Half-Life² Episode Two trailer available now!

My RSS feedreader flashed up a post from GameSpot to let me know that the HL2e2 trailer was up, so I clicked the link eagerly... only to find that to see it I have to pay for a subscription! However, resourceful as I am, I always have alternatives. GameTrailers.com has all the latest trailers, they're free and you can even download them for your delectation and delight. They have the trailer in standard and high-def versions (the standard one can even be downloaded as .mp4 format so it should play on an iPod). And of course it can be embedded - I tried to do that here but Blogger.com isn't allowing it so you'll have to make do with a screenshot (above) and a link: Click here to view the trailer (it should open in a new window).

If the game (or rather, this episode) is even half as good as this trailer it's going to be brilliant and I can't wait - the last I heard it was slated for release early next year.

Take a look at the trailer and gasp as Gordon blows one strider to bits with just two shots from a machine gun (huh?!) and Dog goes head-to-head with another. I also wish Valve would release that awesome soundtrack as a free download...

The Governator speaks sense; Internet problems fixed

At least, ONE republican has a clue...

...none other than the Governator himself. Arnie was at a UN summit and had this to say:

"I say the [global warming] debate is over. We know the science," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared forcefully at a recent United Nations summit. "We see the threat, and we know the time for action is now."

ABC News went on to point out that "president" Bush is still hiding his head where only his proctologist will find it:

President Bush, however, continues to cast doubt on the consensus in the scientific community that man-made emissions cause global warming.

"I have said consistently that global warming is a serious problem. There's debate over whether it's man-made or naturally caused...," the president told reporters in June, hours after an extreme thunderstorm felled an elm tree to the ground just outside his White House door.

High Speed Internet at last

The cable dude showed up as promised yesterday evening and fixed us up with a direct cable feed to bypass the noise problems that were causing trouble with our Internet connection. I gave it a thorough testing - not only have the problems apparently gone but (according to a speed test on BroadbandReports.com) our download speed is up 30% compared to last week. Brilliant.

Warped Space

Warped Space 1: NASA hides what they're doing by telling everybody

Most conspiracy theories are pretty dumb, but some are plainly dumber than others. Here's one that came up in response to the news that NASA is having problems locating the original slow-scan videotapes of the Apollo missions: on a site called Allergic Reality¹, some goon wonders out loud what's on the tapes that NASA doesn't want us to see.

Here's a clue: Nothing, you dope. Nobody's been bothered about these tapes for over thirty years, and we wouldn't have even known about them if NASA hadn't said they were trying to find them. If there was something on them they didn't want seen, all they had to do was burn them and not say anything.

¹It may be that this site deliberately picked a name close to Augmented Reality™ in an attempt to confuse the public. I think we should be told...

Warped Space 2: Welcome to the Dwarf Planet Mickey Mouse

In the wake of yesterday's decision about the definition of the word "planet" comes another problem for the IAU. It turns out that with more trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) being discovered all the time (Wikipedia lists over 100 found since 1992), and at least a dozen of these being big enough to possibly be classified as Dwarf Planets, we don't have enough names for them all.

Seven of the nine eight planets (the exception being Earth) are named after Roman deities. Ceres and Pluto also get Roman names because at the time they were named, they were classed as planets. This scheme can't be extended to include Dwarf Planets because there aren't enough Roman deities to go round.

So an idea has come up from Stephen Maran, author of "Astronomy for Dummies": Sell the names to the highest bidder and use the money for education and science programs around the world.

While I applaud the idea of using the money for education, I can't help but have a nagging doubt. What would happen if...

• ... The Disney Company bought up a Dwarf Planet and called it "Mickey Mouse"? Would that give them the right to rename Pluto as "Pluto™ - a Disney Planet"?


• ... Sun Microsystems named a Dwarf Planet "Sun"?


• ... Cadbury's bought three and called them "Mars", "Galaxy" and "Milky Way"?


• ... and if Earth Shoe got in on the act, that would really confuse things.

