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The kindness of strangers in Eterna City.

By Joe on April 29, 2007 10:00 PM | 4 Comments

To date, every trade I've asked for has come through, and always by a player in Tokyo or Osaka or somewhere in Japan. I've traded out Bidoofs and Zubats and Geodudes for a Turtwig, Piplup, Psyduck, Cranidos and a level 51 Skuntank. I am currently offering a level 3 Bidoof for a Chansey, which is my most aggressive request yet.

All of this online trading means that I've been walking back and forth between the GTS and Eterna City quite a bit. I can't wait for the Fly HM.

An old man gave me passage to the underground world, which is basically the Secret Bases from Ruby/Sapphire relegated to a Pac-Man maze. I think this is local-WiFi only (sucks), but you can check out other players' bases and play a weird little version of capture-the-flag... as well as set booby traps to keep others from taking your flag. Since the underground section takes place on the touchscreen (nice!), you can tap the walls to search for hidden gems, which opens up an odd little puzzle game. Unearth the gems and you can buy more decorations for your base. Interesting stuff - not as cool if this is truly local only - but can you even battle down there?

Longtime Pokemon Trainers will be excited to walk into Eterna City and see the ubiquitous Bike Shop. Of course, the place is empty and rumors persist of the proprietor somehow and somewhy kidnapped by Team Galactic, who have holed up in a mansion in the north end of town. The overgrown brush outside the mansion means you need to earn the Cut HM, however, and there's only one place to get that...

Jeez, did she even hit me?

Once you free the Bike Shop guy, guess what, you get a bike. Naturally there is a Cycling Road nearby that requires a bike, so it seems obvious that the next stop on the path to Pokemon Master will lie that way. Unless you're like me and you want to head back to Jubilife to see if the GTS paid out again.

Classic next-gen fumble: there is still only ONE item hotkey. You could always assign one of your cooler items (the bike, the VS Seeker, the watering can) to the SELECT button in previous games (as far back as Red/Blue/Yellow? I forget.) The Game Boy was always sort of button-challenged, so being able to map a single item to SELECT was very helpful. You'd think that the multiple buttons on the DS would have allowed the ability to map several items out to buttons, for even more helpfulness, but no such luck. You're stuck with choosing merely one item to attach to the Y button. What's SELECT doing again? Not a goddamn thing? Right.

Did anybody tell the devs that the DS has shoulder buttons?

And what's up with the "Move Pokemon" feature of the storage PC lacking stylus control? The hell?

But here's some good things:

The new Item Finder arrives in the form of a tappable Poketch app.

If you click any of the blue bike stands in any city, the game will ask if you want to switch to the bike.

I just received my absolute favorite item, the EXP.SHARE.

My sister picked up Pokemon Diamond this weekend, and found this unsettling tomfoolery going on at Wal-Mart:

That's taken directly from their Sunday circular, and my sister verified that indeed to be the in-store price. Wal-Mart is selling Pokemon Pearl and Diamond for $40, five bucks more than everywhere else in the country. What kind of dick move is that? Now, that's just the in-store price... if you order from their website it's $35 as normal, so make sure to ask for in-store pickup. I'd love to hear the story behind this unfair price hike, and I'd also love for Wal-Mart to be strangled in the night by a giant poisonous spider. (My sister wisely bought her Diamond from elsewhere.)

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Grotle lv20, Monferno lv22, Prinplup lv21, Luxio lv17, Staravia lv20, Geodude lv15

The Week in Links

By Joe on April 28, 2007 1:28 PM | 2 Comments

Daft Punk: One More Time (YouTube)
Cartoon Network ran this, like, once.

Crotch-Gate '07 (PostModernBarney)
Casual homophobia is all over the DCU fanbase at the moment, thanks to an upcoming Alex Ross JSA cover that does not skimp on the ol' penis. It's a shame that male comics fans think it's acceptable (or at least tolerable) to parade around hyper-sexualized female characters, and then get all twitchy about the depth of field visible in a male character's crotch. They're all dressed in underwear, folks. Generally, that means there's something under there.

SakuraCon 2007 Photo Gallery (flickr via ToonZone.net)
I could look at cosplay galleries all damn day.

PokeParty From Cross-Dressers to Masuda (Kotaku)
Except maybe this one. Although now that I know this guy is cool with getting his picture taken, I won't be so shy about it next time I see him.

PS3 HD Eye Toy Card Game Dated (Kotaku)
The second picture looks wicked cool. Unfortunately, this game is likely to fail out hard.

Threadless vs. Goliath (Penny Arcade)
Amazing comparison of the t-shirts of one company to the t-shirts of another company. Is it really that hard to come up with stupid random t-shirt designs for hyper-ironic food court kids that you have to go steal stuff from somebody else?

Adult Swim goes 7 nights a week (ToonZone.net)
About effin' time.

Now that's service.

By Joe on April 25, 2007 11:31 PM

While Wedge took off for Eterna City, I pushed north towards the small town with all the flowers... after breaking up a rumble with Team Galactic, Pearl's edition of Team Rocket. (Nothing seems to sound as iconic as "Rocket" though, does it?) This is the fight with the "massive damage" meme in it.

I planted some berries, my Starly and Shinx evolved, I rescued a scientist that Galactic was holding against his will, received more TMs that I will never use, blah blah blah.

What's truly important is that I already received a Piplup.

After clearing out the windmill place, I walked back to Jubilife to check on things at the Global Trade Station. I wanted to see if you can have more than one pokemon registered to trade at a time (you can't.) But when I logged in to the GTS, I was greeted by a newborn level one Piplup, straight from Shizuoka, Japan! Check this out:

Here he is, ready for some fast upgrading. I don't know if that's Japanese for "piplup" or if he has been given a nickname.

He was originally owned by Yuta.

He was hatched on January 3rd at the day care center, four months after the game was released in Japan (and four months before the US release.)

Here's a screen I rarely look at.

He already knows Surf, the precocious darling!

So what did I do next? I ran out to catch some more crap types to offer in more trades. I put a young Zubat on offer, hoping to score a Turtwig.

Remember how crappy it was to collect all the starters in previous Pokemon games?

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Piplup lv1, Monferno lv16, Geodude lv7, Luxio lv15, Staravia lv16, Budew lv6

Malpercio destroyed!

