Interzone Futebol Gets Publisher

Speaking of "my game", I just saw some goods news. The following press release went out the other day regarding Interzone Futebol signing a publishing deal with Gamigo AG.

Gamescom special - gamigo surprises with football MMOG

Hamburg, 21st August 2009 - gamigo AG, a leading European publisher of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), today unveiled the world's first football MMOG. gamigo and Interzone, the Australian developer of Futebol, signed the publishing contract this morning at gamescom Cologne. Futebol will be released in German and English by the end of this year, with French, Spanish, Turkish and Polish language versions following in 2010.

Fast-paced football action for up to 22 players

This realistic football simulation offers players exciting 11-a-side matches combined with action-packed gameplay. The intuitive controls are a snap for beginners while providing the finesse demanded by our more advanced gamers– they can even queue commands up to 4 seconds in advance, entirely eliminating latency issues. Players earn experience points not just by scoring goals, but by their overall performance in the match– players at all levels and in all positions will have a great time!
Even off the pitch, Futebol is amazing fun: a huge 3D city houses numerous NPCs from which the player can obtain upgrade items and customise their character’s appearance. gamigo and Interzone have even hidden mini games throughout the city for our gamers to play and earn rewards. Of course, Futebol includes the typical MMOG features with a football twist– a sophisticated skill system, clubs, leagues as well as a large 3D lobby in addition to a mass of other community features.

Exciting competitions across Europe

"Football is the national sport par excellence. With Futebol, we’re pleased to offer not only the world’s first free to play soccer MMOG, but also a lively MMO world based on the most popular sport in Europe." said Patrick Streppel, gamigo CMO. "With the launch of this title across Europe starting in Q4 this year we will surely inspire many football fans. We’re even more excited at the possibility of our players re-creating world cup matches on their PCs, come the competition next year in South Africa. "
Football fans hungry for this brand new football MMOG can register for the closed beta right now at www.futebol-game.com.

I know Marty and the gang have been working at this really hard at this since late last year and I know this is really good news for the guys still in Perth. Congrats everybody. Yay!

Though this just reminded me that I have to do my Australian taxes for last year ASAP!

Champions Online Doesn't Want My Money.

I am trying to buy a six month’s subscription for Champions Online, and upcoming MMO from Cryptic. They keep sending me emails saying if I pre-buy a discounted 6 month’s subscription I’ll get access some stuff including access to the Star Trek Online beta. Now, Champions was my game for a good number of years back in the late 80’s and I want to see Star Trek Online early. So I decided to spend money I really don’t have... except that they won’t let me.

It appears their web form has a little problem with the Google Chrome browser. The drop down fields for the Credit Card Type, Expiration Month, and Expiration Year are broken. They aren’t displaying correctly. They are left aligned on top of their text label and are non-interactive.

I went to the support page and one of the options it gave me was a link to the technical support forum. Only when I used the link it took me to a page that said I do not have permission to access this page. I went to enter a ticket and it wants me to pre-search their knowledge base before it allows me to do so, which is pretty standard now days. Only when I entered “google crome” as my search it comes up blank. Blank as in nothing is displayed.

I did finally get the purchase to work by loading it in Firefox. I also managed to enter a ticket saying that their purchase page is broken by searching for something else which gave me the option of creating a new ticket.

The whole thing just got me so frustrated which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that I normally do this sort of thing for a living and not having a job at the moment. The standard operating procedure for this sort of thing in somebody else's game would be to make snide remarks to my co-workers along the lines of, "look those fools forgot to test their site on Crome!" And then see if we any of us knew somebody who worked there so we could curry favor by telling them about it. Or if was something in my own game, I could pick up the phone and light a fire under somebody; because not being to give the company money goes against what I would say is the number one goal of the company.

The next problem is that I am going to have to spend more money I shouldn't, back to the being out of work thing, on actually buying the game I just bought a subscription for. I have a feeling the guys at Game Stop will have a much easier time taking my money. Unless... I make it more difficult by bringing in my old X-Box, PS2, and Game Cube and trying to get store credit for them which I could use to by the game! Yeah, that should be tons of fun give me lots more to complain about!

This is a Test Post

I am testing both the email to blog feature and also seeing if I manged to fix it so the entire post doesn't show up as a note on my Facebook page. 

I cannot find whatever I set up post my blog onto my Facebook page. I've looked through both the setting / options on Facebook and on Blogger and found nothing.  But I did find the site feed option and changed it from Full (entire blog post gets published by the feed) to short (only approximately 255 characters of the blog post gets published and you have to actually read the blog to read the rest of what ever I'm rambling on about.)

That is really all I wanted to say in this test post, but I want to go on a bit more so that I know for sure that it is only publishing the first 255 chatacters.  I don't really have anything else to say at this point, but I'm still typing. Hey, do you know how confusing / annoying some design documents are when the author doesn't differentiate "characters" (the avatar the player is controlling) with "characters" (letters of the alphabet)?  

"The character name can only be 14 characters long."  

"The first character in the character's name is automatically capitalized."

Those two lines should post in italic. And this line starts with a tab, wonder what that will do when it pasts. I have no idea but I am going to keep typing a little more to see if it just indents the first line or multiple lines.  I could start testing some HTML but I'm not feeling up to that much test at the moment.

The character vs. character thing is not as amusing as the designer author who keeps saying "Player" when he means "Character."  I don't care how realistic the game is, you should never damage the player or kill him off.  They tend to stop paying their subscription fee if you do that.  It is; however, okay to damage or kill the Player's character.  Those last two words should be in bold.

Okay, that enough typing for this test.  I now return you to you regular browsing.

Into the Deep, Dark, Burning Depths I Ventured...

I went dumpster diving today... okay, not in a dumpster but rather my storage bin here in Las Vegas. Half of the stuff in there is what I kept after moving out of my house before moving to San Diego and onto Australia about six years ago. The rest is the stuff I put in there after moving back from Australia.

There was one point, while climbing around in 400 degree heat at the very back of the "air cooled" storage bin, when a number boxes started to shift behind me, that I suddenly felt like I was going to pass out. I had a thought about how long it would take them to notice I was missing, find my dead and crushed body, and figure out how to get it out. Luckily, I had my 100 FL OZ, insulated, Rebel Convenience store cup full of diet Dr. Pepper within reach to provide some much need refreshment. That's right one HUNDRED fluid ounces!!! And it only costs me .99 cents to refill. Thats one dollar and seven cents if you include tax. Compare that to the cost of a normal, 12 fluid ounce, can of soda. To be fair it isn't quite as big as it looks; because, it has a very thick, foam insulated core. I can fill it in the morning and it still has ice left in it in the evening.

I was looking for some specific stuff, but also found some other cool stuff.

First up is a self-portrait that Neil Gaiman drew on the back of his name page at a 1993 (I think, though I might be off by a year either way) San Diego Comic-Con panel on Horror Fiction. During the panel another author started to drone on about some artsie-fartsie stuff and pretty much everybody else in the room started to nod off. I noticed that Neil had begun to doodle on the back of his name page; which was really just a folded piece of paper with his name printed on it so you knew who was who on the panel. After the panel was over the entire audience swarmed around him at the exit as he was leaving. I, however, went to see what he had been doodling and claimed this prize.

