Admissions of solecism

http://xkcd.com/682/

I forgot to post this earlier:

As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living. So, we all sing carols to lull him back to sleep.

— Peter Griffin, Family Guy

sales of electronic books topped their paper-based cousins for the first time this past Christmas day, according to Amazon.com

Full story.

Is that the thinking?

GOP opponent claims front-runner Mark Kirk is gay in attack ad
[...]
"You've got Mark Kirk, who's been so strong on his homosexuals so long that the solid rumor is that he himself is a homosexual," Roeser said on the program, adding, "Who, in Christ's name, needs to get themselves identified as a freak in the sexual department?" They named other Illinois Republicans they suspect are gay.

Full story.

Oh, GOP crazy people. If you ever lose your crazy you'll be so less entertaining.

It seems LoudTwitter hasn't been forwarding my tweets which explains my absence from here!

So! Short story: Went to my mom's for Christmas.

( Long story... )

http://xkcd.com/681/

http://xkcd.com/680/

I haven't heard of any happening this year - are there any going on?

http://xkcd.com/679/

A long time ago I stopped reading Ebert's reviews because he was getting the facts wrong in his reviews, and it was happening often enough that it became a problem.

On a whim I went and read his review of Avatar expressly to see if he was still suffering from the same problem.

Alas...

The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star.

Wrong x2.

First, the movie goes out of its way to say, expressly, that the people are not U.S. armed forces but company men who have security personnel composed of ex-military. It's a corporation with heavy weapons looking for profit. This fact is actually important to the story because it's necessary to explain things that happen in the film. (I won't spoil.)

Second: Planets orbit stars. Moons orbit planets. It would otherwise be a tiny thing but suggesting otherwise diminishes the movie. Pandora is a moon orbiting a large Jupiter-like planet. How do we know it's Jupiter-like? The first clue is the ginormous blue spot that has the same (proportional) size—and even shape—as the great red spot on Jupiter.

Why this second point is important would be to speculate about points that would be a spoiler to reveal, so I'll not go into it. Suffice to say, I believe it diminishes the movie to say that Pandora is a planet, not a moon.

Ebert remains off the list, I guess.

Werewolves! Vampire! A ghost! A haunted carriage!

Yay!

Also: Solo brutes are dead to me. Bleah. Don't like them at all. Once the PCs can immobilize (which with this party can happen a 100 different ways—they're big on controlling the actions of monsters) then it's just a matter of burning the monster down. I reduced the monster's hit points from over 700 to just over 200 and it was about right.

I refer to the brand new Looking for Dungeon tool in World of Warcraft and it's the most wonderful thing that's been added to the game, probably ever. All MMOs need this tool. It's a superb addition and has changed the way I play WoW, adding a lot to my enjoyment of the game. It's really keen.

The interface and functionality are both superb. It's easy: Click the eye in the UI, select either a random dungeon or a specific one. You're entered into a queue and when you're matched with other people you become a group and can teleport into the dungeon from no matter where you are or what you're doing.

The best part? It works with other servers. Yes! It looks across a variety of servers so the queue forms out of a vast pool of potential players.

Poof! You're just inside the dungeon. Buff up, kill things. When you're at the end, you can leave the party and when you do, Poof! you're put back exactly where you were back out in the world. The matching system roughly matches you with people of your same gear level so you're teamed with people who're like you.

What makes this amazing is how easy it is and how well it works—and the rewards you get. If you team up with enough people you get in-game rewards and it's a wonderful way to get gear, because you get tokens you can use to buy medium-high level gear.

And it's great if for example you've done your daily quests and there aren't a lot of guildies on at the moment but you still want to do something. Just queue up and within 15 minutes (shorter for healers and tanks) you'll be in a dungeon, killing things, and getting rewards.

This is fantastic. You can just hop into the game and do a quick dungeon and be out. For example, today I did two dungeons, each taking about 20 minutes each. Boom! That easy, that neat.

