ExtraLife

Manson is still villain, but is he able?

Not so long ago, current galaxy, a new Marilyn Manson album came out. Not much was known about it during the recording process, except that it will be THE BEST EVER ™ and will mark Manson’s return to form. 

Born Villain sounded like a concept album. With all the references to Shakespeare present in the Born Villain trailer, one could only assume that this album will be a lyrical masterpiece. Manson cited Fleurs Du Mal and Macbeth as influences. What could go wrong?

Well, a lot, actually. Album has no tangible concept, unless the listener wants to far-fetch a lot of things. And you want to do that, since conceptual albums were what they did best. Fortunately, Born Villain is not riddled with depressing love songs, but they are still present and don’t go well with the album’s supposed theme. Maybe I’m wrong and the album has no theme, but interviews from this era really sound like he’s proud of this  ”I became a born villain” concept, so I have no idea what to think. Lyrical high points are “Overneath the Path of Misery” and “Children of Cain”. I guess. I mean, it’s no Shakespeare or Holy Wood era Manson. But they’re okay. Ish. They fail miserably when compared to any of the band’s work up to (and including) The Golden Age of Grotesque, though.

Musically, it’s not bad. It’s no Holy Wood or Mechanical Animals or etc…, but it has its moments and just enough catchy parts to make you come back a couple of times. Vocals, however,  are horrendous at times, on my first listening I had the urge to skip some songs and the only thing you can do is let them grow on you (like a tumor) or immediately convince yourself that they’re great. I can appreciate the moments like “I have to look up just to see hell” had, where the screaming\moaning\wailing at the beginning really added to the atmosphere of the song, but on Born Villain whole verses and\or choruses sound like that. Luckily for Manson, that’s the only sound he can still produce live, so great for him!

All that being said, I enjoy Born Villain more than I’d like to admit. But I’m not in denial - if some random band came up with this album, I wouldn’t give it a second listen (or maybe even a whole first). This album works for me mostly because it’s Marilyn Manson, and I’m a fan boy. He can do better. They can do better. There is more than enough musical proof out there.

Final rating:

6/10 (mostly out of respect, or what is left of it)

Croatian president openly supports ACTA

Ivo Josipović displayed a wide variety of ignorance a few days ago when he openly spoke about ACTA as a good thing. Although he obviously supports the ACTA agreement and speaks about it at great length, one can get the impression that mister president didn’t read it very caref at all.

While comparing piracy to stealing from a supermarket and trying to compare digital information to groceries, he said that ACTA maybe could be exploitable for surveillance and intruding privacy , but that he believes it won’t be. 

Since ACTA itself cannot function without intruding privacy and constant monitoring of everything we do online (and offline?), it’s probable that Josipović doesn’t really have a firm grasp of what ACTA is and what it says. I won’t disagree that the ACTA agreement is a convoluted document written to confuse and hide its obvious fascist agenda, but Josipović did study law and shouldn’t have any problems with understanding it. But that would actually require some reading, I guess.

Croatia already sports a blank media tax protecting the (un)intellectual property of Croatian singers and artists which was also introduced by Josipović, unlike the displayed ignorance about the subject. He speaks of some elusive group of people called “the pirates” who lie about ACTA to protect themselves and it all sounds like a big fairy tale he’s trying to sell to the public while hiding his ignorance.

I am aware that sometimes piracy can be hurtful (although it’s not really hard proven), but it could also be a very valuable tool if people realized that the world of marketing changed and that the Interwebz are not the enemy. (for example, check this out).

Even if piracy was the biggest problem on the planet, it still doesn’t give anyone the right to censor the whole Internet and disregard any leftovers of privacy and free speech we might still have.

Not everything is hacking

There’s just so many hackers these days, you know?

“Somebody hacked into my Facebook account”

“My ex hacked into my email”

“I hacked her MySpace”

“Hackers stole my bike”

Just because you are stupid and don’t know shit about Internet security, that doesn’t mean everybody else is a hacker. No, it’s not hacking if you are a dumbass and leave your Facebook logged in on a public computer. No, it’s not hacking if somebody breaks into your account if your password is your first name or “dog” or “sex”. No, you’re not a hacker if your ex girlfriend uses the same password for every goddamn thing on the Internet.

It’s NOT hacking. Hacking is a skill. If breaking into your account takes 30 seconds and a simple guess, then it’s not a skill, it’s just YOU BEING STUPID.

