Frakking Off

Single Digit Kyu

2011-12-26T01:35:00.002-06:00

After a year of study and effort, I have successfully achieved a ranking of 9 Kyu in the game of Go. Here's a nifty chart representing my progress over the last 12 months:

For those unaware of the ranking and rating system used in Go, here is a brief summary:

"Kyu" stands for student ranking, and counts down from 30. Hence, a player who has just learned the rules would be ranked at 30 kyu. Lower kyu rankings indicate more advanced playing. A new beginner would find himself rated somewhere between 30 and 20 kyu, while a casual player would find himself rated somewhere between 20 and 10 kyu.

I've finally broken into the single digit kyu rankings, indicating my status as an intermediate amateur.

After advancing beyond 1 kyu, a player is given a "dan" ranking (as opposed to "kyu"), which counts upward from 1. Thus, after 1 kyu comes 1 dan, then 2 dan, and so on, up until 7 dan. A dan-ranked player is a serious amateur, and a high dan ranking can indicate the potential to play professionally (which has its own, parallel system of ranks, also called "dans," and ranging from 1-dan to 9-dan).

This ranking system is similar to the colored belt ranking system used in martial arts. The kyu ranks are then analogous to various colored belts, and 1 dan is equivalent to a black belt. The ranking system also makes it easy for players of different ranks to play on an equal playing field together - the less advanced player simply receives a handicap of X number of free turns at the start, where X is the difference in ranks.

My rank, and the above chart, are calculated using the games I play on the KGS Go Server, one of the most popular on-line Go-playing communities. The rank is continually adjusted, both as I play and as my previous opponents continue to play, so that rankings can accurately reflect each players' skill with respect to one another, using the history of all games played on the server, between all opponents.

Admittedly, I did take one or two breaks of a month or so. This is reflected in the smooth portions of the chart above, where my rank continued to increase automatically, as my previous victories against opponents counted more since my previous opponents continued to improve. The jittery portions are when I was more active, reflecting the constant fluctuations in my calculated rank as I both won and lost games.

Reaching single-digit kyu has been a specific goal of mine for a while, as it now puts me within striking distance of several advanced players that I know in person. My next specific goal is to reach a level of 5 or 6 kyu. Though my ultimate long-term goal is to be as good as I possibly can, for now I think I would be quite satisfied to reach 1 dan, even if I never improve beyond that - so that can be my specific long term goal for the time being.

Reaching 5 or 6 kyu will not be easy - it may take as long as it has taken me to reach 9 kyu (from 30), which was about a year. And reaching 1 dan may take 2 or 3 years.

But the progress is enjoyable, so I think I will be able to stick with it. You can always check on my most recent progress by clicking the link on the right menu, and if you would like to play, I can be found on KGS - my username is just my first name.

The Fire Rises

2011-12-14T02:09:00.003-06:00

Almost exactly four years ago, I remember specifically being blown away by Heath Ledger's voice as the Joker in the theatrical trailer for "The Dark Knight." I even wrote about it here. I had been worried about his voice, ever since it had been ever-so-briefly teased the summer before. But after that trailer, I knew his voice would be the one I heard in my head when reading the comics. And six months later, I was not certainly disappointed by what I would come to see as the definitive interpretation of the Clown Prince.

What's funny is that now, having seen the prologue for "The Dark Knight Rises" in an early screening, I find myself once again most struck by the voice of the featured villain - in this case, Bane.

Like before, I had been worried about how Tom Hardy would sound as Bane. Early spy footage leaked from the set in Pittsburgh featured a few lines from Bane, giving the impression of a weak, old, British man. It was a caricature and a joke, and I feared the worst.

But in the film itself, Bane sounds entirely different. Bane as a character is intense, and his voice matches. It's eery and cold. Distorted and warped. Muffled, yet clearly hiding a man who strives to be articulate and calculating. Confident and sure. Mechanical

Comparisons have been made to Darth Vader, but I think it would be far more accurate to compare it to a mechanized Jeremy Irons from "Die Hard 3."

Will "The Dark Knight Rises" be as good as "The Dark Knight?"

I don't know.

But I do know that one of my biggest fears has been put to rest.

I won't be laughing when I see Bane breaking the Bat, six months from now.

Bat Graffiti

2011-12-03T14:44:00.003-06:00

In Gotham City, everyone knows who Batman is. Some fear him, while others see him as a symbol of hope and justice. Those that do pay homage to him and his presence, in whatever way they see fit.

I found this graffiti art spray painted behind my apartment building.

What's really interesting to me is the choice of subject - rather than the Batman of the movies or the comics, this is the Batman of "Batman Beyond," a cartoon that aired between 1999 and 2001, featuring a new cyberpunk Batman of the future, trained by an elderly, dying Bruce Wayne.

It's generally held in very high regard by critics and Batman aficionados, especially for its darker themes, but because of its limited broadcast period and specific target demographic, its fanbase is relatively small and its familiarity amongst the general audience even smaller. Hence, the pleasant surprise at seeing him used as the focus for this graffiti artist

Manual Exploits

2011-11-30T01:55:00.002-06:00

One of the oldest traditions in video gaming culture is that of the manual exploit.

In a video game, an exploit means taking advantage of the system, for personal gain, in a way that the original programmers did not intend or foresee. Abusing a glitch or bug in the program to gain invincibility for your character would be one example.

A manual exploit, then, is taking advantage of a physical vulnerability in the system in ways that the programmers did not intend or foresee, often via a design flaw in the controller.

Perhaps the most famous example of a manual exploit from the old days is the "pencil trick" from "Track and Field."

"Track and Field" was an arcade game from the early 80s in which you competed in several simulated track and field events, such as the 100 meter dash, the javelin throw, and the high jump. Running in a race was accomplished via the use of two buttons - one for the left foot and one for the right foot.

It was important to push these buttons as rapidly as you could - but only in an alternating fashion. So a consistent rhythm was just as important as speed. Just as in a real race, where you need to put your left foot forward after your right foot, and your right foot forward after your left foot, the game would not advance your character along the track if you did something stupid like trying to move your left foot forward twice before moving your right foot.

Obviously, the faster you could push your consistent rhythm, and the longer you could maintain it, the sooner you would complete the race and the higher your score would be. If you were good enough, you might even get your initials in the high score board.

Gamers are a notoriously competitive lot, however, and the reward of having your initials at the top of high score board, for all challengers to see, was enough to motivate several devious gangsters into figuring out a way to game the system.

Hence, the "pencil trick" was born, which was described as follows by an old gamer:

"To prepare, take a pencil and thread it over your middle finger and under your index and ring fingers of your left hand. Place your middle finger between the left and right buttons, with the erase on the left button. Then, push down your ring finger, so it presses down on the button.

When you're ready to start, tap quickly with your right hand on the index finger side of the pencil, so that it pushes down on that right button. Continue to maintain pressure with your ring finger, so the pencil immediately presses back down on the left button."

In essence, a pencil is used as a see-saw between the buttons, pressing left and right, over and over, with your middle finger as the fulcrum. The result is an easily-maintained, yet lightning fast, perfect rhythm, which could never be achieved by two fingers alone. The player ends up with an incredible race time - and an equally incredible score.

More than one crafty gamer used such a manual exploit to guarantee their unbeatable high scores - and their initials - would remain indefinitely at the top of each "Track and Field" arcade cabinet in their hometowns. Of course, plenty of variations existed, as the technique was duplicated independently by multiple gamers all over the world - from a "spoon trick" to a "buzzsaw trick."

Well, I'm glad to see that the spirit of the manual exploit is alive and well in gamers today, as this clever gamer demonstrates a manual exploit in the very recently released "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:"

In this section of the game, your character is supposed to swing his sword left and right as quickly as he can, in order to try and chop the falling bamboo stalk into as many pieces as possible before it hits the ground. The sword's movement is controlled by the motion of the Wiimote controller, in a direct 1:1 correspondence. Swinging the controller left makes the the sword swing left, swinging right moves the sword to the right and - just as importantly - swinging up and down moves the sword vertically, meaning the sword can move at any angle and at any speed that the player wishes to.

Again, speed isn't the only factor - your ability to maintain a perfectly horizontal motion, back and forth, is also important, as swinging at an angle will push the falling bamboo off to the side, making it harder to score as many slices before the bamboo hits the ground.

Here, the gamer has tricked the Wiimote controller into thinking it's swinging back and forth in a blazingly fast, perfect motion, by attaching it to a spinning bicycle wheel. The details of why this trick works* isn't important - I just think it's cool that he was able to figure out how to use such a manual exploit.

I know I wouldn't have considered attaching my Wiimote to a bicycle wheel. But then, that's why I can barely manage chopping the bamboo into 30 slices, and he's almost reached 40!

* Footnote: If you're interested in the technical details of why it works, here's my theory: First, he calibrates the Wiimote into thinking that pointing straight upward is in fact pointing straight into the TV, which is simply a matter of telling the Wii that the default "Zero" position of the Wiimote is when it's pointing upward. Sort of like tricking your digital scale into printing out negative weights by "Zeroing" the scale when there's a weight sitting on it.

This way, the Wii thinks that you're swinging the Wiimote purely horizontally when in actuality you are swinging it in a purely vertical manner, and vice versa.

Then, the player spins the wheel. At first, the Wii senses that the Wiimote is moving in a direction away from the "Zero" position, in what it believes to be a horizontal direction, so it swings the sword to the right, at a speed corresponding to the speed of the wheel. The Wiimote keeps spinning around the wheel, but after it spins a little past halfway, it's now found itself in a position away from the "Zero" position in the opposite direction - so it instantly moves the sword back to the left of the default, ready to swing again to the right. The Wiimote keeps spinning, swinging the sword back to the right, before the sword flips back over to the left side as the halfway point is reached a second time. And so on. The result is that the sword keeps endlessly swinging to the right, with the Wii automatically resetting the sword so that it's to the left of the bamboo stick with every spin of the bicycle wheel.

So basically, the exploit relies on the fact that the Wii considers the position of the Wiimote, when it has been rotated 270 degrees away from the "Zero" position in a clockwise direction, to be equivalent to the position of the Wiimote when it has been rotated 90 degrees away from the "Zero" position in a counter-clockwise direction.

In other words, your character on the screen doesn't actually spin around with his sword, even though you're technically trying to tell the Wii that you keep swinging the sword around and around in circles - which would only be possible if your character was swinging around in circles. Since the Wii can't reconcile these two facts, it just instantly moves the sword, and your character takes another swing at the bamboo.

The Original "Video" Game

2011-11-27T14:40:00.002-06:00

I don't know if it was truly the first, but this arcade game certainly must be one of the oldest in existence, at an age of about 100 years:

I'm glad somebody had the imagination to see the potential to expand the scope of such machines, because this particular game seems like it would get real old, real fast.

Exploring the Federation Historical Archives

2011-11-17T15:22:00.002-06:00

Sometimes the bridge crew of the Enterprise had movie night.

When Captain Picard talks about being inadequate at the end, I can't help but suspect that it's a reference to the fact that Chewie didn't get a medal.

That's right. The Rebels were racist.

Drunk Jeff

2011-10-28T05:27:00.001-06:00

For some reason, Jeff Goldblum's voice and mannerisms just happen to lend themselves perfectly to a seemingly intoxicated state.

Occupy Gotham

2011-10-14T18:45:00.003-06:00

Even playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne knows that there's something very wrong with this country.

Original Stories

2011-10-03T01:05:00.002-06:00

It is said that there is no such thing as a new, original story - just old stories repeated, repackaged in new ways, and retold to new audiences who have not been exposed to older versions of the same story. Heroes fight villains, characters fall in love, and stories end happily or tragically. There are only so many kinds of characters and plots, and they have all been told in one form or another since man began to craft and tell stories, in the dawn of history.

The nitty gritty details may change, but the backbone is always one that's been used before. The human drama has played itself out billions of times over the last several million years. Is it sensible for a storyteller to really expect to be able to craft a story that has not already been told in one form or another?

That's not to say that there aren't good storytellers or writers, or that the effort to tell new stories is wasted or worthless, or that talent should not be admired. It just means the quality of implementation is what will set a storyteller apart - and we should recognize that, when a story seems original, it is only proof of our limited and narrow experiences, of our understanding of that which has come before, and perhaps of our mortality and the physical limitations on the effort to save stories of the past.

However, most do not realize that there is one notable exception to this rule - science-fiction.

Or perhaps more accurately, speculative fiction.

Speculative fiction is the genre of ideas. A good speculative fiction story will not simply feature characters, setting, and plot - it will also feature the exploration of new ideas. New possibilities, not grounded in the real (historical or contemporary) world of other fiction, not limited by what has come before or what exists today.

And because there will always be new ideas, there can always be original stories in speculative fiction.

Thanks to modern science, our knowledge and understanding of the universe expands every day. Out of this new knowledge is born the possibility of new ideas and new ways of perceiving the world. Out of these new ways of perceiving the world are born new ways of thinking about our reality. Out of these new ideas and ways of thinking, new stories can be born.

Maybe that's the reason I enjoy science-fiction so much more than other genres.

The Miracle of Watchmen

2011-09-18T23:21:00.002-06:00

In discussions regarding the film adaptation of "Watchmen," whether on the internet or face-to-face with friends, I often am lead to feel that most fans (of the movie, of the book, or of the genre) do not realize how truly lucky all of us were that the "Watchmen" film was made in the first place, much less that it turned out the way it did.

Consider the fact that Warner Bros. spent $130 million to create a movie that:

-Ran 2.5 to 3 hours in length,
-Was rated "R,"
-Contained extremely graphic violence and gore, including a brutal sexual assault,
-Included quite a bit of nudity, including full-frontal male nudity and a borderline pornographic sex scene,
-Was set in a completely different era, 25 years in our past, in an alternate history,
-Featured no famous or well-known actors, and was
-Based on a book and characters that are largely unknown outside the community of comics fans (unlike universally recognizable characters like Batman).

Add to all of that the fact that "Watchmen" was an extremely faithful adaptation of the book, often panel-for-panel, and was clearly made by those who held a great deal of respect and reverence for the original source material.

What most people tend to forget is that major movie studios - the only kind that have the bank to pull off a big-budget feature like "Watchmen" - simply do not make these kinds of movies. They're far too risky. You can't make big money off of merchandising (since it's not a kids movie), you have a hard time appealing to mass audiences (since it requires relatively more extensive intellectual engagement), and you're not really telling a story that can lead to a sequel for delayed return on investment.

It's an all-or-nothing gamble, where the movie has to return a profit by selling itself, based on its own merits, to an audience that, by definition, is already narrowed and limited in scope. No big name actors or characters to help and no supplemental sources of income.

In short, it was a miracle that "Watchmen" got made, especially without any artistic compromise.

As a fan of well-written science-fiction, comic books, and "genre" literature and art, I'm used to being shit upon by the businessmen who own the IP to the characters and worlds that I love. So to me, it's a rare treat to see a major movie studio do things right - artistically and morally - even if it's not the smartest business move, and that's something that I think fans should be thankful for in this case (whether they personally liked the movie or not).

Now I'm not trying to say "Watchmen" was a perfect movie. It wasn't. I'm not even sure if it's a "great" movie (though I would at least rate it as "good"). It certainly had plenty of flaws - the graphic violence was far too over-the-top, the sex was ridiculous and laughably gratuitous, and there were times where ham-fisted directing got in the way of what would have been nearly-perfect, emotionally resonant scenes.

But we were damn lucky that we got what we did, instead of a watered-down, cheap, generic piece of crap created by executives and MBAs rather than artists. Or yet another remake or sequel, completely unrelated to a beloved, original graphic novel. Or a lazy romantic comedy or forgettable, schlocky action flick.

If you had asked me beforehand if a "Watchmen" movie would ever have gotten made at all, I would have said it was unlikely. And if you had told me that a "Watchmen" movie would not only be made, but that it would be so completely faithful, filled with moments of true vision, originality, and brilliance, without any compromise in its artistic integrity for the sake of marketability or bottom-line profits?

I would've sooner believed that Nixon could have served five terms in office.

Brainchild

2011-09-14T14:10:00.000-06:00

Whenever I hear or see the word "brainchild," this is the image that is always immediately conjured up in my head:

A Talosian - a bare, hairless, almost childlike face with a giant, bulging head, laced prominently with throbbing veins, barely able to contain the massively enlarged brain within.

Consequences

2011-09-09T15:18:00.002-06:00

From "Our Valued Customers," regarding the new Batgirl #1:

Not to be dramatic...but I kind of agree.

Despite what you might think about the original intentions and manner in which Barbara Gordon was made a cripple, the subsequent 20 years of character development and storytelling that followed as a product were nearly unparalleled in their symbolic and dramatic importance in the world of comics. This is because it served as an example that:

A) Crimefighting in comics can have deadly, serious consequences and repercussions, and the hero does not get to settle down in the bat-cave, satisfied with their night's work at the end of each story.

B) The characters (and readers) cannot count on cosmic influences, magic, or lazy editorial decisions to render such consequences moot with a "reset button." In a genre where death is always seemingly temporary - and thus always a joke to readers - it's important to fight the trend and show that this is not always necessarily true. Because if the writers aren't going to take the consequences of their characters' actions seriously, then why should I?

and

C) When faced with devastating tragedy with no "reset button" in sight, characters can still work through their seemingly insurmountable setbacks and come out stronger for it - by accepting and owning their setbacks, and not cheaply wiping the slate clean. In other words, the "reset button" is not only dramatically distasteful, it's entirely unnecessary for the character in the first place.

Gordon was far more interesting, likeable, and three-dimensional as Oracle than she ever was - or arguably ever could be - as Batgirl. Gordon showed us that death and injury could be permanent, and that her strength was in her ability to work beyond her paralysis.

Now she's just another crimefighter in a cape - and the industry's strongest example of why the drama of comics should be taken seriously has gone out the window.

Synchronicity in Sometimes a Great Notion

2011-08-30T21:50:00.002-06:00

Though I caught a few of them at the time (specifically, the setting), I had no idea that "Sometimes a Great Notion" had quite as many references and homages to the original "Planet of the Apes" as it apparently did. The Battlestar Wiki lists the following:

-Astronauts discover a post-apocalyptic Earth; the view of which bore striking resemblance to New York City.
-Leoben warns Kara, "You might not like what you find," quoting verbatim Dr. Zaius' admonition to Col. Taylor.
-Kara has been declared "the harbinger of death", a description of man from the apes' sacred scrolls carried by Dr. Zaius and read by Dr. Cornelius.
-A central character, Dr. Gaius Baltar, has been a scientific, religious and political leader; his forename is nearly identical to Dr. Zaius who was the apes' scientific, religious and political leader.
-Cylon Galen assists human astronauts in their survey of post-apocalyptic Earth, just as chimpanzee Galen did in the Planet of the Apes television series.

Looking at that list, what strikes me most is how so many of those references could not have been deliberately placed, but work anyhow, due to the virtue of unplanned coincidences and convergent synchronicity.

Of course, the writers of the episode chose the setting and wrote Leoben's dialogue - primarily because it serves the story, but the specific words picked for Leoben must have at least partly been to simply serve as an homage. So the presence of such a deliberate reference is not at all surprising and didn't require any forethought before the writers sat down to work on this episode specifically.

But Starbuck was labelled the "harbinger of death" more than a year beforehand, in "Razor." Even more astounding is the coincidences of Gaius Baltar's and Galen Tyrol's first names, both of which were established in the initial mini-series, a full five years earlier.

It's a neat little set of references that are made all the more cool because they could not have been deliberately staged that way in the beginning, but still work, all the same.

Custom Bound Comics

2011-07-15T13:10:00.008-06:00

One project that I've been working on over the past few months is getting some of my Batman comics bound, in custom hardcover books.

My childhood collection of single issues encompasses about 6 years worth Batman, across many titles, and that has been supplemented by additional purchases of back issues in the years since. All told, I probably had a small stack of a couple hundred issues in total.

The problem is, most of these issues have been sitting, individually bagged and boarded, in various stacks. This is for their protection - I'm mostly concerned about them becoming torn and tattered, though the bagging also protects them from sunlight and humidity.

But unlike most collectors, I enjoy Batman comics for their stories and artwork - not for their inherent "collector's value." So in order to enjoy my collection, I have to pull out of my issues out of taped bags to read them, one at a time. This is especially annoying when reading multi-part story arcs across several issues.

That means:

-Slowly prying the tape off of a bagged comic
-Slipping the book out
-Placing the bag on a table so it doesn't get taped shut in a bad position
-Reading the book
-Opening the taped bag again
-Trying to slip the book back in the tight-fitting bag, without getting the tape on the book or bending the book
-Taping the bag back shut
-Repeating every step above once for each issue in the storyline

Needless to say, I found myself just avoiding the process altogether and never going back to read through my books.

And while Marvel seems to reprint everything in graphic novel form, DC (which publishes Batman) has only just started reprinting their single issues in graphic novel form in the last few years - and they seem to have no interest in going back to reprint their older stuff from the past few decades.

So I decided to try getting some of my books bound, which is the perfect solution to my problem. It lets me just pull my comics off the shelf for a quick, easy, straightforward read-through, like any other graphic novel. It also keeps my comics sturdy and protected, so they don't get torn or tattered. And the overall presentation is very attractive.

The only downside is that your single issues won't be left intact - they'll be trimmed on the left (to remove stapes) and then glued, and usually they're trimmed on the other edges as well (to make sure the edges are uniform like any other book). If you're a collector who wants the books intact for "collector's value," then this isn't going to be a very attractive option for you. But if you're like me and just want to read your old books, without any concern for resale value, then that shouldn't matter. (And some of these custom bound books can also sell for hundreds of dollars, just because the presentation is so nice and unique!)

Here was my first experiment, binding the Moench-Jones-Beatty run of Batman, including my very first comic book.

There are two volumes, collecting about 35 issues in total. You can usually fit up to 20 or even 25 issues in a single bound volume, but I didn't want any of my books to be too thick - better to err on the side of caution, for a more comfortable reading experience.

As you can see, the front and back covers and spine are printed in full-color, from a design I created. I matched "Batman" title logos to the title logos used during that era (and they're different on each volume because they switched logos in the middle of the original run). I used some cover art from the original issues for the front and back artwork, and I wrote the blurb myself.

A lot of the artwork for the cover designs needed retouching and seamless manipulation, to remove things like extraneous titles and names on the covers of the original issues. I certainly gained a new-found appreciation for just how easy it is to manipulate and edit photographs to make things appear that weren't there before (or disappear entirely!).

You can just read the issues without interruption, moving from the end of one story to the cover and beginning of the next.

When binding comics, you have a little bit of "gutter loss" - because the books are trimmed and glued in the center, you can lose a little bit of artwork or text in the inner edges of your pages. But I found the "gutter loss" was minimal and not really any more noticeable than reading a normal, unbound single issue anyway (much less an officially reprinted graphic novel). And it can be reduced even further by binding fewer issues per volume, for slimmer books.

Here are some gorgeous two-page spreads, when "gutter loss" would be most important to avoid. As you can, "gutter loss" is barely noticeable.

Batman, Killer Croc, and Swamp Thing:

Man-Bat flies:

Batman stands up to The Spectre in a vertical spread:

Special covers, like this gatefold fold-out cover, are also left intact and can be enjoyed as they were originally meant to be:

At the end of each volume, I decided to include the letter columns - a slice of the history of comic fandom, before the days of the internet and BBSes. I still remember the content of some of those letters, back from reading them in elementary school:

I enjoy back matter material in my graphic novels. An inside look into the production and design process for the story and book, they can include preliminary sketches, scripts, or essays about the work in question. They're a bit like the "extra features" on a DVD. So I included a reprinted retrospective essay about the Moench-Jones-Kelley Batman run at the back of my second book:

Like any professionally published book, they also include a title page and a table of contents:

One other advantage of binding is the ability to remove annoying ad material. I tore out all the double-paged ads and back covers, for a smoother reading experience featuring fewer interruptions. That lets you stay in the story longer, without being pulled back into reality like someone texting on their phone in a movie theater. I even re-arranged some pages where possible, to clump irremovable ads together (so there were fewer total clumps and fewer interruptions, with longer lengths of continuous story material).

Here's an example of just how many pages I was able to excise entirely from the 35 issues bound above. The ad material is the stack on the left:

As you can see, it would've almost been enough to bind another volume entirely!

After the first two books were received, I sent five more in, having learned from a few cover design mistakes (though as you can see, there's still room for further improvement).

"New Gotham" describes the period in Gotham City just after it had been rebuilt after the "No Man's Land," when Gotham had been abandoned by the United States Federal Government for a year after a massive earthquake destroyed the city.

The above books collect the first part of Greg Rucka's first run on "Detective Comics," one of my favorite runs. Informed by his background as a crime writer, he writes an excellent, gritty, realistic take on Batman, who relies on his detective skills to solve crimes.

That part of the run featured a unique art style - a muted color palette, which really made it stand out apart from other, typical superhero comics fare.

The latter part of Rucka's run was mostly involved in crossovers, and didn't feature the same art style, so I omitted it.

While Rucka was doing his "New Gotham" run on "Detective Comics," fellow crime writer Ed Brubaker was doing a run on the main "Batman" line.

Like Rucka, Brubaker featured stories set in the "New Gotham," and he tried to focus on a more realistic take on Batman and his foes. However, the art style (done by Scott McDaniel) was very different - much more dynamic, brightly-colored, and "cartoony." Not my favorite, but still unique and enjoyed by many.

To that end, I collected most of his run (not including issues featured as main parts of crossover stories) in a bound volume as well. It's not an identical format to the above books, but it shares some design similarities because of its chronological and thematic relation to Rucka's run.

A couple of dynamic, two-page spreads featuring McDaniel's artwork.

Brubaker and Rucka would later team up to do Gotham Central, perhaps my favorite monthly Batman title, featuring a realistic look at the Gotham City Police Department. A lot of the seeds for those storylines and characters are planted in the above issues.

My final two books spotlighted two villains. While both are featured in plenty of reprinted crossovers, neither have many graphic novels devoted to them as the main villain - and both have plenty of smaller stories that were never reprinted in paperback form. So I collected a bunch of these stories together in two bound volumes.

First, the Riddler:

Part of the success of "Batman" is the ability of his character - and his various recurring villains - to transform, adapt, and be re-interpreted by writers for each new era and audience. Here, I collected modern Riddler stories, featuring various interpretations of the character and his many different attempts at transforming himself. Here are the table of contents and a few of the stories, for those interested:

The modern telling of his origin story:

The famous "Dark Knight, Dark City" arc, featuring (for the first time) a vicious Riddler:

The Riddler teams up with the Cluemaster, a C-List copycat villain:

"Riddle Me That," in which the Riddler attempts to shed some of his more pathetic attributes and transform himself into a suave badass:

The Paul Dini single-shot issues, featuring Edward Nygma as a consulting private investigator, working within the bounds of the law:

The other villain I focused on was Bane, just in time for his cinematic spotlight in "The Dark Knight Rises."

Going back and re-reading the stories featuring Bane, I found him to be a tragic character. Certainly he's very dangerous and vicious. But writers later showed a sadder side to him - raised, since birth, in a prison, Bane is a man without family and without purpose. So these stories (comprising the bulk of his non-crossover appearances) follow that arc - beginning with his birth, his battles with Batman, and later his quest for family.

The infamous "back-breaking" scene, when he utterly defeats and destroys Batman:

I was able to include the cool special cover to Batman #500, featuring the old Batman (Bruce Wayne), eclipsed and replaced by the shiny, modern Batman (Jean-Paul Valley), who goes on to defeat Bane in this issue.

Bane fighting - and later allying with - Ra's al Ghul. Look for this aspect in the new film, as Ra's al Ghul is rumored to make an appearance in a flashback sequence.

Bane, side by side with Batman:

I had my books bound by Houchen Bindery. You simply tear our the ads and back covers, stack them in the order you want them, and send them in - along with an image with your cover design on a CD, if you want a printed, custom cover. The price is $15 apiece if you get 5 or more bound in a single order (with a slightly higher price for smaller orders), and that includes staple removal, binding, trimming, and a printed graphic cover. If you don't want a graphic cover, you can also opt for a more "library bound" style.

I'm quite excited by these books, and am glad that I can now go back and read the old issues from my childhood collection, without hindrance or inconvenience. Look for several more to be posted in the coming months, as I definitely want to bind another half-dozen volumes at the least!

Two Angry Men

2011-07-09T05:11:00.001-06:00

Only one man has the level of rage required to stand up to O'Reilly's douchiness.

Good Tastes

2011-06-19T22:19:00.003-06:00

It's always comforting to see that someone, whose work I enjoy in one field, has good tastes in other fields. Will Ferrell is one of us.

Life, But Not As We Know It

2011-05-27T20:55:00.004-06:00

Spock is living long and prospering.

Hobbits Are Not Logical, Captain

2011-05-27T12:29:00.001-06:00

Spock doesn't like illogical songs.

Perfect Peanut Butter

2011-05-25T13:47:00.003-06:00

To have the best peanut butter of your life, all you need to do is leave a half-eaten jar in the afternoon sun for a few hours.

The gentle warmth is strong enough to transform the peanut butter into a slightly melty, very creamy confection - but not so strong as to turn it into an outright liquid or unmanageable goo, like if you melted it in a saucepan on the stove. Rather, it retains some degree of solidity, allowing you to spoon it out with ease, as before.

I discovered this yesterday and I'm scared of doing it again because I know that if I do, I'll probably end up eating an entire jar's worth in the space of a few minutes. There truly are some powers that are far too dangerous to leave in the hands of mere mortal men.

(And I'm sure any further consideration of throwing in a handful of chocolate chips certainly wouldn't help matters)

Mysteries of the Universe

2011-05-13T21:30:00.001-06:00

Everything is so much clearer now.

Googly Eyes

2011-05-09T05:25:00.005-06:00

While on campus on Friday, I looked up at a familiar landmark to see a startling sight.

A feat so silly, crazy, and impressive can only have one source - Scav Hunt. Specifically, item #40 on this year's list:

"40. Affix a pair of appropriately enormous googly eyes to the campus building of your choice. [8 points]"

Well, at least now I can feel more comfortable around Rockefeller Chapel, now that I know where I stand with it.

Congratulations to the BJ team, which finally took 1st place. Watching their meteoric rise over the years has been fun, as they continued to surprise everyone - moving upwards, year after year, from their accepted position at the bottom of the list when I was a first-year, to this year's final, ultimate triumph, as they trounced once-champions and claimed the crown for themselves.

You guys earned it!

Porn Movies Have Trailers?!

2011-05-01T14:35:00.003-06:00

I mean, I guess I already knew that porn movies have trailers. That's what you'd call the 10-second preview clips on the front page of paysites, right?

But I had no idea porn movies could have full-length trailers that exclusively showcase their plot, while completely excluding any..."special effects."

A Better Class of Mask

2011-05-01T02:47:00.003-06:00

You might remember that Takara Batman came with a utility harness and ninja mask for an alternate "first night out" look. Here's a reminder of what it looked like:

Of course, the ninja mask is wildly inaccurate. Check out some screen captures from "Batman Begins":

Bruce Wayne during his "first night out." As you can see, his mask in the movie is of a completely different shape and texture than the one that comes with the figure. It's actually not a ninja hood - rather, it's a much more traditional black ski mask (something you might imagine a burglar might wear).

Here you can see Bruce Wayne laughing at how terrible Takara Batman's ninja mask is.

Screen accuracy and quality is important to me, so I wanted a better mask - especially because I've now got Takara Batman permanently sporting his alternate "first night out" look, ever since acquiring the definitive version of the Batman Begins costume. To that end, I got a much more accurate ski-mask from a 1/6 part supplier in Hong Kong.

Much better.

Hard Work

2011-04-27T02:24:00.002-06:00

To my mind, one of the coolest aspects of special-effect filmmaking are "bigatures" - very large, detailed "miniature" models. I think they appeal to the same part of me that highly detailed action figures do.

The most famous uses of bigatures probably come from the "Lord of the Rings" films - the castles, towers, cities, and so forth. The above video, however, depicts the construction and destruction (and re-construction and re-destruction) of the James Bond-inspired snow fortress in "Inception."

Imagine being one of the poor schmucks who worked hard to build that bigature so that it can be blown up, only to be told that you had to rebuild it all over again, just because Chris Nolan didn't like the way the explosion looked the first time.

The guy's a taskmaster.

All In His Head?

2011-04-25T21:47:00.001-06:00

What if Batman isn't actually real?

Publicity

2011-04-15T12:12:00.006-06:00

I don't often talk about my work work here - there's often very little reason to, and it rarely seems important or exciting enough to mention to those who don't already know what I'm up to anyway, work-wise. Suffice it to say, I'm currently involved in a number of diverse projects.

However, one of the more interesting projects I'm involved in just received a small amount of publicity from the University of Chicago, so I thought I'd share. You can click to read the full (short) article, but here's an excerpt:

"This kind of [psychological and genetic] study would require thousands of subjects to build enough statistical power to identify previously undiscovered variants. Bringing that many people into the laboratory for experiments and obtaining full genome sequences for them all would be absurdly expensive. So Palmer is proposing a new kind of psychiatric study, able to be conducted from the comfort of a subject’s own home."

...

“We can basically give them a website and they go there and get applets to run on their local computer, where they can do tasks locally and then the data gets sent back to our server,” Palmer said. “For a million dollar budget, you can get 40,000 people. That’s a powerful sample for doing a genome-wide analysis where you don’t come at it with preconceived notions of what are the important genes. Instead, you get completely novel insights about what are the genetic predictors of these kinds of behaviors.”

Though my name isn't mentioned, I'm doing some computer consultant work for the project, and the design and implementation of the applets mentioned (as well as all the back-end server code) were my doing.

A New Morse Code

2011-03-30T20:52:00.003-06:00

It has always bothered me that Morse code cannot be derived from first principles.

Morse code is the most widely recognized binary code, enabling communication between different parties when bandwidth is limited to the extent that more convenient forms of communication (like speech) are impossible. For this reason, it can be extremely important in impromptu emergency scenarios as a fallback method of communication, when all else has failed.

Yet it cannot be properly encoded or decoded without already having the master key - either physically in front of you or memorized beforehand.

So imagine you're trapped in a cavern by a cave-in. You hear banging on the walls from your colleagues, and recognize the pattern of banging to be Morse code, even though you don't personally know the code (it's a pretty unique sound that most can at least recognize, given basic exposure to Morse code through its occurrences in popular culture).

But unless you either had the foresight to carry a master key with you or you have an English dictionary, a calculator, and a nearly infinite amount of time (with which to re-derive the master key, if you know how it was initially formulated in the first place), you'll be unable to understand your colleagues, much less respond to them with anything besides random banging.

Wouldn't it make more sense for Morse code to be something that you could derive from first principles, fairly easily? The order of the alphabet is a pretty commonly known standard - so it doesn't take long to figure that, starting from the beginning, 'A' should be dot, 'B' should be dash, 'C' should be dot-dot, 'D' should be dot-dash, and so on. (Interestingly, the Morse encodings for Arabic numerals do follow a pattern that can be derived from first principles in this manner - as long as you know that the numerals are each a total of five "dots" and "dashes" long).

Of course, there are historical reasons for why Morse code wasn't formulated in such a simple fashion. When Morse code was used in conventional situations (not just emergencies) during the early days of long-distance electronic communication, speed, efficiency, and economy of transmission was important - so letters that were more frequently used in the English language (based on their relative frequency of occurrence in the dictionary) were given Morse code representations that consisted of fewer dots and dashes.

But Morse is rarely used conventionally anymore - so its current primary domain, that of emergencies, should inform the manner in which it is currently formulated. If the objective of Morse code has now become the enabling of communication in difficult circumstances, then it makes sense that a more easily derived code can help more people, as it makes it more accessible.

Furthermore, the Morse standard has changed several times since its invention, so there is precedent for changing it once more - this time, to a standard that is friendlier to those who haven't necessarily used Morse code before, much less memorized it.

For the record, here is how I would propose we re-define the master key, to create a standard Alawi Morse code:

o = dot
- = dash

A: .
B: -
C: . .
D: . -
E: - .
F: - -
G: . . .
H: . . -
I: . - .
J: . - -
K: - . .
L: - . -
M: - - .
N: - - -
O: . . . .
P: . . . -
Q: . . - .
R: . . - -
S: . - . .
T: . - . -
U: . - - .
V: . - - -
W: - . . .
X: - . . -
Y: - . - .
Z: - . - -
1: - - . .
2: - - . -
3: - - - .
4: - - - -
5: . . . . .
6: . . . . -
7: . . . - .
8: . . . - -
9: . . - . .
0: . . - . -
Period: . . - - .
Comma: . . - - -
Question mark: . - . . .

I would argue that further characters (ampersand, colon, etc.) are unnecessary (and their arbitrary ordering would make deriving their encodings from first principles impossible), but the pattern can be extended as desired.

Self-Referential Fish

2011-03-29T03:37:00.002-06:00

"I don't know Mr. Fish, what if you ARE a self-referential system?!"

For the past several months, this little fish has been dealing with existential angst on the surface of a traffic light pole next to a bus stop I frequent, where I snapped this picture.

I'm not really sure what he means by his concern about being a "self-referential system," but one thing's for certain - if that's the largest of his worries, then he's got it pretty easy, as most of his buddies probably have much more immediate problems to deal with.

Like making sure they're not some bigger fish's next meal, for instance.

The Definitive Original Costume

2011-03-24T19:18:00.002-06:00

I mentioned that Takara Batman was the most popular 1/6 scale Batman action figure of his time, when he was released in 2005. However, the 1/6 scale action figure world has exploded in popularity in recent years, and with that popularity has come an equally explosive advancement in the quality and artistry of the figures. To that end, Takara Batman is no longer considered to be the definitive "Batman Begins" 1/6 Batman figure.

In 2005, one of Takara's competitors was Hot Toys, who had put out their own version of the character. However, it was considered to be an inferior product to Takara - featuring less poseability and a so-so headsculpt.

But when "The Dark Knight" was released in 2008, Hot Toys produced a revised, updated version of their 2005 figure, to go along with their brand new line of "The Dark Knight" action figures. At this point, they had seriously stepped up their game, delivering products of the quality I've recently been showing you, which has made them a leader in the field. Among their improvements to the original 2005 figure were much better headsculpts and paint applications, as well as critical new accessories featured exclusively in "The Dark Knight." The new figure blew the old one out of the water.

It also surpassed Takara Batman as well, as it featured not only better headsculpts and more accessories, but a bulkier, thicker, more accurate body than the relatively slim and shapely Takara outfit.

Hot Toys' "Batman: The Original Costume Version," or "OC Batman" for short, features Batman as he was at the start of "The Dark Knight" - still sporting his original suit from "Batman Begins." One of the first three figures in Hot Toys' "The Dark Knight" line, the box features a similar design to the other two original figures, including the Hot Toys Dark Knight Version of Batman.

Like the other figures, we start with the jacket, showing us what we're going to get:

Remove the jacket, and we get the inner box:

The back features images of the other two figures released at the same time, as well as credits featuring the names of the artists and manufacturers responsible for this figure (in the style of a movie poster):

Like most action figure boxes, the front flap opens up to reveal the figure itself:

Out of the box, the imposing Batman:

True to the movie, this outfit comes with a longer, larger cape than his new outfit, which can fully cloak and envelop Batman if he wishes.

The headsculpt is a massive improvement over Takara's doll-like face, both in terms of physical detail as well as paint application. Very realistic.

Batman comes with an appropriate stand with his name, of course:

And here are the additional accessories he comes with:

Four additional hands, a magnetic grapnel gun, two batarangs, a sticky bomb, and the "pneumatic mangler." A varied arsenal, to help him combat his various foes.

His belt includes a slot for his batarangs:

Unfortunately, the slot isn't quite tight enough - so the batarangs don't really hold in place very well and slip out very easily. I find it annoying - why include the slot if it barely works? Perhaps a testament to the quality of the figure that this relatively minor problem is one of my only complaints - but it still bugs me quite a bit, nonetheless.

I want my Batman to be able to go out in the field, armed to the teeth and ready for anything!

Speaking of small problems - the belt includes a non-removable cell phone unit. The fact that it's non-removable bugs me, particularly because it's mentioned as one of the features in Hot Toys' promotional materials. I'm glad it's there, for accuracy's sake, but why not include it as a tangible accessory, rather than a detailed part of the costume?

The back of the belt shows the cell phone, as well as a slot to hold his grapnel gun, just like his "The Dark Knight" version counterpart.

Attached to a spare gauntlet is Batman's "pneumatic mangler."

You may remember this device from his first appearance in "The Dark Knight."

The pneumatic mangler is an independently powered unit that allows Batman to bend, tear, and cut metal and other strong objects, with the guidance of his hand. He used it to destroy the barrel of an opponents gun by bending it in two, and then used it to claw his way through the side of a speeding van, by ripping the metallic door apart.

I originally only had Takara Batman, because it was considered to be more poseable and was less expensive than OC Batman. But I will admit the lack of a pneumatic mangler for Takara Batman really gnawed at me over time.

The accessory was unique to the OC Batman (as it was unique to the movie, "The Dark Knight"), and I knew I wanted Batman to have every possible tool at his disposal, to aid him in fighting the dangerous Joker. So eventually, I knew I had to get OC Batman, even though I had already gotten Takara Batman to avoid the expense of OC Batman. Luckily, I did decide relatively quickly, as the price would only continue to rise over time.

Even Batman must handle his explosive sticky bomb with care:

The grapnel gun has been a staple of Batman's arsenal throughout most of his career, including all of the modern motion pictures.

As has the batarang, which also connects him to his ninja roots.

I've always said that Batman is the paragon of the modern, urban ninja.

OC Batman also comes with an additional headsculpt - a Christian Bale "Bruce Wayne" head, much like the one that comes with the Hot Toys "The Dark Knight" figure.

A stunning rendition, but not surprising, given Hot Toys' usual quality. Like the nearly identical sculpt that comes with the "The Dark Knight" figure, it too is far superior to Takara's "Bruce Wayne" sculpt, both in terms of detail and paint.

The sculpt not only offers an additional look, but is an important step in putting together a second "Bruce Wayne" figure if you desire.

Is there no doubt that Batman is the manliest of men?

Bruce Wayne considers his role as Batman, while holding the cowl of the monster he has become:

I've considered getting another one of these, for the unmasked Bruce Wayne look, since I love both so much. Unfortunately, I've always had to hold back, as it is a truly expensive proposition.

