Awesome.

What started out innocently enough as a search for “I Want Candy” by MC Pee Pants (second page) somehow ended up with me on the iTunes Signature Maker.

It’s a java app that digs through your iTunes library and generates a file that contains snippets of your favorite tracks mixed together. It’s not exactly pleasurable listening; the author’s sounds okay (kind of like what I imagine an alien SETI program would hear), but it seems like most of them come out pretty atonal.

I imagine the only way to get something that flows well is if you’re one of those people who claims “I have a very eclectic taste in music” but it turns out you listen to a bunch of bands that sound exactly the same, but you have the soundtracks to Manhattan and O Brother, Where Art Thou? to show how diverse you are. Or something.

On the other hand, this is pretty much what it sounds like in my head all the time, so maybe the computer don’t lie.

And speaking of noise, I just realized that I’ve got to be in Florida all next week for work. I’ve known about the trip for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been thinking it was further away. If it’s anything like the last trip, it’ll be that infuriating feeling of knowing I’m at Disney World but being unable to get out and enjoy it because I’m working. And even when I get free time afterwards, it’s no fun going to the parks by myself. Plus, during the week the parks close a lot earlier, leaving only a couple of hours between the end of a work day and closing time. Since I’m contracting, I can’t get into the parks for free unless I’m working there — which means I have to pay full price just to go a couple of hours.

And I’m not really fooling anybody, I realize. Even on a business trip it’s pretty damn cool. At the risk of sounding like I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid: the Disney hotels really just get everything right, and they’re a blast to stay at even independent of the parks. And as for the parks, I’m still hoping I get a chance to check out the new Expedition Everest ride at Animal Kingdom. It’s not supposed to open until next month, but supposedly it’s in “soft opening preview” mode now.

Update: Calendars are hard. Apparently I’m not leaving next week, but the week after. I just wanted to make sure that the Internet was aware of my travel plans. Go on about your business.

It looks like moving everything to the new host worked out okay for the most part. It wasn’t painless — as easy as it is to install WordPress on a new site (and it is ridiculously easy), it’s difficult to move the contents to a new site unless it’s exactly the same as your old one, which is seldom going to be the case. Also, there are a lot of characters that didn’t make the transition, so you’ll see spurious stuff in old posts until I get the time to go back and edit every one out.

Probably more effort than the hosting change will be worth, but what’s done is done.

Yesterday I thought my cold was finally on the way out, because I could actually breathe and see without my eyes watering and go for a minute or more without coughing. But I guess that was “Indian health” or something, because today I feel like a cold turd. I ended up sleeping all day; I kept waking up and immediately falling asleep again. So I get the joy of waking up just as it’s getting dark, and having to be up all night and tired tomorrow.

Plus I kept dreaming about minor comic book characters (like Blue Beetle), which adds another level of creepiness to the already-creepy waking-up-at-nighttime. Bleh.

I decided to change my webhost, so access to the site (and my e-mail) may be spotty until the transition is all sorted out. It’s just as well, because my cold is getting worse and I don’t feel like posting anything anyway. Try to stay strong through the transition!

And the reason for changing is partly because I couldn’t access my mail or website at all when I was down in LA. Turns out that was the hotel’s fault, not the host’s, but I’d already gotten the idea stuck in my head. The old one was fine, but the new one is cheaper and has a few more features, and it comes more highly-recommended. Plus I think it’ll be easier to do cool web-app type stuff with the new host, because there aren’t as many restrictions on what my site is allowed to do.

Of course, I don’t have the time or motivation to do cool web-app type stuff these days, but it’s nice to know that I could.

Here’s a thirty-five minute long video of Will Wright’s presentation of Spore at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference. Whoever wrote the description is right; it does look like it’s going to be the best videogame ever made. (If you don’t want to or can’t watch the video, GameSpy did a write-up of it). And here’s another longer video of the entire presentation.

Pretty much every time I’ve seen a demo of the game, I’ve been hugely impressed. But what impresses me the most about this demo, even more than how amazing the game looks, is the philosophy behind it. Not just the stated premise — you can have a game that allows infinite content without an infinite budget — but the philosophy of pushing the limits of what games can do and what games are about. From what I’ve seen, the game delivers on what it promises, and each component of it (for example, making an arbitrarily-designed creature learn how to walk) is impressive on its own. And that could end up as either a shallow tech demo with a slick front end, or a traditional RTS or Sims type game with some new features tacked on.

Instead, you get the impression that the philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make the core idea (a simulation of life from the cellular level to the galactic level) work, instead of cutting corners and doing traditional stuff and taking the easy way out.

And even more impressive, doing all that without being so damn arrogant. Wright acknowledges influences wherever they come from, and every time I’ve seen him talk, I never get the impression that he sets his games off as superior to other games. They just end up, more often than not, being that way. It’s really nice to see a guy and his team and his project getting attention based on merit instead of hype.

Now I just really, really want to play the thing. I’m not so arrogant to assume that I could’ve gotten a spot on the project if I’d tried — at Maxis, especially after the move to Redwood Shores, people talked about Spore like the people in Logan’s Run talked about Sanctuary. But I did have a few people ask if I were interested, and my take was that I didn’t have anything useful to contribute to the project, so I shouldn’t even attempt to get on it. After seeing the video, I have to say I’m glad I’m not working on it, so I can just enjoy it when it comes out.

But maybe, after this Disney job ends, I can try to weasel my way onto the expansion packs or the sequel… Anybody got any contacts for me?

Now I can really appreciate the plight of Chinese people barred from the internet, as I too have gone a week without access to my own website and e-mail. Including three days with no internet access at all!

No need to call Amnesty International just yet; my hotel in Burbank just refused to connect to my web host, and the cheap motel in Anaheim didn’t even have a phone, much less an internet connection. My living conditions definitely fluctuate based on whether a giant, multinational entertainment company is fitting the bill or I am. I suppose it says something about me that I considered a motel room with no internet and only three cable stations “roughing it.”

Considering how much I went over budget with this little trip, I sure found my cheapskate instincts taking over — the hotel was charging seven bucks for a can of shaving cream, and I wasn’t having any of that. Better to go into work looking slovenly than pay that much for soap. Or food; the rain was coming down so hard the first night there that I couldn’t practically go out to eat, and I wasn’t going to eat at the hotel’s ridiculously overpriced restaurant, so I had a dinner of Pocky and a Whatchmacallit bar. But since I was at either Universal or Disneyland the entire time, I was forgoing the basics (balking at the costs as if I’d grown up during the Depression) but still paying theme park prices for dinner.

In any case, I’m back now, and I may be able to get a good story or two out of the week. For now, I’m in the first stages of a chest cold, so I’m tired and achey and I feel like Tom Waits after a tonsilectomy. (The fact that smoking inside my hotel room is such a novelty that I abuse it every time I stay in a hotel probably didn’t help). So I’m going to sleep. In my own bed.