The majority of adverts are soul sucking time sinks that eat away precious minites of your short life. Some are genius.
SWAN DIVE!
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Star Tik Tok
When you were younger you were taught that adding two and two makes four. This is true.
Sometimes, however, adding things does something strange. Two and two become more than four. They become greater. They become... AWESOME!
Sometimes, however, adding things does something strange. Two and two become more than four. They become greater. They become... AWESOME!
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Futurama
So, in case you have not heard, there are new episodes of Futurama coming. And they are now just one week away! If you were wondering, it's moving from Fox to Comedy Central in the USA, which will hopefully turn out to be no bad thing. Best of all, all the original voice-cast are back, even tho' that looked unlikely at one stage. Woo-hoo!
These are going to be the first new episodes for seven years, so as you can imagine, I cannot wait.
There is some justice in the world after all.
These are going to be the first new episodes for seven years, so as you can imagine, I cannot wait.
There is some justice in the world after all.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Float Out review
Serenity: Float Out is a one issue comic, set after the movie Serenity, and "expanding" upon the character of Wash. I put expanding in quotations because of how spectacularly it fails to do this.
In this comic, three new characters are about to christen their new ship, when one of them mentions Wash, who has recently died. They spend five pages standing there, expositioning at us about their new ship, which is pointless as these characters are ones we have never seen before nor will ever seen again. They have no personalities, and these pages do nothing for the story. This exposition is very bornig, and what makes it worse, it is the most predicatble backstory imaginable. It just feels like padding.
Then these guys decide, for literally no reason, to share stories about Wash. They take it in turns to tell a story which makes Wash into Jesus. (If Jesus were the pilot of a spaceship. Which he surely will be after the second coming. But I digress.) While this, kind of, makes sense for people reminiscing about a dead friend, but it does nothing for the reader. It just makes these stories less usefull for connecting us to Wash.
In the first story Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Reavers. In the second, Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Pirates. In the thrid he dumps his smuggled cargo so a friend can escape a trap.
This is really boring.
Wash does things out of character. He was makes jokes when the real Wash would be serious, due to haviing to concentrate on the whole not dying thing. He pulls stunts that the real Wash would know are impossable. The story does not develop Wash, it just has three guys tell us he was a great pilot. It does nothing to build him as a character, or devlop him in anyway. And it is really boring. This comic is a huge let-down.
This is what I hate about post-cancellation Firefly. You cannot just stick the name to it and call it Firefly. It goes deeper. Serenity was a great sci-fi film, but it was not Firefly. It was clearly not in the same 'verse.
If everyone is just gonna act out of character, then what is even the point of using those characters?
In this comic, three new characters are about to christen their new ship, when one of them mentions Wash, who has recently died. They spend five pages standing there, expositioning at us about their new ship, which is pointless as these characters are ones we have never seen before nor will ever seen again. They have no personalities, and these pages do nothing for the story. This exposition is very bornig, and what makes it worse, it is the most predicatble backstory imaginable. It just feels like padding.
Then these guys decide, for literally no reason, to share stories about Wash. They take it in turns to tell a story which makes Wash into Jesus. (If Jesus were the pilot of a spaceship. Which he surely will be after the second coming. But I digress.) While this, kind of, makes sense for people reminiscing about a dead friend, but it does nothing for the reader. It just makes these stories less usefull for connecting us to Wash.
In the first story Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Reavers. In the second, Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Pirates. In the thrid he dumps his smuggled cargo so a friend can escape a trap.
This is really boring.
Wash does things out of character. He was makes jokes when the real Wash would be serious, due to haviing to concentrate on the whole not dying thing. He pulls stunts that the real Wash would know are impossable. The story does not develop Wash, it just has three guys tell us he was a great pilot. It does nothing to build him as a character, or devlop him in anyway. And it is really boring. This comic is a huge let-down.
This is what I hate about post-cancellation Firefly. You cannot just stick the name to it and call it Firefly. It goes deeper. Serenity was a great sci-fi film, but it was not Firefly. It was clearly not in the same 'verse.
If everyone is just gonna act out of character, then what is even the point of using those characters?
Monday, 31 May 2010
That time I tried to predict the Eenglad squad.
So, this time last year I decided to make a stab at predicting who would make the English World Cup squad. That squad which was just announced. I was aiming to get 20 of the 23 right... and now to see how I have done.
