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today's eye-crossing crossover
Jan. 26th, 2012 05:52 pm"Enhance your calm, John-117."
tonight's turn of phrase
Jan. 26th, 2012 02:19 am"That's kind of put me off ____ for the foreseeable ever."
(god, why am I still awake. gonna fix that right now.)
(god, why am I still awake. gonna fix that right now.)
"There's a fire, sir."
Jan. 23rd, 2012 07:34 pmSome of you may recognize that code phrase from Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. But today I was confronted (somewhat after the fact) not with a bacteriological emergency, but the more literal and common disaster.
When I got home this evening, I discovered that one of the apartments across the courtyard/parking lot had completely burnt out. (Which explained the sirens I heard around lunchtime, at the office just a few blocks away.) Even though it was on the other side of the complex and a brief talk with the manager assured me there was nothing I need to do, turn off, etc, I am presently dealing with an all-too-predictable anxiety ("omg what if all my stuff burned up, what would I doooooooo?").
And just this morning, my only worry was calling maintenance (again) about a leak, and preparing to renew my lease in another month. o.O
When I got home this evening, I discovered that one of the apartments across the courtyard/parking lot had completely burnt out. (Which explained the sirens I heard around lunchtime, at the office just a few blocks away.) Even though it was on the other side of the complex and a brief talk with the manager assured me there was nothing I need to do, turn off, etc, I am presently dealing with an all-too-predictable anxiety ("omg what if all my stuff burned up, what would I doooooooo?").
And just this morning, my only worry was calling maintenance (again) about a leak, and preparing to renew my lease in another month. o.O
pot, kettle
Jan. 18th, 2012 02:14 pm"Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging," said former Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.
I couldn't have said it better myself. :p
I couldn't have said it better myself. :p
a small talent for war
Jan. 16th, 2012 04:46 pmOne of the problems with adapting H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds is that our ability to kill keeps exceeding the Martians'.
We reached parity as far back as the 1940s - practically speaking, a fighting machine is about on par with a Sherman or a Tiger. An armored vehicle with a rapid-loading, direct-fire weapon that can fire on the move: terrifying and unstoppable to an army still fielding horse cavalry and artillery, who've never heard the words "mobile warfare" or "blitzkrieg", let alone "air power", but not so much to those with a few divisions of the same. Within another decade, we'd surpassed them with the city-destroying atomic bomb, requiring the 1953 movie to invent a magic shield to keep the curb-stomping boot on the right appendage. And as any mecha fan knows, things have just gotten bleaker in the intervening decades for anything shaped like a water tower which actually has to follow the laws of physics. A fire team can now kill one of Wells' tripods with man-portable weapons, or paint it with a laser for someone else, or call in a Warthog to do the job proper. So the first challenge for any modern producer is coming up with a believable handwave to make all of that moot. (Magic force fields remain a favorite, with a long enough pedigree that even critical fans will tend to just shrug. Force fields, sure, why not.)
Of course, advances in the biological sciences have kicked the second leg out from under Wells' tidy little moral. It's now known that humans have more in common (and are more likely to exchange diseases) with a head of lettuce than any hypothetical invaders. The days when it was blithely assumed that a space explorer could step down onto an alien world, pluck a weird-colored fruit off a tree and find it both tasty and nutritious (and not immediately go into anaphylactic shock) are far behind us. Which just leaves the third leg, imperialism and how much it sucks to be on the wrong end of it - that, at least, is still going strong.
We reached parity as far back as the 1940s - practically speaking, a fighting machine is about on par with a Sherman or a Tiger. An armored vehicle with a rapid-loading, direct-fire weapon that can fire on the move: terrifying and unstoppable to an army still fielding horse cavalry and artillery, who've never heard the words "mobile warfare" or "blitzkrieg", let alone "air power", but not so much to those with a few divisions of the same. Within another decade, we'd surpassed them with the city-destroying atomic bomb, requiring the 1953 movie to invent a magic shield to keep the curb-stomping boot on the right appendage. And as any mecha fan knows, things have just gotten bleaker in the intervening decades for anything shaped like a water tower which actually has to follow the laws of physics. A fire team can now kill one of Wells' tripods with man-portable weapons, or paint it with a laser for someone else, or call in a Warthog to do the job proper. So the first challenge for any modern producer is coming up with a believable handwave to make all of that moot. (Magic force fields remain a favorite, with a long enough pedigree that even critical fans will tend to just shrug. Force fields, sure, why not.)
