Navigate apocalyptic New York
As a bored teenager, I endured hours on the train each weekend so I could hang out with godless New Yorkers in Washington Square Park. Now a PC game based on the ``Left Behind" novels has those nonbelievers getting their comeuppance at the hands of righteous Christians.
``Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (www.leftbehindgames.com) is a war game in which you become one of the characters from the end-time s novels. Permission granted to stop turning the other cheek, and to start kicking butt.
``Eternal Forces" brings the tension and violence of the Tim LaHaye books into relief and sets the apocalypse against a smoking New York City skyline. The black smoke drifting away from Manhattan Island in ``Eternal Forces" looks eerily similar to the TV images we saw when religious zealots attacked the city in 2001.
``Eternal Forces" pits Christians not only against non-Christians, but also those Christians who only make it to church for Easter and Christmas.
There are three kinds of people in the world, according to the ``Eternal Forces" trailer: ``Those who daily seek a personal relationship with God, unbelievers and believers who don't seek after God, and those who choose to ignore God."
The really good Christians (including all babies) get taken up in the Rapture right away. That leaves the rest of us to duke it out with machine guns in the streets of New York's neighborhoods. The city's buildings and grit are reproduced in fine detail. But, oddly, the ``Eternal Forces" website spells Chinatown, ``China Town." And it makes a reference to ``Uptown" instead of the Upper West Side, for example.
``Eternal Forces" seems to think the God-ignorers will be tattooed skinheads and mob enforcers in Members Only jackets. That part works for me. As in the ``Left Behind" novels, words like ``global" and ``peacekeepers" (and ``UN") are bad. Doing battle against one-world government forces is good. The tough part for me was deciding whether I should be a commander of the Tribulation Forces or join the Global Community Peacekeepers, under the command of the Anti christ.
Suitable for framing
Are you ready to take your photo-editing skills beyond one-button red-eye correction?
No Starch Press, the computer-geek book publisher, has a new volume that teaches how to edit photos in the RAW format, rather than JPEG, which the authors consider an inferior format if you are after a professional product.
The book, with the lengthy title ``The Art of RAW Conversion: How to Produce Art-Quality Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Leading RAW Converters," explains the process of in-camera JPEG conversion and the benefits of cameras that support the RAW format instead. When you use RAW, you preserve all of a photo's data for editing, in what is called a ``digital negative." In-camera JPEG conversion, according to ``The Art of RAW" authors, Uwe Steinmueller and Jürgen Gulbins, causes some important data to be lost, making it difficult to produce a fine-art product.
``The Art of RAW" guides readers through the art of color management and -- with tons of screen shots from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lighthouse -- provides a workflow you can follow to filter out imperfections and correct the lens distortions in your would-be masterpieces.
A small, all-in-one sound system
Unlike Häagen-Dazs, the faux foreign brand created in the United States, the sound system manufacturer Geneva Lab (www.genevalab.com) is based in Switzerland, and it has the Euro-hipster designs to prove it.
The Geneva Sound System is a single box with a lacquered wood finish and built-in speakers, 600- watt amplifier, CD player, FM radio, and iPod dock. Its compact size and simple, futuristic looks make it a good fit for a sparsely furnished apartment or the set of the ``Prisoner," perhaps.
The sound system, as a replacement for your oversize stereo system from college, is fairly priced. The 1-foot-high Model L system costs about $600; while the 2-foot XL costs $1,075. Add $100 for a floor stand for either model.
