Return of the Editor
Hard to say whether this is a forgery or not, but this web page claimes to have a revised clip of the last scene in Return of the Jedi. Yes, Sebastian Shaw’s face has been replaced with Hayden Christiansen’s.
*sigh*
Speaking of tech
Hail Eris! I have a 2-button mouse again at work. Once you get used to right-clicking, it’s not easy to give it up.
“You mean this isn’t real?”
I suppose it’s because I know a little about technology, but I tend to get quickly annoyed by “sucked into the computer / Internet” stories. To start with, there’s no “there” to be sucked into, mainly – it’s all numbers, words, and pictures constantly copied from A to B and back; and there’s no technology on the horizon that can copy & paste your consciousness like an MS Word file. Moving the story ahead several technology levels helps a bit, as does tossing in blatant magic (if a character is sucked into a painting, no author ever tries to convince us that it’s a glitch in the painting). Still, to simulate *everything* about a world, one needs information storage, processing, and display greater than the sum of the information to be simulated. If you plan to build an virtual planet with a convincing ecosystem and 6 billion people, that can be a heck of a challenge.
Ironically, one of the movies that did the best jobs of this was actually Tron. The hero was sucked into the computer by a device specifically designed to suck physical objects into computers – there was no “I put my cell phone on my low-bandwidth acoustic modem and I suddenly ended up here!” crud. And the simulation he arrived in was clearly crude and basic – there was no pretense of complete realism. Maybe the plot and characters didn’t hold up, but at least there was some underlying logic.
On the other hand, a compelling plot and interesting characters can easily make up for technological BS. The world of the Matrix movies is extremely technologically suspect, but at least during the first movie, we didn’t mind. Just be aware that if you have an “in the computer” story you have to tell, make sure something’s distracting us from the technology, please?
It seems I’m a cat lover.
I did the “Opera” quiz… it was a moment of weakness.
No, I don’t mean the web browser.
Fandom ought to equal tolerance
Even though vt_komainu has already posted a link to this guy’s entry, I want to quote this paragraph from Lay Off the Furries, OK?
“Fursuiters aren’t hurting anyone. […] They’re role playing. I remember when more SF fans did this, and I miss it terribly. You know, maybe the fursuiters wouldn’t be so remarkable if there were more space pirates, jedis, elves, ninjas, wizards, androids, zombies, Vulcans, barbarians, Klingons, starship pilots, and bounty hunters running around, like we used to have in the old days. When I first attended my first science fiction convention over 20 years ago, it was explained to us newcomers that we didn’t have to create a fannish persona to attend. But we did have to do so if we were going to ever be accepted as one of the cool kids. Then fannish persona and consistent hall costuming declined precipitously, and now only the fursuiters and the anime cosplayers still do it. Well you know what? That doesn’t mean that they’re sick and weird. It means that the rest of us suck.”
Hear, hear!
Yay for Rain!
Happy birthday to my true love raininva!
“Wuvv… twoo wuvv…”
(also many happy returns of the day to meiran and amberinside, two more quite keen ladies)
“It’s All Sticky!”
Since most of us have long forgotten (though I can name specific people on my friends list that I know haven’t), today is the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon.
Of course, the Apollo missions were all complete fakes, as reputable psychics and conspiracy theorists will tell you. The truth is that both Americans and the Soviets have been on the moon since the early 50’s, where we have established a diplomatic post for our continuing negotiations with the Xothar Dominion. There is, however, no truth to the rumor that German war criminals escaped Earth around that time to set up their own base in the southern hemisphere of the dark side. Fnord.
Should’ve chosen Rt. 460
Yesterday’s drive could have gone better. I made excellent time up to the Busch Gardens exit of I-64; suddenly, the highway turned into a parking lot, and I sat there for the next 90 minutes. Good thing the iPaq has Solitaire and a power adapter. Now we just need flat-rate nationwide 802.11 access!
I think the 90 minutes of inactivity wiped me out more than the drive would have, but I did have enough energy last night to load up DDRMax to make sure everything worked okay – tonight will be my first “workout mode” session. Then I played an hour of Fatal Frame, since that’s on loan and I want to finish it. Nice graphics, very atmospheric and creepy, though I haven’t actually been scared by it yet. I also need to be quicker on the draw with my camera!
I miss Rain already – I’m so glad I’ll see her again Friday. I have to get one or two more items for my costume for Lorelei’s party – I can’t wait to see what Rain picks out for herself. Lots to do this week!
Hup, 2, 3, 4
Today I have:
Climbed to the roof of our building to help check a wi-fi link (I am not doing that again, I had no idea the last part would be a 30′ foot wall-mounted ladder. I don’t like heights and I don’t need to break the remaining organic bits of my left leg. They can find someone else next time.) Climbed back down.
Walked 4 blocks to the boss man’s loft to check the other end of the link, then back.
Walked 4 blocks to the local mall for lunch (I ran out of frozen stuff to microwave and eat at my desk), then back.
Headed up and down 3 flights of stairs all day servicing machines.
Walked 4 blocks to the boss man’s loft to re-install the hardware we uninstalled the first time.
Walked 5 blocks to the bank from there.
Walked 4 blocks back to work.
Much more of this and I won’t miss the gym membership I left back in Roanoke. At least it’s only 85 and breezy out, as opposed to yesterday’s 103 degrees.
RPG Team Meme (Weem!)
Now all I need is a catchy soundtrack and a hyperactive title sequence and I’m ready for cable TV:
