bacon is magic

I was thinking about what everybody could do on Earth Day, and I think I’ve found the best answer.

Do absolutely nothing different from your daily routine on Earth Day.

Do not turn off your lights early. Do not go plant a tree. Do not take things to a recycling center. Do not change your home’s air filter. Do not unplug anything at home. Do not shut down your computer after using it. Do not ride a bike or take public transportation to work. Do not take the stairs. Do not turn off your air conditioner and open the windows.

Do not deviate from what you would consider to be a regular day.

Why?

One of the great motivators in life is guilt. By not doing anything special or eco-friendly on Earth Day, you can let guilt drive you to make more permanent lifestyle changes. Why only have one day where you turn off your lights early? Let guilt drive you to turn off your lights early throughout the year! Why shun the use of electricity for a day to celebrate Earth Day? Let guilt goad you into more frequent acts of energy conservation throughout the year! The same guilt that makes you eat your vegetables and floss your teeth can be put to good use. “Oh man! I forgot all about Earth Day and didn’t do ANYTHING… eh… I guess I can make it up by finally changing those lightbulbs and maybe I can take the bus instead of driving and… etc”

It’s stupid to have a holiday to encourage people to be eco-friendly for a day, only to continue doing the same old thing the next day. A good example are cities that go “lights out” on major buildings for Earth Day (and revert to the usual lighting schedule the very next day). That’s just dumb and frankly, it’s very disingenuous. If you can save ### kilowatts of energy by turning the lights out on a building for a day, why not do it more often? Permanent changes make a difference, not 24 hours of concentrated caring.

I don’t hate Earth Day - I think it’s a great idea. I just think we’re using it the wrong way.

I saw a post on Kotaku earlier this week and saw that there would be a full Rocky & Bullwinkle game for XBLA coming later in the week, and I got EXCITED. Unreasonably excited. I already got the Rocky & Bullwinkle pinball table for Pinball FX on XBLA last week without even thinking; I saw it on the XBLA Marketplace, everything went hazy, and then I saw it being downloaded. I don’t recall ever pressing the A button to confirm spending 200 points three bucks on it at all. In any case, it wasn’t a bad pinball table, and I did really well on the table on my first try, unlocking multiball on my first ball about 4 times, and it was pretty well themed with the table design and such.

In any case, I was EXCITED about the Rocky & Bullwinkle game, though I didn’t even know what it was about. I found out later that it would be some sort of minigame collection, trying to grab on to the success ho-train that is Warioware. However, I was sorely disappointed. It’s made by the same people as Pinball FX, which makes me really wonder WTF happened.

First, the good bits about it:

• It has a bunch of Rocky & Bullwinkle characters sprinkled throughout the minigames, including Peabody’s boy Sherman, some Fractured Fairy Tales characters, the moonmen, Captain Wrong Way Peachfuzz, and so forth.
• Some of the games are based on stuff that happens in the cartoon, such as Gidney and Cloyd scrooching things as a whack-a-mole theme.

And now here is what’s actually included in the game:

