I think for this week, we’ll just do a couple quickies.  LOLquicks I callz dem.

Be my guest…

Well, not MY guest. But *I* will be guest-posting tomorrow over at The Absurdist.  Why I agreed I’ll never know.  Ok, well, I do know.  But YOU should know that there are bloggers in this world whose blogs are not what we call “safe for work.”  So if you see the acronym NSFW it means “not safe for work.”  I sometimes think about living vicariously through some bloggers who put it all out there, so to speak, on the Internet for everyone to see.  They are, to say the very least, NSFW.  Some are NSFA (not safe for anyone).   Guest-posting for The Absurdist is probably NSFW (not safe for Wayne) but I never did claim to be able to make sane decisions.  Enter her domain at your own risk.  Your jaw might break due to the fall; your funny bone might get sprained; your eyes might dry out after being bugged out; your heart might swell; and your fingers might go numb from commenting because you either agree with her so much you can’t stop saying why OR you are so apalled or outraged, you can’t stop saying why.

You’ve heard of crush’s revealed…

And now Poppy pops the big one. Wait, that’s the wrong phrase. I mean she was “quite revealing” on a blog post earlier today. No, that’s not right either.  She flashed the world today with heaping mounds of courage.  Whoa, that’s really not what I’m trying to say.  She kept us abreast of the news?  Is that better?  Probably not.  Just go over there and see what she revealed.  And FWIW, it’s definitely “safe for work.”

Oh and by the way, I won a “Poppy.”  It’s like a Grammy, but infinitely more poppable.  The category I swept, hands-down, was “Best Blog That References Guitar Hero”.  Wait, that’s not right either, because you can’t play Guitar Hero hands-down.  I can’t get anything right today.

Once she sends me my graphic, it’ll be displayed prominently.  And often.  Thank you Poppy!

Best of LOLcats

Many of you know (and some of you lament) that there are millions of LOLcat photos out there on teh internets.  Some are so funny you need a few minutes to compose yourself.  Some are so bad you need a few minuets to compose for yourself (for your funeral.) 

*My* job is to give you only the best ones, so you don’t have to weed through multiples per day and possibly lose interest in the phenomenon.  Oh noes, we must has qwahluhtee.

(I think another caption might be
OMG!!! u has a zit let me pops it!)

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Guitar Hero phenomenon.  To recap for you if you’ve just tuned in, I’m a big fan.  OF THE GUITAR HERO PHENOMENON.                                                                                                                                                                      

I have Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3 and the 80′s version, all for the Playstation 2 (PS2), with two guitars.  The whole family loves the game and we all play it often.

When Guitar Hero 3 (GH3) came out, I had an important decision to make – do I buy the game for my existing PS2, or do I buy the game plus a guitar for the Wii? 

For all intents and purposes, the GH3 game for Wii is a clone of the GH3 game for PS2, XBOX and PS3 platforms.  I had done some research ahead of time on the differences between playing GH3 on PS2 vs playing GH3 on the Wii.  My primary concern was, of course, cost.  Moula.  Dinero.  Money is not something of which I am made, and the idea of paying more for a game AND buying new guitars wasn’t very appealing to me.

If you read the extended entry (below), I go more into the differences between the two, how I chose and the mistake I ultimately made.

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I’m through, being cool…. at least, I’m through with strep.  But I still have this nasty tickle-based cough that prevents me from rocking out on SingStar 80′s or SingStar Amped as much as I deserve to.  I am pleased to report, however, that my Guitar Hero awesomeness is unimpacted by my throat malaise.

Find the Star

Speaking of “stars,” I found a pretty cool little online game/puzzle thingy.  It’s in Chi-japanese or whatever, but still you get the hang of it pretty quick.  I’ve only spent 5 minutes on it so far, and that was back on Friday, but as soon as I get a free moment I’m going back.

