The Quixotic Engineer

The Quixotic Engineer is Moving!

2008-02-02T01:56:00.000-05:00

Blogger's been good to me for the last 7 months, but I recently got it into my head that owning my own domain would be a good investment. Over the next few days/weeks, I'll be moving this whole operation over to a Wordpress blog at www.gangles.ca, Gangles being a handle I've used for years (and it seemed more memorable than quixotic-engineer.ca)

I used NetFirms as a domain registrar, hence the current splash page, but will be using A Small Orange as a host at Tim's recommendation. I'll keep you guys updated here as the site progresses, here's hoping it all goes smoothly.

I'm also looking for good Wordpress plug-ins, so please drop me a comment with your suggestions.

My Latest Project

2008-01-28T15:40:00.000-05:00

I came out of CUSEC last week filled to the brim with geeky creative energy and the desire to get my hands dirty with something new. While I usually have a few ongoing projects at any given time, my latest one, inspired by this fellow, has been use a nearly decade old unused computer to host a website. I'm curious to see how viably an old machine would work as a server for a low-traffic website, and how quickly it would load a Wordpress blog. While paying for a host is much more reliable and relatively inexpensive, I figured this would be a good chance to learn about Apache, PHP, Linux and the web in general.

My first step was to sort through the kipple that is my storage closet and find the old machine. Purchased in 1999, it has a 500 MHz Pentium III processor, 256 MB RAM and a 30 GB hard drive. I found a spot large enough to hook it up to the behemoth CRT monitor that's as deep as it is wide, and gave it a trial boot (I couldn't remember exactly why I had retired this old warhorse.) A corrupt Windows 98 sputtered at me, so I quickly went ahead and reformatted from a Linux CD.

I decided that Ubuntu Desktop edition would be my distro of choice for a number of reasons. While I would get better performance out of a server edition, as a Linux newbie I felt more comfortable having a GUI to fall back on when the mysteries of the command line eluded me. Secondly, one of my best friends recently moved her main computer over to Ubuntu, so hopefully she won't mind when I harass her with calls for help at all hours (thanks Malini!)

My next step was to install and configure Apache, PHP and MySQL, all necessary to set up Wordpress. While I've worked with Linux at school, this was my first time playing around with it. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to complete the installations with three commands:

sudo aptitude install apache2
sudo aptitude install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.0

I configured these programs with minimal difficulty, then moved on to the Wordpress installation. It's here, however, that I've run into a bit of a snag.

Step six in the Wordpress "Famous 5-Minute Install" is "Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser." The problem I'm having is that Firefox does not want to run PHP scripts. When I point my browser at install.php, it just asks me if I want to save the file to disk. This thread in the Ubuntu forums helped someone with a similar problem by suggesting that php5.conf might not be in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/, but this is not the case on my machine. You can see my unanswered question sitting orphaned and alone at the bottom of the thread.

If you happen to be a Linux wizard (lizard?) and have a theory or two about how I can fix this frustrating problem, please drop me either a comment or an e-mail!

CUSEC 2008

2008-01-20T13:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday marked the end of CUSEC 2008, a three day software engineering conference for Canadian university students. While the conference has been going annually since 2002, this was my first year attending. I had initially planned to be quasi-live blogging the whole thing, but I hadn't realized how busy the three days were going to be. Instead, here's a quick recap of some of the terrific people I heard from at CUSEC.

Day One
- Tim Bray - Hard Problems in Network Computing
  One of the co-editors of XML, he gave a great talk about some of the difficult problems that programmers are having little success in solving. I don't remember the exact words he used (relying on my brain was a bad idea, I plan to take better notes next year), but the main problems were communication between different programming languages and taking advantage of parallel processing.
- Dr. Marsha Chechik - Guarding Against Software Accidents
- Zed Shaw - The ACL is Dead
  Author of the Mongrel web server and notorious blogger, he talked about staying creative in the face of bureaucracy and corporate greed. The part of his keynote that really struck a chord with me was that "managers want all of your creativity, but trust none of your judgement." I had a chance to talk to Zed later at Brutopia and a little throughout the conference, he was a really cool guy with a lot to say. Here's hoping he comes again next year.
- Bruce Miner - Taking Risk
Day Two
- Sylvain Carle - We Didn't Start The Fire
  A self-described "venture technologist", he talked about why we should consider founding or working for startup companies.
- Michel Martin - The Evolution of Large Scale Business Software
- Dr. Peter Grogono - Living with Concurrency
  This talk was a bit over my head, but it really made me appreciate what a problem concurrency is and will be in the coming years. Dr. Grogono is one of the most loved computer science teachers at Concordia, and after hearing him speak I can understand why.
- Dr. Jeffrey Ullman - When Theory Matters
  Prolific textbook writer and Ph.D. advisor of Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google), Dr. Ullman spoke about the theory of how Google's PageRank system works, as well as variations such as minhashing and locality-sensitive hashing.
- Jeff Bailey (Google Corporate Speaker) - Hacking on Open Source After Graduation
  He talked about the history of OSS and why major companies like Google and IBM invest millions to develop it. I had always been interested in contributing to an open source project, but after hearing his talk I feel compelled to begin doing so within the next few months.
Day Three
- Zed Shaw - Factor Tutorial
- Dr. Jeremy Cooperstock - Music & Games: How Fun Applications Stimulate Core Technologies
  I really enjoyed this presentation, he began by talking about how the video game industry has been accelerating technological progress, which included some of his own research into the "next step" of virtual reality. The meat of his talk, however, was about his research into ways of overcoming network latency to allow people in separate parts of the world to play music and talk together naturally.
- Jon Udell - Hacking the Noosphere
  Another talk that was a bit over my head, he spoke about keeping the focus of Web 2.0 and information sciences on people, and how we can gather information in a human-centric way.
- Jeff Atwood - Is Writing More Important than Programming?
  As a big fan of Coding Horror, I had been looking forward to this talk from the beginning. In his keynote, he argued that writing for people was in many ways more important than writing for machines, and that it is crucial to "convince other people that your code, in a world positively overflowing with free code, is worth looking at in the first place." His talk provided a counterpoint to some of the more technical presentations, and was a fantastic way to close the conference. Better yet, his talk inspired my friend Malini to pick up her abandoned blog again!

I can't believe how much I learned in three days. Hearing from passionate people and being in a community full of fellow coding geeks has really inspired me to be creative, take chances and really explore the world of software engineering. I'll definitely be attending CUSEC 2009!

Album Cover Meme

2008-01-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

I have no idea where this meme came from originally, but I picked it up from Bill Harris at Dubious Quality. In his words:

The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days is your album cover.

Ten minutes of poorly done MS Paint later, and I ended up with this:

The Pawn is an interactive fiction game from 1986, the quote is Lydon Johnson's address to the nation in 1963 ("Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose") and the Abbey Road-ish picture is by ~KIM~. The "to" seems really out of place, ashame it wasn't just "Win or Lose".

Head over to Dubious Quality for some album covers made by people with actual picture editing talent.

Battlestar Galactica

2008-01-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

I don't watch much television, but when I do like a show I follow it religiously. My favorite series of all time was Firefly, a peerless science fiction series that was tragically cancelled after 14 episodes. I plan to elaborate on my love for that particular show someday, but for now let's just say that there's been a hole in my sci-fi loving heart since 2002. My enjoyment of the new Dr. Who is a poor substitute, with its lack of an overarching narrative and generally poorly developed characters.

When my friend's father, Dave, told me that he was enjoying the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, I was sceptical at first. Dave is a big fan of sci-fi television, but he also enjoys series such as Stargate and Babylon Five that I never really got into. I also felt that a show whose cast of characters were primarily military and government officials would be too dry; I prefer characters who are on the gray side of the law, such as Malcolm Reynolds and Han Solo.

However, last week on a whim I broke down and asked to borrow his Season 1 DVD set. It took a while to get going, but I'm now 4/5ths in and completely enthralled. Some of the characters, such as President Roslin, Colonel Tigh and Dr. Baltar, are interesting people with complex motivations. The show also does a good job of keeping enough hidden to allow for a perpetual sense of mystery. I'm already speculating as to which of the crew members are really Cylon sleeper agents.

It's not Firefly, but it'll do for now.

The Case of the Mystery Operator

2008-01-07T23:47:00.000-05:00

Inspired partially by xkcd and partially by testimony from other programmers, I've decided to take up learning Python in my spare time. I've been using the free e-book Dive Into Python as a reference, and it's been an interesting experience so far (whitespace for code blocks!?)

I was showing the Python Shell to my friend Thomas the other day, and he typed in a few equations to try it out. While "2+2" and "3*8" resolved normally, "2^3", which is a standard notation for two raised to the third power, returned "1". We were a bit confused, but decided that the caret symbol "^" must mean something else in Python. We entered a few more formulas in an attempt to discover what the symbol meant, and here are the results:

1^0 = 1
1^2 = 3
2^0 = 2
2^2 = 0
2^3 = 1
3^2 = 1
3^4 = 7
4^1 = 5

Try as we might, we just couldn't figure out what this operator did. I had a theory that it had something to do with modular arithmetic, but some cases just didn't fit. Despite our combined brain power, we just couldn't crack it, and after twenty minutes consented to Googling it.

I would challenge you to try and figure it out yourself! For cheaters, the answer is below.

ANSWER

In Python, two multiplication symbols "**" are used to indicate exponents, while the caret symbol in this context is used to indicate XOR (exclusive or). Since I was comparing two integers, the computer was doing bitwise XOR on the two numbers and returning the result as an integer. For instance:

2 = 010 (binary), 3 = 011 (binary), 010 XOR 011 = 001 = 1
3 = 011 (binary), 4 = 100 (binary), 011 XOR 100 = 111 = 7

It was obvious in retrospect, but my mind was so focused on the usual mathematical operators that I hadn't even considered the basic computer operations. However, as it is with most lessons learned the hard way, I'll remember for the rest of my life how to do an exclusive or in Python.

Uncommon RSS Feeds

2008-01-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

While I possess a startlingly wide array of methods to waste my time, one of my favorites lately has been Google Reader. It's nice to know that I can sit down at my computer and always find something to read, be it an interesting blog, gaming news or webcomic. However, speckled among the nerdy ones are a few feeds that are quite different from my usual fare. I thought I'd take the time today to highlight some of these strange sites, with the hopes that you too might discover a new quirky feed to liven up your RSS reader with.

Google Sightseeing

Google Earth is a great toy, but like most people I played with it for a few hours before moving on to other things. The folks at Google Sightseeing, however, have been scouring the globe to bring us all sorts of landmarks and oddities. Whether it be rolling snowballs in Antarctica, hippos in Zambia or whales off the cost of Mexico, Google Sightseeing is like National Geographic done accidentally by satellite robot photographers.

Passive Aggressive Notes

Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but laugh when I read notes from people trying to get their point across by being venomously polite. The notes run the gamut from very direct to extremely subtle, but they all showcase the real paradox of being rude politely.

Strange Maps

Anyone who has ever looked at an upside down map of the world knows that a familiar place can look radically different when looked at in a different way. Strange Maps is a site dedicated to these quirky cartographers. My personal favorite include the night-time illumination map of Korea, the blonde map of Europe and a maximally fragmented North America.

Cute Overload

I cannot intellectually defend this one at all, but it bring a smile to my face every single day.

Scruffy Programmers

2007-12-30T16:37:00.000-05:00

It's a well known fact that programmers are generally unkempt, hairy and scruffy-looking fellows. Some believe this is due to the fact that, without a beard to rub, we would be unable to think. Justin Etheredge, however, suggests that we are merely emulating our computer science heroes, burly men such as Dijkstra, Stallman and Knuth. His gallery of scruffiness is well worth a click and a read.

Fear not clean-shaven programmers, you can always say that your well-groomed face is a tribute to Alan Turing.

The Programmer Dress Code - CodeThinked

[Image from mike's web log]

Exploring the Wii

2007-12-26T21:32:00.000-05:00

Unlike the thousands of disappointed children this year, for Christmas I received a Wii (found in an HMV in late November.) It being Christmas, I was also presented with a unique opportunity to christen my new console with a real litmus test: entertaining my gaming averse aunts, uncles and cousins.

We started with the easygoing Wii bowling, but that proved to be a bit too slow to be entertaining. Furthermore, they blamed every missed strike on either controller detection error or programmed randomness. Next up was Wii boxing, which was a big hit with my father. To most, however, it was too chaotic for them to tell what was going on and therefore their successes and failures felt like pure luck.

Wii tennis, however, was loved by all. They really got into the game, jumping around much more than necessary in their attempts to return the ball. Watching my mother and aunt laughing and playing against each other just warmed the cockles of my heart. It took some serious prompting to get them to leave the system when dinner was ready.

When I had time on boxing day to finally explore the system for myself, I had fun making Miis with my sister. She in particular enjoyed the process, and insisted that I had her eyes/face/hair/etc wrong and grabbed the remote to correct them herself. I ended up with the handsome fellow you see at the top of this post, lacking only my trademark sideburns to be complete.

The rest of today was spent exploring the world of Super Mario Galaxy. I've completed the first galaxy, and what has really struck me so far is the sheer variety of gameplay. So far I have seen concave planets, convex planets, Mario 64 style areas, 2D platformer areas, and the manta races from Mario Sunshine. The boss of the first galaxy, Megaleg, was a terrific monstrosity twice as large as the planet it stood on and was lots of fun to fight (check out a video of the battle).

Beyond that, I was deeply impressed by the selection of titles available for the Wii Virtual console. While the arcade titles available on Xbox Live might make some older gamers nostalgic, it's the NES and SNES games that have made me reflect fondly on my younger days. Super Mario Bros. 3, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart 64 and Paper Mario all look extremely tempting.

While I'm a little new to how exactly this friend code system works, drop me a comment or an e-mail if you'd like to be Wii friends. My beast of a code is: 4831 9046 9295 2783.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T12:31:00.000-05:00

To both long-time readers and those who have stumbled upon my site by chance, I wish you all a merry Christmas. Drive safely and have a good time with friends and family!

The Musical Box (Christmas Edition)

2007-12-22T15:03:00.000-05:00

As someone who worked a variety of service industry jobs in my teenage years, I can quite rightly say that most Christmas music is little more than muzak to me. While I zone out the old staples like Bing Crosby and various choirs used as background music at family events, there are a handful of Christmas albums that I can actively enjoy listening to. So for this edition of The Musical Box I'll be exploring holiday music done right.

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector - Various Artists

Say what you will about the "Wall of Sound" ruining music, A Christmas Gift to You is one of the greatest holiday albums ever made. Featuring Darlene Love, The Crystals, The Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, the album feels like a classic 60's pop album first and a Christmas album second. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is a timeless classic, and a nice reprieve from the usual holiday fare.

The Ventures' Christmas Album - The Ventures

This album by early 60's instrumental band The Ventures, best known for songs like "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii Five-O", blends Christmas staples with surf-rock seamlessly. Album highlights include "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" opening with "Wooly Bully" and "Jingle Bells" starting with the "What'd I Say" riff.

The Jethro Tull Christmas Album - Jethro Tull

While it was released as recently as 2003, no modern Tull album has better recaptured the wild essence of their 70's music better than this one. Featuring a combination of traditional folk ballads and holiday interpretations of classic Jethro Tull songs, the album is festive yet distinctive.

I'm always on the lookout for new listening suggestions (holiday related or otherwise), so please comment with your favorites.

Transmetropolitan

2007-12-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

H. L. Mencken

For reasons I can't quite fathom (although it might have been more than one person professing their undying love for Watchmen to me in the space of a week), I took the time this week to explore a medium that I had long neglected: comic books. This first foray took the form of the postcyberpunk comic Transmetropolitan.

I was very impressed; Transmetropolitan follows the Hunter S. Thompson-esqe gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem on his mad quest for truth in the politically corrupt world of the future. It deals with themes of dissent, censorship, propaganda and journalistic integrity, and is a profoundly human drama (absent of solipsistic robots and intergalactic space battles.) Furthermore, it's nice to see a hero armed with nothing but a typewriter, a lot of drugs and the truth.

I could say more, but to be honest I'm still letting what I've read swirl around in my head a little. I will however say that if, like myself, you haven't opened up a comic book in over a decade, Transmetropolitan seems like a decent place to start (Follow the link at the bottom of the page for a free PDF download of issue #1.)

Since I enjoyed Transmetropolitan so much, I went ahead and ordered a few graphic novels off Amazon.ca, namely Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Those should be arriving towards the end of January, and I'll be perusing Y: The Last Man until then.

Free Download of Transmetropolitan issue #1 (PDF)

How the Valve Stole Christmas

2007-12-15T10:07:00.000-05:00

From the moment it was announced way back in November, I knew I had to get my hands on a Weighted Companion Cube Plush. Portal is one of the best games I've ever played, so I was eager to have a version of the WCC that I didn't have to euthanize.

