George, Don, and I rode for the National Bicycle Greenway’s National Mayors’ Ride this year. This is the same organization that my brother and I rode for 3 years ago when we went across the country. Martin Krieg, the guy in charge of NBG, changed the format of the ride a couple years back to a relay ride instead of a trans-am ride to get more people involved and to get more cities involved. I was actually around last year, but didn’t even hear about the ride! Ah well…

So the leg that we participated in was just for 4 days, Portland to Eugene. This being a relay ride, someone named Rocky Brown rode from Boise to meet us in Portland, and we in turn were to “hand off the baton” to a guy named Skot in Eugene who would then go to Arcata, Chico, and Sacramento. The ride originated in DC in May or so and will end in Santa Cruz in August for some huge party which I think my brother will be attending since he’s doing SF to Santa Cruz.

Most of this post is copied from an email I sent Martin, but I’m embellishing it a little and adding photos as I go…

George and I left my place Friday morning, July 18, and met Don at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry since it is pretty close to the Hawthorne Bridge. We then biked across the bridge and when we got to the plaza where we were meeting everyone else, we noticed people protesting Ashcroft and the war. There were even a couple of topless women holding signs up (no photos, sorry). But we didn’t have time to dally, so we looked around and saw Dat, from Shift, Don’s friend, and a city transportation worker of some type, come running up to greet us. He told us where everyone was, so we headed over. At this point, my chain fell off; I fixed it later, but something to keep in mind if it happened again…

“Everyone” was us three (Mark, Don, and George), Dat, Kristine and a coworker, two parking enforcement officers, Andrew and Lisa Heckman, and Pat from TerraCycle. Kristine is also a transportations city person or something like that. The funny thing is this whole thing was slightly disorganized, so I’m not sure who all the city people represented… mayor’s office, transporation, what have you… Andrew Heckman is the guy who was riding last year for the Mayors’ Ride from Chicago to Des Moines when he was struck by an inattentive motorist and is now physically handicapped. Crazy story; the woman apparently still claims to this day that she didn’t hit him even tho there are visible dents in her car. Pat is a guy who builds bikes; I’m not sure how he was involved with the ride.

We were all wondering where Rocky was. Across the block, across the street, were some people setting up a podium at the steps of city hall. Basically we just spent the time (about 25 min) meeting each other and checking out each others’ rides. Andrew Morton, the guy who did the ride from PDX to Eugene last year, showed up around then, too, and fun was had by all. It was at this time when Pat noticed the completely broken chain-stay on Don’s bike. Uh-oh. But we didn’t have time to do anything about it since Rocky and his sister showed up at City Hall and biked over. We then made a little train, led by the bike parking people, over to the steps where some 20 people were crowded around waiting to see what happened.

When we reached the steps, we met Cynthia and Eileen, two more workers for the city, and Eileen told us what was happening. When everyone was gathered, she made a speech, and read the proclamation, followed by speeches by Andrew H and Rocky. Andrew is an amazing guy and his speech was well put, IMHO, lauding Portland for being bike friendly and stressing the idea of a Willamette Valley bike path to bring tourists and money into Oregon. He also talked about his accident and how he can cope with it thru positive thinking. Rocky is also amazing–not complaining about 108 degrees because last year he had to endure 118. Bejeezus, if I were them, I’d milk it for all it’s worth. Dirt Bag, Rocky’s pet rubber lizard that he found on the side of the road, is well, too. More info about this event has been written by Andrew and there’s even some photos! Dat also took lots of photos!

So after the speeches and the clapping and all that, Kristine shows us the box lunches they had prepared for the cyclists. The day before she called me and asked if there should be food, saying something like, “I don’t know if you guys want food or if we should provide food for something like this. I mean, I don’t know if you are on some type of training regimen or diet or something…” To which I replied, “Well, *I’ll* eat at least! Actually, the ride we are doing is really easy, so any kind of food should be fine.” And the food was indeed fine. Very nice actually: Paradise Bakery and whatnot. Don, George, and I had planned on leaving right then and there and to take our food with us before we found out about Don’s bike. So instead, we ate on the lawn of city hall, while Cynthia made some phone calls. This woman has some bicycling clout! Or should I say “grease”? She got a hold of Bike Gallery and they offered to lend Don a bike for the weekend. After we finished eating we all said good-bye to both Andrews, Lisa, Rocky, and his sis, and we rode with Dat to the Bike Gallery located on the other side of the city (the one on Sandy Blvd–Too bad they couldn’t find a bike at their downtown location!). I guess due to Don’s height, they didn’t have many bikes that would fit, so he got stuck with some carbon fibre USPS racing team Trek. Such is our luck. 🙂

Well, i’m assuming that mark and gwu are somewhere between pdx and eugene now on their silly mountain bikes (although gwu is riding my bike)! I hope you guys make it home safe.

