September 2002 Archives

Okay, there's a few people who read things here that speak ... hell, I don't even know if it's Chinese.

Okay, I either need a rough translation of these phrases from Firefly if they are Chinese, or a guess as to what they are if they aren't Chinese. (It seems like they should be... certainly the wrong vowels for Japanese.)

Yes, I'm a geek. Sue me.

Spellings are approximate, so I'll try to provide contextual aids.

Wu de ma? - In context, seems to mean "what's that?" or "what's up?"

Jen dao mei
Tzao gao.
Wu de tyen, ah. - All seem to be exclamations of disbelief or horror.

Tyen shiao duh. - Used in a sentence: "What the tyen shiao duh is going on down there?"

Hwoon dahn. - Derogatory. "Moron?" "Bastard?"

In a conversation regarding Firefly, there were these two comments:

"Book's preaching bugs me, but then I'm an atheist so that's to be expected."

"Huh. The reason it bugged me was that I'm not."

I'm not a religious person, athough agnostic is far more accurate than atheist, so I guess I'm looking at this from between these two poles. I have a friend who is deeply involved in his church, but in his life it is simply part of his daily activities, and gets just as much or as little "talk time" as the other important things in his life. If he constantly brought it up the way Book does, I don't think he'd be as close a friend (any moreso than any other person who regards me as a 'potential sale' :), or nearly as good a Christian. (Lead by example and all that. I may not be in a church any more than I was, but I do believe I'm a better person for having known him*.)

That said, I've known quite a few pastors in my time and as a general rule they are a bit different than even the most dedicated church deacon because it is their job, so to speak, to always be 'on'.

So, comparing Book to the one good (non-judgemental, open-minded) Christian that I know, he comes off poorly. Comparing him to most pastors I've met, he's about average. Whedon himself is quite anti-religion, so I suppose that fits.

Gina Torres, who plays Zoe on Firefly, also played the main K-Directorate spy in Alias last season (I forget her character's name). Alias is written by the same guy who wrote Felicity (J.J. Abrams), which aired following Buffy during B's third season (the WB habitually put shows it wanted to succeed following sure-things like Buffy, Angel, and *coff* 7th Heaven).

Inbred Circular, isn't it?

Last night was the season premiere for both Buffy (7th year of dedicated addiction) and Gilmore Girls (which I really can't recommend enough). We're still in what I'd call our "summer schedule" right now, however, which means that our house was full of people last night.

Piece of cake: we've got three different VCR's capable of taping shows in the house, and all of them work just fine -- this is the same sort of gymnastics we pulled off all last season. We don't even have to do any complicated "timed" recordings because, after all, we're going to be right there.

Right. It's been awhile since we've had to do all that. At a guess, I'd say we're out of practice.

Buffy: forgot to start the recording, then the VCR was on the wrong channel, so we basically missed the standard "scene before the music starts".

GG: did this one on a timer, which started just fine, recorded the first twenty minutes, and then shut off, because apparently that's what we told it to do.

Ugh. Me not grok the 'lectroniks so gud.

The difficulties I was experiencing in trying to set up an MT install for a work-related project continue, but on a slightly more positive note. Over the weekend, they swapped out an older server for a newer model (still slower and smaller than my slow, small home machine, but it's generally just a file server, so I only poke a little fun), so we grabbed the old box and "repurposed" it as a Linux server that we can run MT on and create this ... thing that they want.

What's this thing, you ask? Interesting question: what they want is a web-served solutions knowledge base that can be quickly and easily updated from pretty much anywhere, broken down by category, individual entry, author, or timestamp, and is searchable. I'm going to see just how much I can twist MT around to make it work. Initially, it'll just be for about four people (certainly what I'd call private use), and if it ends up becoming open territory for clients, then the company buys the license.

Personally, I just want to see how effectively I can make MT create a user-friendly interface for a knowledge base (I'm sort of reverse-engineering an web-based interface for an SQL database -- build the interface first and let the database build itself: just how many different ways can you make the monkey dance?

I'm not that far right now, though. The server's old, the video card is REALLY old (and crappy, because really, why have a good video card on a dedicated server?), and it's been two days of solid struggle to get Mandrake working and looking decent. Next up: Samba interface to the rest of the network (never done that before).

The MT part should be the easy bit.

Joss means 'good fortune' in ancient egyptian. It's a good name. In the world of television writers, it's my favorite name.