The problem is that, unlike most other Hot Toys figures (including most of their Batman figures), OC Batman was not released in the West - only in Asia. So the production numbers were more limited, making it more rare. Additionally, the fact that Hot Toys did not intend to release him in America was a surprise to collectors, who did not find this out until he simply failed to materialize alongside the other figures in the "The Dark Knight" line. This resulted in a collective, mad scramble on the part of collectors to get it before it sold out on the other side of the world.

Since then, the market price of OC Batman has always been high, and has consistently risen over time. It's true that most Hot Toys figures go up in value over time (as they tend to be produced only once, before being discontinued) - but usually collectors can find them easily for retail price during the first several months of a figure's release, resulting in a long-term reduction of demand and increase in supply. This was not the case for OC Batman, so he's never been easy to acquire, for anyone.

Still, OC Batman is considered to be the definitive release of Batman in his "Batman Begins" suit, and most 1/6 Batman collectors eventually have to give in to their internal pressure and get him, no matter what the cost, because he simply is worth it. No other "Batman Begins" action figure includes as many accessories or is as realistic and authentic to the movie in terms of detail and size.

You may notice I didn't put him in as many dynamic poses as some of my other figures. This is because his range of articulation is more limited than other figures, including the Takara Batman - particularly his head, which can only move up and down slightly, and not side to side. However, this is true to the movie, where Batman could not turn his head or move around very easily - which was one of his primary motivations for getting a new suit.

Because this figure was released to coincide with and celebrate "The Dark Knight," I wish they had included one last detail that was revealed in the beginning of that movie - Batman's grapnel gun harness/holster.

In his first scene in the movie, we see the grapnel gun hanging from his belt, dangling to the side of his leg (and not stored on the back of the belt like on the action figure). This helps give considerable visual weight and bulk to the appearance of the suit, as we see just how much stuff he has to carry around and deal with. Because it's an important visual plot point, I regret that Hot Toys' belt and gun combination did not allow for this look.

However, it's an easy fix - I just used a black twist tie to let the gun dangle from his belt in the right position. Since the suit is also black, and the twist tie is so thin, it blends right in, and you can't even tell it's there!

Your Business Card

2011-03-17T16:30:00.003-06:00

For a minute there, I thought this guy was actually going somewhere with his speech...

"What do you do guaranteed?!"

Video Game Tutorials

2011-03-15T01:50:00.002-06:00

This is what the first level of Super Mario Bros. would look like if it were made today.

When I was a kid, whenever I got a new video game, the first thing I would do was open the box and read through the manual, cover-to-cover. Before installing or starting up the game, I wanted to be thoroughly prepared. Part of this stemmed from wanting to get the whole experience of the game from the beginning - including the background story, the secondary characters' names, alternative artwork, and so on. The other motivation was the desire to make sure I knew how to do everything in the game, so that there were no special moves, game options, or secrets that I missed out of ignorance.

Of course, when reading the manual, I had to fight this unsettling feeling of discomfort and tension within my gut. I felt squirmy, since I wanted to just get up and play the game already! Reading through the manual became a painful, hour-long chore, like finishing a heap of vegetables before dessert.

Eventually, I grew up and put such childish ideas behind me. Now, I just put the game in the machine and start it up. I don't waste time learning how to play from the manual, since I'll learn much faster (and more enjoyably) by just experimenting and playing around with the first level.

As the link above suggests, however, the choice to just "jump in and play" is becoming less and less of an option.

The problem is, in a misguided effort to make just "jumping in" more feasible, game developers have added extensive, built-in walk-through tutorials into the first levels of the game. While a nice idea on paper - and certainly a helpful option to those who are new to video games - it inevitably slows down the process of getting to the real meat of the gameplay. In attempting to make games more accessible and new-player friendly, designers have bogged down their games with weighty, slow-moving starts. The tense desire to "get to the good parts" has been transferred from the optional (and skippable) manual-reading experience to the mandatory first-level experience.

It didn't use to be this way - in fact, at one point, there was a happy medium, where most games would come with the optional "tutorial" level. This level wouldn't have any bearing on the game (either gameplay-wise or story-wise), and would be composed entirely of on-screen instructions and a sandbox environment to experiment around in. But it was separate section of the game - distinct in the menu, one which you would have to deliberately choose to visit, rather than a mandatory part of the first level that you had no choice but to slog through.

Now don't get me wrong - sometimes a little on-screen instruction can be helpful and is necessary. But this instruction should be easily skippable and unobtrusive in its visual presentation on the screen. In addition, it shouldn't affect or slow down the flow of gameplay - and it should only apply to esoteric options and inputs that depend on combinations of multiple keys and buttons.

In other words, it's OK to tell me that I should "Press the Z button while in midair to perform a ground-pound," because that move depends on two successive inputs at a time (the jump button, followed quickly by the Z button) - so it's not guaranteed that I'll stumble across it during my initial experimentation. But what's not OK is telling me to "Press the A button to jump - try it now." If, through normal experimentation, I haven't yet figured out that pressing one of the main buttons results in a jump, then I should either be reading the manual, playing through an optional tutorial, or not playing the game in the first place!

What makes this problem worse is the fact that it is self-reinforcing. Players don't learn to experiment at the start of a new game. They get used to having their hand held, so they never think to play around and see what they can do on their own. Their ability to experiment is never a skill that is developed - which means successive games must repeat the mandatory hand-holding experience, lest it lose its audience.

A secondary consequence of this problem is the fact that gamers who are less apt to experiment in the beginning are also less apt to experiment later on down the line. If you show them each and every one of the basic moves, then they assume you've shown them every relevant combination of these moves, as well as each and every one of the advanced moves. So when they get to a new section of the game, perhaps a puzzle that requires experimentation and thought, they get stuck - they try all the moves you've shown them, and then give up in frustration when none of them work. It doesn't occur to them to try brand new things, to see if something unexpected will work.

For instance, if you show them something as basic as how to run (using the A button) and how to jump over a pit (using the B button), they're less likely to figure out how to do a running jump to get past an extra-long pit, then if they had had to figure out how to both run and jump on their own in the first place. If they didn't have to experiment to learn the first parts, why would they assume they had to experiment to learn about new parts of your game? If you don't encourage experimentation from the beginning, then it sure isn't going to happen later on when it is needed - and your game ends up being thrown aside, as being too difficult at best, if not outright broken.

I have seen players who, given their prior experience with video games, should be more than capable of picking up and learning the ins and outs of a brand new game, just by playing around for a moment. But because they never learned this simple, necessary skill, they stumble around - limited by the on-screen introductory experience, which often leaves them lacking one or two basic, but important, moves. So when the game picks up in difficulty, and experimentation is necessary, they try in frustration for a few moments, before giving up for good.

And on the other hand, I have seen players (such as myself) who are completely turned off to what would otherwise be a good game, simply because the starting levels and on-screen instructions take far too long to complete. If there are good parts, we just don't see them, because we rightfully don't have the patience and time to spare to get to them.

A Zombie of Chance

2011-02-17T11:37:00.004-06:00

One of Batman's most formidable foes is the ex-District Attorney of Gotham City, Harvey Dent - also known as Two-Face. With Dent also serving as a major character in "The Dark Knight," it's no surprise that after their initial release of 1/6 scale "The Dark Knight" action figures, Hot Toys decided to follow up with a Harvey Dent/Two-Face figure.

Like all of Hot Toys' action figures, Dent's box is itself a work of art. In fact, I think Dent's box may be my favorite of all of Hot Toys' boxes, as it does a spectacular job featuring the dichotomy between the hero Harvey Dent and the villain Two-Face.

Starting with the stiff, full-color cardboard jacket, from the front and one side, we see the Harvey Dent figure - a bright beacon, shining of hope:

But from the back and the other side of the jacket, we see Dent's dark side, both literally and figuratively:

Though you can't see it in the picture, the red, blistery burns on Two-Face are embossed from the cardboard, giving it a more tangible quality than a mere image.

Remove the jacket and we have the box itself:

And credits featuring the artists responsible for this figure:

The front opens up in a flap and we see where the figure would be situated on the right:

On the left is an extra pouch for the extra jacket, and a brief description of the character:

As you've probably guessed, like many of their figures, Hot Toys included multiple headsculpts and specific accessories that allow for very different looks and multiple figures, if you desire to maximize your value for your money. Knowing this, we start with Gotham's "White Knight," Harvey Dent:

A decent man in an indecent time:

Harvey Dent addresses the court:

Taking a closer look at the headsculpt, we see the artists did an excellent job in capturing actor Aaron Eckhart's likeness:

Dent comes with an accessory - an "I Believe in Harvey Dent" campaign button, which can be used on any figure:

I imagine it'd go quite well with my Bruce Wayne figure. Here it is shown next to an actual Harvey Dent campaign button, which I acquired during his actual, real-world election campaign, during the build-up to the release of "The Dark Knight":

But of course, what we're really interested in is not the man Dent was, but the villain he became. So switching heads and jackets, we get Two-Face:

You can see that, like all of Hot Toys' figures, he comes with a personal, titled stand.

The Two-Face headsculpt accurately reflects the full physical horror of the accident that scarred Dent for life - massive burn trauma that destroyed half his face, splitting him in two:

Like Dent, Two-Face comes with a few accessories specific to his villainous persona as well:

First, his lucky, double-headed silver dollar, complete with a pristine "good" side and a burnt, scarred "bad" side, mirroring the split that Dent himself faced.

Also, a small handgun, used by Two-Face as a tool in his quest for vengeance and "justice."

As you can see, the gun hammer and barrel themselves involve real moving parts, showing the commitment to accuracy in this figure, even in 1/6 scale:

Two-Face is completely reliant on the coin to make decisions for him. When faced with a moral choice, the coin is flipped - if "good heads" comes up, he does the merciful, morally right thing. But if the coin lands "bad heads" up, you can expect fatal results. If the Joker is an Agent of Chaos, then Two-Face is a Zombie of Chance.

Even Two-Face is not above "his law" - self-preservation is meaningless in the face of his twisted brand of justice.

"It's not about what I want, it's about what's fair!"

Two-Face consults the coin:

One of the brief moments that really struck me in "The Dark Knight" is the expression of resignation and sadness on Dent's face after he flips the coin to judge his own fate. When he sees that he's fated to live, you can tell the good man inside of him is disappointed - suicide was the only legitimate way out, that he could see, from his on-going, living nightmare of vengeance.

Fate, it seems, would deny him even that.

No matter, dear reader - there's still your own fate to determine.

"You gotta flip for it."

"Hmmm...."

"Looks like bad side up..."

"You lose."

The Lost Episode

2011-02-16T15:02:00.002-06:00

For those of us who love certain kinds of long-running television shows, there is a secret pleasure known to few others but ourselves. These shows are often rich in strong continuity, unique characters, and often (but not always) feature "genre-related" settings and stories - shows like "Star Trek," "The X-Files," and even "Seinfeld."

The secret pleasure I'm referring to is what is known as "The Lost Episode."

By "lost," I don't mean "lost to the depths of time," never to be seen by anyone again. Though that does happen, as demonstrated by the total destruction and loss of many original Doctor Who tapes, resulting in the Missing Episodes of Doctor Who.

Rather, I'm talking about "lost" on an individual level. A "lost episode" is one that a viewer has not seen, often because he doesn't even realize that it exists. Not knowing it exists, or that he hasn't seen it, he he never feels compelled to go out and seek that one episode needed to fill the gap in his near-complete experience of the show.

The pleasure, then, comes from finally discovering the "lost episode," and experiencing it for the first time. Often such discovery is accidental - a typical broadcast of the episode on TV is caught by the viewer, who recognizes the show but cannot immediately identify the episode. Challenging himself to name the episode's title, or at least summarize its plot, he sits and continues watching, trying to figure it out. But after a few moments, it finally dawns upon him - he has never seen this episode before!

The result is a treat that is rarely experienced, but greatly treasured - being able to watch an episode of a beloved show, without knowing exactly what happens or what to expect. It's like being able to go back in time and re-experience the show for the very first time, all over again, as if it were brand new. The suspense, the surprise, and the awe is never as great as that first time, when everything is fresh.

Except this time, even though it's fresh, you know you're in for a hell of a ride, because it's a part of a show that you already know you love.

It's like going back and reliving your first date with your girlfriend or wife, but with your memory of that day wiped beforehand - so even though the specific details of that date seem brand new to you, you still retain your memories of a long and fruitful relationship to come - making the date that much more memorable.

With the proliferation of DVDs, the "lost episode" is becoming a dated, and increasingly uncommon, phenomenon. We're no longer subject to the whims of TV channels, syndication rights, broadcasting decisions, and rigid schedules, so watching every episode of an entire series is much easier to do without missing an episode or two. But before DVDs and on-line streaming became cheaper and more popular, it was not uncommon for even the most die-hard "Star Trek" fan to miss, and to never subsequently catch, an episode of their favorite series without knowing it. Even with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the "Star Trek" universe, and with publications and large gatherings of fans at conventions, it was all too easy for one episode to slip through the cracks, given how many there were (726 and counting!).

One of the most interesting aspects of the "lost episode" phenomenon is that different episodes are "lost" for different people - so every experience is truly unique, from one fan to another.

A few of my "lost episodes" were from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." I had the Star Trek Encyclopedia and other books, and the aforementioned near-encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Trek universe, but during the late 90s, these shows weren't shown in regular syndication, in their entirety. It was only years later, during my high school and college years, that they finally started rerunning them day-to-day, from the first episode of the series, to the last. And during that period of syndication, I was treated to several "new" episodes, much to my surprise and joy.

Another "lost episode" for me was "Fire," from the first season of "The X-Files." An unimportant episode (it didn't tie into the mythology of the show regarding the alien conspiracy), I was shocked to finally see it when it was broadcast on TV late one night. "The X-Files" had been in regular syndication for some time - and I thought I already seen every episode, much less every episode of the first season.

For some reason, almost as a matter of policy, "Fire" was never rerun on any of the channels that were rerunning the X-Files from start to finish (of which there were several at the time). I'm not sure why - though it was a fairly weak episode, it wasn't any worse than many other lousy first season episodes. And it certainly wasn't controversial (which is why "Home," from the fourth season, wasn't rerun in syndication for a few brief years). So it was just pure chance that this channel had decided, just this once, to rerun "Fire," and that I had decided to stay up late on this particular evening.

I still know of at least one "lost episode" that I haven't seen - though perhaps it's not all that "lost," since I've known of its existence for some time now (so the surprise will come not in finding it, but only in experiencing the events of the episode). I've never seen the Seinfeld episode where they go to India and everything plays backwards through the whole episode (don't ask me to explain that - I'm not sure what it means, given that I haven't seen it yet!). Whenever they're rerunning Seinfeld episodes in order, day-to-day, I try to pay attention to when the "India episode" is coming up - but I always end up forgetting or missing it at the last moment!

Beyond that, I don't think there's much chance of my ever experiencing a "lost episode" again. I haven't watched through "Star Trek: Voyager" since its initial run, but it was the first series I watched religiously, making a point to catch each episode - so odds are, I've seen them all.

Still, part of me hopes that, in my efforts to catch up on episodes I had to tape or catch on the Sunday re-run (when I was out of town on any given week or day during the initial broadcast, for instance), I may have missed one. And though I would feel a certain level of shame for having a gap in my "Star Trek" experience (I pride myself on having seen every episode and having such a complete knowledge of the "Star Trek" universe), I think it would be worth it - because, when I finally choose to revisit "Voyager," I can imagine fewer surprises that would be more joyous than experiencing that one last, lost episode of "Star Trek."

Depth and Simplicity

2011-01-27T23:36:00.002-06:00

If you took every board game and gave it numerical value representing the complexity of its rules (with a lower value representing simpler, more natural rules), very few games would have as low a value as Go (Weiqi, Baduk, Igo, etc.). Perhaps Tic-Tac-Toe or Checkers would have a lower value, but certainly not even games as relatively simple as chess (with its six different piece types and sets of movement rules, special rules cases, etc.).

Alternatively, if you took every board game and gave it a numeral value representing the depth of strategy and gameplay (with a higher value representing deeper and more expansive gameplay and strategic potential), then I think very few games would have as high a value as Go. Go would certainly have a value higher than games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers, and even games universally recognized as being quite strategically sophisticated, like chess, would not be able to top it. (Consider the fact that this is one of the prime reasons that computer programs can be written to defeat Chess grandmasters, but still struggle to defeat even novice Go players).

I would argue that one excellent way to quantitatively rate a game's overall quality is to look at the ratio of the two numerical values mentioned above - dividing the depth of gameplay by the simplicity of the rules, with a higher value for such a ratio representing a higher quality game.

Though it's certainly possible that Go may not rate the lowest for simplicity nor the highest for strategic potential, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have the highest ratio of the two values and thus would rate as the overall highest quality game in any comparison of board games.

Flying Dreams

2011-01-21T21:31:00.002-06:00

I've never had a flying dream.

Usually when I tell this to people, they react with surprise. To them, it's unheard of that someone would never have had a flying dream before. Rarely, perhaps. Maybe just once or twice, even. But never? After the surprise comes a bit of pity - leading me to the feeling that I've really been missing out on something special and incredible.

That's not to say that I haven't had lucid dreams. There was a period for a year or two where almost every dream I had was lucid, and I could consciously wake myself up from inside the middle of the dream. It was actually quite handy when I realized I was in the middle of a nightmare.

My frequency of lucid dreaming has diminished, but I had a very lucid dream last night. It was interesting for a number of reasons, as I performed a number of in-dream experiments with the dreaming process and my ability to control the enviroment of my dreams.

Perhaps most fascinating was the people I was interacting with - I was assuring them that, though they looked and talked and acted just like people I had known in real life, they were just constructs of my mind. They insisted that they were real and acted as if they had free will, independent of my mind's control, no matter how much I tried to convince them.

More relevant to the topic at hand, I also attempted to fly in my dream. Recognizing that I was in a dream, and knowing that I have always wanted to have a flying dream (to see what I had been missing out on), I seized the opportunity and attempted to fly.

Apparently my mind is incapable of accurately simulating flight, as my experiment failed. I remained grounded and came to the disappointing conclusion that a flying dream is an experience I will never have.

The Last Batman Movie?

2010-12-17T14:27:00.005-06:00

Is "Batman Returns" the last Batman movie?

I've been mulling over the idea that "Batman Returns" is meant to be Batman's final cinematic adventure. While it's followed by two (lousy) sequels and Tim Burton himself initially conceived of a third Batman film to follow it (featuring a psychopathic, scary Riddler), I think that "Batman Returns" could thematically and chronologically be placed at the end of Bruce Wayne's story, describing the events that could be considered the build-up to his retirement as Gotham's protector.

Consider Wayne's personal circumstances.

In 1989's "Batman" film, Bruce Wayne was awkward, anti-social, and a little bit disturbed, but he still interacted with people - throwing parties, seeking out a "normal" relationship with a woman, and so forth. But this is not the case in "Batman Returns."

Rather, the beginning of "Batman Returns" makes it clear that he's withdrawn into himself, his cold and impersonal mansion serving as an outer shell to his inner shell of silent isolation. Wayne's first appearance in the film is when he's sitting in a dark room, all alone, completely lost within himself. The only thing that wakes him from his reverie is the Bat-Signal - Batman has become his life.

Consider also the way in which multiple Bat-Signals stationed around his mansion all simultaneously and automatically shine into the darkened rooms within, when the official Bat-Signal in Gotham is lit. It only takes a little bit of extrapolation to surmise that Wayne probably hasn't had, nor does he ever expect to receive, any visitors as of late - otherwise, the mansion's Bat-Signal system would be an unwitting and dead giveaway of Wayne's darkest secret to any unsuspecting party guests, should Gordon feel the need to light the signal in the city in response to an unexpected emergency.

And the situation for Wayne doesn't actually seem to change as the film continues. Throughout the film, he seems to exude a certain sense of resignation - that he's unhappy, and perhaps he will always be that way. Perhaps functioning as "Batman" no longer holds the same appeal or feeling of importance for him.

While he does make an effort to connect with Selina Kyle, it's her disturbed and dual nature which ultimately fascinates and attracts him to her. She is as messed up as he is (if not more so), making her a perfect counterpart. In "Batman Returns," Wayne actually seems to come to terms with the fact that not only is he not normal, but that he doesn't really have a desire to seek normalcy (either in himself or in a companion).

Perhaps part of this acceptance is also the realization that the use of "Batman" in his life, as an outlet for his disturbed feelings and rage, is no longer necessary, because normalcy as Bruce Wayne is not a role he needs to continue pursuing. If he no longer needs to pretend to act normal, for the sake of fitting in to society, then he no longer needs a separate outlet for his abnormal eccentricities.

When he takes off the mask at the end of the film in front of Kyle, asking her to "go home, together," he doesn't mean "together as Batman and Catwoman." He doesn't want to share the Bat-cave with her or go out at nights fighting crime as a Dynamic ~~Duo~~ Couple.

Rather, taking off the mask is the perfect symbol for his desires - to end his career as Batman and put aside the cape and cowl. To take off the mask for the last time. To retire and settle down with his perfect opposite (which Kyle understands, as evidenced by her response about living with him forever, in his castle).

