Canada

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I just got back from a short little weekend excursion to visit my cousins up in Windsor, Canada. Windsor can be described as Detroit’s Gary, Indiana… if Gary had weird money and lots of Tim Horton’s donut shops (or do they say shoppes in Canada? Or doughnuts for that matter?). One area where Windsor has Gary (and Chicago) whipped, is great Lebanese food (El Mayor). On the other hand, the whole “Beer Store” thing is really, dare I say, stupid and backwards. We got to witness a little bit of the Canadian healthcare system when we met our cousins at the E.R. while they had their son treated for his fevery sickness. The free thing is great and all, but they definitely had a much longer time waiting than you would see in most U.S. emergency rooms. They did manage to treat the fever and all was well by the end of the weekend. Other notable events: full monty vehicle search at the border coming home, vandalized key-drop at the Enterprise car-rental return and a guy with tourettes at the Swiss Chalet who would be an awesome back-up vocalist for Naked Raygun!

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on Nintendo DS (9/10)

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Chinatown Wars

Aside from the hour or two of GTA 2 that I played on the PC years ago, this was my first Grand Theft Auto game. I don’t find that whole gangsta thing terribly appealing. However, mature rated games are very hard to come by on the DS so I decided to try this out. Having finally completed the main storyline, I have to say this one of the best games on the DS by far. The world is massive, with tons of little nooks and crannies to explore and distract you from your main goal. There is just so much attention to detail here. Every corner offers some new sights and sounds. Liberty City feels alive within those tiny screens.

Even though at its core every mission is just about either driving or shooting, there is plenty of variety in things to do. I have finished the game and there is still tons to accomplish. My only gripes are with the mediocre story and dull, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny dialogue. Otherwise, I loved the psuedo 2-D perspective, the music / ambience, and all the crazy mini-games to accomplish basic tasks. Virtual scratch-off lottery tickets? Awesome!

Bedazzled by Love Interest, The - CD Single (8/10)

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A one-off single featuring drummer extraordinaire Martin Atkins, Jesus Lizard’s David Simms, Bowie clone Chirs Connelly and someone named Mary covering Dudley Moore’s Bedazzled. Much more groovy/trippy than the original.

Terminator Salvation (6/10)

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For the first 20 minutes or so I couldn’t see why this film got such bad reviews. I was really enjoying it. And then they introduce the “love interest” and the story starts to focus on the jaded sci-fi trope of the robot who thinks he’s a man. There are plot holes galore and editing jumps that feel like place holders for commercials. We don’t care about the new terminator, all we want to see is the story of John Conner and Kyle Reese. At the very least, there are enough nods to fanboys to keep it watchable until the end (the digital surprise cameo is jaw-dropping). But the last moments of this film which are soooo cringe-worthy will make you eject the DVD with a sour taste in your mouth.

Adobe Contribute Is No Longer My Friend

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I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Adobe. Some of their products are great—Photoshop is a verb these days for good reason—but, they have also released some of the most disappointing software I have ever used. Encore, their DVD authoring program, will crash anytime you try to do anything with even a moderate degree of complexity. Dreamweaver will give you cryptic JavaScript errors out of the blue, when you are not actively editing anything. Heck, everyone knows Acrobat is a bloated resource hog.

Back in the early 00s, Macromedia Contribute was a great idea. Give web developers a cheap (Contribute 1 & 2 sold for around $60-$80 bucks) WYSIWYG web editor to give to their clients who may not be comfortable with the destructive power of Dreamweaver. Sure, it didn’t quite render CSS right, but nothing really did at the time. Contribute just worked and filled a niche.

Fast forward to 2010. Macromedia is no more. Adobe has been trying to integrate all of their products into interoperable “creative suites” of programs. In theory this seems good. I like being able to dump files from one application to another without any hassles. Unfortunately, this makes the world of Adobe a bit like Melrose Place, where you don’t know who’s sleeping with who and Acrobat has given half the cast an embarrasing, throbbing rash.

These days, my clients who are using Contribute to edit sites I created for them are plagued with cryptic errors and equally cryptic workarounds. For example, one of my sites will not allow users to center text of all things. Another site gives you errors when you try to type in a repeating region. Other users have connection issues all the time. On top of all this pain, Adobe now charges something like $190 bucks for a single license. Sorry, Contribute. But friends we can be no more.