Spacehamster’s Blog

I’ve always hated disaster movies. I know that quite a few people love that genre - the epic-scale disaster with the suspense of wondering who lives and who dies. I can’t stand it, quite frankly. The first disaster film I ever watched (quite by accident) was ‘The Towering Inferno’ when I was only five years old. I hated it. Still do.

But why? These are meant to be enjoyable popcorn flicks! My problem is that I can’t separate the fantasy from the reality. When I see people drowning, being burned alive or tumbling several hundred feet to their deaths, I can’t think “Wow! Great stuntwork!”. All I see is people dying, and I find that extremely hard to watch. I don’t gain any sense of thrills or excitement from watching innocent people dying, and I can’t understand why anyone would.

The only Disaster film I can remotely stand is, oddly enough, ‘The Day After Tomorrow”. It might be because of the environmental message - the idea that we brought this global superstorm disaster on ourselves, rather than being at the whims of a mercurial mother nature. Or perhaps its because the deaths aren’t as “in your face” as in other films of the genre. I still don’t like it, but at least its tolerable.

I just watched a small peek at Poseidon, the latest disaster flick from Wolfgang Petersen. This particular film is (for me at least) vomit inducing because it doesn’t hold back. You see people drowning, falling hundred of feet to their deaths, or being burned alive. Sometimes all at the same time. I even found the trailer distressing viewing. Encouragingly enough, I noticed that Poseidon didn’t do very good box office on its release. Perhaps its because people are too sensitive to such things after 9/11 - an explanation I don’t believe. Or because it was “a bad film”. Who knows?

Although I don’t like disaster films, I’m certainly not some stuffy do-gooder who wants to ban this type of stuff. I don’t have the right to shove my beliefs down other people’s throats. I’m just venting because I had a visceral reaction to a film genre that I really hate. Just my pet peeve.

It seems only a few short years ago that Stargate was first televised on our screens. I remember watching the first few episodes and not being at all impressed with what I saw. The acting was B-Grade, and it seemed flat and unexciting, even compared to the movie on which it was based. I lost interest after the end of the first season.

And now I wished I hadn’t.

Flash forward ten years later, and Stargate has matured into a surprisingly entertaining series. The mythology has expanded considerably since that tentative first season. Goauld. Naquadaa. Asgard. F302’s. Stargate seems to have built a universe that is every bit as fascinating as Star Trek once was. It seems to have built a niche for itself as “the” Space Fantasy franchise for the 21st Century.

And the series got a real shot in the arm with the welcome addition of Ben Browder and Claudia Black (of the late and greatly missed Farscape). Both add a real zing and vitality to a series at a time when it was dangerously close to repeating itself. And the new enemies (the Orori) are an interesting but relevant opponent for modern times - fundamentalist religious fanatics with mystical powers.

So just how are they going to overcome this latest threat? And can they do it before the end of the tenth season? Sci-Fi, in their limited wisdom, has decided to cancel Stargate SG-1. I suspect this is based on the same reasoning they used for cancelling Farscape. Because they don’t like Science Fiction series. Which is an odd and stupid attitude for a network named Sci-Fi to take. They have transmitted some of the best SF shows on US and UK TV - Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Eureka, the now legendary and unsurpassed high-quality Battlestar Galactica, and the classic Doctor Who.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the new plot threads will ever be resolved. I’d love to see Stargate SG-1 continue for a few more years, and then end in its own sweet time. There’s still plenty of life left in this old dog.

Good grief, you mean even ex-Planets have political lobby groups?!!?

Started playing Darkstar One (the new space sim from Ascaron Entertainment) this week. It’s a reasonably good game, and I think the 7.0-8.0 score from IGN and Gamespot is about right. The two biggest irritations I have with this game are the copy protection, and the AI scaling.

Darkstar uses Tages copy-protection. The biggest problem with Tages is the excessive number of reads from the DVD that are required. Not just when loading the game, but also when loading or saving savegames, and even during in-game activities like leaving space stations. Its annoying and considerably slows down game performance.

The other irritating problem is the AI-scaling. The fighter in the game can be upgraded with extra weapons and engine upgrades. So by the time I reach level 10, and am armed with a multitude of turrets, lasers and missiles, I should be able to take on any pirate squadron in the game. Unfortunately the game designers chose to scale the AI up with you. What’s the point of having an uber-powerful spacefighter if 3 pirate ships can take it out with a barrage of direct blasts? It was an extremely bad design decision.

For those reasons, I uninstalled the game after only a few days play. Hopefully, once the English Mod tools are released, someone will release a mod that fixes the AI scaling problem. A similar mod (Obscuro’s Mod) was released for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, and considerably improved the game.

And I went back to playing X3: Reunion instead. And I’m convinced more than ever that this is a potentially fantastic game, albeit a complex one. With the games I really like playing, I get an illusion of freedom - that I can do anything I want to within the boundaries set by the game designers. Its one of the reasons I enjoy Freelancer and Oblivion so much. Different genres, but in both games you can do whatever you want to within reason. Despite its large size, Darkstar One limits itself due to the small size of individual systems. Each system consists of an asteroid/debris field and a trade station. That’s it. After the 10th or 20th time, this type of layout becomes repetitive and boring.

