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Aris Katsaris
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| | Temporary colors/icons change in solidarity to Iranian protests. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| I have created a dreamwidth account for myself -- thank you very much ![[info] - personal](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) giandujakiss for the invite code! I had started to get displeased/annoyed with LJ for a long time, and I decided to follow everyone on the mass exodus. Useful crossposting feature. Very useful importing feature: If nothing else, it'll serve well as a backup of post and commentary.
I haven't set it up fully yet, mind you -- there's hardly anyone in my subscription list yet, for starters. Still learning about all the features.
I now have two invite codes to give out as well, if anyone else wants an account. Let me know if anyone's interested. First come, first served.
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I tried out "Wolfram Alpha" a bit :
Question #1: "kirk vs picard"
Response #1:'Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'
I decided to try out something a bit less fannish:
Question #2: 'murder rates in the united states'
Response #2: 'Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'
Too many words I thought.
Question #3: 'abortion rates'
Response #3: Basic dimensions: '[time]-1 [abortion]', Standard unit for abortion rate: abortion per year
How very utterly useless.
Is there anyone out there who has discovered anything useful (even infinitesimally so) to do with Wolfram|Alpha? | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Yesterday's Dollhouse (1x06) was both the first good and the first EXCELLENT episode of the series -- the first episode that made me feel I was getting two episodes' worth for the price of one, rather than a 10-minute idea stretched to hourly lengths.
5 bad-to-okay episodes followed by an excellent one. Let's see how the 7th one goes.
( Saw Watchmen last Sunday. Minor spoilers ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I was actually was about to write a post about how the impermancy of the Internet is depressing: my main instigation for this feeling, was that I was no longer able to locate what's probably my all-time favourite fanvid, "Higher than Hope" by Freddo, which beautifully chronicles Willow's magical, psychological and romantic arcs in seasons 4, 5, and 6. (I have it saved in my hard disk, but I can no longer locate it on the Internet)
Then just so as to make my thoughts even more relevant, Scans_daily is now taken down, after Peter David notified Marvel about copyright violations of its "property".
( My comment in Peter David's blog ) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
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I'm still surprised that every lyrics page I've ever seen claims that Tanita Tikaram's "Twist in my sobriety" says "timid smile and pause to free" rather than "timid smile and poised to flee". I'm even more surprised that Tikaram actually does seem to sing "pause to free" rather than "poised to flee".
I have no clue what the former is supposed to mean. I like my heard version lots better. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The past year I started watching many series that previously I had only been hearing about: preeminent among them Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural, but also Farscape, Medium, Jonathan Creek, and the more recent Mentalist and Sarah Connor Chronicles.
In December I saw the whole of "Death Note" and the first three seasons of "Dexter" (only the first two seasons of the latter were any good, btw). Both these series were vaguely depressing, with the serial-killer protagonists and all, so near the end of December I decided to switch to something lighter and checked out "Kim Possible" instead. But Kim Possible won't be the one animated series to stick to my mind from this past season.
( Avatar - the Last Airbender )
( Digital Rights Management annoyances )
( City of Ember )
( Fanvidding ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I have detailed commentary on the "Prince Caspian" movie which has been a few paragraphs away from posting for the past half month... but honestly now is not the time, just before the US elections.
Random thoughts about the election:
- Obviously I support Obama. Not because I'm certain he'll be a good president (nobody can be sure of that about any candidate), but because I am quite certain McCain/Palin would be horrid ones (and that's something one can be reasonably sure about -- certainly Palin at least seems to WANT me to consider her a terrible candidate).
- I expect many exit polls to wildly screw-up at the beginning: Too much early voting done by Democrats. I'm guessing some exit polls will hand states to the Republicans (e.g. North Carolina) that may very well go to the Democrats once the actual votes are counted. So, please, nobody panic if some exit polls show a much closer election than it's likely to be.
- I like reading conspiracy theories. My favorite one this time around was not the "Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, he was really born in Kenya, and thus is ineligible to run for president", (which is a rather lame conspiracy theory as conspiracy theories go) but rather the "Obama is actually the son of Malcolm X, and his mother married Obama Sr. as a mere ruse to hide that fact" which has it all: secret romance, hidden bloodlines, political drama, etc. Not to mention that it cancels out the importance of the former conspiracy theory (as the child of two citizens is a natural-born citizen no matter where it was born). It's fun when conspiracy theories cancel each other out. :-)
- Recently Adam Cadre posted an article which pretty much epitomizes the reasons I read his articles -- when he makes observations that combine psychology/sociology/mythology/current, medieval and ancient politics and elucidates points of history in a unique way. http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12682.html One minor point I'm not certain I agree with (Medicine as a "Mercurial" profession? Mythologically that doesn't make much sense to me - Asclepius was the son of Apollo) but on the large: YES.
