The Giant Fighting Robot Report

I am dubious. (I am metal.) I am stainless. I am milk in your plastic.

Monday, October 31, 2005

All NaNo's Eve

Another November, another attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I usually say that it's no big deal—it breaks down to about 1,667 words a day. Which is not a lot of writing.

On the other hand, it is a significant chunk of time that I can't spend ranting about the latest SCOTUS nomination (This guy hates small girls, women, minorities, and the Family Medical Leave Act. Plus, since Miers was in theory the most qualified person in the land, he's sloppy seconds, to quote a member of the White House press corps.), the weather, or how few comics I manage to read these days.

On the other hand, I really am looking forward to this exercise. If only it weren't November. What a sucky choice for a month. January, April, May, June—now those are months that would benefit from some distraction. November has not only Thanksgiving, but football playoffs, pre-Christmas madness, and the end of autumnal events. I can think of at least three things I should be doing on Saturday, so now I've gotta figure out how to cram in a couple of hours of writing.

Perhaps I should see what deals CostCo has on cases of Red Bull or Mike's Hard Limeade. Though I should probably not mix the two, huh?

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Lord Admiral Da Vinci

It's a pity the CBC doesn't have an equivalent of BBC America.

Some of their shows make it down to the States through syndicbation, like Da Vinci's Inquest. I'm not sure I can put my finger on just why this show is so compelling. It's a police procedural, but it's got a huge cast and the city of Vancouver is as much part of the show as any of the actors.

Between this, National Hockey Night, and Corner Gas, I'm wondering what other great shows are up there in our neighbors to the north.

I see from the Web site that Da Vinci has moved from the Coroner's Office to the Mayor's Office. Much like Hornblower, the future is very open. Prime Minister Da Vinci.

(Certainly couldn't be worse than the gang of criminals we've got running our country. Contrary to what the panicking Freepers would want you to believe, having the Vice President's chief of staff indicted for five counts in a matter related to national security is a huge fucking deal. I wanted to take Fitzmas off yesterday, but instead I had a really nice day watching the Bush administration start to implode.)

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Plastic bricks. Honest

Evidently LEGO has picked up a new license. (Thanks to Lauren for the heads-up on this. You made my day!)

LEGO Batman


I've been a LEGO fan since I was seven, and this is the coolest thing I've seen since the X-Wings of a few years ago. Or the Cosmic Fleet Voyager. Those of you with a long memory for LEGO Space may remember that one.

(Speaking of space fleets, I really want to see them license Star Trek, if only to make a green Orion slave girl minifig.)

We Love Katamari

I've been playing the sequel to Katamari Damacy. It's got a good sense of humor about the unexpected success of the first game. The entire opening sequence mentions that now that the King of All Cosmos is so famous, katamari fans the world over are making demands that they want to completed.

It's a fairly good sequel in that a few things that were weird have changed, but the core gameplay is still there. The soundtrack is still great, though there have been one or two songs that annoy.

Speaking of sequels, despite being a huge fan of the earlier games, I'm not that excited about Ratchet: Deadlocked. I thought the last one was really pushing the boundaries of the PS2, and this one looks to be a little more of the same. The emphasis is on even more shooting—Clank is pretty much a supporting cast member instead of a costar this time. Guess there won't be as many flying puzzles or solo adventures.

I can't wait to see what Insomniac can do with the PS3. I'm sure I'll rent the new one, but it may not be a must-have.

Been a bit under the weather lately. What I originally thought was some sort of allergy has turned into a cold of sorts. Must get the sinus subsystem looked at.

Addendum: You Knit What?? is making me laugh quite a bit. (Thanks, Metafilter!)

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Roll you up into my life

We Love Katamari just found its way into my mailbox.

I'm really looking forward to this game, as I loved Katamari Damacy enough to remix it into various things. Heck, now I'm wishing this text version was real.
Katamari Damacy: A Text Based Adventure

You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.
Your Katamari is 10cm.

> N

There is a PAPER CLIP here.

> ROLL CLIP

I do not know what a CLIP is.

> ROLL PAPER CLIP

You roll up the PAPER CLIP.

You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.

> LOOK KATAMARI

Your Katamari is 10.2cm.


I've got a copy of TADS around here somewhere. It could happen.

Of course, that would involve me having free time that I'm not sure I do. Besides work, NaNo is calling me. I came up with a plot or two while waiting for the bus. Plus, there's a moleskin in my bag full of notes and the like. (You can also get them from 43 folders...)

I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow's episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Fitzmas is coming.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Grape job, TiVo!

