barely fatal

Ok now it’s summer, we all noticed that, thank you. Last night I could actually sleep since we had some rain. But dude, hand me a melon, if this is global warming and it’s only the start, I’m really happy I was born in the last century. Although I’d surely like to see the graphics of computer games a hundred years from now.

The topic of the week, let it be The Hole ™. Reruns on TV, not many interesting movies to premiere, no decent games coming out, news coverage about trivial things … ok now wait, don’t quote me on that. I mean, we have a war going on in the Middle East, once again. But from this very place, sitting in the summer sun, in front of a computer, surfing The Tubes ™, it seems pretty far away and only marginally interesting. All the news in the world can’t change that, in fact, it makes it worse. When your neighbour tells you about the terrible things that happen there you can relate. Through all the channels of modern media, alongside the usual entertaining programs it’s just a story from another world. I keep trying to remind me that it’s not.

In other exciting news, I just wanted to mention for those who have asked that absolutely nothing whatsoever happened today in sector 83/9/12. I repeat, nothing happened. Please remain calm.
(If you got that reference right w/o googling, I bow my head to your geekness).

No really, when I get home at night and I sit on my chair I never make it past the first minutes of any game I might load. It sucks sticking to everything I touch. So I do it like all others, talk meaningless talk, make all the old jokes and point at the obvious: Go, download and try the demo of Call Of Juarez. Play both campaigns, the horseback riding is way more realistic (and more fun) than in Oblivion … which, I confess, I still haven’t beaten. Shame. On. Me. Anyway, the demo is long enough to make me want to play more and short enough to fill the hole … gap I mean – between two showers.

Hey browncoats, the allegedly ultimate Firefly and Serenity fan documentary, “Done The Impossible”, is now available for download. The official Bittorrent lacks all the DVD extras (you can buy the DVD at the website or on Amazon.com), but it features the full 80-minutes documentary in DVD/HD quality. Unfortunatly it comes as a Quicktime .mov, which prevented me from burning it to DVD, so I had to watch it on my PC, oh well.

I’m a big Firefly fan myself as you might or might not know, so I’ve had a big interest in this fan project. They have some of the Big Damn Heros giving interviews, namely Mal, Kaylee, Wash, Inara, Book, Joss Whedon and Tim Minear, and others. Adam Baldwin (Jayne) acts as the host.

Well, it turns out to be from the fans – for the fans and about the fans. They explain how it all started, ended and started again, but most of the time they talk about the passionate fanbase trying to safe their beloved show. From that perspective, it differs from the usual Hollywood marketing making-ofs one is so used to see. Firefly fans have always been very emotional about their show and they like to express it. Be it on Podcasts (The Signal, FireflyTalk) or in this film, they very often show their passion and love for what they do. For my liking, that makes the documentary a little cheesy and feel a bit long…ish. The fan-performed songs make up for it a bit, Morena looks hot as usual, Nathan … is Nathan.

However the quality of picture, sound and editing can easily keep up with professional productions, and something like that costs solid bucks. They are giving away the torrent for free under the Creative Commons License, as people would copy it anyway. I think it’s a smart move. There’s still enough extra material on the DVD – and probably no watermark – to make it a worthy purchase for the die-hard fans, especially with all the extra music tracks.

I think it’s worth watching as you can do so for free, even when it gets a bit dull and repetitive towards the middle. From fans, for fans, about fans.

Yes, sweat is what we really have enough of these days in Germany. This ain’t a heat wave anymore, this is a heat tsunami. On thursday, it was the hottest day ever in my city. Hottest ever – literally.

At this very moment, sitting in front of my PC, I sweat and think about how I can find some sleep. When I come home from work, after throwing off all clothes, I end up on the sofa doing nothing. Just … can’t … move. Taking a shower only helps you so far.

In the US, most households have air condition. Not so in Europe. It has been an exceptional summer up to now. At work, we do have air. It could be all a-okay. But guess what, when temperatures went through the roof and we set the AC to maximum, our servers started to act up. Not enough power! They fixed the problem quite fast though – had to, working was impossible.

So what do we have? Let see, we have heat waves, a new tsunami, forest fires, insane ozone levels, Israel on the fritz again, Taliban taking back parts of Afghanistan, Iraq still a warzone, Iran and North Korea performing missile tests (unfortunatly not on each other), the blog gets spammed as if it was popular, and I slowly start to think I could use a holiday. But maybe that’s all just the mood I get in every year around my birthday.

Oh look, great, there I start sweating again. Need my towel. A towel can be immensely important, especially when you space travel a lot, y’know.

Supplemental: Actually I wanted to write about all the free games I tried recently and give some links and reviews and stuff. Just can’t do that. No mind capacity. Maybe later, when I find a tub big enough and not too big so I can fill it with ice, sit in it and still type.

This guy is right in my opinion. I said it before, I’ll say it again: I don’t like ‘episodic content’ and I think it’s the wrong trend to follow. Even if it’s good stuff like HL:EP1, it always tastes like money squeezed out of customers. Or beaten, with a crowbar. Hmm, nice analogy. No content re-use, be more creative!

Besides. Penny-Arcade linked to The Ship today so I’ll do the same. Can’t hurt to mimic the big ones, eh. It’s an interesting mod for Half-Life 2, costs $20 and is available via Steam as of today. I consider giving it a try, though I yet have to read a lot of spellbooks, perform penetration tests on magic armor pieces and sharpen dozens of not-from-this-world swords and daggers.

Yes, Oblivion, I really want to finish it before I start anything new. When I picked it up I knew it would take me months to beat, but I didn’t expect it to take this long. I’m the kinda player who has to try everything in a game. Beat every quest, see every corner of the world, visit every dungeon, find the last hidden treasure. In a game like Oblivion, this approach basically means to either give up real life or to build up a lot of patience. Well, I’m enjoying it. I can beat the crap out of most of the mobs with my bad-ass gear, wicked protection spells and killer potions in every pocket. Now I only need to find a way out of the game so I can go on with something new. Man, I have more than 100 hours of B5 sitting on my shelf, waiting to be consumed. Only gotta find that uber boots I still miss …