I have written before about my battles with Mavis Beacon on the Martian Cartel forum. Mavis is the composite identity used as the face of a typing program published by Broderbund. I regard her as an arch-nemesis.
A few months ago I picked up the current version of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing — the third time I’ve bought the insidious program. I was sure this time would be different. This time she wouldn’t crush my dreams like a sparrow in the hand of a hill giant. This time I would progress beyond my usual three-fingers-is-plenty typing style.
She looks so friendly and helpful on the cover. She wouldn’t be mean this time.
The first thing you do in the program is create a profile. Then you get presented with the screen below. Why is Mavis talking about herself in the third person? Does she think she is royalty? Has she gone mad? She won’t say, so I just start a-typin’.
As expected, my speed puts me in the “special needs” category. I’m staying positive, though! Mostly I stay positive by closing the program at this point. I’ll have further results Soon®!
While Activision devotes 90% of its production toward Guitar Hero titles (“Play Guitar Hero on your car’s GPS!”) EA is busying itself between studio closures and layoffs with preparations for the Sims-like milking of its newest declared mega-franchise, Spore. This Shacknews story reports there are four Spore titles due out this year. They are at least targeting different platforms — the Wii, DS and PC but is there really anything about the Spore universe that warrants a bunch of titles with only a tenuous connection to the original game? The answer is: you aren’t in marketing and your question is dumb.
I’m not terribly bothered by the incoming wave of Spore titles but I do think it reflects lamentably on the growing reliance by game publishers to produce one carefully-cultivated franchise (not game series, “franchises” of “products”) and then squeeze it for all its worth until its eventual collapse forces them to move onto something else (see also: the glut of hunting games and Myst clones in the 1990s that have all but vanished now).
Looking through my (digital) collection of stories, story ideas and fragments, I found something called ROACH, probably a scrap I wrote when I had my Atari ST (circa 1987-90) that was later converted to a DOS text format. In any case, dragging it into the latest version of Word provided me with this:
The Boogum in the Closet
I was getting ready for class, much as I do on the other four days of the week. It was a Tuesday, perfectly normal. I had already brushed my teeth, washed my hair, inspected by body for small, potentially cancerous tumours and was now opening the closet to get my jacket. As I said, all perfectly normal.
For the last two years I had gone through this same routine. Not a single detail had changed. I’m not much of a morning person, liable to sleep in till noon if you let me. I had devised this nearly sacred morning ritual to keep me awake, to allow my mind the time it needed to realize that my body was staying up and it had better come around, too.
As nearly sacred rituals go, I had followed this one with appropriate religious zeal. The only thing that had changed was the specific location. Being the quintessential starving college student, I was forced to move from abode to abode, constantly seeking the cheapest rent and the lowest number of cockroaches. The optimal balance was ever-elusive. It seemed to exist in my current apartment, though.
Of course, I had only lived in it for a little over twenty-four hours. Give the little nippers time.
I opened the closet and observed, with disgust,
And yes, it ends with the comma after “disgust”. It’s like I ended it there just to jerk around anyone coming across it years later — including myself because I have no freaking clue what was in that closet. Proof that writers are weird. All of them.
As of right now, this is the forecast for Sunday, January 18th (tomorrow):
As you can see, it is only slightly different than before. “Mainly sunny” instead of “sunny”, a high of 6 instead of 8. But you watch, overnight, the forecast will change to “blizzard with angry polar bears”.
1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
No surprise here. World of Warcraft: Poop in a Box would sell a couple million copies. Fortunately the expansion turned out to be pretty good, even if it did actually contain poop (quests).
2. Spore
Incessant hype, lots of controversy (DRM, science vs. toy game design, penis creatures), that Sims-y vibe. No surprise it has sold so well. The Creature Creator probably played a big part in greasing sales.
3. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
I guess everyone buying #1 would need something like #3 so this is inevitable.
4. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures They recently merged over half the servers but this sold like crazy for a few months. A textbook example of launching an incomplete game and torpedoing your long-term efforts as a result.
5. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
Four of the top 5 games are MMOs. WAR stopped bragging about its numbers even sooner than Conan and Mythic has been stealthily working on server merges/closures. Will publishers look at box sales or subscription numbers when deciding whether or not to green-light future MMOs? The answer is: more money will be flushed down the drain on expensive persistent-world games that fail to deliver while everyone keeps buying extra copies of WoW (see below).
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
CoD is the new Quake. This game is a year old, which is actually kind of young for a PC title.
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
Way down the list at #7. Shocking! The Sims 3 ships next month. Not so shocking.
8. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition
A lot of #1s were bought when #8 sold out. Probably going for $5000 on eBay now.
9. Fallout 3
Bethesda successfully revives a series that has been dormant for a decade, a neat trick. Name recognition still matters (or so 3D Realms hopes).
10. World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Yeah, okay, this has been out for two years now. Do people just buy some flavor of WoW every time they go down the PC game aisle?
11. Call Of Duty: World At War
See #6.
12. The Sims 2 FreeTime
Inevitable Sims 2 expansion, amazingly not in the top 10.
13. World Of Warcraft
There are three dozen SKUs for WoW. Buy all of them, people!
14. Sins Of A Solar Empire
The first RTS in the list (sorry, EA and Red Alert 3) and an impressive debut for Ironclad. Would place even higher if its Impulse sales were counted.
15. Warcraft III Battle Chest
“Hey, I thought it was World of Warcraft!”
16. The Sims 2 Apartment Life
My apartment life included a drunk landlord that tried to burn down the building. This will get recycled some time in the next year for Sims 3 (the expansion, not the torching ways of my ex-landlord).
17. Crysis
Despite murdering hardware, this game has done very well, sales-wise. PC gaming is still doomed though, right?
18. Left 4 Dead
Steam sales would place this a lot higher, I suspect.
19. Diablo Battle Chest
“I thought it was Diablo 3!” Diablo 2 was released in 2000. The most successful Diablo clone since then might be Titan Quest — and the developer shut down after its release. Advice to game companies: Don’t try to emulate Blizzard’s success. Even when your games are good, people will still choose a 10 year old Blizzard title instead. I recommend changing your company name to Blissard Entertainment as an alternate strategy.
20. The Orange Box
Again, Steam sales would lift this higher. Another 1+ year old game but it almost counts as brand new in comparison to some of the others.
A handful of FPSes, an RTS, the Blizzard catalog and the Sims. This was the state of (retail) PC gaming in 2008. I suppose it could be worse. Deer Hunter and Myst clones no longer make the list but it’s a bit scary that games that predate the original Xbox are still in the top 20.
Follow-up: Shacknews has an NPD report that PC retail sales dropped 14% in 2008 to $701 million. Considering that Blizzard generates over a billion dollars per year from WoW alone, I think it’s safe to say retail is providing a picture of revenue that is…less than accurate.
Flashpoint is a CTV-produced police drama starring Hugh Dillon, former lead singer of The Headstones. Hugh Dillon is a great name. It oozes macho. Really, if that wasn’t his actual name I’m pretty sure the producers of the show would have had him change it to that. Here’s Hugh in a promo shot for the show:
“Look serious. No, more serious. More. Turn it up about 20 notches. No, 100 notches. There’s this guy and he’s hurting kittens. A terrorist hurting kittens. And grannies. The grannies are saving the kittens from a fire. Serious, come on. More serious. MORE. You are grim and determined. You have steely eyes. Seriously steely-eyes and the musky stench of determined grimness. Very very serious. You are a man. A serious man. You have a gun. You have no hair because men don’t need hair. Hair is not serious but good god man, YOU ARE SERIOUS. And…that’s a wrap. Brie with bagels for lunch, let’s go!”
