The Occasional Solipsist

After a short learning curve last night, I spent the better part of three hours swinging through the skies above New York City as my all time favourite superhero, in the new PS2 game Ultimate Spiderman.

Killer game; cool open storyline, huge environments, amazing graphics, controls are fairly intuitive and easy to learn. It is already one of the best videogames I've played this year.

However.

In the real world (or at least what I think is the real world most of the time) I am deathly afraid of heights, a fact that my wife is infuriatingly eager to share with friends, family, and menacing looking strangers.

Maybe afraid of heights is the wrong phrasing to use. Pants-shittingly terrified is a little better. The real truth of it is that I get stomach churning vertigo whenever I look down any height and allow my eye to follow the path from where I am to the ground.

A few experiences that may or may not have anything to do with my phobia:

• Sliding my body between the bars of an apartment balcony when I was very young, maybe 4, and getting seriously screamed at by the idiot that should have been watching me


• Being held by my feet over a staircase by a cousin when I was 5 or 6


• Being forced to go on The World's Largest Ferris Wheel when I was 10 or 11, sobbing in uncontrollable terror and laughed at the whole time

Those things may have contributed to it, maybe not. I am not a big believer in being born with anything but the most basic of instincts. I am a subscriber of the nurture theory, which means that somewhere along the way I picked up this fear, but other than providing further proof that certain family members of mine are dicks, that is not of much consequence.

What is of consequence is that I had thought my fear, if not buried, was at least covered enough to get me through the rest of my life. A belief I tested when I chose to go up the Skylon Tower (520 ft above ground, 775 ft above the Niagara river below) a few years ago. Aside from having to get pretty drunk first, I made out all right.

But last night I was totally immersed in my Spiderman game, and I actually got Vertigo while swinging in between the tall buildings in Manhattan.

Seriously. As in for the briefest of moments I felt the same kind of panic that I get when I experience real vertigo on a real height.

So I figure one of two things is the cause: Either the game is so immersive that I was able to extend my irrational fear onto a false reality that I was choosing to believe, or using this blog as my own personal therapy area is not going to cut it, and I am going to have to shell out for the professional stuff.

Or maybe I can choose to use my new game to conquer my fear for once and for all.

And while that's not very likely (or rational), it does give me an excuse to stay up well past my bedtime again tonight.

Labels: gaming, narcissism

For anyone who knows me, either through direct experience or gleaned from browsing through the many shining examples on this blog, I am not now, nor have I ever been the most sensitive of people.

Not that I'm declaring to the world for once and for all that I am a bonafide jerk. People like me don't make declarations like that.

But I will say that I am not anywhere near as nice a guy as some out there, and here's why:

I had to sit through an agonizing 8+ hour drive up north to my in-laws on Friday, a drive that should have taken a scant 4.5 hours but for one silly bitch's bad driving. I don't know the details of the accident that closed the highway seemingly FOREVER, but what I do know is that a minivan entered a contest with a gas tanker in a very head-on capacity and surprisingly, the minivan lost. And because of this loss, I myself lost an extra 3.5 hours that I would rather have spent at my in-laws sailing quietly away from sobriety.

So, insensitive prick that I am, I spent the vast majority of that time sitting on the highway, listening to Superwife loudly count the minutes to and past Trinity's next feeding, smelling the pungent aroma of my daughter's latest offering, and seething at how inconvenient it was for the person driving that minivan to go ahead and get into an accident that killed them.

Imagine the nerve, ruining my friday afternoon like that.

---

Insert funny segway here.

Meh, I've never been much for segways. To prove that, here's a great clip I came across today. Froggers of the world unite. Hilarious.

And in one bold, last non-segway, I just tonight got my hands on the new Ultimate Spiderman game. The good and moral part of me can't wait to save New York from all of the baddies. And the insensitive prick in me (see above) can't wait to kick hell out of all those innocent civilians.

Labels: family, gaming, rants, trinity

I have been demoing the new Dreamweaver 8.0 this week, to see if it makes sense to pay for the upgrade. Looks great, I love the native support for stylesheets: The design pane now acts like a live browser instead of showing you default text when using a remote attached stylesheet. Very cool.

But, I have just found my first in-joke. At least I can only assume that this is some programmer's idea of a funny. Maybe it was his last day after getting fired or something.

In case you can't read it, the error reads 'No error occurred', and it comes up right after Dreamweaver has a fatal crash and needs to be restarted.