I also found some of my old Unicorn Software educational games. Pictured are "Animal Kingdom" (later renamed "Wonders of the Animal Kingdom"), "Kinderama" on the Amiga, and "MacRobots."I really only found the slipcover for "MacRobots." When I left Unicorn Software back in 1988 I wasn't allowed to take my copies of the games I had worked on so that is all I got. If I mess with the sidebar art anymore, I'll add these in along with "Adventures of Sinbad" and "Magical Myths" which I also have cover scans of. Though now that I look at them I see that they are photographs taken of the boxes lying on a table which puts them at odd angle.

I also found two other Unicorn related items. Both of these my Mother had been keeping. She gave them back to me just in time for me to bury them in storage with the rest of the junk I was keeping. The first thing pictured above is the Amiga advertisement on the inside back cover of the August 1987 Commodore magazine. That is the Amiga version of "Animal Kingdom" on the right-hand computer. The funny thing is, as I just took the magazine out of the scanner, I noticed the advertisement on the outside back cover is for the Amiga versions of SSI's "Phantasie III, The Wrath of Nikademus" and "Realms of Darkness." I'm not sure about Realms, but I know Westwood did the port of Wrath to the Amiga. It was an omen!

Then there is the Unicorn Software Educational Catalogue. It looked much better on the Amiga monitor I assure you. A lot better than you see it here where it is a picture (with flash) taken of the monitor, that was then printed out on the manual which then sat in a box for the last 20+ years only then to be rescanned into the computer. It is actually a fold out catalog and has two screen shots for each game. I'm looking at a few of them thinking, "Did I draw that... I think I drew that... Okay yeah, I remember drawing that!" The fox for Aesop's Fables looks especially good. If you look real closely at the bottom left of the cover, you can see some yellow pixels. That is where I signed my name, but it got cut off when they trimmed the picture to account for the curve of the monitor photo.

I also found my pillow which I am very happy about. It is one of those nice memory foam ones that is thicker along the top and bottom making it less likely that my arm will fall asleep if I rest it under the pillow while sleeping. Arm falling asleep is actually loss of blood circulation which isn't the same as me falling asleep. I probably didn't have to explain that, but the sentence felt odd.

My Vectrex video game console was in there too, but I figured it was safer to leave it there. Especially since I had booby-trapped it to kill off any other tomb raiders who dared disturb my "Temple of Junk!"

The two cartridges I have for the Vectrex, a 'mega' cartridge with every game officially published and the unreleased prototype cartridge of "Dark Tower" are buried in one of the other boxes that I brought back from Australia. I had accidentally had them in with my desk supplies and moved them downunder with me. I was always afraid I was going to loose them, but I distinctly remember putting them in a box when I packed up in Perth.

Bob Jones, one of the very talented artist I worked with at Auran, also had a Vectrex in Australia. He had actually bought his new back when he was a kid. Unfortunately, it no longer worked and he just had it sitting on his desk as a show piece.

I never had any of the color overlays as I bought my system used from a guy who's name I believe is Sean Kelly. He used to have a newsletter that he would publish with antique video games for sale. I also think he was one of the guys who founded the classic video game convention that they used(?) to host here in Las Vegas. I was able to find links to Sean's website but it appears the site is no longer there.

One thing I didn't find was my Westwood jacket. We all had letterman's jackets made with the year we started on the sleeve. I know I didn't take it with me to Australia, so I hope it is in there somewhere.

Went Out Looking for Dollhouse on DVD/Blu-Ray

My first problem is very large and would probably make somebody’s career if they had a good literary agent and a couch I was comfortable on.

My first problem with the Dollhouse television series is I can’t decide on the format. (kinda like how the internet can't decided if it is "Dollhouse" or "Doll House!" Compound word on official site so I'm going with that.)

A digital version on iTunes to go with my other collection of TV shows is preferred. I like having them all nice and neat on my little red portable hard drive. But since ITunes doesn’t offer all the extras, such as commentaries and the TWO (that’s twice as many as one!) un-aired episodes, they are right out. Sorry Apple, I know you are taking a bunch of crap right now, but suck less and everything will work out.

UPDATE: Felicia Day has just posted via Twitter, that the missing 13th episode, "Epitaph One," will be on iTunes and AmazonVideo on Demand on August 11th. No mention of the un-aired pilot. That missing and the commentaries, which I would like to listen to for this show, still means iTunes is out.

So now there is Blu-Ray versus regular, and a lot cheaper, DVD. Cheaper is good, I’m not actually rolling in money right now. More like rolling towards financial ruin actually. But tell that to the handful of VHS tapes and books on cassette tapes I have packed away in shame. Tell me all about that as I cry softly while curled up in a ball around my Criterion Collection Blade Runner Laser Disk!

The real problem is the Blu-Ray player. I do have a Playstation 3 sitting in the closet, but don’t have a decent TV to hook it up to. I did buy Watchmen on Blu-Ray, but it came with the digital copy that I could import into iTunes which was cool. I will eventually have a decent TV (what an optimist). But how will I be able to watch them NOW? It is pretty common knowledge that I have the patience and restraint of a two year old when I want something. Any ideas?

I saw both formats at Target, but thought they might be cheaper at Walmart. Turns out Dollhouse isn't even in their instore inventory system yet, much less on the shelves even though they have it up for sale on Walmart's online store for $28.32 DVD and $42.32 Blu-Ray. Amazon has it for 29.99 DVD and 42.49 Blu-Ray.

One of the odd things about me is, that I will sit and whine about not having it for weeks before finally decided to buy it somewhere even though I would have it sooner if I ordered it online now. That is another way of saying, I didn't actually buy anything.

So what about this Dollhouse show. Is it worth getting and watching? The Io9 website has a great article on the box set. It talks about how less episotic and client of the week it feels when they are watched closely together, how much you get from the two unaired episodes and even the Joss Whedon commentary where he dishes on the problems and interference he had with Fox. Then there is the interview they have: Joss Whedon On The Dark Secret At The Heart Of His Worlds, where he talks about the show, but you shouldn't watch it if you don't want any spoilers from the unaired episode "Epitaph One."

For those of you who don’t follow these things, Fox decided that either Dollhouse or Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles had to go. They could only keep one. (the zero sum game of the current television broadcast model needs to go. Yay rise of the internets! Boo, that they will probably manage to screw it up.) Fox chose Dollhouse over Terminator, probably because they are afraid of the Joss Whedon Fan Club's army. I know I am and I actually have that T-Shirt from PvP Online.

Speaking of io9, I found this other great article on their site about Favorite Last Lines From Science Fiction Novels and another about Why Avatar Can't Fail. I think I'll bookmark their site. Maybe even put it up on the sidebar of links over on the right, though I've been saying that about the XKCD comic strip forever. Hey, at least I fixed the missing RSS graphic! You didn't even notice that did you... you didn't even notice it was broken... Sigh.

An Apple a Day Won't Keep the FCC Away

I was going to write a post summarizing the Apple iPhone "shenanigans" and "goings on," but then I found this lovely post on Rickman's Posterous that does a great job of collecting all the stories and links.

I do miss my iPhone. But I had to sell off my contract to Richard when I left Australia. That didn't stop Telstra from sending me a $1000+ bill for breaking my contract. Fortunately, my friend Lisa's boyfriend works for Telstra and had brokered the deal for me. A quick email to him and he straightened it out.

At the moment I am just over joyed to be waiting. New 3Gs phone is out and I'm not stuck with the old one. All this flak over the Apple Application Store being sorted out. And hey, maybe I won't be restricted to AT&T in the near future. Why did I choose the iPhone in the first place you might be asking yourself if you were even still reading this post at this point? For all the cool aps? The slick, easy to use interface? Because I'm an Apple fanboy? No, because a few years ago I made the mistake of choosing iTunes as my media player for all the audiobooks and few TV shows I buy. Now DRM won't let me choose a new application.

Before I go, one of the links about the story is a must read: Google Pulls Apple from Search Results.

Google's official explanation for removing Apple from its search results came from Vice-President in charge of search, Marissa Mayer, "Those search results duplicate a lot of the functionality of other sites. For example, people can find cell phones on many other sites. We just think this makes it easier for our users."

P.S. don't be an idiot and try to google "apple.com" to see if it works or not, its a humor piece and isn't true. However, you can go over to his mailbag page and read some emails and comments from people who did think it was real.

Who is the Sausage King of Chicago?

Yahoo mail won't let me log in unless I give them two security questions and answers which they can use if I lose my password. This is part of how Twitter was hacked, google it yourself for details. But boiling it down, somebody who is trying to hack your account could very well know the name of all your aunt's and just has to enter them all to find 'your favorite aunt.' Granted I can enter my own question and corresponding answer. The problem with that is I get too creative and don't remember what the hell I was thinking of 5 years later when I actually do need to retrieve my password.

In the meantime I have found a way around having to come up with these questions and answers until I figure out something. I log into yahoo messenger which prompts me if I have yahoo mail. I tell it to open yahoo mail and it does so bypassing their page that requires that I come up with those questions.

In the meantime, please don't hack me. Not that there is anything in my yahoo mail account that you'd find the least bit interesting. And not that I use that password on any other sites.

The title was one thing I thought of as a possible security question, but I think we all know that the Sausage King of Chicago is Abe Froman. Now go away or I will be forced to get 'snooty.'

Our Princess is in Another Castle

Alright, now I have to figure out what I did to turn on the feature that publishes my blog on my Facebook page. I think there is a way to just get it to post a notification that I have published a new blog entry, without it posting the whole blog entry. The reason is that I have noticed a drop in the numbers of people visiting the blog which is probably because a good number of my readers are also my friends on Facebook. Also people are commenting on the Facebook posting instead of the blog itself which can mean two different comment chains.

On a related note, I saw the Google Wave presentation video and can't wait for that to come out. I've been trying to tell people about it, but nobody seems interested enough to watch the video.

I know I have said it before, but I should also get around to moving the blog over to the new blogger templates. Can they even be called the "new" templates anymore? It has been awhile since they upgraded the system. Lots of new features though and I am sure that the Google Wave thing will require the new stuff to work on the blog.

I have also been wondering if I publish negative things and complain too much on my blog. I do rave about some of the things I like, but I don't think I do it often enough. I am going to make more of an effort to do so.

Actually, what I really need to do is start seriously playing games again. I took a forced break when I moved from Australia and I had to wait till my stuff arrived. But even then I didn't really start playing anything. I think it is a matter of this not being my house, I don't have my gaming computer set up and the TV here is pretty old and wouldn't handle the PS3 very well. Been playing some browser games, but nothing overly exciting. I am getting pretty itching to raid something, fight off a hoard of zombies, or save a princess. Jones'ing to actually get back to making games as well, two promising irons in the fire at the moment, keep your fingers crossed.

Borders Bookstores Continuing the Beatings Until Sales Improve

Let me start off by coming clean. I am NOT one of those people who spends their day shouting from the rooftops about the evils of big business and large chains. I actually like having large, well-kept strip mall nearby full of, what I believe some people call, “shoe box stores.” I eat at mid-level food establishments like Chili’s, Applebee’s, and the like. I get a Venti, Coffiee Frappuccino ™ with vanilla syrup at Starbucks a few times a week. For my book shopping needs I go to Borders and Barnes & Noble.

I take the criticism and cries of “economic imperialism” with a large grain of salt. I understand that people are in business to make money.

However… that being said…

I am reading all sorts of crap about Borders. The company, in an effort to rescue itself from declining profits, is apparently attempting to piss everybody off and have them shop elsewhere. Employees have started venting about cuts and elimination of perks. You can read their comments in reply to various posts over on Used Book Blog. The comments were from a post questioning if rival, Barnes & Noble, was planning on buying them out and are summed up in the next post title “Borders Books Employees Are Angry.”

After looking into all this I found the story about the Border’s “Make Book” program where they have decided to mimic the tradition of independent bookshops that “Hand Sell” books by local or favored authors. A few titles get prominent placement and recommendations from the store employees. Granted these aren’t local authors but rather titles picked by Border’s national sales office, but that is okay. Deserving titles that are under appreciated get a little boost. Except that we are hearing reports from Border’s employees of the pressure they are being put under to sell these books. Tales of being forced to hound customers, even if they clearly aren’t interested and if the quotas aren’t met employees can lose their job. The May 5th, 2009 story about this on Yahoo news seems to have expired even though it isn’t even 3 months old.

There are stories about Borders getting rid of managers and supervisors, quick return of unsold product to vendors to get back credit at the expense of empty bookshelves, repairs not being completed, elimination of the employee of the month program, and firing of long time employees.

In response to all this negative news and information that is OBVIOUSLY being leaked out by employees, Borders has leapt into action by pressuring employees to sign non-blogging contracts. Seems like quite the admission of guilt. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to motivate your employees into being proud of where they work and have them saying nice things about you on the internets? This really seems like a, “The beatings will continue until moral improves” measure.

As a game designer, I know that rewarding players for positive behavior works much better than punishing them for doing things I don't want them to do. Granted, that doesn't work in the extreme; if a player is hacking and cheating in my MMO, I am going to ban him from the game. If your employee is embezzling funds, fire him. However, I think that rewarding the employee or store that sells the most copies of the title you are pushing that month would work better than dire threats and the like. Follow me on this:

Nobody wants to work someplace where they are constantly being threatened with being fired.

Nobody who doesn't like where they are working is going to do that great a job.

Nobody enjoys shopping someplace where the staff isn't doing a good job.

Thinking about it, whenever I talk to somebody I know that works at Starbucks, they have nothing but nice things to say about working there. When my nephew was 2 and my brother would take him to Starbucks they doted on him. They even put up pictures of him next to the register. There is a newspaper article clipped to the bulletin board of the Starbucks about how the employee’s there made a Starbucks apron for the little dog of one of their customers. Cheesy I know, but it is the employee’s generating positive press for your company.

Dear Borders, give it a shot. In the meantime I'll be over at Barnes & Noble.

Rambling About Television Shows Again

Can Network Television just not handle cutting edge TV programming? Did “Kings” fail because it was on Network Television as opposed to Showtime or HBO? I just watched the second to last episode and got to thinking about it. Looking back, I see that that overall plot was pretty good; it was just that the rest of the production didn’t live up to that. I just deleted a large section where I nit-picked what I didn’t like; because, that isn’t really what I wanted to write about. I am really interested as to why this show failed.

There was a bit in “The Long Lead Story,” episode 5 of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” where the president of Entertainment Programming for the fictional NBS, Jorden McDeere (played by Amanda Peet), wants to buy the pilot of a show called “Nations” about the behind the scenes workings of the United Nations. The debate in the show is about how HBO wants the show and that it doesn’t belong on Network TV. When she first comes out and asks for Danny’s help in convincing the writer to let them buy it, he says, “No.” When asked why he says, “Because HBO is better.” At another point in the show she says, “I don’t think that the people who write TV are smarter than the people who watch TV.”

