Left 4 Dead on Xbox360 is my recent vice. It’s just too much fun. It’s also causing me frustration to no end.
All the game is about is having fun. There are no rankings that can haunt you and there’s no score being kept once a match is over with. So that means there’s really no motivation to win other than its fun to win; even though it’s also fun to lose.
Sounds perfect, right? Wrong. It’s the goddamn Garden of Eden and every ass-chomper is also biting into the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I’m not saying these dill-holes are smart with this metaphor, just that they ruined complete paradise.
There’s an exploit where the Infected can push a items in the way, blocking the Survivors completely, causing a stand-off. This makes it so the Infected will eventually win. Eventually in this situation can take hours. It becomes a slow battle of attrition. It has no place is a fast paced zombie action survival game.
So the first thing I ask from you Valve is that you remove the ability from the Infected to move objects that can block the Survivors. You’ve already done it for the PC version. Please find the time to fix it for the Xbox360 version. We’re your customers too.
Second thing I ask from you Valve is to add a disconnect ratio. So many games have been ended because someone is losing and they just want to quit. This ends it for everyone. I’ve worked my ass off to win a match so many times only to have our server shut-down because our opponent was going to lose. Sure it counts as a win for me but that means nothing because the matches aren’t ranked and scores aren’t kept. I’ve had my ass handed to me a lot. It took time to get to the mediocre skill level of which I’m a master. But I never quit. I always tried to learn how I was being beat. Both for how to copy it and improve it and also how to avoid it.
So if you add a disconnect ratio and I see a player who disconnects 50%(!!) of the time, I’m going to kick him from the game. He can repair his ratio by playing quick matches so he’s not forever fucked…but he is for a long while.
I think with these rules in place, paradise can return to the land of the dead, as it should.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Web Woes
There’ve been some troubles lately in my blog-o-sphere. Against the suggestions of our webmaster Microbomb, I wasn’t running a tandem blog on a blogger account to make my articles redundant. Then when we put in meta-tags to make our website searchable and viewable, www.catch-33.com was hacked and we lost all our content. There were of course backups for all the articles but they were spread across three different computers in no logical order. Also all the fine tuning of the work is done post publishing so while no content was lost, flavor was.
The hacking also scattered those contributing to the site. SirFignuts went and created a Tumbr account in our name and writes there now. The Villain went back to writing at either our TestBed or his Reality Blog. egotistus had his delicate sensibilities damaged and has retreated back into his shell. And MicroBomb still resides at his blogger account.
So I’ve got some options: Rein everyone back into the compromised Catch-33 and hope it never gets hacked again. Move the URL to hostmonster and run the site there after again reining everyone back in. I’d say having a network of all of us writing on our own site would work but we don’t individually produce enough content to necessitate that, at least by my thoughts and standards of what a functional weblog should be.
I think the only solution that will work is a de-centralized hierarchal network that automatically feeds our individual blogs upward to the final site via the RSS. But such a site isn’t already made nor is the network for it to work. So until then, I’ll be working out of my Tumblr account, my Blogger account and the TestBed (the only places I have access still).
The hacking also scattered those contributing to the site. SirFignuts went and created a Tumbr account in our name and writes there now. The Villain went back to writing at either our TestBed or his Reality Blog. egotistus had his delicate sensibilities damaged and has retreated back into his shell. And MicroBomb still resides at his blogger account.
So I’ve got some options: Rein everyone back into the compromised Catch-33 and hope it never gets hacked again. Move the URL to hostmonster and run the site there after again reining everyone back in. I’d say having a network of all of us writing on our own site would work but we don’t individually produce enough content to necessitate that, at least by my thoughts and standards of what a functional weblog should be.
I think the only solution that will work is a de-centralized hierarchal network that automatically feeds our individual blogs upward to the final site via the RSS. But such a site isn’t already made nor is the network for it to work. So until then, I’ll be working out of my Tumblr account, my Blogger account and the TestBed (the only places I have access still).
Sunday, December 28, 2008
IMX/BLU-RAY BULLCRAP
Here’s a reality check for you dill-holes. Almost 100% of anything with Blu-ray and IMAX on it is utter bullcrap. They took your money and are now laughing at you, ass.
