Bruce Campbell’s going to be there because Brisco County’s coming out on DVD.
Sweet! This is the best year ever! We bought a house, The Tick and Brisco County are on DVD. Awesome!
So are you saying that getting married and going to Ireland were just filler?
No. I’m just not sure it compares to the Tick on DVD….
*SIGH* I’m too tired to hit you…
Be the zombie
Sometimes a game comes along that’s just the thing. Timely, satisfying, bloody.
And occasionally you get to eat brains.
Now, most Zombie games you play the human, intent on stopping the Zombie threat. Certainly a noble cause, but, really it’s gotten kind of boring. Yeah, yeah, everyone want’s to be the hero, save the world, yadda yadda. But we’ve done that before.
Much more satisfying to be the Zombie.
which takes us to Punchbowl, Pennsylvania, 1959.
Punchbowl is a gleaming City Of The Future. Complete with flying cars and robots. A wholesome place.
And now a place with an unwanted visitor.
See, back in ‘33 Edward “Stubbs” Stubblefield was murdered and buried in an unmarked grave. Then the city of Punchbowl was built on top of him. 26 years later, during Punchbowl’s opening day festivities, Stubbs decides he wants a snack.
And that’s where we come in. As Stubbs, you get to eat brains, possess people stun them with your Unholy Flatulence and kill the with your exploding head and gut bombs and build up an army of your undead minions. And it is good, bloody fun.
Stubbs is built on the Halo engine (Alex Seropian, the executive producer, was one of the founders of Bungie) so the controls are somewhat familiar. Punchbowl is very stylishly done, very retro-modern. The dialogue gets a bit repetitive, as there’s only so many ways for someone to scream “it’s eating my brain” but I’m probably 1/3 of the way through the game and I still cackle with glee every time I eat someone’s brain. And the soundtrack is, simply, awesome. Featuring covers of 50’s songs done by current bands like Death Cab For Cutie, The Dandy Warhols, and The Flaming Lips. It’s not used enough during the game, except in the “boss fight” against Punchbowl’s chief of police, which may be the weirdest boss fight I’ve come across in a video game.
All in all a very stylish, bloody and fun game. Two green, decaying thumbs up.
Hopefully The Wife and I will be seeing Serenity tonight. I’m really interested to see how Whedon treats the Firefly universe as a movie, and where the whole River thing goes.
I’m inclined to like this movie, just because Firefly was pretty much the best sci-fi on TV in years, and one of the better shows in general. So, of course Fox screwed it up.
Anyway, review tomorrow assuming we get in.
Oh, and here’s the remarkably bland marketingspeak synopsys that the marketing company insists I include:
Joss Whedon, the Oscar® – and Emmy – nominated writer/director
responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE
VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion
and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the
future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film
centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the
losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living
pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship,
Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing
he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.
Wow. I’m all aflutter. That’s powerful writing.
Ah. So that’s what it was.
We were sitting on the patio at the bar last night when I looked up and saw this:
Cool. A rocket! Though it looked too close to be a launch from Vandenberg, it was:
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE – A rocket carrying a military research satellite blasted off Thursday, dazzling spectators from California to Arizona with a rainbow of colors as it streaked across the sky at dusk.
The Minotaur rocket carrying a DARPA payload launched into orbit at 7:24 p.m. from Vandenberg Air Force Base, said Maj. Todd Fleming.DARPA is the research and development arm of the Pentagon. The 920-pound “Streak” payload will stay in orbit for a year, gathering information about the Earth’s environment in low orbit. The mission’s cost is classified.
Those of you inclined to conspiracy theories may now don your tinfoil helmets and hide from the black helicopters. Everybody else just enjoy the pretty pictures
I didn’t take that many this year, but the better one’s are up on flickr.
Clicky badge for dorky goodness.
| www.flickr.com |
Well, looks like the “Apple to use Intel” rumors were true.
Bloody Hell.
So after ten years of “The PPC is Better/Faster/Stronger/Just Plain Cooler” Intel now delivers “Better performance per watt”.
Yeah, that’s why my Pentium 4 M laptop feels slower and hoter than my Mac Mini. (And, yes Windows’ horribly broken VM system doesn’t help.)
Bloody. Fucking. Hell.
And this just a month after buying my Mac Mini. My PPC-based Mac Mini. My Mac software buying plans just nosedived.
