It's been a long time, but Led Zeppelin still rock
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One feature I would like to see on the Roomba, is the ability to put it on a rug and tell it, "Clean this rug." At which point the Roomba would stay on the rug, and clean only it. The iRobot company does allow you to program your Roomba if you are so inclined, so maybe I could whip up an algorithm for that, but I'm probably not that good. And at some point in the future, a combination Roomba/Scooba would be awesome - just one self contained floor cleaning machine. Another weak point is corners; since the Roomba is round, it naturally can't get all the way into the corners, but it the area left uncleaned is really quite small.

Overall, I'm really impressed. If you don't have one already, and a $99 Roomba deal crosses Woot.com or any other site, I highly recommend picking one up. It did a great job removing dirt and dust from the hard floors, and an even better job on the carpets. If you have a lot of animal (or - shudder - body) hair or if you just haven't cleaned in a really long time, it can get overwhelmed and fill it's collection bin pretty fast, and might not pick up as much until you empty the bin. But then it's not really a spring cleaning kind of machine, it's more of a once or twice a week press-the-clean-button-before-going-to-work-and-there's-no-more-dust-when-you-get-home kind of cleaning. Or if you have the scheduling kind like me, you can just set it to clean at say 1300 every Wednesday and never worry about it since it just returns to its charging station in the corner when it's done (just have to remember to empty the bin every so often).

Errr... 5/5 stars for Roomba. 

Garden State

Wri: Zach Braff

Dir: Zach Braff

Date: 2004   —   DVD

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Rating:

Like Lost In Translation , Garden State conveys as much through its tone, pacing, music, and non-dialogue sequences as it does through the words we hear from the actors' mouths. Also akin to Sofia Coppola's soul search script is that while there are physical events transpiring on the screen in front of our eyes, the real story lies in the inner journeys the characters take.

I appreciate how bits of story are told through context and not spelled out for me, which I think helps put me in the perspective of the main character and keeps the focus of the movie. The dry, subtle humor was perfect and didn't interrupt the tone while still providing laughs.

I'm not completely sure how I want to rate Garden State. I think it's a better movie than how I liked it; and I think I liked it less than I should; but I want to see more movies like it; and I want to like it differently from how it made me feel.

Objective Score 4/5 - It doesn't quite have what it takes to be a great movie, but it is very good.

Subjective Score 5/5  - This is really closer to a 4.5 out of 5, but I gave it 5 stars in Netflix because I feel like it needed to be in that category rather than the 4/5.

Wri: Lowell Ganz (based on screenplay and book by Nick Hornby);

Dir: Farrelly Brothers

Date: 1997   —   DVD

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Ok, so I can't even make it up to 15 minutes without talking about what's wrong with this movie - so this is a live one. He's supposed to be obsessed with baseball, and so far every spare minute he has he's playing around with a football. WTF?

Rock climbing doesn't work that way. If someone is pulling you up the climbing wall with a rope, IT'S NOT CLIMBING NOW IS IT!?!? 

14mins 36secs, still super-lame.

What? Super-lameness continues - line about the protagonist (who has so far only had one tiny mention about baseball) : "something's not quite right." Yes. Because apparently this lady's special sports-team-obsession sense it tingling! Isn't it obvious?

Thank god. 21 minutes: finally getting better.

28:40 - lame again.

still lame.

not getting any unlamer.

Drew Barrymore says, "I've never really been good at servicing myself..." It wasn't supposed to be funny. BTW, it kinda looked like it was getting better, but it's still lame.

There's no real bonding. They don't bond. It's all just like they're reading off cue cards and trying not to pronounce any of the words wrong.

Still lame. 45:12. I can't believe there's an hour to go... :-(

It's so uphill and downhill. The gameday scenes are great. The scenes of the game being played and the atmosphere of the stadium crowd are very entertaining and lend a great feel to movie, but every non-game scene just totally loses it. The story's focus isn't in the right place.

Around and hour and it's starting to get better. Better now. Still has some lingering lameness occasionally.

They do a good job on the ending, but movie watchers just shouldn't have to sit through an hour to get something good.

It's got a cheery tone, which is not inherently a bad thing, but I think there needs to be more angst or anxiety around the protagonist to show the depths of his obsession. He doesn't sell it, and I don't buy it.

The soundtrack is good, but then you can't go wrong with songs about Boston. "Dirty Water" is an all-time favorite.

