Donald A Petrie’s The Prize Game turned out to be a very interesting little book. I’m not linking it here because its out-of-print and I imagine it’d be awfully hard to find, but the ISBN is 1557506698 and it was published by US Naval Institute Press in 1999. Petrie, at least at the time of writing, lived in Wainscott, NY and that’s probably why I was able to find it at Bookhampton in East Hampton some number of years ago. Local author and all that.
Turns out the whole concept of taking prizes in the Age of Sail was a way of warfare that had rules that were followed among many different countries. How different from today’s world, eh? The book talks about these rules and illustrates them by following the adventures of a few successful privateers. The book is heavily footnoted and if you flip to the back and read you’ll find Petrie got a lot of his information from actual ship’s logs from times, as well as from court documents and newspapers. Turns out that prize-taking was followed by the papers almost like a sport would be today.
If you can find it, well worth a read. I’ll be taking good care of my copy for future reference.
On a personal note, it felt good to read some non-technical non-fiction for a change of pace. I’ll have to make a point of doing more of that.
Last night I finished The Golden Compass, Book 1 of Philip Pullman’s YA fantasy trilogy, “His Dark Materials.” I have to admit this one never would’ve made it onto my radar if not for the movie version (which I have not seen) getting promoted all over the TV.
There was much to-do made about the book’s anti-Christianity message, and Pullman, as I understand it, is an atheist and did indeed set out to write a “children’s book” that set itself directly opposite the pro-Christian symbolism in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. As someone not very much concerned with organized religion, I wouldn’t have given this aspect of the book a second thought had I not heard all the fuss about it. At the same time, I can’t in good faith (pun not intended) address the possibility of the book being offensive or troubling to someone with strong Christian beliefs.
I can describe the setting though. The Golden Compass takes place in a world parallel to ours. Land masses are the same, and many countries are familiar. Technology has advanced in a more steampunk sort of way, though scientists understand (mostly) the same elementary particles that scientists in our world do. At the same time it seems airplanes were never invented, and zeppelins still rule the skies. They don’t have electricity but they have “anbaric” energy (which seems to be electricity) and “naptha” (gas?) lamps.
The big difference is that every person has a “daemon” that takes the form of an animal and is intimately connected to the person. Essentially, these daemons are the souls of the humans in this other-world. These daemons remain in close proximity to their humans, and it is a huge taboo to touch another person’s daemon. It is unclear to me if this is what people of strongly Christian faith are bothered by — the idea of a soul external to the body — or if it was the fact that Pullman re-wrote brief passages from the Book of Genesis (adding daemons to the mix).
In any case, let’s talk about the story. Our protagonist is Lyra, a 12 year old girl who has been “adopted” by Jordan College at Oxford. Although she is of noble birth, she spends most of her time playing with the children of the servants of Jordan College, so when ‘commoner’ children start disappearing, including one of her friends, Lyra decides that she must do something to rescue them. Thus starts a whirlwind adventure taking her to “The North” where talking, armored polar bears rule (as far as we see, these polar bears are the only sentient animals in this world). Along the way Lyra starts to show certain abilities that may or may not be ‘magic’. She also learns much about the parents that she never knew.
It was an entertaining tale. As a YA book, I have to think it skews old. There are some fairly advanced concepts thrown around and the vocabulary is an adult one. For the most part it is “YA” only in the fact that the protagonist is a child, and that there is really just the one plot and one set of characters to worry about. There is violence, but no sex aside from one scene where we get a short voyeuristic glimpse at what happens between daemons when people become passionate.
Lyra is well portrayed; her ‘accent’ went a long way towards making her real in my imagination. The other characters don’t ‘pop’ so much, with the exception of her polar bear companion later in the book. Also about two-thirds of the way through, Lyra changed in a way that I found it hard to put my finger on. She started using “dear” a lot as a term of endearment, which felt odd. I suspect Pullman had put the novel aside for some length of time when he was writing it, and Lyra changed while he was gone. It’s a nit, but it has stayed with me and bothered me since I came to that change.
