Keeping Score

Bye Neighbor

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?
Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor? -- Fred McFeely Rogers 1929-2003

It was nice getting to know you. Thanks for the great times.

Before and After

There's five boxes of Girl Scout Cookies (FIVE) sitting on my desk that I evidently ordered over a month ago. I vaguely recall ordering them; not being able to really decide on any one particular box, so I must have figured "why not buy one of each?"

This order was pre-sensible diet and excercise regimen. Now I'm sitting here with five boxes of sweet, delicious temptation, and I have to admit that for the first time in months, I'm really tempted to say "fuck the diet" and just eat all five boxes at once.

Fortunately, with fat loss comes the willpower to keep it off. Keep your fingers x'ed that I haven't eaten my way to the bottom of the bag by 6pm.

Stupid lousy girl-scouts.

Yes, I'm Counting

Well, technically we're about 4 days early for this sort of thing, but considering my lack of vigilance in reading Odometers, I'd say early is better than never.

Somewhere in March or whenever it will be roughly a year that this site has been around, or really at least since it's been getting healthy hits. Keeping Score wasn't started in March, but the art part of this site, which is temporarily down due to my lack of updating, got about 10,000 hits in March of last year due to some really popular artist person linking me. That individual has some serious traffic. More than Wil Wheaton, I believe. I can't tell which artist it was, since I was linked twice in one month, and my stat-tracking software isn't very robust since this is a free site.

Then, in June I started the Blog part of the site, and got another healthy 3000 hits from him or so. Seeing two incredible months of hits has made me a total and complete hit whore/junkie, and in December I was I able to beat the Wil Wheaton month, when I received 4000 hits for some unknown reason (seriously, I don't know why. My only guess is due to a Game Girl Advance article?)

At any rate, enough pointless rambling from me. Here's the boring stats:

Visitors: 26786
Hits: 150459
Pageviews: 17282
Bytes: 1.8G

Not a terribly impressive or massive quantity, but I do appreciate everyone coming by to take a look, and hope even more of you will be swinging by here in the year to come.

Thanks!

Best. Quote. Ever.

Favorite Quote from Die Another Day:

James Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) has just completed a training excercise where he is forced to shoot M in the shoulder in order to kill the man holding her hostage. Q (played by John Cleese) shows up to lecture him on his performance.

Q: "You aren't supposed to shoot your own boss, 007."
Bond: "It's only a flesh wound."

Definition

So I'm sitting here, working on some freelance this weekend, and my wife comes in the office, and excitedly tells me that she was watcing a show on the History Channel called Conquest, where in a typical show the rediculously Ren Faire host shows a bunch of SCA freaks how you would have fought a classic post-Renaissance 1600's duel, from the insult to the glove-slap to the deathstroke.

Today's episode was evidently how knights fought on horseback in the classic medieval period. Or something.

At any rate, she was excited because the bald wish-I-lived-in-an-era-where-my-swordsmanship-would-mean-something host was explaining that mercenary knights who were not in the service of a lord, and were for hire were called...wait for it...

Freelancers.

Oh yeah baby. That's right. I'm bad.

Enter the Maddening Torrent of Lies

Normally, I'm all hot and bothered when it comes to any Matrix goodies, but I've been lamenting this next one for some time.

Enter the Matrix is the videogame that we never got with the first Matrix movie, because Warner Bros. didn't have any faith in the movie, and expected it to flop. Besides proving beyond a doubt that Warner Bros. doesn't know anything about making movies, it means that we get an extra-large dose of Matrix-related merchandise this time around. So, besides Animatrix, there's this video game that's supposed to use some of the new characters we'll see in Reloaded.

The only problem with it is that the Wachowski Bros. asked Shiny to do it. Yes, these are the guys who once brought you the wonderful game Earthworm Jim. They're also the egomaniac bastards who have lied about every single game they've come out with since.

