They were just down the road. This makes me so sad..

This is both a revelation and a problem in that I stay up real late surfing like I’ve never surfed before. When I first had my sudden hungering for blog-eye (late night blog reading), I was pissed with most of the feed readers and seriously considered writing my own. I made up a long list of all the things I’d want in one. When I started to realistically plan it, I culled it down a lot to the easiest bits. Then found that google reader satisfied most of them, with the added bonus that I wouldn’t have to do any work.

There is one major problem the shits me though. I can read endless amounts of posts, but what if I want to keep track of particularly good articles? Bookmarks completely suck. StumbleUpon (which I use for site discoveries) doesn’t seem suitable for individual posts.. Blogging about them myself takes too much work. I just need a new feed of good things. Oh the pain! Maybe something could be whipped up in Yahoo Pipes. But how the hell would I submit an article? Ideally it would be a single button on firefox that adds it to a feed, but I can’t be fucked figuring it out. I’m sure it could be done, just fetch the referrer or something within a pipe which will add it to the existing feed?

However it doesn’t really satisfy me, I’d want to be able to add tags too. Maybe I can work something out with wordpress here… It has some pretty groovy plugins, maybe add a new category that doesn’t show up, but is listed separately?

Anyway as an example of my dilemma I present a list of interesting articles I’ve been reading (that I could find again). The John Pilger ones are exceptional as always.

• How Truth Slips Down the Memory Hole
  ~ by John Pilger / July 26th, 2007
• Rebellion in the British Army
  ~ by John Pilger / June 8th, 2007
• The History Of (Meier’s Own Brand Of) Civilization
  ~ Gamasutra
• Resident Evil: Promoting Tolerance
  ~ Leigh Alexander – Sexy Videogameland
• On Race in Resident Evil 5
  ~ Heroine Sheik
• The Aberrant Gamer – ‘Sundering the Mind’
  ~ Game Set Watch. Silent Hill 2.
• The Aberrant Gamer: ‘Sympathy for the Devil’
  ~ Game Set Watch. Silent Hill 4.
• Racism in Age of Conan’s Hyborian Age
  ~ Destructoid
• HGS 07: Clive Barker on fat people, Jericho, and videogames as escapism
  ~ Destructoid
• The Question I Hate the Most
  ~ Save the Robot – Chris Dahlen.
  This is about “video games as art?”

It does strange things to me. I went for a jog with it (I don’t usually jog), it was 1am and freezing cold. Though when jogging the only part of me that really feels the cold is my lungs. I ended up with a unstoppable grin, I was jogging through pure imagination. The beat was running up and down my spine, dancing with me past midnight. I must have looked ridiculous, I love it when that happens. I seriously lost it.

Each track slowly adds layers. Like it’s filling in the colours of a landscape.

Jazz, funk, electronic, experimental, unique. I don’t know how hard it would be to listen to for someone who wasn’t searching for the new weird. I’ve tried to recommend The Lounge Lizards or Medeski, Martin and Wood to people before, but they seem to be too hard to follow or understand for them. I can never tell. While they sit with a blank stare hearing a cacophony of sounds, all I can here is the beat. I have a thing for the offbeat. Maybe this will be the same.

Though, this album has lasting appeal. It still surprises me and I’ve had it months now.

Now they’re in for a showdown with Japan, who they kicked out of the World cup last year. Hopefully they can make a game of it. Japan are looking pretty good.

It’s amazing how quickly the media can turn on a team. The moment they aren’t playing well, they disown them. Being a fan means you have to stick with them even when they aren’t doing too good.

The world game really does some bizarre things to your health. Apparently every world cup there is a major spike in heart attacks. There was talk that FIFA should be making health warnings. The Asian cup hasn’t generated that kind of excitement here yet, the Japan game might though. If we get past them things will really get interesting. Hopefully Australia has it’s form back.

I really don’t know why I care so much about Football (soccer), I don’t give a shit about any other football code (or most sport). In fact I actively hate some of them and the meat heads that surround them. I think it’s the fault of my Dad and his West Ham heritage.

