I'm Obviously a Masochist

So, I have this thing I do, where whenever I find a game I like, I look up how it was reviewed on various sites, and occasionally wikipedia it. The review sites I tend to go onto are GameInformer, IGN, and (sometimes) Gamespy. In case you were wondering, this is a rant about GameInformer.

So, in case you didn't know, my recent game addiction is a 2D fighter titled Blazblue (not pronounced as it's spelt, and apparently the Japanese pronunciation is different than the American pronunciation). So, in my normal fashion, I went and looked up reviews, where most places said "THIS GAME IS AWESOME!" in many more words than that. However, once I got to GameInformer, I noticed that their numerical rating was much lower than the 9.5 average that every other place had (namely, a 7.75/10). In theory, I'm fine with this--not everyone is going to like a game, and so long as they give valid reasons as to why a score is given, I can live with it even if I don't agree. However, this was not the case with GameInformer. Their review consisted of three pretty small paragraphs, while every other place had pages (on a fucking fighting game to boot)!

Not being quick to judge, I read the review myself (it didn't take long--it was short), where they stated that they didn't like the inclusion of the story (yes, I will admit that it's story is kind've convoluted, but if you don't like the story, then just play the arcade mode....), stated that it looked gorgeous, and finally that the combat system is hard to pick up, mainly because each character has a special mechanic that goes with them. While many reviews, as well as personal experience, contradict this last point (sereously, I've never seen a fighting game where noobs have picked it up and kicked my ass so quickly....), I thought to myself, "Well, fighting games in general can just be hard to pick up and get good at, so maybe their complaint stems from that..."

Well, I then re-looked up the Street Fighter IV review, and my soul was crushed. SF4, just so you guys know, got a whopping 9.375/10 on GameInformer (that number is the average of the second opinion and the normal review), talking mostly about, for it's five, chuncky paragraphs about how the nostalgic feel of the game, the fact that characters work mostly the same as their past incarnations (thus making it easier to just "pick up", or as they say, "...familiarity with a character’s moves will ease the transition into the new mechanics."), and that the new characters, while they look ridiculous, offer something new, "They are pretty stupid characters, but I love the way they fill combat gaps and force you to learn new techniques," and finally ending by essentially saying that, while grasping the whole system and mastering the game would take a fuck-load of time, you don't have to master it to enjoy the game.

Now, to make my point clear, let's compare the points they made about SF4 to the points they made about BB:

• BB looks amazing--no such thing was said about SF4, in fact, they pointed out that the new characters in SF4 looked bad.
  
• They stated that, in SF4, that doing a Hadoken is as simple as doing a quarter-circle forward and then punch, making it pretty easy to pick up. I would like to point out that, in BB, most combos are carried out using the very same method, and that BB is actually more forgiving when inputting these combos (unlike SF4).
  
• For SF4, GI states in it's conclusion: "Fighting games can be intimidating. Many are littered with impossible final bosses, overwhelming character selections, and complicated mechanics, but Street Fighter IV is a distillation of everything the genre does right. It delivers the intensity of competition and the thrill of victory, all through elegant techniques that are easy to learn and difficult to master." which is contradicted by the very game they are reviewing, as the final boss, Seth, is really fucking hard to beat because he has a move to counter just about everything any character can do, it has a rather hefty roster of 25 characters (note: BB has a roster of 12 characters), and it has moves that are so hard to pull off that I've had friends who have said that, "I play better [as SF4] when I stop trying to do stuff and just hit buttons".
  

Are we starting to see where I'm going with this? If not, I have more I can compare that, simply stated, is not at all expressed in GI's review (but is in IGN's review of BB--I don't honestly remember what they said about SF4):

• SF4, with all of it's "simplicity", uses every single fucking button on the controller (minus the left two triggers, if you aren't counting buttons mapped to multiple button presses): Square being light punch, triangle being medium punch, R-top trigger being heavy punch, X being light kick, Circle being medium kick, and R-bottom trigger being heavy kick, and then having some button combos do specific things: Square and X together for a charge attack, Triangle and circle together to grab, as well as specific moves (like your Ultra Combos, which are not to be mistaken with your Super Combos, and some random teleports) requiring you to hit L-M-H attack together after a sometimes obfuscated (or simply just hard to actually pull off) d-pad combination, and then it has some extra, high-level stuff you can do that also requires multiple button presses (like insta-cancels). BlazBlue, on the other hand, has a very simple control scheme, the D-pad for movement, square, triangle, circle for l-m-h attacks (respectively), X for "drive attacks" (which employ the characters' special mechanic), triangle and circle at the same time to grab, and then all three attacks at the same time to do high level maneuvers (insta-cancel, gaurd counter). Go measure how long it took me to tell you BB's commands versus SF4's. I dare you.
  
