Haibane.info

Author: Otaku-kun

  • thinking about Thinkpad, seduced by Alienware

    I’m waiting for my aging Thinkpad T42 to be delivered today from repair – it had the same fan error as last time, and fortuitously chose the day before my 3-year warranty expired to conk out. My desktop PC replacement saga aside, I need to think seriously about what my next laptop will be – especcially since I can’t renew the extended warranty on the T42 anymore.

    The T42 is a 14″ machine and it’s basically been the best laptop I’ve ever owned. I have no complaints, and for a replacement the T401s looks like an obvious choice. However, my dalliance with netbooks has me convinced that smaller is better. Unfortunately, netbooks seems to have imploded as a category, I still cant find a decent Core Duo 9-inch netbook with an SSD and Nvidia’s ION2 “Optimus” – and even if I could, I doubt it would come in under the $500 mark (if anyone knows otherwise, though, please let me know ASAP!).

    However, I’ve become aware of Alienware’s new M11x, an 11-inch laptop which is designed for gaming portability. The smaller size makes it compelling, and it would scream at my scientific work as well as run Warcraft better than anything I’ve ever played on. And it has Optimus and an SSD option (only on the R2 revision, which has the i-series processor instead of Core Duo). The downside is of course that it won’t be cheap, probably $1k minimum if I get a good deal or closer to $2k loaded including 3yr warranty. Thats what I’d be paying for a Thinkpad though as well.

    I’m going to have stay tuned to @DellOutlet and see if they have any deals on the M11 in the pipe. I’m seriously tempted by it, enough to even consider straying outside the Thinkpad tent.

  • the Dalaran portal cataclysm

    Note to anyone who hasn’t played World of Warcraft in a while – the Cataclysm has occurred. No, I’m not talking about the emergence of the dragon aspect Deathwing, whose eruption from the elemental plane has rent the continents and reshaped the world; I’m talking about this:

    missing portals in Dalaran
    the cake is a lie

    The portals in Dalaran are gone, partly to encourage players to go out and experience the world. That means that if you have low level alts hearthed in Dalaran, you might be royally screwed… because getting out of Dalaran, and Northrend for that matter, is not exactly a cakewalk.

    (tip: check your hearthstone before embarking on an epic run home like Shamus did. You may have been reset to your race/faction’s home city, which means getting out of Dal is trivially easy instead of a major grind.)

    Bonus – Deathwing is going to randomly show up in a zone on Azeroth and kill everything and everyone – mobs, players, NPCs, everything. Fun!

  • Sherlock: No sh$%

    Sherlock (BBC)I returned from a lengthy trip and caught a few episodes of the Grand Moffat’s latest series, Sherlock, on the flight. This particular reimagination of Sherlock Holmes is unique in that it is set in the modern day rather than the Victorian era, which for me was like a revelation. The Wikipedia entry describes the series development and inspiration in detail and makes for good reading in its own right, as a case study in adaptation of a literary masterpiece to a different medium. For example:

    The writers say that they didn’t want to force the modernity of the world onto the story. There were some creative challenges, such as the decision to include the sign “221B” on Holmes’ front door. Gatiss and Moffat reflect that in the modern world the door would only display the number of the house, and there would be doorbells for each flat. However, the full house number is so iconic that they felt that they could not change it. The writers also decided that the lead characters would address each other by their first names, rather than the traditional Holmes and Watson. Director Paul McGuigan came up with the idea of putting text messages on the screen instead of having cut-away shots of a hand holding the phone.

    One of the modernizing facets of the show is that John Watson is encouraged to start a blog, as means of working through his adaptation to civilian duty and the psychosomatic limp. That blog is actually available online, and makes for great supplemental material to the show, as is Holmes’ own website and even the website of the landlady at 221b Baker Street! These tie-in websites are well done, if a bit amateur (though I am utterly spoiled with respect to
    ARGs by Cloudmakers).

