I just re-read Asimov’s “The Last Question” after having lunch with my folks. It’s probably my favorite story from one of my four night-stand mainstays (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Treasury, that also includes “Flowers for Algernon” which I cannot assign enough importance to).

When I get back to my computer and hop over to my Gmail tab, I’m greeted by “please moderate this comment” email from WordPress. After dealing with the spam, I notice the yellow banner of “New WP version out, update now kplz.” I then hit “Upgrade Automatically” and it all works out (like it always does). (I even updated a plugin auto-magically.)

I was not sure at the time (and am still not) if I should have been more unnerved by a successful or unsuccessful outcome.

If it had mentioned anything about “insufficient data” though, I’d probably still be screaming.

Specifically Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, but that difference isn’t important.

To get something out of the way quickly: I’ve never been good at fighting games.  My ascent up the playstyle ladder usually stops around “find a couple moves that work and stick to them”.  This isn’t through lack of desire to be “good” at fighters.  Before the advent of Internet video though (and honestly now as well), learning about fighting games involved reading ASCII hieroglyphs or knowing someone who could teach you.

(Admittedly, I can talk shop about MMO mechanics with the slightly-less-than-best of them, but the physical act of inputting commands is much less important in WoW than in Street Fighter IV.  MMO play is more about the decisions made before the fight and in-fight decisions measured in seconds versus the fractions-of-a-second scale for a fighting game.)

VF4 had this “Training Mode” that Wikipedia describes best:

The mode consisted of an encyclopedia of fighting game terms, complete character command list walkthroughs, tips on all of the games mechanics, recommended character combos, alternative options for failed combos, detailed command input timings, slow motion for frame counting and timing, and other useful training tips.

The Command Training was really what made it awesome.  You could go through a character’s list move-by-move and learn them by seeing your inputs in real-time and what the move actually was timing-wise.  You could also have the game do the move so you can see what you’re missing.

I’m sure a real person could beat me senseless, but I actually had a lot of fun going through the Quest Mode (going to different arcades, playing in tournaments, and getting customization stuff).  If I ever got stuck, I’d go into the training mode, learn a few new tricks, and get back out and win a couple tournaments.  It was by far the most fun I’ve had with a fighting game which is surprising because the Virtua Fighter series is on the technical-side of the spectrum and I am not technically-proficient in the least.

Now, the lack of such a mode in the next-gen fighters I’ve played hasn’t been a huge deal.  Dead of Alive 4 wasn’t very good and Soulcalibur IV’s combination of character creation and the Tower mode were a blast to play with.

Enter Street Fighter IV (literally, in the mail today via GameFly).  SFIV’s move list is tiny compared to VF4’s but it is nearly unapproachable.  Its “Training Mode” that I entered into full of hope was just the usual “beat on this turned-off-AI”.  When I go the command list, I get icons that look nothing like the “QCB + K” that the fine folks at Shoryuken tell me is what I need to do C. Viper’s Burning Kick.

(via Kotaku)

Now, it would be awesome if SFIV could tell me what’s wrong with my “QCB + K” action: am I too slow or am I not actually making a quarter-circle-back?  But, instead, I just have a turned-off-AI Ken to beat on hoping that I’ll get it eventually.

Of course, all this time spent raving about VF4’s amazing training mode (that wasn’t carried over to VF5 apparently) could have been spent learning C. Viper or any other character, but SFIV really doesn’t provide the tools that I’ve now come to expect if I can’t just learn-as-I-hit-things.

I have no problem going to Shoryuken or Calibur Forum to figure out what kind of fighter might suit my playstyle best or to learn some advanced techniques or to get down into the nitty-gritty of frame counting, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.

SFIV seems to expect that I know everything as soon as I put the disc in, which along with VF5 not continuing VF4 in having an awesome, robust training mode, is a real bummer.

My life expectancy (based on gender, nationallity, and current age) is 76.42 years…  that gives me until until Monday, June 18, 2063, which is 74 days after the Vulcans make first contact.

While it does a lot of neat things with one piece of information: a name, a date, some math, it doesn’t seem to be able to deal with the sets it’s using to produce the information.  So, while I now know that Isaac is the 41st most common name for (male?) births in the US, I can’t get to what the 40th or 42nd names or, what the 41st most common name for girls is right now.

For that, Google gives me good results for “names US births rankings” in no time, and I also learn that the Social Security Administration’s website doesn’t like Chrome.

Thanks to Lifehacker for the idea I’ve shamelessly stolen.

Upgrading to the latest WordPress has introduced the ‘Â’ character into a number of posts. As I have no idea why this happened and my phpMyAdmin-fu is weak, this fix will have to wait for a while.

EDIT: Just fixed it today after a rather simple find-and-replace on the wp_posts table.  (Export -> Do Notepad++ On It ->Drop Table -> Import Editted File.)  It was simple but oh so scary.   Let’s hope I didn’t break anything.

In the spirit of the Stock Tips post on the lovely DreamHost Blog, I bring you TypeFrag’s totally rad gamer pics:

Obviously a badass.

Hey… how you doin’?

How you doin’ take two.

HERPES!

ZOMBIES!

Token minority!

What the fuck is up with her eye shadow?

HERPES take two!