What grinds my gears

Never mind HL2 Episode 3 becoming a new Duke Nukem Forever... I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the naming of the trilogy. I have never understood it. After the success of Half-Life 2, Valve started developing a direct continuation to it, in the form of smaller games in an "episodic" format. The original intention was that instead of spending two or three years to make one big game, they would publish smaller games at a faster pace. Of course we all know what happened to those plans (while Episode 1 was slightly delayed, it was more or less in par with the plans; Episode 2 was way, way delayed; but neither compares to the ridiculous delay with the third one) but as said, I'm not here to talk about the delays. From almost the very beginning Valve announced that when the three episodes got published, they would effectively constitute Half-Life 3. So it puzzles me to no end why exactly they are named " Half-Life 2 Episode 1 " et...

There are many hobbies that people engage in, and that do not require much talent or expertise. The main point is that they are fun. In some cases these hobbies may be fun to watch too. Air guitar is not, in my opinion, of the latter kind. It may be fun to prance around in the rhythm of a groovy guitar solo and pretend to play an imaginary guitar, but watching it is not very fun. It actually looks ridiculous. Pretending to play a guitar is not a talent, it does not show anything interesting, and in fact it looks ridiculous and obscene. At least with a real guitar it doesn't look like you are playing with yourself, but without it... It just looks horrible, and I really don't want to watch that. What's worse, some people take it way too seriously. Heck, there are world championships of air guitar. WTF? People argue that it's all about the show. Fine, but if you want a dance show, then make it a dance show, not a pretend-guitar-playing show that doesn't requ...

In the world of music, there have been and are really extraordinary talented performers who have contributed more than just music and songs, but have helped pioneer entire styles and genres. They are truly music legends, the people who set the standards, who not only composed and performed individual songs, but who developed music styles further and even invented entirely new forms. Such legendary musicians often get such a cult status that they get a free pass on everything they have done, even if it doesn't really compare all that well to later developments. Criticizing their work, comparing it as inferior to later works, seems tantamount to blasphemy. To take one particular example, consider the song Unchain My Heart , originally performed by Ray Charles, and later covered by Joe Cocker. Ray Charles enjoys such a legendary cult status. He was certainly a pioneer of soul music, and helped define an entire new genre. Thus it's no wonder that many people will say things l...

This is not something that grinds my gears. On the contrary, the video game Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor is in fact a little gem. I bought this game on Steam because they were having a sale, and it cost just a few euros. At first I was disappointed, but then it became quite engaging. The thing about this game is that probably at least 90% of gamers nowadays would not like it. It's way, way too difficult for casual gamers, and most HC gamers would probably get turned off by it because it feels technologically so antiquated. This game was released in 2004 for Windows, yet feels like a DOS game from the early 90's. It consists of pre-rendered still images and short FMVs, with no sprites, 3D models or anything else. Even its screen resolution is fixed at 640x480. In fact, if you were to remove the voice samples, it could quite well pass for a DOS game from 1994 rather than from 2004. And as said, most casual gamers wouldn't like it either because it's so damn...

Newspapers and the press have hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and have had a big impact on the society during all of it (for good and bad alike.) For hundreds of years newspapers have thrived, and were a staple of any society. This is because for a long, long time they were basically the only medium that people had to get information about current events (be it local, national or international) and people thirst for this kind of information. In the past 50 years or so TV has kind of become a big competitor to newspapers, but never really supplanted them. However, during the past decade or two a new form of media has become so big and prevalent that it actually has turned into an almost newspaper killer: The internet (often colloquially called "new media.") Traditional newspapers have struggled for a decade or two to adapt. Physical newspapers are selling less and less because it just is easier for people nowadays to search for information on the internet, usu...

