| Splinter Cell: Double Agent for Xbox 360. |
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| 08:31pm 14/06/2009 |
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Man.
Back when this game first came out, the reviews basically said, "Xbox normal version is better, ignore the Xbox 360 version." They criticized the levels in which you played as a double agent within the terrorist's cell, arguing the more traditional approach of Splinter Cell: DA for Xbox worked better. So I grabbed the Xbox one and just played it.
I finally decided to go back and try the Xbox 360 one.
Holy balls. The critics were wrong.
The levels where you're inside the base are what make the game, not what wreck it. They're tense as hell, with infinitely greater chance of discovery and hair-line chances of success. They're fantastically well designed.
OK, let me pull back. The basic premise of Double Agent is, as the title suggests, that you're a double agent within a domestic terrorist organisation named John Brown's Army. You worm your way in by breaking one of their members out of prison, and then the game alternates between your missions for them, and your time at their base. When in the base, you're meant to be training, but you can use this time to complete missions for the NSA, swiftly placing tracking bugs, software backdoors into their data servers, etc. It's unrealistic sure (would a hard-core terrorist cell REALLY run their own data servers?), but it's FUN unrealistic spy stuff. You walk around, smiling and nodding to the other cell members in the zones you're allowed in, and then duck into a side corridor, sneak into restricted zones you're not meant to be in, and accomplish tasks that you're not meant to be doing.
Fantastic. This is great stuff, it feels atmospheric and right. It's a great game. |
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| Facebook: Deactivated. |
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| 06:30am 02/06/2009 |
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I deactived my Facebook.
Why? Because frankly, it's too much work. The damn thing constantly sends friends requests at me. The very thing I think most people like it for (how quickly and accurately it constructs your real-life friends network) is exactly what I hate about it. I mean, geeze. I hate my friends.
Erm, let me try that again.
More accurately, I'm a fairly private guy. I don't want constant contact with all my friends. One thing I like about online communities is how easily I can limit my interactions, until I'm only with the people that make me feel safest.
Facebook is a net tool for popular people. I'm not one of them. |
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| Quick observation from the bus. |
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| 06:23am 22/05/2009 |
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The guy who is driving my bus claims it's a 610 express. This is because he is an inveterate liar. I know for a goddamn fact it's not an express – Or isn't meant to be.
Since this benefits me, I'll happily ride his bus.
But I'll report him anyway. I feel sorry for the people who were hoping to go to Lane Cove this morning. |
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| Weird mechanical though for an RPG |
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| 05:16pm 21/05/2009 |
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Weird mechanical thought: The idea of an RPG system with powersets based on mood, with the idea that characters could actually shift through different moods of play, with either (a) powers shifting accordingly, or (b) As player characters die, new ones are made into the new mood, creating interesting contrasts. |
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| Gruen banned ad. |
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| 07:06am 14/05/2009 |
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Holy cow.
If you're not a Gruen Transfer watcher, I'll give you some context. The Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising, where advertising professions break down advertisements and discuss them by technique and strategy. Every week they do a segment called The Pitch, wherein they give two agencies a brief to 'sell the unsellable'. Usual topics will be "convince people that global warming is a good thing", "sell ice to eskimos" or "promote invading New Zealand amongst Australians".
This week, they chose "convince people that fat is good". If you've not seen a Pitch before, go to the Pitch website and take a look at the other ad. It's typical for the Pitch, and is the kind of stuff that has made me argue passionately for ditching the Pitch. I felt it useless, a fun gag but that's all. Now, once you've watched that, go here, watch this. It's the other ad, the one the ABC refused to air.
First off, this is powerful, confronting stuff. While I wasn't as shocked as some people might have been (I'm hard to shock) it's tough to watch. The Sydney Morning Herald reported there wasn't even 'shocked, nervous laughter' in the audience... which now that we've seen the ad we can tell is exactly right. It's not meant to provoke that. It's meant to provoke anger, it's meant to provoke dislike... and then attach those emotions to shape discrimination.
I think it's staggeringly well made, and the discussion afterwards is top notch. If the Pitch were more like this, I'd defend keeping it on the show. I've only ever seen one other ad on the Pitch as good as this one. (The "Australian Democrats" ad #2). Much as I dislike Russell, I'm with him on this ad. It's powerful, confronting and it took the brief seriously. I think it wins. |
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| No show survives a network change. |
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| 08:31pm 29/04/2009 |
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Especially not one that was, frankly, on life support in its third season anyway. Yes folks, Thank God You're Here's 4th season has begun woefully.
The guests are not the problem. Cal Wilson, in particular, demonstrated a high level of wit - It's always been her habit to fire with her first thought no matter how silly, so when she's good she's brilliantly off the wall. And tonight she was good.