Don’t tell your password to anyone, don’t leave your accounts logged in, don’t pick one syllable passwords, pick a proper security question\answer combination and stop dating psychotic maniacs - and guess what - not that many “hackers” around you anymore. Problem solved. NEXT

000webhost grinds my gears

I have recently signed up for a free hosting account at 000webhost.com, and I know that “free” comes with a few catches, or in this case 22 of them, but they really are something else.

They promised 1500mb of storage space and 100gb of monthly bandwidth. Since all I wanted was to install a phpBB board for some of my friends and me, that sounded like more than enough.

However, not 2 weeks have passed and my account got suspended with this message:

“Suspended (Unmanaged or abandoned website that allows anonymous posting. MySQL database is overloaded with thousands of junk records. To get your account unsuspended please upgrade to our premium hosting.)”

Let’s dissect:

Unmanaged - Not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I guess they are implying that users were running amok and posting child pornography and warez all around. Which they were not.

Abandoned - They probably want to say that I haven’t logged into my account frequently enough. I guess 10 times every day just doesn’t cut it.

Anonymous - Oh no, these people want their privacy. They must be doing something illegal.

Overloaded - “While we did promise you 1,5gb of storage space, but come on, you have already filled almost 3%!!!!”, I hear them say.

Junk Records - This one baffles me the most. I’m sure all other free accounts on 000webhost contain records filled with cancer medications, AIDS prevention techniques, ways to get to the moon on a bike and similar amazing information (TM), so our petty little chatting looks like junk. And “thousands” is somewhere around 5 thousands, not 500 like they made it sound.

“To get our GREAT AND TOTALLY AWESOME SERVICE to work again, please GIVE US MONEY.” I did intend to make an upgrade, but to hell with them, there is no way that I will pay them now. I just hope they will be fair enough to allow me to download a backup of the database before I abandon their unmanaged junk of a website.

Level Up (2011)

I’m one of those people who just love making gaming references in real life. Making remarks about leveling up, graphics… I’m there. When I accidentally found out about “Level Up”, a new series about to come out, that’s set on doing just that - merging real life and gaming - I was like “HELL YEAH!”, but after I’ve just seen the pilot episode I’m all like “HELL NO!”

Maybe you wonder why?

Acting is horrible. I’m pretty sure that this thing is targeted at younger kids, so young in fact, that they don’t even have “poor acting” in their everyday vocabularies. So there’s an excuse to hire poor actors. It’s for kids. I guess the same goes for the script.

<Character 1> (some stupid remark)
<Character 2> (gaming\pop culture reference)
<Character 3> (insult 1 and 2 for LULZ)

Characters are totally stereotypical. We have 3 guys, out of which one is a popular jock and hides the fact that he’s gaming because it would RUIN HIM. Games ruin lives! Remember that. It’s 2011. and you can’t be popular and\or have friends if you play games. There’s a positive message about gaming for all of you out there. Later on, somebody probably realized that they’re missing a female character so they add in a girl just to fill all of the requirements. Her weapon sucks monkey balls, by the way. All of them are, in fact, looking like cheap toys. Check out the visual aids to the right and see for yourself.

The game they’re playing is obviously an MMO, with “tens of thousands of players playing”. WHOA! Tens of thousands! It must be the biggest game out there! WOW currently has 10.3 MILLION people playing. I wouldn’t normally complain about the subscription count of a fictional video game, BUT THEY SHOW AN ENORMOUS SKYNET-LOOKING SERVER FARM IN THE FIRST EPISODE. And we’re meant to believe it’s only one of many. WHO ARE THEY FOR? All those countless tens of thousands of players? Come on…. We meet the programmer who made the game in the first episode as well. No surprise there - they portray him as a Peter Pan figure who refuses to grow up and acts like a spoiled brat with no sense of reality. SO MUCH LUV FOR GAMERZ! Thank you Level Up!

The monsters are lame. And inconsistent. Some of them are CG. Some of them are people playing dress up. You know what, Level Up? Either have all of the monsters CG or have NONE of them. This looks really stupid. Oh yeah, and the CG is awful, as expected.

But, all that aside, my biggest complaint is about the show itself. It’s about gaming. That’s cool. But it’s trying to be edgy about all the wrong things. Gaming is huge today. It’s not for “nerds” and “no life geeks”. Almost everybody I know plays games, at least once in a while. And they’re perfectly normal people. Why succumb to the stone age premise and make gamers look like total idiots? If this show is being made for gamers, shouldn’t it send a positive message about them? Big bang theory fucks this up occasionally, but this one is out of the box obnoxiously wrong about everything.

