Level One

Knight Rider 2008

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:37:19 -0700

In February this year (2008), Knight Rider was reimagined, rebooted, and remade. This reboot, however, is better described as a continuation of the saga. Unlike Battlestar Galactica's "continuation" wherein they take all the original characters, change them completely, and deposit them back into the same setting forty years hence. Knight Rider (KR) just advanced time and had a new revision of KITT made, and had the Knight Foundation look out for a new driver. In the pilot/prequel that aired in February, it was made apparent that this new driver was Michael Knight's son. Now that pilot/prequel was not as bad. KITT had an attack mode that changed the car a bit more subtley. Fast forward to the new series and things change quite drastically. The first thing we notice is the new Attack Mode: blower on the hood, massive body kit, huge spoiler at the rear, blacked out windows -- in short, it looks awesome. However... the transformation process does not look so awesome. It looks very very bad; very blatantly CGI. And for something that is so batantly bad, they take a lot of time to show you every detail of the transformation process in intricate detail. What they should have done is just have him transform in a blur. That would hide the tacky effects, and it would make us believe it was happening in microseconds, rather than the four or five seconds it currently takes. But I'm getting ahead of myself. There will be a whole generation of viewers who will have no idea what the original Knight Rider was all about. Having been about 20 years since it last aired, a few people will have missed out. Before Baywatch, a little TV show about a man and a supercar made David Hasslehoff into a legend; the legend of The Hoff. With his big curly afro, and his black leather jacket, he was the baddest white mofo of the the '80s. Every guy wanted to be The Hoff, and every girl wanted to fuck him. The story of Knight Rider was about a cop, Michael Long, who was shot in the line of duty. Long was an excellent cop and an excellent driver, and some important people were watching over him. When he was shot, they saved his life, changed his face, and changed his name. Funded by the Wilton Knight's Knight Foundation, a new agency was formed called FLAG, the Foundation for Law And Government. But FLAG operated above the law -- a very popular thing to do in the '80s -- and they needed an excellent driver with impeccable morals for their new project. Instead they got The Hoff. Long took the last name of the man who started the Foundation and became Michael Knight. Knight drove the new project -- a supercar called KITT, short for Knight Industries Two Thousand. KITT could seemingly do anything; chief among its features were pursuit mode that allowed it to go faster than anything else on the road, and turbo boost that allowed it to jump over obstacles. The team of Michael Knight and KITT were the epitomy of coolness. Yeah, they were a bit silly, but they were still outweighed by cool. Fast forward 20 years, and the new version is not so much. The new KR is about the son of Michael Knight -- Mike Traceur -- an ex-ranger who did a tour of duty in Iraq ... hey wake up... In the prequel, some bad guys found out about the new Knight project and stole the plans for KITT, but KITT got away, as did the old man who designed it. KITT was programmed to find Mike Traceur, because the old man was in love with Traceur's mother, and Traceur was Iraq-tough. It was also programmed to find Sarah, the old man's daughter because she is super smart and will be the token hot chick mechanic. Sarah and Mike had a thing years ago which went sour when she went to college, and now they just have lots of awkward moments. All sound familiar? I think they're using template #6. OK, so the prequel was nothing special, but not overly disastrous, so the series got the green light. And what six or seven months of masturbating over a writing table can produce... The Knight Foundation is a big organisation and have dozens of people sitting around a big lab all watching everything Mike does when he's in KITT. How the privacy advocates must have itchy crotches watching this show. There are a few common stereotypes littered around the lab. All super-geniuses no doubt. There's Billy, the weird white kid who's in love with the token Asian cock-tease. Billy is made to look like a pervo, which would normally be fine except he's been written as a complete fucking stalker weirdo. He's always talking about having video camera footage of people making out, and that he has cameras hidden everywhere so he can watch what people are doing. In the second episode Mike was kissing someone and Billy made mention that he was going to email himself the footage for later. Uh, what? That's just fucking creepy. They weren't even naked. But everyone just takes what he says in their stride. Um, alarm bells should be ringing. Billy's a fucking creepo stalker. He's not just making idle jokes or banter, he is completely serious. There's a big fucking difference between a young guy into porn and psycho creep. The writers have successfully pulled off the latter. Hey maybe that's the intent. But it's fucking weird. At the beginning of the first episode, Mike and Sarah are trying to get away from some bad guys. Needless to say, KITT has to come to the rescue, but ohnoez, he doesn't have time to stop. That's OK, Sarah uploaded a new program this morning, just get KITT to run that -- it turns him into a Ford F150 pickup. Once they've jumped safely onto the back, one magical