Kevin's Musings

We had a nice Christmas here in NY on Roosevelt Island. I spent the day with my beautiful wife – breakfast/lunch at the island diner, I finished making my annual Christmas gumbo, she made cookies. We had dinner with several folks from the apartments (mostly folks from the weekly game night). Nice time had by all, I think.

A few of the Christmas gift highlights include (but aren’t limited to) Arrested Development Season 2 DVDs (thanks Greg and Jill!),  Rainbow Six: Vegas for the Xbox 360 (thanks, sweetie!), and a crazy book I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris (of Strangers with Candy, umm, fame), which I hadn’t even heard of – but is really great (thanks Steve and Cheryl!). Santa got me a pair of Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones, which sound really great. Oh yeah, and new game, Fact or Crap – we’re looking forward to trying it out at game night (thanks, Tish and Marv, err, Secret Santa).
I guess I finished GRAW single player just in time so I could start in on Rainbow Six: Vegas (well, I do need to finish Gears of War, but…). R6:Vegas is really impressive. It has great graphics and a fantastic control scheme. I might have slightly changed one or two things, but, it is really, really solid and a lot of fun. Like GRAW it is no cake-walk – it is challenging and somewhat unforgiving (but probably a touch more forgiving than GRAW). If you liked GRAW (or other tactical shooters) you should definitely give R6:Vegas a try.

Just in time for Christmas Eve (no idea what that means), I finished the single player missions of GRAW on the Xbox 360. This was a really fun game, very well done, great sound, great missions, great graphics but, it is incredibly unforgiving – a very hard game — all the way through it is play, die, play, die, die, die play, die. Hopefully I’ll get to play some more of the multiplayer, soon.

Over the weekend I saw Apocalypto. I would say that overall I enjoyed the movie. If you are thinking about seeing it you should realize it is quite violent — if Braveheart was too violent for you, you should skip this one. The story was interesting, the casting was perfect, the locations were fantastic. I had a few nits, though – while I will give you these people were obviously physically fit, who can run for that long – especially with no apparent stops for food or water?  My other nit was that for about 10 or 15 minutes the filming and effects were really cheesy — it felt like for those 10 or 15 minutes they let some high school film student take control of the movie (and those 10 or 15 minutes included the scene with the Jaguar). How could they have possibly screwed up THIS scene? With these two exceptions I thought it was a really well done movie.

I seen a ton of movies recently (some older, some new). Here is the scoop:

Turistas: This turned out to be better than I anticipated. I knew the general story before going – sort of like Hostel, but, it wasn’t nearly as violent and there are far fewer moments where you say “nobody would do that”. While you wouldn’t ever want to be in these situations, this movie felt much more like reality than most movies that would be dubbed “horror”. I enjoyed it, but, not a movie for most.
Deja Vu: I was hoping for the best and expecting something less than stellar with this one, but, I was really pleasantly surprised. I thought they handled the “time paradox” stuff really well with a very interesting story. I would recommend this movie to almost anyone, especially anyone who enjoys sci-fi.
Awake: This was a sneak preview, so, it won’t be in general release until sometime next year. I had absolutely no expectations. I read the blurb on IMDB but knew nothing else. I won’t tell you anything about it, and you should go into the movie with as little information as possible, but, I think almost everyone (well, not the kiddies) can probably enjoy this movie if they enjoy the “Drama / Thriller” category – there is a little blood (surgical), but, it is by no means a slasher or horror film. Go see it, but don’t read any more about it from anywhere.
Borat: I laughed really, really hard in parts of this movie but it often felt either under-developed – lots of things could have been longer (and a few shorter). So, I had a good time but I think it could have been even funnier. Not very many people who I would recommend this movie to, but, those who aren’t offended will have a good time.
The Fountain: I like Darren Aronofsky’s movies a lot… Pi and Requiem are both great movies (although I don’t generally suggest Requiem to people, it is a very uncomfortable movie). This movie is slow and deliberate and very non-linear, but, it was very, very interesting. Probably you will love it or hate it. Must be patient and enjoy sci-fi, but, if this sounds like you, you will probably really like it.

A few weeks ago I downloaded the demo of RoboBlitz for the PC (via Steam). RoboBlitz is a fun, inventive physics-oriented puzzler set in the 3rd person perspective where you control a robot and solve various puzzles using various gadgets and weapons. There is a bit of “shooter” in it, but, mostly solving puzzles. The PC demo was a lot of fun, but, I knew it was coming out on Xbox Live Arcade for the 360 for the same price, so I decided to wait. This week it came out, I downloaded it and, in fact, I prefer the controls on the 360 (and like that it has Achievements) so I went ahead about bought it for the 360. I am really enjoying it. Will post here if my opinion changes, but, lots of fun so far.

I picked up Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS. This is a really fun music and rhythm game. Somewhat like playing DDR with the stylus on the DS touch screen. Wacky-weird Japanese graphics and story lines. Addictive gameplay. This is definitely a game that would only work on the Nintendo DS (well, any game with a touch screen, I guess). It is somewhat hard to describe so check out these videos.

I got my Xbox 360 back and it works great, but, I discovered a well known problem related to getting your 360 repaired. If you buy a game on Xbox Live Arcade, that game is locked to the combination of the account which bought the game and the specific console on which the game was purchased. If you play the game on the console on which the game was purchased, you don’t have to be logged in to play the game and any account on that console can play the game. On any other console you can only play the game only if you are logged in with the account that purchased the game. This means that if your console is repaired and they send you a replacement (different) console, your Live Arcade games will only work if you are signed into Xbox Live with the account that purchased the game. No other accounts on your system will be able to play the games. This also means you should be careful not to buy a game on any Xbox 360 console other than your own. If you buy a game on a friend’s 360 you will have a harder time playing it on your own console (must be logged into the account that bought the game) but your friend will always be able to play the game.
There is a solution for this (at least if you cannot play the games after a repair). You call Xbox Live Support and after being passed around to a couple of support folks, they will have you create a new Silver account. Then, after a few days to a few weeks they will call you back and give you a code for the number of points for the games you previously owned with which you can then re-buy those games with that new Silver account. This is a really odd solution, but, I guess it works.

