Progress is achieved by taking part, not by switching off.
Just a note to all you lovely Internet folk: The moment you start calling people sheep, whatever argument you were trying to make lost all credibility and interest.
Really. It’s old.
Things are changing
I meant to launch into a redesign of the website back in January, but for some mysterious reason that never happened. In the coming months however I’ll have a few things I want to publish to the site, so I’ll be instituting some gradual changes to the site as that forthcoming stuff goes up. The focus of the site will be shifting away from a forum for my occasional rants and towards a showcase of my work and a discussion upon it. The rants will still be around somewhere and in some form, but probably not plastered on the front page for days on end.
The first of these changes is the rotating slideshow of images on the front page, highlighting my various projects. As I complete more of my project pages, writing at least one interesting thing about each project, I’ll add them into the rotation as well. I deal with pictures, so perhaps I should be showing them off more often.
More coming soon…
The final episode of Battlestar Galactica has gone to air. All involved should be congratulated for creating such a satisfying conclusion to what has been in whole a brilliant series. That is all. Now let the Internet do it’s thing and ruin everyone’s fun.
UPDATE: People can be so boring. A common complaint from fundies with regards to many movies (especially science-fiction) is that they do not portray a world in subservience to a higher power. That is, these people demand that their view of the universe be reflected in all areas of life, fictional creations included. For people to complain simply about the inclusion of supernaturalism in BSG is hypocrisy. Boring “Internet Atheist” hypocrisy.
MORE: A response:
Whilst reflecting this morning upon the absolutely and exhilaratingly satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest television series of all time, I found myself mulling over the very issue you singled out. It’s strange that I, as an atheist, accept BSG’s heavy spiritualist slant with such enthusiasm. I guess it’s all in the way they handle it: their approach is unwaveringly agnostic - they refuse to categorise or define the higher power which guides the characters through their journey, a truly refreshing attitude to behold when contrasted with common real-world views on religion.
What it comes down to is the show’s creators have crafted a universe in which the existence of a higher power is virtually undeniable, but have done so with such guile, intellect and pathos that where you in the shoes of these characters, even the hardiest of non-believers would be forced to see the truth permeating all the events which brought you to where you are.
Reality 1, Deluded Jerktards 0
Anyone want to know where to find some primo kiddie porn? Ask everyone’s favourite uber-pedophile Stephen Conroy and his buddies at ACMA. Their secret stash has been made not-so-secret anymore by the fine freedom-loving folk at WikiLeaks. Says Senator Shitheel:
“No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.”
I don’t know about that. From earlier in the article:
“The list itself should concern every Australian - although plenty of the material is unsavoury or even illegal, the presence of sites like YouTube, MySpace, gambling or even Christian sites on the list raises a lot of questions,” [Colin Jacobs, EFA] said.
Cue bleating insistence from Conroy that by the time the list affects all of Australia it will be pruned to only the kiddie porn they insist the list is for, and won’t also block sites that are objectionable to the moralist assholes who have sway with the stuffed shirts who run the country.
I suppose I’m not interested in “cyber safety” though. Partly because anyone using the word “cyber” should not be trusted. Mostly however it’s because I don’t think the Internet should be made kid-safe at the sake of adult freedom. If parents don’t want their kids to see “bad” content, parents can supervise their children.
This program is not about “cyber safety” however. It can’t be, because it does not limit access to the objectionable content. It is about the Labor Party buying the votes of lazy, paranoid parents who are convinced that the world is out to corrupt their sweet, innocent little lambs of god. And if the last election went the other way, it would be about the Liberal Party doing the same. They’re all a bunch of morally corrupt whores.
Except for Nick Xenophon. Turns out the only person I voted for at the last election might not actually have shit for brains. For now.
The trailer for Michael Mann’s new movie Public Enemies starring Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, and the batshit-insane Marion Cotillard. It is truly bizarre seeing a period of history that has in the past been so well filmed be given the digital video treatment. IMDB says a Sony CineAlta F23 was used. It’ll be very interesting to see how the film (can we still call them that?) looks on the big screen.
UPDATE: I’m hearing now that while most of the movie was shot on the F23, a small amount was shot on the smaller EX1. Cool.
