Our new house

Originally uploaded by willgorman.

As of about 10 am yesterday Jolayne and I are now officially homeowners. We closed on our house, a nice little split level in Parkville, MO (How about that, the Parkville community website recommends FireFox. That’s certainly a promising sign) It’s a nice town a few minutes northwest of downtown KCMO. One of the things that we like about it is that it’s not too suburbish and has its own little downtown/main street area with a bunch of local shops and restaurants (including the excellent Piropos) So yeah, we really like the area it’s in. We really like the house itself too (which is, you know, probably a good thing). It was the 10th or 11th house we’d looked at I think and as soon as we walked in we knew that would probably be the one. We’re not actually moving in until the end of January though, the former owners are going to be renting from us until then (that’s right, not only are we homeowners now, we’re landlords. I may have to add that to my resume.) That works out really well because our apartment lease isn’t up until the end of February anyway. The hard part is waiting until then, but on the other hand I’m not looking forward to moving everything (but who does, right?) At least the only thing we really need to do before we move in is some painting (the bedrooms and one bathroom). I’ll probably get some pictures up of the inside once we start moving in.

Comments

Comment by Brett on 2005-12-03 15:41:57 +0000

Nice looking digs, bro. Let me know if you need a hand on moving day…oh, wait, on second thought, don’t.

Comment by Neal on 2005-12-03 19:50:59 +0000

That’s awesome. Congratulations.

Comment by Carrie on 2005-12-04 01:33:09 +0000

Congrats! 😀

It’s always good to see innovative, interesting, or just plain offbeat steps taking in the gaming world, and Cloud seems to be all three of those things. Cloud is a free game that comes from the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab and it certainly looks promising so far. In the game you control a young boy who can fly around and gather clouds. Simple enough. Some levels have you trying to create vast pictures in the sky out of the clouds, while others have you pitting the clouds you’ve gathered up against ominous black smog clouds in an attempt to clear the skies (doing so produces rainstorms and lightning). While the game currently feels a little more like a sandbox environment than a complete game, it seems like they’ve got some good ideas. Flying around and playing with the cloud physics is a lot of fun and while the graphics aren’t anything ground breaking they’re nicely stylized and fit the game well. One of its best features though is the impressive score which is symphonic and lends the perfect atmosphere (ha!) to zipping around in the clouds. This one is definitely worth checking out, and its a work in progress so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

Comments

Comment by Neal on 2005-12-01 13:56:55 +0000

I looked at this for a second the other day and couldn’t figure out how to move the clouds. What am I doing wrong?

Comment by Will on 2005-12-01 21:31:21 +0000

If you hold down the left mouse button so that the camera zooms way out, then the bright colored clouds will stick to you as move (as long as you don’t move too fast). If you hold down Shift while doing this you can capture clouds and store them. Then if you hold down Ctrl and the left mouse button you can release them as you fly.

A new tool I’ve just stumbled across in my Galactus-like quest to consume more and more of the musical universe is Pandora, an offshoot of the ambitious sounding Music Genome Project. They seem to offer a different approach to the typical “recommend-if-you-like” method of comparing artists. Rather than trying to just say “this artist sounds like these other artists”, Pandora tries to go a level deeper and actually examine the fundamental characteristics of individual songs to more accurately help you find music similar to other music that you like. It then creates a station that plays a stream of that music. For example, it lists a song by The Arcade Fire as featuring “basic rock song structures, punk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, and major key tonality” and then finds other songs that match many of those characteristics. That’s a pretty tall order, and while it’s obviously not possible encapsulate every thing that makes up a song in those terms, it does seem to do a decent job of finding similar stuff. Not everything is spot on, but considering what a subjective experience music enjoyment is in the first place that’s only to be expected. All that really matters is that I’ve already found a couple of new things that I like and it never hurts to have another tool for finding new music.

Comments

Comment by Neal on 2005-11-13 21:51:14 +0000

My mind has been boggled!

