Genius

As in the iTunes feature. If you use it, you probably know the drill. Pick a song, click the button, and maybe you'll get a pretty decent playlist. That's just it though, maybe you'll get a pretty decent playlist. Sometimes it'll actually be a few songs that really do go well with whatever song you start with, but there's often a lot of stuff that doesn't. For example, I made one for Bittersweet Symphony a few minutes ago. I've reduced the list to five (counting Bittersweet Symphony) after getting rid of Van Morrison, Devo, Steriogram's Walkie Talkie Man, etc. And a lot of the content that I took out was pretty good stuff, too. For example, I like Walkie Talkie Man. But when I'm listening to Bittersweet Symphony and I want to hear more songs like it, I don't want Walkie Talkie Man.
What I'm getting at here is that Genius is too broad. It seems like it's trying to base suggestions off of a perspective that covers too many different tastes. For example, I have most of Franz Ferdinand's works in my library, and I also have U Can't Touch This. So does that mean that if you make a playlist based off of U Can't Touch This, you should get The Dark Of The Matinée? Nope. There should be a way for you to modify the playlists after they're made as a way of "showing" Genius what you think should go with that song. If I'd built the playlist for B. Symphony, it would've included songs like Exodus Honey by Honeycut, Bytecry by Weevil, Aluminum by Barenaked Ladies, etc. It ended up being that none of those songs were in the playlist, which is unfortunate since I think they all go well with Bittersweet Symphony.

Anyway, in case you're wondering, the playlist I have after reducing it so much is Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, The Dark Of The Matinée by Franz Ferdinand, Dashboard by Modest Mouse, The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats, and How Bizarre (Mix) by OMC.

This one's for the Mario Kart DS players: Why I hate you

So I take it you like playing Mario Kart on Wifi? I bet you do, it's pretty fun. I like doing it too. However, you should stop being a shithead. Here is everything you do that I hate:

-Rainbow Road. Yes, it's the hardest track, but that doesn't mean it's the only track. Do you think it's fun to play on this one so much? It's not. Something I think is funny though is that people tend to choose this one when they're doing badly. If you're doing bad, why do you pick a harder track? If the trend continues, then you'll just do worse. And if you're good on this track, it doesn't show any skill. It just means that you spend too much time on this particular track.

-Disconnecting. I don't care if you're losing, stay in the damn game. I can sympathize if you're just not as good as the other players and can't keep up, but if we have a close match and I win, stay in the game and accept that you failed. Disconnecting doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just makes it look like you're a small child who's angry about losing.

-"Snaking." This is a fancy term for "hold down R and move the control pad left and right a few times and then let go of R." It's that boost that happen when you do that. Go ahead and do it when you actually use drift. I use it pretty often for that. If you're using it on straight track to get ahead, I hate you. This doesn't show skill, in fact this shows blatant absence of skill. I used to do it myself, then I realized it was stupid and stopped. I'm still damn good at it though. Whether you always do it or only when you're angry that you're losing, I'll always do it back, and I'm probably better at it. Actually, something I've noticed a lot is that the crybaby players (people who are kind of good but disconnect if you beat them) often resort to this if they're not winning. Then they disconnect when they lose. I hope they break their DSs out of frustration.

A BIT OF IRONY: I'm playing the game online as I make this post and the game I joined after writing "Snaking" involved one player named "crybaby." It disconnected at the beginning of the race, during the countdown.

-"Figure 8 Circuit" is not for snaking. Everyone seems to decide that even if they don't snake in other courses, they can do it here. You can't do it here. That is all.

CFL Bulbs

They should stop smelling like burning plastic when they burn out. I understand that's a sign that the bulb is working right (a sign that it's working wrong would be it catching fire), but I still get kind of crazy over it. Even if it's not on fire, the smell of something burning is always alarming.

Watts ≠ Sound output

This is just a pet peeve of mine.

NOBODY LIKES YOUR SLIDESHOW VIDEOS

Ah, YouTube. There are lots of things it has that you can complain about, today I choose slideshow videos. These are nothing but shitty "me too" reasons to put a video up on YouTube. I wouldn't even care if they weren't so common, but you can search just about anything and the results will be spammed with "[topic] pictures" and it is just a bunch of pictures that you've already seen that scroll by while some shitty music plays. If I wanted to see them, I would have searched the topic in Google Images where I wouldn't have to hear the music and I could see them without them scrolling around or the need to pause for a better look or the overall bad quality. And since the images used are always from the first few pages of a Google Images search, it isn't difficult to find them. So when I search "PS3 slim" on YouTube, I want actual videos of the PS3 slim, not slideshows of the pictures from Engadget.

