Grabbag

What can I say? Well, little, seeing as I haven't found much of particular interest over the past couple of days, as well as being quite busy playing through Starcraft (for the first time without cheat codes) after hearing the exciting news of a Starcraft II. After having looked back, I have to say that I hope the change to a 3D graphics engine, what with all the over-saturated colors and bloom effects, doesn't distract from the game itself. As for the interface, it seems about the same, though it is a bit of a disappointment that the Protoss GUI looks as drab as ever, at least compared to what detail the Terran GUI has (though, admittedly, they have spiced it up quite a bit).
Aside from the obvious reordering of buttons to allow for more, probably done in a large part to make room for the individual building icons, the menu has been moved, becoming tabs on the upper-left hand corner, as opposed to a single button just above the unit portrait. Now, I obviously have not had a chance to try this out, but at first glance, I'm not so hot on the idea, primarily because the labels on the buttons, as well as the buttons themselves, are rather difficult to read in front of the bright background. On the other hand, all three minimap toggles, including terrain on/off, team on/off, and another one that I can't identify off-hand, are right there, as opposed to just the single terrain toggle, with all others having to be done via hotkeys.

Getting off Starcraft, Youtube has given an award to one FinserSteele for the Lejo DJ video (seen below) that he posted. I cannot help but snort, since I have seen Lejo long before this, and then the guy who posted the video isn't even Lejo's creator, nor did he give true credits. Whiny of me? Perhaps, since I got chewed out for reposting some French videos explaining two 18th century automatons.



I was very pleased to find that Comedy Central had a full (or at least nearly-full) listing of Colbert Report's Better Know a District episodes (link), though I must say that their video flashware is crap; I had to watch a 32-second commercial about some new car, and not even a good commercial, at that. It only took five views to make me groan at the annoying song playing, and by the twentieth time I heard it, my brains were leaking from the corners of my mouth as I stared at the screen in a stupefied half-coma. Of course, for this comedy gold, it's more than worth it. Who needs those extra few pints of gray matter, anyway?