Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Heptapods and Cats

Published on September 30, 2009 in Misc and Projects. 3 Comments

Yesterday went quite well. I only managed to finish three levels, but that’s because I decided to add/change some graphics, and because a major crash forced me to redo an entire area (I hadn’t saved after putting in all the creozoids). But I’m still happy with the results, so it’s all good. And finally seeing a Heptapod in action convinced me that putting in stealth mode was a good idea.

And now, something profoundly intellectual and world-affecting: a YouTube cat video (found quite accidentally via Hugh Hancock’s LJ). Watch it. Trust me.

And then watch this one, featuring the same cat: another piece in the great and mysterious puzzle of Kittendom. It should brighten up your day. And if you’re depressed, remember how lucky you are to live in a world that has such creatures in it – that for all the horrors of everyday life, all the mind-numbing boredom of the system we live in, and all the unimaginable horrors other people have to live with, we still live in a world that is full of funny and wondrous beings, many of them cats.

Grumble

Published on September 28, 2009 in Projects. 5 Comments

Looks like I’m not going to be finishing Phenomenon 32 in September after all. It’s not far from completion, but level-building is taking longer than anticipated, and so is remixing the music. It’s not that any of it is difficult per se, or that I’m having conceptual or design issues – it’s just that I’m making a rather large game, and being very obsessive about the details. Some will never notice this, because they won’t be able to see past the minimalism and abstraction of the graphics, but a lot of thought has gone into achieving both interesting and challenging environments, and a strong atmosphere. And it’s all working quite splendidly – but every additional ruined city or anomaly-infested area or what-have-you takes another few hours to do properly.

So when will the game be released? I’d say in something like 10-20 days, depending on work, health, and testing. I’m hoping to make tomorrow a major level-building day; let’s see if I manage.

Tell me what you love… (Part One: Novels)

Published on September 27, 2009 in Literature. 4 Comments

I wanted to write about some of my favourite books, and start the post with the idea that by knowing what someone loves, you learn something about them as a person… and then Verena stole my idea. And it’s hard to do something about it when you’re part of the same symbiosis. But I can grumble. Ha!

Obviously, anyone who takes top tens or similar lists seriously has some pretty severe flaws in his or her thinking. (Harold Bloom and his Western Canon would be a good example) But if they’re not taken too seriously they make for an excellent intellectual exercise, a way of recalling and comparing things you read or saw that can lead to interesting thoughts and discussions. And it’s fun. Just don’t think that it’s even remotely possible to achieve some sort of accuracy or deeper truth.

So, here’s a list of ten books that have deeply affected me and my writing. I’ve not counted nonfiction, because that would make the list impossible, but I did count a book of Blake’s that’s not really a novel and still belongs on this list. This is my list, so I can cheat.

  1. The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien
  2. The Dark Tower, Stephen King
  3. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
  4. The Gap Series, Stephen Donaldson
  5. Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon
  6. Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling
  7. Duma Key, Stephen King
  8. I See By My Outfit, Peter S. Beagle
  9. The Riddle-Master’s Game, Patricia McKillip
  10. Belgarath the Sorcerer, David and Leigh Eddings

Of course this list is ridiculous. It’s missing The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, It by Stephen King, The Liar by Stephen Fry, (what is it with all the Stephens?), The Beach by Alex Garland, the novels of Isaac Asimov, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip, The Innkeeper’s Song and The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, Childhood’s End and Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, various books by Paul Auster, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, To Kivotio (The Box) by Aris Alexandrou and a whole lot more. Perhaps I should make a longer list one of these days.

It’s all absolutely worth reading, though.

