Gear Shift

Dear Readers,
For the past two and some years, Blogger has been my online home. I believe it is now time to do a little growing up and a little moving on. It's been a veritable jumble of all things from aesthetics through music to techy goodness. Here on Blogger I've ranted, reviewed, and posted photos of all things cool, funny, and emo. Now, I think it's time I migrated to a different host, much like how a student must graduate. Enter WordPress.com, a service that some friends have been using for some time now. I'm not ritzy enough, for the life of me, to pay out for hosting, so in keeping with my free hosting traditions (Blogger, I won't easily forget you!) I'll be on WordPress' online services. thankfully, I can (and will) import all my Blogger posts and comments onto WordPress' servers, meaning you'll be able to go back and read all the P.Pole v. 1.0 posts you want. For your information, the new page can be found at larker.wordpress.com and I've named it the P.Pole v.2.0 in loving memory of this place. Anyway, without further diddle dawdle head on over and bookmark away (unless something insane happens, I won't be coming back here to post, as sad as that is for me to say). As far as I know, Blogger has no "Import Posts" option meaning I will not be able to make a reversal migration from WordPress if things should go awry. And it just seemed like the other day where I was going on about not changing to the new Blogger template format... Fly-out menus, I will miss you.
Blogger, you and I had a great run. You were fun while we lasted. I've grown to know you much better. You were my first real blogging host and now, to borrow words from Christ (simply for linking purposes and not for blasphemy), "Where I am going, you cannot come." - John 13:33.

With love,
Carl

P.Pole's [Custom] Template

I'm quite proud of my template for this blog that I've slowly created and altered over the years. It started out as a generic, one-size-fits-all kind of template that most blogs run on but I didn't want my page to look exactly like all the others. Okay, to say that it's completely groundbreaking in its layout is a huge exaggeration, but for someone without any actual knowledge of how to code (apart from some very primordial HTML), I think I've done quite nicely for myself. I mean, I had to pretty much move, shape, shift, and shapeshift by trial and error. Here's how I "coded" the stuff on this page (which, by the way, looks proper only on Firefox so far, by my testing, because of my "coding"):

1. I imagine something cool I want to achieve and catalog it away for a rainy day.
2. I take note when I see something I cataloged on another site I happen upon.
3. I press Ctrl + U (read: "View source").
4. I sift through to the good part and see if it's something done without javascript (which I don't know how to use).
5. If it's javascript, I sigh and move on. Otherwise, I move on to step six.
   
6. I go to Google.ca and look up something along the lines of "HTML (or CSS) [tag] tutorial" where [tag] is whatever the hell tag or function or whatchamacallit I saw the other page using.
7. I then read through and try to understand how the tag and its parameters work.
8. This is the fun step: I spend hours and hours typing in stuff mostly haphazardly, clicking "Preview", and then going back to make the appropriate (i.e. guess and check) corrections.
9. When this is all done I marvel at what I've created for a few moments before I check its rendering in Internet Explorer (explosion) and then in Opera (assplosion).

If I had any idea whatsoever how to code this all properly without relying so much on guess and check, I'd be able to make changes so that my page would render decently across all forms of web browsers. Sadly, I do not have the patience to sit down and really learn this stuff as it bores me. And anyway, I think I sort of enjoy my current way of doing things too much to give it up. Firefox tricked me into thinking it kept web standards before, but now I know that the developers took a few liberties with it (or so I've heard from watching videos of conferences with web standard discussions). Apparently they decided that some rules were better kept and others bent/broken. I don't know what that means in detail but hey, I don't think I'll need to know all that to be able to enjoy my Webernets.
Nevertheless, I thought maybe since my current template is running a bit cluttered I would consider upgrading my template to Blogger's new way of handling templates that much resembles Xanga's styling pages. This would mean pretty much wiping my entire template settings (even though I simply love my fly-out/mouse-over menu things). And so, I decided to check out Blogger's version of the template designer on my other "blog" (which is just there to reserve the domain and for testing such as this). I wanted to see if I could make it work towards my needs, whether it was worth the switch, and whether there might be a chance of my reworking my menus (again, my favourite part of this template) to work there. So far, no luck. I mean, it's convenient to have them do kind of what I've done with the hierarchy look that now comes default but it's not a mouse-over fly-out.
It's got auto-adding and -sorting of new stuff (like links, archive links, etc...) whereas I update my template every month with the new links myself (every month I add a new list item linking to the new month's posts). Still, I'm not convinced. It looks as if the new template designer thing is great for adding page elements and quickly editing them but it doesn't do much in terms of allowing me to really tweak stuff with the HTML/CSS editor and that's what I need to be able to do above all else. It's either that or I just don't know enough to be good at manipulating (the right bits of) code. Sigh.
Anyway, I'm going to stick with my current state of affairs until I really find a reason to switch over and get rid of/recreate my mouse-over menus. I love that thing. Mouse... over! Mouse... over! Wee!

