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PAX Prime 2011

2011-10-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

PAX = Success
I attended this year's PAX Prime not to see any particular game, not to hear any particular speaker or panel, but because it feels great to be in the company of so many like-minded geeks and nerds. PAX's business operations head Robert Khoo confirmed that PAX Prime had approximately 70,000 people this year, making it the largest PAX yet.

Despite the event's size, the founders and organizers remain quite hands-on. I was impressed while waiting in line for the keynote to see Mr. Khoo walking the line, counting attendees so that potential attendees could be told the cutoff for when the venue was going to be full.

Exhibition Halls
The exhibition halls were, as always, impressively large. The place was packed, but the crowds were friendly and people were moving through pretty well, so clogs were rare. The PAX Enforcers are more active every year in managing the lines of people who are waiting to play a demo, have an autograph signed, or get into a panel, and this year was no different.

Halofest
Microsoft and Bungie's Halofest was maybe the single most impressive thing I saw at the expo this year. Never have I seen so much Halo gear, games, toys, props and assorted paraphernalia in one place. 2011 was the inaugural year for Halofest, and it did not disappoint. There were life-sized figures from several of the games, but the dioramas of combat scenes were the most impressive.

I'm willing to bet it will be at forthcoming PAXes for the foreseeable future, and may even be an independent traveling exhibit in select cities around the country. There is that much stuff, and it is that good.

Indie Games
One of the cooler things I experienced this year was the "indie games" area. There was one smaller exhibition hall dedicated solely to independent developers and games. Unfortunately I did not find this treasure trove until the last day of the show, but I will definitely be returning there at future shows. The neat thing was that the crowds were much less dense in this hall and you had a real opportunity to not only play the games on display, but talk to the developer who made the game.

This area also had a zombie makeup booth where you could be "zombified."

Camaraderie
The people are what keep bringing me back to PAX. We are all so similar there, no matter what type of gaming or geekery we are each interested in. I happened to run into one of the volunteer PAX Enforcers at the airport when I was heading home, and he summed it up well: "No matter how geeky you are, you're not the geekiest one there." Simply put, one feels at ease and among friends. Who wouldn't want that?

All photos are on flickr here.

Buckethead and Picasso, or ...

2011-07-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

... a weekend in San Francisco.

Buckethead was the first artist whose work I experienced last weekend. I headed west after work Friday evening and went straight to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco for a burger and fries before the show.

I have been a Buckethead fan since about 1992 when I became aware of the album Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis), on which Buckethead plays guitar, and I presume, after seeing this live show, some bass. I'm not sure, but I may have read about that album and Buckethead in a review in one of the guitar magazines at the time, probably Guitar Player.

His performance was pretty awesome. I knew he had amazing skills on the guitar, but to see him pull off all of those sounds live was just incredible.

It was just him on the stage, using pre-recorded music. We were all there for his guitar-playing, so that was great. It's hard to describe his music - it's more a collection of themes and emotions rather than your typically structured songs. One minute he's shooting out a high-speed staccato solo and the next he's playing a melodic blues lick.

This was guitar-nerdry at the highest level.

It was an interesting mix of people too. A lot of younger men and women, probably late teens to early twenties, many middle-agers like me, and a few older folks. In addition to guitar, he also played some bass, and I have to believe he picked up some tips from Bootsy Collins (a past collaborator on other projects and legendary bassist for Parliament-Funkadelic), 'cause man, that bucket can play bass! Slappin' and poppin', he can do it all.

He also handed out some toys from a large santa-like sack, took some time out to put down his guitar and do some pop-and-lock dancing and also give a nunchaku demonstration right on stage.

He had a specially modified guitar that let him make and control sounds like I have never heard in a live performance. On his customized white Les Paul he had two "spots," one where the pickup selector switch usually is, and another at the tone knob farthest from the strings, which it appeared he could tap or rub to control effects and maybe a synth to morph his sound.

(Interesting: I just found his signature model here and it describes those "spots" as arcade button-style "kill switches." I really thought they were some sort of electrostatically charged plate that was a controller for some effects device. He must have been working some devices on the floor that I couldn't see.)

Anyway, fantastic show!

The next day, I went to the de Young museum and saw the Picasso exhibit. It was quite a mind-bender. I did not know that Picasso worked in so many media - steel, bronze, charcoal and paper, wood - almost anything in addition to the expected oil or watercolor on canvas. I liked the way he plays with perception, perspective, and the use of simple shapes to convey his subjects. Often his pieces look quite bizarre or child-like. Very much worth the trip if you can make it.

Howard Stern makes national news with Weiner press conference

2011-06-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

I heard a story on NPR this morning about a heckler at Anthony Weiner's resignation press conference yesterday. I figured the heckler was Benjy Bronk, one of Stern's writers, because Benjy had disrupted one of Weiner's previous press conferences, which had been discussed on the show this week. Indeed, the linked story mentions Benjy by name. The radio report only said he was a writer for "shock jock" Howard Stern.

It's so great that the national news media had to mention Stern's name, although NPR felt obligated to qualify the mere mention with the term "shock jock." Such an outdated term, and not even accurate.

Howard Stern re-signs with SiriusXM

2010-12-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

Awesome. Now I'll be able to make it through my commute for five more years. Consider my subscription renewed.

For anyone who heard yesterday's show, you know we now can look forward to seeing George Takei wrestling with Ralph Cirella and Richard Christy in speedos!

Call of Duty: Black Ops - first impressions

2010-11-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

The major difference between this game and the new Medal of Honor is the narrative presentation. Medal of Honor is fairly straightforward, gritty even, allowing you to play different aspects of one single mission within a much larger war. Also, with Medal of Honor, while there is an ultimate mission goal, it is clear your allegiance as a character is to your fellow soldiers rather than to being a "save the world" hero. You feel closer to the action.

COD: Black Ops has different ambitions, as one might expect from this series. As you can tell from the title of the game, you play as an operative on secret, behind-the-scenes missions. The setting for this game is the Cold War - the game begins in 1961 and I believe you play through several real-world conflicts, starting with the Bay of Pigs. I'm only a couple of missions in, so I don't know how far through history this game goes.

I like the type of game that fills in the holes of history. Games that allow you to play through a story that is framed by actual historical events. This is that type of game. So far, the story is pretty fantastical, but still fun. I have only played the single player campaign, and so far, I like it.

The graphics are sharp, controls are responsive, and the sound is good. I noticed a few times where the action paused for a second while the game was loading, but hopefully that will be minimized or eliminated by installing the game on the hard drive. This game feels highly polished, and I'm looking forward to finishing it and playing the multiplayer and co-op zombie modes.

Medal of Honor - full review

2010-10-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

My initial impressions are here. The main issue I had early on in playing the Medal of Honor [wiki entry - plot spoilers there] campaign was distracting audio dropouts during heavy onscreen activity, specifically when my character was firing the PKM machine gun. I'm happy to report I had no further incidents of such dropouts during the remainder of the campaign.

The only other sort of glitch I noticed is that I was able to run up onto a spawn point for the enemies in one of the later levels. I think it was in the "Rescue the Rescuers" level where you are advancing up a rocky mountain. I don't know if I moved forward too fast or just went an unexpected direction, but me and my squad were all sitting around this spawn point just killing enemies as they appeared. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening and how these guys seemed to be getting the jump on us so quickly.

The overall narrative of the campaign is quite good, and pretty different from most games of this genre. The focus is on the soldiers and their loyalty to each other, not some overarching mega-mission to save the world. You play a number of different types of special operations soldiers, including Army Rangers, Delta Force and Tier 1 operatives, each at different points and from different points of view of the same overall sequence of events.

My favorite game mechanic is the slide - as you run to cover, if you crouch while you're running you will go into a slide and stop against the cover and end up in a crouched position, ready to go. It's really too bad this mechanic did not carry over to the multiplayer aspect of the game. The slide is a great addition that I haven't seen before, and the mechanic is executed flawlessly, much like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2's implementation of anchoring behind cover and rotating out or above to shoot (see here at about the 33 second mark).

The campaign is quite short, maybe four to six hours, depending on your skill and aggressiveness. I wish it had been longer, but what is there is good. There is a good variety of vehicle and weapon usage. The gameplay is fairly structured, however, and while you are definitely not playing "on rails," the game takes you where you need to go, providing the appropriate weapon for the situation. Also, as I have seen others mention, there are areas in the game with "invisible walls" where you can see an area your character could obviously go to, but the game simply won't let you. This sort of funnels you through some parts of the game, and while it is a small complaint and something I only noticed once or twice, it would be just that more immersive if your character could explore any area that appears accessible.

Multiplayer
The multiplayer felt good, other than the fact that the controls did not directly carry over from the single player campaign. For one, the slide mechanic is missing, and the other thing is that your controller settings have to be set separately. For many games I don't use the default controller configuration and I had to set that configuration up in the multiplayer separately even though I had already done so for the single player campaign. Also, the configurations are named differently between the single and multiplayer, so it's not immediately apparent which in the multiplayer will be the same as what you use in single player. This is fairly small, easily remedied and hopefully a one-time thing, but I spent 10-15 seconds in my first live multiplayer map sitting vulnerable while I configured my controller.

There do not appear to be a lot of options to select the type of game you want to play in multiplayer. Admittedly, I have not played a ton of games, so maybe I just haven't found all of the options, but it looks like you select a "type" of game (combat mission, team assault, objective raid, sector control or hardcore) and go. That's fine with me, but I imagine for the multiplayer junkies out there who like specific settings, it may not be enough.

Comparisons to Battlefield Bad Company 2's multiplayer are inevitable as the same developer did the multiplayer for this game. The feel is similar, but the settings and goals in the various gametypes are different enough that I was not constantly being reminded of BFBC2. This multiplayer stands on its own. Now I just need to get some of my friends online to play with me.

Overall
I definitely give this one a "thumbs-up." The only hesitation I have in a full "buy" recommendation is that you should probably make sure your friends online are also going to buy this one since the single player campaign is so short. The campaign looks to have decent replayability with multiple levels of difficulty and a "Tier 1" mode (available after completing the game once) which involves beating each stage under a "par" time, but once that's done you'll be playing with random people online if your friends don't have the game.

Medal of Honor - first impressions

2010-10-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

I picked up Medal of Honor for the Xbox 360 today and played through the first few levels on the single-player campaign. I have not played multiplayer yet. The game is good, but I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. My biggest gripe is that there are some serious audio glitches when there is a lot of action on the screen. The sound just drops out for fractions of a second, which is very noticeable and distracting. The drops have been most noticeable so far when using the PKM machine gun. I'm using headphones, so the effect is probably amplified for me, but it still shouldn't happen. My in-game audio "Speaker Type" is set to "Headphones."

In addition, movement of the enemy vehicles and soldiers can be a bit stiff, sometimes making angular turns instead of smooth movements. You also seem to be able to "play ahead" of the audio. By that I mean you can kill an enemy or move to a position before the game's script gets there and the audio prompt (e.g., "tango at 12 o'clock") will still play. That's small, but it's something I noticed.

On the good side, the graphics are pretty good, and I like the way you can shoot through holes in buildings or other cover to take out enemies. Your squadmates are particularly good at clearing enemies on their own too, which helps. So far, I like the feel of the game, the focus on working as a squad. I'll give the multiplayer a try this weekend. If DICE did that as well as it did Battlefield Bad Company 2, there should be no issues.

UPDATE: added in-game audio settings

PAX Prime 2010

2010-10-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Penny Arcade crew continue to do it right. Despite the 67,600 attendees during the course of the weekend, the "con" experience was great: friendly people, effective line management, and the volunteer Enforcers were awesome.

Panels

There was an endless variety of panels to attend and topics to learn about. There was simply too much available to do everything one might find interesting, so picking and choosing was a must. I attended the Bungie panel on Halo Reach, a live taping of Major Nelson's podcast and a panel on academic research related to gaming.

Bungie

The Reach developers shared some insight into the creative process and thought behind the design of this final game in the Halo franchise to be developed by Bungie. Among other things, they showed video of some of the motion capture techniques used which was overlaid on game footage so you could see how it was integrated into the game. The captured facial expressions for the voiceover actors was quite amazing.

Major Nelson

Xbox Live's Major Nelson put on a pretty good show. The usual cast from his podcast was there live, and the resulting podcast was posted that weekend. They took a lot of questions from the audience, and everyone who asked a question was given some extra swag. Plus, they gave away probably ten of the new special edition Xbox 360 controllers and the grand prize giveaway was the very first publicly available Halo Reach edition of the newly redesigned Xbox 360.

Academic Research and Game Studies
I didn't quite know what to expect with this panel, but I probably should have since it was exactly what the title says. This was a panel of researchers, some still graduate students, who were adapting more traditional areas of social science research to the area of gaming. It was a little bit dry, and correspondingly I did not take any pictures. It wasn't too bad, but I wasn't the intended audience of potential grad students or teachers who were interested in formal research about how people interact with and play games. Just goes to show the variety of topics available at PAX.

Exhibit Hall

With the main theatre located off-site at the nearby Benaroya Hall, there was much more space available for exhibitors this year. There were two "wings" of the exhibit hall and more than once I became turned around and had to keep wandering to find something I remembered I had seen before and wanted to revisit.

All manner of gaming-related companies were represented, from game developers and specialty hardware manufacturers to clothing companies and book publishers. Countless videogames were available to look at and play: Rock Band 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Metroid Other M, EVE Online, Halo Reach, Fallout: New Vegas and a lot of smaller indie games from all types of developers. The focus of PAX continues to be on games, but a number of related industries like comics and to some extent movies and T.V. also have enough crossover appeal to warrant a presence.

Characters and costumes

Another cool and fun thing that has become more and more prevalent at PAX over the years is the effort that people put into making costumes of their favorite characters. Taken to its extreme, this is called cosplay and involves live roleplaying or posing in-character. Below are a few great examples from this year.

The last PAX I went to before this one was 2008, when it was really beginning to become a huge event, and the waiting in lines for virtually everything took away a lot of the enjoyment of the show. This year, the Penny Arcade crew appeared to have addressed the line-waiting problems with pre-planning (taped or roped off line queues along with plenty of Enforcers to answer questions, keep people informed and play games involving the line-waiters) and active monitoring (counting of people in line versus room capacity, for the largest events there was a twitter feed specifically for updates on line length and remaining room capacity).

What this convention continues to have that makes it so enjoyable is the community. Everyone is there to have a good time, and there is something for everyone and every type of gamer. The volunteer Enforcers also make a difference - they are not simply temps hired to monitor just another convention floor, they are gamers themselves and have just as much enthusiasm as the regular attendees. As the Penny Arcade crew have said before, they create the opportunity and space for the show, but it is the gamers who create the atmosphere and the community.

Many more pictures are at my flickr page.

Access granted.

2010-08-26T22:15:00.001-07:00

PAX 2010 is on!

Phoenix Comicon 2010

2010-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

I have family and friends in Phoenix and lived there many years before moving to California, so deciding to attend this year's Phoenix Comicon over Memorial Day weekend was an easy one.

The variety of interests at the Phoenix Comicon this year was quite broad, though the main themes were pretty clearly comics (characters, art, artists, authors, accessories) and science fiction (authors, movies, books, costumes). There was a smattering of gaming-related events like freeplay sessions of Rock Band (and Wil Wheaton's Rock Band all-nighter), but gaming was not a main focus.

Phoenix Comicon has been around for nine years, but has not seemed to be very visible until the last several years. None of my friends who still live in Phoenix were aware of it when I told them I was going. I think with the explosive growth and commercialization of the San Diego Comicon, more people are aware of cons in general, and some people may want to find a less crowded, less in-your-face and less commercialized version of the con experience. The Phoenix Comicon provides that alternative and has become more visible as a result.

