mgroves

I created a simple Excel spreadsheet with random numbers to determine the winner.

The winner of the Brutus Buckeye Coffee Mug is...

Minywheats!

Congratulations, sir. I will email you to arrange delivery. I might even arrange to get video of the prize ceremony.

Thanks everyone for participating and stay tuned to future contests where I give away stuff that I don't really want!

This is a sketch from Kids in the Hall, episode 10 of season 1.

Mark: Hey, see that moon? No, that one there.

Dave and Bruce: Ahh.

Mark: I think that moon is a bit of a spy. Yes I do.

Mark: There was a moon like that on the summer of my sixteenth year. Some say I was sixteen but, heh, I don't know. And there was a girl, too; her name was Marie. At night together, we would walk down by the sea, and, oh my God, if you could've seen the body on this woman! The way at night her long legs would stick into the moist night sand like God's own barge poles! You know? And I longed to tell her the feeling I had in my, heart for her, but the words would not come; they would not come through my spotty adolescent face; they would not come through my angry hair or my sweaty feet or any other part on this body that I now call a man! So the words je t'aime were never passed between us. But, that moon, yeah that one there, it spied on us then, as I think maybe it spies on us tonight, no?

Bruce: The moon is bright, over Lebanon tonight! The Lebanese moon looks down. Shim! Sham! Shikam! Cattle explodes! Cow shrapnel drips off a tree, cascades into mother's tear, for little boy. Who goes on into battle and comes back dead or worse, comes back a man. Why don't you warn them moon? Why don't you say "duck" or "scram?" But the moon will not. The moon just sits there grinning, like a corpse at a Dean Martin roast. What are you laughing at moon? Why don't you share it with the whole class moon?

The moon laughs knowingly.
The moon laughs.
The moon.
The.

Dave: Gee, I wonder who owns that moon?

Mark and Bruce: Yes...yes...yes...yes!

If you recall, the first Xbox 360 game that I bought (besides XBLA games) was Blazing Angels. The game got average-to-poor reviews, but I really enjoyed it.

I also tried to rent Blazing Angels for Wii multiple times, but was thwarted. However, I recently picked it up on sale. So yes, I now own two copies of the same game for multiple systems.

I think if you like Blazing Angels for 360, you'll like it for Wii. Ubisoft made bad decisions on both versions, so I guess it's a "pick your poison" situation, since both versions have weaknesses. Here's a brief rundown of the differences of the Wii version as compared to the 360 version:

• Two new missions (Georgia & North Sea). The Georgia mission is a really good idea (protecting and assisting multiple ground divisions on multiple islands), but Ubisoft either biffed the programming or made a bad decision here. Because of the sheer amount of targets in the Georgia mission, there is noticeable slowdown, which sucks. I haven't got to the North Sea mission yet.
• 10 new planes. This includes the awesome F-82 Twin Mustang.
• There are subtle differences in many of the other missions. For instance, on Guadalcanal, when you have to land and switch planes, you get hit by flak (part of the mission) which makes it much harder to land. The first Normandy mission is considerably harder with faster advancing ground targets.
• I didn't think it would be possible to make the "sandstorm" mission any more annoying, but Ubisoft did just that with the Wii version. Instead of listening to the Germans banter (in English) over the radio, you get a wonderfully loud, piercing stream of morse code for the whole mission that cannot be turned off. I turned off my stereo. In exchange, it's easier to find the German bases with an on-screen indicator/radar thing. And thankfully, I achieved Ace rank on the first try, so I will never, ever have to play it again. Honestly, this mission should have been excluded from all versions of the game.
• In most campaign missions, you can choose which plane to use. Why anyone would turn down the Spitfire V and/or P-51 for any campaign given the opportunity is beyond me. So yeah, you can fly Spitfires and Stukas against Zeros if you want.
• The controls are obviously the biggest difference. You can choose between 5 control schemes. My favorite is the Wiimote motion to control direction with the nunchuck for throttle/weapons. Additionally, I switch hands because I was so used to the 360 controls. This seems to work fine, though it takes a half-dozen missions and ace battles to really get the hang of motion controls.
• The graphics are significantly worse than the 360. The planes still look fine, but in general the game looks more jagged. I probably wouldn't have noticed this if I hadn't played the 360 game first.
• There's no online play. (The 360 version has online play, but good luck finding opponents).
• The voice acting was redone, for whatever reason. The script is largely the same, but now Germans speak German and Japanese speak Japanese. So there's less stereotyping, and more realism. Fine. Your wingmen have less exaggerated accents as well, and your player has a large speaking role in this game as a sort of narrator, as well as an in-game persona.
• There's a cockpit view. I found this completely worthless as I do with every other air combat game, but some people like it.

