After Christmas II: And Approaching New Years

I'm here at home right now, hoping to go fireworks shopping/other stuff for a decent New Year's Eve.

I've worried about Kmart and Sears (closings so far: nothing too shocking, a few attached to C-list malls, Sears Essentials looks finished), though talk of what next concerns me too. Cutting inventory and more sub-leasing? I'm looking forward to Eddie Lampert, who essentially bought Kmart in bankruptcy and bought Sears, getting the boot, as he took huge raises while presiding over 18 consecutive losing quarters.

I've attached this cool shot of the 1996 Kmart website to reminisce on things gone by, and can't quite figure out what it is: do they prepare pizza in that? Is it like Subway, where they prepare it in front of your eyes, or that sushi place in town I have yet to try (if ever).


Elsewhere, I visited Michigan in 2010, but I didn't explore at all Grosse Point, Michigan, a charming-looking place on the edge of Detroit.


Check out Google Maps and explore the "Village", the downtown area, which actually looks pretty healthy and functional: Einstein Bros. Brothers, Starbucks, a dentist office, Gap, Ace Hardware, Borders (sorry, not anymore), and a street-front Kroger.



This has a bit of parking in the back and was a very cramped store, though recently, it was demolished and rebuilt as a two-level store (it now has a basement). Unfortunately, this meant that the facade is now completely different, and all but one of the employees left. Whoops.

Speaking of Google Maps, recently they changed the design of their Interstate and Highway logos to a thinner font. This is what they used to look like:


My brother left for Tennessee today. He sadly had to return the bottle of whiskey to the liquor store (as mentioned yesterday) and almost got his spices that he bought in Houston confiscated by TSA agents (they have been known to do unscrupulous things), which we all hate, but deep down they're just trying do their job, and don't have anything against people, most of them, anyway (my father once had a run-in with a particularly nasty TSA agent that taunted him over a small tube of toothpaste that was technically legal, and I have a feeling that she probably victimized others, too).

While digging around in the attic, we found an old picture that was on fired terra-cotta (or something) "by" me when I was younger (I think my grandfather helped me with my finger). I won't show it with you, but it looked a LOT like the "Red John" face. It was even in a light maroon color.



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Time will tell what I want to do in Carbonizer! in 2012. It will be either grand or shut down. But lets try it out!

After Christmas

I'm sorry I didn't do a "Carbonizer Christmas", though to tell you, I have a better Christmas this year than last: not better gifts, mind you, though I think the stuff was better. A pound of Community Coffee New Orleans Blend (would go great with beignets!), a new clipboard, "Images of America: College Station", "Reimagining Detroit", "Wrapped Up FoxTrot", a remote control flying shark (inflatable!), helium and balloons, the Logo Board Game (more on that another day), some weird flavored straws for milk, some JellyBellys, a pizza stone, an iPod cable that I wanted to replace my current one that's patched up with electrical tape except it turned out to be a bulky hand-me-down that I wanted to avoid, and a homemade wearable blanket.

It should be noted that in addition, I got some Spam from Hawaii and a reusable Kmart bag (also from Hawaii).

All in all, pretty good. My brother got a bottle of Jack Daniels that he can't take on the airplane home (among other things, of course), my aunt donated a gag gift ("365 Ways to Go Green", and given that we're all independents or conservatives, we all took a look at it and passed it on), I gave my cousin some bacon-flavored popcorn (among other things), and all in all, good times. We watched a few movies during the time (Muppet Treasure Island, which I've seen dozens of times but I don't pass up, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Red), played games (Mario Kart 64, Mario Party 8)


Miscellany:

This is my inferior picture of some groovy flooring exposed by building demolition. My brother had the superior camera and produced a way better (and way bigger, storage-wise) picture. Due to the fact that I signed an NDA, I can't tell you where I was, or what I was doing there.




Lightning McQueen here seems to have gained some weight, and he doesn't quite comprehend what he's done.





And more is yet to come...! (Happy Boxing Day, everyone!)

Sequels Suck

I thought Cars 2 wasn't great, but by far, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil is a far worse sequel than Cars 2 ever was. The original Hoodwinked! was enjoyable and fun, but the second isn't. To sum it quickly, the fun of the original was having the characters not appear who they really look like. It used a rather novel way of telling the same story four times, each from the view of a different character, and if you rewatched it, you could catch details that make it more obvious as to what's going on. But HT!, in development for years, doesn't really have that same punch. Rather, a crummy plot with incredibly bad pacing replaces it. The voices for Red and Kirk are different, and some running jokes that aren't funny reminded me of what happened to Homestar Runner before they stopped updating, they just couldn't leave some one-shot jokes alone (Peacey P being a notable example), and the result was detrimental. While there were a few funny jokes in there, and it's not as bad, as say, I don't know, Bee Movie, but HT! sucked and a sorry way to effectively kill the franchise.

Fall of Pixar

One of the movies that I watched over Thanksgiving break was Cars 2, the only Pixar movie I didn't see in theaters and easily the worst Pixar movie. Granted, it wasn't as bad as any direct-to-DVD Disney film, but it sucked in a lot of ways. Granted, there were some funny moments (especially concerning the first part of the film, which takes place in Japan) and all sorts of funny euphemisms, such as the antagonists showing what remains of a car (in a "crushed car cube" form) and Mater's "oil leak", and of course the whole plot revolves around a race around a converted SUV promoting a non-oil alternative fuel which turns out to be a ruse, and he's just trying to discredit alternative fuels, although Sarge won't switch to alternative fuels.

The whole thing looks like it was made solely for the merchandise: unless you've been living in a hole all summer, you know that they've been promoting the heck out of Cars 2, and the executives at Disney knew that for kids, Mater (the main character in Cars 2, another reason why people don't like it so much) IS popular with the kids.

Is it good? Not really, no. It's less than half as good as Cars was (and given how weak Cars was, that's saying something).
Is it bad? Not really, either. There are many recent animation films worse than Cars 2, and it's not nearly as bad as most Dreamworks Animations films, and you know that there are some awful ones in their back catalog.

The Season for Classic Mac Gaming

My iMac currently sits dormant underneath a nearby desk. It won't play Yoot Tower right anyway, one of my favorite games around this time, as old memories bubble back up from those glorious weeks in 2003. Short, but glorious. And that's pretty much the last key to that sort of thing. Basilisk II is on the Mac side of the computer (I'm posting this from the Windows side), but it has all sorts of quirks, and based on my experience trying to run SheepShaver (I tried twice, yet still no dice), I really don't want to attempt to put Basilisk II on the Windows side (it might work, since BasiII was meant for Windows), even then, it won't be synced to the Mac side unless I do some complex replacing of the disks that were updated. I might end up trying it though. Yoot Tower won't run on Basilisk (I believe Yoot Tower requires PPC)

Macintosh Garden is down again, with the Drupal "Site off-line" page up again, which means I can't contact my fellow classic Mac aficionados either.

Meanwhile, even IIGS gaming on the Mac side is limited (mono sound means it only comes out one speaker, apparently) and I can't use joysticks (which is admittedly OS X's fault).

I'd like to continue my iMac project, which I'd like to talk about and pick up, which I can't do because Mac Garden's offline. Basically: I'm a bit depressed that I can't continue what I consider to be a tradition, and all I have is a shadow of what I did.

Ah well. At least there's still Nintendo.

Carbonizer's vacation

I did take the Houston Travel Guide offline until I have all of it done. Still don't know what else I'm going to do.

Schizo Kroger

I love the Kroger logo. Well, one of the Kroger logos anyway, what I affectionately call the "Loopy K" (it would be "Big K", but Big K is a nickname for Big Kmart, a defunct discounter, and of course, the Kroger soft drink name. The Loopy K, something like this is what appeared on all stores save the really old Krogers from the early 1970s (and before). It was iconic, bold, and different.

But ever since about 10 years ago or so, I'd say 2000 since that's when I first saw it, they switched to a non "Loopy K" logo. My local Kroger dumped the "Loopy K" for a bland KROGER in block letters. An example that I could find on Flickr is this. They renovated my local Kroger in circa 2001-2002 to include that logo, and later in the 2000s, changed some of the older Krogers that still had the Loopy K (even in slightly different hues, I think I remember white-on-brown) to the block letter KROGER.

This specimen is what my local Kroger used to look like, and they changed the lettering in the mid-2000s, though the Greenhouse exterior stays (Huntsville, Texas).