Vista Fraggers

Remember a couple months ago when I went on and on about my mail-order gaming mouse? Well, when I got my Logitech MX310 I had to tweak my driver files (read: overclock my mouse) before I could take full advantage of the mouse's abilities. Ever since I migrated to Vista, I've never gotten too much into the FPS games since my mouse ran at the average polling rate of ~125 Hz which just doesn't cut it when I'm trying to blow a baddy's head off with a 50 caliber sniper rifle.
Up until today, my searches for a way to overclock my USB ports on Vista turned up nothing. I don't know whether it was my searching or people not having invented some way of doing it yet. Anyway, long story short, for all those fragging on Vista, check out this thread (you need to register on Overclock3d.net to download the zip file) to overclock your own ports for better and smoother fragging all around. I am now happily chugging along at ~450 Hz.
In related news, Battlefield 2142 is fun. It was fun even when I could hardly aim but now that I've got almost 4x the sniping power, well, it's great fun and I'd suggest it to anyone with even a half-decent machine to give it a go. I just can't wait until Gears of War comes out for PC. Curbstomping and chainsawing can never be a bad combination.

My Latest Look

I got tired of my Samurize dock and decided to tweak a little. I ended up making a whole other one from pseudo-scratch. That's what you'll see in the bottom left corner. As usual, there is the Winamp track progress bar (the larger blue stripe) and my CPU Idle percentage (I made two smaller semi-circular stripes that meet together at 9 o' clock for this one). The overall effect is pretty sweet I think. There's also the album art, current track number, and artist + title scroller. As you can see, my "dock" is mostly just a Winamp stats displayer replacement with an idle bar.
For the rest of my functionality requirements I've still got my tabbed Objectdock at the bottom of the screen and my invisible'd Vista start menu. A random thing I discovered about Vista (not sure if this works in XP) was that pressing Ctrl + Esc also brings up the start menu just as if I pressed the Windows key. Neato.

God's Jackpot

I don't mean to associate God with gambling or anything but today's date is exactly all made up of sevens -- 07.07.07 -- and I think it's also strangely fitting to have my 490th post on such a day (490 = 7 x 70 of course). Seeing as how seven is supposedly God's number, I figured today would be a holy jackpot of sorts... I don't really have anything specific I want to talk about so I suppose I'll write about my comings and goings of late.
As mentioned before, I decided to write about one Clive Staples Lewis for a pretty big paper. To date, I've read all of "The Magician's Nephew" and approximately thirty-four pages of "The Pilgrim's Regress" which is a bit of strange book to say the least. It's not a novel or narrative per se. It is sort of like an allegorical story but on crack where everything is very obviously representative of something else, and dabbling heavily in Christian and Biblical themes. It's a slower read than "The Magician's Nephew" -- the likes of which I thoroughly enjoyed, mind you.
After reading just the first book of "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, I've grown quite fond of Lewis' writing style and quirky humour. I'm beginning to understand why he's so admired by so many people. It has something to do, I think, with his almost childlike demeanor in viewing, constructing, and describing his ideas.
Anyway, this coming week is looking packed with LoaH and Summer Retreat practices and I'm quite looking forward to them. IMO the best part about serving in a musical capacity is the practice and fellowship time I get to have with my peers/teammates. I mean, playing and actually leading is exhilarating too, but I don't really take more joy in that part than one should (since it's leading and not soaking that I'm supposed to be doing). LoaH songs are sounding pretty good for the most part after our intense practice the other day -- Eric (vocals and guitar), Stephen (drums), Adwin (electric guitar), and I (bass) practiced without Melissa Kwan (second vocals) this Thursday morning for three hours. Retreat worship is also looking pretty good so far, but that is to be expected with the competent leadership of mainly Katherine and Gabriel. I think playing my bass in these kinds of settings is pretty much the best part of my summers nowadays. With no job (part-time or otherwise) in sight, I'm going to make playing my summer (pre)occupation for this year pretty much.
My aunt and uncle (Monique and Jock respectively) are over from the states with their young son, Philip. Before you go "Haha, sucker!" because of the addition of an extra young'un (my sister + Philip = 2 little and potentially annoying kids) in my vicinity, I want to sneer at you because with Philip here, my sister is officially sleeping over for the duration of their trip. And with them (my aunt, uncle, and cousin) staying with my grandparents, I am virtually un-childbearing. This means I can do all the things I couldn't do at home (with my sister around) before, like leave my stuff out without fear of annihilation and play with my more dangerous toys (like my totally hot Zippo and... I don't have any other violent toys actually). Of course, this liberation comes at the price of having my aunt and uncle randomly coming over to borrow my wireless Internets... That leads to me thinking "GTFO my Internets before I telegib you." but saying "Hi, welcome! Feel free to use it as you please."

FWD: You're going to die a lonely, painful death if you don't foward this to everyone and eat dirt and...

I don't know why but I got the sudden urge to hate on forwarded messages during the car ride home tonight. I'm not going to rant (I promise I'll keep it short this time). I'm just going to ask you (all of you, there are now no exceptions or special favourites to be excused) to never ever pass along one of those "Read this or you will have 70 years of bad luck" type emails to me (as if I expect to live to be +80 anyway). I hate them. I never pass them along and I never read them. If you send one to me, you're basically condemning me to whatever the hell is promised inside that email as a warning against ignoring it because I intend on and will succeed in ignoring the damnable thing. With the number of "Read this only if you have time for God" emails I've passed up, I probably need to convert to Roman Catholicism and buy an eternity load of indulgences to get my condemned self out of purgatory. It seems I might have offended some people with that last remark so my work here is done for tonight.

PS: Really, don't send me them, unless you want to be goatse'd. Trust me, you don't want to get goatse'd. I never was but that doesn't mean I've never thought of passing it along.

I've got firmwear on!

Today I headed out to have lunch with Shivon and Kishon. It was their first time at a KBBQ restaurant and they really liked it (even if we did eat about six times the amount of meat they're used to in one meal).
Shivon was running late but about five minutes after sitting down across Kishon, my dad walked into the place looking for me. He asked me "Where's the PSP?" and so I handed him my thigh-warmed PSP wondering "WTF? He came all the way out here to get the PSP?" I didn't pay it too much thought.
When I got home, I went into my dad's room to look for... I don't even remember anymore but I found my PSP on his bedside drawer/counter thing with a note. Apparently he found the latest homebrew firmware hack for the PSP compatible with update 3.5 and below. I couldn't do anything about my PSP before because I'd upgraded to 3.5 without checking whether anyone had yet found a way to hack it (that was a couple months ago).
Anyway, long story short, I can now play my PlayStation (that's the FIRST PS console) games on my PSP along with, obviously, PSP iso files. This might not sound too significant but I've got two words for you. Final Fantasy.

ObjectDock 1.9

Lately I've ditched my XP partition almost completely (I haven't used it for a month and the last time I did was yesterday to try and open a corrupted file). I'm not missing the clutter and crap of XP. Now I've got the clutter and crap of Vista! I got curious today and checked the List to see which docking programs were compatible with Vista and to see whether my (favourite) ObjectDock by Stardock was on the List. Luckily, it was and I promptly downloaded version 1.9 (some previous ones don't work w/ Vista). I spent the next hour or so tweaking, making icons, disabling Windows functions (such as the standard taskbar) and just having a fun time with my new dock. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out (click the thumbnail for a full view of my desktop... in full resolution too!). I'd rather be running on 1280 x 1024 but my new monitor/my dad's old monitor (I switched to a newer LCD monitor when my old one started showing ugly-coloured spots of pink and green...) doesn't support that high of a res. Anyway, that menu collapses into the bottom of my window and the Vista icon/start menu button doesn't show unless I press the Windows key (pretty neat actually). I still have all the functionality of the taskbar AND start menu, but a more clean look. The only downside to this all is that I can't view my system tray icons unless I go into object dock's preferences and un-check "Hide Windows task bar." Then again, I don't use my tray very much anyway...

