The Ziggurat of Doom

You need to turn this mutha up real real loud…by which I mean watch Human Target.

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I wasn’t planning on watching Caprica, since these kinds of spin-offs are almost always very contrived and/or watered-down. People were making noises though, so I gave it a go. Caprica doesn’t particularly suck. Some things about it are very good. It is definitely not a show, as I think Rhad can attest, that one will want to jump in on mid-stream. This is partly because the show doesn’t spend sufficient time explaining everything that’s going on; it feels like it really wants to have 60 minute episodes. The acting and production are good, and the plot is potentially very William Gibson, which I obviously find appealing, though I have my doubts as to the show’s ability to follow through on this. For a science fiction fan, Caprica is probably worth following, for now.

As for Japanland, I haven’t been watching much anime of note in the past while, except for some good remakes. I caught the first to episodes of Sora No Woto. I don’t know about the story yet (interesting world at least: post-apocalyptic, kind of Haibane Renmei esque but less opaque), however this show is gorgeous in HD. Absolutely gorgeous.

Some spoilery critiques of Caprica below…

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So, in addition to the 1:1 scale Gundam, Japan has another life-size giant robot. A 1:1 scale model of Tetsujin 28 (18 m high) was completed in Kobe in Falll 2009. Here’s some more info on it. If you don’t know who Tetsujin 28 is, be ashamed of yourself.

Money quote from 2nd article:
“The only thing I would change about the statue itself are the eyes – they’re painted and therefore opaque, when they could have been semi-translucent and lit from within like the street lamps – though that may have sent the statue into dangerously awesome territory causing everyone to pee their pants.”

Thanks to Sabah for the heads-up on this.

Burn Notice has the easiest set-up in the world for awesome television: badass ex-spy with hot trigger happy ex-girlfriend tries to survive contactless and resourceless in Florida. It has no excuse to be bad, but it is. It’s sloppy directing: the pacing blows and their attempt to create a laid-back Florida atmosphere in their action show undercuts its tension. The dialogue is delivered like nobody really cares what’s going on.

Castle has the most generic TV show plot I can think of: homicide detective solves murders. But it’s really good. The dialogue is snappy at the right times to cut the tension, and serious when the tension needs to build. It’s funny, well-paced, good scoring. Characters have the right amount of screen-time. The minor mystery aspect of the murders is in the right place: you can figure out what’s going on before the characters, but won’t all the time: it’s a common mistake to make “mysteries” either intractable or trivial to the viewer/reader.

Castle also has some fun role reversal going on: Beckett is the strong female detective (but not in an annoyingly smug way), and Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a prissy writer who shadows her for story ideas and, usually futilely, attempts to help. This show only clocks in at 1 or 2 Mulder-Scullys, unlike Bones which seems to be maintaining something absurd like 7 or 8 (more like Boners, amirite?).

It is ten dollars on Steam. I just bought it.

This message brought to you by people who believe Psychonauts was a pretty great game.

Okay. Wrong question.

Holidays are a good excuse to donate to charities and causes, which help us affluent white folk feel like we’re zomgactivists while sipping overpriced lattes and complaining about politics / poor service / lousy sex / etc. The internet makes this easy (both the donating and the complaining) and provides a plethora of wells in which to vomit disposable income. I think of it as part of the new years hangover recovery process.

Absent other ideas, it’s hard to feel bad about supporting wikipedia / wikimedia foundation, IMO.

This is about as preachy / disgustingly self-righteous as I get for the year (not counting spaces v. tabs debates … I wonder if there’s some way I can donate toward making everyone use tabs for indentation), so feel free to condemn / ignore.

This is basically what I’ve done on my vacation:

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What.

The.

Fuck.

Pretty much everyone at this point, iwht the possible exception of George Lucas, admits that the Star Wars prequels were crap. This guy, Mike from Milwaukee, illustrates exactly why. And when I say exactly, I mean 7 10-minute videos each illustrating a point.

Devastating: he asks people to describe the characters from the original series, without describing looks, just characterization, to people who have never seen star wars. They do it. He asks them to describe characters from the new series…. they just laugh. They can’t do it.

Okay, so NOW we have our real iPhone/iPod touch game done and up on the app. store. Sample gameplay shown below the cut. We also have a web site. If you decide to check it out, please leave a review.

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Presented without comment: a man in a chicken suit playing “What is love” on a pianica.

