My dad recently retired.  I think he’s hit the point where he doesn’t know what to do with himself.  Today he came up with a “movie treatment” for a slasher flick.  I don’t want to go into details.  Trust me, I’ve heard them so many times now in one evening that I don’t want to relive them.

Here’s the break down in cliché form:

1. blonde killed in shower
2. murderer is a sadest (sic) [yes, he kept calling him that]
3. detective says “in 20 years on the job I’ve never seen something like this”
4. murderer comes from a broken home

The worst part: he wants ME to write it!  Yeah.  He’s going to come up with the “ideas” but I have to write it.

I politely declined (I’m kinda in the middle of my own cliché book at the moment).  To which he replied, “You really think it’s better than this?”

I used to think my mother was the worst person to ever critique my work.  She’s harsh.  I mean, she will stop reading at page one and rip something to shreds (not exactly constructive… and this coming from someone who exclusively reads Harloquin Romances).  But dad doesn’t even bother reading.  He just assumes it’s crap because it’s not his idea.

In fact, in writing this, he has come in another two times to talk about how he has the first two “scenes” already done.  At this pace he’s going to have this “screen play” finished by the weekend — and then urge me to actually write it.

A few other important observations:

• My father can’t stand the sight of blood
• The last slasher movie he’s seen was “Scary Movie” (yeah, the comedy)
• whenever I ask him questions about the characters he keeps bringing up the shower scene with the blonde.

Sigh.

After all the writing I’ve been doing lately, I decided I deserved a day off.  And so, I started up my 360 (haven’t done that in a while) and played through some games that I haven’t quite finished.

Of course, the top of this list should be Fallout 3.  Everyone raves about that game.  I played for a few hours.  But I don’t really like it.  I can’t get into it.  I’m not sure why.  I feel like I have no direction.  And I don’t care about any of the characters.

Since I didn’t want to start that beast of a game, I went through Prince of Persia Epilogue.  I think it was a lesson in frustration.  At first, I didn’t remember any of the buttons.  Worst – I felt like the entire game I was waiting.  The issue is, waiting sucks.  And there was always a blob, or some kind of corruption thingy in my way.  Where was the cool “I’m so awesome; watch me parkour this temple” gameplay?  It felt like things were there just to slow you down.  It wasn’t about timing.

Then they kept throwing the same boss fight in your face over and over again.  Geez.  I know the game didn’t get a lot of respect when it first came out, but I always liked it.  After playing the DLC, I lost interest.

Link’d

Kimi ni Todoke

You need to watch this animé.  See, I added a link to it right at the top.  No excuses.  Just watch it.

For those of you who are already on paragraph two (although you shouldn’t be after the instructions from paragraph one), Kimi ni Todoke is a story about a girl in high school who is treated as an outcast.  Mainly because they think she looks scary.  It is the most adorable, heartwarming animé story I have come across since… actually, I’m not sure I have a comparison.  Since ever.

There is clearly a love-story built into this scenario, but it’s accompanied by the journey Sawako (main character) takes trying to find friends (and by extension of that; friendship, acceptance, happiness, and love).

Watch it.  The story will make you smile.

Okay… I don’t get it.

Tale of Tales is an indie game developer. They made the Path — which I thought was pretty good and pretty interesting.  It’s how I first heard about their studio.

Today they released Fatale.  I bought it, played it, and now… disappointed.

I like Tale of Tales because they look at games as an art form and experiment with it in that way.  Which is great!  Fatale, sadly, is just a horrible game.

As in game-game.  Something I want to play!

At the beginning, you just stand in a cellar as text flashes up on the screen.  There’s a progress bar at the bottom, and when a new scarf appears a new floating wall of text appears.  They did a great job with the text effects.  But I’m bored out of my mind waiting for it to show up.  It feels like I’m watching an extremely long loading-bar.  There’s nothing to do except wait for more text to show up.

Then, some guy enters the room and kills you.

I have no idea why the spacebar is ‘jump’ since it holds no purpose… unless you’re bored and want something to do like jump while waiting for the next block of text to show up.

