It is Halloween.

I am Doug Ballantine.

Auto/Boat/Home/Life Insurance agent.

1983 Top Sales Associate – #1 Western US Region

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I’ve beaten Shadow of the Colossus twice now – once normally and again on hard mode. I guess I’ll try and do the time trials now.

The game’s just so short! And easy! ‘Hard Mode’ should have been the normal difficulty setting.

However! That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a beautiful, totally fun, and absolutely unique game with some of the best music I’ve ever heard and some of the most gorgeous visuals I’ve ever seen my PlayStation pump out. Some not-so-obvious references to ICO, another of my favorite PS2 games, were nice touches.

In fact after seeing the ending I’m pretty sure that Shadow is probably meant to be a prequel to ICO in some form or another. Anyway, it’s worth a play if you consider yourself to be an appreciator of well-designed games and not just a player of them!

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Wow! Mr. Sulu is gay?

That still doesn’t explain why he’s such a horrible actor. I want answers, people!

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15 of the top 31 most reliable cars for 2006 are Toyotas. I’ve said it for years – Toyota makes the best cars!

Le scoop.

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To follow up from my post yesterday it turns out that low-level electrical pulses applied to your ears can affect your sense of balance, effectively guiding you to walk in a certain direction.

Researchers in Japan have already developed a remote control/helmet system that basically does just that!

This is either sorta spooky or TOTALLY AWESOME.

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Google Video just threw up a bunch of interviews with TV legends like Sherwood Schwartz, Bob Newhart, Carl Reiner, and even William Shatner. The interviews were conducted by the Archive of American Television and are available in their entirety, completely unedited. The interviewees talk about their lives and their work – and they save you from having to read a biography written by someone else years later down the road.

I’ve been watching the interview with Fred Rogers. It’s a little over four hours long, but I just love to hear that guy talk.

Here’s the complete list of interviews.

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The human brain is capable of staggering feats! But unless you’re born a savant or incur some type of brain ‘damage’ throughout your lifetime, most of us will never have the ability to tap into or harness even a fraction of the mental powers that we all carry with us.

One researcher claims that a series of imperceptible low-level electrical pulses is all it takes to trigger your brain to do wonderful things, at least on a small scale.

Based on this article I predict that someday we will start seeing people wearing electrode-equipped hats powered by 9 volt batteries. These brain enhancers will be as common as baseball caps are today.

Just you wait and see.

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Attention Internet! This is not a picture of me!

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I discovered this morning that my VCR had died. I put a tape in and nothing but a horrible grinding noise came out. The tape won’t even eject.

That’s life I guess. Granted, the VCR has been sitting unused next to my TV doing the 12:00 thing for the past three years, so I’m not too broken up about it.

It’s just one less device cluttering up a shelf and a TV input. Just goes to show that in the DVR and DVD age it’s not uncommon for a VCR to go completely unused for three freaking years.

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You know what feeling I miss from my days as a wee lad? The feeling that you get when you take sharp pair of scissors and cut through construction paper.

It’s like biting into a crisp apple.

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