Unseen Mercury

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

During its third and final flyby of Mercury before it enters orbit in 2011, the MESSENGER probe acquired this rather elegant image of the nearest planet to the sun - including a slither of its surface that has never before been mapped.

Friday Bigfin Squid Blogging

Moving on to the beginning...

So I bought the Resident Evil Remake as soon as it was re-released on the Wii (as 'Resident Evil Archives'), played Jill's game, liked it enough that I played it through a second time, and then moved on to Chris' game. That I only actually finished this weekend. Having managed to become quite skilled at traversing the mansion as Jill, it was a bit of a shock to play as Chris and suddenly lose two of my inventory slots, and find that all my favourite short cut doors now required a 'small key' in place of Jill's trademark lock pick. Coupled with the fact that I just found Chris to be a less interesting character than Jill (a straightforward action hero compared to Jill's more subtle and cunning heroine), I didn't get that far into his story before I stopped playing.

But Chris is also the lead character in Resident Evil 5, where he's found both a more interesting outfit and a much stronger personality, so I kind of felt honour-bound to try and finish his origin story before completing RE5. Obviously, I failed, but I got there in the end. :-P

So I've now finally completed (special masochistic game modes aside) the original Resident Evil game (or at least, its prettier update). One thing that struck me throughout is just how much unlike its sequels it is. I don't just mean that this game really does force you to carefully conserve ammunition (there were times when I was dodging past zombies with only a couple of bullets in my gun), but there's also a lot less story in here. Most of the game really is just exploring this creepy mansion, unlocking doors and solving puzzles. When you encounter other characters, it's never really to advance the plot so much as to foster a sense of life (or un-life) in the mansion.

And as a game that's primarily about drawing you into this carefully realised environment, Resident Evil succeeds brilliantly. This remake was (appropriately) one of the last Resident Evil games to use the infamous static camera style, before RE4 introduced the influential over-the-shoulder perspective, and I think it demonstrates how well developer Capcom had honed the formula. The camera angles and controls do (unfairly, but deal with it) create a sense of fear about what may be just out of view, and playing into this is a sublime use of light, shadows and careful framing to create striking visuals - whether it's lightning throwing the shadow of a previously unseen zombie across the room, or the feet of a hanged corpse swaying steadily in the corner of your view.

I'm often saying that the things I care about most in games are the characters and the locations, and in both these respects I think you can say the Resident Evil remake is visually striking, over-the-top and memorable.

We All Love Charlie Brooker

To say that Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe is a truly important piece of games journalism is most obviously a statement about how much of professional games journalism is utter toss - but that shouldn't imply that the single fifty minute episode of genuine video games content that the BBC saw fit to give Brooker is any less than the fantastic piece of uncompromising, acerbic and hilarious commentary you'd expect.

Brooker tries to cram a lot into the time he's been given, attempting a brief history of video games, an explanation of the different genres, and - crucially - actual discussion of human beings playing games. He also returns frequently to the question of why such a popular medium gets so little exposure and discussion in the wider media outside of dismissal and scaremongering.

If you're in the UK you can watch the show on the BBC iPlayer here. The rest of you will have to settle for the glitchy YouTube videos, starting with part one above.

Huzzah

According to this news, the BBC and a couple of other TV channels have stepped in to make sure that the next two seasons of Primeval get made, even though ITV had previously decided it couldn't afford to make real television shows anymore.

Colour me happy.

Monday Movie: The Straight Story

In his seventies, Alvin Straight walks with two canes, can't see well enough to drive, and hates relying on others.  So when his estranged brother has a stroke, he decides he has no option but to drive over three hundred miles to visit him... on his ride-on lawnmower.

The Straight Story is an unusual film for director David Lynch in that it's a delightfully ordinary tale for the rest of us - a gently paced and inspiring true story of everyday humanity.

Master of Unlocking

Woooosh! THAKA-BOOM! R.I.P. grotesque final boss. Now we shall ride into the sunrise on our rescue helicopter.

I really want to write about the ending to Resident Evil 5, but I guess I shouldn't spoil anything for anyone. One of the things I liked about it and can share was that it did move the story forwards. After all the time the RE series spent stagnated in Raccoon City (the likes of Resident Evil Outbreak File 4: Zombie Zoo Escape) it's great to see that Capcom are now quite happy to keep things moving. A rather significant part of the story comes to an end here, and that ties in nicely with the broader "monsters are a part of life now" perspective the RE universe has reached.


At the same time, I suppose some might worry that there's a danger that cutting too many ties to the Umbrella/Raccoon City thread that started the series won't leave enough meat for subsequent developments. But the thing I liked best about RE5 - in fact, the whole reason I was so keen to buy the game, after finding out the spoilerific specifics of this - is the way it's firmly rooted in characters and relationships from previous games.

My absolute favourite part of the game involves a fun, action-packed boss fight, and then a protracted, gruelling ordeal of melee attacks and quick-time events that lasts precisely TOO LONG minutes. What are you doing in this bit? I'm not telling you. But the fact that I found it so difficult and it took me so long and the 'F' key on my keyboard is probably never going to be the same again, well it only made the emotional payoff of success all the sweeter. It's a great technique I think: torturing the player not because the game has arbitrarily decided to make you jump through cruel hoops, but as a way of conveying the lengths one character is prepared to go through for another.

In other news, completing the game unlocks the exclusive PC version costumes, including this number for Sheva:


It's like they saw me coming.

Shadows touching in the outer solar system

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

With Saturn at equinox in this Cassini image, a thin line with a blip on it marks the conjoined shadows of Enceladus and the rings.

A Postcard from Saturn at Equinox

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Cassini has assembled a great, high resolution mosaic of Saturn as it appeared during its recent equinox. Grab a larger version and read the details here.

One of the most notable features of the Saturnian equinox is that its rings are edge on to the sun, which means that as well as this being the only time you won't see their shadows strewn across the gas giant's cloudtops, it's also a time when the rings become pretty much invisible. This image has therefore obviously been tweaked slightly to afford us a better view.

You Make Irving Look Bad

I'm seriously digging the supporting cast in Resident Evil 5. One of the reasons I love the second Resident Evil game so much is because of its varied and interesting minor characters, something which I don't think any subsequent RE game quite achieved again - until this one. So here - for example - is squeaky-voiced Ricardo Irving, an arms dealer who, following the events of the previous games, now sells the likes of giant, black-shelled crab monsters to despotic regimes and guerilla fighters.

Speaking of which, while RE4 seemed mostly concerned with taking the storyline somewhere completely different and finally moving on from Raccoon City, RE5 takes a broader perspective, looking backwards to tie events and relationships into the new bigger picture. By creating an alternate history where zombies and monsters have proliferated as weapons of mass destruction, far from seeming like it's been tenuously strung out, the Resident Evil series now feels like it's opened up a whole new range of possibilities for where it can take its characters.

Oh Right, THAT One

So I'm too much of a Resident Evil fanboy not to snap up Resident Evil 5 now that it's out on the PC. That doesn't mean that I don't still think the racial imagery deserves serious criticism. It's not just the depiction of Africans as gibbering, rabid savages. There's a prominent visual theme of light and dark, with you moving between the sun-bleached outdoors and black, underlit rooms, and this theme extends to the characters. Sure, the fair skinned characters are good guys and bad guys and in between, but the people with the darkest skin tones are all violent monsters.

And my first bit of 'gameplay' was jumping through Microsoft's hoops. The game won't let you save until you log into Windows Live. Oh, but you have to create a gamertag first. Oh, and then you have to update Windows Games Live. Oh, and your firewall's blocking that? Guess you'll have to do it manually. I recently got the ten year old PC version of Resident Evil 2 working on my current computer. Will I be saying the same for RE5 in ten years time?


But aside from all that, I'm impressed by a lot of the things I've seen so far. I never understood why, in RE4, Leon never gave his simpering female sidekick a gun. This is the man who gave Claire Redfield a gun within two minutes of meeting her (and within five minutes of discovering that Raccoon City was infested with zombies). So the fact that Sheva is a capable combatant who you fight alongside and co-operate with is a vast improvement in my eyes, even if it's probably the main thing that tips the scales from horror to action. And given the ridiculous wardrobes sported by the heroines of RE3 and RE4, it's actually quite refreshing to see that the designers have done a great job of giving Sheva a pretty face.