Apple is hosting a preview of the new iPhone OS 3.0 early next week. As an iPod touch owner, I’m already familiar with the sting of selective upgrades (apparently I’m not allowed to have Google Maps Street View). Hopefully I won’t be deprived of the worthwhile upgrades to come.
It occurs to me however that as someone who types words into a computer that are then published to a (somewhat) public-facing website, I am obligated to offer up a set of features I hope to see included in 3.0, and to then assert my imagined authority by calling them “predictions” instead of “wild guesses I just extracted from where I keep my poop”. So here’s one thing I’d like to see in iPhone OS 3.0:
Voiceover.
“With Big Rubber Cocks”: a new game from the boffins at Cook’d and Bomb’d.
Robert Mugabe is reported to own long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.
The President of Zimbabwe apparently possesses tapes of some early episodes of the science fiction series that could be thirty or forty years old, according to The Sun.
The Sun wouldn’t make something like this up would they?
My fellow 2008 HBCA graduate Ari Crellin discusses his graduating film, The Human Prism for Channel 9.
“South Australian Film Sampler”, the collection of 16mm films which I cut down into a 60 minute presentation (58m34s to be precise), will be getting its one and only public screening tomorrow 12 noon in Palace cinema 7. It’ll be followed by a panel discussion with the project’s producer Mike Walsh, local eccentric personality Peter Goers, film director Mario Andreacchio, and others who are not me. I managed to avoid it thankfully. I can’t imagine I’d have much interesting to say other than “Do you like how I kept in as many instances of casual racism as I could?”
I’ll post something of a post-mortem shortly.
The classic Amiga game, Pinball Dreams, has made its way to the iPod touch and iPhone. Brilliant.
Tony Kelly is way not into cyber sex with dudes, he swears
So the NSW Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, has decided that MMOs are illegal in Australia. I put forward that the reason Mr. Kelly is so insistent on demonising games such as Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft is that he was recently busted having cyber sex with a Night Elf chick who turned out to be a dude. It’s the only scenario that makes any sense.
Actually there could be a couple of things going on here. The NSW MfP’s argument is that since these games don’t carry any classification, selling them is illegal. I looked it up in the OFLC database, and these games are indeed unclassified. The relevant industry association contends that since the games have no single-player component, classification is not required. These are the basic facts of the situation, and they’re undisputed.
The argument for not classifying these games (which I agree with) is that since all online interactions depend upon the unpredictable behaviour of other players, classifying a game based upon all possible activities in the game would be unfeasible. At the very least, all games which included unrestricted text chat could be held liable for the behaviour of filthy government ministers and their disgusting elf fetish. The model the ESRB in the US follows is that while the scripted, single-player components of games are rated, online interactions are not, for the mentioned reasons.
An optimistic assessment of this fiasco is that by calling for retailers to be reported for selling these items, the NSW Minister for Police is doing a sensible thing, essentially calling for reform of federal classification laws. This reform is desperately needed. Much as I’d like to think highly of our leaders (well not specifically my leaders - I’m a South Australian and this asshole is in New South Wales), I don’t find this plausible.
MMOs have been on sale in this country for a very long time now. Warcraft, the biggest game of the genre, went on sale here in late 2004. Warhammer Online went on sale late 2008, and that game runs servers in this country. I don’t think EA (or their local surrogates) would invest in that infrastructure without checking to see whether they were entering into a criminal enterprise.
No, what I think is going on here is misguided moralism. Game retailers are not breaking the law, and I expect any pending lawsuits to prove this. Well unless we get similarly misguided moralists as judges in those cases. So I guess we’re fucked. What I see going on here is the same reactionary nonsense that went on 30 years ago over Dungeons & Dragons. Misguided moralists pissed off not by a minor legal quibble, but by the general content of these games and the continued misconception that - like cartoons and comic books - “games are for kids”.
Gizmodo “editorial director” Brian Lam decides he can have it both ways. He’s just now recognising that feverish speculation over someone’s health is ghoulish. Welcome to the human race, asshole.
Running through my logs, I just found this post I made back in September. I was a miserable twat. It since turns out Genius is an excellent way to quickly generate a decent playlist on the go - no more dealing with On The Go, which is an even more frustrating experience on the iPod touch.