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Alright, I've had it with the game now! My 30+ hours of progress on this campaign is now officially ruined, as I am stuck as a vampire, due to one more wonderful bug.
For those of you who have played, creating the cure to vampirism requires a few things:
- Argonian Blood
- 2 shoots of Bloodgrass
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 5 leaves of Nightshade
- Ashes of a powerful vampire
I had them all collected today, and I was finally ready to rid myself of the blasted disease, considering how inconvenient it is to take damage from sunlight.
Anyhow, I went to Melisande, the witch, to give her all the requested items, when I ran into a very frustrating and disappointing problem.
It seems the she is refusing to accept my Bloodgrass. It says you need 2, and I have 17! I did a bit of googling and discovered that this is a confirmed bug in both the PS3 and the PC. Apparently it has been patched on the PC, or at least can be fixed pretty easily. PS3 users do not have such an opportunity for a workaround.
Oh, and to disspell a few assumptions a lot of people have with this bug. No, it is not a result of how many Bloodgrass you have in your inventory. I've tried it with various amounts, and even thrown all of it away except two pieces. No, it doesn't matter if you get it from Oblivion; all of mine is taken from Oblivion and not in shops. No, it doesn't matter what order you give Melisande the ingredients in - I've tried it out of order, and down the list, and it is still a problem. No, it doesn't matter if the campaign is beat or not (at least for me here on the PS3 GOTY edition); I have not even come close to beating the main quest yet.
What this means?
The vampire cure quest is completely broken and cannot be finished, meaning my character will forever be stuck as a vampire and take damage from the sun, simply because of a bug.
Many of the users who experience this on the Game of the Year edition state that you can load up your gamesave on a copy of the original Oblivion, and complete the mission that way. This, sadly, is not an option for me, considering my copy of the original Oblivion is American and the GOTY edition is European (the game saves are not compatible). People recommend renting a copy, but I don't even know of a single place within 30 kilometers that rents games over here. 
So now, I am completely unmotivated from even touching my game anymore. What a waste of time!
It's sad to think about, but my first play through of Oblivion was pretty smooth, but each sequential time has uncovered numerous performance bugs, and many which prevent certain events from happening. I love the game like hell - heck, it's one of my favorite, but I am really deeply disappointed at how so many of these issues are so well known and remain unpatched.
Bethesda has gotten a lot of money out of me too over this game. I own*four* legitimate copies of the game (Xbox 360, PC, PS3, PS3 GOTY edition), plus I dished out some 300 additional kronor just to get Shivering Isles on Xbox 360. What I'm trying to say is, I've poured a lot of money into collecting this game, and frankly I am beginning to feel it wasn't worth it anymore. Games that don't get their issues fixed deserve to be pirated, not paid for.
It would be nice if Bethesda would patch their mistakes occasionally (and not just when it is a fun one, like the item-duplication), but again, this is just wishful thinking. The game is two years old, and even though loads of people still play it, it doesn't seem that Bethesda is too interested in making the experience as polished as possible.
Grrr...
Suddenly, I am a lot less interested in seeing Fallout 3. If Oblivion is any sign of the level of polish it will receive, then there are going to be a lot more frustrated gamers in the future.
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You know those electrified fly swatters that have become kinda popular lately? Well, I recently stumbled upon a "how to" at www.instructables.com which told me how to turn one into a personal electroshock weapon. If you want to see the guide go here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/cheap-taser-from-fly-trap-rocket--1500-volts-/
My model had a slightly different configuration inside, but the idea was basically the same. Instead of having two wires to snip, I had three to snip, so if you pick one up, just connect the two small wires to each other as if to make one.
The instructions are pretty self explanatory, and requires nothing more than breaking off the racket, cutting a few wires, and re-soldering the wires to a newly mounted plastic plate with two newly added metal spikes.
The end result is a 1500 volt (apparently, I can't confirm this because my multimeter has a 230 volt limit, and I don't want to risk mucking it up) device that will give a nice shock to anyone you use it on. Fortunately, there is a button on the side that has to be pressed as well, otherwise no current passes between the two connectors.