• SF4 is not balanced. To put it bluntly, there are characters in SF4 that suck fucking balls, and characters that are just better. BB, on the other hand, is incredibly well balanced. Sure, some characters are harder to use (Carl) than others (Nu-13), but if you were to take a character skilled at playing Carl and have them fight someone who was equally skilled with Nu, it would be a very close fight. For SF4, no matter how good you are, Balrog and Zangief are simply a whole lot fucking better characters than Guile.
  

Anyway, my ranting mood is starting to leave, and I kind've want to play BlazBlue some more (I just learned that you can map combos onto directions on the R-stick to employ a tactic much like c-sticking in Smash), so I'm going to conclude: SF4 is a very good, solid fighting game that I have enjoyed a lot, and has a lot of good things going for it. However, there is absolutely no fucking reason why it should get a 9.25/10 when BlazBlue, an arguably better game gets a 7.75/10. GameInformer's reviewers have obviously failed at doing their most important job: review and critiquing games from an objective standpoint, to help us judge how good a game is relative to its genre and to games as a whole before we go out and spend a lot of money of said game, and, due to their prominence as game-reviewers, this sickens me to no end.

G'Night and G'Luck.

Worst Plot Arc Ever

So, this time, I'm going to bitch about an anime. The anime in question is called Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu Season 2. Before I start my rant and analysis, I would like to point ou that the first season was *excellent* and is, by all means, worth watching. As of right now, however, the second season is very not worth watching. Also, if you don't like spoilers, just don't read this--I'm going to spoil story stuff.

Anyway, the stuff that happens in the second season happens before many of the episodes in the first season, but after the main plot arc of the first season. If you haven't seen the first season, this works out because the first season is not presented in chronological order, with more than half of the episodes taking place well after the main story arc.

Well, the first episode of the first season was entertaining--Kyon gets sent back in time and ends up initiating Haruhi to go to the high school she inevitably goes to, thus explaining a line that occurs in the second episode of the first season (where Haruhi randomly asks Kyon, "Do I know you from somewhere?"). It wasn't by far the best episode of the shows as a whole, but it was fun and entertaining. And then the second episode of the second season airs.

This episode is simply about the SOS-dan enjoying the last couple of weeks in their summer vacation in a very busy, yet relatively normal, fashion. Overall, this episode was okay--it wasn't particularly funny, but it was a nice change of pace...

A week later, I watch the third episode. As I start the episode, I actually have to double check that I in fact obtained the right episode because it starts exactly the same as the previous episode. After confirming this, I continue watching the episode, where I learn that it is the same exact episode except this time there is a scene explaining that everyone is stuck in an infinite time loop....

Well, I've now finished episode 6, and it's still the same episode (with some very minor differences, like different clothes). It has gotten VERY OLD. In fact, It got pretty old after seeing the same episode twice, much less FOUR FUCKING TIMES. The worst part yet is that they are showing no signs of the characters ever getting out of the loop, since the only character that actually remembers anything in any detail won't do anything. That and, the main male protagonist, Kyon, it too much of a dipshit. I'm pretty certain, given past events (namely, the end of the main arc from the first season), he could probably get out of the damn loop if he just asked Haruhi out on a date.

Anyway, that's really the end of the rant. I don't really have a problem with time loop plots, especially considering the content of this show (if you don't know what it's about, it's about a very eccentric girl named Haruhi who is essentially god, but doesn't know it), but you have to do them in a certain way, and the way Haruhi is doing it is most definintely bad.

Fallen to the Drarkside Have I?