Personally I think we need to think up some new names instead of recycling old ones. After all, when the Romans named Mars, what did they name it after? Nothing - they thought the name up from scratch. We should get a little imagination and think up our own. I hereby propose that 2003UB₃₁₃ be henceforth known as "Drophfenjoter".

Update: I mentioned in an earlier post that the new "planet" definition might still be revised because of a certain amount of disagreement between astronomers. There's more about this today on New Scientist's Space Page.

More space news

Space News 1 - My Very Educated Mom Just Served Us Nachos

It's official, and all over the news so I'm not going into detail here: Pluto is no longer classified as a planet - it is now a "Dwarf Planet" along with Ceres, Charon, 2003 UB₃₁₃ and others. This means that we now have eight planets in the solar system and the old mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" will have to be rewritten.

On the other hand the decision may not stand for too long - the astronomers who voted on the proposed definition account for only a small percentage of professional astronomers worldwide and there have been some fairly strong objections to the new definition.

Space News 2 - First evidence for Dark Matter

Observations of the Bullet Cluster have provided the first hard evidence for the reality of Dark Matter. The Bullet Cluster is actually two galaxies that are passing through each other in opposite directions (I'm simplifying a bit, but this is essentially correct). As they pass, the stars in the galaxies miss each other because of the huge spaces between them, but the gas clouds are much larger so they bump into each other and slow down. The result is a cloud of gas in the middle with the stars passing out of the gassy region.

Measurements of the mass distribution show that the majority of the mass stays with the stars and not the gas - even though there's a lot more "normal" matter in the gas than there is in the stars. This shows that the Dark Matter is associated with the stars and not the gas. This puts us a step forward in understanding what Dark Matter may actually be.

Space News 3 - Mariner 4 mystery may be solved

In 1965 Mariner 4 took the first close pictures of the surface of Mars. Its job done, it cruised the space between Mars and Earth - it didn't have enough fuel to go anywhere else, so it simply drifted along with nothing to do.

On September 15, 1969, something strange happened - for 45 minutes Mariner 4 was sandblasted by a storm of meteors more intense than any seen here on Earth. And that's where the mystery began, because nobody had any idea where these meteors could have come from.

Until now, that is. Paul Weigert of the University of Western Ontario may have the answer. The trail goes back to 1895, when well-known comet spotter Lewis Swift found a comet which, by convention, was subsequently named "1895 Swift". The comet was seen again in 1896, heading out of the inner solar system on a 5-year orbit, but was never seen again. When it didn't show up as expected it was presumed to have disintegrated and renamed "D/Swift" for short (the "D" prefix indicating a comet that has disintegrated or been destroyed).

Weigert suggests that D/Swift broke up shortly after the last sighting in 1896, becoming a stream of small particles following the original orbital path of the comet. In 1967 Mariner 4 crossed that orbit just as the bulk of the broken-up D/Swift was passing. The calculations aren't certain because D/Swift was only seen a couple of times over a century ago, so the orbit isn't accurately known, but the indications are certainly compelling.

Comets like D/Swift break up all the time, so it's highly likely that the space all around the Earth and Mars is filled with particle streams just like the one that Mariner hit. This is important to know, since plans are afoot to send more spacecraft to Mars over the next few years.

Space news and the latest on the high-speed Internet disaster

Space News 1 - Apophis: Only You Can Save The Earth

On April 13, 2029 an asteroid called 99942 Apophis will pass the Earth at a distance of about 20,000 miles - that's a little closer than our TV satellites and close enough that it'll be naked-eye visible from Europe, Africa and western parts of Asia.

The close approach to Earth will change Apophis' orbit, and nobody can be certain how it'll be affected. Seven years later - on April 13, 2036 - there is a slight but nevertheless very real chance that it will hit the Earth.

Apophis is about 1,000 feet across and estimated to weigh around 50 million tons. That's nothing like the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs - that one was about six miles across - but it's still estimated that if it hits, the blast will be equivalent to 65,500 Hiroshimas.

The chance it'll hit may be very slim but the danger it poses if it does hit is enough that some serious scientists, such as Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, are urging that we need a plan to deal with it. I agree with this.

