None of the Wordpress/Buzz interop plugins around at the moment are meeting my needs, so it looks like I’m rolling my own. Needless to say, there’s a certain amount of lag time there as I fit doing this between various other spare-time activities. So: I’m working on it.
In the meantime, your assignment is to read some sci-fi. Wil McCarthy’s The Collapsium, to be specific, which I picked up on a recommendation and did not regret.
Wow. This place has been kinda dead lately.
Let’s see.
Well, I know some of the Zigguratti are busy with wedding planning. Others are just plain busy. I, for example, recently completed a move across the country.
Complicating the issue is the origin of ZOD: It was originally a mutual link/rant/whatever-sharing site and much of that traffic has been supplanted by the use of Google Buzz. Which is a pretty handy tool for a lot of things.
The good news is that in my copious free time (now that I’m not moving for a while, one hopes), I’m looking at ways to link them without just spamming up the place. More updates as events warrant.
Meanwhile, the trailer for the film version of RED, an Ellis comic that I’m rather fond of. There are quite a few changes — Warren’s thoughts on those here.
Mass Effect 2 is really, really good. Follow this simple decision tree to experience video-game related enjoyment:
Do you have a 360? If not, buy one.
Do you have Mass Effect 1? If not, buy it.
Play Mass Effect 1.
Do you have Mass Effect 2? If not, buy it.
Play Mass Effect 2.
Pine for Mass Effect 3.
Neither game is perfect, but both are reasonably fantastic.
Meanwhile, here is a really, hilariously long review of Final Fantasy 13. In summary, I don’t think he liked it very much.
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.
(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.”
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.”
back pain relief
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.)
Prototype (360): Did you play Grant Theft Auto IV, and wish that (a) you could get right to the murderin’, (b) there were a lot more tanks, and (c) more missions involved eating people’s brains? Prototype might be for you.
The movement controls are slightly finicky and prone to over-compensation, but once I got used to them I was moving right along. The power upgrades are pretty awesome — sure, the whipfist is the go-to weapon in 99 out of 100 fights, but it’s not like most of the fights are particularly hard, so use whatever’s fun for you. And the ones that are hard, you generally need to use something more specific anyway. I think the challenge is in a pretty good place for most of the game.
The one big issue I have is that once you can hijack helicopters, it becomes trivially easy to fly around, nuke stuff from orbit, collect your “EP”, and upgrade all your attacks to 11. This is mostly very boring, and not helped by the extremely dubious helicopter controls.
Still: open world mayhem, an action-movie plot, plenty of violence. Good game to blow off some steam.
BlazBlue — Calamity Trigger (360): Apparently the Guilty Gear property got tied up in some legal wrangling with Sony, so Arc Systems Works told them to go to hell and rolled a new property. The plot is fighting-game-incoherent (which is to say, consists mainly of hilariously over the top cutscenes), so whatever. The graphics are crisply gorgeous, the animations are smooth, and the soundtrack ranges from decent background noise to actively great. I haven’t exactly plumbed the engine in depth, but so far it’s at a nice place in terms of execution. Most gatling combos and special cancels are pretty slick and intuitive, and the “Drive” button is something of an all-purpose “do something cool” command that helps add some variety to character combos. Obviously there’s more at the high end, including the return of Roman Cancels (now called Rapid Cancels) that should give competitive players something to work with.
Character variety is decent, though a couple of the designs aren’t as original as I’d hoped for. Fortunately, they all seem to play pretty well and differently.
The Story mode is a pain. Getting 100% completion on a character’s story mode involves iterating through the win and loss branches of every fight, even when the loss branch is not much more than “u lose game over”. So the pattern of “save, lose, load, win, save, lose, load, win” gets pretty tedious after a while. And there’s an awful lot of text for a story that’s pretty spare.
Overall, still a blast to play, and hoping to spend a lot more time learning it. Highly recommended.
Apparently, the Nepal airport is so prone to corruption that the government has decided Something Must Be Done:
Nepal’s anti-corruption authority has come up with a novel solution to rampant bribe-taking at the country’s only international airport — the pocketless trouser.
The authority said it was issuing the new, bribe-proof garment to all airport officials after uncovering widespread corruption at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport.
Brilliant.
(Via Bruce Schneier.)
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
Let’s talk television.
I haven’t watched any Heroes since early season 2 was so terrible, but looking over the episode recaps for season three, it has gone completely, insanely bad. Last I checked, Mohinder (whose unique contribution to evolved humanity was Super-Bad Decision-Making) is Spider-Man now, right down to wrapping people in cocoons, and that’s the least incredibly stupid thing I’ve heard about. So, pass.
People keep telling me to watch Chuck. Someone want to back them up on this?
Terminator: SCC. I’m a week behind on the Tivo, but it is still some bloody fantastic television.
Supernatural. I’m still not 100% sure I’m on board with this season, but the first few seasons were so improbably good that they’ve earned a certain amount of patience from me. I think a lot of people missed out on this show because it was on WB or CW or whatever, and they can be forgiven — it is a routinely terrible station. But go back and give it a watch.
I gave Fringe two episodes and got exactly what I expected. JJ Abrams doesn’t know what a story bible is, but he knows he doesn’t want one. I gave Alias and Lost their chances - a season and a half each, same as anything else, and look where that got me. (Hint: Bored and slightly bitter.) So, not watching that.
Anything decent I’m missing out on, particularly in sf?
Oh, the Terry Goodkind TV series apparently starts in a few weeks. This can only end in alcohol and comedy.
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