But when I see “Kings” and wonder what happened that made the show into the mess that got it canceled to nobody’s surprise, when I see a show as unbelievably good as “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” get canceled due to low ratings, and when I see the high ratings of all the reality TV shows; I wonder if the statement above is true… at least for Network TV. Over on the high end pay channels like HBO and Showtime we have shows like “Deadwood,” “Rome,” “Dexter,” “Californification,” “Weeds,” “The Tutors,” “Entourage,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Trueblood” to name more than a few. Even basic cable has great stuff like “Rescue Me,” “The Shield,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Mad Men.” To be fair there have been some good shows on cable that got the axe before their time such as “Dead Like Me” and “Farscape” to name two.

There is a lot of well written TV out there across all genres, but it appears to only flourish on cable. Could these shows not survive on regular Network TV? If not, why? Is it the audience? I hesitate to blindly place blame with the network executives. I know they want their shows to succeed even if they sometimes appear to be working hard against that. I don’t really think it was entirely their fault for canceling “Terminator, the Sarah Conner Chronicles.” I think the writers have to take some of that blame as well; because, they appeared to be dragging out too much of the personal character issues at the expense of the action we would expect in a TV show about time traveling killer robots from the future. But for all I know that could have been the network guy’s fault too. Something obviously went wrong and now the show is gone. Dollhouse was moving along just as slow until the last two episodes, but thankfully that survived the axe and hopefully Josh and the gang will pick up the pace a bit next season.

I loved Westwing but even it suffered from low ratings in its later years. I was never that impressed by 24. If you haven’t seen the YouTube clip of David Cross’ reaction to “Arrested Development” being canceled, you really should. What else? I haven’t watched “Lost” since season two, thanks to the even worse Australian Network TV (whole other rant) but I hear people complaining about it all the time. In the beginning the show was going too slow and dragging everything out and now they are complaining that it is going too fast and confusing everybody. Speaking of Joss Whedon, there was “Angel” that I still don't understand while another network didn't pick up and of course “Firefly.” I am trying to think of a other shows... there was the one about the American Embassy years ago that I think I liked, that one where Gena Davis was President which I thought was horrible, and a few others that have already slipped my mind.

Back to the audience issue, is network TV just for those people who want some instant satisfaction entertainment without all the baggage of having to concentrate too deeply on the show or its ongoing back story? Shows like CSI and Law and Order seem to fit that bill, “done in one” as they say in the comic book industry. Sure it’s an on-going show, but the whole story is pretty much done in one episode and you don’t lose anything if you miss any shows in-between. That is pretty much true for most sit-coms as well. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this. But is it the fate of Network TV to be saddled with nothing but that type of show while the harder stuff is confined to cable?

Anyway... sorry was just rambling there. I always have this fear that I am going to be trying to get a job as a writer at sometime in the future and somebody is going to read my blog, see these rambling posts, and not hire me. Dear Mr. Editor from the Future, If I was writing this for you I would have structured and paced it a whole lot better, not to mention actually proof read it. Okay, that should solve that problem. Now I am just going to go toss a penny into the fountain and make a wise that Aaron Sorkin will come back and do another TV show.

Little of this, little of that

I was showing my blog to some people today via Internet Explorer 8 on a giant TV screen in some ungodly resolution, and the layout was broken. The right-hand sidebar was wrapped under the posts. It may have been because somebody had increased the text size, but it was still pretty embarrassing. I think everybody realized that this was a Blogger thing and not something I really have control over. I am a bit worried that I am still not using the new blogger templates, though at this point 'new' is a relative term.

If you didn't know I am in Scotland at the moment. I count myself lucky that after five years in Australia, I at least know which way to look when I cross the street. It is a lot like Australia in that they roll the sidewalks up pretty early, not counting the pubs and the lone Kebab shop.

It has been quite the two weeks though. Took my dad down to the VA hospital for his eye operation. That all appeared to have turned out quite well.

Then a few days in Disneyland with the Niece, Nephew and other assorted relatives. Kids are still pretty young and hyper while my elders are starting to get up there. Being caught in-between that was almost an event unto itself. I did get away the first night because Eric#3 and Kristina had wagon-trained up with us. She had an appointment in LA the next morning. The upshot of that is that I got to have a grown up dinner with them in Downtown Disney the night before, fireworks included.

I did get my Monte Cristo sandwich (don't look at the picture on that wiki link, it is horrible and very unappetizing) but I missed riding Space Mountain while I was making reservations for the Blue Bayou restaurant in the morning. Alex went back to get us a fastpass for it later on, but they closed it for a few hours to fix something. When we went back by it, the Fastpass time had a return of much later that night and we had dinner reservations at the Pirate's Dinner Adventure. I thought there was too much singing and a tad too much slapstick, but the kids really liked it. Next time I think I'll go back to the old tradition of Medieval Times which is next door.

Now I'm in Scotland and managed to chip my other front tooth veneer. I got in at 12:00 local time and took a small nap. When I got up I was spying around the local area on Google Earth when I kinda nodded off again. I awoke with start for no reason I can remember, bit down too hard and off comes a big chip. I had to have the Lovely Kristina call my dentist back in Vegas to extend my Wednesday appointment to get the actual new veneer on the previous one installed (I'm wearing a temporary on that one that I've been afraid would pop off during this trip) to now include starting the process to fix the next one. Anybody got a spare $1300 dollars lying around?

Speaking of the adventures of me and my dentist; when I chipped the first tooth, I had tried to get a hold of Dr. Phelps who was pretty much Westwood's dentist back in the day. He was related to one of the programmers and played Everquest with us. I found out that he had moved away and somebody else had taken over his practice. They then in-turn moved to the other side of town. When I was tracking down their address, driving down Flamingo, when I had a big scare that they would be the dentist that had taken over the old Unicorn Software office. As it turns out they are in phase two of the office complex that Unicorn was in. It was being built during my time at Unicorn back in the late 80's. I went over there and the nice ladies at the accounting office that is now there, let me take a picture of the stained glass Unicorn window from the inside. I do think that had this new dentist been in the old Unicorn office that I would have had to find someplace else to fix my tooth.

I have been desperately trying to follow the Tour de France, but am not having much luck. I got to watch the first stage via the Australian SBS website, but they blocked out of the country viewing the next day. Since they I either haven't been around or able to find a site that lets me view the videos live from where I am. I have just been settling on reading about each stage, watching the standings and following a few of the team on Twitter. Even the TV here in my hotel room doesn't appear to be working.

Half a Day and A Cramped Hand Later...

Okay, the new left hand sidebar background graphic is done, uploaded and appears to be working. If you are viewing the blog in a resolution thinner than 1024 you are just out of luck, sorry. It sure took longer than I expected. But what else do I have to do while sitting here in this hotel room? Let me just say that using Photoshop on a laptop, without a mouse, is a royal pain in the ass... or more exactly, the hand.

One of the things that made it take so long was that I just couldn't take the cover of Dune II looking so bad. It wasn't the first Real Time Strategy game, but it was the one that created and defined the RTS genre as we know it. Such an esteemed title deserves a little respect, and all the box scans that I found online were horrible. The reason being that the title text and frame around the picture on the front of the box were done in raised gold foil which doesn't scan in very well.

