The Long Road

Archives: May 2003

Saturday, May 31, 2003

Man, got home so late. *YAWN*

Posted by Rayne @ 04:14 AM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Friday, May 30, 2003

So I sez to the good doctor
"Herr Doktoor, I need you to examine the arches of my feet"
so the doctor looks at my feet and sez
"zee problem, young man, iz dat you have no arches"

Posted by Rayne @ 07:17 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Thursday, May 29, 2003

So many Andrea's, so little time...

Posted by Rayne @ 02:08 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]

There's definitely something wrong with the people marketing the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". In the first trailer and teaser, the movie's title was shortened to "LXG". That's not so bad since "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is pretty tedious to type out and/or say. We all like our short-forms but hearing Mr.Voice actually saying "Elle Ex Gee" seems dumb to me. I think I would have been happy with "Elle Ex Gee, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

Exceeding stoopidity shows up though in the trailer attached to X-Men 2 when the words "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" appear but Mr.Voice only says "The League". It sounds absolutely horrendous and cheesy, I kept expecting to hear "of Extraordinary Gentlemen" as any sane person would, especially when those words are up there on the screen. It was very unsatisfying I might have even slept better that night if someone said to me "of Extraordinary Gentlemen". You'd think the people making these decisions would at least watch the trailer first and realize how wrong it sounds.

Imagine what these people would do to "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" or "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life".

Posted by Rayne @ 01:51 AM EST [Link] [17 comments]

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Took the O-train for the first time yesterday! I’ve been wanting to try it out but never got around to it. The O-train is probably the greatest thing ever! The train can get from South Keys (where I live) to pretty much downtown in 15 minutes. It takes around 40 minutes by bus on a good day and almost the same by car. The train saves me so much time! The thing only makes 5 stops per trip and not many people seem to use it so it’s nowhere near as stuffy as the bus. The chairs have high backs and are really comfortable. A soothing female voice announces the upcoming stops so you don’t even have to pay attention to the scenery to know when to get off. All in all a remarkably pleasant experience!

Can you believe I wrote this whole thing without an O-train pun??

Posted by Rayne @ 06:18 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Flashback episode. Yuck. This episode is a prequel to Enterprise, which is, itself, a prequel to all Trek. Was there a point to this episode? I don’t know. We see the first warp 2 flight. So? What was so special about warp 2? Will we get a warp 3 episode one day? Warp 4?

I seriously doubt that a control room would be as somber as the one shown when warp 2 was reached. I can easily imagine people cheering when such a landmark is achieved, but nope, everyone is instead looking like their mothers just died.

The only thing we really learn from this episode is that Archer was once a by-the-books kinda guy. And that Forrest was never truly leader material, young pilot-in-training Archer seemed more in control of every situation they were both in than Forrest was.

The effects and designs were, once again, awesome. The NX launch pad/runway was very well done and the NX Alpha seemed like a logical evolution of Cochran’s Warp ship from First Contact.

Best line this episode was from T’Pol “Enthusiasm will not alter the laws of physics”.

For being mediocre, I give this 6/10

Posted by Rayne @ 07:20 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Monday, May 26, 2003

So I went to bed at around 4:30-ish on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I’ve been so busy this whole week, goin’ out and such that I haven’t had much rest. I was hoping on sleeping a few hours that night…like 12. But good ol’ Darryl calls me around 10am to ask me what I’d be up to. 10 am!!! Ridiculous! As a general rule, I try to never call anyone before noon, weekend or otherwise. The worst part was that I wasn’t able to go back to sleep at all.

After a late dinner, I fell asleep on the couch at 9pm for the 3rd time this term. Around 4am I got really cold and went up to my room but couldn’t fall asleep anymore so I stayed up. Damnit, Sunday is supposed to be the one day in the week that I get a full night’s sleep. I blame YOU Darryl!

Posted by Rayne @ 08:12 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Sunday, May 25, 2003

What fun I had tonight!

Tomber la... on a tombé, on a tombé la chemise
Tomber la... oui moi j'ai tombé, j'ai tombé la chemise
Tomber la... oui moi j'ai tombé, j'ai tombé la chemise
Tomber la... oui moi j'ai tombé, j'ai tombé la chemise et..

LOL

Posted by Rayne @ 03:54 AM EST [Link] [27 comments]

Saturday, May 24, 2003

In "Up the Long Ladder" of ST:TNG, there was an interesting society. Five spacemen (3 men, 2 women) had crash-landed on an uninhabited planet and decided to go one with their lives hoping but not expecting to be rescued. Instead of trying to let nature run its course, our stranded people took a more pragmatic approach to their social dilemma. They realized that they did not have diverse enough genetic material for a stable gene pool so they all vowed to never have sex with each other and build a community out of clones of themselves! A possible solution, but not very fun. Here is MY idea. Their solution is all about preserving their genes as they are, but mine involves creating a society that tries to have all possible combinations of the genes from the five original stranded astronauts represented.

