Phobophilia

I know that everyone is afraid of something (well maybe not Ben Affleck). I also know that as a species we have to have a name for everything. Thankfully we have the Greek language to fall back on to categorize things, and with that in mind I present the Phobia List, a very impressive list of the different phobias out there.

My favorites include:

• Coulrophobia - Fear of clowns, in honor of a close friend.
• Alliumphobia - fear of garlic, I'm surprised there are non-undead that are truly afraid of garlic.
• Atomosophobia & Lepraphobia - Fear of atomic explosions and leprosy, respectively. Isn't this all of us?
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - Fear of the number 666, that's just a frakking awesome word right there.
• Phobophobia - Fear of fears. Isn't that ironic?
• Proctophobia - Fear of rectums. No comment (I'll leave comments on this to the Jackal).
• Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat. Holy specific fear batman!

My favorite fake phobia has to be Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words), there's no way this is accurate. Actually I wonder about the accuracies of a lot of them. The website claims that all phobias on the list are from some reference (not sure what that means). Real or not, though, the list is entertaining. Another interesting part of this, if you Google any of these phobias, more often than not a link to ABC or NBC news pops up. A little proof that the medias job is to keep us scared.

I am a tad scared of it's counterpart, a list of "-philias"...

Get Your Game on - Go play!

This weekend was the NHL All Star break. Saturday was the Skills competition (My favorite part of the All Star Weekend) and Young Star game. Last night was the All Star game, which unfortunately ended with the East winning 8-7. Eric Staal won the MVP, despite Nash's record setting hat trick (He scored the first goal only 12 seconds after the puck drop). It was a great game, no fights, no unnecessary hits, no biased refs - just fast paced, skilled hockey.

While it would have been amazing to be at the game, I think watching it on TV was more fun. During the game they had the goalies on a headset during the game. The announcers were joking and talking to the various goalies during play. Mannie Legace was a crack up. He would joke with the announcers even when the puck was right in front of him (and still did well I might add). It's really too bad normal hockey isn't like this, the players were obviously having fun. At one point Legace made a lucky save and laid on his back in relief - leaving the net wide open for another shot. Fortunately the shooter (can't remember who) hit him in the side instead of the net. You could see smiles and jokes all over the ice. All examples of the fun they were having, which made it entertaining for the fans too.

So I'm sad to see the All Star game over, but also glad to be back to the regular season, Go Avs!

Oh, and Coach Q, can you please put Budaj in occasionally?

BeWitcher-ing

I have lately been playing The Witcher, a game i picked up with a number of others recently. It's a role playing game that's apparently based on a book series. You play as a character named Geralt. He's a witcher, a diminishing group of monster hunters possessed of minor magical abilities.

The game is pretty standard for an RPG, lots of quests and tasks. On average most RPGs are simply animated shopping lists, "collect 5 of this flower", "I need the tongues of 10 zombies", etc. With that in mind, you may ask me why I play them, the best answer I can give is that the storyline must be engaging to be worthwhile. Without a decent storyline RPGs can be a very tedious experience, which is why I no longer play Hellgate: London. The storyline (so far) in Witcher seems decent enough that it's still playable. The theme is very adult orientated, which in a lot of ways is gimmicky without being over the top. The sexual content is an obvious ploy to hook the adolescent gamers, but fortunately these can be skipped and aren't necessary for the storyline to progress. I just wish the voice acting didn't range from decent to "dear god shut up." Again, fortunately the dialogue can be skipped without missing too much thanks to the subtitles.

Gameplay is simple point-and-click, much like Diablo or Dungeon Siege. You click where you want to go, and the monsters/enemies you wish to attack. There are combos, but it's extremely simplistic. To execute a combo attack you must click, wait, then click at the correct time to further your attack. It's not always as easy as it sounds though, a slightly mistimed click can lead to defeat surprisingly fast. Gaining and spending experience is pretty standard, though the interface screen is intuitive and works fairly well.

Bottom line, it's an average RPG with a decent storyline (again, so far). Plus, it's not often you can kill a cockatrice and cock-a-tramp all in the same game...

Network "Solutions"

Lately I've been looking for a while to register a unique domain name for a personal site. I've done a lot of searching and trying random word combinations for something interesting. I've also done some shopping and research about who to register the site with, once I do make up my mind.

After everything, I can tell you whom I won't be registering with. Network Solutions seem to offer the same functions for searching for available domains, but with a devious twist. After you check if a site is available through their site, they put a hold on it for 5 days. This means that you have no choice but to register it through them during that period.

According to NSI, they are doing this to protect consumers from front running. A good story, but I find it hard to believe that it has nothing to do with forcing unknowing consumers to register through them. A shady practice to say the least. Let's say you want to go to a movie. You jump on Fandango.com and look up showtimes at the closest theater. Suddenly you find out that you can't go to any other theater to see the same movie AND you have to buy it through Fandango - unless you want to wait five days to see it. Does that seem wrong to anyone else?

