White people love electric guitar. Fact. Not only do we love it, those of us who do not play a guitar of any sort desperately wish — above all else — that we could in fact “thrash” on an “axe.” Something magical happens when white people (myself included) hear a particularly awesome riff on the radio, at a wedding or a party: we must play air guitar. Aside: we must also bite our bottom lip while playing air guitar. Anyway, I am pretty sure that this insatiable need to play electric guitar is buried deep within our whitey DNA. True?

Well let me tell you about the most righteous of all video games that will fulfill this primordial need: Guitar Hero. Brought to you by Harmonix, makers of Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution, Guitar Hero is a game about playing air guitar. Seriously. It even comes with a sweet guitar controller. Here I am caught mid-rock-out jamming on the controller. Notice the awesome over bite and rock star headband:

The guitar, as you can see, is guitar shaped. It even comes with a shoulder strap and stickers! On the guitar are five “fret buttons” on the neck, a “rhythm bar” where the pickups would be, and a whammy bar. You simply press down one (or multiple) of the fret buttons and flick the rhythm bar up or down and BAM — you are ROCKING OUT. Hammer on’s and pull off’s are supported as well.

The game’s concept borrows heavily from Amplitude. “Notes” fall towards you from the top of the screen and you must press the correct fret button and “strum” the rhythm bar in the correct rhythm.

But who cares about that stuff? The important thing is you actually feel like a rock star when you play this game. It is impossible to keep yourself from dancing around with a pained look on your face. Even on the easiest levels you feel like you are melting faces left and right with your amazing guitar powers. You really need to play the game to appreciate it, but as far as simulators go, this has rock star simulator down.

The song list is pretty good too, I mean both David Bowie and Queen. There are a couple of classics by Cream, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Jimi Hendrix. Then there are heavy rock songs by the likes of PANTERA. Over all something for everyone.

The game costs 70$ which may dissuade some people, but you get a free mini guitar!

Also how bad can a game be where the following actually accomplishes something in the game:

Seriously, tilt the neck straight up and unleash your “star power” for double points. I kid you not. The face however is extra credit.

Go out and buy this game now. Guitar Hero. PS2. ROCK!

Today PharrOut launched its new website. Designed by our hot new designer, the new site complies to all kinds of web, usability, and accessibility standards. Pretty exciting. We thought our two year anniversary (ok minus a month and a half) of being in business would be an excellent time to upgrade our own website.

I mean if you make websites, you should have a kickass website. Am I right?

A couple days ago I netflix’d The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had been looking forward to watching the movie for quite a while because 1) the Hitchhiker books are pretty amazing, and 2) it had the guy from the office in it.

Well let me just say: don’t watch this movie.

Hey, I am an easy going guy. I typically like most movies. I even enjoyed watching I, Robot. I like both mindless movies and movies that make you think. I like old movies and new movies. I like animated movies and documentaries. I’m sayin’ I like movies here.

But don’t watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

HG collects the most notable quotes and inside jokes from the book and shakes them up a in jar. Then it spills them out on the ground and stomps on them. The writers/directors didn’t feel the need to explain any of them to those who may have not read the books. “Oh hey you guys know about 42 right? Oh thats a thing.” Or “hey mice are the smart ones, also we build planets!”

The whole endeavor is difficult to follow and confusing. Don’t watch it. Such a shame because Douglas Adams rocked.

My wife and I receive the titular stickers after voting at John B. Cary — our Richmond City precinct. I stopped by at 8.30AM, greeted by maybe fifteen Democratic Party representatives trying to shove literature in my face. These were my actual words to them:

No thanks, I’ve already got my…things.

Wtf? I wonder what things I was referring to.

Having a surname somewhere in between A – K sucks. I think everyone in America must have an A – K last name. Except a girl I made out with, who had big eyes, in eighth grade. Her last name started with a Z. Anyway I rolled up into the gymnasium to vote and there were maybe four people ahead of me. All of them were A thru K‘ers! How annoying is that?

The best part about voting was using the sweet new touch screen voting machines. Yeah I know electronic voting machines steal your votes, store them in a small black box, and then drop them in a wormhole never to be seen again. Still, compared to the Giant Lever™ machine in use last year, the touch screens rock. It took me a while to write my self in three times because the on screen keyboard was laid out alphabetically and not QWERTY — but the process was very smooth and easy.

Also, after you have finished voting you are presented with a giant (literally six inches wide) button labeled “VOTE.” My wife and I both found that to be hilarious.

The election is over. So sad to see you go Mr. ElectionMan. What will the Virginia Blogosphere ever talk about now that you are gone? Below is who I voted for along with the winners.

Governor:
H. Russ Potts, Jr. (I)
Winner: Timothy M. Kaine (D)
Lt. Governor:
William T. “Bill” Bolling (R)
Winner: William T. “Bill” Bolling (R)
Attorney General:
R. Creigh Deeds (D)
Winner: ???
House of Delegates (Disctrict 69):
Ross Catrow (I)
Winner: Franklin P. “Frank” Hall (D)
Commonwealth’s Attorney:
Ross Catrow (I)
Winner: Mike N. Herring (D)
Sheriff:
C. T. Woody (I)
Winner: C. T. Woody (I)
Treasurer:
Ross Catrow (I)
Winner: Eunice M. Wilder (D)

[The attorney general's race is still too close to call. -- Ed.]
Update:
[Bob "Do I heart Blow Jobs?" McDonnell won a close AG race. --Ed.]
Update:
[Blue in VA suggests Deeds is still in it. Possibly loves BJ's?. --Ed.]