They are indeed making a show for gamers. Purely to take their money and give some neigh-sayers (hello everypony!) and parents more verbal ammo to shoot at gamers. Because games make you violent and prone to breaking law and the only use you’ll ever have from playing games is if, by any chance, games merge with real life and you have to kill a troll or two.

This series is totally unimaginative, lacks interesting characters and story, misses the point of gaming and sends an almost completely negative vibe about video games. Why? TO TAKE YOUR GOLDS! ALL YOUR GOLDS ARE… you get it….

ONE FINAL NOTE: THE DISCO BALL JOKE WAS HORRENDOUS. Somebody actually got paid to write that?

Don’t watch this shit.

It will tear your soul apart

The new Hellraiser movie was released a week or so ago. Although I’m a huge Hellraiser fan, I must admit I wasn’t even aware it was in the making so it took me by surprise.

At first I thought this was the remake, but no. Even though some parts of the story are an obvious rip off (you could say homage, but I’ll go with rip off) of the first Hellraiser movie, this is the ninth installment and a sequel.

Let me start by naming all the good things in this movie - it’s only 75 minutes long (short?). And that’s about it.

There’s a lot more going on on the negative side, though. Firstly, actors. One can’t shake off the feeling that any scene could probably convincingly derail into porn without losing anything in the credibility department. It looks and sounds fake, and the script doesn’t help. Admittedly, Hellraiser scripts were never Shakesfear quality material, but at least there were some memorable quotes and one liners that stood the test of time. Revelations has none of those.

The biggest disappointment in this movie is - THERE IS NO DOUG BRADLEY. He rejected the role of Pinhead. We got Stephan Smith Collins instead. One thing this guy sure did succeed in doing is proving that it takes more than makeup to convincingly play Pinhead. After eight movies with Doug Bradley, it’s hard to separate the character from the actor and this movie really suffers for it. I’m aware that it’s hard to be creative with the role because fans expect Pinhead, not Pinhead 2.0 and the character is pretty much set in stone by now. There is nothing else Stephan could do to make this work but try his best to imitate Doug. But he didn’t even try. Or perhaps he did, but he’s just that bad of an actor? There’s nothing intimidating in his bland performance and I couldn’t help but cringe\laugh each time he opened his mouth.

If this was the remake I would probably be much more okay with the “reinvention” of Pinhead (not a bad reinvention like this, though), but since this movie is in the same timeline with the other eight he just looks out of place and character.

“Hello,my friends. I want to put on record that the flick out there using the word Hellraiser IS NO FUCKIN’ CHILD OF MINE!” “I have NOTHING to do with the fuckin’ thing. If they claim its from the mind of Clive Barker,it’s a lie. It’s not even from my butt-hole.” - Clive Barker reviews Revelations via Twitter

The plot is dumb. I won’t spoil anything else, just that it’s dumb and dumber. Some of the scenes are from a POV of a handheld camera which seems to be all the rage in horrors these days. There’s nothing scarier than a dark, shaky, blurry scene with some yelling in the background.

After the movie was finally over I visited IMDB.com to find out why does this desecration of all that is unholy even exist. Basically, they needed to put out a Hellraiser movie before the end of this year so that they don’t lose the rights to the franchise. Which explains a lot quality wise. This movie is just another case of greedy people cashing in more money on the classics. I’m glad I didn’t buy this.

And the fun doesn’t end there - the reason that the future of the remake is still uncertain is because the makers want to make it TEEN FRIENDLY so they’re looking for a suitable script (the one Clive Barker approved was scrapped, apparently). What the hell, Weinsteins? A PG-13 Hellraiser? Will Pinhead sparkle in the sunlight? This has catastrophe written all over it.

Having read that, I am not surprised that Clive Barker and Doug Bradley don’t want to be involved with Hellraiser movies anymore. Because

WHAT THE HELL, WEINSTEINS?????

Linux is not for everyone

Although free and very user friendly as of recently, Linux is not for everyone. Many enthusiastic Linux users will tell you that it’s easy to use, stable, fast, virus free and a great replacement for day to day use.

And they are right! Linux is AWESOME.

But what most Linux users won’t tell you that Linux does require you to WANT to use Linux. You know, invest yourself a bit. Be interested in it. Or at least - GET USED TO IT.

Linux is not Windows. It can have a Start menu, icons on the desktop, wallpaper, screensaver, Firefox, Chrome… It has a Winamp replacement, Word replacement, you can run VLC media player on it and many other things you are (most likely) used to in everyday life. But it still is NOT Windows.

