June 2007

I found the official BBC Martha Jones blog here.

I don’t know if it’s official story line canon or not (like the books are also a grey area), but it’s fun to see what Martha would write about in between shows.

Well, it is an okay game.

The load times are terrible though for the battles. They seem to get longer the more you play, so maybe it’s a memory leak, or just win2k.

Easy mode is far too easy, so I guess I’ll have to restart again. It takes a few restarts I think to get the hang of how to tackle things. The first thing you need to research is some real guns. Then to make them you need metal, so you have to send out scientific and technician teams build geology probes and mines.

The resource aspect is a nice addition.

The one thing I found most disappointing is you don’t get to hire your own men, you start with 22 or so, and work with them. Maybe we do later but I’m not holding out hope.

I’m not sure if I’ll go back to it, it’s so time consuming. The battles are so far in mostly open areas, which doesn’t have much cover.

The xcom battles I remember best were the first ones in the farms, in the dark, where seeing an insectoid for the first time was actually scary. This game doesn’t seem to be scary, but maybe that’s because I played on easy mode after being massacred on normal (because I hadn’t researched weapons quickly enough).

Also, the researching doesn’t seem to provide the same sense of satisfaction. Instead of take different paths on increasing sophistication, each choice seems to branch off every time. Too many choices, not enough benefits from each choice.

UFO: Afterlight has been released and it snuck up on me. I heard about it  long ago, it looked like the most promising remake version of xcom yet.

I really loved xcom. I loved building my own bases, training and looking after my favorite troops, sending out interceptors. I loved having the planet view from which to coordinate the defence of earth.

I’m hoping this satisfies some of those glorified memories. Hopefully much the way that Tomb Raider Anniversary completely lived up to the hopes and expectations generated from my memories of the original (it really is the best remake of any game I’ve played, the bar is low on that score though).

It’s just about downloaded now…

About Torchwood… I was remembering some of the best bits of the season.

I think one of the stand-out scenes for the whole show was when Captain Jack Harkness kissed the real Captain Jack Harkness from the past. They really look liked they’d fallen in love. Not to mention it being a damn great story.

Actually they more acurately, pashed, or maybe snogged. No.. I think pashed fits best. In the most traditional “I love you and I’ll never see you again” movie style. Which is usually done really badly in crap blockbusters, but in this it was really emotional and inspiring. You don’t see that between two men very often. Yay for Torchwood!

StumbleUpon has been bought by ebay, so I think I’ll take this as an opportunity to start posting more stuff here then there. Not because I care, not because I think SU sold out (which I don’t), but because I figure since I’d rather keep my online scrapbook on my own site. I hadn’t decided until just now what this blog is even for.

It’s to blog! We blog because we can Really it’s just a scrapbook online. Who needs a good reason to keep a scrapbook?

And really I don’t give a shit that stumbleupon was bought by ebay. Google already knows everything about my habits, a lot more then SU does. Ebay probably only bought SU for the data. They want to make more intelligent targeted ads. I’m against that on principle, but in practice I don’t give a shit. It just doesn’t spark any anger. Maybe somewhere someone’s written a good article on why it’s bad, I’d possible look at it.

Taking things to their Sci Fi conclusion… There is the argument that maybe then our ads would be more tasteful. It’s not a very good one, when privacy and abuse of information are at stake. Still, imagine a world where we wouldn’t get horrible banner ads for finding high school friends (I never want to see any of them again), etc etc. Surely intelligent advertising would know that I don’t give a shit about most of the things they try to push. But… If this was possible it still wouldn’t happen, ad networks would instead use their power to push on us unreasonable wants and desires, whether we want them or not.

Imagine if an ad network knew you were against the war, and bombarded you with propaganda which pretended to be left, but was really just soft right (aka BBC, ABC), but not only that, it was targeted, specifically crafted to persuade you based on the way you think. If advertising networks became that sophisticated there is no way that they wouldn’t used politically. Explicitly or implicitly.

I guess I answered that question myself. Targeted ads are a bad idea, but as long as there is still distributed accessible communication channels, aka blogs, indie news, Democracy TV, etc, I’ll continue to ingore the ads. If ads get more sophisticated in their manipulation, I’m positive I’ll get better at ignoring them.

I still don’t give a shit about Ebay/SU though. I don’t have an emotional investment in it.

I’m supposed to be going to Eurotrash tonight, as in now.

I really can’t be bothered feeling out of place tonight.