Last week sometime, I entered a Target store (which is somewhat like a Wal-Mart, but with business hours and lower ceilings) for the purchase of a number of tee-shirts. I discovered in the same section, a shelf of novelty shirts... you know the type: "I'm with stupid ->" or "Greasy Dan's Diner and Filling Station: Eat Here, Get Gas", or for the ladies, "Hey, I'm up here."
Well, in between a Pac-Man board and a 1UP mushroom, I found a shirt with the heading, "10 Reasons Why Kirk is Better Than Picard".
I'm probably taking my life into my own hands by saying this on a blog visited occasionally by Trek anoraks, but...

Pfft! No, he's not.
Allow me to turn the tables and remix a list which has probably already been printed on a tee-shirt and sold to 32,647 people.

Ten Reasons Why Picard is Better Than Kirk

10. Four words: "tea, Earl Grey, hot".
9. When dealing with alien girls, there's a thing called self-control.
8. Has the best autopilot system in Starfleet: Data.
7. Have you seen "Chain of Command, Part I"? Three words: "bald James Bond".
6. Has enough composure and patience to not escort Wesley to the airlock.
5. Three more words: "Warp nine. Engage."
4. Picard. Doesn't. Make. Every. Word. Its. Own. Sentence.
3. "Resistance is futile"? Eh, not so much.
2. "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".
1. The first Starfleet officer to make a red shirt look fashionable.

Posted by theniftyperson at 2:01 AM CDT

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Some time ago, I was debating whether or not I should replace my long-dead mobile phone with an iPhone, a Droid, or a BlackBerry. Well, it turns out that I didn't go with any of the above. I tried out several demonstration mobiles at the local electronics purveyor and discovered that, as per usual, I was woefully misinformed as to the performance of three finalists versus the other smartphones on the market. Whilst it was neck-and-neck at times between the Droid X and the HTC Incredible, the Samsung Fascinate edged out ahead of the competition once they were in sight of the post. Leaving the horse-racing metaphors in the proverbial dust, I ultimately chose the Samsung Fascinate. I liked its archetypal "smartphone" shape -- not as sharp as the Droid X, not as round as the iPhone. The virtual keyboard with Swype was a nice touch, too... stops one accidentally butt-dialing Pantsburg, don't you know.

As with any new gadget, the learning curve was somewhat high upon its triumphant emergence from the box. Particularly Swype... for a man who has spent the past seven years of his life tapping impossibly tiny virtual keyboard keys on the Touch Screen of a Nintendo DS, Swype is the greatest invention since ROM cartridges. One simply draws one's finger across the keyboard, trailing a path through the letters one wishes to type, then as though by magic, the word appears in the text field. I do have an idea of how Swype does what it does, but I shan't bore you.

Now, this may seem hard to believe, but I have just turned 23 and have never sent a text message. I was in high school when texting became the institution that it is today... I always saw people (girls, mainly) walking about the grounds, writing something with their mobile keypads that probably contained at least one instance of "lol", "omg", or "cu l8r". On one occasion, I thought that I should like to send a text message and receive a reply, however texting does tend to cost money -- something which does not come in great abundance.
But, I figured that, if I am to move up in the world, I'll need texting ability. To that end, my new plan involves unlimited texting for an actually very reasonable price. So, yesterday, after the mobile had completely finished charging, I sent my first ever text message -- it was to my cousin in Alaska. I actually don't know if his plan includes texting, but we shall find out soon enough, yes?
After all, I might become a really popular bloke one day -- one who needs a 21st century way to communicate things in a short period of time. Texting is the way to do that.

I recall my mother telling me, on the eve of January 1st, 2000, how her generation had been promised such things as jetpacks, flying cars, colonies on the moon, and visophones by 2000. Well, it's a bit delayed, but the smartphone with Skype functionality is, for all intents and purposes, a "visophone" (that is, a video-phone -- kind of like the viewscreens on Star Trek). Thanks to incessant congressional lobbying by various groups who like their money and dislike any kind of change in automotive manufacture, flying cars proved impossible. And, thanks to a near total cut of any aerospace research funding by the United States government, colonies on the moon are no longer in the stars, either. However, all is not lost...

On various occasions, I've mentioned "Trek Tech" -- technological advances with roots in Star Trek. One of the most influential pieces of fictional technology from the series has been the PADD (personal access data display), which was first introduced in The Next Generation. PADDs could display anything -- warp core schematics, security protocols, duty rosters, scripts for a stage-play, the works of Shakespeare, what-have-you. The smartphone is a real-life iteration of the PADD. But, it's also similar to the communicator and the tricorder. The communicator, obviously, is in the telephony (they are "smartphones"). The tricorder was notorious for being the almighty, omnicient data storage and scanning device that could do anything Gene Roddenberry wanted it to do. That's what apps are for... perusing the Android Market (analogous to Apple's App Store), I, personally, came across speech-recognition language translators, remote keyboards and mice for PCs, phone locators and lockouts which can be remotely activated by calling the app's special number on any land-line, the same but activated by e-mail, satellite locators with augmented reality... and, of course, your standard Foursquare, MySpace, Pandora, and Angry Birds. Soon enough, the smart-phone will rival the tricorder, if not surpassing its abilities.

I've downloaded two apps so far, both of them were free. Perhaps you've heard of them... the first is called "SoundHound", which advertises itself as the world's only viable song identifier to support whistling, humming, and singing. I haven't had an opportunity to test it yet, but I intend to put it through its paces at the Chinese buffet tomorrow (I could swear they were playing an "Orientalised" version of Thunderball the last time I was there).
The second is called... something. I know it has the word "Piano" in it. Anyway, it functions as a small MIDI-based piano with 3-note polyphony. The feedback was mixed -- some claiming it to be a waste of time, others claiming that it is a great teaching tool. Me, I plan to use it strictly for composing purposes. If I'm ever at a location where there is not an actual piano, I'll be able to use the piano app to help me write music. I rather need to see the keyboard in order to assign musical notes.

I intend to post the following feedback message to Verizon's webpage for the Fascinate...

It's your typical smartphone. It looks nifty, costs less than competitors, and does everything you'd expect a smartphone to do. The camera's nice, too.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:08 AM CDT

Updated: Tuesday, 29 March 2011 12:45 AM CDT

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Ah, the slot machine... a casino staple since the 1950s. What's the first thing you're likely to see when you set foot onto the casino floor? About a hundred or so slot machines, neatly arranged in rows (or columns, depending on where you stand). However, the slot machine's style is going to change in every place you go. Some casinos have proprietary designs, others have stock designs made for anyone who'll buy them. It's sort of like television... most networks have programmes which can only be seen on that particular network, but there are a number of programmes (new and old) which are syndicated and available for viewing on any network that will have them.

...But, they're all the same really. Television shows and slot machines. The mode of delivery with a television programme is the same, no matter what kind of device you use -- it's an audiovisual transmission which you view with your eyes and hear with your ears. Regardless of whether you watch it on a CRT monitor from the '80s, an unnecessarily large LCD screen from 2009, or an expensive 3D TV, it's the same thing. It doesn't matter if you watch on your mobile phone, your PSP, your computer, Hulu, YouTube, CBS.com, Netflix, whatever -- no matter where it is, the programme is still the same audiovisual transmission which you see with your eyes and hear with your ears.
Likewise, slot machines are all fundamentally identical to each other. The mode of operation is to pull on a crank to activate flywheels with pictures on them. If the pictures line up where the flywheels stop, a payout is given. Regardless of the style on the casing (tropical fruit, Monopoly iconography, manga girls with katana or nunchaku, a distractingly bright spinning Wheel of Fortune wheel attached to the top), it's still going to be the same fundamental principle in operating the machine. Some machines are computerised, some are contained entirely within JavaScript or Flash. The only difference is that the programmer may have a say in how frequently payouts are given. You still pull a virtual crank (often by pressing a button on the casing or a key on your keyboard), you still watch pictures scroll by on virtual flywheels, and you still get some kind of prize if you line the pictures up.

I suppose it's no different from The Incredible Crash Dummies, when you talk about fundamentals. Most of the Crash Dummies would explode when you pressed their impact buttons, but some were more appealing than others. Even though Vince, Larry, Slick, Spin, Axel, Dash, J.R., Wack, Flip, Pro-Tek Slick, Pro-Tek Spin, Chip, and Dent all performed the exact same function, there were ones that I liked better than others. Why? I preferred Spin's indigo colour to Dash's mustard yellow. I really didn't like Chip or Dent, mainly because of their Leno-style cleft chins.
A casino patron might be more attracted to slots with hot girls painted on the casing than an identical machine painted to look like the Old West.