I'm also loving how well this HD generation console port is working on my PC. I've had to crank the resolution way down, but the fancy effects are working happily. I mentioned the light/dark symbolism above, and it pleases me no end that my humble video card is handling the shadows perfectly. Moving from shade to sun - even just standing under a palm tree, it's all great to look at.

From the visuals to the audio: I'm very fond of the way RE4's music consists largely of drums and ambient noise, but from what I've heard so far of the music in RE5, it seems they've thrown some more orchestral stuff back into the mix, which suits the greater focus on action, I think. And while we're on the subject of sound, it's been a long time coming, but I'm glad to see that this is the first in the main series of Resident Evil games to include subtitles.

So positive first impressions so far. It's just a shame that, with stronger female characters and greater inclusiveness for the deaf and hard of hearing, Capcom had to go and shoot themselves in the foot with a take on the African continent that might have been pretty progressive in the Victorian Age.

Thursday Book

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, yo-yoing up and down the length of his life from birth to death. He's a prisoner of war who sees the bombing of Dresden, an optometrist who survives a plane crash, an alien abductee. This is his story, and his unique take on time and war.

I suppose I was expecting something a bit like Catch-22 with this one, but while Catch-22 made me laugh and cry, Slaughterhouse 5 made me laugh and made me think, but I didn't really empathise with any of the characters as much as I'd have liked to - although there are quite a few poignant moments.

Comics and Stuff

Dawn of Time is a webcomic about a Victorian time traveller, a cave girl and a triceratops who all have hijinks together. I think it's great, so you should probably read it too, on account of my superior taste.

Scary Go Round, one of the most prolific, funny, imaginative and well characterised webcomics has also come to its conclusion this month, making me feel extra bad for always being stuck in the archives and never caught up to date.

Actually, my comic reading is hopelessly behind in general at the moment. There's a stack by my bedside yea high. Maybe I'll catch up a bit while I'm reading the next couple of non-graphic novels on my pile, thick bricks of prose that they are.

Monday Movie: A Tale of Two Sisters

The name Kim Ji-woon (also written Kim Jee Woon along with other variations) should be at least vaguely familiar to regular readers - I've previously exalted his languid, existential gangster story A Bittersweet Life and his explosive action-adventure The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Cementing Kim as a director who can turn his hand to anything, his earlier A Tale of Two Sisters is an eerie psychological horror film, brimming with atmosphere and tension.

But while a lot of directors can churn out self-effacing genre films, what I really like about Kim is his ability to create vastly different movies and still add his own touch to them - perfectly framed static shots, bold and confident camera movement, an eclectic score, powerful emotions underplayed...

Okay, obviously I'm a fan, and all you really need to know is that this a very clever, very nicely formed horror in the typical East Asian style. The scariest scenes carefully layer dread over ordinary household moments, building and building, until suddenly changing gear and confronting you expertly with what you had hoped would remain unseen.

Mars Rovers - What are they up to?

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Opportunity pulled a bit of a U-turn back in August, when her controllers realised they'd rolled on past 'the largest meteorite yet found on Mars'. Large enough, in fact, that it would have shattered on impact unless slowed down by the friction of a thicker atmosphere.

The idea that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere (presumed to have been lost because of the planet's relatively low gravity) is not especially controversial, but this meteorite offers us evidence on the kind of time scales we may be looking at. Has it lain on the surface of Mars for billions of years? Or was the Martian atmosphere thicker more recently than we thought? Read more in the official news article.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Spirit, meanwhile, is still stuck, while her friends on Earth continue to experiment with rovers (one equivalent in mass to Spirit, another lightened to mimic her weight on Mars) in their sand pit. While sitting waiting for orders (and weathering a dust storm), she's snapped this panorama of her surroundings.  (Click the thumbnail above to turn on the makebigenator).

Rem

The most important thing we can learn from the suggested searches on Google is that wherever you're going, people have been there before.

DVD Review: Ergo Proxy (The Complete Series)

In the domed city of Romdo, strong emotions are frowned upon, waste is encouraged and everyone is accompanied - and monitored - by android 'autoreivs'. Simmering beneath the surface are countless threats to the pervading peace - the Cogito virus is spreading free will among the autoreivs, and the powers that be are keen to blame these rogues for a spate of mysterious killings.  

Re-L, an inspector in the Intelligence bureau and granddaughter of the city's regent, is not so sure that Cogito is responsible. Neither is Vincent, an immigrant hoping to become a Model Citizen as he works to hunt down infected autoreivs. Their attempts to investigate see them thrown together - much to Re-L's displeasure - eventually pushing them beyond the city and outside its dome.


On the way, they encounter Pino, a childlike autoreiv designed for those citizens who can't get a permit for a human child - now orphaned, infected with Cogito and following Vincent like a lost lamb. Pino's so impossibly cute that she should be annoying, but there's also a creepy edge to her character - in part actually due to her irrepressible good nature in the face of any event, however terrible.

And while these three journey through the ruins and failed societies of an eerie wasteland - a deserted dome where robots keep everything meticulously clean for their absent masters, a city where generations of cloned soldiers fight endlessly against an implacable enemy - intrigue continues in their wake back at Romdo. Daedalus - a perpetually pre-pubescent scientist with an unhealthy crush on Re-L - and Raul Creed - the increasingly unbalanced director of the Security Bureau - vie with and against one another to advance their aims, trying to subvert and further the society of Romdo while always under the watchful eye of the autoreivs created to maintain it.


Two words that I think perfectly describe Ergo Proxy are 'atmospheric' and 'thoughtful'. The unique art design, gentle pace and ambient music drew me into a world inhabited by ambiguous and compelling characters, and stalked by haunting, post-apocalyptic mysteries. The plotting is perhaps rather weak, but I think the best thing about Ergo Proxy is that it isn't really trying to be too weighty and meaningful. Certainly there are big themes and references to philosophy, but these are an embellishment to - rather than a distraction from or perversion of - the depiction of these characters in their carefully realised world.

In that sense I suppose the show is arguably admirably restrained, but it's also prepared to be quite bold in terms of where it takes the story. This extends as far as changing the entire format of the show - one episode begins as a Who Wants to be a Millionaire style game show where Vincent is bombarded with questions and answers whose relevance he doesn't yet understand. Another episode even mixes in a separate style of animation, when Pino finds herself lost in a bizarre amusement park where the staff look and behave exactly like characters from an old Disney cartoon.


The show has a nice knack for sketching out its minor characters, and pretty much everyone manages to seem likeable, flawed, admirable or sinister at some point in the series. One of my favourite characters was Raul's entourage autoreiv, Kristeva. At first she's little more than an elegant sounding-board for her master, but she goes on to show a noble investment in maintaining the society of Romdo, while always threatening to lean towards either malevolent loyalty to Raul or disobedient compassion.

The characters in Ergo Proxy definitely change and grow as events progress - and not always in a positive direction. By the end I definitely felt as though, even if the story could have been tied together and parcelled out better, I had been on a journey with characters I cared about, through a world that felt both very real and very strange.

Rusty Anchor

From the classic adventure game Grim Fandango... Take it away, Glottis!

(If the voice of the skeleton sounds familiar, it's because it's Tony Plana, Betty's dad in Ugly Betty.)

Cloud Depths

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source

Cassini used a wavelength of infrared light that passes easily through methane to obtain this image of the turbulent depths beneath the serene pastel cloud-tops of Saturn.

On another note, I've often wondered just how much fuel Cassini has left after all these years of steadily adjusting its orbit. Todd Barber, the mission's lead propulsion engineer, discusses the probe's fuel gauge here.

Thursday Book

The Resurrectionist - James Bradley

I was hooked from the first page of this tale of a medical student in early 19th century London who becomes more involved in grave robbing than he'd care to and falls in love with a lady of ill repute. In no time I was two thirds of the way into the story. At which point I increasingly had to force myself to get through the rest.

Around the midpoint of the book, all the relationships and characters that drew me into it were destroyed by the narrator's descent into immorality. It is, I suppose, a fantastic literary device, but it had the unfortunate outcome of removing all those elements I liked best. Personally, I'd have preferred it as a more low key, less destructive story. In particular, I - perhaps pathologically - found myself rather touched by the reserved and bittersweet romance in the book's first half.