Comment by Neal on 2005-11-14 11:02:12 +0000

I’ve been listening to pandora most of the morning, and I am hooked.

Also, is it wrong to wish that E-Music had a plan that would give me more than 90 songs per month?

Comment by Will on 2005-11-14 18:28:51 +0000

Not at all. At least I hope not. I often find myself wishing the same thing. Sometimes I give in and buy a booster pack or two, but they’re more expensive than the subscription prices. I find that if I get a lot more than 90 tracks a month though, I don’t really listen to all of them as much as I’d like before the next month’s songs are available. So it works out well as a balance to help me evaluate the stuff I get and figure out what I like and what I don’t before moving on to the next batch of new stuff.

As a recently relapsed World of Warcraft junkie I was surprised and disappointed to find out that apparently Blizzard uses something called a warden client keep its player base honest. A warden client is something that will run along with the game and check out the other processes running on your machine in order to make sure that you’re not running any known 3rd party applications used for cheating. It then sends that information back to Blizzard. Cheating is obviously a problem for any MMORPG and Blizzard definitely needs to find ways to reduce it but that seems a little excessive. As the article points out, that could technically be described as spyware, except for the fact that they granted themselves the right to do so in their EULA. (section 13A) I just knew those years of skimming EULA’s and clicking ok would get me eventually! Now, there are privacy protections in place (it only compares hashes) and apparently the client won’t send any information other than to raise a flag on the account for potential violations of the terms of service. And, apparently there’s something of a precendent for this in that the popular anti-cheating system Punkbuster operates in a similar fashion. I wasn’t aware of that but I don’t really find it comforting. I always thought anti-cheat systems just verified the integrity of the games executable files and resources, not actively scanned the state of your system. I’m fine with the former but the latter just creeps me out. At any rate, I think it’s kind of pointless since the determined cheaters and hackers will eventually find a way around it and sure enough they already have. So, what to do? I’m obviously not going to stop playing WoW because 1.) Blizzard seems to be a fairly non-evil entity and I trust them to a limited degree and 2.) WoW is the sweet sweet crack and I’m only taking the time for all of this exposition because I can’t currently sign in. I don’t like the idea of warden clients at all. However, that I agreed to it without knowing is worse. The fact that some lesser known games company could just as easily slip something like that (or even more expansive) into their EULA and run whatever else they wanted to along with their game is just disturbing. There’s got to be a better solution to shrink wrap software licenses than 20 pages of firstborn-signing-away EULAs that you usually can’t even read (and by read I mean skip over) until you’ve already run an executable.

Comments

Comment by Carrie on 2005-10-19 22:59:35 +0000

A completely un-related comment: w00t Sufjan Stevens!

Saw his name on your recent tracks list and had to say ‘w00t’.

Comment by Neal on 2005-10-19 23:06:42 +0000

Rock | Blizzard | Hard Place

I really feel for Blizzard on this issue – it’s really a no-win situation. Should they give all their customers the full pat-down before letting them buy their product? You know this is going to escalate as cheating packages start to use root-kit-like functionality to “hide from the warden”. The fact is that I have physical access to my computer – I can install anything I want on it. I can tell WoW that I’m running Windows, while I’m really running Linux (that works by the way, but performance is impacted). I can just take over Windows API calls and lie to WoW without replacing the whole system. Blizzard is fighting an impossible battle against cheaters. This relatively benign spying is only the first shot fired in what will be a long battle.

I do hate EULAs, of course. They should have a “cliff notes” version that we could actually read. Maybe something like “don’t cheat – you’ll get booted, we reserve the right to spy on you a little, there’s going to be some server downtime – deal with it, click here for more info”.

Comment by Phil on 2005-10-19 23:59:25 +0000

Will, I think I’ve finally figured out why we love this game so much. Remember Ancient Anguish? WoW is almost exactly like that in format, but it has GRAPHICS! W00t!

