January 2001 Archives
Sega
announced it would discontinue the Dreamcast. Well, it was a good run.
Meanwhile on the political front, Bush calls for more non-partisan politics...asks democrats to "just vote how we do."
"CHAPTER XI. The Selection of a Wife.
More happiness or misery is wrapped up in this one transaction than in any other upon which a man is permitted to exercise his judgment. The frogs in Æsop's fable had a great fondness for water, but they were not disposed to leap into the well, because they could not get out again."
Excerpt from
What A Young Man Ought to Know 1897
Finally,
Go.com is dead. I hated this concept from the very beginning, with this "network of sites" all that was really gained was an automatic redirect whenever you tried to type in
ABCNEWS.com,
Disney.com,
ESPN.com, or
MrShowbiz.com. Nothing was improved, it was just a waste of marketing dollars.
I finally got the windowing thing going now, with a little help from my
friends. Now when you click on one of the icons on the left, you will be setting your preferences for how links open up: in this window, in one pop-up window, or each link in its own window. The default is one window. I was getting quite an earful from visitors complaining about the ill-planned javascript windowing scheme that I had partially in place before. I think this way is much better. I hope you all agree.
After several weeks of using and abusing the Playstation 2, and seeing the best games the system currently has to offer, I can honestly say... eh, no big deal. Although they are the best console games on the market, nothing has awed me. The jump from the 64-bit systems to these new ones has not impressed me like the jump from the old 8-bit Nintendo system to the Super Nintendo, or the Super Nintendo to the Nintendo 64. Those were some serious upgrades.
But I still will comment on the games I have played:
Madden 2001 - Bar none, the best football game since Super Techmo Bowl. I really get into the franchise mode where you can draft, sign free agents and make trades, but the graphics are very good as well, and the game seems very "polished" and complete.
NBA Live 2001 - Now this game seems a little too far from being complete. Still one of the best basketball games out, but it just doesn't seem as complete as Madden and it really seems like they left out some big things like: multiple player trades (and multiple team?) division standings (this seems like a serious oversight), and a franchise mode. Don't get me started on the players faces! My god, they said they took photographs of every player or something? What happened! They look nothing like the players.
SSX - Although I am in the "web industry" I am not a snowboarder. In fact, I have never snowboarded. But, SSX makes me feel as though I am one. This game demonstrates a great use of feedback through the (usually stupid) dual shock built into the controllers. You can feel it when you land a jump and the feeling fits with what you are seeing. It is really cool. Plus there are tons of tricks and stuff you can do, plus it's challenging. A cool game. Really cool...even if you are barely a gen Xer.
I could go on and on about a number of topics that have come up recently: Bush, corporate welfare, pardons, the web, design, the fall of the dot.com's, and more. I just find I am tired right now. I am tired of all these things, and others are saying the same things.
I'm sure I'll be better in the morning. Best be
on your way.
"Every young man who desires to remain strong, or to regain his physical, intillectual and moral powers, should have an absorbing purpose in life. Live with an aim, and let that aim be high. The man who aims at the sun will shoot higher than the man who aims at the earth. If you do not build a few castles in the air, you never will own any that are built on earth."
From
What a Young Man Ought to Know, 1897
The Golden Globes are over and it looks like there were some good decisions and some questionable ones.
Almost Famous won for best Comedy w/Kate Hudson as best supporting actress, which I think is great (although I think Best in Show should have edged it out)
I think Traffic should have won for best Drama, but alas, Gladiator wowed them with what I can only imagine is its great technical qualities (cause the story and acting weren't all that)
Yawn, Tom Hanks wins best actor in a Drama (Cast Away). Julia Roberts wins it for Erin Brokovich.
I liked the picks for best comedic performance: Renée Zellweger in Nurse Betty and George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (I never saw the Grinch so I can't say for sure if Jim Carrey deserved it or not)
In the next couple days I will have a complete recap at
BenOnFilm.com but for now...on to
Sundance
Ok, so a few days ago I gave some mini reviews of some movies I have recently seen. I have received some flak for giving Save the Last Dance and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the same score: a C+. While I too, believe Crouching Tiger is a better movie, I think I was expecting much more from it and so was more deeply disappointed by it. On the other hand, I really didn't expect much from Last Dance and got a little bit more than that. Am I trying to teach Crouching Tiger a lesson? Make it start living up to its potential? Whatever. It's a movie. Only a best movie of the year candidate for the foreign film category, I don't think it could hold its own versus some of the year's best.
Another movie I recently saw, State and Main, (another underachiever)has been reviewed for your viewing pleasure at
benonfilm.com
"The general tendency among young men and young women is to devote the hours designed for rest and sleep to social enjoyment, and oftentimes to exhausting and even debasing amusement and recreation."