Not Bioshocked Enough

So I bought Bioshock now that it's cheap. I wasn't expecting it to be my cup of tea, and I'm disappointed to say that my instinct seems to have been pretty spot on. Compared to its predecessor, System Shock 2 - which I have never played beyond the beginning, to my great chagrin - the set up just seems weak.

I don't understand why everyone I meet wants to kill me. I don't understand why when they do kill me I just respawn in a vita-chamber, but when I kill them they stay dead. I don't understand how you can hack a computer using little squares to re-route water. And most criminally of all: this game just isn't scaring me.

There was one bit that did give me chills, where you know there's someone or something around the corner, and when you turn around the corner the lights go out. But that's it. System Shock 2 didn't even need set pieces to frighten you. Just surviving was scary, crouching in a shadowed corner with a half broken pistol, waiting for one of the Many to pass you by while it lamented pathetically about its lost humanity.

By contrast, I can't help but think that Bioshock is just another shooter. Especially in the sense that you spend most of the time shooting bad guys, with very little tension or suspense. And where in System Shock 2 the absence of character interaction nurtured a desperate sense of isolation, here - where there are plenty of people around, and they just all want to kill me - it makes me think that Bioshock is something of a step backwards.

Thursday Comic

Whiteout - Greg Rucka, Steve Lieber et al.

Whiteout begins with a chunk of hard-boiled monologue from our heroine Carrie Stetko - the sole representative of American law enforcement on the entire continent of Antarctica - about 'knowing the ice' and whether or not she trusts her gut. It's a slight misfire, I think, for a book where the best aspects are the veracity of its setting and its ambiguous characterisations.

Rucka's clearly put a lot of effort into researching Antarctic conditions and politics, and he tells a plausible, well motivated mystery thriller that happens to be set in the most inhospitable and least populated region of the planet. Lieber's art fits the tone, with sparse, sketchy drawings that make good use of the white page.

Whiteout is a low-key, offbeat book that's worth looking into if you enjoy quirky stories of suspense.

Paprika + The Matrix + Nolan = ???

I don't know the answer to that sum, but whatever it is - yes please!

Hat tip Twitch, as ever.

Friday Videogame Babe Blogging

So I finally got around to fixing my install of Steam and playing Portal. GLaDOS totally won me over, especially in the final sequence, and with that fantastic song.

Definitely my kind of murderous AI.

Thursday Book

House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds

Six million years ago, Abigail Gentian split her personality and memories into a thousand clones and launched them into deep space. Now, two such Gentians - Campion and Purslane - are in trouble. They've broken Abigail's rules by falling in love, and they're decades late for the latest reunion. They hope that their amnesiac robot guest will curry them some favour - but little do they know that they've become mixed up in posthuman mysteries that, after all this time, could finally bring an end to the Gentian line.

Alistair Reynold's stories typically have as their underpinning a strong sense that civilisations are probably ephemeral, and that the clock is ticking for humanity. In House of Suns, however, he explores the other side of the question: how might humanity survive for longer than an astronomical sneeze? If it does, how might it change? And how (through long lived individuals and time dilation) might it stay the same?

Although I think Revelation Space and Chasm City are two of Reynold's strongest works, I also think that House of Suns - like Century Rain and Pushing Ice - is yet more proof that he's currently doing his best work outside the Revelation Space series. Reynolds benefits from being able to shape the entire Universe around his ideas like the vastest of all storytelling tools. He does this here to perhaps a greater extent than he's ever done, combining the astronomical and personal scales with a dash of that Gothic, anachronistic style that will be familiar to fans.

:-p

After all these years, I finally got pictures of him doing this. Usually he stops in the time it takes me to grab the camera.

Monday Movie: The Insider

Jeffrey Wigand used to be a top scientist in a big tobacco company, and now he wants to spill the beans on how cigarette manufacturers are manipulating the nicotine in their products - even if everything he has is ruined in the process. But when his interview is finally on tape, the corporate lawyers of CBS refuse to allow its broadcast, worrying about their culpability (and the effect of controversy on their share prices). It's up to dedicated newsman Lowell Bergman to get Wigand's story out into the open before a smear campaign destroys the man's credibility - and his life.

