The World Is A Neat Place, Usually

I'll Take "Things That Confuse/Annoy/Frustrate Me" for $500, Alex

2012-01-16T07:54:00.000-08:00

Since today is Martin Luther King Jr Day and a day to reflect, consider, and understand the world around us all...I'm going to reflect on some things that are annoying, confusing, and frustrating me lately. Be warned, highly geeky and probably NSFW at some point...

1) Mass Effect 3, the third game in one of the better action/adventure RPG series out there, is going to have online DRM via EA's Origin platform. Well, bugger that idea of finishing off the Mass Effect series until they have a DRM-free/Steam-only version. Why? It's intrusive, automatically assumes that I'm going to be involved/dealing with a pirated version of the game, and the moment they don't want to support the game anymore, boom goodbye. And, they probably will NOT release any way to patch the game to avoid DRM issues (Alpha Protocol did this when the game series was canceled-the company released a patch that disabled the server check).

Ubisoft does this with their games, with the addition of "you must have a all-the-time, fully on Internet connection or else!" DRM scheme that the moment you have packet drop or any other issues dealing with the Internet...goodbye game. It's almost like they're allergic to making money or whatever. And, as far as I can tell, it's because EA is a bunch of anal-retentives whom like being in control of everything with their games, to the detriment of the game itself. When you have Sony (notoriously anal-retentive on the whole piracy thing) that has a problem with Ubisoft and EA's copy protection schemes-admittedly for legal reasons-maybe you should be reconsidering the whole idea.

It's like watching Star Wars and the whole scene of "the more you squeeze, the more control you'll lose". Which, of course leads us to...
2) George Lucas and his increasing madness. Okay, sometimes it's a good thing (Red Tails probably would not have been released/produced if he wasn't involved-it doesn't fit the current Hollywood paradigm), but I Did Not Ask for a 3D version of the Phantom Menace. It has almost reached the whole insanity thing of "Lucas will not keep remaking A New Hope until he dies" in the madness involved. It's not as bad as Force Unleashed II, or the Clone Wars animated movie...but that's sort of damning with faint praise, isn't it?

Hell, I'm not asking for 3D movies at all-it's another attempt at copy protection (it's hard to record a 3D movie in the theaters, I think...), an effort to create a "premium" experience to drive up ticket costs (which are already at the "obscene" levels for even a casual movie experience), and it's an effort to create a "oooh, shiny!" thing for audiences. I did not ask for any of this. I very much DO NOT WANT this. If you spent more on making good movies, taking chances on new Intellectual Properties, that sort of thing...I wouldn't mind so much. Except, well, now, I do. Very little appeals in terms of films and I've pretty much given up on watching network TV-so far, my "big three" network schedule pretty much consists of House after Law and Order: SVU became Law and Order: Lifetime Movie Of The Week. I probably watch more BBC America and Comcast's Music Choice TV than any actual TV programming...which is exceptionally sad. Let's not even talk about "popular" music-I can't even understand it, let alone the appeal. I don't feel old...and there's no urge to yell at the kids to get off my lawn, so it can't be that.
3)Yes, I know-anime exists to cater to young people to buy licensed items and love pillows in Japan and the US market exists at best as a "nice bonus" bit, but still... There were some great series in the past that hit the US market like a lemon wrapped in a gold brick and I don't just mean Naruto or Dragon Ball Z or Evangelion-Ergo Proxy, Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Cowboy Bebop, Witch Hunter Robin, FLCL...the list can go on and on and I'm just in the official licensed stuff, not even counting fansubs.

But, this year? I'm mildly more optimistic than Steven Den Beste, but not by much... So far, my total list of series this year that look even remotely interesting is very, very short- Boacious Space Pirates, Aquarion Evol, and Lagrange. And, all appear to have US licensees already (which means it's either FUNimation, FUNimation, or...FUNimation, with the closure of Bandai Animation in the US), so no "legal" fansubs for any of them. Which means we can be waiting for up to two years for any of this to come out on DVD...after everybody and their cousin have been watching the horribly timed illegal fansubs out there. And, quite frankly, I want to give Aquarion Evol a test run for free before even thinking of buying it.

The rest of the shows out this Winter season? High School DxD looks like a plate of sick trying to fake being an "edgy" drama/fighting harem show that insulted my intelligence (the main character is a jerk asshole that is a massive violation of rule #1-when dying, he just wants to grope his killer's breasts). Listen To What Papa Says!, yay for vague incest loli erotic fun, not. Dog x Me SS, another supernatural "odd couple" romantic drama that looks like it'll be stalked by cherry trees (with all those blossoms everywhere...). Kill Me Baby! looks to be a very stupid show that will make most of it's "humor" from the whole "fish/soldier out of water" thing that Full Metal Panic! did so much better. And with giant robots.

Damn. It's probably the cold out there (it was below freezing last night here), but it's probably making me more cranky than usual. Still...not happy. The Secret Masters who run the world should clearly be fired and replaced with new people in charge. Immediately, please.

The Movie That Will Never Be Made, But Should Be...

2011-07-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

The first movie that so should be made, but will never be is a simple one-

Ghost In The Shell by Michael Mann.

Why? Because...when I first saw Heat, I realized that this film could so easily be adapted to the vision of a post-cyberpunk world that I saw Mamoru Oshii pull off in his production. Mann is an artist with color...all the scenes that are of a character in the film are shot in a particular color type (the character of Neil McCauley, played beautifully by Robert DeNiro, tends to be stark, simple, and blue while Vincent Hanna-played superbly by Al Pachino-is colorful and complicated. We never see Vincent in anything other than complexity, all the angles filled). All the shots are stylized-night is the "normal," all the daylight shots are flat and bleached out.

Ignore the gunfights-which are beautiful, by the way. Ignore the crime drama. Ignore everything else...at the heart of it is two stories of two lonely, alienated men-Neil due to the discipline he maintains ("Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner") and Vincent whom is working on pretty much failed marriage #3 and personal relationships that he's willing to toss aside for anything that gets in the way of catching guys like Neil. Two guys that admit that they respect each and like each other, but one day will probably have to kill the other because that's the discipline they're both under.

Ghost In The Shell is about alienation as well. For Major Kusanagi, does she really exist? Is there a brain in her skull, a ghost in her soul? Or is she just all software that mimics human existence? There's an iconic scene in the movie where Kusanagi is on a boat, and she sees a woman that might as well be her twin sister-or somebody using the same cybernetic body (the video is here on YouTube, 0:39 to 0:52). There's the last chase, as Section 9 hunts down the team that stole the Puppetmaster body from them for Section 6, using this iconic music as a part of the chase scene.

I can damn well see, in my mind, the film-shot for shot-with Michael Mann directing it. I can see the Major and Batou in their boat, talking about their circumstances. Or the chase scene through the market...not a shot for shot adaptation but one where Batou grabs items to make himself seem a bit more like the crowd as he hunts for an invisible man. And, the final, climatic gun fight...man vs. machine vs. man.

Of course, a US version is being made by Steven Speilberg, but I think that he'll miss the point, which is awful. Still, one can dream.

UPDATE: A great blog posting on the real life locations that inspired the movie. Worth looking at, and the rest of the blog, too.

Anime Here And Not...

2011-07-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, Steve DenBeste has hit about the same problem that I've had with the difference between getting stuff bit-torrented vs. waiting for the legal, official download. To rehash the issue from my perspective...

There are some series that will probably never make to the US. Legend of the Galactic Heroes will probably never see a US release-it's nearly 25 years old (and the animation was good for the era-but, still, 25 years old), nobody could afford to handle the dubbing track for the series (it would probably run to about 60 hours worth of dialog), etc, etc, etc...
There are some series that nobody could afford to bring to the US. Macross Frontier probably has a license cost that runs in seven+ digits, you would probably have to provide a high-level dub track that would include redoing all the songs in English (okay, some of Sheryl Nome's songs done in Very Good English would be very cool), -even ignoring the whole "who exactly owns it for handling overseas release" (I've heard everything from Harmony Gold to Big West to nobody having a clue).
There is some stuff that is so...esoteric that the fan base is very, very small. No question about it, there are some very rare things...
Time is not on your side in some ways. Fans can get fansubs of a show (usually of good quality) in less than 48 hours. Assuming your show does get picked up by a US distributor, we're talking anywhere between a year to two years before you get four episodes on a DVD at a time.

So, how would I solve this? If I had a great deal of money, I'd go into the anime distribution business myself (as a labor of love, not for profit...), and one of the things I'd insist upon as a part of my contract with the anime studio that we would get HD masters of the show in enough time to produce, subtitle, and distribute in HD the show on iTunes within 48 hours of the episode being shown in Japan.

However, I don't think I could get away with it...the US market is still viewed as a niche one in Japan for anime, and I don't think there's any way to get away with it...

Review: The World Of Darkness and Mage:The Awakening

2010-03-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

First things first, I want to say that I fucking loved Mage:The Ascension with quiet sort of desperation that is best described as "courtly love from afar". During the early '90s, people kept telling me, "you have to check out White Wolf games, they're the shit and awesome and cool and all that." But, the games they had so far seemed to have either been a case of playing angsty, blood-sucking ambiguously gay porn stars or every variation of Wolverine that Marvel Comics thinks it could have gotten away with. Then, Mage came out, and like somebody slipping me the red pill, I fell into this world of wonders, joys, amazement, and magic. And, this was a universe of urban post-modern magic that I could get behind, unlike Unknown Armies which seemed to always be a case of "everybody's smarter than you are, and the only way to get ahead is to go mad." The game had magic, worlds of possibilities, enemies ranging from "we're good guys, only different" to "shoot them in the head, now" bastards. The magic system was free-flowing and it let players get away with one of the most important talents (I think) a player at a game table should have-using bullshit and amazement to succeed by entertaining other people. Yea, it had some mechanical issues and some other problems, but I liked it.

Even better, you could have played as the theoretical "bad guys", aka the Technocracy, with zero irony. And, from a personal perspective, you could easily see how the Technocracy was a much better bunch of people (making the world a better place and kicking the ass of any supernatural monster that would eat people) than the Traditions (whom were stuck in the "only the right people" can find the way to enlightenment). They weren't evil, just somebody on the other side of a long war that kept seeing monsters being allowed to roam free when the Traditions were in charge, and doing something about it.

Most importantly, if you knew the right powers, you could turn vampires in to lawn chairs and margaritas. I wish I was making that up. You could, with the right Spheres of magic, turn vampires into lawn chairs and margaritas and sit on them in the sunlight. That's awesome, almost as cool as a gun that shoots shuriken and lightning.

When I was down to a game budget of about two game lines, Mage:The Ascension and Champions was it-Champions because The Best Gaming Group In The World was playing it and I was a part of it, and Mage because I loved the game. And, life was as good as it was going to get for me, game-wise.

So, around '02, White Wolf Games came to the realization that the game mechanics for the World of Darkness was breaking down, they were running out of ideas to throw at players, and quite frankly the market for the books was over-saturated. In that, they decided to reset the whole game line, blow the universe up, and rebuild it. Part of this rebuilding was to totally revise all the game lines, and to separate out the game rules from the setting book. And, this actually worked pretty well, as the World of Darkness rule set is pretty good with a few flaws in it. My big issues with it is that there's a lack of the snarky commentary in some of the sections, you have to buy martial arts as "powers" and not skills, and some of the damage mechanics seem funky. Oh, and the morality system seems to be built in to involve a nagging mum effect. But, unlike most "generic" rules, you can pretty much run a low-level supernatural campaign with just the core rulebook and be done with it. This counts, in my mind, as a Very Good Thing. And, by doing this, you can turn over the page count in the setting rulebooks to more neat stuff, and in the case of the newest Mage game, Mage:The Awakening, more ways to turn vampires into lawn chairs and party drinks.

Except...well, it's harder. The new Mage background is one of "only one path to enlightenment" in the form of Atlantis (which they're very clear is a. not just the place that Plato described during the era of Ancient Greece and b. was done in as much by hubris as people being mean to each other). Sometime in the really, really far past, a bunch of powerful mages climbed up to power, there was treachery, betrayal, and two major factions tore the universe apart. This condemned most of the human race to becoming Sleepers, and creating an Abyss that wants to devour everything. But, five of the mages created the Watchtowers and some humans can awaken again from Sleep. Bra-fucking-vo, you stupid bastards.

First of all, I want to talk to whomever set up and laid out the book-unless you wanted to make the point of "magic is hard to understand and read, and requires dedication", the book layout sucks. Odd uses of text fonts and font colors, breaking the text up with mystical symbols...ugh. Irritating. Next, the magic system has been changed-you can debate better or worse, but the changes have broken the nine Spheres into ten Arcana, with one that you're weak in and two that you're strong in. The magic changes also mean you have to learn Rotes-basically spell "short hand" for certain effects to make it easier to cast and handle. And...all the magic is that of Atlantis-they "won" the magical decisions war, and that means that everybody uses their language and terms and concepts.

Oh, and Paradox is no longer "reality biting back", and more "you failed to negotiate well with the Abyss that straddles the Real World and magical power". The enemies no longer range from "kind of like you, but playing with different rules" to "bug-fucking nuts", they're now "the world will run by the rules of the guys that caused the Abyss" to "various categories of bloody lunatics". And, unlike the "we're making the world a better place-once we figure out what 'better' is" of the first Mage, the new Mage is a Gnosticistic romp through "becoming something more and greater than God". Yay. And, the new morality system that permeates the game system has it's expression as "Wisdom"-messing around with the powers of the universe unwisely is a Very Bad Thing and is like doing cocaine. And, as just about anybody that has done cocaine can tell you, you start out doing well and it all goes downhill fast and very mess.

Except most people that do cocaine won't start developing extra limbs or an evil twin. Usually.

I really, really wanted to love this game. And, I do like it-I just don't have the same absolute lust for buying books and such that I had for the previous version of the game. I get the feeling that if I wanted to pull off the same game effect that I had in Ascension, I'd have to drag out my copy of Genius:The Transgression, and it's not even an "official" game (but it is so awesome, it should be). It feels like you're trying to play a game where you can be John Constantine without irony or "messing around with mechanics" that a lot of other games have. That Neil Gainman (who is one of the authors that I like when he's "on" and despise when he's "off") is one of the big game-world influences disturbs me as well.

So, in a nutshell-the new World of Darkness is pretty cool. Mage:The Awakening is neat, you won't feel like you lost money buying it, but it doesn't have the same flavor as Mage: The Ascension and that is a bit disappointing. Now, it's going to be sunset soon, and I've got these great lawn chairs and margaritas to share...

More On The Bushido Blade Wii Idea

2009-11-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Anyways, I've been coming up with more ideas for the Bushido Blade Wii idea...

I've decided that there will be about eight playable characters, four hidden ones (since it's a Square/Enix game, Cloud Strife, Squall Leonheart, Sora, and a unnamed Jedi). Twelve weapons for the players, and about four bosses.
The weapons are all going to be "classical" weapons-rapier, long sword, katana, naginta, scimitar, broadsword, pike, and saber. By going through the training games, you can get upgraded versions of the weapons. The "perfect" weapons are hard to find, but very much worth it. The eight players have an "optimal" weapon choice, of course. The hidden characters have improved versions of their weapons to find.
The basic game story-eight characters that are members of a secret society of assassins. They think that they're trying to make the world a better place, but actually are serving a cause of making things worse. The player is the one trying to escape, the remaining seven are trying to kill them (yes, I'm using the original plot. So sue me.)
Realistic weather. Using the Wii Weather Channel to find the weather close to the player, or the "original" dojo, or somewhere else in the world.
Lots of little visual bonuses. Good stuff.

More ideas as they come up...

Sudden Explosion Of Imagination!

2009-11-10T19:46:00.001-08:00

I just had a great thought, and a superb game idea.

It'll either be awesome-or I'll get killed by insane fans. Your mileage may vary.

The idea-remember Bushido Blade? (If you haven't, you missed a great game that every fighting gamer player should have owned.) Solo player game where there was no health bar, no "blow up the scenery" super moves-just guys (and gals) with swords and making the most of a massive dojo area to fight in.

The concept-Bushido Blade Wii. (Wait for it...)

Single player game, with the Wii Motion Plus to control the sword, and the Wii Balance Board to control the player (move the player's balance to move where the player goes, to dodge, etc, etc...). The game is played either from first-person or third person (with a "ghost" player), with multiplayer being done by the WiiConnect.

All sorts of gameplay options, including a "Highlander" option (fight your way to beat the enemy, then take their head), 10,000 Ninjas (survive waves of ninja attackers), and with the amount of accuracy that the Wii Motion Plus offers...you'll be seeing a lot of geeks that can suddenly go pretty good with a sword (I'd find that awesomely cool, as well).

Somebody's going to have to say "it's a great idea" or "it sucks"-and if you think it's great...how does one get a Wii Dev kit?

Horrible Mis-Matches In The World

2009-10-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

We've seen them all. Sonny and Cher. Little tiny women with huge dogs. Brittney Spears and K-Fed. A bacon Gardenburger. Things that should not go together, and when they fall apart, people that honestly took a look at it was not surprised. The only people that aren't surprised are the people involved and their hanger-ons.

A new, horrible mis-match that we're going to see end badly-President Obama and the United States of America.

So far, nobody has really been able to prove to me that the United States-on a political axis-is more or less a center-right country. There's a fundamental distrust of the concentration of power outside of certain activites-military, some kinds of regulation and law enforcement. A belief in what the Little Red Hen said-she did all the work to make the bread, so why should people that did nothing but sit around and watch get anything? It may also be more of a modern thing, but the mores of the United States have changed in the belief in the melting pot-we got no problems with the Pakistani bistro down the street, but your kids have to learn how to speak English as their main language. And, they're here to stay-you're here to make a small bit of this country your home and bitch about the fact that your daughter is seeing that Irish kid down the street with his pants around his knees (but, if you kill her for the "dishonor", you'll be staring at a needle yourself).

Militarily, there is a belief in that a single source of leadership-however occasionally poor it is-is better than military control by committee. Better a George W. Bush than a Senate Armed Services Committee. We like having somebody that we can wave a finger at and say "he's to blame", and force changes by indirect (protests, letters, writing) and direct (voting out his allies, voting out the one who's the problem) means.

Like all generalities, there are exceptions-Johnson's Great Society is a big one (I suspect a lot of people thought it was a "fair" deal, and not what it turned out to be-bread and circuses). So was the massive demobilization after both World War II and the end of the Cold War, when the world kept showing that there were major threats on the horizon. But, both sides agreed that there had to be an end to the tools of war, if not for why there had to be an end.

And then, we get to President Obama. As it seems to be from how he's been treated in Europe, he'd make for a great head of a major leftist party. His politics are very much "we need to centralize power so the decisions can all be made once, here". And, many of the policies are ones that have been used over the decades in other places and failed horribly. You keep getting the feeling that it's like Charlie Brown and the Kite Eating Tree...instead of being careful, he just buys a bigger, more expensive, and much more tasty kite.

A few of the less brilliant ideas he's had...

"Cash For Clunkers"-not does it mean that there are fewer cars on the used/secondary sales market (which a lot of lower-middle class and poor people get their cars) and the related parts market, most of the cars bought to replace the junked cars tended to be from Japan and Europe, not the United States.
Bailing out GM. For years, the bitter joke has been that GM is pretty much a company that provides health care and benefits, and as a byproduct makes cars. Bankruptcy and restructuring would have been awful for the people that depended upon GM and people that depended upon GM people for their lives, but restructuring would have done something to make GM profitable. Now, all that's going to happen is that the crash is going to be higher and harder to avert. And the mess much larger.
Dithering about his support in Afghanistan. Especially doubling-up with the Pakistani government that has been shown in the past to either look the other way or help Al Quedia. You can almost suspect that he's waiting for a Tet-like event that looks horrible on TV to pull American troops out.
By words and deeds, pretty much putting Eastern Europe out in the cold. There's a steadily growing sense of Russian nationalism, an effort to go back to the "good old days" when Eastern Europe was where Russians went for cheap hookers and cheap goods. Not as free nations that have had enough-centuries enough-of being a part of a Russian Empire in all but name.
Failing to provide political support in dealing with Iran. Had the election fight gone more against the mullahs, they would have issues supporting their nuclear program. When they start screaming that they'll soon be ready to nuke Israel-and Israel makes quiet plans to destroy their nuclear program-Obama dithers. An Israeli strike-no matter how justified-will set of a war in the Middle East that makes the Yom Kippur War look like a wet firecracker. A nuclear attack on Israel would probably result in massive strikes across the Middle East, as the Israeli military engages in retaliatory strikes.
And, on that note...rather than develop heavy power industries such as nuclear power, improved coal, and such; there is the push for windmills and solar power. Nice if you want to run a few lightbulbs and maybe a laptop, but horrible if you want to run a machine shop. Especially if you want to work at your own pace, and not during the day or when the wind is blowing.

