Kusanagi on a crutch! It turns out I did lose a bunch of important data when my hard drive died a while back 🙁
Most of it I can reconstruct – with some hard work. What’s frustrating is that I’m sure there’s some of it that I can’t remember, which means I can’t reconstruct it, which means it’s lost forever. It’s also personally galling that I didn’t back it up in the first place – I was so certain that I’d backed up everything important, so to miss such a big chunk of data is just humiliating.
Well, I guess it’ll encourage me to be more careful with backups in future 🙁
At least last night’s Hamster Wheel cheered me up somewhat…
…In the 1970s John Boorman was contracted by United Artists to direct an adaptation that would have collapsed [The Lord of the Rings] into a single film. […] In the script by Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg, many new elements have been inserted or modified. Among other things, Gimli is put in a hole and beaten so he can retrieve the password to Moria from his ancestral memory [and] Frodo and Galadriel have sexual intercourse…
My initial reaction was What!? But then I discovered that John Boorman was the guy behind Zardoz, and suddenly it all made sense.
What makes the proposed film even more disturbing is that in the 1970s they wouldn’t have been able to use the digital editing that Peter Jackson used to shrink his actors, and may not have been willing to do an entire film with the complicated trick photography Jackson used when he wasn’t using CGI. So Gimli and the Hobbits would most likely have been played by dwarfs. A movie where little people are thrown into holes and beaten in between sex scenes doesn’t sound like heroic fantasy – it’s more akin to something you’d get under the counter in an ‘adult novelty’ store.
Thank the lord Boorman made Excalibur instead, which (if memory serves) features very little dwarf S&M content.
You know, I was planing to write up what I did in Melbourne this weekend – including why I was there in the first place – but I ran out of time. So instead I’m going to blog about television.
Exactly when did swamp-dwelling hillbillies become a television genre? Swamp People, Swamp Men, Turtleman – what maniac decided these were good ideas for shows, and what maniacs watch them in sufficient numbers to make them viable?
American Digger – I think this show is mis-titled. It should be called American Destroying the Archeological Record for Fun and Profit.
Caught the first episode of Black Mirror last week – the one where the British PM is blackmailed into… well you know if you watched it. They describe the series as black comedy, but I didn’t find anything comedic about it. Which is not a condemnation – I found it a taut and thought provoking thriller. I’d like to watch the others in the series, but they’re on a bit late and I need to work Tuesday mornings. No doubt they’ll be available online.
Apparently that’s all I’ve got to say about television. Hmmm.
Caught Lawless last night with Rebecca. It was actually really good – I’m astonished to relate that Shia LaBeouf can actually act. The Appalachian accents were a bit tough to decipher from time to time, and Guy Pearce’s villain was a bit over the top, but overall a damn good watch. Also, Jessica Chastain – wow (and I was thinking that before she got her kit off thank you :)).
Asylum of the Daleks premiered on Australian TV on Saturday night. Not the best season opener ever, but major props to whoever came up with that giant Dalek building on Skaro, and even more major props to whoever slipped a Special Weapons Dalek into one of the shots. Woooo Special Weapons Dalek!
I’m back. Well, I’ve actually been back since Thursday afternoon, I just haven’t got around to making a post about it. As I kind of suspected, my hard drive was to blame. It was on the verge of complete failure, so I needed to get a new one put in and Windows reinstalled from scratch. Bwah.
On the upside, the machine now seems to be running beautifully. Thanks to semi-regular backups and that Ubuntu disk I mentioned I don’t seem to have lost any serious data – just my iTunes playlists and ratings, which is a pain, but not a major one.
On a completely different subject, I know I’m completely behind the curve on this one, but isn’t the opening sequence of Games of Thrones astonishing?
Co-Worker: Does the name Robert Hughes ring a bell? Me: Yeah… isn’t he that guy who died? Co-Worker: No, the guy from Hey Dad! Me: Oh, the guy we all hoped would die…
Turned on Star Trek: The Next Generation last night to discover it was an episode featuring Ro Laren. This, I thought, was excellent, as I’m always up for some young Michelle Forbes.
(Vaguely related, I once had a conversation with Stephanie regarding the merits of Bajoran noses. I happen to think they’re cute. She violently disagreed. Vive la différence!)
