Gamecube games rewired to use the Wii Controls. I finally get to play Metroid Prime 1 & 2.
(I'm loving the way that the Wii really is in many ways a GameCube do-over. And I mean that in the best way possible. Great hardware with great games that no-one played - because everyone bought a PS2 with GTA3 instead.)
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
It's always good news / Bad news with The Internet
Signing up for Facebook and Twitter in the same week have got me thinking alot about the web as a communications medium. The way it does.
Let's recap. I've got a blog with a feed. A Facebook page. Twitter. A Gmail account. Google Calendar. Google Reader. And an iPhone, with a whole mess of apps that tie into the above, along with mobile safari. Not to mention things like Yahoo Pipes and FeedBurner, which are sitting in the back row going "pick me, pick me!"
My response to this is to think that there must be a way to lash all that together to make my life easier. No, scratch that - by "easier", I really mean "more organized." Instead, "checking my email" now takes half an hour and uses a dozen services instead of ten minutes with Thunderbird like it used to.
I feel like you do about ten moves into working on a rubix cube. It's still all just a mess of different colors, and you're kinda still thrashing around, but the shape of the big picture is starting to form. You don't know the right moves to get there yet, but you're starting to be able to see the final shape down at the end of the hallway.
Let's recap. I've got a blog with a feed. A Facebook page. Twitter. A Gmail account. Google Calendar. Google Reader. And an iPhone, with a whole mess of apps that tie into the above, along with mobile safari. Not to mention things like Yahoo Pipes and FeedBurner, which are sitting in the back row going "pick me, pick me!"
My response to this is to think that there must be a way to lash all that together to make my life easier. No, scratch that - by "easier", I really mean "more organized." Instead, "checking my email" now takes half an hour and uses a dozen services instead of ten minutes with Thunderbird like it used to.
I feel like you do about ten moves into working on a rubix cube. It's still all just a mess of different colors, and you're kinda still thrashing around, but the shape of the big picture is starting to form. You don't know the right moves to get there yet, but you're starting to be able to see the final shape down at the end of the hallway.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Book Review: Henry IV, Part 2
For those of you just joining us, I decided to spend the fourth quarter of 2008 reading books without robots - the "sci-fi free fourth quarter." Figuring I'd jump in the deep end, I started with The Histories. Now, I'm writing reviews.
So, it turns out that on top of all of his other contributions to world literature, Shakespeare also invented crappy sequels. Because make no mistake, Henry IV part 2 is bad. Really bad.
It starts of promisingly, just moments after the end of part 1, with the Percy family receiving word of the rebels defeat and Hotspur's death. And then - nothing happens. For five acts.
The rebels get ready for one last battle - which never takes place. Henry IV's health continues to wane along with his faith in Prince Hal - whereupon the king dies off stage in an oddly perfunctory manner. Worst of all, though, is the Falstaff - Hal dynamic. The relationship between those two is what keeps Part 1 running (even though I didn't think Falstaff was funny,) and so, in the sequel, they spend the entire play apart, doing nothing of consequence.
The only part of the play worth talking about, really, is the final scene where Hal becomes king and rejects Falstaff and his other companions. It's epic and fantastic and everything a Shakespeare play should be. Tack that scene on to the end of Part 1, and you really have something. As it stands in Part 2, it still carries some weight, but due to the fact that it's the character's only scene together, even that doesn't have the punch it should.
It's hard, really, to come up with something to say. The play is dull - amazingly so. It feels like 4 and a half acts of padding, before we get to the final scene that should have ended the previous play. There's numerous theories about why there are two Henry IVs - one is that Part 2 was written to cash in on the success of Part 1, particularly the Falstaff character, and the other is that they were both one play originally, and then expanded to two for the same reason. I'm not sure which theory (if either) has the backing of the historical record, but having read them, it sure feels like that second theory is correct.
The closest we'll ever get to Shakespeare DVD deleted scenes.
So, it turns out that on top of all of his other contributions to world literature, Shakespeare also invented crappy sequels. Because make no mistake, Henry IV part 2 is bad. Really bad.
