Filed by Richard on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 12:20 am

Comcast sucks story number 304,934,454: So I was at my dad’s house tonight, and I tested his up and download speed on his cable modem. My dad has a slingbox attached to one of his DirecTV Tivo units; it’s my main source of TV at my house. The signal is always a bit slow and I wanted to see how much upload he had to find out if there was any way I could improve the slingbox signal.

Anyway, it was slow as suspected: 4 megs download and like 400k upload.

 So I went to the Comcast site to find out what options there are for speeding the thing up. Try as I might, I COULD NOT FIND ANY PRICES FOR VARIOUS SERVICES ON THEIR SITE. They just don’t have any page that I could find that lists the various prices for things. I couldn’t even find a page that lists the different levels of cable internet service.

So I called Comcast, and to their credit, an actual human answered the phone, and answered quickly (this was 9pm on a Friday night). I asked them what the options where for speeding up the service, and found out that my dad had the 4 meg service, but “this service choice doesn’t even exist anymore,” so my dad was eligible for the 6 meg service “at no additional cost.” I asked the rep how long the new service has been available, and she said that she thought it was available for about two years. I asked her (rhetorically), “so you changed the level of service for the same old price, but continued to provide my dad the old speed for two years?” Her response: “It looks that way. Customers need to specifically ask for the new speed.”

“But how are we supposed to know about the different speed options? I could not find a single thing about them on your site.”

“That I cannot answer”.

 To her credit, she elected to give my dad 3 months of free upgraded 8 meg service. I suspect everyone gets this free offer, but I’m choosing to believe that she only gave it to us because she felt sorry that Comcast had screwed us for two years.

 Postscript: my slingbox picture looks 10 times better. But the very second that FIOS is available in my neighborhood, I’m signing up (apparently we’re about a month away…)

Filed by Richard on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 12:06 am

I am so frickin’ excited about Grand Theft Auto IV. Three days away! I purchased my XBox on November 29, 2006, specifically because Grand Theft Auto was supposedly going to be released exactly one year later (it got pushed back because of PS3 issues). Now the day is almost upon us!

 IGN, the notoriously stingy Video Game reviewers, just gave the thing 10 out of 10! They didn’t even give Bioshock 10 stars. Apparently they haven’t given a game 10 stars in 10 years.

Bring on GTA IV!

Filed by Richard on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 12:31 am

I didn’t look too closely at the headline of this article and I spent about 15 blissful seconds thinking someone had ginned up a retail version of the Hypnotoad.

Alas it is not to be. But the hypnocube looks pretty cool though.

Filed by Richard on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 9:07 pm

WTF?

Seriously. WTF?

Filed by Richard on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 2:57 pm

Assassin’s Creed is a great game; it’s many faults are swamped by it’s many virtues. The story of an Assassin travelling through the Holy Land during the age of the crusades, Assassin’s Creed puts you squarely into that far away time. Essentially a first-person shooter without guns, Assassin’s Creed represents a remarkable step forward  visual game design.

Much of the action takes place among major Holy Land cities like Jerusalem and Acre, and each city is truly epic in size and detail. Your assassin character can wander the streets and climb the city walls; the attention to detail remains high throughout. If there were not a single bit of gameplay the game would almost be worth the money just for the opportunity to wander the dusty streets, bump into townsfolks, and climb the myriad spires to take in the entire city. It’s rare the game that make you feel fully sucked into setting of the game by simple visuals alone, but Assassin’s Creed does this and then some.

The physical interaction with your character and the townsfolks feels more realistic than any game I’ve ever experienced. A crowded alley or square of most games seems to represent a major challenge to game designers as the AI townspeople will move in unrealistic ways, such as everyone walking in the same direction, etc. The “people” of Assassin’s Creed wander any which way, stop, scratch themselves, have conversations with each other, move out of each other’s way, and more. It’s a remarkable thing to watch.

Perhaps the major fault of Assassin’s Creed is the repetitive nature of the challenges. Many times you are called on to save a citizen from being hassled by local thugs, eavesdrop on a conversation, or assasinate a knight. And every single time (well almost every time), the challenge is identical. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, which presents unique challenges every time; your challenges in Assassin’s Creed are essentially the same on hour 20 as that are at hour 5.

And the fighting is essentially a button mashing affair. There are many different button combinations that you learn throughout the game, designed to break holds, lunge, defend yourself, etc. Yet I found easy success just hitting the sword button over and over, while hitting the “defend” button every fifth time or so.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there are bad button-mashing games, and this isn’t one of them. If you want to be tactical and learn the combos, it will definately work and work well. But if you want to just mash your opponents to death you have that option as well.

