K-Squared Ramblings

Mirrormask Opens Tomorrow!

Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s fantasy film MirrorMask opens tomorrow in limited release. Inspired by such classics as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, MirrorMask tells the story of Helena, a girl who wants to run away from the circus and join real life, but gets trapped in an otherworldly realm separated into kingdoms of light and dark. I, uh, may have mentioned it before a few times…

Word is that if the movie does well enough this weekend, Sony is considering giving it a wider release.

The Beat has a nice run-down of the film [archive.org]. The AV Club has an interview with Gaiman and McKean, and Time magazine has an interview with Gaiman and Joss Whedon, who has his own film coming out this weekend. (Gonna be busy!) Neil Gaiman’s own blog links to more press.

Oh, yeah, one more thing to do this weekend: Stop by a bookstore and pick up Anansi Boys, which apparently hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Somehow, despite reading about all the signing tours, I had it in my head that it didn’t come out until next month. But Gaiman is one of the very few authors whose books I buy in hardcover instead of waiting for paperback.

Server Crash

Everything’s restored, but we’re on a temporary server for now. With luck the main one will be back online tomorrow.

Update September 30: Miraculously, the regular server is back!

That Belt of Venus Thing

About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun.

If you look at the right edge of the picture, behind the silhouette of the tree, you can just see the red band fading into the dark gray of the Earth’s shadow.

(And to think, I almost brought the good camera with me this morning… Update: It turns out that I did bring it, and just didn’t realize it was there. Oh, well.)

Dating the Dead

For a movie theater with only four screens, they seem to be going for themes lately. How else would they end up pairing up these two? Corpse Bride, Just Like Heaven.

(I passed the sign the night before, and it was pairing up The 40 Year Old Virgin with Just Like Heaven—another combination that’s just slightly wrong.)

Free Opera!

That happened a lot sooner than I expected: With today’s release of Opera 8.5, the desktop web browser is now free. That’s no cost to register, no ads in the browser—100% free (as in beer).

Now we know the “new business model” they were hinting at. Reportedly they have a new deal with Google for search revenue and marketing. Edit: Opera’s Haarvard provides more info.

Aside from removing the ads, the change log shows mainly bug fixes, though they have turned on Browser JavaScript, a previously experimental feature that fixes some broken websites on the fly. I suspect without the business model change, this would have been 8.1 or 8.03. Edit: Tim Altman describes what’s in store for Opera 9.

Now that Opera and Firefox are both entirely-free downloads, the browser wars are about to get really interesting!

(via WaSP Buzz)

Perfect Price Point

Reportedly the recording industry is still pressuring Apple to raise the prices on the iTunes Music Store. They don’t seem to understand that a big part of what made iTMS a success was the 99¢ price point. It’s sometimes cheaper than buying a CD, and more importantly, you can impulse buy at that price.

Steve Jobs seems to get it, though. He’s pointing out that higher prices will just drive people back to illegal downloading.

Voyage of the FyreFawkes

A tale of the Browser Wars on the high seas.

Harken, lads, and listen to my tale. It is the tale of the FyreFawkes, a vessel that turned the tide in the never-ending battle for the high seas.

In this day, shipping lanes criss-cross the ocean like a Web, and in years past, that web was commanded by the Fleet of the Navigators. Wherever ye wanted to go, a Navigator ship was there to take you. But the wealthy My Crows’ Loft Company controlled the ports, and knew that if they did not take command of the high seas, someone might use the Navigator Fleet to build their own harbors, outside My Crows’ Loft’s sphere of influence.

So My Crows’ Loft built their own fleet, a fleet of Explorer craft, and after a great trade war, their fleet dominated the ocean. The Navigators’ fleet shrank, nearly forgotten.

