Darby's Blog

Facebook Zombies

Facebook: If you don't have one, you don't exist. Apparently. I personally have never been interested in a site where the only point is to post about yourself... Okay, well this blog but I've never been interested in a site where the only point is how many friends you can add to your friend list. Actually, you don't even have to add friends. Or know the person, though it is nice to have some excuse for friending them. Take one of my "friends," he added me not too long ago, and I believe the best way we know each other is when he stole my chair in eighth grade, and when I confronted him about it he flipped me off. Yeah, according to Facebook, we're BFFs.

The only reason I joined Facebook is when I was working for Lijit and needed to test some stuff involving these kind of sites. I posted a few test posts, then never touched my page ever again. And for a while, this was fine. I forgot about Facebook, and the rest of the world didn't know I existed, and all was peaceful. But one day, somebody found me, and added me. It was fine, just another email I didn't read. All was peaceful again. But then someone else found me. Now I have two friends... Then a few days later, two people found me. The next day: two more people. Next day: three more people. Now everyday I'm getting an email saying that I have a new friend. These are usually people who I only know because we happen to be in the same class, or people I haven't talked to in ages.

So what do you do about this? I'm fine if other people want to add me to their smorgishblorg of people they roughly know, but do I really need an email about it every time? Of course, I'm sure there's a way to turn this off, if I were to go back to my Facebook account. But this is almost an opportunity that's too good to pass up. Look at all these people who are my friends... there's nothing up on my Facebook page, but what would someone think if they were clicking through a friend's list and found that my friend friended a scientologist...

Bad Case of the Line Syndrome

When there is a line in front of something people want, people will get in that line instead of going to the lineless table next to it. It sounds like a Super Spy tip from Burn Notice, but very true.

Yesterday I got back from a trip to Magic Mountain. Because of the LA traffic, my mom and I weren't sure how early to leave to get there. As it turns out, there really isn't too much on a Friday morning. So we got there at 9:15 for a 10:30 opening. But that's not the funny part. What's funny is what we found at the gates.

The last time my mom went to Magic Mountain was over 20 years ago, so she didn't really know the ropes. But common sense was with us. And common sense said that there shouldn't be a single line of 30+ cars all lined up in front of a single gate when they'd for sure open up most, if not all, of the gates. I will admit, there were cones in front of all but one gate, but the park wasn't open yet. So that's why there's cones, right?

Waiting in a single line just didn't make sense, so we decided to move up in front of another gate behind another car with the same idea. Or so we thought. About ten minutes later the car we pulled up behind drove away to where I'm guessing would be behind the massive line, leaving us in the front. Note that by this time there were five or so cars following our great example by getting in line behind us.

Who would have thought that all but one of the gates opened. And when they did, the huge line completely dismantled into a crowd. Of course, we were the first ones at the gate, so we got in first.

Alright, has everyone learned their lesson? Of course not, when does a mass of people learn things? On our way to the park gates, my mom and I passed eight ticket booths (we bought online and just passed by). There were four ticket booths to the left, and four to the right. There were absolutely no differences between the booths, no differing signs, no different color in shades. Exactly the same. A line eight people long had formed on the four booths to the left, and the four on the right were completely empty. When my mom had to run back to the car to grab her ID that she forgot (and was nessessary to get our Flash Passes with) seven of the eight booths were open.

Time and time again we saw this when lining up for rollarcoasters as well. All the lanes would have four or more people waiting to board the coaster, except for one lane which was inexplicibly empty. Guess where we lined up at.

Two years late

I think I'm two or three years late for a "Snakes on a Plane" joke.

When the general public votes, you get an average result.

I have to keep reminding myself that I know better than the general public. If the following post bashes one of your favorite movies, then feel free to revise that phrase in your head to, "the general public of my high school." If you go to my high school, then too bad.

I just watched Trasnformers, since it was THE movie last year and I finally got to stay home sick and watch it. But before I go into my review, I'd like to talk about other movies that are THE movies.

First off this year it's Sweeny Todd: Demon barber of Fleet Street. As far as I know, since I've never seen it, it's about a barber who wants to get revenge on some guy in London. But he does it by killing his patients (that's bad business if you ask me) and turning them into meat pies. While singing, because it's a musical as well. All I have to say is, what's the appeal here?

But before that it was The Dark Knight. (You know, I'm not sure if they left out "Batman" in the title because nobody says "Batman: The Dark Knight.) I give the movie credit, it's not bad. I liked the first better, personally. But this one was too long. They should have ended it when they captured the Joker the first time and left off with him saying, "I'ma get you next time!" Then make a third movie from there. (Addmittedly this would have caused problems since Heath Ledger died after the movie was done filming, but we can't predict these things.) But length I'm usually not too concerned with if it's a good story, I got through King Kong (200...6? The most recent version that lasted 3 and a half hours) just fine. But The Dark Knight? Batman had the Joker at gunpoint about four times in the movie. AND STILL DIDN'T SHOOT HIM. The guy blew up a hospital! He killed lots of people. Just freaking shoot the guy. You'll do the world a favor.

