| Heat Death Of The Universe |
[Aug. 17th, 2005|12:40 am] |
Not so drastic! This site has now been eclipsed by a reincarnation of the one it was intended to suppliment. The new one merges lots of the ideas and visual motifs of both.
http://www.kfj.f2s.com/
To clarify, I've switched to WordPress because it lets me customise everything completely, and is properly free. The social networking of LiveJournal isn't well-implimented enough to sway me - relationship terms are too strong (my Friends aren't my friends, they're just people whose blogs I like) and you can't find people with similar interests, only search by a single interest at a time (such an obvious, easy hack). |
|
|
| Sniper Spotted |
[Jul. 9th, 2005|11:39 pm] |
|
This guy, I swear, shot me twenty times before I worked out where he was. I'm not even exaggerating. I'm a medic, so I just hid behind that board and healed myself after each time, but I could not see where he was. Cranes are typical sniper spots, but it looks like this guy was using his head - a dark corner is much harder to spot. He got me in the end, simply because medic bullets barely scratch at this kind of range (as I say, his sniper fire couldn't kill me in one), but I was glad I at least sussed him out before I went down. He lol'd. I was, like, "Finally!" |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 9th, 2005|06:55 pm] |
Terrorists Win!
We followed the London thing today in typically geeky fashion - browsing Google's news aggregator, comparing it to Yahoo's (theirs is edited by a human, while Google's is automated based on popularity - Yahoo is quicker to recognise the significance of stories) - checking to see if the BBC site was back up, and eventually installing a digital radio card in my PC to listen to the news. The Guardian blog was very good right up until it reported a bomb had gone off in Leicester Square when it hadn't, which is a fairly big thing to get wrong. Quickest and juciest, though, was the Flickr pool for photos of the bombing, and most authorative - as ever - was the extraordinary Wikipedia entry, which is beauitfully organised, totally comprehensive and eerily up-to-date.
At lunch I wanted to try the new cs_assault map in Counter-Strike Source, and the moment I joined the server, "Terrorists win!" blared out of the speakers over the radio casualty reports. Counter-Strike exists in this kind of isolation bubble for gamers - the fact that one of the teams - the one that I virtually insist on playing as - is called Terrorists is utterly unconnected to the language of 9/11 and, now, 7/7 (you have to like that they picked a date that's the same in American and British formats). It's not until the two shout at you at the same time that you notice the similar sounds. It remains meaningless.
My sister and both my cousins live in London. Before I knew Anna (the former) was in Scotland, I entertained the idea that she might have been killed. It's never injured, is it? Every event like these sees hundreds of times more injuries than deaths, but that's inconceivable - in your head, if they were there, they're dead. Examining my emotional response to this possibility, I didn't come across any hatred or anger. It would have been exasperation, at the fact that her bike was recently stolen, and that she might have been riding that instead if it hadn't been. For fuck's sake, mankind. You had to steal her bike?
She actually always took her bike (which was collapsible) on the tube anyway, because cycling in London is dangerous (you laugh, but Stereolab lost a vocalist that way). But it's interesting that only the theft would have really irritated me. Explosions are a force of nature, suicide bombers are psychopaths. If someone's prepared to kill themselves for a cause, they are, by any definition, mad. It's hard for me to get angry at a mad person.
Bike thieves are assholes, though. They stole my bike, so I got a new one and a better lock. They stole the wheel, so I bought a new one and locked it to the frame. They stole the other one, then stole my sister's bike from her house. God damn it people! Leave the bikes alone! Why can't you steal a form of transport that kills people and pollutes?
Cowardly Act
Cowardly? How so? I mean, brutal yes, evil, random, sure. But the current understanding is that these were suicide bombers. Say what you like about that, it takes guts. It might not be honorable or whatever, but cowardice is about shying away from danger for your own sake. It's so wildly inaccurate for suicide attacks that you have to wonder if anyone's checked to see if our soundbites and clichés make any sense in the last few years. They just come out subconsciously now, the logical part of the brain having given up vetting the garbage that passes under it every day for the sake of just fitting in with the other illiterates.