IMHO, this is simple cybersquatting, albeit a low calorie version. Not only do they have these questionable practices, but NSI is more expensive than a lot of the other registrars out there. Of course, this makes sense when they have a captive audience.

Thanks to Webbalert for the links, and kudos to her for calling NSI on their cyber ethics, while at the same time taking their money for advertising on her site. No wonder I love her...

Motiva-tion

Discover Card is offering a new type of account. The Discover Motiva card is a credit card that rewards you for paying your bill. If you pay your bill on time for six months in a row, Discover will return two months of finance charges.

Are there that many people that have problems managing their bills that this makes a good marketing ploy for a credit card company? If so, kudos (and a little shame) to Discover for making money on these people.

A short call

A few weeks ago I picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I haven't played many of the other games in the series, so I don't have a lot to compare it to. However, I can say that's it frelling intense. The game immerses you in combat enough that a few times I found my heart beating harder. Of course that could be simply being out of breath from going downstairs to for a drink.

The visuals in it are amazing, but in a subtle way. Sighting down some of the guns slightly blurs out the surrounding area, which makes for a unique experience.

The AI is the best part of the game. I've seen some of them draw my fire while others break off and try and flank me. They'll throw my grenades back at me (bastards), they've been wounded and will wait till I pass to shoot me from the ground, they've doubled back and caught me from behind. The game is frakking HARD. The story is captivating and keeps you up to play a little more. A few times I even found myself a disturbed by the what happens.

My biggest problem is that it's short, damn short. Single player took me less than 6 hours on the "Hard" setting. I was actually surprised it was over as I watched the credits roll. I kept thinking, "That can't be all." But it was.

However, as short as it is, I loved it. I can't wait to try it on the hardest setting. It's the first game that made me wonder how real soldiers handle actual combat. Don't get me wrong, I know that I'm just playing a video game, I also know that it's no comparison to real life. I can say that this is the closest I want to be to real combat, and my hat goes out to those that are the real thing.

Though it's entirely possible I'm just a pansy...

Wii-compression

Being a dive professional I'm always curious about SCUBA related books, movies and games. Turns out that a scuba game is coming out soon for the Wii. OK, maybe "game" is the wrong word, it's really more of a diving simulator.

It's called Endless Ocean, and frankly, it looks...different. From what I can tell players catalogue fish, take pictures of them, find treasure all the while exploring the fictional Manaurai Sea. I loved the clip of petting a great white, which is actually pretty realistic, they're just big puppy dogs. No really they are.

This "game" is worth checking out, but from what I've seen it seems, well, boring. Maybe I'm biased by actually diving regularly, it's possible that it's a decent "game" and I've unfairly prejudged it. It just seems there's not much worthy of a video "game". There are no terrorists, aliens, Nazis or zombie dolphins present. Not that these are required for a good game (this may appeal to the Sims folk), but having some task or goal is required to be entertaining. I'm all for giving non-divers a feel for diving, but this also may give them a boring view of diving as accurate as it may be (it's rare that someone has attempted to cut my hoses or shoot me with a spear gun).

Anyway, I'm curious enough to try it. Not buy it mind you, but try it. Should make for a good Yahtzee review though...

Signs from above

OK, this was actually posted on HDW's blog, but it was too funny not to pass it along...

Click the image to see a bigger version...

Can you see the music?

Apparently the newest Rock Band peripheral to shortly become available is a stage light kit.

Yep, you can now have flashing lights blinding you and smoke to choke on as you play the game. Nothing like sucking $100 out of fans, for nothing that a strobe light and kid with matches couldn't accomplish...

Too many spoons Ted

I'm not one to make a big stink out of the improper use of the term "ironic." There are plenty of those people on Fark and elsewhere to do that for me (it amazes me that anyone uses the "Irony" tag). Hell, I love quoting Alanis Morisette to the people that do just to watch the anger rise.

Anyway, I was reading a magazine article about the shortage of seafood when I came across the following sentence. "It's ironic that we're literally running out of seafood at a time when it has never been so popular."

Normally I would just chuckle and move on, but this kind of bothers me. This was in an article written by, presumably, a professional writer. Shouldn't he know better? I know the term is misused constantly, but usually by bloggers and message board posters. IMHO, A professional should have a better grasp on the term. I'm not asking for perfect usage all the time, but at least somewhere in the ballpark.

Maybe I'm way off base (I'll let those with a communication "degree" correct me), but this is a direct relationship - More people eating seafood means less seafood available. He doesn't even misuse it in a "normal" way, nothing coincidental, improbable, or even strange here.

I won't even start with his use of "literally"...