Netflix is, basically, an online video rental service. It's available for a surprisingly large number of platforms besides just desktop PCs. Other such platforms include various Android-based cellphones and tablets, the iPhone, iPod and iPad, Apple TV, various Blu-Ray Disc players and several gaming consoles, including the Nintendo Wii, 3DS, Sony Playstation 3, PlayStation Vita, and the Xbox 360. There's one thing in common with all of them: Netflix can be used in all of them without any additional cost from the part of the platform's manufacturer. Except for Microsoft's Xbox 360. From the literally hundreds of different platforms that support Netflix, the Xbox 360 is the only one where it cannot be used without paying additional money to the platform's manufacturer (in this case Microsoft.) An Xbox Live Gold subscription is needed to use Netflix. One could argue that this subscription is needed to account for costs from Microsoft's part. I don't kn...

I had a bookmark to a YouTube video where Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks about UFOs and all the argumentative fallacies regarding them. That person is one of the smartest people alive, I really admire him, and I think that he has done an astonishingly good job at popularizing science and getting some rationality to the public knowledge amidst the widespread of irrational superstition. Today I went to watch that again because it's just such a great video. What do I encounter there? "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by St. Petersburg College." This is really worthy of a facepalm. Double facepalm. How stupid can these people be? How completely and utterly stupid? St. Petersburg College, you are not helping the spreading of science and rationality with stunts like this. You are only doing the exact opposite. You are doing the exact same thing as the irrational fanatics are doing. This makes no sense. This kind of material that helps humanity sho...

Oftentimes the human mind works in rather curious ways. For example, let's assume this hypothetical situation: A new flu pandemic has appeared that's especially nasty. About 1% of all people who contract it will die. (This is not unrealistic because such flu pandemics have happened, at even higher mortality rates.) You are pretty much guaranteed to get the flu unless you live a really isolated life. A vaccine is developed that prevents contracting the flu completely. Later it's discovered that approximately 0.1% of people get a serious chronic disease from the vaccine. What happens in this situation? A significant amount of people will refuse to take the vaccine, instead opting for the 1% probability of dying. It doesn't matter how much you explain the probabilities to them, they won't budge. But why? The highly contradictory reaction that many people have to this becomes even clearer if we assume two alternative hypothetical situations: Instead of the va...

I like Stephen King's novels like anybody else. He really is a master at writing in a really interesting and engaging manner. However, there's one aspect of many of his books that I don't like that much. Please don't misunderstand. I don't have any problem in supernatural elements being used in fiction, as long as it's interesting and support the fictitious reality of the story. In fact, quite many of King's books containing supernatural elements are just fine, when it's precisely the supernatural element that's the very core of the story. (Classic examples of this include Christine , Firestarter and Pet Sematary .) However, in quite many other of his books the supernatural elements seem completely out of place, and artificially tacked on. They feel like not belonging to the otherwise interesting story, and they actually detract from it. King is a master of writing suspense. Many of his novels start in a very suspenseful and mysterious manner,...

The world is full of people who believe in all kinds of irrational supernatural ideas, such as the paranormal, the "spiritual world", the supernatural powers of the human mind (that only wait for them to be unleashed via proper training), and so on. Well, people are (and of course should be) free to believe whatever they want. The problem is, lots of other people are cashing in on this psychological phenomenon. In the same way as many people believe in such things, there are others who are willing to sell them such beliefs for money. Just here in Finland, which should otherwise consist of relatively highly-educated civilized people, there exist several organizations that sell books and other material, and offer "training courses" related to the supernatural, the paranormal, and all kinds of such nonsense. And they are not doing it for free either. The thing is, these organizations and people are using their websites to advertise their material, and these adver...

Apparently there are people who really, honestly think that the Earth is a flat disc, and that all we know about astronomy is just a bunch of lies (perpetuated by a gigantic, world-wide conspiracy.) And I don't mean just a few lunatics rambling in their basements, but a relatively substantial amount of people who take it seriously and actually try to rationalize it. They have websites, forums, books and "documentary" films on the subject. The funny thing about it is that when you read their web pages and online forums, and watch their videos, it's really, really hard to tell if they are being serious or if it's just a parody. ( Poe's law is in full effect here.) However, apparently at least some of those people are really being serious about it. What's even funnier is seeing how they have to struggle to argue their position. As more and more undeniable evidence has come forth during history, they have to keep changing their arguments. In the distan...