But the reason I call this schizophrenic is the way they do logos. The Loopy K remains as the corporate logo, and in 2006, they renovated Tanglewood Mall's Kroger (no, it's not connected, don't get too excited there) and kept Loopy K intact. In Houston, the notorious Montrose "Disco" Kroger had the block letter Kroger (with the Signature tagline, even though it was older and missing niceties) and gave it a rehab, including yet another logo which is narrower than the block letter Kroger (now, if they could only give something like that to my local "Krappy Kroger". I guess we don't have enough yuppies). Elsewhere in Houston (well, Hedwig Village, anyway), the lovely "Kroger of the Villages" was built/remodeled in the 1990s, and has an awesome front, even in 2011. It looks like it even tailors to the local tastes. In Conroe, north of Houston, a former Albertsons (must have gone out in the 2000s, as records on the Internet obviously show it exists, plus it has the old Food/Drug logos of Albertsons) had the Loopy K, but discarded it later in the 2000s, leaving a possibility that it was put up in the late 1990s or early 2000s and lasted less than 10 years. In southwest Houston, two Kroger Marketplaces opened up, reportedly nice stores on par with H-E-B Plus, which do have Loopy K, sort of, but it's not the same and I just can't get over how cheap the "Marketplace" logo looks.

Or was it always, in fact, just a twist of fate that had the Loopy K get on stores themselves? Kroger had the logo since 1961 and a similar logo (thinner) since the mid-1940s, but even by the 1970s, the Kroger logo remained on a lighted box by the street, but not on the storefronts themselves.

It should be noted that I did beat VVVVVV

November 5th at 8:48 PM. And the "Time Taken" is wrong (took much longer time out of my life)

The sad elephant

In a way, playing music from VVVVVV, especially Pressure Cooker, makes me think of Bastrop and the Lost Pines (as I listened to VVVVVV tunes through that area weeks before it burned).

It makes me sad.

Supersized?

Apparently McDonald's, at least the local ones, have Supersizing as an option again. I'm pretty indifferent to that: I was getting my annual McRib but wanted to keep things at a medium. Now, wake me up if they have Holiday Pies this year.

Comics! BAT! And a recipe!

My webcomic, I haven't been working on it: Wikimapia, college, sleep, and plain old wasting time have taken tolls on it. Plus, I'm so ashamed of my art, too. It hasn't too much improved from a few years back.

Although I am trying to BAT again. Right now, if I can figure out the height of automatic doors (standard), I might be able to make something. Although I have closer pictures of both, here's Candidate #1:




Candidate 2:


(you may click for larger view on both, and yes, I turned Lightbox off)


Both are increasingly rare in real life, Super Kmart moreso (in fact, this particular specimen downsized, converting the grocery department into a Sears Outlet). I know automatic door heights, so using the odd SimCity scaling, I should be able to convert a reasonable facsimile of the facade and work from there. But which one?

Finally, I may have complained in the past that General Mills reformulated their "Milk and Cereal" bars, diluting the cereal with miscellaneous grains and God knows what other stuff to make it less like what it's supposed to be like.

But it's fairly easy to recreate the taste as it was: just follow the Rice Krispies Treats recipe, and substitute the cereal in question. Smash it down flat in the pan (breaking a few, I know), let dry, cut, spread icing (Pillsbury Supreme Classic White icing works well) on it, and enjoy.

Retro HTML

There's something about HTML-coded pages that makes me smile. It resembles a backlit magazine page (with one uniform font and a few pictures), super fast loading (a plus), and usually is packed with neat information.

The dark side of this is that HTML pages, especially amateur-designed ones, are packed with pictures everywhere, use garish colors, an obnoxious background, and (in some cases) music playing.

Examples: This what I like. But the main page of the previously linked webpage has EVERYTHING wrong with it (but no music).

Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins

(I posted this last September, but wanted to add an extra paragraph to it)

I recently was looking at an eBook of Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins, and was a bit disappointed. It outlines what Kmart did wrong: having terrible locations, rarely updating its stores, and ignoring Wal-Mart until it was way too late.

Well, some of the Amazon.com reviews says it reads like a high school research paper (or early college) as it tends to jump around between Kmart and Wal-Mart with Target as an afterthought. Despite the terrible decisions Kmart made (personally, pushing Big Kmart was a Big Mistake), it's really anti-Kmart, and makes Wal-Mart to be a far better retailer than it was even in 2003.

My uncle had always said that Kmart built far too many stores in Baton Rouge, about eight or nine(!) at its peak, until the bankruptcy, and these were all converted to Target or Wal-Mart. They did treat employees really well, giving my cousin (who worked at Kmart at one time) a few weeks of paid vacation despite only being an hourly employee. It pains me to think about what Lampert and his group did to Kmart, at first giving it a new logo (sadly, not the green-and-gray logo, which I prefer), even a new "Kmart Supercenter" logo before a recent slashing that did away with the grocery sections of many stores (that were left) and even sealing off the K-Café. On the other hand, I know I've seen advertising for Kmart in my local movie theater recently, of all things, and in my town, there's not a Kmart for 100 miles away (the local one closed in 1994).

Another thing that really bothered me about the book is it has a full paragraph on why Little Caesar's is a poor choice for Kmart.

Is it in Kmart’s best interest to commit to another five years with Little Caesar’s? Perhaps not. Explains Rob Gelphman of Gelphman Associates, “Little Caesar’s’ position is two pizzas for the price of one. Low cost is their stated value proposition—not quality, and certainly not taste. When everyone competes on price, it is almost impossible to move up and compete on quality, or performance, or functionality. You are stuck on price. Kmart is now looked at as the low-cost, low-quality leader. Having Little Caesar’s as a partner does not help.”

While that IS true for Caesar's, the fact is ALL fast food works this way. Wal-Mart had McDonald's in most of their stores at this time. Do you go to McDonald's for a really good hamburger, or is it because it's cheap? Clearly this woman is grasping at straws.

More on Kmart will be explored, but not here.

Carbonizer isn't dead

I haven't posted since September 26th, which is a relatively short time for many blogs (some may have a hiatus of up to a year, and then never quite post again after that) but I've become kind of less and less interested in Carbonizer! and more time pursuing other projects. One of the reasons is that I started to realize that Carbonizer started to become Two Way Roads II in several aspects, including a continual (yet subconscious) delusion that I actually HAVE followers.

- The webcomic I've been planning is still in planning (I made two strips, but wasn't satisfied with the art) and will focus more on wacky college hijinks rather than the wacky college hijinks+overarching story+sociopolitical commentary I've been planning. It probably won't bring anything new to the webcomic world, although it is designed for all environments: I can't be accused of Cerebus Syndrome because it's already built for that.

- You've probably heard of the death of Steve Jobs. An amazing visionary and creator of so many wonderful things, my appreciation for Steve Jobs waned as he did several things with the Mac and the iPhone that I wasn't too fond of, with Mac OS X Lion being one of them.

- In the Electric Light Orchestra album Time (which is amazing, by the way), I'm surprised that no one on the 'net has mentioned that on 2:09 on "Here is the News", one of the soundbites is "RadioShack programs".

- One of the things at Simtropolis is another SimCity-like proposal. Given the discontent with the abysmal SimCity Societies, Cities XL, which was talked about, planned, and over-hyped only to be a major disappointment, and about half a dozen cancelled fan ideas, I'm curious to how this ultimately turns out.

In Defense of Robots.txt

Back in April of last year, I posted a rant on why robots.txt is horrible. The real problem then is not robots.txt that I was hating, it was the fact that Archive.org retroactively blocked previous versions of websites that had robots.txt added to them (often domain squatters).

The real problem now is that in this day and age, bots are crawling the web, stealing content and creating clone caches that steal page views. It ultimately brought down Dan's 20th Century Abandonware because there was simply no way to block the bots while allowing full visitor access and findability. I know that my brother's website is somewhat limited by search because he blocks so many of these garbage bots.

Stolen content is everywhere: not in the form of copyrighted torrents (at least, not as much as the Hollywood magnates would like you to believe) but by actual content that was produced somewhere on the Internet and suddenly shows up in no less than half a dozen other areas.

Google Anger, Again

Well, that's done it. Google now seems to have changed the images on Blogger (look at anything below) to open in a "theater" style layout similar to Facebook (why should I migrate to Google+ if they make the same things, except worse? I thought Google was supposed to be BETTER).

I'm considering a move to Wordpress, merging Carbonizer! (which was never really popular, anyway) and Two Way Roads (which started to become popular, but not what I had in mind). Unfortunately, carbonizer.wordpress.com is taken, so I'll have to think of another solution.

In, Around, and About Brazos Valley will probably be dismantled and moved to another source, but that still leaves comp/mag and Blue Skies and Nintendo.

Plus, I was thinking about using ComicPress for the upcoming webcomic, inspired by Brawl in the Family, one of my favorites.

