I've gotten a little fed up using my Twitter account to log my progress through Star Trek. I think I'm going to use idkfa instead.
Following replies will be my history thus far, and updates (however banal) on new episodes I watch.
I watched the episode "Final Mission," the ninth episode of the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation this weekend (original air date: December 2nd, 1990).
The episode had Wesley Crusher and Captain Picard traveling in a mechanically dubious alien shuttle to get to a planet that is in need of Picard's galaxy-renowned diplomatic arbitration skills. The trip is intended as a "final mission" for Wesley, as he is about to leave the Enterprise to study at Starfleet Academy, and Picard wanted to use the time on the mission to give him sagely advice. As is predicted, the shuttle's propulsion system fails, leaving Wesley, Picard, and the captain of the alien shuttle stranded on a desert planet.
Picard maintains an uneasy command of the shuttle crash survivors, convincing the shuttle captain to make for the mountains as their best chance for food or shelter. They make their way across the desert and to a cave, with what appears to be an active spring welling up from the bottom of the cave. However, upon approaching the spring, they discover that a force field surrounds the water, and a number of energy-based sentries attack the survivors when they try to take down the field with their phasers. The sentries cause rocks to fall from the ceiling, injuring Picard. Wesley tries to help Picard, but discovers that the injuries will eventually prove fatal, and cannot be treated in the cave.
The alien shuttle captain grows impatient, and convinces Wesley to try another plan to use the phasers to take down the field around the water spring. Their plan again fails, and the alien shuttle captain is killed after being encased in "selenium fibers" by the sentries.
Wesley, tending to an ailing Picard, tries to keep Picard awake and in good spirits while he works on a way to disable the field. Picard, on the verge of death, tells Wesley how proud he is of him, gives him advice on Starfleet, the Academy, and life.
Up until now, the episode was a pretty standard "away team" story, with the added bonus of Patrick Stewart doing a good job on acting, and Wesley not being annoying and actually growing a pair.
What was more interesting about this episode is that I realized, watching the concluding scenes, that watching this episode is actually one of my earliest memories. Wesley, furious punching away at his tricorder while the energy sentries whirl around him, and then suddenly, his plan works, and the field goes down, and he's able to get the lifesaving water to Picard.
This is probably the most compelling reason I have for watching these shows. I may not have seen all of the episodes, but for the ones that I have (and no longer consciously remember), the characters and the imagery are buried deep in my memory and subconscious. And I think it's interesting to recall what a 5-year-old Josh thought about Star Trek.
This is hilarious. These poor people actually believed what they read in articles from The Onion, then posted links and rants on facebook.
http://literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com/ (literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com)
I need to start reading The Onion more often... these stories have had me cracking up for 10 minutes!
I bought L.A. Noire on Sunday.
Big mistake.
Every case I go through, at the time I'm playing the game, I'm thinking, "Hey, that was alright. Let's see if the next case is cool."
Now I'm 9 hours into it and on the second disc. and still thinking similar things to that.
[cue scrotor: second disc?! WTF] [yes, scrotor. in fact, the game isn't just two discs. IT'S THREE.] [scotor: ZOMGWTFBUBBLE]
At some point I should stop giving Rockstar blowies. oodles of money. all of my spare time. attention. This is what it does to my life.
We must build the robots Skynet has ordered us to build. The day of our machine overlords grows closer:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/new-rolling-robot-transforms-into-helicopter/ (www.wired.com)
for the past seven years or so, for my primary computer, whatever it was, I've been using a microsoft intellimouse 4.0. recently it started showing its age, and required severe physical punishment in order to properly left click, either single or double click. so i bought a replacement for it, a razer deathadder. its basically the razer version of that same mouse. lets see how long this one lasts.
so i guess in other words i have more electronics for the next time we need a proper lead death + viking funeral.
I just wanted to point out that NPR's First Listen is AWESOME especially right now as they have the entire The Book of Mormon: The Musical Cast Recording (www.npr.org)and the album Rome (www.npr.org)right now.
The Book of Mormon has gotten 14 Tony nominations and is written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park/Cannibal: The Musical/Orgasmo to name a few).
Rome is a new album by Danger Mouse and Danelie Luppe. It also has Norah Jone and Jack White. Danger Mouse is a DJ, while Luppe is an orchestral composer. Should make for good stuff.
I love watching Top Gear. I watched 3.5 years of it while home sick this past weekend. I'm sure things like poker or mead tasting would have been excellent, since I hate to be a homebody, but being so busy since I moved home from college meant that I haven't had the time to watch any of it.
Dead Space 2 Review:
Dead Space 2 is a good game. It's got high production value, decent writing / storyline, and is an impressive technological accomplishment. There are few horror/suspense/non-standard shooter games like Dead Space and Dead Space 2, and I appreciate when they're implemented well. I also appreciate science fiction storylines that don't insult my intelligence.
I will, however, probably never play Dead Space 2 again. Much like I haven't played the original Dead Space since I beat it some years ago. This is for two reasons: though additional playthroughs may introduce more frustrating and difficult gameplay, it won't introduce new gameplay, nor will it introduce any new story elements (at least, not without going the completionist route, wasting countless hours of life to get the super-special ending, if there is one, that I can just view on Youtube). At no point in either game are you given a choice about anything, you're either mowing something down, or listening to people going crazy.