There were a ton of people in all types of costumes. It was obvious a lot of people were having a lot of fun:

There were writers, artists and actors there whom you could talk to, have your picture taken with, and whom would probably sign something if you brought it to them. Some pretty well-known people were there, including Stan Lee, Levar Burton and the previously mentioned Wil Wheaton.

Unicorn Pegasus Kitten ("UPK")
Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi had a "Super Happy Fun Time" panel wherein they discussed various Internet-related items (as you do), a little about their respective backgrounds, and revealed a certain fan fiction writing contest (deadline for entry was June 30) and subject painting which I have to say I am glad I was witness to. Phoenix Comicon 2010 will likely be remembered as the beginning of the epoch of UPK storytelling. This was the scene just moments after the unveiling:

Here is a closeup of the painting taken after the panel:

There are a number of crazy Internet-Wheaton-Scalzi memes going on here, my favorite being the Wheaton infamous clown sweater. You can read about that, along with what else is going on in that painting, at the link to the writing contest above.

Levar Burton
I'm a big fan of Levar Burton from watching Reading Rainbow as a youth, and also Star Trek: The Next Generation. I had hoped to see him at this event, but hadn't planned to have my picture taken with him. There was a portrait service there that scheduled photos with various of the celebrities who were at the con, and I just happened by the photo booth right at the end of the session with Mr. Burton. I thought I probably wouldn't have another opportunity to have a professional portrait taken with him, so I decided to do it. The portrait is on the portrait company's flickr site, linked here. I elected to provide that link instead of posting the portrait here directly as the portrait company has reserved all of its copyright rights.

Next Year
Overall, this was a really fun event to attend. It ran the entire weekend, starting with Thursday evening preview events. I attended only on Sunday, but it looked like there were plenty of things to see and panels to attend if one were to go for the entire show. The price is right, too. I believe it was only $35 for a full event pass. I'll probably go again next year as it's a great bonus to a summer trip to see family and friends.

Artie's voice on the radio

2010-06-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

Last week The Howard Stern Show was on break and played a special collection of clips called "Wasted Week." It was a showcase for funny bits and the recounting of drunken misadventures of several of the Stern Show staff, former guests of the show, Wack Packers and others.

Some of the stuff was pretty funny but what I noticed most was the presence of Artie Lange's voice on many of the clips. One would think some of the stories would have been about Artie, but I didn't hear any. He was just part of the show, one of those making observations and participating in interviews and bits. I was reminded of how much he brought to the show with his observations, jokes and laugh. The show is still funny now, but hearing these clips reminded me that it is missing something.

I think I express the sentiments of many Stern Show fans when I wish Artie the best and hope that he takes whatever steps he needs to to get better. Hopefully he can someday return to comedy and maybe the Stern Show.

Phoenix Comicon 2010

2010-05-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

I will be attending the Phoenix Comicon tomorrow, May 30. I have been to several Penny Arcade Expos, but never a comicon, so I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on there. Plus, I want to see authors Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi. I just signed up for Twitter so I can keep up with @wilw, @scalzi and @PhoenixComicon. My Twitter username is @Kev_aru. The tag for tracking Phoenix Comicon-related info is #PHXCC. I will post pictures on Flickr.

Blame Sally back in Sacramento

2010-05-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

Blame Sally will be back in Sacramento next weekend, May 22, 2010. The venue is one I've never been to before, a yoga studio called fusion yoga studio. I've written about Blame Sally before--their style is hard to categorize, though the general category that is closest is probably folk. Throw in the accents from a Fender Strat and beautiful vocal harmonies and you are getting warmer.

You can check out some of their music here and here.

The show starts at 8:00p, hope to see you there. The more people who attend, the more likely it is the band will be able to travel to Sacramento more often.

Hello, Sacramentonians!

2010-05-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

I went with my friends Holly and Chad to see Conan O'Brien's "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television" tour last Thursday in Sacramento. The place was packed and the show was really funny. His band from the show (minus Max Weinberg) played a few introductory songs, and at one point all of the horn players walked out among the audience on the floor and played their solos using their wireless mics.

Conan did a monologue with some choice local material, including his impression of our governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, mention of the governor's name garnered mass boos from the audience. He's not a popular guy in this state right now, primarily because our budget is such a mess, but I digress. Conan used the Schwarzenegger impression and the associated booing to good effect, though, bringing it back several times and throwing in a faux-behind-the-scenes impression of Schwarzenegger talking to Conan on the phone about mention of his name and how it went over.

There were a couple of prerecorded videos which were really funny. I won't spoil it for those still waiting to see the tour, but one documented Conan's life during the post-Tonight Show funk prior to his putting this tour together and another involves a certain comic canine with which any fan of Conan's will be familiar.

There was more music than I expected. Conan played the guitar, and took center stage quite often, both singing and strumming, playing with the full band and two backup singers. Mr. Andy Richter also appeared, adding to the comic mix. They play off of each other well and Andy complements Conan perfectly.

Overall, this was a really fun show that exposed the audience to more of Conan's forthright genuineness and humor. He poked fun at TV network executives without being cruel, and made light of his own situation and his struggle to recover after losing his dream job.

Conan's recent interview on 60 Minutes was good, too. Nothing particularly groundbreaking was revealed, but he made it clear he was disappointed in how the late night situation happened and how he would have handled it differently had he been in Jay Leno's shoes.

This is great, too: Conan's recent appearance at Google, which happened on this tour the day before he appeared in Sacramento.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

2010-03-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

What I am looking at:

What I am listening to:

Pink Floyd's 1977 album "Animals." One of my favorites. The guitar work of David Gilmour is simply superb--it conveys the feeling of the theme of this album perfectly. Great bass work on here too, by Roger Waters. Heck, everything is terrific. I love the drums, keyboards and synthed-out vocals and sound effects, plus the various farm-inspired metaphors conveyed through the lyrics.

A little self-promotion--Scenic Brews

2010-03-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

I am a contributing writer to a new e-magazine published by a friend of mine out of Southern Arizona. It is called Scenic Brews and the general theme is all things brewed, from beer to coffee to tea to whisk(e)y and back to beer. Accompanying food and photography of the same is also an emphasis.

I am writing the "Beer & Pizza" column and this first column is an introduction and then discusses a recent beer tasting I went to at a great local restaurant here in Sacramento called OneSpeed Pizza. The e-zine will be published every two months with occasional updates inbetween. I hope you enjoy it.

Reference guide for Halo 3 ODST Audiophile achievement

2009-11-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not often a "completionist" when it comes to earning every achievement in a game, but sometimes a game is interesting enough, and the achievement tasks are realistic enough that it can be fun in itself to see if I can do it. To this point, I have earned all of the achievements in Halo 3 ODST except for the ones associated with the Firefight co-op mode. This "Audiophile" achievement was not difficult, but it was time-consuming, so I thought I'd post the references I used and the experience I had earning this one to hopefully save someone time if they want to do this.

To earn this achievement, one has to find all 29 of the Audio Log locations throughout the "Mombasa Streets" portion of the campaign and the final Audio Log within the Data Hive mission. You will only be able to find the Data Hive location after you have found the previous 29 locations. You can do this on any difficulty, so you might as well do it on "Easy" so you can quickly take care of any resistance you meet on the streets as you travel. There are a number of maps of the Mobmasa Streets available online, some with linked video clips showing each Audio Log, and there are also complete video walkthroughs showing the locations of all of the Audio Logs, but there is not one place that puts everything together, including what to do if you have difficulty actually "retrieving" the Audio Logs.

First, you will need a good map. I like this one because it shows the names of some of the "flashback" missions of the campaign (i.e., Kikowani Station) that make it easier to know where you are on the map. I will caution you that the video on that page showing the location of the 30th Audio Log in the "Data Hive" level contains a "spoiler" with regard to the story that is told by watching and listening to all of the Audio Logs. If you feel you must watch the video before doing it in the game, I would recommend you stop the video once you see where the 30th Audio Log is. However, you really don't need to watch the video at all as once you reach the Marine who accompanies you to Level 9 in Data Hive, you won't need any further guidance.

I found this video walkthrough to be extremely helpful. It quickly runs through every location and even traces the route you will need to walk on the overhead map to reach the next location. If all of the Audio Logs are "retrievable" (see "Other Considerations" below) it should take you about half an hour to confirm that you have them all using this walkthrough.

General Approach
Once you pick a map it is best to follow its Audio Log locations in sequence so you don't get lost. I had the map open on my laptop next to me while I played, but you can also print out the map and mark off each location as you find it. One initial thing to realize is that the Audio Logs do not need to be found in a specific order (but, see "Connection With Flashback Missions" below), though as you find them and listen to them, they will be sequential. This confused me at first since I needed to start looking for the 18th Audio Log after I went back to find all of the logs (I had found 17 while completing the campaign), and different maps labeled different locations as "18th."

Just remember that whatever audio log you find is the next one in terms of telling the story, so the numbering on the various maps showing all of the locations is really of no value except as reference within that map itself. Start with #1 on whatever map you choose, and go through to #29. Another thing to remember is that there is no connection between the "solo" and "co-op" campaigns as far as the Audio Logs go. If you find an Audio Log while going through the campaign on co-op, you will need to find the same one again if going through solo, and vice-versa. It's probably easiest to just do this solo, so you don't have to coordinate more than one person to all of these locations.

Other Considerations
The biggest problem I had going through the streets to find these Audio Logs is that not all of them appeared "retrievable" when I found the correct location. You will know an Audio Log is retrievable by two clues:

Virgil, the city's computer, will use the environment to clue you in that you are close. Police car lights will flash, crosswalks will operate, phones will ring, etc.; and
The location of the Audio Log itself will be outlined in bright yellow if you are using your VISR mode. The Audio Logs are found in such items as pay phones, health pack stations, recruiting stations (in-game advertisements to join the UNSC--you'll know them when you see them) and a few others.

If you are not seeing either of these clues when approaching an Audio Log location you know you have not yet retrieved, you will probably need to go back and complete some flashback missions.

Connection With Flashback Missions
It seems that the availability of the Audio Logs to be "retrieved" depends on the completion of a certain number of the "flashback" missions. I believe the reason that not all of the Audio Logs were "retrievable" for me is that I had gone back through to certain of the flashback missions within the campaign in order to earn particular achievements. When you do this, your previous campaign progress is lost. As such, the game believes you have not completed any of the flashback missions after you begin skipping around.

With this in mind, if you have just beaten the campaign you should have no problem immediately going back to "Continue Solo Campaign" (though if your last save was within the Data Hive level this might not work) from the main menu and wandering Mombasa Streets to find the audio logs. If, however, you have skipped around after completing the campaign you will need to re-play the first three flashback missions in order to make all of the Audio Logs "retrievable."

I don't know the magic of the first three missions, but I found a post on the bungie.net forums that confirms my experience. Apparently five or six Audio Logs are retrievable after having completed the first flashback mission. Then after completing the second flashback mission, another 20 or so are retrievable. Completing the third flashback mission makes the last five Audio Logs available (the last five on the Mombasa Streets level), and then the last Audio Log is located within the final Data Hive mission. This apparent requirement of completing flashback missions is another reason to work toward this achievement on "Easy" difficulty.

Audio Log Story
The story that is told through watching all 30 of the Audio Logs adds a cool element to the campaign. You learn about some of the events prior to your arrival in New Mombasa, what and who Virgil is, and meet some interesting characters who provide a backstory to the campaign. The "spoiler" mentioned above relates to how the Audio Log story is tied to the main campaign story that you are playing. It is not something critical, but if you approach it without knowing how the two tie together, it is more satisfying. Once you have found the last Audio Log in Data Hive, listen to and watch it, then remember to look around and explore the room. Also notice the "condition" of the room and the area outside the room. Remember the events of the last several Audio Logs and you will see the connection.

Retro gaming goodness

2009-09-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

The classic gaming room is coming together. We are still working on cable and power management, but this is a great start, and everything works, all original hardware:

Be sure to click the picture to go to flickr as there are explanatory notes for all that you see here.

Xbox 360 is back

2009-07-07T23:29:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that my Xbox has been returned, exactly two weeks after I sent it off. I briefly updated my previous post on the red-ring warranty service.

Circuit City brand back in business

2009-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

When I received an email this morning from Circuit City promoting a new laptop deal, I scrutinized it for signs of phishing. When I then separately (without clicking on any links within the email) visited circuitcity.com, the web site appeared very much as it did prior to Circuit City's bankruptcy.

Apparently another company, Systemax, Inc., has bought the Circuit City brand, trademarks and assets and has re-opened circuitcity.com. It appears they will be offering products for sale only online and not in brick and mortar stores.

According to Bloomberg:

Systemax Inc. is a direct marketer of private label and brand name personal computers and related supplies, as well as industrial products, through branded websites and direct mail catalogs. The Company offers its own brand of Systemax built-to-order personal computers, including desktops and servers. Systemax operates in North America and in Europe.

I guess this is a bit of old news as ZDNet blogged about it on June 12. Apparently Systemax also runs TigerDirect.com and also acquired CompUSA. It will take some time before I'd feel comfortable ordering from the new circuitcity.com, mainly because I don't know much about Systemax and there are many more familiar alternatives, but I wish them luck.

SiriusXM - The Loft

2009-06-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

One of my newly-discovered favorites on SiriusXM is The Loft, channel 29. It plays a very interesting mix of music, which I like when I really want something different. On a recent drive into work, I heard the following artists:

Randy Newman
Duncan Sheik
The Temptations
Ben Harper and Relentless 7
Coldplay
Rolling Stones
Muddy Waters
Wilco
Bobbie Gentry
Jill Sobule (song: "Where is Bobbie Gentry?")

15 years and 168,743 miles...

2009-06-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

and we're still going strong in 2009.

Yep, this is me in 1994 with my newly-leased truck:

My truck has probably provided the most utility of anything I've ever owned. Innumerable moves, both my own and others, a trip halfway across the country to Minneapolis and back, transport of a stranded motorcycle, commuting to work, and I believe my brother Brian used it to move an engine block once.

Xbox 360 RRoD #1

2009-06-18T22:22:00.001-07:00

Xbox 360 RRoD
Originally uploaded by arukasa

[UPDATE - Xbox returned! See below]

I am now a member of the club, I guess.

My Xbox 360 finally gave in yesterday. It had been freezing more and more frequently with distortion and pixellation on the screen, and finally after taking the hard drive off and turning the unit on, I saw the three quadrants lit up and blinking indicating ... death.

Unfortunately last night Xbox.com's support page was virtually inaccessible it was so slow, so I have been doubly frustrated at not even being able to print out a shipping label to send my box back. It is still loading like molasses tonight...

Well, it lasted one year, nine months (I bought it just prior to the Halo 3 launch). That's pretty sad considering my original Xbox, PS2 and GameCube still work fine. At least it's still under the 3 year RRoD warranty.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 360 and think it offers the best online console gaming experience currently. I'll have it repaired and play again, it's just frustrating.

FYI, my box was manufactured 7/19/2007, has a Zephyr mobo and chipset (with supposedly improved heatsink) and HDMI port.

UPDATE: My Xbox arrived on July 6, 2009, exactly two weeks from the day I shipped it off. Not a bad turnaround time. This new box is a replacement and not a repair of my old box. It shows a "service date" of June 28, 2009. From some searches online, this appears to mean it is a repaired/refurbished machine, just not my original box. I set it up and everything seems to be working ok, so it looks like I'm back in business.

Stern on Letterman next Monday, June 8, 2009

2009-06-04T23:06:00.000-07:00

Howard announced on the show this morning that he will be on Letterman next Monday, so be sure to set your VCRs or DVRs. He's always entertaining.

One insider bit of info if you don't listen to the Stern show -- watch for Howard to ask Dave whether Dave will have Jay Leno on the show now that Leno is not really a competitor anymore.

