The Ziggurat of Doom

Or, more importantly, what are they learning?

By the way, check out the tags and the comments.

Kotaku is reporting on how to unlock developer mode on the Palm Pre.

You type “upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart” on the keyboard. Seriously.

No word on whether or not in unlocks your buddy’s phone if you put a “select” in there.

Futurama is coming back for 26 episodes on Comedy Central in 2010. Once again DVD sales resurrect a loved TV show.

Conan? Mario? You decide.

Edit: Italan anti-defamation league protests mario

If this review is even close to accurate, the Palm Pre is the smartphone I’ve always wanted.

And lo and behold, my contract is up in July. Win.

Just announced at E3: Final Fantasy XIV will be both a PS3 exclusive (console, though there’s already chatter that a PC version will also be released) and an MMORPG.

So, that’s a thing.

Is this from the same developers who brought us FF XI? Of the famous 28-hour raid boss? With a grind that makes Everquest look like, I dunno, one of those games that’s insultingly short and easy? Well, based on the screenshots, not only yes, but it is a direct sequel. STAY TUNED.

Actually, don’t, since I probably won’t follow this, since I probably don’t care. I paid my dues to the FFXI beast and got out alive. But hey. Final Fantasy. Maybe this one won’t have a six hour installation process.

(Also announced today: Nintendo to continue making Mario and Metroid games. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Will this mad journey never end?)

I finally got around to listening to The Decemberists’ “The Hazards of Love”. Short review: If the composition, lyrics, and performance weren’t all spot-on, it would be the kind of pretentious, overproduced, melodramatic rock opera you expect from hair metal bands towards the ends of their lifespans.

But since it is, in fact, awesome, you should listen to it. I liked it considerably more than “The Crane Wife”. In fact, taken as an album, it may be their best to date.

The 80’s. They just get weirder. I present to you the next part in a series: Batman: The Musical.

What Has Gone Before

Star Trek: Imperfect, but compellingly watchable. I continue my daily prayers that one day, some paleo-cinematographer will rediscover the ancient, lost technique of Steadycam. As with The Fool, I put all credit for this movie at the feet of the casting and acting, since I can’t stand J. J. Abrams. Worth watching.

Wolverine: Low-end of the “meh, popcorn” scale. I wouldn’t recommend paying movie theater price for it, but you won’t wake up at night screaming, caught in a flashback of a movie that won’t end and a pain that won’t go away if you happen to accidentally walk into a room where this is playing and it inadvertently enters your eyeballs. Which is more than I can say for Ultraviolet.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Officially dead and buried. I blame you. YES YOU. Solid show that deserved better, but at least last season went out on a high note. Godspeed, John Henry. See you at the crossroads.

GI Joe: Resolute: 11 five-minute episodes, written by Warren Ellis. It’s on the internet. It rocks.

What Is Yet To Come

Terminator: Salvation: Let me see if I get this straight: Yet another movie? Fine. The best show on television? Can it. I fucking hate showbiz logic. Whatever, the trailers look interesting and I’ll go see it, if I can get over my screaming bitterness vis a vis SCC.

9: A Tim Burton-produced CGI film based on a short that won a bunch of awards. I love me some post-apocalyptica, so may as well check it out.

Dollhouse: Hang on. I have to confirm this yet again. Yes. Yes, FOX has renewed a Joss Whedon series (reportedly, after he agreed to quit spending so much damn money every episode). But they still passed on SCC. The network giveth, and the network taketh away. Started weak, but got pretty solid after episode 6, so I’m willing to see where it goes.

Supernatural: Picked up for its fifth and reportedly final season. Good show. Worth watching.

GI Joe: The Movie: Ha ha ha ha. We’ll see.

Transformers: Something Something Giant Robots: (May not be the actual subtitle.) From the trailer, appears to have more giant fighting robots, something the first movie was depressingly short on. There’s a lesson here in giving the viewers what they want: fewer whining humans, more robot-on-robot violence.

A new flavor of wargames. The glorious cyberpunk future comes ever closer.

(Via Balloon Juice.)

Do you remember a few posts ago where I said that people were Autotuning the news? And how I said that this, while vaguely hilarious, was ultimately unsatisfying?

