Game: September 2008

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Chocolate frogs and all that

Robert Merkel, who is not a parent, reviewed Parentonomics and found it fun to read anyway. His post engendered plenty of discussion with one of the commentators pointing to this method of using chocolate frogs to drive (literally) good behaviour.

Before you start the car trip, buy a packet of chocolate frogs.

As you all get into the car, children in the back seat, adults in the front, the adult(s) should open the packet of chocolate frogs. The packet of chocolate frogs should be left in full view of the children.

Then, start driving.

Sooner or later, the bickering, the shoving, the kerfuffle, the noise, the complaints from the back seat will get to be too much for the grown-ups to bear.

At that stage, the adult(s) should reach for a chocolate frog. They should wind the window down, and throw the frog out.

At the end of the journey, the children may eat any frogs that are left.

Brilliant!

Kevin Costner Wants a Music Career

Not content to merely tank in blockbuster movies, Kevin Costner has his sights set for failure as a musical artist as well.

Yes, after a gig in front of group of NASCAR fans in July, Costner and his band Modern West felt the need to record an album. I guess seeing some massive ugly crashes that left the participants reasonably unscathed made him once again long for failure, and Swing Vote just didn't give him that same satisfaction.

Also I think this quip from comedian Alonzo Bodden says everything about that particular audience: "I didn't understand NASCAR until I met some NASCAR fans. Because you talk to a couple of NASCAR fans, and you see where a shiny car driving in a circle would fascinate them all day."*

Let's face it, Kevin Costner's best work is behind him. There isn't going to be another Bull Durham or Field of Dreams in his future. And yes, he is talking about working on a sequel to The Bodyguard, but really, does anyone really want to see that? I certainly don't. I mean, how good of a bodyguard could he be if he couldn't keep the crack and/or Bobby Brown away from Whitney Houston, I ask you.

Some of you may remember a post I made at the beginning of the month about actors becoming trying to become singers, and how sometimes people have to know their limitations. Well, this is another one of those times.

Granted, looking at some of the movies Kevin Costner has directed, we know that at times, he does not know his limitations at all... and I think perhaps an intervention may be in order... especially if at any time he tries approaching apocalyptic science fiction or an English accent, because the world can't take either of those things happening again. I mean, seriously, never again, those were all crimes against cinema and pop culture.

So, for the sake of my audience, I am just giving you ample warning that a silly, celebrity-backed vanity project is on the horizon so you can get a stockpile of earplugs and apathy to greet it.

* I'm playing NASCAR 07, so I can make that joke.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Celebrity Reality Shows: Some Suggestions

A couple months ago, I lamented about the reality show-based career that Brigitte Nielsen was putting together, and I began to think about one of the root ideas behind that entry. You see, I had originally started to write a more generalized article about the difference between good reality show exposure for celebrities and horrifyingly bad ones. For example, Celebrity Rehab is a bad career move no matter who you are (not the rehab, the fact that they are filming it). And having a film crew follow you around, with a few exceptions (like Kathy Griffin for instance), is also likely going to be really bad exposure.

In all this thinking about the problem, a particular kind of show did suddenly come to mind that I think does give celebrities very positive exposure... with one particular show dominating that field.

I am talking about Dancing with the Stars.

Now, I don't watch Dancing with the Stars, but in principle, I approve of what they are doing over there. To me, there is something appealing about celebrities competing at something they actually have to learn and work at. I mean, they have to show up and learn something with enough competence to impress people who have expertise in that area.

I recently found myself watching another series based on that same kind of premise called Celebracadabra, where a group of comedians/performers were each matched up with a magician and had to learn how to put together a magic act for various kinds of venues (Hal Sparks got really good).

For instance, we have a show on Discovery Canada called Canada's Worst Handyman, which gathers a group of people, who are hopelessly incompetent when it comes to home repair and renovations and attempts to teach them the proper way of doing things while completing a larger project, and I think that this format would also be interesting for a celebrity competition... with somewhat more competent people that is. The point is that it is a competition, not an opportunity to laugh at some hapless celebrities (because you know there would be people desperate enough to get some more fame to go on the show no matter what). The second season of CWH had their contestants building sheds with the winning one being sold on Ebay, and I think that could also be an incentive for the audience of a potential celebrity based version of this concept. And because the people involved are merely inexperienced going into the show, rather than pathologically bad at building things, well, the end product might actually be something worth bidding on.

I also thought that having a celebrity cooking competition would also be interesting. You know, where a group of celebrities each get matched up with a prominent chef and they are taught how to make a certain kind of cuisine every week, culminating in an Iron Chef-type battle to see who mastered that week's lessons. And again, the challenges involved aren't meant to humiliate a desperate star, but rather make for some entertaining television. And I am sure such a program could also prove to be informative and profitable in other sectors as well, as I am sure with a long enough run, a cookbook could be put together, or at the very least a tidy revenue stream could be generated from people visiting a site devoted to the show to pick up the recipes and principles of the featured style of cooking.

