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I don’t just listen to angry music. I also like stupid music. (I would like to hear a metal version of this though )

I’m still working through the 2008 Hugo voters packet but I’ve read enough to make a decision on which novel to vote for best novel of 2008.  My criteria for picking the best is: which book did I enjoy the most. (no heavy thinking here). Here are the nominees and my thoughts about each:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

This is only the second Neil Gaiman book that I’ve read. The other was American Gods, which I didn’t really like. So I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. Luckily The Graveyard Book exceeded my low expectations. I’m guessing that this book was aimed towards the young adult market. It’s a fun story of a little boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

This book has a totally different tone that any of the others. It’s barely science fiction since pretty much all the technology used in the book already exists. If you’re a conservative who thinks the way the Bush administration handled the War On Terror ™ was the right way,  then you’d probably hate this book. Another book aimed at the YA market, it’s about a high school computer geek who is yanked from the streets as a terrorist suspect after a major terrorist attack on the US.  It’s interesting, scary and, I’d like to think, a bit implausible. Still though, it’s a good read as a warning against the state taking away freedom in order to combat terrorism.

Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross

Definitely the most hardcore science fiction book of this group and certainly not aimed at the YA market. (The main character is an obsolete sex-bot).  The story is set in a very interesting time a couple of hundred years in the future. Humans have died off and what’s left is a civilization of robots that still have Azimov’s 3 laws built in.  I’m mixed on this book. While the universe that Charles Stross created is vast and is a great setting for a story, the story itself was hard for me to follow. The ending was unsatisfying.  Still, it’s worth reading just for the universe that Stross creates but perhaps someone else should have written the story.

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

Another novel with a YA audience in mind. (Just to clarify, I have no problem with YA novels).  Scalzi is one of my favorite authors and he doesn’t let me down here. This is the same story as in the Lost Colony except told from the point of view of a teenage girl – the daughter of the protagonists in The Last Colony. I’m also a little mixed on this novel. While I love Scalzi’s writing style and it’s interesting to read this story from a different point of view, it is still the same story that I read in The Last Colony.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

I loved Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and hated The Baroque Trilogy.  I managed to slog through Quicksilver but gave up on the trilogy half way through The Confusion.  Because the last two books I read by Stephenson were so very not-fun, I was not willing to buy Anathem. Of course it happened to be the only one of the five nominees that wasn’t included in the Hugo voters packet.  As a compromise, I downloaded the Kindle sample from Amazon. The sample was the same dense writing style that made me hate The Baroque Trilogy.  Maybe the book turns out to be the greatest science fiction book known to man,  but I won’t know. Stephenson has used up all the patience I have for his writing. (I’m sure he’s heartbroken).

My vote comes down to choice between Zoe’s Tale,  Little Brother and The Graveyard Book.  And damn it, I still can’t make a decision.

Part 2 in the series…

Olivia Munn - Not nearly naked enough

Damn it! I was crushed this morning when I learned that although Olivia Munn is going to be on the cover of Playboy, she’s not going to be posing nude. There should be a law or something. I mean seriously WTF. What the Fuck!

Look, Playboy’s whole purpose in this universe is to show nekkid women. Not almost nekkid. Nekkid. No clothes. Boobies, butts and bush. If I want to see almost nekkid, I can just buy cosmo or TV Guide.

I don’t blame Oliva Munn. Good for her. Playboy on the other hand should have standards. Nekkid or not on the cover.

As Taggert said in Blazzing Saddles, “I am depressed.”. I guess this means I can forget about seeing her in Gang Bang Girl 52.

I used to post my email like this: X AT y.com instead of x@y.com. Nowadays I get so much spam that I don’t think it matters anymore. As a consequence, I no longer bother with this email obfuscation. It’s a sad sad state of affairs. Fucking spammers.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me: I have an addiction to music rhythm games. (I know what you’re thinking – no shit). I played no other game besides Guitar Hero from Jan 06 until Guitar Hero 2 came out in Nov 06. I have a $1000 Roland drum kit that I only use for playing drums in Rock Band 2 (and a little bit in GHWT & GHM). I’ve wired my own custom overdrive pedal to my fake guitars. I even bought the music game that wins the award for worst covers: Rock Revolution.(when I found a copy for $20) So of course, I bought Rock Band Unplugged for my PSP. It was $40 at Best Buy.

Interface

The interface design is exactly like that of Rock Band 2. The same sounds accompany button presses, it uses the same fonts, same colors etc. If you’ve played Rock Band 2 then the interface will be very familiar. This is a good thing. It easy to take for granted how good the user interface to Rock Band is until you’ve had to use the awful mess of an interface from Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Songs

The game comes with 41 songs on disk with 10 songs available as DLC on the release date for $2 each. Most of these song are on-disk songs from Rock Band 2 or Rock Band DLC. There are a few new songs like the Jackson 5′s ABC and What’s My Age Again by Blink 182. If you’ve gotten tired of playing the on disk songs from Rock Band 2 then you’ll be disappointed in the set list for Unplugged.

I bought one DLC song from PSN via the WiFi connection on the PSP. This worked flawlessly and the song was integrated right into the game just as it is in Rock Band 2.

