I first saw coverage of this on G4TechTV’s Pulse. Ben, a young boy with leukemia was approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and asked what his one wish would be. He decided he wanted to make a videogame.

So they set out to look for a game developer that would help him. All the really big shops turned him down. Fuck you, Electronic Arts, you heartless bastards. (I believe Microsoft and Activision were two other major gamedev shops that turned the project down.)

Enter the good folks at LucasArts! (/cheer LucasArts!) and specifically Eric Johnston, the game developer who met with Ben once a week to work on his game (except for one Tuesday when Ben couldn’t make it because he was grounded. ).

Well, here’s the CNN article but its dry going compared to the Pulse piece.
CNN.com - Former cancer patient debuts cancer-fighting video game

And you can find the game itself available for download here:
Ben’s Game

Stories like this one, and the Children’s Charity Fund that the folks at Penny Arcade put together last year at Christmas…they don’t get as much media coverage as all the ‘violence in videogames is creating a generation of monsters’ garbage. But these are the stories that tell a truer tale of the gamer lifestyle, if you ask me.

Think of how many gaming fan-sites are put up every year. Gamers work hard to help their fellow gamers enjoy the hobby. And that’s the foundation of hobby’s community. It just builds up from there. Sure they squabble on message boards and don’t always behave as well as they should, but at the end of the day, if you go to a gaming board and ask for help, you’ll get it. Gamers are naturally a supportive bunch.

BTW, in case you don’t click through the article, this story has a happy ending. Ben is in remission and doing well.

Carmina (who is a bona fide fiber nut) sent me this link. She thought the animation was interesting but didn’t listen to the sound. I thought the whole package was pretty whacky and cool:
Steriogram | Walkie Talkie Man

So I watched Lilo & Stitch today, and I actually found it somewhat refreshing, for a Disney animated movie. Lilo was a screwed up little kid, and today there are so many screwed up little kids in the world that it was nice, for once, to not see the perfect child as a star. And even her sister…her tummy had a bit of extra weight on it and she really shouldn’t have been wearing navel-baring shirts. So in a way the movie rang very true to me.

Stitch had some neat animations, but as is so often the case, the CGI animation and the hand drawn animation really didn’t blend well. The basic story has been done to death but there were enough fun twists and angles to it that it made it quite enjoyable. Some of the voices seemed wrong…Lilo’s sister sounded more Hispanic than Hawaiian to my ears, but then I’ve never been to Hawaii.

All in all though, a fun film. Nothing amazing…just a decent rental for a rainy day.

Last night I started in on Bitten (Women of the Otherworld, Book 1). It was late and I didn’t get much past the prologue but that bit was pretty entertaining. Its about a woman in modern times who is a werewolf. Yeah, back to genre fiction.

Anyway, haven’t read enough to talk about the book, but oddly I wanted to talk about the publisher. Its from Plume, which is a division of Penguin Books. Its a paperback (I read in bed a lot so prefer paperbacks to hardcovers since the book is often resting on my chest.) but its got a really nice binding and feels like a ‘real book’ if you know what I mean. The cover has a flat finish rather than that glossy cheap-seeming dimestore paperback stuff.

I know, I’m being weird. But I just really like the feel of this book in my hands.

So I finally finished Sea of Glory yesterday. In spite of the fact it took me months to read, I’m still giving it a big thumbs up. I’m mostly a fiction reader and when I have a choice between a novel and a non-fiction volume, I tend to grab the former. Ergo the long time spent on my night stand.

Online gaming addiction: The next legal hotbed

Thank goodness I’m not addicted to these games! I can quit any time I want. I just happen to not want to right now…

From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” files:
CNN.com - Gene mutation makes tot super strong - Jun 24, 2004

CNN.com - Video game review: ‘Riddick’ redefines Xbox gaming

I’m reading so much good press about this that, while I was out getting myself DRIV3R, I picked up Riddick, too!

He made it!!!!

CNN.com - Private craft flies into space

Happy Solstice, everyone!

