Belshazzar's Feast

Thus spake Isaiah--
Thy sons that thou shalt beget
They shall be taken away,
And be eunuchs
In the palace of the King of Babylon
Howl ye, howl ye, therefore:
For the day of the Lord is at hand!

By the waters of Babylon,
By the waters of Babylon
There we sat down: yea, we wept
And hanged our harps upon the willows.

For they that wasted us
Required of us mirth;
They that carried us away captive
Required of us a song.
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.
Yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

By the waters of Babylon
There we sat down: yea, we wept.

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed,
Happy shall he be that taketh thy children
And dasheth them against a stone,
For with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down
And shall be found no more at all.

Babylon was a great city,
Her merchandise was of gold and silver,
Of precious stones, of pearls, of fine linen,
Of purple, silk and scarlet,
All manner vessels of ivory,
All manner vessels of most precious wood,
Of brass, iron and marble,
Cinnamon, odours and ointments,
Of frankincense, wine and oil,
Fine flour, wheat and beasts,
Sheep, horses, chariots, slaves
And the souls of men.

In Babylon
Belshazzar the King
Made a great feast,
Made a feast to a thousand of his lords,
And drank wine before the thousand.

Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine,
Commanded us to bring the gold and silver vessels:
Yea! the golden vessels, which his father, Nebuchadnezzar,
Had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem.

He commanded us to bring the golden vessels
Of the temple of the house of God,
That the King, his Princes, his wives
And his concubines might drink therein.

Then the King commanded us:
Bring ye the cornet, flute, sackbut, psaltery
And all kinds of music: they drank wine again,
Yea, drank from the sacred vessels,
And then spake the King:

Praise ye
The God of Gold
Praise ye
The God of Silver
Praise ye
The God of Iron
Praise ye
The God of Wood
Praise ye
The God of Stone
Praise ye
The God of Brass
Praise ye the Gods!

Thus in Babylon, the mighty city,
Belshazzar the King made a great feast,
Made a feast to a thousand of his lords
And drank wine before the thousand.

Belshazzar whiles he tasted the wine
Commanded us to bring the gold and silver vessels
That his Princes, his wives and his concubines
Might rejoice and drink therein.

After they had praised their strange gods,
The idols and the devils,
False gods who can neither see nor hear,
Called they for the timbrel and the pleasant harp
To extol the glory of the King.
Then they pledged the King before the people,
Crying, Thou, O King, art King of Kings:
O King, live for ever…

And in that same hour, as they feasted
Came forth fingers of a man's hand
And the King saw
The part of the hand that wrote.

And this was the writing that was written:
'MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN'
'THOU ART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE
AND FOUND WANTING'.
In that night was Belshazzar the King slain
And his Kingdom divided.

Then sing aloud to God our strength:
Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.
Take a psalm, bring hither the timbrel,
Blow up the trumpet in the new moon,
Blow up the trumpet in Zion
For Babylon the Great is fallen, fallen.
Alleluia!

Then sing aloud to God our strength:
Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob,
While the Kings of the Earth lament
And the merchants of the Earth
Weep, wail and rend their raiment.
They cry, Alas, Alas, that great city,
In one hour is her judgement come.

The trumpeters and pipers are silent,
And the harpers have ceased to harp,
And the light of a candle shall shine no more.

Then sing aloud to God our strength.
Make a joyful noise to the God of Jacob.
For Babylon the Great is fallen.
Alleluia!

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Celestia

Real time space simulation - and it's free!

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Dragon's Dogma Review

Here’s something to make you feel old. It’s now been more years since the release of Morrowind than were between the release of Morrowind and Doom. That has a particular poignancy for me because I distinctly remember playing Morrowind and marvelling at the enormous, 3D game world and thinking how far things had come since those 2D sprites. For that reason, I have in my own internal scale on what constitutes a good open world RPG, a Morrowind shaped slot that other games need to meet. However when I look back on it now, I would have to say it is not the RPG I enjoyed the most from that time. That honour would go to Gothic 2 by German developer Piranha Bytes. While Morrowind was great at world building and exploration, Gothic 2 followed through with its own, distinctly combat focused gameplay. In true German fashion, this mainly consisted of being tough as nails. No handholding, no simplified combat and definitely no level-scaling. This game was hard caps all the way. While the game wasn’t as polished or as large as Morrowind, it had character in its carefully handcrafted world that was more memorable than the empty plains of Vvardenfell.

Unfortunately, sequels to Gothic 2 had a patchy record. Gothic 3 was held to be a decent alternative to Oblivion (although I could never get it to run properly). Gothic 4, made by a different studio, didn’t make much of a splash. Piranha Bytes meanwhile went on to the solid Risen, and more recently Risen 2 (which has been getting some poor reviews). All the while the Bethesda juggernaut rolled on apace with Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. Each one of them serving up that Morrowind style gameplay I loved.