No, the issue is with the show itself. Simply put, what had been so fresh and smart in its first season is now down to formula. Remember scenes with Alan Brough (as an example) beautifully hijacking scenes so that instead of a straight war scene, we got a bizarre commander coming out to his men, declaring with finality, "And so, for my love of Gilbert & Sullivan, you must all die."? You won't get that this time around.
Hell, remember Fifi Box blowing her scenes, every last one of them? (And she had many.) Some were entertaining train wrecks. Others were just plain awful. Again, you won't get that this time around.
No. The laughter is clearly canned, and the "audience" will ergo laugh at everything. It's so heavily edited that they can cut to get the funniest lines only from even the most uneven performer. And perhaps to sustain that second trick, the scripts have become rigid: TWICE they asked an actor for his character's name, and promptly corrected him. Why? It's not clear at all.
The problem is that the show's central appeal always used to lay with a simple premise: You never know what you'll get. You may get a truly brilliant performance. You could get a dreadful one. You might get inspired hijacking of a scene.
These days? You can always know what you'll get. Each and every time.
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| It's a rare day Peter Costello could make me smile. |
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| 05:30am 15/04/2009 |
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But he pulled it off with this.
I've been feeling sorry for Belinda Neal. Neal, you will recall, is the Labor MP who let fly at a waiter when he asked her to move tables at Iguana Joe's a restaurant/night spot on the NSW Central Coast. "Don't you know who I am?" she demanded. Soon all of Australia knew who she was. Kevin Rudd stepped in, reprimanded her and ordered her to undergo anger management counseling. I've never been to this sort of counseling but I can imagine how it operates. A therapist gives you a tricky case and questions you on how to respond. The idea is to keep your anger under control. Here's a case study for Neal. You are flying on your private jet when the flight attendant brings you the wrong meal. Do you (a) eat it anyway; (b) point out you ordered something else and ask for an alternative; or (c) shout at the flight attendant and reduce her to tears? Mind you, he then goes on to labour his clever joke too far after that, but still. A nice piece of political observation and wit. |
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| Wow |
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| 05:35am 07/04/2009 |
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This gets more and more intriguing.
My guess is not that there are more gruesome torture methods approved in those memos. I'm guessing that they link very specific people to the story.
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald:
If the Obama administration releases these memos in largely unredacted form, they will deserve credit for doing so. These memos, which an anonymous Obama official told Newsweek were quite "ugly," are virtually certain to fuel calls for investigations and prosecutions and erase all remaining doubt in the eyes of the world how directly and knowingly involved in the torture regime were our highest government officials. Disclosure will require a fair amount of political courage, and if they do that, credit ought to be given.
Conversely, a refusal to disclose these memos, or disclosing them with so many redactions as to render them meaningless, will be absolutely inexcusable. It doesn't matter how loudly John Brennan screams or how many nominations Republican Senators threaten to filibuster. Put simply, there is no legal authority for these memos to remain secret -- ongoing concealment is itself an act of profound lawlessness -- and, beyond that, keeping them secret will constitute the most extreme complicity yet on the part of the Obama administration in the last administration's war crimes.
UPDATE: Greenwald, again.
This is the Obama DOJ's work and only its work, and it is equal to, and in some senses surpasses, the radical secrecy and immunity claims of the Bush administration.
I say again: FUCK OBAMA. |
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| Test #2 for Obama |
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| 06:24am 06/04/2009 |
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So far, Barrack Obama has done well on few metrics, to be honest. After an early flurry of excellent moves, he's retreated heavily into centrism. It's not all his fault – His own party has been doing their best to undermine him and there are a lot of people who don't want him to do the right thing. But still, he's the president. This is the job, hard as it is. That said, he has failed most, in my opinion, in the field of human rights. This is the area I'm most passionate about,
As you may remember, I was bitterly disappointed when he failed his first test. Well, now he has his second one.
The basics are this: There were a long number of 'torture memos', the legal correspondance the former White House engaged in trying to create legal cover for itself in its human rights abuses. A number of these, five if I remember correctly, have been disclosed. And this is to Obama's credit, since those reports did create some embarassment and reveal much. But they primarily revealed damaging information on the Bush DoJ, more than anyone else, and since Yoo et al. pretty much have little power anymore, it was an easier task than these last three are, which look certain to embarass at least two and possibly all four of the following: the CIA, the former White House, the US congress and senate, and the USA's allies. As such, there is now a major amount of opposition to disclosing the memos.
Which also happens to be the right thing to do. And now it's pretty much up to Obama.
