Life in general
Victory of The Daleks Wallpaper
I watched the latest Doctor Who episode yesterday, Victory of The Daleks, which took place in World War Two-era Britain. The Daleks had managed to infiltrate the British army, and were posing as a ‘secret weapon’ against the Nazi menace. Winston Churchill was extremely happy to use the alien tech to win the war, but of course, The Doctor knew that the xenophobic cyborgs had to have some ulterior motive. That’s all I’ll say about the plot for now, but a basic review of the episode was that it was awesome.
Anyway, about halfway through the episode Churchill shows The Doctor an early draft of a propaganda poster based on the Dalek secret weapon. It looks like this:
Well, I took that poster, and made a wallpaper out of it. Check it out:
Update: For those so inclined, I made an iPhone version as well. Click the image:
Longest Comment Ever
Now that’s a comment. Weighing in at well over 1600 words, this is the longest comment this site has ever received. It’s a rant about Apple, inspired by my review of Picasa for Mac. A word of warning, however – the commenter appears to be somewhat off their rocker, especially towards the end there.
I keep wanting to tweet that Twitter is down, and I have no way to tweet, but then I realize that since Twitter is down, I can’t tweet. Hence this odd little tweet-like post.
For those who aren’t following me already, I’m zib_redlektab on Twitter.
Mysterium 2009
I just got home from Mysterium 2009, the annual gathering of Myst fan(atics). It was held in Spokane, Washington this year (as it is every few years). Spokane is the hometown of Cyan Worlds, the company that made Myst.
The convention was really great, although the last day was somewhat ruined by a flu outbreak in the hotel. It was fun to meet all of the other fans of Myst, and to know that I wasn’t even close to being the geekiest person there (ha).
On the second day we all piled into a few cars and visited the Cyan offices. We got to meet all the Cyan bigwigs, past and present, and they threw a party for us. I had Rand Miller sign my collectibles, including the copy of From Myst to Riven that I bought at their store, and the Myst concept art that Robyn Miller sent me a few years ago. We were given a tour of their awesome workspace, which I filmed, but due to some accident, I no longer have that footage.
After the party, a few members of the Uru community (Blade, Brian Fioca, Douglas Sharper, and Eleri) held a panel about storytelling in Uru, which was pretty cool as they all were (or are) celebrities in our community at one point or another. After that, the real show started with a Q&A session with Rand Miller. He answered all of our questions, covering topics from Something Else, to MO:RE, to the Book of Marrim, to many other things. It was quite entertaining, and also educational!
For those who weren’t present at Mysterium, or those who would simply like a refresher on the convention, check out the video footage I captured over the course of the weekend. The file is about 580mb, so be careful if you have a slow connection (took me about 20 minutes to download on a standard-speed connection). Also, please don’t directly link to the video file, link to this post instead. There is also a torrent of the video file available, for those who would rather use a P2P connection.
If you’re more into photos, check out this thread on MystOnline.com, this Flickr pool, and this thread on UruObsession.com.
In other news, THIS IS THE 500TH POST! Yes, you read that correctly. I have now posted 500 things to this website. Pretty ridiculous. Here’s to 500 posts, and hoping for another strong 500 in the future!
4 Years!
Today, in 2005, I wrote my first post on this blog. Basically a completely nonsensical post, simply a basic introduction for what eventually became this website. When that post was uploaded, this site was extremely different. Not only was it at a different url (mystotaku.blogspot.com), it looked entirely different, and even had a different title (Myst Otaku). The blog has been through a few different iterations since then. First, it moved to a different blogger site, with a different title – Love, Life and Linux, then eventually my tinkering broke the site entirely, and I migrated to wordpress. That site was extremely similar to this one, it even had the same title – A Series of Tubes. I eventually migrated here, where I plan to stay for a long time.
What ties all of these sites together is the actual content, which I have brought with me on each move, so I count this as the 4th birthday of my website, even though the title and url have changed many times since its inception.
Happy Birthday, Blog!
Silence
Yeah, I haven’t posted in a while. Not for lack of things to write about either: I saw Up in 3D (loved it), I played around with a Palm Pre (enjoyed it), there’s a new iPhone, etc etc. I’ve just been incredibly busy lately. That being said, school is ending next wednesday, so I’ll have much more time to post about fun things. In the mean time, check out Little Wheel, one of the best Flash games I’ve played since Samorost.
Happy New Year!
