One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 29)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

It's a lazy Sunday morning here in the Roy household, and I don't want to be doing this. The thought of sitting here for almost 2 hours, listening to bad music and trying (and usually failing) to be funny.

No, there's something else I'd rather be doing...



Ahhhhh, now I feel rugged!

Though I don't think I'll ever be as rugged as these guys.

But I can try!

It's time for this week's installment of the one-hit wonders of the 90s. We're approaching the pearl anniversary of this weekly show, and you can make out your million dollar gifts to "Dave Roy" at the Money-Hiding Bank, Wengen, Switzerland.

Or you can, oh, I don't know, leave a comment if you're so inclined. That could work too. And hey, if you stumble upon these posts and spend an hour or two reading them all, how about letting me know what you think? Did you find them funny? Or were you just watching the videos?

A guy's gotta eat, you know.

As usual, you can find the list I'm taking these from here. But don't you dare look before I'm done! Otherwise, this might get you:

Whoops! That's me when I've been out of the sun too long. I thought I had trashed that picture.

I meant this might get you:

And here we go!

The death of handwriting?

I've blogged about handwriting in the computer age before, but this story on Breitbart.com just reinforced it: handwriting is going the way of the dodo.

I never really thought about it before. Yes, we westerners, with our relatively easy alphabet, have been getting away from actual handwriting over the last few years. But the alphabet's so easy that there's no way we would actually forget the characters.

What about more complex written languages, like Chinese?

Rizzoli & Isles - From Books to TV

Long-time readers of this blog know I've been a fan of Tess Gerritsen for a long time now, ever since getting the first five books of her Rizzoli & Isles series for review from Curled Up With a Good Book. The series is about Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles, and they are extremely well-written. If you like the "bloody knife" genre of detective thrillers, this series is definitely for you. I took a chance asking for all five books, because I would have been obligated to review them all even if I hated the first book, The Surgeon.

Thankfully, I fell in love with them, and they just continued to get better and better. The characters are wonderful, with Rizzoli's hard edge which has been tempered somewhat by more recent events in her personal life. Isles has been having a lot of relationship issues lately, with the forbidden love she's had with a priest dragging her down even further. I love Gerritsen's mastery of her characters, making them both fascinating and bringing them all to life. Even as it's been taking me long stretches of time to read books that I've enjoyed, I still race through the next Gerritsen book when it presents itself (I still have to do a review of her latest, Ice Cold).

So imagine my pleasure when I heard that some of my favourite characters were coming to TV!

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 28)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

I had a dream last night. No, it wasn't that S.E. Cupp and Lauren Sivan were both sitting in the "Legs Chair" and smiling at me, slowly unbuttoning their blouses while they were pontificating on the news of the day (though that would be a pleasant dream, but I won't continue down that road due to the readership of this blog).

Instead, it was that every artist that I've made fun of in one of my one-hit wonders posts decided to band together like some super-villain group in a comic book.

They all banded together and were going to do dastardly things to me (as opposed to truly evil things, because super-villains are always dastardly). But then the Justice League burst into the building just as the creeping laser beam was almost to my crotch ("Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Roy, I expect you to DIE! Or, you know, just be seriously inconvenienced.") (Yes, even in my nightmares, people are kind of nice to me). They made short work of these horrible villains (Spider-Man started making puns about their bad singing, and did I mention he was there too?).

Then, to top it all off, we went camping and had S'Mores!

What could be better than that?

How about this week's one-hit wonders post? Yeah, that might do it! (This week's segueway brought to you by the letter "Q" and this doofus)

Yes, the weekly post that's more regular than something that's regular (and you know that's really regular, if you think about it). We're heading into 1997 now, the home stretch, you might say!

Or....you could say that we probably have at least 15 more weeks of this shit.

As usual, you can find the list I'm taking these from here. I'm too bored to tell you not to go look.

Here we go!

How much gaming is too much?

Is it bad to play games for...3 hours a night? Ten hours a week?

How about 20,000 hours in 5 years?

A gamer is suing NCsoft, makers of Lineage II, because he became so hopelessly addicted to the game that he couldn't function.

What a pleasantly disturbed human being

I think we're all disturbed in our own way. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. Bad disturbance is pretty obvious (known any serial killers, anybody?). But good disturbance?

I live with that whenever I do a blog post. Or try to think, hanging out in my own mind and discovering just what kind of insanity might be hiding in there. I like to think it's more like Steven Wright than it is the Joker. But can we ever tell?

