After playing a couple of turns on Empire and then closing the game, I got the regular Steam advertising for new content. One of the games looked interesting, so I grabbed the demo and played it as far as I could and then figured that for US$8.99, the full game might just be worth it.

The game is Osmos, and is produced by Hemisphere Games, one of many small independents who are able to market their games through the Steam content delivery system and bypass the usual publishers and problems therein.

The game itself is quite simple – you are a blob (or an amoeba or somesuch), and you jet around by ejecting some of your mass in the opposite direction in which you want to travel (this can also come in handy in order to move other blobs as conservation of momentum is maintained in collisions as well).

Your basic goal is to feed on smaller blobs, and to not be eaten by bigger blobs. There are a variety of other blobs out there, although the game isn’t quite sadistic enough to throw all varieties at you at once. The game ramps up pretty quickly from the introductory levels, and leaves you with some incredibly difficult and frustrating levels towards the end.

The most amazing thing about this game is the realisation that it is a physics game – as well as the conservation of momentum, there are other blobs that ‘attract’, and these levels start you with enough motion to be in orbit. One of the most beautiful levels is the one where a number of attractors are orbiting another central attractor, and you are orbiting one these satellites. The difficulty comes when you have to carefully manoeuvre your blob into another attractors orbit without crashing into the edge of the level or any of the attractors.

Smartly, the game doesn’t limit the number of attempts you have on any level, and so you can keep trying until you can beat the level (or give up in exasperation after spending an hour or more). You also have the option to randomise the distribution of blobs, although this doesn’t apply on certain ‘crafted’ levels.

The graphics are simple, but elegantly so, and visual cues help identify when another blob is safe to approach or not. You also have control of ‘time’ in the game, so you can slow everything down to give yourself more reaction time, or you can speed up through any boring bits and cut down on waiting. The game also has a lot of ambient music – which helps to keep you calm while you start swearing at yet another seemingly impossible (and eventually winnable) level.

Good game, and not bad for the price, although I think it would sell more at $5.

If you want to fly in this war, you must be crazy. If you’re crazy, then we won’t let you fly – but if you don’t want to fly, then that is rational fear of death, so you can’t be crazy which means you have to fly.

- Catch-22

Catch-22 follows a group of young men conscripted into service and flying bombing missions in Italy as part of a fictional squadron in the United States Army Air Force. It centres around Yossarian, a bombardier (bomb-aimer) who is reluctant to continue flying as friends and other squadron members are swatted down by anti-aircraft fire, or other mishaps, but has to keep flying as long he is demonstrating this reluctance (since this is a sane reaction to the evident danger of flying missions).

The book seems to draw on real tales and experiences from the war – although they are obviously fictionalised and further enhanced by Heller’s satire.

There are some incredible sequences in the book – including Milo Minderbender’s amazing ability to get eggs in Malta at 7 cents a piece, and then sell them on for a profit at 5 cents a piece. And then there is the hunt for Washington Irving, a false identity used by a number of officers in the squadron, much to the vexation of military intelligence, and Major Major’s biography and rise to squadron commander, and more and more.

The storyline is a little scattergun in places – talking about events and jumping about the timeline in order to provide more details a little later on in the book, but it is extremely easygoing to read, and even the crazy skews of logic that some of the characters take are fun to follow and reach the conclusion.

One thing I find remarkable is that the book was written before the Vietnam War had even started, and even more years before the mass disaffection with conscription that started the protests and demonstrations of the late 60s and early 70s (although the film adaptation did hit the screens in 1970 alongside M*A*S*H). But, then, the book isn’t really anti-war as much as it is a commentary on exactly how crazy can be.

In the not too distant future, an alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky above Johannesburg. Twenty years later, and the ship’s many occupants are apparently trapped on Earth and are being held in a cordoned settlement known as District 9.

The film covers a few days in the life of one of the men put in charge to enforce ‘policy’ with regards to the alien population – a minor functionary whose day goes from bad to worse.

District 9 is a project that almost came unannounced (as far as I can tell) – it is the result of a collaboration between Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame), and Neill Blomkamp (the director that Jackson has pegged for his Halo project). The writing on the film is excellent, with a tight plot that ignores what can be ignored (it doesn’t matter where the aliens are from, or why they are here – just that they have been for 20 years). The film itself is well-executed, with good direction, superb acting from everyone on the screen, and seamless special effects (including the aliens and their technology – they are there, and interacting with their environment).

