2009.12.22 22:59 - Guns, Entertainment, Music
Stolen from here.
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2009.12.02 09:00 - Entertainment, Books, Movies, Television, Meatspace Stupidity, Whining
I have the RSS feed from theforce.net laying around in my Google Reader subscriptions. This morning, that feed included an announcement of the cancellation of an upcoming Star Wars novel by Karen Traviss.
I really don't follow this stuff very closely, and what's going on here is one reason why. Karen Traviss has been writing novels in the Star Wars universe centered around some characters that are clone soldiers and a handful of Mandalorians, either referencing or creating a lot of stuff concerning the previously established warrior culture of the Mandalorians. I've read a few of these, because they've crossed over nicely into the sub-genre of military sci-fi that I've recently found myself enjoying, and because I do still like the Star Wars universe, despite the fact that it is often so shoddily and inconsistently constructed. So, I've got two or three of the Republic Commando novels on my bookshelf, and I'll probably pick up the couple of novels following those characters at some point.
Traviss has decided not to write this last book because, among other reasons, the Mandalorians are being retconned into pacifists during the movie time period, which presents certain existential difficulties for many of her key characters.
Uff da.
[Addendum: I fired this off without putting a complete title on it, so I corrected the title.]
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2009.10.25 23:31 - Guns, Browning Hi-Power, Entertainment, Movies, Television, Meatspace Stupidity
According to imfdb, "John 'Hannibal' Smith's sidearm of choice was the Browning Hi-Power."
That's pretty cool, in a pop-cultural sort of way. I wonder if that's going to carry over to the movie they're doing?
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2009.10.09 14:09 - Entertainment, Microcode
I'm not sure I understand how there's a market for a railway simulator.
I'm always surprised when Steam advertises updates and add-ons. Not displeased or anything, I just can't quite reconcile the sort of person I've seen working on model train layouts or chasing steam engines cross country (i.e. my Dad) with the sort of people I know that enjoy computer gaming.
On the other hand, I don't really grok the virtual air traffic controller thing, either, so maybe I'm just not sufficiently imaginative.
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2009.09.12 23:47 - Entertainment, Music, Internet Stupidity, Miscellanea, Whining
My iPod came with a default playlist called 'Classical Music'. Intuitively, it contains anything in my music library that has been classified as belonging to the 'classical' genre.
There are currently twelve composers represented in this list.
- J. S. Bach is from the Baroque period.
- Anton Bruckner, Georges Bizet, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Franz Schubert are all Romantics.
- Fritz Kreisler and Gustav Holst are Moderns (though I'm using that term rather more broadly than the music geeks in the audience probably like).
- Sergei Rachmaninov and Gustav Mahler are arguably Romantic and Modern.
- John Williams is late enough that I'm not sure he isn't post-Modern, but I don't know that he's Post-Modern, either.
- 'Traditional' is not a composer. And "The Star Spangled Banner" isn't classical, even if Sergei Rachmaninov is playing it on the piano.
And, for the record, that's about as music-geeky as I get. I can't particularly tell the difference by listening, but it turns out that I still remember a little of the music education I got in elementary/middle school.
Related: apparently, Frederic Chopin looked a bit like David Carradine (or so it seems to me). I had no idea.
[Edited: After much fixing of syntax, a terrible and over-used pun occurred to me, so I updated the title.]
[Edited again: Fixed some syntax.]
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