Ah, the Joker. Heath Ledger left us too soon, didn't he?

Tweeting while driving - biggest no-no yet?

For those of you who haven't heard, celebrity plastic surgeon Frank Ryan supposedly was sending a tweet while he was driving when he lost control of his car and went over a cliff, killing him (his dog, who was with him, managed to survive).

I have to say that I don't understand this at all. Neither do I understand texting while driving (or putting make-up on, shaving, or any of that stuff). It's dangerous enough being distracted while driving, but also keeping your hand (or hands, even) busy? How is it not obvious that this would be dangerous? Yet it happens all the time.

"A recent report from Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that 47% of adult drivers admitted to sending or reading text messages while driving."

WTF?

Classmates.com

Hello to the Davenport West High class of 1988!

I joined Classmates.com a few years ago, but first sprang for a paying membership last year. It's a great way to keep in touch with your old classmates, whether it's high school or college (or any other schooling, actually, at least older than high school). You can post pictures (old and new), keep people up to date on what you've been doing since graduation, all of that good stuff.

Well, it is if people actually use it.

A shoutout to Vevo

Long-time followers of this blog know that every Sunday there is a "one-hit wonders" post. I don't think I've missed a week in a *very* long time (I don't even remember if there was a break between the 80s and 90s posts).

With the second batch of 80s one-hit wonders posts, I started embedding the videos on the page rather than just posting links to them. That way, I can always tell if something has happened to the video (or picture, or whatever) in question. It makes things a lot easier because I can see if they're gone and I can replace them as necessary.

There are three types of music videos on Youtube right now (leaving aside the "there isn't one at all" possibility).

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 27)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

It's Sunday! And you know what that means. No, it's not time to retire this really lame joke that I've used way too many times before. Though I really should, you know. Give it a retirement party and everything.

I know! I'll call all of its friends, making sure I include those joke emails that have been sent around again and again and again until everybody in the world except somebody living in remote Indonesia has seen them. But I'm not going to call the knock-knock jokes. We have standards, and I don't care whether this joke wants them there. I'm just not going to do it. It can call them itself if it really wants them there.

But there will be cake.

Where was I?

Oh yeah! It's time for this week's edition of the weekly One-Hit Wonders of the 90s! That mainstay of your Sunday morning (or afternoon, considering the only fans of this one who read it on the day it's posted are out East). That bedrock in your life. More dependable than your loving husband or wife! (But it doesn't do windows or gutters). The show that has lasted longer than some TV series, faithfully showing up week after week like a druggie that needs his hit.

Is this where I tell you I'm going to miss a week in September? Well.....maybe not. We'll see.

(this picture has been posted by the Society of "GET TO THE F-ING POINT!")

So sit back and enjoy the last of 1996. We're getting into the home stretch now! Hold on to your hats, because it's gonna be a doozy! (Disclaimer: Said doozy may or may not happen, as the creator of this blog has not actually listened ahead, and thus no guarantee of a "doozy" is actually implied or inferred (or whatever the hell word you use) and thus, the blogger reserves the right to be a loser (not that this is anything different than usual, and why am I using so many parentheses?) and be wrong)

There, now that we've got the legalese out of the way, you can find the list here. And I'm not even going to bother threatening you if you go look ahead. It's not like you listen anyway...

Here we go!

Is privacy the same as anonymity?

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has recently been quoted as saying that anonymity on the Internet is "dangerous" and that it will soon disappear. In an article on the International Business Times web site (though there are articles about this all over the web), it says:

"Arguing that anonymity on the Internet is dangerous, Schmidt had reportedly said, 'In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you.'

He also said governments may eventually put an end to anonymity. 'We need a (verified) name service for people," he said. "Governments will demand it.'"

He goes on to say that this is different from privacy, and that privacy is crucial on the Net, and that people's private information should be secured. (Given their recent issue with private data, I think he's partially covering his ass there, but who knows?)

It's the little coincidences that are funny

I've never heard of Waukesha, Wisconsin, even though I'm from Iowa (right next to Wisconsin, for those of you who are geographically-challenged, though I'm sure that doesn't include any of my brilliant regular readers). I'm not sure where in Wisconsin it is, actually. (Yes, I'm aware I can look it up, but that's not the point).

Yet it's now popped up twice for me inside of 6 hours.

First, in my Iowa State dynasty in NCAA Football 11. My very first recruit commitment was a Center from Waukesha. I just did a post today about this on my EA Sports blog (where I'm posting the stories that eventually will show up on the one I'm linking to, so that post will show up in the next couple of days).