And there was a series called My Bare Lady that was on a few years ago (and looks set to return this November), followed a competition between female porn stars to see who actually had the acting chops to perform in My Fair Lady (with West London actors training them), and I thought that a similar idea featuring comedians learning to become Shakespearean actors for one of his comedies would also be fascinating exercise for reality TV, and for those involved, it could get them some positive attention and help open some doors for them with casting directors and producers, and because they've developed or enhanced talents they already had, we as viewers would be the ultimate beneficiaries of such a series.

I am sure there are other great concepts that I am missing, but I think three shows like the above would really help cleanse the palate from the cheese of shows like The Surreal Life, Flavor of Love, and Armed and Famous, and help me respect the men and women with name and face recognition who go on them.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sunday Night Video: No Country for McLovin

With the release of the latest 30 Second Bunnified movie, No Country for Old Men, well, I thought it was time for another mashup trailer classic... so I present No Country for McLovin from the CollegeHumor site.

Interesting fact... the Bunnified movie before No Country for Old Men was in fact Superbad... so there is an odd symmetry to the whole mashup.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Confessions of a Clown: A Culture Kills Comic

Clowns... such easy targets.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Week 20: Pageant of the Transmundane

Sometimes events and Transmundanity winners just go so well together. This is one of those rare weeks as you will see.

Earlier this week, I stumbled across an interesting variation of a particular card game at a site called Mightgodking, and it made such an impression on me that it basically cleared the road in front of it.

Picture this: the current election as reimagined as a set of Magic: The Gathering cards. I know it doesn't sound like much, but wow, the breadth of references and the sheer number of cards (there was a sequel post which makes me think that you really could play a game of Magic with all the cards available).

And because this week's Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award winner has to do with playing games, well, a Simpsons based Monopoly board with a Treehouse of Horror theme seemed exceedingly appropriate as the image to represent the winning entry.

Congrats to the various bloggers of Mighty God King.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Simple Graphics Calculator Using the Visualization API and the Scatterchart

By Nir Bar-Lev, Google Visualization Team

We recently came across a great use of the Visualization Platform. In fact, this is something that we never thought the platform would be used for.

Steve Aitken, a developer contributing to the Visualization Developer Group, created a simple graphics calculator for Javascript-supported math functions that plots functions using the Google Visualization Scatter Chart. Here is a screenshot of a simple calculation of -sin(2x):

Steve has been kind enough to share the code with us (even though it was originally written for his girlfriend). A slightly modified version is pasted below:

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["scatterchart"]});
      function drawChart(equation,xmin,xmax, numPoints, pointSize) {
        var data = new google.visualization.DataTable();
        data.addColumn('number', 'x');
        data.addColumn('number', 'y');
        data.addRows(numPoints);
        var step = (xmax-xmin) / (numPoints-1);
        for(var i = 0; i < numPoints; i++)
        {
          var x = xmin + step * i;
          data.setValue(i,0,x);
          with(Math) {
            var y = eval(equation);
          }
          data.setValue(i,1,y);
        }
        document.getElementById("chart_div").innerHTML = "";
        var chart = new google.visualization.ScatterChart(
            document.getElementById('chart_div'));
        chart.draw(data, {width: 600, height: 400, titleX: 'X',
            titleY: 'Y', legend: 'none', pointSize: pointSize});
      }
    </script>
  </head>

  <body>
      equation: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
      <input id="txteq" type="text" value="-sin(2*x)" />
      <br />
      minimum value(x): &nbsp;<input id="txtmin" type="text" value="-3.14" />
      <br />
      maximum value(x): &nbsp;<input id="txtmax" type="text" value="3.14"/>
      <br />
      Precision (number of points): &nbsp;<input id="precision" type="text" value="1000"/>
      <br />
      Point size: &nbsp; <input id="pointSize" type="text" value="2"/>
      <br />
      <input id="Button1" type="button" value="Draw Graph"
          onclick="javascript:drawChart(
              document.getElementById('txteq').value,
              parseFloat(document.getElementById('txtmin').value, 10),
              parseFloat(document.getElementById('txtmax').value, 10),
              parseInt(document.getElementById('precision').value, 10),
              parseInt(document.getElementById('pointSize').value, 10))" />

    <div id="chart_div"></div>
  </body>
</html>

We thank Steve for the inspiration and would love to see more creative uses of the platform from you.

The Visualization Team

5 Quick Remembering-type Movie Reviews

In light of my entry earlier this week about fellow blog, the House of Self-Indulgence, I thought that I would do a quick rundown of a few movies which could have made longer Remembering columns, but I thought this format would be better.

And taking a cue from SamuraiFrog, I will not refer to them as guilty pleasures.

Ready to Rumble: It was a movie about WCW wrestling made at a time when I wasn't into wrestling at all... and yet I watch it every time it is on. Maybe it is because I enjoy Oliver Platt's take on sloppy redneck drunkenness (I enjoy seeing him in movies anyway), or Martin Landau's spunky trainer Sal Bandini... or maybe it is just the gratuitous kicks to the groin. I mean, I do like Scott Caan, Joe Pantaliano and Rose McGowan, and I am OK with David Arquette. I do know that it certainly has nothing to do with supporting the career of director Brian Robbins (he inflicted Norbit on us... and that is just unforgivable). It is a stupid movie, and I am the first one to admit it, but I still get roped in every time.

