Another Kamikaze Bambi Strikes

It would be nice if car problems would stop happening, but here we are in 2013 and another deer collision happened last evening.

My father was coming home and hit a doe following her fawn across the road. She darted up from an embankment in front of the car as he slowed to avoid the fawn. It appears her muzzle impacted the windshield from all the chewed grass combined with saliva.

The impact could have been a lot worse but the slow down and angle left a dented fender and the badly cracked windshield as the only damage. It could have been far worse as my posts on earlier deer damage show.

Still, this is going to be incredibly expensive to repair if my suspicions are correct. I can feel the center of the spider web fractures on the inside of the glass. A Walmart parking lot temporary repair is probably in order involving reinforced packing tape.

Given the out of control deer population in the area the DNR really should do a massive cull, but that’s not going to happen. Instead the pests will continue to damage vehicles, crops, and gardens. I’m sick of the varmints being cared about more than humans.

Being Prepared to Serve

Any time there is a disaster such as the tornadoes that struck Oklahoma recently or hurricanes like Sandy there follows an outpouring of sympathy and volunteers to help with the clean ups. Churches and volunteer organizations send groups to assist in myriads of ways, which is unquestionably a good thing. But I find myself wishing more people would do the same closer to home at all times, rather than just during a highly publicized catastrophe.

This is a thought that I’ve been pondering for some time. However, recent events big and small have brought it to the fore in a nagging way. I believe we are here on Earth to learn to love one another and that the only real way we can do this is to serve each other. Being a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lessons on serving others are repeatedly taught in sermons and Sunday school. Service is emphasized for every member through our callings (volunteer jobs) in the church or helping out in the community.

Still, we all have our agency that applies to members and nonmembers alike. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians he wrote, “For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” Gal 5:13. That scripture implies that we are expected to choose whether or not to serve one another and that we should do so out of love. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Real versus CGI Special Effects

Over at BoingBoing I ran into this great post and discussion on old school special effects and what's been lost in changing over to CGI. The starting off point is Ray Harryhausen's wonderful work and things go from there. Rarely are comment threads worth reading on big sites, but this one has a lot of valid points being made.

Personally, I think CGI can be fantastic when used properly and devastating to the suspension of disbelief when poor. Part of that comes from accepting the unreal aspects of older stop motion or miniatures effects for what they are when we visually process them. So when something that is photorealistic doesn't move or behave correctly, the mind freaks out disproportionately. That's the Achilles heel of CGI and I just had that experience watching the trailer to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug:

It looked pretty good until the scene with the elves in the trees chasing the dwarves in the barrels. Right there the fluidity did not match the rest of the image and jarred me out of full immersion. Quick cuts of real stuntmen would have worked much better, but the temptation of CGI leads to directors using it too much. And this is the work of one of the better CGI directors out there, Peter Jackson.

Motion capture is one way to ameliorate the effect, but so far nothing has completely fooled my eye in a movie. So I'm back to learning to forgive the limitations and hope my eyes eventually do too.

Time of EVE Kickstarter Makes Stretch Goal

Having already recommended the anime Time of EVE and how it blew through its initial $18,000 Kickstarter goal in less than 24 hours, I am pleased to report that it has exceeded $126,000 by a good amount. This shows there is a model for import/export that may be emerging even as the world economy is in decline. Transitional time bring opportunity and I've decided to put my money where my mouth is by upping my backing to the $80 tier.

Yes the book is nice goody to have, but my intention has less to do with greed than with wanting to see this economic model flourish. For niche industries such as anime this could encourage more independent projects such has happened with video games. Crowd sourcing is also an interesting way to weed out ideas since demand has to occur up front rather than just being speculated on.

It might be that Time of EVE is an exception and this model won't work for other animes. After all, it is a brilliant work that is not your average animated fair of any kind. Time will tell, but at least this gem succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations.

Some Brief Thoughts on Snowden and Heroism

I do not believe Edward Snowden is a hero like some on the political right and left are hailing him. The timing of the disclosures and his running to Hong Kong are straight out of Cold War espionage operations so I suspect China’s hand in this. From his own statements, I see him as an erratic personality more than likely manipulated by a handler working for Chinese intelligence.

Even if he wasn’t, he’s not the white knight people think he is. A Ron Paul supporter and Obama sympathizer, he did not go public with this information when it mattered most before the 2012 presidential election. Timing is everything in life and doubly so in politics, which is why I believe China’s spies have a hand in this.

This would be a perfect opportunity to weaken President Obama for his meeting with President Xi Jinping on cybersecurity. Given how much attention had been focused on Chinese hacking of defense, government, and business servers in the United States it makes sense to skewer Obama with spying on his own people to deflect attention.

Seeking asylum in China while spouting off about freedom indicates that Snowden is either lying or quite stupid. Yeah, going to a country that censors the Internet, has spied on its citizens for many decades, and suppresses any mention of Tiananmen Square is beyond foolish if you are seeking freedom. It looks like someone has been working on his perception of China, if you get my drift.

Meanwhile, there are purportedly idiots in the intelligence community talking about “disappearing” Snowden in public. Oh and another scandal is hitting involving the State Department covering up drug dealing and use of prostitutes by ambassadors and security contractors.Our government is in the best of hands, isn’t it? There is no way to indicate just how much sarcasm fills that sentence.

There aren’t any heroes, folks. So please don’t rush to put Snowden on a pedestal just yet. Remember that Manning and Assange both proved to have motives that weren’t heroic and even Deep Throat turned out to be someone wanting revenge for being passed over for a promotion.

Isn’t it interesting that all the wrong doings of the current administration are coming to light after Obama was safely re-elected?

Technobabble: Video Card Style

There is nothing quite as infuriating as troubleshooting personal computer issues and it can reach exponential heights when nobody else has successfully solved it. That’s the situation I’ve been in for the past month since getting a Nvidia Geforce 650 TI based video card. Part of the pain was making the mistake of testing the 320.xx beta drivers, which ended up being certified in 320.18 without correcting any of their bugs. Check out this forum for multiple threads on the issues involved.

Some of the bugs are show stoppers. By that, I mean they lock up the computer which truly qualifies as a stopper. The worst symptom is that of Windows Explorer locking up while allowing currently running programs to function. They can be used or shut down, but Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t work, launching programs fails, and you can’t shutdown. Other folks have had their video cards actually burned out by the drivers.

So I’ve spent the last week or so uninstalling and installing drivers (use safe mode, folks – you’ll be grateful you did) to find something remotely stable. 310.70 was fantastically unstable, 306.97 was slow in games, and 314.22 showed some of the same lockups. I’ve settled on the latter for now, since they crash the least.

Checking the latency on my PC with LatencyMon reveals large problems with Nvidia’s driver kernel, nvlddmkm.sys. I’ve disabled powering down the video when the PC is idle and that’s helped stability. So far I’ve kept the PC going for its longest stretch by enabling the screen saver to make sure the card doesn’t go dormant.

Digging for solutions exposed another large issue and that was what was causing Mass Effect 2 and 3 to fail to run. It turns out that starting with Windows 7 the power management in the operating systems from Microsoft park the cores in multicore CPUs. This saves power for laptops, but is pointless for desktops. A utility called parkcontrol made all the difference in the world in allowing the games to run.

The big surprise from using that was how much faster and responsive the PC has become at doing everything else. From Internet browsing to graphics editing, everything is much faster now. Why this is an issue with Nvidia and not with AMD Radeon video cards is a mystery to me.

If I had things to do over again I would buy an AMD Radeon 7790 based card. The Gigabyte 650 TI hardware is excellent and never spiked in heat like some with the 320 drivers, which is a testament to its cooling system. But I never had driver issues with Radeons like this.

A Source of Referral Spam

Ever wonder where the strange links in your Blogspot stats come from that don’t really link to your blog? Ever wonder why someone would do such a thing? Wonder no more.

r-e-f-e-r-e-r . com showed up on my stats today and this site blatantly lays out what is going on. For $29.95 you can spam forty million websites with links to your site to artificially drive traffic – or at least that’s what they promise. You may have heard of similar schemes for Facebook likes and Twitter follows to boost apparent status.

Screen capture follows and is safe to click on:

The part selling ads pointing out mostly webmasters visit this site is something I find vaguely hilarious. Most won’t be pleased to be visiting, I suspect.

Please don’t help them out by visiting their site.

Beowulf: Director’s Cut (2007) Review

Before underdressed CGI blue cat people fought “the man” in 3D and made a billion dollars, another underdressed CGI hero fought against “the woman” in 3D and barely managed a profit worldwide. Despite its underwhelming box office, this movie inspired by an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem is the more interesting of the two. Gory, boisterous, beautiful, and dark, it was hampered by trying to be both a meditation on human frailty and a popcorn action flick. UPDATED June 2013 with Blu-ray details and HD screen captures.

In those forgotten days before television, before movies, before radio, and yes even before comic books, heroic tales still circulated. Traveling bards who could recite great tales were highly valued and the superstars of their day. Committed to memory, countless tales that thrilled audiences of the past have been lost. But a few lasted long enough to be transcribed to paper and Beowulf is the oldest in the English culture.

If you are a dedicated fan and purist about the heroic poem, please stop reading here. It will save you time wailing and gnashing your teeth – besides, Grendel of the movie is much better at doing both of those. This movie is more of an “inspired by” story than an adaptation.

Set in 6th Century Denmark, the film begins with with chanting driven orchestral music (composed by veteran Alan Silvestri) and the main title flashing on screen. In 3D at the theater, it looked very good I must say. Quickly the title fades and we are presented with an ornate golden horn drinking cup featuring a dragon. It is apparent that we are supposed to pay attention to this object and I recall thinking “It’s a plot device!”

As the camera pans up, we are introduced to our first look at how the all CGI film renders humans. A very pretty and regal looking Nordic lady is holding the cup during its filling, all the while looking none too happy to be doing so. Soon we find out why and her identity.

A Worthy Anime

While I’ve been aware of Kickstarter for some time now and even been interested in a few projects, there has been nothing that I was willing to put my money on until now. Time of EVE is a wonderful webcast science fiction anime about a café where humans and humanoid robots mingle in a homage to Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. After marathoning the episodes the day after the Kickstarter announcement for an international Blu-ray of the movie version, I knew I had to contribute.

At the moment, the funding stands at $99,112 with my contribution in. The goal was $18,000 by June 22 and was blown through in 22 hours. That should give you an idea of what people think of the anime. Because of the overwhelming support, an English dub is going to be included and further stretch goals are being worked on. Personally, I’m hoping for a soundtrack CD for the next goal.

Time of EVE is wonderfully written and animated, so don’t expect crude Flash animation – this is the quality of theatrical release along the lines of Studio Ghibli productions. Heavy on character development, the film features humor and gentle emotion throughout rather than action.

The story begins when a curious high school student tries to account for the movements of the female humanoid housekeeper robot and walks into a mysterious unmarked back alley café. Inside there is one rule: don’t discriminate between humans and robots. As the mystery deepens, the question of what makes an individual a person is raised, tolerance is tested, and outside political intrigue raises the stakes involved. Along the way, everyone’s personal story gets told.

Check out the first episode for free at Crunchyroll and the whole thing if you are a paid subscriber.

Area 88 Ep. 5: An Unyielding Spirit in Lipstick

An anime original character loosely based on one from the source manga makes her debut in this action filled episode. With their top ace grounded, the mercenaries at Area 88 receive a large surprise when a fighter sweep goes wrong. Forcefully inserting herself into the all male base, a brash newcomer finds her abundant self confidence tested in the lethal skies.

The greatest strength of Area 88 lies not in its action sequences, but in its character development. A third of the way into the series and it had already introduced a good number of unique individuals, but lacked a strong female. Wanting to rectify that, the writer and director of the show decided to bring in a new pilot. It’s a well timed introduction given Shin is grounded while waiting for his new fighter.

Before the opening credits roll, a tense situation is depicted with the commander of the base, Saki, listening to the combat chatter while watching the radar screen. One of the flights has gotten into a furball and used all their ammunition up. Kim, the young boy flying the Sea Harrier FRS.1, is in trouble and unable to shake the MiG-21 on his tail.

Post credits, things look worse as a warning of a bogey entering the area is immediately followed by a radar warning receiver going off. That indicates a fighter radar has gone into padlock mode to lock a target for a guided missile. Kim prepares to die as the missile streaks in from the unfamiliar plane.

So I’m Thinking of Building an Ark…

…Not because I want to or have been commanded to, but because the rain keeps coming. There is a large amount of water standing in the fields around the county, flash flooding between Caledonia and Hokah last night, and the promise of another round of intense storms this afternoon. It’s reminding me a little of 2007 when the floods hit.

So far there hasn’t been anything quite to that level. However, the ground is past saturated and fields in the valleys are mostly unplanted. I did see some corn planted in higher elevations around Caledonia at least. What little thought toward a garden has been negated by the cold and wet spring we are suffering from. The farmers have far more to worry about though.

The Internet service has been going in and out the last few days and I suspect water is getting into the lines or repeater boxes somewhere. That’s trivial compared to how damaged the driveway is getting. A few more storms and we’ll be able to compete with the Grand Canyon for tourists.

The Last Dinosaur (1977) Review

You wouldn’t expect the studio behind Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman to put out a live action monster movie, but that’s exactly what Rankin/Bass Productions did in 1977. Supposedly aimed at older kids, this movie is a great deal more adult in its themes than expected. Ostensibly about a big game hunter getting a chance to hunt a dinosaur, the story is really about being a relic in a changing modern world.