UPDATE: It seems that others have the same problem, so it's possible there will be an official fix (instead of a script that lets images load normally, but makes the page slower).

At the bottom of the night

It was just another morning at South Knoll Elementary School, not too long after school started (class started at 7:50 AM in those days), when the phone rang. Usually it was used for teacher-teacher communication (most announcements were done over the PA), and I still remember the genuine shock on her face as she learned that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.

I had heard of the World Trade Center...it was an iconic New York City building, seen it in pictures, but never really considered it.

She turned on the TV: a plane had crashed into one of the towers, creating an ugly burning area in the center of it.

Clearly, I thought, this was a pretty serious accident. Definitely would make the news tomorrow, but it's going to be repaired eventually (after all, years earlier, a plane managed to hit the Empire State Building accidentally, and the building survived).

As she sent us off to gym class, they just sat there, watching.

Only in the afternoon she told us what happened: both towers had been hit and collapsed. I couldn't believe it.

I went to a friend's house that afternoon (as was common, my mother worked a bit late on that day), and continued watching the footage on the TV at home (Tuesday afternoon cartoons had been cancelled...and WB/UPN didn't usually have news).

My mother shielded me from a lot of the tragedy: she would not let us see many of the pictures taken (including, but not limited to, The Falling Man).

I never learned the true tragedy of September 11th that day.

Since that day, I learned more about it. I saw pictures. I've heard people talk about what happened. The harrowing tales of escape from those burning buildings. The incredible heroism of the firefighters and the passengers of Flight 93. The economic recession that followed. The monstrosities of these terrorists, and even the so-called "Truthers" on our own hometurf, which only helped to undermine the efforts to find and punish those responsible.

I do wish the September 11th attacks had never happened. It permanently altered everything that would follow. Wouldn't it be nice to just drop bags on an airport scanner and just relax for your flight, no more taking off your shoes and letting some surly TSA agent feel you? Maybe some things released post-9/11 would be more successful. The Nintendo GameCube and The Shops at Willow Bend both suffered post-attack. The economic recession doomed Service Merchandise and didn't help Kmart prospects much. It destroyed The Mall at the World Trade Center, as it was destined to be an upscale mall.

But that's enough. Please, remember what happened 10 years ago this day.

Prima

Here's two scans from an old Prima guide from the mid-1990s, back in the days when Prima was not a division of Random House:



To me, Prima guides were always a step down from "official" guides (unless, of course they WERE the official guide, in which case they were very good). Nintendo published Player's Guides for many years that were far better than the Prima ones (maps, strategies for certain areas), Prima's often had simpler maps and had walls of text. Unfortunately, this is more the case than ever. In most guides, they tend to force you to go in a set path, spoiling everything, and not allowing you to do things at your leisure. This brings them down to the level of what things like GameFaqs have done for years: walls of text (of course, with some pictures). You'd be better off printing off a bunch of HTML from places like StrategyWiki and VGMaps and binding your own, really.

No explosion today

You know how there's research how most people believe that most people are idiots? Well, I believed myself to be one of those "90% of people are idiots" people, though every once in a while there's evidence to the "Everyone else really IS an idiot" theory. So I was in line at a gas station, just pulled behind a car. Apparently the car had just gotten there because a college-aged girl (about my age, maybe slightly younger) got out and began to use the pump. Used her card, punched buttons (credit or debit? our "engine-enhancing" additive? receipt?), and began fueling. So, after sticking it in her car, she walked back into her car. I thought she was just sitting there, maybe even going so far as to record her gas refueling (yeah right). But then I noticed that there was exhaust coming from the car. That's right: she turned on her engine (possibly for A/C) WHILE HER CAR WAS REFUELING, one of those they tell you explicitly NOT TO DO.



So I drove over to the opposite end of the fuel island (with no cars ahead of me) to fuel up MY car, which in addition to having no one in it (it was rush hour, after all), in the event that her car blows up due to her incompetence, I could have an escape route to flee before the entire station went kaboom. Fortunately, no explosion occurred, which was good because I feared more for the other people fueling their cars than for her. And luckily for her she's probably at home right now instead of being a crispy skeleton.



And this was the same trip that on the WAY to college, someone almost ran into me, I swerved, and I accidentally bit my tongue, which hurts still, but at least my car's intact.

End of Summer/Western Movie Roundup

Well, here we are. The End of Summer.



A couple of things: last year I did the Two Way Roads End of Summer Wrapup, but this summer, it was more spread out on other blogs.



On Carbonizer, I had movie reviews through the summer (this post included) and a collection of scans, which altogether isn't all that fun. There was the first of the Ex-Fanboy, however.



But on In, Around, and About the Brazos Valley, there was a lot of material posted.



Two new blogs came onto the scene, Blue Skies and Nintendo (actually a revival of a project from two years ago), and comp/mag, the computer-oriented companion. Neither got many updates, but they're there, and I plan to expand them.



One blog didn't make the transition, Pseudo3D's SimCity 4 completely dried up, and will not be updated again. However, I did work more on the BAT.





I played a LOT of games this summer, including indie favorites I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game, Eversion, Braid, Atom Zombie Smasher, And Yet It Moves, VVVVVV, Crayon Physics Deluxe, and Machinarium (just beat that stupid green circle puzzle, thanks to this hint from YouTube:

The triangle is pretty easy once you get into the right mindset. For me, I focused not on getting the green dots to make a triangle, but instead on getting the red dots OFF the triangle. Seeing as how once you get two red dots next to each other and move them off the triangle, they will no longer move (unless you move the circle they're on), it becomes a fairly simple puzzle from there.

My SNES emulator featured Chrono Trigger and Tetris Attack, and the PC side got some time with SimCity 4 Deluxe, Plants vs. Zombies: Game of the Year Edition (I re-beat it after the Cloud Disaster), and a bit of Portal.



There was another game I bought and played and am too ashamed to talk about it. Angry Birds.



Two movies I watched recently were both western-type movies, True Grit and Rango (the latter sorta counts, right?). True Grit is my favorite of the two: there's wonderfully bizarre side characters, strong main characters, the lead heroine does not look like a Justin Bieber twin (as in, the original). It IS a gritty movie, admittedly: lots of drinking, plenty of blood, and one of the content warnings, "Disturbing images" becomes quite apparent when it turns out that hanged/hanging bodies are the least of said imagery. The ending is a downer. Well, it turns out okay at first: neither of the main male characters die, the girl shoots the man who killed her father herself instead of the other ideas (such as Matt Damon's character taking him back to Waco, TX to hang for the shooting of a senator. But then the heroine (Mattie) falls into a snake pit, a rattlesnake bites her, Jeff Bridges' character ("Rooster") is forced to shoot Mattie's beloved horse, Mattie loses her entire arm due to the gangrene, and the ending is set 25 years later, as Mattie, now a bitter, one-armed old woman who never married, stands near Rooster's grave.



Rango, not so much. Granted, the voices are excellent, Ned Beatty voices the mayor turtle (who turns out to be the main villain, and look up on IMDB Ned Beatty: you'll find he voiced another similar character in a much better film), but it has so many problems: there's some quasi-religion that the main characters are searching for (along with some really cliché themes), more language then is typical for a PG-rated family film fare, and a few other glaring problems. That being said, it really does have some good moments, and even has a few neat visual gags as well (the titular lizard hides in a Jarritos bottle toward the beginning).



But enough on that. This fall will be rough for certain, but things are once again cooking up in the back rooms that will make Carbonizer! more than a blog. And do check my Brazos Valley-centered site with history and commentary.

Currently Playing: Final Summer Hits

Man, right now, I'm playing a FULL PALETTE of awesome games to end the summer. There's the challenging (but not crazy difficult, a la IWBTG) VVVVVV, the intriguing Braid (two worlds done!), the classic SNES game The Lost Vikings (since it's password-based, I could pick up playing it on DOSBox with no loss in progress), and of course, SimCity 4 Deluxe on Windows. Also, I'm trying to collect the last gems in Eversion. Eversion is pretty cool. It's like Super Mario Bros. with a little 8-bit flower and upbeat music! Until, of course, things get worse and the formerly happy Goomba-like creatures become one-eyed abominations



Additionally, I'm also re-playing Plants vs. Zombies: Game of the Year Edition, after a Steam Cloud error wiped out my save file (but kept my achievements, at least). I was pretty PO'd when it happened, but it's better.

