Category Archives: General

Common or garden posts.

General, Movies & TV

The Jason Mewes Story

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I talked about Kevin Smith’s blog some time ago (here to be exact) but there’s something on there that begs to be read, especially if you’re a Jay and Silent Bob fan. Jason Mewes had a well-publicised battle with drug addiction that pretty much started with weed around the time that Clerks was made and ballooned into crack, heroin, Oxycontin, and whatever he could lay his hands on that almost killed him or landed him in jail several times.

With the third anniversary of his sobriety around this time, Kevin has been blogging the full history of their relationship (start with part one, here) and all the crap that Mewes put him through. Reading it, I honestly don’t know if I could give someone that many chances and pour that much money into helping them. The moment they stole from a dealer and ran into the house where my family lived they’d have been out the door.

It’s spread over nine very long parts, but definitely worth the time to read and thankfully it all works out in the end, complete with quite a tear-jerking video on the last entry. Without Mewes we wouldn’t have the great-looking Clerks 2 to look forward to, which is clearly going to be the monster hit of the summer. That or Snakes on a Plane…

Games, General

Starforce Dumped

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Following on from Starforce’s recent PR disaster, Ubisoft, one of the main proponents, have announced that they’re unceremoniously dumping the malware software from all future games after “investigating the complaints about alleged problems with Starforce’s software.” Good to see them taking the initiative, because if high profile users jump ship it’s likely that smaller publishers will follow suit.

Hard to crack though it may be, this goes to show that if people are vociferous enough with their complaints the consumer will always win out in the end. Even if most copy protection schemes don’t stop large-scale piracy, at least they don’t stop people using their computer in the way it was intended. I hope Starforce dies a painful death, and I hope they don’t sue me for saying that.

Games, General

Games Are Bad, Mmmkay?

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Mr Mackey

Another day, another anti-game study. Only this one is even more idiotic than usual.

Obviously as tired of finding tenuous links between violent games and psychotic behaviour as we are hearing about them, someone has gone and decided that there’s a link between playing violent games and, get this, “permissive attitudes” towards drugs and alcohol, as well as that great evil that has blighted humanity since the beginning (cover your eyes now, children)…sex.

I almost feel bad for giving this shit exposure. As stupid as I find the idea, it’s not a huge jump in logic to say that virtual violence would beget actual violence, but this one is just ludicrous. OK, so GTA and its ilk might, in places, depict a culture that encourages drugs and they’re rated as such, but to say that violent games encourage drug and alcohol abuse is absurd. I can’t remember the last game I played that did anything to encourage alcohol (in Oblivion drinking ale lowers your intelligence), and even if sex was starting to pervade games in the same pernicious way that “urban” culture has, Hot Coffee put paid to that.

Like most people of my age I enjoy the occasional drink and I’ll admit to trying weed once, but does that constitute a drug problem or rampant alcoholism? I concede that I feel an urge to have sex without the need to get married that of course naturally follows, but I’m willing to put that down to hormones and absolve the Call of Duty 2 that I just played. There’s nothing like a rifle and some dead Russians to get me in the mood for some lovin’, baby!

I can only imagine that these asinine studies keep happening simply because they guarantee mucho exposure as indignant gamers try to DDoS the culprits. That means I’m a part of the problem by giving it exposure, so I suggest that you don’t look up who did it, don’t click any links to it, and if you show it to anyone else make sure to laugh your ass off at it. Treat it like the joke it is, which is something that Penny Arcade do well.

General

Boot Camp

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Apple Boot Camp

This is sensational news – Apple now support dual booting OS X and Windows XP on Intel Macs with their new Boot Camp utility, to be included as a part of 10.5 Leopard when that’s released.

I’ve been considering upgrading my iBook to an Intel model when those are released and now I see absolutely no reason not to. The ability to dual-boot was made available a few weeks ago when some enterprising individual released a hack, but this is a matter of turning on the computer and clicking the one you want to use.

No shitty text bootloaders and no more worrying about whether an app is available on OS X or not. This could seriously be an Apple killer app.

What I loved though, were the quotes on the Boot Camp page like this one:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Pwnd.

What I’m more interested in, however, is the effect on the Mac gaming market. It’s been steadily growing with companies like Aspyr producing a steady stream of decent ports and official support from big names like id and Blizzard, but I have a feeling that this will kill it off, since developers will assume that Mac users who want to play games will have Windows anyway. They seem optimistic, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Games, General, Nintendo

DS Lite Shipped (Eventually)!

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You may remember that I ordered a DS Lite almost as soon as it was announced, but with the popularity of the DS in Japan reaching fever pitch my order got lost amongst the sold out signs and predictably extortionate eBay prices. Well, Play-Asia have finally gotten to me and my crystal white DS Lite has shipped via EMS, so it should be here in a few days. Of course I’ll put together some belated impressions when it arrives.

What’s cool is that as I held out and stuck with Play-Asia I got it for $170 instead of the $200+ that some places were selling it for. Not a bad deal at all, and even with courier shipping it’s about the same price that it’ll probably be when it eventually comes out here.