It starts of promisingly, just moments after the end of part 1, with the Percy family receiving word of the rebels defeat and Hotspur's death. And then - nothing happens. For five acts.
The rebels get ready for one last battle - which never takes place. Henry IV's health continues to wane along with his faith in Prince Hal - whereupon the king dies off stage in an oddly perfunctory manner. Worst of all, though, is the Falstaff - Hal dynamic. The relationship between those two is what keeps Part 1 running (even though I didn't think Falstaff was funny,) and so, in the sequel, they spend the entire play apart, doing nothing of consequence.
The only part of the play worth talking about, really, is the final scene where Hal becomes king and rejects Falstaff and his other companions. It's epic and fantastic and everything a Shakespeare play should be. Tack that scene on to the end of Part 1, and you really have something. As it stands in Part 2, it still carries some weight, but due to the fact that it's the character's only scene together, even that doesn't have the punch it should.
It's hard, really, to come up with something to say. The play is dull - amazingly so. It feels like 4 and a half acts of padding, before we get to the final scene that should have ended the previous play. There's numerous theories about why there are two Henry IVs - one is that Part 2 was written to cash in on the success of Part 1, particularly the Falstaff character, and the other is that they were both one play originally, and then expanded to two for the same reason. I'm not sure which theory (if either) has the backing of the historical record, but having read them, it sure feels like that second theory is correct.
The closest we'll ever get to Shakespeare DVD deleted scenes.
Friday, March 20, 2009
minor update to www.GabrielHelman.com
I finally got the style-switching widget working. (Among other nips and tweaks.) Yay me?
So long, Battlestar
The last ever episode of the New Battlestar Galactica is tonight. I've stayed as spoiler free as I possibly can, so I have no idea what's going to happen.
I'll just say this: Guys, please don't screw this up.
I'll just say this: Guys, please don't screw this up.
Where I am on the Internet, March 2009
This Blog
www.GabrielHelman.com
Twitter as ghelman
I seem to be on facebook now, as well.
I now have many, many ways to ignore all of you.
www.GabrielHelman.com
Twitter as ghelman
I seem to be on facebook now, as well.
I now have many, many ways to ignore all of you.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sun + IBM = ?
What? What? WHAT?
I know I'm supposed to have something intelligent to say here, but the idea of Sun Microsystems being bought out by IBM is so bizzare, I don't.
(Subtitled for the non-nerds in the audience: Sun and IBM are essentially competors down the line. They make and sell exactly the same stuff. This is, in many ways, the tech equivalent of McDonalds buying Burger King. It may be great for the stockholders, but you can be pretty sure that the new restaraunt won't be selling both Whoppers and Big Macs.)
I've been a Sun fan for a long, long time. I think Solaris is probably the best operating system on the planet, those SPARC pizza-boxes are incredible machines, and Java, all things considered, is probably the biggest thing to hit programming in the last 30 years.
Sun's problem, of course, is that they can't manage to get anything over that hill and into "fully functional."
Let me give you an example. Sun makes an operating system called Solaris. It's a UNIX derivative, and came out of a project in the late '80s to fold all the then-existing Unicies into one system. It's spectacular, and chock full of kick-ass nerd features. You really couldn't ask for a better "enterprise-grade" server OS.
So. Being a Unix, it's very command-line based. It's got a cool windows-esque desktop and all, but really, you end up back at the old DOS-style commandline sooner or later. When you drop to the command line, the backspace key doesn't work.
Let that roll around in your mind a little. Solaris, arguably the most advanced server OS on the market, and it's been in existance for over 20 years. Sun Microsystems, a multi-million dollar company. At no point, did anyone say, "you know, maybe we should have a guy spend a week and wire up the backspace key?"
And really, that's every Sun product. Absolutely fantastic feature set until you get right down to the wire, and they go "nah. Who uses backspace?"
I know I'm supposed to have something intelligent to say here, but the idea of Sun Microsystems being bought out by IBM is so bizzare, I don't.
