Making Sauerkraut

Another video I made using Openshot Video Editor. The program seems to be coming along nicely,and is updated and maintained very well. I’m learning more about using it bit by bit, but think I would enjoy using it if I put more time into learning and experimenting with the features. After trying to show exactly how to make sauerkraut, I actually did not have a good level of brine/cabbage juice up and over the cabbage, and the top parts of the cabbage started rotting. So, I’m starting a new batch, and I will watch it more closely so that it stays fermenting the right way.

Acekard Says “Merry Christmas”

When I first became aware of the flash carts that enable piracy on the Nintendo DS, I wasn’t very interested. The R4 was the most recognizable name at the time and I knew folks who boasted of their pirated game libraries. I won’t claim to be a saint, or of never “acquiring” digital stuff online, but in regards to the NDS I didn’t see a need for it. I was aware of the non-piracy utility of these cards, but that aspect did not interest me either. I guess I shouldn’t start this off by mischaracterizing the true nature of these devices. Just because mainstream news outlets dismiss any function outside of piracy for these carts as dishonest justification  doesn’t mean it is true. It seems similar to individuals dismissing the bittorrent technology as simply a piracy tool, guffawing at legitimate uses for it…like downloading linux distributions (of which I use it for often). The homebrew scene for NDS is real. Although I had never been interested in the past, aside from reading the occasional article about it in Google Reader, I definitely considered homebrew authentic and genuine. I certainly didn’t feel the sins of the vast amount of piracy outweighed the wholesome good of a homebrew scene.

The other feature of these cards, backing up your home collection for safe keeping, seemed more of an excuse to me, actual dishonest justification, than the homebrew use. That is until I had several of my DS games stolen while I was attending a Basment Jaxx/Modeselektor show in Chicago. The financial prospect of replacing the games that I really liked DID suck, but it was a different consideration that really disheartened me. As mentioned in this post, I had broken my Pokemon cherry with Pokemon Platinum, and made it to the elite four at the end of the game. After leveling my pokemon up considerably and sinking probably at least 50 hours into it, my game card got stolen. I also mentioned at the end of the article that I was going to begin playing Retro Game Challenge. Well, I did, and had a GREAT game save on that as well. My Tetris DS game card from 2006 had actually over time become rare and is currently out of print. So, the game saves cannot be replaced…they are GONE, and I had to shell out $50.00 for now-rare used copy of Tetris DS.

The idea of backing up my games never seemed useful, and I had never even thought about losing a game save. Now I felt differently, and I came across this great Lifehacker article. The comments are worth reading on this one as well, where there are actually quite a few commenters lamenting Lifehacker promoting piracy tools. I don’t know what website they’ve been reading, but these articles are the ones I count on reading on Lifehacker. The R4 has actually been banned in the UK and in Japan. In Japan, Nintendo and 54 other companies including (ironically in my case)The Pokemon Company successfully sued the R4 makers in 2008. I’ve been buying and playing DS games since the DS Phat first came out and despite Nintendo’s current motion fetish and litigiousness, I’ve always loved Nintendo games. I want to buy Shigeru Miyamoto’s games, Masahiro Sakurai’s games, and Eiji Aonuma’s games. Plus, I have only so much time to play video games. When I see someone with an SD card full of tons of pirated games, I see a digital packrat. That person probably doesn’t assign the value to these games that I do, and probably doesn’t play games like Bowser’s Inside Story all the way to the end.

I decided to buy the Acekard 2i, and bought it from Modchip Central. It came with a handy micro SD-to-USB thumb drive, and a USB charge cable that I am still not sure what is for. Having (almost) all my games on one card is awesome. I’m using it along with an 8 GB SD card on my DS Lite. I never upgraded to the DSi or DSxl, and never will. The game dumps from the DS Lite over wifi to a computer are slow, but work pretty well, and the most important part, backing up saves works well also. There is ONE glaring exception though. I’m now playing my way through Pokemon Soul Silver and Dragon Quest IX. Apparently due to the inclusion of the infrared pokewalker communication built into the cartridge, the game saves can’t be backed up using the  Wifi Backup Tool on the Acekard 2i. This sucks, and means I still have to carry around my Soul Silver card. Oh well. I also had problems playing Dragon Quest IX from the card. It would freeze up, and become unplayable. I upgraded the AKAIO operating system on the card from 1.7 to 1.8.1 and now it seems to play without a problem.

