Sandwich chains from a veggie perspective

A comparison of the vegetarian sandwiches offered by various sandwich shop chains

Sandwiches are a major staple of my diet. At home, I make all kinds of sandwiches (meatless, of course), in different styles, and on a variety of different types of bread, such as sliced Columbo sourdough (one of the best sourdough breads in the world), loaves of Safeway French bread cut to sandwich sizes (Safeway makes consistently excellent French bread -- maybe I should write another comparative article about differences between French bread from store to store), focaccia topped with cheddar and jalapeño, or topped with parmesan and olives, and ciabatta. Other ideas I've picked up from sandwich shops include using interesting salad dressings instead of mayonnaise, sprinkling with olive oil and freshly ground pepper and other spices, and using different kinds of mustards (I've generally settled on Maille dijon mustards, with or without horseradish).

So, as you can see, I like my sandwiches hearty and flavourful. Here, I'll give my impressions of the sandwiches offered by several chains that I've frequented.

Quiznos

Quiznos, one of the many stores with an S on the end of their name but no possessive apostrophe, offers one vegetarian sandwich on their menu, under their Signature Classics header, unambiguously called "Veggie". Available in the usual three sizes that all their sandwiches can come in, it offers guacamole, black olives, lettuce, tomato, red onions, mushrooms, cheddar, mozzarella, and a vinaigrette sauce on your choice of bread. I prefer swapping the raw red onions with grilled onions, and sometimes adding pickles.

The bread is soft and moist, good for toasting, and tasty on its own. Quiznos has a very good rosemary parmesan bread that I prefer for this sandwich even though it costs extra. Good bread can make the difference between a blah sandwich and a delicious sandwich, and Quiznos seems to understand that.

The guacamole and the olives make this sandwich very flavourful, and the onions, whether you choose raw or grilled, give it a nice heartiness as well. Additionally, Quiznos toasts their sandwiches (adding the cold ingredients like the lettuce, guacamole, etc. after it has been run through the toaster), which adds a very good additional appeal. This sandwich is best eaten there rather than being taken home, for that reason. But even cold, this is a very tasty sandwich.

If there's one thing that I have to criticise Quiznos for, it's their specials. They occasionally have specials with discounts on their specialty sandwiches, but these specials never include the veggie sandwich. Thus, I'm always paying $2-3 more for my sandwich than someone who wants a huge meatball sub or something along those lines. Doesn't meat cost more than vegetables? Perhaps the guacamole puts it on equal footing, with the rising cost of avocados, but it still doesn't seem right.

However, this criticism is mitigated by the coupons you can get by signing up for their newsletter. Since I've been getting them, at least one of the two coupons provided is good for a veggie sandwich, be it a general "second sandwich for half price", or deal on a combo, or whatever.

Subway

I used to like Subway's "Veggie Delite" sandwich. That was back when they cut their bread by scooping a U-shaped wedge out of the top of the bread, allowing it to be piled high with ingredients. I remember the changeover, when they switched to just cutting into the side without fully separating the pieces, ensuring a limit on the amount of fillings. They used slanted language seemingly intended to influence the customer to prefer the new cut by calling the old version a "U-gouge", in comparison to their new "hinge cut".

But it wasn't until I tried sandwiches from other restaurants that I realised how dry and tasteless Subway's bread was, no matter which one I picked. They all looked good, and had tasty-sounding names, but all tasted like cardboard. Let me give a little disclaimer here -- I haven't eaten at Subway for several years now. And from looking at their menu right now for the purposes of accuracy, I see that they appear to have changed the recipe for their Veggie Delite (again). So it's possible they may have also improved their bread in the meantime.

The bread is clearly not as important when you have richly-spiced meats livening the sandwich up, but since some of these places don't provide equally rich meatless fillings, it calls a lot of attention to the stuff that makes up about 50% of the sandwich, whereas sandwich shops that use excellent bread really don't need to dress it up very much.

The current recipe touts lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, onions and a choice of fat-free condiments. "It’s like a salad sandwich", says the web site, perhaps to explain why it no longer includes cheese. Personally, I like cheese on my salads (my prohibition against meat does not prohibit milk products), and there are a lot more things I like on my salads as well, which this sandwich doesn't seem to offer. And if the bread is the same as last time I checked, Subway's bread would make poor croutons for this "salad sandwich". The sandwich was poor before, and I'm not tempted to try this new version either.

Mr. Pickle's

I tried this place for the first time today, and it's what inspired me to write this comparison. This is a fairly local chain, limited to Northern California and Nevada, though I've only seen two franchises total, in two different cities. I assumed it was a single local shop until I saw this second one.

As with almost all of the other places, there's only one vegetarian sandwich on offer, the Veri Vegi, which includes cheese, cucumbers and avocado. When I asked, innocently, "Are there any other vegetarian sandwiches?" the attendant responded, "How many ways are there to make a veggie sandwich?" Assuming the reason you're reading this is because you're interested in meatless sandwiches, I'm sure you readers can offer a few dozen suggestions. At least it makes it easy to decide which place to eat at, when it's an all-or-nothing choice.

A highlight of this sandwich is the choice of cheeses. There's only one size sandwich, rather than the small/medium/large you see at other places, and so they all come with 5 slices of cheese. They offer swiss, jack, pepper jack, cheddar, and american. For my sandwich I chose 2 swiss, 2 pepper jack, and 1 cheddar. There are in fact more included toppings than the three specified on the menu -- mayo, mustard, garlic sauce, lettuce, tomato, pickles (naturally, considering the name of the place), peppers, and onions. I don't eat mayonnaise due to the eggs, and the onions were raw-only, no grilled option, so I had mine without mayo or onions, with italian dressing added to make up for the missing mayo. Of the choices of bread (dutch, sweet, wheat, and sourdough), I picked sourdough.

