geeksfromlastnight?

before there was textsfromlastnight, there was bash.org:

#954315 +(260)- [X]

<@LAMMJohnson> I suspect Star Trek Into Darkness will be good but not great.
<@LAMMJohnson> My reasoning for this is thus                 
<@LAMMJohnson> Perfect score because all of its words have a length that is a power of 2.
<@LAMMJohnson> Minus one point because total letters is not a power of two.
<@LAMMJohnson> Not even including spaces.
<@LAMMJohnson> However, the letters in all of the words plus the number of words is 24.
<@LAMMJohnson> Overall score for the movie: 8.5                         
<~chown> LAMMJohnson - Vice Executive of the Autism Department   
<@LAMMJohnson> The score, correctly, is a power of two marred with an ugly fraction.
<@LAMMJohnson> Although the fraction is 1/2
<@LAMMJohnson> Actually, the overall fraction is 17/20 which I pretty much hate.
<@LAMMJohnson> Which means I will initially think the movie is OK but then later change my mind and hate it.
<~chown> LAMMJohnson - Honourable Chairman of the Autism Empire

Star Wars III: "How did we let this happen? We're smarter than this."

Wow, been a long time since I started to rock 'n roll this Star Wars Blu-ray release, huh?

EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH

Original Thoughts:

This one I was waiting eagerly for. Watched the trailers on YouTube. Talked about its potential with friends. Bought tickets ahead of time for opening night for me and my date (yes, date).

I honestly figured that, with as many separate plot lines and situations that Lucas HAD to resolve, I'd be happy with "good enough". The trailers I saw looked good - not a lot of info, but enough to whet the appetite, and I was honestly looking forward to it.

Things I liked:

1) Space battle opener. This was a feast for the eyes, and a true testament to space opera everywhere. Just imagine what someone could do with the Lensman series!

2) The bubble-opera scene. Maybe George had a weird day. Maybe Hayden and Ian took their "work past the director" pills that morning. Whatever happened, this scene, where Palpatine subtly begins to reel Anakin in, is very well done, in my opinion.

3) The effects. Yes, I know that calling out the FX in a Star Wars movie seems silly, but really, I'm not kidding. There are things going on that are simply amazing, and 90% of them aren't really there (at least in scale - there was a lot more model work in the prequels than is commonly understood).

4) The finish line. He did it. He managed to wrap up all of the main, and most of the secondary, plot lines he had created heretofore, in a relatively coherent and entertaining package. That couldn't have been easy.

5) Rebel Blockade Runner in the house! Woo hoo! One of the best-loved, most-desired, and least-served spaceship designs in all of the Star Wars modeling community, and there it is up on the big screen again in all its 11-engined glory.

Things I liked less:

1) Part of the opening crawl:

"War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere."

"There are heroes on both sides." Really? Well, maybe, except that the Republic's heroes have names like "Skywalker" and "Ki-adi Mundi" and "Commander Cody", and the guys flying the separatists' banners all have speeder licenses issued to "Darth Tyrannous", "General Grievous", and "Major BabyCrusher". No doubt there was a Corporal "Atilla von Cribdeath" waiting for his turn at the Separatist hero machine. (Thanks to the late author Brain Daley for that last name.)

"Heroes on both sides" reeks of moral relativism. Moral relativism perturbs me.

2) Ensmallening of the Star Wars universe. It's not bad enough that Darth Vader built C-3PO? Now Yoda has to be best buddies with Chewbacca? Yuck. Next you'll tell me that the Emperor's face wasn't ruined slowly by years of messing with Black Magic, i.e. the Dark Side of the Force, which would be consistent with the morals of all those classic fairy tales that George Lucas professes to want to emulate; but instead that it was melted by 20 seconds of force lightning as part of one fight.  But he would never do that.

3) Palpatine's lightsaber. Phantom Menace's Darth Maul showed us the double saber-staff, Attack of the Clones' Count Dooku wielded a one-handed "fencer saber" - so clearly one of the differences between the Sith and the Jedi (blue or green single-blades, anyone?  Everyone?) is that the Sith are much less conservative as regards their weapons and fighting styles. Giving in more to their passions, their individuality comes through in their weapons. Intentional or not, I like it. It fits.

