Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old high school student from Florida, decided to up the ante on his journalism “immersian” project and travelled without parental knowledge to Iraq in order to see what life was really like in the war zone. Without knowing a word of Arabic, the young man flew to Kuwait and eventually made his way to his target, Baghdad. There’s a burdgeoning thread about it on Ars, wherein most of the posters are calling the kid an idiot.

I think the kid is a badass. His reasoning, although possibly “young and idealistic” as one Ars poster put it, was that if he could put even the smallest foot forward to understand (and be understood by) the common person in Iraq, that tensions between the two cultures may ease. Despite all the brow-beating received by his mother, his teachers, and the armchair internet tough-guys on Ars, I think that if more Americans up and went to other countries that our country would be much better off.

That being said, I don’t even have a passport. Doh!

In preparation for dealing with a rather unfortunate event that transpired last week, I took the What Action Hero Would You Be? quiz. Not much of a surprise to those who know me, my greatest affinity was with The Terminator. Final results below the cut:

You scored as The Terminator. The Terminator can be good or evil. It just depends on who’s manipulating his circuits. When he’s evil, he’s a killing machine. When he’s good, he’s—well, a killing machine. He often comes back in time to protect certain human beings from other Terminators. He has no sense of stealth or subtlety and will do whatever it takes to accomplish his mission. He has a curious penchant for sunglasses and seems to enjoy mimicking human slang. The Terminator 75% Lara Croft 71% James Bond, Agent 007 63% Neo, the "One" 63% Maximus 63% Batman, the Dark Knight 63% William Wallace 58% Indiana Jones 58% Captain Jack Sparrow 42% El Zorro 38% The Amazing Spider-Man 13% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

Not necessarily in real life, but what sites/journals have you stopped reading recently? And what has really captured your attention?

I stopped reading the two journals because they were self-pitying and/or obsessive. My blood pressure went up just by reading them. I have also reduced my visits to good ol’ Ars Technica because their news items haven’t caught my interest in about a month. The Lounge, which is my favorite forum, has been packed with whiners or tragedy. There was a great discussion about Spiderman vs. Wolverine, conducted in the best geekery possible, but there haven’t been the “laugh out loud and pass along to my friends” tidbits like the past. I’ve also stopped visiting Meghann Marco’s site (author of Field Guide to the Apocalypse) because apparently she got a real job. :smirk:

Predictably, I’ve been reading the FZ6 forum over at sportbikes.net. The traffic isn’t nearly what I’m used to, so I could visit a few times a day and not see any new posts. I also returned to Friendster not too long ago after my friend Gary realized it was the only way he could successfully contact me. But again, Friendster isn’t something one would check regularly. Unless you’re stalking someone, that is.

What’s caught my interest? World of Warcraft has dominating my browsing habits AGAIN. I spend most of my surfing energies looking up quests, items, reading about the classes I play, and scanning the server board to see if my hijinx have caught anyone’s attention. I wouldn’t call that “new hotness,” but that’s what’s loaded in Firefox most of the time.

So, what’s in YOUR wallet?

Hi everyone, hope you had a pleasant Christmas holiday. I scored some fantastic loot this year from my gal Lady Jaye, and the goodie I’ve had the most fun with so far is my Taiko Drum Master game from Namco for the PS2. I’ll do a full report on the game at a later date, but the jist of the game is you beat the Japanese drum along with the music. It’s a lot like Donkey Konga, which I also own and love very much. Here’s the drum controller:

I also got a Dance, Dance Revolution game and two dance pads, so someone else can make a fool out of themselves alongside me ;) Lady Jaye also gave me a black cast iron Japanese tea pot and two Japanese tea mugs with 37 as-yet-unidentified ronin/samurai looking fellows on them. Awesome! I also got an auto-balancing laser-leveller to help me hang stuff around the house, and hopefully shoot down ex-Soviet nuclear missles. We cleaned up with the folks, also: a toasty down comforter from my family, gift cards to Target and Lowe’s, games, oh my!

How’d you make out this year (with presents, not with your cousin)?

I ganked these questions from the November issue of Glamour. Two questions for you:

1. What’s the best compliment someone could give you?

2. What’s your favorite curse word, and why?

My answers, you ask?

1. “You’re the person I’d call when someone’s in my house.” Knowing that people trust me to help them and that I will bash anyone who threatens them means a lot to me. I’ve responded to a frantic call before, and while it was scary at the time I was honored to be the first person that person thought of in a time of need.

2. I’ve been really fond of “fuckblister” lately for some reason. I don’t know where I picked it up, but it’s pretty heinous even for me.

Lady Jaye and I held a birthday bash in my honor back in August. I was lucky enough to have most of my friends present, and to make things even better I got some games! They all fit my personality: the Captain and his family bought me a martial arts movie-style card game, gave me SPANC, which stands for Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls, also a card-based game. More on those games at a later date.

hooked me up with Sucking Vacuum. The object of the game is to escape a doomed space station via the one escape pod. The catch is that you must assemble a space suit, fuel the escape pod, and either leave with another player or find the autopilot and leave by yourself. This last point is what makes the game really fun. If you don’t have the autopilot you have to ally with another player. But as soon as you do so, the other players will be out to get you! You can also jack players for their equipment, so the game has a paranoid vibe going on.

