Spider-Man 3: The Video Game Trailer
February 28, 2007 | 2 Comments
With both Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man video games, Activision put together possibly the greatest product tie-in video games. IGN gave these scores of 8.8 and 8.4 respectively, which says a lot (scores from GameCube versions).
The development team is claiming that they have improved on the previous games with a larger, more detailed map of Manhattan as well as the ability to go underground in the sewers and subway systems. In previous games, they left things wide open for you to swing and explore the city, taking on thugs and side missions as you so desired. In this game they have enhanced this piece immensely, causing alternate story lines to spawn based on your actions as well as setting up competing city gangs who need to be kept under control.
Of course all the villains from the movie will be included, we can expect Venom, Goblin, and Sandman. They also promise to bring in a few other Spider-Man bad guys who aren’t in the movie, just to keep things interesting.
The trailer above leaves me with very high hopes for this game. More than anything, I hope they can find a good way of harnessing the Nintendo Wii controller for even more engaging game play.
But, hey who am I kidding, let me swing around New York city as Spider-Man and there really doesn’t need to be much more of a point in the game than that…
Tags: "black suit", activision, city, comic, comics, gamecube, manhattan, new york, Nintendo, peter parker, spider-man, spiderman, venom, video game, wii
Fantastic Four 2 Rise of the Silver Surfer: TV Spot
February 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
This sweet TV ad ran during Monday night’s Heroes episode. There are multiple indirect references to Galactus leading us to hope he will in fact make his debut in this film. I am now more excited about this movie than I ever would have expected.
Tags: comic, comic book, fantastic four, Galactus, heroes, movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer, Silver Surfer, tv ad, tv spot
He-Man Sings - 4 Non Blondes
February 26, 2007 | 1 Comment
Keith sent me this hilarious video mashup of Prince Adam from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe singing the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Up?” The video was created by SlackCircus, they have a couple other great videos on their site as well. The first minute and a half or so starts off slow, but then it get’s funny quick when Man-At-Arms, Beastman, Skeletor, the Sorceress, and Cringer all join in.
Marvel Civil War Concludes
February 25, 2007 | 3 Comments
Civil War concluded this week after 116 issues of lead-in and direct tie-ins. This has been a monumentally large event in the Marvel Universe. Many have criticized it for it’s delays or for it’s political allegory. I however think this was one of the most brilliantly engaging comic series ever. Even more significant will be the impact it will have for years to come.
From here on will be spoiler filled.
The series concludes with a huge fight amongst the two sides. The resistance is winning, Captain America is about to take out Iron Man when a group of civilians (firefighters, EMS, police) tackle him. As he looks around him, he realizes how much the fight has cost the people they should be fighting to protect. To prevent more bloodshed, he orders his team to stop fighting and surrenders.
Anyone who fought is offered a pardon. Some take the opportunity to register. A few leave for Canada to form a new Omega Flight. Others decide to remain underground as the new lineup for the New Avengers.
Here is a list of the major milestones from the series:
- Nitro kills 600 people and all of the New Warriors except Robbie Baldwin (Speedball) in Stamford, CT
- Superhuman Registration Act is enacted
- Spider-Man’s identity revealed as Peter Parker
- “Thor” returns, he’s actually a clone/cyborg creation
- Goliath/Bill Foster is killed
- The Thunderbolts get a new roster (including Green Goblin, Bullseye, Venom, and Penance)
- Negative Zone Prison is created
- Robbie Baldwin (Speedball) becomes Penance
- Reed Richards (Mr Fantastic) and Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) separate temporarily, their marriage rocked
- Captain Marvel returns, from the past
- Captain America surrenders and goes to prison
- Tony Stark (Iron Man) is appointed director of S.H.I.E.L.D, Maria Hill is demoted
- The 50-state Initiative begins; placing a sanctioned super-hero team in every state
- May Parker is shot; (Peter Parker’s aunt)
- Spider-Man ditches the Iron Spidey Suit, returns to the Red and Blue as he switches sides. At the conclusion he regresses further into the Black Suit
- New Avengers get a new roster (Sentry, Iron Man, Captain America leave. Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, and a new Ronin join)
- Mighty Avengers are formed
The next big thing to watch in the Civil War aftermath will be following The Initiative. There are around 63 issues in this crossover event. It will primarily highlight how the Initiative is being created, run, and what these new superhero teams will have to face. I am looking forward to this continuation.
