hwan.com

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit A: QWOP . Proof that Hwan does not need a fancy schmancy computer in order to be amused and entertained for hours on end. No, he only needs a game with simple mechanics and a steep learning curve. HDR , fillrates? Pfeh, a Jedi craves not these things! Seriously though, that QWOP game is hella fun. I guess it's the combination of the hilarious animation and the thrill of actually getting the dude to run, once you figure out the control scheme. Getting the beginning movements correct is crucial, as this initial forward momentum is what seeds the rest. Then you need to get into a rhythm, adjusting it for missteps and other randomness, incrementally increasing the size of your strides to match your speed. After a while you start to naturally press the right keys, without even thinking about which finger is pressing what key when. Oh, it's definitely tough in the beginning oh my yes. Montreal is where I went this past w...

Slight flu/cold right now. Not using that as an excuse for anything, but just letting you know that I'm not feeling 100%... so perhaps my writing is not 100%. Not that that's ever stopped me before. Oh yeah, feeling the heat of sickness now urgkkkk. Been playing more Left 4 Dead , having now gone through all four missions (or movies). I can see the good (graphics, zombie-animatronics) and bad things (same maps, few items and weapons) about the game, but it will be the multiplayer experience that makes or breaks it as a lasting thing. So far, I think the multiplayer can be very much likened to Counter-strike in that the players play on one of two teams whose aim is to kill the other. The twist is that the mission of the protagonists (the humans) is to reach the other side of the map alive. Oh, and that the antagonists (the infected) respawn. Fallout 3 is still on my games radar. I came across this excellent review of it: Fallout 3 review [nma-fallout.com] which, fo...

With the new computer I've also done a bit of re-arranging of my apartment, getting things done that I've been putting off for months. Funny, I wrote that sentence and can't for the life of me remember where I was going with it. Sure, sometimes there are things I recall that I wish I wouldn't. I suppose any thoughts on controlling these are futile. Has anything happened? No. My fridge was fixed, but not until most of the food inside transformed into non-food material. I bought the pre-release of Left 4 Dead which I have to say looks fantastic and plays even more so. I tend to rave in a meaningless manner about games I really think are neat, but believe you me, Left 4 Dead is impressive. My only grief is that there's not much to it -- run, shoot, survive. But it's so very well done, with shockingly good zombie animation. Oh man, when a horde of those suckers come running at you, it's the thrill of seeing one's first fast zombie all over again...

I had actually planned to spend a month or two watching (or trying to watch) a movie a day, but of course like most things I think might be fun to try, it never happened. Still, I did make some time on the weekend to watch The Deer Hunter. I liked it. I read that Christopher Walken went on a diet of rice, bananas and water to get as pale as he did. I did find the first act somewhat long to sit through, but then I can be impatient with weddings if I can't take part in the festivities. I suppose you could call The Deer Hunter a war movie, but in three acts it shows the before, the during, and the after, and manages to transform the viewer as even we witness the characters transform, hollowed out by the trial of war. I found myself worrying about life and death all over again, that old bonnet of going away, the long goodbye to nowhere and nothing and life is but a temporary illusion and when I go it is gone. Yes, I have been playing some more Fallout 3, but haven't these p...