Sucking Vacuum is a tile-based board game, with setup similar to Zombies!!!. The play area is made up of square tiles that are randomly assembled at the beginning of each game, so each game will be different from the last. There are three types of tiles: the shuttle, rooms, and hallways. The shuttle and room tiles each have three pieces of random equipment in them, represented by tokens that are placed face down. If you occupy the shuttle bay or any room, you can “search” the room and retrieve a piece of equipment of your choice.

Images downloaded from Funagaingames.com

The space station is leaking air — rapidly — and while everyone starts in a room full of air, each tile in the game is quickly depleted of oxygen. If you’re on a tile without any air, you expend oxygen for everything: moving, searching, attacking another player, defending yourself, even standing still. You have 10 “breaths” and can only replenish your air supply at pre-determined air tanks throughout the station or via an air bottle special item token.

You’ll need a complete space suit to escape: helmet, jacket, and pants, but the other equipment items come in handy. My favorite (obviously) are the weapons. You use makeshift weapons, such as a toilet brush, to jack your opponents and steal their equipment. All recovered equipment is played face up except for special items, so all of the other players can see what you have. This makes for some interesting bargaining. In the game we played together, I threatened that if she didn’t team up with me I’d beat her up and take her stuff. She said “NO YUO” and I advanced on her with my trusty fire extinguisher Unfortunately she was better armed than I was — a hunk o’ space station — and I got pounded me hard. Special items include the autopilot, an air tank, a rocket sled, and a jet pack.

The game has an awesome premise, and I like the idea of rapidly shifting alliances. But Sucking Vacuum has a few major flaws that need to be addressed. First off, the rules that come with the game are in dire need of a rewrite. There’s a revised ruleset available online for download, and while it fixed some of the glaring mistakes the rules were ambiguous enough to give us fits. The game is bundled with an expansion, and it took us about fifteen minutes to figure out how to split the tiles and tokens up and configure the board. In reality, it was a simple process, but a border-less chart in the rules led to confusion about how many types of tokens there were, and if they needed to be in the standard game or not. It was a silly bit of confusion, and one that could have been easily remedied by some thoughtful editing. What’s particularly sad about the rules was that the boxed set gave me was the second edition. According to Funagain Games, my version is now out of print; hopefully the next version will have an even more refined set of instructions. I may go over the rules one more time and write a quick summary of them later.

The tiles are nicely illustrated and give shout-outs to various Sci-Fi books and movies. For example, one of the rooms has a facehugger from Alien in it. Unfortunately, the tiles are a bit too small and flimsy. This is a double whammy when you have multiple players on the tile with 3 equipment tokens face down. The tiles get crowded quickly, and it’s hard to pick up the equipment tiles without disturbing the board or any tokens. I guess I’m a little obsessive when it comes to having the board properly aligned or markers knocked over, but if you’re not bothered by a disheveled playing area this probably isn’t a big deal.

As pointed out at the end of the game, things would have gone a lot more smoothly if we played with someone who had played the game before. The annoyances of the instructions would have been smoothed over, and we could have spent more time playing than wondering if we were following the rules. It turns out we ignored the one part of the rules we did understand: that you could only carry one piece of equipment at a time. Discovering halfway through the game that we’d made a mistake led to some more frustrations that probably would have been avoided if we had an experienced player there to check up on us.

Did I like the game? Yes. Would I recommend it to anyone else? I’m not sure. I don’t know if my displeasure with the game is based on mechanics or the problems with the rules. I’d like to play a few more games, but I’d rather play with our original crew again, as to not repeat the first-timer instructions debacle too soon.

Pigs. In. SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

• Great premise. The twist of trying to keep other players away while keeping one person close enough to help you pilot the shuttle is genius.
• Great graphics and ingenious weaponry. I really got a kick out of the teddy bear weapon.
• Randomly-generated playing areas are great. I really enjoy them in other games like Settlers of Catan and the aforementioned Zombies!!!

I can’t let you do that, Dave

• Awfully written rules. More editing and less discussion about choosing accents for each player, please.
• The tiles could be made out of a thicker cardstock.
• I’d like to see the tiles a bit larger, or the tokens a bit smaller.
• Not enough tiles; the space station felt very small and the game may go by too quickly once we understand the rules better.

Sucking Vacuum, I launch you into space aboard:

Three and a half out of five STFU mugs!

I found a discussion on Ars Technica’s forums that I thought I would share. The discussion point was plain: is it possible for an ape of King Kong’s size to really exist? The thread dives quickly into a discussion about mass ratios, muscle density, and how real, large animals exist. The conclusion: there’s no way Kong could be both as big and strong as he is depicted in the movies.

