So Star Wars has been and gone
Whatever it was, and whatever it might still be, one can argue that Star Wars is finished now, for all intents and purposes. If you haven't seen Episode III by now, you are likely not a fan of Star Wars, and if you do go see it, it will likely because it's the least sucky film playing at the moment, or because you just feel like you should yet don't really care either way.

Now that we have finished the 30-year journey across probably 11 hours of cinema, we can look back and reflect on Star Wars as a whole. (Expanded Universe notwithstanding--you know, all the books and stuff that got extruded out of the Lucas Machine ever since 1977? Yeah, there are people who take it all seriously and it's been evolved into this massive, uber-continuity where lonely nerds go to great lengths to make sure all the causality is reinforced and that you don't wind up with things like Luke's uncle and aunt not recognizing R2 and C3P0 in New Hope when they clearly knew about them in Clones. Wait a second... For more about continuity, go HERE!)

But I both digress and perpetuate negative stereotypes at the same time. With all the hubbub about the "new" trilogy being complete, I thought it would be neat to go back and see the "original" trilogy and see if it really was all that. I haven't seen them in many years, after all.

Then I realized I had other things to do. Like make my way through Firefly and Samurai Jack Season 2, both of which kick your ass. Still the idea has merit, and after reading the review of Sith from the guy who made Parking Lot, I just might go ahead. Through that, I found the 50 Reasons Why Return Of The Jedi Sucks.

Go read it. I dare you. ESPECIALLY if you think that RotJ wasn't that bad, because those 50 reasons are all valid, although only for the original versions. Give the guy a break, he wrote it five years ago.

16. Unforgivable Dialogue
Threepio approaching Jabba's palace: "I have a bad feeling about this."

Han Solo, when confronted by Ewoks: "I have a bad feeling about this."

Leia, after releasing Solo from carbon freeze: "I gotta get you outta here."

Leia, after being freed from Jabba's chains: "We gotta get outta here."

Leia, after she and an Ewok are ambushed on Endor: "Let's get outta here."

With dialogue like this, it seems Lucas finally put that "million monkeys at a million typewriters" theory to the test.

Or,

5. Painful Lack of Innovation
When it comes to scavenging, Lucas could teach even the Jawas a thing or two. Jedi borrows from Wars on levels ranging from conceptual to minute. There's another opening scene with a Star Destroyer (though this time it isn't even permitted to finish its awesome crawl across the top of the screen). There's another Imperial stronghold to infiltrate, and another energy beam to turn off. And of course, there's another Death Star to blow up for the film's climax (though at least the Emperor had enough brains to plug up that pesky exhaust port).

Most of the creatures and droids seen on Tatooine in Wars make background appearances in Jabba's court-even Greedo's alive and well! (Okay, maybe it's a different Rodian. They all look the same to us.) Finally, little thought seems to have been given to developing or maturing any of the main characters in a realistic manner. Han and Threepio suffer most, coming across as catchphrase-spouting caricatures of their previous selves.

One can make the same lack of innovation comment about the sets and locations, as is mentioned in reason #8. In short, he's right.

Granted, some of these were fixed with the Special Editions, such as the Rancor fuzz, but the Special Edition/Original Edition debate is just a whole other ball of wax.

With all this in mind, I think this weekend might be a nice time to go back and watch A New Hope and Empire. I may just skip Jedi though...

Oh, and what did I think of Episode III? Basically the same thing most people think: as a Star Wars movie, it wasn't bad and certainly tops the first two. As cinema in general however, I only offer this as an answer.  ¶ 7:30 p.m. 0 comments

  Anger rising
This pisses me the fuck off. From an open letter to the almighty POTUS regarding the United States' actions in Columbia to stop the cocaine trade:

I work for a French NGO , "Tchendukua" whose goal is to recuperate land for the Kogi Indians living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia.

In 2000 we bought, La Luna, a land, with access to the sea, It was the first time since the Spanish invasion, the Kogis had a low land. They where so happy, full of hope.

At the end of June 2004, La Luna became an " Indigenous Reserve" , a protected area...

The Sierra is also one of the UNESCO's "Biosphere Reserves". Fifteen days later, on July 17th, a plane from Dyncorp passed only once to fumigate La Luna. That was enough to provoke a complete disaster. Some days ago, I saw the rushes of a second movie we have made on the Kogis. Now, La Luna is like some places in Asia after the tsunami... I could not believe it.

I'm all for taking down coke cartels. They are like despots, only can't be bothered to draw official country borders. This does not excuse the wanton destruction of land that is both protected and known to not have any drugs in it. The Dutch paid to have La Luna cleared of coca by hand. Forgive me for thinking that a search done by hand and with people might be more reliable than a blanket passover with noxious chemicals.

Condolezza Rice wants Colombia to change its laws and spray in National Parks such as La Macarena, El Catatumbo, La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, etc... To achieve that dirty job, a new aerial base for fumigation planes will be build, $125 million.

The fumigation of La Luna on July 17th 2004 was completely illegal.

In the Sierra, Kogis, Arsarios-Wiwas, Kankuamos and Arhuacos are starting to have health problems , especially children (see notes-page 14).

