Author: Karel Kerezman

  • The Curse of the Serenity

    On Tuesday night the kids and I went to see the Wallace and Gromit feature, “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” It was funny, and particularly punny, not to mention incredibly well made as a piece of top-notch stop-motion animation. Nick Park and his crew clearly went all-out, even to the point of doing a fine job on the fur effects.

    This afternoon Kyla and I saw “Serenity.” (Not being die-hard Firefly fans, neither of us had a burning need to do so before this point.) It was about what I expected, and even a bit better than, truth be told. I wouldn’t say it was a great movie through-and-through, but it was wholly serviceable and generally transcended the genre trappings through a mixture of snappy dialogue and clever visuals.

    I wholeheartedly recommend catching either or both of these movies while they’re still in theaters. ‘Nuff said.

  • Pay In Advance

    My penance for daring to take a day off of work this week, apparently, is to have one of the most unpleasant workdays in recent memory just beforehand. Printers, Microsoft patch shenanigans, projectors, and nuke-and-repave jobs were the order of the day. Not only that, but my wonderful Neuros portable music player seems to be nearing battery death. Argh!

    The plan for this weekend is to relax as much as humanly possible. I enlisted some help this time, so wish us luck!

  • Hard to do that in mid-Atlantic, actually.

    As a follow-up to yesterday’s mini-rant, a clever reader sent me to this Grand Avenue comic. The really amusing parts here are that the comic was published the day before my rant, and that not only did they get the “to prove the world isn’t flat” part wrong, but also Columbus’ intended destination. (He was aiming for Japan, actually. They knew that Japan was east of China, so that’d be what they bumped into first, if they were correct about which ocean Japan was on.)

    None of this should stop you from finding the comic strip amusing, mind you. I got a laugh out of it, after all.

  • I used to think the world was flat.

    From a 3Com advertisement in the latest InformationWeek magazine:

    People told Columbus the world was flat.

    No. No, they didn’t. That was never the problem with getting funding for his little expedition. Sheesh. From the great Wikipedia, I quote:

    The widespread notion that Columbus encountered opposition based on the idea that the Earth was flat is a literary myth created by Washington Irving. Educated people in Columbus’s time agreed that the earth was round; anyone familiar with seafaring certainly knew it, since the roundness of the Earth forms the basis of celestial navigation. The main debate was over whether a ship could circumnavigate the planet without running out of food or getting stuck in windless regions.

    Argh. Maybe I shouldn’t get so worked up about this sort of thing, or perhaps I’ve watched too much of James Burke’s “The Day The Universe Changed” lately. (His presentation of the Columbus story is among the best you’ll find anywhere. Truly.) Still, shouldn’t we work to stamp out misinformation when and where we find it?

    Of course, in a society where “Intelligent Design” can be taken seriously, there’s a whole lot of stamping to be done…

    Wikipedia Christopher Columbus

  • And he’s off! (His rocker.)

    If you’ve been wondering when (if?) it would ever be a good time to add the anime site to your feed reader, I’m here to answer the question with a single word: Now.

    I’m going to be writing up recaps for the new series, Mai Otome, as it airs (and is fansubbed, of course). I will probably also pick one other show from the new season so I have some variety and a bit more of a challenge.

    Check it out, eh?

    Mai Otome #1

  • No, but I did something good anyway.

    I cleaned, today. Laundry, vacuuming, garbage, tidying. That’s why I didn’t get any work done on the anime site.

    That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Rumors that computer gaming and anime viewing had anything to do with my lack of website work are wholly unsubstantiated, I assure you.

    Ahem.