I was prowling the headlines in Google News earlier, as I am oft to do when I want to know what's going wrong in the world without getting too immersed in all the crap, and I noticed a fun one. As of about 4 PM yesterday, SpaceX is now the first privately-funded company to put a liquid-fuel craft into orbit. This is the fourth try by these folks, the last of which carried Jame's Doohan's ashes (this is Scotty from the original Star Trek, for those of you ranking below me on the nerd-o-meter) along with some of the remains of nearly 200 others. They lost contact with the vessel after the first separation stage, at which point their engineers believe residual thrust in the detached section caused it to rear-end the second stage of the craft. But this time, they sent the Falcon 1 up with a dummy payload, and achieved orbit without a problem.
My question here was: "Who was funding this?" I assumed it would be a group of investors, but couldn't imagine who they would be. Turns out, it's the guy who created PayPal. Apparently, he sold PayPal to eBay.com for $1.5 billion, which I suppose is more than enough money to, excuse the pun, get his company off the ground. So now we have the potential to actually get commertial flights in orbit in the future, provided the future holds a lithium-ion battery big enough to replace the damn rocket fuel, because by the time we get to the point where this might help, or even be available, it'll be too expensive to use.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Things The Star Wars Saga SHOULD Have Taught Us
About Life:
1) Light and Dark are not bad things. The Dark Side is not the Evil Side. But it's easier to use for evil means because it's more powerful offensively. The Light Side is only seen as good because much of it's power tends towards defensive abilities, mastered through meditation. But the saga is there for a reason larger than "Yay! Lasers and princesses in the same story! Let's blow things up in space!". The saga as a whole (Yes, I am recognizing episodes 1-3 as part of the saga officially, dispite my initial displeasure at how they were writen) is a lesson on the need for balance. Their conflicts arrise from the belief that one side is right, and the other wrong. Point of view draws them into combat with each other. The Jedi believe Anakin will bring "balance" to the Force by helping eliminate the Sith, when in fact, the only way to balance a council of several hundred Jedi against a few Sith is to kill a lot of Jedi. As it was, the Force was stacked in favor of the Light Side-favoring wannabe-Vulcans. And as good as it is to have them around, people are not meant to live lives of logic. Nor are they meant to spend their years cultivating hatred. The true "balance" in the Force ends up being Luke, who embraces qualities of both schools of thought to confront Vader and the Emperor. We must all find this balance.
2) It doesn't matter who shoots first. It matters if you can walk away from it.
About Film Making:
3) It's okay to change an audience, but not too much. A New Hope was so good because it was a grown-up's fairy tale. It was a quest to save a princess from a black knight. But with lasers and a wookie. The Empire Strikes Back was a great follow-up, and takes our heroes into darker territory, setting us up for a final showdown in the next film. Return (Revenge) of the Jedi is the darkest of all, and yet, for some reason, this film is infested with Ewoky cuteness. As if C3PO wasn't annoying us enough on his own, we now have to listen to the incessant screaching and purring of Ewoks as they show us all the reasons they should have never been able to flourish as their own society. But yes, many of them die (some heroicly), making the Empire an obviously horrible enemy, but by this point, we know how terrible they can be and we don't need the very obvious visual of stormtroopers killing teddy bears.
In these terms of an evolving tone through the movies, episodes 1-3 actually mature better, in a manner which I'm going to call the Jar-Jar Effect. The less he is featured in a film, the darker it is, and the closer to the original Trilogy you are. Jar-Jar Binks is inversely proportional to the quality of the movie.
4) We really don't need to see how everyone was as a child. Boba Fett, though in need of more focus as a character (since we assume he's a badass until he's beaten by a blinded Han Solo), was an entirely unneccessary addition to Episode 2 as a little boy. In the books, I know Boba Fett is supposed to survive, managing to escape the Sarlaac's stomach before he is digested, but unless the fact that the clone troopers were cloned from his father (like him) plays a major part in the next episodes (Lucas wrote 9, remember?), his history is something that would have been best left a mystery.
5) Human dialog is the key to a movie. I don't care how many ships you can show in combat at once, or how amazing the action is, if your main characters sound less human than R2D2, the whole piece of art will suffer and it will flop. I sincerely wish I could get a few people and redo the scenes that went wrong in the 'new trilogy' - say, all of the scenes involving Anakin or Padme.
1) Light and Dark are not bad things. The Dark Side is not the Evil Side. But it's easier to use for evil means because it's more powerful offensively. The Light Side is only seen as good because much of it's power tends towards defensive abilities, mastered through meditation. But the saga is there for a reason larger than "Yay! Lasers and princesses in the same story! Let's blow things up in space!". The saga as a whole (Yes, I am recognizing episodes 1-3 as part of the saga officially, dispite my initial displeasure at how they were writen) is a lesson on the need for balance. Their conflicts arrise from the belief that one side is right, and the other wrong. Point of view draws them into combat with each other. The Jedi believe Anakin will bring "balance" to the Force by helping eliminate the Sith, when in fact, the only way to balance a council of several hundred Jedi against a few Sith is to kill a lot of Jedi. As it was, the Force was stacked in favor of the Light Side-favoring wannabe-Vulcans. And as good as it is to have them around, people are not meant to live lives of logic. Nor are they meant to spend their years cultivating hatred. The true "balance" in the Force ends up being Luke, who embraces qualities of both schools of thought to confront Vader and the Emperor. We must all find this balance.
2) It doesn't matter who shoots first. It matters if you can walk away from it.
About Film Making:
3) It's okay to change an audience, but not too much. A New Hope was so good because it was a grown-up's fairy tale. It was a quest to save a princess from a black knight. But with lasers and a wookie. The Empire Strikes Back was a great follow-up, and takes our heroes into darker territory, setting us up for a final showdown in the next film. Return (Revenge) of the Jedi is the darkest of all, and yet, for some reason, this film is infested with Ewoky cuteness. As if C3PO wasn't annoying us enough on his own, we now have to listen to the incessant screaching and purring of Ewoks as they show us all the reasons they should have never been able to flourish as their own society. But yes, many of them die (some heroicly), making the Empire an obviously horrible enemy, but by this point, we know how terrible they can be and we don't need the very obvious visual of stormtroopers killing teddy bears.
In these terms of an evolving tone through the movies, episodes 1-3 actually mature better, in a manner which I'm going to call the Jar-Jar Effect. The less he is featured in a film, the darker it is, and the closer to the original Trilogy you are. Jar-Jar Binks is inversely proportional to the quality of the movie.
4) We really don't need to see how everyone was as a child. Boba Fett, though in need of more focus as a character (since we assume he's a badass until he's beaten by a blinded Han Solo), was an entirely unneccessary addition to Episode 2 as a little boy. In the books, I know Boba Fett is supposed to survive, managing to escape the Sarlaac's stomach before he is digested, but unless the fact that the clone troopers were cloned from his father (like him) plays a major part in the next episodes (Lucas wrote 9, remember?), his history is something that would have been best left a mystery.
5) Human dialog is the key to a movie. I don't care how many ships you can show in combat at once, or how amazing the action is, if your main characters sound less human than R2D2, the whole piece of art will suffer and it will flop. I sincerely wish I could get a few people and redo the scenes that went wrong in the 'new trilogy' - say, all of the scenes involving Anakin or Padme.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Haha, Kyle's a Tropical Depression
I got it. I've killed a great many things. I've jumped great heights and gone to great lengths to destroy anything that stands in my way. And according to George Lucas, it's all Star Wars canon.