However, it appears that Valve has decided to cancel Christmas in Canada this year. While proceeding to the checkout with my Weighted Companion Cube and Aperture Laboratories Coffee Mug in hand, I was blindsided by five cruel words: Shipment to U.S. Addresses Only. Heartbroken, I put the items back on the virtual shelf.

Valve: even though you broke my heart (and killed me), you're still one of my favorite game developers. Your support for the mod community is commendable, as is the fact that you've remained independent and keep making terrific games. That being said, not shipping outside of the U.S. is massively uncool, especially considering that your games are enjoyed worldwide.

So, fellow non-Americans, it's time to get proactive. I'm going to urge you to e-mail the Valve store and let them know that you're interested in purchasing from them but do not live in the U.S.A. If they see that there's enough international interest in their products, they may consider revising their exclusionist shipping policies

That concludes what may have been my nerdiest blog post yet.

UPDATE: After some additional investigation, it turns out that the shipment page is lying. They *do* ship internationally, but it costs a whopping $27.

Sunday Reading

2007-12-09T15:10:00.000-05:00

December is a busy time of year. Busy cramming for the exams next week? Caught up in the holiday rush? Either way, you're probably online looking for an excuse to procrastinate for another hour or so. Here's some recommended reading to help you do just that.

First up is an article over at CGSociety about the visual design of Team Fortress 2. I've geeked out more than once about how much I love this particular aspect of the game, but reading this article has given me a new found respect for the team of animators at Valve. Among the piles of great concept art (including an early build of the Heavy with a mullet), the article explores how well-designed characters and maps can enhance the gameplay experience. Consider the following excerpt:

Due to the importance of the nine character classes to the gameplay, the team focused on them first. They established a "read hierarchy", a prioritized list of the information that players needed to extract from the character model. From most to least important, this was: the player's team, the player's class, and the player's current weapon, which usually implies the player's intent in our game.

They used the model color palette to represent the team, a somewhat suboptimal solution for varying lighting conditions, but a good tradeoff given the technology constraints. “We found that silhouette and animation were better long-range identification characteristics than texture detail or color,” says Jamaal Bradley, “so we used those for class identification. Finally, we tackled the weapon by using contrast and color gradients to draw the player's eye to the chest area, where the weapons are held.

What a powerfully simple idea: using colour, shading and silhouettes to draw the player's eye towards important information. It's this level of attention to detail that has garnered Valve so much critical acclaim and fan loyalty. For more TF2 reading, consider the recently released Steam statistics, which include heatmaps and other interesting tidbits (such as the fact that the Medic class is criminally underplayed.)

Secondly is a fascinating look at the Morris worm, a 99 line program that ended up infecting 10% of the Internet back in 1988. The creator, Robert T. Morris, was a grad student working at Cornell University who simply wanted to prove that it was possible to propagate a program by exploiting vulnerabilities in sendmail and Finger. However, due to a flaw in the reproduction algorithm, the benign worm ended up reproducing itself many times on the same computer, eventually tying up the CPU. While the Morris Worm has been overshadowed by some of the modern malignant worms, I highly recommend this article to anyone involved in software security as a case study from a time when the web was much more homogeneous.

Finally, a short article about one of the most famous and successful heists in MMORPG history, one that left the victim's character frozen dead in space and relieved of virtual goods worth an estimated $16,500 USD. It's a fascinating look into the world of EVE Online, a game that seems to be as much about political intrigue and skulduggery as it is about spaceships and mining. The story reads like a virtual Ocean's Eleven, and is an interesting commentary on the consequences of meeting people semi-anonymously in online worlds.

Have a great weekend, and best of luck in all your procrastinating.

The Golden Compass

2007-12-05T01:10:00.000-05:00

There have been very few mainstream film releases this year that I've had any interest in. I think that the last movie I actually saw in the theatres was the brilliant Hot Fuzz. There is, however, one film coming out before the end of the year that I've been eagerly anticipating for quite some time now.

In my last year of high school, I read Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. I was instantly fascinated by Lyra's world; its strange combination of steampunk, science, magic and religion was unlike anything I had ever imagined. Her parallel universe had its own language derived in part from archaic words: Oil became Naphtha, Greenlanders became Skraelings and electricity became anbaric power. I have read the series many times since then, and Pullman's imagination never ceases to astound me.

When I first heard about the film adaption of The Golden Compass, which is arriving in theatres this weekend, I was cautiously optimistic. The thought of Jordan College being filled with Hollywood actors tempered my excitement. If the movie version of my favorite book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has taught me anything, it's that sometimes an adaptation ends up being nothing like the vision of the story that you had built up in your head.

That being said, after watching the first five minutes of the film courtesy of the Internet, it seems like they did a great job with the visuals. The little girl playing Lyra seemed appropriately spunky as well. However, the rapid-fire explanation of Dust, Daemons, and Panserbjørne was extremely disappointing. The best part of The Golden Compass was being gradually introduced to the strange things in Lyra's world, and listing them off right from the start spoils the mystery. It's also evident from the trailer that the religious tone of the books has been severely diluted. Instead of the bad guys being the alternate universe Catholic Church, they've created a quasi-fascist organization to pit against Lyra and her friends. I question how they're going to deal with intercision and puberty without the religious slant.

I'm sad to say that even if the movie is junk, they'll be taking my money anyways. Even if they do ruin it, at least I'll always have the books!

By Popular Request

2007-12-03T14:24:00.000-05:00

Since it's a common question, I thought I'd address it with a quick guide to pronouncing the word quixotic. The confusion is well warranted; while it's derived from the Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote (roughly KEE-HOE-TAY), the word quixotic has an anglicized pronunciation (KWIK-SO-TIC).

I found a few definitions of the word on the net, but I most preferred this one from Wikipedia: "Quixotism is the description of a person or an act that is caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality." Engineers are practical by definition, but as a nerd who believes in open-source software, video games as art and harnessing nuclear fusion (someday!), I can't help but feel like a dreamer at times.

Features Every Game Should Have

2007-12-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

I read a fascinating article last week over at Gamasutra entitled Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient, and it really got me thinking about game design. Game feel, as it is explained in the article, is an intangible quality that could be described by a game just feeling right. It's a fleeting elusive quality, something author Steve Swink believes may be tied to tight, responsive controls coupled with environments that respond to player actions with audio and visual cues. Game feel is important on a fundamental and subconscious level, where ideally the lines between man and machine begin to blur and thoughts translate naturally into on-screen actions

Today, however, I would like to take the time to consider aspects of game design that are much more concrete. While the feel may define a game's artistic merit and timelessness, there are very different aspects in play when we consider games as hobbies and entertainment. These qualities make a game fun to play with friends, playable for short periods of time, and challenging without being frustrating. Zack Hiwiller beat me to the punch with his excellent discussion of underused game mechanics, but I would like to consider the same question in a different way: what features should every game have, regardless of genre? Here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

Local Multiplayer: This one is a no-brainer. When I think back to the games that I logged hundreds of hours on, games like Super Smash Bros, Goldeneye and Mario Kart, their one common element was the ability to play them with friends over. Adding a solid co-op or cooperative mode can instantly add dozens of play hours to a game. The modern extension of this is the ability connect more than one person online from the same box (such as Halo 3), a feature that hopefully more games will adopt.
Unlimited Saves: Forcing players to reach some arbitrary save point is just a frustrating way to artificially inject challenge into a game. Allowing saves anytime not only makes it easier to pick up a game for 20 minutes, but also prevents the annoyance of having to repeat the same area many times over. This is an absolutely necessity in portable games; the otherwise terrific New Super Mario Bros. really flubbed it by enforcing the Super Mario World style "only save after castles" rule.
Good Voice Acting or None: Nothing shatters the illusion of a game world more than bad voice acting, second only to the bad writing that we've become so accustomed to. Considering the amount of time and money it takes to produce, publish and advertise a game, you would think that studios would cough up a little more to hire some real voice talent. If they aren't going to go that extra mile, then old-fashioned on-screen text might be the lesser of two evils.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head and by no means represent an exhaustive list, so I throw the challenge out to you now: what features would you recommend for any game, regardless of genre?

The Musical Box (Vol. 2)

2007-11-25T16:01:00.000-05:00

Has it really been a month already since Vol. 1? November just flew by. For the unfamiliar, this is my monthly attempt to conglomerate a number of disconnected recent discoveries into some kind of coherent musical suggestion selection. A musical buffet, if you will.

First up is Robots in Disguise, an "Electro Punk" DJ Duo from the UK. I've been enjoying their 2005 album Get RID! this week, it's got the quirky kind of sound that I've come to expect from UK electronica. Strangely enough, I was originally linked to them by Destructoid of all places. The clip below is their latest single "The Sex Has Made Stupid", which gets bonus points for featuring some mildly unsettling robot pornography.

Next is Battles, a band my friend Nick introduced me to, whose debut album Mirrored came out last year. Each member of the band earned their chops with their previous work (Ian Williams with Don Caballero, John Stanier with Helmet, etc.), so you could reasonably call Battles a math rock supergroup. The music is largely experimental, with strange vocal samples and unusual rhythms that might not suit all tastes. Still, you've got to respect people who are pushing the boundaries of music, since they're the ones who determine what we'll be listening to in 2020.

At the suggestion of Scrawled In Wax, I've been checking out Kate Nash's 2007 debut "Made of Bricks". She's achieved tremendous success in Britain despite having picked up the guitar as little as two years ago. As a vocalist, however, she's fab, and her lyrics are down to earth and stunningly honest.

Montreal is already covered in snow (that will likely melt by next week) and there's 30 days 'til Christmas, so expect a Holiday-themed Musical Box come December.

Ghillies In The Mist

2007-11-21T00:07:00.000-05:00

Call of Duty 4's storyline has all the insight and depth of a James Bond film; Russian and Middle Eastern terrorists are the modern day stock villains. That being said, there's a reason that the Call of Duty series has stood out in a sea of military shooters: Infinity Ward creates campaigns that are masterfully orchestrated and filled with stunningly cinematic moments.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently profiled one such scene, in which you are put in the shoes of the kidnapped President of an anonymous war-torn Middle Eastern country. Men brandishing AK-47s push you violently into the back of a car without explanation and drive you through streets where firing squads murder civilians. The shift from being an armed soldier to a scared politician makes the sense of helplessness all the more palpable. This is a terrific scene, but today I would like to expand upon another sequence, one that I would easily rank as one of the most memorable video game experiences I've had in years.

First, a little context: the game so far has mostly had you controlling rookie Sgt. "Soap" McTavish of the SAS, under the command of the gruff mustachioed Cpt. Price. This particular scene, however, is set during a flashback to a mission 15 years prior. Opportunists, including one Imran Zakhaev, have been scrounging the ruins of Chernobyl, looking to sell spent fuel rods on the black market. The British Government orders a hit on Zakhaev, and sends in a young Lt. Price along with veteran sniper Cpt. MacMillan to do the deed.

The mission begins in a small field outside the ghost town of Prypiat, Ukraine. At first you appear to be alone, but you hear a confident Scottish voice instructing you to follow him closely. Suddenly, a virtually invisible man in a ghillie suit (see picture above) rises from the weeds beside you and begins to move ahead. You sense immediately that your survival depends on following this man's instructions to the letter.

You methodically advance through the village with Cpt. MacMillan. Travelling involves slow tactical sniping punctuated with mad dashes to avoid enemy patrols and helicopters. You are greatly outnumbered at every turn, but the Captain's years of experience tell him when to hide, when to run and when to shoot, and all you need to do is listen and obey.

About halfway through the level, you're following MacMillan through an open field when he suddenly shouts to "Get down!" and assumes a prone position. As you crawl through the weeds, you suddenly hear a low rumble ahead of you. You can't see clearly through the grass, but you make out the outlines of a few dozen soldiers escorting a group of tanks through the field, and they're heading straight towards you. There's nowhere to run and fighting would be suicide. The captain lies still in the grass, and orders you to "keep low and hold your fire." All you can do is try to anticipate their paths, then pray that they don't spot you through the ghillie suit. Time slows to a crawl as boots and treads miss you by inches. After what seems like an eternity they finally move on, never aware that the enemy was right at their feet.

I'm not a great writer, but I hope I've evoked for you a little bit of what I felt during this heart-pounding sequence, one that I won't soon forget. This kind of brilliant level design is a testament to the talent of the Infinity Ward team. If you're not much into military shooters but are curious how the scene played out in game, you can catch snippets of it from E3 2007 in this video.

Sorry I Shot You, I Was Trying to Sprint

2007-11-18T14:05:00.000-05:00

Video game enthusiasts have had a deluge of great titles to choose from this fall. What started building momentum back in August with the release of Bioshock is coming to a head in November, with hotly anticipated titles such as Assassin's Creed, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect and Rock Band arriving within scant weeks of each other.

While I'm by no means a sucker for all shooter games, it so happens that I've picked up a few excellent ones in the last few months: Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box (which includes Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the brilliant Portal.) These games earned scores of 94, 95 and 96 respectively on Metacritic, and are each thoroughly enjoyable in their own way.

However, playing all of these games in such a short period of time has made me realize how little consensus there is among FPS games with regard to controls. The A button is commonly used to jump, and the left and right sticks control movement and aiming respectively, but from there things become muddled. Consider the following:

	Half Life 2	Team Fortress 2	Halo 3	Call of Duty 4
B	Reload	Reload	Melee	Crouch
X	Pick Up	Taunt	Use Equipment	Reload
Y	Flashlight	Show Scoreboard	Swap Weapon	Swap Weapon
L Bumper	Sprint	Previous Weapon	Select Grenade Type	Throw Secondary Grenade
R Bumper	Toggle Weapon	Next Weapon	Reload	Throw Frag Grenade
L Trigger	Secondary Fire	Secondary Fire	Throw Grenade	Aim Down Sights
Click L	Crouch	Crouch	Crouch	Sprint
Click R	Zoom	Call for Medic	Zoom	Melee

To summarize:

Reload: A, X or Right Bumper.
Change Weapons: Y or Left/Right Bumper.
Throw Grenade: Left Trigger or Left/Right Bumper.
Sprint: Left Bumper or Click Left.
Melee: B or Click R.

Should there be one standard control scheme for shooter games? I don't think so. There's a reason I don't manually edit the default controls for most games: programmers design games with the control scheme in mind. For instance, the three types of grenades in Halo 3 all do the same thing: blow up and cause damage. Therefore, it's not important to map them individually. In Call of Duty, however, being able to choose between a flashbang and a frag in an instant is critical, so each warrants a unique button.

That being said, there are some key functions that could benefit from a little consistency:

Reloading is important in every FPS title, so it deserves a standardized button. I think X would work well, but using Right Bumper seems to be the new trend.
If meleeing is a game option, it should be available without changing weapons (I'm looking at you Team Fortress 2.)
Map infrequently used functions, such as Taunt or View Scoreboard, to the D-pad (again, Team Fortress 2 got this wrong.)

As the interface between manual and digital, it is absolutely crucial to get game controls right for a game to feel fluid and natural. Here's hoping that future designers keep this in mind, or I might be cursed to accidentally frag my teammates for the next decade.

Gmail - Mark Spam Messages as Read

2007-11-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was mildly frustrated by the "new spam messages" counter in Gmail, mostly because I mistook it for the "new inbox messages" counter in my peripheral vision. Before my hard drive crash, I used a Firefox plug-in called Greasemonkey to hide the counter. This solution turned out to be inelegant when I realized that at work, at school, and on any computer other than my own I would still be visually assaulted by that silly counter. I decided then and there that there must be a better way.

Fortunately for me, there was. I had previously tried to go about using the remarkably versatile Gmail filters to mark all spam messages as read, but lacked an adequate description of what messages to mark. A closer look into Gmail search semantics revealed that I could use the keywords "in:spam" to refer to the all messages in my spam folder. Knowing this, I set up the following filters:

Has the words: in:spam
Doesn't have: my name, my school, my work, etc.
Do this: Mark as read

This filter simple and efficiently hides all new spam messages, while still alerting me when potential non-spam messages have been blocked. If you're as fussy as I am when it comes to Gmail, I hope that this little trick comes in handy.

Memento and External Memory

2007-11-13T20:01:00.000-05:00

It had been in my movie backlog for ages, but I finally got around to seeing Memento this weekend (and absolutely loved it.) It's nearly a decade old, but here's a brief spoiler-free synopsis for the uninitiated: it's a story told chronologically backwards about Leonard Shelby, a man with short-term memory loss trying to avenge his murdered wife. To remember who people are, where he lives and what he's doing, he consults relevant notes and pictures in his pockets at all times, keeping the most vital information tattooed on his body.

