Recently I’ve been caring less about everything on my computer being customized and tweaked to my exact needs. I think that attitude was my main problem with all things Apple. Their products generally come out of the box the way they are and stay that way forever. iTunes for example, will always have an interface not native to Windows that just doesn’t quite feel right. It doesn’t help that the program is kind of slow and clunky, but even if it were fast the behaviors are not natural for Windows. Which makes sense considering it’s Apple and it was designed for their own OS in the first place. But it’s the obtuseness of porting all that behavior over to Windows that bothers me. Why not hire some Windows developers to make a program natively for Windows. Or at the very least, open up the iPod so any program can do everything iTunes does without messy reverse-engineering. I get that they want to sell you stuff on the iTunes Store but that doesn’t really make me feel any better about the situation.
I’ve been reexamining the alternatives lately, because I decided to buy one of those new iPod Nanos. I was considering buying a Touch but decided I would rather have something more compact since I’m never ever going to watch videos or play games on an iPod. I was also considering a non-Apple player, but the ubiquity of iPods is appealing and there’s nothing significantly superior out there anyway. I used to still do hate the iPod white plastic bar-of-soap design, but these Nanos are pretty slick. Plus it comes in orange. Orange rules. So yeah, iTunes alternatives. Winamp does more or less everything iTunes does, but somehow they made an even worse media library interface than Apple did so that’s out. My music player of choice (Foobar2000) has an iPod plug-in but it would require some work to get it doing roughly 90% of the stuff iTunes does. And like I said at the start, I just don’t want to spend time messing around with that anymore. Maybe this winter when I’m sitting at home with nothing to do.
But for now, I’ve got iTunes 8 installed and I’ve been using it for about a week. I still wouldn’t say it’s a well designed program but it does some things well and I haven’t been driven away in frustration… so it’s not so bad. I’ve been using the Genius playlist generation feature a lot. It’s a feature that appeals to people who like the experience of listening to the radio (except without commercials). You hear some songs frequently enough that they get stuck in your head, with some less often played songs filling the space between. Coverflow is also kinda neat, assuming you have nice album art for everything. Which reminds me, one time-consuming task was getting all my album art showing up in iTunes. It won’t just look for a .jpg in the album folder, you have to embed it into each MP3’s id3 tag. I first tried a program that automates this task, but it resized all my album art into a low resolution blurry mess before embedding. So I had to hunt down good quality album art for each of my ~300 albums and embed them all within iTunes one album at a time. That fucking sucked. But not totally iTunes’ fault.
As for the iPod Nano, it plays MP3s. That’s all I really need. I’ve always felt the wheel was a little awkward for scrolling through large lists of items, but other than that I have no issues with it. I like that I can generate Genius playlists on the Nano. I like the way it looks. Not sure what else you can say about an iPod anymore. Oh, I had bought a better pair of in-ear canalphones before I got the iPod, knowing the reputation of Apple’s bundled earbuds. And if I’m just sitting at my desk I can definitely tell the difference in quality. But the microphonic effect of the cable brushing against my clothing (caused by having a sealed ear canal) is really distracting. So when I’m moving (i.e. any situation where I would want to use the iPod), the bundled Apple earbuds are less irritating and I can’t really tell the difference in quality anyway. So that was a waste of 80 bucks.
In summary, I’m totally over hating on Apple. Mostly.
This would be awful anyway, but I’m also sad to see Michael from The Wire in a new version of 90210. On the other hand his acting here is pretty awful. Maybe he’s lucky to have any part he can get.
I’m not sure the game is all that special but the developers seem awesomely insane! (even though these are likely not the actual developers..they still had to create this video! Ok fine some marketing person at Sony is awesomely insane.)
As much as it is possible to hate a man I will never meet and that has not killed a close friend or family member, that is how much I hate Denis Dyack. And that was before I saw this
interview with him on OXM (via
Destructoid). This is the part where he’s explaining why people didn’t like the Too Human demo:
But what we’re also seeing is for the people who don’t like it, generally just don’t get it. And it’s because we’ve created something so innovative and different. It’s ironic, it just shows that human nature of if you don’t understand something, you immediately attack it. It’s pretty interesting in that regard.