Rankin/Bass Productions had a long running association with Japanese studios with both their animated and stop motion children’s specials being produced in the land of the rising sun. But that wasn’t the only kind of content made for the American producers. In the late 1960s, King Kong Escapes was made as a live action joint production taking advantage of the cheaper suit acting for giant monsters pioneered in Gojira.

In fact, The Last Dinosaur has a direct connection to that classic movie through the special effects studio founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, creator of the effects of the early Godzilla series and television’s Ultraman. Providing all the miniatures and dinosaurs, their work imbues the movie with the kaiju spirit.

The film opens with a dark room with a home movie comprised of big game hunting footage being shown over a fireplace. Hints of shag rug complete the impression of a 1970s make out den and sure enough when the lights come on it’s there. You will not mistake the setting for another time period, that’s for sure.

A pretty brunette in a pink blouse appears to be the trophy girlfriend of the much older and wealthy owner of the residence. He paws her for a bit before handing her his photo scrapbook to peruse while he goes to check on what the guys up front are doing. A quick pullback reveals that this is a room on a plane, which is very impressive.

Then we find out it is actually a model plane from the external shot. Okay, being just a little snarky there, but sometimes the Japanese use of models to just use models doesn’t look too great and this is one of those occasions.

The credits roll while the young woman leafs through the life of our main character, Masten Thrust, Jr. That name is also a giveaway of which decade this was made in, come to think of it. Played by Richard Boone of Have Gun, Will Travel fame, Masten is a man’s man according to the clever device used to show his backstory. Every page shows a part of his life through photos and newspaper clippings. Even his personality shows via the short and humorous comments on each page.

Memorial Day 2013

It is a rainy and cold day that adds a somber atmosphere to the day set aside in the United States to remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Many people confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day, but this day is for those fallen in battle. A gloom has fallen on this holiday weekend, traditionally more a time to grill outside and for families to gather from afar.

I feel an odd foreboding today and have no inspiration to write the kind of post I’d like to. Browsing through my photos, I find that ones of the county memorial exist only in my memory and not on my hard drive. Instead, this photo of the M3A3 Stuart tank from World War II on display in Houston will have to suffice.

Many have sacrificed all so that the rest of us can exercise our agency and enjoy freedom. Sadly, I think remembrance of their deeds is fading in our ever more self centered society. I’m grateful for the way they laid down their lives for a greater good and I hope more of my fellow Americans will reflect on the true meaning of the day.

Topblogstories Referral Spam

Another round of spam has hit the blog stats page and this time it is a link to a purported hookup service for the sexually desperate. Okay, it doesn’t say that, but that’s how I view it.

topblogstories . com / led me to this page:

Link to NSFW screen capture, but not pornographic image.

topblogstories . com / 18331&c=3 led to virtually the same page:

Link to NSFW screen capture, but not pornographic image.

Notice the javascript coding picks up where your IP is from. I suspect false advertising given the number of breasts promised.

As usual, do not click on the referrals! I hope your mother warned you about these kinds of girls…

…and hopefully you will warn others about these kinds of spam.

UPDATE: The first link now leads to a topless photo. It may be that they rotate them, but be warned it is now very NSFW!

UPDATE 2: Seeing another round of it with a small variance. Persistent, aren’t they?

topblogstories . com / 7293&c=6

UPDATE 3: Thanks to the efforts of commenter Edgar Bangkok there are more details on the spammers, both methods and probable location in Ukraine. He’s posted detailed analysis at his blog in two posts:

The first one shows how javascript is used on the webpage.

The second post drops shows the topblogstories spammers are now targeting Google Analytics and shows sublinks going to AdultFriendFinder and Damned Love.

If you don’t read Italian, you’ll need to use a translation service such as Google Translate to read his posts.

Slowdown in Reviews

Due to a trip to Indiana and the resulting penalty to my health, I’ve been slow in getting anything serious done for the blog. A new movie review is currently being written and notes to redo the Beowulf review to cover the Blu-ray have been taken. Somewhere in the confusion I forgot to review the fifth episode of Area 88 so that will come after the review in progress.

I’m mulling over the nightmarish task of adding the tag “kaiju” to Japanese giant monster movies, but can’t decide. It isn’t the task that is dissuading me, it is the definition. Would giant monster movies from other countries fit the category? If not, what label for them? And since so few visitors use tags is it worth the effort? Since I put up the index pages I have noticed they get used far more than tags.

Meanwhile, I have upgraded my multimedia PC in the living room to the point where it has replaced the Samsung Blu-ray player for DVD playback. The picture quality of combining a Radeon 7750 based videocard and XBMC software has produced a result that is nothing short of amazing. While not true HD, the image quality has no right to look so good.

There is probably a decent sized blog post in that project and I may write one about the settings, software, and hardware cobbled together. A few screenshots would be appropriate, but I haven’t figured out how to get any out of the Samsung player. That is most likely impossible, which is a pity. The difference is staggering especially close up and the Samsung is no slouch at scaling up DVDs.

Why am I mentioning this in a post about reviews? Out of concern that my take on DVD picture quality is going to change due to the enhancements. What I’ll be seeing will be far better looking than most people will get to view. Yeah, yeah, I can see you are weeping for me having such an awful problem.

Failure Is an Option…

…At least it is where engineering is involved. NASA has successfully tested the privately built Orion capsule with parachutes rigged to fail. While we live in a risk and failure averse society (no lose soccer matches anyone?), science requires failures to advance knowledge and nowhere is that more true than in mechanical engineering. Failures expose weaknesses so that they can be addressed so that tragedies can be avoided as much as possible.

There is a life lesson in that, I think. My failures have taught me more than my successes, so I appreciate the necessity of screwing up from time to time. Maybe not immediately, but once cooled off things can be assessed objectively.

Oddly enough, the anime Space Brothers is going through an arc involving parachute failures right now, so this article leapt out at me even more than the usual aerospace report. Lives will depend on getting this right, so it is good to see the test went very well.

Moral Apathy and the Decline of the Nation

People who know that I am a conservative would probably think I’m celebrating all the bad press the Obama administration is finally getting this week. The long delayed look at the Benghazi terrorist attack and the huge IRS scandal are actually dominating the news right now. I doubt they would if the Feds hadn’t seized Associated Press phone records in an apparent fishing expedition for whistle blowers. No, none of this is happy news or even surprising.

Instead it feels like a continuation of the slow fall of the United States into a completely corrupt government like all before it. This is the death of the dream established by the founders of the nation, so it isn’t a cause for celebration. Frankly, I only see it as a symptom of what’s going on with the American people themselves.

New Page Index for Spam Posts

Since I’ve gotten a lot of views on posts about referral spam on Blogger and not many people click on tags, a new page has been added at the top under the blog title graphic to make it easier to find those posts. Spam, Lovely Spam is the page and also includes links to posts on other scams and spamming.

These aren’t the kind of posts that one would hope would be popular on a blog, simply because it would be a better world if it wasn’t necessary to identify the garbage filling our Blogger referrals. Being a strong believer in service, I’ll continue to add info as new spam shows up.

