Race For Research

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This weekend, my mom is participating in a fundraiser to raise money to fight  Multiple Myeloma, the cancer that my dad was diagnosed with last year.  Please help her meet her fundraising goal by donating some money to a very worthy cause.  The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation has a four star rating with Charity Navigator, and they fund research, like the experimental therapy my dad is now receiving.

Established in 1998, The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) is dedicated to accelerating the search for a cure for multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell, is an incurable but treatable disease. As the world's number-one private funder of myeloma specific research, the MMRF has raised more than $60 million to fund 51 laboratories worldwide. Our tremendous investment has already resulted in significant advances in the field of myeloma, including pivotal research that contributed to the recent approval of Velcade, the first myeloma drug in more than a decade. Currently, the MMRF is funding 20 new therapies now in Phase I, II, and III clinical trials - such as Revlimid - that have shown promise in treating myeloma patients at all stages of disease.

Problems with Samsung BD-P1200 and Weeds Blu-ray discs

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We tried to watch Weeds Season 2 last night on my Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray player, but the disc wouldn't work the second time we tried to play it, though it had worked fine the first time (though the menus were really slow).  After much cussing, cleaning of the immaculate disc, and scratching my head, and rebooting of my player, I found this thread at AVSForum that indicates I'm not alone.  Hopefully Samsung will fix this with a firmware update soon to fix this issue.  In the mean time, I'll just be thankful that I rented the disc from Netflix, and I'm not stuck owning this turkey.

Bioshock

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I spent much of the weekend playing through the new game Bioshock on my Xbox 360.  Wow, what a game, and a work of art.  It took me around 20 hours to play through, but I want to go back and do it again, as the choices you make in the game influence how the story progresses.  I'd like to make a few different choices, and see what happens.  What makes this game so special?  Outstanding story telling (which is pretty rare in a video game), excellent art design, and game mechanics that let you play in radically different ways.  Most first-person shooters are just that, you run around shooting things.  In this game, if you want, you barely even have to use a gun.

The game is set in an art deco underwater city that was founded in 1946 by Andrew Ryan (Andy Ryan = Ayn Rand) in an attempt to create a utopia where science and art would be unconstrained by morality, government, and religion.  Of course, things sort of went wrong...

I'd write more, but I don't want to give away any of the story, and it's very engrossing.  Here's a blurb from IGN's review that sums up how I feel too:

But to call this game simply a first-person shooter, a game that successfully fuses gameplay and narrative, is really doing it a disservice. This game is a beacon. It's one of those monumental experiences you'll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured. This isn't merely an evolution of System Shock 2, but a wake-up call to the industry at large. Play this, and you'll see why you should demand something more from publishers and developers, more than all those derivative sequels forced down our throats year after year with only minor tweaks in their formulas. It's a shining example of how it's possible to bring together all elements of game design and succeed to the wildest degree.