Didn't think anything of it.

Just now, I did a check on my blog traffic stats for *this* blog (not the EA one). Lo and behold, there's a visitor from Waukesha, Wisconsin! Totally unrelated to the football post (they wouldn't have been able to access it anyway).

Is that weird, or what?

Aren't the little coincidences in life the stuff that makes you sit back and just wonder at the universe?

Iowa State Football Blog

For those of you who may be interested, I'm going to be blogging my NCAA Football 11 Iowa State Dynasty. The blog is going to be reported as if the team is being covered in the newspaper, so the articles will be game recaps, recruiting news, stats, etc.

I welcome comments, of course. Whether it's about the results themselves, suggestions, tips, or anything else you might want to leave.

Otherwise, just sit back and watch me take the Cyclones to the National Championship. You know it's going to happen.

It's simply titled "Dave's Iowa State Dynasty" so it should be easy to find.

Hopefully the new blogging features that EA has added to the game will help me keep up with the blog. We'll see how long it lasts.

Let me know what you think!

(and yes, I realize that of my potentially regular readers, there's probably only one person interested in this, but who knows how somebody may find this blog?)

8/15/10: I've taken down the blog, for a number of reasons. First, I'm kind of over-extended, so while it was kind of fun, I was having trouble keeping up with it. Secondly, since nobody's reading it anyway, what's the point when it feels more like a chore to do anyway? If it was being read, then it might be a fun chore. But it wasn't, so it wasn't a fun chore.

Now I can go back to playing the game just for the sake of playing the game.

And yes, that means that this officially lasted about a week or so.

Yay, me!!!

NCAA Football 11 - A Couple of Comments

Go Cyclones!

I just bought EA Sports' NCAA Football 11, and I've got a couple of comments about the game.  I've only played 4 or 5 games so far, so I obviously can't review it (I also haven't played the Road to Glory mode). But there are a few things I want to say about this year's installment. A few annoyances and couple of awesome things.

First, I want to give heartfelt thanks to those people who spend the time and effort to create accurate rosters for this game.  With the players not being professionals, the game can't use their real names. Thus, you can either have the game make up names or the game will just use numbers ("QB #1 falls back, and throws a perfect strike to WR #85!!!! Touchdown!!!"). Or, you can download a roster that somebody's created. I can't remember when EA first put that option in there, but it's a wonderful thing. It's so cool seeing the players' real names on there. Even cooler is when the announcers say the last names. It really helps that feeling of actually playing your team.  I'm using the Pastapadre rosters, but there are a lot of them out there.

Ok, now for the annoyances.

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 26)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

As I sit here staring out of the window, contemplating my place in the universe (and avoiding actually doing any writing, except that I'm writing this right now, but if I'm writing this right now then I'm not just sitting here staring, which means....which means I have a headache), a myriad of thoughts run through my head all at once, like a bunch of cars hitting an intersection at the same time because there are no stop lights. Crashing and burning in my mind, disappearing in a puff of smoke almost before I can wrap my head around them. Is this what life is reduced to? Can I aspire to more? Maybe help out with this economic crisis somehow? Or bring about world peace? (Nah, not the last one...I don't look good in a Miss America tiara, though that dress on the other hand...). Maybe just making sure that I leave the world a better place than it was when I found it?

And can any of that measure up to doing a weekly one-hit wonder post?

I think not.

So I shall continue! The fan out there who was beginning to worry can rest assured. I am never going away.

Not without a restraining order, anyway.

It's time for this week's one-hit wonder post! Where I look at a series of one-hit wonder songs that were popular in the 90s and generally make fun of them. Or make fun of me. Or, usually, both. And you get to play videos for hours on end! It's been gratifying to see some visitors recently find one of these posts and spend the next hour or so going through all of them. Really does make these seem worthwhile.

You should really stop enabling that part of me, you know. I may have to put on my happy face.

And you know you wouldn't want that.

As usual, you can find the list I'm taking these from here. But you know you don't want to go look. In fact, you're getting verrrrrrry sleepy.

Hey, wake up!!! You've got some videos to watch.

Here we go!

The podcast has been posted

Followers of this blog (and my Facebook) know that we've been working on a podcast at my office.

The results have finally been posted on our blog, and you can go listen to it here. I'd love your feedback, but please be kind. This is the first time we've done this.

The subject matter is Education and Educational Technology, so I will admit it's a bit dry for some people. We did try to add a bit of personality to it, but I admit that we're a bit stiff too. That will get better as time goes on, I'm sure.