While the character's handicap was extreme, I felt a strong empathy with his condition. I'm a forgetful person by nature and, like Leonard, am constantly relying on external memory to function. Text files, post-it notes, e-mails and address books have become my substitute for real memory. I hardly take the time to remember anything nowadays; birthdays, telephone numbers, assignment due dates and addresses are taking up less and less of my cerebral real estate.

It doesn't stop there; I am now reliant on the internet for information. I've hit ten Google searches and half a dozen Wikipedia articles in my twenty minutes of writing so far. My daily hits on both sites likely number in the hundreds, and twice as many when I'm programming. Having a wealth of information at your fingertips is a major boon, but my work is now dependant on it (as referenced by a recent xkcd strip.) When the internet goes down, I cringe at the idea of stooping to consulting the phone book, a real map, or my 40 year old Encyclopedia set.

While it's true that our grandparents' generation could dial a friend, get directions and long divide using brain power alone, is the relegation of our long term information storage and computation power to machines necessarily a bad thing? NY Times columnist David Brooks argues "no" in a recent article entitled "The Outsourced Brain."

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

What do you think? How do you use computers and the internet as a brain-extension in your daily lives? Is "outsourcing" our brain power helpful, harmful, or inevitable?

Remembrance Day

2007-11-11T13:27:00.000-05:00

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada and the commonwealth, and Veteran's day in the U.S.A. In that spirit, I thought I'd take a moment to thank my cousin Adam. As an American / Canadian dual citizen, Adam was eligeable to sign up with the U.S. Marines. He has since served two tours as a sniper in Iraq, and is currently training to become an officer and military pilot. It takes a certain kind of man to volunteer to leave a peaceful and plentiful country like Canada for a country where bombings and gunfire are everyday occurances. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan face terrible asymmetric warfare (IEDs, ambushes, suicide bombers and worse) from desperate guerrillas not bound by the Geneva Convention or international laws. Thank you for your incredible courage and sacrifice, Adam.

Soldiers and veterans deserve all of our support, since the government does not do nearly enough for returning soldiers (ex: one in four homeless people is a military veteran). Political speeches and flag waving don't do our courageous men and women any good. Here are a few organizations that are really making a difference:

Three Days With a Mac

2007-11-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week my laptop suffered a rather frustrating hard drive crash. I can't say that I didn't see it coming; I had a near-crash 2 months ago and my computer had been running exceptionally slowly lately. Fortunately for me I had backed everything up to my terrific 320GB external hard drive about a month ago, but I still lost a few dozen important files (including my copy of In Rainbows) that will require re-downloading.

While waiting for my new hard drive to arrive, I spent most of this week borrowing my dad's MacBook. My father is the kind of person that Apple has been aggressively marketing to these last few years: someone who is interested in what computers can do but doesn't have the inclination or the patience to learn the details of using them (the "I just want it to work" type). As such, this MacBook fits him like a glove; he hasn't even downloaded any new software for it, content to use first party applications such as iTunes, iPhoto, and Safari.

This week has been quite a learning experience; I know my way pretty well around Windows, but I have very little experience with OSX. While the two operating systems are almost identical in general terms, the little details often threw me off. For instance, it felt unusual to use the command key for shortcuts in lieu of Ctrl or Alt. The way in which OSX minimizes tasks took some getting used to as well. The biggest change by far was the single button mouse. A bit of Googling told me that OSX would recognize the two button mouse off my laptop, which was welcome relief. I understand Apple's logic; anyone who has tried to teach a loved one how to use a computer knows that they struggle with "which button do I press again?" troubles. A single button interface is much more accessible for beginners. However, it's ashame that Apple doesn't sell a first-party two button mouse, since their products are painstakingly colour-schemed and an ugly third party mouse destroys that.

I'll admit that I've toyed with the idea of switching to Mac. I've met enough OSX power users to know that Apple products aren't just for technophobes. I owe no particular loyalty to Windows, especially considering all the problems Vista is having. Furthermore, I could potentially use Bootcamp to dual boot XP should the need arise. Yet, all things considered, I just can't find any particularly compelling reasons to justify a change. Nothing on Apple's list of advantages, which should be enourmously biased in their favour, is that great. For instance:

"Awesome out of the box." That's sort of nice, but setting up a PC is a one-time hassle. Installing everything from scratch on my new hard drive has let me customize everything to my liking. In fact, the only program that had trouble with the hard drive jump was iTunes, which lost half of my album artwork.
"114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac." Using a combination of AVG Anti-virus, Spybot: Search & Destroy and Sygate Personal Firewall, which are all free and light on system resources, I'm essentially immune to spyware and viruses as long as I use common sense while downloading.
"Everything-ready." As I mentioned earlier, I could always dual boot XP for the programs that OSX can't run, but that seems like a hassle. I can count the number of times I've found software that doesn't work with XP on one hand. Many open-source and freeware applications are never ported over to Mac, not to mention most games.

For the moment, Apple has left me unconvinced. I think they make great products, and I'm glad that they've offered a gateway for people like my dad to get into computers, but it's just not for me. I'm quite content to milk Windows XP dry, then consider making the jump into Linux.

Superstitions in MMOs

2007-11-02T01:09:00.000-04:00

Normally I try to resist the urge to make a post devoted entirely to linking to another article; adding the Google Reader widget was supposed help me develop discipline in that regard. However, this post about superstitions in MMORPGs from The Daedalus Project was just too excellent and funny to pass up.

Embarassing confession #1: I played Final Fantasy XI for over 2 years. As such, I can attest to the fact that the superstitions profiled in this article are held as articles of faith for most players. For instance:

One of the most persistent superstitions (and for all I know, it might be true) was that facing in certain cardinal directions would affect how your crafting came out. It was the perfect superstition, because it took so little effort to follow that even if it wasn't true, you didn't lose anything by acting as if it was true.
Whenever trying to make an item with a particular kind of Crystal, there were rumors that if your character was standing and facing, for example, Southeast with a Wind Crystal, they would be less likely to fail the synthesis and lose the crystal and items. I even once saw an entire investigative guide that said the directions to face were linked to the time of day in-game, and that each crystal had its own favored 'direction' depending on the time of day.

Embarrassing confession #2: Not only do I remember reading that guide, I timed my crafting to it more than once. One of the most prolific and succesful crafters on the Odin server (Mikesjustice) absolutely swore by it, claiming that's how he made so many HQ Haubergeons. I also remember eating a Lucky Egg in Dynamis on the off-chance that it might improve the odds of a Sorcerer's Petasos dropping, another silly superstition.

However, after laughing at the superstitions from other MMOs, I realized that the beliefs I held in FFXI were equally stupid. I believe I was aware at the time that they were dumb, but since most of them were easy to follow I did so "just in case". As the author put it:

Other people’s superstitions always seem crazier. When reading through the superstitions, I felt more sympathetic towards ones in games I’ve played and more likely to laugh at superstitions in games I haven’t played. But, of course, most of the superstitions are incredibly similar across games and I think reading superstitions from other games will help us think more seriously about the ones in the games we do play.

If you've ever played an MMORPG, I strongly urge you check out the whole thing, and even if you haven't the stories will give you a good laugh. Enjoy!

The Screwfly Solution

2007-10-28T11:37:00.000-04:00

In keeping with my love of excellent short stories, particularly dystopian science fiction, I highly recommend Raccoona Sheldon's Nebula Award-winning The Screwfly Solution. The title is a reference to the sterile insect technique used to eliminate the Screwfly worm in the USA, Mexico and parts of Centreal America. The story is a shocking one, dealing with themes of sexuality, violence and femicide, and is told in a great disjointed style through a combination of several narratives, letters and newspaper articles.

Read the story first (seriously, do it!), then consider the following: wouldn't it be great to see a video game set in the middle of an end-of-the-world scenario (not after one)? One where you start out in the near future, in a big city living a normal life. You start to hear dangerous rumours, maybe a deadly manmade pandemic, a militant religious organization, or some other Margaret Atwood storyline. From there you could have branching paths: do you petition the government? create a militia? go into hiding out in the country? Perhaps there could even be an element of randomness, where sometimes the rumours really are just rumours and you end up a paranoid conspiracy theorist!

This idea would definitely need some polishing and refinement (and I may have drawn liberal amounts of inspiration from Indigo Prophecy), but properly executed I think it could be really interesting. Leave a comment if you have any ideas on how this game could be implemented (or just call me crazy! That works too).

The Musical Box (Vol. 1)

2007-10-25T00:57:00.000-04:00

Firstly, to clarify, this is not a post about the early-Genesis tribute band The Musical Box, although I hear that they're great. Instead, I thought I'd combine some of my recent musical discoveries in a (potentially) monthly post. I'll be embedding videos of the artists I mention only until I can find an audio alternative, since the lifespan of Youtube videos is often measured in weeks due to copyright policing.

I've dabbled in folk music, mostly enjoying the very famous artists from the 60's and 70's (Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.) After speaking with my friend Malini, who brought up artists such as Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, I noticed that my preference for folk artists was majorly skewed towards male singers. That trend has begun to change recently after another friend introduced me to indie folk singer-songwriter Feist. Since her single "1 2 3 4" has been getting noticeable radio airplay after that new iPod commercial, I thought I'd talk about the slightly less well known Regina Spektor instead.

I first saw her perform on Conan O'Brien a few months ago, but only recently have I had a chance to enjoy her "Soviet Kitsch" and "Begin to Hope" albums. They're both musically, lyrically and thematically brilliant. Her voice has an unconventional quality that I can't quite pinpoint, which is emphasized of course by her frequent use of irregular vocal techniques. Perhaps being raised behind the Iron Curtain gives her a unique view on things, since her lyrics are whimsical and often silly, yet feel soulful and beautiful all the same. Wikipedia tells me that this is a characteristic of the "anti-folk" scene, but I'm not a big fan of fussily pigeonholing everyone into a restrictive musical genre.

If you've played through the excellent game Portal, which I wrote a little on last week, then no doubt one of your favorite moments was the song at the end entitled "Still Alive". This song was written by folk rock singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, a man who has made great strides for both internet published musicians and the Creative Commons license. Being a programmer, I was first exposed to Coulton's music about a year and a half ago via his geeky hit "Code Monkey". His quirky and nerdy lyrics reminded me a little of the first few Barenaked Ladies albums, so I was immediately a big fan.

While Coulton does publish under Creative Commons and encourages people to spread his music around, keep in mind that he does make a living off his internet music. As such, I urge you to check out his MP3 store where you can listen to all of his songs and download them for the standard $1 each (no DRM either, eat your heart out major labels). My personal recommendations include the aforementioned "Code Monkey", "The Future Soon", "Ikea", "Re: Your Brains" and his folk cover of "Baby Got Back".

Lastly, along with just about everyone else on the internet, I've been checking out Radiohead's latest album, "In Rainbows". While their choice of digital distribution isn't exactly going to send the record executives packing just yet, I believe that this is most definitely a step in the right direction for the music industry.

As someone who really only got into Radiohead less than a year ago, I feel ill equipped to judge "In Rainbows". I do believe I'll just default to agreeing with Chris Dahlen, who wrote a sensible piece on the subject. It is in that spirit that I embedded Radiohead's excellent cover of "Nobody Does It Better" in lieu of one of their new songs.

That concludes volume 1 of my Musical Box experiment, here's hoping that I have the discipline to pick it up again next month!

Basic Instructions

2007-10-22T12:36:00.000-04:00

I recently came across Scott Meyer's terrific webcomic Basic Instructions. The premise is "your all inclusive guide to a life well-lived", so each strip is a life guide to doing one particular thing. For instance, consider "How to Open a Snack Quietly", "How to Fake a Smile" or "How to be Suave".

What's especially great about Basic Instructions is how it manages to be funny on two levels; both explicitly through jokes and dialogue, and implicitly by describing uncomfortable situations that we all deal with in our daily lives.

Interesting side note: Dilbert author Scott Adams has recently been advising the other Scott in how to get his comic published in newspapers (a medium that requires considerable artistic compromise, but is much more lucrative). The comics that are only three horizontal panels long are the result of these experiments, in an effort to use the traditional newspaper format.

A Step Towards Parity

2007-10-19T19:40:00.000-04:00

For those who are perhaps not aware of the situation, for many years the Canadian dollar was worth 0.70 - 0.90 cents to the US Dollar. Recent events in both countries have pushed the exchange rate closer to 1.035, which is great news for consumers in theory. However, many US-made goods have yet to match their prices to this new parity, video games included.

For instance, The Orange Box costs $59.99 USD at Amazon.com, but La Boite Orange costs $64.99 CAN at Amazon.ca. The same is true for all games; we're consistently paying 5-10% more for nothing.

It is for this reason that I salute Sony / Playstation 3 for taking the first step towards video game price parity for Canadians by matching the price on both their consoles and PSN downloads. Hopefully this move will force Microsoft and Nintendo to get their act together and price their games more fairly.

PS: Much support to my PAL brothers and sisters who have been putting up with even more ridiculously inflated prices for years.

Ōkami for Wii

2007-10-18T20:27:00.000-04:00

Great news for you Wii owners: Ōkami, one of the overlooked gems of the Playstation 2, is being ported to your system. One of my personal favorites, Ōkami is an adventure game not entirely unlike The Legend of Zelda in execution. However, what has made the game truly iconic are the unique graphics and the creative Celestial brush system.

Ōkami is done entirely in the style of a Japanese Suibokuga (Ink & Wash) painting, and is steeped in Japanese mythology as well. In continuing with this theme, the hero Amaterasu has access to a weapon called The Celestial Brush which allows her to stop time and use paintbrush strokes to draw in various effects. For instance, a straight line cuts objects in half and an arced bolt can control lightning. Furthermore, Amaterasu can banish colourless cursed zones and restore life by reviving the trees with her brush.

While critically acclaimed, Ōkami sold poorly, which may or may not have contributed to the closing of the terrific Clover Studio. It's nice to see the game get another shot at success for the game-starved Wii, especially considering how well the Wii control scheme will work with the Celestial Brush. So spread the word to your casual gaming, Wii owning friends: buy Ōkami!

I Love You Weighted Companion Cube

2007-10-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

Having picked up the Orange Box late last week, I finally got a chance to play through Portal this weekend. Despite its brevity (3-4 hours for the main story), I can say with conviction that it will be remembered as a classic for years to come.

Valve could have easily rested on their laurels and sold Portal on its unique first person puzzle gameplay alone. Instead, they went the extra mile to really flesh out incredible atmosphere, terrific voice acting and quite possibly the greatest video game ending I've ever seen. They mix genuinely hysterical dialogue with a terrible sense of dread, which puts you on the edge of your seat while you're chuckling to yourself. It's as if someone mixed Cube and Brazil, then threw in an awesome portal gun for good measure.

The enemy turrets say "No hard feelings!" in a sing song voice when you deactivate them. The ubiquitous AI voice promises you cake at the end of the test, but when you venture behind the scenes you find scrawled graffiti saying "The cake is a lie!" There's danger everywhere, and your only friend is your stalwart Weighted Companion Cube.

Portal is awesome!

Fez

2007-10-11T19:21:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine from work got Joystiq'd today. In his free time, Renaud is the lead programmer for a game called Fez, a platformer game being developed by Kokoromi Collective, which is also entered in this year's Independent Games Festival.

Having tried the beta firsthand, I think the game will be a strong contender. Similar 2D/3D mechanics have been explored in games like Super Paper Mario and Crush, but Fez has enough interesting twists to be original in its own right. The graphics are vibrant and have an Earthbound-like quality to them, accentuated by the intentional 8-bit look. Furthermore, the physics for jumping are as tight as any Mario game, which is essential in a platformer.

Best of luck to Renaud and Phil Fish in the IGF!

Rainy Woods Trailer

2007-10-08T14:37:00.001-04:00

Rainy Woods has been described as "Silent Hill meets Twin Peaks", but it reminds me of the film Se7en more than anything. Either way it looks fantastic, I'll be looking forward to this next year.

On a slight tangent, not only does the Orange Box come out this week, but it seems that Puzzle Quest is set to arrive on XBLA on Wednesday as well. With today being a holiday, this is shaping up to be one fantastic week. Happy turkey day, fellow Canucks!

Why Console Gaming is Better Than PC Gaming

2007-10-07T11:56:00.001-04:00

I had originally considered a more moderate title for this post, but I thought a bit of tongue-in-cheek flame baiting might be fun. First, a bit of exposition: outside of the RTS genre, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool console gamer. PC elitists frequently scoff at console controls, the mouse and keyboard interface for shooters becoming a virtual sacred cow among those raised on Quake and Unreal Tournament. As someone who loves lively pointless debating, I've decided to strike back and offer my perspective on why console gaming is better than PC gaming.