I'm not sure if this is a case of shrewd business practise or absent-mindedness, but I noticed that the man behind the counter didn't indicate that the sandwich includes a cookie until after he asked if I wanted any sides. Only after I said "no" did he pick up a cookie and add it to my tray, explaining that it comes with the sandwich.

The sandwich was very bland, despite me being very hungry at the time. The sourdough wasn't sour, the avocados desperately wanted a dash of salt and pepper (and there was no table of condiments for customers to add to their own sandwiches, like at Quiznos and other places -- not even any salt and pepper shakers on the tables), I couldn't taste the cucumbers, and the sandwich was overwhelmed by the taste of the yellow mustard. I won't be eating here again.

Panera Bread Company

After all my talk about the importance of bread, it should come as no surprise that Panera gets high marks from me.

Unlike most of these places, Panera offers two vegetarian sandwiches. The first is their Mediterranean Veggie, with hot peppers, feta cheese, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cilantro hummus on tomato basil bread. I've eaten this sandwich at least once, and it was quite good, though I don't remember the hummus containing cilantro when I did. I usually have a bad reaction to that vile herb unless it's in very small quantities. I especially like the inclusion of feta.

The other is their hot toasted tomato and mozzarella panini, which contains mozzarella (obviously), roasted and fresh tomatoes, basil and sun-dried tomato pesto on ciabatta. A very hearty sandwich, and I've ordered this several times.

Each sandwich comes with your choice of either a bag of chips, an apple, or a hunk of one of their other breads. I usually choose the apple. I took the bread once, but combined with the sandwich it was just too much bread.

Aside from the tasty sandwiches, the highlight of the place is its comfortable, welcoming atmosphere. The seating area is large, and resembles a living room more than a restaurant dining area. There are the usual booths and small tables, but also couches, thickly padded easy chairs, and a fireplace! The spaces vary from areas of privacy and intimacy to areas of openness, especially near the large windows. Panera welcomes local clubs and groups to have their meetings there, and offers free wireless internet to all.

The downside to Panera is the number of locations. There are none local to me, and the two nearest ones are about 25-35 minutes out of my way. Whenever I'm relatively near the area, though, I take the opportunity to visit.

Togo's Eatery

This is another place that I've avoided for years because of the bread. Most of the times I've eaten there in the past, I've been turned off by the chewy bread that's hard to tear off of the sandwich, causing the fillings to spill out the other side unless you wrap it tightly. My parents prefer this place, however, so your mileage may vary.

The advantage to Togo's is that they offer four vegetarian sandwiches (five if you count the egg salad, but I don't), which is more than any of the others, and one of only two of these shops that offer one with hummus.

I ordered a sandwich here within the past month, and asked for their softest bread. This wasn't bad, actually, but I don't know which one it was, so I can't specify. I chose the hummus sandwich, and it came to me neatly wrapped and inviting. It was flavourful enough, but a few slices of cheese would have improved it greatly. I believe I will try another sandwich from here at some point, with that in mind.

The winner

Quiznos. It was hard to decide between Quiznos and Panera, both of which offer delicious sandwiches, and each has its own strengths in other areas, but Quiznos wins mainly for repeatability and number of locations. I have yet to get tired of Quiznos' veggie sandwich, and suspect I could eat one every week without getting bored of it. Panera's sandwiches, as good as they are, seem like something I could get tired of more easily.

However, if I lived in a town with a Panera location, it would certainly see a lot more of my business.

Wish for the new year

All I really want for this new year, I think, is for some of the ghosts of my past to stop haunting me. My regrets aren't all that many, but they have accumulated over time, and too few of them are ever forgiven, or reach closure. The ones that remain weigh heavy on my heart. Not all the time, of course. Only on occasion, in fact, such as when I hear a certain song, or find a memento. They remind me of mistakes I've made with such vividness that I feel the full impact of those regrets all over again. I've had to put away old notes, papers, or trinkets left over from happier times because of the memories.

My only shield is that things have been going very well for me. I'm on track for a lucrative career, I've been making new friends, and I've had good success in relationships. If not for those things, the weight of my regrets could threaten to crush me. If 2010 has a gift for me, I hope it's to free me from some of them. Not entirely, of course. What would it be to not care about the consequences of my mistakes? To never learn from my mistakes or strive not to make them again? Not the kind of person I'd like to be, I think. Just the chance to achieve closure with some of them would be enough.

Human rights

The purpose of the Constitution is to protect the minority from the whim of the majority. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. The Constitution is there to make sure it's not going to be the sheep.

The trouble comes when the wolves rewrite the Constitution, as the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm did.

Mo' Betta Vista

The Vista search function is easily worth the price of admission. I was worried there for a while because for years I've been using an indexing system I developed to keep track of my hundreds of backup and archive DVDs. A very simple and elegant solution of assigning each DVD a number, and using a simple directory dump to a text file for each one. Then, any time I needed to find an archived file, I simply do a search of my index folder set to search within the text files' contents. The results would show the archive numbers my search term appeared in, and I could simply open those text files (if more than one appeared) to check their contents to see which one had the file I wanted.

