Last post of the year

Greetings and Happy New Year!

Alright, so I had this plan for today's post, but I had trouble sleeping last night and I did not get out of bed when I was planning to, so being slightly pressed for time (and with a brain that feels like sticky pudding) I present you with a short but funny video.

In hindsight and such, it might be a good thing to have a really short thing for you today. Many are busy on this, the last day of the year.

Please join me next year for more Eccentric Spheres. Take it easy, don't blow off any fingers tonight, and rememeber booze and explosives don't mix.

Until next time (and year), have a great week!

Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

It's not easy being Queen

Lizzie. Her Maj. Or, Queen Elizabeth (Alexandra Mary) II is an interesting person. This is not a biography of her life, you can look that up on your own if you like.

This is a few fascinating facts and happenings that involve HM and people around her.

Did you know HM is the only person in Great Britain who can legally drive without a drivers license? It's true, she could if she wanted too, issue one to herself, but chooses not to. Despite that, she is in fact a keen driver. She learned to drive during WWII when she was a second subaltern in the Woman’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, working as a truck driver.

In 1998, she hosted Saudi Prince Abdullah at her estate, Balmoral in Scotland. One day she asked if the prince would like a tour of the estate and to his shock she jumped behind the wheel of her Land Rover. She then proceeded to drive fast across bumpy terrain while pointing out features. Eventually, the shell-shocked prince had to ask (through his interpreter) her to please stop, as the ride had terrified him. It could have been the speed and terrain, or it could have been a female driver. After all it was only in June this year that Saudi women were allowed to drive.

Back in the day, HM and Mrs. Thatcher disagreed on many things. Thatchers tendency to arrive early irritated the Queen a great deal and she was overheard on many an occasion referring to the Prime Minister as 'that woman'.

One time, Thatcher suggested that they could both coordinate their outfits for an occasion. Buckingham Palace responded: “The Queen does not notice what other people are wearing.” Ouch.

Eventually, HM decided to attend Mrs. Thatchers funeral, even though it was not her duty to do so.

When Diana died in 1997, the people were bereaved. Diana was very popular and well loved by the nation. This grief turned to anger when the flag on Buckingham Palace wasn't lowered to half mast. Despite the outrage, this was correct. The Queen's flag, the Royal Standard is never flown at half mast, as it represents the monarchy. As Terry Pratchett once wrote: “Monarchy is the only thing that is faster than light. The instant one monarch dies, the first in line of succession is automatically the new monarch. Light is slow in comparison.”

The other flag on Buckingham Palace is the Union Jack, but that is only lowered if the deceased is an HRH. Diana lost her HRH status when she and Charles were divorced.

Out of respect for the feelings of her people, HM did order the Union Jack lowered on Diana's funeral until midnight.

In 1979 HM's cousin, Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb. Elizabeth was very close to her cousin so it must have been awkward for former IRA leader Martin McGuinness to meet the Queen in 2012. You see, at this point Martin had been appointed deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. In 2016 they met again, and he asked her how she was. Her reply, “Well, I'm still alive.”

Lizzie likes them sick burns...

That's that. I wish you all a Merry X-mas, a Happy Holiday etc. Have a wonderful week and join me again on the very last day of 2018.

It's getting cold.

Hello and welcome to Eccentric Spheres.

Today is a short entry as X-mas is around the corner and I have a lot to do. So I give you
50 Insane Cold War Facts That Will Shock You. Whether on not you are shocked, I leave up to you.

As a side note, both Christmas Eve and New Years Eve fall on Mondays this year, but fear not, Eccentric Spheres will update anyway. So, enjoy 50 weird facts about the Cold War and I'll see you on X-mas eve.

Until then, have a great week!

The bigger they are...

The last few weeks have been an interesting time in the AAA game industry. Interesting as in the ancient Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.”

EA releases Battlefield V, and most gamers barely notice. It's lousy sales numbers compounded by their former Executive Vice President in charge of Worldwide Studios, Patrick Söderlund, who stated “If you don't like it, don't buy it”. Then he took his multimillion dollar bonus and quit. Well, it seems that's what gamers did. They didn't buy it. EA's stock price has plummeted by almost 50% this year...

Blizzard, now Blizzard-Activision, dropped the ball twice in a row. First during their own conference, BlizzCon, where they announced a Diablo mobile game after leading fans to believe they had a proper game in the works. The devs on stage then double down and sarcastically asked the crowd: “Don't you all have phones?” Blizzard was booed at their own con...

Then, the announcement breaks that Diablo 3 is being released on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's new console / hand held combo device. To celebrate, Blizzard announces a competition where you can win a Switch with Diablo 3. Nice prize, the Switch is fairly expensive. To enter all you had to do was take a picture and upload it, but the picture had to be of you playing Diablo 3 on the Switch... So to win the prize, you already had to own the prize.