• Shitty hack flash animation. Seriously. This looks like it was animated by the same people that make those crappy, disjointed e-card animations you get in the chain e-mails from the crazy person at work. Bullwinkle running and throwing Rocky into the air looks like a reanimated corpse puppet with a different puppeteer for every limb, lumbering along with the grace of a manatee on a pogo stick down a flight of stairs. I don’t know if the animators have no talent, or are just extremely lazy. A good example is losing the trampoline minigame: Boris throws a bomb on you and laughs, and his “laugh” is moving his head up and down independently of his body.
• Shitty representations of the R&B characters. Load up the game and look at Bullwinkle, and you will immediately know something’s wrong, even if you can’t quite understand why; his head is poorly proportioned and his eyes are all fucked is perhaps the reason why. Don’t these guys have, I don’t know, at least 78 episodes of reference material?
• Awkward interface. For a game that tries to capture the fast-paced hectic fun of Warioware, they can’t seem to understand that there needs to be a flow of “a game is coming, here it is, figure it out and play, repeat” in a boom, boom, boom fluid motion like clockwork. The Rocky & Bullwinkle game is “this is the game and how to play (press A), here’s the game, you won/lost (press A), repeat”. The problem here is the (press A); Warioware moves at a steady clip, keeping you on your toes. In this game, the pace is nonexistent; you have to read how to play the game, confirm, play the game, then you see if you win or lose, and confirm. There is no excitement, no adrenaline rush, no crazy fun to be had, making for a disjointed, staccato experience that’s rather jarring. This also brings me to my next point…
• The games are not intuitive, because if they were intuitive, they wouldn’t have to tell you how to play each game. Because the games aren’t intuitive, they have to provide instructions. Because they have to provide instructions, there is no pace, there is no flow, there is no challenge, there is no fun.
• WTFBBQ use of video clips. You will see clips from the actual cartoon interspersed throughout the game, particularly after each minigame. However, they serve no purpose other than to proclaim, “Look! It’s Rocky & Bullwinkle! These clips prove it!” It makes the game look cheap, like one of those “multimedia” games from the 90s, or the Mario/Zelda CDI games.
• Inappropriate, awful MIDI music.  It was already bad on the Rocky & Bullwinkle pinball table for Pinball FX (why is there guitar?), but here, it’s there to give you the feeling that you are in fact, not playing a Rocky & Bullwinkle game.  But you are, and it makes you sad.  It doesn’t help that the nature of the game flow (as listed above) means that you’ll never hear music for more than 10 seconds at a time or so before switching to something else.
• False variety in minigames. The “buy me” information screen boasts over 100 minigames to play should you purchase the game, but that number is probably a lot closer to 35, as many of the games are clones of each other, bringing us to the next point…
• Game design without the design. Here’s a set of game “designs” they use:
  • Press the L and R triggers as fast as you can.
  • Rotate the analog stick. A lot.
  • Move the cursor over the targets. (you don’t even have to press any buttons)
  • Press a button with the right timing.

That pretty much sums up most of the games, as there are about 2-3 of each of those game types. Oh yes, there’s a dodge and collect minigame where you collect Fudge cakes with your spaceship while dodging asteroids, bringing us all the sophisticated gameplay of an LCD dodge ‘em game.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all is the fact that they made this game; because it’s so god-awful, we’re far less likely to see another game using the Rocky & Bullwinkle license anytime soon, and that’s a shame.

I realize that I only played the trial version, but it did show a decent percentage of the minigames, and amazing lack of attention to detail like, the interface, the animation, the graphics, the gameplay, the use of the license, the use of video clips, and trampling of one of the first highly intelligent cartoons has peeved me just a bit. If we sent this game to Pottsylvania, they’d send it back. I never got to try any of the Xbox LIVE Camera minigames, where “players with an Xbox LIVE Vision camera can control 25 of these games using fun gestures.” Unfortunately, I can think of only one gesture to give this game, and I think Jay Ward would approve.

I went to see Street Kings today with a handful of co-workers tonight, as we happened to have 5 free tickets for the movie given to one of us. I found out that its official release was actually supposed to be Friday, making this a preview/first look screening of the movie 2 days before it’s official opening.

Thank god it was free.

My friend warned me about the movie, as he found the following excerpt from a review of the movie:

This thing you want that you think you want, you don’t want,” Reeves tells Evans’ character. To which Evans wanly replies: “You don’t know what I want.”

This part of the dialogue was stellar compared to some of the other dialogue in the movie. Right from the start, it sounds like the writers were confused and instead of writing a no-brains action movie (this is not a bad thing), they wrote lines that belonged to a Shakespearean play, and so you have characters trying to end sentences in what should be parts of soliloquies go beyond the realm of the ridiculous and well into the realm of OMGWTFBBQ. In fact, after the initial action scene, you are immediately treated to plenty of odd lines like this, including a scene where Terry Crews, playing Keanu Reeves’s old partner and now rival, awkwardly tries to finish an unreasonably long line in the middle of a heated argument.

I can’t blame the actors for this either; Keanu Reeves is… Keanu Reeves, which is what most people want out of Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker seems to try to make the best out of his shitty lines, and Hugh Laurie (House) does a good job of being House as a cop. It feels like the director is responsible for a lot of the odd bits of the movie.  Forest Whitaker plays Reeves’s crazysauce “don’t worry, I’ll fix it” boss, and in the early part of the movie, you can catch him in a prolonged “I’m incredulous!” head shaking (with no dialogue) while yelling at a subordinate for almost a full second - something that should have ended up on the editing room floor. There are gobs of awkward moments like this, like Reeves’s last fight scene, and you can’t help but wonder how much better the movie could have been if scenes were better coached or simply re-shot.

