Previous month: November 2004
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Asteroid near miss

NASA's Near Earth Object Current Impact Risks page says the MN4 asteroid has a probability of 3.8e-05 % or 1 in 26,000 to actually hit the Earth. It's Torino Impact Hazard Scale level is one, A routine discovery in which a pass near the Earth is predicted that poses no unusual level of danger. December 24th CNN (Scientists study orbit of newly found asteroid) said the asteroid had a 1 in 300 probability of hitting us and a Torino rating of 2. At it's peak MN4 had an impact probability of 1 in 37 and Torino rating of 4.

Here's a timetable of impact probabilities for interested parties:

2004-12-24: 1 in 300
2004-12-24: 1 in 62
2004-12-25: 1 in 42
2004-12-25: 1 in 45
2004-12-27: 1 in 37
2004-12-27: 1 in 26,000

(source: 2004 MN4 at Wikipedia)

Asteroid 2004 MN4 reduced to Torino zero, says UK NEO Information Centre. So I guess now it's time to breathe a breath of relief. We're safe again.

This all has been quite interesting, hunting for information. After all, MN4 was first asteroid to have a Torino rating over one. In the end it was the first asteroid to drop from Torino four to Torino zero, too, but that's just good. It's a good question whether or not such warnings should be announced at all - why publish the scary news of (almost) certain death in 20-30 years time when the probability of such news being cancelled next week is much higher than the probability of the impact?

Anyway, MN4 is still predicted to pass within the Moon's orbit in 2029 and is still a minor risk when it returns in 2053. However, the current highest risk is once more 2004 VD17, which has an 1 in 17,000 probability of hitting us within the next 100 years or so (highest probability being in 2091).

28.12.2004 klo 14:00 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Christmas movies

Christmas was movie time, with lots of time and movies to watch. Christmas in general was fun, with traditions upheld. Good food, tons of candy, lots of clever gifts... What else do you need in the end?

Village of the Damned is a new version of a movie from 1960. I find it hard to believe the movie was made in 1995, it has a bad eighties look in it. It isn't the sharpest of movies, but entertaining enough to be watched once. It's about a village, where every inhabitant blacks out one day. After that many women are pregnant and give birth to weird babies. The plot works, but I've seen better. As an interesting fact you might be interested to know that this was Christopher Reeve's last movie before his fatal riding accident. I'm quite sure he won't be remembered from his part in this movie!

Creepshow was another Christmas gift from my brother, though this one was from last year. We finally got around and watched it. Two-hour length has kept us away... It has five stories in the style of old horror comics, all written by Stephen King. King also stars in one of the clips, making it clear it's better for him to be an author. Leslie Nielsen makes a curious appearance in a rather serious role in perhaps the best story of the all. Unfortunately that story is somewhat marred by silly undead, but it's still weird in a good way. Seeing Nielsen so serious must have something to do with it. Not a classic, but ok for seeing once.

Deathwatch was a rented flick. Behind the silly name lies a horror movie set in the trenches of World War I. I like that, as the First World War was in many ways an interesting war and is a lot more fresh as the second one. In this movie group of British soldiers find a German trench where evil things happen. It's an European movie with crappy ratings in IMDB, but I enjoyed it. The trench is a creepy place with lots of rats, mud and rain. We were surprised (in a positive way) to notice Andy Serkis (aka Gollum) in the cast, his character was pleasantly insane. Jamie Bell does a good lead role as a young kid. The movie reeks atmosphere and metaphor and the WWI setting is quite fresh indeed.

Schoolday of the Dead aka Shisha no gakuensai was an important film: it proves that all Asian horror movies aren't good. It had a confusing plot, which made some sense in the end but still felt pretentious and artificial. The movie wasn't scary, just somewhat silly.

The Office Christmas special, in the other hand, was absolutely brilliant. One of our favourite shows got a good end. I got the Office boxed set as a gift from Johanna, so we'll be watching the show second time soon. It's certainly worth another round. I've also ordered the Black Books box, which actually has lots of episodes we haven't even seen yet. I'm looking forward to returning to our favourite book seller.

27.12.2004 klo 15:25 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Shaun of the Dead and Last Party 2000

Sometimes you just can't find anything decent in the local DVD rental place. Then you go there one day, looking for something specific and don't find what you're looking for, but tons of other movies worth seeing. Well, that hit us yesterday.

First we watched Last Party 2000, a documentary about the 2000 US presidential election. An old topic, but the movie was interesting. It was hosted by Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of our favourite actors. His style was better than Michael Moore's, while the documentary was less entertaining than Moore's work. It was good, fairly neutral document giving voice to both republicans and democrats, but especially to the activists, who felt an injustice in the system, be it racism, fraudulent vote counting, WTO or whatever. I enjoyed it and found the document thought-provoking.

After that it was time for serious comedy. I've read lots of good things about Shaun of the Dead so we had to see it. It's highly recommended and one of the best movies I've seen this year! Absolutely brilliant! Simon Pegg, known to us from Big Train is great as Shaun, a sad loser who wants to turn his life around: he wants to win back his ex-girlfriend and improve his relation to his mother. That good cause is unfortunately slightly troubled by dead who wake and become zombies...

The beginning of the film is hilariously subtle, and the action picks up speed from there. The movie has good actors, many of which are well known from British comedy series like Black Books and The Office. The plot is full of references to ...of the Dead -movies, but the comedy works without any previous knowledge. Shaun of the Dead is a must-see for fans of either British comedy or zombie movies.