Setup
We have 5 people, 3 men and 2 women. For the sake of scientific objectivity we'll name the men John, George, and Luc; the women Beth and Lucy. Our subjects are very intelligent (they are astronauts after all) but have no way to get off the planet and no immediate plans to. What our stranded specimens do have at their disposal; however, are cloning facilities that can reproduce a person using some of their genetic material. The episode shows full grown adults being made in a lab but doesn't address whether the clones come out with full motor control, understanding of language, etc. so I'll assume that clones can be reproduced as full grown adults with all the knowledge that their templates have (yaya, scientifically implausible but the show doesn't even address this as far as I can remember).

G1
For ease of reference, lets refer to our original 5 collectively as G1 (for generation 1). Initially, we create clones of the G1 people so that there are an equal number of men and women and that the cloned men are divided evenly by template amongst the women.

For example, we could create 150 clones of each woman and 100 clones of each man for a total of 600 clones. The 150 clones of Beth get 50 clones of each of the men and same goes for Lucy clones. Now we have 6 unique sets of 50 couples, making 300 couples.

G2
Lets label the children from each G1 pairing, G2. I think we can safely assume that children from identical couples will all be different since the odds of the same sperm cell from 2 cloned men impregnating the same zygote in 2 cloned women are astronomically small. Each G2 will be able to mate with G2s born from G1s that aren't their parents; G2s could also be mated with new G1-clones (or even the original G1s if they're into that kind of thing).

Let's say each of our 300 couples produce an average of 3 children giving us 900 unique children. A male G2 born from a John-Beth coupling could be mated with a Lucy-George or Lucy-Luc female offspring; he could also be coupled with a Lucy clone since he would share no genetic heritage with Lucy. Now we have 900 G2 people that we can begin cloning and we can still keep producing G1s.

G3
G3s have it a little bit harder. At this point, all G3s would share the same grandmothers (since there are only 2 female G1s). A G3 female can only be mated with the G1-male that is not her grandfather without mating with someone with whom she is genetically linked. However, it has been recently shown that the odds of genetic anomalies occurring in children born of first cousins is only about 1 percent higher than children born of unrelated couples, so G3s can be mated with other G3s with almost no problems as long as they don't share he same parents and have at least 3 unique grandparents combined.

Back to our example, a female grandchild of John-Beth and Lucy-George can be coupled with the 3rd G1 male - Luc - without intermingling genes. Their offspring would carry the genetic material of all five original G1s.

G4+
I don't know. It gets too complicated here. Every G4 and beyond will have at least 1 G1-ancestor in common. Remember that we're constantly producing G1, G2 and G3 clones and that those clones are constantly pumping out new babies. Let's say our scientists have been keeping tabs since the beginning of who is an offspring of whom and charted characteristics (physical and psychological) about everyone. After several generations and thousands of clones of each individual, our scientists will have a very clear genetic picture of almost everybody. With all this data they could easily pinpoint who is carrying certain unwanted recessive genes. With gene-knowledge in hand, these later generations would be mated with care so that unwanted genes could be breeded out of the gene pool. Eventually, we could have persons with all the desirable genetic qualities of the original five G1s and none of their weaknesses.

Musings

This would be quite a strange society!! Imagine the expectations of the 1000th clone of John. If all Johns are found to be great teachers, would all John clones not be at least somewhat expected to become teachers? How about marrying someone you know is genetically similar to you? I think these people wouldn't have a problem with it; they would be raised with a different set of values and outlook on such things. People who are found to produce 'damaged' offspring would be either not cloned or anymore, or simply not reproduce anymore and join the adopt-a-clone program.

FUN!

Does this make sense to anybody? I think its stopped making sense to me if it ever did.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:15 PM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Thursday, May 22, 2003

I watched my first hockey game last night! I’m not really a hockey fan, nor a sports fan in general; but there is a lot more excitement to be had when watching your home team playing in a game that will the difference between going to the finals or not.

Playoff games have a real weight to them because each game, each point is important. Watching the game in a rowdy environment with people cheering and jeering at every little thing also made the experience really fun!

Sadly, I had to leave before the overtime period started, but I heard the results over the radio. I’m looking forward to Game Seven, Friday! Go Sens Go!

Watpub tonight!

Posted by Rayne @ 07:13 PM EST [Link]

This episode, the Crew of the Enterprise is introduced to the Borg, though they are never referred to as such; “We are Borg” is cut out of the “resistance is futile” speech. On its own, this episode is pretty good. We get a good build up of suspense and have a couple of characters make some really tough decisions. The Borg ship is a joy to see since we get several versions of it as the Borg are constantly upgrading. The ships on this show have been consistently well designed and break the mold from what Trek ships usually look like. I also liked that we finally get to see someone get physical with the Borg when their weapons start to fail. I’ve always wondered why no one thought of just using hands and traditional weapons when phazers stop working. What if you gave ‘em a nice shotgun blast to the head? Can Borg adapt to projectile weapons? “Adapt this!”

If this is the first episode ever for the Borg, it’d be pretty damn good; but it’s not. “Regeneration” puts a pretty big dent in the carefully weaved Trek continuity. They wanted a Borg episode and found a way to do it, but in doing so screwed up so much! Yes, it is possible that a couple of Borg survived the explosion in First Contact, but it’s also possible that none of them survived; there was no issue to be addressed here. If Archer knew about the Borg and an impending invasion in 200 years, why would Picard have never heard of them and Starfleet be completely unprepared when the Borg finally came around in TNG? Unless everyone on the ship and those on Earth that know about the incident dies in the next episode with no time to report anything then this episode is just one big plot hole. Never mind that there is now a butt load of 24th century Borg technology sitting in the 22nd century Earth Arctic. Also, these Borg are such wimps! They are 24th century Borg; it’s hard to believe that it would take them a dozen deaths before they can adapt to 22nd century weapons. Even against the TNG crew it took at most five shots for them to adapt to any weapon.