- Excerpt from the book
What A Young Man Ought to Know from the Self and Sex Series by Sylvanus Stall, 1897 that I happened to pick up this weekend at an antique shop.
A couple movies to tell you about:
Brother Where Art Thou?, is a movie by the Coen brothers based (very) loosely around
The Odyssey by Homer is a fun movie, with some really funny parts and some rather slow parts. I like George Clooney in this role. The cinematography is surprisingly stunning in parts and although some of the points in the plot don't necessarily all work themselves out, I believe it to be a solid B+ effort.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was a disappointment to me. I expected it to be a great movie about the "ass-kicking" aspects of martial arts AND something about the spirituality of the martial arts. What I got was a movie that didn't touch at all on how these warriors could perform such feats of physical and ethereal prowess and didn't even have enough fight scenes in it. When the fight scenes were there they were amazing... almost too amazing, to the point of being ridiculous without explanation. Could have been better: C+.
Save the Last Dance. A teen movie about grown-up issues? Well about issues that most grown-ups don't even have to face but many of America's youth are facing daily. Not just about dancing, this movie tries to touch on some heavy topics and ways of dealing with tough issues. Sean Patrick Thomas is really great in this movie. Everyone else is simply adequate. This all told, I give it a C+.
Pending no further technical setbacks you will be able to see more in-depth reviews of recent movies soon at
BenOnFilm.com
Just a little bit of a break these last couple days to celebrate my wife's birthday at a little
bed and breakfast. No TV, no computer, no radio. Just me and her and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Working this weekend and liking it?
In the "have you seen this site yet?" category: It seems that Scott over at the
vlaminck.com family of sites is back on the web bandwagon and posting his thoughts on science and the like. His latest post points to
this article about black holes and how we are even closer to *proving* they exist. (he is almost a rocket scientist after all)
Along a similar vein,
this article at Space.com describes a "new sport" known as space diving, which is similar to skydiving except from *much* higher altitudes.
After playing with the PlayStation 2 for several days now I can honestly say...yawn...I guess I am only slightly impressed. What's that? You say they rushed out this first batch of games and that the next generation will be really cool? By then will the Xbox be out? Is the Xbox just a souped up PC with nothing else on the OS? Many questions grasshopper, few answers.
One thing, in particular, bothers me: all the consoles that use CD's, and now DVD's, access the information so slowly. I am talking about loading up the game for the first time, etc. And gameplay just does not feel as responsive as good ol' Nintendo64 and its seemingly old fashioned, low tech cartridges.
I guess it could be worse. I could have the threat of
random and selected power outages? How's it going
Jason?
I seem to have quite a following this fine day. It seems a ton of people are looking at me. Odd indeed. Current record number of simultaneous users: 11.
Wanna look at me? (note: the chat part may not be working correctly for the moment)
I have had a chance of late to do some "hands on" work in my profession. Usually I do a lot of proposal writing, UI storyboarding, and strategic direction type stuff, but lately the need has arisen for me to do some coding and graphics work and I like it just fine. I wouldn't mind doing some more visual interface design and get paid, too. Although Interaction and information design are fine for now.
The "tech world" is abuzz with speculation on what
IT" is. MSNBC says it is an "Invention said to be bigger than PC's and the Internet.
From digging up info (and having a lot of info dug for me. Thanks
Jason) there seems to be consensus that Dean Kamen has invented some sort of personal transport (like a hovercraft/skateboard thing), or some sort of clean power supply (portable fuel cell).
Start below and then do your own digging:
If it turns out to be neither of these, I still want to get me one of them "hover scooters".
Has anyone played around with the new
Google tool bar? It does some nice things like:
- You can choose to only search the site you are currently on regardless of whether or not they provide search functionality.
- You can also find your search terms wherever they appear on the page.
- And access additional info on the page, including Google's ranking of it.
But the best thing is the simplest. You can use Google's great search from your browser at any time. Simple and fast.
~~~
Some things I have come to understand in the past year:
- I am a hard person to please
- Having a dog changes your life
- Computers are fine but "people rule" (Gateway paid me for that remark)
- Designing on a laptop (even a good one with a huge screen) has very clear shortcomings
- The Velvet Underground is so highly praised because they are damn good.
- Pi (the movie) wasn't a fluke.
- There is no such thing as the perfect job.
- Having a webcam up kinda sucks.
- I want/need to learn more about this world/universe I live in. Corollary: Science is interesting.
- Being with friends as much as you can is a good idea.
