wee doors banging

Everything is going “cloud” these days. Your files, music, books, video – all online, all the time, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. But what about your games? Existing services like Steam allow you to download and install games on to your local machine, but what about “true” cloud gaming where the games themselves live elsewhere and you just consume the content (play the game) locally? OnLive is a new service that aims to do just that, and I’ve been asked to have a poke at it.

Twenty eight years. That’s how long I’ve been waiting for a sequel to Tron, but now, finally, and almost unbelievably, it has arrived in the form of Tron: Legacy. It’s been a long time, and the new film has a lot to live up to. For the most part it delivers.

In previous instalments of this blog, I’ve questioned the apparent lack of science fiction television programmes aimed at adults made in the UK, singling out the evergreen Doctor Who as an example of such a show that is aimed squarely at children and teenagers. Having said that though, the fifth series of the new Who has just finished its run and I must admit that this particular adult enjoyed it very much.

You are a bird. Some pigs have stolen your eggs. This makes you angry. You are an Angry Bird. Thus goes the largely irrelevant back story to Angry Birds from Clickgamer and Rovio, an iPhone game I’ve been playing a lot lately. Like, really a lot.

Angry Birds has been a huge success, selling half a million copies in the first month alone. This, I think, is down to the design cleverness that lurks beneath the polish, cutesy graphics and simple mechanics. No matter what you think of the game itself, if you’re in the games business then you could learn a lot from it’s design.

Kick-Ass, if you’ve been living under a cinematic rock recently, is an action movie directed by Matthew Vaughan based on the graphic novel series of the same name created by Mark Millar. I’ve seen the movie and make no mistake, it boots bottom. It’s Superbad meets Batman Begins, with a generous sprinkling of Kill Bill. It’s enormously entertaining in an over the top comic book kind of way. Great performances from the young cast and old codger Nicolas Cage, perfect comic timing and a kick-ass soundtrack make it a fun way to spend two hours.

But Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail disagrees. He thinks it’s child pornography.

I’ve enjoyed the previous Academy books (with reservations) but I’m not sure what to make of this one. One the one hand, Odyssey is excellent and worthy of the award nominations it has receieved, but on the other the pacing fails in spots and there’s a gaping back story hole you could, well, fill a book with.

Omega is typical McDevitt, but one of his better efforts.

I referred to Chindi, the previous novel in the series, as an “action movie of a book” and Omega is no different. Expect a fun read, filled with mishaps and adventure, but with a certain lack of depth.

On the other hand, who has time for chat when a civilisation is at stake?

Matter is Iain. M. Banks’ latest novel set in his much lauded Culture universe, an advanced, interstellar society of (mainly) humans, operating in a scarcity free economy and protected by benevolent artificial intelligences. I’ve very much enjoyed Banks’ previous outings into science fiction and the Culture, and Matter is his first Culture novel for eight years and his first science fiction novel since 2005′s The Algebraist, so I was eager to find time to read this latest offering.

If, like me, you like your old computers, you could do an awful lot worse than pay a visit to Andy’s Retro Computers, a site of “vintage computers and other stuff”.

The eponymous Andy describes himself as a “collector of vintage computers”. He shares his home with an impressive collection of these old-time machines, one that’s growing all the time. Some are brands you’ll know well, but others you may not be so familiar with.

Chindi is another in Jack McDevitt’s “Academy” series. True to form, it is an adventure romp across the galaxy to investigate a Mysterious Thing(tm), with daring rescues and dangerous situations to get out of along the way.