Mies Google Doodle!

Per the title…

Exploding Blood Sausage

Wow, another week, another great (and already highly funded!) kickstarter, this time for Wasteland 2.  Now THAT brings back memories.  I remember playing Wasteland way back when it came out… wandering the desert, trying things out and especially I remember with surprising vividness the scrolling combat description for each round.  I played and played until I got to some part where everything was wiping my party out really darn fast.  Probably got to some higher level area sooner than I should have, but I simply stopped playing the game at that time.  Hmm.  I wonder if I can muster enough time to finish the game before the sequel comes out…

Thinking about Wasteland has me also reminiscing about other (now amusingly old-school) games I loved.  Anyone else play Battletech:  The Crescent Hawk’s Inception?  Fun little RPG, using the full tabletop turn-based rules, if a bit tweaked (like the fact you could carry infinite ammo for any personal weapon – including SRM and Inferno launchers!).  Also played loose and fast (compared to how the BT universe states it) with ‘mech upgrading technology to allow you to actually have an upgrade path for your ‘mechs.  I remember once managing to escape the first combat with the training ‘mech, something not really expected, leaving me to having the only mech with a large laser in the whole game.  Kinda fun.

But the game that I am really remembering with fondness was Sentinel Worlds 1:  Future Magic.  I had so much fun in that CRPG, given it mixed space combat, ground exploration, interactions, out-of-ship actions, half decent graphics and a rather amazing soundtrack for the PC speaker (where the programmers, amazingly, subdivided the speaker track to play at 240 different notes per second, allowing them to simulate three tracks, and it was actually well composed music too).  I can hear the music in my mind even as I type.  I played that one through several times, loved it.  Anyone else remember or played it?  Or Wasteland or the old BT CRPG games?

Orbit!

I have recently begun to play and have much fun in Kerbal Space Program.

The great news:  I have just attained my first sucessful orbital insertion!

The bad news:  I didn’t pay enough attention and have no fuel left for a de-orbit burn.  Oops…

W8 Geekery/Speculation

With all the Windows 8 talk this past week, and the delicious possibility of the same OS on both tablets, netbooks and desktops, I have gotten in my mind this image of what I would consider close to some ultimate computing sweetness:

I leave the house in the morning with my netbook and get on the train for my commute.  I launch some documents and work on them;  every few moments they are saved both locally and to a remote/cloud based server of my choosing.  When I get to work I set my netbook next to my desktop, it detects proximity, and my desktop unlocks, logs me in, and all the applications and documents I had going on my netbook appear on my desktop (the applications having been automatically launched on my desktop).  I work during the day, and I choose to go show something to Francine down the hall.  So I grab the screen of my netbook, which detaches and becomes a tablet, and I walk on down, the document I had going already showing on my screen automatically and ready for showing.  I make changes at her desk, return, set the tablet down, and back the document goes into storage and onto my desktop, updated.  Etc…

Now that I think could be just cool, beyond being able to run any/all software in all environments…

Nostalgia

Even 18 years later, this still rocks hard…

Epic realtime goodness.

This is very rad

100 tonnes of fun

Thanks to MekTek I have just re-installed MW4 Mercs.

This could be very dangerous (and holy cow have they added a massive amount of chassis/mechs to the game!). Thing runs very nice and smooth on my machine.  Ought to tide me over until MW5 comes out…

Mixed Media

First: an amazing CG film full of architecture, light and beauty

Second:  an article on the modern music industry and music making

Third:  An observation on the power (and deliberate use) of labelling (or not labelling, as the case may be).  The nine indicted members of a group accused of plotting to murder police officers and detonating explosives (IEDs), whom in the very indictment against them are charged that they wanted “to levy war against the United States,” are conspicuously not being called terrorists or a terrorist organization on any of the media reports I have heard.  Curious, that.

QotD:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/why-records-do-all-sound-same

TRON

So, how about that new TRON Legacy trailer?  I so did love TRON when it came out.  Mmmm…  It took me a few viewings before I started getting into the new visual style, it was too slick for my eyes at first (It makes sense given 20 years of advancement of course, yet I have a soft spot for the style of old).  Still seems a bit simplified (less circuitry on the characters) and I still do not like that the light cycles bank when their walls are on (right angles only, please!).  And I’m getting very psyched for the film, it’ll be geekily cool!

Holiday Scatteredness

Welcome to the almost-end-of-the-year!  I’ve been having a great holiday, home in Canada where it is a bit white on the ground (but not by much, alas).  Great times staying with my parents, visiting a bunch of friends, and I even played a round of BattleTech, which I haven’t done in ages.  Now that I have space to hold people around a table I’m thinking I ought to host a few BT games this year…

Pretty much by chance we drove by the new Whitby public library and went in to have a look.  I like it!  Very nice, clean, modern lines, and I could tell right away looking at the detailing that the architects were on the ball.  Have a look at it here.  The spaces have a good feel to them, and the material palette remains limited and well executed, and the whole is varied without being busy.  Above all there are many different reading spaces with lots of glazing, so plenty of choice about your reading environment.  Good stuff, surprising to me to see something so well done in Whitby.  Guess my view of the town needs to grow.

I’ve been using my netbook a tonne while at home too and I am loving it immensely.   Eee PCs FTW.  So uncumbersome and easy to port around and yet it’s a cinch to type on it and the keyboard feels nice, exceptionally clear screen and a battery life that makes having a portable computing device to do work on the road actually worthwhile.  Between the train trip and here I’ve edited books, done a bunch of writing, many ‘net related things, even played Master of Orion on it.  So fun having this thing.

Unfortunately, before leaving Cali I carefully copied all the trip pictures onto an SD card so I could bring them home to edit while on vacation… and then left the SD card in my machine in Cali.  Oops!

And that’s it for this pretty random post.  Call it holiday verbiage… make it a great celebration everyone!