DVD Review: The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry, who mastered surreal psychology in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind returns with this tenderly constructed portrait of an over-sensitive dreamer. Mexican Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) has moved to France, tempted by his Gallic mother's offer of a supposedly creative job at a calendar company. Staying in his childhood bedroom, he falls in love with his adorable neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsborough) – but not before casting a pall over their relationship with a mistake he makes due to his tendency to confuse imagination and reality.


The first thing that struck me about The Science of Sleep was its immediacy. Hand-held cameras and natural sound make reality seem just like reality – while steadicams, cardboard buildings and stop-motion animation denote the world of Stéphane's dreams. There's a glorious hand-made feel to these latter sequences, as if each car, cloud and building was created by Stéphane himself from loo rolls, cellophane and glue. If nothing else, it's nice to see some real craftsmanship in a contemporary movie, in the place of the often soulless barage of CGI.

As in Eternal Sunshine, Gondry shows a keen, almost painful ability to convey the ups and downs of love, from moments of energetic creative connection, to depressive, drunken jealousy. As an added dimension, flowing from that comes a perfect depiction of dream logic – barely coherent declarations of love, peculiar causes and effects, arguments based on semantics rather than actualities. At the collision of these two planes is Stéphane, able to imagine his hopes and fears with equal vividness, self-centred, self-defeating and moody – a lot like a certain blogging space cat you may know.


The Science of Sleep had me alternating between being on the verge of tears during Stéphane's painful waking moments of heartbreak, and laughing at the sheer brilliance of his imagination. In places these dream sequences betray Gondry's background as a music video director – but so what? If destroying the world with an enormous plasticine volcano isn't sufficient cause for a rock anthem, I don't think anything is.

Given that the back of the DVD case promises a film about 'imagination vs logic' it's refreshing to see the film take an entirely positive approach to science – musing pseudo-scientifically on black holes and brain chemistry. You have to understand how things work, be able to appreciate the peculiar and surprising before you can create; have to understand a little chaos theory and electronics to make a tiny robot horse – though whether Stéphane actually does make a tiny robot horse is debatable. Stéphane's inability to distinguish reality from dreams overflows into the film itself, especially where he sucks Stéphanie into his flights of fancy – making cotton wool clouds float in the air with a resonant note played on the piano.


With its combination of everyday ambience and out-of-this-world imagination, The Science of Sleep is perhaps the film for the hopeless dreamers among us. While it may not efface Eternal Sunshine in the eyes of many, I found it to be one of the most touching films I can name.

"The Usual Suspects."

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog assembled this awesome montage of Saturn's eight largest moons, all to scale. Titan, the big blob in the upper right (larger than Mercury, you recall) is a kind of orangey brown, but other than that, most of Saturn's moons are pretty much identical in monochrome to how they are in colour.

An intangible reward will go to the first commenter to identify each moon - you should know them all by now!

You might also like to check out this article on the Cassini homepage about the 'ecology' of Saturn's moons.

"Ecology is about your entire environment -- not just one body, but how they all interact," said [Cassini scientist Bonnie] Buratti. "The Saturn system is really interesting, and if you look at the surfaces of the moons, they seem to be altered in ways that aren't intrinsic to them. There seems to be some transport in this system."

Across the Martian Canyon

Image source with larger version
Credit: ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Europe's Mars Express captured the original version of this image of Candor Chasma, one small branch of the enormous Valles Marineris, with its High Resolution Stereo Camera. A stereoscopic image contains the necessary information to simulate an entirely different perspective, as above. You can see a number of different views of Candor Chasma here.

What R-Type of Manly-Man are You?

In ripping off H.R Giger's art style, does R-Type end up depicting a Freudian nightmare of homophobia and misogyny? Game Cabaret argue that yes, yes it does.

Moon Geography

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This image of Tethys shows us its three most notable features. Top left is the Odysseus impact basin - chief reason why, to my great shame, I often have difficulty distinguishing Tethys from Mimas. Bottom right is Ithaca Chasma, the second largest canyon in the solar system after Valles Marineris. Finally, there's a subtle dark band in the middle, like a dirty thumbprint, as yet unnamed.

In other news, rumours are circulating that the American government suspects Titan of harbouring weapons of mass destruction...

Lunokhod Style

Image source
Image credit: NASA or Soviet Union

A post on the planetary society links to this very cool article. Many of my generation may have assumed that the dinky little Pathfinder rover was the first remote vehicle to wander the surface of another world - but in fact the Soviets got there first.

