Before

The guy had taken some liberties with his property. Basically, there was the pine tree and holly tree completely blocking his yard from our view. However, it was 1) a fire hazard 2) a wild animal habitat and 3) ate up a lot of our backyard, so we trimmed it. This is what we saw on a daily basis for 3+ years.

After

It’s a 6′ shelter board fence. The way it was done, well, it wasn’t done to code. As it turns out, there are a couple of neighbors who aren’t the guy with the nasty backyard who don’t know how to mind their own damned business.

Over 1,000 miles later, we’re almost done. Jaya leaves this Saturday.

—

Have you ever had a moment where you know you’re in a ‘moment’, and you don’t want to do or say anything to ruin the moment? That happened a few weeks ago. Nora and Isaac were in Nora’s room: Isaac started crawling towards Nora, and she’d run out of the room, and run back and start making silly noises which Isaac found hysterical. Then Nora would run to one of us and jump in our arms, and Isaac would crawl as fast as his little legs would allow. This went on for a good long while, and it was just simply amazing to watch.

Nora is an amazing big sister. She won’t admit to loving Isaac (in fact, she’s mentioned that we should leave Isaac at every rest stop we hit in NJ) but she really does care for him. Just last night, Isaac was throwing a fit about eating, so I decided we were having a break from feeding for a minute. Nora pulled up a chair, declared that Isaac wants his big sister to feed him, and she did – a whole jar of puree and a cup of yogurt.

It’s pretty clear in Isaac’s world that Nora is rated #1, with everyone else a distant second. He always wants to do what she’s doing (much to her chagrin and consternation) and we’re certain that’s why he’s worked so hard to learn how to crawl (and now he’s trying to walk. At seven months!).

—

Projects: I never posted the pictures. Sorry. You don’t care, I know. In any event, we put up a fence, and naturally our neighbors didn’t like how high it went (8 feet!). It was illegal for sure, and we expected it to be an issue, but not in the way that happened.

After Michael wrecked the r/c truck, it went into hibernation until two days ago where I did a complete tear down and used compressed air to clean it out. I’ve de-tuned it even further and upped the torque, going with a 53/14 setup. 53/13 would’ve been nice, but the gear wouldn’t fit properly (it may be an investment for later).

—

Brief reviews

Mourn the Living by Henry Perez was a fascinating page turner that had only one issue, and it’s a weird one: the main character’s name. Instead of referring to Alex Chapa as ‘Alex’ or ‘Chapa’, the writer would write out ‘Alex Chapa’. It’s an odd thing that I’ve never seen before. Even towards the end, it’d pop up. Otherwise, fantastic book.

Monster Truck Nitro (ip/t): from the makers of Trials HD, it follows a similar physics based vein where you’re trying to get your monster truck to the end of the obstacle course in a ridiculously short amount of time. Great game.

Dark Nebula (ip/t): it’s a labyrinth game on steroids. It’s production values are stellar. Dark Nebula, Ep 1 is now free and Ep 2 is 99c. Go get them, you’ll love them.

Lilracerz (ip/t): top down racer ala Micro Machines for the NES. Tons of tracks, and the difficulty curve is steep. It’s a brilliant retro game (with retro chiptunes, too), well worth the price of admission (99c).

—

Today there will hopefully be an announcement for a new ipod touch which I can lust after. Toodledo has been a smashing success: the alarms do work (though they aren’t nearly loud and as annoying as my palm and winmo device), and since it’s syncs so nicely, I’ve been able to jot notes down in the car to and from work or as an idea strikes and have it available on the desktop right away.

I won’t lie: ever since Toodledo, I’ve been a complete nut for this device and carry it by my side at all times. I am running into a space quandry: Nora’s tv shows take up a big chunk of the 8gb. My desire to upgrade has nothing to do with iOS4 or the retina display; in fact, my hope is that the new installment drives down the price of the 3rd Gen devices so I can pick one up used in a reasonably good condition.

My other thought is getting an unlocked 3GS, getting a t-mobile prepay plan and use it like an ipod touch except in case of an emergency (like last weekend, when the internet was out and we ended up calling Ray after exhausting all the local hotspot locations).

—

Basketball season starts soon, and Rod Thorn (not Eddie Stefanski) is at the helm. Who is Rod Thorn you ask? He’s the guy the drafted Michael Jordan and made the New Jersey Nets relevant.