"We're the same...split, right down the center," he explains to Kyle. What he's saying is that both he and Kyle have dual identities. But together, as a couple, they represent a duality as well. Together, their individual dualities become redundant. Thus, together, Wayne and Kyle can shed their identities as Batman and Catwoman, respectively, as they no longer have a personal need for them.

Another interesting bit of evidence is to consider the script for "Batman Returns." One of the final scenes is as follows (from the August 1, 1991 draft):

EXT. CITY HALL--NIGHT

The Mayor, his staff, and Commissioner Gordon, out of
their costumes, look up at the flashing bat signal.

GORDON
Think he'll ever forgive us?

MAYOR
Probably not. But he'll always
help us.

Gordon is referencing the fact that he, the mayor, and the city blamed Batman for crimes committed by the Penguin and Catwoman (the result of the villains' attempt to frame Batman), rather than having faith in their protector.

It's interesting that this scene was ultimately left out of the movie. Had it remained, it would have made it clear that Batman was still, and always would be, Gotham's protector.

But without the scene, that certainty is no longer present. And Burton's conscious decision not to include the scene speaks to a deliberate attempt to, at the very least, cast this uncertainty upon the audience. We don't know if Batman is coming back, because it's entirely possible that he's retired.

One final bit of evidence is the way in which Gotham City itself has changed. While Gotham was fairly normal in "Batman," things have taken a turn for the bizarre in "Batman Returns," as gangs of murderous, pillaging clowns, carnies, and circus folk are apparently par for the course in Gotham. "I'm afraid the Circus Gang is back," Gordon tells Batman after the Red Triangle Circus Gang's first attack at the beginning of the film - indicating that this is not the first that Gotham has heard from these group of thugs.

One of the themes of the Batman movies and comics is the way in which Batman's War on Crime has affected the character of his city and the nature of criminality. Initially, Batman decides to fight against corruption, organized crime, and run-of-the-mill street toughs. But his presence inspires criminals to resort to more theatrical - and more bizarre - means and goals, resulting in the appearance of Batman's rogues gallery - supervillains and their elaborately dressed henchmen, who ultimately supplant the more traditional criminal element that first inhabited Gotham.

"Batman Returns," then, shows us the end-point of Gotham's transformation, after the "rise of the freaks," as the citizenry has learned to contend and cope with the truly frightening and strange end-result of Batman's one-man war.

Before it was clear that Chris Nolan would be returning to finish his trilogy with "The Dark Knight Rises," many of us wondered whether Batman's cinematic reboot would have a worthy final installment. Had Nolan not returned, I mused, then perhaps we could consider "Batman Returns" to be the final episode in the trilogy.

An unconventional idea, to be sure, but I've shown above that it could fit, thematically. After Rachel Dawes' death, Bruce Wayne has finally come to terms with the fact that he will never have a normal life, and Gotham has reached the apex of relative chaos, as "escalation" has had its devastating effect on the city.

A few minor conveniences would've furthered the legitimacy of this suggestion. For instance, the fact that Batman walks freely in the streets with Gordon, in the open (representing the fact that the majority of the city has finally accepted and embraced Batman's presence and role). Or the fact that Gordon and Wayne are both somewhat significantly older (indicating the passage of time since the events of Nolan's first two films).

Of course, this idea can still hold true. "Batman Returns" might very well end up working as a spiritual fourth part of Nolan's trilogy - as long as Nolan doesn't use Catwoman or kill off Batman, of course. Meaning that, even though "Batman Returns" was the second of the modern live-action Batman films (of which there are now soon to be seven), we may still be able to consider it to be the "last" Batman movie!

Coming A Long Way

2010-12-15T10:50:00.003-06:00

It's hard to believe how far these guys - and Star Trek in general - have come since "The Next Generation"'s rather embarrassing debut in 1987.

But did you know that in today's TV network environment, a show like "The Next Generation" would never have been given the chance to prove itself after a fairly dreadful first season?

It would've been canceled, and that would've been the last we ever would have heard from any attempt to reboot "Star Trek" - which itself would have gone on to be remembered much as "The Twilight Zone" is today, as a once-brilliant gem whose day in the fifties (or sixties) had long since come and passed, with only one or two sad attempts at a modern reincarnation, which are best left as forgotten.

Think about it - if the prevailing attitude among TV network executives today had been the same back then, we would never have gotten the brilliance of "TNG"'s later seasons. No "Deep Space Nine." No "First Contact." None of the other shows or movies or books or comics or games or even toys. None of the extended universe of the 24th century and beyond.

The TV networks have forgotten all about taking risks on long-term investments, as shows are cut after only one season (if that!), if they don't show immediate and obvious signs of becoming an explosive hit. What's interesting to me is that not only do their long-term net profits end up being smaller for it, but that this correlates to our culture inevitably suffering a stunted potential - we now only allow dramatic artistic expression to develop and flourish on TV if it falls within a very narrow definition of "success."

Our world was made just a little bit richer for being able to have Captain Picard in it - as his popularity and familiarity in popular culture today can attest (almost two decades after his show's peak). And that's a direct result of the TV networks taking on the risks of "The Next Generation" twenty years ago, investing in these strange and sometimes critically or financially disappointing characters and stories.

But the cultural world of the next two decades, the result of today's investment in stories and characters, will be a smaller, less varied world - because we only invested in a smaller, less varied selection of stories and characters. There will be less room, and perhaps no room at all, for the next decade's equivalent of Jean-Luc Picard.

Sadly, we will never know what we will have missed.

(Also, where the hell is Worf in the second picture? I would've only shared the first one, but Troi's outfit from the pilot in the second picture is all kinds of special).

The Skies of Cyberspace

2010-12-03T23:48:00.003-06:00

Whenever I look up at the winter sky at night here, I am reminded of the opening line to William Gibson's "Neuromancer:"

"The sky above the port was the color of television, turned to a dead channel."

When Gibson wrote his description of the skies in cyberspace, he probably had a very specific vision in his mind that he was trying to convey. But it's funny, because the above description would read quite differently to a modern audience than it would to his original audience, in the mid-80s.

Back then, a dead channel on a television would most likely have inspired the image of a constantly shifting pattern of static - an array of black and white pixels, constantly and violently sparking in a loud staccato of random spikes. Or perhaps a dull gray, the blending of said blacks and whites, into a blurred average.

Today, a dead channel evokes an entirely different image - a deep, unnatural blue, the kind that silently fills your screen like the depths of an ocean when your DVD player can't find the cable channels or waits for input from a currently unpowered game console. Far deeper and darker a color than the daylight skies of reality, but with an underlying glow that makes the dark blue easier for us to see, making it seem brighter than it actually is.

The winter sky here offers a third variation - a sickly, faint orange hue that blankets the sky from one end of the horizon to another, the result of constant cloud cover at night, reflecting the light from a quarter million uniquely orange street-lights scattered throughout the city. For some reason, unlike many other cities, we don't have white street-lights here. If we did, our clouded skies might look brighter - certainly more natural.

Though few, if any, dead television channels might have looked like this, I suspect the feelings evoked in an observer of these Chicago skiesmight mirror what Gibson was trying to convey - that what was above the skies of cyberspace didn't just look unnatural, they were downright unsettling.

Turkey Day

2010-11-25T21:42:00.002-06:00

Excited after having found another flightless bird in the kitchen, the Penguin is eager to stuff his gullet.

Happy Thanksgiving, from Batman, friends, and foes.

Just a small preview of some of the upcoming figures I intend to share with you in the coming months.

Ok, time to eat.

More Like "Bullshit Buttons"

2010-11-10T23:55:00.002-06:00

From Wikipedia:

A placebo button, also called an idiot button, is a push-button with apparent functionality that actually has no effect when pressed, analogous to a placebo. In other cases, a control like a thermostat may not be connected.

...

Many walk buttons at pedestrian crossings were once functional in New York City, but now serve as placebo buttons.

...

Some door-close buttons in elevators are placebo buttons, although some of them do in fact change the timing, and others are functional only when activated with a maintenance key.

I always knew that elevator designers and traffic engineers were just fucking with our heads. Those things never work and it's incredibly frustrating!

Incepcion

2010-10-22T22:59:00.002-06:00

When Hayla was younger, she looked a lot like the original Dora the Explorer. Or rather, the original Dora the Explorer looked a lot like her when she was younger.

Handicapped Kids Can't Run and Jump

2010-10-20T01:16:00.004-06:00

The NES Hands Free controller, available by special order only, was meant to allow handicapped kids the chance to play Nintendo games.

Kids could either suck or blow through a tube on the chest-pack to control the A and B buttons, respectively. The problem is, not even the most talented women I know can suck and blow at the same time - so how is a kid supposed to operate the A and B buttons simultaneously?

For instance, when controlling Super Mario, the B button makes you run, while the A button lets you jump. Without the ability to press both at the same time, you couldn't perform a running jump.

It looks like Nintendo of America didn't want handicapped kids getting past level 4-3 in "Super Mario Bros!"

Terminator: Salvation

2010-10-20T00:37:00.004-06:00

Although it gets a lot of crap, I honestly found Terminator 4 to be more interesting than Terminator 3.

That's not saying much, perhaps, but at least I wouldn't call it the worst movie of the franchise. It had some interesting visuals, a post-apocalyptic setting that felt honest, and new, credible additions to the canon of Skynet and Judgement Day - surpassing "Rise of the Machines" in each category.

Personally, I would've focused the story either on the human concentration camps or the struggle of John Connor as a low-level Resistance member who some see as a prophet - either choice would've resulted in a tighter, more cohesive, and more dramatic story.

But it could've been a lot worse.

On an interesting side note, in my head I always kind of derided the director, "McG," for his name. After all, it seems like kind of a douchey name to go by. But after reading about it, I kind of feel bad for the guy, since it turns out that's pretty much his real life name - not something he had a whole lot of choice in.

In his own words:

"I realize my name is ridiculous. I was born Joseph McGinty Nichol. McG is short for McGinty. I have been called this since the day I was born to create separation from my Uncle Joe and Grandpa Joe. I realize it sounds like some Hollywood nickname, hip-hop choice. But the truth is, this is simply my name - for every day of elementary school, every zit-filled day of high school. I have been taking shit for it ever since. I get it, I would think it’s lame too. But it’s just a name, and to change it now would seem fraudulent."

Having dealt with it myself, I can't help but empathize with a guy who's got a weird name - it's not your fault your parents named you what they did, and you do end up taking a lot of shit for it, unfairly.

At least McG can take solace in the knowledge that Batman supports his name - in an interview, Christian Bale explained that "In a strange way, I like the fact that he keeps that name because it does him no friggin' favors."

Oh No!

2010-10-19T01:10:00.004-06:00

Bruce is one of my favorite minor, recurring characters on "Family Guy."

This video contains a few snippets from his various appearances.

Like several characters on "Family Guy" (and perhaps "South Park"), Bruce is an example of a very special kind of character archetype - what I refer to as the "That Kind of Guy Archetype."

Someone who belongs to the "That Kind of Guy Archetype" has certain very specific traits and characteristics that remind you of very specific people you may have come across in real life - things like their voice, their speech mannerisms, and their physical appearance.

But at the same time, you can't remember exactly who those people are - probably because they were remote acquaintances that you barely met (if you ever actually did meet one on one). You can't recall their face or names or where you met them, but you know they're familiar to you, because somehow they were unique enough to leave a subconscious impression on your memory.

Each collective set of shared characteristics, then, make up on a unique version of the "That Kind of Guy Archetype."

The reality is that you've probably met, seen, or heard several examples of real-life people who fit into any given version of the "That Kind of Guy Archetype." But the maddening thing is, even though you know this, you can't actually pick out any specific examples from memory.

Don't believe me or understand what I mean? Watch that clip I linked to - and tell me that Bruce doesn't somehow remind you of someone you know or once knew, even if you're not sure of who it is.

(And perhaps all of this in itself is a reflection on the possibility that individual people aren't actually nearly as unique as we usually assume).

Minority Party Entitlement

2010-10-17T02:01:00.002-06:00

In their bid to regain control of the legislature, quite a bit of the Republican Party's rhetoric this election season seems to revolve around a common set of ideas and messages. To paraphrase:

"We won't repeat the mistakes of the past [Republicans]."

"We had lost sight of our original ideals."

"We are returning to our roots and original principles."

"We understand that we were fired by the People [having lost control of the legislature] and we've learned from our failures, so you can count on us not to fail you [the People] again."

The content of such messages - indeed, even the fact that they can and do attempt to deliver such a message - not only exposes the feelings of entitlement that the minority party has, it also reveals just how broken the two-party system is in the United States.

To illustrate, imagine a company hires you as a worker in their production line. You end up being a lousy worker - not following your bosses instructions, messing up the production process, and costing the company money, all while drawing a steady paycheck.

Naturally, you get fired.

But even if your successor ends up being just as lousy as you are, that doesn't mean you get to go back to the company and get a second chance!

There are plenty of other potential employees out there - the company in question is just going to find a new worker, not go back to one that's already failed them quite handily in the past.

Even if they did give you a second chance - when you screw up again, in the real world, they're not going to go back to your original successor, nor are they going to give you a third chance later on (or fourth, or fifth, or sixth...).

And yet, the way our system of government works, this is the ONLY way events will unfold. Each party knows that - this time it's the Republican party, but last time it was the Democrats, as it will be again, the next time they lose control of the legislature (possibly during the next election cycle).

And that's why they get this feeling of entitlement - that they're perfectly justified in expecting the American People to elect them, and no other, when the dominant party fails the People.

And make no mistake, it's not like the minority party has somehow persuaded the People that they're worthy of consideration as the best alternative to the current majority party. By the very nature of the system, they will be the only other option to be considered - all they have to do is persuade the People that they're worthy to be chosen above the current majority party. No other contenders will ever have a chance to be examined.

The problem is, we have a monopoly in our system of government - the two parties have absolute control over the political process, including the election cycles. You might call the current setup a duopoly, but I'd argue that the Democrats and Republicans are really on the same side - forming a monolithic entity you could simply call the Two-Party Machine. That's an argument for another time, though, and it doesn't matter, because the consequences of a duopoly and a monopoly are the same for the sake of this argument.

The natural consequences of a monopoly are detrimental to a market and its consumers, as restricted competition results in the lowest common denominator of product quality. In this case, the People are the consumers and the representation they deserve - but are not getting - is the quality of the product. Though there are very few, very rare exceptions where a monopoly may be the most desirable situation, representing the public good via politicians is certainly not one of those exceptions.

Why is it considered acceptable for us to have to choose between the lesser of two evils to represent us?

And why is it considered acceptable for the worst evil (as judged by the previous election cycle) to be re-entered as one of the only two "viable" choices during the next election cycle, rather than replaced by a new and potentially better option to be considered?

If the political system were fair and set up to truly work for the People, then failed politicians and political parties would go the way of a failed company. They would go bankrupt once they were fired and rejected, never to be heard from again. There are plenty of bright, honest, well-informed, and well-educated citizens who could easily do a better job than the members of either branch of the Two-Party Machine, given the chance.

But of course, the current system prohibits this, and the People's interests suffer as a result of the monopoly. As a result, the minority party feels entitled to a position that, in all fairness, they would never have had.

I just think it's interesting how easily the minority party's rhetoric exposes all of this, if you just give it a few moments thought.

On the Edge of the Final Frontier

2010-10-15T12:57:00.007-06:00

The first indication I had that "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was coming was while I was watching the broadcast of an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

During the commercial break, a mysterious advertisement played that both captivated and confused me. I don't remember what the commercial's narrator said, but I do remember the images. A dark background of star-studded space, over which was super-imposed a progression of shadowy forms, taking the shape of unfamiliar faces.

In my mind, I can't clearly recall the details of the first two faces - but I will never forget the slightly sinister, gleeful snarl of the third face. A Ferengi, with his pointed fangs bared, his mouth opened towards me in a vicious laugh. Or perhaps, as my six-year old self feared, he was just going to eat me.

At that point, given the presence of the Ferengi, I realized this was a commercial relating to "Star Trek." Still confused, I turned to my mother and asked what it all meant.

I don't think she had been paying attention, so she wasn't sure, but she said it probably meant there was a new "Star Trek" coming.

My mind was blown. There was going to be another Star Trek? Not just more "The Next Generation," (TNG) but another starship, like the Enterprise, going to explore strange new worlds? And just who exactly were these strangers being touted in the ad? Were they a new crew, friends of Captain Picard?

I did not fully understand the relation of "TNG" to the Original Series (I'm not even sure I knew at the time that there was such a thing as the Original Series), so the idea that there would soon be a different "Star Trek" seemed so preposterous and so fantastic an idea that I did not believe it - and for a while, I forgot about it.

(Of course, the Ferengi I saw in the commercial was Quark. While I can't be sure, I suspect the first two faces were Commander Sisko and Major Kira).

"Deep Space Nine" (DS9) places a unique twist on the "Star Trek" mythos. Instead of Starfleet officers using a starship to seek out new life and new civilizations, "DS9" takes place on the titular stationary outpost in space, and features a much more diverse cast than "TNG," made up of as many aliens and civilians as there are humans and Starfleet officers.

"DS9" takes advantage of its single, continuous setting by positing a hypothetical scenario and exploring the answer to the following questions:

"What would happen if, after half a century of occupation, the Israelis withdrew from Palestine?"

"And then what if the Palestinians discovered, in their newly won freedom, that they were sitting on a previously unknown, vast source of wealth?"

"DS9" uses the Cardassians and the Bajorans to fill the roles of the Israelis and the Palestinians in their analogy, respectively, and the small Starfleet contingent might be see as being representative of a small United Nations peace-keeping force. From there, the show explores themes of political reconstruction, religious strife, deeply embedded cultural conflict, and the consequences and ravages of war.

Of course, as the show and setting takes a life of its own and continues to evolve, the above analogy breaks down. Who does the Dominion represent? Are they the Chinese? Or North Korea, paired with Al Qaeda sleeper cells? What about the Maquis? Are they Israeli settlers or seceding American confederates?

It doesn't actually matter though, because the themes and conflicts are so universal, that eventually they can expand to reflect any historical scenario - which speaks to the power of the show.

Most significantly, "DS9" reflects the first time a long-running television show explored the idea of terrorism and freedom fighting from an intelligent and multi-faceted perspective - instead of the one-dimensional, one-sided propaganda mill approach that almost all television before and since have used. In fact, the only show that's done it better since is "Battlestar Galactica" (greatest show ever!). Is it any wonder that the creator of the new version of "BSG," Ron D. Moore, was also one of the creators in charge of "DS9?"

Like its thematic successor, "DS9" is a much darker, and thus realistic, show than is traditional in televised space opera. "Let's just say DS9 has more shades of gray," Commander Sisko tells one of his newly assigned officers - and he's right. Protagonists include shifty con men and thieves, terrorists, and political traitors. Starfleet officers and Federation citizens are usually portrayed as the good guys - but sometimes they are a party to atrocities, too. There is no black and white in the real world, and so there is no black and white on "DS9" as well.

I didn't see the first episode of "DS9" when it came out, but I did see the third episode.

And right away, I hated it.

We were at someone's house and I had expressed an interest in seeing "Star Trek," since that was the night it was on. Expecting "TNG," the TV was changed to the channel too late - "TNG" was over and its credits were playing, but "DS9" was starting next.

I guess the adult in charge did not realize that by "Star Trek," I had meant "TNG" - because "DS9" was Star Trek and it was all the same to him.

Disappointed, I settled for this new show as a consolation prize. It might not be "TNG," but it did take place in space, right?

By the end of the episode, I was completely disenchanted. These characters were aliens. They were strange and mean and not Starfleet officers. They were on a station that didn't go anywhere or do anything - it just sat there in space. It couldn't go to warp speed! I had no idea what was going on, and I didn't care. Where was Data? Where was Captain Picard? This was not the "Star Trek" I loved and cared about.

It's funny that I hated "DS9" so much back then because, although "TNG" will always be my favorite "Star Trek" for personal reasons, today I can I say that, objectively, "DS9" is the highest quality "Star Trek" ever to have been created.

Of course, I wasn't completely unjustified in my feelings back then. Like the other modern "Star Trek" shows, "DS9" suffers from a slow, rocky start. Traditionally, a "Star Trek" show requires one or two seasons before the writers, cast, and crew really find their way and the show gets good. I said "TNG" was my favorite - but I'll be the first to admit that the first season was atrocious, and I wouldn't blame a new viewer for giving up on "TNG" if they started at the beginning, rather than somewhere in the middle. In fact, I'm lucky that I was too young to have caught "TNG" during its debut - I may have been turned off for life.

Unfortunately, "DS9"'s greatest strength - its serial continuity, rather than episodic nature (like "TNG") - is also its greatest weakness for this reason. Because unlike "TNG," you can't really start in the middle. Like the opening chapters of a novel, the first two seasons lay a lot of groundwork for the characters and the setting. It may start slow and boring, but it's necessary for the payoff of the final five seasons, not to mention ensuring that the viewer isn't lost.

(Still, anyone can skip "Move Along Home." The less said about that episode, the better).

I gave "DS9" another chance a few seasons later, by which point "Worf" had joined the show. A familiar, and favorite, character from "TNG," his transfer to the station made it a more appealing place for me - especially since "TNG" was no longer on the air. I also discovered that, by this time, DS9 had also been granted the Defiant, a small starship for the crew to use when they needed to explore the space beyond the immediate surroundings of the station.

