Iphone Sucks 2

I've decided the iphone merits it's own series of semi-regular posts. Today's post is about MMS messaging.

MMS (Multi Media Stuff) messages are texts with a picture from someone else's phone. Until 2008 when everyone got iphones, they were pretty popular. Iphones can't send them, nor can they recieve them. Kind of.

When your iphone gets sent a MMS you get a text from whoever sent it that says:

I sent you a multi media message, you can view it online at http://viewmymessage.com
login: kFq4CtFf7q
password: eelsballs

and the iphone, because it's an awesome internet phone will allow you to click on the URL and bring you to the login screen at View My Message .com. Sadly, the impossible to remember login and random words password are back in your text app and didn't make it across. It's an iphone and while "Copy and Paste" is on the apple's to-do list, they were too busy making sure Crash Bandicoot would run well on it for all 10 complete suckers who care.

Now what you do is go back to your text application (or whatever you wanna call it) and you grab a pencil and some paper and you write down the login/pass so you can go BACK to your web browser and type them in.

Pretty awesome effort to put forth for a picture of your friend in a bar.

No copy/paste. Fine. To be perfectly frank, outside of this one instance I don't feel much of a need for it. But it's been a year and a half. AT&T built a website around people not being able to recieve MMS messages. It's obviously an issue, and so I have to wonder, why has no one up in the gilded white halls of Cupertino come up with the simple idea that when an iphone receives a MMS it understands that it's an MMS and enters the login/pass for you? Even better: it downloads the damn picture to a MMS folder in your pictures app.

Over a year now. I can watch youtube videos, shake it to find arbitrary restaurants and get the weather in Saint Tropez, but I can't get pictures of my sister's dog in the pool.

Your Internet Form Sucks

Filling out a bank account, shipping address, petition to get some senator to listen to you, whatever, and they've got the zipcode for you to fill out and it's mandatory.

Then you have to enter your state.

Why?

It's the digital age, just check your database of zipcodes and figure out what state I'm in. It's not a cellphone number, it'll be right. You can do it computer!

Why has this not happened yet? Why am I still punching in my zipcode and then having to enter a less specific version of that in a dropdown menu right after?

Heroes, for the last time in 2008, Sucks

Claire's wig.

Good God. So distracting I wasn't even bothered by her manner of talking from the very back of her throat.

Get yourself some tips from Tyra at least.

Celebrity Fragrances Suck

Puff Daddy has a perfume.

Why would I want to smell like cocaine and sycophants?

Guns N Roses Fans Suck

Listening to the new "GnR".

I'm fine with Axl making music. He can do as he pleases. The stupid part comes about when I encounter people who speak of the last decade of GnR like it's the same band.

This is a huge problem in society, much larger than Axl's side-band. Humans make companies, but in most cases, the humans that make a company one thing don't stick around, or other humans come in and make it something else. The company name is all that stays, and people will, effectively, mindlessly endorse said company even though whatever person responsible for creating their affection for it is long gone.

An Example:
Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy, left Squaresoft. Squaresoft still makes Final Fantasy games and Sakaguchi still makes games like Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi's games are arguably as good, only they aren't badged "Final Fantasy" so they sell worse.

I don't entirely expect people to do development team research on their games, but don't fucking ever try to tell me that Guns N Roses is a band that does not involve at least two of the original members.

Burning Man Sucks

Just because you and I are both creative does not mean I will like art cars. I don't feel like being stoned in the desert for a week with a bunch of naked hippies and--even better--part-time hippies. If I was going to do drugs in the desert I'd do them alone, upping the likelihood I'd come across a talking Coyote.

Your Conversational Idioms Suck

"Seven minute silence"

Yeah, um no. There's no such thing. What you have run into is the fact that you and the people around you are both boring and uninterested in each other enough to have run out of things to talk about in just shy of half of a quarter of an hour. Good job.

"No such thing as absolutes."
"That's an absolute!"

Yes. Thank you both. How about this assholes: There's no such thing as absolutes except for a few, this being one of them, go fuck yourselves knowitalls.

All Obama Impersonations Suck

Everyone I've seen try has completely blown it. The SNL guy neither looks nor sounds like him. Last time I saw him on I was far more impressed with the Tom Brokaw impression. Gawker had some dude who wants to get the job on SNL but other than being black, he was no better.

My feeling (that I'm willing to share with all you aspring Obama impersonators) is that to get him to be funny you have to think of things that are funny and then have Obama do them. Like maybe he's always dancing like he did on Ellen. I'd watch that. I am right now, in my mind!

Saturday Night Live Sucks

I know we all started watching again after the "Lazy Sunday" video, and again when Tina Fey dressed up like Sarah Palin, but the show is godawful.

Neither the McCain guy nor the Obama guy is any fun to watch, and even when Fey teamed up with Will Ferrell it was a one trick pony, only getting laughs cos the two are famous legitimately now. The remainder of the show that isn't ads is two people standing and awkwardly reading cue cards.

Jimmy Fallon Sucks

Jimmy Fallon's success resides in various network and movie excecs feeling two things to be true:

1. That Saturday Night Live is relevant, hip, funny, or any combination of the three.
2. That Jimmy Fallon was funny on it.

Barring this idea, I have no explanation for him landing movie roles and certainly not for his appointment to the Late Night desk.

Lara (Laura? Lyra?) Croft Sucks

Not because of her consistently terrible character design of muddled green and brown paired with orange skin and eyes set so wide as to be an orca, each generation both getting slightly better and less insipidly proportioned, yet still paying homage the original disaster that the character is still unsettling to look at, not for that.

For her voice.

It's too "British".

Yes, yes, thank you, I realize she's supposed to be some heiress raised all nicely, thank you for trying to poke that hole in my argument. That's not it. It's that no one, British heiress, Q of E or girl from Staines, sounds like that. Every time I hear the character speak her voice sounds decades too old for her poorly designed body and it blows the whole poorly slapped together image.