Only 2/5 stars

It's a phone-in. It had promise, but every time it showed through, the script would turn around and start talking about something else.

Wri: Alan Jay Lerner; Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Date: 1954   —   DVD

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Ok, so I'm not really one for musicals, but I do like older movies, and the description of the story of Brigadoon was interesting to me so I had some high hopes for it. I was disappointed a little, but overall it's a good movie.

The first thing I noticed that set me off and started to lose me were the funny argyle tights. We're talkin' spandex here. Argyle. I'm pretty sure that's not Scottish dress of any time period, let alone 1748 or whenever they're supposed to be from. Why don't they all just wear kilts? Most of them did - it was only a few that wore the tights, and it's not like they were all doing splits and flying through the air ballet style or anything. It was mostly just frolicking around. The argyle tights really lost me.

The first 30 seconds are a great opener to the movie. The sing-song narration sets the tone for some mystical happenings, but then goes off-'kilt'er with a confusing song & dance piece that is supposed to establish setting. It does establish a setting, but the problem is we don't know where this setting is. It could be the North Pole for all we know. It's just confusing. This part should have either been the intro, or occurred after Tommy and Jeff agree they are lost and catch a glimpse of the village. Also two of the main characters are featured in this scene, but they aren't and haven't been introduced yet, so it's unclear why they are the focus and why they share a hostile look between them.

I was looking to use an adjectival form of the word animus in the previous sentence, but i don't think it exists. Bueller? 

Despite the confusing start, it's an enjoyable progression. The sets are very pretty in a Disney fairy tale kind of way, and it's crazy to think the entire thing is inside. It gets better as the movie progresses. The underlying premise is good, although a little bit too much of a heavy-handed Christian explanation of it for my tastes. I'll chalk it up to the 1950's though and ignore it. Again, the further the movie progresses, the better it gets. I could, however, do with all the song and dance pieces being cut in half. Because about that time in each of them, I was getting ready for the plot to move on, but they just kept on dancing.

The ending was good but left me wanting for knowledge of Jeff's situation. What happened to him? As far as we know he's just standing there at the end of the bridge in the mist. And in my mind, he's the one who needed Brigadoon the most. If it were me, I'd have him say, "Aw, what the heck!" and traipse across the bridge to find the rowdy shepherd girl. Would that really have been so hard to write in?

So, the scores... 

Objective 3/5 - It would be ranked a bit higher, but it has some mandatory deductions for poor structure and poorly explained plot. The important plot points are glossed over as if they didn't matter, and not in a mysterious guess why kind of way, but in a there's-some-really-heavy-shit-going-on-here,-but-lets-sing-a-happy-song-instead! kind of way.

Subective 3/5 - I wish some things were different, and if I liked the song and dance more, I'd probably give it 4 stars. But as it stands, I'll mark it up as an "I liked it." Despite the argyle tights, it does a very good job of transporting you to another place.

Wri: Nick Hornby; Dir: David Evans

Date: 1997   —   DVD

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Rating:

Having just finished the book, I decided to check out the 1997 movie. In addition to penning the novel, Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay for this movie.

Instead of trying to tell the entire story of the book (which isn't really entirely movie material), it takes two slices from the book and twines them together into a clean-cut start-to-finish tale. Scenes from the main character's formative childhood years are spliced into the main story at intervals to give us the background on what makes him tick, and at times parallel the present day events of the story.

I think it's a bit funny that the end of movie credits contain the standard disclaimer "All characters are fictional... in no way depict actual persons... similarities to persons living or dead are coincidental...", when the screenplay is based on a book, that is based on the author's life. While many aspects of the movie are fabrications, much of the content clearly based on the author's life (according to his book), and one can hardly say it's "coincidence". That being said, I think the movie does a stand-up job of telling the slightly-altered-for-movie-format story.

Much like the book, any sports fan or anyone who has ever "obsessed" over anything can relate to the protagonist, and if not, then probably relate to the leading lady's point of view (and generally everyone else's as well).

The good news is that it's an enjoyable movie, and I though Nick Hornby did an excellent job to come up with a story based on the book that was suitable for film. I also only had to use subtitles for one word of the dialogue, and in my defense it's not even a real word (the word was "crapness", FYI). The bad news is that it just lacked a certain something to make it a great movie. Maybe it was too much like real life, or the script and dialog needed to be a bit tighter. I'm not sure, but for me it gets 3/5 stars. Subjectively I want to give it half a star more, but we're stuck with the whole-star rating system, so 3 stars it is. 3 stars = "I liked it"; 4 stars = "I really liked it". I just liked it.

The other bad news is that I have to watch the 2005 Hollywood version now, so I can see how the two movies differ. Other than that, I have no interest watching this version. I think some aspects of the sport won't come across well or have the same influence on the plot and characters. I just don't think the threat of getting hit with a line-drive foul ball compares with the threat of fan violence or being one of 100 people getting crushed to death at a game. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

by Nick Hornby

Date: 1992   —   Paperback Book

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I just finished reading Nick Hornby's famous book Fever Pitch. I'm about to pop in the 1997 English movie version and see what they did with it. I've heard it's at least somewhat like the book, unlike the American movie version which only has a title and an obsessed sports fan in common. The text below is my Shelfari review. I'd link to the book on my "shelf" directly, but I don't think the site is structured that way. You can view my Shelfari shelf by clicking on the Shelfari logo on the "virtual bookshelf" in the sidebar of the blog.

Overall I found the book a decent read, especially if you like football.

While I liked the organizational structure of the book where football matches replace chapters, I found it to be disorienting at times when, for example, a chapter labeled as a match in 1978 would also discuss a match in 1989. While usually interesting, these anachronistic asides tended to ruin the flow of the book for me, especially when the discussion of the future was prolonged (as was the case at least twice).

I also found the middle of the book to be a bit bland. I was captivated by the beginning and the end of the book, but something lost me in the middle.

On a positive note, Nick Hornby's description of himself and his "obsession" with his football team as he goes through life is bravely soul-baring in his recognition of the choices he's made and an interesting look inside his head. His descriptions of matches, mobs, and fans are equally engrossing, and lend color and context to his story. Even though I was only able to identify maybe two of the players named in the book, the author's descriptions of them and having their names repeated made me feel like I was watching the ones who mattered him.

(Not that I'm disappointed - just surprised.)

Given: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , mathematical and philosophical genius, discoverer of calculus and polymath (I had to look it up, too).

How can one man be responsible for such acts of scientific genius as well as immortalizing himself as a delicious chocolaty biscuit? Alas, he is not responsible for inventing my afternoon snack, instead he is merely its namesake.

So, Choco Leibniz and Leibniz - related.
Chocobo and Choco Leibniz - no relation (I didn't even have to look this one up).

And there you have it, another one of life's mysteries solved. My brain,  however, is somehow still thinking of a Renaissance Man who is both man and cookie, riding a Chocobo off into the sunset... or maybe he is the favorite treat of the Chocobo...?

Hiroshi Inagaki, Hideji Hojo, Tokuhei Wakao, Eiji Yoshikawa

Date: 1954   —   DVD / VHS

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I originally watched this trilogy and wrote these notes in January of 2006, and am just releasing them now.

The Samurai Trilogy is based on the book Musashi Miyamoto by Eiji Yoshikawa. Beginning the series, one might think this film to be an Akira Kurasawa work, but it is not. Hiroshi Inagaki carefully crafts the complicated crusade of capable samurai warrior Musashi (yay - alliteration!).

Plots based on real stories often make the best films, and Musashi Miyamoto, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, and Duel at Ganryu Island are all  great films telling a powerful story.

Here's the overall breakdown.

Musashi Miyamoto: 4/5 stars
story telling a little rough in the first 1/2
merely the beginning of the plots to come, the tip of the proverbial iceberg

Duel at Ichijoji Temple: 5/5 stars
Amazing fight scenes.
show musashi's tactical genius, physical strength, and skill
intricate emotional plot

Duel at Ganryu Island: 5/5 stars
Amazing final battle
tension built through the first two movies finally comes to a head.

One aspect of these films that I was fascinated by, were the fight scenes. Without any special effects, camera angles are
expertly employed so that sword cuts and jabs are never directly seen hitting their mark in a close-up. But the convincing movements of Toshiro Mifune as Musashi make the final blows seem more real than actually seeing a flesh and blade connection.

And don't forget the twisted Romeo and Juliet style tragic love story, and the social commentary on war. Combined with the excellent progression of the plot and development of Mushasi as a human being being evenly spread throughout the three films, this series is a treasure. Unlike many trilogies, the second film in the Samurai Trilogy does not get lost, but provides a natural transition and engrossing, progressive plot. The tension builds and continues until the end of the final film in ways that I wish would be seen more in modern trilogies.