It's a disappointing misuse of language, because this is a time when our language should be gleaming with zeal, bringing us together with passion. If you've seen the West Wing you've seen a glimpse of this - how did Bartlett's speech after the pipe bombing go? "I don't know if it's one person or ten, and I don't know what they want. All I know for sure, all I know for certain, is that they weren't born wanting to do this." We need writer Aaron Sorkin in government, even if he is on magic mushrooms and cocaine.
You don't need to emphasise the brutality of this. People get that part. You don't need to call them names that you don't even seem to understand yourself - that's a playground response, and it's sad to watch. The thing to note, the thing that does need emphasis, is that these attacks were stupid. Al-Qaeda terrorists aren't Muslims, they're idiots. They're killing for a religion that forbids killing. They're trying to stop Western powers by really, really pissing them off. They just haven't thought it through.
|
|
|
| Killer Shot |
[Jul. 9th, 2005|05:56 pm] |
|
Nice shot, huh? Well, my men DIED to bring you this shot. Seriously, the three-second pause my irritating graphics card (a GeForce 6600GT - powerful, but glitchy with the Source engine and VERY slow for screenshots) needs to take a shot was enough for the boat to stop dead in the water (even though I was still holding the forwards key) long enough that an enemy helicoper shot us with all its rockets. All five of my passngers were killed, but your intrepid photographer was unscathed - at least physically.
THE HORROR. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2005|01:41 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | batman, batman begins, black box recorder, chocolate, film, firefly, flickr, futurama, future publishing, gastronomic decadence, glastonbury, movie, review | ] |
Batman Begins
There's probably not a lot of virtue in talking about Batman Begins properly now, but I feel the need for some bulletpoints at least:
- I never read the comics, and appear to have missed the apparently excellent animated series, and this is the first time anything's really attempted to explain what the point of Batman is - i.e. that he scares bad guys. The trappings of the role have become so important in every other incarnation that the central ethos never got mentioned to me. Here, it's not just mentioned, it's cleverly brought out by a mirror-image bad guy, Scarecrow.
- Scarecrow, in this, is one of the greatest villains I've ever seen. His by-day human face is so perfectly acted - fresh-faced and pleasant in a way that is utterly and immediately creepy. His mask is almost comically exaggerated in its attempt to look scary, but the speed and frequency with which he dons it makes it terrifying - it's so halloween that it seems absurd for this respectable person to suddenly don it, and that lack of comprehension gives a nameless horror to the act. The scene when he first uses it - against a crime boss - is one of the most magnificent pieces of cinema I've seen in years.
- Batman isn't really a superhero in that he doesn't really have any powers. He's what we City Of Heroes players would term a Natural Scrapper. Essentially, he achieves his goals by punching people in the face. That's hard to make cool - as a tubby Adam West once demonstrated. Batman Begins explains that Batman is basically a ninja, and that is very cool indeed.
- The Batmobile looks silly in stills, but in the film almost immediately makes all previous Batmobiles look silly. There's even a sports car with Batmobile style doors in there, as if to mock the low-clearence ponciness of previous models.
- Another Scarecrow one - his first defeat - when Batman contaminates him with his own weaponised hallucinogen (I, like everyone else, love referring to that stuff by its proper name) and becomes a brawny black red-eyed mutant to him - is incredibly cool and neatly symbolic. His second defeat - rearing up on his flame-breathing horse and informing Katie Holmes' character that "There is nothing to fear but fear itself!" immediately before being tazered in the face and galloping off screaming - is hilarious.
Score Bat out of bat.
If I Set Fire To You Now, Would You Even Make A Sound?
I'm off to the Future Publishing 20th anniversary party tomorrow, which is a kind of festival camp-out kind of thing in a field. The last Future party had a fountain of molten chocolate into which you could dip skewers of marshmallows and strawberries, so this one had better have fried gold or something. Then on Sunday there's a street party on our street, then on Thursday I'm going to Glastonbury for five days.
Ticker Tape Tales will return on Sunday, I would think. I also hope to write about the wildly exciting things I've found on the net. In the meantime, LiveJames is redesigned and now has tags (and an RSS feed and comments, as ever), and my Flickr Photostream has loads of Battlefield 2 shots which I will eventually annotate with little stories not long enough to form full Ticker Tape Tales. The game, the demo rather, produces story-worthy game experiences like it's a factory for making them or something.
Things you should do: play the Battlefield 2 demo or, if your PC can't handle it, Eve Online. Watch Batman Begins, and if you have the DVDs or have always meant to give them a go, Firefly. I had, until today, never been more excited about a film than I am about the Firefly one, called Serenity, out in September. Today I learned that the Futurama guys are hoping to make some straight-to-DVD films of it. WHOA.
|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 16th, 2005|08:14 pm] |
Ticker-Tape Tales - Episode 1: Defibrillate This
This is mostly Tim's idea - he was telling me about Battlefield 2: "I was watching that ticker-tape text in the top left, where it reports each kill and what it was done with, and I realised every one of those lines is a little story." It strikes me that they're not terribly descriptive stories, though, so I have taken it upon myself to give some background on a few lines that scrolled past me in the demo yesterday.
Locutus [SVD] mrbuzzard
Fuck. They're swarming us. This beachhead strategic point looked safe, but they're pouring in now and that guy just got it in the face. I sprint over to him and whip out the defibrillators. I'm a medic, you see.
"Clear!" Tzz.
He gets back up and I chuck him a medikit for good measure. "You're gonna be okay buddy," my character automatically says. "Thanks man, I owe you one," his automatically replies. The tank we're standing next to explodes.
mrbuzzard is no more.
Fuck! The concussion from the blast is so strong I can barely see, but as a medic you See Dead People regardless. I stagger over to his body and-
"Clear!" Tzz.
-shock some life into it. I don't have time to patch him up before the ground explodes again and the troops pour in.
^^andy^^05 [AK-101] BlueBall
^^andy^^05 [AK-101] $uper_Gang$ta
hammi [T-90] tOMMy
Jesus Christ. I make a beeline for the bodies and an enemy troop rounds the sandbags ahead of me. I hit the deck and spray him with M4 fire, and he goes down before he can hit me.
Pentadact [M4] pHk
I get BlueBall-
"Clear!" Tzz.
-and tOMMy-
"Clear!" Tzz.
-fixed up, but $uper_Gang$ta fades away before I can get to him. God damn it, I hate it when I lose one. "You'll be fine, get back to the fight." I wish I could believe or stop myself saying that.
nofear [T-90] Squire
nofear [T-90] tOMMy
Shit! The tanks have rolled in, and I'm-
Mr0 [Artillery] mrbuzzard
Mr0 [Artillery] easydog
Mr0 [Artillery] Sigmax
Everything explodes. You hear it before you see it, but not by much. Then you can't see anything at all, and pretty soon you can't hear anything either. The dust-clouds a blast like that kicks up would blind you even if you weren't in shock, and your ears just hum a monotonous song instead of reporting the outside world. When my senses return it's to a beige world of loud noises. Through the smoke I can still make out the gleaming white trails of more artillery shells slamming down into us. I know with a grim certainty that almost everyone will die before I can get to them, and before I even make it to the first one I'm shot three times and hit the deck. I have no idea where the shots came from, or even if there's any cover nearby - all I can see is the corpse bar on my singularly selfless HUD. Biting the dust seems to have saved me, and I'm on the mend all the time my medikit is out, but I'm not any closer to the bodies and I'm not going to hold this post on my own. I get up and immediately come face to face with the guy who shot me. I throw myself backwards over some sandbags and frantically hammer the number keys. My Beretta 9mm comes up and I shoot him three times in the face.