The new Star Trek

2009-05-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

What a terrific movie! I went to see it with a couple of friends, one was a Trek fan like me, the other more of a general sci-fi fan, and we all loved it. Knowing the characters from watching several of the tv series and the movies added some subtlety to learning about the genesis of the main characters and their relationships, but one certainly would not have to be a hard core Trek fan to enjoy the movie.

I am still digesting what may be my favorite part of the movie, but I loved learning about Captain Pike and how he came to appear as he did in the original Star Trek series on tv.

When the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor

2009-03-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

Tonight was all about relaxing and taking in a few of the gospels of comedy movies. The first was "Life of Brian" by Monty Python, which, all by itself is enough to feed a large portion of modern comedy culture. 1979? Is it really that old? If you haven't seen this one, get yourself a sense of humor, especially about Chrisitianity, and take a look. The lighter side of stonings and crucifixions has never been funnier.

And whatever you do, if approached, join the People's Front of Judea, not the Judean People's Front or the Judean Popular People's Front -- don't be a splitter!

The second gospel tonight was "Animal House." Good lord, 1978, really? The mother of all college/fraternity/misadventure movies, this one never gets old. Besides Mr. John Belushi in his breakout role, and John Vernon as Dean Wormer, this movie can't be beaten. Simply classic in all respects. If you don't know what it means to be on "double secret probation," you have missed something and need to see this movie.

One of the coolest product loyalty promotions ever

2009-03-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

I am now a lifetime leaseholder of a plot of land near the Laphroaig distillery:

As a "friend of Laphroaig" and lifetime leaseholder, I am entitled to payment of an annual ground rent of one dram of Laphroaig, payable in person at the distillery. I've had long-term plans to visit Scotland as it is part of my family's heritage, and this is one more incentive and a great reason to include Laphroaig in my planned distillery tour.

All I did to become entitled to this great benefit and handsome certificate is register on Laphroaig's web site using the code I received along with a bottle of Scotch I recently bought. It did not cost me a single cent to have Laphroaig send me, via airmail from Great Britain (really, Scotland!) the above personalized certificate.

I'm looking forward to my trip.

Rock Band 2 triple cymbal expansion kit

2009-02-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

This might be the greatest gaming accessory ever invented. I liked playing the drums on the Rock Band games before, but this takes it to the next level. It's still not exactly like actually playing drums (which I cannot, by the way), but the position and different levels of these cymbals contributes greatly to the illusion.

This adds a high-hat, ride and crash cymbal to the kit which not only make it more fun to play, it's actually easier and more intuitive. They are connected in such a way that each cymbal corresponds to one of the drum pads, so you effectively have two ways to successfully hit a beat during play. In addition, hitting the cymbal will produce the corresponding sound of a cymbal as opposed to the sound of a tom, so you also have a bit more control and can choose the sound produced for a particular beat. I understand there is a double cymbal expansion kit also, but you don't want that one -- you need the triple, trust me.

The build quality is solid, and I have not noticed any dropped "hits" during gameplay. I played my first virtual gig a few nights ago as the drummer and held my own on medium difficulty, so I am quite pleased.

Everything is alright

2009-02-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

I went to the "Songs for Presidents" show last night here in Sacramento. It was quite an event, with a collection of four or five Sacramento bands and a number of musicians from several other bands sharing the stage to play 27 songs from the "Of Great And Mortal Men" album.

I had seen a previous show at the "Of Great And Mortal Men" album release party last September, but it was at a smaller venue. Last night the band was in its full glory, with accordion, violin, saxophone, clarinet and flute filling the large stage at Marilyn's on K.

It was a great show, with passionate (and sometimes humorous) performances by all. The emcee for the night was David Watts Barton, Managing Editor of sacramentopress.com. He provided a bit of background on each President before that President's song for those of us who were less than familiar with their Presidential history. He kept it funny and interesting, and even sang a few songs, too.

The night ended with the group's song for Obama, "Someone to Wake," composed after the release of the album and available as a free download at the link to NPR above. It was a rousing and hopeful rendition, with most of the musicians onstage, extending the final chorus of "Everything is alright" to an appreciative crowd.

The band played at Obama's inauguration, and I understand will be performing at the South-by-Southwest event in Austin, Texas this March.

I don't think there are further Sacramento dates in the near future, but keep your eyes open and if you can catch this band, do it.

Rock Band 2 Endless Setlist completed

2009-01-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

My other achievement over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, in a literal and Xbox 360 sense, was completing the Rock Band 2 "Endless Setlist." This is fairly insane, as it involves playing all 84 songs contained in the game in one gigantic set with no breaks. It took my friend Shawn and I over six hours to complete. Admittedly, we completed it on "medium" difficulty (and five-starred every song, thankyouverymuch), but given the difficulty of many of the later songs in the setlist and the exhaustion point approached at the 6 hour mark, we could not have done it any other way.

We earned two achievements for completing this task:

1) The Bladder of Steel Award (no pausing and no fails on any song); and
2) Vinyl Artist (completion on "medium" difficulty as opposed to earning "Gold" for completing it on "hard" or "Platinum" on "expert" difficulty)

So, I present to you, proof:

Scalzi and Kowal in San Francisco

2009-01-25T21:28:00.000-08:00

I'm late to the party with this post, but I had a great time over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend in San Francisco. I kicked it off Friday night by attending a reading by John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal at Borderlands Books. The place was packed:

It was an orderly crowd, but everyone was enthusiastic and the laughs flowed freely. Each author read short fiction pieces that were good, but it was when they interacted with each other that the magic happened. It was obvious they were having fun, and consequently all of us had fun. The final "science fiction comedy improv" topped off the evening to great applause.

If you're interested, a fan recorded the entire event and it is available online.

A few more pics:

Nice Monster EP release party

2009-01-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

I saw a great show last night at one of my favorite spots here in town, the Fox & Goose. My friend Chad's band, Nice Monster, had an EP release party there. From the band's page on Grayscale Records, the music is described as "Melodic Math Rock." I'm not quite sure what that means, but I like the music. It's a nice mix of acoustic guitar, bass, drums and keyboards with just the right amount of Stratocaster.

Separated at birth?

2008-12-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

This is fantastic. This is my brother Brian holding Artie Lange's book, Too Fat to Fish.

Early walk

2008-11-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the fog this morning:

Bright future for Xbox 360

2008-11-16T21:15:00.000-08:00

The Xbox 360 leads the console hardware race with an installed base of 22 million as of September 2008 that should reach 25 million sometime this month.

In addition to leading the hardware race, the Xbox 360 leads the way in third-party game sales, meaning that, aside from Microsoft-published first-party titles, more games are sold for the Xbox 360 than third-party titles for Nintendo's Wii or Sony's Playstation 3. This is important because it shows publishers of third-party games which console will provide the greatest return on their game development dollar.

An article in today's ars technica has great graphs that show this obvious advantage over the course of this year to-date. The number of third-party games in the top 10 for sales numbers each month over the past 10 months for the Xbox 360 exceeds the number of games in the top 10 for the Wii by over 6 times and the PS3 by over 2 times.

With the recent price cuts for the Xbox 360 bringing the base model to the magic $199 price point, the sales trends are sure to continue, with more non-gaming consumers willing to buy.

The release of Microsoft's "New Xbox Experience" this week on November 19 should help to broaden the appeal of the Xbox 360 beyond regular gamers. This update to the dashboard interface will have happy avatars, more community features and games, and the integration of Netflix downloaded movies, bringing the Xbox 360 much closer to the general-purpose set-top box that will appeal to media content companies as well as more general media consumers, not just gamers.

Artie Lange on Conan tonight, NPR's Fresh Air today, 11/11

2008-11-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

I neglected to mention Artie's appearance on Letterman last Friday mainly to preserve the gravitas of my posts on the week's election events, but also because Gears of War 2 released on Friday and, after picking it up on the way home from work I immediately began playing it and forgot all about posting on my blog.

Tonight Artie will be appearing on Conan, so be sure to catch or record it if you're interested.

*UPDATE* I forgot that Artie was also interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. I caught the tail end of the interview just now. He is promoting his new book, Too Fat To Fish, and recounts some of the stories from his life. The interviewer, Terry Gross, is always thoroughly prepared for her interviews, and with Artie you can see that she is also a fan. The full interview is online here after 3p EST.

Hope begins to return

2008-11-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

A few quotes, one I read and one I heard today, have softened my anger about the passing of proposition 8. The first is one I read on John Scalzi's blog today, speaking of a long and difficult struggle:

"Re: Proposition 8 and the other anti-same-sex marriages initiatives on the ballots, which passed in their respective states: I am disappointed, of course. I had hoped voters, particularly in California, would have had better moral sense. But as I mentioned to someone else earlier today, the struggle against bigotry is long and difficult, and the fact of the matter is we’re in the middle of this particular struggle, and it will take years to see it through, as has every struggle against bigotry here in the US. I’m willing to invest the time."

This will indeed be a long struggle. It will take time, and judging from the demonstrations and actions I have read about and seen today that large groups of Californians are taking part in to protest proposition 8's passage, I have no doubt we as citizens will endure the struggle and eventually prevail.

The second is a quote I heard on tonight's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, said by an individual who was interviewed on the street about what the election of Barack Obama means to him. The imagery just struck me:

"Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run."

Hope.

I don't know if we can

2008-11-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

I am sad and dismayed this morning to see that the majority of voters in California appear to have chosen to incorporate discrimination and bigotry into the state's constitution with the passage of proposition 8 (Wikipedia entry). At this moment the results are not official, but with 95% of precincts reporting, proposition 8 is passing with 52% approval.

If it ultimately passes, proposition 8 will cast a dark, ugly shadow across the positive change embodied in Barack Obama. How is it that a state which voted for such fundamental change with Barack Obama can also embrace fear and ignorance to regress to the days of 19th century anti-miscegenation laws?

Those who think they are "protecting marriage" by supporting proposition 8 have done quite the opposite. Discrimination and bigotry against a minority group in our society undermines that society and its institutions, of which marriage is one. If passed, proposition 8 will turn the institution of marriage into a tool of "straight supremacy," something proposition 8 supporters can point to and say "marriage is ours" and that gays and lesbians are not equal under the law.

This is a terrible message to send to children and young people.

The contradiction inherent in electing a black president while simultaneously choosing to enact law to discriminate against a minority group is mind-blowing.

Polling place update

2008-11-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

I arrived at my polling place about ten minutes before seven, and waited in line behind maybe seven or eight people. Once the polling place opened I was able to finish voting by about 7:15.

By the time I finished the line was out the door and on the sidewalk, maybe 40 people. It's going to be a busy day, people, but get out there and vote!

Please vote

2008-11-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

Please, everyone, remember to vote tomorrow.

Get up early, take time off of work, come home late, but whatever you do, please vote.

Scalzi's "Hate Mail" in the wild

2008-10-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

I spent a wonderful few days in Monterey for a friend's wedding last weekend and took along John Scalzi's "Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded" as I had recently received it in the mail and wanted to get a good start. This is the first time I took it out:

I found a German/Italian cafe, and while I sipped a weissbier and enjoyed the beautiful weather, I started to read. I've followed John's blog, Whatever, for a number of years and he always has something insightful, poignant, thoughtful or funny to say, sometimes all three (edit: four!) at the same time (explore his site a bit, you'll find one). This book is a collection of selected pieces from his blog from the last ten years. Some I have read before, but most I have not, and it's nice to have them in a portable, printed format for easy transport.

The reading that day didn't last very long, however, because while Scalzi's book is good, some things just take priority:

Gamers can be engaged politically

2008-09-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

Last month, Microsoft announced a partnership with Rock the Vote, a group which works to engage young people with the political process. This partnership enables Xbox Live subscribers to have voter registration materials sent to them by making a request right from the Dashboard, and provides content from both political parties to allow gamers to become more informed about a candidate or issue. I watched Barack Obama's acceptance speech from the Democratic National Convention and have downloaded John McCain's acceptance speech from the Republican National Convention.

I spotted a story on Edge Online announcing that 100,000 Xbox Live users had participated in an unofficial presidential poll on Xbox Live where users could express their preference for a candidate by downloading the candidate's corresponding gamer picture.

From the above story:

"According to Microsoft, the sample of 100,000 voters was larger than the combined samples from individual Gallup, NBC and CNN polls."

and

"The company said that more than 55,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox Live and Xbox.com during the first two weeks of the program, and that videos from the recent Democratic and Republican conventions were downloaded nearly 25,000 times."

Those are impressive numbers.

Admittedly, not all Xbox Live subscribers are of legal age to vote, and not all who participated in this poll will go out and actually vote, but the majority of gamers are over 18 and if nothing else, this partnership will raise gamers' awareness and hopefully their level of knowledge about the political process.

If candidates and others want young people to vote and be interested in the process, becoming informed needs to be easy and can't be blocked by barriers to entry like poring through lengthy newspaper diatribes or suffering through the "talking heads" on every news network.

This is politics on demand, and gamers don't even have to let go of their controllers.

Artie Lange in San Francisco

2008-09-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

**Eric the Midget Update**

I was lucky to be able to see Artie Lange in San Francisco last Friday night. It was Artie Lange "and friends," which included Yucko the Clown, Sal Governale, Shuli, The Reverend Bob Levy and Beetlejuice.

Unfortunately, due to traffic and parking nightmares, I missed Yucko, Sal and Shuli, but Bob Levy and Artie were great. It's always fun to see people in person, so that alone was cool. When Artie brought out Beetle to say a few words, he received a standing ovation second only to Artie's.

I was surprised and happy to see that most of the people there appeared to be Sirius subscribers and fans, as none of the Stern show inside bits were lost on anyone. The Nob Hill Masonic Center is a 3,165 seat venue and it appeared to be pretty close to sold out. This satellite radio thing might just work after all.

**UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Eric the Midget was in the audience. An involuntary member of Stern's "Wack Pack," he used to be one of my favorite callers to the show, but lately he has become so angry and self-serving with his personal promotions that he is now merely annoying. Artie handed him the mic to say a few words and he received huge boos after attempting to promote an upcoming personal appearance.

Of Great and Mortal Men album release party in Sacramento

2008-09-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to one of my favorite pubs in Sacramento, Fox & Goose, for the album release party and performance of a group of musicians who have released a collection of songs titled "Of Great and Mortal Men."

It's a collection of 43 songs on three CDs, one for each of the U.S. Presidents so far. The packaging itself, let alone the music, is quite impressive with an oversized booklet, individual illustrations of each president in a different style of art and complete lyrics and information about all of the artists who contributed.

You can read more about how the project came about in two articles from the local news and review paper, but it began as a challenge to write 43 songs in 28 days and turned into a national and international effort to complete the entire undertaking. The project has received national coverage in publications such as GQ and the Washington Times.

My friend Chad is one of the contributing musicians and played bass during a set last night.

It was great music, and the songs were non-partisan with no bashing of any particular president or party. If you're intrigued you can find it at the Standard Recording label, Amazon and iTunes.

A 44th song will be recorded for whomever the soon-to-be-elected next President is. The last song will be released for free online. Here's hoping the group will be working to find plenty of words that rhyme with "ama."

Penny Arcade Expo 2008, the review

2008-09-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

It was definitely another successful year for PAX. Initial estimates are that 58,500 people attended over the three days. That number of people, even in a large convention center, has its disadvantages, but not necessarily because of the number itself. More on that later.

First, the highlights.

1. Meeting Wil Wheaton.

Need I say more? Probably not, but this was the coolest thing I did, so let me throw some words down here. I missed Wil's keynote at last year's expo, but listened to it online, checked out his blog, and have been a fan ever since. We are the same age, so many of his gaming and life experiences have been similar to mine, and it is both fun and nostalgic to read his writings about his life growing up, and familiar and interesting to read his writings about his life now. I "get" the Star Wars, Family Guy and most of the musical and gaming references.