If you haven't already guessed, I'm talking about The Force: Unleashed, the newest game in the Star Wars galaxy. It's really everything I could want in a game, though it does have a few noticable flaws, like the difficulty aiming, and the poor controls for blocking (Enemies just seem to rip you apart sometimes even with the block button firmly depressed before the attack). It's really about just being able to pick up a wookie mid-attack, bounce his head off a tree once or twice, and them slam him onto a few of his buddies. Yes, Darth Vader is a total badass as he is meant to be. (side note: the psp game presents your character as a much more brutal killer)
Being almost done with the Xbox version (and having beaten the psp version), I've glanced at the news again. Good gravy, world, what the hell is wrong with you? I look away for a little bit to do my own thing, and you start to crumble on yourself? The stock market's gone wrong, there's a Large Hadron Collider when we could have saved so much money and building a Small Hadron Collider (See, I'm a practical thinker. They should appoint me to the Treasury. I'd save people billions), and Sarah Palin is still a major focal point of McCain's campaign (which seems to be performing a charade for the economy, and crashing as we watch in awe). But there's hope. Google's putting out a phone to counter the iPhone. Yay!
Oh, and apparently, Tropical Storm (read: Hurricane-in-Training/Hurricane Apprentice) Kyle is making it's way to our anti-social shores. Woo! Can't wait to see my namesake tear some shit up!
If you haven't already guessed, I'm talking about The Force: Unleashed, the newest game in the Star Wars galaxy. It's really everything I could want in a game, though it does have a few noticable flaws, like the difficulty aiming, and the poor controls for blocking (Enemies just seem to rip you apart sometimes even with the block button firmly depressed before the attack). It's really about just being able to pick up a wookie mid-attack, bounce his head off a tree once or twice, and them slam him onto a few of his buddies. Yes, Darth Vader is a total badass as he is meant to be. (side note: the psp game presents your character as a much more brutal killer)
Being almost done with the Xbox version (and having beaten the psp version), I've glanced at the news again. Good gravy, world, what the hell is wrong with you? I look away for a little bit to do my own thing, and you start to crumble on yourself? The stock market's gone wrong, there's a Large Hadron Collider when we could have saved so much money and building a Small Hadron Collider (See, I'm a practical thinker. They should appoint me to the Treasury. I'd save people billions), and Sarah Palin is still a major focal point of McCain's campaign (which seems to be performing a charade for the economy, and crashing as we watch in awe). But there's hope. Google's putting out a phone to counter the iPhone. Yay!
Oh, and apparently, Tropical Storm (read: Hurricane-in-Training/Hurricane Apprentice) Kyle is making it's way to our anti-social shores. Woo! Can't wait to see my namesake tear some shit up!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Happyness is a cold, dead Stormtrooper
I haven't been excited for a video game since the Wii came out with the new Super Smash Brothers game. Granted, though I wasnt disappointed with the game (it's still a favorite in my circle of miscreants. Apparently, its great to play stoned.), the system itself proved to be a major let-down. What with the wonky motion sensors, and Nintendo's strange, zealous focus on gimmicky games based on looking like an idiot as opposed to games based on story and skill, and more peripheral attachments than Batman's utility belt, the whole deal seems to add up to a large waste of money.
But. There is hope. It comes in the form of The Force: Unleashed, which comes out today. At last I can satisfy my Sithly urges and throw things at people from afar with the force. Crushing people with TIE Fighters? I'm there. Working for Darth Vader? I don't even need benefits. I'll intern with the motherfucker. Killing everyone I come across? ...Erm, I do this already in all my other games... But hey, now I can do it in style!
I get my copy delivered on Friday (supposedly). I'd thought it came out friday until just this morning, when my friend pointed out it comes out today, which means I misled myself and had read the shipping date for the game and thought it was the release date. I get it three days sooner! W00tz!!1!
Anyways, this seems to be the begining of a parade of good games to come, like the new Spiderman game, Web of Shadows, which I might actually overlook my hatred of Spiderman to play, now that I see a decent combat system in play. And Left 4 Dead looks like it'll be quite the party game - if, of course, you have four-person parties.