So there you have it. I highly recommend it if you like air combat and have a Wii.

Just a quick reminder that the Great Coffee Mug Giveaway of 2007 is coming to an end soon.

Head on over the Coffee Mug giveaway blog post and leave a comment to enter.

The contest ends on November 30th, so you don't have much time left. It's free to enter and free to win, people, so just do it already!

Recently, Zogby and the Norman Lear center did a survey to find out the entertainment tastes of conservatives and liberals.

First off, note that Norman Lear is an outspoken liberal and friend of Meathead, but also that Zogby is a credible source of statistics and polling.

Let's go over the concept of correlation and average, briefly. As you should know, correlation is not causation, it's simply the statistical strength of a relationship. So for instance, just because 85% of people who drink beer are healthy, doesn't mean beer makes you healthy. It could mean that being healthy makes you drink beer, or that some other factor external to the data causes both.

The data for the survey is attached. The sample sizes were statistically pretty good (n around 1000 for each political grouping). However, there are no confidence intervals or anything like that (I'm sure they were calculated, but they aren't in the data), so there's no way of knowing how accurate these point estimates are.

With that quick preface, here are some interesting points from the survey:

• Dr. Gregory House apparently unifies us all with his cynical cruelty. Conservatives and liberals all enjoy his show.
• Of all the movies surveyed about, The Departed was the only apolitical/irreligious movie that was preferred by one group (liberals) -- I guess because it's R-rated? C'mon adult conservatives, this is a good movie!
• Conservatives don't seem to play a lot of video games, what with being employed and all.
• Out of 15 TV and film genres, "arts" emerged as the one with the highest positive correlation to liberal viewers, "arts" being a codeword for "gay".

(Those last two are jokes, people, jokes!)

And here are some interesting things that weren't talked about in the article, but were hiding in the data:

• People polled were all likely voters. So there are hardly any non-voters. I think this is a potential bias, as a non-voter isn't necessarily apolitical in their opinions.
• Liberals surveyed believed that government generally solved problems (69.7%). I'm going to assume they think that liberal government generally solved problems, not government in general. Whereas conservatives (89.5%) think that government doesn't solve problems (it doesn't matter WHO is in there). This is strange given that the data also suggests that 80% or more of all surveyed (including liberals) were cynical about the motives of elected officials. So what's up liberals, something doesn't jive here.
• Nader got most of his survey votes from so-called "moderates". Interesting.
• Liberals were observant enough to say they lived on "planet Earth" but were unable to specify any further.
• The "global economy" issue was close to split 50/50 among liberals. I'm guessing 50% are in "dey took our jerbs" camp, and 50% are in the "every other country is superior" camp?

Today is the official release date of Bender's Big Score, in case you haven't been paying attention for the last 10 weeks.

Go get the DVD! Support the arts! Specifically, support the arts that I like!

• Can't Get Enough Futurama has a bunch of news links about the release, including some Wired articles and video interviews.
• Here's an unboxing video of Bender's Big Score with a fun-KAY soundtrack.

• Now would be a great time to review the complete Best of Futurama series here at mgroves.com, since it's now complete.
• Check out the official Bender's Big Score site (ilovebender.com) and get yourself a nice Futurama desktop wallpaper.

I'm still counting down The Best of Futurama.

This mini-series of posts is counting down to the release of the all-new Futurama DVD, Bender's Big Score, set to be released today, November 27, 2007. Go buy it already!

"The Luck of the Fryish" is my favorite episode of Futurama, I've already established that. The "horse Pepsi" sequence alone seals the deal for me. However, the episode has a bittersweet ending that's timeless: the bond between brothers is stronger than their antagonistic rivalry.

1. Don't forget about me

I think this episode, and especially this sequence typifies the greatness of Futurama. On one hand, you have the hilarious and the absurd (Bender's weird celebrity grave robbing), the pop culture reference (Breakfast Club soundtrack), and the touching moment of Fry discovering that his brother loved him and never forgot about him, despite all their fighting and rivalry.

Here lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit.

If you watch only one episode of Futurama in your life, make it this one.

This week, Tuesday Tube is early! Tomorrow is the release date for Bender's Big Score, so I'm switching things up a bit.

Missed the last Tuesday Tube? Head over to the tag search for 'tuesday tube' and browse through the archives.

This weeks' Tuesday Tube is about the taser.

Ah, the taser. The non-lethal weapon of choice for police officers around the world. It's not as deadly as a gun, but it has been estimated to be around 1.71 times as hilarious.