Tomb Raider was, is and always will be a mediocre game series, cobbled together using the concept of what men like without any actual thought, giving us inpossibly huge and unshapely breasts, a manly run and your mom's voice. It's a computer's solution: vairables fed in ("giant tis" "big eyes" "kind of tan" "short shorts") and the uncomfortable result returned with digital indifference. She'd probably smell like fresh bread.

Your Distaste for Arial Sucks

It's that bad huh? It's ruining your life the way that gay marriage is? Messing up your program harder than an ATI graphics card? It's the Xbox to your PS3.

Give up.

It's not a shitty typeface.

It's not Helvetica. Waaah. Sorry that your one right answer, the one you always go to when you are incapable of, I dunno, desinging, thinking, whatever, so that is gone when you boot up your friend's PC. Epicly tragic. Thank you for blogging about it. Thank you for the snarky tests, the comparison websites and the offhand comments about the design failures of the tail of the lowercase "a". Thank you for this idea that Helvetica is god therefore anything close is shit. Anything except Univers, cos that is also god.

Do they hand out a list of the fonts that you should, will and have to love for life when you take a graphic design class? Is there a day where they tell you to hate on Comic Sans and Arial? Special seminars where you talk about when you had to slum it cos you were on a PC?

In art school the biggest insult was to call something "craft" versus "art". Defaulting to Helvetica is craft.

The Lack of Politics News Sucks

I'm used to checking out wonkette and fivthirtyeight every day, but now, with the next president elected the whole network's gone quiet.

What am I supposed to chew up two hours of every day with now? Actual reports of happenings in the world? Booooring!

Kanye West Sucks

"I got this idea where I rap over another song, and then lets make the video look just like that other video, yeah!"

Your Dessert Selection Sucks

Creme Brulee
Tiramisu
Cheesecake
Chocolate Mousse
Sorbet
Apple Pie/Tart/Fancy word.

That's the list you'll be handed at 97% of all restaurants when you ask for a dessert menu.

I'll give you that desert is a tricky business, but the lack of imagination at even very good restaurants is astounding. Maybe that's all people order anyway, but to be perfectly frank, if your restaurant is functioning solely on market conditions you should just franchise a Cheesecake Factory cos people line up around the block.

I'm not asking for a revolution here, just a few items that aren't dairy-based and a non-apple fruit option. Apple pie is the shittiest pie. Apples taste like almost nothing. It's cinnamon pie. Apple tart just means less of everything presented prettier but tasting the same. Just change the goddamn fruit in it and I'll be perfectly happy with the tower of unoriginality that you call a desert menu.

Wanted, the comic, Sucks

This comic is angry, racist, misogynistic and sloppily written.

I'm gonna write a lot about how much I hate it, but really, all you need to know is the above sentence and that the movie is incomparably better.

On the second page the narrator, doing his very best Fight Club monologue, points out verbally that his boss is an African-American. Later someone else veers off their conversational road to again establish that Wesley's boss is indeed African-American. His boss' ethnicity must hinge around a plot point with the hammering they're giving it. Why else bring it up? That boss has to have something to do with this story.

She actually doesn't. The boss is verbally observed to be black twice and a lesbian once and is promptly out of the story. I don't even know if she is one of the myriad of people he shoots in his arbitrary killing spree that passes as his "training".

You see Wesley is the son of the greatest assassin evar and now he's being trained by some "Super Villains". The "Super Villains" run this secret society called "The Fraternity" which narrowly beat out "The Corporation" in a vote on "sweet names for evil organizations" among wet men. There are no "Super Heroes" cos all the bad guys teamed up in 1986 and killed them. For reasons that escape me The Fraternity then pulled an Agent Smith and reformatted the whole place (human brains and all) so that only they had any memory of it and run around the new world like a bunch of adolescent Neos killing and raping to their heart's content.

Yeah, raping. Supervillains and specifically the protagonist are super into rape. It's what Wesley does for fun now. And why not? After all, if I were in his shoes and my societal chains broke off I'd run right out and brutally assault everyone and everything. Just get my rape right the fuck on man! I mean, I get it. He's a Super Villian. He's a bad person. Bad people rape. Bad people kill. He's also the protagonist of this obscenely masturbatory fantasy of Mark Millar's. He's celebrated on every page. He's your super hero Tyler Durden, also: rapist.

I imagine that Mark Millar was drowning in the gallons of his own semen flooding his parents' basement when he looked up and asked God to save him. That must have been when the vision hit him: the ability to kill indiscriminately, to be taught how to have sex, to be able to rape anyone and get away scott free. This was the dream. This is what the unsexed 14 year old who'd let the past two decades slide right the fuck by saw as a savior: sex training and easy revenge. Also: rape.

It's far more likely however, that Mark Millar is a mediocre writer who had an interesting idea and little capability to carry it out. The question of what a society of outlaws does when no one can stop them is excellent, exploring that with a normal guy: also excellent. Millar never digs in, never gives it more than a passing thought. Everyone goes around killing and raping. That's the extent of it. Rape used as the "edgy" spice. The whole book spends so much time trying to be badass in every direction it's a dish made with every ingredient in the kitchen. Celery Salt, Cumin, Nutmeg, Rosemary, Brown Sugar, stir it all up! Yum! Piles upon piles of ideas of how to show you "Badass". Later Wesley cries about his bad deeds, but whatever cos he goes in killing on the next page (oh, sorry, now he's killing BAD guys...) then he shoots his dad at the end, says "Bitch" arbitrarily a few more times and it's over.

I'm conflicted: I think it's a talentless screed--that much is clear by now--but I love the movie. The movie of course, took the "Super assassin dad dies, hot lady finds son, trains him" part and dropped the juvenile sex talk, rape and everything else. This complete pile of shit produced a very fun movie. I suppose we should call it fertilizer, the comic.

But hey, I like to be the bigger man sometimes, so here are some small ideas that would make "Wanted" suck less:

- The Shit Man, instead of being "the collected feces of the 666 most evil people" why isn't he the death shits of those people. Hitler shoots himself, ass relaxes, shit falls out. Shit Man should be that shit specifically, not just arbitrary bad guy shits. Also, do evil people shit really tiny, cos 666 human shits would be fucking enormous. Also also, have you seen that Kevin Smith movie about God? Just curious...