21.12.2004 klo 10:25 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Spam keywords

I checked the list of best keywords in my MT-Blacklist. Those have been most succesful in blocking spam comments and if they are not on your blacklist, they probably should be. The hits have been collected, by the way, over a period of month so as you can see, I get lots of comment spam in my blogs. Here goes:

top@tredgf.com (1269 hits)
phentermine (1094)
tramadol (1017)
meridia (909)
adipex (898)
xenical (888)
ionamin (888)
tenuate (886)
buy online -regex (512)
-hold-em (505)
<h1> (501)

That's the top 10, all over 500 hits. top@tredgf.com is the worst source of comment spam, assuming it's one source. Block it right away and you'll save yourself lots of trouble. Others on the list are pretty obvious: most comment spam sells drugs. Viagra is, by they way, way down the list. It's just not that popular anymore. Levitra is more popular. The most popular pills are all weight loss, except Tramadol which is a pain killer. Ritalin is also fairly popular. "-hold-em" refers to Texas Hold'Em, which is a very popular Poker game. It's also very popular in comment spam. I think most of the garbage landing on Gameblog is related to Poker. <h1> was means to block a surge of comment spam which didn't advertise anything.

Edit: Comments are closed; funny enough, this entry was a real spam magnet.

17.12.2004 klo 08:48 | Comments 2 comment(s)

Return of the King - the proper way

Watching the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings movies was the primary reason Johanna bought a DVD player two years ago. Now the trilogy closes with the whopping four-hour edition of Return of the King. That includes 48 minutes of extra material, introducing the Mouth and then some. Extended edition indeed - the whole trilogy clocks in around 11 hours.

While I do think the movies are best enjoyed with the extra material, the extra materials on the DVD's are probably even more interesting. Few movies offer such extensive extra materials and if they do, they are rarely worth watching. However, this one's different. The crew at WETA who did all the special effects and props and all that were madly in love with their job. When people love their job, they'll put in amazing amounts of effort that's basically useless - the movie would be equally good without it, because you simply can't see it. Or did anyone notice the rat-catcher's hut in Minas Tirith, with the dead rats hanging outside the door? Not to mention the decorations everywhere, giving each culture distinct feel.

All that would be mostly wasted without the detailed documentation. Of course, there's also the wonder: how on earth they did that? Seeing how the locations and effects were done doesn't kill the illusion for me, because the creativity and enthusiasm of the team is a wonder in itself.

We'll be watching the movie Tuesday - it'll be a long and wonderful night. But what's then? Peter Jackson should do The Hobbit next and then start working on all the tales of The Silmarillion...

13.12.2004 klo 15:05 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Hot games right now

Finally, there's a good reason to own a N-Gage. That reason is called Pathway to Glory. While World War 2 is a hot subject in games right now, Pathway to Glory is very old-fashioned: it's a turn-based war game. How boring and hardcore gamer is that? However, I don't think the game's target audience is necessarily the mainstream and if they try to get gamer credibility for N-Gage, it just might be a good move to appeal to a group like hardcore war gamers. And really, anybody who's played and enjoyed gems like Laser Squad, Jagged Allience or UFO should like Pathway to Glory.

I've played the demo mission twice now. First time around my squad got slaughtered by my carelessness. Second time I managed to reach the objective (blow out a water container) losing only two men (and both died executing dubious orders). Better placement of my troopers was the key to the victory, proving that Pathway to Glory is a serious wargame. Most of the enemy forces were killed by a single trooper, placed rather strategically. But hey, what can I do, the enemies came on in such a tight group that even missed shots killed soldiers around the actual target.

The complexity level of the game seems quite good - I'd expect more from a PC game, but with the limited user interface possibilities N-Gage offers, there's only so much you can do. Nothing essential is missing. I'm looking forward to getting the full version and trying the online play. That should be the main treat. Well-implemented GPRS connections allow playing wherever I want, 55-second turn time limit makes sure the game doesn't bog down in analysis paralysis and world-wide ranking system guarantees interesting matches between opponents of the same skill level. Sounds fabulous.

Also on the N-Gage front, Pocket Kingdom sounds like something I should check out. These are the hot N-Gage games, not the boring conversions from other platforms.

Meanwhile... On PS2, the main game after Burnout 3: Takedown wasn't FlatOut (even though it has some redeeming qualities like being Finnish, neat physics, fun ideas), but Sly 2: The Band of Thieves. It's probably the best platform action game since Jak & Daxter: Precursor Legacy (me and Johanna are in the minority who actively dislike Jak's later doings and anything relating to Ratchet & Clank). It has very cool graphics, brilliantly smooth gameplay and good sense of humour.

One more addiction: we got Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube. It's epic Japanese styled console RPG, with all the cliches and still it's quite enjoyable. We've never figured out what's so great about the likes of Final Fantasy, so it's quite strange we like this one. The nice graphics (even if the animation is sometimes substandard) and interesting plot help, as does the exciting realtime combat system. Johanna is already addicted and I like it a lot, too.

The Sims 2 - well, yeah, we did play that, for a while. It's not that new, really, even though it adds lots of good stuff to already working game idea.

8.12.2004 klo 11:01 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Writing about games

Enter, a middle level computer magazine (not for beginners, but not for heavy users either), has started to run a column about games. Of course they wanted to get the best author possible to do it, so they turned to me. At least that's how I want to believe it goes, but the truth is, they did invite me to write a column. I'm rather glad they did, too, because I get to write about games (both video games and board games, thus my point of view is somewhat unique in Finnish game press I think) and they pay me (rather well, I might add).

On a side note, I wrote an blog entry on games and artificial intelligence in Gameblog. It's not completely about games (it's also about computers, so it's still all geek), so it might be worth checking out.

2.12.2004 klo 14:39 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)