I’ve even got a couple of ideas that I think would work, too. Nothing too concrete, but something that would at least get the creativity flowing and allow me to stretch those muscles, so to speak.

I used to write. I used to write quite a bit, any time I had free time to kill and a black sheet of paper. Most of the time it was really, horribly bad fantasy crap. Occasionally I’d try my hand at other genres, like horror (crap), satire (crap) and sci-fi (crap in space), but I almost always came back to fantasy.

Which is weird, really. I’ve not read a lot of fantasy. Most of the time I read science fiction, from the pulpy 30′s to the atomic 50′s, from the hard-science 80′s to the cyberpunk 90′s. Rarely any fantasy, though.

Maybe that’s why I wrote in that genre – because, to me, it was more open. I didn’t know what had already been done – and been done better than I could hope to achieve. I hadn’t already limited myself with expectations of what other writers would do, so I was a bit more free to try my hand at things. That would explain why ever horror story I tried came out like a really shitty carbon copy of a really shitty Steven King short story. It could be worse, I suppose. At least I’m still better than Peter David.

What I’m trying to say, is: I want to write again, and Peter David is a talentless hack.

Not Actual Box Art

The plot is straight out of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past: A long time ago, there was a big bad guy who did big bad things. Six smart, wise guys got together, and trapped him in a parallel world of his own creation a glowing Orb. Some wizard has sucked up to the king, stolen the Orb, and plans on unleashing the power of the Big Bad. It’s up to you, who just happens to be the direct descendant of the Previous Hero, to save the world.

Sound familiar? Sages are called Scholars, Dungeons are Temples, but otherwise it’s all very much in line with what we know and love. Which, in my opinion, is a great thing.

Graphically, it’s closer to The Legend of Zelda, only in 3D. Kind of like the reverse of Super Paper Mario: Instead of 2D sprites in a 3D world, it’s blocky-sprites in a blocky-sprite world.
Okay, maybe the analogy doesn’t hold up particularly well… But you get the picture.

The game is full of references to past games, from direct quoting of famous lines, to references to the cheat codes and other such trivia that gamers of a certain age will remember fondly. Even the sound effects have been crafted in such a way as to be reminiscent of other titles.

What, then, does this game bring that is new? Sadly, not much. It does contain a rather robust – if complicated – character creation tool, but other than that it is a retro game in high-def.

Which is not at all a bad thing – because 3D Dot Game Heroes has a sense of whimsy and sincerity about it which truly sells the idea. This isn’t something crafted over a weekend by some guy in his basement hoping to cash in on your love of old stuff. No, it’s a love letter to the past, a thank you note for all the fun what we’ve had, and a reminder that such fun need not go away as games evolve into… well, whatever the fuck Twilight Princess was.

Frankly, this is a game that Nintendo should have made, and would do well to take notes from. In many ways this game is more Zelda than the last console entry in the franchise.

I don’t think I can recommend it highly enough.

*Not an iPad

It’s my blog, I’ll do what I want. :p

First off, don’t expect me to answer the question of who it’s for. I don’t know – I know I like using it, it fits my needs pretty damn well, and I’m really happy I bought one. Beyond that, I don’t know.

I can say that most of the folks that have spent any time using mine seem to enjoy it, and can begin to see how it might fit into their life – and the others think it’s a neat toy, and then dismiss it. Which is how it should be, really. It’s not something needed, it’s something wanted.

The iPad really is a big iPhone, not a small laptop. That’s both it’s greatest strength and it’s biggest weakness. What I mean to say is, that allows it to be dead simple to use and maintain, but not near as easy to modify or personalize. This is something I knew going into it, and not something that’s been an issue – I can set my wallpaper, which is more than can be said for any netbook running Win7 Starter. I can’t use Flash, of course, but that’s not something I rely heavily on anyway.

It’s great for email, Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and text/image based internet in general. It is awesome for video, and pretty good for audio. The built in speaker is okay, but I’m very glad for the headphone jack. The screen makes reading easy and enjoyable (I’ve read two books already on it), and the ability to use Amazon Kindle is a major bonus.

