My annual winter gaming binge this year started with Monster Hunter Tri… Actually I picked this up back near the end of August, and am still enjoying it. I’ve been aware of the Monster Hunter games for a long time, but having no PSP the previous games were unavailable to me. When I realized Tri was on the Wii I grabbed it up.

The game is pretty impressive… Game play is pretty smooth once you get used to the controls (particularly the camera which is controlled manually). It takes some time to learn all the controls, but that is true of all games. I do recommend the Wii Controller Classic Pro with this game. Capcom worked with Nintendo to co-develop the controller specifically for Monster Hunter Tri, and it works amazingly well. There is also a bundle with the controller included (which I was unable to find until after I purchased the items separately). I recommend the bundle since it will save you $10 (US) compared to buying the controller and game by themselves.

The Monsters in this game are… Just freaking huge!!! It’s one thing to see a boss take up most of the screen, but then you realize that compared to your character these things are like city buses or some even the size of buildings.  The other thing that you immediately notice is that these critters are fast. They don’t sit around waiting to be hit. Although they do have defined attacks and patterns that can be figured out and anticipated in most cases.

One thing that seems to bother many casual gamers is that you have to grind for everything in the game. While it’s not as bad as a typical MMORPG it still turns many of the “I want it now!” crowd off. Your weapons and armor come from items that you gather by foraging and mining as well as parts of monsters you hunt. It can get a bit tedious, but once you learn the basics it’s fine. Use the fishing boats to gain “resource points” and the farm to make money or farm-able items you need. Everything else you have to go out and find.

The graphics are pretty amazing. The background scenery is beautiful, and the monsters are very well designed and rendered. The water areas are impressive and actually “feel” like you are swimming… Well… Aside from the unbelievably long and generous air supply that you have.

Weapons in the game are… Well they pretty much are the game… Every monster in the game has weapons that can be made from it’s parts, and with the different weapon types that makes for a lot of weapons that are available in game. You have great swords, sword & shield, hammers, switch axes, long swords, and bow guns. Not only that you can use them all as you see fit. One thing I notice about people who play this game is that they seem to be used to standard RPGs where you pick a weapon type and you are stuck with it. Not so with Monster Hunter games. They allow you to use any weapon in your arsenal at anytime. Certain weapon types are better against some monsters than others, and while many choose to stick to one weapon type I find it’s much more fun to try and learn them all… Or at least a few rather than sticking with one boring weapon for the whole game.

Now in offline mode there is quite a lot of playable content, and you can get more value out of the game than many other games just playing offline single player, but this game also has online multi player with up to 4 persons per hunt. The online mode consists of a set of quests somewhat similar to the offline quests except more challenging to cater to 4 players, and there are also special online only events as well as a few monsters that can only be fought online. And did I mention that online is included for free??? (At least in the US/Europe).

All in all Monster Hunter Tri is a fantastic game, and I agree with some who opine that it is currently the best game that has been released for the Wii.

So after listening to the full Mitsudomoe OP I realized it reminded me of something… Which lead me to do something completely un-original with it:

I felt like I missed out on the whole Caramelldansen thing, so there is my one contribution to the foolishness.

It was actually kinda fun and killed some time though.

Since it’s a slow week for anime news I decided to follow what most other sites are doing, and posting something completely unrelated. I really should post a gallery of hot Japanese idols in skimpy outfits (at least I put up a Haruka pic), but I am looking forward to this film so much I figured I’d post the trailer.

The Men Who Stare At Goats:

So I wrote about the V reboot about a year ago, and haven’t written any more updates simply because I talked to someone who had seen an advance screening of the pilot around the beginning of this year, and he described it as “unwatchable”, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it after that. I assume they have worked on it quite a bit since then because the aired pilot was rather watchable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was good, but it was alright. The show has some potential if the writers don’t get weird. Of course Sci-fi writers always tend to get weird don’t they?

As far as the visual aspect of the show… It looks like they were betting a lot on the visuals with large sweeping pans of the ships, but… Maybe if this show had aired 6 years ago it may have been more impressive. They didn’t really do anything breathtaking, or anything that wasn’t already done in BSG. I did like that there was an Independence Day reference in the show though.

The cast is pretty good so far, and were quite believable. The story has some potential if as I mentioned above the writers don’t go off on a weird tangent, and simply stick to the plot that has been laid out. For those expecting a simple retelling of the original series you may be disappointed. As I mentioned in the last article I wrote (here) this story is quite different than the old series. The 80′s series was based on a World War II perspective with a very similar story to the German Holocaust. The new story is based more on well… What the current hot topic in the world is… Terrorism. I did like the way they placed the Visitors on Earth decades before the ships appear thus the UFO nuts that people have been laughing at for years turn out to be the base of the resistance force, and that they really weren’t crazy all this time.

If I had to do a comparative analysis… The original series to me was always like The A-Team with laser guns. The new series I’d say is more like 24… With laser guns (although I haven’t seen any actual laser guns yet… The new Visitors seem to like bladed weapons).