I’d say read and enjoy, but…

Weight Loss Referral Spam

It seems to be a week of heavy traffic in Blogger referral spam and I wish there was a diet we could go on to lose it. The latest links to a video from a chiropractor and “wellness expert” calling himself Dr. Charles from Fishers, Indiana.

current . com / 1rhh7kc is the link showing up today, but it has also been showing up in large quantities as www . filmhill . com / redirect . php?url=http:// flf-course . com?a_aid=510d2acc92117&a_bid=6f93443e for some time now.

UPDATE 1: Now it is coming as vk . com / away . php?to=http %3A%2F%2Fflf-course . com%2F%3Fa_aid%3D51893d1ad4b02&post=18068744_31

UPDATE 2: Once again the link has changed, this time to appear to be coming from LinkedIn. www . linkedin . com / redir / redirect?url=http %3A%2F%2F flf-course %2Ecom%3Fa_aid%3D517d0f042c205&urlhash=e75j

UPDATE 3: As of June 26, 2013 a new link has appeared: http:/ /t . co/ MaAptuGFVu that is of course the same video.

UPDATE 4: July has found the video making its way into referrals again, this time as blogsrating . pw/ An interesting thing happened when I loaded the site – it ran a very long load with many blogspot addresses going by in the info bar of the browser. I’m no code expert, but I wonder if it uses every hit on the site to send further referral spam hits to our blogs.

Also, it appears to be using Russian resources, surprise, surprise.

Screen capture of the Current version:

Screen capture of the Filmhill version:

Yep, it’s the same thing with only the sidebar being different.

I should also note I had to “hard” shutdown my virtual Kabuntu session to get out of the second link. Whether that has something to do with my video card drivers or the site I can’t say, but I don’t advise visiting the sites. Besides it’s just another scam to get money out of you.

Ray Harryhausen Died

The master of visual effects Ray Harryhausen was 92. I recently was talking to a high school senior who surprised me because he was trying to remember films he loved as a kid to get on Blu-ray. Those films turned out to be Jason and the Argonauts and the Sinbad movies that were Harryhausen’s babies. I’d watched Clash of the Titans a few weeks back and thought to myself that it was the perfect swan song for his stop motion effects.

The movies he made were magic to me growing up and the creatures may have moved in jerky fashion, but they all had real personalities. In the end, that was the secret to Harryhausen’s success. Somehow he imbued his creations with a feeling that they had emotions in such a way that kids of all ages could instantly connect with them. It made the movies such a delight on a Saturday afternoon.

Ray may be gone, but his spirit remains. If you loved the cave troll in Fellowship of the Ring, that was a true homage in CGI of what he did. So many directors and special effects artists were inspired by him that he’ll never really be gone from cinema.

Now he’s off in the afterlife with his best friend Ray Bradbury probably coming up with some new wild idea to play with on a galactic scale.

Health 5-7-2013

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it is the most mediocre of times.

I finished the antibiotics on Saturday, so of course a deer tick bit me last night. It didn’t wait for the 72 hour period doctors and researchers think is the minimum, it was on me for less than 24 hours guaranteed. Fortunately for me, I found it right after it bit.

My first 2.5 mile walk of the year turned out to be a lot tougher than expected yesterday. The off and on infection has taken far more out of me than realized. Now to get back to weight training – perhaps today if my morning twitch reflex test is any indication. My last blood pressure reading was 134/82 which I consider to be too high even if ill. Moving and functioning should help with that.

Stargate: Continuum (2008) Review

Stargate: SG-1 as a television series ended, but the adventures of the team continued in this direct to DVD and Blu-ray feature film. A nefarious plot by the last remaining major villain leaves the team stranded in an alternate timeline and powerless to affect events. An amazing array of familiar faces from the entire ten year run of SG-1 make this a fan’s dream, but the story and action set Continuum apart from being just an extended episode. UPDATED May 2013 with new screen captures and expanded review.

Stargate: SG-1 has played with time travel nearly as much as the Star Trek franchise, usually with superior results (sorry Trekkies). Once again the creative team uses the concept, in this case to show a what if scenario of the Stargate never being used in modern times by the U.S. government. Jack O'Neil makes a return appearance early in the film, as does everyone's favorite System Lord, Ba'al. What follows is one of the darker stories told in the Stargate universe, allowing the entire cast to show off their acting chops.

Director Martin Wood starts the movie off with a bit of fun: a continuous single shot traveling through SG Command. While not quite up to the level of Orson Welles’ famous take in A Touch of Evil, it is pure fan service for longtime followers of the series. Watch for cameos of fan favorite supporting characters who won’t be seen again in the flick.

Eventually the camera catches up to final incarnation of the SG-1 team made up of Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Ben Browder), Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping), Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks), Teal’c (Christopher Judge), and Vala (Claudia Black) as they prepare for an easy mission for a change.The last clone of the last of the Goa’uld System Lords, Ba’al, has been captured and slated for “extraction.” Okay, if you aren’t a fan of the series, the preceding sentence made absolutely no sense, right?

Nook HD to Get Google Play!

This is very good news for owners of Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets. Barnes & Noble is not doing well and there was talk of spinning the Nook off from the main company if a buyer could be found. That would have meant being locked into their software and content store which could go under at any moment.

Instead the full Google App experience is going to come to the Nook HD:

Faster Web Browsing with Chrome: As Web browsing continues to be among the most popular tablet activities, NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ now feature the Chrome browser for fast start up and page loading and an unlimited number of tabs open at once. Customers can even sync bookmarks across any device with Chrome.

Google Search^™, Gmail^™, YouTube^™ and Google Maps^™: Customers will have instant access to Google Search, Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps, now built in to NOOK HD or NOOK HD+. Sync calendars across multiple devices and check email from any account including Exchange, Yahoo! and Hotmail.

This will be rather nice since it will all work with the built in user interface, which I like but cannot use in my semi-hacked Nook HD. Apex Launcher has been installed to allow access to my non B&N apps. I’ve actually been using Google Play since early January and for the most part it has worked well. One thing that I hope is improved is compatibility checks with apps. Some don’t understand that the Nook HD is more than powerful enough to run them.

I use my Nook HD everyday and love the thing. Fast, light, and a beautiful screen in a 7” format have made it my perfect tablet for reading, research, and Sunday school teaching. Have I mentioned I love the thing?

Defeat and Victory

If there is one thing that can be said about high technology is that when it works it is like magic and when it doesn’t it feels like a curse – or cursing. So I’ve been dealing with an ugly side effect of upgrading to the GeForce 650 TI this week. Every game I’ve thrown at it has run faster and looked prettier with two exceptions. They would be Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Neither will run. The best I can get out of them is a slideshow after the intro movies. Neither can connect with EA’s servers and the moment 3D graphics are used they run about 1 frame every 2-5 seconds.