The Borg are the most overly used ‘event’ villains in Trek (see Voyager), they've really been powered down and made into more of a joke than a credible threat everytime they've shown up. I’m all for a Borg episode, but if they can’t do it right then they just shouldn’t do it.

This episode basically amounts to a ‘stunt’ because they needed some good ratings during sweeps. Next week’s episode is “T’Pol in heat”. Kill me now.

For screwing things up, this episode gets 5/10

Posted by Rayne @ 07:11 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Matrix: Reloaded tries to build on the two worlds created in the first film. We learn the explanation behind ghosts, vampires and werewolves in the virtual world and in the real world we see how and where humans live. I’d definitely be interested in a little bit more detail like where food and clothing come from. We also get a bit of a religious overtone as Neo is seen somewhat as a messiah figure by some people and I thought Morpheus seemed a bit like a religious fanatic since not everyone believes in the prophecy.

If you think about it, there are similar plot points between the two matrix movies. There’s a revelation, a red-pill/blue-pill decision, a resurrection, and new found powers.

I like that this movie has moved away from guns a little bit. Maybe it’s the whole columbine thing. We still get lots of guns, and the fight choreography is still really good, but what I enjoyed the most was the addition of hand weapons. Katanas, sais, clubs, and badass scalpels. Weapons really add another layer to the whole superpowered-kung-fu thing, which the first movie already did so well. If Matrix: Reloaded affects modern cinema in only one way, I think it would be weapon-based combat.

What made the first Matrix stand out for me, after the effects, was the revelation of what the matrix was. This sequel has a revelation, but nothing of the same scale. Nothing that makes you think “oh my god, that’s craaaaazy”.

The special effects, as expected, are amazing. The opening sequence, the highway chase (which is probably the best car chase I’ve ever seen), and the fight with the multiple agent Smiths are all spectacular. The problem, if you can even call it that, is that there isn’t any one effects scene in Reloaded that stands out as a ‘classic’ moment to be imitated again and again. Everyone copied the bullet dodging and Trinity kick scenes from the first movie but I seriously doubt that anyone will copy the effects scenes here.

Good as they are, there are definitely some parts that you can still pick out and say “ya, that’s cg”. I will be impressed the day I see an effects movie that is seamless. Actually, as long as they don’t try to render people it’s pretty good. Intellectually, we can pick out people that are CG (like the agents smith), but its disappointing to still be able to tell that Neo is rendered because he doesn’t move correctly or because he’s suddenly lost all the texture on his clothes.

I loved that this movie was channeling Superman for the flying sequences. The first time we see Neo flying then bursting through the clouds and the scene where Neo is flying with one hand forward and the other hand back were definitely homage to the man of steel. The thought that he flies so fast that cars get picked up in his wake is awesome. Reloaded is so power-trippy!

The acting, nothing glaring except for the fact that I did not believe for one second that Neo and Trinity were a couple. The two actors have no chemistry with each other. I blame Keanu. The only real couple-scene was when Trinity said “excuse me?”, a moment I particularly enjoyed.

While The Matrix asked its questions about the nature of existence and reality implicitly, the sequel does so more explicitly with its characters engaging in long conversations and rants philosophizing on existence, control, symbiosis, cause and effect, and choice. Those looking for mindless summer blockbusters will not find it here; in fact, I expect most people (like me) would tune out during the long conversations and tune back in when the crazy effects show up again. I expect this and the lack of a ‘classic’ effects moment are what made certain people think that this movie didn’t live up to expectation.

A real nice surprise (for me and those who have watched all of The Animatrix) is that a couple of the animated shorts directly affect the movie. “Final Flight of the Osiris” seems to occur just days or even hours before the events of Reloaded, and is even referenced in the movie. The kid in “Kid’s Story” appears in the movie and has a somewhat significant role. What amazed me was how similar the stylized character in “Kid’s Story” was to his live counterpart. Neat little easter eggs these are. Those are the only ones I caught. Maybe there are others. I hope Matrix: Revolutions continues to incorporate more of the Animatrix into its story.

Another nice touch was the first ever (that I can think of) fully realized live action mechs. Mechs have been such a long-time staple of animation and science fiction I’m actually surprised they’ve never shown up before in a live action movie. The mechs had a rather short role, but they looked absolutely cool and realistic. The trailer for Matrix Revolutions promises some actual mech action, I can’t wait!

Speaking of which, for those of you who don’t know, there is a 30 second teaser for Matrix: Revolutions attached to Reloaded after all the credits roll by. Well worth sitting around the extra 3 hours worth of credits for.

Spoilers!
So what’s up with Neo’s new found powers at the end? I’ve heard it said that it was because they were now in a Matrix outside the Matrix. I can’t possibly believe that the writers would resort to that kind of redundancy. The same way an agent Smith was able to escape the matrix, I think that Neo unknowingly took something with him when the left The Source. Something that gives him the ability to control the machines outside the Matrix. “Source code” as it were.
End spoilers!