I present to you the Slapchop Rap.

Edit: Beware, this will get stuck in your head.

1936 - Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be but is shanghaied by British Intelligence to be 007 before he can patent them.

From A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages.

(Yes, I’m going to try to get back to posting more often.)

So, one of the occasionally-useful things about Steam is that it tells me when cool things are happening, and/or on sale. Today, it told me about “Plants Vs. Zombies”. It looks kind of like Desktop tower defense, only with plants. And zombies. and a Zombie Bobsled Team.

Yes, you heard that right.

Also if you buy it this weekend, you get a free copy of “Heavy Weapon Deluxe”, which they really should have just called “Atomic Tank.” It’s kind of a neat shooter.

Autotuning is nothing new. Debates have raged back and forth over whether or not it is okay to use Autotune, in what circumstances. Circumstance where it is definitely OK to use autotune: Setting the evening news to music and getting the anchors to ’sing’ along.

I watched the 2nd video - not as hilarious as I had hoped, but a hilarious concept nonetheless.

Maybe you’ve heard me going on about the Erlang programming language before? Well, watch the Erlang movie!

This video mostly consists of old Ericsson engineers with old desk phones, old computers, and timeless British accents saying “Hello Joe.” “Hello Mike.” over-and-over while they demonstrate the telephony app they implemented in erlang. Much of what they demonstrate is not too shocking if you have a fair breadth of exposure to modern and classical programming languages, but if you watch the whole thing you’ll see one erlang feature not so easily duplicated, still somewhat impressive today.

Zac Efron and The Rock in my Jonny Quest live-action remake? It’s more likely than you think.

What, no entries in two weeks? You guys remember how to write blog posts, yah?

Anyway, since I don’t have an Anime blog like the Fool does, I figured I’d bend your ear for a moment to describe some of the shows I’m watching currently.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Possible the best mecha show anyone has ever produced ever, this show is the proprietor of the patent-pending Exponentially Increasing Awesomeness Curve. It starts fairly slow and with a narrow view, following two guys from the underground caverns as they reach for the surface. It ends with both feet firmly planted on the train to crazytown, with such amazing awesomeness as a guy, piloting a mecha, which is piloting another mecha, which itself pilots the moon. Yes, the whole goddamn moon. Obviously not for everyone, but if you have ever enjoyed a series with giant robots in it, you NEED to watch this.

RideBack
A series which mixes, of all things, mecha, motorcycle racing, and ballet. A ballet dancer sustains an injury which renders her unable to dance. She finds a hobby in the RideBack, a half motorcycle, half-robot, which can stand balancing on two wheels. Kind of an interesting show, although I have only seen a few episodes of it so far.

Gundam 00
After forty years of Gundam, including somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 anime productions, several movies, and untold volumes of manga, Sunrise/Bandai may have finally figured out how to make a Gundam series. There’s legitimate character development, interesting political divisions, no horrid pacing problems, and neat mobile suits.

Sengoku Basara
Ok, so I haven’t actually started watching this one yet, but I sure am going to. It features Sengoku-era fighters (~1550-1800) in modern-day Japan, only… with a little bit of ridiculous thrown in. What kind of ridiculous you ask? I have been told that one battle in the anime features two fighters wielding six swords each, and when they clash there is a nuclear explosion. You know what? Just watch the opening.

Cast & creators of Battlestar Galactica appear at UN panel on human rights & race. Edward James Olmos makes impassioned and moving speech about race as a cultural determinant. Starts really getting into it. Shouts “So say we all!” - and the crowd says it right back to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

Ha. You thought I was going to make a “watching the Watchmen” joke. I am not that predictable!

Seriously, other than the unnecessarily long orgy scene after the fire rescue (which did, at least, have a truly hilarious moment with a flame thrower), I was reasonably impressed with the movie. I do want to give bonus points to whoever assembled the soundtrack for really committing to some of those choices. Basically every scene has the single most archetypal song possible, and that does include an appearance by “Ride of the Valkyries”.

Lot of Bob Dylan, too. And by the way, whoever let My Chemical Romance cover Desolation Row needs to die in a fire.

Go see it once. I don’t feel any particular need to see it again, but it was better than I expected and about as good as I hoped for.