2 hours and a half hours

That was the length of my new commute to work today. My car's dead, that much I've mentioned before. So, today was the first day of work for me without a car. That meant that I got to explore the rich wonderland known as public transportation.

Now, by and large, my experience was fine. It took a little longer than I wanted it to in order for me to get from San Mateo to San Fran. But, no biggie. I enjoyed not driving, I was able to finish my latest GameDeveloper article, and I just happen to love trains. So, all around - good.

Unfortunately, I read the schedule wrong for the Presidigo Shuttle, the free shuttle that will take me from BART (San Fran's subway system) to my office in the Presidio. Turns out I looked at the info in Insert A when I should have looked at Insert B on the Presidigo schedule info. Stupid me. What does it mean? It means I showed up a half an hour late for the last shuttle to the Presidio.

Frustratingly, absolutely no one anywhere downtown seemed to know anything about the Presidigo. It's some sort of weirdo ghost train that just shows up, drops off Presidio phantoms, and disappears. There are no signs for it. None of the transit system workers know anything about it. So, I didn't know I was late for a while. I stood around waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a ghost train that never arrived. It was awhile before I actually made the realization that the ghost train was not coming. So, I decided I'd start walking. I figured I'd walk until I found an ATM and then get a taxi to work.

Turns out I found the one freakin' street in San Francisco that doesn't have an ATM. I ended up walking about a mile before I found both a taxi stand and an ATM next to each other and finally made it to work.

My favorite part of the taxi ride was when the taxi driver got a call on his cellphone, turned around to me and held a finger up to his mouth as if to say "Shhhh ... don't let this person know you're here." Quoth the raven: Bweh?! Is this guy moonlighting as a taxi driver? Why would a taxi driver need to sound like he didn't have passengers? Part of me felt like I'd wandered into an 80s comedy movie where this guy was trying to fool his in-laws into thinking he was a nuclear brain surgeon diplomat when in reality he just drives a cab.

Well, buddy, you're secret's safe with me. Oh ... well, except that I just blogged about it. Guess it's not safe with me. Sorry, guy.

if we were all three-toed sloths ...

We'd probably have a base-6 number system. That being the case, I would have celebrated today at the age of 18. Instead, being humans and all, today is my 30th birthday and the beginning of my third decade on Earth.

And I rang it in watching the finale of "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and watching my brother horribly attempt to perform the Running Man, which was much funnier than Deuce Bigalow.

So, here it is - 30. I feel significantly less introspective than I would have imagined. I attribute it to the fact that I have always been the youngest person in my department at work. Therefore, I'm surrounded by people already in their 30s and I end up feeling as though that's where I am already. I certainly don't feel like I'm a part of the "where am I going? What am I doing?" crowd of mid-20 somethings who live with their parents these days.

As for where I've come from, ten years ago today I was about to leave for England for college. I was single. I lived with my parents. I had a new car. I looked pretty different; 40 pounds thinner, I hadn't started to shave my head yet, etc.

Now, here I am 10 years later. I support myself and am now 4 years outside of grad school. I'm engaged to a wonderful woman and will be getting married in January. My car that was so shiny and new 10 years ago may have just breathed its last breath as it's in the shop right now and looks like it will cost more to fix than it's worth.

But the biggest change, and by far the most important change, is that I'm happy. My teen years were rough and as I turned 20, I was thrilled to kick them to the cosmic curb and trudge off into my 20s. Turns out, my 20s were pretty rough too. I found myself an outsider in a foreign country for a few years. I then did the whole "starving artist" thing in LA for a few years, still very much feeling like a foreigner in a foreign country. But then, Amanda and San Francisco and LucasArts all came into my life. Slowly but surely over the last three plus years, everything feels as though it's been falling into place. I've made a home for myself, a name for myself, a career for myself, and a life for myself with a wonderful woman.

So, it feels good. 30 feels good. And not good like I felt at 20 when I was simply happy to be done with my teens. No, 30 feels like I'm happy and optimistic because things are settling down, going smoothly, and just generally good - as opposed to just the promise of potentially being good. It's a nice calm feeling, something akin to sitting outside in the summer dusk and watching fireflies linger in the air. That's how I feel today - calm and slow. S'pose that means I'm mellowing in my old age.

Meh. Whatever. I'm happy and I'm going to go eat a piece of cake.

jane camaroni

Well, the Birthday Train keeps a-rollin' along. Today is the big 3-0 birthday for everyone's bass-playing new father, Ben! Hopefully, Simon got Ben something good for his birthday this year, that little moocher.

