bedeviled mojo slop

Awhile back I used part of an Amazon.com gift certificate to purchase Shadow of the Colossus. I can't believe I actually own 6 PlayStation 2 games now. A year ago I only bought the PS2 to play Katamari Damacy. Now I'm sucked in ... but that's not the point.

Shadow of the Colossus. "Some mountains are scaled. Others are slain." That's the tag-line on the game box and it's pretty accurate as to the premise of this game.

Shadow of the Colossus is a majestic journey through ancient lands to seek out and destroy gigantic mythical beasts. With your trusty horse at your side, explore the spacious lands and unearth each Colossi. Armed with your wits, a sword and a bow, use cunning and strategy to topple each behemoth.

The long and short of it is that you need to defeat 16 colossi to bring some broad back to life.

It's a game where you have to fight bosses. No bullshit weapons gathering or village plundering. You find each colossus and try to kick its ass before it wallops you and the horse you rode in on. And yes, there is a horse you rode in on.

Good: The visuals are great with all the right attention to each colossus. Fighting bosses is an interesting twist. You don't have to go around and get money or anything to buy new and powerful weapons. You've got a sword, a bow-and-arrow, your trusty steed, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and you're wearing ... wait ... You get the idea.

Bad: Screw the controls. I hate them. I guess they're not hard to master, but I believe they suck.

Also, be sure to check out the Penny Arcade news and comic where they talk about this game.

I guess I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Technorati Tags: playstation 2 shadow of the colossus

I spent 6 hours snowboarding on Gore mountain today. Gondola rides are nice. The weather report had forecast rain all day which kept away many of the holiday crowds that would've descended on the slopes. However, the rain held off until around 3 PM when it was time to pack it in anyway after getting there at 8:30 AM.

All of the runs I took were blue and black diamond trails except for one part of a run down a green trail. The black diamond mogul trail ... not so fun. I guess if you really know moguls, you're probably OK, but I don't think snowboards and moguls are really a match. Considering this was probably my 11th time snowboarding and I didn't even step on a snowboard before February 2005, I'm feeling pretty good about my progress.

Technorati Tags: snowboarding gore mountain

• Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs 2 at exploding-boy.com
  (tags: CSS )

• 24 ways: Edit-in-Place with Ajax
  (tags: ajax javascript )

• Real Lessons for Rails Deployment
  "Here's an unpleasant truth about Rails: Deployment of a Rails application is tough."
  (tags: ruby_on_rails )

BarCamp NYC will be held Saturday and Sunday, January 14-15, 2006. I hope to be there.

Oh, and be sure to leave your e-mail on the wiki to be notified of the location.

Technorati Tags: barcamp

• Enterprise Java Technologies Tech Tips
  "This Tech Tip offers some helpful hints and best practices for accurately transporting character data from a browser to a database, and back again."
  (tags: internationalization java )

What It Is To Burn - Finch

I've moved a bunch of information from the sidebar into various pages.

The about page has information about me. The tag cloud page lists the tags that I've applied to posts and presents them in tag cloud fashion. The archives page breaks down my blog entries month by month.

Can you dig it?

The snowboard season for me has officially begun. Yesterday I got in a full 6 hours of riding. 4 hours before I took my first break after hitting the slopes and 2 hours after lunch. Really the only sore part on my body is my shoulder that took a mild blow during my only spill going down a steeper hill. I probably caught an edge or something, but I tanked and tumbled. Oh well, it happens ...

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

Cliffano Subagio ported the Connections theme from Wordpress to blojsom.

Download. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: blojsom wordpress themes

It looks like I'll be able to head out this weekend to do some snowboarding.

"Is that an iPod in your pants or are you just happy to see me?"

iBoxer

'Nuff said.

Technorati Tags: ipod boxer shorts

• Top 100 Wines 2005
  It's a Pinot heavy and pricey list, partially driven by the demand produced by "Sideways"
  (tags: wine )

I know I'm late to the online photo sharing account game, but that's not the point of this post. After clicking the tag on one of the pictures in my Flickr account, it got me thinking about tag attributes. I'd like to be able to apply some meta-information to none, some, or all of the tags in services like Flickr and del.icio.us.