Google is a BIG JERK

Up until recently, Google seemed like it could do no wrong. I mean, there have been many problems: I didn't like their first Maps redesign, I didn't like their redesigns of the Google Main Page, or YouTube, or Google Earth, but hey, nothing can remain the same forever. But it was today when I tried to access the Archive Search, a little oft-forgotten page that provided access to the newspapers (http://news.google.com/archivesearch), when it redirected to the Google page. It wasn't until now that I discovered that they shut down the project months ago. Basically, those papers are still there, but far harder to search. Today, as Google trumpets the arrival of Google +, their competition to Facebook, just you wait: Facebook was once as clean and nice (if not better) than Google + is now.



See? I told you this was all a bad idea!

Lost saves

This is at least the second time this has happened this summer! A mis-handled VVVVVV save means I'll have to do the Tower again, and earlier this year, a bug in the Steam Cloud ruined my Plants vs. Zombies save. When that happens, I never want to play the game again. You?

IBM stupidity

A bit late to the party, but what's all the hullabaloo about the IBM PC's 30th anniversary anyway? I don't remember anything about the Apple II's 30th about five years ago (it got a few mentions, but IBM got a few minor headlines). It was a popular computer, but people acted like it "revolutionized" the industry. It only got to where it is because of (ironically) what Apple is accused of today: brand name power!



Was that all there was to it? Please fill in.

Killing the Time Killer

Sick of wasting my time on the Internet, I decided to (via AdBlocker for Safari) to permanently* banish TVTropes from my computer, as I determined that most of the URLs in my history were from that site. I'm glad to report that my productivity already seems better. They did warn people after all (you don't have to click, just mouse over). And I'm glad to know that time-wasting isn't uncommon.



To do what I did, place these in your ad-blocking software:



http://urlyouwantblocked.com/

and

http://urlyouwantblocked.com/*



Don't forget the slashes, otherwise, it won't work.



ALSO: if WWW is in the title, add that: again, it won't work otherwise.













* well, not irreparably

Captain America

After this week's disappointing Transformers 3, I liked Captain America: The First Avenger. Better than Thor, even. There's no post-credits scene, but we do have...the Wilhelm scream, Stan Lee cameo, some other nods to the Marvel-verse, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, a nice uplifting mid-movie scene where Cap goes and saves a bunch of people, a plausible explanation of Captain America's costume, and various other niceties. Hopefully you can see before it goes out.



Also, saw The Amazing Spider-Man trailer. It looks okay, but the original Spider-Man film was just released 10 years ago (well, by the time TASM comes out, it will be) and Spider-Man 3 is in recent memory (trust me, the book makes a lot more sense). A bit tragic, in a way, as S-M3 was supposed to be amazing, but ended up killing off the series. Also hurting TASM's prospects is the expensive and poorly reviewed (but curiously a hit) Broadway Spider-Man production, and the continuing failures of Newspaper Spider-Man (available at the Chron).

iMac Disassembly, Part One

I'm finally disassembling my old iMac G3 to be converted into a stand-alone case computer, and unlike my old Performa 550, the iMac G3 (now about 11 years old) has a future destined for it that's not the recycling center. Using a real Apple disassembly guide, I unscrewed several screws. This is my story.







This part wasn't so hard. I was able to unscrew these, and if I was adding RAM, this would be the way how to do it.





Screws on top were removed.







And here's where things got sticky. I've got it so I've removed the two screws on the very top, removed the video port cover, and undid the four screws inside there. So, I'm trying to take off the case, but I don't want to hurt the area where the CD and speakers are. As you can see, I can one or two fingers in there.





Please reply here or on the Macintosh Garden thread, where I have posted toward the bottom (Temporary Joe).

Tranformers 3

Another movie review. Sadly, I can't recommend Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon to anyone.



The movie's convoluted plot and whiny hero throw it into one of those movies you see once and never again. The highlights include that they replaced the annoying Skids and Mudflap with two other comic relief Autobots, but it's not explained at all. The novelizations say that they were supposed to die, with Skids taking the shot by Sentinel Prime meant for Bumblebee, and Mudflap fighting him to buy the others time, but because none of that is explained, the advantages disappear. The ending is the most disappointing: Chicago is completely destroyed (mass destruction in the street, hundreds dead), not to mention the Decepticons destroyed the Lincoln Memorial, but hey! The whiny "I got a medal from the President, and thus, I am a god" hero got his (slutty) girlfriend!

Stolen cache

Recently, my hard drive has gotten really full lately, down to around 1GB or less. I had gotten home, loaded up Google Earth, played around with it (TX-130 is going to be how long?) and then quit it. My MacBook alerted me that my hard disk had only around 200MB left. That's insane! What the heck is killing my disk space? I decided to clear the Google Earth cache, as it does store a pretty large amount of space on my disk. I cleared the cache on Google Earth after figuring out how...and the empty disk space shot up to 2GB. Wow.

Lost Posts

This was from an aborted blog post/forum thread I wanted to write. Enjoy (but it's not, and will never be, finished):

"Game Boy Porting"

As a life-long Nintendo fan (well, until recently anyway) it's always bugged me that the Game Boy line (and later, the Nintendo DS line) just couldn't get decent ports of older Nintendo games.

The 1989 Game Boy, with its "cabbage-green" screen, was exempt and at one time a totally different beast than the NES or the Super NES. It excelled in original games, whether puzzle games being a perfect fit (launch title Tetris), some made-for-Game-Boy sequels (sequels to Kid Icarus and Metroid, Super Mario Land, the excellent The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening), other original titles that required the linking cable (Pokémon Red and Blue), or Game Boy adaptations of popular SNES games (Donkey Kong Land).

The problem really started with Game Boy Color, released in 1998. NES games were starting to have a small come-back, with still many used NES games on the shelves on second-hand game retailers. It would be the perfect system to port many classic NES games!

Or not. The Game Boy Color had a distinctly different resolution, much less than the NES. As a result, every game got some alteration that made it harder or more annoying. The famed Super Mario Bros. DX couldn't let you see past a certain point that you could in the original Super Mario Bros., making some jumps a leap of faith (though you could pause and look around). Shadowgate and Déjà Vu divided the "action" commands and the graphics (and this was even more a resolution-squisher, the games were built as Macintosh games in the first place). Crystalis was butchered in more than the resolution. Dragon Warrior I & II also got a release. Worst, those were some of the only NES ports ever. By and large, the idea of a portable NES faded away with the release of Game Boy Advance in 2001, though the Game Boy Color enjoyed the massive success of Pokémon and its sequels, plus The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. There was even a port of a Super Nintendo game, Donkey Kong Country, which dramatically downscaled the graphics and music, but was still rather enjoyable.

When the GBA was released, it seemed to blow the Game Boy Color out of the water. A new widescreen screen! L and R buttons! 32 bits!! But as anyone knows, bits don't mean anything: the GBA was certainly wasn't a portable PlayStation, and barely more powerful than the Super Nintendo.

The GBA had three major problems that most people agree upon:

1) An inferior sound chip to the SNES
2) No X & Y buttons
3) No backlight
It also didn't have 3D, putting PlayStation ports out of the question.

So, where did the GBA fail?

Well, it had really odd choices for ports, and some arrived too late.

Rather than re-releasing the Super Mario Bros. games, they created the Super Mario Advance line, which had the non-SMB1 games in their graphically updated forms (from Super Mario All-Stars) plus a graphically-updated port of Mario Bros..

To compensate for the lack of a backlight, colors were brightened. This was obvious when the front-lit (and later true back-lit) Game Boy Advance SP models were released, making everything seem washed out. The GBA-SP was the truly the pinnacle of the line, but integrated the headphone slot with the power adaptor, requiring an adaptor. The washed-out colors, coupled with the bad sound, ruined the ports of the Donkey Kong Country series. Even the classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was messed up because they felt like they had to dub in "Link's voice" from Ocarina of Time. Mother 1+2, the port of EarthBound and its Japanese-only prequel, was unreleased in America, but it also was messed up by the sound and graphics.

Meanwhile, in late 2004, Nintendo released Classic NES Series, which had more accurate NES ports of some of the more popular games, like Metroid, or Ice Climber. Unfortunately, the resolution was too small again, and $20 was too high a price for many of the games.

Around that time, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS, which at the time wasn't supposed to replace the Game Boy line (but it did).


---

Another one was a Currently Playing I was to put up (for the first one) but never got around to it.