This worked in Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. So I was worried that the new searching methods might break this system. Au contraire! It's even faster and more efficient now! Microsoft has clearly recognised the importance of searching in modern day computing, as had Google with their Desktop Search and other companies with similar products, and having it built into the OS is quite a boon. The old way, I had my Indexes folder in my Favourites, so I would go Start>Favourites>Indexes, then hit Ctrl-F to search that folder. Results would come up in a few seconds. Now, I can search directly from the bloody Start menu, and results come up instantly. A tap of the Windows key is all it takes.

As if the speed wasn't enough, let's say I'm not sure whether a given file has been archived already, or is still on the hard drive somewhere. Old method, I'd try searching the indexes first, and if I didn't find it there I'd search the whole hard drive, as slow as that would be. New method, I do that same search from the start menu that I just mentioned, and it shows both indexes containing my search words, and any matching files on the hard drive. Instantly. And we're talking about a nearly-full 290GB drive.

And the ways you can sort and organise your search results or just folder views with virtual folders/saved searches, view filtering, and tagging makes this a dream come true for keeping my massive quantities of files manageable.

Windows Vista review

Despite me being a neophile, I'm generally cautious about adopting new tech. I like to wait a while and see the reviews and give it a little time for any flaws to be shown, etc. With some software, I've been known to stick with an old version for many years if I find the new features and abilities don't warrant the increased memory requirements or interface bloat (Photoshop), or if I find no useful new tools for my purposes at all (Flash).

Similarly, I was very slow to embrace Windows XP, since Windows 2000 had been serving my purposes very well for a long time, and it was very stable and secure. It still is, in fact. One of my machines still runs it, and I've been using that one as a secure file server. In fact I didn't so much "upgrade" to WinXP as I just failed to uninstall it on the new machine I bought several years ago on which it came. I did plan to change the OS to Win2K, just never got around to it because WinXP did the job well enough, and eventually I got used to it and came to appreciate some of its newer features.

With Windows Vista, it happened the same way, just much sooner. My former main computer (an HP Pavilion a510n with extra RAM, extra hard drives, and a Radion 9800 All-In-Wonder) had failed on me a few times -- each time I was able to recover it, of course, but this time I decided it was high time to get a new computer that could run the newer games nicely, run my existing software faster, and run some of the newer software that required the SSE2 instruction set, which my old one didn't have.

I went to Fry's and picked one that met my budget and seemed to have most of what I needed. They were all Vista-equipped, of course. I had mentioned a month or two previously on the Anime Studio forum that I was looking into getting a Vista machine, even after seeing all sorts of posts warning about draconian DRM, incompatibilities, irritating features, clandestine file deletions, and a total lack of support for games. It sounded ridiculous, straining credibility, like an urban legend, or propaganda. And at least one review I'd read from a much more credible source completely contradicted the scaremongering. So I bought it anyway, brazenly ignoring the warnings.

The computer (an HP Pavilion a6010n running Vista Home Premium) came with a measly 1GB of RAM, which was less than I was using with WinXP, so I took advantage of a special Fry's was running and preemptively bought an extra 4GB. I knew I'd also have to get a new video card, since the onboard graphics would be insufficient for my purposes, but I decided to wait until I'd had a chance to try it out.

So I set it up, and spent the next few days getting acquainted with the new OS, adjusting settings to my liking, and deleting all the unnecessary bundled crap new computers always come with, like trial versions of MS Office (OpenOffice does the job well enough, and it's free), demos of games, dialup provider signups, etc. Also proceeded to install all of my most used software and utilities, especially with an eye for any possible problems or incompatibilities. Everything ran fine. The graphics were slow, as expected, so I went shopping shortly thereafter for a graphics card that's more than I need at present, which will hopefully last a good while. I went with a DirectX 10 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS.

Next step was to get my data from my old computer onto the new one. So I stuck my old hard drive in as a slave. I knew I'd quickly regret having to stick with IDE for the last hard drive I bought, since the old machine didn't support SATA, and sure enough, this motherboard only had 1 IDE controller port, which meant that I could only add 1 of my old drives, while leaving in the also-IDE DVD burner. Not too important, since this computer comes with a generous 290GB drive (actually somewhere around 300, but there's the usual recovery partition taking up about 8GB. I'll probably end up repartitioning it eventually to reclaim that space).

While I had my new computer's guts torn out, probably perplexing Richard when he happened by to see me operating on the thing, I also swapped the power supply for the higher wattage one in my old computer (also an after-market addition) to better accomodate the additional drive and the power-hungry video card.

It took a number of hours to copy all the data from the old drive to the new into a temporary folder to let me sort it all out as I have time. I began by copying over all my e-mail and Firefox settings and bookmarks and the preferences and game saves from any other software I needed. The rest I'll work on gradually.

The next day I removed that drive and installed my larger storage drive which I intend to leave in there. I'll eventually patch up my old computer, get it running again, and use it as my file server, retiring the older computer currently occupying that space.

So far, everything has migrated fine. All my data is intact, and every program and game I've tried has run fine. Some of it I didn't even need to reinstall, just copy the program folder from the old computer into its new permanent place.

The computer connected to the network automatically of course; internet was no trouble. But I wasn't able to see my file server. It took several more hours of research and experiment to determine it was the fault of the Norton Internet Security that came with the computer, blocking all file sharing access, both incoming and outgoing. I set up some trusted identities and computers, and it was all fine.