transform later, and they're both in their assigned seats comfortably back in GT500 mode. WTF? I'm starting to think Hasbro had a hand in this. KITT transforms (and they use that word in-show) from a standard GT500 into Attack Mode, and into F150 Mode. I'm waiting for it to transform into Mecha Mode in some future episode, then we'll see it in a line of Transformers toys if it's not there already. Later in the show, we find out that the bad guys at the beginning were after Mike Traceur himself, not the shiny briefcase with the super secret plans. It seems Mike has a few blank spots in his memory of some events that took place in Beirut, inclduding getting with some chick. Don't worry, Billy has the footage if you want to see it. Of course, Traceur has no recollection of ever going to Beirut, so it all must be a setup. So in the end, the Foundation has to fake his death so that the bad guys don't get too close to them and their secrets. In the end Mike chooses a new name for himself. And yes, you guessed it, he chooses Michael Knight. The Ghost Who Walks. Michael Knight is the new Phantom. Not a bad idea as franchises go. It means that when this series bombs, and it will, the studio can commission another Knight Rider set far into the future. They could take it a step farther and do one set in Europe; have multiple Michael Knights around the world. An army of Knights. Much like the also-failed Team Knight Rider, but global and in any time. I'm sure that's the plan, if only they could get some writers to pull the whole concept off believably. The only saving grace I see this show as having is that it's not a reimagining in the truest sense. It's set in the future with a new guy, in a new setting which means The Hoff still exists. He hasn't been retroactively erased and the TransAm that he drove in the '80s happened. This sits well with me. I'm also glad that they changed Traceur's name because it was stupid and faggy. But the things I don't like are more numerous. The transformation could have just been simple and subtle. It was in the pilot/prequel. KITT didn't change much to get into Attack Mode. Now he just looks silly. Well, kinda cool, but over the top. And letting us watch him change in slow-mo highights all the flaws in the poor CGI. The car looks CGI in its transformation process. The windows don't look like windows. The wheel hubs don't look like wheel hubs. And we don't need to see the same animation of the internals of the engine when KITT is transforming and when he is turbo boosting. Just fucking get rid of it. Have it happen in a blur. This will show us that it happens instantaneously and will hide the crappy cheap effects. Transforming into a pickup is just retarded. Where does the extra metal and mass come from? Where do the extra large wheels and axles come from? If it's all nanobots, then there's nothing KITT can't do or transform into. When they want to hide, they won't need to change the colour of the car, they can have him transform into a crate or a bush, or a dumpster, or a Toyota. When you make us imagine there are no limits, then we don't expect to see any. KITT is too slow. Seriously. You want us to believe that a GT500 is a fast high spec automobile, but in the pilot/prequel some guys in a minivan were keeping up with it. Then in the second episode of the series proper, KITT goes up against some street racers with NOS. He couldn't keep up. He had to go into Attack Mode to beat the car, and then he only just beat the guy by a hair's breadth. In the original KR, KITT had Normal and Pursuit modes. Pursuit Mode allowed it to go stupid speeds and it could beat anything on the road. We need that back. Please have Sarah upload Pursuit Mode software. KITT's voice is complete shit as done by Val Kilmer. The voice of Wilton Knight (provided by William Daniels) was awesome in the original series. Although, you've proved that KITT's voice can change in the new series, it's probably too late to make the change. Any way they introduce a voice change now will seem forced and redundant. The studio should have done a bit more work in picking a better voice actor to begin with. KITT is Knight's sidekick. We expect to hear their voices equally throughout the show, and such a large part really should have had more effort put into it. While Daniels isn't dead, he is 81, so that may have been a deciding factor. He was in one episode of Boston Legal this year, and in Blades of Glory last year, so he's not working a lot. Voicing an entire TV series may have been a lot of work for someone who's well past retirement age. But Val Kilmer is just terrible. The new series just doesn't have what the old series had. Yes, they're both cheesy, but Glen A. Larson, the creator and writer of the original series also brought us the original Battlestar Galactica, Magnum PI, Automan, Buck Rogers, and many others. His list of writing and creation credits is longer than my arm when written in a 12 point font. All his original shows were legendary. Resurrecting them is just a blatant attempt to generate income from something that's already established. It's fraudulent. Larson is still listed in the credits of this new show as having created the characters, but I'm sure that was his only input. The studio owns it, and they'll fuck it up like they did with Team Knight Rider, Knight Rider 2000, and Knight Rider 2010. I'll still watch it in the name of science, but there's no way this is going to be on my list of DVDs to purchase. If the studios are too lazy or too stupid to come up with new concepts and keep rebooting old shows, then I'm not going to support those fraudsters with my money.

