Remembering Star Wars Galaxies

Image via Wikipedia

There are two things I always remember on July 4th every year. First is my great-grandfather. We always have fireworks on the 4th for his birthday. The second thing is the fireworks at the Theed spaceport on Naboo.

On the 4th of July, every hour on the hour, we used to get together at every spaceport in the game and shoot of fireworks. It was a great event. Low-level crafters got some xp by making fireworks, and made a little money selling them. It was a great community event and I’m both sad and happy that this will be the last time it will ever happen.

I’m sad because it’s something that I used to do with all my friends and it’s over now. I’m happy because the abomination that has been called Star Wars Galaxies for the past few years since SOE wrecked the game I loved is finally getting the axe.

In the aftermath of the huge security scandal when the Playstation Network (and every other network operated by Sony Online Entertainment) was hacked and user data stolen, Sony has finally decided that SWG just isn’t worth the money to keep the game’s servers running. Right when I was about to give it a second chance. Oh well. I’m sure I’m better off not ever trusting Sony with my credit card information.

Oh well. Back to dreaming of the day when SWG emu will finally be released and I can play good ol’ Galaxies again. For free. Without the fear that anyone will break it again.

Windows Live Writer

Don’t use it. It sucks. Hard. I just wrote up a big long blog entry, then the thing just quit on me. Didn’t save my document first; just quit. Gave me a friendly little message saying “Hi! Fuck you! I quit! Okay?! Bye!” Piece of shit. This is not the first time this has happened. Don’t use Windows Live Writer. I’m just so pissed off right now I can barely spell.

Anybody know of an alternative? I need a Windows application that will publish to my blog. I need it to process html and java so I can put embedded objects (like YouTube videos) in my blog posts. It would be nice if it could put metatags on my posts as well, which Live Writer has never been able to do.

Movie Time

Image via Wikipedia

So yesterday Kerry and I watched movies on Netflix all day. Two of them were The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Kick-Ass. Both pretty awesome; both featuring Nicolas Cage. I’ll start with Kick-Ass.

Part Daredevil, part Superbad. Kick-Ass is a “superhero” who doesn’t actually have any super powers. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but he’s just barely super-human. Not because of any gamma radiation or mutated animal encounter.

But before I really get into it, here’s the first thing: I don’t care what anybody tells you. This movie is NOT FOR KIDS. If you’re not old enough for high school, you’re not old enough for Kick-Ass. If you’re not old enough to buy beer, you’re not old enough to watch Kick-Ass without your mommy. This is a grown-up film for grown-up Humans. Not surprising, since the graphic novel it’s based on is similarly targeted. Mark Millar doesn’t write comic books for kids, and movies based on his work are likewise rated for big boys only. If you wouldn’t let your 9-year-old watch Wanted or 300, you shouldn’t let him watch Kick-Ass. Just because this movie is largely about an 11-year-old girl doesn’t mean 11-year-old girls should watch it.

At any rate, Kick-Ass chronicles the adventures of a high school kid who doesn’t understand why there aren’t real superheroes. Scratch that. He understands why there aren’t real superheroes. He doesn’t understand why there aren’t more people who try to be superheroes. Batman, after all, is a totally plausible story. No super powers; just insanely rich with a highly developed sense of justice. Ditto Punisher. Along for the ride are the team of eleven-year-old “Hit Girl” and ex-cop “Big Daddy.”

As with anything written by Mark Millar, the story seems to derive directly from common childhood fantasies, tempered with an adult sense of how the world really works. There’s no real Batman largely because nobody with enough money to be Batman gives a shit about the crime in New York City. Expert martial artists (who don’t have Batman money) don’t dress up in costumes and fight crime because they can make a lot more money as hollywood stunt men. Or because they’re afraid of guns. But wouldn’t the world be a more interesting place if people like that did that sort of thing? Not all of them; just one or two here and there. I mean: wouldn’t a lot of petty criminals give at least a second thought if there was a real Batman?