One of the benefits (?) of being a night owl is that I get to see all sorts of late night wacky television commercials. From Space Age Memory Foam to vacuum cleaners that cut your hair, I’ve seen just about everything. The Micro Touch Trimmer had such a horribly cheesy ad campaign that I rolled my eyes every time it came on. The actors were straight out of the 80s and as usual, the ad promised the Micro Touch could do everything, from shave your nose hair to cure cancer.

The next thing I knew, I saw the Micro Touch in lots of places. I saw it at Target, Wal*Mart, CVS, and of course, during late night television. After passing by the Micro Touch display for the 50th time at Target I decided to buy one. It was $10, and it seemed like a good compliment to my already self-service haircut toolkit. I was able to get my head, back of my neck, and certain large area of my body (underarms, not that large area of my body) with the traditional barber’s electric trimmer. I had to rely on scissors to trim near my ears. And regarding that other large area of my body … let’s just say I was being VERY careful with the electric trimmer.

I was surprised by the Micro Touch. I half expected it to self destruct once it came into contact with my manly follicles, but the little trimmer cut my sideburns, monobrow, nose hairs, and uh, my somewhat private area with aplomb. The Micro Touch gets its name from being gentle and resistant to cutting the skin. Unless you poke yourself with the jagged teeth of the trimmer, I’d agree with the Micro Touch product marketing. I’ve never nicked myself with the Micro Touch, which is something I’ve managed to do twice with the full sized trimmer (don’t ask). The Micro Touch trims very close to the skin line, although not as close as the regular shears.

The Micro Touch is powered by two AA batteries (not included). It is of adequate build quality, although my first one broke after about a year. It’s about the size of a thick pen, and travels easily. The trimming part is covered by a plastic barrel. Cleaning the razor is easily accomplished by sliding up a plastic latch and removing an upper section of the trimmer.

This is a must have grooming aid. Even if you get your hair cut at a barber/stylist, you can always use a little touch up here and there. And I am picturing some of you in my mind, and I know you can use a little deforestation between the brows, the nose, your feet, and god knows where else.

Cuts evildoers down to size:

• Compact, easy to manipulate trimmer for those hard to reach or sensitive areas
• Miserly — I’ve had my current Micro Touch for over a year and have yet to change batteries, and I cut my hair every two weeks
• Gentle. The Micro Touch can be used around the manbag without fear of ripping yourself open
• Powerful enough to trim all sorts of hair

Cut it out

• My first Micro Touch just stopped working one day. Your mileage may vary. At $10 a pop it wasn’t a big deal for me to throw the dead one in the trash and buy a new one at Target
• The plastic latch that holds the upper section together can sometimes vibrate open. When this happens, the trimmer keeps running but it stops cutting hair. Again, not a big deal, but it happens frequently enough that it’s worth mentioning.

Micro Touch Trimmer, I dub thee:

Four and a half out of five STFU mugs!

And apparently, only the Shadow knows what the fuck is wrong with my foot. I went to the doctor’s today, and had absolutely no idea what was wrong with my toes. He ruled out frostbite/exposure, fungal infection, and acute injury unless something happened that I didn’t know about :\ In short, we are going to keep an eye on things. The pain has gone away 99%, and now it looks worse than it feels. I expressed my concern over necrotic tissue or blood poisoning due to dead toe tip but he said not to worry. He also cleared me to go swimming, which quickly sunk my excuse to sit on my ass and play Warcraft once Lady Jaye came home.

So, stay tuned, I guess. The doctor said that it should heal like a normal blister, but if something does take a turn for the worse he’ll be around during Christmas.

In the email world, there is the concept of blacklisting and whitelisting. Blacklisting is the act of banning certain domains or IP address from sending mail to you. This is very similar to when you click the “report spam” button in GMail or label mail as “junk” in HoTMaiL. The problem with this approach is that it is reactive and doesn’t get everybody — you have to wait to get spam from a source before you blacklist it. I’m not sure how much spam comes from repeat addresses, but I have over 1000 messages marked as spam in my GMail box, and we’re only halfway through the month (GMail purges your spam and trash folders every 30 days).

Whitelisting is a much stricter, but proactive, approach. Everyone is prohibited from sending you email until you allow them to. That means no spam, no unwanted solicitations, nothing. The drawback to whitelisting is that if people change their identifaction information, such as their email address, you won’t be able to receive mail from them. For example, my stepsister sent out an email last night from her new email address. In a whitelist-only world, this message would never land in your inbox.

As I mentioned some time ago, we have a Broadvoice, a Voice Over Internet Protocol online telephone service. We also have a landline just for our ADT alarm system. Believe it or not, we’ve gotten more spam callers (telemarketers and poll takers) on the alarm line than the VOIP line. Nothing makes my heart race faster than the alarm control panel ringing — is it ADT letting me know that someone’s in the house? Blacklisting and whitelisting works for email, so why not throw it on your mobile, VOIP, and land lines?

I could easily see this being a service on VOIP offerings. Broadvoice has an option to reject anonymous calls. What I’m after, though, is the option to reject all calls from people I don’t know. Now, given, we’d have the same problem with whitelisting and blacklisting as we do in the email realm, but do you think it’s something that people would be willing to tinker with?