There... I think I managed to stop this entry looking like a criticism of one of the advertisers.

Posted by theniftyperson at 5:22 PM CDT

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Excerpt from The Mind's Rubbish Bin - Homestar Runner Edition:
The longest hiatus between Strong Bad Email updates began in October 2009. Following the release of "videography", updates to this section inexplicably stopped. As of 10 March 2011, the hiatus continues.

No one knows precisely why, but Matt and Mike Chapman (known also as The Brothers Chaps, or TBC) have not made a single update to the Strong Bad Email section of their critically-acclaimed Flash cartoon website, HomestarRunner.com, since October of 2009. In fact, since the hiatus began, only four updates have been made to the website, in general. The April Fool's Day cartoon, "Xeriouxly Forxe", the matching homepage, "A Decemberween Mackerel", and "Which Ween Costumes?". Un, deux, trois, quatre... just those four. To be fair, though, they did make a YouTube-exclusive "demonstration" of Strong Bad's videography "skill", "Coach Z pukes in guy's toupee". It lasts 19 seconds and only features Coach Z, Senor Cardgage, and the voice of Strong Bad, but it does exist and it was made concurrently with the "videography" email.

Speculation has run rampants... er... rampant on this subject -- potential reasons for the inexplicable lack of SBemails have been more far-fetched than the other. Maybe someone died? Maybe someone had a baby? Maybe someone was arrested? Maybe the economy got so bad, they needed to get real jobs? Maybe they're just not feeling it anymore, like, the vibes dried up, man?

Whatever the reason, I tend to think that Strong Bad needs an email that he cannot refuse to answer. To that effect, I recently sent the following message to Strong Bad's email address...

Posted by theniftyperson at 5:45 PM CST

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As I mentioned in a previous entry, the supremely nifty action-figure line from 1991, The Incredible Crash Dummies, turns 20 this year. Of course, this is a highly momentous occasion here at SebasTECH. To celebrate the event, I shall be giving the Crash Dummies page a makeover (not that I wouldn't have done it anyway), consisting of new headings and a new banner. Also, something rather unorthodox...

I've recently come into possession of a freeware application known as Game Maker. At its simplest, one can use this programme to create a game where you click on bouncing fruit to raise your score. At its most complex, one can create a 3D platformer. My level of skill with the programme is about halfway between those two. Enough, however, to make a decent top-down Zelda-esque adventure game.
To that end, I'm presently working on a game I call, The Incredible Crash Dummies: Spin's Junkyard Adventure. I already have a working beta version, but I'm somewhat dissatisfied at how Third-Generation the graphics look. So, I'm redesigning all of the game's sprites (those little pictures of stuff that make up the game) to look somewhat more Fourth-Generation (rather Super NES-level).
I fully expect Spin's Junkyard Adventure to be finished by late Q2, perhaps early Q3. Of course, this is coming from the same chap who promised a redesigned Mario page last year sometime.

Anyway, I'll talk more about it when there's something new to report.

Posted by theniftyperson at 3:56 PM CST

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As you may be aware, last week on Jeopardy!, there was a contest which will prove to be quite an historic event. It was, of course, the contest between the two all-time Jeopardy! scoring champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and the IBM computer system named "Watson". This contest has been put on YouTube in various forms -- most of the viewer comments concern Skynet and the silicon or computer uprising. But, caught up in the novelty of having an artificial intelligence defeating the two men with the greatest amount of TMRB-level knowledge in the entire world, people seem to have forgotten something.

"Watson", whilst cutting an imposing square silhouette on the Jeopardy! stage, was created to understand natural language. That is, idioms, colloquialisms, puns, and any sufficiently abstract thought which is created by the human brain and put into vocalised words. What does that remind you of?

Star Trek, of course. When Commander Riker creates a holodeck programme, he does so by explaining his desires to the computer in generalised concepts... "But, computer -- blondes and jazz rarely go together." The computer interprets his statement as a command to change the obligatory nightclub bombshell's hair colour to something other than blonde.
From what I understand of how "Watson" works, it would parse the command and strip it down to its base parts. In the case of Cmdr. Riker, "Watson" would find "blondes...jazz...rarely" to determine that something is wrong with the scene. Of course, the bartender or the jazz bassist could have blonde hair, so it would postulate that a man referring to "blondes", plural, would be talking about women with blonde hair. Since it already knows that the scene is wrong, the determination that it is the hair-colour on the woman in the scene which is wrong would give it enough information to change the scene accordingly.

Or, in the context of its Jeopardy! skills...
The Starfleet library computer is foremost a reference tool. Say, perhaps, that Lt. Ayala asks the computer who the most prolific new-age composer of the mid-21st century was. After thoroughly researching the database of composers it has on file, it would return the response, "J Sebastian Perry".
"Watson" would find the keywords, "new-age composer... most prolific... late-21st century". Finding that, from the list of 21st-century new-age composers it has on file, J Sebastian Perry composed 47 more pieces of music than the runner-up, Jerry Martin, that he must be the most prolific.

At any rate, the basic idea behind "Watson", as I understood it from the developer interviews, was to make a superencyclopaedia that could be interacted with using natural language. Simply put, it does not have the capability (at this stage, anyway) of asking its own questions... outside the format of Jeopardy! responses, that is.
Why is this relevant? Because the basic requirement for machine "consciousness" (also known as "sentience") is that the intelligence be able to ask philosophical questions and expect meaningful answers to them.
Self-awareness is largely accepted as another requirement for machine consciousness, but I don't believe it should be. A computer can be programmed to use personal pronouns such as "I" and "me" without having any sentience at all. I can make my speech synthesiser say, "I like toast", but that's because I, Spiny McSpleen, typed it into the spoken text field. Self-awareness is too easily falsified.
I suppose that a computer could also be programmed to ask a philosophical question and only to accept responses that the human programmer wants to hear. However, if the computer can ask the question without being prompted to do so and the programmer can attest that he did not tell the computer to do it, that qualifies, in my book, as an artificial sentience.

One could say that "Watson" is sentient by its ability to learn from its mistakes, but that trait is native to all artificial intelligences. Even Sims in The Sims 2 and 3 have enough smarts to learn what their fellow Sims like and don't like and how to behave around them. You can't call it an "artificial intelligence" with any credibility if it doesn't learn.

The point is that "Watson" is more like the Starfleet library computer than HAL 9000. It is an artificial intelligence. Granted, a very complex intelligence... but intelligence alone only goes so far. It is not an artificial sentience or artificial consciousness -- it has no personal agenda, no carbon/silicon biases, no clandestine plans for world domination. It's a rack of servers full of data from Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database, dictionary.com, perhaps even TMRB. Terabytes of text. Simple, plain, old text.

Letters... and words... AI gets absurd. I just gotta jump back?

Yes, "Watson" probably even knows how each of Strong Bad's computers met their respective demises.

So, before you write another "Kill 'Watson' Before It Kills Us" rant on another tech blog, take a second or two and consider what I've said.

Posted by theniftyperson at 10:40 PM CST

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I speak, of course, to my generation. Generation "Y", The Millennium Generation, The Children of the '90s. That pretty much includes anyone who was old enough to play with TIGER's Inspector Gadget figures in 1993. I call us the Fourth Generation, because our first gaming console was probably the Super NES.
Anyway, I've just come to remind us of one inescapable fact...

...We're getting old. Whilst it seems as though it was just yesterday that we were children, many of us now have children ourselves. You know the old saying, "I'm not getting any younger", right?

"Wow," you say, "Depressing much?"
Or, "You're just finding that out now?"
Or, "Tell me something I don't know."
Or, "Quit putting words in my mouth and get on with it!"

I was on YouTube the other day and came across a VHS transfer of the one and only episode of The Incredible Crash Dummies, written by Bill Kopp and "Savage" Steve Holland. It's in three parts, since uploaded videos can't be more than 2 GB in filesize or 10 minutes in length.
So, in the comments section, someone suggested that the film be remade and the series upon which it was based be revived. I realised at that point that it's been eighteen years since the episode was aired! Eighteen! Someone born on the original airdate will graduate from high school this year!
The Incredible Crash Dummies action-figure line is 20 years old this year, too. Q4 1991 was the release date of the original Vince and Larry series. That's old enough in some people's books to be collectibles. On eBay right now, there are Spins, Slicks, and Spare Tires, all mint on their cards (how, I do not know) going for 45 quid each! The Crash Test Centre playset, mint in its box (again, how, I have no bleedin' idea) is going for five hundred quid! Wack with the lawnmower will sell for upwards of 80 quid! Dash with the... car he came with (whichever it was) has a starting bid of 150! Axel, separate from the Crash Car, is going for 50! Unfortunately for collectors like me, all the stupid people who were only asking for the price on the original tag have sold their collections to the smart people who don't care about the crash dummies so much as the money they can get for their sale. You know the type -- the guy who lives in his parents' basement and has stacks of toy collector pricing guides completely spanning floor to ceiling on one wall.

