I begin to wonder about things, this has never led to good things in the past (or to good spelling and grammar), so that would usually stop a person wouldn’t it? Well, not me. For as you see, I am not a normal person in any form. I have strange eating habits, my musical selections generally draw the ire or at least a strange look from people when they hear a song they don’t know, don’t like, or a combination of the two. Probably the closest to the “norm” I become is my parents, in that we live a quiet “normal” life.

So this leads me to a question… What really is “normal”?

Is it owning a home in a small town, or is it living in the apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? Does our society dictate what is “normal”? Hell if we all lived in TV we would either live in pristine neighborhoods, the perfect apartment in the big city, or in that white-picket fence. Is normality dictated by what foods we eat, what music we listen to, what TV stations we watch, the latest in gadgetry? That is debatable, when one’s perception of normal can be so radically skewed from one viewpoint to another. Which is the inherent problem with subjective terms such as “normal”. What is normal for one, is never necessarily normal for another.

And I think i’m just going to end it there.

Alright so maybe I am not the biggest fan of Christmas, but then again I have a really good reason.  See the thing is I call myself a Christan.  I will never claim to be a good one, or even close, but I am one.  So when I think Christmas, I think Little Baby Jesus and all that, and then presents.  So yeah, Christmas is big to me also, but… in America, Christmas has blown up into a 2-3 month holiday with no religous meaning what so ever.

I can usally keep my voice down and not get all up in arms about this, I just suffer though it.  But this year, sigh, I gotta say something.  The day after Holloween Wal-mart started to show their Christmas Ad campain… that centers around Christmas dinner…  ISN’T A WHOLE AMERICAN HOLIDAY CENTERED AROUND FOOD?  DOESN’T IT FALL BETWEEN HOLLOWEEN AND CHRISTMAS?

I don’t get it, isn’t Thanksgiving the American holiday worshiping food?  I guess its this down economy, they want people to start thinking about Christmas now so that they spend more money (that they don’t have) on presents to help their companies and the economy.   But I have a feeling its gonna backfire, See people will start to save for Christmas (read: not spend any money) and then once they do start to buy stuff, they will spend less because they got into the habit of spending less.  So whats gonna happen?  Come January, alot of companies are gonna be spewing up some pretty horrible numbers.

Moral of the Story: THAT FOOD HOLIDAY… YEAH THE ONE COMING UP… ITS CALLED THANKSGIVING… KTHXSBAI.

Update:  Well its seems that just when I thought I had seen the worst of it…. it got alot worse…  It seems that some channels on TV have kicked off their Christmas countdowns a bit early.  Instead of doing the usual (and also somewhat acceptable) “25 Days of Christmas”, they are now starting up with “x days till The 25 Days of Christmas”.   Okay, look, Christmas is a great holiday, and the market is in a recession, and good Christmas season will help out the economy a bit, but Thanksgiving shouldn’t be forgoten.

-Irv

More after the jump.

The controls, which would have to be flawless for a game of this type, are close, there’s a few things that just really don’t work in a game like this, namely the whole, it being in first person. Only because you can disarm your opponents, but the game doesn’t want you to have weapons become a crutch, and for you to use the environment around you to get to them and take them out with your body and not weapons. Which for me, in a first person view, it just doesn’t feel right to turn your back to opponents and run away. Even if the person running away is really, really fast.

But other than combat, the game handles like a dream, the freerunning/parkour is where the first person view shines, because it has that “Ohshitohshit I don’t know where I’m going to laaaaaaaaannn… Hey I made it!” Type feeling. One thing I would love to see them do is find a way to implement a multiplayer other than time trials to this game, like a multiplayer race through levels, where you could take your own path, even have two teams, have one team be the runners, and the other as a poliece/merc force trying to take them down.

But anyway, I’m now looking foreword to this game, even though my schedule’s already full with Gears 2, and Wrath of the Lich King, and… School, but it looks like one of those games that may not sell well, only due to the time it comes out. Like Beyond Good & Evil or Psychonauts. But anyway, I’m out!

Then… I guess the companies bean-counters and corporate voodoo masters decided to get into the mix.  Spore, a game that many people, even people not easily classified as gamers, have been waiting on for years, well… it flopped.  Sure the sales were pretty good, and I am sure that EA made money on it.  But Spore had has DRM issues.  EA limits the amount of times that the program can be installed and on how many computers.  The casual gamer may never notice the restrictions, but there are many people who buy new computers regularly to be able to play the latest and greatest games, or reinstall routienly to keep Windows from becoming overly bloated.  These are just the issues if you actually buy the game, but the way the DRM works, it makes it impossible to rent the game or buy used copies.

EA has caught alot of flak over Spore’s DRM issues, so they decided to fix them… sorta… not really.  They upped the limit of installs from 3 to 5.  Not removing the issue, just delaying it.  Many people are now boycotting EA’s games because of this issue.

