Wow. I want one.

Apple has released the new G5 iMac. Available in 17 inch and 20 inch widescreen models, the all-in-one design is the hottest looking Mac since... well, since the Cube.

The 17 inch model, sporting 1440 x 900 resolution off a GeForce FX 5200 graphics card starts at $1,299. That's a pretty good deal for a sweet looking Mac.

I want one!

H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian

I have started the third book in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, H.M.S. Surprise. I have thoroughly enjoyed the books so far, and I am pleased to see there are so many in the series that I have not yet read.

I am astonished at the detail O'Brian pours into his stories. His description of Napoleonic naval warfare rings with a degree of truth and authenticity seldom seen. And while many authors have a firm grasp of thier subject matter, it is a joy to read a tale where that authority is combined with great skill in characterization, dialogue, and plot.

That is the simple truth of the Aubrey/Maturin novels I'm read so far. Yes, they are fantastic in regards to descriptions of sailing, gunnery, and life aboard ship, but they are also damn good stories. O'Brian has created characters that you love and hate - and he makes even his secondary characters seem real.

If you are interested in high seas adventure, you really should take a look at these novels.

"It's the only way to be sure."

I finally booted up Alien Swarm and started a run through the single player game. It's a blast.

It was harder than I thought to control, though I did get used to it pretty quickly. The sound is good, and the gameplay is spot-on. Everything about this thing evokes Aliens for me, which is a good thing.

In addition to the shoot-em-up action, you have to balance your resources. You are given eight marines at the start of the campaign - two of each class. As they gain experience, they will get more capable, but if they get wounded or die...

The game awards medals based on marine performance, as well as special bonuses for certain achievements. For example, If a marine kills 50 bugs without the assistance of any targetting devices, they get an automatic Accuracy skill increase.

The variety of weapons and equipment is good, and the weapon effects are a lot of fun. Aiming via the crosshair is excellent - if you put the crosshair over something that is above the marine, they will fire up to hit it, etc. I also enjoyed the 'Flashlight' attachment for the weapons. When the marine takes the flashlight, it is assumed to be attached to thier weapon - always pointed at the right place. (Doom 3, take note)

The marine AI is pretty good. They will stand thier ground and effectively engade targets that appear, and they will follow the player marine when ordered. The alien swarm AI is simplistic - charge! They have no ranged attack, so they basically, uh, swarm you. The only downside is that events seem to be heavily scripted. During the second mission, the fire team had bunkered up in a room with their sentry gun - mowing down bugs as they tried to 'get some'. Unfortunately, ammo is limited, and we were running out. I had three marines stand their ground, while I ran the fourth through the gauntlet looking for the exit. I found it, without any opposition. So I ordered the other three to follow the path. Of course, we were dogpiled as we ran along the same corridors. So I'm not sure scouting like that is going to be useful.

Oh, another cool touch? Friendly fire is always on. That right, make sure you set up those marines right, or the autocannon gunner either won't fire for fear of hitting his team leader, or he will fire, doing more damage than the bugs.

I can't wait to try the co-op multiplayer - eight marines under two commanders should be twice the mayhem.

I was afraid of that...

Lucasfilm has officially denied rumors regarding possible Star Wars sequels.

The Riddle of Steel

While browsing the web a while back, I found a reference to a 'real-time' roleplaying game called The Riddle of Steel. After checking out the site, I discovered that while the game is not truly real-time, it does seem to be less turn-based than other systems I have played.

I am planning on downloading the sample game called A Hint of the Riddle:TROS Quick-Start Rules and giving it a go in the near future.

More to follow as I find time to actually play!

My Next Gaming Fix

The official site for Star Wars Battlefront has opened.

Personally, I cannot wait to see how this thing plays. Team-based FPS in the SW universe? I can play an ARC Trooper? Jeez, this looks awesome. The screen shots on the site looks great - and you can listen to John Williams while drooling....

More Star Wars?

According to a blurb posted on /., there is a possibility of Star Wars sequels (episodes 7,8,and 9). The gist of the story is that some employees as Lucasfilm were just made to sign NDA's regarding those hypothetical films. This is far from concrete evidence, but as soon as some turns up, I'll put it here.

Don't Go Into the Woods

My wife and I went to see The Village this afternoon. I've been looking forward to this movie since I saw the first teaser trailer almost a year ago. While I seldom get attached to movie directors, I've liked most of Shyamalan's work in the past, and I had high hopes for this latest work.

I was bitterly disappointed, even though the movie was well made and entertaining.

Does that make sense? It's like sitting down to dinner and expecting a medium rare ribeye, then getting served a garden salad instead. Yeah, the salad might be good, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

[SPOILER WARNING]

I loved Signs. It is one of my favorite thrillers simply because I didn't know squat about the story going in (very deliberate on my part) and was simply blown away by the fact that there actually *were* aliens in the cornfield. It was an awesome movie experience for me.

I tried the same thing with The Village. I deliberately avoided anything about the movie except for the occasional trailer in the theaters. I walked into the movie expecting a suspenseful thriller with possibly a supernatural overtone - exactly as the trailers led me to believe. But I was as deceived as the children of The Village. The lack of anything supernatural - the horrifyingly mundane explanation - left me wanting more. The cast, especially Joaquin Phoenix, was excellent, but in the end, my disappointment and the perceived plot holes left me unsatisfied.

Oh, well.

"Somebody wake up Hicks."

If you are a fan of the movie Aliens, you should check out a mod for Unreal Tournament called Alien Swarm.

