Friday, June 27, 2003
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Monday, June 23, 2003
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Friday, June 20, 2003
Huh. This week's Photoshop Phriday is bent on ruining the twist in about 8 movies without actually being funny at all.
WISH 52: Your Robin Laws Type
I haven't read the book, so I'll try not to make too big a fool of myself. I did find a slightly less-brief summary of the types, and I think, as a player, I'm somewhere in between the Specialist and the Method Actor. I have the most fun when I'm playing a character with interesting behaviors that I feel I have a good grasp on. I don't enjoy, as a player, exploring motivations that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. My favorite character to date has been Byr, a kobold shaman seriously bent on taking over the world, or at least as much of it as he understood. The main reason I enjoyed him is because I always knew exactly what he was going to do. That almost makes me a Method Actor, I think, but for the fact that I don't enjoy it when I have a character that doesn't really click with me.
Robin Laws identifies several types of gamer in his book of GM tips: The Power Gamer, the Butt-Kicker, the Tactician, the Specialist (plays one type only), the Method Actor, the Storyteller (plot and pacing fan), and the Casual Gamer. Which of these types do you think you are, and why? Most people arent pure types, so multiple choices are OK.
I haven't read the book, so I'll try not to make too big a fool of myself. I did find a slightly less-brief summary of the types, and I think, as a player, I'm somewhere in between the Specialist and the Method Actor. I have the most fun when I'm playing a character with interesting behaviors that I feel I have a good grasp on. I don't enjoy, as a player, exploring motivations that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. My favorite character to date has been Byr, a kobold shaman seriously bent on taking over the world, or at least as much of it as he understood. The main reason I enjoyed him is because I always knew exactly what he was going to do. That almost makes me a Method Actor, I think, but for the fact that I don't enjoy it when I have a character that doesn't really click with me.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
So, yeah. I bought a new Canon S50 digital camera, it came in yesterday. I'm a little bummed that it only goes 35-105mm; the Mavica FD-71 spoiled me with 40-400mm (that's the only fashion in which it spoiled me, though.) There are a handful of 4MP+ cameras with a better range than the S50 available, but they failed in other categories - price, compactness, or picture quality. I was able to satisfy myself by figuring that, at a minimum, the S50 could still do everything the FD-71 could do - a 5MP shot at 3x zoom, cropped to the .3MP size the FD-71 produces, is roughly a 10x zoom. I shot some test shots this morning that confirmed it.
Man, the LJ people get all the cool icebreakers.
So there's a list going around - 100 movies, bold the ones you've seen. And no one seems to source the list.
It's the IMDB top 100. I recognized it from the first ten. Interesting that they chose that, and not the AFI top 100.
But what's more interesting is that they use the European titles, but not the Asian ones. So the list features La Vita e bella, Lola rennt, and Leon, but not Wo hu cang long, Shichinin no samurai, or Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi. I do wonder how many people don't realize they've seen Leon.
So there's a list going around - 100 movies, bold the ones you've seen. And no one seems to source the list.
It's the IMDB top 100. I recognized it from the first ten. Interesting that they chose that, and not the AFI top 100.
But what's more interesting is that they use the European titles, but not the Asian ones. So the list features La Vita e bella, Lola rennt, and Leon, but not Wo hu cang long, Shichinin no samurai, or Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi. I do wonder how many people don't realize they've seen Leon.
Monday, June 16, 2003
Ok, so now I remember the real problem with Stronghold. It's just not hard enough. It doesn't present a guns or butter challenge at all - the enemies are virtual non-factors until you attack them. If you know what you're doing, you don't need to attack them until you're strong enough to annihilate them. That's another problem, actually - there doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason to the strengths of the enemies in the randomly generated scenarios. I generally end up a stone's throw away from something I couldn't defeat right away, anyway. So I have no choice but to build up my utopia before unleashing my devastating army.
It's still fun, but I wish there were a way to bump up the challenge factor.
It's still fun, but I wish there were a way to bump up the challenge factor.
Friday, June 13, 2003
WISH 51: New Genres
I'm going to include the superhero genre as my first pick, even though I've actually played in a number of superhero games - they've just been so unsuccessful, I'd prefer they didn't count. (q.v. "The Unstoppable Cat Basket" - which, now that I've thought about it more would have been really clever if the character had been, say, "Katarina Basket." But it just sort of stood on its own.) In fact, I still have a hard time fathoming that four-color campaigns ever wind up being really fun.
I hope it's not cheating, but I'm going to cite this as my second choice. As uninterested as I normally am in V:tM, I could really go for that.
I don't think i can manage three, honestly - which probably says a lot about me, considering that the two I did manage were both cheats. I don't generally take to new genres very well - even if I find them interesting enough to devour their sourcebooks, it still generally takes peer pressure to coerce me into actually diving in and playing.
What are three genres that you've had limited exposure to as a gamer that youd like to try or play more of?
