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Archive for February, 2009

Treasure hunting

25 Feb

I don’t recall when, exactly, I became aware that Wil Wheaton had an active blog pres­ence. It would have been a few years ago, prob­a­bly men­tioned in pass­ing in com­ments or a link-​​in some­where else, point­ing to a post he’d done. Likely it was on a nerdy sub­ject of some sort, since I often con­sume nerdy blogs, and odds are good that’s where the paths crossed initially.

Crossed paths some­times have a way of con­verg­ing, and over time I grew more aware of posts he’d made — again, by oth­ers’ ref­er­ences. I know I down­loaded chap­ter 9 of his Just a Geek as a PDF, because the file is still res­i­dent on my Mac, dated from 2004. Nevertheless, it was only a few months ago that I subbed to his RSS feed and started actively read­ing his posts and content.

In that time I found that I’d been miss­ing some­thing good. Wheaton, as many of us in the nerd­verse are some­times painfully aware, had a role in his teens as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Alas, that role tainted the minds of many over the years, peo­ple who for some rea­son couldn’t seem to quite sep­a­rate the liv­ing, breath­ing and vital per­son­al­ity from the cre­ated char­ac­ter he filled two decades ago.1

I hadn’t been over­look­ing his blog for that rea­son; mostly, it was because I’d put ST:TNG behind me quite some time ago, and didn’t feel it was all that rel­e­vant to my life any longer. I wasn’t bear­ing ani­mos­ity against Crusher (or Wheaton); rather, I was just no longer fol­low­ing the series, nor a devoted Trekker to begin with. At least not with the rabid feroc­ity evinced by the pro­test­ers that fought long and hard to keep Enterprise in pro­duc­tion — truly a spike­wor­thy show, if ever there was a mean­ing­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the species.

So my mis­take lay, I sup­pose, along sim­i­lar modes of think­ing that led him to be sav­aged ver­bally for years at Trek cons. I asso­ci­ated him well enough with a long-​​out-​​of-​​production show that I didn’t feel con­nected to any­thing he might be doing today.

I was wrong.
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Posted in Why Culture Sucks

 

Apple improved its DRM-​​free purchase policy! Woot!

20 Feb

A while back Apple went DRM free with iTunes, a move her­alded far and wide by sundry and all. On the plus side, los­ing encryp­tion while improv­ing audio play­back is a clear value-​​added bonus for we long­time users. I can actu­ally put the music I pur­chased onto non-​​iPod devices now, such as my smart­phone. This has empleas­ened me.

On the down­side, though, as I noted before, you could only upgrade your library all at once, in a mas­sive whack — which, in my case, was more than two Franklins.* Even though the per-​​album cost aver­ages (for me) $3.00, I have a hell of a lot of iTunes content.

Sometime in the last cou­ple of weeks they appear to have changed that pol­icy. iTunes users can now upgrade their con­tent on a per-​​album and per-​​song basis, rather than hav­ing to blow a wad on every­thing at once.

This is a much more sen­si­ble and fea­si­ble approach, and has allowed me (for one) to pro­ceed with the upgrade and downloads.

It was a nice move, and hand­ily did away with my one irri­ta­tion with the upgrade policy.

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* Initially the cost was more like $140. As more upgrade­able con­tent has been added, though, the price has gone up.

 
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Posted in General Foolishness

 

Samsung might be a little tone-​​deaf

19 Feb

For the NV100, Samsung is try­ing to illus­trate how crisp its cap­tures are by a pos­si­bly clever, and cer­tainly notice­able, cam­paign. They’ve got images show­ing peo­ple cap­tured in a split sec­ond, so fast that their bod­ies appear to be bisected:

The imagery is effec­tive and star­tling, and cer­tainly arrests your atten­tion. But in the series of ads, they did some­thing that is gen­uinely obtuse.
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Posted in Advertising Matters, One Thousand Words

 

Going off message

17 Feb

Oh my.

Police say an upstate New York tele­vi­sion exec­u­tive who sought to improve the image of Muslims in the media beheaded his wife after she filed for divorce.

Yes. Really. I do not believe this is going to do much to reform the image of Muslims.

