BOOBIES!

I'm not dead yet, honest. I've just been lazy. Those are two different things you know! Unless, you're so lazy that you might as well be dead - but that's not me. I feel bad for not updating, but I'm too lazy to sit down for 45mins to flesh out the things on my mind.

When I first heard about the whole Mass Effect controversy on Fox news, I was going to go into a rant on the matter. I was going to take the entire debate with Fox vs. Keighly and break apart each and every claim and "rebuttal" that Fox offered. Everything they said was flawed, all of their evidence was skewed, and they had no idea what they were talking about. I was going to take each line and show why and how it was completely wrong. But, while I'm still perturbed by Fox, I'm too lazy to do it. Plus, the "expert" they hired to argue with Keighly offered an apology for her incompetence - er, I mean, lack of research. I'm not sure whether she was being sincere about it, or just trying to cover her butt - in either case, I'm just mad that there are people who watch this stuff and believe it to be true. If Mass Effect has full frontal nudity, then all beaches in the entire world should be off limits.

I've played the game; and I've seen both scenes in question. The first, I would never have encountered because it required following the "evil" track. The second was only through "hard work" of completing the love story with one of the other characters. To be honest, it's a very cinematic (in the plot sense) progression. You get to know the said love affection-character throughout the game, fight with them, and talk to endless NPCs with them. It's only reasonable that before the finale - the final battle - that your character and their love interest get a little something... But wait, what's all this fuss about! Mass Effect is rated M. The equivalent in movies is R. Both are for ages 17+. Take the movie 300. Just before the King goes to battle, he and his wife have at it - OMG BOOBIES! -- Mass Effect: NO BOOBIES! OMG THIS IS BAD!

I will venture to say that it is harder to play a game through to get to the "sex scene" (a very mild one in comparison to movies and even TV these days) than pop in a comparably rated movie just to get at some nudity. I guess I couldn't help ranting about the ordeal despite saying I was lazy. There's more to be said, but there is one point that completely shuts down any possible intelligent argument. Mass Effect is rated M. "but but! kids are seeing this!" ... Your point? Are they supposed to? Porn is meant for 18+. I don't have statistics, but with the advent of the internet... Hell, even movies depict kids with porn mags as if it's daily life. My favorite quote is, "I went on the website today. I clicked on a lot of different trailers. I tried to learn as much about it as I could before we did this... It's interesting: when you click on it, it asks you your age. It says you must go through a scanning process. So I though, ugh, this is going to take forever. Ok, so I put in my age; and then Boom you're in, no problem. So that is a pretty screen to get past."

Wait, was she trying to make a point of something? Wait, is she trying to say that a 10 year old could do this? Wait, let's up that age to 13. Wait, oh my god! Wait, she's saying that a minor could be getting into a restricted site! Wait, they're getting access to potential nudity?! Refer to one of my older posts about this age verification subject. I felt pretty good that I had already made her look stupid, before she put out the idea. There's free porn on the internet that's much worse than a video game site.

Anyway, I'm done with that. I got a new keyboard today; I'll probably share pictures next post. I also went to the Wash. DC auto show yesterday with some friends yesterday too. So stay tuned for those as well. Nothing too exciting though. I'm sorry there were no pictures in this post and it was just a long string of text. Tomorrow is Monday! Enjoy the new week. *cough*

little green man

I know this is so last week, but I was too lazy to blog the moment I found out.

YODA IS GOING TO BE IN SOULCALIBUR IV FOR XBOX 360!

Now that I'm done sounding like a complete marketing advertisement, I'd just like to reiterate how ecstatic I am about the wicked green short guy doin' his thang in ソウルキャリバー IV. Doesn't he look badass? You know how you smiled the first time Yoda whipped out his lightsaber in Episode III? Yeah, this may not be a rehash of that moment, but it is still smile-invoking nonetheless. Oh yeah, Vader is on the PS3. But honestly, envision the fight between Yoda and Vader; it wouldn't last very long: Yoda would school him all while taunting him with anastrophes like "Suck, you do." and "Slow you are; Catch me, you cannot." So since I'm an owner of a 360 and I like to dish out the PS3 hate:

Yoda > Vader :: 360 > PS3.

Hopefully Project Soul manages to incorporate these characters into the game and maintain balance. (Because let's face it, if it were my choice I'd just say: Yoda enters match. Yoda automatically wins because he's Yoda). That aspect aside, another thing that bothers me at the moment is: Lightsaber vs. Metal Sword. I haven't followed the Calibur series nor have I played any of them, so if I'm wrong about the fighters' weapons being made of metal, I'm sorry.