When I've not seen one of his films for a while, I tend to just think of Michael Mann as the one working American director who seems to still have an aptitude for action scenes, but The Insider stands as a fantastic reminder that Mann's true strengths are his ability to convey intense dialogue and evocative ambience. Words fly like machinegun bullets throughout this dramatisation of a true story, but there's also great care taken to convey emotion and atmosphere.

Thursday Book

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

An interesting one, this. Wilde's wit is evident from the first page, with the decadent Lord Henry espousing his callous views on why one should live a shallow life of opulence and beauty. And although the plot of the book seems to be told from the perspective of a more conventional morality, the central conceit of the story - that the incomparably beautiful Dorian Gray is able to hide his predilection for sin and vice because the inherent ugliness of such a life affects his supernatural portrait instead of his own flawless face - arguably assumes that goodness and good looks are one and the same.

But regardless of what Wilde was actually trying to say with the book (Victorian society seemed to think that he was saying he should be sentenced to hard labour) something this well written, with luxurious sentences that flow right off the page, is an undeniable pleasure to read.

Edge on to the sun

Image source
Credit: NASA/STScI/AURA

So today's the day (perhaps not the Saturnian day, but close enough) that Saturn is at equinox. The gas giant's axis - and therefore also its ring plane - is neither tilted towards or away from the sun. With the sun's light striking them edge on, the Cassini imaging team's favourite frame of reference - the illuminated/unilluminated side of the rings - will be briefly meaningless, before turning on its head.

The Cassini homepage has a nice article on the event here, but as always, you're probably best off checking out Emily Lakdawalla's eloquent description at the Planetary Society blog here.

Disclaimer: the Hubble image above actually shows Saturn from 1996-2000, leaving an equinox and heading into the northern winter that would greet Cassini.

Monday Movie: Return of the Jedi

Return of Jedi has always been my favourite Star Wars film, mostly because of the stonking great space battle, and because Lando gets to be a hero. But then let's not forget Luke's attempts to redeem Darth Vader, the impossibly tear-jerking spectacle of dead Ewoks, and - yes, I'll admit that it figures as well - a certain golden bikini.

The best cut, in my opinion, is the only one that I don't actually own on DVD - the first Special Edition, after Lucas made the ending properly epic, but before Hayden Christensen's dull-eyed ghost was slipped in.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

I've not had the time or energy to get much done these past couple of weeks, but I've got some time off coming up, and the chance to get back at my creative projects. Hopefully I'll have some stuff to show you all before the end of the month...

Thursday Comic

Polly and the Pirates - Ted Naifeh

Polly Pringle is a prim and proper girl who aspires to be just like the prim and proper mother she never knew. Living in a maritime city where there's no clear distinction between the ships and the buildings, she's the one girl in her boarding school who never gets into trouble and always does as she's told. That is, until she's suddenly abducted by pirates who believe that she's actually the daughter of the courageous and honourable Pirate Queen - and their best bet at recovering a lost treasure map.

These Thursday posts are supposed to be part of my impetus to read through the stack of books and comics on my bedside table, but I haven't had any time at all for reading over this past week, and looking for something that I could re-read in one sitting and write a post about, this adorable little book immediately leapt out at me. Polly and the Pirates is funny and adventurous, it's full of memorable characters and it eventually manages to be quite touching as Polly grows to give a damn about a group of scurvy buccaneers who probably need her a lot more than she needs them.

I've sung Naifeh's praises as an artist before, and I think that his diverse cast of caricatures - from an impossibly petite schoolmistress to a razor-toothed, goblin-like pirate - manages to cultivate the perfect tone and feel for the story. His writing's on top form here as well, with plenty of swashbuckling action and piratical repartee. Pretty much the only the complaint I have with this book is that three years later there's still not been a sequel.

Monday Movie: Hana-Bi

Director, lead actor, writer, editor etc. etc. Takeshi Kitano reached widespread acclaim with this tale of a quiet, unassuming police officer trying to give his terminally ill wife a pleasant send-off - while dealing with the fallout of a bust gone wrong and the loan sharks who paid for her treatment.