The Incredible Crash Dummies were a major reason why the 1990s AD was the best decade on Earth since the Cambrian Era. Of course, there were other factors as well...
Reasonably-priced toys from all of my favourite franchises (except Mario, which came later), digging for "dinosaur bones" at recess in kindergarten -- which led to a world-class hole in which to stand (which happened to me, at least), being endlessly entertained by Pac-Man and Super Mario World, and finally being able to control James Bond near the end of the decade. There's loads more, but it's only stuff that happened to me, not to everyone else.

Nonetheless, the '90s were nifty, they've been gone for 12 years, get over it, right?
Here's to the next best decade. Na zdorovie.

Posted by theniftyperson at 11:20 PM CST

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I recently found myself in the waiting room at the doctor's office - for what, who cares, right? Anyway, in the time I sat there, several nurses came into the room and announced the names of the next patients. Certainly, there were a few of your standard names, your Jasons and your Susans and your Brads... but, three stood out from the rest. Names I had never heard before as names. There was a Jaden (or Jaeden, Jaedan, or Jaiodhan, whichever), a Scout, and a Genesis present in the waiting room. Naturally, Jaden, Scout, and Genesis were all... guess what? Babies. And their mothers were all... guess what? Teenagers.

Some time ago, I spoke of the portmanteau. Word synthesis. The fusion of two or more words. About how prolific the portmanteau is in the realm of naming things.
This is similar in the respect that it's rather grating on the nerves.

There's a whole generation of people with names that mean nothing, at least not as names. As general words, yes. However, these new age names have no precedents in modern society.
Genesis, obviously, refers to life from lifelessness (thank you, Captain Spock). In the most well-known sense, it is the first book of the Bible, where God makes everything. A jolly nice story, but really, not a very good name.
Scout has a great many meanings. Perhaps Scout's mother was reading To Kill a Mockingbird in literature class and missed the fact that "Scout" was, in fact, the character's nick-name.
Jaden is probably the most annoying name I've ever come across. Not only is it largely unisex, it's the portmanteau syndrome: tack a random letter onto the Gaelic name, Aiden (or Aiodhan in the original Gaelic). I've seen this in many different forms: Jaden, Braeden, Kaidan (which is actually Japanese for "conference"), Raidan... what's next, I ask you. "Xaiodhan"? Let's see a schoolteacher make head or tail of that!
Still, all of that pales in comparison to the hundreds of names which were manufactured by corrupting a different name. Oddly, most of these are only used by people of African descent. Shavonn (originally the Gaelic name, Siobhan), Nevaeh ("heaven" spelt backwards), Chanté (French for "sung").  There's also the arbitrary placement of apostrophes in a name: D'Ijon, Sha'Niqua, Des'ree. Perhaps it's a western variant of the Japanese trend, where the first son is given the name "Ichiro" (which, itself, means "son") -- Ken'Ichiro and Jun'Ichiro being the most common.
But, really, the worst name anyone could possibly give their daughter would be "Jazmyn" (a corruption of "Jasmine", which itself is an Anglicised variant of the Arabic "Yasmin"). Or, even "Jazzmyn"... heaven forbid you should spell it, "Jaz'Myn". Who likes Zs enough to do that?

Of course, this has dealt largely with female names. There are a fair few unfortunate masculine ones as well.
For some inexplicable reason, most contrived male names have Gaelic or Old English roots. "Colton", "Holden", "Graeson", "Rylan", and "Slade" come most quickly to mind. But, there are also several names which are totally contrived, either through word synthesis or just plain old Simlish. Examples of synthesis would be "Jaron" and "Kyler". Examples of plain old Simlish would be "Goshler" and "Kant". Who would just make something up?
"What's the name for the birth certificate, then?" the doctor asks.
"Er, um..." Mike turns to Sarah, holding little baby 'X', "Well, we really couldn't find any really good names in the three months shy of a year that we had, so, um..." he sees a medical word on an IV pouch lying on a counter, "er... 'Morph'... 'Morph Feen Smith'."

I wouldn't be surprised if two HomestarRunner.com fans got together and actually named their son "Emtarkanderundersgunderson".

What's wrong with "Kieran"? Or, "Shaun"?
Blimey! Get a clue, people!

Posted by theniftyperson at 11:35 PM CST

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Right at the outset, I'll say this -- I don't care about football. American football, especially. I mean, how can you even call the sport played by the Green Bay Packers "football"? The players' feet don't connect with the "ball" (if you can call a non-spherical object that name) on a regular basis.

Still, regardless of my thoughts on the matter, an event known as the "Super Bowl" took place this evening, which despite my general indifference toward organised sport, is a very good day for The Mind's Rubbish Bin.
Millions of people across the United States bought unnecessarily large televisions in anticipation of this occurrence, as well as purchasing in bulk soft-drinks, beer, crisps, and pizza (the backbone of America, yes?). The show was viewed by tens of millions of people, many of whom do not regularly watch network television. Collectively, advertisers spent enough money on the filming and airing of commercial announcements to give everyone in the world $3.47. The energy expended in shouting various phrases, figures of speech, and epithets at television screens (LCD and CRT) could have powered a small city for a day and a half.
Now, traditionally, the Monday immediately following the airing of the Super Bowl is the least productive day for American business. 25% of the entire workforce will not bother to show up for work -- of those who do, a further 15% will do very little, if any actual work. This equals a 40% decline in productivity on post-Super Bowl Monday, which is less than any other individual day of the year.

I think that's all...

Posted by theniftyperson at 10:00 PM CST

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Yes, it's GoldenEye Wii again. Though, perhaps not exclusively... I may end up on a completely different subject by the end of this entry.

So, I'm putting the finishing touches on my updated GoldenEye 64 page. In order to make the proper impression, I've decided to put in a few GameShark codes for those who still have one, or who use software emulation. I was rather surprised to find that there are so few GameShark sites left! Really, you only have maybe two reputable websites featuring GameShark codes anymore: GameFAQs and some bloke's Angelfire GoldenEye fansite. All the rest of them went down with the good ship, H.M.S. Fifth Generation.
Then, when you get right down to it, the very same codes can be found on both websites -- some idiot's list of a thousand glitch-codes with duplication, indecipherable descriptions ("Even worse What-The-Hell-Is-Going-On? Mode") and 3rd-grade spelling mistakes ("Sacurity camras ca'nt see you") written hastily in 1998. I tested a random selection of five of these codes on my emulator ('cos you can't brick software) -- one did what it advertised ("Metal hands"), two did nothing at all, one was clearly mislabelled ("Use N64 controler as a weopon" [sic] performed the function of "OneHit Kill" [sic]), and the other crashed the ROM. I pity the poor 10-year-old souls who bricked their N64s with those codes back in the '90s.
The thing is, there are demonstrations on YouTube of GoldenEye codes that change Bond's outfit (something I've been trying to do since '97), make all weapons gold or silver, let the user combine weapon functions to make an RCP90 fire knives or a DD44 shoot lasers, and make bullet impact-flashes red. I've seen codes in use that arm Scientists with Golden Guns, Facility guards with AR33s, and Ourumov with a grenade launcher. And, guess what? You can't find these codes anywhere on the Internet! And why? Because their creators are too snobbish and miserly to provide them! The worst of the worst of the GoldenEye hacking set is a person known as "SubDrag". Typically, this person manages to get GoldenEye to do something really nifty, but doesn't bother telling the non-hackers how to do it.

That's the second thing (and the first mention of GoldenEye Wii since the first sentence)...
After I gave up my futile quest to find worthwhile GoldenEye 64 GameShark codes, I decided to look up cheat passwords for GoldenEye Wii. Evidently, there are only three in the entire game and all of them have to do with multiplayer mode. Otherwise, there's loads of them and they're being closely guarded by a programmer at Eurocom, who, in all likelihood, will take them to the grave.
I know that Eurocom didn't want to stand in Rareware's 14-year-old shadow when they "re-envisioned" GoldenEye, but... why is it that GoldenEye 64 is the only game in the entire Bond series to have a cheat-options menu? Paintball Mode would have been a blast in Everything or Nothing! NightFire really could have used DK Mode! And, why wouldn't anyone want every guard everywhere in The World is not Enough to have a rocket launcher?
Sure it's reasonably entertaining to turn Oddjob into a karate-chopping homunculus by combining the giant-handed Melee Only mode with the Big-Heads password, but that's only nifty if you happen to have several other players about. I tend to play games alone. I had rather hoped that those two traits would be combined into a sort of re-envisioned DK Mode... sure, there would be graphical oddities as deformed characters interact with the environment, but that kind of uncanny-valley stuff is what made GE64's DK Mode so appealing! Here, in the middle of a James Bond game -- a save-the-world scenario with a serious tone -- is a bunker full of blokes with huge heads. Monty Python would be hard-pressed to come up with something more random than that!
But, I guess the world will never know if it's possible or not, since Ebenezer Scrooge over at Eurocom refuses to let anyone know the secrets of GoldenEye Wii.

Also, I noticed a rather disturbing trend with the cheat-code sites. One into which I never thought to look. About 90% of the sites I found, according to McAfee's SiteAdvisor, contained adware, spyware, malware, spamware, hereware, thereware, elseware, killware, tortureware, talibanware, and just about any other kind of nasty 21st-century leeches you can think of.
For example: cheatcc.com. Excessive popups, adware, and a potential browser exploit.
Next, supercheats.com. Excessive popups, phishing, and a potential browser exploit.
Then, cheatcodes.com. Adware, phishing, spam, and a potential browser exploit.
Noticing a theme here? According to the SiteAdvisor reviewers, many of the cheat-code sites I checked will attempt to gain control of your computer or make it otherwise unusable.
Now, as I understand it, the ultimate goal of any sensible spammer or malware writer is to gain access to a random computer in the hopes of finding some identifying information which can then be used in the process of identity theft. Sure, there may be one or two stupid people left in the US, UK, or EU who keeps that kind of thing stored on their computers, but society in general has become so wary of identity thieves that they guard their personal information with more care. Stupid people don't go to gaming sites -- people who need the services of a game or cheat site know enough about computers than to keep identifying material (knowingly or unknowingly) stored on their hard-drives. So... why spike a gaming website? If you really want to buy 32,640 dollars'-worth of electronics under someone else's name, go for a small business's accounts computer! Surely it's networked. Or are you too dumb to see logic? Home computers aren't the things to hack anymore!
Mostly, just keep away from sites where I might happen to go.

Well, look at that... three different topics and only one of them was about GoldenEye Wii.

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:46 AM CST

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Last time, I mentioned that, although GoldenEye Wii is not, on its own, worth buying a Wii console for, that there are definite compensations in owning one. Perhaps I should clarify this point, yes? Just what are the benefits of going Nintendo?

"Wait. Why do you always talk about Nintendo, Spiny? 360's the way to go!"

It's all a matter of perspective, I guess. I started gaming in 1994, playing the Super NES... specifically, Super Mario World (though, it could have been Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World, I can't recall exactly). The character animations, the colours, the backgrounds, the music, all of this led me to realise that Nintendo is a company that is devoted to making not only games, not only really good games, but really good games with an almost OCD-like attention to detail. If this pixel's colour doesn't go with background in this level, Miyamoto shouts "No way, man! Do this instead." Which leads us to...

Benefit #1: Quality. If Nintendo makes a game in-house, you'll be hard-pressed to find any glitching. Even in such an old game as Super Mario Bros., when it was only Miyamoto-san, Tezuka-san, and maybe 15 other people on the entire staff, there weren't blatantly glitchy things like floors that don't clip right, frozen animations leading to "skating" characters, stuff like that. Of course, there is "Minus World" to consider (World "space, hyphen, one")... I can't explain that. Easter Egg? Programming glitch? Hidden beta test level? No one really knows.

Benefit #2: Mario. Who doesn't love Mario? You want to know who doesn't love Mario? Al-Qaida.
Mario games are the quintessential videogame stereotype. In fact, the only videogame stereotype that existed before Mario was that games had little stick-figures with, like, a sword or something and if you got past the last level, your Amiga's sound-chip would shout "Congraturation!" at you before the game crashed. Which leads us to...

Benefit #3: The Saviour of Videogames. Before the NES was released, the game market was saturated with mercifully-released abberations. Half the games had insurmountable obstacles that the level programmers forgot to take out and you could only pass by hacking your way to the next level -- the other half were so poorly made (by a staff of three blokes in one of their parents' basement) that, if you made a bad keystroke, you risked bricking the computer. Only a small fraction of a percentage of a decimal to the hundredth power of games actually did what they were meant to do: provide entertainment and actually work in the process. Because of this, the game market crashed into more pieces than an Atari 2600 dropped from the roof of a 16-story building. Everyone assumed that games were just a passing fad that had its day.
Then, along comes the NES, which had to convince people of its legitimacy by first introducing itself as an accessory required to use a toy called the Robotic Operating Buddy (or "ROB" for short). It was only after people bought ROB, they discovered that the NES vastly undersold itself. From Japan came wave after wave of the best games since Table Tennis for Two -- Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, Castlevania. No home computer or dedicated game console up to this point had such an excellent reception as the NES.

Benefit #4: Wii Virtual Console. Now, I don't live in a cave, surrounded by brainwashing Nintendo stuff. I know about Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store (though I know more about the former than the latter, mostly from researching GoldenEye 007 for TMRB). Of course, Wii Virtual Console is a collection of classic games from a host of classic consoles. On XBLA, at least, Microsoft have a nasty habit of meddling with classic games -- updating them to bring them more in line with the Seventh Generation. Nintendo have issued an outright refusal to follow them in this way. For that reason, everything you see on Wii Virtual Console is largely unchanged from their original releases. Whilst Microsoft insists on "hot-rodding" their XBLA releases, Nintendo prefers to leave the games intact, as they were in the '80s and '90s. This way, if you were unfortunate enough to have been born during the Fourth or Fifth Generation (SNES or N64), you can go back to the Third Generation (NES) and see precisely what you missed, then rectifying the situation by downloading (for a small fee, usually 5 quid) and playing what you missed, being born in 1999 and all.

Benefit #5: Be an U83R64M3X0R! Huh? "Ubergamexor?" Yes. Be one. Nintendo has the highest quantity of L337633K 64M3RN3RD (leetgeek gamernerd) series than any other console on the market today. The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, and, occasionally, Final Fantasy (though SquareEnix seems to prefer these be released on PlayStation, God knows why).
I'm sure you know at least two people who talk ad nauseam about Zelda or Pokemon... haven't you ever had even the slightest desire to interject with something? Maybe to contradict something they say about Zelda canon, then prove that you're right and they're wrong? There's no better joy in life than to pwn a 64M3RN3RD! And I am one!

Benefit #6: WiiWare and DSiWare. These are games which are made exclusively for Wii and Nintendo DSi (and soon-to-be Nintendo 3DS, too). Don't bother looking for these games anywhere else, 'cos they're only available for Wii or DSi... or both. Nothing else. Certainly XBLA and PSN have exclusive games, too... but, you haven't lived until you've built a sandcastle with a Wii Remote (and not as a spade, either).

Benefit #7: GoldenEye 007. Both of them: N64 and Wii. 'Cos, let's face it, people, XBLA ain't getting it and VC ain't getting it. The only way you can play classic GoldenEye (within the bounds of the law, that is) is to play it on N64.
"Can I still find an N64 in playable condition?" Yes. I speak from experience. I've had my N64 since early 1997 and I played GoldenEye on it yesterday. It's a durable piece of equipment, the N64. The Super NES was sort of sketchy, but during and after the Fifth Generation, Nintendo set higher quality standards for all their products.

Benefit #8: GameShark. I know, hacking is sort of outside the law, but hackers have managed to do some really zany stuff with Nintendo games, particularly on the N64 (many hackers use N64 games as practise ground for greater hacks or even an eventual career in the game industry). There are millions of lines of code that people have come up with to alter their Nintendo gaming experience in some way (like you can improve on perfection), and, granted, most of them are crap. But, occasionally, you stumble upon a code which surpasses your expectations. For example, plug this one into Super Mario 64 and see what you get:
8107EC40 0099
8107EC42 0000
8107EC38 0033
8107EC3A 0000
8107EC20 0000
8107EC22 3300
8107EC28 0000
8107EC2A 9900

Benefit #9: Glasses-free 3D gaming. The Nintendo 3DS is releasing to the world in late March. If you blew your entire paycheque going to Avatar for the 3D effects, you'll love the 3DS. Of course, if artificial 3D gives you a headache, just turn the depth-slider all the way down to completely disable 3D and play like it's a normal game. Does PSP give you that freedom? Pfft... no. PSP doesn't even have 3D (though it probably will by Q4... and guess who they'll have stolen it from).