The goal is to find the star in each of a lot of little flash games.  The trick is – you have to figure out what the trick is.  YOU have to figure out what you’re supposed to do to get the star.  It tells you NOTHING about how to play.  I think that’s the cool part.

The ones with the little star in the upper left hand corner are the ones I’ve completed.

Lateral Thinking Puzzles

One of my favorite things to do with friends (and especially with my 13yr old daughter and her friends / cousins) is to do Lateral Thinking Puzzles.  You need to get people who aren’t impatient or will ruin the time.

Here’s how it goes:

• One person knows the answer.  (If more people know the answer, they voluntarily sit out.)
• The puzzle is read aloud by the person who knows the answer.  The puzzle describes a situation but is cryptic, and the other people are supposed to figure out what the situation is.
• The people can only ask yes/no questions.  The answerer can only answer with one of three answers: Yes, No or Irrelevant.

Some of the puzzles are like riddles, and others are just descriptions of an event.  They key here is to learn how to ask questions that narrow down the possibilities, and to question everything and make no assumptions.

If you google for Lateral Thinking Puzzles you can get a few good ones.  For some reason, most of them are a little morbid.  Here are some of my favorites

• A man leaves home, makes three left turns and encounters two men wearing masks.
• Anthony and Cleopatra are found dead on the floor with broken glass everywhere.
• A man is found naked and dead in the desert, with a piece of straw on the ground nearby.
• A man and woman are found dead in a cabin on the side of a snowy mountain. 

This kind of thing sure beats watching a bad movie.

Jaden on Guitar Hero

I haven’t dumped the pictures from Christy’s cell phone in a Looooooong while, so I did that over the weekend (while trying to get p2k commander to work and other tools for syncing off of a Motorola RAZR) and found this picture from i-dont-know-how-long-ago. 

This was probably 6 months ago.  He’s a lot more into Singstar now, and you can hear him belt out “We’re not gonna take it” or “Hold me now” and it’s completely awesome.  He also does “Rio” pretty well.

Best of LOLcats

No really, I do.  I even have a screenshot to that effect.  Oh, that reminds me, I saw a funny comic recently

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I was waiting and waiting for my Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80′s game.  It came just as they promised, on the 25th.  A Wednesday.  A day that I play APA pool league and wouldn’t be able to waste all night playing.  Nooooo, they couldn’t deliver it early or anything.

Last night I only played through two set lists, and only on Hard and I’ve put up my sight-reading scores here for a little self-bragging.  100% on one of them?!?!  Sight reading?  I must be a true Guitar Hero.  I even have a shirt to that effect.

My quick comments on the game:

• A lot of people on the forums were complaining about the game, the number of songs, the song choice, etc.  Pshaw.  It’s a great game and they did a good job. Bunch a whiners if you ask me.  I’m quite thankful for the game release.
• On the “No One Like You” by Scorpions song, it’s not that the guy doesn’t sound like the Scorpions singer (as is the case with most of the songs).  It’s just that his voice is so unique, it’s really lacking a little without the original guy.  I got this same feeling on Ozzy’s / Black Sabbath songs on Guitar Hero I and II.  On the other “covers”, Red Octane did a decent job.  I mean, you can tell it’s not the original singer if you think about it, but it doesn’t stick out real obvious except for a few songs, like “No One Like You”.  Maybe they were predictng this with the song title?  Maybe it should have been titled “There’s No-One Like Me” ?
• I would have preferred it if they left in Eddie Knox as a player.  But I’m not complaining!
• Playing all these new songs just increases my drive to get *my* custom songs working.  My first batch will be family favorites (and will thus likely not be of much initial interest to the other custom guitar hero folk, until they see my ‘expert’ midi’s for the songs and then they’ll change their tune) like Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Steely Dan.  Also, I definitely don’t plan on dedicating the guitar controller to just guitar parts – I have no qualms having the guitar hero dole out fabulous riffs even on keyboard, flute, recorder or even bass, and intermingling it into the same song.  I’m no guitar hero purist.