This essay provided datapoints which support my position and which I wish I knew about when a few months back I was arguing with my brother about the role of Jewish communities in America and Russia. (My brother was basically arguing for a religion-related POV which claimed that Protestantism and its focus on the Old Testament was one of the reasons the Jewish community prospered in America.
This was making less than zero sense of me. It was making NEGATIVE sense. I was making the class-related argument instead: it's very reasonable for a highly educated class of people to thrive in a new land which didn't deny them opportunities -- same as it was reasonable for such a class to strive in Russia for the overthrow of the old older which had them as perpetual 2nd-class citizens.)
But I lacked datapoints to further support my view -- this essay provides them, by referencing similar success stories by the Indians in East Africa, the Lebanese in South America, the Chinese in Southeastern Asia, the Armenians -- and framing them with the Apollonian/Mercurial division of professions -- which once upon a time were divided between the insiders of the community and the outsiders.
- Which reminds me also this -- how the older Olympians seem like forces of nature (Zeus - sky and lightning, Poseidon - sea, Hades - death, Demeter - earth and the circle of seasons) while the younger Olympians seem more related to professions and human behavior: Ares for the warriors, Dionysus for drunkenness and maniacal destruction, Apollo for sober toil, Hermes for services. Hephaestus for the smiths, Athena for all craftsmen.
The article I linked to notes the decline of the Apollonian professions, and their replacement by Mercurial ones as the backbone of current society. But it seems to me that as the Apollonian professions declined with industralization, most Mercurial ones will also inevitably decline with sufficient computerization. What will remain then?
Perhaps:
Athena - for the scientists and teachers (and programmers :-)
Hercules - for the athletes
The Muses - for the artists
Aphrodite - for the sex workers and supermodels.
- Which brings me back to the topic of the current elections. I bet a small amount of money in Intrade -- it's one of the longshots, Obama winning Georgia, so I fully expect to lose it, but that's okay, I didn't bet much. But in retrospect, as I turned it around in my head, I didn't much like it either way. It's not wealth-creating toil, it's not artistry, it's not craftmanship. It's not even a Mercurial "service" in the sense of actually helping someone out, it's Mercurial in the sense of "god of thieves and gamblers". I still hope I'll win the bet, of course, but it feels distasteful even as a principle.
So the main thing I learned? Though I have nothing against Hermes, I'm definitely not his. I still belong to Athena. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Stayed up late to see the VP debate.
Up to now I hadn't seen Palin speak. As such I had thought that the SNL/Tina Fey sketch was a caricature of her. But no, the caricature is actually nicer and more intelligent than her actual self. When she started with the "doggone it" and such stupidities, I couldn't believe my ears.
I hope I'm not totally off-base but I think Obama/Biden just secured the victory -- not because of the Palin-stupidity thing: half the American population seems to have a great fondness for stupidity after all (they elected Bush not despite it, but because of it). But rather because the whole "liberal are so aloof and can't connect" thing was the Republicans' sole remaining card on the table, after they chose to ditch the "experience" thing.
And in this debate, you get Palin being almost contemptuous towards Biden and Obama while performing some sort of elaborate comedy sketch, while on the other hand you get Biden choking up in memory of his own dead family. I'm sure it'll make Palin look like a complete ass in retrospect -- and even she seemed to figure it out since her behavior in the remainder seemed to me to be slightly more serious afterwards, less comedy routine-like.
Anyway, enjoy:
| | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Google Chrome
Gave Google Chrome a few minutes' try when it first came out, but some oddities gave me a bad first taste of it -- bookmarks only appearing when you click the "new tab" button for example. I wasn't in the mood of fiddling with it, so I dropped it and went back to Firefox.
A few days ago I gave it another try. This time I fiddled with the options -- added the things that were not present in the defaults: bookmarks now appearing as a toolbar all the time, homepage icon added. And voila -- I'm suddenly loving it. Chrome is fast, elegant, and I keep loving that Google-style simplicity of its interface. I made it my new default browser.
Only one major failing compared to Firefox, and one minor one. The major failing is that when I'm downloading a file it doesn't seem to store the location for my next download -- that makes it a burden when I'm e.g. downloading five dozen wallpapers into one particular folder - I ended up switching to Firefox for that task.
