Rambling Monday Edition for 02/08/2010

Well, it just hit me that we've hit the second major milestone on the Arthur C. Clarke universe. Luckily, Hal still doesn't exist... unless you count the small device my beloved keeps in her purse.

All that aside, I had a busy weekend. So busy in fact that I did not get to watch any anime, nor read any manga. The only geek activity I did find a bit of time to engage in was further playing of Left 4 Dead 2. The reasons for this were an influx of party-like activities which my family was involved in. Friday night saw a party which my elder son was invited, Saturday saw a party which my younger son was invited, and Sunday was a party which my beloved was invited to.

But lo, and behold, there is ever geek news that comes across my desk and RSS Feeds.

The least of which is the latest FotJ information published today no less, about the cover to the sixth book in that series, Troy Denning's Vortex. Sadly, it involves Han, who is supposed to be an accomplished marksman, holding a gun at that insane gangsta angle.

Basically, showing that the artist has never fired a gun, and that most of the gun activity said artist has witnessed has come from Hollywood.

Poor Han. First Lucas messes with your character arc by making you shoot second, and now you're just a two-bit thug on the covers...


But, I do think I need to backtrack, as I've realized that I have been doing something geek related, but that it's such a fundamental aspect of my being that I hadn't even realized that I was doing it.

Of course, I'm talking about reading. I've finished (re)reading There Shall Be Dragons, and 2 B R 0 2 B and have begun (re)reading A Matter of Oaths and Fallen Angels.

I must say, I'm enjoying carrying around a micro-library in my pocket. Now, if only more places carried the consumer-friendly, DRM free ePub formats, I'd be happy to spend my a significant portion of my book money on eBooks.

Additionally, tangentially related to that last thought, everyone needs to read this.

Well, that's all for this week...

Monday Morning Playground!

I've gotta say that I love my new phone. It has games, and the internet, and it yells "Droid" at me at more or less random times. This is all good, but especially on Friday when I was home sick. I spent most of the day in bed, and during those times when I was actually awake, I COULD have held a laptop on my lap to check emails and surf and what-not, just holding my phone was so much easier.

Of course, this weekend was not all sunshine and roses: it was also my eldest boy's birthday. My newly minted seven year old had a birthday party on Saturday, and got quite the haul of Star Wars goodies among other things.

And then in a fit of true brotherly love, he proceeded to torture the 3 year old by not actually opening every package. Sure, everything was unwrapped, but he left a couple toys still in their boxes. I was amused at the sheer perversity in the thought, and less than amused by the constant begging for access to the new toys from the younger offspring.

Yet, my son was not the only child with a birthday this weekend. An additional two friends had parties (and one had a birthday, but is having a party later this week), and one of them is of Japanese descent. Which is awesome, because now we have some Japanese candies at the house from the goody bags. The second friend with a party this weekend was the son of one of the Mandos, and both boys got to spend a good hour and an half at Chuck-E-Cheese.

Which, I must also point out that it was my youngest son who had to be literally stripped off of the Chuck E Cheese costumer's leg, so said costumer could do his job.


Now, I must get off to work, and maybe play with foursquare and see how well that works.

Monday Morning Rambling: The Droid Version

Well this past weekend was my 10 year anniversary, and me and the Beloved Wife had a grand time. The festivities (at least the eating portion of them) started with lunch on Friday (sushi! sushi! sushi!) continued throughout dinner Friday night (taampas @ P.F. Chang's) and finalized with standard lunch fare on Saturday afternoon.

Of course, eating at Cheddar's wasn't the only thing that took up my Saturday afternoon. There was also a trip to the Verizon store, in which I came one step closer to becoming a part of the Singularity. Basically, I now carry around the sum total of human knowledge (or ignorance, depending on your POV) in my pocket. In! My! Pocket!

I'm still trying to decide what to call it, currently my choices include, Whistler, SELMA, Ziggy, and Mother Box.

Sadly, not all of the proposed festivities for this weekend went off without a hitch, since neither of us were feeling just 100% yet, we decided to forgo the movie experience and instead focus on getting caught up on our viewing of Sanctuary. Which meant that we watched a good 4 hours of Sanctuary this weekend, but did not get to go see Sherlock Holmes the way my Beloved wished to.

Oh well, it was a great weekend, and as I said, I now get to carry the Internets in my pocket!

Amusingly, that's not the only thing that's happened this past week. I finally received my second Christmas gift (apparently there was some sort of screw-up when my Beloved ordered it or it was on back order or something).

Anyways, I am now the proud owner of a set of of the Stargate coasters. This things are awesome, they have all the chevrons and the glyphs and even the blue puddle.

And for even more geek greatness is the fact that my 3 year old has used it for its intended purpose--that is the power of the Stargate Coaster. Of course he removed my drink from said coaster in order to utilize it for its intended function, but that's okay.

Well, that's all the time I have for this week, join me next week where I wish for more time yet again....

The Holidays Are Over

And I'm regaining time. Well, at least that is the theory.

Of course, with the new anime season starting up, a new video game, and as always more and more books (much to my Beloved Wife's dismay), that theory does not always hold up well under the light of day.