In summary, these videos are shitpiles. Condemn them.

Happy birthday!

Today is someone's birthday, although I don't know who's. That person gets a happy birthday.

This is why I don't like Guitar Hero/Rock Band

Have I ever expressed how much I like music games? I don't think I ever have.

Well I do. But I don't like these games. Specifically it is because of their use of incredibly popular rock songs. Now I'm not one of those kids who's music taste is the least popular bands he can find. I like the songs themselves, but they make for some awful note charts.

The games are OK as long as you're playing guitar or singing, but a lot of these songs have very repetitive bass or drums. For this reason, GH/RB are the only music games that can actually make me want to take a nap. This isn't meant to be funny, playing the same few notes for the duration of a 4 minute song can be very underwhelming.

I especially don't like Rock Band's drums. I don't like the symmetry and the pedal would be easier if it had it's own column instead of being one big line. Speaking of columns, I don't like the way the notes scroll (at you).

I think it's been quite clear that I'm leading up to something with this post, and I am. Guitar Freaks and Drummania are much better. They're made by Konami and are part of the Bemani series so you know they're good. The reason you haven't heard of them is because they're Japan only. I've played them both though, and they're great. I'll explain one at a time.

Guitar Freaks would look bad to someone who was used to Guitar Hero. This is because it only has three frets. They go a long way, however, because Konami tends to make the best note charts for music games (not counting DDR). I've played the games, and I much prefer Guitar Freaks' charts to Guitar Hero's. Anther thing I like about it, and this applies to GF and DM, is that it pays attention to timing. GH and RB, from what I've gathered, care more about whether or not you hit the note than how well you timed it. GFDM focuses on the actual timing of the note, so your score wouldn't be as good if you hit them a little early or late.

Drummania is more significant in this argument. Instead of having four drum pads, it has five (technically speaking it's three drums and two cymbals). There's also a pedal. The new drums that Guitar Hero is going to have will have the same number to my understanding, but DM's drums are more laid out (google for a picture of them). Drummania's charts make it a shining example of how fun a music game should be. This is because instead of going with popular songs that mostly have pretty repetitive drums, Konami uses music with more intricate drumming. A lot of songs are written specifically for the game by artists affiliated with Konami and as a result, are made to be easy to make great charts for. You can watch videos of people playing this and get a good idea of how great it is, but I can tell you from watching videos and having played it that videos won't do any justice to how fun DM actually is.

The best part of GFDM is that with the "V" series of games, Guitar Freaks and Drummania were put into the same game in a Rock Bandish fashion (except this was before Rock Band). This is why I've been referring to them as GFDM. I've done sessions at a friend's house before (he has an electric drum set that is setup to be used as a DM controller) and they're great.

I first played GFDM before trying Rock Band or Guitar Hero, which is why I never liked either of them very much. I can see why people would like them having not played GFDM, and plenty like them all, but I'm quite partial to GFDM.

I was going to make another post about SUVs but

I forgot that my last post was also about them. It was basically going to say the same thing though, the message would have been "Putting a "Support our Troops" magnet on an SUV is the biggest display of irony I have ever seen." So much for that.

Also it's been such a while since I posted anything here. I'm well aware that the two or so people who read this blog now and then aren't gonna read this, but whatever. I felt like saying it.

Oxymoron

Does it make sense to drive a huge SUV with an American flag on top? I saw an example of this in the form of an Escalade EXV recently (is that what it's called? It's the huge one) and just could not understand it. Do these people even think before putting the flag on? "Oh hey, let's show my patriotism by putting a flag on a gigantic example of how much oil I use." It's the equivalent of going on strike while continuing to do your job.

The V-Modas broke

If you've been keeping up, you'll know that a while ago I had gotten some V-Moda headphones. A while ago they broke and I decided to not post about it until I'd gotten the replacements.

The problem was strange, they broke after sitting on a desk. They were working fine, sat untouched on a desk for a while, then later the problem was spontaneously there. What happened was the left bud would go on and off as the cord moved near the jack. I emailed them about it and they'd given me a response the next day. It took me a few weeks to have the headphones mailed out to them. Then they took their time in sending replacements. The customer service was overall good though, they were prompt to answer whatever questions I had and the new pair arrived the day after they confirmed that it shipped.

