Podcast Roll

My love of storytelling in all its forms often leads to quite an entertainment deficit as I try to fit in movies, television shows, books, and other forms of story telling into a life that is increasingly over scheduled with pedantic necessities like paying bills and actually working. Luckily, the convenient Podcast keeps me connected to interesting fiction, non-fiction, and news and the evening commute gives me time to listen in.

My Top 10 in not-necessarily-preference order:

1. Buzz Out Loud
2. This Week in Tech
3. This American Life
4. Escapepod (with sister podcasts, PodCastle and Pseudopod)
5. The Moth Podcast
6. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
7. The Dungeons & Dragons Podcast
8. Windows Weekly
9. Gadgettes
10. NPR: Planet Money

What are your favorite podcasts?

Star Trek

Maybe I waited too long to see it and had my expectations set too high by other people's positive reviews or maybe I am just an old crumugeny Star Trek fan that is never satisfied.  After seeing the new Star Trek movie last night, my first reaction was a resounding "Meh."  As an action movie, it was pretty darn good.  I enjoyed the acting and the casting, even if every time I saw new-Spock, I thought of Heroes.  The special effects were pretty darn good, though at a couple of times I thought they were a bit overblown.   I certainly enjoyed the internal references to the Star Trek universe like "Admiral Archer's Beagle" and Pike ending the movie in a wheelchair (and the countless others I missed or forgot).

 

I guess I have three major spolierific problems with the movie that really left an ashen taste in my mouth:

 

1)         Red Matter.  Hey, this is the Star Trek universe and we need a plot device, so let's create a particle or substance out of thin air to drive the story.  Throw us a bone, and at least have old-Spock throw away one line on giving us a description of what it is.  Like "Red Matter, a concentrated matrix of graviton particles suspended in an anti-matter matter containment field" or some such!

 

2)         Time.  Hey, this is the Star Trek universe and we need a plot device, so let's mess with the Space-Time continuum!  I get it.  They need some device to pull the Star Trek movie off canon and reboot the series.  I am okay with that, really.  But then leave it alone.  There was just too much old-Spock telling new-Spock what to do and how to do it.   I like Nemoy's Spock.  I like that he was part of the movie and bridged the two.  I think they relied on that too much.

 

3)         And the worst.  Captain Cadet!  Yes folks, we are going to take someone who has not even graduated from the appropriate learning institution and make him the leader of 1000 people!  I am okay with a Lord of the Flies like "young people stepping up and taking command" atmosphere.  I am even okay with the "oops, how did we get here" motif (a la Space Camp!); but it is simply too unbelievable to take a military structure and stretch it to allow for a cadet to jump 6 or 8 promotions to Captain in one day.  When I saw that Spock had the rank of Commander while everyone else was still a cadet, I knew we were in trouble. 

             Compare Kirk's elevation to Uhura's.  Uhura's made sense.  A commissioned officer couldn't do what Uhura could, so she was asked to step up and do the task she was trained to do.  But, she started her Enterprise voyage down in the communication pool like any other low-ranking person.  

             Sure, from a military perspective, Star Trek is full of cases when Kirk or Picard or someone is not 'following orders.' And sometimes they get away with it, and sometimes they do not.  If this were 1600 and not 2300, and you could buy a command, I would be okay with a young Kirk stepping onto the bridge of the Enterprise.  Even if it were his natural charisma and leadership that made everyone look to him in crisis, that might have helped (a little), but Pike turning and saying to Kirk "You are the new first officer" was too much to handle.  The elevation of new-Kirk to Captain just blows any and all credibility out of the water and took me out of the movie.

 

So, I guess I am just like all the other Trek nerds and would rather complain than enjoy.  I can't quote the inconsistencies between In a Mirror, Darkly; Mirror, Mirror and Crossover.  I can't tell you the first ship that old-Kirk served aboard (without looking it up on Wikipedia at least), but I have watched a lot of, and enjoyed most of, the Star Trek universe.  This movie just left me going "Meh."