What Women Want: I'll sum up why I watch this movie every time it is on in 6 words: Judy Greer, Marisa Tomei, Sarah Paulson. But in all seriousness, the premise that because of an electrical accident, Mel Gibson can hear the thoughts of women is ok but the execution is more than a little sloppy. And his post-movie behavior really taints this one (as does Helen Hunt)

The Whole Nine Yards: I started writing a Remembering post about this a few weeks ago, but somehow, I could never get it finished. Basically, the argument I was going to try to advance was that this movie was in essence, a Shakespearean comedy filtered through the conventions of film noir. The film tells the story of a dentist named Dr. Oseransky (Matthew Perry), who is unhappily married to a woman who is secretly trying to have him killed. His life changes when a former hitman for a Chicago crime family, Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis), moves in next door, setting off a series of events which are both romantic and violent in nature. Now, the only reason it didn't work as successfully as it should have was because it seems like the filmmakers couldn't decide on an appropriate tone for the film, so there is seems to have been an attempt to make things a little more wacky than they probably should have been.

Robocop 3: I know, I know. It doesn't have Peter Weller in it, and compared to the elegant satire that was the first movie, Robocop III is more than a little ham-fisted, but I find it enjoyable on a lot of levels. Decent action sequences and a somewhat well-thought out anti-corporate message, and it's got Mako. Mako is one of those actors who has elevated an otherwise disappointing movie for me in the past. And that isn't even mentioning Stephen Root showing some range in another dramatic role. And because of the mask, well, it isn't like you miss Weller too much.

Blue Streak: This is one of two movies starring Martin Lawrence that I find entertaining. He does have a tendency to either play cops or petty criminals in his movies, and in Blue Streak, these two types comes together in one performance. Lawrence plays Miles Logan, an expert jewel thief, who after being double crossed by one of his partners in the theft of a large diamond, hides the stone in an under construction building before being arrested. Upon his release from jail, Logan discovers that the building is now a police station, and to get the diamond, he must pretend to be a police officer, something he is surprisingly good at. But every time he thinks he has the diamond in his grasp, some new complication arises... including the re-emergence of his old partner who is willing to kill to get the diamond all to himself. Featuring supporting work from Luke Wilson, William Forsythe and Dave Chappelle, this movie is an unsung gem in the TBS lineup.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Fair grades

[HT: Mark Richards] A Pittsburgh school district has set 50% as a student's minimum grade.

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say they want to give struggling children a chance, but the district is raising eyebrows with a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work. ...

"A failing grade is a failing grade," district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.

At the same time, they said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, Ms. Pugh said, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester.

It gets better ...

Superintendent James Lombardo said he's in favor of implementing the idea, partly as a fairness issue. He noted that a failing grade carries far more mathematical weight than any other grade if the "E" or "F" has a range of zero to 59 percent.

"I guess I laud the Pittsburgh district for recognizing some of the foibles of our numerical system," he said, adding low percentage scores sometimes are given to students because of their attitude or work ethic, rather than their level of accomplishment.

I guess if one were to be kind, this would be considered a nudge as opposed to a scheme that weighed early assessment lower as a means of providing a catch-up opportunity or for allowing a low assessment grade to be discontinued. That said, it doesn't say much about the numeracy component of the education program.

Science and parenting

In Slate, Alan Kazdin looks at the evidence on corporal punishment. His lament is that lots of parents still hit their kids despite the scientific evidence that it likely does harm. But the discussion is more about why parents do not pay attention to scientific research.

Part of the problem is that most of us pay, at best, selective attention to science—and scientists, for their part, have not done a good job of publicizing what they know about corporal punishment. Studies of parents have demonstrated that if they are predisposed not to see a problem in the way they rear their children, then they tend to dismiss any scientific finding suggesting that this presumed nonproblem is, in fact, a problem. In other words, if parents believe that hitting is an effective way to control children's behavior, and especially if that conviction is backed up by a strong moral, religious, or other cultural rationale for corporal punishment, they will confidently throw out any scientific findings that don't comport with their sense of their own experience.

The issue is that a parenting behaviour can appear to work right away (and so be affirmed) but actually do more harm later on or be otherwise ineffective. Scientific research can inform about the latter. And it is not just corporal punishment. Consider sleeping, eating and all sorts of other things where it is difficult to weigh the present and future.

The argument in the article is that governments need to ban violence against children and Kazdin again laments the lack of political traction in the US on that. But come on, is he really surprised. The same parents are the voters and if they see corporal punishment as effective and morally OK, why would they vote to ban it.

This suggests that the way to get parental behavioural change is not the public equivalent of corporal punishment -- bans and penalties for infractions. Instead, my guess is that social norms and changes will be more powerful. I have not looked into it, but my guess (hope) is that the degree of violence against children has fallen: e.g., less using of hard objects and more using of hands. Why has this occurred? Social pressure mainly.