The Palpatine/Sidious character was built up as clearly more of a thinker than a fighter, a talker and a persuader and a liar rather than an ass-beater. Palpatine is overall a wielder of raw dark side power, not physical tools. This power seemed to mainly manifest as an overall cloud of foreboding and confusion pervading all of the Jedi (all across the galaxy!), and in that context, the complete eschewing of traditional fighting styles and weapons would have been perfectly in character.

When confronting first Mace Windu and then Yoda, it would have been far more interesting and proper, I think, to have the Emperor's sole weapon be his force lightning - for close-in work show him focusing it into an energy blade of sorts and let him duel with saber-wielders, even. It would help avoid the repetitiveness of the lightsaber fights in the 3rd act of the movie, would have looked better (sorry Ian and Sam Jackson - you're just not the kind of movie swordsmen that MacGregor and Christensen are), and would have been more appropriate, I think. Plus, I could believe him force-blasting 3 bad-ass Jedi swordsmen in 5 seconds as opposed to cutting them down with a blade like they'd never even seen a saber before.

4) Space and time. This deserves a longer post - I think I'll break it out into its own in a bit, but suffice it to say that, for heroic drama to work, there needs to be tension - a chance for failure of a choice. For that possibility of failure to be made real, there has to be a challenge of some sort - usually overwhelming odds or a ticking clock, and sometimes both. Another way to achieve or increase tension is inflicting sense of isolation on the character, in time or in space or in both. In the prequels especially, there is no such isolation - you want to go from the heart of the galactic capitol to the edges of civilization, you can be there before the next commercial.  Yawn.  And a bit jarring for space opera.

Warning: EXTREME NICHE GEEKERY AHEAD.

5) Rebel Blockade Runner in the house, but they based the CG model on the stupid and inaccurate West End Games line drawings instead of the original studio model.  Which us geeks have been drooling over since the summer of 1977. Dickmove, George.  But a special "geek you" to the  CGI artists/modelers who made sure they included a couple Panther tank rear decks in around the docking bay.  Nice touch, there.

EXTREME NICHE GEEKERY OVER.

6) To steal a line from the Rifftrax, "What? From Jedi Knight to child murderer without even a stop at kiting checks?"  Let's face it - moving the story along at the speed of a charging rhino means we're going to be feeling a little rushed, but really.


Blu-Ray Hubbub

Once again I am hard-pressed to claim to spot anything that is different in the BluRay version. It's pretty and it sounds great, and the special features are nice. After 3 prequels, it's still hard to believe they never had to make a suit of Clone Trooper armor - they were, each and every pixel-jack of them, CGI creations.

Overall

I like it.  Sure, I have criticisms and sure I think it could've been better/different/more like what I wanted, but really, there's 3 more movies of material in there at minimum to do it "right".  Heck, the Clone Wars series (which is totally awesome, by the way and should be seen if you haven't yet) showed that you could do 6 seasons of stories and still not be technically done.

When you're done with The Clone Wars you can totally buy the fact that Anakin Skywalker could flip burgers for the Dark Side.  No problem.  And you'll care.  After an hour of this movie?  Mmmmm, not so much, in my opinion.  And since it's the whole point of the storyline, it's a big problem. It's not enough to kill the whole movie for me - the Ben/Anakin duel, the other things I mentioned in the list of likes above, and the fact that Lucas managed to tie it up at all carry a a lot of weight with me - but I understand that it does ruin the movie for a lot of people.

Placement in my list?  Solid 3rd.  Better than Attack of the Clones but not my Top Two, neither of which will surprise anyone, I'm sure.

My rating of its place in the pack, best-to-worst:

1 - XXXX
2 - XXXX
3 - Revenge of the Sith
4 - Attack of the Clones
5 - The Phantom Menace
6 - XXXX

Next up, for the non-geeks: A New Hope (i.e. Ep IV i.e. Star Wars.)

Definitely Not the Character I Play

Unlike Midwest Chick, my result from the survey bears almost no relation to the type of Fantast RPG character I played in my youth, although it's in the ballpark with how I play such things now.

Fun stuff though.


I Am A: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard (6th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-13
Dexterity-16
Constitution-11
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-14
Charisma-17

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Captain, Sensors Detect Something Off the Starboard Bow

Uh Oh.
Cashectomy alert! Set wallet to "Empty".

