Have fun storming the castle
One of the blogs I read is full of people who, for the last week or so, have been making cheesy Inigo Montoya jokes.
After Cthulhu Montoya “The stars are right again; prepare to die!” came this jewel:
The Princess Bride of Frankenstein: “My name isz Viktor Montoya. You killed my fazzer. But now I bring him back to LIFE!“
Rrrrrrradar!
This is one of the niftiest uses of Second Life I have yet seen.
Using (time-delayed) FAA data, a company has constructed an (almost) real-time model of the airspace over LAX airport.
That’s just keen. I’d love to see a BattleTech game played in a similar manner.
There’s a voice in my head that drives my heel
I got Guitar Hero 80s last week. First-ever five-star ratings – on “Radar Love” and “Turning Japanese”, naturally. This has an excellent song list as far as I’m concerned!
The weather down here lately has been incredible. Clear blue skies, sharp edges on all the polygons – err, objects nearby, and temperatures in the high 60s to mid 70s. On the other hand, It’s really dark when I get out of bed now, and the sunset is happening sooner and sooner. I don’t like this at all, no sir.
Still trying to figure out if I’ve got the money to do all the traveling I’d like to do in October. The pirate wedding was a reminder of how much I miss old friends.
I wish I was doing more interesting stuff to talk about. If I can do the traveling, that’ll help a bit 🙂
Wacky Chinese game companies
The Chinese online role-playing game “King of the World” has banned male users for playing as female characters. Female users must verify their gender with webcams in order to continue playing their avatars.
The general response so far is:
1) This is stupid. Role-playing game, hello? Must I also be tall and skinny to play and elf?
2) This is even more stupid. What about androgynous-looking males – do they get a pass? What about people with the brains to get a female friend in front of the webcam for the verification? What about people with no webcam?
3) This is kinda creepy. Women are not barred from playing male characters – so in other words, this is solely to ensure that female avatars have female players. The only people to whom this could matter are people whose masturbatory fantasies or upcoming stalking plans depend on the object being the desired gender.
My WoW characters are split about 50-50, but it does happen that the most active ones are female. This is more coincidence than planning. OTOH, I don’t eroticize my World of Warcraft, either. No random messager’s getting cyb0rz3x off of me!
No point in being grownup if you can’t sometimes be childish
Monday night Starr was working on her laptop, so I wanted to put something on the TV that she didn’t have to watch. I ended up putting on the 20th anniversary DVD of “The Five Doctors“. Starr got sucked into it anyway, and at the end stated firmly that there was something about style and feel of the Who of the 80’s that she rather appreciated.
I don’t want to just sit and bash the new show – it’s not my position at all. I am quite the fan of the Ninth Doctor, and the recently-aired (here) episode “Blink” is one of the franchise’s finest. But I get what she’s saying, and I’ve been trying to pin down what it is that I miss. Is it a certain innocence about the older show? The rampant charisma of Tom Baker? The shinier, more futuristic TARDIS interior of the period? Or should I chalk the whole feeling up to nostalgia on my part? I’m not sure.
For those who abstain from BitTorrenting, I greatly look forward to opinions on the end-of-season three-parter. After that, I look foward to series four next year. At least I’ll be caught up this time!
There’s a cold that’s been going around. For the past three days, I’ve been ill. Tonight… I’m VERY ill.
If you are a programmer, this may be funny
I read a dduane post, bounced through a couple of links, and found lolcode.com:
HAI CAN HAS STDIO? I HAS A VAR IM IN YR LOOP UP VAR!!1 VISIBLE VAR IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE IM OUTTA YR LOOP KTHXBYE
… I want a T-shirt. This is probably too big for one of trenn‘s buttons, sadly 🙁
Robotech Live-Action?
On the “Robotech” movie Tobey Maguire’s producing:
I would love to see a good Robotech movie. I don’t even mind if Maguire plays Rick Hunter – they could do worse.
Last I heard the property was in Licensing Rights Hell. I will believe this is actually in production when reliable on-set reports start filtering out.
I’m not worried about whether the script will be more faithful to Robotech or Macross. When the studio suits are done with it, it will more resemble the Go-Bots. “Geez, you idiot fanboys, it’s just a cartoon.” Otaku who thought that Peter Jackson was spawn of Satan will be utterly enraged, burning down message boards across the ‘Tubes.
Minmei will no longer be Chinese, or ethnic in any way. (Claudia Grant, either.) She will be played by some losing American Idol finalist who will produce a soundtrack album of mildly grating, forgettable songs; this will put her ahead of poor Reba West but still behind Mari Iijima.
The iconic VF-1 Valkyrie, one of the most believable and good-looking transforming mecha in anime history, will no longer strongly resemble an F-14 Tomcat; but be based off of an F-22 Raptor or some Wing Commander refugee, whose transformation sequence only works if you look at something else for several seconds in the middle. (“Hey, where’d Optimus Prime’s trailer go, anyway?”) The SDF-1 Macross will probably fare little better.
Finally, I’m sure I’ll see it at least twice and buy the DVD.
So who would you cast for the main characters? (I just had this mental picture of The Rock as Breetai, which horrified me initially, but is slowly growing on me.)
Cat vs. Weasels
I spent a fair chunk of the weekend ‘suffering from brain weasels’ as they say… just listless, depressed, and grumpy. As near as I can tell, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, or due to anything going on around me – perhaps my body chemistry fell out of whack, I can’t tell. Last night, I consumed a fair amount of chocolate – it seemed to help.
After months of waiting for the money to be available, we have a new kitten! She’s 8 weeks old, and is a grey tabby we picked up at the local shelter. Her name is Midori, and she’s already fixed and microchipped – she goes in for her first vet visit (since moving in with us) on Thursday. She’s sweet, but full of mischief – in other words, perfectly normal.
I may have addicted ptownhiker to Guitar Hero II Saturday night. Heh, heh, heh. Now to spring Katamari Damacy on them!
Finally got your questions ready, fishy1. Sorry about the wait!
