I’ve done it again, much to my chagrin. I’ve set up another MySpace account. I wouldn’t have done it, but frankly, right now it’s the only way for me to re-establish some semblance of contact with a few of my high school classmates. Oh, the things I do for my friends…
In the process, though, I’ve discovered yet another terrible layout idea – opacity. Specifically, making just about everything on the page opaque just so that the background design can be seen. It’s obvious that those who employ this particular technique know nothing about web page design. Opacity can be a good technique – when used in moderation. Making an entire page opaque, however, is a very bad idea because it makes everything super-difficult to read. And I’m not one of those ultra-patient folks who will labor through it just to find out what’s new.
Oy, MySpace is still evil. But in this case, I have good reason to live with it – at least for the time being.
Tags: Design, myspace, Rants
Ok, this bugs the tar out of me, especially since I’ve seen a lot of writers, both for books and for TV, who get this wrong. Schizophrenia is NOT the same thing as multiple personalities. Schizophrenia involves delusions and hallucinations, among other things (see A Beautiful Mind for a flick that actually gets it right). Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder before the DSM-IV revision) is what is actually multiple, or split, personalities. It’s a common misconception that the two mental disorders are one and the same. Stephen King got it wrong in The Dark Tower series (and should, in my opinion, have fixed it in Book 5, given the timespan between it and Book 4), and the writers of Stargate SG-1 got it wrong in a couple of episodes, just to name two examples. There have been plenty of others I’ve seen lately, too.
Get it right, people!
(Aren’t writers supposed to do research on these things?)
Tags: psychology, Rants, Writing
In doing my daily write-ups for WLTC, I’ve become even more aware of just how many WordPress themes out there contain sponsored links – and believe me, there are a lot of them. I can also understand folks wanting to make a little money of their work. Theme design does take a lot of time and effort, which is why I haven’t done more than the one WordPress theme and the one bbPress theme of my own – I simply haven’t had the time. And it’s always cool to get paid for doing something you love.
But I myself will probably never use a sponsored theme. I shy away from them for the same reason why I have decided against using any form of adsense modules on my site. I think advertising of any form embedded on a site I’m reading is annoying and distracting, and I think that most people feel much the same way. The last thing I want my site to turn into is an advertisement for someone else. Granted, I’ve tossed banner ads up once or twice for something I truly believed was worthwhile, but always those ads came down within several days or a couple of weeks once the promotion period itself was passed. And I likely will never put up ads again – I just don’t like the added clutter. Sponsored links, while they usually take up hardly any space at all and since as simple text links in the footer, are still advertising that clutter things up too much.
The thing of it is, WordPress is free software and what’s more, it’s open source. It’s a community project of sorts, one that a lot of people contribute their work toward improving with themes, plugins, bug fixes, and much more. And a lot of this work is excellent, top-notch stuff. I’ve stumbled across a lot of sharp-looking themes and plenty of plugins that make life so much easier and better. So I guess I feel a little bit insulted when someone else comes along with a theme or plugin, one that has probably already been seen in some form somewhere else (for free), and wants the rest of us to billboards their ads and sponsored links on our sites. Aside from the objections I’ve already raised, the thing I object to is that by allowing such things on my site, I’m implying my support for whatever businesses lie on the other end of those links, most of which I know nothing about and cannot, therefore, provide any sort of endorsement for.
With so many free, unsponsored themes out there, plus the ability to make my own, there’s no reason for me to ever use a sponsored theme. Besides, with the WordPress Theme Generator and Canvas, I don’t know why even the least HTML-savvy individual can’t create their own theme to their preferred specifications.
Tags: Rants, themes, WordPress
Well, Season One of Heroes is now complete, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll even bother tuning in for Season Two. Tim Kring has me that upset with his piss-poor writing. I could have written a better show here, and I’ve been tempted to draft a couple of sample scripts for episodes myself just to prove that I can. Mind you, I don’t want an X-Men knock-off here. That’s been done already, and by much better writers than Kring. But Kring’s premise for the show was fabulous. In the X-Men series, you have mutants who effectively become larger than life. In Heroes you have regular people coming into their abilities who just want to continue being regular people. Kring tried to tackle this subject – and failed. Miserably. What he ended up with were weak, pathetic people who were never really able to get a handle on who they were now. His characters all felt watered-down and washed out.