Told in Kitano's inimitably static style, the relationship between husband Nishi and his unnamed wife at first seems reserved, even indifferent. But as the story progresses, the lengths that Nishi is prepared to go to for her become clear, and we're treated to touching insights into their understated love.

Hana-Bi is certainly a sober, softly spoken film, but it's by no means heavy. Kitano keeps things bittersweet and dryly humorous, interspersed with his trademark form of after-the-fact slapstick, and a moving score from Joe Hisaishi draws you into the gentle pace.

Friday Omar Blogging

Omar Little in his Sunday best.

Thursday Comic

Bleach (Vols 1-4) - Tite Kubo

Although I can certainly see why Eiichiro Oda's One Piece is the best regarded of the popular boys' mangas, I have to admit that its interminable, slow-paced fights scenes started to grate a bit after reading seven volumes of it. Compared to the high-seas nonsense of One Piece, the concept of Bleach - high-schooler secretly fights ghosts gone bad - may seem more prosaic and cliched, but you're at least guaranteed that something will happen between the first and last pages of a book.

But more than that, what drew me back to this comic were the memorable and colourful characters - whether it's Rukia, an ancient soul reaper lying low as a school girl, with her frosty exterior and courageous heart; or sensitive giant Chad who fights spirits he can't even see using sheer brute strength.

Okay, there are much more 'worthy' books out there, but Bleach is lively, fun and full of personality.

I am being a busy bee...

(Cross-posted to my other blog.)

Thurday Book

The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Greene's amoral tale of idealistic American agent Alden Pyle interfering with the war between the French and the Viet Minh has often been hailed as prophetic. It also happens to be tautly written, evocative and thematically complex.

Yes, the way it's framed around the competition between Pyle and an old Englishman for the affections of a child-like Vietnamese woman has racist and sexist overtones, but that's kind of the point - that for all their posturing and concern, neither of them every truly considers her capable of independent action.

Whether he meant it to or not, Greene's book would go on to become emblematic of the next half-century of American foreign policy.

Messy Moon

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image Source

The influence that Saturn's moons have on its rings is nicely illustrated by this Cassini image of the feathery mess Prometheus has made of the F-ring. (There's a good description of Prometheus' shenanigans here.)

I'm not going to write any kind of comprehensive post on the anniversary of the moon landings, because there's enough of that elsewhere, but I think a nice addendum to the celebrations can be found in this article by Mars Rover big-wig and Planetary Society president Jim Bell.

Yes, the Apollo missions were a fantastic acheivemement. But complaining about the lack of effective human spaceflight since then ignores the massive sucess of our unmanned exploration of the solar system.

Feynman Online

So it turns out that Bill Gates owns the rights to the recordings of Richard Feynman giving some general lectures on science and physics. If you have Silverlight installed, you can watch them here.

I watched the first lecture - in which Feynman describes the nature of gravity and orbits, both topics dear to my heart - during my lunch break on Friday. It's great to see how Feynman was able to be entertaining while actually teaching physics. He even writes an equation on a blackboard. By comparison, the kind of science shows on television at the moment seem both intellectually bankrupt and boring.

And it's also great to hear how the man often described as the second greatest physicist of the twentieth century (after Einstein) sounds very much like a regular guy, with his fantastic Brooklyn accent.

Anyway, if you want to get some real science in you, please check out at least the first lecture. Captions for the hearing impaired come as standard.

Friday Blog Blogging

It still needs some work, but I've put together a crappy new blag. In part it's a place for updates on the games I'm working on (although major news - such as new releases - will still get posted to Space Cat Rocket Ship as well).

But I've also thought for some time that text-only games could do with an equivalent of the Indie Games Blog: a place where a screenshot and short description can be posted for new IF. Too often, otherwise not bad games seem to get just a blank post on the IFDB or IFWiki, and I think it might be cool to be able to get a peak at what's inside the game itself - even if it turns out to be yet another 'my first game' game.

To that end, I give you:

Text Games for Space Crows
http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/

New District 9 Trailer

Setting quite a different tone, but also starting to look like an extremely well put together movie.

Hat tip: Twitch, as always.

