Oh Internet

If I still wore a wristwatch, and this one was actually put into production and it didn’t cost what designer watches usually cost, I would absolutely buy it.

Oh, how many ways could this enterprise go wrong? Red Eagle Entertainment, which owns the right’s to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels, are forming a development studio to create a series of games tied into the series of films that they are co-producing with Universal Pictures.

The films are the first warning signal. The books are legendarily bloated and slow moving. Robert Jordan died last year after publishing the 11th book, with no end to the story arc in sight. Brandon Sanderson has been hired on to write the 12th book and wrap everything up, which is a creatively thankless task (I’m sure that it will be monetarily fruitful, though.)

I’m more or less expecting that each film will consist of 5 hours where nothing whatsoever happens, wrapped up with 10 minutes of insanity where the entire fabric of the universe is all but destroyed. Those last 10 minutes will be enough for lots of people to give the next film a chance.

Then, there are the games. A brand new studio? Making film tie ins? Presumably to tie in with the film release dates? Being released on: “the consoles, personal computers, handhelds and wireless devices”? Those people are doomed. The workers who come out of the other end of that project will be broken, empty husks. They’ll emerge dislocated from society, covered in their own filth and burbling incoherently about “The Dark One”, “Shai’tan” and “a curious aura of mysogeny”.

One of the producers said that “he is aware of the risks and he believes that most games based on movies fail because they are made in too short a time and there isn’t enough cooperation with the movie studio.” That’s not true. Games based on movies fail because they are entirely different forms of media, and the criteria for a successful game is different than for a successful movie. Most film-based games fail because they’re unable to move far enough away from the source material.

Third strike? This new games company is also planning a Massively Multiplayer game, based on the Wheel of Time universe. All of the above wasn’t enough, so now they want to take on World of Warcraft too? Good luck, chaps.

Twist 1: Radar Games, a recently-formed startup, also sound like they’re planning on making games based on the same properties. Huh?

And Furthermore: There’s already been a game loosely based on the Wheel of Time, by Legend Entertainment in 1999. It was, surprisingly, not entirely terrible. Then again, it didn’t actually have much to do with the books at all.

… probably not. Terminator 4 is almost guaranteed to be awful, but at least it’ll look good, if this video from io9 is anything to go by. For reference, the production designer, Martin Laing, did City of Ember, which was also very pretty.

(I would embed the video, but I can’t for the life of me find out how to. Stupid Gawker network blogs…)

I am becoming dangerously obsessed with the My Day, Yesterday video pool on Flickr. Yes, I know it’s horribly voyeuristic, but there’s something completely hypnotic about seeing a day compressed into 90 seconds.

Fable II launch trailer (with a direct streaming version)

and!

A movie theatre/tv slot thingy (plus streaming version)

Much more to come about this, later.

Collecting the many and varied responses to the credit crunch:

Facebook advertisers are going for the “Higher interest rates” approach (40%. Holy shit!)

Selfridges try some kind of complicated psychological reversal technique:

Protesters on Wall Street try to recreate the heady days of the Great Depression:

I’ve just spent about an hour reading This Old House’s Home Inspection Nightmares page. It was very funny at the time, but now I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight:

Breaking radio silence to make sure that you’ve all bought Amanda Palmer’s new solo CD.

You have, yes?

Good, good.

I like the Photoshop Disasters blog almost as much as I dislike Vista:

See also: You Suck at Photoshop

I was already annoyed about missing the Hide and Seek festival (because I was too busy, uh, making a game…) and reading this write up by Jane McGonigal isn’t really helping. It sounds like it was great fun!

Nick Hornby on why eBook readers don’t (and won’t) sell.

Be careful not to read too far into the comments page, though. It’s full of that special breed of Internet solipsist who hasn’t figured out that their borderline obsessiveness isn’t exactly representative.

But – and this is the most depressing reason – the truth is that people don’t like reading books much anyway: a 2004 survey of two thousand adults found that thirty-four per cent didn’t read books at all. The music industry’s problems are many and profound, but you never see advertisements asking us to listen to more music; there are no pressure groups or government quangos attempting to ensure that we make room in our day for a little Leona Lewis. The problem is getting people to pay for music, not getting people to consume it. Can you see every teenager in Britain harassing their parents for a Kindle? Me neither.

BBC News - 04/07/2008

Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”

Control room: “Right.”

Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”

Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”

Caller: “It’s in the air.”

Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”

Caller: “OK.”

The mystery was soon solved, as the exchange between control and an officer at the scene, makes clear.

Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”

Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”

Dubai is planning to build an 80-storey, wind-turbine-powered, Rubik’s cube-style spinning skyscraper, with a 70-storey version planned for Moscow.

(Make sure to watch the concept video too, it looks well swanky.)

According to the sign below, how many different things are you going to hell for? For reference, a score of less than 10 could be construed as indicating a distinct lack of ambition…

(Furthermore, most of the list is standard bible-basher boilerplate, but the inclusion of “sports fans” seems like it has an interesting back-story.)

Via: here.

Compare and contrast:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Hip Replacement: Deeply stupid, and not the good kind of stupid that the other Indy films were.

Iron Man: Deeply stupid, but completely magnificent. (Also has Suicidal Tendencies on the soundtrack, which is always a good thing.)