EDIT: Rocketdock is part of Punk Software brand wares. There's also Uber Icon (

Rumor Busted: Silver PSP Exists

Everybody, come hither and bask in the light of the little mentioned but oh so stunning Silver PSP. I mentioned spotting this thing a while back but I had never gotten a chance to see it again/find it again since then until today. My parents happen to be out of the house at the moment so I got to take a few sneaky shots of it without anyone knowing. My dad is a sneaky one, what can I say. I didn't even know they made them in silver... It's too bad there's already word of a PSP 2/Slim coming out...
On a PSP related note, I am still considering whether or not I should custom firmware my PSP... I'm wary of writing over the flash memory of it since I might brick my PSP ("brick" means to freeze up the PSP and turn it into, well, a brick). I also happen to own the games I play so I don't have any real motivation to go ahead and get a homebrew firmware. It would be nice to have PDF reader on it though...

This Day Has Come

The wait is finally over. It's almost been ten years but Blizzard just released info about their upcoming game (their newest "OMG!"), Starcraft 2. If you've played the first one (and chances are you probably have or have at least heard of it), this is a continuation of that golden formula that got the world addicted (to this very day) in 1998. I've never been a hardcore player but I've always had a place in my heart for this awesome game now turned series. I'm just drooling in anticipation for when I can get my greasy hands on a copy... Click on the title for the official SC2 website (make sure to watch the cinematic movie).

Sunday Afternoon

What better way is there to spend such a wonderful afternoon than to take a quick nap as I wait for my F.E.A.R. Combat download to finish? Don't worry, I'm getting it legit this time off of their official site (free multiplayer version up for download here). I just nabbed myself a not nearly as legit copy of pzizz and I'm going to be testing it out momentarily (it's an app that's supposed to help you sleep). This seems a bit sci-fi to me, using a computer to make my body do stuff, but if it works, I think it would be very useful for someone like me who doesn't get enough natural sleep. I'll keep you updated on its effectiveness in a wink.

EDIT: So it's a pretty cool idea that actually kinda worked. I feel more energized and awake after pzizzing but it's only been the first run. I'll probably do it again soon (to rest up between... "study sessions" since exams that actually matter are coming up).

Cool Body Facts

So I have a habit of listening to my MP3 player with my left early only when I don't have both buds plugged in. Of course I prefer having both in to just one, but if it's got to be one only (for example, when I've got listen to Mr. Teacher give a lesson or something) I always have it in my left ear. It just seemed natural to me. Having just my right ear with a bud in it always sounded worse to me than my left ear, and apparently, this makes sense. According to a post on Lifehacker, your left ear's better at picking up musical tones.
My hearing's probably not as great as it used to be--due to the large amounts of rock music and BS that I tend to hear--but I can still hear the annoying buzzing mosquito ringtone mentioned in that same post. There are actually kids who turn it on during tests or exams to piss the hell out of other people knowing that, chances are, the teachers probably can't hear it. Hey God, look at the cool things we can do with the brains given to us.

Opera Hates Me

There's been a lot of buzz about different web browsers (Firefox, IE, Opera, etc...) and after having checked what this page looks like from a friend's Opera install, I'm thoroughly disappointed. My precious time spent coding my pretty pretty sidebar menu seems to have been wasted as far as Opera users are concerned, since they don't render properly--I'm sure it's probably got to do with my coding rather than Opera's capabilities but nevertheless, boo.

Of course, they pan out perfectly from Firefox (if from nothing else--IE you're just as screwy too). After all, I did code it for Firefox.

I'm not too concerned about this issue, though, since, well, Opera users are few and far apart and I'm sure anyone using Opera would know to just, you know, look up the page source for all the linking goodness otherwise lost. Still, I wonder why there must always be such inconsistencies from one platform to another. Can't we all just play nice?

info @ the P.Pole 04.11.07

7 Firefox extensions I couldn't do without:

• Greasemonkey - Absolutely the most useful extension there is for Firefox, GM lets you download/install lines of codes (from sites like Userscripts.org), allowing for more control over Firefox and opening up a world of new possibilities. You can change the way (specific/all) pages are displayed, change the appearance of some sites (notably Gmail.com with Gmail Air), and say, insert Gmail's inline mp3 player beside mp3 links (with the aptly named Inline Google Player script). There are extensions for skinning Gmail but why install that when I can just use GM.
  
