Pandora Algorithm Raving

I'm a paying Pandora customer, the $30'ish a year is worth it to avoid the advertising annoyances and short, unattended play-time of the free version.  However, I am really tired of their "algorithm" trying to insert trance music into my "Mystical Ambience" (yes, it's misspelled -- whoops) station.  It includes Brian Eno, Klaus Schulze, Steve Roach, and other stuff like that.  Today after the desktop app lost connection again (that happens frequently behind the firewall here, but only Pandora seems adversely effected -- too brittle?), it happily started my station back up with, what else, TRANCE NATION 2!

WTF!  How many times do I have to thumb down trance before it stops putting these tracks in here?  I have another station for those!

Back to Windows

For my own projects, primary development is now done on Ubuntu using either my ThinkPad running the Desktop edition or my EEE 901 using the Netbook Remix version (both still 9.04).  I'm now doing a short consultant programming stint at a Microsoft centric organization at which I used to work full-time and did another 9 month contract at early this year.  Right now, on Monday, I'm only starting the second week and already I've experienced amusing aspects of the Windows world.

Today: my manager had pre-installed a fresh copy of Vista and apparently used the MSDN DVD and/or key.  The result is an instance of Vista which refuses to activate successfully over the internet.  At the same time it wants to install SP2 even though it's working fine but not activated.  And finally, Windows Defender is complaining it hasn't had a full run in 3+ days.  Not having to deal with licenses and keys is just about the best property of using Ubuntu/Linux.  With no qualms about paying for software, I still find it irritating that pirating takes approximately the same amount of effort as legitimate activation; and acquiring through BitTorrent is (for me) vastly easier and faster than juggling physical media.

Last week we had trouble finding our Team Foundation client software since the Visual Studio Team System edition doesn't come with it.  Yes, that's right.  You can't access TFS through the Team System edition; what is the logic there or is it just some kind of naming conflict?  Once installed, joyfully wade through the mire of menus, dialogs, and tree views to find where all the options are.  I can't say that a GUI in this case is an improvement over arcane command line options.  One requires me to browse like I'm lost in Yahoo! directory and the other to search for something I'm unsure of like when I'm feeling lucky at Google.  Luckily a co-worker had the CD contents copied on a share which he gave me.  Initially he wanted to send me this location over Messenger, but ...

Messenger's installer is actually for all kinds of bundled "Microsoft Live" services and that behemoth required me to download a huge turd which then failed to finish installing because it was taking too long and I had already started the TFS client install based on the location having been written on a post-it instead!  Whew!  "Another instance of Windows installer is already running, setup cannot continue" or something like that.  Then I flip over to the Visual Studio patching part and its failed because I ran "vs_setup.exe" instead of "setup.exe" (whoops).  I had mistakenly thought it was actually going to do something when it was taking so long to start up and copy setup files.

Welcome back to the Jungle!  I could go on, but I have some dialogs to click through ...

What is the Precursor to the Internet?

Talk about a helpful answer:

Windows 7 Upgrade Beta? Nope

Let me backtrack a bit on what I'm about to say that I understand the perils of running beta, however ...

When last night I tried to upgrade my Windows 7 beta installation with a full version of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, it came as a rude shock to have Microsoft's as-ever-poor installer refute me.  On the surface it doesn't make much monetary sense to provide an easy upgrade path to users of a beta, who are probably more technically proficient than the average customer and unafraid of wiping the slate clean.  However, wouldn't it be prudent to cater to the early adopters already proselytizing your latest offering before it is even offered?  For myself, I've been recommending the OS to people since I installed the first public beta (back when they had time bombs).  Spooky!

So it seems a good a time as any to pick apart the things I don't like, since this is generally a site where I whine about such things.  How about starting with the installer which itself starts with a small splash window and one friggin' button.  I'll have to upload a screenshot later, since I'm not at home, but honestly I didn't know what would happen when I pushed this mysterious thing.  The designers created a huge surprise in an über friendly.  Sure it says "Install", but what does that mean?  Am I the only one curious as to the effect?  Will it start an upgrade, did it already detect it could?  Will it give me options after this or just start doing something?  I really have no idea because there's nothing on this "dialog" except that one button.  It turns out, for those also curious, that this means it'll copy a pile of setup junk files to your computer and then actually give you options -- and then deny you after you've selected upgrade (assuming you're running a beta like me).  So what you're doing is installing the installer.  Effin' ridiculouso!

I bought the dang thing so I'll end up doing a fresh install, but I'm going to ride this beta for all its worth until then.  I wonder if they've fixed Windows Explorer to not crash or rape large files it doesn't understand?  Probably not, their file explorer has always sucked (and been kinda awesome at the same time, a paradox possibly parallel to human existence?).  For one thing sometimes 7's Explorer will just crash and take your task bar and all open folders with it.  Sure your apps are probably okay, but it's disconcerting in its frequency compared to XP or Ubuntu's Nautilus.  I have been using 7 for web, games, DVD ripping, and video editing. Given a directory containing a fair sized VOB, Windows Explorer gives the hard drive an ample thrashing while it presumably tries to generate a thumbnail.  This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't do this every damn time I open the folder!  I've taken to using only the command prompt and typing full paths into the Open dialogs lest I be unable to operate my machine without ending Explorer.exe or "COM Surrogate".

