Apple, Animation and Art

January 25 - Tech Wars

Novels of the ‘soft apocalypse’ seem to becoming popular, about what happens after the world ends.  I mentioned A Canticle for Leibowitz, which is on the list at io9.com that examines some of the best soft apocalypse fiction ever written. It’s quite impressive, and I’ve added a few books to my to-read SF list.

Wargames have always been a favourite of mine for the PC, though I’ve not been very good at actually winning them. Like a lot of things, time is not kind to PC games, especially ones meant to be played online. Thankfully, places like The WarZone exist to cater to retro online multiplayer games, where you can still find someone out there to humiliate and conquer... or just provide an amusing diversion and entertainment too, more likely.

The new X9000 CPU chip has been humming away in my laptop for a week now, and it’s running GREAT! When totally idle, the thing actually goes into the negatives for temperature – now THAT is COOL! The virtual WinXP PC software is also working great, but I still have to gather together all the older games I have and start installing them under XP... should be great, as there’s some I’ve been waiting to play for quite a few years now.

January 26 - Old B5 and Bikes

Mass Effect 2 was released today, so that means I’ll likely pick it up about this time next year – see if I don’t. Massive RPG games aren’t meant to be finished quickly, and I tend to get sidetracked a lot in them.  Strangely, the cancelled Sierra B5 Space Combat Sim website is STILL online 10 years after Sierra cancelled the game. That they could kill a great project that was 95% complete, and yet still leave the website running perfectly really, really annoys me in ways that end in yelling.

The phrase “Renting out your dreams” popped into my head today, and I can’t seem to get it out again. I think it may relate on some odd tangent to the film Total Recall, which I still haven’t really figured out to this day if it was a dream, or reality. Googling my phrase didn’t help either, though “Renting your dreams” did turn up one single hit out of the entire internet: buying property in Mexico. Is someone out there in the Great Big trying to tell me something via my subconscious? If so, I’d wish they’d just pop in some winning lottery numbers and stop being so obtuse about it...

I like bikes, though I’m not one to try out some of the really odd recumbent ones. There’s a ton of cool bicycle designs listed here: some really radical designs, and I love the ones with the really high-tech look to ‘em.

January 27 - Grapes of Wrath

While playing Borderlands, I managed to activate one of the hidden easter eggs after getting the “You’re On A Boat” Achievement – opera music, fireworks and people riding fish ensued. There’s also a great interview with the developer that talks about how the game came about and where it’s going: it all sprang from a system designed to create millions of unique guns for the players... and some cool art.

I combed through the four web browsers I use daily( Chrome, Opera, Firefox and... ick.. IE8 )to make sure each one had as many of the more useful browser add-ons installed as possible. The most useful?  xMarks – this synchronizes ALL of your bookmarks across all the browsers you use, which may not seem like much but it means you can use any PC on the planet and still have access to your saved faves. The best part? ALL of the extensions I use are FREE... talk about bang for your click.

Gra’pples – they’re not bacon. Has anyone tried one of these? I keep forgetting to pick some up locally; I think they carry them at the Superstore nearby.

January 28 - Apple Causes Wrath

Today, the iPad was announced... leading to quite a lot of debate on the ‘net: is it the Next Big Tech Thing, like the iPhone was? Or not? In my opinion, Not: as in, not so revolutionary... I see it as just a larger, less-portable iPhone. C|net had a great 10 points on Why Netbooks are Better than the iPad; for one, the iPad doesn’t have Flash enabled... so 99.9% of the websites out there in the world today won’t display content correctly. Well done, Apple... and thanks for making it so affordable too.

Have you ever hear of the Antikythera Mechanism? It’s a 2000-year old mechanical creation that was dredged up from the ocean a century ago and is only now being fully understood by scientists. It was built in Greece and contains revolutionary mechanical gearings not seen again until Leonardo’s time.

A different kind of old: Today I found out that the Chinese Terracotta warriors are coming to Victoria in 2011, and that we are only 1 of 4 Canadian cities chosen for that singular honour. I haven’t been to a museum display in... well, I can’t remember when the last major exhibit was that I attended, but I’m marking this one down. Sometimes you get to see such things only once in a lifetime, as 90% of the artefacts museums have get stored away from the public, often for decades or longer. Make the time, if you have the chance to go.

