Penny Arcade

I wish I could say that things like this were the extent of my family’s deep madness.

Common wisdom holds that one should not shop for groceries while one is famished.  That has never sat quite right with me, because if I come home with string cheese, a big thing of beef jerky and six bottles of stout I feel like things went about as well as they could have.  I only mention this because I believe I’ve stumbled onto some strange corollary to this supposed rule that has to do with binary files.  I know!  It’s invigorating!

I went to Sourceforge because I had read somewhere that The Ur Quan Masters - essentially, Star Control 2 without the Name Star Control - was out there and available for download.  Star Control 2 (and Starflight II, obviously) are games I recall with such fondness.  I had initially written “extreme fondness,” but I removed it because, really, what would that look like.

I grabbed the files for it, which are available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS (for some inexplicable reason).  They’ve done a great job and it will only become cleaner and more sensible as time goes on.  If you’ve never experienced SC2 before, keep in mind that the last time I played this was on a 386, which ran it silky-smooth.  This was when we thought two hundred and fifty-six colors was rather a lot of colors, maybe too many for our liking.  I know you aren’t supposed to care about graphics if you’re a real gamer or something but graphics are really important.  How important they are is a personal consideration, so whether or not this’ll float your boat is something I can’t say.  Do give it a shot, though.     

I went to Sourceforge because I needed a single file.  And I was very happy with the file I got.  But, like some Weezerian sweater, once tugged something began to unravel, revealing a deeper hunger for files that I shudder to relate to you now.  Useful files!  Un-useful files!  Files I don’t need!  I began to discern that this executable or another had a “smoky” flavor, or was perhaps “robust.”  I found great stuff I didn’t even know I needed, like a great, free multitrack recorder called Audacity.  Celestia is like this star thing.  Galeon, I mean, there was no reason to download that.  I don’t think it will even install on Windows. 

I was kind of freaking out near the end.   

We’ve got the family in town still.  I thought we’d escaped them when we came back from Spokane, but like some horror cliche there was one attached to the undercarriage or some shit, and maybe one on the ski rack or something and now they’re everywhere.

You’re clever people, though, and I do not doubt that you will find many ways to amuse yourselves.  Why not check out John Scalzi’s novel Old Man’s War, available on his site?  You might remember that he advertised his book Agent to the Stars here with us a few months back, and I seem to recall quite a few people enjoying it.  You could also check out Scott’s rant about the dastardly, fictitious Mavav - he certainly comes at it a different way then we might. 

(CW)TB out.

this world will never want us here

I got a lot of mail asking me to respond to Scott’s rant over at PvP. So I went over and read it this afternoon and I wasn’t really surprised. I am sure you are looking for me to do some kind of point counterpoint shit but that’s not going to happen. Instead of coming away from his rant upset I am mostly just disappointed. See we have had a sort of friendly rivalry with Scott for something like four years now.  We’ve chatted on the phone a few times and I met him in person once or twice. The thing that always stood out about Scott to me is just how much alike we are. You wouldn’t know it if you only read his comic strip but Scott is a son of a bitch just like me. We both enjoy saying things that piss people off. He cusses like a sailor and talks shit about everyone and their mother. And I think that is why we have always gotten along pretty well. What I never understood though is why we hardly ever see that side of Scott in his comic strips. I think that Kurtz is at his best when he is being satirical. His parodies of other webcomics are still some of the best work he has ever done. When Scott actually puts some of himself into his comics the stuff he comes up with is really special. I’m not saying I don’t like PvP, I think it’s generally a pretty good read. I enjoy the occasional fart joke just as much as the next guy, but It’s just that when I see a rant like this from Scott it reminds me what a fucking firebrand he really is. Sure I think everything he wrote is total bullshit but that doesn’t change the fact that I respect him for saying it. He knew it would piss people off, he said it anyway, and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that son of a bitch cracks a little smile every time he gets another hate mail about it. Then I look at his comic strip and it just feels so watered down in comparison. I know you like to cuss Scott, I’ve heard you do it. Just write shit for God’s sake. I mean it’s not like we don’t know what S#!% is anyway. Just spell it the fuck out man. I know you have opinions. I’ve heard you say some stuff about Keenspot that is not only vicious as fuck but balls on accurate. Scott is probably the finest cartoonist in the medium of online cartoons right now. He can outdraw anyone else in the game. Many of you never saw the artwork he did on his other comic strip Wedlock but he had something fucking magical going on. All I’m saying is, why not put a little of that piss and vinegar you show in your rants and in real life into your comic strip. If he combined the razor sharp wit that I know he has with the raw artistic talent we’ve all seen the man would be unstoppable. Like Juggernaut, only he wouldn’t have a suit or anything. I mean he could get a suit but he wouldn’t really need it. It would just be like for show.

-Gabe out

I was absentmindedly reading Blizzard’s interview with the Ghost team when I saw something that brought me into the present moment.

BI: What is the game’s multiplayer like? How long do you expect multiplayer games to last?

GT: The plans for multiplayer are still evolving and a lot still needs to be kept under wraps, but we can say this - the MP gameplay will support a cooperative aspect as well as combative - and will add some great content over and above the single-player missions.

What’s this, now?  Last I’d heard, they were still discussing it.  Now we’ve moved up to for-sure multiplayer, co-operative and otherwise?  Happy day!

(CW)TB