That New Blog Smell: Blog 2.0

It's been a long time since I last posted here (sorry friends) but I wish to make amends and try a new regular blog schedule. And by that I mean I'll try writing again. In the past year I’ve wrapped myself in my “geekness” and played many video games, read many books, watched many movies, and seen much TV.

Microsoft got its fangs into me when it invented the Gamerscore and Achievement Points system, so I spent 99.9% of my gaming time getting as many points as I could. Labeling me "Achievement Whore" wouldn’t be out of the question. I finished out 2008 with 31,660 GS. The last game I finished up in December was BioShock, which I received for X-Mass last year and I’m thankful I finally played it. If you haven’t you gotta play this, unless you hate original FPS ideas with an Art Deco 50’s flavor, wrapped around genetic experiments and life-or-death choices with Little Sisters and Big Daddies. Your psyche will thank you after this game. PLAY IT. My New Years resolution is break 60,000 GS by the end of the year. I’ve currently pasted 35,000 with Afro Samurai on Sunday, so my pattern is clear.

On TV I was late to the show with Jericho, but at least I saw the last season, which brought me to the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The new Doctor Who has really impressed me of late as did Robin Hood for a brief time. And thank god for South Park, as I’ve been catching up on all the episodes thanks to XBL. I tried Reality TV for a few months but left me feeling cold and shriveled. 2008’s fall season came in like a lion with a show almost every day of the week to watch. So far I’ve been following Terminator: TSCC, Heroes, Fringe, Knight Rider, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. After the Christmas hiatus I added 24, Leverage, CSI: Morpheus and Chuck. Hard to find time for games with these on.

I read through a number of Star Wars books including Darth Bane: Rule of Two and Deathstar. I always have to read Star Trek books so I tracked down some of the novels from the 70s, before ST:TMP was released, and came to the conclusion the Pocket Books era novels (and beyond) are so much better. The books I liked were the Titan series, the Klingon Empire series (especially A Burning House), and the Terok Nor series of prequels to DS9. Star Trek novels have never been canon (like Star Wars) but these novels are fitting a larger Narrative Canvas I find very pleasing since we have no new Star Trek on TV. The futurist Ray Kurzweil wrote a book called The Singularity is Near, which is quite interesting, about the future of tech and humanity. According to him Skynet may be the least of our worries. The Zombie Apocalypse has never been better told than in World War Z. Get it, read it, and be very scared. I also “knocked out” some early Michael Crichton novels from the 60s and 70s that I never read. Then he died and now I have nothing more of his stuff to read. RIP Mr. Crichton.

Movies for the most part were good last year with the likes of The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Iron Man, and Deathrace. However I did see some really bad ones like The Spirit, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and 10,000 BC. I’m still on the fence about Quantum of Solace and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I love Star Wars but Lucas “kid-ified” it again, with likes of Ahsoka Tano, so I’m having issues with it (that also carry over to the TV series). I’m not even going to mention Indy 4. We could have had Star Trek around Christmas but they bumped it to May and I’m still incredibly impatient here.

In my most impressionable years I discovered D&D (Basic and Advanced) way back when before the invention of the computer RPG. Since then I have had an almost instinctual desire to collect D&D manuals of any sort, so I immediately descended on my local Comic Book store and consumed any and all books they had. I don’t even play, I just like the books. Last week I bought the Open Graves guide to undead campaigns, with thoughts of running a game about a zombie apocalypse. Sadly, I don’t play anymore but I love collecting the books. If only the web resources we have today were around when I was in High School running games. RIP Mr. Gygax.

The biggest news I can think of from late last year was a decision of me and a few of my friends to start a Podcast. I had just bought an iPhone 3G and Bwane introduced me to podcasts. (GamerTags used to protect the innocent.) Once he had me on board we agreed to do it with a couple other friends, R moe nay and KILLAB, and I started learning HTML and how it works with DreamWeaver and started a website to support it. The Weekend Ronin site in its “under construction” phase. We have recorded 5 podcasts so far but those haven’t been “migrated” to the real internet yet (or iTunes) so please stand by. In fact just today I started a Twitter account to facilitate (I think that’s the right word) our combined efforts but also to be a mini-blog in between regular blog entrees.

For tech news I upgraded my Mac OS from Tiger to Leopard with not a few initial issues but I’ll save that for another Blog as well as trying to integrate Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac into the flow. Stupid “.docx” files. That’s about all I remember in my beer-addled brain. See you next broadcast.