There’s a legend that the Sixers offered Dr. J for the third pick of that draft, and Thorn turned it down. Can you imagine what life would’ve been like in Philly if Jordan were a Sixer? …words, they fail me.

For those wondering, they drafted Charles Barkley in that draft. Had the Sixers managed that trade, they would’ve had Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, two members of the dream team that won gold medals in 1992 and 1996. Holy crap.

—

As a final note, I fixed my laptop cd-rom drive. The distro reviews shall recommence!

Zenwalk: A paris based organization which uses a distro based on slackware. It arrived very bare – which is good in one sense – but it’s basically a pre-configured slackware. Unlike Slax (which I will get to in a moment), it lacked some basic configuration stuff (couldn’t load the wired NIC but could load the wireless?, no CPU throttling at all even though many new PCs use throttling). If I wanted to muck around that much, I would’ve just installed Arch or Slack.

Slax is a live distro based on Slackware. Slax can be installed to the hard drive, but in a very hackish way. If you go to the Slax site, you can custom build the distro and download your creation. It’s quite a nifty feature, and the distro has a very well put together feel. It does exactly what you ask and it does it well. Even though it’s a live cd, it runs very quickly.

Vector: the latest one is the opposite of Slax. Things configured just fine, but it’s a slapdash amalgamation of ‘things’. There’s no focus, which is a shame since at one time it was a really nice distro.

Ubuntu: definitely not my first choice (obviously) but xubuntu’s installer was balky (which seems to happen somewhat frequently). Ubuntu sets the bar for user experience, and it does what it needs to do right out of the box.

However, for my laptop it’s not the best solution. Given the age of my hardware, Ubuntu runs intolerably hot. To add salt to the wound, Lisa’s laptop (also running 10.04) runs whisper quiet and while it’s slightly warm, it’s comfortable.

I’m going to attempt to mod Ubuntu instead of distro hopping and chronicle it here.

-

I loved Arch and still do, but when you leave your computer for a time and come back to it, the number of updates and things I needed to consider was overwhelming. Sometimes I don’t turn on my laptop for weeks. Arch is like a dog and needs daily attention.

It’s likely I’ll be trying out pure slackware for my purposes in a few months, but right now I don’t have the patience.

—

That’s it. Hopefully I won’t be going another few weeks without an update.

Lisa would say that it’s misplaced optimism, and she’d probably be right. I’m hoping she’s wrong, though.

The plot isn’t hidden from the reader. The journey is seeing how the main character learns all the information that the reader already knows. There was one gut punch left towards the end, with a visceral and chilling tale with respect to one of the characters who died early on. It’s a shame he died, since he was only character that wasn’t of the cookie cutter variety.

By the end, I was glad it was over, but for the price of free it was worth the read. I certainly wouldn’t recommend paying for it, though, unlike the previously mentioned book.

That is fair, since Apple has only made the most superficial of inroads in the business community. When you get a blackberry or WM device, it’s all business. When you get an Apple device, it’s all fun.

So that being said, with my Treo dead and gone and my Garmin and Zaurus sold off, I’m going to try and make it work. Toodledo recently went free (right as I was about to buy a similar app, actually) and it has a very competent online component. At the moment, syncing is very fast. While the online app isn’t terribly easy on the eyes, it works well. I installed backgrounder from Cydia, and now the program opens and closes instantaneously. I’m not sure how it affects the device in general, but I guess we’ll see.

The only issue is that I can’t seem to get the alarm to work. I suspect this is more an implementation issue on the 3.1.3 firmware than anything toodledo is doing, since notifications are hit or miss on the device already. I imagine iOS4 fixes that, but there have been nothing but negative things regarding iOS4 on 3G devices.

Onward and upward…

A Nail Through the Heart takes place in Thailand, and delves deep into the seedy underbelly of child and adult prostitution. The author ventures into the minds of the abused; it’s a world I could barely comprehend but it exists, every minute of every day.

The main character is compelling and likable, the characters were all well defined and interesting, the plot moves quickly. I couldn’t put it down last night.

If you have an ipod touch, iphone, kindle, blackberry, pc, mac, android phone, you can download the kindle app and read this gem for free. It is absolutely worth it.

- – - -

I finally (!) finished Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2. It was a gift from my sister shortly after I got the Wii. Let me explain why by backtracking to about ten years ago.