Ben, that’s cool that you saw some pro players up close… did you get to see kobe in that hotel room?! hah..i’m sorry, i think that whole situation is kinda sad. don’t they teach you about things like that in nba boot camp?

Some of the things i’m going to write about are kinda ‘out dated’ but i have photos..so at least look at them and ignore my lack of writing skills.

So this first pic here shows how much pain i was in on that last lap around mt. tabor. i think at this point i was sucking in air so hard i thought my lungs were going to explode! our first lap was at that blistering 23mph which thankfully slowed down to around 20mph. so much for ‘climbing’ up hills…the pace was so fast it didn’t matter. Anyway, i don’t think i’ll be racing any time soon, unless of course some one pays me to do it..hah. i did appreciate having ben, gwu and of course diana there cheering me on.

Moving right along, i have some selected pics from mark and robin’s reception. this first one on the left shows how gwu was so anxious to play ball, he was willing to steal one from a poor unsuspecting toddler. The next one is of the cake cutting. unfortunately i don’t have a good pic of mark shoving cake in robin’s face. i thought that both did a great job on the reception and i hope mark will post more pics soon.

You know, i didn’t realized writing and adding images on this blog can be difficult at times. the formatting is kinda screwed up at times.

So moving right along, the next big thing for me was STP or seattle to portland. my brother and i had talked about doing this sometime last fall. in fact, i had convinced him to spend lots of money to build a new bike.

to keep a long story short, about 4000 miles later, we were both ready to finally take on STP. after months and months of riding, we felt that the ride should go well. actually in retrospect, i probably didn’t need to train that hard but i guess it was a good thing.

on friday (july 11th), we had a friend drive us up to seattle in our rented chevy trailblazer. i actually think brandon’s durango was bigger. but we basically needed a vehicle to take up two bikes. my brother and i spent the night at a UofW dorm room which was about the size of a closet. we were lucking at reed…let me tell you that. after having our last real meal at denny’s (lots of carbs in those pancakes)…the 5hrs of sleep we got were great.

the next morning ,we managed to start with the first wave of one day riders at 4:45am and headed out through the suburbs of seattle. about 5hrs later, we were already in centralia…our 100mile mark. not bad, we rode and impressive 20mph ave! this is something that we probably wouldn’t have been able to do if we were riding alone but the fact that there were hundreds of riders to draft with..it made things a lot easier..but dangerous at the same time…20 man pacelines are not fun!

i think the pic on the right was taken at around mile 120. yes, we are still smiling because we weren’t aware that we were going to get some headwind back into portland and also some rain. ya, my parents also managed to score some team malaysia jerseys not available to the public back home…cool!

the rest of the ride was pretty uneventful except for the flat tire my brother had along the way and the second one he noticed 2 miles into portland that he refused to fix! he was riding rim all the way to the finish line baby!

the second half did take a little longer due to the headwinds but we were feeling really good at the end and in fact dropped the group that we were riding with. at the last rest stop about 30miles from pdx, a lady noticed my brother’s jersey and told us that she lived in malaysia in 1976. turned out that she went to the same school we did, where my parents work and she even remembered them. i called my dad on the cellphone and he was amazed that we had met up with her. he did remember her and it turns out that she’s debbie armstrong who was a gold medalist in the winter olympics in the mid 80s! truly a small world.