• Gmail Notifier - Being an avid Webmail fan (Gmail, I love you) and web goer, I have a need for something that keeps me up to date/ minute/ second (actually more like minute, as I've got it set to check once per minute... man I'm paranoid) with my mail. Gmail notifier's one of those extensions Firefox really should just come standard with. It's clean and simple, just customizable enough, and does its job well.
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - As someone who is extremely neurotic and paranoid (just look at how many back-ups of back-ups of back-ups of... ad infinitum that I have), as well as someone who frequently switches from Vista to XP and back, as well as having a terrible memory for URL addresses, something like FMBS is a must have. Foxmarks lets you manage your bookmarks and back them up onto remote servers under your account name (passworded of course). When you make changes to your list, you can automatically (or manually) update those changes to make sure nothing is lost, as well as importing your lists from their servers onto other computers/partitions. Win win for the little schizo in you.
• Session Manager - In continuation of my back-up theme, here is an extension that records and remembers the state of your Firefox tabs open every X seconds (your call) so that, in the off chance you accidentally close FF or your computer crashes, you can simply restore your last session and continue working. It even saves the text entered in fields on sites (even though Greasemonkey also has a script for that). It's wonderful as I've a habit of closing stuff accidentally with the following extension (it's not the extension's fault though, I just don't think before I stroke).
• All-In-One Gestures - The basic premise surrounding mouse gestures is that you can perform repetitious and simple (or even very complicated if you're 1337) tasks by 1) holding down a key/ mouse button and 2) performing a "gesture" with the cursor (for example, I drag my mouse down while holding the right-mouse button to close my current tab). AIOG speeds up browsing (since I can, say, go back or forward a page by dragging left or right instead of going up to the history forward and back buttons) and improves control over navigation in Firefox in general (you can assign a gesture for a crap load of common or not so common tasks, making life much easier). I just hate it when I close my window (which I can do extremely quickly with a simple down-up drag) prematurely or when I go use a computer not mine/ IE and I find myself clicking and gesturing stuff without response. Honestly, almost makes me want to use another gesture.
• No Squint - As someone who does a load of reading of blogs and web pages, my eyes tend to get very strained and tired. No Squint is lovely since it allows me to set default zoom levels for text, as well as customized, page-specific zooms as I please. This means two things: 1) I can read stuff without having to reset the text zoom every time I go to a different page and 2) I can read a lot more (leading to a need for thicker and more robust glasses). The only I don't like about this extension is that pages don't exactly zoom perfectly sometimes, meaning the placement of images and whatnot can be pretty screwed up sometimes. That's not the extension's fault though... Just web designers.
• NoScript - This is pretty much the most standard extension for Firefox that I'd suggest to anyone who gives a damn about their security. What NoScript does is, as the name implies, javascript blocking. There are many sites out there that have malicious scripts that can do God-knows-what to your machine and so, if you're paranoid like me, you'll want to protect yourself from most sites/ untrusted sites. Of course, you can set a safe list of sites you do want to allow. The only problem with NoScript (or is it the page designer's fault for using javascript?!) is that some/ many pages will not display or function correctly without javascript, forcing you to choose between safety and access to whatever it is on that page you need to read/ see/ submit.

And that is that. As you can tell, I'm a definite Firefox fan. I've heard (from Herman) that Opera has something akin to Greasemonkey that allows for scripting by the user, but seeing as how I am neither 1337 enough for that or willing to learn how to script such stuff at the moment, Firefox will do. I'm also wary of trying out alternatives to Firefox (I've grown quite attached and fanboy-ish) so I doubt I'll be switching any time soon (not that I even see a need to).
Everyone, if you haven't already, download Firefox.

Tony Vs. Paul

Lookie what I found on the Interwebs. My good friend Alex sent me this link. I'm not even gonna both explaining--go watch it for yourself.

