tl;dr

A note to future-me, who is going to forget the funny syntax of the /l switch:

msiexec /i Package.msi /l*v Install.log

Personal, Professional

The subject of Star Control II came up in conversaton recently and it prompted me to go and check up on The Ur-Quan Masters. For those not in the know, the original producers of the game released all source code and game assets to the 3DO version (which had full voice and enhanced graphical assets compared to the other 16-bit versions). The only thing it doesn’t have is the name, as that’s trademarked by Activision. Following that release, a project sprang up to get the game playable on a number of platforms; that project is called The Ur-Quan Masters.

Well, turns out UQM is basically complete; it seems to be a perfect version of SC2. All downloads are here for Windows/Mac/Linux. I however have been playing the PSP port which, although suffering from a streched screen ratio, seems otherwise perfect. And more compelling than any of the PSP games on there.

And now, in further excellent Star Control news, Stardock are apparantly trying to get the rights to produce a sequel. Fingers crossed, that could be excellent.

If you don’t know what Star Control II was, for shame! IGN named Star Control II the 17th best game of all time, and Gamespot named it one of the greatest games of all time. It’s excellent! Star Control I was a top-down space fighting game; you chose a ship and fought, one on one, with another one in an Asteroids-ish playfield. Strategic depth came from the choice of ships and how you used their weapons, which had varying effects and powers against specific other ships.

Star Control II then did something completely bonkers, by taking that entire first game and making it just a part of a sprawling space epic. In SCII, you travel the galaxy, exploring star systems, conquering planets, juggling resources, and interacting with alien species in frequently very funny dialog trees. In many ways it was years ahead of its time — for example, it has real consequences; piss off an alien race with poor diplomacy choices and they won’t join up with you in rebelling against your slave lords. Well worth checking out.

Personal Games

From my mate Pete:

Personal Funny, TV

As long-time readers will be aware, I’m a dribbling Watchmen fanboy and am eagerly awaiting next year’s film adaptation. With principle photography wrapped some time ago now, and (I presume) post-production work either done or nearly done (based on the 03/06/09 release date), more information is starting to appear.

First up is this information from mtv.com that the ending has been changed. Not sure how I feel about this; it’s possible, or perhaps even probable, that the giant space squid concept is goofy looking on film, and I appreciate that they have to be able to sell the film to people who haven’t read the book. Director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300) is at least promising that “in the ‘new’ ending, the moral dilemma [is] the same, but the mechanics [are] different” — and I think that theme, the rightness or wrongness of the master plan, is more important than how that plan will work.

Meanwhile, they have released some extremely cool promotional posters, one per major character. Two notes about these. Firstly, the bold quote on Veidt’s poster, “A world at peace. There had to be sacrifices.” does reinforce Snyder’s claim that the climax of the film is thematically unchanged, even if the content is different.

Less good though is the character ages, particularly with the shots of Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre. According to some internet site I just found to save me pouring through the book, Laurie Jupiter should be 36 in 1985 when the film is set. Dan Dreiberg’s birthday isn’t given but he started as the second Nite Owl in 1962, making him in his early 40s in 1985. Both actors just look too young in those shots for me, and in the trailers showing the jail break sequence. And that’s not just a style point; Nite Owl’s podgy middle age is a defining part of his character in the book.

Back to the good, it would appear to have enough runtime to be doing the book’s complex overlapping stories justice. Snyder again, in a different mtv.com interview: “‘Run time now is right around 2 hours and 43 minutes,’ he said, adding that he doesn’t expect it to get much shorter.” I’d be worried if it were much shorter; I don’t think you could cram it in and still have it make sense. They’ve already removed the Black Freighter, which will be released as an animated standalone DVD (which is a very nifty solution, I think).

And now more bad! (This is a real rollercoaster of a blog post today). There’s a game coming. Why is this bad? Well, mostly because movie tie-in games almost always stink up the joint; they are almost always rushed to market to meet an enforced ship date (to coincide with the film) and written by second-tier developers. Hello, Deadline Games. More specifically, what’s great about Watchmen is the literary depth — not something computer games have traditionally excelled in. What’s not so great about Watchmen is the action, as there is (by comic book standards) very little; this is probably why the game is a prequel which promises to “flesh out the backstory of the comics a little more”. So now it needs original writing to the calibre of that in the book. I’ll be very shocked if this isn’t tripe.

