Emerald rocks

Seems like every time there’s a new release of Emerald there’s always something cool they added to it, but they don’t really document those new things very well. Sure they have a change log, but it’s long and tedious to read and a lot of it is esoteric stuff I have no idea what the fuck they are talking about. So if you haven’t been following their changelog since they started development on this project, you’ll be clueless of other features that may not be so apparent in the interface.

One “Feature” i just learned today was if you double click a name on the radar, your camera will instantly snap over to them, if they are in range.  FOOKING AWESOME!  But I don’t know if this is a new function added in since I started using Emerald this past summer, or something that has been in it since early on.

But then there are the frivolous new features like breast physics, which I have no use for since I wear prim boobs (though it will give booby physics to all avatars), but there’s always one douche bag who has to complain about adding “features” and not working on bugs, lag an all those “important issues.”

This reminds me of an pet peeve I’ve had for years since I’ve been beta testing games and software.  Just because a small group (or even just one person) is working on a feature or function of an application that some people may deem useless, doesn’t mean the development team as a whole is being distracted from the so-called “important issues,” and those issues aren’t getting the attention they need to get them resolved as soon as possible. That’s bullshit.

This isn’t an RTS game, like War Craft, Star Craft, Total Annihilation, or SupCom where the more workers/engineers you have building or repairing a unit, the faster it is built or repaired.  Real life doesn’t work that way.  If you dedicate more people to work on a problem; that won’t guarantee the problem will be fixed any more faster, and thusly if you take away some people to work on something else won’t hurt the over all progress.

Now there IS the risk that when you add new features/functions into an application that’s already buggy, that can exacerbate the problems it already has.  But we live in an age where software development is on such a grand scale like a movie production costing millions of dollars just to produce a days worth of work, it’s impossible to avoid problems that arise when you have so many ppl working on the same project.  Ever heard of the old saying of “too many cooks in the kitchen spoil (or ruin) the soup?”

This “too many cooks…” analogy is status quo in all aspect of productions, TV, movies, video games, even books; especially government too. Mainly so that when something goes wrong, which almost always does, no one can blame a single person for the failure, so the whole group are failures, or that the shit rolls down hill for the blame.

Back in the 80s, most software wasn’t created by huge teams of professionals who each spent four years in collage/universities for their creativity to get sucked out of them and produce mundane software and games (cough-Microsoft-cough). Back then it was done by individuals who mostly created awesome works given the limitations of computers back then.  Now we have extremely advanced computers compared to 20 years ago, but now 20 times more people working as developers to create uninspired contrived unoriginal games like, for example Halo. And continue this mundane-ness umpteen times with squeals, or “prequels” just to make it seem “cool” ever since George Lucas did it 10 years ago with Star Wars. >sigh<

But I digress, I wanted to talk about bugs and requests I have for Emerald Viewer.

Bugs:

• Logins ALWAYS fail the first time you try, claiming it’s a bad login/password. If you log out, and then launch the viewer again and login with a different avatar, it ALWAYS fails. Including if you just installed Windows, and a fresh copy of Emerald viewer for the first time, and you login, it will fail that first attempt, always.  Has something to do with how it handles multiple accounts with a drop down menu, but I’m just used to manually typing in my login and password.
• Double clicking on objects in inventory to “wear” doesn’t always work, and brings up their properties. (this may have been fixed since the new release)
• The built-in AO is a cumbersome to use when you need to turn it on and off, or load up a different set of animations.  I’m considering going BACK to using the ZHAO-II HUD attachment, but I love the concept of the VIEWER having these nessessary functions and not relying on SLS that simply adds more load to the simulator and grid over all.
• At start up, after it shows the “splash screen” and it goes away, there’s a very significant delay between that and when the login screen appears.
• The sitting AO [checkmark] often comes back on on it’s own, after re-logging.
• While on the login screen (before you login), often the random in-game screenshot doesn’t appear. That’s not a big deal really, but the links on the screen do not work, until the the image appears.  Which isn’t a good thing since I often DO want to click the link to see LL blog posts, and Emerald Blog posts that seem important (like down times, updates, and other issues)

What I want in Emerald Viewer:

• Sculpted flexi prims (a la CoolViewer)
• The new shadow rendering engine that’s been seen in different viewers.
• Double clicking on a group in your groups list, activates that group, instead of starting a group chat.
• When an object “speaks” in local chat, you can click on it to see who it belongs too.  It either shows the users profile (if worn) or a smaller dialog with a SLURL, and a button to mute the USER.  Why isn’t there an option to mute the OBJECT?
• Support for wild cards mutes (for objects) so I can specify *xcite* and it will mute every spammy xcite product on the grid (assuming the owner didn’t rename it).
• Full mute function so I won’t get *anything* from that user.  No inventory exchanges, no script pop-up menus, no IMs, no ANYTHING.  Hopefully this will thwart grifers.
• If a user installs the “optimized” verison of Emerald Viewer onto an older PC that won’t work on it, it should give a message STATING SO when the user tries to run the app.  As of right now, it just doesn’t do ANYTHING when you double click the Emerald icon to run the viewer.  No error message, no anything.  Would also be nice if you guys had a “compatibility” list for the optimized version.
• External (floating) Local Chat/IM window.  IM windows that appear as separate window(s) so you can drag your IMs outside of the viwer, or minimize the Viewer, and still have your IM window open for chat (also great for dual monitor users!)
• 64bit Windows, and Linux versions, assuming there would be any benefit to it.
• Speaking of Linux; how about a .deb installer please!

How NOT to be a noob

This is a quick list of things noobs tend to do, so try NOT to do them!

1. Avis who wear underwear under their penis. It looks like a STRAP ON like that!
2. People who try to edit their penis longer and end up making it float off their body
3. People with a “solar system” of facelights around their head.
4. Over-acting roleplayers who narrate every non-sexual mundane thing they do
5. Female avatars that are just TOO DAMN TALL!
6. Groups that hand out VIP roles to EVERYONE, and the idiots who join then compulsively.
7. Total strangers who send friend requests w/o greeting me or even saying hi.
8. Girls who wear prim boobs with the pointy ends up to their collar bones, looking like they are wearing a baby’s bib!
9. People who have their hair set to Glow, or Full-Bright
10. Prim finger nails. You’ll look like Wolverine when your hand goes into a fist.
11. People who try to insult me, or argue with me when they barely speak English.
12. People who ask me “R U a Shemale?” when I’m standing there butt-nekkid with my big boobies exposed, cock hang out and a “shemale” group role in my name above my head.
13. People who still have the default avatar face on their hot avi body shape
14. People who are too infatuated with me; they try TOO HARD to be friends, and just come off  as creepy, clingy, and annoying. They think can get a “Free Fuck” if we become friends. Don’t bother.
15. People I barely know who just spontaneously start to roleplay in IM, and say they are being friendly
16. People who have obvious fake RL pics when you can see the web address in the corner
17. People who SCREAM in their profiles “NO MEN!” are probably men themselves in RL.
18. Nude beaches/resorts when no one is nude.
19. Spammy penises (and other addons) that fill the screen with meaningless sexting that no one reads
20. People who use English translators, when they are already chatting in English.
21. Users who wear text floaters over their heads that  redundantly shows their name.
22. People who TYPE IN ALL CAPS. Sign of the douche bag.
23. Avatars who are well over 2 years old but still look and act like noobs!

Yet another Red Ring of DEATH

RROD

Just as I got GH Van Halen, my 360 died AGAIN!  I had the game playing idle looping  songs while I messed around on the net.  I heard the song stop (playing Panama!) I was thinking… oh shit not again!  Restarted it, and got nothing. Not even the red rings at first.  But after disconnecting everything (HDD, MU, Ethernet) and power it back on a couple more times, I saw the the three flashing Red Rings (top right not blinking) meaning the hardware is faulty… again.

Amazing the last time I had a problem with it was the DVD drive broke down exactly two years ago tomorrow (Wednesday October 7th.)  They replaced the DVD drive and sent me back the same unit, so technically this unit lasted for over 2½ years without RRoDing.  Three times before that I had RRoD’s and they sent me a different 360 each time (swapping my Premium model with the Chrome detail on the DVD tray, for a dull looking Core unit). This will be the FIFTH time I’ve had to ship my 360 in for repair.