In Vietnam, after 45 years, Agent Orange is still active. The new poison cocktail is called Agent Green. If you take the ingredients one by one, it doesn't seem so dangerous. If you mix them, highly concentrated, it is a terrible weapon. The mixture is made with Monsanto Round Up Ultra, Cosmoflux 411F (illegal in the US), POEA and fusarium oxysporum EN-4.

And of course, we all know how awesome-tacular Agent Orange was. Hooray for chemically induced illness.

I just hope that it doesn't take the death of a culture to send a message and I sincerely hope that if that message gets sent, it doesn't fall onto deaf ears.  ¶ 8:39 p.m. 0 comments

  BLING.
I thought the blingy-est thing I have ever seen was possibly the PimpSP. Alas, I should have never thought the internet wouldn't outdo itself.

Because, y'know, nothing spells L-O-V-E like a titanium, jewel-encrusted dildo.  ¶ 7:08 p.m. 0 comments

  The Yeti and I agree
Or at least, I agree with him, since the total sum of any relationship between myself and Matt Baldwin is limited to my reading his website. This doesn't quite make me a "special fan" or anything like that. Still, I found myself nodding during his review of Hitchhiker's Guide. Nodding... a little TOO MUCH! Basically, I got a similar impression: yes, they left a lot out of or changed stuff from the books, but it just wouldn't work if they did a literal translation.

I remembered reading [the book] when the line "I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them" cropped up in the film. But instead of thinking "They've ruined a classic!' I found myself musing, "well, yeah -- the other way probably would have been too long." Blasphemy I know.

Which isn't to say that Hitchhiker's trademark silliness is completely missing -- it's there, but watered down and spread out. The movie intersperses bits from the book -- scenes lifted directly from the pages, guide entries, etc. -- with traditional motion picture fare, like action sequences and muted bits of exposition. It's as if they decided to just split the difference between Hitchhiker's outlandishness and Hollywood's reluctance to think outside the proverbial box. Granted, Hollywood gets the upper hand by the end, but up until then it works pretty well.

  ¶ 6:56 p.m. 0 comments

  The acronym OMFG just isn't enough
I think I've mentioned Spore, the new game Will Wright is making. In a word, it's SimEverything, and I want it so very, very badly. I did not know, however, just how badly this want is, until I saw the video of the demo.

Yes, registration is required, but trust me when I say that words are not enough to describe this game. You must see it to believe. Go now, and bow prostrate before the temple of Wright and his unholy game-making skills. Let this video be a warning for the pwning that this game will deliver unto you.  ¶ 11:02 p.m. 0 comments

  Remember the Citroen?
Step 1: Remember how cool Transformers are.

Step 2: If having not done so already, check out the Transformer Citroen.

Step 3: Tear eyes away from awesomely fantastic dancing car.

Step 4: Check out cool parody/tribute/homage using a junker Citroen.  ¶ 6:59 p.m. 0 comments

  GRRRRRRGLGLRLGRRRLGLLLGGLRRRR!
If I were a murloc, I would probably say that to you as a greeting. Of course, if I were a murloc, I would also be one of the most annoying monsters in a videogame ever. Ever. I cannot stress enough how much anger those bloody fishmen have caused me. Yeargh.

Still, the reason for this post is that there is not one, but DEUCE new podcasts for some listening enjoyment. I had originally planned for these puppies to be in time for Star Wars, on account of the Light/Dark sides of the Force and stuff. That idea rather fizzled, and I lay most of the blame on myself for deciding that the fun-but-still-a-little-tedious podcasting thing would be pre-empted in lieu of the always-amazing-all-the-time World of Warcraft. I seriously have no idea how some people can put that game on their computers at work and still do things that are for the company and not for their character. If I had WoW at work, I would be fired for not doing my job so many times over, my head would be spinning in true Blairsian motion. That is a term I just made up.

So yes: MUSIQUE!  ¶ 6:51 p.m. 0 comments

  Now this is a commercial
Advertisers tend to perpetuate the trend that they are lacking in Clue. The news I follow is constantly full to the brim about ad agencies that just don't understand that we are not captive audiences anymore, and that they will need to do something spectacular to get us to watch commercials. Anyone with a TiVo or VCR will fast-forward without any hesitation whatsoever, but will gladly pay to go see the Cannes Best Of Commercials show in the theater. The reason for this is that the Cannes ones are GOOD.

One of the commercials that hit big in the Cannes feature was the series for the Orange phone thing. I don't quite get what the product is, but I'm reasonably sure it's either a mobile phone or a cell carrier. Still, they were pretty good, with Spike Jonze, Carrie Fisher and Ron Schneider making appearances.

This one is Darth Vader, and man oh man is it great. I watched it twice in a row.  ¶ 6:46 p.m. 0 comments

  On Expositions Entertaining and Electronic.
E3 has been and gone for another year. As far as they go, this one was high on speculation and hype, and a little less on substance worthy of satiating one's gaming appetite. As far as gaming goes, there are a few gems that I'm looking forward to, notably Shadow of the Colossus, Spore and Prince of Persia 3, among others. Hopefully at least a few of these will be good, and we'll have yet another holiday game release frenzy that is totally awesome, yet mind-boggling in its enormity.

