Tag Archives: Entertainment

My latest TV addiction: “How The States Got Their Shapes.”

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I watch and read a lot of non-fiction. The Discovery Channels are frequently tuned in on my TV because they have so many shows that I love to watch. The History Channel, though, not so much. Mainly because whenever I flip by it it seems like it’s either A) something World War II related most of which I’ve seen already or B) one of the crap shows like Ancient Aliens which lot of these channels, including the Discovery ones, program for the idiots in the audience who buy into that nonsense.

Well, yesterday I flipped by the History Channel and fell into the lap of a marathon showing of How The States Got Their Shapes and I was hooked. Each show has a theme such as “Living on the Edge” and “Mouthing Off” which connects the stories they cover and it’s absolutely fascinating. As an example, to this day there is a dispute between Tennessee and Georgia over where their border happens to be. Here’s a small clip from the show that explains why:

In the episode “Mouthing Off” they don’t cover so much the shape of the States as they are, but as they would be if you were to base them on their regional accents. The first episode, themed “A River Runs Through It”, talks about how water and access to it has defined a number of States. I was surprised at just how much I learned watching this show, which apparently debuted back in the spring and I’m only just finding out about it and I’m hoping they’ll continue the series.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out when it repeats on the History Channel. If you’re anything like me you’ll enjoy it.

‘Doctor Who’ season 6 launches on April 23 on BBC America.

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Get ready to program your DVRs. The new season of Doctor Who will hit BBC America on April 23rd and rumor has it that it’s the same day and date as the U.K. premier. No more waiting two weeks after the British airing? Yes please!

Doctor Who Banner

Here’s some more background on the premiere: “Doctor Who is coming to America in a spectacular two-part season premiere on BBC AMERICA. Part One premieres Saturday, April 23 at 9/8c. The mysterious time traveler, the Doctor (Matt Smith), and his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), find themselves on a secret summons that takes them on an adventure from the desert in Utah – right to the Oval Office in1969. More details will be revealed in the coming weeks about this two-parter penned by ‘Who supremo’ Steven Moffat (Sherlock) and featuring guest star Mark Sheppard (Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica). Also set to return this season, Alex Kingston (ER, Flash Forward), as the irrepressible River Song.”

via BBCAmerica – Anglophenia blog.

The Utah episode was actually filmed in Utah marking the first time an episode of DW has been filmed in the States. Yes, that’s even taking into account the American made TV movie as that was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. There were plans to film one of Colin Baker’s episodes in America — The Two Doctors — set in New Orleans which was rewritten for Spain when funding didn’t come through.

Alas, I’ll still be grabbing these episodes off the Intertubes as AT&T U-Verse doesn’t offer BBC America HD yet and I just can’t bring myself to watch it in standard definition.

Dumbledore comes to this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special.

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OK so that’s not entirely true. The character of Dumbledore won’t be coming to DW, but rather the actor who currently plays him: Michael Gambon. Additionally it sounds like this will be the most Christmas-y DW special of them all:

“Oh, we’re going for broke with this one. It’s all your favourite Christmas movies at once, in an hour, with monsters. And The Doctor. And a honeymoon. And… oh, you’ll see. I’ve honestly never been so excited about writing anything. I was laughing madly as I typed along to Christmas songs in April. My neighbours loved it so much they all moved away and set up a website demanding my execution. But I’m fairly sure they did it ironically.”

The Christmas special will feature one very big guest star: Dumbledore. That’s right: Michael Gambon will be guest starring in the Christmas special. “Michael Gambon is as distinguished an actor as I can imagine and the fact that he was Dumbledore means that he is already known to millions of children,” Moffat said. Classical singer Katherine Jenkins will also appear.

BBC exec Ben Stephenson has revealed that the episode will be based upon Charles Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol, providing a “clever twist” on the story, as well as giving “Amy and the Doctor for an unforgettable present!”

I’m quite pleased with Matt Smith’s take on The Doctor and while this season had a few episodes that were a little “meh”, the finale was pretty damned impressive. I’m also, oddly enough, a big fan of A Christmas Carol so seeing a DW take on the story is something to look forward to.

“Tron Legacy” trailer hits the Net.

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I am so excited for this movie. I was a huge fan of the original and have always held out hope that someday there would be a sequel. Don’t know how good it’ll be, but the trailer is very drool worthy:

Now there’s something to look forward to in December. Assuming I’m employed and have the spare cash to go to the movies.

“Bioshock 2″ following in “Modern Warfare 2′s” footsteps for multiplayer.

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It looks like the folks at Infinity Ward may have started a trend among developers of first person shooters on the PC. Word now comes from a Q&A about Bioshock 2‘s multiplayer mode over at The Cult of Rapture that it will not have dedicated server support, LAN play, or the ability to kick troublemakers from the game:

Do you support LAN play on consoles or PC? Do you support dedicated servers?
Short answer, no and no. There is always a finite amount of time for the development of a game. Bringing Multiplayer to BioShock was a daunting task between the tech (there was no multiplayer support in the codebase from the first game) and the expectations of the community. Either you try to do everything and so nothing feels finished or you focus your efforts to do a smaller number of things really well like an accessible online experience. We chose to spend the time we had creating a solid game foundation and unfortunately that did not include LAN play or dedicated servers.