The key to social pressure is exposure. And that is the issue with parenting. So much of it is within the confines of a household and not exposed socially. That is why pressures to breastfeed are stronger (as you leave the house sometimes) while punishment is another matter. Then again, how often are we seeing physical punishment performed outside the house? The point here is that we need to think far less from the hip and far more using science (this time on parenting behaviour) to actually produce changes.

Express Checkout: Closets, Duckman and Wall Street

Well, it was a ginger double reveal yesterday as both Clay Aiken and Lindsay Lohan came out of the proverbial closet (Aiken on the cover of People magazine with his child and Lohan in a radio conversation), and it is my sincere hope, and I have a feeling I speak for a lot of people, that by the end of this news cycle, this is the last time anyone really talks about either story. I know that won't happen of course, but one can dream can't they?

Last week, I learned that one of my favorite animated programs, Duckman, had its first two seasons released on DVD. Now if we can just get Daria and the rest of The Larry Sanders Show out on the market, my wishlist from this entry will be complete.

Is it just me or does anyone else think it was weird that Michael Douglas had to field questions about the current financial crisis in the United States because he was in Wall Street 21 years ago?

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Community Shoutout: House of Self-Indulgence

I have to admit that as of late, I haven't been the best member of the blogging community. I haven't been commenting enough on the work of my peers(though rest assured, I've been reading it), and I've been leaving comments unanswered for too long here as well.

And in some small way, I would like to make amends for that by giving a shoutout to one of my peers who is doing some fine specialized work in pop cultural analysis.

You see, a couple of weeks ago while I was looking at my Sitemeter, I had noticed I had gotten a hit from a blog called The House of Self-Indulgence, and after checking it out, it has been one of the first blogs I check every morning. It is a cinematic blogging tour de force.

Every once in a while, I do a Remembering column about a movie that, while perhaps not being the best, still holds a loving place in my heart. Well, what I do every few months, blogger Yum-Yum does every day. Personally, I respect that level of commitment to film as a whole. I envy not only the quality of the content, but the breakneck speed at which it is produced.

And the breadth of reviewed material is astonishing. There's cult horror, teen comedies, much maligned Sci-fi and so much Anna Faris and Betsy Russell love it hurts (and don't get me wrong, I mean hurts in a good way).

Let me give you a sample of the wit and wisdom Yum-Yum brings to the medium:

"Out of all the Canadian films from the mid-1990s about necrophilia, I'd have to say Lynne Stopkewich's wonderfully tactile Kissed is my favourite."

(Yes, I admit it... Canadians like their movies a little adventuresome when it comes to sex... I mean, the same year Kissed came out, Cronenberg released Crash... we're dirty birdies above the 49th parallel).

But the thing that got me hooked on the site was a review of a movie I hadn't seen since 1985: Voyage of the Rock Aliens, and helped me remember what mesmerized me at age 8. And then a week later, Yum Yum reviewed The Legend of Billie Jean, which was the subject of one of my own early remembering columns as well.

And no blog like this would be complete without a review of Buckaroo Banzai.

So in short, I highly recommend you check out the House of Self-Indulgence... you won't be sorry.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Parentonomics on TV

I just got word that Today Tonight (in Australia) is running a story on Parentonomics tonight (Channel 7 at 6:30pm). I gather it is a 'reality TV show' where some families are trying out Parentonomics in the home; whatever that means. If there is an on-line version, I'll post a link in the next few days.

Here is the link to the video (scroll down to 'Bribing Kids')

[Update: Well that wasn't quite what I was expecting. All about bribery where I came off as the academic who creates highly incentivised children while a psychologist (read: anti-economist) came off as saying it would be better to give children praise and hugs as rewards and time-outs and I am guessing no hugs as punishments. Call me crazy but I'd rather toy with material things than emotions.]

A new era for Book Search begins with new APIs

By Venu Vemula, Google Book Search Team

Since I joined Google, I've been working on Book Search, our project to help users discover what's inside all the world's books.

Today we are happy to include the developer community in this historic effort with the announcement of two new APIs:

An Embedded Viewer API, which allows you to embed book previews on your site and control them programmatically using JavaScript.
A robust Data API, which allows you to access full-text search results and access with users' book reviews, ratings, and individual My Library collections.

By allowing anyone to integrate with the complete Google Book Search index, we hope this broader community will find new ways to connect users with books that are interesting and relevant to them.

To learn more about the sites already using these APIs — including Books-A-Million, Worldcat, and GoodReads — check out our post on the Book Search Blog.

Or, if you want to dig right in, go straight to our newly revamped developer site.

Google Developer Day Israel: Registration now open

By Alyssa England, Google Developer Programs

We are excited to open registration for one last Google Developer Day this year, to be held on November 2 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

At this Google Developer Day, developers will learn about the latest with our APIs and developer tools, ranging from App Engine and OpenSocial to Google Chrome, plus more. The topics will vary so you can be sure to discover new and interesting best practices. And don't forget to socialize with fellow developers and Google engineers.

If you are in Europe, registration for some of the October Google Developer Days is still open, including Italy and Czech Republic, though space is running out fast. We hope you can join us for one of our upcoming events.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Sunday Night Video: Rebekah Higgs - Parables

I happened to turn on a music-oriented channel this week, and surprisingly they were showing music videos (and even more stunning, they didn't show Katy Perry hissing harshly over mechanical electronic music about the joys of the lesbianic lip locking).

Instead I was treated to a video by 24-year old Halifax singer-songwriter Rebekah Higgs called "Parables" and I thought I would share it with the rest of you.

Enjoy.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Culture Kills Comics: I'm Back Bitches

My mind is flabby and out of shape... so bear with me as I start getting back up to speed with the comics.

You'd have thought a break would have refreshed my sense of comedic timing... but alas, that doesn't seem to be the case...

...it's going to be a rough few weeks.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Punishment Capital

Tim Harford runs a 'Dear Economist' column in the Financial Times whereby readers write in their problems and Tim helps them out. This week's column involves the use of incentives for discipline children. And here is part of the answer:

The challenge, then, is to make sure that you have punishments available to you that you are willing to carry out. You may be able to rise to that challenge by building up what Joshua Gans calls “punishment capital” – not to be confused with capital punishment. Professor Gans, author of a new book called Parentonomics, points out that if you are the source of a steady stream of money or sweets, that gives you a negotiating position. Threatening to remove the carrot (or rather, the flow of chocolate coins) is more credible than threatening to wield the stick. What one parent sees as junk food, Professor Gans sees as an “incentive opportunity”.

Week 19: Pageant of the Transmundane

Hello from Hollywood. It sure is sunny here, but boy are their are lot of car chases and explosions here. And it smells vaguely of urine, but I think that is another story entirely.

This week's winning entry comes from the fine electronic pages of a Holy Juan.

And what kind of entry won it all this week? How about one detailing the fact that Hollywood is running out of 555 numbers. You know, how when you watch a movie or tv show and a telephone number is mentioned or written down, it always starts with 555... well, much like the rest of America, they seem to be getting all filled up.

It was very droll indeed.

And because this week's Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award has to do with phones, well, it seemed only fitting to have an actual Homer Simpson based communication device as the image that represents this win.

Congrats Doug on your first win. Huzzah!

What is Weirder: James Lipton Edition

I don't know which piece of information I learned today is weirder.

The fact that Inside the Actor's Studio's James Lipton is 82 years old today, when I always thought he was in his mid-60's.

(There is something not quite right about that picture of him. Maybe a more recent image would work better.)

(That's more like it.)

or

After looking at his biography, noticing that he wrote the theme music for Thundercats.

Which do you think is weirder?

Usability Research on Federated Login

By Eric Sachs, Product Manager, Google Security

Federated login has been a goal of the Internet community for a long time, but its usage is still quite low, especially in the consumer space. This has led to the constant need for users to create yet another account to log in to a new website, and most consumers use the same password across websites even though they realize this is a poor security practice. In the enterprise space, many software-as-a-service vendors such as Salesforce.com and Google Apps for Your Domain do support federated login, but even those vendors encounter usability problems.

On September 12 the OpenID Foundation held a meeting to gather feedback on how to evolve the best practices for using OpenID so that it might be used by websites in a larger number of market segments. The meeting included representatives from many mainstream websites including The New York Times, BBC, AARP, Time Inc., and NPR. Google has been researching federated login techniques, and at the meeting we showed how a traditional login box might evolve (see below) to a new style of login box that better supports federated login.

We also shared a summary of our usability research that explains how this helps a website add support for federated login for some users without hurting usability for the rest of the website's user base. We hope that industry groups, such as this committee in the OpenID Foundation, will continue to share ideas and experiences so we can develop a model for federated login that can be broadly deployed by websites and broadly used by consumers. If your company has experience or research that you can share, we hope you will get involved with the OpenID community and join the further discussions on this topic.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Remembering Fire Pro Wrestling Returns

A few days before last Christmas, I was at a local Walmart at 2AM (it is a long story), and I happened to look through a bin of value priced Playstation 2 games, and I ended up with a copy of Fire Pro Wrestling Returns in my hand, and since I hadn't heard of it, and it was less than 20 dollars, I figured "How good could it be?" and quickly returned it to the pile and in the crush of holiday spirit, I forgot that I saw the game for some months...

...and then I looked it up and realized that I had missed out an excellent wrestling game with a fanatical following and great customization that was sort of just dumped on the market in November 2007 with little fanfare, despite the fact that it was one of the first games from the long-running Fire Pro series to be released in North America.

But I have to warn you before I start that Fire Pro Wrestling Returns isn't going to win any beauty contests. Yes, unlike the shiny, 3D graphics the Smackdown series has brought to the table, FPR is a 2D, sprite-based wrestling experience. And there isn't a story mode to really tie matches together (the WWE games have you build-up your created characters through a scripted season mode). And the music, well, leaves a lot to be desired (it is old school MIDIized metal lite). (And an added bonus for Canadian buyers like myself is the game comes with French instructions only, but you can request the company send you the English version, and it is available as a download from Agetec's site).

I know that sounds like a mighty hill for any game to climb, but the upside is so huge on this title, it is unbelievable that all those seeming flaws don't really inhibit the game at all.