EA has now also annouced that any infractions or bans on its offical forums will carry over into the actual games.  This means that if you are banned from the forums for any reason, you will not be able to play ANY of your EA games.  This seems like someones idea that sounded good the first time they said it, and it was implimented, and THEN everyone actually got sober.  Being on many forums myself, I can see where almost any form of Troll Control can be used successfully.  But this is a bit harsh even for use against the internet’s worst citizens.  If this were actually used, it may mean a $300+ loss for the person that has been banned.  In all likely hood this move will result in killing off the offical EA forums and more bad PR at a time when EA can scarsely afford it.

Oh and remember all that talk about new ideas and moving away from sequels and what not….

Just announced, Mercs3 – 10, Mirrors Edge Trilogy, Dead Space 2. So much for that idea…

/rant

-Irv

This is it….

Thats all Folks…

I put a link to it on the side, so I figured I might as well explain why its there….. I wonder if I should do that for the rest of the links…

-Irv

Starting with the opener The Human Abstract, they weren’t bad, and I did kinda like the music that they played, well that I paid attention to anyway

More after the jump…

36 CrazyFists put on a really good set, lots of energy, lots of charisma, and, they got the crowd into a Wall of Death, which was the first Wall of Death i’ve experienced.

For the uninitated, a Wall of Death is where the pit splits down the middle, and both sides run at each exploding into a giant mosh pit.

All That Remains, put on a wonderful set, granted they were the band I went to see, but still. I’m definitely going to see them live, barring health and travel issues.

Now Trivium…it was interesting, the start, wasn’t all that impressive, but they way they finished it was great.

I know I don’t really have much to say, but bite me. K?

So, I have finally gotten around to installing Intrepid.  Usually I get around to installing the newest version a little before now, but I was really busy this summer.  I will say though I have been impressed as always with this newest version.

One of the first things that struck me was the new user switching button that takes the place of the shutdown button.  At first I was disappointed that they replaced my shiny red button, but then I saw why.  Not only does the new button handle Shut Down, Log off, Switch User, Hibernate, and Suspend, but a few other things.  One is the new “Guest User”.  Clicking Guest User will log off the current user and start a new session.  Whats cool about this is that the new session will work the same as the Live CD (won’t save anything to the disk), so its great for letting someone borrow you computer to check e-mail or the like.  But that’s not all folk, this wonder button can also be used to set your status in Pidgin.  You loose a bit of functionality using this button because you cannot set a certain away message. But its still cool none-the-less.

The next one’s not quite about Ubuntu but its close, ADOBE RELEASES A REAL FLASH PLAYER FOR LINUX.  Sorry its habit, Linux is always getting the short end of the stick when it comes to professionally made software, so its nice to get some attention.  The major difference for Flash this time around is that Adobe finally fixed what was probably one of the biggest bugs, Flash always being on top.  This is quite annoying when the site you are visiting has one of those mouse over HTML menus that overlaps a Flash object.  This bug made some sites unuseable.  Linux going Mainstream ftw.

Ubuntu also has plenty of under the hood improvements, like better driver support, and the latest versions of Gnome and Xorg, hopefully making this the most stable Ubuntu yet.  If you are new to Linux, never used it before, or even an experienced Linux user, this will definatly be worth getting.

-Irv

There she sits, all alone
a brown-haired beauty
I wish I could be here guy
If only I could work up the courage
Then maybe, just maybe,
Maybe I could be that guy.

I lie in bed and wonder,
If she would say yes,
or would she just laugh if off,
think it was a joke, never giving a second thought
What would happen if I asked

There she sits, all alone
a brown-haired beauty
I wish I could be here guy
If only I could work up the courage
Then maybe, just maybe,
Maybe I could be that guy.

Today might be the day,
The day my world changes,
The day it all falls in place.
I see her in the usual place,
Along with a new face,
As they lean in for a kiss, I wonder what could have been.

There she sits, with that guy
a brown-haired beauty
I wish I could be that guy
If only I had worked up the courage,
If only I had gotten there sooner,
Maybe I could have been that guy.

‘nough said

-Irv

Lets start with the Senses Fail album, Life Is Not a Waiting Room.

It reminds me alot of their earlier album Still Searching, with the screaming less aggressive and a bit more of a focus on the lyrics and the music itsself, I noticed that the album seems a little more down-tempo than their previous albums, which fits the album as a whole. But when they do speed it up a little, it’s great, especally on Lungs Like Gallows and Wolves At the Door.

I really enjoy the album, there’s maybe one track that I don’t particularly care for, but it’s near the end of the album.

Favorite Track: Wolves At the Door.

Most Skipp-able track: toss up between DB Cooper and Ali for Cody

Which brings us to the new Rise Against album, Appeal to Reason.

Now, I’m a Rise Agaisnt fan, and I really enjoyed the last album they released (The Sufferer & The Witness), whereas most RA fans I’ve talked to around VCU didn’t much like it, and with the new album it feels a little like old Rise, and a little like new Rise.

When I was listening through it the first time after I got the album through iTunes,  I wasn’t much of a fan of alot of the tracks, but then again, I wasn’t really listening to them, it was more of a skim through than a real listen. One track that feels out of place on the album is Hero of War, only because of where it is in the album, maybe if it was moved after Savior then it would feel like it’s in a better spot, not that its a bad track, it just feels otu of place to me.

Favorite Track: Savior

Most Skippable Track: Hmm, I would probably have to say The Dirt Whispered.