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Monday, October 6th, 2008
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11:45 pm - Anathem
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I don't usually post reviews of books - I get through so many that it would be ridiculous.
However, I am going to celebrate my enkeyboardedness with a big double-thumbs-up for Neal Stephenson's latest tome, Anathem.
I don't really know what made me love it so much - except it's like Eco's Name of the Rose crossed with Xkcd. I can't actually say why I liked it without giving away the plot.
Suffice to say that with this novel Stephenson is now a hard SF writer with a lyrical bent. Anathem reminds me of the works of Iain M Banks, except it's better than Banks' recent efforts.
Finally - and hugely impressively - in a marked difference to most authors who have gotten successful, Stephenson appears to have listened to his (justified) critics and delivered a satisfying, rounded and well-paced ending.
Don't start Anathem if the concept of techno-monks having dinner conversations about quantum effects on the multiverse turns you off. Did I mention that sometimes one word in four is invented? However, like Banks' greatest efforts, if you're prepared to become subsumed in Anathem's world, a very rich and fulfilling treat lies in store.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, October 5th, 2008
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6:30 pm - Like the opposite of writing longhand.
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One wine-into-keyboard event and I'm now clicking on the on-screen-keyboard utility.
Grrr...
My 'backup' keyboard is PS/2 and my new puter is USB only. I have tons of usb-ps2 adapters, but none the other way round. Grrr...
lets hope my sysadmin at work can sort me out, but no gaming this evening. ;-(
And I was halfway through a reply about 360 games, too.
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(14 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 3rd, 2008
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9:02 am - World of Goo = Awesome!
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Anyone who's into game design has probably encountered the excellent Tower Of Goo years before. I've been playing it, off-and-on for some time. The creators have been hard at work since then, converting their gameplay experiment into a fully fledged indie game (entirely self-published so far, and with no marketing spend, hence this post)
Following rave reviews from Eurogamer and RockPaperShotgun, I finally decided to pay £11 or so and pre-order because I felt I had to play the first chapter. (I hadn't done so before because a) it was through PayPal*, b)we didn't know a release date, c) it was apparently coming to WiiWare and d) no-one told me it was worth the cash)
World of Goo isn't just worth the cash for the pre-order, it's nearly worth full price for this first chapter alone. It's spectacular, phenomenal, brilliant, marvellous, enchanting, [insert favoured superlative here].
You know those magnetic ball-and-rod toys that clip together, allowing you to make geometrical shapes? World of Goo is a bit like those, except in 2D with sort of stretchy boingy physics, and anthropomorphic little blobs of goo that independently climb your structure to get as high as possible (their weight affects what you build) and then go 'wheeeeeeee!' when you stick them up at the top of your tower to reach a new height.
At least try the experimental one if you like games and have a soul. If you discover yourself addicted to it, pre-order World of Goo and play the sumptuous first chapter (of 5). There's about 15-20 levels of awesomeness in there, as well as a network enabled fully fledged version of Tower Of Goo where you get to see the heights other players have achieved as floaty clouds above you for you to aim at.
*As it turns out, PayPal now accepts credit cards instead of demanding you have an account, so that's an improvement.
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| Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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7:45 pm - Need a new iconograph
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I'm in a moderate state of bafflement at the moment. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) _alanna and myself have booked a rather special holiday this christmas, and I need a camera - since my current one uses "Advanced Photo System" 35mm film cartridges that cost a bomb to develop, and I don't think people make them any more.
My budget's up to £200, and I'm particularly interested in small size, optical zoom, light weight and simple connectivity. I'm going to take tons of storage, and there'll be a laptop with plenty of storage nearby. This device needs to be reasonably rugged, light enough to carry comfortably and not totally allergic to cold, damp and salt.
I'm not so much asking for individual camera recommendations (although they'd be helpful) more which sites people trust, and which features to look out for and gotchas to be aware of.
Unsurprisingly, ter intertron is filled with camera reviewers, merchants, forums, comparisons and so on, and I'm drowning in data. Any help would be welcome! ;-)
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(15 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 4th, 2008
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9:44 pm - Dancing for Cthulhu's praise
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My friendly local games shop has delivered once again. I have been engrossed in Spore for hours now.