Tags: "black suit", bill foster, civil war, goliath, mark millar, may parker, mighty avengers, mr fantastic, negative zone prison, new warriors, penance, peter parker, Reed richards, shield, spiderman, stamford, sue storm invisible woman, thor, thunderbolts
Luminis Statistics from Uportal
February 23, 2007 | 3 Comments
Note: this is a reposting of an article I wrote on LumDev.net April 12, 2005. I am publishing it here because LumDev is currently experiencing technical difficulties. I have not updated this post in any way to reflect new versions or practices. It is still the 2005 article in every way. I would highly recommend reading that article’s commentary if LumDev.net is available when you are reading this.
As many of us who use and administer Luminis know, the stats are quite inadequate straight out of the box. There are some improvements in III.2, but they are still not enough. Some posts on here have suggested some other solutions that gain some ground. I have been instead researching Uportal’s build in StatsRecorderFactory support. After a lot of trouble initially getting this enabled, Grace Francisco at SCT support was finally able to get me what I was missing to try this out. The following is an account of how to enable these stats outlining what I like and don’t like about this solution. In short this is useful, but short of perfect.
1) cd CP_WEBINF/config
2) jar xf ../lib/uPortal.jar properties/portal.properties –> this actually will get picked up by our classpath, and much easier than editing the file, and rejarring it back to uPortal.jar
3) cd properties
4) edit portal.properties
5) change
#org.jasig.portal.services.stats.StatsRecorderFactory.implementation=org.jasig.portal.services.stats.DoNothingStatsRecorderFactory
to
org.jasig.portal.services.stats.StatsRecorderFactory.implementation=org.jasig.portal.services.stats.LoggingStatsRecorderFactory
6) turn the stat recorder settings ON, if you scroll down a few lines you can choose which ones you want.
7) bounce the webserver:
CP_ROOT/bin/rc/70-webserver stop
CP_ROOT/bin/rc/70-webserver start
8) add logging settings to CP_WEBINF/config/cplog4j.properties
# - STATS-RECORDER
log4j.logger.uportal=INFO, stats
log4j.appender.stats=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.stats.File=${util.logservice.log4j.directory}/stats.log
log4j.appender.stats.MaxFileSize=10000KB
log4j.appender.stats.MaxBackupIndex=10
log4j.appender.stats.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stats.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d{ISO8601}] %m%n
These are some of the log entries created in stats.log:
[2005-03-18 17:10:11,828] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: (cpadmin) logged in successfully at Fri Mar 18 17:10:11 MST 2005
[2005-03-18 17:10:30,937] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: Channel [E-mail Channel, 221, u11l1n13] was rendered in layout 1 by (cpadmin) at Fri Mar 18 17:10:30 MST 2005
[2005-03-18 17:10:30,937] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: Channel [Personal Announcements, 210, u11l1n14] was rendered in layout 1 by (cpadmin) at Fri Mar 18 17:10:30 MST 2005
[2005-03-18 17:10:30,937] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: Channel [Campus Announcements, 211, u11l1n15] was rendered in layout 1 by (cpadmin) at Fri Mar 18 17:10:30 MST 2005
[2005-03-18 17:10:30,937] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: Channel [My Headlines, 212, u11l1n17] was rendered in layout 1 by (cpadmin) at Fri Mar
[2005-03-18 17:12:43,015] [INFO] WebServlet [uportal]: STATS-RECORDER: Session destroyed for (cpadmin) at Fri Mar 18 17:12:43 MST 2005
The first major limitation of this is that it is logging all the stats in a file. So in my instance I am running a cron’d process hourly to go in and pick up the stats files, parse them, and load them into Oracle. My table structure is attached so that you can see the sort of info I’m am acquiring. The script I’ve written is in PHP and if anyone is really interested, I could share that as well. In a perfect world, there would be a Stats Recorder for Oracle, so that it could go straight in without the extra steps. Someone has written RDBMStatsRecorder which hits Postgres. That may be a good base for building an Oracle version. (Google search RDMBStatsRecorder to find out more).