GKs:
I had predicted James, Foster and Green to make the journey. Well, James and Green go, but Foster is left out for Joe Hart, and I have to say that is the right decision. Last September, Ben Foster was given his chance for Man Utd... with VDS injured, he was between the sticks for some high profile games, but put in some poor performances and didn’t make the step up I was expecting. Joe Hart gets the nod instead, and given the “quality” of the other options, that makes sense. Anyway, the third choice keeper has only been used three times in the history of the world cup, and one of those time it was a managers decision, not due to injury, so frankly our third keeper doesn’t matter.
2/3
DEF:
So, the core of this I predicted, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Glen Johnson, John Terry, but that is where it goes very wrong. I thought Fabio would only take 7 defenders, but he has decided to take 9! How was I to know that Lescott would become a pathetic defender? Still, it was to be expected that Wes “injury prone” Brown might miss out. Not so expect was the inclusion of Ledley “actually injured all the time” King in his place. Upson is for some reason consider worthy, even though he is shockingly bad, especially when compared to Michael Dawson, and Warnock gets Baines’ spot, which is hard to argue with as they are both pretty bland left-backs. But the shock here is the return of Jamie “I never cared about England” Carragher. When someone retires from internationals, and writes of how little he values international football in his autobiograohy, it looks pretty weak to phone him up, begging him to come back, when we are trying to compete seriously in a major tournament.
4/9
MID:
Well, this looks slightly better. I correctly said that Hargreaves would not recover in time, which is a huge shame, and I correctly argued that Walcott would miss out. I even predicted James Milner, which now looks a good call. Of course, Beckham would likely have been there if not injured, so that is understandable... but I look a right idiot for predicting Downing to make the cut, missing out SWP.
7/8
FW:
Finally, things looks good. I got all four, which is a nice way to end things. And given our options, it is clearly the right four.
4/4
So what can we learn from all this? Well, sometimes average players like Downing will be finally dropped, and sometime average players will continue to get picked for no discernable reason... I am looking at you Upson. Of course, our first 11 has not changed for the past year, so getting that right is no huge surprise. It was picking our second choice backline which proved the problem... mainly because England have such poor options in that field at the moment. When we have to take the permanently injured King, and beg Carragher to return, you know things are going badly. Considering I was aiming for the 20 mark, it seems I was slightly overconfident. You could argue that it was injuries to Brown and Beckham which set me back there, and given how close it must have been when choosing Warnock over Baines, I was actually closer than it looks.
My Final Score: 17/23
Anyways, here’s hoping that all 23 can give us a World Cup to remember.
GKs:
I had predicted James, Foster and Green to make the journey. Well, James and Green go, but Foster is left out for Joe Hart, and I have to say that is the right decision. Last September, Ben Foster was given his chance for Man Utd... with VDS injured, he was between the sticks for some high profile games, but put in some poor performances and didn’t make the step up I was expecting. Joe Hart gets the nod instead, and given the “quality” of the other options, that makes sense. Anyway, the third choice keeper has only been used three times in the history of the world cup, and one of those time it was a managers decision, not due to injury, so frankly our third keeper doesn’t matter.
2/3
DEF:
So, the core of this I predicted, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Glen Johnson, John Terry, but that is where it goes very wrong. I thought Fabio would only take 7 defenders, but he has decided to take 9! How was I to know that Lescott would become a pathetic defender? Still, it was to be expected that Wes “injury prone” Brown might miss out. Not so expect was the inclusion of Ledley “actually injured all the time” King in his place. Upson is for some reason consider worthy, even though he is shockingly bad, especially when compared to Michael Dawson, and Warnock gets Baines’ spot, which is hard to argue with as they are both pretty bland left-backs. But the shock here is the return of Jamie “I never cared about England” Carragher. When someone retires from internationals, and writes of how little he values international football in his autobiograohy, it looks pretty weak to phone him up, begging him to come back, when we are trying to compete seriously in a major tournament.
4/9
MID:
Well, this looks slightly better. I correctly said that Hargreaves would not recover in time, which is a huge shame, and I correctly argued that Walcott would miss out. I even predicted James Milner, which now looks a good call. Of course, Beckham would likely have been there if not injured, so that is understandable... but I look a right idiot for predicting Downing to make the cut, missing out SWP.
7/8
FW:
Finally, things looks good. I got all four, which is a nice way to end things. And given our options, it is clearly the right four.
