Borgus Reviews of Literature
Finally caught up on my reading this weeked… finished re-reading “The Barsoom Project”, read “Idoru” and “Snow Crash”, and checked out some half-remembered passages in “1984”.
“Barsoom Project” is one of my favorite books – it’s set at a Disneyish corporation that runs incredibly realistic Live-Action Role Playing games in a pair of titanic Star Trek-style holodecks. (Paid for by the movie they’ll edit out of the footage, the home game cassettes, and the novels and tie-ins.) It’s three stories at once – you want to find out how the LARP will work out, who commited the act of industrial espionage that drove one of the last group of players insane, and what the game controllers will do when that player inexplicably pops up again in this run-through of the LARP.
“Idoru” is the sixth William Gibson book I’ve read, and the third in a row that I just didn’t like. In “Difference Engine”, “Virtual Light”, and “Idoru”, he writes of helpless characters who mostly stand around open-mouthed as the book happens around them. It’s kind of dull, and uninteresting… you finish the book thinking, “what was that about, and why would I care?” It’s a darn shame, ’cause “Neuromancer” was so good.
“Snow Crash”, on the other hand, more than made up for that. Excellent humor, interesting characters who matter greatly to the plot, intelligent writing, and intriguing speculation about the fragmentation of human language. I just told a friend that the story “begins with a guy who delivers pizza for the Mafia, and ends with a futuristic Ted Turner’s attempts to enslave the population of the world”. If this is the quality of the author’s work, then I am absolutely picking up “Cryptonomicon” as my friends have been advising me.
Finally, after looking at the portions of “1984” where George Orwell (as Emmanuel Goldstein) describes the method by which the Party came to power and maintains it, I have arrived at the uneasy conclusion that the world is still traveling smoothly in that direction, just a lot of years behind schedule. However, I can’t think of a dang thing I can do about it, so I’m not going to stay up nights worrying about it.
Oh yeah, and I finally beat a sub-boss in the fifth act of Diablo 2 that has been giving me serious trouble on “Nightmare” difficulty. So that’s good.
Catching Up
I’ve actually had a great deal to post in the last week, but I’ve spent most of the week unable to summon the creative juice to sit and really write the entries. I’m feeling a little more in touch with the muse this morning, so hopefully I can catch up a bit on some of the things that have been on my mind.
Today, here at work, I got my first piece of spam from “the widow of a rich African government official who would like my help recovering her funds”. Yeah, “lady”. That’s the one where some people end up broke, and others end up shot. No thanks.
Re-installed Diablo II on my machine twice last night. Cleared the backup files from my boss’s laptop (that’s another story) for space, reinstalled once, got all my old character files off CD, and had it running (almost) happily before I discovered I’d made a major mistake. I won’t go into details, but I had to clear the files and install again. When people bring their machines over tonight, we’ll have to ensure they all the latest patch installed, ’cause that’s the version I have to use to run the game under OS X. I’m looking forward to the game, though character balance may be a bit difficult, since Rain’s favorite char has progressed to level 38, and mine’s up to level 50… and we expect to have at least one complete newbie tonight.
Found out this week that the upcoming OS X 10.2 for my machine, retailing at $130, costs about half that if I’m a student or a civil servant. Hmmm…
“Yum”, the iMac girl
Relating to my post about Macs and B&D, here’s the “dojinshi”-ish graphic that some were asking about:
You can find a nice desktop / wallpaper sized image here, as well as Yum in the fruit flavors.
http://www.polycount.com has a model of her that can be used in Quake 3 and Voyager: Elite Force.
Enjoying hypertext
Okay… I have just proved to myself that I don’t have a single functioning braincell.
I’ve only been reading jdunson‘s comments to my various friends‘ posts for several days. Only today did it occur to me that I could add him to my Friends List.
D’oh!!
Hi James! I just downloaded the OS X binaries for ToME after reading your mentions in your journal. If this game sucks away my life like a Blizzard game does, it’s all your fault. 🙂
I cannt tyype…
I meant to say that MiB 2 was not as good as the first one.
Also, I’m glad that I’ll finally get to play Voyager: Elite Force holomatch with Rain. Of course, she’ll find her groove in about a game and a half and start kicking my butt, but at least I can spawn a cube’s worth of Borg to help out if it starts getting too humiliating.
So, like, I had a long post almost ready yesterday… but I had to slot a Zip disk to check a reference. I should know better. The Zip driver for OS X crashes the desktop every time (no big deal, the process restarts automatically)… but this time it locked up the whole machine, I had to do a hardware restart. Lost my post, and just wasn’t up to re-typing it.
Anyway.
