March 17, John W. Backus died.
Backus was the computer scientist most famous for FORTRAN, the first high-level programming language and creator of the Backus-Naur form, the most commonly used form to define many programming languages and other communication protocols. He was the recipient of the Turing Award, the highest honor for the computer programming field.
His complete eulogy is here.
He will be missed.
There’s talk on the mozilla.dev.planning that the Mozilla Corporation could be considering creating a new Mozilla-based Desktop Environment (like GNOME or KDE) soon.
“I’m only proposing that we make a desktop environment, the same thing that KDE and Gnome, are. The only reason I mentioned a “Mozilla OS” is because we’d probably also want to release distributions for one of more specific kernels as a whole OS, including with it Firefox, Thunderbird, and any other applications built with the Mozilla platform available then. Currently there are plenty of kernels to put a Mozilla desktop environment on.” – Emery Denuccio
Sounds pretty interesting, really.
Someone took the time recently to create two of the vehicles from the Halo universe in the medium of Lego. It’s pretty awesome.
You’ve got your UNSC M12LRV (a.k.a. Warthog [or Puma]):
And your Covenant Spectre:
Pretty freaking pimp:
You can see the rest on the Flickr stream.
Though I think the Playstation 3 is a wonderful console, and if one really thinks about it, it’s a great deal (considering that a stand-alone Blu-Ray Disc player usually retails for about $1000 by itself), it’s just too expensive for me at the moment. So, I am glad to hear the announcement that Hironobu Sakaguchi (the creator of the Final Fantasy series) has given hints that a Final Fantasy game could be coming to the Xbox 360 platform.
I love the Final Fantasy series, and I have loved the 360 since I bought it about a month ago. So, for me, the two combined would be lovely. I just hope this actually comes through, and it’s not a MMORPG like XI. =/ Just a regular ‘ole Final Fantasy would be nice, please.
This is what Sakaguchi had to say:
“I feel that the Final Fantasy series should come to Xbox 360 as well. This is wise. It makes so much sense to me…it has so much potential in North America and in Europe. So there’s a great chance for the series to succeed on 360 as well.”
I know I’m a little late on this one, but I didn’t see it in theatres. Last night, I watched it with some of my friends from my dorm. I must say it’s a pretty kickass movie.
Casino Royale is the 21st James Bond Film, and it was the first one to star Daniel Craig. I must say that Craig is definitely an extremely good 007. The movie starts out with Bond killing a rouge MI6 section chief. He then gets tangled up in a bomb plot, and is soon thrust into a poker tournament for the “high rollers.” The buy-in is $10 million, and many of the players there are terrorists hoping to use the prize money ($150 million) to fund their activities. Bond enters to win the money away from these unsavory characters.
The acting of this movie was very good. Bond was excellent, the “Bond girl(s)” w(as/ere) hot, as it should be. The music was superb. In fact, it may be the first James Bond soundtrack to grace my music collection, if I can find it. The action sequences were tight, well-filmed, and exciting (especially the opening one… the henchman was freaking pimp, and he was clearly a free runner).
I must say, that Casino Royale was one of the best James Bond films I’ve seen in recent years. The plot was a bit shakey at points, but overall, it was an extremely good movie.
So, I went to see Frank Miller’s 300 almost a week ago, and I just realized that I’ve yet to make a blog entry about it. (The reason I remembered, is because I was going to make an entry about Casino Royale, but I noticed a review of 300 was clearly missing.) So, tonight, I will make two entries for two movie reviews. Enjoy. :)
So… 300. What other word can be used to describe it other than “EPIC” ? (Yes, all caps.) If you said “there isn’t one”, you would be correct. 300 was one of the best movies I’ve seen in recent times, and what makes it better is that I got to see it on a DLP screen, so it looked absolutely amazing. High Def > all.
In case you don’t know, 300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, which pitted a small band of Spartans (with assistance from a few other Ancient Greek City-States) against the massive horde of the Persian Army. 300 however, is not the most historically perfect rendition of the tale, though. As should be expected from a brainchild of Frank Miller, 300 takes a heavy supernatural lean.
There really isn’t much plot to speak of, except for the few scenes that take place in Sparta, but this is the Battle of Thermopylae, folks. You don’t need plot for that epic battle. 300 vs. a whole friggin’ lot is pretty much all you need to know.
The CG is amazing. The whole film has been artificially colored an orangish color, which greatly adds to the blood and war feeling. The monsters are done quite well, also, and the costumes and weapons are outstanding. Another thing is the blood effects. There is a copious amount of blood, but the animators take an interesting approach. Instead of having “streams” of blood, as would be the norm on such action movies, instead when a person is stabbed, slashed, or otherwise caused to bleed, the blood comes out in little “drops”. If you’ve seen the logo for 300, then you know what I’m talking about, as that is the style of the blood.
Overall, 300 was an amazing movie, and I can’t really do it justice while just using the textual medium. It is definitely a “must-see” film for anyone.