And of course, I've already dispensed a bit of ranting against Snap, so we're through for now ...

Windows 7 Snap Sucks

Apparently the Windows 7 "Snap feature" is a big deal, because their commercials focus on it.  I haven't watched them, even in that CNet article I just linked, but I don't think snapping is quick, or fun, or useful with regards to maximizing windows.  By a quick count there are three ways to use your mouse to maximize a window pre-7: click the maximize icon, double-click the title bar, and use the window menu drop-down (left-click window icon or right-click title bar).  Now there's a fourth and it has the added benefit of happening precisely when you don't want it to.

Is this something Mac OSX does, or maybe doesn't so Microsoft can tout it as innovation?  I don't know, but more often than not it pisses me off.  Anytime I'm trying to swiftly position windows above or below each other they now have a tendency to explode selfishly across the entire screen.  The problem is compounded by the widescreen display which has less vertical real estate and therefore more chance of this occuring.

Wah, dinosaur whining, right?  Well go on and enjoy your fun and quick new way to maximize windows, because I'm going to be grumbling behind you everytime you do it successfully.  I do admit, however, the idea of snapping two windows to each other sounds intriguing -- why can I never get that to work right?

Finally, why add this at all?  Even assuming that some people find it useful, how many are asking for it?  And if they're asking for it, why are people trying to maximize windows in the first place and where are they running into problems with the other three ways (not counting hot keys)?  I can think of more difficult problems for useful solutions if those developer folks are having trouble finding things to keep themselves busy.

Snap out.

Fate

Fate is a generic dungeon-crawler purporting comparison to Diablo.  If your desire is a medieval fantasy, point-and-click combat system then this game is for you.  I supposed more satisfaction than actually occurred and I'm writing this to explain it.  Know that I don't mean to demean the game or its developers, but Fate was built to be free.  No qualities warrant a purchase, cheap or otherwise, because it is a stock "RPG" experience.  Solid but soul-less.

Frugal people: you can play it for free so go forth and download if that is appeal enough.  For a game that costs nothing but a video ad prior to playing it is quality work even if creatively barren.  I got confused on the route to getting the game, prepared even to pay some small sum to try it, and nearly wound up buying some kind of wild points or something.  Know that these are not necessary, there is a download link, and cheapskates such as myself will root it out.

If you boiled down essences of statistics-based video game systems, RPG's as they are unfortunately labeled, then you will come up with Fate as a result.  There are the standard attributes like dexterity and strength which do the most basic things like increase hit percentage and weapon damage.  Your skills are a list of all the weapon types, also associated with a number which is unsurprisingly a higher damage bonus.  Killing monsters yields experience points.  Accruing said XP gains you levels.  Experience levels give you two sets of points: some for attributes and some for weapon skills.  And there you have it, no surprises.

Pets represent the one semi-unique aspect of Fate.  You begin with a dog and can acquire other creatures, I guess (from the picture).  I barely made it through clearing the first two dungeon levels and had the pup the whole time.  These are computer-controlled allies that you can load with inventory and send back to the starting village (Grove) on their own to vendor things.  What would have made this more useful is if they could buy things too.  And then the designers needn't have even had a town!

Being that the environments are so vanilla, the town is entirely unnecessary.  There are a few more relatively useless character-building thingies like reputation (never figured out what that did), but otherwise Grove is just an area that takes too long to run around and get things done in.  You go there just to visit specific people: new weapons, gambler, healer, etc. and not to stretch your legs.  There's no auto-run and clicking to move gets old fast.  That and you have to keep clicking to attack.  Ugh, did I not talk about combat?

You click on an area of ground and your character will move there.  You click on an enemy to attack.  You click on a friendly thing to talk.  Click, click, clickety click.  Mind-numbing repetition made worse by the fixed 3D perspective that sometimes hides enemies behind walls or other objects.  Just keep clicking until you find a spot the game recognizes, meanwhile your sitting there doing nothing.  The mechanics could have easily translated to keyboard alone or a game controller.  Then I could sit back and stop adding to my mouse-hand RSI.

The music is just fine, but it never stops playing and since there's only so much, it gets old too.  Sound effects are fine, but they're not balanced at all.  Every bloody torch makes crackling noises and with a few on screen all biding for your audible attention, well that gets old too.  Initial enemies simply run directly at you and are not very interesting to melee with.

I picked up a bow early on and dumped my points into it, from then on it became even more mundane ... standing back and shooting.  I found that clicking in the general area with the bow caused me to shoot directly at a foe, whether I could see it or not.  That didn't alleviate the need to find pixel-perfect points, however, because loot obscured by bodies is still a problem.

You can't see very far and not just because it's a mostly top-down affair, but because there's some kind of swirling "fog of war".  It doesn't annoys rather than adding to the atmosphere.  The graphics and models are clean and decent, but uninspiring.  There's no mystery, rather "there's a goblin, blob, rat, etc."  Why are there urns and crates everywhere with items still in them and why does the place look rather well-kept when it's infested by monsters?  What are these things eating, doing, etc.?  Whatever, just kill kill kill click click click.

Alright, I'm going to end this here, now that I'm rambling.  It is enjoyable for small spurts without any brain matter required, but it is also only viable when it costs nothing.

eHow Sucks

Okay, so I should have posted this here, but I didn't.  Go over to Gibdon.com to see Why eHow Sucks.