Some people have no shame

Disney's Kanter says the new cartoon represents not an abandonment of an old, familiar world, but rather an alternate universe for Pooh and his crew."Christopher Robin is still out there in the woods, playing," she says. "We hope people will fall for this new tomboyish girl. The last thing we want to be is the ones who brought the franchise down."

USATODAY.com - Disney lets girl into Winnie's world

A few days ago a friend expressed sentiment about sometimes you almost feel sorry for people who work in marketing. Then I see this and I'm reminded that the profession has earned my enmity. They are making a new CGI Winnie the Pooh TV show - likely bad, but I'd reserve judgement. They are replacing Christopher Robin with a girl. Why? Apparently to bring an "older audience" to Pooh. OK, I don't need to reserve judgement anymore - this stinks.

There's a lot of babble in the story about "expanding" the brand which is pretty sad. Y'see adding a new character expands the brand. Replacing one character with another one doesn't  expand the brand, it changes the brand for no good reason. Grrrr.

(I saw it from The Whatever - author John Scalzi's blog.)

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Breaking through Writers Block

Geez. Almost two weeks of non-posting. I have an excuse, sorta. Wizards kicked me back to the chapter outline - rightfully so, but still a setback. The story is absolutely better for the rework but I've noticed every time I work on the chapter outline it's a huge writer's block - I get nothing done while I'm on it. But I sent off a revised outline today, and lo the block is lifted!


Karin is sick, so I spent most of the evening tending to the sick (oh I make a mean chicken noodle soup with homemade turkey stock - colds beware!) but after she crashed I felt the creative juices flowing. I've just finished cranking out part IV of my secret web-serial. When I want to write but not worry about fitting into the Magic style I've been writing on this. Come 2006 you blog readers will begin to thrill to the epic adventures of Captain Jaimie Arcolier - space pirate extraordinaire! Don't believe me? Check this fragment:

The pilot, a young whelp of an ensign stuttered out his call for full thrust. Tammy in engineering flickered into view in a corner of the viewscreen as the <i>Revenge</i> leapt forward. "Full thrust? William? You sure you can handle what I can put out?" Tammy chuckled throatily as the young pilot blushed crimson. Tammy locked eyes with Jaimie and arched an eyebrow. "Seriously Cap'n. How do you find them so young and innocent? You know I love it!"

Jaimie threw her head back in a full-throated guffaw. "Down girl! I promised his Ma we wouldn't hurt him. Get us into grapple in the next minute and I promise you an extra week of shore leave. Hell, I'll go with you. Haven won't know what hit them, but we'll have a full squad of new marines when we launch. That's a Captain's Promise there lassie!"

Tammy tugged a raven forelock in a mock salute. "Aye, aye Cap'n! It's a date!" her screen faded out as William swallowed ineffectually and continued to guide the <i>Revenge</i> into Electro-Grapple range.

That's good stuff there. I like it a lot. And you should all be very afraid, because I realized the perfect soundtrack for this serial - and it is this

Seriously though, this has been my outlet for a few months now. I expect to start posting about 1K words a week in the new year. It's a web serial in the style of the old-tyme sci-fi radio and movie serials. I like it a lot, and Jaimie Arcolier has a lot of fun in her red-haired chassis. I hope you'll like her as well - we'll see next month!

And yes, there is Scottish whiskey involved with this post. Today's post is brought to you in part by Strathisla (and Abba, natch - Take a chance on me!) But most of Jaimie's adventures to date have been written very sober. I'm just giddy to have unlocked the words again. Words - I've missed you!

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(EDIT: every once in a while Flock posts something with the GMT timestamp, instead of the PST one. This makes things order incorrectly if I have multiple entries on a day. So I fixed the publish time.)
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Trauma Center: Under The Knife Review

Recently I rented Trauma Center from Gamefly and I thought I'd mention it briefly here. It got decent if not stellar reviews, and I disagree. In fact, I think it exemplifies something that I've come to notice about the DS: I like games that use the second screen, but not the "touch" aspect. Examples of this include Advance Wars:DS (you can use the touch screen, but I chose not to - I found the control was much better using the regular GBA controls) and Mario Kart DS (tapping the screen flips between the two map modes). Trauma Center tries to be unique and use the touch screen, and I ended up sending it back the day after I got it.


The hook is that you actually perform the surgeries in the game using the touch screen. You have a little palette of tools such as a scalpel, suction pump, anesthesia and the like. You touch the scalpel and then make an incision and so forth. That part is fairly neat. I almost immediately got hand cramps, and I even lost a mission because I foolishly used the built-in microscopic stylus instead of the pen I always use for DS - but I'm used to that for the DS so I don't even count it. What absolutely killed the game for me was the fact that you have to make little circle gestures to zoom the camera in and out. Make an imperfect circle and it beeps. Make a wrong sized circle and it beeps. I quit on a mission where several things happen at once and I kept losing because a tumor offscreen would have something bad happen. There was no warning, no overview, no real clue that something bad was happening elsewhere. I found I was just zooming in and out like a freak, frantically checking to make sure I knew where the worst tumor was.

This is weird to me, because it's not even a good metaphor. Stylus as scalpel, sure. Stylus as roll of bandages that you unroll is fine. Stylus as a syringe or vacuum pump that you fill and use seems really cool. But why is making circles in the air zoom or unzoom?

Anyways, it's not a first party game so I can't give Nintendo too much grief, but it was being touted as a good example of the unique gameplay the touch screen allows. Unfortunately, it's just another example of the sucky gameplay the touch screen allows. A year after the consoles release we should have something better.

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Keep on rocking in the free world

If Nintendo has any sense they should lock up Harmonix to develop exclusively for the Revolution. Guitar Hero is a perfect example of what Nintendo keeps preaching - difference is Harmonix is practicing it, not developing baseball games with the main character from Amplitude. I resisted Guitar Hero for a while, thinking the extra price might not be worth it, but I gave in last week. That game is super-fun, and I'm still only scratching the surface (just unlocked the third batch of songs on medium).

I've been humming "Smoke on the Water" or "I Love Rock & Roll" to myself for a couple of days now - which is totally the game's fault. I've even contemplated an iTunes run to make a few purchases. That game needs a soundtrack CD or iMix playlist (but the list is missing a few tracks due to iTunes selection issues.)

Years ago Dana Carvey had a stand-up routine where he made fun of the faces guitar players make as they play. I was fairly appalled to realize that I make those same faces when a song in GH starts kicking my ass. I have no explanation why - don't know if it's culturally ingrained or something more complex. Biting my lip doesn't surprise me, that's something I do to avoid sticking my tongue out when I'm concentrating - and I know the tongue thing is genetic going back at least two generations. After finishing the Easy songs and starting in on Medium though I realized I wasn't just biting my lip - I was doing full on rocker faces. Very troubling. I've either got to stop doing that or grow rocker hair and buy some snakeskin pants. I'm pretty sure if I do that Karin will make me get a real job again :-(

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