we finally cruised into the finish line around 7pm for a total time of 14hrs with 11hrs of actual saddle time. our average was a good 18.1mph. my brother was pleased since he was planning for 12hrs of ride time but i think i was convinced that we could have done it in 10hrs. we did spend way too much time at the rest stops because of the group we were riding with. but that’s okay because i think that’s one of the reasons why we were strong the last 30miles to pdx. (i think i’m trying to wipe mud off my face from the rain)

in retrospect, i didn’t think the ride was extremely difficult since it was pretty flat. the temperature was bearable but the headwinds did slow us down a bit. i don’t know if i’d do it again because i’m realizing that i would rather ride faster for shorter distances than to hammer for 11hrs. if anyone wants to do it…mark (since you’re going to be up there next year), it would be fun to maybe do it in two days and have a party at the midway point. but again, if i feel like i’m riding stronger next year, i’d want to ride it in one day and try and break my record. you’d also have to ditch your mt. bike and get a real bike, mark!

yes, finally some confirmation. the ride route was suppose to be 206miles though.

after riding in 40 degree weather during the winter, doing a 10wk(6 days a week) training program for my century in May, and later doing 100miles for saturday rides…it was finally over! or was it…

I’ve just returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest to attend Mark and Robin’s reception and see the gang. Here’s a lil blow-by-blow:

6-28-03: Arrive (two hours late due to an unexpected plane switch in Cincinnati; luckily we switched on the ground) in PDX around 1. George picks me up in the World’s Jankiest Truck, which I am thankful for. We spirit off to Mark and Robin’s (M&R’s hereafter), and are put to work 15 seconds after arrival threading beads. Mark is the fastest bead-slinger. I am the slowest. Such is life. Acquire taquitos at Jack in the Box. We played some Epic Duels with M, G, Mark’s friend Grey, and George’s friend Claire. George suffers his only defeat for the whole week after a brutal tag-team in a 2vs3 match. Install my version of Rise of Nations that evening and eventually get it running right (thanks Mark n Grey!). Amazingly, George and I leave at a reasonable hour to crash at the Reed Christian Pad.

6-29-03: Awake at 8 to go see Colin in his first bike race, 4 laps on Mt. Tabor. Colin gets cocky and attacks early but still finishes an impressive 4th. G runs off to speak with God and I take the bus across town with Diana, meeting Colin at their place (C&D’s hereafter), which is quite swanky, including two full living rooms (but only one with Grand Theft Auto, which oddly is the one we ended up in). Ben begins learning how to jack foolz and pop caps in their asses immediately. Brandon arrives in town early evening in the Most Valuable Vehicle (MVV), da Durango. We should have filmed a commercial and sent it to Dodge this weekend, cause we really got a chance to use it’s tasty SUV-ness. We even had the racially-balanced group of young people which is so important these days (they could have air-brushed my ass out and replaced me with a golden retriever or something). We all went off to a tasty Chinese dinner at Legann (SP?) on 82nd with a bunch of Mark’s peoples. George ate roughly 6 times as much as the rest of us combined, impressive several of the ladies in the process. I’m so proud of him, having found the ability to woo women by gorging himself. He’s come so far! Then off to Avalon with G, C, and Brandon. Brandon whooped all our asses in air hockey, a fact he made sure to remind us of over the subsequent seven days. A good time was had by all. Then back to the comfy confines of C&D’s for some more GTA and bullshitting.

6-30-03: Day of the reception!! We wake up late, hit off some more RoN and venture to Tigard to have it our way. Then more gaming and off to the reception when Colin and Diana get home from work (you poor guys!). The day turned out colder than predicted, but the reception was big fun with great food (especially the Middle Eastern stuff). We catch up with a bunch of people and play some volleyball (mostly poorly, cept for G and Mark’s friend Jeff, who is roughly 11 feet tall). Mark and Robin played off the cake cutting, but I kinda felt myself a little choked up nonetheless. It’s crazy how life works sometimes; I guess it’s just nice to celebrate people and relationships sometimes, and our group doesn’t seem to do that too often. It was good to have a little party, no matter how laid back. Due to the overestimation of the turnout, there is a LOT of leftover food, which is distributed among a bunch of people. Then back to C&D’s where George commences demolishing the Chinese and the BBQ leftovers. More RoN and GTA as well.