Pentadact [Beretta] ^^andy^^05
In retrospect he was probably more surprised to see me than I was him - it was a fair bet I was dead. More fire rains in, either a Support troop or a tank judging by the sheer fire rate. Shots thwack into the sand all around, and a final artillery explosion kills-
Mr0 [Artillery] BlueBall
Mr0 [Artillery] wpmike
-two more and-
Mr0 [Teamkills] th0ry
-ha! One of their own. I'm hit again but I'm not ducking this time. I pelt straight for the very patient body of my patient, dive through the smoke over an ammo box and land prone on top of him, immediately-
"Clear!" Tzz.
-defibrillating. He gets up and-
neurax [AK74U] easydog
God damn it! I shock him back to life. He's learnt his lesson and stays down with me, but by this time I've lost everyone else for good. I chuck him a medikit and we scramble to the bunker by the flag.
easydog [M16A2] Bleak
easydog [M16A2] neurax
Pentadact [M4] Parliuus
easydog [M16A2] Monterto
He might be stupid but he's a good shot. But there's still the APC, and when its not scattering heavy fire at our little window on the world, it's smashing up our empty vehicles with guided rockets. Worse, an enemy chopper I thought was just flying by has come around for another pass.
But something's not right about it. I don't know anything about anything, really, but consciously or otherwise most of the Western world now knows a Black Hawk when they see it. Black Hawks are ours. I focus on it and sure enough, friendly nametags pop up - green ones, in fact: my squad. Then, inevitably yet surprisingly, gloriously and loudly-
D4rkM4ster [Black Hawk] nofear
D4rkM4ster [Black Hawk] hammi
D4rkM4ster [Black Hawk] DanMM
D4rkM4ster [Black Hawk] Jage
It's their turn to explode. The much-killed idiot and I sprint out to meet them. There's still a body out here I can res, which I promptly-
"Clear!" Tzz.
-do. Half my squaddies throw themselves out of the chopper and parachute down to meet us, while the pilot takes it to a safer landing just outside the base.
It's a fantastic sight, but I don't have time to admire it - I'm seeing more Dead People. Scampering around the wreckage of the base rubbing my shock-pads together gleefully at the prospect of more life-saving fun, I suddenly discover where these fresh corpses are coming from. An enemy Spec Ops commando an inch from my face, silenced pistol raised to my neck. I don't have time to think.
"Clear!" Tzz.
Pentadact [Shock Pads] FaR2SiNiSTeR
YES. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 6th, 2005|02:11 pm] |
What We Really Need Now Is An Emotional History Of The Lower East Side
I have a new favourite expression. I will relate it in context, taken from one of the most idiotic threads on the most idiocy-friendly type of forum - one for a game that isn't out yet, but is far enough along that suggestions are too late.
Idiot: "PC CD-ROM" Unfricking acceptable, Bethesda. I'm not buying a game with 6 cds.
Genius: Want me to call a waaambulance for you?
The idiot's quote comes from the little placeholder icon at the end of the extraordinary, mind-blowing, Patrick-Stewart-voiced Oblivion trailer that came out a while back. The PC, of course, doesn't have a real logo because it's a type of computer rather than a brand, and games publishers have been admirably reluctant to adopt a Windows logo to indicate the nature of a game's compatibility. Evidently they've been a bit sluggish getting "PC DVD-ROM" logos made up too. They're also slow to give a God damn about the install process when they're in the middle of revolutionising the genre.
So yes, self-pity, complaining about trivial things, and superficial criticisms are hereby outlawed. Violators will be prosecuted with an icy "Oh, can I call you a waaambulance?" Get it together or be zung!
Also, and this isn't really related, but can we stop capitalising 'mod'? I'm not sure when people started assuming it was an acronym for something, but what would it even stand for? And another thing! MMO isn't a noun, MMOG is! God damn it people! Always with the three-letter TLAs!
Yes, I know.
