The Worst Link Costumes of All time

Update: I wrote this post as a joke. I am not a Zelda fanatic although I’ve spent many hours playing the various Zelda games. If you can’t see the humor then please move on. All degrading comments will be deleted. Check out the comments section for some responses from people who take their Zelda very seriously which is cool. All comments are moderated so if your post is full of venom it just goes in the trash. Please keep in mind the title of my post….”The Worst Link Costumes of All Time”. You do understand that Zelda is a fictional character, right? I appreciate the few who took the time to explain cosplay to me. I’m not making fun of that in any manner. Read a few other posts I’ve written before calling me an idiot. I certainly didn’t set out to offend anyone.

My 4-year old son loves to play the Zelda games from Nintendo. He has a hard remembering to tie his shoes but ask him about any area or weapon or secret treasure chest stash in a Zelda game and he’s all over it. So for this past Halloween, Kim and I thought it would be fun to find a Zelda costume for him to wear. We both searched online and what I mostly found were bad costumes that made me laugh.

Here are the worst Link costumes I found:

Toothpick Link – Forget taking on Ganondorf and his armies of baddies, Link would have trouble cutting down limp grass with such a lame sword. Did this guy blow his entire wad of cash on those fancy tights leaving only enough money in the budget to pickup a sword at All a Dollar?

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Wicked Stepsister Link – No need for a sword or even a slingshot because this Link will scare away even the fiercest of enemies. Is that a name badge hanging off her tunic that’s covering a mosquito net?  Whatever the case she’s just about to sling a Deku nut your way. Heads up!

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Lackluster Link – I just get the felling this Link isn’t very committed to the adventure on which he’s about to embark. Maybe it’s the look on his face or the price tag dangling off the tunic, but this Link needs a pep talk by Navi or maybe even the Deku Tree if he’s to have any success bringing home the Triforce. For a second there I thought his arm was just very tan.

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Tin Foil Link – The Hyrulian Shield is one of the best defensive weapons in the game. Sadly, this guy decided to forego the genuine article for a cheap homemade replica that couldn’t block a single Deku nut. Even Mario looks displeased. I can picture this poor Link’s mom balking at the price of a real Hyrulian shield and telling her son, “Don’t worry, I’ve got all the supplies to build you an even better model!” There’s an area in Ocarina of Time where Link must deflect three Deku nuts in the right order. Sadly, they would break right through this guy’s shield.

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Eddie Bauer Link – This guys is the polar opposite of Tin Foil Link. His mom probably felt the authentic costume wasn’t rare enough so she mixed a bunch of Eddie Bauer clothing together to create this monstrosity. For starters, it appears his tunic began life as a long sleeve sweater until its arms were ripped off to create the cap. Link should be wearing a white shirt underneath his tunic, not brown. And what on earth sprouted from that sword? I’m pretty sure I own that very same belt I found at Banana Republic in 1994.

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Aqua Link – Two problems here: first isn’t this Link a little old to be taking the game so seriously? Just look at that pose. And second, isn’t green the preferred color when putting together a Link costume? I don’t remember Link sporting anything of the blue variety, do you? Also, it looks like he’s wearing 3 or more belts around his body.

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I Love the 80’s Link – The only thing more disturbing than this Link’s leggings, is the bikini-clad Princess Zelda. I’ve played most of the Zelda games and I don’t recall coming upon a Zelda with big boobs and hair that reached the floor. If the leggings weren’t a dead giveaway this was the 80’s version then the Vans he’s sporting should do the trick.

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Elfin Link – This guy’s shield and sword are first rate! But those ears have gotta go along with the cheat sheet he’s carrying. Maybe it’s an IGN walk-through? That shield is just killer though.

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Androgynous Link – This Link appears to be coming under attack from some trench coat villain in Reeboks. That wig is of such high quality that I can’t tell if I’m looking at a male or female here. Either way, that plastic bag just isn’t going to cut it as a bomb bag for the adventurous Link.