In MDK, Dave Perry (the head egomaniac, no really, go look at his bio. It's on the site. On the front god-damned page that takes almost a minute to load on a T1 line, and forces itself into full-screen mode) claimed months before the release date that you could "go anywhere you wanted to" in the game, and "take out your enemies in a variety of fashions. For instance, you can take the guy out from a sniper shot, or you can work your way up through the building and kill him up close." Well, as it turns out, you could go anywhere you wanted, so long as it was within the ten foot wide path that they laid out for you to run down, and yes, you could take out the guy with a shot from the sniper rifle, or you could take a different guy out by going through a building and taking him out up close. But the point was that you had zero leeway in how you played the game. You either played it by their script, or you were doing something else other than sitting at your computer playing their game, because there was one way to get things done in that game, and that was their way. It was no GTA3, that's for damn sure.

Then, in Messiah, they touted a graphics engine that would put everything else out at the time to shame. They didn't. I recalled them giving examples of how to solve problems, such as "at one point, you have to possess a guy and have him walk through the fire, so he dies and you don't." Basically, he just described the only way to get through the fire. It's not like there was an alternate route. That was it. He wasn't expressing your options in game; he was giving you a sneak-peek at the hint guide for solving his terribly linear game.

So, you can imagine my chagrin when the Wachowski Bros. selected Shiny over Hideo Kajima (the man who created the Metal Gear franchise). Here's an excerpt from the press-release marketing copy over at Amazon:

Players will see, only after playing the game, that their actions in the game can actually have an effect on the movie The Matrix Reloaded

The problem lies in the wording: "...their actions can actually have an effect on the movie..."

This implies that it's possible that my actions might also not effect the movie, or that they can. When in reality, they will do neither. We now know from Shiny's track record that the game will play like a god-damned train on rails, and we will have zero options as to the final outcome of the game. There will be no alternate endings. There will be no options or decisions to make in the game. Every once in awhile we'll be given the option to throw a punch versus a kick, but I highly doubt that anything I do will effect a movie that's presently almost finished and sitting in the can.

Yes, I'm going to pre-order it, because the Wachowski Bros. worked on it, but I don't have a lot of faith in Dave Perry's "vision" as a game creator anymore.

Life is Turning Into a Parody of Itself*

You know something's wrong when the witness accounts of 34 people being trampled at a gay club sounds a hella lot like a piece from The Onion:

"I started playing the BigDrama remix of 'Whatchulookinat,' and before Whitney even got to the chorus, the place was overrun with people," said DJ Markus, a guest DJ who was spinning at Limelight. "I haven't seen anything like this since 'Like a Virgin' in '84."

"It was completely out of control. 500 Half-naked men cramming in and pushing up against each other just to dance to Whitney. All things considered, I'd do it again," said witness Bryan Hayes.

"There were boys jumping off the mezzanine level to get to the dance floor. It was literally raining men," quipped James Malone, another witness.

Not all found the stampede amusing. "I had made eye contact with this hot guy across the floor and he was trampled by the mob when that Whitney sing came on. I am so not getting laid now," complained one patron, Matt Denton.

"As soon as we heard the digitized 'beenlookinatyou,' it was pandemonium. The boys were pulling each other's hair just to get on the dance floor," said one of the injured, Jason Hinns. "I was hit in the head with a spiked heel."

"I blame the owners. They already let too many people in, to begin with. And then they go and play Whitney. What did they expect?" said angry patron Daniel Vega.

[Update Edit] Hey, guess what kids? I'm so stupid I didn't know that the site this came from is in fact a parody site, but for gays. So, now everbody point and laugh at the dumb straight guy who doesn't know anything...very good.[/Edit]

* Title quote courtesy of Rick (who doesn't have a website to link to)
** Link via Emma via Gawker

Bust a Move

Got Bandwidth?

Then go over to rueben.fm and check out their videos page. There's one in particular (in fact, the only one I've watched so far, but I plan on checking out the rest), and click on the one in the upper-left hand corner, or alternately, the link called DJ FORMAT - We Know Something.

We're talking about a mock rap video, but with guys in stuffed mascot suits. There's a guy in a cute bear suit breakin'. You. Must. See. This.

