Some experimental notes

Movies: Loopers was excellent, on par with Inception and On Time for good entertaining movies with actual plots and thought provocation. In a completely different way the new Dredd and Resident Evil movies were quite entertaining and all the more so because they almost entirely lacked a plot or any provocation to thinking -- in fact the blessedly brief moments when they relaxed on the fan service to attempt such things were the low points of either film.

The fan service was particularly strong with the new RE movie. Lovely lovely ridiculous costumes ... including one in my new favourite shade of purple. Almost worth her character being blonde this movie rather than the much better dirty brunette hairstyle of other films. Another positive note is that Ms. Jovovich has put on a little weight and looks much better for it.

Books: Reamde was excellent. It's an easy recommendation for anyone who has read Stephenson before and hearkens back to Cryptonomicon in many ways (all good) with a more mature and skilled writer (and only one time setting, with some mild flashbacks). It's quite the thriller and as might be expected quite educational about all sorts of things. Also read recently of his are Some Remarks, a collection of letters and essays (not quite a pre-death Grumbles but very interesting) and some bits from the Foreworld.

Stephenson and several notable co-conspirators have channeled their interest in historical science fiction and martial arts into a ambitious project. It's one I knew of and did not subscribe to but I am enjoying the output. I'm reading volume two of The Mongoliad and quite enjoying it, though it seems a great deal slimmer than the first volume. Among other pleasant surprises is how compelling the character of the Khagan (Khan of Khans) has been.

I've also recently read, in novels, the latest Rachel Morgan book. It was fine overall, though I must say I am looking forward to the series winding up soon. The author is having trouble balancing 10 books worth of powerlevelling of the heroine (now actually a goddess of sorts) and her allies versus making a compelling antagonist and a readable plot.

Manga:ナナとカオル gets a new character in book 16 and that's really adding to the fun of what was already a great read and good kana practice (from the sound effects and signs).

Comics: I've been enjoying reading comics on my Kindle Fire from Amazon and Comixology both. In addition to more than $20 of tasty classic Witchblade collections (Origins V1-3), a Dr Who, Star Trek crossover (?!), I've dipped my toe into Batman books as well. The Arkham City collection of all the game tie-in comics was brilliant, not only setting up the characters and story, bridging the two games, but beautifully drawn. I got it from Amazon: Batman: Arkham City. Further if you have ever enjoyed a Batman comic then Hush is not to be missed.

Alas, all of the complaints about the Comixology Kindle Fire Comics app are true. Most damning is how few of the comics available online show up in the Kindle app for reading even after purchase.

Telly:Revolution continues to teeter on the edge between watchable schlock and terrible drama. Grimm is still good as the second season rolls along. The new American Holmes show Elementary is showing hopeful signs two episodes in, but they have a heavy burden with the Great Detective. I teared up a bit at the end of the Dr. Who season finale.

With October some of the best shows are coming back on the air both top-notch and delicious schlock alike ... and almost all on the BBC. The new American Horror Story show looks to be even better than the first show and the new Bedlam isn't too bad. One of my all-time favourite guilty pleasures shows Hex is being replayed Saturdays and there's more yet to come. The not-a-real-Tivo is getting a good workout.

I manage to watch a Rachel Maddow about twice a week but she watches all of them. She has a stronger stomach I guess. Please on't misunderstand I adore and strongly respect Ms Maddow as one of the few journalists standing, but I have to limit my exposure to political news. The last dosage had me ruminating about the constitutional definition of treason and foaming a bit.

Studies: I'm making minimal progress on my year-long NSM studies themselves because I'm studying packet analysis (and soon Snort) for my 503 class and preparing lessons, labs, and teaching another class (401) in weekly chunks. I'm elated to be teaching but I'm still struggling to juggle it all around work and home. Oh and I got my CISSP, finally.

Moved: Still unpacking in rare fits and spurts. We're starting into a new phase of arranging and putting away of things that will likely run the month but may result in some books finally getting shelved. I have discovered three items (so far) borrowed/misplaced by others and need to conspire to drawn their attention to this fact...

