My favorite Countdown to Kickoff yet :).
The passing fancies of a partial observer.
August 25, 2010
August 23, 2010
Android: Power to the Incumbents!
Now that we know Google is only in it for the cash—not the consumer—we can now begin to evaluate how their Open Handset Alliance and Open Access initiatives are going. Hint: not well. The telcos never actually did anything to work with Google’s vision, so it’s just business as usual in Android-land. (For the record, Apple’s in it for the money, too, but at least they’re doing something disruptive by not letting the telcos run the show.)
August 23, 2010
Semantic Versioning
I’ve been steadily moving in this direction for some time (thanks, @dkastner!). Nice to see the concept articulated clearly.
August 23, 2010
"Ann Arbor has more LEED platinum level homes per capita than any other metropolitan area in the United States"
— Michael Klement, quoted by AnnArbor.com . Another myth busted: that Ann Arbor doesn’t back up its green intentions with action. The University is finally on board, too.
August 20, 2010
A quick review of the Mass Effect 2 DLC
Meh.
A slightly more generous review
Firewalker: the grav-tank is a damn sight better than that horrible mako thing from ME1, but they’re so limited in your deployment of it. It sort of feels like they spent a bunch of time polishing the aesthetics and the controls and how they were going to handle larger environments and then just called it a day. The missions are outdoor linear space dungeons, requiring nothing more than driving to the end of the corridor, maybe hopping from time to time. The Sphere-like artifact was a cool nod to one ofmy favorite pieces of horror/scifi, but… as soon as you find it the DLC is over. There’s no mission exploring it, no tension, nada. Barely even a cutscene. Weird.
Kasumi Goto: is awesome, and it does indeed seem like you might need the galaxy’s best thief, until you remember that all of the missions in the game are linear firefights through space dungeons. And that you’ve no doubt already beaten it at this point. Even her own loyalty mission tricks you: it tasks you to infiltrate a party and steal something of great personal import to her. Great! You say. A nice gameplay twist! Alas, no: there’s no puzzle to solve, no spy action to be had, just a series of unmissable unfailable tasks to accomplish before you unlock the linear gunfight that you should have seen coming. Missed a huge opportunity to break out of the mould.
Overlord: a slightly more involved version of a standard main quest mission. It makes you use the hover tank—presumably to justify it’s inclusion in the game at all—to zip between a series of geth-overrun Cerberus labs. Feels like a throwback to ME1, and that’s probably a good thing. There’s actually an interesting story behind the missions that I won’t spoil for you save to say that it reinforces how extreme Cerberus really is. Even though it is more of the same, it is at least at the high end of the quality spectrum, unlike the lame Firewalker or disappointing Kasumi missions.
C.
p.s. Turned the difficulty down to normal towards the end here so I could breeze through to level 30. Normal is redonkulously easy you guys. I think I took non-shield damage once.
August 20, 2010
The Sharpie Liquid Pencil
Writes like a decade-old plain Bic that you found in your pen drawer without a cap on. Hey, it erases, at least. And comes with 6 (!) spare erasers, inexplicably.
August 19, 2010
A ride on one of the solid-fuel rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle. Doesn’t get exciting (save the hellacious noise) until around 1:45 in :). ( HT @marick )
August 18, 2010
I’ll have the Horns of Valhalla with a side of the Black Terror Gruel from the Cosmic Abyss. Thanks! ( HT @moonpolysoft )
August 18, 2010
"Michigan will now start a particularly agile walk-on office cabinet at corner, sport walk-ons at safety, and will have to rely on Greg Robinson to coach his ass off under pressure to stand a chance on defense this year. Please reread the last bit of that long sentence. If you have Michigan friends considering suicide—and we all do—do not let them read it. If they already have, begin throwing pillows out the window in hope of cushioning their fall from the roof."
— Orson, masking his sympathies with cruelty, as usual.
August 17, 2010
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
— George Washington ( source )
RSS feed: http://blog.hypomodern.com/rss
1 of 27
Next page