It is interesting that a movie on hatred and ghettoisation should come from a country like South Africa – but I guess that those people who have experienced apartheid would be well-placed to utilise it in a film-script. Filming around Johannesburg certainly helped free up more of the US$30 million budget for the special effects – but it lent the film a real anchor. Instead of picking on the cliched arrival over the White House, seeing an everyday city as the backdrop seems to increase the ‘it happened’ factor which the documentary style filming is intended to portray.

Speaking of the documentary style filming – I’ve read a number of disparaging comments about its apparent overuse (and getting motion sickness). Personally, I thought it was used just right. The shaky handicam was used mostly in the first half of the film where we are following the protagonist as he visits the aliens to notify them of their ‘eviction’ to a new encampment further away from the city, but there were plenty of steady shots in between the handicam ones, so you weren’t exactly assaulted by it.

The film has a fair bit of gore and blood in it, and there is plenty of swearing in it, so this is not a film for the little ones, but I don’t see anything wrong in taking anyone from about the age of 12 on up.

The film, also, is not a science fiction film despite the near future setting and alien presence – it is a redeeming hero tale, with a quest, and it is also a commentary on hatred and discrimination, and overcoming that.

It is a film most definitely worth watching.

Review at LibraryThing

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

The Impact of the Highly Improbable is not really what the book is about.

This book reads as more of an ego-stroke, as Taleb does his best to point out that he seems to have tapped into a great realisation that nobody else seems to have grasped. He is also extremely deprecating of anyone not sharing his views.

That aside, the book is interesting, and does point out that a large number of tools in use by market financiers and speculators are limited and misleading to those who have limited understanding. Taleb stands on the authority of having been successful himself – but while he points out that his peers’ success is mostly due to luck, his success follows from his ‘insight’ into The Black Swan.

In his own terms, there is likely a ‘graveyard’ of investors out there who understood the implications of The Black Swan, but were unlucky enough to bet on the wrong swan.

The book is interesting, does offer some interesting thoughts, but doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in what really matters (that is, it is more important to have a plan to mitigate the effects of a Black Swan, rather than limit the odds).

Last Thursday, I went to the cinema to watch the new Star Trek movie, and I was completely blown away.

As a franchise, Star Trek had been getting a bit stale. It was continuously running on TV for eighteen years, with two series concurrently for half of that time (not counting syndicated repeats). And then there were six movies in there, too.

There were at least two things working for the new film – it came out 4 years after the last new Star Trek production was released (the series finale of Enterprise), and the writers and producers decided to reboot back to the original crew (although, with different actors).

Actually – they go a bit further back than the original series, introducing Kirk and Spock when they are growing up and joining StarFleet.

Another decision by the writers was to not go the future-retro-future (not sure how to describe it, really) look of Enterprise (where they tried to make the tech look older than the Original Series, but with a production quality matched to the 21st century), and worked to get a visual style which was more in keeping with the original series – but with enhancements. In other words, it looked great.

The actors chosen to play Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and McCoy (Karl Urban), were selected for their similarity in features to the original trio. The remaining cast relied more on mimicking behaviour and mannerisms rather than facial likeness – but from what I saw, all casting choices were good ones for this movie.

The director, J J Abrams, was one of the brains behind Lost, and also wrote MI:III and Armageddon. I think he did a pretty decent job on this movie (I hear he is now working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series – so I’m looking forward to that).

The film does appear to deviate from ‘accepted’ Star Trek lore – but then it explains it, and in such a way that even the most die-hard fan can really object. And because it doesn’t retread, it stays nice and fresh – and is accessible for newcomers.

By the end of the movie, after watching some great acting and scripting, I was left hungry for more again (as opposed to the last couple of Next Generation movies which just seemed more like extended TV episodes). I haven’t seen any rumours yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they get at least one more movie out of the cast for this latest film.

So – verdict: this film is brilliant – well written, well directed, and well acted. Even if you don’t like Star Trek, the movie is setup so that you don’t have to have watched any of it before. It is a reboot, and it works.

Go watch and enjoy.