{"id":102,"date":"2010-09-26T21:55:40","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/?p=102"},"modified":"2010-09-26T21:59:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:59:17","slug":"bugs-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"Bug&#8217;s Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ve been thinking about taking a page from Potato&#8217;s blog and run a (hopefully) weekly roundup of thoughts and musings that I had over the past several days. Sticking with the alliteration theme, I&#8217;ll go with Bug&#8217;s Brain for now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>StarCraft II<\/strong><br \/>\nPotato posted <a title=\"Blessed By The Potato\" href=\"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=892\" target=\"_blank\">his thoughts<\/a> recently on the game after having a few months to play it. Unless he&#8217;s completely given up on his thesis, I would deduce that the majority of the team games he&#8217;s been playing have been with me. Mostly we play 2v2 against the Very Hard AI.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not a die-hard strategy game fan, but I fully admit being engrossed by StarCraft II (as I expected to be). I find the worlds that Blizzard creates to be quite inviting (I&#8217;ve spent WAY to many hours in Azeroth&#8230; with potential for a return TEMPORARY visit when Cataclysm hits) and the narrative which weaves the SC2 single player campaign is fantastic. The single-player portion of the game was fantastic with my only complaint being having to wait at least 2 more years to find out how the damn thing ends.<\/p>\n<p>The multi-player I find very inconsistent; and this is not just against other humans (as I tend to shy away from those, preferring the co-op experience). When we play against the very hard AI, it is such a crap shoot as to win or lose. Potato and I are good players. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, we&#8217;re not <a title=\"Seriously?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q\" target=\"_blank\">Korean<\/a>, but we&#8217;re pretty good. The trouble, for the most part, is the maps. Maps which have a single choke point against the AI, we seem to have about a 70-80% win ratio. The problem comes when we have separate bases (and when Potato ends up with Zerg&#8230; the random addict). If they attack me first, we can usually make it through the first wave or two (for some bizarre reason, I find myself to be stronger in the early game defense than Potato&#8230; which I would say is the only portion of a strategy game I have ever been better at than him) but we can&#8217;t seem to overcome it. We are getting really good at turtling (hey look, it&#8217;s not a word), but it seems with the AI if you can survive the first 10-15 minutes, you win as the AI has trouble adapting to evolving contingencies in the later game.<\/p>\n<p>Potato is much MUCH better at micro than I am (how the hell did you kill 5 marines and 2 Zerglings with one Zealot?!), but gimme a bit of time and my armageddon of battle cruisers will obliterate you!<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, I&#8217;m blithering on here. To sum up, StarCraft II is a hell of a lot of fun and I&#8217;m greatly enjoying the games we play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Predators<\/strong><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t think I posted any thoughts on Predators when I first saw it, but I&#8217;ve watched it a couple of times now and I really love it. I&#8217;m glad that Robert Rodriguez was allowed to produce this property and I am even more glad that he let Nimrod Antal take the directing reigns. Rodriguez&#8217;s hand is very evident in the film but the shots and feel are different enough to make it something new.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not familiar with the Predator mythos (seriously?) it&#8217;s pretty simple; humans are used as prey for a race of bipedal aliens who are essentially the galaxies big-game hunters. The first Predator was released in 1987 and had Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hero (<a title=\"You're one ugly mother...\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-9-Te-DPbSE\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;GET TO THA CHOPPA!&#8221;<\/a>). The sequel had Danny Glover take over the reigns in what I consider to be a good sequel, but a terrible movie.<\/p>\n<p>From there, some idiot at Fox decided to give the Alien vs Predator idea a shot and let Paul WS Anderson have a go at it.<\/p>\n<p>Sigh. Big mistake. I&#8217;m not going to go off on a diatribe about how awesome a well done Alien vs Predator movie could have been (I even wrote out a treatment, I thought it was that cool an idea), but suffice to say, they REALLY screwed up both of those franchises in one go.<\/p>\n<p>Predators is a sequel to the first film (and to a certain degree the second) and it is a GOOD sequel.<\/p>\n<p>The only complaint I have with it, is that it doesn&#8217;t do enough in terms of story to differentiate itself from the first one. There are a few beats here and there that make it unique (Laurence Fishbourne&#8217;s character is amazing, despite being a glorified cameo), but overall, it&#8217;s a retread. It&#8217;s a good retread, but it ends exactly where you expect it to. The story doesn&#8217;t go that extra mile like it did with Predator 2 and the post-battle on the ship.<\/p>\n<p>Loved:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>seeing the original Predator creature on screen again for the first time in 23 years<\/li>\n<li>Laurence Fishbourne&#8217;s character (actually, all the characters in this were very strong)<\/li>\n<li>the race war between the two classes of Predators<\/li>\n<li>the dogs<\/li>\n<li>the music (very similar in feel to the original Predator score, and hearing Long Tall Sally over the credits at the end was just icing on the cake)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Liked:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the effects: the jungle and the planet in general were fantastic; though completely improbable (I think the gravitational pull from those moons\/planets would pretty much tear the planet to little bitty pieces) it sure makes the sky nice to look at.