| More deadliest warrior matchups! |
[Aug. 7th, 2009|03:16 pm] |
1. The Rats of NIMH vs. The Bunnies from Watership Down
2. Makuuchi Sumo Wrestler vs. NFL Line Backer
3. High School Shooter vs. PCP Deranged Axe Murderer
4. Victorian Rat Catcher vs. US Border Patrol K9 Unit
5. Monster truck vs. World war one battle tank |
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| My head is in the cloud |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|08:42 pm] |
Other than emergency/post apocalyptic/zombies are now attacking scenarios and actual human to human real time conversations, it seems that it is now much more effective to store most of what one knows in the cloud, and instead keep in the level 1 and level 2 caches that knowledge the lets you use the cloud more effectively.
I have noticed that my ability to use google and to filter through the results I find has been far more important than any set of facts I have learned, though the learning of these facts has made me a better google user.
Google/google-like services/the cloud in general have become an extension of the human mind. And access to the cloud is rapidly becoming more intimate and more immediate.
Since I have never believed that the 'self' is anything real and that its instead just an illusion created by our physical, embodied, human form of life and our language/culture, it doesn't bother me at all. There never really was an I doing this thinking anyway, or at least, not so that it was any sacred big thing. I feel just as smart or just as dumb as I have ever felt. Perhaps more so. |
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| Match ups I want to see in deadliest warrior |
[May. 25th, 2009|03:23 pm] |
So, if you love the idea of pirates vs. ninjas, etc. there is this show called 'Deadliest Warrior'. They run computer simulations of match ups like 'Pirate vs. Knight', 'Yakuza vs. Mafia', and 'Shaolin Monk vs. Maori Warrior'. Way cool, though I confess to just watching the synopses on line.
Here are some future match ups I would like to see:
Drunken Bufoon vs. Feral Child
Killer Clown vs. Ape Man
Angry Motorist vs. Pony Express Rider
Punk Rocker vs. Soccer Thug
Stampeding Super Close Out Sale Shoppers vs. Mob of Bavarian Peasants with Pitchforks and Torches |
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| Hugo Winning Novels that I have read |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|05:28 pm] |
I thought I would post the list of Hugo Winners that I have read (struck through), just for the heck of it. Please see the caveat regarding Nebula Winners in the post immediately preceding this one. Also, I did not include the retro hugos. Ooops. Well I have read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburywhich was awarded the 1954 retro hugo in 2004 (I think pretty much everyone has read Fahrenheit 451-- don't people have to read that in Jr. High School or something?), and I may or may not have read Issac Asimov's The Mule (I read the foundation trilogy in high school), but I didn't read Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky.
Hugo Winners I have read:
2008: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
2007: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
2006: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
2005: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2004: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
2003: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
2002: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2001: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
2000: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
1999: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
1998: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
1997: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1996: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
1995: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
1994: Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
1993: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
1992: Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
1991: The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
1990: Hyperion by Dan Simmons
1989: Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh
1988: The Uplift War by David Brin
1987: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1986: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
1985: Neuromancer by William Gibson
1984: Startide Rising by David Brin
1983: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
1982: Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
1981: The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
1980: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
1979: Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre1
1978: Gateway by Frederik Pohl
1977: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
1976: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
1975: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
1973: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1972: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer
1971: Ringworld by Larry Niven
1970: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1968: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
1967: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
1966: Dune by Frank Herbert
1966: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
1965: The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber
1964: Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
1963: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
1962: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
1961: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1960: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
1959: A Case of Conscience by James Blish
1958: The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
1956: Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein
1955: They'd Rather Be Right (aka: The Forever Machine) by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
1953: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester |
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| Nebula Winners |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|11:36 pm] |
They have announced the winners of the 2008 Nebula awards.
I once made a goal to read all of the nebula, hugo, philip k. dick,
and world fantasy award winning novels. So I thought I would update my list.
Note that winning an award is not always that significant. Sure, you can bet that if a novel won an award, its probably pretty good, and so reading such novels is usually a safe bet, but there are a lot of great novels that are nominees, but for one reason or another don't win. For example, Perdido Street Station, nominated for the 2002 award, is an awesome, breakthrough work. In my opinion, its far better than American Gods, which took the award. Likewise, I preferred Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, nominated for the 2005 award, over the winner Camouflage.