Check out the scores. 

My new Guitar Hero game is just sitting somewhere in Austin since Saturday!

Argh!!!  I pre-ordered it so maybe I’d get it right on time, or (gasp) a little early.  But noooooo.  Some retailers are already selling it and people are out there, right now, playing this game on their little guitar controllers, hogging all the fun, beating songs, and getting scorehero points.  Toys R Us decided (or more appropriately, didn’t decide) to either be clueless or insanely genius by letting a few copies go out the door on Saturday, when they were (as far as we know) expressly forbidden to do so.  So now all these folks on the forums have been able to play the game.  Before me, even! 

UPS still says it expects to deliver tomorrow.  Argh, why do they tease me so.  I wish I could just go pick it up from the facility or something.  Do they offer that?  Should I stop complaining?

It’s unfair.

It’s un-American.

It’s heart-breaking.

It’s “Whining Wayne,” here for your enjoyment, until he gets his precious little game.

Bohemian Rhapsody by 25 artists

Saw this on Kazim’s Korner.  Reminded me of the Evolution of Dance video in a way, in that it’s one of those “must watch at some point in life” videos.  Why not watch them now? hmm?

WHALLcats

I had mentioned earlier that I came up with WHALLcats, a complete rip-off of LOLcats, but I didn’t mention that I don’t have any cats.  So all of my images are going to be of Jupiter, Zena or Nacho.  Maybe Maverick and Nitro (passed away).  The name stuck tho.

So I started on a couple.

The only frustrating part of this is that the software I use (SnagIt) for most of my quick photo manipulation needs – it’s truly a fantastic tool for quick changes, but it doesn’t support fonts with colored outlines, so I end up with letters that either need a bright or dark outline.  So far, I had to just do a quick black line across the bottom.  I think that’s annoying, both to make and to read.  I guess I could use the LOLcats generator if I needed to…

In fact, I did – I went ahead and used the generator on this photo above and I must say, it is better than mine.

Here’s another try with the generator.  I think I’ll stick with it from now on.

So I don’t think that these are “worthy” of trying to submit to I Can Has Cheezeburger… but if you think they are, add a comment and let me know. I know that if I do get one that’s very good, I’ll submit it.

Guitar Heronoid

So, seems someone came up with a robot to play Guitar Hero for you.  Sounds like a great robotic project for a young up-and-comer in the science community – especially if they have a passion for music, technology, and overall high injections of coolosity.

Click on the picture to get a full run-down on the construction, fingers, strumming, the technology they used to “listen” to the screen and music and putting it all together.

It really is a fascinating read.

As I mentioned a little while ago, we have some cousins staying with us – hey, it’s summer, they get new experiences, and we all get to hang out.  We’ve played a lot of games, swam, and are having a great time, especially with me on vacation.

Last night we went to Main Event and had a blast.

Main Event is where you can do all of these in one place:

• Go Bowling
• Play Pool
• Compete at Laser Tag
• Play the latest video games
• Do Rock Climbing
• Play Glow Golf
• Eat

As you can imagine, all this stuff can get expensive.  It wouldn’t be hard to drop $100 for a family of four, depending on what all you participated in.  That’s why Half Price Night is so cool – it makes it a lot easier on the wallet.

Jaden and Caitlin did some Rock Climbing, we all bowled, and we played some video games.  Jaden _really_ liked the rock climbing, although he said about 2.5 feet up “um, I think I’m afraid of heights.”  So he hovered at the bottom and just enjoyed the assist cord, “fake falling” from a foot or two up and loving it.  He sampled the different faux rock surfaces and watched some of the older kids.  Given that he’s just big enough to be on it, I wasn’t expecting Mission Impossible.