If I had to give this rating, it'd be 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 02:51 PM EST [Link] [38 comments]

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

So what’s been going on with me?

On Friday I went out and finally got myself a suit. There’s a wedding sometime next month so no khakis and t-shirt for me. It was pretty expensive but it’s only the first of several large purchases I intend on making over the next little while.

A friend had these hilarious comments to make to me:

“speaking of glasses, i just got some
the word is an HD-TV
i don't go "she's hot....whoa NO she's not" anymore”

Saturday I went out biking and saw a sight that made me think "unfair". Then I picked up some people and we went to see Matrix: Reloaded. Thoughts on that are coming up, I like it overall though. After the movie we went out to dinner, three of us split 8 pounds of wings. The girls were ... I wouldn't say impressed, more like...disgusted by all the poultry that was consumed. It was a rather messy ordeal, I tried holding out against using my hands but gave in after a while. I made sure to wash out all the wing-sauce very very thoroughly afterwards. We then went to play some pool...I was doing alright at first but as the night wore on I got pretty bad. Meh.

Sunday I went out and bought some groceries for the BBQ that my cousins and had on Monday. I spent 70$ on food...a little ridiculous considering I don't think I even bought that much stuff. My brother and I had to drive around for about an hour looking for somewhere to fill our propane tank. None of the gas stations around here have a refilling service thing apparently. We hit all the stations within at least a 10 block radius from our place, but nothing. Then we got to COSTCO, they had one but were closed. At COSTCO, we ran into some guy who had the exact same problem except he'd been driving around for about 30 minutes more than we had, so we vented to each other. I told him about a place I knew that for sure had a propane pump but it was 1/2 way across town, he came with us anyways. This was the hardest I've ever had to work for propane. Ridiculous. Turns out that the other guy with propane issues lives down the street from us. Cool.

Oh ya, I also bought some comics, yay cheap comics!

Monday, I had my BBQ with my cousins. We made our own burgers which was fun and ate outside with all the bugs, which was not so fun. Eating indoors is a thousand times more comfortable. I insisted that someone bring me a black forest cake (I’ve been wanting one for like 4 months) so my brother had to drive around for a long time looking for one. Apparently he found one at a Tim Horton’s “on the other side of town”. It was well worth it, though maybe not for my brother.

Posted by Rayne @ 01:52 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Monday, May 19, 2003

Two good ones in a row? What the hell!?

This episode does something that Enterprise rarely does; it introduces us to aliens that are vastly different from humans. The main focus being on differences in sexuality. The aliens, Vissians, have three sexes; males, females, and cogenitors. Cogenitors, we find out, are treated almost as pets and have very few rights. Commander Tucker, unbeknownst to the Vissians, befriends the ship’s cogenitor and tries to teach it (her?) about all the things its been missing out on, like reading. When the Vissians find out, they’re furious at Tucker for interfering in their people’s business and at the cogenitor’s new found independence who asks for asylum away from her people.

The conundrum for Trip (and the viewer) here is the choice between changing something that he feels is absolutely wrong or not taking action because he doesn’t understand Vissian society and a cogenitor’s place in it. It’s too easy for Star Trek (and especially Enterprise) to show humanity as the moral superiors in any situation so it’s refreshing that this episode shows us some things in a bit of a grayscale. The strength of this episode comes from the fact that it doesn’t take sides in what the best course of action should be.

What blurs the morality a little more is that the Vissian captain is completely understanding, patient and kind towards the humans and what had happened; a lesser episode would have taken the easy way out by showing us that the Cogenitors were, in fact, grossly mistreated by heartless masters and that Trip had every right to do what he did.

What I would like to see in a future episode is more of the Vissians and their society, to learn why the cogenitors have the role they have. I want the writers to come up with a reason for cogenitors being treated as they are that is intellectually, socially, and morally acceptable. I also want Trip to have been absolutely wrong about his choice by learning that the Vissians ARE enlightened to sexual discrimination and that the cogenitors cannot possibly occupy any other role in their society.

I hope that’s not too much to ask.

If I had to give this a rating, it'd be 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 03:13 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Sunday, May 18, 2003

Now that the war on Iraq is over (notice that the war was won in a very small time with few U.S. casualties despite Bush's constant proclamation that it would not be an easy fight), the Bush Regime is really playing up the whole "Freedom for the Iraqi people" angle. Freedom and democracy are nice goals and all, but I can guarantee that no one will be 'elected' if the U.S. doesn't want them to be. All Iraqi political candidates in Iraq will now on be basically chosen by Washington to make sure that their agenda coincides nicely with the U.S. one. This is not democracy. Democracy, after all, is the choice to elect a psycho as your leader if you wish to do so. An opportunity the U.S. public seems to embrace.

Does anyone remember that this war was started by the U.S. because they claimed Saddam was hiding WOMDs? Both the U.S. and British governments said that they had irrefutable but classified proof that Iraq did have some stockpiles somewhere. This is the time, then, for the press, the public and the opposing party to see this proof. If Bush and Blair were so sure of themselves how come we're not seeing anything concrete coming out of Iraq? We're seeing SOME stuff but its all conjecture, every little factory or vat of liquid that is found is suddenly a potential source for chemical weapons. It's as if I walked into your house, killed you, found a lighter and said I was justified because you had a flamethrower.