People kept warning us that Obama was a hollow man without anything to really get an idea of what he was. I've told people that I kept viewing Obama as a bittersweet chocolate Easter bunny in a three piece suit-bite the head off, and there's nothing there. And, nothing since has shown me that I've been wrong in this opinion.

How did it happen? A golden window between the time of the perceived and actual failures of the Bush administration and a Democrat Party looking to try and reconnect with the glory days it had and lost with the 1994 Republican revolution. A Republican Party that has serious internal issues between the moderate and harder-right member of it's own party, especially as many of the members that were the ones that had been a part of what got Regan elected (by kicking out the worst of the conspiracy theorists, Birchers and such) died or left politics. And, a Republican Party where the conspiracy theorists-the Nirthers, the Birthers, the Truthers and such-began to take on a much more predominant role.

This golden window is why you see such pressure to pass health care reform, and a horde of other bills to try and "fix" things-soon enough, the 2010 elections are coming and you get the feeling from polling data that somebody is going to be left holding the bag. And, if they can't get enough things to show that they're making things "better", the Democrats are going to be the ones with the bag. A shift of votes to a more contested House and Senate, especially of Republicans that are going to try and show they are not "business as usual" types is a disaster for the cozy relationships that Obama has been trying to use to get his bills passed.

And, he's still there, still smiling and accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for being somebody other than Bush. Even more so than Jimmy Carter (whom I keep seeing as the nearest contemporary politician to Obama), you get the sense that if he stops smiling he might have to think.

And, that would be a disaster. More so than what's going on now, but definitely a disaster.

Solving Starship Computer Battles For Dummies...

2009-09-16T12:03:00.001-07:00

...or, why you shouldn't let me be stuck watching Banner Of The Stars and the "Day Of Sagittarius" episode of Haruhi Suzumiya, and having lots and lots and lots of time to think about things...

(Special Thanks To Steven DenBeste, who worked out a lot of the stuff I'm starting from.)

In the episode of "The Day of Sagittarius", the Computer Society has created a new game called "The Day Of Sagittarius III"(with the inevetable deadpan snark from Kyon of where No 1 and 2 are...), and the SOS Club are now challenged into a duel between the two groups.

One of the key inspirations for the game's (hereafter called Day III) combat system seems to be the way Plane Space is handled in Crest Of The Stars-ships move on a two-dimensional space, and are dependent upon long-range scouting to fully use their weapons. Literally, the side that knows where the other side is-and can engage them first without being detected in turn will win or at least hold their own.

A factor involved is the use of recon drones to extend a fleet's ability to see. While the Computer Society cheats throughout most of the game with the Fog of War option disengaged, Yuki counters with an option built into the game. This option is a micro-management option of splitting up fleets and (presumably) drones to spread out and perform multiple scouting options. This, combined with the understanding of how the Computer Society is cheating and disabling it at the right time, gives the SOS Club the win against the Computer Society.

Now, there are a few Java/Visual Basic games out there that cover this game, but I'm thinking...how could it be done better? And, in a way-more fun.

Peel it down to the basics-flat space, "fog of war" and the need for scouting, and "fleets of thousands" that some people and games like. From that, we can perhaps assume some things-

The smaller the fleet, and the smaller the ships in the fleet, the faster they can go. This allows for "hit and run" attacks by smaller warships, scouting fleets, and such.
Bigger ships are more deadly-they can carry torpedoes and the truly huge batteries of energy weapons needed to smash the largest enemy warships around.
Resupply in the Day III's combat system is assumed-Asahina is put in charge of the SOS-dan's supply ships. This may mean that it's possible for a fast reloading of torpedoes and such-but both the supply and resuppling ships are vulnerable to attack.
The light novel indicates that there are at least three customization options and a number of points you can use. Expand it a bit further...perhaps you can buy your ships by type and fittings, then expand them to form a fleet of ships.

The game starts to coalesce-we have about four major hull types that will show up (with some variations on size, and overlapping concept hulls)-

Scout Ships are small. Not tiny, but small (the smallest "ship" is the drones used for recon by ships). Their major job is to find enemy fleet, and hit and run if a fleet operates in smaller components. Or, to engage supply ships. They don't carry torpedoes, but do have defenses against them.
Patrol Ships are faster than battleships and supply ships, and slower than scout ships. Think of them as "flankers" for the most part-scout ships can't take out a patrol ship without swarming them with huge numbers, and patrol ships can't chase down scout ships-but they can deny a scout ship the ability to do recon. Patrol ships carry torpedoes, but mostly use them to stop scout ships.
Battleships are the huge bruisers. Slower than everything else, but they carry enough armor and defenses that trying to swarm them under with anything other than hordes of patrol ships is suicide. They carry huge numbers of torpedoes, to serve as an opening attack against other battleships. They're the "anvil" in a "hammer and anvil" combat strategy.
Supply ships are there to do field repairs to warships, reload torpedo and recon drones, and a few hulls might be of a "Carrier"-type platform, carrying huge numbers of torpedoes, but slow and very vulnerable. This would dictate that torpedoes have a long range but are fairly "dumb"-they need to know where to engage a target to enter their sensor range and engage it.

A few "odd ball" ship types might exist (a "heavy scout" that would be pretty much a "light patrol ship"-armed enough that a fleet of them would be a threat to an equivalent sized fleet of scouts, but not "true" patrol ships or a heavy patrol ship hull that could be considered a small battleship), but those are the four major types. Then, we get into weapons-

Torpedoes are the very long ranged weapon of the fleets. Presumably, they are fairly "dumb" in the sense that they need somebody to "spot" for their launching ship, to be able to provide directions in where they should be. A large torpedo salvo is a dangerous threat-presumably they would carry powerful warheads and ships would be in serious danger from them.
Energy weapons are the other major weapon. It seems that there are two types-weapons mounted along a ship's long axis (as a part of or along the ship's spine), and "side" cannons similar to the weapon arrays of Exelion-class. Presumably, the main spinal weapons are the main ship-killers, while the side weapons are their for anti-scoutship, anti-torpedo, and "we need to fire something at them!" role.

Suddenly, the concept starts to make sense, and we now have a much more...dynamic game to play in.

There's more options available "under the hood", if we want-do we build our battleships with a few huge guns, or a lot of guns (and the damage model may have to reflect this-huge guns will punch deep into a ship, while lots of guns will "peel" the surface of a ship)? Do we emphasize with our scout ships speed and sensors, or do we sacrifice for the ability of scout ships to be able to hold their own in a fight? Do we allow modifiers to each side-in the sense that one side might be strong in armor, but weak in speed across the board for their ships?

The new version of Day III starts looking like this-

Dynamic ship design and ship operations concept. Combine that with the micro-management option of splitting fleets (presumably around a "command ship"), and rather than having to command each fleet, assign sub-fleets a formation (of them and their drones), based upon control groups.
Fog of War becomes important. Recon drones either have to be fairly "close" to their ships, or become a "use or lose" when they run out of fuel.
Teamwork becomes a key. Fleet vs. fleet can quickly become fratricide. But, two fleets versus one? Much more dangerous for the one fleet...especially if they are vulnerable to attacks on the sides or aft.
Play options for everyone. Maybe when fleet-vs-fleet combat starts, a setup like Dynasty Warriors happens-players command a single ship and issue commands to the rest of their fleet, while they get to blow away their enemies.

The Battle of the SOS-Dan

But, what does this have to do with the price of Tea in China?

With our new, dynamic combat system under the hood, we can see a much more...interesting fight between the Computer Society and the SOS.

Both sides have five players, and five fleets. Since the Computer Society is cheating with a disabled fog of war effect, their fleets are pretty much all battleships, with a single supply fleet to reload their torpedoes. On the other hand, the SOS has to be a bit more "balanced", and that leads us to how the fleets are set up.

Haruhi, without a doubt, is entirely packed to the gills with battleships. She wants to get close and blow them up with lasers and torpedos and such. She has the weakest scouting ability of all the fleets, and is probably entirely dependent upon drones.
Kyon, on the other hand, seems to be a bit more "balanced". Personally, I suspect his fleet is mostly patrol craft, with enough scouts to spot for him and a few battleships to "put the boot in" as needed. Kyon wants to flank the enemy, know where they are, and engage them on the sides-he doesn't want a battleship-to-battleship duel head on.
Itsuki is probably the other battleship fleet, but less maniacal about it than Haruhi. He probably has enough scouts to fill out his flanks and serve as early warning for torpedo attack. His strategy is going to probably be as much misdirection and being where people don't expect him to be.
Yuki is the commander of the fleet's scout forces. She uses her abilities to multi-task to command multiple small squadrons of scout ships and drones. Like Kyon, her fleet has a small battleship "core" to keep things interesting, but most of her elements are scout ships. Mid-way through the game, she probably has all the Computer Society fleets bracketed with scout ships and drones.
Mikuru commands the support fleet the ship has. Since Haruhi hasn't thought of it, her fleet probably is just supply ships and enough patrol ships to keep scouts off with maybe a few battleships. Unlike the Computer Society, she probably has no torpedo bombardment ships/carriers to use.

Without the high weirdness that Haruhi can generate, the battle works out like this-

The SOS fleet tries to find the Computer Society fleet-but because of the disabled Fog of War effect, the Computer Society begins to use flanking attacks to wear down the SOS forces.
Yuki splits up her forces to scout for the Computer Society. Meanwhile, she is also analyzing the code and setups used by the game.
As her scout fleets have most of the Computer Society fleets bracketed, she discovers that the Fog of War effect is disabled and informs Kyon. By this time, Mikuru's fleet has bee badly damaged if not destroyed.
Kyon tells Yuki to re-enable the Fog of War. Since the Computer Society is now dependent upon their own (non-existent) scouting, the SOS fleet has the advantage since Yuki's scouts have the Computer Society under observation.
The battle now changes. The Computer Society is trying to find the enemy, meanwhile the SOS knows where they are and the three main fleets attack. The strategy is probably one of one fleet (Kyon or Itsuki) engages the Computer Society on a flank. As the Computer Society fleet turns, the other and Haruhi attack from the other side. Caught between three fleets, the enemy ships are rapidly destroyed for little damage on both sides.
The last fleet is destroyed, and Yuki fires the shot that kills the last command ship.

Now, that would be good entertainment. And, I'd love to play that game. It's exciting, to say the very least.

The End Of R1 Anime?

2009-07-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

Serious question to be asked. Between Bandai's...unique choices in distributors (after the scandal involving their reproduction of defective DVDs), the whole Endless Eight debacle (it looks like there will be at least six repeats of the exact same episode, just with different animation-it takes talent to pull off a Groundhog Day plot, and this isn't talented), and the fact that there just isn't a lot of anime coming to the States-most of what the studios are releasing are repeats and compliation packages.

From the outside, this is what I see as the problems (anybody wants to tell me wrong, I'm interesting in hearing why)-

Fansubs. As somebody that loves fansubs, I hate the idea that I'm hurting the industry. I grew up on the anime industry, and I have a place of pride for all of my Animeego VHS tapes-with the cultural hint and music lyric liners attached. But...

I just picked up the first two DVDs of Gundam 00 here in the US. Nine episodes, total. The series came out in October 2007 in Japan. So...call it about 18 months from the first episode to having a legal copy here. I was able to get some very good fansubs avalable of the first episode, within two weeks of it coming out on Japanese TV. Anime has benefitted from the Army of Davids-a good setup for doing high definition anime subtitling has easily fallen within reach of a well-off person in the United States. The only issue is a lack of good translators and time.

The response of anime companies? Go after the fansubbers as pirates. Piracy flourishes when there is a market for a product that there is no legal avenew for. When cigarette taxes are high, people will go to smugglers that will give them more value for their money, legality be damned. Especially in a free market society.
Shifting demographics. Most anime fans came in during the first "big wave" of anime (mid '90s), the next wave that started in the late '90s, and the current generation that grew up on Naruto and Death Note are starting to get out of college and are trying to find jobs in this crazy market. I don't see a major new "wave" of anime fans coming up. Or manga fans. Hell...I'm not even sure what the new demographic of the 18-25 year old is...

Fandom has less money to spend on greebles. And, they have to have value for their dollars.
Shifting anime companies. From what I can gather, most Japanese production and distrubtion companies regard the American market as either a "nice to have" or a "direct competition". Geneon's big problem was that American anime DVDs were cheaper than the Japanese releases, even with reimporation costs. Add a region-free DVD player and it's easy to watch our DVDs of their anime. American studios also have the problem that they were running on fiscal shoe-strings. This probably was what killed ADV-they didn't have enough money in the bank when the bubble burst.

This may be what Bandai is up to with their exclusive deal-they want a justification to cut their losses. They tried a "Japanese" model with Bandai Visual, and that failed. Now what?

I'm looking at the whole market, and I've got a few ideas for both Japanese and American studios-all as an ousider that wants the anime market to succeed.

Go to a model that makes it easy for anime owners to use their products. Digtial downloading to media devices like the iPod and similar mobile devices.
More rapid/integrated options for fans to get their products. There is no practical reason why anime cannot be released in the United States within a few weeks of it appearing on Japanese TV. Make DVD releases important because they have items like dubbing, high definition (and on BluRay with new releases...1080i formatting), and items like interviews and toys.

Of course...I can't see it happening. The studios are not going to take chances...and they won't be around much longer.

Which is a pity. One day, I want whatever legal snarls that are keeping Macross Frontier (and the rest of the franchise) from coming to the United States. I got a chance to see a few episodes on BluRay and they are stunning.

A Sudden Pontification Upon A Theory

2009-05-30T23:42:00.001-07:00

So, what does the single, intellectual Republican do on a Saturday night in San Francisco, somewhat broke?

He reads blogs and webcomics and starts trying to figure out things. Usually on bottle of two of good beer. During this running, I came across one of the latest articles by PJ O'Rourke on how America is seeing the end of the love affair with cars. Worse yet, you have the simple fact that now that GM is going to be Government Motors, they will be producing cars for a market that does not exist, for people that cannot afford them. And, there is the love affair that Obama is trying to sell to us, one of the most loved ones of Socalists since Mussolini, the high-speed rail line.

After all, the logic is, we don't need cars. Why, the Europeans get along without cars, very often-usually, if they need one, they rent it. Why own a car that will be a threat to the enviroment and Al Gore's peace of mind? We can all take the bus! And public transit! And the train! Why live out in the suburbs when the cities are the place to be!

And, in that instant, the idea hits me like a lemon wrapped in a gold brick. Between sips of a good oatmeal stout, the realization reaches me.

What is the ulitmate form of protest against the policies of a government, short of explosions? Voting with your feet. And, with the automobile, it's so very easy to vote with your feet.

Why live in San Francisco or New York, where it's crowded, full of people that annoy you, high crime rates (when the police department is being run for sensativity and not arresting people), high costs (you can pretty much tack on about $1-2 for anything that isn't already pre-priced in SF like coffee, worse for New York or Chicago), living in apartments that are so small you have to go outside to change your mind, long commutes on crowed buses and subways, the public school system sucks multicultural donkey dicks, etc, etc...

...when, you can live in Berkeley. Or Petaluma. Or outside of Washginton DC in Virginia, where you can own a gun. And, you can drive to the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk and not pay twice as much at the corner store. And, you can send your kids to a school where they have a chance to learn. And, live somehwere that there's enough space for a hobby.

And, live somewhere that you can have a chance of effecting the political process. Let's be honest-politics in the big cities tends to be restricted to the very young (who have energy to burn and brains full of bat guano), career politicians (whom being employed in politics is a job), and the various courtiers of the big city political process (union leaders, newspaper editors, law firms, etc, etc).

The automobile gives a large amount of polticial autonomy that makes it much harder to enforce larger, massive top-down solutions on people. When it's possible for people to live in a city that has minimal taxes, then come to work in a larger city that has more taxes that can be avoided by not being there and make more money, you see a phenomina similar to what's going on in Mexico-people crossing the border from cheaper places to live, to find work in places that pay more because they have to pay more for talent to even come close to those cities.

And, oddly enough, this kind of border reform is something the Obama administration and it's followers like. They want people to move into the cities, where it's possible to regulate and control them. To poke into their lives and meddle, and be meddlesome.

When people are living in a crackerbox apartment, they can't afford to buy stuff to fill it, unless they get help with the rent and rent control (which benefits the upper middle class and beyond-Berkeley is a diaster in the making when the old hippies and such have to go into nursing homes and managed care). Mom can't buy huge amouts of food at Costco, but smaller amounts at the local corner store that charges a premium. So, if they want to eat more, they have to qualify for food stamps. The cost of paying for union jobs on public transit systems means that the cost of taking public transit goes up, and there goes your pocket money for Starbucks for that month-but, after all, you don't need to drink all that coffee, do you? Bad for your heart, have some tea, instead.

And, how can you fight City Hall, when it takes you two hours to ride the bus to and from work, add nine hours for work and you have maybe three hours to eat, shop, and maybe have some fun? Of course, your political donations go to people that will cheerfully help your cause...even if you don't know that you need that kind of help yet.

I remain uncertian as if this were planned for (in the sense of an overarching scheme), or it is a part of the circumstances (like flying shrapnel from a chemical plant explosion). I don't like thinking the first, it speaks of paranoia, consipriacy, and the French. The second, on the other hand...where is the explosion and what is it coming from?

The American car industry, in a lot of ways, did bring this on itself. They need to dig themselves out...and soon. Because, Americans may be driving cars made in Japan, China, and Europe.

If they can drive, at all.

Obama, And Democrat Nobility

2009-05-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

I've been reading another superb column by Victor David Hanson (been reading a lot of his books lately, and I like his logic) this weekend.

One point that he's been making about Obama is that he's been making use of one of the greatest tools of demagogy politician, the "evil other". He's been drumming up a lot of hatred of the usual socialist class warfare targets-evil banks, "fat cat" capitalists, "greedy" people that aren't paying their "fair share"...

Worse, nobody can make fun of Obama. How soon in the Bush administration-either of them-did the jokes start? How early in the Clinton era did the really bad jokes begin? But...I haven't heard any good Obama jokes. Are the court jesters of our era all suddenly struck down with laryngitis?

Or, are they scared that any jokes of Obama would be called racists? That criticizing Obama in a way that a white politician would get screams of "racism", "going after our first-ever Black President"?

Worse...I can see a new kind of political nobility showing up in DC. Look at how Nancy Pelosi is denying that she was briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques". When other people there aren't saying "oh, she didn't know what she was saying" but "she's lying out of her very blouse." That eight major banks were told that they had to sign and accept agreements to accept TARP money and government controls, "or else". When did the Treasury Department turn into Vito Corleone?

Or, the various departments in Washington DC turn into courtiers for the "elected" politicians?

It's going to be a crazy, crazy four years-because, short of several miracles (man-made or otherwise), I can't see Obama being President for more than four years.

Me For NASA Administrator

2009-05-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

They're still looking for an administrator to run NASA. (Special thanks to Instapundit.) The Obama administration has a lot of things on their mind, namely they can't find people without tax trouble. However, I think that if there is somebody with a good shot at the job out there, they should apply for it.

Like, for example, me.

