August 2002

+ Thursday - August 29, 2002

For some reason I decided to torture myself and watch the MTV Video Music Awards tonight. Here's some of my thoughts from the show:

1) I think MTV must have done the entire show in Flash and forgot to crank the FPS up from the default 12.

2) I'm glad Avril Lavigne won Best New Artist. Now I won't have to worry about her having another hit, just like everyone else who's won that award.

3) I was sorta hoping for Triumph the insult dog to eat Eminem's face off. Or at the very least poop on it.

4) Has anyone else noticed that 90% of music these days is hip-hop? For some reason I find that quite scary.

5) I think Christina Aguilera has been demoted from Crack Whore to Assistant Crack Whore. She looked that trashy.

6) It was nice to see G'n'R again, but Axel really needed a kilt and an NWA hat to really nail the full comeback.

7) Why exactly does MTV have the Video Music Awards if MTV doesn't play videos?

It's great to see corporate music and MTV are still as shitty as ever.

+ Wednesday - August 28, 2002

Got my copy of Super Mario Sunshine today, and spent most of the day playing it. I'm about 10% done with it and damn this game is tough. I'd say it's harder than Mario 64 was, but there are a lot of similarities between the two. I'd still say Mario 64 is the better game, though not by much. My only gripe with SMS is the control scheme. It's hard to get used to and the camera tends to get in the way in spots. Still, it's pretty much everything you'd expect from a Mario adventure, so I'm quite pleased.

The game I'm really waiting for though is Animal Crossing. Everything I've read about it is right up my alley. Unfortunatly, I have to wait three more (long) weeks before I can get my hands on it.

+ Monday - August 26, 2002

Well, I finally have an interview somewhere and it's at the Walker. I'm not too concerned about the interview, either I'll be a fit for them or I won't. But at the very least I will get some interview experience. I just hope they don't expect me to be carrying in a 20 pound steal portfolio case with piles of mounted boards and translucent paper resume's with ribbons or something. Then again if that's what they want then they probably don't want me anyway.

+ Thursday - August 22, 2002

Just finished my last fantasy football draft of this year. Here's how this one turned out by round:

1. Priest Holmes (RB KC)
2. Daunte Culpepper (QB Min)
3. Joe Horn (WR NO)
4. Michael Pittman (RB TB)
5. Chris Chambers (WR Mia)
6. Marcus Pollard (TE Ind)
7. Plaxico Burress (WR Pit)
8. Clinton Portis (RB Den)
9. Mark Brunell (QB Jac)
10. Dolphins (DT Mia)
11. Todd Heap (TE Bal)
12. Doug Brien (K Min)
13. 49ers (DT SF)
14. Joe Nedney (K Ten)

Not the greatest draft in the world, made up mostly of unproven talent. This team probably has the greatest upside of any team I've ever had, but it also carries a big risk. We'll see how it performs compared to the others.

To add to the football note, I also got NFL 2k3 for my Gamecube today. Being a big fan of the 2k series from Sega, I was pretty hyped when I got it. The last 2k game I played was 2k1 on my Dreamcast, and there have been very notable changes, some that I didn't like at first. After a while playing however, I've noticed the game's deapth and balance, which is really good. There are still a few annoying things (crappy field textures, and low quality audio on the announcing), but other than those minor things, it's a really solid game. Should make for a good time killer between Packer games. ;)

+ Wednesday - August 21, 2002

My second fantasy football team has been drafted. This league had an auto-draft, which I don't like as much because the computer controls the drafting from a predefined list, but here's what I got by round:

1. Marvin Harrison (WR Ind)
2. Dante Culpepper (QB Min)
3. Anthony Thomas (RB Chi)
4. Tim Brown (WR Oak)
5. Antwain Smith (RB NE)
6. Derrick Mason (WR Ten)
7. Freddie Jones (TE Ari)
8. Pittsburgh (DE Pit)
9. Matt Stover (K Bal)
10. Brian Griese (QB Den)
11. Thomas Jones (RB Ari)
12. Todd Heap (TE Bal)
13. Travis Taylor (WR Bal)
14. J.J. Stokes (WR SF)
15. Todd Peterson (K Pit)

Overall not a bad team. I like the QB's and my starting WR's, but the RB's, while solid, are a little low on the totem pole for my tastes. Plus, how the computer drafted is not how I would have. I would never take a defense or a kicker before the last rounds (especially a kicker in the 9th, jeesh). This team should hold up well though, and I especially like the Culpepper pick, because the league is heavy on TD's and stingy on passing yardage.

One more fantasy league to draft for the year, and that's tomorrow night. While it becomes easier to draft the closer you get to the regular season, there is something a bit more exciting about drafting early. Perhaps it's the bragging rights you have if you make the right calls before anyone even steps on the field.

+ Friday - August 16, 2002

Well I just got back from the theatre and saw "Signs". I would just like to say what an unbelieveably horrible movie that was. I heard from a lot of people it was scary. It was not scary in the slightest, in fact there were so many downright cheezy parts that I was almost laughing (Annette who was sitting next to me was laughing quite loud actually).