So a better, but more ambitious goal would be to read all of the nominees. However, many of us have giant reading lists, and there are many novels that are just cool, and need to be read, but may not even get nominated for one of the above awards.
I currently do not have a serious goal of completing this list.
This is because there are too many other books I want to read, and I am more interested in reading the contemporary nominees and books by my various and sundry favorite writers, and books that my wife recommends (who has an uncanny sense for excellent space opera, weird fiction and weird non-fiction).
Nebula Winning Novels (I've struck through the ones I've read):
2008: Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
2007: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
2006: Seeker by Jack McDevitt
2005: Camouflage by Joe Haldeman
2004: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
2003: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
2002: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2001: The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro
2000: Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
1999: Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
1998: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
1997: The Moon and the Sun by Vonda McIntyre
1996: Slow River by Nicola Griffith
1995: The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer
1994: Moving Mars by Greg Bear
1993: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1992: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
1991: Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
1990: Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
1989: The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
1988: Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold
1987: The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
1S86: peaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1985: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
1984: Neuromancer by William Gibson
1983: Startide Rising by David Brin
1982: No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop
1981: The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
1980: Timescape by Gregory Benford
1979: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
1978: Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre1
1977: Gateway by Frederik Pohl
1976: Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
1975: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
1974: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1973: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
1972: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1971: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
1970: Ringworld by Larry Niven
1969: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin1
1968: Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
1967: The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
1966: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany>
1966: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1965: Dune by Frank Herbert |
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| Why not Satan? |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|07:43 pm] |
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Why doesn't American Idol ever have a Satan night, god dam it!?!? |
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| craptracker |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|08:15 pm] |
craptracker update
Another happy textual moment in the self imposed panopticon. |
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| 1st Edition D&D Rules for Orgies... |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
Hmmm, I would think that orgies would help restore your psionic powers.
I wonder if they have updated this for 4th edition. |
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| Watchmen |
[Mar. 7th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
See it. But first, before you see this very good movie, you must read the graphic novel if you have not.
I was pessimistic about this movie, because of the fairly negative reviews of it that I had read. But I noticed that when I asked people who saw the movie what they thought about it, they fell into two camps. People who had never read the graphic novel did not like the movie, and people who read and liked the graphic novel, loved the movie. The woman who was giving me a haircut said, 'It was so long and boring and there was this guy who was blue who kept talking for like an hour in a monotone. I was expecting something like the X-men. Did these people even have super powers?'
Watchmen is just not a typical super hero movie, because it does a little of what the comic did and deconstructs the super hero. Its about our imagining of these comic book heroes and what that imagining implies about the way we imagine into being other aspects of our world.
I think that watchmen may be my favorite 'super hero' movie. It has a global scope, politics, real science fictional weirdness, Bubastus, monotone martian monologues by blue naked guys, full frontal shots of said blue naked guys, serious moral ambiguity, and a good take on the characters. A lot of that is Alan Moore's writing-- the alternate history, the moral ambiguity, the characters. Some of that is Dave Gibbons, whose frames become real in the movie, and some of that Zack Snyder preserving a good slice of the comic's coolness.
The movie takes many lines and many frames straight from the comic, but I liked that. Its great to see those frames on the screen, and great to hear Alan Moore's words spoken by the characters. |
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| Gutsville news! |
[Feb. 13th, 2009|10:45 pm] |
I emailed one of the creators, and it turns out that the series is going to be completed!
This from Frank Irving:
There's 3 more issues to come, with the last one being double sized. The comic got derailed last year thanks to the Fickle Fingers of Fate mucking about with the artist, though issue 4 is now complete and the last 2 issues will be drawn within the next few months.
Hoody hoo! |
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| What ever happened to Gutsville? |
[Feb. 7th, 2009|09:03 pm] |
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So, sometime in the ye olde era of 2007 I came across a comic book called Gutsville. The first issue was truly awesome. It was a mind bogglingly weird trip down some fantastic gullet with Russian nuclear subs, aboriginal dream time, pseudo-cetacean anatomy, fascist puritanical bad guys, and "rat" catchers. I wanted more, more, more. The 2nd and 3rd issues did seem a little like cop outs (there was still a lot of hope, though), and then the comic disappeared for years. Has anyone heard any news? Is it really gone forever, a moment of shear weird beauty and glory, only to be lost under waves bilious leviathan backwash and time? |
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| Writer's Block: Starting Out Fresh |
[Jan. 3rd, 2009|12:41 pm] |
Its not what you do on the first day of the new year that matters, but what you do on each second that is, counting from January 1st, 1970, either a perfect square, a member of the fibonacci sequence, and/or a prime number that matters. Those tiny slices of your life form a fractal compression that represents the whole. Its true. |
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| Hoody hoo! Its 2009! |
[Jan. 1st, 2009|10:32 pm] |
What a busy first day of the year.
