Crazy Sunshine

The Final Fantasy XIII Hostage Crisis: Hour 19

2011-01-12T17:59:00.000-05:00

I've often stated my belief, only half-jokingly, that Shin Megami Tensei, as a series, is everything that Final Fantasy wishes it could be, from a storytelling and character-building perspective. One of the most recent entries in that series, the spectacular Persona 4, is a great example - it's a lengthy tale (I spent 67 hours total completing it) but none of that time was spent poorly. The story is well paced, the characters are fleshed-out and likable, and the overall narrative is both easy to follow and intriguing in its twists. Persona 4 is, for my money, one of the best JRPG's of all time. It's the kind of game that I always thought Final Fantasy, deep down, wanted to be.

Final Fantasy XIII has shown me that I was wrong in this assessment. Because Persona 4 is still a game. If XIII is anything to go by, I'm not sure Final Fantasy wants to be that anymore.

Where do I start with this game? How can I properly describe how utterly horrific an experience it has been to sit through it for this long? Can I even call it a "game" at this point? It certainly doesn't feel like a game, as I understand the term to be used. So far, it feels like nothing more than a long string of cutscenes, almost like a movie in design. Even the parts that most closely resemble an actual game are stripped of any true gameplay value, an empty husk of what once was an actual interactive experience.

The most notable point in where Final Fantasy has stripped out any part of actual gameplay is in the very world that you play in, Cocoon. As far as I can tell, Cocoon is form of nothing more that endless, straight forward hallways that merely lead to the next straight hallway.Every time I gain "control" of the characters - and I use the term very loosely - you have no actual choice in what to do with them. You are given a clear path, and you have to take it. Other RPG's are usually noted for their expansive worlds, where the player is free to explore at his or her will. Fallout 3 comes to mind - if you want, you can delay working on your actual quest for as long as you want, doing side quests, discovering towns or just randomly wandering around, trying to see what's up that next hill. Another game, Skies of Arcadia, presented a huge world for the player to discover and explore, and playing the game opened up more and more of this world0 for you to explore at your liking.

The only thing notable about the world of Cocoon is how little there is to do. It seems unimaginable to me that, after playing an RPG for 19 hours - nearly a full day! - that I have not once been able to choose where to go, what to do, or even who I take to do it. Look at Skies again - the game distinctly tells you where you should go to continue your quest - the the point of almost drawing an X on your map for you - but there's nothing forcing you to go there. you know where the next dungeon is, but don't want to go tackle it quite yet? No problem! Head back to town, do some side quests, find some hidden locations, whatever. The choice is up to you.

In Final Fantasy XIII, the only choice I've been allowed to make so far is "Do I turn left here, and head down the next linear corridor, or do I go right, get the item I can see - and then head the other way, because there's nowhere else to go?" You are unable to control anything in FF13. Hell, it's been 19 hours, and I just got to decide which characters I can take into battle. I've been complaining about this for a while, how the game randomly changes perspective to allow every character their chance to complain about how sad they are, forcing you to change up your battle style every time they switch. Now I have all of them together in the group, and as luck would have it, I now have no desire to change anything, because the game randomly handed me a team that works (Lightning for main offense/pinch healing, Hope for magic/main healing/buffs, and Fang for offense/defense/debuffs).

Speaking of battle, that's another way that Square Enix has tried to turn the "game" part of this game into a movie. You are only able to control one character - the others are controlled by the computer - and, unfortunately, I am again using the term "control" very loosely. You can tell your character what exact actions to take, but the pace of battle is so fast that doing so will get your team killed, so there's no reason to do anything but hit "auto-battle" over and over until everything in front of you is dead. Every now and then, you have to switch paradigms - a system the control what actions your character takes, from physical attacks to magic and healing - to make sure that you're team doesn't die, but that's pretty much the only action you'll ever have in battle. I used to think that the battle system wasn't that bad - it was decently quick, and I can only imagine how long this game would have been with traditional turn-based combat - but after hours and hours of the same fight, I'm starting to hate it with a passion. It confuses me to no end how Squeenix managed to turn what was once an intensive, strategic combat style into a goddamn button masher.

Another thing that's traditional in RPG's that Squeenix decided to change - What's wrong with the traditional style of leveling up? Is there something wrong with "Gain experience, go up level, get stronger" that Square Enix can't stand? What is the deal with this Crystal bullshit? FF13 doesn't award experience after a battle, it gives "Crystarium points", with which you go into the Crystarium and use those points to gain small bonuses in strength, HP, and, occasionally, new skills in whatever role you want. There's nothing specifically wrong with it - but there's absolutely no reason for it. Ostensibly, the reason for the Crystraium is because your characters have multiple roles to develop, but I don't see any reason why your character can't gain regular levels, and the individual roles develop differently as the regular level goes up. It's just very strange.

That's enough for now - I know I ignored the characters and story, but really, insulting the story at this point is just stating the obvious. We'll save it for next time.

The Final Fantasy XIII Hostage Crisis: Hour 5

2010-12-29T16:44:00.006-05:00

For those who have not met me, or rather, those who have not conversed with me over the thrilling topic of video games, I should point out before I write another word that my feelings about the mega-popular Final Fantasy canon are constantly stuck somewhere around the area of general distaste. To say I'm not a fan of the main series is slightly understating things, though this is mainly based in me questioning why I lovey-love with all the love in my heart many of Square Enix's other gifts to the gaming world, while their main work tends to drive me away angrily. I consider Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG to be among the all-time great games, and I heartily enjoyed more recent spin-offs like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Tactics Advance. This serves to make my hatred of the main FF canon even more consuming, seeing that Squeenix is capable of such great things, yet seems to take none of that into account when making their main series (Though I'm more lenient on FF6 and FF9, which seem to get it slightly better.)

So then. It is with these feelings that I went and got Final Fantasy XIII yesterday.

I still don't know why I did it. This is a game that I am going to hate. I've seen a number of reviews and heard scores of opinions from sources I trust telling me that I will hate this game. I know going in that this game has received scores of comparisons to FF7, the game which gets the largest portion of my ire, mainly for its success encouraging Squeenix to try to emulate it. I know, going in, that it will be one of the longest, most difficult quests I will ever undertake, if the number of "It starts getting better around hour 20" reviews mean anything." And yet I got it.

Why? Maybe I was struck a little deep when a friend of mine mocked me for hating on the game without having played it. Maybe the fact that I just graduated from college has given me plenty of time to undergo a long haul of a game. Maybe because I was getting the game for free anyway, thanks to a Christmas gift card. Maybe I felt better about getting it because I was also acquiring Batamn: Arkham Asylum and 3D Dot Game Heroes, games that I am pretty sure are made of a condensed awesome rarely seen in this world.

Whatever it was, I got FF13. And now I have to play it.

I managed to get 5 hours into the game last night, an amount of time that, in any reasonable RPG, would be the point where the plot becomes clear - sure, a twist or two is extremely likely around hour 30 or 40, but I at least have some idea as to what the hell I'm supposed to do. In Final Fantasy, however, this is the point where the characters all come up where their own ideas as to what the plot is. One decides that he must save the world(tm), another keeps trying to tell character #1 "YOU KILLED MY MOM", but never does because he's a gigantic pussy, and the rest apparently aren't even trying. I would mock this more, but as I said, this is Final Fantasy - the inability to tell a sensible story is, apparently, a charm point, so I don't need to think about this too hard.

Any other RPG, for example, would start by slowly introducing its players to its world, to get a sense of what they are dealing with. Again, not FF. It's as if there was a school for how to tell a story - a storytelling school, if you will - and FF was the jackass jock who decided to skip every class because he could. Go play Persona 4, for example - the first hour or so is spent slowly introducing the characters and setting before shit goes down. The first two hours of FF13, on the other hand, was akin to a hurricane of confusion, as characters, terms and sheerly massive objects were whirled around with little explanation given for any of them. Admittedly, it was a very pretty hurricane, showing the painstaking effort that Squeenix put into this games graphics, while at the same time reminding me that they chose not to spend that time on making a sensible story.

As with every FF game, the plot elements that are important in XIII are so ridiculous that no human language can properly convey their meaning, leading to Squeenix just making up words to describe them, many of which use the apostrophe in ways that it was never meant for. The game slings around terms like "l'cie" and "fal'cie" in its first few hours while giving absolutely zero explanation as to exactly what they are. I still, after five hours, don't know what exactly a fal'cie is. Considering that they seem to be the central element of this game's plot, you'd think that this would be something that requires an explanation, but you would apparently be wrong.