#1: The Posture

To quote Bill Nye the Science Guy, consider the following:

Gamers and couches go together like zombies and shopping malls. Let's face it, most sedentary relaxing activities take place on a couch. They're comfortable for both sitting and lying down and it's virtually impossible to get any work done while on one. Now contrast this with the following:

I dare anyone to try and play a PC shooter in anything but an upright sitting position. Call me lazy (true) and insult my posture (also true), but after working at a computer all day I have no interest in assuming the same position in my leisure time.

#2: The Controls

As any handyman will tell you, use the right tool for the job. Let's face it, standard keyboards are not designed with gaming in mind. Moving with the WASD control scheme is at best like writing a novel with an oversized novelty pencil; you can do it, but it's sub-optimal and there are better tools available.

Of course, what PC gamer gladly clamour about is the precision of mouse aiming. This is, of course, a strong point of contention in my mind. See, I like a bit of imprecision in my shooter games; it gives a game that run-and-gun, "relying on instinct" feel. The precision needed to headshot someone from half a mile away with a mouse is more akin to the later levels of Trauma Center: Under the Knife than to an actual firearm.

#3: The Cost / Technical Requirements

Gaming is an expensive hobby, just ask any PS3 owner (zing). However, this cost is compounded by the ridiculous system requirements of cutting edge PC games. To keep up requires frequent upgrades to your system. Ponying up $500 for a new video card to run Crysis on the lowest graphics setting is utterly inconceivable in my mind.

Furthermore, with the endless PC hardware permutations it's often a toss up as to whether or not a game will run on your particular setup. If it doesn't, you have hours of potentially fruitless forum reading / driver & patch downloading ahead. As a software engineering student, I'm a fairly technically minded guy, but even I prefer the convenience of coming home with a console game and knowing that it will work from the moment I put the disc in.

Conclusion

Before I loose this fairly inflammatory piece on the world, I'd like to emphasize its generally facetious nature and also make a few concessions. I'm well aware that PC gaming does many things spectacularly well. One could argue that most console games are ported over PC eventually, so the game selection is rather terrific (although lacking in Nintendo and platformers). While Xbox Live and Playstation Network are good and getting better, they're years behind the online capabilities of PC games. The modding community is also especially top-notch, and having complete control over the platform you play on is definite boon. It's that very control that, unfortunately, leads to gross inconvenience when things don't work.

Ultimately, your choice of platform comes down to a cost-benefit analysis with your own particular values. As someone who appreciates convenience, comfort and cost over customization, processing power and control precision, I'm going to stick with console gaming. Snobbery is for jerks; either way you choose to game, game on!

Halo 3 Lucky Shot

2007-10-04T00:36:00.000-04:00

Regardless of how you feel about Halo 3, you've got to admit that's one lucky shot!

The Technical Challenges of Gaming

2007-09-30T11:17:00.000-04:00

There's a fascinating article in the online version of Popular Science magazine entitled The Hard Science of Making Video Games. It details the technical challenges that high end video game developers face when pushing the envelope on next-gen features. Written in an very accessible way, it's a great read even for those with little computer knowledge. In case that link ever expires, the top challenges/limits are as follows:

Processing Power
Water
Human Faces
Artificial Intelligence
Light and Shadows
Fire
Material Physics
Realistic Movement
True-to-Life Simulation
Motion Capture

First Impressions of Halo 3

2007-09-26T20:57:00.000-04:00

All the hype and anti-hype about Halo 3 left a sour taste in my mouth and made me question whether or not I should bother writing anything about the game. While it certainly doesn't deserve the release madness it has created, the fact is that Halo 3 is a very solid FPS with extremely refined balance and great production value. Taken objectively without the fanboy hype, the game is just good fun.

I never owned an original Xbox, but I did play the first two Halo games occasionally at other people's houses. As someone whose last shooters had been Goldeneye and Perfect Dark at the time, the wide open spaces and vehicles blew me away. The repetitive level design and waves of Flood, however, bored me to tears. Halo 2 fared much better on the levels at the cost of the weapon balance (can't say I'm a fan of dual wielding, losing easy access to grenades and melee is too restrictive.)

Here in no particular order are my impressions of the third game after roughly two hours of playtime in campaign mode:

Right off the bat, I'm not sure why anyone was whining about the graphics. The game looks at least as good as Gears of War to me. My only quibble is with the marines and other humans, who have rather poor face modeling and lip syncing.
The game does a good job of guiding you to where you need to go. This is nice, because I frequently got lost and disoriented in the first game (although that may have just been the bland level design...)
The new equipment is good fun, and adds some interesting dynamics to the game. You'll see a lot of the Bubble Shield in the first level. I'm personally especially fond of the Grav Lift, I'm really looking forward to using it against a vehicle.
I used to enjoy using the sword in Halo 2, but the Gravity Hammer is my new weapon of choice. I just can't resist the appeal of batting enemies halfway across the map. I was also impressed by the AI of the hammer wielding Brutes, they're very effective
Watching yourself in third person in theatre mode is neat, and pausing the animations makes you appreciate how good the game looks. However, the lack of a Rewind button and a Fast Forward that caps at roughly 3x speed are really glaring flaws. Having worked a little with animated replays in the past, I have some idea as to the challenge of adding those two particular features. However, having to sit for 10 minutes to get to a kill 30 minutes in and praying that you don't accidentally skip it is quite frankly ridiculous.

My Xbox tag is MrQuixotic, feel free to drop me an invite if you're up for some co-op or competitive Halo 3.

Useful Web Tools

2007-09-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

Through a series of strange coincidences and necessities, I've been introduced to a number of really great software and web tools these past two weeks. Here's a little bit about each one, with any luck they might fix some of your problems as well.

Google Reader

As I've mentioned before, I'm a terribly slow adapter. However, after seeing that a good number of people were subscribed to my RSS feed via Google Reader, my curiosity was piqued and I took the time to check it out. I had previously considered switching from a browser based aggregator to web based one, but I didn't have the motivation to do so until I began lacking things to read during my breaks at work.

As with most of my slow but eventual technological upgrades, I really should have made the switch a long time ago. It's the little changes that make a big difference. For instance, the interface is much cleaner and easier to manage, similar in spirit to Gmail (more on Gmail further down). Instead of marking an entire feed as read when you open it, Google Reader marks individual articles as read as you scroll down through them. If you see something interesting but lengthy that you would like to devote more time to later, you can mark it with a star. You can choose to see your entire list of feeds on the left hand menu or just the updated ones, hiding feeds that are updated infrequently while still keeping track of them. Finally, it does a much better job at formatting the feeds, avoiding the "converted directly from XML" look.

With its terrific interface and web portability, I would heartily recommend Google Reader over any browser based aggregator.

Firefox + Greasemonkey

After moving all my feeds over to Google Reader, I made another long overdue change by finally switching completely to Firefox. There's really no need for me to extol the virtues of Firefox here, as it already has some particularly rabid fans. I will say, however, that its most significant advantage in my mind is how many great customizable add-ons exist for it due to its open-source nature.

To properly explain why the Greasemonkey add-on is so great, I'll first explain the problem I was facing. I love Gmail, but one thing that has always bugged me was the fact that it displayed how many new spam messages you had received. The point of blocking spam messages is to stop them from annoying you, but when they sit there on your left toolbar looking deceptively like a new e-mail from the corner of your eye... admittedly it was a very nerdy problem. Nevertheless it bugged me that there was no way to turn it off.

After a bit of Googling, the solution came in the form of the aforementioned Greasemonkey. Alone, the add-on does nothing. However, it allows you to install scripts that modify websites' source code, altering their appearance however you please. The particular script I used was the "Gmail Spam-count Hide" by Daniel Rozenberg. It's a very simple open-source script that hides the new spam message counter in Gmail.

I only recently found Greasemonkey so I'm still exploring it, but if you know any other useful scripts please share them in a comment.

Thunderbird + Gmail

After getting used to Thunderbird at work, I decided to use it to start backing up my Gmail. This is quite nice since it both gives me offline access to my e-mails and protects me in the event of data loss on Google's end. Furthermore, Thunderbird is designed with Gmail in mind so setting it up takes minutes. I also installed the Thunderbird Tray program to minimize it to the system tray and never have to worry about it again.

That concludes my list of discoveries that have made my life a bit easier this week. If you have a program or web tool that simplifies your life, I'd love to hear about it, so comment away.

Bioshock Posters

2007-09-12T20:31:00.000-04:00

I found something great the other day that I thought I should share: apparently someone (who I can't find and am therefore unfortunately unable to credit) searched through the PC version of Bioshock's files and extracted Rapture's posters and advertisements as images. Since they're right from the game, most of them still have great water damage effects for authenticity. The kind fellow uploaded these pictures as a set which you can download here*. I'm sure you can come up with all sorts of fun ways to use them; I plan to turn the above picture into a birthday card for a friend.

[Update: Much thanks to Mantrid for uploading these great images]

*Note: I did not upload these files and am therefore not responsible for their content. Download at your own risk.

Meet the Engineer

2007-09-11T20:03:00.000-04:00

Considering the name of the site, it seemed oddly appropriate to post this video. Everything you see is true to life: we engineers frequently sit and play guitar in the middle of battlefields, and we most definitely wear orange helmets at all times. If you haven't been following the amusing character profiles, you should also check out Meet the Heavy and Meet the Soldier. The cartoon-like visual style is really striking; I'm really hoping that the light-hearted approach translates into the actual game.

These videos are promos for Valve's Orange Box video game compilation, set to be released on October 10th. The set is a bargain, including Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for the price of one regular game. Furthermore, if you pre-order the game off Steam then you'll not only get into the TF2 beta, but also get Orange Box themed Peggle Extreme (pictured above)!

Update: Rock, Paper Shotgun has been doing a really great 9 part series detailing each class in TF2. If you're beta-less like me, this might help tide you over.

Segways are Awesome

2007-09-08T15:50:00.000-04:00

You may or may not know that I've been a long-time of proponent of the Segway Personal Transporter. Why, you might ask, would I support these silly devices? I have two important personal reasons.

Firstly, they're a triumph of engineering. As vehicles that constantly appear to be in peril of falling over, they defy our expectations by remaining in perfect balance using a combination of computers and gyroscopes. Anything that harnesses the power of physics to do something counter-intuitive (see the levitating frog experiment) is alright in my books.

Secondly, it is literally impossible to look cool on a Segway. They're the dorkiest things imaginable, something out of a bad sci-fi film. In that sense, they're the antithesis of the modern trend of form over function. If buying an SUV is supposed to make you look sporty and tough, then a Segway gives you a vibe somewhere between a mad scientist and Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Therefore, riding one anyways is a giant "fuck you" to the modern fashion obsessed, cosmetic surgery, teeth whitening madness; I look like a huge nerd and I don't care!

Need further proof that Segways are awesome? How about the Chicago police officer who chased down a shooting suspect on his Segway. Cruising at 12.5 mph, the officer wore down the suspect to the point of exhaustion then jumped off and arrested him. As District Commander Kevin Ryan put it: "These don't wear down -- people do." What I wouldn't give to have seen THAT chase scene.

Would I actually buy a Segway? No, they cost upwards of 5000 USD and I'm already a big fan of walking and biking. Despite what some enthusiasts believe, I don't think that any able person can really justify personally owning a Segway. I do, however, see potential in the device for tourism, police patrols and post offices. They rent Segways in the Old Port of Montreal, and one of these days I'm going to make the time to give one a whirl.

[Thanks to Clive Thompson at Collision Detection for the Segway Policeman Story]

Zero Punctuation

2007-09-08T14:11:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard of this fellow Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw and his Zero Punctuation reviews, allow me to introduce you. Croshaw is a fast-talking Brit with an acid tongue whose brutal Bioshock review has recently garnered a great deal of well-deserved praise and attention. He started out on Youtube, but was quickly picked up to do a weekly feature in The Escapist. His videos are sharp, humourously animated and quite simply hilarious. Be sure to check out his old reviews as well as his weekly Escapist feature.

Embedded below is his review of The Darkness demo, which more or less encompasses the impression I got as well.

Grateful for Rock Band

2007-09-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

Hot on the heels of last month's full albums goodness, Harmonix has recently announced that they will release a sizable number of downloadable Grateful Dead tracks for their upcoming game Rock Band. Here's the abridged official announcement:

New York, NY - September 5, 2007- Harmonix [...] announced a deal that will bring the legendary band Grateful Dead to the highly anticipated music videogame Rock Band. The iconic group is making 18 master recordings from its diverse catalog available as digitally distributed game levels following Rock Band's release this holiday season. Among the songs available will be the classic Dead tracks "Truckin'," "Uncle John's Band," "Touch of Grey," "Sugar Magnolia," and "Casey Jones."

"Grateful Dead's unique fusion of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, and jazz challenged traditional musical boundaries and pushed the limits of creativity to produce a signature sound that is undeniably their own," stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV's Senior Vice President of Audio, Home Video and Electronic Games. "With an enormous legion of fans all over the world, Rock Band will give players a chance to interact with the music of these beloved rock pioneers and experience what Grateful Dead did best - jam from the depths of their souls." [...]

Grateful Dead's journey ignited in San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury district during the psychedelic '60s. The band, well known for constantly touring, continued to spread their message of peace and love for another three decades with a devoted community of fans known as Dead Heads, many of whom traveled the country with them. Earlier this year, the Recording Academy awarded Grateful Dead a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for its contribution to the evolution of rock music.

You can pretty much guarantee that Friend of the Devil is going to be on there, but I'm hoping for New Speedway Boogie, St. Stephen and New, New Miglewood Blues as well. With any luck Harmonix will catch the bootleggin' spirit and release the tracks for free.

What do you think the next big announcement might be? Clapton? Zeppelin? Queen?

Fun With Dylan

2007-09-06T20:38:00.000-04:00

What happens when you mix Bob Dylan with Web 2.0? This apparently. The flash game, promoting a greatest hits package, puts you in control of the cue cards from the famous Subterranean Homesick Blues video. It's hard to put anything funny into that tiny box, but there's my best effort. Let's hear yours.

Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

2007-09-05T00:55:00.000-04:00

I've never been a big fan of puzzle games. Even the really classic ones, (Tetris, Bust-A-Move, etc.) only manage to entertain me for a short time before I'm compelled to move on. While I can certainly appreciate the sheer genius of deriving complex strategy from simple rules, the truth is that these games quickly become mind-numbingly difficult. It's been my experience that there comes a point in the learning curve of every puzzle game, usually right after you've wrapped your head around the game's mechanics, where it takes immense dedication and practice to make any kind of headway. Clearly some players thrive under these conditions; I am not one of them.

After hearing various rave reviews, however, I was urged to try Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (what a mouthful) on the Xbox Live Arcade. Demoing arcade games is free, so in effect I had nothing to lose. Needless to say I was quickly hooked on the game's intuitive and fast-paced gameplay, which warranted downloading the full version for 800 Microsoft points (~$10). I won't go into detail here about the mechanics of the game, since it's the sort of thing that's best learned through seeing and doing. I will, however, describe what makes this game so enjoyable to me.

First and foremost are the incredible comebacks. My experience with Tetris leads me to believe that, for the average player, if you're approaching the top of the screen you've essentially lost. By that logic, a slip up or two can cost you the game. In Puzzle Fighter, however, it's really not over 'til it's over. A player with a large pile of bricks under them also has massive potential for a huge combo which will reverse the situation. Furthermore, the diamond bricks which destroy every brick of a single colour can give a struggling player a respite from which to launch a counter-offensive.

This leads me to my second point: playing head to head actually feels like a fight. Indeed, the symmetric nature is inherent to the game; the closest thing to a single player mode is you against the computer. Unlike Tetris, "staying alive" in Puzzle Fighter would be trivial if not for your opponent's actions. In that sense, just trying to keep your own pile of bricks small is not a viable strategy; the only way to win is to actively work at hindering your opponent. Playing against a friend on the couch the other day was tremendous fun, with taunts, near-wins and miraculous comebacks flying both ways. My Xbox Live tag is MrQuixotic if you're ever up for a friendly bout!

All in all, Puzzle Fighter is a terrific game even for us non-puzzle lovers. This experience has taught me that modern puzzle games don't have to be gruelling affairs with steep learning curves. I'll now be looking forward to Puzzle Quest when it hits XBLA sometime in the coming months.

The Music Industry's Failed Approach

2007-09-03T12:19:00.000-04:00

This post is in response to a comment by Marc Cohen on the post The Best Things in Life are Ad-Supported.

