Charlie's Thoughts

Rest and relaxation...oh I wish...nope, this time it's RAILROADS!!! Last time I showed you how we placed bus stations, this time I'm going to give you an inside look at where ZooElite decides to put railroad stations. This is all subject to change, but the general idea will stay the same. Full info after the jump!

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Two things that have come to annoy me recently that I want to bring up.

First, I was trying to find flights today to go abroad. Naturally I started with Delta which has its hub in Detroit and which I know (when it was Northwest) had about 6 flights daily to Amsterdam. Northwest literally used to have 2 flights to Amsterdam within 15 minutes of each other.

Anyways, so I got on Delta and the first thing that comes up is some random flight connecting through Toronto. Come to find that the direct flight which is about 20% booked cost $1500 one-way. Are you kidding me? This is for something still 3 months out too. I want Northwest back. Needless to say I will be flying an alternate airline, although the DTW terminal still rox my sox.

Second, the RPI Men's Hockey Team. I've been waiting to rant about this one for awhile. During hockey games, the teams traditionally line up on their blue lines during the national anthem. Well there I am listening to our nice national anthem when the line, "And the rockets RED glare" comes up. Suddenly the entire team/audience decides that they are going to scream out the word red. Maybe they had a random vocal spasm, or maybe they just got so excited that they heard their school's color red in a song that they couldn't contain their enthusiasm. Apparently the RPI team/audience thinks it's cool to make the national anthem all about them. Whatever the reason, they might as well be screaming out "TOOL", because that's what the whole stunt is, toolish. Congrats RPI on having a school color that coincides with a word in the national anthem. Glad to hear your enthusiastic about the red WHITE and BLUE. (Oh hey, we're two for three!)

Can you tell that it's one of those little things I really hate? Anyways, that's what's currently bugging me. I'm de-bugging (nice segway) the train building portion of our AI: ZooElite right now, so look for a post about that later this weekend!

So ZooElite, our AI for Transport tycoon I mentioned earlier is now in full development. One of the first things I've been working on is determining the optimal placement for a given number of bus stations in a given city. This little info bit will explain how I'm choosing station placements. Read on for details!

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So today, I'm adding my 2 cents to the discussion, and reviewing the Super Bowl. First, I'm happy to say that the game itself was pretty fantastic. But who watches the game for the game?

Fox ticked me off early by over-using their super high-speed camera. Really guys, it is not necessary to show a super slow mo clip after every play. Review the video, if it's interesting, show it to me. Otherwise, I don't want to see a guy getting arm tackled in slow mo. To their credit, the 2-point conversion review was very well shot, there were 3 very conclusive angles, and it was a baller play to watch.

Moving right along, the halftime was superb. Probably the best part of the whole production. Despite the fact that they didn't let people up close, they compensated well by making an INCREDIBLE stage. The lighting configuration of the stage was absolutely stunning. Add to that the laser light show out of nowhere (Where did they put all those lights in the stadium!?), and it was a really good show. Oh and it was the Who.

Most importantly though, are the commercials. Admittedly, they were a bit lack luster this year. I think there were only a couple very good commercials. Jump to read and see more!

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Sometimes I worry that being at school, and not listening to the radio, I miss a lot of new music. So I went to checkout the top 40 today and surprise! Not a single song in the top 10 changed this week. Furthermore, only one new song was on the charts...at #40. Looks like the American music scene is in hibernation for the winter! Oh well, here's to waiting for the new Lifehouse CD.