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The Vogue Link – How much time do you think his dude put into his Link costume? Check out that shield with leather handles. Or that leather breast plate sewn together with small leather patches. I wouldn’t be surprised if this costume was his eagle project. The one major problem with this ensemble is the scarf which looks foolishly out of place. Was it cold out and his mom made him roll with that thing before heading out to trick or treat?

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Pretty Princess Zelda – I saved this one for last because this Link and Zelda combo is just scary. Would you invite this lovely couple over to your house to party? I don’t think so.

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My favorite products or services of 2007

I discovered some great software this year. Some of my choices have been around a while, but I didn’t use it till this year. Here’s a list of my favorites:

  1. Twitter – I’ll look back on 2007 as the Year of Twitter. It wasn’t till I  attended Gnomedex that it took hold, but I’m now addicted to this service that’s a mix of IM, email, chat, forums, and newsgroups. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the place I gather a lot of my news, hear about cool products and ask for trusted opinions. My favorite Twitter client is Twhirl although several friend swear by Snitter. Give them both a try.
  2. CallWave – Would you like to manage your voicemail on your PC? CallWave  makes it easy to do just that as well as a number of other things. It also includes a good audio to text converter that will email or text message me any missed messages. I cannot imagine managing my voicemail the old fashioned way.
  3. Slacker – Tired of the same old playlists? Download the Slacker client and  bring dozens of internet, ad-free radio to your desktop. I discovered more good, few music through Slacker than any other means. I keep it on at work all day on either the smooth jazz or classic rock station.
  4. LogMeIn – This is the remote access solution that doesn’t require bribing the IT dude in order to actually work properly. The best compliment I can  give this service is that it “just works”. And it’s free for the basics. I use this weekly to access my home machine from work and vice versa. Stop futzing around with Microsoft Remote Connection and try LogMeIn. 
  5. Ultramon – I added a second NEC 90GX2 to my home setup this year and it didn’t feel right until I discovered UltraMon. It makes working on dual  monitors a seamless experience. You gotta give this program a try if you’re using two or more monitors.
  6. Miro – Just an amazing product for watching your favorite    TV shows and whatever else you’re after. No need to go hunting down codecs since it plays most formats right from the get go.
  7. Windows Live Writer – I’ve already written a lot about this blogging editor so I won’t rehash it here. If you have a blog and are still using your  browser to update it, you should give this a try. It changed how often and posted and made the entire process a lot more enjoyable.

How I locate, purchase and manage my music collection

Back in high school when I’d heard a song I liked, I’d find a friend who had the imagealbum and take a cassette tape over to his house and copy it. I’d made dozens of mix tapes that included all my favorite songs. As a last resort, I’d even record a song off the radio if I couldn’t locate a friend with the album. An occasional band like Def Leppard (Pyromania rocked! I wore out one album and two cassette tapes) would come along and I’d break down and buy the album or cassette tape. But, for the most part, I didn’t buy a lot of the music I listened to. 

When CDs came along I was in college and still without a lot of money to purchase music. I seldom bought new CDs but I’d hit up Gray Whale used CD exchange until I found what I was looking for, usually to the tune of eight bucks or less. Over the years, I built up a collection of hundreds of CDs in this manner. Even when I had a full time job and could afford new CDs, I’d hit the used CD shops of downtown Seattle to pad my collection.

But times have changed. It’s been years since I purchased a used CD. I still buy the occasional new CD but that’s rare and only for bands I know I will enjoy like Alison Krauss or Tracy Chapman.

Here’s how I typically locate music now:

Favorite Artists/Groups: Buy CD from Target, Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart or Amazon.

Individual Song: Buy if available from Amazon MP3 Store. If not available I’ll check iTunes and buy it there and then use Tunebite to remove the DRM and convert to MP3.

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Amazon’s MP3 Store makes it easy to locate, preview and purchase DRM-free tunes. 

Not Available at Amazon MP3 Store or iTunes: I will use MiniNova to locate the song and uTorrent to download it. I do this for singles that a band releases before the album/CD is available or bootlegs or live tracks that are not available anywhere else. An example of this would be the song, “She’s a Mystery to Me” from U2 which is still hard to find today. It pops up now and then on the torrent sites. See here for YouTube version of this killer tune.