Admittedly, I don't have enough of a management/space industry background to really be in serious competition. But, I do have some things going for me-

I'm a huge space nut. Whatever else happens, there will be Buck Rogers at some point, men will be back in space, and on the Moon, ASAP.
The day I get in, I'll demand a 60 day, non-partisan review of the Aries/Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle and the Jupiter/DIRECT launcher system. Whichever one passes the review, will be the one built. I personally am a fan of the DIRECT, but I want the best launcher deployed, and soonest.
We'll be funding a 10,000 lbs NERVA engine system, to maximize the options for missions going to the Moon and Mars.
I hate Washington DC with a passion, with the exception of the museums. I promise that I'll spend the absolute minimum of time in DC, the maximum possible time on my work desk.
I promise, my CSPAN experiences will be memorable. I promise lots of props, lots of visual greebles, all sorts of fun things.
Quite a bit of NASA budget will be in getting Science In The Classroom. Easy to handle and read packets that give kids from K-12 the ability to understand science as a real thing. Even easy-to-do experiments of all sorts.
There will be men on the Moon in by 2014, 2012 if I have to get out an push. Permanant base at least two years later.
Mars mission ASAP, based upon Mars Direct. With the development of the NERVA engine, that gives us a lot more mission options.

I'm pretty much ready to go to work, day one, for the job. My only issues is that I think dueling may still be legal in Washington DC, so I might have to challenge a few people for the job...

Waming Up...

2009-01-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

If you've come from my LJ posting, I'm starting to bring this blog back up to speed.

Even if Live Journal doesn't die...I'll be posting more often here.

This Is Not Going To Be A Good Anime Season

2008-08-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

Just was looking at the preview of the fall season in anime (special thanks to THAT Animeblog) and the term "drought" can easily be applied to this season.

Eight sequels.

Two remakes.

And the rest isn't too good, either.

Gundam 00 is going to have finally the ~~Titans~~ Oz ~~FAITH~~ Arrows, a "army independent from the formal Federation Army dedicated to defending the peace" and of course they get corrupt. And, of course, our Gundam pilots become heroes rather than the quasi-terrorists that they were in the first season. I actually liked the moral ambiguity...it made the heros actually ask questions about what they were doing, why they were doing it, and the actual reason behind Celestial Being.

Of course, if this turned out to have been all as planned by Aeolis Schenberg, I'm not sure how annoyed I'm going to be. Worse...since 00 was purchased by Bandai for pro release in the United States...I'm going to have to buy the series to see what happens.

Ugh.

Other than that...Tytania looks reasonably tempting, but will have to see what the quality is.

Kemeko-DX has a kind of "silly zany" that might actually make for some neat story fodder...and, mmm, sexy rice cookers...

Kurogame no Linebarrel looks kind of amusing, as long as the mecha aren't done as CGI. With very few exceptions, CGI mecha in anime have kind of sucked... The question is-since they have a not bad English page, are they trolling for distrubtors or do they already have one?

I'm going to keep an open mind, mind you...and see what happens next. But, it might not be that good a season for anime fans.

At The Gym

2008-07-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

As a part of my "making myself better" project, I recently got a gym membership and I've been going on a regular basis. Okay, for the last two weeks, but hang with me for the next few bits.

Anyways, I'm in the gym locker room, having exercised tonight, and I'm listening to the conversation across the other side of the row. And, it's scary scary to hear...grown men, talking about Obama in the same manner that girls talking about their first crush on a boy band. Oh, and how BushCheney is the root of all evil in the political system and he should be impeached immediately. Yes, I know it's Oakland, but still.

Just to be clear...

I'm supporting John McCain. I view that an Obama presidency would make us fond for the days of Jimmy Carter (yes, and I'm serious-Obama has all the wrong vibes to me, from people that he supports as a part of his friends, various issues that have come up that make me wonder what he believes, and there just seems to be nothing there...). The same Presidency that gave us the term "stagflation" and gas lines. Obama would nominate Supreme Court nominees that-if Congress does not change much-would be a court so far to the left that it would pretty much be outright socalist/communist.

And, this is not a time for somebody to be learning on the job how to handle foreign affairs. The next three to five years will see changes on the scale of the mid-1930s and if it is handled wrong, we could easily be seeing World War III. It would probably be in the Middle East, and it will be messy...

I mean, you hear the howls of outrage when the eight "yutes" that were caught dealing crack and were shielded by San Francisco's sanctuary law escape...but they view it as how we are Abusing Our Brown Brothers and If We Would All Sing Kumbaya...

It's like the inmates are running the loony bin. And they've gone off of their Haldol...

Worse, I keep seeing a definite "two Americas" starting to show up-the rich and the poor that they protect to assuage their consciences, and the rest of us.

I'm getting really pissed off by this. And annoyed. And frustrated. And angry...

There has to be a change. And Obama is not it.

MMORPG Ideas

2008-06-27T19:34:00.001-07:00

I'm having some really random MMO thoughts, despite the fact that I hate the genre...

-One of the things I want to try with it is that the entire game is class-less. Which is to mean you don't build a fighter, cleric, wizard, etc, etc. Instead, it's all about stats, skills, and perks.

The base game engine is D100 based-stats plus skills, minus modifiers. PVP and PVC (Player Vs. Character) will include modifiers based upon how well the other guy rolled to resist. You can level stats up as high as you want, but they cost XP. Skills as well, but only up to 25%, then you have to find a tutor for your next qualification (journeyman), then at 50% you have to find a mentor (expert), then at 75% a sponsor (master), and finally at 100% and beyond a God (heh, Elite). Otherwise, no restrictions at all.

Then, we have perks and disadvantages. Perks and disadvantages "round out" a character, and are first purchased, then can be gained through gameplay. There's a reasonable number of "perk points" you can buy at the start of the game, but if you want more, you have to buy disadvantages.

Here are two good disadvantage examples-
*Nemesis. At the level you buy it, every "real" hour in the game means that your nemesis shows up, on an increasing chance. Depending upon how powerful your nemesis is, he could be weaker, stronger, or equal. If he's stronger, it's good to have friends. And, sometimes, nemesis drop interesting stuff. If you want to get more points, buy a PC as a Nemesis. And, wait as he comes to kill you, steal your stuff, and skullfuck your corpse.
*Incompetent. This is a skill penalty (in the form of more XP to buy the skill), and can cover any one skill, set of skills (magery, for example, is a skill set. You buy a particular "branch" of spells, and if you have the skill for it, you can cast the spells you buy), and how much XP more you need to raise the skill.

This allows for some pretty interesting characters-and a wider variety of them.

-Most games control weapons and armor on the basis of levels, a sort of "you must be this tall to destroy the city" control. But, the game I'm thinking about has no levels-so, how do you prevent some total new guy from doing the whole "I paid a Chinese guy $3,000 and he gave me all the most awesome stuff!" aspect.

First of all, to use some items you have to have minimum stats and skills. Buying Divine Blizzard when your Ice Magic skill is only 30% is a waste of money and could get you killed if you tried to use it. Literally, as in "it rips your character's soul apart, generate a new character" thing. Second, some weapons and items require you to get Certified. This is a quest (or you can buy the basic certifications during character creation) and each certification gives bonuses besides the ability to use certian kinds of weapons and/or advanced weapons of each class and type.

And, let's not forget-if you want to use some of the really unique weapons, you have to go on some pretty hellacious quests...

-Having a reputation is very important. All the more so, in this game.

Reputation is something you can track, between the six major and twelve or so minor factions. Having a good reputation means that you can get deals at the various stores, buy cheaper drinks at the bars, and the City Guards will take your side-with a vengeance-in towns that your faction is in control of. If you're in a town that you have a bad reputation with...vendors won't sell to you, bar fights become more common, and the City Guard will beat you up, steal your stuff, and do other horrible things to you.

And, if the reputation of you in a town is really bad...best come with a whole bunch of friends, to conquer the town...

-One of the things I hate in MMORPGs is the power gamers that play huge numbers of hours per day, and build hugely buffed characters. And then take them to stomp on everybody else...

So, you have to include some way to fix this problem. Worlds of Warcraft has the answer in the form of multipliers to XP for the time you stay off of the game-and it has to be a real amount of time. It's a neat idea...but, I think it can be done better.

My idea? Your character, in-game, has a job. Doesn't matter what the job is-tho certain skill, reputation, and perk sets will mean that you can take certain jobs over others. What do these jobs do? You earn money, and some XP. Certain jobs let you work on player character-based will create an eidiolon, which interacts with thing as a NPC bot. The catch? You have to be off-line at least eight hours in a 24 hour period. Spend too much time on-line, and your character becomes a freelancer...which means you have to pay rent, bills, etc, etc...and you don't get the nice and nifty XP bit for doing nothing.

-One of the "fun" things in many MMORPGs is creating objects. Then, selling them. Then, repeating the process.

From my perspective, if I want to do that, I'll get a job making widgets. But, some people find this exciting, so....

Manufacturing items is a tricky thing-and, to produce more than the most basic thing, you need a workshop. Of course, some workshops come in a Portable format (with the cute graphics of you opening up a box...and a whole workshop appears right there...), so you can take them anywhere. This lets you make new stuff, if you have the materials. But, if you want to enchant something...you need nothing more than the materials, the right spells, and time.

Of course, if you goof, you bust what you're trying to enchant, so be very careful....

In game terms, each non-expendable items has a number of "slots" in which you can insert enchantments and enhancements. Some enhancements are pretty simple-new gun sights, careful weights on swords to make recovery time easier, that sort of thing. Some are complicated...carefully shaving off enough metal to increase the rate of fire, adding enchantments so that your blade does elemental damages, adding a status-effect to a mace.

And, we haven't even gotten into Artifact Weapons yet...

More From Idea #2

2008-06-09T20:36:00.001-07:00

I feel an urge to talk about our first giant robot, and how "he" fits into the game.

Unit One (they never quite came up with a better name/designation for it) comes in at about 30 ft (9 meters) and nearly forty tons. This puts it in the range of most Type A and Type B Beasts. Fully humanoid, it is covered in layered RHA armor (with later upgrades to a Chobham composite armor on the torso, head, upper arms and upper legs area), with a central cockpit in the rear chest area, mated to a zero/zero ejection seat. The cockpit and design gives the Unit One a distinct "humpback" look.

Unit One uses a combination of hydraulics and linear motors for control and movement. The A/O generator is located just below the cockpit and must be activated for Unit One to even stand up, let along move. Nuclear power was rejected for obvious reasons (Unit One engages enemies in close combat), but the battery power system has a limit of six minutes at full combat power, ten minutes at "standby" walking speed.

All versions of Unit One were built by Tojo Heavy Industries in Japan, and were shipped to various locations along the Ring of Fire to defend against attacks, with the exception of (then) Soviet territory. Twenty-two Unit Ones were built, the first on March 11, 1968 and the last on June 19, 1968.

The Mod One version of Unit One added upgrades to the computers and added newer linear motor arrays to the hands in the mid-70s. The Mod Two version replaced the torso, head, upper arm, and upper leg armor with lighter but equivalent Chobham armor plates, and revamped the control and monitor system in the late-80s. No further modifications were to be made, and there was serious talk about retiring Unit One until the Second Great Monster War.

Unit One, initially, relies upon a 30mm "rifle" and it's reinforced fists for combat. To use the rifle or to engage in combat with Beasts, Unit One needs to "erode" the A/O field of an enemy Beast, enough to engage it in combat.

While old and somewhat decrepit...it would form the first line of defense when the Beasts came back. And, it can be upgraded and the basis of the design is one of future giant robots...

It's Not Quite The End Of My Anime World...

2008-06-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

...but, you can definitely see it from here.

Steve DenBeste has commented that he is nearly hitting the end of anime, and I'm starting to see the edge of the universe, myself. In my case, I'm not fitting in the demographic that seems to appeal these days to buying agents for American anime studios.

The only things coming out on DVD so far that appeal-

Gao-Gai-Gar Box Set One-After the last decade or so of high-angst Eva-derivative giant robot shows, a modern series of GUTS! and BRAVERY! just appeals in ways that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Gurren Lagann-After a long, torturous road, we have the latest from Gainax. What's really happy-making is that Bandai has their first release of 9 episodes in one pack. This is a Good Thing, to me-more episodes to a pack means I can have the whole series faster.

And...that's it. Macross Frontier may never make it to the United States due to licensing issues. There is no news on when/if Gundam 00 will come out. Reideen won't come out, either. No news on when Real Drive will come, either...

Mind you, this is a Good Thing (TM)-it saves me more money for sci-fi and computer stuff. But, I feel a touch sad. It's almost like the end of an era...

Back To Idea #1...

2008-06-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm working again on Idea #1 (which, for future reference, will be graced with the title of-until further notice-of Our Worlds At War). There are three big concepts that I'm working on with it. These three concepts are tactical behaviors, experience control, and deformable battlefields.

Let's start with the first. Each unit has a type of tactical behavior, which is engaged by changing three sets of settings (or selecting a pre-defined "default" setting/macro). The first setting is Aggression-which can be set to one of three levels-aggressive (the unit will close to engage a target, getting as close as possible to use it's weapons), neutral (the unit will try to balance attack distance vs. range-trying to choose a range where it does as much damage as possible while at about half the unit's combat range), and cautious (the unit will try to keep a target at the maximum possible engagement range).

A second setting is vigor-how quickly a unit will engage a target. A unit can be hungry (where it will leap right off the bit and start following anything that it detects or targets), neutral (units will attack a target, or try to find a target within pre-determined norms-if it loses contact, it will try a short search, then stop), and full (units must be controlled to choose a target, and if they lose contact, they will stop and respond according to other rules).

The third and final rule is formation. We have a wide variety of formations, from lines to echelons to a circular formation. With these three choices, you have a wide variety of possible attack options. For example, a unit that is set for a neutral aggression, hungry vigor, and a circle formation will try to find a target, encircle it, and shoot it from every direction-with indirect fire units at various ranges with artillery and direct fire weapons trying to engage a target in a hull-down formation. Another set of units set for aggressive aggression, neutral vigor, and a echelon left formation will try to keep it's target on the left side, engaging them as close as humanly possible.

This set of rules will dictate a wide, wide range of reactions in units. And, it takes away a lot of the micro-management that quite a few games tend to indulge in.

A second factor, which relates to the first, is experience control. Call it "tactical intelligence" in games-if a unit encounters a unit that it has never seen before, it will engage in a sort of "poking" behavior, trying to make it do things such as attack, maneuver, escape, etc, etc. As it builds up a database of experience, it gets easier to engage and kill to hostile unit. Let's take an example-a group of human Strikers (tier 2 infantry) encounters a newly made Venusian Whisper (light, tier 1 recon vehicle). They will try to close with it, fire their weapons, and see how it responds. In game terms, the Strikers will not do as much damage, and will get closer than might be safe (Whispers have a secondary anti-infantry attack that only works at close range), etc, etc. However, as long as the fight continues, human units will learn how to engage the Whisper better-they won't get as close if they're infantry, armor will engage very well indeed...

And, this gets to our third factor-deformable battlefields. One thing that armor and infantry will do (our terrain is 3D), if they have defensive behaviors set, is to try and find a "hull down" position-where as little of their vehicle is showing to a potential target. But, if a weapon is powerful enough...it can shoot through dirt. Or sandbags. And, if you hit the ground with a powerful enough weapon, you can create a crater. Or your engineering unit can dig trenches and revetments for your equipment. There is a absolute "floor", but you can pretty much carve yourself all the way down to the bottom with enough explosives. Oh, and water flows into holes, too.

More ideas as my brain works on them.

What Are You Going To Do With 20 Pounds Of Flour?

2008-05-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Or twenty pounds of rice?

Let's face it, the latest "craze" in the form of the current popular mania is hording of rice and flour and other stuff, because "there's a shortage and if we don't collect and get our stuff now, we'll be all out!".

I remember the Cabbage Patch Kids riots, my friends. And, I knew a friend that paid her rent for about two months just on Furbies alone. Human frenzies are nothing new. Still, that leads to the whole issue of "what the frell am I going to do with twenty pounds of rice and flour? Oh, and twenty pounds of beans, too."

Well, eat it, of course.

Besides, you should be doing it anyways-the usual recommended storage time for bulk foods is about six to eight months, tho with some techniques you might be able to extend it out to sixteen to eighteen months. A rotation plan should be a part of any bulk storage plan-older stuff on the top, newer stuff on the bottom.

And, until the disaster hits, you really need to pick up some very useful items.

Food storage containers smaller than 20 pound sizes. It's easier to get to flour and rice when you don't have to heft and carry and toss twenty pound bags. And, the containers are air and vermin tight, so you can store them and use them for a good, long time.
Rice cookers and bread makers. A really good rice cooker also includes a steaming tray for things like vegetables and potatoes, so it's a multi-purpose item. And, let us not forget that in some ways, it's better to have homemade bread. And, I defy any family of four to go through a two pound loaf of bread in less than two days, three at the most.
Cookbooks. Let's face it, you'll have a lot of stuff...and learning how to do new things with it is never a bad idea. And, it never hurts to have a copy of Apocalypse Chow on your bookshelf-it has a lot of very good recipes that might come in handy one day.

And, at worse...you have plenty of stuff to make use of, one day.

Did I Not Threaten You With Idea #2?

2008-05-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

I did, didn't I?

Idea #2 is another RTS idea, based around the idea of giant robots.

Once upon a time, actually around 1954 (the day after Godzilla is released in Japan, actually...), one of the first of the Beasts appears on the shore of Japan. Thirty feet tall, it takes just about everything the United States has to kill it, short of nuclear weapons.

Then, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily, more Beasts of the four big types come up from the water in the Pacific Ring of Fire...and a few of them take nuclear weapons to stop. Including one that surfaces between Seattle and Portland, and requires a nuke to stop. For nearly fifteen years, the Beasts attack. Humanity learns of the nature of what they call the Alpha/Omega (A/O) field, which serves both as a shield and as a way to "break the laws of physics" so that something like the Beast can actually exist. And, desperately, they build a mechanical generator (the Beasts are some kind of bio-mechanical organism) that can replicate the A/O effect. They build a prototype giant robot-Unit One-and place it in San Francisco to hopefully fend off the first attack (okay, there's a few more in Japan and up the rest of the West Coast, we are paying attention to the San Francisco one).

They wait for an attack...and it never, never happens. For forty years, the robots stand (okay, layed out on the ground to prevent stress to their frames) as almost black sheep in the fight against the Beasts. Some mild renovations of Unit One to make sure that it can actually function over the years. It becomes a joke, something to tell on the evening news about waste and such.

One day...a detector mounted near the Cliff House goes off...and the joke has to defend San Francisco against attack.

We're using San Francisco because it's a nice battlefield to use. Lots of nice, graphical property damage. It's also got a whole bunch of "in jokes" for various robot anime...and maybe some special guest stars (if we can get the licensing rights).

The game is based around two sections-a "base building" section, where you do research, build and improve your giant robots, train pilots, create the technology you need to make it easier to deploy your giant robots (early on, they have to be hauled to the battlefield location by truck-their batteries have a lifespan measured in minutes).

The second section is a tactical battlefield section, where you face off against a Beast with your giant robots, all commanded at your "command truck" (the game interface). Lots of explosions, lots of things happening that will make anybody go "oooh, ahhh".

More details as I keep thinking of them.

Back, and More RTS Concepts...

2008-04-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I've been incredibly busy, not the least of which has been doing the con writing for SiliCon 2008. Look for your Progress Reports in the mail, and the program book if you make it there.

Anyways, wanted to thank tabuxfix for letting me onto his website and various ideas, which are very nifty. Added him to my blog roll and wanted to say "Hi!".

So, more ideas on my RTS game idea#1 (#2 is coming soon...)-

Humans-

One of the big things about humans is that we tend to build stuff and we like a roof over our heads. And, that's where humans start. When the game starts, the first things that come through the teleport portal is a base core, and a Commander. Human equipment is hexagonal in it's design-and facilities are "docked" to each other and to the base core. One of our game conceits is that you have to have a side that is accessible to the "outside" to let vehicles deploy. But, you can move the bigger factory blocks around-you can undock them from where they are, they sprout tracks (or legs, maybe), and move....very slowly, but faster than building a new factory bit. The only exception is the air factory-all of our aircraft are VTOL-capable.

The base module and some of the secondary modules will mount weapons (that you can upgrade), and the game has four level of weapon upgrades for each unit. A specific turret module can be built independently, as well as a sensor module. These can be mounted and attached to a resource pool location (which lets these weapons fire a bit faster and repair their own damage a bit faster), or placed where you want them.