Normally I can solve such a problem on my own or by browsing gaming forums. Not this time. Every trick and tweak known has been tried including:

• Reinstalling the games.
• Installing Nvidia’s latest beta driver.
• Reinstalling DirectX 9.0c.
• Reinstalling PhysX.
• Setting processor affinity via task manager.
• Setting processor affinity via a utility.
• Running windowed.
• Running with the resolution low and all the pretty settings at lowest.
• Glaring balefully in the direction of the games.
• Deleting save games and imported settings from previous installments.

My suspicions lean toward bad PhysX coding in the game, but from all the complaints online about something having changed for the worst in recent months one has to wonder.

What’s really ironic is the more temperamental first Mass Effect runs beautifully. Of course it is on Steam…

I give up. It is rare to be defeated this way and it is very disappointing. Time to remove the games from my drive and gain a huge amount of space back since I have all the DLCs.

Some of the aggression I felt after that went into tearing my PC apart to install an intake fan Gateway never bothered to. It involved snipping rivets (and using a Dremel on two) to remove rails for hard drives plus unplugging just about everything that could be unplugged. Nearly three hours of fighting and fuming later the new fan is working nicely.

The air flow has always been suspect in the case and now it should be just dandy. Now to test how gaming temps go, though the cold front threatening snow make it a little harder to verify.

Nearly 2000 Movies Taken Off Netflix

Checking the news this morning revealed that Warner is removing 1794 movies from Netflix’s streaming service. It reminded me of an argument I had a few years ago with my brother-in-law about Netflix having a future via streaming. My position was that the studios would eventually shut them down by starting their own pay services.

Sure enough it has begun despite Disney’s earlier exclusive deal with Netflix. A month ago (or was it two) I was notified that Warner had started a streaming service of its own, Warner Instant Archive for $9.99 a month. I occasionally purchase made to order DVDs from them so it was not a surprise to get an email from them. The collection is all older movies – for the moment. I expect that to change over time.

BTW, a lot of content is shown as available in 1080p HD. I can’t say it is tempting enough to merit $10 a month, which works out to $120 a year. Other services such as Hulu Plus and Crunchyroll are available at cheaper rates while Sony has a free service, Crackle. Maybe the service will fall in line with them eventually, but it is hard to tell.

Roku and PC are what’s supported at the moment via Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which was a surprise since Flash dominates the streaming industry. This is another nail in the coffin for Adobe’s fading standard as the Web transitions slowly due to Apple’s refusal to support Flash in iPads and iPhones.

Rumors have been floated that HBO might start an online only subscription service for their shows, so this is not an isolated incident. We’ll be seeing more fragmentation in services as time goes by since studio executives blame streaming for loss of revenues from DVD and Blu-rays. They want profits to go back up or go entirely to them. Hulu may not survive if it is finally sold off since the content won’t be included thanks to this kind of reasoning.

I wonder which studio will be next to launch their own service?

A Thank You Speech to Remember

Actually there are three, but the last is the most eloquent and appropriate acceptance speeches ever given. This is from Rush being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an ever controversial institution. I know I'll never forget Alex's passionate speech.

Area 88 Ep. 4: The Treacherous Sky

It may start with a bang, but this episode is more about revealing Shin’s mysterious past than aerial combat. When a mission goes wrong, the Japanese mercenary pilot finds himself alone in the desert. As he struggles to survive he is forced to remember how he ended up in a civil war far from his home.

Area 88 is at its best during slower moving episodes rather than the flashy dogfights. That’s rather ironic since I suspect most people who watched the series were attracted by the action. With the fourth episode, the main story begins in earnest. The questions of who is Shin and why is he here are finally answered.

An ominous tone is set early on when Shin Kazama lands his aging F-8E Crusader to refuel. Pickings have been slim in the skies lately and this causes the resident ace to press his luck. His mechanic Gustav warns him he’s being reckless, but the dollars associated with each kill matter more.

Makoto photographs all this as usual despite feeling something is wrong. Gustav, on the other hand, actually knows something is wrong. He can hear a malfunction within the Crusader’s turbojet engine.

Ah, There You Are Spring!

At long last we broke the 60 F mark today. This tied a record for the region set in 1951 according to the National Weather Service. I’m feeling slightly better so I’ll venture out to hike the driveway to the mailbox in a bit. Oh and there is sunlight coming out of a blue sky too. My thimble runneth over!

It has been a long, hard winter and I’m glad to see it finally end. Maybe people around the area will start cheering up. For awhile now it has seemed if everyone was either on edge or gloomy. Yesterday at the clinic there were a lot of comments about doubting spring would ever come only partially tongue in cheek.

Oh and the  right front brake has been fixed on the car, though it will be necessary to replace the other side soon. At least we don’t have to worry about braking anymore. Trying to down shift and not stop doesn’t work so well once you are in the city.

The world might end tomorrow (doubtful), but at least there is sun today.

Health 4-24-2013

Oy vey is the phrase that fits right now. I’d been feeling dizzy the last week or so and also noticed a little pain where the infection from February was but saw no swelling. That changed today.
The pain escalated until it was impossible to ignore this afternoon and so I checked again. It looks like the infection has returned. My suspicion is that it never fully went away because there has been no cat clawing me incident lately.

So it is off to the clinic tomorrow.

All of this is adding injury to insult thanks to one of the car’s rotors being shot. So no safe long distance travel and now this again. I’m going to have to get a ride from a neighbor at this rate.

What an exceedingly bad year this has been so far.

UPDATED 24 Apr: Back on antibiotics and the abscess is draining again. That's almost as nasty to type as witness happening. Thanks to what I learned last time, I got in early enough this time around. At least I now know why I've been out of it since Sunday!

A Very Strange Blogger Referral

I checked my stats today and found a referral that looked extremely suspicious:

mysql . removeyourcontent . com / russ_pornbb_spider / admin / hentai_check . php

An attempt to access this through a virtual machine asked for an admin login plus password and when I limited it to the domain I got an Apache 2 test page. Apache is one of the most common software packages that runs servers.

To my eyes, it appears to be a misconfigured spider checking web sites to see if it can drop porn spam. Either that or it is looking for porn. The hentai part of it relates to anime and the referral showed up on one of my anime reviews. Since I don’t have any hentai this is a dead end if it is a search.

Could it also be a way to get into an Apache server? I wish I knew more about the software to say.

Monkey Business (1931) Review

What do you do when you’ve had two smash hit movies adapted from Broadway plays? In the Marx Brothers’ case, they headed West for their first Hollywood film. The result is a movie that is very different from the previous two while cranking the insanity to eleven on a scale of one to ten. A wafer thin plot usually sinks a movie, but the Marx Brothers manage to stay afloat in this truly madcap comedy set on an ocean liner.

A mere four years after the revolutionary The Jazz Singer ushered in sound for movies, Monkey Business showed just how important the new technology was for comedy. There is no way the Marx Brothers would have been a success on the silver screen without hearing the machine gun patter of Groucho, the puns of Chico, or the harp playing of Harpo. Zeppo was always going to be along for the ride and could have been mute.