Figured out the last problem I was having with the special effect for my friend’s wedding video. Rain wants me to change the timing slightly, but that will just be an evening’s work. I’m learning a lot – maybe I can be meiran and raininva‘s special-effects tech when they are famous moviemakers.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein is very hard in single-player. Hey, game designers – some of us don’t play Quake 3 Arena 40 hours a week. The easy setting is supposed to be… easy.
Yes, I enjoyed MiB 2… no, it was as good as the first one.
Got the final “Robotech: Macross” boxed set this weekend, thanks to Rain. It even has the “Robotech: Sentinels” pilot as an extra – a film that made Macross purists howl. Only four more boxed sets to go before I have the whole Robotech series… then I can get the UFO set… then Monty Python’s FC… then Thunderbirds… what do you mean they’re already released ST:TNG third season?
MPEG-2 is going to be very expensive to me, I can see that.
Ooops… my boss’ laptop is throwing a kernel panic… won’t boot off the hard drive or the CD. This oughta be fun…
Oh, yippie doodle.
Just got the niceset e-mail from Sony, offering to let me download Classic Everquest for free *and* throwing in a 30-day trial for the same low price.
Well, guess what, Sony, I am immune to your offer of EverCrack becuase you don’t feel the need to support my OS. So there.
Blizzard, on the other hand, is sending all my gamer friends to tell me how much they are loving Warcraft 3, and how I really won’t miss all my non-gamer friends that much…
Of some note…
Blizzard announced today that Warcraft 3 has gone “Gold Master” and should be on store shelves July 3rd. The packages will retail for $55-$60 and contain versions for Windows 98/ME/200/XP and MacOS 9/X on the same discs.
This is only of interest to one or two of the people on my friends list, but will explain why we stop hearing from them next month. 🙂
Notes from a weekend
Rain and I finally joined a gym. I think that the benefits of the place, for me, are 1) an air-conditioned, level track to do laps on and 2) a whirlpool jacuzzis to relax in afterwards. I might look into some of the classes too, but thanks to my Borg parts I need to avoid unnaturally repetitive motion and shocks to my hip. So a lot of the exercise equipment is out, and I probably won’t be doing jump-rope or step aerobics. 🙂 That’s okay; the only things I’m really looking for right now are more stamina for walking / hiking and a smaller waistband.
Went ahead and got “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” this weekend. Pretty game… would probably look better if I had the processor and video card that the game lists as “minimum requirements”. That’s okay, proper frame-rate is for the weak and helpless *grin*
Got a lot done on a “Star Wars” opening for Sean and Leisa’s wedding video this weekend. I think they’ll plotz when they see it. Hopefully, I can finish it tonight so we can get back to the actual editing, though I’ve already captured all the footage to hard drive, so a major chunk is already done. Thank you, meiran, for forcing us to finally get that big HD. 🙂
I always expect my list of digital media (games, CDs, DVDs) I’m saving for to be huge… but this weekend I compiled my list of books I’ve been meaning to get. It’s ugly, over a hundred dollars, and that’s just for the top six books… the posthumous Douglas Adams, an illustrated book on gnomes that I loved as a kid, a book on Cold War espionage equipment, and more. Great Ghu, I love to read.
The earliest appointment I can make to get my car inspected is Wednesday at 4:00 pm. The good news is, I’ll be off work by that time. The bad news is, I hope I don’t get pulled over for a expired May sticker today or tomorrow…
Editorial
Got a newsletter from starwars.com which mentioned some of the visual (and one audio) Easter Eggs in Episode 2. What interests me is that despite the fact that Lucas has expressed a basic lack of interest in the “Expanded Universe”, one of the secret items is a freighter which has only ever appeared in the EU. (Talon Karrde’s freighter Wild Karrde is visible for an eyeblink in one scene).
I wish Lucas understood that the Star Wars universe isn’t his personal property any more, and it’s his own fault. Any time a storyteller does as good a job as he did with the first trilogy, people will take it to their hearts and run with it. Just ask Lewis Carroll, or Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. SW is Lucas’ legal property, sure., and it wouldn’t exist without him, but it resides in more places now than just his head.
Would Star Trek be on its fifth incarnation if the show was still under Gene Roddenberry’s inflexible hand? I don’t believe so.
Ah well… even with his blessing removed, the fans and pros will still continue their own Star Wars… and in this creative age, some of it will be as good or better than Lucas’ “vision”.
And I just heard that “Jedi Knight II” will be ported to the Mac and will run on my machine. Soon, I’ll be wielding a lightsaber just like Mace Windu. Okay, Anakin Skywalker. Would you believe Han Solo in Episode V?
