Summertime

Well, that was a nice summer vacation plus a bit.

Choice bits:

Goblin Corps - a deliciously sarcastic and violent take on the fantasy-genre - only we're following the bad guys for once, a variety of half-witted and malicious goblins, who are generally trying to murder each other as much as the foes that they meet. Not rocket science, but exceedingly well-executed, and just plain laugh-aloud funny.

Goblin Corps - by Ari Marmell

Ravenmark - a beautifully presented and well-told tactical wargame for the iPad. In the best tradition of the venerable, but best Warhammer tactical game Dark Omen, cutscenes tell a story that makes us care about the characters. I long for some kind of a zone-of-control system to allow me to control the battlefield more, but hey, well, it's the first game by a young studio (Witching Hour), and they seem to be thinking hard about the design challenges on a platform (the iPad), where I think that the gaming scene is still trying to find out exactly what it's going to be. I (and I'm not alone), think that the platform is excellent for brainy turn-based games (but then I would say that wouldn't I...)

Windswept at the Vesterhav -

Asbjørn, speed-junkie at 3 ½ -

And yes! You will note that I've had time for both gaming and reading. The incredibility...

Tea Party Fail

It's Sunday morning. It's two-hours-too-early-o'clock. We're having a tea party. I'm barely awake, trying to maintain a coherent dialogue voicing Icebear, Little Bear, and Tigger - and sometimes, but seldomly, myself. We're sitting at the little blue table. Asbjørn is serving cups of tea, buns with honey and tuna (don't ask), and some Lego flowers, while being a generally likeable, but rather demanding host. I'm sitting beside the table, propped up on a pillow, so as to leave the little chairs for Icebear, Little Bear and Tigger.

Asbjørn says something introductorily along the lines of "Happy you're here. Now sit down and drink and eat my imaginary food and tea from my imaginary plates and cups." I make Tigger jump a bit around - over-enthusiastically as is his wont, and lisp "Wooohoo". Little Bear gets a bit scared as usual, and whimpers in a high-pitched voice.

I blink. Very, very slowly.

Apparently now the tea is being poured. I'm supposed to do something. I grumble something while waiving Icebear in the general direction of the imaginary tea-cup, bend him over the table and go "Mmmnnmmnnmnn."

Silence descends. I look up. Asbjørn is looking horrified at me and Icebear. I'm suddenly wide awake. I - or rather Icebear - commited some horribly faux pas.

Asbjørn finally manages to speak. "Dad...! Icebear just ate his cup!"

Fail. I accidentally employed the eating-sound instead of the drinking-sound...

Knuckle Tattooes

On the periphery of my vision the movie Babylon A.D. is running on my really rather splendid tv-set. It's a Vin Diesel movie. His character has tattoes - faded letters - on each finger.

I grew up digesting every sci-fi novel in the little library in my provincial town. I'm willing to squint and overlook a lot when a sci-fi movie comes along. For instance, as far as I recollect I did enjoy Pitch Black a lot.

He seems to have a thing for sci-fi too. Quite effect-driven, cheesy, action-heavy, and, not-all-like-2001(-but-let's-be-honest-that-movie-was-also-a-tiny-bit-long)-movies.

However, this movie is - sadly - just bad.

... Oh yes. I should keep up appearances, shouldn't I? This is not new, but it is marvellously heart-warming.

Elegant Science Dissemination: Scale by Brad Goodspeed

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

The Award Show P3 Guld 2011

As has become traditional, I watched the award show P3 Guld, last night with a few good friends. It continues to be one of the only award shows I find worth watching. It's quirky, very Danish, and is about music that is not Beyoncé. Finally, the show consists mainly of a string of good live perfomances and four awards. No fuss. Just the good bits.

The prize for Breakthrough of the Year went to blog-favourites Turboweekend, and I certainly won't complain about that... Though, I believe you can always argue on what level they actually had their breakthrough last year. With the remix of Trouble Is by Joker and Tiësto, they certainly raised some international eyebrows last year. Here's the one by Tiësto:



Talent of Year went to Agnel Obel. Hmmm. Not really my cup of tea, though I can certainly hear the talent, and I appreciate the novel sound. Somewhat too art'y for my taste, I guess. I'd probably have voted for Kellermensch for holding the rock flag high. Here's their Springsteen-like Army Ants:



The Hit of Year - as voted by the listeners - went to Volbeat for Fallen. I am not much for popularity contests, as I seldomly like what the majority likes; but fair enough, Volbeat is party-hardrock, and that's ok by me. The nominees were these 25 songs, including two hits by rising popstar Vinnie Who. After the performance below by Vinnie Who last night I'd have thought it fair that he won at least one award.



Very, very stylish funky pop. I also applaud that he also understands that live music is about giving the audience a show.

The main P3 Guld award went to Fallulah. Ok, I guess. Her performance last night was quite good.



Hmmm, well. Ok, catchy. Well, she can actually sing and it's infinitely more pleasant to listen to than standard American/English pop. But - I was really impressed by Vinnie Who, so I must say that he was my favourite here, as well.

...

And finally, tadaaah! My main prize was a great new (for me at least...?) song, performed live by another blog favourite Veto!

The Most Enlightening Thing I've Read About the WikiLeaks Situation

This. By Bruce Sterling, co-father of cyberpunk. Eloquent, long, insightful, and rather sad.

Daft Punk Lives

This deserves a bump of my near-dead blog:

An alluring teaser for the reshoot of Tron - including silly quotes, two-dimensional characters in a 3D-world (isn't this so MineCraft?), and ALL NEW MUSIC FROM DAFT PUNK!



UPDATE: I have now seen, and, in particular, listened to this video at least 25 times this day. So I decided to change my blog-design to celebrate Tron.