Hoshnasi

This here is Jason Ricci



I’m really digging his sound and harmonica work. Also, he provides free instruction on harmonica to people on YouTube. However if you have ever played harmonica you know its mostly about feel and ideas. You can point to a key on a piano, or a cord on the guitar for instruction, not so much for harmonica.. Its a pretty difficult instrument to truly master.

Rock on Jason.

Move remakes, as a movie maker its your ticket to a fat paycheck. I believe its easier to make a remake then come up with a new intellectual property (IP). However, there is a breaking point here. Think of a break-even chart.

In the middle of the chart there is a point, the break-even point. Everything to the upper right is profit. Lower left, a loss. In a standard movie, were the IP is new and purchased from a writer or author the break-even point is higher. However, in a movie remake you just need the rights to the old IP. In my mind (which is completely biased and I have no movie making experience) buying an old ip is a cost savings its cheaper then starting fresh. In some cases, I would say that for example The rumored “Red Dawn” remake. The IP was probably purchased from a $5.00 bin. Thats not to say the movie isn’t good or that fans don’t have a love for it. Its just, well, dated and I assume hard to adapt. Can the Russians really be the bad guy again?

Pretend you’re the movie maker (or team of people all rolled into one). You have your IP, and a bunch of people to get this movie in the can. Just at the starting point alone the remake starts off cheaper and already has the execs seeing dollar signs and prospects of pulling all the original fans back to the movies to see Red Dawn again. Being the greedy people most of us are we set the break-even point down to pull as much profit as possible. Instead of leaving the break-even point at the normal spot for a new IP. This leads to fans getting royally pissed off. For two reasons. One, you can’t just re-shoot the first movie, so you need to have new content. Which means, money spent adapting the story, creating a script. You know movie making stuff. In the end you have to do all the same work and the original IP just gives you name recognition and marketing funds saved. The second thing that pisses fans off is pandering and “WTF is he thinking”.

These are one point because they both come from the producer or director, who climbs way up in his butt to either appeal to fans primal needs of fan service without actually expanding on the characters, or take the story to who-knows land that has no basis on the previous story. Making shit up is the most egregious of all my complaints and often leads to movies tanking.

On my list of movies I’m scared of, that may or may not be remakes, but involve already established IPs are:

(ranked from movies I care lest about to most)

1. X-men Origins: Wolverine.
   • Why it scares me: Wolverine has a well developed back-story. By putting “Origins” in the title you better pick a good established track and STAY on it!
2. G.I. Joe.
   • Why it scares me: Taking my childhood cartoons and remaking them scares me enough, but making it live action makes me loopy -clutching on my blankie. Not to mention the original animated movie features my favorite movie intro of all-time. That intro gets me pumped!
3. Red Dawn.
   • Why is scares me: Still in its infancy, which is fine. However my sirens are already buzzing. For all the points listed above it makes my list. My main gripe, “Who the hell is going to attack the US this time”? Not only that, but if it gets all politico, I’m going to snap. Just give me a straight up good 80’s remake of this story based on today. Don’t give me some grey-area diretor rant on war.
4. Watchmen.
   • Why it scares me: Read the book, then you will quiver with fear.  There are nuances to this story that I don’t want to be lost.  One is that it isn’t cool.  The costumes are not suppose to be X-Men movie shinny.  Things are grittier and more depressing.  Another fear, don’t mess with Rorschach.  His journal entries and thoughts are pretty important to me.  Finally, the ending is not Hollywood.  If the ending is change, I fear for nerd-based riots throughout the country.

Today I found that the coffee pot was again down to about one tablespoon of coffee.  I know that no one in my office reads my blog, but seriously?  Can we get some personal responsibility?  I’m so tired of people doing this.  This morning literally pushed me over the edge into calling people out.  The next time I see questionable coffee antics I’m going have to regulate.

Coffee is the mental lubricant that keeps sleep and consciousness from seizing up together in the morning. Coffee at my office is consumed in mass quantities, which is all fine and good when the production is constantly ramped up (at least until 12:00pm, when most put down the mug).

It is not uncommon that in a typical week one day I enter the kitchen to find the Starbucks carafe empty. Normally this does not bug me, however this morning. The Startbucks, Decaf and Hawaiian blend were all empty or containing about one table spoon of delicious coffee. This made me quite mad, instead of one jerk, there were three jerks and they tag-teamed the hell out of my morning. Had the Starbucks been empty I would of drank the Hawaiian, and made a fresh pot of either. However, they made me fell bad for the decaf people. So those three jerks got me not only looking out for my preservation and mental faculties. They had me scared about the constitution of others in the office!

Angry, I made a new pot and went back to my desk to think up a simple list that we should all follow if we are nice cube-dwellers.

1. Always make a fresh pot if you kill the pot. By kill I mean, you can no longer get a full cup out. Just accept it, and make a new batch. Most if not all machines I know have a space in the carafe for about half a cup. Just leave whats in there and make a fresh batch.
   1. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP! Following step one is more than enough to get you by, the remaining tips are for people who truly care about their coffee drinking teammates!
2. If the coffee maker has multiple warmers and there is only one pot warming, make a pot of something different. I drink Starbucks House Blend, but I know we have a ton of Hawaiian and Hazelnut drinkers in the office. Actually I think the Starbuck drinkers are in the minority at my office. Either way, its nice to have at least two types of coffee available.
   1. Step 2, is even more important if you drink inferior coffee that comes pre-flavored. I’m still a nice guy, but you have to accept that any coffee that has to come covered in flavor is like betting on a three legged horse at the track. Its going to loose to better horses (coffee).
3. I’m just throwing this in there as a career builder, but if you happen to make it to the pot at the same time or before a co-worker, or boss. Pour them the last cup. Not only will it make you look like a team-player and a good person. When you make the fresh pot you can sneak the first and best cup off the top.
4. Its ok to cup fill off the machine, when you make a new pot. What I mean here is, when I walk up and my brew is empty I put my mug under the machine and make a new batch. I get an immediate cup and when its close to full I swap the pot over pulling out my mug Indian Jones style. When people see me do this I exclaim “Someone left the pot empty, just trying not to loose too much time on this.”
5. If a pot is brewing, that you did not make and there are people waiting, DO NOT machine fill your mug. We had a manager walk up, swap the carafe for his mug when it was filling exclaim “sorry, we have work to do.” then proceeded to fill up the mugs of two of his yes-men. Small events in the workplace stick in peoples minds like glue. Pulling jackassery like this over something as little as a minute of your time and a cup of coffee makes people think you’ll stop at nothing to climb over anyone to get what you want. A bad trait in an office worker.
6. Last tip, if you think coffee time is about up for the day (for my office anywhere around 11:00 to 12:00 things start slowing down) and you see a carafe is teetering on about one cup left. Turn the warmers off. This is a small thing but saves alot of pissed off people. Coffee warmers can scorch the coffee if it sits too long. In some cases we have had carafes shatter from the boiling coffee and heat. Its better to have a lukewarm cup of coffee then one with hunks of glass in it, or none at all.

Well there you have it. A simple list, that if you follow won’t take alot of time, makes you look like a coffee superhero and keep the wheels churning in the office.

Last tip, if you have coffee at home that you think the team might like, grind up a batch and bring it in to share. Put a little label on a carafe or a note letting them know what it is and where they can buy it. Might I recommend a batch of Kopi Luwak?

Anyone have any good coffee stories from the workplace?

Hang on to your butts!

This weekend I find myself in Sacramento.  Which is great because I get to see my Grandmother and Granfather.  I also get to hang out with a cousin and uncle I rarely see.

 The problem is I am packing light, just my iPhone.  The other problem is the computer time I get is after many have gone to bed. 

 Naturally I started to think of mobloging for the iPhone (nevermind there is no wifi).  Still the thought has entered my mind about being able to access my Wordpress blog and add entries with pictures taken from the iPhone or from the library.  This is easy enough if I had a 3g iPhone or 2.0 software, Wordpress has an app.  More details on this app are available here.

However, I’m ghetto with my first gen iPhone and 1.1.4 running on T-Mobile.  So, I’m off to find some new means to accomplish mobile blogging.  Initial google searches have been fruit-less.  Next step I’m going to go off the beaten installer update path and find some of those fringe apps.  Scary things that many iPhone users avoid.  Mainly because they suck.

 With me luck, I’ll post my findings.

I was playing around with different coats of green on the skin.  The chest is a different blend then the head and neck.  I used a base of Dark Angels green.  Then brought up a layer of Serpentine Shadow.  From there I played around with mixing Serpentine.  I’m much happier with the head area, but in the end I’m going to stick to the RMS paint trio from Serpentine to Scaly Highlight.

I realized after I started this that I finished the eyes, but did snap a shot.  I’ll get it in the next update.

Playing through the Too Human demo a few times made me yearn for a game on Xbox 360 that was more fantasy RPG.  However, I just don’t think thats ever been made on the 360.   So now, I’m looking at the achievements for Oblivion.  I never played Oblivion on the Xbox.  I had it on the PC and I didn’t like it that much, bad balancing and menu design made the game feel really console like.  Which I don’t think will bother me on the Xbox, but killed it for me on the PC.

Too Human and the escapades of Silicon Knights president Dennis Dyack have become infamous. Its hard for any enthusiast to not have an opinion about one or the other -regardless of Dennis’ rants on how anyone should NOT do so. Too Human for those do not know has been in development for nine years and due to a very poor 2007 E3 demo has received almost an endless paddling session from many enthusiasts on different game blogs/forums. At the time I wouldn’t have disagreed. The game looked like ass. However now, with a new demo out. I decided to keep an open mind and give it a whirl.

