Wall-E was Awesome!

If you haven't seen Wall-E yet, do so!

I saw it last night. The movie is both enormously touching and hilarious, a wonderful piece of science fiction and cinema. While I've always enjoyed Pixar's movies, I think this may be the first that I actually will go out and buy. Definitely see it! Also, if possible, go late enough so that you won't have the annoying distraction of little kids... it's much easier to appreciate Wall-E when watching it with adults.

Otherwise... um... what have I been up to?

Remember Hard Power? That board game I was working on about a year ago? Well, I revisited it this week and have spend the last couple of days reworking the rules and cards. I've attempted to simplify some things, although whether or not I succeeded is debatable. There's been two big changes:

1. The resources are no longer tied to specific territories. Instead, there will be 56 "resource chips" - one for each territory, divided in a 3/2/1 scheme amongst Food, Metal, and Oil - which will be placed, face down, on the board during set up. When a trading tie is placed on a territory, the resource is flipped over, revealing whether or not the player made a good or bad choice in investing in trade with this territory.
2. Battles are no longer determined in a Risk-like fashion, instead battles are card-based. There are eight different "tactical cards", ranging in value from 1 to 8. Basically, the player whose hand has the highest value wins the battle. I'm hoping this injects a little more strategy into an area that was, until now, just a matter of chance.

There's a bunch of other things I've also altered, but I don't feel like boring you guys with it right now. ^^()

This week promises to be... eh. I have school until Wednesday (finals, yay... -_- ) and work until Thursday (I think). I have to feed Kim's turtle while she's away at Wildwood (I'd be there too if it weren't for finals this week) and the family dog-sitting my cousin's chihuahua. He's a really nice dog, but he just reminded me once again why I never want to have a dog. I'm a cat person, plain and simple.

Oh yeah! I finally got around to buying Halo 1 and 2 for the PC. While I've played both games countless times, both through story (co-op) and multiplayer modes, I've never had the opportunity to sit down and play through the campaigns by myself, so as to really gauge the story (I already know the gameplay and soundtrack are fantastic). Based on my previous experience with both games, I suspect Halo 1 will have the tighter story while Halo 2 will be deeper and a bit more well rounded. I expect to find both stories to be better than Halo 3's plot, which I found to be... well... rushed. It felt like they dumbed it down... but, I guess I'll just have to play through the first two games to see whether or not that's true.

I still haven't finished reading Count Zero. It's a good book, I just haven't had much time or energy to sit and read. I'll see if I can do that this week.

I watched the Japanese versions of Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster and Terror of Mechagodzilla this week. ToMG was better than I remembered, especially since this was the first time I'd ever seen it uncut. Ghidorah... not so much. It wasn't bad, but I can easily see how this was the beginning of Godzilla's transition from "Godzilla the Villain" to "Godzilla the Superhero". I, personally, consider the middle of the Showa series - from Ghidorah to Destroy All Monsters - to be a transitional period called "Godzilla the Anti-Hero", basically that Godzilla is acting like the Superhero but still being treated by the humans like the Villain.

My main problem with Ghidorah is that while the human storyline is being treated fairly - it concerns a police officer sent to protect the crown princess of a foreign kingdom who has lost her memory after an assassination attempt - the monsters, who in the past were treated as walking mountains of horror and might, had been relegated to comedy relief. I specifically refer to Godzilla and Rodan, who spend most of the film fighting (off camera, mind you) and are generally portrayed as stubborn buffoons. Mothra is once again shown as heroic (as usual) and only Ghidorah is allowed any measure of fearsomeness.

Ah well, just ignore my fanboy rantings. ^^()

This was a long week...

Man, I'm beat. >_>()

I did WAY too much school/job/socializing this week and not enough editing/sleeping. I saw The Incredible Hulk (which was fun, although not quite as good as Ironman) and a crappy comedy show (I was invited by a friend who moonlights as a stand-up comic to see the show and have dinner. I somehow ended up being Assistant Director to another friend's video project... ><# Ah well, at least the food was good). How crappy was the show? Of 18 comedians (there were more comedians than audience!), only 2 were any good, and 2 were so bad they didn't even get sympathy claps!