By Joe on April 25, 2007 8:53 PM | 1 Comment

With Pokemon Pearl so prevalent, I forgot to mention that I finished Baten Kaitos Friday night. I actually had to stay up until dawn to do it, which means that I don't remember it very well. I think there was a ... boss ... fight?

My save has 53 hours on it, but I'll bet the end sequence was another hour. That matches up sorta with the game's claim of "over 60 hours" of gameplay. Of course, you don't get to save after beating Malpercio and rolling credits (THANKS AGAIN), so I can't really tell how long it lasted. Nor can I see how my magnus collection ended, or everybody's final stats. Seriously gang. Let me save after beating the game. It's just better that way.

Here's some spoilerish thoughts. You could bail out now, but come on, simple probability suggests to me that you're NEVER going to play this game.

Lyude sucked. I'm kind of annoyed that he's this big internet fanart thing. I never thought he was worth sticking into the combat trio, except when I found a new card for him that I wanted to see animate. He just never seemed to do enough damage for my tastes. I also had huge problems with Savyna. Even though I wanted to use her just out of sheer hotness, her time limit was so punishing that I'd miss half of her final attacks while computing my most advantageous numerical poker card combo. I stuck with Kalas and Xelha for most of the game, with either Gibari or Mizuti picking up the third position.

Speaking of Xelha, what a way to go. So, like, you're the lost ocean? Again, when you're stuck with watching the scene play out in a lousy zoomed-out view with overbearing and unstoppable subtitles, the drama gets a bit watery (pun not intended). Like most of Baten Kaitos, the big character moments just sort of drop in out of nowhere, but at least Xelha's big coda gets the bulk of the finale to play out. However, I was incredibly disappointed to see her live. Come on! Can no one just sacrifice themselves dramatically anymore? Has Aerith scarred an entire generation? At least all those ugly little schmoos seem to be gone. Sque-EEEK.

It was nice to see the Player-as-Character thing played out to the bitter end. I did, I confess, speak my part aloud when Xelha, Kalas, and I had to do the little chant speech together. That was the closest the game came to immersion and it worked aces. I felt that. Namco, I would have liked to feel more.

I was even okay with the silly ending with all the game's characters standing in a grove waving goodbye to me.

I ended up really enjoying this game. Like all long-winded adventure games, there was plenty of areas that dragged and plenty of backtracking, but there was enough bright spots to keep me interested, and I found the combat system simple yet engaging. (Choosing your card's number value with the C-stick was ingenious, don't you think? Especially when your character was hit with a confusion spell, making the numbers rotate around the card's edge.)

Considering that I only paid $5.50 for it, this was one of the best values I found on the GameCube. Even if I played it on the Wii. Maybe I'll find the sequel(prequel) for just as cheap someday.

Send me a Piplup.

By Joe on April 25, 2007 12:25 AM | 1 Comment

I'm up to a small handful of pokemon, including my new favorite, Shinx. Shinx recently faced off against a Magikarp, whose fighting skills, as you can imagine, have not gotten any better in ten years of Pokemon games.

Jubilife City is really nice. It's a great visual antidote to the boring little hovels of the first areas. The awkwardly-named Poketch factory is in Jubilife, and it just so happens that you get a Poketch for free once you visit the Training School and then locate three clowns. The Poketch is super-keen and just screams to be made into a real toy. The starter Poketch comes with a clock, calculator, pedometer and pokemon life meter. There are twenty different features that must be collected separately, so I'm looking forward to that.

Although the life meter does not update in real time, which is stupid. I had that screen up, showing a slightly damaged party, when I went to heal at the Pokemon Center... and after the heal, the screen still showed the damage. I had to click out of the life meter and back in to get it to update.

Had a faceoff with Wedge and I barely won. In fact, had he not used a couple of useless Growl attacks, I would have lost. Regardless, he took off to the east after the battle ended, in the direction of Oreburgh. I followed, and found him standing in front of the door to the Gym. A few halting NPC conversations later, I learned that Roark - Oreburgh's Gym Leader - was working in the coal mine south of town.

After a quick run through the mine, during which I mistakenly killed an Onix that I would have liked to capture, I spurred Roark to return to his Gym. Somehow, by the time I got there, he had already battled and lost to Wedge. I defeated Roark's two Gym subordinates, evolved my precious Chimchar into a Monferno, healed up, and then challenged him...

Oreburgh must really suck for pokemon training, if this guy is the best they could offer. I guess that's what comes from living in an isolated mining town.

Anyway, after scoring a Gym Badge, I hightailed it back to Jubilife so I could hit the Global Trade Station, one of Pearl's vaunted WiFi features. Since I had some extra Geodudes in stock, I submitted one of them (with Rock Smash!) for a trade and asked for a Piplup (any level) in return. You can only request pokemon you have seen in the game, which is a rather clever way of stopping people from demanding Mewtwo over and over again.

My Friend Code, by the way, is 4381 8470 0450. Battle on.

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Starly lv12, Monferno lv15, Zubat lv6, Bidoof lv2, Shinx lv14, Geodude lv7

New Pokemon, Same as the Old Pokemon

By Joe on April 22, 2007 9:39 PM

The anticipation is high for Pokemon Pearl. There's a lot to see and do in this one, perhaps enough to rinse away the lame taste left by LeafGreen. I'm eagerly looking forward to the real-time day/night cycles (which debuted waaaay back in Gold/Silver and should never have left) and, of course, the WiFi play. Flipping through the manual, the only un-reported feature that I found of interest is the ability to customize the effect when one of your pokemon leaps out of the ball. Cool.

The beginning to Pearl is nearly identical to every other Pokemon game. A professor of some local reknown is introduced, he demands your gender and name, and hopes that you will "achieve personal growth." Then you wake up in your bedroom, where, you'll note, you own a Wii. Mom is waiting downstairs. She has your shoes.

I named my "friend" Wedge, not out of any affection for Star Wars but because he has a wedge-shaped head. He seems to be the most affable "rival" to date. Whereas previous rivals were bitchy and elitist, this one is one step ahead of you simply because he is impatient. Maybe his story will develop further along.

