The Midnight Hour...

It turned out to be a lovely morning on Wednesday. About 10 miles of Albany, I was gifted with an amazing sight: A rainbow with its bands of colors diffused through the clouds. It would have been special any time, but I was feeling kind of low anyway, and that natural wonder seemed there just for me, at that moment in time.

In the wee hours on Wednesday, I went online to play some Black Ops. In general, I did just horribly. After some team death match, I tried some Free-for-All, and I finally unlocked a weapon combo that seemed somewhat effective: the FAMAS with the suppressor. The rate of fire and lethality of it seem good counters to all the young, fast Timmies with much better broadband than I have. Still, there were some infuriating moments, as always, as one or another pre-adult douche always seemed to appear behind me to give me a bullet-rash in the ass. It's quite a transition going from hardcore to core FFA, tho. A lot of times, the bullet spread of hipfire seems unbelievably inaccurate; given the higher health level in the core games, that puts a premium on aimed fire. The problem is, before I can get my gun up, the little douchebags almost invariably manage to put multiple aimed bursts on me, seemingly without slowing down or stopping. How do they do that, I wonder? Moving on...

• Call of Duty: Black Ops reviews: GameReactor (on YouTube); Seattle Times.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops PC console tricks.
• Some hand-wringing about the Call of Duty: Black Ops 'There's a soldier in all of us' commercial.

• Homefront confirmed for March 2011 release date.
• Rumor: New Mass Effect game a multiplayer spinoff.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenshot teases.
• Zero Punctuation reviews Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (NSFW language, as usual).
• YouTube video: The Future of Character Creation.
• Hacked iRobot uses Kinect for seeing, moving, by your command.
• Original Halo beta footage. (It ain't what you'd expect.)
• Blast from the Past: The First Official Halo Screenie.
• Cracked: Six Ways Fallout: New Vegas Made Me a Worse Person.

 

Just because I'd love a Half-life movie...

 

• [Image] NASA blended wing-body prototype in wind tunnel.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day - Looking out the window of the ISS at Mother Earth.
• Antimatter - in the form of antihydrogen - trapped at last.
• Stem cells injected into brain in attempt to repair stroke damage.
• How do you really know what time it is?
• Anatomy of a Dalek.
• The Green Lantern trailer is chock full of awesome.