When I was eagerly awaiting NWN2, I remember deluding myself into thinking that they had more then enough time for development. That building a new rendering engine from scratch with only 2 short years was plenty of time. That tacking on a prettier interface would be all that was required to turn NWN into a modern slick game. Ah well, it didn’t turn out. NWN2 is plagued by some of the worst load times I’ve encountered. It runs like a sick dog on my system, while other more graphically impressive games run like a dream. Oh and the much lauded toolset needs at least 2 gig free memory to not crash repeatedly, and it will still be cumbersome and horrible.

Anyway, luckily CDProjekt have been making the game I’ve been dreaming would exist for years. And they have been spending the years required to do it. Browsing a few major sites will show you how pretty it looks. The official site has a very impressive trailer. Beautiful even.

But I think the aspect most interesting to me is that there will be no ridiculous alignment system. Good and evil is all a matter of perspective. I’ve always been shitted off by the DnD alignment system that every rpg seems to emulate to some degree (either that or you can only be ‘good’). In fact I once mathematically proved that such an alignment system is fundamentally inadequate for describing a moral system, it was very hand wavy.

I’ve dreamed of an rpg that does away with it all together. Why should we have a conversation choice that is essentially good, neutral or evil? They aren’t literally that choice, but they stand out like obelisks. How often would a person make a choice like that in the real world? Almost never. Not to mention systems based on that always enforce upon the player predefined ideas of what good and evil is. (Fallout 3 has been talked up alot with exactly that mechanic and it makes me have no faith in it. Having played Oblivion I’m not convinced they know what a story really is).

The Witcher breaks this tradition. I know I’m getting my hopes up, but it just sounds so good! The story sounds captivating and unconventional. The fighting even sounds fun in it’s own right, which is unusual for an rpg.

My PC is aching in anticipation.

Russell T Davies is a shockingly bad writer, I’m hoping he sticks to being the boss next season and lets the talent do the scripts. That is after we are inflicted with his christmas special starring Kylie Minogue trying to act.

I’m not really good at coherent rants however so I direct this post towards this blog. I’m so happy to see that there are people don’t rate the finale as the “best who eva!”

My hopes for next season are that RTD stops writing, let him inflict his scripts on Torchwood. I love Torchwood, but it seems a far more suitable medium for his sensationalist over the top stories. The other hopes are that they deal with Martha’s character intelligently, and that they get Steven Moffat (who wrote the episode Blink) to write a few.

Blink was by far the best episode of the series and that says a lot for the writer when the Doctor and Martha were barely in it, yet great when they were. Steven Moffat, I am your fan!

Okay big spoiler rant follows:

Okay, there were loads of Star Wars references, from the floating spheres, the near Star Wars music, and of course the Yoda Doctor. I suppose it’s possible to include all that and still have it tasteful, but RTD certainly didn’t pull it off.

Poor David Tennant and Freema Agyeman, they have been so good in some episodes, but how could they be with this story? Martha was made to walk the land and spread the word. It reminded me of Jules from Pulp Fiction going out to get into adventures. The religious symbolism was very off putting, not to mention ridiculous . Pretty unmissable once “Jesus Doctor” turned up.

I kind of get the impression that RTD is simply bad at Sci-Fi. I don’t think it’s possible to use a “make everything back the way it was” plot twist and maintain credibility. Remember when in Superman when he flew round the Earth in the opposite direction to it’s normal rotation, to turn back time. It was that incredulous.

I liked the future humans idea but they were discarded with as soon as they were revealed.

The has always been ridiculous ideas in Doctor Who, what with people being attacked by telephone cables and such, but at least they were a little more modest in their attempts. Essentially destroying Earth? Making the Doctor turn into Jesus and save humanity? It’s just a wee bit over the top.

Also… He brought back the Master, solely to kill him off again straight away. Arghh!

I’ve one class left and a thesis to write. The class will be on group representations. It should be hard. Good luck me.

Women Who Changed Gaming: Part 5 – Jade