Mary Timony’s latest project is a collaboration with Brendan Canty (Fugazi). If this goes as well as the work he did with Lois Maffeo on The Union Themes, then we can finally herald the return of Mary Timony. Now all we need is for Ash Bowie to return from the dead and record something, and then we can work on that Helium reunion. I would also like a pony.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no. Freespace 2 is still one of the finest games I’ve ever played; I can only imagine what depths the franchise would sink to if this were ever allowed to happen, considering Gamespot’s review of Battlecruiser 3000AD essentially considered it as near to a complete failure as anything ever produced by a game studio. Give it back to Volition; give it to the people at Outrage; give it to Relic Entertainment or Rockstar Games or any of ten trillion other developers first. If this franchise goes to Derek Smart, you can expect nearly all of the things that made Freespace a cut above—the attention to detail where the storyline was concerned, the gigantic capship battles, the customizability of the interface, the care with which nearly every gameplay element was designed—will go out the window, following the insults he’s already hurled at the still-dedicated fan community and the many gamers who still hold Freespace in such high regard.And to think, the worst anyone thought would happen to the Freespace and Descent franchises was that they would lie dormant and forgotten thanks to the ineptitude of Interplay.Update: The day after, Smart posted what appears to be his final word on the subject. Thankfully, this is a change from his previous tone of wanting to create the interiors of ships and creating ground combat missions, which is indeed far more like Battlecruiser than Freespace. So why is this still a bad idea?His treatment of the modding community is atrocious. Yes, some of them might be immature 15-year-olds. Hell, some of them might be immature 27-year-olds. But there’s a difference between pointing out whatever abuse they’ve given you and essentially cutting them completely out of the loop. Threatening to sue them for the work they’ve done in good faith on an open-source project the original developers released is not kosher. And while ignoring all input from the modding community is his perogative, I don’t think anyone thinks this would actually be a good idea. Such a move goes beyond simply trying to maintain your own vision; it’s essentially ignoring a fair amount of constructive criticism about the product, and alienates your only guaranteed base of support in the process. Smart will basically be making this game for himself, and himself only, and part of me thinks he wants it that way; otherwise, why bother picking up what he repeatedly terms “a failed franchise?”Also, there’s still no guarantee Smart won’t try to Battlecruiser-ize the game, and it’s clear he doesn’t have the resources to put together a game with the scale of Freespace 2. This may seem counter-intuitive to you—after all, this is the guy who made a game called Universal Combat and really meant it—but it’s true if you think about the products he’s released. Battlecruiser was supposed to be, first and foremost, a spaceship simulator, with everything that entails. Including the complete lack of a storyline. Most games are narrative-based; even the slimmest of plots are neccessary to keep someone playing a game like Quake 2. In order to create a game without a set storyline, you have to give the player the tools to carve their own story out of the world you’ve given them. This means a large cast of interesting characters, detailed and intricate worlds, and plenty of possible human-computer interactions of all kinds. As you can imagine, this is much harder to do properly than a linear plot is, which is why most developers don’t even go near the stuff.Can Derek Smart do it? Previous attempts say no. IGN’s critique of Universal Combat likened the game to a “skyscraper built and maintained by a handful of people.” According to reviewer Tom McNamara, ” ‘content’ is not successfully determined by sheer size and interface depth, but by an environment that feels alive and, in the open-ended design, doing its own thing with its own routines.” Consider also that even if Smart decides he wants to continue the tradition of (occasionally) strong narratives in the Freespace universe, he’ll have to not only change the way he does things, but also give up some creative control to writers and artists, unless he wants to write the story himself. To that I can only wish him good luck, and say that the area where you have the least experience is precisely where you most want to avoid failure, because in the end Freespace is just as much about the mythology of the Sol node’s collapse, the struggling GTVA alliance and the mystery of the Shivan threat as it is about cool weapons effects and giant ships.

Spider-Man 2 has been getting amazingly good reviews from all corners. I’m guessing it’s because this is the summer blockbuster season, when anything remotely resembling a script immediately wins effusive praise from the most pretentious of critics simply because it means two less hours of gouging one’s own eyes out with a claw hammer. I can definitely understand why so many are so quick to praise the sequel, but that doesn’t mean the movie is without flaws.