To make it better, the characters and writing are just plain awful. For example, when creating our main character, Lightning, the thought process seems to be, "Make her act like as much of a bitch as possible, so that she can - surprise! - show that she's really not that mean later on." While I'm certainly in favor of strong women in lead roles of games, when Lightning's every line is calculated to make her look completely unlikeable, then - and this might blow your mind - I'm not going to like her very much. Character number 2, Snow (By this point, I'm expecting every other character to be named Earth, Wind, or Fire) is your classic hot-headed hero-type, made even more noticeable when every single character that sees him for the first few minutes calls him "hero", up to and including himself, even though when know that he isn't , because Lightning's on the cover of the game, not him. Honestly, I thought he wasn't that bad at first, but his constant "Time to be the hero!" refrain and tendency to bring out the worst of Lightning's bitch factor are starting to annoy the hell out of me.

The other characters can wait until later, because this post is long enough as it is, but the writing is its own miserable mess. As if the constant slinging of 'cie wasn't enough to drive me mad, the plot has so many horrifically done cliches that I want to scream. The greatest moment of this was after Snow and his gang of clearly unimportant characters save refugees, and the refugees decide to help Snow fight. One of the characters who volunteer manages to get one line off - one line! - before I knew that she was going to die. Five minutes later, guess what happens? She dies! They didn't even bother having her stick around for a few hours, developing her character and thus deepening the emotional impact when they eventually whacked her - they just straight up killed her for no good reason, to move the plot along.

I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say about this game - god, why am I doing this - but I pardoned myself after about my five hours of pain to drink, watch sports and finish up the day with Arkham Asylum, which has allowed me to do more in an hour and a half than all the FF13 I've played put together. Until next time.

#FactCheckFail

2010-12-14T18:03:00.001-05:00

In response to a recent drug bust at Columbia University, The Daily Beast decided to create a list of what was, in their research, the 50 druggiest universities in the nation. A noble endeavor! What caught my eye was how my school (soon to be alma mater) Northeastern University pulling in the #2 overall ranking as a hilariously drugged up school. Woohoo!

Except for one iiiiitty-bitty problem....

One look at the profile of Northeastern that the Daily Beast put together made me think about things a bit. These are the stats for drug use at Northeastern.

Drug use grade: C-
Percentage of 18-25s statewide using drugs regularly: 24.41
Percentage of 18-25s statewide using marijuana regularly: 35.72
Percentage of 18-25s statewide using cocaine regularly: 6.36
2009 on-campus arrests for drug law violations: 75
Student population: 9,239

See that last one in red? I'm not quite sure exactly which year the Daily Beast is referencing here, but the population at Northeastern is a tad larger than 9,000 students. How much larger?

Try triple that number.

In Fall 2009, the school's total student population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, was 27,537 students, a little less than triple the number the Daily Beast gave. Even if you only include undergraduates, the population of the school is 18,782, double the figure cited by the Daily Beast. Even if you only use the full-time student figures, found right on Northeastern's website, the population is still 19,856 students, with 15,699 undergrads.

This got me thinking, "Just how did they come up with these rankings?" Let's take a quick look sat the Daily Beast's methodology here, step by step:

To rank the colleges and universities, we first turned to College Prowler, the largest student review database, to see which institutions had “drug scene” grades, which illustrate how students rate the prevalence of drugs on campus. A high grade, i.e. an A+, indicates that drugs and alcohol are not noticeable on campus and there is no pressure to use drugs.

Ah, so they start with an outside source for their most noticeable stat. And they certainly picked a good one, because all, what college ranking service is more credible than the one that has the dirt on which schools have the hottest girls! (Apparently Northeastern ladies only rank a B+) Interestingly, though, College Prowler lists 40 schools, including Northeastern, whose drug scene ranks at C-, as well as five schools who rank even worse, at D+. So how does Northeastern beat all of those schools out? Let's see...

We then considered the surrounding environment, using the most recent data on illicit drug, marijuana, and cocaine use by state for 18-25 year olds, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2009 National Survey on Drug Abuse.

Ah, so statewide stats come into the equation. The thinking is, because Massachusetts loves to get high, obviously, Northeastern loves it too! There are three stats here - 18-25 year old's a) using drugs regularly, b) using marijuana regularly, and c) using cocaine regularly. So Massachusetts must be near the top, right?

Well.....

To start with, the stats aren't even used right - stats quoted from the survey studied drug/marijuana/cocaine are stats on drug use in the last month or year, not regularly, as the survey says. It's not even consistent on the time frame - their general drug use stat references drug use within the past month, but their marijuana and cocaine stats are over the last year.

Second, even if we bought the Daily Beast's line about regular use, Massachusetts wouldn't alone be responsible for Northeastern's high rank. From the data used by the Daily Beast (assembled in Access by me, because the hard data is listed alphabetically), Massachusetts ranks 11th in drug use, 7th in marijuana use, and 21st in cocaine use. Not exactly the druggiest state in the union.

Okay, so the grade means nothing and the statistics mean nothing. So, what's left is...

Lastly, we referred to U.S. Department of Education data for the number of on-campus arrests for 2009 for drug-law violations for each school. An arrests-per-capita metric was calculated for each school based on the Department of Education’s student population tabulations.

Bingo. So it must come down to this. Northeastern's #2 ranking comes from its arrests in relation to...hmm.

Those "student population tabulations" mentioned? Those all come from the National Center for Education Statistics...the exact same site that gave me the schools actual population number, the one that was triple what the Daily Beast had cited. There's a slight difference between 75 arrests (the correct number, as can be found on the annual report for Northeastern's Pubic Safety Division) out of 9,000 students and 75 arrests out of 27,000.

And all this information? This could be found in a single night of research - it took me literally an hour or so out of my day to prove how wrong this ranking was, and I don't exactly have a newsroom working behind me. The Daily Beast should have put a lot more work into this, but from the glaring mistakes, it's obvious they didn't.

I'm not saying Northeastern doesn't have an active drug scene - I'm not a drug user myself, so I don't know just how widespread drugs are on campus - but calling us one of the drugged-up schools in the nation without bothering to do the proper research isn't right. It makes me wonder if the Daily Beast staffers were high when they wrote it.

New Layout! New Music! Fun!

2010-09-05T23:08:00.001-04:00

Celebrating a new layout, which has come about as I finally got bored of my old layout. Whee! It's a lot sunnier, which works well for the theme of the site. As for site content - actual, real things, written by me, going up on the page - there should be something coming, very soon. I've just finished Metroid: Other M, and a review has been considered, but I don't have anything ready just yet. It should be up this week.

For now, a return to Music of the Day! To go with the sunny new theme, "Sunshine Day", by the Brady Bunch. Camp never hurt so...good? We'll go with good.

Dragon Age Part II

2010-08-08T21:16:00.001-04:00

Or, as I like to call it, "Dwarf Politics, the Game". As I mentioned in my last review, I was about to start recruiting dwarves into my medieval army of awesome, having already recruited humans, mages, and elves. What I didn't know was that it would take about as long to recruit the dwarves as it took to recruit the other three classes combined.

You see, the dwarves' problem that caused them to be unhelpful in my quest to stop the army of demons was that they lacked a king, as two high-ranking dwarves were fighting for the crown. Obviously, this meant I had to decide for them, by assisting one of the aforementioned douchebags and lifting him up over the other. I chose the prince, because his representative was closer, and was immediately sent on multiple quests to improve the prince's good name, culminating with a ~~demand~~ request that I find a "Paragon", some sort of super-citizen, to help persuade the dwarf congress.

About 6 hours later, I was through my 4th dungeon, having slaughtered ever kind dwarf, demon, monster and ugly that the game had throw at me, and was told, yet again, that the paragon I sought was in yet another dungeon, just past this one. I don't think this explanation explains just how utterly soul-crushing this process was, but I finished up leaving a trail of blood through six soul-crushing dungeons, all of which looked no different from the one I had just finished, except for the fact that this dungeon's rocks were of a slightly different hue than the previous four.

The only shining grace for all of this torment was Oghren, the dwarf warrior you recruit midway through the mission. Much like the characters had been the saving grace for the early part of the game, Oghren was the only this keeping me from killing both of the royal assholes and making my character the ruler of all dwarfkind. He's highly entertaining, very powerful in combat, and exceedingly quotable. Even after I left the dwarf's city, I kept using him in pretty much every battle, just for his amusing banter with the more uptight members of my party.