Here’s a list of software products I use with music:

Playback for best possible sound quality: Q-Player + iZotope DSP plugin. To my ears it makes everything else sound like crap although not the most user friendly or feature rich option. But if you want your music to sound its best, look no further.

Playback for Podcasts, Audio books and everyday music – iTunes + Volume Logic DSP plugin. Most people find this solution easy to use and pretty much the only choice if you own an iPod. If you’re daring you can give open source Songbird a try. I’m running it at work and like it quite a bit.

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Songbird is based on the Mozilla platform and is a solid competitor to the ubiquitous iTunes. 

For Quick Ripping I use CDex. For the best possible sounding rips I use Exact Audio Copy which is slower but provides the best possible rip. I wrote about EAC and CDex a while back here.

Tagging: If you purchase songs from iTunes or Amazon MP3 Store, they come properly tagged which is nice. It’s hit or miss on torrent sites as some will come fully tagged while others are a mess. If you have a large collection of music that needs tagging I highly recommend grabbing a dedicated tool for the job like Dr. Tag Plus. It’s $35 price tag is a bargain in such cases. It also comes with advanced tagging features you won’t find on the free programs. If you have a large batch of mp3 files that require renaming, just grab this program and save yourself hours of hassle.

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The feature set on Dr. Tag Plus can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it’s a huge time saver if you have advanced tagging needs.

I’ve used dozens of other programs over the years as I’ve moved my CD collection over to digital format. I’m interested to hear what programs you use to manage your music collection as I’m sure I’ve overlooked many worthy products.

The Wilson A-2000

Do you ever ask yourself this question:

“If my house were on fire and I could only take a few items to safety, what would they be?”

We’ll assume for a minute that spouses, children and pets have made it out of the house safely. After my computer’s external hard drive the possession I’d go after would be my Wilson A-2000 glove.

I grew up playing baseball. It was my favorite sport and probably the one where I possessed better than average ability. Compared to basketball and football where having a larger body can give a person a competitive edge, baseball seemed tailor made for my 5’10 frame and inherent quickness.

My father was the baseball coach at the time and would always make sure I had the best equipment. He also made sure I didn’t wear my hat like a doofus. (It’s supposed to sit low, not up high like a chef’s hat) The year before he’d fitted me with a Wilson glove called the A2000 XL. I played third base up until my sophomore year when I switched to the outfield. That meant instead of a small fielders glove, I needed a larger outfielders model.  A teammate at the time was making the transition from the outfield to the infield. One day at practice we decided to swap gloves. It was a perfect fit for both of us.

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Along the back webbing of the glove is imprinted “The A2000 XLC”. You can see how flexible the webbing is. I love the color that’s come through over the years.

If you’ve ever purchased a new baseball glove, you know that they are very firm, uncomfortable and clasp the ball like a clam. My father showed me how to rub Vasoline and and later, mink oil into the glove to soften it up so it could be properly molded to my hand. The idea is to make the glove soft enough so that it grabs the ball like your hand would with the fingers and web enveloping the ball instead of merely clamping down on the ball. Hand motion is good. Clam snapping is bad.

So I’d take my glove home from practice every night and rub mink oil into the fingers, web, and palm. It’s amazing how much mink oil good leather can soak up. I’m sure I went through several tins of it. At night, I’d place a ball in the palm, secure it with twine and place it under my mattress where I’d sleep on it. After several weeks my glove was getting closer to perfection. After working on it for an hours I’d toss it to my dad at the dinner table for his inspection. He’d put it on his big hands, punch it a few times in the palm and say, “You’re getting close“.

