Phew, I haven't been this sick in probably a couple of years. It ran almost the complete gamut in the last several days, fatigue, Pharyngitis, ear and sinus infection, runny nose, congestion, muscle soreness. I only missed out on vomiting and death. Although death seems preferable to some of those symptoms—at least at the time.

--Leif

Hey, what a nifty date.

--Leif

Yes, it's true, something I've been saying for a long time: Daylight Savings stinks; Summer days are already longer, but with DST it doesn't get dark until after 10pm. That's just silly! And annoying. I like the night, but never get to see it in the Summer! Well, all that's over with. On the day before DST was scheduled to take effect for North America, the ICTS has abolished Daylight Savings Time, calling it a "boon to sun-worshipers", and stating that it infringed upon the rights of non-pagan citizens, which constitute the majority of the world's population.

So, up with real time, down with fakery!

--Leif

Hey, I forgot the first day of Spring yesterday, but so did Mother Nature! It's snowing outside, what gives? Did we spend all the nice days in Winter? Huh? Snow!?

--Leif

An Irish National Holiday to be exact.

No, not this Patrick:

THIS Patrick:

Glad we set that straight.

--Leif

Hollywood doesn't like competition. They've never liked competition. Maybe it's because they never quite embraced the capitalist system, or perhaps it's the simpler explanation that it makes them work harder, but regardless, they don't like competition. They eventually got used to Television, and are adjusting to the Internet, so why are foreign publishers so threatening? I'm referring to Region Coding of course, and the fact that we can't order a—considerably more expensive—DVD from Japan or Europe, and play it on a normal DVD player. More exactly, the fact that the new disc formats—HD-DVD and Blu-Ray—are probably going to end up with Region Coding again, under pressure from Hollywood studios.

The consensus is that this stinks, nobody really likes it—there's indifference at best, and loathing at worst. Australia and Kiwiland have even outlawed it, essentially.

Their usual explanation is that it's necessary for anti-piracy measures and Copyright protection, but the lesser used one, and the actual reason, is so that foreign DVDs can't compete with native ones. To be fair, this does make sense sometimes: For those hit Hollywood movies that are released in North America first, the European and Asian distributors don't want their market drying up before they can capitalize, and in countries like Japan where prices are so high it's actually cheaper to import from other countries.

However, in reality, these aren't good reasons. For the new HiDef formats, Anti-Piracy Copyright protection is very important. Region Coding doesn't protect from piracy, but it does make what protections are there targets for cracking, especially if the Region Coding is integrated with the Anti-Piracy protection. They'll have essentially doubled the effort to crack the software.

As for competition from foreign DVD markets, in my opinion that would be a good thing. At worst it would have little to no effect, at best it would raise the overall quality of our DVD releases, and that's what Hollywood doesn't want to have to do. Not that our DVDs are poor, but it would open up the market to more options, especially with foreign film (particularly when they edit them for NA distribution.)

Luckily, despite the apparent adoption of Region Coding by Blu-Ray, and the as yet indecision from the HD-DVD camp, there is good news. Asia (including Japan) and America will share coding, leaving only Europe out for the crackers to fix, and even if HD-DVD does adopt Regions, many of the initial players won't implement it. Bittersweet perhaps, but it's only a matter of time before both will do away with it completely.

--Leif

What is it about old video games that can inspire such vicious nostalgia and depression? Well, perhaps it's not being old, but rather lonely. To explain, I was throttled with the blues when I stumbled across a blog entry about NiGHTS, the Sega Saturn classic. This is not a game I missed out on, on the contrary, I logged more than a hundred hours in it, yet the knowledge that it's such a little known title is sad somehow. Certainly, many gamers will know the name, but only by reputation, only a faint whisper of its enigma.

The reason being, Sonic Team has never re-released the title, never a sequel, and only a couple times has the character been seen outside of the Saturn release. This has helped to maintain the title's insularity and mystery. While fans get to belong to an exclusive club, it's lonely too. And that's sort of sad.

To digress—and that's what this is for—many other game titles inspire the same sort of—dare I say—longing, for their own allure of exclusivity. Ironically, many of these titles could be quite popular: FFVII was definitely a seductive enigma, partially due to its marketing, and partially due to its fans' own dedication. Myself even more so perhaps, as I didn't own a Playstation, so it was entirely unavailable.

It's the feeling of having missed out, games which have cultish followings, and are almost regarded as compulsory plays. Yet, ironically, there are many games like this which are quite hard to obtain (FFVII of course is not one of them).

Old movies are simple: You can easily rent or buy practically any movie, with more being released on DVD each week. A couple hours later and you've seen it. Old Video Games aren't so easy, and outside of eBay many aren't available at all, and then aren't playable without proprietary hardware (I'm ignoring EMU for the benefit of this argument). Even PC titles can suffer from incompatibility. Imagine trying to get and play Aliens vs. Predator for the Jaguar. Even then, if you get the game, and can play it, you've got dozens of hours ahead of you. (Of course, that shouldn't be a chore, but can be a limiting factor.)

And yet if it weren't for this unavailability, and necessity of effort, many of these classic games would not hold this almost cultish mysticism that surrounds them.

Equally depressing though is when one of these games has been forgotten, or left behind. NiGHTS might be perilously close to that outside of Saturn faithfuls. A good example might be Chu Chu Rocket, which is a crazily fun party game, and the first online console game ever, that will never be played online again, since the servers have long since shut down.

Ahh, nostalgia. It really shouldn't hurt.

--Leif

For the most part, things went as planned last night at the 78th Academy Awards. Best Animated Feature went satisfyingly as expected, and the best actors took home the Best Actor and Best Actress (definitely the highlight of the evening) awards. Best Picture going to Crash was a pleasant surprise however, in fact a shocker, and there were a few other niceties, though they remained the minority.

Overall, it was a better show than I expected, but only because I expected so little, and Jon Stewart actually was funny. It was still a nauseating affair at times. An orgy of self-congratulation and back slapping, or worse (wink wink).

Not to be too down on them though, Ben Stiller simply killed, and the slander ads for Best Actress and Best Sound Editing were brilliant.

Now then, the interesting tidbit: Oscar was [possibly] named for the statue's arse's resemblance to Bette Davis' ex.

--Leif

Embarrassing:

AP Tokyo:

Eight people in southern Japan forked over ¥150 million (US$1.27 million) to a man who promised huge returns involving fake US$1 million bills and then disappeared with their money, a news report said yesterday.

...

The president showed them a thousand of the US$1 million notes featuring a portrait of George Washington at a Tokyo hotel, according to Asahi.

...

The investors were told the notes could be exchanged for smaller denominations in Hong Kong

This story is rather amusing when contrasted with legitimate $2 bills being rejected, and you have to wonder if that Hong Kong bank just might have cashed one out.

Also, if they catch the scammer, and recover the bills too, they could become collectibles on eBay.

--Leif

Despite the franchise's recent decay, becoming a Bond girl is still a coveted honor, and this year's forthcoming Casino Royale features what is considered one of the series' most important female leads. Bond's first fling, if you will. So the considered lineup was studded: Charlize Theron, Thandie Newton, Olivia Wilde and Kimberly Davies, but Eva Green (Kingdom of Heaven, The Dreamers) is who was chosen.

I've said the choice to cast Daniel Craig was inspired, but I haven't seen Eva Green act in anything, and I might have expected a more exotic, European look for the character, but Vesper Lynd is a strong, independent personality, not a blond bimbo like some have been, so Eva Green might work well.

--Leif