I don't know about you, but that picture looks unrealistic. (Ignoring the fact that there's a Vader and lightsabers exist). I've read a few Star Wars books in my time, and from what I can recall, no material resisted a lightsaber. Sure there were huge thick doors and walls and things; those just took more time for a lightsaber to cut through. So, how are these fighters are going fight against lightsabers?

... Maybe their swords are made of mirrors. Or they're "mirror-plated" metals. Because, mirrors reflect light right? I just had a revelation. Why don't these futuristic people wear armor made of mirrors? It'd be like chain mirror-metal armor or something. That way, laser guns would ricochet and lightsabers would reflect off! Genius!

Moving on to the next subject without any sort of transition at all; and completely leaving no conclusions to the Yoda-SoulCalibur train of thought... I finally got around to playing Call of Duty 4. Got it Saturday afternoon and I beat the single player campaign today. Overall, an enjoyable experience though I was slightly unnerved by the disconnected empathetic atmosphere of the game. They tried to get the point across that war is a major pile of suck through random deaths of squad mates who you really don't get a chance to be attached to. I suppose that's the trade-off in having a short but intense game. If it was a longer game with more character development/interaction, the intensity would have faltered.

Returning to my point of disjoint empathy, this game is paradoxically humanistic. War should teach us to value lives, but this game throws so many enemies at you that you end up mowing them down without a second thought. "Man that mini-gun!" "Grab the detonators on the second floor!" The best example of this is the mission where you man the guns in an AC-130 gunship. The enemies show up on your monitor as small specks (in a sense), and the larger guns you fire send these buggers flying. The 25mm gun obliterates the enemies in a shower of black and white pixelated blood and dirt. The comments by some dude in the plane make it even worse. He has a very lazy manner of commenting. "kaboom." "Good kill, good kill." "Light him up." It just isn't right. Here's a link to a video on gametrailers to see what I mean.

It's a fun game. There's no doubt about that; but it unnerved me morally. The reason I was originally going to talk about Call of Duty 4 was that I was surprised at the number of invincible monitor screens in that game. I went around shooting LCD panels and none of them died. It just left a huge bullet hole in an otherwise unchanged still image. With so much attention to detail in other places, I wonder why they didn't short out the monitors when you shot at them. I took a picture of what I'm talking about, but I can't find it anymore...

I think I'm done yapping.

Enjoy hump day tomorrow!

-nfinite

settled in

So I'm pretty much moved into my residence for this semester. Which do you like more: unpacking or packing? My guess is that you chose the former. Me too! Some parts of unpacking are actually pretty fun, right? You can call me a dork for this, but I get a feeling of accomplishment after unpacking my possessions in an organized manner - especially my desk. Scratch that last thought, I guess I should clarify that my desk is essentially the computer and peripherals. With so much moving back home, into the dorm, back home, into a different residence, back home, into dorm, etc., I think I'm gradually forming a routine to unpacking. (I only with packing was as streamlined) First is the monitor, then the PC, then the keyboard and mouse, then the speakers, then the router, then extra peripherals. The most important part would be organization of the wires.
As you can see, this part of the step doesn't go too well. At first, the wires are organized. However once you start adding more peripherals, it starts to get hectic. You try your best to use the twisties to keep the wires from being too long, but there are just too many wires! Still, despite how convoluted it looks, I still was satisfied with the result because I know how much worse it could be. *Smiles at self* - Ok that was depressing.

Time to discuss road configurations.

Let's talk about "WTF-inspiring" roads. Since I'm Vietnamese and since I'm near the DC area, I had to visit the Vietnamese niche around Falls Church - namely the Eden shopping center. It's located on one of the corners of this intersection/area called "Seven Corners". This place is confusing as balls. Take this from someone who lives near a highway group nicknamed Spaghetti Junction. At least spaghetti junction looks natural and symmetrical. What the heck happened with Seven Corners? It's like they contracted 7 different people to build 7 different portions of road and said, "Hey, let's meet in the center for fun!". Yeah, I needed to get to a left branch, so I was in the left lane. It turns out I needed to be in the right lane in order to go over and stuff. I don't even know if this could be called ordered chaos. It's just chaos.

This was pretty fun leaving too. I haven't seen this kind of road setup before. I needed to merge into the main road from a side road. The thing is, the side road was a 2-way street. It was a big game of "how did the chicken get to the other side?" Answer: By facing on coming traffic with a simple Stop-Yield sign.

Now for a complete change of direction.

I was sitting on the can today at work - couldn't hold it 'til I got home. And I was examining the toilet paper. What else are you supposed to do? There's only so much Staring-At-Wall I can take. You know how places that try to save money use that really crappy toilet paper? You know the kind that's thinner than hair and makes printer paper seem soft? Yeah, and then you end up reeling out the stuff so that you have enough paper that won't tear. To give my work office some credit, I think they went a little fancy on the TP. They had non-standard size sheets. They weren't square like most of the TP I've encountered in my life. I'd even dare to say that the individual sheets might even have been perforated to make rectangles with the golden ratio.