I am sure Ed McMahon is rolling in his grave right now. A Japanese prank show decided to scare the hell out of this poor guy by luring him to a fake meeting and then… Well… Just watch.

Thanks to Sam Riegel for tweeting this gem.

I’m not up on the current slang, but I’d say that guy has been “punk’d”

Just wanted to give people a quick reminder that Yahoo! will be shutting down Geocities permanently on October 26, 2009.

So, if you have embarrassing pics, or webpages you forgot you put up there 10 years ago now is the time to save that stuff before it’s gone. Yahoo! has sent out a “final notice” about this and no files will be archived, so if it’s on the Geocities server after the 26th then you can consider it deleted… Or maybe on some Yahoo employee’s hard drive at home.

I just removed the last site I had up there from like 6 years ago. It was kind of sad actually… As I was right clicking and saving my data I came across files that were remnants of older sites I had up there over the years. I actually built my first site there back in around… 1994 or thereabouts using the same account I just finished erasing. Those days were fun with nobody worrying about search engine ranking, and the internet was still small enough that people on the web could actually get to know each other rather than adding their profile to Twitter and forgetting they exist 5 seconds later. God I’m getting old.

Wikipedia needs to hire or appoint some moderator hunters (I’ll volunteer right now). The place has gotten out of hand with a bunch of teenagers and bums living in mom’s basement who think they are Gods just because they have moderator status on Wiki.

Now I’ve heard of this before, but never really witnessed it. On a certain film maker’s message board the discussion came up that a moderator on Wiki who had a personal grudge against the film maker (Think he wouldn’t read the guy’s lousy script or put him in a movie), and took it upon himself to delete any info regarding that film maker from Wiki using the excuse that the person was “not well known, not popular”. Uh huh… The guy had 8 films theatrically released… Internationally no less. The film maker even had one of his employees updating Wiki while stuff was being deleted. So I’ve been aware of the practice, but as I said I’ve never actually seen it until now.

The other night I was looking up release dates on certain older animes when I come across several pages for anime series that were deleted with a message “not well known enough”, and one visual novel page was deleted with a message “This is not a game review site”. Now I can understand deleting info that may be someone’s personal opinion, but to delete an entire entry for any reason is kind of idiotic. I mean since when is an encyclopedia supposed to contain only well known or popular information? It’s kinda like whiting out Aardvark in a printed encyclopedia just because you dislike aardvarks.

Personally I’m of the opinion that (as I stated above) Wiki needs to appoint some moderator hunters whose sole purpose is to watch over the other moderators. Since most of these folks are not actual employees of Wiki or are particularly motivated to follow the rules I think it makes sense to keep an eye on them. I know Wiki currently expects the users to report the abuse by moderators, but honestly… Most people are on that site to research information, and do they really have time to stop to send a message to the site admin? Of course there are always busy bodies with nothing better to do and can’t resist getting involved, but I imagine most folk (like me) will simply back page to Google and find the information elsewhere.

It truly reminds me of a certain message forum I belong to where recently the site admin decided to appoint a slew of new moderators. Within a few days at least a dozen members were banned for no apparent reason, posts were deleted, locked, or moved to the wrong categories. I think the admin spent about 2 weeks cleaning up the site and wound up permanently banning the abusive moderators.

The Corpus Clock located outside the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge may just be one of the coolest things ever. The clock was conceived by John C Taylor an alumni of the university, and was unveiled on September 19, 2008 by physicist Stephen Hawking.

The face of the clock is 5 feet in diameter sculpted from a stainless steel disk plated in 24 K gold. The disk was formed by placing the disk over a mold under water and using explosions to press the steel onto the mold. The hands of the clock are actually created by three bands of LEDs which are always on but only visible through slits in 3 concentric rings which turn with the clock’s movement. As you can see in the video the LEDs seem to race around the clock for each change of seconds, minutes, and hours.

The most obvious (and probably creepiest) feature of the clock is the strange insect monster on top which has been dubbed the Chronophage (time eater). It resembles a horribly mutated grasshopper, and acts as the clock’s escapement. It’s legs work back and forth on the outer gear ring of the clock driving the entire mechanism. It also opens and closes it’s fang laden mouth and sometimes blinks it’s eyes. The concept of the “Grasshopper Escapement” was originally conceived by 18th century clock maker John Harrison, and the Corpus clock’s Chronophage escapement was designed by Taylor as a homage to Harrison.

The operation of the clock is probably one of the neatest things to watch. The Chronophage steadily crawls along driving the outer gear as the LEDs race around the clock to signify passing time while on occasion the CPU brain inside the clock treats viewers to variety by slowing down or stopping the clock then racing to catch up on the 5 minute marks (so the clock only tells time accurately every 5 minutes). When the clock chimes the hour it actually runs backwards and forwards while the sound of a chain dropping into a wooden coffin inside the clock acts as the chime.

