I’m having some trouble actually making my permalinks and comments work. I’m not sure why they broke basically out of the blue.
One of these days I’m certain I’ll see if maybe my htaccess file has been mangled by a bad upgrade. That’s probably it.
To the tune of “Fireflies” by the illustrious Owl City
You would not believe your eyes
if ten million PC guys
Saw Apple’s light as I fell asleep
They’d all carry Macbook Airs
And boot up iWork software
And they’d walk around in Snow Leopard underwear
I’d like to make myself believe that my iPad completes me
Not hard to say that I’d rather stay away from a PC
Cause Windows carries contagious diseases
Yeah I see a thousand bugs
And I have to pull the plug
They make me use that crap at work
Two buttons is too hard
And I feel so bombarded
Wish I could see Cupertino from my yard
I’d like to make myself believe that Android boots too slowly
It’s hard to say that I’m not a gamer, cause I can download Steam
Or load up Parallels with WinXP
(Don’t be so mean…)
My iPod’s got a hairline crack (take me to the Apple store)
It’s time to get me a new iMac (take me to the Apple store)
I need a nice trust fund to bleed (take me to the Apple store)
For all the products that I need
And everything Mac just works
Those PC guys are jerks
They say that I don’t know anything
But I know a little bit
A couple keys to hit
Command-option-escape will let me force quit
I’d like to make myself believe that I’m not wasting money
It’s hard to say that I’d rather pay for a superior machine
This Apple sticker makes it run so clean
I’d like to make myself believe I’m not elitist or haughty
It’s hard to say what I’d convey to those who disagree
Those Windows fans are just too blind to see
I’d like to make myself believe that Steven Jobs is holy
It’s hard to say if I’d rather keep my pancreas just for me
You never know when he’ll need surgery
I’m not really keen on buying many things before I get the opportunity to test them out. Cars, for example, I won’t really buy until I drive. Music, I won’t buy until I listen to.
So why is it that so many developers expect us to buy games sight-unseen? Or, rather… game unplayed? It’s a problem that’s plagued the industry for a long time, and it’s often cited as one of the reason for rampant piracy among the industry. I’m far more likely to buy a game I’ve tried for a few minutes and feel good about than one I am just hoping will meet my wild expectations.
Case in point: I’ve had an eye toward NCSoft’s newest MMO, Aion, for a long time. This week, on Sept. 6, the much-touted “Open Beta” commences.
You’d think “Open Beta” would mean that anybody who wanted to jump in and try it could, right? Hardly.
Via Brian Knox, aka @aion_xaen, on Twitter:
@Kravock open beta is for preorder folk, closed beta folk, as well as additional keys we will be handing out.
By “Open” what they really mean is that you can have access to it if you were in “Closed” beta. Or if you preordered the game. So, ultimately, rewarding the people with blind faith instead of trying to win over those with doubts. Gotcha.
Finally, they have “additional keys” but no mention has so far been as made as to how they’ll be getting distributed. A cursory search turns up Fileplanet as a distributor of client and keys… and we all know what that means: subscribers only.
So unless you were hand-picked by Aion staff long ago, the only way to test drive this game is to fork over the green stuff. That sounds like just the thing to keep me from taking the plunge. Maybe in a few months, if the game hasn’t done a Conan or a Warhammer on us, I’ll be able to come back and try it out.
…then again, even if it has, I’ll still be able to come back and try it out. Hrm…
It’s no secret that Internet Explorer is constantly playing catch-up to Firefox when it comes to not just meeting web standards, but surpassing them. Today, I ran across another interesting problem made manifest by IE’s inability to do perform any better than “just good enough.”
Certain ad images in our system were not properly rendering in Internet Explorer, but they were rendering just fine in Firefox. Obviously, as far as ads are concerned, this isn’t an ideal situation, but none of our software appeared to be at fault.
Furthermore, IE seemed to actually download the file, but when it came time to display, all one could see was the big red x of death.
Turns out IE can’t display images that are encoded in CMYK colorspace – only RGB. According to a three-year-old post I found, Firefox didn’t used to either – but today that’s clearly no longer the case.
So, lesson learned: save your JPEG images in RGB if you plan on putting them on the web. Otherwise save them in PNG, which has no CMYK support. You’ll thank yourself later.
I’ve managed to resurrect my blog from the ashes. We’re now on a new, dreamy host and running a brand-spankin’ new WordPress installation.
Lots to do yet with plugins and other things. Like content. But things are good – I even managed to port over most of my old content. Hoo-ah!
Arcane Tinmen, of Denmark, are still attempting to work out the details to revive the too-soon extinguished fires of The Spoils – at least, according to an email I recently received from them. From what I’ve been able to gather, the fight is still strong … and still completely up in the air.
I’m pulling for a win, but I know how rapidly deals can fall through. It’s disappointing not to have seen success yet, but at the same time, I’m relieved that any hope yet remains for a card game that died before its time.
I suppose going a month without blogging isn’t really a good way to keep the dream alive, is it? A true testament to its predecessor, I blame the fantastic Peggle Nights as my primary source of procrastination (and I’m still going to do that review I promised). I’ve finally finished the challenges and I’m working my way on to the aces before tackling the clears.
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
I also managed to take the time to finish Final Fantasy XII, which is very likely the greatest Final Fantasy experience SquareEnix has produced to this day. FF7 and FF9 fans, meet me out back. We’ll rumble old school style. Bring your posse. FF10-2 fans, the three of you can be the cheerleaders. (Really, I have no idea what VGPub was thinking with a 62 rating, other than an attempt to undercut this magnificent game in order to attract attention.)
But I digress.
The thing that actually snapped my streak of failing to blog was an article on Joystiq that appeared to be faux-disgusted as to how “nobody noticed” Talisman got cancelled, as if Capcom did the smart thing by letting the project drop in favor of continuing to work on reviving a ton of old franchises.
Again, I digress.
Didn’t I write about this back in August? I suppose I’m a victim of my own failure to “pimp my blog” as it were, but at least I can feel a sense of accomplishment that even the boys at Joystiq are two months behind me. Maybe I’ll try to tip somebody next time I unearth exciting news instead of keeping it here for all of six people to read.
I wasn’t expecting it until this Thursday, but a hopeful load of PopCap.com rewarded me with what will likely be the downfall of my productivity for the rest of the day: Peggle Nights!
http://www.popcap.com/games/peggle-nights
I’ll be picking it up and posting thoughts and impressions later. Less talk, more Peggle.
Gordon Freeman, in the house:
http://www.shacknews.com/screenshots.x?gallery=10698&game_id=
http://blog.reddit.com/2008/09/crowbar-headcrab-and-half-life-strategy.html
Godspeed, Mister Freeman. The fate of the free world rests squarely on your shoulders.