The USSR placed two rovers, or Lunokhods on the surface of Earth's moon early in the seventies. It was also revealed in the 1990s that they even landed a pair of ill-fated rovers on Mars in the seventies - one of which expired after mere seconds, while the other was destroyed in what you might call a 'descent of unplanned rapidity' (or 'crash').

On the one hand, the lunokhods are very cool - not just a milestone in the history of space exploration, but a damn cool piece of retro chic. On the other hand, the Soviet Mars rovers are emblematic of the whole Soviet Mars program: cool ideas that failed spectacularly, seemingly through nothing but bad luck.

Atomic April: A Couplet

Atomic April keeps her brain behind glass.
If you think that's silly, she'll kick your arse...

(May require an English accent to get that to rhyme.)

The Little Snowball that Could

Image source with more information

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Few people had probably even heard of it before Cassini arrived, but small, icy Enceladus is now easily one of the most interesting and mysterious worlds in the Solar System. Two new articles on Enceladus now grace the Cassini homepage, and I heartily recommend reading them both. The first concerns the question of why exactly this little moon's south pole is shooting jets of ice and water vapour into space. A subsurface body of relatively warm liquid water seems like quite a good suspect so far, but I wouldn't discount other contending hypotheses just yet.

The second article explains how tiny Enceladus, just 500km across, has an effect on the whole Saturnian system. The ice it ejects weighs down Saturn's magnetic field by creating a "plasma donut" that is then absorbed by the A ring.

"This is an example of how Saturn's rings mitigate the overall radiation environment around the planet, sponging up low- and high-energy particles," says [William] Farrell [of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]. By contrast, Jupiter has no dense rings to soak up high-energy particles, so that planet's extremely high radiation environment persists.

Cassini will be flying past Enceladus at a minimum altitude of 50km - an astronomical hairbreadth - sometime in March.

DVD Review: The Man with the Screaming Brain

Bruce Campbell is America's most famous jobbing actor. George Clooney regularly spends his millions on developing worthy but unprofitable films. Brad Pitt sunk the relatively low-budget Fight Club by demanding a huge pay cheque. But most actors can't choose projects they like, or make demands. They take small roles in shit films, because they need to put food on the table. Although he may be something of a household name, Campbell identifies strongly with these actors, still belongs among them in many ways. He's also written, in his autobiography If Chins Could Kill, about the importance of actors understanding what happens behind the camera as well. It's no good giving the performance of your life, he argues, if you're not even in the frame.

Reflecting on this, it's hard not to have relatively high hopes for The Man with the Screaming Brain, Campbell's directorial début. The results, however, while they hint at better things to come, are not so great that I could happily recommend this film to anyone but ardent Campbellites.


In interviews, Campbell has shown a far better grasp of plot and character than your typical A-list Hollywood screenwriter, so it comes as a surprise to be faced with the peculiar lack of tension and motivation to Screaming Brain. I think figuring out why might be clearer when you consider that after years of trying to crack the mainstream, Campbell only seems to have recently noticed that he's an icon among alternative and indie film fans. Screaming Brain seems like an attempt to emulate indie films that focus on character and ambience more than plot and special effects, but by someone not all that familiar with how such movies actually work. The situations depicted may be well devised, but all too often the result is more made-for-TV than made-for-Sundance.

The film certainly doesn't work as a whole, nor in most scenes, but it still has moments – often moments that rely either on Campbell's skills as an actor or as a physical comedian. A scene in which his character – a ruthless industrialist who has the brain of a former KGB agent grafted onto his – orders at a restaurant while arguing with the voice in his head and confusing the waitress is particularly well done. Another sequence, which simply involves Campbell staggering through Bulgarian landmarks like a possessed maniac, also displays some rather striking cinematography. Other than that, things hang together pretty poorly, with no real flow to proceedings, either in plot or in tone – a problem exacerbated by the odd bit of sloppy editing.


I like the idea of The Man with the Screaming Brain, and it certainly gets an A+ for effort. I'll be back for Campbell's next effort as actor-director, but I don't expect to pass many people back-tracking to his début while on my way there.

And finally, for once I will actually review the DVD disc in question. Importantly for me, there were no subtitles, whether for the hard of hearing or otherwise. Meanwhile, lurking in the extras is a nice little feature about how Campbell and his co-writer raised the money for the film – a straightforward short that I found more entertaining than the feature itself.