And Fallout 3. That will be good. I hold Oblivion as an example, and contest the nay-sayers that Elder Scrolls 4 was a good game. Screw you people, I can't wait to kill some poor, radiation-addled, mutated sons of bitches.
But. There is hope. It comes in the form of The Force: Unleashed, which comes out today. At last I can satisfy my Sithly urges and throw things at people from afar with the force. Crushing people with TIE Fighters? I'm there. Working for Darth Vader? I don't even need benefits. I'll intern with the motherfucker. Killing everyone I come across? ...Erm, I do this already in all my other games... But hey, now I can do it in style!
I get my copy delivered on Friday (supposedly). I'd thought it came out friday until just this morning, when my friend pointed out it comes out today, which means I misled myself and had read the shipping date for the game and thought it was the release date. I get it three days sooner! W00tz!!1!
Anyways, this seems to be the begining of a parade of good games to come, like the new Spiderman game, Web of Shadows, which I might actually overlook my hatred of Spiderman to play, now that I see a decent combat system in play. And Left 4 Dead looks like it'll be quite the party game - if, of course, you have four-person parties.
And Fallout 3. That will be good. I hold Oblivion as an example, and contest the nay-sayers that Elder Scrolls 4 was a good game. Screw you people, I can't wait to kill some poor, radiation-addled, mutated sons of bitches.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Extended breaks from blogs are totally fall-damage
Haha, I'm back! And you thought you were rid of me. Silly humans.
So it's been a while ride since my last post in December. (...Holy crap, my last post was in December.) Since then, I've been to California, been convinced I'd fallen in quicksand, eaten a squid's face (fried, of course. How else would you eat someone's face with dignity?), bought a knife from a Marine, gone kayaking in the ocean with a Marine and played kayak tag with said Marine, beaten Guitar Hero 3 over the course of a single day on Medium (this is back when it came out, I'm not bragging about it), trekked on foot over most of San Francisco, gotten a harmonica lesson on Haight and Ashbury, got a new girlfriend, traveled to Minnesota with her and her family for a week's vacation during the summer, got a new bike, bought and became proficient with a Ripstik (a caster board - I'll explain some other time), obtained an Xbox 360 at last, decided the Wii might have been a waste of money after all, tried the Wii Fit and walked away from it, found out that Spore is a totally fall-damage idea, decided that I use the word "gay" to describe things that are horribly lame too often and switched to a more accurate term - "fall-damage", missed the financial aid deadline and inadvertantly took a semester off because of it, and got a new job at the head office of Spencer's Gifts, where I use all my Computer Science talents to pack boxes.
Anyways, I'll be here from now on, keeping you guys posted on everything that really matters, without ever mentioning fall-damage things like Sarah Palin's Miss Congeniality award.
So it's been a while ride since my last post in December. (...Holy crap, my last post was in December.) Since then, I've been to California, been convinced I'd fallen in quicksand, eaten a squid's face (fried, of course. How else would you eat someone's face with dignity?), bought a knife from a Marine, gone kayaking in the ocean with a Marine and played kayak tag with said Marine, beaten Guitar Hero 3 over the course of a single day on Medium (this is back when it came out, I'm not bragging about it), trekked on foot over most of San Francisco, gotten a harmonica lesson on Haight and Ashbury, got a new girlfriend, traveled to Minnesota with her and her family for a week's vacation during the summer, got a new bike, bought and became proficient with a Ripstik (a caster board - I'll explain some other time), obtained an Xbox 360 at last, decided the Wii might have been a waste of money after all, tried the Wii Fit and walked away from it, found out that Spore is a totally fall-damage idea, decided that I use the word "gay" to describe things that are horribly lame too often and switched to a more accurate term - "fall-damage", missed the financial aid deadline and inadvertantly took a semester off because of it, and got a new job at the head office of Spencer's Gifts, where I use all my Computer Science talents to pack boxes.
Anyways, I'll be here from now on, keeping you guys posted on everything that really matters, without ever mentioning fall-damage things like Sarah Palin's Miss Congeniality award.
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