Archive for August, 2005
Finally finished Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 - interesting and nicely balanced length and difficulty. The quick interface for giving your squad commands works well: point at a target and click the right mouse button, and the context determines the command given. The biggest problem is that the click is modal — you have two teams to command, and which team gets the order depends on which team you have selected in the lower left corner of the screen. Unfortunately I can’t see a better way to do the command targeting without adding another button to the mouse. It would be nice if the current selection was a little bigger than the tiny icon in the corner.
It’d also be nice if the team were smart enough to know not to run in front of the german machine gun nest, but I guess the problem is that sometimes you do want the team to draw fire away…
The command system is almost too simple, since there are only two verbs: “go” and “shoot”. Still, when the bullets are flying it’s easy to give the wrong command. The game gives you lots of interesting puzzles to apply your commands to. Early battles are tutorials, with handy fences and walls for you to hide your flanking maneuvers. Each fight becomes a simple chess game: fire team to that fence, fire to supress, move assault team to flank, fire to finish enemy position, move up to next obstacle, repeat. Later battles are a lot more open and free-form, where your tactics and eye for positioning become the deciding factor. Flanks aren’t as obvious. They also require the occasional headlong rush to solve. Interlocking fields of fire makes flanking impossible without taking casualties.
This isn’t as much a chess game as Full Spectrum Warrior. Especially in later battles, where the enemy AI tries to flank you while you are doing your thing.
The narrative is thin but realistic — the squad leader voice-over mumbles on about the friendships and the horrors of war. The missions all fit together nicely (i.e. take a town, then defend it against the counter-attack), but the characters in your squad remain cardboard cut-outs for the most part.
August 28th, 2005
Calvin and Hobbes + Fight Club.
Two things that go well together!
August 28th, 2005
Two hours of music from all three films, played in order. Unfortunately there was no “March of the Ents”, which I think is one of the more stirring pieces in the second film. The music in the second film is, on the whole, weaker. We both let our attention drift for a bit during the third movement, and suddenly it was over, on to the fourth movement and the Battle for Helms Deep.
Still — Gollums song was beautifully done. Sissel sang stirringly and clearly. For most of the concert I could close my eyes and watch the scenes roll by in my mind’s cinema. And with the whole seven hour epic squeezed into two hours, it’s quite hectic. It actually sounds like an interesting edit to put together…
Oh, and bonus points to the Justice-minister Dørum, who attended in the front row, in costume as Frodo Baggins, along with a slew of elves, hobbits and Gondorians.
August 27th, 2005
Saw The Island today. I feel Microsoft, Aquafina, and MSN all owe me a dollar for watching their ads during the movie. I mean, I paid full price for my ticket. If I wanted to watch XBOX ads I would stay at home and watch TV.
Anyway - apart from the distracting whoring going on screen - quite good. I wish Lucas had directed the chase sequence, but that’s just my preference. Still, amazing how much fun you can have with a 36 wheel truck laden with train wheels.
Now just don’t spoil it by asking what they were doing with train wheels in the first place, since all the trains elsewhere in the movie are flying maglev trains. Maybe they were taking them to the scrap yard…
August 19th, 2005
For his noodly appendage touches us all.
It has certainly tocuhed the Kansas School Boards and El Busho, since nothing but divine intervention can explain their actions…
August 19th, 2005
rioting for cheap iBooks makes Jennifer Government seem less like fiction, more like a case study.
August 17th, 2005
Bluetooth headphones suitable for use with a phone, plus a Bluetooth dongle for the iPod. Schweet! Gizmo heaven.
August 14th, 2005
Reading. Lots of it. The plan was to spend lots of time at the beach lying in the sun with a stack of books on hand. Instead I’ve spent a lot of time in bed with a stack of tissues and cups-of-tea next to the books.
Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
Makes science history fun! Should be part of the curriculum in all schools — has just come out in a norwegian translation that the education ministry should be shortlisting for the imminent start of school. The brilliance of the book is that it focuses on the process of science, not just the end results, so you end up reading about all sorts of odd-ball 18th and 19th century gentlemen who spent years fiddling with rocks and/or plants, sometimes to no great effect, but who ended up building the foundation for later discoveries. Absolutely fascinating.
Wrong about Japan
by Peter Carey
This book has saved me trip to Japan. I share the same fascination with Japan and its alien culture, and I’m fairly sure I would be as baffled by it as Carey-san is in the book. Unfortunately it becomes annoying to read about an authors failure to achieve understanding, especially when he appears to have skimped on his preparations — the whole trip is a father-son bonding trip as much as it is a reporters field trip. Still, I fear I would fare no better in Japan. Annoyingly realistic.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Jon Ronson
Too weird not to be true. Generals who try to walk through walls. Subliminal messages in music as a kinder, gentler interrogation technique instead of torture? I read this, and wondered if the author was pulling my leg — is the book a big joke? A bit of googling makes it appear not. The news reports coming out of Iraq and Gitmo back up his reports. Crazy people are running the “war on terror”. Oh joy. Funny in a funny-uh-oh way.
A World Without Time: the forgotten legacy of Gödel and Einstein
by Palle Yourgrau
Interesting history of Gödel, less about Einstein, mainly because this is a book about philosophy, not theory. We had quite a bit of Gödel at university — gödel numbering is a pretty cool trick. I remember feeling a rush when the lightbulb came on. The book covers the material well, and digs into the philosophical debates Gödel raised. The big let down is really that philosophy has kind of ignored the issue of time, and physics doesn’t worry too much about it. Basically the problem boils down to this: why is there a now? If time is a fourth dimension, then why should one point along its axis be special? If time flows, then time is not a fourth dimension, and Einstein’s theory needs to be re-formulated.
August 7th, 2005
Beate got SingStar for her birthday - very popular it appears to be too.
Just 
listen to her take on George Michael’s Careless Whisper.
My brother’s just dug up a PC open-source version of the same thing: UltraStar - written in Delphi/Kylix, runs on Windows and Linux. Impressive!
August 2nd, 2005
One week into my summer vacation and my summer cold is finally loosening its mucus-encrusted grip on my head. There is nothing quite like spending my hard earned days of rest of relaxation forcibly relaxing — well, sleeping non-stop really — with only the occasional pause for yet another cup of tea with honey.
Now I firmly believe in the old saw that with proper treatment a cold will vanish in a week, or you can just sleep it off and it’ll be gone in a mere seven days. Well, my week is up today, and I’m well and truly fed up with being tired all the time. The coughing and congestion have worn out their welcome. Enough.
Ohhh. Ok, one more cup of tea then.
August 1st, 2005