Spaceman

Credit: NASA
Image source

I don't often post images from manned missions - purely because unmanned missions pay greater dividends (and for a smaller outlay to boot). But this image of astronaut Joseph Tanner orbiting the Earth (way back in 1997) is undeniably sublime.

Friday Humorist Blogging

The Indie will never be the same again.

Victoria Crater

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Here's a fraction of the most recent panorama from Opportunity, looking down into Victoria Crater. Though Opportunity - who recently celebrated her fourth Earth year on Mars - is the more physically healthy of the two rovers, it seems unlikely that she will ever re-emerge from the crater. Except, perhaps, as a museum piece...

Sunday Scribblings: A Miscellaneous Story

Sunday Scribblings prompt: miscellaneous.

Clockwork Miscellany

Dressed in a tailored black suit, he waits at the base of a tall, crooked tower of crumbling stone. Encrusted with moss, gargoyles and improbable balconies, it lances up into a full, silvery moon. A metallic skittering seeps out through cracks in the ancient wooden door, and her faithful clockwork servant opens the door to allow him in, its spidery limbs scraping on porous flagstone.

Wrought iron head bowed low, the servant leads him up narrow spiral steps. He knows to let it go on ahead, so it has space to slip and scrabble. From time to time it sheds a cog, or a small black morsel of coal, that goes bouncing down the stairs with hard knocks. A small optical lens beneath the servant's warped underbelly swivels manically to track the shed parts for later retrieval. Mostly, the visitor just tries to stay out of the way.

At the top of the stairs the servant shrinks to one side of an unassuming archway, gesturing with one small, dented claw for him to pass through. He knows the way already, but bows his thanks. Once the visitor has passed through the arch, the servant clatters back down the stairs in a half-controlled slide.

She stands before him, a glittering silhouette in a ray of moonlight, draped in black lace, upright among shelves of jars bearing faded yellow labels. Without looking at him, she holds a jar out towards him and says, “What is this?”

He approaches, takes the jar from her. It fits neatly in his palm, glass clinking against stainless steel. He studies the jar from various angles, lenses flicking across his iris with smooth clicks. “I don't know,” he says, handing it back. “What is it?”

She sighs. An affectation. Hands and arms clicking with careful calibration, she takes another jar from the shelves and reads the label. “Look,” she says. “Every one carefully recorded. This was my spleen, you see? And this my appendix. Epiglottis, aorta, little toe... But what-” she taps a finger on the jar still in his hands, a sharp little clink of metal on glass “-was this?”

He turns it around in his hands, smooths a thumb across the curling yellow label. “Miscellaneous,” he reads aloud. He holds it up to the light. “There's definitely something in there.”

She lets out a low growl. “But what?”

He sets the jar back on the shelf and shrugs. “Does it matter?”

She frowns, delicate eyebrows clicking into place on her carefully sculpted face. “Yes. Yes, it does. This, whatever it is, used to be a part of me.”

He looks around at the shelves and shelves of musty jars. “A lot of things used to be a part of you. Now they're just taking up space. Best not to obsess, I think.”

She sighs again. “What was I thinking? Miscellaneous. It could be anything. It could be something I'd remember fondly.”

“I should doubt it,” he interjects. “Otherwise you'd have labelled it more clearly, surely?”

“You never know what you'll remember most as you live it,” she maintains, “only afterwards when you look back do you realise you shouldn't have thrown that away, or you should have taken a photograph of someone's face, or kept a lock of hair.”

He steps closer, places a hand on her shoulder. “None of this was ever a part of you. A part of your body, certainly, but not your self. If it was a part of you, I'm sure it would have filed itself all attentively away with the proper records and everything.”

She looks down to one side, away from him. “I suppose.”

It's his turn to sigh. Just as much of an affectation. “Honestly, sometimes I think you swapped your brain out for clockwork as well. Everything has to be just so, itemised and tagged.”

She looks at him sharply and steps away. “As you said, I'm still me.”

“But you were never human,” he teases. “You never had those messy passions, those feelings that don't fit in jars or sit on shelves. Everything about you was already clockwork. I'm not surprised, honestly, that you feel the need to keep carefully preserved evidence to the contrary all these years.”

“You only have to see how messy and unkempt my servant is to realise that neatness is a very human passion.”

He smiles. A peculiar gesture of whirring servos. “Passion is hardly the word for it.”

She raises her chin. “You don't think I'm capable of passion?”

“I've never seen seen you exhibit any,” he says. “Yet.”

At that she grabs him by the lapels and kisses him full on the lips, metal squeaking against metal. Before he can respond, she pulls back. “I think there are some medical textbooks in the library,” she says.