RRoD’s are still a FREE repair (and free shipping), and I just filled out the online forms at xbox.com. It was painless; so printed out the UPS shipping label and taped it to shipping box my LAST 360 came in two years ago.  Thank gawd I kept the old shipping box, and packing materials with the “bumpers.”  They will likely repair and send me back the same 360 unit, but I hope they send me a NEWER 360 that has an HDMI port. From what I understand those newer units don’t RRoD fail as often since they figured out what the defect was.

Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Yes it came today. The only really disappointing thing about it is it didn’t come in a normal plastic green DVD jewel case like all Xbox games come in.  It had no manual, just a thin cardboard sleeve which at least has the unique code on the back so I can export the songs if I wanted.  It also had two fliers advertising the other Guitar Hero games that are coming out soon.

The game it self seems to be based off of Guitar Hero Metalica, with OUT all the with the extra features and function thgat GH5 has.  It doesn’t have the ability to “join in” at any time, or have up to four players playing the same instrument.  As per-usual, these band-specific Guitar Hero titles includes songs from different artists, and a lot of them I’ve already played in different music games. >sigh<

Also included was a small letter thanking me for purchasing Guitar Hero 5.  At the bottom of the letter shows the “founder” of guitar hero as “Kai Huang.” Sorry I don’t buy that claim. From my understanding, the people behind Rock Band were the original creators of Guitar Hero 1, 2, and Rocks the 80s, before Activision bought up Red Octane, and dropped the Guitar Hero franchise on Neversoft’s lap when they were doing their umpteenth Tony Hawk game. Harmonix was then acquired by MTV, and Rock Band was soon born.

So while I don’t know the exact history and the names behind these music games (other than the fact that Konami invented music rhythm games, including a three-button guitar YEARS before Guitar Hero came out for the PS2) I’m sure this statement of Kai being the “Founder” might be true.  But history is a funny thing, and can be re-written to mean anything one wishes; you just have to be in the position to do so.

Healthcare is officially fucked up

This new “Baucus Bill” that was just hammered out by our Congress this past week, is a prime example of lobbyist influences and corruption, and shows how our elected officials are so isolated from the real world. According to this bill, everyone will be REQUIRED (read forced) to have health insurance, or pay a penalty.  How exactly is this going to help uninsured people who can’t afford health care in the first place?  This doesn’t change anything, but force people to pay for something they can’t afford already.  I’m sure insurance company execs shot a huge wad when they saw this new bill, since it will give them more business.  Maybe this could lead to more jobs to be had at insurance companies?  Either way it’s a good time to buy stock in insurance companies.

This sounds a lot like how in California all drivers are forced to have car insurance.  But at least you can choose not to drive a car, and therefore you won’t be forced to have car insurance.  However everyone ALIVE is going to be forced to pay health care insurance, or just go and die. Sure there will be provisions for people who can’t afford health care to get that, but that isn’t the so-called public option, and it’s really no diffrent from the system we already have now, but worse!

Insurance companies don’t want a public “single payer” option, since they won’t be able to compete with it and go out of business.  People talk about how we should open this into a free market, and let companies compete for better services and prices, but this bill isn’t doing that.  If anything this bill was practically written by health care insurance so they can be shovel-fed more money from people who are already too broke to buy health insurance in the first place.

This is not health care reform, this is just reinforcing how fucked up it already is.

Smudges on my 37″ Westinghouse LCD LVM-37w3

I own a 37″ Westinghouse LCD monitor, model # LVM-37w3 which I’ve had for about 3 years now. For about 3-4 months I’ve noticed these dark smudges on my HD LCD monitor.  It is an HD monitor, not a Television since it doesn’t have a TV tuner, nor does it have speakers.  It does accept audio in with RCA jacks for audio out.