That seems to be the rationale behind Kick-Ass. Also like other things written by Mark Millar, people die in Kick-Ass. And they don’t get shot ambiguously just off-camera. They get stabbed, sliced in half, blowed up in a microwave and thrown off buildings. Oh yeah. And they get shot.

The one detrimental thing I would say about Kick-Ass is that it’s too much about the hero and not enough about the alter-ego. Spiderman was great because it wasn’t really about Spiderman. It was about Peter Parker. Kick-Ass is a movie about high school nerds who never get shoved in their lockers, pantsed in gym class or thrown in a dumpster by the football team. They talk about “we’re such nerds and the cool kids always pick on us.” But there’s precious little footage of anyone actually getting picked on.

Here’s an analogy: What if Harry Potter just happened to take place at Hogwart’s, and you never heard about any of the actual school things that happened at the school? Would it still be a good story? Sure. But it wouldn’t be as good. One of the large factors that made Harry Potter great was its new twist on an old story. It’s the same basic story as Ender’s Game, Horatio Hornblower, Glee or Dune (say “Star Wars” and I will kick your ass. But yes, that fits too). It’s the same old “growing up different” story in a fantastic setting.

I feel like Kick-Ass is a growing up story where nobody actually does any of the usual kinds of growing up. Don’t get me wrong: all the characters learn things, and by the end of the story they’ve all grown. But we don’t follow anybody from childhood to adulthood. Nobody graduates into a new, profound understanding of humanity; nobody has a seminal moment of “so THAT’S how the world works.” It almost feels like an introduction to the beginning of a growing up story.

I guess that’s not really a negative; just something that struck me as odd about the movie. Maybe it’s different in the book. I’ll have to read it. Without having read the book, I give Kick-Ass five stars. Once I read the book, I’m sure I’ll downgrade it to a three.

Now, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. There have been a lot of reboots and retellings as of late, and why should Uncle Walt be left out of the fun? Granted, this is the first full-length feature in the franchise, but we all know the original apprentice had big ears and a pointy, blue hat.

In contrast to Kick-Ass, this movie absolutely is for kids. I would feel totally comfortable letting a 9-year-old watch the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They might not follow it all the way through, but there’s certainly a lack of objectionable content (it’s Disney; It’s kosher).

To sum up, the film follows the adventures of David, the apprentice of Balthazar, a former apprentice of Merlin. David is a molecular physics major who plays with tesla coils a lot. Balthazar is a very old wizard who’s spent centuries searching for the perfect apprentice.

One of the cool things about this film is how magic is portrayed similarly to the way it is in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. “A carefully placed thumb on the scales of the universe.” Magic isn’t really magic. It’s just science that most of us can’t grasp. That was kinda cool.

The effects are well-done, the acting was good (Alfred Molina is always awesome), and the plot was good as well. The dialogue was a little dry, but it was okay.

And yes, there is a mop scene with lots of water splashing all over the place. Fantasia fanatics: be placated.

Heroes

Image via Wikipedia

Once upon an NBC, there was some great television. It was the best rip-off of X-Men that has ever been. It was about a group of what can only be described as mutants that were supposedly the next step in Human evolution. Loved that show, almost cried the day it got cancelled.

Anyway. You all know I only blog about something that’s pissing me off. So here it is. The entire series is now available to watch instantly on Netflix. Awesome. I’m watching it right now, as a matter of fact. One hiccup. Those sons of bitches “fixed” it. Nothing major, but totally breaks my immersion in the show.

When the show was on TV, every episode started with a monologue, usually by either Sendhil Ramamurthy or Erick Avari. That was all the recap anybody ever needed. Apparently, on the DVD edition of the show, the producers decided that wasn’t enough.