They also included all the accessories that come with a new pair, so I've now got a second pleather pouch, extra ear tips (which I needed anyway) and a second "modawrap," which is a hard rubber thing that you wrap the headphones around. That was courteous of them.

I apparently had an older pair of theirs before. The problem with the old pairs was that something would go wrong with the jack after a while due to design issues. Somehow, the pair I got had been sitting in the Apple store for a long while after they changed the design of the headphones to fix the problem, and that's why this happened. The new pair is mostly the same. The jack is the biggest difference, now it is angled and mostly rubber, with a piece of blue metal (matching the rest of the headphones) at the end opposite the jack. Also, the part that connects the wires of the buds to the wire coming from the jack seems to be a bit larger.

I now know what these headphones sound like brand new compared to broken in, though. Before I didn't notice much of a difference since the break in happened over time. I've essentially gone from a very broken in pair to a brand new pair, so the difference is quite noticeable. The soundstage of the unbroken-in pair sounds like the musicians performed in a room that was too small. The bass is also bloated and not as tight as it was. Something I've noticed from running sine waves through them though (I had to see if they'd changed anything sound-wise with the new models) is that they go both higher and lower now. The higher highs (17k+) don't distort anymore and they go a bit higher, while 17k didn't make much sound before you can definitely hear something and 18k makes a tiny bit of sound. Certainly after breaking them in this will improve further.

And as I mentioned, they also go lower. Although you still aren't getting great response below 30hz, it has improved, sounding a bit louder. I'm sure this will also improve with break in.

The strangest thing has happened though, for whatever reason my right ear canal seems to have somehow changed it's shape. While I didn't have issues with putting the buds in there before, it's now quite a challenge. I have tried with both the left and right bud and with different tips, but my ear canal is just strange. Basically, the earbud goes in at some strange angle and the sound loses all clarity and sounds very bloated and muddy. The current fix is a lot of careful repositioning. I can't think of why this might have happened, but I hope it stops.

Dear Apple: no.

The new iPod Shuffle. It's probably the prettiest thing I've seen in my life. Unfortunately, it is crap.

Removing the buttons sounds pretty stupid. They almost did it right, with the buttons being on the headphones. But oh no, you're stuck with the shitty stock headphones! Some other company will make an adaptor, right?

Well, almost. You remember those "authorization chips" that accessories for the iPod Classic/other iPods of that era need to work? Apple is now putting those in the headphones. We can essentially expect $10 headphone adaptors that cost 3¢ to make because Apple is being a shit. Anyone who's read this blog before knows I love Apple, but you'd have to be a pretty huge Macfag to not see what's wrong here.

Back the fuck up.

Was that a commercial for high fructose corn syrup? Really?

I don't know if you've seen it or not, but some guy is sitting on the ground in the park when some woman comes by and she's like "HEY HAVE THIS POPSICLE."*

He looks at that shit and says "Fuck you hoe, I'm not eating that frozen chunk of high fructose corn syrup. That shit fucks you right the fuck up."*

She says "Screw that shit, this shit is the bomb. This shit is all the bombs. It only kills you because you aren't supposed to have that much HELL YEAH at a time. Eat it in moderation, you pussy."*

He says "Fuck, that's swish. Gimme that popsicle. You're still a hoe."*

And then the commercial's over. I didn't know what to think the first time I saw it. I still can't believe they put that on TV. It's one thing to advertise things that use HFCS, but the fact that they're advertising a damn ingredient is just awful. It'd be fine if the commercial was for vitamins or something healthy that they put in food, but it's not. They're essentially trying to convince you that it is OK to eat shit and die.

The commercial does insist that it's good in moderation. That's a lie. Something that is genuinely bad for you is not "good" ever. It's just less bad in moderation. Besides, even if it were true that it was OK in moderation, it is in everything you don't buy at a health foods store. Unless you shop at one, you can't have it in moderation.

There is a good side to these commercials though, I doubt they'd put them on if HFCS-products were selling as well as they used to be. Either it's because of the economy, or people are just getting more health-conscious and aren't buying it anymore. This commercial better not convince anyone of anything though.

* Quotes may be off by a word or two