The second limitation is that it is logging all the STATS-RECORDER entries into the cp.log as well as stats.log. This makes for a very dirty cp.log. Someone who knows more about log4j may be able to explain how to resolve this. I unfortunately do not…
The third limitation is that there is not a way to track what tabs are being accessed. This is an important statistic for a bunch of reasons. I reported this desire to support and they entered Enhancement Request #26422 on my behalf. Another option would be to try and glean these from the webserver logs, but of course then you would not have a username and associated role to tie to these stats, so I’m not certain how useful that might be… Better than nothing though.
You can see my PHP code here: http://my.plymouth.edu:81/code/stats.phps
Tags: cplog4j, java, luminis, php, statistics, stats, stats-recorder, sungard, sungardhe, uportal
Avengers, New and Mighty
February 22, 2007 | 9 Comments
In the wake of Civil War, the Avengers are left split into two teams. These will be the New Avengers and the Mighty Avengers. Little is known about either, especially considering Civil War has not yet completed. However, the cover for Mighty Avengers has been revealed, and the first issue with the new New Avengers is out!
We do know that Brian Michael Bendis will be writing both books. Leinil Yu will be drawing New Avengers and Frank Cho will be drawing Mighty Avengers.
Here’s what the teams are looking like so far:
Mighty Avengers
based entirely off the cover art
- Ms. Marvel - leading the team
- Iron Man - is this Tony Stark? I have my doubts…
- The Sentry
- Ares
- Wonder Man
- Wasp
- Black Widow
New Avengers
- Luke Cage (returning)
- Spider-Man (returning, now in black suit)
- Wolverine (returning)
- Spider-Woman (returning)
- Maya Lopez/Echo (returning, no longer as Ronin)
- Iron Fist - no longer wearing the Daredevil costume and clearly the new money for this group.
- Doctor Strange
- Ronin - not Maya, so who’s Ronin? They imply it is “not quite” Matt Murdock. Could this be Nick Fury? Captain America? Sue Storm? Some other lesser known disenfranchised character?
I find the Mighty Avengers to be the more surprising of the teams. Lots of old characters being brought back to the main stream.
Early indications say that Mighty Avengers will be the more government acknowledged team addressing the massive universe effecting events.
New Avengers are a darker more street level team with a concentration on fighting crime. The art styles do a great job of immediately indicating that distinction as well.
Tags: ares, art, avengers, bendis, black, black widow, brian michael bendis, captain america, civil war, comics, daredevil, doctor strange, echo, iron fist, iron man, luke cage, marvel, matt murdock, maya lopez, mighty avengers, ms marvel, new avengers, nick fury, Ronin, sentry, spider-man, spider-woman, spiderman, spiderwoman, sue storm, tony stark, wasp, Wolverine, wonder man
Ghost Rider Movie Review
February 19, 2007 | 9 Comments
I had low hopes going into the Ghost Rider movie, and I was neither let down, nor inspired. I would give this movie 2 out of 5 stars. The term I would use is poor.
The movie starts out solidly, but Peter Fonda’s portrayal of Mephistopheles is the lead in to the downward spiral of the film. No one should ever cast this man in a movie… ever… again.
There are also a few major holes in some of the effects and an equal number in some of Cage’s dialog. My other big criticism is in Eva Mendes’ Roxanne Simpson character. Actually… it’s the lack of character and development that I found most upsetting. This is the second billing character in the film, and undergoes absolutely no characterization! She is a reporter and she loves Johnny Blaze without any reason or background justification. Just sad…
I will say that the overall look of Ghost Rider is done perfectly. In general these effects are put together nicely. Also, the overall plot seems like it was well envisioned, but the previous complaints obfuscated that to the point if seriously degraded enjoyment.
In conclusion, I had minor hopes that this would be a good film that would excite me into wanting to read the new comic series. The reason for this is that Clayton Crain is an amazing artist. I wanted an excuse to read the book and enjoy his art, instead I’ll have to flip through the book, still uninterested in the character of Ghost Rider. Crain is currently my favorite comic artist, I’m now wishing more than ever that he had remained on Sensational Spider-Man. For reference, the cover image included in this post is from Clayton Crain.
Tags: art, artist, cage, clayton crain, comics, crain, ghost rider, johnny blaze, marvel, movie, nicolas cage, Sensational Spider-Man, spider-man