Archive for January, 2010

I think “The Great TV Binge of 2008-2010″ is finally over. I finished The Wire on Friday night and it was spectacular. Now that I’m finally done going through every television series I was interested in watching, I’ll have lots of time to learn more about programming & game.

Speaking of finishing things, I finally finished Mass Effect for PC last night, which led me to frantically order a copy of Mass Effect 2 from Amazon. I think I’ll give my two cents on the first game later tonight. Until then, more interesting links! It’s been a slow week but there were still a few gems among the rough.

» The Frank Oz-directed Death at a Funeral was a fantastically hilarious film. So why is it necessary to have an American ‘urbanized’ remake, less than 3 years after the original was released? With Chris Rock and no Alan Tudyk? Set sail for fail! At least Peter Dinklage, aka Tyrion Lannister, will be in it.

» Hey, what a surprise! Some studies done at various American universities posit that good gamers not only have bigger brains than non-gamers, but also learn better as well. See, mom? All that time playing video games DID pay off!

» I know The Daily Mail is not the most reliable news site, but this story made me feel sick. A 13-year old Saudi girl sentenced to 90 lashes for bringing a cell phone to school? These indoctrinated fools will use anything as an excuse to keep women on the bottom of the social ladder. It’s pretty sad. “Religion of peace”, my ass.

» New details regarding the first true Legend of Zelda game built from the ground-up for the Wii are starting to surface online. Here is a site I found with a few details. Sounds like this entry in the series is going to give the gameplay a much-needed revamp. Colour me intrigued!

» Now this is cool. A programmer who works for Crytek (Crysis, Far Cry 1) and a 3D modeller developed this system for a “Structural Procedural Demo” which can generate an entire city, along with it’s interior, for a game or simulation setting. Video included in the link. I have to say, the possibilites for this in a game like GTA, or (*crosses fingers*) Shenmue 3 are mindblowing. I can’t even imagine how long it would take to do something like that manually. Of course, at first I can’t imagine the interiors of buildings having too much detail or layout variety, but that is something that can be tweaked over time.

» And to end off this post, two posts from io9 that make me quite happy. Firstly, Stephen Fry wants to write an episode for the new season of Doctor Who. For the love of dog, YES PLEASE! Fry’s sense of humour would be a perfect match for the Doctor. I really hope he ends up writing an episode, as long as the word “Geronimo” is not even uttered once. Finally, BOOM! Comics, creators of the Farscape comics, are launching a new Farscape comic series starring… Scorpius! Best sci-fi villain ever gets his own comic series? In on day one.

Okay, class time. Bye!

It has been a busy week! I started Computer Programming & Analysis Monday and while things haven’t seem to really gotten started yet, I feel like I am going to enjoy this program a lot. That makes me happy. There are a ton of things I found interesting since Sunday though, so here we go:

» foobar2000 finally hit 1.0. I can’t believe it, that program was stuck in ‘beta’ hell! It’s my favorite music player for Windows, as it plays nearly every audio format out-of-the-box and is incredibly customizable and light-weight… my favorite qualities in a program!

» Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg believes users do not want privacy online because that’s the current social norm. That’s right, folks, Facebook defines what’s cool and what ain’t these days, and clearly privacy is NOT cool. Amirite?

» This made me laugh hysterically for a minute or two. Iron Maiden? Excellent! Oh, how I love thee, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

» Lifehacker posted an interesting article on how your passwords may not be as secure as you think, and how to fix that problem. A good read for anyone paranoid about being haxed.

» Sarah Palin is in talks with FOX News to become a ‘contributor’, whatever that means. Is anyone really surprised by this?

… unfortunately, my web host is being quite unreliable and I just lost the other 3/4 of this post. Oh well, I can’t be arsed enough to re-write it all. Night!

Unfortunately, procrastination ate my Doctor Who – “End of Time” review. Perhaps I’ll have it done by the end of the weekend? At least I have a bunch of interesting links to share, so everyone can procrastinate! Hoorah, procrastination!

» Lifehacker compiled a list of Android 2.1′s best features, so I can add even more reasons why I hate Rogers to my list. Unfortunately, unless I root it, my HTC Dream will be stuck with Android 1.5.

» Indie game developers Wolfire posted an interesting article on why OpenGL should be used instead of DirectX as the API-of-choice for games. I don’t know too much about either, so it was an educational read for me.

» Cracked Magazine’s online site posted this hilarious picture depicting the acting range of Michael Cera. I loved him in Arrested Development but he really needs to try something new. I guess what he does now pays the bills (and more) so I doubt he is complaining.

» YouTube user TotemX made this awesome animation of Super Mario Jesus. Yes, you read that right. A work of genius or the result of boredom? Either way, I found it pretty cool.

» At CES, Engadget took a look at Dell’s new Studio XPS 16 with an OLED display, and man is it fine. Of course, pictures do not do it justice, but the specs are absolutely ridiculous. I hope this technology makes it into televisions ASAP!

» Game industry site Gamasutra took a critical look at Final Fantasy 13, and why it may be missing the ‘G’ in ‘RPG’. I’ll definitely be getting this game but it’s disappointing that Square Enix has essentially dumbed down the game for a wider audience. Ah well, at least it looks better than Final Fantasy 12, right?

» And finally, MovieLine reports that a LOST-themed ride may be appearing at a Disney theme park sometime soon, meaning I will finally have to drag my ass to Florida or California (or Hong Kong) so I can ride a smoke monster into the hatch before it explodes. Oh man, that would be sweet.

That’s quite the list of links, if I do say so myself. That’s all, folks.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010 is to start blogging more. So here I am, blogging. I was thinking that I would start posting links to things I find interesting while browsing the internet at the end of each day. So without further ado, here are my interesting links for the day! I have yet to come up with a witty name for these kinds of posts, but it will come, rest assured.

» io9 posted an article about the 10 things they fear will happen in 2010. A good list, although I think the Large Hadron Collider producing a planet-eating black hole would be a tad worse than another season of contrived writing on Heroes. Although Lost ending anything like Battlestar Galactica would be the end of the world for me…

» For those aspiring filmmakers, Lifehacker posted an awesome guide on how to make your own video camera stabilizer. Perfect to make as a gift for that uncle who is always taking family movies! Hopefully this will make it so his family movies doesn’t induce motion sickness.

Sundays are slow, so only two interesting things tonight. Sometime this week, I’ll be posting my review of Doctor Who – The End of Time. I’ll also be commenting on the possible strike of OPSEU – the Ontario College Professors Union – whom at least seem to have morally permissible grounds for striking compared to CUPE3903 (York University Teacher Assistant’s) last year. Sometime later this month, I’ll also be posting about how ridiculous Canadian politics can be, why serialized television shows should not be feared by TV executives, and the beginnings of my journey into computer programming. Until then…