Cave Story Cosplay

super soldiers
Originally uploaded by quickdrawmcgraw.

Holy crap... Thanks, Flickr!

Program Your Own Mind

Every facet - every department of your mind needs to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.

Technorati Tags: quotes, quote, QotD

Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots For Nov. Vote - washingtonpost.com

Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots

Ehrlich said that, if necessary, he would call a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to change the law to allow paper ballots. But Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) dismissed the idea of a special session, saying elections officials should focus instead on fixing the current system.

"We paid millions. These are state-of-the-art machines," said Miller, who called Ehrlich's announcement a political ploy to energize his Republican supporters.

Political ploy? Maybe. Ehrlich is certainly enough of a douschebag to do just such a thing. But regardless, we of the blogs have known for a while that Diebold machines are crap. They are incredibly easy to hack -- you can watch a video of how it's done on Youtube. They are unverifiable. They are unsafe, and undemocratic.

Federal elections in Canada use paper ballots. We should, too.

Technorati tags: maryland, politics, diebold

Destructoid � Blog Archive � Live at the NYC Wii event - Video Games PC Games PlayStation 3 GameCube PSP DS GBA PS2 PS2 Xbox 360 PlayStation 2

Destructoid Blog Archive Live at the NYC Wii event - Video Games PC Games PlayStation 3 GameCube PSP DS GBA PS2 PS2 Xbox 360 PlayStation 2:

Wii on sale Nov. 19. Worldwide debut is here in Americas. The same place they debuted DS. Available across 25,000 points of distribution. Price will be $249.99. One price, one configuration, one color — white.

4 million Wii consoles shipped worldwide during 43 days between launch and Dec. 31. America gets the largest share. Flow will be continuous and even.

Inside box, get everything you need. One Wii remote and one nunchuck. One central message for Wii: Once you play it, you will understand. There are two dozen games here for us to play, with some better than E3. Some we’ve never seen or heard of before. Showing us Wii Bowling now, which is part of Wii Sports.

So it looks like I will be purchasing a Nintendo Wii. $250 is more than I was hoping for, but it would be silly of Nintendo not to charge the maximum price the market will allow.

Problems: I don't see a launch title I'm terribly interested in. Besides the system itself, I don't know what I want to play. I've never been much of a Zelda fan, and Wii Sports sounds... okay, I guess. Red Steel seems like the game to have, and if that actually makes the launch date, then that's probably what I'll want.

However, if Microsoft can beat the Wii's price point, I might be swayed back to the 360 camp. Dead Rising is a big pull, as is Enchanted Arms. And XNA... oh sweetness. The Wii's online systems look to be an iTunes-like, end-to-end solution, with designated 'user participation areas' like message boards and avatars.

Ooh! Check this out:

Mii Channel — digital character of you or anyone in a big 3d virtual room. Can interact with others in this channel. Can customize avatar — he’s making a Samuel L Jackson character. Guy actually looks like Jackson, pretty funny. Tons of choices and such to create character. Gives Sam the Pulp Fiction stache. Can change outfit color and put in a nickname.

Can do a little dance move. Now showing interaction. Can transfer Mii’s to Wii remote and can customize Wii remote to carry Mii’s. Can populate your own Wii console and also populate other consoles. Can also let Mii’s populate your games like Wii Sports and Warioware and others in development.

Make your own avatars for games?! How cool is that? I hope it gets used more than the ne'erseen imported soundtracks feature on the Xbox.

But even if it's only good for online interaction, there is a Second Life-like point of customizable identity to it. And I do find that very attractive.

Time to check EB and see if I can reserve one of these beasties.

Technorati tags: nintendo, video games, wii

9/11 - Five Years Later

I'm going to try not to be sappy or melodramatic about this. We all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and we all still mourn the loss of life inflicted on us that day.

Five years have passed. We have invaded two countries - one is in a civil war which we caused but cannot contain, and the other is one of the world's largest opium producers and features a rebuilding Taliban. We can't take liquids onto planes. An American city has been wiped out. We have fought the bigoted battles of gay marraige, Terry Schiavo, and xenophobia. We have seen the republican party nearly implode under the weight of its own corruption. The gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. Diebold has made voting machines that may or may not count our votes.

Is this how it had to happen? If Gore had won, would all this have happened? If Kerry had won, would all this have happened? Would we have different problems? Would they be better, or worse?

I think these last five years could have gone a lot better.

Technorati Tags: politics

Facebook Things

So, a lot of people are upset about the new Facebook Feed. The big man behind Facebook posted to their official blog in response:

We’re not oblivious of the Facebook groups popping up about this (by the way, Ruchi is not the devil). And we agree, stalking isn’t cool; but being able to know what’s going on in your friends’ lives is.

I tend to agree. This is much like the Gmail privacy freak-out -- much ado about nothing. Frankly, if you're willling to post and keep track of everything you do on Facebook, you really have no reason to complain about your lack of privacy. Once you put information online, it will be seen and tied to you. Permanently.

I wonder what my future employers will think of this post. >.>

Besides that, it's not like stalking is any harder than it was. Given an IP, I could call the police on someone across the country in minutes well before Facebook appeared. I think it's just spooky for people when they realize how much of their information is being collected and profiled. I bet AOL users were (rightfully) scared when AOL released their data. If that isn't an action call to leave behind an unethical service, I don't know what is.

But in any case, the Feed is just the sort of thing that might get me addicted to Facebook. Whereas before I haven't wanted to waste bunches of time to find out mostly irrelevant information about friends, I'm willing to stop by and read up on my home page every now and then.

I digg the new features. Good going, guys!

Technorati Tags: facebook, network, college

Max 300

Max 300
Originally uploaded by agius.

I have finally defeated Max 300. Now to get an AA on it...

Or perhaps, beat Vertex^2?