(Subtitled for the non-nerds in the audience: Sun and IBM are essentially competors down the line. They make and sell exactly the same stuff. This is, in many ways, the tech equivalent of McDonalds buying Burger King. It may be great for the stockholders, but you can be pretty sure that the new restaraunt won't be selling both Whoppers and Big Macs.)
I've been a Sun fan for a long, long time. I think Solaris is probably the best operating system on the planet, those SPARC pizza-boxes are incredible machines, and Java, all things considered, is probably the biggest thing to hit programming in the last 30 years.
Sun's problem, of course, is that they can't manage to get anything over that hill and into "fully functional."
Let me give you an example. Sun makes an operating system called Solaris. It's a UNIX derivative, and came out of a project in the late '80s to fold all the then-existing Unicies into one system. It's spectacular, and chock full of kick-ass nerd features. You really couldn't ask for a better "enterprise-grade" server OS.
So. Being a Unix, it's very command-line based. It's got a cool windows-esque desktop and all, but really, you end up back at the old DOS-style commandline sooner or later. When you drop to the command line, the backspace key doesn't work.
Let that roll around in your mind a little. Solaris, arguably the most advanced server OS on the market, and it's been in existance for over 20 years. Sun Microsystems, a multi-million dollar company. At no point, did anyone say, "you know, maybe we should have a guy spend a week and wire up the backspace key?"
And really, that's every Sun product. Absolutely fantastic feature set until you get right down to the wire, and they go "nah. Who uses backspace?"
Book Review: Henry IV, Part 1
Consistent and alert readers of this space will recall that back in September I declared a “sci-fi free fourth quarter,” intending to use the last three months of 2008 to catch up on some books without robots in them that I had meant to read but never actually had. While this ended up as a total success, I never actually got around to writing reviews for the blog, like I intended. But, under the basic aegis of "better late than never,", here we are.
Never one to start slow, I opened up with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1. (I’ll leave the plot summary to wikipedia.)
Look, am I going to loose my English Minor street cred if I say I didn’t think Falstaff was funny? Great character, well written, interesting actions – but not funny. I could see how a talented comic actor could really milk the character for some humor, but the lines as written – not funny. Whoever played Falstaff on the stage for the first time must have really made an impression because I can’t believe anyone could read the script and say “comic genius!”
Other than a vague sense of disappointment at the comic stylings of Sir John Falstaff, the play is excellent. The plot rocks along towards the Battle of Shewsbury, the characters are all interesting and well written – in short, everything one would expect from one of The Bard’s most popular and successful plays. It’s hard to come up with something intelligent to say about a play that’s been chewed over for 400 years, so I’ll more or less leave it at that.
One other thing did surprise me, however; how sympathetic the play was towards the rebels in general, and Hotspur in specific. While Prince Hal is certainly “the good guy,” and the main protagonist, his father Henry IV is in many ways the closest the play has to an antagonist. Hotspur and the rest of the rebels have a point, which the play goes to some length to support – they have been treated abominably by the King – the king whom they placed on the throne as part of a coup, and when he fails to live up to the bargain they decide to remove him. The play presents the rebels as being in the moral right – they just loose, and Prince Hal grows up. The amount of gray in the delineation of which characters are good guys versus bad guys surprised me – in a good way.
Never one to start slow, I opened up with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1. (I’ll leave the plot summary to wikipedia.)
Look, am I going to loose my English Minor street cred if I say I didn’t think Falstaff was funny? Great character, well written, interesting actions – but not funny. I could see how a talented comic actor could really milk the character for some humor, but the lines as written – not funny. Whoever played Falstaff on the stage for the first time must have really made an impression because I can’t believe anyone could read the script and say “comic genius!”
Other than a vague sense of disappointment at the comic stylings of Sir John Falstaff, the play is excellent. The plot rocks along towards the Battle of Shewsbury, the characters are all interesting and well written – in short, everything one would expect from one of The Bard’s most popular and successful plays. It’s hard to come up with something intelligent to say about a play that’s been chewed over for 400 years, so I’ll more or less leave it at that.