At this point in time the priority is to "tag" Apophis so that we can track its position precisely - that'll provide the data needed to get a much better idea of whether or not it'll hit in 2036 (or later - there are other close approaches in 2037 and 2054). If we find out that Apophis is going to hit, tagging will also provide vital position data that can be used in any attempts to deflect or even destroy it.

The Planetary Society just announced a $50,000 competition that anyone can enter. All you have to do is come up with an idea for how to tag Apophis. It's not as easy as it may sound; Apophis could be a big ball of gravel or small rocks, rather like Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, in which case fixing something to the surface won't work. We need ideas, hence the competition. The competition details aren't up on the web page yet but keep watching.

Space News 2 - We May Have More Planets Tomorrow

Tomorrow - August 24 - the International Astronomical Union will be voting on a new proposed definition of the word Planet. Depending on how it goes, the number of planets in our solar system may officially increase from nine to twelve sometime in the next thirty-six hours.

The way the definition stood a few days ago, the three new members of the planet family would be Ceres (currently considered an asteroid), Charon (Pluto's largest moon) and 2003 UB₃₁₃ - a trans-Neptunian object larger than Pluto, the discovery of which was the main factor in deciding that we needed a proper definition of what a Planet is.

More news on this tomorrow when the result of the vote is out. However it goes, it's a fair bet that The Nine Planets website will need to be renamed.

Update: the proposal is still being reworked as discussions continue. At this time it looks like we may actually have less planets after tomorrow, as Pluto and Ceres may be reclassified as "dwarf planets". More tomorrow.

Space News 3 - The Moon Landing Tapes: they're not lost, we just don't know where they are

We've all seen the really poor quality video of Neil Armstrong stepping down onto the Moon's surface in 1969, and some of us have always wondered why the quality was so bad. It turns out that the original recordings were far better, and what we saw on TV was the way it was because it had to be filtered and converted to TV format on the fly.

So, what happened to the original high-quality recordings? It turns out they're sort-of missing. You see, with all that was going on in the space program at that time, the recordings were packed up and sent to Goddard Flight Center. Later they were sent to the National Archives, then in the 1970s they went back to Goddard. And that, presumably, is where they still are - except that the guys there have been looking for them for over a year without any success. NASA is fairly sure that the tapes are still there, and they're still looking, but time is running out because Goddard is closing down in a few weeks - and they have the only remaining equipment that can read the original tape format.

Let's hope the tapes are found and they're still readable. I for one look forward to seeing that video digitized, cleaned up and made available on DVD.

The high-speed Internet story - Latest

The Cable Dude came to the house last night and figured out the problem, which is that the signal goes through no less than three splitters between the point where it enters the house and the connection on the back of the modem, suffering a loss of about 11dB on the way.

To fix it, the cable company will be installing a dedicated line for the modem early next week. We'll just have to make do as-is until then, but thinking about it I don't have a problem with that - after all, even with these dropouts it's still better than the old 56k modem.

Hi speed (hic!) inter(hic!)net; Video; Darkstar One

Hi speed (hic!) inter(hic!)net

As mentioned at the end of the last post, we have a problem with our newly-installed high-speed internet connection. It gets very flaky -- web pages timing out, mail not connecting, all that stuff. Strangely it seems to happen mostly in the early part of the evening, say from about 4pm until 8 or 9pm. I tried plugging my office laptop directly into the back of the modem instead of going through the router, and saw the same problem this time. When I tried that before it worked fine -- but that was around 10pm, maybe later.

In any case, the fact that I can make it happen without the router or the long cable that connects it proves that the problem, if it's in our house at all, can only be in the cables or the modem. The fact that it's worse at certain times of day suggests that the wiring and the modem are not the problem -- I can't see how the modem could have problems only at certain times, unless it's missing happy hour at its favourite bar.

We have a tech dude coming to the house tomorrow evening to troubleshoot. I'm hoping he can find the problem and fix it right there on the spot, but we'll see.

Video

I suggested in the last post that I might write up some stuff I've learned about video work as a series of posts. Well, a comment flooded in, asking me to do that. So I will. Watch this space.