So now there’s an actual recap before the monologue, in which some dude with a deep, gravelly voice (that’s getting old, by the way) begins HIS monologue with “previously on Heroes.” But it doesn’t just end there. He does a full voice-over during the whole half-minute clip show. Aggravating: especially since they do a recap DURING THE SHOW. It’s okay if you don’t remember what you just watched five minutes ago, or an hour ago, or yesterday, because they’re going to do a flashback DURING THE SHOW. That’s one of the things that made Heroes great. You could miss an episode and not worry that you’d miss some crucial event, because anything that was important enough would get into a flashback, or (and this was my favorite method) they would replay the last scene of each storyline.

But I digest. My point is this: Heroes ain’t broke and never was. It was the awesomest show on television as long as it was running. It was deep, it was followable, and it shared none of the pitfalls common to contemporary science fiction (horrible acting, brain-dead director, artless writers, overbearing producers, crap story). I’m just perturbed that the producers felt that the show didn’t stand well enough on its own and needed to be appended in the form of a voiced-over recap at the beginning of each episode. And I’m further perturbed that they didn’t get any members of the actual cast to just throw off a quick “previously, on Heroes.”

Look. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched Heroes, and maybe I’m remembering it wrong. If I am… my point still stands. This blog entry is just a few years late.

CL4P-TP video.

Not as funny as everyone is making it out to be, but funny. And super cool. I would totally do this for a fan if I ran a video game studio. It goes to 720p, so crank it up and fullscreen it.

Here’s the full story. I was going to post a link to the story on Steam, but their website really, really blows. You’d think with the amount of money they make (about $970 million in 2010) and the number of people they pay (13) they’d have a functioning website. Oh well.

PS Turns out, the story on the Steam site is a re-blog of the one I’m linking here anyway, so you’re not missing anything.

Also on Steam this week: check out Universe Sandbox. I’m downloading the demo as we speak.

Light Painting

I’m sure I’ll be publishing this entry more than once, since I’m trying to line-up text and photos, and somehow that never translates properly between Live Writer and blogspot. So if you get six or seven alerts that I’ve published a new blog entry, relax. Have some dip.

So today in… a place that is dark and may or may not be underground, we did some light painting. What’s that? You’re not familiar with light painting? Let me explain briefly, but the photos will explain it better. A light painting is a photo (typically a long exposure; 10-30 seconds) in which you use a bright light in a dark (preferably pitch black) place to “paint.” Let me get right into the photos and you’ll understand.

To set the stage, here’s where we were shooting. Big, wide-open basements are awesome for light painting because you can usually turn all the lights off and have nothing coming in through the windows. This particular basement doesn’t have any (those ones in the back are bricked up on the outside and don’t count).

That light was the only one in the room. This is a ten second exposure. That green squiggly business over on the right is somebody playing with a laser pointer.

Here’s another ten-second exposure with the light on. This time, Mia and I are walking around in the room during the exposure. This was just to see if that one flourescent was way too much to make an effective light painting. Long story short: it was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next: Just some fooling around with a couple little flashers that Mia brought in. The girl in the photo (I’m embarrassed that I don’t know her name yet) was just kind of whirling them around for a minute, so I took a thirty second exposure and it looks like a swarm of multi-colored fireflies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s Mia with some rings around here. She stood still while Kyle walked around her and drew rings around her with what I think was a mini Maglite with the end taken off (to expose the bulb).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here, Mia again (she’s didn’t shoot a lot today) stood while Kyle (he likes to shine the light) stood behind her with the light and traced her with the light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s Kyle. He had his flash set to burst. he stood in the middle of the room and whirled it around a little while he fired it off. Then he walked towards his camera (off-frame to the left) while he flashed his face. I bet the shot he got is a lot more interesting that mine, but mine’s still pretty cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I set my exposure to thirty seconds and used Mia’s green laser to write the letters. Up to now we’ve just been playing around. Now the real fun begins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s me. This is another thirty second shot. I took Kyle’s hot shoe flash, held it in my hand as I walked around during the shot. I posed a few different ways and flashed myself. So it looks like there are four ghostly Andys in the shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one is my favorite. We all pushed our shutters and Kyle took the laser pointer and whipped it around the whole room. I love how you can see every little detail in the walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one’s just a bit different than the last on. We all stood in the room while Kyle painted the room. Then when he was done, he flashed us. I think this would have looked better if he’d painted the room without us in it, then flashed us in.