Posted by Rayne @ 02:13 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Saturday, May 17, 2003

This episode has 2 plots going. In one, the doctor has to convince an injured person to trust him. The patient is from a race that was engaged in a bloody war with the doctor's people hundreds of years ago and the two races have not seen nor talked to each other since the end of the war. The patient would rather die than let the doctor touch him so the doctor struggles throughout the episode to convince the man to let him help. This is the stronger of the two plots mostly because John Billingsley can act in circles around everyone else on the show. His character is more compassionate, funny, angry, frightened, and 'human' than any of the real humans are ever shown to be. The doctor is the deepest of all the characters in the show, he has the most range of actions and reactions; everyone else seems 2 dimensional in comparison.

The second plot involves 3 members of the crew trying to get some geologists off a planet. This story is here mostly for its action and comic relief from the drama involving the doctor. It even serves up a gratuitous firefight at the end. What I find strange is that, in the time of Enterprise, rock climbing hadn't evolved passed what we know it as. They had self-anchoring pistons but nothing else that was high-tech. In a universe of warp-drive and artificial gravity you'd think that rock climbing would be a little easier.

I liked this episode overall, but mostly because of the Doctor parts. Thinking back, was it standard to episodes of Trek to have 2 plots running concurrently? I can think back to some that had a major plot and a minor subplot, but Enterprise seems to have quite a large number of episodes that try to tell 2 whole stories in 40 minutes.

If I had to give this a rating, it'd be 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 01:03 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Friday, May 16, 2003

Be warned, this is potentially filled with spoilers.

I’m almost done reading the Dune ‘house’ trilogy. Overall the books are pretty good but I found them to be too…predictable. For instance when a character is put in a life or death situation, it’s not very suspenseful when I know that that character is alive and well in ‘Dune’. I’m currently at the climax of House Corrino and the book is playing out exactly like I thought it would, not because I’ve read other Dune books but because all the dominos had been laid out so explicitly. Too explicitly.

Here is some conjecture on my part. In books 5 and 6 of the original series we learn that the distant colonies of man were being attacked by some new force so they started retreating back to the empire of a million worlds. Frank Herbert died before he could write book 7 so readers never found out what he intended to do with this ominous threat. Halfway through reading House Atreides, I started thinking that the thinking machines would be the mysterious enemies in the yet-to-be-written Dune7. There was nothing explicit to make me think that, just a few little details that I picked up on. First, House Atreides discussed the war on the machines a little more than I thought was ‘normal’, but maybe that was because the writers were trying to get us interested in the Butlerian Jihad. Which leads me to the second thing, the writers will be writing about the Butlerian Jihad. The thing is, they will be writing about the jihad BEFORE putting out Dune 7. It’s almost as if they were trying to prepare readers for it by giving them background info first. There were also some other vague, subtle things to lead down this train of thought. I won’t go over them but today, on page 374 of House Corrino a prescient character had this to say: “No time…Threat…outside force…evil…drawing closer…beyond the imperium…ancient enemy…future enemy”. That’s almost explicitly saying that the machines will be back. Unless humanity has an ancient enemy in the Dune universe that I don’t know of, it’s a pretty safe bet that the machines will be around in Dune 7.

Posted by Rayne @ 12:29 AM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Thursday, May 15, 2003

I've had to live in near destitution for the last month and had to borrow quite a few dollars from my 'rents. But today, ah today. Today, I got income tax refund check to my name in the mail, a very very nice amount at that. HUZPAH!!

Its time to take some things of my 'to buy' list! Who wants to go shopping!?

Its a really good day in general!

Posted by Rayne @ 06:38 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Treasure Planet didn’t do very well in theaters; in fact, Disney blamed it for its poor fiscal performance that quarter. I don’t know why this movie did so poorly because its GOOD. Maybe it’s the fact that Treasure Planet is sci-fi (animated sci-fi hasn’t done very well lately, witness: Final Fantasy (Here’s a brackets-within-brackets thought: Final Fantasy. FANTASY. FAN-TA-SY. Why the hell was it science fiction?!), Titan A.E, Iron Giant) or maybe because the U.S. public has become more enamoured with CG animation so traditionally animated movies are going the way of the sprite-based side-scroller?

The best part of Treasure Planet is the animation. The movie is done using a combination of hand-drawn and computer-generated images. The blending is so well done, that it’s seamless in most instances. Captain Silver, for example, has a body that is half mechanical; the mechanical parts are done in CGI and the rest is hand-drawn. Each style compliments the other extremely well and the combination of the two is not intrusive at all. The CGI adds a lot of depth, complexity and texture to objects which would otherwise be flat looking. CGI also allows for shots that would have the artists go insane (or have their hands fall off) had they been done traditionally, shots like the incredibly long zoom-in of the moon/starport from the planet. The hand-drawn stuff is used mostly for the characters since it would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming to do convincing humans using computers.

What’s the movie about? Pirates in a flying ship looking for a planet full of treasure called…Treasure Planet. The story isn’t your typical Disney fare; our hero isn’t really…heroic and our villain isn’t really, well, villainous. And there’s got a good moral at the end.