See below for snapshots of this problem I’m having. This is not a surface scuff, or smudge of dirt otherwise it would effect all colors. It seems to be only effecting blue pixels, and colors that use blue (cyan, green, etc) since full white, full yellow, and full red won’t show this blemish (see images), unless I darken a color (like gold, and dark red).  All shades of blue will show this blemish, and shades of gray do show this smudge quite predominately.  There are also two more smaller smudge-like blemishes at the top left of the screen not shown, but they aren’t as intrusive as this one.  I really don’t know what caused this to happen. I usually use a old paint brush (never used for painting, only dusting) to dust the screen with. But I have used a screen cleaning product that comes in a spray (Monster ScreenClean) bottle that you spray onto a lint-free cloth (looks like terry cloth) and then wipe the screen with.  I’ve used this on ALL my other LCD displays (laptops, netbook, my PC’s 22″ LCD) with no problems. I  don’t think this stuff is to blame otherwise there would be smudges like this all over my screen.

If anyone can help me fix this would be greatly appreciated, I doubt I’ll be able to do anything. Unless there some sort of test pattern I can run on my monitor that will work out this problem.

Music games GALORE!

I just spend my hard earned Linden$ on Guitar Hero 5, Rock Band Beatles, Guitar Hero Metalica, and a new 120gb HDD for my 360. I also am going to redeem my free copy of Guitar Hero Van Halen but I won’t see that for another month. I ordered GH Metalica from GameFly, they have free shipping this month for non-subscribers, so I should get that some time next week.

As I type this I’m doing the  data transfer from my old 20gb HDD, to my new 120gb HDD, which is going to take another hour to finish (1 ½ to do total)  Gawd, I could just re-download all of that quicker!  So I gotta wait before I can pop in my games and rock out with my cawk out.

Last time I bought a 120gb drive for my 360, I got it used from some website (via Pricegrabber), that didn’t come in it’s original packaging. It was shipped in a thin envelop (not in a box) and I knew the moment I hooked the drive up, it was going to fail, and guess what folks? (click.. click… click…) I was able to get my money back, though I had to pay to ship the thing back.

Now that I finally have a 120gb drive for my 360 console, I just know Microsoft will announce a larger model.  It really does seem like a rip-off considering I’m paying MORE than $1 per gigabyte. I’ve bought 1TB hdd’s for less money for my PC.  They don’t get any bigger than 120’s for any console it seems. Sony PS3’s are just now getting 120gb drives in their slim units, though you can hack-in any kind of hard drive into the older PS3 from what I understand.

I’ve not found any legitimate hacks (oxymoron) for putting in a larger hard drive into a 360, which you’d think would be REALLY easy to do since they are detachable, but since I have an old 20gb 360 drive I don’t really need anymore, maybe I can hack that into a 500gb drive or something?  To bad I can’t just hook my old drive into a USB port and have it be treated like a memory unit (mu).  Or hook it into a PC and use it as an external storage (I could if removed the drive from the case and used a laptop/usb adapter). I bet I can find websites that will let me hack these old drives to do something.  Though i might just save it in case I buy an arcade 360, or a used/referb 360 with no HDD.

Oh hey 45mins left on this transfer!

UPDATE:

You can use the transfer cable on your old 20gb HDD and hook it to your PC and use it like an external hard drive, as long as the USB port gives it full power to spin the drive.  Though to use it on your 360 as a USB storage device, you have to format it FAT32. When you first connect the drive it won’t show anything since it’s partitioned and formatted weird to your PC, so just partition and format it, you’ll only get 16.8gb from it, which is about as much as a normal USB thumb drive offers, but probably a bit faster.

I formatted the old 20gb drive NTFS and tossed on a few files on root (mp3 and two jpgs). Then put it back on my 360’s drive bay and started it up. I was assuming the 360 was going to balk at the drive for whatever reason, but it saw it normally, but didn’t see the files I put on it. The 360 has a format function, but when you try to do it it asks for your consoles serial number… which I find ODD.  The serial numbers are VERY long, so I guess it’s to avoid accidental formats from your kids screwing around when you’re not paying attention.

Bing Sucks

I have been using Bing as my default search and start page for about two months, and it just doesn’t feel right. But I’m switching back to Goggle.  Most of the time I’m looking up definitions for words and proper spellings, but Bing doesn’t support the [define: <word>] function like Google does. And doesn’t always “suggest” what word you meant to write when you can’t spell it proper.  Bing is just not as intuitive as Google.  Now perhaps Bing DOES have a [define:] function but I’m not aware as to what it is.  I’ve yet to see a “Hack Bing” page that explains all the advanced search tricks and tools like we all have seen for Goggle in the past five+ years.