Learn Some New Moves

I've recently discovered the wonders of MediaMax and their awesome online services (25 GB of media file storage, sharing, and 1 GB hosting per month all for free). With that said, I've got more flexibility with the kind of stuff I can do with firstly my music and secondly the P.Pole. I don't know if any of my readers actually bookmark this page but even if you don't, you'll notice the P.Pole now has its own "Favourites Icon" beside its URL in your address bar/tab title and beside its item in your bookmarks list. I couldn't do that with Photobucket (by the way Photobucket, I know this is short notice but we're over, sorry). I promptly switched over all my image hosting needs to my MediaMax account (I'm not going to run out of image hosting bandwidth with their 1 gig/month of hosting versus Photobucket's pitiful 20 megs/month). My top and bottom banners are now switched over and so are the list icons and other little bits of stuff I've tailor made to fit the P.Pole just right (yeah, I'm an OCD freak, get over it).
I've also been spending more time on my Windows XP account lately (mostly for some gaming and whatnot) as opposed to my Vista partition. As a result, I've gotten to playing with my GUI again. Here is an updated snapshot of my desktop as of right now. The wallpaper belongs to an amazing anime series called (in the words of Amy) "Furi Kuri / Fooly Cooly / フリクリ / FLCL (Pick one)". I heard about this anime awhile back from the already mentioned Amy (from school) but I never bothered to watch it (partly because I couldn't figure out how to spell it based on her telling me the name verbally). It's a great anime, I'd say pretty much as good as Haruhi (but of course, none can take Haruhi off her golden pedestal in my books). Anyway, that wallpaper's from a DeviantARTist and I figured it'd look sweet with the Winamp skin shown (Avalon 1.2, also discovered on DeviantART). The theme is OSX Leopard Beta (Pinstripe) by dobee (yeah I reverted back to my OSX fetish today).
Getting back to Furi Kuri, I finished the sixth and final episode today (having started the first episode last night, just to give you an idea of how short/sweet/intriguing the series is) and I'm very impressed. The artwork is beautiful and I don't think I ever caught instances of the makers cutting any corners or cheating by reusing footage (which is common in less-than-amazing animes). The characters were terribly interesting and quirky. Plotwise FLCL was solid and extremely thought provoking (that's the best I can describe it, you really have to watch it yourself to get what I'd mean if I tried to explain). The entire series screamed of wacky humour that was a fun break from the usual North American humour of Avatar or serious-ish humour of Haruhi. What I enjoyed the most, however, was the stellar soundtrack, composed entirely of music coming from an alternative Japanese rock band called the Pillows. From the moment I began watching, I immediately noticed the quality of the soundtrack. The Pillows are catchy. Enough said.

A Gamer's Fancy

I don't normally link to other blogs' posts, but this one I thought you would be interested in (click title for the short, nerdy post). What I enjoyed in particular was this person's (i.e. "chetho") comment:

My girlfriend plays almost all video games with me.... That's one of the reasons I started dating her. And no, she's not a man. or ugly, or fat.

I think why he had to make sure to explain that this "girlfriend" was not of the highly undesirable (for a girlfriend) sorts. To find a girl who enjoys gaming as much as yourself (or at least enough to play with you) is indeed something very special, if not nearly impossible altogether.

In other gaming news, I thoroughly finished and refinished God of War and have moved on to Final Fantasy XII. It's been slow to start but the game's really picking up speed with me. I find myself actually working harder than normal just so that I have more time for gaming. Yes, it's pitiful, but I count it as one of the few unadulterated pleasures I can enjoy.
I used to get hassled a lot by my parents (especially my mother) but after we had an experimental phase (consisting of mostly me playing a load of games and many tests over the same period of time), we found that my hours spent with my electronic mistresses had no effect on my marks. Nowadays, they abandon me to my games and I them to their... whatever they do for fun (television? clean the house?).
But to return to my original topic, I found it pretty awesome of Crystal to actually play me in Winning Eleven when she came over the other day (and not completely suck at it either!). I mean, I was creaming her the first few rounds, but she actually managed to score a couple on me near the fourth or fifth matches... Good times? Yes. Now all I have to do is find a way to get her to like Die Hard movies and we'll be set.