If you are not ready to make some changes in your everyday habits, don’t use Linux. I, as a Linux user, personally despise people who try Linux because I suggested it to them and then behave like I owe them something everytime they break something that’s usually fixable by (tested many times) copying and pasting their EXACT question into Google. First result - SOLVED.

But people are lazy and brainwashed into thinking that one thing is better than another. Windows HAS to be better because everyone is using Windows. Your argument is an invalid. You have a cripple of an argument there, really. Sure, Windows get a lot more attention from hardware developers and game developers and if you game most of your time, stay on Windows.

If your daily routine is more web based, you write blogs, watch Youtube, surf the web, watch porn (be honest), give Linux a try. But be ready to invest yourself a bit. Linux, as much as it is dumbed down today, still takes some getting used to, and apparently most people are not ready for that.

No one owes you anything if you try Linux. Don’t be an asshole to random Linux users on forums, IRC, Facebook or anywhere if something doesn’t work. It can be fixed, but acting like a spoiled brat won’t help you. Try to solve your problem yourself. Realize what just happened - you SOLVED a problem on your own. And probably acquired some computer experience, maybe even leveled up. Linux does that - it gives you ultimate control over your PC, but with power comes that cliche quote about responsibility. You are responsible for your own actions. If you blindly copy commands somebody gave you online and break your whole system, it’s your fault, don’t blame Linux.

Bottom line is - Linux is great, but you have to be at least a little bit  interested to properly give it a chance. Otherwise, there are always pirated Windows out there, and you can return to your semiannual re-installations when everything goes to hell.

Duke Nukem Forever review

I was probably in the minority, although not the only one, who thought that actually releasing DNF after such a long development cycle was a bad idea. The game can’t be awesome (as it should be), I thought to myself, after all those engine changes and postponements, no matter what kind of brilliant ideas Gearbox wanted to bring into the mix (and they brought very few, it seems).

And then it finally came out. The gaming community held its breath. Duke is here. It took FOREVER, but he’s here. However, the first battalion of reviews wasn’t really positive and I wasn’t surprised. But since I never trust reviews, I had also hoped. Not sure for what exactly, but hope was there, teasing me to give Duke a try.

I have just played through the game and… well, the game sucked. Let’s be honest, the game itself is NOT THAT BAD. But that’s all. Almost every aspect of the game can be described with NOT THAT BAD.

Level Design

Levels are NOT THAT BAD. The developers avoided the whole FPS “generic factory and/or warehouse” look so levels do shine from time to time. The dam level (SPOILER: there is a dam level) actually looks pretty inspired and the mission built around it is pretty exciting. But for the most part, levels are just there for you to run through them, in one linear way, with little or no available sidetracks for you to explore. Textures sometimes look a bit low-res, but I’m not really big on graphics so I didn’t care. As long as I can differentiate the enemies from the background, I’m fine. But I can’t ignore the linear fashion in which the levels are designed. I know they went for the old-school design, but they did it wrong. Duke 3D had much better levels.

Sound and Music

Sounds and music are NOT THAT BAD. Both heavily aim for the nostalgia factor, so there are a lot of references to the good old Duke 3D. The Duke theme can be heard in elevators, Duke’s casino and many more places. In the end the theme gets overused to the point where you think that’s all this game has going on - nostalgia. And you’re right.

Characters

One of the bigger selling points of Duke 3D was the main character - Arnold macho type with a healthy, even somewhat sexist, sense of humor. I can still hear quotes and jokes from the first game and laugh. They were good. They were fresh and inspired. The new Duke, however… well, he sounds like an idiot. The only good things he says are actually ripped off from Duke 3D, the rest is just sad. I don’t find quotes like “More equipment means more ass kicking” very funny or adrenaline-rushy. They sound like poor filler material. The game is much more sexist than the first one, but not funnier. It’s counterproductive. Fails to deliver. I guess it could be worse, but I cannot say that it’s NOT THAT BAD, since it is. The game occasionally gives the impression that it’s painfully aware of where it belongs (there is one instance in the game where the president calls Duke “a relic from the past”, which is exactly what this game is). That also reminded me of one more thing why I thought Duke sounds like an idiot - there is a lot more talking in this game, characters actually communicate and talk among themselves or to you. Duke fails to say anything meaningful, he ends up sounding like a random punchline delivery service, if there is such a thing. In the first game, all the talking he did was mostly to himself, so it worked and it wasn’t so obvious he’s an empty minded squid.