Firstly I'd like to clarify that I was most definitely being facetious with that post title. I did some casual research into the ad-supported media model, and my gut reaction was similar to that of one of my favorite authors:

When Kurt Vonnegut learned that users downloading his novel Slaughterhouse-Five on the new e-book retailer WOWIO will have to flip through ads like one for Verizon Communications Inc.'s (VZ ) "Chocolate" mobile phone, the 83-year-old author snapped, "This is just tasteless," and hung up the phone. [link]

As a consumer, the saturation of advertisements now present in music and video games is already at a truly distasteful level. The idea of hearing an advertisement pop up while listening to my iPod would constitute a violation of my private listening space; it's the #1 reason why I don't listen to FM radio anymore. Furthermore, it seems to follow the same path that the failing-DRM system has: taking control of how to enjoy music away from the end-user.

That being said, it's easy for me to criticize the ad-supported model without providing any sort of alternative. It's clear that the current system is starting to crack. People who have grown up with the Internet have become accustomed to free music on demand, and your model certainly does a great job of catering to this demographic. I certainly don't agree with music piracy; no matter how anyone tries to justify it, it comes down to absolute greed. I'm simply being pragmatic: how can ad-laced DRM-restricted music can seriously compete with restrictionless pirated mp3s with virtually no consequences? The ad-supported model's fundamental flaw, in my view, is that it sustains the record company's paradigm that making users pay for music, whether with money, time or convenience, is still a viable business option. They can litigate all they want, but the high demand combined with the ingenuity of freeware programmers is such that piracy will find a way to resurface every time.

My guess would be that, in the long term, a major paradigm shift will have to occur. Today's industry struggle is akin to the tug-of-war in the 30's and 40's, when live musicians feared becoming obsolete with the advent of radio technology. How would live bands be profitable if recordings were played for free over the airwaves, they clamored. In the end, the local live bands were largely replaced by country-wide superstars like Elvis, and the industry evolved. Similarly, perhaps we are soon approaching a time when an mp3 will no longer become something that is bought and sold, and the recording industry will inevitably find some other way to turn a profit.

Counter arguments are welcome, so feel free to comment if you have a different point of view.

The Best Things in Life are Ad-Supported

2007-09-02T13:01:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of things that are free: free food, freeware, free speech, free Tibet. To keep you up to date on the state of the free world, I'm happy to inform you that EA is offering a free download of the original Command & Conquer, a terrific RTS game that spawned a million sequels and spin-offs. The game comes as two .iso files, which are disk images that can be burned right onto a playable CD with software like Nero. A few simple steps, explained on their website, make the game Windows XP compatible. Did I mention it's free?

While they're not quite free, Ubisoft has kindly offered us the PC versions of Far Cry, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Rayman Raving Rabids at the reasonable cost of the game being interrupted by advertisements every once in a while. The latter two strike me as games better played on a console, but that's more than likely my own prejudice at work.

Finally, the Gears of War "Hidden Front" map pack which previously set you back 800 Microsoft points becomes free on Monday. It includes the Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process and Subway maps. 4 games and a map pack for $0 is a fine way to spend the long weekend, so happy gaming!

Dr. Who

2007-08-31T21:43:00.000-04:00

I've been rather enjoying the modern interpretation of Dr. Who lately. The show fluctuates between brilliant (The Empty Child) and cheesy (The Lazarus Experiment) as it has done for over 40 years, but always manages to be entertaining. David Tennant and Freema Agyeman are well cast as the quixotic Doctor and his stalwart companion, and the supporting cast is often surprisingly strong. Furthermore, as a fan of science fiction, the modular stories are a nice change of pace from the long drawn-out story arcs featured on other shows. In that sense, Dr. Who could draw favorable comparisons with The Twilight Zone.

You may ask what provoked me to write about this now? Well, the episode that the CBC aired this week, Blink (we're way behind you Brits), was especially excellent. It featured a chilling antagonist, a cohesive plot and only revealed the bigger mysteries towards the end; the majority of Dr. Who episodes pull off two out of three of those at best. What truly sealed the deal was the story-told-backwards narrative, a plot device employed surprisingly rarely considering the time-travelling nature of the show.

The CBC is kindly offering streaming video of the latest episodes on their website, so you now have no excuse for not checking it out. Get to it!

They Call Me The Working Man

2007-08-31T21:03:00.000-04:00

As of last Monday, I have officially begun my career in programming... as an intern (or stagiaire as we say in La Belle Province). As part of Concordia's co-op program, I'll be spending my fall semester working full time as a programmer at a Montreal company called 123 Certification. The job involves working with a small team on their largest product, the Arc Simulator, which is designed to teach welding in a way that is safe and cost-effective. It is quite literally virtual reality; the student wears a sort of VR helmet and uses motion-sensing tools.

Needless to say, it's been a dramatic learning experience so far. I've spent a good part of the last week reading code and documentation, and have just recently had a chance to get my hands metaphorically dirty with some code debugging. I'm hoping to learn a great deal about handling 3D objects, working on a large scale project and coding professionally!

To Mend & Defend

2007-08-27T18:59:00.000-04:00

Growing up in Canada in the early nineties, one of my favorite television shows was called ReBoot. The show was groundbreaking for its time, both for its use of computer animation and its unique computer-world setting. The characters, plot, concepts and voice acting were all top notch, and the show was littered with jokes and references that only an adult would get (not entirely unlike recent animated films such as Shrek). I still get a kick out of the rare occasions when I catch a rerun while flipping channels.

Browsing Wikipedia the other day, I found an interesting Wired article from 1997 profiling the creators of ReBoot and how the show came to be. Page four of said article, however, was especially interesting as Gavin Blair discussed some of the difficulties the show faced under the BSP's oppressive and often ridiculous rulings with respect to acceptable content. For instance, they objected to Dot's figure, and insisted she be re-fitted with a much more acceptable monoboob. They considered a kiss on the cheek from sister to brother to be incestuous, and imposed a moratorium on the words hockey and wuss due to their apparently filthy slang meanings.

Fortunately, by the third season ReBoot had parted with ABC's thought police and was able to explore more complex storylines and darker themes. As creator Ian Pearson put it: "I think the third season is blowing the first two out of the water. We haven't gone hideously violent or anything like that - it's just more action-filled and fun-filled." This might be part of why the show had such a lasting impression on me; the characters grew up with me, in a way.

I'm not sure if ReBoot achieved any kind of popularity outside of Canada, but if you've never seen it I urge you to check it out. The second season is when the longer story arcs begin, so it's a great place to start. The fourth season's quasi-movie Daemon Rising is also terrific.

Little Sister, Big Heart

2007-08-25T01:04:00.000-04:00

In my anticipation for the game, I had made myself a little plan for Bioshock. I was going to harvest the little buggers the first time around and go buckwild with ADAM. I would then know which plasmids were worth picking up to use the second time around, when I would rescue them all. It was a good idea, in theory...

...but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Rapture is a city filled with people who have compromised their morality in order to survive. If I did the same, would I be any better than they are? I decided that being kind of guy who clings to his values under pressure better fit the narrative I was building up in my head. I've saved five of them so far, and exploring the alternate reward scheme is turning out to be quite interesting.

Is it silly to personalize a video game in this manner? Yeah, it is. It's also, in my mind, the mark of a great work of fiction.

Databases Final Project

2007-08-22T20:12:00.000-04:00

...and that concludes a very busy four day programming marathon. The final project for my Databases class involved creating a database and web interface for a hospital. We were a five person group, and I was responsible for designing the interface for the doctors, nurses and residents. Elaine wrote the interface for Administrators and Directors, Sven and Fadhl were in charge of the MySQL database and Alex used Dreamweaver to make a great looking site.

All in all this was a great learning experience. Fortunately for me, Elaine was quite familiar with PHP/Javascript and sent me over lots of code that I could use as a template for my own work. I was already familiar with Perl and Html, so PHP wasn't especially foreign. I managed to write ~18 interactive pages that allowed doctors to view their patient list, add/modify/delete patients, view their schedules and paystubs, etc.

Unfortunately, our project demo today didn't go as well as planned. Databases was a rather involved four credit class, and taking it in ~5 weeks really didn't allow us to invest as much time into our final project as we would have liked. Due to inadequate testing, our demo was full of errors and bugs. I'm not expecting a very high mark, which is ashame because we put lots of work into it.

At the very least, this project has taught me a great deal about group programming dynamics and the importance of code testing. It's very likely I'll work with the same group of people again in the future.

I was going to write a big post Monday about the Bioshock demo, but I was unfortunately too busy programming. I've now decided to wait and and just write a review of the whole game in the near future.

The Xbox 360 Adventure

2007-08-17T00:12:00.000-04:00

I've finally taken the plunge into next-gen! I had been considering picking up one of the three new consoles for some time, but I figured it was only sensible to finish my 6-hour exam marathon on Wednesday first (or I'd never get any studying done). With that behind me, I had a choice between the "lots of power, no games" PS3, the "cool idea, how about some decent games?" Wii and the "breaks after 2 months" Xbox 360. It was a tough call, and I'll curse myself if I get the dreaded red ring, but I went with an Xbox 360 Elite in the end.

MrQuixotic

The difference that really struck me between this machine and my last-gen consoles is how well it has integrated online capabilities. I don't know if Xbox Live on the first Xbox was as good as this, but I'm very impressed at how it's all available up front. From the moment you turn it on (which you now do from your couch with a wireless controller), you're immediately logged on to your Xbox profile, and that one profile handles your whole account both online and offline. You can press the guide button at any time, even in game, and it will pull up the Xbox dashboard.

Since I'm being a bit abstract about why this is so great, here's a concrete example: the first game I played today was Crackdown. The moment the game began, it immediately prompted me to download updates to the game, which took less than 30 seconds. Getting to the menu screen for the first time, there was an option at the bottom to download additional content from Xbox Live (which included a Harpoon gun with some great physics, I'm told). Starting a new campaign, I had the option of playing alone, with an invited friend or with a randomly paired stranger from Xbox Live. I chose to play alone, but if I wanted to invite someone else mid-game it would be as simple as pressing the guide button, scrolling through my friend's list and clicking "invite to game".

Lets contrast that with my last-gen experience with an online console game: FFXI on the Playstation 2. An update to the Playonline Viewer would turn off your PS2 once it finished updating, since for whatever reason it couldn't prompt a software reset. Friends list and messages were all used by FFXI alone (i.e. completely separate from my SOCOM buddy list), and the system didn't even work that well once you were actually in-game. Simply put, everything was very poorly integrated.

This has been a little more of a rant than I usually care to indulge in, so I'll wrap it up here for now. Feel free to throw me an Xbox friend invite, I'd love to put this 1 month of free Gold membership to good use. Now if you excuse me, my Bioshock demo has finished downloading (impressions to follow shortly).

A Gentleman's Duel

2007-08-13T21:59:00.000-04:00

I saw a great video over at Dailymotion today called A Gentleman's Duel. If you like clever animation and steampunk mecha, then you'll enjoy this epic duel between Sir Dingleberry and the Marquis de Manstrumpet.

I'm swamped with work right now, I have both my Database and Engineering Statistics finals on Wednesday. A more substantial post that isn't just 30 words and an embedded video to follow after that (hopefully).

Beautiful Katamari Intro

2007-08-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

Gametrailers.com just put up an exclusive look at the intro movie for the upcoming game Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360. In keeping with series tradition, there are mushrooms, rainbows and dancing red pandas as far as the eye can see. More of the same? Sounds nice, thank you!

Be A Rational Agent

2007-08-08T23:35:00.000-04:00

Living next to [America] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
-Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau on Canada/US relations

With four major political parties to choose from (not to mention the rising Green party), Canadians are afforded some protection from the strongly polarized politics found down south. However, you can't live in America's hat without forming some kind of opinion about what's happening. After being linked to this extreme-left video and this extreme-right one in the space of a week, my internal BS sensor was overworked and I felt the need to throw in my 2 cents on the issue.

In both of the aforementioned videos, these amateur interviewers head down to the opposite camp's rally and start doing Michael Moore style interviews (i.e. lots of talking heads and very little substance). In a textbook example of the Straw man fallacy, they single out the dumbest/loudest people in the room and start asking them directed questions about various controversial topics. These people make incredibly ignorant claims and hyperbolic statements (comparing Bush to Hitler? see Godwin's Law), which the filmmakers love because they can use these to discredit the entire party.

While these videos are really nothing more than amateur footage on YouTube, they're symptomatic of a larger social issue; namely, the kind of groupthinking that's emerging from these political parties. It's easy and fun to belong to a group. You all believe in the same things, so you can get together and act smug about how you've got it all figured out. You can insult the other party's viewpoint without fear of a counter-argument. If a moral problem is too complicated to think about, you can follow the party line with zeal. By subscribing to the beliefs of a group, you're immediately undermining yourself as a rational agent. You're substituting your own reason with the reasoning of the group, and groups are notoriously unreasonable. As Dilbert author Scott Adams put it:

As soon as you tell me "Carl joined a group," I can tell you Carl is no longer as rational as he used to be. His judgment will start to conform to the group’s judgment, and the group’s judgment will be based on some ever-drifting sense of values that lost its rational connecting tissue long ago.

It's in this spirit that I invite you to assert yourself as a rational agent by challenging your assumptions. Engage in meaningful dialogue with people who do not share your beliefs, and play Devil's Advocate sometimes. As author Stephen Covey described it: seek first to understand, then to be understood. If someone is able to argue persuasively against an idea you hold, either research a counter-argument or consider changing your beliefs.

As Chris Rock so eloquently put it (video embedded below, NSFW): in the end you'll find that you're liberal about some things and conservative about others, and that's the way it should be.

Montreal Tam-Tams

2007-08-06T01:07:00.000-04:00

Every Sunday in the summer, hundreds of people gather around the statue of Sir George-Étienne Cartier on Mount Royal. The assembly doesn't have an official name, but it's called the Tam-Tams by most. The focus of the event is the drum circle, a free-style jam where anyone can bring a hand-drum and start playing along; it's not unusual to see over a hundred drummers at one time. The rest come to listen to the music, dance, play some hacky sack or frisbee and just enjoy the great outdoors.

Along with the Jazz Fest (which I wrote about earlier), the Tam-Tams are part of a complete summer experience in Montreal. The event has a great vibe, Mount Royal park is beautiful, and overall it's quite possibly my favorite use of a Sunday. If you're ever in the city, do yourself a favour and check it out.

Links: [Tam-Tams in Montreal site] [Google Map of the park]

Short Stories

2007-08-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

For as long as I can remember, I've had a problem writing essays with an assigned word length. I like to say as much as I can with as few words as possible, because to me good writing is concise and to the point. When I'm required to artificially lengthen my work, the result is always weak and diluted.

I think that this paradigm can be applied to all media. For instance, the film Strange Days had some interesting ideas, but as a two hour long feature film they were lost in a sea of pointless action and terrible drawn-out dialogue. Done right, it could have made a great 20 minute short film. Consider the last 80 hour RPG you played: could it have been an even better 50 hour RPG by removing a tedious dungeon crawl or two?

It's perhaps my inclination towards succinctness that makes me a fan of short stories. A novel based on an idea will usually explore every facet of this idea and all of its implications. While this works well for some concepts, there are certainly others that are perhaps too experimental and strange. These quirky ideas would likely fall apart or become lost in a novel, but they can easily become the central theme of a short story.

I've listed a few of my favorite short stories below. Where applicable, I've linked to sites I've found that host them; otherwise, a little Googling will usually do the trick.

Eight O'Clock in the Morning - Ray Nelson [link]
An alien race controls humanity through subliminal messages in television, advertisements and billboards.
A Sound of Thunder - Ray Bradbudy
Published in 1952, it was one of the first short stories to deal with what would later be called The Butterfly Effect; the idea that one small change in the past could completely rewrite the present.
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson [link]
One of the most chilling short stories I've ever read, it deals with the evils that are permitted in the name of tradition and crowd mentality.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison
An insane omnipotent computer tortures the last five humans on Earth.
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick [link]
The story that inspired the film Total Recall, it deals with the implications of memory replacement.
Little Lost Robot - Isaac Asimov
This is my favorite short story from I, Robot. Dr. Susan Calvin must use logic to expose the one robot among an identical hundred that has had its programming altered and is now a threat to humans.
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
To finally achieve societal equality, the government forcefully handicaps those whose beauty, intelligence or athletic abilities give them an "unfair advantage" over everyone else.
How To Talk To Girls At Parties - Neil Gaiman [link]
This story is a nominee for the 2007 Hugo Award. An awkward young man is dragged along to a party, but all is not as it seems.

I'm always on the lookout for more great short stories, so please comment with your favorites.

