Bigiu's chronicles (EN)

Let the game begin =))

2009-07-15T00:50:00.003+03:00

Bugs vs Poison... and other errors

2009-07-14T22:46:00.003+03:00

Don't think that I hit some nasty invasion of harmful insects. Known to most of us, who torture the keyboard and watch for hours the monitor, as "bugs", these are just some errors which appear in programs or video games as a result of rudimentary production stages in pre-alpha, respectively alpha and beta test and because of rushing the launching of the product. Today the producers are as oppressed as the slaves from the Middle Ages, the publisher ensuring on their work with their whip called "deadline" ready to strike when the producers least expect. There are many such examples to be told, but frankly I don't think that would be necessarily because increasingly there are products launched on the market today and unfinished too, because of the maniac publishers not thinking about risks. Thanks to them, or rather because of them, lately it became a bad habit to launch the program/game on the same day with a patch which corrects a small number of problems. Or, even more outrageous, I've seen cases when they released the patch a week before the launch of the product. Nice, huh?

On the other hand, even a too indulgent publisher who changes the deadline according to the whims of the producers may lead to a failure, although in theory it should be the other way. It is true that what I say here is a rare case, but if we think about it is not too difficult for a producer who has a soft and understanding fairy-like publisher to make a step in the wrong direction and ending in failure later. I'll take the most eloquent example of the last months, namely the 3D Realms company, and their game Duke Nukem Forever. Few are those who have not heard of it. Poor 'Duke was kept in production since'97 (meaning 12 years), while the producers were announcing the launch date and later postponing it, deciding or veering round, the game passing from the Quake 2 graphic engine to Unreal, reaching eventually to the the Unreal 3, all culminating with the ironic, but also unfortunate bankruptcy of the company. Their mistake was, apparently, the obsession with technology, the desire to achieve the best looking game of the moment. Who da 'fuck gives a damn about that? If the gameplay is healthy, it has Duke, the action is furious and it has Duke (did I said this before?) the graphics may be the biggest crap on the world with huge hidious pixels but despite of this the "biggest success" words would be written on the game box. Lately 3D Reals said that they didn't bankrupt yet, but will continue as a smaller company. An useless decision, I may say. If you weren't able to make a game in 12 years when you had a gargantuan budget and countless of employees how do you hope to do something now when you're so limited in all points of view?

So finally what would be the best decision? To launch the product even if it's infected with bugs, risking to have terrific weak sales or postponing it forever until the financial collapse kicks your butt, poisoning your creation (a reference to the title or... you thought that the poison was meant for the bugs? Eeh, no such luck) at which you sweated for so long?

* And as a suffix made for this post, I was thinking to present two errors, a stressful one and comic one. The first error I define it as a bug which I encountered during the editing of the two blogs manifesting by switching languages of the blogrolls between them, but not anymore anyway, because I resorted to some changes in this category. The second error I found it trying to see if the translation function of the Google site can save me from the titanic work of translating each article by myself. I was wrong it seems, the translator not being able to handle our hieroglyphical language. To understand why I called it a comic error, write in the text box "Vreau sa incep naibii"(it's a romanian sentence) and see the answer.

A mule breaking the rule

2009-07-09T23:45:00.003+03:00

Personally I love the Rotten Tomatoes website. Why? Reviews are built on solid arguments, film's scores are set on some clear criteria, all this to advise you to watch them or on the contrary, to warn you not to throw your money out the window. Not for nothing is the most famous site of reviews and analysis. But is not that I want to detail, but to insist on the fact that those reviewers are cutting in flesh while drafting articles, without missing any hiccups of the scenario and I was dumbfounded when I discovered that movies which I did enjoy to watch received scores below 50. There are some high standards, but fully justified. But for director Uwe Boll would have to be created a special website, only for his masterpieces, as original and pleasant aesthetically like our famous Nikita, which makes all the screens in the country look widescreen.

