Goodbye, Autobnnsleve

About a week ago, the phone I'd had for the last, oh, maybe two years suddenly became terminally ill and was in dire need of immediate replacement.

And unfortunately, its replacement is so terrible that I literally have had its official nickname entered in as "Really Stupid Phone." (This is a real thing I have actually done. I clearly win at adulthood.)

Anyway, while my old phone was far superior to the current one, it had its moments of stupidity such that I occasionally chucked it at walls. And I've been meaning to talk about it for ages, so now seems the time.

The real standout feature of the old phone experience was its text messaging autocomplete function, which is just about the most fun I've ever had trying to communicate with another human being.

Don't forget cat food. If I had listened to autobnnsleve, it would have been "don't forget act done."

Yes, for whatever reason, my old phone's autocomplete wanted to fill in "autocomplete" as "autobnnsleve."

Zur. ...stupid autobnnsleve still doesn't know "yup." Yet it knows endor.

(In fairness, it probably knows "endor" because of "endorphins" or something. I never checked.) Eventually, I was deliberately writing it as "autobnnsleve," because I memorized its spelling and it amused me so.

[omitted first part of message] Autobnnsleve doesn't know pooped even though it knows poop.

(I omitted chunks of the previous and following messages for reasons.) That is an important word to know, and just because there are workarounds doesn't necessarily make it forgivable.

My new phone's autocomplete has its own issues, and its own name it wants to be identified by.

[omitted first part of message] Attmanorlete on this phone doesn't know a stupid number of words... Including most of that last sentence.

"Attmanorlete" is far inferior to its predecessor, not least because it's a lot bossier and harder to work around when it refuses to get a word right, which is frequently. There's a way to enter letter individually, but it's drecky and time-consuming.

That said, today the new phone made me laugh for the first time since I've gotten it.

Okay. One of the features of this attmanorlete is that it seems to forget wordr at random. Kind of like that. Xoper. Xoper. Xhat even is this sinof.

This is accurately transcribed. I actually had to type "words" in the previous text out piecemeal, because it refused to believe that "words" was a real word. Think about that. And then, after I'd written "kind of like that," I tried to type "words" again twice, and got "xoper."

"Xhat even is this sinof" was me trying to type "what even is this phone" and attmanorlete taking over and putting its own spin on things. I didn't tweak anything to end up with that, that's exactly what it gave me.

I'm watching you, attmanorlete.

-Signing off.

Sleep Well Tonight

NOTE: I have a new computer. Eventually maybe, this may simplify blogging, although at the moment I don't necessarily feel like blogging five times a week.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I hate Windows 8. (Why did Microsoft get rid of the Windows 95 theme? I liked that theme. Sure, it was 18 years or so old, but I've been using it that long because it's a good theme.) Also, I just had to turn off Sticky Keys, one of the most obnoxious things about recent versions of Windows.

So have a video of a rather large snake opening a door.



And apparently also flipping a light switch.

-Signing off.

I Like To Think My Mind's Like That

I'm out today, so here's what you get: An old She-Ra clip of Orko's weirdness at its best.



One of my absolute favorite moments when I was a kid, and I still love it.

-Signing off.

SA-X From Metroid Fusion: Not the Brightest Bulb

It's apparently hard to program a good enemy AI into a simple game...

It's not that you can't get something that will exhibit smart behaviors, it's just that testing will reveal... special behaviors, by which I mean, inadequate programming causes the AI to be unable to cope with some situations.

Such as... the player hiding. (In the below videos, the hyperactive orange and red character is SA-X, a sort-of evil sort-of clone of Samus Aran from the Metroid games. The other similar-looking character is Samus, the player character, who can turn into a ball to move through tight spaces.)









Some people remark that the music (which is the theme for the SA-X) sounds a bit sarcastic. I'd tend to agree.

-Signing off.

Probably Not Brain Food

Look! It's proto-Cookie Monster!



Y'know, now that I'm not a stupid teenager, I can honestly say: I love Sesame Street. Not everything in it, and honestly, the older skits are usually better than the last ten years or so...



And those aliens are awesome.

-Signing off.

Math In Windows 7

I've been exploring Windows 7 on the new computer over the last few days, and it's been a hoot.

Perhaps my favorite part is the Math Input Panel program, which is hilarious to try and fool.

I've been working on pushing the limits on what it will and won't accept as mathematical equations, and have found some interesting results.

First, this crude drawing of a robot (produced by the same masterful hand that created the first Law of Purple guest comic ever) apparently counts as math.

Who knew?

I also tried my hand at a stick figure.

This made me wonder just how far I could push it before it flipped out, because there are limits to its patience.

So here's where I basically just straight up started screwing around, and amazingly, it was just fine with it.

Incidentally, the program apparently doesn't believe in "not equal" signs at all-I couldn't get it to make one no matter how hard I tried.

Here, I started sticking little dots everywhere. The program changed the equation with each dot, but still stuck with it.

The straws that broke the camel's back? A capital letter "G" and a vertical line underneath a dot.

MATH INPUT PANEL HAS NO USE FOR YOUR FOOLISH ACTUAL LETTERS AND NUMBERS.

So, in conclusion...

...you can draw all the robots you want, and Windows 7 will work extra hard to turn them into legitimate mathematical equations for you. Just don't draw triangles in their chests, because for some reason, it hates that. (Seriously. My kid brother drew a random triangle on one of these robots, and the program freaked out and refused to do anything with it until the offending simple three-sided shape had been taken away.)