Still, all the focus for this E3 was on the new consoles. Microsoft has clearly decided to grab the bull by both the horns AND the balls, whole-handedly, with an iron gauntlet. They were the only ones with a console worth showing, and with software representative of what this new console will be doing. Sony managed to try and get some hype going with their picture of what the new PlayStation will look like, and that whole Killzone 2 attempt was nice, but totally lame once it got out that the video was pre-rendered. Nintendo managed to mumble something about revolutions and old games off to themselves in the corner, but nobody much took anything they did that didn't start with a Z- and end with -elda too seriously. (Oh, there was something about Nintendogs, but... no. Just no.)

It might sound like I'm firmly in the Microsoft camp when it comes to the new generation of games, and that probably sounds about right. They will be the first out the gate, and they have the best offering to date. Essentially, the ludicrously-named Xbox 360 will be a bizarre media PC/console hybrid, like the strange lovechild results of tech-geek slashfic. I mean, wireless internet, movies, music (with a nice light synthesizer) AND both new and backwards-compatible games? You sir, have something worthy of praise.

Sony's trumpeting about their teraflops is a concept too nebulous for me to grasp, not knowing quite what a single flop is, let alone a trillion of them. They're just now saying that they too will be a media center like the Xbox, but I see this as a last-ditch effort to scream out "Hey don't forget me! I made gaming cool back in the day!"

Nintendo is essentially not even an option for me. Yes, their backcatalogue of games for download sounds good, but I barely have time for the new games, let alone the ones from the days of yore that were either not good enough to catch my attention the first time, or that I have already played. That bit about the revolutionary open development thing, equally conductive to big developers or indies with only a big idea? That hope has been dashed on the rocks, thanks to a re-assessment of the vibe at the press conference, as well as a sober look at the N's past history with 3rd party developers.

So. Until something new comes out to blast Bill's box from the sky, Red Baron-style, I am firmly a Microserf when it comes to the next-generation games. Yes, I am most definitely perpetuating the downward, stagnating spiral that is threatening to choke the life out of the gaming industry, but I don't much care. If a revolution happens to videogames, it will come on the PC, riding like Gandalf at the end of the Two Towers, iridescent light shimmering from the horizon, but that's most definitely a wholely different rant.  ¶ 6:09 p.m. 0 comments

  Nintendo Revolutiona-wha?
So the Big N has dropped their bomb as to what is going to make their new system "revolutionary". First of all, this is what it looks like:

Basically, it's a tiny box. I like this, since it's unobtrusive, and the smaller the form factor, the more interesting places you can put it. Just look at what happened to the Mac Mini.

The revolution, however, is apparantly in the ability to play old games.

Eschewing the company's previous business ideas, the Revolution will be online-friendly and will support a broadband gaming service similar to that of Microsoft's Xbox Live. Its most significant contribution to online gaming will be the ability to download Nintendo's entire catalog of NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 console games. As for GameCube titles, they have the potential to be downloadable, though it's not clear whether the games will be saved to storage devices or memory cards.

Based on the reaction I've seen, a lot of people are going to be stoked about this, and I don't know why. This is not anything new--I was able to play SNES games on my Dreamcast for chrissake! While I think that Nintendo is definitely doing something great with this, I would hardly call the ability to play 20-year-old games "revolutionary", and I sincerely hope Nintendo has more up their sleeve, or they're going to be dead in the water when the next round of consoles and games show up.

So to recap, the Nintendo Revolution has:

• 20 years worth of games
  
• a nice, small package
  
• wireless controllers
  
• broadband support

It does not have:

• anything to make it more desirable than the competition, other than games you've already played

Once again, Nintendo is falling back on the "Hey! We're Nintendo! Anything we make is super-awesome!" platform, which is only delaying the inevitable. Yes, they have history, and yes, they do make a good game every year or so. I have nothing against Nintendo that way, but unless they can come up with something truly revolutionary, I suspect they'll be walking the same path Sega walked before long.   ¶ 6:36 p.m. 0 comments

  Don't Panic!
(I was planning on posting this on the 16th, but I didn't. So here it is now.)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a movie that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the material upon which it is based. This is not a bad thing for two reasons. First, a literal translation of the novels or radio series to film would simply not work. Both sources are too tangential, a tad aimless, and undeniably British, and these are qualities that work counter to the format of North American cinema. Second, every fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide already has a version of the film in their heads, and trying to outdo that version would simply fail--this is true of any adaptation anywhere.

