Ask Palpatine

As a child growing up in the '80s, I loved TV puppets. The Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Spitting Image were some of my favs.

If you want a modern day fix of puppet madness then click over to Hoggworks Studios - Ask Palpatine is just one of their creations.

[Thanks to Brain Needed Space]

Poetry Retrospective #3

England on the plane back to the UK next Thursday...let's fucking hope not.

Sun Downer*

It's bloody,

whole generation.

This generation

is vain,

sun drown.

When everything burns

against you,

society blankets

and begs...

hold onto the feeling

of the time.

This generation

is vain.

Orange shower

sun drown.

*first published 1995 in a limited edition collection, 'Polarise'.

Week 22 in subspace-urbia

Can a post-season get any worse?

Benitez had been manager at Liverpool FC for nearly as long as I had been married but after a very poor EPL campaign('09-'10) the pressure was on for something to give. Shamefully, the cancers(as one blogger nicely puts it) are still there as owners of the club. I can only hope that Mr Dalglish picks very wisely in the coming weeks/months!

I've reached a point in the main storyline of Red Dead Redemption where I feel a break from the game is needed - I do this often with games that have an open-world setting and while some have not been revisited yet, I did crave a return to an unfinished ACII. I'm making some nice progress there and only have the last upgrade to the off-hand hidden blade to go - the pistol. Leonardo hasn't requested any MMO style hunt & gather type quests, so I take it he's come to the conclusion that the proposed Sforza horse project is just never going to happen - shame that. I'd have loved to have seen a giant bronze horse placed within the grounds of Ezio's villa.

My first ever game for my MacBook Pro has now been downloaded from Steam. Impressed by the trailers and by some of my peer's experiences of the game, I took a stab in the dusk and installed Torchlight. Although I have yet to give it a run for its money, it has spurred me to go back and look at Raptr - not entirely sure why it did but am glad all the same. I had been less than impressed by it when I first gave Raptr a look over but I didn't remove myself from the beta and it has been collecting my gaming data ever since 2008. Looking at Raptr now, there's a very clear and easy to use interface with some nice touches and I'm hopeful for it's future. Include to that that a iPod app. is due to released very shortly, and I may just stick with Raptr.

On that final note, I am curious to know what my gaming readership think is the currently the best or their favourite system of recording their gaming achievements etc. I have added a poll to the sidebar for you to cast your votes.

18 months in a sealed container

Bliss?

...4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42...

Rockstar and the Sforza horse

I have never been on horseback - riding around in games like Red Dead Redemption are no way a substitute, but I can appreciate the love that these animals give to people and how different the world can look from the saddle.

So it comes as no surprise when artists, like Leonardo da Vinci, spend a great proportion of their lives trying to replicate a larger-than-life impression of such an elegant beast. The ill-fated Sforza horse project, that Leonardo undertook to honour Ludovico's father, took many years of his life to realise and due to the restrictions in technology and the lack of resources, it was never completed in his lifetime but that never stopped him from dreaming his dream.

Thinking in more modern terms, where would fantasy movie-making or gaming be without the love of the horse? Riding horseback is an essential ingredient to the whole fantasy world experience without it we'd be stuck with fast-travel and waypoints - goodbye exploration!

It's also good to see Rockstar making the horse a seriously proposition with the open-world of Red Dead Redemption, as they developed the game. To a different degree than compared to Leonardo da Vinci, Rockstar have obsessed over the idea of the horse in an artistic form and it rightly shows. There maybe a few things that Rockstar could have added into the mix(i.e naming your horse, branding, stabling etc) but we don't know to what detriment to other areas of gameplay these would have caused. Let's not forget that Assassin's Creed also gave us a better feeling for horseback riding than any of the MMOs on the market at that time and I would still argue that it still does today.

I wonder what Leonardo would have made of these digital representations of his beloved beast? More importantly, will he be making me run errands to collect bronze for his Sforza horse project in Assassin's Creed II?!