Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2005 > October
October 2005
Everquest: Finding a cell phone
I’m getting a new cell phone.
My Sprint clamshell phone, which seemed so edge-of-chic three years ago, now is a scuffed, scratched-up, barely-working mess. The little shoulder with the antenna broke off and it’s been super-glued back several times.
When I bought the phone, I loved taking it out to make calls because it looked like I was holding an artifact from the future. Now, when I take it out, I try to duck into a bathroom or cup the diminutive device with my hand so I don’t show people my scarred and ugly mobile handset. Sometimes I’ll open my phone to make a call and a ringtone will play that cries, “I’m hideous! Look away, look away!”
My house in New Braunfels has terrible cell service. Though my phone is battered, it’s not li’l Samsung A500’s fault. My wife and dad, also on Sprint, have the same problems in our home, which seems to sit on some sort of Micmac Cell Phone Coverage Burial Ground.
I think the best solution is to switch to another carrier, and as such, I’ve begun my search. Oscar, who sits next to me at work, suggested I try Lower Your Bills.com, a truly excellent site that has great deals on everything from mortgages to satellite TV. Their cell phone section is juicy, yet long-lasting in taste. I found a good deal on a Cingular Razr phone (in black + headset!) for free after rebates with a $39-a-month plan. Downside? It requires a two-year contract.
So as soon as I borrow a phone from somebody and test out Cingular service in my house, I’ll let you know if I jump on the deal.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Phones, Shopping
Filthy digital Zombies!
This one goes out to Sarah, who shares my love for the fetid undead.
Maybe it’s not love, exactly (does loving the undead constitute unrequited necro-fascination (parenthetical within a parenthetical: I’m not going anywhere near the word “necrophilia” here. Well, except for that I just did) or is it just the opposite?).
Nevertheless, we have great affection for those who are not dead and seek the brains. If you’re a videogame player, and you share this predilection, you’re in luck. Not one, but two zombie games are in our midst.
“Land of the Dead — Road to Fiddler’s Green,” based on the George A. Romero movie, is out now and I know very little about it except that it’s a movie-to-game adaptation, which usually means it’s undead in a whole other way. One other note: When your game is called “Land of the Dead,” do you really need to add “Road to Fiddler’s Green?” You add that, you might as well be talking about a “Wallace and Gromit” title.
More promising is “Stubbs the Zombie,” published by Austin’s own Aspyr games (we’re thinking that name’s not a coincidence). This game is getting pretty great reviews and I’m looking forward to spending some quality time raising a zombie horde of my own. That’s what weekends are for.
If you’re into portable limb-losing, you could hang in there for “Infected” which involves global viruses of the sort that turn mankind into the shambling brutes.
Keep it up, game developers. Bring ‘em on. More braaaaiiiinnnss!!!
Permalink | | Categories: Videogames
March of the tech wins
I’ve been a bit remiss on keeping my geek ramblings up to date. I blame a crush of work activity, an all-day barbecue and late-night cake baking, plus the fall TV season. It does shame me to admit as much. I’d much rather say that I was building a water-cooling solution on my PC so that I could overclock my processor far past the heating limits that humans dare, or that I was busy with “Quake IV” (I haven’t seen “Quake IV” — it might be made out of maple syrup, and I wouldn’t know it), but none of that would be true.
This blogging time-lag means I missed commenting on last week’s Apple announcement about its new video iPods. My brother and I, who both have the 4G iPods surgically attached to our hands most hours of the day, suddenly want the foul things removed. Who wants this thing that only plays music? With a monochrome screen? Are we not far descended from apes? (Or, er, an Intelligent Designer?) If you tempt us with on-the-go episodes of “Lost” will we not pine?
For users who’ve been downloading whole seasons of “The Simpsons” via BitTorrent, the iTunes video movement presents a bit of an ethical dilemma. Continue downloading stuff in legally questionable ways, or plunk down $2 per program? (At 22 episodes per season, that’ll cost you as much as the DVD set for most TV shows, without benefit of extras of a video format you can play on your big-screen TV with any degree of quality.)
Right now, the TV offerings on the iTunes store are slim (“That’s So Raven,” anyone?), but make no mistake. This announcement is huge and if other networks hop on board, it will change the TV industry as surely as Apple has transformed the landscape of music.