- Knock off Fox's ebonics. It reads like Americans doing British accents.

- Show the Killer doing a kill that is more difficult than just shooting at a guy. Other than a few frames where he's posing like Chow Yun Fat, Wesley never comes off as any more skilled than a magically invincible psychopath.

- Knock it off with the "the authorities leave us alone cos of our pins and license plates" nonsense. Don't go there, don't explain it. The Super Villains can reprogram minds. Done. Don't show me cops going "oh shit sorry sir, I didn't see your pin" cos now I start to think, "How soon after a cop gets hired do they tell him to let the people with the pins do what they want?" and then, "Is anyone counterfeiting pins? Cos if I was a cop (and thus knew about the secret pins) I'd sure a shit make a few for myself and friends." Imagining cops kow-towing to these pins forces me to punch all kinds of holes in the reality of the world. Regular people may not be as powerful as the super villains, but it's rather unlikely that people would just sit around and take it up the ass for two decades. So either the people get their minds consistently erased or the Super Villians aren't causing all that much trouble, neither of which seems to be the case in the book, hence my issue with it all.

- That part in the beginning where Wesley's dad is about to fuck two dudes and is all "I'm not gay, I've fucked tons of women." Is written out so specifically I'm creeped out. I don't see a super killer who's banged 5,000 women as someone who'd feel the need to explain himself (even if he is insecure enough to keep track), extra especially in a world without consequence.

- As a subset to the above note, and a general writing suggestion: imagine every line you write being spoken aloud in a real world situation. If it sounds like your character is explaining a bit much, your character is explaining a bit much.

- If you're going to constantly comment on how your girlfriend character is fat, you might want to have her illustrated as such. Katsuhiro Otomo said he didn't draw attractive girls because that was too easy. But who's he?

- All I see in that two page spread of Wesley shooting his dad is cock and eyes rolling back. What word did you hold in your mind when you drew that? Roofiedudesex?

- The guy who's dick is a super villian: clever. How's that working out for you?

- Dear powers copy guy, was Wesley there with a stopwatch when you sucked the powers from the other guy? Cos man, he knew down to the SECOND when you were gonna lose them. Super assassin AND super time teller! Also, who were you? Was I supposed to care about you when you barged into the story sometime in book five, cos I was all WTF and like, maybe I missed the part earlier where anyone said anything about you at all.

- Okay, those last few weren't exactly suggestions.

- Plot based killing. People come into and out of this story so ham-handedly it's like someone opening a door for you while they say "you can't see me! you can't see me!" I suppose in a book whose central context is a world without consequence it is fitting that characters would appear lacking in all motivation.

that makes me think, what if this book is really some amazing art thing I only partially comprehend? The whole no consequences thing being more about the writing than about the actual book? An epic brilliance that will have to be dug through by scholars before I can truly see it clearly. Is this another "Night of the Carrots"?

I stand in awe.

Sarah Palin Sucks I.V

McCain woke from his nightmare where he was a creepy republican proxy and delivered a very nice concession speech. To be perfectly frank, I'd have been impressed with Obama had he done so as well if the reverse had happened, though admittedly, he's been a bit better about not lowering standards,

ANYWAY,

It looked to me like Sarah Palin was crying.

This is sucks 1.5 because IF she was, then I have another if/then statement:

IF she was crying because she'd realized using her children as cheap political props made her a terrible human being who not only didn't win the election but gave the children some severly difficult memories to chew on THEN I forgive her and she only gets one and a half "sucks's" on my bastion of standards.

IF she was crying for any other reason, well, whatever. Barring my friend's wish for her to do Playboy, I don't see much more interesting coming from her.

24 Season 7 Will Sucks

I saw a piece of the trailer for this "Jack Bauer in Africa" business in a bar. I was told it would take place in Washington D.C. instead of Los Angeles.

I was hopeful.

I made a mental note to watch the trailer with sound on.

Utter blah. Other than putting an orange filter over all the Africa footage, what is new? It's all the same parodies of real humans, so one sided they might as well be the stars of a Joel Schumacher courtroom drama. Easy answers are on the menu.

Things that will happen in this season:
- Jack tortures people
- People tortures Jack
- 3rd party gets tortured and instead of either a) dying, or b) getting their ass to a hospital they will c) get right back to the work "only they can do" and create filler for the better half of the season.
- CTU gets infiltrated
- 3 to 1 it's by someone who has a recently kidnapped relative and a cockamamie reason for not calling the cops about it.
- Jack's boss hates Jack and will fuck him over to add another 15-20 minutes to each and every goddamn episode
- A bunch of government dudes will be complete horrible shitholes for almost no reason other than like one of them has a brother in law who's half Chinese or something.
- Jack Bauer will say "You're gonna have to trust me" and you know what? He'll be right, because Jack Bauer is never ever wrong on 24, ever. He's like Donald Rumsfeld's idea of Colon Powell and George Patton's lovechild: indescribably perfect.
- Jack's Ninja father shows up again and does more Ninja like crap.
- Things that kill many normal people (poison gas, bombs, bullets, torture...) make Jack cough, grimace and possibly sputter for 2-5 seconds before he gets up and does something heroic or we break for commercial.
- They'll lose Jack, the bad guys or more likely both, on their satelite feeds.
- Jack will rack up a 40 plus bodycount over the "day" and the rest of the world will not notice all the random shootings in North Hollywood (sorry, "D.C.") parking lots.

and finally,
- No one will fire any of the incomptent turds that comprise the "white house staff" that has consitently blown it for 6 seasons in a row. There's been four presidents, right? Five if you count whoever pre-Palmer was. I don't want to see the same people snarking on each other while some genuine crisis is only averted beacause superhuman Jack Bauer makes up for the incompetence of an entire government.

Go Jack,

I'll be rooting for you, at least until I start skipping to the "Next week on 24" part way at the end like I did for last season.