The movie has overtones of Training Day and L.A. Confidential, and it’s not surprising, as the director, David Ayers, wrote Training Day, and the writer of Street Kings (James Ellroy) also wrote L.A. Confidential. “A cop deep in the snake pit of corrupted cops” brings us the direct correlation with Training Day, and a lot of the twists and turns mirror those of L.A. Confidential (which is also about corruption… gee). The scene where Keanu Reeves is arming himself and preparing to confront two murderers gives off the exact same vibe as the scene in L.A. Confidential where Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce are preparing to take on the corrupt cops, right down to handing the partner a shotgun.

But this then begs questions: How did this movie turn out so badly? How can the same guy that put together the intricate story of L.A. Confidential create a plot where you can tell who the mystery villain is after half an hour? Why does this feel like an 80’s cop movie, except more retarded? Why does Jay Mohr have an awful, unconvincing porn ’stache that just makes him look like a chester?

So, in the end, the movie feels like a recipe for dinner: take Training Day and L.A. Confidential and put them in a blender, add a couple of movie stars to the mix, then use all of that as sauce for a doggie lawn sausage, and you have Street Kings. In other words, all the good elements of the movie can’t cover up the taste or smell of its dog-shit core. But I will say this in its defense: sometimes dog-shit is funny, and this movie’s flaws and reasonably decent action scenes (the sound is good) make it ripe for open mockery with friends. I suggest waiting until this comes out on cable, then watching it with friends, a couple of beers, and a loud mouth.

I went to the Zhongxiao Fuxing Sogo department store today to buy some point cards for the Xbox 360 and PS3 today. Why Sogo? I had about 5000NT in gift certificates to the place given to me by my company for various events like holidays and weiya(year-end company party) prizes.

I made the following wonderful observations:

• New and old 360/PS3/Wii games were about 2000NT ($67USD) on average at Sogo, going for about 1890NT at cheapest and 2200NT highest (approx.)
• New 360/PS3/Wii games are normally 1380NT at ANY GAME SHOP in Taipei, and that’s without shopping around (however, some JPN-version 360 and PSN games run 1800NT, as the Asian versions are the ones at 1380NT)
• This means that Sogo regularly marks up game prices by about 620NT on average, or about $20USD
• In other words, games at Sogo cost 44% more than normal for no good reason

I also found out that they didn’t sell the point cards at the store, and I’m pretty sure I know why: these items are pricelocked, so they can’t overcharge you for them, so they don’t sell them. Unlike the 360, PS3 cards have NT values on them, usually 400NT or 800NT(about $14/$27USD). How can you mark up the prices on something that has another price on it already?

The problem is, pretty much everything here is like this - marked way up already. Whenever there’s a sale, it rarely matters because the prices were high in the first place, and generally cost more than retail anyway even after the “sale”. After all, other stores have sales too.

Now I have 5000NT in gift certificates that I can only use to buy overpriced goods. It’s pretty irritating; I have free money, but the money is worth less than it’s supposed to be because I’m limited to spending it on excessively priced goods. Ain’t that a b.

Still, I believe that Sogo is ideal for particular groups of people:

• Stupid rich people (must be both stupid and rich)
• People who are in a pinch, such as someone who needs to buy a gift ASAP
• People looking for a very specific brand they can’t find elsewhere
• People who have gift certificates to the place already (why me?)

If you don’t fit into one of the above groups, you should really shop somewhere else.

Anyway, I’ve determined that I can only get my money’s worth for my gift certificates through one of the following ways:

• I use my gift certificates at places where the prices are less likely to be pushed up, such as at chain stores like The Body Shop or one of the restaurants in the place.
• I use my gift certificates at “new” Sogo’s City Super supermarket - the prices are always high there, but at least the stuff I buy there is of good quality and I can’t get those things elsewhere.

All of this is totally retarded too, when they sell things like this:

On the bottom shelf, you can see the Vii (hilarious breakdown examination here), also known as the Chinese knockoff of the Nintendo Wii. It boggles the mind to think that Sogo, which prides itself on being a high quality Japanese department store, sells knockoffs of the Wii instead of selling the actual Wii itself.

