Friday, 30 July 2010
If You've Just Got Over You Canabalt Addiction...
...On no account do you want to play Epic Coaster. Especially as it adds things like achievements and a global highscore table...
Friday, 16 July 2010
Shocking
No, really. I put in the text of the "A Bad Day For My Childhood" post and that's what came out. I suspect shenanigans, but what can you do?
UPDATE: Making Light suspects shenanigans, too, and tries to prove it.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Gaming News
So, Ron Gilbert is starting to take over X-Box Live Arcade.
Last week it was the excellent refit of Monkey Island 2: Le Chucks Revenge. And what a refit it is! New art, new commentaries, vastly improved control scheme and classic, classic gameplay. It's not really as funny as you might remember it — the games have always been warm smile, broad humour than laugh out loud (for the most part) — and some of the puzzles verge on the obscure (especially if you aren't listening carefully for the clues, I'm not entirely sure it's obvious why you need to win the spitting competition, for an example, or why you can pick up certain animals...). Video game writing, though, doesn't get much better than this.
This week is DeathSpank which starts off loud and rather crass and I hope it continues in that vain. I've not played it enough to form firm opinions on it yet, but the art direction and the writing have a unique feel to them from the start and that warm, broad humour is here in spades.
Now if he could get Telltale Games to convert the latest Monkey Island game to the XBox Ron's canonisation would be assured.
Also, Lego Batman was fun, Shepard's new Aegis armour in Mass Effect 2 is funky, and Leliana's Song for Dragon Age: Origins is a good blast of what made DA:O fun in the first place, hopefully I will eventually have the couple of hours needed to finish it.
Last week it was the excellent refit of Monkey Island 2: Le Chucks Revenge. And what a refit it is! New art, new commentaries, vastly improved control scheme and classic, classic gameplay. It's not really as funny as you might remember it — the games have always been warm smile, broad humour than laugh out loud (for the most part) — and some of the puzzles verge on the obscure (especially if you aren't listening carefully for the clues, I'm not entirely sure it's obvious why you need to win the spitting competition, for an example, or why you can pick up certain animals...). Video game writing, though, doesn't get much better than this.
This week is DeathSpank which starts off loud and rather crass and I hope it continues in that vain. I've not played it enough to form firm opinions on it yet, but the art direction and the writing have a unique feel to them from the start and that warm, broad humour is here in spades.
Now if he could get Telltale Games to convert the latest Monkey Island game to the XBox Ron's canonisation would be assured.
Also, Lego Batman was fun, Shepard's new Aegis armour in Mass Effect 2 is funky, and Leliana's Song for Dragon Age: Origins is a good blast of what made DA:O fun in the first place, hopefully I will eventually have the couple of hours needed to finish it.
More Roadzters
For the many Roadzters fans out there wondering when The Roadzters are they going to drop (that's the hip term these days, right?) their next youtube joint (mmm-hmm) here it is:
Friday, 2 July 2010
Homeopaths Get Taste Of Own Medicine
I guess there's some good in everything. An article in the Telegraph looking at a recent vote by doctors to cut homeopathy funding concludes:
And really, homeopaths shouldn’t be too disappointed. In fact, they should be grateful. After all, by their own logic, the less funding they get, the more effective it will be.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
A Bad Day For My Childhood
I just found out that Johnny Ball, who was something of a hero of mine when I was growing up, is a Climate Change Denier. It's all down to spider farts, or something.
It is a little sad that he was booed off the stage by those who were there to hear it, though there is comedy value in the fact that contrarians can use this to show just how close minded scientists and "liberal atheists" are. Why it's almost like they are religious zealots or something. Brendan O'Neill[1], over at the deeply contrarian Spiked mag, has just such a rant handy. That is if you can get past his ultra-smug mug pic at the top of the piece...
You can tell by the inappropriate capitalisation that he is being satirical and by the arch use of "Unto" he's making a point about belief.
Atheism and science being relatively large churches, it's unsurprisingly easy to find disappointing people among the godless and the supposedly-rational.
The opposite of Atheism is, of course Theism, and most opinion-piece writers would, I hope, baulk at making general comments about Theists. A belief in God, god or gods tells you virtually nothing else about a person.
O'Neill here is hoping that by appending "liberal" to atheist he's narrowing the field. There are atheists, many of them good people, you see, but it's the "liberal" atheists you have to watch out for. Perhaps he could have narrowed it down to "muesli-eating, non smoking, yoga practising, Guardian reading, theatre loving, Volvo driving, liberal" atheists but I'm hoping his editor would have called him on that.
This is all to point up the irony. The liberals aren't allowing free-speech and the men of science aren't rational. How can we expect the other side to be any better?
Free speech doesn't mean having to listen to rubbish, though. And Science doesn't mean having to rehash all the arguments because someone wishes to. Climate change is well accepted now, to change people's opinions you have to do more than hand wave over some spider farts. It's not that they don't want to hear, it's that they have heard it. Many times. It wasn't right the last time and it won't be right now, almost the definition of a false hypothesis. Free speech isn't meant to weaken debate. It's meant to enhance it, at certain times having an opinion is enough (or handy access to Google, it's almost the same thing nowadays) but to change rational people's minds you need evidence.
It does seem, though, that climate change is leading to larger spiders, so Johnny Ball may actually be on to something.
[1] His blogspot url used to be boneill.blogspot.com and I can't help but think of him as "bone ill" for no good reason.
It is a little sad that he was booed off the stage by those who were there to hear it, though there is comedy value in the fact that contrarians can use this to show just how close minded scientists and "liberal atheists" are. Why it's almost like they are religious zealots or something. Brendan O'Neill[1], over at the deeply contrarian Spiked mag, has just such a rant handy. That is if you can get past his ultra-smug mug pic at the top of the piece...
The new collective of liberal atheists, of agitated ‘rationalists’, of Keepers Of The Scientific Truth As Revealed Unto Them By Richard Dawkins, can tolerate nothing so intolerable as someone taking the piss out of scientific theories about climate change.
You can tell by the inappropriate capitalisation that he is being satirical and by the arch use of "Unto" he's making a point about belief.
Atheism and science being relatively large churches, it's unsurprisingly easy to find disappointing people among the godless and the supposedly-rational.
The opposite of Atheism is, of course Theism, and most opinion-piece writers would, I hope, baulk at making general comments about Theists. A belief in God, god or gods tells you virtually nothing else about a person.
O'Neill here is hoping that by appending "liberal" to atheist he's narrowing the field. There are atheists, many of them good people, you see, but it's the "liberal" atheists you have to watch out for. Perhaps he could have narrowed it down to "muesli-eating, non smoking, yoga practising, Guardian reading, theatre loving, Volvo driving, liberal" atheists but I'm hoping his editor would have called him on that.
This is all to point up the irony. The liberals aren't allowing free-speech and the men of science aren't rational. How can we expect the other side to be any better?
Free speech doesn't mean having to listen to rubbish, though. And Science doesn't mean having to rehash all the arguments because someone wishes to. Climate change is well accepted now, to change people's opinions you have to do more than hand wave over some spider farts. It's not that they don't want to hear, it's that they have heard it. Many times. It wasn't right the last time and it won't be right now, almost the definition of a false hypothesis. Free speech isn't meant to weaken debate. It's meant to enhance it, at certain times having an opinion is enough (or handy access to Google, it's almost the same thing nowadays) but to change rational people's minds you need evidence.
It does seem, though, that climate change is leading to larger spiders, so Johnny Ball may actually be on to something.
[1] His blogspot url used to be boneill.blogspot.com and I can't help but think of him as "bone ill" for no good reason.
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