So, due to a certain someone who will not be named, I've become a fan of the show Dead Like Me. This isn't really a problem and is, in fact, probably a good thing because it's a good show. However, it got me thinking and then realizing that I am, in fact, a very morbid person.

Of all of the things, especially comedies, that I am interested in, or have been interested in, a lot of them deal with death a lot. As a short list, we have The Darwin Awards, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, and this one book I saw at B&N that I don't remember the name of that was essentially a dictionary/encyclopedia of ways to die.

After going through this in my head, I realized I'm a really morbid person, or, at the very least, I find death kind've funny. Am I alone in this? Probably not, since these comedies exist. So, I shall continue to be morbid and laugh at death!

Just Like Elvis

So, word around the street says that Micheal Jackson died today. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's all LIES. That's right, like Evils, Micheal Jackson is not really dead. Unlike Elvis, Micheal Jackson was not taken by aliens--Micheal's plot is much more... sinister.

At Micheal Jackson's burial, there will be a priest with a deep, foreboding voice speaking over his grave. As the coffin is lowered slowly into the grave, the priest will suddenly start to say:
"The foulest stench is in the air,
The funk of forty-thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom.
And though you fight to stay alive,
Your body starts to shiver,
For no meer mortal can resist the evil...
...of...
the THRRRRRILLEERRRRRRR."

And then Micheal Jackson will jump out of his coffin, onto the damp grass, his skin color (and race!) will be changed to that of a zombie, and he will start to dance, . The procession, entranced by the power of The Thriller, will begin to dance as well, and thus Micheal Jackson will have successfully re-booted his life.

R.I.P Micheal Jackson, even though he was a creep.

Disgaea Rant Time!

Hello all of you one followers! Today seems like a good day to rant about the Disgaea series, since I stupidly went on a videogame look-up spree involving that series (a videogame look-up spree is when I start to look up random ass games I play on all sorts of different sites).

Just to put this out there before I start my rant, if you haven't played Disgaea and Disgaea 2, go play them now. Seriously, best games ever. If you haven't played Disgaea 3, go play it and tell me if it's really just me (you'll know what I mean later).

So, I was wandering around on the internets, and randomly decided to look up the various NIS strategy games. This eventually, as a matter of course, led me to the Disgaea franchise, which thus lead me to Disgaea 3. To put it simply, I love-HATE Disgaea 3, with emphasis on the HATE.

As far as the series goes, Disgaea 3 definitely has the most depth out of the three--there's all sorts of crazy stuff you can do in combat, monsters are actually kind've usefull, and there are now geocubes which explode when you throw like colors adjacent to eachother.

However, gameplay will only take me so far. Mind you, with a NIS strategy game, gameplay can take me QUITE far (just look at the hours I've clocked into Disgaea 1 and 2--I think it'd be safe to say about 200 hours each). However, Disgaea 1 and 2 both had a loveble cast and a pretty decent story (Disgaea 2 more so than 1 for story, but the original still had a good story). Disgaea 3, however, lacks that COMPLETELY. The story is essentially the same as Disgaea 1's story, except all of the great characters the original had are replaced with incredibly obnoxious characters with bad voice acting. For instance, the main character Mao sounds like a stereo-typically cartoon-geek, except he makes orgasm noises whenever the thought of doing something evil comes up (which, considering the series is a lot). The Japanese sound track, which NIS always includes, couldn't solve this issue for me either because the Japanese Mao, whose regular voice is more tolerable, still makes fucking orgasm noises. In the end, the only character I liked remotly was Almaz, who, in a nutshell, is pretty much Flonne minus some Flonne and plus some Gordon--a wannabe hero who believes in all things good and huggable who gets rapped-up in Mao's evil (and it isn't even), orgasm-inducing plot to kill his father. Regardless, they actually do some decent character developement with Almaz, so I'll give him some credit there.

Anyway, more on the plot: as stated above, Mao is plotting to kill his father so that he can become overlord, all while attending this evil demon school. The evil demon school, is just dumb. I won't go into it, just think about it a bit and that's probably exactly how it is. As for killing his father, his epic plot is to kidnap a hero and take his hero title, so he can become a hero and kill his father while making orgasm noises. Regardless, it's pretty much just about Mao, and evil person at heart, learning the importance of love and friendship *cough disgaea1 cough*. As previously stated, the only character that developes in any way I noticed because of this is Almaz, as when he loses his hero title, he gets a demon title, and thus starts to act more selfishly.