Now on to Bethesda, dear Bethesda. Their last couple of months have not been good. First Fallout 76 launches to less than positive reviews, then a furor erupts when Bethesda refuses to give refunds on digital versions of the game. But, there are no physical copies. Even if you went and bought it from a physical store it was a case with a download code in it. So people start talking civil suit, as in several places (like the EU) it's illegal to withhold a refund within reasonable terms.

Then the bag controversy pops up. The Collectors Edition (or power armor edition) of Fallout 76 was advertised to come with, amongst other things, a sturdy canvas bag. People got a cheap thin nylon bag instead. When they complained to customer service they got answers like, “Sorry, the canvas bags were too expensive to make,” and “We're not planning to do anything about it”. To no ones surprise people were furious. To make matters worse, the Collectors Edition was left on the Bethesda store unchanged for days after the story broke. Now, if it had truly been impossible to make the canvas bags, they should have changed the ad, but it remained.

Of course this is blatant false advertising, which is extremely illegal. Some lawyer at Bethesda must have gotten through to the decision makers because they announced that everyone who bought the collectors edition will get a canvas bag as soon as they are produced. All they had to do was contact customer service with their details so that Bethesda can send them the new bags. Simple, right?

Well, no, because Bethesda's CS pages apparently flipped completely and allowed a small number of random people access to the personal information of everyone who responded. Eight pages of real names, addresses, screen names, type of credit cards (but not complete CC numbers), etc. In internet parlance Bethesda doxxed a lot of their already angry customers. To make it even worse, these people could affect the tickets, as if they worked at Bethesda. The problem is fixed now, but there's a saying about barn doors and bolting horses.

All this leaves me wondering what is going on in the AAA game space? How can companies like this screw up so monumentally? What's next?

That's me for this week, join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres and until then, have a calm and successful week!

It

I got around to watching It (2017), and I liked it.

First off, Stephen King's novel was published in 1986 and the TV mini series was produced in 1990, so I consider the story pretty well spoiled. That said, I'm still going to try to avoid any major spoilers, I'm nice like that.

So we have the small town of Derry, a nowhere kind of town set in Maine, because this is a King story. Every 27 years, something awful happens and lots of people die. It has now been 27 years since last time, and kids are disappearing. A small band of kids, dubbed the Losers Club decide to do something about it, and they do. End off first movie. The next film is out next year so we're only looking at the kids part of the story.

Overall, this movie is incredibly well done. All the usual things I ramble about applies, set pieces, sound etc. Well done everyone. The film gets a black mark against it due to a couple of scenes, including the climactic finale, being way too dark. Stop trying to make an almost black screen exciting. You know what is exciting? Seeing all the exciting things happening in the film, okay?

Now, an important point is that the book (and the TV series) are set in the 50's and in the 80's. This version starts in the 80's and then moves on to now. Placing a movie in a time period that the audience can actually remember is always risky, as you can't mimic an era perfectly. It always comes off as a set piece, but they really did an adequate job here. Besides, there is nothing in the story that requires it to be set in the 50's. The 80's works just as well, as long as it's pre internet.

Another pretty big change is how the kids fears take shape. In the book, the kids watch classic Universal horror movies at the cinema, so Pennywise the Dancing Clown (the monster if you didn't know), takes, amongst other things, the shape of the mummy and a werewolf. Kids in the 80's aren't going to be scared by that so the film changes it around a bit. Controversial perhaps, but I think they pull it off quite well. This presented a problem however. When the kids decide to fight Pennywise in the book, they decide to use silver, because werewolves are allergic to silver. But with the werewolf gone they can't use that, and their plan seems very haphazard. It becomes less of a plan and more a drive to do something.

Lets look at the characters next. There are very few adults here with anything to say. This part of the story is about the kids, and the actors were phenomenal. Some of the best child actors I've seen in a long time. However, the characters are almost not developed at all. For having a 2h 15m run time, the film barely introduces anyone. On one hand we have stuttering kid who lost his kid brother, girl, fat but smart kid, scared Jew, hypochondriac, loudmouth and poor black kid. On the other hand they all have motivations, fears, personalities and a strong drive to survive. I wish they could have developed them a bit more though, as I had to fill in a couple of blanks from memory.

My one complaint with the kids is Ritchie. He's the smart mouth who always has a joke or quip ready. In the book he's the morale booster, the kid who can calm tensions and cheer everyone up when it gets too scary. In the film, he comes across as a crude, rude jerk. I mean, thirteen year old kids are walking hormone bombs, but Ritchie does little except make crude sexual suggestions and trying to high-five his uninterested friends. It does not work.

Pennywise is interesting. Visually very different than Tim Curry's version, but more accurate for the novel. Bill Skarsgård does a really wonderful job being all weird and creepy. They could have used him better, but it's good enough, no question about it.

I could go on, nitpicking and analyzing, but there's no point. You have either seen it, you're going to see it, or you don't care.

Join us next time for more Eccentric Spheres, and until then have a great week and stay away from creepy clowns.