It's a very simple device to make if you have a soldering iron, couple of spikes (or nails) and one of the electric fly swatters.
I've tried out mine numerous times on myself. You get a heck of a shock from it, but then again I have a high pain threshold, so I get a kick out of repeating it on myself. On a funny side note, most of the time I've used it on myself you smell burning just after since it fries several hairs off my arm with a quick half second contact. 
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A big thanks for a stranger who visited my blog with the same problem in Oblivion (Game of the year edition) for the PS3.
A major bug, which seems to affect countless people, prevents you from ever completing the "Cure for vampirism" quest, as the witch will not accept your Bloodgrass.
No thanks to Bethesda (big, big surprise there... yeah right), the solution that was passed onto me works like a charm!
Basically, you create a save file outside of the witches house. Then you exit Oblivion to go to the PS3 menu system. A quick system language change to German, and load your game save back up again. Now, she finally accepts the bloodgrass, so all that is left is to resave, change the game back to English and play with it finally out of the way.
It worked perfectly for me on my first test of it (although I think I will have to redo it since I got busted buy guards and had to give up loads of $h!t I stole from people).
The solution where you had to use a NON-GOTY edition disc to complete the part and then go back to the GOTY edition didn't work for me, as my GOTY edition is PAL while the older version is NTSC/U.
So this solution really came in damn handy for me, because it didn't force me to buy yet another copy of the game simply because Bethesda doesn't give two shits about their fans after they got their money.
Here is a link that I was referred to, and I can vouch for its success:
http://oblivion.wikia.com/wiki/Vampire_Cure
Thanks again to the stranger who visited my blog and alerted me to the solution. To be honest, I didn't want to bring them down when they said they were contacting Bethesda because I knew it would be in vain. Although Bethesda makes some killer games, they don't seem to give a $h!t about their loyal audience who gives them the money that keeps their company alive. It's a sad state of affairs when a major game on a major console has a major bug affecting how you can play the game, while the developers do nothing for more than a year, and eventually have to turn to dedicated gamers out there to find wacky solutions.
In any event, it's finally done, and now I feel like I can go back to replaying the game when the mood strikes me!
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I've wanted to know how to do this for a long while, and since a situation came up where I wasn't happy with a table's structure, I decided I'd investigate to see how I could re-order some of the fields in the table to my liking.
How do you do it?
You DON'T!
This completely blew me away when I discovered mySQL has no such feature.
After googling a while, I discovered there are a number of people who are trying to accomplish the same thing, and most responses to such queries are greeted with narrow-minded answers saying, "why", "do this instead" and so forth.
Has it ever occurred to any of these people that perhaps you use and rely on phpmyadmin for creating and organizing your tables, so it's a matter of preference to have phpmyadmin sort them accordingly.
Yes, I know you can change the result ordering in a SELECT statement, but this is probably not only obvious to everyone else asking, but doesn't address the underlying issue of cleanliness and organization which would make a big difference in phpmyadmin.
So I guess the only alternative is to backup a field's data, drop the field, and recreate it in the desired location.
MySQL - that is lame. Really lame.
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I always like a challenge, but impossible mode on Dead Space wasn't really much of a challenge. There were a few parts that were difficult simply because of the game's mechanics, but it was never really challenging.
Anyhow, I just managed to complete the whole game on impossible... I wish I had looked up one of the achievements earlier because you get the Peng Treasure on the 11th level, and I have no save files there anymore. In fact, my closest save file is at the beginning of level 4, so I have to go through a lot of the game to get it again.
Why the hell isn't there a way to just replace a level???
I'm only missing two achievements on Dead Space... The one for the Peng Treasure, and the one for completing the asteroid part on level 4 with more than 50% of the shields remaining. Fortunately, I just arrived back on level 4 (on my third round of a Medium game), so I will play that part over and over until I get it. Then it's just a matter of time before getting to level 11 again so that I can get the Peng Treasure and complete the achievements for this game.
