Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, part 6 of 3

    Um. Er. Hmm. It would seem that there’s a new H2G2 book coming out:

    An Englishman’s continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . .

    Arthur Dent’s accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident.

    Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

    Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.

    Arthur’s chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world’s oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up . . . again.

    And Another Thing . . . is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone’s favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

    It would be easy to go on a rant here about how they are raping Douglas Adams’ legacy, if not for the fact that DNA’s widow herself has blessed the project, not to mention there’s significant precedent (for example the Second Foundation Trilogy written after Asimov’s death, by scifi authors Benford, Bear and Brin). Plus, the long-awaited H2G2 movie was such a horrific waste of time that I think I’m all outraged-out as far as DNA’s legacy goes. I mean, what more could they possibly do? At least in a novel you have relative freedom to actually develop things like plot and whatnot. In a weird way, seeing the new Star Trek movie has also made me more amenable to giving someone else a chance at H2G2. It’s better than having nothing at all, and there’s a reasonable chance that it might even be good.

    This is actually old news – the BBC had an article on it last fall, with some more detail on the author:

    Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.

    He said he was “terrified” by the prospect of creating a new Hitchhiker book almost a quarter of a century after being introduced to what he described as a “slice of satirical genius” in his late teens.

    ‘Pressure’

    “My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series,” he said.

    “But on reflection I realised that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding on to the spirit of Douglas Adams.

    “I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books,” he said, adding that he was “determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written”.

    well, ok then. sigh. please don’t suck, ok? It comes out in October. I guess I could pre-order it… heh. am I pathetic or what?

  • the infinite Khan

    This is amazing.

    People always discount William Shatner as an over-actor, but this mesmerizing loop of his most famous syllable really highlights the incredible range of nonverbal emotion he is managing to convey with just a clenching of his jaw and a tic of his eye. This is only a few minutes long but apparently the full version is 15 minutes. This needs to be made into a screensaver or something.

    Somehow I think Chris Pine has a long way to go before he can deliver something similar. It should be noted that even in the alternate timeline of the movie, Khan is out there, waiting to be discovered.

    UPDATE – ah, Youtube! Here’s the complete Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in ten minutes.

    UPDATE 2 – and who can resist Wrath of Khan as a literal space opera, courtesy of Robot Chicken?

  • Coffeegasm: protection against Alzheimer’s

    The following has essentially zero impact on my habits, but it is worth crowing about all the same:

    A U.S. study has found drinking five cups a day not only protects against Alzheimer’s disease but may even reverse damage.

    Scientists at the University of Florida tested the theory on 55 mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s, giving half the test group caffeine in their water once signs of memory impairment became apparent.

    Astonishingly, and to the delight of the cafe latte set, those dosed up on caffeine performed far better on memory tests and thought-related skills than those who were not given caffeine.

    “The results are particularly exciting in that a reversal of pre-existing memory impairment is more difficult to achieve,” said study leader Dr. Gary Arendash in a BBC report. “They provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable ‘treatment’ for established Alzheimer’s disease [sufferers] and not simply a protective strategy.”

    “That’s important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people,” he added, “it easily enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process.”
    The team believes the application of caffeine has a preventative effect on the production of both the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid — the protein which forms destructive clumps in the brains of dementia patients.

    Those mice lucky enough to be dosed on caffeine showed up to a 50 percent reduction in the damaging protein. Dr. Arendash has called for further tests to see if the results can be replicated on humans.

    So, in a sense I can rationalize my Starbucks habit as a preventive health care expense. Incidentally, this is not the first study to suggest coffee’s beneficial effects wrt AD. Here’s a couple papers on PubMed I found when searching for “coffee alzheimer” – the second one is the paper referred to above.

    Alzheimer’s disease and coffee: a quantitative review.
    Barranco Quintana JL, Allam MF, Serrano Del Castillo A, Fernández-Crehuet Navajas R.
    Neurol Res. 2007 Jan;29(1):91-5.

