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Archives: April 2003

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Darn it, I'm sooooo craving some form of baked good right now. Best would be something filled with an almond paste because I would love to get my hands on some almond paste. Alternatively, if anyone wants to bring me a honey crueller (sp?) from Tim Horton's, I'd be pretty satisfied.

hehe.

Posted by Rayne @ 10:46 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

So I was working on my work report re-write last night, and wrote at length on SSL and Firewalls. I was actually really interested on how SSL worked so I did quite a bit of research and wrote lots and lots about it. After about 1300 words, I looked at my paper and thought "waddaminnit, this isn't what I was suppose to write about at all".

I think my enthusiasm for SSL really got the best of me there. After tonight's RISK game and episode of Smallville I'll have to set out to write the work report I was SUPPOSED to write. It looks like it'll be another late night for me.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:53 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Monday, April 28, 2003

Looks like yahoo and google have found my site! Yay! Well, yahoo is powered by google so maybe only google found my site? The most amusing part is that some of the words that have been used to find my site are: keira, knightley, sexiest, tomboy, and beanpole. I don't know about you guys but that really makes me laugh. She's a popular gal! I should try to keep those words a constant on my front page for the next few months, I wonder if I can work that phrase into at least one journal entry a week?

See here for the full report on search words.

Posted by Rayne @ 12:44 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Sunday, April 27, 2003

So I saw the first of my summer movies last night; Bulletproof Monk.

It was actually very hard to find someone who would see this with me. Dan categorically refused to go, so I asked Jessica (2b elec eng @ UW) and she agreed to go after some discussion. She thought the movie looked ridiculous though and that it might not even have been real since the trailers made it seem like such a joke. We saw the 10:40 showing with about 20 other people.

Anyways, the movie itself is much much better than trailers would have you believe. Yes, it is silly but it was also thoroughly entertaining. Its one of those check-your-cynicism-at-the-door kind of films. We both had some good laughs but I’m not totally sure if it was at or with the movie. What surprised me the most about this film was how good Chow Yun Fat's English was. I was expecting a 3-line role like most of Jet Li's, but instead he has a pretty much full speaking role. Awesome!

Could it be that I’ve finally found someone else who’ll go see subpar action movies with me? Hope so!

Posted by Rayne @ 01:27 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Saturday, April 26, 2003

In the early 21st century, the first sentient computer was created: Skynet. Initially improving the lives of the people of Earth, it was not long before Skynet turned on its makers. With the help of its mechanical warriors, the Terminators, Skynet was able to overthrow humanity. Unprepared and outmatched, only a small band of humans remained led by John Connor who had trained his whole life to fight the machines. On his death bed, John Connor vowed that he would one day return to continue the battle.

Slowly losing the war, humanity retreated, hiding deep within the crust of the Earth. The Machines, feeding their ever growing need for energy, began to use humans as biological batteries. Countless humans were grown and connected to The Machines; their consciousness kept active trough a complex virtual reality known as The Matrix. For hundreds of years the war was at a stalemate. The Machines could not find the remnants of human civilization and humanity had no hope of winning. It was not until Neo had arrived that the tides changed. Believed to be the reincarnation of John Connor, Neo undid The Matrix and unleashed dormant humanity on The Machines. Its consciousness free of enslavement, humanity divided itself into factions to fight the war. Each faction eventually became known as a House.

For generations, the war endured on Earth and in other worlds. It was not until all the great Houses united that the last of the thinking machines were exterminated. So great became the fear of thinking machines that after the war, both law and religion explicitly forbid the creation of machines that would mimic the form and thought processes of man.

