Ex Libris

I think the book meme is evolving – I could swear that this is a different list than I saw earlier this week.

Bold those books you have read.
Italicize those books you intend to read.
Underline those books you love.

Post the list in your own LJ. Behind a cut for good manners.

We’ve got work to do

Meme from lemonlye:

When you read this, quote Doctor Who in your LiveJournal.

The Doctor: I don’t suppose you’ve completely ignored my instructions and secretly prepared any Nitro-9, have you?
Ace: What if I had?
The Doctor: And naturally, you wouldn’t do anything so insanely dangerous as to carry it around with you, would you?
Ace: Of course not. I’m a good girl and do what I’m told.
The Doctor: Excellent. Blow up that vehicle.

– “Silver Nemesis”

(I resisted the urge to quote my own fanfic. Aren’t I well-behaved?)

And The Heavens Shall Tremble

Today in Paris, at their WorldWide Invitational event, Blizzard Entertainment announced their upcoming game Diablo III.

That is all. (That’s plenty!)

Azerothian Geographic Society

It takes a certain kind of person to play World of Warcraft, yes. It takes another kind to try and figure out the geographical details of the place.

Azeroth’s “Google Map” has been assembled at mapwow.com. For most of the game, players have explored two continents on that fantasy world (though at least one more is known to exist), but the actual map scale has never been revealed. Some time ago, I figured that one could record the time it takes to walk between two points on the map, and multiply that by the average walking speed of a hero laden with equipment, and come up with a fair estimate of the scale.

I’m far too lazy to do that, of course, but someone else wasn’t, and neither was another person. Turns out that the “continent” of Kalimdor is about 4 miles wide… or around 41 square miles in size. For my Virginian friends, this is vaguely the size of the combined cities of Blacksburg and Christiansburg.

In a related note, this destroys a hypothesis I had made before about the shape of the world of Azeroth. The “world map” seen in the Burning Crusade game expansion must be considered an artistic rather than a faithful representation; and I argued that Azeroth was clearly flat, because there is no difference in the position of shadows between the northernmost and southernmost points of the continent at the same time of day and season. (The Greek Eratosthenes used the shadow trick to figure out the Earth’s size in the 3rd century B.C.)

Unfortunately, if Kalimdor is around 10 miles long, then that’s not enough distance for the shadow trick, and the question remains unresolved. Oh, well. Perhaps the Gnomes can develop a space vehicle and get some photographic evidence (there is indeed photography in WoW).

Radio KPAST

As I listened to The Thomas Jefferson Hour yesterday, the following thought crossed my mind:

Imagine that suddenly, you’re motivated to thoroughly research a famous historical figure, and present a weekly podcast in character as that person. You have to play it straight – no parodies or sitcoms. Who do you choose?

Seven Words Ain’t Enough

Lots of people have posted about George Carlin’s passing. I’ll miss the man; he and Steve Martin were the first two comedians whose albums my parents took away from me 🙂

Much has been made of his dark, often nihilistic humor lately, but many seem to miss that it was the humor of a disappointed idealist who knows that people are better than this, dammit, and hopes like hell that they’ll remember it in time.

Protected: I look less like Captain Harlock every year.

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“I’ve found interesting correspondences in your DNA.”

The other day, I finally broke out my subtitled, un-cut copy of My Youth In Arcadia. I’ve owned the cut, dubbed release for a long time, to the point that I know the script pretty well, and I looked forward to seeing what had been removed from the original.

I only made it to the end of the World War II sequence, but I was still pretty surprised. While this version is clearly a slightly better translation, so far the only new material I’ve seen is the World War I-era prologue. Plot points that I’d assumed would be better explained in an uncut version remain murky.

Of course, this is a common condition with anime films, which have a habit of stringing together cool sequences with a minimum of narrative linkage, and letting the viewers fill in the gaps from their own imaginations. I’m not saying that it’s an invalid technique – there are some American SF / Fantasy movies that would have been better had they explained less – but I was hoping for more.

Back when I apparently didn’t eat

If someone’s Twitter profile page says that they are following 35,000 people, than I somehow doubt that their ‘personalized’ request for me to follow them back means much. It doesn’t help that all their tweets are private. How do I know if you’re interesting if I can’t read your tweets / journal entries / etc.? This is also why I don’t have a MySpace.

Spent all night last night trying to catch up on e-mail correspondence, and in the process, forgot to call my mom and check on her, which I am not especially proud of. I did get the gerbil cage cleaned, though, which I’ve been promising to do for a couple of weeks.

MikhailBorg at age 19 cynical_prophet sent me this picture of myself from 1988. I was kind of down that night, and the pic was a surprise, so I don’t have the best expression. Starr had a fairly amusing reaction: “Is that you!?”

“Yes, it’s me, about 20 years ago.”

“Wait… you still have that shirt!”

“Not that it fits, it’s a size medium or so.”

“More like size Tiny!”

Temperatures are down a little, so I am walking again. Missed yesterday, but I aim for a mile today!

EDIT: Hokey smokes, they are sending my mom home from the hospital on Friday. Now that, boys and girls, is a solid recovery. I know she’s going to love getting to see her kitty again!

The Soul For Getting Down

meiran posted this. It’s silly, it’s fanservice… and it’s joyously wonderful.

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