But wait! Sogo isn’t a Japanese store, at least not in Taiwan, where it’s owned and run by the Far Eastern Group. Going to their webpage, you can see the following quote:

The Far Eastern Group’s Founder - Mr. Y. Z. Hsu - has always taken “trustworthiness” as the guiding principle of his business management.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see how products priced 44% over retail and blatant knockoff goods in lieu of the ones customers are looking for help to instill a feeling of trust.

Update: I’ve since found out that the Vii is produced by KenSingTon,(or 广州市京仕敦电子科技有限公司荣誉出品, which is Guangzhou, Beijing Shidun Electronic Technology Co. Ltd. roughly translated) which I’m guessing is trying to imitate the name of Kensington, a computer peripheral company, which does have a Chinese branch in Beijing, making me wonder how they deal with trademarks in China. The fact that the official inquiry e-mail is a Hotmail address makes them seem very sketchy. They have since come out with a redesign of the console(Google translated link), ironically making it look less like the Wii and more like a PS3. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now has a cartridge slot for 3 different multi-game cartridges (like 7-in-1 style cartridges), giving it expandability over the previous model, though I have no idea who will make the cartridges other than “KenSingTon”. My issue? Sogo is still selling the obvious Wii copycat, and the one that could be potentially mistaken for a Wii.

Here’s fun pictures of my cats, Espressa and Munny - enjoy!

I heard a bunch of yelling outside my apartment and found these two guys in an argument.

Their scooters were unusually close, side by side, so it didn’t seem like one had crashed into the other. An older guy (right) was yelling at the younger guy (left) and lots of yelling was going back and forth. I grabbed my camera out of habit, and by the time I came back, the older guy started grabbing at the other guy and dragged him off of his scooter.

Soon after, they started tusslin’, and I remember the younger guy’s shirt being pulled on and stretched out.

After less than a minute of yelling and grabbing and shirt pulling, they both went back to their scooters, and the older guy rode off after yelling some more words, and the younger guy seemed kinda dejected, and collected some bits and pieces of what I guess was his stuff off of the road slowly, put his helmet back on his head, then drove off.

All of this just brought to light one thing for me - I totally don’t know how to describe this stuff to the cops should I decide to call them. Ugh. I mean, I can’t yell “old man TK’s fighting with some kid!” to the dispatcher. On afterthought, I think I should’ve used my flash through the window; chances are it’d freak them out and they’d break it up faster.

Oh well.  At least this was better than the time some lady was sitting on her scooter arguing at a phone for an hour and a half down there late at night.

Last Saturday, I went to Neidong National Park, south-ish of Taipei. I went on a photo trip with a handful of co-workers in our photo club.

The night before, I went to Indian, a dinosaur/cavemen/native american/what? themed restaurant to eat and drink with Amy and everybody. I needed to take my scooter home so I could drive it out to the Xindian MRT station to meet everybody, as I needed to get there by 6:30AM, before they opened(I think they open at 7). We had 2 mini-kegs though, so I had to wait a while before I could drive my scooter home, so I ended up looking around the RT-Mart nearby until they closed. Awesome!

That morning, my alarm woke me up at 5:40AM. I had gone to sleep at 1AM, and I’d been tired from sleeping badly all week anyway. >_< I woke up fine though, got ready, and drove down to meet them. It’s not the first time I’ve had to get up ridiculously early - there have been plenty of times where I’ve drank with Fred ‘n Kevin, slept 2 hours, then left for our international flight which we COULD NOT MISS.

So, of course, I ended up falling asleep repeatedly in the car on the way there.

The park was pretty neat - it’s famous for its triple waterfall, lush greenery, and general nature-ness.

Lots of people were there exercising, including one guy who appeared to be doing air humps, an exercise that seemed to be good for men.

Some other people were meditating or sleeping, which is pretty much a form of meditation anyway.

On the way back to the car, we stopped to take macro pictures of a bunch of bugs, where I learned that I can “convert” my lenses to take macro photos by getting some extension tubes. However, it’s still difficult to take pictures of ants that WON’T STOP MOVING, and you also have to hold the camera closer than you would hold a magnifying glass, like less than 3cm from the bug.

I also managed to take some panoramic shots, which I stitched together using Autostitch, which is pretty sweet.

So, after spending about 2-3 hours in the park walking around and taking photos, I meditated repeatedly on the way back home.