I've been thinking a bit about Godzilla today and how a new American Godzilla could play out. The movie I came up with was sort of a cross between the original Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Destroyer. ^^() The idea actually gives a lot of personality and characterization to the Destroyers (there's a few of them), but unfortunately little for Godzilla himself. Hm...

Oh yeah, and Godzilla's back:

Mystery of the Mystery Wires!

I picked up my first paycheck for the new job today. Yay! ^_^

Most of today consisted of tracing odd million-mile long wires through the Communications building at William Paterson. The first was confusing because it seemed to wrap in, out, and under this one bank of A/V equipment. The second... ran through the floor into the next room, under that room into the Studio B control room, under Studio B, up the wall, and into the ceiling of the main lobby.

We still haven't found the end! (Although, we suspect it ends in Master Control.)

The edit of Flight 62 has hit a bit of a snag... thanks to the combination of the new job, work, and the HOT weather, I've been too tired to really get any work done... for two weeks. Geez, I should be done by now (or close to it!), not grumbling about no progress. Ugh. I'll see if I can get some work done later tonight.

In the meantime, I have added some updates to The Race, without their Empire, ISOT to OTL 2007 (I really need to come up with a new title...) that wrap up my planned first act of the timeline: I describe the first Race-Australian war via a series of news clippings from The Daily Telegraph dated between November 2007 and June 2008. In the next act, I plan to wrap up the storylines for a few characters and explore a few ideas, including some semi-suggested by my readers: a radical Harry Turtledove personality cult, major societal decay and collapse amongst the Race, an Earthling virus jumping species, and the reactions of the Race to the slow realization that, yes, they are the only ones of their kind -- their homeworld and their Emperor didn't ISOT with them.

Also, I just realized that I've failed to move on my short stories at all. I really need to get on that. Argh, the summer is just such a lazy time for me... it's so hard to get anything done!

My new favorite novel

So, I've finished reading William Gibson's Neuromancer. I picked it up a couple months ago... one of those things I spotted in Borders and thought "Hey, I should read that!" It turned out the be really good, if you haven't read it yet I highly recommend it.

I've been fascinated by the cyberpunk genre for a while now... I've always liked The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite manga and anime, and now Neuromancer is my new favorite book. The future it presents seems... plausible, very plausible, even considering it was written about 25 years ago. A world where multinational corporations have grown in scope and power, where capitalism, advertising and technology pervades every aspect of life, where the Internet (called "cyberspace", or "the matrix") is central to both the social and economic worlds. Considering Neuromancer was written before the modern Internet formed, I think Gibson made a pretty good guess as to how hacking, data security, and the Internet in general would operate. Even the three-dimensional, hallucinogenic, direct mind-machine interface he described doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Hell, he describes an orbiting space resort/city in plausibly realistic detail!

I've gone ahead and picked up the rest of Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and will probably spend the next few weeks going through those (depending on how much I enjoy this trilogy, I may move on to his "Bridge" trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties).

Again, if you haven't read Neuromancer yet, do so!

New Job: Panda Consultant

I got a new job!

I am now a student technology consultant working for the Instruction and Research Technology division of William Paterson University (*whew!* That's a lot!). Basically, I'm a tech guy working for the school (I check out cameras, etc.)

Finally!

A job that's actually related to my studies! With a year (if even that) left of school, I'm hoping this job will give me a good jumping point on to a more substantial full-time job. (Also, I can finally quit my other job! Yay! Not yet, of course, but by the end of the summer it won't be practical to work both jobs any longer).

Also: go see Kung Fu Panda. I don't care if it's a kids movie, Jack Black is funny! (And it has Jackie Chan!)