As you poke-fans know, once you pick your starter (from the expected grass-fire-water trio), then your rival picks the one that has a natural advantage over it. The jerk. So I chose Chimchar, the fire monkey thing, and Wedge chose Piplup, the March of the Penguins thing. Get this: a third character - Dawn, a friend of the Professor - claims to use the remaining starter (the leafy turtle thing). Maybe it is she who becomes your most hated competitor?

The world is in 3D now, but you'd never know it. The people are all 2D sprites and enough of the background elements are flat (trees, most notably) that you have to wonder why they bothered. Even if those buildings are 3D constructs, it's not like you're going to get to rotate the camera around to pick a nice cinematic angle anyway. The constant scaling of the 2D stuff creates an unpleasant wavy redraw effect as the screen scrolls.

There are some fancy embellishments (see below), but by and large, it's a very familiar first impression. Even the geographical layout of your hometown is identical to the other games, complete with the fat guy walking by the lake to the south.

Here's an early battle between my brave Chimchar and a wild Bidoof...

I really like how the grass parts and flutters right before the battle begins. More of that, please. Shame that the battle itself - aside from some tech upgrades - is the same old sprite-on-sprite action, with the usual comfortable distance between the two. I'm sure that halfway through the game, I'll turn the battle animations off.

I would have played more tonight, but my battery went red so I had to quit. I think I unnecessarily drained it after downloading the Meteos Disney Magic demo while I was waiting in line at EB.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to venture into the online stuff! GO CHIMCHAR!

TIME

BADGES

PARTY: Chimchar lv7

The Week in Links

By Joe on April 20, 2007 10:44 PM

Baten Kaitos Intro (YouTube)
This is the awesome movie-trailer-style intro to Baten Kaitos, which only serves to make you wish they had FILLED the game with this level of quality, instead of just crapping out cutscenes done in the game's boring engine with terrible subtitles and lousy pacing.

Ren and Stimpy "realistic" sitcom acting (John K.)
"I love the Honeymooners and the 3 Stooges. They depend on many scenes that contrast the relationship between an asshole and an idiot. Moe is the asshole, Curly is the idiot cartoon character. Ralph is the asshole, while Norton is the surreal idiot character that drives him nuts. Ren is the realistic character who is constantly driven nuts by Stimpy's unreal cartoonish antics."

Awesome! Another lame photo post! (Dave's Long Box)
It's the Mickey Mouse picture/caption that you're going to like.

MSFT, Xbox 360 and Japan: Failure-in-a-Box (Information Arbitage)
Talk about fanboy bait. Some financial guy examines the history of the Xbox and wonders just how long Microsoft will continue to dump money at it with absolutely no plan or means to recoup. Don't worry Xbox fans! I'm sure the next generation will turn a profit!

Venom as The Punisher (Action-Figure)
Look, I'm all for making toys of obscure fan-favorite characters, but when you cherry-pick something from a silly issue of What If in hopes of cashing in on a summer movie tie-in, and then price it at $100, then you're just being an ass.

THIS IS WHY "EDWARD NORTON" SHOULD NOT PLAY HULK IN UPCOMING MOVIE ABOUT HULK. (HULK'S DIARY THAT IS ON THE INTERNET)
Very funny. It's listing "No Muscles" twice that gets me.

Dissecting Jack's Lies (Kotaku)
Kotaku superstar Brian Crecente examines the half-truths launched by Jack Thompson as he wormed his way back into national news coverage (on FOX News, natch) shortly after the Virgina Tech shooting story broke. Best quote from Crecente: "...you can say anything on TV and not have it fact-checked as long as you say it quickly, when TV needs someone to fill time and it's a good sound bite." Too true. (Also, check out the follow up where MSNBC neatly keeps Thompson from getting away with it. And the Op-Ed piece on the ongoing media rush to equate video games with violence.)

The VT shooting is obviously a tremendously sad event, and not because ambulance-chasing choads feel the need to use it to spur on their book sales. Even aside from the horror and pain caused by one very disturbed individual, there's the thorny issue of how this generates anti-Asian actions and sentiments, specifically anti-Korean, which hits us very hard. For thoughts on this from Asian-American writers, check out "Let It Be Some Other 'Asian'" (New America Media), "More Fears of Backlash" (Reappropriate), and, of course, the excellent ongoing commentary from Angry Asian Man.

$64 on comics

By Joe on April 20, 2007 9:06 PM

Oh settle down. It was a month's worth.

Green Lantern Corps #11
No Gibbons artwork this time. A ton of stuff happens in this issue, the most worrisome being the big hanging curveball on the corruption of Kilowog. Didn't we just see him go crazy in Superman/Batman, like, two issues ago? And it hasn't been that long since he was rather ceremoniously killed and brought back to life... so it would be terrible to kill him off again. So either we're seeing Kilowog turning evil - which would be a classic mismanaging of the character, but I can see a bored writer going that way since the only thing Kilowog ever gets to do is play drill sergeant for young Lantern douchebags - OR, this arc will end with Kilowog (and the other brainwashed Lanterns) doing terrible, horrible things and then getting returned to normal, with only the C-Team guys getting killed (like the two jerks who were slaughtered in this issue.)

I am more intrigued by the notion of Mogo going crazy. Now there's something that could work into a full-fledged DC event. Have we ever seen Mogo actually use his power?

I hope the robot guy lived.

Shadowpact #11
Still a fun book. The B-grade characters are swiftly becoming A-grade; these guys could hold their own in a major team-up crossover. As much as I enjoy JSA and JLA, there's so much baggage over there. Shadowpact feels almost indy in comparison. This issue's best moment is when The Guy In Charge Of Hell (that's my nomenclature... DC is understandably reticent to get too overtly Judeo-Christian and call him Satan or Lucifer or whatever) explains that he wants Blue Devil to remain operating on Earth because BD is like a living poster child for how cool it is to be a demon and work in Hell. Hilarious.

The Flash #10
Still on the bubble. This was a do-or-die issue for me: if it sucked, I intended to drop the book. It didn't. Although I'm tired of getting covers that draw Bart as if he looks just like Wally.

The good news is that the shit writers from the first story are gone, but their legacy of awful still has to be dealt with. Turning Bart boring has to be one of the biggest tragedies on the racks. What saved the title for me was the return of Zoom, who, in his modern incarnation, is a good modern character in a typically ridiculous Silver Age dressing. This is the kind of thing that kills retro fans, but I like this particular example. I would not mind him switching to a non-silly costume, maybe a yellow version of "New Future Flash" costume from a couple years back.

Also, DC recently tossed some hints around that BIG CHANGES were coming to CHANGE THE FLASH'S LIFE FOREVER... which says to me that Wally will return. Or maybe Barry? That would be interesting. After years of getting Hal's Green Lantern title, I had just gotten used to reading Kyle when they brought Hal back, but I've never had the chance to read Barry since he was killed off in '85. So the Flash book will be sticking around.

Brave and the Bold #2
Why would Supergirl bother to keep her S costume on under her skimpy schoolgirl disguise?

I loved watching Hal fight off the urge to flirt with her, but it ended totally weird...

Did he really just tell her that? Good luck finding a planet like that in the DCU, honey!

Fantastic Four #544
This is the issue where Marvel was hyping up a roster change, as Reed and Sue disappear for a vacation and enlist Storm and the Black Panther to fill their shoes. It's actually clever when you read why. And having Thing and Torch switch to black FF costumes was a nice touch.

Three shocking things: One, Thing consistently being a dick with wiseass comments to people he barely knows. Two, The Watcher making a joke involving shrimp cocktail. Three, Panther right away going for the Ultimate Nullifier. Chill, dude!

The big reveal at the end is the most obvious thing in the world, given that today's comics must by law mimic what goes on in other super-heroic media. Cyborg, Beast Boy and Raven used in the Teen Titans cartoon? Cyborg, Beast Boy and Raven return to the Teen Titans comic. Smallville dredges up the awful idea that Clark and Lex knew each other as kids? All of a sudden DC retcons a retcon and revives the concept in the Superman: Birthright miniseries. Now, I won't spoil what happens in this FF issue, but note that the subtitle of the new Fantastic Four movie is Rise of the Who?

Justice League of America #7
I got the second half of the double-cover that showcases multiple Leagues across history. I was really impressed with how the cover presented the style of the artist(s) most associated with each iteration of the League.

The foldout inside (which reveals a dopey "picture" of the current League lineup) screwed up the page order, which is an amateur mistake. For shame.

And I really hated how this issue brought the "Hall of Justice" into regular continuity. Guys. That cartoon sucked.

Stupidest reason to choose members of the League EVER. So those six months looking at photographs were a complete red herring? I'm with Batman. This blows. At least we finally get answers as to why Green Arrow was skipped over and when Arsenal (dumb name but okay costume) would rename himself Red Arrow (dumb but historically sound name, with dumb costume).

What's up with this pose of Vixen's? Is that subliminal tiger poster plus the ass-in-the-air supposed to make me think she's going to attack that child?

Superman/Batman #33
Getting close to dumping this one. The mind-controlled alien storyline really went off the rails last issue, and this one's big finale where Superman gets to preach from the mountaintop about how cool it is to love Earth really stank. The next issue box shows the Metal Men, though, so I'm in for that.

JLA Classified #37
I wonder how much longer this book will use the "old" Justice League logotype?

This is a great issue, with art that is stylized but solid, and a story that both reveres and pokes fun at the Silver Age. It is downright creepy to see Amazo handled with such care and humanity after slogging through that dreary "Tornado's Path" potboiler.

Green Lantern #18
Love Daniel Acuna's art. Not so crazy about Star Sapphire's return, but I'll live with it until we get to the Sinestro Corps. Which, by the way, is completely and utterly awesome. The "Tales of the Sinestro Corps" backup feature was an absolutely pitch-perfect mockery of the old "Tales of the Green Lantern Corps" stories. Little sci-fi morality tales, now twisted to venerate the spreading of fear throughout the cosmos. I'm really excited about where this is heading.

52 #46-#49
And that's how I know it's been four weeks since I picked up my books.

Number #48 has an amazing image of a Question graffiti tag, one that DC really should have made available on the 52 website. I would put stickers of that all over town. I may be imagining things, but I think the hand even looks appropriately feminine. Is it too obvious to infer that Renee will be heading over to the Birds of Prey team? (There's a book I regret not getting into, seeing as how I like the team books, but I really had no inkling that it would survive for as long as it has.)

Justice Society of America #4
I know I praised Shadowpact for being legacy-free earlier, but that's exactly what makes JSA so great right now. That and the art.

JSA Classified #24
Although this is a nothing issue, the artwork is really appealingly ugly. Did DC commission a Dr. Mid-Nite solo series and that back out, because Classified has delivered an inordinate amount of Dr. Mid-Nite stuff lately. Good thing I like him... but still, more Mr. Terrific!

Jonah Hex #18
Every time I bring up Hex, I seem to say the same thing. Great book, very accessible to new readers (no continuity to worry about), very strong stories. I can't believe it's survived for a year and a half. Just seeing how different artists handle his scarred face is fascinating.

Uncle Scrooge #364 and Walt Disney's Comics & Stories #679
It saddens me deeply, but I had to drop these two. They are fantastically produced books, but you pay through the nose for that kind of quality. It's $15 a month for me to usually-not-read these two cover to cover. I've been getting them for awhile because I thought they were bi-monthly! Duh. I will miss the fabulous Don Rosa stories and the classic Carl Barks tales, which was the only stuff to which I paid strict attention.

A Twitter Success Story

By Joe on April 19, 2007 8:38 PM | 2 Comments

I think I have a resolution to the Twitter code problem that's been bugging me for the last few days. Although I reserve the right to develop new issues should obnoxious non-standard browser conflicts demand it.

I did some serious investigation into the Twitter-Code-On-IE thing. If you do a Google search for '"NaN days ago" Twitter', you'll find a couple other confused souls out there. How can something as (temporarily) huge as Twitter drop this shitty code out there and not have it work inside the world's (unfortunately) #1 web browser? It boggles the mind. I guess nobody is using this particular display option. Or, at least, those who are using it know enough how to fix it. Unlike me.

A few more Google searches brought me to PatMyBelly.com, where the proprietor Ant had posted some clever and brief custom code... an adaptation of the Twitter-supplied stuff with the bonus of actually working in more than one browser. This code even includes nifty back-and-forth buttons to page through the last ten messages, which makes it very similar to Twitter's own Flash solution without being ugly and permanently set to a weird, unusable size.

