The Ziggurat of Doom

Les Miserables 2d fighter

When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums…hadoken!

(Thanks JP).

(Warning: Possible Spoilers)

So, first I should point out that I haven’t read the previous entry, by The Hermit. I have heard some of his observations, but that’s it.

I liked the movie. The plot was excellent, very believable in the context of the show, and explained some things that I hadn’t really wondered about, but should have.

The writing was magnificent. Every character was perfectly done, had lines exactly appropriate to their moment, and threw liberal doses of humor into the whole mix of the movie. The one-liners tossed off are the kinds of things Winston Churchill wishes he could say at parties.

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The majority of the Ziggurauti and I went to a super secret advanced screening of Serenity tonight. It must be because I am a member of the press. By virtue of it being across the road from my apartment, I think I’ll probably have this post up first. The other posters will edit this post and write their own thoughts.

First off, this movie lived up to its hype. That’s really damn amazing, considering the amount of hype there has been around this movie. I usually come out of any movie with a gripe or two. My gripe for this one is all of Joss Wheidon’s characters have put rocks on grave stones, a traditionally Jewish behavior.

One of my favorite parts of this movie is actually the exposition. The film does a good job of bringing everyone not familiar with Firefly up to speed, and there’s a bunch of crunchy new facts for the rest of us. Walking out of the theaters, I heard a good couple “I didn’t watch the show, but I didn’t really notice anything wrong with the movie”. I also heard one “Yo that didn’t make no sense to me,” but it’s hard to show a movie without at least one idiot in the theater.

I had two concerns going into this movie. First, I was afraid it was going to be too tied to the series (the one that I didn’t watch too recently, you know). I was mostly afraid of this because of the comic book. The comic wasn’t so much a good story as much as it was a direct download to your brain of things that should have been in the series that really round out the setting. As I said, that was not the case here.

The other concern I had was the addition of a new character in the unnamed government agent. Usually when a new character, especially a baddie, is introduced in a final movie or comic mini, it really draws away from the story and characters we were going to see in the first place. In this movie, he plays very well off of Malcolm. Malcolm is a great antihero who hardly behaves like a hero. This new agent is a great antivillian. We aren’t subjected to a fluffy Machiavellian “I’m evil for good” or Megatron*. Nope, we got a villain as unique and interesting as, dare I say it?

So in conclusion? Yeah, go watch this movie, early and often.

*Megatron is my new adjective for villains who’s motivation is “I’m totally evil, and I’m going to do something evil”. I invented this after trying to figure out what was up with Agamemnon in the recent Hollywood movie. He was Megatron’ed.

Free Opera for today only? Yeah, it’s part of their 10 year anniversary party. A neat idea, but it will only last till midnight CET today.

I’ve never really used Opera, but this promotion will probably get me to try it out.

(Thanks Ars Technica)

This looks like an interesting book:

A prototypical geek discovers Magic: The Gathering, becomes World Champion, discovers poker, is recruited into a card counting ring, and ends up making his living as a gambler in this fascinating true story.

In other MtG updates, this Marvel Magic website is also an interesting read. It’s It’s full of fan created Magic the Gathering cards based off the Marvel (and DC) universe. I haven’t read them all (takes a while to load), and I don’t know if it’s balanced or not, but it does look like a bit of fun. May have to print out around 60 and challenge the other Ziggurauti who are jonesing for a game.

From Tom’s Hardware Guide, this news about the software world:

Putting an end to speculation that Microsoft had indefinitely postponed, or even cancelled, the proposed contextual file system that chairman Bill Gates introduced in October 2003, the company this morning released Beta 1 of WinFS.

Jellyfish Cause Reactor Shutdown in Sweden

Apparently too many invertebrate sea creatures in your nuclear reactor’s coolant system is a Bad Thing.

I keep trying to write up a good rant about the new trendy cheap green iced tea that is replacing our cheap black tea in the supermarket. I can’t get it past “I don’t like cheap green tea as much as cheap black tea. Stop selling it. You aren’t trendy if you buying prebrewed green iced tea in a plastic bottle, and I have it on good authority (mine) that it doesn’t taste as good. With these two facts, I have shown there is no reason to make, sell, or buy cheap green iced tea. Also, green tea with peach tastes like an old sock, and damn you for tricking me into buying it when I thought it was regular black tea with peach.”

Then I realized that’s really just about the extent of my thoughts. So go. Buy the cheap black tea that we all know and have been using. I like it more.

It is now CONFIRMED that we have a free sneak preview of Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride.” The sneak will be in Strosacker, September 20, 7:00pm. If this could get on the website soon, that would be awesome!