January 29 - Cool Animation

Twenty-three years ago today, the Blizzard of 77 was in full swing. I remember parts of the aftereffects very well: there was a LOT of snow, more than I had ever seen before or since. There was so  much that when we went to the corner store to get milk, my sister and I were riding on a sled being pulled along the center of the street we couldn’t see the houses on either side from where we sat. It was all white piles to either side, made very surreal-looking by the bright sunshine in the bitter cold. I recall it well all these years later, as it was a fun end to what had been a deadly time of winter weather.

Batman: The Animated Series is back on television on TeleToonRetro, and I keep on forgetting to record it, which is all the more annoying as it isn’t repeated at all afterwards. Watching it again, I am reminded of how cool it was when it came out in 1992, about the same time as Gargoyles was on television. Now it does seem dated to me, though I am glad to see it back on TV again; so far, I have not seen Pirates of Dark Water on anywhere, which is a shame. Heck, I even enjoyed an old episode of G.I.Joe on TTRetro tonight called “The Viper is Coming” which was a play on a very old( and very bad )joke. Still funny! What’s even funnier? Cobra: The Musical, that’s what!

Another show that's caught my eye lately is Superjail! which is a far-out, almost surreal take on popular culture through the eyes of a futuristic prison. It's hyper-violent though, so be warned: not for the prudish or the young-at-mind. Very, very funny though - reminds me of Duncebucket, actually, which this review said "...was the funniest of the lot and a no-brainer for a series."

January 30 - Winter Smog Stinks

Today I bought some new shoes for the winter, not boots... which is only possible here in Victoria. Which is why I’m glad I didn’t choose to move to Edmonton: for the first time I’ve heard of, that city has smog in the wintertime. What’s up with that? Year-round pollution might be the wave of the future?

Two great lists from the early days of the internet are 50 Fun Things to do in an Elevator and The Evil Overlord List, which people have managed to keep going all these years despite the actual websites changing hands quite a few times.? If it does, head on over to CrazyThoughts.com, where questions like “Can you cry underwater?” and “How fast do hotcakes sell?” are listed for your puzzlement.

The evening saw me dividing time between Borderlands, online chat with some of my NWN friends, and incessant phone calls from work – apparently no other managers were answering their phones, so I was it as the last resort. Which was fine; I’d rather avoid a customer service failure or at worst, lose an employee because they couldn’t reach a manager, especially as they’re hard to reach elsewhere on a weekend. It did play merry hell with my Borderlands game though; so much for hours of unlimited loot.

January 31 - Shooting Softly

Ideas about mortgages have been floating through my mind of late, and I’ve taken it upon myself to edumicate my brain all about the fun facts and many, many pitfalls that mortgages have to offer your average Canadian. I did find a great site for general ideas here, which gave me a few ideas of my own. Which are far, far removed from such shows as Fantasy Homes By The Sea or Million-Dollar Broker on HGTV – who wants to watch shows about rich people spending money they don’t really care about?

I’ve always liked Nerf dart guns, which are even cooler now than ever, but they’re no longer seemingly aimed( pardon the pun )at kids. The TV commercials I’ve seen show teenagers trying not to hit each other in the eye with DayGlo Nerf darts, with no kids in sight at all. Marketing switch to the better dollar-buying segment perhaps? Anyway, my point is that the guns they have now have belt-fed ammo, which just looks cool no matter how you shoot it – beats the hell outta rubber-band guns, I think.

My evening drew into watching a few shows on TV as I worked on the blog and caught up on emails. Wedding Crashers was on, which I had never seen. So I ended up catching the whole thing and surprised myself by liking it, as I’m not one for romantic comedy. Rachel McAdams could have been the reason, as she looked fantastic in the film. And everyone likes Vince Vaughn, though he seems to play the same character a lot – he was essentially the same likable guy from Dodgeball as he was in tonight’s film.

My closing thoughts this week? Sleep is good, when you’re tired. How’s that for good advice?