El Blogo Del Juan

I hate ballroom dancing. I would never want to do it. Dancing in general isn’t that interesting to me and doing it slowly to bad music with a bunch of people in stuffy clothing even less so. Also those people probably like ballroom dancing… but so do I. I love it in fact. I love a lot of things that I don’t like but have absolutely no effect on my life.

I want the whole world to be full of things that I don’t do. Variety is the spice of life some say. I don’t say it but others do and I agree with them in principle. Life would be less interesting if we all did and thought the same things. At the very least the lines for those things would be longer.

I’m not sure what the internet is doing to underground culture but it is certainly making it more accessible. It used to be if you wanted to do something a little non standard you had to really look to find info about it. For me it was radio controlled cars or paintball. You would find a magazine or go to some little shop and talk to people there. Now all you have to do is google (v. to google, also see yahoo).

I had a Western Civ professor in college who claimed pop culture began with the Sears Catalog. One big piece of mass marketing that everyone got so we could all know what to buy. I don’t know if he was the first to think of that but it makes sense. Suddenly everyone had the same options as what to buy. Given the same limited options do we all tend to gravitate to the best options? I don’t know, I’m just making all this up but the internet is both consolidating certain experiences such as shopping with amazon.com or giving us seemingly infinite options for in-depth info on any edge case hobby we want.

What does it all mean? I don’t know but I love the fact that there is a whole world full of stuff I don’t like and know nothing about. It means there are plenty of options of new things to do and others that I don’t need to worry about.

I have always been a fan of Christmas music as well as Christmas in general. My parents had a few Christmas albums around so I never thought too much about it but now as I decide I am feeling festive I realize that I don’t have much of a catalog. So with this post I am requesting proposals for Christmas music to acquire. An “RFP – eace on earth good will towards men” if you will. No? You’re probably right.

So here is what I have:
Merry Christmas From the Chipmunks (full album)


Mr Heat Miser by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (single track)


Bing Crosby Christmas Classics (full album)


O Holy Night by Trombone Shorty (single track) this is from the TV show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and it’s amazing and free so go download it


and last today I ordered this. My mom had it as a little girl and I really like it. It’s been discontinued but you can find it if you look. I hope it gets here by Christmas…


It’s a Spike Jones Christmas


What else ya’ got?

This is impressive

I found it on Gibbon Jockey . As he says stick around until the last 2 minutes where he really wraps it up well. It’s amazing that this isn’t/wasn’t more of a story but we had to hear about crazy ministers and $150 dollar haircuts for weeks.

Year end lists are cliche but to be honest I really like reading them and hearing them so now that 2007 is fully in the books here are my lists that sum up the previous year in entertainment and other things that I find amusing. Be sure to note that I didn’t get a chance to see everything so as this site has no real theme other than stuff I like and think these lists are merely things that I liked and I saw/heard/etc… I won’t spend the time to guess at what may be better had I had a chance to check it out. With that off we go. Lists are in no particular order.

Top 5 movies:

- 300
-Alpha Dog
-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
-Beowulf
-Superbad

Looking at that list makes me think I need to get out to see more movies. None of them would I feel good about giving favorite movie of the year status. Alpha Dog really surprised me. Generally I like movies that are happy and that one was not but still entertaining. I guess it was a slow year for movies If I had to give a top movie I would go with 300.

Top 5 Video Games:
-Portal
-Team Fortress 2
-Guitar Hero 3
-Bioshock
-Crackdown

This was a very good year for video games. Portal was easily the most innovative and funny but it was fairly short so I would give my game of the year to Crackdown. It was the first game I played Co-op over live and it was the type of games that screwed with my sense of reality. Once you really start jumping from building to building you start feeling like it may be possible. You start to dream about it and you start to think about doing it in real life. That is a winning game. I am really hoping for a sequel.

Best albums of 2007:
I am so bad about new music lately. I am years behind discovering albums that came out 2 – 3 years ago. The only timely thing I heard this year was Pinback Autumn of the Seraphs which I love. To totally punk out I will also name Rob Crow’s solo album who is the singer of pinback. I really need to get out.

Best NL Wildcard teams of 2007:
I can’t think of any. Perhaps they should try not getting swept…

Best Book I Read This Year:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – It’s hella nerdy I know but J.K. Rowling is a wonderful story teller. It takes real talent to write at a level that is interesting to both kids and adults and she is a master of it. I had always said I didn’t want to spoil the movies and reading the books has ruined the movies for me a little bit. I would suggest if you haven’t read them then just hang out wait for all the movies and then listen to the audio books read by Jim Dale. The guy is a genius voice actor and he does seperate voices for every character.

Best website I am using but dislike what it means I should make this facebook as I just recently started using it but I am going to give this to http://www.oobgolf.com. It’s a social networking golf site which has so many things wrong with the idea but it is actually pulled off fairly well. I am going to save a full explanation of this category for a post of it’s own.