But My Crows’ Loft grew complacent in their victory, and the Explorer fleet aged. Worse, the vessels had weak spots and leaks that pirates and brigands of all sorts knew how to attack. What was once a pleasant voyage across the sea became a journey fraught with danger, with spies, phishermen, and great wyrms lying in wait for the unsuspecting voyager. Read the rest of this entry »

Blog Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy mates, and let the parrrrrty begin! Talk Like a Pirate Day be upon us, at long last, and folk like me get to let our inner pirate out o’ the brig. Fer those of ye what don’t talk like pirates nigh every day, today be the day to learn! Ye best not practice with yer customers or yer boss, tho—some would as soon have ye walk the plank, as it takes a bit o’ humor to get into the spirit.

…speakin’ o’ spirits, where be the rum?

Feathered Sunset

Here’s a picture of last Wednesday’s sunset (September 14) as seen from the 405 in Irvine.

The photo links to a larger copy.

And no, I wasn’t trying to get the “monolith” in there. I don’t remember exactly where this was, so I’m not even sure what the sign is for.

Original Sinsuality

I was going to write a review of last night’s Tori Amos concert at the Greek Theater, but I realized I already wrote most of it about the Concert at Royce Hall back in April.

We got tickets for this one because it was a new tour, and we figured there was a chance it would be a different type of concert. Eventually it became clear from her newsletter that it was going to be the same type of show—just her, a piano, two organs and a synthesizer—but hey, we liked the last one, and we already had the tickets!

As it turned out, it was the same type of show, but a very different selection of songs. I tried to write down everything I remembered her playing last night, and compared it to the list from the last concert, and there are only 5 songs in common, all from the new album!

Some of the interesting bits: Read the rest of this entry »

His people are coming

You know that new site selling JMS’ Babylon 5 scripts?

Within 48 hours, fans subscribing to the announcement list filled up the database. The remark in that message is a variation on a line JMS would use when he told stories about trying to get a big enough room for B5 events at conventions: “My people are coming.” (He eventually managed to get that line into an episode of the show.) Con staff would constantly underestimate the draw for B5 panels.

I’m also reminded of a joke David Kemper made at a Farscape panel last year: “You guys probably don’t know this, but we have obsessive fans.”

Hot and Fresh!

‘A‘a fresh? Hmm, that makes me think of something more like this:

(Image courtesy of the US Geological Survey)

No thanks, I think I’ll stick with the mild salsa on this one.

Edit: For the benefit of out-of-state readers, the sign’s for a restaurant called Baja Fresh.

Babylon 5 scripts going on sale!

A few days ago, JMS announced that he was preparing to sell a 14-volume collection of all his Babylon 5 scripts, complete with new introductions and commentary. For never-before-seen stuff, the first volume includes a vastly different early draft of the script for the pilot episode, “The Gathering.” Even better, there’s a bonus fifteenth volume with alternate versions of several episodes, the series’ writers bible…and a 7-page write-up of the entire 5-year arc, as originally envisioned with Sinclair sticking around. (Oh, and the version of “The Gathering” that they finally filmed.)

Unfortunately, you can only get the bonus book by ordering the entire set, and the only ones I’d probably want would be #1 and #15.

Babylon5Scripts.com is online, and collecting sign-ups for an email announcement list. The store is set to launch in October. More info in JMS’ post.

(These are only J. Michael Stracsynski’s scripts, but he wrote 93 of the 110 episodes, plus the pilot and all the TV movies. As far as I know, only one other B5 script has been published: Neil Gaiman’s script for “Day of the Dead” is available from the CBLDF online store.)

Three Years of Blogging

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been three years since the first post on this blog. I still think of myself as being kind of new at this, but at this rate, we’ll be in the old guard. Or at least the new old guard.

Topics have shifted around. It started out as a personal blog with Sci-Fi overtones, and slowly took on more of a focus on humor, comics and tech. Posts in the early days were divided 60/40 between me and Katie. These days it’s more 90/10, partly because we’ve both shifted a lot of the personal stuff over to LiveJournal. Strange photos started showing up very early on, making up what are now the Strange World, You Must Be Mistaken, and Signs of the Times categories.