Benefit #10: Perpetual reliability. I guess this sort of goes along with Benefit #1, in that it concerns the quality of Nintendo's console hardware. But, I think it needs to be said that Nintendo consoles have the highest degree of reliability of any other console on the market since the Fourth Generation. You can rest assured that, when you turn a Nintendo console on, it will turn on. None of this "Red Ring of Death" crap. However, on the offhand chance that something doesn't work, chances are, you can send it off to Nintendo for repair or replacement free of charge. But, hardware failures on Nintendo consoles are uber infrequent, like less than half of one per cent (that's like one console out of 400 billion). In fact, I don't think anyone's ever actually seen a Wii console's "Blinking Red Light of Death". Nintendo claims that this is how the console tells you that it's bricked, but, thus far, it's only a myth.

There. Ten benefits of going Nintendo. Now, am I going to have to come to your house and spell it out for you? Nintendo is the videogame industry!

Buy a 3DS,

Spiny McSpleen.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:37 AM CST

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...So, if you're tired of me rabbiting on about GoldenEye, turn back now.

Right.
Well, I've gotten a bit further through GoldenEye Wii at this point. As I said before, it is a decent game -- after all, Wii doesn't get very many really good FPS games like N64 and GameCube did. The problem, I guess, is that Microsoft has stolen away the FPS market with the Halo series (of which I don't really see the appeal -- futuristic alien games are stupid cliches).
Anyway, action-wise, it lacks for nothing. You've got running and gunning in all the right places, plus, guards can't hear gunfights between Checkpoints, so you can blow stuff up in one room, then sneak up behind a guy and snap his neck in the next. There's a wide array of weapons to choose from -- silenced pistols to full-auto shotguns and grenade launchers. Like I said before: blow up your enemies in one room, snipe them with a silenced pistol in the next.

However, there are a few things that have been brought to my attention which I didn't know about before. For example, a rather strange glitch.
Every so often, particularly whilst crouching, the floor will disappear and Bond will fall to his death, causing the level to restart from the last Checkpoint. Now, in a small area, such as the Facility's server room, this isn't such a great problem because, well, it's short -- maybe three minutes to get back to where you were. But, in a longer area or an area with a lot of heavily armed enemies all vying for your head, such as the Nightclub's kitchen, it takes a bit longer to get through (maybe ten or twelve minutes). Falling through the floor here will definitely be a "what the crap just happened?" moment where you may end up throwing your controller to the floor and shouting, "I quit!".  Now, I've got to say -- in my 17 years of gaming experience, I have never played a game where the floor just disappears. I've found glitches where walls aren't clipped right and you fall through them, but I've never had the floor yanked out from under me before. It's quite distressing, going into a freefall for no particular reason. Plus, there's no way to avoid it, because somehow, the circumstances always change, so you can't intentionally cause the glitch ("testing the water", if you like)... it just happens, literally, at random.

Non-glitch-wise, there's the Tank. To leave the St. Petersburg Archive, Bond must take control of a tank, then use that vehicle to chase down Ourumov and Natalya. Remember the tank from GoldenEye 64? Well, this is not as easy to control. Someone at Eurocom decided it would be nifty if the tank's directional controls (forward, backward, and turning) were done using different control sticks! Rather than doing all the steering with the left control stick on the Classic Controller (like you would think would be logical), you only go front and back with it. Pushing the stick even in the slightest right/left direction and you end up swirling the gun around. You can only turn left and right with the right stick! Now, what the hell kind of sense does that make? Though I am loath to compare GE64 with GE Wii, GE64's tank was much, much more user-friendly. Get in and go kick some ass. With GE Wii's tank: get in, read the instructions, press the wrong button, get turned around, crash into buildings, go nowhere, and don't kick any ass at all.

Next, the music. Written mostly by David Arnold, the composer for all but one of the Pierce Brosnan-era Bond films and both in the Daniel Craig era, his score is somewhat reminiscent of The World is not Enough... what can you do? That's his composing style -- his signature, if you like. However, though I have nothing bad to say about the music, itself, I do take issue with how little there is of it.
Again, comparing GoldenEyes: GE64 had at least a two-minute loop of distinct original music for each level (granted, the pause-screen and mission select themes were shorter than that), plus nearly the same amount of action music for several levels.  GE Wii doesn't have that. It has, maybe 30 minutes of source music for the entire game. There's a bit of overlap between levels. There's pretty much only one action theme which plays when you've been spotted and the heavily armed special forces with annoyingly-accurate guns are after you.
Then, on the subject of music, there's the Nightclub level. This level takes place in Valentin Zukovsky's Barcelona nightclub. The musical score for this level is basically overpowered by two separate 30-45 second vocal loops: one trance, one sort of new age hip-hop. If you haven't played this level yet, take heed:
Once you hear these loop twenty times, you can't forget them!
As the level takes (me, anyway) about 25-30 minutes to complete, and about 12-15 minutes of that is spent listening to a 30-second pop riff, you'll be present for at least twenty loops of both.

Anyway, that's all I've found that really stands out as being unfortunate about Activision's new GoldenEye. Considering there are more pros than cons in this case, I recommend it for any Wii owners who pine for the bygone days when Nintendo was FPS heaven. I also recommend it for all PS3 and 360 owners who went over to the Dark Side after the fall of Rareware in 2002. On its own, it's not worth getting a Wii for, but there are definite compensations for owning a Wii console that you just can't get with the other two.

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:47 AM CST

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You've heard of YouTube, right? Of course you have. You haven't been living in a cave since 1996, after all... have you?
Anyway, YouTube's been around for a few years now -- long enough for millions of people to use it on a daily basis. Some to upload videos, others to simply watch videos uploaded by others.

I've been a YouTube member for a couple of years now (SpinyMcSpleen3264 -- natch), but thus far, I've only gone so far as to write comments to other people's videos. However, yesterday, I decided to actually upload something.
Not a very long, complicated thing... it doesn't even break a minute in total duration. But, no one else seems to have done it and I thought it was nifty (or, at least, interesting) enough to merit recognition.

See, on HomestarRunner.com, in the Strong Bad Email, "mascot", SB provides a score (musical, that is) for the fight-song of his made-up Crazy Go Nuts University (or, CGNU, for short). I was incredibly bored last night, so I went on a "rando"-clicking spree on the website ("rando" having the meaning here of "select for me a random toon and play it"), at the end of which, I happened across "mascot".
I've seen this particular SBemail before and was aware of the musical thing at the end -- you mouse-over the notes on Strong Bad's computer screen and they make their respective pitches. So, being incredibly bored, I decided to see if I could crash "mascot's" SWF file by playing all of the notes as quickly as I could. I swiped the cursor back and forth over most of the notes, but, rather than crashing the toon, I found that I could make a new song out of the CGNU theme. So, I recorded it, made some video-cels, and put it on YouTube.
My first-ever video, bogarted from HomestarRunner.com. Still, considering how many copyright-infringing Super Mario 64 gameplay videos there are on the site, my little contrivance seems innocuous, really.

Anyhow, I've strayed from the point somewhat.
The thing about YouTube is that people's original videos have become what is known as "viral" (like a biological virus which wreaks havoc, then dies away -- videos are widely-circulated, sometimes for a month or more, then they become tiresome or even annoying and then abandoned). Sometimes, millions of people will watch the video (number of views occasionally total in the tens or hundreds of millions, but that's only because of the same people watching multiple times or someone writing a programme that accesses their video hundreds of millions of times).
But, the real reason for this entry (which has become a bit longer than I anticipated) is that some people have used YouTube to become famous.

Take, for example, the most recent teen idol, Justin Bieber (there's a name I never thought I'd type here).
"A feminine-looking boy with a strange German name," says I.
"Total heartbreaker!" say millions of 12-14-year-old girls.
Somehow, he sang a song for a webcam and became a cultural icon inside a week. What followed, then? Album deals, TV appearances, live performances, bio-pics, magazines, cross-country tours, agents, lawyers, late-night TV punchlines, "Ken"-dolls with his likeness, school supplies of most kinds -- general celebrity.
Perhaps, one wracks one's brains wondering how he managed a career-launch via YouTube -- not two sentences ago, I, myself, stated that "somehow, he sang a song, et cetera". The reasoning is actually rather simple when you get right down to it. It's Paris Hilton Syndrome, again. People saw the video, thought he was "hot", and its popularity for that reason brought it to the attention of television executives who decided to capitalise on it.