Grovely Tales

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:39:00 -0700

Something that may be of interest to some gamers/roleplayers out there: There is a goblin who inhabits Neverwinter Nights by the name of Grovel played by a guy right here in Wellington, NZ. The Grovely Tales are his renditions of classic childrens stories. Of course, they're all told by Grovel hisself, so ifs you can't speek gobliny, den dis bes ard to read.

Diablo III announced by Blizzard

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:00:00 -0700

"Twenty years have passed since the cataclysmic events of Diablo� II. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal have been defeated, but the Worldstone, which once shielded the world of Sanctuary from the forces of both the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, has been destroyed, and evil once again stirs in Tristram...." In case you've been off-world, or buried deep under our world, you will need to know that Diablo III has been unveiled by Blizzard�. No date has been announced -- in typical Blizzard fashion, it'll be ready when it's done. But they have given us a cinematic trailer and a 20 minute gameplay video, available on their media page. Oh and 60 screenshots. This is some seriously cool footage that left my mouth on the floor. It's not an MMO, just classic Diablo in lush 3D. Here's hoping that they're making enough money from their 10 million+ WoW subscribers to keep this free on Battle.Net like its predecessors.

Commodore goes under...again

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:34:00 -0700

Commodore, the company that brought us the C64 and the Amiga in the 80's had sold their name to a company who were intent on reviving the name in an effort to cash in on a previously good name. Well, you don't need to be a psychic to guess where that company is now...

Hands up if you're surprised that the new Commodore computer company has declared bankruptcy. Anyone? Didn't think so.

Commodore International (the original company) went bankrupt in 1994 after giving the world over a decade of wonderful computing by way of the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. These two brands are without a doubt among the most historical and legendary computers of all time. So it has been that since Commodore's downfall, the Amiga brand has had several failed attempts at revitalisation. The current incarnation of Amiga exists as software, but their hardware partners left or went broke themselves, so they exist on an ethereal plane in hiatus.

At about the time that the Amiga name was getting some media attention, a German company called Escom decided they wanted to resurrect the Commodore name, for which they promptly paid US$14m. In 2004, this got transfered to a Dutch company called Tulip Computers, who managed to drag the name out of obscurity and use it to push a line of branded PCs. That's right -- standard whitebox PCs with a Commodore logo on them.

Hoping to get a reaction from a generation of ageing gamers who remember the brand fondly, Tulip believed that they would be able to market 'hardcore' gaming machines to 'hardcore' gamers. The only special thing I know they attempted was to print graphics from the sci-fi MMORPG Eve Online onto Commodore PC cases, and tried to give them away in a competition. However, this was only a week or so before their bankruptcy. But even that wasn't so special. It certainly would have been much cheaper to just offer vinyl stickers to be placed on current PC cases.

Commodore PCs were nothing more than high specced gaming rigs. Stuff that you can buy yourself at any corner PC store. In fact, I recently put together a rig of slightly more powerful specs for considerably cheaper than their offerings were. Most "real" computer stores will build you a machine to your exact specifications if you can't build it yourself. I say "real" stores, excluding the Noel Leemings and the Best Buys and the Walmarts where you just buy a box off the shelf. Commodore offered nothing special; sure they were slightly higher spec than a Dell or an HP/Compaq, but that was the extent of it.

