Newtype Flash

Limiting the unlimited.

2009-11-17T13:49:41Z

I'm currently in the process of fleshing out a vampire hunter series and can't decide if I want to limit the series to just vampires and vampire variants or to include other mystical entities.

Werewolves and vampires are a bit cliche at the moment, so I'd like to avoid using lycanthropes altogether.

The undead/zombies wouldn't seem that out of place, though their use may be more suitable for a later stage of the story but I don't think that they should reach pandemic levels.

Ghosts would just be silly.

Black Dogs and similar animal variants could possibly work.

Doppelgangers?

Satyrs maybe, just for a laugh...

Though for the most part I think I should just stick with vampires.

Review: One day in Champions Online

2009-11-02T18:07:26Z

In order to promote their latest event and the game itself, Cryptic Studios decided that for 3 days they'd make the game Free to Play for everyone and this tempted me to take a look at it. Unfortunately for the first day of the freeplay, my internet was capped... Then the second day the client kept on stopping in the middle of downloading. But by the third day I was finaly able to play! The first thing I had to do was create a character.

Now herein lies the problem. I suck at coming up with designs from scratch, it's why I stick to photography and model kits. But the problem is compounded by the fact that when you do find a series of character parts you want, you'll often find out that they're mutually exclusive between the outfit categories. I had a similar problem in City of Heroes/Villains but it just wasn't as bad as it is in Champions Online. The body parts and costume items you can use are really generic most of the time, while sometimes having designs with too many variations, when the designs themselves won't be used that often. Eventually I did manage to get some decent looking characters in the end, but that was only because I started going through the character creation process backwards.

I pretty much picked a powerset I think would be good, picked a gender, skipped the face and body customizing and got straight into costume design. Then when I had the costume ready I would go back and change the body/face to suit and then almost always change the power set to match the character.

When you first enter the game you're treated to a tutorial level that's very similar to CoH/V, but much more compact and fast-paced. No longer do you have to run long distances to talk to some guy or enter a mission instance and pretty much each quest introduces you to a key game mechanic, running the gamut of attacking, blocking, picking up items and rescuing trapped civilians. All culminating with your character helping the main heroes of the story take down the alien mothership. Then your character is briefly thanked by the mayor before you're given the decision to go to either Canada or the Desert.

Both choices pretty much play out the same, a fuck-ton of missions culminating in a boss instance involving one of the major villains. But before you start doing any missions you should visit the powerhouse, your one-stop shop for all your power needs. Because once you're in the real world you have access to travel powers! Now this is a godsend, in CoH/V you had to play for an eternity before you were given minute travel powers. But in CO, you're pretty much given fully-fledged travel powers from the get-go. The travel powers themselves are quite an interesting mix, your usual flavours of flight: Fire, Earth, Hoverdisc, Ice, Jet Boots and Vanilla. As well Super Jump/Rocket Boots and Superspeed. You also had Acrobatics, which was sort of a comination of Super Jump and Super Speed, but even though you couldn't jump as high as Super Jump or run as fast as Super Speed, being able run faster AND jump higher than normal at the same time is much better the individual powers on there own. Also it lets you travel entirely by backflipping.

What CoH/V didn't have and what probably came about as a result of Cryptic's intial work on the Marvel MMO is the Swinging travel power. Though it may be disconcerting when you look up to find your grappling gun is hooked into nothing but air as you swing along, the process of swinging across level is quite enjoyable.

Outside of the Travel powers that game varies deeply depending on which sets of power you're using. My first character, Coup De Grace, used a combination of punching to charge up energy with that energy released in the form of pistols to the face. This worked quite well, but I reckoned that I could take less damage if my energy building power was also a ranged attack. So that led to the webslinging cowboy, Hollow Point and I ended up playing through most of the time as him. If only I had more time to play, I could have leveled up enough to be able to take on the cowboy robots.

With time running out, I decided to take a few more powersets out for a test drive. I created a mecha-type character and decided to tryout the power armour powersets, they didn't go so good. I don't know if it's a bug or just the design, but I just couldn't used them as effectively as I could Gunslinging. I came up with a nice Telekinesis/Telepathy combo that would probably do good if I had more time with the game. I then tried to make an avian character, but my efforts were hampered by the lack of avian parts that aren't wings or feet. Then I decided to make a ripoff of Scarlet Spider and join in on the countless tirade of copyright infringement.

I don't know if it's case outside of the free-to-play weekend, but if you spend a couple of minutes watching the tutorial spawn point you'll see a neverending influx of copyrighted characters and cheap knockoffs. Though while you'll find a fair few of them to actually be really well done considering the creation system, but for every decent-looking Lizard-Man, you'll find a dozen terrible Superdudes and Verde Lanterns...

Overall I enoyed playing CO and would consider picking up the retail version if I had the money, though that's only because Cryptic doesn't allow you to continue playing with just a subscription alone, unlike SOE.