In my previous post I talked a bit about the high standards of evidence that skeptics demand before believing in something. A bit more on that subject: As I said in the previous post, evidence is valid only if it passes the rigorous test of science and peer reviewing. However, there's still another aspect of this that also has to be considered: Just because the evidence has been verified as valid, that still doesn't actually tell us what it's evidence of. We should always be cautious to avoid jumping to conclusions even if evidence turns out to be completely valid. The next big question should be: "What exactly is this evidence of? What's actually the cause behind it?" Let's take an example: There's undeniable, verifiable and repeatable evidence that stars in galaxies rotate at orbital velocities that do not match the apparent mass of those galaxies. Normally the orbital velocity of a star should diminish the farther away it's from the center o...

There's a really widespread misconception, both in real life and in fiction, that skepticism means "the conviction that everything must have a natural explanation." The common picture of a skeptic is a stubborn old fart who denies anything seemingly supernatural out of principle, and refuses to even consider any possibilities. No, that's not what skepticism means. One narrow definition of the term in colloquial language might have that meaning, but that's not what it means in terms of the philosophy of science. What skepticism means is "not accepting extraordinary claims at face value without valid evidence" . Personally I would also add to that "and passing the rigorous test of science" . Skepticism is not about denying some explanations on principle while accepting others just because they are more "sciency" and "natural." Skepticism does not, in fact, have any preconceptions on what the true explanation for somethin...

While not the first zombie movies ever made, the original "zombie trilogy" by George A. Romero is by far the most influential set of movies of the genre in all of movie history. They popularized zombie movies, and they set all the major "rules" of zombies. And on top of that, they are really good movies. Perhaps the best characteristic of these movies is the extreme realism they depict. Of course I'm not talking about the very existence itself of zombies in the movies' universe, but everything else. The only "supernatural" thing depicted in the movies is that the bodies of dead people, for an unknown reason, get reanimated. The bodies are still dead, they just move and have some minimal brain functions. Everything else follows very physically plausible laws, such as: The bodies decompose over time due to natural processes, because there's little to no immune system fighting the micro-organisms that consume dead meat. This can be clearly se...

This isn't something that grinds my gears, but hey, it's a blog... Major spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen the movie and want to see it, don't read this. Just saw the movie The Cabin in the Woods , and immediately after, I thought to myself: "This would have actually been a lot better if they had removed all the scenes of the control room up to the point when the stonehead discovers the camera hidden in the lamp. After that it could have been almost exactly as it was (perhaps with a few added control room scenes.) It would have been a great twist that so far the movie seems like a regular horror/slasher, which suddenly turns into something else entirely, that there's more going on than first met the eye." That would indeed have been a great twist... but then I thought: Maybe it would have actually been too cliché of a twist? I mean, it would have been a subversion of the "traditional" horror/slasher, but in the end, perhaps it would...

Vegetarianism/veganism ranges quite a lot between people. The mildest vegetarians simply don't eat meat if there's a vegetarian choice, but don't worry too much if they have to eat a bit of meat because there's nothing else. They might also have no problems in eg. eating fish. They usually don't have any problems in eating animal products that aren't meat (such as milk products and eggs.) Vegans, unlike vegetarians, do not eat any animal products (not even milk products.) The most open-minded vegans, however, do likewise not worry too much if there's a situation where there's no choice than to eat some animal products (or even outright meat.) They do not adhere to veganism religiously, they simply follow it given the choice, but do not stress too much about it otherwise. The type of vegan that really amazes me, though, is the obsessive vegan. Not only do they avoid all kinds of animal products religiously, they are in fact pathologically obsessive a...