First, let's get this one out of the way. "Don't tase me, bro! What did I do? Ow!"

And now, the inevitable remixes.

Can't tase this.

We are the Knights who say...."tase!"

Here's a guy who I think we can all agree needed a good tasering.

This next taser is udderly ridiculous, and that's no bull.

But notice how quickly the bull recovers and charges! If I were a farmer, I don't know if that taser would be good enough.

Anyway, Tuesday Tube over. Go buy Bender's Big Score.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of November 22nd - 25th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

This was Thanksgiving weekend. I want to say that I'm very thankful for everything God has given me, and I still believe that if one really takes the time to count all one's blessings, the problems and trials that we face every day really aren't that big of a deal.

I also want to say that I'm very thankful for all of my faithful blog readers who put up with my nonsense and leave clever, thoughtful, and humorous comments all the time. Reading this blog wouldn't be half as entertaining without you.

Next, I've been building up a backlog of interesting links I wanted to write about but haven't really got around to it yet. I wanted to at least share the links before deleting them after they get too old.

• Recently, I was doing some work with generating Excel spreadsheets dynamically with PHP. Hint: don't try it with SSL. Here's a link to help you out a little bit.
• Geeks.com has a portable Intellivision system available on their site now. I think it's pretty cool looking.
• Complex tax law has been estimated to cost $265 billion or more, but it is sometimes advantageous if you happen to be a big company that can afford to spend a little on lawyers and tax shelters. Note to next president, whoever you are: let's put a simple tax system in place, okay? Sales tax, flat tax, fair tax, whatever. Just do it already.
• Something fishy might be going on with the unions and the Franklin county commissioners in regards to Huntington Park.
• I think this is a pretty good article about Bush hatred.
• Kudos to Mike Coleman for cutting spending instead of raising taxes. I didn't vote for him (or any mayoral candidate), but I gotta give him props. Note to next president, whoever you are: can we get a balanced budget amendment going already, okay? Just do it already.
• And finally, Digg's political bias is now a matter of record. The official bias: out-of-the-mainstream candidates. Besides that, it leans heavily to the left (and Hillary isn't even there yet). By Digg, of course, I mean its users, not the staff of Digg.

And here's what my neighbor did, really:

Not quite as ridiculous as this guy, but still pretty cool. Note that this isn't my rotten neighbor.

I get asked alot "hey where do I get roms?"

More precisedly, "HEY D00D WHAR IZ de ROMz?"

Well, I can't really host most of the commercial ROMs here on my site for fear of legal repercussions, but I can give you a few hints about where else to find them.

To be clear, the legality of ROMs is somewhat gray, but I'm almost 100% certain that it's illegal to have a ROM for a game that you do not already own in some other form. Even if you do own it, I'm not 100% sure it's legal to have it on a ROM. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

That being said, here's some general guidelines on how to find ROMs. First, what the heck is a ROM? Well, to be more precise, when I say ROM, what I really mean is a ROM image, which is just a copy of data from a chip. It could be from an NES game, a Genesis game, or the firmware in a cell phone. A ROM isn't much use unless you are able to "flash" it to some sort of hardware or you have an emulator that can interpret the ROM on some non-native device (like your PC, or a Game King.

Okay, so there's lots of more information about ROMs and emulation out there, I'm not going to go over it all here, but you can check out some of my other blog posts about emulation.

Now, suppose you have an emulator/device/whatever and you want to get some ROMs to play games on it. Where do you get ROMs?

• The "usual" sources. This includes P2P networks like Limewire, Shareaza, etc, and my current favorite, BitTorrent (which is much different than a traditional P2P network). You will need a BitTorrent program like BitComet and a website to download torrent files. Some good ones are The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. Torrents are a good way to get ROMs in quantity, but not so great if you are looking for specific ROMs.
• IRC. Internet Relay Chat has been around for at least 100 years. It's the original chat protocol for the internet, before all you kids and your instant messanger and MySpaces and what not. Yeah it's good for chat, but it's also good for finding specific things. In this case, ROMs.

IRC is a big place. Where to start?

I'd recommend starting at roms-isos.com, the website for a chat room that I have been know to frequent, #roms-isos (IRC chat rooms start with #). You will eventually need an IRC program, of which the most widely used by far is mIRC (and for good reason). Once you have mIRC and have figured out how to connect to the #roms-isos chat room, you can follow this handy guide to using an FServe, which is a "file server" in an IRC chat room.

It's a little tricky and complex, but like I always say, nothing worth doing is ever easy. So, good luck, and stop asking me for ROMs. I won't give you any.