Things I need more of:

2009-09-24T14:50:33Z

I need Part 3 of the 20th Century Boys Live-Action movie series now!

I've just watched Parts 1 and 2, they were really good, but part 3 won't be out on dvd until early next year!

The way the movies were broken was just as I expected with the first movie ending just before the first time skip and the second ending at the part where Friend is resurrected and the post-apocalyptic time-skip.

Not too much has changed from the Manga even with a few bits of dialogued removed the movies are still quite long, over 2 hours each. Though they did cut the whole thing about Pope visiting Japan and Kanna using her ESP powers at the casino to win a bunch of money to hire the mafia to protect the pope. Also the opening of the first movie is slightly different from the opening of the manga. But other than that it pretty much sticks to the story.

And we'll all say no to the picture phone

Transformers 2: The Quickening

2009-06-25T13:37:04Z

I had to get up earlier than usual to make it to the first screening of TF:ROTFLOLBBQ because the cinema had decided to fit as MANY screenings as they can into the day.

The Ads.

I turned up five minutes late so I missed a majority of the ads and pretty much entered when they just had the trailers left. Nothing really memorable, except the G.I. Joe tralier which looked very generic/cheesy action filmy with a dash of crazy, Accelerator Suits?...

The Movie.

The movie started off quite weak and it could have possibly had a bit more exposition for people who hadn't seen the first film ("What the fuck is the Allspark?"). In fact most of the film suffered from massive lacks of exposition and was filled tonnes of panning wide shots of cars (some of them autobots) just driving around... The fans complained about the lack of actual Transformers in the first movie and this had lead to Michael Bay adding them to the point of full saturation. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they had included an Introdump or 2 to showcase the new characters, but no, you're given no real introduction to the characters (old or new) and towards the end of the film during the climactic fight you have no idea who most of the Decepticons are.

The plot is roughly 80% the same as the first film: Find the MacGuffin before the bad guys can, Prime convincing Sam about his destiny and Sam realizing it at the climax of the film and saving the day using the MacGuffin.

The pacing is a bit odd as well, importants parts of the film move too quickly and the unimportant parts are dragged on for too long.

Another thing: most people would had seen the first film would be confused that bumblebee had lost his voice again and wouldn't know that he lost it again in a comic set between the movies. Also, why the hell did Optimus meet Sam in a cemetery?!

One of the most ironic things about this movie and all it's explosion is that during production they managed to blow up a sizeable chunk of the ILM render farm.

I've also just realized that the film would make absolutely no sense to anybody who had never heard of transformers before.

I hate all my songs...

2009-06-18T16:19:59Z

To begin with, then after awhile I think they're actually decent. Though I'll probably need to cut a few of the crappier ones out in the rerelease. While "Thri&&" contains some awesome parts in it, it is too high pitched to be any good. "EP-S Gaussian etc..." is too boring.

Also with today's additions I've made 1 hour and 44 seconds worth of music!

I think it's time to burn off some demo CD's.

Also, also I think I might add my Gameboy Color with Gameboy Camera into the mix and use the music maker in that to make some songs.

And sonictail remind next time we're at lunch to look for a cheap electronic keyboard.

Also x 3, I'm still drawing blanks as to how I'm gonna make a music video.

Play Him Off, Keyboard Green Day

2009-06-17T11:32:30Z

Essay: Results of the Social Experiment

2009-06-07T15:59:08Z

"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" -- Emmanuel "Cereal Killer" Goldstein, Hackers (1995)

14 years on and your name has probably gone through over a thousand computers today. If you're signed in while you're reading this you've probably been recorded in at least 2 more. In the social internet of today people have been conditioned to give up a lot of information that isn't really necessary. How many website signups have you put your home address and phone number into without a second thought? With social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc ... people will go out of their way to reveal their most personal details and social information. Except for extremely rare circumstances you might as well throw out your keyloggers and password crackers because most of the information you'd want on a person is primed for the taking.

In our Web 2.0 Tour de Force we'll start with the most closed of the big names, Facebook.

"Facebook requires all users to provide their real date of birth as both a safety precaution and as a means of preserving the integrity of the site. You will be able to hide this information from your Profile if you wish." This is from a probably little read help tip on their front page. Both "safety precaution" and "a means for preserving the integrity of the site" are pretty much legal jargon for "the ability to cover our asses" and it's pretty much assumed that you've read this and from a legal perspective you haven't got a hope in hell if you try to commit identity fraud. But it doesn't really stop you. Once inside you pretty much have access to a list of names, probable location and known associates. At this point your IP address and searches are almost definetly being archived though with a simple anonymous proxy and a reasonable number of dummy searches you can easily mask your intent.