Anyways, I didn’t have high expectations (because of its $-intake) for the movie but I was pleasantly surprised by it and ended up really enjoying it.

If I had to give this a rating, it'd be 8/10

Posted by Rayne @ 11:33 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

Around this time last year I came home from school for the May24 weekend. This also happened to be lobster season. My parents had obtained like 20 lobsters, so I was treated to some on my stay at home. This year is no different, we just got our first 8 at 60$ from the local super C. I can’t wait to dig into ‘em tomorrow!

One of the best parts of living at home is the relatively extravagant meals. Delicious!

Posted by Rayne @ 11:24 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Sunday, May 11, 2003

X-Men 2 is an awesome film. This film is better than the first in every way; music, acting, effects, plot, script, sets, costumes, action, everything. With the introduction of the X-Men and their world out of the way, this sequel can afford to pick things up assuming that we know who the X-Men are and what they can do. Really, they made X-Men so that they could make X-Men 2.

This sequel does an amazing job of giving each character a good amount of screen time. Most ensemble movies tend to focus mainly on one or two characters but X-Men 2, while still focusing on Wolverine, maintains a good balance between most of the other characters. Rogue and Professor X get a little less screen time now than in the first one, but we get to see and learn more about Jean Grey, Storm, Iceman, Mystique and Pyro, plus there is the addition of the extremely well executed Nightcrawler to the cast. The only character that I felt got short-changed was Cyclops. Compare X-Men 2’s excellent cast-juggling to the last few Star Trek movies where the captain gets more than ½ the screen time and most of the rest of the established crew get so little that it’s probably not worth it for them to even participate.

X-Men 2 opens with Nightcrawler’s attempt at assassinating the U.S. president. The scene is so well done. Nightcrawler’s teleportation is shown as a beautiful burst of light with blue smoke. From there, the movie shows us quite a few instances of mutants using their awesome powers, Storm’s evasion of fighter planes and Magneto’s escape from prison being the two other highlights. Magneto’s escape really shows off how immensely powerful the man is and how truly ruthless he can be, that scene is most likely my favorite ever, I think I was giggling for a good minute after seeing it. The movie does a great job at showing us how dangerous, useful and absolutely cool superpowers can be.

Though the action scenes are most likely what everyone will remember about the movie, X-Men 2 also touches heavily upon racism, which these characters have always been an allegory for. We get outright anger, hatred and even blame towards mutants from Stryker; he has no qualms about enslaving, torturing and experimenting on mutants to achieve genocide. Iceman’s family show the more casual prejudice and ignorant side of racism, blaming themselves for the way he was born and thinking that genetic traits can be something one can just turn off.

That last shot! What a cocktease of an ending, the very first time Jean’s eyes started burning, I was completely hoping they’d go headfirst into it, instead we get suspense. It would have almost been more satisfying had they made it as a cliffhanger with a full blown shot of what X-Men readers know is coming, instead of just a hint of it. Maybe they didn’t want to commit to any promises they may not be able to keep but dear god does it ever make me want to see the next one.

I have a few small complaints about the movie. First of all, not once in this film was our group of antagonists referred to as “X-Men”, not even in the opening credits where we only got the silly “X2”. Personally, I think a movie about the X-Men should at least have “X-Men” in the title. If you’ve read the comics, it’s easy to tell that the he plot was based on Chris Claremont’s “God Loves, Man Kills” and Mark Millar’s “Return to Weapon X” but those two writers got no credit whatsoever which is a little disappointing. It’s like they are ignoring the fact that these characters and this concept came from somewhere other than the filmmakers’ minds. And of course, Cyclops’s brutal treatment in the movie was not something I particularly enjoyed.

Cyclops not only disappears for a whole hour in the middle of the film, but when he’s on screen he only has two things to do, get beaten up and cry. Cyclops is supposed to be the field leader of the X-Men, the one whom everyone trusts without question because he always makes the right choice. He is super-protective of his team and if the X-Men ever lose a fight Cyclops and Wolverine would be the last two to go down. The movie doesn’t show us any of that, everyone else’s personalities are so well done, but they manage to mess up my favorite character. The ending does; however, promise us that there will be more Cyclops screen time in one of the upcoming sequels. I would really appreciate it if each X-Men movie from now on focused on a different subset of the X-Men. They keep adding to the team so obviously not everyone will get equal treatment in a particular film, but if the filmmakers got off their Wolverine-addiction (though he IS cool) and gave us movies centered on other characters then this franchise could probably go on forever.

But really, in the face of the greatness of this movie, all of my complaints just amount to fanboy quibble. This is the greatest superhero/comic book movie ever made it raises the bar so high; “there is no bar”.

Click here to see a list of all the 'name drops' that appear on Stryker's computer.

Overall 9/10

Posted by Rayne @ 12:04 AM EST [Link] [8 comments]

Saturday, May 10, 2003

May 10th, , 2003
A couple of changes today.

I added a little script that randomly chooses from 4 different logos to show in the header. Also added a new skin, keep your eyes out for a 5th skin on monday.