This was a big deal for me - now the crew could be mobile, and explore new worlds, just like their colleagues on the Enterprise and the newly-airing Voyager did.

My faith restored, I began to watch the show semi-regularly. I soon found that the Dominion was an exciting adversary - the most worthy since the Borg, and far more interesting to me than the Cardassians or the Kazon. Their growing presence in the show eventually made me begin to tune in weekly, and I gave "DS9" almost as much attention as I gave "Voyager."

Being exposed to "DS9" on a regular basis also helped me to appreciate the unique strengths of its setting and story-telling style - it's long-running, serial continuity. "DS9" told the story of a war that took place over the course of multiple seasons. "TNG" could only have done this for a few episodes at most, and thus could not have explored the ramifications of war and conflict in as deep or meaningful a fashion.

Another of "DS9"'s strengths is its extended cast of recurring characters. On "TNG," the crew was always going to new worlds and meeting new characters - but rarely revisiting old friends, acquaintances, or adversaries. On "DS9," the crew is situated in one location, far from Federation space, so the new characters and aliens come to them - and there, they often stay.

The result is that "DS9" developed the largest group of substantial and memorable recurring characters of any science-fiction show that I can think of.

Great villains you love to hate, like Gul Dukat, or the slimier, icky villains you hate to love, like the unforgettable Weyoun and Brunt. Old friends like General Martok and the ever-chatty Morn. And it's always a pleasure to see the return of Grand Nagus Zek - surely Wallace Shawn's best acting role.

I light up every time I hear that high-pitched voice of his.

Speaking of characters, "DS9" also featured the most realistic portrayal of family life that "Star Trek" has ever had. Whether it's single father Ben Sisko and his son, Jake, the extended house of Quark, or the growing family of Miles and Keiko O'Brien, the families of "DS9" were much closer to real, human 20th century families in their interactions than the wunderkinds and impersonal relationships that inhabited "TNG" (I'm looking at you, Wesley).

Perhaps "DS9"'s last great, undeniable triumph was the way it managed to transform the Ferengi from a pathetic joke of a species to one with as fully realized a culture and as much enjoyed by fans as the Klingons. The Ferengi episodes showed us a fascinating caricature of ourselves without always resorting to downright parody, and always allowing for a diverse range of Ferengi personalities - rather than the one-dimensional stooges that they all had been on "TNG." In the end, they were as lovable in their own peculiar way as any of the rest of the cast.

It's been many years since I last explored the universe of "DS9" in-depth. I think it may soon be time for an extended return to the edge of the final frontier.

So with that, I'll leave you with "DS9"'s unique, haunting theme. You may note that it's quite dissimilar from the bombastic composition that opens "TNG." The brightly lit corridors of the Enterprise are nothing like the dim, shadowy spaces of the titular Cardassian-built space station - and so it's entirely appropriate that the theme be darker as well. "DS9" always was considered to be the black sheep of the "Star Trek" franchise - pushed aside because of how different and how dark it was.

But as I hope you now understand, part of "DS9"'s charm is the ways in which it differs so much from that which has comes before.

Binary Sunset

2010-10-13T13:47:00.006-06:00

Speaking of Tatooine, I can't help but be reminded of - at least for me - how iconic of the Original Trilogy the Tatooine sunset is.

It's a simple visual effect, but remarkably effective. The two suns, setting on the horizon of Tatooine, speak volumes of the setting Lucas created. This is a magical place and an alien world - but one that's still realistic and believable. Different, beautiful, and exotic, yet still tangible and inhabited.

The scene itself is quite brief, but it too speaks of how truly personal the Original Trilogy was.

John Williams, simple visual effects, and characters we can relate to trump CGI monsters and lightsaber orgies anyday.

Casting

2010-10-13T13:27:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure how I would feel about Jean-Luc Picard being the Riddler.

I don't like it when my Batman gets mixed up with my Star Trek.

It's like when your spaghetti sauce gets all up in your broccoli, and then you've got a mess on your dinner plate, instead of the purity of discretely arranged food groups.

It feels...incestuous...

Tatooine

2010-10-12T00:29:00.002-06:00

Clearly, a lot of loving craftsmanship went into this video:

I don't know why, but it reminds me of some people who've long since departed from my life or otherwise perished.

Tom Bombadil, Closet Witch-King

2010-10-10T23:41:00.002-06:00

Those who've read "The Lord of the Rings" will know that the movies left out quite a few minor characters. One of the most bizarre supporting characters to make an appearance in Frodo's quest was Tom Bombadil. A mysterious, magical man of the woods, Bombadil often speaks in verse or song and has a strong command over the woods and hills around his home.

Because his appearance is so brief and filled with unanswered questions, readers have endlessly debated over his true nature and purpose in the books. One of the more interesting ideas I've come across is that Bombadil is actually the alter ego of The Witch-King of Angmar - that the "Bombadil" secret identity serves as a haven for Sauron's head ring-wraith, allowing him to kick back and relax when he doesn't feel up to the task of any major evil-doing.

It certainly resolves a long-standing question amongst Tolkien scholars:

KGB Deals - SCAM!

2010-09-17T12:44:00.008-06:00

I just wanted to put it out there and make it clear that KGB Deals is a scam.

That's right, KGB Deals is a massive, massive scam. They are nothing but bloodsucking con artists. Do NOT give them your money. Do NOT do business with them.

By making it public, I hope to prevent at least one potential victim from having their money scammed from them. Maybe they'll be lucky enough and do a search for "KGB Deals" (or "KGBDeals" or whatnot) before handing over their hard-earned cash - in that case, I hope they find this site and realize that KGB Deals sounds too good to be true because it IS too good to be true!

I also hope that any businesses doing business, or considering doing business, with KGB Deals thinks twice before forming a relationship with them. When you partner with, or even just hire, a scam artist, it makes you look really shady - their fraud becomes your fraud. Their ripoff becomes your ripoff. I know that I think twice before purchasing products or services from a company that relies on a scammer to do their marketing for them, even if they aren't directly scamming anyone themselves.

For those not in the know: KGB Deals is attempting to be kind of like "Groupon." Every day, they offer a new "deal" - you send them some money for this select "deal" for a service or product from a merchant in your area and they send you a coupon, supposedly worth a lot more than the cash you paid for. You then take this coupon to use at the merchant's place and supposedly save a bunch of money.

For instance, they offered a certificate to see a movie at the movie theater for only $4, supposedly allowing you to save money instead of purchasing a full-priced ticket.

The only problem is - they take your cash and don't ever send the coupon!

KGB Deals purports to have a customer service department. They also claim to have a "money-back guarantee." These are both lies. Specifically, their claim, on their website, is as follows:

"Every kgbdeals voucher comes with a money-back guarantee. If you aren’t 100% happy, let us know and you get your money back in full. Simple. Just email us at the address below."

Funny they claim that it's "simple." Because it's actually all bullshit. There IS no e-mail "below" on that page site.

If you look around on other pages, the only contact information you find is a form submission (not an e-mail address to contact them directly). Tell them that you didn't get what you paid for and they'll say "Sorry" and claim to have sent a second one to you, to placate you and make you wait a few more weeks - long enough for them to avoid a charge-back from your credit card.

Try complaining again after that and they'll just ignore you. No ticket. No refund. No "money-back" or "100% happy."

Not that that'll stop them from spamming you every day with new, phoney "deals."

KGB Deals is a scam. They're full of shit. They'll take your money from you, with sweet sounding words like "money-back guarantee." And then they'll ignore you when demand your money back.

I only lost a few bucks, but it could've been worse. So here's the warning, to make sure you don't lose anything: Don't give them your money. Don't do business with them. And don't have your own business sullied by any association with them.

UPDATE: I have sent a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and they have resolved the problem to my satisfaction. I do not advocate using KGB Deals in the future, but I definitely do advocate taking any complaints up with the Better Business Bureau of New York if YOU have any issues with KGB Deals!

World-building in the 23rd Century

2010-09-14T15:04:00.005-06:00

"World-building" is the term used to describe the process of creating an extensive imaginary world or universe as a setting in which a storyline takes place. Typically found in science-fiction and fantasy stories, world-building involves far more than naming the characters and describing the elements of an unfamiliar world that are directly relevant to the plot and characters. It can include geography and landscapes beyond the setting of the plot, political and historical backstories going back centuries, genealogies and mythologies, new terminologies, and even entirely new languages. Most of the new setting is barely experienced by the casual reader, who may only receive a sense of its existence by incidental references and clues in the text - rather, it is left for enthusiasts and fans to explore and expand upon, developing connections between the casual references and exploring the appendices, secondary materials, and later, related storylines.

There are many notable examples - one of the most famous is J.R.R. Tolkien's "Middle-Earth" from "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," which includes maps, appendices, poetry, and as much background text as there is present in the main works (including the Elvish languages).

But perhaps the largest, most monumental example of world-building can be found in the "Star Trek" series and movies. Looking back, I think the extensive world-building found in "Star Trek" was what was most responsible for my love of the series as a child.

My first "deep" experience with the universe of "Star Trek," and the revelation that there was more to its world than was readily apparent, coincided with one of my earliest trips to the city's public library, probably around second grade.

I had accompanied my mother, who was likely searching for her own books - she probably had a better idea of how to look for what she wanted. So I had been left in front of one of the library's monocolor computer terminals, to figure out what to look for.

The computer system was quite primitive - simple orange text on a black, DOS command prompt-like background. No other colors and no mouse - none of the graphical flourishes of Mac operating systems or Windows 3. The keyboard itself was covered by a transparent plastic coating, shaped to conform to the contours of the keys - when you push down and then release a key, you can almost feel the "popping" sensation as the plastic folds in on itself and then lets go on your release.

In the days before Google and search engines, looking for interesting books on a whim was rather difficult. Though the library system had been computerized, it was only really helpful when looking for a specific book - you would have to know the title or author, which you used to perform a computer search. There was no generic keyword search - the closest was a "subject" option that you might use when searching through the system. But books were only allowed to be listed with one or two specific subjects, despite the fact that most books could conceivably cover dozens or hundreds of subjects. So searching for a "subject" would be like rolling the dice, hoping that the librarian chose to categorize any given book under the specific "subject" keyword that you would use to describe it - and not another related subject.

Even a synonymous word or phrase were not included and would not register a successful search in the very limited system! For instance, searching for "Science-Fiction" would yield some results, while "Science Fiction," "Sci-Fi", or "Sci Fi" would each yield entirely different results - most all of which were actually "Science Fiction" and should have been listed under the same subject!

Sitting in front of the computer, wondering what to search for, it occurs to me that I like watching that "Star Trek" show ("The Next Generation," to be specific), so maybe I should type in "Star Trek" and see what happens.

My luck wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either, as I received mixed results. The library system had categorized several books under the subject "Star Trek" - though few (if any) of the paperback novels had been included, for some reason. (Perhaps they had been listed under one or more of the litany of "Science-Fiction" subject keywords?) Most of the results were fairly uninteresting to me as a child - the subject of "Star Trek" in this computer system tended to refer to books chronicling the behind-the-scenes development of the show or the social impact of "Star Trek" on our culture. My mother later pointed this out to me - I think that, had I picked one of these to try out from the list of results, I would have been turned off from further investigation.

Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to pick a somewhat more interesting book from the returned results: The Starfleet Technical Manual.

For reasons beyond me at the time, the "Starfleet Technical Manual" was several floors above the first, in the "Reference" section. There were only one or two other "Star Trek" books on the shelf by it - illuminating another problem with the library for me at the time: Books like "Star Trek" books were scattered into many different sections all over the library, so I didn't even know about the novels until years later!

My mother found it on the shelf for me and let me look over it at a table, to decide if I wanted to check it out from the library.

What I held in my hands didn't have the cover above. The library had bound it in a plain, featureless, red buckram hardback cover, as they often do to books to preserve them. So I had no idea what it was I was about to see or what the book would be about.

The Technical Manual was a book written as if it had been authored in the 23rd century and the universe of "Star Trek" was reality. The most obvious draw to me were the technical schematics and listings of starships:

I also immediately thought the blueprints of future technologies and devices like phasers and tricorders was awesome:

But beyond that, there were pages filled with documents that made the "Star Trek" universe so much larger than just the background setting of a TV show. There were maps and starcharts of the Federation:

Fabric patterns, rank insignia guides, and color codes for Starfleet uniforms:

And there were documents chronicling the history of Starfleet and the exploration of the galaxy, replicas of important documents like the Articles of Federation and the Romulan Peace Treaty, and listings of Starfleet rules and regulations.

That was when I realized that "Star Trek" took place in a fully realized universe, one which I needed to explore. It was as if the Star Trek episodes and movies, and their backstories, were a legitimate future history of mankind, that we could learn with certainty how galactic history develops by reading how it developed from the perspective of 23rd century historians and scientists. That this is what was going to happen in the future and there were documents and books describing it all to prove it - just as there are contemporary books written that describe what had happened in the past, in the centuries of human history before us. The exploration of our world and the events that shape it went in both directions, the past and the future, and both were equally real and legitimate.

So I began studying "Star Trek" and explored it much more deliberately and aggressively than I had before. I watched the series whenever I could and rented all the movies. I read any books I could get my hands on, including both novels and important reference materials like the Star Trek Encyclopedia, and always kept my eye out for more information.

The world-building of "Star Trek" was so elaborate and complete that it allowed such an exploration to be possible. There were alien cultures that had been fully realized, with all kinds of histories and interactions. There was the Klingon language and dictionary, even more developed than Tolkien's Elvish language. Scientific advances and technical developments had been given descriptions and explanations.

So I attempted to memorize the details and trivia of every mission and planet in the Federation. I worked on an understanding of the Klingon language. I studied the technical manuals and technologies, and attempted to understand the science of the future - so that I could comprehend the physics of dynamic warp fields, chroniton particle fluctuations, subspace distortions, and space-time anomalies (which in turn inspired me to study contemporary physics and real-life astronomy, and one day become a real scientist).

Most of all, I tried to learn everything I could about Starfleet rules and regulations, so that I could be the best Starfleet officer I could. I knew that being a 20th century civilian meant it would be unlikely I would ever serve on a 23rd century starship - but if the opportunity ever did arise, I wanted to be ready to step up to the challenge - perhaps impressively enough to earn my own command. Memorizing all of the Starfleet General Orders would certainly be worth it!

All of this had been informed by the primary sources of 11 seasons of the show (eventually to become 28) and six films (eventually to become 11). Secondary sources supported this foundation with hundreds of novels and written stories, reference books, board games, computer games, and RPGs. Not only was this an enormous amount of material in its own right - it also was enough to achieve a sort of "critical mass," prompting fans and enthusiasts to add their own material, pooling their imaginations together in a sort of collective vision. Fan-produced sources, including books, games, movies, and websites, have all added to the tremendous level of world-building that has turned "Star Trek" into a universe that feels so real.

Of course, even as a kid I knew it wasn't "really" real. The way books like the Technical Manual were written, as if it were a document from the 23rd century, certainlty made it all "feel" real - but it was all made up, and we all knew that.

Still, being able to pretend - even momentarily - that the 23rd century would unfold in a certain way and that there were Klingons conquering worlds in space was fun, and it was made easier by the extensive world-building that had gone into "Star Trek." I think that's why I got into it in the first place and that's why I've always thought "Star Trek" was a more interesting universe to explore than the universes found within many other alternative stories and settings.

An Agent of Chaos

2010-09-03T09:45:00.002-06:00

From his very first appearance in 1940, the Joker has proven himself to be a master of disguise. His penchant for costumed trickery was reflected in "The Dark Knight," where he dressed up in a variety of disguising outfits, so it's only natural that any 1/6 action figure collection s hould contain each such visual representation of the Clown Prince of Crime.

Unfortunately, while Hot Toys had created a Bank Robber version of the Joker, as well as his traditional clown suit, collectors were left without a deadly Nurse Joker.

Thankfully, a small Asian company known as ToysMon Studio Ltd. created and released a kit that lets you bash your own Nurse Joker, using components from a Bank Robber Joker. The set comes in a small box, made to look like an oversized, jumbo box of cards.

On one side is a list of components:

And the other side is for those English speakers among you:

Inside is a bonus Joker playing card:

I don't like that it's jumbo-sized, so it doesn't blend in with a normal deck of playing cards. Oh well.

And here he is!

Note that the body and the head don't come with the kit - but everything else does. The body is a Hot Toys standard Truetype body and the headsculpt is the alternate Bank Robber Joker head (with slicked back hair).

As you can see, he comes with a silenced version of his Glock 17 automatic handgun.

The wig is designed especially to fit perfectly on the slicked-back hair of the Bank Robber Joker headsculpt.

Who is that naughty boy hiding behind that (surgical) mask?

It's the Joker! A true "Agent of Chaos."

That's the last smile you ever want to come across - because if you do, it's probably the last smile you ever will come across.

The deadly nurse also comes with a detonator.

Looks like somebody's about to blow up another hospital!

Notice the Harvey Dent sticker, just like he wore in the movie. Though the eagle-eyed among you might notice it's a sticker supporting "Henry" Dent, rather than Harvey - and urging us to take back "Godham City" instead of "Gotham." I'm not sure if the Engrish was unintentional or a deliberate attempt to avoid copyright issues (since the kit itself is both unauthorized and doesn't actually use any other copyrighted terms or materials - it could plausibly be argued as being just a generic deadly nurse outfit, with no Batman-specific components). I can believe that "Godham" might have been an accident - but with the attention paid to some of these details, I have a hard time believing that "Henry" and "Harvey" were accidentally confused. Harvey's no minor character!

As you can see, the Nurse Joker is really quite detailed for a small, unauthorized production. The hands have smeared makeup on them and the uniform has a belt and pink lining complete with a nametag, watch, and pen.

The kit also comes with a pair of relaxed hands and a patient chart as additional accessories:

The kit is relatively cheap and well worth it. Considering that you'll already have the extra headsculpt if you've got the Bank Robber Joker, all you need is this and a spare Truetype body to, once again, have two figures for not much more than the price of one!

The Infected Fly

2010-09-02T23:39:00.000-06:00

"Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bughunt?"

The other day, with a few minutes to kill, I noticed a medium-sized housefly, buzzing up against a nearby window. After watching it for just a moment, I looked around for something to kill it with. Though I'm usually fast enough with my hands, I wanted to avoid getting any gooey fly guts on me, if possible.

An abandoned cardboard tube from a depleted toilet paper roll was all that was within reach. Not the most useful weapon - a book or anything with a hard, flat, decently-sized surface would have been preferable. Oh well.

Before I continue, allow me a few moments to explain my method of killing flies, as it may seem a bit peculiar to you at first.

If I have an actual fly swatter, I will use it without mercy - slamming my arm downwards as quickly as possible, never missing, leaving nothing alive. Like the Klingons, a "Take No Prisoners!" attitude overcomes me, as the swatter puts me in a mood wherein I see myself as a cold, brutal, effective assassin, striking with surgical precision.

But if I don't have a swatter, if I'm left with an alternative weapon, or even just my hands, then my process changes quite drastically. Rather than trying to end the fly's life as swiftly as possible, I aim to wound and maim. I won't try and squash the fly into a pancake - rather, I'll nudge the fly or swing it at with just enough force to knock it off course, to send it reeling, or to injure one of its limbs. Most frequently, I'll end up clipping a wing, leaving it flightless and constraining its movements to the two dimensions of a flat surface, where it can be much more easily tracked.

Now before you assume that my method of killing flies might be an indication of psychopathic behavior, let me assure you - my objective isn't to cause pain or to torture the fly. Rather, it's to slowly reduce its mobility, making it easier to observe.

I find myself wanting to observe these insects because I'm fascinated by them. I'm fascinated by the fact that they are so perfectly annoying. They are the culmination of nature's design and the peak of evolution when it comes to the living embodiment of irritation. So I want to examine their bodies up close, as well as their behaviors. As a computer game programmer, I find myself wanting to understand the algorithms governing their actions - both in their conventional states as well as when they're injured. How do they react to a non-functioning leg? How do they adapt to a crisis induced by a broken wing?

Of course, although I admire the fly's ability to survive and harass so perfectly, this also means I hate it, as I am frequently the victim and target of the fly's pestering machinations. Thus, even if I'm observing a particular fly, I will inevitably reach the point where my hatred and irritation overwhelm my scientific curiosity, and I seek to end the fly's life once and for all.

Returning to my story, I found myself trying to figure out how to use my cardboard tube as a weapon against this fly. Without a flat surface, swatting the fly was a dicey proposition - the fly's ability to evade while in flight can usually only be countered by a large enough surface area, so that it cannot fly far enough away in time to avoid being hit. Because the tube has a rounded, cylindrical surface, only a small fraction of its already paltry surface area could be used in applying blunt force to the fly.

I decided, then, to attempt to use the edge of the tube as a sort of guillotine - to bring it down on the fly from above, slicing it in two. This required patience and a steady hand, as I would have to slowly bring the tube closer and closer to the fly without spooking it, so that when I did slam my tube into the fly, there would be as little time as possible for the it to escape in.

I inched my tube closer, but the fly knew what was up - it leapt up off of the glass and buzzed around a bit, before settling down again. I brought my tube in close again, but once more it saw me coming and buzzed around.