4/4
So what can we learn from all this? Well, sometimes average players like Downing will be finally dropped, and sometime average players will continue to get picked for no discernable reason... I am looking at you Upson. Of course, our first 11 has not changed for the past year, so getting that right is no huge surprise. It was picking our second choice backline which proved the problem... mainly because England have such poor options in that field at the moment. When we have to take the permanently injured King, and beg Carragher to return, you know things are going badly. Considering I was aiming for the 20 mark, it seems I was slightly overconfident. You could argue that it was injuries to Brown and Beckham which set me back there, and given how close it must have been when choosing Warnock over Baines, I was actually closer than it looks.
My Final Score: 17/23
Anyways, here’s hoping that all 23 can give us a World Cup to remember.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Valve Speculation
So... there is some almost news that Valve, (those guys who make Half Life) are planning a surprise for this years E3 Expo.
This led to a fair bit of internet humour as to what Valve could be doing. A fair bit of parody at how slow they are at doing anything, for example. Of course, I immediately thought of joking how "the surprise is a lie" before realising that was pretty much the joke everyone had made, instantly, and so I was already five minutes behind the entire internet.
So. Yeh.
Warning: From now on this is pretty much just me speculating what Valve are gonna do this E3. If you don't know what E3 is, or who Valve are, then don't worry, it is not really that important. But if you don't know, this post is either going to make little sense, or be pretty dull. Maybe both. Who can tell.
But what could this surprise be? The most obvious would be for a sequel to be announced... but of the various IPs Valve have, we already (pretty much) know the status of these. Portal is definitely getting a sequel sometime "soon", Half Life Ep3 is in "development", and since Team Fortress still has a few class updates to go, so I doubt there would be sequel talk there. That leaves Left 4 Dead, but that just had a new title last Christmas, and I don't think Valve are gonna try to make that an annual thing. So I don't think the "surprise" is going to just the announcement of a new game. We already know, kinda, how those series are playing out. I doubt a "big surprise" would involve any of those.
So here is my guess. New Counter Strike. Considering how many people played CSS back in the day, a new version of CSS could draw all those people back. Valve have been tweaking CSS in recent patches, maybe testing things out to see how the community reacts. This is because they are planning a new game. Vavle love teasing the community, they love to have anticipation build for a very... long... time. Remember how long we had to wait for the original L4D? Or how long we have already been waiting for Ep3? Valve will drop a bombshell and then wait over a year before bringing results. This would be a big project. That project will be Counter Strike. You heard it here first.
(Of course, this is not what I really want. I want Episode 3. So get on that Valve.)
This led to a fair bit of internet humour as to what Valve could be doing. A fair bit of parody at how slow they are at doing anything, for example. Of course, I immediately thought of joking how "the surprise is a lie" before realising that was pretty much the joke everyone had made, instantly, and so I was already five minutes behind the entire internet.
So. Yeh.
Warning: From now on this is pretty much just me speculating what Valve are gonna do this E3. If you don't know what E3 is, or who Valve are, then don't worry, it is not really that important. But if you don't know, this post is either going to make little sense, or be pretty dull. Maybe both. Who can tell.
But what could this surprise be? The most obvious would be for a sequel to be announced... but of the various IPs Valve have, we already (pretty much) know the status of these. Portal is definitely getting a sequel sometime "soon", Half Life Ep3 is in "development", and since Team Fortress still has a few class updates to go, so I doubt there would be sequel talk there. That leaves Left 4 Dead, but that just had a new title last Christmas, and I don't think Valve are gonna try to make that an annual thing. So I don't think the "surprise" is going to just the announcement of a new game. We already know, kinda, how those series are playing out. I doubt a "big surprise" would involve any of those.
So here is my guess. New Counter Strike. Considering how many people played CSS back in the day, a new version of CSS could draw all those people back. Valve have been tweaking CSS in recent patches, maybe testing things out to see how the community reacts. This is because they are planning a new game. Vavle love teasing the community, they love to have anticipation build for a very... long... time. Remember how long we had to wait for the original L4D? Or how long we have already been waiting for Ep3? Valve will drop a bombshell and then wait over a year before bringing results. This would be a big project. That project will be Counter Strike. You heard it here first.
(Of course, this is not what I really want. I want Episode 3. So get on that Valve.)
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