| Abandon in Place |
[Aug. 31st, 2008|12:29 pm] |
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I recently happened to view my Livejournal while logged out; apparently when you aren't you then the world wide web magically converts it into a machine for selling penis pills and Democrats. I don't have many standards - and the ones that do don't make much sense - but I really dislike advertising on the internet. So, goodbye to all that... I set up a Blogspot account (http://banditloaf.blogspot.com) which I can use until it turns out it's secretly selling people chest creams and Republicans. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|10:06 am] |
CNN has added a tiny 'T-Shirt' graphic button next to their website headlines. Clicking on it generates you a page selling a t-shirt with that headline and when you saw it. The 21st century is awful.
This is the best one so far: 6-legged Kitty Named Hex Needs Surgery.
In the near future the most embarassing social situation will be to walk into a room and find someone wearing the same news headline auto-shirt, but with an earlier "I SAW IT ON CNN.COM" time. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 15th, 2008|08:19 am] |
Dear Superthread,
My, it's been a long, long time.
Star Trek delayed until summer?! This setback is most bitter. It's probably good news for the quality of the movie... but it just doesn't seem right. Star Trek movies are like drinking cider and going to the beach: things you do in the winter.
I rewatched Terminator the Show last night, as I often do on Wednesdays. Some praise: whoever wrote Reese's dialogue has an extremely rare gift for writing futuristic slang that flows correctly. This is something that nearly every other show ever made is extremely bad at (the same does not go for John's lines about chess, which were awful.) I really like that the show does a great job of making you wonder if pretty much every character is a Terminator - and then not revealing any of them as such. BattleStar Galactica does this poorly and in the opposite manner - suddenly revealing that main characters are Cylons with absolutely no foreshadowing.
CNN's front page is linking me to the worlds most sensationalistic story about the space program: http://www.wesh.com/news/15298911/detail.html The Soyuzes have guns onboard them?! What a shocking news story which everyone has known about since the late 1960s. I will grant them that removing it may lead to a much more interesting news story (cosmonaut crew eaten by wolves.) What is the plural of Soyuz?
The used game store in Olney has the limited edition of Perfect Dark Zero for $20. I almost bought it to get the happy crab gamerpic that's on the bonus disc. My Xbox being broken was enough to justify my not wasting money in the saddest manner possible.
Re: New Star Wars theatrical Clone Wars CGI movie - do we wait in line for this? I'm not really sure how it will work. I'm moderately excited, though.
I did enjoy the Indiana Jones trailer, although on various practical levels it bothers me (Area 51 on the box, going back to the Ark warehouse which was essentially a joke from the original... I'm really learning to hate continuity in my old age.) I assume this movie involves aliens, which will really only be amazingly great if they change the style of the film itself so it's like a 1950s sci fi b-movie instead of a 1930s action serial.
I very much enjoy the media's new obsession with superdelegates, mostly because it's just another layer to the grand historical irony that is the Democratic Party this year. The party was (ostensibly) founded in protest of exactly this type of situation, when the Presidency was given to Adams despite Jackson having won the most votes (and, of course, just the idea that they might nominate an African American candidate compounds this - since the alliance which founded the party was half based on the idea that it would protect slavery.)
Frosty and LeHah and I are doing some work on the DRAFT CHRIS campaign; as long as I find the energy to put into it then it may end up being an amazingly effective project.
It's Valentine's Day at work and there's candy and cupcakes and stuff everywhere. Free food is one of the great benefits of working for a school system (the other is health insurance, and the third is that I can walk to a store that sells little pellets that you put in water and they turn into airplanes.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 1st, 2008|10:33 am] |
Dear Thread,
I'm sorry for not writing for several days. I had a lot of meetings and work and also I'm extremly lazy. This post will contain everything you missed -- and more!
Schools were delayed two hours because of rain today, but it didn't apply to administrative offices. So instead of a story about how I spent two hours making the worlds finest breakfast sandwhich, you get some meandering bit about dreams.
My morning routine lately has been to get up around 3 AM and move over to my chair. I flip through the various late-night TV shows that have been Tivo'd and then switch on VH1 and fall asleep again for three hours.