I am not making a word of this up.

-Signing off.

Free Antivirus (is not angst-free)

You know what I hate? Free antivirus programs that have misleading renewal notices that make it look like they can only be purchased.

Aside from the fact that a misleading notice like this is probably how these guys make most of their money (i.e. it's scammy), it's very frustrating. If I was willing to pay for the darned thing, I think I would have opted for that a long time ago, guys. I actually got rid of an old antivirus because it gave me one of these notices (and I didn't figure out what was up with it until I had well and truly resolved I was never going to use the program again-it had some problems anyway). I almost decided to do the same thing when its replacement did the same thing, but this time around, I'm going to respond with less annoyance. Mostly.

Of course, I didn't bother blogging about it last time, but when this kind of thing happens repeatedly, you take note.

Frickin' almost-scammers.

-Signing off.

The Scariest of All Computers...

...even scarier than Computo.

Eek.

This is Compucore, the insanely powerful computer from the cartoon Robotix.

Now, as this picture demonstrates, Compucore has... mobility issues. But this doesn't even remotely cut down on "her" scary powers. (Compucore's voice is decidedly feminine.)

This relatively rarely used power is something that Compucore has in common with the Ark's computer, Teletraan I: Scout drones. Of course, instead of being satellite-like (which Sky Spy only sort of was itself), these things were faster than fighter planes and really maneuverable. (The sequence which featured them seeking out vegetation on the planet's surface was pretty well animated.)

This was the least of Compucore's scary abilities, however.

Take, for instance, its sole means of manipulating the environment around it:

That's right, a tentacle.

So whatever is this tentacle for?

Stealing (and granting) souls, of course! That's right, Compucore could download a person's essence from their body and then store it, delete it, or put it into something else.

That something else generally being a Robotix, of course.

Here's the other scary thing about Compucore, which really pushes this power over the top-Compucore has almost no initiative and a total lack of morality, loyalty, and helpfulness.

Case in point: When the Terrakors capture Argus, the leader of the Protectons, and also Compucore, they order Compucore to suck Argus's essence out, delete it, and then replace it with a Terrakor essence.

Does Compucore grant any mercy to its creator, perhaps react to special programming? No. Compucore deletes Argus without mercy.

Of course, in keeping with Compucore's unhelpfulness, it doesn't mention that it had a backup copy of Argus's essence, either...

-Signing off.

Brave Robots: Villains Again

(And can I have a big "WHAT A HECK BLOGGER?!" I've changed the timestamp, but it's giving an even weirder post time than before... [Er, nevermind, I didn't have the right timestamp, but it's still way wrong, more so than it should be.])

This post is another greatly overdue one, originally "forecasted" here. It's recommended that that post be read before this one.

Many of the later Brave Robots series dropped the earlier conceit of the villains being similar to the heroes. While I can't speak for all of them (Brave footage and information is always kind of scarce), I do know that some of the series, such as Dagwon, had at least some enemies that were monsters instead of robots. (I think that thing's a monster, anyway. Could be wrong.)



The series for which I can speak most confidently is GaoGaiGar.

GaoGaiGar, in a post-Evangelion anime world, had to raise the bar. Its enemies couldn't really afford to be simplistic, weak enemies. GaoGaiGar's first major enemies were the Zonders.

While mechanical in basic nature, the Zonders upped the villainous ante by having durability far in excess of believable limits, as demonstrated by this video.



As this video also demonstrates, while they are tougher than nails, the Zonders are also considerably dumber than nails. (I mean, look at him just sit there after he finishes regenerating.)

Another characteristic of the Zonders, related to the regeneration, is their ability to reshape themselves completely to their own will. Since Zonders are dumb as rocks, they only usually use this ability effectively when being managed by one of the "Four Machine Kings" early on. (Later Zonders occasionally show signs of intellect.)



Zonders' forms are heavily determined by the fact that their bodies are built by absorbing machinery. (Zonders are actually not true mecha but humans who have been transformed into quasinanotechnological lifeforms by exposure to a substance called "Zonder metal." They are also powered by stress. No joke. Since they are restored to normal after the Zonder's defeat, the individual is always grateful, because they've had all their stress removed in the "purification" process. Again, no joke.) Sometimes this mostly means that their weapons are derived from what the Zonder uses to build its body, as with this one.



(Also note this Zonder's rather strong resemblance to a Zaku. There was also a Zonder which originally merged with a train and later with a space shuttle, a somewhat oblique reference to Astrotrain, and a Zonder which could have been a baby V'Ger. I suspect that many of the other Zonders were also paying homage to other pop culture stuff.)

There are also much more extreme instances of Zonders resembling what they absorb, such as this Zonder, which absorbed a big old railroad cannon.



Note GaoGaiGar's creative usage of his space-warping weapon there. He increased the distance between himself and the incoming shell.

After the Zonders were defeated altogether, the Primevals, which were basically smarter, stronger Zonders, showed up. They all had body part themes. (I'm not touching that one.) This eventually led up to them being parts of a larger entity.

In the GaoGaiGar OVA, FINAL, the series ironically reverted to relatively more traditional piloted mecha-like enemies, although for the most part they still did most of the same stuff Zonders did other than absorb things.

-Signing off. Also, the first half of this blog took fifteen minutes, the next fourth took an hour, the eighth after that took TWO FREAKING HOURS, and the last three paragraphs, where I finally moved to a new window, took five more minutes. Stupid computer.