Anyway, back to Transformers. It was THE movie last year, and now I finally got around to watching it. It was... It would have been better if the good-guy robots were more kick-ass. And if they dropped the Zicron war or whatever and all the robots were bad and wanted to take over the world. Except for one who helped the humans because he felt bad. Or he's actually the Iron Giant from the Disney cartoon.

And that band "Disturbed" I mentioned in my last post (if you remember it) contributed to the soundtrack, so added bonus. Except it was the third song in the credits. Nobody even stays in the theater long enough for the first song to end.

This post dates all the way back to July of last year, when my dad and I went to see the Rush Snakes and Arrows concert. One of the pre-show songs played on the speakers was an interesting rendition of 2112 Overture and Temples of Syrinx... played on string instruments. When I got home from the concert I did some research and found that this was by The Vitamin String Quartet. And they had an entire album dedicated to Rush's 2112. Okay, so maybe the guy who owns this quartet happens to be a big fan of Rush. I mean, it's not like these guys always cover heavy rock songs. They're violinists, right?

Today I was surfing iTunes when the Vitamin String Quartet popped up again. This time they had covered an album by Disturbed, a band I picked up from Guitar Hero. You should be able to figure out the music style from the name itself.

Curious about this new face of the quartet, I looked to see what other albums they had covered. What I found were tributes to Queen, Coldplay, Lincoln Park, Evanescence, Led Zepplin, AC/DC, Metallica, Nirvana, Guitar Hero songs, rock wedding songs and many more. It's really quite odd listening to Bohemian Rhapsody on a violin.

My only question is, who picks up an orchestra instrument and says, "Let's learn Freebird!"?

Merry Christmas

Or whatever holiday you celebrate. (Are there any holidays for Pastafarians?)

Anyway, for Christmas I got a Mazda 3, which is rockin. I'll have to learn how to drive a stick though.

Most of my readers know however that if that was all I had to say I wouldn't bother posting. (Though a new car IS awesome enough to brag about.) So, a while ago I purchased Guitar Hero: World Tour, which is the game where Guitar Hero realized that if they didn't include a drum set and microphone they'd lose to Rock Band. But then I realized I didn't have enough Wii remotes to do a four person band. I ordered one up, and it came with a bonus.

Apparently Nintendo got complaints about people getting too into a game and throwing their Wii remote into their HDTV. So instead of a. telling people not to throw their remotes into their TV and b. telling them to pay attention to the thousands of warnings to put on the safety strap on their remotes, they came up with a buffer so instead of creating a hole in your TV, you'd only dent it. (Not actually tried.)

May I present to you the Wii condom.

The Wii has definitely had its fair share of obscene jokes when its official name was released, but apparently these didn't stick with the designers. Didn't anyone on the design team yell out, "These are ugly!" Honestly.

Microsoft's Worse, Worser and Worst

I've had a ton of homework lately. Every single one of my classes decided to assign a huge project for this week. In fact, I would have done this post last Monday if my computer didn't freeze because I was trying to manhandle Microsoft's worst program ever.

First though I should give Microsoft credit for making Power Point. It's awesome and I'll probably use it in a future career. Exel isn't too bad either.

Now that I've gotten that taken care of, let's look at Microsoft's worse. (Yes I know that's not proper grammer, I'm trying to copy Keith Olberman.)

Microsoft Word: Actually, Word comes in handy. Its spell check has saved my school reports, its just about the only application that lets me do accents, and its really the only thing out there more advanced than notepad. However, there are things it sucks at. Auto spelling correction can be a pain, especially when I'm doing Spanish homework on it. Often times it labels my sentences as fragments, even when they're not. Adjusting margins is agrivating. The list of little messups goes on.

And the worser:

Microsoft Outlook: Actually, I wasn't planning on having a worser, but I decided to take a look at my applications to see if there were any programs I wasn't aware exsisted. And there was. When I first opened Outlook to see what it did, an error message came up. Not surprising, since it was the 2003 version and I've never used it once since then. The error asked if it could re-open in "safety mode." I clicked no, since I really didn't care all that much. However, it didn't take no as, "don't bother, close down please," but as, "no, try to re-open in a mode that we know doesn't work." So the same error message came up again. This time I clicked yes, I can see patterns. Outlook tried to re-open in safety mode this time, but another error message came up. This one asked to download some software to fix the problem. I clicked no, and got the program trying to re-open itself again. Apparently I'm not that good with patterns. Going back through the error messages again I clicked yes to the download and, well it started downloading. I canceled the downloading and the thing finally shut down. The only thing worse than giving up is to come up with thirteen programs to fix the first. And forcing you to download them.

And the worst: (Though I have to admit, Outlook was pretty bad.)

