Sunday, August 28, 2011

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.

Monday, August 22, 2011

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.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

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!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

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?

Monday, August 15, 2011

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.

Friday, August 12, 2011

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).

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

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).

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

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!

Monday, August 8, 2011

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.

Monday, August 1, 2011

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)