I was looking forward to reading some of Wil's books, and after this meeting, I was not disappointed:

The "Hot Cocoa Box Sampler" is a limited edition collection of writings from his books, his blog, and several other sources. "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" is his latest book, and tells stories from his youth growing up and coming of age in the 70s and 80s. I have to say, regarding the picture on the cover of that book, I did not have pajamas exactly like that, but mine were similar (full-length zipper and footsies, you know it), and you'd better believe I had a bicycle with a banana seat!

Wil was an exceptionally cool guy to meet. I threw him a little curve ball when paying for the books by literally presenting him with shiny gold rocks. He recognized them right away and said that they were merely pyrite and not worth anything, to which we both then said "...but they're shiny gold rocks." I'm not going to start The Great Shiny Gold Rock Controversy of 2008, but I will say that Wil recognized the value of what I had thought to bring and credited me accordingly. I did also present several sheets of a cotton/linen blend paper printed with green and black ink, which he happily accepted. Surprisingly, no one had thought to literally bring him shiny gold rocks before I did. I wish I'd taken a picture of them, but alas, it was such a dark secret I dared not leave any trail of evidence prior to their unveiling. Do not be surprised if that was the first and only time such an audacious offering will be recognized.

I also went to Wil's panel, where he did some readings and then Q&A. Great stuff. He didn't just read, he did a bit of acting and made the stories fun:

2. The Exhibition Hall

This is great every year. It's a lot of fun to walk around and see all of the latest or upcoming releases from developers and often, be able to talk to the developers themselves. The most visible thing was the displays for the upcoming iterations of Guitar Hero and Rock Band:

Ubisoft was demoing the new Raving Rabbids game on the Wii, which was participatory like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, except the "instrument" is you:

The main exhibition hall was probably 1/2 to 2/3 larger than last year's hall, so the show is growing along with the number of attendees.

The not-so-much highlight

The only thing that was not as cool this year was the waiting in lines. For everything. This has been reported elsewhere, and apparently the PAX organization is aware of it and will work on this for next year. The convention hall was crowded, yes, but not overwhelming. When forced to wait in a line, however, things became ugly. Not the attendees, just the waiting. As attendees, we all had similar "line-waiting" stories to share, so we all got along fine. It's just not very fun to wait 45 minutes to an hour or more to see a panel or presentation and not get in. This discouraged me from attending a couple of the panels because I wanted to spend time in the exhibition hall or just exploring instead.

Hopefully, some "pre-reservation," armband or another system will be implemented next year. It would seem that attendees could, if not reserve a spot when buying their admission pass, choose which panels or talks they want to see for sure upon checking in on the first day of the show. A similar system is already in use at PAX for those who wish to attend the band performances in the evenings (first 4,000 in line at the beginning of the day), so extending this to other functions should not be difficult.

The Omegathon

PAX would not be complete without the Omegathon and particularly the Omegathon finals. This may have been the most highly attended event of the show. This year's ultimate showdown was with "VS. Excitebike," which was apparently only released in Japan.

A version of this game was released in the U.S., and most gamers from the classic era will remember it. The Omegathon finals is the culmination of an elimination tournament over the entire course of the expo, where the two remaining gamers face off to determine the true champion. The tournament games range from classic and the latest videogames to real-world physical manifestations like Jenga. It's quite a feat to win, and the past two years the prize has been an all-expenses-paid trip to next year's Tokyo Game Show along with $5,000 spending money. This year the prize also included custom-painted Penny Arcade-themed gaming consoles.

A Community Gathering

Ultimately, like years past, the Penny Arcade Expo is about bringing together the community of gamers. All types are welcome, from board gamers, to PC gamers and console gamers. There's a little mix of other related phenomena like cosplay also, which adds to the fun. This year, I believe the number of attendees may have pushed the facility to its limits, so it will be interesting to see how the arrangements are handled next year. Line management is a solvable issue, so hopefully next year will be even better.

PAX 2008, Day One

2008-08-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

The best thing from day one was the exhibit hall. It appears to be almost twice the size of last year's hall, with tons of booths, displays, open consoles and PCs for demos.

My friend Shawn and I had two bad "line-waiting" experiences. The first was waiting to enter the convention itself at 2p. We waited probably an hour, winding through one of the larger exhibition rooms. The thing that made it not enjoyable at all was that we weren't able to see the presentation we wanted, which was the Speed Run gaming video. First of all, the scheduling appears to have been poorly planned as the Speed Run presentation was scheduled to begin at 2p, which was right when the doors were supposed to open. So, in order to make the presentation on time, I suppose one would have had to have been within the first several hundred people admitted to the convention right at 2p.

We weren't, so we didn't make it over there until just before 3p. It turns out that the DVD they were going to play somehow didn't work, so we didn't miss it anyway. We asked if they were going to show it again, but they didn't know. Plus, it was going to be shown via projector, and the glare from the windows directly behind us didn't allow a decent viewing anyway.

The second experience was waiting to see Ken Levine's keynote speech. To make a long story short, we waited in line for about 30 minutes before being told the room was at capacity and we could wait for the next event in that room if we wanted to.

We didn't.

On to something cool, there was this group of guys outside on the sidewalk who had modded GameBoys to play music, and they were making some really good stuff. This was the setup:

Also, in the main Exhibit Hall I ran into the same woman who last year was promoting the Conan game, but this year she was promoting Saints Row 2. Quite stunningly beautiful, and as sweet and nice as can be. She's the one on the left:

And we'll end with this one:

First leg of PAX trip complete

2008-08-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

I flew into Portland, OR, last night to stay with a couple of friends. I flew Alaska/Horizon airlines and they actually served complimentary beer in-flight! Not something weak like Bud Light, a nice amber ale, "Drop Top Amber Ale" from Widmer Brothers. Good stuff, particularly when it's free.

After dinner, we went to Doug Fir Lounge to watch The Walkmen. The venue was really cool -- basement-level with a 1960's decor and logs all around the walls, almost like a huge ... log cabin. Makes for a nice feel and good sound. I liked the band, too. Their singer has a heluva voice. I heard shades of Bob Dylan in the way he led into some notes, but he could wail like Bono or Chris Martin of Coldplay.

This morning I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on PS3. I'm still in the early stages of the game, familiarizing myself with the controls and relearning the history and past events in the series. It was a bit frustrating to have an eight minute install before being able to play, but hopefully that means shorter level load times overall throughout the game.

Early morning walks

2008-08-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of being outside as the sun rises...

Penny Arcade Expo 2008

2008-08-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

It draws near on the horizon, a bit more real now that I've received my ticket to ride:

I went in 2005 and 2007 and am truly looking forward to this year.

All of gaming's major players will be there as exhibitors, as well as independent and small companies and developers. One new feature this year will be "The PAX 10," which will provide a forum to promote independent games. This is a collection of the top ten independent games, selected by a panel of experts gathered by the Penny Arcade guys, from submissions which will be voted on by attendees during the show.

August 29 - 31. More to follow.

The Police reunion tour in Sacramento

2008-07-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

I went with my buddy Chad to see The Police this past Thursday night. Really great show. This was one band I thought I would never have the opportunity to see. They opened with Message in a Bottle.

They played many of their hits and many of my favorites. A lot of them were interesting and cool variations on the album versions, either in tempo, melody, or more completely, but all were great.

My brother saw them in Phoenix last June, and I posted some pics from that show here. Looks like the setup was very similar.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters opened up, and while we missed the beginning of their set, they were good too. Sting came out to sing on Allison.

Snuggly, the Security Bear

2008-07-09T22:55:00.001-07:00

Following up to my post on Barack's disappointing support of retroactive telecom immunity, I found these terrific animated pieces via the EFF web site. They are done by Mark Fiore, cartoonist for SF Gate, a daily paper in San Francisco. The two cartoons nail the issues with illegal wiretapping and constitutional compromise. Your narrator and tour guide for these issues is Snuggly, the Security Bear.

Don't you feel better now?

Obama disappoints with vote for retroactive immunity for telcos

2008-07-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

It was more than disappointing to hear on the news today that Barack Obama had voted to support the Senate's passage of HR 6304, the bill that amends the Foreign Intelligence Sureveillance Act of 1978. The provision of the bill that held up the vote until after the July 4 weekend involved the granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who complied with requests from the current administration to allow eavesdropping on domestic American citizens without a warrant.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation put it best by saying that the Senate Join[ed] the House in Caving to White House Immunity Demands. There were some senators who had the backbone to stand up to the White House, and no doubt lobbyists from telecommunications companies, and oppose this bill, most visibly Sendator Biden of Delaware (D), Senator Boxer of California (D), Senator Reid of Nevada (D), Senator Clinton of New York (D) and Senator Feingold of Wisconsin (D). I'm not sure what my other California Senator, Feinstein (no mention of this on her web site today, hmmm...), was thinking by voting "Yea." Senator McCain of Arizona (R) was not much better, as he was "Not Voting."

Granting retroactive immunity in this situation will only encourage future similar abuses by the executive branch, and the continued complicity of telecommunications and other companies in activity that has plainly violated the rights of United States citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures as granted under the fourth amendment.

Only one major telecommunications company, Qwest Communications, had the guts to stand up to the National Security Agency when it was approached with a request for access to its customers' private phone records. A statement put out by Herbert Stern, attorney to Quest CEO (in 2001) Joseph Nacchio puts it quite clearly:

Nacchio declined the NSA’s request because the agency did not have a warrant and that the authorities showed “a disinclination to use any legal process, including the special court which had been established to handle such matters."

What does it say about the other telecoms who agreed to comply with what was undoubtedly a similar request? Is the NSA, acting at the direction of the Bush White House such an intimidating force that companies and people are afraid to disagree? Or do those same companies and people simply not question such requests? Either way is unacceptable.

More information on the NSA's unlawful spying program is here at the EFF. Stay informed, people, and let your senators and representatives know how you feel.

Lange on Letterman tonight

2008-06-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Late notice, heard it on the way in to work this morning. Check it out if you can.

BMW Ultimate Drive - 2008

2008-06-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

I attended the periodic BMW Ultimate Drive today, which raises money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Unfortunately I arrived just before 5pm, which is the last driving appointment for the day, so I was only able to drive one car, but it was a winner:

The new 135i convertible. Quite small, but very quick with a 3.0 liter, twin turbo, 300 hp 6 cylinder engine. A nice exhaust note and definitely enough power to push you back into your seat with even moderate acceleration.

This car is very nice. I expected nothing less, but wow. I liked how, with a push of a button, both of the sideview mirrors rotated toward the rear for close-quarters or on-the-curb parking. Of course Sirius satellite radio was present, so I had it on Alt Nation, channel 21, the whole trip. Good stuff.

By the time I finished the approximately 25-mile loop, they were preparing the caravan of vehicles for the trip up to the Roseville BMW dealer for another group of drivers tomorrow. I didn't have the chance to sign the "signature vehicle" that travels around with the group. Next year.

N.B. - I've had a flickr account for years, but this is the first time I've linked directly to my pictures hosted there. I think I like how you can paste the html right into the code of the post. Much easier than uploading to Blogger and then dragging the photo within the text. There's a few more pictures at my flickr account of some of the other cars that were there today.

Western Civilization survived...

2008-04-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Well, GTA IV launched, likely sold millions, and we're still here. No mass riots or violence against law enforcement. Well, not any more than what happens anyway.

The fact that I stole two cars, got into a fight on the street, went bowling on a legitimate date with a woman, and ran numerous red lights somehow didn't have any effect in the real world. According to Next-Gen, NPR apparently gave a pretty fair treatment to GTA IV's release, not the typical overblown media reaction. I'd also like to suggest that gamers are doing their part to stimulate the U.S. economy in this economic recession. The New York Times agrees.

I picked up the game yesterday after work and played for a few hours. The freedom within the game is pretty amazing, but I have to say so far I have been underwhelmed by the experience. Part of it is just me learning to control my character, learning to drive, and not knowing how the GTA universe "works," but I also haven't really been pulled in by the story yet. So far I've just been responding to phone calls from my loser cousin and getting him out of trouble. I would certainly live a boring criminal life.

At one point, the game's tutorial text (appearing early on to orient one to the controls, etc.) suggested I could watch T.V. in my cousin's apartment and I actually wanted to do that, looking for relief from the mean streets of Liberty City. As soon as I parked and got out of his car (I'm using his car, since I'm new in town) however, my cousin called with some crisis, so I was off again.

One thing I can say for sure is that there are definite consequences for your criminal activities within the game. My character started a fight on the street, mainly because I wanted to see what would happen and how all of the buttons worked in confrontations, and a police car happened to be nearby. In less than a minute of fighting, the police were after me, so of course I ran. I ran for a few blocks and could hear the police yelling at me to stop, giving me a chance to stop running before things went bad. I thought I lost them by going down an alley, and was hiding, but quickly there were 8 to 10 officers there telling me it was all over.

I suppose I could have surrendered and been arrested (I guess. I'll have to try it again and see what happens), but instead I chose to run past them. No surprise, I was brought down by a hail of bullets. Apparently you don't really "die" in the game, your character just wakes up outside of the hospital after having been charged (yes, your in-game money is reduced) to be treated.

I'm sure I'll learn how this whole world works and soon either get into the story or just go out exploring. No multiplayer yet, but I'm sure that will change by this weekend.

Grand Theft Auto IV releases today

2008-04-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

Quite possibly the biggest-selling and most controversial game of the year hits store shelves today.

Metacritic, the site that aggregates reviews from across the tubes, shows a 99 out of 100 rating. I've only watched someone play one of the previous games in this series, so this will be the first time I've played a GTA game. I'm looking forward to trying it out, but the big draw for me is really the multiplayer aspects of the game -- 15 different modes. Just about all of my friends on Live will have it, plus with the enormous sales expected, this will become part of the gaming community's common experience.

The Xbox 360 version will have additional exclusive (read: not available on PS3) downloadable episodic content available later this fall.

Artie has returned

2008-04-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

It was with relief that I learned Artie was back on the show today. When Artie resigned before the show went on vacation, I set up a Google News search with RSS feed so I could stay up to date with any news articles about him. That feed provided an article before I left for work that confirmed Artie's return.

He sounded good, like the Artie we all know, though it also sounded like he had come to a realization that he has to deal with some issues going on with himself. Someone on the show today said the blowout and resignation led to a "moment of clarity" for Artie. I hope so, and I hope he follows through with the "shrink," as Artie put it today, to whom he made a commitment to see for a series of appointments.

I'm disappointed that howardstern.com no longer allows a deep-link to a particular day's show summary, but check out the site anyway and just navigate to April 21, 2008 for some more details about Artie's return.

Welcome back, Artie.

Artie resigns from the Stern show

2008-04-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd let this one sit for awhile before writing about it.

Artie has been my favorite individual contributor on the Howard Stern show since he started there in 2001. The amazing stories, incisive and hilarious commentary, unabashedly excessive eating both on and off the air, and most recently sleeping on the air -- he truly complemented the show.

There's not much to say other than things got way out of hand on Thursday's show with behavior that ultimately led to Howard accepting Artie's resignation. Obviously there is more to what happened than a simple annoyance at having a passport copied. I hope Artie has been able to talk to family or friends since this happened and I hope he is able to work out or at least address whatever it is that has been going on.

The Stern show is on vacation all next week, so there may be no official word until the show returns on April 21. Robin Quivers is scheduled to appear on The View on Monday, 4/14, so maybe she will have something to say. Thursday's show has not been rerun in the usual replays on Howard 100 and there is no summary of Thursday's show on the official site.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles -- test drive

2008-04-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I attended an open house at the California Fuel Cell Partnership in West Sacramento. It was interesting to learn how hydrogen fuel cells work to power a vehicle and to see a working hydrogen fueling station up close, but the coolest opportunity was to actually drive a vehicle powered by hydrogen. None of the vehicles they had were commercially available, but all were fully functional and appeared to be pretty normal.