It then decided to come to a stop on the window sill. No longer on a vertical surface, I would now be able to use more of a downward motion, rather than an outward, stabbing motion, which made things easier.

This time, I got close enough to guarantee success before it saw me. So I slammed the tube down the last few inches to try and get the fly - however, I refused to apply any additional force when contact was made, pulling the tube upwards again instead of grinding it into the sill (and into the fly). Thus, I hoped to injure it before killing it outright.

Examining my target, I saw that I had sliced the tube into its lower midsection. A small splatter of yellowish-white fly guts on the sill next to the fly confirmed the presence of a gash where the tube had struck.

The fly was nearly, but not quite, killed instantly. Most of its legs were rendered useless, and it lay on its back, squirming every once in a while with a thrust of one of its legs.

And that's when I saw that there had been something seriously wrong with this fly that I had not noticed before. For that yellowish-white splatter was not in fact a bit of fly guts, but the remains of an altogether different creature.

Because out of the gash, I saw what appeared to be a very small, white, worm-like creature wriggling its way outwards.

It pushed its way out of the hole in the side of the fly and onto the window sill.

And then it was followed by another.

And then another.

And another.

I rubbed my eyes, incredulous at what I was seeing. I thought that perhaps I was making it up - either I was misinterpreting what my eyes were seeing, due to previous work-related exhaustion, or I was completely imagining something that was not there in any way, shape, or form.

It did not seem believable.

Yet there, before my eyes, were these tiny little worm-like creatures, squirming their way out from inside the body of the injured fly, through its wound. The fly had been infected, host to a large number of parasitic worms, who had been living inside of it, until a gash allowed them an exit from which to escape.

These weren't maggots, and I wasn't witnessing a premature birth - remember, insects (including houseflies) lay eggs, and these worms were coming from a wound in the side of the fly - plus, they seemed to be fully alive and functional, and not prematurely forced out during an early developmental stage by the fly's death.

As they made their way out of the fly's body and onto the window sill, I was able to take a closer look. Each was no longer than 3 mm, and appeared to be a pale white color, with barely visible segments. At one end seemed to be three tiny hairs or tendrils, like at the end of a mouth. Each would squirm its way outwards in a random direction, tumbling without coordination.

A few actually ran into some of the others, tangling up, as they attempted to squirm around each other. It was as if they were fighting, but with no arms or legs, they could do nothing but wrap around one another.

More and more of these parasites tumbled out of the fly. In all, 11 lay on the window sill, while a twelfth was left hanging halfway outside the fly's wound, having never made it out completely.

Imagine - this fly had been carrying, within its body, a dozen foreign, living creatures. While each was tiny, in all they totaled a formidable mass when compared to the volume and mass of the fly itself.

I was disgusted and horrified. After observing for a few moments, I did what I had to do - the only humane option. I squashed the worms with a Kleenex (leaving remains identical to the splatter I had initially mistaken for fly guts) and then finished by ensuring the fly itself had been put out of its misery.

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

New Policy

2010-07-27T18:46:00.001-06:00

Very well, then. You heard the man. From this time forward, I will never again eat Nachos.

Fanboys

2010-07-07T10:26:00.001-06:00

I periodically switch between feeling mild amusement and bitter irritation at the ability of Apple fans to consistently, reliably, and blindly accept inferior products and services for higher prices and more restrictions, simply because it makes them feel hip.

Morons.

Enhance!

2010-07-05T20:17:00.000-06:00

From a message board:

Happy Independence Day

2010-07-03T23:52:00.001-06:00

Captain Kirk has a lesson for you.

A Lifelong Fan

2010-05-26T23:13:00.002-06:00

I found this in a storage box:

(Click for larger version)

I drew this poster (and many like it) in first grade, while anticipating, with great excitement, the new Batman movie, "Batman Returns." They were done in exactly the same style as the real movie posters, images of which were always floating around in my head:

To this day, I still remember deliberately making Batman's skin yellow and leaving Catwoman's skin a stark white, since that's exactly what the real poster was like (though I made the wrong choice with the Penguin's skin tone). I remember making the corner of the Penguin's mouth more open and circular, so his cigarette would have room to stick out. And you can see my trademark failing as a young artist - the failure to anticipate the amount of room I would need on the paper for the image I had in my mind. In this case, it's clear that I made the faces and cigarette a bit too big, forcing me to scrunch up the text in order to make it fit nicely.

Because It's There!

2010-05-25T23:18:00.001-06:00

Tribute

2010-05-21T09:10:00.002-06:00

The Google Logo appears to be so accurate a reproduction that it not only mimics the ghost behavior of the original, it also includes the exact same bugs as the original - I was able to recreate the condition which allows me to pass through a ghost around a corner.

Impressive.

The only thing it seems to be missing is a global high score. Otherwise, I'd be tempted to play for a perfect game.

Happy Jedi Day

2010-05-04T11:17:00.001-06:00

May the Fourth be with you!

Eyjafjallajokull

2010-04-24T23:10:00.002-06:00

Say it with me:

Eyjafjallajokull

Ay - Yef - Yet - Lay - Yo - Koo - Tlh

If you're a broadcast journalist, and you're going to be talking about this volcano on the air, every half hour, for the next two weeks, then simply saying "That volcano in Iceland...that's hard to pronounce..." (followed by an embarrassed, nervous laugh) just isn't going to cut it.

Pronouncing these names is part of your job. If you can't or won't do it, step aside for someone else who is willing to do all the work. In this recession, I'm sure replacements wouldn't be very hard to come by.

Stop wasting your listener's time.

Do your job.

(Also, there are now three media-related entries that are "On Notice." It looks like heads are about to roll.)

Define "Murder"

2010-04-24T22:54:00.003-06:00

I don't understand how "Manslaughter as a Hate Crime" is not the same thing as murder.

I guarantee that, had a hispanic teenager gone "gringo hunting" with his friends and ended up killing a white man they targeted, the jury would have convicted a murder charge without hesitation. But since the defendant was a white teenager in this case, and the victim was only a hispanic immigrant, the jury was squeemish - why send a youngster of their own to jail for life?

Looks like Strong Island sent a pretty strong statement - that racism is alive and well in this country, and that immigrants aren't human - at least, not on the same level as the white natives.

Trifecta

2010-03-26T19:46:00.002-06:00

From the writings and words of Orson Scott Card:

Regarding the existence of rape in society:

Card: "Let's bring back chaperonage. That's the best way to prevent rape!"

Interviewer: "Are you being serious?"

Card: "Oh, I'm quite serious. There's a reason why the whole system of chaperonage began.".

Sexist - check.

Regarding the effort to legalize gay marriage:

So if my [homosexual] friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

...

The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."

Homophobic - check.

Regarding airport security searches:

"I am not a criminal. I have complied with all the laws and regulations. I should not have to be subjected to such loathsome alternatives in order to use public transportation.

It might be different if I actually fit some kind of profile of a terrorist or ... But I do not fit any likely terrorist profile, being grey-haired, of European appearance, with an American accent...

Enough. There is no excuse except mindless political correctness to continue this level of harassment and abuse of citizens of a free country. Though the guard who was molesting me piously said, "There is no way to tell by looking who a terrorist might be," there is, in fact, a perfectly reliable set of indicators of who really doesn't need to be patted down.

...

Might loyal American citizens of Middle-eastern appearance resent being given "special" treatment at airport security gates? Maybe. But the solution is not to abuse everybody. We're at war. If you resemble potential enemies, you get special scrutiny. If you don't like it, then get all the other people who look like you to band together to detect and report on all the crazies among you who approve of blowing up airplanes or killing Americans by other methods..."

Racist - check.

Card has achieved the truly sad and horrific - a completed trifecta of hate.

It's sad because at one point Card was a talented author who wrote some of the greatest novels concerning ethics.

It's horrifying because Card is still respected by many and accepted as legitimate, instead of being shouted down for being "a crazy," as there are plenty who share his views. Even worse, there are an even larger number who at the very least do not believe there's anything wrong with these ideologies of hate.

Introducing a Little Anarchy

2010-03-18T20:34:00.005-06:00

With two Batmans and a Bruce Wayne, there was a little bit too much law and order here at the Penthouse. On top of that, the three heroes were getting a bit bored, so I decided it was time to give them a few villains to tackle.

The first evil-doer to join us would be a version of Batman's arch-nemesis, appearing just as he did at the beginning of "The Dark Knight" - Hot Toys' "Bank Robber Joker" action figure.

The box art for Hot Toys' "Batman: The Dark Knight Version" was pretty top-notch, but they outdid themselves with this one:

Here's the back:

I like the motif here - the clown mask, the burnt Joker-ized money, the stylized Gotham Police Wanted Poster. You know you're getting a hell of a bank robber here. And that's just the cardboard sleeve protecting the rest of the box!

Remove the sleeve to get to the main box. "I want my face on the one dollar bill!":

The back of the box features the names of all the artists and creators of this figure:

And then open up the front flap of the box for a brief bio:

The box indicated as much, but when you take the figure out, you finally know for sure that you've got another masterpiece:

As you can see, he comes in the same outfit he wore in the opening scene, when he helped to rob Gotham National Bank. I've got him here with his full-auto pistol, with extended clip, and his duffel bag. You can also see that he comes with a unique stand and nameplate: "The Joker: Bank Robber Version"

He is one dangerous dude. Check out how detailed and accurate the head-sculpt is:

Wow. That is spot-on - it's like a miniature Heath Ledger, hanging out with you in action figure format. I love the smeared makeup, evocative of the Interrogation Room scene. And he looks so angry, too.

Do not mess with him, because he will blow you away. Does he look like he's joking?

Bank Robber Joker comes with a number of accessories, including some extra hands for more poses, as well as money, playing cards, a clown mask, a duffel bag, and a pair of guns:

The duffel bag is awesome for two reasons. First, it's very detailed, despite it's small scale, including mini zippers!

But open it up, and you've got a nasty surprise:

A duffel full of grenades, for Bank Robber Joker to use for holding hostages or doing a hell of a lot of 1/6 scale damage!

He also includes a stack of 1/6 scale, Joker-ized bills:

Also, a deck full of unique Joker playing cards:

And then his two main weapons, with removable clips:

The pistol is a natural, given that he used it during the bank robbery at the beginning of the film. But why the machine gun? You'll see in a minute...

Also, did you notice the clown mask? That way, the Joker can blend in with his other clown thugs, disguising himself as another lowly henchman.

Here's what he'd look like if you were kneeling down in front of him, like a hostage:

Pretty terrifying.

But how did we get that mask on his head, with all that unruly, wild clown hair? It couldn't be the same guy - so who's really hiding under that mask?

Surprise!

That's right, this guy actually comes with two different head-sculpts - the classic angry version earlier and this one, with slicked-back hair (like in the opening scene) and a sly grin on his face. The detail on this sculpt is equally incredible. Check out the accuracy of those scars.

One of the reasons I really like this sculpt is because it shows off how Heath Ledger was able to express multiple emotions and feelings all at the same time as the Joker. This sculpt is evocative of the famous Joker cover of "Empire Magazine:"

Take a look at the sculpt (or the magazine cover). He's actually got several expressions going on at once. On the left side of his face, he's all evil smiles:

But on the right, he's glowering and angry:

Truly schizophrenic - but amazingly, when you look at his whole face, there's no contradiction or clash. He looks just as he should. Crazy, huh?

Here's a re-enactment of the first time we see him in the film (and we don't yet know who it is!)

Finally, I got another duffel bag and printed out a bunch of money - that way, the Joker and his cohorts can haul around bags full of cash, fresh from the bank!

Ok, I love the two head-sculpts - but if the second one was more appropriate to the bank robbery scene, then why did the figure include that first, angrier one as well? And what about the machine gun - the "Hit me!!!" scene featuring that gun is later on in the movie, when Joker is wearing his more classic, purple-coated outfit. So why include it with this figure?

Well, Hot Toys had actually already made a Joker figure for "The Dark Knight".

The problem is, it wasn't very accurate. The outfit left a lot to be desired, including a super-dark coat with huge lapels and a crappy tie, and the head-sculpt sucked: There was no likeness to Heath Ledger's Joker and the scarring and wrinkles were all wrong. This was because the artists at Hot Toys didn't have a lot of references to work off of - the movie was still in production when they had to design and create these figures.

When the figure came out near the movie's release, collectors also expected this Joker to come with the iconic machine gun, from the "Hit me!!!" scene in the middle of the movie (and featured in some of the trailers). But the folks at Hot Toys hadn't known about this scene or its importance, because the movie hadn't come out yet, so they didn't include a machine gun as an accessory to the original Joker figure.

As a result, they included a second head-sculpt with the new Bank Robber Joker, so that owners of the original Joker figure could plop the angry sculpt on and it would fit in naturally, while the slicked-back sculpt could go on the Bank Robber body. The machine gun was included as an extra bonus which could also go with the original Joker - in fact, combined with the angry sculpt, collectors could now re-create the "Hit me!!!" scene much more accurately than before.

So why didn't I grab the original Joker (or "v1", for "version 1", as it's now referred to)?

Well, I didn't grab it beforehand because it obviously sucked - the original head-sculpt is far too cartoony; the likeness to his appearance in the movie is important to me, if I'm going to have a Batman that looks just like Christian Bale. And I didn't get it later, even after the Bank Robber Joker figure gave me the right head-sculpt and the machine gun, because the outfit still kind of stunk.

Plus, more importantly, I knew there was a better version on the way...

The Nightmare of Command

2010-03-15T18:00:00.005-06:00

It's said that David Theurer, famed programmer at Atari, suffered nightmares during the development of "Missile Command." Re-visiting this old classic, I'm not sure that I blame him.

Go ahead and give it a whirl. Play a version of the original if you can (either on an emulation platform or, if you're lucky, a real-life "Missile Command" cabinet). If you can't find a copy of the original, the 90s Microsoft Arcade release is about as authentic of a port as you can get.

To a kid, as I was when I first encountered "Missile Command," the game is a fun, if challenging, test of reflexes, fast decision-making, and video gaming skills. But to an adult, the gravity of "Missile Command"'s scenario is much more serious. Though the bright, contrasting colors and the simplistic vector graphics yield a fairly abstract rendering of nuclear holocaust, the game nevertheless manages to worm its way into the dark recesses of the player's mind, making an insidious assault against his deepest anxieties.

The tension within the player is immediately set at the start of each stage by the blaring alarm sound effect, a red alert indicating the threat of incoming missiles about to fall upon your cities. As the missile commander, you're in charge of your civilization's armed forces. You have three bases, each stocked with a full complement of rockets for your anti-ballistic missile system. Your task is to send these rockets to intercept and detonate the enemy missiles, thus protecting the six cities in your civilization. As each stage is successfully completed, you take whichever of your cities survived with you into a new round, at a harder difficulty level - the enemy missiles, planes, and satellites are faster and their warheads become capable of anticipating your interceptions and splitting into multiple, forked attacks, just as a MIRV would.

As the stages become more and more difficult, the number of surviving cities dwindles. Every so often, a new city will rise, reflecting the success of your efforts at re-population and leading to a brief moment of elation within the player's heart - but there are inevitably more deaths than births in this apocalyptic war, and more losses than victories. Thus, the mood is set and the atmosphere prepared to bring down the player via psychological means.

For as your cities begin to be bombed out of existence, one can't help but wonder what the citizens of each city must be thinking to themselves, whenever they see one of their neighbors destroyed. Mere miles away, located within the same canyon walls, each lowly citizen that survives to see their neighbor's annihilation must certainly be thinking the same thought - "There, but for the grace of God, go I..."

After all, how could there be any rhyme or reason to the rampant destruction that each survivor is confronted with? Why was my neighbor destroyed, while I was allowed to live? The immediate, horrifying explanation that springs to their minds must no doubt resort to luck as an answer - the missile commander was too inept to save both of our cities together, the survivor reasons, but his incompetence was not enough to doom my city as well. Thus, the survivor believes that while the missile commander tried to save everyone, his skills were only enough to save a few.

But this explanation soon gives way to an even more fatalistic chain of reasoning - that the neighboring city was destroyed not because the missile commander wasn't able to save it - but because the missile commander chose not to save it. Perhaps the only reason that I am alive is because my city was chosen instead of my neighbor's. And so the dread of each survivor is heightened further, as they realize that perhaps their survival is only the result of a fortunate stroke of luck, dependent not upon the skills and the best efforts of the missile commander, but upon his decision to prioritize one city over another in a moment of immediate crisis. A citizen survives because his city was prioritized in a global version of Sophie's Choice.

For Sophie's Choice is infused into the very mechanics of the game. Often there are two or more enemy missiles falling rapidly, simultaneously converging on separate targets, with not enough time for the missile commander to devote to accurately intercepting each one. Thus, the missile commander must make his decision - which city to save? And therefore, by definition, which city not to save?

Next time, will the missile commander again choose to save my city? Or when the split-second decision needs to be made again, will he disregard my city and not even give it a chance, just as he disregarded my neighbor?

But the nature of the choice is even worse than it might at first appear to be. At first, it's easy to place blame on the attackers for making this choice necessary - there simply isn't enough time to block both falling missiles, so the doom is not one that can be prevented. The missile commander can only make his best effort and no one can blame him for any failure. But the soul of the missile commander is proven to be even darker than that of a hapless soul who is forced to make a terrible choice at the last second - for the civilization can increase its odds of survival, if the missile commander is willing to damn his own soul.

This is because the skilled missile commander will be thinking not only of each city's immediate survival, but of its long-term future as well. The skilled missile commander will employ a long-term strategy, to guarantee his civilization's survival, even when it comes at the expense of individual, member cities:

Since there are six cities, spread over two wide canyons, each being equally threatened by a wide spread of missiles, the missile commander's attentions will be necessarily divided. And if he applies equal attention to every one of his cities, then they will eventually dwindle. First the eastern-most city is destroyed. Then, a city in the central region. After that, perhaps a western city.

Three cities destroyed. Three more remain. But they are as widely spread as the initial six were - from east to west. So the missile commander's attention remains spread equally thin, as his eyes can only scan one part of the sky at a time, his mind only able to react to the threats from one fraction of the heavens above, and the cursor of his rocket guidance system only able to move with limited speed, from one section of the screen to the other.

But the missile commander can instead choose to focus on only a small fraction of his cities from the very beginning, at the expense of the rest. Say, the three cities in the eastern canyon, for instance, at the expense of the other three in the western canyon.

Then the western cities stand little chance of survival - while the eastern cities each have twice as much of the missile commander's focus as they might have had before. Furthermore, because they all lie next to one another, in the same geographical region of the playing field, this focus is further enhanced - all the western cities are being threatened by the same group of missiles, so there are even fewer threats for the missile commander to have to worry about and plan for. And the rocket guidance system can target and operate within the same localized area of the screen, resulting in faster interception times.

Play long enough, and this decision is almost always finally made by any player. The missile commander then begins making his Sophie's Choice long before the moment of final crisis - it becomes a part of his long-term playing strategy. His willingness to sacrifice entire regions of cities is made with little - and eventually zero - hesitation. The civilization thus lasts longer - but at the cost of the missile commander's soul, for he has now given up on even the attempt to save everyone. Instead, he dooms entire cities to scant protection and even death, based arbitrarily on their strategic and geographical location - all factors which are out of the control of the citizens of such cities.

Thus the innocence of the once-great missile commander, who at one time worked to save all of the civilians under his protection, has now been destroyed.

But can the player truly be blamed? As he watches his cities destroyed, he comes to hate the loss he feels every time an enemy missile strikes. Isn't it only natural, then, to grow attached to certain cities and protect those, while sacrificing others that you have made less important in your mind's eye, simply to lessen the heartache?

There comes to be a certain feeling of dread, once your bases have expended their forces and sent forth all their rockets, while the enemy onslaught continues. You're forced to helplessly watch as your cities continue to be targeted and destroyed, while you know that there's nothing left for you to do - you're out of rockets. Now, all you can do is hope that at least one of your cities will be spared long enough to move on to the next stage, where your bases can be restocked and your armies rearmed.

I mentioned the blaring sound effect of the alarm above - perhaps worse are the sounds of this scenario, the sickening, dull thud of enemy bombs hitting their targets, unaccompanied by the WHOOSH of your intercepting rockets, which previously acted as a background noise to comfort you, assuring you that you were doing something, that some of your cities were being saved.

Of course, this feeling of dread may not be as bad as seeing your cities hit during the times when your bases are still at least somewhat armed. For in this case, you know that you might have saved that city that just blew up in front of you. Had you been faster or smarter, you might have been able to save the lives of your people, who may have just died needlessly. I could have done more, you tell yourself.

In modern games of strategy and warfare, the size of one's army is generally proportional to the size of one's civilization. Were "Missile Command" to be developed today, instead of three decades ago, one might find that the number of rockets in your bases at the start of each round would be proportional to the number of cities that survived the previous round - reflecting the resources your civilization can devote to protecting itself, round to round.

But "Missile Command" has a more simplistic model of army and resource management - at the beginning of each round, all three bases are fully loaded with 10 rockets each. Thus, as the rounds progress, one finds that the ratio of bases to cities increases. In other words, the number of soldiers in your army begins to outnumber the civilian population that they are tasked with protecting.

Eventually, you're left with one city and three fully-loaded bases at the start of a round. The player can't help but feel like Commander Adama and the Battlestar Galactica, in charge of the remaining military forces, whose duty is to protect the small, remaining fragments of a once-great civilization against wave after endless wave of enemy attacks.