Oh, and Human units have a specific "scavenging" unit that dismantles enemy units to take the parts back home-to build things that work better than their enemies.

Martian-

Martians are like crabs. They bring their homes (their walkers) with them, everywhere they go. And, they really don't have a base...more like a "place to work". Transport vehicles haul materials to a central point, and a specific builder...pretty much dances and creates a unit. This central location can be destroyed if either side pretty much runs their ground units across the central glyph/location.

Resources are also hauled to the walkers, which uses the resources to grow, build modules to increase capabilities, and build secondary systems and modules. They can even build turrets that move very slowly, then settle in and engage hostile targets, both in the air and the ground.

Venusians-

Venusian forces really only build three (four?) kinds of units-troopers (basic soldiers), builders (basic building units), and a Scaffold. By combining the three, you can build base facilities and larger units and vehicles. Of course, you can build a finished unit rather than build the basic three and then collect them into a single unit...but, when it's destroyed, then units break up into their component troopers and builders.

Venusians tend to be sneaky and stealthy and fast. They are not going to be the fastest unit in the game (this is when the Mercurian units show up), but they have speed.

Think China Has A Problem? No, It's Worse.

2008-04-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Steve Den Beste has been commenting about the problems China has been having with it's preparation for the Olympics. Problems from Tibetian independence, food contamination, etc, etc...and it will only get worse.

Let's start out with the fact that China is being pressured to lower it's digital wall of censorship, since major sponsors such as various corporations and similar agencies are demanding more access to the Internet during the Olympics. And, there will be thousands and thousands of people out there with digital cameras. And access to the Internet...and cheap access to blogging software and Livejournal and YouTube...

A major whoopsie (a term of art meaning anything from "we got caught beating some Tibetian monks on tape" to "Tianamen Square Part 2") will probably be on the Internet in all forms and ways within a day or two.

China is getting very paranoid about access, especially by "foreign" guests. Lately, the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco is only giving one month visas for non-US nationals applying for a visa. And, for only a single entry and if you've been there before. Oh, and you have to have permanent residency in the United States to get a visa. If you haven't been to China before...you have to go back to your home country to get a visa.

I think that China is really worried that they are going to have thousands of people that going to be there, with easy access to communications to the outside. Especially with all the trouble going on with China. The first major incident...will be messy. Every time something goes wrong, it will get out of the country fast. And, you can bet that everybody that has a bone to pick with China is going to be picking away (I'm almost surprised that Taiwan isn't pushing "we have higher quality stuff and it's cleaner" in the media-or that's more for the trade magazines.)

This year's Olympics is going to be interesting. A big enough scandal might make the upcoming recession worse (honestly, it should have started by now, or when the major lending problems happened with people buying houses that are Way Too Much), with people moving away from China products because of a general sort of "we don't like China" movement.

I'm watching this news, it will be interesting...

A Solution To The Fansub Problem (Maybe...)

2008-03-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has really, really been bugging me lately has been the screaming lament of various people in the American anime industry about the fact that "fansubs are killing the industry! Nobody wants to buy anime if they can download it from the Internet via BitTorrent!" Fansubbing has been blamed for everything from haltosis to the end of Geneon Animation US (which, AFAIK, had the lovely trait of trying to sell anime in America in many of the same ways they sold it in Japan).

To the studios, I have a question for you. Serious question, too. If it isn't for fansubs, how in the hell am I supposed to get a English version of Legend of The Galactic Heroes? Or another series that has all the popular appeal of curling to the general audience? Or any of the really high-end, non-ecchi mecha series (like Gundam 00), which doesn't have an American audience, really?

Yet, the question does remain-how does the animation studios combat the problem of fansubs on the Internet? Especially since anime fansubs are reaching the point of becoming like the BitTorrent of Global Frequency-awesome, but killing any possibility of the show ever being "legit".

Answer-beat them to the punch.

This would require studios to coordinate their activities with American and British distributors, but quite frankly they should have done so years ago. Anime studio in Japan produces a new series-let's say it's a harem/mecha show (where the harem girls are the giant robots...). Twenty-four hours after the episode comes out, the American distributor (say, ADV Films) puts up a un-encrypted, digitally open, subtitled version of the episode. Accurately subtitled too (mostly because they have access to the scripts), and perfectly done. Probably a high-end AVI formatted file with stereo sound and all that.

The catch? There are commericals-for both anime that the distributor produces and anime the studio makes (even if it's via another distributor, they can put ads for their shows on there. Deal With It). Each of the ads has a code...which is shut off 24 hours later for special bonus items (like a web-only interview of the staff, a free download of the soundtrack off of iTunes, etc, etc).

This makes the episode about the same length it is in Japan. Yes, people can click over the ads and such...but that's not the point. The point is that the ads are there, and in theory are watched. And, there are reasons why people want to watch the ad, the WHOLE ad... (yes, those letters on the girl's bouncing breasts means something important...)

Which is a traceable demographic.

Which can be sold to other studios ("It looks like American fandom is really, really into series with characters of questionable sexuality and gender. Oh, and openly are doing each other, despite probably being siblings.").

Or used to improve your own internal anime development ("Moon Cow Elisa got twice as many hits as Bloody Opera Marie. More moe!").

Then, when the series comes out...heh, heh, heh...downloadable content. But you have to have entered and collected the codes from the entire Internet run of the series to get it...

I must contemplate this idea more.

Getting Off The Planet, Version 2.0

2008-03-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest pushes that NASA has been up to has been building the whole Aries (aka the Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle) system. Of course, to build it means funding and supporting and supplying the whole space launch and industry system. Including all new contracts to do research and development and produce all new space hardware...by 2012 or so.

Of course, a much cheaper system and proposal is outlined here, in the form of the Jupiter I-V system. This setup would mean man would be back on the Moon...in five years or less. Maybe six. I would love to work on this project...at the very least, work on writing up all the neat and interesting paperwork and documentation needed. As long as I got a chance to play in the simulators every once in a while.

Social Networking Thoughts...

2008-03-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I'm on several social networking systems (namely Tribe, Facebook, MySpace, and Livejournal), and all of them seem to lack features that I keep thinking would be perfect for these networks. In no particular order, here are my thoughts-

1)Let's be fair. There are some parts of our lives that we would want to very much keep a secret from other people in our lives. Our employer doesn't need to know that we are a fan of Green Acres, nor do our parents need to know that we like women dipped in honey and chocolate. Nor do our friends need to read about the frustration we have with them (I have a friend that I love deeply, but hell is she bad on my ego when I play world-saver for her). The concept that I have is what I call the "hive"-six levels of control positive and negative over people you know.

You organize the people on the social network by one of three types-friends, family, and business. Postings can then be segregated on the various groups by type (a dating board, for example, would only let people that are posted as friends and not business). In addition, if you were to post a blog on the social networking site, you could restrict it by type...and by levels of friendship.

Remember I said about six levels of control? You could set the levels on each person that is a friend on your list by 1 ("kinda know them") to 6 ("best friends forever/lovers"). Photos would be controled by levels-from open to the public (0) to the photos you only want some people to see (3) to photos you maybe want one or two people to see (6). Your blog postings would be controlled like this-"only friends 3 and above", "only business three and five", etc, etc. On your friend's profile, you could see friends of your friends...and how they know them, and how their levels are in comparison to yours-a good tool to sort out people you know and don't know.

Of course, we have the reverse controls-the ability to list somebody from -1 (not a fan of them) to -6 (don't want them to know ANYTHING of what I do here). If somebody has a lot of -1s and belows, maybe you shouldn't know them...or let them find things out.

2)At the end, the purpose of social networking sites is user-created content. Groups for things you didn't think there was a need for (kinky knitters of making toys out of yarn, I swear to God they exist), organizing events of all types, finding things to buy and parties to go to. Group control should let you be able to set up everything from parties to sales....of course there will be open, CL-type boards, but the ability to put add-on modules such as event calenders and photo galleries and similar types of hardware.

3)For handling adult content....I'm thinking of a three-tier system. The first tier is the "free" tier-kids and such can reach this level. This keeps them out of content specially designated as "adult" (and, conversely, there are two tier levels, 18+ Adult and 21+ Adult). I'm still trying to figure out a way to keep kids away from annoying people...but the idea hasn't hit me yet.

Second tier is "adult"-and if you want to get to the adult boards, you have to pay...$1 a year. You have to have a credit card that is linked to your name and your address (to prevent fraud), and that gives you access to the Adult boards.

Third tier is "patron"-for a monthly or yearly fee, you don't get any ads, any postings get put on the top of the screen and any friend listings when you're online, etc, etc...

There are other ideas, but they're all being worked through my brain...very, painfully slowly.

I'm Feeling...Ah, Creative...

2008-02-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

Read the news today, and saw that Al Qaeda used two women with Downs Syndrome as suicide bombers. Probably promised the fruits of Paradise (which, according to Islam, women don't get) and they were detonated by remote control, which suggests that they weren't exactly volunteers. Or might have been told that they were to leave the bombs then get out of the area. Which means they were used as human cruise missiles, and that Al Qaeda used to their ends.

This is a good sign in some ways-that Iraq is stable enough that the usual "kid with a Semtex overcoat" strategy isn't working and they have to delve into a deeper and different pool of "recruits" to carry out their suicidal attacks. But, of course, the leadership won't be the ones doing it...they need to "lead" and let others go on to Paradise.

When they're captured, sad to say, they will probably just be put up against the nearest wall and shot once we confirm they don't have info we need, or will spend time in Gitmo while they fling fecal matter and stage riots with the guards, all the time lying about being tortured. Which is sad, really, because I have some better ideas of what to do with them...

My idea? We get the cells in order-newest to oldest prisoners. Then, in order of arrival, we start turning them into women. We use hormones, implants, sexual reassignment surgery, plastic surgery, etc, etc...the ones that talk and start talking quickly, we'll make sure they get therapy, training and help so that they can be released out into the world as women. The ones that are a problem? We make sure they know they're going to the worst brothels in Turkey and the Balkans...where the customers know exactly what they were.

Make sure the cells are done in a Panopticon style, so all the prisoners can see what's going on. Hell, I might even have photos taken of their "progress", and quietly distributed in the Islamic world...

Yes, I know it won't happen.
It's wrong on so many levels.
But, damn it, I'm feeling so creative with the idea...

Torture Porn vs. Horror Films

2008-01-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

Kim du Toit-one of the best bloggers out there-has been commenting about Torture Porn films such as the Saw or Hostel series. And, I fully agree with him-and the sad thing is that short of another serious act of censorship or blacklisting, torture porn is here to stay.

Okay, let's see...my last convention was SilCon 2007, where the theme was horror films. And, I do mean "horror". Some of the films shown in the hallways were films that were hideously not PG-13 trailer material. And, there was a deep love of "let's see how much blood and guts we can generate, just to see what we can generate."

Why do people make torture porn films? First of all, it's cheap-Hostel was made for about $5 million dollars and made $81 million in return-about a sixteen times return on the investment. Saw is an even better example-$1.5 million to make, $100 million in return, about ninety times as much. I'm willing to bet that at the convention, I could go onto the floor and offer to about eight or ten people there a contract for a small amount of money now and a portion of the profits for the next iteration of the series-and get them, easy.

Second, it's like watching a car wreck-some people actually like watching this. Does anybody remember that lovely comment "if it bleeds, it leads"? There are people out there that like watching crush porn-and torture porn can make most people think they're the guy doing the cutting or the building of the horrible gadgets of torture. They are the ones that will be the ones that watch as somebody is slowly, slowly killed-and they get to kill the next one.

Please, everybody's had at least one fantasy of taking apart somebody we really didn't like.

Third, and finally, it's empowering all your little monsters. There's no plot to worry about (mostly), there's no morality message involved (classic '70s and '80s horror film-premarital sex, yuppies, and being an idiot, bad!), there's no need to make the guy that's doing all the torture into a bad guy. There are no good or bad guys after all, just points of view (lovely post-modernist concept...). Oh, and you get to have such fun torturing people...

You can argue that there is a market, and if they don't fill the void, somebody else will. But...should it be filled? Should films like this be made, with people going home with those little monsters of their psyche fed? That films like this are just mainstream enough that people don't look too askew when they take their kids to the film (any parent that takes a kid under 12 to one of these films should be shot). The ones engaging in the torture have enough moral ambiguity that you can see being the one with the chainsaw.

This is not like horror films. Say what you will of it, Grindhouse was a perfect send-up of the Z-grade, cheap-ass budget film that go hideously towards the late-late-late-shouldn't you be asleep TV movies or on Showtime during the 3 am hours. I can't see a sendup of torture films like Army of Darkness did to horror films. Some horror films actually make a lot of sense and are sometimes so overdone that they're just hokey. And, the guys that torture in horror films tend to be the bad guys. The ones cutting up people with the chiansaws? You shoot them, please. The shooters aren't the guys that cut up girls for fun.

Horror films are intended to scare you and shock you. Torture porn are best watched with one hand on the popcorn...and one on your joystick. If you can't get any play with your joystick...well, enjoy watching a beautiful girl (that, in real life, somebody like her shot you down) get eaten alive by mutant cannibals. Get some good revenge in, for the boss that drove you mad, the girl that teased you in bed, the doctor that treated you like an idiot and a fool...all of them have to suffer.

This is a bad way to go. Add to that the fact that most kids would be better parented by wolves and there's some...social validation to being a successful torturing asshole pervert (Hostel has a club of very rich people that get to torture and torment people for fun, there are people that consider Jigsaw in Saw to be a folk hero) is expressed here. Add to that music media that most kids listen to tends to view women as objects at best, tissue paper at worse...I'm scared to see what the next school killing spree will be.

My advice? Don't watch it, don't spend money on people that sponsor it, make it known that you don't tolerate this kind of mess...I don't.

My Official Endorsement

2008-01-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

I used to be a huge political junkie. Couldn't get enough of politics, fun to read and almost always hilarious if you just ignored how much money was being spent to have all of that fun.

I started getting tired of it about 2006-2007 or so, just burnout in the form of getting tired of the morons on parade (on both sides of the political aisle) and just was content to watching the monkeys throw poo at each other.

But, the old political urges get pulled back up, especially looking at the clowns showing up on stage these days. Let's see...

Hillary Clinton- We had one Clinton and that was one too many. And she is much more...driven than her husband. And he was a statist Tranzi bastard.
Barack Obama- Does not impress me at all, and I'm convinced that he would be the Jimmy Carter candidate of this election. And I mean that in all of the bad ways possible...
John Edwards- At best, an ambulance chaser. At worse, a fool. And, a scary one, too.
Rudy Giuliani- If he would just come out of the (proverbial) closet and run as a Democrat, I wouldn't feel like I would have to hold my nose when I looked at the Democratic party. Probably a great law&order president, but not very good otherwise.
Ron Paul- This guy is probably drinking too much of the very special Kool-Aid, and he is the sort of candidate that gives "fringe" a bad name. His supporters are notorious for spamming polls to make Ron Paul look like he has actual appeal and a groundswell of support. At the very least, we now know where all of the Black Helicopter/ZOG/UN Conspiracy nuts are hanging out...
Mike Huckabee- He has this kind of swarmy/messy sort of look to him that reminds me oddly of either Mister Saxon or Tony Blair, in which he's very very much the consummate politician. Hideously greasy, and is using his Mormonism as a defense against criticism.
John McCain- Another long time, annoying politician that was the author of the damn near unconstituional McCain/Feingold Act and he just seems too...polished, as well.

So, now that we've reduced all the candidates down, and who's left?

I personally think that Fred Thompson is the best possible candidate for 2008. So far, nobody has been able to show me otherwise. On the big core issues-defense (a bigger and better military, more capable and more able to fight small and big wars), economic policy (keeping taxes low and encouraging people to invest and put money away), immigration (his full paper and proposal don't include things that I'd like to see-but, then again, what I'd like to see is "big catapult on the border to fling convicted criminals over to the other side of the Rio Grande"-and dealing the problem on both sides, coyotes and the people that hire illegal laborers), and other factors.

Not the perfect candidate, mind you...but he is a good choice, has a record of saying what he means, and is not a scrubbed, polished, shaped, and otherwise tweaked candidate that looks like he'd do anything to win and is waiting for the best price for his Mom.

So, Vote Fred 2008!

A Magical Girl MMORPG...

2007-12-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

The idea just, well, hit me.

A "magical girl" MMORPG.

Stick with me a moment here, lemme walk you through it...

You have a nice fictional Tokyo, with all sorts of neat sights and created maps, where our players hunt monsters and have occasional Fight Club PVP battles. They're all hunting down monsters and critters and creatures and all the naughty things that go bump in the day (and the night). Girls-and boys-of all sorts are on the battlefield, trying to make Tokyo a safer (and PG-13) place...

I can even see the character archtypes-

Cosplayers-They can change their powers by their costumes. Higher levels mean more interesting costumes...

Meganeko-Gadgeteers and Weird Stuff creators. Occasionally blows up property in the area.

Miko-They cast buff spells and healing spells. Oh, and can banish some kind of spirit critters.

Joshikousei(and whatever the male version is)-Major sailor suit action, with all the fun and excitement that brings. Divided into the ones that actually use weapons and the ones that are spell casters.

Tsundere-Years of harem abuse means that these are the game's "brick" characters.

There's probably a "gun otaku" character type a'la Sosuke Sagara, with options of "real world" or "sci-fi" guns. Add a Martial Arts template, too.

So, our (of legal age-18 and over) characters go out and make the world a better place-hopefully without doing too much property damage. The various districts of Tokyo serve as a way to control character levels (and it all converges on the center of Tokyo...). Map-accurate, too...tho not probably "ground-level" accurate.

Probably can pull this off with most current MMORPG engines, but I would definitely want the whole "high anime" aspect to the graphics. Lots of explosions...and havoc and chaos and panty shots. Real-world clock as well, where players are on Tokyo time. And, some monsters are out during the day, some are out during the night...

I'm almost tempted to add a connection so that you can play iTunes native to the game.

So, anybody want to start throwing more ideas up against the wall, to see what sticks?

If It's A Religion Of Peace, Why Isn't It So Peaceful?

2007-12-16T08:44:00.001-08:00

Just, read the first two stories, then come back here. I'll wait.

The last days of Aqsa.

British iman's daughter needs police protection when she converts to Islam.

Read and follow up the links. Especially read the whole article on the British woman whom converted. And, remember this is England, a land of high liberalism and claimed that everybody more-or-less "got along well". There was a statistic there, wasn't it? Just to bring it up again...

"Earlier this year, a Policy Exchange study found that 36 per cent of British Muslims aged between 16 and 24 believed those who converted to another religion should be punished by death."

This is not a small minority. This is not-in theory-a group that has just come from the home country and many of them have probably been born and raised in England their entire lives. In short, they've lived most of their lives in a Western society with certain rules. They have not just fallen off the banana boat and are still gawking at the big city-they can no longer claim ignorance as an excuse.

We keep getting told that Islam is a religion of peace. Of peaceful interaction, when Moslems and Christians and Jews lived in peace with each other, and it was only the coming of the Evil Jooos whom took Israel away from the Palestinians and George W. Bush's evil that made them mad and angry and willing to blow themselves up.

The problem with that is that the history is that ignores several hundred years of Islamic history-not the least of which is the jizya-go read the Islamic legal commentaries, especially the humiliating nature of the tax payments to Islamic rulers. Or the status of the dhimni, whom have their lives hideously legally restricted and have no escape by conversion to Islam, for example. In many cases, conversion was restricted by law-it lessened tax receipts for the Islamic government.

I've held-and have always held for years-that Islam could probably be considered the only real form of fascism that would have worked for the Middle East, in which it tried to unify the various amoral familists of the extended-clan structures into a single unified whole. And, that if Islam wants to be a religion that wants to live with the rest of the world, it needs to have a version of the Reformation. The issue with that is that the Koran is considered to not have been divinely inspired a'la the Bible, but the literal Word of God. There are no mistakes in it, no errors, no "feature creep" from people making errors in wondering what the translation of really obscure words are.

