Big Fat Ostrich

So my Sony Ericsson W380 has been acting up lately. It’s really a great phone with few problems, but recently the battery started discharging when I shut the phone off!

What happens: After you turn off the phone, it starts to heat up. When you turn the phone back on, the battery is drained.

Well, that pretty much sucks monster moose cocks. It really is too bad that our technological crap is built to last for as long as it took me to make that avocado/cheese/tomato/zucchini sandwich that I just ate (which was awesome, thank you very much).

So, I grudgingly called my cell phone people. Grudgingly because, you know what it’s like: Call, wait, be on hold, talk to someone who may or may not know what they’re talking about. I got lucky this time though. I got through quickly and the customer service agent person forwarded my call to Sony Ericsson since they don’t deal with the W380 anymore. Nice.

Anyway, long story short, the guy at Sony Ericsson actually helped me out (although he had the personality of someone who just had a chloroformed rag shoved in his face). I followed his instructions carefully:

• Hold the power off button while simultaneously taking out the battery.
• Keep holding the power button for 20 seconds
• Finally, put the battery back in and power on your phone.
• Stir
• Serves one

And that’s it. My W380 hasn’t turned into a worthless brick yet, but we’ll see how it goes in the next few weeks.

And no, I am not getting an iPhone, so stop asking me already! I mean it. Seriously, now go away.

Tonight’s Household Deathmatch Double extreme: Human vs Plum. Who will emerge victorious in this challenge to satiate hunger and/or survive?

The Matchup:

Attributes

Weaknesses

The Battle
The Human knows where to find The Plum: in the fridge. The Plum is a sitting duck. The Human lands a right and grabs The Plum. The Plum is defenseless as The Human guides it towards it’s incisors! It tries to take a bite but the skin it tough. The Plum resists, but gives in to The Humans second attempt. Surprise attack! The Plum drips all over the humans hands! How disgusting! The human is surprised but thinks quickly and grabs a towel and rotates the plum while coming in for another attack! Combo move! The Human repeats without mercy until The Plum is decimated, its pit discarded in the trash.

The Outcome
No contest. The Plum was eaten by The Human and never landed one punch. Not one!

Match Time
43 seconds

“Where the fuck is Dan?!” is what every one of you has been asking for the past weeks. Well, Dan’s been playing video games! And totally slacking on that Solaris 10 howto. It won’t be ready this week, I can tell you that! What is ready this week though is a quick overview of my latest video gaming discoveries.

Let’s start with the iPhone stuff.

iPhone OS 3.0: It’s not gaming. It’s not very exciting either. Without reading the release notes, the 3 things I noticed were the addition of “Voice Memos”, an application that lets you record… voice memos. There’s also copying and pasting now, but I never seem to need it. Finally, there’s a cool “Search iPhone” thingy based on Spotlight. That one’s very handy. On the performance front, I noticed some games running more smoothly while others crash more, probably because they didn’t get their 3.0 compatibility update. In conclusion, the iPhone is still freaking awesome, but not MORE awesome.

Fart Piano: I just had to write about that one. It’s a piano. It makes fart noises.

The Moron Test: I really enjoy a good game of Moron Test while commuting to and from work. It’s a bunch of little tests to see if you’re paying attention.

Zenonia: Little RPG with kinda real time combat. Let’s start with the bad: Very cheesy and the graphics are blurry like when you don’t set your display settings to the native resolution of your LCD panel. Other than that, I play the “dude with light armor and 2 daggers” class (“assassin” or something) and the fighting is lots of fun so far. I’m level 18 or so and the story still feels like I’m just at the beginning. Good stuff.

Magnificent Gizmos and Gadgets: Remember “The Incredible Machine”? It’s kinda like that, but light. The game is split between Easy, Medium and Hard puzzles to solve with a bunch of machine parts with which you build gizmos to carry a ball from point A to point B. The physics play an important role and the game let’s you get quite creative. I can spend hours building testing crazy machines that don’t work.