Now that summaries are done, I'd like to display why I felt the need to go on this rant (from wikipedia):

• Jordan Jackson from RandomNPC said "Taken as a whole, this is probably the strongest cast yet, narrowly edging out the trio of Disgaea 1."
• It is worth noting, however, that reviewers have praised the new innovations to the battle system and have often stated that it is the best of the trilogy, despite the lower scores.

Just NO. For the second one, they are perhaps just praising the battle system (which is quite entertaining), but the first one is definitely just... wrong. Anyway, feeling disgusted, I decided to see what score Disgaea 3 got on IGN: a 6.7.

"YES", I thought, "SOMEONE is thinking on the same level as me!" Then I read the review, where they pretty much just bitched about the graphics. They even stated that the story was only really tarnished by the fact that dialogue is done through static protraits: "I will admit that the story did start to intrigue me a bit as I invested more hours into the experience, but watching everything play out through static portrait cutscenes is getting excruciatingly old. I understand that having the pictures of the characters with dialogue below is a "classic" device, but I'm beginning to feel the need for something different -- I've seen it far too many times now. It would have been tolerable had there been more variations on the portraits, but each character only has three or four to speak of and it gets tiring very quickly." A valid complaint: yes; really all that big of a deal compared to the OTHER GLARRINGLY HUGE ISSUES: no.

In short, I appear to be the only human on this planet who has played Disgaea 3 and truly distasted the characters and the story (I haven't gone into all of them--trust me. In fact, I didn't even meet all of them before giving up on the story--after a butt-load of game time--and just randomly leveling). So, a mission to all of you: play it, compare it to Disgaea 1 and 2, and tell me if it really is bad, or if I've just matured out of my highschoolhood too much to enjoy it, and still enjoy Disgaea 1 and 2 because of the very special place they will always hold in my heart and soul. I needs to know.

Oh yeah, one last complaint: the pacing in the story is also really bad. Each chapter is RIDICULOUSLY long with a lot of dialogue and such that doesn't really seem to move the story anywhere. Also, all of the cool cameo characters and some of the classic monsters are only available through DLC this time around, as an epic plot to milk me of moneys, which I HAVEN'T FALLEN FOR!

Good Night, and Good Luck.

This Post is Only Readable by People in North America

This blog post is region-coded so that only people from North America can read it. It was decided to be this way so that I can sell this blog post to peoples outside of North America for a higher price, even though I might get more readers by just letting Spanish people try to translate this blog post.

<>

If you haven't already figured it out, I'm starting a rant about region coding. You see, I recently remembered that a new version of my favoritest fighting game ever is coming out for the PS2 soon, and it looks super shiny. Normally, I would just *blank* such games (I PLEAD THE 5TH!), but I like this branch of fighting games so much that I actually want to SUPPORT THE COMPANY and BUY IT. Unfortunately, old Sony doesn't want my business, because I'm white, or, more specifically, because I'm not in Japan.

That's right--it's region coded for the PS2. If it were a PS3 game, that wouldn't be an issue, but it isn't (probably because producing a game like this for the PS3 would cost more than it's worth). And so, I think I want to look at and critique why in the world companies loooooooooooove region coding (because they obviously do, since they keep on doing it, the fudgers--BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I REALLY TYPED).

So, I couldn't think of any reason why it's good on private contemplation, since I'm a huge supporter of free trade and all that jazz, and thus was not able to comprehend why in the world free trade would be so disinsentivized. So, we go to wikipedia, where they say:

• Allow for companies to have seperate release dates in seperate countries, which can make it cheaper to release (fair enough).
• Allow for games to be feesibly released in countries that have stricter censorship laws (which is fair enough, but I'll get back to this point later).
  
• Allows for different country branches to be more economically feaseble (e.g. NIS America v.s. NIS--fair enough, I guess).
  
• Allow for price discrimination by region, thus making companies some more money (i.e. a company can sell a product in one country for a higher price than another without free of people bypassing their home country's price by importing).
  