I drove the Mercedes A-Class car called the "F-Cell:"There are cars that actually combust liquid hydrogen, like the BMW Hydrogen 7, but all of the vehicles available for test driving last weekend were hybrid-electric, meaning the main drive engine was electric, which was powered by electricity from a hydrogen fuel cell where the hydrogen used is in the form of a gas. This is a hydrogen fuel cell that was in Ford's garage at the facility:Apparently there are hundreds of individual "cells" stacked inside of a unit like this. The simplest explanation of how electricity is produced by a hydrogen fuel cell is that the fuel cell has a negative electrode/catalyst plate inside of it that the hydrogen passes through, which strips off its electrons. The then positively-charged hydrogen passes through a membrane and interacts with a positive electrode/catalyst plate which combines the hydrogen with oxygen that is brought into the fuel cell, producing heat and water. The flow of the stripped electrons from the negative side to the positive side produces electricity.

The cars were virtually silent, though the Mercedes I drove had a distinct high-pitched sound associated with acceleration that the representative in the car said was an air compressor pumping extra air into the fuel cell, apparently to provide a bit more "juice." The transmission was continuous, meaning there were no gears or hesitations. I didn't really test out acceleration, but it seemed like just about any other car.

There are two sticking points to the widespread use of hydrogen to power vehicles on a large scale: 1) distribution infrastructure; and 2) efficiency. For infrastructure, there are currently only 24 working hydrogen fueling stations in the state of California. There are only two in the Sacramento area. Here's the one at the facility I toured:
For efficiency, I learned some new terms: "well-to-tank" efficiency, meaning how efficient the process is that produces the energy (here, hydrogen) and transports it to the individual vehicle's tank. Also, "tank-to-wheel" efficiency, meaning how efficiently the car converts that energy from its own tank to the wheels.

Currently hydrogen's "well-to-tank" efficiency is lower than that for gasoline (Toyota quotes 58% to 88%, respectively). Hydrogen's "tank-to-wheel" efficiency is greater than gasoline (38-50% versus 16-37%, respectively). Combining those measures, Toyota estimates that gasoline vehicles have a "well-to-wheel" overall efficiency of about 14%, a gas-powered hybrid like the Toyota Prius has an overall efficiency of about 32% and Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell vehicles range in overall efficiency from about 22 to 29%.

Undoubtedly these efficiencies for obtaining hydrogen and operating hydrogen fuel cells will improve and the fueling infrastructure will be built out, so at some point this will become a viable option for mainstream use.

Artie on Kimmel and Robin on Mike & Juliet

2008-04-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

This Friday, April 4, Robin Quivers will appear on The Mike & Juliet Show, 11a Pacific time on NBC, and Artie Lange will appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 12:05a (ok, technically Saturday, but you know it's Friday night) Pacific time on ABC.

Robin will probably be promoting her new "Girls Night Out" charity and Artie will probably be his usual hilarious self. Kimmel is a great friend and fan of the Stern show, so there will certainly be good chemistry and discussion.

Please update your schedules accordingly.

U.S. Department of Justice decides Sirius-XM merger is not likely to harm consumers

2008-03-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Evidence Does Not Establish That Combination of
Satellite Radio Providers Would Substantially Reduce Competition"

Finally.

I wrote about the proposal of this merger last year on February 19. Now, 13 months later the Justice Department closes its investigation and reaches what I believe should have been a fairly straightforward conclusion. I suppose the length of time this has taken is because the DOJ "reviewed millions of pages of documents, analyzed large amounts of data related to sales of satellite radios and subscriptions for satellite radio service, and interviewed scores of industry participants." That may be true, but I think the delay is also evidence of the last desperate attempts of the regular terrestrial radio industry to hold on to its monopoly of the airwaves.

The main factor in the analysis of this merger's effect on competition was the definition of the relevant market satellite radio competes in. The DOJ found that "evidence developed in the investigation did not support defining a market limited to the two satellite radio firms, and similarly did not establish that the combined firm could profitably sustain an increased price to satellite radio consumers."

Presumably the DOJ saw the truth in Sirius and XM's assertion that they "compete with a variety of other sources of audio entertainment, including traditional AM/FM radio, HD Radio, MP3 players ..., and audio offerings delivered through wireless telephones."

The first sentence of today's New York Times article on the merger demonstrates how easy it is to misunderstand and misrepresent what a relevant "competitive market" is:

"The Justice Department gave approval on Monday to the merger of two rival radio networks, XM and Sirius, a marriage that would create a de facto monopoly in satellite services now used by more than 17 million subscribers."

Of course when there are only two companies providing a particular service (here, satellite radio) and they are combined into a single company providing that same service, it becomes a "monopoly" as to that particular service (that's the "de facto" part). They key misunderstanding here is that the DOJ evaluated a competitive market that exists beyond just these two companies. Current and potential subscribers have many other choices for things to listen to outside of satellite radio.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a trade association that advocates (read: sends lobbyists and makes campaign contributions) for the interests of terrestrial broadcasters before Congress, federal regulatory agencies (i.e., the Federal Communications Commission) and various courts across the country. This association has opposed the Sirius-XM merger from the beginning and predictably was not pleased with the DOJ's conclusion.

However, the NAB issued a curiously short and curiously nebulous response to the announcement:

"We are astonished that the Justice Department would propose granting a monopoly to two companies that systematically broke FCC rules for more than a decade. To hinge approval of this monopoly on XM and Sirius's refusal to deliver on a promise of interoperable radios is nothing short of breathtaking."

That's it. One paragraph. I'm not sure what FCC rules these two companies "systematically broke" for more than a decade, perhaps some rule that required interoperable radios? Or was that more of a promise that Sirius and XM just haven't delivered on yet?

As Artie might say, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, they promised they'd make interoperable radios and they haven't done it yet, waaaaaaahhhh."

The FCC still gets to have its say on the merger, so Sirius and XM are not in the clear yet. However, according to an article today on Bloomberg.com, analysts think that the FCC will probably follow the lead of the DOJ and approve the merger, though there may be some conditions. What these conditions might be is unclear, but they could include giving time for public access programs or channels for minority or other underrepresented groups.

According to the same Bloomberg article, "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said last week that his agency would 'go forward quickly' after the Justice Department ruled." Let's hope so, and also hope that the agency will see the common sense of the DOJ's assessment of the market in which satellite radio competes.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Beef Jerky Edition

2008-03-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

This is the first Rainbow Six game I've played, and it's quite different from most other first-person shooters out there like the Halo and Call of Duty series. This R6 series is so tactical in its execution that a "run and gun" approach is almost universally suicidal. As the main character, you command a small group of two other soldiers whom you can direct to breach and clear a room, throw grenades, and independently engage and kill enemies, among many other things. An excellent "cover" system that allows you to fire from behind things like pillars and corners is integrated seamlessly and aids greatly to the game's tactical execution. The number of options make the learning curve a bit steep, but once you learn it the options give you an enormous amount of freedom and variability in how you approach the game.

Online co-op play is also possible with your friends in a number of modes. One friend can join you as a fourth team member in the single player campaign, you can play a "versus" mode with two teams against each other, and there is also a "terrorist hunt" mode where you and three friends work cooperatively through a map to clear it of enemies.

I picked up my copy from Circuit City, hence the "beef jerky" reference in my title. Circuit City included some swag with my purchase, namely a "gamer's energy kit," which included an energy drink, energy gum, energy spray (to spray under your tongue!) and beef jerky:and some red fuzzy dice:

The beef jerky was pretty good.

Microsoft, you're the best!

2008-02-25T21:18:00.000-08:00

So I received a document over the weekend that had been created with Microsoft Word. "What a boring blog post," you must be thinking, but wait, I'm not finished. This particular document was created with Microsoft Office Word 2007. "This isn't helping!" you exclaim.

Would it improve the situation if I told you the file extension was ".docm" and my version of Microsoft Office Word 2003 was unable to open it?

I believe you stand corrected.

Before I could open this Microsoft application-created document with my Microsoft application I actually had to download a Compatibility Pack. A 27.5 MB compatibility pack, in fact. Apparently this pack allows pre-2007 versions of Office applications to work with Microsoft's new Open XML (Wikipedia's Open XML entry) formats.

This was a time-consuming annoyance when all I wanted was to read some text. I realize a ".docm" extension means the document is macro-enabled, but just a plain Office Word 2007 document with its ".docx" extension would require the same update, and there was nothing extraordinary about the document I was trying to open.

I suppose if this is the beginning of a Microsoft policy of greater interoperability going forward that is a good thing. However, going forward by alienating all that has come before is rarely the best way to proceed. After being forced to use Internet Explorer to use Microsoft Update and confirm that I had all the latest updates (recommended before proceeding -- yes, I RTFM), it took only about five minutes to download, unpack and install this compatibility pack. The best part about the installation was that Word was open the whole time and I didn't have to close down or restart it for the pack to work.

But what about the millions of Office users worldwide? Is this going to encourage current users to upgrade? What if someone doesn't have a broadband Internet connection? What about those in developing countries to whom Microsoft has practically given away its Office suite (2007) and other software products? Is this "free milk" with a past-due expiration date?

In short, thanks, Microsoft. Way to implement interoperability.

What a difference an "e" and a "t" make

2008-02-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

I wonder how different would a children's librarian be from a children's libertarian?

Would a children's libertarian be involved with children only to the extent such involvement is explicitly enumerated in a written constitution with the child left mostly to fend for itself?

Now if a children's libertarian worked in a library...

Artie Lange on Letterman this Friday, 2/1

2008-01-28T17:46:00.000-08:00

Be sure to watch the Lateshow with David Letterman this Friday, February 1.

Looks like Paris Hilton is scheduled to be the "main" guest, which sucks, but that should also give Artie some good material for his segment. I didn't hear Artie discuss this appearance on the show today, so I don't know how he rationalized around the Writer's Guild strike. He mentioned on a previous show that he wouldn't cross the picket line, but maybe the deal the Guild made with Dave's production company was enough.

Blame Sally in Sacramento

2008-01-24T23:34:00.000-08:00

Indie-pop, folk-pop, whatever you want to compare their style to won't exactly hit the mark. Piano, guitar, bass and percussion (not a drum kit) are the tools these women use to craft their sound.

I was introduced to the band Blame Sally a number of years ago by a friend who discovered them in the San Francisco Bay area. They often play in and around the Bay area and sometimes on the outskirts of Sacramento, but tonight they were right here, downtown at Marilyn's on K. What I really enjoy about this band is that their passion and joy for music comes through in their performance. As a casual musician, it's inspiring. Whether you are a fan of indie-folk-type music or not their shows are great because it is obvious the band is having a great time, the songs are heartfelt and the music's eclecticism is interesting.

The twang of a Fender Strat or slide guitar evokes some country flavor in one song, bongo drums and bass suggests African rhythms on another. Other instruments present were a mandolin and accordion.

The melodies chosen over atypical chord progressions are fresh. Dynamics and silence are no strangers here either, and enhance the individual skill of these musicians and their voices. The two and three part vocal harmonies are beautiful.

Blame Sally has been gaining attention over the past year with their 2007 release, Severland, ranking number one on XM Satellite radio's Starbucks XM Cafe and making the pre-nominating ballot for a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk, Best New Artist and Song of the Year categories.

The venue was low-key and not crowded, but in a good way. This band connects with its audience and those who were there were enthusiastic. Here's to more tour stops in Sacramento.

Portalpalooza

2008-01-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

I just finished Portal this morning and loved it. I don't know what I could say that hasn't already been said to heap praise upon this game. I finished it over two days, maybe 8-10 hours, so it's pretty short, but it's also mind-bendingly creative and very fun. Portal is one of the five games included with The Orange Box, which is out on PC and Xbox 360.

The basic game mechanic centers around the use of two types of "portals," each can be an entry or an exit, which are linked ... dimensionally, I suppose. As the player you learn how to control and place these portals to move objects, move yourself, and achieve various objectives. It's a deceptively simple concept that you come to realize is surprisingly versatile.

The setting is within a "test facility" where you are supposed to be learning about this new portal device. As you progress you find, through some often hilarious automated commentary, that all is not as it seems. The in-game environment is interesting and at higher levels it is quite challenging to achieve the required objectives. There's a ton of spatial reasoning and problem-solving skill required to achieve these objectives, and I just loved it.

If you've heard the buzz about this game, I'm telling you the buzz is justified. If you haven't heard the buzz, do yourself a favor and find out what rock you've been under and then check out this game. The Orange Box is a compilation and also includes Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2, all of which have received high praise as previous separate releases.

Praise and a few gripes for PGR4

2008-01-08T21:49:00.001-08:00

I have expanded my videogame collection with the spoils of holiday giving and one of the games I've acquired is Project Gotham Racing 4. The only other game I've played in the PGR series is PGR2 on the original Xbox, and I loved it. It hit the sweet spot between an arcade-style racer and a driving simulator, with an excellent online component to race against your friends.

PGR4 is much the same, though I have to say it is more of a challenge than PGR2. This is due a bit to the more technical nature of the game, leaning more toward a realistic simulation, but it's mainly due to the toughness of the artificial intelligence of your bot opponents. If you don't get out in front early in a race, it's nearly impossible to catch up to first place. I'll be spending much more time honing my driving techniques this time out.

One of my gripes with the single-player portion of PGR4 isn't even with the gameplay, it's with the integration of your friends' stats via Xbox Live -- it hardly exists. In the "arcade" mode where you're just competing for various medals in different types of races you will see a leaderboard after completing an event that shows you where you rank among your friends, but that's it. That's the only time you will see the leaderboard and as far as I can tell, you can't bring it back up just to look and compare. Lame. That's a huge part of the competitive fun of racing games is competing against your friends' times on the same tracks.

In the "career" mode, such friend comparison simply isn't there. Maybe there are too many variables to factor in with all of the choices one can make throughout the course of one's career, but I don't see why the game couldn't at least let you see how your friends are doing.

I played my first online matches this past weekend and they were just as fun as the online races in PGR2, just much prettier graphically. I have to say, though, the interface and menu navigation for setting up the custom races is clumsy and leaves a lot to be desired. Much of the menu choices are text-based with little explanation and the menu choices are all nested inside of each other. It may be a case of sacrificing ease of use for a "clutter-free" onscreen menu appearance.

Even the online web component of PGR4, pgrnations.com, suffers from a lack of ability to compare your stats with your friends'. You can do it, but not without seriously digging down into the "Leaderboards" link, and even then, you are relegated to nondescriptive text-based choices that provide so little information they are useless, particularly out of the context of the game.

I want to see these comparisons when I'm online in the game interface so I can look at a leaderboard for a particular track before I race it, see where my friends placed, and try to beat them. The leaderboard should also be associated with a graphical representation of the proper map with a title, too, not just "Event 1 Street Race."

Another gripe is with the "garage" component of the game. It apparently lets you view vehicles and motorcycles available to you in your garage, but I didn't see all of the cars I'd been using in my garage, and of the cars and bikes you see, you seem only to be able to take pictures of them to upload to pgrnations.com. Huh? I was so bored, here's the picture I took and uploaded:
I couldn't even open the dumpster or kick it or anything. But that's not the worst part about the "garage." In one of the garages you can walk up to and play an upright arcade machine version of Geometry Wars: Waves. I did this and it was a cool variation on the regular Geometry Wars, but when you've had enough and want to go back to PGR4 (even selecting "Back to PGR4" on the menu) it spits you totally out of the entire game as if you rebooted your console. What? I wanted to go back to the garage and walk around taking pictures!

I don't mean to sound so negative about this game. It does provide a great driving experience while you're actually playing, and the online component when you are actually racing works very well. The shift toward a more technical simulation may warrant experiencing this game with a steering wheel. I've read many find this significantly enhances the feel and experience of driving in this and other driving games. Also, one creative addition to PGR4 is the ability to use motorcycles instead of cars. You still race against cars and other motorcycles and it's an interesting addition with a whole different feel and skillset to learn.