The bummer is it appears there are a lot of  360 consoles that are breaking, so, they must be having to do this a lot. I would think by now they would have a more streamlined process to solve this problem. Oh well.

I finished Splinter Cell Double Agent for the Xbox 360 just before my 360 died. This weekend I played and finished Splinter Cell Double Agent for the (original) Xbox. I really enjoyed both games. The 360 version has very nice graphics and the gameplay is fun. The original Xbox version has graphics that are good, but pretty much identical to the previous games. In my opinion, if you are going after every single objective, the 360 version is considerably harder than the Xbox version. What really amazed me was the fact the two games, while both having the Splinter Cell Double Agent title, are completely different. Control is similar, but, the gameplay is completely different, the graphics (obviously) are very different, the level design is completely different (although some of the locations are similar). The plots have similarities, but are essentially different. I was amazed that at least key key character died in the 360 version who didn’t (or at least doesn’t have to) in the Xbox version – does this suggest the end of the Splinter Cell games?

Anyway, I really enjoyed both versions and am glad I played both of them. It never occurred to me that they would be so vastly different and still carry the same title. They should have named them differently, in my opinion. If you are a huge fan of the previous games, you will probably like the original Xbox version better – it feels far more like a Splinter Cell game than the 360 version. The 360 version has much more daytime, full light action where the original Xbox version so almost completely in the dark, like the previous games. Also, the JBA missions in the 360 version were mostly “honeydew lists” with very little stealth – a feature that didn’t exist in the original Xbox version. While it was an interesting change up, they got a touch tedious, IMO.

On a bright note, my Xbox 360 has been repaired and I now have a tracking number (as of the 12th) for its return. With any luck I will have my 360 back before the end of the week and hopefully it will be good as new (or better!).

I discovered last night that my newly re-installed Windows XP installation has sound in programs like Windows Media Player, iTunes, BSPlayer, Windows Media Center, etc. but no sound otherwise. No sound from the browser, no speaker icon in the tray. This is incredibly bizarre. I played with it for a long time and have found no solutions. It was working correctly but some Windows Update I installed broke it. I have no idea how to fix it (tried stuff for hours, very difficult to Google this problem). I found others with the same problem but no solutions. I guess I will be re-installing. Again. I am really considering just buying a Mac but I would rather spend the money on a Plasma HDTV. Oh well, we’ll see.

I decided to make a page on my website for Wallpaper Scramber. Which brought me to the next topic…
While I was making the page for Wallpaper Scrambler I noticed that many of the links on my home page are broken (just re-show the home page). I don’t know how I didn’t notice this before, but it has probably been like this for several months. After some research, I realized the problem is that PHP (which I use a touch of in my home page) has a setting named register_globals and the default for this setting changed in 4.2.0. This change can dramatically change how a page behaves if you aren’t aware of it (and I wasn’t). Anyway, I finally noticed this today and all is back to normal. I understand WHY they changed the default value for register_globals, it just seems like it could cause more problems than it solves — most people will probably just set it the way it used to be set so there is little security gain.

I have made a few small changes to Wallpaper Scrambler and pushed a new version. If you are running it now, you will really want to download this. Changes are slight, but, important. (1) It no longer stops your system from shutting down (doh! sorry about that) (2) It will only let you run one instance (why would you want to run two?). Send me your feedback (to kevin at dorffweb dot com). Anyway here it is…

• Installer: WallpaperScramber-Setup.exe (108k)
• Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0 (big… but you may already have it)

I have a love – dislike relationship with the Xbox 360 controller. I love it. I think it is (with one exception) the best game controller made to date. It is comfortable, everything is placed in the right place, the wireless is great, battery life is quite acceptable. But… the D-Pad on it is terrible. It doesn’t respond too much of the time and it doesn’t always respond accurately. Most of the time I can live with it, but, for the Arcade games MS is now pushing (Pac Man, etc.) it is completely unusable, IMO.
I came across The “Original” D-Pad Mod and decided to give it a try. I bought the sand papers, but, I didn’t have a Torx T08H driver (the same as a Torx T08 driver but with a “security” hole drilled out of the tip). I looked at all the nearby hardware shops and Home Depots but no luck. Lots of T08 drivers around, lots of T08 with security hole “bits”, but I needed a driver with a thin shaft that is at least an inch long to get to the screws within the controller. A local mom & pop hardware shop tried to order one for me but it didn’t come in so I decided to get one online. The best deal I found was on ebay. I won the buy it now auction on Thursday, it shipped on Friday, and I received the driver on Monday – living in NYC is great for receiving mail quickly.
I opened the controoler, sanded away, and put the controller back together. I admit the controller appears to be as nicely constructed on the inside as it is on the outside – it was easy to take apart (once you have the right tools) and easy to put back together. Good design.

Next I hear you asking… Did it help? Is the D-Pad wonderful now? (Does it still work?). I won’t be able to answer that until next week when I get my 360 back 🙁 Ho hum.

On a vaguely related note, I got two new card games for our weekly game playing group. We haven’t yet played Tag 6! but it looks like fun and I suspect we will play it next week. We did play Landlord! and really enjoyed it. While Tag 6! looks easy to pick up and play, Landlord! took a while for everybody to understand and get the hang of – I would recommend it though, we did have a really good time. We played through two games, both times with six players. The first time through took about two hours, the second time through took an hour (which is probably pretty close to normal).