Some things that happened in the last year:
- The American people got a lesson in the Electorate, now we all have to take our medicine for the next 4 years
- I got a new job
- my "cursed", new SUV has not rolled over and helped me through one of Minnesota's snowiest winters.
- 2 of my sites became 1
- Arnold realized what Willis was talking about.
- The tech stock bubble broke
- I made a post here and there
If you didn't get a PlayStation 2, you may have been lucky. We've all heard about the Xbox and what it can supposedly do. I don't think most people really thought it would be out this year, but it looks like it will be.
Here are some sites containing more and more details:
I am really looking forward to see and hearing the sound and graphics quality of this thing, and I am very interested to see if the games will be better than the typical PlayStation game. Because really, I think PlayStation game designers have traditionally suffered from creating games that utilize the graphics of the system and are stunning but bore me. They just aren't interesting; the stories are not imaginative.
The numbers for the U.S. Census are in and they do not bode well for those of us to the left of the political center. The U.S. population rose 13% over the last 10 years but most of the gains were in the southern states of Texas, Georgia, and Florida, as well as some new found conservative centers in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada.
You can check out the
U.S. Census site and the
U.S. Census 2000 site for some very good information and links. I especially commend them on spending our taxes on the following site:
the factfinder that allows you to do an amazing number of diverse sorts on current data and view it in maps, charts, and more.
On a somewhat related note, there is a new book called the
New Geography that's all about how the Internet is changing where people live. There was also a
program on NPR (RealAudio) discussing the ideas presented in this book by Joel Kotkin. The gist? That the Internet allows people to move out of the big cities and typical technology havens like Silicon Valley and Alley to live wherever the hell they want. It's actually much more interesting than that sounded however.
I hate when weblogs have "conversations" with other weblogs by responding to something on them, but...
I thought this was interesting from
kottke.org. Jason states:
"People have been trying to figure out what the 90's were all about. The 70's decade is referred to as the 'Me Decade' and the 80's were the 'Greed Decade'. What about the 90's? I would like to propose that the 90's were the 'Where's That From? Decade' or, alternatively, the 'Meta Decade'."
While I agree that the 90's were sort of an aggregate of past decades in some superficial ways like, clothing styles, movies, and music, I don't think there was any great change in the mindset of the average person*. I think that, beginning in the 60's, the average American thinks almost solely of themselves (and at a distant second, is their family). The "Me" and "Greed" decades simply gave way to the "I" decade of the 90's. The sensitive 90's man is encouraged to state things like "I think" this or "I feel" that. Image means more today than ever before, it's all about the individual now. I don't think this was always the case.
I wonder if there was a moment in time somewhere that could be pinpointed to as when the American public lost its sense of community, its sense of being together in some great endeavor. Granted there were a lot of bad things that were still far more prevalent in the 50's: racism, sexism, etc. I still believe however that something was lost. Something changed in the way people feel and act toward each other and this new manner of interaction has persisted for the last 30+ years.
Comments?
* the average person is defined for my purposes as a U.S. citizen.
I tend to think that a corporation that is asking for donations to maintain the viability of their product is a tad ludicrous. I think that the people who may be donating their own money to help out
Pyra labs' Blogger product would be vehemently opposed to paying additional taxes to keep a professional sports team in their home town, but this is the very same thing.
What kind of company cannot raise $5000 to buy new servers, anyway?! A company that is going to be around in a year? I think not. No offense is meant to any of the good people working at Pyra. I think they have a good product; would I donate money for that product to stay afloat a little while longer? Probably not. I would probably start looking for a new product.
~~~
Can Russia afford to build an
underwater tunnel between Siberia and Alaska? It looks like they are going to try. Prediction: they'll get 1/4 of the way through and we'll have to pick up the tab to complete it. Wouldn't it be cool to travel from the tip of South America to the South end of Africa? [from
slashdot]
The "Everywhere Network" in an article at Forbes.com. UC Berkley researchers trying to come up with a truly distributed internet solution - a web without firewalls.
Well that
dotcomguy debacle is finally over. Like anyone noticed.
What's with Amazon.com "closing" temporarily yesterday? Think it didn't happen? Take a
look at this.
The new millennium is upon us. It looks sort of the same as the old one. In the last year much happened but did anything really change? Have we progressed as a species?
What you expect me to answer that right now. Nope. But some things did happen in the last 10 years. NASA posted it's
Top Ten Stories for the Year 2000
Want something to look forward to? I can't tell you about hovering cars or automatic dinner making machines, but I can say that the first year of this millennium is shaping up to be
A Feast of Film. That is if you're into that sort of movie-going, fun, type of thing.
