- Site Related

It is where it is...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:25:00 +0000

Pickup in shop for front-end alignment; this will be followed by another trip to another shop to figure out why the Low-4 won't engage. I'm guessing it's dirty, but I don't know what to wash.

Got new phone. While it's good to know for sure that jailbreaking and rooting phones is not illegal (I mean, according to the law it was legal, but when does a silly thing like written laws stop lawsuits? Or the government?), but I didn't really see where the iPhone 4 was better than a Samsung Captivate. The iPhone 4 has a slightly better screen, the gyroscope and a front-facing camera; the Captivate has more storage capability, a more open OS (and a faster one, in my experience) and a not-buggy antenna. It's taking a bit to get used to doing things differently, but so far I really like the phone. Oh, and it's $100 cheaper than the top-of-the-line iphone 4; same price as the cheaper iPhone 4.

I'll try to get some screen grabs and commentary from Saints Row 2 up later. I never played the first Saints Row, but I remember that it was a fairly popular game when it came out and SR 2 carried some anticipation. Kinda fell off the radar pretty quick; but then, there are sandbox games with mini-games, story missions, side-missions, unlockables and purchasables coming out every week. I've found there is a small but dedicated fan base, and a handful of people working on some pretty major mods. As is, from where I am now I can see playing through the game twice; it's an open-world sandbox but I'm not sure it really should be. At least not to the extent that it is.

Still working...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:30:45 +0000

...60 - 80 hour weeks. Taking a few hours off this morning to read news and drink some coffee (and get over the entire pizza I ate last night covered in cracked red pepper. Why do I do these things?)

I'm working 60 - 80 hour weeks because I want a better year than last year. Despite a rough winter, everything really jumped forward when I hit spring and I had the energy to push everything faster and just about get caught up. I was looking forward to actually getting ahead when the weather went into a wet cycle, which actually helped out until this last storm a week ago. That one was pretty bad, and I ended up having to replant about a third of my crop. Which means a lot more money spent, and having to put up with some employee problems until I can get through this minor crisis.

Haven't watched any anime lately; the list is just as long as it has been. Been playing Bully: Scholarship Edition, Jagged Alliance and Betrayal at Krondor. I've picked up a bunch of older games recently (again), but I'd really like to get back to playing something on the 360. Plus, I've still got dozens of RPGs to get through on the PS2.

Ton of things I'd like to do posts about. Here's a list:

1) Recently made one of the Fundamental Internet Pilgrimages; I read "My Immortal", the Harry Potter fanfic by Tara Gilesbie. (May not be her real name, her spelling is so atrocious that I do not doubt she misspelled her own name.) Encyclopedia Dramatica's entry on the fic is written in a straightforward and fairly serious manner. That's not really surprising, "My Immortal" cannot be harmed or helped by gross exaggeration and making $*&# up. It is the black hole of fanfics. I have read some fics just about as bad, but I have never read anything worse.

2) While following up on research regarding "My Immortal" (i.e. reading the TVTropes entry for the fic), I came across another fanfic. Shinji and Warhammer 40K. I was somewhat surprised at the number of people who seriously wrote things like "This is how the series should have been!" and "It all makes sense now!" Will this fic blow your socks off? Well, no, probably not...but if you have any kind of appreciation for the story (such as it is) and setting of NGE, you may get a lot of enjoyment out of this fairly long retelling of the series. Also, Shinji is much better in this version.

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Stopped for a bit and now I can't remember what else I was going to write. Great. Maybe soon I can get back to writing regularly.

Status and Links...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:33:38 +0000

This is the longest I've gone between posts in quite a while. I've been pretty danged busy, though; and the last few weeks especially have been nothing but constant headaches. My wife and I (btw, Happy Birthday, Love of My Life!) made a quick trip to the nearest Gamestop two weeks ago, but I just now got around to updating the games lists and playing one of the games. Specifically, I picked up Lego Batman and X-Blades for the 360; Wild Arms 4 and and the original Lego Star Wars for PS2. When I bought my 360 I got Lego Indiana Jones in a pack of used games and really enjoyed it, so I went back and played Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy on PS2. I wanted to get the Complete Collection for 360, but it was cheaper to just pick up a used copy of the original game for PS2. I've done a couple of levels in Lego Batman, and so far I'm not really getting much enjoyment out of this Lego installment. My wife, who for some odd reason enjoys watching me play video games, says the game isn't nearly as much fun to watch as LSW and LIJ; so I may not stay with this one.

