James Galvin

I was so focused on release date that I didn’t notice the Shins have put nearly the entire new album online on MySpace. These guys are the anti-Metallica in more ways than one. The unfamiliar synths and atmospherics indicate that the Shins have deviated from the course that was set by their previous work. I don’t know yet if thats a good thing or a bad thing… I’ll have to listen to it a bit more before deciding, but at the moment I agree with this guy.

This will come as great news to any fan of George R. R. Martin’s heptalogy-to-be, “A Song of Ice and Fire”.

The series will begin with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,” and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season’s worth of episodes.

This is a series that lends itself to TV more than most in its genre, since much of it is driven by George Martin’s own passion for the history of the middle ages - authentic battles, knights, jousting tournaments, castles, etc. Keeping the dragons and pookas to a minimum is advisable, since they so often end up looking cheesy. The books are so steeped in cruelty that it will take a courageous director to maintain the spirit - I’m glad its HBO at the reins.

Other fantasy epics that I would like to see coming to our screens:

• Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow, Thorn
• Stephen R. Donaldson: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

I mentioned in my last post that very few people these days take the time to give their views on how things are shaping up in the world of online gaming. In the days of Geocities and Gibworld, the internet was hopping in time with its myriad of animated ‘mail me’ gifs. Dozens of clan sites and tinet homepages in Ireland were poised to strike at the slightest bit of news in the gaming scene. When the boat rocked, ripples would spread giddily through the network of fluorescent static HTML pages, lovingly tended by faithful enthusiasts.

Last week, the boat rocked. When I say it rocked, I mean it crashed into an iceberg and flipped over three times before landing upside-down in the Bermuda triangle. The thundering mother of all cheating scandals emerged in a haze of furious drama. eSReality has an account of the saga involving a English gamer called Fusen and netCoders.be - a group who make aimbots, wallhacks, etc., for games such as Quake 3, Enemy Territory, CoD 2, and SOF, and sell them for up to $200. This is story of the hacker who hacked the hackers and gained access to their database via a vBulletin exploit, exposing the details of all of their customers to the public. The wild-west response, where netCoders offer a $1,000 reward for information on their attacker. The irony of the moral high ground held by the victims and their alleged legal follow-up. The hackers’ threats to hack the hacker who hacked the hackers.

The plot thickened and boiled and simmered as professional players were busted, and respected Clanbase admins ruined. But it didn’t interest me until I noticed that several members of team Ireland were caught with aimbots and wallhacks.

I have followed Ireland in the Enemy Territory nations cups a few times, and despite our small playerbase, Ireland has always had a very strong squad which was able to compete at the highest level. More recently, a new generation of players has risen to eradicate the respect that Irish national teams have accumulated over the years. If this had happened 5 years ago, there would be riots.

Just noticed that Darren’s blog is up and running, with archives going back to November. Views on technology, the internet, online gaming, and whatever else, from the heart of Wicklow. Anyone who is acquainted with Dardoz will know him as one of the most authoritative voices around when it comes to eSports - a topic which lends itself well to blogging but is rarely covered, least of all in Ireland. Some very interesting posts already - well worth a subscription I would say.