Ferrell and Reilly redeem themselves for Talledega Nights in this one. Step Brothers starts OK, peaks in hilarity, then falters towards the end, but is the funniest comedy of the year so far. The most immature scene of the movie was also the first to have me in tears in a long time.
Browser Games: Intro
Lately I’ve been exploring the not-new-but-maturing area of BBMMO (“Browser Based Massively Multiplayer Online”) games. They have some cool aspects that drew me to them, and I figured I’d talk a bit about some that I’ve tried in my first-ever series of posts.
These games largely fall into two categories: strategy and role-playing. The role-playing ones are all about you building up a character, typically to compete with other characters. The strategy ones are usually about building up cities and armies and warring with other players or guilds. Both types can be found for all of the standard gaming genres: medieval fantasy/sci-fi/cyberpunk/sports. They also vary widely in terms of competitiveness and social aspects.
Persistence and asynchronicity are defining attributes. They are designed to be played casually, whenever you want. You can attack someone who is not online, or assist a friend on a completely different schedule. This is more like the old play-by-mail games than games like World of Warcraft or Starcraft. Active players often log on several times a day, typically for just a few minutes, and read messages, read reports, launch attachs, issue build orders, etc.
These games typically lack the flair of a downloadable/installable game, or even that of a flash game. Some of them are even almost entirely text-based. They seem to be heavily focused on game mechanics rather than interface, not unlike a board game, and this has a noticeable effect on the type of gamers you’ll encounter. Those lacking patience or the desire to dig deep typically become inactive quickly.
There are hundreds, possibly thousands of these games out there, many with active playerbases in the tens of thousands, yet they are largely ignored by the mainstream gaming community probably because of their lack of commercialization and blockbuster titles. Over the next few days I’ll be discussing some of the ones I’ve tried, including Ikariam, Tribal Wars, Travian, Duels, and Baseball Boss.
Molly the Neurotic Wonder Dog
I’m writing this to honor the memory of Molly May. Molly wasn’t mine, but it doesn’t feel that way. I met Molly only in the last of her 10 years, and she was a pretty amazing dog. She was so smart and responsive you’d quickly find yourself talking to her like a person because she had an uncanny ability to really understand you in a way that was clearly not training.
Her intelligence also seemed to manifest as an endearing set of neurosis, from being deathly afraid of thunder and photo flashes, to literally pouting if things didn’t go her way like getting her spot on the bed. She’d even go into the bathroom and close the door behind her (locking herself in) when left alone at home.
Molly, I’m glad I got to know you, and you will be dearly missed.
Sorry Manny
I guess I could say I called it.
For the past few years now, I buy an All Star Game jersey for one of the Red Sox that is playing that year. I’ve avoided getting one for perennial attendee Manny Ramirez, figuring that since he easily makes it every year, I’d be better off getting one from more variable players.
Here’s what I’ve gotten so far:
2004: Ortiz
2005: Varitek
2006: Papelbon
2007: Okajima
And in 2008 (ordered before even the rumors started flying)?
P.S. Last year I started buying a National League jersey as well. Who did I get? Bonds (who isn’t playing this year). Apologies in advance to Chipper Jones…
52 Word Review: Strange Wilderness
This movie was so uniformly bad I couldn’t even finish watching it. It’s basically a really bad Adam Sandler movie without Adam Sandler. It has people in it who have otherwise been reliably funny, so it’s difficult to fathom the odds of that many funny people making an entirely unwatchable movie. Wow. Horrible.
Inside Fenway
I was lucky enough to take part in this year’s “Yaz Day” at Fenway Park. This is a fundraiser by The Genesis Fund where you get to go on the field at Fenway and take part in various baseball-y activities.
They said the infield was too wet for us to get on, so we were relegated to taking BP in the batting cages, but it was pretty cool regardless. Hopefully next year it will be drier!
Interesting Fact: The warning track is made of crushed red brick, not dirt. See more pics here.
52 Word Review: The Dark Knight
The best Batman movie since the first, The Dark Knight was everything fans of superhero movies could want. Cast, music, and effects were up to expectations, while the real highlight was the writing behind Ledger’s excellent performance. Comparisons to Empire are deserved, will the next one fare better than other third movies?
Missing Java Annotations
@SelfExplanatory – I’d love to be able to turn on JavaDoc warnings in Eclipse, but I can’t. Why? Because 90% + of the code is self explanatory. Do I really need to see that getName() “Returns the name”, or that setName(String name) has the utter audacity to “Set the name”? No, I don’t. Put a @SelfExplanatory and JavaDoc can create these braindead comments without cluttering up my code, while Eclipse can reserve its warnings for the more interesting methods.
@NotNull – Other languages may have solved or avoided this problem, but I’d like to be able to dictate that a variable can be set to anything except null, and also that a method will never return null. It would just save so many headaches (of the onerous Runtime variety, no less), as well as lots of “if (foo == null)”…
The ulterior purpose of this post is to test the upgrade to WordPress 2.6.
Gordon Ramsay & The White Barn Inn
I’ve lately been fortunate enough to eat at two amazing restaurants. The first was Gordon Ramsay at the London in New York City, the second was The White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport, ME.
Ramsay’s was quite simply the finest meal and dining experience I’ve ever had. Reeny is a big fan of his show, and I’ve watched it here and there, so I had some confidence he knew what he was talking about and that he had very high standards (important since he is not actually the chef there). The food was astonishingly good, from the artichoke soup to the Black Cod to the Kobe short rib, everything was A+. The highlight was either the soup or the scallop, both were so good it’s impossible to pick. The service was perfect too, we never felt like we were waiting nor did we feel rushed. If you’re even in NYC, make sure you visit this place, assuming you can make reservations two months ahead…
The White Barn Inn, a recommendation of Dina, was also memorable. While not quite as good as Ramsay, it’s easily the best place I’ve been to in New England. I opted for the lamb, Reeny for the beef, and both dishes were great as well as the other courses. The atmosphere is cozy, the service was very good, highly recommended when you’re down east.
Register My Login to Join Your Account
One of the details that can be tough to keep track of with a large or fast-moving website is language consistency. Of course, to be consistent, you need to decide what to use. I did an audit of the most popular English-language sites (as determined by Alexa and Compete), to see how three key phrases were being used. These were:
Login/Log In/Sign in – The action of authorizing your account.
My/Your – My Movies, Your Account, etc.
Join/Sign Up/Register/Create – Creating a new account.
Here is the raw data, see below for some analysis.
| adultfriendfinder.com | login | my | join |
| aim.com | sign in | my | join/get |
| amazon.com | sign in | your | start |
| aol.com | sign in | my | sign up |
| bankofamerica.com | sign in | your* | enroll |
| blogger.com | sign in | my | create |
| craigslist.com | login | N/A | sign up |
| deviantart.com | login | N/A | become/join |
| ebay.com | sign in | my | register |
| facebook.com | login | my | sign up |
| flickr.com | sign in | your | create |
| fotolog.com | log in/login | my | join |
| friendster.com | log in | my | sign up |
| go.com (espn) | sign in | my | register |
| google.com | sign in | my | create |
| hi5.com | log in | my | join |
| imageshack.us | login | my | signup |
| imdb.com | login | my | register |
| live.com | sign in | my | sign up |
| mininova.com | login | my | register |
| msn.com | sign in | my | sign up |
| myspace.com | login | my | sign up |
| neopets.com | login | my | sign up |
| photobucket.com | log in | my | join |
| pogo.com | sign in | my | register |
| rapidshare.com | login | my | join |
| store.apple.com | login* | N/A | create/set up |
| veoh.com | log in | my | register |
| walmart.com | sign in | my | create |
| wikipedia.org | log in | create | |
| wordpress.com | login | my | sign up |
| yahoo.com | sign in | my | sign up |
| youporn.com | login | my | register* |
| youtube.com | log in | my | sign up |
* Inconsistent
“My” is the clear winner over “Your”, with 27 mys, 3 yours, and 2 that avoid using possessive pronouns.
“Login” takes the edge over “Sign In”, 20-14. “Sign In”, however, seems to be more popular with the biggest of the big sites, like Yahoo, Microsoft’s sites, and Google. I’d say this is a tossup, and I have a feeling that in a few years signup with come to dominate. Of those using login, 13 use “login”, and 7 use “log in”, with the space.
There’s a plurality of choices for sign up, with “sign up” being used on 12 sites. 7 used join, 7 used register, 6 used create (an account), 1 used start, and 1 used enroll. This is not an independent choice, however, as “sign up” is often seen where “log in” is used, and sites that use “sign in” use something like “register”. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo use “sign in/sign up”. I suspect that some people think using such similar phrases would be confusing, and I agree, despite the appeal of the general consistency.
My preference is to use “my, “log in”, and “sign up”. “Join” seems ambiguous, “register” seems bureaucratic and expensive, while “create an account” just feels a little dorky.
Dishonorable Mention: The Apple Store, supposed paragon of usability and attention to detail, is the worst offender on this list in terms of mixing and matching the terms, often on the same page. They also fail miserably on one major point, there’s no logout button!