Minor failing is some search-engine oddity. I've not seen yet as easy way to search wikipedia as there was in Firefox.
Mystery series
Ended up downloading several crime/mystery series lately. "Jonathan Creek" - a British series about a magician's assistant solving mysteries. "Numb3rs" - a series about a mathematician using the power of um, mathematics to solve crimes. And "Medium" - a series about a psychic using her own powers to solve (or prevent, or punish) crimes.
I abandoned Numb3rs after a few eps, once I realized that the *only* thing I liked about it was the application of the math, skipping everything that wasn't math. I disliked pretty much every character, with the possible exception of the mathematician's physicist mentor.
Jonathan Creek had both great and lame eps -- at its best an ep has several interconnected mysteries, none of them with obvious solutions (or with several obvious solutions, none of which are actually workable), and punctuated with humor. At its lamest (and the writers' laziest), an ep only has one mystery that I solved in five secs flat -- and it was utterly implausible that Creek wouldn't solve it even faster. Creek's female co-protagonist (Maddy) is utterly unlikeable to me though -- a lying manipulative scumbag who lies more often than tells the truth, even to Creek himself. I'm glad they switched her away eventually, though I'd have been even gladder if they'd had her, you know, apologize to him, grow as a person, forgo her evil ways, etc.
I've only seen five or six eps of Medium so far, but up to this point I seriously like: Much more likable characters than either Jonathan Creek or Numb3rs -- the medium's daughters especially are cute as hell. But in that series there's *nobody* I don't like so far. The medium, her boss at the DA's office, the husband, the kids... all great characters.
Sea of Insanity
Sea of Insanity is back. This was one of my top favorite webcomics some years back -- but it suddenly and inexplicably stopped updating. Turns out the reason was the creator's personal life meltdown. Anyway, it's back now. Enjoy. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| "Post the first line from your 25 most recent fanfics and try to find a pattern." Gacked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) homasse.
Well, I've not written nearly that many fics, not even if I include ficlets, but here goes:
1) Europa held her new-born baby next to her breast and sang to it, sometimes in her own Phoenician tongue, half-remembered songs of her childhood, sometimes in the alien tongue of the Cretans which she was quickly learning, in fragments and hesitant pieces.... ("Names and Forms" - Gargoyles fic)
2) It had been more difficult for Simon than for anyone else. ("Reticent Confessions", HP fic set in Barbara Purdom's "Psychic Serpent" universe)
3) "I have been here before... " ("Dreams of the Kisei: A Prologue" HnG fic)
4) She had moaned his name once, in the throes of passion, as he was thrusting inside her, as he was bringing her to the cusp of orgasm. ("Broken souls: Entr'acte, in the dark" HnG fanfic, sequel to the previous)
5) “My father said what?? Oh father, father! You can be so unthinking sometimes.” ("Mighty" Tolkien ficlet)
6) "Please, some money, dear sir! Our mother is sick, we need--" ("Traits Revealed" HP 100-word drabble)
7) She cuts herself, she screams names at teachers, she burns her diaries and runs away from home. ("Hateful Memories" Buffy 100-word drabble)
--
Common element in all of the above? I guess that I tend to begin with a scene indicating the emotional state of an individual: Europa's parental love, Simon's desolation, Hikaru's uncertainty, Akari's need, Luthien's amusement, some random kids' despair and poverty, Dawn's complete emotional meltdown.
I think I miss writing fics. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| This amused me: Hillary Clinton's path to victory
On other news, I'm getting back into interactive fiction -- past few weeks I've tried some of the best games that have come out (and I've therefore missed) the last few years, at least as judged by the results of the annual IF competition, the XYZZY awards and the Spring Thing.
Next few weeks I'll try to start again on a rather *big* idea for a work of interactive fiction that I've had for several years now.
Somewhere in between the two, I'll be writing a lengthy criticism/suggestion list for Inform 7, which despite its several flaws will almost certainly be used by me in aforesaid game, as it's pretty much the defacto replacement for Inform 6, which is the only IF language I'm familiar with. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Last whole month was excessively busy at work, we ended up working even during weekends and the national holiday... This week's much easier, I took Wednesday off and decided to get paid for the other days I had worked extra (rather than use them as additional holidays).
Anyway, I hadn't had the chance all last month to write my commentary on the final season of Buffy -- here goes.
( Thoughts (and ways to improve) on Season 7 of Buffy -- MAJOR SPOILERS ) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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Aris Katsaris
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