One other thing did surprise me, however; how sympathetic the play was towards the rebels in general, and Hotspur in specific. While Prince Hal is certainly “the good guy,” and the main protagonist, his father Henry IV is in many ways the closest the play has to an antagonist. Hotspur and the rest of the rebels have a point, which the play goes to some length to support – they have been treated abominably by the King – the king whom they placed on the throne as part of a coup, and when he fails to live up to the bargain they decide to remove him. The play presents the rebels as being in the moral right – they just loose, and Prince Hal grows up. The amount of gray in the delineation of which characters are good guys versus bad guys surprised me – in a good way.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Do I do anything besides post links to Boing Boing?
In Short: no.
First up: a link to Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report. While that's just awesome in its own right, Stephen takes a dramatic left turn into full-frontal nerdiness at about the half-way point that is well worth five minutes of your time.
Also: Times online lists of "10 Spectacular second novels," "10 Cursed second novels," and "10 Literary one-hit wonders.
First up: a link to Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report. While that's just awesome in its own right, Stephen takes a dramatic left turn into full-frontal nerdiness at about the half-way point that is well worth five minutes of your time.
Also: Times online lists of "10 Spectacular second novels," "10 Cursed second novels," and "10 Literary one-hit wonders.
K-9 and Company?
They're making a K-9 spinoff show.
Some background, to get everyone up to speed. K-9, of course, was the robot dog on the original Doctor Who, and who's had the occasional cameo shot on the New Who and The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures. Thanks to the wild and wonderful carnival that is British IP law, the writers of the script that K-9 originated in own the rights to the character (while the BBC owns the physical design.)
What that means is that Bob Baker gets to make his own K-9 show whether the BBC wants him to or not. Which, really, is pretty cool, all things considered.
Where am I going with this? I'll tell you: they've released an image of what the new K-9 prop will look like. And I'll just say this: I'm no great fan of the old look, but man, how did they manage to find something that looks worse?
Some background, to get everyone up to speed. K-9, of course, was the robot dog on the original Doctor Who, and who's had the occasional cameo shot on the New Who and The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures. Thanks to the wild and wonderful carnival that is British IP law, the writers of the script that K-9 originated in own the rights to the character (while the BBC owns the physical design.)
What that means is that Bob Baker gets to make his own K-9 show whether the BBC wants him to or not. Which, really, is pretty cool, all things considered.
Where am I going with this? I'll tell you: they've released an image of what the new K-9 prop will look like. And I'll just say this: I'm no great fan of the old look, but man, how did they manage to find something that looks worse?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Alien Versus Predator
Monday, March 16, 2009
In case anyone missed it
Everyone caught the Jim Cramer / Jon Stewart... thing last week, right?
In case you did, boingboing did the usual bang-up job of summing up the setup, and then Comedy Central posted the full & unedited version of the interview on the web. It's good stuff.
In case you did, boingboing did the usual bang-up job of summing up the setup, and then Comedy Central posted the full & unedited version of the interview on the web. It's good stuff.
"lately there's been a lot of activity from a group that's secretly invading the Earth"
Look, there really isn't any way to do this link justice. Just click.
Okay, I'll say one thing. That dude with the eyepiece is named "Professor Monster." No, really.
Okay, I'll say one thing. That dude with the eyepiece is named "Professor Monster." No, really.
The internet's current belle of the ball
(I love how all stories about the Internet start with the phrase, "so, there's this guy...")
So, there's this guy. He did a super-cool thing that we don't seem to have any vocabulary for.
He wandered around youTube, and found a whole stack of random clips of people playing instruments. Dudes giving guitar lessons, little kids showing off trumpets, mullet-equipped gentlemen jamming on theramins. They all have that grainy, home-made quality that makes the half of youTube that I don't use to watch Battlestar Galactica clips so much fun (and / or terrifying. YMMV, and with youTube even more so.)