There are a few things I still need to get used to and try out, like the new method of searching it uses. My old system of CD and DVD indexing still works with this version, but I might be able to use it to search faster and more efficiently, because the new search supports booleans. There are several web pages devoted to the new search system that I still need to digest.

Some things in the interface are slowing me down, though, like the "smooth scrolling" in the file windows that doesn't turn off even though I ticked the box that says it turns it off. That, and the "classic folders" that doesn't seem to work either. I'm waiting for an official TweakUI for Vista that'll allow me to do that and the other things I liked to do in XP and previous versions.

And Favourites isn't in the drive windows anymore. In previous versions, it existed in both IE and Windows Explorer, because they were essentially the same thing. Since I use Firefox, not IE, I was using my Favourites folder for links to my most frequently used folders. Just be in such a folder, pick "add folder to favourites" in the Favourites menu, and that folder would be instantly accessible from any drive window I happened to be in, or right from the Start menu. In Vista, it seems they've decided it should only be in IE. Not even keyboard shortcuts will conjure it in a drive window. It still exists in the Start menu if you enable that option, but it behaves differently than it did before.

Also, the links in the right-hand panel of the Start menu (or is it called a Windows Logo menu now?) no longer have icons beside them -- they're just plain text now. Those icons were useful to more quickly locate the option I wanted. And I can't find any way to restore them. The icons exist, I know this because if you hover over the text links, the icon slowly fades in to replace the user avatar at the top of the menu. Very useful, Microsoft. Not.

These interface annoyances I predict will either be resolved through tweaking software over time, or I'll adapt to the quirks, or find new ways of accomplishing my tasks efficiently in the new OS. All in all, my verdict is that all the scaremongering and rumours about Vista that I've heard have been either entirely baseless, or easily resolved.

Contest entry

A little cross-blogging here, since I also posted this on the main WR site, but hey. For fun and practise, I did this very short animation for a small contest. I call it "How Not to Pass Through Airport Security: Righteous Indignation", in keeping with my more recent propensity for long titles. The audio is from the movie Penn & Teller Get Killed. (I recommend clicking that little "full screen" button for it.)

Sad news

I found out about this when posting a casting call on the Voice Acting Alliance board. Tony Jay -- prolific, extraordinary, well-respected voice actor, has died. Sources say he had surgery in April to remove a tumor from his lung, and never recovered from it. My reaction was first a strangled, enlongated "NO!" and then a quick check with other sources to confirm it. I was very upset.

I knew Tony Jay as Megabyte from ReBoot, before I knew the actor's name. He brought a lot to that role, and really stood out. The next time I recognised his voice in something, I took note of his name. I liked his voice so much, I started imitating him, doing Tony Jay impressions along with my Kermit the Frog and Worf impressions. Since then, I've noticed him as Shere Khan in the Jungle Book 2, the Administrator in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the storybook narrator in Treasure Planet, and the protocol-obsessed fiancé of Lwaxana Troi in a Star Trek episode, where you actually get to see the man himself. On that latter occasion, when I was pointing him out to my roommate Tom at the time, Tom said he knew him as Virgil in Mighty Max. With Tony Jay's long list of works, it's hard to imagine any English speaker who grew up on cartoons and video games not to have heard his acting.

It had been my goal to become successful enough to eventually hire Tony Jay to act in one of my animations, and regrettably I have failed in that goal. It only reinforces my feeling that has been growing clearer and clearer in recent years, that if there is someone you respect or admire, you should make an effort to see them, meet them, let them know what they mean to you, before it's too late.

It's "poseur".

While I'm on the subject of abuses of the English language, here's another thing that has gotten my goat for a long time, but I've never written about publicly. If you're describing someone who pretends to be something he or she is not, the word is "poseur", not "poser". Compare the two definitions with the links provided (check both definitions of "poser" you'll find there) -- neither of them apply.

Yes, they are pronounced essentially the same way in English, and yes the etymology of the word "poseur" is the same as that of "poser," but there is a reason we have both words in English: so that we can be specific and exact when we speak. If you say one thing when you mean another, it should be from wit, not ignorance.

Vault, son of Surge

I am someone who loved the late lamented Surge. I became acquainted with it almost immediately before its discontinuation around 2000-2001, at the house of my friend Brendan. Thereafter I bought several cases of it, perhaps even the last cases in the area, because for several months afterward, I saw no more coming in, even after I asked about it at the store. While visiting Brendan's house around this time, I was surprised to find he had a 12-pack of Surge left, and he graciously shared it with me, even after I told him I was unable to find it anymore. He believed it could still be obtained through ThinkGeek.com, and maybe it could at the time, but soon enough, it was all gone, and I later learnt it had been discontinued.

Other drinks I loved which were discontinued include 3 drinks from Sobe: Wisdom, Karma, and Zen Blend. The first two may have been discontinued for a good reason, as they contained St John's Wort, which may not be the best thing to put in drinks. But Zen Blend was a wonderful blend of several kinds of tea, 3 or 4 kinds of ginseng, and several fruit juices. It became harder to find, and eventually vanished, only to be resurrected with a changed recipe a year later or so. It wasn't as good, had far fewer ingredients, but I took it anyway. I was only able to find it at one small gas station about 2 hours' drive away. I stocked up whenever I happened to be passing by that way, but soon enough it was gone from there, too. I still have a single bottle of the original blend, which I have the semi-joking fantasy of replicating someday when we have access to molecular or chemical samplers that can reconstruct a substance from a sample. If it hasn't horribly spoiled by then. I have no idea of the shelf life of this sort of drink.