Very fun. :)

http://xkcd.com/678/

Reminder to self:
letting coworkers drink absinthe at your house is a BAD IDEA.

Now for a weekend full of family and stuff!

The best looking film in cinema history, unquestionably.
Utterly amazing.
Spellbinding.
Incredible.
Stunning.

No hyperbole.

Where to begin. There's been press about how the film was made using "performance capture." I avoided such press as well as new trailers, behind-the-scenes, and whatnot about the film so I wouldn't be spoiled. I wanted to see the film as cold as I could. However, I watch The Daily Show and Sigourney Weaver was on it and I couldn't resist watching her bit. She said that the cast wore bike helmets with cameras pointing at their faces so the expressions you see on film are the actors' real expressions as they acted them in real time. Hence the new terminology performance capture instead of the now crude by comparison motion capture.

It works so well that I recognized actors without knowing in advance who they were. That's amazing to me. Everything, and I do mean everything, is so completely natural and fluid there's not a trace of uncanny valley and that's the greatest technological achievement in movie making to date as far as I'm concerned. To do everything that's done and it feel natural? Astounding.

Next up: You Are There. I caught myself actually feeling that the alien landscape was so real and familiar that it felt like it was home. If you've seen the trailers or stills you've noticed bright colors and the like that're obviously alien. But once into the film and on that planet and walking with the characters, the totality of the environment, from how the plants and animals behave and how the people in it interact with it and each other that everything becomes so natural and familiar it's like I felt welcomed back to a place I hadn't visited in a long time, and that I suddenly felt homesick for it even though I was standing right in the middle of it.

I ache to go back to Pandora, even now. I want to be a Na'vi, even for a little bit.

Speaking of that: If the choreography and direction of an action scene are good, you want to join the fight instead of witness it. Avatar makes you think you already are doing everything you see on the screen so when the action breaks out it's natural that you're in it. When the Na'vi leap from one tree branch to another or pull back on a bow or bend down to put their hand on the ground, it's as if you're doing it right alongside them. You can feel the bark underneath your foot, the tension of the bowstring, the softness of the dirt. Oh, what it must be like to stride underneath a giant planet filling the sky and with such beautiful wonders on the ground. I miss Pandora so much now. With Star Wars I thought it would be neat to have Force powers and a lightsaber. After Avatar all I want to do is go for a walk and simply be on Pandora.

A quick word about characters. Colonel Quaritch (actually not real military, "just" corporate military) is amazing. A well-rounded villain who combines personal proficiency in combat with natural leadership and intelligence. He's like Rambo with Force powers but perfectly level headed while still maintaining emotion. It was a great pleasure seeing him work, even though everything he was doing was evil. The last time I felt like that was with the Colonel Landa character from Inglourious Basterds. After that film I wanted a TV show where Landa goes on adventures to solve mysteries. After Avatar I want to watch Quaritch give orders and kick ass. All day.

Incidentally: This is a powerful film just from the experience of it.

We saw Avatar at an IMAX 3D theater and ... wow. What an experience, to keep using that word. If you at all have the chance to see this film that way, your humanity will not be complete until you do (to throw a dash of hyperbole on it. But seriously, see Avatar at an IMAX theater or you will regret it deeply once it's no longer available. I'm serious.).

If you don't go see it at least in 3D somewhere then there will come a time, to paraphrase King Osric the Usurper: when the wrapping on your presents cease to sparkle, when bright candies lose their luster, when the standard cinema becomes a prison, and all that's left is the deep regret of not seeing Avatar as it was intended.

@Unicorness tweeted the following, after coming out of the theater:

Just saw Avatar in IMAX 3D. Stupendously awesome. Better than any Star Wars. Cannot express how great.

Yes. It's like Star Wars but without anything that sucks. There are no Ewoks or corny lines or stilted dialogue.

Instead there is a compelling action, tragedy, romance, and the most brilliant wonder ever committed to screen that, more than any other film I've seen, makes me want to go to another world.

Avatar has my highest recommendation.