The moral of the show came out in the final monologue – the hero’s true values are not the powers he possesses but the people he comes into contact with and loves – but I suspect that moral will have gotten lost in the absolutely terrible way the show ended. I can even see how Kring tried to demonstrate this moral in each of his characters’ development throughout the season, but I think it could have been done much better.
Kring can write drama (albeit, not well), and he can certainly handle suspense (he had me on the edge of my seat more often than not this season) – but I’m convinced that Kring has no clue how to write conflict. Every single instance of conflict in every episode was like a flashbang – loud and noisy but ultimately causing no real damage. For instance, the first fight with Peter and Sylar was over before it even began. Peter hardly put up a real fight and then somehow (conveniently) ended up with his back to Sylar. Likewise, the final battle with Sylar was sloppy and chaotic. Niki had one solid strike in, and Peter, who supposedly has all this power and great ability, opts to use his frickin’ fists on Sylar’s face? Remember? The guy with the great telekinetic ability? And of course Hiro’s little jab was cheesy and completely unbelievable. But there are others, as well. Niki’s physical attacks were always one strike, and then it was either the victim was rendered unconscious or Kring decided it was to cut to another scene. See? Even he realized he had no grasp on writing conflict. Turns out, it was just easier for him to change the subject rather than let us see that too soon. But he couldn’t avoid that in the final battle, and there we got to see what a hack he truly is.
I’m disappointed in the lack of real character development in this season. It’s my opinion that Kring set too high a goal by creating so many characters for himself. Some TV writers could have developed whole, well-rounded characters that only got richer and fuller as the season went on (see: Joss Whedon). Kring’s characters, if anything, seemed to become more shallow and faded the closer to the finale we got. I don’t feel like any of them really grew or developed all that much, mostly because they simply continued to react to events around them rather than becoming stronger and taking a more proactive stance. Sure, there were many feints and attempts at action – Hiro’s first attempt to destroy Sylar, Peter and Claire searching New York, Parkman and Bennett going after Molly – but mostly everyone seemed to be trying to run away.
Conspiracies were revealed, and only some of the answers were given. This part I’m fine with – I like a little suspense. But the pacing was all wrong. I could deal with the first half dozen episodes kind of dragging out answers for us, but they never really seemed to gather any steam from there. Kring knew he had a good thing with the cliffhanger, but then couldn’t seem to find the courage to move behind the cliffhanger and give us some real action. All these characters had such great potential to become true superheroes, to develop and become true forces for good. Sadly, I think he mostly ended up with superflops, and this is why this former fan may not be able to stomach tuning in for Season Two next fall.
I loved the principle of this show. I think it had merit. Frankly, I think it still does. But I think Kring needs to concede control of the writing to someone else, someone who can actually write for TV and do these characters justice. They have the potential to be inspiring, engaging, and interesting. Right now, they’re… not. I think I’m almost sorry now I even got hooked on this show. It certainly didn’t meet my expectations in the end.
Tags: heroes, Rants, science-fiction, Speculative Fiction, tv
There was a lot of bitching and moaning going around yesterday about the lack of Beta access through Crackdown. A lot of angry folks sounded off just about everywhere they could, with some even (quite literally) calling for blood. Angry words were spoken (and written), and folks basically just plain made asses out of themselves. It was a bad day to go foraging through discussions boards on any Halo-related site looking for news and updates; most of things that could be read would make your eyes bleed.
There is an entitlement mentality here that I simply don’t understand. Bungie, as the Halo producer, owes the consumer nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. That’s the truth, plain and simple. They don’t owe us a thing. Now, granted, they do want to make money. And we’re fortunate that Bungie is a company that actually cares about its customer base enough to continue to support Halo 2 three years after its initial release with new maps, fresh matchmaking lists, and more. But they certainly don’t have to – you’d be hard-pressed to find another video game company out there that does the same. Bungie wants to produce the best quality game possible – they make more money when they do because their customers are happy.
But they don’t owe it to us. We’re lucky and blessed that they opted to even let us have this sneak peek into Halo 3 via the Public Beta. It’s cool and awesome, but again, they didn’t have to do it. They could have just opted to conduct the beta-testing phase completely in-house, the way it’s usually done. Instead, they chose to let their fans and consumers have a say about what works and doesn’t work, what they like and don’t like. It’s a smart move on Bungie’s part because it allows them to produce a game that will be that much more marketable.