The site started on B2 and moved to WordPress when the project forked.

Even the title is subtly different. It started out as “Ramblings,” with a “K²” icon to the left. After a while, the icon became part of the title, and it’s been known as “K-Squared Ramblings” for most of those three years.

According to the WordPress Dashboard, we now have 912 posts and 961 comments Read the rest of this entry »

That Explains It!

Okay, read the last two titles together: The 40 Year Old Virgin, Unwanted Woman. It seems like the second line might explain the first…

(On a side note, this is the second post with pictures from my new camera phone. The image quality is pathetic compared to the good camera—640×480 vs. 5 megapixels—but it’s a lot more convenient to carry around, and quite adequate for this type of photo. And it’s much better than the expendable camera was, especially at the end of its life.)

Renovated Grass

Yes, they’ve actually replaced some of the grass with more grass, instead of astroturf. Here’s the same median where I took the original Grass Under Renovation picture.

I still have no idea why they bothered letting it die, putting up signs to warn people, and seeding all new grass. Not that I paid much attention to it before, but it doesn’t look particularly different.

Another Kind of Internet Piracy

It’s less than a week t' Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19). Dougal Campbell has a WordPress plugin t' piratify yer blog.

Arrr, I be thinkin’ about it!

New Ellis Comics

I think all of Warren Ellis’ crop of new series have launched at this point. I’ve picked up the first issues of Fell, Desolation Jones, and Jack Cross.

Ellis is one of a few writers whose name will get me to at least look at a new book. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. His superhero stuff doesn’t appeal much to me, with the exception of Planetary, which is on my must-read list on those rare occasions that a new issue comes out. (Others include Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Joe Straczynski. Heck, Joss actually managed to get me to pick up an X-Men book!)

Desolation Jones tells the story of an British ex-secret agent living in exile in Los Angeles. In fact, there’s an entire community of ex-spooks living in L.A., an open prison that the city’s normal residents don’t even know about. Jones underwent an experiment, the “desolation test,” that left him both enhanced and destroyed. Many of the people he knows underwent similar experiments. There’s a man who only needs to eat four times a year—but ends up chewing through entire herds of cattle when he does. A woman whose pheromones trigger fear and revulsion, and literally has to beg Jones to spend an hour with her just to stave off the loneliness. Despite the background, the book is more hard-boiled detective than thriller. And the characters are well-drawn, both literally and figuratively. Issue #1 had me interested enough to check out issue #2 (despite some of the less savory aspects of the story). Issue #2 had me hooked.

Jack Cross is pretty much a straight-forward thriller, with an ex-agent brought back into action, a conspiracy within government agencies, etc. I’m just barely curious enough to look at #2, but it’ll have to be really interesting to get me to keep going.

Fell just came out last week, and breaks from the other books in several ways. First, it’s designed to have a complete story in each issue. Second, it’s designed to be cheap. By telling a highly-compressed story in 16 pages, with text pages filling in the rest, it keeps the cost down below the magic $2 mark (if just barely). As for the actual content—it’s another detective story, this time about a quirky police officer with an excellent intuition, Richard Fell, who ends up in a hellhole city called Snowtown. As promised, there’s a complete story, but there’s also hints of something larger. Eveyone Fell meets is disturbed in one way or another. And the book is so full of story, I didn’t even notice it was 2/3 the length of a typical comic. Definitely good enough to check out the next issue!

Diet Red

It’s always strange when you throw out wacky ideas, then see them turn into reality. About four years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around talking, and someone uttered the remark, “Diet Spite.” From there we filled an entire page with culinary brand names made from abstract concepts, not unlike the Wheat-Free Chaos we found a month ago.

One exchange went like this:

Kelson: “Diet Red.”
Daniel: “Sure, that’s red.”

So it was a surprise to find this can at Trader Joe’s:

Truth is stranger than fiction. It just takes time to catch up.