Once I had finally crowned a new king and gotten the hell out of that hole, I had entered the endgame, and the story started moving extremely quickly. I set foot in one, maybe two dungeons for the rest of the game, and finished not that much later. I crowned a human king in about a third of the time it took me to crown a dwarf one, the waged a final battle against all demon-kind, and it turned out to be very fulfilling. Once I had gotten into the endgame, I didn't want to put the game down, as I barreled towards the end. Unfortunately, this meant I missed out on a lot of the sidequests and downloadable content, so in order to do any of that, I had to start the game over again.

My final words on the game are that it's fun to a point. Sure the story is well-written and all around good, and the characters are wonderful, but the sheer length of the game can drive one to madness. I'm not sure how much longer a second campaign will keep me interested, as I already feel the annoyance of Dwarf Politics closing in, but it was worth it to finish once. It's not great, or at least not as great as, say, Mass Effect 2, but Dragon Age: Origins is certainly a lot better than most entries in the genre.

Video? Video!

2010-07-29T14:42:00.000-04:00

Huzzah, your blogger feels like a not-lazy bastard, for he has created a video! This is a short slide show accompanied by possibly the funniest audio clip I've ever heard. It's a news story about two men getting seriously injured while doing horrible things, and is probably the only time in my life I'll ever get to use an image called "gerbilcannon.jpg" Enjoy.

Dragon Age: Origins

2010-06-29T01:20:00.002-04:00

I'm growing quite fond of Bioware's recent offerings to the gaming world. Mass Effect is easily one of my favorite recent games, and the second game in that series is every bit as spectacular. So, with my new-found love for their brand of Western RPG's growing, getting Dragon Age: Origins was one of the easiest purchasing decisions I've made since I heard that two of my all-time favorites, Kirby Super Star (one of the most underrated games ever, possibly the best game one the SNES and my all-time favorite) and Punch-Out!! (an absolute classic in every way) were getting remade.

But was my decision justified? Ehh...well, take a look after the jump.

First, I want to talk about the character creation system. I like the general idea - design your heroes yourself, as opposed to having their design imposed on you. But in practice - I dunno. Around the time I had spent 3 hours playing with a slider bar trying to get my female city elf (Yes, I play the female hero in DA, as well as using FemShep in ME. It's my opinion that Samus shouldn't have to bear the burden of being the only female game protagonist that I can tolerate.) I started losing interest in the game, so much as I was gaining interest in making sure that I had created the cutest little mass murderer possible.

This didn't annoy me, though - what caught my eye is that Bioware still refuses to allow the player to change the character's body type with the same level of intricacy as we change the body. Not that I couldn't understand the sheer restrictions of game space and programming time, not to mention the inherent dangers of giving gaming nerds control over a female character's three sizes, but if we're going to call the process "Character creation", then Bioware has to make the whole character customizable. I didn't spend all that time designing, nay, sculpting my character's divine cuteness, including closely editing her check bone depth, blush levels and the number of nose hairs in her left nostril, only to have that finished head plopped onto the same basic body as every other female elf in the game.

Moving on to the actual gameplay, I think it was about 4-5 hours of play time until i started getting the sneaking suspicion that I was merely playing a better written, single-player version of World Of Warcraft (the less said about my one foray into the hells of that game, the better. Just know that I have condemned it to a very personal level of hell, where there is no escape and floggings are given on a rather generous schedule). Not that this wasn't instantly an improvement of WoW, but around the time I was ordered on my fifth quest to track down three different people at different ends of the world and deliver important items/sweet death to them, the similarities started to get annoyingly noticeable.

The writing is mostly the saving grace of this game - just like with Mass Effect, Bioware has a talent for creating entertaining characters for the player to control. Although I was a little annoyed that, unlike ME, the main character was unvoiced in conversations (I immediately chose FemShep once I learned that she would be accompanied by the fantastic Jennifer Hale), the other characters more than make up for this. Alistair in particular is quite entertaining in conversations, especially since I have yet to piss him off through quest-related dickery (My roommate was unfortunate in this regard and received a bitching-out that will be told of in legends).

And it's good that the characters and writing are stellar, because Lord knows, I'm sure not playing this thing for the gameplay. Combat in particular is frustrating to the point of murderous rage. For an example of how Dragon Age is driving me to homicide, in order to attack an enemy, you have to right-click on them. Sounds simple enough in theory, but since right-click is also the input for telling your character to move to a specific point, a missed click will cause your character to run around the enemy while doing nothing else, never stopping to notice that said monster is trying to chew out her throat. Add the fact that the game delights in sending five-ten enemies at you in packs, and one errant click can lead to what could be adequately described as monster gang rape.

This point also raises the game's difficulty, which tends to range on the hardness scale but usually favors demonic. The game was nearly unplayable until I got a dedicated healer on the third major quest, and which point the game shifted from "actively malicious" to merely "agonizingly tedious". Then there's the fact that your teammates rely on you for their every command. Apparently Bioware skipped out on the whole "Ally AI" system, since they basically require you to walk your teammates through every single motion. For instance, I once had my party wiped out in a long battle because Wynne, my healer, stopped healing as she had run out of magic, despite the fact that we had plenty of magic potions, because I hadn't explicitly told her to take a potion when her magic gets low. Excuse me, Bioware, but she's supposedly an experienced mage with years of experience under her belt, so I had figured she could be trusted to ensure that her most basic functions could work without a problem.

I'm going to stop here, because, truth be told, I still haven't finished the game yet. I'm somewhere between halfway and two-thirds done, not that I can tell, because the last quest (hunting a werewolf in the woods for the elves) was so agonizingly boring as to drain the life from me. I searched through a ruined temple, which seemed suspiciously like the just-as-ruined temple that I had searched in the mission before that, which seemed suspiciously like the still-pretty-ruined temple that I had searched in the mission before that. I think I'm trying to deal with dwarves or something, I honestly can't remember. I'll finish up this review if I ever find the end-game, but until then, know that Dragon Age is easily a weaker game than Mass Effect, but can still be decently fun if you enjoy good writing and characters.

E3 Thoughts

2010-06-18T14:50:00.002-04:00

Ye gods, Nintendo. Ye gods.

Maybe only Wii-centric owners can fully grasp the impact of their E3 conference this year, which I could accurately describe as earth-shattering. My roommate, he of the XBox clan, was rather meh about the whole affair, having lost interest of Nintendo's offerings circa Gamecube. I could not disagree more. Nintendo's return to form at E3 was, like manna from the heavens, sustenance, proof that Nintendo did, indeed, remember their more intense fans, and announe exactly what we were all waiting to hear.

I had know that some old-school games would soon be announced - We all knew about Zelda and Metroid, and I had heard rumors of Donkey Kong and Goldeneye. But as the conference kept going, more and more games kept getting added to the pile, which was quickly approaching a staggering size. around 10-12 games were announced, 8 of which garner my intense desire. Let's go through the key ones:

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: I like the art style - a combination of what worked in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Besides that, I was distincly underwhelmed by the Zelda presentation. A show of how the game works with the the new WiiMotion plus was, while amusing to watch as Miyamoto flailed about, wholly unnecessary. We expect Zelda to control well, and that should have been at the bottom of the list of "things that we must know" about Zelda. Recall the speculation-craze that Nintendo caused over a single image, and imagine the chaos that could have been caused if Nintendo had let more of the story slip out. Perhaps this was their strategy - as important as it is, Nintendo could not have wanted Zelda to overshadow the rest of the show - but it still leaves one dissatisfied. Not to mention the release date being pushed back to 2011 - annoying, but mitigated by the hoard of games that will be arriving instead.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Nintendo announcing the sequel to Golden Sun was one of the key moments of last year's demonstration - and, like Metroid: Other M, we've hard nothing about it since then. The fact that it would be set much later than its predecessors was expected, but the lack of other story details is distressing. The subtitle, Dark Dawn, is good for some speculation, and the fact that there was the Golden Sun would turn against the world is interesting. The graphics looks superb, especially for the DS. This gives me even more reason to hurry up and finish Mario and Luigi, as well as Zelda: Spirit Tracks, so that I can focus my DS solely on this one.