 

The movie begins with a creative way to present the credits: they roll on screen pasted on barrels. If you look closely, you can see that the photos were cut out and varnished on. So why barrels?

I’m tempted to say, “Why not?”

But there is a reason for them…

Whither Spring?

I looked out the window to see a gray haze filling the far end of the valley. The winds were picking up and then the haze was upon the house. What was it?

Snow.

It hit and was gone again in a matter of a couple of minutes to afflict other residences.

Sigh. I’m tired of the cold and the pain it brings to my back along with my joints.

Anyway, as I await spring arriving, I’m trying to get another movie review finished. The national events have kept me away from getting it done, but no more.

Boston Bombing Suspects in Firefight with Police

If you thought all the confusion and misidentifications were dramatic, things just got crazier. More bombs, lots of shots fired, suspect in custody and another on the run in Watertown all after killing an M.I.T. security officer. Once again things are confusing and unclear though we now have names: Mike Mulugeta and Sunil Tripathi. Incorrect info. Dzhokar and Tamarlan Tsarnaev are the correct names.

Somehow I don’t think they are Tea Party activists.

BREAKING 2nd NIGHT

6:00 PM CST: Shots fired in Watertown, families being evacuated from one street. 20-30 shots fired. Suspect is down.

He in a boat on a trailer in a back yard. Robot being brought in to search for explosives.

6:25 PM CST: From the scanner stream… He’s still moving in the back of the boat. Police are having trouble getting fields of fire cleared to avoid a blue on blue. Police dogs are being coordinated so only one will go after him if he runs.

6:56 PM CST: Two flashbang grenades have been used after seeing a possible small fire on the boat. No movement by the suspect in reaction. This is after he’d been seen sitting up more than once. A negotiator may be brought in. Tsarnaev is on his back not moving.

7:30 PM CST: Not much happening other than the suspect has been seen moving his arms and is covered in blood. State police chopper did illuminate with Midnight Sun spotlight, plus the police are irked that somehow the downlink video has shown up on the Net. Not sure if that really has happened or if it is the scanner audio being out there that is the problem.

It has been surreal following this via the streamed scanner. Time for me to head out, maybe this will be over by the time I come back home.

FINAL

Arrived to see friends play at a local American Legion to see the news go by on the TV that they captured Tsarnaev alive about a half hour after I last posted. I doubt they get much useful intel out of him since it was his brother that got the training. I am concerned that he didn’t get his Miranda rights and since he is a citizen, that’s flat out wrong. He’s not a foreign combatant and must be treated with the rights that are due to him, no matter how evil he is.

Previous postings after the fold.

Moving from Radeon to GeForce Again

Getting a better monitor seemed like a great idea at the time, but performance issues in games became noticeable on my aging system once 1920 x 1080 became the default resolution. The Gigabyte Radeon 7750OC is a great budget videocard that handled 1680 x 1050 well ever since my Palit Radeon 4850 died. It was the only card at that time which would fit in my case while having any kind of decent gaming performance.

A visit to Newegg.com to check out the newly released AMD Radeon 7790 based cards produced a possible replacement from Gigabyte again for $150.00. For some reason, I decided to see if any Nvidia based cards had come out in smaller size. Somehow I’d missed the introduction of the Nvidia 650 TI family of GPUs last fall.

Being one to save $20 I ended up ordering Gigabyte’s GeForce 650 TI in the 1 GB factory overclocked edition. The videocard is very small with amazing performance for its size. Luckily for me I got a good one straight out of the box.

Some initial observations follow since I won’t actually benchmark the performance.

Further Confusion and Fallout

UPDATED 12:20 PM CST: CNN is saying a suspect has been identified in the bombings. Also, more ricin packages sent to President Obama and Republican Senators.

With things still trickling out about the Boston Marathon bombing, we have another terrorist tactic being trotted out again. Mail to a United States Senator has been verified as containing ricin, a deadly poison made from castor bean plants. This particular method of trying to kill someone was last seen in 2001 and it sounds like it is unrelated to the bombings. There has been some question as to whether the government was correct about the identity of the culprit last time, so conspiracy theorists have new grist for the mill.

Meanwhile, we know a little more about what happened in Boston. Pressure cookers packed with black powder and probably ball bearings were used for the bombs. This is a method favored in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan by Muslim terrorists which hints at a jihadi. In those circles there has been a call to hit sporting events lately.

Nobody has stepped forward to claim responsibility. To me this suggests a lone wolf though the idea that drone kills and such have driven terrorists further underground to the point where they don’t take credit intrigues me. This would show a level of intelligence and restraint previously unseen which would be a very bad thing. I’d rather it be a lone wolf.

It doesn’t matter if it is a lone wolf or an organized operation at this point because the government is acting like they have zero leads. While not reassuring for the public, it could be ruse so that they can track down the terrorist. At least I hope that’s the case.

What’s worse than the horror of the explosions is how the media is behaving. There has been a desperation to make out the culprit as being a white male right winger rather than simply report the news. Even if that does turn out to be the case, there is more than just a bias showing. There’s a desire for it to be thus that overrides factuality and demonstrates how hopelessly divided the nation is becoming. It is also begetting a backlash.

So score one for the bomber whatever his political, religious, or ethnic motivations may be. He’s helped make things politically worse on the national stage.

In other words, he succeeded despite all the feel good that Bostonians have rallied together stories.

Terrorism Hits Boston Marathon?

I checked in on Yahoo and saw that two bombs have gone off at the Boston Marathon today. The use of trash cans and backpacks have been reported, which sounds like a classic lone wolf bomber, but it is very early yet. Other reports say a suspect is in custody. As is usual not much is really known with talking heads and Internet denizens speculating all over the place.

There are deaths and many injured, that much has been confirmed.

It doesn’t look like an Al Qaeda style operation and reminds me of the Olympics bombing in Atlanta…

…and as soon as I typed that, the rumor that a 20 year old Saudi national is in custody. Like I typed before, it is early. That would go against the talking head speculation that it is domestic terrorism connected to Patriot Day or anti-tax groups.

UPDATE: Cell phone service is being shut down to prevent further bomb detonations. Precaution or do the authorities know something?

UPDATE: Now the Boston PD says they don’t have anyone in custody and cellphone companies say there is service in the Boston area but that it is under heavy load. Total confusion.

UPDATE: I think it is going to be awhile before we know a lot. In the mean time, I feel the frustration of not being able to do anything other than pray for those killed and injured along with their friends and loved ones. Also, the police, EMT's, and those that helped on the scene go through a lot dealing with such carnage. Please keep them in mind too.

The Most Successful Lightweight Jet Fighter

I’m on record as being a fan of lightweight fighters and there has been none more successful than Northrup’s F-5 family. Starting with the T-38 Talon supersonic trainer and F-5A Freedom Fighter the jets have been gracing our skies since the 1959. F-5E Tiger II fighters are still in service around the world in upgraded form and as Marine aggressors in fighter school training here in the United States.