With that in mind, (ie. knowing that what you will see in the theaters will not be expected) you would do well to go see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy right quick, since it happens to be a very good movie. It both contains all the essential bits of the story for those that haven't any prior knowledge about it, but at the same time, contains all kinds of little in-jokes and references to the books, mini-series and radio series which I just dig so much. For example, the music played during the very first Guide scene is the theme from the radio series. Whenever Ford swears in the film, he utters the word "Belgium". Zaphod's psychologist showing up on a background display with his line, "Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?" The mention of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Sure, they changed a bunch of things for the film. Some of the changes are good. I found Sam Rockwell's "lunatic cowboy" portrayal of Zaphod to be a nice change from the "self-absorbed beatnik" that always shows up in British dramatizations. The Arthur/Trillian plot was played up, but not enough to detract from the film, and the Vogons got more screen time, since it's a movie--you need a villain. (Same reason why Saruman got a bigger part of the Lord of the Rings films.) At the same time, some changes I thought were a little half-baked. While I think it was a nice addition to the story, allowing the core plot of the first book to fill the movie, the whole John Malkovich/Zaphod's head thing didn't really go anywhere. Also, while the Vogons are interesting, they aren't quite enough to be the main villain--I think the Krikkits would have been much better, but they also require far more setup to make threatening, which would have further detracted from the plot.

All things considered, as an adaptation of a series with a fanbase bordering on Sci-Fi Fanatics, the film of the Hitchhiker's Guide is very well done. It doesn't cover everything in the Guide, but it covers enough and it does so well.  ¶ 6:33 p.m. 0 comments

  I saw this a while ago, but didn't blog it.
I don't know why, because this is SO COOL. The Khronos Projector is basically a way of manipulating video in the 4th dimension.

The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames. The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time.

Simply put, you fast forward or rewind different parts of the video in different places, allowing one corner to be at the end of the clip, while the rest is still showing the first frame. There's some stuff about a time cube as well, but it's not what you think. Watch the video--it explains all.  ¶ 10:35 p.m. 0 comments

  Odd Man In
Over on Ben Garvey's website is a game. It is played with many people, over a simple PHP web interface. It is also a lot of fun.

Here's how it goes. Just like Reservoir Dogs, you hide behind a color like Mr. Pink or Mr. Turquoise. No, not all of them are girl colours, some are manly like Mr. Black or Mr. Slate. At the end of every weekday, you take a shot at someone. Could be anyone (including yourself) or nobody at all. If anyone gets shot an even number of times, you are out. Last man standing wins.

There's more to it than that, of course. I mean, if you only die when you get shot an even number of times, it's pretty obvious that negotiations with other players will be necessary (and there is an intra-game message system for this), but you get the gist of it. I've been in the last couple of games, and the current one is still accepting new members. It's lots of fun and only takes a minute or so for each turn, unless you decide to do a whole lot of wheeling and dealing.

The thought has also crossed my mind to run one of these games in person, perhaps in the disguise of a kegger party or something involving equal drinking, but that will certainly have to wait until the fall. Still, it's quite an appealing thought...  ¶ 10:07 p.m. 0 comments

  This... is the sound... of radio silence.
They say the average person can only remember about 7 things or so clearly. This would lead one to believe that this is why phone numbers are 7 digits, but this would also blatantly label one as having never been to Britain, where the phone numbers are something like 2^3490172 digits long, and that's just for local calls. Hyphens are distributed arbitrarily throughout, partly for zoning reasons, partly so that when you make your phone number into something witty like 1-888-NOT-POOP, you get a complete sentence. But I digress.

I need something to do. While World of Warcraft is immensely entertaining, and while it would be quite possible for me to spend most of my time playing it over doing other things, I would like to make something. If anything, it will serve to open the door out of my currently-inevitable future as a cubicle rat.

I do not want to live as a cubicle rat.

Now there are several things holding me back, but ideas for things are not one of them. For example, I recently came up with a game idea that combines the best elements of Lumines/Tetris and God of War/Prince of Persia/Devil May Cry. Yes, it would work, and with five minutes and a napkin diagram I might even be able to convince someone to let me make it.

One of the other things I read a while ago was that if you can break everything into steps, they're easier to do. Since I just mentioned up there that seven was a good number for things like this, I present my 7 Steps for making a game:

1. Design game mechanics.
2. Design game look and feel.
3. Find someone (or maybe a few someones) that can program.
4. Build proof-of-concept.
5. Playtest and refine POC.
6. Build demo.
7. Sell demo to someone.

The last step, make a lot of money and do it all again, goes as implied. Also, some of those steps might smack a little as being a bit broad, and if you noticed that, you're right. The seven steps are recursive, see? Each step can be broken into seven more steps, and so on until you have something that can be ticked off in sequence! Amazing how that works.

Now while I would love to be a game designer, I think I would like to be a comic-y person more, because internet celebrity can go hand in hand with that, and who would turn down a chance to be a celebrity?

Therefore, as before, the 7 Steps:

1. Get sketchbook.
2. Learn to draw.
3. Come up with story and character ideas.
4. Draft comics.
5. Draw comics.
6. Set up hosting and website.
7. Publish comics.

Ultimately, you might ask why I'm posting this. Maybe I think that by announcing it to the internet (better envisioned as whispering to nobody in particular whilst standing in Grand Central Station at High Noon), it'll lend some permanence to my thoughts and get me to act on them. Whatever.