He stares at her. “Um... what?”

“Maybe there'll be a picture of whatever it is,” she explains, cocking her head towards the miscellaneous jar. Before he can compose himself she grabs his hand and leads him towards the archway.

“I don't understand you at all,” he says.

Somehow, her features form an elfin smile. “Good,” she answers, softly.

Robotprints

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

I rather like this panorama from Opportunity, taken quite a few months ago, and uploaded to their website at the start of this year. There's a real sense of immediacy to this view of churned-up Martian soil and messy rocks.

Art Deco Rings

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Once again, there's a noirish, almost Art Deco feel to this monochrome Cassini image, as we look through the unilluminated side of the rings towards the edge of Saturn.

Zzzzzzz

This cat is sound asleep.

Sunday Scribblings: A Story about Fellow Travellers

Between projects, so let's throw some short stories and vignettes together. Sunday Scribblings prompt: fellow travellers.

My Fellow Traveller,
Myself

Thick mist permeated the city, shadowy spires rising up into white obscurity. Tall, gangly figures loped through the bare streets, shooting curious glances in my direction. It was a difficult journey this time. I was the only one who made it. My mouth tasted of blood.

But this had to be it. We'd finally pinned it down. As far forward as you could go and still find human - more or less - civilisation. But what kind of civilisation? And what did they do wrong?

A voice spoke from behind me. It took me a second to realise they were speaking English. I turned to face a grey-haired woman, definitely from a similar period to mine, wearing a trouser suit cut in an unfamiliar fashion.

“I've been expecting you,” she repeated. Then, after a moment of silence, she added, “You don't recognise me. Not quite yet. I remember that much.”

“You're me,” I said, slowly, disbelieving.

She smiled. “It's always been a possibility, of course. Just not one you ever expected, given how imprecise the machine was, in your era.”

I still felt ill from the journey - wondered if I might faint. “But...” I stammered. “How? And why?”

She laughed, dryly, her eyes watching me with a strange affection. “Good question. I wonder if the only reason I'm here is because I can remember meeting myself when I was you. That's part of it, I suppose, and it's kind of paradoxical, like a self fulfilling prophecy. But I also have a very definite reason to be here. One of the more useful aspects of time travel is that if you need more than one person, you can go back in time and help yourself.”

I looked around at the city. It was deathly silent, aside from the occasional burst of harsh chattering from its inhabitants, the gentle whooping of strange aircraft. “Help me to do what?” I asked.

My companion sighed. “You'll find out soon enough.”

“You remember it, of course.”

“Yes. I don't think I can change what happens. It won't be pleasant. You'll have to face some startling truths and revelations. You'll never look at human civilisation - at your own life, even – the same way again. But we have to do this. We may not make things any better, but if we hadn't – if we don't rather – things could only be worse.”

My head was whirling. “I'm not sure I understand.”

“Me neither. But we have to get moving. And, I know you won't listen, but I'll say it anyway, when I tell you to do something, you have to trust that I can remember a lot of what's about to happen. Trust me, okay?”

I studied her aged face. Like looking into an unsettling magic mirror.

“Sure,” I said.

She didn't reply, nodded with a pointed detachment, and gestured toward a part of the city where ethereal bridges criss-crossed the spires, fading in and out of the mist. “Let's go,” she said, stepping away from me.

I followed my future self into the city, into the white murk, towards the end of civilisation.

Gun Mute: Let's Also Beta

I've uploaded Version 4 of Snowblind Aces - just a few little tweaks and fixes, including the mother of all typos. It's time to move on, I think, and finally get my mute cowboy game into beta.

Picking the game up again for the first time in a couple of months has given me mixed feelings about it. One important decision I made with Snowblind Aces - which I think is probably going to apply to all my future games - was: no puzzles. The thing is: I hate puzzles. There's nothing more annoying than a game with great atmosphere, characters and dialogue, which then expects you to take a break and figure out different ways to open a door.

My mute cowboy game, henceforth called Gun Mute, is a step in that direction in that I tried to make it about simple combat-oriented puzzles, but I still worry about the gameplay - and also everything else. But, well, it's practically done, so I might as well get it out there.

If you want to volunteer as a tester, feel free to comment below. Alternatively, I may come to you...

Friday Smurf Blogging

Image credit: What What
Some rights reserved

The Unseen Face of Mercury

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Both times that Mariner 10 passed by Mercury, the same half of the planet was shrouded in darkness. This, the first image from the recent MESSENGER flyby, shows us what the other half looks like.

