“On the day we signed the agreement to license Warhammer from Games Workshop, I promised them that we would create a great and glorious game, a truly next-generation MMORPG. Today, I have news to report; we are going to delay the release of WAR until Fall 2008. ”
Mark Jacobs
VP, GM EA Mythic
Encouragement (noun): the act of providing someone with the motivation to overcome what may seem impossible.
Here’s some encouragement for those of you who are reading this to procrastinate.
So when you consume food, the calorie, fat, sugar, etc. content is measured by the serving size on the back of the package.
What I am ranting about today is, almost always, those serving sizes are unreasonably small. I mean for fuck’s sake, who is going to eat two fig newtons? When was the last time you opened a package of oreos and ate three of them? How about when you had 13 average sized potato chips?
I don’t know about you, but when I open a potato chip bag, I eat half the bag and all of the freakishly large ones first. Or fig newtons? I can’t go without eating half the damn package. In the case of fig newtons, the serving size should be by tens of boxes, not by single cookies.
And of course, let’s not forget the fubar companies play to make stuff reduced fat. Check out our normal oreos, they are 8 fat grams for 3 cookies. You don’t like that? Try our fat free oreos (warning they actually have .01 fat grams and the serving size is 3 crumbs). In the limit as the portions get smaller, you’ll eventually arrive at fat free…
I did not this; apparently you can watch any youtube video in high or medium quality by adding &fmt=18 and &fmt=6 respectively to the end of the address url.
Observe, in the following Dark Knight trailer, in the beginning, you can barely make out the “www.mpaa.org” text in the lower right hand corner. Now in the high resolution version, the text is much more visible. It seems this “hidden option” is progress based on an announcement made last November by Youtube [1], [2].
I really like the new batman movies. Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, etc. really make a great cast and the newer movies seem even more darker and sinister than the previous three. Albeit this upcoming batman is only the second, I bet they will follow the Hollywood movie making paradigm and turn the whole ordeal into at least a trilogy and maybe even a group of six. While six new batman movies would be repetitive, I wouldn’t mind a third one, or one more new one beyond Dark Knight.
One has to consider though, they really made it tough on themselves to out due the first Bale/batman movie. The first one not only had batman, but Ninjas as well…That in itself seems to contrive a collection of unbeatable movie ingredients.
On yet another completely random note, I love this bear commercial.
Update: Apparently John West also made another bear commercial. I didn’t see the second one till recently. I still like the first better though.
Updatex2: Courtesy of Derek: John West Shark/Salmon Commercial
I recently came across this word press theme and decided to change from the default skin. The blog header has also been redone to be compliant with the updated template.
Some close seconds which I almost chose over the one implemented were these: [1], [2]. I ultimately decided on the one chosen due to the lighter background color.
On a completely random note – I really like the music in this Sonic Unleashed leaked video.
I started experimenting with Joomla early this morning. I found this template to skin the default installation with and then setup a Joomla based version of my dissertation site. I am really pleased with how easy Joomla is to navigate and manipulate. Depending on how motivated I am feeling, I may end up replacing my current dissertation site with that of the Joomla based one. The current version was developed with NetObjects Fusion. NetObjects fusion was a nice package for me several years ago. I like Joomla alot more since it relies on php and sql tables, as opposed to NetObjects inflating your site into tons and tons of html files. One significant advantage Netobjects has however over Joomla is that it is of course independent of sql tables, meaning if your sql server is down, your site is still up. Furthermore, it is easy to move a bunch of html files from one server to another. I will have to research how easy it is to back up your Joomla installation.
The real factors for whether or not I will migrate to Joomla is it’s ability to be integrated with WordPress and phpBB3. It would be really hot to somehow elegantly tie the site to include both of those free, aforementioned utilities.
Taken straight from OpenGL’s website:
“OpenGL is the premier environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications.”
Taken straight from OpenGL’s FAQ:
“OpenGL will not read or write image files for you.”
Que? 
How does one create a “premier environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications” without being able to support the ability to “read or write image files”? 
Update: For those interested, I used CImg’s Library to read in and write images.
A good indicator of how many times I’ve read a paper (journal/article) is how much of the paper has been highlighted. It seems on successive rereads more highlighting is inevitable.
I’m currently reading “Unsupervised Segmentation of Color-Texture Regions in Images and Video.” It’s an image texture segmentation algorithm. You can actually download the publicly available code and tinker with the authors’ program yourself.
Hopefully, I’ll have my own, improved texture segmentation code available and an accompanying publication soon…
“If a person says bro, I know that that person is irrelevant.” – Jerry Holkins aka Tycho
“I would taze someone for saying bro.” – Mike Krahulik aka Gabe
(click the picture to see original PA strip)
Here’s the PA pod cast for last Friday’s comic:
<download here>
This is a really hilarious critique of Army of 2.
I went to see the Bank Job last night with my friend Frank. It was really nice to see a good movie for a change. The two consecutive movies I saw before the Bank Job, in theaters, were No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Albeit both of these movies did have underlying messages that may make them entertaining to some viewers, I thought both were horrific and would caution everyone to avoid seeing them at all costs. Don’t get me wrong, there are several open ended, anti-climatic films I have seen before and have enjoyed. But, in the case of There Will Be Blood, I cannot enjoy a movie with a run time greater than 150 minutes where the plot, regardless of the subtext, is about a drunk who’s life is destroyed by his ambition, greed, and addiction to alcohol. Also, for No Country for Old Men, I like my bad guys dead at the end. How awesome would any of the Die Hard movies or Disturbia have been if the villians/bad guys won at the end? I rate both There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men a 1/5. I may watch these again and will try to keep an open mind about both films, desperately seeking resolution and understanding to what seemed like to me, at first viewing, very boring films not worth investing the time viewing in which they demanded.
Nice…
