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| Have to say its nice to have a weekend at the end of a twelve day week, and a long weekend at that.
Basically did nothing today which was nice but I found a collection of Larry Niven's Draco Tavern stories which is even nicer. | |
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| Walking across the Commonwealth Ave bridge today I was for a moment quite disconcerted by the lack of rear vision...
John Scalzi's The Android's Dream is well worth chasing down, much fun to read. | |
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| Not riding to work feels odd. Quite liked Empire of Ivory (the latest in the Temeraire series), just starting in on Scalzi's The Android's Dream with its very P K Dick tribute cover. | |
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| As in "flat as a pancake" when I checked it today. I'll change it tomorrow. I received a largish collection of books and manga* from Slow Glass Books which kind of kept me occupied for most of the day and will do for a couple of weeks. Scalzi's The Last Colony rocked and... ( Brief but somewhat cryptic spoiler )*Including ARIA V1, and AQUA V2 is on order. Yay! | |
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| First the bad: I have officially lost interest in Bionic Woman. Frankly, I was about to watch it tonight and just couldn't be bothered. Maybe someone I know will buy it and I'll borrow it later to watch without ads but I'm not holding my breath. In many ways Bionic Woman is one of those 80percenters (to borrow a phrase I picked up from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rdmasters IIRC) that could have been great and are frustrating when they miss the mark. The kawaii: So I watched Card Captor Sakura instead. And I would just like to state for the record that Tomoyo-chan is disturbing... :) The good: Heroes. It has taken a while this season, and I was beginning to wonder if Heroes was going to be a one series wonder but tonight's episode nailed it. Looking forward to next week. | |
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| OK, so we've seen the third episode of 2nd season Heroes and I now have a possible explanation for the aspects of the 1st season that I've ranted about previously. | |
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| Despite the interesting start to the day, today at work was fairly productive so I thought that the fun was over.
Little did I know - there was a brief power cut this evening followed by my continued re-watching of series 1 of Heroes. Oh well, tomorrow is another day. :) | |
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| I blame Battlestar Galactica. | |
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| To get started the plot for 28 Days Later depends on a group of animal rights activists who are, frankly, evidence of evolution in action.
This irritated me at the time that I saw 28 Days Later, but I got over it and enjoyed the rest of the film.
But it is a plot device that, for me at least, only works once. Unfortunately Black Sheep uses it too so I walked out about half an hour in - it completely shattered the suspension of disbelief for me.
Sigh. | |
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| As you may have guessed from the title I saw Transformers this evening.
As a colleague at work noted this is a movie aimed at 11 year old boys. Judging by some of the costumes they had the female lead (almost) wearing I'd move the target more towards 13 year olds.
It is also a blatant recruiting film for the US military (although I note with some amusement that the product placement adviser beat out the military advisor in the credits. Just).
But having said that, there are some refreshing elements to this movie. The female lead Mikaela Barnes (played by Megan Fox) is skilled, intelligent, loyal, and courageous (a word I chose very carefully, she has her moment of fear but faces it and conquers it).
Given the target audience, I think that this is at least slightly subversive scripting and I thoroughly approve.
As for the male lead Sam Witwicky (played by Shia LaBeouf) ? Well to quote the friend I saw it with, he achieves acceptable levels of mediocrity by the end and does get a few things right.
Bad, but watchably so on an $8 ticket. I wouldn't have paid more.
I'm still undecided as to whether this will eventually qualify for the ranks of the gloriously bad. | |
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| This morning I was in the gym for less than an hour... and the fairing frosted over. Oh, and this was while the sun was up. In other news lilyseahas written a wonderful post for mutual friends about our ballooning yesterday with willowgypsy. Tonight I'll try to write up a review of the National Capital Orchestra concert I went to yesterday afternoon. For the moment, very enjoyable. Mind you its getting to the point where I don't care what the NCO plays, I know I'm going to enjoy it anyway. :) The drive train is still being problematic towards the top end of the middle ring but seems to be settling down outside of that range. Oh, and I've read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and may post some thoughts about it later. It was a busy weekend. | |
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| This is a spoiler free review. Its more about impressions than the storyline.