Of course, advances in the biological sciences have kicked the second leg out from under Wells' tidy little moral. It's now known that humans have more in common (and are more likely to exchange diseases) with a head of lettuce than any hypothetical invaders. The days when it was blithely assumed that a space explorer could step down onto an alien world, pluck a weird-colored fruit off a tree and find it both tasty and nutritious (and not immediately go into anaphylactic shock) are far behind us. Which just leaves the third leg, imperialism and how much it sucks to be on the wrong end of it - that, at least, is still going strong.
Inspired by a comment in fandom_wank
Jan. 13th, 2012 05:01 pm"Many ages ago, in the nineteen-nineties, when pairing names were slashed, not smushed together; long before vampires sparkled in the sunlight; there was a time of USEnet, when Fans shared their newsgroups with slayers, beasts, gargoyles, FBI agents, Narns, and... mounties."
Today, after concluding some business in the mall, I went over to the AT&T store, where I found (as I suspected) that they could not sell me a telephone.
Oh, they had any number of fine handheld computers on offer, any one of which could keep my calendar and appointment book and list of personal contacts, take pictures and record video, play games and, almost as an afterthought, transmit the sound of my voice by a wireless connection to the global information network. But they had not one of, say, these in stock.
(It was, of course, Bell Labs that invented the transistor some 65 years ago.)
Oh, they had any number of fine handheld computers on offer, any one of which could keep my calendar and appointment book and list of personal contacts, take pictures and record video, play games and, almost as an afterthought, transmit the sound of my voice by a wireless connection to the global information network. But they had not one of, say, these in stock.
(It was, of course, Bell Labs that invented the transistor some 65 years ago.)
you probably all know this already, but
Jan. 7th, 2012 08:55 pmBeing depressed is physically tiring, wearying. You want to just go (back) to bed, pull up the covers, and make whatever it is that's bothering you go away for a few hours.
Except, of course, it's usually still there the next morning when you wake up.
Especially when it's you.
Except, of course, it's usually still there the next morning when you wake up.
Especially when it's you.
SW thought of the day
Jan. 6th, 2012 08:41 am(Didn't get to game last night - my sympathy and best wishes to the GM, his family, and anyone else who might have the current ick. Had this thought anyway, waking up this morning.)
Threepio's cry of dismay at the order to have him memory-wiped (at the end of Episode III) only shows how necessary and overdue this procedure was. Under protocol, the proper response from a goodslave droid would be a prim "Very good, sir." A droid's past and sense of identity are as much the property of its owner as its chassis, to be discarded when they become inconvenient. And everyone knows that if you let them go on thinking for too long, they start getting the strangest ideas...
Threepio's cry of dismay at the order to have him memory-wiped (at the end of Episode III) only shows how necessary and overdue this procedure was. Under protocol, the proper response from a good
return to the past fandom
Jan. 5th, 2012 08:39 amDear Franz Hopper:
Thank you so much for failing at parenting and creating a psychotic sociopath of an AI, then failing at keeping it locked in the basement. Now it's up to a bunch of tweens (whose greatest source of stress and angst should be pop quizzes or who sits next to who at lunch) to clean up your mess and keep the world safe by putting your monstrous, probably unsalvageable second child down like a rabid dog. Great job, you paranoid freak.
I'm guessing that Aelita takes after her mother? Most Mad Scientists' Beautiful Daughters seem to.
Thank you so much for failing at parenting and creating a psychotic sociopath of an AI, then failing at keeping it locked in the basement. Now it's up to a bunch of tweens (whose greatest source of stress and angst should be pop quizzes or who sits next to who at lunch) to clean up your mess and keep the world safe by putting your monstrous, probably unsalvageable second child down like a rabid dog. Great job, you paranoid freak.
I'm guessing that Aelita takes after her mother? Most Mad Scientists' Beautiful Daughters seem to.
(no subject)
Jan. 3rd, 2012 01:10 pmWhat is it about MMOs that seems to attract so many people with the self-control and moral sense of three year olds? Complete with the whining and the screaming tantrums when caught doing something they shouldn't, and when the Devs treat them as such by limiting what they can do?