But, on the other side of the coin, there's another example which involves actual talent. A few years ago, a housewife from Scotland by the name of Susan Boyle auditioned on a UK talent programme, singing operatically. Sans the school supplies and dolls, her case was extraordinarily similar to Justin Bieber, however the PHS was not a factor. Some would say that she only became famous because her story was "inspiring" -- a plain British housewife going on television and singing an uplifting song about... something (I can't actually remember what it was offhand). However, I like to think that Susan Boyle became a household name because she has actual talent.
Why? Because I'm considering uploading footage of me improvising on the piano. I'm certainly not going to be the next Justin Bieber (the only "hot" that applies to me is during the summer), but if I shoot for being the next Susan Boyle, I may stand a chance.

Another odd thing about YouTube. I upload one 40-second video and suddenly, I'm a philosopher.
Well, maybe not suddenly...

Posted by theniftyperson at 9:36 AM CST

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Necessity is the mother of invention. At least, that's how it used to be. Back in the days of Archimedes, Edison, and Yokoi, there were so many inventions to be made -- mechanical water pumps, artificial light, portable 3-D displays, that sort of thing.
However, in this day and age -- the 21st century -- the Social Network Age -- we really don't need anything else. The only really groundbreaking inventions come from Japan: ASIMO, Vocaloid, and Wii to name a few. "Inventors" everywhere else create things to make our respective existences more convenient. Right now, Netflix has cornered the market on convenience, I think. They introduced DVDs by post to save a trip to the video-rental shop. Then, they created movies on-demand on your computer to save a trip to the letterbox. Now, they've made it onto the remote control as a "Netflix" button to save a trip to the computer. One wonders how they'll save you from pressing a button: voice recognition, maybe? "Computer, activate Netflix."

But, that's not why I'm writing this.
I've recently come across a mass-mailing from the Sears Roebuck Company with "mail-order only" products. Things one can't get from their chain of department stores. Most of the items therein were "combination devices", or things that serve many purposes. For example, an AM/FM radio and digital photo frame on a carabiner, so you can listen to Rush Limbaugh and see pictures of your kids whilst you rappel down a mountain. A portable digital television with MP3-player capabilities (you upload via SD card in a slot under the rechargeable battery). Oddly, also on a carabiner... they seem to be in vogue these days.
But, along with all of this conveniece, I found what definitely must be the Stupidest Piece of Convenience Equipment of All Time...

The Power Dome NX. Despite the name, it is not dome-shaped, however, it does contain the following features...

  -AM/FM/Weatherband radio tuner
  -AC-to-DC power converter with voltage metre
  -Emergency lights
  -2 plug outlets
  -260 psi compressor hose with pressure gauge
  -USB power port

The only thing missing is an iPod dock. Oh well... maybe in the next release. Also, none of this came on a carabiner. Perhaps people don't need to take their 65-pound automotive repair centres with them on expeditions to Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Now, mind you, I'm just a composer and g4m3rn3rd, so I really don't have a use for the Power Dome NX. I'm certain that someone, somewhere, swears by it and can't think how he was ever able to live without it. But, really, to me anyway, the USB power port rather put it over the top. In the category of places you don't want to put a computer: garages, workshops, disaster areas, and anywhere else you might need a 260 psi compressor hose. If bogarting power from your computer is the only way to turn the thing on, you may want to ask yourself: "Is this really worth the 200 quid I'm about to pay for it?"

Perhaps after voice-recognition to stop you needing to press a confusing button, Netflix can partner with 7-Eleven and some Trek Tech consortium to provide a food replicator to save you a trip to the kitchen.
The future is starting to sound a lot like "Buy-N-Large" from Pixar's Wall-E.

Posted by theniftyperson at 10:32 AM CST

Updated: Wednesday, 5 January 2011 5:57 PM CST

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Hm. If the website were a person, he'd be old enough to stay at home by himself whilst mum and dad are at the cinema or something. Anyway, I neglected this obligatory entry last year, didn't I? Well, let's make up for lost time, shall we? More of The Mind's Rubbish Bin!

TMRB: Nifty Website
The site went live in 2004 as "Jeff Perry's Nifty Stuff"

"Spiny" is the name of a spiked turtle dropped by Lakitus in Super Mario Bros. "Spleen" was a Nifty Word of the Day on Jeff Perry's Nifty Stuff in 2004. "Mc" was added to "Spleen" to make the name sound genuine. Hence, "Spiny McSpleen".

The picture of Xenia Onatopp on the GoldenEye 007 page was done using a character modifier for the Silo level.

The website has been visited by Charles Martinet at least twice.

TMRB: Super Mario
The vast majority of warp pipes in the Mushroom Kindgom and other territories are green in colour. This originates from the arcade game, Mario Bros., where Shigeru Miyamoto wanted the pipes to be a bright colour which would not clash with any of the colours onscreen.

Super Mario Galaxy was the first game in the Mario series to feature acoustic instruments in the soundtrack. Super Mario Galaxy 2 also features acoustic instruments. These are the only two such games in the series.

The basis for Donkey Kong came from an idea Miyamoto had for a Popeye arcade game. Though Nintendo held the rights to the Popeye characters at that time, they were unable to use them in the game. In an interview, Miyamoto recalled how Bluto became Donkey Kong, Olive Oyl became Pauline, and Popeye became Mario.

The Japanese version of Super Mario 64 contained much less voice-acting than the other releases. Mario says only, "Bye-bye", when he throws Bowser off the stage. Princess Peach has no dialogue at all.

TMRB: Nintendo
Nintendo was founded in 1890, producing cards for the popular Japanese game, hanafuda. The company would invest in many more business ventures, including taxi services, hotels, and toys, before becoming a dedicated videogame development firm in 1978.

Nintendo's senior engineer until 1996, Gunpei Yokoi, was responsible for inventing a number of what are now industry standards in videogaming. Yokoi's developments include the four-pointed directional pad, portable game consoles, and the ability to save game states.

The short-lived Virtual Boy, despite its criticisms, is responsible for introducing 3D displays into gaming consoles. The Nintendo 3DS contains similar functionality.

The music which plays behind the GameCube BIOS screen (accessed when no disc is loaded on startup) is a mellow new-age rendition of the Famikon Disk System's startup theme (the GCN version is has been slowed down sixteen times).

TMRB: Star Trek
The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D has made more onscreen appearances than any other ship in franchise history, appearing in every episode of The Next Generation, one episode each of Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, and in the film, Generations. 181 appearances in total.

It was considered that one of the potential reasons for lackluster viewership of Enterprise was many Trek fans were unaware it was an official Star Trek programme. The show's title was changed to Star Trek: Enterprise at the beginning of the fourth series.

Vasquez Rocks, a park near Agua Dulce, California, has been used numerous times to represent alien terrain on all Trek programmes except Deep Space Nine. Other television programmes to film at Vasquez Rocks include Gunsmoke, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and CSI.

Deep Space Nine was the only modern Trek programme to begin and end entirely within the 1990s. Its first episode, "Emissary", aired 3 January 1993 -- its final episode, "What You Leave Behind", aired 2 June 1999. Whilst two other Trek programmes also aired in this decade, The Next Generation began in 1987 and Voyager ended in 2001.

TMRB: General information
Every possible move in the game of chess has a name.

The five most commonly-used letters in the Roman alphabet are R, S, T, L, N, and E.

The standard bleep-censor (used to cover profanity in the dialogue track of television and radio programmes) is a sine wave oscillating at 1000 hz (approximately B5 on a piano keyboard).

The scene from the 1975 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, wherein the character, "Violet Beauregarde", chews a piece of Wonka's experimental gum and turns into a giant blueberry, inadvertently created a new sexual fantasy. A subcondition of the body-expansion fetish, subjects are inflated and turn blue.

It is impossible to lick your own elbow (47% of those reading this will attempt to achieve it).

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CST

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At approximately the same time I was talking about Super Mario 64 Mario recolouring codes for the GameShark, a game development firm called Oxygen (not to be confused with the low-key satellite television network of the same name) had just released a game called CID The Dummy for Wii. "CID", the protagonist, is named for an acronym: "Crash Impact Dummy". The astute will notice that "CID" is also an anagram of "ICD": as in, the Incredible Crash Dummies.

Without rewriting my webpage on the subject, the Incredible Crash Dummies were the highlight of the early '90s. In fact, if you were to come up to me and say, "nineteen ninety-one", the first thing to enter my thoughts would be Slick and Spin, et. al. For some reason, whenever I lower myself to entering a dollar-store or a Walgreens, I always expect to find the recognisable orange-with-hazard-striping packaging of the Incredible Crash Dummies in the toys section.

Anyway, CID The Dummy. I'm not certain precisely why, but this game seems... well, stupid to me. A little crash dummy running about, punching enemies and crashing through walls.
Had I known about the game when it was released, I would probably have written this sooner. But, really, no one knew about it. Or they didn't care. MobyGames has nothing on it (but, of course, being wiki-like, they don't have many of the basics, either). Gamespot and GameFAQs have limited information on it, but lots of pictures. Nintendo's website has a short paragraph and the cover-art. Perhaps I just don't know enough about it, but it just seems totally unappealing to me, the Incredible Crash Dummies buff...