[This is spoiler country. You've been warned.]

Ultimately, Spider-Man 2 is a valuable contribution to the franchise, and certainly a cut above the standard fare where summer blockbusters and sequels are concerned. And it continues the tradition of deftly avoiding one of the problems inherent in superhero films: how are we supposed to relate to the person behind the mask when they’re essentially infallible? Unlike so many other movies that hamfistedly attempt to bolt on some major psychological issues or an Achilles heel to the superhero template, Spider-Man 2 shows us a superhero who can just barely afford the strain it takes on his normal life (which is another refreshing change—Peter Parker’s life is still an essential part of him, unlike the throwaway “I’m a billionaire” alter-ego of Batman). Thus everything about the first half seems to ring true in theory, and the central conflict of which life Parker should choose to lead is a compelling one.

If only they hadn’t gone all anvilicious on our asses.The movie could use a fair bit of editing. One of the assets of the Spider-Man movie franchise to date has been that, compared to most other films of its ilk, Spider-Man managed a bit of subtlety at times. The scene between Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane and Tobey Maguire’s Parker in their neighbouring backyards was a touching one because, taken out of the movie’s context, it was essentially one of those endless-night conversations about how uncertain the future seemed, and what chance did you have anyways? Every troubled high schooler (which is to say nearly all high schoolers, period) can relate to something like that. Touches like that went a long way towards making Peter Parker seem human, and all without the heavy-handedness of a devastating weakness to Kryptonite.

That’s mostly out the window here. Aunt May gives Parker a grandiose speech on why the world needs heroes like Spider-Man, too perfect and on the nose as a response to Peter Parker’s inner turmoil. Dialogue excesses like that abound. Near the end of Parker’s downward spiral, he stares out the windows of his tiny apartment. In another movie, the look of regret on his face would be enough; instead we get, “Why can’t I ever get what I want?” Peter calls Mary Jane to apologize for missing her play, but gets disconnected halfway through; he them tells the dead line how much he wants to express his love, and that he’s Spider-Man, and blah blah blah. This should all be plainly obvious to the viewer by now.

Even sight gags and hints to the previous movie are leaden. The reference to Maguire’s back pain during the film is funny, but the joke goes on too long as we see the new Spider-Man struggle to his feet and walk away from the camera for a good thirty seconds at least. And then there’s Mary Jane’s revelation, and the kiss she shares with her fiancee—upside down, of course. Maybe if there was a was to avoid telegraphing it somehow, it would’ve been a nice wink to the audience.

Other minor issues abounded. Doc Ock was a bit of a waste as a supervillain; his motivation is somewhat unclear (just because arms have AI doesn’t mean they have dreams and goals) and much of his scant time on film is spent rebuilding his project. The whole fusion reaction story is absolutely horrendous, from the apparent requirement of four gigantic robotic arms to manually control reaction containment (?!) to the sudden ability for a fusion reaction to exert an extremely powerful magnetic (or gravitational?) field (??!?) to the final solution for destroying it. Assuming you really are creating a miniature star, you can no more drown a self-sustaining fusion reaction than you could drown the sun. Kirsten Dunst was apparently told to look stoned throughout the movie, and Mary Jane isn’t the strong, independent character you could see glimpses of in the first Spider-Man movie, when she declared her determination to leave her parents and her home behind.

But for all that, I still liked parts of the movie, not necessarily for what it offered, but because of the potential the story had. Sam Raimi and company had the opportunity to knock one out of the park, what with the stellar cast and the great story. Instead, they’ll have to settle for a ground-rule double.