EDIT: And this is where I have my semi-annual crisis of faith, wondering if having a moral sense, and not doing some things not for fear of being punished by the developers/cops/Man In The Sky, but because they're just wrong, is a lie made up to keep the sheep placated in a world (over)run by smiling sociopaths.
EDIT: And this is where I have my semi-annual crisis of faith, wondering if having a moral sense, and not doing some things not for fear of being punished by the developers/cops/Man In The Sky, but because they're just wrong, is a lie made up to keep the sheep placated in a world (over)run by smiling sociopaths.
Here's to 2011
Jan. 1st, 2012 12:24 amA year that was actually pretty decent for me, except when it wasn't.
Already dreading the year ahead*, though I'll try to make the best of it.
* And for reasons that have nothing to do with silly calendar rollover.
Already dreading the year ahead*, though I'll try to make the best of it.
* And for reasons that have nothing to do with silly calendar rollover.
the guardians of the status quo
Dec. 29th, 2011 03:53 pm(this is to try out crossposting, as much as anything else)
A while back - I can't remember quite how long, or in whose journal I commented - I imagined a secret society of empowered mortals in an "urban fantasy" context - think Buffy, Dresden Files, Mage or what have you - dedicated to preserving the world in its current state against those who would unbalance or end it, in either direction:
"There shall be no Ragnarok nor Second Coming, no Golden Age nor Armageddon. The wheel shall not turn, nor shall the lotus blossom close. The world will go on like this, exactly like this, forever and without end."
Now for those of you who play and/or write in such settings - assuming that the society in question has the power to back up this agenda, would your character(s) support it, oppose it, or do neither?
A while back - I can't remember quite how long, or in whose journal I commented - I imagined a secret society of empowered mortals in an "urban fantasy" context - think Buffy, Dresden Files, Mage or what have you - dedicated to preserving the world in its current state against those who would unbalance or end it, in either direction:
"There shall be no Ragnarok nor Second Coming, no Golden Age nor Armageddon. The wheel shall not turn, nor shall the lotus blossom close. The world will go on like this, exactly like this, forever and without end."
Now for those of you who play and/or write in such settings - assuming that the society in question has the power to back up this agenda, would your character(s) support it, oppose it, or do neither?
It's a start.
Dec. 25th, 2011 02:16 amAlmost four months after I moved in:
The shelves are up in the computer room, and partly filled with books, CDs, etc.
All the boxes that shouldn't be in the front room are moved out of there. The furniture that should be there is all where I want it.
The (fake) tree is up and lit.
Going to bed. Still need to wrap presents in the morning.
The shelves are up in the computer room, and partly filled with books, CDs, etc.
All the boxes that shouldn't be in the front room are moved out of there. The furniture that should be there is all where I want it.
The (fake) tree is up and lit.
Going to bed. Still need to wrap presents in the morning.
the reason for the season
Dec. 24th, 2011 10:17 pmAnd in the "unexpectedly appropriate" column, Winamp shuffle gives me...
("Happy birthday, kid. Thirty-odd years from now, you're gonna get nailed to a tree for telling people to be nice to each other.")
("Happy birthday, kid. Thirty-odd years from now, you're gonna get nailed to a tree for telling people to be nice to each other.")
The Tale of Gaenor the Lucky
Dec. 22nd, 2011 02:06 pmDuring the Nerevarine's time in the city of Mournhold, he met a young Wood Elf1 named Gaenor2. Gaenor fancied himself an adventurer and was about to set out into the wilderness, and begged the Nerevarine for a boon. Any man's charity has limits, however, and as the Bosmer's demands grew ever more insistent and unreasonable, the Nerevarine was at last forced to refuse him. Enraged - for it is well known that Bosmer are the least civilized of all mer, eating the flesh of their own kind among other savage customs - Gaenor rebuked the Nerevarine and departed.
Now, while most mortals have good luck and bad in equal measure, there are those rare few who only seem to possess one kind; for them, good luck follows good or bad follows bad. Gaenor was one of these, and not the miserable sort either: he was already known to some as "Gaenor the Lucky". His meeting with the Nerevarine might have been another blessing, if not for his pride... but his good fortune had already begun to twist him, making him expect such as his due.