info @ the P.Pole 02.01.07

I'm currently blogging to you guys from my Windows Vista Ultimate (partitioned with XP) Firefox. I've been fooling around with Vista all day long and I've got some preliminary feedback on it.
Firstly, I don't want to come off as fanboyish, since, well, though I've never thoroughly used anything other than Windows for my day-to-day computing needs (I did have a brief Linux stint way back when my dad liked to play with that stuff), I use computers enough to spot stupid programming/design (like when I have to terminate and restart explorer.exe every time I want to see a registry change take effect in my taskbar). I'm not overly tech savvy but I think I know my ways around a computer. Anyway, I thought XP's defaults were ugly and navigation was boring. From a purely aesthetic POV, XP was quite bland. Vista's default settings, on the other hand, are quite pretty looking and it runs quite smoothly on my machine.
I've yet to run into any errors while just trying to get the hang of the OS, and I suppose that's a good sign. Did I mention how I also had a brief experimental period before with OS X Tiger? Well I did, and I found that Vista's got quite a few similar features... as I'm sure the more nerdy of my readers have already heard about from various geek blogs (Gizmodo, anyone?). Really, the "gadgets" sidebar, the program search field in the start menu, the window switching application: this all reeks of smart ideas on Apple's part and smart business by Microsoft.
Nevertheless, it's looking good and I'm not going to hate on it just yet. For now, Vista, you're on my "kinda cool but slightly rip off" list. I do have one complaint, however, and it's that Vista refuses to play my House episodes (or any other video files I've got loaded on my drives). I'm guessing that this is that dreaded copyright protection crap that was tattooed into the OS, so I'll be patiently awaiting someone to crack this... Unless it's already been done. Guess what I'll be Googling for the next little while.

EDIT:
Firstly, thanks to Herm for pointing out that it might be missing codecs (I feel retarded now). I hadn't thought that my father had not installed the necessary codecs when installing Vista (yes, I let him take care of it because I was too busy entertaining my lady friend, or maybe because I've not had to set up an OS in awhile). Now that I've found and installed the necessary codecs, House plays wonderfully.
Secondly, after a little bit more Vista-ing, well, the OS is lovely. It was lagging before and I couldn't figure out why. That's when I decided on grabbing CCleaner again and installing it on my Vista partition. I ran it, cleared 100+ megabytes of trash and deleted 60+ obsolete/useless registry keys. I also ran the disk defragger on my drives and cleared up more trash. Then I cleaned up a gigabyte of hibernation system files (useless) and that cleaned up even more trash off my drives. Now it's running swimmingly and with no lag. Sweet deal.
Lastly, I reinstalled my usual apps and reconfigured everything. I actually had to reconfigure Firefox twice (takes a long time if you run a lot of extensions like me) because my dad wiped my configuration the first time when tweaking the Vista after the first day. I would've just copied my settings over from my Windows XP application data for Firefox (like I did with Gaim) but that turned out to not work as nicely as I'd have liked (Vista uses three separate folders to do what XP's "Application Data" did). Dumb. Either way, I'm slowly integrating my needed apps into Vista (installing as I find the need for them so I avoid installing an ass-load of stuff I don't actually use).

Smash!

