about every net reviewer seems to wonder if they’re a joke, as if all their guitar virtuousity could only be accompanied with tongues planted firmly against cheeks. And, everyone has some wacked out visualization of them, how they’re a mix of (insert really good riff guitarist here), (insert something metal-ish here) and (wildcard here: some dead composer, a video game or maybe a nothern European country). To me, The Fucking Champs fall somewhere between Thin Lizzy, Deadly Towers, the Baroque period and my own guitar awkwardness.
But one thing is certain: they’re not cool.
The Tender Crisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch
OK, I’m would have to update my list for grue’s favorite songs post. I was cursed this morning by not being able to get Burger King‘s newest jingle out of my head for a couple hours.
Now my misery seeks company.
This infectious song is actually a remake of an old hobo bluegrass tune called Big Rock Candy Mountain that depicts a dream life for a hobo (ever-empty boxcars, cigarettes that grow on trees , etc.). BK’s version has Hootie, Brooke Burke, the Dallas Cheerleading squad and, probably, countless pornstars with which I’m not particularly familiar.
My goal is to get everyone around me to not help but hum/whistle/sing it at one point, showing that they’ve also got this thing on auto-play in their head.
Click here for the song, the lyrics and some insightful notes.
I’m a Gesture Junkie
So today I watched Minority Report that bear lent to me and noticed, apart from that Philip K. Dick liked to write stories about future prediction, the computer interface Tom Cruise used was reminicient of what Keanu Reeves used in Johnny Mnenomic, only without the goggles. That is, not only did they use their hands as if they were a computer mouse, but gestures were added that performed functions you’d normally find in some hotkey or drop-down menu list. I really think that this kind of interface (albeit rather exaggerated in the movies to be efficient), along with voice commands, is the future. Except, they aren’t the future at all. Gestures are already here.
Nintendo Midis
As per bear’s request, I checked out the possibility of converting NSFs to Midi format, specifically the Spelunker theme for his cell phone. After quick consulting with my Minibosses friends I found there is quite a nice app for that called nsf2midi that not only does a great job of aproximating the sound from the NSFs, but also lets you tweak everything from there. For example, when converting the Spelunker theme it set a closed high-hat or something instead of a snare, but I was able to just change all that with a drop-down menu. So, if anyone needs a conversion, it looks like I’m open for business.
They don’t make ’em like him anymore
As we saw our own DJ Webb partaking of the boob tube this holiday season, I also took rare look at TV programming this New Year’s Eve. I caught several movies that I’ve been meaning to look into. These are the first 3 installments of the Death Wish series of movies.
There are men. There are men we look up to, and there are men’s men. And then there is Charles Bronson.
This man’s mustache and overall ugliness could only be trademarked. While Hollywood girly-faced actors are revelling in this metrosexual era, Bronson only had one thing to say about his visage: “I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited.”
The story of Death Wish is a simple fantasy to even the most liberal of us and one which probably started a vein of vigilante stories that, already cult classic, Boondock Saints continues with currently. That is, to issue justice as we ourselves see fit. Bronson plays an average New Yorker family man who stumbles on the misfortune of having his wife and daughter robbed, raped and killed by Jeff Goldblum and his gang of thugs. What ensues over 5 films and 2 decades of filming is Bronson exacting revenge not only on the personal perpetrators, but over hundreds of similar scum.
The height, for me, is in Death Wish 3, when Bronson, already in his 60’s by then, teams up a crew of senior citizens in low-income housing to take back their safety from organized gang members, including Bill S. Preston, Esq.. But Bronson has help from one more source. He has Wildey on his side.
A decade before there was the Desert Eagle, we had Wildey, which fires a .475 Wildey Magnum, a shorter version of the African big game cartridge. Shown above is the 18 inch barrel (I think Bronson -only- used the 12″ or 14″ in Death Wish 3). Fabled to resolve most fights without a shot being fired, the Wildey is said to reduce a cinder block to dust, having the main drawback of not stopping until it has gone through 2 or 3 human targets.