Yet...I don't see it happening, in all reasonably. And, I don't know how to make it change-the Islamic world has to change itself and there's too much inertia for it to change. The Saudis fund their extreme radicals to go away and try not to seize Mecca again and doubt the Islamic street credentials of the Royal Family's rule. The Palestinians live high off the money of the UN and if they ever took Israel, that money would end-as well as taking over Syria which has a much better claim of being a Palestinian majority country. And, let us not talk about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom is convinced that he might be the Tenth Iman and he will be the one to solve the Jewish Problem-with nukes.

I just hope that the mess...doesn't explode while I'm still around. The solution for it is going to be messy. It will be a solution that will probably offend most Americans, but by that time we won't have a choice. We will have to do what is needed, because we must.

Zen And The Art Of Beer

2007-12-11T06:27:00.000-08:00

About 2002 or so, my dad's dad died. Thud, dead. Not only did this give my current car (which has lived well, but shall soon have to be retired...), I drove my dad down to a meeting with several members of what was left of Dad's dad family.

I learned a lot about my Dad on that drive, all the sorts of stories and tales and such that I should have learned years ago...mostly because my Dad's dad family and Dad's dad got alienated from each other after the death of his mother and that he didn't give up the kids (i.e. Dad and his brother) immediately for adoption. I don't know anybody of Dad's family beyond his father, a short man that survived World War II, made a home, worked his ass off even when he grew old.

About two weeks later, I got the basic hardware needed to make beer, an ingredients kit, and made my first batch of beer ever with my Dad.

And, about five years later and much beer, I know my Dad a lot better. I've got more reasons to talk with him. I've learned a lot from him, and we've learned more about each other.

We do need to make more beer...Mom is going to be in one of those "not good" situations in a few years and I need more stories from him.

More Nukes, More Of The Time

2007-12-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

Via Instapundit and Slashdot, former nuclear activist Gwyneth Cravens is advocating that we get off the coal (and by extension, gas) teat and switch over to nuclear power. Not only does this tick off the Saudis and the oil industry (which a lot of the moonbats can appreciate), it is a lot cleaner and a lot safer than coal power.

Don't drag out the old beaten horses-Chernobyl would haven't passed the laugh test at the AEC development committee. Three Mile Island functioned exactly as designed, and while it was a mess...the reactor came back online. That, and it was a perfect-storm event where a really bad movie happened soon before the accident, and the two got co-located in people's minds.

Still...we need more power, and we're running out of options. Especially if we want to live our lives in about the same way we want to...

Some Details On Game Design Concepts...

2007-12-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

From my replies so far, both on and offline...they've been pretty useful, the spaghetti is sticking to the wall very nicely-

Basic Concepts And Such-

Once upon a time, I had a somewhat sarcastic thought about RTS resources management, on the basis of the old cliche of "Mars Needs Women" a'la really BAD '50s movies. So, by the following logic if Mars Needs Women, Venus Needs Men, and the poor humans are just trying to hold onto both of them with both hands. Venus needs Men for their high-end, Tier 2 and 3 units, Mars needs Women for major upgrades to their walkers, and humans need 'em both for keeping their really advanced weapons working.

This, of course, lead to the whole joke of "how do you catch women? Shoe sales?" and going on and on and on from there. The horse had been VERY well flogged, thank you....
One of my big problems with Supreme Commander was just how BIG it could get. Oh, it was fun, no doubts about that, and the whole "sending hordes of soldiers across the map, raising huge dust clouds" has an appeal to it, but at a certain point, I kept getting the feeling of pixel bitching, wishing I had a few (human) sub-commanders I could just assign bits of the combat assignment to, I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of a on-line game, etc, etc...

So, we have both the scale (enough to give some tactical variety and make it challenging without "oh, it takes three hours for our fastest ground vehicle to make it to the other side of the map") and by building infantry in a squad format encourages players to save units that have built up a really high level of experience-pull them back from the front lines, rebuild their capability, then send them right back out into battle again...
Mid game...this is the point in DoW where you've maxed out your Tier 1 building capabilities, have about half or so of your Tier 2, and looking seriously at your future options. Better yet, in Supreme Commander, you have your builders building Tier 2 defenses, the factories are churning out Tier 2 vehicles and you're seriously thinking about what your Experimental Weapon for stomping the enemy flat will be.
When I was talking about resources...Humans have their resources sent to their base directly by teleport technology. It's slower, but it can't be stopped short of destroying what's mining the resources. Mars and Venus need to use vehicles and build buildings to store resources, and they can be attacked and destroyed. Mars units can have shields and weapons added to their transports to make them much harder targets, Venus can add stealth systems and boosters to make them faster.

Universe Notes Bit-
Ah yes, THIS bit of fun...

The game's basic concept is "serious comic"-we have humor, only 40% of the humor is black, and the game does take itself (mostly) seriously. The designs of all three sides are practical within their context.
The game takes place on Earth, Mars, and Venus. The game's campaign mode (which ties into the game's on-line mode...you can play campaign battles online and earn achievements a'la XBox Live!'s system...) takes you through the story and the three factions. Each one of them has a part in the story to play...
All three sides are (in campaign mode) mostly shooting at each other. Both of the Alien sides want humans, the Humans want their world back, and nobody is going to play nice.
The game is in full 3D with "fog of war" effects on both the visual field and radar possible.
The technology is realistically stylized...you can tell right away "oh, that's a Martian" unit right off the bat...

The Factions

The Humans are the "conventional" faction. You need to build or improve buildings to build better units. They have infantry and vehicles...and these are separate things. Human infantry is built in squads, etc, etc....
The Martians start out with a central core/factory that can only build light "infantry" drones, construction drones, and materials transports. As it gets resources, it upgrades into a much larger core, which can build heavy "infantry" drones, then the first Walker lands. Walkers, with the right Core upgrades, can build "vehicle" drones and "aircraft" drones. As the Walkers grow more legs, they grow more Core slots, which you can add more facilities to produce drones, which means you can build better drones. Of course, each space taken up by a drone facility could mean you can't upgrade your shields...and shields are what keeps nasty weapons away from your fragile hull.
Venusian units start out with a single factory...and all it can built are Builders and Troopers (basic soldiers). You mix and match Builders and Troopers into buildings, more powerful infantry units, and eventually you can build Scouters, in which you can combine 'em with Builders and Troopers to produce even more powerful weapons, base defenses, infantry and vehicles, etc, etc...

One small note about Venus buildings-blow one of them up, and you suddenly are under attack by the "liberated" Troopers....

I'll talk more about units when I have some chance to figure out exactly what the units will be...

Some More RTS Game Concepts...

2007-12-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

A while back, I kept tossing ideas against the wall to see if they would stick for a RTS strategy game.

After some thought, quite a bit of beer, and playing some more games, I've come up with ideas for my game that would make sense, fill bullet points, and could be easily summed up. Oh, and maybe be made with the grace of God(dess)....

Basic Concepts

I damn well am going to try and keep the idea of "Mars Need Women/Venus Needs Men" game mechanic. All the sides needs them, the Humans are the only producers of them, and in multi-player games they can be traded around for other things...
The game scale is to be between Dawn of War and Supreme Commander-no map should be bigger (in "real-world" scale) than ten kilometers by ten kilometers.
Units will be built around squad-sized units for "infantry" and individual vehicles.
All three sides will have a different combat dynamic, and that dynamic can be adjusted within the three types of combat dynamics. This change in combat dynamic is based around the building of a mid-game building, which offers access to several technologies and augmented units.
There is a definite "resource flow" in the game. Human players have the advantage that their flow of materials (there are only three resources in the game-humans, matter, and energy) cannot be interrupted, Martian material transports can be upgraded with shields and armor and guns, and Venusian units can have cloaking devices added.
There will be ground and air units.

Okay, to the factions!

Humans

The Human faction is a bunch of survivors from the early days of the war, hidden deep underground and developing their technology to fight the alien invaders on the surface of their world. They use a LOT of nanotechnology and cloning technology-a Clone Complex has to be built so they can deploy advanced units and vehicles. They are the most "conventional" of the three races in the game, and all their tech looks like it was developed by Masumune Shirow (lots of glowy bits...)

One of the Human's big advantages is that they can steal and upgrade their own hardware with the technology of the other two sides. For example, they can salvage shield technology and improved energy weapons from Martian walkers, and stealth technology and improved projectile weapons. The other big one is the use of teleport technology-Human material feeds come directly from the miners to the base, without a vulnerable supply line to interdict. Later units can also "blip" across the map in deadly rear attacks.

The mid-game development point is a Citadel, in which one of three technology tracks and final weapons can be built-

The Art Of War-Units will incorporate heavier weapons and armor, at the cost of mobility. This technology line leads eventually to the Overlord walker and the Lucifer supertank with it's massive quantum cannon.
The Art Of Fortresses-Defensive structures will be improved, and are cheaper to build. This technology line leads to the Quantum Reaper fixed defensive gun and the Mammoth four-legged walker.
The Art Of Cavalry-Mobility is supreme in this Art-all units move faster, and air units can pretty much zip from one end of the map to the other with hideous speed. This technology line leads to the Wyvern bomber and the Shiva supertank.

Martians

The Martian faction has come to Earth to take our women. They need women (for reasons that SO do not involve tentacle rape (not!)) to build their war machines beyond the basic core. A Martian base starts out with a Core (think of it as a HQ building) and several Constructors. As the resources flow into the Core, it upgrades automatically (you can build other units at the time, mostly infantry) into a Sepulcher, which allows for the first of the War Machines to arrive. As you gather resources, another War Machine arrives, to build up the total army (of six? eight?) in the area. The tech looks an awful lot like something made in the '50s or so, many fins and shiny bits and curves and fun stuff.

Each War Machine is pretty much a mobile base (stole this idea from Universe At War) and they auto-upgrade as resources flow into them. At first, a War Machine has three legs, three leg slots for upgrades, three torso slots for weapons, and three core slots for add-ons. As time goes on (in a very...disturbing ripple of growth), a fourth leg is added, giving more slots....and so on until you hit the total of six legs. Heavy units are built at the War Machines, and upgraded via technology built at your Sepulcher. Air units are built at the Sepulcher, as well.

The mid-game tech development point is the Reliquary, where one of the three technology lines can be built-

Tomb-Heavier shield technology is the heart and soul of the Tomb series of technologies. The most powerful shield technology and the Thermobaric Cannon (big explosion) can be mounted on your War Machines.
Grave-Faster shield regeneration and the ability to penetrate enemy defenses easily is a core element of Grave technologies. Faster-regeneration shields and the Twist Cannon (bypasses shields) can be mounted on your War Machines.
Masoleum-Shields are much, much cheaper and the weapons are built to do huge amounts of damage. Cheaper shields and the Lash Cannon (think of it as a killer rope gun) can be fitted to your War Machines.

Venusian

Four armed, very busty and well-built female aliens, the Venusians have come for our men and...well, for our men. And beer, too. Can't forget the beer. They start out with several Assemblers, which will either split into more Assemblers, or merge into a Foundry. The Foundry can build Assemblers or Soldiers...and by combining numbers of Assemblers or Soldiers, you can build more powerful units. (Think of the "more faces equal more power" of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann-the more units that merge, the more powerful a unit can be created. Of course, you can queue up building the units entirely...).

Venusian units tend to steal from the '60s in terms of design concepts and looks. The Venusians tend to rely a lot more upon mobility and stealth than their enemies-even their "basic" units are hard to detect on radar than the other two races. The best way to describe their strategy is "stick and move".

The mid-game tech development point is the Liturgy, and they can choose one of three technology development paths...

Chorus-Stealth technology is first, foremost, and paramont. Pretty much their units vanish on the radar screen and the "normal" stealth units are invisible in all ways...with this technology, the Venusians can build the Monolith superheavy tank and the Scimitar fighter-bomber.
Soloist-The quality of the units increases, and they can withstand more damage and deal it out, as well. With this technology, the player can build the Romancer walker and the Fresco superheavy tank.
Glissendo-The air is where this technology leads. Flying units get faster and can do more damage, and all units can engage air targets now (except for fixed defensive weapons). With this technology the player can build the Stevedore airborne assault walker and the Marathon bomber.

More ideas as they come up...

My Challenge To The Anime Studios/Producers

2007-11-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

Here's my idea.

A twenty-six episode series anime series. It's a mecha series/harem anime in which all the things make sense (and it's a series that Steve Den Beste would watch and love-think of it as the hybrid love child of Vandread and Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu). Interesting characters, neat plots, and minimal loli.

All the usual package deals and such...and within 24 hours of release in Japan, a full version of the show, subtitled, will be avalable on US and UK iTunes. Possibility of there being the same release on the Japanese version of iTunes. Add in a season pass.

(Oh, and if the series takes off and a second season is made-there will be that possibility-I will retain rights to write the pen&paper RPG version...and it will be fun).

I'm willing to bet cash money that people would pay $1.99 an episode (the first two are free...) or $45 for a season pass for a series that would come out from Japan promptly. And, it would beat fansubbers out of their game. Not that I'm in any particular complaint about fansubbers, but it's time to use the technology, not fear it.

The Fansub Issue(s)

2007-11-27T22:32:00.000-08:00

Steve Den Beste has lately been talking about all the problems with fansubs, the Japanese anime market, release times, and how it probably will kill a few of the anime companies here in the United States (it has already killed Geneon).

My opinion is very much an end-consumer one, so take it with a grain of salt. My issue is very much one that SDB notes-that it can take anywhere from about 2-3 years for a series to come from the United States. It has been bitched over, talked about, discussed, dismantled, dismembered, Wikipediaed and folded into a little hat by the time American fans can see it...

...unless they watch the fansubs. Only the fansubs give the non-Japanese speaking fans the illusion that they're "watching" the series with the fans in Japan or speak the language. And, let's face it, there are some series that are too old (Gundam, Legend of the Galactic Heroes), too weird (School Days), or just too niche (a judo anime who's title I can't recall off the top of my head) for an anime studio to make a decent profit off of.

Especially considering what Japanese studios think of fans...

Case in point, I am a die-hard Gunbuster/Diebuster fan. Big fan, I think that any anime fan that hasn't seen Gunbuster at least once needs their head examined. Or their Otaku rights revoked. But, when Bandai Visual brought out Diebuster out on DVD, they released it at $39.95 for two episodes on a DVD and weak/anemic extras.

Two episodes on a DVD. Of a six-episode series, I can...somewhat accept this. But, nearly $40+tax, you better stuff the rest of the DVD space with as much stuff as you can. Hell, throw in a second DVD of just "The Making Of" information.

Even worse? Freedom. Six episodes, one episode per DVD, next-to-no extras, $39.95 for a half-hour episode. That is easily more than a dollar a minute. Not even counting tax.

No wonder the Japanese studios are afraid of re-importation of anime DVDs from the United States. What most Japanese fans pay for one episode, they'd get about 2-4 episodes, maybe 5.

And, let's be fair...the dubbing setup in the United States isn't good yet. Most fans will freely admit that most dubs...could be done better. Unless the series has major popularity, the dubs are not of pretty high quality and they take a lot of time. Most series could be subtitled in a few weeks...it might take a few months to get a series properly dubbed. And, with the way that anime series are done (usually just-in-time or so...), it would be nearly impossible for a American distributor to get the scripts in enough time to do an English-language soundtrack.

What would really work would be a distribution agreement with Apple/iTunes. $2 for an episode of a series, $50 for a "season pass" that would automagically download each new episode, with official subtitles. Of course, this would require Japanese studios and TV execs (whom are not an imaginative bunch among AMERICAN execs, and the Japanese ones have to be worse) to work out that they have to get their product out to fans-both American and Japanese-faster and easier.

Of course...I think the only way they'll get realism is to be whacked over the head.

You Know, You Have To Ask Why....

2007-11-20T23:10:00.000-08:00

...nobody has thought of this before.

It makes a lot of sense, in a whole "why not?" sort of way...I don't see any reason why you couldn't build a sealed-package pebble-bed reactor that would fit on a flatbed truck, fit the cooling tower on a second truck, and just deploy it somewhere where you need lots of power.

Hell, combine it with solar power, and you can use the solar power for "home" use and the nuclear plant for "industrial" use (refrigeration of food, running wells, recharging electric trucks and farming equipment, tools, etc, etc). For some small towns in the United States alone, they could work a co-op setup where all the towns in a close area chip in to get the reactor, giving them enough power to do things. Oh, and sweat equity in setting up the power wires and such.

Or for military applications...a lot of gruff is being put into military technology such as diesel-electric hybrid drive for light armored vehicles, the increasing need of electronic systems on the modern battlefield, and keeping the batteries charged for all the gadgets that American soldiers carry. Probably in 10-15 years, military units will probably mount fixed high-energy lasers and railguns for anti-artillery/missile defense in major firebases. The time will come when the power is needed...

There are a lot of options out there, and maybe this will be what, in some places, allows locations to become civilized.

The Six Ages Universe

2007-11-12T21:37:00.000-08:00

I've been coming up with ideas of a metaverseal concept for a series of game universes, using HERO 5th as the game system. I call it "The Six Ages", and it'll consist of five major game universes.

The First Age is the focus of the game Glories. Think of it as the Hero 5th version of Exalted-it's the era of Atlantis, Shangra-La, and similar cities of myth and legend, when magic was alive and bouncing through out the world, the swing of a hero's blade could carve canyons....and this all ended when the "magic" (actually the quantum energy that allows the rules of physics to be broke) is sealed away. Most of the gods fall asleep, and the world rolls into the Second Age, which is the world we live in.

On 9/11/2001, the Third Age sets off with a bang when the planes crash into the World Trade Center. This awakens the trapped power that was sealed away...and it's woken up and it's as pissed off as a force of nature can ever be, and this game is Capes and Cowls. Think less Heroes and more The Ultimates. The good guys are good guys, the bad guys are bad guys and it gets very interesting when the lines start to blur...

As time goes on, and we get to the Crash-a massive, major event that ends the superhero era. It is PROBABLY about the start of the 22nd Century...we think. The Crash ends with a lot of the records of the past century or so scrambled and messed up, and this leads us to the Fourth Age-it's a cyberpunk/space exploration era and the subject of Survivors. Think a mixture of the Aliens universe and a lot of the bad cyberpunk films of the '80s and '90s, which leads up to a war between humans and an alien species-a nasty, and brutal one that leads to an empire being formed.

The Empire that forms-the Terran Empire, which is the title of the book, is the core of the Fifth Age. There's very definitely an aspect of Traveller to the universe. Got some ideas on how to handle some of the problems of huge empires, such as "how do you keep the Emperor/Empress from going Nero on you?" and more. Much fun, then then the power REALLY comes back...

Our last gaming age is the Sixth Age and this is the era of the Legion of Super Heroes, New Gods, and such. Superpowered and super human beings and aliens...much big fun. No title for this book yet, but there will be one...

Dream A Little (Girl) Dream...

2007-11-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Den Beste's comment about the otaku's dream girl hits hard in many, many ways...

Mostly because he's described one of the problems of any otaku-getting women interested in him in a good way. Most otaku girls/women tend to have issues...and they tend to be interested in men that most otaku males are not.

Case in point, YaoiCon was held last weekend and the hotel was near San Francisco Japantown. The restaurant there I like to eat at when I can (sadly, not daily-long story) had a horde of fangirls. Most likely they were very young-high school to early college-due to the high amounts of giggles over sexual pairings and triplets and other odd combinations. The only series they talked about? Naruto. The proposed relationships? Let's just say that anybody that has had any idle fantasies of Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy slashfic would find the love geometry disturbing...

So, for the fan that isn't highly bishionen...you can see the issue. Or that don't have on their Character Sheet "Dark Flaw:Secretly Not Gay".

Also, the Otaku Dream Girl is interested in the main character because they like him. Not what they can do for them-get them beer, solve their problems, be their last-choice date because the guy they wanted to take out dumped them at the last minute. They realize that the character's heart is good, even if his efforts are at best bumbling...or naive. Or, better yet, they know the character is worthy...and is worth knowing better.

The main character knows where they stand with the Otaku Dream Girl. It's not a game of "emotional minesweeper", or the ever-popular "does this outfit make me look fat?" passive-aggressive BS that some women think is their due. Or wondering if the girl is hanging out with them because the main character can fix their computer/do magic/has wished for a girl like her to stay with him forever.

