I have seen The Watchmen.

I didn't actually plan to go watch it. Well, I did at first, but then I found out that it was rated M18. So I complained about it a bit and resolved to buy the DVD. Then, I went out yesterday to meet up with Leonard and Jeremy, and we ended up watching The Watchmen.

The first thing about The Watchmen that really strikes you is how Dr. Manhattan doesn't like wearing stuff, and walks around naked for pretty much the entire film. There are these scenes where where you can see his glowing blue genitals clearly in the middle of the screen. Usually they're not in a position that says that you are intended to focus on them, but come on. You see the naked torso of a guy on the screen, what do you do? Check to see if he's really naked. After the first scene of that, you spend the rest of the movie wondering when the quantum phallus is going to appear again.

Also, imagine the guys on the CGI effects team who did Dr. Manhattan's glow. In order to have achieved a uniform glowing effect, they would have had to edit the scenes frame by frame, adding textures. Dr. Manhattan walks(and sometimes hovers) onto the scene fully unclothed for maybe a minute or two in the whole movie. Take 50 frames per second, that works out to... a lot of penis to edit.


I'm probably missing the point of the whole movie. I don't have a lot to say, except that it was awesome. I have only read four out of twelve of the graphic novels, so I can see that the beginning of the film was extremely faithful to the comic. Of course, everyone else says that. All the reviews include some comment about the film being too restricted to the graphic novel. I don't think that that's really an issue; would you have changed the plot of The Passion of the Christ?

The fight scenes were great. I really liked the way the slow-motion effects were implemented. I guess I'm still a sucker for bullet time. It also kinda reminded me of that first battle in 300.

If anyone wants the full plot, I have the graphic novel in digital form. It's really cool in the way that unlike regular superhero comics, there is no clear enemy. No supervillains with infinite supplies of henchmen or armies of giant killer robots. Instead, the whole thing is really about the struggle that humanity faced during the Cold War. Also other things, but I'm not that interested in literature, and I don't want to spoil the story for those who don't know of it yet.


Air hockey is awesome.

-Joe

Oh no. I have fallen ill. For the first time, however, I am able to identify what is wrong with me. As usual, it is most likely a rhinovirus. Okay, that didn't help much. All I can do is wait it out.

Probably contracted it from my brother.

This is so not fun.

What was fun, was the Singapore Science & Engineering Fair that I attended yesterday. I listened to people talk a lot about their projects, most of which I was quite unfamiliar with. The theoretical physics projects just blew over my head, and I could only struggle to understand the experimental physics projects. At a very basic level.

The biology ones I definitely did better at appreciating. I didn't have to replace any jargon with "thingy" and "stuff". Still, it made me realise how much more there is for me to discover. Made me realise how little I've actually learned so far, and how inarticulate I actually was with the biology terms when speaking. It's not like I don't know these words, it's just that I don't ever use them outside of writing.

Or maybe I just have a problem with public speaking.

Thankfully, the people eventually understood what I was trying to say, and I ended up even talking to one of the mentors regarding the stratification of the epidermis.

I should probably have gone and taken a look at more of the projects. Still, I'm glad that I went.


-Joe

What's really funny, is that a game released about eight years ago, featuring gritty, 2D graphics, and built for processors that had their speed measured in megahertz, is still more fun than most recent works.

I've just about gotten bored of Titan Quest. It wasn't really bad, not in the way that some other games were totally horrible. The real problem with it was that while interesting at first, the novelty quickly wore off, leaving a homogeneous, repetitive grind. Okay, so the other games I play are also repetitive grinds, with little variation other than the style in which the grind is carried out. However, it is this very quality that determines whether or not the game eventually sells for $20 in the stores...

See, even though Titan Quest mirrors Diablo II very closely, it just lacks this feel to it that made the Diablo series fun to play. The first problem is that there's a large lack of impact effects. When you swing your axe at a monster, you want to hear the sound of a blade hitting dull flesh. Titan Quest just doesn't have that. It's the same for when monsters attack you. No sound worth listening to.