Once you've got a target there are several ways of moving up into the next level of information access. The one with the highest chance of success is to simply google your target and try to find out if they use the other social networks such as MySpace, Twitter, DeviantArt or a personal blog. If they have a MySpace account you've hit the jackpot, elsewhere you may have to do a bit more research. It's simply a matter of comparing their MySpace friend list and their Facebook friend list, then making of a note of which friends are on MySpace but are not currently on FaceBook. Once you have your shortlist you should delete the original facebook account and the email you set it up with. If the person you're going to impersonate still has a hotmail/yahoo address try to get a similar one at gmail as to make it less suspicious. Now all you have to do is sign up for a new Facebook account using your new alias and Friend Requesting your target. Most of the time your target will probably add you. Now depending on how paranoid you target is you may have access to just their Day and Month of Birth or extremely detailed information about their movements and countless photos of their house/car/family/etc.

If you do not get a reply or get demands to prove your identity you should BAIL. Though do not delete the account or email just yet, your target may relent a future point in time and give you access.

MySpace is a lot easier to exploit. In most cases you don't even need to sign up an account and you'll still have access to viable information and countless photos (probably moreso than on Facebook). Though with the widescale spread of adverbots and friend whores you'll find most of the social information worthless to your needs.

Twitter is a Stalker's wet dream, especially if their victim twitters about their every movement and action. Once again depending on the level of paranoia in your target will determine the amount of information you have access to. Though with even the most paranoid twitter users would probably give you access to their private twitters if you repeated the steps previously used to set up a false facebook account to set up a false twitter.

One thing you have to remember is that while you are phishing targets you're probably being phished yourself by the services you're exploiting. Facebook especially.

I haven't really used many other social networking sites but the social engineering techniques I've shown you hear will probably work elsewhere.

ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS POST IS TO BE USED AT YOUR OWN RISK AND I CANNOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY REPERCUSSIONS YOU RECEIVE FOR IT'S USE/MISUSE.

And besides it's all commonly available at countless sites across the internet and in several of Kevin Mitnick's books.

NEXT UP: Pseudo-Reverse Engineering the social networks to see how they work, how people exploit them and how they exploit people.

Terminator: Salvation: The Review

2009-06-04T08:51:59Z

The end of T3 gave me the impression that John Connor had at the moment became the leader of the resistance, it was somewhat surprising to see that John Connor was only a unit commander in the resistance and the real leader was Michael Ironside (Lead military guy in almost every war film ever). On the big screen you can easily tell the difference between CGI and Live-action, especially at the beginning when the resistance fighters are landing at the satellite dish complex. A bunch of secondary characters die but since you don't know their names and their deaths hold no consequences you don't really care.

The opening introduction text should have really been a narration by Linda Hamilton.

In the aftermath of a "Nuclear" explosion Marcus emerges from somewhere covered head to toe in mud and yelling a lot. He then walks to Hollywood and meets up with Kyle Reese and a miniature Janet Jackson. They rustle up a Jeep Wrangler and head out to the desert where the giant terminator captures a bunch of people and makes things explode and Marcus, Kyle and Janet escape in a MadMaxified Tow Truck but end up getting captured anyway, except for Marcus who got thrown off the transport. Then some A-10s (aka my most favouritist aircraft ever) attack the transport ship and then get shot down (awww). Marcus meets up with ~~his designated love interest~~ the female pilot of the A-10 and then they treck east towards the resistance and fight some rednecks along the way.

They get to the resistance camp which is surrounded by magnetic mines, which of course Marcus sets off and then everyone (including him) finds out that he's a Terminator. Whatsherface breaks him out and then a bunch of shooting that ends in a helicopter being raped by Terminator-Worm things and John Connor being saved by Marcus then John letting Marcus go infiltrate the Skynet base in San Francisco.

John Connor goes solo, capturing a MotoTerminator and then hacking it by plugging his BlackBerry into it's USB port. Then he rides it off into the sunset.

Marcus walks right into the base unaccosted while John Connor sneaks into the base while twittering almost the entire time. Then Marcus goes into the Skynet main computer area and interfaces with the machine and then uses it's complex database TO LOOKUP NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS! Then after somehow getting his skin healed he discovers that after he signed his body over to Cyberdyne, Helena Bonham Carter's character died but the research continued and eventually Cyberdyne was bought out by the USAF and then you discover that Marcus is the Prototype for the next Terminator series, specifically designed to infiltrate human settlements. As well as the fact that Marcus has succeeded in his mission of bringing John Connor to them.

Cut to John Connor sending off another Tweet before releasing all the prisoners that Skynet was holding except for Kyle Reese who's cell does not open. Enter the naked 80's Arnold terminator who then beats the shit out of John, before somehow everyone ends up in the Terminator factory. The Arnold terminator then fights Marcus for awhile until Arnold does the Five Point Palm Exploding Fist on Marcus and drops him. John then pours a load of molten metal onto Arnold but that only stops him temporarily while John can perform chest compressions on Marcus. Marcus is brought back to life and then a second later John is stabbed through the chest. Marcus defeats Arnold and then brings John to safety and NOONE attempts to stop him despite the fact that he has no skin on his hand. Then the good ending happens and your left wanting a little bit more.