And the 1st impression is one of tight, disciplined editing. There is nothing extraneous in the storyline; all shotguns on the mantlepiece are used and don't usually get much time to gather dust whilst they're waiting to be fired.
The 2nd impression is that the tight editing vastly improves the character development, and enhances the general "War on Terror" atmosphere of the story.
All in all, a very impressive piece of work.
EDIT: A couple of amusing items in the end credits (alas no easter eggs, sys admins, or business analysts):
a) Drapesmasters. What the...?
b) Wand Combat Choreographers
(Note the plural in both cases) | |
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| For those who haven't seen this post by stephen_dedmanregarding the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein's birth, it is well worth a look. baby_elvishas also mentioned it. Even now RAH casts a long shadow over science fiction; the genre would have been poorer without him. | |
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| I saw the last episode this morning before work. Spoiler free reactions above the cut, one major, major, spoiler beneath the cut.
Without any spoilers I'd have to say: Good to almost the last drop. There's one aspect that was a big disappointment and the cause of a mini rant. But overall an excellent 1st season and looking forward to the next. | |
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| I saw the end of this excellently crafted series today. I can certainly understand fogod42's reaction to what was an entirely appropriate ending. Me? Bizarrely, despite seeing the whole thing, and despite an interest in the spin off, I'm still not sure if I liked it. Compelling viewing? Certainly. Excellent characterisation? Check High production values? Yep. Well scripted with a black sense of humour popping up every so often? Got that. But I'm not sure if its a show I can watch again. Fortunately, I'll get the chance to starting next week on the ABC (Sundays 8:30 apparently). If you haven't seen it, Life on Mars is certainly one of the most intelligent cop shows I've seen in a long time and definitely recommended. At least once. | |
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| A quick note of thanks to fred_mouseand nevryn. My copies of Borderlands that I bought at SwanCon but couldn't carry have arrived in Canberra and I've been enjoying them greatly. I may even, if I'm feeling energetic, write some reviews later. :) | |
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| This outstanding, and hilarious, short story can be found in the Villains Victorious anthology edited by the ubiqitous Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers. Told from the perspective of the classic Dark Queen of faery tales dictating her biography to a hapless scribe it is one of my favourites that I dig out every so often. Best line: "I dealt with the council in the traditional manner, replaced the carpets, and set about consolidating power." Thoroughly recommended, track it down if you can | |
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| I've been reading the snippets of this for some time and out of impatience bought the electronic advance readers copy from Webscriptions today. I'll try to limit the spoilage but if you're looking forward to this title (and you should be) you might not want to hit the cut. Looking forward to when the hardcover comes out so I can sit down and read it properly. :) | |
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| A quote from 1824: The Arkansas War (which I thoroughly enjoyed).The speaker is President Monroe discussing the lowlife in the process of stealing the 1824 presidential election in the alternate history timeline
"It's one thing to gain office by pandering to prejudice, unreason, and blind fury. Quite another to guide a nation based on them. The first can be done, yes. The second, not at all."
This may have been true once, it is a great tragedy that it is no longer so. :(
UPDATE: The discussion is between Monroe and John Quincy Adams who in the original time line (as opposed to the alternate history of the novel) was the next president. I won't say who the lowlife who steals the election is but those familiar with the period should be able to work it out.
In any event 1812: The Rivers of War and 1824: The Arkansas War are superb reads and thoroughly recommended. | |
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| A collection of Christopher Anvil short stories and 1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint.
The Arkansas War is a sequel to The Rivers Of War which is a "pure" alternate history novel.
By "pure" I mean in sense of there being no overt science fictional elements such as the all-too-common device of time travel.
The break point in The Rivers of War is actually quite subtle: shifting an arrow by maybe an inch so that a wound that took Sam Houston out for months at the Battle of the Horseshoe Bend becomes only a light wound, leaving him a major player in the remainder of the War of 1812.
But as they say, from tiny acorns... | |
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