Overall, I would highly recommend the Acekard 2i. The homebrew programs have been interesting as well, such as Flickbook, DSOrganize, and Warcraft Tower Defense.

A Fully Informed Juror is the Least of a Jury’s Problems

Reddit links, there are a lot of lame ones, and the perspective of the posters often seems predictable. Just today I read a massively upvoted link complaining about old people not dying off fast enough. There definitely are cool things found there though. I found this youtube video through reddit weeks before I had to report for jury duty. It’s not really worth watching, just some officials outside a courthouse harassing some FIJA(Fully Informed Jury Association)  fans that were passing out informational pamphlets. I didn’t pay a whole bunch of attention to it. Of course, then I approach the county courthouse the morning of reporting for jury duty and there are folks there handing out the same materials. No one was harassing them, and I thanked them for the information and read it. It is definitely interesting stuff, and I can see how it would be upsetting to some people. FIJA advocates jurors to not simply judge whether someone is guilty or innocent of the stated law, but to judge also the law itself if need be.

I decided to write about this because of the River Cities’ Reader article I read recently entitled “A Law Unto Themselves”: Jury Nullification and the Deck Stacked Against It and also my recent experience serving as a juror. This was my first time actually serving as a juror. I was previously called to the Federal Building on 4th St. in Davenport to serve, but during voir dire I was stricken from the pool by the prosecuting attorneys. It was a drug conspiracy case involving 92 pounds of marijuana. The prosecuting attorneys asked if anyone in the jury pool thought marijuana should be legalized. Besides me only one other person raised their hand. I presume they struck me on those grounds, which was a relief to me because I didn’t want to be on the jury. It wasn’t just an excuse, because I do think it should be legalized for recreational use. That belief certainly wouldn’t have affected my judging the facts of the case in that instance though. At that time I wasn’t even aware of jury nullification, but in retrospect, I really think I wouldn’t have used nullification as a tool in that specific case. Sure I think marijuana should be legalized, but this wasn’t an individual with a user’s amount of marijuana, this was 92 pounds of the stuff, and this business is costing people their lives in Mexico. So far, according to this L.A. Times page, there are 22,700 drug-related deaths since January of 2007. Obviously illegal purchasers contribute to this problem, but nullification would have been a more likely candidate in a simple marijuana possession case depending on the penalties involved.

That brings me to my more recent experiences, of actually serving on a jury. I won’t talk about any particulars of this one, but I will say that when I went into the jury pool with over a hundred other people, I understood jury nullification and was prepared to use it as a tool. That meant that if I had a problem with the law itself or the consequences of breaking that law I would could consider jury nullification. The River Cities’ Reader article quotes a law professor saying “Courts recently have been reluctant to encourage jury nullification, and in fact have taken several steps to prevent it. In most jurisdictions, judges instruct jurors that it is their duty to apply the law as it is given to them, whether they agree with the law or not”. In fact the judge in my case addressed the whole jury pool this way saying that we can’t use jury nullification as a tool. I took that with a grain of salt. It turned out that I didn’t particularly disagree with the justice of that specific law, or the application of it, so I was free to judge the facts of the case like a normal juror. Initially I pondered answering some jury pool questions in such a way that I would likely be stricken, but then I thought it would be simply shirking what little civic responsibility I had. I also felt that if I was on trial, I would appreciate having a jury equipped with jury nullification as a tool.

The problem with jury nullification, like the River Cities’ Reader article points out, is that it can be a double-edged sword. It was used in the 1800s to acquit individuals accused of harboring slaves, but also used to acquit white supremacists of racist killings of which there was ample evidence of. True jury nullification would have the whole jury refusing to convict based on a judgment of a bad law instead of the facts of the case. But just one juror doing so may simply result in a hung jury, in which the defendant may be tried again at a later date. A competent juror that holds jury nullification as a potential tool is no threat to justice. What can be a threat to justice is simply an incompetent juror regardless of any potential jury nullification ideas. A jury of our peers may indeed include individuals that do not fully understand the different counts of criminal charges one is accused of. It may include individuals that don’t understand what “beyond a reasonable doubt” means. Prejudices do come into play, as well as preconceived notions based on what some see on fictional television police dramas. David Caruso wouldn’t have done it that way, so I say “not guilty”. Some individuals simply aren’t courageous enough to find somebody guilty, grasping desperately onto any possible doubt, conspiracy theory, and fabricated scenario. I think a fully informed juror is a good thing, and in the grand scheme of things, nothing to sweat over.