In honor of Ben's thirtieth birthday, here are 30 ridiculous prog-rock band names of actual bands courtesy of the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock:

- Airbridge
- Bach Two Bach
- Captain Beyond
- deathORGAN
- Exqueixada Sniff
- Flasket Brinner
- Flied Egg
- Gongzilla
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Igginbottom's Wrench
- Jade Warrior
- Jam Camp
- Kalacakra
- Kraldjursanstalten
- Lord of Mushrooms
- Moving Gelatine Plates
- Nocturno Concertante
- 101 Crustaceans
- Public Foot The Roman
- Qoph
- Raccomandata Ricevuta Ritorno
- Sperrmull
- Supersempfft
- Triangulus
- Universal Totem Orchestra
- Vampires Sound Corporation
- Waterfront Weirdos
- Xhol
- Young Scientist
- Zamla Mammaz Manna

Oh, and about the title of this post: "Jane Camaroni" is the retahded misunderstood lyric that I - at the age of 14 - thought Steven Tyler of Aerosmith kept singing on their MTV unplugged show during the song "Train Kept A-Rollin'." It didn't seem out of character for them to have a song whose lyrics went "Jane Camaroni - ALL NIGHT LONG!" What the eff did I know? Apaprently, not much.

no wonder most of the world hates us ...

We have UrbanDictionary.com.

Besides just being a respository for common and obscure slang terms (like "mac daddy" and "yoti breath" respectively), Urban Dictionary also seems to be the Great Conjuction of the internet that brings the Mystic-like A-holes together with the Skeksis-like Fucktards to create a disgusting blunderland of sexual depravity.

There are so many slang terms here for some of the most repugnant things you could ever do to another human being. Want some examples? Feel free to go on a little treasure hunt here. Take a gander at the seriously eff-ed up wonders that are terms like:

- Angry Dragon
- Pink Sock
- Strawberry Shortcake

Why anyone would do any of these things boggles my mind. Why more than one person would do them is unconscionable. That enough people even consider these things to the point that they need some kind of name to differentiate them is insane.

the waiting is the hardest part

Just delivered a new piece of music this morning. Now I'm waiting on feedback. That's my least favorite part of the gig. Concert composers get immediate feedback when they have something performed. TV and Film composers get pretty immediate feedback from the Director or Production company. Game design, however, being a creative endeavor via committee, takes a while to get "buy-in" from all of the "stake holders" involved in order to get a general consensus of feedback that then gets passed on to the "content provider" - in this case, me.

In reality, I probably won't hear anything back about the track until next Tuesday at my next scheduled meeting regarding the project. Still, every artist wants to know some feedback on their work. Otherwise you're just throwing your work into a bottomless well and never get to hear if it splashes or crashes.

That's a weird metaphor. Sorry. Oh, and I fucked up Microsoft Outlook today. Some random keystroke made it so that I now can't get rid of a visual display of every carriage return or space marker within my emails. It's ugly and it's driving me nuts. Anyone know how to turn that off? I have no idea what I accidentally hit to turn it on.

If you know how to fix it, you're my new buddy. Well, if you know how to fix it and you tell me, then you're my new buddy. Who cares if you know and just keep it to yourself, you selfish a-hole.

30 days in 60 minutes

Last night Manda and I watched the show "30 Days," the (relatively) new show from "Super-Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock. As you'd imagine from someone with a flair for documentaries and socially-minded investigations, it's a very interesting show to watch.

The episode we saw was centered around a guy named Chris who lost his job in NY as a computer programmer. For the show, he traveled to India where his job had been outsourced to in an attempt to see if he could get his old job back.

Turns out he couldn't because he now needs knowledge of India, its culture, and its regions in order to have that job. He did, however, get a job working at a call center where he had to pass a test judging how well he spoke with an American accent.

It was a fascinating show. I really recommend it. Looks like it's on FX at 10:00 on Wednesday nights. Check it out. Good stuff.

e3 is dead, long live gdc

You can read about it here if you're interested. The short version is that a bunch of the top publishers in the game industry decided that E3 - the Game Industry's mega marketing blitz held each May in Los Angeles - was too costly and had become a large, bloated, money-sucking noise-hole.

To which I couldn't agree more.

The new approach is apparently for E3 to be replaced by a number of smaller, "more intimate" events. Adios E3 trinkets, earplugs, and booth babes. Looks like you'll have to find somewhere else to make nerds think you're into them.

and I refuse to meet anyone with the last name of Cockburn

I was driving into work today listening to Howard Stern and they were interviewing Meat Loaf. Apparently, Mr. Loaf is out plugging "Bat Outta Hell III, his new album due out around Halloween (sounded pretty lame to me, but I've never really been a fan).