A nice orange box from TiVo arrived the other day, so now there's a little robot that watches TV for me, to quote Patton Oswalt. (Who posts a great deal about who is and is not a dog lover in this recent Spew post...) Setting it up wasn't that bad, after consulting the Scroll of Install TiVo. I'm already trying to figure out if I have any screwdrivers that will fit the case, for the eventual modding that cries out to be done.

Some fun facts I've learned so far:
- How to enable the 30-second fast-forward
- Some folks are happy to help you hack your TiVo
- Many of the shows I want to watch are not on for the next week because of holidays or baseball
- Skipping commercials and intros is so much fun I can't believe the advertisers haven't tried to sue all of these companies into the ground

I am annoyed about the missing shows. At least there's plenty of Cheap Seats and X-Play to go around. On the other hand, I should really decide what I want to write about for NaNoWriMo.

In comics, so far I've purchased all three of the DC Showcase Presents... trades. The Green Lantern one has awesome Gil Kane art, the Superman trade is just insanely funny, and the Metamorpho trade has surprised me at how good it is. Still anxiously awaiting a Flash volume.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Another trip around the sun

I share my birthday with Oscar Wilde, Angela Lansbury, and Larry Young. And a bunch of other people, of course, but those are the ones that stick in my mind.

It's the Night Before Fitzmas. Or maybe, the night before the night before Fitzmas, as I am guessing that nothing is gonna happen until tomorrow.

Passing the time by reading the DC Showcase Presents Green Lantern.



Enjoying the hell out of it, with the Gil Kane pencils and the constant "Will she or won't she?" drama of Hal Jordan's pursuit of Carol Ferris. I wish Kane could have seen this—I think he would have gotten a kick out of the massive amount of fun contained in 500 pages of GL fighting puppets, the Weaponers of Qward, and Sinestro.

What I've learned so far:
  • 24 hours can take three panels or an entire issue
  • Hal Jordan has some sort of color blindness that makes him forget what yellow looks like
  • This is the "good" universe, so I would hate to see what evil looks like
  • When going on a vacation, the best way to increase productivity is to tell your daughter she can't marry anybody while you're gone
  • Even though it's repeated every freaking issue, Alfred Bester's poem about being Green Lantern gets me every time.

If you can find it in your area, watch The Colbert Report. The best belated gift I've had. I laughed my ass off at the "Gravitas-Off" between Colbert and Stone Philips.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Super Friday

As you may have noticed, things have been very quiet around here as work has been nuts.

There's been a lot of old-school goodness from DC as of late. The Showcase trades are selling like hotcakes, and then there's this little number from a ways back.

DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories: 11 Tales You Never Expected to See!

Watch as Superman goes through wives like so many tissues! See how Bruce Wayne was ALWAYS going to become Batman! Captain Marvel watches a nuclear holocaust! And so on.

The Superman Red/Superman Blue story was the highlight for me. The folks of Kandor read Superman the riot act about how he's a complete fucking failure, and they give him six months to straighten his act out and:
  1. Return them to normal size
  2. Get rid of all the goddamn kryptonite
  3. Stop all crime and evil

The obvious answer is, of course, to stick his super-noggin into a brain-amplifying machine, which not only boosts his intelligence 100 times, but splits him in half (in convenient color coding).

There's a brief allusion to this storyline in one of the Supreme tales as I recall, and it has the standard "Lex Luthor would save humanity if he'd stop being so darn evil" plotpoint, seen in so many of these tales. But it's such a satisfying story, where various foes of Superman come in, say their respects, then leave. There's also an exodus of the Superfamily, though Beppo and Streaky are suspiciously absent.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Youa Culpa

Watching a rereun of the Daily Show tonight, where they were covering how Michael Brown was coming clean to Congress about how all of the fuckups in Katrina were because he "trusted people too much."

Yeah, and Admiral Ozzel brought the Empire fleet out of lightspeed in the exact spot to catch the Rebels on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Which is probably the nerdiest thing I have said all month.

Looking for presents for people, and I see this:



It's not the video-playing iPod, but it does come with every single Potter book as an audio file, and has an engraved Hogwarts crest on the back.

Now if they could just get an iPod to sync with TiVo over Bluetooth, I'd buy a handful.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Planet of death!


Reading the old Gold Key Trek comics makes me wonder just how rigid the quality control of The Franchise was back in the early days. (Also, take a gander at what these go for in the original printings. OW.)

Reading the recent Checker reprints over my lunch hour made me miss some of the Blish adaptations of the series. The writer of these isn't listed, though the inking and pencils are by Nevio Zaccara according to the GCDB.

