Have I really neglected my blog this long? Time to catch up without too much effort. So let me throw some of it out there.
I have made some major financial changes to my life, and it feels … so good. It feels good because I’m can be a little bit of a control freak, but also an extremely lazy one. When I finally get the most minor control in the chaos that erupts around me, I feel fantastic. I better not get too good at dealing with money, I may develop an addiction. That last sentence was hilarious.
Oh ya, I’m moving. After 7 years in this place, I’m finally moving on. I stayed here 2 years too long I think. This will be an ‘interesting’ move, to say the least. I might even share more details of it later, but for now, I’m still trying to convince myself it’s the best choice. Overall, this move will save me money. Where I’m going this year, it will be very wise to save some money.
Yeah, I’m being a little vague.
Okay How about this: The Avengers was incredible. Everything I could have hoped for in a comic book movie. So of course I’m planning on seeing it a few more times. 
There are moments that actually brought tears to my eyes. Moments that I have been looking forward to since I was 10. I can’t believe they actually pulled that movie off. It’s appealing to fans and non-fans alike. Oh, and it also has made about a billion dollars already. Joss Whedeon, I’ve loved your work from Buffy to Angel to Firefly.. but you outdid yourself this time sir.
Halo 4 news has been trickling out and I can feel the building for what is easily my favourite games series. The art looks fantastic, the story (what has been released) sounds epic, and I’m excited to see what the new dev team changes for this game. My one fear was the music. Marty O’Donnell’s music is considered to be some of the best work ever done for games, and it’s never been out of my music rotation. Can the new music measure up? I don’t know, but they took a step in a bold new direction by hiring Massive Attack producer/composer Neil Davidage to score the game.
Some of this stuff sounds fantastic.
And finally. The box art. Incredible. Nov 6 is too far away.
And E3 is 2 weeks away. My brain is melting.
John Carter? Isn’t that the name of that Movie that just came out? The one that bombed? You know, the one that looks like Avatar? Well yes, the movie is out, and people are not going to see it. Yet, this is John Carter! The novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired most of the modern adventure science fiction that we love today, but it’s obvious that many just don’t get that connection. Avatar is so much like John Carter I expected to to see a mention in it’s credits and Star wars is born out of Flash Gordon serials, which were directly influenced from Burroughs planet hopping hero. Everywhere you look in science fiction, you can see parts of John Carter, and that might have been the problem.
John Carter books like ‘A Princess of Mars’ have fallen from the zeitgeist of adventure science fiction, yet the DNA of those stories is everywhere today in every medium. From Books, TV, video games and movies, you can spot direct or indirect influences. Now compare this to the Lord of the Ring movies. Fantasy films were not huge when ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ released in 2001. As such, Tolkien’s stories received the best of both worlds, seeming fresh and original to many newcomers , and still understood to be one of the originators of the fantasy genre.
So what went wrong with John Carter? The movie’s name stands out. Why not ‘John Carter of Mars’, or ‘A Princess of Mars’ from the book? When I first saw the poster, I was wondering if it was just another movie with the characters name. The problem appears to be that the filmmakers assumed that the world remembered John Carter, like we remember Sherlock Holmes, or Gandalf the Grey. It was a miscalculation, and one that might have doomed the movie from the start.
A lot of this is covered in this great Vulture article from last week. It focuses on the trailers, which may have been the films downfall from a PR perspective.
IO9.com also posted a great fan made trailer, that better gives the sense of the history and scale of what a John Carter film could be.
Now, that looks exciting. Maybe I’ll go see the movie.
Mike Dines died this past Monday. Cancer. I worked with him for a few years during the UUNET days and we kept in touch. Not nearly often enough, and now he’s gone. I can’t just hit him up on the phone or chat and discuss something insane and stupid, and end up laughing until the tears came. I can’t hang out with him and watch a movie and MST3K-it to hell. So many things I can’t do with Mike now. That just sucks. I wish I could communicate effectively just what sort of man he was. Far better writers could do that. But to understand him, you had to have met him. He was a warm, funny, honest man who everyone just seemed to love. It was easy to like Mike, and I was lucky to know him. Fate, you took him far too early. You screwed up big.
For those that didn’t know Mike, I’m sorry…
You totally missed out.
Star Trek Online just went free-to-play a few weeks ago and I jumped in to see what was new. It was FREE afterall. Yet, I won’t be playing it long. Really. I swore off MMOs years ago as horrible time sinks with little true reward, and I still believe them to be. In fact STO was the last one I really played, about a year and a half ago.
I do love the idea of a game that is dynamic and expansive with updating quests with groups of people and, in theory, many of the top MMOs seem fantastic. In practice, I’ll love it for a month or so then just start to hate myself for being stupid enough to play it for this long.
Now here is a caveat: I love Star trek.
From watching reruns of the original 1960s series at my Grandparents on Sunday evenings to the movies and newer tv shows, I have been a life long fan. This is where they get you. This is how the MMO digs into your subconscious and says “Come live out your childhood fantasies”. These games are truly insidious. From Lord of the Rings Online and the newly released Star Wars: The Old Republic MMOs, I feel the pull of those expansive online worlds. Experience has taught me otherwise however. Yet I jumped back in Star Trek Online went it moved to ‘free to play’. Why? Wasting time at no cost makes me feel better I think. Instead of paying a monthly fee, many of these games have moved to a model of free play with expanded content locked behind micro transactions and for the dedicated, full subscriptions. So far I played around for a few hours, and Ill probably mess with it a bit this weekend… then I’m done. Really. Having played a bunch of great non-MMO, games during the holiday, each of them offered a more robust experience, with a less extreme time investment. And I have other interests, and playing an MMO means all of those are marginalized. So I’ll play some of this online star trek a bit, but not for long. Really.
Promise.
But man, check out my awesome Starship!
Other than being one of the most incredible games in years, Skyrim also turns out to be a fantastic cheese rolling sim.
Note: Beware youtube uploader’s music selection.
Dragons make everything better.
Nope, won’t do it. I don’t need it. Honest. My Samsung Focus is still a great phone, works brilliantly and of course is just over a year old. And yet.. here I am thinking I want Nokia’s new phone. Why? Because the one thing that most phones out there don’t have right now is great design and great build quality. The current crop of smartphones have dubious materials at best, even my current phone feels like it would shatter or snap with some effort. My Blackberry phones were all pretty solidly built, but pretty they were not. And even some of the more solid HTC phones still don’t have much variation from model to model.
Cue the Lumia 800.
It’s absolutely gorgeous. It has this slightly raised and curved screen and the body is made of one piece of coloured polycarbonate, so scratching it will not be as noticeable as in other phones. It’s just one of the best looking phones I’ve ever seen. The specs aren’t cutting edge as cutting edge however. A single core processor, no front facing camera. which admittedly, in the case of the front facing camera, isn’t up to top of the line phone standards. I’m not so concerned about the processor as Windows Phone’s Mango OS runs better on 1 processor that all Android phone do on dual core.
Nokia claims they only had about 6 months to push this phone out and it’s a brilliant device given that the Nokia/Microsoft deal was only signed in April 2011. The time frame is probably why Nokia isn’t even bringing this model to North America this year. Expectations are early next year with an announcement at CES in January, with more new Nokia windows phones in 2012 and we’d be impressed by what’s coming.
I hope not. Because I’ll want them all.
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