In this age of tight-arsed punters, unless you're selling to a mass market, your chances of survival take a serious dive. Compound that with the fact that this business was already in the red to a tune of US$14m before they'd printed a leaflet, let alone a PC, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

It was always going to end badly; it was just a question of when.

So let's look at this from a different point of view -- from the potential customer. I'll use myself as a guinea pig because I grew up on Commodore computers. Starting with the Vic20, then the C64, and when I finally got my own computer, it was an Amiga 500. And it lasted almost throughout my teenage years. So the likelihood that I am the best candidate for purchasing a Commodore computer is pretty good. I have very fond memories of Commodore and my Commodore computers, and now that they have been risen from the dead, naturally I would want to run out and purchase one of their computers.

Or do I?

The only legitimate reason I can think of to purchase one of these new Commodore computers is so that I can show off to my friends that I am one of the elite. How many of them would care? Very few. Those who do would probably just ask me if it could run the new AmigaOS natively. Yeah, no such luck. Then again, I could just pay to get a big C= logo sticker printed, stick it onto my own PC, and nobody would be any wiser. Assuming they were in the 0.004% who even cared.

The reasons I can think not to buy a Commodore PC are as plentiful as the inches around my waist. First, I cannot buy them off the shelf in this country. OK, so that diminishes its value to all countries where they are not being directly sold. If I buy online, I will have to most likely replace the power supply, and I won't get any technical support. And pay for shipping. Which brings me to cost. They already cost a premium, because they're aimed at a premium market. Add shipping. Add no support. Add a new PSU. It's cheaper for me to buy locally.

Fine, but ignoring that, assume I was in a country where I *could* buy them off the shelf and I did have a face to back to for support. Well, then I would argue that I can *still* get a high specced rig for cheaper. I have no loyalty to this brand and to this incarnation of Commodore. Who are they? They could go under at any moment(duh). I have find memories of the Commodore that was. Why can't they leave well alone? We know that all they're trying to do is to cash in on a well-established brand name. Inevitably, the only logical reason I can imagine anyone would do this is for free marketing. Well, not really free, because in this instance it cost them $14m.

All they're doing is dragging the name up from the dead, and dragging it through the mud as the name faces closure again and again at the hands of companies that continue to go bankrupt. They are not offering anything new, nor anything special. It's just greed or laziness. I daresay they would have been much more successful had they just come up with a new brand. They could have used that $14m for a super global marketing campaign, or just had a great marketing campaign and pocketed $10m. Maybe they still would have gone under, but it would have taken them a bit longer.

So speaking as a person who fondly remembers the old days of personal computing, I will be the first to say to anyone else who wants to cash in on our mindshare: Piss off and come up with something original. We don't want you. We were happy with the originals, so please don't spoil our memories.

Steal an Xbox and Sell it back to the owner.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:30:00 -0700

While I'm at a music festival, the Internet is going crazy over some who tried to sell a stolen Xbox back to its owner. The skinny: Jesse McPherson's house was robbed a week ago. Among the items stolen were a Mac laptop with the wrong power supply taken, an Xbox 360, and a TV ripped out of the wall. He reported the crime to the cops, who promptly did nothing. So he went to a local pawn shop and got images of the thief trying to sell Jesse's laptop. Jesse tried telling the cops, but they ignored him. Some of his workmates buy him a new Xbox 360 and he manages to get back online to find that his Xbox Live account had a message from a retard trying to sell him back his Xbox. Thanks to Digg and a couple of thousand geeks harassing this loser via XBL, YouTube and more, this guy shit his pants and returned the Xbox to the owner. Turns out this fucktard bought it off the actual thief. Needless to say, actual thief also identified.