Goldeneye 007: I have no idea what, exactly, to expect from this game, but the theme seems to be cautious optimism. The trailer certainly hits the right points - an enhanced remake of the N64 classic, similar level designs and story, and of course, the tank. Retelling the game with the Daniel Craig-style Bond isn't too worrisome, though I wasn't exactly a fan of the recent Quantum of Solace - my issue there is less with his interpretation of Bond and more the director's love of Shaky-Cam, a film style that I correspond with the third level of hell. No, my concern is the developer - obviously, Rare is unavailable, and considering their recent output, this may be for the best - but I place no trust in Activison. Admittedly, they are only publishing the title, and have hired Eurocom to develop the game - though again, that company's recent works are not exactly much comfort either. Here's hoping that Goldeneye is too good for them to screw up.

Kirby's Epic Yarn: Let it be stated for the record that this was the moment that assured me that Nintendo still knows what they are doing, much as the Vitality Sensor (which was noticeably absent for this year's show) has shaken that faith. The Kirby series is one of my favorites - its most recent release, Kirby Super Star Ultra (a remake of the obscenely underrated SNES game), has spent the better part of the last year dominating my DS, and is one of the best games I've played in a while. Epic Yarn looks to be no different. The yarn design had me worried at the start, but it looks great in motion. The only real concern I have is that it looks like Kirby lacks his inhale-and-copy powers that have become iconic - it'll be interesting to see how he gets his abilities now. An absolutely solid title.

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Between this and Kirby, its should be obvious that Nintendo has fallen in love with the so-called 2.5D style, which they have every right to, as New Super Mario Bros. seems to be making enough money to buy them a small nation. Another solid title - Retro Studios appears to be hitting all the right buttons with this return to norm for the series.

Metroid: Other M: See Zelda. Another game that Nintendo had gamers psyched for, only to become exceptionally lax on details for quite some time. The hidden theme of their E3 show was how under-wraps Nintendo managed to keep its lineup - We knew precious little about what was coming, and some games still have us guessing. Metroid gets a bit of a pass because its release is only two months away, as opposed to Zelda's 6+, but it still stands that we don't know much about what Other M will be like. The constant moving between first and third-person gameplay is troubling - we have no idea how this will handle. Its impending release, apparently, is the only way we'll find out.

The 3DS: I could care less about the 3D phenomenon, though so my opinions on this device are less its raw capabilities, as much as its apparent library. Third-party support seems to be through the roof on this handheld, a list of companies that makes you wish the Wii could get this level of support. Nintendo's own offerings lead the way, including the new Kid Icarus (a game which I never played on the NES, sadly), a 3D remake of Ocarina of Time, and a new Paper Mario (returning to its RPG roots). Super Street Fighter IV certainly catches my interest, but the company to watch for my JRPG-loving self is Atlus, which apparently has both a Persona title (Most likely the first game, which was just remade for PSP) as well as a nondescript Shin Megami Tensei (A sorely needed remake of the original, perhaps?) and Devil Summoner game on the list. We'll just have to see how it works - every report from the floor says it looks great (from what we can tell, the graphics might even overpower the Wii), but it's likely still a ways off.

The other events had nearly nothing that held my interest, aside from a demo of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, but I'm holding judgment on that until a more complete character list starts to float around. Megaman Trigger would be nice, if only to remind us that Capcom is still aware of the Legends series, and could lead to a MML3 appearing soon. Maybe the Tokyo Game Show will have more on that, coupled with a possible announcement of Persona 5, which has had rumors flying around like crazy.

Look what I found.

2010-06-18T12:56:00.001-04:00

I have a blog, apparently. Well, time to clean it up and make it not suck with the no-posting, eh?

Music of the...just...music.

2009-07-08T22:14:00.002-04:00

Music! Remember when I used to have that? And, indeed, anything? I do. I know, no posts in, what, three months? The lazy, it grips you and doesn't let go. But that will change! I took some video at Anime Boston 09 that will be put up on YouTube...eventually...as well as my new project, Obscure Game Watch. One of those SHOULD be up within the week, unless the laze demons rise again.

Oh well, back to Music! This song is "Funky Goldman". The band is Soil & "Pimp" Sessions, a smooth Japanese jazz band. These guys should get heard a lot more than they do, because they are absolutely fantastic. Check em out. Later all.

Random Thoughts from Fenway

2009-04-18T00:02:00.004-04:00

I was lucky enough to catch Friday's Red Sox - Orioles game at Fenway Park with my brother Mike and his friends (the opening ceremony of Mike's bachelor party). A few thoughts on the game, the teams, and the experience:

First, before actual the actual game, I was distressed to find that the program of the game that I had purchased lacked a scorecard. Actually, I was only "distressed" at the start because keeping score is one of my favorite things to do at the games, but I soon moved into "outright pissed off" territory later in the day because the game was ridiculous, and thus would have made for a fun scorecard. Mostly because it makes absolutely no sense to make a baseball program without the scorecard, because that's probably why people by them in the first place.
Moving to the game, I have a question: when did Nick Markakis become a legitimately terrifying hitter? We all knew he was a pretty good hitter, averaging .300, 20 homers and 90 RBI in his career. But for some reason, I never felt safe when he was up on Friday. Mostly because I had good reason to, as he terrorized the Sox, going 2 for 4 with a walk and hitting the grand slam to cap Brad Penny's 2nd inning meltdown. After the first inning, the only out he made was another ball launched into center that was caught by Jacoby Ellsbury in the triangle in center (I assume, because where that was the only place on the field we couldn't see in the right-center field bleacher). Which leads to...
...the fact the the Orioles, all of a sudden, have the makings of really potent offense. The first hitters in their lineup especially: Brian Roberts, Adam Jones, Markakis and Aubrey Huff are all dangerous, especially if you believe that Jones has finally turned the corner and become a legit threat. But then you factor in Melvin Mora's return from the DL and Matt Wieters' eventual callup (which might be sooner then later, since Gregg Zaun has been ghastly to start the season), and suddenly the 2009 Orioles' offense looks exceptionally potent.
All of the above, of course, is mitigated by the fact that the Orioles still have no pitching at all. In case anyone is wondering why no one's noticed Baltimore's hot start to the season, it's probably because everyone realizes that their pitching will collapse on itself down the line. Against most teams, being down seven runs before the second inning means you're going to lose. Against the Orioles, me and my group were trying to figure out exactly how the Red Sox would get momentum back and who'll hit the home run that dd it (turned out to be Jason Bay). Jeremy Guthrie, who apparently qualifies as an ace nowadays, ended up coughing up 4 runs and the Sox ended the second inning only down three, and knowing that they can easily outlast Baltimore in a battle of the bullpens. And Guthrie was the best starter the O's have, in front of Japanese import Koji Uehara and a parade of journeymen. Really, when they've given up more runs than all but one team in the league, it's hard to take a team's chances seriously.
Most distressing thing I noticed at the game, besides the program scandal: David Ortiz. Papi went 0 for 4, with a three strikeouts and a sac fly being his sole moment of glory in the game. But even that line fails to tell the story of how bad Ortiz looked during the whole game. There is something seriously wrong with his swing, and it's hard to tell if he'll ever be the same again. He's going to be better than the miserable start that's he's having, but honestly, I can't think the Red Sox at this point wouldn't view .260, 25 homers and 85-90 RBI out of Papi as a success. Whether or not it's realistic...
Most reassuring thing about the game Friday: the fact that the Red Sox are still a very potent offensive team even with Ortiz's struggles. Despite Papi and Kevin Youkilis, who has offically cooled off of his monster start, putting up an 0 for 8 in the 3-4 spot in the lineup, the Sox still scored 10 runs on 12 hits, in their pest offensive performance of the season. J.D. Drew's line in particular was impressive: 2 for 2, with a home run, a triple, and three walks, always getting on base and getting driven in somehow. Dustin Pedroia's 3 for 4 performance hopefully means that his slump is over, and the same goes for Ellsbury's 2 for 5.
One thing that can't be mentioned enough is how impossibly good the Red Sox bullpen is. They come in in the fourth inning following Penny's miserable performance, and shut down the O's for the rest of the game, only allowing an inherited Penny runner to score on a double by Markakis. Going back to Wednesday's game in Oakland, the Sox pen has only given up one run in 16 2/3 innings, though of course, that one run was a game-loser. It was mentioned that the pen had the chance to be really good this year, but it looked downright untouchable Friday.
The one exception in the Sox pen? Lefty Javier Lopez, who probably won't make it through the full season with the Sox. How little confidence do the Sox have in him? He's only allowed to face lefties (obviously), to come in if all other options have been used (like Wednesday, when he gave up the game winner after the Sox pen held solid for 10 innings) or if the better options are being saved for later in the game, like Friday. After Manny Delcarmen gave the Sox 2 2/3 innings, Terry Francona went to Lopez to face lefties Markakis and Huff, with the bases empty and only needing one out to end the inning. Ten pitches later, Lopez was pulled to showering boos after allowing both men on via a 5 pitch walk and a base hit, a situation defused by Ramon Ramirez, who only needed one pitch and got the win for his efforts. To quote one of Mike's friends (can't remember which one at the moment), "Ramon Ramirez, where have you been all my life?"
There is nothing - NOTHING - like experiencing the final innings of a close game in Fenway. First, the crowd is always into it, as "Sweet Caroline" works its magic to give the stadium a rush of energy heading towards the final innings. And then there's Jonathan Papelbon, the insanely intense closer who captures that energy perfectly and uses it to finish his victims for the day. The sheer number of flashbulbs that go off with every single pitch alone shows you just how electric he is. He got the save in Friday's game, striking out the final batter and sending Fenway into hysterics.
So to finish up, how do I feel about the Sox right now? Going into the game, I was fairly confident they could win at least three of the four games with Baltimore this weekend. After it, I feel that there's no reason they can't sweep the O's out of Fenway, because this was probably the best chance the Orioles' will have to win in Boston in a while, and they coughed it up. As for the division, the Sox's struggles are mitigated by the fact that the Yankees and Rays are also around .500. Toronto at 8-4 has looked good, but they're entire strategy is built upon hoping their young hitters instantly mature and endlessly praying that Roy Halladay doesn't get hurt, so I'm skeptical. I'd feel better about the Sox if Big Papi could hook up to the Rejuvenation Machine - SOON - but I feel better now than I did yesterday.