As most techheads have pointed out, there are a few other problems: apart from the tiny screen, there is the matter of converting videos to the iPod format, something a lot of casual users won’t have the patience to do. Battery life for playing videos is significantly shorter than for playing music (we’re talking 2-3 hours). And the iPod Video apparently ditches the FireWire connection, which I’m not alone in preferring to USB But that’s pretty nitpicky.
The other interesting tech news this week is the dust-up between the videogame comic strip Penny Arcade and one-man anti-videogame crusade Jack Thompson. What started as an exchange of e-mails and phone calls has exploded spectacularly into threats of lawsuits, a very funny strip (warning: profanity), $10,000 charitable donations, the distancing from Thompson of a major game violence opponent and a call for police to arrest the hooligans who would dare to donate in someone else’s name.
It was one thing when Thompson was crusading against specific games and instances of violence, but Thompson has shifted his rhetoric to belittle gamers in general, in so many words: “To be fair, though, you can’t expect a bunch of gamers to understand the satire if they think that Jonathon Swift, the author of ‘A Modest Proposal,’ is the name of a new Nike running shoe…”
Nice spelling on Jonathan Swift, Jack.
I’d say that the very public unraveling of Thompson and all the free press Penny Arcade is getting for this stance against him is… well, for us illiterate videogame-playing thugs, positively Swiftian.
Permalink | | Categories: Gadgets, Internet, TV, Videogames
DVD notes
Just one facet of the genius behind Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park” and “Team America” is that as well as they know how to push the boundaries of taste, humor and crude animation on television, they are wisely restrained on the DVD sets of “South Park.”
The co-creators do “Mini-commentaries” on each episode of the series, sticking around only for the first four to six minutes to remember choice bits from a particular show or just goof on the origin of the idea for a last-minute save — many “South Park”s are completed the same day they air on Comedy Central.
Parker and Stone say that anything longer than short commentaries would be boring for even fans of the show and they stick to their guns; when they realize they’re rambling on, they stop short and move on to the next one.
If the handsome six volumes do not best “The Simpsons” in longevity, they at least make the argument that “South Park” rivals Groening and Co.’s show for sheer laughs and brilliance; even if many fans gave up on “South Park” soon after the shock value wore off.
Some choice bits from the just-released “South Park — The Complete Sixth Season”:
- With an episode railing on George Lucas, the “South Park” guys may have saved Indiana Jones. According to Parker and Stone, Stephen Spielberg sent them a note about “Free Hat” an episode in which the cartoon Spielberg and Lucas decide to remake parts of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with new special effects, a la “Star Wars.” Sometime after the episode aired, Spielberg shelves real-life plans to to do the same.
- “City Wok” was based on a real Chinese restaurant owner that Parker and Stone once called for take-out.
- “Simpsons Already Did It,” an ode to all the great jokes that Parker and Stone come up with only to find out later have already been done on “The Simpsons” ended up becoming a victim of its own title when a secondary plotline in the show did end up matching something “The Simpsons” had done in a “Treehouse of Horror” episode. In the spirit of the episode, Parker and Stone, who claim they’ve only seen a handful of “Simpsons” episodes because of their busy schedules, left it in.
- Butters is still one of Parker’s and Stone’s favorite characters and Season Six was when the character’s voice and mannerisms crystallized in “Professor Chaos.”
- Parker and Stone still firmly believe that “Crossing Over” host John Edward lives up to his billing in the episode about him they called “The Biggest Douche in the Universe.”
- Parker and Stone joke that they should have made a “Terrance and Phillip” movie instead of “Team America.”
- In “Red Sleigh Down,” Parker and Stone decided to kill off Jesus as a character on the show, but brought back Kenny, after a season of placing surrogate characters in his place.
- Parker says he’s officially over “Star Wars.”
- The creation of tunnel-dwelling Lemmiwinks from “The Death Camp of Tolerance” is something Parker and Stone are very proud of, but they had to convince their animators that it wasn’t an elaborate prank that they never intended to put on the air. Nobody else thought it was funny.
- Parker and Stone still start on some episodes the Thursday before air and finish them on Tuesday or Wednesday, mere hours before the show is nationally broadcast. For “Asspen,” the boys didn’t get clearance to use A-Ha’s song “Take on Me” until the day the episode aired.
Permalink | | Categories: Movies & DVDs, TV
Bigger ‘n bigger
More thoughts on Google: The Great Bloatening from The Associated Press.
