Tonight on Poorly Conceived Theater: Zaxxon for the Atari 2600.

(I was reminiscing with psu on IM about old game consoles, and he mentioned Zaxxon. I made the bold claim that surely it had never been released for the 2600, then decided to check my work. I'm still stunned.)  5:05:09 PM  (comments [])   

Robert Jordan, like Stephen King, is like ten times better in audiobook form.

Charles Sheffield's "Heritage Universe" series had an interesting start, and like a fool, I stayed hooked in for the agonizingly stupid remaining three and a half books. I kept thinking there might be a good revelation at the end to make up for it, but it was pretty much stupid characters and stupid situations and stupid explanations all the way. There was one and only one good idea: that faster than light travel might rely on jump nodes that are in fixed positions in space, and that this forcing factor would make it more likely that FTL-capable species would actually encounter each other in something the size of a galaxy.

I restarted Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver after the release of the second book in the cycle shamed me. My first attempt at reading it set my pacing expectations, and the second read-through (I'm maybe 60% done) is pretty darn enjoyable. I like that the book conveys the same sense of how technological change impacts human culture that you normally get from "science fiction" set in "the future." Like Transmetropolitan, it does a good job of getting at the ways we are affected by our tools.. and the ways that, over time, we aren't.

Hellboy: fun. Van Helsing: dumb. I mean, I enjoyed VH, but only because The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had already taught me a valuable life lesson about how bad it could be. (Actually, I really enjoyed the first five minutes or so of VH, where it was all black&white and having fun with itself, but the action sequence after switched to color totally squandered that.) Confidential to KB: I feel certain I've seen you act.  10:40:51 AM  (comments [])   

Entropy Tide Ebbing?

On Sunday, my XBox decided to stop reading disks; Monday morning, my external hard drive decided it no longer liked being run 24/7 as a main boot disk (the heat from the tower underneath it may also have played a role). I felt like Charlie Brown. But I've got my original laptop back and in service again, so fingers crossed this freak storm of chaos is going to recede again into inexplicable noise. As they say, "If I'd known this shit was going to come true, I would have made up a religion about Aphrodite". Just kidding, Eris. Really. JUST KIDDING.

It turns out to be only slightly less expensive to send your XBox for repair than to buy a new one outright, but the prospect of copying off all of my save games using eeeeety beeety memory cards seemed more terrifying than having to wait several days for shipping and repair to happen. Of course, if they end up sending me a new XBox and not copying off my games, my neck may snap clean off. Then again, it may be the push I was needing to actually restart Ninja Gaiden and this time manage to keep some potions in those early levels.  10:30:15 AM  (comments [])