I did finally win a few Championship series races in the Amateur category tonight, so I just have to keep at it and keep practicing.

Howard Stern to be on Letterman next Monday

2008-01-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

[UPDATE -- LAST MINUTE] On today's show Howard said he'd be on Letterman tonight, January 10!

Just a quick note -- Howard mentioned on his show today he will be appearing on David Letterman next Monday, January 14. Stern always steals the show, so this one's worth a tape or DVR program.

Never been a big fan of toast

2007-12-13T20:05:00.001-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I'll eat it if someone makes it for me or it comes as a side dish for breakfast at a restaurant, but who needs the hassle of making toast at home?

I hope this isn't some indication of a deeply-repressed negative toast experience early in my life.

But really, who wants the hassle of monitoring the burn rate of a piece of bread just to have the perfect crispy bread-surface crushed by a distorted, cold rectangle of butter? I reject such toast-torture!

And the toaster itself, what an infernal toasty-crumb-making machine it is! Just when you think you've finished cleaning the countertop after the CIA-inspired butterboarding, the toasty bits make their escape as their steel-encased crumb womb is pushed back against the splash board.

I have even seen the case against toast made in a medical journal! Aside from it's general hassle of preparation, witness the "pernicious activity of toast!"

Rock Band lives up to the hype

2007-12-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I got together at my buddy Chad's house with a bunch of friends and played Rock Band all evening. We had at least 8 or 9 people, so we all rotated and each had a turn at playing guitar, bass, drums and singing. Playing bass or guitar is virtually identical to the Guitar Hero series, but the addition of drums and vocals take Rock Band to another level, and when you have everyone in the same room, and those not playing at that moment are your "audience," this game really comes into its own and is the best party game out there.

The drums were challenging, but very doable on the easy setting and it was not difficult to make it through an entire song. Of course some songs are harder than others. I enjoyed the drums much more than I thought I would. There's lots of opportunities to do your own custom fills and as long as you hit a final cymbal crash and get back to the song without missing a beat (hah!) you get points for it.

Even the vocals were fun to do. The mic is "on" throughout the entire song, even before the instrument tracks begin, so you can improvise or say concert phrases like "How's everybody doin' tonight? Are you ready to get caraaayzaaay?" etc. The vocals are doable too. Apparently you can hit the notes either right on or an octave above or below, so vocal range isn't really an
issue. It's strange having to hit the note, sing the lyrics (I don't think it measures lyrical accuracy) and manage your breath so you don't run out of sound on a long phrase.

I thought the Rock Band Stratocaster guitar was cool, too. It takes a little getting used to because unlike the Guitar Hero guitars, the fret buttons extend the width of the fretboard, meaning you can't really grab tightly all the way around the neck when hitting notes because you'll press other buttons down. From the pictures I had seen I thought the fret buttons were hinged at the bottom and you would be pressing them at the "top" of the fret, but the entire fret is a button. If you prefer the Guitar Hero guitar, with the Xbox 360 version the Guitar Hero II Explorer and newer Guitar Hero III Les Paul wireless guitars will work with Rock Band.

The song selection is excellent also, with a good variety of difficulty levels for the various instruments. Also, each instrument can be played at its own difficulty level in the same song, so less experienced players can still have fun playing with experts. Chad had bought the song pack for The Police, which was awesome. Actual original tracks, not covers of "Can't Stand Losing You," "Synchronicity II," and "Roxanne." Synchronicity II was the best, especially for drums, though they are all great to play. I also played drums on Metallica's "Enter Sandman" and it was a blast.

The game becomes quite loud with four people getting into it and the "audience" (those not playing that song) yelling or laughing too, so you almost need a standalone house to play it, where noise is not an issue with neighbors. At the moment the game comes as a complete package for about $170, but if you consider you're receiving a game with three instruments (one guitar, mic, drums) it's not a bad deal. If you can easily get a group of friends together to play it's definitely a lot of fun.

George Takei on Howard Stern this week

2007-12-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

The announcer of the Howard Stern Show, George Takei, is back and will be on all week.

Gaming: playing to win or playing to see

2007-12-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

I like the way Gabe put that approach to gaming in his post today (second post on the page). He crystallized what Tycho brought up (first post on the same page, 3rd para.) about the range of reasons people play games.

Some people want the challenge, they just want to beat the game like any other competition. The other end of this spectrum is that some people want to progress through the game in order to see what happens next. I suppose this could be a desire to complete a story or simply, as Gabe put it, to see the next level or next cool animation.

Most of the time I'm in the latter, "playing to see" group. I like to win for sure, but revealing the game's story or seeing something particularly creative or cool is more motivating for me than just passing the next checkpoint. I have to say, though, that the Xbox 360's achievements make it really easy to add in more of that competitive spirit to gaming.

Geek factor +10

2007-11-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

I've always enjoyed the original Star Trek episodes. The cheesy special effects, William Shatner's overacting and kissing of alien life forms, and the predictable deaths of no-name ensigns who go down to the planet with the main characters is simply fun to watch.

Last night I went to see the theatrical release of the original two-part TV episode, "The Menagerie" from 1966. This episode has the famous Captain Pike, original Captain of the Enterprise, who through a "space accident" was relegated to sitting in a rolling box only able to communicate by blinking a light once for "yes" and twice for "no." Portions of this episode have been spoofed by various TV shows and cartoons.

Everything had been digitally remastered from the original film, new visual effects had been added and the famous Star Trek theme had even been newly recorded using the original score sheets.

There was a nice short documentary at the beginning, hosted by Eugene Roddenberry, Gene Roddenberry's son, that showed the remastering, cleanup and production process. The newly digitized film was remarkably clear and the new visual effects were noticeable (spacecraft, planets and stars) but not distracting. Actually the new effects contributed to the suspension of disbelief since the appearance was what viewers have come to expect in science fiction and it wasn't so obvious this was made in the 1960s.

The showing was done in high definition, but was in the original TV format of 4:3, so no extra widescreen real estate. It appeared that the theater projected it directly from a computer, as evidenced by the Windows task bar, including the "Start" button in the lower left corner, appearing below the movie screen after the end credits rolled and the lights were raised.

The entire first season will be released this month on HD-DVD/DVD combo discs and the second season will be out in 2008, all remastered in the same way this theatrical release was.

Online storage solution that's easy and inexpensive

2007-11-12T22:29:00.000-08:00

Quick quiz -- would you rather pay $200+ for an external hard drive and backup software or $0.15 per GB-month of storage used and $20 for a front-end backup application?

Hmmm... not quite as snappy as I'd initially envisioned, but it should get the point across that online file backup can now be a reasonable solution, particularly because that external hard drive is just as vulnerable to wear-and-tear, floods, fire and destruction as the PC you are backing up with it. Same goes for CD and DVD ROMs.

Sometimes I stray from my gaming-related newsfeeds and find something applicable to the realm of work. I've been meaning to find a way to backup my work documents and ran across a recent post (hit ctrl-f and search for "Amazon S3" to skip to the heading) on 43folders that spurred me to try an online solution.

The front-end application is called JungleDisk. It costs $20 after the free 30-day trial and provides an easy-to-use interface for Amazon's S3 web service, which is what actually stores the data. JungleDisk makes an otherwise consumer-unfriendly service meant for developers accessible and useful for everyday backup.

JungleDisk provides secure SSL connections to S3 as well as the option to separately encrypt documents before they are sent. Windows, Mac and Linux versions are available, as well as the source code. Since JungleDisk is merely the front-end to your S3 account, you can also run JungleDisk on any computer with Internet access and you'll have your files.

The S3 service provides off-site, decentralized, redundant and unlimited data storage.

Setting up JungleDisk was pretty easy. No configuration was required beyond the default settings other than telling it which directory I wanted to backup. The "disk" it creates shows up in your "My Network Places" folder on Windows. If you use Windows XP or Vista you can map the "disk" to a local drive letter. For the S3 account, you can either add it as a web service to your existing Amazon account or create a separate Amazon and corresponding S3 account.

As a test I backed up one of my entire directories of work docs, which was 17.3 MB of various Word, WordPerfect, Adobe and OpenDocument files. It took 2 to 3 minutes to upload everything and there were no problems. I was able to check my S3 account activity immediately and it showed I would be billed a whopping $0.04 on December 1 for the storage and transfer.

JungleDisk can automatically backup particular files or directories about as frequently as anyone could want. I'm going to give this a try for awhile and see how it goes. I certainly feel better now that important documents are safely backed up.

Possible clan names - inspired by todolistblog

2007-11-12T22:09:00.000-08:00

This post immediately reminded me of my brainstorming session to come up with a clan name in Halo 2 for my group of buddies. I dug up my notes from back in 2004, saved no doubt because of some brilliant naming nuggets which I will now reveal to the world:We ended up going with Lemming Army. Incidentally, my buddy Shawn and I extended the exalted lineage of "Lemming Army" by using it as our team name when we captured third place in the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory tournament at PAX 2005.

The funniest ones to me have either the word "biscuit" or "ferret" in them.

Beer Advocate goodness

2007-10-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter, for a number of years. His encyclopedic knowledge of beers and whiskeys has helped to more fully enjoy those beverages and explore new choices.

So when I saw the October issue of Beer Advocate I had to order it (you can order individual issues through the web site). The portrait on the cover is very much an iconic image of Jackson, so I thought it'd be cool to have. I had never read the magazine before, and turns out it's very well written with a lot of interesting stories about beer, brewing, beer history and beer reviews.

An unexpected bonus accompanied my issue -- a thin neoprene beer sock with rubber non-slip bottom! Very cool.

Fair Trade Day at the Sac Food Co-op

2007-10-24T22:44:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday was Fair Trade Day, so I thought I'd stop by, do my part, and pick up a few things. Buying local and "fair trade" items feels pretty good and the Sac Food Co-op on Alhambra & S is the best place to do that here in Sac-town:
Check out my bounty:The squash, eggplant and fruit were all locally grown in the Sacramento valley. The beer is Drake's IPA, brewed in San Leandro, CA, a gold medal winner at the 2002 Great American Beer festival. Extra hops make for a nice bitterness and beautiful golden-red color. A couple of fair trade coffees also, a Dark Costa Rican Monteverde from Caffe Ibis in Utah and a French roast from Alter Eco in San Francisco.

I also picked up a delicious chocolate bar from Alter Eco that is a blend of Swiss milk chocolate and South American coffee beans. There's also some brown rice and Annie's worcestershire sauce in the picture, but those aren't too exciting even though worcestershire sauce might be my favorite flavoring for any meat dish.

The co-op also had a few tasting booths set up and I tried some other chocolates and a natural energy drink. The usual demonstration area was also open with a freshly made salad and dressing. Quite a different experience from the typical grocery store.

I also picked up a new canvas shopping bag in the spirit of the day, and even it is made with organic cotton and classified as "fair trade:"Love the co-op.

I could get used to this...

2007-10-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

Today I participated in BMW's annual Ultimate Drive for Susan G. Komen for the Cure event. What they do is take a caravan of current model year BMWs across the country to various BMW dealerships and then donate $1 for each mile that people drive these cars at each stop. The money goes toward breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment programs.

Participants can also put their signatures on one of the cars that travels with the group so that by the end of the trip the entire vehicle is covered:At the BMW dealership in Roseville, there was a 15-mile loop that had some nice uncrowded roads as well as a leg of freeway driving to open things up a bit. I drove three cars, the Z4 Roadster 3.0i, 650Ci Coupe and 650Ci Convertible. The Coupe was my favorite:
Unsurprisingly, these cars were amazing and truly fun to drive. BMW's craftsmanship is impeccable and the cars are so responsive you really feel connected to the road. This is about as far-removed from a "Cadillac boat" as you can get.

The Z4 is a bit small for me, but was still a blast to drive, especially with the F1-style shifter paddles on the steering wheel. The 650s are just pure fantasy -- the Coupe starts at $75,600 and the convertible is over $80,000 so I'm under no illusion that I'll have one of these anytime soon, but wow, verrrry nice. The convertible has a great heads-up display that projects your speed onto the windshield so you don't have to take your eyes off of the road.

BMW also offers Sirius satellite radio in its new cars and both of the 650 models I drove had it. No "Howard 100" unfortunately, but most of the music channels were available.

I ran into my buddy Chad there, too:The tour is heading to the Bay Area next, so if any readers out there can make it, I highly recommend this event. The only cost is your time and the event raises money for a worthwhile cause. You can either register ahead of time on the web site or sign up once you arrive at the dealership.

Blogger's word verification for comments appears to be down

2007-10-01T17:37:00.001-07:00

[UPDATE 10/6 -- word verification appears to be working again. Comment moderation is now off.]

The word verification aspect ("captchas" which require human intervention to recognize and then type distorted words from an image) of posting comments appears to be down at the moment, which makes it impossible for visitors to post comments. For this reason I turned that feature off but enabled comment moderation, which means I'll need to approve any comments before they are posted.

Hopefully this will be short-term and if anyone has wanted to comment lately but couldn't, please try again.

"Better Shredding" in Wired

2007-09-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've managed to do it again -- my rant about Wired's "How To" piece (scroll about halfway down to the picture of the black and red "Guitar Hero" guitar) on how to Rock at Guitar Hero was published (scroll down to "Better Shredding") this month. The advice the article gave was good, but didn't talk about a technique to use that will help you to actually hit more notes even after you've learned all of the basics.

My new mini-bio is "Two-time globally published author/ranter."

Caught on camera, in the wild

2007-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this yesterday. Nothing says "classy" like a set of chrome testicles hanging from your trailer hitch:

Nice work, sir. Like we couldn't already tell how manly you are by your huge truck.

All of Sacramento is so proud.

Online comic Achewood shows the logical extreme of such things.

Game on!

2007-09-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE: added info on motherboard & heatsink]

She's a real beaut -- manufactured July 19, 2007 with the Zephyr motherboard and an HDMI port:

I haven't been able to get a good picture through the ventilation grill to see if I have the new heatsink, but I believe all new Zephyr motherboards have it.

For the record, my very first contact was with an old Live friend, Inbound Orb, who sent me a message before I could even finish configuring my 360 profile.

See you all on the Halo 3 battlefield, co-op campaign and multiplayer.

Pat Monahan performs brilliantly on Stern ... again

2007-09-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

I only caught about the last half of Howard's interview on today's show with Pat and his solo bandmates (not Train), but I was lucky enough to catch Pat's performances of his new single, "Her Eyes," as well as Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and Stevie Wonder's "Superstition."

In a word, wow. This guy can sing. His original song was great, and he's a dead ringer for Robert Plant in the vocal department on Zeppelin covers, hitting all of the high notes and picking out the vocal accents that are a signature of Plant's. "Superstition" was good too -- his new band really nails the songs.

I found this when searching for info on "Superstition." It's a great performance of the song by Wonder on Sesame Street. I'm guessing mid-1970's. Watch for the kids dancing, especially the kid behind the band who shakes his mop of hair around, really getting into it. Great stuff.

Stallman, Lessig, Karl and Me

2007-09-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

rms

On Monday I trekked down to Palo Alto and Stanford Law School to hear Richard Stallman speak about the General Public License version 3. Though I missed the first 20 minutes due to south bay area traffic & construction as well as construction on the campus, I heard many of the salient points he addressed like software patents, "Tivoization," Digital Rights Management, and the GPLv3's compatibility with other free software licenses such as the Apache license.

Much as I expected, Stallman was a passionate, almost strident, supporter of software freedom who tends toward the melodromatic, as he described, because that his how he feels about freedom. This is why Stallman and the Free Software Foundation are so important to the free software movement. Their position is uncompromising and one that polarizes. Yes, it is extreme in the sense of "live free or die," but without such extremes change would be slow, difficult or nonexistent.