Take to heart that this is Book I in the trilogy, because it really doesn’t wrap up very well. It just kind of ends at a logical breaking point, but with many, many questions unanswered. At this point I’m not sure if I’d give the trilogy a thumbs up or not. If I had to rate The Golden Compass, I’d give it 3.5 stars out of 5. Good, not great.
Because I’m just not sure what to say about them. Do I like them? Oh yes, very much indeed. Can I describe them succinctly? Not a prayer of that. Erikson has built an incredibly rich fantasy world, gritty and often dark. And at the start of the first book he drops us in it and we must learn to swim or drown in its complexity. I learned to swim, barely. Not nearly well enough to give you any tips.
Humans are the primary race of the world, but there are others, some incredibly ancient. It’s an old, old world. There is magic, based on “warrens” which each have a name and, one presumes, particular characteristics. There are old gods, and “ascendent” godlings: mortals that somehow shrug off their corporeal bodies and enter the heavens (or the hells). You start reading these books and you’re immediately caught in a whirlwind.
While Deadhouse Gates takes place after Gardens of the Moon, either book stands alone (and I suspect this holds true with the rest of the series as well). Characters are sent ‘off stage’ in Book 1 to take care of a quest, and Book 2 is all about that quest. Characters cross-over mostly in the form of being referred to, reminding the reader that we’re peering at a tiny slice of this huge world.
I personally enjoyed Book 2 more than 1, but I think that might be because I’m slowly understanding the world better. I intend at some point to re-read Gardens
If you like big, meaty fantasy tomes where the good guys don’t always win and bad things sometimes happen to good people, and you don’t need to have everything spelled out for you, then I highly recommend checking out both Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates.
Well, I’ve gotten pretty far away from actually comparing the two games at this point, but that alone is indicative of my personal preference. Tonight right after dinner I fired up Rock Band and played until my hands started to ache. Yeah, just a tad addicted.
I finished out the Easy Mode career and unlocked all the bonus songs, then started on a Medium Mode career. When I made the jump from Easy to Medium in Guitar Hero 3, the difference was crushing…I just couldn’t manage to do Medium songs at all well. In Rock Band, I hit 4 & 5 stars on my first two Medium mode songs.
This felt pretty ‘right’ to me. Finishing up the hardest Easy songs and then the bonus songs on Easy, and then moving onto the easiest Medium songs…it should (I think) feel like a pretty seamless progression, and in Rock Band it does.
At this point it’s hard to imagine me going back to Guitar Hero 3 for anything. I’m just hoping for that patch that’ll let me use the GH3 guitar in Rock Band so I get some use out of the purchase.
Today was my day to test out the Rock Band drum kit. The biggest challenge for me here was setting it all up. Now everyone’s gaming space is different, but for me, I have a 52″ LCD TV, and directly in front of it, a couch and a coffee table. So the very first thing I had to do is drag our rather substantial coffee table out of the way. Then I needed someplace to sit. Really, if you’re going to do this drum thing seriously you’re probably going to want to invest in an adjustable stool. A quick Google search tells me you can spend anywhere from $20 to $200 for a drum kit stool.
Well, the best I could do in a pinch was a plastic Adirondack chair. So I dragged that into the living room, and spent some time fiddling with the arrangement of the drums and particularly with the drum pedal. Since the chair didn’t adjust, I ended up pushing the drum kit pretty far away from me in order for my foot to feel comfortable on the pedal (to where it felt almost like the gas pedal in my car). Anyway eventually I got something workable set up.
My first experience with drumming was pretty frustrating. I admit I’m no musician, but I can at least tap out a steady beat, and on Easy mode there’re a lot of places with long strings of evenly placed notes to hit, and I kept messing them up. Finally in frustration I called in the girlfriend for a second opinion, and she had the same kind of troubles. Finally I remembered that there’s a “TV Calibration” feature in the game. We’d had no problems with guitar or singing, but I tried it anyway. I just had to tell it I had an LCD TV and it calibrated automagically (there’s an option for a manual calibration as well). And that did the trick. I went from getting 2 stars to getting 4 stars immediately after the calibration.