Consider this a turning point, where I state my goals, announce my intentions, and then seriously consider saying "screw it, I'm going back to Azeroth."  ¶ 9:42 p.m. 0 comments

  Totally awesome
Ever seen Meet Joe Black? I haven't, but I have seen the scene where Brad Pitt gets hit by two cars, one after another. It's pretty cool from a bouncing-cadaver point of view. Anyways, some guy in Wales has done that one two better:

A man who ran out of taxi fare after a stag night, was hit by four different vehicles as he walked along a dual carriageway, an inquest heard.

One motorist pulled over to remove clothing from the front of his car before driving off.

  ¶ 11:37 a.m. 0 comments

  I just figured out how to get my 15 minutes of inter-fame
I shall perform a dramatized performance of the Creative Commons License!

First of all, I don't think anyone's ever tried to both act out a body of legal text (complete with the funny voices!) and publish it over the internet. Second of all, it's the sort of thing that would be sure to get BoingBoing'd, since Cory Doctorow is all about the CC love. And from there, it's only a hop and a jump to Slashdot, being the obvious center of the internet in the same way that Toronto is the center of the Universe (meaning, according to the locals). And once you're at the center of the internet, you're Inter-Famous! It's brilliant!  ¶ 9:33 p.m. 0 comments

  Doctor!
Just watched the pilot of the new Doctor Who series, and I must say it's pretty spiffy. Can't speak for the whole continuity thing, or how well it ties in with other Doctors or how Chris Eccleston does as a performance, but as general sci-fi TV goes, it's darn spiffy. I mean, only Doctor Who could pull off When Mannequins Attack! and leave any degree of respectability.

Also, Billie Piper: Mrowr.  ¶ 8:43 p.m. 0 comments

  I don't quite know what the analogy is

But I'm pretty sure I agree. Click the comic for the rest of it, and in COLOUR no less! (Diesel Sweeties is totally made and owned (pwnd?) by R. Stevens. I feel obligated to mention this, cuz it's in the picture and I cropped it off. I'm a terrible person that way.)   ¶ 7:20 p.m. 0 comments

  Totally awesome
Ever seen Meet Joe Black? I haven't, but I have seen the scene where Brad Pitt gets hit by two cars, one after another. It's pretty cool from a bouncing-cadaver point of view. Anyways, some guy in Wales has done that one two better:

A man who ran out of taxi fare after a stag night, was hit by four different vehicles as he walked along a dual carriageway, an inquest heard.

One motorist pulled over to remove clothing from the front of his car before driving off.

This fills me with the most diabolical mental images that are likely in no way healthy. Unfortunately, he was probably on the ground the whole time, which kills all my thoughts of this person bouncing around the roadway. I'm a horrible person, I know.  ¶ 7:04 p.m. 0 comments

  It's not music
It's more like MYOOOOOOOSIK! Like NYOOOOOOKLEAR! FEEL THE FROSTY CHILL OF YOUR DOOM!  ¶ 7:51 p.m. 0 comments

  Deep thought
If Americans have no armour, colour or honour, why don't they go to the sorce of the problem? Or maybe just ignore it all and por themselves a nice cool drink?  ¶ 7:29 p.m. 0 comments

  YES! I KNEW IT!
AH HA HAHAHAHAHA!!! Remember when I got my PSP that you could play games from the memory stick? 'Member that? And that if emulator software could be made to go on a PSP, it would be so totally rad and that I would be so happy forever!?

IT HAS BEEN DONE! I now cackle with maniacal glee!

If you've got a version 1.0 Japanese PSP—the kind that will allow you to run unsigned code from your MemoryStick—then count yourself lucky, as the first GameBoy emulator has just shown up for the device and you're the only ones who can run it.

Unfortunately, and there is always an "unfortunately" now isn't there, I don't have that particular kind of PSP. I guess all the PSPs that aren't the original Japanese 1.0 version require some kind of signature from Sony to make them go, ala-DRM or something. Personally, I hates it very, very much, since it means that I will likely have to mod my PSP to get it to be more useful to me. Bad Sony! Bad! However, that post does inspire hope that it will be possible, one way or another, and that is a good thing indeed.  ¶ 2:28 p.m. 0 comments

  Hooray for Engrish!
This post on Gizmodo about a roll-up keyboard interests me less for the keyboard, and more for the quote from their site:

3. The international normal musical scale demands, will bring you the normal sounds.
4. Input 100 kinds of tambers for your choices.
6. With input 10-demo music for your study and enjoy the sutra chef-d'oeuvre.
8. Input speaker with tamber fruity and silvery.
9. Connect head phone with the outer sounder.

I just got my outer sounder checked recently, but my tambers are due for a tune up...  ¶ 1:28 p.m. 0 comments

  Why hasn't this been done before?
Dracula in real-time, yo, starting from Chapter 1 as of May 3rd. Since the book is written as a series of journal entries, and is definitely public domain material, to blog the contents of it according to the dates they were "written" in the novel is an idea that makes you wonder why nobody's thought of it yet.

