I have not laughed this hard at a video in a long, long time. 
It’s 3 and half minutes, so you can definitely sneak it in between meetings.
Tom Izzo should take money out of the equation as he ponders Cavaliers | cleveland.com.
For the 23 people on the planet who are not aware, LeBron James is currently a free agent. Lesser known outside of the NBA is that the Cavs are also looking for a new coach, who may or may not have LeBron as a player.
Terry Pluto has written a nice column about why the potential coach, Tom Izzo, should not be looking at the money when considering the job, and brings up a truism that I’m reminded off often in my line of work:
I once took a project for the money. But I made a list of all the non-financial reasons that I wanted to do it. The idea was to convince myself that I wasn’t doing it for the money.
It was self-deception.
The project also was a disaster. Because money was the ultimate bottom line, and my heart wasn’t in it. When challenges came, I wanted to bail out. I finished the job, but it wasn’t anywhere close to my best work.
I had a discussion with my mom last night about whether or not I had made the right choice with my current job, as opposed to the offer from the larger company, which would have paid more.
But in the end, everything else about my job is great: the people, the work, the working climate. As a small game company, money is always going to be a concern, and it’s something that I knew going in.
Of course, I suspect that I would have really liked the people and work at the other company, too, but I doubt that we’d be having nearly as merely discussions about Team Fortress 2, The Disney Afternoon, or why Captain America could totally take out Batman in a fight.
Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench.
I ran across this today, and it’s one of those cool graphics that basically puts things into perspective that deals with height/depth — I knew the Grand Canyon was deep, but not that deep.
And just why the heck do Sperm Whales have to dive that deep in the ocean? What secrets are they harboring down there? Someone should investigate!
FIFA World Cup Murals by ESPN | CreativeRoots – Art and design inspiration from around the world.
I’ve seen a number of these around the subway stations, and always thought that they were pretty cool — this link displays all of them, which is nice, as I haven’t seen a number of them (there are like 33 total).
…don’t be surprised if people throw up in your bed.
We’re Turning Off Our Comments Because You’re Not Cool Anymore.
I read HolyTaco on a regular basis, but never bothered with the comments — that would require more attention than my ADHD brain could handle. Still, I find this deliciously ironic that they have felt that commentors have gone too far.
Consider this quote from the post:
Holy Taco’s comments section is intended to be an environment where people are free to insult eachother’s mothers, brag about boning eachother’s mothers, and battle eachother to come up with the most creative household objects to say you shoved up someone else’s mom’s ass. Instead, it’s becoming a bastion for comedically constipated assholes desperately attempting to improve their self-image by shitting on any and all available targets, including this site’s editors, other commenters, guest columnists, and even the completely passive readers who visit our site on a daily basis.
Now, maybe it’s just me, or the fact that I am a mere couple of weeks away from falling out of the “cool” age range of 18-35, but it seems that the effort required to go from insulting people’s moms to insulting passive readers (who, you know, could totally be the aforementioned moms) is about as trivial as it is for Rush Limbaugh to go from criticizing Bill Clinton to criticizing Barack Obama. One just naturally leads to the other.
Did the editors of the site honestly think that this was not going to happen? This is the Internet, after all, the chief export of which is drama, emboldened by the sense of anonymity and delusions of grandeur. The number of people that have tried to gain a following and ‘Net stardom through nasty, bile-filled “humor” (if you want to call it that) is probably so high that Stephan Hawking would have a hard time figuring it out. Surely the editors at HolyTaco realized this?
Well, I’m thinking that it there’s a bit more to it, than that:
These types of comments are uninformative, unentertaining, and completely unacceptable. More importantly, they negatively affect our business, and once you begin infringing on our ability to run this site, you’re no longer welcome here.
Looks like this is less about offending the editors than the advertisers, and hey, I back the editors in this case. Trust me, not getting paid is a pretty crummy situation, especially when it’s something that you weren’t really expecting.
Still, I think it’s worth pointing out that this whole situation is, to me, far more amusing than the (apparently) informative, entertaining, and acceptable jokes about other people’s moms. A website that takes pride in the comment pages being filled with “dirty, tasteless, and incredibly inappropriate” jokes are now upset because the comment pages are getting, well, “dirty, tasteless, and incredibly inappropriate.”
Oh, and “not funny.” In the world of Internet snark, that may be the biggest crime of all.
To be honest, I haven’t really be spending as much time on the online dating sites as I planned. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, as the main reason is due to things like taking care of things around the house, playing outside, and otherwise spending a little more time away from the computer. That, and there are days when I just don’t feel like dealing with the amount of time and effort that it takes to write up proper emails. Oh sure, I could just use the good ol’ copy-and-paste method, but trust me, it’s like being enthused about making a girl’s parents: she can tell when you’re faking.
Still, my time back on the sites thus far has reminded me of a couple of issues I’ve had with them in the past; in this case, one each, that is unique to the particular site.