First and foremost, I treated this game like I treat all demos -with kid gloves. There is no manual, so if its complicated I expect to deal with a learning curve. In Too Humans case, I wasn’t disappointed, it was indeed complicated. While melee combat wasn’t difficult to get in terms of the smacky-smack simple stuff. The more rewarding air juggling and troll mounting took a little bit longer to grasp; there are good reasons though for figuring these advanced combat moves out. First, air juggling breaks enemy shields and troll mounting gets you out of the range of the very strong troll hammer smash, which for all intensive purposes has one of the biggest area effects I have seen on a monster in a long time.

As many already know, attacking both melee and ranged in Too Human requires the use of the right analog stick, which is normally the camera control on other games. For the haters this is the biggest gripe of the demo/game. It was for me as well on my first play through, The lack of camera control was hard to grasp initially, vaguely similar to getting used to GTA 4. However again, I had to learn that I needed to be more proactive on either snapping the camera to my back, or using the D-pad to go into a zoomed out Diablo-esqe camera view. Although I do still have a camera gripe. The setting of this game is massive and beautiful. Interior passages which look like an ancient tomb are amazing. Not having the ability to flick the analog stick around and feel like I’m there on the ground, verses being pulled along with a fixed view floating in a balloon takes away from the immersion. I know many can say “There is a free look mode!”, but all I can say is I hate free-look and don’t usually remember how to do it when needed. I’ll go a step further and say a majority of gamers would agree with me.

At this point I’m sounding like I’ve made alot of consolations for the demo and to be honest I have. I gave the demo an honest and FULL play through and while I have my complaints, like the game taking it self to seriously and my natural human opinion about Dyack and his up-his-own-ass rants on 1UP Yours podcast in regards to forum attacks to his game and his personal retaliation (which are not defendable in my mind). I still like the game and will be buying when it comes out and here is why.

Eighty percent of my gaming is social, either Team Fortress, Halo, COD4, Diablo or hell Uno and Catan. I like playing with people. I also like a good story driven RPG. I think Too Human takes a little bit from most of the aforementioned games. A good thing here is it takes me back to working with friends like in Diablo. Making a party and sharing loot to bolster effects and guarantee success is a huge plus to me. With gobs and gobs of items to loot in the demo I can only imagine customization of your character will be massive. Of course you will have to make sure you turn OFF the auto salvage feature, something I had set to ALL on the first demo run.

Too Human is going to be too much for some of you who have an opinion that they can’t get around. Either that “Its not nine years worth of game.” or “The camera is too much to deal with.” or that you just don’t want Dyack to win his NeoGaf bet (or fill his wallet). Still I’d recommend everyone check out the demo. If you like the game in the first play through I’d rank its a buy, even with some frustration on the controls. If you like the idea of the game co-oping on Live then its also a buy. If you can’t handle the camera even in Diablo mode (as I call it) stay away.

Heres my list of pros and cons:

Pro:

• LOOT LOOT LOOT, I’m looking forward to building a monster commando personally
• Shared skills and competent class system make me look forward to Co-op
• Skills trees that pull in the spider and war cry add versatility to classes. The three classes I ran through (Champion, Commando and Defender) seemed well thought-out and balanced
• Combat is fun, both up close and away once you get the hang of the Advanced Combat system. My big “Ah-ha” moment came when playing the Commando. Holding right trigger performs auto fire, however if you don’t use the right stick to pick a new target you’ll just be spraying bullets into a dead corpse after too long. However a flick to the right or left causes your character to turn ninety degrees. What you have to do is flick up or down, that selects the next adjacent target. For the commando, this meant alot more death to goblin hordes
• The demo both in the tomb and the Fey world were picturesque. I didn’t miss much when in Diablo camera mode, I just had to figure out I needed to be there!

Cons:

• The menu system is poorly laid out. Hitting start for the menu takes you into a rotating dial type thing where Skills and Equipment -the most used branches for me are spaced at opposite ends. Leaving you to scroll back and forth when you need to access both.
• The menu sounds are ear piercing. My Fiance was doing work at home at her desk and couldn’t stand the wretched noise as I went from the root menu to the Equipment branch.
• Shield breaking for the range classes seemed tough, I don’t think I ever figured it out aside from letting the mob attack me, launch it into the air with my sword then air juggle it with my riffle. It seemed like I was missing another way to do it
• How the hell do I use the War Cry? I just couldn’t get it to work. I had the skill points and what seemed like a full combo meter, but no amount of spamming X on the Commando made him do a thing. The game did notify of my failure by giving me another horrible tone with every press

Lessons learned:

Need to work on better layer colors. I have alot of uncompleted sets. Basically what I mean is I’m lacking three or four colors that flow from dark to light with similar shades and tones. I have a TON of whacky off set colors I use for accenting. Mainly because my big box O’ paint went missing.

Also, white is nice. But needs to be done a bit more sparingly.

The last step I did was the base, which sadly was after I realized my failings in blending and layering. So the base is the best part or of mini in my mind.

BTW: this is Reaper model 02408 if you want to buy it.

What do you think?