If he does disclose them, he'll go a long way in my opinion. If he caves? Bastard. Forever.
ps. There was also some discussion about whether or not liberals are less likely to play 'follow the leader' than conservatives in the comments of my last post. Well, it wasn't just me observing the quick leftish knockback against Obama, Glenn Greenwald's been noting it too, with the same approval I have. Economically, we have people like Krugman blasting Obama for not committing enough to the recovery effort. In human rights, we have people like Glenn Greenwald pointing out his faults. There is already a lot more criticism of Obama from his own side than there ever was in Bush's whole first term. |
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| Oscar Meme: Name your best film as far back as you can go. |
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| 05:08pm 02/03/2009 |
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Look over the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars. Year by year, say which film you'd have voted for. Keep going until you reach a point where you don't know any of the films and wouldn't vote.
2008: Slumdog Millionaire
2007: Juno
2006: The Departed
2005: Capote
2004: Million Dollar Baby
2003: Lost in Translation
2002: Gangs of New York
2001: Moulin Rouge
2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
1999: American Beauty
1998: Shakespeare in Love
1997: L.A Confidential
1996: ... I got nothing.
I'm out. How far back can you go? |
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| Fuck Obama. |
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| 06:02pm 10/02/2009 |
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When Rudd became PM, I was already calling him "New Bastard" on the very night. I was under no illusions as to what kind of a politician he was: Not a good one, but better than Howard.
And he has been not a good PM, about as bad as Howard. Shows me how much cynicism I have: Not quite enough.
But Obama? I believed. I sincerely did. I didn't think he had a hope in hell of repairing the bridges of bipartisanship (I was correct) and I didn't think he'd pursue war crimes proceedings against Bush and co. (I'm correct.)
I thought he'd be better than this.
Commentary by Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald.
Fuck him. Just another bastard.
Liberals out there? Show America what it MEANS to be a liberal. Blast Obama. Publicly. Protest this in any way you can. Get noisy and angry about it. Because at least to me, that's what it means to be liberal: You don't trust a politician for a SECOND even when he's on your side. You don't give him any slack even when he's on your side.
Because, as a liberal, I believe they're never on our side.
Edit: Yet more commentary by Hilzoy and Kevin Drum. Good. This needs attention, and I'm hoping to see more on it.
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| OK, I held my silence until AFTER Australia Day. |
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| 05:28pm 27/01/2009 |
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But this is why Australia Day and any celebrations like it suck.
Patriotism is nationalism. There's no difference between the two. Both are evil, and both always end up in racism, prejudice, and eventually violence. Not every patriot turns to violence. But inevitably, a culture that trumpets "My country is greatest!" will inevitably produce those who seek then to harm lesser countries.
I trust the man who hates his country more than the man who is proud of it. The man who distrusts his government does more good than the man who adores them. The woman who despises her country -- and seeks to change it -- makes the world a better place than the one who loves her country, warts and all. Here's to distrust, hatred, and above all dissent.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) duckay convinced me to amend this post.
ps. Kevin Rudd? Huge, huge disappointment, yet again. Voting liberal next election. |
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| On Political Voting |
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| 08:55am 21/12/2008 |
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James Joyner is quickly becoming my favorite conservative pundit. He's level headed, doesn't retreat to idiocy, and puts forward limited, sensible critiques of liberal discussion.
Here's a cracker of a shot from him though, on the current Minnesota mess.
Electronic voting is slow, confusing, and subject to theoretical mass manipulation. Mark-sense ballots are much more intuitive and have a built-in paper trail. The solution is simple, if draconian: No tolerance. Ballots that are incorrectly filled out are thrown out. Zero interpretation. If you vote in the wrong place, write in “Lizard People,” or otherwise don’t follow the ridiculously simple instructions, your ballot is excluded from the process. Period.
Exactly.
Unsurprisingly, this is what we have in Australia, so perhaps I'm biased.
EDIT!: In cases where a third party candidate gets a significant number of votes and no candidate gets a majority, instant run-off voting would be a solution. As would an actual run-off election. Or, perhaps, you could require a run-off (whether instant or actual) only in cases where the margin between the first two candidates is less than one percent (or two percent, or whatever), keeping it first past the post but considering elections within the margin to be ties.
Does that sound a bit like -- yes, I think it does -- preferential voting? Goodness me!
I'm not proud of my country. But one thing we have gotten RIGHT is our voting system. It's compulsory and has built in checks to stop this sort of thing; and it nearly always does.
America can and SHOULD adopt the same system. Compulsory voting, with preferences all the way down the line.
And pass the National Popular Vote measure while you're at it. Electoral colleges are silly. |
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| 04:16pm 13/12/2008 |
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The first five people to comment in this post get to request a SIMPLE sketch of a character (or whatever) of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their drawing ability level.
I draw in a very cartoony style. Be aware. |
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