On OKCupid, the problem lies in the defaults they use when you search for matches. Even if you set the presets during a previous visit, the defaults snap back into place. Three of these are very noteworthy:
- Distance: Set to “Within 100 miles.”
- Last online: Set to “Within the last decade” (mind you, OKCupid has not been around for a decade yet, so this is really “Anyone who ever made an account that has not been erased.”
- Age: Set to 24 to 56 (this, I assume, is based on your own age)
What bugs me about this is that it’s a pretty blatant attempt to pad their results as much as possible. It’s not going to be as noticeable for someone like me, who’s living in a major metro area. But, if I was been back in Dayton, then OKC would have had to pull this trick, as it’s far fewer pickings back there. You have to basically cast a very wide net in terms of miles if you hope to actually find someone that you’re interested in dating.
But even then, the Last Online setting is completely whacked. Why would I want to see a profile of someone who hasn’t been on in over a month? Let alone a year or more? The whole point of a dating site is to meet someone “today.” Writing to an abandoned profile is about as useful as a carpool lane for Segways.
Match does not have this problem; their search page remembers the last settings you entered; and to be frank, they do have many more users than OKCupid does, so padding isn’t that big as of a need (although I’m sure that they don’t mind when it happens). Also, when they display results, they always show the most recent users first, unless you’ve entered some strict criteria that severely limits the number of results.
The problem that Match does have, however, is in their profile review service. Best I can tell, what happens is that it is sent to a computer program that scans through it for a variety of naughty words, email addresses, or other types of personal information. While this is faster than having to wait for some underpaid, overworked intern to read through a slog of submissions, this process is deeply annoying for two reasons:
First off, it limits your “voice” a bit, because a number of things can set off the filter triggers, some of which are so obscure that you might not even have thought about them as a “bad word.” This can include just a mention that you like a particular website, like hulu.com, because the filters seem to treat any use of the “.com” as some sort of attempt to get around the need to use the in-site mail system.
But it’s the second reason that is really, really grating, and I found this out the hard way:
I made a minor change in my profile a while back, noting that I was working as a Game Designer. One line was changed, and even then it was just a change from “have been working as” to “am now working as.” I sent it in for review, and was quite puzzled when it returned stating that it had been rejected because some “questionable content” was contained within. Questionable? Really? I changed, like, 4 words, all of which were prepositions. They gave a list of possible causes as part of this form letter, but did not say what the exact thing was in the profile that set off their rejection stamp. And that’s what snowballed things in an epic fail of customer service.
Since the only change I had made was one line about working as a Game Designer, I could not figure out for the life of me what was the problem. I surmised that they must have updated something in their filters that snagged on a part of my profile that had originally been deemed worthy. I tried a number of different takes on the profile (all minor, as I have gotten a number of compliments on it, even from those with no interest in dating me), but each time it got pushed back. I tried writing letters to their customer service email, explaining the problem: I couldn’t “fix” my profile because I had no idea what the problem was — the lack of any feedback meant that I was just firing my shotgun randomly in the dark, hoping to get a headshot on an approaching zombie. When their “official” customer service reply arrived, it was just another @%$# soulless form letter, with basically a direct copy and paste of the exact same rejection notice I had already been getting. It was starting to look like Kafka was the Director of Customer Service.
Finally, after some careful dissection on my own, I figured out what the issue was: in my profile, I make a reference that I felt all keyboards should come equipped with a “WTF key.” I re-spelled it as “W T F,” and sure enough, the profile was then approved. So, apparently, Match had updated their filters and determined that WTF was a bad, bad word. Or, acronym, anyway. Now I’m tempted to try and work in FUBAR and see if they catch that one or not.
Whatever the case, I never should have had to figure that on my own. Instead, what should have happened was that I should have gotten a rejection notice, explaining exactly which word or phrase was the one the tripped up the alarm. After all, if you can detect it, can’t you just make a note of what it is from the list and include that on the email?
Ironically, it could be worse — I remember back in Dayton I had a profile rejected because there actually was someone reading it, and did not get the concept of sarcasm, which I had peppered throughout the writing. I think I eventually convinced the person to let it through anyway, but still: this isn’t an English paper with only one proper form and structure. If I want to do it in iambic pentameter, well, then, I should be allowed. I’m paying for the site, after all.
For the record, OKCupid doesn’t even bother trying to police the profiles. Rather, they follow the web 2.0 approach and the the customers do it for them. Same with photos. Now, I do think that OKCupid has some filters of their own in place, but maybe not. What they do have is a button on every page and for every photo that allows the users to “flag” something that they find objectionable. When a user flags something, then OKC checks it out and determines if a deletion/removal is warranted.
From the fark.com Photoshop thread of May 12, 2010, by "supdog"
Sunday night I was burning some major midnight oil as I progressed through “Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.” To be precise, I did not get to bed until around 4 AM. Good thing I had slept in most of the weekend to bank up some sleep time, eh? Some people have a bedside lamp; I should get a bedside DSi. On second thought, that would be a bad idea – I probably would not get any sleep again. Well, aside from while doing dull things, like driving or listening to people.
