Archive for June, 2009

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be con­sid­ered good. Transformers 2 is, how­ever, an awe­some movie in the sense that sum­mer block­busters are designed to be awe­some. It’s pretty typ­i­cal to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is some­what far­ci­cal, in my opinion.

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion to the trend of sum­mer block­busters is that story/plot isn’t actu­ally that impor­tant and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what hap­pens if you reach that log­i­cal con­clu­sion and make a movie that is an open acknowl­edg­ment of the friv­o­lity of plot in sum­mer block­busters? You end up with some­thing that is a gor­geous, shiny, mov­ing piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intel­lec­tu­al­ism; you end up with some­thing that every tra­di­tional movie-watcher will think is ter­ri­ble as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in look­ing for plot and tra­di­tional qual­ity, have failed to see the gor­geous, shiny, sense-satiating, mon­ster of an expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is. The crit­ics made a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence with Speed Racer, which was not very com­pelling but nonethe­less exces­sively beautiful.

In addi­tion to the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is, its qual­ity has also inspired, what is prob­a­bly the finest review of any­thing, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I com­pletely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly got­ten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because peo­ple don’t under­stand that this isn’t a movie, in the con­ven­tional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a bar­rage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You pro­ceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair fol­li­cle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan coun­tries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get over­stim­u­lated; and enjoy the cul­mi­na­tion of all that is the sum­mer blockbuster.

Posted in movies & tv | No Comments »

[PROTOTYPE]

Monday, June 29th, 2009

At the sug­ges­tion of my good friend Rodin, I grabbed a copy of the game [PROTOTYPE] (which I am going to refer to as “Prototype” because the brack­ets and cap­i­tal­iza­tion are annoy­ing to type) for my Xbox 360. Rodin’s sug­ges­tion was a very good one and so I am pass­ing it on to all of you; Prototype is awe­some, you should go get a copy and start play­ing it.

Discussing the story behind Prototype won’t really give you a sense of why you should be play­ing it so, instead, let me start off by say­ing that it’s a game where you can jump kick heli­copters. Let me say that again, you can jump kick heli­copters; this includes apaches, and you can destroy them by so doing. Other things you can do include con­sum­ing peo­ple for their knowl­edge and pow­ers, shoot­ing spikes through the ground to destroy entire city blocks, or throw­ing tanks at mutated mon­sters. All of this mas­sive destruc­tion and awe­some­ness takes place within the con­text of being able to run up the sides of build­ings so as to jump and glide from one to the next. Your char­ac­ter is truly super­hu­man in a ridicu­lous and com­pletely amoral man­ner; you will con­sume civil­ians just to restore a lit­tle bit of health.

The con­trols are tight, if a lit­tle com­plex, the cam­era is ok, and the game­play is as cathar­tic as video games get. I’ve sunk, and enjoyed, enough hours of Prototype to say that it’s worth the $60 that I paid for it. It doesn’t mat­ter what you’re play­ing these days, you should put it down and go get a copy of Prototype; unless you’re bor­ing, you’ll thank your­self for doing so.

Posted in video games | No Comments »

Oubliette (was Abyss)

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

I recently con­sid­ered the nam­ing of abyss and decided that the word oubli­ette made a bet­ter name. Oubliette is a much more appro­pri­ate descrip­tion in under­stand­ing the theme and pur­pose of the machine as a replace­ment for thevoid.

The name change hap­pened a while ago but I’m bring­ing it up now because oubli­ette is on my mind. Having just pur­chased six Western Digital 1.5TB dri­ves and another SATA con­troller, it is finally time to obso­lete the last rem­nants of thevoid. This actu­ally stirs some amount of sen­ti­men­tal­ity in me but, even though the hard­ware and oper­at­ing sys­tem are no longer that of thevoid, oubli­ette will carry the pur­pose and data for­ward. It is almost as though oubli­ette is my ghola thevoid.

For those with tech­ni­cal inter­est, the dri­ves will be arranged in an mdadm RAID6 array with luks dm-crypt. This should pro­vide me with 6TB, secure stor­age, and two dri­ves worth of failsafe.

Posted in computers | No Comments »

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Thanks to hunch, I recently dis­cov­ered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as any­one who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will under­stand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the bat­tle scenes are just awe­some. On top of that, there are some pretty great char­ac­ters in the show; I am espe­cially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of com­ple­tion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo cal­iber but it’s cer­tainly worth hunt­ing down and giv­ing a shot.

Posted in movies & tv | 2 Comments »

Sleep and stress: inversely correlated

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

I have noticed in my life that there is an inverse rela­tion between the quan­tity of sleep that I get and the degree to which I am expe­ri­enc­ing stress. It is unclear to me in which direc­tion causal­ity lies and it may be noth­ing more than a cor­re­la­tion but I recall times in my past where I went as many as three nights with­out sleep. All but the last of those such times were before I under­stood the sen­sa­tion of stress–such is my dis­con­nect from my emo­tional state.

As I think about it, I am inclined to sus­pect that not sleep­ing is a sort of cop­ing mech­a­nism. In the extreme of those three night vig­ils, I would reach a level of exhaus­tion that was so strong and per­va­sive as to be able to wash over any other stress that I might have been feel­ing. Eventually, I would sleep and the rest would be needed to such a degree as to make every­thing else seem insubstantial.

It seems as though, for quite a long time, I have had to approach my emo­tional state from an indi­rect point of view; suss­ing out how I might be feel­ing by watch­ing my reac­tions and back-tracking to the most appro­pri­ate descrip­tor for my state. This is an arrange­ment that I have come to accept and although it often works well enough, it can be a lit­tle slow as far as pro­cess­ing is concerned.

I’m sure that there exist other thoughts on these mat­ters and things that I might express but, mostly, I am find­ing the issue rather per­ti­nent at this (just after) one in the morn­ing time. I intended to go to sleep a num­ber of hours ago and, at this point, I will not get much sleep, which causes me to sus­pect that I am avoid­ing sleep in some man­ner cor­re­lated to stress. Unsurprisingly, this con­tin­ues to be my stan­dard way of being; such is my life, I guess.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »