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Way over 50 fast. Thanks to the dreadfully named Mag-beam Propulsion, we’re talking 11.7 km/s (that’s 26,172 mph for those playing at home), at which speed a round trip vacation for three to Mars would last only 90 cozy (cramped) days and 90 luxurious (still cramped) nights. And I guess however long they decide to look at rocks and play golf once they get there.

You could go to Jupiter, but why? Jovians are very rude to tourists. Also, you would die.

With all of this talk of Mars, though, people are failing to look at the smaller picture. There’s a very nice planet named Venus a mere 26 million miles away, half the distance to Mars. At the proposed speed of the Mag-beam whatsit, a round trip to Venus would only take a month and a half! Granted, the surface temperature is 740 Kelvins (hot enough to melt lead), the surface pressure is 90 atmospheres (strong enough to crush lead), and the air is full of sulfuric acid (sulfuric enough to… really annoy lead), so that may not work out so well. Let’s think smaller still.

I hate to burst your moon bubble, Stanton A. Coblentz.

The moon. We haven’t been there in a while. We haven’t called in years. What, are we too good for the moon? Well no more! The moon is a mere 240,000ish miles away. Traveling just over 26 thousand miles per hour, we could put an intrepid group of moonologists on the surface of our favorite orbit-buddy in nine hours!! That’s faster than a non-stop plane trip from San Diego to London!! Is my increased use of italics and exclimation marks getting my point across?! It’s the moon, people! Not to be confused with “the moon people” which, sadly, do not exist. I suppose the reason we haven’t gone back to the moon is probably the lack of moon people. That and it’s unspeakably dull. Let’s work with this London idea.

Let’s say I live in San Diego. I set up my magical beam propulsion system, and have my friend Tony set another up somewhere in London. I hop in, hit play, and I’m off to England, and all the fog I can eat! Time for some math. If I am moving at 34 times the speed of sound, and London is about 5500 miles away, how long ’til I get there? Twelve minutes. That’s all! If you weren’t totally blown away by the answer, see me after class. I could be playing cricket and dining on bangers and mash on my lunch break, without missing a minute of work! This is what science is all about. Too bad all of the “scientists” are busy trying to figure out how to play golf on Mars.

That’s the title of my NaNoWriMo novel. Now, I know that the word “megalomania” is not defined as “a desire to take over the world,” but one who desires to take over the world could be called a “megalomaniac.” Also, it’s a really cool word. If it turns out that I don’t like it, then I shall strike it from existance. Until then, here’s the synopsis of my novel in easy to use back-of-the-book format!

Megalomania is sweeping the galaxy!

After the advent of superluminal travel, the quest to colonize the stars was quickly followed by the quest to dominate them with an iron fist. Those so taken realized that with infinite worlds came the prospect of infinite world domination! The rich, smart and generally evil found that little resistance awaited their attempts to take over the world- any world! From tropical planets to terraformed moons, nothing was safe from the complex machinations of the evil geniuses that desired them.

To combat this problem, the first spaceside military force was hastily thrown together by the countries of Earth to help protect newly colonized planets from being usurped. With limited resources, the fleet did its best, but many planetary takeovers went by unnoticed.

Enter Roger Plotnik, a scientist with delusions of granduer and a few planets already under his belt. Sadly, the planets ranged from unihabited to unihabitable. Undeterred in his quest for world domination that someone would actually notice, he set his sights on Centaurus, the most inhabited and heavily gaurded planet besides Earth. His peers thought him mad… and he appreciated the compliment.

Plotnik was not alone, however, since the equally mad yet far more evil and successful Victor Segue had also decided that Centaurus was to be the next stop in his domination tour. With two mad scientists vying for control of a planet, what else could go wrong? It just so happens, plenty!

Okay, I just realized that the synopsis was heading into short-story territory. Man that was long. It’s still a work in progress (a WIP if you will) and will be for at least the next two months, at which point it will be the first draft of a much larger WIP that is my novel.