• Allow for companies to milk more moneys out of us because companies are sometimes run by smart assholes.
• Allow for companies to analy rape its fans and make money while doing it.
• Gives reasons for some people to write complanative blog posts.
  

Now, let's take a look at some of the advantages to not region coding:

• Allows for free trade.
• Insentivises more interaction between different cultures.
• Insentivises actually learning about different cultures.
  
• Creates a great way for people to learn a new language.
  
• Gives a great reason for people to learn a new language.
  
• Allows for customers who like "untainted" (i.e. un-localized, purer, etc) products to easily obtain said "untainted" products.
• Disinsentivises previously mentioned "purer-is-better" people from obtaining said product illegally, which is win-win really.
• Allows for people to get products that will probably never be localized in their home country legally.
  
• Disinsentiveses people who like products that will probably never get released locally to actually obtain said products legally.
  
• Allows for companies who are not international to still receive money from the international market, instead of just having a bunch of foreigners essentially steal all of their games.
  
• Disinsentiveses people from modding their consoles, which while it has many legal uses, it also has far more illegal uses.
  
• Allows people to not have to pay a company to analy rape them. I mean seriously.
  

Now, this second list looks a whole lot longer than the first list to me, and the first list had a bunch of repeats to boot!

Now, I'm going to talk about why some of the points on the first list are stupid. Namely, the point on censorship. Censorship is dumb. Sure, it is very arguable that violent video games, movies, parents, and abusive dogs can have a big impact on a child. However, it IS NOT the responsibility of companies to make sure that kids who cannot remove themself from a game or movie after they have finished playing or watching said game or movie, but the responsibility of that child's PARENTS. The movie and video game industry has been nice enough to provide us with these nifty things called ratings (ESRB ratings in the video game industry) that makes this job INFINITELY easier for parents to accomplish, but that still doesn't make it the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure that a snively 12 year old brat doesn't play Grand Theft Auto and decide that he should go steal a car, hire a hooker, run over grandma on the way, and then kill the hooker and take all of his/her money in real life--that is the parents' job, gifted to them by G-d, God, Buddha, or Survival of the Least Retarded (The Sperm and the Egg just didn't seem like an appropriately godly name to me), whichever you believe.

That being said, I was really dissappointed when playing Xenosaga episodes II and III when I noticed the strange lack of any sort of blood when there very should've been blood--it made it look silly. And then I became even more dissappointed when I realized that blood was present in those scenes in the Japanese version, and that us STOOPID AMERRYKANS decided that OMG, RED PIXELS ARE TOO GRAPHIC, GET RID OF IT, GET RID OF IT! Seriously people, you live with the fucking fluid, get over it. Also, breasts are breasts. It's not like you have never seen a pair before. Same with penises.

OH YEAH, I forgot: WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG MIGHT USE NAUGHTY WORDS, LIKE BREAST, AND PENIS, AND DEPICTS CORPORATIONS ANALY RAPING THEIR CUSTOMERS.

*EDIT* Well, a pair of penises very well probably is a new thing for most people... unless you are into some kinky stuff. Or if you are a sexually active homosexual (nothing wrong with that either). *END EDIT*

< /rant>

To Mute or Not to Mute

So, I caught a really bad cold, which has resulted in me losing my voice. Well, because of this adventure and plenty of free time to myself on my hands (being able to speak up to only a whisper isn't conducive to social interaction), I started to ask myself...

...if I were to physically lose my ability to speak, would I get one of those disgusting talking devices implanted into my throat like those unfortunate smokers, or would I just stay mute?

Well, I decided I would stay mute. I wouldn't bear 1) having that disgusting looking device attatched to my throat, and 2) having that voice it gives you. So, even though not being able to speak would probably be incredibly lonely, I would still do it. And probably learn sign language.

What would you do?

Monstrous Muncher, part II

Well folks, looks like the Nocturnal NOM-er is real. However, I have developed some new theories about it based on recent experiences.