Anyway, I finally tried Vault. Well, it was only released nationally 5 months ago, and may not have shown up here until last month. I know I'm the only one on the Frappr map in the Central Valley. But last year I was in Virginia, which was test marketing it at the time. Just never got to try it until now.

I admit, my memory of the taste of Surge is rather cloudy, but Vault pleases my palate quite nicely. I think it's a worthy replacement, though perhaps it wasn't necessary to increase the amount of caffeine. I think it's second only to Jolt in this recipe, while Surge was below Mountain Dew (another favourite of mine). At any rate, my taste result was that yes, I accept Vault in place of Surge, and after finishing the bottle, my opinion remains the same. I'll be getting more. In fact, if I had a Vault T-shirt, I'd wear it proudly to spread the word of our new saviour.

It's BATED breath!

I don't know if it's coincidence, or if this phrase has been used in some popular media recently, but I've seen several people use the phrase "waiting with bated breath," except they spell it "baited," which doesn't make any sense. The phrase is "bated breath", as in "held breath." Look it up here. More examples: I'm holding my breath in anticipation; don't hold your breath waiting. It actually means something, when spelled correctly. What would "baited breath" mean? You're putting bait in your mouth and blowing? Merriam-Websters is your friend.

Another supermarket rant

One of the reasons I go by "the Touched" is because people have always had a hell of a time pronouncing my last name (or spelling it, if they hear it pronounced). But some places have this irritating policy of addressing their customers by last name whether we like it or not.

Safeway is the culprit in this case, because their method of doing it is especially egregious. Picture the transaction, me at the cashier. The groceries are all passed through, and I've paid. I use a Safeway club card for extra savings, which prints my name on the receipt. Yes, I could probably evade this issue by paying more and not using the club card, but hey.

So this is what happens every time: after the transaction is complete, and my receipt prints out, instead of handing it to me so I can go on my merry way, the cashier holds it back from me, squints at it, and demands that I pronounce my name for her, so that she can repeat it back to me. And for some reason, even the times when I state in advance "Don't try to pronounce my last name" or "Address me by my first name," they either ignore me, don't understand what I'm saying, or forget. This is another case of company policies Wasting My Time, and annoying me with the name thing at the same time.

That's the second, lesser annoyance. It's one of my little eccentricities. I think shopping should be a relatively anonymous activity. I know the company thinks it's some kind of 50's-era "respect" to address the customer by his last name, and pretend they know him. But to me, it doesn't matter if I'm buying a sack of potatoes or a box of condoms -- you shouldn't act like you know me.

So don't hold my receipt hostage to read it and stumble over the name issue when I want to be heading home. Knock off this policy and hand over my goods. But if you must call me by name, just call me Shawn, for the love of mike. It's 1 syllable, and easy to pronounce, and I can get out of the bloody store that much faster.

Richard Williams' "The Animator's Survival Kit"

I've been hanging around the 10 Second Club lately, and everyone has been recommending this book, The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. I already own Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation and Shamus Culhane's Animation From Script to Screen, and I've read numerous other books on animation that I recommend whenever anyone asks, but I had to see why this book comes recommended so highly, so I checked it out from the library.

It's a great book. I've learnt new things, and been reminded of things I'd forgotten. His writing is clear, instructive, and doesn't get muddled down too much in archaic or obsolete terminology or methods. An old-school animator who has a clear love for his animation mentors, masters of the art who are no longer living, Williams acknowledges and embraces the modern ways of doing things. And of course the principles and tips are universal to any animation medium, whether modern or old-fashioned.

There is a large and detailed section on how to animate a walk. Preston Blair showed many different walk and run cycles in his book, but Williams doesn't just show you how, he shows you why. This book has given me an understanding of walks that I didn't get from Preston Blair, or even from having animated many walks in my own experience!

Anyway, it looks very useful, and I think I need to get my own copy. I probably won't get rid of my Preston Blair book, but I don't think I'll have much occasion to refer to it anymore.

Wildly inconsistent Pepsi prices

A couple of days ago I was thirsty, so I went to the nearest convenience store with my X-treme Gulp 52-oz insulated beverage mug, and filled it with Pepsi for about 99¢. Personally, I was expecting to pay less for a refill, especially since 52 oz is around 1.5L, and a 2L bottle of Pepsi cost 89¢ at the store last time I was there. So today I went to the store, and found that 2L Pepsi was on sale for 78¢, so I bought 2 of them. At the register, I noticed in the little refrigerated section they had some 20-oz bottles of Pepsi. Now, I've long known that 1L bottles of soda generally are priced nonsensically higher than 2L bottles, but the 20-oz bottles are much smaller -- only 0.6L...and yet they were selling these 0.6L bottles of Pepsi for $1.80, in the same store where they were selling 2L bottles for 78¢. I got 4L of Pepsi for less than the cost of 0.6L.

It has to be the refrigeration. I never see 2L bottles in the refrigerated section. So the extra cost must be because it's cold. Of course, this doesn't explain how sometimes I see Dasani or Aqua Vita being sold for more than the same size of Pepsi or Coke. It's the same filtered water as they use in their sodas, just without the syrup and carbonation -- and they price it higher for this.

V For Vendetta (the graphic novel, not the movie)

I just finished reading the graphic novel yesterday. If you like dystopian fiction where there's no real "hero", and you know who Guy Fawkes is even if you're not British, then you ought to read this novel.

