Sobtanian's old blog. Still full of goodies, why don't you stay a while.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Masters Of Doom, Changeling, and nights

On holiday I managed to finish two books:

Porn & Pong: an OKish look at how the videogame industry and the porn industry are closer than we imagine. Trends are the same, the explosion of both market's worth is amazing too.

Masters Of Doom: now this one's more like it. The true story behind how John Romero and John Carmack ended up ruling the PC gaming world. It's an amazing story, and even though it's all based on fact it's written very cleverly and is even a page turner! You'll find out the drive behind the two, the differences and the similarities, and more importantly the technical achievements they managed on the then-worse-than-consoles-PC. There's a lot more behind things like Commander Keen (the smooth scrolling was the first ever seen on the PC) and even the names of their games.
This is a book written for EXACTLY the kind of people that read this blog.. the geeky PC gaming/using fraternity that literally grew up drooling at Doom and it's Deathmatch. Read it, it's essential.

On holiday we managed to watch one film:
Changeling: here's a prediction I'm going to make. Changeling is going to net 4 Oscars: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress in Main Role, and Best Costumes (or design). Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie (yes, she does act great in this film!) in a gripping true story about a woman who's son goes missing and the police give her back the wrong child. When she starts questioning them, the corruption behind the LAPD starts to show leading to a national scandal. On paper, this sounds dull, but trust me, it's difficult to say anything about this film without spoiling the shockingly true story.
It's also a film that rivets around the performance of it's stars, and they truly do shine. We watched the film with low expectations but ended up being so gripped by it and pleasantly surprised. Watch it.

Finally, I'm on a week of nights starting in 2 hours. That's 7 in a row. Hmph.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can only second sob´s words on the doom book ... the story of the two johns is a must read ... it didn´t only bring me back memorys of good times but also reminded me strong of my 2 partners on many occasions at occ :) ... get your copy at amazon and maybe check out the rome.ro blog for some nice stuff ...

happy holidays y´all

Anonymous said...

"Changeling" !
after reading your blog ,i watched it today,, Telesync copy
amazing movie :)

SoB said...

We saw the TS too, a dodgy DVD we bought off the Chinese lady selling on the streets of Dubai :D

Wasn't that bad though, goes in and out of focus on times cos the idiots had the camera on autofocus.

Great wasn't it?

And Nile, LOL at OCC and the John's, or in your case the H's :p I can guess now that Sati was Carmack right?

Anonymous said...

yup sob clever thinkig, there were a couple of times (pizza money, very fast driving, bit flipping, confusing others codewise, ...) this could have been them too, ... but when it came to deathmatching, killing keyboards and swearing each other into the ground, it took over to a different group of people who met on a regular basis :) ... but surely everyone else could share his own slice of memory with the story told. i not only wonder why we read this (almost) simultanously, but why no one made this into a movie, like pirates of silicon valley (which didnt suck as much as that bimbo doom movie did imho) ... well .. better "suck it down dude" and read it again ;)

SoB said...

loool that bit flipping SURE DOES remind me of someone that bit flips.

You're right man, maybe when I read it I related to stuff I had been part of or witnessed. I sure related to the deathmatcing part, like all of us!

I think anyone who's played doom, and particularly anyone who's played doom and walked in to OCC should own a copy of this book. It's like the story we all secretly want to be our own.

I thought you might have read the book a few years ago (it's 2003) but isn't it funny we read it nearly the same time. Evil minds think alike dude......