So last night I set to work adapting the PatMyBelly code to work within the word balloon design I had already created. (IT'S LIKE THE LOGO IS TALKING, GET IT.) The big hurdle was figuring out how to twist the code into working with a table of images, since the original is all text based. Safari and IE handle table imagery in subtle yet annoying ways. In Safari, you can declare background images in just about any portion, the TABLE, the TR or the TD. IE isn't as forgiving; it just wants the TABLE or TD. I had to use background graphics to simulate the "dimmed arrow" look when you can't page further forward or backward. What's actually happening there is that the dimmed arrow is part of a background image, which, should paging be active, is then covered with a lit arrow image.

It's probably the worst way in the world to handle something like that, so pro coders the world over can begin laughing now.

Anyway, once I figured out the precise language so that the table displayed properly in Safari and in Explorer, then I realized that the timestamp was incorrect. It was showing a two-hour-old message as being from "about a minute ago." The implication being that I played Baten Kaitos at two in the morning, gasp. That's better than defaulting to "NaN days ago," sure, but still undesireable.

The vagaries of javascript time functions are above my head, so I posted a message to PatMyBelly and received a reply with corrected code within hours. Turns out, Ant had not included a line to handle adjustment for different time zones. Crazy! I never would have figured that out; I probably would have just moved to French Guiana, where the timestamps would have been correct. With the fix applied, the Twitters all sorted themselves into a more chronologically accurate position, so people tracking my Baten Kaitos play can breathe a now-accurate sigh of relief.

So the main reason behind this entry is to give a big shout out of thanks to PatMyBelly.com, who, in addition to hosting a sweet Twitter code solution, also sports a kickingly colorful weblog design.

And, secondarily, to get this info into Google so future webloggers pissed off by Twitter can search themselves closer to fixing the problem. The truth is out there. You don't have to put up with NaN Days Ago anymore.

The easiest, stupidest thing on the internet.

By Joe on April 17, 2007 9:05 PM

You've heard of Twitter. It's stupid.

But it's also dead simple easy, which is why I like it.

For your luddites who aren't hep to the consultant-mandated inevitability of Web 2.0, Twitter is like the world's smallest weblog system (in fact, people have already coined the phrase "nanoblogging," just to piss me off.) Once you have an account, you can instantly add tiny little updates - no more than 140 characters - to your Twitter weblog. It's marketed as "here's what I'm doing right now," but really it's like a chat room with no one in it but yourself.

You get a page on Twitter's servers, plus the ability to incorporate it into your own stuff via Flash or javascript. The main Twitter site lets you tag other friends with Twitter accounts and collate faux "conversation" pages that list everything your friends have posted.

So I've added my own Twitter widget to the main fourhman.com page. It may or may not stick, depending on its reliability. Strangely, the Twitter-supplied code seems to hate Internet Explorer (jesus! What is it with that crap?), but it looks fantastic in Safari. Even hoary old Netscape likes it. I'm fairly certain it's a CSS subtlety thats wrecking it here, but since I don't use CSS (NOW who's the luddite!), I have no idea what to do about it.

Anyway, what makes Twitter work is that everything is focused on you being able to issue updates, small though they be, from anywhere. I attached my account to my phone's Instant Messenger... so no matter where I am, I can push a quick no-programming miniature site update. Yeah, yeah, I can use Movable Type on my awesome phone, but there's something to be said for making the process totally transparent: I IM Twitter and the text goes live. Wonderful. Most of the time.

You can also publish via text messaging, but I never use those, since I have, as you know from the previous paragraph, an awesome phone.

That said, Twitter is the dumbest bit of internet forced-trend I've seen in a long time. (Since all those flash animations that play a calm waterfall scene and then quick-cut to a man's gaping asshole or whatever, actually.) Twitter is, in pure utility, more useless than MySpace. At least with MySpace, you can pretend you have a real website where pals can post pictures and comments, even of you can't hold a goddamn coherent conversation on your own smegging page. With Twitter, it's just an endless litany of "having lunch with Dan" and "gas prices very high this week so I shoplifted a muffin." Twitter feels like a beta.

Although, to be fair, Twitter looks much better than MySpace, which is partially why I'm sure I'll use it more often. Design is everything, and MySpace looks like the 1997 internet jumped ahead in time to somehow kill the 2007 internet in an evil quest for dominance.

For my purposes - speaking as somebody with a real website and everything - Twitter is just a cute sidebar feature. We'll see how long it lasts, which, as I said, hinges mainly on the damn code not melting on Windows machines.

Wherein we manage to avoid using an umbrella for U.

By Joe on April 16, 2007 12:34 AM | 1 Comment

He looked the other way a lot when Gumby's team was up to something shady, like corking a bat or throwing dirt into one of the basemen's faces.

Not one of the top things I'd personally think about as I was dying, but I guess if you're super into sports...

It's a good thing this guy decided to wear a vest to the shoot that day, because he was already shut out of O.

I have a theory that Mr. Owl is actually a Mary Sue for the author.

Can you believe it took this long to get to a Truman Capote appearance?

As nuts as this story is, you'd think that simply wishing it was over would actually take care of it. >POOF!< "And Gumby and Pokey relaxed on their front porch, thinking how cleverly they had outwitted the Space Dinosaur."

This racing episode was sublimely bizarre. As I recall, it was like a giant board game, only with cars. The competitors had to drive until a whistle was blown (see above), and then they had to stop, and weird things happened depending on what icon they stopped on. Those damn Blockheads were there and messed everything up as usual. Clearly the author threw this in as a bone to the True Fans, because I can tell you for damn sure that Gumby had plenty of shit going on with xylophones that could have been used instead.

And why would he whisper that?

Next time: With only two letters to go, will Gumby and Pokey return home in time to catch gorillas and hire more house-painting robots?

The Week in Links

By Joe on April 14, 2007 9:22 PM

300 Pokemon (YouTube)
This is the audio from a 300 trailer edited (mostly) to clips from the best Pokemon movie, the first one. I still loves me the Mewtwo.

Nintendo replacing buggy Zelda discs. (Aeropause)
Even though I finished the game with no trouble, this makes me want to request a new copy of Twilight Princess just in case.