Drumming is fun but requires a lot more real talent than the guitar does. And even though the drums aren’t as loud as I’d feared they would be, I think I was still subconsciously trying to hit them ‘gently’ so as not to disturb the neighbors. I think that’s ok for Easy mode, but if you watch the YouTube video below you’ll see that to get good you have to be willing to go for it.
I honestly think most Rock Band Drum Kits are going to end up gathering dust, at least with the casual players. I’d love to have a practice area where I could get a stool and set up the drums and not worry about bothering the neighbors, but that isn’t really practical for me, and I don’t think it will be for most people. And the reality is that I don’t see myself dragging furniture around after a long day at work just so I can relax with a little Rock Band. Right now you can get Rock Band in two configurations: the game only, or the set with drums, guitar and mike as well as the game. If that has changed by the time you read this, think long and hard about buying that drum kit.
After dinner, I picked up the guitar again and played some more of the solo Rock Band ‘career.’ I guess I’ve played through about 20 songs so far. One of the big differentiators between Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band is the play lists. I found Rock Band is pretty middle of the road for my tastes. There aren’t a lot of songs I just love, but neither are there many that I hate. GH 3 is more about the ups and downs. There are songs in that game I just adore, and some that are just horrible noise to my old ears. Now this is going to be really subjective, and I’m an older gamer. Suffice to say I’m really happy when I run into Rolling Stones or ZZ Top, and a lot of the bands I encounter in Rock Band I’ve never even heard of.
Of course ultimately you’ll have played through the careers and you’ll just be playing for fun, and at that point you can start buying downloaded songs, and cherry pick your favorites, so long-term I’m not so sure this is going to be a huge factor.
I’ll also reiterate that the learning curve in RB is a lot smoother. I’m still getting 4 or 5 stars on all the songs (and managed a 100% once). Over in the GH 3 camp, there are still “Easy” mode songs that just destroy me (Slayer, anyone?).
So I’m still standing by my preference for Rock Band. Oh, I did find one ‘gimmick’ here, and that’s “the big rock finish” which is a freestyle section at the end of some songs…you basically just mash notes as fast as you can to generate a huge pile ‘o points at the end of a tune. I could really do without this section since it generally ends up sounding likes two cats fighting in a 50 gallon drum. But it still isn’t as awful as the GH 3 Boss Battles.
Anyway, here’s a great video of someone rocking out like mad on the RB drums. It’s pretty long, but if you can, watch it at least until they cut out the game audio; it gives you a good idea of how loud the drums are.
I put the Rock Band drum kit together today. It’s big. It looked pretty big in the store but in my living room it seems to expand. And it really seems like it’ll require a stool; I don’t think that playing standing up is going to work for very long, or very well. The drumkit stand seems like it’ll break down pretty easily, but the ‘drum heads’ are all one big, rather large, piece, so I’m a bit concerned about storage.
On the plus side, they aren’t as loud as I’d feared they would be. There’s a Rock Band demo kiosk in the local Best Buy, and those drums are pretty darned loud. The sticks are regular drumsticks, and the drums at the store are plastic so the whole time someone is playing they’re bashing plastic with a wooden stick. Loud and unpleasant. But the drums that I got have a rubberized surface and aren’t too bad as far as noise goes. I still don’t think I’d practice my RB drum solos in the middle of the night though, out of respect for other folk in the apartment building.
As I mentioned in my last post, as of about 2-3 weeks ago I’d never played one of these games. Guitar Hero III was my introduction to the genre. Today I experienced Rock Band for the first time and I thought I’d compare the newbie experience.
Both games offer tutorials, but Rock Band’s guitar tutorial is longer and more informative. However if you fail the tests, you have to listen to the whole explanation before trying them again. In Guitar Hero if you fail you can just retry the test right away. Some guy named Izzy narrates the Rock Band tutorial and he’s fine. In GH3, the “god of rock” and some other character take turns. They’re pretty corny, but y’know, it’s just a tutorial; I guess its not a big deal. Continue reading “Rock Band vs Guitar Hero 3: Day 2, The Newbie Experience”
I’m a Johnny-come-lately to this whole world of ‘virtual guitars.’ I finally picked up Guitar Hero 3 a couple of weeks ago, and today Rock Band arrived. I’d found it really confusing, trying to decide which one to get. So in the end I got both. Great economics, huh? I thought I might capture my impressions in a series of posts, in case anyone else is trying to pick one of the two.
