Everywhere you read how awesome the game is, from the game review sites to the New York Times.  And they are right, it’s a very good game.

However, it’s not the best game evar.  In fact, while I admit I’m not fully complete yet I think it’s already safe to say that GTA:Vice City and GTA: San Andreas are actually more fun to play.

The biggest mistake Rockstar made was to make the driving more realistic.  Driving just about any car is a pain, with horrible acceleration and loose handling, it’s far too difficult to make controlled turns quickly.  And driving a bike (what was one of the best parts of the GTA experience) is now virtually impossible, because once you get up to speed you’re highly likely to hit a car or other obstacle that sends Niko hurtling through the air to his death.  Realistic sure, but lame!

My other complaint is that with this series they came “back to earth”, so to speak.  I’m probably in the minority but I played GTA:SA to completion and really enjoyed its far-out storyline, with planes and alien technology and multiple-city landscape.  The simpler one-city environment of Liberty City (while still quite large) feels constrained to me.

Don’t get me wrong… the city is incredible and breathtakingly beautiful.  And they’ve added lots of depth and richness to the environment and the story.  I love their in-game internet and television station and radio talk shows.  The plotline and missions are still pretty darn great — one cutscene in particular made me laugh until it hurt.

I am having a great time with the game, but I want more.  Bring on GTA4:Vice City! (or London, or whatever it will be) and make driving fun again!

This sort of thing doesn’t surprise me anymore.

Next time you think you had a bad day, think of the guy in the picture here.

Major kudos go out to John Edwards and Barack Obama for spurning FOX “news”.  It’s nice to see FOX finally being rewarded with the marginalization it has so long deserved.

That’s right, they now hit 45km/h!

Because I am not sure it’s not April 1.

via Iaiain

According to a Washington Post report, Microsoft is now admitting their co-operation with the NSA.

Cherry says the NSA’s involvement can help counter the perception that Windows is not entirely secure and help create a perception that Microsoft has solved the security problems that have plagued it in the past. “Microsoft also wants to make the case that [the new Windows] more secure than its earlier versions,” he said.

Or it could lead to increased distrust around the world about the security of Microsoft products.  After all, from the perspective of foreigners the job of the NSA is to spy on them — NSA collaboration in Microsoft closed-source software means potential for being tracked.

Watching my 70+/80+ grandparents play wiibowling was nothing but spectacular. They were pretty skittish at first but got the hang of it really quickly, scoring as high as 130 on their first effort!

Other wii-related news:

• My parents both love bowling. Surprisingly they don’t really like tennis but my dad also quite likes the golf game.
• I turned pro in wiiboxing, woo! Nearly there in Tennis too.  The AI get really tough as your skill level increases!
• Got Madden 07 Wii for xmas. Don’t usually like football games but this one is a blast! The controls were a bit too complex for my dad though so I had to play this one solo. After a few games I started to get the hang of the basics and really started to get into it.
• I nearly got a great entry on wiihaveaproblem.com as my mother chucked her wiimote at their large hdtv lcd, but it bounced off with no apparent harm done.
• My arms are really, really, really sore.

I just posted this from my Wii.

I concur with geekpdx’s assessment, whiteboard stop-motion is wicked cool.  Also it’s his pi entry, congratulations dude!

This BBC reporter seems positively giddy with the news that Palestinians are using crowds as human shields to protect houses that the Israeli military warns to evacuate before airstrikes.  If you think that story shows its bias too strongly, you can only imagine what he sounded like on the radio telling the same story… practically cheering them on.

Regardless, it seems to miss an incredibly basic point.  What precisely does this accomplish?  Think in terms of the completely forseeable conclusion.  You know, when the one where the Israeli military stops warning militants to clear out?  Oops, I spoiled the ending, you were supposed to guess that part.

So it seems that  Saddam’s lawyer has warned if the death sentence is carried out, there will be more violence in Iraq.  Isn’t that a pretty easy prediction to make though?

• “If there isn’t any Pibb Xtra in the fridge at work tomorrow, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If your pizza isn’t delivered in 30 minutes, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If the glove doesn’t fit, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If you believe they put a man on the moon, man on the moon, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”

I could go on.

Luckily Haggard has clarified things. He’s admitted to having visited the male prostitute but claims he did not “visit” with him. He simply got a massage and bought some meth (which he did not use!) - seems believable enough to me. Who among us haven’t gotten a massage from a prostitute and bought some meth we simply threw away in the past? I know I routinely spend thousands of dollars on drugs I don’t use. Why must we all be so quick to condemn this man who has never rushed to condemn others in the past? — Calgary Grit

Via my lovely wife, a new column from Seattle Weekly called “Ask an uptight Seattleite”.  They don’t seem to have an index page for it on their website (forshame!) so these are the three I found on google.  Funny!

• http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0642/seattleite.php
  
• http://www.seattleweekly.com/diversions/0643/seattleite.php
• http://www.seattleweekly.com/diversions/0644/uptight.php

BBC News, on Sasha Baron Cohen:

In the film, Cohen’s character Borat portrays Kazakhs as a nation of misogynists, racists and anti-Semites.

