So I was thinking of how to post some updates of what I’m listening to. Then I considered the fact that last.FM catalogs everything from Amarok.
Which turns out to be a win all around, for now.. now you can check what I’ve listened to recently journalized to your right.
I know. You’re all very excited.
It occurred to me that I haven’t put a series specific write up for anime lately, or anything on what I’ve been reading and listening too. Here’s a brief post to remedy that, possibly with some specific write-ups later.
Reading:
And watching:
And basically listening to the same run of audio. Nothing really exciting on that front. Groove Coverage, Tiesto, Ferry Corsten. Anjunabeats Worldwide off di.fm. A good run of Last.fm.
Even though it keeps insisting that I want to listen to bad 80′s New Wave and seriously clangy industrial, which I don’t.
And that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll have something up on the series or some single tracks that have caught my ear out of the noise.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up Dennō Coil. The angle, youth wearing VR overlay glasses, sounded something like .hack. Fortunately that wasn’t the case.
What Dennō Coil does have is a compelling story line centering around a group of young protagonists and a not altogether far-fetched technological premise. Through the plot the authors have weaved urban legend and the vibrant imaginations of children starting to explore the wider world.
Our storytellers viewpoint for the story is well balanced with much of what happens being caused or influenced by a well-done and well thought out perspective I rarely see in film. It had me going right up to the end, not quite sure what the larger picture was.
So this is definitely one to watch. It’s got competent animation, a very approachable bit of science fiction, and a compelling story line.
Dan Zarella, always a propagator of non-obvious social memetics, has artfully crafted an article over the weekend on the science of laughter. Through it he gives a quick overview of some practical examples of laughter outbreaks along with a few medical examples to give his hypothesis credence.
Also, a suggestion that you can try it out at some point. Who knows, it might do you some good! Plus it’s guaranteed to cheer things up a bit and generally break up mindless monotony. (DanZarella.com)
Nochnoy dozor (Night Watch in English) was an excellent book by Sergei Lukyanenko. Night Watch the movie (in it’s original Russian, no need to watch a bad dub) is a mediocre movie that’s a horrible letdown from the novel it’s based off of.
Honestly, I’d say to give it a pass unless you want to see how badly a book can be translated into a movie.
The plot changes are drastic and largely unnecessary. One of the major ones is even listed as a “glitch” by Lukyanenko in his comments.. how on earth you glitch a major part of your adaptations plot is beyond me.
If you’d like to see the array of differences check the movie listing out over at Wikipedia.
Acting talent for the movie isn’t all that bad, casting is alright, with characters fitting in with their descriptions from the novel well enough. It all really comes back to the plot being a horrible adaptation that really chops the heart out of the story.
Read the stories (although I found Day Watch to be a bit odd and that it didn’t fit well with Night Watch/Twilight Watch) but give the movie a pass. Or catch it on broadcast TV.. this one’s not even worth a rent. I’ll post if Day Watch (the movie) is any better when I pick up a copy to check out.
Sometimes things look a bit strange from their description and you decide to take a chance on them. So it went with Baccano!, described as a not-wholly in chronological order series about a myriad of people who’s lives intertwine around covered-up events on a train back in early 1930s.
Coincidentally the events on the train takes place in the middle of about three timelines, blending back and forth with minimal warning.
What I was worried about here was that I’d never know what I was looking at, which part of the story I was actually following. But they get around that with a device that’s usually irritating in film.
Most of the time when you see a shot from a different angle it’s annoying overkill on a point. Baccano! uses the affect in good measure to show where and when a certain scene is taking place. Same scene, different character.. at the same time, but strangely it works to move the plot along. You’ll quickly infer when it is by who is moving around and where they are.
So what I’m saying is if that all made sense to you, you’ll like the series. It’s about as fast paced as it gets and the audio/visual work is superb, the characters fun (if somewhat deranged), action filled bits of movement, and a mystery at it’s core. It might be a bit too much gore.. but nothing along the lines of, say, Sweeney Todd.
Added: almost forgot to put a link to the official Baccano! website.
Sometimes I see something so astoundingly useful I feel the need to post up a link to it to remember. This is one of those times.
Not only can you make mead in sub-bathtub batches, you can make it in convenient 1 gallon hooch containers!
Functional and fashionable.
Anyway, the folks at storm the castle have the recipe up.
It’ll take you a few ingredients and a bit of hardware, but at the end of the creation process you’ll have a gallon of mead. Without blowing anything up!
Now what could be better than that, I ask?
Now that there’s a new point version and I’ve had a chance to work KDE4 over properly, I thought it time to revisit it. As it turns out, putting a widget on the KDE4 panel isn’t all that hard.
To add a widget to the panel instead of adding it to the desktop, simply click on the star on the widget dialog. Then left click and drag the star to the place you’d like it on your toolbar (is that still kicker? no idea). Pretty simple, just not intuitive.
Adding items from the K-Menu is much easier. Just right click and select “Add to Panel”. Way to use the same methodology across the desktop guys ;p. Might want to have a right click add-to-panel method in the widget dialog as well as that’s a comprehendable way of doing things.
So far the layout is fairly usable, although the icons having a huge transparent block around them is still disconcerting. It seems a bit of unnecessary clutter and looks funky.
Note that this is after updating to Xorg 1.3 and KDE 4.0.0.1. Everything appears to work fine, and I’m not seeing that odd OpenGL performance hit that the systems took running KDE 3.5.
Current verdict is that there’s still quite a bit of work to be done but the release is usable and fairly clean. Good job.
Going with the old apt-get source.list rotation to switch from Ubuntu to Debian. Since Debian appears to have a working KDE4 repository and a shiny new version of Xorg in their bleeding edge tree I’m going to give it a whirl.
We’ll see if the machine is better or worse after an update to the latest, greatest, and potentially flaky.
Hey! Some media review for the media log. Who knew.
Went out to catch Voltaire at Alchemy “Rapture” yesterday in spite of my throat feeling roughly like sandpaper. And the show was worth it!
From Zombie Gigolo to his birthday rendition dedicated to Brian it was a rollicking good time.
And if you’re wondering who this Voltaire chap is, he’s not the French philosopher but the NY musical act. I’d define the genre, but I’d probably be wrong. I mean.. if it’s goth, then most of the labeling on all the synth-pop inspired bands is wrong. It’s good, at any rate, and mostly humorous. But not comedic music. That’s about it.
So if you get the chance clip out to see his performance, either solo or with the full eclectic ensemble.
Rapture itself was something of a surprise down at Alchemy. It’s run by some of the usual faces from the other “Goth” nights of New Haven’s past and proved to be a solid venue (if a bit chilly, bring a coat). They also play requests, which is huge.. probably a main requirement for me at a club with only one floor. So check it out if you’re in the area. Apparently running every Wednesday night in the third room at Alchemy, it’s around the corner from the main area you may be familiar with.