All in all the film could have been a bit grittier. There was hardly any scenes that resembled the future represented in all the previous films. But since they featured T-800's and that model had only just been put online at the end of Salvation it's possibly left open to yet another sequel...

There really wasn't that much salvation in the film either...

This is John Connor concluding your broadcast day.

I want to make a music video.

2009-06-03T17:39:09Z

But I don't know where to start.

First of all which song should I use?

And what the hell is it going to be about?

Though at least one thing I do know is that I have a friend who can possibly convert it into Digital Betacam/Betacam SP for me so I can at least submit it to Rage.

Also I'm going to go see Terminator today, my local cinema has some sort of new digital dolby system that's being unveiled with this movie so that might be interesting.

Also, Also new Icon based on the latest Penny Arcade.

Holy crap! I'm a Yu-Gi-Oh Card!

2009-05-27T13:19:10Z

Des Wombat

Two for the price of one

2009-05-22T02:19:38Z

Well there was nothing much going on last night so I managed to knock out two more songs:

Al-Jazari's Ancient Automatons

Pixie and Viking

Al-Jazari I managed to get through quite easy and I'm happy with it. But I'm currently not satisfied with Pixie and Viking, can't quite get the pixie part right or settle on suitable ending/outro to the song. I'll probably redo it at some point.

For my fans, all three of you.

2009-05-21T09:11:43Z

It's a brand new car song!

Soft Porn and Nazi Sharks

Unlike the previous song I didn't have this one sitting around for a couple of weeks, I in fact made it today. Regarding the title: It's something I heard someone say at a sci-fi convention. The song itself I reckon is one of my best yet and while it's almost all freestyled I do manage to have a proper rhythm throughout.

A new song, this one's kinda good, better than the last two.

2009-05-20T11:06:42Z

Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lamp

Holy crap! I was played on Triple J...

2009-05-19T12:30:22Z

In March... Looky

And I didn't even realize that the drum logo next to the song on my unearthed artist page meant it had been played on Triple J until today...

Once again, holy crap!

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.

2009-05-15T14:49:28Z

I feel like impaling myself on my guitar...

X-Men: Origin: Wolverine: Origin: The Movie: Origin: The Review: Origin: Origin

2009-05-04T15:27:52Z

You know what I'm not going to review this movie until it comes out on Bluray so that way I'll know the proper ending and not have my judgement tarnished by this mulitple ending malarky.

Although in short:

Fuck you for ruining my manchildhood.

Also: While researching for what was going to be the proper review I've come to the conclusion that almost EVERYONE in the Marvel Universe comes either has had an abusive parent or comes from a broken family. Seriously, what the fucks up with that.

Songs, I make them.

2009-05-03T10:34:28Z

I've been playing EVE online a lot lately and when I came across a sound on my Korg DS-10 that sounded remarkably like a mining laser I thought it only natural to incorporate it into a song. So this leads us to:

EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse

Not automatically shipped from clckchmstry.com

Slow and Content: A Fast and Furious Review

2009-04-29T14:17:18Z

Now before we get under way let me make a few things clear:

1) I'm somewhat of a car nut.
B) Im somewhat of a writer
III) Vin Diesel's DnD skills are nowhere to be found.

Also I wrote most of this review a week ago but had it in a buffer, so i've hastily completed it so I can get onto my Wolverine review which involves another chart....

Let's begin.

I've seen all the previous Fast and the Furious movies and I've had my share of complaints about them, mostly the lack of streetracing in what are supposed to be streetracing films. ~~Not So~~ Fast and ~~Not So~~ Furious is no exception, especially since it contains only ONE street race and it was a pretty shitty race at that. Most of it was Paul Walker's character ignoring his incredibly fake hollywood gps. The film starts off in ~~Southern California~~ Dominican Republic which just like in real life is filled with CGI valleys. Vin Diesel and his crew hijack incredulously long Petrol tanker road train before he decides to run off to protect his woman and Han goes off to be killed by the yakuza in the previous film.

The whole hijack scene was just ridiculous, I mean Reverse J-Turning pickup trucks in order to hookup the rear of the road train to the rear of the pickup... Then they use liquid nitrogen to break the couplings... Then things go down hill from there, literally. So right about the time the truck gets to a corner he couldn't have possibly turned at with 6 tankers the driver grabs his iguana and abandons truck, then the truck rolls, explodes and explodes again.