The main occupation of mister Boll is collision between video games and movies, in other words he is adapting scenarios of successful games to movies designed and directed with any body part but brain. So game franchises like Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Blood Rayne, Postal and Dungeon Siege were stained by a completely incapable man and unapproachable too. His brutal stage activity doesn't seem to know any limits (the launch of the sequel Alone in the Dark II in this year's autumn is just one example, despite the previous mushy film) any criticism being received with a violent reaction, both verbal and physical, meaning that mister Boll isn't shy enough to call "retarded" the most spirited reviewers who had the nerve to condemn his work, and also he doesn't seem willing to stop his primal urges to provoke them to a boxing game. Yes, you heard right! Uwe Boll is a wonderfully multi-talented guy, so hyperactive to the point where his ubiquity would make even Napoleon Bonaparte blushing. Now, I have no idea how good he is as a fighter, but certainly it can't be worse than his actual role playing as a director ... because he's anything but a director.

One factor to encourage Boll to continue his movie massacre was a "hole" in the german state law, home country, according to which the state does not charge investment in the films which doesn't bring any profit. Unfortunately for him, this law was repealed on 1 January 2006, but unfortunately for us, the same anomaly can still be seen in other countries laws. My question is quite natural: we will ever get rid of this guy?

că

Unexplained longevity

2009-07-08T15:37:00.002+03:00

Rather than explaining the proverb "Add too much and it will rot!" I will link to another one who says that "a short joke is a good one". In this case, although the joke wasn't a part of the equation, the initial intention was producing a professional series, but in the end it became a lackluster one (ergo, a bad joke), which in spite of poor quality it managed to stretch over more than 9000 (!) episodes: The Young and the Restless ... although, considering how much time passed between the youth of the original characters/actors you would be more correctly to call it The Dodderer and the Fussyless. It's not that I cannot understand how comes that it lasted so long but I don't understand this mania to constantly attempt to rectify by launching new episodes because, when they looked back at their work, the directors realized their own amateurish blunders, but unfortunately their awareness of the mistakes wasn't enough to teach the directors not to repeat them again or eventually to stop it for good. The old fashioned recipe applied is simple: dilution of the story yarn in such a plight that one episode can be summarized in a S + P type of sentence. Y&R doesn't have only one but several stories that unfolds in parallel, with rare moments of intersection, but usually you don't see a story tree but a quite linear plot, and the way a conflict is triggered is superficial and puerile, an easy to blame cliche . But however, the series has not died yet, in fact it still goes well and even now when I type this, they finalized the 9186 episode (really!). Hilarious is that some of the actors, children and teens, began their career back in diapers, on the plateaus of this antique serial.

In the next post I will talk about Uwe Boll and his mediocre films.

căut

Romanian Boat Show

2009-07-07T01:23:00.004+03:00

Delayed and without a consistent content in this post, because we didn't stay too long there, I can only say that I was downright impressed. After all, an exhibition is meant to excite your eyeball, but when the eye contact with all the boats is passing slowly to a visual contact with the price, written with digits of a minuscule size, your soul seems to suffer an ache 'cause you're not gonna be the happy billionaire who will buy one. But considering that I didn't saw anybody crowding to buy (an expected fact) I was happy just to visit the interior of an Azimuth yacht, the second price in the whole exhibition. With a few moments before we climbed aboard, a special one did make a return from a short trip: Azimuth Supremus, the most expensive of all, filled up with suga' babes, an yacht that had been rented by Ilknur Pintilie (she looks so anorexic at TV that you'd expect her to be tall, but no such luck) and another reporter from Antena 1. Anyway, my mother wasn't able to master her verbal surprise when we reached the inside view, which I admit, it charmed me too, but I tried to keep a somewhat neutral attitude, with a smile as a bonus, but don't get me wrong, I just didn't wanted to be perceived by the guide as a fresh-out-of-an-underground-bunker guy. Just an obsession of mine! :P

Next, a picture of me and a short movie in which I "wanted" to include all the boats, until my battery sabotaged me :))

Meeting with the sea again

2009-06-23T19:29:00.004+03:00

Given the fact that my last trip to seaside happened 6 years ago, I would lie if I would say that there was little enthusiasm nesting in me, even though when the parents announced me that they have already made reservations I was a little reluctant. I don't like the idea to be held with a hook and dragged in the direction desired by them, as I suggested other destinations for summer holidays. But, in the end, I left aside such trifles and tried as much as possible to be glad for this trip, because, after all, this was the whole purpose.