After a little searching I found a copy online that was uploaded pretty large. Unfortunately, it was scanned and saved in 256 colors even though it was a jpeg. Somebody needs to do their file format compression homework. It was still pretty good for what I needed. I spent about an hour cleaning it up and bringing out the title text. Once shrunken down, you can't even tell. Here is the old box cover I had and the new cleaned up one. I also left the new one a little larger.
You can also see this problem with "Mines of Titan" box cover. Notice how the giant title text doesn't stand out very well against the background. It was also done with foil text, silver this time. Looks great on the store shelf, but doesn't scan in very well. I probably should have cleaned it up a bit too, even just a little brightness & contrast adjustment to bring out the red background. Though I know how I am, if I don't make a stand and stop now at 11:00, I'll be up all night touching up every single box cover. Even now I just had to go back into Photoshop and add the drop shadow. But those drop shadow settings where the ones I used for the boxes on the top layer of the side bar montage. It doesn't quite look right, by itself, on the white background... No no no! I'm not doing any more work on it! It's just my stupid blog that is only read by half a dozen people! I'll save my anal attention to detail for work that people will actually see.

As another famous Westwood saying goes, this one from Brett Sperry directly to me over something I was working on, "It's done, quit pixel fucking it!" It is a quote that has served me well over the years.

"That's a lot of boxes!"

If you are an old Westwood employee you may recognize that saying. If you are a current Petroglyph employee, you should go up to Mike Legg and ask him; because, although it was something said by Marco, it was Mike's imitation of Macro saying it that made it one of the famous "Westwood Quotes."

Other quotes in the Mike imitating Marco series include, "You should shave, you look like Pancho Villa." and "I'm nobody's flunky."

But the purpose of this post, is to point out that I know you can't read the blog if you resolution is 1024 pixels wide. I am sitting in a hotel room in Redlands California as we speak, slaving away in Photoshop, fixing the boxes on the left.

If you are reading this blog at some point after a few hours from now, in a browser window 1024 pixels wide or smaller, and don't see what the problem is; nevermind because I have obviously already fixed it.

If; however, you are reading this at some point after... yadda yadda yadda, and the text still overlaps the boxes on the left... Sorry but I guess one of the following things happened:

• I never got back to it after going to lunch.

• Hotel's internet went out and I wasn't able to upload the new graphic.

• I couldn't figure out what I did last time to link to the new graphic in a manner which the site wasn't scaling it down to fit on screen.

• An attractive woman expressed at least some passing interest in my romantically and I am off wooing her and could care less if you could read this or not.

• My plans for world domination have been moved forward and I am busy trying to take Australia, which as we know from Risk, is strategically important.

• I am still thinking of things to add to this list instead of working on the graphic... DOH!.

04:05:06 07/08/09

There has been a piece of email bouncing around the internets the last week or so.

Just in case you had nothing more serious to think about today...

At five minutes and six seconds after 4 on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be:

04:05:06 07/08/09.
This exact sequence will never happen again in our lifetimes

I love how it includes the tag line "This exact sequence will never happen again in our lifetimes."

First this isn't true, because after it happens in the AM, it happens again 12 hours later in the PM. Unless you are using military time.

You could fly to someplace like Australia, that does DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY, next month and it will happen again on the 7th of June. Unless you are already there in which case it isn't happening today; because, today was yesterday (Australia is 15 to 17 hours ahead of the U.S.) which doesn't matter because it was 08/07/09 for them anyway.

Who ever wrote this email also didn't consider my impending plans for world domination. One of my immediate action points after taking control, will be to start the calendar over again in my name. So about nine and a half years after I get that done, it will indeed happen again. It will also be more accurate than; because, the year really will be 0009 instead of 2009.

Sci-Fi = SyFy = Equal Still Don't Care

The Sci-Fi channel is about to change its name to SyFy sometime around now. Yeah, when I first heard the name I thought it was stupid too. I read the reasoning and understood it, but still didn’t like the new name.

At the end of the day though, I don’t really care. But I am reading forum after forum where people are just going off, ranting and raving about how they are never going to watch the channel again. Granted there was animosity generated when Tim Brooks who was part of the channel's launch, said the following in a TV Week interview:

"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,"

SCI FI president Dave Howe responded to this quote in a recent interview:

We didn't say this! This was a quote by a TV historian named Tim Brooks, speaking to TV Week, which has been mistakenly attributed to us by some people. That is not our view, and we wholeheartedly disagree with what Brooks had to say. He does not work for the network, and he hasn't for more than 10 years.

But again, I don't care. A rose by another name and all that. If I was dating Megan Fox and she suddenly changed her name to Myrtle Pussboil, she would still look great running in slow motion!

The reason I give the channel a cold shoulder is that I'm just not impressed with their content. For every good series on their channel there are half a dozen crappy filler shows. They canceled Farscape and other a number of other award winning shows. They have been completely silent when fans have begged them to pick up shows canceled on other networks. In the end I have not a shred of loyalty to a channel brand, just the individual shows. You want to impress me SyFy? Pick up Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yeah I know its way too late for that to happen, but that's why it would impress me.

Virtuality

I just watched Virtuality, which was supposed to be a new TV series on Fox. Instead the two part pilot was aired as a movie last month. It doesn’t look like Fox is going to pick it up as a series. You can watch it over on Hulu for free, legally.

I liked it for what it was and would watch it as a series. But there are a number of things about it that bother me and since I like to rattle on and complain about such things, I will.

First of all these people aren’t the type of people you’d send off on a long range space mission. The people who you’d find on this type of mission would be the super a-type personalities, the do or die achievers, the people with the right stuff. They are the kind of people who continue on toward their goal no matter what. The goal is their whole purpose in life. The people on the show, however, are a bunch of mental loons. Everybody has a personality problems and half of them are more irritable than I am when trying to explain why I don’t like baby-doll waistlines on women’s dresses.

The show throws in my two least favorite and ultra tired plot devices. The evil giant mega-corporation that is operating with shadowy, deceitful methods to achieve unknown goals that basically boils down to money and power. And, the whole global warming is going to kill us tomorrow thing. Note that is “kill us tomorrow” not “eventually make the planet unlivable at some distant point in the future.” Though to be fair there is a suggestion that the evil giant mega-corporation may be making up the whole global catastrophe thing to influence the crew.

Another tired thing is the over simplifying of technology in the form of some “Ghost in the Machine” figure who keeps popping up in everybody’s virtual reality program and doing bad things like killing or raping them. The crew keeps referring to it as a “glitch” and that just annoys the hell out of me. That is like playing Chess on your computer and suddenly because a computer programmer messed up, the program bugs out causing you to have to play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe every time you want to capture a pawn. Well actually in this case a Tic-Tac-Toe program that shoots you. Glitches don’t do that. A stack overflow error doesn’t create a whole other game inside the program, especially one that has its own motives. These characters wouldn’t call it a glitch, they would know it was something more purposeful.

And since the whole show was just a pilot, it doesn’t really end which sucks if you just sat through the whole thing.

New Sidebar Art

As you can see the new sidebar art is up with all the box covers from the various games I have worked on. Actually, I have only "Futuria" out of the Unicorn Software titles. I started to look for "Animal Kingdom" (later renamed "Wonders of the Animal Kingdom" because they didn't want to fight a lawsuit from Animal Kingdom magazine) but couldn't find it. The Commodore 64 version was the first professional game that I worked on.