Anyway, music aside, Loaf told an awesome story. Apparently, he was at an award show a few years back and realized that he was sitting at a table near K.D. Lang. Being a big fan of her music, he asked his people to talk to her people and see if he could come by and introduce himself. His publicist slipped away and returned a moment later saying, "Um ... sorry, man. She said she doesn't want to meet you."

Shocked at the blow-off, Meat Loaf asked why be wasn't allowed to offer her a compliment.

Turns out, K.D. Lang is a very staunch vegetarian. Her reasoning? "She said she doesn't want to meet you because your name is 'Meat.'"

LAME-O!!

the mind is the first thing that goes

Can't remember if I linked to these before or not.

Here's a bunch of Flash-based mini-games to waste some time with.

Orisinal

meeting my neighbors

There's a button in the upper right of blogger blogs that says "Next Blog." It seems to randomly select someone else's blog for you to check out.

I got curious as to who my neighbors were in the blogosphere so I clicked the button. After a boring one, a SPAM-centric one, and one in a language I didn't understand, I finally found Keet.

Keet, short for Keethana, is apparently 8 years old and blogging from what I'm assuming is England. I have to tell you, I find the blog of an 8 year-old strangely compelling.

Take for instance her take on cable cars:

"Cablecar

I like to go in cablecar. I have not been in a cable car. cable car is so high . It is nice to go in cable car."

I find the fact that she likes to go in cable cars but hasn't been in a cable car yet fascinating. Or then there's this about phones:

"Phone

Phone use to take. Every month my faher will pay the fee. My father has the record. thats what I know about [PHONE]"

... Bweh? Strangely, I feel like I know less about [PHONE] than I did before reading her entry about them. And that's the beauty of Keet. I know that I kept journals when I was 8 or so. I also know that those things were incoherent at best. But, they never ended up on the world stage of blogs and so the world never got to benefit from my thoughts about new Transformers, or whatever Ry and I had done that afternoon with our cousins, or the latest exploits of our dog, Thor.

Though, truth be told, if it wasn't for the spellcheck, my blog would look like it was written by an 8 year old. I can't spell for crap.

it's a couple of wavy lines ...

Everyone's heard of the Rorschach Test, the ink blot test that psychiatrists use to figure out just how crazy you are. Apparently the thought is that by showing the subject a meaningless image and asking them to give it meaning, what they deduce is an insight into their personality.

Well ... Analyze this.

While I've never been one for seeing Jesus in a banana chip or the Virgin Mary in a tree stump, I do find it odd that I keep seeing this strange little image that holds some meaning to me. For the last year, I've been walking outside to my parking space in our apartment building. Everyday I walk past an old blob of concrete on the driveway. And everyday it just sits there and stares at me with it's immediately recognizable form. What is it, you ask?

It's the freakin' Millennium Falcon.


Now ... seriously. Tell me that doesn't look like The Falcon.


I mean, I'm not crazy right? Well, I mean about this. Forget everything else. Actually, come to think of it, that Banana Chip Jesus kinda' looks like the old LucasArts logo

eMe

Yahoo! mail has a gimmicky little feature called the Avatar. Basically it gives you the ability to create a little online cartoon version of yourself that will stare at you when you log into your mail.

This is mine.


It's not as fun as South Park me, but then again - what is?

hotter than a bantha's taint

Good gravy, it was hot this weekend. Manda and I don't have air conditioning in our apartment so we toughed it out on Saturday. But you know what? Toughing it out sucks. Especially when there are plenty of other places in the world that aren't toughing it out. So, we decided that on Sunday we were going to go to the movie theater.

Not just a movie, mind you. The theater. We decided to hang out there and see two movies because they had air conditioning and our apartment was 97 degrees inside. When we got to the theater, it was a sweltering 109 degrees outside.

109! That sucks. I know it's no 116 like Phoenix, AZ or 115 like Nowheresburg, SD; but still ... Mark Twain said "The coldest winter I ever had was the summer I spent in San Francisco." Not anymore, buckaroo. Now it's 109 and people are running for shelter in malls and movie theaters.

Every place that had air conditioning, ice cream, or both was packed. And so we saw two movies: Lady In The Water and The Devil Wears Prada.

I enjoyed both. However, besides the air conditioning, the highlight of the entire experience had to be the old couple that sat next to Manda and I during Devil.

The husband was the star of the couple. This guy had a phenomenal super power.

"Mild-mannered Mort Buckwald was just your average retiree until one day when he was struck by a bolt of Nuclear Lightning! From that day forward, Mort Buckwald, in the guise of Captain Pain-In-The-Ass, could forever narrate the obvious!!"

