Just a few things this morning Metro. When will you ever get things right? I tried to add money to my smarttrip card for the last few days from my Smartbenefits account and it just kept saying ‘transaction canceled’ no warning, just left me hanging there. So today I try again in the crowded Vienna station, it would have been a much more frustrating experience had it not been for the other people who had already waited for the kiosk to just sit there and do nothing. So nobody is adding Smartbenefits at Vienna today, because everybody wants to… Sounds like a good plan.

Next is a little thing but it always annoys me. I know you’re trying to appear safer by having the train stop at the end if the station. But when the driver has to start the train again and move forward 3 feet it gets really annoying.

‘train will move forward’

no shit

So yesterday the Netflix app came out for the iPhone and iPod touch. What a red letter day in the history of science this was. As if my life with an iPhone 3G and iOS4 isn’t a fucking pit of despair already, now I have this taunting me on my phone. You’re supposed to be able to use Netflix Watch Instantly ( the greatest thing in the history of entertainment) on the phone over 3G or WiFi.

Oh please can I Mr. Jobs, can I haz entertainments?

So I download the app, start it up. It responds in the same sluggish way that everything does not on my iCrapped 4 device. I get to the gleaming red Netflix log-in screen, enter my email address, enter my password. then watch the spinning wheel of sloth for a few seconds. Then a dialog pops up…

Sorry Login Timed out, Try Again!

What a happy cheerful message that was, I’d really like to try again… But then the screen refreshes and I have to enter my email and password again. Which is annoying when I have to type it on a regular keyboard, when it’s on a tiny touchscreen it’s more that maddening. So after 4 or 5 tries I give up.

I understand that this may be a first day problem with everyone trying to reach the servers all at once. But I tried it again later on my WiFi and it still didn’t work.  This morning too and NOTHING.  This should be the number one rule of web form design…

DON’T MAKE THE USER RE-ENTER THE INFORMATION WHEN THEY HAVE TO RESUBMIT THE FORM.

Actually that should be just about the only rule of web form design. I would like to use the Netflix App… I REALLY REALLY would.

*UPDATE*

So it turns out that I wasn’t entering the right password into Netflix… So my frustration was partially self inflicted. The message that came back says “Login Timeout, please check your user name and password and try again.”  Last time I checked that wasn’t called a login timeout, that was called “Password incorrect” or “Username/Password combination not recognized” I think Netflix has a serious problem with UI design. I can’t figure out why they never seem to address the problems that are on various platforms. Maybe they are designed by different teams that do not communicate with each other.

So my impressions of the actual service are pretty good.  I was able to stream a movie over WiFi without it stopping, buffered for about 30 seconds in the beginning and then smooth sailing after that. On 3G it was a little slower, but after pausing it for about 2 minutes to let it buffer I was able to stream Monsters Inc almost completely through in the car.  But for no apparent reason you can’t add movies to the physical media que… why? I have another application on the Iphone (phoneflix) that will manage my queues on the  device. It looks like they just forgot it. For a company that is trying to have its service on as many devices as possible I’d think that they’d have someone to make sure that all the features are included on all devices.

and while we’re at it can I have a search for all streaming movies? Not just show me the top 50 in each category.

I want to start off by saying that I love playing Bejeweled 2 on my Iphone. I had the game on my Treo before that and it’s really the only game that I keep coming back to on a regular basis on the Iphone.  Some would say that I’m addicted. When I saw that there was a version on Facebook that you could play against your friends I was excited. But it turns out that I NEED a stylus or a finger to play the game, I’m no good with a mouse. It’s the opposite of what Microsoft just found out with console vs pc gamers.

So I waited patently and eventually the Iphone version got the coveted Blitz mode that was only available on Facebook and you could compare scores against your Facebook friends. There was much rejoicing. So I’ve been playing it almost everyday on the Metro annoying people that I knew in high school with my high scores. These were the salad days. I didn’t even mind that there was one guy that kept pushing me back to number two on my list. But then I found out that he was playing on Facebook and that version had added bonus multipliers called boosts. I really didn’t know much about them other than they seemed to make higher scoring easier. It’s like I was in a wood bat league and he came in with a composite bat filled with argon gas. I tried to play on Facebook again, but I still stink with a mouse. So I decided to wait until the Iphone version got the boosts. A little message taunted me on the top of the screen “We’re working on bring boosts to the Iphone”. So the other day it happened…

At first I was excited about the boosts, you get free multipliers, random gems, an extra 5 seconds. Since you only get 3 uses out of each boost it made the games that you were using the boosts extra intense. But then I realized something. Because the boosts make high scores so much easier, you HAVE to use them if you’re interested in the high score list. I think maybe what they were trying to do is give the weaker players a chance at beating the people above them in their lists. That’s exactly what they’ve done, increased chance. Blitz is a game much like poker, you need to have skill, but it’s mostly determined by how the cards (jewels) fall. The fun of playing Blitz for me is that in any game you could get the right gems and you could set the high score for the week. You have to buy the boosts at a cost of about 6000 coins, you earn about 650 coins in a average game. What that does is effectively neuter 90% of the games you play. You’ll have fun, you’ll earn coins, but you’ll never beat someone having a pretty good game while using 3 boosts at once. So the addicting quality that the next game could be the one that you break that big score. My previous high score in about a year of playing is 545,000 in about an hour with boosts I hit 615,000. They’ve essentially introduced grinding into the puzzle genre. You need to do boring repetitive tasks to achieve higher scores.

