Viva Piñata；実績をすべてゲットした

Well, the game owned me from October to today, apparently an even two months where I didn't play anything else. And for the first time, I've bagged all 1000 Achievement points in a title. To be fair, the Achievements were grotesquely easy if you use GameFAQs.com - but without GameFAQs.com, the game is more-or-less unplayable. I'm done with it now, except for helping my daughter manage her new garden. She plays it like Animal Crossing - she just likes fiddling around with the plants and arranging things. In that sense, it's a good game that can be played in any number of ways.

XBL fall update!

Wow! The new fall update for the 360 is out, and I downloaded it mas pronto. I am stupidly happy to have a Psychonauts dashboard theme gracing my 360, and new gamerpic to boot, thanks to the launch of the Xbox 1 downloadable titles. I've also confirmed that the console will play Divx/Xvid, which is pretty darned neat. However, I'm MOST excited that the update appears to have adjusted "black levels" in the Display profile. Previously my TV was getting about a 70-80% grey instead of black from 360 output; which is to say "that's darned bright for 'black.'" Now I'm seeing a much richer black, and switching between "standard," "intermediate," and "extended" actually shows a clear difference in the black level.

oh, noes!

The Golden Compass, one of my favorite books. Sadly, the movie adaptation is currently at 38% at Rotten Tomatoes.

vista is its own kill-switch

Service Pack 1 Will Turn Off Vista's 'Kill Switch' | Compiler from Wired.com:

( partial article text )

Perhaps the strangest part is that, in spite of the fact the Microsoft is doing away with the kill switch, Sievert claims that it’s been a huge success — Vista piracy is roughly half that of XP.

It is worth noting that correspondence does not imply causation. It's highly likely that Vista piracy is down because anybody who knows enough about computers to install an OS off a P2P'd ROM wants anything to do with Vista.

56 geeks poster complete

56 geeks poster complete, originally uploaded by ExtraLife.

Thanks, cartoon_goblin

Alpha Dog

I just finished watching Alpha Dog. Good god, what a heart-wrenching film. The parties and the dialog and the tone of the just-post-high-school crowd shown feels very genuine. Apparently it is based on a true story. I'm never letting my kids outside again.

I was a really straightlaced kid, and was never approached about doing drugs, and I tended to run in entirely different circles than the kids who were into them. Growing up in southern California, there was a lot of rumor that there were drugs galore going around, but it was on a different plane than I was aware of. That said, the pace, the attitude and the natural, naive, and stupidity-of-youth way that things spiral out of control feels a lot like some of the bigger (and dumber) confrontations I'd been in around that stage. I feel lucky to have survived, just by not running into anyone more crazy or testosterone poisoned than I was.