Who watches the Watchmen

I have a confession to make. Despite my many layers of geekiness, I never got into comic books or their cousin, the graphic novel. For the written word, I have always been more of an epic fantasy consumer or an RPG-supplement-that-I-will-never-use reader.   Thus when I went to see The Watchmen at the local megaplex tonight, I did not have a preconception of what the movie ought to be.  I have seen comic book adaptations that I loved (i.e. X-men and Spiderman) and ones that I did not (The Hulk (2003) and do not even get me started on Fantastic 4).  Ultimately I want works based on speculative fiction to do well so that more spec. fic. works will be produced, but I readily acknowledge the difficult task for Hollywood types to produce projects that appeal to the zealot fans that science fiction produces and that also appeals to a wide enough audience to make the projects profitable.

***Spoiler Warning*** Some details below.

So, as a fan of geeky in general without being a fanboy of the Watchmen universe, I can say that I enjoyed Watchmen very much.  It was dark, depressing, pessimistic, gritty, and gratuitous.  And those are the good parts!  Again, without knowing the source material, I found some parts distracting.  The crystal clockwork on  the planet Mars was visually stunning and completely superfluous.  I get it, Dr. Manhattan is not like the rest of us.  Celestial Harmony and all that, but it felt like some extra cash was left in the special effects budget and it had to be spent.  And what's with the horned tiger beast that suddenly starts following Ozymandias around towards the end of the movie? Where did she come from?  

What drew me into the movie and the Watchmen universe, however, was the alternative history that is created as the background to justify the pending nuclear holocaust that is the dramatic force behind the plot of the movie.  The film uses flashbacks and narration to weave the main story (set in 1985) with a host of background information about both the characters and the world in which they live - from the characters' predecessors in the '40s to radical political issues in the '60s and '70s (such as the answer as to who shot JFK, how America won in Vietnam, and a world in which Nixon retains the presidency into the '80s).  This distopian alternative history allowed the screenwriters to plant (or steal) a number of subtle humorous lines into a very dark and violent story.  When the final confrontation between the heroes and the villain occurs, the viewer understands where the parties are coming from and how they reached the decisions that lead to the final confrontation.

In the end, the movie made me want to reach out to the source material.  Unfortunately, at 2 hours and 43 minutes, the movie let out after the local book stores were closed so I will have to wait to see if I enjoy the graphic novel as much as the movie.  The book is always better, right?

Watchmen (the movie)?  3.5 M's out of 5.  

Ship of Magic

With news that one of my favorite authors, Robin Hobb, is preparing to return to the Realm of the Elderlings in an upcoming novel (or two)[1], I decided to pull Ship of Magic
off the shelf for a reread.  Ship of Magic is the first volume of The Liveship Traders trilogy and takes place a few years after the Farseer Trilogy.[2]  It has been a number of years since I read Ship of Magic and am always cautious when it comes time to reread a book after a long interval.  Will I still find the story engaging?  Will the characters' development seem natural in light of the information I know from later in the story?  Will books that I loved as a kid or young adult still live up to my presumably more mature scrutiny?

 

In the case of Ship of Magic, the answers are all a resounding yes.  The Liveship Traders tackle compelling  issues of gender equality, imperialism, and slavery in the context of the struggles of individuals trying to leave their personal marks in the world, or at least survive it.  The story opens with introductions of a wide cast of characters (a pirate with big ambitions, a young woman with the need to prove herself, and her mother trying to cope with the loss of her husband – to name but a few) and is a wide departure from the first-person narrative of the Farseer Trilogy. The narrative immediate flavors the story with a sense of foreboding, a pregnant pause of anticipation for the drama that is about to be inflicted on the cast.  Financial problems face the family of the main characters, political disagreements strain relations with the imperial capital, and strange, non-human creatures dot the landscape with their incomprehensible motivations.  While telling the particular stories of the varied protagonists, the author fills in pieces of the history of the Realm of the Elderlings and lays the foundations for stories 4 and 5 books away.