More pictures, including colour images, are in the pipeline.

Getting Closer

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Not long to go now...

Resident Evil De-Degeneration

(Warning: zombie violencing)

While the trailer above isn't all that slick, it at least gives us the gist. Yes, I bet Capcom were front of the queue when Advent Children (I reviewed it here) opened in cinemas. "You mean we can take our expertise in computer animation and make our own movies extending the storyline of our games instead of just letting Hollywood make trashy cash-in 'adaptations', pissing on our work like a less polite form of zombie dog?!"

Granted, the Final Fantasy games are a quantum leap ahead of Resident Evil in the visual storytelling stakes, but Paul W.S. Anderson has already set the bar pretty low. To be honest, I think many fans will just be happy with a faithful Resi movie, regardless of how rubbish it is.

And this trailer definitely has "For the fans!" written all over it. Resi aficionados will be quivering with excitement at the prospect of the further adventures of Leon and Claire, while I suspect those who only know the movies (or are completely innocent of the whole franchise) will be left singularly bemused.

Mercury Ho!

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

So prosaic and anonymous an image, I almost didn't bother posting it, but this thin monochrome crescent is our first close-up view of Mercury since the last (and first) robot to visit it over twenty years ago. On Monday, MESSENGER will fly right by the closest planet to the sun, snapping pictures as it goes. This gravity assist will help it to enter orbit around Mercury some time in 2011.

This is a good excuse for me to finally get around to brushing up my orbital mechanics, firstly because of the much-bandied factoid that it takes more effort to get closer to the sun than to leave the solar system, but also because, so close to the sun and taking such a long time to rotate on its axis (about 58 times longer than the Earth) the solar day on Mercury is seriously weird.

Image source with more information

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

As you can see, MESSENGER's journey has been pretty convoluted. More shockingly, although it's approaching Mercury right now, it's actually just over halfway through its journey to orbit insertion.

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Northwestern University

This image of Mercury is courtesy of Mariner 10, the last robot to stop by. It's a monochrome image, since Mercury is actually a kind of bronze-y brown, I believe. Now that Titan (which is larger than Mercury, btw) and Iapetus have been illuminated by Cassini's curious eye, Mercury is perhaps the most obvious world of great mystery out there. If all goes well, the veils should begin to drop starting next week...

Meanwhile, on Mars...

Image source with larger version
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

A shivering robot peers around at her surroundings.

Halo and Rings

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

As Cassini nears the end of its primary mission, CICLOPS held an online vote for the public's favourite Cassini image. There were no real surprises, but I did notice this stunning black and white image of Titan's halo behind the rings. Equivalent natural colour images exist, but this is somehow much more striking and elegant.

Text the Halls - Review-Me-Do

As promised, here are my thoughts on the other Text the Halls entrants. If I were to compare them to this year's bevy of IFComp games, I'd say that the Text the Halls entrants were less technically proficient, but a lot more lighthearted, fun, varied and - dare I say it - interesting.

The TIGSource forums are down (pining for holidaying TIG head-honcho Derek, I suspect), so I'm linking to each (non-online) game's page at the IFWiki instead. Alternatively, download the whole lot (except for Breathe) courtesy of Terry by clicking here.

When it gets down to it, I don't think there's any way you could order these games and not find something undeservedly at the bottom, so I've gone for alphabetical order, cowardly allowing Sesame Street to take the heat.

---

Breathe - Daniel Benmergui

Who'd think getting your head stuck in a sweater would be so dangerous and difficult a situation? Still haven't beaten this game, though it's very addictive.

Capture Santa! - James Higgins

It's not an especially good sign when you find yourself solving puzzles without understanding how you did it. It's worse when the game is constantly giving you heavy hints about what to do and you still struggle to make it respond to sensible commands. Capture Santa! is full of neat ideas that the author clearly wasn't entirely sure how to implement. Some tough testing might help to kick this game into shape. As it stands, I found it difficult to enjoy. Sorry. T_T

The Christmas Party - OldGrover

Definitely wins the award for best implementation, and it was even written in ALAN, which doesn't have the best reputation for that sort of thing. The Christmas Party relies on the fact that people like sticking things together, and gives you a straightforward but expansive goal from the outset. It's simple enough, and full of enough things to do that it holds your interest and makes the nicely festive atmosphere work well.
(Disclosure: I was one of the beta testers for this game.)

Midwinter Rites – Colossus Entertainment

An unashamed homage to the text adventures of old, complete with retro music and fantasy clichés. Great, simple fun.

