Gunpowder, Google and Godzilla

The clocks are back, the sun is less apparent and the winter blahs begin...

Nov 2 – Flu Terminations

Here’s a good opener: it seems the Terminator franchise is in trouble... and Joss Whedon is offering to save it! How wow would that be? Terminators... Buffy... Serenity... all in one mind. Mind you, since the owner Halcyon Entertainment wants $60-million for it, Whedon’s $11K offer is a little... low.

Now this is a scary thought: the internet we all know and love, brought down by the flu bug? I'm serious. The internet, which was designed to survive even a limited nuclear exchange( if there can ever be such a thing )intact, may be humbled by massive numbers of flu victims. Weird!

Why do banks need assets? Have a look at that link, there are some very interesting points. Especially in the light of the recent upswing of the gold market, which has led some to speculate that economies may swing back towards a gold standard. Which would be the wrong thing to do in today's world. There’s an interesting video over at IOUSAtheMovie.com, which is 30 minutes of great insight and hard questions about the current economic crisis. Well worth watching!

Nov 3 - Zombies vs Godzilla

At last! Someone at Forbes.com, of all places, has hit the nail on the head: Zombies are (North)America's Godzilla! Incredibly, we may share a social bug with the Japanese, who are crazed about all things to do with the giant atomic lizard. Really cool, and it explains a lot.

Is anyone out there even a little excited about the upcoming MMO Star Trek: Online? I’m not a fan, though I do like some aspects of Trek, but we’ll see how long the franchise can keep going after the Feb 2010 launch date for ST:O – monthly subscriptions are what it’s all about, and I’m not sure that one can keep up an ‘authentic’ Star Trek experience online for very long. I mean, how often can you chase down Tribbles or phaser a few Klingons before it gets old?

With MMO’s, you’re also lacking physical human contact – much like those who play WOW too much and never leave their house, or in years past they played ‘EverCrack’ too much. Now along comes ‘Funktionide’ to take care of that missing human contact... with a computerized huggable white blob. Shades of The Prisoner, anyone? Creepy!

Nov 4 - Character

I’ve discovered the BBC remake series Survivors on BBCCA channel here, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a series about a post-apocalyptic world where a virus kills millions, leaving survivors scattered around the world. Nice idea for human drama. On the other hand, it’s your typical low-budget BBC drama, with shiny-clean homes and vehicles looking out of place in a world gone crazy. At least there’s been a few good TV series and movies on the topic – this list showcases some of the better ones, including The Stand from a few years ago – the literal Hand Of God notwithstanding. I much prefer to browse this massive list of movies dealing with the end of the world – it has reviews attached, always a good thing! I just wish I could recall the name of the miniseries from the 80’s that BBC had, it had the most depressing ending I’ve ever seen, and that’s all that stuck with me. More on that next week, if I can find it!

As a writer, designing characters can be a task sometimes, especially making them both memorable and unique. When working with just the written word, you have to keep every aspect of a character in mind, especially the way they speak. With dialogue being a weak part of my portfolio, I was thrilled to find this article on io9.com about how to give your characters unique voices.

I had my usual 6-month dental appointment this morning, with a new hygienist... who was old-school, and never stopped talking during the entire 45-minute checkup. Which wasn’t so bad, as I learned a few things that hadn’t been brought to my attention in all the past years of visits. She also gave me some cool dental floss( yes, I just said that... )which is made out of GoreTex, allowing it to be a flat, tape-like strip that fits better for people with tight teeth like myself.

Nov 5 – Gunpowder and Google

“Remember, remember, the 5^th of November...” begins the famous rhyme, which saw Guy Fawkes and his treason immortalized in infamy on this day, for over 3400 years now – a remarkable thing to celebrate for such a long period of time. I meant to watch my HD copy of V for Vendetta today, but I was too busy in the evening playing Borderlands to remember, it arrived today in the mail. Oops...

For almost 8 years now, I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. I mention this because I've used quite a few email programs as they came onto the scene, but once I had Thunderbird in my hands I never looked back. This month should see the release of Thunderbird 3, which has a few features I am excited to use, including an improved search function. I don’t like entrusting my email to servers outside of my control, hence my great attachment( heh )to Thunderbird.