(ref)

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the humour that Ali G provides. To see his characters including Borat as making fun of the characters he portays is totally missing the point — if that were all that was it would be a really dumb show. Ha ha, look at how dumb foreigners are, ha ha.

It’s more true to say that Cohen is a master of the art of trolling, that is to say creating great controversy just for the sake with people who don’t know better. To the people who know better it’s funny to see the reactions of those not in the loop, because we know we’d probably be just as taken in. That’s also the basis for hidden camera shows, though of course Cohen mixes more offensiveness into the batter.

The real crux of the humour in the show is that Cohen shows just how much common folk in the US and UK are willing to take so long as he portrays himself as an outsider. He does horribly offensive things and is treated like a child because his victims assume that his differences provide him with an excuse for the things he says as does. Instead of standing up and saying “hey that’s wrong you jerkoff” as they ought to, they’ll condone it as if his outsider status gives him immunity from the responsibilities of being a good person.

In this way, the character of Borat doesn’t make fun of Kazakhstanis any more than Ali G makes fun of people from Staines. The joke’s not on them, but it’s on us.

I know I’ve made fun of Toronto a lot recently, but that’s only because you’re moving away and I’ll miss you.  But look on the bright side: you’ll be able to drink in pub washrooms!

The phrase “guilty until proven innocent” conveys horrible images of trials in authoritarian countries like the USSR or China, where the accused has to prove their innocence.  The sad part is, it’s impossible to prove innocence in nearly all cases.  Enter on stage right, Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper!  Not just for the USSR or China anymore, coming soon to a Canada near you!

The sentiment of the bill, trying to keep repeat sexual or violent offenders off the streets is a worthy goal.  However that is absolutely no excuse for the sort of authoritarian precedent this sets for Canadian law.  The “three strikes” law where you are automatically jailed for life on your third offense isn’t ideal either, but at least in that case you don’t have mock trials of people trying to prove they are not dangerous.  How on earth is one to prove they are not dangerous, anyhow?  The concept is truly absurd.

People who said “what’s so bad about Harper?”: I told you so.  Now we finally see the wolf that has been hiding in sheep’s clothing for so long, and it’s just as bad as the naysayers feared.

A Russian version of the studio’s Perfect Strangers debuted last week on Russian channel Ren TV.

The show, about a country bumpkin who moves into the big city apartment of his urban cousin, has undergone a few changes to better reflect the local audience.

The mismatched roommates originally named Larry and Balki have become Ivan and Andrei. In the first episode, Andrei arrives from a remote ex-Soviet republic and insinuates himself into the Moscow apartment of his cousin, Ivan.  (ref)

The word “terrorism” no longer means anything at all.  Perhaps it used to mean something, at least I thought it did… but no longer.  Leftists attribute it to governments like the US and Israel.  Right-wingers attribute it to anyone who opposes them.  And now it seems that Putin has taken the bizarre step of attributing it to a neighbouring country simply because they apprehended his spies.

It’s been on this road for a while now, but it’s finally official: terrorism now joins the rank of fascism and simply means “we don’t like them”.  RIP, “terrorism”.

Last night my lovely wife snuck some spinach into my food.  I think she’s trying to kill me.

One thing I haven’t seen much press on in the coverage of the recent coup in Thailand is why the military needed to intervene in the affairs of a democratically elected government.  I heard from some guy at work that there was an election there scheduled in November but was unable to confirm this — if true that means this coup was not about corruption at all but simply because they were unwilling to accept the likely results of the upcoming election.  That’s pretty scary.  Then again, when are coups not scary?

Don’t eat spinach, it can kill and most likely will kill you if you get within 20 metres of some.
Thankfully by total coincidence my wife left town for a bit so I’m about as safe in this area as one could possibly be.

Muslims are so pissed off by the mischaracterization that their religion is linked with violence by an Emperor of the Byzantine Empire that they hold violent protests worldwide.
Seriously, Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, cut that out already! If you don’t stop talking about the link between violence and Islam, they’ll hold more violent protests and kill people.

Unless you are John Hodgman*, you can only be an expert at so many things. Two of the areas that I know much better than the general population are computer technology (deliberately vague) and US immigration. What is interesting is that I quite frequently see dramatically false examples in the mass media relating to current events. For computer technology this is of course nothing new, I’ve grown to accept that to reporters they have just given up on trying and just try to paste something down that is grammatically correct-ish. Glaring factual errors are just par for the course in this arena.

So during my long ordeal with immigration into the US I managed to become quite the expert on procedures and things that most people won’t experience. This gives me perspective on news items like this one which tells me that just as they do with computer technology, reporters are just making stuff up as they go along with regards to immigration too. They take a story about a guy who (a) didn’t know what kind of visa to get; (b) screwed up and did the things out of order; and (c) is subject to standard US immigration practices — and they turn it into a sob story about how The Man is denying Arabs from getting into the country.

Guess what, sfgate.com? If the dude was legally married to an American, he could apply for a K-3 visa without having to leave the country. He could get his security clearance done inside the US in any of the time following his legal marriage. Getting fingerprinted, questioned, and barred entry into the US while they judge the merits your case is standard operating procedure.