Out of the package, the game features 327 wrestlers--all real world stars, mostly from Japanese federations, but with different names that can easily be changed to match their actual counterparts). Most of the wrestlers are Japanese, but there are more than a few wrestlers who gained prominence in America as well (Andre the Giant, Terry Funk, Sting, Bret Hart and Kevin Nash just to name a few).

In addition, the game has room for 500 additional created wrestlers. I will say that again. 500 slots for edited wrestlers. Five-Zero-Zero. And unlike the WWE games, you can make your wrestlers as strong as you want them to be from the minute you stick the game in your PS2. It isn't something you have to unlock or slowly work at through a particular mode for each wrestler you want to make, which to me, was a huge selling point, especially since the most fighting/wrestling games allow at most 30 edited combatants, and some, like the recent TNA Action allow only 5.

Of course, to get the most out of this game, you sort of need a device like the AR Max, Max Drive or a Codebreaker, because the mod community for the game is really awe-inspiring. I mean, there are so many rosters available for so many companies and time frames that if you wanted TNA, the current WWE or a historical configuration of that company or WCW, ECW, one of the various Lucha Libre companies in Mexico, Ring of Honor or any number of Japanese organizations, Mix Martial Arts organizations such as the UFC, Pride etc, someone has likely made and distributed a save file with those combatants on it for you to easily transfer to your own save. And that isn't even mentioning such creative uses of both the engine and those 500 available slots to make reams of Marvel and DC heroes/villains, video game characters (in one case, a user recreated nearly every combatant from the arcade and console wrestling games of the 1980's and early 1990's), movie characters and thousands of original creations.

And that isn't even mentioning the scores of logos that people have made to go with all those above federations. The fan community for this game is very well-organized and helpful, especially at the Fire Pro Club, a site devoted to the series, which started in 1993.

But the thing that makes the game work so well is the AI. Hands down, that is the selling feature of the game. Because while most wrestling games allow you to fight against your own creations, Fire Pro is the first game that I've played that I really felt like I could personalize a combatant to this degree. It goes beyond merely selecting a few attributes and putting together a moveset and then picking an AI style or two (and putting together a moveset from the over 1500 moves available in this game takes some time by itself).

You can set the percentages and really tweak the personality and style of a wrestler down to the use of each individual move on a situational basis for every move in your arsenal, and in additional, there are other parameters like how focused they are on winning the match vs. just hurting their opponents and how flexible their game plan is during a match to name a few. That means that you could have two wrestlers with the same moves that compete in completely different and very noticeable ways. Again, it is a seemingly complex system, but once you get the hang of it, it is very satisfying.

And because the game is based on timing rather than simple button-mashing, the matches are much better paced than most of the other wrestling games out there. You and your opponents can't just whip out the power moves from the beginning of the match... you have to build up to the big moves and finishers with weaker moves and strikes. And because there aren't any life or stamina bars on the screen as you play (a feature that was much lauded when it was introduced in EA's Fight Night Round 3), you have to watch the participants to get a sense of how a match is going. If you see someone wheezing, you know they are getting tired, and if you see blood, well, you know they've been cut. It also means that at any moment, a match can end for anyone through a rapid reversal, a submission or a KO. Momentum can shift on a dime, and that just makes everything more exciting.

Now, I hate to lose, especially in sports-oriented games, but I have to tell you, I've lost many a match in FPWR and been thoroughly entertained even in defeat... which is a rare quality for me in any game. It is truly a work of art, and as one user at the Fire Pro Club forum put it, FPR = real wrestling in sprite form. There have been moments between two computer controlled combatants that have left me stunned because the match was just that good.

But don't just take my word for it about this game. Here are some of the summaries of the game from a few online publications to back my assertions up.

Let me just get this out the way: Fire Pro Wrestling Returns is the best wrestling game ever. That's not an exaggerated statement -- you will not find a better mat simulator on the market. Michael Donahue, from 1UP

Fire Pro Wrestling probably isn't a name that is part of many a wrestling fan's gaming dictionary, but it should be. Although it doesn't feature any major wrestling brands (at least well-known to the general WWE audience) and looks like it came straight from the SNES visually, it also manages to trump any current wrestling game on the market. Ricky Turner, from Game Vortex

It's for the wrestling fan who skips the ring entrances in their wrestling games and just wants a solid grappling and fighting experience. It's for the devotee of games with deep editing tools, who would love the chance to make hundreds of complex, satisfying characters. Fire Pro Wrestling Returns may not be the best-looking wrestling game available today, but it is in fact the best. Gerald Villora, Gamespy

If you want the flashy entrances, the cutscenes, and the backstage brawling, by all means pick up the next WWF (I know it's the WWE now) game. If you want pure wrestling action, a deep gameplay system and a huge level of customization extremely cheap, pick up Fire Pro Wrestling Returns. Brendon Lindsey, GamerNode

So, if you are feeling nostalgic or you've been dissatisfied with the current crop of promotion-based wrestling games, or even if you are a fan of wrestling, domestic or international, you'll likely find something to love in Fire Pro Wrestling Returns. To me, it was a game that helped me to love professional wrestling, as a whole, all over again. And that took some doing.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

DataView Makes Working with Visualizations Even Easier

By Yaniv Shuba and Nir Bar-Lev, Google Visualization Team

Visualizations are usually nifty, small pieces of code that make our data come alive. In order to live in peace on the web, they need to be streamlined and compact.