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I came up with a short list of funny video game facts that people may not know about on TT, so I figured I could post it here as well:
- The voice of Marcus Fenix from Gears of War is performed by John DiMaggio, who also does the voice of Bender for the Futurama animated series.
- The voice of President John Henry Eden from Fallout 3 is performed by Malcom McDowell, the same man who once played Alex in the classic, A Clockwork Orange.
- You could only carry 255 rupees in the original Legend of Zelda game because that is the maximum value of an unsigned 8 bit integer, and carrying more would have required more memory at a time which memory wasn't as expendable as it is today.
- The developers of Bioshock had considered using numerous other mechanisms or characters to retrieve the ADAM, instead of the Little Sisters. One suggestion was even using a two legged dog with rolling wheels.
- Several of the characters in Fable 2 are not only named after the Fable 2 staff, but designed to look like their real life counterparts.
- up, up, down, down, left, right, left right, b, a is known both as the Konami code and gamers code. While Contra was the game that gave popularity to the code, it actually first appeared in Gradius.
- In Kakiriko village in Zelda: A link to the past (SNES) a portrait of Mario appears on a wall inside a house.
- Chun-Li makes a cameo appearance in the first ever Breath Of Fire game by Capcom.
- The first gaming console to ship with an internal hard drive was the Sega Saturn.
- The original Donkey Kong game (which gave birth to "Jumpman", later renamed "Mario) was the first video game to feature a story behind the characters and what was going on.
- "Mario" was an Italian landlord for Miyamoto when he chose to give Nintendo's icon character a name.
- In Final Fantasy 7, a portrait of Hironobu Sakaguchi (the creator of Final Fantasy) appears on the wall inside of one of the houses in Rocket Town.
If you happen to know of any that you'd like to share, please leave a comment!
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Even before I ever experimented with hallucinogens, I've always been intrigued by this man. He went - overnight - from being one of the most respected names in psychology to one of the most hated people in America because of his ideals.
I guess I empathize so much to him because I, too, am often disliked for some of my "radical" ways of thinking, and overall attitude against the system.
Anyhow, I felt it was only suiting to create a portrait image dedicated to his memory and how he has changed the world and continues to change people's minds about the way we think about life, happiness, sanity, peace, government and beauty.
As you can see, this is a major work in progress... I've only gotten down the basics, and it will all be painted when I'm done with it (acrylic simply because this is all I am comfortable with now).
If you think it kinda resembles Medusa, that's okay, because me and Nero also got that thought!  But those are not snakes; they are Liberty Caps (Psilocybe Semilanceata - one of the most potent magic mushrooms).
I plan on painting in an upside down rainbow over his mouth as well, as to give off the impression of the rainbow surrounding his smile.
I'm thinking about using either swirled colors in the background, or some sort of prismatic effect, or maybe I can use the "fish effect" I always see when I am broadening my horizon.
I'm also thinking about throwing in some text in the background (faintly)... I'm going to go with either just one of his famous sayings or several of them in different places (such as: "turn on, tune in, drop out", or "in order to free your mind, you must go out of your head").
His birthday is coming up on October 22nd, so I am hoping to have it ready then, so I can send it to a few sites (maybe erowid too) so his spirit continues to live on.
In the words of Pink Floyd, "Shine on, you crazy diamond"!
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*sigh*
I know I've said this probably a hundred times, but I am constantly so disappointed with the Wii's graphic capabilities.
I picked up the Wii copy of Okami today, and just gone done with firing it up a bit now. Well, it didn't take more than a second of seeing the real time footage before I thought to myself, "what the hell is going on here?!?".
It's blurry. Reeeeeally blurry. Not just a little blurry. Not just you woke up and your eyes are playing tricks on you. I'm talking virtually snow storm blurry.
Look, I know the frigging Wii isn't high definition and that has an awful lot to do with it, but it can't just be the resolution. There are many things (menus and so forth) which are clear (well, for 480p standards, anyway), but all of the in-game footage is heavily blurred.
