A Braid History of Time

I first heard about Braid last year when I attended Free Play 2007, the independent games expo here in Melbourne, in my capacity as Planet Nerd‘s roving reporter. Braid creator Jonathan Blow was the keynote speaker, though I missed his address and only caught him on an excellent panel about game design. The key thing that piqued my interest was repeated mentions of its “rewind” feature; this isn’t really a new idea – it’s been used in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, for example – but for it to be included in a game by an independent developer of Blow’s calibre certainly piqued my interest. Having been thinking about  recently, I was doubly interested in the game when it was released this week for Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Once you get past the lovely prose and gorgeous painted visuals (by David Hellman of one of my favourite web comics, A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible) you quickly discover that this game is like an art-rock version of Super Mario Bros. You jump from platform to platform in a series of “Worlds”, jumping on the heads of diminutive enemies (who resemble Grug more than anything else), and trying to collect the pieces of puzzles which illustrate the game’s backstory. Read more

Day of the Daffodils

For me, carnivorous plants fall into the same category as dinosaurs, muppets and the concept of Doctor Who – if you don’t find them wondrous, I’m not sure I can trust you. I hadn’t thought about carnivorous plants recently, what with my brain full of the , but the redoubtable Paul Riddell, ex-writer and essayist and creator of the fondly missed Esoteric Science Resource Centre, has finally opened a web site for his business devoted to these little beasties: the Texas Triffid Ranch, a nursery for “carnivorous, prehistoric, and otherwise exotic plants”.

Besides which, Daffodil Day – a fund-raiser for the excellent Cancer Council (which as a kid I always called the “Anti-Cancer Council“, which is either an organisation who like to make it clear they’re not in favour of cancer, or a rival group who oppose the altruistic deeds of the real one) is coming soon. Every year on Daffodil Day the city fills with tiny, Triffid-like flowers, their bell-shaped mouths leering at me from every corner, watching, waiting… I can’t help but imagine that the plants will soon eat us all. Read more

The Big Pterodactyl?

There are times when you’re struck with something so bizarre that nothing makes sense; reason is turned upside down and wonder and confusion take the reigns of your destiny. So it was when, on the way back from Dubbo with my beloved, I spotted this statue of a pterosaur in a field.

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There was no sign proclaiming Dubbo to be the home of “the Big Pterodactyl” (which would no doubt be its name if it had one, though like most popular representations of pterosaurs, this one has the classic Pteranadon head crest), nor were there any other nearby monsters. There was just this guy, who more resembles Rodan (the Godzilla monster, not the much smaller Port Adelaide footballer) than any actual prehistoric flying reptile.

There’s something very charming about this statue – it’s very old school, almost Crystal Palace-like in its chunky, heavy design – but at the same time it seems somehow…sinister. So far I’ve not been able to find any information about its origins or fate. Was there once a dinosaur park in Dubbo? Was there a tourist attraction here? Perhaps its the last remnants of some obscure cult, and obscene sacrifices were made in its name?

This might not be science, but there are few things the Man in the Lab Coat enjoys more than finding answers. I’ll let you know how I get on!

The Man in the Lab Coat versus the Giant Squid

When I was in primary school, I guess I would have been about 6 or 7, one of my most prized possessions was a small, illustrated, abridged paperpack copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I must have read it 50 times; I even brought it in for one of my teachers to read to us, and when we dressed up as literary characters for Book Week (do kids still do that?), I came as Captain Nemo.

It’s true – I’ve been geeky all my life. But I like to think I was at least a cultured geek, with a love for Important Geek Literature. And even years later, after re-reading the full unabridged novel a few years ago and realising it’s largely just a list of interesting fish, I still remember the fight with the giant squid. It was, predictably, also my favourite part of the Disney film, in which a bizarrely upper-class Nemo played by James Mason fights off the world’s rubberiest monster with the help of Kirk Douglas as Ned Land. (I still love that movie, and it was the best birthday ever a few years ago when my Mum bought it for me on DVD.)

So you can imagine my excitement when a couple of weeks ago I headed down to Melbourne Museum to see them dissect a Giant Squid. Read more