 

 

 

 

This one’s for the Potter fans. I wrote this with the Maglite with the end taken off. I forget who initially had the idea for “Ruderman’s Army,” (Ruderman is our photography professor) but I think it’s beginning to take off. Stay tuned for shenanigans involving this meme. No, I didn’t make the “S” backwards on purpose, but it’s hard to write all your letters backwards when you’re on a thirty-second timer. Even when I did this backwards (as if I was writing on a blackboard in the air, with me between the camera and the light), I still made it backwards, still not on purposeEventually, we figured it would be a better idea to shoot on “bulb.” If you don’t know, “bulb” is a setting that holds the shutter open as long as you hold down the trigger. It’s great for light painting.

 

Okay. This one is sort of a light painting, in that it is actually two light paintings layered up in photoshop. There’s a shot of the group of us photographers, and a second shot of the words “Ruderman’s Army” done using a small keychain light. I think it was probably me who painted the latter shot, since the “S” is once again backwards. The group shot was taken by setting the timer on the camera (so everyone had time to get into place) and using the pop-up flash. First, I opened the shot of us in Photoshop. Then I added the other shot as layer 1. I set the opacity of layer 1 to 60%, so that the background layer (the group photo) would show through. Then I made a layer mask on layer 1, and used the brush tool to paint out everything except the letters (which mostly amounted to black space, with a few random reflections in the ceiling). This worked out okay, but didn’t really give me the effect I wanted. The group photo was clear, but the letters were a bit… weak. The background layer shone through the letters too much. So I scrapped layer 1 and began it again from scratch. Next, I made a copy of the background layer and made it layer 2, placing it above layer 1. Instead of changing the opacity, I changed layer 2’s mode from “normal” to “lighten.” That tells Photoshop to evaluate every pixel on the layer and decide if it is lighter or darker than the pixel on the layer directly beneath it. If the pixel below is lighter, it shines through the upper layer. If the pixel on top is lighter, it covers up the pixel below. For this particular project, that means that not only the letters shine through, but so do the sparkles in the corners of the letters.

RGB vs. CMYK

Hey! Anybody wanna know the REAL difference between RGB and CMYK? I mean really want a visually obvious example to etch the distinction into you psyche for the rest of your life? If you’re really unclear on this point, and you still think this “color management” stuff is all bullshit, try this.

1. Open up InDesign (or Quark, or MSPublisher, or whatever you want to use) and design a business card in sRGB (your monitor works in sRGB, so you’re doing that automatically). Use a lot of black and dark grey. Especially use a black background and black text with an "outer glow" effect to make it readable on a background of the same color.

2. Export that design to a PDF in sRGB (if you leave the settings alone, this is probably what they will default to, since most people don’t know anything about color management).

3. Search online for a printhouse. Look for a good deal. Find someplace a little cheaper than VistaPrint (like overnightprints.com).

4. Send them the PDF you created in step 2.

5. Receive two boxes of completely unreadable business cards.

6. Remove brick from pants.

7. Write a long, bitchy e-mail to the printhouse, in which you point out that you formatted your file exactly to their specifications and are entirely displeased with the results and expect them to overnight you two new boxes printed properly. Ask them to provide you with an ICC profile for their printers so that you can send them EXACTLY what they need.

7(a). Don’t click send just yet.

8. Go and read the specifications mentioned in step 7.

9. Realize that they specify not only that they want files in CMYK, but that they specifically note that their color management system uses the GRACoL 2006 color profile, and provides a link to an article about color management and how bloody important it is. It even provides a helpful bit at the bottom about how to convert from RGB to CMYK using several popular software products.

10. Delete unsent e-mail.

11. Place your face approximately 8” above your keyboard.

12. Swiftly lower your head approximately 8.5”.

13. Repeat steps 11 and 12 until the importance of color management becomes apparent.