There is a glitch with the code for the otherwise spiffy Techmania theme I am using for this blog. It manifests itself as a duplicate arrow on the headlines for each post. It looks like this:
Curiously, the glitch shows in Firefox 3 and Google Chrome but not in Internet Explorer 7. I have looked over the code but have been unable to figure out what is causing this. After three weeks and no response at the forum that hosts this (and other) themes, I am putting it out here in the billion to one chance some CSS expert sees this and has solution.
Back in April 2008 I was getting persistent pain down in my abdomen and being the responsible type I went to a medical clinic near work and they siphoned a bunch of blood from me and ran the usual battery of tests. It turned out to be a prostate infection, treated by the usual antibiotics (or not the usual in my case, but that’s another story). One of the doctors also informed me that my blood sugar level was slightly higher than average, making me pre-diabetic in his estimation. He foretold, gypsy-like, of a future a year hence when I would be a full-fledged diabetic if I didn’t improve my diet, exercise more and lose weight.
After a few tentative steps, I resolved to improve my health in early June. I weighed myself for reference and came in at 187.5 pounds. Fat. And plenty of it.
I cut out all junk food and fast food from my diet, started cooking lean fresh meat and veggies and stuck to at least three meals per day. Today I weigh 147.5 pounds. Using my fantastic math skills (Windows Calculator) I have determined that there is now 21.4% less of me than there was seven months ago. I marvel at how I have saved so much money by eating healthier meals I make for myself.
But wait! To exercise, I bought a bike to ride to work. Then I bought an exercise bench and a set of dumbbells. I bought four books on exercise and diet (sensible-eating diet, not fad diets). I figured swimming lessons would be a good thing, so I signed up for those.
I then discovered as I shed the decades of roly-poly that my pants didn’t quite fit anymore. In fact, I could take off my jeans without unzipping them. I needed new jeans that were two sizes smaller. My medium t-shirts were also kind of baggy and billowy now, requiring replacement with small sizes. Even my stylish medium boxer shorts were too big now. Who would have guessed I’d want underwear for my birthday?
Losing a lot of weight has cost me a lot of money. Overall it’s been worth it. Being able to take off my shirt in public without inspiring Stephen King levels of horror is, I think, a good thing.
It was night #2 for the ol’ swimming lessons and I was ready. I had a proper duffel bag for my towel and trunks, I had nifty-looking goggles and I had practiced that whole blowing-bubbles-in-the-water thing in my kitchen sink in nice, comfy warm water and without incident (drowning in your kitchen sink is one of the more embarrassing ways to kill yourself). I was one of the first to arrive and Dave came over to say hello and asked me how my leg was. Thoughtful.
He then presented me with a straw. He vouched that it was all sanitary and chlorinated and such, then explained that I would be breathing into the straw to help me with the whole breathing in water business. I did so several times without causing injury and he seemed pleased. Or at least slightly less worried.
There were more people at tonight’s lesson. I believe it was six total, split between the sexes. The girls were in their teens while the guys all skewed much older. Odd that. Pete claimed he had last been swimming about 40 years earlier and would go on to complain several times about water up the nose.
While the others did some rudimentary exercises with kicking feet and rolling over while kicking feet, I was advised to keep at the more basic stuff until I was comfortable or even bored with it. I was okay with this. At one point a second instructor who was along for the night walked (swam?) me through simple exercises to get me used to breathing out while in and under the water. She suggested humming a tune and ultimately came up with The Beatles’ “When I’m 64.” We began humming together and as I dunked my head I was so focused on the humming that I pretty much forgot the breathing. Turned out to be one of those “chewing gum and rubbing your tummy” things. I did better without the humming and graduated past the straw.
The combination of breathing and head-dipping resulted in water in my right ear. I was told it happens to a lot of swimmers, which suggests it doesn’t happen to some. I want to know how certain people end up with magical water-repelling ears because I’d like a pair.
At the end of the lesson Dave came over and asked me if I was comfortable and all that and was concerned over whether I would show up for Thursday. I told him I was good for the remainder of the course, knowing I am often a slow learner when it comes to new things and would be satisfied as long as I was making some kind of progress.