That’s all I have for 2007. Next up will be goals and things I’m looking forward to for 2008. I don’t want to linger too much on the past so onward to the year of rat which actually doesn’t start until Feb. 7th. However, it’s never too early to name your years by a revolving list of animals.

Have you ever been sitting around with your Mom and your Aunt and everyone has a beveridge? You go to pick up your glass of Pepsi and instead on accident pick up your mom’s ice tea. You take a drink and nearly throw up because you expected fizzy sweetness and instead get bland Iced Tea. That is how I am if you tell me what is for dinner and then change it. I get preprogrammed for meals and I don’t know why. You could tell me at noon that tonight we are going out for dry bologna sandwiches, no Mayo, no nuthin and then take me to my favorite restaurant. I would still be disappointed because I had been gearing up for bologna.

On a complete sidenote how did you pronounce bologna in your head when you read it? Did you say baloney? I did when I wrote it. Something has gone terribly wrong.

See my review of last Friday’s Police show at Double Time Feel.

 OR  
It seems the Gears of War weapon the Hammer of Dawn has been made a reality and is being used on innocent bystanders in Denver CO. Also if you haven’t seen google street view it is pretty impressive.

See for yourself
Hammer of Dawn

Today I pretty much rebuilt my computer because of of issues my motherboard was having with Vista. Now that I’m back up and running I am playing around with the new RDP and I just figured out something that was not intuitive so I figured I would throw a post up about it since I get so much info off random blog posts.

When you attempt to connect to a remote machine using the IP address with RDP it by default will assume the IP address is the domain and then you have to wait for it to time out to delete the domain name in the log in box and log in.

If you go back to the file and attempt to change the domain in the Edit menu for the RDP it looks like the domain has already been defaulted. However if you explicitly change the domain to DOMAIN\username instead of just username then the domain will change as well.

It’s not terribly intuitive and I figured if I spent that much time trying to figure it out then maybe I can save someone else a few minutes

After signing an exclusive 3rd party deal with the mlb Take Two now enjoys being pretty much the only game in town. I was very happy with the MVP baseball series from EA but due to the exclusive deal I had to change allegiance. The big dilemma in sports games is do you go for perfect simulation or do you go for crazy action packed arcade. I had read an interview with a new project manager that came over from EA’s MVP team in which he said that mlb was not too happy with the previous version of the game with all it’s highlight plays and unfaithful reproduction of the game. I always prefer total simulation vs arcade and in that regard mlb 2k7 for the xbox 360 has done fairly well.

The key to any good baseball game is the hitter/pitcher matchup. Do change-ups really feel like they are slowed down and throw off your timing? Are you fooled by breaking balls with out them having looney tune esque unrealistic break? 2k7 comes through on the features and also adds an innovative touch they call the swing stick. In order to hit you have to first pull the right stick down to step and then either release it or push it up or to the sides to swing.

Unfortunately, the batter pitcher match up is the only really strong point of the game. The biggest problem is the game can be buggy. While playing a franchise the game would get caught in a loop where the play is over and the first baseman is holding the ball and just jog back and forth around 1st until you turned off the game.

Another issue is the difficulty settings and the frequency of HRs and hits. On the lower settings the user can hit 7-10 HRs in a game and on the higher the computer seems to hit a large number of pitching mistakes per game. The computer also has an uncanny knack for robbing HRs. One robbed HR per game is not uncommon. Part of this problem seems to be a smaller set of possible hits than what would be possible in the real world. HRs very often are just over the wall and hits are either directly in a gap or easily fieldable. The computer never comes close but can’t quite reach a ball.

The attention to detail at certain points can also be lacking. I have noticed a few issues with the Cubs such as Sean Marshall being a righty in the game but a lefty in real life. The bleachers in Wrigley Field have seatbacks and the variation of fans in the crowd is very low so much so if you are looking at fans you will see 7-10 people on the screen doing the exact same movements. I can only assume I am only catching the things with the Cubs because I know the team well enough to catch them and the same sort of thing exists on multiple if not every team.

A smaller issue is the lack of named prospects unless they have appeared in the major leagues. For instance Lastings Milledgeof the Mets, who spent some time in the majors last year exists in the game but Felix Pie the Cubs top prospect does not. Also there are unlockable teams such as the 89 A’s or the 55 Brooklyn Dodgers but the players have made up names. I can only assume both problems are because they aren’t in the players union but it still seems like there should be some way to work that out. I haven’t seen any online roster update ability either but since the season hasn’t started yet I am still holding out hope. I have seen sites online that will let you download roster files that if you have a third party attachment that allows you to save PC content to a memory card then you can get them to your 360. It would be nice to see Microsoft provide a way to transfer rosters and game saves from the internet.

Though I focused on the negatives the game is still playable and since it is pretty much the only game in town that is a good thing. Hopefully even though there is no competition they will still feel the need to aggressively keep the game updated and improve it. With a few updates and better quality control this could be a solid baseball franchise.