You can't even see Ammy's face properly at anytime. It's a blurred mess!!!
*sob*
Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed, because the Wii has taken one of my most loved games of all time, and chewed it up and spit it out as a shoddy impersonation of its original and intended nature.
I'm hoping this is just a first impression, but I know even if I change my mind, it will only be because I've gotten used to it.
I actually have the PS2 copy of Okami playing right now on the PS3 (since it's the European release, and my PS2 is American, but the PS3 is European). I also have the Wii version of Okami playing right now. I am at the same exact part in the game on both (the beginning) and I keep switching between the two channels (PS2 version, and Wii version). All I can say is there is a dramatic difference.
I can guarantee if I asked 100 people to tell me which one they think looks better not a single sap will say the Wii version.
And so I am brought back to the source of my gripe. How on earth was Nintendo able to get away with completely cheaping out of hardware inside the Wii, and how have they possibly been able to present this console as being in the same generation as the PS3 or Xbox 360?
(Look kids - you can throw your arms around and act like you're in the game! hehuhhh! Wow, a motion sensitive control will make me completely ignore the fact that they've thrown the engine of a motorized wheelchair under the hood of a Ferrari.)
Grrr...
It blows my mind, because I can't really think of a single Wii game that I thought could stand up against any original Xbox game. This really disappoints me, but doesn't really surprise me. I went into the game expecting a minor bummer, as I knew they had removed the canvas texture filter (supposedly for "performance" reasons - I don't even want to go there). But, I never expected the game to look as blurry as it does.
Has anyone else out there played both, or even had both running at the same time to do a comparison? Surely, I can't just be completely HD-spoiled..?
I just have a hard time understanding why a game released on a last-generation console looks superior to the same game running on a current (or "next") generation console.
I know, I know... There are other subtle differences at play here (such as the PS3 being connected via HDMI, and the Wii as component), but the fact of the matter isn't necessarily the resolution throwing me off (as the PS3 only upscales, it can't recreate the graphics as if they were natively HD). The Wii version is just very, very blurry.
Poor Okami. And poor Issun. The poor little bugger doesn't even look like he did anymore because he's so damn hard to see.
WOE
IS
ME
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You know things are getting worse when companies devise clever schemes to reap the benefits of tax-free marketing campaigns. The recently founded “non-profit” organization, PC Gaming Alliance, is a perfect example of just this. While on the outside it's purpose may come off as a welcome idea to the average, good-hearted gamer, the underlying truth of the matter may be far different than that.
First of all, what does it mean to be a non-profit organization. In technical terms it is when an organization does not seek to reap profits, and it's income is lesser than, or equal to, it's necessary finances needed in order to sustain itself. Obviously, there is a lot more to it than just that, and there are also numerous factors which serve as major beneficial incentives. For example, non-profit organizations have the opportunity to attain tax-exempt status. Another major advantage is that donations given to such an organization are often tax-refundable, and can be written off as charitable expenses.
So now, keeping this all in mind, what is the PC Gaming Alliance all about then? According to the organization's web site, the “PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to drive worldwide growth of PC gaming”. In other words, it's a “non-profit” organization who's purpose is to revitalize a sluggish market, thereby increasing growth in the PC hardware and software markets. Naive gamers might be conned into believing the organization is there to benefit them, yet how exactly this would be achieved remains unclear. Sociologically speaking, the organization has no direct benefit to society, and in no way constitutes an organization who's purpose is the people. On the other hand, there are a considerable number of groups who stand to directly benefit from such an structure, and those would just so happen to include share holders in corporations that produce software and hardware that PC gamers use. Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Dell, and Nvdia are several companies which would, no doubt, greatly benefit from resurrected PC gaming “growth”.
Then, who exactly is behind the PC Gaming Alliance? You probably already are aware of this, but sure enough it's the same companies; Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Dell, and Nvidia. That's not just a coincidence that the companies who have the most to gain from such a campaign are also the same companies behind the so-called non-profit organization.