Germany: VOTE LEFT

Published on September 27, 2009 in Thoughts. 0 Comments

Once more – if you’re in Germany, get out there and vote. You know the CDU and FDP and NPD and Republikaner mainly stand for Evil, but also remember what the SPD and the Greens stand for. My friend Julian posted a partial list:

  • War against Yugoslavia
  • War in Afghanistan
  • Privatizing the public sector, including the Post and Energy
  • Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy
  • HARTZ 4
  • labour-leasing and temporary work
  • allowing hedge funds
  • cutting civil rights in the “fight against terrorism”
  • Praxisgebühr
  • Riester-Rente
  • contributing to EU-market radicalism
  • no resistance against tuition fees, even though they promised to forbid them
  • raising indirect taxes with Ökosteuer and Tabaksteuer

These are not parties of social or economic progress. They are not even parties of environmental progress. Everything they supposedly stand against was actually initiated by them and will continue to be supported by them. Just like the CDU/FDP/etc., they will use the economic crisis their policies created as an excuse to eliminate the rights of normal people and tranfer what little money the population has left into the hands of the people they actually answer to: the financial aristocracy.

Your vote may only make a small difference, but right now the world can use every small bit of progress it can get. Go out  there, and vote left.

Wer hat uns verraten?

Published on September 25, 2009 in Music and Thoughts. 2 Comments

I’ve posted this before, and I’ll probably post it again, but with the coming elections here in Germany this is an important reminder of what the SPD (the Social Democrat Party) actually stands for. It was the SPD and the Greens that went to war against Kosovo, a war as illegal and immoral as the one against Iraq, and supported it with arguments worthy of George Bush (“Milošević is the second Hitler! Bombing civilians saves them from persecution!”). It was the SPD and the Greens that began dismantling the welfare state. It was the SPD and the Greens that secretly helped the United States transport prisoners to third-world countries where they could be tortured and in some cases killed. It was the SPD and the Greens, now selling themselves as progressives, that betrayed everything their parties supposedly stood for. The differences between them and the CDU and the FDP are minimal at best – and at least we know what those parties stand for. When the FDP tells you that their program is to bring more evil into the world, you know they’re telling you the truth. But when the Greens say they want environmentalism and peace, they mean they want to dump their garbage in the Balkans and declare war on third-world countries that “pose a threat to civilization,” like Afghanistan. Either that or they want to save them by bombing them. Also like Afghanistan.

So, please, if you think that civilization is more important than Social Darwinism, and cooperation more important than competition and greed, vote left. Vote the Left Party, or if you think they’re too flawed, vote the PSG. If you’re evil and think rich people deserve to be richer without working while the people who actually work should be exploited, vote FDP or CDU or NPD or some similar group of slimeballs, and we’ll talk again in a few years… but do not vote the SPD or the Greens. If there’s ever going to be any progress towards a fairer society, those two parties will have to go. As appealing as their propaganda may sound, they have shown their true faces.

And if you don’t believe that, just ask some of the dead in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Love, Hate and Music

Published on September 25, 2009 in Misc and Music. 1 Comment

My friend Ivo (aka Qondory Weary) has, once again, started updating his blog. I’d like to take a tiny bit of credit for that, though not more than 5% – after all, he’s a writer, and the urge for writing is alive in him.

The one bad thing about blogging is that there is so much of it that it’s hard to find something interesting to read, and that people generally don’t leave comments, which is often discouraging. That’s why I always try to promote the blogs and sites that I enjoy, especially when they’re not hugely popular. There is great writing out there that is obscured by the sheer size of the internet, and it’s worth discovering.

Ivo writes a great deal about music. Music, I would say, is central to his understanding and experience of the world, and he treats it with a mixture of profound love and complex analysis; as a result, his writings on musical subjects make for fascinating and often deeply philosophical reading. Take Resisting the Cold, his review of the new Muse album: it’s a beautifully written review, but it’s also a meditation on love and hate and resistance and art, all in a single blog post. I greatly enjoyed reading it, and I haven’t even listened to the album. Ivo can write poetically about the heaviest of heavy metal, and even if the music would make your ears bleed and your head explode, it’s still worth reading. He also writes beautifully about literature, science, technology, the future, and is an excellent and original poet.

(I’m not just being nice because he’s my friend, or because I broke his character’s ankle in our last RPG session. When I think something sucks, I tend to say so, or keep quiet. I can be very critical.)