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I’ve had the glove repaired numerous times. The leather stitching comes loose at times as you can see here. I wrote my initials (BDN) on the glove in 1983.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that a glove is never finished being worked in. The best one can do it get it to the state of “close”. There’s only so far elbow grease and mink oil can take it. The finishing touch came by playing catch, fielding fly balls and retrieving grounders. My father taught me to catch the ball in the palm instead of in the web because that made it easier to grab and possibly gun down a runner going for home. This is a lot easier said than done and one must have a lot of faith in the glove before attempting the palm catch. Ozzie “the wizard” Smith used to do this better than anyone. He’d catch the ball right up near his wrist where he’d flick the ball into his right hand and rocket a throw to first base just in time to nail the runner.

A few weeks ago I realized that my glove accidentally got placed in a toy bin that had been left out in the rain. I was crushed to find my old glove at the bottom of the bin, swimming in dirty water, mud and leaves. I pulled it out only to find it had moss and rocks and dirt all over it. I was so upset I didn’t do anything for a few days except place it on a rack to dry. I realized it was going to take a lot of care to nurse it back to shape.

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You can see how my my index finger has pushed down the leather over the years. The infield model had an open back whereas the XLC was covered except for the finger hole.

Once it fully dried, I used an old toothbrush to brush aware any debris on the outer side. It was clean, but very rough and discolored. It felt as stiff as a new glove so I pulled out some leather cleaner I normally use on my shoes and swirled it around for a while. It removed the last few bits of moss, but the glove was still very stiff so I bought a tin of milk oil and began the process I’ve done a hundred times or more. I sat at my computer and rubbed the mink oil into the fingers, the palm and the webbing. The most difficult part was cleaning the inside of the fingers. But over time it began to soften up. The rich colors returned and it began to feel like my old glove again. It’s still not back to where it was during my playing days, but it’s a lot better than where it was a few weeks ago.

And if I were to hand it over to my dad and ask for his opinion, I’m sure he’d say, “You’re getting close“.

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Webkinz leaves bad first impression

We bought a Webkinz animal for each of our three oldest children. If you’re not familiar with Webkinz, the unique feature of this toy is the online integration. Basically, one buys an animal for about ten bucks and then goes online to register, adopt and name their pet. It reminds me a bit of Animal Crossing (Which our kids and their mom enjoy on the Nintendo DS) where there are places to see and activities to join in which earn Webkinz money which can be used to buy things in this virtual world.

On Christmas day one would assume the Webkinz website would be overloaded with kids trying to register their new pets. But we tried anyway and ran into this message:

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We decided to come back the next day and ran into the same problem. We’ve been trying to login to the site for four days now and I finally got all three pets registered, adopted and named tonight but not without more hassle.

Near the end of the registration process, I was presented with the screen below which asks me to “Enter the letters” I see in this image. Do you see any letters in the the box? If you look closely, the letter are supposed to appear in the rectangular box, but they didn’t appear until I clicked on the back button, entered in the “Webkinz Secret Code” and returned to this screen. I had to do this several times for all three pets. I’ve run into confusing “captcha” screens but I’ve never been presented with a ghost “captcha”.

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Luca has been checking out the Webkinz world for the past hour or so and seems to really like it so it appears the inconvenience was worth it. But it doesn’t leave a good impression.

Webkinz had to know there would be a rush on its website on Christmas day. Technology such as AmazonS3 is available to resolve scalability issues. Webkinz isn’t run by two teens in their basement trying to get the business off the ground. They are owned by Ganz which is good sized toy company. There is no excuse for a four day outage like this.

What could Webkinz do to soften the blow to our kids? How about extend the subscription (the first 12 months is free) by 6 months? Or give them an extra 100 bucks in Webkinz cash. Something that shows they care about the frustration they caused.

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A few of my favorite pictures captured by my brother-in-law

One of the best purchases I made last year was a Nikon D40 DSLR camera. This camera has made taking pictures a lot more enjoyable compared to the cheap point and shoot cameras I’ve had over the years. For Christmas this year I ordered this Nikon 55-200 VR lens. I’ve only begun to discover how all the different settings influence the picture, but I’m learning as I go.