As for the movie...I ought to have learnt my lesson about seeing movies someone adapted from an Alan Moore comic, after The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was an excellent set of graphic novels made into a crappy movie, and my friend Taliesin says the same of From Hell. Still, though I've not yet seen the V For Vendetta movie, something tells me I probably will. I know they totally changed the ending, but I was surprised to see characters listed in the cast list on IMDb that I expected would have to have been cut. This is a long graphic novel -- there's no doubt they had to condense it. So I'm curious about what they did cut.

But being the Wachowski Brothers, I'm expecting they'll be emphasising V's superhuman quickness in a fight -- which, while it certainly was there, and was pointed out many times, it was definitely not the focus of the story. Even more supernatural than his speed was V's ability to plan for every tiny detail in his complex plan for revolution, and his ability to carry it out with surgical precision, all the while quoting from various works of culture.

So far, I've enjoyed everything I've read from Alan Moore, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman's not so much a writer, as he is a collector and reteller of fairy tales and legends, and a weaver of atmosphere. As far as plot, pacing, and characterisation goes, his writing is weak. Much like Dan Brown's not so much a fiction writer, as he is a composer of essays on some neat ideas, and a writer of travel guides. Hmm, I could keep adding to this, but I think I'll expand on this and some others in a later entry I'll call "Writers Who Increasingly Piss Me Off the More I Read From Them."

Dr Who

Just so there's no repeat of the Shaun of the Dead thing from a few years ago, since I see last year's Dr Who series is about to be shown in the US, let me just say in advance that it's a great show, and you'll probably like it. I anticipate a great big wave of new Dr Who fans who have never known about it before. I saw the whole season in mid-2005 when it was airing originally, and it's much better than the older seasons. Better budget, more dramatic, less corny. I thought the new regeneration of the Doctor was a great choice, despite his short haircut and rather normal clothes. There's still corn and cheese in the series, but in a fun way, so enjoy, all!

Suggestions for corporate voice mail

Businesses: If you want to keep me, the customer, happy, consider these suggestions. They all really boil down to the same thing -- speed it up. But here are some specifics.

1. Talk faster.
2. Do not inform me to listen carefully as your menu has changed. If this is the first time I'm calling, as it usually is, then I've never heard your menu options before, let alone developed a habit of punching in numbers in advance. And if I'm a returning customer doing so, then I'll easily find out your menu has changed when I find myself listening to more questions from the wrong area, and I'll just try again. Better to waste the time of an occasional instance like that than to waste everyone's time every single time they call.
3. Do not include useless extra submenus that have only one option ("press 1"). Just pass through to the meat of the issue.
4. Do not entreat me to visit your web site. If I'm calling you, it's usually because I already tried your web site and something wasn't working correctly. And you irritate me more and more the longer your web address is, pausing after every dot and slash, after every careful and slowly-enunciated word (or worse, spelling) in the URL.

Sure, there's more, but these are the only things annoying me right now.

New passport review

Well, since I'm going to Québec again on the 19th, I ordered a new passport. I had one from my trip to Japan some time ago, but it expired since then. So I got the new photos taken at Kinko's...they used a digital camera and I ended up with essentially a colour printout of a couple of pictures. The quality wasn't that great, but I guess most people are used to bad passport pictures. My last one was pretty good, so I guess I had higher expectations.

Well, I paid the extra fee for expedited service and express mail return delivery, so it cost me about twice as much as it would have if I'd had the money to do it earlier. The service was actually very prompt and without trouble, to my surprise. After my trouble at the DMV in getting a replacement driver license all thanks to their increased "security", the replacement passport was very straightforward. Took only about a week, even though they said it would take 2 weeks. I received my new passport 2 days after seeing on my online banking that they'd cashed the check. Happily, they also returned my old passport (cancelled with a stamp and 2 holes punched in it), so I still have that memento of my travels.

So, the new passport style...well, it's prettier with all the colours and shiny seal on the main page, and the font is better than before, but the cover material is thinner than the previous one. Also, the photo is not one of the two I sent in. It's clearly been scanned and re-printed on the page with the rest of the information, and the contrast is harsher and the colours are uglier. Half of my face is stark white. Why did they require I send 2 pictures if they weren't going to use one of them for the passport itself, like they did before?

Well, that's my only real gripe about it. I notice that the new passport has 6 pages of general information before the visa marks start, where the previous one had only 3. The rest of the pages are decorated with bluish watermarks of all the state seals, different on each page. A nice design decision, and probably good for anti-counterfeiting purposes, too.

Very specialised humour

I don't expect most people to get this, because it's in German and it's along the lines of Spamusement! humour, but I found it hilarious, and I decided to share it. A little background info: I had written down a line from a song that I was having trouble remembering, from Melotron's Manchmal. The line is:


So, a few days later, Martha found this notepad on my desk, and she drew a little cartoon for it to caption:

LOL! What more is there to say?

GTA: San Andreas, the "Hot Coffee" mod

It's sort of old news now, but I'm very disturbed by the huge disaster that's been made over the Hot Coffee mod that hacks GTA: San Andreas to allow the player to execute code that was otherwise inaccessible, to allow the character CJ to have sex with his girlfriend. Unlike some people who are quick to judge things that they haven't bothered to actually try out, I've played the game, in depth. And an amazing game it is. It has broken the record for PS2 game sales, and it well deserves that record.