Really, I could pick any paragraph from this interview to explain my hatred, but this one in particular is so… so awful. I would jokingly say that this would only make sense as some bizarre social experiment to see what happens when you act like the ultimate douchebag but… Dyack has actually
used that excuse before. This man… I hate him so much. I wish his ability to communicate was violently removed by a rabid baboon that recently escaped from a nearby zoo. That he has this level of control over my emotions only makes me hate him more.
I’m not going to shit on Silicon Knights for making bad games, they appear to be a competent group of developers. I liked Eternal Darkness when it came out, though I think that had more to do with me only owning a Gamecube and being starved for games, rather than the game being of exceptional quality. The Too Human demo was not fun or original in the least, but it wasn’t a broken game or anything. I was able to kill dudes with no major control issues. The Silicon Knights guys ought to form a mutiny and throw Denis Dyack overboard. Literally. Rent a boat for the day if you have to.
UPDATE:
My mistake, the proper way to deal with Denis Dyack and Too Human is extreme sarcasm:
The sarcasm here is so thick.. I’m not 100% sure it is sarcasm. But let’s pretend that it is, either way.
Microsoft is doing this “Summer of Arcade” thing where they’re releasing games people actually want to play. Like.. more than one week in a row. Crazy right?
They started with Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2. I wasn’t a big fan of the first game, it was alright but I thought it could’ve looked a little sharper and maybe offered some more gameplay variants. The sequel… looks better and offers some more gameplay variants. So I’m satisfied with that. I like how the leaderboards are integrated into the mode selection screen, so as long as you’ve got a friend with a higher score than you, you’ve got incentive to keep playing. I also like how quickly you can start a new game after dying. With two presses of the A button you are instantly in a new game. It really removes a lot of the frustration inherent in these types of games.
Next was Braid. Braid is similar to Portal in that it sort of straddles that line between “games as art” and “games that are fun to play” philosophies. I have conflicting feelings about the game, and they’re pretty much the same feelings I had about Portal. It has solid gameplay, and the story is unique and tied to the gameplay in a way that every other game doesn’t even seem to consider a possibility. But.. I don’t know. There’s no “oh shit you just blew my mind” moment. It’s a good game, smartly designed, but I feel like it’s missing a crucial ingredient. I haven’t finished it yet though, maybe I’ll change my mind when (if?) I finish it. Never happened with Portal so I’m not holding my breath. I know it’s probably not fair or realistic for me to even have this expectation for mind-blowing, but I can’t help it.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed came out today, it’s a remake of the NES game Bionic Commando. I never played the original so I can’t tell you how it compares, but this seems to be a good game. There’s a story mode which I guess follows the original game’s levels and story, but I think I prefer the Challenge Rooms, which challenge your bionic arm swinging skills in levels reminiscent of MGS VR missions.
Next week is some Galaga remake and the week after that is Castle Crashers. Personally, not interested in those. But I’ve heard they’re good if you’re into that kind of thing.
I’m working a lot lately so I haven’t been bored enough to look for reasons to update my blog. What I have been doing is stuff on my
giantbomb.com profile. Giant Bomb is a new website about videogames, it’s sort of like Wikipedia+blog. Apparently it uses the same backend as comicvine.com, which is a comic book website. Anyway I’m not sure if I like this site yet but I think I do. There’s a lot of dumb users submitting bad content but on the other hand I like correcting people and there’s a lot of correcting to do. If you sign up make sure you add me as a friend or something I don’t know.
In other news, it’s fucking hot right now god damn it’s hot. I’d buy an air conditioner but I’m afraid it would blow a fuse any time I turned it on with the massive amount of electronic devices sucking power in this room (which I’m sure is not helping the heat issue).
I found this kind of neat app/web site recently that keeps track of which applications you use on your computer, and how long you use them. I guess it’s pretty useless but it’s the type of useless information I like to know. It’s called
Wakoopa.
So I’m watching the Red Wings game last night and during a commercial break I flip around the channels and for whatever reason I stop on WGN and see this show called Corner Gas. It’s… bad. But I can’t tell if it’s really horrible or just.. not very good. It feels… Canadian (and checking Wikipedia confirms that it is in fact Canadian). I don’t know. I think I’m confused, but I’m pretty sure I hate this show and everyone involved in its creation. Check out some
youtube clips if you’re really bored.
