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.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
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!
Mmmmm snapple!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
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:
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:
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.
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.
Awesome.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, January 25, 2008
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.
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.
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