Lovely little jets and the video is in HD at YouTube.

The Swiss have flown them as a demo team for years and this is one of the most attractive schemes the F-5 has ever worn. If you are in Europe you still have the opportunity to see them in action at air shows.

What amazes me about the plane is how small it is when you see it in person. It reminds me of a sports car in its compact size and looking like it is going fast even when parked. What a beauty!

Health 4-11-2013

While being energetic is permanently out of the question, there has been a slight increase in energy. Dizziness is still there on occasion, but far less than it has been. The last year has taught me that I have to pace myself no matter what now and that I can’t be pushing my limits like I prefer to. I really don’t like that.

One thing I’m grateful for is that I don’t suffer from seasonal depression. It seems a lot of people are and the long winter has gotten to them in more than an annoying way. Me, I’m just annoyed when ice causes me to get stuck in the driveway.

Of course, my attitude may have something to do with bright sunlight hurting my eyes. Gray days are actually more productive for me in my strange existence.

April Hail

This is supposed to be the season of April showers to bring forth May flowers, but what does April hail bring?

We had quite a storm here last night with two rounds of hail involved. The entire area was hit by this according to Channel 19 and I feel sorry for anyone outside at the time.

Fortunately the car is not dimpled from I can see this morning. This is despite the gale force winds driving the hail that made a din that I’d never experience before. Later rain reduced the cover somewhat leaving a well salted yard under the gray skies of today.

More rain, freezing rain, and snow are in the forecast to make things even more fun. It will be hostile weather until Sunday rolls around with 50F temperatures again. Have they executed that groundhog out East yet?

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Review

Hiyao Miyazaki’s second film that he directed displays all the elements that have made him legendary: a brave heroine, a strong environmental message, dazzling flight, and extraordinary images that linger in the mind long after the movie ends. The story follows a young princess trying to save humanity while facing hostile neighboring kingdoms, deadly giant insects, and a world devastated by an ancient war. It is a great pleasure to review the movie that allowed Studio Ghibli to be founded.

Way back in the early 1980s, animated movies were in the doldrums with Disney suffering a creative and financial slump. Other studios attempted to recapture the magic, but none saw great success. In later years Disney would rise again, yet it was over in Japan that real animated magic was reborn thanks to the creative genius of a struggling forty year old animator named Hayao Miyazaki.

Having had some success in directing the adaptation of Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979, Miyazaki wanted to make his own creations but was getting nowhere. It took Toshio Susuki the editor in chief of Animage magazine befriending him for things to finally start rolling. Finding Miyazaki bursting with ideas he suggested that Hayao create a manga to run in the magazine.

That manga debuted in 1982 and was called Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Its success made it possible to raise funds to make a movie and the world of animation, not just anime, would never be the same. Miyazaki’s works would go on to influence traditional animators and even the new wave of computer generated animation movies at Pixar.

Nausicaä opens with a masked man riding a strange dodo-like bird out of a wind swept haze. Visually and auditorily striking, the scene seems to step straight out of one the era’s fantasy magazines such as Heavy Metal or Epic Illustrated. I have the vague memory of seeing the intro either in stills or possibly flipping past the horrifically altered version Warriors of the Wind on HBO at the time. Suffice it to say this was nothing like the staid Disney animation of the time and made an impression.

The man investigates the ruins of a settlement that has become overgrown by fungi in a very grim introduction to the setting. Once the credits start rolling it becomes clear that this is the future Earth and not some fantasy world. A wealth of information is quietly and quickly conveyed through intercutting tapestries depicting the downfall of man with the actual events briefly glimpsed. Fire breathing giants laying waste to the world alternate with images of a white winged woman sometimes clothed in blue dominate the introduction…

The Week That Was

It is hard to believe it is General Conference time again – time does fly. The past week itself went by rather quickly thanks to a road trip on Wednesday.

Monday I accompanied my father on a pair of repair jobs and ended up not helping at all due to not being needed. However, it was good to get out of the house. Having the car out of action again has been frustrating. Anyway, the second call was at a friend’s place where the dishwasher pump isn’t working properly. While I was there, his son suggested watching his new Yellow Submarine Blu-ray which looked great even if the animation was pretty bad.

Also, in retrospect it made Magical Mystery Tour look sensical (this isn’t a word, but should be) by comparison in my opinion. This opinion will be shared by exactly zero other people in the world.

April Fools Day Delivers the Spam

It was an unusually sedate April 1st without any friends pranking me. But a wave of spam hit one of my email accounts. 61 were caught by filters and three made it through for the biggest spam assault I’ve seen in years. All were diet/weight loss centered with many purporting to come from celebrities ranging from Oprah to Pamela Anderson. Other common elements were the phrase “special offer” introducing a link and Microsoft Office Word 12 formatting.

It makes me wonder if it is connected to the attacks on Spamhaus, an organization that blacklists known spammer IP addresses. Probably not, given the ridiculous number of spammers out there. There seems to be no end to the Black Hats on the Net.

More interesting is that weigh loss spam is amongst the most successful in getting people to open it. Nothing beats social engineering for finding a way into a system as the banks in South Korea found out last month. I remember when it was false protestations of love or romantic interest that was the best bait to get people to open emails.

It is amazing that spam is still successful given how old email and the Internet are now. One would think people would stop falling for this by now. I guess P.T. Barnum was correct about “a sucker born every minute” – except he never said that.

Can’t trust anything, can you?

Easter

A joyous Easter to all fellow believers and unbelievers alike!

I find Mark Chapter 16 to be fascinating for it shows how even the apostles were capable of disbelief in miracles. The first followers of Jesus to find he had risen again after being crucified and buried were not to be found among them. Instead, women were the first:

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?

And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.

And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.

And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.

But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

Shortly after that, Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene and when she told the eleven apostles they didn’t believe her. When two more encountered Jesus they weren’t believed either. It took the Savior showing up in person to convince them:

Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

For those who struggle with faith or think they have no faith it should be noted that the original apostles didn’t do so well in that department themselves. It is an understandable reaction to living in a harsh world and I’m sure they rationalized their disbelief quite well with perfect reasoning. Yet in the end they were wrong for Jesus lived and still does.

There are many good lessons in this account, but the one I’m dwelling on this Easter is how we can easily blind ourselves to the words of others. In a world filled with lies and the liars that tell them, there is a danger in trusting no one at all but ourselves. To a “doubting Thomas” such as myself, it is a needed message from time to time.

Ten Years Gone

For many Christian people this is Easter weekend and a time to reflect on the Savior’s great sacrifice for all of mankind. For me it is something more and that’s the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death. Much has changed since then and some things not at all.

It is odd how it seems so recent and at the same time longer than a decade ago. Her death was the kind of thing that should have left reoccurring nightmares behind for my father and me, but did not – at least in my case.