So, do yourself a favour and read a bit of a completely undiscovered but absolutely excellent blog. And maybe leave a comment or two – it won’t take you more than a couple of minutes, and you’ll be encouraging a good writer to write more. Think of it as your good deed of the hour.

And now, back to Phenomenon 32. I’m almost done with this damn research menu.

Hmm, where did I put that podcast? Oh, the EMP Generator’s hypercapacitor crushed it. Damn.

Published on September 24, 2009 in Podcasts. 2 Comments

There is no podcast, because I spent all my time working on the research system in Phenomenon 32, and forgot to record one. So no podcast for you, but nearly 30 things to research. Quite a few of them are even useful. Isn’t that awesome?

If you’re bored, why don’t you read up on the hagfish, one of the most amazingly weird creatures ever?

Up

Published on September 24, 2009 in Film. 1 Comment

UpI’m not a huge Pixar fan. I admire their technical abilities, but I don’t worship every film they make. I liked Wall-E quite a bit, but Finding Nemo bored me and Ratatouille was excruciatingly bad (and racist to boot). I’m not one of the people who immediately light up the moment they hear the word Pixar.

I say all this so that you fully appreciate it when I say that Up is a truly brilliant movie. A masterpiece. An amazing work of art that succeeds greatly in almost all the aspects of its medium (great writing, beautiful visuals, perfect actors) and fails in none (the music is good and effective, if not entirely memorable).

Up is, quite simply, absolutely fantastic.

I’m not going to say too much about the plot, because you should go and see the film. The trailer does not do it justice even remotely, even though it’s cute. (Actually, I’m glad the trailer didn’t spoil as much of the film as a lot of trailers do.)

But let me say a couple of things about what makes this film work so well, apart from the enormous technical talent involved in its making.

Up is hilarious – a lot funnier than any other Pixar movie I’ve seen. It is also extremely touching, and at times quite enormously sad. And I think that one reason the movie is so funny is that it’s also got sad parts. The sweet is never as sweet without the sour, as Brian Shelby might say. The first five or ten minutes of the movie are just heartbreaking, and the central theme of those minutes is revisited repeatedly throughout the movie, and creates an underlying seriousness to the events. And thanks to this emotional seriousness, the audience is so deeply invested in everything that is going on that they experience the humour a lot more strongly, and appreciate it a lot more.

This isn’t just a technical aspect of how the movie is structured: it is a matter of philosophy. The tragedy at the heart of the movie is profoundly real, and as such lets us profoundly appreciate the beautiful and funny parts of life.

A film that tells us that the world is all laughs and shopping bags must by its very nature fail, because it’s lying to us. But a film that tells us that life is often overwhelmed by unbearable heartbreak, yet is nevertheless full of laughter and adventure and beauty, is a film that is accomplishing the highest purpose of art: showing us the truth in all its complex glory.

I’d say something meaningful…

Published on September 23, 2009 in Projects. 0 Comments

…but I’m too busy implementing the player side of research right now. Later I’ll take a break and we’ll go see Up, which I hope will be good (like Wall-E) and not utter shit (like Ratatouille).

Oh, and a new podcast should be up today or tomorrow.

How You Can Tell That Your Wife Is An Excellent Cook

Published on September 22, 2009 in Misc. 0 Comments

So you buy yourself one of them instant noodle soup thingies, something that’s supposed to taste of garlic and prawns. Turns out it tastes of nothing with an aftertaste of blah. Your wife takes the soup to the kitchen, puts in a bunch of spices, and it comes back tasting somewhere between good and yummy.

What, you expected that sentence to end with “tasting perfect”? Then you don’t know what that stuff tasted of in the first place. The sheer nothingness of it could have absorbed all of a less talented cook’s spices. And no matter what the cook does, she can’t fix the blahness inherent in the noodles.

And if you still doubt her abilities, you should join our role-playing group (no, you can’t) and get served three-course themed meals with each session.

Hmmm. I hope the Kamikaze Cookery DVD I ordered arrives soon.

Anyway, that’s how you can tell.