Category Archives: Video Games

SOPA, Toast!, Facebook, and thoughts

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I’ve written in this blog more this month than the last two combined (if you include this post). And it’s only the 18th. Weird.

Anyway, you’ve probably been hearing about the various site blackouts today in protest of SOPA/PIPA. Given that I work for a tech company, you probably already know my stance on the issue.
It just occurred to me this morning that this conflict seems to be a lot like the kinds of conflicts you see in tech companies.
You have the management types (politicians, MPAA, RIAA, etc) with the money and the power, who want something to happen without really having an understanding of what they’re asking for. You have the tech people (Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist) who have a good understanding of why the request is flawed.
When a direct conflict between the two groups happens in a company, it’s not a good idea for management to blindly push ahead, insisting that they are right over all the protests of the people who really know what’s going on. Do so, and you come out with a crappy product. Do so too much and the company goes bankrupt, or all of your employees quit, and you’re pretty much screwed.
The same thing is happening here. I find it absolutely insane that Congress is attempting to draft legislation that involves so much technical detail, but refuses to listen to the people who really understand that technology. (Or, you know, dismisses them as “profiting from the illegal activities.”)
Sigh.

In other news, I had a birthday, and it was nice. We went to Toast!, and I got the tasting menu with wine pairing, and it was tasty. Probably not nice enough to justify the price tag, but still really nice.
I suppose I’m one of those people who can’t fully appreciate gourmet food and drink. Wine tastes like wine. Food tastes like food. A $30 dinner may taste nicer than a $10 meal at Orient Kitchen (one of my favorite restaurants here), but it doesn’t really feel like it’s 3x as good. So I don’t know.
Service was also not up to what I would expect from such a place. They forgot the wine pairing with my first course (but made up for it at dessert with an aged tawny port), forgot to switch my butter knife for a meat knife (so I pretty much had to fork my salmon apart; they seemed to get everyone else though), ran out of bread (which I suppose is excusable), and just generally weren’t as attentive as you would expect for a restaurant that was mostly empty. Part of it may be the late reservation (7:30). Part of it may be that I was expecting more from hearing people talk about the place (and how they gauge your reaction to each course when selecting the next). I don’t know.
I guess this means I should not attempt to make a trip to The French Laundry. I wouldn’t be able to properly appreciate the food there. (Although I’m sure a $270+ meal would at least not have issues in the service aspect.)

In other other news, I miss Facebook. This is not because I miss Facebook itself, but rather because I miss being able to contact people. It seems that, these days, AIM usage has fallen off and email is generally neglected. When I want to contact certain people now, I pretty much have to send a text message (and that doesn’t even always work). It’s kind of a depressing thought that Facebook has become such a central means of communication, especially over something like email. I don’t know.
I still don’t have plans to get a new Facebook account anytime soon. I’d rather be unable to contact people than deal with their crap again.

In other other other news, I ascended again in KoL to try out bumcheekcity’s ascension script. Apparently, not only does the script not eat or drink for you, it also neglects to find food or drink for you to manually consume. Which meant I was almost stuck with a super-crappy day 1 at level 3 with no food or drink. Luckily I was able to rest in my campground, use the MP to summon Alice’s Army cards and a snack voucher, and use the snack voucher for adventures to spend at the tavern. I’m wondering what other people do for the script. Or do they rely on having spleen familiars to get the adventures necessary? It’s my own damn fault for not ascending manually, yes, but meh.

In other other other other news, I was looking at Photoshop Lightroom as a potential upgrade from Photoshop Elements organizer (currently using version 5). Unfortunately, while Lightroom does have the ability to import Photoshop Elements libraries, it only does so for versions 6 through 9. So my options, if I ever want to upgrade, are to either buy a new version of Photoshop Elements as an intermediate step (to use to upgrade the album file), and then import the upgraded album file into Lightroom (that is, of course, assuming that all of the upgrades work as promised, or I’d have wasted $80 on something pointless)… or to reconstruct my tag library from scratch.
Neither of which is a good option.
Considering doing a small upgrade now to Elements 6, since that’s supported by Lightroom, and Amazon does still sell it (via third parties), and reviews say it doesn’t suck nearly as much as the newer incarnations of Elements, and the process of upgrading the album should work better than an upgrade from 5 to 10. But still, the entire thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Do people really not use software for years anymore? Do companies really expect you to be on the new version as soon as it’s out? Elements 5 is just over 5 years old. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of time to use a piece of software you paid for.
I suppose it’s also hypocritical of me to use Elements organizer when I decided not to get a Kindle because of the lock-in effect on Kindle books.
I do have all of my tags written to the photo metadata, so I could potentially switch to anything if I absolutely had to without losing them completely, but I would lose all of the organization I currently have of the tags (like categorization of people tags, separation of people tags from location tags, etc). That’s nontrivial when you have several thousand tags.
Sigh.

I guess this has been a list of things that have been making me sad lately. #firstworldproblems, eh?

Edit: From Ian:

I see SOPA in a very different light from you, I think. I don’t see Congress and media execs having any misunderstandings. They’re old, don’t have a use for the Internet themselves, and accumulating short term earnings for retirement. Fuck the rest of the world.

Yeeeeeah. :\

Recovery

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Got back from San Francisco last night. Woke up this morning at 10:30 (!) and immediately felt like crap, so I decided to take the day off. Best idea ever. I managed to sleep in (some more), run KoL turns, process and tag all 1871 photos from the trip, and have meals on time. (Only 1871 photos? I’m getting more restrained with photos. Kind of. At least compared to my Carnival 2009 trip where I took 10840 photos and my Carnival 2010 trip where I took 6733 photos.)

As such, photos are now posted to photos. It was kind of an awesome week.
life has also been updated.