...and I ended up getting it for Christmas.
A friend of my mother's, whom we have known for many years, saw CID The Dummy in the 90%-off sale bin at the supermarket and, apparently, I was the first one she thought of.
So, we went to mum's friend's flat for a belated Christmas do -- something which took two interminable hours -- whereupon I was presented with CID The Dummy.
See, I also had seen that game in that bin -- I examined the cover art and the description on the back of the case, made the conscious decision that it was a waste of the 5 quid they were asking for it, and re-deposited it from whence it came. Unfortunately, this man's trash was another person's treasure... for the man who decided it was trash.
Y'know, in retrospect, it's rather likely that the very same game case that I rejected was the one that I received as a gift.

Anyway, I was presented with CID The Dummy and also a dilemma. What the bloody hell do I do with it now? I could, A) keep the game and not play it, B) try to sell it on eBay or craigslist, or C) try to sell the game to the vintage game store which, ironically, is only a few blocks away from the supermarket where it was purchased. I doubt very much that GameStop would have much use for it... if they do, it'd only be worth a couple of quid at the most -- not even enough to buy a new DSi stylus.

I still like the Incredible Crash Dummies, but CID The Dummy just seems like a cheap knockoff.
On the other hand, it could be an indicator of a resurgence of commercial interest in crash-test dummies. Perhaps, one day, my son will be able to play with crash dummies, as I have...

"Kieran, use your Test Centre. Daddy's tired of painting over the dents in the skirting-board."

Posted by theniftyperson at 6:26 PM CST

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As you are no doubt aware, Activision has recently released an adaptation of the seventeenth James Bond film, GoldenEye, for Wii. Not for the other Seventh Generation consoles, but for Wii and DS only (for the moment, anyway). Right now, Nintendo DS has the market's advantage as it has two Bond games: the Nintendo-exclusive GoldenEye 007 and the competing Blood Stone. But, that's a different story.

Of course, GoldenEye Wii (as it will be known, hereinafter) has been out since mid-November, but I got it for Christmas. I haven't played it all the way through as yet, but I've played enough to know what's good and bad about it (well, as good as).

The first thing that becomes glaringly obvious is the title. GoldenEye. Gamers associate that word with Rareware's GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 (or, as it will be known hereinafter, GoldenEye 64) -- arguably the best FPS of the entire Fifth Generation. What most players familiar with GoldenEye 64 are likely to do is to compare it against GoldenEye Wii. This would be an error in judgement. It's rather like comparing apples to oranges -- both are types of fruit, but one has pectin where the other has citric acid. GE64 and GE Wii are both first-person shooters, both are based on the same plotline, but -- let's face it -- one is dreadfully old and the other is shiny and new.

Another major thing that one notices right off is the tone of gameplay. The adaptation (written by Bruce Feirstein -- author of the original GoldenEye film's screenplay) calls for it to be set in the modern day and for it to support the drastically revised James Bond as portrayed by Daniel Craig. All of this creates for a very dark undertone, compared to other Bond games.
007 NightFire, for example. NightFire, whilst enjoyable and with high replay-value, is somewhat out of place in the Bond universe. Its predecessor, the critically-panned Agent Under Fire, played out similarly to a Connery-era Bond film -- sneaking about on oil-rigs, infiltrating foreign embassies at night, speeding through subterranean railway tunnels. NightFire wasn't like that -- even though Pierce Brosnan's likeness was featured, it really didn't pan out like a Bond film. It borrowed elements from Moonraker and You Only Live Twice, but it just lacked the proper James Bond "essence".  Even 007 Everything or Nothing, featuring not only the likeness and voice of Pierce Brosnan, but also the likenesses and voices of Judi Dench, John Cleese, Heidi Klum, and others, didn't manage to capture it.
There was recently a discussion between Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, and Mario creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, on the Wii website about the "essence " of Mario. Even though each game in the series is worked on by different people, they all manage to maintain a certain Mario-ness.  The same can be said of the James Bond games. Using the film series as a benchmark, developers should create Bond games that mesh with the films as much as possible. In effect, the player needs to believe that they are playing a Bond film, which is something that GoldenEye Wii has managed to achieve.
Perhaps because it was worked on by two Bond veterans; writer, Bruce Feirstein, and composer, David Arnold... perhaps because of the game designers' decision to incorporate the Classic Controller into the control scheme for more traditional gameplay... perhaps a combination of all of these... perhaps something completely different. It's difficult to tell precisely why, but the game seems to belong in the Bond series.
Referring back to Everything or Nothing, in contrast, it does not seem to fit in the series. Perhaps because the perspective was third-person, like a Mario or Zelda game, rather than first-person, like GoldenEye 64. Perhaps the problem was that the A-list cast sounded like they'd never done voice-acting before. I think, though, the problem with EoN was in the screenplay. What I like to do when I play a game of any kind (except, perhaps, SimCity) is to imagine how it would fare as a movie. With EoN's plotline (which seemed to be pieced together from various sources, including GoldenEye and You Only Live Twice, with a tenuous reference to Max Zorin from A View to a Kill -- which, itself, was a box-office failure), Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and the late Gene Shalit would all have agreed that it was a waste of time.
Fortunately, as I've mentioned, GoldenEye Wii was written by the same bloke who wrote the GoldenEye film: a professional screenwriter. As a film, GoldenEye Wii (at least the bits of it I've played) has potential.

The next significant thing is the gameplay, itself. Without comparing it to GoldenEye 64 too much, the controls aren't as user-friendly. Of course, GE64 had just the one control stick and four "C" buttons. GE Wii has two control sticks, with one taking the place of the four "C" buttons.
Of all of the criticism I have heaped upon Electronic Arts (yes, them again) on Of Carbon and Silicon over the years, one beneficial thing could be said of them: their games were and continue to be easy to control. The Bond games under EA's supervision were no exception. Agent Under Fire introduced the control scheme where (using GameCube as an example) the left control stick always controlled Bond's body (forward, backward, turning) and the "C" stick always controlled Bond's head and feet (looking up and down and strafing). Furthermore, if Bond were in possession of a sniper rifle, the "C" stick always controlled the scope. Bond could strafe in sniper mode with the left stick, but the "C" stick would always move the gun.
GoldenEye Wii has not done this. On the Normal Pro setting (default for the Classic Controller Pro), aiming mode is a direct reversal of normal movement controls. Outside the sights, Bond moves with the L Stick and strafes with the R Stick. Whilst aiming, Bond looks left and right with the L Stick and looks up and down and strafes with the R Stick. This causes the learning curve to be a bit high when it comes to actually controlling Bond. A NightFire-like aiming system wouldn't go amiss (no pun intended).

In Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Bond is seen performing difficult tasks which would require intense concentration and manages to do them whilst injured or poisoned. This made it into gameplay of 007 Quantum of Solace as a regenerating health metre. Unlike other games where Bond must collect body armour and only has a set amount of health which means death when totally depleted, Quantum allowed Bond to be shot many times, even to the brink of death -- but, if he managed to not take damage for a while, his health would regenerate. This seems to be a permanent character trait for Daniel Craig's Bond in the games, as it makes a re-appearance in GoldenEye Wii. The only downside, relative to Quantum, is that there is not a visible stamina metre onscreen. Players are forced to guess when Bond requires a break. Of course, if his health drops below half, a red blur begins to enter the field of view from the sides of the screen. If his health drops below 25%, little lines akin to those in bloodshot eyes appear also.

If you're the type who likes to shoot everything in sight, the next significant thing is that this is the first Bond game with a semi-destructible environment. Shoot that barricade enough times and it breaks apart. Sure, there have always been things in Bond games that you can shoot and they blow up in sodding great balls of fire, but it was always unusual to me that, if you shot that wall with a rocket-propelled grenade, it didn't show any damage... as though I hadn't just wasted a perfectly good bomb on a stupid wall. As a general reference, GoldenEye 64 had a great many objects that could be destroyed by shooting them or blowing them up. Of course, fully destructible environments were unheard-of back in '97 -- too processor intensive. In terms of lousy environment destruction, that award goes to Everything or Nothing. That game's third-person viewpoint meant that you couldn't even target things that weren't objective-related unless you had the bloody loud sniper rifle.

Talking of weapons, here's the other important thing. Like Quantum before it, GoldenEye Wii does not allow you to pick up more than three weapons at a time. In Bond games of yore, you could carry as many weapons as you could find. Some would contend that this "Professional Mode", as it was called in NightFire multiplayer, presents a more realistic challenge -- I contend that it's bloody inconvenient when you're pinned down by guards with huge machine guns and you've only got a couple of pistols and an empty AK47.