Utilizing the spice Melange, found only on the desert planet Arrakis, it became possible to travel between any two points in space in the blink of an eye. Finally unshackled, humans expanded throughout the universe, and colonized a million worlds. For fifteen thousand years, not a single thinking machine was seen again.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:53 AM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Friday, April 25, 2003

by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

The original Dune Chronicles are my favorite books of all time. Dune was set in the most detailed and complex universe ever committed to fiction. Even throughout six books Frank Herbert was never able to elaborate on everything he created; what the authors of the prequels have set out to do is to fill in some of the details. In Dune: House Atreides, we're treated to brief but detailed glimpses of the inner workings of Ix, The Guild, and The Landsraad. These political bodies were mostly behind the scenes forces, but now we're shown, amongst other things, the caste system of Ix, the training to become a navigator, and the procedures of the U.N.-like Landsraad. There are also a lot of nods to the continuity of the original books, one of my favorites being the origin of the Harkonnen no-ship found in books 5 and 6.

Set roughly 30 years before Dune, House Atreides tells the story of the minor characters from the original. Duke Leto the First's childhood gets the spotlight, but we also see things like how Duncan Idaho came to Caladan, how Shaddam rose to power, how Liet Kynes became planetologist, and how the Baron Harkonnen became so sickly. These aren't really stories that need to be told; but, as a Dune fan, they add a lot of depth and history to the characters that were a little overlooked.

Its actually impossible for me to write this thing without comparing it to the originals, so. In terms of style, the tone and structure of this book and the originals are very similar. The main difference is that House Atreides is much more narrative while Dune and its sequels were filled with dialog. The narration makes this book a much easier read and more seems to happen since we're not bogged down in chapters and chapters worth of conversation all the time. That said, I find that the dialog in the originals was what made those books so charming. The dialog really helped to bring out the subtleties and personalities of the characters in Dune, I quite often found myself reading conversations over and over again just to catch all the little things that were said or unsaid. Like I said, there is much less dialog in this prequel and it helps a lot with the pacing but in some cases it would have been nice to have the characters actually say something. An example: early in the book we're told "Leto calmed himself as his mother gave him a quick retort."; Frank Herbert would have taken the time to actually think up and write a "quick retort" and It would have made the character, if not the moment, a lot more powerful.

House Atreides is an entertaining read, it is much lighter than its predecessors as it doesn't dab in chapters worth of religious, ecological, and political musings. If you've never read Dune, read it. If you have read Dune, then you'll probably be reading House Atreides no matter what I have to say about it...if you haven't already.

Overall: 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 03:04 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

AH.

So I went back to future shop tonight to deal with my problem. I was in line for like five minutes but then I told the woman my problem, she took me to a cash register, punched in some numbers and put 50$ back on my visa. Done and done.

I love dealing with people who are competent at their chosen vocations.

Posted by Rayne @ 08:33 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

This is going to be a little vague.

Has there ever been an event that you thought was caused by something you said or did but you can’t be sure if it’s your fault or not? Or maybe the event in question isn’t really happening at all; it’s only in your mind that this is going on and it’s all coincidence and conjecture somehow.

In any case, that’s how I feel currently.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:19 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Well, I’m pretty much settled now; I’ve unpacked everything and set up my computer. I also had some big itches scratched as I went out to dim sum with my parents, played several long games of RISK (winning 2 out of 3) with my brother and cousins, read 300 pages of “House Atreides”, and made my large, obligatory, end-of-term comics purchase.

I spent 50$ at The Hobby Center getting 7 trade paperbacks for 5$ each and some other books. I was really impressed with the 5$ sticker price! I think these were books that they just didn’t want anymore. None of them were on my to-buy list except maybe “Sword of Azrael” but I can never resist cheap TPBs. One day, I’ll take a picture of all of them; I think they look really nice on my bookshelf. Since Dave asked me, I made a count of all the bounded comics I have: 245. That’s quite a few! By bounded comics, I mean ones that aren’t stapled; those don’t tend to stand up too well on bookshelves.

I have so many things that I want to get done this next couple of weeks, I hope lazying around doesn’t distract me too much!

BTW: AFI’s Girl’s Not Grey is a great song.
Bend it Like Beckham is a great film.
Keira Knightley IS the sexiest tomboy beanpole on the planet.
Phil’s was an awesome time.
Leanne was drunker than I’ve ever seen most people. She rocks.

