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My friend and coworker, Roman, had worked on a movie a year or so back and has finally been able to show it on the big screen. Check it out:
I had the chance to go to a screening of this movie and it was actually pretty good. The first half or so is a little jumpy but towards the end it was pretty fun. Some cool camera work too. Anywho, if you are in the Denver area and happen to be downtown, check it out.
Happy New Years!
I know everyone keeps talking about the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asian, but please don’t forget to donate to the Red Cross.
I finally started to read the Baroque Cycle which has, to say the least, been interestingly weird the first few pages. Still trying to get use to the setting and nomenclature. The end of The Naked God was less interesting than I had expecting. I think Peter Hamilton ran out of steam and couldn’t finish with too much more information (probably be a whole nother book) but it is too bad the whole crisis + other issues are all solved in one final event.
Cheryl and I watched a couple of movies recently:
And I saw a couple of DVDs:
I think that’s about it. Oh yah, Cheryl and I will be heading to Cancun at the end of the month for a week’s vacation, so that should be fun!
I thought I was being sly when I decided to order all the gifts I could online. Oh, I was able to order 8/10 gifts online, but that final gift I ordered for Cheryl was a big snafu. I just reordered a similar (but not exact) gift just yesterday with the SuperSpeedyShippingFor$50 option selected: I sure hope it gets here in time (they promise it will).
Other than that, everything went well. Had most of my shopping done by Dec 10th or so, with a few items to pick up at the mall.
I felt bad not updating the blog, but I was (am) just having way too much fun playing Worlds of Warcraft with my spare time. If you have more free time than you know what to do with, I recommend you pick it up and say “Hi” to Viin on the Icecrown server.
I had pre-ordered a copy of Raph Koster’s new book, Theory of Fun for Game Design. So far: interesting. It’s a pretty light read, with drawings and all, but interesting. Raph is one of the guys that I try to keep up with, not least because he’s made a career of making games (the dream of many, I’m sure).
Due to most of my time being spent playing WOW I haven’t finished the last Reality Dysfunction book yet, but I’m getting close. I haven’t even gotten to play Half-Life 2 much, darn it Blizzard!
We had our little Buckley ANG holiday party earlier this month, which was fun if only because we got to wear civilian (normal) clothes, have a good breakfast, and leave early. Funnily, the day before we played dodge ball in one of the aircraft hangers - not something you would except a bunch of on-duty military folks to be doing - but it was pretty fun. It’s interesting to see how competitive people can get even with a silly game like dodge ball.
Cheryl and I will have the Christmas Hop to play this Saturday, but it shouldn’t be too bad. We’re doing our own Christmas dinner (mm, pizza) on Christmas Eve and then heading to my mom’s house Christmas morning. After that, we head over to her sister’s house for another Christmas dinner. Thankfully, both of our families are pretty close by so we don’t have to travel with everyone else - yuck.
On a sad note: quite a few people were cut in the layoffs in AOL a few weeks ago, including a few friends on the development side of stuff here in Denver. While it sucks, I know that they are smart individuals and will be able to find something as good or better. Good luck to them!
Well, I’ll leave it at that for now. I hope everyone has a Good Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Ever have one of those days where everything is fine until a certain point and then it just rolls downhill from there? That was yesterday. Why? No clue. Maybe it had something to do with the Lunar Eclipse? Which, btw, was pretty cool.
The Red Sox have won the World Series. Yay.
Today also marks the beginning of the Guild Wars World Preview Event. You should hop on if you need something to do this weekend and want to check out a forth-coming game. It’s probably a total of 55megs to download to start playing, but you can create a character after the first initial 10megs or so. Some folks from F13 will be playing as well, hopefully we can get a guild going to try some Guild Vs Guild combat. If you play, look me up - I’ll be ‘Viin Seeven’.
I had a SUTA drill last weekend with our new One man; Ben is still the three man so we basically know what’s going on already, but our One man is new to being a One man and has to get use to his functions. We started our Initial Certification for weapons loading which is basically going through the steps to perform 60-day (use to be 30) Functional Checks and load various munitions (within a specified time frame). We got through the functional checks, Mk-82’s, AIM-9s, and AIM-120s. We’ll be doing another SUTA in November where we should be loading the rest of the standard munition types: Mavericks, GBUs, CBUs, JDAMs, and whatever else they think we should know. Unfortunately, I also have to go in for our new annual physical fitness exam on the 6th (which is the normal drill weekend, as opposed to the SUTA weekend); hopefully it won’t take more than a few hours, I don’t really want to be there for two weekends in a single month!
