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The last few sentences were quoted exactly from my review of the previous disk. I’m getting lazy. In this second half we find out a bit more about where the aliens come from, and there are some battles. The Doctor is trying to make peace between the humans and the Silurians, but most of the humans, and most of the Silurians, want no such thing. The Doctor tricks the Silurians into something he hopes will avoid conflict but keep them alive. Of course, the humans decide immediately thereafter to blow them all up. Oh well. And that was the end. As usual with these older Doctor Who episodes, the pacing is VEERRRYYY SLLLLOOOOWWWW. And of course the effects are awful. They have some level of charm though. We need to go faster though. I like the Fourth Doctor and beyond much better than the first three. [05:15 UTC edited for a typo and minor wording change]
In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. OK, the basic premise of this movie, and pretty much as much as I knew going in, was that an alien crash lands amongst the medieval Vikings, and then things happen. In the first few minutes, the alien crashed, opened its helmet… and it was a PERSON. This wasn’t even a Star Trek style alien with bumps on its head. Just a generic person. I had been hoping for a movie sort of like ET, but set in the middle ages. No such luck. Anyway, the first half of the movie was really bad. It seemed like nobody in the movie could act at all. There were a few words here and there and some grunting and fighting. Oh, and a dragon showed up. And of course the alien is going to save the village from the dragon and all. Of course. Anyway, it was pretty bad. Laughably times at times, but not so much so that you actually enjoyed it because it was so bad. I think Brandy retained this feeling through the whole movie. She was ready to walk out. On the other hand, I thought the movie started to improve somewhat about half way through… right after they started giving some backstory on what had happened to the alien guy before he crash landed. But I think the main thing is that they pretty much stopped even trying to do anything with the characters… there was no more getting to know the people or any of that stuff… they just started running around fighting the dragon. So just your normal sort of action and adventure thing with chases and fights and explosions and such. And OK, that stuff is usually not enough for me in a movie… I like to actually care about the characters some, and perhaps even think a little. But in this case, the constant running around and stuff at least meant that none of the people were trying to have conversations or really talk very much, which they weren’t very good at. I did feel sorry for the dragon though. I actually ended up empathizing with the dragon more than any of the main characters. Poor dragon. You really wanted the dragon to win, because pretty much all of the humans sucked. So, I doubt it is even still in the theaters, but if it is, save this for video… or not at all. You won’t miss it.
Young musicians “Monkee” around
And since I got a nice little handheld digital recorder thing for Christmas… School of Rock Seattle plays “I’m a Believer”… I remembered way later than I should have, that there is an election going on right now… one where the deadline for submitting your ballots is just barely more than two hours from now. And it is already too late to mail the ballot, as is preferred, so instead I have to drive to the one drop box in my town. (About a 20 minute drive away.) Oops. There is only one item on the ballot this time. Director of Election for King County. The candidates and their information are here. This is a non-partisan office (good). Well, actually I think it should be an appointed office, but if it is going to be elected, at least it should be non-partisan. Whatever. I’m going to go only by the stuff these people have on the voter’s pamphlet, and by what they have on their websites. Here we go:
So, OK, thought process… I generally think this is the kind of position that should be appointed… or actually “hired” based only on qualifications and not on political grounds, and probably approved by the legislature or something to provide a level of protection against political hires or patronage and such. It sounds from some of the reading here (mainly Pam Roach’s site) that there is a bit of politics here unfortunately, and the incumbent may be part of that. So since this *is* now an elected position, I want to go with one of the candidates that is as detached as possible from people currently holding office or running for office, etc. Ya know, I think I’ll go for the banker. Looking at his site (which isn’t pretty or anything) it actually has some content on it regarding the elections process and some problems with it. And listening to the first few minutes of the interview he has on his site, he sounds reasonable. He’s talking about the crap technology used for the elections and how it needs to be replaced by something that is actually reliable, secure, etc. He talks about adding transparency to the process, etc. He seems to actually be THINKING about the elections process, rather than just talking in vague generalities. You won my vote Bill. My vote: Bill Anderson Last week my laptop for work melted down and the tech support guys had to reimage my hard drive. Now, having had this happen about once a year for the last few years, I’ve grown smart and keep most of my important documents and such on the network, not on the laptop, so I didn’t lose