7-1-03: Wake late and game a little, then we hit the road and had some Mexican food near M&R’s at La Carreta (which Brandon probably regrets, ask him why). Then over to gather George’s and my stuff and Brandon offers to drop George at the SKI CABIN, so we hit the road in a hurry to Mt. Hood. On the way we sample G’s favorite music (read: Milli Vanilli, Paula Abdul, Whitesnake heh heh). The sun was low in the sky and the scenery was gorgeous! Definitely worth the trip. After a few minutes shooting the bull with Johnny, who was subbing for G, we hit the road. Destination: Seattle. During the 3-hour ride, Brandon actually remembers each car (4 of em) which passed us on the drive. You figure out what it means! Stop of at Denny’s for midnight breakfast and then on to Brandon’s casa downtown, which was quite nice if small and within walking distance of EVERYTHING. A bit of PS2 gaming and we crash, having to get up early the next day. We also see the worst set of pictures I’ve ever witnessed of what happens when you get bit by a spider and get necrosis (hint: it’s bad).

7-2-03: We wake up early to make an appointment across some frickin body of water in Bellevue, to take in the trusty Durango. From there, a cab to see the first showing of Terminator 3 at a nearby theater. I thought it was amusing, more funny and less action than T2 but worth it. We made friends with a cabbie after Brandon laid on the charm (it’s the Harry Potter thing, good conversation starter). I guess if you are a cabbie long enough, you eventually have to deliver a baby and who knows what else. Turns out the car we took in had no problem, so that was a waste. Lunch at a fusion Cajun/Irish place. Good food, but I mean, I’m just sick of all the Cajun/Irish places out there. Don’t people have any imagination? I learn the benefits of the minigun in Vice City, and we have Chinese for dinner (there Brandon, are you happy now that I told everyone?). I love Brandon’s place, there’s like 50 restaurants within 2 minutes of walking. Maybe it’s not a good thing, as for the next roughly 48 hours we didn’t do anything but bullshit, game, and watch movies (I saw 4! all of them i’d seen before! how dumb is that?!)

7-3-03: More useless gaming! Lunch @ Mexican (another bad move, MR. Bond!) and dinner @ Italian.

7-4-03: We go to a July 4th BBQ at Brandon’s apartment complex. Full of interesting young people with cool talents (i.e. a ten-year-old who asked people to throw plastic forks at him all night so he could test our his shield fashioned from a plastic platter…I actually got good at lobbing the forks OVER the D). I heard some cool hip-hop from some guys who are up on underground stuff, and hopefully will get a copy of a CD compliling stuff produced by Kayne West (if Brandon hooks me up, come on dawg). Finally get back after another Jack in the Box run around 2:30 and we decide to play and not sleep.

7-5-03: Wake up at 6:30 after an hour of sleep (train left early) and haul our asses to the train station, where I say farewell to Brandon. Sleep most of the ride and get into PDX at 11 AM. Roll over to Dharma’s pad where we catch up for several hours, with one trip to 23rd in NW for food at the Cameo Cafe (hotcakes the size of a pizza, I shit you not). I also procured some tasty treats at a bakery up there but then left em at D’s place. Hope you enjoyed it, Dharma! Early evening, I roll back to M&R’s on the 19. We hit up Dairy Queen for dinner (my first DQ dinner, woo!) and then go down to Belmont for another Avalon trip. After shooting the breeze with Dylan and Doug, we think better of nickling it and return to the pad for some RoN.

7-6-03: We had dinner at Thanh Thao’s with C&D, which was quite good. It’s too bad I didn’t get into TT’s more until after I left PDX. Then back to M&R’s for some Cranium, where I drew a bad-ass tennis racket blind. Unfortunately, George wasn’t feeling me and M&R carried the day.

7-7-03: Wake up late (notice a pattern?) and finally make the Chang’s pilgrimage (TM) for lunch: G, Mark, Scott, and I. The soy seemed a little weak but otherwise, it was quite happening. Adhering strictly to the one-garlic-scoop rule, we improvised. Mark and I disgraced ourselves by eating like just over 2 bowls between us, but G was on the ball with a solid first run and a double-bowl on the second. We had leftovers for dinner and watched “Shaolin Soccer” as well, which was SUPER funny. I think I might have to rent or buy it to see it again. An instant classic. We ate some leftovers for dinner and George cooked some food for a late-night snack. Then Mark and I dominated in Pictionary, Mark won a quick round of the Great Khan Game, and we made the mistake of staying up later to play some DungeonQuest. Basically, DungeonQuest consists of the following steps: you all pick a character (they’re all the same) and one “magic ring” (also, all the same). Then you wander into a randomly-generated dungeon, where you get bitten by flies, fall into spiked pit traps, spun around by rotating rooms, and eventually flung into a bottomless pit. The person who dies last is the winner, I guess…

7-8-03: Lunch at the hotcake house. My poor GI system is ill-equipped for that kind of thing these days. Then we trekked back to the pad for some online 3-player RoN with Brandon; we seemed to be getting a lot better, easily beating even numbers at tough-tougher. Aside from the intermittent crashes, these were some fun games. Hooked up some Teriyaki for dinner. That evening, an epic game of Talisman, with M and G (Scott had to work so he left early, his Samurai sitting dutifully in wait for him for the remainder of the game). In the end, I beat George to the punch by a single turn (lucky, cause he had been whooping my ass for several turns) and rolled a lucky ending, whereupon the dragon king ate my enemies.

7-9-03: Take the MAX to the airport on two hours sleep…get stuck on the runway in Cincy (AGAIN) in a massive LOUD thunderstorm, arrive at home just after 11. I read the entirety of PKD’s “The Man in the High Castle” over the course of the day. I still have to think more before I can describe the book. Nevertheless, it was quite riveting.

Thanks everyone for big fun! If Mark has some pictorial depictions from his new camera of anything I talked about above, I welcome him to post em or send em to me so I can include them. I’m trying to become a blog-picture-whore like Melhus.

Mark & Robin: I hope that your wedding reception was a success on Monday! I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there to hang out with you guys. I hope that Schrag honored my absence with several misplaced comments in poor taste, as that’s what I would have done. I also have to ask (based on last week’s posts) how many cars Woo-Hah tried to “borrow” over the weekend to help people out, perhaps he could have served as the valet (a la Ferris Bueller, no doubt).

KT and I celebrated in our own way (yesterday) by spending the day at Six Flags New England in “glorious” western Massachusetts. It was a pretty nice day, and we spent just over 9 hours at the park. We mostly stuck to roller coasters (KT’s favorite), but we also spent a few hours at the water park (my favorite). Here’s what we rode, in order:

• Flashback (not a good ride to “warm-up” on)
• Cyclone (I like these old wooden coasters, they’re kind)
• Blizzard River (longest line of the day)
• Thunderbolt (another wooden coaster, but smaller)
• Scream (200 ft. straight up, then down. Terrifying.)
• Mind Eraser (the picture at right says it all)
• Batman (just kept my eyes closed, focused on survival)

.sixflags.com/parks/newengland/rides/superman.asp”>Superman after all that physical and emotional abuse, plus it was after 9:00 pm and the line was pretty long. Of course, it’s supposedly one of the best rollercoasters in the country, but I’m sure that the person that believes that is also comfortable taking a 208 ft. drop at 80 mph. I am not.

Everybody….

Grill meister.

Don’t look!

Food is yummy to eat.

Guess who’s home?

Who brought this guy?

The Zboard, by ideazon, is a keyboard which takes interchangeable key layouts for different applications. The review sample I received* is a base keyboard with a Windows/IE interface. The ideazon rep also sent key layouts for Photoshop, Medal of Honor, and Age of Mythology.

“What the heck am I talking about?” you ask. Basically, the Zboard is just like a regular keyboard with a few exceptions:

1. It features some special keys above the F-keys; one launches media player, another IE, there’s mute and other audio controls, etc. This feature appears on some other keyboards from Logitech and the like.
2. There’s nice labels on some of the keys to let you know what those keys do in combination with the control or windows key. For example, the “W” key also has “Close” silk-screened on it letting you know that if you Control-W you’ll close the current window or document. Handy feature.
3. The biggest feature, the keys can be removed and replaced with another set of keys featuring different hot-keys or key combinations for use with specific applications. The Photoshop interface, for example, features tons of keyboard short-cuts for many of the image manipulation tools you can use. Furthermore, each interface does not have to follow the traditional QWERTY layout. This is most evident with the Medal of Honor interface where the whole left side has been replaced with movement keys and the QWERTY alphabet has been shifted over to the right. Pretty neat.

Check out this demo!

So, how does it work?

Basically, each interface has a chip in it which tells the base which layout has been installed and what each key does. Additionally, some software which came with it on a CD lets you program the special keys at the top and I’m guessing hooks each layout with a specific application like Medal of Honor.

And how *well* does it work?

I’m typing up this review with the basic Windows/IE interface. The keys are harder to push than the ones on my old keyboard which is making my hands tire out faster. This also makes it harder for me to capitalize as sometimes I’m not pressing the shift key down far enough apparently. Still, the handyness of knowing what all the hot-keys are and the usefulness of the top row of special keys is a very nice feature.

When I first saw the Zboard at the Game Developer’s Conference last March, I saw the Medal of Honor layout and assumed one could use that interface with any FPS by just reprogramming the FPS using the game’s in-game settings. Currently, I’m playing Splinter Cell and so tried it out. Unfortunately, it seems, the MoH layout will only work with MoH! I’ll try it with some other FPS games in the future so might amend this statement later, but, if this is the case, it’s not exactly useful for me since I stopped playing MoH months ago. I haven’t tried the Age of Mythology interface with one of the RTS games I have, but I don’t have AoM, so if it only works with that game, I won’t even be able to try it out! IMO, this greatly diminishes the attractiveness of the Zboard since most of the hard-core gamers I know go through like a game a month. To expect them to pay for a new interface for each game I think is asking for too much.

Since I couldn’t get the MoH interface to work with Splinter Cell, I switched back to the standard IE interface and played with that. That’s when I encountered something buggy. It seems that you can’t hold down one button and then hold down another and have the first button continue to register reliably. This, of course, happens all the time with an FPS–hold down W to move forward, then hold down D to sidestep while continuing to move forward, then let go of D but not W. Sometimes I would stop moving forward. Sometimes, even worse, I would continue to move sideways like the key was stuck. When I noticed this I thought it odd. When an enemy saw me because I stepped out of the shadows, I switched back to my old $7 keyboard! Not a good recommendation!

The Zboard as a training tool for the working world, however, might be where this product has the most promise. Photoshop has new features every time a new version comes out, but the standard functions will always be there. And when I say standard, I mean like oh… a hundred or so commands. To have a handy way of accessing those commands without having to wade through the drop down menus is of great benefit. If you’re even just a casual Photoshop user, getting the Zboard and the Photoshop interface might be money well spent. I have not yet had time to check out this set-up and will post an update as soon as I do!

*on behalf of OMSI who are currently revamping the tech hall and are trying out different human-computer interfaces to demo on the floor. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear keyboards are a good interface to demo unsupervised since they allow visitors to do pretty much whatever they want with the computer…

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Aight… So we went out drinking with my boy Mark one night. You might remember Mark as the dude that can’t keep his eyes open. Yup. That’s him there, with his eyes closed. Typical. Anyway, we were all psyched to watch the T’Wolves get some revenge on the Lakers, but the Lakers beat the pants off of them. Oh well.

We had a few beers. We took a few pictures. A good time was had by all, except that we almost missed the last train home! Whoops.

This picture is kinda sideways —->

Jenny thought that she looked cute in my Kapalua visor, but I think it was the Curious George shirt that brought the cuteness. Although, it was a little awkward when Mark tried to collect data from the little guy. Oh yeah, did you notice that Lara is rocking a Canada hat? Bet you didn’t.

I don’t know what the thing in the bottom corner is, but it sure looks bright. Maybe that’s why Mark’s eyes are closed… Then again, maybe not.

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Later in the week, we went to the Mass Ave for some breakfast. The usual + bacon for this special occasion.

How about a toast? white or wheat…

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I was really busy this week, and didn’t get to hang out too much with these crazy girls. They went to various places. Saw certain things. For example: this tree.

I think that they were fond of trees, because they made another friend with this blooming young fella:

So, I had a lot of crazy meetings this week (7-11 pm two nights in a row!). The girls decided to grab Katie and have a good old time in the North End without me. Is that rude, or just really smart?

They had dinner at some Italian joint, and then loaded up on Cannoli’s from Mike’s pastries.

Wow. Boston looks pretty good at night…

Then it was time to go home and pig out. They are so lucky they didn’t spill any cannoli on my new couch!

Grils just love dessert.

Amazingly, they saved one for me.

It was good.

Splinter Cell is probably known by most of the people who read this blog. It’s been given extremely high accolades by many gaming magazines. Tons of fans couldn’t wait for it to be released to PC, PS2, or Gamecube, and before it happenend the case for buying an Xbox was that much stronger. What many people don’t realize, however, is that the stealth shooter is not a new thing in the PC gaming world, and, in fact, recently one came out, Hitman 2: The Silent Assassin, which is IMO just as good as Splinter Cell. Here’s a comparison.

Introduction

In Splinter Cell you play as a covert agent in a super secret US agency. The premise is that data encryption is so sophisticated nowadays that a reversion to more traditional forms of espionage is needed; in other words, agent insertion. Stealth is of utmost importance; leave no witnesses; better to kill someone than to have them identify you.

Hitman 2, by contrast, has you play as a hired assassin working for a global mercenary “problem-solving” agency. You aren’t necessarily playing for the “good guys”; you’re just doing an assignment. Stealth is still important, but disguises may work just as well. Instead of always sneaking about, you can infiltrate your target’s organization by posing as a henchman or civilian.

Moves and Controls

Both games are over-the-shoulder FPS games (which I guess makes them third-person shooters), so they both have similar control schemes (as made standard by Half-Life). The WSAD keys in combination with the mouse moves you around.

In Hitman 2 you can run, walk, crouch, drag bodies to dark corners (some really cool and sometimes funny ragdoll effects here), and zoom your view in and out a bit. Splinter cell lets you adjust your speed in two different stances (upright and crouched) using the mouse wheel, so you could run, jog, or walk kinda like Mario. Splinter Cell features some additional moves your character can do, like rappeling, jumping up between two close walls so that you are above the ground a foot on each wall (a la Jean Claude van Damme in Time Cop or Jet Li in Black Mask), and moving along the edge of a wall or building or along a pipe hand over hand style, whereas Hitman 2 features some scripted actions, like climbing out a specific window.

When you come upon a door, both games allow you to take a peek at what’s behind; Splinter Cell with a fiber-optic camera and Hitman 2 by having you peep through the key hole.

Splinter Cell features a light meter (similar to No One Lives Forever 2) which lets you know if you are hidden or plainly visible to your enemies while Hitman 2 has an alertness meter which is much more spastic (but not in a bad way) which keeps track of how suspicious your enemies are of you. For Splinter Cell if the meter goes up really high, you are in broad daylight, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone can see you at your current location. In Hitman 2 if your meter goes up too high, someone *will* walk towards you and investigate. They may have already spotted you ages ago; it’s only now that they think you might be an unwanted trespasser.

Objectives and Methods

Admittedly I only just bought Splinter Cell yesterday so have not finished the game yet, but from what I’ve seen I think I can assume all the missions feature you sneaking into an area, doing some espionage, and maybe killing or disabling certain things (like alarms) before going to the extraction zone. You are wearing a black uniform commando-style and have things like night-vision goggles, fiber-optic door peeper, and a trusty silenced side-arm. Gameplay pretty much boils down to observing patterns in guards movements, taking advantage of darkness, and sneaking around a whole lot, knocking out or sometimes killing when necessary.

Hitman 2, by comparison, lets you choose which items to bring for each mission, most of these being of the weapon category ranging from piano wire to assault rifles and a whole butt-load of ammunition. During a mission you can take out a guard or civilian and change into his clothes, thus having a disguise for the rest of mission (but if you are seen killing with the disguise on or if someone discovers the naked body of the person you took out, your disguise is blown). Gameplay in Hitman 2 often involves walking around (painfully slowly in a very good way) in plain sight and getting stressed out the whole time, watching your alertness meter frantically move up and down as you approach enemy guards hoping they don’t take the time to take a closer inspection. If you run, your meter goes up; if you crouch, your meter goes up; if you do anything out of the ordinary, your meter goes up. As its name implies, for most missions your objective is to kill a certain person, but each mission plays out a little differently to great effect. For example, on one mission you infiltrate a Yakuza bosses’ home to take him out. You can go in guns blazing (which is always an option for almost all the missions) or you can sneak into the kitchen, knock out the cook, prepare the blowfish sushi wrong, and wait for the servant to take out the boss for you while you make for the exit!

Ending a Mission

If there’s one aspect of the game which Hitman 2 does much better than Splinter Cell, it’s the mission endings. In both games, ending a mission involves going to the extraction point. In Splinter Cell your mission just ends, you get a cut-scene, and then it’s on to the next mission.

In Hitman 2, you are given a screen which shows your statistics for the mission: how many people you killed, how many alarms were raised, shots taken vs. shots scored, and an overall rating of how you did. Scoring a Silent Assassin rating means only killing your target (often using a quieter weapon than a gun, even if silenced) without anyone knowing about it. On top of that, enemies you take out during a mission can be searched for additional weapons or ammo and any weapons you gather during a mission are available to choose from in subsequent missions. You have a base of operations between missions which includes a garden shack loaded with gun racks which are empty at the beginning of the game and hopefully full by the end of the game, sort of a trophy room. This makes replayability very high; I played the game once normally, played again to try to get every weapon in the game, and played yet again to try to get Silent Assassin on each level (which precludes you getting all the weapons in the game).

Conclusion

Which game is better? Well, they both are very, very fun games if you’re into stealthy tactics and together they make a great combo. If I had to choose, I’d go with Hitman 2, but to be fair, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve yet to finish Splinter Cell, so we’ll see. I just don’t think Splinter Cell will have a great replay value, unless I set a personal goal to be as stealthy as possible or, alternatively, to kill as many people as possible, etc.

I like this trend for stealthy FPS games and am looking forward to Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3!

I watched it on opening day during my extended lunch hour. 🙂 A coworker and I just slipped out, picked up Robin, and went to the movies and lunch for 3 hours…

The movie was good. In terms of action it was grittier than the first, scarier in showing the raw power of some of these mutants. In terms of story, well it was okay. When I saw that William Stryker was in the movie, I was really looking forward to the Sentinels, but that didn’t happen.

They’ve introduced a few new mutants (Nightcrawler, Deathstrike, Iceman, Pyro), but that sort of makes up for the fact that some of them from the last movie are gone (Sabertooth, Toad). The biggest problem about the first movie I thought was that it didn’t go into all of the characters enough and spent too much time on Wolverine. Well, this movie is a slight improvement in balancing out who is featured, but it also short-changes some of the roles, and I mean really, really short-changes them. Cyclops is in the movie for maybe 15 minutes, Nightcrawler has a great intro and then just sort of gets dropped, Deathstrike has like one line in the whole movie which is a shame since Kelly Hu is at least as good an actress as Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. The kids Iceman and Pyro make a pretty good introduction but don’t get the same screen time as the adults which is fine and makes sense, but Rogue is given as much a role as them, which when compared to the first movie is slightly disappointing. Storm plays about the same as the first movie, she is just there. Colossus even makes a brief appearance and according to Robin, he was hunky.

Jean is featured pretty well in this movie, which I think doesn’t jive well with Scott’s afore-mentioned 15 minutes. In the comics they are a pair and really have a sort of synergy when teamed together making for a more team-based feel to the X-men. Scott has been given a lesser role in the movies which really sucks since he is supposed to be the in-the-field commander second to Xavier only when out of battle. Xavier depends on him to lead the team in the field. The movie portrayal also gives an unfortunate disbelief in the Jean-Scott-Logan love triangle; who in their right mind would stick with Scott as he is portrayed in the movies?

The X jet plays a pretty big role in the movie, too, which is fine, but it’d be cool if they featured more of the ground vehicles like the motorcycle from the first movie.

So, I thought the first movie should have been about 30 minutes longer and after viewing the deleted scenes on the DVD, I became satisfied. Maybe the same will be true for this movie.

All in all, a good movie, continuing the trend of good adaptations of comics to the big screen, but not as good as say Spider-man. And The Hulk has the potential to be better. I think X-men will really shine as a series if they do make more and continue to focus on different characters each time. The last scene pretty much hints at a sequel with potentially amazing special effects.

I was extremely disappointed that the viking kittens singing the immigrant song was taken off of www.rathergood.com when I wanted to set my boss’ computer to always be redirected to that site no matter what domain he typed into his web browser for April Fool’s.

Tonight, Robin mentioned that she wanted to show a friend of hers, so I went looking. Here it is in all it’s glory!

http://www.markdangerchen.net/media/blog/viking_kittens.swf