On the book front, I have recently finished American Gods and was thoroughly happy with it, and I've managed to purchase Tobias Buckell's Ragamuffins. Sadly for me, this is the second book in a series, which of course means I must now go and see about acquiring his Crystal Rain novel. Amusingly enough, much like Doctorow's and Scalzi's works, I discovered his writing via a blog.

On the video game thing, I finally broke down and purchased Sins of a Solar Empire. I've been watching this game for a while now, and have never bought it mainly because I did not think that the enjoyment I would find in the game was worth the $50 (then $40 and then $30) price tag. Luckily, they brought said price tag down to $20 and the little economist in my head decided that yeah, $20 for that game is a worthwhile purchase and one should get $20 worth of enjoyment out of it. And I have, and I'm nowhere near finished playing with it.

Finally, over in the anime department, I've been bad. I know I said I was going to try to do episodic blogging last season, and I did watch 11Eyes, but I didn't ever really blog on it. Likewise, I'm wanting to build a nice review of t he series, but there is that whole "lack of time" thing going on.

Anyways, it's now firmly within the winter season, and I have tentatively made up my mind on which shows I'm going to watch this season:

• Durarara!! (for what appears to be an awesome anime)
• Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (for the amusement)
• Okami Kakushi (for the sick horror of watching car wrecks)

Alas, let us see if I manage to make it through the entire season watching all of them this time.

In manga/comic news, I feel the need to talk about something here that I usually reserve for my programming blog. As indicated by the fact that I have a programming blog, I am, by training and trade, a software engineer. As such, I practice on things. I build software for the sake of building it, much the same way that I write things for the sake of writing them.

One of those things that I have built, is called eComic. It's purpose is to display CBR/CBZ files. For those of you who are unaware, CBR is a file format which is basically a RAR or a ZIP file of a folder of a bunch of images. eComic (and other tools like it) basically display the images within said file in a sequential format.

Basically, it's a digital comic book. It is software that is both free and open-source, therefore have fun with it. My primary reason for building it is to learn new techniques therefore, I release both the compiled version for people to use, as well as the source so others can see what I'm doing within it.

Now, despite all those things I have been doing, I have seen a few movies recently, among them 9 and Astroboy. And as one might expect from previous proclivities that I have espoused upon this blog, I did find both enjoyable (actually Astroboy more so than 9 in a somewhat surprising upset of my expectations).

Oh well, they were both fun movies, now I just have to get the time to go watch Avatar, Holmes and The Book of Eli. Maybe this weekend which happens to be my 10^th wedding anniversary.

Yes, intrepid reader, you read that correctly! A mere 10 years ago, this Friday, I was suckering a beautiful blond into being my wife getting married, and have been happily within that particular state for all those years now.

I am a lucky, lucky man.

Oops! This didn't make it out yesterday....

Well, it seems that I managed to break my publishing streak by 1 day. Of course that is primarily because of the fact that I overslept yesterday morning, but that's okay. At least I think so.

Truth be told, I don't really have much of anything to talk about from this past week. I went and saw Law Abiding Citizen (highly recommended) and purchased the Star Trek DVD (again, highly recommended) but with the holiday and then having to rake my yard (25 bags of pine straw/leaves!) I didn't have a whole lot of time.

Sadly, the anime that I have taken an interest in this season has been culled down to just 11 Eyes (and yes, I'm a horrible, horrible, episodic blogger, I know) so I don't even really have that to talk about.

BUT I have gotten my Fate of the Jedi: Abyss review written, and will have it posted up probably later in the week. Additionally, I've read through Death Troopers for the first time, and have started on its second read through in order to write its review.

Well, that's it for this week, now I just need to sit down and watch last week's Stargate Universe.

The Latest Thing to Drool Over...

I'm a geek. I know it. I don't feel any shame, but I do have to fight the urge to make somewhat... random purchases of those things which tickle that inner magpie which lurks in the hearts of all Otaku.

And that magpie nature works for traditional geeks such as myself to those whose geek-dom involves things such as sports. After all, we have NASCAR ornaments for the Christmas tree right next to the Star Wars ones, thanks to my Beloved Wife's inner Otaku in relation to some blue and silver race car.

So, it's not that big of a surprise that I saw this pretty thing run across my RSS Reader and commenced drooling. After all it's a 1/350^th scale reproduction of the Space Battleship Yamato. I mean, how utterly cool and awesome is that?!?!

And it even comes with light-up engines (via a remote control no less!), and a number of the space battle planes that were used in the anime.

Over all, I have to say that the Yamato is one of the coolest space ship designs (if not necessarily the most practical).

Time for More Monday Morning Rambling...

Hmm... well, I'm still in the process of re-reading Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss in order to write its review. Sadly, the book has not even lived up to my memories of how it read the first time. It's bad mojo when a book does not age well.

Anyways, because these first FotJ novels were micro-books (in related to most other modern SF works I read) it shouldn't be too much longer before I have this second read-through done, and the book ready for review.

Also, Death Troopers should be arriving from Amazon in the next couple days, so good times there.

Something I have done though is gone back and re-watched one of my favorite animes from recent history: True Tears.