Entry into the USA for non-citizens is not a right, it’s a privilege and when you declare your intent to immigrate they don’t want to let you in until they make sure you qualify. It super-mega-sucks, I can personally attest to this, but it has nothing to do with the dude’s name or country of citizenship. That’s just a bunch of nonsense written by people who don’t know what they are talking about written to serve what I assume to be a predetermined agenda.

I am also reminded of the times in both my personal and working life where I have been privy to a situation that was considered newsworthy. There was an “act of god” type accident at a job site my father’s company was tangently involved in, and also the company I work for launched a new product. In both cases the various media agencies put out incorrect facts and made unwarranted conclusions that would mislead viewers/readers. The reporters took the angle they wanted to report on an tried to jam the facts of the case into their story (for better or for worse).

It begs the question**, does the media get anything right about anything at all? It really can’t just be a coincidence that all of my exposures have been so bad, can it?

Notes:

* Wow really?? That’s frigging AWESOME you read my blog.
** Sorry was that incorrect? I meant, it literally begs the question.

My lovely wife points out that Whistler is the same word as hitler with just two extra letters.

Also, I invented a new saying: “the worst thing since sliced hitler”.

That is all.

Salon has an article up announcing their winner of the Buffy award for unappreciated television shows — the winner in this case being the wonderful Battlestar Galactica.   Their delightful “ten reasons not to watch Battlestar Galactica” includes one particular gem:

10. I like my science fiction peopled with multi-nostriled characters sporting thick, blue, leathery skin. Too many of the “Battlestar Galactica” characters are preposterously hot, and stubbornly refuse to ooze green, viscous liquids. Who wants that?

One thing that really interests me is how living in urban centres distances ourselves from the social constraints that you would have in smaller groups.  For example: in a tribe of 100 people, if you do something antisocial like let your dog poop everywhere everyone else will treat you like garbage.  But in a large urban society, those societal pressures don’t really apply for better or for worse — the good or bad things you do that would be rewarded or punished in a smaller setting are just ignored.  If your dog poops on the sidewalk you just move on, and you don’t really have to worry ever seeing anyone again even if they give you a nasty look when you walk away.

This has a lot of implications, for example how small town people don’t like “big government” and large cities are usually full of liberals who regulate everything.  It just makes sense in the different contexts, because in the smaller towns there is a relatively greater chance that societal pressures will be able to accomplish things that big cities require rules and regulations to accomplish.  That’s obviously just one part of it, but I digress.

What adds to that discussion is an article I ran across from South Korea, where the internets are so pervasive that the societal pressures of small groups can sometimes even apply on a larger scale.  Read this IHT article and note especially the bottom paragraphs.  Even in (assumedly) a large city, the mob rule of the internet has transformed a large city into using negative social pressure to punish someone for letting their dog poop on the sidewalk — something that would have otherwise just been anonymous.

Regardless whether you think the reaction was overboard or not (I certainly do), it has interesting (to me) implications about what this means in our society.  Is this mob rule going to replace some of the rules that we enforce today?  Instead of a $500 fine for people not cleaning up after their dogs, maybe the parks should just post photographs of offenders on a blog somewhere to get better enforcement.  Okay, maybe not.  But nonetheless it has implications for the future.

Except that it makes reference to a fellow named “Borys Wrzesnewskyj”.

Call me culturally insensitive, but it really seems like you could get a better last name by mashing your hand against a keyboard.

aebadblkAVBKsd.

p;bjmhhhhhhgibjqerbinf

goqeogp;bhkibjaherbhqepobhj

Hm.  Perhaps not.  Still, it’s a very awkward name.

When I get really drunk, I don’t start screaming anti-semitic comments at police officers.  That’s one difference, another one is that I’ve never made a movie where people torture Jesus for several hours.

So, uh, any bets on whether his new Mayan movie features “the Jews” as a villain again?

There goes a great all-purpose joke.

It’s now illegal to name your children “Hitler”.  Can you believe this?

As a gift to my good friend joh3n whose first child was born just a few days ago, I made for him a Book of Zogg. This was one of the coolest things I have ever done — though I give credit for the idea to my lovely wife. Read more for the pictures in all their glory!

(more…)

Ok, so I have been known to harp a bit on the media constantly misreferring to Islam as a “religion of peace”.  So in the interest of fairness, I’m going to link to an example of a dude who actually lives up to this moniker.  This guy risked life and limb to do something both awesome and dangerous, and I admire him for that.  I’d buy him a beer, were I to know where he lives — except of course that as a devout Muslim he couldn’t drink the beer.  So I’d have two beers, but the thought would be there.

In case you were thinking you had a bad day at work, think again.  That guy had a bad day at work.

This is pretty cool.  Human beings are so frigging adaptable.  When life serves you lemons, build a railroad out of bamboo!

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

Something tells me that Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has been taking the same crazy pills as Time Cube creator Gene Ray.   If you’ve ever wondered how the internet is like a tube, read his whole enlightened description here.