Average age of the members of Morning Musume yesterday: 21.

Today: 17.

Distribution: 24, 22, 21, 21, 17, 14, 13, 12, 12.

This does not look like a recipe for success to me. The four oldest girls have been in the group for more than seven years, and will have to bend over backwards to not crush the little girls on stage and in public appearances. They know all their lines and dance steps by heart, they have legions of devoted fans who will not be happy if they get less spotlight time, and the competition is much fiercer than it was even a few years ago. It was bad enough when AKB48 and Idoling were poaching their fans, but Girls Generation has been a massive success in Japan recently, making the local talent look like, well, terrible dancers in funny-looking outfits.

A werewolf in a dress? Of course she’s an engineer!

Sadly, engineering goggles currently look stupid on worgen, and it takes a long time to reach the point where you can build your own flying machine, but a wolf’s gotta have dreams.

Chapter one is finally beginning.

Of all the things to adopt from other games, the unskippable, uninterruptible cutscene that advances the “story” with wretched dialog and worse voice acting was a poor choice. I pay to play your game, not watch NPCs run a third-rate school play.

#1 offender: the final quest line in Vashj’ir to unlock the dungeon. Poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly implemented, confusing, and way too fucking long.

#2 would be the multiple Indiana Jones “homages” (ripoffs) in Uldum, which are not even a little bit as cool as you seem to think they are. The only reason they don’t make #1 on the list is because they’re broken up into several different quests, and sometimes you actually get to participate instead of just watch.

Honestly, if you’d spent less time scripting these abominations, you’d have had more time to make sure that all the other quests actually worked, especially the way-too-many vehicle quests with mechanics that you’ll only ever use once. You might even have been able to write some original story and dialog instead of relying on an endless stream of really lame pop-culture references. I’m sorry, but when a shaman tells me to “check out the big brain on Braddock”, I don’t laugh, I wince.

Steam is having a big Christmas sale. Recettear is 66% off. This game was worth full price, so it’s now three times as cool.

[Update: okay, now only 50% off, still worth it. The daily specials are daily, it seems.]

[Update: Not true. So the only thing that was really news in those leaked cables turns out to be no news, hopefully hastening the day when both Assange and Moore fade into well-deserved obscurity.]

Best Wikileaks exposure yet: even Cuba thinks Michael Moore writes bad propaganda.

Perhaps I should have titled this one “When attention whores attack…each other!”.

Just because I haven’t complained recently, don’t think you’ve stopped sucking at your jobs. I mean, when even Ai-chan is having a what-the-fuck moment, you know it can’t be good.

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Many years ago, I was working setup at a trade show, and the network guy asked me to run down to the other end of the conference hall and check out a piece of equipment for him. When I got there, he called me on the radio and asked me what color the blinkenlights were.

“Oh, you didn’t know I’m partially color-blind.”

Today, Dan Kaminsky has released a new iPhone/Android app that does real-time color filtering to allow you to compensate for these problems. I don’t have any compatible devices at the moment, but they seem to have matured enough that it will be worth buying one soon, and this will be a must-buy app.