This weblog is shutting down for the winter, there’s about 30 things in the drafts folder and I can’t seem to finish anything. I’m working on a couple of ideas for new formats but they’re unlikely to surface until my birthday for a variety of reasons to boring to go into (that’s never stopped you before! (haha)). Anyway here’s what’s in the drafts folder, can you guess what they’re about?

• The Opposite
• Lazy Types [possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written]
• Big Numbers [or maybe that was this one]
• Second Consecutive Day On The Tube
• People Who Don’t Understand Technology Trying to Explain how Things Work
• Naming Conventions
• Ruby Mon Amour
• links for 2006-04-25
• links for 2006-04-24
• links for 2006-04-23
• links for 2006-04-22
• links for 2006-04-19
• Video Games
• Dennett vs Jay Z
• Shrinking space
• Game aesthetics
• favourite videos
• Rant
• Web 2.0
• science of hits
• Games that I like and those that I don’t like
• Lint
• Boggle
• OK, Lets Do This. Top 100 part 1 [well that idea when well didn’t it]
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• archipelagos
• The bubble is back
• Serenity
• Disgaea [i’ve been trying to write this one for ages]
• london games
• games vs stories

The problem I find is that the format sort of makes it seem like what your saying is a fixed opinon and it’s gogin to be there as a statement of youtr position for however long the databse is online, that’s also somehow priveliged regardless of content because of its relationship to the comments section etc…

Anyway, byex.

As spotted over someones shoulder the other day in the swaying forest/eco apocalypse of London free ‘news’ papers.

So apparently they’re letting videogame designers work out what soldiers should wear now.
Pic from here.
I particularly like the monochrome stars and stripes.
xref. Atari Teenage Riot.
xref. The war on terror fashion shoot from Vogue (apparently some people have a problem with this link crashing their browser, if you’re using firefox it should be fine though). As JG Ballard has repeatedly envisioned a “sinister marriage between sex and technology … the final realisation of violence as consumer spectator sport”. C’est chic!

RE:The guy from the tube that both Emma an I saw: I saw him again, gone were the laptop and the suit and the conversation about film deals with his ‘mum’ (OK, so I didn’t mention some of that stuff in the afore-linked post, I thought I filled you in in the pub (no, not you, I’ll tell you about it when you’re back in a couple of weeks)) and he was sitting on the pavement in a (new) hooded top begging for change outside the halal/curry/kebab place outside Finchley Road tube. I can’t work out what could have gone on between my two encounters with this guy, one day you’re going into work with a laptop and your mother and a film deal (or not), a month later your outside Finchley Road tube…

A film which I nearly didn’t go to see because the poster and the trailers have all been so rubbish but then I did go and see it last night and was totally blown away. Attention Wachowski brothers, this is how you make a convincing and terrifying film about a near future British fascist state.

So it’s pretty bleak and occasionally seems depressingly close to where we are now, you can see how we get from here to there with just a couple of nudges eg. there are some pretty explicit refrences to Abu Ghraib in background of the refugee prison camp that the characters visit. On the down side, there’s the occasional clunky monologue but whilst these stand out they don’t detract from the film. To me it felt like a return to the inteligent British sci-fi tradition of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, sensibilities which were kind of lost post Star Wars but seem to be reasserting themselves with things like this and the new Doctor Who (esp that gas mask episode) and writers like Tricia Sullivan (who’s actually American but seems to me to fit in better with the John Wyndam, Brian Aldiss, JG Ballard continuum than the US pulp tradition) Also it’s a better action film than “V…” was.

Also, in trailer news, the new James Bond film looks pretty good (the guy they have as James Bond = pretty much how I imagined James Bond should be from the books) and the Scorsese remake of Infernal Affairs doesn’t look too bad either

If you like to read evething I write on the internet in strictly chronological order, you’ll already know that I’m back from having read the rambling comment on the last post. If you haven’t read that here’s the thing, we’re back from Greece. It was very nice thanks.