Even worse, as the missile attacks increase in frequency, the odds are that your lone city will find itself destroyed at the beginning of a new round - leaving a fully stocked army with no one to save but themselves for the rest of the round, at which point their usefulness will automatically expire, along with their lives. The game isn't over, because the round must finish first, and so enemy missiles keep coming, targeting both the bases and the empty spaces where great cities, now dead, once stood. The player is no longer Adama, but is instead Admiral Cain, in charge of the Pegasus - an army with no one to protect.

The player then realizes that the remains of his civilization is, by definition, a police state, made up of soldiers, existing without any sort of higher purpose. There are no more artists or scientists to protect, no beauty left to defend, no democracy to safeguard, and nothing to justify their civilization's way of life. There are no more children or girlfriends or loved ones to save or return to at the end of the day - all that is left is a futile attempt at revenge, to take down the enemy planes before the soldiers themselves are killed by the enemy bombardment or the end of the round, smoked out silently in the night, as the last embers of a dying fire, left without fuel with which to renew itself. The player has failed, though he is forced to live on briefly, to see the results of his failure. The totality of such failure is cemented as the game concludes, with the text "The End," instead of the traditional "Game Over."

The result of "Missile Command"'s assault on the psyche makes itself manifestly apparent via physical symptoms. As I step away from "Missile Command," each time I feel my heartbeat racing and my breathing labored, erratic, and irregular. My vision is narrowed, darkening around the edges, and my palms sweat, shaking ever-so-slightly.

The narratives above play through my mind consistently, time and again, as I play "Missile Command," and I live through each one instantaneously, as I send forth rocket after rocket, trying to make it past the next round. Yet the magnitude of their effect remains as strong as ever.

Your first reaction might be to think that it's a bit ridiculous to read so much into such a simple, colorful game. To play through narratives in my head which grant thoughts and fears to non-existent citizens of pixelated cities? Ten years ago, I would have agreed - if anyone was taking such experiences from an arcade game, then I would have said that they were crazy.

But with its incredibly simple graphics and relatively simple gameplay (compared to the sophisticated strategy games of today), I would argue that the game invites the player to form such narratives and live the game through them, to fill the empty voids of "Missile Command" with their boundless imaginations, to make something so simple feel that much more real, to turn it into a fully-realized, three-dimensional experience.

And if Theurer, as well as countless other arcade players, are to be believed, then the nightmares of "Missile Command" are as valid, as deep, and as real as any other.

Zelda Lyrics

2010-03-12T16:19:00.002-06:00

I finally found the translated lyrics of the ridiculous Zelda Dance.

From mrjohnnybravo17:

It's coming out, coming out The Legend of Zelda
It's coming out coming out coming out coming out Finally coming out!
Gorgeous! This adventure
Real! You too shall soon experience for yourself
Gasping at the puzzle solving action.
I see! Super Famicom
It's dangerous! It came out!
Go! Link!
Unwitting sword fighting action
Zelda shall reach its climax tonight as well
Super Famicon The Legend of Zelda.
It's coming out, coming out, coming out, coming out Finally coming out!

Mexican Jetpack Man

2010-03-11T17:41:00.002-06:00

Juan Manuel Gallegos is a Mexican inventor who has spent a lifetime perfecting jet-packs and personal rocket technology:

I think it's fascinating that Gallegos has no formal training or degree in physics, chemistry, or rocketry - he's completely self-taught, and is now one of the most knowledgeable members in his field.

Check out his laboratory and workshop. Consider how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years of work, that he put into endless cycles of research, learning, and experimentation, without any promise of eventually making it pay off. Imagine the expense of the research not only into the rocket belts themselves, but in the infrastructure and support technologies needed to get them working (after all, you can't invent the microchip without first inventing electric power).

Think about how many personal sacrifices over the years this man has made for the sake of his life's love and work.

How can you not admire that?

Over the Top

2010-03-11T17:32:00.003-06:00

This is the perfect illustration of why I don't enjoy most super-hero comics:

Exaggerated for the sake of artistry is one thing - I'll forgive you if you make Batman's ears a foot high - but these proportions don't even come close to making sense. How can there be drama or emotional investment when the heroes are so far away from being human that they look like the stuff of a five year-old's nightmares? How can I take any situation with such characters seriously?

How can I look up to or connect to these heroes?

They're not real. Not simply unrealistic, but fundamentally dishonest.

Like the abundance of fake tits in porn, the over-the-top phoniness takes away from the enjoyability of the medium.

Scintillating Conversation

2010-03-05T00:00:00.002-06:00

Awesome.

The Horse with the Long Face also has a hell of a punch-line.

Kitbash Bruce

2010-02-27T02:36:00.003-06:00

Wanting to take advantage of Hot Toys' excellent extra Bruce Wayne headsculpt from DarkKnight Batman, I decided to put together this kitbash Bruce Wayne:

I grabbed an extra body (a Hot Toys Truetype, the best on the market, for the most realistic poses and articulation) and found a 1/6 scale suit for Bruce to wear and plopped on the head.

I didn't settle for anything less than best when it came to Bruce's suit - because I know he wouldn't accept anything other than top-of-the-line designer clothing! I wanted his suit to be real classy, something you'd except a playboy billionaire to wear to the boardroom.

This guy's gonna have no problem picking up chicks.

The extra headsculpt meant I got two figures for not much more than the price of one!

Troggle

2010-02-25T16:02:00.002-06:00

Speaking of mascots, take a look at the monster mascot that eats the cheerleader in that video that's making the rounds...

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it looks like a Troggle from Number Munchers?

Sparring Partner

2010-02-25T15:14:00.003-06:00

As I alluded to before, Takara Batman was only the first of many new roommates to arrive at the Penthouse. Next up was a sparring partner for Takara Batman:

Hot Toys' "Batman: The Dark Knight Version," or "DarkKnight Batman" for short, features Batman in his latest costume - his upgraded suit from "The Dark Knight."

Hot Toys is the best 1/6 scale action figure manufacturer on the market, for so many reasons. Right away you can see the first thing that sets them apart: Though Takara Batman had pretty cool packaging, Hot Toys does them one better. First, the box itself comes in a stiff, full-color cardboard jacket. The front is above, and this is the back:

Remove the jacket and you have the box itself:

The back of the box features the three figures that had been released in Hot Toys' "Dark Knight" line of action figures at the time. You'll see some more of those later, but I thought it was cool how the artists and designers are acknowledged on the box, in a movie poster-like format at the bottom.

The front flap of the box opens up like a book, to clearly reveal the figure:

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of this guy before I took him out of the box, so you'll have to use your imagination. But note the graffiti on the plastic:

The Joker has defaced Batman's box! If the figure were still there, you'd see Batman placed so that it appears as if the Joker painted a smile on his face.

Unlike Takar Batman, DarkKnight Batman comes with his own stand. It's difficult to read because of the lighting, but it's labelled "Batman: The Dark Knight Version."

Note the excellent paint job of the headsculpt. Though Takara Batman's mouth is a bit more Christian Bale-like, Hot Toys does a lot better when it comes to painting a realistic looking, varied skin tone - miles above Takara's flat shading.

DarkKnight Batman comes with a variety of accessories and crime-fighting tools - a gas-powered grapnel gun, a mini-mine, and a pair of Batarangs.

Like Takara Batman, his belt comes with a clip at the back, for him to store his grapnel gun:

He also comes with several additional gloved hands, for other poses.

Finally, DarkKnight Batman also comes with an alternative Bruce Wayne head (in the likeness of Christian bale), in case Batman needs to take off his mask.

Again, you can see how much better the sculpt on this guy is than on the Takara Bruce Wayne. Takara looked like a toy - this looks like the real thing.

Usually, DarkKnight Batman's wearing his mask. But to be honest with you, taking these pictures of DarkKnight Batman without his mask has made me realize something - I really like this look. Something about it makes it seem very manly.

I might just have to try and score another body, so that I can have both looks posed at the same time!

A Qualifed Candidate

2010-02-25T13:24:00.004-06:00

I wish Admiral Ackbar had been our school mascot.

I'm just saying that, on a scale of 1 to Batman, Ackbar sits a lot closer to the top than a phoenix - and WAY higher than Colonel Sanders.

In fact, I think more organizations should consider using Ackbar as a mascot. (*cough* scavhunt *cough*)

Man in the Yellow Hat

2010-02-20T01:00:00.002-06:00

For most of my life, I have been bothered by the identity of this man:

Known only as "The Man in the Yellow Hat," this man is a mysterious presence, lurking in the background of the adventures of the monkey "Curious George." Frequently, he facilitates the start of George's latest adventure - with no explanation as to motive. More disturbingly, the Man in the Yellow Hat also often acts as a god-like deus ex machina, able to step in at the last moment and clean up George's mess before it is completely out of control. And all of this is done without expounding upon or revealing any of the personality, history, or background of the Man in the Yellow Hat.

For instance, in "Curious George Visits a Toy Store," the Man in the Yellow Hat takes George to the grand opening of a brand-new toy store. Without explanation, the Man in the Yellow Hat is allowed to take George inside, as an expected and integral part of this monumental event, so that George may roam free. Later, when the situation inevitably falls to chaos due to the presence of a wild, child-like monkey, the Man in the Yellow Hat is allowed to fix things and take George away, making it all better - again, without question from anyone else.

The first "Curious George" book tells of the meeting of the Man in the Yellow Hat and Curious George, but none of the canonical works of H. A. Rey go any deeper into the Man's history. Others later attempt to theorize as to the nature of the Man's personal details, but these works, created more than half a century after the original by other authors, cannot be considered canonical or true by any means.

"The Man in the Yellow Hat" bears an eerie similarity to a disturbing class of men - the secretive, powerful agents of those holding the reins of our society. Perhaps the most familiar examples are the shadowy government agents operating in the background of "The X-Files."

Like "The Cigarette Smoking Man" and "The Crew Cut Man," "The Man in the Yellow Hat" is known only by an alias granted to him by others, based upon a physical characteristic. "These men don't have names," Skinner tells us. Their personal history is never revealed and their agenda is always kept secret. Their authority to act above the law is never questioned and their presence is never recorded.

Who is the Man in the Yellow Hat, and what is his agenda?

Memories from Mars

2010-02-14T14:29:00.003-06:00

The first computer game I ever had, for my first computer, was "Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons - Episode One: Marooned on Mars."

Quite a mouthful, I know. That was the style back then, in the heyday of shareware DOS games. I was about five years old and never had a Nintendo - so Commander Keen, with his pasty-white skin, was going to be my guide to the immersive world of computer games, as he lent me his raygun, his pogo stick, and an entire alien world to explore.

But first, a bit of historical perspective:

"Keen" is a legend among PC gaming - at least, amongst those in the know, who can remember that far back. It was made iD Software, the crew who went on to create Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, pioneering the first-person shooter genre and real-time 3D graphics. "Keen" itself was also the first PC game to demonstrate smooth side-scrolling graphics - a feat previously limited to the Nintendo, a la Super Mario Bros (the first of many ground-breaking graphics breakthroughs by the legendary John Carmack). "Keen" also helped to pioneer - and prove the commercial viability of - the "Three part shareware model" - where the first third of a game was given away for free, to entice players into purchasing the following two parts.

Though "Keen" holds an important position in the history of PC gaming, for me "Keen"'s place is even more special - for it represented my first foray into the virtual reality of computer games and served as my introduction to the conventions, the wonders, and the frights of the gaming world.

I stumbled, I screamed in terror, I explored, and finally I triumphed as I played "Keen." Here are a few specific memories I have.

Yorps

Yorps were the first enemy you encountered on Mars. They were fairly harmless and couldn't harm you on their own. They'd mainly just bumble around, back and forth. If they ran into you, they might push you around if you were in the way of their aimless wandering. A bit annoying, this behavior would only become dangerous if you were next to a spike pit or other hazard that they might nudge you in - and that's only if you don't jump around them.

Or on top of them, if you felt cruel or wanted them to sit there injured for a moment.

Notice the low resolution of these guys? It actually made it a bit difficult for me to figure out what some things were. For instance, as a kid, I thought the big black area in the middle was just a big gap between his legs - the Yorp was just an eyeball, a neck, and two legs as far as I was concerned. It never occurred to me that that was supposed to be his mouth - and that white spot was his tooth, rather than the background behind him.

This is what he looked like if you shot him:

That's his tongue, sticking out of his mouth, since he's been hit with your Neural Stunner. Of course, I didn't think he had a mouth - so I interpreted that big red splotch as being a huge gash, caused by my weaponized violence.

Gargs

These guys were scary.

Let me tell you why.

Unlike Yorps, Gargs kill you if they touch you. The giant mouthful of teeth make that pretty clear.

What isn't clear is just how fast Gargs can run when they're hungry.

Like the Yorps, Gargs will slowly wander back and forth, pretty care-free. So you would suspect that it'd be a simple matter to walk nearby them, simply jumping if they wandered too close to you. For instance, consider this section of a level ("The Treasury"):

To get to the other side, all you have to do is step down, wait for the Garg to come close, and jump over him. Right?

Wrong - because as soon as you step down onto the same level as him, he sprints over to you, rushing to gobble you before you have a chance to react, much less realize what's going on. At that point, your death is inevitable.

I swear, the first time he did that, I screamed.

I probably screamed a good half-dozen times each time after that, too.

After experiencing the Garg rush for the first time, you learn to be wary after that.

So the Garg steps up his game - and plays mind games with you.

Don't believe me? Check out that image of the Garg above. Most of the time, he's just walking back and forth - looking this way, looking that way.

But every once in a while, when you're trying to sneak around him, over him, or under him, he'll stop dead in his tracks - and look directly at you.

And I mean you - the player, not Commander Keen. He'll look straight into your eyes, his eyeballs' gaze boring into the screen of the computer.

I swear - he can see you. I know because I've felt it - way too many times for comfort.

And after he stares you down for a second, without warning, he'll make a rush at you. If you're careful, you won't be in his way. But the message is clear - he's got two eyes on you, at all times. And if you come into his domain, he will fuck you up.

The Garg's last big trick is his private little hang-out area - a place he likes to chill and hide out in, found in various levels (shown here in "The Emerald City"):

It's a yellow tunnel area, which Keen can walk right through. Unlike other parts of the level, you can't actually see what's inside. So when Keen walks in, he disappears behind the wall of the yellow tube.

Some times, Keen will emerge from the other side just fine. But what the player doesn't know the first time (or the second or third time, or any time until it happens) is that Gargs like to hide in there. So one day, you'll walk through a tunnel and then - BAM - you're dead. And you won't know why.

And since you don't know why, you end up avoiding the tunnels. But that's no good, because the Garg that's in there (that you don't know about) ends up figuring out you're avoiding his tunnels. So as you're walking underneath, he'll simply charge at you from above (as illustrated above). Without warning, you'll see a huge, hungry mouth come flying at you, leaving you no recourse but to run or - more likely - get eaten.

I screamed the first time that happened to me, too. And then I avoided levels with yellow tunnels forever onward.

Vorticons

Vorticons were wolf-men in jumpsuits and they were the worst enemies in the game. Frequently guarding the exit of a level, the vorticons were unpredictable - they ran fairly fast, switched directions mid-stride without warning, and could jump many times Keen's height.

You might try to avoid them by jumping across platforms way over their head - but their unpredictable jumping allowed them to easily jump up and kill you from below, making such a route dangerous, at best. Furthermore, their jumping made it quite difficult to shoot, as your bullets traveled slowly, relative to the speed of the Vorticon's jump.

Actually, as a kid, I was convinced that killing them with your gun was impossible - not just because they dodged your shots pretty easily, but also because I remember one of my shots hitting them once and having no effect. At that point, I wrote off killing them as an impossibility - it was only later, as an adult, that I'd learn they could be killed - it just takes four direct hits to do the job.

Having given up on the idea of taking down the Vorticons with violence, and having no choice but to continue past them to the exit, I frequently sat there for a few moments - waiting, watching, and gathering up my courage. When I thought I was ready, I tried to make a dash for it - running past the Vorticon, hoping to run under him whenever he made a jump. The unpredictable nature of the Vorticon jump meant that he'd either jump quite high (making it easy to run past), quite low (making it a near certainty that I wouldn't make it), or not jump at all (eradicating any hope of my survival).

There was no way to know what would happen each time. I peg my mortality rate at about 50%.

This was compounded by the physical appearance of the Vorticon - a tall, domineering wolf creature, made worse by the slick jumpsuit, indicating intelligence, coordination, and organization. The stuff of nightmares to a small, five-year-old boy.

Needless to say, the Vorticons presented a considerable, looming fear through each level.

Learning the Ropes

Video games have a lot of conventions - similarities in gameplay that make it easier to pick up a new game that you haven't played before. I didn't know or understand these conventions, however, since I hadn't really played any video games before.

One such convention is the key and the locked door.

Levels in games frequently have locked doors that you need to bypass in order to proceed. To do so, you need to find a key, a code, a keycard, or some other mechanism in a different part of the level, which you can then bring to the door to open. "Commander Keen" was no exception.

The problem was, I had no concept of a key in a game. So I ended up stuck at this portion of an early level ("Capital City"):

Above me, you can see the yellow door, which you need to bypass in order to proceed and complete the level. Over to the right, you can see the yellow keycard, hanging in the corner. All I needed to do was go over there, jump up and grab the keycard, and then walk over to the door to unlock it.

But because I didn't understand the concept of opening doors in computer games, that thought never occurred to me. I know, I know - the door and the keycard are both yellow. They even have the same alien symbol on them, indicating that they go together.

Well, I thought the keycard was just a bit of decoration. A little painting that the bad guys had hung up in their level.

To be fair, there was precedent for this - many of the levels have incidental pieces of background decoration, found only in that level, which serve no purpose and cannot be interacted with. In this very level, for instance, you start off next to a weird...flag...or flagpole...or decorative curtain fence type thing:

Yeah, I don't know what it is either. But that's my point - you can't do anything with it. And that yellow keycard doesn't look like anything special either - so I never tried to jump into it and grab it.

I remember the computer was in the living room and I was frustrated because I couldn't beat the level - I tried finding a way around the door, I tried shooting the door, I tried jumping into the door with my pogo stick - nothing worked.

It was early evening (probably before dinner) and the room was pretty dark. I remember I had to be quiet, because my mother was taking a nap. I wanted to ask her how to proceed, but I didn't want to wake her up.

So I sat at the computer for a good long while, trying in vain to bypass this door, and having no luck.

Eventually, my mother woke up and I asked her how to beat the level - so she just walked Keen over to the keycard and walked him through the yellow door, which now opened. It was surprisingly easy - and I felt like an idiot.

Yes, even my mother knew more about "Commander Keen" and video games than I did at that age.

Sound Effects

Before lossless media, before mp3s, before even WAVs and MIDI music, if we wanted sound effects and music in our games, we had to use the PC speaker.

The PC speaker could make blips, beeps, bloops, honks, and even small, digitized tunes and jingles - but it didn't do any of them very well, and most were a headache to listen to. Particularly annoying were the repetitive thuds that occurred if you tried jumping on your pogo stick in a place with a low ceiling - thanks to your football helmet, you didn't crack you head and die, but you would make a constant thudding noise as you rapidly bounced up and down.

By far the worst sound effect, however, was the ice cannon:

The ice cannon shot chunks of ice, about once a second, which would freeze you and send you flying if you were hit. But there was no way you could miss it, as every time it fired, it make this horrible, crunching sound, like ice in a blender at full blast. Thankfully, you could only hear it if it was visible on the screen (when it would blare at you at full volume), so just walking a bit to the left or right would make it go dead silent.

I avoided the ice cannon whenever possible, not to avoid being shot, but simply to spare myself the headache that the cannon would inevitably induce.

But I like the little tune that plays whenever you beat a level - one of my favorites!

Puzzles

"Commander Keen" was primarily an action game, but it did sport one or two puzzles. Because I hadn't played any computer games before, this fact was lost upon me - and so I never was able to recognize the presence of a puzzle, much less solve them.

This made things considerably more difficult than they needed to be.

In the last level ("Commander's Castle"), you have to get past a Vorticon wolf-man, to pick up the item (Everclear to fuel your rocket), and go out the exit door. Here's what it looks like:

The Vorticon is in a little room with a relatively low ceiling (given his jump height), created by a large stone slab hanging above him. What I would normally due is take the path I've indicated in red - I'd try and run under the Vorticon when he jumped. Because he was under a low ceiling, he couldn't jump very high - meaning I had a very small window of opportunity to run by him.

Most of the time, I didn't make it. Because this was the last level, necessary to beat the game, this meant that winning the game was a rare occurence.

What you're supposed to do is take the path indicated in green - you can't walk through the small ice blocks (they comprise the floor and walls), but the longer ice blocks are foreground objects, which you can easily walk behind (i.e., pass through). So you're supposed to jump up, above the stone slab, and shoot the chain that's holding up the slab. This causes the slab to slam down, crushing the Vorticon, and opening the way to the exit.

Like I said, I didn't know these kinds of puzzles were in the game - or that some objects could be interacted with in such a manner (like shooting the chain). And, to be fair, there really aren't any other interactive parts of any levels that are similar to this - it's a unique occurence.