And now, my favorite iPhone game of the summer…

I Dig It: You’re a dude. You drive a caterpillar with a huge fucking drill in the front (and it’s equipped with a jetpack to get back to the surface!). You dig holes in the ground to collect ores and bottle caps and all kinds of crazy shit which you then sell in order to upgrade, refuel and repair your vehicle. The upgrades allow you go dig deeper in the ground and last longer, resist more damage, etc. The graphics and sound are great, the gameplay is very simple yet totally addictive, you collect stuff and you can unlock achievements. I dig love it.

Okay now, Nintendo DS…

Final Fantasy IV: I got nothing more to say. Been playing it for weeks, will probably still be playing it come Christmas. The move to Nintendo 64-quality 3D graphics is a success, the game itself is every bit as awesome as it was before.

Xbox 360. YEAH! I GOT AN XBOX 360!!1 WOOHOO!!! As much as I love my PS3, let me just say, the Xbox people totally nailed the integration with Live, the achievements and the friends list, with the possibility to invite someone to play a game from the root menu, etc. In comparison, the PS3 equivalents still feel awkward and lackluster.

That said, here’s some of the games I been playing…

Fable 2: I can see why some people would find that game a bit too easy and oversimplistic, but what can I say, it totally worked for me. It delivered what I would’ve wanted from Oblivion. An open world in which you can fuck around as much as you want, an exciting fighting system with very spectacular magic effects and satisfying shooting. The auto aiming and no dying just cuts to the fun part in my opinion. I also liked the writing. Very entertaining and the (many) jokes really made me laugh, which doesn’t happen often. I completed the main story in 2 sittings (but the second one, I spent like 13 hours in front of the damn thing), it’s a bit weak near the end but what the hell, I still had TONS of fun. And I’m not done, all the little side quests are a joy to do. I also bought both downloadable “expansions”, Knothole Pack and See the Future, for about 6 bucks each. Konthole adds a new map (Knothole island) which contains a bunch of new quests, new items and offers 3 new achievements worth 100 points. See the Future is a story around cursed items that you can buy from a merchant. It provides new quests, items a new area and the ability to change the breed of your dog! Oh and you also get 13 new achievements worth 250 points. I believe Knothole is usually 8 dollars but I got it on sale. Anyway, if you like open world games but Oblivion and Fallout 3 make you nauseous, this one is really worth looking at.

REZ HD: If you ever played the pen&paper RPG Shadowrun, this is Shadowrun’s matrix. With 3D graphics like we thought the future would look like back in 1991. It’s a shooter with kinda a rhythm game in it. If you play for too long you get transported to a different plane of reality, or maybe you just travel back in time to 1991. I dunno but I’m enjoying it immensely.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2: Do I even need to say anything about this one?

Now, on the Wii… let’s see…

Excite Bots – Trick Racing: Little animal themed transformer type robots that have wheels. It’s like a racing car game, but with mini games in it (bowling pins, a soccer ball that you gotta kick in the net, a clown you gotta throw a pie at, much much more). The goal is to collect stars to get the highest possible rating which unlocks new levels and robots which you can then buy with said stars. The controls are entirely motion based but this time they were done right. It’s what I thought Mario Kart Wii would feel like. Every time I sit down and start playing it, I can’t stop. It’s one of the few must have games on the Wii, period.

PS3…

ZEN Pinball: Go figure, the only game I been playing on my PS3 lately is a fucking pinball. It’s got a bunch of different pinball machines, it’s beautiful and fast paced. It’s pinball.

PC…

I tried Prototype and, even though the fighting and the moving around are exhilarating, I just couldn’t. Those graphics are just so shitty. It’s like City of Heroes but without the excuse of being a 5 year old MMORPG. I’ll give it another shot later when I’m in a better mood.

Okay now the PSP. Oh wait, I don’t have a PSP. THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE A PSP. I’m completely exhausted.

Well folks, I hope there was at least one game in there that caught your attention. Notice I didn’t mention any game prices this time around. It’s a new concept, I call it “fuck everything-ness”.