When I changed, I nearly stabbed myself with the safety pin attached to my locker key.
Looking back, I am left with a few observations on my swimming thus far:
the pool is just really freaking cold. I told Dave that maybe I am part reptile or something because the water never feels warm to me and it makes me tense up, which is bad for swimming. I’m mulling things to help, like stretching before the lesson starts or investigating heated bathing suit technology.
I have the grace of a boulder. As soon as I move in the water, it’s like every part of my body decides it wants to find a different way out. I don’t float so much as drift for a moment like a listing ship before sinking. “Keep your hips up!” Dave advised. “Keep your butt down. Relax.” After awhile it felt like foreplay. Bad foreplay.
I only ingested a small amount of water tonight and the goggles helped with the head-dunking. They leak a little but are definitely better than going naked. About half of us had goggles.
no one dropped the soap in the change room. In fact, there was no soap. Most guys seem to wear boxers. Yeah, I looked. So sue me.
There was a time when I would have been self-conscious about being the slowest person in the group but that part of my ego wandered off a long time ago. I’m not going to end up rivaling Aquaman here but I’m already ahead of where I was and that’s good enough for me. Now I just need to find some way to get the pool water to heat up another ten degrees…
When I operated the Locarno Beach concession back in 1996-98 I checked weather updates with a near-relifgious fervor as business rested entirely on the weather being sunny and pleasant. Today, thanks to the vast richness that is the world wide web, I can check weather forecasts 24 hours a day. For example, there is The Weather Network (that should show the forecast for Vancouver). The Weather Network is about as accurate as one might expect.
Or is it? <ominous piano chord>
I have noticed of late a typical pattern. The last day of the forecast is always really nice. Then when that day actually arrives, it’s snowing or flooding or something. I’m thinking they have some standing order to make the end of the forecast look nice to fill people with hope and to have them keep coming back to see if it’s changed. When that day actually arrives it is, of course, snowing or flooding. I’m going to test this crackpot theory by linking a copy of their little graphic for the last day of the forecast then following up with updated images as we get closer to the actual date in question — January 18th. As you can see, there is no snow or flooding predicted:
The 0% is the chance for precipitation. The 18th is six days hence. How wrong could they end up being in just six little days? Let’s find out!
I made it over to the island for a late Christmas the weekend after New Year’s. The reason for the delay, of course, was the weather. If someone had told me back in the fall I wouldn’t be able to ride my bike to work for nearly a month due to snow I would have chuckled quietly and called them insane. Today I would call them Kreskin.
I get up on the morning of Saturday January 3rd and look out the window. It’s snowing. Again.
Undeterred, I head out and once downtown I catch the #153 bus to Horseshoe Bay. It is snowing harder in West Vancouver, nestled as it is at the base of the North Shore mountains. The bus driver advises the passengers that all West Van buses are on “snow routes” without explaining precisely what that means. Someone on the dispatch also relays this information. We eventually learn it means all buses are sticking to the lower roads and avoiding the upper levels highway until the plows get through.
We get to the terminal safe and sound thanks to the driver not being a maniac behind the wheel. The ticket booth at Horseshoe Bay is covered but outdoors. It is a bit chilly but the line-up is not too long as I am early. Unfortunately the line-up does not move. At all. A woman up at the wicket is having a problem of some sort. I am too far away to catch any of the conversation so I wait and watch the snow piling up. The line continues to not move. Minutes go by. Then more minutes. The cashier is on the phone now. I gnash my teeth. The woman holding up the line has a dog. It’s a cute dog but if it’s the reason I’m standing here freezing my skinny butt off then screw you, cute dog!
After about ten minutes (which feels like 20 once you add wind chill) I buy my ticket and am astonished that the price is something like five dollars cheaper than it was in October. I take a whiff and sure enough, there is the unmistakable smell of pre-election on the ticket stub. Thanks, Gordon!