Shadow of Destiny

2007-08-01T01:31:00.000-04:00

When I first read about Shadow of Destiny, it immediately struck me as a very peculiar game. It has elements in common with Indigo Prophecy, in that it involves a murder mystery and is somewhat like an interactive film. What interested me enough to skulk out eBay for it, however, was definitely its unique premise; you play as Eike Kusch, a recently deceased man who is given the chance to go back in time and prevent his own mysterious murder.

After being stabbed in the street, Eike finds himself in a timeless void where a creature named Homonculus offers him another chance at life. Dodging fate, however, is a daunting task; it seems that the young man has found himself caught up in a sequence of events that has spanned centuries. At the start of each of the game's eight chapters, fate catches up to Eike in a number of creative ways (which include being run over by a car, having his food poisoned and being pushed off a tall tower). Each murder that he manages to prevent gets him a little closer to the root of the problem.

The time travel mechanics, which occasionally reminded me of Chrono Trigger, play an interesting part in the puzzle solving. Some of the earlier puzzles are unfortunately very simple; you stop a building from burning down by going back in time and stomping out the flame that started it. The later puzzles were thankfully a bit more complex; one of my favorites involved finding a book about antidotes by convincing the ancestor of the art museum curator to make a library instead. The time travel is divided into four eras: 1580, 1902, 1980 and the "present day" of 2001.

Being a six year old game, it does have some serious flaws. For one, the voice acting is terrible. While the character models are surprisingly decent for a first generation PS2 game, the city is full of bland textures and feels devoid of life. Furthermore, the developers made some glaringly lazy choices at times. For instance, in the first chapter, the game blocks off certain alleyways to prevent you from exploring too far. The choice of obstacle? An angry dog... at every single intersection. Finally, the game is incredibly short; be prepared to see the credits roll in under seven hours.

Despite these glaring flaws, I don't regret my purchase. Unlike Indigo Prophecy, the plot doesn't fall apart towards the end. Quite the opposite in fact, the story was excellent and came at me with twists that I genuinely did not see coming. Furthermore, while the game is short, there are more than five endings to unlock depending on your choices in the game.

All in all, if you're interested in an interactive movie game with an excellent plot and are willing to overlook some major flaws, I recommend looking into Shadow of Destiny.

New Image Header & Favicon

2007-07-30T01:10:00.000-04:00

New header/favicon today, and a renewed appreciation for the hard work of graphic artists. While the Blogger template I had before did look a little more professional, I think I did pretty well for an amateur (go go MS Paint!). I figured out how to make these modifications using a combination of guides and trial & error. I've compiled the information I found into the small guide below, I hope you find it useful.

Using an Image as a Header

I found most of the information on how to make this modification here. The first step is to remove the old header. Blogger doesn't allow you to remove it as a page element normally, so we'll have to change the template html first. From the Blogger dashboard go to Template > Edit HTML. Back up your template and then look for the following code:

Replace the word true with false and save your template. You can now remove your old header as you would any other page element. We will now replace it with the image header, which I recommend you use Photobucket to host. Go to Template > Page Elements, and create a new Javascript/html page element, then insert the following code:

Move this new Page Element over to where your old header used to be and hit the "Save" button. However, depending on your template, you may notice that you still have a small piece of your old header above your image. To remove this, delete the following line of code from your template's html:

Using a Favicon with Blogger

See that little picture next to the "http" in the address bar? That's called a Favicon, and by default Blogger gives you an orange one with a letter B. If you'd like to change this to your own icon, first head on over to FavIcon Generator and save the .ico file it generates. Usually, a webamaster would host this on their own site, but since you can't do this on Blogger we'll have to host it externally. Since Photobucket doesn't let you upload .ico files, so I recommend you use ImageDip. Next we're going to edit the html template, so once again remember to back up your template before modifying it. Look for the following line:

Once you've found this line, add the following code one line above it:

Save your template and you're done. Thanks to Tips for New Bloggers and My Tech Life for information on how to do this.

Dune Messiah

2007-07-27T21:09:00.000-04:00

I was on vacation earlier this summer at a friend's cottage near Parry Sound, Ontario. While in town one day, we walked over to Bearly Used Books, a terrific used book store where, along with about eight other books, I picked up a copy of Frank Herbert's Dune. I was vaguely familiar with the general plot, having seen parts of the televised miniseries years ago, and knowing that it was considered a classic among sci-fi fans I was eager to read it.

Needless to say I read it ravenously. Frank Herbert crafted the world of Dune with loving detail and a passion akin to Tolkien, with appendices, maps and a glossary at the end of the book. It was not a typical sci-fi world either; I found the idea of mentats, human supercomputers necessary since the ban of thinking machines, especially interesting.

I quickly went out to a used book store back home in Montreal and picked up the first two sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I just finished the former and, while it was still very good, it didn't feel nearly as polished or as cohesive as the first book. I'd like to address what I felt were weaknesses in the plot, so be warned that there are spoilers ahead, although nothing that would really ruin the book for you.

Dune gave me the impression that Frank Herbert had every aspect of the universe figured out beforehand, and was gradually revealing them to the reader. However, in this book, we are suddenly presented with the Bene Tleilaxu, who are apparently a very important group of gene manipulators and have as much clout as one of the Great Houses. They can revive the dead, give people new eyes, and even apparently made their own Kwisatz Haderach! Yet, they go from unmentioned in the first book to common knowledge among the populace in the second. I can appreciate that the author wanted to introduce a new faction, but it really hurt the feeling of cohesiveness of the Dune universe.

In the first book we were told about how very secretive the Spacing Guild is. Their methods are only hinted at, and they send only low-ranking navigators to meet even Emperor Corrino. In Dune Messiah, however, Edric the Guild Navigator appears in front of the entire royal court and seemed to have no problem discussing prescience and spice. Is it completely unreasonable? Of course not, Paul is the Emperor and it makes sense that the Guild would send a high-ranking Navigator as an ambassador. It is, however, a complete turnaround from how they were presented in the first book.

Finally, I don't know why the Fremen Jihad was allowed to happen. I could be wrong, but wasn't avoiding a Jihad the whole point of the first book? Everything Paul did in Dune was in an effort to stop the bloody rampage that his prescience predicted; that was his greatest motivation. Whether or not he had succeeded was left ambiguous at the end of the first book, but within the first chapter of Dune Messiah we learn that the Jihad had been raging for twelve years.

I don't mean to give the impression that Dune Messiah was a bad book; it was a great read, and it set up the next book very well. The fact that I even care about these nerdy little details is proof of what a great writer Frank Herbert is. Dune presented an entirely cohesive sci-fi universe, but unfortunately that universe is starting to show some seams.

Final Fantasy Retrospective

2007-07-25T23:34:00.000-04:00

I was recently directed to new video series over at Gametrailers.com, a retrospective of the Final Fantasy series. While I'm all for nostalgia, I'm becoming a little jaded by it. I'm happy to see gamers acknowledge their roots, but frankly I'm tired of game companies looking to cash in by exploiting my childhood memories.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the quality of this retrospective. I expected a cheesy montage of gameplay footage, but instead found that the videos explored some interesting questions: How was Final Fantasy radically different to other games at the time? What innovations did it each sequel bring to the RPG genre? How were the early games unbalanced?

I've embedded Part 1 of the series below. They seem to be doing a new video every week, so I'll update my links when new videos come out. You may also want to check out their Metroid and Zelda series retrospectives, which are also good.

Endearing Story From Penny Arcade

2007-07-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

Penny Arcade's comics are great, but their news posts are often surprisingly fresh and funny too. The first part of yesterday's post told a particularly great story about Gabe's adventure signing up for a Gamestop Pokemon competition. The story made me nostalgic for Grade 5, when Pokemon Red & Blue were the hottest thing on the block. However, the second part, a reply from a 12-year old Pokemon fan, was quite possibly the cutest thing I have ever read. The little girl's enthusiasm really helped remind me of what video games are all about: having fun.

I hope the gents at PA won't mind me reproducing the story here, since on their site the two parts are separated by a much larger post about PAX. Thanks for the great read.

Part 1:

So I ended up attending one of the Gamestop Pokemon tournaments on Saturday. When I told Kara that I wanted to go she told me it would just be a bunch of little kids. I explained to her that Pokemon was no longer just a kids game. That a large number of men my age played Pokemon now. I told her I'd probably be surrounded by guys my age who took it way more seriously than I did. I'm really glad she decided not to go with me. As it turns out I was the oldest person in the tournament by roughly twenty years and the only one not wearing a shirt with Pikachu on it.

I showed up at the Alderwood mall Gamestop and entered my name. As the little kids poured in I became less and less convinced I should participate. The little boys with their Pokemon backpacks and the girls with tiny Pokeballs in their hair seemed to assume I was just someones Dad rather than their competition. It was actually really cool to see how much these kids love Pokemon. I've been so into it recently that I think I'd forgotten I should be having fun. With my pages of hand written math and charts of carefully plotted out EV training regiments I actually felt sort of dirty. These little kids were showing me teams comprised not of statistically optimal Pokemon but of their favorites. A little girl talked to me for five minutes about why she loved Kyogre so much. When she asked why I used Rotom I couldn't bring myself to tell her that his ghost/electric type meant he had a lot of immunities while giving him some surprising moves that should allow me to cripple sweepers with status effects but still fight off any Dark types I encounter. "I think he's cute." I explained. She smiled and nodded as though this was the reason she had expected to hear.

I noticed one of the kids there was actually quite a bit older than the rest of the group. Still probably half my age, but he towered over his opponents. I watched as he struck up conversations with the other children, inspecting their Pokemon and always finding them lacking. "I've EV trained my entire party." he said to a few of the kids who obviously had no idea what that meant. He showed of his multiple "shinies" to a couple of very impressed young men before explaining that he wasn't going to use them in the tournament because it just wouldn't be fair to everyone else. No, he would dominate them with a mixed bag of EV trained legendaries and obscure all stars culled from every single incarnation of the series. He was essentially being a little Douche.

I had just decided to pull myself out of the tournament in order to let the kids have their fun when Cory, who was running the show told me he'd matched me up against the little loudmouth in the first round. I figured I might have a chance to take him out and then none of the other kids would have to face him. So I stayed in and when it came time to play I synced up my DS and loaded my fairly mundane crew. It worked out that we were standing on the wrong sides of the television so his team showed up on my side and mine on his. The crowd of kids around me cheered and congratulated me on such an impressive roster. I explained that those were his and that mine were on the other side. "You really need to play more." one of the younger boys instructed. I agreed and selected my three Pokemon to take into battle. A few of the kids behind me would shake their heads in disgust as my finger hovered over each possible selection. My opponent, in what I can only assume was an attempt to show off grossly underestimated this old man's skillz. He tried to pull off an extremely risky strategy involving the near sacrifice of his first Pokemon for a "baton pass" maneuver and a quick stat boost to his second in line. This failed miserably as the aforementioned Rotom I pulled in did not give two shits about anything he hit me with. Once I'd taken him out I moved to the next round but really had no desire to continue. I played my opponent but then bowed out and gave him a free pass onto the next round. The young man I played earlier kept approaching me and telling me he could have beat me easy, he just used the wrong Pokemon. I nodded, yes well that's sort of the whole game.

I watched a bit more of the tournament and I was really impressed with the sportsmanship of the kids. I've been watching the cartoon with Gabe and it really stresses the importance of winning and losing graciously. Each of these kids when they lost shook the others hand and thanked them for the match. The winners complimented the losers Pokemon and strategies while impressing on them that it really was a very close game. I know they weren't my kids but as a thirty year old gamer with a kid of my own I could not help but be extremely proud of all of them. Their passion for the game was totally infectious and I've decided to throw away my spreadsheets. I'm no longer hatching five eggs at a time in order to find babies with the optimal natures and stats. I've also brought Beautifly back into my team. She's not very tough, but I like her, she's pretty.

-Gabe out

Part 2:

I just got this email and I had to share it with you all.
Dear Mister Gabe,

Hi! My name is Nausica (gnaw-sik-ca), I am twelve years old and I love pokemon. My mom got me the Pokemon Pearl for my DS and I love love love it, it is probably my favorite game. I heard about the pokemon tournament at Gamestop and really wanted to go, but I am really shy so I wasn't going to, but my parents talked me into it and said it would be a good for me and I would have fun.

So I went and it seemed at first like it would be fun, there were alot of really nice kids there who all loved pokemon like me, it was really fun showing off my team of Evee's and seeing what other people liked too.

Then the older guys came, I dunno how old they were but they were much older then most of the other kids there, they pretty much ruined the fun of it for everyone else there. I guess they weren't really mean, but how they acted sounded alot like the boy you described, that you had a chance to beat. But unfortunately for the kids at the tournament I went too, there wasn't a nice guy like you to set an example for them. Needless to say most of us there didn't have a good chance against them, (I never knew what the special point things were even), and they never really told us nice job or anything. The guy that got me laughed when he saw my line up of Evees.

So afterwards I really didn't wanna play pokemon very much, and I thought I was gonna stop playing, cause I only really play to have fun, not to beat everyone else. Then today my mom (who is a big fan) showed me what you wrote, and it made me feel a million times better!!! :D

I couldn't believe I almost let some jerks take away my love of pokemon!

So I really just wanted to tell you thank you Mister Gabe! What you said ment alot to me and my evees!! You are a great person and I wish I could have been at your tournament to meet you!

Have a great day!!

Sincerely
Nausica

ps! I'm naming my next boy evee after you ^_^

I think I'll probably be smiling for the next week thanks to this.

-Gabe out

Thank you Gabe & Nausica for reminding this jaded gamer what it's really all about.

Snake vs Zombie

2007-07-23T00:04:00.000-04:00

Interviews with game developers don't usually interest me, generally because the interviewees always come off as salesmen and rarely just want to talk openly and honestly. Even if you're similarly jaded, I urge you not to overlook the recent Snake vs Zombie event interviews, which featured a trio of important designers: Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid), Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry) and Suda 51 (Killer 7).

Unlike typical gaming industry interviews, none of the designers were pushing any game in particular. While Suda 51 chaired the event, there was no interviewer as such; it was more akin to a conversation than a question and answer session. In the video (embedded below), they discuss various topics, remaining only vaguely topical at times. Highlights include Kojima's semi-serious pitch for a Resident Evil Online game, discussions about Season 2 of Lost, Mikami's rental of "Dino Kung-fu", good-natured teasing about Killer 7's development, and thoughts regarding console platform politics.

If you're interested in hearing some of the most respected names in the video game industry talk in a very relaxed and casual setting, I highly recommend you invest 26 minutes in the video below.

Children of Men

2007-07-20T23:42:00.000-04:00

TV Reporter: The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet. [...] He was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old.

I've always had a fascination with narratives set in a dystopian future (see 1984, Brazil, Brave New World, Blade Runner, even Half-Life 2). The good ones evoke a convincing world that could conceivably represent our own future. The great ones use this world to explore philosophical and moral issues. What struck me as unique about the film Children of Men, however, was how it presented a world rocked by an extension of our own contemporary Western issues: divisive immigration policies, xenophobia, terrorism, and overzealous homeland security. This picture of the world looks and feels real; it is by far the most convincing vision of the future I have ever seen.

The world of 2027 is on the brink of ruin; two decade of inexplicable human infertility have led to widespread societal collapse. The film is set in Britain, where the anti-immigrant sentiment has been pushed to the extreme. The oppressive government ships thousands of illegal immigrants to sprawling refugee camps, with imagery and brutality that echo the Holocaust.

The plot follows Theo Faron (Clive Owen), an activist turned bureaucrat, who, due to a string of complex events, becomes the guardian of what may be mankind's only hope for survival: a miraculously pregnant woman named Kee. While the plot is excellent, it's the imagery, setting and cinematography that are the real stars of this film. Very little is explicitly stated; it's the visuals, such as a country field filled with the burning corpses of livestock, that tell the story of society's collapse. Many scenes are done with a single unbroken wide shot, which allows the viewer to take in the richness of the landscape.

Children of Men is quite simply a remarkably good movie, and I would recommend it without reserve to anyone. Whether it's the bleak landscape, the tremendous visuals or the touching characters and dialogue, everyone will be able to find a part of this film that affects them in a very profound and meaningful way.

Last.fm

2007-07-18T02:38:00.000-04:00

Fellow blogger Nectarine gave me a tip recently to check out a site called Last.fm. I'll admit that I had heard of it before, but I had never bothered to browse my way other there until today. The site essentially creates a custom radio station tailored to your tastes. That in itself is not especially unique; there are many sites that provide similar custom radio channels. There are three things, however, that in my mind really set Last.fm apart.

First is the sheer variety of artists. Last.fm appears to have collaboration from not only all of the major labels, but also a great variety of indie labels. You don't only get the hit songs either, because Last.fm has full albums. Furthermore, since musicians can upload their own music to the site, there are opportunities to get to hear some great up and coming unsigned bands.

