James

Well that's my point, although perhaps I expressed it poorly: Given that we can represent a good approximate of 3D scenes in flat media, would a representation of a 4D scene on some sort of 3D medium be a profoundly better and less confusing visualization than something like this. Perhaps not. Interestingly, ThunderPeel's mention of the time-as-fourth-dimension theory isn't entirely irrelevant: it's through the addition of time that the animation I linked to is able to represent a hypercube. The way I look at it is this: It starts with a 2D square, which is extended the traditional way to make an image of a cube. Extending this again on a flat surface would be confusing, so to give the illusion of extending it in 3D, the virtual shape is rotated, simulating a moving viewing point, allowing for simulated extension into 3D space. Perhaps. I'm probably completely missing the point, though. MOVIES AND TV.

I sometimes wonder whether 4D space could be projected onto 3D media as well as 3D space can be projected onto 2D media. I guess it's not really the same thing, but I would still love to see it.

I know what you mean, KJ. JavaScript in particular has become quite alien to me. I feel like I knew pretty much what was going on and how to do most of the things I'd want to do, then I turned my back for a couple of years and now absolutely everything involves some sort of bizarre arcane object hierarchy or something. I'm sure the reasoning is at least half-decent, but it makes me wary to even bother using it at all. On the other hand, I've managed to work a bit of PHP into my job, which I'm quite pleased about. I'm sure everything I do would be painfully simple for a proper programmer/web developer/whatever, but I'm quite proud that I can even work out what the hell is going on (to some degree) with some of this labyrinthine OO stuff. The company I worked for recently moved its online store to Magento, which I can BEND TO MY WILL after hours of hitting my head against a wall and swearing.

It's kind of crazy to me but also vaguely heartening that in this day and age anyone is still learning their HTML before their BBCode. Jolly good show, sort of.

Sorry, I had to work late, and the trip into London is a bit of a pain on a week night (more specifically, the trip back when I'm tired and have work in the morning is unpleasant). Glad to hear you guys had fun, though. If they show Alien sometime perhaps I'll make it.

Me! I'm watching it. It's certainly pretty good, but I must confess I'm also generally interested in seeing Scandinavian stuff because my mum is Swedish, and I've been recently feeling rather guilty for how little I really know about that whole portion of my genetic background. Obviously Sweden and Denmark are not the same, but hey, it's nearby. Also, it's nice to see international film and TV in general. Anyway, there's something I find kind of funny: the Danes all sound kind of German to me if I don't concentrate too hard on the sound of what they're saying, but Lund's Swedish boyfriend, who is presumably speaking Danish, sounds to my idiot ears like he's speaking Swedish. THE POWER OF ACCENTS (particularly when the relevant languages exist on a continuum like the Scandinavian ones do). So that's my dumb observation. I offer no insight on the programme itself.

For me it's the fact that I moved. I'm sharing a flat with a friend, and I feel a bit uncomfortable hogging the TV for multiplayer. I could potentially play some PC multiplayer, but I feel a bit antisocial if I lock myself away in my room. Then again, I did spend most of the weekend finishing Arkham Asylum on my PC, so I suppose I don't mind too much. I also got thoroughly burnt-out on L4D. I think at some point I started to become a total downer whenever anyone convinced me to play. Sorry about that! Anyway, I'll try to remember to keep an eye on this forum for stuff I'm interested in again. Most of you guys are at least a little bit cool.

I can't say Mogwai's latest is my favourite, but it has its moments, and it certainly closes well: Lm8JNh2Da6A (It takes four minutes to properly kick in.) This was my favourite bit of music from Battlestar Galactica: tII1DSHPU80

I can't describe how excited I was to see a photo of Big Dogs in one of the "The Truth" segments in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Actually, I can, thus: I was quite excited.

Really?

Then we're agreed: it might work, but not well.

My point was that There Will be Blood wasn't a great example for the general principle because it's such an outlier. Basically I wanted to explain why I didn't mention that particular film, because apparently at the time I decided it was important for everyone to know. I suspect you may be right, although I think taking an active role in a story can allow for interesting moments unique to gaming. It's not so good for plot points, but I think you can achieve a different sense of discovery in something you've actively participated in than a more passive medium. That's what I loved so much about Portal (other than the actual gameplay, that is)* — the content of the story is nothing too incredible, but the sense of breaking free from the test chamber environment was exciting in a way I don't think it would have been had I been watching a film. That's not to say that films can't do something similar, of course, but I do think games have something of their own to offer in that regard. But I'm not sure to what extent that can be extended or expanded or fleshed-out or whatever. I feel that the ending of Red Dead Redemption also benefited from its interactive nature. I think there are interesting things to be done, but I'm not sure games will ever end up serving an equivalent role to novels or films. * Which, I suppose, illustrates that the disjunct between gameplay and narrative is ever-present.

I can see there being a problem with the time it takes for each eye to open and close. Wouldn't it be very flickery?

Because they already showed that on the 3rd of January, I think. I'm pretty sure it's the same stuff, but tidied up a bit. Unless I'm misremembering how rough it was in Quadrilogy.

I remember little about it other than I really liked it and was frustrated when I couldn't find more. And the voice-overs were pleasingly understated, if I remember correctly.

Hey, that guy looks a bit like Rex the Runt.

True, but I think it's important to emphasise that games haven't even reached the comparatively "modest" height of your more average films. Yes.

Yeah, the alternative/director's/whatever cut of Alien 3 is a whole lot better than the theatrical release. They had it in the Quadrilogy box set, too, but from what I remember a lot of the extra scenes were noticeably less well-produced, with bad sound and so on. That might have been my imagination. Anyway, in the Anthology version it's basically seamless.

I was surprised at how underwhelming the 3D in Tron was. You'd think if any film had room for crazy over-the-top 3D nonsense it'd be that, what with all the hyper-stylized visuals, but other than what I thought was a pretty cool 3D opening shot (a sort of curving pan (sorry, don't know the proper terminology) looking through a suburban front window) and an awful make-you-jump-by-flinging-something-right-at-the-camera thing, it was pretty easy to forget it was even there (as is often the case).

TOTALLY.

The only comic I check with any frequency is Cyanide and Happiness. I also enjoy Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Dinosaur Comics, and XKCD when it's not being annoying and awful. I've also been entertained by a few other things, but I forget what they are. Perry Bible Fellowship was great, and White Ninja seemed pretty good. The start of Problem Sleuth at MS Paint Adventures was wonderful, although it lost its way a bit as it went on, I felt. I'm not really into ongoing story stuff that much, although I did try to get into Achewood, which seemed good, but I couldn't handle the huge archive. Oh, and I might have had the most posts at the Spamusement forums for quite some time.

I considered mentioning There Will be Blood, but it occurred to me that the reason it blew me away IGN.com so much was because it was such an anomaly – there hasn't really been anything quite like it in recent years, if at all. It's amazing, but it's not really indicative of current films on the whole. STILL, other films are good too. Sometimes. I think I remember fretting at you over the possibility that I'd ruined my computer with an attempted BIOS upgrade. It seemed all right after that, but then it did break again a few months later, so maybe everything wasn't fine.

My flatmate and I might possibly attend depending on factors. We actually both quite like Alien 3, too. I might have difficulty getting into London that early, though. No Alien, though? That's my favourite. Oh, wait, looks like I missed it (3rd January). Bugger.

Hey, I'm just curious about the nature of thrills.

Does thrill permeate specific areas of flesh and muscle? And does it start from the outside, such that it can work its way from the skin to the bone? My left arm is thrilled!