But I'm posting it here for a couple of reasons:

1) I'm proud of it, even though it's very obvious this is our first time (and I don't mean that just because we *say* it is on the podcast).

2) Some of you have expressed interest in listening to it, no matter what the subject matter. For those masochists among you, I encourage you to go take a listen.

I'm just glad to have gotten it out of my system, and maybe when we start up again in the Fall, we'll be a lot more comfortable doing it. I noticed that the energy level in our voices kind of flagged as each segment went on. That's something we're definitely going to work on.

Let me know what you think!

And who knows?  Maybe I'll inflict a personal podcast/vlog on you some day, too.

Alan Wake & the Signal, a dual review (Can you hear me now?)

Alan Wake is a psychological horror game for the Xbox 360, and The Signal is the first additional downloadable episode for it.


So what's my verdict?  I didn't find it as awesome as some people have, but I thought it was a very good game with a great story, and a couple of major problems that marred my enjoyment of the game a bit. The first DLC episode is fun too, but again with a problem.

First, the good news.  The story is as excellent as advertised, aided by Wake's narration of it.  You are author Alan Wake.  Suffering from writer's block, you and your wife Alice head to a sleepy forest town in Washington named Bright Falls, only to find an unspeakable darkness there.  Your wife disappears and you wake up in a car that's crashed on a mountain road.  With the help of your agent and the local sheriff, you must face off against an FBI agent who thinks you're the devil as well as darkness-possessed individuals who will stop at nothing to kill you.  What's the evil secret of Bright Falls?  The story is told like a TV story, with individual episodes that begin with a "last time on Alan Wake" introduction, which is actually kind of fun.

Book Review - Fortress Rabaul

As the steady trickle of my review posting continues, my review for Bruce Gamble's Fortress Rabaul is up on Curled Up with a Good Book. This is a great history of an ongoing battle during World War II that isn't really discussed much, except in passing. Through my many long years of reading books about World War II, Rabaul has often been mentioned in books on the Pacific War with Japan. But it's always been mentioned as a stumbling block in the United States' island-hopping campaign from Guadalcanal up to the Japanese Mainland. I've never really read a book on the struggle to put the Japanese fortress out of commission.

This is that book.

Video game music that makes you shiver

Music has always been a vital part of the gaming experience, from the "bleeps" and "bloops" of the old arcade games to the midi soundtracks of the original console generations, to the sweeping orchestral scores of today.  Much of it is iconic, at least to the point where you recognize the game as soon as you hear it (sometimes I still can't get the most addicting song from Dr. Mario out of my head).

The other day, I was happy that I was catching up on the Game Informer news page, because I discovered this gem: Air Dates for Video Games Live on PBS. After checking out the link for scheduled air times, I discovered that in Washington it was going to be on last night.  I quickly set the recording for the HD version of it.  KCTS in Seattle (and probably all of the other PBS stations as well) are using it as part of their annual pledge drive.  For those of you who don't know, Video Games Live takes video game music and has it played by a large orchestra as well as a choir and other performers.  Images from the video games are projected on a huge screen at the back of the stage, perfectly timed to go with the music being played.

When we started watching it last night, I just sat enthralled.  Creator and video game composer Tommy Tallarico has created something truly brilliant.  My hats off to him.  Watching some of my favourite music (as well as a lot of music I've never heard before but which was riveting all the same) being performed live on stage by an actual orchestra is something almost epic.



Yet I found myself disappointed, too.

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 25)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

Yes, I know I'm late. But I can explain. See, I was getting ready to do my weekly one-hit wonders post, but I decided to go outside and investigate this really large semi-truck trailer that was sitting outside of our building. So I hopped on my trusty Segway to check it out!

Little did I know that whoever parked this in the lot outside had hired an Amazon army as their security! When they caught me, I tried to get away, but it just didn't happen.

I think they released security footage of it.



You can hear the security chief narrating the whole thing. Sounds like a real hard-ass, doesn't he? "Don't grab him!" I'm sure he would rather they just shot me instead.

And sadly, once I was in their custody, I had a hard time breaking out. Thankfully, they didn't confiscate all of my stuff, and I was able to don my handy disguise...

Reach my alternate transportation...

And get away. Sadly, the Segway was trampled in the initial scuffle.

That makes me sad.

But I am happy that I am still able to bring you some one-hit wonder goodness! As usual, you can find the list of songs here.

Here we go!