I had actually wanted to do something like this for awhile, I just never felt like digging through the web to find all the box covers. It was a lot easier this time than it was back in 2003 when I last tried to find them all.

Anyway, I am not quite happy with the art and will make some adjustments later. I just spent an hour trying to get it working; because, Picasa Web Albums, which Blogger uses to host pictures you upload to the blog, wouldn't let me get at the actual, un-scaled down jpeg file to link to in the template. Finally got it working, but it is 4:30 AM already.

UPDATE: FYI. There are two things I am going to fix. First the boxes come over too far and you can't read the site in 1024x768. And second I need to rearrange some of the top level boxes.

Art and the Art of the User Interface

You might have noticed a few graphics on the blog, namely the title and the blue background sidebar thing, have gone missing. Those things were still being hosted at my old hewitt.org URL which is now gone. The back up of all the stuff that was hosted there is on my "Elements" portable hard drives which is sitting over at Eric#3's house with a broken power adapter. It just happens to have some proprietary power cord that you can't buy anywhere.

Doesn't matter as I've decided that it was about time to give the site a make over anyway. I fired up Photoshop and have been spending the last hour or so messing around, but haven't really created anything I like yet.

Right in the middle of this, I started randomly browsing Deviant Art for some inspiration. Just poking around to see if anything gave me any ideas. Eventually I hit something (nudity) that required me to log-in and I wanted to share something about that process.

First go to Deviant Art, pop down a few directories, then use the log-in in fields at the top of the page to log into the site. Notice how it resets the site and suddenly you are back at the very top of the directory tree. Hope you remember which sub-category of which category you were browsing in.

Now go to Hulu and start browsing down through their stuff. When ever you feel sufficiently immersed in their content, use the log-in fields at the top of the page to log into the site. Note that it did NOT change anything else on the page. You are still exactly where you were before you logged in.

Bravo to the Hulu guys, well done. Apparently the Deviant Art guys were too cool for school and need a few more lessons in usability.

Teh Learning Curve: Episode 3

Just a quick post to say that the guys in Perth have finally gotten episode 3 of "The Learning Curve" up. Jeremy, Dan and Liza try out Fallout 3.

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice...

Not a lot going on at the moment. Lots of irons in the fire, but everything is moving sooooo slow. Just a lot of waiting to see how things pan out.

An odd thing kinda work related since I got back in Vegas. Two different "friends" have called me up, asking me to do some artwork for an iPhone game they are working on. Both of them flaked out on me. I've been wondering if it was me, something I said or did? But I can't think of anything. I thought I was going out of my way to be accommodating. When they brought up how much they should pay me for the work I even told them to pay me what ever they thought it was worth. Both times they went incommunicado before I actually started doing any work so it isn't like I am out any time or effort, but it still strikes me as very odd. They called me. I said I would be happy to do the work. They said they would get me the specs and such, and then nothing. Shrug.

So what else,

I signed up for Netflix even though I was tempted to boycott them because of their use of pop-up advertising.

Just borrowed the box set of "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." staring Bruce Campbell. I've been wanting to watch the series since I missed it back when it originally aired and it is still on my Amazon.com wish list.

Cool fun fact about "The_Adventures_of_Brisco_County,_Jr." I just learned by reading the show's Wikipedia entry: Two Mare's Leg pistol props from the show were later reused in the science fiction television series "Firefly" as a rifle by the character Zoe Washburne.

Going to drive my dad to California for a doctor's appointment next week on July 7-10th. Might do Disneyland with the niece and nephew the following weekend. Monte Cristo sandwich at the Blue Bayou restaurant! Whoo-hoo!

Found my mom likes to play Solitaire on the computer, so I showed her Spider Solitaire. She quickly got addicted to it and was complaining that she is wasting too much time playing it when she has other stuff to do. So then just to be mean I introduced her to the web version of Book Worm, a Pop-Cap word game you can find at Yahoo Games. She is in her office playing it now and has been for over an hour now. hehehe.

Got my replacement passport in the mail last week, still really upset that I lost the last one. I can't believe nobody turned it in because I know it fell out of my DMV study brooklet at the library.

Speaking of the DMV, I passed my driver's test today and now just have to wait for them to mail me my new Nevada driver's license. Got a piece of paper that said I passed though, so I am no longer in fear of driving around on my expired Queensland Australian license. I had been hoping that if I get pulled over, the police officer won't notice that "11-02-09" is actually February 11th, and not November 2nd. Australia uses the DD-MM-YY format. Loosing my passport and a 2 month wait to get a driving test appointment is why it took me so long to get my license in case you were wondering.

I'm still waiting on the lab to have my replacement tooth veneer ready so my dentist can finish fixing my front tooth. The temp tooth is holding up pretty good though (knock on wood).

I finally got an answer from Hover (formerly Net Identity) and have access to my hewitt.org email address again. The website domain is gone but that's okay. All I really wanted was to keep was the email address and if the URL was still active I would have just redirected it here.

The lovely Kristina is still dragging me to Stoney's about twice a week. I mostly sit there, guard the table, watch the purses and people watch. At least it gets me out of the house. Plus the waitresses are HAWT! Out of my league, especially with the way my love life has been going, but HAWT none the less.

Meanwhile back in Perth, Brad sold my car, the 2003 Daihatsu Terios known as "The Hamster." He appears to have gotten a good price. I do wonder if not having a car there means that I will wind up back in Perth.

And that is about it for my exciting life at the moment. Thank you for your support. And stay tuned next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel.

On-Demand Entertainment

I’ve made the jokes in the past about the year 2000 coming and going without flying cars, jetpacks, and the silver jumpsuits. Please don’t send me any links for flying cars, jetpacks and silver jumpsuits; because yes, I know there are various websites where there are prototypes. Granted, almost 2010 and still not actually available in Wal-mart, but that crap really isn’t what I’ve been waiting for.

My prediction for the future has always been about on-demand TV. I imagined that new episodes would still come out as normal, but you could watch them whenever you want. I imagined it would be a subscription service of some sort that is also bolstered by normal commercials, except that the company would have some demographic information about you so that the commercials you saw would be suited to you. Maybe there would be subscription levels that eliminated the commercials. I dreamed up the basic idea as a kid back in the mid-80’s when I got annoyed that every Saturday I would see episodes of “Thundar the Barbarian” and “Battle of the Planets” that I had already seen even though I knew there were episodes that I hadn’t seen.

One of the big, unforeseen problems that appeared to have delayed my prediction coming true, was the rise of DVD sales. It is still coming true, it’s happening slower than I thought; because companies have to be weaned off DVD sales before it will really take off. For example if you go to Hulu.com, a legal streaming website from Fox, NBC, and other studios, you will only see full seasons of older and not-as-popular shows. Anything they think they can still make money on by selling on DVD, they will only show a few recent episodes of that expire as new episodes come out. It is still good if you want to watch current episodes online or if you miss an episode, just don’t expect to be able to watch The Office from season 1 episode 1 to current. The office DVD boxed sets are still making them money.

I think there is some turbulence in the DVD world though; the rental market especially seems to be bouncing around. When I left the country five years ago, it seemed like you couldn’t find a street corner without a Starbucks and a Blockbuster video store. Yeah, Starbucks is hurting, but I can still stop for a Frappuccino (tm) no matter which direction I am heading when leaving my house, and yet I only know of one Blockbuster around here that is still open. Everybody I know has a Netflix account now. Granted, the type of people I am likely to hang around is also more likely to adapt to this new paradigm (Wow! I’ve always wanted to legitimately use “paradigm” in a sentence.) I do wonder though, what this is doing to the DVD sales.