The game is meant for adult audiences -- it's rated M, which means no one under 17 may buy it. I haven't watched any gangster movies other than Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill -- I assume Boys In the Hood would be a better comparison if I had seen it, but the level of grittiness (violence and language-wise) seems on par with those two movies. As gritty as they were, they were rated R, not NC-17, and certainly not X, which is the equivalent revised rating they've given GTA: San Andreas. Setting aside for the moment that you cannot see the sex in the game without hacking it, let me describe how the sex is portrayed:

The sex occurs between CJ and a girlfriend only after many dates where we see them smiling, laughing, holding hands, and kissing in the cinematics that play after successful dates. CJ must wait for her to offer the sex, after he has been dating her for a while and been treating her well. He cannot force it on her. It is entirely consensual and positive, and an entirely believable thing for a happy couple to be doing.

You see no penis, no vagina, no penetration, no closeups, no sound effects other than an occasional moan from the girlfriend if you're doing well. A movie with this content would get no more than an R rating.

Aside from the fact that there is no way to access the sex in the normally-played game, it is evident that Rockstar decided not to use it and left this code unfinished, because CJ is entirely clothed during the sex, and there is no music in the background.

Movie directors never get this kind of outrageous attention when they leave a few scenes on the cutting room floor to achieve a lighter rating. That is exactly what game producer Rockstar did -- they edited out a game feature. A piece of software is not as easily edited as a movie. Removing chunks of code can be tricky and if it's not done very carefully, it can cause the whole thing to become unstable. They were well within their rights to lock it away, unused like a vestigal organ. If someone found a way to make it work again, that is not Rockstar's fault. Indeed, their user license expressly forbids the kind of reverse-engineering required to have done this.

I am further disturbed by a seeming inability of the news media to understand the reality of the situation. Time and again I see people reporting that Rockstar first denied creating the Hot Coffee content, then changed their story. I read their statement, and they did nothing of the sort. They blamed the hacker for doing what was forbidden, reverse-engineering the game, to create the mod that allowed players to see this abandoned code. They didn't say the hacker created the content of the Hot Coffee mini-game, they just said in a carefully worded statement that the sex was not a part of the finished game, as they released it. I quote: "...the 'hot coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse engineering of the game's source code". Get it right, media people. You're doing them more harm than good. They are the victims here.

"The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it's not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc," also said the spokesman. Similarly, another lesser-known mod for this game allows players to re-enable a skateboard into the game. Rockstar had planned to include skateboard riding, but abandoned that code, too, yet vestiges of it are still in the code. And in the same way, a player will never see the skateboard unless it is hacked back into the game like Hot Coffee was. Even then, the skateboard is even less finished than Hot Coffee, and even with the mod, you will not be able to ride the skateboard, because Rockstar just never got that far into the programming before abandoning it.

Despite how some people make it out, this game is not nonstop mindless violence and sex. It has a solid, realistic story with excellent scripting, well-respected actors such as Samuel L. Jackson playing the characters (see the IMDB listing for more big names), and a boatload of non-violent activities to pursue. You do not have to go around shooting people (which is exactly what you have to do in most other first person video games). In this game, it is the choice of the player. GTA is primarily a driving game, and you don't even need to carjack people's cars to go for a drive. There are plenty of unoccupied cars and other vehicles available to drive. Here are some of the more "inoffensive" activities available:

• Playing basketball: Shoot hoops solo, trying to make baskets from different areas on the court. Just go to the court and pick up the basketball to start playing.
• Playing billiards: A full-featured, very fun (if you like playing pool) pool game played against a computer opponent or another player. Realistic billiard ball physics, different viewing angles, and a helper for difficult angles. Just go to the local pub down the street and talk to the guy standing by the pool table to start playing.
• Playing video games: Yes, within the game you can play other games. There are 3 or 4 different 90s-style arcade games at various locations in the game world.
• Bicycle delivery: Quite fun and challenging. Deliver packages from a food mart to various locations all over town, within the time limit. You have to deliver more and to more widely scattered locations as levels progress.
• Taxi service: A lot like the game Crazy Taxi. Pick up passengers and get them to their destination within the time limit. Bonuses for speed and the levels get progressively more challenging. Remember, although you can drive like a maniac, you are punished for hitting pedestrians or other things -- hitting pedestrians will make the police start chasing you and you could end up busted and lose all of your items and some of your money. Similarly, hitting other things and damaging your car too much can end the taxi mission, or make it blow up and you'll end up in the hospital, which also makes you lose all your items and some money. The goal of driving is to drive skillfuly, avoiding collisions with anything.
• Paramedic: Injured people need your help! Pick up people in an ambulance and get them to the hospital on time. Drive carefully, or they might die!
• Firefighter: Extinguish fires across town in a fire truck.
• Vigilante: Assist the police in chasing down dangerous criminals.
• BMX challenge: Ride your bike, doing trick jumps and riding up and down ramps and half-pipes to catch all of the rings throughout the bike park, within the time limit.
• Triathlon: Swimming, then running, then...I don't know, because my stamina wasn't high enough to get further than that.
  
• Boxing and martial arts matches: Available at the various city gyms.
• Dancing: DDR-style arrow-based dancing moves.
• Lowrider bouncing competition: Arrow-based just like the dancing, but you're bouncing your lowrider's hydraulics to the arrow beats.
• Exploring: The game world is huge and detailed. Just exploring the scenery, the cities and the wide and varied countryside is a pleasure in itself. But there are also specific exploration-related activities you can pursue:

Collecting oysters: There are 50 valuable oysters to be found underwater all over the state, for those who would like the challenge of finding them all.