I had been intrigued by Iridion 3D because shooters, “shoot-’em-ups,” (“shmups” if you wish) are a rare and valuable commodity in today’s world of Madden NFL 2004 and Madden NFL 2004 for the Xbox. However, it turned out that the freshman entry in the Iridion saga was more or less an excuse to have a 3D game of the GBA, and was devoid of things like fun or the ability to have any clue what was happening on the screen. Thusly, I moved on.

Like all decidedly sub-par games, the Powers That Be deigned to give us a sequel. Thankfully this sequel turned out pretty well, gaining reviews of 8 and other numbers such as “not quite 9,” and “better than 7.” IGN, of course, gave it an “8.372719 (not an average).” I was able to find the game cheap, decided “why not?” and bought it.

(continue reading…)

I love the THPS series, though I have to admit I came late to the game. In fact, the only reason I started to play Tony Hawk at all was because the original was on sale for five dollars at Fry’s. For the Dreamcast. So not only was I late to the game, but I was wearing the wrong uniform. Nevertheless, I was immediately enthralled by the game, and played for hours on the relatively lumpy Dreamcast controller.

Since I didn’t get into Tony Hawk until after it had been ported and subsequently discounted for everyone’s favorite thinking console, the next game in the series to be released was THPS3, which I bought for the Gamecube just after it launched (more on that later). I had completely skipped over what I at first thought was just another sequel. I have learned, thanks to the Xbox re-release, that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is the defining game of the series.

(continue reading…)

It’s no good.

When the GameStop near my house announced that they were no longer accepting SNES games for trade-in, I made the natural assumption that they would no longer be selling them, either. I figured, then, that it would be a good time to stock up. Despite intending to buy more, I ended up with only three new games. ActRaiser quickly became my favorite of the three.

And how could it not? I mean, I play God! The power of the elements is at my fingertips (provided I have enough SP)! I command a mighty warrior with the strength of at least two or three really strong guys! And my holy messenger appears to be a cutesy cherub! Maybe I’m not painting the best word-picture here. Let’s rewind.

(continue reading…)

While helping my sister with her CD-ROM today, I threw in a disc to see what the problem was. That disc just happened to contain Oregon Trail.

It was the spiffed up Windows version of the game, of course, with all sorts of fancy bells and whistles like “background music” and “color graphics.” But behind the repetitive and strangely catchy music was the same game from so long ago. You know the one.

It was computer lab time in elementary school. Everyone would run in and take a seat next to their friends at their favorite computer, despite the fact they were all identically terrible. Apple had seemingly offloaded dozens of their lowest end II models on the school system and they were bound and determined to use them until the CONTROL-OPEN APPLE-RESET sequence shook the computer so hard that it disintegrated.

Number Muncher, Word Blaster, and all the flavors of Carmen Sandiego shared a huge diskette folder in what amounted to bulk software piracy on the part of the school. There were a few other games in there, like Lemonade Stand or the text adventures and such that the stragglers got left with (oh, the text adventures I was missing!) but I always secured my copy of Oregon Trail.

Being a kid at the dawn of the personal computer age, I wasn’t too sure why sometimes my saved games wouldn’t appear when I started the game up. Was it because I was at a different computer? Did the disk have something to do with it? Maybe the teachers were playing a trick on us. Looking back, I now know it was because Apple II’s didn’t have hard drives, and I would have had to grab the same disk each time to pick up where I left off. As it was, I enjoyed the randomness of never knowing whether I would get to restore a saved game or start a new adventure. I was careful to name all my characters the same thing in each game, appropriately enough after the members of my family.

Every week I would embark on my quest to reach Oregon as those around me attempted in vain to catch Carmen Sandiego (something no one ever accomplished) or munched numbers that matched 6 x 3. Occasionally one of my various parallel families would reach their goal, but it would take months of going to the computer room and playing to achieve this.

Tonight I beat Oregon Trail in about ten minutes. Go figure. During the trip Obadiah (I used the default names) died of a mysterious fever almost immediately. Beth and Ezra suffered through the measles, dysentery, typhoid fever, exhaustion, and cholera… and made it through just fine! My main character never got sick, nor did my fifth. I never even knew his/her name! There was one point where an impassable trail cost us eight days, which was bookended by about a week of fog. I say, if you’re lost for two weeks straight just start a settlement where you are and hope the idea catches on. Then you can have a city named after you!