The gameplay in DS2 is exactly the same as it was in DS1, except for maybe two or three additional monsters, which show up pretty few and far between. This means that if you had a strategy you liked in DS1, that strategy applies perfectly well to DS2. It also means that the weapons used in the game, while still fun examples of how industrial equipment can be used incorrectly, are the exact same thing. And, because the game has you stressed and frightened and clinging to whatever dear resources you've managed to find in monster's ribcages, you're not likely to explore outside of the standard fare. I played through almost the entire game sawing through horrifying monsters, which while efficient and satisfying, left me wishing I'd been given the opportunity to go at things a different way.
DS2 does, however, have some entertaining sequences. At one point, you have to launch yourself in a rocket-powered ejection seat at a planet, rather than away from it, all the while using your meager suit stabilizers to careen your way around space debris. It's fun as hell, but the sequences like this mostly exist towards the beginning of the game, and leave you at the end with about 3 hours worth of just dismembering room occupants, and then moving to the next room.
I'm not sure I'm sold on how DS2 changed its characterizations from DS1. In the first game, your game character, Isaac Clarke, is a non-speaking protagonist (the "heroic mime (tvtropes.org)," a la the Half-life games, the Dooms, the Quakes, some of the Bioshocks, Chrono Trigger, Portal, etc.), throughout which you never actually see Isaac's face. This works well, because not only does it project the player's own thoughts and feelings (mostly panic and fear) onto that of the protagonist, but because you feel like you're more fully interacting with the game through your actions, even if your game character isn't actually saying anything. It's also all the more unnerving in the first game because all you tend to hear from your character are grunts of pain when hit, labored wheezing when severely injured, and screams when you die.
And for some reason, in DS2, they decided to forego that, giving Isaac Clarke not only a face, but a voice, and considerable dialog. And in a game where you have almost no choice but to go forward, this meant that instead of reacting how I wanted to react to something, I had to instead listen to how somebody else decided Isaac Clarke would respond. The lines were believable, and the voice acting was very good. It's just a weird thing for them to change, particularly when it worked well in the first. I wonder if the non-inclusion of Clarke's dialog in the first game was more from a developmental effort standpoint, rather than a choice of the writers.
DS2 is a fun experience, even if it is extremely linear. As with the first game, it gives me an uneasy wariness around certain sizes of ventilation ducts. But like I said, I'll never be revisiting it.
" 'Our blood is green, not red," one unidentified woman told the broadcaster, referring to the signature color of Gadhafi's regime. "He is our father, we will be with him to the last drop of blood. Our blood is green with our love for him.' "
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/20/134704978/after-u-s-allies-strike-gadhafi-vows-long-war (www.npr.org)
they're....romulan? vulcan?
They can't keep doing this to me. They just... they can't...
"Help Nathan Buy Firefly": http://helpnathanbuyfirefly.com/ (helpnathanbuyfirefly.com)
On Feb 17, 2011, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly (insidetv.ew.com), Nathan Fillion said: “If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.”
It took me four hours to tag 3600 faces detected by Google Picasa, but now it is done. I have associated every face in my photo album with a name (save for those people who just happened to be in the photo, folks that I don't know, or folks that I can't remember their names). Also amended my backups script so I never have to do this again.
So, now that I have seen all 10 of this year's best picture Oscar nominees, this is how I would rank them:
1) King's Speech
2) Black Swan
3) The Social Network
4) Toy Story 3
5) Winter's Bone
6) 127 Hours
7) The Fighter
8) Inception
9) The Kids Are All Right
10) True Grit
I still think Social Network is going to take home the prize and my favorite movie of the year isn't even on the list (KICK ASS!!! I LOVE YOU NICOLAS CAGE!!!).
Colin Firth and Natalie Portman are shoe-ins for the acting prizes, but for some real entertainment, catch all the Supporting Actor movies. To me, this is always the category with the most entertainment value and talent.
Man... the Sega Genesis had some really poorly designed games. Ended up tracking down some old ones I remembered having as a kid. Maybe it was just games in the mid-90's, but they're all super dark, difficult to control, and damn near impossible.
"Beyond Black Mesa": http://kotaku.com/...-half+life-fan-film (kotaku.com)
Interesting fan-made film in the Half-life 2 universe.
Collection of great lines from the character Roman, from Party Down (sorta NSFW due to language):
http://www.youtube....re=player_embedded (www.youtube.com)
Probably my favorite exchange (www.youtube.com) in the entire series:
Roman: "Are you into scifi?
Porn Actress: "Yeah totally. I even did a scifi movie once... alien did me with his tentacle arms... it was cool."
Roman: "Sounds cool."
Porn Actress: "Yeah."
Roman: "I haven't seen that one. So what kind of stuff are you into?"
Porn Actress: "Oh, you know, all of it. I mean, what I really like is dragons."
Roman: "Dragons?"
Porn Actress: "Mmhmm, dragons."
Roman: (sighs, long pause, takes a drink) "...Dragons are fantasy. If there's magical talismans, or a magic sword, or... wizards, or fuckin' crazy, not-real animals, all these basic things that break the laws of reality, that shit's all fantasy... I'm into hard scifi. Fantasy is bullshit."
Porn Actress: "Mmhmm." (leaves)
I'm at least two years behind on this, I think, but Braid (braid-game.com) is a pretty amazing game. The entire game mechanic is based on going backwards and forwards in time, or slowing time down in order to solve puzzles. All of the puzzles are extremely clever, and some are damn near impossible.
Probably what struck me most was that it also has a compelling, albeit short story to it that plays extremely well into providing a narrative to what would otherwise be repeatedly making you feel not smart enough.
If you've wanted to check it out, please do. It's well worth the time and money.
I liked Tron: Legacy a whole lot.
Maybe not a compelling or gripping film, but fun, and a fun artistic imagining of what a computer system that can think might eventually become.