Collecting horseshoes: There are 50 horseshoes scattered throughout one of the cities to find as a scavenger hunt.

Graffiti: There are 100 gang tags on walls throughout one of the cities that the player can cover up with a spraypaint can.

Photography: There are 50 particularly scenic locations that the player can find and photograph for another bonus.

Unique jumps: There are 70 ramps throughout the state which will give you a bonus if you find them and jump them in a car or bike.

• Just going for a drive: Cruise downtown with the radio on your favourite early 90s station (there are quite a few to choose from, even though the amount of content seems to be on the slim side) or fire up your own custom folder of mp3s interspersed with 90s DJ chatter and amusing fake commercials. Or drive along the coastal highway. Turn on some thumping bass and cruise your hydraulic-bouncing lowrider down the inner city streets. Drive through rural country roads and watch the farms go by while listening to country music if you prefer.
  
• Dating: The dating is a whole game in itself. Meet certain girls, dress up or work out in the gym to impress them (they all have different tastes), bring flowers, take them to restaurants or out dancing, or various other activities (also based on their tastes). Personally, I think the Hot Coffee mod is a welcome and challenging addition to the dating portion of the game, but you still have the option of declining to go inside for "coffee", if you so desire. Keep the girls happy by giving them plenty of attention and dating them often, or your relationship status will go down.
• Stadium racecar driving: Do laps around a racetrack with a bunch of computer opponent cars, with an announcer and a cheering crowd.
• Attending flight school: You get your pilot license this way, allowing you to legitimately fly planes in the game.
• Plane and helicopter flying: For fun, for transportation, or for challenging race and checkpoint missions.
• Parachuting
• Base jumping
• Horse racing
• Various full-featured casino games: Including video poker, blackjack, roulette, slot machines. and wheel of fortune.
  

This is nowhere near all of the non-violent things you can do. This is what I've found after exploring less than 1/3 of the locations in the game. I haven't even mentioned the ability to go clothes shopping at the several different kinds of clothes shops and getting different styles of haircuts, customising your cars at auto shops, etc. There is much, much more to do, in addition to the more gangster-oriented storyline missions. This game is literally dozens of games in one; scores of games, even. An incredible value.

Rockstar deserves awards, accolades, and lots of money for this game, not the huge costs of recalling discs, carefully editing the game code to remove the already-censored sexual content in an already adult-rated game, being careful to keep the software stable -- and they certainly don't deserve a Federal Trade Commission investigation.

And for reason's sake, politicians, shut the hell up about "the children". The game is for adults. I'm an adult, and I want to play the goddamned game. Stop trying to turn the whole world into a nursery.

People I can do without:

Okay, computer. Time for an actual rant. After all, that's what title says. And this one's about a particular breed of Newgrounds user. This is the type who thinks it's all about him.

Here's the thing. My personal creative works are not designed with a mass market appeal in mind. Yes, some people flame me for my art style, not because of the technical skill, but because in their minds I'm just trying to cash in on the recent popularity of anime. Never mind the fact that I've been drawing anime-style since the mid-1980s, long before the recent surge in anime's popularity, even before most of these people had been born, and that my strongest influences are a wide range of artists that even many hardcore anime fans have never heard of. Ebi Fry, anyone? Ramiya Ryo? Amagi Kei?

But that's not the main rant. The type I'm talking about is the type who ignores my descriptions of what audience one of my works is intended for, and insists on watching it himself -- only to angrily complain about the fact that he doesn't understand it. Indeed, many flames amount to "I don't understand the point, therefore there is no point."

First taking as an example the Pink Lemonade Valentine's Day card: It is obvious that this card was intended for lesbian women to send to their loved ones on Valentine's Day. How could anyone take it any other way? Yet, time after time I got reviews from guys saying "I can't send that to my girlfriend -- she'd hit me!" Well, that's because it's not meant for you, genius. I even got such complaints after I spelled out in clear language in the description who the intended audience is.

The second, and more major example is Cutethulhu, recently resurrected in Newgrounds consciousness thanks to it being featured on the front page as part of a promotion for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival contest (which incidentally I don't think Cutethulhu can enter, since it's already been shown there at least once).

I stated very clearly in its description that it was not meant for a wide audience, and that only literary-minded people (specifically fans of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft) would get it. Incredibly, a statistically significant number of angry people were of the harshly-worded opinion that I should write stories that everyone can understand. That is, I should not give my intended crowd the specific material that they can appreciate -- that which is lacking in mass entertainment in general. Why are Hollywood movies so trite and cliché, you may ask? I believe it's precisely because of this attitude.

As Joel Hodgson said regarding MST3K, "The right people will get this." That is the kind of writing that I applaud. No pandering to the masses, but being true to oneself. I write for my sort of people. People who think like me, and appreciate the things I appreciate. In my opinion, there is not enough entertainment for people like me -- and it's clear from the enthusiasm of the many positive reviews that there are plenty of people like me who feel the same way. They -- you, if you're reading this -- are my audience. As for anyone else...my analogy went like this: If I'm performing a rock concert, should a classical music magazine review it? I would say not.

And yet even though I take pains to ensure that viewers are aware what my work is like, there are people who actively seek it out for the express purpose of loudly complaining and insulting it, as if they can't stand the idea that other people like what they hate. This is akin to someone who hates a particular standup comedian (let's say George Carlin) going and attending every George Carlin show in the area, just so he can heckle and raise a fuss. This is sad. Such people's insults have no bite, no weight, because they are simply irrelevant.

And the right audience will understand that.