Unlike most mods, Alien Swarm is a conversion that changes the FPS UT into a top-down squad based action game. The 3D engine combined with good level design makes this mod very pretty to look at. As of right now, I've only played through the tutorial, so I've not gotten a big taste of the gameplay, but it looks promising.

The weapon effects looked great, and the animations and sound were solid. I particularly liked the flamer and the targeting flare.

The game is definitely inspired by Aliens. The creatures come in egg pods, and lay their young in humans. The weapons include the assault rifle, flamer, shotgun and autocannon. The marines can bypass locks, use cutting torches to open doors and seal them, and hack computers. I love it.

The only multi-player offered is co-op play of the campaign, but thats fine with me. If I wanted to get owned in a top-down game, I'd go play Starcraft.

I'll post more when I get a chance to play some more.

Really... LARP'ers Get *No* Respect

The PvP LARP storyline continues, so I have to keep laughing about it. I was thinking earlier - maybe I shouldn't laugh too much at LARP'ers. I play pen and paper RPG's, and I play paintball. In fact, my favorite flavor of paintball is scenario games - that's not much different than live action roleplaying, but with guns, right?

Then I did a quick google and decided that yeah, there's a difference. While I'd have a little respect for people who go out swordfighting, the whole LARP thing is ... weird. Instead of dice, you simply try to hit the other guy - all the while yelling how much damage you do. Uh huh. Keep it. I'll stick with the paintguns.

And in case you are wondering, some people do take this stuff seriously.

Tech: Problems Installing XP

I have an Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that needs to be given the 'clean slate' treatment after being turned in by a departed employee. I wanted to simply boot from the OEM XP Pro CD, format the drive, and do a clean install of XP. Simple.

Wrong.

It would boot from the CD, but as it was loading files for setup, the laptop would shut down. The computer would boot into the existing Windows XP, but would not run setup. I tried running the setup from explorer - same effect. I also tried booting from the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disk set I have - same problem.

I thought it might be RAM, so I removed one DIMM module, then the other - no effect. I then took memory from an identical laptop and tried that, but that didn't work either.

So now it's been a few hours, so I went to lunch.

When I came back, I put the original memory modules back in their original locations, but the modular drive back, and put the battery back in and booted from the XP Pro CD. It worked. For a moment I thought it was the RAM until I realized that I had not reconnected the AC power cord - the laptop was running on battery. Just for fun, I stopped setup, plugged the machine back into AC power, and booted - same failure.

I'm not sure if the problem is with the specific AC adapter I am using or if it's something on the motherboard, but I've got setup running now without further problem. Of course, the battery is over two years old and was not going to hold a charge long enough to complete the install so I was forced to plug the AC adapter back in once it passed the point where it normally crashed.

Everything seems to be fine now, we'll see how it comes out.

No More Capitalization?

For as long as I can remember, I've made a conscious effort to capitalize the words "Internet" and "'Net" (as well as to make certain the leading apostrophe is there on 'Net). Now the copy editor of Wired News has declared that Wired will no longer be capitalizing the words internet, net or web.

This reflects the changing nature of the 'net, and I agree with the decision - I just never would have thought of it on my own. When you think about it, there is no longer any more reason to capitalize internet that there is to capitalize phone or newspaper. The net has become a staple of modern communication, and deserves to be recognized as such. Isn't it strange that by removing the emphasis on a word, we are actually recognizing how ubiquitous it has become?

Cool.

LARP'ers Get No Respect

Everyone laughs at the LARP'ers. Even traditional pen-and-paper roleplayers, themselves sometimes ridiculed, manage a chuckle at the thought of running around with foam swords.

Scott Kurtz of PVP hit it on the head with this strip:


I'm with Brent (shades, ponytail) on this one.

So I'll play my DnD and my D20 - but you can't make me dress up and beat the snot out of other people. Hmmm. On the other hand....

No. Forget it.

Student.Attitude.Text == 'PITA'

I live in a college town, and this is the week where students start drifting back into town for Fall Semester. What a Pain in the Ass (PITA).

We went out to an early dinner tonight, at a tex-mex burrito joint near campus. My wife, myself and my two kids. My son is four, and my daughter is two, and I am very well aware at how disruptive they can be in restaurants. Tonight, however, the fact that we were eating early - before they got cranky and hungry - combined with a loud, casual restaurant made for a pleasant meal. I could barely hear them, so I doubt they were bothering someone else.

But, of course, I was wrong. My wife told me as we were leaving the the pair of college girls sitting in the booth behind us had said something along the lines of, "why'd they bring those kids here?". Unfortunately, I missed the comment because I would have enjoyed explaining a few things to the spoiled brats at table six.

College students annoy me. They suffer all the excesses of youth - too loud, too rude, and too stupid - and they offer very little to the community to offset that. The fact that I, a property-tax paying resident of this city, should have to put up with stupid comments from someone who is still a long way for paying their dues really irritates me.

It's apparent to me that I am going to be a seriously cranky old man when my time comes. Shotgun on the front porch kind of cranky. And I am very sensitive to real and perceived slights - I have trouble letting things slide. But students who behave as if this town was built to serve them are doing themselves as well as those around them a disservice. I don't remember acting that way when I went to school (but would I remember that?), and that I don't recall any of my friends or acquaintances behaving that way, either. Did we have more respect than students now - a mere fifteen years later - or is that simply an effect of looking at life from two different perspectives? I can't be certain.

I do know that the kinds of behavior I see in modern students cannot do them any good. Few people want to associate with arrogant spoiled people, which will become evident to these kids as time passes. If these kids cannot appreciate the fact that they are, in fact, simply one part of this community and not the hub it revolves around, we'll all be better off.