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Canvas: Visions of Character
Tue, 21 Mar 2006

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Big Z's father is having a showing of his paintings at Cafe Bernate (1024 Queen Street West, Toronto Ontario) from March 23rd through April 30th 2006. They're having the opening on the 23rd (which is to say, this Thursday!) wherein Jean Hawryluk will be present for tea and my dear friend Big Z will be working the cocktail station. I'm sure a lot of cool folks, friends and arteests will be mingling, but don't worry.. I'll have the most gadgets so I win.

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Comics: Batman: The Long Halloween
Mon, 20 Mar 2006

Another quick writeup from my phone..

While putting together some final features for a potential mini-release of Shadow Plan (perhaps I'll go for a 4.4 intermediate release rather than heading straight to 4.5 as originally planned) I've been valiently trying to keep up with the support email inbox. At the same time in the wee hours before falling off to sandland, I've been catching up on the goings-about in Gotham City. You see here, I picked this very fine book up for myself around Christmas but never got around to it.

This isn't the latest Batman or Dark Knight type comic as it was originally published around 1996 if memory serves; life has been busy for all of us of course, so I too have contributed to the death of the genre by tending to pick up the graphic novels or collections rather than the monthlies featured at the local comic shop. This book was a thirteen part series, spanning from one Halloween to the next and featuring a somewhat involved plot as the Batman tracks down a serial murderer who strikes only during holidays. Many characters feature cameos including Catwoman, Joker and some others (avoiding spoilage here) so its a fast and fun read.

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TV: Good news everyone!
Sun, 19 Mar 2006

I'll be short and sweet for this is important and heady stuff - a short note on Billy West's (the voice of 'Fry') message board notes that Futurama will be back! Hooray! One of my favourite shows every to be on the tube. Now, if only Firefly could be brought back I could die a happy nerd.

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Rants: One mans comment in a Slashdot posting, re: Army
Wed, 15 Mar 2006

This lad Daniel Dvorkin replied in the Slashdot thread here. His reply hit me in the right place for today, so I thought I'd share.

These people you so casually dismiss as "robots" sign up, generally speaking, when they're eighteen or nineteen years old; they believe, almost without exception, that they are doing so to serve their country, to protect the Constitution and the flag and Mom and apple pie. And you know what? At most times throughout our country's history, they've been right.

Just a few years later, if they're unlucky enough to have enlisted at a time like the current one, they're old men, scarred by things no human being should ever have to see. That's what war (any war, including the "good" ones) does to people. That doesn't happen to robots.

I started out as one of those nineteen-year-old grunts; a couple of years later, dimly sensing what was coming down the pike, I cross-trained as a medic, in which capacity I served in Desert Storm. I had no desire whatsoever to "profit from the misery of others" -- I wanted to serve, and I was, relatively speaking, one of the lucky ones. I don't have anyone's death on my conscience. I do have memories of things that will give me nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of my life ... and mine was a very, very short war. What those kids over there are going through now is so much worse I can't quite get my mind around it.

They're not robots. They're your son, your niece, your little brother, caught up in a horrible situation not of their own making. Don't take your anger out on them. Save it for the evil old men who never exposed themselves to that kind of horror, who would never allow their own children to go through it, who casually, thoughtlessly, cheerfully send other people's kids off to hell.

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Rant: *grumble* Taxes *grumble*
Tue, 14 Mar 2006

So Revenue Canada gives me a call to ask for something; the person on the other side was a really nice gal, and I must admit than in all my dealings with the tax boys they've been friendly and courteous -- doubly so for the company taxes. But as any know - when the tax man calleth, no good can come of it.

In this case its a request for some information and clarification for my personal return a number of years ago; thats fine, but I'm sure it can lead to no good and more to point, it just brings up something that annoys me: Running a business really just means you work your tail off to feed a bunch of greedy folks from government to middlemen. The guy who works his tail off the most really doesn't get all that much out of it, in my humble opinion. All the hands are out, but all you want to do is keep keep them out of your pocket and make the end customer happy.

But anyway; its just one of those days, so I had to vent :)

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Day by Day: Voices of the Blog^h^h^h^hJournal
Sat, 11 Mar 2006

I go on about all sundry of topics here, and I do hope theres something for the nerd in everyone.. that you like something from Palm and handheld business, to technology and entertainment, to arts and nerding out. I really just started the blog so long ago as an experiment to see if there is really all that much to talk about.. to see if _I_ could really say so much as to support a journal. Well, how about that? Every single person, if they choose to describe just a small fraction of what they experience every day, can support a journal!

I find it interesting (and endlessly troublesome) that I have such a variety of readers among the oh, 3 or 4 that I do have. Lets take stock off the top of my head, in absolutely no particular order. i) Obvious ones include friends and family - the real people I actually know. Some even follow the blog, to my great shame ;) ii) Homebrew communities - I've been supporting and coding for all sorts of communities over the years, and some even rabidly so. Sony PSP, GP32 and GP2X, of course Palm OS and Zodiac. These are the obvious, but lets also chalk up various Atari nerd groups. Gods. iii) The very fine Codejedi and Shadow Plan fans and customers; I have carefully avoided trying to advertise for my company and insane pursuits here, but these people do support me quite a bit and I count a great number as friends. As all know, I'm a huge fan of community building and linking people together.. iv) I suppose one could add to the homebrew listing above the emulation and arcade and jukebox scenes that I've been loitering in for far too long; I helped pioneer arcade emulation to some small extent and met a lot of bizarre and interesting kooky people while scouring southern Ontario for retro gear. v) Syndication. The very nature of blogging technology has led to content being cloned around the web (or 'mirrored') so people are forever finding copies of my journal here in all sorts of places. Numerous times I've been caught off guard when someone comes up and mentions they read such and such a thing about my personal life on some Atari news aggregator or console site -- since I so often talk retro they syndicate my blog into their site, not knowing they can poach just the retro entries. Whatever.. this is the nature of the system though it can be weird sometimes :) vi) LiveJournal -- I mirror my blog into LJ for the conveniance of a few friends over there, but god only knows who stumbles across it there. vii) Perhaps finally, random googlers on the web (hi, by the way!) -- once in awhile some topic or another searched for will end up here. I'm glad to be amusing or useful once in awhile (or shall we just leave it at 'once'?)

Day zero, I did consider a wiki instead of blog, and a set of blogs under one roof so that folks could visit a retro blog, or a friends blog, or others; instead I went with the one you see before you, featuring categories to allow more easily breaking down of the content so one can easily bookmark a group of topics instead of the whole shbang, should they not like my pathetic meandering of thoughts.

[ Category: / day_by_day / philosophy ] [link] [Comments]

Cinema: "Now that's a campfire"
Sat, 11 Mar 2006

A penny for you if you can recall the movie featuring that line ;)

I was chatting with a fellow today and, just as it so often does, the topic of classic good-bad movies came up. (Yet another form of retro that we're all addicted to, of course.) He was asking "Where are the Die Hards, the Delta Forces, the Conans and the Dirty Harry's?" Now I suppose in this environment of post-9/11 and the US war in Iraq it is unfashionable to feature a little of the old ultra-violence, but then again.. we do have The Matrix and the influx of Asian inspired wire-fu action films (thank Crom!) -- have the action heroes simply swung from steroid-pumped uber-Americans towards the CGI-pumped under-Americans? (Toby Maguire as Spiderman -- a very fine set of films by the way.) Or maybe they're just considered homo-erotic.

We can thank the DVD gods for the deluge of retro preservation, as I do see in several online retailers that Romancing the Stone (there, no penny for you!) is still available. While not an action film, I'm incredibly impressed that Hudson Hawk is around -- a film that is utterly brilliant .. or is in my memory anyway. (I will never forget the one night where I forced my poor friends to rent and watch Clash of the Titans, as I remembered it being _so_ good, when in fact it is unfit for observation by sock-monkeys.)

With hand on the most holy book (If Chins Could Kill, naturally) I solemnly swear to watch a good old fashioned steroid film. I wonder if there are any Oscar winners in the lot, to help complete my quest to watch 10 past Oscar winning films this year. Spartacus counts? Or must I stick to the true greats - Escape from New York or Commando? Oh, oh, maybe Big Trouble in Little China.. does that count? Certainly Leonard Part 6 is out..

[ Category: / entertainment / cinema ] [link] [Comments]

MMORPG: Player Vs Player (Not the MAD Magazine Kind), Or, A Lame Strategy Guide
Fri, 10 Mar 2006

(Or, in an alternate gotee-wearing universe: "Nerdiest Post Ever" for I mention roleplaying, online gaming, MUDs, Quake, and strategies for these. I hope you respect me in the morning. Apologies in advance for the awkwardness of the writing.. not a lot of proof-reading going on here.)

Wired.

Busy times -- been sick for days, caught the Lord of the Rings musical (to be reviewed separately in a less-nerdy moment), visited yet-another funeral, readied up for some house hunting, and just watched the muffler blow off my car... but tonight I will finally get to sit down. Well, sit down to catch up on the support inbox.. <cry> Anyway, as an old pencil and paper 'roleplaying and wargamer' from waaaay back in the 80s (Dungeons and Dragons ('D&D'), Battletech, Starfleet Battles, etc.) and later a bit of a computer gamer, I've always kept an eye out for good design and to watch the game industry; I've rarely had a lot of time to keep in games myself, but I do like to read a few magazines here or there and fiddle as best I can arrange. Like an armchair sports watcher, but without the beer can. As a developer I like to see whats going on and how things are done, and as an wannabee gamer I like to just see how things evolve. As an arcade collector, I like things to be fast and vicious since 15 minutes is about all one can squeeze out of a day, right? (And for the curious, I take my poison as Scotch, not beer ;)

Prelude: Lets get this out of the way once and for all

MMORPG's are computer 'role playing' games (where you take on a character and manage its growth over time) you play online with a few thousand other people - so the enemies are both computer AIs (scripted) and real people (unpredictable) - potentially much more interesting than traditional games where things can get rote very quickly. (MMORPGs take longer to get rote ;) You've likely even heard of one of these games, from EVE Online and their virtual stock scams and Everquest online where real people have had their lives destroyed because of being too addicted. Anyway, the virtual cities are abuzz with folks running every which way on all sorts of quests and tasks, buying goods or hunting monsters, constructing new gadgets or fishing in a online pond. They're not so much like action games - Quake for example - a frantic 3D shooter akin to running amok in a warzone, but where players invest months of time to slowly grow their character up into more and more strength in various ways: the better warrior, sneak, wizard or what-have-you. I ignored the MMORPG genre more or less as I've not the time, but I did spend a lot of time during college with their predecessor - the MUD or text-only Multi-User Dungeons. Those were the same as today's MMORPG, but without fancy graphics. Really, pretty much the same pound for pound, though today's games learned heavily from the MUDs, tabletop RPG and wargaming to produce nicely pollished online experiences. Big bucks for the company that can harness the millions of potential players willing to spend per-month to play in the online world.

I should point out, for clarity -- MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. There are also MMOFPS for First Person Shooter. Someday we'll have the true life-destroying game MMOCiv -- give me a massive persistent world with Civilization style exploration and we'll have something.

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