Thanksgiving Snowboarding
I went snowboarding with my family on Thanksgiving Day. I brought along my helmet cam and made a video. The weather was gorgeous and the snow was the best it has ever been on Thanksgiving. Squaw had only opened their intermediate and beginner lifts. I wish they had opened more!
The video is fairly long and is pretty much me just riding by myself. I also apparently move my head around a lot. It was hard to actually stick with my cousins, and when I did it was hard to keep them in frame. I muted the commentary and stuck in a soundtrack, as there wasn't really any interesting dialog and the camera had a fair amount of wind noise.
I crash in powder somewhere towards the middle.
Songs in order of appearance:
Donny Darko
This stuff blows my mind and reminds me of Donny Darko:
I liked the 4+ dimensions in college when I was told to just accept them and trust in the math...
Blizzard can write something as complicated as StarCraft 2 but can’t handle the difference between “a” and “A”
According to various blog posts my StarCraft 2 patching issues are because I am running a case-sensitive filesystem. I saw this stupid issue before with Steam. This is extremely frustrating and I can't believe I have to work around it. They don't even offer a manual patch package I can download and try. I found the answer by searching the web, as I was on hold with Blizzard for over an hour and never got a chance to talk to a real person. I doubt Blizzard support will be winning any awards soon.
No, I am not reformatting or hacking around. THIS IS A VALID APPLE-SUPPORTED CONFIGURATION!
Don't tell me it is too hard to support case-sensitivity due to porting issues...other people ship software on multiple platforms without issues. As mentioned in the blog article I linked above, all Blizzard resources are stored in compressed archives...they shouldn't even have to deal with the filesystem save for 20 files or so.
It's also fairly clear this wasn't a conscious decision as there are no support articles and the troubleshooting suggestions don't mention this as a possible cause. There is no mention of this "requirement" in the system requirements on the box either. The QA team should be sternly talked to if this wasn't in their test matrix. This is pure laziness or ineptitude on Blizzard's part.
This is a disturbing trend in Mac OS X application development and I am ashamed it is tolerated. If companies told their Windows users to reformat they would get skewered by reviewers. Also, I still don't get why this is special to Mac versions of the apps, as far as I know NTFS is case-sensitive and FAT is not.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem in this particular case, as it's their updater that's crashing. How do they expect to fix it in the future (if they intend to do so)? They don't look to be too speedy/adept at releasing manual downloads. So, I have no hope it will be fixed and intend to get my money back.
Because no part of this process can be easy, I can't even vote with my wallet without tons of hassle. GameStop doesn't take returns for opened computer games. They will "helpfully" open another box and give me the DVD out of it, but won't give me money back. I tried to explain there was no benefit to this rule--if they were giving me the DVD anyway I could have copied the old key and activated 2 accounts without both disks. They didn't listen of course.
I am sure Blizzard will refund the money, likely in a couple weeks time. Weeks they get to keep my money and hours of my time wasted installing and diagnosing the issue. I should send them a bill.
What a joke.
My horrible experience with Blizzard’s StarCraft 2
I picked up StarCraft 2 tonight @ 8:00pm. It's 1:00 am and I still haven't been able to play it. It's going back to the store tomorrow. I spend my weekdays troubleshooting software and have no desire to do so on the weekends. I needed to vent, here's how it goes down:
I first read the manual to catch up on the story, as I forgot what StarCraft 1 was even about. Oh man, the story is sweet! I'm pumped! I make sure I have my machine updated (hello Graphics Update!). I pop in the DVD and am greeted with a nice disk image background and installer:
Hot! Let's install...
I run the installer, and it tells me that it needs to install some insane amount (12 gigs!). Good thing I opted for the 2TB drive! It wants to install it into a StarCraft II folder, which is slightly annoying...why could the game not fit in one app bundle like every other mac app? Oh well, I want to play this thing!
I then see this weirdness:
It strikes me as odd that they would put up a sheet instead of making it part of the custom UI. It just looks...awkward. The sheet animates seemingly from nowhere. This isn't the polish I expect from Blizzard. Whatever, it's just a sheet...onward!
As the install starts, I realize it is going to take forever (my i7 iMac is IO bound of course). Ok, at least there is a story I can click through. Errr, the text is exactly the same as what I read in the manual! I guess that's to be expected...that's what I get for reading the manual. Not a big deal, I'll just surf around on the web. I start the install and get another oddly floating sheet asking me to register:
I click on it, it opens a browser (even though the installer app is open, why couldn't it open there?) and.....nothing. Blank page. Ok, I'm running a pre-release version of Firefox 4, so likely my issue.
15 minutes later (yikes) loud music starts blaring and my dock icon starts jumping, informing me the game is ready to play. Sweet! The game informs me where it successfully installed to, even though I had chosen it at the previous screen. Also, it oddly replaced all the backslashes with forwardslashes when telling me the path.
So I run the game expecting Blizzard cinematic goodness and instead immediately get the patcher/updater. What a horrible first run experience. I understand the need for updates as I manage security and stability updates, but it feels wrong to make me sit through yet more installing before I have even tried the thing. I mean, at least trick me and tack it onto the end of the normal install's progress bar...is that too much to ask?