Link via EK

Refreshing

Well, there should be a new picture in the upper-left hand corner, but it's not showing up unless you refresh. This post might fix that, however.

So, if you're still seeing painted old me, refresh, won't you?

No One...Can Be Told...What the Animatrix Is

If you haven't heard, the Wachowski Bros. have decided to pay tribute to their favorite anime directors by asking them to make shorts for their upcoming collection of animated Matrix tales which tells the backstory to The Matrix: The Animatrix.

What they didn't tell you, is that the first four shorts are free for the downloading, and the first one, The Second Renaissance, Part One, is available right now*.

I suggest you get your ass over there and start downloading. The big one is 132M, which might take you all day, so you'd better get started.

[Edit] I just saw a one minute teaser someone released (it's no longer online, sorry) of Square's Final Flight of the Osiris short. It's the one that looks like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within but is about 1000 times cooler because it's a Matrix short with all of the promises and trappings you'd expect to see in a CG rendering of a Matrix tale. And I have to say that it looks balls rad. [/Edit]

*Unfortunately, the whole site's flash, so you're going to have to find the navigation button for "anime" at the top right corner under "mainframe," as there's no direct link.

I Suck

I was going to have some nifty before and after photos for you today.

Every time I've ever hit any significant mileage on my cars, I always miss the rollover; my daily commute is so long that I'm frequently driving in a sort of daydreaming state. On my last car, the Celica, I missed the 100,000 mark, and every "tens" number thereafter, all the way 'till 160K. So now that my Civic was rapidly nearing the 100K mark as well, I reminded myself daily this entire week that, "Friday, on your way to work, keep checking the odometer, and have your camera ready to take the 99,999 photo and a 100,000 photo!"

Well, today's Friday, and I'm at work, my odometer reads 100,025 and I don't have any pictures to show for it.

Because I forgot. As usual.

This, among many other things, will be one of my Sisyphian tortures in hell. Driving a car for 100,000 miles, and then forgetting to look down for the reward. Then they'll put me in a brand new car (with no bathroom break, probably) and force me to start driving towards 100,000 again, where I will again be distracted by the cliffs of eternal flame.

Baby Jebus is Crying

Look, whatever you do, don't go here.

Because if you do, you might have to poke your own eyes out.

But, if you're a fan of Lord of the Rings slash, and you like seeing really muddy Photoshop mock-ups, by all means, knock yourself out.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Pizza Rant

I'll attempt to make this one quick.

Back in my Stats 101 class in college, we had to do some really stupid story problems. A lot of times the "correct" answer would get confusing, and not make any real sense. This is because math teachers have no grasp on what reality actually is. I think they walk around in some hazy numeric dream state imagining if the world really was governed by their demented sense of vision. Too often, they try and put word problems in a tone that sounds familiar to the student answering the question, when they should really just be giving us questions. The whole idea of putting the question in story form is actually nothing more than mental trickery, and has nothing to do with actual math. This is the whole reason why I think story problems (like the one in the previous post about the paint) should be eliminated from standardized testing, because they don't make any real sense. For example, I give you the famous Pizza Question:

It's lunchtime, and you're hungry, so you head into a Pizza restaurant. There's three lunch specials:

The 10" Pizza which costs $10.25
The 12" Pizza which costs $13.50
The 14" Pizza which costs $15.10

Which pizza is the best value for the money?

I'm not even going to bother arguing symantics with you about the fact that the question merely asks "which pizza is the best value for the money," allowing such answers as "Pizza Hut!" or any other Pizza delicatessan of your choice. I'm not even going to bother showing you what the "proper" method of achieving the right answer is, because it involves attempting to resolve the surface area of the different pizzas from the diameters given, and then dividing the number of square inches (surface area) into the amount the pizza costs. I may not have even written down the dollar amounts properly, because in the original question given to me, the proper answer is the fourteen inch pizza.

Remember the first line of the question? How it says you're hungry, not "you and a bunch of your friends" are hungry? So the answer to this question is that the "best value" for the money is me walking into a pizza parlor and spending over fifteen bucks on lunch. For myself.