In the meantime, I play a little Street Fighter 4; and, thanks to Steam and Impulse, I've loaded up on some classic sim and strategy titles for only a few bucks. I'm almost done with Railroad Tycoon 2's Campaign in Normal mode...I've made it this far before but I'm having trouble with the last few scenarios. Still haven't tried Sword of the Stars or Making History, but I've heard a lot of good things about them.

In other news, I'm still not completely caught up on Naruto Shippuden. After the Atomic Bomb Ninja Technique, recurring Deus Ex Machina Sasuke started the biggest dumb-ass subplot I've seen in the series so far...(details under the fold, spoilerific). It's takes a lot for me to work up enthusiasm to keep watching. But I'm sooooo close....

Crunchyroll has also started streaming The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I haven't checked to see what order the episodes are in.

I've made it through episode 11 of Chu-Bra! (with my wife...I was too scared to watch it alone.) If I can ever organize my thoughts on this series, it deserves a short amount of commentary. For those who have avoided...yes, it's squicky. Really, really squicky.

Mark finished Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and has started A's. I'm refraining from any comment until he finishes that series.

The 2010 F1 season has begun, which means Wonderduck has started his wonderful F1 Updates again.

Noah Antwiler, aka Spoony; the man responsible for a hilariously savage review/commentary/let's play of Final Fantasy VIII, is going to try Final Fantasy X.

Linkara is producing and narrating a "History of the Power Rangers", which is actually pretty interesting if you're into absolutely useless information, like I am.

I've completely forgotten by this point if I had any other point to make in this post...so I guess I'll stop here.

EDIT: Oh yeah, details about the Sasuke subplot below the fold.
Continue reading "Status and Links..."

The most wonderful and stressful time of year...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:53:36 +0000

No, not what you think. With few exceptions, the "holidays" aspect of the Fall and Winter is a stress-reliever for me. What I'm referring to is that my financial year usually starts in March, April or May; and ends in December. I start getting some income in December. So, the period from November to the end of the year is filled with making every dollar count. Plus, you never "really" know how good a job you did during the year until this final huge, expensive effort.

The amount of work that goes into a harvest and all of the stress mentioned above means, as I posted last year, that I don't really have a lot of time for posting...and when I do, I don't feel like it. I don't want to just do more re-posting from other blogs. I like to try to keep blog mentions confined to other bloggers' original work rather than contributing to another round of viral videos. OTOH, Wonderduck comes up with some of the more unique and entertaining examples I've seen, there are currently two good videos on his front page.

So, just to force myself, I'll just run through some randomness.

Recently found the Let's Play Archive. This particular LP got me wanting to play KotOR 2 again...he made the game sound pretty good. As I tweeted recently; though, I actually think the writing is WORSE in 2 than in one. Different, yes. The story certainly has the basis for something MUCH deeper and more complex than KotOR. Unfortunately, the writer(s) didn't know what they were talking about half the time. Obviously, somebody made it through the first chapter of the Pop Guide to Chaos Theory and a Psychology 101 primer, but missed out on War Strategy and Tactics That Anyone Can Understand and Principles of Leadership: A Common Sense Approach. Then there are the "moral choices." Bioware games and western RPG's in general have become well-known for their "black and white" moral choices. KotOR 2 was made by Obsidian rather than Bioware, and a lot of players felt that Obsidian did a better job of making those choices more like "multiple shades of gray." I don't see it, myself. Most of the choices are still "Save/Eat Puppy", they just word them differently. Most of the "gray" choices are actually railroading by the plot...which is to say, rather than "Save/Eat Puppy" you get to choose "Eat Puppy Now/Eat Puppy Later." See, the writer(s) don't really give you a lot of freedom in "defining" your character. Sure, you can level and play your Jedi as Light/Dark Side, Neutral or Insane; but KotOR 2 goes well beyond KotOR's "this is who you are and what you did, now what are you going to do?" KotOR 2 says, "this is who you are, what you did, why you did it, who you did it with and for, and what you thought of them. Now what are you going to do? Oh, and you're still mad about this, so you should probably choose A, and even though we've made it perfectly clear to you repeatedly, and you have high intelligence and wisdom, you don't really understand B, so we'll just fill in "duuuuuuuuuuuh" for that answer.

And so on.

End the end, it still comes down to "side with/kill bad guy". But there's so much arrogance and ignorance in the story, and the frequent Character Development railroading make the game less enjoyable than KotOR...at least to a certain degree. On the other hand, the story IS more complex...not better, just deeper. The game is bigger, the mechanics are a little better, the crafting system is much improved, and the animations and graphics are much better. On the third hand, the rushed development time means that something like 20% of the game got cut before release, and you see a lot of the resultant broken bits still in the game. I don't bear any hard feelings about that, though...13 months is not enough time to develop a game like this.