Darkstar One

New game! Ascaron's Darkstar One shipped last week and hit the shelves here on Friday. I've played it for a bit and despite some downsides it's very good. Upsides: graphics are good (although I do see some framerate slowdown at times on my less-than-optimal system), I like the storyline, it's challenging enough to stay interesting. Downsides: Missions, trade stations, even star systems are very samey, and there's not much to explore. Maybe Ascaron will do a "Plus" version as they did with Sacred Plus, to address some of that.

It's also very addictive. Tonight, I will be doing something else.

Look Upon my Blog and Despair

...which is exactly what I've been doing, since I haven't posted a damned thing here since April. This isn't because I haven't wanted to write, but because I seem to have been permanently blocked.

Regular readers may have noticed in the past that I've written about things that disturb me in the good ol' USA -- the simian president and his corrupt repugnican menagerie, for example, or the rabid religious right and the way they're trying to destroy the place. The trouble is that writing about that stuff makes my BP go up even higher, and frankly I decided to try to chill for the sake of my health.

Hence the more recent writings have tended to be about more laid-back subjects such as home video, or computer games, or podcasts. But the cool, crystal wellspring of inspiration about such things slowed to a trickle, and finally turned into a kind of stagnant muddy puddle with dead bugs floating in it.

Today I resolved to force myself to write something. Be prepared, gentle reader, for a collection of random brain-farts as I try to scrape the rust off my brain's writing lobe...

Video

I have work to do. I took about 90 minutes of video in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland a few months ago when we went up to visit number-two son. A few weeks after that I got another couple of tapes worth at the Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival down in Waxahachie. Both sets of tapes have been captured onto my hard drive, and I reviewed the first set... and that's as far as I've got. So I have to make a start into picking out the usable stuff and editing it into to some sort of order.

Maybe I should write a series of posts about videography. I'll consider that idea.

Games

Kate and I have been playing Sacred again, probably for the first time in a year. I'd forgotten how much fun that game is. We also went ahead and bought Sacred Underworld, the expansion pack, and that's cool too -- the graphics are definitely smoother than the original. There's a sequel on the way (Sacred: Dark Angel, I think it's going to be called) but I don't know when they're planning on releasing that yet.

Ascaron, the company that makes Sacred, has just released a space-sim called Darkstar One which looks like Freelancer on steroids. I played the free demo a few weeks ago and it looks pretty good.

I also got Half-life 2: Episode 1 right after it came out. Regular readers may cast their minds back to Christmas 2004, when I wrote on this very blog about how I would never buy another game that uses Steam. Ok, I lied. Half-life is just too good a game to miss out on. I still think Steam stinks, though.

Speed

We finally bit the bullet, got broadband installed and joined the rest of the twenty-first century. It hasn't been without its own little family of problems, though...

Setting the thing up the first time, I just couldn't get it to connect to the Internet. The problem turned out to be the order you power things up the first time -- you have to put the router on first, then the modem, and not the other way round like the manual said.

With that hurdle passed, we were off and running... or so we thought. We realized pretty soon that there was some kind of serious problem -- the connection would just seize up for twenty or thirty seconds at a time, so web pages would time out and mail wouldn't send, and all the rest.

I finally narrowed it down to a problem either in the router or the cable connecting it to the modem. "Can't be the router," I thought, because it's a Linksys made by Cisco, and Cisco know a thing or two about networks. So I replaced the cable thinking maybe I'd stretched it or kinked it or something when I was feeding it behind the furniture.

Wrong. Kate and I were very, very careful not to bend, kink, stretch or perform any other kind of topological operation on the cable as we put it in place... and it made no difference at all. The problem was still there. Bugger.

So last night I ran out to Fry's to get another router -- a Netgear, this time -- and it looks like our problems have gone away. Note to readers: avoid the Linksys BEFSR41 router -- online reviews weren't great and it sure looks like we got a bad one. The Netgear is smaller, works better and was cheaper, too.

Stop Press... the problems came back, so it wasn't the router after all, so ignore what I said about the Linksys router. Looks like the problem is at our provider's end. More on this as it develops...