Gameplay

So how do you actually play this game without a fake guitar, fake drums or a fake real microphone? Well, there are 4 tracks for each instrument that correspond to the left, up, triangle and circle buttons. You push these buttons to strum/hit/sing each track. (well you don’t sing on vocals, you just try to match the rhythm of the vocals).  Since this is a band game you play every instrument one at a time. Pressing the right and left trigger allows you to switch to a different instrument track.

There are three different ways to play the game: warmup, survivor and quickplay/tour. The method that you play in quickplay and tour are obviously the way the game is intended to be played.

Quickplay/Tour

I’m a fairly good Rock Band player so I assumed I would be able to jump right into the game by playing at least on the hard difficulty level. Well, that was a bad assumption. I failed the first couple of songs I played on hard. The game doesn’t rate your performance the same way that Rock Band and Guitar Hero do. You play each instrument in phrases, the key is to full combo a phrase which keeps that instrument playing automatically for a while and lets you switch to another instrument. The only time you can’t switch to another instument is during a solo (any instrument can have a solo). This can become frantic. To keep your overall phrase streak going you have to be able to switch to another instrument quickly. I would often miss the last note of a phrase because I would switch too quickly, or, I would miss the first note in the phrase of the instrument I switched to. To add to this maniac switching, you have to be able to get ‘into’ the rythym of the next instrument immediately. It’s tough to get used to this track switchin at first but after playing the game for a while it becomes second nature.

The star rating system seems much harder in Unplugged than in Rock Band. Missing 3 phrases almost guarantees that you will only get 4 stars even with good use of overdrive.

World Tour works the same way that it does in Rock Band 2. You start out with access to a few gigs in a few cities and as you play you increase your access to other gigs and cities. You do this by accumulating stars, fans and money and hiring different staff members such as agents, promoters etc. There are ‘make your own’, random and song specific set lists to play through on your way to the top.

I’ve played through about half of the tour mode, first on medium, then moving up to the hard difficulty with brief excursions into the expert level. I’m having fun with the game but there is something off about the timing. I’m not sure if it’s the timing window, or if the scroll speed is too slow or I’m used playing Rock Band 2 with a slightly skewed calibration but I have a very hard time with hitting notes early in this game. On the expert level it’s very difficult for me to ‘see’ the pattern when there are lots of notes. This is where Harmonix always disappoints me. Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour both have adjustable hyperspeed settings that let you adjust the scroll speed of the notes. This also spreads the notes out and makes them easier to see. Even though Harmonix relented and added a single speed Breakneck speed option to Rock Band 2, there’s no equivalent option in RB:Unplugged. I don’t think I will be able to play most of the songs in this game on expert because it’s so hard to make out the pattern of the expert note charts.

One other thing that’s hard to get used to is the use of chords. They’re not too hard to play when they’re seperated across the PSP (e.g. Left+triangle chord) but when they’re on the same side, they’re very difficult to hit and still maintain your streak. This is especially true when trying to hit the triangle-circle in the middle of a complicated note progression. My thumb doesn’t want to bend that way quickly. My inability to hit some of these chords will also keep me playing on the expert difficulty level.

Overdrive is used in a similar manner as Rock Band. You can use it to try and get a better score, bring all the instrument levels up if you are having problems, or use it to bring a failed instrument back into the band.

Warmup

Warmup mode is accessed through the extras menu and allows you to play any instrument for as long as you want. There’s no need to worry about switching tracks. This is the closest thing to playing the way you play in Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

Band Survivor

This mode is played similar to the Tour & Quickplay modes except that there are no phrases. You can’t put an instrument on autopilot by completing a phrase. If you aren’t playing an instrument its rock icon starts sliding towards the bottom of the screen and hence towards failure. You end up switching a lot to whichever instrument is closest to failing out.

Extras

Harmonix included the No Fail mode from Rock Band 2 and also added an ‘Unlock All Songs’ option. These are welcome additions, particularly the “Unlock All Songs’ option. (They do, however, disable saving of scores etc when enabled).

Online leaderboards are missing from the game. This would be a nice thing to have but it’s not a deal breaker. You can still see your high score and star level for each song in quickplay. Unfortunately, Harmonix still hasn’t bothered to differentiate between difficulty levels when showing you these score. You can’t tell whether your 4 star score on a song was played on easy, medium, hard or expert. I don’t understand why on the third version of Rock Band they still haven’t added this feature.

Summary

Overall I’m having a lot of fun playing this game. I don’t think my PSP has been used this much in years. Except for a few fairly minor issues, Harmonix has created another very good game.

More Chrysler dealers whining:.

“It’s just a feeling of betrayal,” said Jonathan Darner, whose family had owned a Chrysler dealership in Mesa, Ariz., for more than 55 years until this week. They must find a place for dozens of leftover Chryslers and Jeeps. “You’d think there would be some sense of loyalty since we’ve been loyal to them for so long.”

I probably shouldn’t be this way but I just can’t help enjoying these dealers’ pain. I just hope congress keeps their hand out of this but it doesn’t look like they can help themselves:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has introduced legislation to allow rejected dealers more time to unwind their businesses and force the carmakers to reimburse them for leftover inventory.