Category: media

I just finished reading The Dew Breaker. It was one of those books I just randomly picked up off the table at Borders, on the authority of some probably made-up award stamped on the cover. But it was a good pick. Dandicat paints a vivid picture of war-torn Haiti while exploring the past of a former prison torturer. The book is short, so it doesn’t go as deep as, say, QB VII or even Mother Night, but it gets a lot of mileage for its brevity. One interesting thing is that Breaker is written as a set of short stories from various points of view that all stand on their own, but still tell a complete story together. This approach is at times annoying for those of us with bad short term memory, but overall it works. I’m looking forward to reading more of her books.

I just finished reading The Great Influenza, by John Barry. This is a fascinating look at the 1918 flu pandemic: the researchers who tried, and for the most part failed, to identify and fight the virus, the conditions that fostered the massive spread of contagion, and even the dangers of a wartime propaganda machine. There are implications for today, of course, as avian flu H5N1 continues to infect humans and may adapt to us at any time. To the author’s credit, though, there is not a lot of fear mongering, just a brief few pages in the end about the possible looming pandemic and what steps we may take to limit its death toll. The only thing I didn’t like in the book was the author’s insistence on foreshadowing while unraveling the story, in the style of VH1’s Behind the Music. After the break, we will see how Lewis’ failure to isolate the influenza virus marked a downward slide from which he would never return. But in all, it’s well worth a read.

I saw Episode 3 last night at the local Gigantiplex where they had ten midnight showings. It was good. The Cinema Delux did a nice job of crowd control by seating everyone hours before the movie started, so there was no pesky waiting in line.

As for the movie itself: it works pretty well. The top notch action scenes (finally CG doesn’t look totally fake) more than make up for the trademark Lucasian horrible dialog. However, is it me or does Vader look like a second-tier late-night local cable wrestling persona? Maybe he just isn’t as scary to me now as he was when I was a kid.

There were a bunch of Obi-Wans and Leias (or Padmes?) in the audience, a yoda or two, and a Vader. I dressed as nothing. Best costume of the night was Napoleon Dynamite who even did The Dance in front of everyone in the theater.

Sleepy.

A recent purchase from the buy-two-get-one-free table at Borders, I can’t decide if The Zombie Survival Guide is bizarrely funny, or just bizarre. It does at least nicely complement a viewing of Shaun of the Dead, though.

Since I’m a recent Netflix subscriber still determined to get my money’s worth, I’ve been watching tons of movies lately. Last night I watched Cidade de Deus (City of God). What a powerful movie. I was planning on watching only the first hour because I started it relatively late, but it really drew me in. It’s like Menace II Society with subtitles, but more violent. And you even feel empathetic towards a murderous drug dealer, for a little while.

Also, I watched Sideways last weekend. Vastly overrated and really, really boring. If only the directors had spent another half hour spelling out the painfully obvious grape-as-life metaphor! The movie just made me want to go to a winery… and punch everyone there.

Cinco de Mayo is coming up so I need to find something to do for that. Also the Chili Cook-off is coming up – anyone going?

A nice complement to my recently manifested build-lust, I found in my mailbox on Friday the first issue of MAKE magazine. First impression: it is like a print version of BoingBoing. All your favorite writers are there: Messrs. Doctorow and Frauenfelder, that chick who always talks about herself or semi-famous people she knows, and that David guy. And the writing styles are pretty familiar; for example Cory D’s submission turns a cool article about kids taking apart cheap toy dogs into some kind of anti-Sony IP polemic. Along with articles detailing student projects taking place in various university labs, the mag contains four DIY projects ranging from the overly simplistic (making an ethernet cable) to some soldering skill required (make a magstripe reader). If you are currently a thorough consumer of the internet, you will probably have seen some of the content before, such as the cheap steady cam built with pipes. But on the whole, it’s a solid zine, and for now it lacks the page after page of ad copy that makes reading Wired or pretty much any other tech mag especially tiresome. Worth the price of admission.

On a whim I bought EFFer and BoingBoinger Cory D’s Eastern Standard Tribe when I saw it in a local bookstore. It was actually much better than I had expected, after that really bad excerpt from his next book. So I read EST in dead tree form, and I liked it! Of course one neat thing about Cory’s novels is that he releases them under various Creative Commons licenses, so you can download them at no charge if you are so inclined. After finishing up EST, I downloaded and read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is a novella-length Disney commercial masquerading as SF. Not good, but at least I didn’t pay for it. The book does have the distinction of being only the second book I’ve read entirely in electronic form (the first: Animal Farm).

Saw Sin City over the weekend. Probably one of the best conversions of a comic book to film. And don’t call it a graphic novel kids, you aren’t fooling anyone. The movie is violent, but all the blood is in black and white, which curiously didn’t affect me whereas Kill Bill made me queasy.

Google maps: now with satellite imagery!

Am I the only one that was sick of mash-ups long before the term was coined?

It’s cute when people or corporate entities put up webpages to match the fake ones referred to in TV shows.

Yeah, I watch a lot of cartoons.