Matt McIrvin's Freaky Alternate Reality

I see the entries from my LJ imported successfully! Comment threads are next.

The thing this isn't going to handle is that for a while, I was using LiveJournal's Scrapbook feature as my primary online photo album. I'll have to stash those pictures somewhere else, probably Google. That will break the LJ posts that were primarily photo links, but for the most part this is no big loss; the photos themselves were the key content.

It says something about my recent LJ activity that the "recent posts" page here now covers about three and a half years of content.

Monday was the very first day of in-person early voting in Massachusetts, ever. I didn't have much in the way of a practical reason to do it, but I was curious (and was probably looking for a bit of early closure to this enervating election season), so I went and voted at City Hall.

Massachusetts of course has long had absentee ballots for people who can provide excuses for not being around on Election Day¹, but in 2014 the state passed a law allowing anybody to request a mail-in ballot, or to vote early in person for a period of a couple of weeks before the election. This year's general election is the first one for which the law is in effect. Every city or town has to have at least one early-voting location, though the details vary from place to place. The main location here is in the basement of City Hall, at the opposite corner from the RMV office. They're going to have a few other locations open just on Saturday, at a couple of fire stations and the Department of Public Works. The operation seems modest compared to what already exists in some other places, but it's a start.

I've heard reports of brisk business in some other towns, but when I went there (about an hour after early voting began), interest seemed fairly low. The poll workers were still getting the hang of the system, but it didn't matter much, because there were only a few people there, most of them elderly. The late and weekend hours might get a more diverse crowd.

In any event, it was interesting. Regular Election Day voting here is a pretty streamlined affair in which you check in at a table with paper voter lists, get your optical-scan ballot, retire to a cardboard cubby to fill it in, then check out at a different table with another set of voter lists, and you stick your ballot in the box. Early voting is a little different, since there are people coming in from all over the city, and the ballots have to be sent back to the voters' individual precincts in sealed envelopes. It's basically an in-person version of voting by mail.

The poll workers checked me in on a tablet computer, with the option of scanning driver's license dot codes to get my name and address faster--though they were very careful to emphasize that this was optional, and ID was not required. The tablet was connected to a little printer that spat out a numbered, receipt-like slip, which they kept at the table. Then they gave me a yellow envelope, a ballot, a sheet of instructions, and a marker pen. There was a long line of cubbies for voting off to the side, most of them unoccupied.

The ballot was a regular optical-scan ballot, only pre-creased for folding so it would go into the envelope. Aside from filling out the ballot itself, I had to write my name and address and sign an affidavit on the outside of the envelope, then seal the ballot inside. (So from the voter's perspective, there isn't 100% assurance that these early ballots are secret--but that's the case with voting by mail as well.) I then brought the envelope back to the original table, where they stapled the printed slip to the front and stuck it in a box. The envelope is apparently going to go back to my home precinct, where it will be opened sometime after the polls close on November 8 and the ballot scanned along with all the Election Day ballots. The voter lists that the poll workers have on Election Day will also note that I've already voted, so I can't do it again.

For most people here, it was probably not more convenient than voting on Election Day, aside from the greater time flexibility. There is the advantage that if something goes wrong, you can always come back later; there's less chance of a disaster that keeps you from actually casting a ballot. But my precinct usually has very light crowds and little trouble anyway.

Still, there is something nice about getting it done when most of the country still has a couple of weeks to go.

¹ The old absentee ballots apparently still exist as a separate system from the new mail-in ballots, which is a little odd. Presumably there's room to streamline that some more.

Playing further through the Rise Against the Empire (classic Star Wars trilogy) playset in Disney Infinity 3.0, we got to a point that I think was just too frustrating, especially for a kid's game.
( The frustration of *that one mission*, and other, better things )

The following is expanded from a comment I posted on John Scalzi's The Force Awakens spoiler thread.

Unlike the thread linked above, it actually is only mildly spoilery; I don't think it'll ruin the movie for you unless you are practicing a total information blackout. However, I'm NOT going to screen for spoilers in the comments.

( Why The Force Awakens actually had me missing the prequels a little... and why I liked it )

A couple of years ago, I posted reviews of a couple of Tove Jansson's classic children's books set in the world of the Moomins: Comet in Moominland (in which Moominvalley is threatened by an extraterrestrial impactor), and Moominsummer Madness (a charming adventure set largely in a theater cast adrift on the water). I loved these books when I was a kid, though I didn't read all of them. A couple of the others in the series have become favorites of my daughter by now, but I never got around to reviewing them.

The Moomin books were written over several decades, and the style gradually evolves, from straightforward, if whimsically strange and occasionally wise, adventure tales early on; through more experimentally witty and psychologically complex stories in the middle books; to the melancholy, largely interior narratives of the late stories. Eventually Jansson entirely abandoned Moominvalley for adult mainstream fiction. Comet is from the early period, and Moominsummer Madness (my personal favorite, I think) is a middle book.


( Finn Family Moomintroll )


( Moominpappa's Memoirs )

This is my daughter's school vacation week, so we spent a few days at the Universal resort in Orlando, a pair of large theme parks (Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure) with an associated shopping/restaurant/entertainment area (CityWalk) and a bunch of hotels.