Observe this video from the classic (aren’t they all?) Goodies episode Lighthouse Keeping Loonies…
Why am I showing you this? Because I’ve been struck down by the Curse of The Jolly Rock! In Minecraft!
The other day in my main Minecraft map I decided to build a lighthouse. I located a convenient rock in the middle of the ocean, constructed a tall tower, and put a pile of glowstone on top. Voila! Then I decided to christen it The Jolly Rock Lighthouse, for no other reason than the thought amused me. I put a sign next to the door, and then lined the internal staircase with more signs, writing out the entire lyrics of the song.
My lighthouse was missing one thing however. A roof. Just because I thought it would look good I decided to make a nice pointy one out of obsidian. After all, I was wearing enchanted diamond armour and had an enchanted diamond pickaxe – obtaining enough of the rare black stone would be child’s play!
So into a recently discovered cavern I descended, loaded up with buckets to fill up with lava. Deeper and deeper I ventured, loading up on iron-ore, coal, gold-ore and lapis along the way.
Eventually I found myself in a cavern not just full of lava, but loaded down with heaps of naturally occurring obsidian. I filled my buckets and got to work, and before long had the 30 blocks I needed to put a decent cap on the lighthouse.
At this point a skeleton appeared out of the darkness and pushed me into a lava pool.
I respawned kilometres away from both my base, and the caves, having neglected to sleep recently. I ran all the way back to base, and re-equipped myself with some backup, non-enchanted armour and crafted a new diamond pickaxe. Back into the caverns I descended, swearing vengeance on the undead fiend who’d ended my previous venture!
But the cavern was empty. So I started mining more of the obsidian, which was tricky because I’d already dug out the most easily accessible deposits. But after some work I collected enough to make heading back up to the surface a sensible idea. I jumped up onto the ledge that lead back towards the surface, and a skeleton appeared out of the darkness and pushed me into a lava pool.
Happily, this time I was able to get out of the lava pool and fight back. As my health burnt away I frantically fought the skeleton, swinging wildly at him with my sword. I hit him multiple times, sending him stumbling back, and leapt into the air, ready to deliver the killing blow, at which point he shot me with an arrow at point blank range, taking away my single, remaining half heart.
I again respawned kilometres away, being so obsessed with vengeance that I’d forgotten to take a nap. I again, ran all the way back to base and hastily re-equipped, burning through more of my iron reserve to make more armour. I then raced back to the cavern and tore through the caves, reaching the scattered piles of my equipment (most of which hadn’t fallen into lava, thankfully). I raced around, picking it all up, and was just about to grab my precious diamond pickaxe when it despawned, right in front of my face.
I was then attacked by more skeletons, who almost pushed me into a lava pool while I was re-arranging my inventory. I survived, but managed to throw my sword into the lava in a panic, meaning I had to fight them off with a stone pickaxe.
Then the creepers came at me…
I eventually did made it back to the surface, but without any obsidian, and with very little of my equipment left intact. And all because of that bloody lighthouse!
One of my guilty pleasures at the moment is the new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures on ABC 3. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s fun – and hey, I already classified it as a guilty pleasure, which means I don’t have to justify it to anyone, let alone you.
😉
There was one annoying thing about the episodes they played last night though. The presence of an “Ossy” (which is how Americans strangely insist on pronouncing “Aussie”).
Now I have no strange objection to Australians appearing in American TV shows. It’s nice to see us represented. But what would also be nice would be getting actors who can actually do an Australian accent – as opposed to doing a Cockney accent with “moit” added to the end of every second sentence.
Sure, Americans can’t tell the difference, but believe me it makes us cringe. It’s like representing an American accent by getting a Puerto Riccan to randomly say “pard’ner”. Or a Canadian accent by having a South African end every sentence with “eh?”. It’s bizarre.
Of course, it’s not going to change. But it would be nice.
So, I’ve just finished reading Gormenghast, the second book of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. It’s every bit as good as Titus Groan, and every bit as good as I expected. Highly recommended!
I’ve also just rewatched the BBC adaption of the books from 2000. I saw it when it first came out and never since, but some wonderful soul has uploaded it in it’s entirety to YouTube. Here’s the first bit and you can follow it on from there.
The mini-series is of course different from the books – in a few places wildly so – but it’s very true to the spirit and feel of the story. So, go ahead and watch it, and if you like what you see then read the source material for the real story.