Comment by Dave on 2005-10-20 18:05:25 +0000

Someone else mentioned this the other day and I fired up my Mac WoW client with a Terminal window and top to see if there was a similar program running alongside the Mac version. There doesn’t seem to be; at least if there is, it doesn’t look like the Windows warden.

Brian Ritchie’s pick!

Originally uploaded by willgorman.

Tonight Jolayne and I went to see the Violent Femmes play at the Madrid Theatre as part of the 25th anniversary celebration for The Pitch, KC’s local alt-weekly paper. We showed up pretty early, well before the doors opened, hoping to get a good seat in the Madrid’s awesome balcony. Due to getting there just as they were starting a second line for entry we managed to be one of the first people in. However, they had the balcony blocked off for more important people than us apparently and so we headed on to the main floor. That ended up being the best thing that could have happened though, as we were able to grab a spot right in front of the stage. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a show from up close, as these days we tend to try to find places to get a good view of shows while being able to sit down. It’s definitely more comfortable that way, but not always as engaging and this was definitely a good show to be front and center for. Watching the show it was hard to believe that the Femmes have been around for almost 25 years themselves because they still put on such an energetic show. We were standing just a few feet from Brian Ritchie and got to witness up close some bass solos that came dangerously close to being face-melting. Victor DeLorenzo is likely the most animated drummer you’ll ever see, opting to stand (and jump and flail) rather than sit as he attacks his minimalist drum kit. And of course there’s Gordon Gano’s instantly recognizable voice. As they were finishing the last song of their encore (“Kiss Off”), Brian threw his pick right at us. Actually there’s some debate about that and Jolayne’s probably right when she says that, technically, he tossed it to her. However, I immediately reached out to grab it as well and with our combined fumbling we almost lost it. Fortunately, and in spite of our efforts, it came to rest on Jolayne’s shoulder. So yeah, with an awesome show and a cool souvenir to boot it was was definitely a memorable evening.

It’s been good weekend for food. Last night Jolayne and I went to the American Royal BBQ over at the Kemper Arena. The American Royal itself is an annual month long rodeo/livestock event in Kansas City, but its first weekend is always a barbeque competition. We’d never been before, but this is only the second year they’ve had it set up to allow you to buy from the competitors. However, we were a little disappointed because we thought there would be a lot more sampling going on. We ended up not finding that many different places selling stuff and everything was generally pretty expensive. Some of the stuff we tried was pretty good, but it just wasn’t the BBQ paradise I had been expecting. We did get to see a nice fireworks show though.

Today was much more satisfying. We went to the Kansas City Chocolate Festival at Union Station. It took us about 20 minutes of waiting in line just to get inside and then after that we probably spent a total of an hour of so waiting in line to get to sample the chocolate from the different vendors but it was totally worth it. We got to try 4 different chocolate fountains and sample a bunch of other stuff as well, but we managed to get out of there with only one purchase (a bag of awesome truffles). The one place I wish we could have stopped but didn’t get a chance because the line was so long was the booth for Elbow Chocolates. He makes artisan chocolates that look completely amazing and there was one there made with single malt scotch that I really wanted to try. I think we may end up ordering some of those anyway. Hopefully the chocolate festival will become an annual event, and based on the massive crowd of people there I think there’s a good chance of that.

Bleh.

Originally uploaded by willgorman.