Muisc of the Day...week...month...I'm lazy.

2009-03-11T22:54:00.002-04:00

It has been a while, but I'm going to try not being lazy again. Your selection today is "Digital Love" by Daft Punk, off their legendary Discovery album. The video was taken from the anime movie based off Discovery, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, one of the more innovative and unusual films in quite some time. Enjoy!

Music of the Day

2009-01-06T20:55:00.002-05:00

Couple of days missed due to the move in back to school, but eh. Anyways, D.A.N.C.E. by Justice. This song is addictive as hell, and the trippy video just as fun to watch. A quick peek on the song's Wikipedia page shows that it was dedicated to Micheal Jackson, and that the song's actual vocals are provided by a London-based children's choir. I don't know it was planned that way, but I was laughing.

Music of the Day.

2009-01-04T00:28:00.003-05:00

Night, whatever. Anyway, Hall and Oates' "She's Gone". Love the chorus on this one. The deliciously awkward video? Uh, not so much. You also might want to see this live recording (warning: has some ausio sync issues) is nice for the new feel of the song and the comedy of John Oates' amazing porn stache.

Ahh, football

2009-01-03T23:58:00.002-05:00

Just finished watching the Indianapolis at San Diego game. One question: how is it that Peyton Manning loses every playoff game he's supposed to win, yet every announcer is convinced that he'll come through in the end? Did that one Super Bowl win against an plucky but outmanned Chicago team really fool everyone this much? He's won three MVP's, which is an amazing accomplishment, don't get me wrong, and lead each of those teams to 12-4 records. His record in the playoffs during those years? 3-3. And he's never sniffed the Super Bowl in those seasons, the closest call being making the AFC Championship Game in 2003 and getting pasted by the Patriots in the snow at Foxborough, a game in which Manning threw 4 picks.

Yet, all we hear about in the playoffs is "Oh boy, you don't want Peyton Manning to have the ball at the end of the game!" I wonder if the evidence in this game will change that: playing with a three point lead, Manning was miserable in the 4th, including two drives where he first couldn't get the Colts out of their own endzone, nearly taking a safety in the process, and the drive to finish the quarter where he struggled to move downfield for a potential Adam Vinatieri game-winner, eventually kneeling down with one second left instead of taking one last no-lose shot at the endzone. (Admittedly, though, a lot of this was caused by San Diego's defence, who played their hearts out in this game.) That was basically Manning saying to his team "Let's just start pray really hard we get the coin toss," which, as we know, he didn't, and the Colts ended up never touching the ball again.

Which moves to the next topic: How far can the Chargers go? They looked great in this game, especially on the defensive side of the ball. And that was without question the best offence they'll see in the playoffs, at least in the AFC. Unfortunately, it was also the worst defence they'll see, and even then the Chargers struggled to score points and made too many dumb turnovers. Sure, maybe they can hold the Steelers and Titans offenses under 20, but would anyone bet that they can put up 20 on those D's? Seeing LaDanian Tomlinson play more than two quarter would be nice, because I'm guessing that Darren Sproles doesn't have too many 300+ all-purpose-yards games in him.

Music of the Day

2009-01-02T22:40:00.003-05:00

Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Why? Funny story that - it started when I was reading manga.

Stay with me on this.

You see, there's this very funny manga called Cromartie High School. It's wacky, weird, and will confuse anyone without a degree in Japanese pop culture. Well...there's this character in Cromartie...here, let me give you a visual.

Yeah, that should do it. Yep, there's a manga with Freddie Mercury as a character. Though he looks...slightly different then in the video, it's obviously still him. Even though he doesn't actually talk in the manga...the other guys just decide to call him Freddie. He usually...just stands there and looks badass. Or does something badass. Or does something...extremely odd. Yeah, it's Japan, it doesn't have to make sense.

About that "posting more"

2009-01-02T22:35:00.002-05:00

So, let me explain.

I was ready to start posting more. Had fun things to talk about. Politics, sports, music, yada yada. And then the internet intervened, with it's magical spyware crashing my computer. So the last few days have been a lot of fixing, re-fixing, still not working right, then finally, complete memory wipe and reinstalling everything. Fun.

But now everything is mostly resolved, hurray! I've still got stuff to fix, but nothing that will take me too long. In the mean time, let's get another Music of the day...week...whatever going.

Music of the Day

2008-12-21T17:37:00.005-05:00

So, I've decided to get a jump on my New Year's resolution to post more often. It has occured to me that I neglect this blog far too much, and now that I'm not doing much on break, I owe it to the great people reading this blog - both of you - to post more often. So! I've decided to start doing this new feature where I share music found on YouTube with you, the viewers. Something to keep in your head each day. And if you listen to this song too much, it WILL stay in your head all day.

This song is called "Pollyanna", one of the most symbolic songs from the Mother series of video games (known in America as EarthBound). Proof positive that video games can have really good music, something you'll know for sure if you keep following this segment. It's a light, happy, and optimistic song, indicative of the outlook I'm taking with this blog. I'll be talking with you guys again soon, so keep your eyes open.

Confronting the Internet, or, How Old Media are going New.

2008-12-10T10:44:00.011-05:00

With newspaper companies in danger—The Tribune Corporation is already filing for bankruptcy, and the New York Times Company taking out massive loans to keep itself afloat—many sources of old media are finding it is getting herder and harder to survive. But many journalists are finding new ways to get by, and are looking to the internet as their vehicle to accomplish this.

Take Jon Keller, a political analyst for the local CBS affiliate in Boston, WBZ-TV. He’s worked for years in television, and has built quite a reputation for himself as one of the finest in his field. In recent years, though, he has expanded his work to the internet – starting a blog, the Keller @ Large blog, where he posts links to articles he finds to be important, links to videos made by WBZ-TV, and opinions on the daily happenings in the news. “I started my blog about two or three years ago”, said Keller, in a conversation we had over the phone. “I had certainly been a blog reader, and I realized that I would need an online presence in order to survive in the current media environment.”

Keller sees his blog not just as an extension of what he does in his television work, but as a separate entity with a whole new—and very different—focus. While his television work is focused at informing viewers, he views the blog as a way to interact with them. ”I think that, definitely, today’s audience is not just going to sit there and be lectured at,” said Keller. “You have to engage them in some way, and that means interactivity.”

Keller is not the only journalist trying to use the internet to help establish themselves. Journalistic blogs pop up all the time, from students jumping in the business, trying to show off their skills - like yours truly - to established journalists using a blog as another platform to do something different then what they do day-to-day. This is what Jay Fitzgerald, a business reporter for the Boston Herald, has done with his blog, Hub Blog.