And finally, GoldenEye Wii does contain a few tongue-in-cheek references to its progenitor, GoldenEye 64. I remember that people took issue with the truck in GE64's Dam and the totally nonfunctional missile battery in the Runway. In GE Wii, Trevelyan and Bond hijack the truck in the Dam and use it to blast their way through most of the territory before epically crashing it just before the dam, itself. Then, in GE Wii's Runway (called the Airfield), an attack helicopter strafes Bond with guns and explosives. The missile battery in this game works just fine, as Bond can use it to destroy the offending vehicle.
Then, I seem to recall something about a hacker finding a motorcycle in GE64's code and a great deal of speculation about what purpose it may have served at the beta stage. In GE Wii, Bond has a few opportunities to drive a motorcycle, though the player only aims the gun, rather than piloting the cycle, itself.
Also in GE Wii's Dam, there is a destructible boat docked on the pier, but looking through a sniper-scope at the river beyond won't yield sight of an unreachable island.

Suffice it to say, as I continue to play the game, more things will make themselves evident, which may cause me to make additional entries on this topic.  However, at this point, I give Activision's GoldenEye 007 a 4.5/5.

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CST

Updated: Wednesday, 29 December 2010 10:58 AM CST

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Christmas 2010 is history. Of course you know that -- you spent seventeen hours yesterday making firmware upgrades and installing computer games, all whilst Timmy and Gracie were jumping about on furniture for their epic sugar-high. Or, perhaps, of course you know because you spent yesterday entertaining relatives who only show up to criticise your decorating, cleaning, or cooking ability.

Whatever the case, it's been most of 24 hours since Christmas. At 12:01 AM (0001 hours), you were the greatest span of time away from next Christmas you'll be all year. Ain't Time something? No? Good, I'm glad we agree on that.

Anyway, this year's holiday season was an eventful one at the McSpleen residence.
First, as a Christmas gift, I made digital copies of several of my mother's audiocassettes. It may have been a trifle on the illegal side, but those particular recordings can't be found on CD. It's been several years since I've had to deal with cassette-tapes -- the last time I made the conscious decision to listen to a tape was in 1999 (not counting the time I had to play a PSA on cassette at KZUM last year).
At any rate, am I ever glad that magnetic tape is no longer the standard! The tape-player my mother provided is a very simplistic, cutting-edge piece of early-'90s technology in possession of three (just three) buttons which are marked so: "PLAY", "FFWD" (fast-forward -- my generation's "fast-scan"), and "STOP". Not possessing a built-in speaker, I had to make certain the thing worked using headphones. It's fortunate that I already have tinnitus.
So, discovering that it does still work after 20 years, it took me a bit of time to overcome the culture-shock, if you like, of operating a cassette player after so long with a CD player and various computers. I was all tense at first about making sure that I got everything right in one go, 'cos there's not a "rewind" function (for those of you who were born after magnetic tape, to rewind is to roll the spool of tape back so a part which has played through can be played back again -- my generation's "scan-back"). This was made easier when I realised that "fast-forward" on Side B is "rewind" on Side A.
Despite my advanced technological experience, I did finally manage to lower myself to the level of 1991 and operate the player efficiently enough for my computer to record the cassettes.

Next, this year, the McSpleen Christmas was mostly Mario-related. As Super Mario Bros. turned 25 in September, many retail outlets were stocking Mario merchandise other than games. This worked in my favour as a Mario and Zelda memorabilia collector. Back in October, I managed to find very large Mario and Luigi figures (approximately 10" in height) and some smaller figurines (perhaps 3"). It was a test of willpower to wait until Christmas to integrate them into my collection, but I figured I needed summat to put under the plastic tree.
Along with that went Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition and Activision GoldenEye 007 for Wii -- also The Sims 3 and SimCity Creator for Nintendo DS. A surprise, however, was Art Academy for DS, which was mum's gift to me.

Now, I talked last time about how FlipNote Studio, which I was heralding last year as the greatest invention of the Seventh Generation, was not all that it was cracked up to be.

Art Academy is vastly superior to FlipNote Studio. You can't animate with it, but it's a jolly nifty painting simulator. You have eight colours that you can mix together in nigh-infinite combinations, then apply them to a digital canvas on the Touch Screen using one of six brushes.
I rather like to paint in real life, but it takes quite a bit of time to set everything up and then to take everything apart afterwards. With Art Academy, you don't need to do anything but turn the console on and start the programme -- make a couple of selections and you're there, ready to paint whatever you want. No errant brush-hairs stuck in the paint, no need to clean your brushes between colours. Or, maybe you feel like drawing instead. Three different kinds of pencils exist, complete with eraser, which allow you to draw, rather than paint. Plus, if you don't know how to draw or paint, it'll teach you (hence, Art Academy)!
As I understand it, this application is also available for DSiWare, where it is possible to save your canvasses to SD card and, thus, to your computer (or to your nearest Kodak Imaging kiosk to print as a photograph).

As for Activision's attempt at remaking GoldenEye 007...

...Well... let us save that for another time, shall we?

Posted by theniftyperson at 4:02 PM CST

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At about this time last year, I wrote about flipbooks, FlipNote Studio, and the animator, Yoichi Kotabe. Well, Kotabe-san has no relevance to this entry, but I would like to review the rest of that post.

As three days from now will have been one entire year since I've had my Nintendo DSi, I can now say without fear of contradiction that FlipNote Studio is not my favourite programme.
I anticipated that people would not take the application all that seriously, drawing stickfigures, bouncing cubes, stuff sprouting out of the ground -- but, I couldn't have been more incorrect. I forgot to take into account the sort of person Nintendo attracts: Japanophiles with knowledge of anime. Also, it seems that more than a few people have figured out how to use FlipNote Studio as I've done with Microsoft Paint -- how to make pixel art with it. People have managed to recreate sprites from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby's Adventure, and other NES games and used them to make demonstrations of their aptitude for level design. Some people use spriting to make dramatic serials involving characters from videogames.

...And, of course, there's a website to showcase all of this. When one finishes one's animation, one can connect to the Internet and post to FlipNote Hatena.

One year ago, I anticipated using FlipNote Studio in my spare time (that is, any time I'm not composing or improvising music). It seems to me as though more than a few people's lives have been wholly absorbed by FlipNote Studio. Me, I've done some stage-falling stickfigures and a lip-synching crash dummy. Someone else, they've done dramatic tales of Mario embarking on a Legend of Zelda-like quest to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser or Wario (or Luigi doing the same for Princess Daisy).

It's rather like hearing about so-called "homebrew" software for Wii. You know it exists and you've seen demonstrations, but you can't possibly fathom how it was accomplished, as the skill level required to make it is far above your own. There are things that I will never understand that others can do in their sleep.

Now that I've had a year to try it out, I've decided that FlipNote Studio is very much beyond my grasp.

Posted by theniftyperson at 10:52 AM CST

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I've recently received an e-mail from an Of Carbon and Silicon reader, expressing a concern about the advert banner. The issue at hand was the item/service shown there -- the banner's content was not, shall we say, "family-friendly".

Foremost, I am not in control of the advertisements you see on the blog or the website. Google Ads is used to show advertisements on this and most other websites. If I had it my way, there'd be no adverts at all, but that would require spending $X0.00 per month on the website, which is not something I'm prepared to do at the moment.

Anyway, back on topic. I should like to mention at this juncture that Google Ads' primary tool in determining what adverts to show you is your temporary Internet files folder. There are cookies there which tell the Google robots what sites you visit, allowing them to guess at the adverts to which you are most likely to respond. If you've been to, say, GameFAQs.com, you'll get adverts for gaming sites and software emulation. If you've searched Google Images for "Leonardo diCaprio", you'll get links to movie sites and rumour-mills. If you've gone to GirlsWithBigKnockers.net (is that even a real place?), you're going to see adverts for dating websites and certain 3D chat services (I'd mention which, but the robots would find it and display the particular advert which generated the concern in the first place)

My best advice to you, if you're using a household computer, is to clear out your temporary Internet files folder after every session. This can be done in Internet Explorer through Internet Options (Tools > Internet Options). I'm sure it's possible on Firefox, also.
On the Wii Internet Channel or the DSi Browser, this can be done from the Settings menu (on Wii, Settings > Delete Cookies; on DSi, the same and History > Delete All -- Wii Internet Channel does not keep a browser history list).

Posted by theniftyperson at 2:50 PM CST

Updated: Wednesday, 22 December 2010 11:25 AM CST

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