Posted by Rayne @ 12:01 AM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Saturday, April 19, 2003

I hate packing. It always makes me very sentimental; even moreso than actually leaving.

The end of the term is very bittersweet. On one hand, I'm leaving the people I've been living with for the last 4 months, the city that I call home for half the year, and the friends that I don't get to see when I'm back in Ottawa. On the other hand, I get to see my family and friends from home again; I'll get to sleep in my real bed, have mom-cooked dinners, a car to drive and no school to stress over.

Someone once asked me, about parting, "Do you think it'll ever get easier?"
In my best teen-drama moment, I replied: "Would you want it to?".

Posted by Rayne @ 04:57 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Friday, April 18, 2003

Summer is all about the big budget action movie and this year is no different. In fact, this summer is probably going to be one of the best ones for this kind of film. Forget about character driven dramas, you can watch those on TV on a weekday afternoon with your girlfriend and her pet cat (boyfriend and his pet dog if you're a girl); summer movies are the ones that are truly worth your hard earned $$. See 'em on the biggest screen you can find with a large enthusiastic crowd on opening night.

Here is a list of all the movies I'm looking forward to seeing and their release dates.

Ya, so I got a little carried away and included movies from beyond the summer. Sue me.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:16 AM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Thursday, April 17, 2003

This episode puts the spotlight on the most underused member of the crew as Mayweather gets to return to his family on their cargo ship: the Horizon. He gets to deal with the rift between him and his brother as well as some space pirates. Though its nice to see Mayweather get more than 2 lines this episode, a lot of his scenes felt really awkward. I'm can't really tell whether that's from poor acting or a bad script.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise is on a scientific expedition studying a planet being pulled apart by two stars. Seeing this as a chance to relax, the crewmembers invite T'Pol to watch Frankenstein. It was interesting to see that T'Pol understood the themes of the story better than the humans who couldn't picture humanity being fearful and intolerant of someone different.

What I would have liked to see is the crew considering some of our more modern movies "classics". This was an issue I had with both Voyager and DS9 as the characters were always more enamoured with our past than their past. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of watching the Frenkenstein trilogy, Reid put on a showing of the Matrix trilogy or some other current films? I think this kind of forward thinking is generally lacking from the show.

The best part of this episode for me was seeing what life would be like on a non-starfleet vessel where the crew were not people trying to see new worlds and meet new civilizations but simply trying to make a living. I guess they were more "down to earth", but nevermind that.

Overall: 7/10

Posted by Rayne @ 12:01 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

The two Cube movies are like reality TV on heroin. Both movies are about following a group of strangers around as they try to figure their way out of an endless maze of identical rooms. Throw in some high tech death traps and you get some very high strung people and engaging characterization.

The Cube was a nice little independent Canadian sci-fi film that attracted a rather large cult following. There were really only two ways they could have made a sequel. One would have been to do it exactly like the first but have a different group of people and different traps, which would essentially be a remake of the first. The other way would be to expand on the first and show us more behind the scenes material and to make it bigger and bolder, but this route diminishes the charm of the first.

Cube 2 decides to go with the second route. The first one was a human drama about the extremes that people can reach when placed in an incredible situation. The sequel retains some of that but veers more towards X-Files territory with military/government conspiracies and theoretical physics. This time out the cube serves more as a death trap for enemies of the builders as everyone trapped in it is on some kind of hit list. Because this was more of a conspiracy story, the ending lost a lot of the poetic irony found in its predecessor.

All the actors were pretty much unknowns but they all did a pretty good job. Two of the characters spoke with lisps though, I found that a little distracting. Another distracting thing was that the main character looked disturbingly like a girl my housemates and I know. We ended up rooting for her to survive the ordeal.

Bottom line: if you want to see a really good human drama go watch the Cube, then if you want more see the sequel.