Darkstar One is definitely a major dissapointment. Hopefully, upcoming mods over the next few months will resolve those problems. But for now, I’m putting this game back on my shelf.

I’ve been reading Madhab al-Irfy’s blog for awhile now, so this type of news doesn’t surprise me in the least:

THE founder of Australian mobile phone giant Crazy John’s has attacked “self-appointed” Muslim leaders, accusing them of destroying his community’s progress, and questioning their allegiance to this country.

John Ilhan, one of the nation’s most successful Muslims, yesterday blamed many first-generation community members for being opposed to Western ideals and cultural diversity, and accused them of “conditioning” their children to follow in their footsteps.

“There’s a massive disconnection between what the young and the old think,” he told The Australian yesterday. “They (first-generation Muslims) haven’t experienced life like we have in this society, yet they want to be our mouthpiece.”

Hopefully this is the kind of rallying cry that both left- and right-wing pundits can get behind. It’s obvious now that there’s a huge disconnect between First-Generation Muslim migrants and succeeding generations. This problem needs to be addressed, and soon.

With the plethora of low-budget (not to mention lowbrow) reality shows like Big Brother and Wife Swap, more educational fare is getting short shrift. So the format needs to be reinvented for an audience with shorter attention spans. ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ was one very good example - using CGI to stimulate people’s imaginations and rekindle an interest in natural science and the importance it has on our world.

The most recent example of this trend is Prehistoric Park. Unfortunately, it’s also copped a bit of flak - mostly from the grim, humorless critics and readers at London newspapers like ‘The Guardian’ or websites like the Digital Spy Forums. The biggest criticism is that children will be too stupid to realise that prehistoric animals can’t be brought forward in time to the 21st Century.

And quite frankly, if they think children are too stupid to understand that, then they’re the ones that are idiots.

When I was young, I loved watching shows like Voltron, Astroboy and Transformers. I knew it was enjoyable fiction, and I was always offended when well-meaning adults tried to convince me that it wasn’t real. Well, of course it wasn’t real, but it excited my imagination and my creativity. Docudramas like ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ and ‘Prehistoric Park’ are far better for children than Transformers could ever be. In addition to teaching children (and hopefully Mums and Dads too) about the wonders of natural science, it also excites the imagination and creativity as well.

And in a world that is definitely lacking in any sense of wonder, creativity or imagination, programs like these are definitely sorely needed.

Much to my surprise, I received both my car and my PC back on the same day. The crash repairers had some difficulty matching the gold colour of my car, so it took several extra days to get that right.

As for the PC, apparently the only problem was that the motherboard drivers needed to be installed first. The PC seems to be working fine (at least for now). The only thing I need to be careful of is the buildup of dust in the PC. Regularly cleaning it once every month should fix that problem.

What’s interesting about these unpleasant experiences is just how much we rely nowadays on technology. Without the car, I can’t get to work. Without a PC, I don’t have access to the internet and can’t see what’s going on in the outside world. It’s an advantage because it gives you wider access to more information. It’s a disadavantage because you come to rely on it far too much. Lesson learned.

As an aside, I wish that I could come up with the kind of witty headlines that bloggers like Wil Wheaton does. Unfortunately, coming up with eye-catching quotes has never been my strongpoint.

I’ve just been told that my PC has been “fixed”. Apparently you need to install the motherboard drivers and service pack 2 first, otherwise you get the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). I’ll be testing the PC at the shop - probably by installing the video and soundcard drivers, and playing a game on it. If it can do all that, I’ll be convinced that the PC is working.

So hopefully I’ll have the PC back on Tuesday night. I still remain sceptical as to whether the PC has really been fixed. I guess we’ll have to see.

Jeremy Clarkson (the host of BBC2’s Top Gear) is one of my favourite conservatives - mostly because he’s out to insul everyone equally and doesn’t give a toss who gets offended. When he insults someone, it comes straight from the heart. That’s incredibly refreshing in a world where politicians with Political Agendas like Pauline Hanson and Peter Costello victimise certain minorities when it suits them. People with Beards, Volvo Drivers, Caravan Owners, Environmentalists, Fat people - no one is safe from Clarkson’s insults. More power to him.

So his articles on his trip to the US made for fascinating reading - you can find them here and here. The US seems like an awful place to live right about now. It makes me feel incredibly lucky to be living where I am. After all, who wants to live in such a controlled environment like that, where your every thought and action is constantly monitored?

I spent an hour this afternoon setting up the Linux PC to play videos. It turns out that Mandrake 9 already has an in-built media player (Totem Movie Player) that can play Xvid videos. So there was no need for me to spend an hour last night installing the command-line only version of MPlayer. I also had the loudspeakers plugged into the wrong socket on the back of my soundcard - as my brother Mark gleefully pointed out this afternoon.

Which means I can now watch videos on my Linux PC - which is what I mostly use the PC for anyway. Happy frabjous joy!