So, there goes 2008! We saw the closure of Myst Online: Uru Live, the election of the first black president, and many other important events, sad and happy.
Now we face a new year, 2009. Open Source Uru is on the horizon, and who knows what else? Happy new year, everyone!
Uru To Go Open-Source!
Cyan Worlds announced today that they are going to make Uru an open-source project. They plan to release the source code for the client, servers, and creation tools to the Myst community, and allow it to grow and develop as it will in the hands of the public.
Personally, I think this is a great development. The Myst community is very eager to get back into Uru, and in Cyan’s current state, the prospects of an official revival (especially one on the scale of Myst Online) are looking somewhat grim. By releasing the code for the project, the community itself can build and maintain the world of Uru, without having to rely on Cyan’s fluctuating state to keep Uru surviving. Also, it will provide me with the opportunity to run a real Uru server once again, and maybe even get it to a state of popularity…That would be nice, not to mention the way way way more interesting hacks that can come out of Uru once the hacking community gets its collective hands on the source code…
But on the other hand, this is also sad news. Uru has been a big project for Cyan Worlds for a very long time (production started right after Riven, basically), and now that they’re giving out the code to the public, it’s sort of like they’re letting go of the last piece of their effort, finally acknowledging that perhaps the world is still not ready for Uru Live. It’s a sad thing to think about, made only worse by the realization that there could possibly be no more Cyan-made content for Uru, ever.
Oh, the Irony…
Yes, I am writing a third post about LittleBigPlanet. Yes, I promise I’ll keep it short. No, it’s not good news. I just unlocked a mini-game level in the game (no, I’m not quite finished yet, but I’m almost there) called “Spline Rider”. When I saw the title, I died a little on the inside, but when I loaded it up and found myself on a toboggan riding down an environment constructed completely of straight lines, I got angry.
Of course, the level is fun. It’s tricky to get the sled to balance right so you don’t flip over. However, this level is an exact replica of the extremely popular flash game, Line Rider (so popular, in fact, that it has been bastardized into a soulless console game). The hypocrisy is unbelievable, that Sony and MediaMolecule will remove fan-made levels that infringe on copyrights, while there is an official level obviously meant to emulate another commercial game.
On the plus side, I checked the published levels again, and I realized that the Mirror’s Edge and Tetris levels have not been removed (yet), so please, go play them while you still can. I sincerely hope that the Tetris level is not removed, because it is pure genius, and really fun.
On Second Thought…
So yesterday I posted about the latest addition to my list of all-time favorite games, LittleBigPlanet. After posting that post, I began to brainstorm the game’s possible flaws, and I came up with a few things.
First of all, in the level creator, the first time you try to use a new category of objects (materials, switches, eyes, vehicles, etc.), you are forced to watch a tutorial on how to use it. This would be tolerable if the tutorials were skippable, but they aren’t. At least, not all of them are. The tutorials are really unnecessary, and seem extremely out-of-place in such an intuitive and easy-to-understand game. Forcing users to complete tutorials before allowing them to proceed is one of the biggest problems in modern games, which usually include a ridiculously long tutorial level (usually unskippable, as well) at the beginning of the game, which you are forced to play through every time you play the game. For example, the first half-hour in Kingdom Hearts 2 (Twilight Town) is basically a glorified tutorial level, and the opening level of Knights of the Old Republc 2 was just as bad.
Secondly, and this is not a flaw as much as a trivial gripe, the clothes are not as customizable as I would like. Basically, colors. Some clothes allow you to modify their color, but there is only one color setting for your entire avatar, meaning every customizable article of clothing, and all menus, must be the same color. Certainly not a showstopper, but a complaint nonetheless.
Neither of these complaints were enough to merit posting about, in my opinion. However, then I read about MediaMolecule (the company that created LBP) and Sony “moderating” fan-made levels.
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I can understand the need for some level of censorship on their part, they obviously are going to have to delete anything obscene, and anything illegal. But the amount of level-deleting (and it is just that, permanent deletion of so-called “moderated” levels) that has been happening in the past few days is ridiculous. MediaMolecule is removing levels that could infringe on copyrights, so levels that reference other video games, music, people, movies, etc. are all being removed, irrevocably. This is really bad, a lot of my favorite levels (the Mirror’s Edge levels, as well as Tetris, Galaga, etc) are all being removed. They were really the best levels online, being so ingeniously re-created from the tools offered in the game. I must say, I’m very disappointed in MediaMolecule for being such cowards.
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