Rock2Wgtn Rock Festival

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:35:00 -0700

This long weekend, Wellington hosted the biggest rock festival we've ever had, featuring some of the biggest names in rock and metal. Alice Cooper, KISS, Poison, Whitesnake, and Ozzy Osbourne all played over the two day concert on the 22-23 March 2008. Rock2Wgtn represented two things: one, probably the dumbest name ever given to a heavy metal festival; and second, the first time in history that Wellington has ever hosted an event like this. According to the marketing, this was a global first, but that's complete bullshit. Even in New Zealand, we have the annual Big Day Out concerts which tend to draw many and varied big name acts. Internationally, I'm sure everyone has at least heard of Monsters of Rock. Then there's anything held at Donnington, or in Germany, or Brazil. Or anywhere else in Europe or America you care to name. So really, this is nothing new -- but it is for Wellington, and that's the big news. For the first time since we've had our stadium built, we have played host to a serious, arse kicking metalfest, with some of the biggest names in rock. For those who don't know, the international lineup was Lordi, Alice Cooper, KISS, Poison, Whitesnake, and Ozzy Osbourne. KISS headlined the first night, and Ozzy headlined the second. In between the big acts were a few kiwi bands, who sadly, failed to make much of an impact. I think that partly was due to the fact that when they were playing, a giant dragon, thanks to Weta Workshop, was breathing fire and shooting lasers out of its eyes. It's tough to pull attention away from that. I'm not entirely sure why Lordi were brought in to the lineup, because first, they're not as old, nor as legendary as any of the other acts, and second, because they are a Christian band. Many people mistake them for Satan worshippers, but that's because they're only looking at the makeup. While they're dressed as demons and monsters, their music is about God. Songs like "Rock the Hell out of you" imply exactly that; they're going to drive the evil out. As further proof, "Rock the Hell out of you" is also the title of a song by another band -- a Christian rock band called Stryper. Whether Lordi's is a cover, I'm not sure, but I do know what they're singing about. Then there's "Rock and Roll Hallelujah". No self-respecting Satanists are going to use the word Hallelujah. The final nail in the coffin is "Satan's a Loser." In which they sing about Satan being a loser and being their bitch. So if any of you still think they're not blatant Christians playing Christian metal, then you're retarded. Of course, all the "real" Christians, whatever the fuck that means, hate Lordi and think they're satanic. So it goes to show just how stupid those religious bastards are. They can't even figure out who's on their own fucking side. So, yeah. I don't think Lordi should have been there at all. Their inclusion in the lineup was an insult, and at best, just padding for the real acts. Maybe they were just cheap. Who knows? The two day event was held at Wellington's Westpac Stadium, better known as the Cake Tin, which I had never been to before. I was surprised to find how tightly packed all the seats were. It was like sitting on a bus if a bus had a dozen seats per row. Completely fucking cramped, with my knees pressed up against the seats in front and my arse pushed up against the other fat arses around me and having to leave my hands on my laps because my shoulders were also pressed up against someone else. Uncomfortable, badly designed seats with these stupid lips on each side that dug into my legs and left me with bruises after the first night. The second night my group decided to take cushions which made the seats bearable, but I still can't stretch that to comfortable. Even rugby games require you to sit in them for a couple of hours, and I don't imagine that's too comfortable, but sitting there for seven hours straight each night, was quite literally a pain in my arse. It was possible that the seating design was contracted out to the same company that designed Wellington's roads (and who clearly have never driven a car a day in their lives). The seating was designed by people who didn't have to sit in them. Or all their testers were four foot tall and anorexic. Given that rugby fans are also loud, fat, beer guzzling louts, I expected more from the seating. Everything other than the seating was quite good. Nice toilets, and plenty of them, food and beer everywhere, and only moderately expensive if you were buying in bulk; one single 400ml beer was stupidly priced at $7.50, but if you bought four for $22, that brought it down to $5.50 a piece. $20 would have been easier to deal with without having to come up with an extra gold coin, but they were only top-up beers. Everybody who was going to get pissed was already well gone by the time they showed up to the concert. So although, overall, Westpac Stadium is a good venue, the seating is complete and utter shit. And considering that's where you spend 99% of your time, I have to severely downgrade the overall rating of the Stadium to Crap. But given that it's all set in concrete now, I don't see them tearing down the grandstands and rebuilding them. So even though it's shit, I would still go there again armed with the knowledge that I need a cushion, and I need to make sure I've got an isle seat, for my sake and those around me. But what was the music like? Glad you asked. The first big act to come on was Alice Cooper. The crowd was pretty noisy up to that point, but when he came out, everybody went wild. He did some great songs among his horror show that included putting a stake through a plastic baby, which some tart off to our right was horrified by (among all her whining