Currently Playing: Now Every Wednesday

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
A Link to the Past is going well. So far, I've

Pokémon Yellow
Since I was never able to attend a Nintendo Event where I could get Mew "officially", nor do I want to invoke the "Mew glitch", I just decided to use a GameShark to capture a Level 17 Mew north of Lavender Town. I dropped it off at the Pokémon Daycare Center at Route 5. Hopefully, it will grow into a strong Psychic 'mon (in the meantime, my Butterfree is going to suffice). I think I've got a pretty strong team at this point: Butterfree (evolved from a Caterpie), Pikachu (starter), Ivysaur, Wartortle, Graveler, and Charmeleon. Butterfree's a bit on the weak side, but that's okay: TM29 Psychic will help it greatly. Meanwhile, I'm...

a) in "Silph Co.", which means I'm about halfway done with the story
b) still in Pokémon Tower




From The Archives:

May 31, 2005
Final Fantasy III (Super NES)
Super Back to the Future II (Super Famicom)
Yoot Tower (PC. Mac, actually.)
Riven: The Sequel to Myst (Mac)
SimCity 2000 (Mac)
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)
Pokemon Gold (GB)
Maniac Mansion (NES)
The Lost Vikings II (SNES)

(the "So far, I've" is original)

So Long, Borders

These were taken just two days apart (7/21 and 7/23).

*sniff*

Borders did many things wrong (and even its old owner, pre-bankruptcy Kmart), but I assure you: print media isn't dead!

Cereal labels

This should carry a bit of explanation:

My uncle's house in Baton Rouge (which he is now selling, by the way) used to have something unique: all of his cereals were in plastic containers that had pop-open lids. The type of cereal would be neatly taped onto the box, while there were other cereal labels that were not in use (on the wall). Eventually, the system was discontinued, and the cereal was in boxes.

This was because of the fact that there were ants in the pantry that required the use of the containers. The ants were attracted by the cat food outside, so when Tiger the beloved Maine Coon cat passed away in 2000, the cat food was no longer necessary, and thus the ants no longer appeared, and thus the cereal could be kept in their native boxes.

Recently, I acquired the old labels, which are a treat in themselves. Many are discontinued or promotional cereals, as you will see.

I kind of like the skewed look (it's impossible to set them straight anyway, given the tape, large number, and uneven cuts): it gives it an artistic look.

Also, on topic: I swear I remember "Frosted Wheaties" in the late 1990s in a purple box. Can't find an exact box (and it was NOT Honey Frosted Wheaties, either)

And I put the Kix label upside-down. Whoops.

Veg(emite) Out

Recently I bought a thing of Vegemite from an import shop in Houston (as nowhere in town carries it), and found it to taste a bit like vegetarian bouillon (it's made from yeast, and it's VERY salty). It's also really strong: if making a sandwich, only put a thin layer on one slice of bread, and preferably (it's recommended) on buttered toast (which makes it better).

Similarly, it can be mixed with cream cheese (or if there's none around, American neufchâtel, which works just as well) for a tastier treat.

The End Is Near?

Clear this one up for me: there's rumors (although usually in tech, "company denial" and certain rumors always true more often than not, at least the less far-fetched ones) that Blogger would get renamed to Google Blogs, which I just can't see going over well: I would hate my .blogspot.com addresses to be changed, it's certain the interface would be radically different, and it wouldn't be tied with my existing Google + services. In that case, expect Carbonizer and the only truly "active" blog, In, Around, and About the Brazos Valley to hit the road and leave Google behind.

Of course, it may not end up happening (or at least, it's not as bad as previously thought) and the blogs remain.

Super 8 and Green Lantern Movie Reviews

With the white text now known to work, I'm going to write a movie review for both Green Lantern and Super 8. First up is Green Lantern, which I've seen most recently.

After being spoiled by Marvel's Thor and The Dark Knight of Batman fame, Green Lantern was definitely a let-down. It takes everything I didn't like about Dark Knight and made it worse. Plot elements aren't explained clearly or not explained at all. Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern character has flashbacks of his father's death, but he never really seems to grasp it fully: he can't even explain it to his aerospace co-worker/love interest, not even by the end of the film. Hal's nephew is seen toward the beginning of the film, moments before the Green Lantern Ring kidnaps him and brings him to the dying alien that would change his life. He never reappears. The villain, scientist Hector Hammond, was infected by the other villain, a many-tentacled cosmic horror, but it wasn't his fault he died and wasn't all that much of a surly character before becoming evil (most comic-book villains, including the comic book version of Hammond, were). The other main villain, a "Guardian of the Universe" turned evil, has pretty much zero character to him and is just some soul-eating beast to descend upon the city and have the Green Lantern save him.

I can't tell what exactly was wrong with Green Lantern: bad character development, very little humor (heck, I laughed more at Dark Knight then this one), the wrong mix of action, too much talking and exposition...it just wasn't good. There were four people in the theater (including me) that I went to go see it (on Friday), on one of two showings.



So I didn't like Green Lantern all that much, but I did enjoy Super 8. It's directed by Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams, so it comes off as a very interesting mix as E.T. meets Cloverfield. There is a boy who forms some sort of psychic link with an extraterrestrial, but in Cloverfield fashion, the extraterrestrial is in fact, a many-eyed insectoid monster who destroys property and kills human beings.

If you're reading this (and not by accident) you have to understand that if I individually tried to pick through everything good and bad about it, we'd be here all day. Highlights: Lots of 1979 references, including a Mattel Electronics electronic football game (Google it). I couldn't quite tell if it was a real one or the 2000-era replica one (the real one has "Mattel Electronics" written on the top, the replica has "Classic Football" in the same font). The fact that it had that beats the shot of Green Lantern'sPokémon Sapphire cartridge but just barely.

Testing 1-2-3

I'm about to write a review for Super 8 and Green Lantern, and I'm testing this white font (spoiler protection). Problem is, those with RSS feeds will be able to see all of it (maybe). What say you?

Highlight for text.

Repackaged computers

One of the things I wrote about last year was add-ons to make video game consoles into full computers. (link, the original piece is toward the bottom). What I failed to keep in mind was some old computers repackaged as video game consoles and could be made back into computers again.

The first console to do this was the Atari XEGS. It was released in 1987 by Atari Corporation and was based on the aging Atari 8-bit computer line. It was a failure due to a few reasons: Nintendo practically owned the console market and even a large library of legacy releases (and peripherals!) couldn't save them, Jack Tramiel's Atari Corporation had terrible marketing, and the fact it was sharing shelf space with the Atari 2600 (now a redesigned budget console called the Atari 2600jr) and the Atari 7800 (backwards compatible with the 2600 but less expensive than the XEGS). Needless to say, it flopped, and the three consoles were eventually discontinued for the Atari Jaguar, which did poorly as well.

Meanwhile, Tramiel's former company, Commodore, released a repackaged version of the Commodore 64 in Europe only (inexplicably, not the USA) called the "Commodore 64 Games System" in 1989-1990, which bombed due to the fact that it was just a stripped-down C64 that retailed for about the same price.

The Commodore Amiga CD32 was also released by Commodore only in Europe (an American version was planned but scuttled due to a federal law injunction), which was far more successful than the C64GS: it was essentially a repackaged Amiga computer released in 1993, and one of the very first 32-bit systems released. And despite the fact it could run Amiga software and hardware, it couldn't save Commodore, which went out of business soon after.

Possibly the most interesting one is the Pippin, Apple's attempt at a game console. The first mistake was making the technology and putting it up to different manufacturers to relabel it (which killed the CD-i and 3DO). So it wasn't Apple's fault directly for making it bad. The thing wasn't very good: it was marketed an Internet appliance but only had a 14.4k modem (which was pretty slow and low-end even for '95 standards) and wasn't as good as the "real" Macs or even the game consoles it competed against. Maybe it could've done better if it wasn't done by Bandai (pretty much the only manufacturer who signed on, a European one signed on later but made no games) and had one of the worst launch titles ever. As a result the Pippin was a complete failure, and one that Apple (and Namco Bandai) has tried to forget. Today, the "@World" (Bandai's name for it) is a rarity and an interesting collector's item that can run the Mac OS natively with a keyboard and mouse, but there's very little point to it.

I wish there was another manufacturer who tried the Pippin, it seemed like a horribly mangled good idea. I've expressed a desire that they could make a "plug-and-play" Pippin much like the Commodore 64, Sega Genesis, and Atari 2600 before it that could in theory be modified to a full system. Alas, it will never happen...

EDIT: No sooner had I written this that I discovered that there was a kid's computer released in 1997 by Tiger Electronics called the Tiger Learning Computer based on the Apple IIe and had real Apple IIe programs (like AppleWorks 4.0 for the Apple II) but there wasn't any floppy drive...they replaced it with a proprietary cartridge port. And thanks to the quirky and outdated behavior of the included programs (you could select you wanted to make a spreadsheet in AppleWorks, but it would prompt you to insert the disk, which of course, you couldn't). Reportedly it never made it out of test marketing in certain cities. However, it's not really listed here because it wasn't advertised as a game console, it was a kid's computer.