Overall: 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 03:34 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Monday, April 14, 2003

There are very few things that I find more annoying than people who mis-label their media. It is immensely frustrating to find out that after downloading 700 megs of twetwotowers.divx.screener.realversion.notfake.avi that it's NOT the real version and that it IS fake. It's like "10 things I hate about you" or some such nonsense. I don't understand how people can have something so blatantly mis-labelled. It's sometimes forgiveable for something like the wrong episode number of a tv series, or the wrong artist for a song but to have something labelled as something completely different is utterly insipid. Sometimes I think that some people label things incorrectly just so others will waste time downloading it. WHY?!? What benefit is there to them aside from a maybe few seconds of chukling? They lose hours of bandwidth uploading it and harddrive space storing something they probably don't want in the first place. And if they do get a laugh out of it then they seriously need help.

Posted by Rayne @ 11:47 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]

I don't know how many people saw/read the news when this happened, Bush said something that was almost exactly "Syria has chemical weapons". Time for them to think "Uh-Oh". I've been pretty sure that this war isn't one for oil, vendetta, weapons of mass destruction (I hate that phrase), terrorism or the "freedom of the Iraqi people". The theory that I subscribe to is that this war is a stabilization plan of the Middle East. The U.S. has basically decided that it is sick of the wars going on in the Middle East and that they will end the strife there by enforcing their rules and way of thinking. Indeed, it has been documented that the U.S. will subvert governments (look up Venezuela and Kissinger) with which it is unhappy, this time it has just taken a much more direct approach. Since before the war with Iraq ended, the U.S. has been accusing Syria of helping the Iraqis and now of developping chemical weapons. It is probably only a matter of time until the troops in Iraq make the little journey over to Syria. Remember that the war with Iraq started because the U.S. said Saddam had WOMD but as the war has progressed I find that that has really been neglected. I'm certain that they will never find any concrete evidence but the general populace will forget all about that once the next big push starts; which is exactly what the government wants. With the war with Iraq having gone well (ie: low U.S. casualties), it will be easy for the U.S. government to convince their own people that taking Syria is the most moral thing to do next. The pill of liberation, anti-terrorism and destruction of WOMD is an easy one for the U.S. public to swallow. The U.S. government has basicaly decided that it has become the Watchman for the world, and the question that arises of course is: Who Watches the Watchmen?

Posted by Rayne @ 10:44 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Saturday, April 12, 2003

Click on any of the TEXT links below to change the skin. Depending on the browser, the site might look slightly different. Click on the IMAGES to see what a full sized screen shot of what the site should look like under that skin.

Note that you have to have javascript and cookies enabled for this function to work properly.






Emerald. My first skin, created April 12, 2003
PAD Took the color scheme from Peter David's page. Created April 13, 2003
Fire: This scheme has some rendering problems in IE. Plus, its not very pretty even when it is rendered correctly, I'll fix it one day. Created April 22, 2003
Kitty: Bit this off of Melissa. Created May 10, 2003
Stucco: First skin to use textures, in this case "Santa Fe Stucco.bmp" that comes with windows. This skin currently looks like arse in Mozilla and i'm too lazy to try to fix it. See arse here. Created May 14, 2003

Posted by Rayne @ 02:18 PM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Archer finds himself the victim of an unjust Klingon judicial system. On trial for aiding enemies of the Empire, Archer suffers through a questionable process while inspiring honour and justice in an old Klingon lawyer.

This episode was fun for a few reasons, the actor playing the Klingon lawyer was the same man that played General Martok in DS9 and Captain Duras was, of course, of the Duras family that framed (or will frame) Worf’s family. The chase through the planet’s ring and the plasma explosion were nicely done, if a little reminiscent of Attack of the Clones. The sparking gavel was a good source of humour for the housemates and I. I liked the visuals for the Klingons a lot in this episode, especially the large Klingon emblem in the court room, and the intricate forehead patterns.

There were a few things that really needed to be elaborated on in this episode that never were. How did the Klingons get a hold of Archer? What happened to the rebels? Why can a human so easily beat a Klingon in hand-to-hand combat? My general complaint about this episode was that it lacked context. It feels very much like the writers wanted an episode with Archer showing the Klingons the error of their ways so they threw a semblance of a plot together without caring about how things got there or what the consequences would be. They wanted to tell the middle part but it wasn’t even entertaining or engaging on its own.