    Caffeine protects Alzheimer’s mice against cognitive impairment and reduces brain beta-amyloid production.
    Arendash GW, Schleif W, Rezai-Zadeh K, Jackson EK, Zacharia LC, Cracchiolo JR, Shippy D, Tan J.
    Neuroscience. 2006 Nov 3;142(4):941-52. Epub 2006 Aug 28.

  • the infinite reading list

    Mark at Kaedrin has been posting detailed science fiction book reviews. I’ve been meaning to link for a while, he is now up to the third installment: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Check it out, very helpful in deciding what to read next (if I can tear myself away from Warcraft). Mark is currently reading Infinite Jest, and tackled the Baroque Cycle and Gravity’s Rainbow a while back too. I am seriously inspired.

  • Microsoft Bing: But It ‘s Not Google!

    I’ve been increasingly using Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing in lieu of Google for my casual searches. One of the things that appeals to me is how the search results are so much more organized and comprehensive than just a list of ten text items. Google’s spartan deisgn was cool and chic ten years ago but today it feels increasingly stale, and Bing is pulling from Apple’s playbook in tailoring the interface to users’ needs. Some examples: saved searches are essential for keeping track of what you’ve been researching, and the live preview of video thumbnails on mouseover saves you a click – and getting video and photos along with text links on the same search results page is a huge timesaver. I feel like I spend less time using Bing. Right now I stil have to manually decide to go to Bing but I intend to switch the default search engine on all my browsers for a few weeks – including Chrome – and see how that works out.

    Bing has been getting a lot of attention lately – there’s a piece on it in the New York Times, another in USA Today, and even a website, Bing Vs Google, that lets you see searches compared side-by-side. It’s good to shake things up – and Bing certainly has its rough spots, ut just like Google these should improve over time. The mere existence of Bing ensures that Google is forced to compete and innovate as well.

  • Kindle temptation and DX desire

    kindle2.jpg

    My friend Zack recently obtained the Kindle 2 and wrote up his initial impressions. Something I hadn’t considered was that the audio-book feature, where it will read the text aloud, is really useful for kids – his daughter loved it and I can see how my 2yr old would, too. Zack also found the bookmarks feature to be invaluable, though he hadn’t played with the annotations capability yet. The latter is really what interests me, because it’s really hard to review or discuss a book afterwards wthout notes taken during the reading process rather than after the fact.

    It’s worth noting that Amazon just dropped the price on the Kindle 2 by $60, from $359 to the magic $299 price point. This puts it right in line with the iPod Touch or other high-end music/video players. I don’t have an iPod either so for me the choice would boil down to either music and video on the go, or books. Frankly, the idea of video to go isn’t all that appealing to me, since video is even more attention-monopolizing than reading. Since the Kindle supports MP3 audio, I’m more tempted by the Kindle than I am by the iPod, though it’s safe to assume that most people buying a Kindle already have an iPod and.or an iPhone as well. I personally prefer to minimize my technological footprint, though. The Kindle really is an ideal device in that regard, and with most bestsellers selling for $10, would make reading convenient and affordable. I drop that much every week on Starbucks alone!

    I’m actually more interested in the Kindle DX because it has better PDF support, meaning I could use it to read research articles for my work. That would be pretty handy and almost justifies my buying one, but I just can’t rationalize it right now. I will probably wait until the end of the year, and maybe the DX will come down in price by then too. However if not for that, I’d have already picked up a Kindle at the reduced price. It’s just too tempting to ignore.

  • when addictions combine: Twitter + Warcraft = TweetCraft

    I recently passed on the Palm Pre because I realize it would be harder to tweet while driving. Yes, yes, I deserve all teh oppobrium such a statement should bring upon me. Still. it gives you an idea of my addiction to Twitter. In the meantime, I’ve been delving deeper into Warcraft and while my addiction there hasn’t quite reached my twitter levels, it still is enough of a compulsion that I was watching television of some beachfront yesterday evening and thought to myself, “hey that looks like the island I swam to off the coast of Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale”.