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I'm just about tired of my iPhone. Getting sick of what I can't do with it. It's a decent multimedia phone, but it just can't compare to a full smartphone with better desktop integration. Add to that the number of ways that Apple WON'T service the phone, and the dreaded iTunes. Think I'll switch to THIS.

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Thought about playing Dwarf Fortress. Got over it.

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Can't think of anything else, right now. Although this is good:

Just what I needed...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:25:27 +0000

Checked google webmaster tools. By far the most popular page on my site now is the post I did about the Stephanie from Lazytown bed; i.e. "Pedobed".
Which means either tons of pedos are visiting my site and leaving disappointed, or I've been turned in by worried mothers. If you never hear from me again, this is the most likely reason.

Three things that keep me from posting much lately:

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:18:12 +0000

One: So many people paying attention to politics right now that I feel redundant...although I did post I link to the health care reform bill on twitter --->
Two: Just got Fallout 3, as watching a Let's Play by Necroscope on Youtube really piqued my interest. And, yes indeed, I'm really enjoying the game.
Three: Summer transitional period of the cotton farming year; even more than before, I'm just running around trying to keep everyone else where they can keep working, due to hiring extra people for hoeing and spraying, and a large number of odd jobs that need to be done.

Site Updates, Poll

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:17:49 +0000

1) I accidentally deleted my links to other sites. I'm working on putting them back up, but I'm going to try to plug them in with del.icio.us this time.

2) Added a "shoutbox" type thingy over there on the left. The thinking was primarily to let visitors leave links for me, but you could use it for comments, too. I would like to make it possible for people to respond to twitter posts, but I haven't found a "good" solution for that, yet.

3) Don't forget to vote in the poll; I would like to get at least a few dozen votes before moving to the second set.

Ben

The Top Ten Sexiest Songs Poll #1

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:36:00 +0000

2 people voting so far; please remember to vote --> To the right and down a bit...

UPDATE: OK, new polling program installed. There will be three top ten sexiest songs polls; please pick 5 in the current poll. Let me know if something doesn't work.

OK, I activated the Top Ten Sexiest Songs Poll with all of the nominations I received and all that I could think of without trying too hard. I'm not sure I really like this poll module, and may see if I can find a better one (I know there are a lot of free ones out there). But for now, vote for one. I would appreciate it if you would let me know if the module will let you vote more than once, on the same day or even after a day or two has gone by. Since you can only vote for one, and it's a long list, I may end up running a second round. We'll see. Thanks to some of the webmaster tools I've added and started using, I know that there are many more people visiting than commenting, so maybe this will draw a few out.

UPDATE: It won't let ME vote more than once, anyway. But outside of digging into the module itself, there are no customization or format options. I'm definitely going to have to find a better module.

UPDATE: Now, Tuesday, it WILL let me vote again. Not a very vigorous security check, apparently. I've tried two other polling programs so far but couldn't get them to work. S9Y doesn't do embedded php with conditions, that I can figure out. Has to be a simple php call, a java app or a java script.

Poll Reminder

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:15:17 +0000

Reminder: Nominate songs for the "10 Sexiest Songs" Poll in the comments for THIS ENTRY.

100th (Official) Post...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:48:23 +0000

100th real, permanent blog entry for MidniteTease. And today I'll be adding the polls plugin, just because it sounded like fun. Also, I want to add an image rotation for my photography portfolio.

Anyway, to the right is the Polls App. The first poll is open for nominations: Top Ten Sexiest Songs. This because twice recently I've heard Joan Jett's cover of Crimson & Clover...and wow. I mean, really, Joan Jett's cover is basically a love long from one girl to another that starts with an orgasm. How can you beat that?

Please comment nominations. I know not many people read this blog, but maybe we can at least get 10 nominations, and they can be the winners!

I'll start with two nominations:

Crimson & Clover (Joan Jett Cover)
Feel Like Makin' Love (Susanna Hoffs Cover)

Fait Accompli...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:51:42 +0000

I said about 20 minutes ago that I really didn't like Serendipity's Twitter plugin, and wanted somthing that worked better and looked better...and while the core Serendipity code and quite a few plugins are actively supported...apparently not the twitter stuff. Of course, why should they when Twitter has perfectly good widgets available now? So there you go...

Oh, and you can ignore the twitter post about a previous entry not working...cuz now that I'm using Twitter's widget, it is.