Cut to LA where ~~Trinity~~ Generic Gangster is being chased by ~~Agents~~ Paul Walker all filmed in the oh so popular shaky-cam. A lot of the film is shot far too close than it should actually be. The whole thing screams of low budget and I think there was possibly a day for night scene as well. Paul gets a name of a guy who knows a guy and goes back to his generic FBI team to do generic FBI things. Vin Diesel returns from ~~Mexico~~ Panama to attend his lover's funeral. Well not so much attend as stand by the oil well next to the cemetary... Then he goes to the scene of his lover's fatal crash he uses his psychic ability to see how the crash happened and to discover using his CSI skills (and possibly a search check DC 25) some Nitro Meth in a small hole in the ground. That leads him to a mechanic who points him to the same guy who knows a guy that Paul is looking for.

Then they both meet up at the guy's apartment and in which the guy turns out to be a red herring leading them into race where the winner can join a team or 3 generic (need for speed generic) racers in a job for Braga, the unseen boss of the whole thing. Paul is then given access to all the impounded cars in an unspecified area and he chooses an R33 Skyline, an R34 Skyline and a R35 GT-R (Which isn't a skyline no matter what anyone says) and then somehow combines them all into the body of the R34. Now this is where the car nut in my gets a bit peeved. Why the hell did he need to combine 3 cars especially since the Nissan GT-R would have been sufficient on it's own and not to mention the face the GT-R engine is hand-built and not really suited to be used for anything else, but as the details of the car combination aren't really glossed over I can't criticize any more.

Vin and Paul plus another two generic racers are given they're hollywood gps devices and have to race through the streets to their destination. Many interior shots with CGI backgrounds and tight shaky shots of cars ducking through traffic later Vin manages to win by PIT maneuvering Paul in the last quarter-mile. Several product placements later Vin and Paul discover that they have to smuggle heroin from across the Mexican border while trying to avoid the unrealistically heavy border security by means of a secret tunnel that runs underneath it. At the end of the crossing Vin realizes that all the racers are killed after the crossing and that Lettys accident was caused by here attempting to escape. But luckily Vin had let the NOS valve open and cigarette lighter turned on so that when the lighter popped out the car plus the other 3 racer's cars exploded.

Then the two escape in a drug-filled Hummer and hide it in a police impound lot which I thought was the smartest thing about the movie. Then the stupidest thing in the movie as Vin chooses a new impreza wrx for Paul's new car despite the fact that the new Impreza is actually SLOWER than the previous model...

Several talky shots later Vin and Paul lure out a person they believe to be Braga, but it turns out that his lackey was actually the real Braga but the don't find out until it's too late because they were waiting for a fax! Then Vin, Paul and the chick was was Braga's lackey but turned sides once Braga tried to run her over. So then they non-chalantly kidnap Braga from a Mexican church but instead of killing him right there he has change of heart and insists that they expedite him back to the US to go on trial.

Then one extreme off-road car chase later they find themselves at the Mexican border tunnel again through which they continue the chase. During the underground part of the chase Vin gets stuck between another car, some support posts and dead end and yet he manages to leap out of his car and into the one blocking him in because when he does so the support posts have vanished...

Then they hall emerge from the tunnel with only the Impreza, the head henchman's and Vin's cars making it through. Then a brief standoff before Vin runs over the henchman's car and the feds turn up. But even though he's offered the chance to, Vin doesn't run and instead sent to jail. But on the bus ride to the jail, Paul, Vin's Character's Sister and the two arguing guys from the opening hijack scene turn up in cars and the movie fades to credits.

There's a gay storm coming. A gaypocalypse possibly.

2009-04-22T03:14:55Z

</div>

Damn you, Avatar: The Last Airbender, damn you to hell...

2009-04-14T16:42:55Z

Back in 2005 or 2006 I was overcome with inspiration and set about writing a martial arts/fantasy epic, Vagabondage. Developed as a comic I managed to get about a dozen or so pages out before procrastination and life commitments threw the whole thing into development hell. Recently I've been trying to get it back up again and redoing the storyboards from scratch. It was during this process that I came to the conclusion that if I do get Vagabondage up and running again I'll draw heavy criticism for having a series that is ripping off Avatar: The Last Airbender because of a lot of similarities between them.

My main character uses an unique form of martial arts to attack using/through air. As well as the party travelling throughout a world filled with many element-themed countries in order to fight the big evil, being chased most of the way.

So now I have to change the main emphasis of the plot to distance myself from Avatar. I never intended to ripoff Avatar at all, heck, I even avoided watching the show itself until last year because of my Law of Fangirlism*. So now I have to make Vagabondage less Asian, which is kinda easy because a majority of the world is a sort of Medieval European setting. Possibly add more graphic violence and either reduce the humour or make it more black.

I don't know, I'll see how things pan out if I can actually get the damn thing up and running again. Failing that I have other ideas which are fairly original.