As some of you may know, I’m no stranger to bowling.  I haven’t bowled regularly for about 7 years, but when I did, I put my all into it (200+ average, one 300 so far).  Of course now-a-days, my arm and wrist is way out of shape for the intensity of my style of bowling, so I have to take it easy.  I’m ramping up to maybe play league again in the next couple of years, and Jaden makes it easy because he’ll go anytime, any place.

The bowling lanes, equipment and computer at Main Event are pretty cool, and a far cry from what I’m used to.  The computer console is mostly easy to use (shocking, I know!), and you can even specify who needs bumpers so that when it’s their turn, they shoot out of the ground with hydraulics.  The animations on the TV monitors are funny, and it actually gives good stats and advice.  All the house balls are color-coded so it’s easy to find a 12lb or 14lb or whatever weight.  You pay by the hour, but it’s pre-paid, which can be annoying.

The video game area even has a Guitar Freaks game, which is an arcade version of Guitar Hero.

Needless to say, I “freaked”.  (that’s kind of like how I “rock” with Guitar Hero).

Jaden’s favorite games are the motorcycle riding ones, the big spinning light-up wheel that you can STOP the pointer at for points, skee-ball, and air hockey.  Man, has air hockey gotten advanced.  When you score a point, you can do a impromptu scratching and rapping sequence.

I’m *mostly* so happy right now.

In short, I finally have the Hacked Guitar Hero II DVD working on my playstation.  This is where I can play other songs instead of just Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II.  My goal isn’t necessarily to play just this hacked version – my goal is to be able to make my own custom songs with all the songs I already own, but this is a MAJOR step towards that goal.

The GOOD news about this custom hacked version (you can find it on various torrent sites) is:

The few songs I like on the song list:

• Journey’s “Separate Ways” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” (that’s right, TWO journey songs!  woohoo!)
• Three words: Stairway to Heaven
• Scorpion’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane”
• “Land of Confusion” by Disturbed
• Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal”
• Europe’s “The Final Countdown”

I also like the funny little sayings throughout the game.  Like instead of Easy, it’s called “LOL”.  Medium is called “Wimp”, Hard is “WOW” and Expert is “Insane”. 

Take a look at the failure screen:

And the old screen that it had when you paused the game said “PAUSED” at the top, but now it says “WHY YOU STOP”.  And when you get star power, it uses hacker terms like uber and haxx0r.

The BAD news is:

• It locks up on some previews of some songs, forcing a restart, which means loading the Swap Magic CD in again, then waiting, then putting in the hacked version.  Seems this would have been preventable after reading the forums, but until I make my own darned custom songs DVD’s, I guess I can’t talk.
• Most of the songs aren’t my cup of tea.  I mean, out of sixty-something songs, the above list is about all I’ll play on them.  Granted, I need to give them a chance but basically I’ve never heard of most of it.  Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised because surely someone had to have a reason to go through all the work to put these songs together.  I went ahead and put the entire song list on the hacked version down in the extended entry as well.
• No multi-difficulty ability on multiplayer.  Simply put, you can’t have someone play Expert while the other plays Easy.  But when I do my own version, I’ll be sure to do that.  Also, most of the songs don’t have any “easy” or “medium” setting.  I hear the other “guitar hero purists” on the forums saying “hey, we’re all expert here” but I have people I share my game with that can’t play expert but like the songs.  So my next huge project (which I’ve already started) is to do my own songs, just the way I want them.
• It’s evident that some of the people who put together the midi files for the songs (that’s the part that controls what notes come down during the song, and when) just simply don’t know music as well as they should.  They’re missing notes, or the notes go down instead of up, or choose to continue playing the rhythm instead of the lead.  So much improvement can be made to some of the songs.   A good example is Stairway To Heaven – there’s an obvious part where the acoustic guitar kind of doubles-up it’s it’s arpeggio-style melody and the Guitar Hero version just stays the same. 
• While most of the songs are mostly in sync, it’s still not perfect.  So you sometimes have to WATCH the notes and play at the right time instead of actually playing EXACTLY with the song itself.  I think I recall that mostly in Rock You Like a Hurricane.