In 2005, SCEA released one bad mother of a game called God of War, representing what was their liberal yet convincing take on Greek mythology. This game would later receive ranting and raving reviews from all of the gaming industry scene. I personally have a natural affinity for such nerdy ventures as video games and the like, so it amazes me that it took me almost 3 years to finally purchase and play this game for myself. Before I go any farther, I must admit that the rest of this post will mostly be verbal nerdgasmic fun.
Now, normally, one would write a review about a game to rant about how it excels in every aspect imaginable, but I realize that whoever reads the P.Pole on any kind of regular basis is probably not a nerd and will have lost interest in the topic at hand about two sentences ago. Nevertheless, I'm going to do a brief summary of this game (not unlike a review) minus any quantitative (haha, that's a dirty word) judgements--I'm not qualified to decide whether the noise the minotaur makes as it dies is quite worth 5 nail clippings out of 5 or not.
God of War has a story revolving around a man's insatiable thirst for power. There are a hell of spoilers in here, but I doubt anyone reading this will care or be the type to play games anyway. I just want to discuss the story a bit, so if discussing video games sounds too nerdy for you, treat it as if I were doing a movie review or something.
I found the pacing and flow of the game were quite brilliantly done. I found myself sitting there and gaming my time away (hours at a time) not because I had nothing better to do (I did have other things to do, believe it or not) but just because I was so thoroughly engrossed in the matter at hand. This is one area where I do believe the gaming industry has a serious upper hand over the television or film industries as entertainment substitutes. Video games, by definition, involve their audiences. I don't consider myself someone particularly easy to fascinate and I don't consider myself picky either. From smashing monsters to solving puzzles to scaling cliffs, Kratos (the tragic hero of GoW) does it all. Never did I find myself tired of repetition or annoying tasks (like having to speak with every single person in the town before one damn bartender will give me a quest... if you're giving me a "WTF?!" look, it's a video game/RPG nuance).
The plot of God of War is basically this: Kratos, a mortal man, is saved by Ares (the god of war according to Greek myth) from his enemies, and becomes his servant/weapon. After pillaging a village with his loyal army in the name of Ares, Kratos enters the village's temple and massacres everyone in it. Only after killing a woman and a girl does he realize that these were his own wife and daughter (see? spoilers). This, of course, was planned by Ares who wanted Kratos to become the strongest warrior ever, to "become Death itself." Bad move. Kratos vows that from that day forward, his only enemy would be the one who saved his ass ages ago, Ares the God of War.
As you can see, this Kratos character must be one messed up guy, a real "product of the system" if you will. I will. I'm telling you, this character is a beast. He spends most of his journey amputating limbs, breaking bones, smashing skulls, busting spines, gouging eyes, and basically eviscerating everything between him and vengeance for his wife and kid. Isn't that sweet? Well if that isn't, the graphics showing him doing it are. Having two blades on chains helps this process of not-so-systematically destroying stuff. Freaking awesome.
So after having beat this game twice (once on normal difficulty and once on hard), I reassure you, this behemoth of a game is just as amazing as people have said. If you ever need anything to get you to bed, this game's not going to do it. What it will do is give you a place to be as violent, gory, and disgustingly brutal as you want. Oh, and enjoy the wonderfully tragic story behind Kratos. Lovely stuff, really. My favourite part about this game must be upgrading my swords to max level about 10 minutes into a new game and exploding everything else in the remainder of the game (yeah, I'm one of those gamers....).

info @ the P.Pole 01.14.07

5 titles I'm hoping to buy sooner or later:

• "God of War I & II" for the PS2 (I've been meaning to get this and it's right up one of my alleys, so I can't say why I haven't yet)
  
• "Me and My Katamari" for the PSP (everything I've heard about it is amazing)
  
• " Winning Eleven 11" for the PS2 (when it comes out)
• "Half-Life 2" for the PC (I've already got the machine for it, might as well)
  
• "Metal Gear Solid 4" for the PS3 (here's a good excuse to get a PS3)

So it's been awhile now since the releases of Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PS3. I must admit right off the bat that I'm a Playstation fanboy. It was my first console and still my favourite series of consoles. If you've been speaking to me about video games, you'll know what I think/thought about the Wii. It's childish, mostly a novelty, etc... Of course, it does have its merits (like getting my arm to ache from a mere half an hour of gaming) and is quite nicely packaged. Yet, part of me has the gut feeling that the Wii just won't last as a serious gaming console. Sure, it's popular now for its low price and somewhat interesting gameplay, but when it comes down to it, its got no lasting intrigue (at least not for me). I really can't see myself parking my ass down to play a hardcore RPG or FPS with the Wii. I also can't see myself playing a next-gen Final Fantasy title or Metal Gear Solid title on it either.
The PS3, though pricey, is looking pretty stacked. Sure, it's been slow out of the gates so far, but once we start seeing some price drops and heavy-hitter titles being released, we're all going to see the PS3 whoop some next-gen gaming ass. It's more powerful than the Wii by far, and runs on disks that can store 5 times the information as the Xbox 360's. That's 5x more gaming goodness, be it graphics, map size, length, whatever. I think it's safe to say that the PS3 is the most stacked of the next-gen consoles, and time will prove that it payed off for Sony to wait that extra year or so before releasing and for customers to cough up that extra couple hundred. Trust me, in a few years, we're going to see Sony swimming in cash from intelligent gamers and fanboys like me.