The Footballs

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Arthur

I watched the Dutch play the other day, against Brazil and saw them win that game in their particular style they’re now known for: messy football with a teeny bit of flair and luck. After the equalizer, that unfortunate mix-up from Cesar and Melo, I was surprised to see the Brazilian team completely collapse, physically and emotionally. There was a remark by one of the guests at the CBC who said it the best (quoted as best as I can):

“There was this total lack of emotional balance in the Brazil team: From Dunga literally kicking and beating up the dug-out to his players losing it on the field”

God. Sometimes I just hate this game for all the theatrics of the players and coaches.

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Lolwhut, civilization?

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Arthur

I think I’ve mentioned this earlier that I find the latest Civ 4 add-ons hardly playable and enjoyable: Beyond the Sword is one of the main culprits. The balance of the game seem to have tipped more towards combat, and (as frequent Civ players know) being in a constant wage of war will eventually hurt technology progress. With announcement of Civ 5 (“Coming this Fall”), one can only hope for the better.

Talking about civilization, I had one link still in my queue of links to be elaborating on, which is Thinking Meat’s “Was civilization a bad idea” posting a while ago. The posting was a response to Spencer Well’s Seed Magazine essay ‘Pandora’s seed’, where the geneticist discusses how the rate of cultural evolution (technological advances for example) seem to have taken a toll on human evolution. As an example, the geneticist notes that:

The unprecedented rise in chronic disease in westernized societies is perhaps the most obvious example. I say westernized, rather than western, because we are now well aware of the growing incidence of heart disease, diabetes and plain-old obesity in the developing world, particularly in places such as India and China. As they become more like us, they are taking on many of our worst attributes as well.

If you think of the medical progress we’ve made since the early ages, where thanks to medical science the life expectancy went from, what, 20 years to 65+ years, it feels a bit ironic that thanks to that progress we’re in need of more medical care these days than in the Stone Ages and that our health has come with a (monetary) price.

I guess the point of healthy life is that you should just eat healthy and with moderation. Otherwise the bugs will take over in a couple centuries.

1.Reddit, Civ 4 tips and Steam.

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World cup

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Arthur

The FIFA Worldcup 2010 has started a couple of days ago and I noticed that I haven’t seen any of the matches yet only because the matches are a broadcast at impossible times. For a lack of better links (or rather, laziness), the following days I hope to watch the Copa Mondial on CBC’s website (live streaming apparently).

I’ve only briefly mentioned the Van Der Sloot case on this blog (to be honest, hardly is a better word). In summary, guy who was main suspect in Aruba case is arrested by Peruvian police for the homocide of the daughter of a Peruvian multi-millionaire uh wait. There are so more colourful details to this case that I’m 100% certain that Hollywood will make a movie out of this. Unfortunately, most of the saillant details seem to come from the Dutch press.

One of the most compelling stories from the Internet (“Right now, On the Internet”, cue typical news program music) is the story about Keanu Reeves. The Guardian perfectly summarizes the story but alas, no links (“What, horrors!”). Here ya go then.

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Mexicana

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Arthur

Earlier this weekend, at the local liquor store I was briefly distracted by a brandy or wine named ‘Caballero’ (can’t find on the Internets): I’m not sure if it was the brand name or the name of the drink itself, but, it reminded me of the other brand name of cigarettes made by a Dutch cigarettes manufacturer, then called ‘Sigarettenfabriek Ed. Laurens B.V’. The company was eventually bought out by British American Tobacco. Their site has a rather bland portion about the health risks of smoking and genetically modified tobacco (no).

Both my parents smoked: Originally, my mother smoked Caballero cigarettes I believe and then switched to ‘Belinda’ cigarettes, which, as you can tell, were cigarettes solely targeted to females. My mother eventually quit smoking (cold turkey I believe) and the images of “the mexican on his horse” cigarette packs slowly faded away from my memories and probably (as the brand doesn’t appear to exist anymore) from the minds of continental Europeans.

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A can

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Arthur

If you look close to the right, you’ll see a can. An ordinary aluminium can. It could have been a photo of a Coca-Cola can. A photo of a recycled Coca-Cola can. Or a regular steel/metal food can for that matter. You’ve probably seen hundreds types of cans in your whole life. Some cans are used to store vegetables. Some cans are stored to use precious liquids, scented oils, Plumtree’s and cat food. Some cans flew off the production line in a metal packaging plant. Some of them never did.

Some of the cans did not meet the stringent quality specifications and in turn were stored elsewhere for recycling purposes. They would have been stored in large carts, hauled or carted away by machinists/operators who incidentally may have worn dark blue overalls.

Most likely these operators would have been wearing earplugs, as to protect their ears from the noise of cans being pulled, pushed and belted through presses, sorters and painting machines. And it’s particularly that clicking high pitched metallic noise that these people would remember if they’re presented with a can like that can shown above.

It’s a fairly noisy can, so to say.

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Jupiter and so

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Arthur

I read this the day before yesterday: apparently, Jupiter has lost one of it’s bands (National Geographic on this) within the last couple of months (or even year). If you’re curious if this will have any impact on our Earthly lives, please check your local daily astrology forecast.

Computers are fascination and so are games: depending on your mileage, of course. Earlier this month, I learnt that a senior fellow in the US managed to defeat the game ‘Bejeweled’ by reaching the topscore of (wait for it, wait for it), 2,147,783,647. If you’re not familiar with that number, for your reference I present Wikipedia’s entry on Integer numbers.

And last but not least, via Reddit, I came across this gem (or youtube video) showcasing the excellent animation stuff in the Arma2 game. I looked at this game a year or so ago and while buggy, I was extremely impressed with the online-multiplayer portion of Arma2. From the ‘Leave no man alone, rescue Arthur’ mission, to that ‘long lonely walk until someone offered me a ride on his bike to the battlefield’ occasion. No really: surreal.

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A shuttle. A Space.

Posted on April 24, 2010 by Arthur

Last week, I found out that the Space Shuttles are going to be retired next year. Currently, NASA is looking for the shuttles’ final home: several institutions consider displaying America’s Expensive and Great Leap Of Faith Into Space. Sarcasm aside, seeing the first Space Shuttle take off and land, and that all live on TV: as a young kid, that was fairly amazing, yes. However, I’ve never been a fan of manned space exploration (previously on xsamplex).

Slightly more exciting: it’s the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA celebrated that with this pretty picture of ‘Mystic Mountain’. What can I say about the Telescope? I remember that the initial launch and deployment were not that successful and that thanks to the Space Shuttle, the ‘Scope wouldn’t have been making as pretty as pictures as it does now.

The Telescope, however, will last for a couple of more years and is to be replaced by the ‘Webb Telescope’ in 2014.

May 15, 2010: Atlantis’ Last Voyage.

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Oh NOES! (part II)

Posted on April 10, 2010 by Arthur

Erlier today, BBC reported that the Polish president Lech Kaczynski died in a plane crash in Russia (link). Besides the president, 80 or so other senior politicians died, leaving Poland in a sort of political and constitutional vacuum. It will be interesting to see what’s next for the Polish people.

Politically, Kaczynski was on the centre-right side of the political spectrum: surprisingly, Poland has been ruled by the right since it got rid of the communist party. Of course, the only reason I bring up the death of the Polish president is because he was featured in an older posting (“Oh NOES!”): a couple of years, Poland was the first country that had an identical twin take the highest offices (that of President and Prime-Minister). I don’t think that we’ll see that again for a long while.

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Welcome to the internets

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Arthur

I read Something Awful’s ‘Deadly Premonition’ review the other day: many other gaming review sites have called this game ‘horrible’ to ‘outrageously bad’ (see Metacritic). Obviously, the makers of the game (age check required) were Twin Peaks fans, as some of the reviewers noted, as it features twins, absurd story lines and an FBI agent. Also, if you’re a Twin Peaks fan, you’ll recognize the photo in the screenshot above (if not, here ya go). Too bad the game is only released for the XBOX 360 platform.

I’ve only slightly followed the NoSQL movement and mostly because it was linked to from one of the mails I get from the Postgres mailinglist. I’m not certain how people can call databases ‘non-scalable’ when most serious databases (including MySQL, I guess) have been around for ages. If you can’t get the right performance out of a database, you probably have to rethink your indexing strategy and if you’re too lazy to do that, you’ll probably end up at in the NoSQL corner. But seriously, this in fact doesn’t mean that SQL servers are becoming outdated and I don’t think they will just yet.

I also read that the PM is looking to replace the current governor-general, Michaelle Jean (the official site). I think she was appointed by Paul Martin in 2005: I was certain that the GG was there for life (or until they resign/retire). From all the suggestions in that CBC article, I find only William Shatner a compelling candidate1. The other ones, not so much.

1 Uh: on preview maybe not…

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X3: Terran Conflict

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Arthur

I‘ve been a long-time fan of Egosoft’s X3 series: A while ago, I used to play ‘X3: Reunion’, but I have slowly moved to the game’s successor ‘X3: Terran Conflict’ (company info, Wikipedia info and Metacritic reviews).

Following in the tradition of ‘Reunion’, Terran Conflict (or X3:TC) is an open-ended space/combat simulator and if that’s still incomprehensible: think ‘Elite’. There’s no real goal in this game: if you prefer to float around then that’s you choice. However, TC is definitely different than ‘Reunion’: first of all, it has multiple ‘story/mission lines’, which you can (of course) choose to ignore. Secondly, TC now provides ‘sector missions’, which are rated missions (from easy to very hard) which you can (again) choose to take up or ignore. These missions literally can fill up your wallet: compared to ‘Reunion’ where it may take months to get to the 10 million credits mark, in X3:TC this is only a matter of days. This of course changes the player’s progress dramatically and with serious consequences: the faster you rate up the harder the competition will get. You’ll find that with all the earned monies, you’ll actually have to buy and use corvettes and carriers to get through some of the hardest missions. Particularly the ‘Patrol’ and ‘Xenon’ missions.

There’s still a lot to explore in this X3-universe: if you’re coming from X3:Reunion, you’ll notice the slight graphical differences, the (changed) user interface (which now offers extensive support for gamers who prefer to play with mice) and several command options that (purportedly) help smoothen out first-time players. In TC, it’s now also possible to board capital ships (as opposed to trying to ‘capture’ them), plus, there’s finally support for using ‘wings’. However, the AI (for your wingmen) is still flaky at times: avoid making too large fighter/support wings.

So, ‘TC’ is the grand finale for the X3 series and (if you’re into these kind of games) a worthwhile buy: However, it can be fairly hard at times. On my game rating level, it’s a 6: the game can be frustrating and has a steep learning curve, but generally, it’s a highly rewarding and one-of-a-kind game. I can’t wait to see what Egosoft is planning next.

See below for screenshots.

04/29/2010: Egosoft bumped up the version to 2.6, which now includes Steam achievements, if that strikes your fancy.

Continue reading →

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A seasonal haiku

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Arthur

Undoub’tly, brown grass
dead for the last three months, so
It can’t be eaten

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Roll up the rim, anno 2010

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Arthur

It’s another year of trying to win a single donut and I bet you are about to run to the local Tim Hortons to put the statistics into practice. Hold on a second: At xsamplex, we’ll get you the numbers, once again (click for all entries).

It looks like the number of contest cups is in a downward trend which peaked in 2008. Compared to last year, the number of contest cups lost stands at 1,474,2000. The general distribution of contest cups shows only slight changes, with Ontario losing the most cups (5 million or so?) and a small rise of numbers in the Alberta, Quebec and Atlantic provinces regions. Quebec is the winner this year, but, with only 2 million more cups, I’m not sure if that’s something to celebrate.

For the 5th year in a row, a Toyota car is the highest valued prize to win: We’ve gone back to SUVs, or rather, the RAV4 has returned. The last time the RAV4 was the main prize was in 2005. This year, there are 40 cars given away, which is 5 more than last year, and all these extra 5 can be win in Ontario. So, if you want to win a car, it looks like Ontario is the place to go for. I bet you’ll look great in your RAV4, 4-wheeling down Toronto’s Younge street.

The other prizes haven’t changed: the numbers are all the same and the distribution has changed in favour of Canadians. The Alberta region seems to be the overall winner here (with the Atlantic provinces next in line): I could make a joke about this (“The Americans get less prizes because of Sidney Crosby”), but the numbers for these two regions just don’t look all too appealing. And again, this yeaer, we see that Toshiba provides the computer gear. That is, compared to last year, this year you can win a sub-par Intel Atom-based netbook. If you win one of those make sure you look happy.

So, generally, I think this year, I’ll stick to instant coffee with a croissant. You should probably too.

Previous entries: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002. Or click this tag for all posts tagged with ‘Roll Up The Rim’.

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Olympicalinitialurescending

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Arthur

I‘ve only sporadically followed the Olympic games: most of the time fellow travelers or colleagues kept me up-to-date about the latests. Since there’s only one day left or so, a summary of things that caught the eye.

First of all, before the games officially opened there was the luge accident involving a Georgian athlete. The day after the accident, the authorities reported that the athlete was at fault. However, from what I gathered, is that for the lugers’ safety, the IOC decided to slightly change the track (or rather, change the starting positions for lugers).

The talk in Canada, is of course, the Hockey final which puts Canada against the US. Earlier in the Games, the two countries also played against each other and the Canadians lost.

There was this weird incident in speedskating (the 10 kilometers for males): the favourite for this distance lost his medal because of an error switching lanes, which was blamed on the trainer who also happened to be a professional speedskater back in the past. That said, the US press core felt slightly vindicated (too bad that the IOC has been serving take-down notices for this particular video).

And I guess the most stunning report in the media came from the CBC, which dryly reported that ‘an emergency shipment of condoms’ was headed for Vancouver. Because, if you won a gold medal (or if you didn’t) you should still consider doing it safely.

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