wasting time

“KIRK, a Captain, in the service of Starfleet”

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Wm. Shakespeare writes STAR TREK (“Amok Time”).

“a holocaust of prose”

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seen via Justine Larbalestier:

The Worst Review Ever, a blog where writers, actors, musicians, etc, can submit the worst review they’ve ever received. Personally, I think some of these are extraordinarily cruel (Hello, “a candy-coated turd”), but I’ve been known to hate on a book or two in my time.

I do disagree with Justine Larbalestier when she says its “awesome” that people react so intensely to her books. When I have a powerful negative response to a book, it’s not because of its engaging qualities, any more than Charles Manson should feel warm and snuggly inside because he’s evoked strong feelings from me.

Hey, authors, have anything you want to send?

The Blue Beanie

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For folks who like Samorost, Jay Is Games is offering a new free game: The Blue Beanie.

Created by a Malaysian artist studying multimedia in Australia, it’s a gorgeous point and click puzzle game about a ghostly woodland creature trying to retrieve, yes, a stolen Blue Beanie.

It’s beautiful to look at and the puzzle solutions are pretty logical. Also, if you’re stuck on what to do next, you can click on the ghost–he looks at the thing he wants you to work on next. There’s also a walkthrough at the top.

Wonderful. And kid-friendly.

I love this sort of thing

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Only an hour

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Ah, well. I only got an hour of free time for my writing today. No big. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

But for you, dear Reader, I have a link: Morningstar.

What is that, you wonder? It’s a free online game of the point-and-click narrative variety. It’s also remarkably well done–the visuals are excellent, the voice acting (there’s a lot of voice acting) very strong (although you can mute the sound) and you can even save the game part way through.

The story is simple: You’re second-in-command on the space ship Morningstar, and the opening of the game is a fantastic little cut scene of you and your ship crash landing on the surface of an alien world. The captain is injured and unable to move (but full of advice) and your engineer is dead. Can you salvage enough of your ship to make lift off? Why did you crash in the first place, and what happened to the other ship lying wrecked across the sand. Finally, how can you prevent it happening again when you try to leave?

It’s a surprisingly long game, with a lot of detail, and the story takes you much further down the rabbit hole than you expect. And of course, it’s all about the puzzles. How do you get this control panel to work? Where are all the pieces of the hull-repairing glue dispenser? What are you going to do about the ruined CO2 filter?

You click on items to pick them up, combine them, and use them with objects in the environment. Best of all, the objects are used in ways that are thoroughly sensible–not always a given in this sort of game. The captain gives you hints about the next step in the mission, but there’s a walkthrough, too, just in case. And the visuals are excellent. Hell, even if you just watch the pre-title animation sequence, you’ll be impressed.

It’s great fun. One of the best c&p games I’ve played in a long, long time. Enjoy.

Quote of the day:

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“For all his veniality and selfishness, Cat was a cool, smart dresser, unlike most _Red Dwarf_ fans,who smelt of piss.”
— Patrick West

“Road Cones Protect My Head”

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Speaking of tower defense games, here’s trailer for a new game, Plants Vs. Zombies:

Or you can check out the more traditional trailer here. And if that’s not odd or cute enough for you, this has to be the cutest zombie moment ever

You’re welcome.

Today (5 things make a Monday)

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  1. For dinner tonight, I made roast chicken (note: I hate my oven) and a from-scratch baguette that had tapenade rolled in it. Olive bread? Big hit with the fam. I’ll be doing that again.
  2. Just watched the latest CASTLE.  Yeah, it’s a good show.  And I would like 26 bestsellers, too, please.
  3. Just when I thought the swine flu thing was winding down, I find out it’s actually getting much worse.
  4. And I realize I’m a little late (hah!), but there are a couple of free comics online you can check out.  One.  Two.  That second one was written by Chris Sims, of Invincible Super Blog fame–it’s pretty ridiculous funny.  What’s that you say?  The internet is full of free comics?  Never mind.
  5. If you Google funny robot, no quotes, you get this animation, which at least has a robot in it, although I’m not sure where the funny comes in.  Look for more Google top hits in this blog in the future, since actual, thoughtful content turns out to be pretty hard to come up with.

I’ve been wanting to write a couple of more substantive posts…

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But that’s going to have to wait until I have some quite time. With Salad Eater attending a conference this weekend and working today, I’ve had a couple of Midays in a row.

Meanwhile, I will shock and surprise you all by posting a link.

Darths and Droids, a fumetti (as in: a webcomic made from photographs) that justifies the utterly random plot of THE PHANTOM MENACE in the only way imaginable–it was a fictionalization of an rpg campaign.

All the photos are stills from the movie, and I swear it is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Just as funny as DM of the Rings, which is a couple of years old (in case you haven’t seen it). The dialog for the comic is the dialog between the game master and the players.

And, God, does it bring back memories. Seen via AntickMusings.

6 things make a post

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* Check out this short “video” which I guess is supposed to advertise a new TV. Actually, I probably shouldn’t have quote marks around that word, because this is a digital video at 30 frames a second, but it’s really more of a technical acheivement than a short film. Basically, it’s “bullet-time” on red kryptonite.

* Health care reform without a public insurance option=the German model. Money quote: “Finally, premiums for children are covered by government out of general revenues, on the theory that children are not the human analogue of pets whose health care should be their owners’ (parents’) fiscal responsibility. Instead, children are viewed as national treasures whose health care should be the entire nation’s fiscal responsibility.”

* Seven year old boys prefer store-bought lemon-lime soda to the homemade variety.

* On NPR this morning, the father of Roxana Saberi, the journalist sentenced to 8 years in prison in what appears to be an Iranian kangaroo court, has been trying to make waves by telling people that his daughter was tricked into confessing to spying. According to him, they promised to let her go if she admitted to the crimes, which he thought was illegitimate. I hope someone explains to him that this happens in the U.S.A. all the time–the teenagers wrongfully convicted in the Central Park “wilding” case were nailed because of exactly this tactic, and that the FBI wanted Richard Jewel to confess to the Olympic bombing as part of a “training video.” While the Iranian government is deeply fucked up and in desperate need of reform, there’s no point in criticizing them for doing the same thing we do.

* I don’t have whatever cable channel showed THE WIRE, but I know it has a lot of fans. If you’re interested, here’s the original pitch and series bible. (Warning, that’s a .pdf file) I haven’t looked at it myself, because I plan to watch the series someday.

* Finally, putting my wife on a bus for her second day at her conference pretty much wasted my writing time today. My son is up, too, and once that happens I’ll have no time to focus on the book at all. Which sucks, but hey, that’s what family is about. Now we’re off for our Saturday library run.