And that ending! Talk about a Deus Ex Machina. It was so contrived; you just knew that they didn’t care about it at all. The ending was just one scene they threw in just so they could get out of the cul-de-sac they had written themselves into. LAZY.

Overall: 5/10

Posted by Rayne @ 04:52 AM EST [Link]

I don’t know about everywhere else but the weather here has certainly been crazy. I don’t recall a single April when we’ve had a snowstorm! How crazy it is that up until 2 days ago we’ve had to venture outside in gloves and jackets and toques! Things are looking up though, it’s been pretty nice lately and the roads are all wet from melting snow as they should be. Perhaps spring will finally show up again…again. Remember that wild heat wave we had about 2 weeks ago? What was THAT about?

I certainly hope that biking conditions show themselves soon!

Posted by Rayne @ 02:13 AM EST [Link] [4 comments]

Friday, April 11, 2003

As you may notice, there's a new look to the site. I've been waiting for the chance to do this for days maybe even weeks but exams kept me busy for a little while. The look's not totally different but I like it a lot better. What you can't see is that I've changed from using tables for the site layout to using CSS to layout and define everything. Aside from a couple of issues, working in CSS has been much much easier than with just html. I still have a few things to work on here so if you experience any technical difficulties, don't worry about it!

For those of you using IE, there are a few small discrepancies (again) with how things look. To see how my site is suppose to look, click here.

Any comments on the new look are appreciated!

Posted by Rayne @ 07:31 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Well, that was certainly one of the most stressful days of my life! I had 2 final exams in one day. CS342 in the morning and STAT231 in the afternoon. They were the two hardest courses I had this term. About 2 days before the exams, there was still quite a large possibility of failing STAT231 so I was pretty freaked out. Studying time wasn't the greatest either since I had a CS360 final two days before. Time was much much tighter than usual. Luckily, the day before, while studying I had this HUGE realization: STAT231 is all about manipulating the standard deviation of the normal distribution! To manipulate SD you only need to know two rules SD(A+B)=root( sq(SD(A)) + sq(SD(B)) ) and aSD(a + bA)=bSD(A). They throw hundreds of models and tons of theory at us but in the end it was all about that damn standard deviation. You manipulate the SD to fit the model you have and plug it into the 5-6 equation that we had to memorize. Honestly, if the prof had ever summarized the course this way I would have had no probems at all figuring things out. As it was, I've had to stumble around all this material not really knowing what I was doing. Once that light bulb clicked though I saw everything in a new light (pardon the pun).

Want to know the craziest thing about yesterday's two exams? I slept about 10 minutes the night before. YA. It was certainly not something I was doing on purpose, I was done studying and in bed pretty early but could just not sleep. This happens to me pretty frequently, if I'm feeling too stressed or excited the amount of sleep I get usually suffers. At one point during CS342 I thought I couldn't do any of the programming questions because I couldn't wrap my head around the questions properly, I took a bathroom break and when I came back it was all pretty clear. Anyways, I feel like I did pretty well on my 2 exams BUT maybe I was completely dilusional and didn't know at all what I was doing? Hope not!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:58 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Thursday, April 10, 2003

We stand today upon a precipice. We will go out and fight one of the hardest and longest battles of our lives. This is the the day we have trained to win for 3 long months. Though some of us might not make it back in one piece, all of us will at least be able to say that we lived through it. That we fought through it. That we struggled through it. We can not lose; we will not lose. And when the sun sets down on the horizon we will be renewed.
We will be happy.
We will be fufilled.
WE. WILL. BE. DRUNK.

Posted by Rayne @ 01:58 AM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

So who's free this weekend? After my 2 exams on Thursday I'd like to go out and do SOMETHING. But I don't know who's free and who isn't. So if anyone wants to hang out Thurs/Fri/Sat lemme know! I'm up for anything.