If you haven't read Dracula yet, and it's an excellent read (my favorite part is where Drac arrives in London--the description of the boat and the man who steered it in is just deliciously gothic and creepy) I would suggest that this way is no better than any other. You can even RSS it!  ¶ 7:56 p.m. 0 comments

  Again with the Ellis love
I've mentioned that Warren Ellis is as much a mad genius as, well, those other guys that everyone talks about as being brilliant, but hopelessly nutty. Now I don't think that Warren Ellis is crazy, but I do think that he has an ability to tap into that well of lunacy everyone has in their brain, and turn whatever spills out into entertaining stories. I just read a post by him that sort of touches on that, and I thought I'd share.

The literary critic Harold Bloom once said that we weren’t fully human until Shakespeare began writing: that Shakespeare completed our sapience. Which is both interesting and stark, utter bullshit. Stories are what make us human. They’re an advanced form of play. Cats have play. Sometimes very sophisticated, dramatised forms of play. But they’re not communicated or externalised. So far, only humans use stories to dramatise the way they see the world.

And we’ve always had them.

Go out to the ancient standing stones at Callanish in the Orkney Islands, at sunrise. You stand in the middle of the stone circle and turn to follow the sun. From that position, the sun is alternately occluded and revealed by the curves of the surrounding hills. The sunrise is dramatised as a struggle. As a performance. Shadows fall and twist around you like spokes, until the sun claws free of the hillside and sends light right down the middle of the circle and on to your face.

Walk down the great processional avenue to Glastonbury Tor, and you experience a similar effect. The walk is designed to sequentially reveal and present aspects of the surroundings, until the Tor is brought out of the backdrop to stand in front of you. It’s intended as a religious experience – a walk that becomes an experience of mystery and revelation. It’s a plotline.

Cave paintings are comics. Standing stones are art installations. It’s all stories.

  ¶ 7:24 p.m. 0 comments

  I feel... defeated.
Today has been nigh-unbearably shitty. It's as though Monday woke me up with a boot to the ribs, and for the next 7 hours just kept on kicking. All that's left for me now is to wiggle around a bit and feel for the crunching scrape of broken bone shard against broken bone shard. First, I overslept by 40 minutes or so, and then thanks to the bussing schedule had this further extended to being about an hour late for work. Next, I find that Visual Studio .NET is a royal irritant of the first degree if you decide to integrate features into your software. Provided you do everything right from the get-go, it isn't so bad as an IDE, and works not too badly. The massive amount of infrastructure and interconnected components and properties and settings however, lead to all kinds of problems if you were not fortunate enough to have done everything perfectly the first time. Just adding a help feature is like pulling teeth. I feel like I have to punch the program in the face a few times just to get it to listen, and then spend further negotiations on trying to convey what it is I want to do. Maybe I'm an idealist, but this shouldn't be difficult--isn't the goal of any program to allow the user to do what they want? Bah.

Perhaps today has not been of the best of days because my weekend was not horrible. I got to play the new Freedom Force game, and lo, it is good. Has a general "B-movie" feel to it, but in some ways, that's not a bad thing. It nicely conveys the general feel of Silver Age comic books, with a nice nod to the Golden Age WWII pulps as well. Most importantly, it plays nicely. There are a few interface issues that have caused me some annoyances, but they're never a big deal (ie. they don't format your hard drive) and on the whole it makes for some fun superhero strategizing. Hero balance seems improved as well, but that may be simply because Man-Bot isn't in this game.* To be brief, Irrational has done it again, further banishing the superhero curse, resurrecting all the fun of the last game while introducing new fun and refining the fun from the first game. A very worthy sequel.

On the less-than-worthy front, we have Coffee and Cigarettes. Now when I saw the trailer for this, I expected a film filled with witty, engaging dialogue between an eclectic mix of celebrities while sitting around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, as the title suggests. Unfortunately, this is not what I got. What I got, was a set of 11 well-made, nicely done shorts that seem to focus exclusively on awkwardness between celebrities. Some of the shorts aren't bad, such as the one with Jack and Meg White, the Rza/Gza/Bill Murray one, or the one with Steve Buscemi. The rest are for the most part utter dreck, leaving me with the desire to never combine caffeine and tobacco ever, although a few, like the Iggy Pop one, merely instilled the urge to shut off the movie at once and burn the DVD. In short, I want my hour and 37 minutes back.

So maybe it was the weekend that caused my supremely lousy Monday today. All's I know is that today of all days, I decide to cop out on my afternoon tea and use the IN-SINK-ERATOR! (I swear it's really called that) insta-boiling water faucet, and it's barely hot. More like the temperature of a half-drunk, sat-for-half-an-hour cup o' tea. Also, because of said less-than-boiling, IN-SINK-ERATED water, I'm pretty sure there's residue from my hot chocolate in my mug. Yeah, this is pretty swell to the extreme right here. Kill me now.

To quote both Tim of the Scientific Democrats and Howard Dean: NYEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!!!

--------------------------
* In the first Freedom Force, Man-Bot was the big, slow tanker character that was supposed to be nigh-invulnerable. Trouble was, he wasn't, in fact, that invulnerable. This put a big dent in the team role he was supposed to fill. The result? A slow character with bad dialogue that was mandatory for many missions and caused much irritation.  ¶ 4:47 p.m. 0 comments

  Jeff Rowland is on fire.