Normally I'm kind of half asleep, able to realize that I'm hearing that Love Song song thirty times an hour but not able to do anything about it. Today, though, I fell into some unusually deep sleep where I felt like I was trying to swim out of my own consciousness to wake up in time, and that it was impossible. I was also absolutely certain, at the same time, that I was having an IRC conversation with Trelane about how we had to agree to buy more Legos. Did this actually happen?
Various things:
Surfer girl was nice enough to reply to my reply; she says Wing Commander X (hey, lets call it that) isn't being done at EA Austin... which still leaves Vancouver as a possibility. I hope, I hope, I hope... I asked her for more information, but I'm not entirely sure how far she'll go.
I finished watching Torchwood, and I enjoyed several of the episodes a lot more than I expected; still, it's basically X-Files except with lead characters who are all intentionally unpleasant. On the plus side, there's not some year-long lag time for re-airing new episodes in the US like there is with Doctor Who, so at least I can go right into season two.
Charlotte and I watched the first half of the Doctor Who season last weekend and we'll probably watch the rest this weekend. And when Captain Jack shows up I'll know exactly what he was doing for thirteen hour-long adventures beforehand and she won't.
I also rewatched the first episode of the Terminator show (Tivo tivo'd the HD version of the pilot) and I like it more and more.
The internet has pictures from Starship Troopers 3: http://www.starshiptroopers3.net/index.php?go=photos&PHPSESSID=3cc4dc15dffd20573d1f75e51d4b62c1 SST'Pol is pretty.
There is a surprisingly good Borders coupon today, 40% off a DVD box set. It's only good Friday and Saturday... I'm hoping I'll be able to get one or two of those missing MST3K sets tonight: http://www.bordersmedia.com/coup/coupon40dvd0131.htm
Speaking of which, I ordered the single disk of Giant Gila Monster that they're selling online (the movie that replaced the rights-violating one in the reissued Vol. 10 set.) It was pretty nice of them to make it: http://rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=437116 I know I promised I'd make LeHah a copy of my crazy rare set, and I will... someday.
Big week for comics, in that there were three that I bought instead of none (Jack of Fables, Futurama and the last Y the Last Man.)
I'm not sure what to think of the end of Y. It was alternatively very satisfying and expectedly disappointing -- sometimes for the same reasons.
I didn't especially need or want to know how succesful society without men was down-the-road... but then I'd criticize any other series for not including that kind of coda (looking at you, Voyager.) I guess the biggest issue I have with the background story is that everything seems to have worked out just dandy, and in fairly short order.
One of the cool things about the series was that it was good at revealing things you wouldn't think of, but that immediately made sense (ie, the ISS crew would be stranded in space and unaffected by the plague, the Australian silent service would still be able to function because they have female sub-mariners, etc.) -- and "then everything was okay" isn't one of those things.
... but then the very end of the book lives up to that sort of hidden-in-plain-sight reveal, exactly. You get a narrative parallel and some implied Shakespeare that you immediately realize you should have known would be the end of the story to start out with, but didn't.
And that's that.
I eBayed a bunch of Star Trek figures (the SDCC exclusives from last year, First Contact Data) and I'm two away (Season One Picard and Riker) from being entirely caught up.
POLITICS: What the hell, man? History is going to make fun of us for letting a Presidential election be decided by the media.
They sell giant chipwhiches across the street and they're incredibly expensive. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 28th, 2008|04:02 pm] |
Allright, this is the brass ring.
Yes, something big is coming. No, I don't have enough details. One half of me would rather just be a fan and deal with whatever shows up... the other half wants to make damn sure that the backstory created by projects like the movie and Arena continues to be respected.
There's all sorts of possible groups doing this thing -- EA Mythic, who recently aquired Prince Thrakhath's head... Bioware Austin, with Wing Commander veterans... EA LA, following up on the C&C relaunch... or Vancouver.
I tell you that, if I were on my death-bed tomorrow and the President of the United States should tell me that a great game was to be designed for the liberty or slavery of the franchise, and asked my judgement as to the ability of a designer, I would say with my dying breath, let it be Sean Penney.
I've known a lot of Wing Commander veterans in my day, from Chris Roberts on down. I respect Captain Johnny and Adam and everybody else more than I can properly express -- I owe Mark Day more friendship than I can ever repay... but Sean is the man to do this. No one has ever gone out of their way to care about the fans than he did on the last title. I wish they'd treated him better, and feel badly about myself as their leader over it.
Allright, that's that.
I had a pretty sad weekend. I spent all day on Saturday helping my mom (missing the tournament! I'm sorry! I would have been a better emcee than Chris) and then much of the day on Sunday helping my dad replace broken pipes. Someday I'm going to get a weekend where I can just sit in my chair with a bottle of Scotch and some M&Ms for two days... someday.
AD says Feeding Frenzy 2 is coming out in the spring and that it has exclusive yBox minigames. Whoop-woo. Still, has anyone actually checked off which games *actually* came out before the end of 2007 as promised at that Microsoft event? Because I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a big pile of those Live Arcade titles yet...
Playmates is doing the Star Trek movie figures! And I figured it out before the rest of the internet! I hope 2008 is like 1994 all over again.
I accidentally exploded a printer cartridge today; there was magenta *everywhere*, like a beautiful purple snow on a horrible purple planet. Actually, none of it got on me somehow. It was just on the rug, and the table, and the printer. I coated my hand in tape and sucked it all up.
They have invented a new kind of Snickers that has caffeine in it. I recently tried the Mint Three Muskateers and wass *immensely* disappointed. Way to spring dark chocolate on me, jerks.
The week ahead will be long and pointless.
I want to eat a chipwhich.
And a root beer. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 25th, 2008|12:15 pm] |
Hello Superthread,
Work was busy this morning! The first third of the day just flew by... now, I imagine, it will slow to a halt.
Very occasionally I have odd blackouts where I can't remember going to bed the night before, and last night was one of those times. I remember sitting in my chair watching The Jerk with Trelane... and then I woke up in my bed without my comforter (it was still by the chair.)
I woke up very early and watched the first two episodes of Torchwood. I'm not incredibly excited about it at this point -- more adult != more sex, in my mind. It seems to suffer the same fate as all mid-level spinoffs -- you're most excited when someone is making a passing reference to the original show that you love.
I think a good way to measure the end of our sociological shift is by watching advertisements for pregnancy tests. As soon as we start having ones with actors who are excited that they aren't pregnant then the gig will be up. Has someone created that test before? It seems familiar.
I have some good posts in that awful 'BWS status' thread.
POLITICS: On McCain - Americans don't reward hard-fought veterans with the Presidency; they elect generals whom they consider celebrities. Jackson, Taylor, Harrison, Eisenhower, etc. They also all have badass nicknames, which John McCain does not.
Amazing new fact: Von Braun actually wrote a science fiction novel about a mission to Mars in the 1940s. "Project Mars: A Technical Tale." I need to read this book.
This just in: Season 6 of Combat! is coming on May 27th - so clear your calendars for that Friday.
I'm going to try walking to the grocery store at lunch; what treasures will I find? What mysteries will I unlock? Maybe a new kind of Oreo? Or a talking octopus clock? Only time will tell! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 24th, 2008|04:29 pm] |
Yo Superthread,
I just got finished with Thursday's five hour meeting. My brother tried to call me while I was muted. I'll bet anything he was trying to tell me the title for the next Bond movie: "Quantum of Solace." Some months ago we were trying to guess what it would be and so looked through unused titles where we found that very one... along with its exciting description: "Told in the style of W Somerset Maugham, the tale has Bond attending a boring dinner party at the Government House in Nassau with a group of socialites he can't stand." Now I'm *really* excited about this movie.
As predicted, the comic book store did not have Starship Troopers. I did try to hint that I would like for them to order it for me, but the effort fell flat ("Do get the Starship Troopers book?" "Yeah, but there hasn't been one in a while." "I thought there was supposed to be one this week..." "Nope, didn't come in.") And of course there was, so I ordered it from the internet.