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you’re just getting introduced to the series), there were only three episodes made thus far. The series will be continued but our man Watson is off to New Zealand to play at Bilbo (which is also good news).

    Frankly, the series was superb. So much so that if it continues, it could even eclipse Doctor Who. The parallels between the Doctor and Holmes are pretty amazing if you think about it (right down to the sidekick) and that certainly isn’t entirely coincidence. This is a great series. Between this, Dr Who, and Stargate Universe, it’s a golden winter for science fiction.

    (and yes, I count Sherlock as science fiction. Discuss!)

  • farewell, Caprica

    Caprica will be canceled; there are five unaired episodes left, but they will be yanked from the Tuesday slot and rebroadcast next year sometime.

    I’m disappointed, honestly. I was very skeptical of the premise when I heard about it as BSG drew to a close, but Caprica earned its own name and seemed to want to continue the traditioin of exploring the meaning of humanity. The latest episodes introduced another “angel” head-character that also lent a spiritual continuity. The subplot of Lacy joining the STO, the Church on Gemenon, and the war on Tauron all had echoes of modern issues but suitably and safely abstracted. It provided a broader vision of the Twelve Colonies than we ever had a chance to explore aboard Galactica.

    However, I think Caprica spent too much time on its ensemble; I was excited that it seemed for a while that Daniel would be a widower, and disappointed that the thoroughly useless character returned. The plot was excruciatingly slow, driven by the cliffhanger formula rather than just resolving things. But still, it would have been nice to see where they went.

    We pretty much know how it all turns out. Somehow, Zoe and Tamara are the seeds for true sentience among the Cylons. It would have been interesting to see how the STO and the Taurons factored into the inevitable rebellion of the war machines. And, how they tied it back to the concept of Everything that Has Happened Has Happened Before – after all, as Caprica unfolded, the Five were racing back from the radioactive ruins of Earth 1. Zoe’s angel was revealed to have given Zoe the basic design for Cylons which Daniel copied, and then she herself is destined to become the precursor to their soul. If done well, it could have added real depth to the Galactica mythos.

    Unfortunately, since Moore and crew basically made stuff up as they went along and retconned the heck out of the plot with each season, I doubt that Caprica would have answered more questions than it raised. So maybe it’s a good thing Caprica has withered.

    I still have SGU – and it’s the best thing on TV until the Doctor returns.

  • excuses, excuses

    As it happens, I’m in the midst of preparation for another trip, this one pretty literally the most important one of my lifetime thus far. Since I try to keep my religion and politics off this blog, I don’t have too much more to say about that, or about the whole WisCon fracas (aside from saying that as far as pure science fiction writing ability goes, replacing Elizabeth Moon with Nisi Shawl is a laudable coup indeed).

    With deference to Mrs Moon, I ask for a little more forebearance from my readers!

    Related, I do not endorse it, but do guiltily admit to finding this hysterical (via Brickmuppet).

    UPDATE (unrelated): this is why you should always try to engage another blogger with a post link rather than an email. We are bloggers. We shouldn’t ever have any reason to email each other.

  • smaller world

    My former AP English teacher from high school has retired and moved to China to teach English.

    This is an amazing world.

  • disc-free Netflix on Wii at last

    great news, you don’t need the disc anymore to stream content fron Netflix on the Wii!

    Starting today, Netflix customers in the US and Canada can instantly stream content through their Wii consoles without the need to fire up a disc first.

    Netflix says members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month (or $7.99 in Canada), a Wii and an Internet connection can now instantly watch movies and TV shows by downloading the application from the Wii Shop Channel.

    The new channel is available at no extra cost.

    I am finding netflix streaming to be a great way to sample some of the older anime fare in particular that I have missed out on.

  • iPad vs Kindle – no contest

    The quintessential question – buy an iPad or a Kindle? – is rather glibly answered by Mark Jaquith here: buy both.