This is a story that has aged well. It's still a story about love, and change, and those that inspire us. I enjoyed it as much today, as I did during my first viewing of it, even thought I knew who was going to end up with who by the end of things; additionally, that foreknowledge allowed me to pick up on a few extra hints as to which way the story was heading earlier on.

And Noe still reminds me of my Beloved, just in the sheer vibrancy that she approached life, as well as the somewhat.... randomness which that vibrancy exhibited itself.

But in the end that's all okay.

Ah, well, I've blathered on enough for this morning, for now I'm off to work, but as I said, I'll be getting the Abyss review up soon, and hopefullly other things here and there as I find time for them.

Yet Another Monday Morning

Well, that was a busy weekend. My dad's 60^th birthday was on Sunday, so someones in the family decided that it was a fine time for a birthday party.

A couple of pertinent facts here:

1. I hate traveling.
2. I live 5 hours away from my family
3. Did I mention that "hate traveling" bit?

So, I got to spend hours upon hours in the car this weekend. Ultimately, it's not that big of a deal and I got to see my elder brother and his family, but still... traveling.

That said, it was a fun-filled, geek weekend. To start, as my Beloved Wife was driving down to Pensacola on Friday night, we were behind a tanker trailer for the better part of an hour. Now, normally, this wouldn't be that much of an issue, but due to the exact distance that my wife was pacing said trailer at, and the fact that it was night, the circle of the tanker was lit up.

So, after a while--and utterly out of the blue--my Beloved Wife said, "You know, that looks like a Stargate."

I glanced out the window, and realize that yes, it does kind of look like a stargate. Which is when two things hit me:

1. My wife made a geek reference
2. My wife made said geek reference before me

And before I could open my mouth to say such things, my wife spoke said realizations.

Oh, I do so love my Beloved Wife, especially as she becomes more and more... well, geek-i-fied.

So, the birthday party went off without a hitch. We were able to surprise my dad without giving him a heart attack, so good times right there, and I spend most of Saturday morning with my elder brother, his kid and my kids, in which we had a grand discussion on anime.

And my Beloved Wife, as you're reading this, I'll have you note that HIS wife watches some of the anime with him.

Ah well, such was my time spent this weekend, and now I must go forth and toil in the exciting world of software engineering....

Monday Ramblings for 11/9/09

Wow, it was a fun-filled weekend in my household.

It was my youngest son's birthday, and my wife is a firm believer in the concept that every birthday should be celebrated with as many people as possible.

So, we had a party at a park. The little megalomaniacal Ewok had two friends his own age show up, and we had a few older kids for his elder brother to play with as well, so fun was had by all. Of course the pizza left me with a bit of indigestion, but that's kind of expected, what with it being pizza and all.

Of course such things as family celebrations cut into the very important GEEK TIME that I have, and as such I failed to read Abyss for the second time (a requirement for its very late review). Yet, I was able to get caught up on Stargate Universe and Sanctuary. These are both shows that I'm enjoying immensely, though my beloved finds SGU a bit... boring at times.

So, I've got to review a couple of episodes of 11Eyes and Abyss, and then I feel the need to take my eldest to see Astroboy sometime soon, but if his behavior doesn't improve that may not get to happen.

Also something that should be happening soon is me getting a phone upgrade. I'm currently looking at the new Verizon Droid, as it is a great phone device (I played with one on 11/6 which was "Droid Day") and since I'm on Verizon I would be able to keep my plan. Nice, "win-win" thing here.

I'm also very interested in the accessories that are rumored to go with this device. Things such as a table-top dock or a car dock both of which will make them switch into relevant modes. The car-dock transforms the UI into what supposedly looks like a standard GPS device while the home view for the table-top mode is an alarm-clock.

The car-dock is retailing for about $30 while the table-top dock has yet to be released.

And of course I'm in the process of downloading Eclipse and the ANDROID SDK in order to see what type of fun and games I can cook up for this highly interesting piece of hardware.

We live in interesting times.... at least for us geeks...

Monday Morning Rambling 11/02/09

Gah! I now have two episodes of 11Eyes which I need to review. Frankly, I suck at episodic reviewing, mainly because I get so easily distracted by other things--like Crunchyroll's collection of anime.

Basically, I re-watched Myself;Yourself over the past few days and realized just how.... freaky some of the character arcs are in that thing. Especially the one revolving around the Watsuki twins .

Oh well.

On the children front, the Beloved Wife and I got yet another example of our youngest having an affinity for megalomaniacs. Remember, this is the kid who's favorite character to play-act as from the Star Wars franchise is Emperor Palpatine.

So, Sunday after church we all went to Burger King. Well, their current kid's meal toy promotion is for some Spongebob thing. We got two, a Plankton and a Patrick.

My wife was holding the things, trying to decide which one to give to each child, when the youngest spoke up, and while pointing towards Plankton exclaimed, "I like that one." A moment later, my eldest spoke, asking for Patrick.

That crisis of differing toys averted, my wife handed them out. Then a moment later glanced at me, her head shaking slightly, as she realized that once again the youngest chose the bad guy as his toy-of-choice.

I fear that my son may be the reason that Real Life Super-Heroes are starting to pop up....