Monthly archives: July 2007

Racing games- adding Dirt to the wishlist

This entry was posted in List video games XBox on by

I’ve just found an addition to the big list of driving games from last month.

DIRT is the latest Colin McRae racing game, and is available for PC, XBox 360 and PS3. It moves away from pure point to point rallying and incorporates dirt tracks, trucks and hill climbs- including the legendary Pikes Peak. (It was because I was looking for a game incorporating the Peak that I found the game.) The graphics look stunning and the review I read at GameTrailers is favourable.

Now, I could see if my pc’s up to the job, or someone could be lovely and buy me a 360. Go on, you know you want to.

Damn those foreigners for being more English than the English!

This entry was posted in Daily Mail immigration racism racists on by

The former Tory MP was responding to an article in the Mail revealing that a foreigner is granted a UK passport every five minutes.

He said: “These people have actively sought British citizenship because they want to make a contribution to the UK.

“I am not sure how many people born in this country have the same commitment. The tests for citizenship are greater than they have ever been.

“We are now turning immigrants into better citizens than people born with a British passport.”

The Daily Mail and its frothing “I’m not a racist, but…” readership are up in arms about this, and goes out of its way to cite Abu Hamza et al as examples of the sort of immigrant we’re getting, insinuating that they’re all muggers, rapists and killers. Take any million British citizens and I think you’d find a number of vile scum in the mix. I mean, a few of them would be Daily Mail readers for a start.

Military SF and Baen books

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Military science fiction, a genre probably started by Starship Troopers, which I have yet to read (though I have seen the film, and its fairly predictable sequel- Hero of the Federation). I would recommend The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, effectively a response to Starship Troopers. The two books characterise the two sides of the genre, Heinlein’s allegedly glorifying conflict and Haldeman’s highlighting the sacrifice of the ordinary soldier and their alienation from the people they are supposedly fighting for in an ultimately pointless war.

Baen books publish a lot of contemporary military science fiction, mostly of the more militaristic, right-leaning type. I’ve read a few of them in the last couple of months, from the library or a big bag of battered editions I was given. Carrying on the trend of getting them for free, I’ve just downloaded a few novels from their free library. They’re all good, no-nonsense reads that aim primarily to provide entertainment without breaking much new ground. The occasional lecture on the greater merits of military service, duty and sacrifice tend to slide past without offending or disrupting the flow of the tale.

What I’m thinking of now is writing a few short pieces in the genre, subverting it a bit with my defeatist liberal outlook. The horror, futility and blowback of a poorly planned war entered into for the wrong reasons should provide a good backdrop.

F-35

This entry was posted in Die Hard F-35 Movie Review on by

Because we were arguing about the F-35’s abilities after watching Die Hard 4.0 last night.

Wikipedia on the F-35. (It even notes the plane’s part in the film.)


F-35 vertical taking off and hovering.

The film’s great fun, not letting up much and only presenting a few bits that looked wrong (surely when your truck’s leaning so hard the left hand side’s in the air you’d steer right, into the lean, not left, much like steering into a skid). It’ll probably be trounced by Transformers as brainless action movie of the summer, but recommended as two hours of simple fun.

If you want to see what went before, you can get the Die Hard trilogy at Amazon. 4.0 is easily as good as Die Hard 3, and definitely better than 2, but the original, with its inventive use of the office tower location, is still the best.