At times, these visualization applications are a product of a creative designer who publishes their work for free for all of us to use. Often these designers do not have the time and resources to deal with data input structures.

Therefore, when integrating with a specific visualization, we often need to format the DataTable just right, so it fits the way the visualization expects to get the data. Say as an example, a first column needs to be of type date, the second a number and the third a text comment. What if our DataTable is not in that exact format? What if we want to create several visualizations over the same data source? To date this required manipulating the DataTable to fit the particular visualization and made the API a bit less flexible.

To make fitting data to the visualization even easier and simpler, and the Visualization API even more flexible, we've borrowed from the well-known SQL concept of Views and created our own DataView. Today, with Google Visualization's DataView you can reorder columns and "hide" a column such that the view includes only the columns you need to visualize. And, the DataView stays fully synchronized with the DataTable at all times, so any change to the underlying DataTable is reflected in the DataView.

Let's see a simple example that demonstrates this.

The following code creates three charts from a DataTable. The data displayed is yearly results for the imaginary Acme Rail company. We display a table, a bar chart and a BarsOfStuff chart. The BarsOfStuff chart is used because we are showing data for Acme Rail, and we thought it'd be cool to use the little trains in the chart:

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://visapi- gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/barsofstuff/bos.css"/>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://visapi- gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/barsofstuff/bos.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">

      google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["barchart","table"]});

      google.setOnLoadCallback(drawData);

      // Initialize the DataTable
      function drawData() {
        var data = new google.visualization.DataTable();
        data.addColumn('string', 'Line');
        data.addColumn('number', 'Revenue');
        data.addColumn('number', 'Expenses');
        data.addColumn('number', 'Commuters');
        data.addRows(4);
        data.setValue(0, 0, 'NorthEast');
        data.setValue(0, 1, 38350);
        data.setValue(0, 2, 15724);
        data.setValue(0, 3, 1534);
        data.setValue(1, 0, 'Cross-Pacific');
        data.setValue(1, 1, 25740);
        data.setValue(1, 2, 12613);
        data.setValue(1, 3, 1170);
        data.setValue(2, 0, 'Midwest');
        data.setValue(2, 1, 11550);
        data.setValue(2, 2, 4389);
        data.setValue(2, 3, 660);
        data.setValue(3, 0, 'Pan-America');
        data.setValue(3, 1, 21720);
        data.setValue(3, 2, 9774);
        data.setValue(3, 3, 362);

        //Draw the charts
        var table = new google.visualization.Table(document.getElementById('table_div'));
        table.draw(data, {showRowNumber: true});

        var chart = new google.visualization.BarChart(document.getElementById('chart_div'));
        chart.draw(data, {width: 400, height: 240, is3D: false, title: 'Acme Rail Yearly Performance'});

        var stuffoptions = {title: 'Acme Rail Commuters by Line'};
        var stuffchart = new BarsOfStuff(document.getElementById('stuff_div'))
        stuffchart.draw(data, stuffoptions);

      }
    </script>
  </head>

  <body>
    <div id="table_div"></div>
    <div id="chart_div"></div>
    <div id="stuff_div" style="width: 400px"></div>
  </body>
</html>

The result looks like this:

The problem is that BarsOfStuff is a cool chart, but it is very simple. It can only accept a single data series in the format: [Series Title; Series Value].

Notice that right now the chart compares revenue per rail line, but we wanted it to display the number of commuters per line (as the title suggests).

How can we fix this? With DataView it is a simple matter of adding two lines of code and pointing the BarsOfStuff chart to the DataView instead of the DataTable. We add:

        var view = new google.visualization.DataView(data);
        view.setColumns([0,3]);

And initialize the BarsOfStuff chart with the DataView:

        stuffchart.draw(view, stuffoptions);

And we get:

Voila! The BarsOfStuff chart now shows the data we wanted it to visualize - commuters per rail line.

Yet another new feature to make developing complex dashboards with Google Visualization even easier is the clone() method, used to clone a DataTable instead of constructing a new copy from scratch.

We're working on making the DataView even more powerful, and of-course, working on other features and additions to the Visualization platform.

For more information on Google Visualization, check out our developer documentation pages.

Happy visualizing!

My Reaction to the Fiorina/SNL Snit

When I first heard that McCain advisor Carly Fiorina reacted to the recent Tina Fey/Amy Poehler Saturday Night Live cold open, where they played Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton decrying sexism in politics by calling it Sexist, well, I had a natural reaction.

As Edna Krabappel would say: HA!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Creating special results in your custom search engine

By Kevin Gargoyle Lim, Custom Search Team

If you have a custom search engine, you can jazz up the customization gig by integrating Subscribed Links into your search engine. The Subscribed Links API enables you to create custom result snippets, as well as define the keywords or queries that would trigger them.