The enemies are also pretty unimaginative and clearly just shadows of the ones in the first game. Perhaps you’ll remember how obvious it was that the pig aliens were actually dressed as cops? Not in this game, it’s not. The graphics are blurry as shit (a lot of post processing effects going on, probably to hide the shitty overall quality) and you can’t see shit. A lot of shit in one sentence, I know.

Gameplay and interactivity

If the character was one huge selling point of the original, interactivity was the other. At that time, there were some much better looking games on the horizon (Quake 1, for example, with the full 3d engine), but Duke 3D gave us interactivity. Almost everything in the game was destructable or interactive. You could interact with pinball machines, pool tables, chicks, sing… the list is pretty impressive. It was one of the first games to bring such a strong immersion with the game world. Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, brings NOTHING NEW, but rather a bucketful of old. I can see why a game from 1996. narrowed interactivity down to “walk to an object, press “use”, something funny happens”, but we’re in 2011. now and Duke still operates that way. It’s not impressive anymore. I don’t want to see scripted events, I want to interact. Red Faction allows us to destroy the entire level, Crysis gives us a realistic, almost sandboxy levels, Half Life/Portal gave us interesting puzzles, a strong story and great characters. Duke gives us a chance to occasionally play a poorly executed game of pinball, pick up a rat and squish it (sooo not funny), pick up shit from the toilet (oh yes, literal toilet humor) and listen to his sexist drivel or childish insults aimed at other games. IT’S THAT BAD.

Even though they were going for the old school FPS feel, you can only carry two weapons at a time. I know, right? The weapons list isn’t really that big anyway, and it offers almost nothing new compared to the original. Shrink ray is here, freeze ray is here. The mighty foot, unfortunately, is not. It’s been replaced by fists. The foot does appear, but as a scripted event when you look down at a shrunk enemy. You can carry pipe bombs and a couple of mines, some boosts (beer and steroids) and that’s pretty much it. The health bar was replaced with an ego bar, which is clever, you might think. When you get shot, your ego goes down. But why would Duke’s ego drop when he’s been underwater for too long? Makes no fucking sense.

Oh yes, and there’s driving in the game, but it’s annoying for the most part. There are games where you think “FUCK YEAH, DRIVING”. This is not one of those.

So, the final rating is… 4 out of 10. I would have probably rated it much better if this wasn’t a Duke game. But at the same time, I would have probably rated it much worse if this wasn’t a Duke game, since nostalgia factor is the best thing about it.

Are you STILL complaining?

I can’t believe I’ll address this issue again, but are you seriously still complaining about the new dash? Since it’s SOOOOO different from the previous one, how do you even succeed in (re)blogging content?

There is no way that your puny little petition will roll back this upgrade. If you took your time and watched their explanation video (which was very nice of them, why should they even try to justify their decisions to you?), you would see that the primary purpose of this upgrade was to make room for new features that are coming up in the following months.

You probably don’t want new features? Most of your arguments against this design were based on how “lazy” you are and how you don’t want to learn new things. Well, get off the Internet then. Why are you online, if not to experience and learn new things? To waste time? The greatest thing about online communities and technology is that it’s constantly changing and testing us and our abilities by giving us new and better tools of communicating and creating content. You can’t stop this progress. You can only decide not to be a part of it. That’s what being OFFLINE is for.

Enjoy your PS1

Creatures of habit

Humans like habits, that’s for sure. For example, I have a habit of pointing out how ridiculous constant whining about website changes is.

Why? Because things change, usually for the better. Whenever Facebook implements a new feature or moves some button a couple inches to the right, all hell breaks loose. Whine whine whine. Whining does stack, unlike poison damage in some games. AND IT’S IRRITATING. SO STOP IT.

Maybe you have a legit pesonal reason for hating a design or new features, but you have to realize that not everyone hates them. What do you think - where would the Internet be today if everything somebody complained about got scrapped? Remember the times when you couldn’t tag people in Facebook comments? Or when notifications popped out in the bottom right part of the screen, next to chat options (and it didn’t have any sense since other requests popped up in the top left)? Every single of these got pissed on and got people pissed off. For no reason except your own, selfish habits.

Shockingly, your personal preferences aren’t that important to the big picture. Designers put a lot of hard work in designing these features and designs and (in most cases) know what they are doing better than you. It’s their job.

And then, at the end of the complaining cycle, you realize that this indeed IS BETTER, but you will probably say something like “I got used to it.” Yeah you did, because it’s better. Maybe you’d realize it much sooner if you hadn’t cried like a little girl because your favorite option is now left instead of right. BIG DEAL. Apologies to little girls out there, you have every right to cry about layouts. Go ahead, CRY.