"I already had the blog going when I joined the Herald," said Fitzgerald, in a conversation we had over the phone. "They [the Herald] were very progressive on blogging, and they let me keep my personal blog." Fitzgerald uses his blog to talk about subjects outside of his everyday reporting, such as politics, which he works on around his day job at the Herald. "I generally post in the mornings, before I go to work...I absolutely don't blog during work," said Fitzgerald. "It is a bit of a balancing act."

Amy Derjue, a former writer for Boston Magazine and Boston Daily, one of the magazine's online sections, has a different reason for keeping her blog - it was how she started writing. In an email interview, Derjue explained, saying, "I started blogging in 2004. I'd graduated from Emerson College, and found a job editing textbooks and wanted to keep writing. " After she began working with Boston Daily, Derjue got introduced to a new way to use online journalism. "Boston Daily was kind of a hodgepodge of work," said Derjue. "We'd follow breaking news, and I'd do interviews or track down my own stories as well. It was reporting meets media criticism meets gossip column."

These are examples of individual journalists adapting to the internet. But how have large news entities, like The Boston Globe, handled the change?. The Globe has had plenty of experience on the internet, as they've been operating on the internet through their homepage, Boston.com, for years. I talked to Mark Micheli, a news editor at Boston.com, about how the Globe has adapted to the internet, at the Globe and Boston.com headquarters in Boston. Micheli doesn’t see Boston.com as just a rehash of what’s in the Globe, as they try using the tools available on the internet to improve the stories on the site. “What we also try to do, too, is add online enhancements to that content,” said Micheli. “So if there’s video to go with the story, or if there’s photos, they’ll add the photos, they’ll add the video, they’ll add the audio, and then they’ll package them in certain ways too, and that’s really where the creative part comes into posting the newspaper online.”

Micheli also sees opportunity in the website to interact with readers and visitors to the site. “If you look at the newspaper, the newspaper’s kind of flat, it’s stagnant, and it stays the same, because it’s published once a day. With online, you can be more interactive with your audience.” He mentioned an example of how this interactivity has affected their work, citing the bomb scare in Boston a few years ago that turned out just to be an advertising experiment gone wrong, saying “Someone noticed that on our message boards, people were talking about how this was just some sort of marketing prank, and that’s where we first got wind of it.

Not all media organizations believe that their website must be something unique, of course. Robin Lubbock, the director of new media for WBUR radio, in Boston sees the website more as an extended conversation with listeners about the content created by the radio programs. "It's not strictly journalism, it's a conversation. In fact, it isn't journalism at all," said Lubbock. "I think the objective is to create or continue the conversation created by the content."

Lubbock expanded on this, saying that, while they are trying new things on the website, in the end, the content should still be focused on the radio program. "I think we have values [about good content], and we use the same values on the radio as we do on the web," said Lubbock. "Are we trying to make [the website] different? No, we're just trying to make it something the users want to have."

As journalism continues to adapt to the internet, it will continue to be presented with opportunities to grow their communities in ways they might not have thought of before. By using the internet to enhance their traditional work and interact with their audience, they can change the way the present the news to a new—and rapidly growing—community of consumers that follow the news on the internet. Whether they can effectively take hold of this opportunity presented to them will have a great impact on whether these organizations will be able to survive in the new media environment.

NewsTrust

2008-11-24T00:18:00.003-05:00

NewsTrust is an interesting experiment: it isn't journalism per se, it is more ingrained in the study of journalism, and dissecting what goes in to a good piece of journalism. It asks its reviewers and visitors to go out and find pieces of journalism to be submitted to the community for review. It is unique in the fact that, while numerous sites allow stories to be rated and commented on, NewsTrust really centers on this aspect, trying to identify strong journalistic pieces, and organizations which can be trusted to deliver good journalism.

The latest News Hunt for the site was on the global economy. I helped out by finding and rating three stories on the net. This piece, posted on Green Inc., a blog associated with The New York Times, discussed the proposed auto industry bailout from an environmental point of view. The next work I reviewed was a report, witten by the Associated Press and hosted by MSNBC, on a recent meeting of Pacific Rim nations, where some leaders were optimistic that the recesion will be over in 18 months. Finally, another AP report discussed how the global finiacial crisis has resulted in Japan's first recesion in seven years.

NewsTrust does some verygood things and has a good idea behind it, but has some flaws and shortcomings. Firstly, the site is mostly dependant on submissions from visitors, so when visitors are not submitting topics, the site has very little content. And since the site community is still very small, it needs the few reviewers it has to submit whatever they can. Also, though this may be nit-picking, since the site is essentially an expanded comments section, then the ratings are subject to the whims of whoever the reviwers are. If reviewers are not doing their job, the site suffers. Fortunately, NewsTrust recognizes and tries to remedy this by rating reviewers as well, giving more weight to reviews submitted by trusted reviewers. All in all, NewsTrust is an interesting experiment that will be well worth watching how it develops.

Coffee coffee coffeecoffeecoffee....

2008-11-12T15:59:00.006-05:00

...okay, not really. I myself belong to the militant anti-coffee faction, so I did not leave Dunkin' Donuts in a caffeine-induced craze. I did leave with a nice hot chocolate and crappy donuts, but that's another manner. The Dunkin' Donuts located at 283 Huntington Ave. - one of at least three in the Northeastern area, in case you were thinking about being disloyal to your new breakfast overlords - is a nice little place open from 6am to 9pm. A medium coffee costs $1.79, but can be gotten with any of their breakfast value meals - donuts, bagles, etc - for around $3-4. The service was very good, but there's not much room to sit down, if you want to enjoy your coffee there in the shop. And, as I mentioned, the donuts leave...something to be desired. If you want to find another good coffee place in Boston, check out our map.

Maps

2008-11-10T16:14:00.003-05:00

Our ongoing study of online maps had us look at a map made by the New York Times about the Tour de France. The map shows the path that the tour takes, as well as who won that stage of the tour and who possesses the overall lead. It also has links to the NYT's story on that stage, as well as some pictures and audio. Unfortunately, there is only a little audio and a few pictures - many stages lack any additional qualities beside the story. An improvement would be to increase the number pictures and audio clips available, or to add video highlights of the stage, to expand the scoe of the project.

Anime Boston 2009 - Video Journalism

2008-11-03T16:21:00.003-05:00

My first attempt at video journalism, hurray! I went to Tokyo Kid in Boston, where they were holding a preregistration event for Anime Boston 2009, the local anime convention. I asked everyone what they though about last year's event, and what they look forward to this year. I got quite a few good responses, and uploaded them here. All in all, it was a pretty fun experience. I hope you all enjoy it.

Jon Stewart at Northeastern

2008-10-28T01:13:00.003-04:00

Matthews Arena was filled to capacity, and then some, but strangely, it wasn't for a hockey game. No, tonight, everyone was here for a rare opportunity to see Jon Stewart perform.

The host of Comedy Central's award winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart appeared at Northeastern University on Friday, October 17. He performed stand-up comedy for an hour to a sold-out crowd of students, alumni, and guests before taking questions from the crowd for a half hour at the end of his appearance.

"It was enlightening", said Katie Fairbank-Haynes, a middler psychology major at Northeastern. "He shares a lot of my views."

For 90 minutes after taking the stage, Stewart kept the crowd laughing with a no holds barred routine on politics, family, and the future of the country. In the question period towards the end, students got a chance to talk with the comedian and ask him more about topics he touched on in his routine.

"I thought it was incredible. Jon Stewart spoke very freely", said Sam Reynolds, a middler biochemistry major at Northeastern. "I think he definitely knows how to talk to college kids."

There was even a bit of national coverage out of the evening. A bit of a stir was caused on the blogosphere when Stweart said "F--- you" to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for, in his eyes, looking down on urban America in their appeal to small town voters. He later clarified that he should have said "F--- all y'all", attacking not just Palin but the entire McCain campaign for the tactic.

And for a nice finish, during the question period, when asked if he would mention his appearance at the school on the Monday edition of his show, he first joked, "F--- that", then agreed to mention Northeastern if the men's hockey team could beat Boston College the next day. When the Huskies pulled off the upset of the then-No. 1 ranked Eagles, Stewart kept up his end of the bargain.