SCORE: A+
Recently, I helped someone I know revamp a little project they had. It’s called Enlightened Reason, and it is a forum dedicated to the discussion of Philosophical subjects. Pretty much anything goes there in regards to discussion, as long as you don’t flame another member if you disagree with their view, and no links to warez and porn (though discussions about the viability or morality of those subjects are allowed).
If you’re looking for a place to speak your mind on controversial subjects, and all those other forums don’t want that kind of stuff, then Enlightened Reason is the place for you. Every once in a while, we all like to have intelligent discussions with others over topics that might normally be locked or deleted at other places. But at Enlightened Reason, those are the kind of topics that we look for. Come join, and speak your mind. :)
I guess I should prefix this article with the fact that I bought an Xbox 360 recently. I’ve been playing a lot of Halo 2, Gears of War and Oblivion, lately, but for this review, I’m going to focus on the game Crackdown.
So, Crackdown. That game that comes with the Halo 3 beta invite. Yes, that’s probably one of the major influences in my initial decision, but if I knew what I know now, I would have bought it even if the beta invite wasn’t included. Yes, it really does stand on it’s own.
So, first up, Graphics. The graphics on this game are very good. The city that the game is placed in is a pretty big expanse ready for you to explore, and the buildings are all very well designed. The models are all in a pseudo-cell shade (if you’ve ever seen any models made in SketchUP, then you know what I’m talking about. Heck, for all I know, the models were made in SketchUP. I doubt it, but that’s the feel of the graphics. It’s a good look, especially in HD. :D
Plot. There is none. Really. You’re a super-human agent of a federal government who’s task is to kill gangs and their leaders. That’s pretty much it. Does that detract from the game? Sure, but not much. This game is meant to be a “sandbox” game, where you can do anything you feel like. Wanna kill gangs? Go for it. Don’t feel like killing gangs at the moment? You can just walk/run/jump/drive around the city and take in the sights. Maybe you’d like to participate in the various races throughout the city. Go ahead. It’s pretty much a “do whatever the hell you want” type of game.
Dialog. It gets repetitive. The gang members pretty much scream the same two or three things when they come to attack you. However, like I told someone, “Do you really think a gang member is going to say ‘Would you like to join us for some coffee while you’re here?’ to a federal agent who was sent in to eradicate them? No. They’re probably going to scream out death threats and other such things, which is exactly what they do in the game. Sure, there could be a bit more variety, but I still think that’s OK for the context.” Also, the “narrator” guy gets annoying after playing for a while.
My biggest beef against the game is the “lock-on” system. Sure, you can lock on to someone 500 feet away, but there’s also a good chance that it will lock on to something you don’t want it to lock on to, like a nearby car or other object instead of the gang member. It gets annoying after a while.
Overall. Overall, it’s a pretty good game. It’s not something like your Gears of War or your Halos, but it’s a good game that can stand on it’s own. The inclusion of the Halo 3 beta is a much appreciated inclusion, but it would easily be worth it if the beta wasn’t included.
Rating: B+
So yeah, it’s been a really long time since I’ve had an update on here (far longer than I wanted). However, don’t be worried, I have two updates rolling around in my head, planned for release sometime soon.
But the reason I haven’t made a post in forever is because that I’ve been insanely busy lately with classwork. Those of you who remember this post from a while back may be thinking, “What You have gay-easy classes, how can you possibly be backed up from those classes?” Well, believe me folks, that’s what I though, too. But apparently, those classes are much more work-intensive than I thought. I’ve had to read so much shit out of a textbook lately. I mean, seriously. I’ve probably read more out of a textbook this semester than I have for all of my High School classes. For every class period I have in Speech and Biology, I have to read a new chapter in the book. And these aren’t short chapters, either. They’re like 40 page chapters that are printed in 10 point font with two columns. They’re serious reading material.
And in the past week, I’ve had a test in three of my five classes, which means I have to go back and refresh both my notes and what I read in the book. It’s some serious studyage. And then, my free time is usually taken up by either writing for Comp, a GIS project I have to do for Geography, or a crapload of stuff dealing with genetics I have to do for Biology.
So yeah. Been a crazy few weeks lately. I think most of the tough stuff is out of the way (at least I hope so), so maybe I’ll have some more time to write up some more posts. Like I said, I have two articles stewing up in my brain, and hopefully I’ll have time to ladle ‘em out into the digital medium soon.
Now for something completely different….
Some of you may remember the slight mention of a site I’m helping someone with in this post. If not, shame on you. If so, you get a cookie!
Anyways, after much hard work, we’ve finally got everything down just right, and have released the site. We’ve put a lot of work into it to get everything just right. The website is the Crackdown Forums. As the title would suggest, it’s a site about the upcoming game Crackdown (you know the one that has the Halo 3 beta invite, the butt of many jokes such as, “Buy a Halo 3 beta invite, get Crackdown for free!”. However, after the release of the demo on the Xbox market place many of the reviewers said it is exceptional.) It’s a very nice site, I like to think, and it’s become pretty active since it’s release last Tuesday. If you’re interested in the game, I hope you come and pay us a visit. :)
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