Ten years ago, my main console was a Sega Saturn. I imported games regularly from Japan, and one of them was Idainaru Dragonball Densetsu. I spent hours upon hours playing and replaying that game, on harder and harder difficulties. The game didn’t have a soundtrack, so you’d just hear random Japanese battle cries for hours on end from my room. In that spirit, Jaya picked it up for me.

I hadn’t played it until recently because the game inspired awe and fear. The game uses the Wii motion controls, so if you wanted to do a Kamehameha you’d have to mimic the motions of a kamehameha. If you wanted to do a spirit bomb, yes, you’d have to stand there like an idiot for a moment, and then pretend to throw a spirit bomb at the tv. Without losing the wiimote. The tutorials themselves take over an hour to complete.

I figured out that I could use the gamecube controller and went with that instead.

With that out of the way, DBZ:BT2 takes all the battles starting from DBZ all the way through the end of DB:GT but it takes liberties with the GT storyline. You see, DBZ was based on the manga which was being written at the same time as the comic, so that’s why there were so many filler episodes – they were waiting for the next manga to come out. The battle between Frieza and Goku on Planet Namek where they had five minutes before the planet blew up took an impressive six episodes. However, GT is an anime only, and that series was the shortest of all DBs. It’s considered by some to be non-canon for many, many reasons.

So that being said, you fight nearly every fight that took place in DBZ.

The game is a true 3D fighter: left, right, forward, back, up and down. The battle arena is shaped like a cube, which is one of the few things I didn’t like. Previously mentioned IDBD had huge battle areas. You could fly to and fight in cities that you saw in the background, for instance. Here, the border is very clear, which can be jarring in the midst of battle.

That being said, land effects are pretty neat. There are valleys, rivers, lakes, gullies, cliffs, ridges: all of these things affect the battle.

While it is a fighting game, there is an experience and money system. There’s no way to beat the game without leveling your character, which required either fighting extra battles or using your money to buy upgraded character stats. Given that you use over 30 characters to finish the game (the various forms of characters throughout the game require separate stat building), it gets pretty time consuming.

The game does something interesting with the plot: if you win a battle that you weren’t expected to win (some matches simply ask you to survive), you unlock a ‘what if scenario’. The what-if scenarios played out brilliantly, and the writing was stellar. Clearly, the writers and designers took the extra step of creating some worthwhile and long lasting, and it shows. I absolutely loved Raditz’s last fight, which was a dream sequence as he was dying where he fought with his father one last time.

Other things I liked: the dynamics of each character. Namco-Bandai did a great job making each fighter feel different from the last. Taipon felt different than Trunks, even though Namco could’ve just cloned the two characters. Some characters are just massive, and I was impressed as to how well they played, especially over varying environments. If the game is buggy, I wasn’t seeing it.

Onto the things I didn’t like, and there are only a few: I absolutely hate the layout of the evolution system. It was an incredibly tedious affair, especially if you’re trying to level and equip multiple characters at once.

The borders are kind of odd in that some spots are flat and others are curved, so it was jarring at times to knock a character back, only to watch them take a parabolic flight path.

Sometimes the AI was as dumb as rocks allowing you to wail on them without much of a fight, and other times they put up a spirited fight (the aforementioned Raditz vs. Bradock was one of them).

After all that, there’s a DBZ:BT3 which is supposed to be the best version of this game. As much as I enjoyed BT2, I think I’m DBZ’d out for a good long while. The game plays much like an action RPG and demanded as much time as an aRPG should (over 15 hours). Still, I loved it, and I’m glad I can tell Jaya I finally finished it.

Thumbs up, way up.

- – -

So, a while back the CD-Rom drive on my laptop died. Since my laptop is six years old and doesn’t boot over USB, I was stuck using whatever was on it (or not using it, as the case may be). I was using Arch, but I ran out of HD space to do updates so now it’s sitting unpatched and I don’t dare connect to any network with it. Windows is windows, and it’s broken because I broke it (phone hacking).

In the meantime, Lisa has been running Ubuntu 10.04 (not without complaint, of course) and I’m quite jealous. With luck, I managed to snag a used drive on ebay for $9 (who wants a six year old drive anyway? other than me, that is) and now we’re back in business. By Lisa’s estimation over 30% of my entries are reviews of linux, hence the lack updates.

Lisa is set in her ways and wants to go back to some variant of Windows eventually but things are working so we haven’t futzed with it. In the meantime, I plan to join her running some variant of Linux that isn’t so needy like Ubuntu or Fedora.