L4t0rz

July 10th marked what would have been Nikola Tesla‘s 153rd birthday had he lived that long. We figured that a small tribute was in order to the man who many credit as single-handedly bringing us into the modern electric age.

In his lifetime, he held hundreds of different patents for various inventions, many of which are in use today in various incarnations. Typical of the genius he possessed, he was also super mega-eccentric.

Aside from inventing Alternating Current and the Induction Coil, Tesla also proposed a crazy particle beam Death Ray weapon. Essentially, he was the ultimate genius/mad scientist who was often disregarded as a complete crackpot due to his eccentric nature. As such, Tesla died completely destitute even though he had sold his patents.

So Happy Birthday, Tesla! Without you I probably wouldn’t even be typing this less than inspired tribute to you. That’s probably not true, but your inventions certainly helped jump start the electric revolution.

m.

Welcome to another edition of Ostrich News, our semi-regular column featuring stylin’ ostrich related tidbits.

This week’s search turned up a strange, but not too surprising find: A laptop sleeve/slip that’s probably worth more than your laptop. Yes, it’s a laptop slip made out of genuine ostrich leather. It’s priced at Nordstrom for $998.00 (before tax, or course) which is probably what it costs per month just to feed a pet ostrich. Well in that respect, I guess turning your birds into bags makes good economic sense while selling them to people with no economic sense.

It comes in three colors: yellow, light blue, and caution orange, as in “caution, your account is overdrawn”. It’s designed for a 17″ laptop too, so if you’ve got a 19″ laptop, do not rush out and buy this bag! Otherwise, you have the all clear to whip out that credit card and start shopping.

Interesting…I can’t believe I’m reviewing a fashion item. We don’t actually have a fashion category here at BFO, and I don’t think we’ll add one. We’ll just file this one under Ostrich News and try to forget it ever happened.

Personally I think it would have looked better with the feathers still on.

I’m going to break with tradition here and do a short review of a Windows-only application. I know, shocking, huh? Well last month I practically imploded with excitement while installing Songbird (on Ubuntu 9.04) and simultaneously drooled, laughed, and cried as I discovered its features and flexibility. You can read about that momentous occasion here. I’m still a fan, and continue to use Songbird, but the iPod support add-on is still not able to sync with my clunky 3rd generation iPod. I’m waiting it out and still using gtkpod for my syncing, but I’m trying out yet another media player which is supposed to kick-butt in the iPod syncing department. That application is MediaMonkey.

What is it these days with suffixing application names with an animal species? Songbird, Ether Ape, MediaMonkey, and uh…Big Fat Ostrich? Monkeys and apes in particular conjure up images of randomness and disorganization. Let’s see if  that’s the case.

Installation was a breeze but this is Windows after all. I should note that I’m doing this on my Windows XP VBox VM, and my first trial didn’t detect my iPod because I forgot to enable USB support. Call me a n00b if you will, but it happens to the best of us

Take 2.

After enabling USB support on my VM, MediaMonkey can see my iPod, but synching is slow. And I mean really, really, butt slow. It’ll take days to sync just 2000+ songs, but hey, I’m doing this in a virtual machine, so what can you expect?

The overall interface looks like…iTunes! Nothing wrong with that since the layout is a logical tree that we’re all accustomed to in the modern age of computing. But yeah, there’s really not alot to say about MediaMonkey. It’s a media player. It plays music. It’s only available for Windows. Nothing here that blows my mind.

And of course, being a Windows application, you get basic features for free but have to buy the “Gold” version for extra features. There’s an integrated CD burning application, but it only burns at 4x. You can pay for the full version if you want 48x burning. Why not just use Windows Media Player? I suppose it’s because Windows Media Player is hideous, but really, this is about listening, not looking. Here are a list of MediaMonkey’s features in case you’re curious.

I’ll stick to Songbird since it’s open-source and you really can’t beat the features and customizability. Running Ubuntu and using a Windows VM just to use MediaMonkey seems silly.  I might reconsider if they make a version for Jaunty, or at least for Karmic Koala which is coming in the fall.