Online Polling Databases

2008-10-28T00:04:00.003-04:00

With the 2008 Election drawing nearer, online polling databases, which crunch polling statistic to come up with a median average, have become more useful to sort out how the election looks to be. The first database I looked at is Real Clear Politics. Real Clear Politics brings together polling data, adjust the numbers to account for poll sample sizes, and puts out an average spread to show the state of the race, assembled into maps and graphs. However, Real Clear Politics has a major problem in that exactly how it creates the numbers it puts out: what the formulas are, which polls are accepted, etc. This lack of clarity makes their numbers slightly dubious, especially to those on the watch for partisan bias. Another problem for RCP is the messy front page, which is cluttered with data, links, maps, and anything else that can fit.

In this regard, then the next database, Pollster, is much better off than RCP, as their front page leads you to an interactive map of the United States, complete with their polling statistics. Pollster, like RCP, has breakdowns of both nation and state level races, but their highly intuitive map makes looking for the information you want a much less daunting challenge. They are also up front with how they acquire their numbers, in a helpful FAQ located right on the map. As a database, it's extremely well-done, and is especially for those people who are not that involved in the political scene.

Lastly, there's FiveThirtyEight, run by baseball statistician Nate Silver. While Pollster and Real Clear Politics focus mainly on the stats in the polling, FiveThirtyEight uses a complex formula to get its numbers, involving the past accuracy of the pollster, analyzing pollster methodology, breaking down the domgraphics of the state being polled, running election simulations, etc. Even with the FAQ to help sort it all out, it's enough data to make a normal person's head spin, contrasting to the more simple methodolgies of the other databases. It requires a lot more understanding of polling methods to fully grasp how the numbers are created, so it's probably not for political newbies. Of course, those more involved will revel in the sheer amount of information that is available on the site, so FiveThirtyEight is much more geared at political junkies than the average voter.

WBUR

2008-10-27T00:32:00.003-04:00

The expansion of WBUR onto the Internet allows for some interesting developments in how the station reaches viewers. Radio has the benefit of retaining its audience, since most listeners listen to radio in the car, and since the car is still the dominant mode of transportation, radio still has a ways to go before obsolescence. But expanding to the Internet will allow local radio stations - like WBUR, a chance to keep their customers interested in their product, so that even if some development in technology occurs and renders local radio obsolete, they still have a unique and viable product that causes viewers to stay engaged with WBUR.

Look at where WBUR has expanded to. They are on Twitter, bringing updates about news stories and chatting with listeners and followers. They have pages on Flickr and YouTube, expanding on their radio content with pictures and video pieces. They have pages on MySpace and Facebook to stay involved in the new social networking scene. And of course, they can be listened to live on the internet and on podcast. What will all these expansions do to keep WBUR afloat should a radio apocalypse occur?

Well, most importantly, it allows more people to find out exactly what WBUR offers as a news source to the city of Boston. NPR is a valuable national news source, and should the Internet expand so that it is easily accessible anywhere, then it will undoubtedly remain the stadrad bearer for national online radio. What WBUR should hope for, then, is to remain as a standard bearer for Boston local news. The audience may be smaller than the national circut that NPR has, but in this way, WBUR would still fulfill its obligation to be keep the people of Boston informed.

Expanding will also allow people who are away from the city to find out what is going on - say, for instance, someone on vaction wanted to hear about local news. Internet expansion allows WBUR to fill that role, even when the listener can't reach WBUR on radio, they can find out what is going on through the Internet. Obviously, this means that WBUR faces new challenges and new competition, as many news sources are expanding onto the internet as well. WBUR must then work hard to keep people interested in what the station is providing, so that their audience will stay with them.

Wired Journalists

2008-10-19T15:57:00.004-04:00

Wired Journalists is one of the many new networking sites popping up on the web. Wired Journalists is mainly an image hosting site that hopes to develop photojournalism online. It's a rather simple site to use - go out into the field, take pictures of events, and upload them to the site. The layout is intuitive and works quickly, so there are rarely problems. As long as you are used to taking pictures, i works quite well. One thing about the layout that could be improved is photo editing: unlike a site like Flickr, which has basic photo editing on the site, Wired Journalists does not - they must be edited before being uploaded.

As for the community of Wired Journalists as a whole, it has the simple problem that it hasn't quite taken off like sites like Flickr or Photobucket. The community is quite small, compared to the followings other image sites have gained - which in turn leads to fewer images being posted. Another problem is just how much of the site is geared towards journalism. While the intention of the site seems to be geared towards newsworthy images, many images on site have little to do with news, as some members seem to disregard the journalistic leanings of the site. Hopefully this can be improved as the community expands, but as of now these problems are hard to reconcile.

Boston blogs on the Red Sox comeback and Game 7

2008-10-19T15:22:00.003-04:00

Win or lose tonight, what the Boston Red Sox have done these last few days - coming back to force a Game 7 in the American League Championship series, after being left for dead in Game 5 - is undoubtedly incredible. So, what are Boston bloggers saying about the series?

Adam Kilgore, blogging at Boston.com, runs through just how improbable the comeback would be:

“In that situation, with the home team down by 7 runs, only 0.6% of all teams between 1977 and 2006 have come back to win the game,” Agami writes. On Friday, “coolstandings.com gave the Sox a 22% chance of winning the next two games in a row, so that would mean that when Balfour entered the game the Sox had a 0.1% chance of winning the ALCS (multiplying 0.6% by 22%) - about one in 1,000.”

At 10:57 p.m. Thursday, the Red Sox had a 1 in 1,000 chance to win the ALCS. Now they’re nine innings away, and they have already thrown some of the final shovelfuls of dirt on the Tampa Bay Rays’ season.

Randy Booth at Over the Monster compares the comeback to last year's:

Does anyone remember what that feeling was like at this time last year? I don't remember. I wish I could, because I'd like to compare it to right now. Right now it just seems like it's set up nicely. The Sox evened the series and now it's do-or-die time. Someone will be playing their last baseball game tonight.

It's hard to compare this team to last year's team because it is so different. Mark Kotsay at first base and Jason Bay in left field? Could anyone have guessed that in spring training? Coco Crisp in center field, nevertheless, after the benching of Jacoby "Jactober" Ellsbury. It's a different team.

A different team, but the same attitude: play like there's no tomorrow. That's how the Sox will play tonight. From the top of the order to the bottom, from the starter (Mr. Jon Lester) to the bullpen. The ALCS is culminating with this and it feels great.

The Rational Sox Fan marvels at the team's playoff tenacity:

I think the Red Sox have made it clear, once and for all, that it is simply a waste of time to count out a playoff team, even when their back is to the wall. You cannot say, "it looks like it is all over for the Red Sox this year", or anything like that. Instead, you need to say things like, "the Red Sox are down 3 games to 1, and are in a perfect position to make this a truly exciting playoff series".

Jose Melendez gives the Red Sox a new tagline:

Don’t bury me… I’m not dead.

That was the tag line for the 1988 Wes Craven film The Serpent and the Rainbow, based painfully loosely on a book by ethnobotanist Wade Davis describing search for a scientific explanation for Haitian zombie myths. It might as well be the tagline for the Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are not dead; they are never dead, and yet year after year, teams come to throw piles of moist black earth upon them.

Jeff Louderback at Sox and Pinstripes looks ahead to Game 7:

After a rough start in Game Three, Lester has another chance to show he is one of the top go-to starters in Major League Baseball. A game like this is where Lester's poise will help. Tampa Bay starter Matt Garza is intense, and his emotions are sometimes detrimental to his success on the mound. The keys to a victory for Boston tonight are no different than they were for Game Six. The Red Sox need to drive up Garza's pitch count and get into the Tampa Bay bullpen, which was exceptional during the regular season but now must be feeling some doubt after the last two games. Lester must control B.J. Upton, Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford (the 2-6 hitters who have pounded Boston pitching in the series)

Mass Live blogs

2008-10-01T14:09:00.002-04:00

The MassFacts section of Boston.com is, essentially, a database of databases, containing links to a number of database sites with information about both Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a whole. These sites are rather plentiful, and contain information on a cariety of topics.

The "Your Town" section of the page is information pulled from databases about the city and surrounding towns. For instance, have you wondered how many Dunkin' Donuts are in your town? Matt Carroll did, so he went to Dunkin' Donuts, asked them for the information, and listed it on the site. This is handy information to have if you want to write an article on, say, Dunkin' Donuts' slow domination of the New England area, one town at a time.