On that same topic of software, C|Net has a great article today: 7 Great Freeware Utilities. They have a few of my faves in there, like CCleaner, as well as 7zip - who needs WinZip any more? I’m all about the freeware, as most of you will know by now... my experience with buggy, PAID software has somewhat soured me on utilities in general. Games are another matter... patches for those are inevitable, but they won’t usually kill your PC if they muck up.

Big Brother is out there.... and it's name is Google. But he's friendly! Google today announced public access to the Google Dashboard, where you can look at all the information that the massive info conglomerate has gathered on you. Scary?

Nov 6 – Aim for the sky!

Whoa... how big is the biggest picture of the sky that’s out there, do you think? 100 megapixels? 500? Nope – try a 648 megapixel one on for size! The work of years, this thing is amazing... which means that any current video monitor cannot do it justice. Still, nice to be able to see the entire sky at once, as well as have the data for use by various scientific projects the world over. And it’d make a killer t-shirt!

How about a spot of afternoon tea on a lovely Saturday? Why not serve it in a really cool-looking teapot? My fave is the Sorapot, it's rather chic. Though I wonder: does anyone have a list of teapots that don't dribble when you pour? Anyone?

Maybe take that spot of tea... in space? It was announced today that the first space hotel is on track to open in 2012. For only $200K US a pop, you can spend a few days in a cramped rocket and a cramped, no-frills pod in orbit. Thanks, but I’ll wait for the first Super8 to open up there before I book my ticket – right after my lottery win, that is.

In the evening, I watched Bender’s Game, the Futurama movie about RPG’s that has a lot of Gary Gygax references alluded to in the movie. Seems the creators of Futurama are long-time D&D players, which makes me like them all the more. Smart folks, they be – verily!

Nov 7 - Scatterday

Ah, the Seventh Day.... actually, over a week now since I’ve been using Windows 7. So far, it’s been a fun experience, though some things aren’t working perfectly – hence my need to get the ‘XP Mode’ up and running in the new year. Hopefully, the new processor won’t strain my laptop with too much heat – the FX is designed to be a gaming laptop, so with proper cooling it should be able to keep things within tolerances.

Boy, did it rain here today. When it rains in BC, it really rains – a lot like Florida in that regard, but more frequent and with better breaks. Unlike rain in Ontario which can last for a week or longer before the sun shines, BC can go from rain, to sun, to rain again here on Vancouver Island several times an hour. Which is hell on drivers, as the sun is blinding on wet roads.

Better that than snow, though. We’ll see how much we get here in Langford in the West Shore; we’re not in Victoria itself, where snow is very rare and magically disappears the next day. Here, it may stay a while, but that’s still fine in small quantities – I don’t plan on any snow days outside.

So I’m happy I didn’t have to work today – I needed the decompression time, and thankfully I had a brand-spanking-new copy of Borderlands to play with. I spent a good part of the day checking the game out, taking breaks to get a few things done around the house. It was a good day to relax, and I even managed to fit in the rare afternoon nap, despite the noise of the rain as it waxed and waned. It was... nice.

Nov 8 – Not-so-Sun-day

After a few unsuccessful auction attempts on Swoopo, I gave up and made myself a pancake breakfast before diving into playing Borderlands. The rich visuals are lovely to watch, the gameplay is simple and there is a ton to do and see. I actually had to tear myself away from it in the early afternoon to take a break. It’s odd too, in that three great games are all coming out within the space of the last few weeks: Borderlands first, then Dragon Age last week and COD: MW2 on Nov. 10^th – this Tuesday!

A few hours of COD4 showed that my successes in Borderlands had not translated to online play, where the human opponents don’t stay in the same spot... or shoot you from across the map with a pistol. Or knife you from behind. Or get you with a randomly-tossed grenade... you get the picture. While AI opponents may make you grind your teeth sometimes with the “That’s not fair!” caught in your throat, it will always be the human opponent who makes you really howl and throw things. Some things never change, really.


I've edited this week's blog post with MS Word 2007, as I've managed to get the blog posting function working. The text seems a little large and the spacing's off, but I'll work on that for next week. Ta'!