Luckily, I have a brother-in-law who has been into photography for many years who has taught me everything I know. I’m reminded how much I’ve forgotten when I compare the pictures I’ve taken to his. He has a way of capturing the most compelling expressions at just the right moment. I don’t know how he does it except to believe that it’s a skill that he’s mastered over many years of trial and error. Check out some of his albums here.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures he’s taken of our kids.

I love this picture of Anna Lynn. The way he focused in on her eyes and features while the hair around her face is in a softer focus.

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This picture of Lincoln running at the park is one of my favorites. The vibrant colors are fantastic and Warren was able to capture Lincoln looking over his shoulder to see who was chasing after him.

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Warren captured Kim’s mom holding Anna, nose to nose, in 2005. Just an amazing shot.

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If I had to pick my favorite picture that Warren has taken of our kids it would be this picture. He took this I love Luca’s expression along with the color and the angle. I hope one day I can capture something close to this.

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I could add another 200 pictures that Warren has taken that I love. Here is my favorite picture I’ve taken with my Nikon D40. This is Lincoln sitting on our back steps after a run through the sprinklers.

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Open source archive

As much as I enjoy finding great open source software, often the process can become frustrating as many of the sites seem like they were designed without the end user in mind. 

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That’s changed with the Open Source Living archive which is clean and easy to use. It won’t overwhelm the first time user in the way it only includes the top few program in each category instead of an exhaustive yet confusing boatload of options.

Here are a few of my favorites that I use at least once a week:

  1. Mozilla Firefox – Don’t tell me you’re still using IE? Seriously.
  2. Paint.NET – Gimp is fantastically powerful but overkill for most. Paint.NET is sharp looking, easy to use and includes what I actually need.
  3. Miro – If you don’t already have this, download it now! A life saver for those times I forget to set my Tivo. See here for how I use this program.
  4. Audacity – Easy to use audio editing. I’ve used this for years.
  5. CDex – Amazingly fast mp3 ripper. I use this all the time.
  6. WordPress – Want to run your own blog? Look no further.
  7. PeerGuardian 2 – IP blocker for those who use P2P apps.
  8. FileZilla – I recently moved from SmartFTP to this great FTP program.
  9. 7-Zip – The best archiving program I’ve come across.

It’s been a few years since I’ve tried an open source office suite but I’m going to do that very soon. I’m ready to give up Microsoft Office but am considering moving everything online so I’m not sure what I’d gain by going with a program that requires installation, updates, fixes and all that crap.

Christmas Eve

I just spent the better part of two hours putting together a pirate ship. It’s not just your run of the mill pirate ship either. It’s a ship that stands about 3 1/3 feet off the ground with telescope, pirate flag, canons and sound effects. The most difficult part of assembly was putting the ship together in our basement under very little light. The screws were tiny and I kept dropping them all over the couch and floor. I’m getting old or something.

But I eventually got the flag hung and the cannon balls loaded for Lincoln to discover tomorrow. Kim keeps asking me if I’ve hidden the large box that it came in and I told her that we’ll tell the kids that Santa also does his Christmas shopping at Costco when the need arises.

Christmas is especially fun with kids. As Kim rocked baby Kai, I told Luca, Lincoln and Anna the Christmas story as tried to keep their little hands off the presents under the tree. We then let them each open a present that turned out to be a new sleeping bag. I’ve never seen them so excited to go to bed. I just checked on them and they are scattered around the floor in their new sleeping bags. They look like a litter of new puppies.

We don’t have family close by so our Christmas days are usually low key. We’ll open presents in a couple of hours and then cook a nice breakfast for the kids. Maybe we’ll see a movie or go to lunch together.

It’s been a fun last few days. I’m looking forward to spending time with the family this week.

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Songza is simply cool

Type the name of any song or band into this elegant online jukebox and you’ll be presented with a list of available songs. Click on a song it begins to play. The controls are simple, but the sound quality isn’t bad at all.

I love their great design and variety of songs. There’s even a Firefox extension that allows you to access the Songza library right from your browser.

I haven’t figured out how they are making money. I assumed they were linking each song/album to an Amazon affiliate, but that’s not the case.

Toss it a few of your favorite songs and see how it does.

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