For more serious information, though, we have the database of the 185th General Court, aka the Massachusetts state legislature. The site lists information on the current legislators, such as their backgrounds, contact info and the committees they serve on. It also lists petitions and bills that have come before he legislature, which can be found with a simple search. Obviously, such a source can lead to any kind of story, especially if there is something large in the news: for example, if there are protests to the legislature on abortion, you can look up recent petitions and bills on abortion, as well as who brought the bill to the floor, to write a column on the legislature's history.

When you are looking for more tangible information, though, there are databases with more substance, like the list of homicides in the city in the last year. Thanks to the interactive map, we can find not only the basics of where the killing happened, but also more detailed information such as information on the victims, the circumstances of the death, and any arrests in the case.Again, it is easy to see what can be made of with this information: seeing if the city is having an upswing in violence based on recent trends, or writing about which sections of town are more dangerous.

Political Blogs

2008-09-26T15:54:00.005-04:00

Politifact.com, a fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly magazine, goes through statements by politicians and figures in the Presidential race to sift through what they say in order to find how much truth is there. It rates the amount of truth and truthiness is in each statement and grades it. The site is very well done and has a fun style that makes it very good all-around.

Factcheck.org is a very good at showing how truthful political statements and ads are, and their articles are extremely thorough in this aspect. They are also slightly faster than Politifact. However, Factcheck covers far fewer statements than Politifact, usually just going over ads made by the campaigns or affiliated groups, while Politifact goes over ads, statements, and attacks anyone who injects themselves into the debate. Expanding their range would help greatly.

The Congress Votes Database, run by the Washington Post, is exactly what it says: a database of votes made by the House of Representatives and Senate, and their reasoning for the votes and statements about the votes. It is an extremely valuable resource for researching the history of the legislators, but that's all it is - good for research. It doesn't really talk about ongoing events, and there is no information on the front page. A suggestion would be to take an issue on people minds today, like say the bailout, document what the politicians are saying about it, and put this information on the front page, so people know where they stand without having to sift through pages of votes.

Lastly, Project Vote Smart, is similar to the Congress Votes Database as it goes over decisions and votes made by politicians and stores them in a database. However, while the Congress database limits itself to only reporting on the national Congress, Project Vote Smart is much broader in scope, going over Congressmen, governors, state legislators and state office holders, and allows readers to find their representatives just by searching their zip code. It also goes over not just votes, but it also keeps track of public stances and speeches given by the figure. I still would like to see something on today's issues on the front page, but Vote Smart is still a very well done site.

Reminding the media to do its research

2008-09-24T00:34:00.005-04:00

Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy - Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

It's not a really closely guarded secret that the mainstream media just doesn't understand nerds. Since nerds and geek chic are one of those odd subcultures that lies just outside of the media's comfort zone, any attempts to report about them often seem like their reporting from bizarre overseas country, where they've just finished talking to the locals and more or less learned the customs. It's not really their fault, since no one in the mainstream culture really cares about it, and since the arrival of the internet, it's no problem at all, since there are now sites run by nerds for nerds about stories they understand. So while the mainstream media doesn't provide up-to-date accounts in the latest Star Wars news, it's all right, because there are at least 15 websites dutifully dedicated to stalking George Lucas's every move, run by people who actually understand what the words Alderaan and Sarlacc mean. (Note to the uninitiated: Wikipedia is your friend.)

But every now and then, someone in the mainstream media gets an adventurous feeling and decides to head into the depths of Nerditania to assess the landscape over there in a way that most people can understand. This usually comes as great amusement to the locals, who relish in watching others struggle to grasp their customs and learn the trms. Which brings us to the topic of this post, a sex column on MSNBC.com about sexually explicit anime and manga. Through the course of this column, he tries to explain the inner dealing and fetishes of "otaku" (a recent Japanese term for nerds that has somewhat gained acceptance in Japan and the US subcultures), and had almost did a good job of it. Almost, though comes into the fact that a number of oversights and misstatements which make it obvious to anypne who knows anything about anime that this reporters has little idea of what e's talking about, if any at all.

The main line that gets nerds laughing is this beauty:

But sexually-suggestive and explicit anime like "Gurren Lagann" and "Legend of the Overfiend," is finding an eager audience of adult Americans who are drawn to the post-modern, almost post-human mash-up of playful, blurry morality found in the genre.

Now, for the uninitiated, there might not seem to be any problem here. But any anime fan who reads that line is likely laughing themselves senseless right now, and here's why: Gurren Lagann is not, in any way, a "sexually-sugesstive and explicit" anime. Gurren Lagann (short for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann) is a recent - and highly critically aclaimed - anime about giant robots fighting in a dystopian future. With no sex. Maybe a couple dirty jokes and fanservice, but nothing in the realm of the pornographic. Not only is this oversight by the reporter embarassing, but it is impossibly easy to correct - just look up the show on a anime news source like Anime News Network, or even look it up on Wikipedia. It's a simple mistake, but a massive one that kills any credibility with anime fans that the reporter has done any research at all.

While no other mistake is as damning as that one, other lesser missteps don't help the reporters cause. For Instance, he writes a good five paragraphs about adult anime and otaku and naghuty tentacles before mentioning that, oh yes, "...not all anime and manga is overtly sexual — a lot of it is meant for children". Two problems here: One, "A lot" should be replaced by "the vast majority of", as adult anime comprises, at best, 10% of the total anime library. And two, not all the rest are aimed at young children, but that doesn't make them porn. Seriously, you'd think 10 years of South Park and 4000 seasons of The Simpsons would teach people that just because its animated doesn't mean it's for kids.

The other point is that he never distinguishes between the clean anime and the adult ones, Possibly because the reporter never bothered to look into it. The actual accepted term for adult anime and manga - hentai - is mentioned all of once in the entire piece about adult anime. This can only be understandable if we assume that the reporter believed that the two terms were interchangeable, which is just not the case. Yes, Gurren Lagann and Legend of the Overfiend are both examples of anime, but in the same way that The Matrix and Debbie Does Dallas are both examples of film. They just happen to be in vastly different genres, and unless that is explained, then the audience won't understand or will get an inaccurate image of the subject - something journalism is supposed to prevent, not create.

Really, the bad part about this article is that so much could have been improved with simple research. Talk to the editor of Anime News Network or one of the sources you used to make sure that what you are writing is accurate. Maybe talk to a few industry insiders to get a better picture. Or really, if it comes down to it, always remember - Wikipedia is your friend.

A Trip Around Blogville

2008-09-17T21:56:00.001-04:00

We have been asked to showcase three of our favorite blogs from the many corners of the Internet. Seeing as my interests are varied, I've chosen three very different blogs that appeal to me. Each one comes from a different subculture on the Internet.

Of course, some of the more well known blogs are political blogs, discussing the news of the day and how it affects you and those in power. There are thousands of these across the net, but one that does things very differently, and thus deservedly gets attention for it, is the political gossip blog Wonkette. Armed with a sharp wit and sarcastic style, Wonkette joyfully mocks the inner workings of today's politics, jokes about the major stories of theday, and revels in the occasional Washington sex scandal. The site takes little seriously, a rarity in the political realm, as can bee seen in their coverage of the recent bank failures:

GO GET YOUR MONEY PEOPLE: Collapsing investment banks are yesterday’s news, trendsetters! Now we can turn our attention to the biggest possible commercial banks failing miserably, like, say, Washington Mutual. And when that collapses on Sunday, probably, it will likely drain up what’s left of the FDIC’s insurance fund. The FDIC can always get more money from the Treasury, or we can just have a BANK RUN!!! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BANK!!! PANIC! CHAOS FIRE OBAMA BURN!!

Moving along, we go too a completely different corner of the Internet to another interest of mine: anime. My favorite blog within the anime community is Random Curiosity, a running diary of shows out in Japan. The editor, Omni, follows a number of shows as they come out each week, writing reviews and discussing the series with other fans. Omni also puts out a preview at the beginning of each season of anime, walking through the upcoming shows and giving fans an ideaof what to watch for.

And lastly, we move on to video games, anime's cousin in geek culture. One of the rising names in online gaming culture is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, creator of the "Zero Punctuation" series of video reviews at The Escapist, an online gaming magazine. Yahtzee's reviews have been lauded for thier brilliant writing and engaging style. His personal blog, Fully Ramblomatic, has links to all these videos as well as an archive of his older work, including freeware video games which he wrote and designed. It's a good read for those who wish to keep up to date on Yahtzee's recent and past work.