My take on health-care reform

I think it’s very hard to disagree that this country has NO MONEY to spend on free universal heath care, or anything else for that matter.

This is why everyone is in a panic since if the US’gubment offers free health care would totally undercut private medical insurances. This is why these companies are going apeshit at town-hall meetings during the congressional summer break. They just can’t compete with that.  But then again most of these larger private companies are just as evil, corrupt and incompetent as any government ran institution.  So would the net result be moot?

So, the medical care we would end up with would be rationed, since everyone’s health care would consolidated into a single administrative body, which sounds like a clerical/administrative nightmare to organize.  Talk about prime opportunity to expose incompetence, and exploit fraud.

What DOES need to be done is health care REFORM, to get the ridiculous costs down, and THEN maybe we can talk about free universal health-care.  But Obama wants to do this on one fell swoop so he can be put into the history books that he did it (yay!) and not take the time to fix the economy first, which he won’t be able to do even if he does serve two full terms. So he going all for broke… literally.

All these talking heads keep throwing the phrases “universal health-care” and “health-care reform” as if it’s exactly the same thing, IT IS NOT! I wish people would make this distinction more clear to everyone.

Linux Distros are still a pain in the ass

Wanna know why windows is so popular?  because when you want to download and install an app, or a plugin/addon to an existing application you have, it just works.  Trying to do the same thing in a linux environment is damn near impossible.

I have an Asus EEE PC 900, and I hate it’s stupid linux install.  So i tried Windows XP, but it’s a bit too large for this little 4gb C: drive.  I had been using Windows 2000 for the the past 6 months or so, but it’s a DEAD OS now. The apps I want to use depend SO MUCH on newest version .net bullshit that the newest .net installer refuses to install on anything less than XP. It’s exactly like Linux where whatever you download either won’t do anything since the OS has no fucking clue what the file does, or the dependencies aren’t satisfactory.  What kina bullshit is this?

With Windows, you just download an installer, and it installs every thing you need.  Some installers are smart enough to download the files you DO need while it installs, and guess what it RUNS.  Why do i have to go though so much BULLSHIT with Linux and it’s umpteen zillion distros that are so fucking particular about every little thing that using this as an every day OS is practically worthless?

Yes I’m a linux noob, but for fucks sake how long has Unix/Linux been around vs Windows, or even Microsoft it self?  At least Microsoft shed it’s user-unfriendliness legacy DOS baggage 10 years ago.. why hasn’t linux gotten the same thing.  Could it be the fact that there is a zillion difffrent distros all trying to do thier OWN THING, while at the same time pretending to be “open sources” and interoperable when they ARE NOT to the average home user.  Sure if you’re a fucking unix NERD you can recompile apps to work on whatever distro you’re using, but when it comes to Joe Average tryng to install FUCKING FLASH pluging.. you’re SOL.

So I’m trying this Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my EEE PC 900.  IT SUCKS.  It has a nice looking UI that it calls it’s “netbook dekstop” that has all the apps you need to use right on screen, but it’s so fucking SLOW.  MY mouse skips and studders making me over shoot the icons of the apps I want to launch.  Ironically it looks like some kina bogged down FLASH GUI animation, since the icons pop when you hover over them, but it just makes my netbook choak. Fortunately you can turn this POS off and just get a normal GNOME desktop that doesn’t make my mouse stutter across my screen.

It comes with FireFox preinstalled (3.0.8) but it doesn’t come with flash plugin. So trying to download the flash plugin for it doesn’t work for the exact reasons i mentioned above.  No point surfing the web with out flash.

So I’m at a loss here.. what the fuck can I run on this shitty little netbook with it’s ANNOYING LOUD CLICKING FAN!  Man I sure did waste $600 on this little pile of shit.

UPDATE: Ubuntu updated it self allowing me to install Flash into FireFox. And the installer applet was then smart enough to install any dependancies it needed, and it installed fine. Yay!  From there I was able to also install Second Life, but it runs horribly on this little lappy. Next I’ll try QuakeLive.