Computer dreams and E3 things

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong in my E3 predictions. Nearly everything was incorrect. No Apple, no Zynga (well, Apple had its own event, which I won't cover, and Zynga, who cares). My prediction about Sony was wrong: the device was the Vita, but they didn't announce the price. Super Mario 3DS still didn't get an official name, I didn't see as many Nintendo 3DS games as I expected (Star Fox 64 3D and Luigi's Mansion 2), and I didn't even hear too much of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D's new features.

I can't tell if Wii U is a show-stealing console or an incredible disappointment. I wasn't impressed. Some staffers at Kotaku even have similar thoughts.

Microsoft did not announce any new Xbox 360 media stuff, but lots of Kinect games (well, I was right about that). But non-gimmicky is the key. From a port of Minecraft (what, you stick your arms out?) to Kinect: Disneyland Adventures, everything is Kinect. And Kinect mostly relies on, that's right, gimmicks.

Rockstar showed off nothing. Max Payne 3 is looking to be the new Duke Nukem Forever. EWJ4 and Doom 4 failed to make appearances. And no Steam on the consoles...of course. After all, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have their own systems, and wouldn't want anyone else infringing on it (even if did bring PC ports to the systems, although people like use of their WASD and mouse. Usually attempts like this fail.)

OK, OK, I haven't been in very often, but here's something new: the HTPC guide. See, I photocopied this in 2006 (I think, but I know it was many months after the Feb/05 publication date) as part of the planning process for "Project Citrus", a mid-range computer infused with a mix of old and new technology. The plan was, of course, horribly flawed, I chose to get the motherboard of the last G4 that could run Mac OS 9 and get the most powerful OrangePC card, and choose to soup it up with neon lights that were popular in PCs at the time. Whatever my decisions were, it was going to be many times more powerful than my ThinkPad I had...a monochrome monitor brick that ran Windows 95 (or less?) and only used AC power. Transferring things to and fro it was complicated (from floppy drive to Performa 550, where it was transferred to Zip disk, then the Zip disk to a computer with Internet and printed). I think I still have the disks and the computer.

Anyway, the scan is from an HTPC how-to guide from Popular Science (which frankly, I still think is kind of cool, but to get "media" onto your computer, such as the one I have now, you have to spend lots of time and money or go torrenting, neither of which I like very much, and besides, it takes up a significant chunk of hard disk space).

But rather than scan the photocopy (I think it was printed with inkjet, even), here's the original. I'd suggest, if you want to print it out, print out in black and white. Unless you have an amazingly cool laser printer that prints color perfectly, but I doubt that. (I had to scan this three times to get it out right...)

An open letter to Nintendo

Dear Nintendo:

Thank you for your many years of service and being a great console company. Although I don't quite remember when you hit America with the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was a great piece of work and a true savior to the American video game industry created and destroyed by Atari. The game Super Mario Bros. is one of the true classics of an entire industry and beloved to all. You brought joy and happiness to homes nearly every Christmas.

Even when you could not own the market exclusively with the NES, you continued to hold with the Super NES against the Genesis. Even though it could not play NES games, it more than made up for it in a vastly improved control scheme and dozens of fantastic games. I'm still playing Chrono Trigger, one of the great games by "Squaresoft". You were knocked down a few notches when the PlayStation came to power, but Super Mario 64 proved to the world that 3D video games could be done. It was also ground-breaking. Two years later, you came out with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: almost universally proclaimed to be the best game ever. You came out with Pokémon, which brought great joy to me as a child.

The GameCube was not your finest hour, and by 2005, many were proclaiming the premature death of Nintendo consoles, having seen the great fall of Dreamcast a few years before.

But you persevered. You introduced the Wii.

Many mocked the name and the inferior graphics, but you were able to make into a smash hit: the innovative Wii Sports pack-in game, an approachable controller, and a reasonable price (compared to the 599 DOLLARS PlayStation 3) made it sell well. But things began to work against you: the Wii sales started to slow, software sales slumped, and your competitors were improving on your ideas. So you tried again: the "Wii U".

It was not exactly the same experience over again. The graphics were much better this time around, and the name was even goofier than its predecessors, but the Wii U is building on experience where it has none. The Wii's gimmick with its Miis is over, and rather than create a future embracing name, you chose to name it after a dying system.

Wii U has none of the things that made the Wii a runaway success: no low price point, and no truly approachable controller. Sure it looks neat, but it's unwieldy. You wanted to create a controller that could attract both casual and hardcore gamers. You will probably fail.

I could be wrong, but I have serious doubts for your future.

I have considered myself a fanboy since before I could pronounce your name correctly, but toward the end of the Wii's lifespan, that began to slip and fall. I have little confidence in your product, something I had never said before.

I did not see a single worthy game at E3 about the Wii U, something I have not seen ever at E3. The Wii had many exciting games, including Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii Music, Super Mario Galaxy, Project H.A.M.M.E.R, Red Steel and more. Even if they were cancelled or weren't what I expected, they were exciting enough for me to give it a second thought.

Even if Wii U is a moderate success, I will not purchase one myself. Despite that fact, I will always treasure the good times we had together.

Signed,

Pseudo3D

E3 Predictions

Well, it's Friday, and I have summer school (college classes, actually) next week during E3. Won't stop me from making predictions tonight though!

- Apple will have a significant presence and make a major announcement as an inroads toward Apple-based gaming. A full console may or may not be released. If it is, expect industry pundits to mention the Apple Bandai Pippin.
- Nintendo will show off the new Super Mario 3DS title, and the 25th Anniversary Zelda surprise. Project Café will be shown off and named. It will turn out to be the show-stealing console or an incredible disappointment. Nintendo 3DS will have a bunch of new games, in an attempt to garner support.
- Sony will name the price for the NGP. It will be too high. They will at least announce the name, but it won't be "Vita".
- Microsoft will announce many new Kinect games, and some of them won't be complete gimmick games. To attract to the non Kinect-ers, Xbox 360 will make inroads to become more of an Internet TV appliance (that is, more than already).
- Rockstar will show off a new GTA title, but not GTA V.
- Electronic Arts will find a way to exploit SimCity further. No SimCity 5, but a rather cartoonish SimCity based in Facebook.
- Zynga will show up as well, showing off a new product, ending in "Ville". It will impress no one but go on to be a success anyway.
- Take-Two Interactive will have Max Payne 3 present.
- id Software will show off Doom 4.
- Interplay will make a surprise showing with Earthworm Jim 4.
- Valve will announce more Steam stuff for the PS3. Xbox 360 maybe. Café maybe not.


By next Friday, we'll see if I'm right.

The Lost NES and Other VG Thoughts, Part Two

I realize the NES wasn't so much something I wanted to have and play again, it was mostly because of the fond memories I had playing them there. I mean, my uncle is moving anyway, and he was supposed to already be in Texas, that is, if it wasn't for the recession. If he had retired a bit earlier and sold it during it during the post-Katrina housing boom in Baton Rouge, well, things would be different right now. It wouldn't be the NES at my uncle's house without my uncle's house, so that's it.

What I DID manage to get was even a bit more exciting, a box of old computer games, many with manuals and original disks. Most of the Mac games have been added to the Macintosh Garden, but I'm sure some manuals would be great. I have an old 80s Carmen Sandiego manual I need to scan. I also managed to get a novelization of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey which includes many scenes not found in the actual film. I know because I read it in 7th grade, English class. Maybe I should tell "Ms. A" that, my old 7th grade English teacher who had it, and now works in the community college I go to. The most exciting thing is a few 1st-generation Sears "Tele-Games" consoles, which I'm eager at trying out.

Also, like my previous post, I wanted to investigate video games again. You may notice Saturn in my previous post, but that was pretty much a wash because of the Saturn's unusual 3D rendering that broke polygons into quadrilaterals instead of triangles. Then there was the whole "Saturnday" deal, in which the release date was suddenly pulled forward to an early release at select retailers (Babbage's, Electronic Boutique, Software Etc.,[*] and Toys R Us) which ended some retailer's relations with Sega and annoyed third party companies, who would not get their product out by launch. Just earlier that year, Sega trotted out the 32X, a add-on that had its own "32X-enabled" cartridges, but it turned out to be garbage and left a bad taste in consumer's mouths. Needless to say, it only got some arcade ports.

The "6th Generation" as it was known, was even more exciting. Sega Dreamcast roared onto the scene in 1999 (an early start) with amazing graphics that could beat the Nintendo 64, a 56k modem, the innovative VMU unit, and some decent games. Unfortunately, Sega had gotten a terrible reputation thanks to the 32X and Saturn, was running out of money, and when the PlayStation 2 came out, Dreamcast was quickly discontinued.