I'm half-tempted to say that they explained the premise of the show in about five minutes, and gave the guy a shooting script or two. But the writer never actually saw the show. For example, in issue one:

The Enterprise has flames shooting out of the warp nacelles. The space language everyone speaks is Esperanta. Most of the dialogue is spoken by Kirk and McCoy, with a few choice bits from Spock. Yoeman Rand is mostly identifiable by her hair. Stardates have colons in them, and there are frequent references to "galaxy minutes" and "lunar hours." The crew, having encountered a mysterious planet, beams down in their teleporter to spy what's going on. In fine tradition, a redshirt buys the farm almost instantly, having been transformed from an animal into a planet.

Enter lots of phaser shooting. Some running. More shooting. OMG! Rand has been captured by plants! (With tumbleweeds acting as the equivalent of herding dogs, which I liked quite a bit.)

Then, once they figure out that the plants are using animals as food, they free Rand using the ship's phasers. And since the plants can make anything into more plants, the obvious solution is to commit planet-wide genocide, so the last page is the complete eradication of all life on Planet K-G with phaser fire.

One of the other issues involved some planet where they execute prisoners by shipping them what must have been a progenitor of the B-Ark from Restaurant at the End of the Universe, one-way missiles that impact on asteroids and then provide sustenance until such time as the asteroids (all of which have breathable atmospheres, by the way) explode. Kirk and his landing party are taken hostage. Kirk hands control of the ship over to Spock, with orders to leave. But a-ha! Spock is now in command so he tells Kirk to stuff it, metaphorically, and then rescues Kirk anyway! Then they leave all the prisoners to die because, dammit, that's how their society works.

There's some goofy bits but it's also all in good fun. Checker's up to volume 3 of the Gold Key series, and I know the DC series has been partially reprinted. (Do check out the Mirror Universe Saga if you haven't already—good stuff. The Best of Trek trade is also fantastic, having one of my favorite issues ever, where Kirk surrenders the Excelsior twice in two issues, all in the name of diplomacy.)

Kevin pointed me to this site, where I should submit a resume. I think I would be disqualified, having no felony convictions. Damn.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Pond Hockey

When I was about 10 or so, we thought about moving from Iowa to Minnesota. We eventually stuck around the Hawkeye state, but I wonder from time to time what my life would have been like had I grown up in a stronger hockey tradition.

What brings this up is the US Pond Hockey 4 on 4 tournament in Wisconsin this February. I've never really ice skated before, so the idea that I can talk three friends into joining this tournament two time zones away is probably insane. On the other hand, it might be fun. They don't appear to have a "complete newbie" league, so it might be just as well. A lot of the folks playing in this can probably skate and everything.

I've done weirder things. Trying to plot anything for NaNoWriMo this year. I've signed up and my track record is pretty good. (Participated three times, finished twice. Last year I lost my will to write or do anything but stare blankly at the TV for a while.)

The first year, I wrote sort of a fantasy about a world where console RPG physics were real. Characters had save points, etc. It was OK. Still makes me laugh, though I doubt there's much in it.

The year after that, there was a hard-science space opera thing about colliding galaxies that didn't turn out how I originally planned, but went OK.

Perhaps I'll take another stab at the story I wrote last year. Or I might do the thing Kevin and I were discussing the other day--cyborg ninjas fighting sharks and Nazis with dinosaurs.

That might help my nerd powers regenerate. It took me a whole day to remember the name of the Star Trek episode where the flying fried eggs take over Spock. And I still had to look the damn thing up.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

By the numbers

OK, so it's not Hurley's cursed numbers:

4 8 15 16 23 42

But it is interesting. The NHL set attendance records all over the place last night. Every team in the league played and every game was a near sellout. Now we're not talking huge numbers here compared to, say, the World Cup, but it's fairly cool. And we even got to see the new shootout in action, as one of the major rule changes this season is NO TIES. Senators win with two goals on Balfour.

One of the weird things that I expected to make more of a difference last night was the removal of the center line from the two-line pass rule. (Before, you couldn't pass across two lines for a much shorter distance.) But I kept watching players move past the blue line to pass—I imagine old habits die hard. I still try and manually lock my trunk, even though I haven't had a car that needed that in four years. So a lifetime of hockey drills probably won't be overcome in an evening.

Still haven't read all of my haul last week from the comics shop. The Top 10: The 49ers trade was short enough to leave me wanting more. Hopefully they'll be restocked on the Showcase Presents: Green Lantern trade, as that was gone before I could buy one.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Ice nine

It's been an interesting night in hockey.