So: Firefly, Joss Whedon's take on Sci-fi. I came into it cold: the previews and trailers didn't do much for me, and I wasn't sure about the premise, and I don't trust the support of the Fox Network as far as I can comfortably spit a rat.

Love at first sight? Pretty much, and it sounds like there's a lot of really good stuff coming along after a really fun first episode. I'm stoked.

I have always firmly believed that Monsters, Inc. is a superior movie to Shrek. I like Shrek fine, and the finally 'message' is a good one that I wholeheartedly support, but it isn't just about the final message, and when it comes to the whole movie, I just enjoy MI so much more. Watching the show again last night simply reinforced my previous opinion.

Dave agrees, which doesn't really surprise me, as the similarities between Boo and Katherine are both strong and multiplying :).

During a press conference today at the Tokyo Game Show, Blizzard unveiled StarCraft: Ghost, a tactical-action console game set in the StarCraft universe. The game is currently under development and is scheduled for worldwide release on multiple console systems in 2003.

Secret to peaceful work.

• Play the CBT (computer-based training) for software you have no interest in learning, but that everyone else wants you to know.
• Put on headphones, ostensibly because the CBT has a voiceover, and you want to be considerate of others.
• Shut off the voiceover option.
• Play Avril while you flip through the CBT manually.

Yeah, she's seventeen and does some of the same dumb stuff I did at that age (there are a few fashion mistakes she'll be regretting in a year or two, if my experiences are any indication), but dammit, I like Avril Lavigne. I bought Let Go two months ago and frankly the only complaint I have is that I don't have enough copies of it to keep me properly saturated at work, home and in the car. It's hard to get sick of the music when every song is just a little bit different in style.

Whatever. I'm a lame old man listening to a seventeen-year-old singing pop, but at least she's writing her own stuff, and at least I'm listening because I really like it.*

I have a bad habit of buying DVD's for movies that I enjoyed in the theatre and then never watching them. I mean, I dig the behind the scenes stuff, I love the movie commentaries (assuming it's not just the producers talking about how brilliant they were to support the movie), I just don't have the time lately, especially when it's a movie I've seen a couple times already. I used to do better at this when my laptop played discs and I could work on something while the movie played but now I have to go downstairs and give up all other activity to watch a flick.

So last night, I forced myself to (a) start the damn movie and (b) stay up long enough to watch it, even though I started it around 11:30. The movie (which I'd liked but only seen once) was Resident Evil.

I like it even more than I did the first time, and I recognize now that a big part of it is Michelle Rodriguez, whom I recognized this time around as "the girl from Girlfight" (haven't seen it) who was just in Blue Crush. (Which somehow manages to be a hardbody movie about girl power.)

This is a good actress. Maybe she's mostly playing to her strengths (which, briefly stated, lies in playing strength), but there's nothing wrong with that. She's competent, athletic, attractive, and could break any two anorexic actress-waifs over her knee, even if you tied them together for added strength.

And oh yeah, there's a lot of shooting and walking dead and stuff. That's cool too. It's actually a pretty kick-ass movie, even speaking from a cinematography standpoint.

I am never going to paint myself blue again, for any reason, and that's all I'm saying about that. I'm still getting that crap out from under my fingernails.

Gahd it was a long weekend. Long. Longer.

Not longest, but a close runner-up.

I'm still beat down and my throat and ears are killing me, but I had a pretty good time. It was nice to stay at the hotel and not have to add "running back and forth from the house" into the mix of events. Being at the hotel was sort of a hassle as well, but it wasn't as much of a hassle, and I'll probably do it that way again (also, I didn't leave blue gunk all over my towels -- although the hotel staff are probably cursing my name).

Next time I want a room that's a little closer to... anything... cripes but that is a poorly laid-out hotel.

Everything was fun and I only had one real let-down the whole weekend, which I'll probably bitch about on my games page later.

Glad to be home, glad to be here, and now it's time for lunch.

David Kemper, Richard Manning, and Ben Browder called a special chat in the SCI FI Channel's #Farscape chat room on September 6th to announce that SCI FI had opted not to pick up Farscape's fifth season option.

This page contains the chat transcript and contact information for those who would like to call or write to try and get SCI FI to reconsider.

DEAR GOD I WANT THIS!

*pant**pant**wheeze*

The weekend was a whirlwind of Geekness.

(Descriptions of roleplaying geekness ahead. Continue at your own risk.)