Because of some changes that I made, everyone will have to go to the skins page again to reselect a skin.
Sorry for the inconvenience =D

May 14, 2003
Added Stucco SKin, but its not very good in Phoenix unfortunately.
Changed the way the random logo works, no longer an array of file names, instead I just use the random number generator.
Changed all the pages to use base tags so that http://rayne.woot.net isn't repeated all the time, this'll make changing addresses (if that ever happens) immensely easier.

June 9, 2003
Finally fixed it so that the words.html and pictures.html are updated by the greymatter engine instead of by hand. Ugh. Also added a picture to the pictures page.

Sept 1, 2003
Replaced the Guestbook link with the Daily Links page, removed links to Dave, Comicsnet. Added link to CBR and finally updated links to Laura Ann and Stephen. Added a poll script.

Nov 3, 2003
Fixed link for Kim's site. removed link to Martin's no longer existing site. replaced the no longer there math comics link with the even geekier w3 schools link.

Nov 14, 2003
More link fixing, removed joe's old site as per his request. added a link to nathaniel's and adi granov, cuz his art is so awesome.

Dec 8, 2003
Removed link to Christine Xenga site.

Jan 15, 2004
After two days and lots of playing around I've finally gotten my "last 14 comments" sidebar working. It is so cool! Thanks to stephen and joe for some help.

Jan 27, 2004
Added links to those BC folks, Andrea and Cameron.

Feb 16, 2004
Mostly done with the RSS Feed that is used at Planet 511.

Posted by Rayne @ 10:20 PM EST [Link] [14 comments]

Wow it's late. Talk about a weird night. Well I will, but not right now. *Yawn*

Posted by Rayne @ 04:33 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]

Thursday, May 8, 2003

I finished putting my dad’s new bike together last night. It’s a beautiful Raleigh Century SE with some nice V-breaks. I’m quite jealous.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved putting things together. I find it’s a lot of fun, especially if you don’t bother with the instructions and try to intuit your way through the assembly. Granted a bike isn’t the hardest thing to assemble but it was still fun. The hardest thing I’ve ever put together, without instructions, was a garage opener at one of my friends’ house way back in high school. I was and still am impressed that I was actually able to pull that off.

Here’s a rant. Why is it that most things that need putting together require at least 2 screwdrivers and 2 sizes of wrenches? It would be so much easier for us if we only needed 1 screwdriver for a whole job! But NOOOOOO, it HAS to be difficult! Ridiculous. Honestly. I think I needed around 10 different tools just to put that bike together. Jeeez!

Posted by Rayne @ 11:11 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Since yesterday there has been a line circling at least a whole block in downtown here. It's wild, all those people are lining up for their big chance at Canadian Idol. The fact that it was pouring here all yesterday and this morning makes these people either crazy or dedicated.

From what I can make out of the bits of American Idol I've seen, it seems like winning is based more on how well you can convince the judges that you can be a superstar than on whatever talent you may have. Isn't the reason why American Idol is so popular because of the harshness of some of the critics? I don't really like Reality TV, it's all so sleazy; I don't think I've ever heard of one that wasn't sleazy.

Anyways, it's crazy that they actually waited in line day and night...this is much worse than the 12 hours my friends and I waited around for for Episode 1.

Posted by Rayne @ 08:01 PM EST [Link]

I just found 10$ in a pair of pants that I haven't worn in a few months. How sweet is that?

Posted by Rayne @ 07:53 AM EST [Link]

Monday, May 5, 2003

I think it’s pretty funny that, if left to my own devices, I will always move my sleeping time to 5am-2pm. If I had it my way, the world would definitely run with working hours in the afternoon and at night.

Every time I have to get up early, even after a full night’s sleep, I’m never really productive in the morning; I also have problems focusing on anything, including regular conversations.

Obviously, I’ve lived the last couple of weeks according to ‘my clock’ so I tried to wrench myself away from that a little today but it’s been pretty hard. I keep falling asleep and can’t really do anything that requires concentration.

The stupidest thing is that whenever I try to go to bed early, like say at 10, I always end up waking up at around 1am and not falling back asleep for at least an hour. Thats so immensely frustrating when I'm trying to get a good 9 hours before class or work.

I know that some of you guys tend towards these sleeping patterns, but do you also find yourself unproductive in the mornings even if you get a full night’s sleep?

Posted by Rayne @ 09:29 PM EST [Link]

Sunday, May 4, 2003

I went to a party at Nick’s place last night after watching X-Men 1.5 with my parents. Yeah, I was still on a mutant high. The party was pretty good, I got to see some old friends again as well as meeting some new people.

The REAL fun though came around 2:30, after everyone else had left but 4 (Pat, Doug, Emily and I) of us and Nick who had passed out in his room hours earlier. Pat and Doug planned to undress Nick and set up his room in such a way that he would wake up in maximum daze. I suggested cleaning up the place to make it seem like there was no party at all…but that didn’t fly for long. So Nick was sleeping in his room on his stomach, they weren’t able to get his pants off because he was wearing a belt, instead they pulled his shirt up and poured half a bottle of hair gel on his back, some black pepper and affixed an ice cream cone to him using peanut butter. The other half of the bottle of gel went in his hair.