I owed Sharon some money. I decided to give it to her entirely in $1 bills (as per an earlier email conversation). It was awesome.

A couple photos also deserve a bit more explanation.


That’s the most oblivious cat ever. It always sits in exactly the same pose with a big goofy smile on its face. No wonder its owners left it behind.


San Francisco constructions sites cause cancer. Too bad there’s construction sites everywhere.


Poor Koyel. We didn’t think she would stop talking on the phone. Well, at least Shawn and Sharon didn’t. Or something. I was kind of out of it at the time.


It’s Andrew with Andrew! Afterwards, we tried to draw him in Crayon physics. It didn’t work nearly as well.


ZMONG best tofu ever :O

When everything goes wrong

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It’s only 10:30 AM and it’s already been a day full of unhappiness. Primarily in KoL.

I was on day 8 of my ascension (of what really should have been a 7 day, but still). DD screw meant I was short a key (two Boris, one Sneaky Pete, and one breath spray), so I had to open the DoD and get a wand (which I don’t do in Bees runs, since you don’t need the bang potions). Completed the battlefield with around 70 adventures remaining (after filling stomach, spleen, and drunkness), which should have been plenty. Except getting the wand took around 55 adventures. Spent an adventure making a disco banjo, The hedge maze decided to screw me, requiring 8 maps to pass (despite perfect solving of the puzzle). Tower took the expected 6. My last adventure was spent defeating my shadow (also did the familiars, but they don’t take an adventure), meaning I was left at 0 adventures ready to face the Sorceress. With no way to generate more turns. Sigh.

The worst part is it’s really my fault. I had two misclicks during the nuns (readventuring instead of healing), causing two beaten ups, wasting two turns of +400% meat buffs, which really probably ended up costing around 4 or 5 turns. Misclicked when trying to buy more MMJ, accidentally spending an adventure instead. Misclicked twice on the battlefield, getting beaten up and losing that adventure. Any of those being different would have meant I’d have the single adventure I need, including not running the DD again today hoping for the last key.

On the plus side, this at least means I’ll have plenty of adventures tomorrow to level to 14 and grab Flavour of Magic as intended. (Would have also been okay without DD screw, but meh.)

In my frustration with this, I had also completely forgotten the reason for getting up early in the first place… to check in to my flight tomorrow. As a result, I checked in well over 30 minutes after the starting time, and got the boarding number B56. Which means I’ll be stuck in a middle seat on the long flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix (then to San Francisco) tomorrow. Sigh.

Additionally, today is the West Virginia walk. I ended up not going, and now regret not going. Sigh.

Now I’m not in the mood to work on Investigations cards, meaning the game is not going to be playtestable for my trip to SF, meaning it won’t get playtested until next month when I go to Tim’s. Sigh.

Edit: Joined up with the West Virginia people after lunch, only to bail about 3.5 hours later because it was way too hot. In doing so, managed to completely forget that today was Lilli’s birthday celebration and missed that too. Fail.

Walk and KoL

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I seem to have gotten into the habit of posting at the beginning of months. Well, here’s continuing that trend.

Today Keith, Greg, and I walked from Bloomfield to Keith’s house in Ross Township for a total trip of about 19.4 miles. Hopefully the fact that things weren’t too bad (except for my shoes and socks interacting to make my toes blister) means I’ll be fine for the annual West Virginia walk this summer (almost 40 miles).

We had lunch at Joe’s Rusty Nail, and it was excellent. My $12 crab cake dinner had three huge (and meaty) crab cakes, a good-sized helping of pasta, and a generous side salad, and came with free bread and butter. Recommended if you’re in the area.

Haven’t done this in a while, so here’s a dump of photos from the hike.



It’s thinking Keith!















In non-walking news, I have finally ascended again in KoL after a hiatus of 4 years (most of it away from the game completely). The recent Valhalla revamp, prospect of doing a 100% run with this month’s new familiar (volleyball + fairy + item drops for a new area!), and the Bees Hate You path finally pushed me over the edge
And I’m glad, because the game is so much more interesting when you’re doing quests than when you’re stuck in aftercore trying to find ways to spend your 200+ adventures every day.
My first run in 4 years is a Turtle Tamer Hardcore “Bees Hate You” run with no clovers (setting up for a BM Kitty run) and 100% Li’l Xenomorph. Should prove to be interesting. Let’s see how long it takes me.

I can already say that my best investment thus far is the VIP Key, because full HP recovery (already have Tongue of the Walrus permed) from the hot tub, +muscle stats from the shower, MP regen from the pool table, and screambats from the fax machine have made the first two days so much better than they could have been. The Pen Pal kit has, thus far, been mostly useless (Box of Pokemann Band-Aids is useless in Beecore and the shield was only useful until I got a cola shield). My snowcones and candy hearts haven’t helped too much either (ran orange for extra stats and purple for some MP on day one, but would have been fine without them).

The Xenomorph has also been excellent. Got its equipment today, and the fairy aspect is proving very useful. The space area also provides good quality food and booze, which I otherwise have trouble acquiring (beers from Tavern are useless in Beecore, and I don’t have cocktail crafting permed due to my love of teet runs). The +stat buffs from the maps are also useful. I think tomorrow will finally get me up to reagent pasta (got some hellion cubes and knob mushrooms today), which will combine nicely with the pumpkin pie and fortune cookie.

So current status there is level 6 at the end of day 2, having completed through the level 5 quest with a reasonable stock of food. I think that’s the best I’ve done in *any* run (all of which were pre-NS13) but, more than that, the game has gotten much less annoying to play due to things like the VIP room and pumpkins. I suppose part of that is also the 100% run preventing me from having to mess with familiars (no He-Boulder anyway, so already have that working against me). Perhaps future runs will also be 100% runs.