lunarchy

Team Fortress 2: DANGER!

TF2  is  sooo much fun,  amazingly well designed and so lusciously illustrated  you can say goodbye to Time whether you thought you had it spare or not.  Never  has shooting from your own point of view been as shirk making as this.

 

Bye Fawkes

Massively hot fire in field Sproughton, Suffolk. Moving back now...

Itouch

posted from an iTouch. Omigosh, it is a lovely thing.

Okami - God of Fur

I hired Okami from the library last week. It is absolutely stupendous. It is certainly in my top ten of cultural products of all time.

In this game you play the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu, incarnated as a white wolf. Your mission is to bring the life back to a Nippon infested by decay, disease and a host of cheeky demons. The ink and wash setting is gorgeous and the design of the Celestial Brush as a mechanic is so clever and so (tricky) rewarding as a special power. I gather this is reminiscent of Zelda, which makes me want to catch up with that. It also reminded me very much of Princess Mononoke in theme, tone and the fact there's a prominent role for a large, white, mystical canine.

There's probably a word for cultural tourists like me who love to take mini-breaks in versions of Japan like this. I'm sure I miss most of the allusions, I can't read the kanji that spills out of engine but I just love it, love it, love it.

Capcom closed the developer, Clover Studio, after all the team left to start Seeds. Can't wait for the fruit.

Alan Watts

Recently I discovered the philosopher and expert in comparative theology Alan Watts. He lives on through a wonderful archive of sound recordings where he mellifluously gives voice to his observations and theories on how to live and how to understand our consciousness. More on Alan Watts at Wikipedia.

Scroobius Pip

Very much in favour of the work of Scroobius Pip. In particular the genius level lyrics of "Thou Shalt Always Kill"

One Laptop Per Child

I was discussing this project to develop a $100 laptop for children in developing countries with Penny yesterday: Talking Tech - WSJ.com. She works in healthcare with the elderly and I think there could be an interesting extension of this program to the elderly, particularly those that are living in residential care. Increasingly the concept of the "silver surfer" will become a reality as we who have grown up with ICT start to dribble, smell of wee and are packed off to stare at the telly in a tawdry communal living room. Having affordable wirelessly capable comms in our laps may well improve the quality of the little life left in us. It will also keep our legs warm.

Cidade de Deus

Finally got to watch City of God. Absolutely beautiful, scary and sad. I was really impressed how a number of stories and characters were conflated from the book and crafted into a really clever story. It was also brilliantly shot & edited with a lot of flourishing that I wasn't expecting. And all this with a group of non-professional actors. And the music. And Brasil. Wow.

Enthusiasm & Confidence

 Been thinking a lot about the importance and entymology of enthusiasm recently. In the Greek original, it had a sense of being possessed by god, inspired. Wikipedia points out that it wasn't fashionable to be enthusiastic post Glorious Revolution as it had been seen as being factor in the start of the English Civil War. I've also been thinking about confidence and the ability of some to trick others into feeling confident too. Mark McGuiness has a nice sequence of thoughts about the relativities of the two conditions Wishful Thinking » Blog Archive » 5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence

Get a First Life

Found a funny satire at Get a First Life. Via the fascinating time-waster/PowerPoint resource:  SlideShare.