Yep. Everything that happened that was even remotely obvious, this guy decided to say out-loud in his outside voice.

"That's Meryl Streep."
"I think [Meryl Streep's evil boss character] is testing her [new assistant]."
"[The overworked assistant] should quit."
"[Meryl Streep's evil boss character's] own arrogance is her worst problem."

Wow. Thanks, asshole. I really needed to hear "The Devil Wears Prada for Dummies" on-tape while I watched the movie. It was pretty freakin' hysterical. You could literally witness each thought that passed though this guys head because he always announced it to his wife.

Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: That assistant should quit.
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort: "She should quit."

It was pretty awesome. Most entertaining of all is that he didn't even get the point of the whole movie. I won't ruin it for people who want to see it. But suffice it to say, he missed the point of the whole thing and therefore it was all a waste on him.

Mort rules. 109 degree weather doesn't.

nostalgia friday

Found this on youtube today. Ah, the 80s ... The glorious golden age of video games when everyone realized that the graphics were impressionistic crap at best and so they couldn't use in-game footage to try and sell the games on TV.

Here's what the commercial for centipede looked like:


I love it so much.

so wrong ... so good ...

There's a show someone here at work just turned me on to that I'd never heard of before. It's on MTV2 and is called "Wonder Showzen." From what I've seen off of youtube, this show is brilliant.

Consider it the unwanted result of a drunken tryst between PBS and Adult Swim. It's a show done much like Sesame Street, complete with puppets and little kids, that just messes with your head for its entire duration. It's weird because, having grown up on Sesame Street, my brain is conditioned to feel like it's trying to learn something when presented with information in this format. And yet ... I think I got dumber after I watched it.

Here are some clips:

A nice little song for us all to enjoy:


What is your greatest wish?


Kid interviews at a beauty pageant:


And lastly, Wonder Showzen teaches us about Geography:


Good stuff.

all that was missing were the tumbleweeds

Had an interesting morning this morning. David and I went to The Plant in Sausalito for a mastering session of the original tunes we're doing for Thrillville.

For David, it was a return to the recording studio he worked at as a runner early in his career. The Plant is where Metallica set up camp in the 90s. It's also where Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" and (the one that made me happiest) Huey Lewis and The News' "Sports" were recorded.

And I'll tell you hwhat ... that place was dead, dude. Deader than an all zombie version of Joe Millionaire 3. Apparently they once had the place buzzing with projects, engineers, assistant engineers, front desk staff, runners ... Not anymore. We saw three people there today: their secretary/office manager whose name I didn't get, a guy named Drew Youngs, and the engineer that did our mastering for us - John Cuniberti. John did a great job, but while he was mastering the tunes he was telling us about how the studio now goes for weeks at a time without anyone in there using it.

The cause? Why, Protools of course. Protools and the increased ability of desktop PCs. It's something that - as a musician - I've heard about for years, but I haven't seen it in action much. This place was in survival mode and running on as skeletal a crew as they could. Interesting to see.

I'm not going to say "sad to see" because I've always thought that record companies and recording studios were ridiculously bloated to begin with. I'm a big fan of the home studio revolution and it's definitely cool to see the power to create music go into the creators hands, as opposed to a label-fed studio system.

Um. [/soapbox] Anyway, the moral of the story is: mastering was neato.

worms, roxanne, i was afraid of worms!

I spent my day assembling lyrics to all of the songs that we're licensing for a new game so that they can be submitted to the ESRB.

Since we're licensing pop tunes by established acts, you'd think that the lyrics to these things would be online. Well, about 50% of them are. The rest aren't.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the singers enunciate to the point that I can transcribe the lyrics without any problems.

But then there's The Redwalls.

The Redwalls is a band from Illinois that sound like they're from England 30 years ago. When it comes to the lyrics, however, it's straight-up Illinoise. I don't know how this guy does it, but you can barely understand a single syllable of what he's singing.

Remember that Weird Al cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with the lyrics:

It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss
With all these marbles in my mouth

Well, the Redwalls are pioneering new realms of bargle-zouss.

The first verse of one of their tunes sounds like he's saying:

Well, Tobliss takes the 55 dollar PA
He let that chick go down, he get away
And he stay alive, it don't miss a thang
Because the place that he eats is better than a wedding field

In reality, that lyric is:

Well, Dublin take the 55 diamond PA
He let that ship go down he get away
And he's saying now he don't miss a thing
Because the place where he is is better than where he been

So, thankfully I don't have to wonder about what a "wedding field" is. Still, it's nearly impossible to understand this stuff and it's not online. So what do we do for the ESRB? What if the lyrics are just a string of curses strung together by places this guy eats at?