Monday Movie: The Duellists

When the dispassionate D'Hubert is sent to arrest fellow soldier Feraud for duelling, Feraud takes it about as badly as he possibly could, doggedly seeking D'Hubert out time and again, year after year. And despite his better nature, honour moves D'Hubert to accept each challenge and risk his life in each new duel.

The Duellists - Ridley Scott's first feature film, adapted from a short story by Joseph Conrad - takes in gorgeous landscapes, gritty period realism and tense duels, while musing on the nature of honour and duty.

Teaser

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 48

Part 48: Ever After

The sun woke me, shining through the open window, red light against my eyelids. I rolled over. The sheets beside me were slightly disturbed, an indentation in the pillow, a warmth lingering to my side. I swung my legs out of bed, and stood, throwing a robe around myself.

The marble floor was strangely warm beneath my bare feet.

She glided into the room quietly, treading carefully, naked and drying her hair with a towel.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You're always up so early.”

She shrugged, brassy metal flowing organically into the gesture. “The pain used to wake me. Fear of the dangers of the world. Worry for my uncle. I suppose I got into the habit of waking at sunrise. Don't let it bother you. You should lie in.”

“I can't. Knowing you're up and about.”

She pulled down a dress from a coat hangar hooked on the wardrobe door, stepped into it. I zipped her up. She slipped her arm in mine and said, casually, “I think a visitor may have slept on our doorstep.”

“Is the doorbell broken?”

“You know how she is.”

We walked downstairs, arm in arm, her feet pattering sharply on the marble steps.

Sigrid looked up at us as we opened the door and stepped out onto the street, her calm eyes waiting for us as if she'd known the exact moment we'd leave the house and had aimed her gaze accordingly. She looked lost without her rifle. Incomplete.

“You should have woken us,” Una said. “You could've slept on the sofa.”

Sigrid barely considered the idea. “Can hardly sleep inside anymore. Or lying down. Not used to it.”

Una met my eye. The world changed, but our sleep patterns stayed the same.

Sigrid stood. “I just came to say goodbye.”

I wasn't surprised. “Where are you going to go?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “Across the sea. Into the Twisted Forests. Anywhere away from here. I can't make it in Unity City. It's too strange, and everyone else seems too calm and quiet. And I don't want to stick around anywhere nearby either. Too many people from Fortress City wandering around on the wrong side of the wall, still loving the memory of Kirkham and hating the people who killed him. Seen too many of their friends come here and wind up with Sky Spider machines in their heads.”

Una pulled Sigrid into a hug. The riflewoman bore it with obvious ill ease, uncomfortable to be so close to Sky Spider technology. When she turned to me, I just shook her hand.

“Hey,” she said with a toss of her head, “maybe I'll go and finally find EON-2, see what it wanted to say all this time.”

She turned away from us and walked off, into the perfectly white streets of Unity City. We watched her until the road carried her out of sight. She didn't look back.

“I'd be dead several times over if not for her,” I remembered, all of a sudden.

“And she'll die out there,” Una said coldly.

I laughed. “And we'll die in here. That's life. Human life, anyway.”

Una laughed too, looking down at herself, her six, oil-slick black, arthropodal legs, her polished brass bust, her human arms. “Human life isn't what we thought it was anyway.”

The sun had crept up higher into the sky, its white light almost painful as it played on the city's bright rooftops. Figures stirred in the distance, some of them with their heads wrapped in glowing coils, others tall, ethereal, androgynous.

“Our kind of human life is well on the way out,” I said.

Una squeezed my arm. “Everything changes,” she said. “What matters is breakfast.”

She lead me inside.

We sat on the balcony to eat, looking out at the incandescent city. Immense forms moved on the horizon, reshaping the world with slow, powerful grace. And my hand rested in hers.

We looked at one another and smiled.

THE END

Moon-Moon Eclipse

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

So Cassini has shown us eclipses of one kind or another enough times. Saturn is a lot bigger than its moons, so they're always throwing their little shadows onto its clouds, or wandering into the shade of their gargantuan parent.

But around Saturn's equinox, something new becomes possible. With the sun and Saturn's moons all on a similar plane, an observer on one moon could now potentially see one of the other moons blotting out their view of the sun. Which is what's happened here, with Enceladus casting its shadow onto Mimas.

There's a time-lapse video of the event that you can watch here.