1. It takes on a host body.
2. The host body is unaware of it's existence.

In short, it's essentially like a werewolf--my roommate, somehow, someway, became imbued with a disease or curse that causes him to transform into an Aurum Vescitur without his knowledge, at night, after he falls asleep. Fortunately, it seems that a Monstrous Muncher does not know how to get up and walk, so I am safe in my perch across the room. Also fortunately, I have become accustomed to its noises, so that I may sleep without having to have a tussle with Cramped Couch (I still am sore from the experience).

Anyway, my roommate is actually quite a pleasant fellow. Pretty outdoorsy. Too bad he's a noisy sleeper.

That's really all there is to report for now--I felt the need to do "part II" today, which is the only reason I actually posted. So I probably won't post again until something interesting happens...which may take a while. Life is pretty low-key here.

Anyway, toodles for now!

Nocturnal NOM-er, part I

I think it's important to note that this was originally going to be called "Notorious NOM-er, part I", but I decided that Narcoleptic was more fitting. Finally, I then realized that "Nocturnal" was more fitting--names are tricky these days.

So, I recently started summer school, and since I didn't want to pay lots of extra moneys to get my own room, I have gone with the notorious random roommate selection option! We will note that this has never really worked out in my favor, seeing how the last time I did this I got Nudist and Nose-Hair Guy (who, ironically enough, did not end up having an abundance of nose hairs). Well, this time, as per my luck, I got Nocturnal NOM-er (a.k.a Monstrous Muncher, Phantom Pheeder, or Aurum Vescitur, as well as any of the three names introduced in the first paragraph).

The Nocturnal NOM-er is a very wiley creature--appearing to be a very nice, well-mannered person during the day, it allures it's prey into a false sense of security until night falls, when it appears to go to sleep. However, it isn't really falling asleep so much as preparing for meal! It's true! I heard him! All night! Biting at the air, clashing it's teath in it's attempts to devour small morsels of... air. I was dreadfully afraid it might get up and bite me too (as well as keep me awake all night with it's infernal gnashing!), so I ran and hid to the couch in the living room! I barely escaped with my life!

However, not all injuries were avoided in this encounter: Sinistra Shoulder suffered much, as after we fled from the Phantom Pheeder, we had a tussle with a Cramped Couch.

Current Score: Monstrous Muncher: 1, Me: 0, Cramped Couch: -1. Stay tuned!
Note: scores start at 0, 1 is added for each victory, and 1 is subtracted for each loss. In this case, I have a score of 0 because while I lost and fled from Aurum Vescitur, I successfully defeated Cramped Couch.

By the way, bonus points to you if you know what Aurum Vescitur means!

Something New and Grand

So, Data Mining has long since ended, and I have grown bored with Facebook as a means of posting stories about things that I find funny that occur to me that no one else reads. That being said, there are still things that I find funny that occur to me that no one else really cares much about that I want to post on the internet, so I'm hijacking my own blog! It's almost like stealing from yourself!

This blog will no longer talk about those silly "Protfolio" things (although, I'm not going to get rid of those posts), but will now contain things like "Narcaleptic NOM-er, part I" (oooh, foreshadowing)! So stay tuned!

Portfolio 8: Chapter 5 Presentation

First, our group got together and divided up the work load; I was assigned pages 97-103, which included some information on genetic algorithms and the minidom Python package. I didn't come across any major hitches while going through this section (although, admittedly, I didn't do all of the python code). While reading it, I marked what I though were the important parts of my section, and once I was done reading it, re-read those parts, and made it into a short power point, which was then added to our group's (Team FEAR) power point (that's why our power point had different styled slides). That's all there really is to note. Good night and good luck.

Portfolio 9: Foreshadowing

This is titled "Foreshadowing" because I'm doing portfolio 9 before portfolio 8.

Regardless, there isn't really much to say about our final presentation. At the end of class on the 16th, me and Luke decided what we wanted to do for the project (which everyone agreed was a good idea). From there, Luke did the clustering, and then we all gathered, analyzed it, and made the presentation. It is important to note, however, that the portion of our presentation that was about how the data was clustered was made by Luke while he did it (or directly afterwards).

Anyway, it was a fun and interesting semester. In case someone looks at this, I will be using this blog after this class for my great adventure into the business world (if you don't already know, I'm making a video game developer company).

