Thursday, July 23, 2009

The cutting edge is in my rear-view mirror (TM)

I needed a motto, and that one came to me 30 mins ago. I like to think of myself as doing programming few others are doing; examples available upon request.

a few months ago came this one: Cloud Computing: not as scary as you might think.

that one was intended as humor...

Sunday, July 19, 2009

politics 2

so Sen (R) Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, doesn't like Sonya Sotomayor, a non-white, non-rich non-male as a Supreme Court candidate.

born in Selma, Alabama, according to his wikipedia page...you'd think he'd have a better appreciation...but...

is anyone surprised? The guy's an insensitive jerk. Why is he still in office? Why did he ever GET into office?

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Star Trek movie 2009

OMG was this good. Better than I was expecting, really. I was afraid it was going to be "Star Trek kids".

They did of course have to show the one and only Starfleet Academy episode of Kirk's of any significance: Kobayashi Maru. Really, no way to do this timeframe in his life without it, that would have really been ripping off the audience. I did think he was a little smug about it, though, eating the apple...there should have been a point at which he say something more like "when faced with that kind of impossible situation, change the rules".

Only complaint: they missed a couple of opportunities for the various characters to say a phrase permanently associated with them: "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a ___" -- Bones did *not* say a variation of that in the movie, and he should have...and Spock should have said "Fascinating" or "indeed" or "that would not be logical" at some point. Scottie did at least say "I'm givin her all she's got, captain"...[later: upon watching DVD, Bones *does* say it: "I'm a doctor, not a physicist"]

Otherwise, damn near perfect. Except for being a parallel-universe Starfleet...I mean, Spock's mom dead? Vulcan destroyed? How will there be the "Amok Time" episode now? I thought for sure the movie denouement was going to be the time-travel-to-set-things-back-on-track sort of thing...[apparently, from an interview, this change was deliberate, allowing a retread of some familiar things, with a different approach]

But nonetheless...this bodes well for a sequel working out well...and I cried at the end when Nimoy said the opening words: "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages..."

Friday, July 17, 2009

Monty Python

a personal favorite for years...my son is properly fond of them as well...spouse too.

this is hilarious:

click here for MP game fun


this is a hilarious YouTube piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc

and this is another one...it starts slow, but just you wait:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enlyHAJfwyI

recent reading...

Julie Czerneda's "Stratification" trilogy 1-3, which are actually 1-3 of 9, where 4-6 were published some years ago...and she's working 7 now...kinda like Star Wars, eh?

These were pretty good...I don't remember 4-6, so I guess I'm going to have to go read those again...

Monday, July 13, 2009

computer games on Steam

Steam is of course the service from Valve (Half-life)...this seems to be working pretty well overall.

I snagged some of the game demos, which weren't too bad. I punted one or two right away for being too short, but others were ok.

There's this one series you can get all of for $15, and the demos are decent, called "Alien Shooter" in which have to eliminate aliens from an underground facility or two. Alien Shooter Revisited is the original with newer artwork, AS 2 has a bit more interesting "inventory" system, and Zombie Shooter is essentially the same game except with Zombies. How much better can a game get than whacking umpty-thousand zombies with nifty weapons?

however...Alien Shooter Revisited has flaws...one of which is disastrous...on level 5, near the end, there's this yellow forklift, and if you run to it, you can get math-locked onto it. No way off, which means there's a serious path-finding error combined with what is probably a 3D-model-positioning error, so that you go through a tiny little gap that the path-finding can't get out of. Has happened to me twice now, I've sent a msg to the devs, and I am done playing that one.

Had the same problem with AS 2, got math-trapped in an odd spot. I can't even allow a monster to kill me, their "AI" is too stupid to path-find closer to me.

Apparently AS 1 has a couple more expansion packs, and Zombie Shooter 2 is due out soon.

Jason Bourne...

Robert Ludlum is one of my all-time favorite writers...he was a master of the conspiracy story...

The Bourne Identity was perhaps the most intense story I've ever read...

So I was excited when my wife came home with the "new" Jason Bourne story, "The Bourne Legacy", by Eric van Lustbader. Pretty sure I've read some of EVL's scifi/fantasy stuff at some point, but I don't own any...suggesting it was short stuff, or uninteresting.

Well, this book stars Bourne...but it's not Ludlum, it's not a Ludlum-style conspiracy...it's really more like a recent James Bond (hm...note the initials on both of them) film. Other than the lack of explosions at the end of the book, it really felt like Bond movie with fewer overall scene locations.

I thought Bourne got into too many fights where he got hurt a bit more than I thought appropriate. He seemed more fight-savvy in the Ludlum books.

It is based on the very early Bourne history, as David Webb, prior to his training that turned him into Bourne. Some of that didn't hang toegether as well as it needed to...

Apparently EVL has written several more Bourne books since this one...well, this story was ok, just not RL. Maybe I'll read the next one, but only as a used pb, not a new one. And maybe not any time soon, I have A LOT of other stuff to read already on a shelf here.

Stephanie Plum...pt 2

Plum book #15 was just published last month...got it and read it last week.

Classic goodness, and this time Stephanie's car blows up again. Twice...well, actually it's Ranger's car each time, but still...that was a signature event in the first 10 books, and then it stopped for a while...I emailed and got a rather stupid reply from some worker-bee who wasn't the author. But it's back.

I definitely recommend this, although if you haven't read the others, don't start with this one, you need the character background, and don't worry, the used bookstore has plenty of copies.