The obvious comparison here is to Walt Disney World: Universal's the only other theme-park operation in the area that is really trying to play on something approaching Disney's level. They have much, much less real estate, so the scale isn't anywhere near as colossal, but for the visitor, that's not necessarily bad. It's really easy to get around Universal's territory, much easier than in Disney's vast pocket universe.

Universal has a number of renowned big steel looper roller coasters... which I didn't ride. I don't know, maybe I'm slowing down. Part of it, I suppose, is that I was more interested in the park's signature motion-simulator/dark-ride attractions, and they provided more than enough sensory assault for one visit. There were also only two of us adults along to wrangle my 8-year-old daughter. I did ride one very special coaster at Universal, more on which below.


( I do solemnly swear that I am up to no good )

I've been playing video games a lot lately, partly because of Christmas.

The one I've experienced enough of to write something like a knowledgeable review is Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, the latest in a series of twin-stick shooters with gameplay that is essentially a refinement of the old Robotron: 2084 formula (move with one stick, shoot in all directions with the other).



( History and details... )

We just took a long weekend and spent a couple of nights up around North Conway, NH.

On Friday, we went back to Story Land, a little kid-oriented amusement park that I visited with my daughter a couple of years ago. She's a little older, and some of the things that used to thrill her are less thrilling; having ridden Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Test Track at Disney World, she's a little too jaded to be truly excited by the Polar Coaster any more.

But what I was really looking forward to was Story Land's newest ride, Roar-O-Saurus. This is a surprisingly hardcore ride for a kiddie park like Story Land: a small wooden coaster made by The Gravity Group, which basically concentrates on delivering as much negative G-force as possible in a small space.



Jorie, having been a bit overwhelmed by Canobie Lake's Yankee Cannonball a few weeks ago, opted out of Roar-O-Saurus. Considering that she was still feeling slightly carsick from the ride up, I don't really blame her. Sam, who I similarly traumatized with a ride on Lake Compounce's gigantic Boulder Dash a few years ago, wasn't keen on it either, and was all too happy to supervise Jorie at the Loopy Lab play area while I went over there and rode Roar-O-Saurus.

Which turns out to be a fairly awesome, somewhat intense ride, and I think I'd actually recommend it more to older coaster fans than to little kids (though a fair number of kids were riding on it, so what do I know). It's only about 40 feet tall, so the biggest drop, while quite steep, isn't big enough to even be worth a scream... but after that, it's all wicked bunny hills, which the trains zip right over, producing enormous amounts of what coaster fans call "ejector air": the feeling that the coaster is trying its best to throw you out of the car, like a mechanical bull. Do not wear an unsecured hat or glasses on this thing; you will lose them.

I was in the front seat just behind the triceratops head, much like East Coaster General up there, though I think that video is shot from the left seat and I was on the right (and I think at least one of the ride ops in that video was working the ride).

The train on this ride is one of The Gravity Group's Timberliners, technically advanced wooden-coaster trains that provide a smooth, comfortable ride, while also a somewhat unnerving one. The only restraint on a Timberliner is a single padded bar that swings down from the side over your lap; it somehow silently and continuously "ratchets" so that it stays in place wherever your lap happens to be. The ride ops were making sure they were pretty snug, so it wasn't the old-fashioned buzz-bar experience where your butt constantly flies out of the seat, but the seats are designed to make you feel like you're fairly exposed. All in all, The Gravity Group's tech impresses me.

There were a lot of adult coaster fans in line with me. I later found out that this was because ACE (American Coaster Enthusiasts) had organized an expedition to Story Land that day to ride Roar-O-Saurus. The ride's reputation had probably been helped by its similarity to a previous small Gravity Group coaster, Wooden Warrior at Quassy. I'm sure they weren't disappointed.


Later that day, we concentrated on water-based rides. Jorie had refused to do anything wet the last time we went there because she insists on wearing a bathing suit, and I hadn't brought hers; but this time we were prepared. One weakness of Story Land in this regard is a shortage of decent changing areas and locker rental (the only lockers are coin-op, so you have to stock up on quarters). But we managed.

"Dr. Geyser's Remarkable Raft Ride" is one of those splashy rides with big circular rafts, this one with a campy turn-of-the-20th-century theme; unlike Thunder Rapids at Compounce, it relies much less on general chaos and more on gimmicks to spray you with water (fake firehoses, fountains that spout up out of the water, a chamber filled with mist), and the sprinkling the gimmicks produce is relatively gentle, probably to make it friendly to younger children. Of the various raft rides I've been on, it's by far the tamest. Despite the warning signs, I suspect it would be hard to get truly soaked on this ride.

This is not true of "Splash Battle: Pharaoh's Reign", an ancient-Egyptian-themed ride in which you ride around on a slow-moving boat and fight with spectators using powerful hand-cranked water cannons. This ride is great hostile fun and gets everyone involved completely inundated. I suspect there are people who just hang around this ride all day long and shoot everybody who floats by. Aside from Roar-O-Saurus, I think it's the actual high point of Story Land.