Full Geek Ahead!

Oh, all right. :) (Ones I've read or am reading bolded. Ones I started and never intend to finish starred. My personal comments italicized.)

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Once every year or so)
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
*4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert (Read the first one. Boooooooooring,)
*5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (read the first one. Is he kidding?)
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (on my shelf, embarrassingly never read. I'm just not a Bradley guy.)
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan (Dear lord, no.)
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson (snoozer. Put it down with the last page unread, never picked it up again. I assume something awful happened.)
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore ("Rorshach threw him down an elevator shaft.")
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss (huh?)
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien (I'll be in my bunk.)
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson (the first 3 were bearable. The second 3...)
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange, Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
*66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist (first couple, if this is the one with tree-Elves and a thousand characters)
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks (Fuck Terry Brooks and his jerk-off ripoff "Sword of the Rings" asswipe substitute.)
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn (Would've been nice if he'd've bothered to see the movies first.)
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock (Blood and souls for my -- Oh, just whatever.)
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
*95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Small Chunks of Free Time - Begone With You!

So, I'm not really a big computer gamer, but I play a lot of boardgames and wargames and have spent a fair amount of time with a character sheet in my hands, and I am a huge nerd. And a buddy pointed me to this a month ago:

Desktop Dungeons.

All I can say is, Elf wizard with the fireball glyph? Shit just got real.

This Is Just Plain Cool

Don't recall how I ended up here, but you should check out this Wikipedia entry on the Voynich Manuscript, a 240-page,14th-century book written in code that nobody can break.

.

Here's a quote from wiki: "The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the early 15th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations. Although many possible authors have been proposed, the author, script and language remain unknown. It has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript".

Giant Cave on Moon -- Site of Future Base?

Just what the headline says, boys and girls: there's apparently a huge cave on the moon.

Full Geek Ahead

You got your popular into my awesome! No, you got your awesome into my popular!

From The Thou-Shall-Not-Trifle-In-God's-Domain Desk

Just got this news alert from the WSJ:

"Scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday. Created at a cost of $30 million, the experimental one-cell organism opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale."

Umm. Holy shit.

Flirtin' With Disaster Every Day

So it's a typical Geeky Saturday Night at my place - a few of us dorky guys clustered around my dining room table playing a boardgame (Descent), drinking rum and beer, slinging dice, and sharing tall tales.

At some point the music I have on gets us in "remember when?" mode and a couple of us relate the various songs upon which we -ahem- first entered the gates of manhood in the company of a lady.

My friend, let's call him "Frank", then states firmly "I lost my virginity to Molly Hatchet!" and the pilings-on rained swiftly down from heaven as the rains onto a parched and unknowing prairie:

"Hard core!"
"Did they send a card?"
"Was it all of 'em at once or did they take turns on you?"
"Was it after a show?"
"Did they write a song about it?"

Bomp-ba-lomp-bomp yeahhhhh!

The Hunt For Geek October

So a chick on the Training team a couple of cubicles over is yakking on the phone with tech support over some login/password issue, and she's reading off characters in the NATO-phonic alphabet - "Alpha" "Foxtrot" "Sierra", etc. - and while I'm hearing this, images from the PC Harpoon database of Soviet submarines keep flashing through my head.

Pieces of junk, all of them really, but they were fun to hunt & sink on my old 286.

Anyone know whether there is a good replacement for the HazeGray naval site these days since that one hasn't been updated in a while?

This Was Definitely the Droid I was Looking For

By the way, I just have to show off one of Xmas presents I got for myself.

I now have the BEST PC CASE EVER running in my office.

My digicam is kaput so the product pics will have to serve, but it looks as good or better than the pics there. I've been looking for a non-custom case styled like this for years, and stumbled on this one a week or so before Xmas. It took all of five minutes for me to blow my Xmas budget and click "gimme!". It fits the internals I use, has plenty of room for airflow, and the quietest fan I've ever had. Plus it's the coolest case on the planet. So Fat Max (my big wheeled aluminum floor case that I've used since I bought this place in 2001) got retired to the basement to get some new insides cobbled together from piles of spares.

Did I mention it looks really awesome? Especially since I've painted my office red and hung the Giant Art I bought this summer in there?