Speaking of Netflix, a subscription based streaming site, has also started to do streaming. I am a bit annoyed that a lot of the stuff that I was looking forward to watching right away isn’t available for streaming yet; I just signed up for their 2-week, free trial today. But what if you don’t want to watch TV on your computer? You just decided that your child didn’t really need that kidney transplant after all, and instead you bought that spiffy, giant, LCD HD-TV! There are already tons of adapters that allow you to connect your computer to your TV. Netflix goes on and on about that on their site. It’s just a step away from having your cable box do all that instead of your computer.

I’m telling you, it is going to be the wave of the future. The only thing I am worried about is the corporate greed. Now, I’m not one for labeling big corporations evil for wanting to make a profit, but just like the bloated music industry, the TV and Movie industry isn’t going to want to be slimmed down or miss one possible penny. I recently went to iTunes to buy True Blood season 1. They waited until the season was over to make it available, so you couldn’t buy a season pass and watch it as it aired. Now that it is available they also are charging $2.99 an episode for standard definition, which is usually the price for the high definition (HD) version. Sorry, not enough money left on my gift certificate I had to pass. I just borrowed the DVDs from a friend. And quite frankly, the amount of money they are charging for digital shows is about the same as what they charge for the boxed DVD sets. The same price even though they don’t have to press the DVDs, box them up, ship them to the stores, and have the retailer mark it up. The point of all the above is that I am worried that we are going to wind up paying more to just watch normal TV.

I’ve tossed around some thought to how this will fall out. Because of how business works, I see the broadcast companies being the service providers you subscribe to. The production companies, the people that actually make the shows you watch, would be the content providers. I imagine the quality of the shows will be much better because you won’t be watching just any old crap that is on. You’ll always have your line-up of favorite shows regardless of when they first aired. I do wonder how that will affect the line-up of shows; will we still have a bunch of sappy, barely funny sitcoms that keep coming back season after season, while critically acclaimed and well written shows get canned? I also thought that maybe they wouldn’t release new episodes like they do now, each episode airing at a fixed time each week. But instead maybe they would just dump a bunch of shows online at once each week. The problem with that is I can see shows starting to missing deadlines like other industries.

I’m sure there will also be some nightmare distribution thing that will go all wrong and screw things up and everybody will complain. But, there ya go. That is what I’m waiting for.

Angel of Death

As I have said I have officially quit collecting comics, or at least the individual issues. I am now firmly in the "wait for the trade" crowd.

That having been said, when I first got back to Vegas I picked up the first three issues of Eisner Award-winning writer Ed Brubaker's "Incognito." Ed is the current writer on "Daredevil" and "Captain America" as well as his creator owned "Criminal" (which I am way behind on.)

I finally got around to reading "Incognito" tonight. It is the story of a super-villain in the witness protection program done in a noir, crime fiction style. It is pretty good, but it just reminded me of how much better I like having the whole story arc at once like watching a TV series season on DVD. Just having the first 3 out of 5 issues just doesn't cut it. I want the rest NOW!

Anyway, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I read in the letters section (ironically, something I wouldn't get in the trade paperback) that all 10, eight to ten minute, episodes of Ed's live-action serial, "Angel of Death" are now available on Crackle.com. It should also be coming out on DVD any time now, if it isn't already, as a single movie without the episode breaks and slightly longer cuts of each piece.

It is a story about a hardcore, hit woman named Eve, played by Zoë Bell (known for her stunt work doubling for Lucy Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. She has more recently stared in Death Proof and Double Dare.) Eve suffers a traumatic head injury and suddenly develops a conscious in the form of hallucinations of one of her latest, if unintended, victims. As a result she starts killing up the chain of people who sent her out on that mission in order to find piece of mind.

It is pure pulp crime fiction, grindhouse style, fun with lots of action and bloodshed. If that is your thing, you should definitely watch it. And if you like seeing stuff like this, where you can watch it free online, make sure you buy the DVD when it comes out.

What Are They Thinking?!

This isn't a real post, just me being up at 3 AM, bouncing around the internet. I found this article at "Ain't It Cool News" and just don't get how some Hollywood people can have such a disconnect from their audience.

Brace yourselves Joss Whedon fans:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER remake without Whedon or anything developed from the TV show... seriously...

WTF?!? I just don't get what they could possibly be thinking. Even as I write this I am wearing the t-shirt pictured here from the PVP Online comic strip. Well, the men's version as that one looks like a ladies t-shirt... you know with the curves and all...

Memorial Day

This monument is in Kirkwood, an unincorporated area of Voorhees, New Jersey. It sits nestled in the shade of a line of pine trees across from the Voorhees fire department and 50 feet in front of 75 mm Howitzer Gun (US) static artillery display. The monument is in honor of it citizens who bravely fought in World War II. It is also a memorial for the four of those men who gave their lives in that endeavor. One of those men was my grandfather, Staff Sergeant Joseph Benjamin Hewitt Jr. U.S. Army.

STAFF SERGEANT JOSEPH B. HEWITT JR, was born in Pennsylvania in 1919 to Joseph B. And Anna Patterson Hewitt. The family as early as June of 1917 and into the 1920s at 1270 Bucknell Street in Philadelphia PA, at the home of mother-in-law Mary Patterson. Joseph Hewitt Sr. worked as a "sponger" for the United States Government when he registered for the draft in June 1917, and later worked as a roofer. There were at least five children, sisters Gladys and Ella being older, while Mary and Kathryn were born after him, all in Pennsylvania. The Hewitts moved to New Jersey some time after 1925.

When the census was taken in April of 1930, the Hewitt family lived at 58 Poplar Avenue in the Kirkwood section Voorhees Township. The elder Hewitt worked as a driver for a transportation company at this time.

After three years of high school Joseph Hewitt Jr. had entered the work force. He was inducted into the United States Army on January 2, 1943 at Camden NJ. By the time Joseph Hewitt he had married. There were at least two sons born of this marriage.

After entering the service Joseph B. Hewitt Jr, was promoted to Staff Sergeant. He died due to circumstances not related to combat while in service to his country overseas on February 4, 1945. The Curtiss C-46A-45-CU Commando transport plane, serial # 42-107386, operated by the Air Transport Command was lost on that day*, according to Missing Air Crew Report 12033.

Staff Sergeant Hewitt Jr. was brought home to the United States after the war. He was buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis Missouri on February 6, 1950.

His son, Joseph B. Hewitt III, followed his father into the military, and retired after 20 years service in the United States Air Force as a Master Sergeant.

Since the original site was photographed, a newer multi-war memorial has been erected next to it.

I have never been to the memorial, but hope to visit it soon. My father stopped by during one of his cross-country motorcycle trips.

Joseph Benjamin Hewitt IV

Star Trek Tech Problems

I wanted to start with, “one of the things that annoys me is…” but I’m a bit scared to. I feel like I might be opening Pandora’s box by doing so. Once I get started like that, who knows when and where I’ll stop… if ever. Now the problem is that I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to come up with a better staring point. Since it appears I can’t, I’ll just forgo the opening altogether and get right to the meat.

Well actually, before I get right to the meat let me start with this warning. This post doesn’t actually contain enough of a spoiler to ruin the new Star Trek movie, but if you one of those ultra whiny people who hasn’t seen the new Star Trek movie yet, STFU if you were a real fan you’d have seen it by now. You’ve no room to complain you LOSER! Now go buy your Terminator Salvation tickets, you’ve only got a day left till it opens.