    So, I regard this latest technical innovation with the appropriate mixture of fearful sweat and eager drool – TweetCraft, an in-game twitter client for WoW. Here’s a video on how it works:

    Thus far I have been playing WoW without any addons of any kind. Obviously it’s time to break the virgin seal on my addons folder. I’ll be piping my tweets to the @otakusphere account. After I install the new hard drive on the gaming machine, that is.

    Aside – does anyone know when the patch comes out that lets you gain riding skill at level 20?

  • Fear the Japanese: bagelheads

    look what an injection of saline can do for you: (below the fold, for decency’s sake, though not NSFW)

    (more…)

  • Finding Ponyo

    The trailers for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff are out, and the influence of Disney/Pixar animation honcho John Lassiter is rather apparent from the poster art:

    PonyoPosterSm.jpg

    Check out that font, complete with little ocean wave! 🙂 Plus here’s a bonus image still from the movie, which makes me suspect that Ponyo is going to have a very Mai-from-Totoro personality:

    Here’s some more info on the film from AICN Anime:

    The film hits theatres August 14th.

    Noah Cyrus will voice the goldfish who wants to be a human and Frankie Jonas will be her human friend Sosuke while other cast members include Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin and Betty White.

    […]

    For hints on how Disney has handled the film, check out producer producer Frank Marshall’s recent conversation with Sci-Fi Wire.

    In January, Variety reported that John Pixar’s Lasseter was working with Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy to make Hayao Miyazaki/Ghibli’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea “the studio’s biggest hit ever Stateside.” According to the piece, Ghibli has been frustrated that their films have only found a niche audience about anime fans and arthouse goers.

    From the Variety piece:

    The goal is to boost both the number of screens and the box office take beyond Ghibli’s record for a U.S. release set by “Spirited Away,” the Miyazaki toon that earned a little more than $10 million on 714 screens in 2002 and 2003.

  • Fire warden of Kalimdor

    I’ve been immensely distracted within WoW by the midsummer fire festival quests. My obsession has been to find as many bonfires as possible, and grab all the flight points (FPs) along the way. This has been great for leveling – I started this with my human warrior Aabde around lvl 18 and am up to 23 – but it also has given me an excuse to sneak into practically every corner of Azeroth, especially areas that are way above my level. It’s been immensely entertaining, especially since there’s a real sense of accomplishment from being the lowest level character in the zone, and still managing the extinguish a Horde bonfire.

    I actually have found it easier to extinguish Horde bonfires on Kalimdor than in the Eastern Kingdoms. I also have managed to get all but three Alliance bonfires in Kalimdor, though the three remaining are the trickiest (Tanaris, Silithius, and Winterspring). I am honestly amazed at how easy it’s been to extinguish Horde bonfires, though. I have numerous strategies, ranging from just walking along the road (surprising number of bonfires are right outside the gates of Horde settlements, so you can go right up to them without getting aggro by the guards) to the infamous “corpse-hopping” where you systematically advance by getting killed, then ressurecting at max res radius in the direction of desired travel. And I wasn’t too shy to ask Guild members for an escort when I lacked another strategy – that’s how I hit the Horde bonfire in Dustwallow Marsh, thanks to a lvl 42 patron.

    My most innovative approach however was to swim. I swam from Ashenvale all the way to Feathermoon Stronghol along the west coast of Kalimdor. This got me in position to run through Feralas, and also hit the Horde bonfire in Desolace. I’m going to try to get into Tanaris next – I cant survive a run through Thousand Needles so this is my only way in. I’ll swim from Theramore and head south, then make my way to Gadgetzan. I’ve heard that if you die in the waters off Tanaris coast, you resurrect in Gadgetzan anyway, so this should be pretty easy.

    After Tanaris, I’ll try to get into Winterspring via Moonglade (I’m told that if I drown north of Auberdine, I can res inside the adjacent zone). And then I’ll try to figure out a way into Silithius, probably by asking someone lvl 80 to escort me in.

    Unfortunately I have five more bonfires to get in the Eastern Kingdoms, so I’ve given up on realistically achieving Fire Warden status there. But I think Kalimdor is within my reach. Anyone have any suggestions?