Kudos to Macromedia for a great product, but I'm going to want to nail this down before I shell out any hard earned cash for the app.

Might have to keep this other pirated copy instead.

Labels: tech

So it turns out that last night's Vanilla Ice appearance on AOTS was nothing more than a bad joke. Which he in turn is, so that makes sense.

This is what happens when I am busy paying attention to the baby instead of watching the teaser for the show, wherein it was explained that the appearance would be mocking the whole co-host finding thing they've got going.

Whatever.

I was worried (only for a bit) that I'd somehow ended up in the Mirror Universe or someplace similar where horrible things like Vanilla Ice getting a cool job could actually happen.

But, it also turns out that after I turned AOTS off in disgust last night, they did a long bit where they made fun of Canadians for a whole segment.

So they still suck.

But that's okay because I can turn on any Canadian show at any time of day (even the news) and its a guarantee that someone is making fun of Americans. Its almost too easy these days.

Labels: gaming

This entry is going to be filed under my brand new category 'the rapture must be coming'.

I am a regular fan of G4TV and a few of its shows, most notably X-Play, and The Screen Savers (now Attack of the Show). I even posted the other night using 'The Feed' format from AOTS.

And it is now clear that Attack of the Show has broken a historical new low, even for cable television.

First of all, what qualifies me to make this kind of judgment:

• I'm regularly on IGN.com.


• I read Joystiq every day.


• I play videogames (PC/ PS2) whenever I get the chance (though now that usually means squeezing my gaming in between Trinity's last feeding and the 1:00 am repeat of Enterprise).


• I have applied for a job at the local game design studio enough times to guarantee I will never get an interview.


• I once spent three days in a row without shaving, bathing or changing my clothes whilst working my way through an RPG. That's 72 hours straight, baby.


• One of my tattoos is directly based on my favourite videogame, and I got it because I related the main character in the game's story to my own relationship with my wife

In all I would consider myself more than just your average gamer, and feel justified in judging the quality of a show that's on a cable network for gamers, and is actually sometimes about gaming.

So it was with nothing less than utter and complete dumbfounded SHOCK that I tuned in to tonight's episode of AOTS to see that in that show's quest to find a permanent co-host, they went ahead and filled the job with VANILLA ICE.

I shit you not.

And for the five minutes it took me to recover from the catatonic state this ludicrosity provoked, I was forced to watch while this bad joke from the early 90's sputtered like a landed fish through a conversation about games and technology, both of which he obviously knew absolutely nothing about.

At first I thought there was a chance that they were pulling some kind of 7 month early April fool's joke, particularly when it began to seem that they were making fun of ole Ice, Ice Baby. But I had to dismiss this idea, because he is a lot larger than Pereira, and could easily stuff him through a mail slot. And there is no way that anyone, not even Vanilla freaking Ice would volunteer to look like such a jackass.

So we're back to the rapture.

Oh dear, here come the locusts.

Labels: gaming, rants

So now it's after two o'clock on a Sunday night/Monday morning, and because I slept like a rock star last night, getting about 10 hours, I'm still not tired yet.

I am going to be kicking my ass all day tomorrow.

I've been watching AOTS reruns a lot lately, so here's my version of the feed:

• My packers got their asses handed to them today in a disgusting display of football ineptitude. Again. Fucking Favre.


• To add insult to injury, I had to have a meeting with my boss while the Packers were getting said asses kicked. Nice guy, my boss, but still.


• I finally have a real reason to buy a PSP: A new PSP accessory that is coming out that allows you to play UMDs and PSP games on your tv via a docking station. Stunningly good idea. You can read about that here.


• Trinity turns 11 weeks tomorrow. I can't believe how unbelievably fast it seems those 11 weeks went by.


• I still, after more than 4 years find myself missing my buddy Jon all the time. It sneaks up on me when I least expect it. Even listening to Puff Daddy (or Diddy, or whatever the fuck he's called now) & Sting sing the remix of Every Breath makes me sad. And Cooley didn't even like Sting.

Labels: everything else, gaming

I guess its a function of my general cynicism, but I have a really hard time feeling sorry for people that are victims of a natural disaster that everyone saw coming. The images we keep seeing of people crying over lost love ones, police shooting looters, etc, etc don't take the toll on me that they do on others.

Some people would argue that I have become desensitized due to constantly being bombarded with these types of images.