Also, music. Good games have lots of music. Good movies are famous for their music. The people at Ironlore must have been on a budget. I can run from Delphi to Athens, killing stuff all the way(a process that takes at least an hour), and I hear maybe a minute and a half of music. It's not even good music, either. The attempts at creating ambiance in this game are so weak that I get more fun out of playing some Weird Al and thinking about how horribly they go together.

The next problem is a gameplay issue. For no reason, your character doesn't respond instantaneously to your mouseclicks. There is always some delay between the commanding mouseclick, and the firing of your bow. This is generally very annoying. I thought that I would get used to this, but I ended up hoarding equipment that decreased the time needed to shoot stuff so that I wouldn't feel the delay. After less than a week of this, I booted up Diablo and marveled at how my Amazon warrior could do stuff without suffering from "real-world acceleration".

They had really better not screw this up in Diablo III. When I click something, I want lightning bolts to fly out and destroy it immediately.


On the upside, I did learn a few things about Greek mythology. For instance, one person I really would not want to be is Actaeon.

Actaeon was a hunter, who, long story short, stumbled upon Artemis bathing in the woods. Artemis, being a goddess, turned Actaeon into a stag out of anger. Actaeon was then killed by his own hunting dogs.

I mean, come on, seriously? You'd think that a god would know better than to bathe in the mortal realm where hunters were likely to come for a drink. She probably set the whole thing up because she was bored and wanted to practice her turning-people-into-animal skills and cruel irony.

Anyway, I'm going to start work soon. I kinda had to lie to my mother about where the stem cells came from. Oh well.



I will make this.

-Joe

I have just purchased about $420 worth of gadgets and games. Well, mostly gadgets. In particular, a new set of audio equipment for my listening pleasure: a Sony Walkman mp3 player, and a set of earphones from Shure. Also a copy of Titan Quest.

As of now, I am very satisfied with the items I have bought. The media player has an 8GB storage space and isn't annoyingly large. I was a little worried about that, since I have been using this little pendrive-sized player from Samsung for about 3 years now. Overall, I feel that I have made a good choice this time, and I'm thankful that Sony realises the importance of tactile buttons and a slim chassis.

My new earphones are a tricky thing. I bought the Shure SE110, which happens to be in the lower range of earphones from Shure. Still, after using it, I have found that it is in fact superior to my old Audio Technica set. I had to do a bit of experimenting with the sleeves(the part that fits into your ear) before there was any noticeable improvement at all. It turned out that the foam sleeves, which are squishy and spongy like earplugs, worked the best. Excellent noise isolation. As I type now, I can't hear the sound of the keys clicking at all.

The Shure earphones are designed in a way that makes them a little inconvenient to put on, but I think I've gotten pretty good at at already. Now I wonder if I should have forked out an extra sixty dollars to get a higher-end pair of earphones. Still, I think that this was a worthwhile investment; if the reviews are to be believed, then I'll be using this pair for at least another couple of years. I'm going to deal with the difficult putting-on process, because now that I have tried these, my old earphones just seem to produce a tinnier sound.


Now, surprisingly, the game that I bought wasn't priced anywhere near any of the other ones. Usually I expect a game to cost about $60, give or take a few bucks. However, Titan Quest was only about $20. That was strange, because it is a fairly recent game(released in 2007), and it doesn't exactly have any major issues(like Hellgate: London). I have played through some of the first act of the game and I have found it relatively entertaining.

Titan Quest is based on ancient Greek mythology. Basically, the titans have broken free from their prisons and are wrecking havoc all over Greece. Naturally, it's up to the hero to single-handedly stop them and save the world. Whatever Zeus and the other Olympians are doing is beyond me.

Anyway, the whole Greek mythology thing makes the story pretty cool. I'll get to fight the Cyclops, Medusa, and a bunch of other big figures.

Even though I would consider this game a good Diablo clone, and a sufficiently entertaining action RPG, it does have one problem: There's no blood. It's like as if blood wasn't invented until after ancient Greece. I can hew horde after horde of Satyrs and not a single drop of the red goo falls to the ground. That's just kinda depressing.

Picture unrelated.

-Joe