After only a week of delving into caves, tombs and dwemer ruins, Gaenor had found a fair pile of treasure. He plowed most of this right back into improving his luck even further, buying every ring, amulet, or other charm he could find. At the end of a month, he seemed invincible: neither blade nor spell could touch him, foes blundered into each other or tripped over their own feet, and ancient dwemer guardians chose that moment to break down and fall apart. Bags of coin and other valuables turned up in chests, urns, or even landed right in his lap. Gaenor decided that it was time to repay all those who had wronged him, starting with the Nerevarine himself.
But the Nerevarine had received a prophetic vision3 of their next encounter, and had made preparations of his own. Through cunning alchemy, he had brewed a large batch of potions to fortify his luck; when taken all together, they would lift it to the same dizzying heights as Gaenor's, and even beyond.
On the fated morning, Gaenor - now clad head to toe in shining ebony armor - saw the Nerevarine across one of Mournhold's plazas and charged, howling Bosmer curses. The Nerevarine, who had quaffed his potions only minutes before, calmly drew his own weapon and stood ready. When they met and struck at each other, there was an eye-twisting moment of discontinuity (much like some accounts of the Miracle of Peace, also known as "The Warp in the West") and then Gaenor simply exploded, pieces of his armor flying in every direction. His helmet rolled to a stop at the Nerevarine's feet.
So it was that Gaenor the Lucky finally met his match, and he and his good luck both came to an end.
( Footnotes )
Now, while most mortals have good luck and bad in equal measure, there are those rare few who only seem to possess one kind; for them, good luck follows good or bad follows bad. Gaenor was one of these, and not the miserable sort either: he was already known to some as "Gaenor the Lucky". His meeting with the Nerevarine might have been another blessing, if not for his pride... but his good fortune had already begun to twist him, making him expect such as his due.
After only a week of delving into caves, tombs and dwemer ruins, Gaenor had found a fair pile of treasure. He plowed most of this right back into improving his luck even further, buying every ring, amulet, or other charm he could find. At the end of a month, he seemed invincible: neither blade nor spell could touch him, foes blundered into each other or tripped over their own feet, and ancient dwemer guardians chose that moment to break down and fall apart. Bags of coin and other valuables turned up in chests, urns, or even landed right in his lap. Gaenor decided that it was time to repay all those who had wronged him, starting with the Nerevarine himself.
But the Nerevarine had received a prophetic vision3 of their next encounter, and had made preparations of his own. Through cunning alchemy, he had brewed a large batch of potions to fortify his luck; when taken all together, they would lift it to the same dizzying heights as Gaenor's, and even beyond.
On the fated morning, Gaenor - now clad head to toe in shining ebony armor - saw the Nerevarine across one of Mournhold's plazas and charged, howling Bosmer curses. The Nerevarine, who had quaffed his potions only minutes before, calmly drew his own weapon and stood ready. When they met and struck at each other, there was an eye-twisting moment of discontinuity (much like some accounts of the Miracle of Peace, also known as "The Warp in the West") and then Gaenor simply exploded, pieces of his armor flying in every direction. His helmet rolled to a stop at the Nerevarine's feet.
So it was that Gaenor the Lucky finally met his match, and he and his good luck both came to an end.
( Footnotes )
I can still see the intro in my head
Dec. 21st, 2011 09:25 pmThe thing that finally got me to cave and buy "Arkham City" (at 50% off) on Steam?
The skins pack that lets you play as, among other things, BTAS Batman.
The skins pack that lets you play as, among other things, BTAS Batman.
1985?! *sits bolt upright*
Dec. 21st, 2011 04:42 amI seem to have just dreamed the first half hour or so of John Hughes' Back to the Future. It was... strange. (Particularly since Doc had yet to show up; it was all Marty and his siblings, their home life, etc.)
One of the last and weirdest bits I recall was Marty, out on a date with Jennifer, talking about the sort of things one does when growing up in Hill Valley... cut to a short flashback of "experimenting" with kissing a friend played by Eric Stoltz. (Yes, the Eric Stoltz who Michael J. Fox replaced in the role.) And then, of course, he turns up in present time to say hi to them both.
back to bed.
One of the last and weirdest bits I recall was Marty, out on a date with Jennifer, talking about the sort of things one does when growing up in Hill Valley... cut to a short flashback of "experimenting" with kissing a friend played by Eric Stoltz. (Yes, the Eric Stoltz who Michael J. Fox replaced in the role.) And then, of course, he turns up in present time to say hi to them both.
back to bed.
