Another To Do List

Looking for alternate universe with 48-hour days. Can be second hand, but must be in good condition.

Now Playing: Dead Space

If there haven’t been many blog updates in the last week, you can lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Dead Space. In times when I normally write my posts or work on BBelief2008, I have been playing Dead Space instead. When I should have been going to bed around midnight, I kept playing Dead Space instead. It’s one of the best games I’ve experienced this year.

(The following text won’t contain any story spoilers, and no major game spoilers. But if you prefer to not know anything about the game, you might want to stop reading right here.)

Dead Space is a case study in focus and execution. There are a few novel touches (like the 3D inventory and 3D UI screens), but when you get to the bottom of it, there’s a preexisting example for every one of Dead Space’s game elements. Dismembering enemies? Soldier of Fortune 2. In-game economics and stores? System Shock 2 (and, more recently, Bioshock). Node upgrade system: Final Fantasy X/2. Resurrection monsters: Archvile from Doom 2. Zero gravity sections: Prey. And of course Doom 3 paved the way, by the way of Event Horizon.

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The Burger King Diet

When the scale displayed 22% body fat at the beginning of this year, I figured that the time for a weight loss initiative had finally arrived. I wasn’t close to getting obese yet, but seeing how I was into my 30s now (when weight is notoriously harder to lose), and seeing how my physical weight had increased 25lbs since I had met Victoria (a gain I can squarely blame on Lair crunch time), I felt like I should reverse the trend while there was still time. Not through a fad diet, mind you. Through lifestyle changes.

Of course that meant eating more consciously, avoiding most fast food restaurants etc. I actually go to Wendys on a regular basis – their grilled chicken sandwich has honey mustard dressing instead of mayo, and substituting the fries for a side salad isn’t a bad deal at all. But I hadn’t been at a Burger King for ages. Until today, when I had to go to the Best Buy in Marin City, and didn’t have much time to find anything else to eat. There’s a Burger King right there, where my coworkers and I had some fun times several years ago – feeding burger meat to the eager pigeons (if you needed any more proof that pigeons are basically rats with wings, here it is). So I figured sure, why not? Maybe I’d forgotten that I once liked the place! So, picture me…

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R.I.P. Gwen

That’s the third bird we’ve lost in two months. I’m starting to doubt our ability to take care of them anymore.

The Two Types of Indiana Jones Movies

I wasn’t one of those people who hated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when it arrived in theaters last May. It had numerous problems for sure, but I was happy to disengage the rational side of my brain and go along for the ride. Now that the movie is available on Blu-ray, I’m finding that Indy 4 is actually growing on me. Once you know where the story is going and don’t care too much about how logically the parts of the movie connect, and once you’re already prepared for the movie’s questionable parts (*cough* fridge sequence *cough*) it’s easier to appreciate the moment-to-moment action and the set pieces in Crystal Skull. And there’s some good stuff there! The “ant arena” is a pretty brilliant concept, for example. Sure, the CG ants look somewhat fake, but the scene is a great variation on the traditional creepy crawler sequences featured in all previous Indiana Jones movies. The ants are also a clever way of creating a “ring of death” around the inevitable big fist fight. The motorcycle chase is well done, as are the cemetery scenes in Peru. (Mutt’s Tarzan moment in the jungle still sucks, though; and the sword fight doesn’t feel any less tacked on.)
I was surprised to find myself going back to the movie multiple times. Not giving it undivided attention, mind you, but using it as a background distraction while working on other things. Like a certain Quake level that I have affectionately started referring to as “that one“.

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Wisdom from Matchbox Twenty

Sometimes you’ll find truths that resonate with you at the unlikeliest of places. For example this one by Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas, talking about their song “Unwell”:

I’ve come to one conclusion, and that’s… In 31 years I’ve found out that everybody in the world – everybody in the world is a little bit fucked up, okay? And it’s okay, it’s okay – when you’re young, when you’re young you think it’s just you. You’re at home, you’re trying to hide it, you figure maybe you’ll grow out of it, maybe sooner or later you’ll get like all of the other people. And what you don’t know when you’re young is that it’s everybody, man! Everybody is a little bit fucked up. And so as you get older, as you get older you have two kinds of people: you have the fortunate people, who realize it early on, man, and they let their Freak Flag fly, and they have a good time, and they…they don’t think too hard about it, they don’t take themselves too seriously. And then there’s those poor bastards on the other side, that are still trying to play it cool, man. Every day: “I’m not fucked up!” So this song goes out to all the wonderfully enlightened people in Atlanta here tonight who know that it’s okay to be a little bit fucked up every now and then.

Found on Matchbox Twenty’s live DVD. Which has terrible sound quality but is still fun to listen to when it comes up in the iPod shuffle.

BBelief 2008 – The stage is set…

One of the challenges has actually been to not add too much detail to various areas. It’s nice that today’s computers are stretching Quake’s limits, but the composition quickly becomes too busy. If think that that first shot is stretching it. What do you think?

First Wedding Anniversary

It’s already been a year since Victoria and I got married! Please excuse the temporary lapse in blog updates as we travel around Sonoma and Napa, enjoy the occasion and eat our remaining wedding cake

Snapshot

Cyber-stalking help, October 2008:

Reading… Anathem (Neal Stephenson). Hard to get into, but it’s picking up steam.
Watching… Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season 1). 49ers games.
Playing… Nothing. Waiting for GoW2, Fable II and Fallout 3!
Looking Forward To… Maui vacation One more month…
Hoping… that the Phillies sweep the Dodgers to win the NLCS! Well, I just want them to win the series, but a sweep would be sweet.
Finishing… Beyond Belief 2008. I think. Current VIS time on Intel DualCore 2.6Ghz: 13 hours…

Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 5)

Welcome to the final installment of Rating “Cyberfilms”! This has been a lot of fun, but it’s also turned out to be much more work that I initially expected. Mostly because the reviews kept getting increasingly longer, I guess I can’t just write a couple of paragraphs on a story. We’re finishing the series today with George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers and H. P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator. To learn more about the series and to see previous reviews, read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4!

Nightflyers (George R. R. Martin)
1980
Score: A+

Robert Jaffe adopted this story into the movie of the same name. It was directed by Robert Collector and starred Catherine Mary Stewart, Michael Praed and John Standing.

She put an arm around him, stroked him, coaxed him. “The esperon will give you range,” she said. “Feel it, feel yourself grow stronger. Can you feel it? Everything’s getting clear, isn’t it? “Her voice was a reassuring drone. “Remember the danger now, remember, go find it. Look beyond the wall, tell us about it. Tell us about Royd. Was he telling the truth? Tell us. You’re good, we all know that, you can tell us.” The phrases were almost an incantation.

He shrugged off her support and sat upright by himself. “I can feel it,” he said. His eyes were suddenly clearer. “Something – my head hurts – I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be afraid,” the psipsych said. “The esperon won’t make your head hurt, it just makes you better. Nothing to fear.” She stroked his brow. “Tell us what you see.”

The telepath looked at Royd’s [holograph] with terrified little-boy eyes, and his tongue flicked across his lower lip. “He’s -”

Then his skull exploded.

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