Reading

Thoughts about something I’ve recently read.

‘Rogue Leaders’ excerpt on Habitat

 Posted by (Visited 6673 times)  Game talk, Reading  Tagged with: ,
Jan 272009
 

Rogue Leaders

Habitat title screen

Gamasutra is running an excerpt from Rogue Leaders, a new book on the history of LucasArts. The excerpt in question is about Habitat, which is of course one of the seminal virtual worlds. It’s short and worth a read, especially just to marvel at the reason givn for the project’s shelving: fear of success.

Essentially, if 500 users were so committed to playing Habitat that they remained online long enough to eat up 1 percent of the network’s entire system bandwidth, a full-run production that could attract Rabbit Jack’s Casino numbers could boost that bandwidth number to 30 percent. “The way the system was built, the server software wasn’t capable of hosting that population while still being successful,” recalls Arnold.

Ultimately, these business challenges caused Habitat to be cancelled after the launch party, but before it had gone into full production and reached retail shelves. It would simply be too popular, and the necessary server fix would be too expensive to make the project viable. And so this massively original, inventive, and cutting-edge project was shelved for U.S. release.

I am really really jealous

 Posted by (Visited 7067 times)  Reading, Watching  Tagged with: ,
Jan 092009
 

I’ve mentioned many times here my love of Neil Gaiman’s work. Well, check out what happened to this other blog that apparently mentioned it more times than me. 😉

A little over a month ago I was privileged to be able to share with you an interview with artist Lisa Snellings. The last comment (currently) in that post was from someone named ‘Coraline’ that read, “Hi there! I’ve got a question for you – can you please email me at [email address removed]“. The link to Coraline’s name took me to a website featuring information on the forthcoming film of the same name based on the beloved contemporary children’s classic by author Neil Gaiman.

With great anticipation I sent off an email and quickly received a response from one of the members of the Coraline Team, the group of animators who worked with director Henry Selick to bring Neil Gaiman’s book to life.

I was informed that the Coraline Team would like to send me “something special. Something handcrafted. We only made 50 of these something specials, and we think yours will be right up your alley.”

— Stainless Steel Droppings » Blog Archive » An Unexpected Pleasure.

Catching up on reading: Ysabeau Wilce

 Posted by (Visited 7394 times)  Reading  Tagged with:
Dec 302008
 
Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce

Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce

Just finished the lavishly titled Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room), which is itself the sequel to the similarly sesquipedalian Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog.

Picture (if you can) an alternate San Francisco named Califa, where magic is spoken in sigils called Gramatica, where there lives an adventurous fourteen year old girl named Flora, descended from a noble house (all the noble houses have what appear to be semi-Scandinavian names, despite the liberal use of Aztec and other Mexican verbiage).

Flora desperately wants to be a Ranger, like her paperback (sorry, “yellowback”) idol Nini Mo. She seems to be well on her way, as long as she doesn’t get killed what with the entanglements with the tentacles in the trendy club’s potty, the fact that her maybe-boyfriend has gone Goth with the Warlord’s daughter, her maybe-psycho father is forcing her to take lots of lessons over her school break, and oh, let’s not forget the city may crumble because of earthquakes and it’s possible that the precarious political situation of Califa may crumble, what with the anarchists and all.

If Harry Potter had been written by China Mieville, maybe it would read like this. It’s worth your time.  Besides, the Official Web Site of Ysabeau Wilce gets across enough of the flavor that you should be able to decide that Califa (and Flora!) are worth visiting. After all, it’s not like you were going to read Twilight, right? You have better taste than that. Plus, the author’s name is Ysabeau. Come on, you can’t possibly resist.

Am also midway thru Elantris, and so far it deserves its acclaim…

A poetry lesson for Bartle

 Posted by (Visited 8570 times)  Reading  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 062008
 

Richard Bartle has a little piece on the rhyming structure of this lovely poem by Carol Ann Duffy.

Mrs Schofield’s GCSE

You must prepare your bosom for his knife,
said Portia to Antonio in which
of Shakespeare’s Comedies? Who killed his wife,
insane with jealousy? And which Scots witch
knew Something wicked this way comes? Who said
Is this a dagger which I see? Which Tragedy?
Whose blade was drawn which led to Tybalt’s death?
To whom did dying Caesar say Et tu? And why?
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – do you
know what this means? Explain how poetry
pursues the human like the smitten moon
above the weeping, laughing earth; how we
make prayers of it. Nothing will come of nothing:
speak again. Said by which King? You may begin.

Sez Bartle,

Maybe I’m missing something, or I’m not reading this with the right internal accent, but calling this “rhyming” is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?

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