The problem with running a six year old laptop is that it is six. years. old. Ubuntu runs nicely on Lisa’s laptop but Lisa’s computer is the intended target audience (less than four years old). The hunt is now on for a decent distro that can run well on my machine. It could very well be that I have to go back to Arch.

In the last few months I’ve found several sites that have seem to attack some 0-day exploit in Windows on four separate machines (including Lisa and her mom’s computer). With Mac’s popularity soaring I’m half hoping Linux doesn’t gain more than 2% desktop market share; however, there are a couple of 0-day exploits floating around in the Mac universe too.

- -

Ilana once said to me ‘Macs can’t get viruses’. I hate that line of thinking. The virus is catch-all and an antiquated notion that should’ve been buried with Windows 98. A virus isn’t simply ‘I love you san‘. The concern is the trojan, and it’s serious. With PCs that are connected 24/7 to a large dumb pipe (the internet), trojans serve a couple of purposes: to infect other machines or to download private information, or both.

Further, if you install anything – anything – outside of the apple/windows walled garden, you’re no longer safe. Install flash? You’re prone to any flash exploits. View PDFs through Adobe’s reader? Prone. Use Firefox? Prone. And the list goes on. Further, unlike Apple or Microsoft products, there’s no reliable method of update delivery. Mozilla and Adobe have no partnership for update delivery, nor will they ever.

A trojan can be a virus, and a virus can be a trojan, but they aren’t exactly the same thing. A virus is self replicating generally not requiring the originator’s help; a trojan has users on both ends.

- -

I purposely left out linux because you can actually review the source of these apps. If Apple hits above 25% desktop share (somewhere between 10-15% now), it won’t matter I’m sure. But in the meantime, security through obscurity.

- – -

Zombie Shock (ip/t): It’s an insanely fun and quite hard zombie shooter. That game took me back to Atlantic City playing House of the Dead. While not quite the same, the game has the same level of energy and fun.

Dirt Moto (ip/t): I wish I paid $5 for this instead of Asphalt. It’s an ATV racing game with a gradual difficulty curve. The game is mostly arcade with some realistic effects. There are four types of terrain with daylight and twilight driving. Some of the courses themselves are challenging: you can’t veer too far off course or you’ll be forced to reset so careful driving is key. The game has a great mix of all out full speed racing with massive jumps and high banked walls and precise tracks requiring careful braking. Two thumbs up – I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Oil painting on wood is something else entirely, too. Having painted only painted on canvas until now, oil on wood is an absolute joy. By comparison, painting on canvas seems so stressful.

I think I’m going to invest a few dollars here and there in tools so that I can do similar works. I’m tempted to liquidate some of my game collection to buy a corded dremel as the battery drains rather quickly on my battery powered one.

We have a tremendous number of projects to complete before summer is up. The garage has been addressed ever so slightly; that’s an undertaking that I hope will happen next week. There’s a few painting projects in the house and the basement needs to be cleaned yet again. That poor room is the area we dump in anytime we accumulate too much stuff in the top two floors – however, it’s one of Nora’s favorite places to play (she could stay down there for hours).

My goal to hit 30 games will miss the mark. Right now I’m sitting on 19, and I’ll review the latest in a moment. I came upon a wood-working art project which I just absolutely adore and will share once our anniversary passes. Moreso than music I truly want to dedicate some time to it.

The pool is a sore spot for us. After the nine hour marathon to set it up, we’ve spent two hours swimming in it and another 4-5 maintaining it. We’ve had fights because of it. At some point we’ll be proficient at quickly maintaining the pool, but I’m not sure when that will be. The chemicals are harsh and dangerous and striking a balance between too much and too little is so minuscule it seems. We’ve already marred the surface of the pool (discoloration). I’m rather tired of getting soaked every time we need to disconnect and reconnect the filter.

I now understand why there’s good business in maintaining people’s pools.

- – -

Pandamania (ip/t): Over the course of fifty levels you use your bow and arrow to strike down enemies. It is at its core a tower defense game. You can upgrade your weapons and switch weapons throughout and the mechanics of the weapons are fairly interesting. Every level lasts somewhere between 2-4 minutes. It has Openfeint so there’s replay-ability if you’ve signed up for the service (I haven’t). All in all a good, very enjoyable title.

- – - -

Happy birthday Leesie! My darling wife turns 30 at 3.17pm today. She’s my hero and best friend and I was lucky enough to marry her. I love you!!!