Ok, maybe not on fire per se, but in comedy parlance, he is killing.

Ok, fine. Screw idioms, I'ma spell it out: I think the latest Wigus are immensely entertaining, to the extent where I am literally re-ordering my webcomic universe. Now and henceforth, the Holy Webcomic Trinity shall be composed of Penny Arcade, Questionable Content, and the collected works of Jeffrey Rowland. Yes, that's a total cop-out, not only because I'd toss Scary Go Round and Girls With Slingshots in there too within the time it takes to blink HALFWAY (ie. the closing your eyes really quickly), but also I am counting Wigu and Overcompensating as one comic.

So. Do yourself a favor and go read those, but especially give Wigu a go. The last week or so has been particularly good, but really the whole things is awesome. Thus ends my pimpery of things I like for at least five minutes. (Maybe.)   ¶ 6:40 p.m. 0 comments

  I'm now reasonably sure there's something wrong with me.
A fourth-grade class was asked to illustrate idioms recently. They were each given a saying, like "bull in a china shop" or "thorn in my side" and they got to draw a picture of what they thought it meant, having no prior knowledge of the phrase. Most of the results are quite literal, and for some reason, I can't stop laughing at them. I think it has to do with the simple artwork combined with the (extremely) literal take on the language. It's very White Ninja, in an elementary school sort of way. My favorites: Above the law; a shot in the arm; play on words; any word; a piece of cake; a lot on the ball; a bull in a china shop.

Comedic gold, folks, and there's lots more where those came from.  ¶ 6:51 p.m. 1 comments

  I have no idea why I'm blogging this
Really, I'm probably the only person I know of who will find this as funny as I do. It's one of the most in-joke laden things I have ever read/listened to, but what the hell. Sharing is fun!  ¶ 9:41 p.m. 0 comments

  Achtung!
Das ist einen neu musik kickassiken.  ¶ 9:02 p.m. 0 comments

  My faith in humanity has been seriously diminished.
I spend a lot of time on the internet, and as a result, I see a lot of mp3s and videos of people doing things that can only be met with speechlessness. The events that the internet gives witness to, and many witnesses at that, are either shocking, or funny, or just plain dumb. Until now, I thought I had seen the worst the internet could send me and not contract any psychological problems.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong. A woman has called 911, yes the POLICE/EMERGENCY people, to get them to come to a Burger King and get the employees of said BK to bring her the sandwich she ordered.

Stop and read that again, because I'm confident it hasn't sunk in yet. There is someone on this planet that we all live on that seems to seriously think that the police are at her beck and call to come in with their magic police wands and solve every problem that can happen to a person.

I'm afraid of what would happen if she tried this on a cop in person. Magic police wands indeed.  ¶ 6:54 p.m. 0 comments

  That's so crazy, it just might work.
MIT to attract time travellers. The idea is that you get as many people to get the word out about the party as possible, and keep doing so for as long as possible. Later, far into the future, someone will find these and travel back in time to attend. I think that several things could happen:

1. Nobody shows up. Either the campaign failed or time travel is impossible, and we won't know which for some time.
   
2. Everybody and their kid brother from all across the future shows up, the place turns into a zoo, and someone gets ray-gunned.

My money's on the second one.  ¶ 1:06 p.m. 0 comments

  *blink*
I thought the Rhino Party was pretty neat. I liked the levity they injected into the political system, even if they were fighting a lost cause and stood no hope of election. It seems the Britons have taken this, or more probably invented it, and taken the concept to extremes considered thus far to be ludicrous.

I present: The Church of the Militant Elvises. They want your vote.

Among the promises from the Church of the Militant Elvis are plans to place giant photos of celebrities such as Johnny Vegas, Graham Norton and Chris Evans in Heathrow and Gatwick, "to discourage undesirable foreigners from entering Britain".

The party has only one candidate, David Bishop, in the Derbyshire constituency of Erewash.

There's also parties to put taxes on caravans and to investigate veterinary fees.  ¶ 11:59 a.m. 0 comments

  Weekend Update
So my weekend was essentially defined by Ratatat, skiing and gaming. I'm pretty sure there isn't much else that I did over the past few days that wasn't somehow linked to one of those, and really, the Ratatat bit was more or less simply overlaid on top of everything like a giant tablecloth. A wonderful, clicky-beepy tablecloth that seizes hold of you almost hypnotically and demands your attention. I've seriously had Seventeen Years and El Pico running through my brain in an almost continual loop. The rest of the album is also quite excellent, but in a different manner. The first two tracks are kind of the lapel-grab that seize you and hold you in thrall, while the rest of the disc is much mellower, almost in apology for that brusque attention-grabbing. Hopefully that makes more sense than my last post about this CD, and it is of note that the 24 hours previously mentioned is now pushing 72.