Think you’re hot-shit buying the Blu-ray version of all your old favorite movies? Wrong. Your poop is ice cold. Back when your old-ass’ favorite movies were coming out, cameras were recording at the quality of a retarded caveman drawing in the sand. So now it’ll look like a retarded caveman’s drawing in the sand in 1080p crystal clear quality. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Love Bug on Blu-ray weren't smart investments for you.
Even modern films aren’t much of an improvement. The next sentence is going to be full of funny sounding words and I’m sorry but I’m also going to have to lay some numerics on you. The following numbers are of modern state-of-the-art 35-mm film with processing, printing, and projection and are tested with Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), a test that evaluates the number of lines rather than the number of individual pixels. Simply said, large numbers are good.
HD/digital resolution has in theory 1080 visible lines. 35mm has 1400. These are perfect measurements in our imperfect world. The average theater-goer, you, only sees 750. And DVDs are 625. That means most people only see a small improvement over the theater’s quality compared to DVD’s quality. So there’s not too much of an difference for you to watch your favorite Michael Bay movie, Transformers, in the theater than at home on a crunchy old DVD player. The upper bound of people, who you think you are but aren’t, can see up to 875 lines. Still not much better.
“But Pariahpism, DVD movies don’t fit my new 65-inch HDTV screen like it should.” you grumble out your troglodytic mouth.
“Shut up”
Maybe you should price check an upscaling DVD player…or you should have before you dropped cash on your fancy Blu-Ray player when they first came out. Sure it’s not the leading edge of technology, but you save money and don’t look like a techno-elitist.
Of course not all movies are filmed on 35mm film to give these numbers. There are the rare few filmed on 70mm and they are definitely worth picking up on Blu-ray. (I personally recommend Baraka.)
IMAX is technically 70mm but here’s the problem with IMAX. If you’re not totally blown away, it wasn’t really IMAX. If you spent a minute wondering if it was, then it wasn’t. To get an idea of how good it should have looked, imagine if you had seven, 10-megapixle cameras grouped into one giant image taking twenty-four pictures a second. Check this list of real IMAX theaters to see if you were tricked. You might have just seen a regular movie with a slightly larger screen and IMAX digital sound (same as any other but louder). And also there are only a few major release movies that are actually IMAX quality. Here’s a list of them.
2002
* Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience (2002) - 6.8/10
* Beauty and the Beast: Re-Release (January 1, 2002) - 8.0/10
* Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience (September 12, 2002) - 7.5/10
* Santa vs. the Snowman 3D (November 1, 2002) - 6.8/10
* The Lion King: Re-Release (December 25, 2002) - 8.1/10
2003
* The Matrix Reloaded: The IMAX Experience (June 6, 2003) - 7.0/10
* The Matrix Revolutions: The IMAX Experience (November 5, 2003) - 6.4/10
2004
* Spider-Man 2: The IMAX Experience (July 23, 2004) - 7.7/10
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: The IMAX Experience (June 4, 2004) - 7.7/10
* The Polar Express: The IMAX 3D Experience (November 10, 2004) - 6.7/10
2005
* Robots: The IMAX Experience (March 11, 2005) - 6.4/10
* Batman Begins: The IMAX Experience (June 15, 2005) - 8.4/10
* Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The IMAX Experience (July 15, 2005) - 7.2/10
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The IMAX Experience (November 18, 2005) - 7.7/10
2006
* V for Vendetta: The IMAX Experience (March 17, 2006) - 8.2/10
* Poseidon: The IMAX Experience (May 12, 2006) - 5.6/10
* Superman Returns: The IMAX 3D Experience (partial 3D) (June 28, 2006) - 6.7/10
* The Ant Bully: The IMAX 3D Experience (July 28, 2006) - 6.2/10
* Open Season: The IMAX 3D Experience (September 29, 2006) - 6.1/10
* Happy Feet: The IMAX Experience (November 17, 2006) - 6.7/10
* Night at the Museum: The IMAX Experience (December 22, 2006) - 6.4/10
2007
* 300: The IMAX Experience (March 9, 2007) - 7.9/10