How about any of you lot? Any good reads of late?

In which even the self-censorship PSAs have a little fun: Have a look at Boss of Dominatrix Although apparently not available en Espanol yet, this does air, as I saw part of it on CNN (with close-captions).

Crescent (a sci-fi horror podcast novel) is coming along nicely. For all of the cliches and odd choice, it's a fun listen, particularly when you are not paying too close attention. Of course some bits are worth going back for, and I've actually started over the current episode (26) after nearly finishing it. The clue for me was not being able to recall quite how a particular character died. There's some great stuff in this episode and not the least of it is a remark by the lead character Gerald who admits that not only is he 'not a hero but he's not too damned bright'. The story before and after this admission bear it out, but in an entertaining way. Another interesting bit was this brief plot holiday, in which characters and listeners alike were allowed to relax a bit and think of some things as resolved .. which bring me spoiler-less-ly to another interesting bit about Crescent: two separate competing adversarial antagonists

I finished One Among the Sleepless (a noisy neighbours podcast novel) and I think I enjoyed it quite a bit overall. I did skim a bit, and skip a couple eps entirely (more due to iTunes/iPod auto-delete misfeature than intent), but I was fairly ravenously devouring it, and found most of the morsels quite tasty. And yes, to keep with the theme of the post, there is a dominatrix...

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is a fantastic release with a buggy installer. I could go on for pages of all of the new stuff, the fixed stuff, but Ars Technica already did. Their review is not for the faint of heart, mind you .. All over it's a fantastic release, chock full of great stuff that will now make it even more painful to try and use other so-called personal computers that don't have it. (QuickLook, for one) Here's a tasty tidbit: They shipped Subversion (and RubyCocoa and .. ). It runs faster on my MBP 17 than Tiger did. If only more OS distributors could do that every release... *wist* Oh, and I mustn't forget: the installer is kinda lossy. Backup twice, and be prepared to do a wipe and install .. even if that isn't the original plan. Or you could just use a really clean disk and pray. After you backup.In fact you should buy something like these Backup drives before you install. And then you can use Time Machine, hooray.

I've finished the tutorial for, and have mostly imported old NanoWrimo crap into, my fresh new copy of Scrivener, an amazing working tool for writing and organizing writing written by this fellow (who is quite correct in his blog about Apple screwing the Select Developers on the Leopard beta release, btw). In addition to being a really cool tool that I hope to get lots of use out of, Scrivener is a fantastic example of independent Mac OS X development and the power of the platform. Oh and I found about Scrivener from the always enlightening LJ superstar folk. Cheers!

I haven't read much on dead trees lately. I'm finally starting to make good progress on the "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" screed I grabbed an ebook of awhile back. It really is quite good. He asks many of the right questions and even provides some answers from his personal experiences and professional knowledge. His approach to "what's so special about Western nations?" was particularly savoury, even though he hasn't much of an answer .. and in fact that's the strength of the piece. In a peculiar way his manner of discussing what a science would be like (without trying to create it himself) and asking very good questions (without answering them, at least not fully). I may have to dig out more on this David Graeber fellow, as he hasn't disappointed yet.

And then I spent the last twenty minutes updating sone of my scripts for the new version on rbosa (0.4, now available as a gem). Fun, a little. And now, @coffee.

QotD: What television show stands the test of time?

M*A*S*H

Covering topics of war, death, life, love, loss, and even the happy stuff too on occasion, MASH not only implements the classic themes of literature and human existence but does so with poignancy and rare talent.

The writing and performances both of this show have already guaranteed it a long life.  It's in syndication somewhere, always, and has been released on video and DVD in its entirety, I believe.

Originally posted on adric.vox.com

Successfully avoided massive social gathering this weekend. Spent most of the weekend watching telly and eating junk food with kittyglitter. Saw Season Three of 4400, both discs of Return of the King, and ... oh, some Family Guy, and ... hmmm. Then home Sunday for some more BioShock, and some Food Network trash with sotto_voce on Monday. And made it back homeward for a late dinner with Dove. Ate too much this weekend, blech.