(the rest of the road trip is in the works, but here's a rundown of my test drives)

Audi A3
200hp Turbo, FWD

Audi terms this car a "sportback". It's got an extra window between the rear doors and the hatch, so it's not fully a hatchback, but also not a full-size wagon like the A4. It comes in two engine configurations a 2.0L, 200hp, 4CYL Turbo with FWD, and a 3.2L, 250hp V6 with AWD. After driving the 2.0L turbo, I didn't even want to test out the V6. Unless you want the Quattro all wheel drive, forget the V6, and stick with the 4-cylinder. It's plenty zippy enough, and the turbo doesn't lag at all. Later, doing some interweb research, I heard that the AWD adds enough weight to bog down the V6, so that many owners preferred the 2.0L. Every time I stepped on the gas for a hard acceleration, the car jumped ahead without any delay including an uphill highway on-ramp merge. As Jason mentioned, the DSG is pretty awesome. It's the same tech used in racecars, where the rules are that the driver has to be in control of gear changes, but the change can be implemented in any way - thus the DSG and paddle shifters.
To make a long story short: this is my next car.

Volkswagon GTI
200hp Turbo, FWD

VW and Audi shared the same building so we also peeked at the A3's less posh cousin, the GTI. The GTI is a hatchback, without the extra windows behind the rear doors. It had fewer blind spots than the A3, but was less comfortable, and the driver's seat was lower to the ground. The spec sheets all say that the GTI has quicker 0-60 and 0-100 times than the A3, but it felt less responsive and a little weaker than the A3 when I drove it. They have the same engines, so I'm guessing that either the power bands are slightly different, or it was all just in my head. Either way, the A3 was more what I was looking for in the way of comfort and style.

Volkswagon Eos???

We took a gander at the new VW Eos,  a hardtop convertible that looks pretty slick and reminds me of the retro Ford Thunderbird convertibles. At the time, VW's website didn't even have any info up about the Eos, and there were only 10 or so of them in all of Los Angeles. It was cool, but not really for me.

Mini Cooper S
Auto, Convertible

When we walked into the Mini dealership, and I asked the sales rep for recommendations on a model, he asked me if I wanted to have fun or have a lot of fun. I was told that the regular Coop' didn't have a responsive enough transmission and power to make it into the "lot of fun" category. The S convertible was a lot of fun, however judging by our 4 day vegas trip, we'd max out the space pretty easily. The convertible has a "back seat", and the hard-top has folding rear seats in addition to the hatch. It would be a great second car, but it really didn't have enough room for carrying even everyday shopping purchases. The really cool thing about it is that in a car that small, you don't really need mirrors, and parallel parking is a breeze. Just stand up a little bit in your seat, and you can see the front a back bumpers to squeeze into a not-really-a-parking-space.

Mini Cooper JCW edition

Do you remember in Ferris Buellers's Day Off when Matthew Broderick is talking about the Ferrari? Well, the same goes for the JCW. "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up." If the Mini is fun, and the S is a lot of fun, the JCW is the S times 10. Incidentally, I'd like to add that the Mini sales guy who drove the cars off the lot for me was an insane driver. He was never out of control, but he definitely put those cars right to their limits. I can confirm that the seat belts do their job quite well, and the seats also do a good job of holding one in place. He actually pulled the JCW off the lot rather carefully as he'd been reprimanded for burning rubber in the lot before. The JCW has an all around stiffer and lower suspension than the S, and a sport manual transmission. After driving around the 10 year old Mazda Protege, it took considerable mental effort to remember the clutch difference and not squeal the tires with every gearshift during my brief test drive.

Toyota FJ Cruiser

This auto is kinda like a heavyweight Jeep. It was fun, and felt like it would be an off-road beast, but felt a bit sluggish compared to my 4dr 4wd Tacoma. Maybe the transmission needed some breaking in. It definitely is not an around-town driver, so it wasn't really appropriate for me, but I thought I'd check it out anyway. The manual transmission was good, and the clutch pedal was in a pretty good place, even for a taller driver like me. It still felt really heavy and had poor visibility for me, so overall I didn't like it.