Secondly, Last.fm gathers data not only from what you listen to on their site, but also from what you listen to on your computer. Downloading the lightweight Last.fm software allows them to track what you're playing from a wide variety of media players. I was initially a little wary about a company tracking information about how I listen to music, but the program is open-source and only extracts the song's name, artist and album from the ID3 tags. This information is used to suggest new artists that you might enjoy.

Finally, the system by which Last.fm recommends new music is very well done. If you hear a song that you really enjoy, you can add it to your Love list to hear similar songs more often. If you really dislike one of the suggested songs, you can simply click the Ban button to ensure that you never hear that song again. It's a simple, intuitive interface that works really well (unless you click the wrong button like I did, because there seems to be no way to undo a ban) [Edit: turns out you go to View Profile > Recently Banned in the Last.fm software, right click and "Undo Ban"].

Here are some of the great artists/albums/songs I've discovered through Last.fm today:

Brainfreeze Breaks, album by DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist.
I'm can't say I'm big on turntable music on the whole, but I love soul music. These two mix wizards apparently took some of the rarest old soul vinyl records (some virtually impossible to find today) and ripped them to shreds making this remarkable album. I've been listening to it all day; it's astoundingly good.
Call Me Up In Dreamland, song by Van Morrison
Heard this track while listening to "Sounds Like: Paul Simon". Great track from his early days that I hadn't heard before.
Time to Kill, song by The Band
Another fantastic song I hadn't heard before by an artist I love, apparently off the Stage Fright album (which I'm now going to have to check out in its entirety).

Not bad for one day's work. Go check it out for yourself.

Blogger, Feedburner and Sitemaps

2007-07-17T01:53:00.000-04:00

I had announced last Friday that I was being an eager beaver and taking advantage of the improved Feedburner integration for Blogger. However, like all early adapters, I've had been unfortunately burdened with the unresolved issues of the new technology. Specifically:

Once enabled, Google will redirect your Atom feed subscribers to Feedburner. However, Blogger also publishes a second feed (in RSS format) which for some reason it does not redirect. Feedburner won't be able to collect statistics about people who subscribe to the non-redirected feed, making your efforts fairly moot.
Bloggers who use their Atom feed as a sitemap for Google will receive errors due to their Feedburner feed being in a different domain than the rest of their blog.

Using a bit of creativity, however, I do believe I've found a suitable workaround that should allow motivated Blogger users to integrate Feedburner and Google sitemap without these problems.

UPDATE: Easier Method
Commenter Lamer came up with an even simpler way to integrate both feedburner and Google sitemaps. Turn on the Feedburner redirection (Dashboard > Settings > Site Feed) and then use http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml?orderby=updated as a sitemap (for whatever reason Blogger does not redirect this XML file). Simple and efficient, thanks Lamer! The rest of this post goes on to describe the old, more complicated method, which may be useful if you want to modify your autodiscovery tags.

Note: I do not recommend the trick explained below if you already have a sizeable number of subscribers to your Atom feed that you want to redirect to your Feedburner feed, since they will no longer be redirected afterwards. Use the updated trick above instead.

Preparation:
Set up a Feedburner account. When it asks you for your Feed URL, type in "YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/atom.xml".

Next, under the Blogger dashboard, go to Settings > Site Feed and clear the "Post Feed Redirect URL" field. This will stop Blogger from redirecting people who try to access your Atom feed.

Step One: Modify Your Autodiscovery Tags:
To credit my sources properly, I learned how to do this from a post by matt in the Feedburner forums that has since had its contents removed.

With your blog open, view the html source of your page. Look for a block of code similar to the following:

Copy the similar looking block from your blog's html source code and paste it in a temporary .txt document. You may now close your Blog's html source.

We're now going to modify what you just pasted into the .txt document. Replace these two lines:

with the following:

This next step will involve modifying your Blogger template. I strongly urge you to backup your Blogger template beforehand in case you make a mistake. From the Blogger dashboard, go to Template > Edit html. Look for the following line in your template's html:

Delete this line and replace it with the contents of the .txt file you saved earlier, then click "Save Template". You have now successfully modified the autodiscovery tags, and browsers that auto-detect RSS feeds will now be directed to your Feedburner feed only.

Step Two: Use Your Atom Feed as a Sitemap
If you have Google'd your own site, you may have noticed that not all of your individual Blog posts have been indexed. One way to help this along is to provide the Google webcrawler with a sitemap. A sitemap is an XML document that tells the crawler how to properly index all the pages on your site. As Blogger users, we cannot write our own sitemap file, but we can use our Atom Feed as a sitemap.

To begin, sign into Google Webmaster Tools using the same Google account that you use for Blogger. Follow the on screen instructions to verify your Blog. Once you've finished that, click on the "Sitemaps" tab, then the "Add Sitemap" button. Select "Add General Web Sitemap" from the pulldown menu, type in "atom.xml" for Step 3 and click "Add Sitemap". Google will now be able to use this information to index your site properly.

Current Issues
~~I so far have not been able to figure out is how to redirect the "Subscribe to Posts" link at the bottom of the page to Feedburner.~~
UPDATE: Fellow blogger Juls came up with this excellent way to redirect your main page Feed footer while preserving your comment feed! Locate this block of code:

And replace it with:

Conclusion
This is by no means a perfect trick, but I think it's a decent way to work around the current Feedburner integration problems and still make use of Feedburner and a Google Sitemap. If you have suggestions, problems or ideas, please feel free to leave a comment.

iTunes Album List in Perl

2007-07-16T00:59:00.000-04:00

This winter I took a course called System Software. In it, we learned a neat programming language called Perl. Perl was handy for that class because it happens to be very good at parsing text, and we used it to write a simple compiler. Being the pragmatic kind of person that I am, I immediately began to think of ways to use this new found skill, and the opportunity arose in a rather roundabout way.

You see, I have what I'd describe as a fairly large collection of music (roughly 18.6 days worth according to iTunes). This sometimes causes problems when I'm out shopping for CDs and I can't quite recall which ones I already own. iTunes is able to export a list of your music as an XML document, but you end up with a large unwieldy file with roughly 15 lines per song.

The solution: create a small Perl script to go through every line of this gigantic XML document and create a list of albums matched with artists. The result of my code monkeying is in the box below. Is the script terribly well written? Not especially. Did my album problem really need solving that badly? Not particularly. Was this a good excuse to play around with Perl a bit? Damn right. Enjoy.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#===========================================
#Program written by Matthew Gallant
#===========================================

$filename = $ARGV[0];
print("Extracting album list from $filename... ");
open(READ, "$filename") ||
die("\nError: $filename not found or cannot be opened.");
my %albums;
my $artist;
while(my $line = <READ>)
{
  if($line =~ m/<key>Artist<\/key>/)
  {
    chomp($line);
    $line =~ s/^\s+<key>Artist<\/key><string>//;
    $line =~ s/&#38;/&/;
    $line =~ s/<\/string>//;
    if($line =~ m/^The /)
    {
      $line =~ s/^The //;
      $line = $line . ", The";
    }
    $artist = $line;
  }
  elsif($line =~ m/<key>Album<\/key>/)
  {
    chomp($line);
    $line =~ s/^\s+<key>Album<\/key><string>//;
    $line =~ s/&#38;/&/;
    $line =~ s/ $Disc \d$//;
    $line =~ s/<\/string>//;
    if($line ne "N/A")
    {
      my %artistalbums;
      if(exists $albums{$artist})
      {
        my $albumsref = $albums{$artist};
        %artistalbums = %$albumsref;
      }
      $artistalbums{$line} = "";
      $albums{$artist} = \%artistalbums;
    }
  }
}
close(READ);
print("Complete.\n");
print("Writing album list to Album List.txt... ");
open(WRITE, ">Album List.txt") ||
die("\nError: Album List.txt cannot be written to.\n");
for my $key (sort(keys %albums))
{
  $tempkey = $key;
  if($tempkey =~ m/, The$/)
  {
    $tempkey =~ s/, The//;
    $tempkey = "The " . $tempkey;
  }
  printf WRITE ("%-40.39s", $tempkey);
  my $valuesref = $albums{$key};
  my %values = %$valuesref;
  foreach my $album (sort(keys %values))
  {
    print WRITE ("$album\n\t\t\t\t\t");
  }
  print WRITE ("\n");
}
close(WRITE);
print("Complete.");
exit(0);

The result should look something like this. If you'd like to try this program out, but don't have the experience to run it in the command prompt, here's a summarized guide with some helpful links:

If you're running Windows, you'll need to download a Perl interpreter such as ActivePerl. If you're running Linux, it's built in.
Open up a simple text editor (NodePad, WordPad, TextPad), then save the code from the above box as "albumlister.pl". Open iTunes, go to File > Export Library and save it as "library.xml" in the same directory as the Perl code.
Open up the command prompt and switch over to the directory where you saved the Perl code (helpful guide here).
Type in the following to run the program: "perl albumlister.pl library.xml". Your album list will be stored in a file called "Album List.txt" in the same directory.

Webcomics - Part II

2007-07-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

And now, the thrilling conclusion of our two-part look at the world of webcomics (part one can be found here).

The Good: Overcompensating features the offbeat humour and social commentary of Jeffrey Rowland, a man some describe, with a glint of fear in their eyes, as a "billionaire cowboy poet hacker". He is also the creator of Wigu, another very popular webcomic.
The Bad: Sometimes more strange than funny.
Worth reading: Diggin

The Good: Penny Arcade was the first webcomic I ever stumbled upon. To many, it is the standard by which all other webcomics about video games are judged. Even after all these years, it's still my favorite gaming webcomic; it's extremely well written, and has been consistently funny for as long as I've read it.
The Bad: Occasional "strip only funny if you read the news post and follow three links" syndrome.
Worth reading: Dark Truths

The Good: It's hard to describe exactly why Perry Bible Fellowship is funny in such a unique way. Artist Nicholas Gurewitch seems to have a knack for humour that comes at you in ways that you didn't see coming. The comic is quirky, offbeat and fantastic, a must-read.
The Bad: Can't think of anything, it's just a great strip.
Worth reading: Food Fight

The Good: Questionable Content is a comic about indie rock, hipster romance and a maniacal robot named Pintsize. While getting into the story will involve reading through the substantial comic archive from the beginning, the plot is really engaging once you do.
The Bad: Dark rumours surrounding the author (not really). While QC features some interesting female characters, the male characters are generally either really boring or completely embody male stereotypes. That's just my perspective though, feel free to argue the contrary if you disagree.
Worth reading: Lady Classes

The Good: Sam and Fuzzy is quite possibly my favorite non-gaming comic. The dialogue is terrific and the artwork is top-notch, but most importantly the comic features a terrific cast of characters (psychopathic Fuzzy is particularly excellent). Recent story arcs have been really interesting and imaginative.
The Bad: No RSS feed!
Worth reading: Paycheque

The Good: Unlike some webcomics, Scary Go Round does not grab you rudely by the collar and shove a joke down your throat. The humour is subtle, sarcastic and served with a cup of tea, a style that is distinctively British. The cast of characters is fantastic, including the bright-eyed and troublesome Shelley Winters and the decidedly pragmatic ex-boozehound Ryan Beckwith. Furthermore, the strip has featured some incredibly creative settings and story arcs.
The Bad: Individual strips are generally not that funny unless you're familiar with the characters and plot (but if you are, they're terrific).
Worth reading: March 16, 2004

The Good: Regular characters in Sinfest include God, the devil, Buddha, and a wanna-be player named Slick. Weird? Pretty much. Social and religious commentary abound, and the art style is really unique.
The Bad: Individual comics tend to be hit or miss.
Worth reading: Craving

The Good: Three Panel Soul is a new project from the creators of the now completed Mac Hall. The humour is fresh and strange, with intermittent political commentary. It also has a rather unique art style, mostly black & white with occasional splashes of colour.
The Bad: Too soon to tell, seems excellent so far.
Worth reading: On Literary Criticism

The Good: VG cats is one of the most popular webcomics out there, well-known for it's excellent parodies.
The Bad: At least Scott Ramsoomair isn't teasing us with "Updated Mondays" anymore; new comics are fairly sporadic.
Worth reading: How I Learned To Love The Bomb

The Good: xkcd is the kind of comic that appeals to tech geeks, math nerds and science dorks. Clearly I'm a huge fan. Randall Munroe's offbeat humour is truly first class, even if his characters are essentially stick figures.
The Bad: To quote the author: "Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)". Consider yourself warned.
Worth reading: The Difference

In conclusion, I'd like to thank the authors of all the webcomics that I've profiled this week. While I did write some minor complaints about each of your comics, I remain a huge fan of your work, which you generously offer to be enjoyed for free. Thank you for all your hard work, and please continue making great art.

Minor Update: Feedburner

2007-07-13T03:16:00.000-04:00

I just thought I'd mention that since Blogger has recently improved Feedburner integration, I've moved the Quixotic Engineer feed over to there. Why, you ask? Feedburner gives me a bit more control as an author, provides feedback and statistics, and has some other useful features as well.

What does mean for you? Probably not much. If you're already subscribed to this site's feed, you may or may not need to re-subscribe to the new Feedburner feed (I'm not sure). If this post has meant nothing to you, never fear, it's a minor technical matter and you can safely ignore it!

UPDATE: It turns out that redirecting my Atom feed to Feedburner was messing up my Google sitemap, which in turn was causing my pages to be indexed poorly. New subscribers to the feed will now be directed directly to Feedburner, but anyone who subsribed to the old feed will no longer be redirected. This won't actually affect what you get very much, but I just thought I'd let you know.

It's Only Teenage Wasteland

2007-07-12T01:35:00.000-04:00

Technically I'm already breaking my own rule, but I'll make an exception for awesome news like this:

SANTA MONICA, CA - July 11, 2007- Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, and MTV Games, a division of MTV Networks which is a division of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), announced today that one of the most influential records in rock history, The Who's iconic Who's Next, will become the first full length album available as a digitally-distributed game level for the upcoming videogame Rock Band™ - a first ever offering for a videogame. In addition to announcing full-length album availability, MTV Games and Harmonix also announced the first 16 Rock Band songs, spanning every genre of rock from alternative to classic to heavy metal. As previously announced Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) will serve as the exclusive distribution and marketing partner for Rock Band, managing distribution for the game in US, Europe and Australia

Holy crapcakes! Who's Next is one of my all time favorite albums and there's not a bad track on it. I was already really excited about Harmonix's Rock Band, but this seals the deal for me.

[See Kotaku for the full story.]

Webcomics - Part I

2007-07-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

It all began about six years ago with an issue of PlayStation magazine. Featured inside was the comic Penny Arcade, which detailed the mad escapades of gamers Tycho Brahe and Jonathan Gabriel. It was my first gaming comic, and it piqued my interest enough to venture onto their website. My exploration soon lead to other gaming webcomics, and then to non-gaming webcomics. I've been a fan of the medium ever since.

What makes webcomics so great? I'm sure there's more than one right answer, but I think it has something to do with niche marketing. A syndicated comic published in thirty different newspapers has to be funny in a very general way. An obscure reference would pass over the heads of most readers. Webcomics usually target a specific audience; if Ctrl+Alt+Del makes a joke about Samus Aran, they can safely assume that their audience will understand the reference. Web-syndicated comics also benefit from fewer controls. Without editors and censors, the artist has the final word as to the content of their strip.

To show my appreciation for this fantastic medium, here are a few short profiles of some of my favorite webcomics (in glorious alphabetical order). For each I've included a short description and a link to at least one strip that is definitely worth reading. Without further ado:

The Good: While it only began this February, 2P Start is already showing promise as a really fantastic gaming comic. The jokes are great and the art keeps improving.
The Bad: It has yet to strongly distinguish itself from all the other video game themed webcomics.
Worth reading: Over The Top

The Good: A Lesson Is Learned is quite possibly the most surreal and oddly philosophical webcomic I have ever read. The artwork is incredible, and has won several awards.
The Bad: The comic has been on hiatus since September 2006. We can only hope that Dale Beran and David Hellman choose to pick it up again soon.
Worth reading: Morning, Sleepy Head!