I know that when I go to a movie I need to suspend disbelief a bit, but movies these days are just so far-fetched sometimes it just irritates me. I mean here we have aliens who are made of water (like all living things), yet get killed by water. Aliens, who have the technology to build space crafts, fly millions of light years, make crop circles and jump 20 feet in the air, but can't knock through a door being held shut w/ an axpick propped against the doorknob.

Perhaps I ask too much when I see a movie (which is probably why I don't watch them often), but the crap I see hollywood put out the past couple years doesn't give me much hope for improvement.

+ Thursday - August 15, 2002

Man, do I hate spam. And I hate those email viruses even more. It's been a long time coming but I finally went through all the stuff on all my sites and spam-proofed all the mailto:'s. I know this probably won't help, but at least I feel better about not having any spiders going through my sites and harvesting my mail addresses.

What will work though is that I'm throwing all email that isn't to my personal account into the trash. 99.9% of it is spam or viruses anyway. Those of you who know my personal email (if you know me personally, you know what it is), just keep sending it there. For the rest of you, just use the email form on this site if you want to get in touch with me. Hopefully when my friends and I move to the new server we'll have more anti-spam software to take care of this, but until then, this is the way I'm living.

+ Tuesday - August 13, 2002

Right around the time E3 was going on in the US, Nintendo's CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi retired after 52 years on top of the company. Shortly afterward there was a press conference held to talk about the state of the company. More great insight into the business of gaming, especially from Yamauchi who very rarely speaks in public. One particular quote of interest:

"Developers can create exquisite titles such as Zelda or Final Fantasy, but when you compare our investment versus profit, we came out behind the Tamagotchis of the business."

I think this speaks volumes about the current state of the industry, and why Nintendo has been able to make as much money as they have. For as many original Playstation's as Sony sold, Nintendo still made more money off of the N64 dispite coming in a distant 2nd place. The fact that they understand what it takes to consistantly turn a profit in this industry is what keeps them in such a great positition over their competitors. And lets face it, they need that to compete against the Sony's and Microsoft's of the world.

+ Monday - August 12, 2002

The 2nd edition of Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference is finally coming out, and according to Amazon, it'll be very soon (Aug 15th)! Looks like it's going to cover HTML 4.01, CSS 2, DOM 2, and JS 1.5, as well as IE 6 (Win), IE 5.1 (Mac), NS 6 and 7, and Mozilla 1.0. It's also going to be 500 pages larger than the previous edition (1500 total pages).

I've been waiting for this book for about 3 years now. The first edition is by far the best (and most used) book that I own, and was what really helped me learn DHTML in the first place (and thus Assembler and the like). Now however, the first edition is out of date, so I'm really looking forward to the 2nd edition and all the new syntax references. It's pretty much the only book anyone needs as a reference to building anything inside a browser window.

+ Friday - August 9, 2002

I drafted my first fantasy football team for the year today. I think it turned out alright, especially since I had the 11th pick. Here's now it turned out, by round:

1. Priest Holmes (RB KC)
2. LaDainian Tomlinson (RB SD)
3. Rich Gannon (QB Oak)
4. Jimmy Smith (WR Jac)
5. Plaxico Burress (WR Pit)
6. Bubba Franks (TE GB)
7. Trent Green (QB KC)
8. Thomas Jones (RB Ari)
9. Troy Brown (WR NE)
10. Byron Chamberlain (TE Min)
11. Buccaneers (DT TB)
12. 49ers (DT SF)
13. Doug Brien (K Min)
14. Joe Nedney (K Ten)

We'll see how the year plays out. If anyone has a league online (a real one, not some newbie league) and needs another member, feel free to contact me, I'd probably be interested.

+ Wednesday - August 7, 2002

Here's an excellent interview with the creators of Super Mario Sunshine. This is probably one of the better interviews about game creation I've seen, it's very detailed, and gives great insight into the creative process of gaming (and no spoilers!), especially since it was translated from Japanese. If you're looking forward to this game, or are just into game design in general, I'd highly recommend reading through it.

+ Monday - August 5, 2002

In a recent press conference in Japan, Shigeru Miyamoto had this to say about the Mario Bros universe:

"Every time I make a series, I want to make a completely new game. Especially when the younger you are as a director, you want to make something completely different. When we made Mario 1, 2, and 3, we always started from zero."

At first I was confused by that comment. Super Mario Bros 2 started from zero? No way, I thought, Miyamoto-san didn't even make Super Mario Bros 2, it was just a hacked version of Doki Doki Panic for the Famicom Disk System in Japan.

But then I remembered why SMB2 was just Doki Doki Panic with new characters. Miyamoto-san thought that the actual SMB2 would be too hard for US audiences, thus the switch. And since the press conference was in Japan, I can only assume he's talking about the Japanese version of SMB2 (later released on the Super NES in Mario All-Stars as "Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels"). The american version of SMB2 was then later released in Japan as Super Mario Bros USA.

+ Thursday - August 1, 2002

You know, I think I have this whole ROM collecting thing all wrong. Why spend hours searching the internet, when I could just buy the Super Megason IV!! 10 million games in 1!! Unfortunately I think the swank glasses are sold separately.