Neither of the Star Trek comics was especially great, but both were passable. The Alien Spotlight Borg had neat art but a story that seemed unacceptably epic for a single issue of a comic book... I wish we could get small stories out of tie-ins once in a while. Year Four #6 was clearly another issue based on an interesting concept that just didn't really formulate into a story properly -- but at least it's the end of that particular series (every time I go to the store the guy complains about how much he hated the first issue of Year Four.) I would really like for there to be an ongoing Star Trek series again... I don't understand why we're subdividing everything.
I ordered MST3K Vol. 7 from DDD because it was noticably cheaper than the others; I'm trying to decide whether or not I should pull the trigger and get the other four I need (a different company is getting the rights, and we all know how stupidly hard it can be to find these sets once they're off the shelves.)
Gamespreserve.org now forwards (for me, anyway) to Frosty's beautiful splash image. If you haven't seen it in a few days, check it out -- he added a Defender spaceship to the top that looks fantastic (Defender will always be but a pale imitation of Gorgon Snoggle, for me...)
I'm reading in the Rockville Library and then having dinner with my dad tonight; home lateish. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 23rd, 2008|02:59 pm] |
Dear Superthread,
I don't have much to say, but if I don't write one of these every day then I'll lose track and stop doing them forever again.
Comic book night tonight; it doesn't feel like such an accomplishment to make it through Wednesday, since the week is only four days long this time around. There's two Star Trek comics (Year Four #5 and Alien Spotlight: Borg) today. How in 2008 do you have a day when there's two new Star Trek comics at the store? Wonders never cease. There's also a new SST (#5), but my store never gets those in.
I'm going to be out late every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the semester. That's kind of a shame, I like sitting in my chair at home.
I wrote a short organizational theory for the GamesPreserve database and Frosty has the 'COMONG SOON' splash page all ready to go. No word from anyone else about the project today, which is making time pass very slowly.
Tivo tivo'd the uncut version of Species 2 in HD yesterday while I was at work; where did it find it? The HD channels must be a lawless wasteland if they're letting movies with naked lady aliens broadcast wildly in the afternoon.
Someday I'd like to have three cats which I could name Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. However, at present I have only one cat which is not named any of those things - so progress is minimal on this front.
iGoogle's weather button is a lot more reactionary than any of the others I check; even the *government* doesn't know there's going to be a giant snowstorm tomorrow.
Bioshock is on sale at Best Buy this week, so I'm finally going to buy it tonight.
I wrote three Point of Origins today so that I won't have to think about them again until Tuesday or so. There's only 25 or so left to do, I should really just power through them. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 22nd, 2008|01:54 pm] |
Dear Superthread,
What a busy day! The forums magically turned good again over the weekend and I had a mailbox full of Origin and GamesPreserve-related business.
It doesn't feel like Tuesday; this holiday messed up my internal chronometer something awful.
Silas put the famous Skunk video online here: http://jessecuster.livejournal.com/33675.html
A new H&R Block opened downstairs and they dropped a box of Dunkin Donuts donut holes off at my desk to advertise. I'm slowly eating them all. They have an odd taste... a brown powdered sugar on the outside, but with an unusual level of crunch when you bite into them.
I went to Joe's all weekend and we had some fun... and got some serious planning for GamesPreserve finished. That plus Frosty's actual work and Billy Cain's interest is making it seem a lot more real. I long for the day when we have a system up and running and I can just start plugging artifacts and documents into it.
POLITICS: ... were entirely uninteresting this week. Some kind of upset that gave Romney South Carolina would have been interesting, but everybody knew that wouldn't happen. So instead, lets talk about an even more controversial, even more important issue: HD-DVDs and BluRays. Has anyone noticed that HD-DVD has survived a remarkable amount of the storm that everyone was certain would kill them? DigitalBits has gone from insisting Paramount and Universal were about to bolt to saying that maybe by the middle of the year they would be making BluRays too.
Speaking of which: they announced a re-release of the MST3k Movie on DVD, finally. May 5th.
Wasn't Terminator the Show good last night? It was. |
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