Among the many activities was seeing the movie Milk. This is another excellent film concerning the first openly gay politician that was elected to a major office, Harvey Milk.
Sean Penn is great in this movie and will probably get the Best Actor award for it. Its not the best film of the year, but it was very moving, and its politically poignant consider the vote the re-ban gay marriage that went down in CA this November-- a definite recommend. Considering how few main stream movies I have seen about gay rights activism (as opposed to, say, main steam movies with gay themes), this might be the most unique film I've seen all year. |
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| Technology of 2008 |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|07:57 pm] |
At the end of this year I changed my cell phone to be an android. Welcome to the 21st century! I deliberately didn't get an iphone in 2007, and so this year had to decide between the iphone and the android. I went for the technoogy that was open source, of course. But honestly another reason was the keyboard. I have dry fingers, and I swear it makes them a little less conductive and so makes touch screens a little more irritating for me. With the android I can use physical qwerty if need be. Anyway, the android is just awesome. With 2 buttom presses I can scan a book at a used book store, the app(shop savvy) will then automatically look up that book on line and give me its price at all known online retailers as well as all local stores. I can then either use my phone to buy the book online, or use my phone to get a map from my current location to any of the local retailers. I can watch rock videos on youtube. I can use it as a level, a astrolabe, a GPS device, a graphing calculator, a strobe light, a complete set of polyhedral dice, and of course email, text messaging, web browsing, mp3 player, etc. etc.. I plan to write an app for it that makes it into a (fake) tricorder so that I can determine how breathable the atmosphere is and whether there is a large, fast moving alien coming my way.
I taught myself ruby this year to the extent that I was able to write highly modular and configurable distributed test framework in the language. I find ruby more elegant than python, though not quite as well supported. If it were as well supported as perl, it would be the total end all of interpreted weakly typed languages.
I also wrote a number of interesting things in python and perl, the hardest of which was a perl module for windows that looks at the perfmon NIC statistics and lets you read them into your perl program. Perl is soooo 90s though. |
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| Books of 2008 |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|07:04 pm] |
This is the year that I discovered Thomas Ligotti. He writes incredibly frightening nihlistic horror stories. Some of his out of print books, like the Bram Stoker award winning 'Nightmare Factory', go for the price of a mint copy of Abdhul Alhazred's Necronomicon. But Teatro Grottesco contains a good representantive sampling of his work and is downright cheap! I think that Thomas Ligotti is really the best, most wonderful literary thing that happened to me in 2008.
This is also the year that I got around to reading M. John Harrison. I greatly enjoyed Virconium. This is the protype for Gene Wolf's Book's of the New Sun, and is very cool.
The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao was very good. Diaz and Chabron are the total Pulitzer geek validating dudes.
For a few months this year I got really into reading about Emma Goldman. I enjoyed Howard Zinn's play Emma, and a graphic novel about Emma Goldman, Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman, by Sharon Rudahl, Alice Wexler, and Paul Buhle.
This is also the year that I got around to reading Spook Country, by William Gibson. The dose of hip proetry regarding what it is to be a technologically augmented creature living in the 21st century was highly welcomed.
The Black Dossier, by Alan Moore, was the most recent addition to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It comes with 3d specs, and is a open door to the blazing world.
Death Note, kind of overlaps 2008 and 2007. It is perhaps the coolest Manga I have read since Pheonix book 4.
This was also the year that I got into Jay Lake. I loved both Mainspring and Trial of Flowers. That boy can write truly weird fantasy.
This is the year that I found out about the Culture and Ian Banks. While I can't say that I loved 'Consider Phlebus', I did truly enjoy 'The Player of Games' and I imagine that it would be very appealing to many gamer/geeks.