My Magic Tire Hoax – nd

God, I hate this game. In particular, I hate the fact that I didn't write it. Because it's great. Sure, it needs a beta tester to poke and prod and add to the implementation and change some of the default responses and deal with some strange (occasionally game-breaking) bugs, but the setting is so imaginative and atmospheric and the characters are so believably strange and compelling, and the whole thing's like Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet had a love child and Philip K. Dick was the midwife and when it grew up, it was this game. I love it, it's brilliant - I hate it, I'm so jealous...

Panorama - Ereth

Don't judge this game by your first impressions. The first thing you encounter is a poetic text dump musing about winter and its oh-so quirky foibles – no thanks. The next thing that happens is you discover that only directional commands have been implemented – I'm sorry, what? But if you stick with this for more than half a minute, you'll realise that Panorama has a huge depth of implementation in its own way. As a snowflake floating on the wind, you have a large and varied environment to explore, and a lot of places to fall. It's a game that teeters a little on the line between evocative emotion and mushy sentiment, but if you play around for long enough you're bound to find at least one ending that will warm the cockles of your heart.

The Snowman – Caio Miranda

The Snowman is a game with a lot of implementation issues – endless disambiguation, a confusing map, misleading instructions, puzzles that provide no indication when you're getting close to the solution...

And yet, The Snowman is also huge fun. A light-hearted, surreal, slightly sociopathic game, utterly insane, joyfully irreverent. I think this is what Text the Halls was supposed to be about: not a masterpiece, but a great piece of very unusual entertainment.
(Note: There's an improved version of this game that I've yet to play.)

TIGSaga -Terry, Kinten, Akhel, Xander, Haowan, Shinygerbil, and #tigIRC

A Wiki-made choose-your-own-adventure created at the last minute, full of TIGS in-jokes. Well-written, imaginative and unique, but there aren't actually that many branches, and they don't go all that far. Its heart is definitely in the right place, though - somewhere between its monocle and its top hat. No, really. o_O

Xmaton – Simeon Maxein

Aha! A gadget game. Push buttons in the right order to win, trial and error with amusing misfires. It's kind of annoying that it only seems to reward you for achieving absolute perfection, but it's simple enough that I was compelled to keep trying. Your reward for winning, by the way, is just to be told that you won, but getting everything to fit together properly is satisfying in its own way.

---

That's it. I think there was another game in the competition, but I don't remember what. Probably nothing important.

Friday Victory Blogging

Snowblind Aces wins Text the Halls.

Over the weekend I'll be coming up with a post or two about all the other games in the competition. ;-)

F Ring Veil

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

In this Cassini image we see the delicate F ring as it veils the face of cratered Mimas. The F ring is carefully preserved by the two shepherd moons Pandora and Prometheus (not pictured).

Running Out of Year

The year is almost over. It is a time to reflect, a time when we are more likely to notice that this day is one that was preceded by another one 365 days earlier, and then to obsess about what we did in the intervening period, and about what we hope to do in the next such period.

It is a bandwagon I would like to jump on, please. Here is some cool stuff I found in 2007. Much of it actually coming from other years (but not years in the future, as I am not a time traveller - or AM I?!) because I am always behind on everything and they have been making cool stuff for billions of years, so give me a break, okay?

---Of the movies I saw:

A Scanner Darkly
Funny, moving, strange and deeply human psychedelia.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society
Politically aware cyberpunk, demonstrates that Kenji Kamiyama can spin a decent yarn if you let him do it in a more cinematic format. Needs more colons.

The Host
Character-driven monster movie provides laughs, scares and tears.

---Of the books I read:

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Breathtaking imagination and heart.

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick
Because my record got stuck.

Pushing Ice - Alistair Reynolds
All this is fleeting, the most solid buildings just motes of dust.

---Comics and manga:

Lost at Sea - Bryan Lee O'Malley
So adolescent angst can be evocative and touching. Now I shall have to eat my hat. Pass the pepper.

Death Note - Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata
Teenager becomes vengeful angel. World-class detective pursues! But I only read the first volume. Why? Because I got distracted. Thus forms my first new year's resolution.

One Piece - Eiichiro Oda
Why did I read so much of this stuff? And there are like a million volumes of it! My name is Pacian, and I am addicted to dumb stories about pirates.

---TV Shows

Battlerstar Galactica
Intelligent science fiction on television? Someone should have done this before!