Also, this late night marathon highlights my complaint against the asynchronous games that populate Facebook: there are times when I just want to play straight for about 30-45 minutes (or more), instead of the “Ding! Sorry, your five minutes are up; please come back again in an hour to play some more, or shell out $5 to keep playing.” Of course, there are some games that make this work, but they are few and far between, alas.
Anyway, in this case of late night playing, it was largely the same thing that keeps a person wrapped up in a good book: “I just want to see how this part resolves before I call it a night.” In my case, it was the Water Temple; 4 levels of tricky access. See, you can control just how much water fills the temple, and thus, which corridors you have access to. One of things that has drawn me in to the game, especially in the temples, is watching how the levels are designed to provide the player with a large space which still has a linear pathway through out. In the current deluge of games that are claiming “sandbox” and “open world” environment, it’s refreshing to be playing a game that often shows why a linear approach to a level is just as much fun (and more, usually) when designed so that a player can only take one path through while making it feel like a completely natural progression.
I also continue to be amazed at how much I enjoy the reactions of Master (the name of my hero) and the other characters in the game, despite the low poly count and non-existent high-res textures.
Oh, and hey, how cool it is, indeed, to be playing a game with true Boss Fights? The boss fight for the Water Temple also had a way wicked intro sequence, showing things from the monster’s point of view as it snuck up on Master from behind.
Also, there was also a very nice touch of psychological weirdness in one room, where you enter what appears to be the outside, in front of a lake with a mirror reflection surface, and stretches off into a opaque, light fog. Turns out you can run across the surface, and it’s eerily quiet, aside from your footsteps across the water echoing about you. Then, without warning, you are attacked by a dark version of yourself. Now, we’ve seen this in many games, but the presentation of it here was really pretty well done. Honestly, I’m not doing the scene justice, either.
Plus, many of the fights are, so far, balanced enough that you can figure out what the weak spot is and how to win without having to get spattered several times beforehand. Navi acting as a mini hint guide is handy, but since she doesn’t always have the answers, you still have to do some thinking on your own.
Mind you, the swinging camera continues to be a great annoyance, the L-targeting can be mind-bendingly picky about when it will lock on, and the collection of subscreens (map, quest, inventory, etc.) is a pretty sad UI design that was clearly made to “show off” the “3D” abilities of the game. Fortunately, all of this continues to remain merely petty annoyances rather than major pitfalls.
I have been moving back into “Zelda: the Ocarina of Time,” and I am continuously getting impressed with it. I’m still fairly early into the game, but man, there a number of things that I’m just really liking — many of which are also little flair elements that aren’t crictical to the gameplay itself, but go miles into drawing me into the experience and deepening my enjoyment.
Again, for those not aware, this particular game is about 10-12 years old, and the 3D graphics are incredibly simplistic. Still, I’m having much more fun with this game than any number of more modern releases. “Ocarina” has often been referred to as one of the very best games to be released, not just for the Zelda series, but also for the Nintendo library as a whole, and it’s not hard to see why.
So far, the game has been moving along fairly quickly; I was momentarily stumped on one puzzle, but there enough clues and hints around that so far it hasn’t been an issue. Navi, of course, makes a nice way to remind players what the next major objective is, so you don’t have to worry about wandering around lost for ages.
But it’s the little things that have really been making this game come alive: the “rockin’” (so to speak) music in the Goron city, the dry humor that (every now and then) bubbles up in the word balloons, and the various idle animations & sounds that the kid (“Link,” we’ll call him, even though you can name him whatever you want) has which always makes it clear that he is just a little boy.
There are also a lot of things that take place which I find myself greatly amused by; last night, I ran across two separate scenes that actually made me laugh:
- When Link plays a tune and the Goron King, a big, rock like creature with a big frown, starts dancing like a maniac (maniac!) on the floor (dancin’ like he never danced before….), Link actually slowly backs away from him, which is exactly what I think anyone watching would have thought.
- Later on, the King is impressed with Link’s help and pats him on the shoulder. However, given that Link is a little boy, the King accidentally knocks Link flat to the ground. The timing was worthy of Laural and Hardy.
I will admit, I have been getting a bit frustrated with the camera swinging around, especially during battles. The Lock-in system works, but a number of times I keep screwing it up and wind up losing track of the enemies. there’s also an odd quirk which is that I can kill spiders up on walls, but then am unable to retrieve the “golden skulls” which I need to complete a side quest. I’m hoping that this will be rectified when I get the boomerage, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Regardless, though, still having a lot of fun with the game. And so far, Link (despite being, like, 6 years old) is as much of a Mack expert as Commander Shepard: already it seems that he has three love interests. Talk about getting started early.
What’s that you say? You liked James Earl Jones in “Coming to America” and wished someone used his dialogue in a mash-up with the original Star Wars? Well, lucky you, someone did just that! And it’s fantastic!