I've been reading some collected ghost stories from Memoware rather than starting in on another full on classic novel. I did finally finish up Kushiel's Scion last week sometime. That was fun and quite interesting in places, if quite long. Imriel is probably a more interesting character than Phedre, if a little bit super-powered.

Gravedancers (from FearNet, unfortunately) was quite well executed and fun to watch. Jumpy and scary in places, but with an interesting little plot and victims who make good choices, mostly .. not that it helps :D

Reincarnation (ibid, although with less jamming) was really good, if you happen to enjoy creepy perception-twisty Japanese movies with creepy little girl (and creepy doll too!). Also, a minimum of three lovely Japanese actresses does not hurt at all.

Babylon 5: Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark: the first new Bab 5 material in several years, this DVD has two stories that lightly connect with each other (call them the B story and the A story). Both stories are quite nifty in their own regard, in terribly different ways. I much prefer the A story, with the weight of the galaxy on President Sheridan's good-humoured but sagging shoulders. 'Bonus materials' include some cute behind the scenes interviews and moving tributes to the cast members who have passed on.

I'm still in the middle of Kushiel's Scion, perhaps I will make some progress of that today now that I paid some bills.

Blee? I've been sooo tired this week...

Started Moll Flanders. The prose style is, well, jogging or perhaps a light run. I suppose the author has a lot of ground to cover. There was entirely too much of the distasteful flavour of Justine in the introduction¹. Of course this is about on level with me hoping to one day find a manuscript of Tales of the Arabian Nights where the phrase "Allah be praised" has not been added to every verse with a crayon or some original Buddhist literature that doesn't thin of Gotama as a god. *mutter*

At least Discordians don't have that trouble. Yet. As soon as someone figures out how to turn a profit...

¹ Justine is a unpleasant novella by the overrated hack De Sade. If you imagine a sort of 'Perils of Pauline' schtick where all manner of bad things happen to the heroine, apply what you know of DeSade's far too well-documented ideas on bad things (viz. buggery), you're halfway there. Then, rather than a rescue by a heroic mountie, substitute an adult religious conversion and (as I recall) a one way trip to a nunnery. Repentance occurs often and noisily well before death. Both halves of the work are unreadable due to their discussion of torture (hers and then yours) and horrible execution.²

² Slightly back on topic, the introduction to Moll Flanders goes to great literary lengths, and use repetition to try to encourage two conflicting beliefs in the prospective reader (publisher): Namely a) that the book is full of racy stuff that will be fun to read and b) that it's okay to read the smut because all of it punished and teaches moral lessons. No doubt there was some law or regulation requiring or encouraging such disclaimers on literature to ensure religious propagation and moral turpitude. I suppose we can expect more of that in this country soon.³

³: How many geek points do I get for having more footnotes than body paragraphs, both by length and by number?

Watched the first episode of the new season of The 4400 with the roomie. Lots of spice-weasel action, quite fun.

And then I started in on back Dr. Who, and watched the "Human Nature" "Family of Blood" two-parter back to back. Damn that was well crafted, scary in some places, merely startling in others, and heart-wrenching in a couple moments.

And crashed.

So, I have labouriously removed most of the shiny plastic from the outside of a shiny plastic box containing some glossy paper and a shiny plastic discus. One more to go.

Damn Amazon and their "Only 18 more dollars and we ship the whole order for free!" Ah well, if it wasn't so easy, it would not be evil. I bought two audio cds: Somebody's Miracle, Liz Phair's post-divorce romance album .. and something Amazon's firefly code recommended, ostensibly because i rated some Bjoerk albums: Emiliana Torrini, Love In the Time of Science.

ITunes (more easy evil there) has digested the Liz disc and wants the other. *tears plastic*, feeds cd to PowerBook.

Hours later Never posted this, eh? Haven't listened to new music yet. Went to UPS store in Georgia, went to Starbucks, came back to orifice...

The new music is good so far. She does sound a bit like Bjoerk, only there haven't been any incredibly annoying bits yet (5 tracks in).