that it was too loud), and staging his own hanging. Cooper went off, and did a mix of old and new songs from Stephen to Poison. Is Poison that new any more? Probably not, but like his nephew Dee Snider, Cooper will remain Twisted Forever. The headline act was KISS, and you knew that was who most people were there to see because 90% of the band t-shirts worn by concert-goers were KISS shirts. Not just that, but it was lucky that little cake tin didn't have a lid because it would have blown right off when the KISS lights started flashing and Gene and Paul took the stage. You wouldn't think the crowd could make so much noise, but they went crazy. All that energy had been pent up for so many hours that when the Demon and the Starchild started playing, the Stadium sounded like a bomb had gone off. Now one thing I haven't mentioned was the size of the crowd. It wasn't that big at all. Consider that at least a third of the seating in the stadium was not being used at all because it was either behind the stage or had other things like the dragon's tower blocking the view. Then on top of that, on the east side, there were a lot of empty seats. On the ground, probably half of it was empty. Sure there were still a lot of people there because it's a big stadium, but they were nowhere near capacity. Not even close. To a band like KISS, this would have been a tiny crowd. But we sure made a lot of noise for them. The lights made the stage look like it was alight, until they actually turned on the flames, spewing jets of fire while fireworks exploded into the sky timed to the drums. I can't imagine what planes flying into the airport must have thought. I'm sure the volume was audible from the other end of Wellington. The second day was a lot crazier if such a thing was possible. For a start, the crowd was much bigger. It seems that Ozzy is a bigger drawcard than KISS. Or maybe it was because there were three big bands on the Sunday, where the day before only had two. No Lordi are not a big name band. They've only been around for one decade and only become famous in the last two years or less. The newest of the other big bands was Poison, who have been around for over 20 years and have twelve albums under their belt. The bands KISS, Alice Cooper, Whitesnake, and Ozzy are all about as old as I am. Ozzy left Sabbath in '79, Coverdale left Deep Purple and formed Whitesnake in '77, and Alice Cooper, while being in a band since the 60's didn't legally change his name to Alice Cooper until '74, at which point his career noticed a sharp incline. I honestly didn't know Poison were still touring internationally. I'd seen Bret Michaels on his reality show, Rock of Love, so maybe that's why he doing it. To show off to his new missus. But the biggest shock of all was to see CC Deville. Last I heard be left Poison to join another band called Tuff. OK, so this was many many years ago, but it shows how out of touch I am. He's an awesome guitarist and it was great to see him live and back with the band that suits him best. Following them was Whitesnake, who have always been a bit slow for me, but have got a few classic songs like "Still of the Night," "Is this love," and "Here I go again." Yeah, I went a bit crazy when the encore was "Still of the Night." Forty years of rocking sure haven't slowed Coverdale down any. And speaking of old farts, Ozzy finally took the stage to be greeted with cheering that blew the shit out of the loudest we got even for KISS. Of course, he kept complaining that he couldn't hear us, but my attempt to spark a chant of "Because you're deaf, you old bastard" was probably too many syllables. Those who were pissed and stoned could only manage "waaaaagggh" or "yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh," while those who were only pissed could manage two syllables and were chanting "O-zzy." Before he came on, the big screens showed clips from movies and television shows that Ozzy had inserted himself into replacing other characters. From playing the therapist in Sopranos to some guy taking a shit in some offices. They were all hilarious and set the mood from a guy who doesn't take life too seriously and whose only goal is to live life and party hard. Well, and make wads of cash too. Once the video clips finished, the lights went off and O Fortuna, from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana started pumping through the sound system. This is one of the finest, darkest pieces of classical music ever written, and I think used in horror films such as The Exorcist. Yes, I own one classical CD, and this is it. It's a brilliant piece of music and very appropriate as Ozzy's intro. The rest of the show included some greats like War Pigs and Paranoid, but the ending was a bit short. Maybe we weren't loud enough for him because after doing a couple of encores, he basically just said goodbye and walked off the stage. Perhaps he needed a nap. In all, it was a great concert, and I hope that we have one every year. Of course, they'll need to come up with a better name because Rock2Wgtn sounds like a twelve-year-old came up with it or some very old people who think that using a "2" like a txt-talking teen would appear "hip" and cool. It's a pathetic name for a great event. What they need is a name that will replace Easter. So instead of people greeting each other and saying "Happy Easter," they will instead say "Happy InsertFestivalNameHere." Even though the tickets seemed expensive, when you think about seeing five legendary bands for the price, it suddenly becomes much cheaper per act. I'm looking forward to the next one. **Update (Mar 25): Thanks to my mate Paul D for pointing out that CC Deville did not join the band Tuff. This was misinformation and he in fact started a band called Samantha 7. Apologies for the mistake.