And the public beta if free. Did you catch that part? It isn’t costing us a dime to play. A lot of folks griped about the fact that they paid $60 for the Beta invite. In point of fact, this is incorrect. These folks paid $60 to buy and play Crackdown – it just happened to have the Halo 3 Beta invitation included. (Much thanks to Stuey for loaning me his copy of Crackdown for a few weeks.)
And remember that the Halo 3 Beta is technology, and we all know how often technology tends to get mucked up. Complaints were made that Bungie should have tested things before the release date. You folks don’t think they didn’t? Please bear in mind that the Crackdown delivery system relies upon more people than just Bungie Studios. There is an entire network of folks in the Xbox Live community who have to do their parts to make this all happen. And Xbox Live updates have been pushed since Crackdown was released to stores, so things were bound to change somewhere along the way. We should count ourselves lucky that it was only the Crackdown folks who suffered the loss of a whole day (omigosh!!!) of Beta goodness.
Here’s the kicker – Bungie is making up for the loss of one day by adding an additional four days to the end of the Beta – which, in my opinion, is a lot more grace than most of these whingers deserve. Was not being able to download the Beta immediately as scheduled frustrating? Sure, it was. Was it disappointing? No doubt. Does that give folks the right to be evil and obnoxious and mean-spirited toward a group of people who are, effectively, giving us a gift? No certainly not.
Bungie is doing us a great service with this Beta. Sure, they get to use all the data gleaned from it to produce a better product, but we get to enjoy the awesomeness three full months before the final release. So, suck up your frustrations, Timmy, swallow those harsh words and remember to thank the nice folks at Bungie for letting you play with their toys when you really don’t deserve the honor.
Tags: bungie, crackdown, halo-3-beta, Rants, timmies
Always a day late and a dollar short.
Tags: halo-3-beta, Rants
Blogger continues to annoy me. I really hate using any feature on that site. And I always cringe – at best – whenever I leave a comment on a blog hosted there. Usually, commenting involves weeping and gnashing of teeth. Three things currently that annoy me about Blogger:
- Word Verification – Technically, it’s image verification. The gobbledygook they put up for you to type in a verify that you are not, in fact, a bot aren’t actually words. Ok, it’s a minor annoyance and not technically anything that’s worthy of weeping.
- Popup Comment Forms – Now these things hurt. A lot. Blogger does not like Firefox, it seems. Those of you who use Blogger and elect to have the comment form appear in a popup window instead of in a regular browser screen like everything else on your site? Yeah, I hate you. For some reason, the popup window in Firefox doesn’t fill out to the form’s full size, nor do scrollbars appear to rectify that issue. Needless to say, it makes it a royal pain to leave a comment. And most of the time, I don’t. So as a personal favor to me (and every other Firefox user who reads your site), please change that option. Please. I even asked nicely.
- No Tab-throughs? – In Blogger the Elder, it was possible to type in one’s comment, tab to the image verification field, tab to the identifications options to select one, tab to the name field, tab to the website field, and then tab to the ‘Submit’ button, where you could then hit ‘Enter’ to submit everything – all without ever touching the mouse. No longer. The new-and-improved (yeah, right) Blogger Junior requires you to mouse-click absolutely everything. Those of us who use the mouse as infrequently as we possibly can hate this fact and wish with all our hearts that Blogger (a.k.a. Google) would fix this.
Yeah, I really dislike Blogger. Bet you couldn’t tell.
Tags: blogger, Design, Rants, sarcasm
It’s after 3:00. Do you know where your computer glitches are?
Tags: Asides, computers, mini-rants, Rants, Technology
Excuse me for a moment while I toss out a little mini-rant…
I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a nice single-column theme to use on my blog. I’ve got Daydream, which I’m using now and that I like quite a lot, but I’m always interested in finding some new ones, as well. Here’s the problem I keep running into, though:
I wonder if WordPress theme designers actually know what a “one-column” theme actually is. You see, I’ve found two themes in the last week that were described as being single-column themes, yet when you navigate to the download page and look at the theme’s screenshot, there it is! Two columns! There’s a main column for the content and a second column for the sidebar. It’s also fruitless to search the official WordPress themes directory for exactly the same reason – half the themes listed in the one-column area are actually multiple columns. For once, I wish WordPress theme designers would learn their numbers.
And I still wish there were more crisp, clean one-column themes out there.
Tags: Rants, themes, WordPress
Apparently, business casual dress for women now requires they display a minimum of two inches of cleavage, with three to four inches being preferred. This is actually rather annoying.
Tags: Rants, sarcasm