Canine delusions

Recently my dog has decided that it's a fun game to run back in forth in the yard barking his head off at every little movement in the front yard. To combat this I started looking into bark collars, I don't think I want a shock one and wanted to see what else was out there.

I'm not one of those people that doesn't believe in shock collars, I actually have a training collar for our trips to the field. It's simply that I think (hope) Rikin will get the lesson fairly quickly and I don't want to spend a small fortune.

Anyway, I've used the sonic collars (emits a high pitched tone) before and had good luck with it. I was curious about some of the others though, mainly a collar that sprays a citrus solution into the dog's face. While browsing some reviews I came across this one. What made this funny was this line:

"When I did finally manage to fill it, Bonnie figured out that all she had to do was bark continuously for several minutes to empty the cartridge! After about a week or two, the collar had absolutely no effect on controlling her barking at all! "

Pet owners crack me up, they always want to believe the most of their animal's intelligence (except me of course, I know my dog is brilliant). By my reckoning, there are two explanations for the above scenario:

A) The dog actually did figure out that the bark is what causes the spray. She then reasoned that the cartridge contains 3 ounces of liquid, and each time the spray is activated it shoots about 1/20 of a teaspoon. She then did the doggie math and figured out that if she barked approximately 360 times the cartridge would be empty. This would then leave her the luxury to bark as much as she wanted without any repercussions.

OR

B) Bonnie is too stupid to connect the barking to the spray and simply continued to bark - wondering all the while what that lovely orange smell was.

I'll lay my money on scenario B, with no offense meant to the canine genius Bonnie...

Trivial?

Last night during our weekly trivia game there was a question about European Geography. "Besides Austria & Slovenia, what are the other two countries that border Italy to the North?"

It made me chuckle that basic geography is considered trivia. Knowing where two major European countries are ranks as high as what Brittany was arrested for last week. While I know that most Americans are woefully undereducated (I'm a proud product of public education myself), I have to wonder what someone from France or Switzerland would think (OK, I really don't care what the French think - scratch that first one).

For the record, I wasn't entirely sure about the answer, fortunately our team has much smarter people than myself. I'm usually there as the support team with contributions such as "good answer" and "Sounds good to me." and "Another beer please."

Shaking with apprehension

Apparently the writers aren't the only thing missing from Hollywood. Unknown to the public there's another crisis in Tinseltown. It seems that there's shortage of tripods.

I want to kill filmmakers that feel that using a handicam is "edgy". While it worked with The Blair Witch, it's gotten old now. Prime example, The Bourne Series. With each movie, the director started using a handicam more and more. The Bourne Ultimatum was barely tolerable. While I kind of understand the effect of using a handicam during action sequences, it's totally unnecesary when the characters are talking at a table. Besides, I frankly think it's a cop out during action and fight sequences - you don't actually have to choreograph anything, just have the actors move a lot and shake the camera around.

And now I have a dilemma, I HATE watching movies that are shot this way, but I'm very curious about Cloverfield. I have a sneaky suspicion that J.J Abrams is using this "Edgy" style to avoid having to actually show the monster that everyone runs from.

In the end I'll probably still go see it, I'll just get an empty the popcorn bag in case I need it when I get violently ill. Fair warning to anyone I may see this with...

24 Timewarp

Got this link from a friend.



I don't watch 24 and I still enjoyed what Jack Bauer's trials might have been like in 1994.

Favorite quote?

"How big is the file?"
"3 Floppys!!"

Cyb-responsibility

So a friend told me tonight that another friend had to send his Rock Band drum peddle in for replacement after it broke.

I'm afraid that this is probably my fault. I can't seem to play the drums in Rock Band without beating the ever-loving crap out of the drum set. So it's more than likely that the reason it had to be replaced is my tendency to stomp on the peddle in an Animal-istic drumming style.

For the record I have been practicing without the stomping and pounding - and I suck. I would, however, rather suck at the game than ruin another of a friend's game system.

So, in conclusion: Dr. H. I'm sorry you had to replace a piece of your drum set due to my over compensation for white man's rhythm. At least I can suck at the guitar without ruining the controller.

At least I can so far...

Customer Quote of the Month - January

Customer, "Are these all the travel books you have?"


Me, "Yep, that's all we've got."


Customer, "We're looking for a book on Maui, do you have one? I don't see it here."


Me, "....."

Kudos 2K

Thank you 2K games, you listened! I complained before about how easy Bioshock was. Dying meant nothing and this in turn made the game utterly simplistic.

2K Games recently released a patch that allows the player to turn off the "Vita-Chamber", or regeneration chambers. If you die, you reload from the last save point like any other FPS game. This actually would make the game extremely challenging, the Big Daddy's become the imposing figures they're supposed to be! Thanks for reading 2K!

OK I know they never really listened to me, but I can pretend. No matter why they did it, I need to thank the publishers. Thank you for listening to your fans and turning a decent game with a major flaw into a great game.