Knowing the anniversary was approaching, I’ve been collecting movies that were among her favorites and part of family tradition for the past year. Some we already had on DVD or were on VHS, but many only became available in modern formats since her death.

So tonight we watched one of her favorite comedies, Raising Arizona. While I didn’t plan to do that, it kind of happened anyway much like the unplanned events that happen to the hapless protagonists of the film. I think my mother would have approved.

Better to Burn Out than Fade Away?

I’ve been suffering burn out lately in one area and have had a very hard time overcoming it. Fortunately for me, the area is not what anyone should consider an important one. What I’m talking about is gaming – especially video games.

When I went through the month plus of fighting that infection starting in February, I played a lot of video games while being unable to do much else. By the time March rolled around, I was getting more sick of gaming than I’d been ill from the infection. Looking at the back log of Steam sale purchases generates no interest whatsoever. I’ve also stopped playing League of Legends.

Other than a brief period of playing the last DLC for Mass Effect 3 (which is more like a visual novel most of the time), only Audiosurf has had any appeal. That’s most likely due to its simple graphics and use of my personal music collection. Going from that, I’ve purchased Beat Hazard Ultra on sale for ridiculously cheap from Steam since it also uses one’s own music.

Will it break the burn out? I’m beginning to wonder since I’ve been suffering from it for a month.

Gorgo (1961) Review

What do you get when you make a knock off a movie that copied of one of your own films? You get another sea monster played by a man in a rubber suit rampaging through a capitol of a nation, but this time it’s London! When a giant monster is found in the depths on the North Sea and captured, it sets the stage for one of the angriest mothers in cinema history. Combining death and carnage with the heart of a family film makes Gorgo an oddly sweet story. Updated review with new HD screen captures and Blu-ray details!

One of the inspirations for Gojira aka Godzilla, King of the Monsters was 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. So it is rather interesting that the director of that film, Eugene Lourie, was also the director of Gorgo, which is obviously inspired by Godzilla. After being berated by his young daughter for killing the Beast, Lourie decided to make a monster film with a gentler take. Well, the movie isn’t that gentle, but it is not as somber as Gojira, that’s for sure.

Oh and if you are looking for a review of the new Blu-ray release, it can be found in the Technical section. If you want the best copy of the movie, the Blu-ray is a must buy.

Gorgo opens up with a group of salvagers working on a wreck off the coast of Ireland. The captain of the ship, Joe Ryan (Bill Travers), is concerned about a strange bubbling in the water nearby. When his best friend and diver Sam Slade (William Sylvester) is late coming up, he becomes even more concerned. It turns out to be a false alarm, but what happens next is completely unexpected: a volcano emerges from the sea and erupts! Nearly capsized, the ship suffers enough damage to be dead in the water.

Comment Spam

From the Sidelines has had a visitor named “fati” from Casablanca, Morocco attempt to post twice during the past two days on different referral spam posts. The content of the comments is the same:

It's easy way to make money
Super-Duper Easy Way to Earn Money By
Promoting A link - 0.5$ per Referral Link Visit.
-Register
-Share Refferral Link
-Earn Money on every visit

A shortened shortened link is also included. I’m not going to click that for obvious reasons.

It’s fascinating to see how prevalent “black hat” methods of generating income from ads on the Net have become. Some of this is typical of how underhanded people always exploit anything that can be exploited. But I’m also becoming aware that some of this is a reaction to how hard it is to make money from running advertisements on a website these days.

Money is tighter and tighter in the current world economy that’s teetering on collapse and ads have always been nebulous in results. With the Web coming into being, actual viewing and response to ads has become a harder science than it was. Results can be tabulated in near real time, targeting has become extremely refined, and wasted efforts easier to avoid.

Google has tried refining its search indexing protocols (SERPS) to downgrade black hat method using sites, but is losing the war while taking out innocent bystanders. They also are in the business to make money and favor branded economic sites over “mom and pop” small businesses now. Reading the pain going on for some of them and how some are turning to “the dark side” to survive, I have to wonder if the mess can be resolved in any good way at all.

My posts on spam, especially of the referral type on Blogger, came about due to the lack of information about the links showing up in my stats. They are a public service endeavor which has led me to learn about things I had no clue about in the financial ecosystem of Web advertising and search results. I’ll never be an expert, but from the amount of hits the posts have gotten at least some information got relayed to those who needed it.

So these public service announcements will continue though they annoy me to write.

Health 3-24-2013

Energy levels have been low, even for me, this past week. Pain has been much higher and spread throughout the body with joints being the problem. It has been very strange because the body is loose which means I can pop the bad spots in my back for temporary relief – that’s the opposite of how things normally are. Still, the relief is much shorter than usual.

I’ve also had to take long naps every day on top of sleeping longer than usual. The body acts like it is under attack from something, but nothing is apparent. Headaches of varying intensity have occurred nearly every day. Dizziness has also been present.

Looking at the symptoms, it reminds me of Lyme Disease minus the rashes and paralysis.

Crossword puzzles and Audiosurf both indicate I’m in normal alertness parameters so I don’t have a clue as to what’s going on.

A Couple of Pests

While perusing the news, I ran across two articles about invaders. One is an invader of the blood stream and the other of trees. Both are connected to me oddly enough, so they caught my interest.

Lyme Disease’s bacterium has been found to be far more unusual than thought. It is the first living organism to be discovered that doesn’t live by consuming iron! Instead it apparently uses maganese as a substitute and that explains why it is so hard for the immune system to fight. Tricky things, the microscopic.

Let’s hope that the research is correct and leads to a better treatment of the disease. I did not enjoy my bout of it last year.

Meanwhile, slightly less close to home, the emerald ash borer has entered Houston County with finds in La Crescent. Worry about the insects has been around for years, but they took their time in arriving. I used to carry a card for identifying the insect that got got thrown out during a fit of wallet cleaning. Time to get another one, I suppose.

Just recently I’d been talking to a friend who will be doing a summer internship mapping out the problem in Winona, which is north of La Crescent. The focus of that won’t just be detection, but advising on substitution of different trees to replace the ones being cut down. Interesting stuff, that.

I find myself disliking bugs of all kinds after reading the news today. I wonder why?

Back to working on my next review.

Ill Tidings

Spring has officially arrived though I can’t tell it looking out my window. It is currently seven degrees Farenheit with snow outside and frost on the inner windows of my room. It could be worse.

North Korea cyberattacked South Korea this morning our time and the afternoon their time. Bank and television computer networks were taken down for many hours and some still aren’t operational. What did this mean for the South Korean people? They had to deal with no debit or credit cards working and that includes ATMs. I suspect business to business transactions were also impossible.

Imagine if that happened in the United States.

Of more local concern and by local I mean household, the Subaru started having serious problems overheating Saturday night and Sunday. It is currently in the shop having its engine torn apart for head gasket replacement plus timing and other belts. So financial pain has arrived with spring.

I suppose Saturday was close enough to the Ides of March to qualify, come to think of it.