Greg’s weblog

Some of you know about how I hate Disney. It’s funny, because as a kid, I loved Disney, and looked forward to the “Wonderful World of Disney” on TV (Sunday nights?) Anyway, I’m not a big fan of how they run their business. While presenting a front to the world of wholesome family values, they present a different front to their shareholders. The kind of front that says “I’d kill puppies and sell them on sticks if I thought it were profitable.”

It’s not fair to tar the whole company that way, because I’m sure there are good people still working for Disney. Sure, they’ve obviously had to work very hard to conceal this fact from their upper management, but I’m sure they’re there. Rot spreads from the core, and Mike Eisner is pretty rotten, in my opinion.

Not the least of my dislike of Disney is the way they take from the public domain with one hand, while attempting to protect their copyrights from the same fate with the other. It’s tough to think of a Disney “original” movie that wasn’t either stolen wholesale from other cultures, or at the very least completely based on public domain materials.

That’s why stories like this make me laugh. Apparently, Disney has pulled out of the movie “Peter Pan” over licensing issues. You see, a children’s hospital holds the rights to Peter Pan, and Disney doesn’t want to have to pay a share of the merchandising to the children’s hospital. “We’ve already paid them once” they say. Yeah, but that was for a different movie. Anyway, if you read the article further, you’ll see a bit at the end where Disney tried to bully a clothing shop named “Peter Pan” into changing their name, because it was infringing on Disney’s copyright. The Children’s hospital stepped in, and licensed the store for a small fee to use the name. Keeping in mind that Disney doesn’t own the copyright to the Peter Pan story. I think it’s funny.

Maybe someday Disney will clean up their act, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “All right! Crime spree!” – Snake

Greg Costikyan has posted an article on Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment on his site.

His point is that there’s no place for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in certain types of games. While he makes good points, I disagree.

Dynamic difficulty levels in games can make them more fun for some people while it will detract from the game for others. The key is – if you make it a user selectable option, you get the best of both worlds. Instead of three difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) add a fourth – “Dynamic” which lets the player choose to have the game change difficulty levels based on how they’re doing.

I don’t think games should ever be strictly dynamic (though I’m sure some of my favorites are, behind the scenes) but it should be an option. Otherwise, how will the player ever know if they’re getting better? How can they judge their skills against their friends’ skills?

There is a place for this in online games too. It has to be optional though. I don’t think I could ever have a fun game of Age of Mythologies against Bryan without some serious handicapping. How serious? I don’t know, but with Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment, I wouldn’t have to know, we’d just check off a checkbox, and play the game. Sometimes he’d beat me, sometimes I’d beat him. I’d be challenged trying to stop his single villager from decimating my entire civilization, and he’d be challenged trying to stop my unwashed hordes from overrunning his base.

If it can be done, I say do it.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “and these (handing books to Homer) should give you the grounding you’ll need in thermodynamics, hypermathematics and of course microcalifragalistics.” – Professor Frink

It keeps getting colder here. Last night, the temperature hit -45. Not with the wind, that would have been a low of -58. For those of you using Fahrenheit, that’s -49, and -74. The daytime high yesteday was a balmy -35.

So believe me when I say that it’s cold here. When a daytime high of -25 is looking mighty nice, it’s time to break out the long underwear (that reminds me – I should try and track down my long underwear.)

The bus was packed this morning – I imagine it was because people’s cars wouldn’t start. The plus side to that is that all the bodies tend to keep the bus warmer than if it’s not full. Anyway, no more talk of the cold this week. I promise.

I finally finished getting a computer set up and working for Erin’s cousin last night. It’s been sitting there waiting for me to get around to it for far too long. In fact, I vaguely remember bringing it home with the A/C blasting in the car. It’s good to have it done now, at any rate.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?” – Homer

So, it’s colder here today than yesterday. Way colder. Fortunately, the building is keeping up with it better than yesterday, so I’m not shivering today.

Am I the only one who sees the problem with the headline: New Wireless Standard to Carry Cable TV Signal – I mean, that wouldn’t be Cable anymore, would it? That’d be like a new cable technology being used to carry Satellite TV signals. (I suppose in theory that’s at least possible.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I’m cold and frightened.” – Grandpa Simpson

It’s cold here. So cold that I had to type that last sentence five times before I got it right. My fingers are seizing up, which will somewhat explain the brevity of this post. I hate when it cools off so quickly that this building’s climate control can’t keep up.

The funny thing is that it didn’t seem like -43 with the wind chill when I was waiting for the bus. I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t waiting very long.

So, we had movie night on Saturday, and watched “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I hadn’t seen it, so I enjoyed it. William slept through the first half on my lap, then he an Mya played quietly on the floor. At one point, I looked down from the movie to see Mya with a laundry basket/toybox over her head. I don’t know how it happened, but it was pretty cute. She didn’t seem to mind, so I suspect it was a joint effort. I don’t think I paused the movie even once, which is pretty amazing with two kids as young as William and Mya in the room.

The one strange thing though, was that any written text in the movie was subtitled in both Spanish and French. I didn’t have subtitles turned on, and none of the speech was subtitled. Just the text on signs. It was very odd. There were only two occasions that I remember it popping up, both near the beginning.

After the movie, I fired up the Eye Toy, for a little Play. I think everyone had a good time. The Kung Foo that I played on the weekend, combined with all the snow we got (I shovelled three times :) made my arms a little tired. Not as bad as I expected though, which is good.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Let the fools have their “tar-tar” sauce.” – Mr. Burns

So, the movie night is going ahead as planned. There are two parking spots out back, and the driveway available. As well, I think the street’s 1h parking is only Monday thru Friday, so make use of that if you want.

We watched Brent Butt’s new sitcom last night Corner Gas. It was pretty funny. I hope they give the show a chance to develop, cause there were several extremely funny bits in there. The actors need to grow into their characters still – at times it felt like watching first season Simpson’s (as far as being kind of rough around the edges.) Butt has said that his approach is not to shove the whole “Canadian” part of it down the audience’s throat, and I think he did a good job. There were some “Saskatchewan is flat” jokes at the start, but I think that was just to get it out of the way more than anything. There were lots of bits that were laugh-out-loud funny too, which is good.

But maybe that’s just cause I’m from Saskatchewan.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Are you the creator of ‘High and Lois’? Because you are making me laugh.” – Comic book guy

The other day, we were discussing a classic Abbott and Costello bit in my office. Then today, I came across a link to it. It is one of the funniest pieces of comedy ever writte/performed, and it stands up very well. Here it is: Who’s on First?. If you could hang a comedy piece in a museum, it would belong in the Louvre, right next to the Mona Lisa.

The only outstanding question is “Who’s in left field?” (No – he’s on first base.)

Movie night is fast approaching, so I guess I should make with the details. Here’s the proposed plan – Movie starts at 7:00 or so. I don’t want to start it any later than 7:30, so try to get there around 7:00 or so. It’s going to be a full house, so you’ll want to stake out your seats early. Popcorn and some chips will probably be in attendance, though if you want to drink anything other than water or milk, you’ll probably be better off bringing your own. There’s lots of room in the fridge, if that’s what you’re worried about. As stated before, the movie is “Pirates of the Carribean”

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Marge: “Homer! Did you tell the mafia they could eliminate my competitors with savage beatings and attempted murder?”
Homer: “In those words? … Yes.”