Rednova News has a neat article on one of the attempts to claim the X-Prize:
RedNova News: First Private Manned Spaceshot Attempt Ready for Liftoff

Last night we watched Balzac: A Life of Passion starring Gerard Depardieu as 19th Century author Honore de Balzac. Turned out this wasn’t a movie but a 2-part mini-series which, I assume, originally broadcast on French television. As such it was about 3 hours long. Now for someone as flighty as me, 3 hours of sub-titles can be quite a challenge, but I found myself completely captivated.

The film is aptly titled in that it was more or less a straight-forward biography. Balzac was a driven writer but in many ways his life was rather uneventful. He wrote, he loved, he died. He was a schemer whose schemes invariably fell apart, and we see this aspect of him, portrayed in a bittersweetly amusing way.

But my point is, if you’re looking for action and adventure, this isn’t the place to find it. But from the point of view of trying to understand who this man was, and what the times were like when he lived, its wonderful. I was particularly struck by the age of many of the characters. At the start, Balzac has a mistress much older than he is. And by then end both he and the woman he loves have aged quite a bit. Obviously the film was based on real events so they couldn’t very well make Balzac and Eve 20-year-old lovers, but still it was refreshing to see a story in which people over the age of 30 still fall in love and desire one another.

One of Balzac’s life-long friends was Victor Hugo (played here by Gert Voss) and I was intrigued by him as well. Also we get the briefest sketches of Eve Hanska and I’d love to learn more about her. We get these intriguing glimpses of a curious blend of devout religious beliefs and an almost pagan superstitionism. I want to know more!

The sets and costumes were wonderful. The sets weren’t really lavish, but rather than show huge swathes of Europe in the early-mid 1800’s they focused on a limited number of locales but did them very well. But the clothes did seem lavish and, to my layman’s eyes, quite authentic.

I must be honest and admit that I’d never heard of Honore de Balzac before seeing the film. Now I’m quite interested in him, and intend to pick up a biography written not too long ago, as well as a few of his books. I’m finding these films about authors (saw Henry and June not too long ago) to be quite inspiring.

A Short Biography of Balzac

Atari CEO harshly criticizes Sony over PSP - Jun. 9, 2004

Interesting read. Bonnell thinks the PSP is going to cost $500. But he seems to be just guessing. Still he makes a lot of good points about how many things we really don’t know about the unit.

Does this make my determination to buy one waver in the least? Nope. I HAVE TO HAVE ONE! /drool

How to Keep Your Brain Young is an encouraging read for an old dog like me, even if it *does* come from Better Homes & Gardens so is scientifically suspect.

I picked up EyeToy Groove the other day and just gave it a brief workout. Looks like it’ll be fun. It’s pretty much what you probably expect: DDR played with your arms and body.

I like DDR but I don’t think my downstairs neighbors like it much, so this’ll be a nice change when I just feel like jumping around looking silly now and then. It certainly doesn’t give the cardio workout that DDR does, but after not too long my arms were in fact tired.

The only real negative I see so far is that the songs take a long time to load and there’s a lot of Yes/No menu questions between them, which really breaks up the rthym. And other little dumb featurs are missed, like it asks for your name to put in the high score list….every time you make a high score. It should just default to the last name that you entered, y’know? So little kinda polish things weaken it a bit.

I’ll have to drag a kidlet down and play some multiplayer and see how that goes.

Still, its pretty much what I expected, and I’m content. Really looking forward to the second generation EyeToy stuff, though, like that hoverboard game!

I finally fired this up last night, with Carmina (a dedicated Onimusha fan…I guess the male lead is easy on her eyes ) watching on. It was late and we basically just get started, but already I’m hooked. Hell, the intro movie was worth $40 to me. It was stunning. The in-game graphics are really good too. Gameplay hasn’t changed much, but that’s fine with me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The voice acting is still kind of weak, sadly, with the exception of Jean Reno, who delivers all his lines in French, so its hard for me to say if he does a good job or not, but it lends an authentic feel to the game and I’m glad they went that route.

The technology that lets them map real actor’s onto 3D models is really astounding. I mean, in the CGI scenes, its sometimes hard to tell this isn’t a real actor. And in game they look really good, too. Very authentic.

Looking forward to spending more time with this one.