as i've played katamari damacy the katamari size has increased significantly. the diameters required to pass levels have increased past six meters to twelve meters. this ads a new point of reference for a song i've enjoyed for a long time, yü-gung by einstürzende neubauten.

first the obvious:

ich bin sechs Meter gross, und alles ist wichtig
ich bin neun Meter gross, und alles ist mehr als wichtig
ich bin zwölf Meter gross, und alles ist unverstehbar!

and in english:

i am six meters tall, and everything is important
i am nine meters tall, and everything is more than important
i am twelve meters tall, and everything is beyond comprehension!

and for something not precisely in the lyrics, but printed on the cover of my yü-gung 12" single:

im Vertruaen auf die eigene Kraft kann Yü-Gung Berge versetzen

english:

through faith in its own power yü-gung can move mountains

i haven't gotten far enough in the game to roll a mountain up into my katamari, but i have faith in the power of my own rolling.

und fütter mein Ego, Ego, Ego, Ego.

katamari damacy = awesome

all you do is roll the katamari around and make it bigger as it picks up more stuff. the level design is great because it works on many levels. the world gets smaller as your katamari grows, so what towers over you at the beginning can be reduced little more than a speed bump as you roll it up. like all great games, it is simple to learn, but difficult to master. i even like the way they took a flat graphics aesthetic and applied it to the whole world. i imagine it was a trade off for the physics of katamari rolling and the fact that world objects become part of the katamari. but they didn't just admit defeat at being unable to make everything perfectly modeled. the graphics aren't fancy, but the design is good.

i should be getting psychonauts from gamefly tomorrow. i'm looking forward to giving that one a whirl.

in other news, it looks as though my cell phone has finally given up the ghost. time for a new one.

they gave me a link to invite people. actually it was always there, i just hadn't dug deeply enough to find it. anyway, joining gamefly from this link counts towards my free ds lite.

http://friends.gamefly.com/r/0ca76caa835b10298535

this is a shameless pitch to get some people here to do something that gets me something for free.

i recently signed up with gamefly.com for video game rentals. so far i'm pretty happy, although it hasn't quite been two weeks yet. i'm in ohio and it usually only takes 2 biz days for me to get the games from cali. they also have something set up with the post office so that they are notified when you send a game back so that games can cross in the mail rather than waiting to get a game back from you to send another out.

anyway, if anyone who reads this is thinking of joining up, please consider letting me invite you to join. if i get 5 people to join as paying subscribers, they send me a ds lite for free. i don't want to mail out invitations indescriminantly. if you're interested, drop me a line at my slashdot name at gmail. for whatever it's worth, they claim they won't share your email or send you spam if i refer you.

time warner cable had some crappy prices for their service so we switched to wow internet and cable several months ago. both services use the same scientific atlanta dvr boxes. the software wow uses is vastly inferior in almost every area. it seems time warner is finally willing to offer reasonable pricing so we're thinking of switching back. the price would be about the same, it would only be to get a somewhat functional dvr.

so i decided to check prices on a tivo just for comparison. looks like the TiVo TCD649080 Series2 80 Hour Dual Tuner Digital Video Recorder (caps from cut & paste) is about $215 right now with a $150 rebate. wait. i just checked tivo's site and it looks like it's only $30 from tivo.

my questions to you all is this: is tivo better than the other offerings out there? is this model worth having? does anybody want to add anything else to the subject?

i sense some of you are going to suggest building a myth tv box. please consider that both cost and features are important. it looks like most decent tuner cards will cost more than the tivo box (at least with current promotions), but that may or may not be outweighed by the monthly fee.

did i miss anything important around these parts?

pictured rocks national lakeshore is beautiful. the campsites are primitive, which is nice if you just want to get away. the roads through it are often "unimproved" dirt roads complete with warnings, but they're worth traversing. i didn't realize ahead of time that the upper peninsula is almost completely without cell phone reception, but i view that as a bonus as well. it wasn't the only place we visited, but it was our favorite.

between camping in a few different places in door county, wisconsin and u.p. michigan we were able to swing by and visit with a few friends. that was good too.

happy anniversary to us.

i'll be incommunicado for the next week and a half. i have a deep cover assignment.

most of you won't notice any difference in your slashdot experience.

to anyone who reads this, be well.

short version:

dead man's chest is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

nearly as short version:

there are fun spectacles throughout the movie. it's fun in parts. it is not very cohesive as a complete work. the plot is pretty weak. it is two and a half hours long, and feels like it is.

more opinions (maybe spoilers):

it's disappointing that the whole movie felt like a set up for the third one. i suppose there's a small chance that watching this one back to back with the next one will make it better, but i'm not too hopeful. the next movie might still be good. davy jones looks neat, but i wish it had been resolved in one movie.

traditionally i've been a pc gamer. this means i've missed out on a lot of great console games. as someone who'd like to work in the games industry, i find that inexcusable. i can't afford to buy all the games i have missed, but i can afford to rent quite a few of them. so i have two questions for you all:

1. with which netflix-type game services might anyone here have experience, and what are the resulting recommendations of those experiences?

here are some services i've been able to dig up a little info on:
http://www.gamefly.com/
http://www.gamelender.com/
http://www.gplay.com/
http://www.gamerang.com/Default.aspx

2. whichever service i decide to use, what games do you recommend as things i simply must have the experience of having played?

i currently have a playstation 2 and an xbox. i will aquire an xbox 360 in the near future. i would like to limit recommendations to games that can be played on those systems. i am well aware that there were plenty of good games that came out for the gamecube and the dreamcast, and that there are good games for the various portable systems, but unless you want to send me those systems i don't have the capacity to play them right now.

great gameplay or beautiful artwork could both be considered good reasons to recommend a game. i'm willing to play a good game that isn't beautiful. a game needs to be really beautiful if it is to be recommended in spite of its terrible game play.

thanks everybody.

we know what black means.

i really hope they don't botch this.

happy father's day to all you dads here in the circle. at some point in the future i'll join the ranks, but for now i just wanted to tell you to rock out.

and an apology for the really late mother's day wish for the moms reading this. you should also rock out.

anybody else can rock out too, if they want. group hug.

out.

i forgot to post about this earlier.

over the weekend i finally watched the last two episodes of season 1 of the new dr who. i really enjoy this series. but that's not what i wanted to journal about.

has anyone else here noticed that satellite 5 has several giant metal penises? it's not as apparent in this shot as it is when it shows up again in the last episodes. it's the center ring. it's not really that subtle, especially considering the way the rings rotate around the main portion of the satellite. right now i can't find any better pictures than that. when the dvd comes out next month, i'm sure more people will figure it out and start posting more pictures.

moral: it's ok to show giant naked penises on tv as long as they're metal and in the vacuum of space.

the body of this journal was already entered over at last.fm. i don't want to reformat all the URLs and such, but i'm posting here in the unlikely event that someone wants to comment here rather than there.

nitzer ebb is headlining the detroit electronic music festival on monday. i'd like to have been able to make it up for the whole weekend, but there are just too many other things going on this weekend.

nitzer ebb is a huge musical influence for me. i never got a chance to see them back when i was buying their music as new releases. since they broke up, they've been too pissed off at each other to do any sort of reunion. but after over ten years, they've finally made nice long enough for a reunion. right now it looks like detroit will be the only stop they make in the US, though they have more dates in europe.

definately looking forward to seeing this show. as a bonus, i'll probably also get to see chemlab, asrock from the final cut, and some other acts perform before the main event.

i hope they play "shame." when they were still together, belief was my least favorite of their albums, but since it has grown to be the one i listen too more often than the others.

huzzah.