Portfolio 5: Visualizations

ManyEyes hates me. I tried to use this really nifty data set I found that had the graduation rates for undergrads within 3 years by state, but I never could get it to visualize in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I tried to get this data set to work way before spring break, and recently tried again now by re-uploading the data set, but still to no avail (it always just says " Visualization couldn't be created. Please try again."). Regardless, here's a link to the data I uploaded.

So, for take 3: I try this data set, making a visualization that already exists--still won't let me visualize it (same issue). So that's why I still don't have a visualization. The end.

Portfolio #4: Clusters of Data Goodness

Part 1: Plug 'n Chug
Not going to say much here, because it was pretty much just plug 'n chug (hence the title).

Part 2
I decided to do my clustering on the number of college students that are able to obtain a bachelor's degree within 3 years versus 6 years by state (out of 100). I downloaded the data in two parts (3 year grad statistics and the 6 year grad statistics) and then I made a new table with both of the statistics together. I think copied and pasted it into notepad. Regardless, it didn't work for my data--I assume there is a way I'm supposed to format my txt data file that I don't know (the txt data files that I got for the book were in a format I didn't understand). Here's some screen shots of stuff not working:

<----- This is annoying.










In short: Part 2 was a massive failure. Perhaps I'll wrestle with it more later.

Part 3: I am Made of Fail
I am apparently made of failure. I put a data set on Many Eyes, but I couldn't get Many Eyes to visualize it. I'm guessing this data set just wasn't clusterable

Portfolio 3: "Head Bang" from Hell

Our group (THE FEAR) got together (mostly) last Saturday to work on this. We spent the next couple of hours trying to get the Python code to work properly.

At first, we had just dumped pylast.py into the python library folder and tried to use the functions in pylast. Needless to say, this ended in failure.

Then, we tried looking at what was on the class site. Still didn't work.

After smacking our heads against a wall (figuratively), we found out that we needed to use the keys provided on the website for a user. Luke had a username that he made for this portfolio assignment, so we used his. Shortly thereafter, we got it to work in python by using the keys on last fm's website as parameters into the various methods, and then we concluded the group meeting (so no GUI work was done during the group meeting).

Later in the week, Luke remade it into C# with a GUI and a bunch of fancy options, as everyone saw in class. If you want to know more about what he did, check out his blog.

Portfolio #2: I run into brick walls quickly

I downloaded the python code using the link Dr. Zacharski gave us. I then was quickly stopped from going any further because "import feedparser" wasn't working--I kept on getting an error stating that "ImportError: No module named feedparser". I tried to just comment out the import feedparser line in pydelicious.py, but a lot of thigns in pydelicious.py need the feedparser, so that proved to be a useless effort. Instead of banging my head against this wall, I'm just going to continue onto the weka stuff.

Part 1: Playing with Weka
Today seems to be a good day to run into brick walls; I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out where the examples that came with Weka were on my computer. I had installed Weka on Ubuntu Linux using the synaptic package manager; when I ran Weka and tried to load the example, the folder it defaulted to was not the Weka folder, but the folder my command prompt happened to be in (not surprising, really). Regardless, because I let SPM install Weka for me, I had no clue where Weka was installed to or where it put it's files, so I had to dig around for a while. In the end, however, there was success:
(This is a screenshot of my success!)












Part 2: Playing More with Weka
So I started I did the same thing as part 1 to the Cleveland Heart Disease data:












The stats are as follows: ~78% correctly classified and ~22% incorrectly classified. This definitely shows that filtering the data worked well for this set--the majority of the data was filtered correctly. However, a good portion of the data was still incorrectly filtered, leaving me to conclude that filtering (or, at least, j48 filtering) would not be a suitable for this data set or to data pretaining to this content.

Portfolio #1: My first real experience with Python.

Before now, I've only looked at other people's python code--being a lab aide, I've had to help some people with their code, but I've never actually written any myself. Regardless, before starting to read the section, I played around with python a bit, to make sure that I could actually make anything; it was successful (I did struggle a little at first though).