Almost 100% of fiction out there dealing with space travel ("almost" because there are a few exceptions, mostly some sci-fi novels where the author knows better) with respect to the "magical" limit of the speed of light. Basically, most sci-fi authors only know the "headline" version of the theory of relativity. Namely: You can't travel faster than the speed of light (in vacuum), period. (Not by any conventional means, at least.) Thus to get past this annoying limit, they invent all kinds of fictitious modes of travel, such as "hyperspace" and "warp speed" and whatnot. They seem to think that, for example, if you wanted to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri, it would take you at least 4.3 years to get there (using conventional means of travel), no matter what. It's (according to their limited understanding) physically impossible to get there faster. Likewise if you wanted to travel to the Andromeda galaxy, it would take at ...

The basic tenet of feminism is equality. Everybody should be treated equally completely regardless of their gender, have the same rights and duties, the same opportunities, and be respected in the same way as anybody else, completely disregarding such an inconsequential thing as gender (when talking about things where gender should in no way be an issue.) While there's still a lot of sexism and inequality in this respect, even in the civilized world, the feminist movement has in some ways succeeded in actually doing the opposite of this basic tenet: People are actually afraid to treat women in the same way as men for example in contexts like how they are depicted in fiction and art. If female characters in fiction do not get special treatment and are depicted in such a way that their gender is a complete non-issue, the author can actually be accused of sexism! This is the complete opposite of what equality should be! As an example, consider the following Magic: The Gathering ...

Although I'm not an American, I find the political situation of the Unites States quite interesting. In a morbid way. Not because of presidential elections or anything like that, but on a larger scale. The political landscape in the United States has changed radically during the past 10 years or so, specifically in relation to religion. You see, 20-30 years ago it would have been a political suicide for a politician to refer to his or her own religion in the United States. Making a reference to being, for example, a pentecostal or a baptist would have driven away all the voters of other denominations. (" Oh, he's a catholic. I'm certainly not voting for him! They are the church of Satan! " " Oh, she's a baptist. They are nutjobs! Vade retro! ") This has turned completely on its head: Nowadays it would be a political suicide to not make references to the (Christian) religion and to not profess one's religion. What was more or less a practic...

For years failblog.org was basically one of the best online blogs in existence. Its major shtick was to publish (at least daily, often even several times a day) images and videos, sometimes other forms of media, of people or things failing in some manner (usually hurting themselves in the process, although that was certainly not the only type of failures), such as for example skateboarders failing a jump and faceplanting, boats getting destroyed by a crane accidentally failing and dropping it, and so on and so forth. (The blog has a strict policy that they will only publish fails that remain at some level of good taste. No people getting killed or seriously injured for life, for example, and no gore. Emphasis on humor, not on morbid curiosity.) It remained like that for a rather long time, and I was a very avid follower. Then at some point it started to change. While failblog has always published other kinds of things (mostly related to internet memes) from time to time, it was qui...

This is a really short one, but... At least 80% of wrestling videos found on YouTube have a completely abysmal image quality. They are really low-resolution and compressed beyond belief. Many of them are so compressed that it's almost impossible to discern what's going on, and even the good ones have really visible compression artifacts. I would understand that if that was the norm with all YouTube videos, but no. The vast majority of anything else you find there is just ok. Except wrestling videos. What gives?

There exists a rather curious type of person. This is typically a young adult, or at most middle-aged, and they might in fact be computer adepts, if not even outright computer nerds, who like technology, innovation and progress... yet they still somehow manage to act like an old fart who detests everything that's new and trendy, who's constantly saying "bah, these kids today and their shiny gadgets... back in my day..." (They don't literally say that, but they act like it.) It seems that these people detest and denigrate anything that's new, flashy and popular, for the sole reason that it's popular. Especially if it's new technology. Out of principle, not because of any actual rationale. If it's trendy and hip, it must suck. There are people who still detest and denigrate, for example, the iPhone. Not for any rational reason, but just because it's popular. They also usually denigrate even the idea of something like browsing the web using a...

