The Hyperlogos

The new effort from Michael Franti and Spearhead, All Rebel Rockers is their most boring offering yet. Almost entirely lacking the depth of lyrics which has been present in every former album, this is basically a drum & bass album for people who need more music to jump up and down to. If you love Spearhead's lyrics, you should avoid this album like the mass-market plague it is.

Being a nominal member of Generation X, I fairly grew up on the Star Wars franchise. I was even young enough to enjoy Ewok Adventures, an abortion which should never have been realized for any purpose. Since those days I have played most or at least around half of the games inspired by the movies, skipping only the obvious lemons and the obligatory crap MMORPG. I adored Tie Fighter and loved Rogue Squadron and even managed to enjoy both Knights of the Old Republic games (even the uninspired sequel.) All this fannishness and a low used price tag led me to Star Wars: Battlefront II. This is the second review I've written for this game; the original claimed that the level design was a bright point. I have since spent many more hours with this game, and learned that there is no bright point. This realization resulted in this second review.

There is a pawn shop in Ukiah near my favorite cheap Sushi restaurant which often has interesting goodies; while most of their floor space is given over to antiques and collectibles they have a couple of racks of tools and usually a small selection of electronics as well. Last time I was in there, I picked up one of these access points new in the box for $30 - not an amazing price (right now you can get one NIB from amazon for $25 shipped) but it satisfied my need for instant gratification. I've been stumbling along with only 802.11b for years now (I got my Linksys WAP11 as part of a trade) and I was long past due for an upgrade.

Need for Speed Underground is a street racing simulation video game from Electronic Arts for PC, Sony Playstation 2, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube. It features twenty licensed cars popular in the street racing scene, which can be customized both visually and for performance. Visual modifications improve your reputation multiplier which grants you additional style points; amassing certain amount of style points unlocks new upgrades. The game features drag racing, drifting, circuit racing, and a sprint mode. You can play a guided "underground" mode in which the goal is to become the best-ranked racer in all of these types of driving, play quick races, or play on the internet against others (on PC and Playstation 2 only.) This review focuses on the PC version.

The Memorex MPD8600 is a small CD-ROM based audio player which supports MP3, WMA, and CDDA/Red Book CD Audio on CD-ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW media. It also has an FM radio tuner built into it. It has quite good MP3 compatibility, including support for the ID3 tags used to store extended information about MP3 audio files. It has a black body with a silver inset on its face, and tapers slightly from one side to the other. It is a highly compatible and functional CD-based audio player, tolerably simple to use, and has acceptable battery life.

Crimson Skies is a game for PC and Xbox which is based on the classic tabletop game by FASA. This writeup covers the PC version, which was developed by Zipper Interactive and published by Microsoft. The game is a flight "simulator" with arcade-style physics - meaning that it bears little to no resemblance to actually flying an airplane. The planes in question are all prop-driven with WWII-inspired designs, including an assortment of fighter craft with and without turrets, a bomber, and even an autogyro. Each plane handles differently, with variation in lift, speed, and turning ability. Players can design their own planes both inside the single player campaign and also for the "instant action" mode in which you fly scenarios, and for network play. Net play is essentially always LAN play but Microsoft provides a matching service on the MSN Gaming Zone. The Xbox version supports Xbox Live and while (supposedly) using essentially the same engine as the PC game, is laid out quite differently, with a different story, (somewhat) different planes, different missions, and different gameplay.

Chrono Trigger is an excellent video roleplaying game for the Super NES from the masters of the art, Squaresoft. It features some of the best graphics and sound seen on the platform, especially in this genre. The music is fantastic, in typical Squaresoft style, but outdoes even other Square titles on the SNES. It features a somewhat unique approach to merging combat with the game in that enemies are typically either in plain sight before you reach them, or hiding behind some feature of the terrain - there are no completely random encounters, and the world map is a place of peace. Chrono Trigger is a fairly short game, representing only about 20 hours of gameplay if you play straight through, including all side quests.

It has been remarked time and again that stupid people reliably breed more copiously than the intelligent. While the situation is more complex than this, one does have to wonder if, in a thousand years, the world will be populated exclusively by idiots. While this theme has been explored exhaustively in all types of media (as well as the great experiment we call "Earth") it has never received so brilliant a treatment as in Idiocracy, a comedy from Mike Judge (Ren and Stimpy, King of the Hill). Starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, Idiocracy is the story of a military experiment into human hibernation gone awry, and the future into which it goes. Five hundred years from the data of the movie's release, in the year 2505, humanity's tendency toward stupidity has resulted in a world in which an average - okay, well, he is a bit sensitive - guy's medical diagnosis is that his "shit is all retarded" and that he "talks like a fag".

The following is an alternate version (a bit more wordy) of a review I wrote for travelpost about a visit to Comfort Inn at 5370 Clayton road in Concord, CA.

My lady stayed in this place and said she hated it, but we tried to get a place up the road and all the rooms were booked. It must have been because everyone else knew about this place, because it's Feb. 20th and nothing special is going on here. This is by far the LOUDEST hotel I've stayed in, which includes venues in Santa Cruz and Las Vegas. Outside noise is absolutely intolerable, and because of the neighborhood this place is in you can expect to hear loud engines, tires screeching, and horns honking all night (I did.)