* Spider-Man 3: The IMAX Experience (May 4, 2007) - 6.5/10
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The IMAX 3D Experience (July 11, 2007) - 7.4/10
* Transformers: The IMAX Experience (September 21, 2007) - 7.5/10
* Beowulf: The IMAX 3D Experience (November 16, 2007) - 6.7/10
* I Am Legend: The IMAX Experience (December 14, 2007) - 7.1/10
2008
* Speed Racer: The IMAX Experience (May 9, 2008) - 6.5/10
* Kung Fu Panda: The IMAX Experience (June 6, 2008) - 7.8/10
* The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (July 18, 2008) - 9.0/10
* Eagle Eye: The IMAX Experience (September 26, 2008) - 6.8/10
* Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: The IMAX Experience (November 7, 2008) - 7.2/10
* The Day the Earth Stood Still: The IMAX Experience (December 12, 2008) - 5.8/10
The numbers to the right are the user-review numbers from IMDB I added to show most of these movies suck. Hard. Any of the animated movies in this list should be ignored because there was no IMAX camera used to make it the super-duper delicious resolution (about 10000 x 7000 pixels). Also most of the non animated movies used CGI to reach IMAX quality without the cameras or just later re-mastered (re-bastard) on 35mm film to fit the IMAX screens. Here’s the list again of the movies that weren’t animated, completely or partially, or wasn't filmed without IMAX cameras.
2008
The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (July 18, 2008) - 9.0/10
So unless you saw a movie that was at one of the 280 world wide IMAX theaters and was the Dark Knight, you got ripped off. That’s too bad for you.
Think you’re hot-shit buying the Blu-ray version of all your old favorite movies? Wrong. Your poop is ice cold. Back when your old-ass’ favorite movies were coming out, cameras were recording at the quality of a retarded caveman drawing in the sand. So now it’ll look like a retarded caveman’s drawing in the sand in 1080p crystal clear quality. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Love Bug on Blu-ray weren't smart investments for you.
Even modern films aren’t much of an improvement. The next sentence is going to be full of funny sounding words and I’m sorry but I’m also going to have to lay some numerics on you. The following numbers are of modern state-of-the-art 35-mm film with processing, printing, and projection and are tested with Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), a test that evaluates the number of lines rather than the number of individual pixels. Simply said, large numbers are good.
HD/digital resolution has in theory 1080 visible lines. 35mm has 1400. These are perfect measurements in our imperfect world. The average theater-goer, you, only sees 750. And DVDs are 625. That means most people only see a small improvement over the theater’s quality compared to DVD’s quality. So there’s not too much of an difference for you to watch your favorite Michael Bay movie, Transformers, in the theater than at home on a crunchy old DVD player. The upper bound of people, who you think you are but aren’t, can see up to 875 lines. Still not much better.
“But Pariahpism, DVD movies don’t fit my new 65-inch HDTV screen like it should.” you grumble out your troglodytic mouth.
“Shut up”
Maybe you should price check an upscaling DVD player…or you should have before you dropped cash on your fancy Blu-Ray player when they first came out. Sure it’s not the leading edge of technology, but you save money and don’t look like a techno-elitist.
Of course not all movies are filmed on 35mm film to give these numbers. There are the rare few filmed on 70mm and they are definitely worth picking up on Blu-ray. (I personally recommend Baraka.)
IMAX is technically 70mm but here’s the problem with IMAX. If you’re not totally blown away, it wasn’t really IMAX. If you spent a minute wondering if it was, then it wasn’t. To get an idea of how good it should have looked, imagine if you had seven, 10-megapixle cameras grouped into one giant image taking twenty-four pictures a second. Check this list of real IMAX theaters to see if you were tricked. You might have just seen a regular movie with a slightly larger screen and IMAX digital sound (same as any other but louder). And also there are only a few major release movies that are actually IMAX quality. Here’s a list of them.
2002
* Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience (2002) - 6.8/10
* Beauty and the Beast: Re-Release (January 1, 2002) - 8.0/10
* Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience (September 12, 2002) - 7.5/10
* Santa vs. the Snowman 3D (November 1, 2002) - 6.8/10
* The Lion King: Re-Release (December 25, 2002) - 8.1/10
2003
* The Matrix Reloaded: The IMAX Experience (June 6, 2003) - 7.0/10
* The Matrix Revolutions: The IMAX Experience (November 5, 2003) - 6.4/10
2004
* Spider-Man 2: The IMAX Experience (July 23, 2004) - 7.7/10
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: The IMAX Experience (June 4, 2004) - 7.7/10
* The Polar Express: The IMAX 3D Experience (November 10, 2004) - 6.7/10
2005
* Robots: The IMAX Experience (March 11, 2005) - 6.4/10
* Batman Begins: The IMAX Experience (June 15, 2005) - 8.4/10
* Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The IMAX Experience (July 15, 2005) - 7.2/10
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The IMAX Experience (November 18, 2005) - 7.7/10
2006
* V for Vendetta: The IMAX Experience (March 17, 2006) - 8.2/10
* Poseidon: The IMAX Experience (May 12, 2006) - 5.6/10
* Superman Returns: The IMAX 3D Experience (partial 3D) (June 28, 2006) - 6.7/10
* The Ant Bully: The IMAX 3D Experience (July 28, 2006) - 6.2/10
* Open Season: The IMAX 3D Experience (September 29, 2006) - 6.1/10
* Happy Feet: The IMAX Experience (November 17, 2006) - 6.7/10
* Night at the Museum: The IMAX Experience (December 22, 2006) - 6.4/10
2007
* 300: The IMAX Experience (March 9, 2007) - 7.9/10
* Spider-Man 3: The IMAX Experience (May 4, 2007) - 6.5/10
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The IMAX 3D Experience (July 11, 2007) - 7.4/10
* Transformers: The IMAX Experience (September 21, 2007) - 7.5/10
* Beowulf: The IMAX 3D Experience (November 16, 2007) - 6.7/10
* I Am Legend: The IMAX Experience (December 14, 2007) - 7.1/10
2008
* Speed Racer: The IMAX Experience (May 9, 2008) - 6.5/10
* Kung Fu Panda: The IMAX Experience (June 6, 2008) - 7.8/10
* The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (July 18, 2008) - 9.0/10
* Eagle Eye: The IMAX Experience (September 26, 2008) - 6.8/10
* Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: The IMAX Experience (November 7, 2008) - 7.2/10
* The Day the Earth Stood Still: The IMAX Experience (December 12, 2008) - 5.8/10
The numbers to the right are the user-review numbers from IMDB I added to show most of these movies suck. Hard. Any of the animated movies in this list should be ignored because there was no IMAX camera used to make it the super-duper delicious resolution (about 10000 x 7000 pixels). Also most of the non animated movies used CGI to reach IMAX quality without the cameras or just later re-mastered (re-bastard) on 35mm film to fit the IMAX screens. Here’s the list again of the movies that weren’t animated, completely or partially, or wasn't filmed without IMAX cameras.
2008
The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (July 18, 2008) - 9.0/10
So unless you saw a movie that was at one of the 280 world wide IMAX theaters and was the Dark Knight, you got ripped off. That’s too bad for you.
The Oily Truth
Too much oily food can be bad for you, true. But what’s also true is everything tastes better either fried, pan fried, deep fried, and/or double deep fried.
That’s why the magicians at Proctor and Gamble created Olestra. Most fats have a glycerol chunk with three fatty-acid legs. Olestra has a sucrose chunk with eight (count them eight!) fatty acid chains. The Olestra molecule can’t be absorbed by your intestinal wall because it’s too big and also can’t be broken down by your puny stomach acids. This all means that you can deep fry everything and not gain a pound. EVERYTHING!
Why is this not used for everything in a country that can never stick to a diet, has to deep fry everything and leads the world in obesity? The assholes in the FDA required a warning on all Olestra’s products and products containing Olestra saying it causes “Anal Leakage”. Not many people buy things that cause that, even if it doesn’t. My problem is I can’t buy Olestra as an oil to make my food delicious all the time. They’re not selling it like that anymore (or since ever for all I know).
Thankfully, the FDA’s “Anal Leakage” warning was removed and Olestra is creeping back in the market under its new name, Olean. That is to say there are completely fat-free Doritos on the market today that taste the same. I’ve never seen them. Also, they must be doing poorly. No one buys fat-free anything; it’s been given a bad stigma by all the bad tasting food that’s come before it. I do plan on buying it next time I’m at the store just to see how it is. I have a personal stake in the matter as a man who loves everything fried yet wants to stay thin for the ladies.
Here’s where Enova comes in. Enova is any typical type of oil but at a different ratio of diglycerides and triglycerides. A triglyceride is normal fat molecule which is a glycerol chunk and three fatty-acid legs. These get digested into chylomicrons in the blood stream and then later become the fat in your ass. Diglycerides are the same only they’ve lost one of their fatty-acid legs in a war. When they get digested some of the legs get broken off of a few and reattached onto others that then become chylomicrons again. And then they go right back into your ass. The donors of those legs, the ones with only one leg left, are broken down completely and has been somewhat proven to be vaguely good for you.
The ratio in Enova is paraplegic heavy: 80% diglycerides and 20% triglycerides. Since half of the diglycerides become chylomicrons just like the triglycerides, that leaves only 40% of the oil is not digested as fat. You’re not getting much for your money, I feel, and the price is high. I looked at the nutritional information and it said for 14 grams of oil, you get 120 calories from fat. Not too surprising since it is a fat. I looked up all the other types of oils in the world and they said 119 calories from fat. Huh? Well, whatever…
So in the oil war I’m hoping Olestra wins. It’s the superior product according to the science.
That’s why the magicians at Proctor and Gamble created Olestra. Most fats have a glycerol chunk with three fatty-acid legs. Olestra has a sucrose chunk with eight (count them eight!) fatty acid chains. The Olestra molecule can’t be absorbed by your intestinal wall because it’s too big and also can’t be broken down by your puny stomach acids. This all means that you can deep fry everything and not gain a pound. EVERYTHING!
Why is this not used for everything in a country that can never stick to a diet, has to deep fry everything and leads the world in obesity? The assholes in the FDA required a warning on all Olestra’s products and products containing Olestra saying it causes “Anal Leakage”. Not many people buy things that cause that, even if it doesn’t. My problem is I can’t buy Olestra as an oil to make my food delicious all the time. They’re not selling it like that anymore (or since ever for all I know).
Thankfully, the FDA’s “Anal Leakage” warning was removed and Olestra is creeping back in the market under its new name, Olean. That is to say there are completely fat-free Doritos on the market today that taste the same. I’ve never seen them. Also, they must be doing poorly. No one buys fat-free anything; it’s been given a bad stigma by all the bad tasting food that’s come before it. I do plan on buying it next time I’m at the store just to see how it is. I have a personal stake in the matter as a man who loves everything fried yet wants to stay thin for the ladies.
Here’s where Enova comes in. Enova is any typical type of oil but at a different ratio of diglycerides and triglycerides. A triglyceride is normal fat molecule which is a glycerol chunk and three fatty-acid legs. These get digested into chylomicrons in the blood stream and then later become the fat in your ass. Diglycerides are the same only they’ve lost one of their fatty-acid legs in a war. When they get digested some of the legs get broken off of a few and reattached onto others that then become chylomicrons again. And then they go right back into your ass. The donors of those legs, the ones with only one leg left, are broken down completely and has been somewhat proven to be vaguely good for you.
The ratio in Enova is paraplegic heavy: 80% diglycerides and 20% triglycerides. Since half of the diglycerides become chylomicrons just like the triglycerides, that leaves only 40% of the oil is not digested as fat. You’re not getting much for your money, I feel, and the price is high. I looked at the nutritional information and it said for 14 grams of oil, you get 120 calories from fat. Not too surprising since it is a fat. I looked up all the other types of oils in the world and they said 119 calories from fat. Huh? Well, whatever…
So in the oil war I’m hoping Olestra wins. It’s the superior product according to the science.
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