There seems to be a really strange consensus that the movie Evil Dead 2 is better than the first The Evil Dead movie. Having seen both several times, I just can't comprehend the reasoning. The first movie is a very low-budgeted pure horror film. Regardless of its extremely low budget, it's really well made. The authors really utilized every limited resource they had to make the best film they possibly could, and it really shows. Many of the special effects might be simplistic and antiquated even by the standards of the time, but they are surprisingly well made and effective taking into account what they had to work with and how little money they had. In short, as a horror film it's really effective and well made. It's gory, it's gritty, it's gruesome, it's seriously made, and it doesn't shy showing you the goriness in full detail. The second movie is not a sequel. It has a relatively short segment at the beginning that's a kind of remake of t...

Version numbering of software products is far from being a standardized thing, but the most common convention is to have something along the lines of: <major version>.<minor version> For example the version number "2.1" means major version 2, minor version 1. (Generally the major version starts from 1 and the minor version from 0. A major version 0 is often used to denote an alpha or beta version that's not yet complete.) The major version number usually indicates some kind of significant milestone in the development of the program, and is usually accompanied by significant improvements or changes. Sometimes it could mean a full (or significant) rewrite of the code base (even if outwardly there's little visible change). Regardless of what exactly is it that has changed, it's usually a very significant major change (either internal or externally visible). Some projects keep the major version so significant that they hardly ever incremen...

In my old " blog " (of sorts) I have written extensively about conspiracy theories and believers in them, and the reasons why people believe in them. One aspect of this is, I think, that believing in conspiracy theories is a form of pseudointellectualism. Especially people who have memorized hundreds and hundreds of arguments and can flood a discussion with them in a form of rapid-fire and shotgun argumentation, probably get a sense of being quite smart and "educated": They have the feeling that they are experts on the subject in question and possess a lot of factual knowledge about it, and thus can teach it to others and use all these "facts" to argue their position and win any debates. In other words, they are pseudointellectuals. They feel that they have a lot of factual knowledge on the subject, and they might get a sense of intellectual superiority, even though in fact they are just deluded. They are often good at debating and arguing their positi...

"Show, don't tell" is one of the rules of thumb of proper storytelling in a visual media (such as movies, TV series and comics). It means that, in general, it's better to show something happening rather than just telling what happened. It can apply even to written stories, where it means that the events should be "shown" as a narrative, rather than being explained. This is not, of course, a hard rule. Sometimes it's better to just tell something as a quick summary rather than going to the lengths of actually showing the events in full. Too much "showing" can actually be more boring than just quickly telling what happened. What grinds my gears is when people use the "show, don't tell" argument to criticize works of art in situations where it really doesn't apply. There are excellent examples of things not being shown, just hinted at in dialogue. For example, consider the famous "hamburger scene" in the movie P...

At least 90% of internet forums out there have a strict rule against so-called necroposting. This is defined as responding to a thread that has not had any activity in a long time. (The amount of time varies from forum to forum, ranging from years to just a few months.) Necroposting is somehow considered a really bad breach of netiquette or something. If anybody necroposts, an angry swarm of people will immediately castigate the culprit with angry reminders that the original thread died several months ago! In fact, a few forums even go so far as to automatically lock threads that have not had any activity in a given amount of time. I have never understood (nor will ever understand) what exactly is so bad about "necroposting". None of the arguments given against it make any sense. So what if a thread has not been active in many months, or even years? Someone might still have something new to add to it. It could be a new perspective, a new idea or even an update of recent e...

The fourth Indiana Jones movie is universally hated. What is the most commonly cited reason for this? Aliens. That's it. Aliens. Sure, there are many other annoyances and defects often cited as well, but the aliens are by far the most common element to all complaints. In fact, it's the first and often even the only relevant thing that reviewers and other people mention. Ok, then there's the fridge, of course, which is probably a very close second most commonly cited reason. (In fact, citing the fridge as a reason for hating the movie is even more irrational than the aliens.) Let's put this into perspective and compare it to the original three movies. A supernatural chest that when opened releases some ghostly supernatural energy that kills everybody not worthy? That's completely ok. A secret cult that can, among other things, rip the heart out of somebody's chest with bare hands, while the victim remains alive through the whole process? No problems. A cup ...