    Well, that’s what you’d expect an iPad owner to say, because they are the sort that can afford to blow $500 on an oversized iPod (the new 4th generation version of which is, as even Jobs himself conceded, basically iPhone 4 without the flawed phone or exorbitant monthly expenses).

    But Jaquith also makes a pretty solid case on the philosophical merits for one of the devices over the other. It’s implicit, but pretty much impossible to deny which device is superior, from this:

    With the Kindle, you’re becoming absorbed in a story for an hour or more at a time. You can read in bed, right before you go to sleep, without worrying that it will rile you up. To the contrary, the Kindle relaxes you. You might even take it outside to the pool or to the hammock. Flight attendants will chastise the iPhone-using passenger next to you as the plane descends for landing; but you, the gentle Kindle user, she’ll merely touch on the shoulder and tell you with a smile to make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened.

    The iPad wakes you up. BAM! Here’s the news, with pictures and video. TWEET! Here’s the torrential banality of Twitter to distract you from something (or everything) important. TWEET! Here’s the same exclamation used again because you’re paying the insanely addictive Angry Birds game. ZAP! Here’s you firing off an e-mail over your morning coffee.

    I’ve never found myself struggling which to pick, much in the same way that nobody is ever torn between having tea and going sky diving. They are different devices, for different purposes. And that’s a good thing in the case of the Kindle. There is something almost drug-like about having a device that can do anything. It’s hard to turn off that ability. With the Kindle, you won’t be thinking about increasing your Fruit Ninja high score, or frantically checking and re-checking your e-mail. You’ll be in the only state that is appropriate when reading a book: completely lost in it.

    And the iPad? It lets you live your soul crushing, hyper connected, vanity searching, e-mail enslaved life in any room of the house, instead of being planted in a desk chair in a darkened basement. And it has two other things going for it: it’s easy to set it down and rejoin the world, and sometimes you’ll lose it in a stack of mail for a day and be forced to do something edifying instead.

    I just bought an iPod Touch 4th Gen because my kids took my 3rd Gen away from me. I intend to use it entirely for two things: Skype and Facetime with my iPhone-4-totin’ wife. For everything else, I have my blackberry – and if I really want to play Angry Birds, I can ask my kids’ permission.

  • back to the here and now

    So, is anyone left or am I truly now just shouting into the void? 🙂

    Ramadan has ended, and I spent the last ten days quite immersed in its rhythms to the exclusion of all else.

    But now, I’m ready to stretch out those cramped unused blogging muscles and start pontificating again! I’ve got a lot of TV to catch up and and look forward to. Fall promises to be exciting with Warehouse 3, SGU, Caprica, Eureka, and of course the return of Dr Who. Plus there’s a few books to read, games to play (well, just the one, really) and even get some anime in there if there still seems to be enough time.

    missed this place 🙂

    PS – hey Ubu, with regards to this, that’s actually my doing. Nick has the links 🙂 I did invent the term, after all…

    also, there’s a search engine, too.

  • he blessed the raids down in Africa

    Shamus explores the Barrens. The whole zone is so clearly African savannah themed, that everytime I go there the Toto song plays in my head.

    And now, so will all of you! But I assume that the game designers were well aware of this possible connection when designing the quests. Look at the lyrics:

    I hear the drums echoing tonight
    But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
    She’s coming in 12:30 flight
    The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
    I stopped an old man along the way
    Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
    He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”

    CHORUS:
    It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
    There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
    I blessed the rains down in Africa
    Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

    The wild dogs cry out in the night
    As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
    I know that I must do what’s right
    As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
    I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become

    CHORUS

    Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you

    It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
    There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
    I blessed the rains down in Africa, I blessed the rains down in Africa
    I blessed the rains down in Africa, I blessed the rains down in Africa
    I blessed the rains down in Africa
    Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

    The Barrens has old men, wild dogs, mountains rising above the plains… and it even rains there from time to time. But anyone who has leveled there on foot know, “Gonna take some time to do the things we never had” indeed.