You hear that, Mr Andersen?

EB 9thEd

I just thought I'd write a brief note, because I just bought something I am very, very happy with.

Arty Bees had a copy of the 9th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. And it was only $300, because the covers, especially the spines, had been pretty badly damaged... so now they're mine, mine, mine! And look what Wikipedia has to say about them:

The landmark ninth edition, often called 'the Scholar's Edition', was published from 1875 to 1889. The ninth edition included numerous in-depth scholarly articles by pre-eminent authors, and therefore is considered by some to mark the high point in the history of English-language encyclopedias.

Hee hee! Oh, and the parents agreed to chip in to make it a Christmas present, which is pretty awesome. I will probably have to get a book-binder to look at them, so that they don't deteriorate any further, but... how cool is it that I've got a pile of books that were published 100-130 years ago? And they're all very happy to talk about methods of working leather that are "still in use in crude and savage cultures", and other things that make the articles so much artifacts of their times. Oh, it's going to be awesome just browsing through them, seeing what speculations the authors made have panned out, and which haven't.

Of course, there's a big problem -- these are big books, and there are thirty-odd of them. Where am I going to put them? I mean, I intend to have a study/library one day, but that room currently has a young woman living in it, and I can't exactly say, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to kick one of you flatmates out, because my books need your room." Well, I mean, I could say that, but it would be kind of crazy.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll manage to work something out. But I'm really glad that, after wavering for a good quarter-hour, I actually bought them. I think they're something I'm going to enjoy for a long time.

(C has just pointed out that this makes my 300-gig external hard drive the second-best $300 impulse buy I've ever made. That's pretty cool, too. ;)

Marae, Fence, AotFKRI

My attempts at posting more regularly aren't quite living up to what I was hoping for. Let's see if I can remember some interesting stuff...

I was unable to get to Scarlet's birthday last weekend, because my family was presenting my grandmother's picture on our marae, as well as giving them some outside seats and a table as a koha. It was interesting; while I'm the oldest of the grandchildren on my father's side, I'm about the middle on my mother's side, and going up to Foxton meant that I was seeing a whole lot of cousins, second cousins and other miscellaneous relatives who I'd otherwise probably never see. (Much genealogy research was perpetrated while we were there.) And I was slightly nervous about the waiata that all of us were meant to sing, to back up my brother's speech. (I mean, you're not meant to repeat a song, so what would we do if they sang it to us first? The only hymn I know in Maori is "Mo Maria", and I'm certainly not going to sing by myself!)

Anyway, I'm not super-confident of myself on the marae, but it didn't go too badly; sitting on the floor meant that my legs went completely to sleep, but I learned some interesting stuff about the history of our hapu. And I got on really well with two little second cousins (sisters, about three and six), the older of which managed to tell me (most of) Aesop's fable of the lion and the mouse, and for whom I made up (at her request) a story about a pink cat, a puppy and a slide. :)

Anyway, it was nice to go up to Foxton again, and see a bunch of relatives I don't often see, and I'm glad that I heard some of the stories about life on the marae early last century that were floating around.

* * *

The big storm on Monday managed to knock down some of my front fence; now I'm going to have to find out what I need to do to put a new fence up, in terms of getting agreement from my neighbour. But it reminded me of an article someone at work pointed to about hidden rooms becoming more popular. This is, basically, awesome. I could easily imagine converting one of the rooms in my house to a secret one, if only because it'd give me another bookcase where I'd otherwise just have a door. :) (For those who know the layout of my house, it'd be the room with the secret fireplace.)

(There's also the house built on the head of a pin link that someone from work posted from BoingBoing a while ago.)

Er, anyway -- anyone know what I need to do to replace a fence? Like, do I need written permission from the person I share a boundary with?

* * *

I finally got around to organizing a game with Sok; I enlisted Superlate and Norm, and we got together on Tuesday for a session of planning and character creation. It took a while to find a idea we were all happy with, but I'm pretty pleased with the result -- I was going to write a summary, but I think it'll work better as a separate post.

But I worry -- maybe I'm misleading Sok as to what roleplaying games are "really" like. I mean, I don't have a specialist gaming table or use digital map projection; heck, we won't even be using miniatures to tactically play out battles for hours and hours, and we're not even using dice! How will we convey the awesomeness of arguing about the minutiae of thick rulebooks?

Oh wait, maybe I'm thinking of wargaming. (Meow! ;)

* * *

And finally, some random stuff. For those who are interested in this sort of thing, there's a writeup of Weta's computing infrastructure, and how it's changed over the years. It looked mostly right, though some of the quotes were a little more glowing in their reviews of various bits of hardware than I remember at the time.

Keeping with the tech theme, there's an article about the Attack of the Flying Killer Robot Insects that we can expect to see coming to a battlefield near you, except for the fact that it's a pretty daft idea.

Oh, and there's a flash animation about the virtues of cats (or the lack thereof) called Catmop. Enjoy.

Dream, Creepy, No Movies

Since it seems a popular topic... here's Crazy Dream What I Had.

Near the beginning, I'm part of a group in some sort of wildlife sanctuary, though it had a TV-stage feel -- a bit brightly coloured and Tellytubbies-ish. There were some tuatara leaping about, and one in particular didn't seem afraid of us, and kept leaping very high, and we were worried it might hit us. Superlate got hold of it, and looking closely at some stuff around its eye, and said not to worry -- it was about thirty (implying that it was very old) and something-or-other meant that it probably had Alzheimers (which was why it was acting so crazy). At the time, I was very impressed by his House-like diagnostic skills, though on waking up, I realised that 30 is actually quite young for a tuatara. (Yes, that's the thing that bothers me, rather than whether lizards can get Alzheimers, or why it was fine that the normally lethargic tuatara were bouncing around like monkeys on meth. I cannot explain what makes sense to me when I first wake up.)

Then there was a section that seemed to be a mix of live action and animation. I don't really remember much about this, except there was a cow princess (you could tell she was a princess because of the tiara, and a cow because... well, four legs, black-and-white hide, all of that); she was very impressed by something I had done, and asked me to marry her. Drawing on the knowledge imparted to me by Princess Diaries Grandmere (the books, not the movies), I said, "That's very kind." (I remember not wanting to hurt her feelings, because she was a good and worthwhile person, but I was still going out with C in the dream, and -- well, um, cow!) There was other interactions going on... I think it was along the lines of the animated parts of Bedknobs and Broomsticks or Mary Poppins.

After a while, it turned out that Weta was doing a children's animated version of Lysistrata... it seemed odd in my dream, but all I could remember was that it was one of the famous Greek plays, it involved a woman, and it around the Sophocles/Aristophanes era. Oh, and that it didn't seem like it would translate well to a kid-friendly animated feature.

Anyway, with that in the back of my head, I was driving to work, and as I turned into Manuka St, the road was closed off with police cars. I was directed to turn around, and park on a side street off Weka (that doesn't exist there; it was one off Camperdown Road), and made to wait in a house. In the house was a crowd of people, and after a while a man in a cowboy hat approached me and asked, in an overly casual manner, whether I could get him a copy of the soundtrack of this new movie. I very politely told him that I was sorry, but my non-disclosure agreement meant that I couldn't help him, and anyway, that's not something we would be working on. Besides which, I wasn't really interested in that stuff; I was more a systems person.

That seemed to convince them, and I was allowed back into work. Apparently someone had let something leak onto the internet, but even in my dream, it seemed overkill to get the police involved if they didn't know exactly who did it... and then I started to check my email, which I think was boring enough to wake me up.

* * *

Of course, there are things that don't make sense to me, even after I wake up. Like... this guy's Giant Robot costume. On one level, nifty; on another, what the heck?

Or -- Thriller was a very innovative music video, but why is there a Crazy Indian version of it? I mean, someone spent money to replicate the video... it doesn't look like a parody or anything. So... huh?

Speaking of creepy, there's an artist who makes sculptures from bones. That's pretty creepy, right there.

* * *

And finally, there's an article in Variety about George Lucas, announcing that he's getting out of films. The reasons that he gives include the cost of feature films -- the sums involved make the whole process a huge gamble, and one that every studio will eventually lose, so it's better to start disengaging now, and focussing on television. He's quoted as saying, "I think the secret to the future is quantity."

Now, while I'm not sure I'm thrilled by the image of opening floodgates of schlock spewing onto the small screen, I think there is certainly a kernel of truth there. Television has a quicker turn-around, and you can see what resonates and what doesn't fairly quickly (some would say, too quickly). And the rise of the serial format opens up new possibilities for storytelling -- I wonder how much widespread on-demand viewing is drove this? With Tivos, DVD sets and internet-enabled viewing, a substantial chunk of the audience is used to watching several episodes in a row, rather than being drip-fed an episode every week or so.

Anyway, I can see the sense behind the statement. There's good evidence that a television series can be just as effective a tentpole as movies; witness Star Trek, Buffy, CSI... so why not take the money that would be thrown at a blockbuster, and try a couple of dozen pilots and a bunch of episodes?

I guess the main problem I can foresee is saturation; even now, I know that there are some pretty good shows out there that I just haven't had a chance to watch (Deadwood, Carnivale, Numb3rs, Prison Break...), and there are probably quite a few that I'd find compelling viewing, but have never heard of. So if the studios start funnelling more of their cash towards the box, how will people hear about good stuff? I imagine the current "branding" thing (with people watching Studio 60 because it's written by the same guy as The West Wing, or Angel and Serenity riding on the popularity of Buffy) will become even more important, which may mean that we get even more of the "pay for the name"-itis than currently.