Sadly, that's why the Otaku Dream Girl is a fantasy-the attractive girls want to have Johnny Depp, or Orlando Bloom, or whatever androgynous male boy-toy that looks good in boxers is this year. That is "kind" and "sensitive" and can know their emotions. Oh, and dress well, too. The ugly girls want something that tends to validate that they are fucked up, and not worthwhile. And the guys? We're confused here.

Strikers Seven Issue 2 Up!

2007-10-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Just finished and posted the whole second episode of Strikers Seven. Characters revealed, powers found, and some nice big explosions, too.

Still looking for an artist. And, thinking about scripting out Ultimate Livewires. Yay, fun.

Gundam 00 and "Solution Unsatisfactory"

2007-10-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

About 1940 or so (the question of exactly when the story was written is a bit in debate), Robert Heinlein wrote "Solution Unsatisfactory". This tale, which could be called the first of his "Patrol" stories, tells about how the development of a new technology (radioactive dust) forced the development of an organization that had to create peace at all costs, lest the weapons of war exterminate humanity. But, it ultimately falls onto the one man-whom could die tomorrow of a heart attack from his weak heart or from falling down stairs-to keep the whole mess from flying apart.

Which leads us to the newest Gundam series, Mobile Suit Gundam 00. I'm already on the second episode, and I've already begun to noticed that the guy behind the curtain is not doing a really good job of pulling the strings, running the console, and he's missing some of the notes.

Let's start with the premise-about 300 years from now, the Earth has pretty much flowed into three major governmental organizations, all of which control an orbital elevator that feeds their countries with energy (and presumably access to space, such as the Moon and the rest of the Solar System). Wars are still being fought, but they're mostly small, proxy wars that change very little. To this end, a mysterious organization called Celestial Being, using highly advanced technology in the form of the Gundam mobile suits, has sworn to end all wars between nations. Regardless of whom is the aggressor or the defender, Celestial Being will come down and destroy both sides.

This is a nice, lovely, Tranzi concept that is annoying as hell-probably the dream that a lot of European and such politicians have of the United Nations. But, the question becomes-if they are impartial to support either side in a war, does Celestial Being merely act as another way to preserve the status quo?

The first, real "mission" of Celestial Being is a battle in Sri Lanka, where the Human Reform League (which is China with other national bits) supports the government against the Tamil Tigers. In this battle, the Gundam pretty much exterminate the Human Reform League army and end the battle...and stops the Tamil Tigers from following up the battle. So, the HRL remains pretty much in control of Sri Lanka...and, while Celestial Being has stopped the "conventional" engagement of both sides, it hasn't prevented the Tamil Tigers, for example, from sneaking in somebody with a overcoat of Semtex. Hell, both sides are a hotbed of so many religious and ethnic messes, that maybe the presence of a foreign military is a good thing-it gives them all something to shoot at that isn't their own neighbors.

So, what is the ultimate goal of Celestial Being? Their avowed goal is to end all wars...how?

If a Shia wanders into a Shiite market and blows himself up with a Semtex overcoat, what does Celestial Being do? Hell, what will they do for a more conventional, infantry battle? Commit slaughter on the scale of the Soviet Union?

(Of course, the director of the series of Seiji Mizushima, whom directed Full Metal Alchemist. The series could be politically...quirky.)

Another factor I noticed was that nobody claims Africa...so, whom does claim Africa? Or have the powers of the world let Africa sink, rather than try and pour more treasure, lives, and time into that rat-hole?

I'm actually curious about how they'll solve the problems their plot makes for them. I have an idea of how I'd do it, and I wonder if our ideas will match at any point...

Need More Hours In The Day...

2007-09-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

I so very do.

Finished up Ergo Proxy and Reideen. Both good, will write more formal reviews of 'em in a few days. I want to do it now, but have to do things that are important so I can afford anime, like work.

Short bits-Ergo Proxy feels like a longer, longer version of Serial Experiments Lain, but with the whole world as the laboratory. Characters were interesting, but occasional bits of the whole Refrigerator Problem shows up.

Reideen is what it is-a post-Evangelion, giant robot anime. More like RahXephon (which is not an insult, I like and still watch RahXephon, unlike Evangelion-which I watch when I need to suffer), Reideen's plot both moves fast and slow, and it is the synchronization of these plots (the plot about what Reideen is and why the aliens are after it is slow, the "robot stomping" plot is fast). Tho, the Really, Really Huge Sword at the end was a fun thing, too...

Recent Anime Watching Habits...

2007-09-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't, sad to say, been seeing a lot of anime lately. Mostly due to work schedule, and there isn't a lot that I've been interested in. So...my very short list of series I've watched or been in the progress of watching...

Ergo Proxy-This has been a good series, so far. Very much in the whole vein/genre of "giant conspiracies", some of the moves have been telegraphed miles away...but, damn it, I'm still watching.
Grenadier-If there was any MORE fan service, they would have to cut into the plot...such as there is. Rushuna is most certainly doing cinematic gun shooting effects...
Reideen-Apparently, this is a remake of a much older series. It isn't bad...just that the way it was written, there were so many opportunities for plot and character expansion.
Bleach-I'm honestly watching it because the fights are good material for Exalted. I'm trying to figure out how to stat out the Ichigo/Kenpachi fight...

After Six Years Of War...

2007-09-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

...I have to seriously wonder if Al Qaeda is the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight...

Let's see. Osama tried to crash the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, and the American economy went up about the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias.

Iraq and Afghanistan are lurching towards something that can be called "reasonable" in a bad light. Considering where we're talking about in the world, that has to be progress.

There hasn't been a major terrorist attack outside of the Middle East in at least three years, unless you count the Keystone Kops attack in London with the flaming SUVs.

"But, other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"

And, the response of the critics of the war is little children antics in Gen. Petraus' hearing.

I'm scared that our enemies may save our government because they just can't do anything right...it's like watching one of those sitcoms where the entire cast is made up of morons, with one token sane person.

Cat Herding, a'la Conventions...

2007-08-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

Way back, oh, last year, I would watch Angela in action at SilCon 2006 meetings, and it was like watching a cat and dog fight...if she didn't get what she wanted, it was a Pain In The Ass...and I had to make it, somehow, work out right.

This year, I'm in charge of SilCon 2007's Staff Feed. And...the stress level is half that of SC2006.

Need to get chafing dishes instead of crock pots in place? Done.

The menu that has both a veggie and a meat option for three lunches and three dinners? Done.

Bringing up the three-body cooler for storing stuff? Done.

No stress. No drama. No "oh, I'm going to make it an issue to get my drama quotient up"...just professionals getting a job done.

Great times, and there will be some well-fed people.

If I Were A Terrorist, I Wouldn't Post At The New York Times

2007-08-09T21:04:00.002-07:00

(Tho, considering some of the bone-headed things the NYT has done lately, I wouldn't be surprised...thanks to Michelle Malkin for finding this.)

Steven Levitt posted in his New York Times blog that he wanted people to make suggestions on how to attack the country. And, of course, he intended this as a purely thought exercise so that "we could defend against it". Of course, he covers his own ass with all sorts of statements that he intends for all of these thoughts to be used to build better defenses...

My God, is this stupid or what? You play the whole game of "oh, let's think up some ideas", in a public forum and people might look into it...and use them.

Hell, I could probably cripple a good bit of the economy with six panel trucks, enough ANFO, and five "willing martyrs". Of course, I'm not going to tell people HOW, especially in public.

Of course, the New York Times has done some seriously bone-headed things, turning the paper of record into a paper with a record-and a bad one that's getting worse. The Old Grey Lady may not be around much longer...and that might be a good thing.

The Long Review Of "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows"

2007-08-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

I promised a longer review, and with the availability of the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, I'm just going to concentrate on the highlights and the things that bothered the hell out of me about the series.

I've said before, and I'll say it again-of the seven books, Deathly Hollows was about second or third to the worst of the series (it depends upon if I count the second worse book-Order of the Phoenix-as a whole or only about a half or so of the book, with Chamber of Secrets being the worse). One of the biggest issues of the book is that the build up of Voldermort as the big villain, and that the response of the Ministry of Magic was so ineffective. My issues? There's a list, so you have been warned-

After the last War with the Dark Lord, I would have been shocked if there hadn't been hordes of researchers trying to develop a way to detect if somebody was under the Imperious Curse-even if it was just the Aurtor's office and even if it kept giving back whole loads of false positive results to be investigated. We know-from at least from Half-Blooded Prince-that memory modifications can be detected and a powerful wizard can find the original memories. That Voldermort's minions went directly for the head of the Ministry of Magical Enforcement prior to the head of the Ministry itself was a brilliant move in one respects-but another that could have been a failure, as the department should have been primed for keeping an eye on people in their own section that would have acted improperly.

Hell, considering how important the job is and how much of a threat it would be if the head of the Ministry of Magical Enforcement fell under somebody else's control, they would have done something like James Bond's "M"-there are all sorts of details that nobody knows or "everybody knows" that is wrong; all as a concealment for the real man (or woman) behind the curtain.
That the head of the Ministry of Magic was assassinated was another one of those "brilliant moves" that could and would have backfired. Ignore the change in the Wizarding World that happened after the Minister's death...yes, probably there was a deep prejudice against non-pureblood wizards in the magical world, but to have a change and to see it happen so fast pushes the point too hard. Especially as probably many pure-blood families have at least one half-blood or "foundling" Muggle in their family tree, and probably recently. In addition, many would have found the sudden and total shifts in authority rules in the Ministry to have engendered a huge amount of hate in the various members of the Ministry that wern't willing to follow-and there would have been all sorts of passive resistance, "Ooops, sorry Miss Umbridge, the paperwork you requested was misfiled somewhere, should find it by the end of the month, sorry!"

Once again, this falls into the level of "believability" in the plot. More interesting would have been splitting up this aspect of the plot between the last three books-the first having the Minister of Magic sacked and the new Minister seeming to be "effective" and dropping all sorts of new rules. By Half Blooded Prince, many suspect that he is at least sympathetic to Voldermort's aims, but has put himself in such a position of the old saw that "if this is the cure, give me the disease" is applicable. In Deathly Hallows, the new Minister of Magic can enforce his aims, which are for the "purification" of the Wizarding race.
Oh, and don't tell me that if the Ministry of Magic in the UK had gone this bad, other Wizarding organizations wouldn't have started to pay attention-and planned on how to "clean up the mess" in Jolly Old England. The United States, at least, would have been planning something...

Another big issues is the Deathly Hallows themselves. For three of the most powerful magical items in existence, and one of them owned by the a Dark wizard whom was only second to Voldermort because he didn't have enough time to get really evil, there should have been many, many, many more hints scattered throughout the books. So, from my perspective, the hints could have been dropped like this-

Hermione learns about the book of fairly tales during her research into the Sorcerer's Stone, thinking that the Resurrection Stone was another name or hint about the Sorcerer's Stone.
In the second book, Gilderoy Lockhart would have been looking for anything to polish up his magical reputation, and a real Deathly Hallow in the form of Potter's invisibility cloak would have done wonders. Which would have dropped hints along the lines of "why are people so interested in this cloak?".
By the third book, the first real seeds of the nature of the Deathly Hallows should have shown up when in an act of desperation, Harry uses the Invisibilty Cloak against the Dementors, even warned that they wouldn't be fooled by it...and they pass by without seeing him.
Fourth book, we get to the wand. A small throw-away scene when Ollivander asks to look at Dumbledore's wand, and looks at the wand and Dumbedore in mixed amazement and lust and horror would have been very suitable indeed...
Fifth book...hm, good question. We bring back the stone (in the form of the first hints of the Horacrux) and the duel between Dumbledore and Voldermort, we get hints that Dumbledore is getting older and not as good, but his skills aren't slipping as fast as they should...
Sixth book is where we get a serious hint about the nature of at least one Deathly Hallow-why would Dumbledore even think about wearing such a powerful and dangerous cursed magical artifact? Unless there was another power behind it...that Dumbedore wanted to use.
Finally, the seventh book is where all the items are brought together with each other.

I wonder, seriously, if the series is "as planned" out as Rowling has claimed it was. Oh, an author should be allowed some spontaneity in their plots, and occasionally a character can get away from the author...but, you don't just drop a powerful "gun" in the last part of a book, it feels too much like a deus ex machine. And, I still think that Harry should have kept the Elder Wand-after everything he faced, after everything he stood for, he earned the right to that wand.

Third problem is one of the characters that falls in the category of "love to hate" in the form of Serverus Snape-I kept thinking of him prior to Deathly Hallows in the same form as Kerr Avon, a character that has his own agenda and his own plans. That the question of "who is he loyal to", I've always held that the question of Snape's loyalty is simple-that he's loyal to Serverus Snape without exception. His working with Dumbledore to stop Voldermort is intended for the sole purpose of having both of them kill each other, so that Snape is on the top. Snape has demonstrated on several occasions that he is a highly competent wizard with a multitude of skills and ambition.

This version of Snape, the one that we see at the end of Deathly Hallows is one that bothers me because...hell, we should have gotten more hints about his lust/obsession/"I'm your greatest fan" aspect of the relationship between him and Lily Potter. That his sole reason for abandoning the Dark Lord was that he found out that Lily would have been killed by Voldermort. And, his hatred of Harry was based upon how much of James Potter was in Harry, but his defense of Harry out of his unrequited love of Lily lessens him. I could see seriously that he hated Harry because of him, Voldemort killed Lily, but he sees Harry as the tool to finally achieve his goals-of ending Voldermort after Voldermort takes out Dumbledore. And, quite frankly...after seeing most of the representations of James as a teenager, I wonder seriously how much of Snape's hate of James was justified, on the same plain as the hate of a goth nerd to the head of the football team that everybody liked because he knew who to suck up to and who to blow-and stole the love of his life from him.

Now, we get to Dumbledore-whom I have said was pulling off a pretty intricate Xanatos Roulette throughout the books-and this gets back to the "plotting and planning" of Rowling thing that I wonder she did. That Harry's only real father figure planned-from the start to the end-planned to feed into the meat grinder of Voldemort's war and have him killed so that Voldemort would finally be vulnerable to another, while all the time he was leading Harry to believe that he was the one that would stop Voldermort. And, Dumbledore's history-a nice counterpoint to Voldermort-would have been another thing to have all sorts of hints dropped into his life, rather than at the end. You knock a character like he was off of his pedestal carefully, or you crush a whole lot of plots-and he was just thrown off the pedestal really, really hard.

The last bit of my dislike of the series was that, to be frank, how much did Harry Potter change through the books? With the exception of a patch in Order of the Phoenix (which I see as kind of justified-throughout most of the book he was treated like a mushroom by most of his authority figures), Harry has always been a pretty decent, pretty good person. And, he has never been tempted by some of the deeper aspects of power in the Wizarding World...not even once. The nearest he has been tempted has been the Mirror of Erised to find the childhood that he wanted. Even when confronted with the last two of the Deathly Hallows, he chose to get rid of one of them-the one that the entire book seemed primed to give Harry in the form of the Elder Wand. Despite stories to the contrary, the Elder Wand is not the One Ring and Harry Potter has shown that he possessed strength of character to have held onto it. Of course, you have to wonder where that strength of character came from-inside himself, or the enchantment on his house that kept him safe from harm--which had to have included mental harm, as his treatment by the Dursleys damn near bordered on child abuse and would have made him a perfect Muggle hater.

It wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't a good book, and we were all primed for a good book. Tho, at the very least, it meant that people are reading more...and that is never a bad thing. I don't regret buying it, I don't regret reading it, I just regret it wasn't a better book.

My Short Review Of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows"

2007-07-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, there's a short and a long review. The long review will be later.

My short review-

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows" is the last book in J.R. Rowling's famous series of books about the English Wizarding world, and it's title character, Harry Potter. While the series, from how it was written, tried to end with a bang; it instead ended with a whimper. The book suffers from several Xanatos Roulettes, not the least of which is the other title "character" of the book-the famed Deathly Hollows.

The plotting suffered...there were hints that should have been dropped in earlier books, and earlier portions of the book, that weren't.

At the end, you feel glad that it ended-because the book ended in a major deus ex machine...one that would frustrate many readers. It felt like Rowling changed the rules of how magic worked...just so she could get the ending she wanted. Add to that a series compression of how it should have ended...which would have been a great "travelogue" sort of book.

Add to that the final annoyance, in my mind-the treatement of Snape. Everything about him, up until the last book, was a character that was trying to build up his own abilities so that when Volermort and Dumbledore finally slag each other, he's at the top of the heap. I kept looking at the character's end as being one like Kerr Avon, smiling as both sides realized that he's set them both up to kill each other off...

I think that I won't be able to come back to this book for a bit. How bad was it? I got it Saturday and pulled it from my bag for work (I have usually two hardcover and two or three paperback books for reading on public transit) tonight. This is the shortest time that I've ever had a book in my bag, not even making it through the week. I don't think I'll be reading it, any time soon again. It bothered me that much...

Multi-Posting

2007-07-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

Short posts today, just to get things off my chest. More details as I have time.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows? IMHO, the book was about second from the worst in the series (#5 aka Order of the Phoenix annoyed me to no end, until about the last third). And, you read it and go back through the other books...and Rowling really, really sucks when she tries to do plotting. I'll discuss this in more depth, but let's just say that if this is was qualifies as "good fiction", I should work harder on trying to do a Heinlien-esque juvenile/young adult book.
I have dream of all the buses in San Francisco smelling like french fries. One of the biggest advantages of this would be that we'd be cutting off more of our dependence on foreign oil. So very much always a good thing.
Another Harry Potter comment...I really, really, really hate how Serverus Snape died at the end of the series. Up until the end, I always kept viewing his character as more of a Avon-type character-ultimately his loyalties were to himself, and nobody else, and he was running the hell out of all the other people.

Damn it, I'm talking more about this book than I want to right now.

Will have my much more complete and complicated review of the last Harry Potter book up either tomorrow or Thursday.

An Insult To Bottom Feeders

2007-07-15T08:47:00.001-07:00

Let's see, Ted "I Never Met A Terrorist I Didn't Like" Rall is at it again.

I had to give it a day so I could think about keeping my temper. Not only is it a flat-out insult on American troops, it makes a direct comparison to American soldiers and Al-Qaeda "soldiers" and their ilk.

Last time I checked, America soldiers would use "hard" methods of interrogation, which we're allowed because many of these "insurgents"/terrorists are not protected by the Geneva Conventions up to about Article IV(which the US is not a signature of)-they are not a part of an organized military chain of command, openly wear their weapons and are identifiable as soldiers, make an effort to avoid civilian casualties, and several other factors.

We don't roast up the son of a local headman for dinner as a threat to remain "loyal" to the cause.

Nor do we just slaughter people and bury them in the groves. Even though I think many Iraqis wouldn't have a problem with us just stuffing many members of Al Qaeda in shallow graves coated with pig lard.

I really, really wonder what people like Ted Rall think. If they do "think". Do they believe because they're "progressive" and oh so socialist, they won't be touched by people like this?

Asshats.

The Big Easy Of The Big Easy

2007-07-11T22:15:00.001-07:00

Just had this inspirational brainstorm. I was reading and thinking about "Life On Mars", and thought about this idea for a story...

Take a detective from New Orleans, who's partner just died. She's wanting to find out who killed him...and she has a new partner.

He's very much an "old school" cop. He dresses as much as you can, like he was from the '70s. He "interrogates" people in ways that a lot of cops aren't allowed these days. Has problems with cell phones and computers. Is a "bit" dirty (there's two scenes that reflects this-one is when she meets him, he's eating a meal, and the guy that owns the resturant won't take her money, cause "she's his friend". A second incident is when a guy tries to slip him a $100 to make a problem go away-he lights the bill on fire and stuffs it in the crook's pocket).

In short, he seems like he was resurrected from the '70s.

Which he was.

It turns out (we'll learn this as the series goes on) that he died in 1976, killed by six people-two he didn't know, his old partner, and three other people. All to keep the secret of a land deal that made them millions. When Hurricane Katrina hit...he came back from the dead.

By the end of first season, we learn that when he "brings to justice" the six that killed him, he gets to go on to Heaven. If he gets killed again (which can only happen if his head is cut off), he goes straight to Hell...

Interesting bits of drama, and there's also the whole "duck out of water" aspect to the story.