I then did everything up to page 9. No hitches or surprises.
>>> from recommendations import critics
>>> critics[
...
... ;
File "", line 3
;
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> critics['Lisa Rose']['Lady in the Water']
2.5
>>> critics['Toby']['Snakes on a Plane']=4.5
>>> critics['Toby']
{'Snakes on a Plane': 4.5, 'Superman Returns': 4.0, 'You, Me and Dupree': 1.0}

I accidentally hit 'enter' after 'critics[' the first time--I didn't really know how to undo what I was doing, so I just typed in crap, then continued. Kind've brutish, but it worked, and I got the same result as the book!

Then I did pages 10-11. I got a different answer here than in the book:
>>> from math import sqrt
>>> sqrt(pow(4.5-4,2)+pow(1-2,2))
1.1180339887498949
>>> 1/(1+sqrt(pow(4.5-4,2)+pow(1-2,2)))
0.47213595499957939
>>> import recommendations
>>> reload(recommendations)

>>> recommendations.sim_distance(recommendations.critics,'Lisa Rose','Gene Seymour')
0.29429805508554946
>>> recommendations.sim_distance(recommendations.critics,'Lisa Rose','Gene Seymour')
0.29429805508554946
>>>
The first part matched with the book. However, as the result for 'recommendations.sim_distance(...)', I got the answer as you see; the book got 0.148 repeated. I couldn't figure out why my result was different--perhaps I'll find out later.

Pages 13-14 (beginning of the page) went by without too many hitches... if by without too many hitches you mean a lot of them. I was being stupid while typing the code, and thus got a errors that took me a while to root out (I'm still not quite used to the syntax). Regardless, I got through it.
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> reload(recommendations)

>>> print recommendations.sim_pearson(recommendations.critics, 'Lisa Rose','Gene Seymour')
0.396059017191

End of p. 14 and p. 15 went without any hitches; my results matched the book's.
>>> reload (recommendations)

>>> recommendations.topMatches(recommendations.critics, 'Toby',n=3)
[(0.99124070716192991, 'Lisa Rose'), (0.92447345164190486, 'Mick LaSalle'), (0.89340514744156474, 'Claudia Puig')]
>>>

The code for pages 16 and 17 didn't work out quite well either; here's what I got originally:

>>> recommendations.getRecommendations(recommendations.critics, 'Toby')
[(3.4200483059633244, 'The Night Listener'), (3.0, 'The Night LIstener'), (2.8325499182641614, 'Lady in the Water'), (2.3485551731281777, 'Just My Luck')]
The first issue was here; 'Just My Luck' had a different result than the book (2.3 for me, 2.5 in the book)

>>> recommendations.getRecommendations(recommendatiosn.critics, 'Toby', similarity=recommendations.sim_distance)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
NameError: name 'recommendatiosn' is not defined
>>> recommendations.getRecommendations(recommendations.critics, 'Toby', similarity=recommendations.sim_distance)
[(3.5269669502488501, 'The Night Listener'), (3.0, 'The Night LIstener'), (2.8632982149533528, 'Lady in the Water'), (2.5, 'Lady in the Wather'), (2.2177762743461225, 'Just My Luck')]
>>>
The second issue being here; 'The Night Listener' has two wrong results for me (although the first result is not very wrong).

After seeing it in this blog, however, the typos in my recommendations.py file became obvious (yey bigger font?). While this fixed the repeat entries, my numbers are still very slightly off (not enough for me to change anything though--usually only 0.1 off).
>>> reload(recommendations)

>>> recommendations.getRecommendations(recommendations.critics, 'Toby', similarity=recommendations.sim_distance)
[(3.457128694491423, 'The Night Listener'), (2.7785840038149239, 'Lady in the Water'), (2.2177762743461225, 'Just My Luck')]
>>>

Page 18 didn't work out correctly either. The first part was mostly accurate:
>>> recommendations.topMatches(movies,'Superman Returns')
[(0.65795169495976946, 'You, Me and Dupree'), (0.48795003647426888, 'Lady in the Water'), (0.11180339887498941, 'Snakes on a Plane'), (-0.17984719479905439, 'The Night Listener'), (-0.5765566601970562, 'Just My Luck')]

However, I got nothing for the second part:
>>> recommendations.getRecommendations(movies,'Just My Luck')
[]

No clue why it didn't work.