very much, and what I did lose wasn’t really important. Other than time. I did lose almost a day to waiting for the computer to get reimaged, then reinstalling software I use on a regular basis and getting all my preferences set back to how I like them, and rebookmarking things I need frequently, etc. But I delayed slightly on the one last thing I needed to install again… yesterday I put LeechBlock back on my Firefox. I’ve used it for over a year to control my own weaknesses. I’m a news junkie. Google Reader is addictive. It is easy to get lost in there when you shouldn’t. And before you even know it you have wasted more time than you would have wanted. This kind of thing never stopped me from getting things done when things really needed to get done, but I could feel it drawing me in during times when I’m sure I could have done better things with my time. So I’ve had it set to restrict me from that site (and a variety of others) to only 30 minutes during work hours. (And to not let me in to the settings to change it if I’ve hit my limits.) I usually use those minutes while eating lunch at my desk. But the rest of the time, no fun websites, not even for a “quick glance”. Yeah, yeah, I know the same could be achieved by a little thing called “willpower”. And I know there are plenty of ways around it that are dead simple. But it is just that little nag that says, “No, not right now, you can wait until you get home…” that is helpful. It is a good tool. And in the two days or so I didn’t have it set up, I don’t think I got sucked in too much, I probably wouldn’t even have triggered the 30 minute limit. But it is still good to have it on. Just to keep me honest. So, keeping with what I started when I finished the previous book, I just looked up my “Kindle Ratio”… namely the percentage of the last 20 books I’ve read available on Kindle. I’ve said that as soon as this ratio reaches 50%, I want a Kindle. Well, it stays steady at 35%… 7 of the last 20 books. So we’re still not quite there unfortunately.
(As translated from the Italian to English by William Weaver that is.) This is the kind of book that has a reputation as being the kind a lot of people start, but most don’t finish, because it is difficult and inscrutable. So of course I wanted to try it out. Reading the first chapter, I firmly believe that it is intentionally constructed in such a way as to put off readers, and encourage all but the most dedicated to stop there. Not that there is anything particularly DIFFICULT about the reading, it is just a guy having very scattered seemingly random thoughts while wandering through a museum… with all sorts of references to all sorts of things that a reader may or may not get. It is rather annoying. But the book does settle down a bit after that and starts to read (mostly) like a regular narrative, although it does use that very annoying method of regularly moving backward and forward in time, with the vast majority of the book being flashbacks from the guy in the museum remembering what has happened that led him to the museum at that time. Annoying. I hate that device when it is used in TV and Movies, and I don’t really like it any more in writing. Over the course of the novel, the main characters delve into the creation of a huge conspiracy theory involving many of the usual suspects in conspiracy theories. They are making it all up, but as often happens in such things, it takes on a life of its own and trouble ensues. Some of the conspiracy and historical stuff is actually quite interesting. I found myself on more than a few occasions taking a detour to Wikipedia to look up people, places and organizations that were mentioned to investigate a bit about the real world versions as opposed to what was being depicted. And that was fun. But a big part of this was a very transparent look at words versus reality, and questions relating to objective reality versus perceived reality, and if saying something and believing it enough makes it true… or close enough to true that it doesn’t matter…. if there is even a such thing as “true” outside of the perceptions of those looking at and talking about things. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Look, I like those sorts of philosophical conundrums. But it was a bit of a stretch to make it 623 pages long. The value in this book is in the thinking about the concepts being raised and in the interesting historical bits. In those ways it is interesting. There is fun stuff there for those who are intellectually curious about various aspects of European history, or of philosophical questions about the interrelationships between knowledge, language, perception and reality. Or, to be specific, semiotics, which Eco is a professor of. If you like exploring those kinds of concepts, you will like this. But as a flat out novel with an interesting story for the purpose of entertainment… not as much. So I guess it depends what you are into. I did like it for the intellectual stuff, but it would have been nice if the story part was a bit more compelling. Am I glad I finally got around to reading it? Yes. I’d wanted to read this for awhile, and now was the time I guess. Many years ago I read The Name of the Rose, also by Eco, and I must say I liked it better. It has many of the same types of themes and intellectual side trips, but I think the Medieval setting just worked better and the actual story was better… So if you want to read an Umberto Eco book, I’d go with The Name of the Rose first. |
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Sam and Ivan talk about:
Sam talks about:
