Kathy Lin

Well, I actually went to see John Stewart last weekend, which was a lot of fun.  There are pictures here although we really were sitting too far away for me to actually get a picture of the Daily Show host himself.  Oh, and since it had rained the night before our seats were wet because our seats were … the grass! :)  Anyway he was pretty funny.  He started off talking politics, but I think most people were expecting that.  But he ended talking about his cat, his dog, and his computer (a Mac).

I do remember one of his best lines about Bush.  He said Bush talked to the people of the United States like he talked to children.  He always follows the same sentence structure:  “I A B.  I’m a B A-er”

Example:  I destroy terrorists.  I’m a terrorist destroyer.

And so forth, and so on.  Sounds like the basis of an ok drinking game.

Yay! I’ve finally beat Kingdom Hearts II. I put roughly ~74 hours into the game — that time was mainly spent working towards 100% completion of Jiminy’s Journal. Well, good thing I enjoy leveling up. Although 100% journal completion is a pain in the ass. The most annoying parts were probably getting the “Poster Duty” time under 30 seconds, beating Sephiroth, and completing Hades Paradox Cup with 15,000 points. Frankly, I would rather have beat the game in Proud Mode.

Anyway, the whole point of completing the journal was to see the extra little movie after the end credits — which really didn’t reveal too much except for “yes, there will be a Kingdom Hearts III.” Well, go figure. This bizarre mixture of Square-Enix characters from Final Fantasy and Disney characters from all over has proven to be pretty profitable.

I didn’t play the first Kingdom Hearts, so I’m not going to make comparisons. I really enjoyed the battle and system and menu layouts/status screen for this game. They were very clean and self explanatory. Although you can’t control the other characters in your party directly, they do a pretty good job of doing what you tell them via the menu options. You can have them attack the same enemy you are, concentrate on an enemy until it dies, attack the enemy you aren’t, and so forth. There aren’t a super large number of extra armor and accessories, you can keep a huge inventory, and the armor, etc doesn’t sell for a huge price so you don’t have to worry about selling something and wishing you didn’t later. Money (munny) isn’t a problem in this game either. By the end you’ll have tons of it.

The graphics are also very nice. Some of them are of the neat/detailed/shiny variety — others are clever bits of animation — think the curly smoke in the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I also thought Sora and the others had pretty good facial expressions.

Sora can also interact with Donald and Goofy in powerful combo attacks that can hit for a lot of damage. Sora himself can master four different forms, Valor, Wisdom, Master, and Final. These forms allow him to take advantage of certain stat boosts at the cost of losing one or more party members for the duration of the form. These forms make Sora uber-powerful — but only last a limited amount of time. Like everything else in the game, they can be leveled up.

The Gummi Ship is another large part of the game — large but inconsequential. I never completed that mini-game. The gummi ship is a ship that allows you to travel in between worlds — while you are travelling, you shoot things. One can upgrade ships, collect rare ship parts by defeating rare enemies, and custom build gummi ships to master other “gummi routes.” Well, let’s just say I wasn’t even going to go there. :) I was bad enough at Star Fox: Assault.

Of course, that being said it’s definitely a kids game. It isn’t gory, the story isn’t too dark, and everything works out in the end! Friendship rules! Some of the levels are downright easy, and a bit annoying. For instance — the “Little Mermaid” level, called Atlantis. BORING. I could have done without it. Also, the 100 Acre Woods was cute, but what was done? Nothing. Also, there were a few worlds that seemed a bit out of place, namely Space Paranoids. I haven’t seen the movie Tron, so I can’t say how accurately it was represented. But yeah, Hollow Bastion, a quaint town, actually has a super complicated computer underneath it that can make Heartless? Yeah, ok…

I enjoyed it though. Otherwise, why would I have played it so much? Now, I have to play Final Fantasy VII. Cloud has such a great outfit! Does anyone have a copy for PlayStation I can borrow?

I didn’t know anything about this movie when I went to go see it. I suppose a bit can be gained from the title, but I mainly went to see it because I love Edward Norton — his acting has great depth and oh, yeah, he’s really cute! I hesistate to say “hot” because he has more the look of a cunning intellectual.

Anyway, that segue aside, it was a pretty good movie. It was clever in the pacing and direction, but the plot was predictable (the title was a big hint) and the ending expected. The girl I am loved the happy ending, but I really felt sorry for the man that was the “bad guy” — the Crown Prince of Austria. He was basically set up — and suffered so that the protagonist, Edward (aka Isenheim the Illusionist) could be with his true love. Now, if it was really true love it would have found a way to let everyone be happy in a fair and just way.

Another movie is coming out this fall that also involves magicians (flavor of the month?) — The Prestige. We’ll see about that one when the time comes.

The following titles are confirmed for the Nintendo Wii’s launch (whenever that is). I’m looking forward to Zelda, and Final Fantasy, arguably my two favorite game franchises. Anyway, this list came from Nwizard.com and the actual post can be found here. You should go digg it or whatever.

A common problem I’ve run into when dealing with float based CSS layouts is that the float’s container doesn’t stretch to “include” the other two floats. For instance, if a two column layout was done by putting two different div’s in a container the container div wouldn’t stretch to enclose the other two.

Here are some solutions to that problem that describe the problem itself in more detail. I decided to link them in case I forgot about them.

• Clearing Floats without Structural Markup – This uses CSS 2.0 and the :after psuedo-class.
• Clearing Floats – A nice, simple solution that doesn’t require putting that extra empty “clear:both” div tag after the containers that require clearing.