2nd Lieutenant Mira: a woman in sensible armor

2nd Lieutenant Mira - 203 Cadian Gaurd

I recently discovered Women in Sensible Armor over on Tumbler and I'm not sure that this sort of nerd feminism is anything new, but it certainly puts a fine point on the realization that all of us have made after playing through our first few RPGs.  And that realization is, why the hell would that chick be dressed like that to fight Orcs?

Now, this site certain gets it's share of traffic thanks to digital boobs and hot chicks in video games so I'd be a little hypocritical to say I haven't been guilty of the "digital male gaze" from time to time.

But still I was pretty gratified when I stumbled across this character in the recently released Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.  Full disclosure, I work at THQ, so I should probably point out that I am a huge warhammer nerd and would have played this game even if I didn't work for the publisher.  But I am also going to give any sort of review.  But what I will give is kudos to the character designers who chose not to give 2nd Lieutenant Mira a cleavage revealing slit in here breast plate and chose to let her wear pants into battle.  She's even a pretty imposing figure when stood next to the emperors own champions, the Ultramarines:

Working at a video game publisher and playing through a lot of games co-op with my wife I find that I am often more than a little embarrassed by some of the crop up.

Take for example a character from the recently released Wii title Conduit 2.  She basically fills the same role in the script for Conduit 2 that 2nd Lt. Mira does in Space Marine, she's a tough military woman that the main character meets up with early on in the story.  She wears battle armor...but of course it's been designed  to ensure maximum "cleave":

Hell, even Red Faction Armageddon had a Kara, a "tough military woman the main character meets in Act 2" role in the script that 2nd Lt. Mira has.  Let's just take a look at her next to the main character for a second:

Sensing a pattern here?  As I'm writing this I'm starting to realize that there are two overlapping tropes here. One is the "cleavage armor" and the other is the "tough military woman the main character meets in Act 2".

Follow up post?  Most likely, but for now, let's all make the sign of the aquilla in honor of 2nd Lt. Mira and her sensible armor:

whiteqube Galaxy Theater, May 19, 2011

Whiteqube stuff is finally online!

Jason and I had our first full scale run through over the weekend and it was really great. The stage show is turning out even better than we could have imagined.

Only a few more tweeks and we'll be ready for our fist gig real gig, opening for Combirchrist on May 19th! Hopefully everyone can make it out to the show. But just to be sure here are a few of the latest tracks to get you hyped.

not on your side by whiteqube


get down by whiteqube

metalliqube by whiteqube

bingbong by whiteqube

Pics from the Namm show

Playing the sweetest note of my life on a Keytar

I went to the Winter NAMM show a few weeks back and snapped some pics with my blackberry. Thought I'd share. First up I got a little hands on time with the Ion Audio iCade. This thing is basically a little "arcade cab" that you slip your iPad into. Currently they have a licensing deal with Atari so they only had Asteroids playing, but the controls felt like genuine HAPP. It wasn't clear if you'd be able to load up your own Roms or if the software was closed. The guy at the booth was more of an audio guy so he didn't really know. All in all it seemed like a great purchase if you have an iPad:




Seems like the "things you plug into your iPad" is going to be a big niche industry for the music industry. Since the next thing I drooled over was the Korg MS20 Legacy Midi Controller. This thing is so sweet. It's all knobs and patch chords. I've used it to interface with Korg's MS20 soft synth on a computer, but at the show they had the MS20 software running on an iPad. IT was a totally portable set up and it sounded great:



Next up we have an official Tron themed iphone / ipad doc. Not much to say here, it is an ipad doc shaped like a Tron Data disc. As UK Mike would say, it does what it says on the tin:



Here is my buddy and band mate DJ Bractune playing a Moog Theremin. If you're not familiar with this device you should really Read up on it, it's totally crackers:



Down stairs in the basement was a wonderland of "home baked" synths and music gizmos. There were all sorts of Chinese outfits selling all manner of boards and chips and such. I'm not much of "chip bender" but some of the things these guys came up with was pretty impressive:





Next up we had a booth of guys who were showing of a vintage Fairlight CMI 2 synthesizer. This thing was a real treat. These babies were used by all sorts of musicians in the 80s but what I found most intriguing was the sweet "Light Pen" interface. This thing was pre-midi and pre-mouse controller. Totally ahead of it's time. The line was too long for me to get to try it, but I snapped a few pics over people's heads:




And I'll end up for something a little more "Rock and Roll" since I know not everyone on this forum is a big synth geek like myself. The classic UK outfit Orange Amplificationwas on hand with a wall of some of the finest amplifiers a man could wish for:



And all being drivin by a head unit with quite possible the greatest name ever bestowed on a piece of hardware the "Terror Bass":



It was a great show, didn't get to snap a picture of it but the Electron guys were there with their SIDstation, a device that I WILL own one day, mark my words.

Fallout New Vegas Mods - Better Body

My post from a couple years ago on Fallout 3 Mods is still extremely popular.  With the release of Fallout New Vegas I thought I'd dig around and see what new mods I could find.

Looks like the "Better Body" mod is now on Version 3.  Here is a gallery posted at the New Vegas Nexus by users and the mod's authors: