Archive for January, 2008

Snow!

Published by Helen on January 17, 2008 in Chatter. 2 Comments

I think of my first ballet teacher whenever it snows here . She used to announce, “It’s snowing down south” if someone in the class was wearing underwear under her tights and leotard. (Because you’re not supposed to, and if you do your underwear will inevitably bunch out under the leotard and become visible through your tights at the hips. A crime totally worth humiliating someone in front of the whole class over.)

So anyway - it wasn’t much and school wasn’t even canceled but it we enjoyed it while it was here.

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Justice League Heroes: The Flash (Game Boy Advance, 2006)

Published by Scott on January 14, 2008 in Reviews and Video Games. 0 Comments

317og9quutl_aa_sl160_.jpgOverview
A beat ‘em up with a speedy superhero twist. As Flash you can zip up to an enemy, give him a hearty punch, and zoom off to another target before he has time to retaliate. This is all done by tapping the “A” button. With good timing you can pinball off a crowd of bad guys and defeat them before they’re any the wiser. Of course some enemies in later levels can counterattack more quickly so it’s not all a cakewalk. When things get too hectic though pressing the left trigger will call on one of the other Justice League members to fly in and clear the screen with a heaping helping of whupass.

The Good
This is a really short game but I’m going to count that as a positive. Sometimes you need short bursts of simple fun to balance out the epic games you may also be playing. With an interesting array of progressively harder enemies, somewhat challenging bosses, and a couple of nifty attacks earned at the end of certain levels, The Flash is engaging and well paced.

There are several unlockable features that make it worth the investment too. Beating it on the default easy mode unlocks two more difficult settings. There’s also a Boss Rush, a “Making Of” mini-documentary, a race against Superman, and a way to read through the comic book style cut scenes from the story mode all at once.

The Bad
Continuous hordes of enemies can feel a bit tedious as you blaze through Keystone City, Metropolis, Gotham City, and Themyscira. These foes occasionally hang out on either edge of the screen, completely out of view. This can be frustrating because Flash will lock on to an invisible target and take off in that direction. A couple of times this led to him becoming “stuck.” The screen action won’t scroll until all enemies in the vicinity are defeated so I actually had to turn off the game and restart levels when this happened.

The extra attacks, such as ground pound and whirlwind, are cool but completely unnecessary. I pretty much just tried them out before going back to the targeting system. It seems like the special attacks could have been put to better use by making them the only way to defeat certain enemies for example.

Bottom Line
Justice League Heroes: The Flash is a short, fun game worth playing if you’re a fan of beat ‘em ups and superheroes. It does have replay value, but it’s more likely a younger audience that would find long lasting appeal.

Rating: 7 / 10

And even more birds-

Published by Helen on January 10, 2008 in Pets. 2 Comments

My friend Claudia brought me some banty chickens yesterday. They are fully grown but about 1/3 the size of our regular chickens. They are supposed to be really good parents - our regular chickens don’t have the nesting instinct, so even though we have a rooster (so our chickens lay fertilized eggs) our chickens will never raise chicks. The banty hens will get broody and sit on their eggs and supposedly they don’t notice if you sneak a couple full sized eggs in the nest.

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I left them in the cage she brought them in for most of the day and put it in the chicken coop so they could get used to each other a bit but not get to each other. When I fed the bantys the big chickens were all very interested.

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Here you can see the size of the bantys - that is two hens standing next to each other and the rooster has the brown stripe and red neck. He has a tiny voice - compared to the big rooster - so his crow is pretty funny.

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One of the cats was interested in what was going on when I finally let the two groups mix. Chickens establish their “pecking order” with little fights - it is really more like a staring contest to see who will look away first - but there is some pecking and clawing along with the bravado. Banty roosters don’t seem to notice that the other chickens are 3X bigger - this one was taking on anyone he came across.

These banty hens have not started laying eggs yet, but Claudia says their eggs are the perfect size for egg-in-a-nest or a biscuit. And yes - they are just the same as regular chicken eggs, just small.