For instance, users who want to search for information about the comic book character Asterix might do the following: Type the search query in the search box, scan the search results for the most promising website, click the link to that website, wait for the website to load, and—finally—skim the page for pieces of pertinent information. However, if your custom search engine has a subscribed link for comic book characters, users can just type "asterix" in the search box and immediately get your custom result at the top of the results page. They don't have to scroll, scan, or click anything else to get the answer to their query.

Subscribed Links can directly answer questions, display links to services, provide news and status information, and calculate quantities, among other things. To get an idea of what you can do with Subscribed Links, read the developer guide and check out some live examples in the Google Subscribed Links Directory.

As if that's not cool enough, you can also integrate subscribed links created by other developers with your search engine. To learn more, read the Custom Search Developer's Guide.

For the end of MTV's Total Request Live

I think I would totally die a happy man if, on the final edition of MTV's Total Request Live in November, a group like Improv Everywhere showed up, and just went all Logan's Run on the whole scene.

I can just imagine a large group of people, showing up for that show dressed like this:

And chanting: It's Life Day! Renew! RENEW! The Carousel of Life. Renew! Renew!

Now, I know they have some friends in high places now, and they have a lot of resources to pull things off, but I think getting people floating in the air would take some doing.

But you know that it would become an internet classic and geeks everywhere would marvel at it for ages.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Parentocomic: Font Size

I have done some of these before (here, here and here). Here is another one:

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Sunday Night Video: Symphony of Destruction

I had a lovely trip down memory lane after trading MP3 playlists with someone else last week. I had totally forgotten about this song for about a decade... and it still rocks my ass off.

I was never really into metal when I was a teen, but dammit, there was just something about this Megadeth song that caught my ear back in the early 1990's, and sort of resonates with me today.

I really wish I had a Buttrock emoticon to put here, I really do.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Week 18: Pageant of the Transmundane

Hello from the somewhere on the NASCAR circuit. I lost my bearing somewhere between Watkins Glen and Daytona truth be told, and I think I am in... Martinsville, Virginia.

Anyhow, this week's winning entry arrives from that haven of craziness, Say No to Crack.

Now they set a really high bar over there, but this week, they have something that really outdoes it. What you might ask? How about a peculiar salad condiment which makes the finished product both disturbing yet vaguely appetizing.

I am not really going to preface this Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award image because once you see the above entry, well, it will all make sense, and for those of you who didn't click the above link, well, it serves as a little bit of a spoiler, so either way, it seems to be a good fit.

Congrats to Karen and the crew over at Say No To Crack. Huzzah!

More Games that Might Work as Films

Back in the infancy of this blog in 2006, I wrote a post about ways to make video game based movies that weren't terrible, and since then, I've played a lot more games, and seen a few more awful video game-to-movie translations (how they messed up Hitman still boggles my mind).

Now I know that not every fun game has the potential to be an entertaining movie, so a lot of my favorite games won't appear here. I mean, I love Bully, the Ace Combat series and SOCOM, but none of those would make a great movie.

Sly Cooper series: Raccoon Sly Cooper is a lovably suave master thief and the descendant of a long line of thieves going back all the way to the Egyptians. In the games, which tells his story in a beautiful cell shaded style, Sly's family was killed by a gang called the Fiendish Five, and at the orphanage, he meets his life-long friends, Bentley, a brainy and inventive turtle, and Murray, a loveably loyal hippo who represents the muscle of the gang(not in a violent way mind you). They are interesting characters and I think they would be wonderful to watch in an traditionally-animated feature. After all, I love a good theft, and they are exceptionally cunning (and well-justified) criminal masterminds.

Urban Chaos: Riot Response: I already discussed ways in which this game could be successfully brought to the screen in my Remembering column about it. The trailer for the game should explain some of its appeal to me as a potential piece of cinema.

Red Faction: What makes this just seem to click as a movie? A small cast of interesting characters? Check. A short, focused narrative? Check. A lot of possible gunplay? Check. Red Faction tells the story of miner's revolution on Mars against the corporate giant, Ultor. The company treats their workers like slaves (along with engaging in rather unethical biomedical experimentation), until finally a single spark of violence sets off a revolution which could potentially change the very face of Mars itself.

Destroy All Humans: You know all those campy B-movies from the 1950's where Humanity is assailed by an alien race that is bent on destroying us. Well, Destroy All Humans takes a loving look at that era through the eyes of the alien invaders, after the US Army accidentally blew an alien spacecraft out of the sky while test firing a rocket in the desert. Well, that is an act of war in most places, and well, the aliens respond in kind by sending someone with the attitude of Jack Nicholson down to 1950's America a lesson or two... with a huge dose of black comedy and satire. It would be a great R-rated comedy (because of the anal probes and the exploding heads and such)

Now, I am sure there are plenty of games that I haven't played that could work as movies, and a few video games that are being adapted to the screen that shouldn't (I have a feeling that by 2011, there will be a feature film based around Guitar Hero or Rock Band... mark my words).

So, is there a game that you've played that you think would make a good feature film?