Tocci's Blog

The NY Times picked up the story of my Double Bird Strike game today and posted an article online with links and everything. It will be in the printed paper tomorrow. A few minutes after the article was published, WCBS 880 radio called me to record a phone interview. How cool is that? They even linked to the game from their "mentioned on air" page on their website. Here's the audio clip. To me, it sounds like my voice was hijacked by a stuttering little girl.

I think I need to practice being interviewed. They only use maybe 5% of what you say, and they try to pick the juiciest stuff without including the reporter's questions which frame the responses. I can't blame them, but it sucks for me because I tend to explain myself after I say things, and those bits don't seem to make the cut. I guess if the interview is not live, it pays to stop and think for a few seconds before speaking to better phrase things. Next time...

Also in the news, and far more prominently, have been Michael Phelps and Christian Bale. Leave Michael Phelps alone. Poor guy can't even have a little fun at a college party without people flipping out on him. What else are you supposed to do with swimmer's lungs in the off season? That guy is definitely the most impressive pull in the cypher. Christian Bale, on the other hand, deserves all the crap he's getting for being a jag to the lighting guy on the Terminator set. That dude needs some anger management.

UPDATE (2/5): MSNBC picked it up now. The article seems to imply the game just came out, even though it was the first one published. And the description of the end screen is off, but hey, any press is good exposure and it's a really nice article. Also, if you have the NY Times today, check page A27 for the story.

Two of my games were mentioned in a writeup on Reuters today. The stuff about the game has some inaccuracies, but it's cool to be mentioned in the news.

Random Thought: Every kid hates writing book reports, but book critics chose to do it for a living.

In other news, the groundhog has seen his shadow, so this winter is now supposed to continue. In this day and age, you'd think someone would slip that little rat an Ativan to make him less skittish. Who isn't sick of winter by now?

Tocci Ponders: Why does one loose hair inside my undershirt itch like crazy but a hair that is still attached doesn't itch at all? (Not even the end that's not attached.)

I've been focusing on websites lately. MiiCharacters.com has some new features including a "Mii of the Day" on the homepage. It changes daily (big surprise there) so there's always something new on the site. I also added an auto-complete to the search boxes which tries to guess which mii you might be searching for. The overhaul of TocciOnline also continues. I've touched up the "miscellaneous" page and named it "odds & ends". I also updated a few pages and removed some older crap. Slowly but surely it's turning into something I can be proud of once again.

A Terrible Joke by Tocci:
Q: Why do Native Americans always get seated at fancy restaurants?
A: They have reservations.

For those suffering from link withdrawal:

• In case you missed the SuperBowl ads last night, they're pitted against each other in a tournament on MSN. For me it came down to Bridgestone "Taters" vs Doritos "Power of the Crunch", with "Taters" taking top honors.
• LookLiker.com is a funny site. I discovered it when searching for juxtapositions of Michael Phelps and Eli Manning. Then yesterday I was thinking how much Mike Tomlin looks like Omar Epps and sure enough it was already posted there. The only comparison that I thought of recently which didn't already exist on the site was Matt Hughes and Guy Ritchie, so here it is.
• Neoformix is an interesting website which discovers patterns in data. I had some fun with their twitter ven app. A related site is FlowingData, which has some cool stuff as well such as The Growth of Walmart Across America. Another cool related site is breathingearth.net, which shows CO2 emissions, births, and deaths in simulated real time around the world.
• Optical illusions - I've seen many of these before, but there are some cool new ones.

When I first heard the news about Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River, I was scared for the passengers and crew. But now that we know everyone is OK, it's really become an inspiring story of heroism to me. So I put together a little game which puts you in Captain Sully's heroic shoes. :-)

In "Double Bird Strike", you pilot the Airbus A320, avoiding the Candian geese for as long as possible to earn points.  Once a double bird strike occurs you'll have to make an emergency landing.  Accurately splashdown in the Hudson River to get maximum bonus points.

I had a terrible experience with my (former) web host cityhost.com today so I'd like to post a cityhost.com review. I had a good run with them over the past four years, mostly while it was under the ownership of a guy named David.  Sure, their services such as a help desk, live chat support, and live phone support all gradually disappeared, but David's personal attention made up for that. And sure, their little servers couldn't handle much bandwidth, but moving images to flickr and flash to kizash made up for that shortcoming. However, today I experienced a problem with my email accounts where my catch-all address was disabled without warning. This caused me to lose days of emails from countless contacts. (If I haven 't replied to you recently, that's why.)

Once I realized what was happening, I emailed David to get the problem fixed ASAP and he informed me that a new owner named Fran had disabled the catch-all feature without notifying me. Impatient and still losing email, I asked David if I should wait for a response from Fran or just move my email to another solution. Fran took this very personally and responded with:

I will make you a deal.

You can answer the phone at 5:00am next time the server is off line being hammered by a DDOS spam dictionary attack because someone has to have every piece of misdirected mail and I will allow your catchall's.

They are not going to be allowed and I wish you luck at your new web host.

Please let us know when you are done with the web content.

I was only going to move my mail to a new solution, not my web hosting account, but after this extremely unprofessional correspondence I told her that I would be closing my account that night. She wasted absolutely no time in locking me out of my account, isolating me from all of my data and stats. (Luckily I had backups.)  I guess she got the last laugh... except if this blog entry makes it to the first page of google results when someone searches for cityhost web hosting reviews. :-) Oh, and judging by her email address Fran also runs ladylinux.com, which apparently owns netmondo.com, so be warned for all three hosts.

Anyway as you can see it didn't take long to get up and running again. Tocci is back in business.

This is the inside of my cat Leia. Last Saturday night she had an all-night vomit party and was straining to poo.  Nothing could go in or out and she was hunched over, obviously uncomfortable. At 6AM we took her to the emergency veterinary hospital where they poked, prodded, reemed, and flushed her.  $500 later, they still couldn't find what was wrong with her, but during the enema they gave her a few balls of poo came out which apparently made her a lot more comfortable. I put a cap on the vet bill by taking her home with plans to monitor her and bring her to our regular vet on Monday should her symptoms persist. Long story short, she was better by Monday. Apparently she was having some trouble passing a hairball or something. In the end, I got no sleep, had to cancel our Sunday plans, and had to part with $500... but at least the cat is healthy again. And hey, check out these snazzy x-rays!