Maddox Sucks

(Updated: 11-08-05)
(Updated: 02-10-06)
(Updated: 05-06-06)
(Updated: 07-27-06)
(Updated: 11-13-06)
(Updated: 03-05-07)
(Updated: 04-01-07)
(Updated: 04-30-07)
(Updated: 07-16-07)
(Updated: 10-29-07)
(Updated: 04-01-08)
(Updated: 05-31-08)
(Updated: 12-25-08)

I love every one of those updates, even all three in 2008.

I bought the book. The book is godawful.

Bape Sucks

I'm actually rather upset about this. Bape is a company that makes more expensive versions of popular streetwear.

They make a version if the Nike Air Force 1, the Adidas Superstar, the Puma clyde and I think they do Nike Dunks and Max's now too.

The Bape knockoff of the AF1 is a better shape than the actual shoe in my opinion. Slightly sleeker without getting into the "duck foot" territory the Nike Dunk occupies. It's a very nice shoe and I have exactly 1 pair.

There are two problems here:
1. The shoes sell for $150 but are poorly constructed out of cheap leather and materials. The cutting and stitching is all ragged and shoddy.

2. They're all patent leather clown shoes now.

Seriously. Ultra colorful patent leather. So your shoes are going to look like hell after exactly 1 wear.

Awesome.

All This Sarah Palin Sucks Business Sucks

Okay, I don't like Sarah Palin, I don't think she'd be good for this country, but to see/read/hear people just DYING to see her eat complete shit publicly is annoying.

Dear Democrats, Obama supporters, people who still care about Michael Moore and general right wing haters,

What are you, A bunch of welfare queens who want to win the lottery?

Winning a battle because the opposition slips on a banana peel is bullshit.

Yeah, she ain't special. Yeah, she's not qualified for president. Let's get over that and win this properly instead of waiting for her to sink the ship like some misplaced Anakin Skywalker.

John Hodgman Sucks

I really loved all his spots on the Daily Show, and his anecdote about someone being starstruck by him was also memorable, but then someone over at boing boing started to take an interest in him and the loose gravel gave way. They made a video of him talking about his book. I can only imagine the appeal is exclusive to those who are into mediocre humor which appeals only to them. An insular group who will insist I "just don't get it". A variant on your drama geeks who incessantly quote Monty Python's Holy Grail, his fans.

Mole men. I get it. Hi-larious.

Now he's back on the Daily Show, promoting his book, and he sucks.

PC Makers Suck

Straight off a post about Apple's horrid industrial design comes this.

For all the terrible work apple does, they also do some great things. The Mac Pro for example. Great looking workstation-class computer. When Dell or HP make one of these the case is gobs of ugly plastic glued onto a standard PC case.

While they may be off dreaming about humping the robots in the Bjork video most of the time, when Apple does make good hardware they make it look good as well, and very few, to this day, manage that.

It's getting better, and thank god, because I don't think i'm going to be able to stomach buying another Mac.

Apple Sucks III

Every mouse Apple Computer has designed since the imac sucks.

First we had the puck. Which way is up? My hand cannot tell because this object has no tactile indicator of "up". Cute and unusable.

They fixed that when people got tired of buying jelly bean computers and we got the one button mouse. Up was easy. Clicking and dragging? Impossible. You have to awkwardly grip two side-nubs (the only part of the mouse that is not the button) to get the contrary force to allow you to tell the computer you are down-clicked-and-holding. It's like buzzard attempting to turn some knobs: Hard to do.

Then we got the mighty mouse, which had magic right clicking technology for the first time in a first party mac product. Welcome to decades ago. Still suffers from the buzzard claw issue. At this point I want to see what the hands of Apple's testing department look like.

I think what this showed them, along with the ipod, is that no one cares about interfaces. They care about shiny, or gumdroppy, and smooth.

To say that their design trumps it's intended function would be to mis-define the word design. The design of any thing should take into account how it's used. That's part of it. If you are making an unusable art object based on a computer mouse you can get away with this. If, on the other hand, you are designing an interface object whose sole purpose is to make controlling a computer more intuitive, then you have failed.

Apple is now in the business of making shiny art objects that can also, with some finagling, compute stuff.

This post came about because Apple's new notebook monitors are shiny. You used to have the option of getting a matte monitor. Matte is superior for viewing; it has less glare. Shiny is 'prettier' especially when the monitor is off, and I suppose for all your people with DWR furniture it's the computer to get. For those of us who make a living staring at these things, it's a big waving middle finger.

Apple doesn't want to make your computers, and the fact that Johnathan Ive is the guy they say is gonna replace Steve Jobs confirms that. Ive wants to make pretty things. I wish I could believe the guy gives any thought to how we might interface with his pretty designs, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

I'll be watching paint dry until another company can step it up.

Sarah Palin Sucks II

http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/11/palin-drops-puck-at-flyers-game-receives-mixed-reaction/

I can only imagine what I'd have felt like at age 7 if my mom took me to the center of a sports arena and half the crowd booed her. I feel genuinely sad for her kids to have to deal with that sort of stuff.

The kids could have stayed home. It's school season. The reporting outside of the punditry class is minimal. They could keep their esteem for their mom. I may not be a huge fan of the lady and honestly this behavior is exactly why, but even I believe her kids should still look up to her and feel she's a good person who people like.

have I mentioned Heroes Sucks

First the obvious: Hiro didn't kill Ando. It was Time Warping Magic!! Which, well, which underscores the whole issue with his ability and how they use it. Zero accountability for Hiro. Also, it's been three years, time for him to stop talking like a 10 year old.

This whole episode was, hmmm....

It was.... I'm working on the analogy.

It was a great hand of poker, played terribly. The end reveal of Parkman's dad as the mastermind was underwhelming; more "oh, okay." than "Oh Shit!" Another example in a long like of "doye" moments that abound. The show is getting better but still has some serious issues showing it's hand.

Then there's Sylar. WTF? Was there a contest to write his character this week and five people all won? He could be a great character if his rehabilitation were more real. See also fake Linderman tell speedy girl it's cool to kill if you have a reason. How about maybe making the show about a slow moral decline? Valid reasons leading to horrible actions. The glib way people brush off death, get upset with each other and/or make friends in this show makes nothing permanent.