The Good: Butternutsquash is irreverent, sarcastic and never politically correct. Features a great cast of characters and very distinctive dialogue.
The Bad: Updated rarely (every ~2 weeks) and occasionally relies on clichés.
Worth reading: Lost Time

The Good: Ctrl+Alt+Del is one of the most popular gaming comics out there, and is probably best known for its wacky characters. Zeke the sarcastic Xbox robot is particularly funny.
The Bad: A hit-or-miss affair, the story arcs are usually better than the individual comics.
Worth reading: Sweet Nothings

The Good: Dresden Codak explores themes such as quantum physics and postmodern philosophy, yet manages to retain a great tongue in cheek sense of humour. Tiny Carl Jung is a recurring character; need I say more?
The Bad: Some scientific references may be hard to understand, but hit up Wikipedia and use this as a chance to learn something new.
Worth reading: Lil' Werner

The Good: Set loosely in the prohibition era, Lackadaisy is essentially about rum-running cats. Why cats? To quote the artist, Tracy Butler: "It's mostly just a device I like to use for characterization. The mobile ears, tails, and big eyes help me emphasize gesture and expression more than I could with human characters, they allow me to be as ridiculous as I like, and, well, they're just plain fun to draw." This is no exaggeration; her character's facial features are quite simply the best I've ever seen. Combine that with incredible artwork, great characters and fantastic dialogue and you've got one of the most underrated webcomics ever. Check it out!
The Bad: Updates are infrequent, but considering the quality of the artwork, this is entirely forgivable.
Worth reading: Brouhaha

The Good: Little Gamers is a really well written webcomic (for proof, check the worth reading link). Yet another great thing to come out of Sweden.
The Bad: Like most gaming webcomics, the jokes are usually hit or miss.
Worth reading: Dec 25

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

The Good: Two bohemian robots explore the solar system and find philosophical and moral predicaments at every turn. NPWIL is well-written and imaginative.
The Bad: Of all the webcomics I've profiled in this post, this one is updated the least frequently. A few months between comics is standard.
Worth reading: Explanation

The Good: I just discovered Nobody Scores recently, but it seems really quirky and funny.
The Bad: I haven't been reading it long enough to judge.
Worth reading: Frozen Fresh Bonus Pack

The Good: Orneryboy chronicles the supernatural adventures of the titular main character, his messy animal-loving girlfriend Dirtygirl, and zombie friend/pet Brian. The contrast between the bright, optimistic Dirtygirl and grumpy Orneryboy is written in a way that's cute and endearing, never cheesy.
The Bad: Updates are unfortunately sporadic.
Worth reading: Thankless Toil

Stay tuned Friday for 10 more webcomic recommendations in Webcomics - Part II!

The Importance of Pacing

2007-07-09T01:09:00.000-04:00

I have a friend named Sven in Software Engineering with me at Concordia. While we've often collaborated well together on projects, our styles of programming couldn't be more different.

Sven likes to research and prepare. He reads the class textbook religiously and writes out his algorithms extensively beforehand. When he gets down to the nitty gritty of writing code, he's already almost done.

I, on the other hand, throw myself into programming projects headfirst. I implement new concepts on the fly and learn by doing. I've described it as "gonzo coding" to some people, though if I really wanted to be true to Mr. Thompson's legacy I'd avoid editing too. In practice the opposite is true, with large segments of code needing to be tweaked to fit my mercurial plans and abstract visions.

When planning this blog, however, I took a page from the book of Sven and read lots of advice for new bloggers. Some of it was technical and mostly involved toying with the html of the Blogger template. Some suggestions dealt with the page's aesthetics, while others referred to accessibility and writing style.

What really struck me was the advice to avoid new blogger burnout. I recognized immediately what they were talking about: I may have a dozen good ideas for new posts right now, but if I update too frequently I may find myself at a loss for fresh ideas in a matter of weeks.

To avoid this predicament, the general consensus was that it is essential to create an update schedule and be consistent. In theory, not only will this set a manageable pace for blogging but also let readers know when they can expect new content.

Therefore, I'm letting you, my handful of readers, know that I plan to publish a new post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Coming this Wednesday: a much more substantial post about webcomics.

A Salute to Daring Covers

2007-07-06T20:21:00.000-04:00

Cover versions. Most bands try them. The results are usually bland, pedestrian and completely unoriginal. Every once in a while, though, you come across a cover that completely changes the way you look at a song; something daring that makes major changes to the instrumentation, pacing and tone.

I recently stumbled upon one such cover, and it inspired me to write this post. The song "Just", originally by Radiohead, is a great alternative rock track that features terrific wailing electric guitars and plaintive vocals. That is until British artist/producer Mark Ronson decided to inject it with a syringe full of groove.

Ronson's cover, embedded below, is a completely different experience. The wailing guitar has become a horn section and the new drum work is not unlike what you'd hear on a George Clinton record. The whole tone of the song, previously mournful and bitter, is now funky and fresh. Making an alternative rock song danceable is already a noticeable feat, but a quality cover like this is a truly praiseworthy accomplishment.

It is in this spirit that I present to you three of my personal favorite covers by artists who dared to do things differently. If there's a distinctive cover that you love, show it some appreciation by leaving a comment.

All Along the Watchtower
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
(Original by Bob Dylan)
Rumour has it that Dylan himself prefers Hendrix's legendary cover. Released just one year after the original, Hendrix turned this classic folk track into an incredibly powerful and soulful rock song.
Hurt
Johnny Cash
(Original by Nine Inch Nails)
What other country/folk legend would cover a NIN song? Cash's tragic passing soon after the song's release made his version especially poignant. If you enjoyed this song, I urge you to check out the albums American III: Solitary Man and American IV: The Man Comes Around, they're fantastic.
Hallelujah
Jeff Buckley
(Original by Leonard Cohen)
Leonard Cohen is a musical genius, and the original version of Hallelujah is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The fact that Jeff Buckley could take that song and perform it differently but with equal majesty is a testament to his talent.

A Beginner's Guide to RSS Feeds

2007-07-04T01:20:00.000-04:00

I have a confession: I hate change. I get so comfortable doing things a certain way that I sometimes resist changes that I know will be good for me in the long run. This gives you a bit of context as to why I'm usually about a year or two behind in upgrading my internet browser and other software. I fight tooth and nail to keep my old version, and only grudgingly submit to an upgrade.

When I finally did upgrade to IE7 (if you're wondering why I haven't switched to Firefox, consult the above paragraph), I found a host of features that I actually really enjoyed. As someone who really enjoys blogs and webcomics, I especially enjoyed the RSS Feeds function. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd write a quick guide to help my fellow luddites embrace this technological wonder.

What is an RSS Feed?

Websites such as blogs and webcomics syndicate new content at certain intervals. The old fashioned way to check if a website had new content was simply to visit it and check. However, if a website adds new content infrequently or irregularly (I'm lookin' at you, VG Cats) this can become time-consuming and frustrating. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way for website owners to tell interested users that new content was available?

The solution is an RSS Feed (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, believe it or not). Website owners create a feed site for their page on which they publish new syndicated content. Using a compatible internet browser (or an aggregator), a user can subscribe to these feeds (more on that later). Once subscribed, the browser will check for new content from that feed according to a time schedule and notify the user when new content is found.

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Here is a step-by-step guide to using feeds in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0.0:

1. Surf over to a site that you'd like to subscribe to. For this example, we'll use my site, The Quixotic Engineer. If a website has an RSS Feed available (not all sites do), the RSS Button on your browser will turn orange. If so, click the RSS button (picture below). Alternately, there might be a button on the page labeled "Feed Site" or "RSS Feed" that should link you to their site feed.

2. The site you will find yourself on is the site's feed. There should be box at the top of the page similar to the one in the picture below (click to enlarge). Click on the "Subscribe to this feed" button to do exactly that.

OK, I've subscribed to a feed, what now?

Here's where IE7 and Firefox divert a little.

In Internet Explorer, feeds are saved under the "Feeds" portion of the favorites menu. To get there, first click the yellow star in the top left corner of the screen, then click on "Feeds". All the feeds that you've added will be here, sorted in alphabetical order. Feeds with unread content are bolded. If you right click on the feed, you can specify how often you would like the computer to check for new content.

In Firefox, using what is called "Live Bookmarking", feeds are treated like a favorites subfolder which can be moved anywhere in your favorites folder. Click on a feed and it will open like a folder, showing the latest posts from that site. This is only one option for handling RSS feeds in Firefox, however. There seem to be add-ons that let you handle feeds differently according to your preference. If you're reading this post and have experience with Firefox RSS, please leave a comment and I will alter this post accordingly (and credit you, of course).

My limited experience with Firefox notwithstanding, I hope that you, my fellow slow adapter, are convinced and have the tools necessary to start creating your own RSS library. Godspeed.

Bioshock Preview

2007-07-02T19:43:00.000-04:00

If you're at all tuned in to gaming news, you've heard of it and possibly salivated a little. I'm not going to say anything new here that you haven't heard before.

To everyone else, the word of the day is Bioshock. A spiritual successor to the innovative System Shock series and scheduled to be released in late August, the game is attracting a lot of seemingly well-deserved hype. I can say from personal experience that every person who I've shown the game to has expressed an interest in purchasing it.

From what information has been released thus far, we know that the setting is the underwater city of Rapture. Built by a man named Andrew Ryan in the late 40's, the city was to be an objectivist utopia where "the artist would not fear the censor, the great will not be constrained by the small and the scientist would not be bound by petty morality..."

It is in this city that an underwater source of raw stem cells, dubbed ADAM, was discovered. Citizens of rapture quickly began using these cells to modify their bodies and minds, but for some the price was their humanity. A civil war soon broke out between Ryan and a young entrepreneur named Tenebaum who had a monopoly on ADAM. In the conflict, all natural sources of the cells were irreparably destroyed. This was bad news for a city now entirely dependant on ADAM, which functioned as both lifeblood and currency for the population, and society quickly degenerated into chaos.

As a means of preserving the ADAM that remained, Dr. Tenebaum conceived a way of harvesting it off dead. He created the Little Sisters, genetically modified creatures in the form of little girls who wander Rapture with gigantic syringes. When they find a dead body, they suck out the ADAM and drink it, their bodies converting it into a stable form. As a player, these creatures present an interesting dilemma, as they possess the genetic material that you need to upgrade your character. However, harvesting this material off the Little Sisters, we are told, will result in their death.

It is for that reason that Dr. Tenebaum also designed the Big Daddy. While little is known about what exactly the Big Daddies are, we know that they resemble men in giant diving suits, and are often armed with shotguns and drills. Their goal is to escort the Little Sisters around Rapture and protect them from harm. They will not attack you unless you attempt to harm the Little Sisters. The AI interactions between the two are amazing to watch, as the Little Sisters skip and jump ahead of their protectors, whom they refer to as "Mr. Bubbles" (yes, that's where I stole this name from). Big Daddies are generally too strong to be killed by the player alone, but can be felled by cunning use of the environment (as demonstrated in the Hunting the Big Daddy video.) As such, they represent a sort of optional roaming boss battle, with the rewards being ADAM that the little sisters possess.

Personally, this concept alone is enough to sell me the game. It's this kind of innovation that the FPS genre has been sorely lacking in recent years. To see the game in action, check out the following video demo, and follow the links for more at the bottom of the page.

Bioshock Walkthrough Trailer: a bit long and lots of talking, but a very interesting demonstration.
Hunting the Big Daddy: an example of how difficult killing a Big Daddy can be, with demonstrations of the various plasmid abilities.
First Trailer: the first glimpse of the world of Rapture and its inhabitants.

A Night in Montreal

2007-07-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

Montreal is a fantastic city in the summer; it has four universities downtown, a great selection of bars, clubs and venues, and a fairly unique mix of English, French, and a thousand other languages. With the F1, Just For Laughs, Francofolies and (most importantly) The Montreal Jazz Festival in town, there is no shortage of fun things to do.

I got to sample three of my personal favorites iconic Montreal institutions yesterday, so I figured I'd write about them:

Carlos & Pepe's

Carlos & Pepe's is considered by many to be the best Mexican restaurant in Montreal. It has great food, large portions, cheap drinks and it's easy on the wallet. I had a great chicken quesadilla with rice and a salad, and that put me back only a little over 10$.

The Montreal Jazz Festival

The word "jazz" is used loosely here, considering invited artists this year include Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Personally, I think that the variety helps make the festival even better. There is jazz, blues, world, and soul music on a half-dozen stages, and all of the outdoor concerts are free! I only had time to wander for about an hour or two, but I managed to check out four interesting bands:

Jodi Proznick Quartet: I'm not a huge jazz fan, but these guys played the kind of jumpy jazz that's really fun to listen to. The bass player, Jodi Proznick, was fantastic.
Ragleela: "Indian ragas" music, apparently. Wasn't really my kind of thing, but it was interesting to listen to, with the sitar and tabla.
Shakura S'Aida: This band was really fantastic. The singer had a terrific set of pipes, and the perfect voice for the kind of blues and soul they were playing. They had a great organ/piano man who did some really fun improvisation, and they mixed in some really great guitar solos. I'll definitely look for them again next year.
Jah Cutta & Determination: I only had a chance to watch these guys for a little while. They were playing on the "tropical" stage, so it was highly Caribbean influenced music. While I can't say I'm a big fan of the genre, the audience was really responding to them.

Brutopia Brewpub

I love a good beer. Two of my favorite Montreal bars, Brutopia and Les Trois Brasseurs, both brew fresh beer on site. I'm not a beer connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but if you like beer and haven't tried microbrewed beer, I can't emphasize how badly you need to go out and try one. They're roughly a billion times better.

That night I tried two fantastic beers. The first was a Scotch ale, which was a dark red beer. I lack adequate vocabulary to properly describe a beer, but it combined everything I love about a red with the qualities of a darker beer. The second, which they called Great Plains, was an unfiltered wheat beer. I had never tried a wheat beer before, but I really enjoyed the distinctive taste.

Not only was the beer fantastic, but they had a great live blues quartet playing. They were called the Stephen Barry Band, and they all looked old enough to be grandparents. Apparently that night was their 32nd(!) anniversary playing together. They played a terrific set, lots of classic covers, and with four instruments (guitar / bass / drums / sax) they made a great simple-yet-full sound. I thought so much of them I went to see them during a break and bought their latest album off them, Bluesville.

There you have it, one fun night in Montreal. Happy Canada day!

Indigo Prophecy

2007-06-29T23:47:00.000-04:00

I'm a chump for a game with a good concept. I purposefully seek out games where the designers have clearly taken a risk and tried something bold. Indigo Prophecy is one such game.

The premise: Lucas Kane wakes up in the bathroom of a restaurant. He has a knife in his hands, blood all over him, a corpse at his feet, and no memories of the last few hours. Furthermore, it is revealed that there is a police officer having a coffee, sitting near the entrance of the restaurant. From here, the choice of what to do is yours. Will you conceal the body in a stall? Wash your blood covered hands? Hide the knife? Clear out as fast as possible?

Once Lucas has left the scene of the crime, you are given control of the two officers in charge of the murder investigation. The evidence found and the witness testimonies heard are all completely dependent on your choices earlier in the game. Furthermore, how you choose to handle the investigation will in turn affect what happens to Lucas.

Indigo Prophecy is just barely a game in the traditional sense. It consists mostly of exploration and interaction with generous interactive movie portions. Every action is done with the context-sensitive right control stick, which is a really cool and intuitive interface. Talking to people is done with the same interface, usually with a time-limited choice of four questions. The movie segments are essentially rhythm games loosely corresponding the actions on screen.

The plot, which borrows heavily from films like The Matrix and Dark City, is by far the best part of the game. It begins as a film noir murder mystery, and slowly introduces supernatural elements. It's the video game equivalent of a page turner, with twists and turns and mysteries throughout. There are even frightening parts, which do a great job of using mood and music to create tension.

Unfortunately, the game falls apart towards the end. Apparently the plan to make the game episodic was changed late in production. As such, the game takes a 2 week time jump towards the end. Plot holes and a deus ex machina ending quickly follow. While the game manages to keep some semblance of coherence, there are simply too many new things introduced in rapid succession towards the end. This contrasts sharply with the game's otherwise slow pace.

All in all though the experience of this game was excellent, and I highly recommend it to anyone tired of GTA clones and looking for something fresh. For the especially curious, here's a video showing the first scene of the game and one particular way of handling it:

Introduction

2007-06-29T21:15:00.001-04:00

"Blogs are terribly self-serving, aren't they?" That was the beginning of the first draft of my introduction. That first draft was rambling and cheeky, but it was mostly just cocky. That wasn't the tone I wanted for this blog, so I figured I'd re-write it and be a little more honest.

Though I've adopted the online pseudonym "Mr. Bubbles" for the moment, I may change to my real name eventually. I first have to decide whether or not this blog is too embarrassing for my friends and family to read. I'm a software engineering major studying at Concordia university in Montreal. I could tell you about my interests here, but I think that will mostly be revealed by what I write about, such as music, gaming, books, etc.

To be truthful, I'm still wary that this blog might be entirely narcissistic, so I'll be writing about things other than myself as much as possible. For the moment, I think I'll finish with the last paragraph that I salvaged from my first draft: "If you do happen to be a non-me person (of which there are many), feel free to leave a comment. Nasty or nice. I promise that I won't delete your comments unless I feel like it."