Fallen Angel Relaunch Preview

Newsarama has posted a preview of the new Fallen Angel book in the form of the first seven pages of issue #1 (due in December). JK Woodward’s art looks great on the cover, and it looks amazing on the interior work. Don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers—it’s just a montage of a typical day in Lee’s life. Also, the first issue gets an alternate cover by David Lopez, the series’ original artist.

Reportedly the first story arc will at last reveal the title character’s origin.

I am so looking forward to this!

(via Cognitive Dissonance)

Edit: Peter David has also mentioned the preview.

MirrorMask, Limited

The bad news: MirrorMask is only opening in selected theaters on September 30.

The good news: Those theaters include Edwards University in Irvine. (I’m not sure where the Landmark Nuart Theater is, but it’s the only one in LA.)

According to Neil Gaiman, the amount of business it does during the first week will determine whether it gets a wider release.

With Serenity opening the same weekend, we’re going to be awfully busy…

Browser + Trust = ?

As part of their redesigned community site, Opera has also released a bunch of new banners and buttons (dropping the Superman-like mascot). Since I like to promote both Firefox and Opera, I think I’ll try to pair up these two buttons:

Under the Sea (Kailua Edition)

On the same day as our whale-watching cruise (April 6), we took a submarine tour of Kailua Bay from Atlantis Adventures. The tour started at the Kailua pier, where a boat ferried us out to the submarine in the middle of the bay. The sub itself went down to around 80-90 feet by the end of the trip, and we got to see all kinds of fish and coral.

It didn’t look nearly so blue to us, of course, since our eyes were adjusted to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for Spike (in all the wrong places)

My regular comic store, Comic Quest, didn’t get any copies of Peter David’s Spike: Old Times. Yesterday I checked at Comics Toons and Toys. They were also sold out. Today I started looking around more of the Orange County area.

First step: Mile High Comics. I figured it was a long shot, since they’re the most well-known comic store on the internet, but I wasn’t in a hurry to read it, and it would save me the trouble of driving around the county. Naturally, they didn’t have it.

So I started calling stores I knew. As I was about to start, I noticed an email on SuperHeroNews saying, “Mile High Comics in LA, burned down last night, more information as we get it.” The first store on my list was Netherworld Comics, which used to be a Mile High store, but is in Garden Grove, not Los Angeles. Their phone isn’t picking up. And they’re still listed as an affiliate on Mile High’s website. And there aren’t any other Mile High stores in southern California. This doesn’t look good for Netherworld. Edit Sep. 7: Yes, it was them [archive.org]. Figures. I’d only been in there a couple of times, but it was a nice store.

Okaaay… Next step: Diamond’s Comic Shop Locator. Unfortunately it only lets you search by ZIP code, and only shows the nearest three. Since I’d already been to two of the stores, I only got one phone number out of it. No luck there.

Time to do it the old-fashioned way: the phone book. (Katie remarked, “There’s nothing wrong with being old-fashioned, especially about a book called Old Times.”) There are surprisingly few comic stores in central Orange County. I only got three more numbers out of it, and one of them specializes in vintage comics. Not surprisingly, none of them had any copies either. (One offered to order it for me, but I simply declined rather than pointing out that it was already sold out at both the publisher and distributor.)

Next stop: eBay…

Zombie Attack!

Finally, something light-hearted in the news: A bunch of people decked out as zombies crashed the American Idol auditions in Austin, Texas last week, groaning things like “Television rots your braaaaaains!”

Reportedly the contestants didn’t get it.

Ironically, the event organizers had read about the protest in advance on Craigslist, and quickly got the “zombies” to sign release forms to appear on the show.

(via Cognitive Dissonance)

Relief Spam Dilemma

This is incredibly bizarre. Today I’ve started getting spam which is clearly coming from zombies and using fake return addresses and forged headers, but the content is a plaintext message encouraging hurricane relief donations and linking to the legitimate Red Cross and FEMA websites. There’s one further link, to arc.convio.net, but the ISC reports that the site is legit.