One small note: in my eternal challenge to to best Matt on Xbox games, I (of course) have shot straight past his score 825 to his 755. Furthermore, in terms of individual achievements in a game, I have equaled every single one of Matt’s acheivements… until now (not counting Gears of War, which I didn’t finish). There is an acheivement in Xbox360 that requires you to hit a button at a key moment during several cut scenes. I wasn’t really paying attention to acheivements until halfway through the game, and at that point it was too late. It would probably take about 5 hours of my time to get the acheivement, and as much as I like being the top dawg; it ain’t gonna happen in this case…

Filed by matt on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 10:06 am

My wife and I watch the Food Network on occasion, despite the fact that I know this makes me deeply uncool. Last night right before bed Iron Chef America comes on and I figure we’ll just see what the secret ingredient is and turn it off. The ingredient turns out to be coffee beans and then of course you have to watch the whole thing to see how you can possibly cook with coffee beans. You can basically use it as a spice but not being a coffee drinker it all looked pretty unappetizing. I don’t know how I watched a whole show about something I don’t really like but we were just sucked in. Amazing.

Filed by Richard on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 10:48 pm

It’s easy to see why so many critics hated Julie Taymor’s Beatles-soaked fantasy “Across the Universe.” A sixties story told entirely through the songs of the Beatles, it seems almost designed to inspire derision.

It’s also to see why a smaller, but significant, number of important critics fell madly and deeply in love with the film. It’s joyous singing, inventive staging and choreography, talented cast, and the effortless way it digs into your core emotional memory is remarkable. Though I’m no important critic, I am definitely in the latter camp. This is a wonderful film.

Telling the story of a young English lad come to America; the girl he falls for, and her brother who’s sent to Vietnam, Across the Universe basically covers every cliche of coming of age in the 60s. That it does this without cynicism is the real revelation of the film. It’s not that the film is all butterflies and rainbows; it’s that the Taymor didn’t feel any overpowering need to comment on the time and setting with an unnecessary modern eye.

The single best creative choice Taymore made during the production of the film–and one hardly commented upon by any critics–is the use of live recording of the actors during most of the film’s songs. On a surface level it helps immeasurably to never see tell-tale miscues as an actor ever-so slightly fails to sync their lips to a pre-recorded track. But more importantly the actor sing and act with a startling clarity of emotion. They’re not trying to convey an emotion while remaining true to a song they recorded in a studio months before. They’re doing it in real-time and it makes all the difference.

And what great singers they are. Evan Rachel Wood, who’s been on the periphery of the big time in Hollywood for the last few years, has a terrific singing voice. And as her boyfriend Jude, Jim Sturgess is regularly moving while singing the most recognizable of Beatles song and instantly re-contextualizing them.

I fell for the movie within the first minute. When Jude (Sturgess), sitting on a blustery beach, turns to the camera and sings a slow, lilting acappella version of “Girl,” I was sold. It hit both the movie-loving part of my brain and the section off to the left reserved for my ipod. The combination made the film impossible for me to resist.

I suspect a lot of other people had the exact opposite reaction. But if there’s ever been a film that needs to be experienced from the heart, it’s this film. It’s own heart is as pure as can be.

 The DVD presentation features a commentary by Taymor and her partner. The commentary is not particularly revelatory, and at times merely descriptive. Given Taymor’s track record of three essentially perfect films (Titus, Frida, Across the Universe), one expects more depth to her commentary.

The DVD also contains a second disc with several documentaries about the production. While interesting, the real find is extended versions of about 10 of the songs in the film.

Filed by Richard on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 5:37 pm

In this latest edition of the Juno-awarding winning Mustardayonnaise podcast, Matt and Richard discuss DVRs, Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six, and lots, lots more!

 

 Mustardayonnaise 73 [61:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed by Richard on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 12:53 am

Charlton Heston died today at 83, or is 84?  I’m a NY Times guy, so I say 83. Since this obituary was written at least a decade ago and periodically updated since, you’d think they could at least get a simple thing like is age right…

Charlton Heston had awful politics when it came to guns. But Michael Moore (who’s films I love and admire), actually managed to make me feel sorry for Heston when he harangued the Alzheimer’s-addled Heston and left a photo of a victim of gun violence on Heston’s doorstop at the end of his Oscar-winner “Bowling for Columbine.” It was no easy feat for me to sympathize with Heston, but Moore managed to do it.

Filed by matt on Saturday, April 5, 2008 at 8:05 pm

This past week I worked something around 56 hours. It’s pretty hard to actually watch movies, tv, and play video games let alone post about any of those thing when you’re dog tired. On top of that I was home late for various reasons the whole week. The first thing I noticed is that the Daily Shows and Colbert Reports start to stack up in the DVR. Then a new CSI:NY and CSI popped in there. Then a few Top Gears appeared, a new Frontline to join the last two that are still on there and a Bill Moyers Journal adding to my pointy-headedness. The only thing I managed to keep on top of was Arrested Development on HDNet every night – usually watched during late dinners. And then last night the new Battlestar Galactica appeared which was all I really cared about last week anyway. Totally worth it.

Also Richard is a dorkwad for continuing to beat the gamerscore thing into the ground.