So you want one??? Unfortunately the Corpus clock is not available for sale and the cost to create it was £1 million (about $1.4 million in US Dollars). Although if they ever decide to market a smaller (and less expensive) version for the home you can be sure I’ll be in line for one.

The easiest way to explain I guess is to just watch the video embedded below.

According to a Myspace bulletin sent out from Norman Lovett this evening he claims to have received an email from Grant-Naylor Productions stating that he would not be participating in the upcoming episodes of Red Dwarf being made for the U.K.’s Dave network.

Seems a bit of a shame to me. The only thing I can imagine worse than Red Dwarf without Holly would be Red Dwarf without Holly, and Arnold Rimmer… Oh wait… The was Series VII. At this point it hasn’t been announced yet whether Grant-Naylor intends to use Hatty Hayridge, someone new, or just have no Holly at all… Most likely the third option as according to the bulletin Grant-Naylor is claiming their reasons as being budget problems.

And, unlike many others you’ll never hear me hate on Hatty Hayridge for taking over the role from Series 3-5. It wasn’t like it was her fault, and she did do a damn fine job at it. Honestly I can’t really choose which Holly I preferred… They were both fantastic. I’d actually like to see them both in the role… Kinda like Holly having a sexual identity crisis where he randomly swaps between the two personnas.

What makes this even more sad is that from the way Norman was talking on his Myspace he really was looking forward to this, and then to be shot through the heart by an email… You’d think they would at least have given him a call, or even went through his agent, but an email??? Well… It could have been a bit worse… They could have texted him like a 16 year old girl dumping her boyfriend.

Here is the quoted bulletin:

“I will not be involved in the new Red Dwarf programmes on the Dave channel. A pathetic little email arrived today to let me know that due to budget I would not be appearing. I dread to think about the size of the budget because I’ve never been paid much to appear in Red Dwarf anyway.

I am a little sad because I’ve been saying over the last couple of years that I am the perfect age to play Holly now. (I was 41 when I first played him). I am more angry really because I was given dates to put in my diary before Christmas but what’s new with GrantNaylor in charge.

If you want to make me very happy please go to my website and buy a copy of my new stand-up comedy DVD ‘Bags & Biscuits”

Happy New Year and Best Wishes,

Norman”

After years of rather ridiculous lawsuits against file sharers the RIAA has finally decided to stop suing common folk for downloading a few MP3s here and there. But… Before you hoist the Jolly Roger and head over to your favorite torrent site to begin downloading the last 20 years worth of music… It’s not quite that easy. They will still sue the worst offenders, but most will not fit that category. For the rest of the illegal file sharers what awaits will be a bit more effective, and is already generating quite a bit of controversy.

The new plan??? The ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will be required to police their users in order to determine whether illegal file sharing is occurring, and then supposedly the ISP will be required to send the user a warning to cease illegal activity or further action will be taken… The further action??? Offenders may be subject to bandwidth throttling (controlling the amount of bandwidth a user can access), or even deactivation of service. The idea is that the average Joe/Jane that is downloading an MP3 or movie here and there won’t be targeted (at least not at this point), but the fellow downloading hundreds of MP3s a week on a regular basis will be flagged, warned, and acted upon.

The most controversial aspect of the new plan has not officially been announced by RIAA at this point, but is circulating around the internet rumor mill is that the practice of blacklisting may occur. It is already understood that ISPs will be required to submit reports on illegal file sharers to RIAA, and it’s completely reasonable to think that RIAA could use this information to create a list of users that could be sent out to all ISPs thus a situation could arise where a person who was banned from one service may be on such a list and be refused service from other ISPs. Of course this is just a rumor at this point, but one could see how easy it would be to implement, and hey… It’s RIAA we are talking about here, so it’s not like it would be a far fetched move based on their previous actions.

Personally… I have mixed feelings about this, but mostly on the good side. It means if I decide to download an mp3 or two I don’t have to sit there with fear debating on whether clicking that download link is worth a lawsuit, and no more news stories about 13 year old Jimmy who has been arrested for illegal file sharing… This is good. Of course the flip side is that your ISP might mistake innocent activity as illegal file sharing thus putting you in jeopardy of losing your internet access. Of course I’m sure if it was truly mistaken activity one could easily call their ISP and straighten things out. On the other hand if blacklisting does occur then that could be a bad thing. While it’s usually not a big deal to straighten out a misunderstanding to an ISP you are already with it’s quite a bit harder to try to explain to a new ISP why your name is on a list of illegal file sharers, and on top of that to convince them to provide service anyway.

If implemented properly I could see this working well, and would allow RIAA to concentrate their activities on the really bad people like bootleggers and such rather than a housewife that downloaded an episode or two of Sex in the City that she missed. If implemented poorly it could be a lot more localized trouble for individuals.

And for those that will inevitably scream that ISPs policing their users will be an invasion of privacy… Well… Sorry to say it, but they have been doing that all along. Everything you do on the net shows up in the server logs of your ISP as well as every server you connect to while online, and it always has. The only difference now is that the ISP will be taking action directly rather than letting RIAA do it via lawsuits.