The soft hand with which Robin Hobb builds the history and rules of her universe is especially prevalent in the Ship of Magic.  This story introduces us to concepts not present in the Farseer Trilogy, but which fit that effort’s world building in a complimentary manner in a seamless transition from the cold and barbaric north lands to the more “civilized” and temperate south.  Because of this subtle approach, new readers are not left wondering what was missed by picking up this book first while devoted fans can catch subtle foreshadowing or explanations of past events.  By re-reading this volume, the skill of this construction is even more pronounced.  Pick it up today and you won’t be disappointed.

It may be hard for me to wait six months to a year for the next novel. Luckily, Robin Hobb has a short story set in the Realm of the Elderlings in the recently released A Fantasy Medley and there is always the “Homecoming” in the anthology Legends II.

Ship of Magic? 4 M’s out of 5
Re-reading Ship of Magic?  4.5 M’s out of 5

 

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[1] Dragon Keeper is scheduled to be released  in the United Kingdom in the summer of 2009 and in the United States in the winter of 2010.  Robin Hobb reports that the manuscript came in at double the expected length and that the book may be released as two volumes. 

[2] The Liveship Traders trilogy was itself followed by The Tawny Man trilogy to complete a trilogy of trilogies set in the Realm of the Elderlings.  In contrast, The Soldier Son trilogy, discussed earlier on this blog, is not set in the Realm of the Elderlings.

Dinner Voyeur

My friend Scot has a new project that is just mouth watering. Dinner Voyeur is a podcast program where Scot and friends take the listener through a meal at local and exotic restaurants. I have had the chance to listen to a few episodes and have enjoyed the content and the production quality. A new podcast, the sound quality and production do not rival professional networks like TWiT or NPR, but Scot is doing a great job of bring his clear love of fine food and wine to his audience. Where DV shines is in the content. In approximately 20 minutes, Scot introduces the listener to the restaurant, browses the menu, and describes the experience with clear and concise prose.

After 4 episodes, it is clear that Scot knows and enjoys his food, and it also sounds like he and his friends are degenerate gamblers. At least their bellies are full when loosing their shirts.

Give a listen and find yourself introduced to some new dinning experiences.

Where have you been?

I finished reading Robin Hobb's Renegade's Magic awhile ago, and I had every intention of writing a detailed review. What stopped me though was how disappointed in the book and in an author who I have come to respect I became after finishing it. The book was good, but not great. And I didn't want to write a negative review. The finale dragged at points. The protagonist whined and postured and did nothing for so long that it was tedious to read him debate with himself (literally) for pages and then chapters. And then, in the end, everything resolves with a tight and shinny bow and life has a story book ending.

Well, Renegade's Magic really is no fairy tale and the overly convenient ending topped with the slow pace of the finale puts a bit of tarnish on an otherwise good trilogy. Hobb still has an ability to delve deeply into characters and expose their motivations and flaws in ways that the characters do not realize. I wish she hadn't felt the need to end this trilogy with a sweetness that ultimately fails to balance the overall bitter tone of the story.

In the end, I would still recommend the Soldier Son Trilogy as a satisfying speculative fiction trilogy. A story that combines exploration with magic and falls a bit outside the medieval tropes of most fantasy-fiction, the trilogy is a good read, even if the ending falls a bit flat.

Renegade’s Magic? 3.5 Ms out of 5
The Soldier Son Trilogy? 4 Ms out of 5

Super Mario Galaxy

When I was a kid, we had an Atari 2600. More then one, because those suckers broke, often. Then my brother got a Commodore 64. From that time on, I was hooked on computer games. My brother some how found about 100 mixed disks of games (pirated, I now know, but at 8 had no idea). And we bought many games too. Classics like the Gold Box D&D games and Ultima III through V.


After the C=64, I got an Amiga 500 that didn't really do it for me so right before college, I got my first PC. And a copy of X-Wing. As a matter of fact, that summer, I would come home from whatever I was up to and find my friends gathered around my computer playing! X-Wing gave way to too many computer games for me to recount


Through all this time, I never really got into console systems. No SNES, no Sega Dreamcast, no Play Station I or II. That changed this past December when we got a Wii. I still love the PC gaming platform, but with a wife and a child, the 'casual' game console in the family room became more and more appealing.


With the Wii, we got a copy of Super Mario Galaxy. I had played some Mario games in the past. I knew what a goomba was and who Yoshi and Bowser were, but hadn't really played any Mario game to completion. As of this writing, I still haven't, but I am on the verge of completing Super Mario Galaxy. The game showcases the strengths that the Wii brings to market; an intuitive control system, good (if not state-of-the-art) graphics, and lots and lots of fun. Both me, the avid gamer, and Saundra, the not really at all gamer, can sit and have sat down to enjoy gathering coins and stars and stomping on turtles. The storyline of the game is barely coherent, but that is not the point of the game. The point of the game is to get to the end. I am now ready to take on the last super-secret level and have really enjoyed the ride.

D&D: 4e

Today is the day. The Fourth Edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules are officially released to the wild. Rumor has it that Amazon is already low on the new Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual and that the books will be hard to find in the wild (of Border's and local friendly game stores). Too much Hype? Not Enough of a good new game with plenty of demand?

When I first learned of the new edition a year or so ago, I was pretty pumped. The move from AD&D, 2ed to D&D 3ed was masterful, in my mind, slimming down the rules and making them more cohesive; without sacrificing the flavor of what made the game so much fun to play. The early information trickling out from the folks at WOTC made it sound like 4e was taking the 3e kernel and making it better.

As I learned more however, I wasn't as convinced. Less dice rolling and weird inter-party party powers seemed to be cropping up that made life confusing and turn 4e into a minis game more than a role playing game. I haven't pre-ordered the books and don't plan on running out today to get them, but I was able to peruse a copy of the Player's Handbook. It is organized well and the quality seems pretty darn high. But I can not tell if the flavor is there. So I will be getting the books in the next month or so. I guess we'll just have to play the darn thing and find out if it is worth all the hype.

Verdict? TBD

Trouble in Poker Land

From the Tao of Poker blog, this post linking to other posts regarding cheating at a well known on-line poker site.

I like poker. I used to play a lot in high school and college in friendly games when you sit around the table with your friends getting high on too much Mountain Dew and maybe risk tomorrow's beer money. I like casino poker though I haven't had the time in the last few years to play but two or three times. I hate conspiracy theories and don't like to spread rumors, but the evidence of wrong doing at UltimateBet is too strong to ignore.

The business model of on-line only enterprises is going to continue to adapt and expand as our Internet connectivity continues to become more ubiquitous. As new services and activities are introduced, there will be problems. Paypal? E-bay? On-line banking? All have had their share of problems and have searched for solutions. So keep your cards close, and your wallet closer.

Quick Notes

Had friends over last weekend and have been remiss in recounting my media intake; a couple of teasers:

1. Went and saw Indy IV today. It was my first time in the movie theater since Noah was born. Noah and Saundra came along and both behaved themselves throughout (I kid... I kid... Saundra always behaves herself). More on this later.

2. Also, I finished Forest Mage Saturday night and had to run out and buy then final volume of the Soldier's Son trilogy, Renegade's Magic on Sunday. I thoroughly enjoyed the ending of Mage, but, without trying to spoil the book, its ending was very similar to the end of Royal Assassin. I am going to give Robin Hobb the benefit of the doubt and see where she is going with this. It is far to well written of a series to be so derivative of the first series without a good reason. I'll see what Renegade tells me on this subject.

3. Saundra and I watched Sicko tonight. While there is clearly some (okay, a lot of) propaganda going on inside this film, it is still a thought provoking exercise in the collective discourse of what we as citizens want out of our country and our government. I think that as November comes closer, we need to hear from candidates more about what changes need to be made in America and less that change needs to be made. The DVD had some interesting extras, but after 2 plus hours, you can only take so much.