Rest in Peace Little Cowon

I knew it would happen eventually, I sure did drop it enough. Although, I don’t think that is the cause. I think it just died of old age. I used this player for three years, and it has served me well, the excellent audio quality and the amazing battery life combined together to make this the best audio player I had ever used. Three years doesn’t seem like much time, but in portable electronic years, I think its a ripe old age, what with planned obsolescence and all. The wikipedia article linked there states that “it must be decided early in the design of a complex product how long it is designed to last so that each component can be made to those specifications.”

Well, the power button component of my player was apparently spec’d less rigorously than the rest of the player. I mean, even with planned obsolescence, any engineer could figure out that the power button slider was going to probably take more abuse than any other button on the thing. At least I foiled Cowon’s plans, because as of this date, there have been two other iAudio models since my original purchase of my iAudio 7,(the iAudio U5 and the iAudio 9). So, I’ve bypassed the planned obsolescence a little bit, by not prematurely tossing out my iAudio 7 as so much disposable tech for the shiny new thing. In fact it looks as if Amazon has my same exact model on sale right now, so I think I’ll double-down on this one.

Cowon iAudio 7 vs SanDisk Sansa Clip+

After at least a couple of years of use, my trusty iAudio 7 is beginning to malfunction. It has rarely useful touchscreen controls that are disabled by sliding a lock button over. Once done, there are buttons that assume new functions, which is very handy. You can play/pause, control volume, and skip/forward/rewind tracks all without using the cursed touch screen. Unfortunately, the lock button is malfunctioning and now the touchscreen gets brushed in my pocket which suddenly changes tracks and/or increases the volume to an ear-bleeding level.

I use my mp3 player constantly. I listen to Girl Talk and Kid Cudi while jogging, several different podcasts, and Spanish lessons from Pimsleur.

I figured I might as well try out a new mp3 player. I like the idea of single-purpose mp3 players. I don’t need a camera, a huge fancy color screen or video playback, and a review I read of the Sansa Clip+ seemed to fit the bill. It was tinier, cheaper, and had a clip on it to attach wherever I wanted-no need for a pocket. The music file formats supported were nice, and the sound quality was reviewed as really good. The battery performance, which is very important to me was reviewed as really good as well. I bought the bastard for $35 or so, whereas my iAudio 7 was over $100 I believe. I’m extremely unimpressed with this Sansa Clip+.

When HDTVs first came out it was said upgrading to one doesn’t bring about about an extremely noticeable change, but once used to it, downgrading was horribly noticeable. I totally experienced that when it came to HDTVs, but would never suspect that my ears were sensitive enough for an audibly equivalent experience. Well, downgrading to the Sansa Clip+ has been horrible. Girl Talk sounds significantly less bumping, and podcasts sound like they’re streaming from the internet… in 1997. Okay, maybe that last part is an exaggeration.

I also had grown accustomed to the battery life of my iAudio 7. I assumed a much newer, and smaller device would match or exceed the battery life of it. Boy was I wrong. Last week I was listening to a podcast while washing the dishes, and it went kaput. Apparently Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to batteries. The battery life with the iAudio 7 was such that in the over two years I used it I never once ran out of a charge. Seriously. Not only that, I never really had to expressly plug it in to recharge it. It recharged whenever I was putting new content on it. Every now and then I would forget to unplug it at night, and then it would recharge over night.There was honestly never any forced recharging time. I’m sure this had much to do with me adding new content daily, but it still was largely an unnoticed effort, and it never went kaput on me.

The features I liked on the Sansa Clip+ were the clip, the OLED screen, and the resume playback feature. On the Sansa Clip+ it was possible to leave a podcast, lesson, or song, and come back to it, resuming where you left off. This is not so easy to do on the iAudio 7. I can’t believe how incredibly handy having a clip on the Sansa is. Still, I have to say, if you’re concerned about having a tiny portable audio player, and not so concerned with carrying your whole library around with you (the player maxes out at 16 GB) the iAudio 7 is highly recommended by me. For a more thorough look, check out some of the links.

