Raithe

In book related news.. Apple is apparently being hit by the American legal system over attempts to fix the price of ebooks Department of Justice hits Apple with e-book price fixing suit YahooNews - US accuses Apple and publishers over e-books

Not something I did, but something I nearly missed.. but today marks the 51st year since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.. And apparently last year the UN marks 12 April as "International Day of Human Space Flight"

Apparently it's not that unusual to do when you have a small group trying to get studios interest in a story. Edit together something like that so you can have a very visual hook of the "style/feel" of what the prospective film is to be like..

For the quirky interest route.. The "mood" trailer that's being shipped around studios to develop interest in adapting Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books to film has been leaked and turned up on the internet. They've edited chunks from a whole bunch of films, then given the "movie text" to add story info and it's actually quite weird how well they've captured the whole feel of the story... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TOVHEnfe0

Ah, and thus the benefits of working from home are brought into focus...

I'm still dabbling a bit on SW:TOR, and slipping in a mission here and there on a second ME3 playthrough.

10 year old Schoolgirl takes drug-dealer fathers cocaine stash to school for a show&tell session Something about this just amuses me.. Also, for the other Yet another show and tell session, this time in the US

Immortal Sayings: "It's not a half-baked idea! It's.. pretty mostly baked. Maybe a little soft in the middle...."

Well, Alien Ressurrection was written by Joss Whedon if I recall correctly... I think that's the thing about ME3, there were a lot of nice touches scattered around, bits and pieces that felt great or were perfectly suited to the background points... So it makes it feel even more bizarre when you have all those missing or skewed elements that just don't feel good.

And I'm realising I must have been really distracted this morning.. The lesson to be learnt is never to post when you have dogs jumping around your seat and pawing at you..

I have to admit, I did enjoy the part of the end sequence where Shep and Anderson are sat next to each other having that quiet talk with Earth in the background.. Also, the amount of in-jokes they threw in, the amount of "calibration" comments that came up, such as hearing Legion offer Garrus aid to calibrate the guns to .23 % and that was the most available.. Garrus doing a tweak and Legion being amazed that the guns improved by .47% and was all "how did you do that??" And the conversations between Liara and her "father" were mostly amusing if you listened to them all. I do kind of wonder how long before there's some form of "retake Omega" dlc.. that seemed something that had a few hooks hung up...

Just for the quirky more then the humerous.... A nice visual of depths of lakes and oceans... http://xkcd.com/1040/large/ And for the more outrightly amusing..

I started up regular running again.. and after about 3 weeks developed a really nice case of tendonitis that didn't settle down for about 3 months. I really should try to get back in the focus to start it up once more...

I just spent the last half hour troubleshooting some troubles my sister was having with the game. So I looked across and asked her "so, I take it you're still enjoying the game?" Her response was to narrow her eyes and bite out "it's like the freaking Tardis! It's sucking my life away because I sit down to play a little and suddenly hours have disapeared"

One of the ways they've tried balancing it is giving each class a different form of hm, "energy" or whathave you to actually use their attacks. It does tend to be more mood/atmospheric then really game system difference.. Every class has one basic attack that doesn't "cost" anything. But Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors need to build up "force" by using certain attacks, which then let them use more "impressive" abilities which use up that force. Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars have a regenerating pool of Force points that get drained by their use. Bounty Hunters build up "heat" as they use their attacks, and then have to vent it off if it gets too high before they can use abilities again.. Smugglers have an energy pool that gets used up.. But I'd certainly say the atmosphere and playstyle of the class stories can feel quite different. Sure the world quests are the same, but the dialogue and style of responses from people during them are toned to recognise the classes and react a wee bit differently. Sith Assassin tends to be dark and surrounded by treachery , not so much happiness and joy... The Smuggler has that general light-hearted swashbuckleryness to it all (and is amazingly flirt-tastic)... The Jedi Knight tries for that ..zen Paladin adventurer approach (but I've only done a little of that storyline so far so I can't really say).. and the Bounty Hunter starts off with a competitive revenge streak going..

Hm, I saw a copy of Fable 3 going for about

Just to add to the collection off odd dreams... I woke up from one where I was trying to escape an event organised and hosted by the mother of a friend. The woman who happens to be one of the most annoying, irritating, small-minded, mean-spirited, soul-destroying people I have ever met in my life. And she has such a horrible, grating laugh that just claws its way through my mind. It wasn't a nightmare, but damn was I glad to finally wake up.

Spent half the night awake, then finally managed to fall asleep sometime around 5am. Woke up in the midmorning from a rather odd dream that seems to have included some vaguely supernatural/gothic ruined castle and dungeons turned into an archaeological dig, whilst I tried to find some lost item...and dodged a pseudo police/paramilitary anti-magic extremist group and flirted with the female officers in Han Solo type manner... then getting hit with an obviously supernatural cursed super-storm to the area... Was a little..bizarre and groggy when I woke up from that. Firmly glad to have that first cup of tea of the day..

The one of the Emperor dancing is just plain creepy... Although.. This actually sinks into the forebrain too damn easily...

Have you ever realised how the major holidays are exercises in deception and warfare? Christmas - an exercise in obfuscation and forensic cryptology. New Years Eve - a form of globally coordinated mass ordnance deployment. Easter - Infiltration and Recovery. Valentines Day - Psychological Warfare....

The whole Anderson / Udina councilor thing is actually part of one of the books they did.. So it's in extra media that you don't come across if you only play the games. Something Anderson does basically results in him taking action where a councillor shouldn't... and thus he resigns to not cause trouble, leaving Udina to take his place. Hm, my theory on the Shroud sabotage is that it relates to the thermal issues - ie, the Salarians had modified it to vary the temperature when expelling whatever organisms were involved - thus any potential genophage cures (which by all that is known would be some form of biologically tailored virus like the original genophage) would therefore be stressed/altered/destroyed so as not to work). In fact, that might have been part of what was slowing down the Reaper poison? Or if it wasn't slowing down the poison, the Reaper's might have been using some form of nanotech, which would have been immune to those sorts of temperature variations that the sabotage caused.... See, wild speculation abounds..

The best "explanation" I've heard put forward is that a> shepard was actually unconscious for awhile, and the surviving members were pulled back during the retreat, and that b> the normandy was caught in the explosion of the mass relays and "pushed" into ftl travel by all that weird energy spilling around..

I guess it's one way to straddle the balance of "artistic integrity" yet also the "listening to our fans".... Edit: Or maybe they'll throw something into the mix beyond "red, green, blue"... Although it's interesting to note that Jennifer Hale has admitted she's heard nothing about needing to do new lines.. So I'm guessing it's more going to be something in the vein of cutscene alteration/extension plus some form of slideshow...

I seem to be having a bunch of vivid, re-occuring dreams that mash up a bunch of sci-fi / conspiracy theory / pulp adventure stories all together the past few nights. Which is a little weird.

Okay, something that amused me - According to the Director's commentary on Ferris Bueller's Day Out.. the character of Ferris Bueller is a sociopath.