Well, I contacted Capitol Records through our legal department and requested a lyric sheet. Now, you'd think that the record label would be able to furnish us with a complete list of lyrics.

Nope.

The list they sent was incomplete and, quite frankly, pretty half-assed; or as the Redwalls would say, "hay stacked" or someshit. So, I had to sit there today replaying sections over and over and over again until I figured out what the hell this jerk was saying.

Not since I phonetically transcribed the lyrics to Queen's "Mustapha" at the age of 13 have I had more trouble understanding the lyrics to a song.

So, thanks, Redwalls. Or as Freddie Mercury kinda' maybe said: moh hoh maht deh yeh loh eh-shehlee. Whatever that means.

say it with muffins

My schedule (or, as the British say "schedule") recently has been really busy and one of the side-effects of that is a shunning of the grocery store. Manda and I end up not meal planning because we don't know when I'll be home. When we don't meal plan, we find ourselves eating out a lot more. And eating out more brings us into contact with some special people.

Recently, we've been having some interesting experiences with servers and hostesses at local San Mateo restaurants. A couple of weeks ago, we went to our local BJ's Brewhouse for the first time. When we walked in, I met the world's most sarcastic, apathetic, and grumpy hostess ever. This lady was awesome, just plain awesome. She was this 20-something Asian chick who looked like she thought she was chronically hipper-than-thou. Luckily, she went out of her way to prove that I was right about that first impression.

When I walked up to her and asked for a table for two, she smirked at me and handed me one of those restaurant pagers that vibrates to let you know the table's ready. While we waited to be seated, I watched some guy walk up to her hostess podium. She waited until he was right in front of her and making eye contact before she turned around and walked away. When my pager-thing went off a few minutes later, I walked up to her, handed her the pager, and she just looked at it. Then she looked at me and said "Whoopeeee ..." with the most sarcastic tone the word "whoopeeee" has ever received. As she seated Amanda and I, she said "Not that you asked, but I'm at work right now when I shouldn't be. You get to eat dinner and I don't." then handed us menus and walked away. Our jaws dropped and we laughed our asses off to each other. I then watched her seat table after table and tell every customer that she was jealous that they got to eat while she had to work. She was awesome and undoubtedly the worst/best hostess I've ever seen.

Last night, Manda and I went to Mimi's Cafe in Foster City. Our waitress seemed like a recent graduate of the Mimi's University for English As A Second Language, although I doubt she was valedictorian. She did her best with some broken English to take our orders and then wandered off. No problems. Food arrived. No problems. She took my soda glass to refill it. Pretty much the rest of the meal went by with out my soda returning. I didn't care much, but Amanda noticed and flagged the woman down who instantly ran off to refill the soda.

What was odd is that she then returned with two sodas "to make apologies." It might not sound odd, but it's kinda' weird to have someone give you two drinks and then feel like you're obligated to drink them both. I just sat there scratching my head and laughing about it with Amanda for a bit. Strangely, she then returned a minute or two later with a styrofoam food container in her hands. She was talking quietly as she opened it and said "For my apologies," showed us a spice muffin, and then placed it on the table, bowed, and left.

?? I don't know where this lady grew up, but apparently food duplicates is how you say "sorry." Anyway, I'd recommend dining in Foster City. It's apparently always an adventure.

i believe it

from Overheard In New York:

I Didn't Know Cheney Had Kids That Age

Amherst alum: So we're looking over the applications, and there are all these amazing kids. Won the Westinghouse, worked for the UN. And the questions: "Who do you most look up to?" "My parents, because they're immigrants, and they taught me to work hard." And with each of them it's like, "in". And then we get to this one, it's like, "What's a recent intellectually stimulating experience?" The answer is, "I love my dog, walking my dog." Stuff like that. On and on, really ridiculous. And then, "Who do you most look up to?" The answer: "my parents, especially my dad. He's the President of the United States." And we look at each other, and Steve is like, "in."

--Williamsburg

Overheard by: Julia Mandell

via Overheard in New York, Jul 16, 2006

the brick testament

If you haven't seen this, it's worth a gander.

Some industrious (read: bored, unemployed, or both) person is constructing the Bible with LEGOs.

It's pretty clever. Be sure to stop by the Laws page to brush up on all the things you do that you shouldn't be doing.

Such as:

'If you hear that in one of the towns, there are men who are telling people to go and worship other gods, it is your duty to look into the matter and examine it.

If it is proved and confirmed, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword.'

You must lay the town under the curse of destruction, the town and everything in it.'

Look out New York! Watch out, LA! I apparently have some sort of duty to deliver unto you an ass-whoopin'!