Primeval
It is better than Doctor Who. It is better than Doctor Who. It is better than- you get the idea.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig
Didn't live up to its potential, but full of cool ideas, beautiful visuals and visceral action.

---Games

Nelly Cootalot
So... cute... can't breathe...

Art of Theft
Actually, I could probably have spent all those hours doing something much more productive.

Sam and Max
They're back! And some of it is excellent! And some of it is not so excellent, but we will ignore that because these two seemed to chime more with my personality than Lost Pig or Aquaria or other - arguably better - games. Tomorrow I am probably going to think of a really stonking game I played in 2007 and kick myself.

---People

You, and you, and especially you. On which note, I wish you all a happy and creative New Year!

Potato Moons Too

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source with more information

What I like best about this Cassini image is that it's a rare example of one of Saturn's small, irregular moons coming to the visual party. Potato-like Hyperion is visible in the bottom left quadrant (click the image to enlarge), while the more spherical Tethys and Enceladus hang around by the rings.

Friday Aviatrix Blogging

Amelia Earhart.

Aviatrix is my new favourite word.

Snowblind Aces

For the TIGSource Text the Halls competition...


Snowblind Aces
An adventure/romance by Pacian
Competition result: 1st Place

-Download .t3 file (600kb)
-Download zipped windows application (1Mb)

Features include:

• TADS 3 game, interpreters available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Windows executable version also available.
• A short game with the emphasis on decisions rather than puzzles.
• Adaptive hint system helps out if you get stuck.
• State-of-the-art 'English words' graphics system, 100% future proof.
• Yours for the rock bottom price of COMPLETELY FREE.

10% of all proceeds go to the Icekin Preservation Fund. Help protect our shared ecological heritage.

Instructions

1. Download and Run the Game
-If you have Windows, you may prefer to download the zipped executable. Just click the link above, unzip the download (this step is probably not necessary) and double click the application.
-Alternatively, if you're a seasoned IF player, or you're using Linux or a Mac, download the .t3 version. Run the file with an interpreter from this page.

2. How to Play
Snowblind Aces is a simple IF - or 'interactive fiction' - game. Interact with your environment by typing phrases like 'examine me' (or just 'x me'), 'go north' (or just 'n'), 'shoot the bad guy' (or just 'shoot guy') and so on.
-A more comprehensive guide can be found here.
-Alternatively, type 'instructions' during play.

Changelog

Latest version: 5
-Fixed a couple of errors in the text.

Previous version: 4
-A few small changes to the dialogue web.
-Fixed a stonking great typo right at the beginning.

Previous version: 3
-Fixed a few typos and a broken hyperlink
-The hint system was misfiring in the forest clearing
-The fire-making bit had a small bug and didn't account for an important possibility

Feedback

All bug reports and suggestions are welcome. An email address for me appears as a hyperlink in the game (type 'credits'), or you can comment on this blog post.

Tiny Robo Tim

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Image source with more information

Mars takes over twice as long to orbit the sun as the Earth, and its southern hemisphere is on the verge of winter. Poor dust-caked Spirit (compare the image above to this one) looked to be in dire straits with respect to its need for nourishing sunlight, however NASA have finally succeeded in perching it on a northern-facing slope so it can maximise its energy intake.

Also of interest, Mars will be in opposition, as viewed from the Earth, tomorrow on Christmas Eve.

Snowblind Aces: Let's Beta

Snowblind Aces is now essentially finished. I need to write the rest of the built-in hints, and I want to add some garnish to the interactivity, but everything important is there.

Now, this is a relatively complicated game that I've written in less than two weeks, so I expect there to be all sorts of bugs unintended behaviour and typos non-conventional spellings. If you'd be able to beta test* the game before Christmas Eve (because it's not like you have more important things to do at this time of year ^_^;) please PM me at the TIGSource forums or leave a comment below.

(I don't think I have any lurkers, but I'm afraid I'll only consider letting you on as a tester if I already 'know' you to some extent).

*Which basically involves playing through the game and making notes of what goes wrong for you.

Commenting for All

I complained enough about Blogger removing the 'other' commenting option, so I think it's only fair that I thank them for listening to their users and reimplementing it (specifically, the 'nickname' option now allows you to enter a URL).

Not that they'll read this, but still.

Friday Velma Blogging

Future events such as these will affect you, in the future...

Well, that's all my stresses out of the way, and my Christmas tree up. Snowblind Aces needs to be done for the Text the Halls deadline of Christmas Eve, and I've surprised myself by getting a lot done today. It's now possible to reach the ending, although a lot of text is missing, and one very important point out of the maximum possible score of seven is currently sitting in the unimplemented depths of my dialogue web. Still, I'm feeling pretty confident.

