this aint Narnia, kiddo…

Batman: back in black and named Andrew

Okay, quick note: I finally got my server up at FatCow.com running. Only problem is… the links seem to not work. I am working on it as soon as I can (I am currently rushing to class) but it should be up and running soon.

- Fin!

EDIT: I found the issue was in my .htacccess files permissions, 777 = working permalinks!

When ducks get dangerous, dreams come true

When news of the Disney aquisition of Marvel first broke, only two words came to mind; Darkwing and Duck.  In fact, it was only recently that I finished downloading all three seasons of our favorite alliterating crime fighter – I have been singing myself the theme song ever since.

I squealed louder than a 3 year old meeting Justin Bieber for the first time when I saw this particular heading in my RSS reader: ‘Darkwing Duck’ Returns In Comic Form With New Miniseries‘.  My life is complete.

I have always been a gigantic fan of Darkwing Duck, he was such a great combination of talking animals, superheroes and stuff in the 90s.  For those that did not grow up in the 90s, it was the best decade for cartoons ever… ever!

(I would list all of the awesome cartoons in that decade but that list would become longer than this actual post.)

But in all reality, this show was awesome. The characters were hilarious, Darkwing’s alliteration was full of style and its homage to classic comic book heroes was great.

There is not much that can be said about the upcoming comic, as it will not be out for another few months.  As right as I was about predicting/ praying for a Darkwing comic book by Marvel… it was announced, but by BOOM! Studios instead.

As for the licensing? I have no idea, but I do know that BOOM! has been doing Disney comics for a while, so perhaps they just have an agreement?

Or maybe… BOOM! Studios is just wanting to… get dangerous!

Any characters of your own childhood that you would love to see return to print, or possibly, to film?

Oscars 2010 – not too bad… [updated]

Best Picture

Who will: Avatar
Why: wanting to obviously appeal to more viewers (hint: no one watches the Oscars anymore), the Best Picture nom now includes 10 movies.  The contenders will not change at all, but it gives more fans more reason to think that ‘their’ movie has a chance to win.

Who should: The Hurt Locker
Why: besides being a very powerful film, this movie successfully portrayed the life of a militant over in the east without sounding at all political.  Without stereotyping, it portrayed one of the most natural feeling male relationships and, without a half billion dollar budget, put one of the years most intense scenes into the passenger side of a busted sedan.

Animated Feature Film

Who will: Up
Why: as did they last year with Wall-E, Pixar makes amazing movies.  And, although not at the same time as most critics, I even cried.

Who should: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Why: I was never a large fan of Wes Anderson’s movies, he is the type of director that tries to be artistic and filmy.  That being said, this movie was fun, smart, charming and quick.  Not short, but quick; I was entertained all the way through and barely ever felt a null in the story.

Directing

Who will: Avatar
Why: because the direction of Avatar is the only thing worth any of the praise this mediocre film has received.

Who did: The Hurt Locker
Why: partially because this is the first of such Oscar ever given to a female director, and because it damn well deserved it.

Film Editing

Who will: James Cameron
Why: Because it is James Cameron and because the money he made saved a whole lot of theatres.  Also, because I am rather indifferent on the category.  That, or blind to it.

Who did:  Hurt Locker
Why: because, other than this part of my original prediction list being deleted for some mysterious reason, it managed to create tension and grit without having to show much action itself.

Music (Original Score)

Who will: Avatar
Why: because, even though I did not notice any of the score, it was still made by James Cameron.

Who should: Up
Why: as with many a Pixar movie, the story can be told with the soundtrack itself, but unlike Avatar, it is done without the song titles.

Spreeder.com – because reading takes so much time!

At time of publication, I have somewhere around 60+ Google Reader subscriptions, although not that many (yet), it is still a lot of stuff to read.  One of my gripes against reading a novel off of an iPad is that I still find it hard to read that deeply off of a monitor.  As such, most of my blog reading is done lightly, but what about when I find a really damn interesting (and long) post, like this recent one, “Unraveling the Mysteries of “Lost”: How Does the Show End?“ by Adam Quigley?

Fast, that is how –  fast.

Speed Reading has always been something I was jealous of, and as nerdy as you may think that sounds, if you knew me it would seem entirely appropriate.

Spreeder.com is, if you like to read as much as I do, a dream come true.  Quite simply, it flashes every selected word at a selected rate of speed and at a selected size.  Currently, I am averaging at somewhere between 300 and 400 wpm, again, not much.  The idea behind speed reading is to work around sub-vocalizing (speaking the words to yourself in your mind), thus shortening the time spent reading.

I do not really have much else to say about this, its uses are as simple as its website.  Spreeder does have a very useful bookmarklet, so all you have to do is select your text and press the button.

Also, it is 9:30pm, I am on my fourth cup of coffee of the night and I am yawning my face off, what is this nonsense?!

Anyone else have any must need bookmarklets?  Any other reading tips, be it news or blogs or anything with a lot of words?

Fuck you Film Riot and fuck you /Film, now everything I see is orange and blue

A while ago, /Film released an image posts on reddit.  As an avid movie goer and avid movie aficionado, this was the definition of something I could not un-see.  It has been a while since then, and I am sure most of you are familiar with said image, but if you missed out, here you go.

I apologize if you had not yet seen it, as it will now ruin watching movie posters for the rest of your natural life.

What are the odds that, in the second episode of Film Riot that I ever saw, a video of the exact same non-un-seeable concept?

This is hardly even anything of surprise, and makes the same sense the movie posters did.  You have seen it, you will see it countless times in the future and, if you are watching any Hollywood movie, you are seeing it right now.

I have never hated a colour combination as much as I hate this very one.