Who knows, though? Maybe he anes­thetized her first or some­thing, rather than just hack­ing her head off like the Islamo-​​perverts do in Iraq.

And, on the heels of the tale of Alfie Patten, the 13-​​year-​​old Brit father of a baby girl, we have Bristol Palin bor­row­ing from Mommy’s lime­light to artic­u­late* on being an unwed teenage mother as well:

“It’s just, like, I’m not liv­ing for myself any­more. It’s, like, for another per­son, so it’s dif­fer­ent,” Bristol Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “And just you’re up all night. And it’s not glam­orous at all,” she said. “Like, your whole pri­or­i­ties change after hav­ing a baby.”

Yes, the fore­go­ing rich broth of insight is an actual quote. The rest of her blather is every bit as tol­er­a­ble. I was all like, OMG, I’m like preg­nant? And like, Mom, she like, was all gaaah, and I was all like yeah I know, but like we decided to like, you know, go ahead with it.

The best option is absti­nence, the teen said, but added that she didn’t think that was “realistic.”

She’s right, of course. But then, it seems using con­tra­cep­tion is equally unre­al­is­tic to her. I have the sad, sink­ing feel­ing that Levi Johnston (the father) is actu­ally the bright­est con­trib­u­tor to that par­tic­u­lar genetic mashup.

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* This is an exam­ple of using what writ­ers call irony.

 
3 Comments

Posted in You Must be F***ing Kidding

 

What she said

16 Feb

in reply, bor­row­ing from Song of Songs:

More delight­ful is your love than wine.
My lover belongs to me and I to him.
I sought him, whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him.

I will rise then and go about the city.
In the streets and cross­ings I will seek him whom my heart loves.

I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go.

Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm, for stern as death is love, relent­less as the nether world is devo­tion; its flames are a blaz­ing fire.

Deep waters can­not quench love, nor floods sweep it away. Were one to offer all he owns to pur­chase love, he would be roundly mocked.

With your gen­tle­ness you came at a time of deep sor­row and with your gen­tle­ness you waited and with your gen­tle­ness you waited until I saw.

And you have nes­tled in my heart forever­more. There’s one you won’t find writ­ten any­where but on my heart.

I need to find a way to keep my socks from being blown clean off.

 
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Posted in General Foolishness

 

Then, and now

16 Feb

What I wrote in 2004:

They still ride in the lock of time, breath­ing with tril­lions of oth­ers across three wide dimen­sions and a fourth still unbro­ken in one direc­tion, and they know they will die but will never die, for this is the feel­ing that has moved every man from the first human stir­ring of heart in the first chest in the first for­got­ten pri­mor­dial wild. Before there were paint­ings on cave walls there was this. After words have died for­ever from the uni­verse, this will remain.

Jektres. Renetta. His and Rena’s rejected fetus. Jek’s seed in him once and his in Jek. They are in this as well. With Link and Nik and Sholi, and every­one else that may be before them in their lives, and those around them now, fus­ing in bliss and flesh and thought. His mother and father. His uncle and his aunts and his other uncle. Everyone who has ever been com­plete in any other. Uncounted tril­lions and tril­lions of cells divid­ing and form­ing and shim­mer­ing and spread­ing. He and Link have joined the throb­bing choir of life. Chloroplast tak­ing in light. Sperm enter­ing egg. Harmony and coun­ter­point, melody and syn­co­pa­tion. Song. Song. Song.

What I wrote tonight:
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Posted in General Foolishness, Huh.

 

Oh, well yes, of course.

16 Feb

Naturally I’m in love with her, and told her so on Valentine’s Day.*

I mean, duh. She can quote from Holy Grail**, knows what a d20 is, likes Firefly and doesn’t live in her par­ents’ basement.

You just can’t do bet­ter than that.

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* Awwwwwwww.

** Those of you think­ing, “She’s got huge tracts of…” You just watch it.

 
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Posted in General Foolishness

 

Hup!

