Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

Stranger In A Strange Land

Once again, the “classics” are leaving me cold.

I’m not done with what is arguably Heinlein’s best-known work, and I’m not sure I’ll finish. Oh, the first two parts are interesting enough. V. M. Smith and his interactions with the people of Earth hold one’s attention well enough, covering a lot of the ground that the C.J. Cherryh “Foreigner” series would later examine in excruciating detail: “Aliens and humans don’t think alike!” Yep. We established that, alright. And let’s be honest, there’s vast and fertile storytelling ground in that concept.

Too bad we’ve spent half the book so far centered on one word: Grok.

All of these clever humans Michael ends up surrounded by, and they can’t find the words in English (or presumably any other language) to approximate this Martian term… that Heinlein conveyed moderately well several times in that same stretch of the book. In, you know, English. Ahem. Well, we wouldn’t want the characters to be as clever as the author, would we? Hey, let’s hit the readers over the head with “grok” a few more times! Some of the conversations late in the second section are interesting, but most are absurd from overuse of grok this, grok that, grok you.

But that’s not where the book has lost me. I can roll my eyes and get past all of that, especially for the sake of the solid sociopolitical theater in the Jubal arc, but I’m perplexed at the Digby And Foster Show. I’m barely into the book’s third section and… all of a sudden, after all of Jubal’s ranting and railing about religion, now we’re peeking into the Heavenly Bureaucracy? For laughs? And the crazy love grokbirds have taken on a tattooed evangelist, and that’s going to be played seriously? Um.

It was the second appearance of Digby And Foster: Angels In Heaven that pulled me out of the book completely. I looked at the time (a bit later than I should’ve been awake, but not too late), firmly closed the book and turned out the light.

I don’t know if I’m going to finish this thing. So, dear readers, I ask you: Is it worth it?

29 April, 2009
Lunch Fixin’s: Photographic Proof

Do you see what happens when I’m so excited by my culinary success that I feel compelled to run upstairs and grab the camera? Do you?

That’s the chicken I cooked yesterday, awaiting insertion to a bed of noodles (mixture of shells and rotini, as yet uncooked in the above picture) and grated cheese (cheddar of various sharpness, plus some other mixed cheeses, not pictured).

I’m such a dork. But I can live with that.

I refuse to take responsbility for any hunger pangs you may be experiencing on account of reading this post.

27 April, 2009
Testing The New Lighting Gear

Following Dad’s suggestion, I picked up a couple of “sunlight” bulbs for scene lighting from Freddy’s. A quick trip to Office Depot netted me a pair of flexible desk lamps to put ’em in, and here are the results:

Lighting Test: Li

Lighting Test: Rusty, LI, Score

The colored towels are there for testing purposes. As you can see, these ducks look pretty good now. My next trick will be to come up with a “set” of some kind. Mind you, I don’t plan to restrict things to just the one location, and in fact with sunnier weather on tap this weekend I’m considering getting some usable shots out-of-doors if at all possible.

Another, albeit less critical, task that I’d like to accomplish involves some softening of the lighting. Both Dad and Uncle Pete have given some good suggestions on that, it’s just a matter of acquiring materials and performing more tests. (Oh, shucky darn, I’ll have to take more pictures. Boo hoo.)

Progress, it is being made. Once the physical requirements are met, though, I’ll have the really tough work: Cranking out enough scripts to get a few weeks’ worth of material into the queue… and there’s the whole “gotta do something about the website design” thing, too. Ack. What have I gotten myself into?

17 April, 2009
Dialog Bubble Test Image

I tried to tweet about this, but for some reason folks were getting a 404 error… even though the image link was 100% correct. So. I don’t know whether WordPress or Apache is at fault. I don’t have the luxury of time to spend tracking it down, either, especially when a simpler solution can present itself: I can blog about it! Duh!

So. Here you go (click the image to embiggen):

Meet Poe. He’s a pretentious little twit duck. Figures he’s named after Edgar Allen, but everyone else knows that his name’s just short for poe-zur…

(Also, I won’t be using the Dragonbones font in the actual project. I just liked how it looked during testing so I kept it in the “final” image.)

13 April, 2009
Ducks, Redux

I still need to get my hands on a good light source for indoors (so if there any shutterbugs in the Rose City who have good tips on inexpensive lighting, let me know) but I wanted to show you what that earlier picture of my recently-cleaned ducks was supposed to look sort of like.

From left to right in that photograph is the starting lineup for that silly little project I’ve been prepping for: Rei, Shimako, Roger, Sachiko, Li, Poe, Neil, Rusty and Score.

The next bit of preparation will involve layout, image editing software & templates, and… fonts selections. Stay tuned, duck fans…

10 April, 2009
Duck Bathing And Color Correction

In anticipation of taking more pics of my modest collection of not-actually-rubber ducks, I decided to clean up some of the critters that’ve been… ahem… collecting dust for a while now. Spruce them up, you see. Ready them for the limelight, or at least the flashbulb. So I gave seven of the nine “main” ducks a quick dip in warm, soapy water and a good rinsing, followed by gentle patting-down with a towel.

Why only seven? Well, one of the stars of our show is Rusty, the cast iron duck. I don’t think he’s interested in watersports. Bad for his complexion, don’t you know. The other abstainer is our newest addition to the flock, a lovely Chinese-themed fellow that Kyla gave me this past weekend. He’s squeaky clean… thus far.

I also learned something about Rubba Ducks. Turns out that because of their unusual composition, over time some of them start to get… a bit sticky. Treatment with dishsoap and considerable patience can keep the condition under control, but he’s never going to be the sort you cuddle and carry around for kicks. Then again, he’s the one with the lip ring. I doubt that he wants cuddles.

Speaking of flashbulbs, I need to come up with a good indoor lighting system. Incandescent and CF bulbs aren’t going to cut it, as evidenced by the picture you see here of our starting lineup:

My color-adjustment skills aren’t up to the task of showing you that the towel is actually a nice deep green color. Ugh. Apparently I have a long way to go before indoor photography is a viable option… and as Dad warned me, the built-in flash is probably the weakest feature on the otherwise-splendid Pentax *ist DL.

One thing at a time. Progress is being made.

7 April, 2009