This could get expensive.

According to kittykatya, my friend Denise saw me as Magenta at Technicon‘s showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and commented that I had “legs up to there”.

So, basically, all the compliments on appearance I received last weekend came from: a) the white dinner jacket / black slacks combo, or b) the black vinyl maid’s outfit with the fishnet hose.

Apparently I need to rethink my wardrobe.

Half-Life: what most computer gamers are lucky to have

I finally finished Deus Ex last night. It’s a computer game set in a cyberpunk near-future world where civilisation is completely dependent on a futuristic Internet, and a mysterious plague is ravaging humanity – though it seems to leave the rich and powerful untouched. You begin the game playing a technologically enhanced special agent for the UN Anti-Terrorist Organization, but by the end, your loyalties have shifted multiple times as you learn more about what’s really going on and who you really are.

At the end of the game, I had three choices (each of which would require some difficult gameplay):

1) Join myself to the master computer controlling and monitoring the Internet (as the bad guy had intended to), and help it rule the world, hopefully with compassion and ethics…

2) Shut down the computer and help the Illuminati (who aided me through the latter half of the game) to return to secretly manipulating humanity from behind the scenes – with myself as one of the new puppeteers…

3) Destroy the computer in a manner that would wipe out the future Internet and give the world the chance to choose its own path out of the mini-Dark Age which would follow.

In the end, I chose option 1. But boy did they leave themselves plot threads for Deus Ex 2, now in pre-production…

And of course, the week I finially get Deus Ex out of the way, Ambrosia Software releases Escape Velocity: Nova. If one owns a Macintosh, the Escape Velocity games are the kind of games where you sit down to play 30 minutes and come out of your hypnosis 6 hours later; this one’s the newest, prettiest, and plays under OS X…

…what’s that, Blizzard? You say you expect the OS X version of Diablo 2 to be ready in about 15 days? Nooooo….

Where’s that lottery money?

So, this morning in Tokyo, Steve Jobs announced a 10 gigabyte iPod for $500. I’m not sure that if added every CD I own to my MP3 collection that I’d have 10 gigs, even if I tossed in a gig of files to use it as an emergency boot drive. Heck, put a color screen on that puppy and you could watch ripped DVDs off of it!

Apple: “Yes, we’re expensive. But isn’t this cool?”

Hey! Stop laughing when we’re making fun of you!

A group of American Indian (and other) students at Northern Colorado University have created a team logo and mascot supposedly intended to educate the public about how hurtful ethnic stereotypes are: the NCU “Fighting Whites”.

However, in an unfortunate twist to their message, the t-shirts seem to be selling well to all ethnic persuasions – white people included.

http://www.cafepress.com/fightinwhite/ is the address, for the curious out there.

Maybe there is some kind of cosmic balance…

Dumb thing I did yesterday:
Nearly forgot check for month’s rental of storage unit. Reminded by much smarter wife with 10 minutes to go – barely made it in time.

Smart thing I did yesterday:
On panicked trip to rental office, thought better of cutting off nondescript white Ford. On closer inspection, saw multiple radio antennas and uniformed driver – breathed sigh of relief that good sense had kicked in.

Extremely early thoughts on the T-Con beta schedule

Technicon starts a week from tomorrow, and they’ve posted an early version of the schedule. I do realize that con schedules are subject to complete revision until late Sunday afternoon, but I couldn’t help noticing a few things.

The first thing is that my sweetie and I are involved in one of the Live-Action Role Playing games, and that at least one (possibly both) of the games starts Friday night at 8:00. So we may miss meiran‘s Women in SF panel 🙁 I’ve enjoyed representing the Liberated Male there in the past, and I’d be sorry to miss this one.

Another scheduled LARP event (if it’s for the one I’m in) may cause me to miss the first half of the Amateur Film panel, which would be a shame. We don’t have a submission this year like we were going to, but it’s fun to see what others bring and comment on it.

(2 years ago: “Are you sure you want me as a panelist? I haven’t actually been involved in anything since Space Rogues – all I can talk about is the several projects I hope to start work on sometime soon.”

“Amateur shmamateur, that makes you a Hollywood professional!”)

The person I will be playing in the LARP is a major Russian political figure, I haven’t decided whether my accent should be “Boris Badenov” or Connery’s “Alexsandr Ramius” (i.e. Moscow by way of Scotland).

This year’s midnight discussions include the SW Virginia Spiritual Alliance (a pagan group), Polyamory 101, and a BDSM demonstration / panel. Who says science fiction fans never do anything but watch their Trek videos?

Internet Movie Madness

For those who wanted to know, the online version of the first episode of Space Rogues can be found on my Movies page.

It’s in two parts which add up to 90 megs of Quicktime, so don’t try this on your 28.8 modem.

Which Space Rogues Character Are You?

Geek Moment!

So, I’m playing the 3D cyberpunk video game “Deus Ex” yesterday… I find a note that an engineer has left for his superior, alerting him that the new root password for the local computer system is “reindeerflotilla.”

I sit there and think, “That sounds so familiar… why is that familiar to me?”

Turns out it’s the internal level 6 password to the Emcon mainframe that Jeff Bridges uses in the movie “Tron.”

Why does my brain only store this stuff? Why can’t I remember anything useful?

Rain made a test!

Which Space Rogues Character Are You?
Cmdr. Brion Fields

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