Readin', Ritin', 'n R-Nitpickin'

I'm a sci fi geek. I've read, and still read, oodles of sci fi and fantasy. One of the best/worst things in that particular genre, in my opinion, is the franchisable "universe" idea. The most egregious examples being, of course, the Star Trek and Star Wars branches. I think it's both "best" and "worst" because it provides an easy way into reading from the more prevalent and passive media of television and movies, but is also inherently more constrained and less original.

So now the nitpicking, because I don't feel like gloating over the religion of Global Warming's recent reception of a Hand Spear to the Throat: Double Damage - YY, and because I don't feel like panicking over the Senate's decision to open the steaming diaper that is the "Health Care" debate, and I don't quite have a clever title yet for my upcoming "I just saw the new Trek movie and I must pee on it a little" post.

But I do have a bee in my bonnet about a Star Trek: Next Generation book that's over ten years old. Do I know how to prioritize, or what?

So I'm internetting around and I twig to the fact that apparently some not-obscure scifi author had written a Trek book about Picard using a second Doomsday Machine (the giant ice cream cone that ate planets and an unshaven Matt Decker in the second season of the original show) he finds to smoke a Borg cube. This was back in the days when the Borg were still menacing and nigh-invincible, so you'd pretty much need a planet-whacker to have a hope of smacking them around. So anyway, I check the local second hand book dealer and sure enough, I find one.

Now, instead of the "Picard and co. find another ice cream cone o' doom and trick it into blowing itself and a nasty Borg cube up" story I was looking for, I got a "Picard & co. are found by a super-better-follow-on model of the ice cream cone which of course turns out to have been made to fight the Borg in the first place and is hunting Borg cubes, and oh, it's run by ghosts (yeah, ghosts)" story that I wasn't looking for at all. And Data gets his arm ripped off, but it's not a big deal. Altogether I found it to be a disappointing offering. The Next Gen crew is remarkably passive and relatively inconsequential throughout the story, and it suffers from what I call the UNGUT; the UN-Grand Unified Theory that everyone and everything in an epic story arc must be related closely somehow. The Star Wars universe is smaller and less interesting when we find out that Yoda knows Chewbacca, and the Star Trek universe suffers similarly when a terrifying historical piece of bad-assery turns out to be originally intended to solve the very problem facing Our Heroes "today".

In my opinion. Anyway. I can put reviews like the above on Amazon, and a general review of that book is not my point. My point is really "where are the editors and proofers?" Ignoring them, where is common sense? To whit: In the book the author refers to a metal, implying great strength, he calls "castrodinium". This is obviously an attempt as fan service, calling back to the original episode "Balance of Terror", the Run Silent, Run Deep story with the Romulans. During the episode at a briefing after a Federation outpost has been destroyed, Spock brings out a piece of the outpost's armor plating recovered from debris. He calls it by name, identifies it as the strongest alloy known, and then shatters it with his hand to show how big an ass-beater their opponent's new weapon is, because it alters the molecular structure. Nice little scene, effective, and the material he referred to was "cast rodinium".

Cast. As in poured hot into a mold then cooled. Like cast iron, they have cast rodinium. Not castrodinium like it was named after a bearded island dictator. Cast. Sheesh. You'd think a scifi author would be able to pick up on something like that.

In a similar mode, switching geek-gears to Star Wars now, one of the original bonus print items to come out of Star Wars was the Star Wars Sketchbook, wherein budding geeks like me could drool, ooh, and ahh over various and sundry production and design sketches showing various stages of Escape Pods, X-Wings, and Millenium Falcons being created or dead-ended. All hail Joe Johnston. In the blurb introducing the Millenium Falcon drawings, somebody wrote some text about how the MF was heavily modifed now but probably started life as a "stock light freighter". Years later West End Games got the license to do a roleplaying game for Star Wars and gadgets and vehicles of course figured prominently. One of the ones the smuggler characters could go for was the Stock Light Freighter. Once again, where were the editors? Where was the thought that, since the assumptions is that the vehicle doesn't start modified, that it's already "stock"? Gah! It's not a "stock light freighter", it's a stock "light freighter". That one's bothered me for years, and I had to get it off my chest.

And Mr. Zahn, Cloud City floats free - it's not on a long pole that extends to the ground. Again, editors asleep at the wheel.

Yes, I'm a supreme geek.