It literally looks like some spammer decided to encourage donations to the relief effort, picked an organization he figured most people would recognize, and plugged the message into his usual spam software.

I can’t decide what to do about them! On one hand, they’re spam. They’re unsolicited, they’re using spammer techniques, and they’re clearly not associated with the Red Cross. And we’ve always said the issue is “consent, not content.” But if the ISC is right, they’re not trying to pull a fast one like the scams and spyware installers that are leeching off of the catastrophe.

I keep thinking I should train the filter on them anyway, just like I would add political or religious spam, or an everyday charity that decided to start spamming for donations… but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it.

In a word

I’m thinking of a word. The definition is “a feeling of shock, sadness, compassion and sometimes guilty relief in response to a disaster that happens somewhere else.” It’s not “horror,” “rage,” pity,” or “sympathy.” It could be German in origin. It’s what a good chunk of the world felt after last year’s tsunami, and it’s what a goodly number of Americans are feeling now about Hurricane Katrina.

And it doesn’t exist.

People are good at making up words. The variety of creations added to the OED each year, and the number of suggestions that are rejected, prove that beyond a doubt. We even make up words without meaning to, running together utterances like “bighuge” and “goaheadand.” We have a word—emo—for “loud, emotionally charged pop-punk music.” Some of us know the word schadenfreude and aren’t afraid to use it. If we can encapsulate stuff like this, we should be able to pick a word or two to define the enhanced survivors’ guilt and horrific fascination, laced with uncharacteristic compassion, gripping so many of us.

So far, we haven’t.

Disasters happen all the time, and always have. We’re just getting better at broadcasting them all. Before the age of telegraph and radio, it was often too late to send rescue-type aid by the time bad news arrived. Today, we can get the news in an instant, but the majority of us are simply unable to give the kind of aid—airlifts, rebuilding, law and order—we perceive as most meaningful. We are isolated by distance and circumstance, so we send money, and watch, and hope. The more we are able to watch, the more we need a word for what’s making us watch. So everybody who’s working on the projects for how to write “whole nother” and finding the modern negative of “used to,” you have a new assignment. Due date: next disaster.

Talk about lousy timing

The SANS Internet Storm center, which has found itself dealing with the fallout on the Internet from a quite literal storm, is reporting that a vulnerability in Dameware (apparently a remote admin system for Windows) is being exploited. Ordinarily the solution would be to tell people to download the update… but the Dameware website is in New Orleans. Fortunately, the UK-based site is up.

Not everyone in New Orleans has gone offline. Netcraft reports that domain registrar DirectNIC has held on through Katrina and its aftermath. Being located 11 floors up in an area that hasn’t flooded yet probably helps. That, and having three weeks’ worth of backup power.

Global Warming vs. Ozone Hole

A quick question for people who discount the idea that global warming could be caused, in part, by human activities on the basis that we can’t possibly impact the climate as much as natural events and cycles affect it.

Do you also discount the well-documented depletion of the ozone layer by interaction with CFCs and similar chemicals? That seems to be a major environmental impact, and one that clearly has an anthropogenic component.

Nearly two decades after we cut back on CFC use, it looks like the ozone layer is finally starting to recover—or at least it’s stopped shrinking. Of course, it’ll take time. The whole reason we started using CFCs is that they didn’t seem to react with anything, so they’ll stay in the atmosphere for decades. UCI’s Sherwood Roland (who won a Nobel Prize for research on this topic) is quoted as saying, “This problem was a long time in the making, and because of the persistence of these chlorine compounds, there is no short-term fix.”

Hurricane Relief via Amazon

I noticed a few days ago that the Red Cross website was running really slow. (It took me about 5 tries just to get the home page to load.) Well, Amazon.com has a Red Cross donation page, and they’re already set up to handle massive amounts of traffic. (Thanks to the Syndic8 mailing list for the link.)

There’s also FEMA’s list of organizations offering assistance.