All of this, however, is background information. This leads me to my revelation. Why is toilet paper perforated into small sheets anyway? Do you use one sheet? If you do, I need to study on your wiping techniques - because I would surely end up dipping a finger through the TP. ... that's pretty sick actually... My first thought was, toilet paper designers should find the perfect length of toilet paper that can be folded into a sturdy wiping utility. But then, I brainstormed some more and thought: why don't toilet paper makers simply roll up pre-determined and researched wiping sheets. You could still keep it on a roll (to keep the essence of toilet paper) but make it so that each individual sheet is thick enough to withstand... pressure. But also make it the right size! Personally, my ideal sized TP is a square TP sheet folded in half. If the TP makers researched how to make the thinnest possible TP, I'm sure they could perform experiments on ideal TP size and thickness.

Too much information? ...your fault for reading it.

May you enjoy all the thinking time you have available to you!

Welcome to 2008!

It's too bad that I didn't finish my layout, tweaks, and additions until this morning. It would have been nice to have this post on 01.01.2008! I hope everyone welcoming the new year in style and with good cheer! First thing's first; as I'm sure you have noticed, the blog design has been updated! This took me a good day of interspersed work to complete. These were the things I accomplished:

• First and foremost: new banner and background!
• Updated CSS template to go with the updated graphics.
• Fixed an issue where line spacing would revert to no spacing after an image or list; This was a pain in the butt for readability since everything was scrunched together. I had been meaning to get it fixed, but never got around to it.
• All pictures now have opacity applied to it with mouse-over effect. Simple, but sleek.
• Incorporated Lokesh Dhakar's LightBox javascript so that images will appear in a popup preloader. I had always wanted to do this. Sometimes in previous posts I would make an image link appear in a new window, but I got lazy sometimes and it would simply load on the same page.

The first bullet point caused me a lot of distress. Wait, scratch that. It should not have caused me any stress. Rather: INTERNET FRICKIN EXPLORER caused me stress. The banner, as you can see (if you're using FireFox or IE7) is nice and transparent - 80% transparency. At first, I remembered that IE6 and prior had issues with alpha transparency (or opacity) of .PNGs. However, I needed the background to be completely transparent. A .gif would not do since it would be horrid trying to make the banner background (non-text) transparent. PNG it would have to be. So I set about setting the opacity of the image.

Great! Firefox worked! FAIL, Internet Explorer still rendered pure black.

So then, I made some modifications to the CSS and HTML. Great! Firefox worked! FAIL, I.E. had jaggies out the butt! Well, I'll give it just a teensy bit of credit; IE at least made the logo transparent. ...At the cost of the thing looking ugly as balls.

After much searching, I simply gave up. If you're still on IE6 or below, make the right choice and update your web browser to Firefox. If you insist on being a IE fan, I guess IE7 will have to do.
Don't get me started on the CSS Block and Float models... Still, despite how long it took, at least Internet Explorer is headed in the right direction.

That last bullet point took me the longest to do. Not because it was hard, but because I was dumb. I had done everything properly, but the image would not load in the LightBox. It would show the loading.gif image but image would never load. I tried all sorts of things. In the end it turned out that the automatically generated url path of the image when uploading to PicasaWeb by Blogger was a little off. Basically, all I had to do was change the image path from "../../s160-h/... .jpg" to "../../s160/... .jpg". Stupid '-h'. So basically, nothing was wrong with the lines of code. It was just a misdirected link.

So, with this new year, I have two Blogger-resolutions.

1. Post at least once a week. (This is more reasonable than my previous goal of 2 or 3 a week).
2. Keep up good formatting practices. Prior to this, I was too lazy and just left bad looking paragraph formatting as the browser tried to render it. Now, I'm going to try and make sure everything looks neat.

Onward to the main event!

So I found out that Picasa can integrate with Blogger now. So here it is, a guided-tour album of my entire holiday break. If you wish to see pictures of me, you'll have to message me in person. No way are those going public. Please don't turn off the comments since they provide valuable information into the album. Enjoy the full screen! (But don't click the 'X'!) Oh, and if it doesn't look like a slideshow, refresh the page. Sometimes the album and not the slideshow loads.

this is a test post

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and stuff, right? and now a list that will screw things up:

1. hello
2. i'm a monkey

and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list and i'm done with that list, now for another type of list

• I'm a double monkey
• and I'm a triple
• okay!

Back to lameness; this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens. this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens. this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens. this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens. this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens .this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens .this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens .this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens.this is a post to test some stuff that happens when other stuff happens that's kinda lame when that stuff happens