The idea of an out of ten scale is that 5 is the middle, which should represent average. Or at least it used to. When a book is rated 6/10 that is an above average book. But when a movie is given 6/10 that is an average or below average movie. And these days a video games has to be an 8/10 or it is not even worth playing by the general consensus. More recently I’ve been looking at guitar reviews where almost every reviewer seems to give 9/10 or more to every guitar I see reviewed.

Now these average numbers don’t matter in and of themselves, as long as you know what the average score is you can judge based on that. But as a reviewer it allows no freedom in scoring. A book that is a 7/10 is certainly worse than one that is 9/10 and there are specific reasons to point out why. But both are good books. A 9/10 video game and a 9.5/10 video game have about the same difference in score as the those two books compared to the average. The same 2 point difference has to be squished into a .5 difference now. There are no in-between points. But you can still say that the 9.5 game is better.

The problem actually comes in low scoring games. Since everything below 8/10 is seen as a failure in video games, how can you accurately score things? 6/10 and 7/10 might seem natural. These scores are just below a good game. But what exactly is the difference between 3/10, 4/10 and 5/10? These seem like they are arbitrarily given out. Any score within this 3-5/10 range can effectively be given the same score.

The other problem lies with how something is reviewed. As price is highly variable in many of today’s products, in order to compare the high end and low end products on the same spectrum you have justify the higher scores on low end products as “for the price”. This is a good camera “for the price.” The downside to this is that you cannot compare things that are not “for the price.” My newest guitar receives mostly 9/10 and 10/10 on review sites yet it is also apparently “significantly worse” to the $2000+ guitars. None of these reviews can accurately score that.

So we should stay with a very easy to use four point system. Or maybe even less than 4 points. Bad, Satisfactory, Good, Great. Just as arbitrary as what we are using now, but with less of the fluff. There are still awards given out at the end of the year anyway, and rankings could be done entirely separately to distinguish the greatest games.

We will drink almost all of something but be compelled to offer that last tiny bit to the original owner.

Lesson? Don’t share your drink.

I went into this movie with the worst intentions. I wanted a B movie to laugh at for crappy effects, terrible acting and an even worse plot. I’ve seen many bad movies from MST3K and that’s what I wanted to experience again here, something so bad it was laughable.

But I didn’t get that. I did get a B movie. And it did have some crappy effects. And it did have some poor acting. And the plot wasn’t always the best. But I laughed with it.

Why? Because I liked it. It was a B movie for sure, but I liked the humour, I liked the characters and I liked the plot. The effects weren’t the best but they were surprisingly good at times. The plot wasn’t amazingly fantastic, but it didn’t seem in the least bit contrived in the least. Hell, everything in this movie I can related to fairly well.

So now instead of laughing at the movie and telling people how bad it is I want to find a place to buy it online (for less than $30 >.>) and show it to as many people as I can. It’s not amazing but it’s pretty damn good.

If you want to see some stuff like it check out Journey Quest.

So I looked back at why I switched away from Chrome the last time I was using it.

• Too much RAM usage on my netbook with Windows 7
• No bookmark syncing, Xmarks wasn’t working  at the time
• Missing many add-ons I loved in Firefox

And effectively all these problems have been solved. My netbook is now running Ubuntu, Xmarks works and google has their own built in syncing with google docs and there are many more add-ons (like ad-blocker) so I’m not missing any functionality. Not to mention that Chrome feels like a faster browser and uses less vertical space by default.

So I’m back with Chrome. I might look like a google fanboy but I think of it as the same as I think of Logitech. I didn’t decide to buy a Logitech mouse (or three), keyboard, speakers and headset because I’m in love with the company. I chose it because those were the best products at the time. Google makes some really nice products, so I will embrace them.

1. Steam offers me many, many deals, especially on older but still relevant games.
2. Steam offers large packs of games at discounted prices.

I began using steam back in 2004 when they were throwing around Half-Life 2 with every video card, but before it came out you could play the older games. And a $10 upgrade got me Day of Defeat: Source and I could keep the back catalog. $10 for Half-Life and all associated mods PLUS a new game that I was waiting for? Sign me up.

From there I bought a few more retail games, some were older collector’s editions on the cheap, that could be activated in steam. Almost every game since then has been a game on sale in one way or another. The last time I bought a game in a store was last January for Mass Effect, Bioshock, Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition and a few others. And then Bioshock went on sale on steam the next week for $5… d’oh!

Last week steam had some very nice sales (25-90% off various games) and I ended up with 7 games for just under $50. Even if a store was having the same sales I would have had to go to the store 5 days in a row to see them. That is never going to happen.

So I love steam, and pretty much everything comes out on it anyway. Except for collector’s editions that’s where I am buying all my games for the next LONG while.

From left to right:

1. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
2. Anathem – Neal Stephenson
3. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
5. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
6. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
7. American Gods – Neil Gaiman
8. The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
9. Virtual Light – William Gibson
10. A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
11. The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch
12. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
13. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
14. The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
15. The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
16. Singularity 7 – Ben Templesmith
17. The Mortal Instruments Trilogy – Cassandra Clare
    • City of Bones
    • City of Ashes
    • City of Glass
18. The Wheel of Time, first three books – Robert Jordan
    • The Eye of the World
    • The Great Hunt
    • The Dragon Reborn

I’m going to be reading these for the next few years…

I’d like to thank The Sword and Laser, Mark Miltenburg and a few other people for these fine suggestions.

Restroom: If anyone things their resting while in there, I have to wonder what I’ve been doing wrong. I think this word is much more appropriate for a bedroom where you can get some real resting done. This really isn’t appropriate in language today.

Bathroom: Does it have a bath in it? About 50% chance in a house, no chance in a restaurant. Are you going to use it? Maybe 20-25% of the time in a given day but I usually don’t need to actually say “I’m going to the bathroom to have a bath.” when it is much simpler to say “I’m going to have a bath.” and location is implied. (Note: I don’t take baths, but I don’t want to call it a showerroom either.)

Washroom: Yes, it is part of the process. A very important part I might add. And you can just do a wash by itself. But it does NOT represent the majority of the going ons in the “washroom”. But this does seem to be the best choice to describe the room while still avoiding all the actual subject.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to stop watching The Big Bang Theory. It’s fun, I like it, I just don’t think it’s worth my time anymore. I know the premise, I like the jokes, but they all seem rather repetitive. Star trek reference, physics quip, computer pun, rinse, repeat, end with nerdy guys not getting hot girls. I get enough of that myself, thank you very much. So I won’t be seeing season 3 of TBBT.

I’ve also decided to stop watching Grey’s Anatomy. It has become stuck in a point of storyline and I don’t think they know where to go anymore. It also lacks that Dr. House/Dr. Cox character I love so much. It just not worth 44 minutes a week anymore.

Unrelatedly, Scrubs will be done after this season, which frees up another 22 minutes a week for me. Which means I won’t feel any guilt because I’m picking up Flashpoint and Castle on my daily schedule.

I also have a suspicion that Chuck will be cancelled relatively soon as will Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

And hopefully I’ll be able to use this time to do other things, like finishe reading these books that have been sitting on my shelf for 3 months now…

The first season had a very nice overall plot, wrapped up at the end with a nice slightly unexpected ending. The overall arc completed and it wrapped up in the first few episodes of the next season.

The second season was a bit worse. They threw a large event in at the very beginning. And then they didn’t touch it for a while. And then they brought it up again. And then it disappeared. They used it for a few random smaller arcs within the season and then in the end it was someone who wasn’t even remotely related at the beginning. Before the end he was mostly a minor character. Not the even close to the best season of a TV show I’ve seen.

Season three? The ending was very abrupt and poorly done. They wrapped up in the last 10 minutes what should have been  done in another two or three episodes. I liked the season as a whole a bit better but the conclusion was simply terrible.

One thing that did get better throughout the show? Smart, cute, blonde girls really grow on me.

Here we go:

5. Finding panties behind my bed a few month into first term.

4. Staying up until 4 a.m. and waking up at noon – for 4 months.

3. Playing Dungeons and Dragons with 2 separate groups.

2. A girl picking me up on my way home from playing Dungeons and Dragons.

1. Having a girl leave my room saying “And that’s why you’re still a virgin, Mike!”

• Office Space
• V for Vendetta
• Wayne’s World
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Men in Black
• The Matrix (all 3, I don’t care what people say, finish the plot)
• Anchorman
• Charlie Wilson’s War
• Pulp Fiction
• Sin City
• Thank You for Smoking
• Superbad
• Back to the Future
• At least 3 Bond movies
• Happy Gilmore
• Rush Hour
• Billy Madison
• A Beautiful Mind
• Fight Club
• LotR (skip to the battle scenes)
• Memento

And there’s probably more but that should keep you busy for a few weeks. Not every movie is as totally awesome as the last one, but they are all required movies to watch.