In the non-Bethesda universe, a new open-world western RPG has recently been released called Dragon’s Dogma. It was developed by Capcom, the Japanese company behind Street Fighter and Resident Evil. If you’re asking what a Japanese company that specialises in fighting games knows about how western RPGs are designed and played these days, the answer is ‘not much’. The game has no fast travel between locations, if you walk somewhere, you have to walk back. Quests aren’t dynamic, nor do you get a map marker telling you where a quest is located (edit: actually there is! It’s hard to spot and I have been playing without it). Conversely (or perversely), one thing the game absolutely tells you is there are places you can’t go until you hit a high enough level.

But maybe that’s what the genre needs. A non-US based company to come along every now and then and look at the current tropes with new eyes and say ‘what’s the point of creating a massive open world if you just fast travel everywhere?’ If you set out on a journey in Dragon’s Dogma, there’s a real weight to your action. Especially for long journeys because night doesn’t just fall in this game, it slams down an inky, impenetrable blackness. All you have to beat it back is a small lantern that you need to keep refilled with oil. The upshot is sometimes you just have to find somewhere defendable to bunker down until sunrise, Minecraft style.

The weight of the world carries on into the combat. This is where Capcom’s fighting development background shows through as the system is very Devil May Cry, (you will no doubt notice some of Dante’s signature moves while you’re fighting). It’s a system which is located somewhere between the mushy hit box combat in Skyrim and the sharp, pinpoint combat in Dark Souls. Dragon’s Dogma gives you access to 8 different attacks which can be strung together in combos. When it comes to fighting larger monsters, like Cyclopes or Griffins, Capcom have realised hacking at a monster’s knee is pretty boring. The result is every so often you encounter a Shadow of the Colossus boss battle that has you jumping all over some huge creature for half an hour before it finally comes down. Even the regular monster fights can be epic as dozens of enemies will turn up at a time to take a chunk out of you.

Other than the combat, the main feature of the game is the Pawn system. When you start a game, you get to create a companion character called a Pawn. In game terms, a Pawn is an extra dimensional being who has come to your world to help you fight the big bad. Once you have created your own Pawn, you can recruit two more. The conceit of the game is the other Pawns you recruit are in fact copies of Pawns created by other people playing Dragon’s Dogma. If you take them on adventures with you, they gain experience and loot, which they then share with their creator. Similarly, a copy of your personal Pawn can be recruited likewise. So for example, my arrow shooting Pawn, Ruthier, recently notified me that while she was palling around with me, she had also been recruited in another world and had brought back experience, as well as knowledge of an upcoming quest. When I got to that quest she was able to offer me some hints on what to do.

All in all its a pretty neat little twist on integrating multiplayer into a single player game. Like the Souls games, you never interact with someone in a normal fashion, but through a quirky game element. If there is one problem with the Pawns it is that they do not shut up. Ever. The concept of them giving me hints about the world is a really good one, but giving me the same hint over and over again is pretty frustrating. For example, when fighting wolves, your pawn will tell you they are weak to fire. Then they will tell you that again every ten seconds until you’ve killed all the wolves. You can turn off their subtitles which helps, and after a while it’s not too hard to ignore. The other issue is if you are looking for a game world to role play in, then this one isn’t it. The plot hasn’t done much for me yet, and the NPC’s are forgettable. Which is kind of a shame because for a game which invests so much in making you live in the world, it doesn’t create a world which seems that believable. Contributing to this is the lack of production values as compared to Skyrim. The textures are a bit muddy on my PS3 version, and there are clipping and frame rate issues.

The good news for Dogma fans is that the game has been something of a success for Capcom, and a sequel has been confirmed. Although amazingly for such a successful game, I was unable to find a copy of it in either EB or JB Hifi when I went looking for it. I was even told at EB that they were only ordering it in if people actually requested it.

That’s kind of disappointing. Because the more I play of Dragon’s Dogma, the more the game reminds me of my time playing Gothic 2. What’s more, it has made me realise that maybe the Morrowind benchmark I had wasn’t an open world RPG benchmark, it was a Bethesda benchmark. Dragon’s Dogma has changed my own internal landscape on what a large, expansive open world RPG can be. It bets heavily on some unconventional designs and decent combat which for me, pays off. It combines the crunchy combat of a Souls game without restricting you to long hallways. Choosing your fights, and more importantly, learning how to fight, is crucial. Progression isn’t just measured in better stats and gear (you keep the same gear for a surprisingly long time, enhancing it rather than changing it). You progress because you become better. But no matter how good you get, you must always remember that in Dragon’s Dogma the night is dark, and full of terrors.

4 stars.

Hemingway as read by Hemingway

Hemingway

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Brain Pickings

My new favourite site.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/07/cartographies-of-time/

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Churchill v Picasso

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1989

By Bill Bishop (@niubi)

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Olympus 35DC

This camera went on sale in 1971. The letters in the name stand for "Deluxe Compact."
The programmable automatic exposure system made photography easy in any setting, whether the subject was dark or brightly lit. The Olympus 35DC featured the world's first automatic flashmatic system and backlight correction system that allowed programmable auto photography even with a strobe. It became popular as an easy-to-use camera that always produced excellent results.

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The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur — nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-linsfirst loved livvy.

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