If Peter, or Claire or any of the "good guys" had, instead of a 1 episode change of opinion, a slow 12 ep decline then when they innevitably became good again it'd be real drama. Stealing bread for your family, so to speak. (who loves the Office?) As it stands the few people still watching the show are going to yell "DOYE" at the TV instead.

Metal Gear 4 Sucks

Not exactly timely but holy hell.

For your $60 you get something like 20 PS3 "tech demos" and 20 nanomachine powerpoint presentations, with the actual game on this shit sandwich being mustard there's so little of it.

Someone call the Japanese police. Hideo Kojima has thrown out his baby and is selling us dirty bathwater.

Apple's Color Sucks

I know I rag on Apple a lot, but they deserve it.

Color is an application bundled with Final Cut Studio. Apple bought "Final Touch" and renamed it "Color" and much like the un-renamed "Shake" they bought only the name and current code so no one, ever, will update it or improve it.

Seriously. Apple Pro Apps are becoming this miserable wasteland of whogivesafuck. Shake's gone from being the #1 desktop compositing app the world over to bargain bin "I wish we had Nuke" software. While I'll be the first to admit compositing isn't exactly the forefront of technology and since Shake supports floating point bit depth it's pretty much at the top of the game, but come on. Autodesk manages to staple on some unnecessary crap every year to justify the $1200 Maya upgrades.

So Color. A DI suite on your desktop. You've got your digital versions of trackballs for your different hue swings and you can make masks and bad keys to isolate areas, so I'd put it on par with a DaVinci in terms of a feature set, but what the fuck is this? I can't set color ranges, the number input fields are a pain to use and the Shake like schematic is only deep enough to really piss me off and make me want to individually export every damn shot to Shake to color correct.

The whole point of this software is that it works so dang well with Final Cut Pro, which it does in the sense that sending the project over is easy. So far however, It's not radically better than Final Cut's native color correction tools.

Maybe now I know why it's free.

Mostly Color sucks cos it's close to being really dang nice. A few more features, an actual product cycle instead of wating for yet another NAB for Apple to not show up at and not announce anything for cos they're too busy getting people to code tip calculators for their phone.

American Godzilla Sucks

If you're gonna name the main character after a friend of yours, it's probably best to not make his difficult to read and/or pronounce name a recurring joke throughout the movie. Especially when the stupid looking monster he designed is running amok outside.

Oh, sorry, burrowed underneath New York.

Sarah Palin Sucks

I was never very enthusiastic about doing homework. When I was in the 10th grade my World Civ 2 teacher yelled at me in front of the class to put at least one fact in the papers I was handing in.

Sarah Palin never had my World Civ 2 teacher.

Deregulation Sucks

So with all this business about investment banks and the stock market, I'll happily chuck in my uninformed two cents.

People are greedy, and when being greedy is easy to get away with, they get extra greedy. I have illegally downloaded music that I've never even loaded into itunes, let alone listened to. I've downloaded hundreds of applications that started up maybe once. When you can get away with all this, the specialness of things decreases as does one's fear of getting caught.

If firms are making money hand over fist using shady practices, but no one tells them to knock it off, they're gonna use shadier practices.

I don't know why this is such news. In this age of government officials having such disregard for the law, it only makes sense others would feel it longer applies to them either. Who knew you could tell a subpoena to go fuck itself?

Laws are really more of handy suggestions.

I'm still waiting for the day when "Karl Rove did it" is someone's defense.

Las Vegas Sucks

Las Vegas is a party town for frat kids who's entire understanding of 'party' is getting housed and going "whoooo" a lot. It's training wheels for your party bike. Scripted fun. Lets go to this club and sit around, let's go to that one and sit around. Amuse me Vegas, I've got money.

Las Vegas is a city built on losers.

Heroes Season 3 Ep 2 Sucks

Minute 11, which considering Tivo grabbed an extra 5 at the head means I'm only one tenth of the way into this drivel, but two things I forgot to mention last time need saying:

1: There's ANOTHER guy who can paint the future. All he paints so far is the earth blowing up, but still. Can't he write the future, make videos that contain the future, pee in puddles that are future shaped? Sure it was a cool ability in season 1, but all this time travel you can't change the future cos I painted it only you totally can bull is exhausting.

2: blue fire man. Never has fire been more unconvincingly thrown than by this man. Shamed (heavily I might add) by the Nickelodeon cartoon "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I'm having a hard time coming up with a picturesque analogy for this other than to say it looks like the actor is embarrassed that he has to throw fire.


subnotes:
Painting Man's Paintings. WTF. He trips out and does them with his hands. But they don't look like he does them with his hands. They look like someone's deviant art page. "Hey, come check out my cool drawings of Batman giving handjobs."

Awesome. Seriously.

The Sarah Conor Chonicles Sucks

In the same way that I'm upset with the Animatrix, Matrix 2 and Matrix 3 for forcing me to question much of the machine logic that I was fine with in Matrix 1 (specifically how humans can dig fast without machines, and why don't the machines either build rockets to go above the goofy clouds for solar power or do like we do now and just burn things and smash atoms to make energy), So has the show "The Sarah Conor Chronicles" forced me to wonder why the machines of the future can't make a Terminator capable of any kind of emotion.

They can put living tissue on a metal skeleton, shoot it through time seemingly at will, but programming smiles in is too much?

Subnote: why did they all of a sudden start sending ladybots back? Was the idea to have them hump JC (In this case "John Conor") and kill him Xenia Onatopp style? It makes zero sense; you can stick way more death aparati in a large dude.

T4 better not have ladybots.

Heroes Season 3 Sucks

Getting started off right with a visit to the future (which, lo and behold, sucks) Claire and the two porcupines the makeup department crammed into her eye sockets bust out this gem of a line:

"It ends here."

which, well, which two things:

1. In hindsight: i wish.

2. Nice to see they got whoever wrote "generic tough guy video game #7" to write for them.

There's a lot of bullshit, but let's focus on three key points.

1. Hiro sees Ando betray him with some red lightning. The "Ando betrays Hiro" setup is dumb and I'm almost as uninterested in how it pans out as I am in how his trip to Japan did. I'm biting my nails down to soft pulp worrying if Ando and Hiro will be friends in season 4. Soft Pulp.