*Law of Fangirlism: If any series has a major following of Fangirls whom produce an excessive amount of OC's and/or excessive character and pairing worship should be avoided. Especially if the series is Western in nature. Examples: Kingdom Hearts, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Twilight and most things involving Catpeople...

Exceptions that prove the rule: Anything Shonen Jump, Huge casts and major character deaths can somewhat impede the OC/pairing process.

Ah crap... I bet Vagabondage is gonna get fangirls, possibly fanboys (amputee fanboys even). I guess I'll just have to make every character ugly and androgynous!

Review: Wrasslemania XXV

2009-04-10T18:10:48Z

Now I'm not the biggest wrestling fan, because that's probably some 500lb lard-ass in America, but I still enjoy watching it on occasion. I found myself following the current season and lead up to Wrestlemania 25 with a fair bit of interest, it had a nice balanced card and the matches leading up to it were quite entertaining. Most of the kayfabe (look it up if you don't know what it means) leading up to the event was a bit cringe-worthy most of the time and some of the WWE superstars could do with some acting lessons.

The first match of the event was the Money in the Bank ladder match which had 8 wrestlers plus their entourages trying to reach a briefcase suspended above the ring and it included a fairly decent group of wrasslers including Kane, the tall silent man with a bachelor's degree in English. For the most part the match was pretty much a repeat of the previous matches the 8 wrestlers had together in the lead up which I found a bit disappointing and while I found their use of ladders to be quite innovative they did make a lot of mistakes. They probably need more rehearsals.

Then there was a performance by Kid Rock...

But as his set was wrapping up all the Divas entered the arena for a Royal Rumble to compete for the newly created title of Miss Wrestlemania. This was pretty much a big cat fight, nothing really technical but it did have a twist ending. The new Miss Wrestlemania was a guy...

Next up was Chris Jericho beating up 4 old guys, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Jimmy "Superfly Snuka, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Ric Flair. Once again this was a repeat of what had been seen in the previous weeks as Jericho had beaten up all the old guys quite recently. Chris Jericho then spots someone in the front row of the Audience, someone none other than Mickey Rourke. Jericho chooses him and then taunts him into the ring, where using only his shoulders, Rourke manages to over-act. Then it becomes a boxing match with Rourke wins soundly but you don't see this because you've been facepalming since Rourke entered the ring...

Matt Hardy vs Jeff Hardy was next, a match I thought I'd never see. I mean I was watching WWF when the Hardy Brothers first turned up and was quite astonished to see Matt now becoming a heel. The match itself was quite odd, I expected Jeff to win after he placed Matt on a table, placed a chair on top of him and then put another table on the table before jumping on top of the whole thing. That amount of damage you would kind of expect to be a finishing blow and if it was it would probably lead to a storyline where Matt redeems himself and becomes a face again. But no... not a chance of that happening, Matt ended up winning it which was pretty much the only outcome I didn't expect.

Rey Mysterio vs JBL followed with Mysterio sporting a look that was a tribute to Heath Ledgar's portrayal of The Joker. Now this match left me a quite ambivalent. While it was a fairly good yet one-sided match it was also quite short, 21 seconds to be exact. Which is one of the shortest matches in Wrestlemania history. I don't know whether to feel ripped off by length or not, because you did get everything you want out of Mysterio, Fast-paced combat, a 619 and an aerial attack. Oh well...

Then was the match that should have been the headliner: Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker. The cheesy horror lead-up to match was also great as well. It was the best match of this Wrestlemania but the only reason it wasn't the headliner is because they weren't contesting and Belt or Title. The entrances we're quite good, Shawn Michaels descending from heaven on a cloud on top of a cherry picker and The Undertaker rising from beneath the ground of the entrance. Good vs Evil, what a proper fight should be. The match itself was just awesome, 40 minutes of intense wrassling filled with lots of technical holds and both men exchanging their finishing moves. And best of all: Evil won.

The triple threat match of Edge vs The Big Show vs John Cena came next. This was probably the second best match of night because it had an element of comedy to it with some great wrassling by all three. The only thing I had against this match was the Kayfabe leading up to it but fortunately there was hardly any care for it during the match. What really amazed in this match is the strength of John Cena. At one point in the match he had The Big Show and Edge lifted over his head, that's just unfathomable. John Cena winning was pretty much the only way the match was going to end that wouldn't further complicate the kayfabe and create a the WWE version of Days of our Lives.

Next was the 2009 Hall of Fame inductees, most of them I had no idea who they were except for Stone Cold Steve Austin. Then Stone Cold went back stage and reamerged on a quad bike and did some laps of the ring before consuming at least a carton of beer and driving off on his quadbike which included cup holders.

Finally the main event: Triple H vs Randy Orton. This match also had some bad kayfabe leading up to it with much heel/face flippery as well as an appearance by Vince McMahon and Shawn McMahon in which Triple H pats Vince on the shoulder and no dialog is spoken. The match was more of a brawl than anything and pretty average overall. A pretty weak ending for such a grand event as Wrestlemania.