I think of this polarizing catalytic effect by analogizing to the concept of an "absolute zero" temperature. The theoretical temperature of "absolute zero" is the coldest temperature possible. I think of rms and the FSF's philosophy about software freedom as the theoretical "absolute zero" temperature of truly free software, always pulling heat away from proprietary software. The reason it is good they are in that position is that if they were not so extreme ("absolute") the movement away from proprietary ("hot") software toward true freedom in software would happen more slowly or not at all.

Even though Stallman objects to the use of the term "open source" (he corrected me and others more than once when we used it) to describe the type of software that embraces these principles of freedom, that term is widely used and has been standardized and adopted by many in the software industry and business community. Some use the acronym "FOSS" (Free and Open Source Software) to describe this type of software. I tend to lean toward using "open source," mainly because it is what many people recognize as being different from proprietary closed-source programs, so while I recognize the distinction between "free software" and "open source," apologies to rms on the use.

Larry Lessig

I had hoped to see Larry Lessig on campus also, as he is one of my most-admired authors on subjects related to law and the Internet. Indeed, he was at Stallman's presentation and graciously signed my original hardcover 1999 edition of the first book of his I ever read, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

In addition to being an author and law professor, he maintains a blog which discusses relevant and interesting issues on many topics. He also helped found the now-ubiquitous Creative Commons, which offers a common-sense balance of copyright license options for artists and their creative works. He's also done a few other things like found Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, clerk for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Scalia) and argue a critically important copyright case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Eldred v. Ashcroft). More interesting details are in this 2002 profile in Wired magazine.

Brandy Karl

Last but certainly not least, I was able to meet Brandy Karl, attorney and blogger, whom I met online after discovering her blog a number of years ago. Before taking a position as a Residential Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society (one of the coolest job titles ever) she was a copyright attorney in Boston, MA. She also used to write for findlaw.com when she was a law student. In fact I think I found her blog after reading this piece about her transformation from an anonymous "especially sharp law student" to full-fledged attorney with her own practice.

I found out about this talk by Stallman by spotting it on Brandy's public calendar.

The campus

If you've never been to Stanford's campus, it's a worthwhile visit just to take a walk around. The scenery and architecture is some of the most beautiful you will see.

Crisp and cool

2007-09-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

No alarm sounded and no sound disturbed my slumber.

I awoke, noticed the early light and remembered yesterday's wavering thought;

"I'm up, I'm up" I said and pulled on my clothes and splashed my face.

Outside my strongest awareness was the quiet;

And next the relief of the morning air.

Blood courses and muscles and tendons stretch;

As I now rest, I am glad for the early rise

and the crisp and cool of the early day.

Why PAX matters: it's about the community

2007-08-31T09:30:00.000-07:00

PAX this year reminded me of the power of a community with shared experiences. The only other gaming conference I've attended is PAX 2005, so I can't say from direct knowledge that other gaming conferences don't generate the same feelings within their respective attendees, but I was truly moved during this conference at the open displays of passion for gaming and the refusal of those expressing such passion to be ashamed of gaming and of being gamers.

I missed Wil Wheaton's keynote address on Friday, but I listened to it later (nice written summary in addition to audio - occasional profanity, so be careful at work) and was pleasantly surprised at how similar his gaming history is to mine and by how well the audience responded to him. I wasn't aware Wil was such a gamer and I wasn't sure what he was going to talk about. As others have stated, Wil's speech set the tone for the entire event -- no matter what different types of games we play, we share the same passion and we are all gamers. Wil also stated the desire of most gamers and another theme of the convention, to thunderous applause, that people not be d!@ks (some profanity in linked comic) when playing online, despite the fact that you're not face-to-face with the recipient of your verbal comments.

I missed the keynote for a good reason -- I was gaming. One of my friends who also traveled to Seattle for PAX brought his Nintendo Wii along with Wii Sports and we played Thursday night and most of the day Friday. I had not yet played anything on the Wii and it was so intuitive, so much fun, and so great with four people in the room, that we couldn't get enough of it. Eventually several of us, me included, had to stop because we were sore. The rest of the weekend my entire arm, from shoulder to hand, ached as if I hadn't played sports in ... oh, right, I haven't. I doubt I'm coining a new phrase here, coming so late as I am to the Wii party, but I considered myself temporarily on the "Wii-njured" reserve list after the Wii marathon.Discussion Panels

In addition to what one might expect at a gaming conference like console tournaments, PC tournaments and an exhibition hall, the variety of discussion panels was staggering this year. Topics ranged from storytelling in games, to women in gaming, to how public relations teams approach the hardcore community, to what to do as an adult when life cuts into your gaming time, to politics in gaming and music in gaming. And that's just some of the over 40 separate discussion panels that were available. All of the panel members were people from the industry or people who were experts in whatever topic was being discussed, making the interaction that much more interesting and relevant. In addition to the panels, the founders and creators of Penny Arcade, Gabe and Tycho, did three separate Q&A sessions over the course of the weekend, one of which also included them creating the artwork for an actual strip that was published on Monday.

Music and Movies

Friday and Saturday nights also included musical performances by gaming-oriented bands. I did not attend these, but they are always packed. Most of the bands either recreate videogame music or sing about gaming and its culture, but a couple of the artists, notably the band Freezepop and singer Jonathan Coulton were less directly gaming-themed, but still appealed to the audience. Freezepop made appearances in both Guitar Hero I and II with a bonus song on each, and Coulton sings mostly about coding and geek-related themes.

Classic gaming- and geek-related movies also played in the evenings if you weren't into the musical acts. True classics like "The Wizard!," "The Last Starfighter," and "Tron" were among the offerings.

Tournament and Free Play

Countless tournaments were available to meet just about anyone's interest, whether it be tabletop games, handheld games, card games, PC games or console games. Additionally, there were all manner of "free play" opportunities where you check out a game and controllers with your friends and just go play.

One cool thing for handheld players was the handheld lounge. This was a large area covered with beanbags where people could just hang out and play their DSes or PSPs or whatever. There was also a distributed tournament system for handhelds created just for PAX that let people compete against each other for prizes without the need of a formalized tournament structure. This is one of those "extra-awesome" things that takes PAX beyond just being a regular gaming conference.

Even More

There was so much going on that made PAX just feel right it's difficult to convey it in writing. The Washington State Convention and Trade Center was just the right size, as many areas were often crowded, but the way things were laid out and organized one never felt "stuck" anywhere. All of the events and the overall structure of the event were oriented toward encouraging a community experience.

There was some sort of matching game going on that I never quite figured out, where PAX3rs (intentionally left that typo -- seemed appropriate) carried, hung, pinned or otherwise displayed a series of numbers that I assume they were trying to match with someone else's numbers for some sort of game or exchange [ahh... found some info on it at Wired - other great PAX pics there too]. The Sony booth was running a contest where one had to accomplish certain tasks within the convention center in the morning to obtain keys which you could then use in the afternoon to try to open a treasure chest with prizes inside.

All Together Now

All of these things encouraged a community experience, but what all of us already shared was a love of gaming. I don't think anyone would've taken the trouble to travel or even take the bus downtown, let alone fly from across the country, and pay for an entry pass if they didn't.

The full community experience hit home for me during the Omegathon finals. Most of the people in that auditorium had likely never met each other, yet each side of the auditorium cheered in unison when the player whose point of view was projected on the large screen to each respective side of the stage picked up a particularly deadly-looking weapon or when that weapon was used to cause the spectacular death of the other Omeganaut. There's something about the swell of a cheering crowd in response to the recognition of a shared belief or experience that is very moving. It was similar to the experience of watching a popular cult movie like Star Wars in a theater crowded with fans on opening night.

The twist to the Omegathon competition is that no one knows what the final game will be that will determine that year's overall winner until it begins. In past years it has been Pong, Combat or Tetris, classic retro games that anyone is sure to have had an experience with but which likely no one has recently played or practiced. When the Minibosses exploded from behind the stage curtains playing an electrified and distorted version of the Halo theme, it was incredible, and I wasn't quite sure whether this was an intro to some official announcement or just a great song before the introduction of the final game.This year Bungie had a hand in providing the final game: Halo 3 multiplayer. Bungie had said in a weekly update just prior to PAX that there would be an announcement about the Forge portion of Halo 3, which will allow players to customize maps with the placement of weapons, items and vehicles. Turns out the "announcement" was more of an exhibition of this new customization feature, as Tycho stated on Penny Arcade the Monday after the event:

This year, when Frankie offered up Bungie's full support of the event, we realized fairly quickly that we had a startling opportunity here ... Neither MNC Dover or Accolon were especially familiar with Halo, another statistical impossibility, but this might have been for the best - they were doing battle on never seen before maps, each of them tuned in Forge to have piles of big guns jammed into every crevice. To quote Bungie's Lukems, this was Halo: Hyper Fighting Edition. Accolon eventually took it, but our competitors definitely delivered the required spectacle.

So we watched as these warriors, MNC Dover and Accolon, battled on two new multiplayer maps nobody had seen with some new weapons never before seen in action -- the flamethrower, some sort of napalm-ish fire grenades, and a blinding flash-bomb grenade that seemed to blind and throw an opponent away, were among them.

Now Carry it Forward

Everyone who was in that room has an additional shared experience that reinforces the gaming community. Our social nature as human beings seems to me most strongly reinforced with physical, face-to-face gatherings, so the longer PAX continues and the more people who attend, the stronger the community will become.

The more unified gamers feel and actually are, the stronger we will be as a community in relation to other other non-gamer communities, like say, senators and representatives. This year PAX reportedly gathered 40,000 gamers over the course of the 3-day weekend. An event of that size that is peaceful, promotes gaming in a positive way, and deals with real and serious issues about the effects of gaming on society begins to be something that can't be ignored. PAX's participants and supporters begin to be a group worth listening to with valid issues that are worthy of being addressed outside of gaming's inner circle.

So let's continue to reach out beyond our Xbox Live headsets and PC keyboards every once in awhile to meet face-to-face and see and reinforce our common passion of gaming.

PAX 2007 info coming soon

2007-08-30T16:30:00.001-07:00

I hope to have my summary up this week.

It was a blast to be there, an incredible variety of discussion panels and things to do and see. I have my pics up on my flickr page. Gamerscoreblog has tons of great pics too. Monday's Penny Arcade has some videos up of the final Omegathon event, including the live performance of the Halo theme by the Minibosses -- gives me chills just watching it!

Sad beer and whisky news

2007-08-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not have heard, Michael Jackson, famed beer and scotch whisky reviewer, died today. I have his books Ultimate Beer and Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch.

Great reference works from a knowledgeable man. He will be missed.

Archival post -- Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) 2005

2007-08-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of this week's glorious beginning of PAX 2007, I am reposting the full report of my visit to PAX 2005. The current host of my PAX 2005 article is going through a portal upgrade and the articles are currently down, so I thought I'd put the full text and pictures here.

From August 2005:

Penny Arcade Expo: The New Videogaming Mecca

I flew up to Seattle, WA last Thursday night to attend the Penny
Arcade Expo (PAX) 2005. The expo was actually in Bellevue, WA, took
place Friday afternoon through Sunday evening, and turned out to be
quite an event. I didn't know what to expect, yet somehow I was not
surprised by what was there. In short: tons o'geeks, consoles, PCs,
board games, arcade games, and plenty of good-spirited gameplay. The
focus was obviously on bringing people together to play games.

The full spectrum of gamers were present, from the casual puzzle game
player to the person who was in full character costume and had brought
his 4' x 4' custom-built and intricately detailed tabletop game board
with full complement of pewter characters to populate it. I don't mean
literally a board that just folds out, I mean a fully-realized 3D
landscape with trees, stone walls, altars, mountains and whatever else
was necessary for full immersion in the game. The cool thing was, even
with this wide range of different types of people, everyone got along,
was considerate and just plain nice.

It was the type of environment where everyone felt comfortable being
themselves and weren't embarrassed, for example, to cheer out loud
when one of the Omegathon contestants increased his Katamari ball past
another diameter milestone. If you're not familiar with what the
Omegathon is, this year it was a six round tournament, with a
different game each round, to test the stamina and skill of its
participants, or Omeganauts. A videogame sextathlon, if you will, that
took place over the course of the entire expo. The grand prize was a
classic gaming cornucopia consisting of every classic Nintendo NES
game and all of the hardware and accessories ever made for the system.
Seriously.

The layout

One floor was dedicated to "free console" play. Xbox, PS2 and GameCube
consoles were all available for play with nice plasma flatscreens
somewhere in the 40" range. You just checked out the game and
controllers and off you went. We played Mario Party 6 and Mario Kart:
Double Dash on the first day.

On this same floor is the Exhibition Hall, where sponsors set up their
various booths to show things off, and the Theatre, where seminars and
some tournament finals were held. At Nintendo's booth I saw the new
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in action, Nintendogs, and Mario
Kart for the DS.

Another floor was dedicated to several different types of gaming. Two
large rooms were used for tabletop gaming. These were places where
people could bring their boards and gear and just play. Some of this
stuff was pretty amazing when you consider the effort involved to
create the boards they used. The boards ranged from about 4' X 4' to
4' X 8' and often looked like a model train layout, but covered with
pewter characters, cards and various other paraphernalia which I did
not understand.

This same floor has another huge room dedicated to PC gaming. Players'
own rigs were welcome, and the neon light from countless case mods
bathed the room in a blue glow. Another large room was where the
console gaming tournaments happened.

This is where we played the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory tournament on
Xbox, but more on that later.

Worth the price of admission

The best event I attended was the "Make Monday's strip with Gabe &
Tycho" seminar. Not only was it fascinating to have a window into part
of the creative process for the strip, the guys kept an auditorium
full of gamers entertained for an hour and a half. They were both up
on stage, Gabe at his PC with his desktop projected on two screens on
either side of the stage. Tycho did the initial typing of the comic's
dialog and then managed the Q&A session for the rest of the time.

You know a guy is a great writer when he can make an auditorium full
of people laugh out loud just by typing sentences on the screen. We
were then able to watch Gabe as he inked and colored the strip from
initial sketches he had done and scanned in earlier. Gabe uses a large
pressure-sensitive touchpad and pen to create the comic and finished
the final art during this seminar that became Monday's comic.

The competition

Sunday morning my friend Shawn and I played in the Splinter Cell:
Chaos Theory tournament. There were 16 teams of two, and each player
had his own flatscreen TV. That's me below.

The luck of the draw went our way the first round. There were two
teams that consisted of a pair of single walk-ons who had never met or
played with each other before, which left them at a distinct
disadvantage as far as communication and strategy went. We were
matched against one of those teams and pretty handily defeated them.
The second round was against a good team, but we played the map called
"Factory," which a lot of players on Live don't like to play because
of its large size and layout. These guys didn't appear to like it too
much, but it happens to be one of our favorites, so we also won the
second round.

The third round was against the team that eventually won the whole
tournament, so we didn't feel so bad about losing. It was a decisive
loss, by the way. They smeared us all over that "River Mall" level.
All we really wanted to do was make it past the first round, so
everything beyond that was gravy. We came in third place overall and
actually won the equivalent of $25! With our winnings we picked up a
copy of last year's PAX 2004 DVD and a t-shirt.

The best sponsor

One of the sponsors of PAX 2005 was Bawls, an energy drink. They had a
booth and sold individual bottles for $1 a piece. This was great
because these things are loaded with caffeine, and a $1 a pop, you
can't lose. Plus, the name lends itself to endless jokes:

"Dude, you're drinking Bawls!"

"I've never had Bawls this cheap"

"These Bawls are nice and cold"

We never tired of it. There was also a variation the company called
Sno Bawls, which was basically an "icee" version of the drink, and
that just added another variation to our jokes.

"Your Bawls are frozen"

You get the idea.

Oh, and did I mention the bottles are blue? We didn't use that in our
jokes, probably because it would've been too obvious. And the place
was full of guys.