So our focus turns to Nintendo. The GameCube, while profitable, failed when stacked against Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2.

And in a way, I think they kind of deserved it.

I mean, it did have some advantages, like a very small case, a neat controller that perfected the bulky and "for three hands" Nintendo 64 controller, and more.

But it did have some distinct disadvantages. Disregarding some consumer feelings, like its goofy case (the default color was purple, and it had a handle). The GameCube used a distinct miniature disc format, which was to help prevent pirating, but it had less storage space than DVDs (which PS2 and Xbox graduated to), could not play DVDs (which helped PS2 sales in Japan), and was far slower than cartridges.

It broke several promises. Following up on the failure of the N64DD, there was a memory card for the GameCube that you could stick an SD card into, to import audio and video. There were many games promised, many of which were never made. Rare put out a lot of games at E3, but after major delays (StarFox Adventures arrived a year late, and many games were completely cancelled) Nintendo sold the N64's golden goose to Microsoft, which has yet to revive Rare (now making, um, Kinect games).

The Xbox had a hard drive as well as a DVD drive, their flagship product, Halo: Combat Evolved (by Bungie, originally going to release Halo as a Mac game...that's often a sore spot in Mac gaming history), and a Broadband-enabled Xbox Live, which took the 56k modem in Dreamcast to a new level. Nintendo never developed a good online system (despite modem add-ons to the GameCube only used for Phantasy Star Online), was not able to create a good launch line-up (though the best game for the console, Super Smash Bros. Melee, came a few months later), no real Mario game (Super Mario Sunshine doesn't count). As the years dragged on, and the GameCube continued to receive multi-console ports instead of exclusive hits, Nintendo tried gimmicks for it and the Game Boy Advance, including linking cables (though Pac-Man VS was fun) and the e-Reader (more on that later). And all the while, Nintendo's "kiddie" reputation continued to work against them. It was perhaps the failure of the GameCube that Nintendo tried a new marketing strategy for the Wii.

In a more detailed explanation on the Dreamcast, here's what I wrote for Two Way Roads in August 2010, about how it could've succeeded.

1. If Sega Dreamcast had stuck through most of the sixth generation, it would be up against the Xbox and Bungie, PS2 and its loyal third parties, and Nintendo GameCube and the games Nintendo is known for. Not great when all you've got is a worn-out franchise character.
2. The Sega Dreamcast was light-weight, looked cool, and had expandability. It was by far the best-looking video game console of the sixth generation.
3. If Bungie had remained an independent company, and the launch platforms were Mac and PC, Dreamcast could've secured console rights, leaving Microsoft with not much.
4. The brand of Sega had been tarnished, which was a huge factor in the failure of the Dreamcast. First was the problems with the Sega Genesis: there were too many Sonic games, and the Genesis had two mediocre add-ons. The Sega CD was too early and consisted mostly of bad FMV titles and enhanced ports of Genesis games, and the 32X just saturated the market with mildly-improved graphics. What Nintendo did instead of a whole cartridge was market a special chip, the Super FX. And it worked. If the Sega 32X and the Sega CD were released as one 32-bit CD-ROM peripheral....that might have worked.
5. Meanwhile, the Saturn's launch was a disaster, by moving the release date up by four months, Sega both PO'd developers and retailers. Arguably, they could've continued with the Genesis, as Nintendo's strategy with the SNES was going fairly well, even in America. The Genesis had been quickly discontinued by 1995.
6. Still, had Dreamcast been more successful and competed with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, the market could've crashed (a crash was feared in 2004) and Sega likely to be the one to fall out.

I didn't mention some facts, about how Sega literally was running out of money. Shenmue got decent reviews and was hailed as an innovative product, but it lost a lot of money. Isao Okawa gave Sega nearly a $700 million dollar donation in private funds, and during this time, Sega was looking to sell out or merge, talking with Microsoft, Namco, Bandai, and Electronic Arts, eventually merging with Sammy Corporation. Plus, I think the Dreamcast had too few buttons.

I'm thinking about subscribing to Steam. Although I don't feel comfortable buying things online, it looks good, plus two of my cousins and my brother use it. I'm thinking about getting the Cyan collection pack (which includes Cosmic Osmo and Myst), Portal, and maybe other games. I don't like DRM especially for abandonware, but I'd pay for something that will run on my system (particularly, I've found Cosmic Osmo won't run well on any system I have, the dying iMac G3 is too fast, Basilisk II runs transitions far too slow, and Mini vMac won't recognize the CD image).

Currently, I'm doing some cleaning again, and found a Famitsu page (partially translated) about SimCity DS 2, which looked cool, but turned out to be SimCity Creator when released in America, which really turned me off for some reason. Be sure to tune in for more scans and content on Carbonizer!

The Lost NES and Other VG Thoughts

Well, it seems that back at Baton Rouge, in order to get ready to sell his house, got rid of all that remained of the Nintendo products that were used so many years ago. This includes a cache of NES and SNES games (the N64 was sold a while back), as well as controllers and even a Virtual Boy. Now, granted, I have acquired the old Nintendo Power magazines and have a bunch of Nintendo ROMs backed up on the very computer that Carbonizer! writes from, but I just can't shake that sense of loss. I mean, this was what helped me get into Nintendo. This was the genesis of all things that came. Up there in that tiny converted attic, this is where the magic really happened.

Just a few days earlier, I was strolling around the local used video game store. A beloved used video game store up north in Bryan had recently closed, and the flea market really was a joke (at least, on my trip there five years ago): they had lots of NES games but no systems. But is a real NES system really that good? I mean, it would just take up space in my room, and eventually, my apartment. The "blinkies" often plague the system and require some minor fixing, the controllers are the best part but I could probably get a USB adaptor if I wanted to play (besides, I've never really gotten a controller to work properly with my Mac anyhow...). In terms of a SNES, I just can't get Stunt Race FX to work correctly, despite numerous upgrades to Snes9x. It still flickers in odd places and seems far harder to control than its real SNES counterpart.

So I still don't know what to do. I think an actual NES would be great: I saw a SNES/NES/Genesis combo at aforementioned video game store, but it was $60 and I was almost certain it used cheap "NES-on-a-chip" technology that would just not be the same.

But there are hundreds of NES games out there. A few are good, a lot are garbage. Said "garbage" are mere curiosities on emulators, but we know which are garbage nowadays due to online sources.

I watched several episodes of Angry Video Game Nerd, which explores some of the worst "garbage" games for consoles. In the interest of providing only SFW outbound links from Carbonizer!, I decided to let you Google that for yourself. The thing with AVGN is that the "novelty" (and what many have ripped off this from), is some dork with glasses screaming obscenities about some bad NES (or otherwise) game. While the character of the Nerd is purely fictional (James Rolfe, the guy playing him doesn't actually wear glasses), the games are not, and are usually culled from the vast collection of James Rolfe. What's interesting about AVGN is that in many cases, he provides background information for the system (although on occasion, he has gotten things wrong). The most interesting part what I've noticed is that the worse the game, the better episode it is. If a game is not great but mediocre, he'll give some vulgarity-filled outburst that can be quickly tuned out with a speaker control. And when something is NOT bad, the review will be almost certainly excellent. Perhaps someday I'll make a SFW-cut of some of the better episodes (Sega CD and Nintendo Power among them). There's also the theme song, which is catchy but has NSFW lyrics (quite a bummer).

Nevertheless, it has been a bit of inspiration in many aspects. Part of me has always wanted to make a YouTube show of anything. Food, video games, anything.

Another thing that has been bothering me in terms of video games, is why did the Nintendo 64 fail against the PlayStation?

A few reasons, I think.

- Nintendo had been promising an add-on from almost day one, the Nintendo 64DD for the system, which would hold eight times the amount of information as a normal N64 cartridge at the time. The system would allow gamers to "edit, trade, and add on" to games. Putting yourself in a video game, editing things, trading components, that was the future. Many games were announced for it. But the problem was that Nintendo wasn't open with the 64DD architecture, and the disks, "Zip Disk" type "cartridges" were still not as cheap to produce or as space-filled as CDs were, and eventually, most planned games moved to the N64 anyway, and the DD got a limited "subscription" release in Japan in 1999, which guaranteed it to fail. I remember reading somewhere on the Internet that would create a rift in N64 gamers, those that had the add-on, and those that didn't. It was possibly the confusion about the DD that doomed the system.

- The CD vs. cartridge debate is widely known. Nintendo 64 cartridges never got past 64MB (the size of planned 64DD disks, but that's not to say that 64DD disks could've gotten bigger themselves), with CD-ROMs having a max size of about 650MB. But most of that was never utilized. In reference to the Sega CD titles, most of the space was used for just new audio/video tracks and not gameplay themselves. In many cases, what the PlayStation got was some amazing cinematic sequences, but not much new gameplay. It could switch CDs thanks to memory cards, but N64 also had a Memory Pak which could've done the same thing. CDs were far less durable and were slow. But they were also cheap to produce. This had two points in itself: higher royalties for developers and lower prices for games (a good deal for all) BUT also easy to pirate. With the N64, pirating games required an expensive "Doctor V64" (or similar) to work, while it was relatively easy to pirate things for the PlayStation. If you cut out the cinematics and actually compared gameplay, N64 had a better processor and better graphics.

- Finally, there was the whole "kiddie" debate. The Nintendo 64 was derided for its games, like the colorful (but very fun) Super Mario 64 and Rare's games like Banjo-Kazooie. On the flipside, the PlayStation had Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VII. Sony was able to capitalize on what the Sega Genesis had tried to do a few years earlier, position their system as the more "serious" game system. Gamers who had been with the NES were growing up and wanted those types of games. The advent of Pokémon was a great money-maker for Nintendo, but also cemented the N64's reputation as "games for kids" and sent more dollars toward the PlayStation.

Junk and buried treasure

I have 250 items on my desktop. Time to clean them.

I could get rid of my hard copy of the many mustaches of Mario. I just got the "Dupond" and "Dupont" reference, it's Thomson and Thompson from the Tintin comics.

A redundant Toast image of an old kid's software program I copied to my file archive can go.

A weblink to something at the University of Alberta. May have used it for CAS numbers, but it redirects to "Wishart Research Group" now.

An "artsy" black-and-white of photo of me taken from Photo Booth. Also, one with me grinning like an idiot as I hold up a bottle of Saint Arnold Brewery Root Beer, with "Root" covered up.

A list of old gas stations in town. Decided to post it on In, Around, and About the Brazos Valley raw.

Another redundant weblink for college, another sign it's been months since I did anything.

A map of my bike route from my house to the local university. Should've been only temporary--it's only on my desktop because I sent it to my brother.

The many owners of Shredded Wheat (the version now made by Post)

Article on gourmet food trucks in Chicago. Also linked in this earlier Carbonizer! post.

A picture taken from Despair.com's "Lose Your Own Adventure", in which every ending is a loss (but to be fair, most of the original CYOA endings weren't pleasant)

A canned crossword puzzle idea. Ended up moving to "Aborted/On Hold Projects".

Dozens of screen captures, 80, to be accurate. A lot of them were from Macintosh applications I wanted to write about (and I admit I cheated on a few, Basilisk was finicky, so I used DOSBox for an image of SimCity 2000. I feel dirty)

Some of these screen captures featured Simtropolis as it was during "6.0". Now viewable here.

Another one was some now-demolished 1960s arches on a local building (viewable here)

There's a neat image of the old MKT right of way in Houston.

Imagine a train going down this way...it's east of the old line that paralleled I-10. This train could've easily passed it earlier that day.


Image of the old McDonald's sign near Splashtown. The original snapshot can be seen on this Carbonizer post.

Yet another screen capture, this time of Google's April Fool's Day prank with results in Comic Sans MS. See what it looked like at this link.

With all that, that brings the total Desktop items to 150 (instead of 257). Come back for another episode of Carbonizer Cleaning: there may be buried treasure yet.

An Aggregation Experiment: The Best and Worst of Video Games

I've spent the last hour trying to compile the best and worst video games of any system. I managed to get a few systems done.

ATARI 2600
BEST: From what I've heard, Yars' Revenge and Activision's Pitfall.
WORST: People say that Pac-Man and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial top the list. Bad as they were, they only topped the list because of their high-profile disappointments. Mystique's Custer's Revenge is also listed, but strip away the shoddy "erotica", and it's basically a cheaper version of the old Game & Watch game "Helmet". When you factor in all of the non-Atari games (ALL technically unlicensed), there's going to be bad ones that could arguably make the list.

NINTENDO 64
BEST: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by Nintendo.
WORST: Superman by Titus Interactive.

NES
BEST: Arguable. The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, or any other the Mega Man games could easily top the list.
WORST: Most of the unlicensed games (except for maybe the Tengen and Codemasters games) could count: Action 52, Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu, Little Red Hood, the list goes on. In terms of licensed, maybe Where's Waldo?, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Deadly Towers and Color A Dinosaur.

Super NES
BEST: Again, so many hits to list. Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, any Square RPG, Super Metroid
WORST: Most games based after movies (including The Wizard of Oz, Batman Forever and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), especially Bebe's Kids. Also, Shaq-Fu.

Sega Genesis
BEST: Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good consensus on Genesis games. I'm not too familiar with the console.
WORST: Like the Super Nintendo, most games based after movies. Dark Castle gets special mention from going to being one of the best Macintosh games to the worst Sega Genesis game. Also, Shaq-Fu.

Sega CD
BEST: Sonic the Hedgehog CD, better known as Sonic CD
WORST: The "Make My Video" series by Digital Pictures.

3DO
BEST: Either The Horde or Star Control II. Like Genesis, I'm not too familiar with this one.
WORST: Plumbers Don't Wear Ties by a long shot.

Atari Jaguar
BEST: Tempest 2000 (almost universally)
WORST: White Men Can't Jump (almost universally)

Game Boy
BEST: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Pokémon Red/Pokémon Blue, and Tetris could all be argued.
WORST: Unfortunately, all of the other Game Boy games I've seen could arguably take this title. But which one is above-and-beyond bad?

Game Boy Color
BEST: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, Pokémon Gold/Pokémon Silver (though they were all backwards compatible)
WORST: Unknown. Take it to the comments.

PlayStation
BEST: Final Fantasy VII is widely agreed upon.
WORST: Bubsy 3D is also widely agreed upon.

Atari Jaguar CD
BEST: Possibly Myst
WORST: Unknown.

Virtual Boy
BEST: Virtual Boy Wario Land by Nintendo.
WORST: Waterworld by Ocean. Pun not intended.

Inflated software count

OK, last summer, I talked about Ports vs. Exclusivity, which was part of a disconnected series of posts about video games and the ways you could play others on platforms. Open console architecture and emulators were all discussed.

Now, putting all that aside, I have to say this in regards to my previous post. It's about this: computers, such as Mac or PC, always seem to get the best of both worlds. Unlike console games, which are limited by generation, computers always got the console ports. Whether it was "Atarisoft" games in the early 1980s (like Donkey Kong, one of the popular arcade ports at the time), the FMV Digital Pictures games (like Night Trap and other FMV games by the same company), or even Sega PC ports of old Genesis games in the late 1990s, computers always seemed to get everything. Granted, they didn't get Super Mario World (or other Nintendo exclusives), and the DOS/Windows and Macintosh had very different game sets (the Mac has a very respectable collection of shareware/freeware not found on Windows, and usually better graphics), but both got a lot, most of which was never seen by video games. Additionally, Macs and PCs got real software, like word processors, something practically never seen by video games.

But one of the most annoying things is that if a game can run on, I don't know, whether it says NES, Sega PC, or 3DO, it can run on that. Any NES game, any NES. I mean, assuming its licensed, you're on your own for unlicensed (and even those have good compatibility, gameplay on the other hand...). But for Mac and Windows, it's impossible. With Mac OS X 10.7 coming up, you can kiss another whole set of applications goodbye when Apple pointlessly removes Rosetta. And even long before Mac OS X, updates would often break titles (some games can't even run in System 6!). Even with DOS/Windows, which have substantially better compatibility with past versions, there are a number of Windows titles that are just not going to work without lots of setting-fiddling, patches, or in worst case, WINE.

What it seems to boil down to is backwards compatibility, but that's not necessarily the case. A Nintendo 64 should not be expected to run Super NES games (it doesn't, not without some shifty adaptor from Hong Kong). It's about whether a game can run for the system its advertised for. If the game requires Macintosh System 7.1 and up, or Windows 98 and up, then I SHOULD be able to run it on my Mac or PC, respectively. No questions asked. I shouldn't have to pay for an updated version to run on a new system (unless, of course it comes with new features and by definition is an entirely different program, or is an entirely different platform), I shouldn't have to lose the compatibility I have, and I shouldn't have to use a stand-alone emulator. Similarly, it is a developer's responsibility to patch games that are accidentally broken by system updates, and it is a manufacturer's responsibility to not break compatibility directly.

Some of you out there may believe I'm asking for too much. And you may be right, but in your heart, you know that this is the way things OUGHT to be.