2. New vilians. This season's about the bad guys. I got that from the subtitle. The bad guys are a black dude, a white guy with blue flames, and Magneto. Fake Magneto's even German. Maybe it's just me, but an homage (assuming it's not ignorance or ineptitude, which is a stretch...) is unnecessary. It's a comic book show. It's not like they broke any molds when coming up with the existing powers, but do you have to underscore it so heavily by picking a superpower that is so specifically iconic to one (German) dude? Unless Fake Magneto's doing cooler things than ripping out Wolverine's exoskeleton or laying waste to prisons with pennies, you're doing a disservice to Real Magneto. As for the other powers, blue flame? The justification for what kind of power in this season can be summed up thusly:

"Fuck it. Because."

3. Any story that involves time travel sucks. Time travel is plot hole spackle. It takes away every single rule and leaves you knowing that things are going to continue and bla bla bla. Having Hiro see that the future still has issues, like wow. They're not going to happpen. Super Hiro's bad future never happened. The virus future never happend. Roll them plot dice kids, "Clair with a Gun Future" isn't happening. It will be narrowly averted. It's 24; it can never be a good show cos nothing lasting can ever happen on it. Instead of creating some interesting constraints and working with them, we've got magic time travel want to fix everything.

Every week, after "The Sarah Conor Chronicles" airs, my friend tells me how terrible it is. He gives me a run down of all the nonsense that these terminators go through to not successfully kill John Conor. He says he's just waiting for the robot sex, but I think his larger motivation is to see how shitty it can get. Heroes is now my Sarah Conor Chronicles.

Megan Fox no longer sucks

I read this:
http://dlisted.com/node/28277

and I take it back. Props to proud ball grabs.

90210 sucks

things I can lift with one arm:

- my laptop
- an orange
- carry on luggage
- the entire female "teen" cast of the new 90210.

not a show, rather a weekly documentary on eating disorders and slouching.

Every Other Cell Phone Sucks

Seriously guys. Iphone's been out for over a year.

Nothing?

The only thing that makes me more pissed off than the shortcomings of my phone is knowing that it's still years better than anything else that's not made and sold exclusively in Japan (where, I swear to God cos I've seen it, they can do video chat and record broadcast TV.)

So yeah, eat a dick all you other phone makers. You've been owned by a company known for making smooth walkmen. How the fuck does that happen?

The Iphone Sucks

Funny story, I thought about writing "Steve Job's ideal sexual object is 5 feet 7 inches of high grade plastic with a 1 inch bevel on the sides and a 1 and 1/3 inch hole, bored and polished in the center," and then I thought to myself, "What if that makes Steve Jobs sad?" and almost didn't write it.

Then I remembered that he's a billionaire and will probably get over it.

So yeah, fuck his phone. Fuck my phone. I have one and no i'm not trading it up. Two simple reasons: Visual Voicemail and Google Maps.

Fuck the app store, weather, stocks, even email and web. All that's glitter.

Maps and Voicemail keep me there. I'm dying for anyone to come out with a competitor that can do the seemingly simple tasks of allowing me to easily listen to voicemail, and to show me how to get places.

Everything else however, is just a reminder how Apple wants my money. Even ringtones cost money (I know there's hacks and I use em, it's the principle of it). Apple's getting out of the "buy our shit and break the law" mode and into "buy our shit, then use it to buy more of our shit" model, which I'm sure looks great on paper.

It does erode at least my brand loyalty to them however. Ipods were great. Even the Itunes store was more like a front than an attempt to make money. Not now. Buy the phone, buy some apps, get advertised to on other ones (that's an awesome new feature!)

Oh yeah.

Tactile feedback. That's where the Jobs fucking plastic boards came in. Between the new default mac keyboard (which even after using for months i'm still blowing it on) and the iphone, Jobs is looking to destroy all tactile feedback.

Sure doing the finger swishing is cool, but I can't even use the phone to take a picture as easily as my RAZR would. I can't tell you how many times my thumb was not hitting the button. See also using the calcluator, stopwatch and any other thing where it'd be a totally sweet thing, if only you didn't have to be looking at or prepping your hand to hit the button. I want to feel that I've hit the button, not wait to hear a delayed shutter sound that is inaudible under most urban conditions.

The Mexican Border Sucks

In all ways. There is no better example of two countries yelling "Hey, Fuck You" and "No, Fuck You!" back and forth than the one you are required to seep through when you want to drive from TJ to San Diego.

Getting into Mexico is easy. It's like a laxative shit, you get ready, think it's gonna be a big deal and blammo, it's over before you even got ready.

Getting out. Mother of God. Mexicans didn't take a lot of time with the "This way to the USA" road directions, especially once you get into TJ. And really, why should they? It's not their responsibility to baby another countries ignoramuses. While I would certainly appreciate some more nicely and specifically labeled road signs, I also understand that if it works for Mexicans, then the problem is mine.

Got in the wrong lane on the last trip. Some kind of bluetooth wireless fast pass lane. It was shorter, but our getting into it was simply a factor of getting heinously fucking lost and that being the only road which seemed to be labeled "USA". This error necessitated an extra search of our car (really more of an up and down glancing), and a warning that if we are to get lost again and go through the fast-pass lane, it'll be a $5,000 fine. Now I've got America saying if I'm a dumb ignoramus again it's gonna cost me a few house payments. Awesome.

So fuck that shit. Get one of those catapults the wingnuts are so scared of.

SGEN sucks.

Seriously. Fuck that stock.

iphone apps suck

so I spend the better part of the morning getting my "2.0" software installed on my iphone, the "2.0" being the ability to do like hacked iphones have been able to do since 10 months ago and install 3rd party applications onto it.

gone are the days when my amazing iphone is hampered by Apple's lack of imagination.

actually, um no.

I've been digging for half an hour now, digging for anything worth downloading.

the sum total of my search:

downloaded:
- currency converter
- ability to control itunes from phone

odds of using either one more than, say, once: one in six.