Stupid, Stupid Greens...

2007-07-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

(Stolen from Steve DenBeste...)

I do have to admit, it's a good idea. A company in California is building a solar farm, and on the one hand, that's a good thing. Supplies eighty megawatts over 640 acres. Of course, this is during sunlight hours...

Also, if my math is right, you're getting about 0.125 megawatts per acre. And, probably subsiding the solar power panel industry, which really needs to spend more in research to make solar panels tougher, more capable, lighter, and cheaper. And, while it will make the heart of any tranzi whom could get cancer from a dosage of heavy metals in water that requires major effort to find happy, it is a waste-worse yet, it's an arrogant waste.

Let's see. If my math is right, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant generates about 2.9 megawatts per acre. If you built the same facility on the same bit of ground as the solar plant, that would be 1856 megawatts-1.8 gigawatts, which is noticeable fraction of the State of California's power needs. Twenty nuclear power plants this size and you have the entire state's power needs and PG&E can get back into the buisness of selling power out of the state, which is why California's bills tended to be so low for so long.

(Yes, I know after deregulation that PG&E isn't in the power selling business-I think. Let me just use my ideas and thoughts here).

Of course, that would require us to build Evil Nuclear Reactors, which is kind of like invoking Satan to the Gaia-worshiping environmentalist Greens and Tranzis.

I wonder, seriously, how well this planet will work out in the end.

Happy 4th Of July...

2007-07-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you that are outside the United States...happy Wednesday.

For American citizens...the nation has been crazy, but we're still here, and not leaving any time soon.

So, for all of you that want America to go away, you can all come and kiss my lovely ass.

Tales From The Side-SF Pride 2007

2007-06-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

Today was the SF Pride Parade and I went, expecting to have a good, and busy time.

That I did, but I honestly didn't expect how busy....

First clue should have been on BART, when by the time I got to North Berkeley, I was packed into a train that resembled one from Japan than on a Sunday.

And, to the people that organized MUNI, when you have these kinds of crowds, you really, really need to have more trains. And this was to the Giants game. Maybe there should be a special "Sunday" schedule (which is pretty much a Saturday schedule), so that the massive, massive crowds can be accommodated. But, this is a good thing-at the very least, it means that that people will be spending money and making the world a better place, a bit at the time.

Of course, I didn't even make it to Pride to see something interesting. These two lovely ladies were a part of Azure Bellydance (sadly no website), and they had participated in the Pride parade. Great ladies, tired but very happy and highly professional about it.

It was a good sign, I think...they looked like that they had a wonderful, wonderful time.

I came into the show via the Civic Center MUNI station...and the whole party was going on, and it wasn't even NOON...I was amazed. And happy, because this year, I was getting my Utilikilt...something that I've wanted for a long, long while.

And, blessed be, the Utilikilt booth is right there, which is a good, good thing. I have the cash, I have the time, I'm going to get myself fitted, and have my own Utilikilt, something to wear that's all new for me.

I discover exactly what size I need...and they don't have any.

Damn. A great plan ruined. Oh, well.

I go forth, and explore the whole aspect of the Pride Parade, and I'm finding all sorts of neat people. For example...

These lovely and fascinating ladies were at SF Pride from Berkeley. Great people, and I think I should have chattered at them a bit more. Neat people, and very cute. I would love to run into them all again.

Ah yes, Honeybuns and Lola. Two other lovely ladies that I would love to meet again-and buy dinner, and wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers, unless they were very, very messy...

Some more people whom came to Pride, and looked like they were having loads of fun. Not the least of which is that the day was still young...

The lovely and loving ladies of The Sock Boutique. They were great with the schwag, and it made me a bit guilty that I wasn't able to really get anything they had offered to sell. Which was a shame, they have great stuff...

This was at 1:30...and it just kept getting busier and busier indeed...

And, yet again, we have the average and run-of-the-mill SF lunatic. It's always fun to see them....

Happy, happy couples. You can't look at them, and not feel happy for them. Love is so very hard to find in this world indeed. We all need more love in this world.

Two very happy grey bears. I have to smile at them, at that age, they look happy and so much in love. You can't ask for more than that...and yes, I'm envious.

More ladies of Pride. I love the costumes, it feels so very much like a really, really good party at a sci-fi con with some of them.

Brekke of the Society of Janus, who is wearing such a lovely, lovely corset...

I love women in corsets, there are so many ways they are lovely indeed...

Oh, did I mention this lovely lady. Her name is Jazz, a dear friend of mine, and I like her a lot. She wears a corset, and so very sadly, she's taken....

...namely, to the guy on the left. Lucky man indeed.

By this time, it was nearly 2 pm, and the crowds were just packed...I realized that my hate of crowds would be kicking in like clockwork, and it was time for me to get out of there. I hate being packed in with people, it makes me feel like a sheep.

I hate feeling like a sheep. I'm very much a wolf.

On my way out, I ran into these lovely two ladies... The lady on the left is Artemis Chase, model and all-around cutie. Loved her friend, too. Two more lovely women to invite to dinner... (Edit: Her friend's name is Charisma Glitteratti.)

Second Test Drive Completed-"Full Metal Panic!-The Second Raid"

2007-06-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

So, due to the fact that I'm looking at paying for school in about two months (donations to The Cause are always accepted...), I haven't had a chance to watch the series on DVD yet.

Warning, there are spoilers...

1)What I liked about the series was that we got a better sense of how MITHRIL relates to the rest of the world. Not the least of which is how Teresa keeps herself in charge-however hard it might be.
2)Emotional activities....you know what, I can really sypathize with Sousuke. He's discovering that he's not just a solider anymore, but has other parts of his life that he can do and explore. And, that he's in love with Kaname...
3)Of course, Kaname changes, too. She demonstrates an ability to defend herself, think quick, and work fast on her feet. Oh, and that she can wield a mean tazer.
4)I'm curious about the nature of the whole Amalgam/MITHRL relationship-is this a "secret war" aspect, a'la the whole SHIELD/AIM conflict in Marvel comic books? Or are the being used as proxy forces for world powers?
5)Of course, the series suffers from "Series Syndrome"-the main characters can't resolve their feeling for each other, not really...since that would mean the end of the series. Or, it would get rid of a lot of the comedic plot aspects of it.
6)I know there are several more books and such in the series...when will we see them animated and published, so I can see them? And read the original books...

Opinion? If you liked the first series, you'll like this one. If you didn't...don't expect this to change your mind. Nice mecha combat action, I liked it.

What's Going On Out There?

2007-05-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

It's a serious question. On the Liberal side of the aisle, the insanity has hit the mainstream. By God, many of the so-called leaders have made sounds and chattered in ways that twenty years ago...hell, ten years ago would have had reasonable and total accusations of the world "treason" bandied about. Not the least of which is the whole "we want out of Iraq" chant from senior leadership of the Democratic party. They are willing to make the blood that American soldiers have shed, the work of thousands that have fought and stood by Iraqis that want a nation of laws, a nation where they know they won't be killed walking down the street because they believe in a slightly different version of God, all for domestic political points. DOMESTIC! POLITICAL! POINTS!

And, let's not ignore our so-called "conservative" and "Republican" friends on the other side of the street. EVERY SINGLE POLL that has checked on this subject has stated that people want a border wall and law enforcement first on the whole illegal immigration issue. Emphasis on the first part, before anything that looks like a guest worker program or amnesty. And enhanced enforcement of the laws-busting employers that knowingly use illegal immigrant labor, busting up gangs that get across the border to escape justice, and keeping people from coming here and using our laws to surf the welfare rolls. Instead, it's like the White House has been working with the Mexican goverment and given it everything they want...

And, the sides are crazy. Not even during the Clinton years did things get this crazy. I don't think any of us hated him in the same way the Left does with the BDS-we didn't like him, thought he was fool and a knave and an idiot...but we just wanted him to go away and join Jimmy Carter in peanut farming. To become a trivia question on Hollywood Squares. Not this outpouring of venom that is standard....I don't think even the Freepers were this insanely hateful of Clinton.

I wonder, seriously, what will happen in this upcoming election. It hasn't gotten serious yet, but when it does, it will be a messy election.

Back From The Educational Wars

2007-05-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Long few months, mostly the fun of learning how to work through the various Adobe programs. Still discovering new tricks for old monstrosities.

Will be blogging more in the next few months, and I have gotten a nice, new Nikon D70S (okay, used but in good shape) to play with. Expect photos, some of which might be NSFW (you'll be warned if there is such stuff).

The Plot Glut

2007-04-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Steve DenBeste was talking about how, once you boil it all down, a lot of the harem animes are the same. Worse yet, you need to be a CPM to really differentiate between some of the shows. And their greatest sin? They flunk the refrigerator test, even before you finish the show.

Does this tie into the glut of remakes? Let's see, Disturbia is a remake of one of the great classics (Rear Window), the swarm of TV shows being remade into movies (the person that does an A-Team remake will go on the same list at Uwe Boll as "people I'll feed into wood chipper, feet first"), and such.

Why? Quite frankly, we're running out of plots. It hasn't all been done before, but I'd say about 70-80% of it's all been done before. What's left is getting pretty esoteric, and pretty weird-and something off-the-wall and strange.

Some of the things that could be done...here's an idea. Try taking a trope, and subervting it.

I've been banging around this idea for a manga/anime seires. Take the Fushigi Yugi plot and mess around with it...

Our main character is accidentally summoned from our world to a Asian magical fantasy world to fulfill a prophesy. The Princess of Roses will marry the Dragon Prince, and will lead that world through it's next thousand years of what it becomes. As the time comes closer, the sixteen Dragon Princes (and Princesses) start appearing, eight bright and eight dark. Once the Dragons kill each other off, one will be left to marry the Princess. If a bright prince marries the Princess, "good" things happen. If a dark prince marries the Princess, "bad" things happen. Both for a given value of good and bad.

So, the "good" and "bad" guys are gathering up the Princes and Princesses to await the summoning of the Princess of Roses...

And this time, the summoned one is a guy. That has all the characteristics and rules of the marks the Princess of Roses should be. Whom is most certainly not a retiring and reticent type. He can make gunpowder and can do blacksmithing, and is a military and engineering otaku. He knows history. A few episodes along, he organizes a village into a small Roman legion with longbows for ranged weapons. He exists as a major change in the world...and there are people that don't want change.

Hilarity, death, romance, and comedy ensue from there.

Concealed Carry For California?

2007-04-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

I need some help here.

According to this, there is a pretty set procedure for getting a proposition on the ballot.

After what happened today at Virgina Tech, I think it's time.

Hell, I think it's way past time.

Only one.

That's all that had to have been there. Only one with a gun. Only one that was willing to stand up and fight.

Highly Depressing...

2007-04-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Everybody has heard the news about the attacks on the Virgina Tech campus.

What makes it worse is that there was a major legislative proposal to allow concealed carry on campus. That it died on committee is something that people will be regretting.

My fears? I go to college, in the evenings. And, as you know God made little green apples, somebody is going to try and do better-and survive.

If it happens when I'm around...I live in California. Where the "right people" think we shouldn't be able to defend ourselves. Because if I could, I'd be carrying. Not because of this...because I believe I should be able to defend myself. And others. A state of affairs that somebody at work would have liked-she got robbed in San Francisco, in broad daylight, by a free-lance socialist. Shooting him a few times would have been a good thing, in my opinion...

Grr. I'm tired and long days...and the idiot count has gone up...

Saw "300" Again...

2007-04-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

...and, damn if that isn't a powerful film.

It's the sort of film Hollywood should be making. The bad guys are bad guys, the good guys are good guys, the villains are nasty, and the moral is one that should be told, over and over and over again.

Hollywood won't make this kind of film, because it means they have to acknowledge that there is good and evil. Not just "a few points of view".

The bad guys commit horrible atrocities in the name of their god-king. Oh, did I mention that they consider civilians a "valid target"?

I wonder why Hollyweird wouldn't want to make heroes that fight this kind of evil...

First Test Drive Completed!

2007-04-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

I got to watch Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, all thirteen episodes. God bless fansubs.

It's a fun, occasionally light, occasionally deep series. Fight choreography is much different, it does flow togeter a lot better. I did especially love the magic system...spells more as programs than arcane formulas. Interesting concept, I must think about it more...

I really wish the characters were older, Episode 5 left me feeling a bit icky, and Fate Testarossa was pushing about 1.2-1.3 reis (clone of the original girl and despised by her "mother", and used only to gather the Jewel Seeds needed to resurrect the original). It was a good story, tho the next series seems to be aiming at the whole shojo/blowing up Tokyo power levels. Not sure how that'll be...but we'll see.

Opinion? Worth watching if you're a big fan of the "magical girl" genre. The character youth should be carefully considered, but it's a good show.

This Looks Awfully Familiar...

2007-03-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

This map is a map of the Internet, posted by somebody that logged IP connections. While looking at this, I pulled out my copy of the Ghost in The Shell manga, and turns out that the map that Shirow posted...looks an awful lot like about the map he had...and very much like a star cluster.

Hm...if Sword of the Stars could support it...run a map built like this. Or Starfire...GOD, the game would take few YEARS to go through. We'd need computer support just to track the production. And combat....I'm scared in so many ways. We could reach battles that would make ISW 4 seem tiny and puny. It could be fleets measured in thousands of ships. Hell, we might even have to make the game played so that whole TEAMS of players were playing the Emperor and Imperial governors of just one empire, as a part of an game that would take years to play through. It's scary on so many levels.

But, it's one of those things that should be tried. And played.

When I win the lottery...maybe.

Watching The Last Episode Of Battlestar Galactica Season Three... (Warning, Spoilers)

2007-03-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

...and, I do have to say this.

What the motherfracking hell was going on?
(SPOILERS)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Are they all toasters and just don't know it? We know that Laura Roslin, Caprica Six, and Athena are sharing the "imaging" of the Opera House with Baltar.

Which also leads to the next big question-what happens next? Galactica is facing off against a BIG Cylon fleet. Starbuck is back...and she says she knows how to get to Earth. Lee's in a Viper, and probably realized what he is-a pilot. We have the Final Five there...and that means that there are at least two hybrid Cylon/human children. And, what is their ultimate agenda? To finally end the war between Cylon and human?

And, there won't be new episodes until 2008.

Motherfrackers!

ADDITION-Friend of mine made a comment, and I have a scary theory.

Roslin is an early version of the human/Cylon hybrid. She had a vision of Leoben Convoy in Season One, not focused...but pretty specific. The drug she was taking for her cancer was causing hallucinations, not quite specific. This might have unlocked her latent ability to image. After she was injected with Hera's blood to cure her cancer...the hallucinations and dreams have been getting more and more specific.

All of her hallucinations that we see on-screen are of Cylons. Even the near-death hallucination she had in Epiphanines had Cylons in it, in one form or another.

That she's imaging with Hera/Athena is one thing. That they're sharing the imagery with Caprica Six is something...crazy. Does that make Baltar a Cylon? A hybrid that shares "imagry" with Caprica Six (their mutual hallucinations)?

And, what is the agenda of the Final Five? All of them are trusted people, having proven their loyalty time and time again, in blood and fire. Where does their agenda lead for all the sides?

BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!

2007-03-22T23:26:00.000-07:00

You know, you look at this, and you realize that people are crazy in GOOD ways.

Somebody is going to do the stats in a game system, you know it. Probably Warhammer 40K.

And, you know somebody will make the miniatures.

And there will be the battle...

Damn it, I want this on a T-Shirt. And if it wasn't going to call down a Plague Of Lawyers...I'd make this T-shirt...

Anime Crash Test Dummy

2007-03-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

I think this is going to be my big thing for the next few months. I'm going to be looking at various fansubs and seeing what's pretty cool and what sucks.

There will be much suckage, I'm fearing. I haven't seen a lot lately that has me impressed.

So, time to fire up the BitTorrent software and see what's up. Note, I'm going only to post complete series (just in case it's pretty decent at the end), so be warned.

Anime Frustration

2007-03-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

I think that me and Steve DenBeste are in full agreement on this-the latest round of anime is kind of sucking.

Badly.

Worse, a lot of remakes, a sign of studios that are needing a serious creative boost (and I want to know whom thought it was a good idea to make a second season of Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, so I can whap them on the back of the head with a two stroke guitar). Those whom are "in the know"-what is the average age of directors and anime writers these days?

Sadly, even the fansubs are getting kind of dull. Let's see, what I got recently was Soko No Strain, in which the main female lead's best friend is a doll that she talks to and never responds, never acts, never does anything but sit there, the entire series. The mecha were too curved for my tastes, looking more like mobile statues than weapons, and the whole concept of a war that takes place at relativistic speed was done better by, oh, Gunbuster and The Forever War....

My theory? Two-fold. The first is the export market has finally caught up with Anime-they know that eventually something will be sold to America. And, they want the next Naruto, the next Cowboy Bebop, the next Evangelion-the mega hit that will make them millions in DVD sales, toys, models, look-alike cosmetic surgery, porn... And, if what I can see on TeeVee and in the stores is what "Americans" like to buy, we're buying a lot of yaoi, drama, shonen-ai faire, and similar. No big mecha stories or "deep" plots.

Oh, and porn, lots and lots of porn...

Second? The cost of investment in anime means that a lot fewer chances can be taken. Like movies, if you don't have a "name" (voice actor, director, studio, etc), fans won't go to see the movie/anime. This means that this is the time for the independent studios to start making products. I do think that the Internet will save anime-if only because within the decade, somebody will make a complete series, produce it, master it, press it on DVD...and only meet once for the release party.
(And, if there's any justice in the world, I'll be writing the scripts and directing...).

I'm a tad frustrated...and I hope to see more neat stuff, and soon.

Watching Gunbuster and Gunbuster 2

2007-03-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

So, I just got Gunbuster on DVD, and watching Gunbuster 2 (Diebuster) via the ever-lovely and useful BitTorrent (I swear, I've saved more on getting BAD anime via download than all the reviews in the world). And, you know what? Gunbuster still holds up, despite being nearly twenty years old (yes, TWENTY years, that's scary...). My only complaint-if any-would have been that if there was a series that deserved a "reimaging" or at the very least bringing the animation quality up to "modern" standards, this is it.

And, despite the fact that GAINAX can't normally do a sequel to save their lives, Gunbuster 2 ties in a lot of the same themes. The same universe-and the way the story is told, it's more like a continuity of the original series. The series is a hell of a lot better than any of the "oh no, humanity sucks" tales of Evangelion (GOD, that series has gotten on my nerves lately, much better series are languishing in obscurity, yet the passive-aggressive Shinji and annoying company are going to have a new series made of their adventures...). I would love to know more about what happened before Gunbuster 2, why the Dix-Neuf had it's degeneracy reactor removed, why the defense system of Operation Galaxy Center Throw changed into the Space Monsters of the series, and why the Topless came about...a hell of a lot more than wanting to find Shinji Ikari and give him a beat-down that would make Camile Vidan go "damn, that boy has it rough".

Supposedly, Gunbuster 2 will be coming out on DVD. Will I get it? Do bears poop in the woods?

Random Week Notes

2007-02-19T08:58:00.000-08:00

Haven't updated this in a week. It feels like a month, between work, school, and a social life that is just confusing the hell out of me.

But, for all of my fans (all three of you), here are some of the thoughts/things that my brain has been up to.

Fate/stay night is just flat, like week-old opened soda. Solty Rei has been done before, and done better. And, this sucks...I'm looking through some of the anime I have, and there isn't much new stuff-fan or pro subbed-that is about as good as a lot of the stuff in my library that would be considered "classic" anime. I want new stuff, but a lot of what the market seems to be pushing out is...watered down? Dumbed down? As if they know they're aiming for the American domestic market.

I just finished up the whole Full Metal Alchemist TV series, then watched the movie. I liked the note the TV series ended on. I hated the movie, if only because it felt way too much like they were trying to recycle the character models. At least this time (unlike way too much anime) the Nazis were bad guys...
Everybody tells me that I need to do two things-get a Mac, and get a girlfriend. On the first, I like the big iron of my PC-okay, I might have to replace the mobo, I KNOW I'm going to have to replace the sound card...but, I can do that with my PC. Macs...once they get too far, it's time to buy a new one. Tho, upgrading the new Mac Pro with the heavy-duty Xeno processors (violating factory warentee!) and setting up my box as a dual-boot Windows/OSX system has a temptation to it.

On the girlfriend issue? Working on it. So far, eighteen people have told me I need one since the start of the year. When I get to number twenty, I'm making them a plaque...
Bring me the head of Bill Gates.
I'm curious-how do most men learn how to date? 'Cause most "men's magazines" tend to be nearly usless on this subject. My female friends have suggested that I try a sneaking a look at Cosmo or Elle or such. At this point, it just might be worth trying...
Fantasy books have been annoying the hell out of me. I personally found trying to read any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be an exercise in homework, which is one of the reasons why I'm reading something else. And, they keep using the same European models, or a Japanese model. I would find it awesome if somebody set a good novel in the Era of Warring States in China, or Byzantinum (the various tales of Bellasarius are good reads).

More thoughts as my brain hits them...

There Is Something Rotten in Redmond, WA.

2007-02-12T06:16:00.000-08:00

My opinions of Microsoft are very...frustrating. Yes, they've probably done more to bring computers to people than any other company in the world (in the form of Windows 95), but damned if they aren't frustrating at times.

Case in point is my latest set of issues with my installation of Windows XP. Mind you, this is the Home edition, not the Professional one (and I wonder seriously why this is...), and I've just had to reinstall it after my computer went crazy lately. Every two or three days, the computer claims that it's missing a vital file in the setup folder. So, I boot up Windows from the CD and go to the recovery console.

Mind you, I do nothing else, just go to the recovery console DOS prompt, and exit and reboot the computer. Computer then works fine for about 2-3 days, without a hitch.

I wonder if this problem would mysteriously clear up if I either got Windows XP Professional, or bought Windows Vista. In which case, I'm going to be doing this for a while...there is no way I'm going anywhere NEAR Vista until the SP1 release on DVD. And I upgrade my motherboard and video card to handle the Aero interface. And pay for somebody to replace my cold, unfeeling mechanical heart.

Piss-Poor Excuse

2007-02-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

Sad to say, I've been so busy with the rest of my life (namely school and work), I haven't blogged much.

But, seeing this article, I have to comment, even if it's pretty quickly. Why aren't more people going to the movies? When sixty percent of the poll respondents comment that they are avoiding the films because of issues that the studios are responsible for (cost and movies), and the major studios are blaming other factors (namely piracy), there is a serious disconnect.

Honestly, the last few years, most of the movies I've seen have been sausage-a product that is so heavily processed and heavily shaped and stuffed into a focus-group created casing. It takes a director with serious gravitas and authority, or probably kept the studio execs stoned and drunk, to make something that isn't sausage. Most of the nominees for this years Oscars are the "independent" films, not major studio productions. And, most of us don't want to spend $10 for sausage...

Don't know how to solve it. It feels an awful lot like the '70s, when older management in the top in Hollywood were unable to get "cool", and a new generation of directors fought them toot-and-nail to make the films they wanted. My question becomes...who becomes the creative souls needed?

Not Sure If I Should Be Happy Or Sad...

2007-02-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

...that the UK foils a terror plot every six weeks.

Happy that the UK is keeping on top of this, that they're able to prevent terror plots like the soldier beheading attempt...it's like the gang that couldn't shoot straight. That the plots are so...amateur. Damn it, if you're the bad guys, you should have at least something that looks like a competent plot...

Sad that the UK-a major bastion of multi-culturalism and a definite effort by people to "get along"-has a terror plot that gets busted every six weeks. That there is such a flood of hate and anger against a nation that wishes them nothing but the best is scary...

I'm curious about what happens if this keeps up-how will England react? And, through England, the United States...

Poached Egg

2007-02-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

How my brain feels right now.

There is, somewhere in there, a pretty sharp piece on Iraq...but, I know that if I write it now, and people could understand it...I think the advocacy of saturation nuclear bombardment would come through way too hard, when I think it's probably our last option.

Tomorrow, once the computer's working again (using a friend's laptop for the next day or so...), my brain should be able to write.

It's a neat article, I think.

Work Fun...

2007-01-31T23:09:00.000-08:00

....just a crazy day at my job.

One day, I'll describe to you all how my job works out.

Let's just say that a lot of jobs I'm looking into are going to get me away from this...

Fried Brain

2007-01-30T23:22:00.000-08:00

Brain fried.

Hardware going screwy.

Will post more tomorrow.

Hardware Woes

2007-01-29T22:34:00.000-08:00

It's official.

I'm probably going to have to pull the HD from this computer and put a new one in...it's time. The drive is about four or so years old and probably should have been replaced a year ago.

If I have to do that, I will probably have a whole swapping out of the mobo, processor, and video card. New hardware, yay! Maybe even Vista-ready. Expensive, tho...about $500+, so if this computer can soldier on for a bit longer, it will.

My only issue? If the new mobo requires a SATA connection and can't take IDE, that means the nice, large 200+ gig HD that's my D: drive might have to be replaced...if there isn't a IDE/SATA card that I can use as a bridge.

Yay, the joys of playing with computers.

Finished Off...

2007-01-28T23:52:00.000-08:00

....Full Metal Alchemist and Hand Maid May. Opinions?

FMA was tight, very much a story trying to tell a story. What is really scary is something that the story brought up-what truly powers our world? Or worlds?

Hand Maid May was a good fun harem anime. At the very least, it was a definitely an interesting take on the various tropes of time travel and androids...

Miniatures Wargaming Thoughts

2007-01-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Some of the random thoughts that I've had about any form of new miniature wargames. I'm thinking modern/future gaming-fantasy/historical would require some different concepts.

Fast, fast combat resolution. While it would be perfect if you could roll one die and both handle to-hit and damage, I can't think of an elegant way to do it.
A "realistic" system of morale. From what I've been reading, morale rarely just "breaks" in the sense of utter panic except under certian circumstances. Perahps a three or four-level gradiated system that confers different penalties (pinned means that a unit cannot advance towards the enemy, etc...)
Point-based build system, so you could build anything from a single soldier to a Terminator to battlefield monsters. It would let you settle the perrenial debate of "which sci-fi army could beat another sci-fi army".
Models for the "official" line would come as 35mm painted plastic ones (for grunt and some specialist units), and unassembled, unpainted metal ones (for "hero" and "elite" units).
Vehicles...there will be some. Enough rules to run a brigate-sized battle with mech infantry and tanks and walkers and artillery and worse...
All the things you need to play the game (unless there's a rule dispute) won't take up more than two pages of 8.5x11" paper.
Compelling backstory! There will be a compelling backstory...

More as I think of it.

Adobe

2007-01-27T02:10:00.001-08:00

I'm about to play the fun game of "how does one use Adoble (insert program here)?" soon...

At least I was able to get it at academic rates.

So, if you see a lot of...strange pictures showing up, it's just me.

100 Ideas...

2007-01-25T23:40:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's seven ideas.

I'm looking at all the social gathering/group sites, like Tribe.net, Friendster.com, and Myspace.com, and I'm thinking of how I could do it, and better.

Some of my ideas...

Lots of tools for "who am I?"....picking "anime" could let you select a slider where you can say you love mecha anime, hate yaoi, and would be vulnerable to death by shonen-ai. Six levels of options above and below "neutral".
Oh, and personal relations...you can pick six levels from "kinda know them" to "best friends forever". Or "don't really know them" to "despise them".
The site will have two tiers-a "basic" site that will have ads, and a "preferred" one where people pay a small fee, don't get ads, and their profiles go up top. Oh, and for adult forums, you have to prove that you're an adult...by having a credit card in your name.
Fun, fun tools of all sorts. We want this to be THE place for social networking...

Like a lot of my ideas...I can do it, I just need some point to get started in the right direction. Hell, I could probably get the servers off of eBay or a disposal company...

Dating Myself

2007-01-24T21:26:00.000-08:00

I hate to say it, but Brett is partially right...KITT is a good Cylon, while KARR is the evil Cylon.

God, how many people would have gotten those references? Of course, I would want to jump a drawbridge with the Bluesmobile, or a hill with the General Lee...hell, travel through time with a DeLorean with a-grav and a time device to see how hot some of the ladies of fame are...

I'm feeling odd and old...

Wow...

2007-01-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

Ergo Proxy has just been awesome, and I'm loving it.

I'll probably have to do a TMW on it...

Con's Over...

2007-01-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

Yay, fun.

Having to deal with drama in all directions.

Yes, I like solving problems. But, whom helps to solve mine?

Con Excitment

2007-01-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

Running any major portion of a fan convention has been aptly described as...chaotic.

Will tell the stories on Monday, when I'm home, safe and sound, and can think...

But, I can say this...there will be promotions.

Drunk...

2007-01-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

...and not that all witty.

More tomorrow.

Smuggler's Blues

2007-01-19T23:57:00.000-08:00

There's trouble on the streets tonight, I can feel it in my bones
I had a premonition, that he should not go alone
I knew the gun was loaded, but I didn't think he'd kill
Everything exploded and the blood began to spill

I'm starting to sober up from being very, profoundly drunk.

To understand my situation, the last...three hours, I've been charming, wittiy, and cuddly. And, working through at least two marguritas and a "phaser shot" and a dirty martini.

So baby, here's your ticket, put the suitcase in your hand
Here's a little money now, do it just the way we planned
You be cool for twenty hours and I'll pay you twenty grand

So, Johnny boy is drunk. And running on that odd place between sober and drunk, where my brain doesn't care, and I can write without fear, without soundng or seeming stupid.

I wonder if this is the state that authors aim for, the pure bliss of creation without the Critic behind them.

I'm sorry it went down like this,
And someone had to lose,
It's the nature of the business,
It's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues

I'm starting to come back. Scary thoughts.

Starting to come back to the scary, scared human being that I am, sober and afraid. No wonder alcohol has been called "liquid courage". I'd like to think that the things that I've done, I'd do if I was sober...but I wonder, as my body starts to grow...dense.

The sailors and pilots, the soldiers and the law,
The pay-offs and the rip-offs, and the things nobody saw
No matter if it's heroin, cocaine, or hash,
You've got to carry weapons 'cause you always carry cash
There's lots of shady characters, lots of dirty deals
Every name's an alias in case somebody squeals
It's the lure of easy money, it's got a very strong appeal

Alcohol is easy. So are drugs-it's so easy to escape, to become what I am when I have nothing but reactions and responses-and that when I'm this way, it's excuseable.

Hell, I make my own beer....which I'm sharing tomorrow night.

Perhaps you'd understand it better
Standin' in my shoes
It's the ultimate enticement,
It's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues

But, I wonder-the so very Scottish personality that comes out when I'm in that fuzzy land between drinking and drunk, whom has no fear.

Whom goes up to women that when sober, I'd be scare of. And wouldn't ask out, wouldn't touch, wouldn't ask if they wanted to be touched...

See it in the headlines, you hear it every day
They say they're gonna stop it but it doesn't go away
They move it through Miami, sell it in L.A.
They hide it up in Telluride, I mean it's here to stay
It's propping up the governments in Columbia and Peru,
You ask any DEA man, he'll say, "There's nothin' we can do"
From the office of the President, right down to me and you, me and you

I wonder...and fear. I need to know where this knife's edge is-tomorrow night, I come in kilt and boots, ready to drink and stand and fight without hesitation. To find my dream, that I will come home with someone to earn another tail at con...

It's a losing proposition,
But one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband,
It's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues

We wil see.

Saturday comes up. My kilt remains unfolded.

And, if I am happy...I shall win.

We...will see.

First Day At Con...

2007-01-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

...busy is the best term I can think of. VERY, very busy.

The usual last-minute disasters.

Running around to get stuff.

Oh, cute girls too...

Must get out of the room more...

Roasting Pork

2007-01-17T23:04:00.000-08:00

Wow.

Fifteen pounds of pork takes about three or so hours to cook.

It's an interesting smell, one that I can enjoy a great deal.

The people at con will love the results, I bet...

The Cookie Blitz

2007-01-16T22:07:00.000-08:00

(Imagine, "Weird Al" doing a parody of Ballroom Blitz)

One of the big things I do for conventions is bake cookies.

A LOT of cookies.

In about three days, I've gone through about sixteen sticks of butter, a pound bag of chocolate chips, half a pound of raisins, and a whole bunch of other stuff...all so that Staff Feed can eat well.

It's one of those strange jobs....it beats working, at least at where I work. And, I can nibble on cookie dough to my heart's content (it turns out to be small quantities...). And, it gives me more time to watch anime!

Sadly, the third DVD of HMLV was defective, so I'm waiting for a new one from Greencine.com. Did get to see UHF, and that movie was just plain crazy. And fun.

10 Away From 100

2007-01-15T21:21:00.000-08:00

Coming up on my 100th post.

And, I'm thinking of a theme for it.

So far, I'm really, really getting off on this idea of doing a NSFW shoot of anime cosplayers in...interesting positions, costumed.

Either that, or go off on this massive screech/screed about what I think most network and movie execs should be dragged out into the street, and shot. Along with their lawyers.

Any ideas? Or should I just post all the "struggling Tifa" photos and get it over with?

Adopt Barbara Boxer!

2007-01-14T21:32:00.000-08:00

Wow, they couldn't just wait for the end of the month to shoot themselves in the foot?

Barbra Boxer is complaining that since Condolizza Rice doesn't have children (whom will "pay the price" for her decisions), she doesn't have a right to make important decisions about the military of the nation.

Wow. Once again, the Demcrats prove that we need a drug plan, so I can GET the drugs these people are using. I want to be that disconnected from reality. Sadly, to get that way, it seems I need to read more Marx, DailyKOS, and consider Michael Moore a "serious" film maker. I'm not that insane yet.

However, I think the perfect solution has been hit upon. Condolizza Rice should adopt Barbra Boxer. It would solve everything!

Con Prep Notes

2007-01-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

Anybody that ever has worked a convention can tell you-it's a lot of stress, no matter how well-run the con is.

Starting late tomorrow or early Monday, I'm going to be baking cookies. A lot and lot of cookies...

Baking roast pork and shredding it on early Thursday so I can put it in bags and toss it in a cooler, so I can take it for dinner on Friday.

Then, the Costco run...

Hard to be the bandleader, instead of the guy banging the big drum. But, damn it, I'm having fun!

Gaming Thoughts #3

2007-01-12T21:00:00.000-08:00

For all the gamers out there, how many games have you bought because they're "cool" or "I like the rules", but have never played.

The short list (from memory)-

New World Of Darkness (yet...)
Exalted
D&D 3.5
Cyberpunk 20XX
GURPS 4th Edition (yet...)

From what I can figure, a third of my games are "never played".

I want to play some more of these games....but, then again, I want the gaming group that I played with that scattered to the four winds about eight years ago. They were people with brains attached. Could completely derail the campaign...and then run as if this was all planned.

And, damn it, that I don't have them, the more I appreciate them in comparison to other GMs and groups...

Idea Chucking...

2007-01-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Working through some ideas tonight, so it'll be a pretty light posting.

For anybody that has customer service experience, is there a technical term or condition that customers have, where they don't listen to what you've told them?

We have that where I work-to get something done, we need items A, B, C, D, E, and F from them. They send us C and E. They claim that they don't need to send us A, they sent us B, D is going to be faxed to us in the morning (in Moscow) and F is still "being processed". And, oif course, they want miracles performed...

I'm so tempted to charge my company an additional ID-10-T fee for each one of these customers...
Does anybody know how to set up a Wiki? I'm thinking of creating a Wiki for a sci-fi TV series that doesn't exist yet (i.e. create a universe from scratch) and see what happens from there....

Blaugh, the brain feels like a limp noodle.

A Car Question

2007-01-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

You get all sorts of complaints about how older cars are "gross polluters" that are out on the highways, contributing to the Greenhouse Effect (of course, most of the "greenhouse gases" are coming from cows in the form of methane, and you don't see them being tapped...), and generally a nusisance. Especially for older cars that are poorly maintained, but are still driven because they are the only cars somebody can afford to keep running.

My solution? On a state-by-state basis (depending upon the state, we'd have to check with them to work out the best way to do it per state), the federal government will match the Kelly Blue Book price of the car that is twenty years or older when it's being traded in-as long as there is a verifiable chain of custody to show that it's going to the junkyard. Double rates if the new car that is being bought is a hybrid.

This way, you get older cars off the road-and keep them off-and put newer cars on the road. Which will have better emissions controls, better fuel mileage, and better performance. I can't see where this would be a problem...tho somebody will complain, I promise.

An iPhone?!?!?

2007-01-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

Oh, it's one of those "great ideas", but there are so many practical problems-

The last round of iPods had a reputation for their plastic developing scratches easily. The WHOLE FACE of the new iPhone is plastic.
There are no controls on the phone other than the touchscreen. If that breaks, you have to get a new phone.
The size of the drive is the same as the iPod Nano, and the iPhone has video capability. Video EATS up HD capacity, even the MPEG-4 format used for the iPod.
The phone is being offered as an exclusive through Cingular. I've heard mixed reviews of Cingular's service.
The cost...$600 for the largest size. Not a lot of difference in cost, easier to get the biggest...which will sell out the fastest.

Personally, I'm going to wait for the second generaton of the hardware, so that all the heatseekers can do the final beta test of the hardware. And, that means I have to get a camera phone, too...which presents so many difficulties. Namely when I get creative...

UPDATE-Oh, and add this.

You can't replace the battery. Which means when the battery wears out, you have to get a new phone. I've only had two cell phones over five years, and the only reason I changed phones was that the old phone's screen was dying.

Got Hanaukyo Maid Team La Verite #2 and #3.

2007-01-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

I just love Green Cine....I just got the next two DVDs in the series and I'm working my way through them.

And, I've got a scary theory that's forming. If I'm right, and I hope to GOD I'm not, Taro is as much a victim of Grandfather's efforts as Mariel. And, Grandfather is not only a major-league pervert, he's a major manipulative bastard. And, I think that Taro was a pawn in the Hanaukyo family's rivalry with the Jihioh family, and he will be walking the primrose path that Grandfather has set up. Why? Because Taro is a decent human being, and will not walk away from this mess.

Random Note About The World #45

2007-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Cherish the people that work without ego, and without bullshit.

Having dealt with people that love petty power games more than getting the job done, I can fully love the feeling of dealing with proper professionals. Petty power games bore me, and get in the way of getting what I need done, done.

Things That I'm Looking Forward To Reading...

2007-01-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

With the New Year coming up, I have a lot of books that I'm looking foward to reading, and enjoying. This doesn't count my reading of politics/current events (I consider that "work" to provide blog material) , and is mostly science-fiction/fantasy. I read voraciously-I can usually polish off a hardcover book in two weeks. This means that I tend to go through a lot of books fast, and I need more books to feed my reading habit. (Women, a perfume that smells of old books is always a turn-on for me...)

The books coming up are...

1634:The Baltic War by Eric Flint and David Weber-This is going to be fun. One of the best Alternate History timelines ever written, the 1632-verse has been one that is fast, well-paced, well-written, and has a wide variety of voices in it. It will be a GOOD time to see this book, esp. since a lot of the side plots are being dealt with in other books.

And, why Henry Leffords is so infamous in his breakout efforts...
Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber-I think this is going to be one of David Weber's big, successful, New York Times Best Seller books (lemme see, he's got at least two series that count for this...maybe three...). The concept is high and sounds well-done, and some of the bits I've read in other places is very "silly serious". It'll be good to read.
Command Decison by Elizabeth Moon-A caviat...I think Elizabeth Moon has a tendencey of too much soap opera in her books. Bad soap opera. But, it's hard to put down this series...
Yellow Eyes by John Ringo and Thomas Kratman-Lemme see, why wouldn't I like this? Two of my favorite authors (you must read Watch on the Rhine, and read it with an open mind...and understand that some people will do whatever is needed when the devil drives). And, it's set in the Posleenverse-which has a lot of stories to tell. The eARC on Webscriptions is great...and I just want to read this book. Openly. In San Francisco.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.R. Rowling-I want to see this series end...the story will be worth reading. Rowling has created a deep and well-made universe, and she has earned every dollar that she has gotten. The last book will be a good read that I can use.

More stuff will be coming out...and when I find it, I'll let you all know.