That is all.

Add to the short list of things worth doing in Cleveland: The Velvet Tango Room. Just make sure you come early or get reservations; it’s gotten a bunch of Top 10 Bars In The Country reviews so it’s a bit popular. Right off the W 25th stop on the red line.

You should know that Gurren-Lagann has a Manga. This is hardly surprising. It also has a High School AU Manga. Which is hilarious.

It also has this.

Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion.

Dollhoose is officially canned, and no surprise. It was a show that had some great moments, but also had some serious flaws.

However, the CW is taking a second crack at Warren Ellis’s Global Frequency (confirmed by Ellis here), which is pretty cool. The first pilot, made back in 2005, was fantastic. There will be a new pilot by a new writer, so we’ll see how it goes.

Someone took the famous Mandelbrot set and turned it into a 3-d model. The result is… terrifying. As one of my co-workers indicated, “It looks like a Great Old One…”

Anyway, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Or terror. Y’know, whichever. The Mandelbulb

(A spoiler-free review.)

Properly, Brandon Sanderson’s Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time: Book 12, A Memory of Light: Volume 1, The Gathering Storm.

Let me go ahead and fess up: I cannot be objective about this book. There are plenty of people who have been reading this series longer in absolute terms, but as a percentage of my life, the Wheel of Time series is approached only by Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and King, at least, finished his. I’ve spent more of my life than not waiting for, reading, discussing, bitching about, and yes, getting bitter over Wheel of Time books. To summarize:

Books 1-3: Important Plot People are Important
Books 4-6: Horrible things happen to them. Sometimes they accomplish things. A lot of running aboot occurs.
Books 7-9: Things slow down. Fewer things happen. Many new and dubiously point-ful characters are introduced.
Book 10: Elayne takes a bath.
Book 11: Jordan realizes he hasn’t pushed a plot even one tiny bit closer to conclusion in about four books. All plots are advanced (and sometimes even concluded) simultaneously. Fandom breathes collective sigh of relief that maybe there’s hope for the old girl yet.
Book 11.5: Jordan dies.

Well, after 18 years of the damn things, we were by Crom going to get some damn closure if Teresa Nielsen Hayden had to personally raise Jordan’s zombie corpse, bind his soul to it in a freakish parody of life, and send it shuffling off to a typewriter. But since a thousand pages of “Braaaaaaains…” would be only slightly less disappointing than Crossroads of Twilight, it was decided that they’d try something else first. Specifically, finding an author familiar with the work and with a background in Cinderblock Fantasy, handing him a huge stack of notes and outlines, and saying “Here. Finish it.”

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Well, okay, a joke app at least.

Lately I’ve been working nights with some people I know to do iPhone/iPod Touch game design. We’re working on a separate, fairly large project, but to test the waters we did a joke app, called Tubby Tester. Basically you whack the device against yourself and it gives you snarky comments about how fat, thin, or average you are. I was one of the the two writers of the snarky comments.

If you have a compatible device and know me in real life, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll get you a promo code to download it for free, have a few laughs, and show it to people. We’re trying a whole “word of mouth” thing.

And, if you just happen to read this blog, please consider looking up Tubby Tester on the iTunes store and giving it a whirl, and a review. It’s only $0.99.

Dollhouse ekes out another lease on life, as Fox confirms that they will air all 13 episodes already ordered. That’s roughly approximate to saying “We’re not going to shoot your dog… at least not while you’re looking.”

Apparently its broadcast ratings suck hideously, but it’s doing very strong on non-broadcast channels like Hulu and DVR viewings.

It’s sort of surprisingly nice to see a TV exec giving it a chance.

If only he weren’t the same puppy-kicking, kitten-eating bastard that canceled Terminator. Jerk.

I don’t know who else has seen this, but Canabalt is the most entertaining Flash game since Nanaca Crash. With which it has basically nothing else in common.

Seriously, though, kills hours, tons of fun, very simple. And turn the volume up.

Let “Stargate Universe” henceforth be forever known as “Battlestar Sliderstrekscape”, to stand alongside the original Sliderstrekscape and its spin-off, Sliderstrekscape: DSV.

Seriously. They weren’t trying hard before, but now they’re just giving up. Even the camera work and soundtrack seem suspiciously familiar.

(Yes, I’ve been watching a lot of the other two series lately as well. I plead boredom.)