I’ll say this, I don’t think there’s enough RDF Kool-Aid to soften the hit from this one. If Apple’s Mac sales take a dive between now and the Mactel transition the whole Board of directors, including The Steve, should be thrown under a bus. And rightly so.
UPDATE:
Good god. Slashdot is slashdoted, along with every Mac rumor site in my bookmarks. Wonder if this might actually provoke some output from AtAt or if Jack’s going to be hiding under the couch and sobbing.
Someday FedEx will manage to ship a piece of hardware from Rhode Island to San Diego and when it arrives no cards will need to be reseated, or bits glued back on, or insurance claims filed.
It will just work.
And I will die from shock.
It’s currently eagerly sucking up the music on my laptop.
Only ~4,500 songs to go. We’ll be here a while.
Yes, I finally got permission to buy a new toy, since we had a bit of a windfall and have some extra cash even with the wedding coming up in just over two weeks(!) and we figured we’d need something to do one the plane to Ireland.
Of course we now have one iPod for two people, so I bought the iSplitter so we can both listen. The iSplitter is just a 1/8″ Y-adapter, but being made by Monster Cable it’s three times as heavy, big, and costly than it probably needs to be. But, hey, it’s white and the name starts with ‘i’, so what the hell. (Of course I could have bought the same thing from Radio Shack for like three bucks, but again, what the hell)
And Apple even gives you sixteen free songs from the iTunes music store! Not “sixteen songs of your choice”, no, it’s the “iTunes New Music Sampler”, literaly chock full of three bands I’ve heard of.
Now I just need to remember to by a power adapter for whatever goddamn incomprehensible plug the use in Ireland. And this, because actually listenening to CDs in the car is just so… 1999. And this, because there’s nothing like hanging a large, ungainly battery pack off of your elegantly designed little toy. And maybe even iPod Socks. I mean, let’s not be rational here, it’s a cult after all.
All we need now are some Apple-designed white Nike running shoes.
I’ll be setting up a new server room at work when we move into our new office in a couple months*. As every experienced sysadmin knows there are two hard-and-fast requirements for a server room: a ClueBat ™ and a poultry sacrifice to the Server Gods. In other words a Louisville Slugger with several sharpened nails driven through the business end** and a rubber chicken.
The ClueBat ™ is easy enough, requireing only a few nails and several minutes with a cordless drill (and perhaps some wood glue and a hammer) , but where to find the rubber chicken for the sacrifice to Jobu?
Of course, Archie McPhee. Should have been the first place I looked.
(*Once the contractors get through mis-wiring, putting all the outlets in upside down and running the UPS backed lines to random broom closets)
(**Sysadmins from Britian, Austrailia or the Subcontinent may, at their discretion, substitute a cricket bat. Nails optional, due to the increased bludgeoning surface.)
I just shot an Ewok. What more could you ask from a game?
Picures of Reagan, Midway and Nimitz as well as day 2 of Comic-Con are up at my Yahoo gallery. Unfortunately I got downtown too late to get pictures of Reagan coming in to port, so all these pictures are shot from the Embarcadero. Here’s the UT’s story about the arrival and the ceremony.
Some quick Con notes before I head down there again: Friday’s attendance was way above Thursdays. By 11:00 the show floor was far more crowded than the day before. Lot’s more people dressed up. Stan Lee was signing autographs. Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask looks stunning. The film’s not done yet, since Dave’s still compositing scenes. All the sets and effects are CG, and they’re simply gorgeous. They’re looking at a limited theatrical release in early 2005.
Later in the afternoon, while I was outside smoking a cigarette, USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52)came into port, so there’s a couple pictures of her in there too.
Anyway, off on the Pop-Culture Death March again. Later.
Yes, folks it’s that time of year again, when thousands of Freaks, Geeks and people who think they’re Klingons descend on San Diego for Comic Con. Thursday seemed like somewhat lighter attendance than last years, and there are fewer huge booths so there seems to be a little more space on the floor. There also seemed to be fewer Stormtroopers and people dressed up like Harry Potter than last year, but I’m sure that’ll change as the weekend goes on.
There’s a few photos in my Yahoo photo gallery, so enjoy. I only had a couple of hours there yesterday, so there’s not much, but I’ll have more tonight including info on the upcoming Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean flick MirrorMask and pictures from the ceremony for the USS Ronald Reagan, which comes to it’s new home in San Diego today.
