Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  
  • entries
    871
  • comments
    4,689
  • views
    1,197,635

About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

 

Disney embraces the Dark Side

If you've been reading my blog, you'll know I've been following The Clone Wars animated series pretty closely since it started. It's had its hits and misses over five seasons, but in practical fact it's been nothing short of a milestone both in terms of TV animation, and theatrical-level CG work in a TV series.   It's also done something I didn't think possible - made me care about the prequel-era Star Wars universe and characters.   At the end of season 5, Over the course of the series
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2
 

Pentaclones

Well, my U-Verse DVR was too stupid to catch the season five premiere of The Clone Wars in its new time slot last weekend. The show has moved to Saturday morning - because nothing goes better with a big bowl of Cocoa Puffs than lightsaber decapitations! So I had to watch the episode - Revival - online.   The problem is that my internet is too sporadic to stream the whole episode without interruption. This despite it not even being in true 1080 HD. Time Warner is looking better all the time.  
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12
 

iBlog 2

So I finally bit the bullet, and bought a new cellphone:   http://youtu.be/ZJoEPWVJqFw   Man... I love those commercials. "The HerniaMate™ 2000! Pick one up (if you can) now!" What's in that thing - a car battery?   Anyway, what I really bought was an iPhone 5. Hence, the start of iBlog 2, and the end of iBlog 1. So long! It's been fun!   Well, fun up until my battery died three months ago and I had to pay for a replacement to tide me over. In hindsight, I don't regret it, since my old p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24
 

Tron 1.5.2

The first episode of season 2 of Tron: Uprising aired tonight. (Some episodes are online, depending on your TV provider, or through iTunes, but it's crazy-expensive there.)   Tonight's episode was "The Reward", in which Tesler offered up a shiny-new car to whoever turned in The Renegade.   Needless to say, that worked well. Because there were dozens of Renegades turned in. Way to clean up the streets there, programs. Of course, none of them were the real one.   Beck decided to lay low in h
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10
 

To-doing

Sounds like a Don Martin sound effect*, doesn't it? To-doing!!   But actually, this is yet another To-Do List. However, since some of it is already in progress, that makes it a "To-doing" list.   If the blog tags weren't still broken, you would be able to click on a handy link, and look at my previous To-Do List entries. But it's just as well you can't, since even I don't particularly like looking back on lists of things that I never got finished.   That said, I'll continue with the tradi
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

32
 

Skyfall - Spoiler Free Review

So here we go again. This time I'm sitting in a properly huge IMAX theater, waiting for the latest James Bond epic to begin. No lack of a crowd this time - being a rainy Saturday night in Burbank. The movie kicks off in about 20 minutes, and as usual I'll be back with a review after I get home.   Or maybe tomorrow.   Either way, see you after the show. __________________   (15 hours later...)   So, is Skyfall the "Best Bond Ever"?   Well, no. That would be Goldfinger. But I'll get bac
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

WRC - MIA... again.

Last year, after the World Rally Championship season started in February, it took until April for highlights to start showing up on TV.   This year, they may not show up at all. Assuming the season actually happens in the first place.   The problem is that the WRC's main sponsor - North One Sport - was sold last year to Convers Sports Initiatives - a Russian-owned company that in the end, turned into a $1.6 billion case of fraud. Ouch.   North One Sport provided the WRC's website, smartpho
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

31
 

Money, money, money... but where's the love?

I rarely blog about my job since hey, it's a job. But this post isn't so much about my job, but rather my alma mater. Both of which just happen to be the same place. CalArts.   Y'see, the LA Times posted a little article today about how films that have been directed by CalArts animation alumni have collectively grossed over $26 billion dollars worldwide. Billion. With a "B". Like Carl Sagan would say: "Billllyuhn." There's a handy little "infographic" about it on CalArts' website.   I happen
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

George, Walt. Walt, George.

So Disney bought Lucasfilm today for $4 billion. Lock, stock and Jar-Jar.   I'll admit this took me by surprise, even though Disney and Lucas have teamed up in the past: Indiana Jones (the ride), Star Tours and all of its related merchandise, plus other more questionable crossovers like this:     As a friend of mine who works for the Big D pointed out, Leia is now a "Disney Princess". (shudder)   Anyway... the question is - is this acquisition a good thing or a bad thing?   Well, let'
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Somebody at Disney likes video games...

First Tron: Legacy, now Wreck-It Ralph:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSQOomMWro   I'd first heard of this years ago (it's been in development for ages under different titles) and was skeptical of it, but it looks pretty good. I've heard some good reports coming out of the studio about it as well (in fact - they have a number of arcade classics set up there for "research").   (Edit: replaced trailer with higher-quality version, without annoying introduction)
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

35
 

The Turbo that never was

Time for another... Stupid Game Idea! (idea... idea... idea... cookie... idea...)   Turbo was one of my favorite arcade games, and was the best arcade racer until Pole Position came along. Even then, it was still a groundbreaking game that would pave the way for others like Out Run, Cruisi'n USA, Chase H.Q., and all of their various sequels and spin-offs.   Sometime back I wrote up a little blurb on my involvement with the 2600 Turbo prototype. Initially, I was brought in to create artwork f
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5
 

Technology steps backwards

Sony finally announced the new, long rumored, slimmer, cheaper, PS3.   Uh... wait a sec.   Cheaper isn't the right word... what's the word I'm looking for?   Oh right... pricier. The base PS3 now costs $269, instead of $249.   I suspect most people were expecting $199. I certainly was.   After all, they did away with the slot-loading Blu-ray drive, for a (presumably) cheaper top-loader. Generally the reason products like this are re-engineered, are to make them more cost-effective to p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12
 

Return of Stupid Game Ideas: Lunar Lander Arcade

Wow... it's been awhile since I posted a Stupid Game Idea (idea... idea... idea... idea...).   They're not so much "stupid" I suppose, as "speculative". But since this blog doesn't have "Speculative" in its name, "Stupid" is what I'm sticking with.   I've got a few of these I've been planning to write up for awhile, and another recent speculative project has given me the incentive to finally dust these off.   So... several years ago (in fact, around the time of the last Stupid Game Idea (i
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9
 

iBlog

So I've finally joined the rest of the world, and got myself an iPhone. Of course the first appropriately nerdy thing to do with it (after using its GPS to plan an alternate route around the traffic to get home from Northridge), was to type an entire blog entry with it. I must say I'm rather surprised at how well the virtual keyboard works - especially in landscape mode and in no small part thanks to its on-the-fly auto-correct feature*. Of course I could type way faster than this on a real keyb
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

167
 

49 in dog years

Today marks the seventh anniversary of my blog. Seven years!   That means I managed to survive longer without being cancelled than Star Trek: The Next Generation, or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or even Star Trek: Voyager! So how about that! Of course I long-ago surpassed Enterprise, but hey, I've got socks that lasted longer than that show. And...   What?   What do you mean they don't cancel blogs?   Really?   Man... I've been putting way too much effort into this.
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
 

The Dark Knight Rises - Spoiler-free review

I'm at the theater yet again, and I've only got a few minutes before the film starts, so there's just enough time to post a super-quick pre-movie entry.   And that was it.   See you in three hours!     (Much, much later...)   You know what? I think I'm going to type this up tomorrow instead. It's late.     (The next day...)   Well, that was a long movie. And if I had to choose one word to describe it, it would probably be "tedious". It takes forever to get going, takes forever to g
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...