Okay, on to level two.  Now you take on the role of a floating spirit (I guess).  And you want to turn out all the lights.  I don’t know why.  In fact, I don’t know why someone killed me in level one, how I got in the cellar in the first place, or why I care so much about the dancing lady the text was telling me about.

Turning out the lights is boring too!  You put your cursor on the flame, wait for all of these beams of light to reach the centre, click, and then snuff out the flame with some kind of darkness.  I think I’m the darkness?  You can’t do it once, either.  You have to do this for all the lights!  I think there are 16.

The process never changes.  There are no puzzle elements, or tricky lights you have to get to.  There are people around, but they can’t see you.  And they don’t care if you turn out the light either.  Once the lights all gone, the game is over.  In the ReadMe it tells you not to do this part too fast either!  This is all there is.  Snuff out a candle and the game is over!

You have to quit it yourself.  If you relaunch it, there’s an “epilogue” screen that is just the girl dancing… which feels it was really the dance from the beginning when you were in the cellar and couldn’t really see it.

Also… why does the girl have an iPod?  Yeah!  Seriously!  There’s an iPod.  I think it’s a 1st gen nano.

If there’s a message buried in here that I’m not smart/deep enough to gather — a “games as art” thing — that’s fine… I just didn’t get it.  But why does that mean the game still can’t be a game?  Gameplay here was repetitive (if it could be called gameplay at all).

And… you know what, I take it back.  I have no idea what I just played, either.  I don’t feel I’ve grown as a person after playing it.  I don’t have some profound message to think about or take away from it either.  Too much of this game was missing.  iPod?  Floaty ghost turning out lights?  head on a platter?  What was the point?

I need a walkthrough to explain what the hell I just played!

Sorry, Tale of Tales — not your best.

A new application came out for the iPhone called Ping! (iTunes Link) Very exciting stuff — basically it’s MMS without the carrier plans (no text message fees).

The application is free. And it’s free to sign up. Your username is the equivalent of your phone number.

There are no long distance charges either!

So… anyone want to get it so I have someone to try it out with?

~andydrew

I don’t know why, but I keep calling Thursday “Tuesday”. I know, you’re right, that doesn’t make any sense. And yet it keeps happening.

I went on a quest to buy Ibrahim a gift card for his birthday (from everyone in the office). I made a mistake and now I have to go back. Awkward! On the plus side, I bought three birthday cards! They are hilarious! Well, they are hilarious to me.

I also insisted everyone needs to draw pictures of robots rather than sign their name. I think that makes it more fun!

I picked up Halo ODST. iPhone saved me once again! I used CanPages (which is quickly becoming my most favourite app). Tap to speak — “Toys R Us in Brampton”. It pulled up the nearest location and phone number. Which I called. They were supposed to have a deal where you get an action figure and a 20 dollar gift card… but apparently that was only in the US (lame!).

I tap again — “Futureshop in Brampton”. Pulls up closest location… but no one answers. Poor customer service. Rather than stop there, I went to Toys R Us. I like it better — no pressure. None of that “do you want the used copy for 0.99 less?”

Sadly, I saw three kids in line with their parents buying a copy. It’s rated M for a reason. That reason — I don’t want to play online with immature 13 year olds. Oh, and also because of the content.

Pfft — what do I really care though. I hardly ever play on xbox live.

Daniel needs to come over now to play. We finished Halo 3 on legendary together. It should become a tradition!

lunch today: Chicken Quesadillas

I think the 2k equivalent of “a watched pot never boils” has to be “a watched torrent never downloads”

Apple… guys, we need to chat.

I love some of the new features in Snow Leopard. A few took some getting used to — like the app-specific exposé – and what’s up with getting rid of auto-play in QuickTime — but what’s the deal with iDVD?

I know you don’t really update it anymore. I don’t think new menus were even added with iLife 09. But the crashes? Really? That’s not supposed to be how the Mac Experience works. That’s more of a PC experience. Lame.

Luckily, some guy figured out how to get around the issues. Let the video completely render and then press burn. Fair enough. But the state of iDVD is unacceptable.

This sign needed to be translated from English to Welsh.

The bottom part of the sign reads: I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.