Still, I’m an optimist. I’ll certainly be going to see this movie, and if it stinks, well, I can write lots of snotty blog posts about it. It’s a win-win situation! See? Told you I’m an optimist. I’ll close with Kevin Smith’s view of the film from an interview on SuicideGirls.com, based on the early cut he’s seen:

When I watched the movie, the biggest impression I walked away with was, “This could totally be Pulp Fiction to some degree.” For the mainstream audience, when Pulp Fiction came along, they said, “Okay, I know crime thrillers. I know the genre, kind of.” But this is a movie that spins it with this left of center view. With Watchmen, you’ve got people very familiar with the comic-book format of the movie, but it takes this left of center view of it. People who love the comic book are definitely going to go in droves, but I think they’re going to get a lot of people who would never see this movie, based on the buzz factor. It’s the goods, man. It’s a really smart, intelligent film. It’s just like reading the book, but a movie.

Personal Movies

Not quite sure what this has to do with Sprint, as such, but their Now Dashboard is amazing and hypnotic. Very very cool indeed. (from Daring Fireball via While You Were Gone).

Personal

Boston.com has this great collection of photographs of Obama, culled from the various newswires and newspapers over the last six months or so. Some great photojournalism on display.

And in other election-related imagery news:

Personal

Personal

Clearly, with the economy crapping itself, luxury car purchases are becoming a tougher and tougher sell. Take this example from some company I had never heard of until just now, BroadSpeed:

The right-most of the smaller boxes on this (fugly) website (I have highlighted it in blue in the above pic) contains the offer:

• BUY NEW/UNUSED (less than 100 miles, 08 plate) Aston Martin Vantage (Coupe or Roadster)
• Pay full list price – or finance it on HP/ PCP
• Receive a 2008 Mercedes SLK at no cost

Wow. I think this implies quite a sense of desperation on the part of the seller, given that the SLK is worth £30k for a basic spec one (and I bet this offer is a basic spec) and the Vantage is £90k; that’s quite a steep discount. It’s also a very bizarre offer. “In these times of economic downturn, don’t buy one expensive-to-fuel, expensive-to-service, expensive-to-tax car! Buy two instead!”. Logically, if this works, I can tie two pigeons together to make an eagle, and Microsoft can buy Yahoo and somehow end up with a better search engine than Google.

Wonder if they have had many takers?

Personal

I normally try and resist randomly reblogging things — although XKCD makes it hard — but this find by John “DaringFireball.net” Gruber is just too marvellous to not pass on.

From the MSDN blog of Richard Sprague, a Microsoft marketing director, dated January 18th 2007:

I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone.  Even some of my blindly-loyal pro-Microsoft friends and colleagues talk like it’s a real innovation and will “redefine the market” or “usher in a new age”.

What!?!?  Without even mentioning that the same functionality has been available on PocketPC, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry for years, I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful).  People need this to be a phone, first and foremost. But with 5 hours of battery life?  No keypad?  (you try typing a phone number on that screen, no matter how wonderful it is — you will want a keypad).  And for all that whiz-bang Internet access, you absolutely need the phone to work, immediately, every single time.  Will it do that?

So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction:  I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.  Okay, it’s possible there are enough Apple religious people to buy a lot of them at first, but even the most diehard Mac fans who buy one of these will secretly carry two phones.  One to prove how loyal and “cool” they are, and the other to actually make and receive calls.

I remember the lessons I learned working with the Newton team many years ago.  I was in Apple’s marketing department at the time and we did this big fancy user study which basically proved that nobody would buy the thing at the price and functionality we were building.  So what did we do?  We shoved it into the market anyway because it was “cool”.  Cool is great, but you still need to make phone calls.

Two years, eh? He’s got about three months to turn it around then. I guess there’s a really fucking impressive WM7 shipping real soon now, yeah? Because right now, and I am speaking as someone who junked a WM6 smartphone for an iPhone and never looked back, I think he’s looking rather silly indeed.

Double irony points because the worst thing about my WM6 smartphone was that it absolutely did not work, immediately, as a phone, every single time. My favourite bit was when it would ring, and the UI would be so lagged it would have diverted to voicemail before responding to my “answer call” button press. That feature was aces.

Personal, Tech, iPhone

A much longer (1:50) bit of footage taken from the Spike Awards. This still isn’t a theatrical trailer (I think), but it’s longer and more coherent than the previously released teaser trailer.

This looks excellent; dammit, I want to see it already.

Personal Movies