The keyboard takes some getting used to, much like the iPhone. It’s pretty good, and close enough to fullsize that there’s not much of an adjustment. The lack of tactile feedback does make typing a lot slower than on a keyboard, but it’s at least as fast (if not faster) than using the iPhone.

It has supplanted my laptop, and is a great second computer – for those who don’t actually need a portable computer.

Hopefully in the coming week I’ll be able to crank out a review of the device, as well as some thoughts on iBook vs Kindle. We’ll see.

Btw: This post? WordPress for iPad.
The keyboard is so win.

Ax? Really? Is that a word we actually want to use? It looks wrong, too short and, well, kind of silly.

I’m sorry, people, but I refuse to go along with this insanity.

Summary:

Last week (sorry about the delay!) I spent four days at the Star Trek Las Vegas 2009 convention.

That’s four days of Star Trek, Star Trek stars and Star Trek fans. Four days of wandering the same halls, looking over some of the loot, and generally being surrounded by folks geekier than I am.

Four days of awesome.

This year was actually a bit mellower than previous conventions – they had fewer folks on stage on any given day, but made up for that by giving them a bit more time to do their thing. This time was greatly appreciated, as it gave the cast time to open up and really get into things. As always, I would have preferred just a bit more time for some of them (Frakes and Dorn, in particular), but I’m not going to be too picky. Any time is better than no time.

Full breakdown follows.

Pictures Taken: 331
Pictures Actually In Focus: 134

Mobile Me Gallery

Thursday:

• Rapping/Singing Ferengi
  Max “Rom” Grodenchick”
  Came out, told some interesting DS9 stories, some stories about the makeup and about being Rom, then did some songs and a bit of dance.
• Rapping/Singing/Dancing/Joking Klingons
  (Martok and Gowron)
  Pretty much what it says – two of the DS9 era actors, in full Klingon garb (only time I’ve seen a Trek actor actually in costume) and mostly in character, singing, dancing, fighting and generally being entertaining Klingons.
• Johnathan Frakes/Micheal Dorn
  (Cmdr. Riker, Lt. Cmdr. Worf)
  Not sure what else I need to say – Frakes was crazy as hell, and Dorn was barely saner. The two of them were just wild and entertaining, talking about everything from smashing eggs on “Ol’ Baldies” head, to flying planes and being old and fat.

Friday:

• DS9 Cast Panel
  A large group; Rosenberg enjoyed the hell out of it. I walked out, because it was kind of boring… Just like DS9.
• Robert Picardo / Ethan Philips “House Call”
  (The Doctor and Neelix, Star Trek Voyager)
  A two man play, written and performed by them. Very humorous – and filled with them bickering both in and out of character. I wish I could have recorded it – it was just awesome.

Saturday:

• George Takei
  (Mr. Sulu, TOS)
  It’s Sulu! What more do you need to know? Talked a bit about the new movie, and how he got into acting, his father, and then a bit about the gay marriage situation in California. Good times, great speaker.
• Christopher Llyod
  Doc Brown himself. Came out a bit dazed, and bit nervous but by the hours end he was rocking the joint. Told many great stories from his days of acting covering the entirety of his career. A great man, Mr. Lloyd.
• Voyager Cast Panel
  (Robert Picardo, Ethan Philips, Roxann Doawson, Tim Russ)
  As always, a highlight of the convention. Not sure why, but the Voyager crew are always my favorites to watch – always funny, always making each other – and us – laugh. They truly are a family, and it shows.
• Star Trek Online Developer Chat
  ZOMG! I cannot wait for this game to come out! I also got into the beta because my wonderful and amazing girlfriend was willing to sit in line for over an hour and half for me.
  The devs do have a handle on both the Trek universe and what it is that makes a game fun – I cannot stress just how awesome the game looks in motion, and how much I want to play it.

