Molé Stout

2013-02-14, 4:06 pm
Categories: Movies, Stream of Consciousness

There's not really anything I could say about Valentine's Day that wouldn't be either a cliché banality or a banal cliché. So instead I'm going to talk about this Ska Brewing Molé Stout I bought at Top's yesterday.

It's good! It's dark, it's chocolatey, it's got a hint of peppers. And it's four bucks a six-pack at Top's! I will probably buy more.

Guess that's it. Off to dinner and Die Hard 5: Son of Die Hard.

Pick Me I'm Clean

2013-02-13, 10:11 pm
Categories: Music

Another piece of the Vancouver concert in 1980, uploaded by Steve Sparx -- as with my Jumbo Go Away/If Only She Woulda post a few weeks back.

I suppose it is a bit ironic, given my recent post of Dweezil discussing inferior music formats and flawed concert recordings, that I post so many of them here. But there is a value to them -- there will never again be a new Frank Zappa recording, and the ones that exist are precious even if they're flawed.

Though if you really want a high-quality Zappa recording, by all means buy a CD or FLAC release. (Or vinyl, if that's your thing.) His old albums are currently being reissued, and there are some rarities available at Barfko-Swill. And if you've still got a local record store, that's a great option too. (I was tempted by a copy of Thing-Fish and a ZPZ DVD at my local record store today, but money's tight and I still haven't finished listening to the last Zappa album I bought there -- maybe next time.)

Snyder's Batman

2013-02-13, 9:23 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Scott Snyder has some great ideas about Batman but his stuff's just not for me. That one-off issue with Becky Cloonan on art was the best Batman story I've read all year, but Death of the Family was some good ideas wrapped around a needlessly violent and decompressed story. (My favorite part: you can show people dancing until their feet bleed, you can show a tapestry made of sewn-together still-living people -- but if you want to say "ass", you'd better use comic-book symbols to bleep it out.) I think both the setup and the resolution were solid. I just think there was too much dithering in-between. Even without the half-dozen tie-in books.

Gail Simone recently responded to a reader who was put off by the grimness of Death of the Family by saying, "The bat-verse in general IS in a pretty dark place right now, but I do believe some lighter stories are coming." Here's hoping. Snyder's already done some great work -- but great work where Batman smiles now and again would be more to my tastes.

Lakshi's Delight

2013-02-12, 10:42 pm
Categories: Music

Via YourArf, who explains:

Frank Zappa's tribute to Lakshminarayana Shankar. Composed and recorded sometime around 1987-89.

Doctor Who: Mark of the Rani

2013-02-12, 7:35 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2009-01-11, following up on my preceding review of Revelation of the Daleks:

You know, I thought Revelation of the Daleks was pretty good -- good enough that it makes me want to check out more Sixth Doctor episodes, which I hear is an emotion most people rarely feel.

Aaaaand Mark of the Rani has cured me of it.

The setting is interesting, and it's got the Master, and the Rani is a character with potential, but...it's pretty much terrible. At this point I want to punch Peri in the mouth every time she opens it (though this actually makes me kind of want to check out Trial of a Time Lord just to see her die).

The fact that this is regarded as one of the better Sixth Doctor serials goes a long way toward explaining why everyone hates the Sixth Doctor. Not worth buying, not worth renting, not even worth watching while drunk.

Tweezil?

2013-02-11, 11:24 pm
Categories: Tech, Work

I had a meeting today for a local business that some clients of mine are working on opening.

It involves ziplines, and there was a demonstration of zipline technology.

One of the components -- a proprietary piece that helps keep carabiners shut -- is called a tweezil -- I'm not sure if I've got the spelling right, but that's how the guy pronounced it, anyway.

And he confirmed that yes in fact it is named after Dweezil Zappa, as a tribute, because its inventor is a huge Frank Zappa fan and vowed that his first great invention would bear that name.

(Can't find any documentation of this offhand online, so if anybody can lead me to more information I'd be happy to link it. But that's what the man said, anyway.)

Signage

2013-02-11, 11:19 pm
Categories: Books, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Yesterday I went to a Cory Doctorow book signing at Changing Hands.

He was promoting his new book, Homeland, but the talk he gave was more general. It dealt with his usual pet issues: overbearing copyright law and its impact on ordinary citizens, and spyware that attempts to control our computers and how it makes them and us less safe. A lot of it was about Aaron Swartz, the talented programmer who developed RSS, helped build Reddit up, spent the last several years of his life fighting charges from the US Attorney threatening a decades-long prison sentence for copyright infringement (when the copyright holders themselves chose not to press charges), and took his own life last month. It's a sobering story -- obviously depression is a complicated thing and it's foolish to blame a person's suicide on one single cause, but I think any reasonable person can conclude that (1) the charges against him contributed to his decision and (2) they were wildly disproportionate to his alleged crime.

Sobering stuff, but a good talk and mostly light despite ending on a heavy note. Nobody in the audience recorded it, but Doctorow said the talk's been recorded elsewhere and that he'd provide a link once it was uploaded to YouTube. (Edit 2013-02-13: Per Doctorow's blog, the version of the speech he gave the next day at ASU has been posted on ustream: part 1, part 2.)

Before all that, I was sitting in the audience waiting for him to come out onstage. I was reading a copy of Circle of Enemies; the lady sitting next to me asked if it was an urban fantasy novel and when I said that it was, she handed me her business card and said that she was an urban fantasy author as well. Her name is Kater Cheek, she's a former student of Doctorow's, and the urban fantasy novel advertised on her card is Seeing Things. I bought a copy when I got home; haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

I mentioned that I'd recently put out a few audiobooks; she hadn't heard of ACX so I suggested she give it a look if she's interested in producing any of her own.

I talked to Doctorow a bit about audiobooks, too, when it came time for the actual booksigning. The guy in front of me asked if Homeland would be released as an audiobook; Cory said there were no plans at present, because he won't distribute through Audible until they offer a DRM-free option, and Audible is 90% of the market. He said he's looking at options with the Humble Bundle; when I got up there I wished him luck on that, and added that a Humble Audiobook Bundle could be a great help to narrators like myself who don't really have an alternative to Amazon but don't like DRM very damn much either. (I mentioned that, while I sell books on Audible, I can't be their customer, because they don't support my operating system. Crazy.)

Anyway, I asked him to sign my Nexus 7 case, because that's where I keep most of his books.

For Thad -- If you can't open it, you don't own it! Cory

Which is really a twofer, because now my case has not only a drawing of a skull and crossbones by Cory Doctorow...

Speck's logo looks like an asshole

...it's also got a drawing of an asshole by Kurt Vonnegut.

(For the record, I haven't opened it but I'm pretty confident that I can. It looks easier than my Mac Mini, Wii, or old 60GB iPod, and I've opened them.)