Not that this will spell the death of the movie, or even the death of the blockbuster. As one of our artists said:

"Big movies ain't gonna die until someone comes up with something for unimaginative people to do on dates. As long as middle-class Americans frown on just getting drunk and jumping in the sack, we'll have work."

* * *

Quick edit: Cactus schnapps tastes pretty much like lime margarita, but with 20% alcohol. (I decided that Editorial would be the best place to try it.) Interesting, and there's no risk of accidentally freezing the bottle when you leave it in the freezer. Even so, I doubt it'll be on my "must repurchase" list. :)

Birthday, GenPets, The Shat

Okay, my ever-longer absences from the blogodome suggest that I should try for shorter, pithier but more frequent updates. I shall see what I can do.

Let's see, what's happened recently? Well, I've acquired a few more weird and exotic alcohols -- walnut liqueur, cactus liqueur, and "Hot Pepper" vodka ("Hot Pepper" being some sort of Danish candy). I'm definitely going to have to rearrange my cabinet; I may have to do something radical, like exiling the brandies, sherries and cognacs (well, cognac, singular -- that stuff is expensive! :) elsewhere.

C and I have finally started to make a stab at Season 2 Veronica Mars, as well as getting into Eureka, and a bit of the first season of Justice League. Yeah, we're living the high life, all right. :)

Oh, and it was my birthday last Thursday -- so I'm pretty much completely 33. I got a number of nifty things; for example, I've been wanting a soda siphon for some time now, and C made it a lot easier to justify by paying for half. :) (What? A nifty squirter thing that can be added to any 48-Hour script for Instant Comedy, plus good for cocktails? The real question is, how did I resist for so long? :)

There were a number of other gifts, too -- one sister gave me some neat square mugs, the parents gave me floppy bakeware, one of my brothers & his wife gave me a wine-bottle cooler, and a flatmate got me some red, fierce-looking eggs. That's not "fierce" in the metrosexual sense... well, I guess they are that as well, but I meant to convey that they have angry faces on them. :)

But don't worry that I didn't invite you to my birthday -- apart from a family thing, I haven't had a party yet. Maybe someday, when I'm feeling organized. :)

* * *

I've told people about GenPets in person, but I thought it was worth pointing to them in my blog. There's some background about the project and artist, but in some ways it's a lot more interesting than the recent art exhibition, because it's so... well, plausible. This is the kind of thing that people who make glow-in-the-dark fish will eventually aim for -- pets being even more commodities than they are now.

And yet... and yet... if what people like is kittens, why not give them cats that never grow up? Toy dogs are presumably often fulfilling a desire for a perpetual puppy, so why not cater to that? Is it inherently more disturbing than bulldogs or pitbulls? If we don't forbid breeders to try and do something, should we forbid genetic engineers, especially if they can get there quicker and with fewer false paths?

(Genetic engineering of large animals doesn't bother me much, on a "danger to my health or the environment" level -- it's a lot easier to control who they breed with than with plants, and I doubt they'll magically be made poisonous, even if I accidentally eat one. But why do you want me to eat puppies, you fiend?! The morals of growing things purely to entertain me, on the other hand, is slightly more complicated... then again, I'm not going to condemn flower gardens, either.)

* * *

Speaking of clever:

Agency: TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, Johannesburg in South Africa

Brief:
Discourage customers from buying pirated DVD's and encourage people to donate to the Anti-Piracy Foundation, the organisation committed to fighting the crime.

Solution:
Sell our own pirated DVD's and distribute them along the regular illegal channels. The campaign was launched with South Africa's most pirated DVD called Tsotsi. The only noticeable difference between our copy and an illegal copy was simple - our version stopped soon after the start of the movie and thanked them for their donation towards the efforts of anti-piracy.

Results:
Hundreds of people who support piracy have now donated thousands of Rands to fight it. The net profits raised from the sale of our DVD's will be used to further enforce anti-piracy laws in South Africa. By flooding the market with our copies, people have become hesitant to buy pirated discs as they might fall onto one of ours.

* * *

Okay, to round out this missive, how about some random links? Like, for example, the Flavor-Flav alarm clock -- so you'll always know what time it is, boyeee!

There's also the now obligatory links to YouTube... how did we ever live without it? Anyway, there's How It Should Have Ended's version of Superman; a cosplayer in a pretty impressive General Grievous outfit performs "You'll Have Time"; and in the pick of the bunch, the ever-luminous William Shatner gets a chance to croon to George Lucas.

There, that should keep you busy for a little while.