There was another match I was looking forward to: The Unified Tag Team Championship. They said it was going to be at Wrestlemania but it wasn't. I also heard that it was in the Pre-Show and after I acquired that I still couldn't find it. I found out the results and the side I wanted to win, did so I was pleased but still I would have like to have seen it.

Some of the entrances were quite good, John Cena and his 100 clones was quite impressive as well as the purel thematic entrances of Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker which I found grandiose and perfect for the event. The even as a whole could have standed to be more grandeur but I guess with the current stock of wrasslers it's quite hard to do.

In conclusion the overall event was pretty average. It seemed like an extended episode of Smackdown or Raw that had better production values and a larger arena. As well as the matches mostly being repeats of matches that have occured in the past month or so doesn't help as well. The prematch story recaps were a pain to go through and tended to drag on longer than they should have.

Nobody does German Suplexes any more...

Review: Dragonball Evolution

2009-04-09T07:27:44Z

If Akira Toriyama was in his grave he would probably be spinning in it. It's probably one of the most retarded movies of this year.

The movie takes most of the Dragonball canon, throws it out the window and deficates on the shattered remains. The movie starts off with Goku living at his Granpa's strangely large cabin and attending high school. At high school he's seen as somewhat of a weirdo and is bullied frequently but doesn't fight back because he's a pacifist... He's given the four-star dragonball as his 18th birthday present, meanwhile Piccolo and his shapeshifting ninja/lackey Mai (who in the original series was Emperor Pilaf's lackey and couldn't shapeshift...) are using their giant airship to loot and pillage various locations for the Dragonballs.

Chichi is impressed when Goku uses his airbending techniques (they call them that...) to open her locker, as well as most of them, and invites him to her party at ~~the Ox King's castle~~ her house where Goku gets into a fight which he wins by only dodging attacks and causing his adversaries to take each other out. Then Goku begins awkward chatter with Chichi before sensing ~~through the force~~ that his Grandpa is in trouble. Goku returns home to find his house had been ~~force~~ crushed and after retrieving his dying Grandpa from the ruins he is told that he has to collect all the Dragonballs before the eclipse (which is in/conveniently in a week's time) and that he has to have faith in himself. Then he is accosted by Bulma and then after they come to an understanding they team team up go on a road trip to find Yoshi who lives in the middle of the ~~ocean~~ city and after a brief fight with some Jackie Chan-esque furniture attacks Roshi joins them and Goku gets a training montage.

On their journey to find the next Dragonball they fall into a ~~plot~~ hole in the middle of the road that was dug by Yamcha who some sort of ~~bandit~~ surfer. Conveniently another Dragonball is 2 feet through the rock wall of the cave... Then they all team up and head to Taisou(?) where Chichi and Mai are fighting in the ~~Tenkaichi Budokai~~ Taisou City Championship Tournament. Mai surrenders after drawing some of Chichi's blood and leaves. Then they all leave for a nearby temple where Master Roshi asks the head monk, Ernie Hudson, to make a magical crock pot to contain Piccolo again. Then Roshi teaches Goku how to do the Kamehameha, the ultimate airbending technique... When Roshi does it the Kamehameha is orange and when Goku does it the Kamehameha is blue and these variations in colour are not explained at all... Goku then has to light candles with his Kamehameha with Chichi acting as a reward for his success...

Then Mai, who has shapeshifted to look like Chichi, has infiltrated the temple and is confronted by the real Chichi. They fight then Goku turns up and KO's the real Chichi and is then shot by Mai and has a near-death experience where he is told by ~~Obi-Wan~~ Gohan to ~~use the force~~ believe in himself. Now Piccolo has all the dragonballs and takes them to the Dragon temple which is in the middle of nowhere but it's right over there. Then Piccolo reveals that ~~he is Goku's father~~ Goku is the Oozaru demon from the legend and at this point the eclipse/black moon (which is actually green...) happens and Goku goes all American Werewolf in London. Then thankfully turns into canonical yet small oozaru ape thing instead of the weird monkey alien that was seen in the some of the early photos. Then ~~Roshi destroys the moon~~ Goku believes in himself and reverts back to normal and the defeats Piccolo with a single Kamehameha while flying towards him for dramatic effect.

Then Goku uses the dragonball to revive Roshi who was killed by oozaru Goku. Then they all vow to find the dragonballs again and Goku goes to reunite with Chichi who was missing from the final fight. Then they end the movie by fighting each other, but the screen fades to black just as their first blows were about to land.

Then the credits at which point most people left and during which their was the final scene (that dragged on for a bit) revealing a women caring for an injured Piccolo and leaving it open for a sequel.

The whole thing was about an hour and a half which I feel is too short for a movie, but seeing as they dragged on the movie and included a lot of pointless scenes already I don't I would have liked it to be longer.

Ambitious but Rubbish pretty much somes up this movie. What they've done is taken the plot Dragonball, chopped it up and then glued various plots together as seen in this diagram:

Well I'm sure as hell not looking forward to Dragonball Evolution 2: Oozaru Boogaloo.

ALSO: Actually I forgot to mention one thing I liked about the movie. The set design was pretty good, there were subtle references in the background which I thought were neat like Goku's house had a Dragonball Zen Garden.

The other thing I forgot to mention concerning the Oozaru transformation. Because of fan backlash concerning the first oozaru pictures released on the web, the studio decided to CGI over the prosthetics and CGI at the last moment but they didn't really do a good job. It was of a far lesser quality than the rest of the film and you can tell it was a rush job, hopefully they redo it for the DVD release.

Hypothesis: Guitars are the new Swords.

2009-04-07T15:36:08Z

One of my somewhat random thought processes recently has lead be to the conclusion that in this current day and age the guitar is akin to what the sword was in the 16th century.

Swordsmen and Guitarists have a great deal in common. Truely talented Swordsmen and Guitarists are respected and can earn both great sums of wealth. Swooning a woman was quite easy for both with only their influence was needed for most of the time. They both compete against their rivals in battles where often the most skilled of them would win. As well as the fact they both usually had iconography and symbols that distinguished them and sometimes come from a lineage of similiarly skilled people.

Sword fighting and guitar playing both featured great varieties in styles and techniques. Swords and Guitars themselves had varieties of designs and we're usually made to suit a particular style. Swordsmiths and Luthiers also are both treated with the same level of respect with the good ones being held with high regard and their greatest works being considered priceless artifacts.

Sometimes a guitar can be a sword as well:

Discussion: Australia's Internet in 8 years time to be as good as Japan's was 5 years ago

2009-04-07T15:06:29Z

The Government apparently is fed up with all the shitty proposals for the National Broadband Network, they pretty much said "Fuck you Telstra, Optus and other wholesalers, we're going to make our own network." and so today they announced that they're building their own Fiber-to-the-Premises network and then wholesale it to ISPs. Of course the whole process will actually take 8 years but they're planning on starting the rollout in Tasmania as early as July.

Now our Internet access will be on par with the Internet access of Japan 5 years ago... Except in Rural Areas where they'll be providing 12mbit wireless services. The main problem with your average broadband user is that they don't know any better. They don't know that Japan has had 50mbit ADSL since 2004 and we've only recently reached 24mbit availability for the majority of the population. So even though this new NBN will greatly increase our speeds it could still go much faster and I'd be interested to see their pricing schemes and how it will compare to ADSL. Because if it's significantly cheaper than what the current ISPs offering it might actually be good and drive up the competition between ISPs which is actually one of the main reasons of why Japan's Internet facilities have advanced so far in such a short time.

I guess the main reason why people feel that the Internet is so slow here is because of the lack of local content, a majority of the websites people access are based in America and though some content is mirrored locally or close enough (Asia) it's not enough. As well the fact that the Internet can be routed in some very complicated paths all because of the idiotic processes used by American ISPs.

The Australian Internet's lack of growth in both speed and accessibility is primarily due to Australia's lack of popularity density. Having the 232nd densest or 7th sparsest population in the world and our quite large land mass means that building suitable infrastructure to service everyone is extremely costly and really only Telstra went to the trouble of trying to accomplish this and of course this lead to somewhat of monopoly where Telstra could charge whatever the hell they wanted and people would pay it because they had no choice and/or didn't know any better.

Let's take SMS as an example, it practically costs the providers NOTHING to maintain it and yet they'll charge you for it. Japan doesn't use SMS at all because all their phones use email and they only have to pay something like $15/month for web access. The closest thing I've come across in Australia is 3's Skypephone which allows for free Skype chat and calls which is only sort of useful if whoever you're calling as a Skypephone as well. So we've got it pretty poorly compared to Japan, but at least we don't have it as bad as the US. In America some companies charge you when you RECEIVE an SMS, so they're making twice as much out of customers for a service that could be free. Though I guess the main reason why SMS isn't free is because if it was there'd be a drop in phone calls.

In conclusion the whole NBN will probably be a good thing, there is a significant possibility of somewhat epic failure. A scenario I can see is Labour losing at the next election for some reason and then the Liberals canning a significant portion of the NBN probably leaving only Tasmania with FTTP. But I doubt that would happen. Though I'm still not satisfied with the whole idea and would prefer it if we we're getting at least 1gbit but I suppose once the infrastructure is in place upgrading won't be too difficult and once pricing is and announced and whether or not the pricing is competitive will I be able to make my true conclusions. The motto of the NBN at this point I'd like to say is "Ambitious but rubbish."

Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead (Trailer)

2009-04-02T03:14:59Z