There's not much to say; prices are no longer jaw droppingly, although we arrived in Mamaia a little early, meaning that the beaches were not crowded yet (until the end of our stay the beaches became more animated) contributing to our relaxation. We got burned, and we also swimed, but on departure I didn't left with the same taste of satisfaction like in previous years. Nah, it's true that being a child you see / feel things differently, your eyes shine at the most stupid and kitchy "attractions" but the way you are forced to throw your money make you wonder how comes that they didn't imposed the fee for air yet.

Other shortcomings, some would say minor, would be the disappearance of some attractions (see lack of quotation marks) which really worth all the money. For example, in the Holiday Village there was once, long ago, enough to be forgotten by others but not enough for me to forget, one train to travel round the lake, running through some tunnels, Choo! Choo!-ing in a gentle way, which equates with (or even surpass) other colored devilish things, worthy of a hippie who pukes rainbows, in which you take a ride for 3 minutes and remain with the feeling of "Is that all?". Instead of that great train they introduced a "minicar" (a dorkier name than that I don't believe it exists), which is nothing but a car that drags other coaches, although is not moving on rails, but in a specially arranged street which doesn't cover even a quarter of the deceased train route. I mean, vapid, pedestrian and totally uninteresting, as proof it was half empty. Also I think the minicar ate more funds than it would have did a renovation of the train. But I'll stop here; my childish side typed too much already :))

One more thing, which I will detail in the following post: I was at the Romanian Boat Show in Tomis port, an unplanned visit but a very eye catchy one. Or eye candy?

PS: Sorry for the disappearance from the blog for 2 months! My bad! I promise not to happen again! ;-)

Charisma

2009-04-28T22:50:00.002+03:00

Want more American Idol videos? Click here.

Pawky feeling

2009-04-28T22:10:00.002+03:00

And finally, a lovely one :-)

Who were you in your last life?

2009-04-25T22:02:00.002+03:00

Believe in reincarnation? I do not (nor should, actually), but I allowed myself to try this funny site.

So? What results did you get? I was terribly amused. Here it goes: I was born somewhere in the territory of France, in the year 950, and my job was a banker, usurer, or judge. Cool! But wait, that does not end here. My psychological profile says so: bohemian personality, mysterious, highly gifted, capable to understand ancient books. Oh, and if I had magician's abilities, I could have been a servant of dark forces. =))

PS: My brother did the test too. It seems that he was an outlaw, like Robin Hood. Certainly he was robbing me! =))

A stupid audience

2009-04-24T20:11:00.005+03:00

His name is Donald Braswell. 11 years ago he had a car accident which damaged his vocal cords badly, making him unable to speak for several years. Now, partially healed, he is willing to fulfill his dream, therefore he plucked up courage and went to America's got talent.

But is well known that every country has its animals, disguised as humans. A very convincing example (and disgusting too) can be admired from the first minutes of the clip, when Donald begins to sing and half of the live audience is booing and yelling at him, crossing their hands in X (meaning "Go home!"). But from the middle of the song until the end he is acclaiming Donald, apparently impressed by his performance. Shall I comment the audience's behavior? I think it's pointless...

via Lore

The english version

2009-04-23T23:29:00.001+03:00

I had a very strange and crazy idea, crossing my mind lately. And, naturally, I couldn't stop myself from spending some precious time (which could had been used better in homework issues) and I started to make a doppelganger blog of the other one (written in romanian) simply because it could prove very useful later. I mean, I really wanted to expand this virtual place so I could be read by other fellas out there, for whom the romanian language is a hieroglyphical-like mistery puzzle. And no, I'm not rude, because in my opinion, the only guy who managed to integrate my country in the foreign people's knowledge was Bram Stoker ("Dracula").

Though it will surely be a hard work to compose and translate, I barely consider it overwhelming ;-) Wish me luck!