Posted by Temporal at 2008/11/06 19:02:15 PST
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Posted by Temporal at 2008/11/05 10:56:26 PST
Edited at 2008/11/05 12:43:05 PST
Edited at 2008/11/05 12:43:05 PST
Quote from me, June 3rd:
I have a hard time imagining this being anything other than a landslide come November.
Yep.
Quote from John McCain's concession speech:
This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.
Wow.
Yeah, uh, hey John... Being the first western nation to elect a minority leader is actually pretty significant even to people who aren't black, and even many people who aren't American. America has proven that we are still the world leaders in democracy and civil rights. We have once again set an example for the world to follow, and we will be setting many more examples in the coming years. Around the world, the contempt for America created by the Bush administration is already reversing and turning back into admiration. We should all be very proud of that.
On a sad note, California's Proposition 8 passed, stripping gays of their right to marry. But America will correct this mistake too. I predict that within ten years, we will have a national constitutional amendment banning discrimination against gays, rendering any remaining state amendments null and void.
I received my California ballot guide. As usual, there are a slew of wacky propositions for voters to decide on. Many of these proposals are very complicated and I personally have neither the time nor the expertise to evaluate them. We should really have a system where instead of forcing people to spend time considering each crazy idea individually, we elect some sort of representatives to worry about this stuff for us. Oh wait, we do have such a system: it's called the "legislature". So why the hell am I expected to do all this work myself!?
Generally, I have a strong a priori bias against any proposition made by petitioners. If it is actually a good idea, then let the legislature approve it. Giving it directly to the people seems like a great way to provoke an uninformed decision. On the other hand, some propositions are actually proposed by the legislature. I assume there is some sort of legal requirement that anything involving selling bonds be put on the ballot. In these cases, I will generally defer to the legislature's judgment and vote yes.
Read more for the complete list...
Posted by Temporal at 2008/09/20 16:58:56 PDT
video games
video games
Holy crap! Why didn't someone tell me about this game sooner!?!
At some point I overheard someone saying this was a good game, so I picked it up and had it on my shelf for some time. I had absolutely no idea what the game might be about; all I knew about it was the cover. I finally got around to playing it last weekend, and it only took a couple minutes to realize this was a winner. The rest of the game did nothing but reaffirm this notion over and over and over again.
This is the best game I've played since Xenogears, and I'm not even sure how to compare it with Xenogears. Xenogears was all story whereas this game does a huge range of things and does them all well.
Things this game has:
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Story: Intriguing, engaging, emotional, and powerful, yet the dialog never gets in the way or becomes boring or annoying. Most of it is voice acted, and pretty well.
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Puzzles: Most of the gameplay takes the form of Nintendo-adventure-game-style puzzles, but unlike Zelda they move very fast. A lot of the puzzles involve sneaking around, trying to accomplish things without being seen, which is incredibly fun.
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Action: The main character fights with a staff. Fights often involve her beating down a swarm of enemies. The controls are extremely intuitive; it's easy to make her look like Neo fighting the army of Agent Smiths. Which is freeking awesome.
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Varied gameplay: In addition to puzzles and fights, there are several mini-games, including various forms of vehicle-based gameplay. All of them are done extremely well. Usually mini-games have crappy controls because the game devs don't spend much time on them, but this game's mini-games were all perfectly polished. I actually liked the racing scenes better than many actual racing games.
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Directed treasure hunts: I hate treasure hunts... unless they are directed, e.g. by marking the general locations of treasures on a map. Then I think they're lots of fun. This game is full of interesting side-quests, all of which were easy to find by just going for the marked spots on the map.
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Originality: The game is set in its own detailed world. Everything is original; nothing is borrowed.
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Art and Music: The art style is not as unique as Wind Waker or Okami, but is still interesting and generally pretty. The music integrates well with the gameplay and there are even a couple of very memorable pieces.
Basically they mixed together a lot of things, nailed them all, and integrated them beautifully.
The game only took me 13 hours or so, and I pretty much cleared out all of the side quests. I wish it were longer, but apparently a sequel is coming soon!
Posted by temporal2 at 2008/09/15 14:47:23 PDT
Edited at 2008/09/18 10:45:23 PDT
Edited at 2008/09/18 10:45:23 PDT
I went hang gliding on Friday. I would have posted earlier but I was waiting for pictures. Turns out no one got a good picture of me, though. Oh well.
In any case, I never got more than a few feet off the ground, being a first lesson, but I liked it a lot better than skydiving. It seems actually very relaxing. Once you're in the air, you don't really have to do any work at all; you can just enjoy the view. Landing is actually pretty easy since the glider doesn't move very fast. It actually seems very hard to injure yourself since the glider will naturally tend to glide mostly horizontally and slowly. If you totally let go of the handle, you'd just glide to the ground and have a slightly rough landing. The only big worry is colliding with objects.
I'm trying to decide if I want to do more of it.
UPDATE: Me, hang gliding! FYI, the instructor told us to keep running while in the air, since beginners tend not to know when they're about to hit the ground. I'm not just doing it to look like an idiot. :)
Posted by Temporal at 2008/09/14 13:09:56 PDT
McCain has apparently decided that truth isn't important anymore. He thinks he can simply make stuff up entirely -- not bend the truth, but simply invent things that plainly have no basis in fact whatsoever -- and as long as he pushes the claim forcefully and doesn't back down, he'll win votes. As an intelligent voter, I am insulted and angered by these tactics. The part that makes me want to cry is that I think it's very possible that this will work.
If McCain wins, it will prove that truth has no place in politics, and the next campaign will surely be even worse. And where does that leave us? What kind of presidents will we get from campaigns that are completely removed from reality? We'll get the president who is a better liar. You might as well flip a coin.
I used to think that an Obama-McCain race would be great because while I prefer Obama, I would not mind terribly if McCain won. That has completely changed. I now feel like I'd be more disappointed if McCain wins than I was when Bush won four years ago. Not that I think McCain is worse than Bush, but compared to his opponent...
And to think I almost contributed to McCain's campaign last year...
Posted by Temporal at 2008/09/13 14:22:08 PDT
I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but only ever watched a few episodes of Deep Space Nine. I've heard that it was good too, especially in the latter seasons. I recently bought the complete series on DVD and have started going through it. So far I've made it through the first season. I'll be updating this table as I go to mark which episodes are worth watching and which ones might as well be skipped.
Posted by Temporal at 2008/09/07 02:37:09 PDT
video games
video games
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
It's a Zelda game. I liked it for the same reasons I like Mario and Metroid. However, Zelda seems much slower-paced. I think this is why I have a tendency to get distracted and stop playing Zelda games before I complete them -- as I did with both Ocarina of Time (many years ago) and Twilight Princess (a year and a half ago). I managed to complete Wind Waker, however, perhaps because nothing happened to come along to distract me.
Don't get me wrong -- it's a pretty good game. Just... slow. But I finished it and I'm glad I did.
This game was designed and programmed by one guy, with art done by one other guy, music licensed from some music licensing service, and the whole thing distributed via X-Box Live Arcade.
It is awesome.
Braid is a perfect example of my theory of good puzzle design. Your character has a very small set of known abilities. In each puzzle, nothing is hidden. Therefore, solving a puzzle is purely a matter of planning; you never have to search for things that you didn't know you could do.
If you have an X-Box 360, go buy this game right now (it's only $15). If you don't, apparently there is a PC port on the way.