Okay here we go. I hate that in the movie they introduced the transporter technology that allows them to beam from a planet to a ship that has been at warp for at least a day. They even talk about being able to beam from planet to planet. All this does is make future story lines harder to write because they are removing the whole “space is big and it takes time to get from one place to another.”

They do this all the time, especially in Star Trek. Somebody writes a throw away bit where ensign nobody on the bridge scans a planet and is able to find specific people who aren’t wearing something that allows them to be identified. Now all future story lines have to have some sort of anomaly blocking the scanners because it would ruin the story if they could just take 5 seconds to just scan for them on the planet. It happens so much that you really can’t call them anomalies anymore, they are normalities.

What is it with the writers of these shows that constantly dig themselves into some stupid plot hole that they need to just suddenly just jump out of? They dug the whole, they should fill it back in! The more of these stupid, throw away things they pull out of their hats to quickly solve some silly problem that they could have written around, the more they risk causing future story lines to be even more lame.

Come to think of it, wasn't there a Next Generation episode where they discovered that high warp speeds were teaching the fabric of space time apart? And they were going to slow down the warp speeds of starships? All this because the writers had kept upping the warp speeds in episodes story lines to the point where they were just popping around the universe with enough time to deliver medical supplies to planet that for some reason couldn't use the magic transporter/replicator technology to produce the supplies themselves and stop for take out on the way? Isn't that the way the transporter/replicators work? Sure you can wiggle and squirm some explanation around it, but you wouldn't have to if some writer, editor, or producer had thought an earlier story through better.

Back to the movie specifically, the whole premise behind the ice planet was pretty thin to start with. The more I think about it the more stupid the premise is. They should have just tossed that whole idea and wrote something else to introduce those characters.

Here is a list of things wrong with the ice planet and since they are spoilers you'll have to mouse over them to read them:

• It’s right next to Vulcan, so close you can actually see the planet Vulcan in the sky. Is it a moon of Vulcan? Maybe some Trekkie can enlighten me on this one.

• Why is there a Federation base on this planet/moon next to Vulcan? It is implied to be some backwater base where they’ve thrown Scotty as punishment. But isn’t Vulcan one of the major planets in the galaxy? Hardly backwater.

• So Mr. Evil Romulan Villain Guy, who’s name I’ve already forgotten and am too lazy to look up even though the actor who played him was actually at the theatre here in Vegas where I saw the movie. He gave a little speech before the movie and was signing autographs afterwards. Anyway, we are expected to believe he is soooo pissed at Spock (who I guess we are supposed to call Spock Prime now) that he waits 20 years for him to pop out from the future, just so he can toss him, relatively unharmed, onto this ice planet/moon just so he can watch Vulcan be destroyed? Is that what you would do, assuming you were a vindictive, overly intense, evil, Romulan villain guy? Or would you instead beat him within an inch of his life, make him watch the planet be destroyed from you ship parked right next to it, then kill him, toss him, whatever?

• New Spock is so pissed at Kirk, and afraid to even have him on the ship, that he tosses him in some shuttle thing and crash lands him on the ice planet/moon. Yeah, that seems like the logical thing to do.

• Then, in another of my favorite, over-used, Star Trek plot devices: out of all the places on a whole planet (moon, whatever) Kick and Spock Prime just happen to run into each other.

Now after all that, don't you think they could have found a better way to get Kirk, Spock Prime, and Scotty together? But instead in the next movie we can look forward to hearing something like, "OMG! Teh evil Kingons are like invading Uranus! And some unknown space anomaly is preventing us from beaming over there! Oh noes!"

Alright, that is enough complaining. Do you remember when I used to write cool stuff that was fun to read on my blog. Yeah, me neither. It's been that long.

Watch Neil Read "The Graveyard Book"

Just a quick little post. Neil Gaiman's website for young readers, Mr. Bobo's Remarkable Mouse Circus, is hosting videos of Neil's recent book tour for his Newberry award winning novel, The Graveyard Book. At each tour destination, Neil read a chapter of the novel. The upshot of all this is that you can now watch a video of Neil reading the entire book for free. Woot!

Net Identity = Hover = Still Sucks

I realized I had never gotten any sort of renewal message for my Net Idenity email address and website: www.joseph.hewitt.org. The site used to be my resume site, but now it just points back to this blog. It is still there however.

That is probably because I don't check the email address associated with that account very often and in the past, very distant past as in back when they didn't SUCK!!!, they used to email account reminders and such to my alternate email address as well. I went to check my hewitt.org email and found out that Net Identity has changed names, sold themselves, or something yet again. They are now Hover. I am beginning to suspect that all this trading, selling, renaming is their attempt to re-brand themselves to avoid the negative reputation. Remind anyone of AIG? Who, by the way, now appear to be about rebrand themselves again because AIU is too close to AIG.

I can't log onto Hover. It redirects me to Hover when I try to go to the old Net Identity URL. It welcomes me, tells me they are now Hover, bla bla bla and then tells me to sign in for the first time using my Net Identity email address and password. I enter my hewitt.org email address and password and I get an error. I can't use their "remind me of my password" function either. It says that both my hewitt.org and Yahoo email addresses aren't in their database. Probably explains why I can't sign on using the hewitt.org one.

I can't even submit a help request; because, because in order to do that you have to sign in. Catch 22.

You can follow my saga of all the problems I have had with Net Identity, their deletion of all my website files, never telling me that they sold the hosting stuff off to another company, then attempting to charge me going over my allotted storage space because they left the archive file of my website there when they restored the files from a backup, their inability to answer even one of the customer service emails I sent them, etc. To be fair Ross Radar did attempt to help me, and as a result I did get one email from customer service, but never got a response back from said customer service guy.

I had planned to ditch the hewitt.org website, because I obviously don't use it anymore. I did, however, want to keep the hewitt.org email address, but I guess they don't want me as a customer.

So in conclusion it appears to be more of the same and in my opinion Hover.com sucks and you should do yourself a favor and avoid them at all cost. I'll repeat that a few times to help webcrawlers find it. Hover sucks. Hover.com sucks. sucks sucks hover.com sucks.

The Straw Shooting Game

Here is the story of another little game I invented to amuse myself. About the time we were finishing up the first Command & Conquer game, I was also involved in a play in Green Valley for Theater in the Valley. They were doing the last production of the season but suddenly had problems. Memories are vague, but I think one of the actors broke an arm or leg and the director's husband was getting reassigned somewhere else and they had to move. Anyway, they HAD to do the last play in the season or they wouldn't have enough money to open the next season. They picked a play one of the directors had already directed and knew well and then called people they had already worked with and knew could memorize parts quickly. I was one such person.

The problem was that I was in crunch for Command & Conquer at Westwood and there were rehearsals every night in Green Valley which is on the opposite side of town. I was slammed and didn't really have time to eat. I wound up getting fast food for lunch from the drive through to eat at my desk. For dinner I would go through the drive through while driving across town to rehearsals.

I noticed at the drive through window; they always took your money, gave you your drink, and then it took a minute or two before your food was ready. So in the down time while waiting for your food; the game is to take the straw wrapper and shoot it back through the drive through window without it being noticed by any of the people working there. There is point scoring for what you can hit. Landing in the fryer is major points.