These posts are based on the PS3 versions of the games. I’m not going to go into a whole big thing about console preference. I have a PS3, an XBox 360 and a Wii, and my personal preference is for the PS3 over the XBox 360, mostly because its a lot quieter when its running, and because I don’t care about online multiplayer.
Guitar Hero III w/Guitar Controller will run you about $100. The Rock Band bundle is $170 and comes with a guitar controller, drum set controller, and a microphone. Right there, you have a compelling reason to go with Rock Band if you’re living in a multi-gamer household.
On the PS3, the controllers are not interchangeable at this time, though as of this writing there are heavy rumors of a patch that will let you use the GH 3 guitar controller with Rock Band. My understanding is that on the 360, the GH 3 controller will work with Rock Band, but not vice versa.
Let’s compare the two guitar controllers. This is a definite ‘out of the box’ comparison. I haven’t actually played Rock Band as of the time of this writing. 🙂 But the differences just struck me so I wanted to capture them right away. Continue reading “Rock Band vs Guitar Hero 3: The Guitars”
Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs was written in 1867. Some kind soul has scanned the book and posted it on the web. You can flip through the pages almost as if you held the book in your hands.
Neat stuff… I love it when modern technology brings the past back to life.
Back in October I wrote on this blog that I’d decided to do NaNoWriMo this year (depressingly that post is only three down the page from this one. (Must…write…more…blog…entries). Keen observers will note that although we are 2/3s of the way through November, no further mention of NaNo has been made. No word count trackers have appeared. No status reports. No nuttin’.
So why’d I decide in the end to reverse my decision and not do NaNo this year? Well first of all, the decision to do it made on Oct. 15th came from without, not within. I’d been talking to a few friends of mine who encouraged me to do it, and their enthusiasm was infectious enough that I caught it. And maybe for some people that’s enough. Heck it might have been enough for me some other year. But not this year.
I’d been approaching November assuming I’d do NaNo since I’d done it the past two years. Assuming I’d do it, and dreading the idea. I kept telling myself that I’d get pumped for it and it would be an exciting challenge once again. But I never got pumped. And without being enthusiastic to do it in the first place, I realized the whole month would just be a misery, so I opted out. Continue reading “The Year Without A NaNoWriMo”
Yeah, I’ve been one heck of a poor blogger lately. I’ve got a post about NaNo in my head…been there for about 2 weeks. I’ll write it down one of the days. But anyway…
Last night I finished Trudi Canavan’s Voice of the Gods, which completes her “Age of the Five” trilogy. If was good…actually it was really good, until the very end which stumbled a bit. And the foreshadowing was heavy enough that there were no real surprises at the end, which takes a little away from it, but still I have to call it a satisfying finish to a satisfying series. I definitely give the trilogy as a whole a thumbs up, with the caveat that some readers might find the first book a bit impersonal. Books 2 & 3 were much more character-driven.
As expected from the title, book three focuses a lot on the Pentadrians, who were the ‘bad guys’ of Book 1. But one of the wonderful things about these books is that neither side is really ‘the bad guys’. There are good and bad people on each side of the conflict, which gives the world a very realistic vibe. Auraya is still a major focus, but Canavan manages to keep the cast of characters broad enough that things never grow dull.
The book ended leaving me wanting for more. I’d grown to care about these characters, and there were cases where two individuals would be at odds due to misunderstandings, and I wanted Canavan to write more so they could all come to an understanding, but it was not meant to be. Ever been in that situation where you have two good friends, and you introduce them to each other and find they don’t like each other, and you just want to do whatever you can to help each of them realize what a great person the other is? Yeah, that was what I needed Canavan to do at the end of the trilogy.
Perhaps some day she’ll write more in this world and do that for me. Until then, I think I’ll be checking out her Black Magician Trilogy.
, Book 1 of Philip Pullman’s YA fantasy trilogy, “His Dark Materials.” I have to admit this one never would’ve made it onto my radar if not for the movie version (which I have not seen) getting promoted all over the TV.
and I never did review the first book, 