Starcraft II new Zerg faction screens

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:49:00 -0700

Computer & Video Games links to some Starcraft II screenshots showing off the third Zerg faction. I must say, I almost mistook these screens as Warhammer 40,000. Some of the Zerg look remarkably close to some of the current Tyranids. A few of the screens just look like renders of Marines vs Tyranids, but either way, if this makes it past their legal department, I'm looking forward to smashing some shiny Xeno, oops, Zerg butt.

Black Industries to close September 2008

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:29:00 -0800

Black Industries, a Games Workshop subsidiary that produce Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 RPGs and the boardgame Talisman, have recently announced that they are stopping release of all their products as at September 2008. Even though they have had great success with the new Warhammer 40,000 RPG, Dark Heresy, and their re-release of the legendary boardgame, Talisman, they have decided to focus their efforts on Black Library, the subsidiary that produces fiction for Games Workshop's properties.

This certainly comes as a surprise to me because the Dark Heresy RPG has only been released this year, and has already sold out. Of course, they promise to continue to release all planned books until that time, which means fans of Dark Heresy have Purge the Unclean, The Inquisitor's Handbook, and Disciples of the Dark Gods to look forward to, and fans of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) have The Thousand Thrones, a campaign book to look forward to.

While I don't play either of these RPGs, I do love the worlds they've created and all of the RPG books double as excellent background source material. And of course, if like me you don't actually like their rule systems, there's nothing stopping you using the source material with the game system of your choice. No doubt there will be huge fan support well after these have stopped being published. GW fans are already used to their favourite games being canned with great regularity. Anything that's not their core two games; i.e.; Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 tabletop games always ends up under the rug.

BTW - if you hadn't figured it out by now, the likelihood of their going into a second printing for Dark Heresy seems very remote to me. So if you want that game, you better make an effort to get it soon before the only copies left on eBay are tattered shadows of their former selves.

Remembering self publishing

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:35:00 -0800

Jeff Smith, of Bone fame, introduces a series of guest blogs by self-published cartoonists. They are set to indulge us with war stories, opinions, and discussions of their experiences in self-publishing their comic books. From the words of Smith, "we start a series of guest blogs about the Self-Publishing Movement. A series of essays, memories, and opinions about a movement that in my mind was less about actual self-publishing than about the freedom to experiment with genre, structure and form during a crucial period for comics in the 1990s." The first of these guest blogs is part one of Colleen Doran's story. She is famous for A Distant Soil, which is currently being published by Image. More will follow so check back regularly.

No year of the Linux desktop

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:49:00 -0800

The Linux Rant has a nice commentary of why there will never be a "year of the Linux desktop."

From the article: "Newsflash people. There is no �Year of the Linux Desktop�. There will never be one...But one thing bothers me and drives me nuts every January. �Year of the Linux Desktop� articles. Now and then, one bright mind can�t sleep at night, so he decides to forget about New Year�s booze that hasn�t left his system yet and type a string of characters proclaiming THIS is the year of the Linux desktop. Not the next one, THIS one."

He points out the crux of the problem and reasons that Linux/Open Source advocates are their own worst enemies. It's well worth a read.