There are several reviews online - and I don't agree with many of them. This game is superb, and it appears to be wired directly into my brain. I'm a tactical min-maxer with a love of light strategy games (I can appreciate deep strategy, but I'm not all that good at it). I also have a keen interest in making sure the colours co-ordinate. For example, I was a Lego freak when I was young, but bilateral symmetry had to be observed. If there weren't enough blue bricks to make a wall on both sides of the [whatever] then it had to be redesigned. Those who could tolerate multicoloured designs were just wrong, mmkay?
( Do you want to know more? )
This game is genius. I wish I could make something comparable, but I know I won't get the chance.
On the other hand, I have my doubts that it'll be commercially successful. It's a bit geek-hardcode for real mainstream success, but I've been way wrong in the past.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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10:08 pm - Holy craptacular!
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The latest Soul Calibur is inordinately pretty.
It's also inordinately hard, at least in Arcade mode. I thought I'd ease in gently, with a few rounds of successively harder combat.
Whoever set the difficulty levels was using a logarithmic scale. It took me playing Lizardman over 15 matches (that's more than 30 rounds) to beat the 7th (of 8) opponent. I was swearing blue murder and then I came up against their new boss, and I just gave up. He's hard ;-)
However, the game is beautiful, and there seems to be lots of SP content. Not sure I'd ever go online (unless there are any folks out there who'd like a game?) but I'm happy enough.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, July 18th, 2008
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6:10 am - Please be good #2
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| Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
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8:18 am - Soooaaaaal Caribuuuurrrr!
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Rumour has it that a remade version of Soul Calibur comes online for the 360 tomorrow. Certainly it's going online in the USA, we can but hope it's available in the UK too.
Teh intarwebs is full of 'tards screaming about the fact it doesn't have online multiplayer - just leaderboards. It's another instance where those of us who've tried to make online games just have to shrug and say "it's hard, mmkay?".
Admittedly, I am slightly disappointed that they couldn't include additional widescreen graphics, or the complete Mission mode (While it was being developed, Microsoft set a 150Mb limit on all downloaded games, which they've now lifted)
But still. The original? For a fiver or so? Come to me, silver Lizardman - all is forgiven!
(kauket and zenithed, you guys might want to plug in your network cable! ;-)
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| Saturday, June 28th, 2008
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3:16 pm - Yay! Bullet-time!
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Wanted is very, very good! It's silly, explosive, overloud, cheerily bloodily violent, completely impossible and hyperkinetic. However, it's also full of fantastic 'omfg' stunt sequences and feels different to most hollywood action movies. It's better than Night Watch, and tons better than Day Watch, and is utterly recommended.
The last film we saw was Indiana Jones - which was flat, dull and tasteless 'meh' compared to this.
Here's hoping Hellboy and The Dark Knight live up to expectations!
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 20th, 2008
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6:53 am - Good omen?
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Potassium Benzoate - 6:40am. Discover bathroom door won't unlock, with oneself inside. Briefly consider excuses for not getting in to work, hunt around for something that looks like a screwdriver (fail)
Free topping - after a session of furious jiggling, I manage to escape my ablutionary prison, then go about taping up the lock so that _alanna will not fall prey to the same devious trap. I also take the opportunity to deposit a screwdriver.
I wonder if this is going to be a good friday?
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
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9:22 am - Mum! Dad!
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To play the full version of the Spore Creature Creator, you must install EA's appalling 'Download Manager'
This was released substantially later than 10pm last night, and being an obsessive, I stayed up far too late first to wait for it, then to jump through innumerable hoops in order to play my £5 demo.
( Don't Touch It! )
It wouldn't be so bad if the new content wasn't so much fun - I'd just uninstall the lot and never buy a game from EA online ever again.
Let me just repeat that - Never buy a game from EA online
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
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8:39 am - Gratified, but filthy
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Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have tasted of the poisoned fruits of EA, and I am addicted.
This morning I tried out the Spore Creature Creator - the 'lite' demo of Spore, with 25% of the available bodyparts that appear in the 'full fat' paid-for demo.
I have now pre-ordered the paid-for demo (£4.99, which you get back when you buy the full game) but I can't download it until 10pm tonight.
It's as if it's been wired specifically into my buhrain... moulding little creatures out of digital plasticine, tweaking the legs setup and adjusting their sensory organs, then painting them and getting them to run around and dance.