The hacked apps available were way more useful and good. It's embarrassing if you think about it: a bunch of people with zero help made some seriously amazing stuff and gave it out for free. Now that Apple's helping people make it (and taking a 30% cut of the pay stuff) everything blows. Where's my non AOL version of AIM?

The rest of all the categories are split between two things: ported widgets and other useless crap is about half the apps (travel trackers, shipping trackers, re-skinned websites); the other half are, and I'm serious, applications to calculate tips and split bills at restaurants.

I can't think of a more perfect statement about douchebags who own iphones.

Seriously, who's sitting there? What programmer downloads, deciphers and masters the 2 gigabytes of heiroglyphics that comprise the iphone software development kit and thinks, "You know what the world needs? An extremely limited version of a calclulator that only relates to the strife of upwardly mobile 20 and 30 somethings who are single."

It's basic math. BAAAASIC MATH. And the goddamn phone already does basic math in the form of the calculator already on it (and every other phone from the last five years.)

The person who sees this app available and thinks, "this is just what I need!" is my enemy. I was thinking of all sorts of violent floral language to put here, but no: they are my enemy. If I see them the urge to smack will be great.

Snapple Sucks

Brew some iced tea, add stale storebought lemon juice and some sugar, pour it on a New York sidewalk and lick it up.


Mmmmm snapple!

Indiana Jones 4 Sucks

I had low expectations, but the first bit of the movie was very fun, so my expectations rose.

It's like making out with a girl, getting a boner and then her slamming it in a door made of generic aliens and a lack of any tension or drive to the story.

Speed Racer Sucks

The Warchowski brothers have been hoodwinked into thinking that technology makes films good and/or cool. After the runaway success of The Matrix and it's amazing breakthrough technology "bullet time" (previously seen when Edward Myubridge was taking pictures of naked people and horses) they knew that their charge in the world was to use technology to make awesome films.

They got off to a good start as noted in this article:

"To simulate the appearance of cloth and its interaction with light, the wardrobes for both Neo and Smith were scanned using a Bidirectional Reflectometer, which captures the light reflectance (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function or BRDF) values for all kinds of cloth. Using this extremely powerful machine allowed ESC to scan the various types of cloth involved in the actors’ wardrobes, which could then be recreated and simulated in the computer."

Miraculous. Well. Except for the fact that the "Burly Brawl" as it was called looked exactly like the barely-not-a-video game VFX shot that it was. All that work for that cloth and it still looked like fake plastic men moving like Grand Theft Auto extras.

So you must understand how excited I was when I read that they were doing to use a magical camera from Sony, the F23. I mean listen to this:

"Whatever you think of Speed Racer, the new alternate-reality VFX fest from the Wachowski Brothers directorial team, you'll have to admit that it doesn't look like anything you've seen before."

Unless, you, you know, have ever seen television, in which case, this will look a lot like many things you have seen before.

Apparently, this amazing camera gets more color, which, you know, cool. Except for the fact that this is the digital age and all you need is any video software to up the saturation.

Then there was some rumor about it being able to shoot things with everything in focus. I suppose that makes it like the camera Gregg Toland used for Citizen Kane.

So I saw the movie. They didn't need that shit. They didn't need it because every shot in the film is a flat greenscreen shot with a defocus plugin that, GET THIS, makes the Bokeh into Diamonds and Hearts and Circles!

The car parts are decent, and do a much better job than anything involving humans or "amazing defocusing techniques" at being not lame.

So, much like every other film John Gaeta and the Warchowskis brag about their new tech in, the technological innovations were completely pointless and also not new.

The worst offense in the film isn't the technological innovations, it isn't the waste of the actors' talent, it's this kung-fu scene.

Somewhere in the movie, all our good guys get surrounded by bad guys with guns. A mediocre kung-fu fight ensues as each good guy uses their specific fighting strengths to overcome the odds. It's not miraculous, but it's probably the best use of humans in the film. As the tide has turned and the fight is wrapping up, each good guy disarms a bad guy and the fight resolves with all the good guys pointing guns at the final bad guy.

That's right, this kids movie, which has done a pretty good job of showing action and danger in a cartoon setting up to this point, this kids movie has to ratchet up the adrenaline with some GUNS. Whoo haaaa. It's bad enough that the only way to make the bad guys menacing at all is to arm them in a movie like this, but to have all our good characters, who solve their problems on the track, pick up guns and threaten someone's life is beyond offensive.

I know it's fun to talk shit about their dumb visual effects gimicks and these posts really shine when they are about inconsequential things, but the gun thing has me incensed.

There's no reason for guns in that movie. Movies already (and Warchowski movies specifically) use guns as a crutch far too much. They're becoming late night cable programming, where every dude has a bad attitude and a gun and no capability to solve anything without them both. The bad guys were beaten, there was ONE LEFT and no one needed any guns to get to that point, so what is so insanely powerful about that one dude left that requires the Speed Racer team to say "knock it off or we are going to fucking kill you."?

The very definition of shitty writing.

Blogger Sucks

I'm trying to get the formatting right on my fucking speed racer post, and whenever I add blockquotes the whole thing eats shit, not to mention that it's miserable to change fonts or to, more specifically change them back to the default.

Awesome.

Music Download Services Suck

itunes is overpriced and/or DRM riddled. Fuck that.

True Story:

I wanna hear M.I.A's "Paper Planes" and I find a link on Amazon where I can buy the song for 99 cents as an MP3, and the whole album for $7. I'm gonna get the whole album.

Or would, but i'm at work and don't have admin privileges, so i can't install the Amazon Downloader App.

Lo and Behold, some nice fellow uploaded the song to a file storage site.

I really was going to pay, and I do think Amazon should be supported both for good prices and DRM free music. But in this case, I had to break the law to bust some jamz.

Character Customizaton Sucks

Barbie Mario.

Open World Game Design Sucks.

Imagine, for a second, that you are Mario. Only, instead of having a linear path to run down and bricks to punch, you don't HAVE to do anything. You can go anywhere and do whatever you want. No more Shigeru Miyamoto breathing down your neck, forcing you to slide down that flagpole and get on to 1-2.