I read 'The Name of the Wind' by Patrick Rothfuss. It is a very compelling 'heroic fantasy' yarn and not the kind of thing I would normally read (I tend to avoid the fat spined fantasy novels). But really good, especially for the way it creates the systems of knowledge of an imaginary, alternate world.
Camouflage, by Joe Haldman was moving and it won a Nebula, but it gets pretty straight forward near the end. The first half or so is the part to remember. A shape changing, immortal alien learns about humanity by taking on different forms throughout the last half the of the 20th century. It would have required years of work by Haldman to get it really right on.
I read Moby Dick this year. The chapter on what Melville believes about Cetology was weirdly entertaining. I like the hear someone argue that a whale is just a big ass fish. I also liked the cozy-bedfellows kind of implied gay sex between Ishmael and Queequeg.
I read a number of short story anthologies this year that I liked a lot, including Paper cities, Steampunk, and The New Weird. All three of these are terrific collections. Steampunk stands out the most for some reason, perhaps that it contains all sorts of New Weird fiction along side other loopey and great SF.
This is, of course, the year that Gary Gygax and Arther C. Clarke died. It is also the year that 4th edition D&D was published. Many people diss 4th edition, but in a way it is more like the old style of D&D than 3.5. I like it, even if it is a little weird at times. My drow elf rogue uses positioning strike to move a large otyugh 4 squares. How the hell does he get away with that? I figure that he spears a chunck of shit on the end of his double bladed sword and uses it to lure and prod the otyugh into position. Say what you will, its not really that much weirder that a lot of what goes down in a D&D game.
The Gates of Fire and The Last Amazon, both by Steven Pressfield, were good. Pressfield knows how to write historical battle scenes, and really creates an believable ancient Amazon civilization.
The China Town Death Cloud peril, by Paul Mamont was interesting. I especially liked when Lovecraft returned from the dead, and all of the pulp trivia and lore. |
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| Doubt |
[Dec. 25th, 2008|06:17 pm] |
That is one great movie. A totally awesome, woman power film with many political, metaphorical, social, etc. layers. Wow. Better than the other obvious academy award candidate movies from both this and last year. I liked it better than Slum Dog Millionaire, and I totally loved Slum Dog Millionaire.
The finger nails. See my claws little children. I keep them long and sharp, but they are clean. A monster does not have clean claws, hence I must not be a monster. Little children, you are safe. |
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| Cool science fiction readling list meme thing |
[Dec. 20th, 2008|08:46 pm] |
According to the Science Fiction Book Club, these are the 50 most significant SF & Fantasy Books of 1953-2002. Bold the ones you've read, strike the ones you hated, italicize the ones you couldn't get through, asterisks for the ones you loved.
1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
3. Dune by Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
6. Neuromancer by William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe*
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom by Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight by James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison*
18. Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison *
19. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman*
25. Gateway by Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling*
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big by John Crowley
32. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny*
33. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
35. More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon*
36. The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith*
37. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld by Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien*
42. Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock*
48. The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
49. Timescape by Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer*
Holy shit! I only have 8 books to go. Actually, 'On the Beach' sat on my book shelf throughout my adolescence. Like many people during that time, I was really into thinking about nuculer war-- how it might start, what its aftermath might be like, but never actually got around to reading it. I remember that stole that book from a jr. high school class room when I was spending an hour after school as punishment for something or another.
For many of these books, I have read other books by the same writer that I liked better. For example, in the late 80's and early 90's I was a total Dick head. But I loved books like Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Valis, and A Scanner Darkly. Man in the High Castle is his Hugo winner, and its very good, but not as weird as some of the other ones.
I loved the 3 Delany books that I have read, but I have never read Dhalgren. I have heard that its a difficult read, and kind of like the Finnegan's Wake of Sci Fi.
I note that some of these books are popular, but not really awesome. I don't understand how the Sword of Shararra could be included, but not a James Tiptree Jr.collection, for example. Stephen Donaldson made the best seller list with Thomas Covenant, but its not that great a series. And where is Robert E. Howard's Conan? Where is Lovecraft? Those two writers have had immense influence on all of pop culture.Well, perhaps they wrote before science fiction was really a genre (they were creating genre), and so they don't count.
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| Fabulous Festivus Cards |
[Dec. 14th, 2008|07:39 pm] |
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Quick! Does anyone know where a person can get Festivus cards? I want some featuring the feats of strength. |
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