The 60's Batman TV series was basically a farce. It was basically a time when, for some inexplicable reason I cannot comprehend, TV and film producers thought that a superhero series/movie should be a wacky comedy and be really over-the-top. (I really can't understand where the connection between "superheros" and "comedy" comes from. In my mind there's a disconnect of the size of the Pacific ocean between them.) In fact, that mentality persisted for a surprisingly long time (even in the 90's and 2000's we were still getting superhero movies that were more comedy than anything else.) Tim Burton's 1989 Batman and its sequel are an attempt to make an actual Batman movie (which sadly sunk once again into a comedy in the hands of Joel Schumacher, a turn of events that's best left forgotten in the annals of history.) It was ok'ish... kind of. Yes, it was something resembling Batman, but... not really. Batman's suit is not like that, h...

This is a really small thing... but I think every software developer has been there, and it can get pretty frustrating. If you are a long-time developer, you have most probably experienced it: You encounter a problem (like a really strange error message, or a strange bug with some library that you just can't understand eg. because the documentation of the library is lacking or other reasons) and you try to search for a solution online. Surely others have had the same problem and solved it. Very often this is so, and you usually find the answer in the first few google hits. Sometimes, however, you will see someone asking the very question you are looking for, and then answering their own post with just "never mind, I found the solution", and never explaining what the solution was. You are left with nothing. A lesser form of this is when someone asks the question, another person answers it, and the first person just answers with a "thanks, I will try that to see ...

One thing I detest about job interviews is that you have to lie even if you really mean to be honest. You have to lie in order to convey your true skill properly. (Not that I have extensive experience on job interviews, but this is from what I have gathered.) For example, suppose that you are an experienced programmer and have a good grasp of how imperative/OO languages (either compiled or scripting) work, and have extensive experience on some languages, but only a very modest understanding of PHP in particular: You know the basics, you have perhaps written a hundred of lines of it in total, but you know how it works and what it offers. Most importantly, if you had to, you could quickly learn to use it proficiently and competently. However, job interviews don't generally ask you that. Instead, they ask you how much you have programmed in PHP. You have two choices: Tell the truth, or "stretch it a bit". If you tell them that you have only minimal experience of PHP in parti...

Watch this comedy routine by Abbott and Costello performing their famous "Who's on first" sketch. Watch it fully and then come back, as I have a couple of questions to ask about it. Question 1: How many times did they show the audience? Answer: Zero times. Question 2: How much did it bother you that they didn't? If you are a normal person, I am pretty sure that you didn't even notice this until I drew attention that fact. It certainly did not bother you at all . If this were being televised today as a live show, at least 50% of the footage would be showing the audience reactions. This is something that bothers me to no end in today's TV show editing. If I'm watching some performers doing an act (be it comedy, magic, juggling or whatever), I want to see the performers. Why would I want to see the audience? What possible interest would I have in that? Of course it's not the act of showing the audience itself that's so bad. It's th...

Once upon a time, when the industry had a good decade or two of actual user experience on graphical user interfaces, a set of good design rules were established. Most operating system development companies even had their guidelines for developers on how to create a standardized GUI for their programs so as to make them as easy and intuitive to use as possible. These are mostly small things, but they are important. For example, if a program has a menu (as most graphical programs do), it should always be located in the same place in all programs (at the top, below the title bar) and there are certain menus that should always have the same name (such as "File" and "Edit") and contain the same basic set of commands (such as "Open" and "Save"). If a menu element does an immediate action, it should be named without any punctuation (eg, "Save"), but if it does not immediately do something but instead opens a dialog where more options can be ...