Sports DO Cause Violence (Game Girl Advance)
I will bang on this drum at every opportunity. Sports inspire far more violent acts than video games, yet nobody ever dares to suggest that sports (particularly youth sports) be banned or otherwise hobbled in the way that certain legislators and lawyers want to do to games. Gaming is demonized without cause, as is all new media.

Microsoft is Dead (Paul Graham via Daring Fireball)
"No one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway." It's so true. Offering up my own anecdotal evidence, the only people I know who are still beholden to Windows machines are the Amateurs (who use Windows for the same reason that they always buy a Ford, for example) and the Gamers (who use their PC as a highly-customizable PlayStation). Neither party cares about their computer: the Amateurs hate it because it's a mess and never seems to work correctly, and the Gamers only care about the ends (the game) not the means (which explains the success of the Xbox; Gamers jumping for an easier experience without losing fidelity). Programmers, Creators and Artists are all on other systems.

Epcot Mexico's Gran Fiesta Tour (Mice Age)
Great photo tour of a new addition to Walt Disney World, the revamped boat ride at the Mexico pavilion. On a family trip there 15+ years ago, I found a $5 bill on that ride, which, in retrospect, was probably just a dinner tip that blew off a table.

The newness is upon us.

By Joe on April 11, 2007 11:04 PM | 3 Comments

I have finally completed (I think) the initial phase of website overhaulery. So now I can wax poetic about it.

One of the goals was to keep things in the same place. So the big monthly archive list no longer jumps from the right side to the left side depending on what page you're on. The weblog feature blurb, the search box and the ad banners also (mostly) stay in the same general vicinity. The only confused soul here is the "latest entries" widget, which works fine on the main page and on the individual archive pages, but went a little nutso on the monthly archives and category archives. So you won't find it in those sections.

The basic paradigm is:

- main page: showcases latest weblog entries, links out to individual, category and monthly archive pages (among other things, which we'll get to)
- monthly archive pages: list excerpts of all the weblog entries and links to their individual pages
- indvidual archive pages: the final resting ground for all weblog entries; contains ability to leave comments (register with TypeKey!)
- category archive pages: list the entirety of all weblog entries for that category (so these pages remain GIGANTIC); contains links to the individual pages for commenting purposes; now has separate RSS feeds for each category, so people who only care about me bitching about Pokemon LeafGreen can now just slap that feed in their feedreader

I inserted rotating ad banners for Play-Asia.com on just about every page... not because I make a ton of bucks off of Play-Asia, but because I wanted something pretty and new to look at on each page.

Both the individual and monthly pages have uniformly placed navigational arrows, so you can backpage through every single archive entry without moving your mouse. This will generate tons of extra pageviews for me, which, on the whole, I'd rather you spent on clicking Google ads. (Which pretty much remain where they have been, just now on a massive amount of new pages.) The new system means new URLs for the monthly archives and weblog entries, so I probably just broke the internet.

On that note, I expect a significant upturn in pageviews, simply because I increased the amount of pages here by a factor of a thousand. That's just math at work.

On the main page, there's been some fun improvements. The Shoutbox has a choice position; no more scrolling down to post quickie comments! The Shoutbox also has some custom smileys, which I've been using at every opportunity.

Top right is an iframe that combines pictures of Clark with the live home webcam and the random photo loader. It will default to Clark, but if you click the webcame or random tab, they will auto-reload every minute or so. Or force it with the Reload button. More unecessary pageviews! The random one is actually quite fun. I've been watching it for days as I tested it.

Bottom right is a brief list of other websites where you can find me, often repeating the same crap I say here!

On the completely-anal front, I changed most of my thin red lines from slightly-light-red to more-darker-red. The cat head icon I use everywhere has also been similarly re-redded. And I darkened the khaki background because on some really bright monitors, it would white itself out.

As I already mentioned, entry commenting requires a TypeKey account, which keeps spammers and robots from pissing me off. Years ago I had full unchecked open commenting, and I was spammed to hell constantly until I gave up and turned it off. TypeKey will cease all of that. I've seen plenty of other Movable Type-based weblogs that use TypeKey, so it's a well-respected service. It also lets me ban people. Cough.

It was quite a bit of fun to do this much reprogramming. The new Movable Type is really cool, even if their support pages suck. I did find that, whenever I was stuck on something, it was probably because I was overthinking it. It just would have been nice had they included a few "hey dummy this is really easy" instructional pages just to keep my confidence up. The biggest ordeal was reworking my old templates to take advantage of the new features, like the better search and the commenting stuff.

What's missing? The full page video game reviews are likely not going to return. I babble so much about games in the regular weblog that it has become redundant to formalize it. When I get around to it, I will dupe the reviews back inside the core weblog, and any future review-style writings will be found right here with everything else.

The card games page is still a mess, but whatever. I'm sure I'll isolate plenty of odd bugs and formatting quirks as I get used to the new layout. And I really need to polish up the mobile version.

I found a couple minor situations where the formatting was different between the Mac's Safari and Windows's IE. Guess which one I decided to favor? I think the biggest discrepancy there is that, on the PC side, you can't use the Reload button on my iframe thingy. Not sure why that is, but I am sure that I don't care. You PC guys can click from tab to tab if you're desperate to force a webcam reload, cancel or allow.

Once Nintendo releases the final Wii Internet Channel, then I'll decide if I want to forge some templates specific to the Wii. I probably will just because it's silly.

Conroy Bumpus has left the building.

By Joe on April 11, 2007 10:26 PM

Could that be? Bruno and Trixie, compelled to act as backup to Conroy's mad floor show? The devil, you say! (The devil, the devil!)

Zelda wins. You are surprised.

By Joe on April 10, 2007 12:48 AM | 1 Comment

You recall the Nintendo Power Awards right? Where I predicted that Twilight Princess would win everything in which it was nominated, regardless of worth or competition? Let's see how right I was at predicting the winners...

The funny thing about the NPA is that the whole Reader Vote thing is really useless and ends up being totally downplayed. NP knows their fanboy base, so the premise of nominating games is just a front to fill some pages. When the "awards" are printed, the final article is really about what the Nintendo Power editorial team chose. In fact, out of the 21 categories, only one of them features accompanying artwork from the game that the readers chose as the winner. Every other award showcases an image from the game that the editors selected. (This does not affect situations where both the readers and the editors chose the same game, of course.)