My first ant looked kinda OK, but his legs were spread out too far, so when he kicked out with one of them he overbalanced. My next one will be more stable - I'm probably going to need to put the feet nearer the centre of gravity, since biophysics is quite different for small insecty-type creatures, and I think Spore is limiting me to creatures that weigh a few kilos.
Also, I can't seem to get his feet pointing backwards (for the rear set of legs) but I'm hoping there's just a tool I don't know about yet. It's also possible that front-facing-feet is one of Spores assumptions though. Equally, you can't create non-bilaterally-symmetrical creatures - or at least, I've not worked out how to yet.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 6th, 2008
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1:51 pm - Fools and their money
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What a great service. I'm sure you've all heard about the 'post death email' services which you can use to spam friends and family from beyond the grave.
A bunch of entrepreneurs / conmen / devoted faithful (delete as applicable) have taken this model one step further. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you - Post-Rapture email. Yes, for the small yearly fee of $40 (cost is assured to reduce as more faithful subscribe) you can archive important documents to be instantly emailed to 62 of your chosen adressees upon confirmation of the Rapture actually occurring.
How do we know the Rapture is occurring, you may ask. Fear not, brethren - "[The rapture] occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system."
Well, that's fair enough. Apparently in the 80's a nuclear response from the UK's hidden submarines would be triggered if they failed to pick up Radio 4's Today Programme for 5 days running.
I wonder - if you signed up for this, would you put your own email address in as one of the 62? (I can't help wondering why 62? Is that some kind of mystical number?). After all, you wouldn't want the Rapture to go by without you noticing.
I think it's also nice that they're so considerate. I mean, when Satan and his hordes are rampaging over the sulphur-scorched earth chasing the last few recalcitrant athiests and naughty evolutionary biologists, you're going to want to take a break, grab a muffin and catch up on your email. Ding! You have mail! The Rapture's here! (HTML graphics in this message have been blocked)
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
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8:30 am - Best bug note ever?
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| Friday, May 30th, 2008
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3:32 pm - Amazing. A web 2.0 lecture that isn't full of shite.
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| Friday, May 23rd, 2008
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7:28 pm - 3rd hand but still cool
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Via the b3ta newsletter - Old Russian / Ukranian dancing footage mixed with 'It's Like That' by Run DMC. Keep watching! ;-)
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 15th, 2008
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7:30 pm - Hornet's nest
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Isn't it cool that California has just (re)legalised gay marriage? Not just made it official, but expressly stated that marriage is not the same as civil partnerships, and cannot be denied on the basis of sexual orientation, as a point of constitutional law.
Even better, they've not restricted it to people in their own state, and it's going to take quite some time to reverse the decision, so when it goes 'live' in 30 days, any gay couples in the USA can go to California to get legally married.
Obviously the usual suspects are frothing like utter loons right now - the spokesloon for 'Concerned Women for America' said, in part - "If people who engage in homosexual behavior want to dress up and play house, that's their prerogative, but we shouldn't destroy the institutions of legitimate marriage and family in order to help facilitate a counterfeit."
Oddly, this makes me even happier. A real hornet's nest has been kicked over today, and the ramifications will be felt quite widely. It's good that this stuff is getting vociferously debated, I think.
With regards to sexuality - homo or otherwise - I'm actually quite hopeful that humanity might transcend some of our more medieval attitudes within my own lifetime. As far as I can see, sexuality is quite fluid, and if the promises of recent biological advances hold true, I don't see anything particularly stopping proper sex changing. We're maybe not at Culture levels of sexuality, but I think we've got a good chance of getting there.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, May 10th, 2008
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12:09 pm - Sacre bleu! Incroyable!
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Wait a moment, something's wrong... American TV that's getting funnier?
Bless their little colonial japeries. They still can't spell 'Yoghurt' though.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, May 2nd, 2008
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9:21 am - Is there anybody out there...
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..Who's also playing GTA4 on the Xbox?
I tried playing it online again last night, and my considered verdict is that it's a bit pants if you don't know anyone. Teamkillers, idiots, quitters and screamers abound.
Anyone want to play multiplayer this weekend?
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
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5:54 pm - Yay! A Grauniad article I like!
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