<\/li>\n<li>Seeing Machete fight aliens<\/li>\n<li>the pacing<\/li>\n<li>Adrian Brody&#8217;s character as an updated Dutch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hated:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the abrupt, predictable ending<\/li>\n<li>the lack of explanation as to how they got there<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, a great film if you&#8217;re a fan of action and sci-fi. Recommended.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Machete<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;m not going to write much about this. It&#8217;s a fun movie. It&#8217;s dumber than a box of hammers and exactly what it sets out to be, a homage to exploitation movies of the 70&#8217;s (hehe, MEXploitation). It&#8217;s over-the-top stupid, gory, sexy, blatant, and hilarious. I enjoyed it, but it&#8217;s definitely not for everyone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New TV Season<\/strong><br \/>\nSo there were no new shows for me until this week and then everything started up at once.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Event: There are no new series this year that I&#8217;m dying to see, though I did watch The Event and enjoyed it. It has potential. The actors are strong and the first episode was sufficiently WTF-ey to make me want to stick around. I didn&#8217;t like the really wonky jumping around of event sequence, but whatever. I&#8217;ll be tuning in for episode 2.<\/li>\n<li>Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, and CSI: Meh, more of the same. It was nice to see Sarah back as a regular cast member on CSI, but what happened to David and Wendy? Criminal Minds had a FANTASTIC villain played by Tim Curry for the first episode, but other than him, it was very by-the-numbers. Patrick on The Mentalist I find to be a very interesting character, even if the rest of the show is very predictable.<\/li>\n<li>Bones: They sure brought the gang back together quickly after they all split at the end of last season. I still enjoy the humour on this show, and David Boreanaz is amusing to watch (though Angel was better&#8230; just saying).<\/li>\n<li>The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother: These shows make me laugh for 22 minutes straight each. I can&#8217;t ask for more than that.<\/li>\n<li>Smallville: It&#8217;s a guilty pleasure. Though I am finding the 20-something drama to be tedious, the hidden gems that show up for comic fans are worth it. Although I&#8217;m more of a Marvel fan, the nods to the JSA, and the emergence of Darksied are nice to see.<\/li>\n<li>Supernatural: I have nothing spectacular to report about this. It was my most-anticipated show of the new season and it didn&#8217;t disappoint. I love the Sam and Dean character dynamic and I&#8217;m sure I will thoroughly enjoy this season just as I have the others. The writing is great and the humour is fantastic.<\/li>\n<li>Dexter: Dexter starts tonight. New show runner and writers, but I&#8217;ve heard good things so I&#8217;m looking forward to it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Gym<\/strong><br \/>\nSo I&#8217;ve been debating back-and-forth with myself about joining a gym again and I&#8217;ve decided I&#8217;m going to drive up to see Goodlife fitness this week. I simply can&#8217;t get enough weight for what I want to do at home with the Bowflex dumbbells and I can&#8217;t afford (nor do I have room or clearance for) a power rack and weights at home. I&#8217;m worried about getting locked into a contract, but I will protest greatly about signing anything and will insist on paying in cash (hopefully). I&#8217;m hopeful that the facilities are good and not overly crowded. <a title=\"OM NOM NOM\" href=\"http:\/\/fortheloveofcookies.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">TheCookieMonster&#8217;s blog<\/a> (which I cannot recommend highly enough) has got me seriously rethinking my current routine and I&#8217;m going to go totally back to basics thanks to her and to many posts I&#8217;ve been reading on Reddit. I&#8217;ll let you know how it goes. It&#8217;s gonna be squats, dead-lifts, presses, cleans (hopefully), bench-presses, and pull-ups for the next few months.<\/p>\n<p><strong>School\/Job<\/strong><br \/>\nOnce again, debating working towards some sort of degree part-time. Depends on what can be achieved through online courses and prior learning assessments. We shall see.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all for now folks. I hope you had a good weekend. I did. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<div class=\"tweetthis\" style=\"text-align:left;\"><p> <a class=\"tt\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home\/?status=Bug%E2%80%99s+Brain+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.netbug.net%2Fblognetbug2%2F%3Fp%3D102\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img class=\"nothumb\" src=\"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/wp-content\/plugins\/tweet-this\/icons\/en\/twitter\/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\" \/><\/a> <a class=\"tt\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home\/?status=Bug%E2%80%99s+Brain+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.netbug.net%2Fblognetbug2%2F%3Fp%3D102\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post<\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ve been thinking about taking a page from Potato&#8217;s blog and run a (hopefully) weekly roundup of thoughts and musings that I had over the past several days. Sticking with the alliteration theme, I&#8217;ll go with Bug&#8217;s Brain for now. StarCraft II Potato posted his thoughts recently on the game after having a few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,5,7,3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.netbug.net\/blognetbug2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}