Regardless, there's a lot of Zelda imagery in this one.

Wii Game of the Year: I voted Wii Sports. Zelda won, as predicted.

GameCube Game of the Year: I voted Chibi-Robo. Zelda won, as predicted.

DS Game of the Year: I voted EBA, but I guessed New Super Mario Bros would win. The readers went NSMB, but the editors chose EBA.

GBA Game of the Year: I was dead on yet again. I predicted Final Fantasy V would win the vote and it did. I personally voted for Drill Dozer and so did the editors.

Console Best Graphics: I voted for Excite Truck out of process of elimination more than anything else. Zelda won, which is stupid... it's a GameCube game. As predicted.

DS Best Graphics: I said readers would vote Metroid Prime Hunters and I was freaking right again. I voted for EBA out of sheer love, but the editors voted for whatever Castlevania game came out last year. I don't keep up with these things.

Best Music: I called another Zelda win, and the readers did not disappoint. I voted for Rub Rabbits, because as much as I may love EBA, this is a music category, not a soundtrack category. The editors were typically confused on the difference and chose EBA.

Best Sound/Voice Acting: I didn't really specify a prediction on the reader vote for this one, because all the games nominated sucked. The readers chose Call of Duty 3, so I guess this is my first prognostication loss, by default. Both myself and NP chose Rayman Raving Whoops WarioWare Is Out Forget This Rabbids.

Best RPG/Strategy Game: FFIII won, as predicted. I voted for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon because I was afraid that if I didn't, they might give up on the franchise and not make any more games. :(

Best Adventure: Zelda won, as predicted. This was my only Zelda vote, actually.

Best Platformer: I voted Drill Dozer again. New Super Mario Bros won, as predicted.

Best Shooter/Action Game: I must have been high to not name Metroid Hunters as the winner here, because duh. The readers went with Metroid, the editors went with Mega Man Even More Animed Edition, and I hand myself another loss because I stopped caring about this ill-defined category.

Best Sports/Racing Game: Wii Sports sweeps the readers, the editors, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Best Alternative Game: I have to chalk this as another Joe-didn't-care loss, since I just chose Elite Beat Agents myself and walked away. The readers voted for Brain Age, if you can believe that, and NP agreed with me.

And don't forget:

Best Multiplayer: Another all-around Wii Sports win.

Best New Character: As predicted, Midna took it. The readers must only have played the first three hours of Twilight Princess, because Midna has, like, only five lines after that point. I hated Midna and thought Twilight Princess's story was lousy. I voted for Chibi-Robo! NP voted for the guys from EBA, which is just weird. 90% of the people they save are more interesting than they are.

Best Story/Writing: From my previous article: "When TP wins, we'll have to endure Nintendo Power's inappropriately gushing hype-ograph."

"As should be obvious by now, pretty much every facet of Twilight Princess is amazing. What ties the whole experience together, though, is the most compelling narrative in the franchise's history. The direct connections to Ocarina of Time sent nostalgic chills down our spines, and the adventure carried more dramatic weight than your typical Zelda thanks to a significantly darker tone..."

Uh-huh.

Best WiFi Functionality: I voted Clubhouse Games. Metroid Hunters won, as predicted.

Best Wii Control: I voted Trauma Center, although that was just so I could enjoy checking a box for Trauma Center. As predicted, Wii Sports won.

Best DS Functionality: I voted EBA. Brain Age won, as predicted.

Game of the Year: I voted for three games that were not Twilight Princess, and Twilight Princess won, as predicted.

So I only missed my predictions on three categories. Zelda won every category in which it was nominated, which is sad and lame, especially in the Character and Writing awards. And did we even get more than four third-party games mentioned? This is like any given year of Nintendo forum talk in one handy article.

Oh, oh, and remember, there was a contest tied to the voting where one lucky winner receives the Games of the Year for Wii, Cube, GBA and DS. Enjoy them TWO extra copies of Twilight Princess, pal. Some local GameStop will be seeing those on trade-in very soon.

The Week in Links

By Joe on April 6, 2007 10:22 PM | 1 Comment

PaRappa The Rapper (In Real Game) (YouTube)
But how'd you get out of the TV?

EMI to Offer DRM-Free Online Music (Daring Fireball)
First the "complete my album" feature, now the ability to buy songs without DRM. Steve Jobs is so fucking serious about cracking the lid off of the music companies' comfortable little world, and it's all because The People started voting with dollars for an easy-to-use, well-designed, OS-agnostic little app called iTunes. Incredible.

The first 30 seconds of "The Drinky Crow Show." (Revver)
Premiering on Adult Swim this May, and of course the music is from They Might Be Giants.

Resident Evil 4 Confirmed For Wii (IGN)
If this drops at $30, I would definitely consider buying it again.

Religion & Philosophy For Gaming Dummies (GameSetWatch)
Although I don't like linking to articles that link to other articles in this list (I'll always just link to the original), there is a comment on this page that seems to have a striking clarity. Ironically, I believe it to be written by John Hummel, whom I never liked when he handled the lettercolumn for the long gone gameforms.com.

Why Bush Won't Compromise (Peter David)
A very short, very sad, armchair analysis of why Bush has absolutely no reason to let the Democrats' recent Iraq pullout timetable stand.

Photo Essay Round Robin
Tony's version of events of the game night discussed previously. His account has more pictures of melted tires. Josh also blogged it up and he only mentions the tire in passing.

A status report.

By Joe on April 4, 2007 8:17 PM

Here's what I'm playing at the moment and what I think I'll be playing in the near future.

Since finishing Chulip, the PS2 has reverted back into the DVD player. More accurately, "the machine that Clark uses to play They Might Be Giants' Here Come The ABCs over and over again." He's really glommed onto that in the last few weeks. We've had the DVD since before he was born - and we gave out copies to everyone we knew who had kids or had kids on the way - but only since he turned two has he fully embraced it. He's at the point where he just requests "Puppets!" and it now means TMBG, whereas before it meant the Wiggle Puppets.

His review of the DVD would go something like "Puppets. D. Robot. Funny."

So anyway, that's the PS2 these days. OMG PS2 DROUGHT! I keep forgetting I have to start Okami.