Star Wars: The Paradise Snare by A.C. Crispin (1997)

Published by Scott on January 9, 2008 in Books, Fiction and Reviews. 0 Comments

211jlnrwxel_aa_sl110_.jpgOverview
Volume one of the Han Solo Trilogy chronicles the young scoundrel’s rise from an Oliver Twist-like background to his first job as a pilot running illegal spice loads for the priests of a religious cult.

The Good
It was interesting to read Solo’s back story. Fun facts and trivia:

  • As a boy Han befriends a female Wookie named Dewlanna, who later helps him escape from his cruel master’s ship so that he may pursue his dream to become an Imperial Navy pilot.
  • His first love is a young cult member named Bria Tharen. After discovering that disciples are eventually sold into slavery to work the spice mines or Imperial pleasure houses, he tries to help her escape. What a softie!
  • Han has an affinity for hulking, hairy humanoids. In addition to his pre-Chewbacca Wookie relationship with Dewlanna, he becomes friendly with a giant cat-like Togorian named Muuurgh.

The Bad
I stalled out on this one after the Big Escape. There was still a quarter of the book left and it felt like that segment should have been the end. It does pick up and Crispin ties it all together nicely, but I had to make myself finish after a nearly two week layoff.

Bottom Line
Despite being populated by familiar species (Hutts, Wookies, Sullustans, etc.) and locales (Corellia, Alderaan, Coruscant) as well as the usual space ship travel and laser gun play, it somehow didn’t feel especially Star Wars-y. The missing ingredients of politics and Jedi are probably the reason for this. It came across as a straight forward adventure, and not a particularly compelling one, without those elements.

Star Wars nerd rating: 6 / 10

Sign o’ the Times

Published by Scott on January 8, 2008 in Environment and Work. 5 Comments

usgs_drought_map.gifMy school, like most elementary schools, has an annual carnival. It’s usually in the spring but some of the other local schools have their versions in the fall. I’m sure they’re all pretty much the same- cake walks, raffle baskets, pony rides, bouncy castles, a dunk tank, face painting, crappy games with crappier prizes, and lots of junk food. The kids love it and the school rakes in a lot of cash.

I found out today we’ll be crossing dunk tank off the list of “fun” things to do this year. Because of the prolonged drought and prohibitive water restrictions, we’re not permitted to have one. How crazy is that? Not that I don’t completely agree with the decision. It’s a waste of water. I find it remarkable the considerations we now have to take into account compared with just a year ago. It’s been such a radical change in mind set that I now find myself giving doubly disapproving looks at most drivers of gargantuan SUVs- one for the gas guzzling, the other for having a sparkling clean vehicle!

Paperwhites

Published by Helen on January 7, 2008 in Gardening. 1 Comment

I planted my own paperwhite bulbs about a week after these. They are about to bloom so I’ll be moving them from the laundry room (bright sunny window) to the dining room in the next couple days.

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I just planted my bulbs in rocks - they have all of the nutrients they need inside the bulb and just need something to hold onto to grow. The roots are amazing, but I had a nightmare about them shortly after they started growing and now I can’t look too closely!

(The huge leaves on the right are brugmansia cuttings that my Dad brought last time he was here. They are going to be trees by next summer when I can plant them outside.)

Scott said that his students were really excited about growing their papaerwhite kits when they came back from vacation. I sent one of the kits to my niece also and my sister says she was thrilled to see how fast it grew. It even inspired my sister (who is not interested in plants at all) to buy a couple of amaryllis bulb kits!