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/7/

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2007/07/cowon-iaudio-7-review.php

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=63

http://www.sandisk.com/products/sansa-music-and-video-players/sandisk-sansa-clipplus-mp3-player-.aspx

My Favorite Hip-Hop Albums of the Decade

I won’t pretend to be a professional hip-hop journalist, let alone a general music journalist, but I love hip-hop. I think I listened to enough of it over the last decade to be able to assemble a list of what I liked the most. Of course, this is a list of some of what I listened to, and there is obviously A LOT that I didn’t listen to. I don’t really believe in required reading or required listening, and I don’t read music magazines or music blogs. I mean, just because Lil’ Wayne gets nominated for a grammy doesn’t mean I’m going to go listen to his album. I do subscribe to Indiefeed Hip-Hop, which introduces a track, and plays it. Other than that, I stumble around on emusic.com, amazon.com’s mp3 store, get recommendations from friends, and sift through B Jizzle’s gigabytes. Now, let me pretend to be a hip-hop journalist and share my favorite hip-hop albums of the decade.

This isn’t a straightforward Top Ten list, but rather a favorite and runners-up for each specific year. If you want to download a specific track, click the song link, and that will take you to the download for that specific track.

I started off the decade by attending a show in Iowa City at the Union Bar. Opening up were the Beat Junkies, Supernatural, and Dilated Peoples. For the main event: Jurassic 5.  Quality Control by Jurassic 5 was by far my favorite album that year.

2000 Favorite Album:

Quality Control by Jurassic 5

Listen to

Jurass-Finish-First

2nd Place: Both Sides of the Brain by Del the Funky Homosapien- The track If You Must was beaten over my head repetitively in one of those Tony Hawk games, so I always skip that track, but otherwise this is jaw gymnastics of the tallest order.

3rd Place: Reflection Eternal by Talib Kweli & Hi Tek- Talib’s rhymes aren’t bad, although I like the sound of his voice more than I like his actual lyrics. What I like the most about this album is Hi-Tek’s beats.

This next album is probably my favorite for the whole decade as well. Its like a sci-fi hip-hop opera, a Scihopera. The rare instance where the beats and rhymes are of equal excellence. “I apply the flow cannon, the combo so slammin’, atomically reconstruct the whole canvas.”

2001 Favorite Album:

Deltron 3030 by Deltron(a.k.a. Del the Funky Homosapien)

Mastermind

Listen to Mastermind

2nd Place: Life’s a Bitch and I’m Her Pimp by MC Chris-He’s not a ten-year old, and not a chick, but his voice sounds like it. This album has the awesome Fett’s Vette.

3rd Place: AOI: Bionix by De La Soul-

2002 Favorite Album:

In Search Of… by N.E.R.D.

TruthOrDarefeatKelisPusha-T

Listen to

2nd Place: Parallel Universe #1 by DJ Broken Window-Some early decade mashup fun. This stuff was pretty low-tech, as far as the actual approach goes. The liner notes instruct you how to recreate the mash-ups with two vinyl records. The mash-ups aren’t perfect by any means…like the sound of rough but persistent experimentation. Pretty random results.

3rd Place: Never is Now by DJ Swamp-Over-the-top violent brags about his skills, his swamp cuts! But his beats do indeed bump, and ladies do indeed move up to the front.

2003 Favorite Album:

Hope by Non Prophets

That-Aint-Right

Listen to That Ain't Right

2nd Place: Revolutionary Vol. 2 by Immortal Technique-Pretty raw stuff. Not for easily offended listeners.

3rd Place: Later That Day… by Lyrics Born

For 2003, this album technically should have been Art Official Intelligence part three, but for some reason(Tommy Boy Records?) De La Soul abandoned their A.O.I trilogy and came out with this instead. Makes no difference to me, because this album was great. It was nice having Flavor Flav visit as well.

2004 Favorite Album:

The Grind Date by De La Soul

Verbal Clap

Listen to Verbal Clap

2nd Place: RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta by Dead Prez

3rd Place: Shadows on the Sun by Brother Ali

Sage Franics likes being in PETA ads, but, at least he’s an excellent MC/spoken word poet. Makes up for it in my book.

2005 Favorite Album:

A Healthy Distrust by Sage Francis

escape-artist

Listen to Escape Artist

2nd Place: The Mouse & The Mask by DANGERDOOM-The rare occasion where I loved all the skits.

3rd Place: Tales of the Forgotten… by Wax Tailor

Its hard imagining The Coup being any funkier, but see them live and you’ll see just that.

2006 Favorite Album:

Pick a Bigger Weapon by The Coup

Get-That-Monkey-Off-Your-Back

Listen to Get That Monkey Off Your Back

2nd Place: Public Warning by Lady Sovereign-She’s like little girl Beastie Boy or something.

3rd Place: 20/20 by Dilated Peoples-Babu’s beats are bumpin’! Ev and Rakaa’s faux nuglets of wisdom are entertaining, but the poetry seems real.

Listening to Tone Tank rap about domestic or personal situations like on “It Is What It Is”, makes the music easy to identify with. It’s not because I have the same problems as he does, but he comes off as being a dude who really wants to just be a hip-hop artist. He doesn’t want to win American Idol.

2007 Favorite Album:

Iller Than Theirs by Iller Than Theirs

Wash Rinse Repeat

Listen to Wash Rinse Repeat

2nd Place: How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? by Public Enemy- It’s nice to hear Chuck D still at it.

3rd Place: Gutterfly by Lifesavas

In 2008 Del doesn’t bring as many jaw gymnastics as he did in 2000, but his slick groovy naked fonk is in full effect!

2008 Favorite Album:

Eleventh Hour by Del the Funky Homosapien

Foot Down

Listen to Foot Down

2nd Place: Feed the Animals by Girl Talk

3rd Place: MC Chris is Dead by MC Chris

As the decade progressed, I got more into mash-ups. In 2009 two of my most favorite things (Legend of Zelda and Hip-Hop) collided. Honestly, not all the artists that are mashed-up in this are my favorite, but the results are great. Jay-Z, Busta, Dre, Snoop, Aesop Rock, and MF Doom are cool, but I can identify the Ocarina of Time tracks more readily than I can identify where those hip-hop tracks came from. I also LOVE the name of this artist. This album is not to be mistaken with another album of the same name, by an artist named Sleaze. If you stumble across that somewhere, run the other way.

2009 Favorite Album:

Ocarina of Rhyme by Team Teamwork

Jay-Z-No-Hook-Meeting-the-Owl

Listen to Jay-Z-No-Hook-Meeting-the-Owl

2nd Place: Man on the Moon: End of Day by Kid Cudi

3rd Place: Uzi Does It by Get Busy Committee

So thats it. See you at the end of the next decade…hopefully.

Prefenz: A Hand Sanitizer?

Germ Free 24, Prefenz, and MRSAnator

Recently both the Muscatine Journal and the Quad-City Times have posted news articles (both linked to in the product website) about the hand sanitizer product called Prefenz.  Both articles seem to preach the gospel of this product being an effective hand sanitizer. According to these news articles, this product not only kills MRSA, Strep, and E.Coli, among other bacteria, fungi, and viruses, but it does so for 24 hours after application. That is a pretty impressive claim. The company president of Prefenz Botanicals, Aaron Powers, is even seen in this youtube video claiming that Prefenz  “is the only FDA listed hand sanitizer product that completely eradicates the swine flu”.

Wow. If this is the case, then sign me up. I actually have a bottle in the bathroom right now, and have been using the product for a few days. It allegedly creates a barrier all over your hands that kills the bad stuff for up to 24 hours. It definitely feels like I have a barrier on my hands right now, and I like how it feels. Its not like you have dried Elmer’s glue on your hands or anything.  In fact, the sensation that I have a barrier on my hands is so faint and light, that it could be a pretty convincing mind trick. If this stuff does what it says, it truly is an amazing product.

The problem is, the current atmosphere surrounding the H1N1, and all that has introduced an excellent opportunity for snake oil salesmen.The government’s FDA website has an FDA 2009 H1N1 (Swine) Flu Page that contains several consumer protection links concerning fraudulent H1N1 claims and bogus H1N1 products. It even offers an embeddable widget for your website that will help identify these shenanigans, and there is a category in it for hand sanitizers. Now, Prefenz is not currently listed as being bogus or anything, but it did help me appreciate the weight of the claims made. One would think that maybe the Muscatine Journal or the Quad City Times would have provided credible links or references to studies that back up these claims, but it pretty much just quotes the website or product makers concerning those claims. The actual Profenz website isn’t much more helpful in providing third-party or other independent sources confirming the efficacy of the claims. In all fairness, the Muscatine Journal article does reference a study done by Iowa State University, but here is the quote:  “According to Reusswig, Prefenz has been tested by Iowa State University and other researchers for use against bacteria, viruses and fungi.” Well, the Muscatine Journal didn’t bother to actually check this claim seeing as it basically just says that this David Reuswig says its so. David Reuswig is president of Northern Filter Media. Northern Filter Media are partners with Prefenz. Their home website prominently features “Swimming Pool Filter Media”. Related hand sanitizer Germ Free 24 from Coating Systems Laboratories also advertises a line of pool products, so I guess that Northern Filter Media may not be an unbiased source.

Right, so where did I come up with this other company Coating Systems Laboratories? Well, the key ingredient in Prefenz is something called amosilq, a silica complex which is a …wait for it…silylated quaternary ammonium compound. This ideally provides residual antimicrobial protection, meaning it lasts a relatively long time, longer than the time it takes for alcohol-base Purell to evaporate anyway. Well, all three of the above pictured products contain amosilq. Those are Germ Free 24, Prefenz, and MRSAnator. I mentioned before the Muscatine Journal trusting that these Iowa State University tests were legit, well, turns out there is a study done by Iowa State University. Keep in mind though, that the study was financed by Northern Filter Media, partners with Prefenz. Also the study very plainly starts off with “In this communication we report the effectiveness of these sanitizers for killling human enteric pathogens on inanimate surfaces…”. Now that sounds like a pretty qualified statement, but this is a study. Also, I can be a pretty lazy guy, but I don’t think I would call my hands “inanimate surfaces”. Sanitizing inanimate surfaces  and grippy grabby human meat mits over the course of a very hands-on 24 hours are two totally different things.

I guess what I’m getting at is that these guys haven’t proven to me that this stuff does what it says it will. I like the feel of the stuff and I really hope it does what it says it does, but I’m not convinced that its not just snake oil in this application. I like this study I found the link to at Hand Hygiene Facts. A news channel compared different hand sanitizers by using actual kid hands! I’d like to see Prefenz stack up to this test, including the 24 hour claim.

Like a Pokemon Virgin

A review of Pokemon Platinum for the Nintendo DS

 

I’ve THOUGHT about playing a Pokemon game for a long time, because of the pop icon status these card and video games have garnered over the years. It is especially odd that I never got around to playing any of them because I’ve been a huge Nintendo fan ever since the NES days. Of course, the only handheld games I really began playing in earnest were on the Gameboy Advance, so any Pokemon game on the Fatboy, or Gameboy Color would not have gotten my attention. Portable gaming in those days for me was definitely limited to Tetris, as it was for many people I imagine.

There was also the stigma it had of being a little kid’s obsession. Well, after reading over and over of there actually being some genuine appeal and gameplay involved in them, I decided to try it out. Now I’ve sunk a combined 55 hours into it. I’ve been playing it since March 2009. Previous to this game, my pokemon expertise consisted of being a dedicated Mewtwo player on Super Smash Brothers Melee (one of my top ten favorite games). I thought about picking up either Pokemon Diamond or Pearl on the DS, but I didn’t know which one to get. With Platinum, there was only one, and it also launched near to my visit to the Nintendo World Store in NY. I figured that would be a great place to buy my first pokemon game.

The game has two settings, the world exploration and the battle screen. The world exploration has the towns and trails between them. There are pokemon trainers scattered liberally across the world (of which you also are one).Upon seeing you, the trainers will challenge you to battle. There are also specific terrain types, that when walking through will randomly throw you into battling a wild pokemon, unaccompanied by a trainer. You never see these wild pokemon on the world exploration screen, but you only know one is there when you are forced to do battle. The world exploration features a pleasant top-down view, with simplistic character sprites, and cartoony houses and cartoony landscape features. Its colorful, crisp and very retro. It feels like you are wandering around a much friendlier Hyrule, from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You can explore towns, houses, caves, mountains, oceans, and lakes, and it usually pays off to wander quite a bit.

The battle screens were less impressive. This game has been around a long time, the first one being released in 1998 in North America. The battle screen hasn’t changed a whole lot since then, even with the relatively capable technical abilities of the Nintendo DS. The battles consist of pretty much static almost unanimated characters stiffly bumping into each other. Its turn-based and most of the action is explained as it unfolds via text at the bottom of the screen. The disappointment with this though is really mostly just with the dated appearance of the animations and graphics. The gameplay that happens is pretty addictive. The pokemon come in several different types, ranging from ice to fire to rock, and there is a complicated rock/paper/scissors balancing act going on that determines how effective a given pokemon will be against another type. Wild pokemon can either be defeated for the experience points or captured to be added to your pokemon collection. You can only carry six pokemon at a time, but you can change up that roster with access to your whole collection, balancing out the six with a good range of different types and levels.