The rest of this post, in the extended entry, shows some of my screen shots of sight-reading the game.  I hereby assert and testify that these shots are my first time trying out these songs, and I’m pretty darned proud of them.

I went through a bit of pain and grief to get all of this to work, so I’ll likely document it in another post in case it helps others.  In short, I bought Magic Keys 2 and Swap Magic 3.8 from modchip.com (I probably should have bought it from mod-chip.com) but ended up having to use the “tape method” on the sensor on the inside because the 3rd tool just wouldn’t work on my version of the slimline.

Now when Guitar Hero hits the Wii, that will be a splendid time guaranteed for all.  Except custom song fanatics.

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I’ve entered into an online Guitar Hero tournament.

Yes, it’s one of those things that, well, I have no plans at all at winning.  I just want some experience.  I’m thinking these things come down to who, out of the people who finished the song 100%, can make the highest 100% score.  With the game allowing you to strum a note when there’s no note to strum, you can still hit 100% of the notes and not make the highest score.  This is because the longer you play perfectly (and by perfectly, I mean not only hitting every note but NOT “hitting” a note that’s not there), your score multipler increases, up to 4x.

Then there’s the Star Power (SP) factor.  The first part of SP is that it doubles your points while it’s active, giving a potential of 8x per note.  The second part is that you can use your whammy bar to increase how fast you accumulate SP on the long notes.  So not only can one person get 100% of the notes, but get more Star Power, to gain more points in the same note string, but the person can figure out and map exactly where to engage Star Power within the song to maximize what note streaks are doubled.  Since how long Star Power lasts is measured in, um, measures (time), the sections of the song that have more notes would score more during SP than other sections that have fewer notes.

This is something I choose to do on vacation.

You may wonder how an online tournament is played – I mean, how are the scores identified, and couldn’t people cheat?  Well, the participants send in their scores to the Tournament Manager, and you have to send in a photo of the “newspaper” you get when you finish the song, and it has to have the name you registered in the tournament as.

We’re in our first round, and each round is 24 hours.  Songs are randomly assigned to each pair.  So I have until 10pm eastern tonight to get the best score I have of the song “Bad Reputation” and submit it and see if I can beat Guissiah. 

Thank goodness for a losers bracket.

For posterity’s sake, I’m documenting how happy I am at the beginning of this tournament.

I’m getting a little closer to heaven every day.  When news like this hits me from out of the blue, it just warms my day.  It’s like I hit the Guitar Hero lottery!

They’re going to release a Rocks the 80s installment (the final, supposedly) of the awesome Guitar Hero series

Check out the wiki entry for updated info, but this bad boy is expected to be released next month.  

Here’s a brief list of songs that I’m looking forward to playing with my plastic guitar simulacrum:

• “I Wanna Rock” – Twisted Sister
• “Metal Health” – Quiet Riot
• “Lonely is the Night” – Billy Squier
• “Synchronicity II” – The Police
• “Heat of the Moment” – Asia
• “Round and Round” – Ratt
• “Holy Diver” – Dio
• “Seventeen” – Winger

There are others, of course, and a few that they haven’t even announced yet.  The GH forums are abuzz with pleading for Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, and I can definitely second that – Eddie Van Halen’s solo would be great to try to play.  “Beat It” would be a great guitar hero song, but then again, so would anything from Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, etc.  I hope they figure out whatever licensing they need to in order to get some real classics on there.

I’ve pre-ordered my copy and am waiting salaciously for it to arrive at my house and greet my PS2 and my family.  RedOctane is offering a free T-shirt with the pre-order, so if you wanna get in on the action, you don’t have much longer to do so.  My only minor beef is that they only go to XL and don’t offer a XXL, but I guess the average rock guitarist is pretty thin.

Don’t you think I’d look great in one of these T-shirts?