Behind the Scenes WordPress Upgrade

Published by Scott on January 6, 2008 in Chatter. 3 Comments

I finally upgraded to the newest version of WordPress (2.3.2), just in time for the next upgrade in March! I won’t wait so long when the next one rolls out. James provided me with these easy to follow instructions (way back in June!) and it was a snap:

  1. Backup the database either with the WP plug in or through PHPMyAdmin
  2. Backup the site via FTP
  3. Turn off K2 by selecting the default WP theme
  4. Disable any extensions you have installed
  5. Delete everything except wp-config.php and the directory wp-content
  6. Navigate into the wp-content/themes and delete the K2 directory
  7. Upload the latest version of WP
  8. Navigate to (…admin page) and follow the instructions
  9. Re-enable all the plug ins
  10. Visit the site homepage to make sure all is kosher (it will have the default theme up)
  11. Upload the latest K2
  12. Enable K2 as your theme
  13. Repeat step 10 as a sanity check

I guess I was put off by the problems he mentioned and that lengthy list of things to do. Those steps look a lot more involved than they are though. But make no mistake, it most definitely would have been a monumental task for me without any guidance. Thanks again, James!

Penguin

Published by Helen on January 4, 2008 in Crafts. 0 Comments

I finished the “antidote” blanket two days ago and needed an antidote to that. I decided the antidote to something time- consuming, mindless, and with no defined end was a stuffed penguin - the idea has been popping into my head a lot lately so

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I popped this guy out yesterday.

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Here he is a little closer - he was not cooperating with the close-ups.

My Sonic Adventure: Boiling Didn’t Work

Published by Scott on January 2, 2008 in Video Games. 6 Comments

I told my sad tale about the hoops I had to jump through to get an official copy of Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. Let me tell you, that game is becoming my personal white whale. We broke it out at Christmas hoping for some high speed ring collecting fun only to discover it didn’t work. I couldn’t get it to load most of the time on either of our two “new” Dreamcasts. When it did finally boot up it would always freeze after the first battle against Chaos. The disc has a couple of tiny light scratches but nothing that should prevent it from playing.

I cleaned it up with a soft cloth first, naturally, but that didn’t have any effect on it. Next I bought a scratch repair / disc cleaning kit from Radio Shack. Still no improvement for Sonic but it did a nice job cleaning up Virtua Tennis and Rogue Squadron III, two other games we got that were in poor but playable condition. I should mention at this point that I didn’t bother contacting the eBay seller I bought it from because it had been quite a long time since I made the purchase and the game itself was only a buck-fifty. That’s how much it would cost to mail back and I’m sure I would have no chance of recouping the six bucks I paid for shipping and “handling.” (That’s how they get you!)

Then I remembered reading about how people got Xbox discs to work by boiling them in water. I figured it would be a fun experiment. Couldn’t hurt anyway. I did some some Googling to read up on people’s techniques and found this video on YouTube:

That’s pretty much exactly what I did, except I used a slotted spatula to lower the disc into the water. After drying it off and letting it cool, I stuck it in the Dreamcast and crossed my fingers.

At first I was really excited because it actually started up and and took me to the cut scene after my initial save point. “Hot dog, it worked!” I thought. My joy was short-lived however. It froze up while loading the Emerald Coast level and that’s all I was ever able to get it after that. Oh well.

I did some more reading around and found out that ten percent of the initial Sonic Adventure pressing was defective. Sega acknowledged it at the time and would replace the game with a working one. Something about the calibration being off on one of their gd-rom copiers. I figure I must be unlucky enough to have bought one of these bad discs. I guess they will play on certain machines without a problem though. No rhyme or reason to it, just a strange quirk.

I’m in no hurry to try to find a working copy of the game. Maybe some day it will turn up at Goodwill. I might even get the port for Gamecube since it’s generally cheaper and has a lot of extras. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. There’s plenty to play in the meantime…

More Birds

Published by Scott on January 1, 2008 in Nature. 1 Comment

I was inside today and suddenly heard all kinds of squeaking sounds, like machinery badly in need of oiling. I was on the verge of freaking out wondering what expensive repair bills were on the horizon (heating system? washing machine?) before I realized it was coming from outside. Turns out it was a huge flock of blackbirds taking a rest in our pine trees. There were hundreds of them! We couldn’t believe how noisy they were. Hazel, Helen, and I watched them for quite a few minutes before they spectacularly flew away. The video didn’t turn out that great (my first YouTube upload!) but you can sort of get the idea.

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