How does your matchmaking system work and how do you make sure there isn’t lag or bad match ups?
The matchmaking system takes a couple of things into account. We try to get you into a game as quickly as possible (since we know how much waiting really stinks), but match you up to people who are as close to your rank and skill as possible, with a certain amount of weighting to each factor, as well as requiring a low ping for those matched players.

How do you deal with people who grief or cheat or are otherwise not making a good ranked experience? Can you kick them?
Even though we are doing everything we can to try to find exploits in our own game, there will always be people who will find a way to grief a game. There is no kick option as we felt like it often leads to more unfair kicking than fair kicking. We hope that because there are a variety of player goals and a multitude of options for ranking up and killing, the player will always feel like he or she is gaining something in a match with mean people and griefers. If you do get matched up with one of those people, please report it, leave that game, and we’ll try to smooth out the online experience as best as we can.

It sounds more or less just like the multiplayer system in Modern Warfare 2 which a lot of fans, including myself, weren’t happy about. This is disappointing to say the least and I expect it’ll be plagued with similar problems as a result. No word on what ant-cheat system they’ll be using, MW2 uses Valve’s VAC system, and that could go a long way to determining how much of a problem cheaters end up being.

Back when I wrote my rant discouraging folks from buying the PC version of MW2 the number of people using aimbots/wallhacks was simply ridiculous and, combined with how long it takes a ban in VAC to be enforced, was making the multiplayer almost pointless. These days it’s settled down quite a bit and I can only assume that someone must be banning cheaters more often as it’s possible to go through a number of sessions with nary a cheater in sight, but the damage has been done and now legitimate players are accused of cheating simply for having a high kill/death ratio. It’s even happened to me and I’m hardly a great player.

I never bought the first Bioshock due to the ridiculously restrictive SecuROM DRM it had and it was looking like BS2 was going in a similar direction, but they recently announced they were scaling back the restrictions for BS2 at least somewhat:

There will be no SecuROM install limits for either the retail or digital editions of BioShock 2, and SecuROM will be used only to verify the game’s executable and check the date. Beyond that, we are only using standard Games for Windows Live non-SSA guidelines, which, per Microsoft, comes with 15 activations (after that, you can reset them with a call to Microsoft.)

What does that mean for your gameplay experience? This means that BioShock 2’s new DRM is now similar to many popular games you advised had better DRM through both digital and retail channels. Many of you have used Batman: Arkham Asylum as an example to me, which uses the exact same Games for Windows Live guidelines as us as well as SecuROM on retail discs, and now our SecuROM is less restrictive on Steam.

This is better than the first game, but still not fabulous. It was loose enough to make me consider buying the sequel along with perhaps the original – seeing as they’ve since dropped the DRM from the first game altogether – but the fact that they’re using a similar matchmaking system as MW2 has dropped my enthusiasm back down to zero.

The Washington Post wants to know your favorite webcomic of the past decade.

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Webcomics are a topic near and dear to my heart. While they don’t show up in my sidebar blogroll that’s only because I have a whole separate list of webcomic links I keep in my Google Reader and it would make an already long sidebar list even longer.

The folks at the Washington Post are having a little unscientific poll asking folks to vote for their favorite webcomics and I thought you guys would like to know about it.

Last week, Comic Riffs put out the call by asking: What are your favorite webcomics of the past 10 years? Readers soon responded strongly and passionately (via comments and Facebook and Twitter), nominating hundreds of titles. (For the uninitiated and even for the true fan, it made for a healthy wealth of recommended reading.)

Many of the comics that made the cut were deadlocked — and among some of the worthy titles that just missed the cut were: “Anders Loves Maria”; “Cat and Girl”; “Goats”; “GPF”; “Templar, Arizona”; and “Wondermark” (that excellent exercise in “illustrated jocularity” that had ties to the print world, too, appearing until a coupla years ago in The Onion.).

Now, we’ve got the Big Ballot — and it’s time to vote for your faves as we all narrow this down to a handful of finalists. Balloting will close midnight Wednesday. (And if not all these strips fit your definition of a “webcomic,” feel free to sound off on that interminable kerfuffle, too — some obviously have seen the light of print at times.)

via Comic Riffs – THE BEST WEBCOMIC: It’s time to vote on your nominations….

Several of my favorites made the list: PVP, Penny Arcade, Sinfest, xkcd, and, surprisingly enough, Jesus and Mo. Another surprise was the fact that the amazing Wondermark did not make the cut. It was tough picking out my favorite, but I had to go with the one that got me started on reading webcomics, PVP, even though Scott Kurtz said he wanted PVP votes to go to Penny Arcade. If I could have voted for all my favorites I would have as those are the only ones I tend to read. The current front runner is one I’ve never read called Least That I Could Do and, while I hold no animosity towards said author, it is slightly worrisome that some of my favorites haven’t even gotten a percentage point in votes yet. Not that they have to win, mind you, but it would be nice if they had more than 0% of the vote.

So if you enjoy participating in pointless Internet polls that really don’t prove a damned thing then head on over and see if your favorite is on the list and then vote for it whatever it happens to be. You will have done your part in nothing of any consequence at all and can feel good knowing your small effort will result in the Washington post getting more traffic on a single entry than they probably have any right to get.

Infinity Ward has fucked over “Call of Duty” fans who play on the PC.

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Yes I am upset and it’s probably a bad idea to write a blog entry when I’m as upset as I am now, but I’m going to anyway because this needs to be said. This is not a review of the game, I’ll write one of those later. This is a warning to anyone who’s thinking of buying it for the PC: Don’t fucking bother.

The reason why is quite simple. Infinity Ward decided that it was too much work to do much more than simply port the game over from the Xbox 360 so that’s all they did. The broke a long-standing tradition among first person shooters on the PC and decided they were not going to release a dedicated server to the fans. Instead they announced that MW2 would make use of a new matchmaking service they would be calling IWNet. They made this announcement during an interview on BASHandSlash.com’s podcast. It was not received well:

Bowling, the Infinity Ward community manager, said IWNet makes multiplayer more accessible to the PC community on Modern Warfare 2, replacing the need for dedicated servers that are hosted and managed by players. But the hardcore PC crowd to whom he was talking, on BASHandSlash.com’s webcast, did not take the news in a completely positive light.

“The silence you hear is because we’ve got a community right now structured in such a way that it relied on having dedicated servers,” one of BASHandSlash’s moderators told Bowling.

“You’re definitely reshaping the way the community has been set up,” another said later.

“Definitely,” Bowling acknowledged.

Reshaping is certainly one word to use. I prefer to use the words fucked over. Which is definitely a much harsher assessment, but the lack of dedicated servers is not the worst of it. A bit later the folks at ArsTechnica filled us in on the other changes to come:

We thought the lack of dedicated servers was bad, but now we can add the lack of console commands, the inability to have a say in who hosts the game, a lengthy pause while the game migrates to a new host if the currently selected host quits, no leaning, no option to record matches, and no way to kick or block trouble players, hackers, or cheaters.

See that last part I made bold type above? That’s where Infinity Ward has fucked over PC fans of their game. Mere hours after the game hit store shelves there was an aimbot/wallhack released for the PC version which you may recall me writing about previously. CoD:MW2 was released on November 10th. They didn’t get around to banning the first batch of cheaters until November 30th at which point about 2500 people were banned from Steam. Not that it matters as there is a crack out there and you can make as many Steam accounts as you want, each of which gets its own SteamID. There’s even a YouTube video showing you how to do it. Plus there are new hacks being created all the time. That’s just a fact of life on the PC. Hell, some of the hacks even advertise themselves in the game.

There’s no way that Infinity Ward or Valve can keep up with the cheaters in any reasonable amount of time. If we had dedicated servers this would be less of a problem as the admins can kick and ban by IP address at the first sign of a cheater. As things stand now not only are there no admins to deal with cheaters, but there’s no means of kicking cheaters at all. At the very fucking least it would’ve been nice to have the ability to call a vote to kick someone who’s being an ass in the game, but Infinity Ward won’t even let us do that.

I can live without dedicated servers if I have to. I can live with the max size of a match being 18 people. I can live with not being able to use custom user created maps. I can even live without the ability to lean around corners. Not being able to get rid of the cheaters, however, completely ruins the multiplayer game which, when you consider how short the single player is, is the main reason to buy the game in the first place.

There’s a certain class of person out there known as a Griefer and it appears they are having a field day with MW2. And why not? It’s not like anyone can do anything about it outside of Valve and Infinity Ward and that’ll take weeks before the SteamID is banned and then they can just make another one and keep right on going. This evening I joined and quit no less than two dozen games because the cheaters were out in force with no less than at least 4 cheaters in each game and one where half the players where cheating. I spent an hour just trying to find a game that didn’t have a cheater in it. When I quit the last game I sat down and wrote this entry.

This has to be the stupidest decision Infinity Ward has ever made. I find it hard to believe there isn’t a single person on that development team who didn’t foresee this being a problem with their decision to drop dedicated servers and remove any ability to kick players from a game. It was one thing when it was one guy every few dozen games or so, but when every game you join has a whole bunch of fucking cheaters in them it kills any desire I have to play the game at all. On the console versions all you have to worry about is people taking advantage of glitches that will eventually get patched and when people get banned there they can’t easily get back in. The PC is a completely different environment and only a fool would try to treat it like a console, but that’s just what Infinity Ward has decided to do.

As a result of this fiasco I can not recommend people buy the PC version of this game no matter how amazing it is. Perhaps IW will come up with a fool-proof way of eliminating the cheaters in a more timely fashion, but until they do it’s just not worth the aggravation on the PC. As a long-time fan of the company I am deeply disappointed and my outlook isn’t helped by the almost complete lack of comment from the Infinity Ward people on the problem.