So it seems companies are not only getting more and more clever, but that they are constantly using the systems in place to their advantage. Sure, you could easily argue that the PCGA is truly a non-profit organization since it won't actually profit itself. However, you'd have to be completely blind to ignore the fact that those who will benefit the most from the organization are also those who founded the organization itself.
Is this the beginning of the end, or is this possibly the “same old” to a greater degree? In any event, it seems as though if you play your cards right you can get away with free advertisement to boost your revenue. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that what's good for the PCGA is good for the companies behind it. Because donors to non-profit organizations can write off their contributions, in a sense it would mean that these same corporations can get away with free marketing by using a puppet organization to do their bidding. Because of the nature of how non-profit organizations are treated through the legal system, it could, and may, mean that other companies can easily jump on the bandwagon. Heck, if your business's sales are slumping, slap together a dummy organization that's purpose is to promote your industry, and voila: free marketing.
Excuse this jaded and skeptical gamer if my take on the whole situation doesn't sit too well with you, but the very idea of what appears to be going on doesn't sit very well with me. I love games, and I love the people who make them and make them possible. But that doesn't mean that I will treat those who's business's revolve around them with any sort of immunity. The PCGA appears to be nothing more than a highly decorated scam. By sugar-coating a concept gamers can eagerly eat up and embrace, most of us ignore the possibility that it isn't even setup for us. While it may be true that the PCGA will operate as a non-profit organization, all of the companies behind it will clearly profit directly as a result. I don't know about you, but that sounds to me to be a lot more like a well-planned charade than anything else. If it's only a matter of time before the PCGA's unquestionable, incentive for the gamers of the world becomes apparent, then maybe my doubts can be assuaged. Until then, I think it's best if we remain skeptical by calling their bluff.
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I am so frigging sick of this game by now.
It's been close to a year since I last touched the thing, actually. I played it for a week after it's release last Autumn, and it was quickly beaten. Since there wasn't a whole lot to do, and since I encountered several annoying bugs (one in particular with moving your family to a new house), and - more importantly - since Fallout 3 quickly came out, I haven't touched Fable 2 for about a year.
I know I know, that's kinda blasphemy when I've been preaching about how awesome the sequel to one of my favorite games would be, but well - I hadn't really anticipated many of the disappointing factors associated with the game (particularly its unpolished nature).
In any event I had been going through Fallout 3 again. I've been playing through the various expansion packs, and since I basically have completed them all now, I thought I could give Fable 2 another try.
I'm quickly regretting that I did.
When I first fired the game up, I got a sigh of relief seeing there was an update available for the game. I thought "wow, maybe they finally fixed up some of these bugs". Sadly, things have only gotten worse for me now, and I'm quickly wanting to smash the disc in, and write a big rant telling Peter Molyneux what I really think of this broken and half-assed "masterpiece" of his.
Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but here's the thing.
I've been TRYING to play a new game of Fable 2, but about 50% of the stuff I play doesn't get saved.
I tell it "save and quit" every f*cking time, and about 50% of the time it will save, and 50% of the time it won't save.
It never gives me an error when it "saves", but I have recently discovered that if I don't shut the system down right away and go back into the title screen of the game I get this nice big error (as seen in the screen shot).
After clicking the error away, I will no longer have the "Continue" option (acting as if all my saved games are gone), but if I exit the game and go to the dashboard, and then go back into the game, the "Continue" option is there again, though any progress I had been making in my game is NOT saved.
I am quickly regretting downloading this "patch" because from my experience so far, it's made the playing experience all that much worse (hard to imagine with the already considerable number of bugs present).
For the record, I don't even touch my damn system, which has a 120 GB hard disc (with over 85GB free). The system is not being bumped, moved or touched and I've never had a single issue with saving video, pictures, game saves or anything else EVER.
I even went into the dash board and removed about 20-25 game saves from Fallout 3, probably 5 demos, and all my videos.