Anyway. He took all these clips he found, and mixed them all together into new songs. On paper (or the metaphorical blog equivalent) this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea - like all those kids cutting together Star Trek versus Stargate SG1 combat movies with an iMac, enthusiasm, and not much else.
The really surprising thing is how good it is. No, scratch that - it's not good. It's phenomenal. They sound professional - and I mean that in the best way possible. You keep having to remind yourself that this is 100% amateur work, and at just about every level of abstraction.
Go check it out if you haven't already.
It's pretty easy to be down on "the future" for more or less failing to deliver the classic list of future props we were "supposed" to have by now - jetpacks, hoverboards, PanAm flights to the space station, robot maids, that show from Running Man, etc. But this is one of those things that makes you step back and smile at the fact that the future we're getting is actually so much better than the one on the cover of Omni in 1985.
So, there's this guy. He did a super-cool thing that we don't seem to have any vocabulary for.
He wandered around youTube, and found a whole stack of random clips of people playing instruments. Dudes giving guitar lessons, little kids showing off trumpets, mullet-equipped gentlemen jamming on theramins. They all have that grainy, home-made quality that makes the half of youTube that I don't use to watch Battlestar Galactica clips so much fun (and / or terrifying. YMMV, and with youTube even more so.)
Anyway. He took all these clips he found, and mixed them all together into new songs. On paper (or the metaphorical blog equivalent) this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea - like all those kids cutting together Star Trek versus Stargate SG1 combat movies with an iMac, enthusiasm, and not much else.
The really surprising thing is how good it is. No, scratch that - it's not good. It's phenomenal. They sound professional - and I mean that in the best way possible. You keep having to remind yourself that this is 100% amateur work, and at just about every level of abstraction.
Go check it out if you haven't already.
It's pretty easy to be down on "the future" for more or less failing to deliver the classic list of future props we were "supposed" to have by now - jetpacks, hoverboards, PanAm flights to the space station, robot maids, that show from Running Man, etc. But this is one of those things that makes you step back and smile at the fact that the future we're getting is actually so much better than the one on the cover of Omni in 1985.
“When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”
It's been making the rounds on the internet lately, but in case you missed it: Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.
Well worth a read if you have any interest in the current (fully justified) hand-wringing about the future of newspapers.
The money quote: "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."
Well worth a read if you have any interest in the current (fully justified) hand-wringing about the future of newspapers.
The money quote: "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tetris in HD is a work of pure, unmitigated evil
Seriously, go try this out.
I was going to say something snarky here, but I really can't beat this comment from Chris Harriman, one of the great thinkers of our time: "It turns out that the width of the playing field is extremely relevant. This is a horrible creation."
Also, mad bonus points to whoever was on the ball enough to register "sovietrussia.org"
Sam's back in the saddle
Sam Raimi has a new movie coming out. A horror movie where a bank employee is cursed for not giving a gypsy woman an extension on her mortage? Yes, please. Really, the only thing this trailer is missing is Bruce Campbell. (And, let's be honest, that's a pretty big deficit.)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Watchmen credits
Short version: I thought Watchmen was spectacular.
And, the opening credits have wandered, loose, out into the interwebs. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this for the moment (but really, it doesn't actually give anything away.)
And, the opening credits have wandered, loose, out into the interwebs. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this for the moment (but really, it doesn't actually give anything away.)
I'm having one of those "I'm glad I live today" moments
First, check out this video made by a 12-year old.
When I was twelve, I was writing unplayable text adventures in BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and doing stuff like this was, essentially, impossible, much less commodity software. Yay future!
Then, go read this article on Why TV Lost. It's a pretty fascinating analysis as to why that TV meets computers convergence that everyone was talking about in 1990 (when I was... twelve) didn't happen, and facebook happened instead.
When I was twelve, I was writing unplayable text adventures in BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and doing stuff like this was, essentially, impossible, much less commodity software. Yay future!
Then, go read this article on Why TV Lost. It's a pretty fascinating analysis as to why that TV meets computers convergence that everyone was talking about in 1990 (when I was... twelve) didn't happen, and facebook happened instead.
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