Huh. Well, let’s see what my statistics are, then.Emails received in the past week: ~10,000
Legitimate personal emails: 10
Legitimate mailing list emails: 2
Spam / virus percentage: (10,000-12) / 10,000 = 99.88%These figures are skewed because I use a catch-all for my domain; I don’t, for example, actually have an email account for jimmy@mydomain, bob@mydomain, or any of a thousand other common first names. But because I’m a sucker who thought a catch-all would be a convenient way to easily sort and block spam (give people a fake email with my domain when I sign up for a service, receive their emails anyways, if I get spam I know where it came from), I get the thousands of virus-triggered emails sent to those addresses anyways.How skewed, you ask? The number of total emails I’ve received at real POP3 accounts in the past week is closer to twenty. That means 9,980 emails have blindly hit my domain.So, again: FUCK YOU INTERNET VIRUSES.

With a Bluetooth-enabled phone and an unlimited calling plan, it might actually be possible to not only drop the landline (except for DSL, natch—any comments on Shaw Cable in Vancouver?) but have a better working system for answering calls.If you’re on a Mac, it’s child’s play: OS X Panther has native Bluetooth support. Apparently, all you have to do is open up the Address Book, pair the phone to the computer, and that’s it—call and SMS notification is ready to go. I don’t know if you can actually answer calls using the Mac (you can certainly tell the phone to pick up, but whether you can use a microphone and speakers attached to the computer to conduct your call, I don’t know) but that’s plenty nifty.If you’re on Windows, well. Seeing as how not even XP has native Bluetooth support before SP1, things get much hairier. Assuming you’ve got a Bluetooth adapter set up, you can grab floAt’s Mobile Agent, an open-source package that adds many of the Bluetooth features Mac users already enjoy. It’s still relatively new if the version number is any indication, but surprisingly feature-packed and mature. It’s a great interface to the phone, and call notification works perfectly.The only issues I’m having thus far have to do with getting the speakers (and microphone, presumably, whenever I get one) to play nice with the phone. Theoretically FMA should be able to use the computer as a wireless headset, but in practice, FMA will switch to headset mode for a split second before realizing the serial port connection is gone, killing the headset connection, and reconnecting the serial port. The forums state FMA should be smart enough to reconnect the serial port only when the call is over. Perhaps it’s time to visit the troubleshooting forums…It’ll be great, though, to come home, slip the phone into the charger, and use my computer as a phone. The headset thing isn’t even a deal-breaker, but it would be nice.Update: Or not. After rebooting the computer, FMA crashes out upon startup with not one but four exception errors. Fuck.

“If you call Pizza Hut in India (which is, btw, insanely expensive), they ask for your phone number and say, “Hello, Mr. Jeb” and ask you if you want your usual delivered to your usual address and billed your usual way. You can order a pizza in five seconds. It rules.Ah, the wonders of globalization. One day, I’ll have to try this.

A Guide To Vancouver Neighbourhoods
According To Relatives And Friends Thereof

• Mount Pleasant. Blacklisted. “Not exactly what you’d call desirable.”
• Little Italy / Commercial Drive. Blacklisted. See above.
• West End. Blacklisted. “You’ll be tempted to walk to school, and that’s not safe.”
• East End (in other words, any street labeled East). Blacklisted. Not safe; controlled by gangs. Yes, the entire east side.

A Guide To Vancouver Neighbourhoods
According To Friends, The Greater Vancouver Book, City Guides And The Internet

• Mount Pleasant. Had issues with prostitutes; community push in early 90s to kick them out; in the midst of a revitilization that has already swept through Kitsilano, False Creek, etc. Lots of artists.
• Little Italy / Commercial Drive. Utne Reader called it one of the hippest communities in North America. The Georgia Strait declared it #1 community in Vancouver. Very diverse neighbourhood of ethnic businesses and restaurants, counterculture, etc. Lots of artists.
• West End. Gay-friendly community; upscale, stylish, close to downtown. Called an “urban village” several times in different sources; perhaps a little expensive. Lots of artists.
• East End. Pockets of prostitutes here and there. Generally considered blue-collar; not much consensus, though, since the moniker “East End” does describe half the city. One writer decries residents’ lack of community spirit: “In a recent survey many Vancouverites could only identify their own ‘neighbourhood’ as the East End—an area containing half of the whole city!”

Conclusions?
One of three: a) my relatives are horrendously paranoid, b) the liberal media and the internet are not to be trusted, or c) “artist” is a codeword for “criminal.”