Posted by Rayne @ 09:56 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]

Monday, April 7, 2003

So I had an interview with Olga Vechtomova today. [content removed -Rayne]

The job is a pretty interesting one. It involves coding up scripts for complicated search algorithms for a 'smart' search engine that she is working on. The thing is suppose to 'learn' as more people use it, it keeps track of what people will find most relevant about the results received. What is strange though is that the search engine won't really be used publicly. The reason she wants to work on it is to enter it in an Information Retrieval contest. So ya, that would be pretty different, getting paid to work on something only to enter it in a contest. Olga, btw, is a phd engineering graduate specializing in Information Retrieval.

The interview itself was OK. She had me a lot of questions about what my abilities were, what languages I knew, how much experience I had. Though I didn't know much about PHP, Perl, and mySQL I stil convinced her that I could do the job and would only take a week or so to learn all that I needed to know. She brought up some PHP scripts at one point and told me to tell her what they did. Not knowing PHP, I had to mumble through some of what the script did but I think I still did pretty good. Then she asked me to right then and there to write up a perl script to parse text files. I told her that it would probably take me like an hour since I had no idea how to write Perl, so she asked me to describe to her in pseudo code how I'd do it. That was pretty easy. THEN she gave me an assignment to do! HA! I'm to write a Perl script that reads in a text file and prints out the contents of it one sentence per line. So on top of studying for 3 exams this week I had to learn a bit of Perl too. Jeez. She said if I didn't have the time that I could email her some old scripts that I had written and she'd look at those. I emailed someone from the CTC and have the scripts in my mail box ready to go!

When the interview was over, I got out of her office, looked at my watch and it was 10:53!! I was in there for an hour!

Click on the "more" button to see the Perl script that she asked me to write. [more]

Posted by Rayne @ 11:16 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Sunday, April 6, 2003

The new trailer for Pirates of the Caribean was just released. I tend to like movies set in the past or in the future a lot more than movies set in modern times, so I'm pretty exited about it. This movie stars everyone's favourite elf from Lord of the Rings, is directed by the cool Gore Verbinski (The Ring), features some awesome cursed pirates effects, and it's also one of the first pirate movie to come out in a long long time. The real reason we should all see this movie though is because the damsel in distress is the world's sexiest tomboy beanpole, the delicious Keira Knightly.

Watch the trailer. GO! NOW!

Posted by Rayne @ 10:42 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Saturday, April 5, 2003

Recipe for some great burgers:
Saute mushrooms and slices of onion in some butter. When they're done add some barbecue sauce and a couple of slices of cheese. Melt the cheese to make a sauce and pour onto your burger. It's good.

I tried going this whole week without writing a "today in my life" kind of entry. What did you guys think?

I am also trying to write reviews of shows/movies I watch and books I read. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be pretentious or anything. As a CS student I'm just never asked "what do you think of this", so I figured I should exercise the part of my brain that does that sort of thing. Its also a good way to learn to write a little bit better as I find I often have trouble writing down a string of related thoughts in a coherent manner. Anyways, you can all expect reviews of all kinds of various things and stuff. Hopefully along the way I'll convince some of you to see a movie you haven't heard of or read a book you would have never thought to.

Its been brough to my attention that this site looks pretty bad in IE. The table sizes seem to be rendered very differently between IE and Phoenix. When I get the time, I'll be switching how everything is done from HTML to CSS style sheets. That should get rid of some of my headaches. And to those who've been using IE and thinking "wow this site is ugly", use a better browser!!!

Posted by Rayne @ 08:40 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Friday, April 4, 2003

This was a pretty interesting episode. The Enterprise gets swallowed into a ship run by 'non corporeal' beings. Some of the crew members go out into the ship, Tucker gets an out of body experience (that is obvious to the viewer but not to the crew) and they get back into the ship. They then learn that the aliens only want to trade bodies for their mutual experimentation in other forms of existence.