Best case scenario: beta release on Saturday.
Worst case scenario: game released on Christmas Eve with no testing...
Really worst case scenario: game release prevented by zombie apocalypse.

Christmas Decoration

It's Jack!

Foreshortened Jack, that is. He is remarkably spindly.

The Time to Act

Our Friends from Frolix 8

Dialogue... Um, Web

Well, since the lead character of Snowblind Aces isn't mute, I've had to get to grips with the TADS 3 dialogue system-a-ma-jig. And yeah, okay, I'll admit that it definitely has nift (ie. it is nifty). One thing that's great about it is how easy it makes it to create conversations that flow from one topic to another. It's also great for creating characters that are as interested in talking to you as you are to them.

A couple of things I've made design choices on: one seriously nifty feature is that it's so easy to make topics different depending on what you've already talked about. So if you ask Alice about her husband, you could get a different answer from her depending on whether or not she's told you about his affair. I have, however, elected to use this feature only sparingly in Snowblind Aces (ie. where it would be inappropriate not to). I want Snowblind to be a really replayable game, and while I think that organic games are great and all, there's nothing more annoying than making a character say or do something cool and then having no idea what combination of topics and actions made them say it. It might be okay for something like Galatea, where the whole idea of the game is to investigate whether the player character can believe that Galatea is a real person, but for an adventure-romance where players are likely to be looking to get a certain ending... it would probably be a new kind of annoying.

Also, for my sins, I'm going to be using the conversation system in a similar-ish way to the Poizoned Mind one. TADS 3 has an optional 'topic inventory', which I'm going to be using. Topics won't stay in the inventory after you use them, but they may reappear if they change or if they take on a new relevance. Also, since - as I suspect a lot of people do - I tend to just type 'topics' over and over to see what I have left to say, I'm making hyperlinks of all the topics mentioned in dialogue. This may shoot me in the foot if it means that people end up accidentally asking (what they don't realise are) the same questions over and over again, so I'll have to be careful.

Anyway, I'm still really stressed (it doesn't take much), but hopefully my schedule is clearing up and I can start turning that complicated mass of doodles above into a complicated mass of TADS 3 code...

Blogger Eats Humble Pie

Then says: Actually, I don't like the taste, I think I'll stick to my do-what-I-say sandwich.

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we're strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

If you haven't set up OpenID, you can still link to your blog - or any webpage, for that matter - by using the standard [a] tag inside the comment form.

Because adding hurdles to commenting isn't a problem. Just expect your commenters to jump over them.

The Plot Thickens

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado
Image source with more information

Larry Esposito, principal investigator for Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s, and later from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, led scientists to believe Saturn's rings were relatively youthful and likely created by a comet that shattered a large moon, perhaps 100 million years ago.

But ring features seen by instruments on Cassini -- which arrived at Saturn in 2004 -- indicate the rings were not formed by a single cataclysmic event. The ages of the different rings appear to vary significantly, and the ring material is continually being recycled, Esposito said.

"The evidence is consistent with the picture that Saturn has had rings all through its history," said Esposito of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "We see extensive, rapid recycling of ring material, in which moons are continually shattered into ring particles, which then gather together and re-form moons."

Read the rest.

Also, dig this:

The team tagged the clumpy moonlets with cat names like "Mittens" and "Fluffy" because they appear to come and go unexpectedly over time and have multiple lives[.]

Game-Start: Announce

Snowblind Aces:


Competition deadline: Christmas Eve.

No, I don't know how I'm going to finish it in time. Yes, this is putting testing of my mute cowboy game back.

Ponder Ring Origin

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This natural colour image of Tethys and Saturn's rings makes me dizzy. We're looking towards the unilluminated side of the rings - or to put it another way, the sun is shining on the other side of the rings from the side we see here. The thick black strip within the rings is not a gap, but the opaque B ring, which isn't letting any light through.

It's also worth checking out this short article. The Cassini imaging team have pieced together a likely history for Saturn's smaller moons (Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Janus and others), a history which also provides further hints for the origin of the dazzling rings themselves. In short, Saturn's smaller moons seem to have formed from dense cores which have accumulated ring material into a somewhat larger light-and-frothy moon. The interesting question now is where those original dense cores came from. One obvious possibility is that they were the fragmentary remnants of larger moons that were shattered by impacts - part of one of the favourite hypotheses for the formation of Saturn's rings.