A New Cycle

corey    Books, Movies, News    

Happy New Years!

I know everyone keeps talking about the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asian, but please don’t forget to donate to the Red Cross.

I finally started to read the Baroque Cycle which has, to say the least, been interestingly weird the first few pages. Still trying to get use to the setting and nomenclature. The end of The Naked God was less interesting than I had expecting. I think Peter Hamilton ran out of steam and couldn’t finish with too much more information (probably be a whole nother book) but it is too bad the whole crisis + other issues are all solved in one final event.

Cheryl and I watched a couple of movies recently:

• Oceans Twelve – You’d probably like this if you liked the first Oceans Eleven, but I didn’t think it was exciting as it could have been.
• The Life Aquatic – I was expecting this to be a funny movie so I came away disappointed. Reminds me of About Schmidt .

And I saw a couple of DVDs:

• Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex – Only on the 3rd disc, but a pretty good series. If you liked the movie, Ghost in the Shell you’d probably enjoy this. It is a bit toned down from the movie, but it’s still good.

• This is Spinal Tap – First time I’ve seen this. Pretty funny movie, reminds me of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster .

I think that’s about it. Oh yah, Cheryl and I will be heading to Cancun at the end of the month for a week’s vacation, so that should be fun!

Games, Anime, Movies, More!

corey    Games, Military, Movies, News    

Ever have one of those days where everything is fine until a certain point and then it just rolls downhill from there? That was yesterday. Why? No clue. Maybe it had something to do with the Lunar Eclipse? Which, btw, was pretty cool.

The Red Sox have won the World Series. Yay.

Today also marks the beginning of the Guild Wars World Preview Event. You should hop on if you need something to do this weekend and want to check out a forth-coming game. It’s probably a total of 55megs to download to start playing, but you can create a character after the first initial 10megs or so. Some folks from F13 will be playing as well, hopefully we can get a guild going to try some Guild Vs Guild combat. If you play, look me up – I’ll be ‘Viin Seeven’.

I had a SUTA drill last weekend with our new One man; Ben is still the three man so we basically know what’s going on already, but our One man is new to being a One man and has to get use to his functions. We started our Initial Certification for weapons loading which is basically going through the steps to perform 60-day (use to be 30) Functional Checks and load various munitions (within a specified time frame). We got through the functional checks, Mk-82′s, AIM-9s, and AIM-120s. We’ll be doing another SUTA in November where we should be loading the rest of the standard munition types: Mavericks, GBUs, CBUs, JDAMs, and whatever else they think we should know. Unfortunately, I also have to go in for our new annual physical fitness exam on the 6th (which is the normal drill weekend, as opposed to the SUTA weekend); hopefully it won’t take more than a few hours, I don’t really want to be there for two weekends in a single month!

Jeremy and I saw the Van Helsing movie last week: It wasn’t that bad, it could have been worse (maybe not by much). It was sorta interesting, but some of the FX were funny and kinda threw it off. Of course, I like vampires and things of that nature so maybe I liked it a bit more than the average joe. 2 and 1/2 stars from me! **`

I also started watching Samurai Deeper Kyo but have only seen two episodes. Not sure what to make of it yet, so I’ll tell you more later. :)

For those of you familiar with SOE games such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and the new EverQuest 2, this quote from Raph Koster is pretty funny: FWIW, SOE has no such policy of intentionally releasing early. :P

You can find the full thread here at this Terra Nova thread I said Lunch, Not Launch!.

Apocalyptic

corey    Books, Movies    

For the first time ever, I saw Apocalypse Now, the long version (Redux). It’s actually a pretty good movie, even though it reminds me a lot of Catch 22: Everyone is insane. In Vietnam. Which makes you go insane. Somehow. Overall, though, I’d give it 4 stars. ****

Speaking of Vietnam, I finally watched, from start to finish, Good Morning, Vietnam. Great movie, very funny. Robin Williams pretty near his best. Four stars. ****

Also got to watch the cartoons for The Chronicles of Riddick and Van Helsing. I really liked both of them and wish they would make them as a series. I’d be willing to bet my bum leg that the Van Helsing cartoon is at least a star (if not 2!) better than the movie. I’ll let you know if I ever happen to watch it. 5 stars for both! *****

I got Scott Kurtz’s The Dork Ages in the mail today. I’ve only had a chance to flip through it but it looks pretty good. If you haven’t had a chance you should check out his online daily comic: www.pvponline.com.

I also got Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. I know I’m in the middle of the Reality Dysfunction series by Peter F Hamilton but I can’t wait to read it!

Some Movies

corey    Movies    

I’ve been wanting to post something on my World of Warcraft Stress Test experience but haven’t had the time to do so. I should be able to get to that shortly, but in the meantime I have a few movies to review.

24 Hour Party People – This is actually a pretty good film about the beginnings of the British Punk movement. (Of course, some people disagree with the term “punk”, but I’m just reading what the description of the movie says). You learn some interesting things and it’s a well done story. Pretty entertaining. 4 out of 5 stars seems about right. ****

Shaun of the Dead – This is another British film that spoofs Dawn of the Dead. Pretty funny, but since I haven’t actually seen Dawn of the Dead it probably could have been funnier. Somewhat gory in a couple places, but overall not too bad. Only 3 stars for me, but you might like it better. ***

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – This is very much a Rated G film. While it has some pretty cool scenes and interesting styling, the dialog was very limited and not very stimulating. I’d wait for video for this, but you should see it if you like the comic-book styling. ***

I’ve also been watching some anime:

Descendants of Darkness – Didn’t care for it very much. **

10 Tokyo Warriors – Netflix only has two discs for this series, but so far I like it. (no rating yet)

Last Exile – This series is really good. Flying wooden battleships, colonial musket standoffs, a cyberpunk Guild.. what more could you want? I definitely recommend watching. *****

Obviously we haven’t been watching very movies lately. I know I know, how can I support the average set maker if I just don’t watch movies? They aren’t even good enough to pirate! Sorry, those ads annoy me. For now we will stick to watching Reno 911, Family Guy, Futurama, and whatever else is good on cable TV.

Metallica, Bourne, and PAX!

corey    Games, Movies, Music, News    

We watched the Bourne Supremacy and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster this weekend. While Bourne was kinda same-ol’ same-ol’and a bit slow, Metallica was pretty interesting. Even if you don’t care for Metallica this is a great film highlighting the changes they’ve gone through over the years and an insight into what a multi-million dollar band deals with daily. Forget Bourne, see Metallica.

Cheryl and I are finishing up the arrangements for our trip to Seattle later this month. I was originally going simply to be at PAX (the Penny-Arcade Expo) in Bellevue. It’s turned into a vacation with Cheryl (which is more than fine), so we’ll be spending a week in Seattle. We hope to get to do some sea kayaking, sightsee Victoria, BC, and visit some of her relatives in Oregon.

PAX should be fun, I’m looking forward to the Soul Caliber 2 tournament. Jeremy is going as well; we’re suppose to be in the Splinter Cell tournament but since we haven’t been playing it I doubt we’ll get past the first round. Oh well, should still be fun! Maybe. If we last longer than 30 seconds.

Cheryl and I have been trying to plan out the days we have there, ie: go here this day, here this other day, blah blah. The Seattle area has so many islands and ferries that it’s getting annoying! We just want to go to Port Townsend and maybe jaunt over to Whidbey Island, but that means 4 ferries (there and back) unless we want an even longer car drive. Ah well, I’m sure it’ll all work out.