Still, it happens about 50% of the time.
Needless to I've been playing less and less, and I'm about to stop playing it altogether now. After all, I mean, what the f*ck is the point of pumping a bunch of time into becoming wealthy or buying lots of property, or even completing missions, when the odds are that the next time you play you'll have just as good a chance having nothing saved as you will having your game saved.
Seriously. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
The fact that Fable 2 already has a number of glaring performance and design issues really suggests to me that this is NOT a hardware problem but a software problem with Fable 2. Further, the fact that the "Continue" option always disappears when seeing this error, and always re-appears when coming back into the game (without even shutting off the system) really seems to support the fact that something (else) is up with the game.
Normally I'd be willing to forgive the fact that the actual gameplay experience of Fable 2 was a lot more disappointing than I imagined it could have been, but with the compounding presence of so many darn performance issues, I'm finding myself being a lot less willing to forgive this game.
After seeing someone else created a thread for this on Lionhead's forums for Fable 2 technical issues, I thought I made my own to show them - "look, it's not just one person". Here is that thread I made:
http://community.lionhead.com/forums/thread/3416246.aspx
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I've come a really long way (financially) since yesterday in Fable 2. I've already probably doubled the number of properties I own, and have completely raked in butt loads of gold. I had more than 100,000 gold at one point today, but I spend it quickly by purchasing more houses (to rent out) or more shops.
I haven't been focusing much on the main story line, particularly because I heard you can beat it really quickly. Plus, it's all the little things you do on the side that make a game like Fable interesting and enjoyable.
I probably own around 30 different shops, houses or merchant stands so far, and I hope to even double that by tomorrow. I'm not sure if there is an achievement for wealth, but I suspect there is and hope to snag that really soon.
For a while there I was a big fatso... Eating lots of unhealthy foods to heal you also makes you nice and plump. I couldn't figure out how to exercise (if it's even possible) so I just switched to eating only things like celery and apples to get health and now I'm back to being skinny (in the game that is ).
I hate to say it, but the world doesn't feel very big at all. Actually, it feels incredibly tiny. I've been running around in the same one or two areas since they are my only real alternatives to keep me leveling up. I guess I had put too much faith in Lionhead into believing they would make this one huge, but it still feels extremely confined and limited. I've played the game for maybe 20-30 hours now and what I've seen would barely amount to one thousandth of the world in Oblivion (literally).
Oh well, it's still lots of fun to play. Call me a prejudice pessimist, but I would be very reluctant at this point to say it is the best RPG ever (which was, as many of you Fable fans know, a claim made by Peter Molyneux). Perhaps my mind will change, but I think it's going to take a lot for that to happen.
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I knew Firefox 3.5 did this when I originally downloaded it back on Ubuntu 9.04. Because of this, I stopped using Firefox 3.5 right away and went back to Firefox 3.
Today I went ahead and updated to Ubuntu 9.10, which comes with Firefox 3.5 as default.
Grrr.....
Damn is it f*cking annoying. What gives?!
My guess is it was done out of memory management, since there is no other practical reason for removing it.
I remember when I noticed this when switching from IE 5 to IE 5.5 (or was it IE 5.5 to IE 6?), and damn was it annoying then. Well, it was worse then with IE because Microsoft doesn't let you downgrade to go back.
In any event, it's frustrating and annoying as hell. Did the developers just decide, "hey, GUI cues aren't all that important"?
I know I'm not the only one, because a quick google on "firefox 3.5 hourglass" will return pages with lots of other angry folks.
Maybe it's just me, but they really made a hugely stupid mistake here. Implementing something that is going to make people more frustrated and a lot happier with the browsing experience isn't going to justify performance - if that was why it was removed.
Damn, Mozilla... come on and get this back already!
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They suck!
There, I said it.
Energy efficient light bulbs... everyone has heard the term, and probably most of us even have switched from our old energy wasting light bulbs to the newer "environmentally aware" cousins. Well, all of us have probably heard about just how "efficient" they are, while all of us have probably also wondered how true it can be when we see the obvious noticeable difference with our own eyes.