Those people would be wrong though.

I just don't have a lot of empathy for idiocy.

I guess I figure if you're that stupid to live in a city below sea level, you kind of had it coming. Same would go for people living on a volcano, or a fault line, or some other soon-to-be disaster area. I mean, seriously, people can be really fucking stupid when it comes to turning a blind eye to danger.

But the obvious exceptions to my uncaring attitude is always children and animals, neither of whom get to make any decision about where they are going to live.

So it was with total disgust that I listened to the reports of the multitude of pets that evacuees were being forced to leave behind as they fled the city. And I'll admit it, the news footage that I had a little cry over were the scenes of pet owners sobbing as they realized their pets were going to die as they left them behind.

And then I came across the following video of what the American authorities are actually doing when they tell people they are gathering pets together to be evacuated.

The link will follow, but I WARN you, if you are squeamish, you might not want to watch this clip. The real nasty stuff happens off camera, but its still pretty awful.

View the clip here for as long as its up. If the link stops working, drop me a comment to let me know and I'll host the file myself.

Bastards.

Good luck keeping your respect for humanity after viewing this one.

Labels: rants

I saw this today and I just had to get a picture.

I'm thinking the good folks at A&W are largely unaware of how their marketing strategy could be misrepresented by people like me.

Labels: funny

As reported by Joystiq earlier today, the eagerly anticipated new movie based on one of Square's highest selling Final Fantasy games (FFVII) got leaked onto the net this week.

And is anyone surprised by the leak? I doubt it.

Gamers are almost or more crazy about their fandom than scifi nuts, and we all remember that copy of Episode 3 that went around the net until the FBI squashed that party.

But I have a unique perspective on the kind of people that would download a rip of a movie that hasn't come out yet. I don't think they're real fans at all, and I''ll tell you why:

If a person really enjoys something, be it a movie, videogame, whatever, I'm of the opinion that they don't mind paying for the real thing, with all of the perks that go along with that purchase. DVD extras, etc.

Its the casual fan that doesn't want to shell out for the privilege of owning something that they're not really that into anyway.

Now don't get me wrong. I am a loud, proud supporter of filesharing. I never turn my bittorrent client off, and I think of kazaa when I hear a song I like rather than run to the nearest music store.

I'm just saying that in the case of something that a person really wants to own/watch because of a visceral connection to that material, especially a movie made based on a killer video game, its somehow wrong to get a stripped down version of that movie.

And with japanese subtitles no less.

So in as much as it pains me to have to wait a little longer to see what Cloud and the kids have been up to, and if Aeris will somehow enter into things, I am content to wait until the real deal is out so I can own it in all my scary fanboy glory.

Labels: gaming

At my wife's suggestion, Trinity and I got to have our first bath together this afternoon.

I think she enjoyed it, but it was hard to tell with all of that splashing going on.

That was probably more me than her.

Probably one of the reasons that I think I'll do okay as a father is that her and I are likely to share the same emotional maturity for awhile, at least until she hits 9 or 10 and passes me for good.

But even so, its still going to take a little while to get used to all of this stuff in my tub.

Labels: family, trinity

So it turns out that rebuilding my blog didn't take that long after all.

All of my old posts have been plugged back in, and thanks to the new SQL database's backup capabilities, this latest catastrophe shouldn't repeat itself.

But it felt good to go through my old entries as I rebuilt the site, seeing how my writing style has evolved (slowly), browsing through some of my more interesting posts. And some that don't hold up as being interesting at all.

But that's me, warts and all.

Speaking of blogging, I came across a really good faux Tom Cruise blog a few minutes ago, nicely coinciding with a discussion my wife, sister and I had earlier about the lunacies that are both Scientology and that afforementioned actor.

The laughing starts here.

Labels: atheism, tech

So I just finished upgrading to the latest offering of Six Apart's Movable Type, 3.02.

The beta's been out for awhile but I was holding back on upgrading until the official release.

Turns out I should have waited until there was a much handier user manual to go along with it. Ironically, Six Apart boasts a new user manual with the release which reads as ridiculously complicated as the last one.

The upgrade was so smooth and easy in fact, that I ended up deleting my old flatfile database after completely destroying my ftp files during the transition.

Here's a sample of the language I've been using around the house for the last 24 hours:

fuckshitassbaggingmotherbitchingsonofawhore

I throw long incomprehensible strings of swears together when I'm really pissed. I tell Superwife that its better than swearing singly, because Trinity has no chance of one of those babies being her first word.

Anyway, bottom line is after the swearing died down, I gutted my ftp, reinstalled the new version from scratch, lost all of my old comments, entries, & templates.

But I did get it installed. And the upside to this torturous process is that I am now utilizing a SQL database so that the next time I fuck things up this badly I can repair them a lot easier than this time around.

So over the next little while, I'll be rebuilding my entries and putting humpty-dumpty back together again.

On a fun note the new version has some sweet options, most notably StyleCatcher, which allows owners to change the stylesheet for the site in a few clicks rather than the old hand coding we've all spent hours doing. So the new toy will be responsible for the site looking different likely everytime you visit.

I have a thing about changing my environment often, my IM avatars, wallpapers, backgrounds, etc. So even though it doesn't make up for the huge pile of work I have to do to rebuild the site, I'm loving this new plugin. And you have to admit, it looks pretty sharp.

Labels: tech

What can you say about the catastrophe that Hurricance Katrina left in her wake? Maybe you could say that everyone with a shred of sense in their head wouldn't live in a city below sea level.

Maybe.

But the time for stupid location decisions is long over.

Time for those who made it out to pick themselves up and move on.

Time for the stragglers still in that hell that was once a city to pack it up and walk away. Before they get forced out by the few soldiers that didn't get sent over to another country to keep oil safe for democracy.

I believe Robert Plant and the boys put it best in one of my all time favourite Zepppelin songs:

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Lord, mean old levee taught me to weep and moan Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move

Labels: everything else, politics

So I've decided to directly rip off Dooce.com's idea of posting monthly letters to her daughter on her blog.

I have already been writing to Trinity during the pregnancy, in the hopes that someday she will want to read what was happening in our lives, what we were thinking, feeling, doing, how she was developing, etc. I'm just going to make those letters available to my daughter via the internet, hopefully in perpetuity.

So here is the inaugural edition of the monthly letter to Trinity:

Dear Trinity,

This is the first in a series of letters that I will be writing to you. I intend to write you each month to update you on what has been happening in your life, what you have been doing, who you've met, etc.

Today you are 2 months old, and although the last 2 months have been the most hectic of my life (and certainly your Mom's), I know I can speak for both of us when I say that they have also been the most rewarding.

Since you've come into our lives, you have already changed so much.

You just came back from the doctor on Friday, and you've now hit over the eleven pound mark. You've been eating really well, and very often, so you aren't having any problems gaining weight. At that same doctor's visit, I'm sorry to say, you also got your first round of shots. It sounds like that could have been a lot more fun. I missed that appointment, but your Mom said that it was a pretty hard thing to watch.

Some days you look so much like your Mom its scary, but then the next day, I find that you look a lot like me. But most days, you are your own person. And you are such a beautiful little girl. I always used to think that babies all looked alike, and were mostly wrinkles and pink skin. But as I watch you change from day to day, as I watch your hair changing from the dark black you were born with to the chestnut brown it currently is, and your eyes deepen to the brilliant blue they currently are, I am amazed by what a unique, beautiful being you already are.

I love so may things about being with you:

I love the sounds you make sleeping as you lay on my shoulder, or in your bassinet, or in our bed beside your Mom and I. And every day it's new sounds with you. We sing and talk to you as often as we can, and you are already trying your best to replicate the noises you hear and see us making. You won't be doing any public speaking anytime soon, but you're already trying to communicate with us in a real verbal, non-crying way. Its just amazing.

I love that you have already shown us your beautiful smile. Your Mom uncovered it while playing with you after meal-time a few weeks ago. And contrary to popular opinion, it was not gas.

I love the way you look up at me when you bottle feed. That happens fairly rarely, as you are being breastfed most of the time. I know, ew, right? But every once in awhile, your Mom pumps a bottle, so I can have the opportunity to share in feeding you. In case you didn't know it (or won't admit it), she's a pretty cool Mom.

And I love that every once in awhile, I get to pick out the clothes you wear:

After all your Dad is a computer geek, although once you're old enough to understand that term, I think it will be a bit antiquated. But in the meantime, I love that you will be able to look back and see that you wore some cool clothes at such a young age.

I look forwad to seeing how much you change between now and next month's letter.

Love

Daddy

Labels: trinity