16 Feb

I’m work­ing on start­ing a stu­pid meme, derived partly from Harvey Birdman: Ending dif­fer­ent thoughts with “…in my pants.”* A sort of com­bi­na­tion of Bulwer-​​Lytton and ado­les­cent humor, as in, “It was a dark and stormy night … in my pants.” The only real rule is that it’s got to be a rec­og­niz­able lit­er­ary reference.

I men­tioned this at a gath­er­ing of nerdish and odd­ish types this week­end at a friend’s house. Several in my pantses went around** such as “O Romeo, Romeo, where­fore art thou? In my pants?”, “And the raven, never flit­ting, still is sit­ting, still is sit­ting … in my pants”, and so on. But it was the friend that came up with the best of the lot: I think, there­fore I am … in my pants.

Somehow the GF man­aged to tol­er­ate (actu­ally enjoy) most of it. That was nice, and a bit sur­pris­ing. But The Moment arrived when, as we were sit­ting down to throw down some Magic — she actu­ally joined in, but that’s not it — and she needed a life counter.

She asked for a d20.

No, lis­ten. She actu­ally said, “I need a d20.”

Those of you who are male and know what a d20 is know what that moment meant. The rest of you — you’ll just never grasp it.

So my friend’s eyes bug out, he looks like he’s hav­ing a seizure, and I look over at him, nod and say, “…in my pants.”

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* Derived from some­thing set up at first by Black Vulcan, and a phrase that recurs in the series:

Harvey: Mr Vulcan, tell us about your super­power.
Black Vulcan: Pure elec­tric­ity … in my pants.
Harvey: Tell us, what would life be like with­out your pow­ers?
Black Vulcan: Well, you know when the power goes out in your house? It would be like that … but in your pants.

** In my pants.

 
7 Comments

Posted in General Foolishness

 

So much for that

10 Feb

And thus doth win­ter end. This is the same view as this morn­ing. Amazing what a dif­fer­ence nine hours can make.

 
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Posted in One Thousand Words

 

I’m dreaming of a white … uh, Valentine’s Day?

10 Feb

This is just plain weird.

Now many, many, many of you might look at this and think oh, win­ter, so what?

Well, this is what the land­scape more nor­mally looks like.
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Posted in Huh., One Thousand Words

 

Two movies, one review

09 Feb

Went to see Inkheart and Coraline this week­end with the GF, and thought it might be con­struc­tive to do a par­al­lel review of them, because to my mind they have at least a few things in com­mon. Also note that there may be spoil­ers, depend­ing on how you view things, below the fold here.

For starters, I haven’t read the nov­els either was derived from. This is a lacuna I intend to change, but it’s sig­nif­i­cant because I have a feel­ing that Inkheart, in par­tic­u­lar, suf­fered a lit­tle from my not hav­ing read the book.

The only truly decent tran­scrip­tion of fan­tasy to screen I’ve ever seen is, of course, Pete Jackson’s LotR tril­ogy — and even with his six hours’ screen time to play with, he still had to release extended, enhanced ver­sions on DVD. If you actu­ally want to watch the spe­cial edi­tions of that film set in one go, be pre­pared for a 9 to 10 hour time investment.

Inkheart felt a bit thin in places, a bit rushed. I had the feel­ing many of the char­ac­ters were more sketches than the fully-​​drawn iden­ti­ties Cornelia Funke likely cre­ated. The novel is rel­a­tively long, which is surely one rea­son. But the plot requires us to first become famil­iar with the con­cept of “sil­ver­tongues”, and then to become at least par­tially immersed in a nar­ra­tive within the nar­ra­tive, the epony­mous Inkheart. That’s a lot of devel­op­ment and back­ground we’re not really able to see or become involved in, at least not in the two-​​hour run­time of the movie.
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Posted in Why Culture Sucks

 

I miss the Talking Heads

07 Feb

I really do. I’ve been a fan for more than a quar­ter century.

Eeriest part. “Years ago, I was an angry young man…” Byrne’s pre­sen­ta­tion, his face. Nice, effec­tive. Eyes closed, then open, then closed again.

That video was made twenty years ago.

Christ, they all look so young.

What does that mean about me?

 
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Posted in Huh., O, Pine With Me, One Thousand Words

 
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