I just got this email from CWRU Film Society. If you are in the Cleveland area and want to see this movie, we’re showing it early, free, and once.

As an aside, no, I’m not a Tim Burton fan. I liked well under half his movies, and everything I’ve seen about this one is point toward me not liking it. The good news about this is we won’t have to play the “who gets to work concessions for the next two hours instead of watching the free sneak preview that they really actually want to watch instead of working concessions” game. It’s a crappy game, and the Queen often will loose it.

Katrina was downgraded to a category 4 storm shortly before its landfall. Additionally, it has turned east. The western eyewall will pass over New Orleans, but the hurricane is weaker to the west. The city can still expect 20 foot storm surges.

We’ll be funny again shortly.

In case anyone’s missed the news, Hurricane Katrina, a category-5 (the highest) storm, is headed straight up the Mississippi toward New Orleans. The entire region has been evacuated.

It’s been known for a long time that New Orleans, a city that lies below sea-level and is protected by a series of levees, could well be annihilated by an event like this.

Katrina is expected to make landfall the morning of Monday the 29th.

Fetusmart: The Magical Land of Fetuses

To all my fellow ZoD-lings who have to return to the grinding machinations of academia tomorrow for the beginning of the 2005-06 Fall Semester: may this year be easy, fruitful, GPA increasing, interesting, and filled with all that is Doom.

I have a small dilemma. Recently, I have returned to my flight-sim roots in gaming. As my current joystick is +5 yrs old, its getting to the point I have to calibrate it every time I play. So, I am looking for a new one. While looking at {electronic store whose logo looks like a yellow pricetag}, I came accross two really good options, and I couldn’t decide between them. I wasn’t going to purchase one until my super paycheck came in later this week anyways, so I’m open to suggestions or advice. The two options I saw were:

1: Stick/Throttle combonation. The last time I looked these were $250. Now, they’re a more reasonable $80. More than enough buttons (40), plus 3-way toggle switch on the throttle to switch control configurations on the fly.

2:Stick/Uber-wasd. This is actually two seperate purchases. A reasonable joystick (probably 6 button, $30-40 range), and a special programmable keypad designed with first person play in mind. It still has more than enough buttons (16), plus a thumb D-pad and scroll wheel ($35). The idea here is to get me to stop looking before hitting a key, as I frequently lose track on a normal keyboard.

Okay, I was somewhat musically inclined during my high school days, but I would’ve kept it up to play a flame-throwing organ

Adventures in the land of Japanese Sex Toys (uh, nsfw)

For the amusement of ZoD, I present this list of Klingon Fairy Tales.

My personal favorite: “Old Mother Hubbard, Lacking the Means to Support Herself With Honor, Sets Her Disruptor on Self-Destruct and Waits for the Inevitable”

I have been pouring over the corebook for Warhammer FRPG lately, as it is the system for ZoD’s major tabletop RPG this year, and I have discovered that the encumerence rules are slightly silly.

A normal character can carry their strength x 10 before being encumbered. A dwarf can carry their strength x 20. Every 50 units over encumberence limit is a -1 Move penalty. A full suit of plate mail weighs about 350 units, I believe. What this comes down to is that a dwarf with a few advances in Runebearer (”Rocket Dwarf”) can move at full dwarf speed while carrying three full suits of platemail, assuming said dwarf can figure out where to put all of it.

Now, plate mail’s defenses, from what I understand, lie in its resistance to denting and puncturing. I’m also pretty sure that making a subtance thicker generally increases that resistance. So I’m thinking what I need to do is find an armor smith to whom I can pay assloads of money to craft me a triple-thick suit of platemail. Logically speaking this should significantly enhance my armor rating, making it nearly impossible to kill me with normal weapons (though I’d be quite drownable and might have difficulty standing after being tipped over).

Just imagine a dwarf coated in an inch and a half of steel plate, charging at you like a mechademon from a B sci-fi movie.

Die greenskins.

It has come to my attention that while at dinner today, I was greviously in errs in regards to my wife’s horticultural skills. It turns out that my wife’s flower, referenced during dinner, is not growing in a manor akin to a broken hand that has been put back together by a blind person working only by sense of touch. It is in fact growing in a form quite constant with what all sane, rational people must agree is very flower like. I have attached this photo as further evidence of just how unjustifiable my remarks were, much to my shame.
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A 2×2 is not 2″ by 2″.

There is a lot (10″) of difference between 6″ and 16″.

“Antiques” and “Liquor” share a deceptively long subsequence of letters.

“Annihilate” and “Violate” sound quite similar.