Unboxing the Hooch

The wine I ordered from the New Clairvaux Vineyard arrived today, with the Ovila Belgian-Style Golden from Sierra Nevada. The wine rack is all full again, and I'll have to start working on making it empty again too. Heh.

Very cool pictures of crashed planes where all aboard survived.

All the wrecks are still in place today, and a German photographer captured them in a new photo book.

At first glance, "Happy End" may not seem like the most natural title for pictures of wrecked planes in forbidding landscapes, but German photographer Dietmar Eckell has a very positive outlook on what these photos represent. As described by Eckell, these pictures document 'miracles' in aviation history: forced landings where everyone on board survived and was rescued from the remote locations.

Swamp Ghost © Dietmar Eckell

Blog Programming Note: No Giro Jot del Giorno this year.

The powers that be have decided that taking people's money through legal live streaming in the United States is just not good enough. Last year, Universal Sports allowed sports fans to purchase streaming events a la carte, but then Comcast made the purchase of NBC complete, Versus became NBCSports, Universal Sports became some weird orphan cable channel, and all sorts of contracts and previous agreements were changed going forward, so that I couldn't even watch the Vuelta a Espana.

Nowadays, one cannot even watch video programs on Universal Sports unless you are a satellite subscriber, which is odd, because you could just watch their programs on your TV, but whatever. And also, beIN Sport, known for soccer coverage, will be broadcasting the Giro this year, and that channel is only available on Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, and Verizon FiOS. If something becomes too much a hassle to watch, then I'm just not going to watch it.

Unfortunately, without watching several hours of furious (and boring) pedaling, I won't know what little jot of info will strike me as interesting that also won't be emphasized in the cycling press. Who else would put a screencap of a wookie on a blog post? So, this year, I'm just going to be a fan, read text updates like the old days of 2003. Oh, I think they call that the Twitters these days. Cycling media sure has changed in 10 years, huh?

Diablo 3 Director was oblivious to market forces and human nature.

Lesson learned. Diablo 3 Director Jay Wilson: Auction Houses 'really hurt' game

Wilson said that before Blizzard launched the game, the company had a few assumptions about how the Auction Houses would work: He thought they would help reduce fraud, that they'd provide a wanted service to players, that only a small percentage of players would use it and that the price of items would limit how many were listed and sold.

But he said that once the game went live, Blizzard realized it was completely wrong about those last two points.

As someone who is still a very regular player of this game, I can attest to having to be as good at the actual game as I am at the "other game" known as Auction House. You have to be aware of market trends, player habits, and timing item sales before new patches go live. Sounds like options trading, doesn't it?

This is why I was very happy about the latest patch which introduced new crafting recipes and materials that allow for uber gear, but not being allowed to sell those items in the Auction House. Literally within hours of the new patch's release, several items' prices crashed, others skyrocketed, and the commodities market (crafting materials and gems for socketing) was reset into a whole new environment. I loved it: watching futures, options, and commodities trading affect prices in real time.

I'm not surprised that this idea of limiting exceptional crafted items to personal use occurred after Jay Wilson stepped down. Also, there are now wholly new markets in lower player level gear in the Auction House for veteran players trying out new classes. This is closer to what Wilson was hoping for, instead of what he got in the first few months of Diablo 3's release.

Oh, and yes, I am still an uber, uber video game playing geek, if you needed to be reminded.

Translation: No buyers. - Anschutz says sports company no longer for sale

This also means there probably won't be a new NFL stadium in downtown L.A. for many years.

Last week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a television interview that Anschutz had to find a buyer for AEG first before moving forward with what he termed as "uphill climb" involving the stadium effort.

Good news (for me). Clone Wars cancelled!

Disney is cleaning house. They're probably finding a way to change it up and broadcast on their own channels.

I really don't care since I stopped watching this show 2 years ago after they botched the political system of Mandalore (kind of important, since the clones think of themselves as Mandalorians), rewrote the whole concept of the Dathomiri Night Sisters (extremely important, since Dathomir is the planet Han Solo won in Sabacc tournament to give to Princess Leia as an engagement present and where rancors are from), and flat out ignored the reasons for civil war between the Mon Calamari and Quarrens (also important for Admiral Akbar's back story). Three strikes and I was done with the show.

Risk-averse venture from publicly traded media conglomerate...

Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold will be reuniting as Axel Foley and Billy Rosewood in the pilot for the possible CBS series "Beverly Hills Cop."

I have a bad feeling about this. "This" being the premise behind the next Star Wars trilogy.

In a story about how hard it was for George Lucas to give up creative control of the Lucasfilm properties, we get this detail:

At first Lucas wouldn't even turn over his rough sketches of the next three Star Wars films. When Disney executives asked to see them, he assured them they would be great and said they should just trust him. "Ultimately you have to say, ‘Look, I know what I'm doing. Buying my stories is part of what the deal is.' I've worked at this for 40 years, and I've been pretty successful," Lucas says. "I mean, I could have said, ‘Fine, well, I'll just sell the company to somebody else.'

What did we learn? George Lucas already had ideas on what the next trilogy will be about, and it concerns the main 3 characters from the first trilogy, Luke, Leia, and Han, since Lucas wanted to make sure actors from the original movies had some kind of place in the new movies.

Next, we already know from the writing for The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network that Lucas cares not at all for the contributions of the authors in the expanded Star Wars universe of books, graphic novels, comic books, and video games.

Finally, we know how horrible the writing and general direction of the Star Wars prequels were, so, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, that Lucas won't be involved at all in those details might be my only hope that fans get a fair adaptation of the later events in the Star Wars universe. But since the general treatment and artistic themes would exist in sketches from Lucas himself, and it would be a grave insult from the current production staff not to incorporate them somehow, I still have a bad feeling this.

Update: I'm not the only with a bad feeling about the next trilogy, but RJ is definitely better than I am at gaming out the worst case scenarios.

Is the video game industry following the movie industry in creative decline?

Provocative question, but the last few years for movie releases have been sequels, more sequels, remakes, and adapted screenplays, with more expensive ticket prices masking the actual decline in number of tickets sold. Does this not sound like the video game industry?

Sure, I like being reintroduced to rich, deep worlds like the Elder Scrolls or Fallout, refighting characters from old games with better graphics, or even seeing beloved games ported to new platforms, but what about new stuff?

I think there is a real interest in brand new properties without the huge marketing budgets necessary for mature titles from publishing houses who are part of publicly traded media conglomerates, otherwise the coverage of Kickstarter funding for Indie games would not be so breathless or hopeful.

If the established titles start costing so much, and taking so long to come to market, and then have mediocre sales, how long before we'll be waiting 15 years for those games to be stuck in an emulator pack like all the Sega Dreamcast games?