The best part is the sound of the motors. It sounds like bees. I hope that the next version incorporates this feature like a terror weapon, because I think that even the most die-hard enemy or terrorist would just throw down their weapons and surrender when confronted by a robotic dog with bees in its mouth that shoots bees when it barks.
The new Terminator tv series is surprisingly better than it has any right to be. It'll obviously never compare to T2, but it is an amusing diversion. I kind of like where they're going with the mythology and how they brought it into modern times, not to mention how it hopefully negates T3 and Claire Danes. It's also nice to have some action on tv, I can't think of anything else in that genre that's been good since maybe 24 a few years ago.
God. I just realized that it's been 14 years since James Cameron made a good movie. If I had a time machine, I'd send a robot back to the mid 90s to punch him non-stop until he got over his water fetish.
So last month there was that story about a meteorite crashing and villagers falling ill. I kept my eye on it, but it was either a false alarm or the zombie outbreak was successfully contained/hidden from the media. Still, one can never be too careful, and now it looks like it may not be the zombies that are mankind's downfall, and we may be looking at the first signs of a robot insurrection. That's right, a robotic cannon ran amok and killed 9 soldiers, wounding 14 more! Luckily most of my preparations for the zombies should still be effective, though now I need to rig up some EMP devices and everything. I'll be in my bunker if you need me. In related news, I finally saw the Transformers movie last night. I guess it was the best movie I've ever seen based on a toy, and hit all the right points for a movie about giant robots fighting and transforming. I'm not sure what the hell Jon Voight was doing there. And it seriously needed some major trimming; the whole scene with the robots in the garden and the humans looking for the pair of glasses was excruciating, and yet it never seemed to end. I also got pretty sick of the only dialog being "No no no no no no!"
I just finished watching the first episode of Flight of the Conchords, a new comedy on HBO. It'll probably take a few more episodes to grow on me, it's got a very dry and self-deprecating sense of humor similar to the British version of The Office. But instead of being about a paper company it's about some New Zealand indie hipsters in New York. Periodically they break into song...like this awesome one about robots:
I guess you can watch the first episode online, even if you don't have HBO. Like I said, if you're a fan of The Office you may get a kick out of it.
Those very words can inspire fear and awe. I read that headline and imagined some 100-foot tall Teutonic automaton, stomping through the streets of Essen while firing missiles at terrified motorists. Armed militia move in to stop the robot, but it fires a deadly heat ray that melts the tanks and sets soldiers ablaze. And as the rampage continues, it blasts David Hasselhoff music from the gigantic speakers embedded in its torso.
But no. It's just a freakin' 4-meter tall arm. It can lift about 450 pounds. Big deal. It's bolted in place so it can't even go anywhere, let alone rain down fiery death and destruction. Germany, what happened to you? How could you let us down like this? This is so terribly disappointing I want to cry.
I mean, seriously, when I saw that headline I thought it would be about something that looks like this:
A few years ago I played an aweswome indie shareware game called Starscape; it was like a lite version of Star Control II, with some pretty insane space combat. More polish than many big budget games, and lots of fun. And now they've released their second game, Mr. Robot. I just got through the demo and it seems like an action/adventure puzzle game combined with a JRPG battle system. From the menus it looks like the RPG system is pretty deep -- a whole lot of stats and item slots that I didn't get to use in the demo, and Starscape was a surprisngly long game. Looks like it'll be a good value for the cheap price, so I'll probably wind up registering it soon.
There's a free demo on their web site. Check it out, it's kinda neat..
bedlamboy was upset that yesterday's video post didn't actually feature Transformers, so this post is for him. I'm not going to talk about the Transformers movie, because I have no faith in Michael Bay. There'll be fast cuts and loud explosions and bad rock music and that's about it. What I am hesitantly excited about, though, is the Halo movie. Getting the screenwriter of 28 Days Later and being produced by Peter Jackson were good enough, but I'm very intrigued by them tapping Neill Blomkamp to be the director.
At first I hadn't heard of him, other than that he'd mostly done commercials and music videos. Sometimes that can be good (Michel Gondry, David Fincher), but all too often that description fills me with fear-filled tremors because of hacks like McG. But then I read that he was responsible for that awesome documentary-style sci-fi short, Alive in Joburg. And that Citroen commercial with the dancing robot car. There's your transformer!
YouTube has a bunch of his films. Here's a short called Tetra Vaal; it's more a concept than anything, but I love his documentary style. He's almost like a sci-fi Spike Lee. I'm also impressed with how he manages to take fantastic technology place it in a real-world, dirty environment without having it look out of place. I don't want to be too optimistic, but Blomkamp so far falls more into the Gondry and Fincher camps than the McG hobo village. I eagerly look forward to seeing what he can do with a feature-length film.
Also check out: Yellow, that looks like what I Robot should have been like.
It was much too hot in my place last night, but not quite hot enough to turn on the a/c or anything. So today while out running errands, I stopped by Target to get a new fan. I mostly wanted a quiet one, and wound up getting a tower model because of its black and chrome finish.
So I get it home, and wtf? It has the longest, most confusing instruction manual of anything I've purchased recently....and that includes the xbox 360. It's a goddamn oscillating fan! But apparently it's got all sorts of crazy functions, like a "breeze mode" that will randomly vary the oscillation and speed, the ability to automatically turn on if room temperature goes above a certain level, timers, a remote control with flashlight, ionizer, and stuff. But still, it's a fan. I'm a smart guy, it should not have taken me half an hour to turn this thing on.
I will admit that that breeze functionality is pretty sweet, but I see this as just one ominous step until the day the robots take over.