As to the rest of the weekend upon which Ratatat insidiously sank into, the skiing was pretty good. Sunshine is still open, and while the conditions are certainly less than stellar, they were still quite decent. It was cold in the morning, which lent to more downhill skating than skiing and the potential for hard, sliding doom should one wipe out. I did not, surviving into the afternoon wherein it warmed up, the ice turned to a wet snow and things were not too bad at all. As an extra special treat I got to watch the Sunshine Dummy Downhill, being a gong show in the highest order. The gist of it is that the lifties and other Sunshine employee folk cobble together ramshackle mannequins, strap them to skis or snowboards, and push them down the hill. The creations are then judged on a variety of criteria, ranging from Best Dressed to Best Destruction, to Best Jump (yes, there is a jump built into the track). The dummies ranged from interesting (two blowup dolls, one on the other's shoulders, with two-by-fours for legs, wearing skis like a person might) to the sturdy (a blobbish, Jamaican-looking dummy on a catamaran-esque ski platform), to the ornately fragile (a homemade replica of an Apache helicopter, complete with gun racks and rotor blades). One of them, consisting of the upper torso of a female rescue dummy (with a styrofoam head) grafted to a beer tub like an alcoholic centaur, took the jump like a pro, but ejected its head on landing, similar to the cork in a champagne bottle. I don't know who ultimately won, but much fun was had by all.

The topic of gaming is slightly more meaty, but what follows carries the disclaimer "Warning! The following is a bunch of rambling and speculation about recent developments in World of Warcraft!".

See, Azeroth is a much harsher realm in these dark days of the 1.4 "honor patch" than it once was. Where before a nervous tension existed between Horde and Alliance, now there exists naught but open, murderous war. Southshore was once a peaceful community on the northern edge of Alliance territory, victim to the occasional raid by the undead, but otherwise left alone. Now, it is the staging ground for a perpetual melee, and gets sacked and pillaged every couple of days. Booty Bay was once a neutral town, serving as one of the eastern continent's gateways to Kalimdor. Horde and Alliance both did business there under the watchful eye of the Booty Bay Bruisers, and while the odd barfight broke out and people were killed, it was kept at least sane. Now, the Bruisers have gone catatonic, unable to step in and break these fights up, and as such the Horde have basically taken over. If I have logged out from the Salty Sailor Tavern, I need to cross my fingers that there isn't a troll or orc in the room when I log in, or I am all but gutted stem to stern within moments of my materializing. I can no longer enter or leave the town via the main entrance, and need to covertly sneak in through the underwater entrance like an inept Navy Seal (ironic, since my aquatic form looks more like a fat sea lion or an angry manatee than a seal). Having the Bay as a staging ground, the Horde have spread their influence in Stranglethorn Vale like a pox, killing any who get in their way.

My beef is basically that the honor system, while implemented (and implemented well), is still only halfway complete. To have honor, but not dishonor, is like having a bipedal walker robot with only one leg. It can probably do its thing with the lasers and smoke and such, but can't quite get around competently yet. As well, I am not sure what the rules for what constitutes an honorable kill are yet, so I don't know if attacking another player who is exhausted and on the brink of death from fighting a monster constitutes "honor". I say it's dirty pool, but that's just me. Furthermore, I have heard tell that the dishonor system as currently proposed only governs the slaughter of NPCs in town, the ones that sell you wares and give you quests, and not the slaying of other players. If true, it's too bad, since the tactic of systematically wiping out low-level players (and to a level 60 Orc, there are a lot of other players who fall into that category) has become widespread in the hopes that the victims will plead for help and worthy opponents will take up the fight. It's like being in the Matrix--if you see an enemy whose level is shown to you as "??", run. You can't hurt them; just run.

If dishonor were now implemented, I think it would fix a slew of these problems. It would probably create some of its own, like the Horde would wait until you've killed your mob and are nearly dead instead of attacking mid-fight, but even that example is a bit of improvement. The root of it is that when you're level 60, you have very little to do aside from perfect your equipment and crafting skills, and even those can be completed given time. As it stands now, there's no reason NOT to murder every elf that you come across, and dishonor could address that in a variety of ways. The simplest would be that NPCs just don't work for you anymore, and eventually might attack on sight, but that would only slow this behaviour down, rather than stop it--I'm sure there are a great many high-level orcs that don't give two squirts whether NPCs attack or not. Personally, I think it would be cool if the most dishonorable players showed up on a global Wanted List with bounties for killing them. Every time they went into a town, the wanted list would update with their last known whereabouts. Of course, this is just my speculation as to what would be a Very Cool Thing Indeed, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

So on one hand, I heartily approve of the honor system. It brings a lot of flavour and texture to the game, and makes things more interesting on the whole. I love the idea of having these huge battles raging elsewhere in the world, and having news trickle to my ears about how things are going there. On the other hand however, it's fucking infuriating being killed by wandering high-level Horde players with nothing to do but cause grief. It's only going to get worse too, as I gain levels towards that coveted level cap. (Fortunately, it will be a while before I hit the REAL danger zone, where you give honor to the 60s but still can't hurt them in the slightest.)

I suppose all I can do is have faith that Blizzard won't let me down, and that in time, all will be well. Until then, I'll just have to steer clear of the most war-afflicted zones.  ¶ 9:00 a.m. 0 comments