The alien ship design was really great; it looked like a manta ray from the outside and had an eerie ethereal glow inside. Why does everything non corporeal always get represented by some eerie ethereal glow?!?! Anyways, I am very impressed with the ship designs that have been used in the last few episodes; not only have they been cool but they've all looked significantly different from what we've come to expect from Star Trek. I liked the fact that every member of the cast got a good amount of screen time. Anyone who got possessed had wonderful scenes in which they got to completely out of character. My favourite possession was when Malcolm tried, very unsuccessfully, to sleep with any woman he came in contact with. It would have been great if one of the female crew members (like T'Pol) were also possessed and slept with Malcolm; they could have both woken up in a very awkward (and funny) moment ala Data and Yar in "The Naked Now".

There was one thing I didn't like about this episode, well two but one comes from the other. Don't read the next paragraph if you don't want this episode spoiled for you.

!spoiler space!
My complaint comes from the fact that Archer was right in his mistrust of the aliens. For most of Enterprise, Archer has always been condescending and untrusting of other races for no real apparent reason. And of course, he's always right. This would have been a much more satisfying episode to me if it turned out that the aliens were truly only after knowledge and Archer's suspicious ways led to the aliens being disenchanted with humanity. But the writers, again, chose to take the easy way out of the episode by turning the aliens into villains and justifying Archer's paranoia. The most aggravating thing about this episode though is the ending, the Enterprise ends up destroying the alien ship. Archer blew them all to kingdom come! Hundreds maybe even thousands of little floating lights. This just isn't right to me. There should always be a better solution than totally destroying the enemy, especially if their only motivation for being antagonistic is their own survival. Picard would have found a way to save them! In any case, I can't remember a single episode of Enterprise where they've encountered aliens with noble intentions. Apparently, humans are the noblest beings in the universe, how sad indeed.
!end spoilers!

Overall, this was a solid episode with great acting and effects but ruined by a cop-out twist and a horrible ending. 6/10

Posted by Rayne @ 03:33 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]

Thursday, April 3, 2003

Writer – Howard Chaykin & David Tischman
Artist – J.H Williams III
Inker – Mick Gray
Colours – Lee Loughridge

It’s been 15 years since Superman mysteriously vanished. The Justice League is now essentially an anti-terrorism strike force working for the U.S. government. Lana Lang and Pete Ross are terrorists. Superman’s son, Jon, is about to learn who his father was.

The story reminded me a lot of “Dark Knight Strikes Again”. Both start with a corrupt government and superheroes helpless to affect real change, the difference here lies in the fact that these heroes have basically given up.

The art by J.H.Willams III is impressive as always. Though it’s not as good as his recent work on Promethea, the art here is still realistic, expressive and full of detail like we have come to expect from him.

This book obviously centers on John and his coming to terms with who he is and what he represents. He starts off as a typical high school student trying to get a date when he suddenly gets his powers and is sought after by various groups with different interests. In choosing sides, he opens his eyes to the true state of the country and his role in it.

Though they’re not the main characters, the members of The League are sorely lacking in screen time. Many of them are completely different than what has been previously established. They are aware of the social injustices of their society but do nothing about it, have helped it get this way or do not see it for what it really is. Though this is a good book and surprisingly relevant, it could have benefited from a dozen or so more pages fleshing out the motivations behind each of the members of The League or explaining how they got to be the way they are now.

Overall: 7/10

Posted by Rayne @ 10:17 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

If there is one thing that the Bush administration has done better than anything else it’s the manipulation of public opinion.

Whenever something the administration wanted to do was criticized, they turned it around and made it seem as though the critic was looking down on something more pure.
A couple of examples. Criticizing the president was turned into criticizing your own country, or doing disservice to it. At one point, the Democrats (the opposing party) were told that they shouldn’t criticize Dubya because it gave the entire country a ‘negative feeling’ and the president needed their support at a moment like this. The whole point of an opposing party is basically to criticize the current government; different parties exist to have different perspectives.