On Saturday we took the Mt. Washington Cog Railway, a cogwheel train or rack railway to the top of Mt. Washington, the highest peak in New England. I'd hiked up Mt. Washington a couple of times in my youth (and always thought it was a bit surreal to hike through the wilderness up a mountain and find a snack bar and gift shop at the top), but this was my first time on the Cog. It used to be a coal-fired steam train; several years ago, they switched to diesel for most runs, though they do a steam run once a day in the early morning.

This is a pretty remarkable experience, somewhat unnerving when it goes over Jacob's Ladder, a curving trestle with a 37.4% grade (about 20.5 degrees, if I'm calculating correctly). It creeps along at about six miles an hour; it's an hour to go up and an hour to descend, and they give you an hour at the summit. Jorie was really apprehensive even before we got on the train, and spent about the first half of the ascent clinging to me, but eventually decided the whole thing was cool and greatly enjoyed it. There's also a little museum at the bottom, displaying, among other things, the primitive and dangerous sliding board that railroad employees used to use to get down the mountain on the center cog rail at great speed, like a proto-alpine coaster.

I first got into playing Farsight's The Pinball Arcade on the XBox 360, which, according to Farsight, has also been their main development platform.

These days, I play it almost exclusively on Android, which isn't quite the same quality of experience, but at least you can get the updates on Android.

Unfortunately, I don't think you've even been able to buy it on XBox Live for some time, and there have been no updates after the first 10 tables or so. Early on, this was mostly Farsight's fault. Their releases, especially early on, were buggier than they ought to be, and for a while Microsoft kept rejecting them for having stability problems of some sort in their qualification testing for release on XBLA. The turnaround time for getting a patch released was fairly long, so this tended to delay the XBox versions of new pinball tables for months.

Then the relationship hit a more serious obstacle. On the 360, Microsoft required companies like Farsight to work through game publishers, which in Farsight's case was Crave Software, the same people who distributed Pinball Hall of Fame on disc to bargain bins everywhere.

One day, Crave's parent company went bankrupt. Farsight tried to line up another distributor... but apparently the bankruptcy court treated the exclusive XBox 360 distribution agreement with Crave as an asset of the bankrupt company, which Crave and Farsight were no longer free to break while things proceeded. That was where it stayed for many months. Farsight has announced that they're going to be shipping on the new XBox One pretty soon, but I think 360 owners had long since given up any hope of the game resurfacing there.

Just a few days ago, though, this happened. It sounds as if TPA really is coming back to the XBox 360, with all the tables they've developed in the interim (since they'd continued to use the 360 as a dev box all along).

If true, this is pretty remarkable. Here's hoping they still remember who requested the 360 versions of the Twilight Zone and Star Trek: TNG tables as Kickstarter thank-you gifts.

It also seems to me that the recent releases on Android have been of higher quality than the earlier ones. I think pulling back to just one table per pack helped with the quality, and I hope that carries over to the XBox. They've also been adapting some real classics recently, such as Fish Tales, Black Knight 2000 and High Speed, and they seem to be quietly fixing the bugs in some earlier ones like Black Knight in the background.

Somehow this blog has become all about Disney products. Oh, right, I have a 7-year-old daughter.

My kid got Disney Infinity for Christmas, a game that is both charming and brilliantly evil in its business model: like Activision's Skylanders, it's a game with huge wads of on-disc unlockable content that you access by buying collectible tchotchkes, that go on a USB platform that is a near-field communication interface.

I have to give it to them, though: you actually get a tremendous amount of play value just from the base starter set, and much of it is as fun for grownups as for kids. Basically you get a set of three full campaigns themed after Pirates of the Caribbean, The Incredibles and Monsters University, plus a monstrously addictive Toy Box mode in which you can build nonsensical worlds out of sweet Disney IP with abandon, unlocking more and more stuff as you play on in the campaigns.

Considered that way, it's not such a bad deal, though it does push the extra content at you a bit hard at times. Probably the game's single most evil touch is that, because of the restrictions on character use in the campaigns, the three starter-set campaigns are single-player only until you buy more characters. But the Toy Box is multi-player from the start, and this is indescribably fun. (This game actually drove me to buy a second XBox controller so I could mess in the Toy Box with my kid.)

The campaigns are actually solid games in themselves, too, though not without some design glitches; they've got the "open-world" design common to most big modern games, in which you can roam more or less freely, but there are missions you gradually unlock that involve both a main story progression and a large number of side quests, loot to collect, achievements and optional hurry-up challenges. My favorite is the Pirates world, mostly because of the customizable pirate ship that is transport between the game areas and vehicle for naval combat. The amount of content in each campaign world isn't as much as in a major standalone game, but for all three put together it's comparable or more.

All this has been covered in many other reviews; I think it's a case where, as with so much that Disney produces, both admiration and resentment are legitimate responses.


What I wanted to emphasize, for people who have been sucked into this maelstrom, are a few play-value-enhancing facts that were not at all obvious to me.

( Read more... )