Matt Goldammer

Printers are the worst

March 30, 2015

I’ve had a personal saying for years now. Printers are designed, manufactured, and possessed by Satan. I hate them and they hate me.

There are, I suppose, good printers. Office printers seem to work well most of the time, but they’re not practical for home use at all. And come to think, the first time I used the printer at my new job I wound up dealing with a paper jam.

There’s a reason that copier smashing scene from Office Space resonates with so many people. Printer/copier/scanners are horrible to us. Consumer printers are particularly bad.

Consumer printers have this sinister business model where the actual machines are sold as loss leaders because you’re going to have to buy extremely overpriced ink as long as you want to use it. According to Consumer Reports, printer ink costs anywhere between $13 to $75 PER OUNCE. How is this not price fixing?

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My not-so-new show: Debug Mode

March 9, 2015

Back in November I had the softest of launches for an occasional web show about video games (or whatever else I want to talk about – it’s my show) called Debug Mode. The first episode was about Call of Juarez: Gunslinger for no particular reason other than I thought it had an interesting narrative structure and it wasn’t already talked about to death.

I’ve done a few videos about games before and I’ve wanted to do something more structured and regular for a long time. Now that everyone and their little brother (especially their little brother) is making video content about games, I thought it would be the perfect time to saunter into a crowded medium with opinions of my own! It doesn’t help that I don’t have a particular “angle” or easily distillable style. In fact I haven’t really found my style yet and I suspect that will take some time. Then again, most of the games commentators I really like don’t fit into short, easy descriptions either.

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A brief word on Net Neutrality

March 6, 2015

Net neutrality was big in the news recently thanks to the FCC. I’ve been a big believer in the principle of net neutrality ever since I heard it defined many years ago. Lately there’s been a whole lot of misinformation about what net neutrality is and isn’t thanks to politics.

I’ve seen numerous opinions on social media for and against net neutrality which are basically divided along ideological lines. Conservatives (and libertarians, I suppose) seem to hate it while liberals are applauding the move.

Like a lot of political issues, I think most Americans want the same end goal. We all want to be safe, happy, prosperous, and free. We disagree on how to get there.

All I really want to do is communicate what net neutrality is as simply as possible. The definition has become clouded by the debate over the FCC’s decision and that’s not helpful for anyone. Net neutrality existed as a concept long before the Obama Administration or the FCC got involved. It means something specific and just because some people disagree with the FCC’s move to classify internet service providers as utilities doesn’t mean opponents of that decision suddenly get to redefine the principle.

Wikipedia’s definition is great:

“Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.”

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The Search for a New Phone

March 4, 2015

So it’s time to find a new phone. Autumn, my trusty old Nexus 4, has served me well, but it’s been acting up lately and the battery life is dismal.

nexus 4

Actually, that’s my second trusty Nexus 4. This is my first trusty Nexus 4.

Yep. Those are some pretty nasty cracks. It was so bad that the screen stopped responding to touch input effectively rendering the phone useless. I take good care of my phones, but let’s face it: they go with us everywhere. They’re bound to get into trouble now and again.

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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes review

July 11, 2014

dawn1 — Hey look! It’s dawn. Get it? Get it?

Okay, that was a lot better.

Despite the thrashing I gave Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I wound up seeing the sequel anyway. And for once a good trailer didn’t let me down.

I will not be spoiling this movie like I did its predecessor. For one, it just came out and more importantly I respect the deftly plotted and better written film that it is.

I said in my Rise review that the film wasn’t nearly well-written enough to support moral ambiguity. Well that’s changed here. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a tale of how limited resources, mistrust, and bad leadership between groups of survivors leads to ruinous war. It’s kind of like what Season 3 of The Walking Dead was going for but a lot better.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes review

July 8, 2014

SPOILER WARNING: The following review/discussion contains spoilers for the whole movie since it’s a couple of years old and I felt like telling the whole story was the best way to talk about what didn’t work. But yeah. Short version: I didn’t think it was a very good movie.

The tagline is ridiculous. The smart apes have nothing to do with evolution. They're made smart by drugs, but I guess the marketers couldn't resist the rhyme. — The tagline is ridiculous. The smart apes have nothing to do with evolution. They’re made smart by drugs, but I guess the marketers couldn’t resist the rhyme.

A couple years back Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out as a reboot of the titular franchise. I wasn’t interested at the time although I heard a lot of good things about it from a plethora of people. Critics liked it and so did average filmgoers. Now the sequel is coming out and I thought the previews for that looked kinda cool so it was about time for me to see this good film I missed.

But it’s not a good movie. Why did everyone say it was? Why did you lie to me, General Consensus?

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Watch Dogs review

June 4, 2014

wd1
So I played Watch Dogs this week. Fun game. Doesn’t live up to the hype of the original E3 demo, but nothing could. Still, as far as open world games go I like it better than average and it does feel somewhat unique.

There were a host of little things that bothered me about my experience, however. And since nitpicking is so much more fun than vaguely praising something, I’ll be doing a bit of that to start.

The story is probably the main thing that doesn’t quite work. That’s because, as with so many games, the gameplay and the story are at odds. Some high-minded people refer to this as ludonarrative dissonance. Not me, of course. I’m never pretentious.

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Happy Birthday, St. Louis!

February 15, 2014

The City of St. Louis is 250 years old today… maybe. Then again, it could have been yesterday.

Our city’s French founder, Auguste Chouteau, wrote the date in his diary, but authorities have gone back and forth about whether he wrote February 14th or 15th. Nobody’s quite sure which is the right date. Yay for bad handwriting!

I’ve lived in St. Louis, Missouri my entire life. Okay, technically I’ve lived in the suburbs of St. Louis and not the city proper, but we claim St. Louis residency and culture just the same.

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Audible.com – the wrong way to do digital commerce

February 3, 2014

So the other day I got an issue of Rolling Stone magazine with Pope Francis on the cover. That struck me as odd for a couple reasons.

First, why is Pope Francis on the cover of Rolling Stone? Did he start a band?

rolling stone pope

Oh man. That would be hilarious if the Pope started a band. That’s a universe I want to live in.

Second, why am I getting Rolling Stone magazine? I never subscribed. But there is was: my name and address on the sticker.

This has actually happened to me before. A few years ago I got Working Mother magazine for six months.

Yeah. I am not kidding you. Same deal: my name was on it and everything. And believe me, I definitely didn’t subscribe to that one either.

Anyhow, I decided to check my credit card history just to make sure I hadn’t been charged for a magazine I didn’t order. I didn’t find anything about Rolling Stone but I did see a different charge I didn’t recall making.

Audible.com. Ugh.

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Favorite Music of 2013

January 29, 2014

A new year is upon us and that means it’s time to hand out meaningless accolades to various media properties because making lists is fun! I am quite intentionally calling these “favorite” lists rather than “best of” lists because there’s a lot of games, movies, and music I didn’t experience in 2013 which no doubt deserve attention and praise, but I can’t consume everything in a year.

Can I make a confession? I’m terrible at writing about music. I lack the vocabulary, I guess. It seems to me that music is the most subjective of all the popular media and therefore is the most difficult to analyze, critique, and discuss meaningfully with others. Music reviews are a strange thing to me for that reason. All it boils down to is “I like this” or “I don’t like this” without a lot of concrete or consistent reasoning about why that is. But I’m probably wrong about that. As I said, I lack the vocabulary.

Nevertheless, here’s some music I liked. Maybe you’ll like some of it too.

KFB show