NBC12 is reporting that Tim Kaine (D) will govern Virginia starting in January.

How Democrats get elected in Virginia I will never know. Oh wait maybe the Republicans should field a decent candidate? Anyway, at this time the other two big races are two close to call. “Liberal Leslie Byrne” trails Bill Bolling, and Bob “I can’t remember if I ever had a BJ” McDonnell leads Creigh Deeds. But seriously that could change by morning.

Results, who I voted for, and impressions to follow tomorrow! Get out and vote peeps.

No, not a sweet hardcore band, the Virginia Blog Carnival is actually a way to give a little more attention to a post you thought got swept under the carpet. This week is the tenth (X) week of the Virginia Blog Carnival and is hosted over at The (not so) Daily Me.

My post on copyright law headlines the carnival! So go on over and check out the other great things Virginia bloggers are blogging about.

Hopefully a few of them are not about the upcoming election!

Hey, this is your reminder to vote tomorrow. Just get up in the morning and go do it. I don’t care who you vote for. In fact I would encourage you to write in “MaxPower” for each position. With enough support we can win this election!

Here is a long winded summary of the candidates for governor’s positions. Scroll down to the bulleted list.

[Find out where to vote. -- Ed]

30,000 Calorie Sandwich
8,000 Calorie Sandwich

Google Print has stirred up quite a controversy lately. Most recently two crossfire-esque dueling politicos have joined forces to deride Google Print as the end of writer’s rights and the end of all creativity as we know it! Surely if a Democrat and a Republican can agree on something it must be true!

Actually no. Let me set some things straight.

First a brief summary of Google Print. Google wants to scan in every book ever written and make them available via the internet. If the work’s copyright allows it, they want to provide the full text. If not, they want to provide short snippets of the text. The whole shebang will be keyword searchable. Ok? Onward we go!

Ahh, the authors begin by harkening back to our founding fathers and that great all-star American document: the Constitution.

And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.

And in case y’all don’t have the Constitution memorized (shame shame), Article I Section 8 Clause 8 says:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

How exactly is Google “unilaterally changing copyright law?” Are they extending the “limited Times” to the entire life of the author plus seventy years? Oh wait, no that was Disney. It seems — apparently — Google runs afoul of the Constitution in two ways: 1) Providing snippets of the copyrighted texts, and 2) Collecting ad revenue from Google Print searches. To quote:

The creators and owners of these copyrighted works will not be compensated, nor has Google defined what a “snippet” is: a paragraph? A page? A chapter? A whole book? Meanwhile Google will gain a huge new revenue stream by selling ad space on library search results.

Actually if the authors spent fives seconds reading the Google Print webpage they would have found that “for books that we have scanned from a library which are still in copyright, you will only be able to view the bibliographic information and a few short sentences of text around your search term.”

But isn’t it still wrong and reprehensible to copy even the smallest iota of a copyrighted work without the author’s permission? Nope. From Copyright.gov on the four part test to determine if something is Fair Use:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Number three is what we are interested in. If Google scanned in the entirety of Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics and made it available for consumption over teh i-nets then of course that would be illegal. But providing a few short sentences — “in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole” — would be insignificant. The simple idea of fair use might blow you away; you can thank the RIAA for deleting the concept of Fair Use from America culture.

Next the article claims authors must “opt-out” of Google Print if they don’t want their works online. False. First off, it is opt-in if you want your complete works to show up. The owner of the work, which may be the publisher and not the author, must opt-in. Second, you can’t opt-out of fair use. It is my right as an American to quote what ever I want. You can see I’ve quoted several things from several places already in this very article. That is my right! But, with Google being sensible, if you join their publisher program, you can request to have works removed — if you own the rights to it of course.

And finally how can you argue against this?

And have you ever tried to get a live person on the phone at an Internet company?

It is obvious to me now that because sometimes it is difficult to talk to a live person at an “Internet company” Google is trying to twist American copyright law to their own evil desires.

Has anyone heard about this? As the title suggest I am either instilled with a healthy southern xenophobia, live under a rock, or this hasn’t been covered by the MSM. All are totally possible.

Apparently two (Muslim) Parisian teens crawled into an electrical relay while fleeing police and were — wait for it — instantly electrocuted. I mean duh. Riots ensued; today is actually day six of rioting. The whole situation is very confusing so here is the quote from wikipedia since I am lazy:

The local prosecutor, Francois Molins, said that though the two teenagers believed they were being chased, the police were actually chasing other suspects after a reported break-in in the area.

This in Paris is, obviously, a reason for the youth of Paris to rise up and throw of their — presumably — deliciously baked shackles. I mean long live the proletariat!

The world is weird people.