Songbird / iTunes

As I mentioned, I was looking for an iTunes alternative.

I'm trying Songbird.

I like it so far. Though its like pre-beta. So we'll see.

Busted Drums

So, I busted the drums on my Rock Band drum set. I noticed this, first when I started getting a funny hollow sound from one of the four pads. Later I noticed a tiny break in the gray cover of the same pad. We kept right on going, but soon saw that the tiny hole was a split in the cover. We stopped to take stock, and soon realized that I had managed to crack the plastic in two of the drum pads. !!!!!

So.. we stopped playing for the evening, even though I've started playing all the songs on "Hard"... INCLUDING mystery sets, which previously I always tackled on medium, because I was scared, but I ain't scared no more!

I am, however, concerned about being able to fix/replace my drum stuff. We discovered that the pads are removable pieces, more simply put - I don't have to replace the WHOLE drum set, to fix this, necessarily. The drum pads come off/out of the set. I have yet to carefully research to see if we can buy/replace individual pads. I can't have been the first person to beat the hell out of the thing, but I'm anxious about how to go about fixing it. And then keeping it from quickly happening again.

But uh, rock band fucking rocks :)

AIM/Livejournal trap

This popped up on my radar recently, and now I got it twice in like two days.

My aim name is listed under my livejournal profile, cause I don't mind.

Friday I got an AIM message from someone with the following:

"your private friends-only posts have been stolen: [link removed]"

I immediately smelled a trap, and started digging, and quickly found that the site that this links to is a simple browser hack that makes it jump around and scream stuff at you.

So, just a friendly warning to anyone who mixes livejournal and AIM: watch out for this kind of thing.

iTunes :(

I think I've complained about iTunes before. But here we got again.

I finally reformatted my computer. It was SO in need of it.

So I'm reinstalling stuff, and I am absolutely dreading iTunes.

It is such bloatware, I hate having to choose to use my computer, or to use my iTunes jukebox, but not both.

I also hate how terribly poorly it manages my music library. If I move some tunes around or anything. Goodbye playlists. Goodbye song ratings and statistics.

I loved winamp 5. It was light weight, and simple. But I'd be surprised if it can manage syncing with my nano. I like rating songs and keeping stats on them and such, cause I'm a nerd.. but do I need those things?

So, mostly I'm just complaining here.

blame al-qaeda

This was on my feed reader earlier, thanks to cnn or some other helpful mainstream news source:

"Iraqi archbishop found dead, al Qaeda blamed"

Immediately, other thoughts sprang to mind. Similar thoughts.

"Fluoride found in water supply, communists blamed"

"Stream runs dry, beavers blamed"

"Fat people keep eating food, aliens blamed"

"Bush says retarted shit, Cheney blamed"

"Windows Vista sucks, Nigeria blamed"


Now, some of these made slightly more sense than others. I don't mean to make light of (YET ANOTHER) death in Iraq... I just hate being told to watch out for the fucking monster in the closet, while Jason, Freddy and Mike Fucking Meyers are standing at the foot of my bed.

D&D Geeks

In which I criticize my own.

When D&D nerds get together, they don't compare penis sizes. They discuss how long they've been playing D&D through the ages. What editions, how old they were when they first played, etc.

Here are quotes from a thread on a certain forum.

"I'm in my late 20s as well and I've started playing with the Red Box, touched briefly AD&D2, then played some of 3.0 and 3.5 (the latter mostly through OGL games though).
I've also played several other RPGs."

"Starting with the Red Box doesn't mean they started the year it came out - it was the 'current' version for several years. Also maybe you're confusing it with the Red Book.
I'm 33 and started in 1982 (on my 8th birthday) with the basic set BEFORE the Red Box - the one with the Red Book and Keep on the Borderlands, not the one with Bargle"

"Starting with BECM/RC to AD&D, then 3.0, then HackMaster/AD&D1 (you just have to ignore some wules to make HM equal AD&D1), then 3.5, and finally alterning 3.5 in our Friday Game Night and Classic D&D/Labyrinth Lord as an not-so-afterschool activity at the centre where I'm teaching. If you think about it, most of the gaming happens during the teens (12-23 or so, I'd say), when you're in highschool or college."

"I'm 30 and have played every edition through Red Box.
My aunt, who worked for Ral Partha, started me at the tender age of 9.
It's not impossible."

And me? I started with the teal box back in '54, when I was -22 years old. *SNEER!*

Oh, where is some video of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Actually, those quotes are basically the whole end of that thread.

4e playtest, player perspective

This past weekend, for GaryCon, I ran some friends through some pre-release D&D 4e stuff.

Here are the thoughts from one of the players:

There were a number of us trying it out, and the class structure was
interesting. Our level 1 group of misfits tore a bunch of kobolds a new
one, then using the new superpowers handled a young black dragon which at
first was quite scary but Pally taunt + Warlock Sliding Nightmare power +
Quarry = Dead Dragon, then we tried our luck with some skeles. Things I
liked: Second Wind as a Last effort do not cause your charrie to die
(twice in our campaign, let's say the newb's did something stupid, like a
mage or the cleric running in front of the meatshields and getting smacked
down by the numerous kobolds/skeles, secondwind causes heroes to have at
least a few hitpoints when they get smacked down to negatives, assuming the
negative number is not negative bloodied), class powers making it so that
the mage does not cast 1 magic missle and then sit for 2 hours of combat,
every class had something they could cast, pray, throw, shoot, or swing
every round, that was cool. "Marking" or as I call it, The impact WoW
has had on D&D. Tanks can now taunt to the detriment of the mob. The
Pally taunt is BRUTAL (mob's were taking 8hp of damage everyround it tried
to attack someone NOT the pally we dropped the dragon because of it's
numerous attempts on attacks of opportunity) Maddie played a fighter
pregen, and we did not use a power of hers until the end but the fighter had
the ability to attack on 5 ft steps if the monster was trying to move to
another person and if successful, stop the mob in its track. Rangers
finally get the DPS they deserve, lol more WoW influence. New Healing
Surges rule and 5 min rest rules. New "Bloodied" rules and what that does
for MOBS that get bloodied.

Things I did not like too much: combining a daily power with an encounter
power for Maximized result and still fizzling because I rolled a 1.
Nothing is more brutal then losing two big powers on a bad role.
The rate of Action Point earning. You have to get to the third encounter
to get the next your second AP point, With the fizzling of powers, AP
points to replace the fizzle is possible but it may take awile if you have
to get to encounter 3.
The game is fun now but it does feel a little like a cross between Final
Fantasy and WoW sometimes. I'm sure that there will be mobs now with
THOUSANDS of HP maybe hundred of thousands, and you'll need a part with HP
in the several hundreds to compete with them. The whole time the Final
Fantasy fight song will be going in your head.

Overall, I thought the good outweighed the bad. It was a lot of fun and the
players only stopped because the DM was tired :). Will I buy a ton of
books to play? Not sure, but maybe if there was a good DM and a consistent
game, I just might.