Sunday:

• Zachary Quinto (Harassed by Garrett “Harry Kim” Wang)
  (New Spock in the new Star Trek movie)
  Zach is hot. There’s no other way to put it – the man has such a strong stage presence that no less than THREE ladies (and possibly one man) nearly lost their shit when trying to ask him a question – and one girl was completely speechless in his presence.
  This, of course, did not stop Garrett from asking the nerdiest question of the entire convention, and also acting like the huge fanboy he must really be.
• William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy
  There are no words to describe this. Shatner was still bitter, if only for comedic effect, and Nimoy pretty much called him on it. It was a great way to end a good convention.

Loot Report:

STLV09 Loot

• Star Trek fleece pullover
• Red Shirt cologne (Because Tomorrow May Never Come)
• Intergalactic Bartender drink recipe book
• Gallifreyan Institute of Technology Tee
• United Federation of Planets Tee (thanks Nadia!)
• Mini- Prometheus, All Good Things Enterprise-D, Original Series Enterprise
• Star Trek Voyager two pack toy (Species 8472 and Harry Kim)
• Star Trek Voyager Voyager tree ornament
• 3D Trek new movie Enterprise 3D picture

The Middleman - Complete Series

The Closed Caption Conundrum

or

Middleman Middlereview Middlemaddness

My copy of the Middleman DVD box set from Shout! Factor finally arrived yesterday, and after much anticipation (and drooling over the intricate packaging) Nadia and I watched the first episode (“The Pilot Episode Sanction”), and it was greatly enjoyed… By me. She also liked it, but not quite as much as I did. Not because she didn’t enjoy it, or think it funny or a great show (she compared it, favorably, to Firefly, which is bot a major plus and some major nerd cred right there), but because of the language barrier.

Which brings me to the point of this posting: Why is it so damn hard to get Closed Captioning working while playing back a DVD? Shout!, for whatever reason, decided it would be better to have the captions on this set as Closed Captions, instead of subtitles. I’m not sure why this is – subtitles are simple to use from a consumer standpoint, and universally supported from a player standpoint. But CC? Not so much.

The PS3 will not pass CC through HDMI – in fact, a quick bit of google-fu shows that this is a pretty standard, known problem. So, my $400 media monster won’t allow my girlfriend to know everything that’s said on this show.

You Microsoft fanboys can just shut the hell up now too – it also will not pass the CC information through. Or, if it does, it does so in a very odd, unintuitive way – which is basically the same thing. So that’s another $300 well spent.

Thankfully, my Mac mini, which I use for a media center anyway – not only has DVD playback baked into the OS (why any modern OS wouldn’t have this feature I’ll never understand), but it does fully support CC. Which is why we’ll be watching Middleman on a computer via DVD…

The box set is great – the package is great, with lots of neat touches, the picture quality is freat, the sound quality is wonderful… But the fact that so much work had to be done just to get the damn CC working (Total time spent dicking around: half an hour… on over a $1000 worth of equipment) makes Shout!’s choice of captioning a fail in my eyes.

I would still reccomend this set to anyone who likes fun, unless they were deaf. In which case, it’s just too much of a hassle.

Seriously, Shout! – Get your act together soon.

So. Fucking. True.

Not entirely sure why I’m blogging about it. I didn’t really ever use my DS in the first place, but if I do miss it I still have my DS Phat to keep me company, or the PSP if it comes to that. I guess a part of me, the nerdy part of me, is just very happy to see her wanting to barrow and play some of the games I enjoy – and wanting to get some games of her own.

I guess, on that level, it makes me realize even more that we really are a great match.

Odd thing to key in on, I know…

It can be hugs time naow?

An Open Letter to the McCain Campaign

Regarding a recent entry on your blog, where you stated:

…Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement…

Is this the kind of thinking one can expect from McCain and his (potential) government? Slurs, slander and ages old stereotypes?

What’s next? Implying that all gamers are fat asthmatics who’ve never seen the sun? That all scifi fans are hopeless nerds who’ll never know the touch of a woman? That we hate America and those that fought for her?

More to the point: How is this kind of blatant attack any different than what you are saying is happening against McCain?

This is not what I want in the White House – I do not want someone who surrounds himself with people who are rude, mean, cruel and completely out of touch with those that might actually consider voting for him.

I do, however, want an apology from Mr. McCain.