Maybe you’re like me and you find yourself unable to resist trying out the different novelty and seasonal variations of snacks and pop. Maybe if you saw candy corn flavored soda on a store shelf you might think “Hey, that’s worth a try” instead of shaking your head and walking right on by as any sane person would do. If that’s you, let me do you a favor with a word of advice: don’t. This was hands down the worst pop I’ve ever had, and as those that know me are aware, I’m not exactly picky about pop. The first clue after you open the can that something isn’t right is the color. It’s a yellow more strikingly unnatural than Mountain Dew highlighter fluid yellow. I don’t want to say it looks like dark yellow urine, but it doesn’t not look like dark yellow urine. If that’s not enough to dissuade you there, we can move on to the taste. It tastes nothing like candy corn. You might think that’s a good thing as pure liquified candy corn does sound fairly repellent. This is worse. It starts off with a short burst of citrus taste that fades into a kind of syrupy, almost buttery taste. It’s kind of like someone poured melted butter rum lifesavers into a Mountain Dew, and it’s every bit as sickeningly sweet as if that were the case. It’s so sweet that you almost want to brush your teeth after every sip to keep them from falling out. The fact that it turns your teeth yellow certainly doesn’t help matters. In fact, it’s so syrupy that when I poured the remainder of a glass of it into the sink, it left a yellow syrup film on the glass. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish a full 8 oz. can of the vile stuff. Between Jolayne and myself we only drank maybe half a can. The good news is that it comes in just a 4 can pack, but the bad news is that it’s still 3 ¹⁄₂ cans too many. I expected better from Jones Soda really. The only people that I could imagine liking this would be hyperactive 12 year olds but they’d probably drink straight corn syrup anyway. My only hope is that this can serve as a warning to stop someone else from making the same mistake. Don’t let this unspeakable terror claim another victim.

Comments

Comment by Dan on 2005-09-18 09:08:00 +0000

I will give the can design some props though. If you’re a fan of black cherry, keep a look out for Doc Browns Black Cherry Soda (both regular and diet). Mighty tasty.

The recent, across the board, governmental screw up in handling the aftermath of hurricane Katrina has left a wide open opportunity for scathing satire. However, there’s no higher form of nerd satire that making a fake Magic: the Gathering expansion set out of current events. If you’ve ever played MtG (or similar games), you’ll probably find it to be pure genius, otherwise it may be somewhat confusing. There are a lot of awesome subtle bits of humor, like how the Dept of Homeland Security card is powerful, but useless without the Proper Paperwork card and (wait for it) there is no Proper Paperwork card.

You pretty much know there’s no way I’m going to miss this. The Video Games Live concert has a bunch of new tour dates announced and it seems that they’re playing in Kansas City at the Midland Theatre on November 9th. At least I hope that’s right, because it’s not listed on Ticketmaster or on Midland’s site itself yet. While I’d probably rather see the orchestral performance of music from Final Fantasy I’m certainly not going to pass on the opportunity to enjoy a fine evening of geekery under the guise of a legitimate fine arts event. I mean, a symphony’s a symphony right?

Comments

Comment by Carrie on 2005-09-15 00:14:49 +0000

We’re so going to the Columbus show on November 13th.

w00t!

Comment by Neal on 2005-09-15 10:23:12 +0000

Carrie, did you get your tickets yet? Mind if I tag along?

Comment by Tobin on 2005-09-17 19:28:21 +0000

Oh man, I hadn’t heard about this yet. I probably wouldn’t know most of the music… but there’s some I’d love to hear. I may end up having to go to the Columbus show as well. Thanks a lot, Will.

Comment by Will on 2005-09-17 19:34:00 +0000

Well this is just great. Now everyone’s going to the Columbus show without me. Come on guys, why don’t you come to the KC show? Please?

I don’t know whether to be amazed or to think he’s totally insane but there’s a guy that’s blogging from his company’s data center in the business district of New Orleans in the wake of the massive hurricane that left most of the city flooded. They’ve even got what is probably the only webcam in New Orleans set up, and a bunch of pictures of the aftermath of the hurricane. The really crazy thing is that he sounds like they’re planning on being there for the long haul, which is some serious commitment to network uptime I guess. I hope they’ve got plenty of fuel for their generator. Between the flooding, the lack of basic services, and the looting I think keeping the network up would be the last thing on my mind but I guess that’s why I’m a software developer and not a network administrator.

Comments

Comment by Carrie on 2005-08-31 20:08:24 +0000

Those guys are amazing. I can’t belive they’ve survived this long.