Here's the rub. If you click on the photo of a bottle of Cristal I received, you'll notice one of its tags is "Cristal". If you click that link to see who else has photos tagged with "cristal" you get roughly 25 pages of photos tagged with "cristal". Note the subtle difference in capitalization.

Interesting ... That many people out there are popping the cris? No. Most of those photos tagged with "cristal" are tagged because they are photos of cristal, the Spanish word for glass, and not actually photos of Cristal, the champagne.

Would tag attributes like "language" help? Yes and no. Yes ... as another way in which to make your tag search more specific. No ... in this instance as Cristal is a proper noun. So, "Cristal" is "Cristal" is "Cristal" whether you're speaking English, French, or Japanese. At least I hope the Cristal is Cristal wherever you order it. In this example, it's more a function of the service, Flickr, not respecting case-sensitivity of the tags in the photos.

This also gets interesting if I actually had a photo of a glass of Cristal. My head is spinning. I need a drink

Technorati Tags: tags tagging Flickr del.icio.us Cristal

• mozdev.org - downthemall: index
  DtA lets you download in just one click all the links or images contained in a webpage.
  (tags: firefox )

It's all fun and games until someone sells a thong. Why DHH, why?!

I dare not venture into the Ruby method double entendre territory.

Technorati Tags: ruby on rails

Back from Disney. Ready for bed. Tired after a long day and a long weekend.

It was odd being in 70 degree weather with Christmas decorations all around. And ... it was really odd walking out of Mickey's house after pictures with Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy right smack dab into the pumped-in scent of Christmas tree. I am not lying. There was not a single Christmas tree in the gigantous gift area outside the picture rooms, but damned if it didn't smell like Christmas trees ... lots of Christmas trees.

I could ride Space Mountain all day. Pirates of the Caribbean is always fun, but the ride stopped for a little and they interrupted the animatronics to announce the ride was backed up. Lame. There's got to be some period of time before they make those type of announcements. After 15 minutes ... OK ... make an announcement. Stitch's Great Escape is probably the lamest Disney ride ... ever! It's a complete rip-off from the Alien encounter they had maybe 15 years ago.

Although I didn't eat there this trip, Seito has some of the best sushi in the Orlando area. It's in the Disney community of Celebration.

Technorati Tags: walt disney world

This weekend I'll be kickin' it with Mickey, Minnie, and friends at Walt Disney World. I'll admit I did a double take when checking out their holiday events page which listed:

The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights

Maybe Disney has embraced the Prince of Darkness? Probably not.

Technorati Tags: walt disney world

I came across a little OS X application called coconutIdentityCard that tells you when and where your Mac or iPod was built.

This iMac was built in the USA. Nifty I guess

Technorati Tags: apple identity

• Release Notes 2.0.2 - Confluence - Confluence
  (tags: java wiki )
• XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Cheat sheet: Esp: for filter evasion - by RSnake
  (tags: security xss )
• JavaScript Component for AJAX
  (tags: ajax javascript )

• Khmerang.com - CSS-Technique: Worn Type
  (tags: CSS )

I think this is a valid API for interacting with Akismet from Ruby. Download Akismet.rb

As I'm just starting out with Ruby, comments and improvements are appreciated.

Technorati Tags: akismet ruby

Akismet ...

When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Did you know they also had an API? Did you want to interact with Akismet from Java?

Download the Akismet Java API. Is that all you ask? NO! There's also documentation available.

"It slices, it dices, it knows viagra from c1ali5!"

blojsom plugin forthcoming ... stay tuned. Otherwise, enjoy!

Technorati Tags: akismet java

Here is part of a track entitled, "El Taco Loco Is Grande Fiesta" from my never-to-be-forthcoming-album entitled, "Jackknife Sodapop".

Mark Lussier, the other blojsom committer, recently got married (in Hawaii). Here is a shot of his wedding cake.

I feel compelled to point out that all of those seashells, coral, and starfish are all painstakingly handcrafted in sugar.

"They're real, and they're spectacular!"

That
is
how
we
roll!

• The Ultimate Options List for the Java Virtual Machine!
  (tags: java )