Finished computer pics

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:31:47 +0000

Last few computer pics, now that I've got the computer done:

Now you can see both processors, both banks of memory, and both video cards.

Nighttime shot.

In the dark with the new monitor.

Done

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:14:09 +0000

New computer is completely finished. Got the new monitor in, got the new mouse in, got the second processor, second bank of memory, second DVD drive, and second video card. Everything is working, still getting the kinks out of Vista. Anything that isn't network related happens instantly. Video encoding happens like copying a file.

As long as I keep her clean and keep good fans in, Saya should be done for a long time. This is one of the few computers I've built that I've been able to over-spec. I don't really game; even on the consoles I stay previous-gen. I DO encode video, because rather than keeping stacks and stacks of DVD's I like keeping all of my anime in one-or-two disk packs, which means ripping and re-encoding everything. What I wanted was a computer that would keep me from worrying about speed and compatibility for at least a few years. I wanted a quad-quad, rather than a dual-quad, but I really didn't like any of the available motherboards. I also wanted Nvidia rather than Ati, although I tried to stay open-minded. In the end, though, I still think Nvidia has the edge. Not really much of one, but their price/performance ratio is slightly better. Plus, while many people (reportedly) have trouble with Nvidia drivers, I never have; BUT I have had tons and tons of problems with Ati drivers. I use an Ati card in my HTPC (cheapest card I could find on the day that included a component cable breakout) and I had to install a startup manager program because the Ati drivers take SO LONG TO INITIALIZE that they cause the computer to crash when another program starts to load any time within 30 seconds after the Ati driver loads. And no, that's not the ONLY Ati story I have, but it IS the best one.

I didn't mean to talk about that.

Anyway, Saya is done, and I'm happy. Hopefully, I'll be able to start working on the Nanoha comic soon.

Amazon Widgets

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:36:41 +0000

Been trying to get Amazon Wish List Widgets working for weeks; finally realized that they're blocked by AdBlocker Pro. So if you want to see the Games Owned and Games Wanted lists in the right sidebar, you'll have to exempt them in your AdBlocker.

Good Software

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:10:30 +0000

Before I forget, I need to recommend a piece of software.

One of the problems I had to allow for with my new computer was getting the data off of my old IDE RAID 0 array. Of course, I had the most important stuff backed up on a removable firewire drive, but it would be nice if I could get ALL of my data back. I thought this would be easy. My former Iwill XP333-R motherboard had a Highpoint 372 RAID controller built in. From what I had read, I should have been able to hook the two drives up to any Highpoint 370, 372 or 374-based controller (or almost any Highpoint IDE RAID controller) and re-establish the array. So I picked up a Rocket 100 controller card (which featured a Highpoint 370 controller chip) at the same time I ordered all of my other parts.

What I didn't know was that Highpoint makes the Rocket 100, AND the RocketRaid 100. They have the same controller chip, but there is a pretty obvious difference (if you know both products). So, my card didn't do RAID. Go looking for a RocketRAID card...there's the other difference...the RAID cards are all pretty expensive (for me). The Rocket 100 was only $20.

So I start looking for software that can recover data from RAID arrays. Some of it is free, most of it costs around $100 - $1500. A few of the products I found ran under $100. Almost all of the programs have a demo or trial that allows you to analyze and rebuild your RAID array, but you can't "save" anything. Some of them let you save one file at a time, then you have to redo everything. Some of them let you save files smaller than, say, 64KB (txt files).

The short end of it all is that I tried several recommended programs, most of which were free or under $100. A few of them I couldn't even figure out how to use. Of the rest, some couldn't read the array, but most would read one or both drives, figure out there was an NTFS partition, figure out there were a bunch of files, then tell me that 99% of them were damaged. These files could be recovered, but half of them would be missing, or scrambled, etc. The best one was consistently able to find 1 - 2% of the files every time, but they were DIFFERENT FILES EVERY TIME.

Now I'm sure that several of these programs would have worked eventually, with proper technical suppport (not all of them offered technical support, or at least GOOD technical support.) However, one product worked perfectly out of the gate. No damaged files, a wizard that properly led me through the process of recovering the data, it all worked correctly on the first try. It was also fast. That program is UFS Explorer. The version I used was the UFS Explorer Pro with a personal license. It was $70, if I remember correctly, but there is also a standard version that I think might have worked just as well and is only $30.

Supposedly my disks were still good and the RAID array was unbroken up until the time my old computer crashed, so I can't accurately comment on how this program would work with a failed drive. But considering what I just did and what the program accomplished, I'm impressed.