But I should've explored more - and the fact that the Everclear is on the left side of the door should've been another hint. If I take the red path, I end up on the right side of the door, so I have to hop over the door to get the item first (which isn't easy - if you accidently go into the door first, you end up making it impossible to beat the game, since you skipped the item and can't re-enter a level you've already beaten).

Another hint was the fact that this particular Vorticon takes 99 shots to kill, rather than the standard four - so you had to find another way. But I was under the impression that Vorticons were invincible anyway, so I never realized that this guy was any stronger than other Vorticons.

Cliffhangers and Inspiration

"Commander Keen" ended on a terrible cliffhanger. You end up fixing your rocketshit and heading home from Mars, only to find the Vorticon mothership hovering above Earth, preparing to blast it to bits. Only playing the next two episodes would let you find out what happened next. What's worse, the names of the next two games made the situation even more dire - Episode Two was called "The Earth Explodes," and Episode Three was called "Keen Must Die!"

Because I was just a kid, "Keen" was way out of my price range. The first Episode was free, but the next two cost $15 apiece. So I wouldn't be able to play the next two games in the series until I grew up - thankfully so, because most of the levels in the last game are filled to the brim with bouncing, angry Vorticon wolf-men. I would've screamed in terror as a kid!

Because I had no way to play the next games, I remember imagining what they would be like in my head. At one point, I drew level designs for future Keen games - I remember in particular an image of a new Earth, being built to replace the old Earth which had been destroyed (at least, in my mind, though not if you beat the game) in "The Earth Explodes." It looked kind of like the Death Star II, with continents and seas partially built on a half-constructed sphere that was not yet whole.

"Commander Keen" was the game that made me want to make computer games. Such a desire would wait many years to be realized, sleeping but never dying. But eventually I taught myself how to program for the sake of making video games - and now, at last, that dream is becoming a reality. To this day, I still want to make an ultimate sidescroller homage to Commander Keen and the other great DOS games from iD Software and Apogee games.

(If you want to give "Commander Keen" a spin, you can get the first Episode for free, here. You might need DOSbox - and be prepared to mute your speakers!)

Stupid

2010-02-14T13:18:00.002-06:00

Just now, a girl left her laptop open and available on a desk in the library, right in front of me. If I wanted to, I could zip up my coat, stuff her laptop in my bag, and walk out the door. Nobody would notice. Nobody would know.

She's been gone three minutes now.

They warn you all the time about leaving your valuables alone when you go to the bathroom - but I didn't think people were actually stupid enough to actually do that in real life.

Klingon Cake

2010-02-09T01:19:00.002-06:00

This Klingon Great Hall Wedding Cake is notable to me because it reminds me of a cake my mother made for me in 2nd or 3rd grade - modeled on a Klingon Vor'Cha battlecruiser:

I had provided her one of my toys for reference, and the cake had detailed frosting, down to the notched windows and red bussard collectors. Interestingly, the turquoise frosting of the ship seems to match the turquoise frosting of the Great Hall, above. And now that I think about it, I think they were pretty much to scale with one another.

It'd be fun to see them next to each other - a Klingon cake diorama!

Upstaged

2010-02-04T22:20:00.002-06:00

It's probably photoshopped, but that doesn't make it any less hilarious.

Throwing Away Your Glove

2010-01-06T03:25:00.002-06:00

From Wikipedia:

Piet Hein was a Danish scientist, mathematician...and poet...

...Hein found himself confronted with a dilemma when the Germans occupied Denmark. He felt that he had three choices: Do nothing, flee to "neutral" Sweden or join the Danish resistance movement...

Taking as his first weapon the instrument with which he was most familiar, the pen, he wrote and had published his first "grook" [gruk in Danish]. It passed the censors who did not grasp its real meaning.

CONSOLATION GROOK

Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.

The Danes, however, understood its importance and soon it was found as graffiti all around the country. There was something worse than the loss of freedom: It was collaboration followed by liberation. And Denmark got the message.

Hein was a math nerd and a physicist, but more importantly he was a man who knew the power of words and could wield them effectively. And even more important, he did so in the cause for good and the fight for freedom.

Gasbags of Jupiter

2010-01-04T19:11:00.002-06:00

One of the more interesting books in my elementary school library was "Our Universe", by Roy A. Gallant.

(The cover is a lovely painting that you might recognize as being from John Berkey)

The book was a summary of our understanding of the universe, from ancient mythology to deep space astronomy, with particular emphasis on the solar system. It was filled with full-page color paintings and photographs of all kinds.

However, what really interested me as a kid, was the speculative material. The last chapter was devoted to the future of human space exploration, travel, and colonization. But even more exciting were the several pages near the middle which speculated on the forms that life might take, were it to have evolved in the extreme environments of many of the other planets and moons in our solar system, from scorching Venus to frigid Pluto. These descriptions were completed with gorgeous artistic renderings.

Fortunately, a brief internet search turned up a few uploaded scans of the paintings and their descriptions, which can be found here. But I will reproduce the most important pair here:

"Jupiter
From birth to death, any life in Jupiter's wild atmosphere would have to stay airborne - there's no place to stand. Hanging from their gasbags, floating jellyblimps would be easy prey for hungry swordtails. A swordtail uses Jupiter's strong gravity and its own pointed body to dive right through its victim. All creatures here must avoid winds blowing toward the freezing layers above and the scorching pressures below."

Some of the other aliens looked a bit too silly, too cute, or too fantastical to be real (though the Pluto aliens really fascinate me today). However, the Jupiter creatures seemed incredibly interesting and realistic.

The image of those Jupiter gasbag lifeforms must have stuck in my mind, because in third grade I wrote my first science-fiction story, and it was about them. It was for a school assignment, the specifics of which I cannot remember - only that it had to be an original piece of fiction and I think it had to be accompanied by a drawing of some kind. (If not, then I included a full-page colored-pencil drawing as an extra addition without needing to).

The story was somewhere between four and six pages long - hand-written, probably in cursive. So while it wasn't a lot of text by an adult's standards, it was certainly my most epic piece of writing yet. In fact, it was probably the first time I sat down and tried to craft an entire story and world out of words, just for my own amusement (the fact that it was for a school assignment pretty much felt like it was a happy coincidence).

It concerned a war between two sets of life-forms - the Jupiter gasbags, seen above, were the protagonists, while the antagonists were another native inhabitant of the skies of Jupiter (probably the swordtails mentioned in the text). I think the gasbags (called Jupitians in my story) had to organize an attack on the stronghold of their enemies and attack a crystal or power source or something, whose energy was critical to the plans of their enemies. Doing so would end the war in a victory for the Jupitians.

Looking back, Jupitians was a pretty stupid sounding name for a race of aliens. Even back then, I think part of me realized that. Still, I hadn't realized that perhaps Jovian would have been more appropriate a name.

Also, if their enemies were native inhabitants of Jupiter as well, wouldn't that qualify them to be labelled as Jupitians as well? To do otherwise would be nonsensical, equivalent to suggesting that "the humans went to war with the Japanese!"

Anyway, after the slow, laborious process of transcribing my story by hand, and then illustrating the attack on the crystal, I turned my project in at the end of the week. I felt like I had put in a monumental effort, especially compared to the other kids - most of my classmates wrote no more than one or two pages, and if they had accompanying illustrations, they were mostly shoddy work (I wasn't an artist, so my drawing may not have been very good, but I know at least that had I put a hell of a lot of effort into it). I somehow remember not feeling suitably recognized for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Still, I didn't let that dampen my enthusiasm for writing science-fiction stories for school assignments. For the next year, I would outdo myself with a tale of murder, amidst the human colonization of Mars...

Thin Shells

2010-01-01T14:44:00.003-06:00

From the Science Photo Library:

The two images depict how much water and air there is in and on the Earth, relative to the size of the planet. The small blue sphere is all the water of the world - the small pink sphere is all the air in the world.

Whenever I'm outside and I think about the atmosphere above me, I grow terrified by how paper-thin the atmosphere is when compared to the ground and rock that I'm walking upon. It seems that there is so little preventing the air around us - and then ourselves - from being sucked up into the vast emptiness of deep, cold, black space.

While, on a rational level, I know there is no danger, I cannot help but feel emotional terror when I ask myself how we can trust something that is so thin to protect us, and not fear that it might fail at any moment?

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T01:00:00.001-06:00

Batman's never been much for jolly, holiday spirit, so please enjoy Christmas with the Joker.

That's SIR Patrick Stewart to You

2009-12-20T01:17:00.002-06:00

Captain Picard's just added yet another entry to the list of items proving him better than Kirk...now even those not in Starfleet will be calling him "sir."

It's about time too, because as cool as Gandalf is, Picard's got him beat. Pretty soon Ian McKellen will have nothing to lord over the good captain, who's about to be knighted.

Let's just hope that he doesn't head-butt the Queen of England in the process.

Cold

2009-12-11T00:08:00.003-06:00

When I look at the temperature and see that it's 1°, I don't read it as "One Degree." Rather, I take it far more literally, and my mind reads it as "One Ring."

Like a Bat-beacon in the sky signaling a certain vigilante's need to fight crime, the thermometer's "One Ring" readout awakens my need to break out the "Lord of the Rings" DVDs and do a "War of the Ring" marathon.

I have plenty of frozen steaks, dozens of cans of soup, and more than a dozen 12-packs of Sunkist, Squirt, and other assorted pops. On top of that, three "Lord of the Rings" extended editions last practically forever. I don't need to go anywhere and I'll be damned if I'm going to give in to the demands of the two-timing weather around here.

Fuck you, Old Man Winter, I can wait you out.

Silent Radio

2009-12-08T06:51:00.002-06:00

I've been having trouble listening to "Coast to Coast" recently. I thought it was because my radio sucks at picking out frequencies - I can't seem to narrow in on a specific frequency because the antenna resolution is so poor that I pick up a single block that's about 50 kHz wide!

But tonight I just found out that "Coast to Coast" is only broadcast in Chicago for the first two hours, before another show takes over. As far as I can tell, "Coast to Coast" is just sliced in two - and the second half is never aired here anymore! What's worse is the fact that the last hour is supposed to be the telephone call-in hour - when all the crazies get to rear their ugly, hilarious heads. We miss the best part! And do you know who's to blame?

That's right - "WLS 890 AM" is going on the big board. Let me ask you something, WLS 890 - what is the point of broadcasting a syndicated show that you pay for if you're going to carve it up like a turkey?

Or, more accurately, like a turkey with the fucking drumsticks chucked out!?

Late nights just became a whole lot less interesting...

Dirty City

2009-12-08T06:36:00.002-06:00

It didn't take long after Takara Batman's arrival for me to realize that not all was well with him. One evening, I saw him standing by the living room window:

He was just standing there, watching the sun set on his city.

I'm sure he knew I was right there, but he still didn't move - silent and frozen, his piercing stare kept watch as night fell.

Then I heard him mutter to himself, in a growl that was just barely audible: "It's a dirty city. It's a dirty, filthy city."

He just kept repeating the same thing, over and over again, with a grim look on his face. "A dirty, filthy city."

Actually, I always thought that this was a particularly clean city. But what do I know? I've only lived here for most of my adult life - an adult life not dedicated to ninja training and crime-fighting.

That night was when I knew we'd have to get Takara Batman some more friends to hang out with - before he completely lost his mind.

Imagery

2009-12-03T23:34:00.003-06:00

Whenever I hear the title of the film "A Fistful of Dollars," I always imagine a guy with an open handful of silver dollars.

It took 10 years before I ever realized that most people probably imagine a guy with a fistful of paper money, rather than coins. Intellectually, I know that that is a much more natural image to come to mind (and you can hold a lot more dollars in cash than in coins). Yet even knowing that now, I cannot avoid thinking of the silver dollars, rather than the paper dollars.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one.

Intar-Web Funny

2009-12-03T17:38:00.002-06:00

I found these while randomly poking around on the internet. Author(s) are unknown.

On Screen, Mr. Worf!

2009-12-01T16:19:00.002-06:00

In the High Energy Physics building at the University of Chicago, in a back corner of one the hallways, lies the ATLAS control station. At least, that's what I think it is - in several years, I've only ever seen it being used once. However, as rarely as it is used, it still manages to silently scream for your attention, with its impressive 10-monitor hookup.

When not in use, the technological display is further enhanced by the visually impressive, 10-part linked desktop background. I thought it was cool, so I took a few pictures:

Each screen is part of a large mosaic of deep space image, filled with galaxies of every size, shape, and color. I assume that the original source is one of the Hubble Deep Field images.

(Sorry about the flash)

The display is even more impressive with the surrounding hallway lights turned off, as the galaxies and monitors then seem to glow. My camera wasn't up to the task of capturing this, but hopefully you'll get some idea of what it was like:

CGI Sci-Fi Cameos

2009-11-30T16:15:00.003-06:00

A casual fan may have been surprised by the revelation that R2-D2 had a cameo in Star Trek, but long-time fans are no strangers to spaceship, robot, and even building cameos in their favorite franchises. Thanks to sneaky Visual FX wizardry and the relative ease with which 3D models can be imported into computer-generated scenery, modern-day televised and cinematic science fiction has somewhat unintentionally become an interwoven tapestry, filled with myriad, subtle visual connections.

Another Star Trek-Star Wars connection lies in "Star Trek: First Contact," where, believe it or not, the Millennium Falcon takes part in the fight against the Borg! It's a bit tough to see, but this one's been confirmed by the VFX artist responsible for the cameo.

Star Trek cameos have themselves appeared in other shows, most notably "Battlestar Galactica" (greatest show ever!). For example, during the mini-series and first season, the U.S.S. Enterprise can be seen as a member of the rag-tag fleet:

Another more subtle cameo can be seen in the recently released movie "The Plan," where got to see many of the 12 colonies. Here's Virgon:

Several times on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and most recently in the beginning of "Star Trek: Nemesis," we saw the Romulan capital city and the Imperial Romulan Senate:

Note the round building in the center, supported by a circle of columns, with very long staircases extending outwards. Now look again at Virgon - you can see the Romulan Senate in the bottom left-hand corner! Interestingly, Virgon was completely annihilated by the Cylons - and Romulus was similarly annihilated in the most recent Star Trek movie! Does that mean Virgon is Romulus? And would that mean Sagittaron or Aerilon was Remus?

We can bring yet another franchise into the fold with the next cameo - during the "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries, one can see a Serenity-class ship from "Firefly" flying in the skies in the background:

There are far too many cameos for me to list all of them here, but consider the following thought:

If we disregard cameos where an object from one show is in a scene of another show, but fulfilling a completely different purpose than originally intended - for example, a model of a ship from one show being used as a hand-held laser gun on another show - then we can infer that the presence of such objects in their original form - like a spaceship from one show acting as that same spaceship in another show - implies that the two shows occur in the same continuity.

In other words, "Star Trek," "Star Wars," "Firefly," "Battlestar Galactica," and a whole host of other shows and movies all take place in the same universe!

You might be worried at the inconsistencies of settings, because one takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, while another takes place in the final frontier of the 23rd century - but that's OK, because all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again!

Osmos

2009-11-29T23:16:00.002-06:00

Osmos is a small, independent game I've been following for a while now. The demo came out a long time ago (maybe six months? A year?), but its actual final release is pretty recent.

Remember "Spore," the Will Wright game that took years to be released and was supposed to be this amazing magnum opus from one of the best game designers of all time? The game that was supposed to model life from its most basic elements to the farthest reaches of an intergalactic civilization?

Remember how only the first 25 minutes or so (the part based on small, single-celled lifeforms) ended up being really fun? While the rest was more...tedious? Followed by dull?

Well, "Osmos" is basically the good part of "Spore." Which is a great thing.

You play as a small single-celled life-form and wander around, trying to eat things that are smaller to grow in size, while avoiding the larger creatures around you (until you're big enough to eat them).

It's also got some great puzzles (physics nerds will especially enjoy some of the intense gravity stuff - epicycles!) and a very soothing, relaxed atmosphere - an excellent combination of ambient music and delightfully pretty visuals.

Go to their site and try out the demo. If you like the game, you can grab it for $10 - which isn't a lot of money. I've heard it can be had for even cheaper on Steam.

Do it, and you'll get the best part of Spore for a fifth of the price - whilst simultaneously supporting independent video game creators.

Masquerade

2009-11-29T20:43:00.003-06:00

Random searching on the internet lead me to the fascinating story of a book called "Masquerade."

Published in 1979, "Masquerade" is a children's book filled with colorful, bizarre, somewhat surreal paintings that tell a seemingly innocuous story. But hidden in these paintings are a series of clues, purporting to lead to a valuable buried treasure worth thousands of dollars.

Each painting is filled with all sorts of secondary clues, and each painting contributes to one central clue (essentially the solution). The first person to solve the puzzle would know exactly where the treasure was, and could either dig for it themselves or mail the solution to the author for the prize (in case they were not from the author's native England).

The book captivated the imaginations of thousands, created the modern genre of "armchair detective books," and initiated an international treasure hunt that continued for more than two years before the treasure itself was finally found.

I invite you to read more about the story at this website, which contains plenty of background information, archived documents, and a page-by-page analysis of "Masquerade" and some of its many clues, hints, and puzzles.

SPOILERS:
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yes, the treasure was real, and yes, the men who found it did so by cheating. But I think it's comforting to know that two men did solve it legitimately and were only a day away from officially winning the treasure themselves. I also think it's comforting - if a bit bittersweet - to know that the two men who cracked the case were physicists.

New Roommates

2009-11-29T20:05:00.002-06:00

Over the past six months or so, I've been acquiring some new roommates here at the Penthouse. Though the neighborhood is relatively safe, if you're smart about things and keep alert, it never hurts to know that there's someone with you who's always got your back. Plus it always helps to have someone around to talk to or let off steam with.

So allow me to present the first of the new arrivals, Takara Batman:

Made by Takara, Takara Batman is a 1/6 scale (12") action figure from "Batman Begins."

Released in 2005 (along with "Batman Begins"), Takara Batman was the most popular 1/6 Batman action figure of its time, held in the highest regard by critics and collectors, in a time when there were multiple competitors. As you can see, he's extremely poseable:

Takara Batman was so popular that he was re-released in 2008, in time for the new film, "The Dark Knight," giving collectors (both serious and casual) another chance at this guy. Just in time for me, too!

He comes in this very cool box, illustrated with a close-up of Batman's body armor, complete with battle damage.

He also comes with a bunch of different hands, weapons, and accessories:

In order to keep his gadgets with him, he can attach them to his utility belt. You can see one of his batarangs attached to his belt in the pics above. His grappling gun also has a spot, on the back:

The versatility of this little guy is of course enhanced greatly by all the options the extras give him.

I think the headsculpt looks quite a lot like Christian Bale, which is especially impressive given that you can only see the lower half of his face! Unfortunately, I do think that the paint application is a bit simplistic - there's not enough shading or variation. So even though it looks a hell of a lot like Bale, it still looks toy-like.

Takara Batman actually comes with another sculpt, in case you want to take off Batman's cape and cowl and relax in the Bat-cave:

(Apparently, while stopping bullets, Batman's suit also attracts quite a bit of dust. Sorry!)

Again, while I think the sculpt looks a good deal like Bale (this one looks more like a younger Bale than the Bat-sculpt), I think this one looks even more toy-like - a combination of simplistic painting and oversimplified sculpting - the critical details are there to indicate that this is Bale, but there aren't enough details to make it look real. It even looks almost (dare I say it?) doll-like.

Finally, Takara Batman comes with an entirely alternate look: The survival suit and harness, as well as a hood, in case you want a "First Night Out" Bruce Wayne - when he was testing his equipment and vigilante skills, but before he decided to use the "Batman" persona as a way of instilling fear in criminals.

I like the alternate look, but I really don't like the hood - it's not at all movie accurate (this is more of a ninja hood, while Bruce Wayne wore a straight-up ski mask) and it also suffers from being over-simplified, making it look cheap. Between this and the headsculpt, Takara Batman is going to need a little personal modification!

Takara Batman was only the first of the new roommates to arrive - there are plenty of others, and they've been getting into some pretty interesting shenanigans. I've also been working on constructing my own action figures, as well as modifying existing figures. So don't worry, there's still plenty more to come soon!

Google Changed Everything

2009-11-20T14:35:00.001-06:00

Even the Empire is getting with the times.

Those poor grunts - doomed to never find the droids that they're looking for.

Intar-Web Funny

2009-11-18T16:51:00.001-06:00

I found these while randomly poking around on the internet. Author(s) are unknown.

Spanish War of the Worlds

2009-11-18T01:09:00.002-06:00

One Spanish edition of "The War of the Worlds" features the U.S.S. Enterprise on the cover. I'm not sure why - maybe the Enterprise was actually the Martian mothership?

If you think about it, it actually takes some balls to plaster the Enterprise on the cover of your completely-unrelated book.

Quote of the Day

2009-11-11T19:40:00.001-06:00

Batman: "The hammer of justice is unisex."

Only the Dark Knight could make this declaration without cracking a smile.

No Powerups

2009-11-07T13:53:00.002-06:00

Stripped to his birthday suit, Mario seems a lot less impressive. But I'm willing to bet it's not the lack of clothes - it's the lack of mustache. Even naked, with the mustache, he'd be a force to be reckoned with.

(Supposedly this was created by an artist whose website was deleted almost immediately after this image was released - maybe Princess Peach silenced him)