The most current juxtaposition is that criticizing the war now means that you don’t support your country’s armed forces. Each time someone says that they don’t support the war, they’re bound to be asked something inane like “but how can’t you support your own countrymen?”. Anytime someone is going to criticize the war now they have to preface their statement with some kind of disclaimer to the tune of “I fully support our armed forces but…” lest they be called unpatriotic!

One example I can think of is the Dixie Chicks. One of the chicks made a statement during a concert that went something like “Just so you know, we’re ashamed that George Bush is also from Texas”. Their popularity took a big nose dive after that. People were calling in to radio stations to get Dixie Chick songs off the air, there was also at least one instance where people got together and burned all their Dixie Chick CDs!

Madonna has recently pulled her newest music video because it had a strong anti-war message. She (or her agents) felt that it wasn’t worth risking the public backlash.

One of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard is that Warner Bros. is changing one of their movie posters because the star on the poster is giving the peace sign! They felt that the poster might stir up negative feelings towards the movie or its makers. See the poster, and read the article here.

Now my question is, who is it that falls for these mind games so easily? Does the u.s. public just eat up anything their high-and-holy president says wholesale? Hook, line and sinker. I always just hope that it’s a very loud minority that falls for all this, but somehow I’m pretty sure that the majority of the u.s. populace hang on to each and every last word their president has to say and no one else’s because they’ve been conditioned to think that the office of the president is something that is meant to be highly respected, almost sacred. Why do they not realize that criticizing the government is not equal to being unpatriotic, and criticizing a war is not the same thing as criticizing those who have to fight it?

A new word that has popped into the administration’s lexicon is “regime”. I’ve noticed, especially this week, that whenever an official makes a public address, they always say “regime” at least once when referring to Iraq and Saddam’s reign. They’re trying to make regime synonymous with words like dictatorship. The next time the word “regime” is mentioned with some other country attached, the people of that country should be thinking “uh-oh”.

Posted by Rayne @ 08:59 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Before we moved, my family and I lived a couple of streets away from a project. I was friends with quite a few people that lived in the projects and knew generally the kind of things that would go on there. In that neighbourhood was a little strip mall with a Giant Tiger's, a convenience store, and some others. One of the more amuzing sights was watching the convenience store turn over every few months. I don't think that the convenience stores were not doing well, I'm pretty certain that they always closed because they were losing money to shoplifting. It was more than on one occation that I've gone in with a few people and have them walk out with jackets full of snacks.

What really bugs me though is the amount of violence that goes on. At the major bus station that I used to get to and from high school, it was almost a weekly occurence that some major fight involving at least a dozen people would break out. Usually, it was in the form of swarmings where a bunch of guys would go after one person. A lot of people that lived in the projects near my house were usually involved in these things.

I don't understand what motivates these people to do such things. I can't imagine ever needing to steal snacks on a daily basis or getting ten of my friends to gang up on one person. I guess I just can't "relate" to them.

As I've mentioned, we've moved recently and I wasn't expecting this sort of thing to keep going on since we are now in one of the nicer parts of town. Unfortunately, this kind of violence and behaviour is apparently prevalent where we are now too. I've run into a few articles lately about this sort of thing, and this one a couple of days ago. I'll also paste the full story in the 'more' section.

So whats the benefit of 16 people stealing a discman from a 15 year old? What are these guys thinking? I can't imagine ever taking pleasure from taking something from someone who worked hard to get it. Do they feel guilt or a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from a good night's work? I'd really like to know. 15 guys working even for minimum wage would make more money than they ever could stealing and selling things they get off of people. Honestly, an mp3 player split 15 ways is not much.

Anyways, I'm upset that this is happening at a bus station that I use, that my mom and my brother use. During the work term, it's pretty common for me to get home late (8-ish) and I'd like to be able to feel safe taking the bus. No matter how strong you are or how fast you are, I think you'd still be pretty scared of 15 or so people trying to rob you.

[more]

Posted by Rayne @ 03:11 AM EST [Link] [15 comments]

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