Jeremy and I saw the Van Helsing movie last week: It wasn’t that bad, it could have been worse (maybe not by much). It was sorta interesting, but some of the FX were funny and kinda threw it off. Of course, I like vampires and things of that nature so maybe I liked it a bit more than the average joe. 2 and 1/2 stars from me! **`
I also started watching Samurai Deeper Kyo but have only seen two episodes. Not sure what to make of it yet, so I’ll tell you more later. :)
For those of you familiar with SOE games such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and the new EverQuest 2, this quote from Raph Koster is pretty funny: FWIW, SOE has no such policy of intentionally releasing early. :P
You can find the full thread here at this Terra Nova thread I said Lunch, Not Launch!.
For the first time ever, I saw Apocalypse Now, the long version (Redux). It’s actually a pretty good movie, even though it reminds me a lot of Catch 22: Everyone is insane. In Vietnam. Which makes you go insane. Somehow. Overall, though, I’d give it 4 stars. ****
Speaking of Vietnam, I finally watched, from start to finish, Good Morning, Vietnam. Great movie, very funny. Robin Williams pretty near his best. Four stars. ****
Also got to watch the cartoons for The Chronicles of Riddick and Van Helsing. I really liked both of them and wish they would make them as a series. I’d be willing to bet my bum leg that the Van Helsing cartoon is at least a star (if not 2!) better than the movie. I’ll let you know if I ever happen to watch it. 5 stars for both! *****
I got Scott Kurtz’s The Dork Ages in the mail today. I’ve only had a chance to flip through it but it looks pretty good. If you haven’t had a chance you should check out his online daily comic: www.pvponline.com.
I also got Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. I know I’m in the middle of the Reality Dysfunction series by Peter F Hamilton but I can’t wait to read it!
With the approach of Half-Life 2’s release, November 16th, I’ve thought a lot about doing some kind of PvP mod for it. Whenever I’m in the “game designer” mood I tend to read a lot:
* GameDev.Net
* Gamasutra
* Game Matters [blog]
* GameDevBlog [blog]
* particleblog [blog]
* Terra Nova [blog]
* Game Architecture and Design [book]
* Designing Virtual Worlds [book]
* Mud-Dev [mailing list]
Plus other things I come across in my blog travels. There’s certainly a ton involved with any kind of mod, even though the game engine is ready to be used. Well, a ton if you want a good one. I was trying to think of a fun scenario/theme to play (Wizards and Ogres? Wizards and Warriors? Wizard vs Wizard? (yes, I was stuck)) when I realized I already had a PvP scenario sketched out for the elder game in Tajana (the MUD I never finished). All I’d have to do was refine it and remove the MMO parts! Now, if I can only find that silly design document somewhere ..
Of course, I might be able to create the best-est design document in the world for a HalfLife 2 Team vs Team mod/total conversion, but without some art assets and some help programming it’s going to be a game of flying Counter-Terrorists with guns that shoot slow.
My long time friend Isaac has this band, see, called The Fray.
They are part of 93.3 KTCL’s Project Next. Check it out!
Very cool, I can’t wait to see how it turns out. Good luck Isaac!
I’ve been wanting to post something on my World of Warcraft Stress Test experience but haven’t had the time to do so. I should be able to get to that shortly, but in the meantime I have a few movies to review.
24 Hour Party People - This is actually a pretty good film about the beginnings of the British Punk movement. (Of course, some people disagree with the term “punk”, but I’m just reading what the description of the movie says). You learn some interesting things and it’s a well done story. Pretty entertaining. 4 out of 5 stars seems about right. ****
Shaun of the Dead - This is another British film that spoofs Dawn of the Dead. Pretty funny, but since I haven’t actually seen Dawn of the Dead it probably could have been funnier. Somewhat gory in a couple places, but overall not too bad. Only 3 stars for me, but you might like it better. ***
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - This is very much a Rated G film. While it has some pretty cool scenes and interesting styling, the dialog was very limited and not very stimulating. I’d wait for video for this, but you should see it if you like the comic-book styling. ***
I’ve also been watching some anime:
Descendants of Darkness - Didn’t care for it very much. **
10 Tokyo Warriors - Netflix only has two discs for this series, but so far I like it. (no rating yet)
Last Exile - This series is really good. Flying wooden battleships, colonial musket standoffs, a cyberpunk Guild.. what more could you want? I definitely recommend watching. *****
Obviously we haven’t been watching very movies lately. I know I know, how can I support the average set maker if I just don’t watch movies? They aren’t even good enough to pirate! Sorry, those ads annoy me. For now we will stick to watching Reno 911, Family Guy, Futurama, and whatever else is good on cable TV.