Around 3am Riccardo showed up. Honestly, who shows up at 3am? Anyways, with Rick around things really got better. He undid Nick’s belt and pulled his pants pretty far down. Took a deodorant stick and wiped it across his ass crack a few times, took some lipstick and wrote “I love you” and drew a swastika on Nick’s forehead. The best part was when Rick took the belt and started giving Nick lashings on his ass. He whipped him quite hard and very often. I’ve honestly not laughed that much in a very VERY VERY long time. To top it all off, a giant plastic tube with a rounded end (think of what it looks like) was shoved down Nick’s boxers. I cannot believe the guy slept through all that, especially with a constant laugh track going on for a good 40 minutes.

After all the humour, Rick, Emily and I went home while Doug and Pat stayed over. I drove Emily since she was on the way and got home at around 4. What I wouldn’t give to have seen Nick’s reaction in the morning though.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:10 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Saturday, May 3, 2003

what a crazy night. we got to the theater at 9:20-ish, intending to see the 10 o'clock show,but that was sold out so we got 10:30 tickets. The line for that show had already been formed when we walked in to the building. Some high school friends were actually in front of the line...but we didn't bud in or anything.

The cool thing is that I actually got change from using the coupon that came with X-Men 1.5.
When the cashier (can you call them that?) asked me if I was a student, I comtemplated just saying no to avoid the hassle (thinking that it would just be a straight coupon-for-ticket exchange), but I did end up saying that I was and showed her my student ID. To my great surprise I got 3 dolllars back from the dvd coupon! AWESOME.

I think it took me 2 hours to get everyone home...ridiculous. Its cool to have so many people at the movie...but it was so much effort to get them all and drop them all off.

Ya...so....xmen2. THE BEST MOVIE OF THE SUMMER.
I don't know how matrix reloaded can possibly beat the sheer badass-ness of this film.
That one scene with Magneto is just so goddamn cool. It's probably my favorite scene ever.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:28 AM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Friday, May 2, 2003

Busy day today. Cook lunch, get hair cut, pick up christine to come over for dinner, buy x-men 1.5 DVD (for the free pass to x-men 2), then pick up 6 (SIX!) people to go watch X-Men 2 with at 10pm. X-cellent

Posted by Rayne @ 02:57 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Thursday, May 1, 2003

So RISK the other night. It was four of us playing: Dan, Martin, Martin’s first-timer-brother Tom and me.

Tom almost had Europe early in the first game so I was concentrating a lot of my forces on taking northern European countries from him. Tom and Martin made a truce between the European-African borders. Tom pushed me out of Europe and began to take North America (which wasn’t owned by anyone), so I came out of Australia with a sizeable army and took a southern European country from him. During all this Martin and Dan were having an Africa-South America spat, each owned a continent. Once I took a part of Europe, Tom told his brother that the truce was off because he was retreating, from me, into North America. Martin then looked at my RISK cards and noticed that I had 6 (!) so he decided to make his move. He moved out of Africa into Europe and destroyed his nOObie brother and won the game. I think I could have won the game if we had played one more round since I would have cashed in my cards; my mission was to kill Martin.

The second game was pretty different, within the first round all the continents had been divided between us. I controlled Europe and Australia, Martin had Asia, Dan had Africa and South America, and Tom had North America. For a few rounds after that, Martin and I did nothing and just kept collecting our forces while Dan and Tom were fighting over South America. Dan saw Martin as the biggest threat in the game because he was collecting 11 soldiers a turn, I was collecting 10 but the fact that Martin won the last game probably blinded Dan to that. So when Martin went to the bathroom, Dan convinced Tom to take away an Asian country away from his brother through the Bering Strait. After Tom took Kamchatka and several other Asian lands, Martin made his move and invaded Africa with the forces he had amassed in the Middle East. He hadn’t gotten very far though since Dan put up a pretty good fight. The three-way battle left most of Asia and Africa undefended with Europe untouched. I stormed out Ukraine with six legions of horsemen and took all the undefended lands of Asia while my armies in Southern Europe took most of Africa. I had conquered 24 territories and won the game!

Posted by Rayne @ 08:32 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

The Product: You’ll find there two 64Kb files, each a 3D demo with music, models and loads of textures. The demos are graphically impressive, not spectacular, but when you think about the fact that the files are 64 Kb(!), well, that should either inspire you, make you think “and what the heck am I doing in CS?”, or make you wet your pants. Download and be impressed.

Galactus: check out the journal of Galactus – The Devourer of Worlds, for some great humour. For those not in the know, Galactus is a cosmic entity in the Marvel Universe that – you guessed it – devours worlds.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect: A cool “novel” about two very different people getting together to decide the meaning of life and the fate of the Universe. Not light reading but highly recommended.

Free Comic Book Day: Also referred to as FCBD2, as per the popular “lets-acronymize-everything” mentality. On the day after X-Men 2 hits (or X2 *shudders*), that’s Saturday May 3rd, anyone can walk in to their local comic book shop and pick up some free samples. Follow the link to see what comics you’ll be able to grab. And if last year was of any indication, there should also be some great promotions going on at the same time. I recommend picking up “Way of the Rat”, “Leave it to Chance” and “Ultimate X-Men”. FOR FREE.

Added links to the websites of Melissa and Laura Ann to the list of people links on the left (or maybe right?)…this is a horrible sentence. There aren't enough girls with sites/journals!

Posted by Rayne @ 07:10 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]

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