Bertuzzi is back on the ice, after hitting a guy so hard a few years ago that he'll never play the sport again. A shootout between the Leafs and the Senators, so the tie game was settled by who could score more goals on Ed Balfour and Dominic Hasek.

That would be like saying "The guy who can punch Mike Tyson or George Foreman the most wins." I mean, the hell.

We're getting a choice of like 10 games at once, direct feeds from individual local sports networks. So we could watch one game from two different vantage points, both home and away. My favorite thing so far, though, is the Canadian commercials. Not that they're that different, but some of the "I'm so glad they're finally playing hockey again" ads are making us laugh.

National Hockey Night

At long last, our nightmare of no NHL hockey is over. It's been too goddamn long.

The rules changes this year are interesting. Some of them appear to be adaptations from the international leagues. Though they didn't grab the automatic icing call that I grew to love during the last Winter Olympics. Shoot the puck past the goal line from behind your blue line? Automatic icing, no stoppage of play. That call alone shaved at least five minutes/game off of a regular game.

Shoot. Icing. Skate back. Shoot. Icing. Skate back. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The only worry I have at the moment is that when I went to test out my new season pass on DishTV, it said that I've not subscribed. However, the cost appears on my bill online, so I'm guessing it's a bit of a hiccup with the one program I was testing.

I'm going to have to go find some Old Crow and toss a few back for familial piety purposes, now that I think of it. Though after doing a bit of research, it appears the Old Crow of today is not the same as the Old Crow of the past.

Guess I'll have to stick with Knob Creek. Oh, the agony.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Dood!

From the-magicbox.com:
Nippon Ichi announced Disgaea 2 for PlayStation 2, the sequel to the popular strategy RPG Disgaea: Hour of Darkness released in 2003, the game is scheduled to release in Japan in December 2005.

Woot! Hopefully the penguins-driving-mecha from Makai Kingdom will make it into this game. (Penguins + mecha == fun!)

Ascended for the second time in Kingdom of Loathing today, since it's a moxie day and all. Picking a Turtle Tamer so I can go with the familiar enhancing skills.

Finally, I think Bush has been watching too many Miyazaki movies. His Supreme Court nominee looks a whole lot like Dora the Sky Pirate. At least she does to me. Might be the eyeshadow. They're certainly about equally qualified, the lawyer from Texas and the fictional sky pirate from Castle in the Sky.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Power beyond imagination

Angry Alien has a 30-second recap of Highlander, done by bunnies.

The Quickening, it powers me


Even though it's got some fairly goofy acting and a bizarre plotline, plus a Scotsman who can't pronounce the name of a brand of Scotch, I still love this film. The Queen soundtrack helps a lot, too.

I used to listen to it a lot, along with the 1984 soundtrack by Eurythmics. Nothing made me happier than listening to "Sexcrime" while going over the dialogue spreadsheets for children's entertainment products. Those were the days.

Watched The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938 again this evening. Magnificent colors, fun acting, and the best swordfighting in any film, with the possible exception of The Mask of Zorro. And as much as I like Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn, I'm going to have to say that the swordfight between Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas is much more interesting. I gather there's a Hopkins-free sequel in the works for summer, which might cut into the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 2 film's cut. I imagine people not me have already thought about this.

Finally ordered my hockey fix for this season. Next I'll be putting gravy and cheese curds on my french fries.

Oktoberfesten

Since hockey season is fast approaching, and the NHL is trying to drum up intersest. Some people are not happy about their player-as-medieval-warrior commercial, though I think it's a lot of angst over nothing. Where are these people to bitch about the Axe ads, which basically imply that you'll be gang-raped by hot women if you walk around smelling like their product?

(And really, Axe smells... not that interesting. It's more hype than Crystal Pepsi or the latest spin about how peachy everything in Iraq is.)

Since ESPN/ABC have decided to skip the NHL this season, leaving us with the Outdoor Life Network (?!?) as the main venue for games in the States, I think some friends and I are going to breakdown and get the Hockey Channel through DishTV this weekend.

Original plans this weekend included my kickball league's mid-season mixer, but then we were going to have massages instead. So having skipped the party, it turns out that our massage therapist is on sabbatical while she finishes up her degree in traditional Chinese medicine.

It wasn't all bad—went to the comic shop and grabbed the penultimate copy of DC Showcase Presents Superman, which is evidently flying off the shelf. Couldn't find the Green Lantern one at all.

Crap, that reminds me. I know I put Peng on my pull list but it wasn't in my box. Pooch. Must remember to call them. Hot kickball action. How can I resist?

Anyway, off to read that big ol' stack of stuff.