Toyota Prius (2007)

I wanted to like the Prius so badly, but I just couldn't. If i can't fit my knees under the steering wheel, I'm not going to comfortable driving it, and that's that. I'm not freakishly tall - I'm 6'2" - but I felt like I had to be at least 5'10" or under to be comfortable. The steering wheel had a very limited range of adjustment. Probably just enough so they could claim it was adjustable in the specs. The mini is just as small, and I fit fine in it, so why can't I fit in a Prius? Visibility was a little weird out the back glass panel, kinda like the old Honda CRX. Supposedly the 2008 model features a roomier interior. And here's a tip for all car makers: telescoping steering wheel.

Create your own Simpsons Avatar here .

And of course, I have to say, because it is awesome, "SPIDER-PIG!!!"

First, it rained. In Los Angeles. In the summer.

Second, it's humid. In Los Angeles. Everywhere in Los Angeles.

Third, I went to work today. My first day of work. After nearly a month of not going to work.

Yes, what a strange day it's been.

The bride and groom presented roses to their parents during the ceremony. This took all of 30 seconds, but there was a special song being played while this happened, so the soon to be married couple went and stood next to the minister for the remaining minute waiting for the song to end. I kept thinking to myself, "Isn't this the part where they're supposed to kiss?" The song finally ended and they were pronounced married, but it was an awkward minute wondering what was going on up there.

Supposedly the bride and groom had agreed ahead of the wedding that neither of them would messily squish cake all over the other's face. But that didn't go nearly as planned. The bride stalked out in a fit after leaving the groom's daughter to pick globs of icing off his face. But they made up later.

It was good to see all the east coast peeps after so long, and I'm sad I didn't get to see everyone. Thanks to everyone who offered to put me up during my homeless, carless wandering.

I fixed a bunch of posts that got screwed up from their RSS feed, including two that got pulled in out of order. They make more sense now.

There are a lot of cool features on Vox. I like being able to easily pull together collections of media. Especially books or DVDs. Add a new media item is as simple as searching on the title, which actually searches within Amazon.com. But overall, the site isn't customizable enough. They don't even have the ability to specify alt text or a target on links. It's a very snazzy site, with a nice look and all AJAXy and stuff, but I need my customization.

Once installed, it took several minutes to catalog all the media on my computer, and for the PS3 to detect said media. I was rather disappointed in the catalog structure that TwonkyMedia provided. Instead of just exposing individual, unique media, it exposed file system paths to that media which ended up creating a sizable network folder structure to browse through in the PS3 interface. Aliases and different access paths created multiple routes to browse to the same media file. On top of that, the PS3 automatically separates media into three categories: Pictures, Audio, and Video. In each PS3 category, all possible media paths were exposed, but only media of the category type could be played from that category.

The PS3 has some media limitations, such it can't play windows media files, although if TwonkyMedia exposed a file as media, the PS3 showed the file even if it couldn't play it. None of the the music in iTunes that I copied from CDs I own was visible - only those which I bought from the iTunes store - which I assume is a decision on TwonkyVision's part. I also didn't see any DVD or video_ts folders or media.

Of the media I played on the PS3 via TwonkyMedia, the streaming was fast and the quality was excellent. I don't know if the PS3 was doing any upscaling to the full HD of my PS3's native output, but the video I saw looked excellent. Better even than if I were to maximize a QuickTime window on my laptop's 17 inch widescreen.

Here comes the dealbreaker. While I think the PS3 needs to have wider media compatibility, I was pleased with the media I was able to play. My major gripe comes from the software side of things. I noticed my laptop's battery life had drastically shortened of late. The battery is only a couple months old. Doing some battery knowledge base searching, I came across the following KB article: Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime. I checked my system performance, and sure enough, TwonkyMedia was consistently taking up between 70% and 90% of my CPU resources at any given point in time regardless of if it was actively cataloging content or not. I don't even know how much of a spike there would be if media were being streamed.

After uninstalling TwonkyMedia, my computer and battery are back to normal, and if I want to view some media on my computer on the big screen, I'll do it the old school way with a video cable (which works quite well, BTW) until some better DLNA software comes out for Mac OSX.

Just to round out the information side of this post, here is a list of articles from the Apple knowledge base about Lithium-Ion batteries / the MacBook/Pro battery info:

• Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance
• MacBook and MacBook Pro: Battery not recognized after being fully drained
• Tips for maximizing your Notebook battery charge
• Determining Battery Cycle Count
• Apple portable computer's battery does not show a full charge in Mac OS X
• Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime
• Lithium-ion Batteries
• Apple Notebook Battery Life

Way back in my early college Ultimate days, I found out that there was another Ultimate player who had my same name. Or I had his same name. He's older. We have the same name - first and last. Neither of our names are very common names, and to top it off, we're both Ultimate players. We first crossed paths with some very brief confusion on RSD when I was on the east coast and he was out here in California.

Now that I'm in California, I've met some people who know him, although he has since moved to Ohio. So our paths never crossed. Until two weeks ago that is. Playing in a beach Ultimate tournament in Long Beach, the two of us were finally in the same place and played against each other in the same game at one point.

What else to do while the laundry is running other than video games and blogging? I picked up a freeware timer application for OSX from Apimac with the indecipherable name Timer 3.0. It's good. It's free. It helps one keep track of the laundry.

I also picked up from the PSN the other day Super Stardust HD. It is absolutely worth every penny of the $7.99 it cost to download. If you have a PS3, you should download this game, especially if you're and old school gamer like me self. This game is like Asteroids on a cocktail of sensory enhancing drugs.

I submitted a two week notice of resignation just less than two weeks ago, and after one week went by, the company put me on paid time off. This is presumably to save money on insurance since now I'm stuck with COBRA coverage for July and August (my new job doesn't start insurance coverage until after I've been there for one month), but I still get salary for that time.

I was shocked by how light it was. It is actually lighter than most ordinary mobile phones. If you thought you would love it, you'll love it. If you thought you would hate, you'll love it. It just has the most useful and simple features. Other phones have had the same features, but they weren't simple, and because of that, not useful. You have to try it for yourself to understand.

If a waiter stopped by right now to take your order, what cocktail or drink are you having?

I just had a giant bowl of phở for lunch so I would prefer an after dinner type drink. Something a little on the sweet side and cold, to offset the hot and salty soup. Maybe an ice wine or a lychee flavored martini. Or a plum wine, especially if I had just eaten sushi. Schnaps would work too. None of these are "the usual" though. Don't be mislead by the question title.

It used to be the case when buying video games that one would have to take a risk and purchase a game based solely on its title and description. If you didn't like the game, you were basically shit out of luck. If you had a friend who had bought the game, you could try before buying. If a game was popular enough or had a big enough marketing budget, you could find a playable demo in a kiosk somewhere, or possibly it had an arcade version that you knew it would mirror. With the new generation of games ranking at $50 and $60 a pop, casual gamers like me are pretty unwilling to play a crapshoot and purchase a random game.

The Unreliable Narrator & Other Questionable Paths:

Most people I know don't subscribe to games magazines, but thanks mostly to the Internet, more avenues are available for gamers to search for content. There are many online game review websites where one can glean valuable descriptions of games, but the rating numbers attached to reviewed games are largely useless. Since most ratings fall within the mediocre range of 7 to 8.5, you can only really filter out the horribly bad games and the ace in the hole good games. And, really, you already knew about these - I mean did you really think "Build Barbie's Dream House" was going to be good? Plus there is the kickback factor. How many of those review websites give favorable or boosted ratings for games in exchange for some payola or out of fear for losing existing advertisers who supply the majority of their income?

Even with all the online information available about games, there's still no guarantee that your opinions will be the same as a reviewer's. So there's still nothing like try before you buy to clinch or break a deal. If you do your gaming on a PC you can DL some \/\/@R3Z and cracks to try an "evaluation" copy of the game, but now you're a pirate and you've wasted hours of time trying to find the complete files and infected your computer with 15 different viruses. But what about us console gamers? No warez or cracks for us without installing a questionable hardware mod. And games companies have proven that they can adapt to the mod market by preventing new games from running on modded consoles. Not on my PS3, no thank you.

How It Is - A Panacea:

Enter: online digital distribution for consoles. The best thing to happen to the console market since the advent of backwards compatibility. If you own one of the new-gen consoles, you've probably already found the joy of online digital distribution. Game demos are available for download directly onto your console. If the game is small enough, you can event purchase the full version. This is brilliant! I love it. Now I can play demos of games in the comfort of my own home and decide if it's worth it for me to spend the cash to pick up a copy. If the game is small enough to carry a small pricetag, it may even qualify for an impulse buy.

Another historical hurdle for console owners was the artificial market segmentation created by region encoding games. So that in the days of the PS2, if I moved from the United States to England or Australia or any other region as defined by Sony, games I bought in that country wouldn't work on my console. I would have to either mail order games from the U.S. or purchase another console in my new country. The flip side of this is that game distribution is localized per country. if there were a game I really wanted to purchase and play, but it was only being localized and distributed in another country, I would not be able to play it on my console if I imported it.

With the PS3, Sony has all but made region encoding for games extinct. If a game targeted for UK gamers is only released in the UK and not in the U.S., I can buy that game and still have it play on my console. Games themselves may still region encode, so that if a game is distributed with multiple languages it will play in English for me in the U.S, but a gamer in Japan using the same disc would play the game in Japanese. I'm not sure if creating a profile under a different region/language affects region segmented content on a disc or not, though.

The Problem & How It Could Be Better:

This brings us to the problems I've encountered on the Playstation Network (PSN) store. An anticipated game has just released a demo on the PSN and there is Big Buzz about it on Teh InterWebz. Because the game hasn't been localized for different languages yet, it is only available in it's native Japanese from the Japanese PSN store, accessible only by a Japanese PSN account. So I created a Japanese PSN account and downloaded the game (which is brilliant by the way - give it a try - it's called "FolksSoul" - see below for specific localization complaints). This led me to some thinking: what other localization differences are there on other PSN stores? I decided to find out.

I created an United Kingdom account, which being a primarily English speaking region, should be easy to access. Lo and behold, there in the UK region sit demos for games that were not released in the U.S. region! And not just demos for games I can buy in the U.S., but small full version games available for demo, download, and purchase that are not offered in the U.S. at all! I've found a veritable treasure-trove of new online content to play with. I downloaded. I played. I even liked one of the games so much that I wanted to purchase the full version.

Uh-oh. Can I purchase it? It's in British pounds. No problem. My credit card will automatically do a currency conversion with the daily rate and charge me a nominal fee for their troubles. With this realization, I was off to my digital wallet to transfer funds. All went well until I entered my credit card billing address. At the bottom of the address form were the words "United Kingdom" in uneditable text. These words were automatically appended to my address, ensuring that my credit card would not authorize. Or was it the PSN store itself that filtered out my address? I guess I'll never know. Somebody doesn't want me to buy this game.

Why the artificial barrier? Is it economic? No, the game isn't even offered in the U.S. The SCEA (the American localization branch of Sony) decided that Americans wouldn't like the game, so we weren't even given the option of trying it. Is the game in a foreign language that I can't understand? No, it's in English. I had no problem understanding any of it. Is it the cost of distribution? No, it's online. The distribution costs are minimal. Is it because I could accidentally purchase a game intended for a different market thinking it was intended for me? No, I had to jump through the many hoops required to specifically set up a PSN account for a foreign region to even look in the store.

And why hold back demos for a specific region? It's free advertising and marketing! It exposes your users to games they would otherwise never even look at twice. Games developers know the market is competitive - they don't intentionally make duds. You prescreen and certify games, Sony, so there shouldn't be any crap material going up on the PSN.

So why the artificial barrier Sony? The more demos you make available to me, the more games I can screen, and the more games I'll be willing to buy. Let me purchase content from any region I want online, regardless of language or other barriers. I'm OK with having to set up a separate account to access other regional content. That barrier is good, but deciding for me what content I will and won't like is condescending. Let me choose for myself.

Localization Naming - We're Not Stupid:

My criticism of SCEA's localization is about the stereotypical business school marketing case: making sure the name of your product is appropriate and attractive for each region it is sold. In this specific case, it is about the game (as titled in Japan) "FolksSoul". For the U.S. release, the SCEA has decided to rename the game "FolkLore". The problem I have is that I like the name "FolksSoul" better because a) it sounds cooler, and b) it is more descriptive of the game than "FolkLore".

The game involves a folk / fairy tale plot, during which your character must physically rip the souls out of malicious fairy land creatures. The title "FolksSoul" describe these two characterizing aspects of the game, and also sounds a bit mysterious at the same time. "FolkLore" is a word with a dictionary definition, and it makes me think of a less dynamic game that could either be a folk tale themed platformer or straight role-playing game. It does not imply any soul ripping at all.

With all of the cryptic names for existing video games over the years, I can't think of any reason why "FolkLore" is considered a better name in the U.S. than "FolksSoul". If you think it's some kind of religious, puritan thing, then why didn't they change the name of any of the "Soul Reaver" games? If you have any suggestions on this I'd like to hear them, because it's a mystery to me.