You could say that I’m just jealous that I won’t be #1 or maybe #2 when everyone learns to use the boosts and starts getting higher scores. But I really wish other people would challenge my scores, the only reason I became friends with the guy who keeps beating me is to compare bejeweled scores. 2 things I like best in video games are short repeatable game play and challenging high scores. Maybe I’m making too big of a deal about the scores, but the only reason boosts exist is to make your high score bigger. They are saying that getting a higher score and beating your friends is the only way to have fun in the game. What they’ve done is make everyone’s high scores 20% higher, but make them play 90% more games to get those higher scores. What they could do to fix this is either make a separate high score list for non-boost games or make the boosts cheaper to ‘buy’ so you didn’t have to spend so much time playing ‘meaningless’ games.

This being world cup season I’ve been having a lot more conversations about Soccer than normal. I live in the DC area so there’s a pretty big international community that loves soccer (football). But the regular everyday Americans don’t seem to get it. Worse than that they don’t want to get it. I’ve come to the conclusion that arguing about why we don’t like Soccer is futile, It’s like arguing about which language is the best. The fact is that Americans don’t like Soccer because Americans don’t like Soccer. It’s not that the rules of the game are silly, or that diving influences the game too much, or that it will make our children into communists. It’s that not enough people like it for you to talk about it at a neighborhood BBQ. If you moved to Canada and all your friends were into Curling then you would talk about curling. There are a small number of Soccer fans in America and I think they’re growing.

For the last few weeks I’ve been hanging out with people who like soccer. Talking about formations and strategies. Discussing why we never seem to get any goals off corner kicks. Talking about whether Shaq could play Soccer, verdict:NO. It’s been awesome. Friends from High school and College getting together to support the US National Team. I was at a baseball game and the crowd cheered when they saluted the US team’s win over Algeria. A big cheer too! My only regret is that it ended too soon. With the level of competition, I don’t think they were going to make the final or anything. It would have been nice to see them advance. But I do really think that Soccer has made the next step in the US, at least World Cup soccer. I’d like to see if the MLS can get a bump from all this attention on some of their best players. I know I’m going to try to get to a DC United game this summer.

The 2014 World Cup Finals are in Brazil, which is much better for the US in terms of time zones. The games should be played in the afternoon or around prime time, I can’t wait for the excitement. It’s going to be BIG. But with the US eliminated I’ll have to find a new team to cheer. I think Germany looks good.

You can’t watch all these videos and tell me that something hasn’t started brewing.

USA CELEBRATES

I saw this on the shelf at the grocery store the other day and it really got me thinking.  This is what we’ve come to, we only want the sugary good parts. This is no different than seeing a “Lucky Charms” box with “Just Marshmallows”. except that you would know that Lucky Charms didn’t have anything good for you in there in the first place. This cereal is theoretically made of oats.  Which are theoretically good for you.

This could be true all over the world, but I live in America, so I’m going to speak about Americans.  We want all of the fun with none of the consequences.  We want to eat a cereal that has 7 times more fat than one with an almost identical name.  I know people have free will and freedom of choice in America.  But you know my problem with that?  People are idiots and we make bad decisions.  I would like to know the nutrition benefits of this cereal?  over what?  Just spooning refined sugar into your mouth??

At least you’re not booting black tar heroin, have another scoop of Bunches!

I guess they didn’t expect anyone to actually remember their past commercials beyond that sugar induced coma. Take them at their own word

Video after the break…

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Chapter 1: Backstory.

This movie came out in 2007 and for some reason I had never watched it. I like the director’s first movie, Donnie Darko^W, but something had been stopping me from actually sitting down and watching Southland Tales^W. I heard that it was bad, but I’ve liked bad movies before (The Island, Terminator Salvation). Laurel was working on Friday night so I decided that I was bored enough to watch it.

I was unprepared.

To say this movie is bad is a disservice to other bad movies. You know when a movie is so bad it’s good? (Road House) Well this movie was heading there then it would snap back to good for a second, then dive headlong into a shit storm of terrible, then it would try to redeem itself, then it would snap off into a vat of crazy.This movie is so insane that it will make you question your own sanity.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

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