And if you're anything like me (distrusting everyone and everything around you), you may even begin to wonder if this is all some scam against every consumer worldwide, simply to hawk a new product at, and justify, and in fact encourage it, by stating it's good for the environment.
Yeah, I know, less energy being wasted is good for the environment, but you know what's even more effective than energy-bulbs? No bulbs at all!
If you understand the irony in that statement, then I think you are getting onto my point now...
You see, the term "efficiency" does not automatically assume something has been sacrificed. In fact, one could argue this isn't efficiency at all; just a sacrifice. For something to be "efficient" it needs to do all of (or in the sense here: both of) the various aspects surprisingly well. But "energy bulbs" don't.
Granted they consume significantly less energy; they also produce significantly less light.
Thus, one could argue nothing efficient is even going on. You're simply getting much less because you're putting less in. That's not efficiency; it's just a sacrifice.
I'm sure every single person who has used energy bulbs has thought to themselves one of the following:
1) wow, that took a little longer than I thought to turn on
2) doesn't that seem dimmer to you
3) how long does it take to reach its full effect
I performed an interesting test today to see if the claimed wattage effect of these energy bulbs was in fact what was claimed. From my testing, I've learned that energy bulbs simply do NOT produce anywhere near the same level of light as non-energy efficient bulbs do.
For my test I used one of those gadgets that tells you a plant's moisture level in the soil, it's PH level - and what's relevant here - the amount of light it receives. You could probably do this same experiment with various other gadgets and tools - it just needs a photon-detector, with a meter to understand what it finds.
In this experiment I used three different light bulbs:
- 60 Watt old-school bulb (day white / active)
- 60 Watt old-school bulb (relaxing / yellow)
- 11 Watt (claimed 60 Watt effect) energy efficient bulb
There was an incredible difference between the amount of light detected from the energy bulb and the non-energy bulbs. As I held the meter about 6 inches from the light bulb, the meter indicator would go as far to the right as it possibly could - when using the non-energy efficient bulbs. Actually, I was expecting a bit of a difference between the white light and the yellow light, but both of these bulbs produced nearly identical results.
The new, energy efficient bulb, yielded completely different results. For one, I made sure to leave the lamp on for a good minute before measuring (as we all know, energy bulbs can take a long time before they even reach their maximum effect). After a bit over a minute, I started measuring, and I was blown away, because it was like comparing an apple to an orange. When holding the light detector basically one inch from the light bulb, the meter's indicator was only 1/5 - 2/5 to the right, whereas with the old school bulbs it was as far to the right as the meter would allow.
So here's where I tie this whole stupid rant together... You can't expect people who have been accustomed to something for generations and generations, just to make a quick trade-in, for something which does not work as well. It's understandable for governments and social institutions to encourage and in fact, disallow the use of older technologies when newer ones are present that have all the angles addressed. Our current generation of energy efficient light bulbs are still nowhere near that point. They really seem like more of a trade-off than anything, which is not what they are portrayed to be. We are all told that they are just as effective, but I think anyone of us who have ever spent a good deal of time around these lights know that's a damn lie. If we are to fully make the transition from energy wasters to energy savers, then we need to focus on the how well it works, and not just the energy usage.
The light produced by energy bulbs is NOT equal to, or even in the same range of light produced by energy wasters. I love the environment, and I don't want us all to damn our future by using ineffective and obsolete technologies, but before we are to move forward with a technology, we need to ensure that we are not sacrificing something we had before that technology came along (namely: decent light). So please, let's not kid ourselves. We can do this if we really want to cut back on our energy consumption, but for the love of it all, can this nonsense that they are just as effective please cease now?
I've got high hopes for LEDs. After tinkering with them for a while, I suspect they may actually be far more efficient (because they consume little energy *AND* produce vibrant light ).
"Energy bulbs" only do one of those, and for that reason I can't call them efficient.
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