Microsoft Movie Maker: Face it. Apple has the best movie editing software. Don't try to fight it. Microsoft Movie Maker is a sad attempt at being able to do something. It was pretty simple what I wanted: Make a slide show, add subtitles, maybe put in some music. MMM does allow you to pretty easily add pictures or movie clips and move them around. The only problem came to when your movie was done, saved on your flashdrive, and when you take it to class you realize that none of your pictures are showing up because it's trying to find them in: Darbyvernon/MyDocuments/Notes/Spanishproject. Then the subtitles are a problem because you can't actually add them. You can add a big title right in the smak middle of everything, but you can't move it to somewhere where it's not getting in the way. My computer froze before I could indulge in the horrors of adding a soundtrack. This all took two hours by the way. The next day I turned my movie into a Power Point. It took 30 min.

And there you have it, Microsoft's worst programs in the world!

Guitar Hero: On Tour, Mostly for DS lite

Normally, I avoid video game posts because I doubt most of my audience would be able to understand me if I did. I think I can pull this one off.

About a month or two ago Guitar Hero: On Tour came out. The basic idea was to put Guitar Hero on a portable gaming device, specifically the Nintendo DS. Before I say anything I will give props for the fact that the creators were able to turn a metal box slightly larger than your palm into a playable guitar. Now that I got that out of the way, let's get onto the more interesting stuff, where it went wrong.

First, a bit of background info on the DS. About a year after the DS came out, Nintendo released the DS lite, an upgraded version of the DS that was smaller, had a brighter backlight, and came in pink. This isn't the first time Nintendo released an upgraded version of one of their handheld consoles. Back in the days of the Game Boy Advanced, the GBA SP came out, which was smaller, introduced the idea of a backlight, and came in purple. Back then, I did buy a GBA SP, but mostly because my GBA had to be held together with scotch tape. Right now my DS is working just fine, (though I have suspicions about the battery life slowly dying.) So, I have not bothered to purchase a DS lite.

One last thing about the DS lite is that the backwards compatibility slot for GBA games is slightly shorter than the DS. Normally, the only problem is that the GBA game annoyingly sticks out of the DS lite, but you can still play it fine.

Unless the makeshift guitar on a new game utilizes this slot.

Like any business, Nintendo holds their latest products in higher light, so any advertising has a DS lite in it instead of a regular DS. It's understandable, but can cause problems. Like in Guitar Hero. When I opened up my game and was just ready to play it I noticed that the guitar part that slides in the backwards compatibility slot would keep falling out. Desperately trying to get my new game to work, I took apart the guitar part, thinking that taking off the outer plastic case would make it small enough to fit. (It didn't.) I was about to disassemble my DS when my mom looked on the internet and found some guy on a forum with the same problem. Turns out that inside the box was an innocent looking plastic piece which is actually an extension to the guitar so it fits all the way in an old DS.

Sad thing was that no where on the box or instructions did it actually say this.

And for the game itself: I'm starting to wonder what flies as a rock song nowadays. There are only 25 tracks. (~60 less than the next one coming later this month.) The only songs I recognized were on a previous Guitar Hero, and there were also songs like All Star, Jessie's Girl, and This Love... which aren't exactly what you'd call rock songs. I did end up liking a few songs: Helicopter by I-don't-know, Youth Gone Wild by I-don't-remember and some song by Ozzy Osbourne.

As a final note, after noticing all the scratch marks, the bulky size, the pixel that always shines red... I was thinking about actually getting a DS lite. Although maybe I should wait, because Nintendo just released info on a NEW upgrade to the DS. (I think it's called the DSi) Apparently it has enhanced WiFi capabilities and an SD slot. And instead of shortening the backwards compatibility slot even more, it just got rid of it entirely. That'll make Guitar Hero difficult.

...

So… Let the record show that this particular blog post was typed through Microsoft Windows… And as we can see… nowhere in this post is a double period. There are only three periods… or just one.

 

So… when you read a certain blog (click) … there is no excuse for double-dotting.

 

J

 

Also, blog haz me wantin cheezburgerz with kittehs. www.icanhazcheezburger.com

 

I Inspire Myself.

Let's just skip the "Why I haven't been blogging" and get to the good stuff.

This semester I have an art class in school. It's fun, I like to draw. And of course we get homework. Our homework this week is to fill two pages of images of things we find inspiring.

Inspiring is difficult for me. Let's just say that if The Fountainhead was made into a movie, a picture of Howard Roark would have been put front and center of my homework. Not necessarily as something that inspires me, but more as a role model. Though proclaiming that Roark is my role model is probably an oxymoron.

Anyway, two things did immediately come to mind, Myst and Ka. But those only take up so much room. I've got to figure out something else.

Inspiring or not, you should see/play these anyway.

So, after digging into my mind, various sketchbooks and the internet, I finally found some things that I could use. That doesn't mean I didn't get desperate.

Mudkip?

We also have to fill a page with writings that inspire us. So my page will probably be filled with the lyrics to Freewill, a couple of odd quotes that smart-alacs like me appreciate, and one of the knock-off poems from the game Portal.

Not in cruelty
Not it wrath
The Reaper came today.
An Angel visited
This gray path
And took the cube away.

And that's about it. Um... here, a moment of zen.