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Monthly Archive for November, 2003
I filled out a form much like this’n a few weeks ago and got my first issue this week, so I can vouch for it.
As a computer professional and a fan of tolerance, I don’t have the slightest problem with this request at all, although none of my clients have yet protested.
I haven’t had too many requests to install a secondary hard drive lately, but when I do, what will we call them? Primary and Secondary would work, but fewer syllables would be better. Felix and Oscar? Laurel and Hardy? Lucy and Ethel? Obi-Wan and Vader? Why are all the dichotomies that come to mind comedy duos? [Yes, them too.] I know! Lone Ranger and Ton… darn.
The biggest problem with these reports of the President’s electronic
doohickeys interfering with Her Majesty’s reception is that the Leader of
the Free World is at your pad, and you’re in your study cursing at a
fuzzy picture of The Big Breakfast [or whatever it is they watch].
What’s wrong with this picture? [Not the static.]
The greatest advertising mascot never actually imagined, developed, or utilized finally takes form through the ministrations of the crack animation shop at Victor Lams Studios.
Truthfully, I never had a concept for an actual animated “Lou Swiffer” character. I always imagined hapless, desperate housewives holding their dry-mop over head and crying out to Lou Swiffer to give them strength. [Jack Chick scholars might also recall Lew Siffer, the evil record exec from the one tract about the band.] But it’s lovely to finally put a face to the name.
The highlights of his career in… um… Windows Media. Oh well.
And another thing — nobody can seem to agree on the runtime. Ty Burr clocks it at 73. Stephen Hunter, El Guapo at the WaPo, noted 78. Christopher Kelly says 80. Carol Cling hung in there fo
r 87 minutes.
When in doubt, I generally refer back to
Pretend Dad, who measured it at… one star for every 41 minutes.
[EDIT: Added Stephen Hunter and a paragraph break for Father Ebert.]
If I had a nickel for every poetry-phrased review of the Shat in the Hat, I’d be eating some smoky BBQ ribs right now. But I think that one critic in particular overextended herself and pulled something.
Meanwhile, on a tangentially related subject, this writer overextended himself last night, somehow falling back on The Ol’ Cyborg Crutch twice in two lines. No more MeFi postings after midnight for you, old-timer!
One user asks for a way to copy iTunes 4.0.1 shared music. The reply, in AppleScript.
[WARNING: This wasn’t supposed to start out as another langweilig XBox rah-rah, but it did. Rickey Henderson has to do what’s best for Rickey Henderson.]
Apple to team up with Nintendo for videogame domination? I’d rather have a MaXbox or an A-Station than a MacGameCube, though I must admit there are a handful of GameCube games I have occasionally considered making the hundred dollar commitment for:
- F-Zero GX - Really delivers on the promises made by the earlier F-Zero games. But no mention would be complete without referring to the first loading screen, with the Nintendo and Sega logos together for the first time — possibly the biggest personal mindfritz of this year not perpetrated on me by a homeless person at the A2 library.
- Viewtiful Joe - Though widely praised by myself and others for its sense of style, Victor feels its biggest selling point is its hearkening back to intense platform games like “Revenge of Shinobi.”
- P.N.01 - Come on, I’m a GUY. Anyway, I think this is the kind of gameplay I was hoping Space Channel 5 would be, with the action and the twitching.
There were a couple of others whose names unfortunately escape me. I think eliminating the whispery identity tag from the GameCube TV ads would go a long way toward getting people like me to actually consider buying one, but this is a horse I have beaten here before.
When it was just Sega and Nintendo, or Sega and Sony, it was pretty easy to stay on top of things, but right now I have an XBox, a PS2, a Dreamcast, and an N64 in the entertainment center. I haven’t bought a PS2 game since Kingdom Hearts. Pretty much every crossplatform game is going to have some edge on the XBox — either better graphics, an extra level to make up for the release time lag, or features that take advantage of the hard drive.
I don’t even use the PS2 for DVDs anymore — though it has the component video-in on the TV and is therefore capable of a better picture, the PS2 DVD remote is a titanic pain. Have you ever seen the thing? It has about a million buttons, all black with grey print and nearly the same size. The Xbox’s buttons are huge and brightly colored and it handles the DVD settings through onscreen menus, which make it ideal for turning down off the lights and watching movies in the dark. [Sure, there are probably third-party remotes for the PS2 that do it better, but read your manuals or the “WatchDog” column in about every third issue of GamePro — third-party peripherals will short-circuit your PS2 and BLOW THE FINGERS RIGHT OFF YOUR HAND.]
I keep the PS2 in there mainly for GTA and Kingdom Hearts and any other Sony exclusives that may catch my fancy at a later date.