So, 0%...15%....25%....50%...woah, downloading quick! Then, I see this:
The text reads "The tracker is not responding". And then I realize there is no way in hell I will be playing this game tonight. The window then spontaneously disappears, dock icons shuffle, and I am left with a StarCraft 2 dock icon for a program called "Launcher" that is doing absolutely nothing:
Ok, I kill the launcher and restart StarCraft 2. Same issue. I know a thing or two about troubleshooting Mac apps, so I immediately check the Console:
8/20/10 11:03:47 PM Blizzard Downloader[158] hidden
8/20/10 11:03:48 PM [0x0-0x1a01a].com.blizzard.downloader[158] download session : 0x2828e00 has created.
8/20/10 11:03:48 PM Blizzard Downloader[158] autolaunch = 1 :
8/20/10 11:03:48 PM Blizzard Downloader[158] 0 : will be launched.
8/20/10 11:03:48 PM [0x0-0x1a01a].com.blizzard.downloader[158] {length = 6, capacity = 6, bytes =
8/20/10 11:03:48 PM [0x0-0x1a01a].com.blizzard.downloader[158] 0x58b035f347d7}
8/20/10 11:03:49 PM Blizzard Downloader[158] attempting to launchTarget :
8/20/10 11:03:50 PM [0x0-0x1a01a].com.blizzard.downloader[158] {length = 6, capacity = 6, bytes = 0x58b035f347d7}
8/20/10 11:03:51 PM [0x0-0x1a01a].com.blizzard.downloader[158] download session : 0x2828e00 is about to be deleted.
8/20/10 11:03:53 PM StarCraft II[160] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: 'connection went invalid while waiting for a reply' invoked observer method: '*** -[LauncherController applicationDidFinishLaunching:]' observer: 0x826000 notification name: 'NSApplicationDidFinishLaunchingNotification'
Uh oh, that doesn't look good..that message is from DO. I don't see any obvious quick fixes or hacks I can do to get this working.
Well, I still really want to play the game...let's see what support has to say. The support page doesn't load all the way in my Firefox 4 nightly. Arg, I decide to write the bug later. In Safari I load it up and get this info:
Awesome, Blizzard is basically blaming me. I load up a torrent (downloading erlang because that's how I roll) and see that my ISP isn't blocking me and I am able to torrent fine. So, I locate the patch torrent file in my StarCraft 2 directory and open it with Transmission:
I realize the update is already 100% downloaded and I am in fact now seeding to people. So why did it say 50% and then barf? Who knows. I relaunch Starcraft 2 and the same thing happens. Let's root around in the StarCraft 2 folder! I figure that I have the patch downloaded, so it's just a matter of getting it applied. Let's try running the patcher! Bzzzt, nope. Dropping the update on the patcher? Nope. Does the Blizzard Downloader help?
Nope.
Can I run the file directly? Nope, it's a mar. Ok, let's try to download the manual update and stop this patcher/downloader/bitorrent foolishness. I go to the support site:
Great, they only list manual patches for their old games. I find the patch release notes on the main StarCraft 2 site but there is no link for a manual download.
At this point I a) realize I haven't played one second of the game b) am extremely frustrated and c) decide I have a corrupted install. Hey, it looks like Blizzard includes a repair tool! How thoughtful. I run it:
Woah, it creates some sort of transparent window containing only text. There are no items in the menu. I open console and see a ton of errors:
8/20/10 11:29:05 PM RepairSC2[300] FAILED TO LOAD:NSImage imageNamed:repairsc2_btn_window_close_down.png fromMPQ:1 8/20/10 11:29:05 PM RepairSC2[300] FAILED TO LOAD:NSImage imageNamed:repairsc2_btn_window_close_over.png fromMPQ:1 8/20/10 11:29:05 PM RepairSC2[300] FAILED TO LOAD:NSImage imageNamed:repairsc2_btn_window_close_off.png fromMPQ:1
Ok, something with my install is messed up. So I start fresh, waiting for the long 12GB install again. The same stuff happens. I try a third time. Again, same problems.
I decide to try to post on the forums and see if anyone has the same issue. To register for the forums I have to register with Battle.net. Ok, I fill out my info and get this error:
Blizzard, you are pissing me off. I generate secure passwords a certain way, don't impose arbitrary rules! Fine, I decide to break with my normal password generating algorithm and go with one I have used in the past as a throw-away. I then see:
I have symbols in that password but apparently not the "good" symbols Blizzard approves of.
At this point I am done. I've decided the game is not worth the hassle and plan to return it tomorrow. If the high school kid at GameStop gives me grief when returning it I will stab him in the face.
Creepily awesome video
This is going around the internet but it's awesome. Carl Burguess took stock footage from Getty and made a music video. So awkward and creepy it's good. Song's not too bad as well.
Ratatat - Drugs from More Soon on Vimeo.
1 Minute from Nevada to California
Apparently UPS has some crazy-fast trucks or planes...
Cool poem & typography video
I've been focusing on being more assertive when I speak. It's been hit or miss. Love this poem and the video is pretty decent too.
Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.