Because It Was Wild
I've signed up to Eve again. It turns out I bought myself a huge hauler just before I quit last time. I took it out for a glacial cruise and tried playing the cattle market. Within an hour I'd lost my ship, five million in cargo and a few thousand skillpoints. I knew there was a reason I loved this ship:
It's a Cormorant-class Destroyer, and it's named after a Low album. It has searchlights all along the bottom that wiggle around searching for stuff. It has missiles, guns, mining lasers, invulnerability and a micro-warp drive. In WoW terms this is only about level twenty stuff, but it's mine, and I have all of it on the same ship, which is actually pretty rare. You can't upgrade from a Destroyer and get something better in every way - if you don't lose speed you lose cargo capacity, and if you don't lose that you lose guns too. I trade, do combat missions and mine, and oddly enough any upgrade means being worse at at least one of those things.
I choose a missile type good against armour and hulls, but not so hot against shields. Why, Tom? Because my railguns are loaded with slugs that are excellent against shields, and by the time the first missile gets to them armour is all they've got. Then, they're a constellation of debris. If I don't need my capacitor's power for shield regeneration or invulnerability (because, for example, suckas be frontin') I can keep my micro-warp active in combat, meaning I'm zooming around at a kilometer a second. In a moment that made no sense but was, relatedly, bristling with awesome, I caught up with one of my own missiles in a fight earlier, just as it hit and destroyed my target, meaning my (awesome, awesome) ship burst through the explosion at the exact moment of his demise. Windscreen wipers activate! Tea, Earl-Grey, hot.
Which is the thing I still long for in Eve - walking around you ship. I'd also like to get out at space stations and go for a wander while work is being done on my ship, or cargo is loaded and unloaded. Everyone has spectacular human beings as their characters in Eve, beautifully formed features genuinely unique to them and at the same time uncannily face-like. They're already 3D models, all they need is a body and some animations. Trading always takes me to impossibly exotic-sounding solar systems thousands of Astral Units from home, and if I could just wander the already lush interior of the station I'm docked at, sit in a café, look at the faces, check the news, fiddle with the jukebox... basically Eve is already a sci-fi dream come true, now I'd like it to be all my sci-fi dreams come true.
This wasn't supposed to be a post about games, but whatever! Here are the names of player-jettisoned cargo containers my scanner picked up while I was touring constellations looking for a fugitive hideout earlier:
- drugs
- druqz
- no drugs here
- drugs kill
- wtf i cant scoop it back up
- destroy me
- Hey! You! Hands off!
- Have you heard of Eve Lotto? Mail Godspeed for details!
- GSV What The Hell
- TO THE CONTAINER THIEF - HAVE IT, BUT ALWAYS SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN
- Gate 1
- Gate 2
- ...
- Gate 20
- Finish line!! Finish line!! Finish line!!
- can't sell it/can't reprocess it/u have it
- Where all the rocks went
- Hey, I'm empty
|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 29th, 2005|01:09 am] |
Lost
Well, we don't find out what's under the hatch. I consider this an anti-spoiler, hence the lack of warning, since it pre-empts a half-expected disappointment rather than an exciting surprise. Lost is almost inexplicably better than it sounds - JJ Abrams' last series Alias was good, but it's not any more and it was never this good. This is genuinely brilliant television, the kind you could just string together to make a great film.
If Alias was defined by its ridiculous cliff-hangers, Lost is defined by ridiculous mysteries. Since the start of the series twenty-five episodes ago, the following elements have cropped up and been developed to the extent detailed here:
- The Monster: We don't know anything about the monster. It might be big. It might not exist. It could also be robotic or organic, or ethereal, or none of these.
- Jack's Dad: Jack's Dad appeared. We don't know why or what was going on.
- The Hatch: Locke discovered a hatch. We don't know what it's doing there or what's inside, or what the thing is it's built into. Since the hatch was discovered, virtually every episode has been about it. So far, we have discovered: nothing. Once the hatch lit up. We don't know why.
- The Numbers: Hurley won the lottery with some numbers. They might be cursed, or not cursed, or it might be fate. Or magic.
- The Others: There might be others on the island, or there might not, or they might not be on the island, or they might not be others. If they are and they are we don't know who they are or what they're doing there or what they want.
- The Kid: The kid knows something about the hatch. We don't know how or what and now he's gone forever.
- The French Woman: There is a French woman on the island. Something killed the crew she was with. We don't know what and now she's gone mad.
- The Polar Bear: A polar bear appeared. We don't know why or where it came from or how it got there. It was killed and never mentioned again.
- The Other Half Of The Plane: We don't know where it is or what happened to the people on it. They might be still alive, or dead, or trapped sixteen years in the past with a magic time-traveling radio.
- The Island: The island might have a will of its own, though it might not and if it does we don't know what it is, why it has it, or how it works.
Whichever of these wildly vague concepts you might be hoping for clarification on, you're perpetually disappointed. The appeal is that by failing to resolve any of these plot lines, they're never cheapened by specifics. Their enigma gives them a lasting menace that only improves the tapestry of sinister threats mounting around the ever-diminishing survivors. All of them verge on the mystical without being scientifically inexplicable - given a degree of imaginative license. We still don't even know what genre we're working in - sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural or real-world.
|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2005|12:30 am] |
You Didn't Have To Do It, But You Did It To Say
Oh wait! I write about games. There's only one summery game, most gamers have it, and you should play it right now. I'm talkin' Far Cry. Do you like paradise? Do you like speedboats? Do you like explosions? Then come to Kabatu, Micronesia! Still the best-looking game on the planet, still the most refreshing burst of escapism, and still the most ridiculously action-packed shooter ever made. If nothing's exploding, you're not playing Far Cry. What did I just say?
I absolutely love the action - these are the best vehicles ever, and they've been sprinkled generously around vast open-ended environments. But I'll admit that its beauty is so overwhelming that this is what it'll always be remembered for, and deservedly so. It's a revelatory game for the sheer variety, scope and quality of its flavours of fun, but the visuals are beyond a revelation, they're a small miracle. Only Half-Life 2 has this level of visual polish, and the scenes rendered in that are much less ambitious - and less attractive. And that was by the most professional developer in the world, eight months later. In fact, Far Cry is virtually the only shooter that didn't suffer from Half-Life 2's release: everything else went slightly weak at the kness when you went back to it after that glorious game, but Far Cry's still just sitting on a beach sipping cocktails, looking amazing. It's a phenomenon. Looking good eight months on - being the best looking game in the world eight months on - is ridiculous. So play it and/or peruse the extremely shiny Flickr set I just made of my best shots.
That You Didn't Have To Do It But You Did Anyway
And I only just now got why it's called LiveJournal. RSS feeds! Click the little orange icon when you're at LiveJames in Firefox, and you'll be able to see from your bookmarks menu whether there's a new post. Ace!
Incidentally, my sources tell me forty percent of you use Firefox. It sounds bad, but that's actually an extraordinarily high percentage - more than eight times the web-wide average. I have decided to call this my page's Firefox Coolness Quotient, and declare that I am eight cool and so are you.
I don't know if it's compensation for the horrible time I've had on the last few deadline weeks, but work and life seem excellent at the moment. It helps that I'm spending most of my time writing for the mag, which of course only means harder work on the disc later, but it's worth it. At least from the present-day Tom's perspective. The near-future Tom may feel differently. Sorry, that got a bit journal-like for a sentence or two there. LiveJournal... spreading to... brain... |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 24th, 2005|10:37 pm] |
Eek. This is a toe of the mighty James being dipped into the LiveJournal water, and while its Borg drones have managed to assimilate much of the colour scheme and the font is not dissimilar, there is something creepy about this place. The feeling of typing in a box where so many serial killers, indistinguishable teenagers and painfully dull political commentators have typed.
Anyway, the plan is to simulcast posts to this and the main site, so you can stick to the one you prefer. This will be smaller, with separate archives, and I don't know about images yet. James proper will remain gigantuamungous and multifaceted. This venture is primarily an experiment with the social networking features here, which I do not see in the hateful Blogger. Which I do not use, incidentally - the main event, so to speak, is a work of raw text saved as a .htm. MANUAL. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
pentadact's journal