So, again, fuck you Film Riot, fuck you /Film and, I especially mean this one, fuck you colours orange and blue, you have ruined my life.

Oh, and in the spirit of the /Filmcast, spoiler warning: the world assplodes.

If I had the money… I would finish "His Dark Materials" [update]

I do not even remember where I saw the trailer for The Golden Compass attached to, but I saw talking animals, Daniel Craig and a giant, badass polar bear panserbjørne – I was sold! Weeks after that momentous occassion, I went to a friends place for some pizza/ scrabble and, amid casual conversation, I mentioned the new Daniel Craig movie I saw a trailer for (and how much I love the man). Lucky for me, my fellow guest was an avid fan of the novels, and told me all about them.

This was some time before the summer of that year, during my breaks at the camp I work at, just as avidly read the full series. Along with the new Deathly Hallows book, the full Death Note manga series. I was in love and I anticipated the movie more than anything I can remember.

And then the movie did come out – I was excited.

And then I watched the movie – and it was fantastic.

And then I watched the second half of the movie – and I was scared like a man of his libido with a flury of nude vampiric women trying to entice his pants off.

The movie was entertaining, the casting was great and Iorek was just as I was wishing for. But then the ending threw all that hope away, removing most of the scene in the Arctic and the daemons’ escape, as well as the ending scene with Lyra and her friend, Roger. When my brother saw it, he had the feeling there was a bunch of stuff cut out. When I bought the DVD, I saw they were keeping the stuff cut out to themselves.

So, if I had the money, I would finance to film the latter two books in the series (Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass) and make sure to keep the religious aspects to the film. I would also re-cut and re-print the first movie as well as, were it possible, put the religion back into the movie. As a Christian, I find it more offensive to try and keep out anything that someone may find sacrilegious; this fiction novel written by a noted Atheist, shone a better light on religious problems than Religulous ever could have been.

(And that was an I am Legend joke (I just finished reading it), not some crappy Twilight “vampire”…)

Yeah, so I just got into 'Hey Ash', what of it? [update]

It took me a few months of listening to Podtoid to, a) realize why I recognized that dude with the beard so often, and b) that he had a podcast of his own.  After listening to a few hours of Hey Ash, Whatcha Podcast I realized another thing; Ashly-without-an-e is really damn cute.

So, besides two podcast recommendations, I give you this; a very cute girl + something about something about Firefly.

EDIT: WordPress.com does not seem to want me to embed videos, so here is a link.

Anyone else find a podcast (or a podcast-esque thing) that left you with nothing more than question as to how you had never heard of it before?

Here is the deal with FatCows

Due to my lack of credit card (I am not very… responsible with one) , I have been relying on the e-cheque function inside of PayPal.  Unfortunately, it means I have to often wait a few days for transactions to make it through.

This happened and that happened, but I did find a very good looking server at FatCow.com, but due to my terrible credit rating, a new host might take a few days.  On a positive note, I did manage to get myself a backup of everything from my former server.

As for the broken image links, those will all be repaired in a few days, but the RSS feed, although it has stayed the same, is not linked to properly (as per WordPress.com free accounts not letting you change raw code.

I say raw code because, although technically correct, sounds a lot better than HTML or something…

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by people that matter

In the wake of my servers cancellation, I have been too busy to get much written.  Lucky for me (and hopefully for you), I fell upon a list for fiction writers, written by fiction writers.  As someone looking to write a book (or two) I found this interesting.  When I saw that Neil Himself had contributed to the list, someone of whom I am a massive fan of, I knew this had to be shared.

Neil Gaiman

1. Write.
2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7. Laugh at your own jokes.
8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

If you are wondering where the last two tips went, guardian.co.uk, with inspiration from another authors similar list, surveyed 13 authors and compiled a list of their lists, the rest of the list can be found here (part one) and here (part two).

Any more lists, tips or tricks that you write with?  As someone who considers himself a writer (of sorts), I actually have to start following Gaiman’s first rule; “write”.

Well that sucked… (and why my website was cancelled)

If you are reading this (okay, this is already sounding like a suicide letter), you would have noticed that this site was down for a day or so.

Essentially, I hate JustHost.com.

Non-essentially, this entire situation is doubly ironic; Kevin Smith had a pisser with a company that treated him like a week old bit of hard salmon roe stuck between their teeth; and Tom Meritt and Rafe Needleman discussed the ‘Beginners guide to blogging‘ on their show, The Real Deal.

Wherein Kevin Smith was kicked off of an airplane for not being able to lower the arm rests (that he very much could), my hosting was cancelled for over-going a boundary I was never told of.  More specifically, my account was ’suspended’ on the grounds of “utilizing an excessive amount of system resources” ’and overbearing on an arbitrary ‘10% CPU Policy‘;

While our shared services are suitable for the bulk of our customers, there comes a time for some websites when they are better suited for a larger plan, which allows for more dedicated CPU and memory resources. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to discontinue service to any customer with a website or other hosted data that takes up more than 10% of the server resources and/or 10% of the server’s CPU. This means that if your website is found to be utilizing more than 10% of the CPU and memory of the service, we reserve the right to take your site offline. If this becomes necessary, you can either upgrade your hosting package, or request a pro-rated refund of the amounts you have paid in advance for the services. Due to the severity of this, and our ability to act quickly to correct these situations to avoid server issues, we will do everything reasonably feasible to provide you with a warning prior to taking your site offline, but we accept no obligation to do so.

The problem is, besides the warning I should have gotten, I was never told what this apparent 10% was of.

I usually leave a post a few days to edit and proof read, as I am far from good enough to pump out quality posts in any form of speed, so I am just going to publish this right now.

Fuck you, JustHost.  Fuck you and fuck your mother.