Screw that timer. Bop your head on that coin brick for hours. Jump on those pipes! Wasn't that fun? Chase Starman! Go ahead. Welcome to the world of "Open World Game Design".

I blame Grand Theft Auto 3, which while I think the series is about as innovative as Tomb Raider (Tomb Raider being noted in this case for becoming legendary on the merits of the first game, which was remade six or seven times over the next ten years with no significant improvements), I do respect GTA 3 for being a proper game.

GTA 3 sold very well and a large portion of that was because the game was so immeasurably fun to dick around in. Most of the actual "game" (e.g. the "missions") are forgettable, but it didn't matter cos the whole world was there to mess with. You could try to atract the attention of the FBI and steal their cars. You could jump cars over stuff, and of course, run people over.

All good fun.

The problem really started to show itself with the magnum opus "San Andreas" which was just damn giant. Instead of tightening up their rather loose game (it's a poor driving game, a poor shooting game, a poor action game, etc etc) to behave to the standards of something like Devil May Cry or Metal Gear, they left it glitchy and loose and instead used up all their money making the game obscenely huge. The game is so damn big, you can spend half an hour in transit. Just going from A to B, 30 minutes down the shitter.

This is open world gaming. Lose, sloppy gameplay and ever increasing worlds.

I stopped playing San Andreas after about a day. I like games that let me steal cars, bone chicks and drive fast. I don't need a traffic simulator. Ever since then, the idea of open world games makes me wanna puke.

But the worst thing, and what made me waste an hour of sleep to type this, is the way the game progression is inevitably built into these games. You go to an area, get some kind of objective, then go accomplish said objective. That's the pattern. If you blow said objective, you go BACK to the starting area and repeat.

In Mario terms: You die halfway though a level, and instead of restarting at the beginning (or even having a FUCKING OPTION TO), you have to get your ass up, and march back to the starting point. There won't be any fun to be had along the way. Just that march to get back to where you want to be.

There will be many, many marches to get where you want to be.

You see, while games are constantly trying to be more "realistic" they end up getting in the way of fun. I don't wanna have to go around and collect all the good weapons every time I die in GTA. I don't want a bunch of busywork put in there for seemingly no reason. The open world situation forces you into busywork. Running around accomplishing menial tasks to enable your primary goal.

Wasting your time in uninteresting ways.

So, I was already a bit apprehensive when I got the new Burnout. I've always loved the series for it's to the point presentation. Wanna drive fast? Do a race. Wanna crash cars, do crash mode. Easy ins, easy outs. Pure fun. But the new one is in an Open World.

No more menus.

I fucking swear, you'd think that Menus raped the parents of every game developer out there for the spite they have for them. They made a game where you drive blind through the streets of London because Maps are "Menus". Menus aren't realistic and shit. Hi, I'm the one over here PLAYING A GAME!

I do not give a shit about menus. I do give a shit about running a race, blowing it and having to drive back uptown for the next two minutes just to redo it. I do give a shit about how much time that wastes. I give a shit that to add a "start the fuck over" button would have been very easy but for some inexplicable reason was left out.

I love the Burnout developers, and I think they are truly innovative, but FUCK does this suck in the game. I know people say that there's so much to do you can just move on, but sometimes I wanna play a game like I play Mario, which is to say beat that little plumbers head into every rock till I pass a specific part. To learn that one level. To really get it down, without having to do it backwards every time as well.

So while people say you do warm to the game, I'm very upset with it now. And above that, i'm pissed with everyone who thinks that no menus is good and open world is even better. SSX started to suck right when they went to an "open world" (number 3 motherfuckers. Tell those idiots at EA to hire Rahzel again and go back to levels. Shit, just remake the first one. It's still the best--talk about a series where no one making the sequels seemed to know why people were stoked on it...)

I do have to give the Burnout crew credit for trying something new, but much like the GTA guys just making their game bigger, I don't think it was the right decision.

Smash Lab Sucks

It's a new show on Discovery. Comes on, lo and behold, after Mythbusters. The ads tell me that it's similar to Mythbusters, but apparently with more destruction (which while hard to fathom, ought to be true based on the title of the show. It looks like "Boom" but with some science.

I'm at minute 25 of an episode where they use this amazing material, carbon fiber (a cloth!) to make things stronger. Apparently jets are made out of it.

So, to test the strength of this stuff (it's cloth!) they take a 2x4 and cover it (staggeringly poorly) in carbon fiber. Then they test it against a control of another, un carbon fiber'd (cloth!) 2x4, by, get this, having all four of them stand on it.

Well good for them that it takes exactly all four of them to snap the wood, and they cannot manage to snap the carbon fiber'd 2x4.

That's to be expected, but all they've proven is it got stronger. they haven't shown why it's in fighter jets. They've shown that if you epoxy some carbon fiber over a 2x4 it can hold at least more than it could before.

Spreading raspberry jam on denim and wrapping a 2x4 would add that much strength. So would just epoxying the thing. So would fiberglass. So what's so special about the cloth???

How about you assholes get an inch more of a budget and go get some weights. Obviously you found that your 750 pounds busts a 2x4. Get some actual weights so you can see how much your poorly carbon fiber'd one can handle. The porn's in the numbers for this. If that reinforced 2x4 can hold five thousand pounds, that'd blow my damn mind. But i'll never know. Thanks guys!

Then they get to making a shack, for as far as I can tell, no other reason than to build it poorly and blow it apart with the backs of two airboats. Whoooo?

seriously, what was the point of that boring ass exercise other than showing me that the two people who built it aren't the best with tools.

So here we are, and they're dicking around with a mobile home to make it more hurricane resistant with carbon fiber. Maybe next week they can make it more hurricane resistant with bricks!

It's a dipshit show, and they're blowing the science end of it horribly, which I have to predict the path of the show based on this it'll be as such:

Mythbusters fans fall off pretty rapidly after posting on their blogs about the shitty science and how it's not Mythbusters. This leaves only the hillbilly jackoffs who wanna see things blow up, which should make this show last as long as "Boom" which was such a promising show, but damn if that didn't get boring after about two episodes.

Average viewership life: 1.6 episodes.