After the teacher revealed this answer, I asked, rather loudly, "Wouldn't the best value for the money be one or two slices of pizza? I mean, we did walk into this place by ourselves, as your question states in the beginning. Wouldn't spending five bucks be a better value for the money rather than spending fifteen dollars on a lunch we couldn't possibly hope to eat by ourselves?"

The auditorium laughed, and the teacher didn't really have much to say.

Needless to say, I just squeaked by with a "C" in Stats 101. I guess according to Math Teachers I'm really stupid or something.

I'm just happy that I don't walk through life buying a keg of beer instead of a six pack when I'm thirsty because it's the "best value for the money."

Why Being Smart Isn't Necessarily Smart

I've never been a big fan of standardized testing, because as I once showed my Algebra teacher who was failing me for getting the right answer the "wrong" way, there's almost always more than one correct answer to a problem. And let me tell you, Algebra teachers don't like being shown that their way isn't the only way.

So I followed a link today to this SAT question of the day site. And after viewing today's question, I have to call some serious bullshit at what they think is the right answer.

Here's today's Question, followed by the multiple choice answers:

To make an orange dye, 3 parts of red dye are mixed with 2 parts of yellow dye. To make a green dye, 2 parts of blue dye are mixed with 1 part of yellow dye. If equal amounts of green and orange are mixed, what is the proportion of yellow dye in the new mixture?

1). 3/16
2). 1/4
3). 11/30
4). 3/8
5). 7/12

After a small amount of careful re-reading, I deduced that if I, a professional artist, were going to mix paints the way they just descirbed, I would have mixed three parts yellow, then 3 parts red, and 2 parts blue. So, a total of 3 parts yellow, out of a total 8 parts, so 4). 3/8 was my answer.

And according to the site, it's somehow wrong. Here's thier fucked up go-around-your-elbow-to-get-to-your-ass way to mix paints, according to some magical formula for paint mixing. Maybe they studied this in Calculus: Paint Mixing or something:

Suppose that x quarts of the final mixture of dye will be made. Since it is to be made from equal amounts of orange and green dye, it will consist of (1/2)x quarts of orange dye and (1/2)x quarts of green dye. Since the orange dye has 2 parts yellow dye for each 5 parts total dye, 2/5 of it is yellow dye. Similarly, 1/3 of the green dye is yellow dye. The amount of yellow in the final mixture is given by 2/5(1/2)(x) + 1/3(1/2)(x) = (1/5)x + (1/6)x = (11/30)x quarts

So, 11/30 of the final mixture is yellow dye.

Note: Although 'quarts' were used to express the amount of the final mixture, it could have been pints or any other unit of liquid measure.

Difficulty: Hard

You know why it's hard? Because some fucking math wizard thought this was a good idea. You know how we mix paint? We keep mixing it until it looks the right way. And then if some fucking genius wanted to mix orange with green, we'd all point and laugh at the stupid math major who thought that would be a good idea. And if parts is not a quantitative measure of units, wouldn't it *still* be one part yellow, *two* parts blue, regardless of the volume? So wouldn't the answer still be 3/8? Evidently it's not.

I decided to check their math, and do some division. I converted my answer, and their answer to decimals.

3/8 = .375

11/30 = .367 (it's really 0.366666666666666666666666 ad infinitum so I rounded up)

I know a math major or an SAT administrator might think this is some significant difference, and that one answer is right, and the other is wrong, but guess what? Being off by eight thousandths is pretty fucking close enough in just about anyone's book as far as mixing paint is concerned. Any real-world answer to this question would have been "about 1/3 yellow."

Next I should go into my math class pizza question rant, which actually got applause in my college math class.

Madness, This Two Towers Is!

Those of you who know me well might be familiar with my love of all things Engrish. I live for hearing Japanese speaking broken English and messing it up horribly, and the oh-so-enjoyable written transrations.

Couple that love with Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, and you have the bastard lovechild of bad Engrish subtitles for an Asian bootleg of The Two Towers.

Who loves ya, baby?