The Wii has mainly been serving up more Baten Kaitos. I just finished the Children of Duhr bit, where the vaunted evil god Malpercio shows up and wrecks the entire continent without actually killing anybody. Weird, that. I still have no idea how to find the 150 "hidden" card combos, and I'm not sure that it is even worthwhile to figure it out. My save file shows 36 hours, but it feels like the end is coming up. "Malpercio" is such a great name.

Bought Cooking Mama: Cook Off and have not done much with it. The controls have some hurdles, since you're not actually touching anything with your remote there's a palpable disconnect between your remote swinging and the onscreen actions... a disadvantage compared to the DS original. The actions are therefore uneven; peeling a potato is absolutely atrocious, but holding the remote like a can opener - for opening cans - is pleasantly perfect. Turning the water tap off and on is simplistically hilarious. I was super stoked to see that the Wii version adds something that was much-needed back when the game only cost $20: a "challenge" mode where you have to prepare the recipe WITHOUT the boring instruction screens interrupting the action. That will be the true test of the Cooking Mama chef.

This game has the ugliest menu screens in the world, though. It's like Nick Jr. with Tourette's.

Considering buying Starfox64 on the Virtual Console. More than considering it; just haven't yet because I can never get into the damn Shop Channel on Mondays.

Slogging through the first Phoenix Wright game on my DS. As much as I wanted to like the game, it's terribly slow and often doesn't make much sense. If, like me, you're curious as to how a video game based on lawyering works, it goes like this: you spend a lot of time wandering around crime scenes looking for evidence, which comes either from talking to witnesses or by inspecting the locations. When the witnesses give their testimony, you're expected to confront them with the evidence you have that contradicts their testimony. Sometimes you can get the contradiction rather easily, and other times you have to press the witness on every key point to get them to say the wrong thing.

If the contradictory evidence was more consistently laid out, the game might be more fun, but many times you're just guessing to see which evidence will expose the lie and move the story along to the next development. If you do not present the correct piece of evidence (you have five or so chances to screw it up before Game Over), the testimony simply repeats so you can try to catch the weak point again. It can get really disjointed. This is another one of those games where the idea is fantastically unique but the execution is lacking.

I also have Drill Dozer hanging out in the backup backup position. Not really persuing it hardcore since I have plenty else to keep busy.

For example, the Coming Soon list: Super Paper Mario, which just looks as clever as all hell. And Pokemon Pearl not long after that, which I'm really looking forward too because I've long since forgotten what a disappointment it was to play Pokemon LeafGreen. Fool!

One more thing... I won another online contest, this time from Aeropause. I received a copy of .hack//G.U. Rebirth Vol. 1. Yeah, that's the game's name. You remember: the RPG that's about a fake MMORPG? I have always found the concept intriguing, but never made the leap to try it. Not sure when I'm going to get into that one, but I have every intention to do so.

In the domicile of a hard-drivin' country-western Liverpudlian

By Joe on April 4, 2007 12:48 AM

Conroy Bumpus's mansion is open to tourists, but don't touch anything. And watch out for the cleaning robot. Who's John Muir?

Beyond Gamerdome

By Joe on April 2, 2007 7:22 PM

Had some good times on a very late night last Friday, as tons of people converged on Tony's for a game night. Did some We Love Katamari (I got 96% on the roll-up-animals level), did some Guitar Hero 1 & 2.

Did some Zombies, which the picture illustrates. I decided to use the base set, add in the dogs from Zombies 4, and included the mall expansion from Zombies 3. With the dogs, I gave each player the option of adding either X zombies or 2X dogs per non-building map tile. So we had several roving packs of wild hounds in our city.

I screwed up the mall thing though. I forgot to jump the mall 4-way tile in as soon as the mall front door was revealed... so the next mall tile pulled was a dead-end food court, effectively turning our mall into merely a Ruby Tuesday.

You'd think that this blind game of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was the dumbest activity of the night, but you'd be wrong...

The first voice you hear is me, suggesting that Cable is female. The two players - Josh and Steve - even chose their teams blind, so the total effect is irrevocably fair. Josh is playing the left hand team, which has Ruby Heart and I forget who else. Steve has Cable, mostly. In complete truth, they are not looking at the screen at all. Josh has played the game more, so he enters with the upper hand, but it turns out rather neatly close. Did I just spoil it?

After that, we did two games of TaleSpin, one where I reffed some newbies (a newbie won) and one with just me, Josh and Tony. I actually forget who won, since it was around 3am at that point. (EDIT: Tony won, using Prototype Jet Engine and the Baloo Passenger card.)

However, still feeling alert, we agreed to pull out a game of Fatal Frame, and this was probably the night's greatest mistake. By 5am, we still had no clear winner. Ugh. Overall, the game was slow to progress, but most games of Fatal Frame start out at a snail's pace because a methodical creepiness is very much in-theme. What really killed it was Tony playing The Repentance as we're all vying for the Shrine. Tony's Album Points were all tied up in Items, so it was a good play to try to destroy his opponents' ghost collection. However, this meant the game was looking at least another hour, since Tony was in sort of middling shape to go after the boss anyway. So we called it and dismissed before the sun rose. It would have been a great game, had it occurred around, say, 6pm.

The Week in Links

By Joe on April 1, 2007 9:02 AM

Things are light this week due to my big Movable Type upgrade. I pretty much paused the entire site while I knew things were being worked on. The good news is that I can now seriously tweak some templates and archiving as I intended. Whoo progress.

Hacking John McCain (Newsvine)
I have a soft spot for guys who punish jerks who steal bandwidth by linking out to somebody else's images, especially since I'm the first result on a Google image search of "waffles".

'And' is the operative part of 'Andreas' (PC Gamer)
Fantastic article about the scope of GTA: San Andreas. I love that I can still see pretty much any screenshot of the game and know exactly how to drive to that location.

"Complete My Album" now on iTunes, credit for already-purchased songs (Ars Technica)
Bloody brilliant. This is one of those features that says "We're not out to screw you."

Real Pokemon (worth1000)
Like most Photoshop contests, lots of these are pure crap. But some are disturbingly, wonderfully good. Way too many Rapidashes (Rapidashii?) in there though. Far too easy.

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