I'm going to include the superhero genre as my first pick, even though I've actually played in a number of superhero games - they've just been so unsuccessful, I'd prefer they didn't count. (q.v. "The Unstoppable Cat Basket" - which, now that I've thought about it more would have been really clever if the character had been, say, "Katarina Basket." But it just sort of stood on its own.) In fact, I still have a hard time fathoming that four-color campaigns ever wind up being really fun.
I hope it's not cheating, but I'm going to cite this as my second choice. As uninterested as I normally am in V:tM, I could really go for that.
I don't think i can manage three, honestly - which probably says a lot about me, considering that the two I did manage were both cheats. I don't generally take to new genres very well - even if I find them interesting enough to devour their sourcebooks, it still generally takes peer pressure to coerce me into actually diving in and playing.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Game of the Week: Stronghold
Should last a few days, anyway. After that, it's off to Knights of Legend
A caveat - if you've never played Darklands, it's precisely 100 times better than both those games put together.
Should last a few days, anyway. After that, it's off to Knights of Legend
A caveat - if you've never played Darklands, it's precisely 100 times better than both those games put together.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Monday, June 09, 2003
There's this car I keep seeing on the drive to work with a URL on the back window: www.trackmenow.com. Ok, that's a hostname, not a URL. At any rate. I can't trackhimnow on my Sidekick, sadly. But why would I want to trackhimnow? Even if I weren't driving right next to him, he still goes to work every morning, same as me. I can just hang out at the Taco Cabana until he drives by.
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Oh, yeah. Another aspect of the conspiracy to make my weekend suck. I went out to an Amtgard (boffer weapon combat) event, this weekend, and really hurt my elbow and wrist on the unpadded shaft of someone's weapon. It didn't hurt too much that night, but it's been seriously bugging me all day.
SSC: I really, really love Straight Outta Compton
That's the one benefit to being the only one in the building - I can listen to my Parental Discretion is Advised collection. Not that I'd actually get any complaints if I did during the regular work-week, I don't think - but it's too tacky for me. Then again, someone did play this clip about 20 times one morning. (I think someone set it as a system sound on his machine.) So maybe they deserve it.
That's the one benefit to being the only one in the building - I can listen to my Parental Discretion is Advised collection. Not that I'd actually get any complaints if I did during the regular work-week, I don't think - but it's too tacky for me. Then again, someone did play this clip about 20 times one morning. (I think someone set it as a system sound on his machine.) So maybe they deserve it.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
Thursday, June 05, 2003
"We're living in America here. I can't believe you can't have a horse for religious transportation," King said. "It makes no sense at all."
From here.
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
CafePress is fairly slick. For some stores, when you go to view the "Larger Image," it overstrikes the word "Sample" on the image. If you right-click and view image, you get just the word "Sample". This is the only shop I've seen the technique used on. So how does it work?
Well, here's the clip from the page that gives us the image:
We go to commonscripts.js to see what e() does:
Obviously, the /cp/img/zoom.gif is the "Sample" we see - it's the source image. It gets stretched to the appropriate size by the h and w parameters. The actual picture is the background of the div element - it comes from http://zoom.cafepress.com/z%10/z_zoom.jpg, where z is the first parameter to e(). Not bad - it works fine in modern browsers, and you have to navigate through HTML and js in two different files to find out where it's actually stored. But once you do that navigation, it's pretty easy to get the image. (Looking for it in your cache would work, too.)
I guess what I wonder is - who is it that's stealing images, causing it to be a problem? They clearly have the resources available to manipulate the source images they're working with - I always assumed they do that on the fly. So it seems weird that they would go this route.
Well, here's the clip from the page that gives us the image:
<script language="Javascript">e(2178636, 400, 320, 0, true);</script>
We go to commonscripts.js to see what e() does:
function e (z, h, w, b, g) {
document.write('<div style="width:'+w+';height:'+h+';background:white url(http://zoom.cafepress.com/'+(z%10)+'/'+z+'_zoom.jpg) no-repeat center center;"><img border="'+b+'" class="imageborder" src="/cp/img/'+(g?'zoom':'spacer')+'.gif" width="'+w+'" height="'+h+'"></div>')
}
Obviously, the /cp/img/zoom.gif is the "Sample" we see - it's the source image. It gets stretched to the appropriate size by the h and w parameters. The actual picture is the background of the div element - it comes from http://zoom.cafepress.com/z%10/z_zoom.jpg, where z is the first parameter to e(). Not bad - it works fine in modern browsers, and you have to navigate through HTML and js in two different files to find out where it's actually stored. But once you do that navigation, it's pretty easy to get the image. (Looking for it in your cache would work, too.)
I guess what I wonder is - who is it that's stealing images, causing it to be a problem? They clearly have the resources available to manipulate the source images they're working with - I always assumed they do that on the fly. So it seems weird that they would go this route.
Sunday, June 01, 2003
Wow. I think I just had the best tiramisu I've had in my life. We went to Pastazio's for dinner - nice greasy pizza, mediocre pasta, but the tiramisu was incredible. A bit custardy, with a very strong espresso flavour. I haven't had much tiramisu in my life, so I'm sure there's better out there, but that was the best I've tried.
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