I think this post is done, but it doesn’t stop there. Maybe later I’ll talk about the Death Wish 3 Commodore 64/Spectrum ZX video game which revolutionarily allows you blow through thugs, cops and bag ladies alike with an RPG.
I Hate First Person Shooters
We all loved it when Wolfenstein 3D came out, followed by Doom 2, finally allowing us to shoot people in 3 dimentions. Such a revolution in gaming has been followed by, well, it hasn’t been followed by anything but the same. The recent “revolutionary” releases of Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Halo 2 have shown us that not a goddam thing has changed in recent gaming except for graphics.
To illustrate my point, here’s an anecdote: Bear and I borrowed Hordak’s Xbox for a couple days just to play the original Halo. I thought to myself, “Oh, cool, with 2 players cooperating, sitting right next to each other, this could lead to really good teamplay.” This image was quickly shattered as the height of teamplay became Bear yelling “GRENADE!”, me fumbling with tunnel vision to find where on the ground he threw it and, a couple seconds later, taking the full blast from under my feet.
This is the frustrating thing about first person shooters, yet it brings up a more fundamental issue about video games and games in general. All games are designed to simulate something and make it “easier” than before. Now, the sense of “easier” here means alot of things, including less expensive, less dangerous, less tiring, quicker or just possible in the first place.
Consider sports for a second. These are physical games that simulate combat to some degree. Boxing, wrestling, rugby and football are more direct in that effect but even badminton and swimming involve physical competition with a declared loser, and losing symbolizes death. Sports as competition invoke physical aspects of parties and declares winners, usually without any necissary harm to anyone involved. This, less dangerous, is one sense of “easier” stated above.
Back to video games, they simulate taking on challenges that no one is ever up to. Shooting guns, flying planes or slaying dragons are all less expensive, easier and, in the case of the dragons, only possible in the first place through video games. Mario and Luigi can jump forward and land a few steps behind. The dude from Grand Theft Auto can steal cars with the press of a button and the player at home really doesn’t get arrested. That’s not to say that everything in a video game is easier than anything in life. It’s that the parallels should be easier. Here’s a checklist for first person shooters and how they compare to real life.
- Shooting a gun = easier, less expensive, less dangerous
- Movement = quicker, easier, less tiring
- Being on a space station, fighting aliens = only possible through games
- The ability to glance down at your feet, taking in 180 degree peripheral vision = COMPLETELY NON-EXISTANT
This is exactly what’s wrong with first person shooters. Until this is seriously addressed, there will be no more “revolutionizing” of first person shooters, unless you’re the kind that counts graphical facelifts.
Infantryzone.net Song
I’ve got a little community at my site www.infantryzone.net, a forum that is like Seinfeld: really about nothing in particular except the people who are there. A few of us are actually from Salisbury and so we, along with my girlfriend, came together to remix a song our friend Mahanaxar, sitting in the picture, wrote over a year ago. Download it here.
For the lyrics, go here. I’m refered to as Ken Oh in this community.
M.U.L.E. Online
What I’ve been waiting for since soon after I got a computer is finally here: We can now play M.U.L.E. on the internet. M.U.L.E. is renown with gamers and game developers alike for its non-zero sum game strategy and simple interface. M.U.L.E. pits 4 players in a Monopoly-like experience that simulates planet colonization, dealing with economic principles such as supply and demand, price theory, economies of scale, learning curve theory of production, diminishing returns and more. Now keep in mind that M.U.L.E.’s interface only includes Atari joystick controls, 1 control stick and 1 button, meaning no keyboard to actually input numbers, but it still manages to handle a complex economic production and trade system. Also keep in mind that multiplayer games with multiple levels of interaction came decades ahead of its time with M.U.L.E. in 1983. Expect more on the game itself later.
An online friend from a M.U.L.E. forum put some time and effort in and figured out how to work an Atari emulator, Atari800Win, using Kaillera, a net connection system, to play M.U.L.E. over the nets. The end result is a zip of all the needed files that’s under a meg large and a budding online community that we are trying to expand. Notable is also that it’s possible to play with all 4 human players, which is exicting since the less AI in the game, the more unpredictable the games get.
Of course this is only for Windows machines, so we’ll have to see if we can get this working with any other OS.