By jp 27 Jul 2001
in case you weren’t paranoid enough, now even ligit vendors are apparently allowing our info to spill out.
<p>thank god I didn’t get a <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/604496.asp?pne=msn&cp1=1">cell phone</a>.</p> By jp 12 Jul 2001
at long last, I took in Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within tonight. a few thoughts:
1) wow.
2) even retina-shattering visuals can be harmed by bad writing (I thought everyone would take a hint after Episode I, but…).
3) wow.
4) the influence from the games is obvious: the character named sid, the similarity to FFVII in overall idea, the same visual effect schemes are even used from some of the cooler console visuals.
but the most interesting thing is the japanese sentiments that are portrayed throughout the movie – the buddhist and shinto beliefs concerning “angry ghosts” and the notion of all objects carrying a life force… really amusing. that these notions would make their way into the games, which would then survive intact and even be developed further in the silver screen production.
but seriously, if you’d like a crash course in the fundamental attitutes regarding sprits, life, and death a la japanese-style all wrapped in some phenomenal graphical achievement, it might be worth your seven american dollars.
By jp 29 Jun 2001
so our alma matter finally updated the “award winning Bates College website”, or as anders once called it, the “six-year old award winning website”.
pathetic.
you know, given the amount of money they spent tearing up the entire quad and staple gunning down fresh grass every spring instead of not using so much fscking sand every winter, and the millions they spend on a football program which excells in date rape and seems to abohr winning a single game or two, you’d think Bates would have some coin to plink down on a new site. moreover, you’d think, given the tight aesthetic criterea all campus buildings have been maintained and/or built within, they’d have some sense of taste.
nope.
picture/graphic heavy, using outdated pix which are of the exact size and quality which makes them absolutely torrid to look at even at a full 16 million colors; poor visibility for most links; a rather bland template/layout; a nearly impossible to negotiate organization/hierarchy of pages and great difficulty navigating to content which was formerly accessible; no secure connection for the alumni section; using some sort of coding scheme which constantly reformats the page depending on what link your mouse is poised over, making clicking more like a game of wackamole than surfing….
….but most of all, it’s boring. and they didn’t mention me niether.
boo hiss.
By jp 15 Jun 2001
happy birthday anders.
By jp 10 Jun 2001
amusing. so I’m in the national aquarium in baltimore with the ladyfriend the other day, out sporting my new hair (which by the way has grown a tid to be a little more pointy and such). there’s a faint gasp from behind me, and assorted murmers, and I turn around to find a slightly overweight biblethumper staring at me, visibly agahst, who says in a near whisper “it’s the devil…”
this was quite amusing and all. so I put on my most mischievous grin and wink, and say “call me morning star, please” and bowed to exit the lobby.
she went backpeddling into the information counter. she was seriously perterbed. guess she really mistook me for someone else.
it’s just hair people.
By jp 05 Jun 2001
congrats to anders on getting his 2nd BS in just as many weeks.
By jp 30 Apr 2001
went and sat in on Dr. Pfefferkorn’s parasite lecture this morning. oooooh boy. highlights included:
By jp 23 Apr 2001
this pisses me off, a great deal.
okay, given that maybe there’s some moral barrier some people may lack, given that everyone wants insta-fix scapegoats for the modern age, given that parents who are too entirely detached and incabable to raise children are still allowed to breed, there’s still such a piss-poor reasoning for tossing the blame around like this.
this angers me most, because as someone who has had plenty of exposure to the agent of corruption at hand and many people who are in theory corrupted by the same great satan, neither I nor they resemble the irrational violent phenotype in any way. I’ll pick on myself:
I’ve never been in a fight, though I love to play the most hideously grotesque fighting sims. Matter of fact, I’ve actively ducked my way out of several fights and never looked back without giving it second thought. I play some seriously tweaked shoot-em-up games, and have never even had the urge to hunt. Wasting a thousand million pawns of some evil empire is all in a quarter’s play, but I don’t think I’d even want to nail a teeney weeney bunny wabbit. It’s just not appealing.
I just don’t understand how parents who are so starved for an explanation of why can reasonably launch such a large scale effort to tackle something they a) know shit about and b) have no rationale for proving it’s the catalyst.
why do people honestly believe that humans are so weak in spirit to take any image or idea presented to them and follow it as if it were their destiny? it’s not that simple. if someone is so tweaked that they’ll crack and use mimicry so easily, there was plenty more going on before. you want a scapegoat, go after their parents. people are only open to suggestion if they’ve got no moral barriers to begin with — those are usually a product of upbringing, which defines their presence, integrity and limits.
it’s just what it sounds like people, entertainment. does this mean I can sue Electronic Arts if little Billy grows up to be a hockey player rather than the academic I always wanted him to be? It’s the same thing as what these folks are saying, and it’s an equal load of bunk.
You want something that makes people do evil things, go after the Church or any organized religion. That’s brainwashing. You want a way to peddle away some hours between classes or unwind for a bit in the evening, try Sega. That’s recreation. You want to blame video games for causing people to snap, try blaming yourself. If people really can’t distinguish between reality and a simulated reality, than there’s something way upstream that we need to be tackling.
And you know behind it all these fucks just want to get rich from the loss of their children. Ah Amurdermerica.
By jp 10 Apr 2001
so I just finished up at the old high school — they had me come back and talk to kids about what it’s like to be getting an advanced degree in the sciences, which I guess is what I’m supposed to be doing.
gave a speech to the entire high school, and visited some classes. what I didn’t know until today was that they were paying me a small lump reward for my “troubles”. uh, BSing about science and getting paid for it. sure.
bottom line — they covered the plane tix too, so all in all it was a nice chance for me to come home for free and drink a yard of beer at the owl bar with some old friends.
By jp 07 Mar 2001
I think one piece of software the net is sorely lacking, and though rather useless would probably download like hotcakes and be incredibly popular, would be a cross-platform universal chat client. it pisses me off to have to use MSN messenger to chat with my japanese friends, ICQ to anyone who’s computer savvy, and AIM to chat to my ninny brother who refuses to switch. I don’t even bother with my Yahoo IM friends.
one client that could maintain a contact list across all services and send and recieve from the appropriate servers based on contacts would be a nice little thing to have, for those of us to cheap to have long distance (which gets a little pricey going to the other side of the globe).
so if any of you programming enabled folks out there want a quick million, write it, distriubute it, sell it, get rich and send me a holiday card.
