Monthly Archives: March 2009

Reading / Multitasking

I’m finding that I can finish more books, as in my attention and comprehension is better, when I’m reading four of them at once.

Two of them in my bag, one at my desk at home, and another before going to bed.  Just having them around seems to encourage me to read them and I’m completing them a lot faster than if I was reading one book at a time.

Just thinking if I had a Kindle, that number would probably be a lot higher.

Totally rad

As a big video game nerd, I was surprised to see the design of the Venture Bros. 3rd season set.

It’s a love letter to the Atari 2600 box art.  It’s got the hideous background color, the fonts, and the action packed style that resembled a dynamic movie poster, but in no way resembled the blocks, bits and bleeps of the actual gameplay.

They even have faux aging on the box.  I have it in hand now and it’s just incredible looking.  Great job.

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The Future

Honestly, when I was but a young lad, carefree and winning spelling bees every year in grade school from first to eighth grade, I never once imagined that I’d have a robot of my very own to vaccuum the house for me.

Now that I have one, I never thought I’d be wrapping socks around the legs of furniture to protect them from the robot.

I’ve got a Roomba.  “Roomba-kun” as we like to call him around the house, loves his job.  He loves it so much that sometimes he can be a little over enthusiastic.  Roomba-kun is a Discovery series and indicative of the breed, has a hard plastic bumper.  The bumper is his primary method of interacting with the world.  As I found out when I activated him for the first time.  He wasted no time in ramming the legs of every chair I relocated to.

Rushing headlong into the corners of wooden furniture is one of his favorite past times.  Great for him, but a sure fire way to get a lot of nicks and scratches around the legs of the wooden furniture.

Enter the bag of old socks that I don’t wear anymore.  I found that just wrapping a sock around the legs of furniture is a little easier than attaching foam to Roomba-kun’s front bumper.

So now, he happily runs headlong into things, although now I feel a little bit better about his overall well being.  The sound of him exploring his world is now punctuated by understated whump noises instead of uncomfortable twhack! noises.

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So. Little. Time.

Doing a lot of things at once.

Catching up with Battlestar.  Reading about four novels at once.  Playing Rune Factory 2.  Troubleshooting the Roomba.  Trying to get unsick.

Book versus Movie

I caught the Watchmen in IMAX which was great.

I felt like the combination of high definition digital projector, overpowering sound system (used judiciously) and good seating all came together with a very visual movie to push my experience over the top.  Now a lot of people disliked the movie and liked the movie.  It’s one of those polarizing events when people come down on one side or another.

I’m in the “enjoyed the movie” camp.  I thought the pacing was fine for a three hour movie, and it never felt long.  I did not have the same experience as I did when I watched the King Kong remake, where I felt like I was waiting for something to happen.

As far as being faithful to the source material or not, I never judge a movie based on its book.  Two forms of media use different methods to get the story across.  Watchmen the movie is not Watchmen the book.  To judge the merits of a movie by a book’s standards feels like an unsound method of reviewing something.  Having read the book several years ago, I felt that while I was familiar with the overall plot of the book, I was far enough away temporally to be surprised with how the movie would develop the characters and storyline.

That said, I felt that the movie stands on its own as an enjoyable experience.  I’m going to let my thoughts settle for a bit, then get around to rereading the book to refamiliarize myself with how the plot developed in that format.