The actual pokemon characters themselves I really enjoyed. The animations aren’t great, but the illustrations are cool, especially the little pixelated sprites that represent the larger designs. I like the sheer number of pokemon in the game as well. There are a ton, not even including the evolved versions that one pokemon will change from as it levels up. The creatures are really bizarre combinations of each other, with some pokemon not seeming that different from another. Some are inspired from animals,insects and plants, and some are seemingly made up out of thin air. It reminded me of my M.U.S.C.L.E. (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere) collection when I was little. The little pink inch-high rubber action figures were also from Japan and featured nonsensical character designs. Its just very fun collecting all these bizarre little things.

I beat the equivalent of eight boss battles. In the game, the towns contain gyms which house gym leaders, powerful pokemon trainers. There are eight gym leaders, and I beat them all. After I beat them however, I came across the “elite four”, which I hope are actually the last four trainers to beat. They are incredibly difficult, and have to be beat consecutively without any retreat between the four battles. I beat the first elite, but am stalled after that. I’m giving the game a rest for now, because I’ve been really wanting to start playing Retro Game Challenge. I definitely see myself coming back to Pokemon Platinum, and leveling up my pokemon in the wild sufficiently enough to beat the elite four. Maybe after Retro Game Challenge I’ll come back to it. Pokemon Platinum was a laid back game to play, and I liked the pacing of it as a handheld game. I would highly recommend it, and I’m sure I’ll be buying another Pokemon game in the future.

The Know It All

I’m reading The Know It All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs for a book club I recently joined. I’ll attend my first meeting on Monday night. I totally won’t have the book read by then, though. I didn’t think this would be a book that I want to read repeatedly, so I tried to obtain it from the Davenport library, but my hold expired before I made it there. So, I requested the book again and finally picked it up from the Muscatine library last week. I think I’ve had the book for a little over a week now. I’m on page 167 out of 726. I’m going to write a review of the book, even though I am only about 1/7th of the way through it. Even though I generally like the book, I will have neither the time nor the inclination to finish it. Before I started the book club, I already had a list of 30 books that I needed to read. Now, with the book club, I’ll need to read an assigned book every month, too. So, with no time to finish, I’m reduced to the bad form of writing a review of a book I have not completely read. Oh well.

It’s actually too bad that I didn’t have time to finish this book. A.J. Jacobs is a really interesting writer. I like the way he phrases things, and a lot of his thoughts/insights clarify my own. I find him really funny, too. He’s not like David Sedaris funny – more sarcastic and dry – totally my type of humor.

Here the book’s premise. Basically, A.J. feels as if he has not done anything noteworthy with his life. This feeling is compounded by the fact that his father has written 24 law books and is super smart and his brother-in-law is a brilliant condescending bastard. A.J., while obviously a very smart person, is more interested in entertainment/pop culture than the subtle nuances of the law. So, to redeem himself and bolster his self-confidence, he starts to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) from A to Zed.

The book is written rather like an encyclopedia. A.J. picks excerpts from the EB that he finds particularly interesting, or that he can at least make some interesting observations about. Some of them are funny (see baculum), some of them are sad (see Chang and Eng), and some of them are just truly bizarre (see augury). This is an unusual tack to take with a book; it makes the book easy to pick up and read when one only has a couple of minutes, but it doesn’t really keep the reader engaged, as there is no plot progression to speak of – at least not one that I’ve seen yet.

One of the reasons I really identify with this author is because of his struggle with knowing that while he is a smart, talented person, he has yet to make his mark on the world. His life will come and go, and the world will be no different for it. That’s a concept that I struggle with a lot, too. I’m smart (ish). In high school, I seemed to have a lot of potential. Heck, I was even voted “Most Likely to Have An Encyclopedia Page Written About Her.” While my daily life is very happy and pleasant, no one will ever find it interesting enough to write an encyclopedia entry about it, and if they did, not many would find it interesting enough to spend 5 minutes of their lives reading it. It’s just rather sad when one comes face-to-face with his or her own anonymity. So, back to my original point, I can totally see where A.J. is coming from, and I’m glad that by him writing this book he’s gained some notoriety, for a little bit at least.

So, I’m glad that I’ve read the first 167 pages. Maybe when I get done with my current list of 30 books, I’ll circle back and finish this one. I wish A.J. the best, and I hope that this book someday warrants him and entry in the EB.