A real-world hack

Late Friday night we were all lagging and looking for some caffeine.
The problem was the Bawls people had packed up and gone home at 10p.
However, the booth was still there. My friend Mish somewhat by
accident found an unprotected opening in the Bawls booth procedures
and architecture, which he fully exploited.

The "Sno Bawls" icee machines were still set up at the booth. An
exploratory pull of the lever on one revealed that they still had
Bawls flowing, though by this time the icee part had melted. At the
other end of the table was an empty pitcher, which seemed to provide a
convenient way to avoid spilling the cold Bawls on the floor. Pull,
pour, zip, zip and you have yourself something to drink. I managed to
catch this hack in action.

The woman on the left is one of the PAX volunteers, all of whom had
"ENFORCER" emblazoned on the backs of their shirts, and all she could
manage to say to him was "That was frightening." It was quite funny.
I'm not sure what they did to "patch" this opening, but this volunteer
may have radioed for assistance because a full pitcher from the Sno
Bawls machine was quickly taken down the escalator and shown to a
waiting group of other volunteers, presumably to show the magnitude of
the potential exploit.

A complete experience

This event had something for everyone. One of the things I didn't see
was the musical concerts held both Friday and Saturday nights. The
music was of course videogame-related, and apparently lots of people
enjoyed it as there was a line halfway around the entire building
outside in order to get into the shows. There were also many seminars
and panels with industry pros discussing online gaming, breaking into
the industry, marketing games, and gaming and controversy (think of
the recent Hot Coffee mod and GTA: San Andreas).

According to one of the organizers of the event there were 7,000
attendees as of the end of Saturday and a total of 8,500 to 9,000 were
expected for total attendance by the end of Sunday. This is a serious
event that I hope the videogame industry continues to support. What
sets PAX apart from others like E3 is that it is not "only open to
industry professionals." Anyone and everyone is welcome, and as an
attendee you are made to feel that way. If you can make it up to
Seattle next year, I highly recommend it.

Do we have a Wii visitor?

2007-08-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Alright, who's using Opera?

For that matter, what's up Camino-using Mac person?

Gotta support the little guys.

Most may ignore you, but I see.

I see and I appreciate.

Xbox 360 new price comparison spreadsheet, clarified

2007-08-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

For some reason (embedded Google Doc?) when I go back in to edit my previous post I just see a blank, so here's an addendum.

One particularly astute friend of mine pointed out two things about the Core model of the Xbox 360:

It comes with a wired controller
It comes with basic composite/RCA cables which are incapable of component output

Taking this information into account, and focusing purely on a utilitarian view of being able to enjoy the Xbox 360 experience, my price comparison changes somewhat. My friend suggested some changes to my wording and I don't think I could have said it better myself, so I'll quote his email:

"to equal the Premium model you'd have to buy a Core model
($279) and a 20 GB hard drive ($99). That's $279 + $99 = $388, so you're better off buying the Premium model ($349) and saving $39." To further confuse things, the Core model comes with the standard (Composite/RCA) cable, so if you bought the Core model and wanted to output in Component, you'd actually have to shell out an additional $39 [for a component cable], basically making the Core model cost exactly the same as the Premium model, except you'd have no HDMI and a wired (instead of wireless) controller. It
therefore makes no sense to buy a Core model unless you know for sure you have no plans to upgrade. [I added "RCA" above and moved the last parenthesis from the end of the sentence to the right of "wireless."]

This observation about the controller reveals my bias to have a wireless one, but functionally for gameplay the wired and wireless controllers are identical. The ultimate conclusion is that the Premium model looks like the best deal, particularly if there is any possibility you'll want to play games or watch movies in high definition at some point in the future. The Premium model comes with Microsoft's HD/AV component cables instead of the basic composite/RCA cables included with the Core model. Even if you will only ever use a standard definition TV, however, the Premium is still the best value considering what's included in the package.

Thanks, Shawn.

Xbox 360 new price comparison spreadsheet

2007-08-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

I put this together for myself and thought other late adopters might find it useful too. I packed a lot of data in here, so check below the spreadsheet for further info. You'll need to scroll around using the slider bars to see all of the data.

Along the top is each type of console, from the Core model through the new Halo 3 Special Edition. The left-hand margin lists a breakdown of the components included with each console. These are listed cumulatively, from Core to Elite, and the breakpoint for what each console comes with is in the right-hand margin. The only exception in the cumulative component list is the play and charge kit included with the Halo 3 Special Edition because the Elite model does not include that.

Along the bottom I did my best to compare the cost savings of buying one of the more expensive console models versus buying the Core model and then purchasing each component separately to equal that more expensive model. For example, to equal the Premium model you'd have to buy a Core model ($279), a wireless controller ($49) and a 20 GB hard drive ($99). That's $279 + $148 = $427, so you're better off buying the Premium model ($349) and saving $78. These comparisons are not exactly equal because the Core model does not include HDMI and that feature cannot be added separately, but I'm just trying to compare overall relative value.

Interestingly, you save the same amount of money, $78, buying an Elite model versus buying a Core and components individually. The Halo 3 Special Edition turns out to save you the least amount of money as a bundle, even though it includes a play and charge kit for the wireless controller. Now that newly-manufactured Premium models include HDMI output I'm hard-pressed to pay $30 ($78 - $48) for a green color scheme and a Halo 3 picture pack. To make the Halo 3 Special Edition a great value, Microsoft would need to bundle in a copy of Halo 3 at the same price.

Pleased to meet you, my good man

2007-08-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

Xymyl ("zai-mull") lives somewhere near Tucson, AZ. He's an artist, a thinker, a brewer, a writer, and some would say (indeed have said), a nonconformist.

I've known him for about 9 years. We worked together in Phoenix at a software and Internet company. I'll leave it at that as at this point he maintains a semi-anonymous blog presence aside from his professional web design, logo, graphics and marketing business which I leave to him to promote as he chooses.

Though he's had an online presence in some form or another since this whole world wide web thing began, he has fairly recently jumped into the world of blogging with two sites, evil nature and nothing, which I have added to my list of friends' blogs over on the right.

Evil nature is the more personal of the two, with no real theme but good stories and thoughtful writings on topics ranging from art, the institution of education (emphasis on institution) to logic, music and blogging.

Xymyl is an accomplished artist and recently began selling some of his work. Check out his online gallery and I think you'll be impressed with the vibrant creativity of his work.

The nothing blog is very much a modern Federalist Papers, except instead of exploring the finer points of Constitutional meaning and interpretation through an exchange of written correspondence, it promotes a fuller understanding of nothing through the wonders of his response to submitted inquiries via email.

Now you must go beyond the plain meaning of nothing and consider its deeper implications. These are no mere tautological, empty pseudo-philosophical ramblings as some others have done. Do a search on nothing and you'll see what I mean. He has thought, and continues to think, deeply about nothing and is happy to clarify any questions you may have.

Penny Arcade Expo 2007

2007-07-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE2: added link to archival repost of my 2005 report.]
[UPDATE: added link to my 2005 report.]
I received this in the mail over the weekend:

August 24-26 is coming soon. You can expect a full report.

I went to PAX 2005 (UPDATE2: link down, but see here) and it was a great time -- totally oriented toward the gamer and not overrun with the glitz of hollow corporate promotion. There were great discussion panels, including one with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins walking through the creation of a PA comic that was actually published the next week.

An exhibit hall, gaming tournaments music concerts and free play with console, PC and tabletop games will all be there. Also, this is the first year the event will be in downtown Seattle at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, a significant square footage upgrade from the previous location at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA, so what new and exciting things will be possible is anybody's guess!

Happiness in Pictures

2007-07-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

Stone Brewing Vertical Epic

Sony's PS3 "price cut"

2007-07-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

So now Sony is going to replace the recently discounted $499 60 GB model with an 80 GB model that includes a game and costs $100 more?

Let's forget for a moment the confusion caused by multiple contradictory announcements from different and apparently reliable company representatives last week during E3. What factors go into the thought process of deciding to actually maintain a $599 price point for a game console? I'll tell you what: arrogance and a disconnection from consumers.

I hear and even understand the argument that the PS3 includes a Blu-Ray high definition DVD player as a reason for a higher price, but now that stand-alone Blu-Ray players no longer cost $1,000 (even Sony sells one for less than $500) this argument simply doesn't hold water.

Yes, the PS3 has a lot of potential, but that potential has to do with playing games and when those games simply don't exist there is absolutely no reason to lay out that much cash.

The home electronics market looks much different than the one that existed when the PS2 was released and standard-definition DVD movies were just taking off as a format. The "PS2 is also a DVD player" argument worked then because you could realize all of the benefits of DVD without buying a new TV. Now, in order to fully realize the benefits of high-definition DVD movies you need not only a new player, but a new HDTV also. For a decent HDTV you're talking an additional $750 to $1,000 for even a basic setup.

Put simply, HD-anything is not a mass-consumer product category yet.

This may be a smart way to clear the shelves of the now-discontinued 60 GB PS3 inventory, but as far as public relations goes, this comes off poorly.

Gaming site Next-Generation takes a more positive view on the price than I do, but they hit the nail on the head with the consumer confusion caused by, and the corporate miscommunication and confusion evidenced by, the conflicting announcements.

Gekkeikan Sake (USA) brewery tour

2007-07-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

I usually only drink sake when I have sushi at a restaurant, but one of my friends in Vancouver, Washington has taken an enthusiast's interest in the fermented rice beverage that I have slowly been acquiring myself. My friend found a great sake store in San Francisco called True Sake that, as stated in its history statement on the web site, "is the first dedicated sake store outside of Japan, and is also the first sake store in America." The owner of that store, Beau Timken, is often present there and has such an enthusiasm for sake that it's difficult not to feel it yourself if you talk to him.

I'm not in San Francisco that often, so unless I'm having sushi at a restaurant, I'm left to the local supermarket to find any sake. Pickings are slim, but a few months ago in my local market I found a decent (by American and Sacramento standards) sake brewed by Gekkeikan Sake (USA). Gekkeikan Sake is one of the largest sake brewers in Japan. I didn't realize until I looked at the bottle a few days later that Gekkeikan Sake's one and only American brewery is located right here in Folsom, CA. Turns out they let visitors take self-guided tours, so I went.

The tour

My first impression was that this location was a nice mixture of traditional Japanese style and the modern efficiency necessary for large sake production. Right up front in the parking lot are two large rock gardens, neatly groomed, with a view to the beautiful pond behind and beside the main administrative and visitor center building and tasting room.

This was a Thursday afternoon and I was the only visitor. I walked through the administrative building back to the actual brewery production facility for the self-guided tour. The tour is a hallway down the middle of the production floor with windows on each side and signs at each window describing what process one is observing. I saw that the brewery's koji mold for fermentation is grown on-site by an automated process.

The door to the laboratory area was open and I spoke with a technician who brought out the Brewmaster /Production Manager to answer my questions himself! He said that their rice is bought right here in Sacramento and is grown in the nearby Sacramento Valley. Also, this kura (sake brewery) is situated on the American River and their water is taken from there and filtered on-site.

The lab:The brewmaster said the yeast they use initially came from their parent company in Japan. Interestingly, he said once the yeast was in the Sacramento area it changed character slightly, in a good way, and that now they make different sakes with both the original and changed yeasts. He said the change in character of the yeast happened to be an acceptable one as opposed to a bad one (the usual case with such changes), not that the yeast was necessarily better than what they originally received from the home office. So at most it gives them a little flavor or character variation with the sake produced here in the states. He said a sample was sent back to their parent company for naming and classification but that they do not use the changed yeast in Japan, preferring to keep to the traditional strains. I thanked the Brewmaster profusely for his time and exchanged several bows with him.

After the tour I walked around the pond surrounding the visitor center. It was quiet and peaceful with a waterfall and many Koi and other colorful fish clearly visible. The landscaping was impeccably maintained.

Finally I did visit the tasting room. They made three sakes available: 1) Gekkeikan's "Black and Gold" sake, which is made in the United States, 2) Horin, a very nice Junmai Dai Gingo (indicates a highly polished rice grain used for fermenting) imported from Japan, and 3) Zipang, a Junmai sparkling sake which is naturally carbonated, imported from Japan. All very nice, though the Horin was of course the best (in general, the more the rice grain is milled prior to fermentation, the higher the quality or grade of sake that results), very clean and crisp. The Zipang seemed almost like a sake wine cooler -- definitely a modern variation!

It takes a bit of work and research to become familiar with sake and how to choose one, but with the help of informational web sites and enthusiasts like Beau Timken, it can be a rewarding journey. For reference, True Sake's web site (subscribe to the newsletter for great monthly info and specials); and Sake World, an exhaustively thorough site by another American enthusiast and expert, John Gauntner.

Satellite radio -- without the antenna

2007-07-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

So here is my current setup, necessitated by the fact that either my roof-mounted antenna is busted, the cable that connects that antenna to the antenna jack is cranked, or the jack itself is worn out. Whatever the reason, I have been using what is normally a "home" antenna for my tuner, in my truck:

This necessitates placing said antenna in my glove box when I am going to be parked for any appreciable amount of time, so sometimes if I have several minutes stored up in the tuner's memory I will unplug the antenna and keep listening to Howard Stern while I'm coiling the cable up to put it away. That's when I discovered this:

Don't see anything unusual? Let me show you more clearly:

I can receive the satellite radio signal without the antenna being plugged in. That top jack there, labeled "ANT," should have something plugged into it. At first I thought it was just that there was some signal still left, recorded in the tuner's memory, but even after that ran out I was able to rewind, skip forward again, and even change channels. I still thought it was a fluke, so after my appointment and dinner (having taken the tuner with me) I came back about an hour and a half later, tried it again, and it still worked.

These pictures were taken in midtown Sacramento, around 20th and Capitol. I first noticed this phenomenon at 19th and J Street. I was able to drive around midtown and receive a fairly good signal, with an occasional dropout, but serviceable. I checked the signal strength meter and this is a signal only from a terrestrial repeater, not the satellite directly. As soon as I start to leave the downtown/midtown area I completely lose the signal and have to plug in the antenna again.

So what's the deal? Is the terrestrial repeater signal in midtown Sacramento so strong that one doesn't need an external antenna to receive it? Are there special atmospheric conditions that bounce and focus the repeater signal? Has this always been the case but I've just not had occasion to try listening to my tuner without an antenna plugged in? I prefer to think it's just me and that I'm special, but that's less than 100% likely. A quick search of the SIRIUS Backstage Forums yielded no similar experiences.

Anyone have any ideas?

GPLv3 release - LIVE VIDEO FEED!

2007-06-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE-2: failure watching *streaming* Theora content on Windows]
[UPDATE: success watching Theora content on Windows]

Hi nerds! Everyone going to log on for the release announcement by Richard Stallman?

Live video feed at 12p Eastern Standard Time on Friday, June 29 at fsf.org.

Video requirements here. They will be using the Theora open video codec (interestingly, released under a BSD license). Compatible media players are here. It is possible to use Theora on Windows, though I haven't tried to set it up yet.

[UPDATE]
As much as I have an aversion to RealPlayer because of its system-resources hogging nature and sometimes overbearing self-promotion while using its player, I did get it to play Theora-encoded files with no problem after downloading the appropriate plugins.

I first tried the Directshow filters which were supposed to work with Windows Media Player, but I could only hear audio and encountered an error when I pressed "stop." Maybe WMP wasn't appropriate for tomorrow's event anyway.

Some fun and short Theora-encoded videos to test your installation are here.

[UPDATE-2]
I can't explain it other than to say the obvious, which is that decoding and viewing streaming content is a different animal than decoding and viewing a fully complete movie from a hard drive. The short of it is, it didn't work. However, I don't think I missed anything earth-shattering. This should be fairly straightforward, however, and this type of failure is one reason open source, or as Stallman would prefer, "free" software is not quite ready for prime time mass consumption.