Monday Morning Musings [VI]

broderic on December 27, 2010

It's been awhile since the last post under this heading, but what better way to kick off a quiet week at the office. No one's around. Just me in the lab. No one to see that you're slacking off. Let's write a blog post about something!I figure that this one should be about the year that passed, 2010. While nothing spectacular happened, there are some highlights and lowlights to assess. Overall, another mediocre year in the life of BrowserMetrics.The best things to happen where the vacations with cousin Bob. It's a good time whenever he's around, but an ever better time when that time is spent in magical places: Disneyland and Hawaii. O, those were vacations to remember. Fun and sun. Surf, sand, and more. Lots of good things, good times, and good eats.Terrible things that happened this year. I never rode my bike. A good friend went back home. We had a couple of blizzards and I never made it to the slopes. My inaction on a lot of these issues was disturbing. Maybe I should get out more?Movies? Didn't watch too many. My Netflix queue is not getting serviced too much. Nothing is playing on TCM. I'm just waiting for something good.Books? Manga! Manga! Manga! From Uresawa to Uresawa: Pluto to 20th Century Boys. Lots of scifi in there: Saturn Apartments, Twin Spica, 7 Billion Needles. It's seems that I've run full circle to my reading habits although it's now manga. As for traditional books, not too much read.Anime! Too much torrenting, and not enough buying. K-ON! ended which makes me sad. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and Summer Wars anime movie were both released which makes me happy. Other anime to have watched: Oreimo, Amigami SS.There were lots of things I did this year. Just nothing spectacular. Have you done your year end retrospective as well?

Link of the Day [12.24.10]

broderic on December 24, 2010

Christmas Eve and if you don’t have that Christmas spirit then “Bah, humbug!” I’m home wrapping presents and doing last minute online shopping. It’s past midnight on the other side of the world, so it’s the 25th and Santa should be visiting those boys and girls of non-christian countries.

Stay safe this Christmas Eve.

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html

Scenes From The Maul

broderic on December 23, 2010

“She’s back.”

“Hey, dude. You’re girl’s back!”

“I heard you the first time. Stop the yelling.”

So I turn around, slowly, as cool as can be. Be the other side of the pillow. Be the other side of the pillow. She is there.

Ready?

broderic on December 23, 2010

This has nothing to do with Christmas, but everything to do with Christmas. It is the opening theme to the Haruhi movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. It takes place in December right around Christmas. The SOS Brigade would’ve had a nabe Christmas party unfortunately developments happened that side tracked the holidays. You just got to watch it. Of course, I’ve been telling you this for years now, but no one listens to me, because I have a blog. First, watch the two seasons of Haruhi and then watch the movie. I swear to kami-sama that you’ll enjoy! I think.

It’s an anime Christmas

broderic on December 23, 2010

A scene from Toradora anime during a school fest/Christmas dance. I haven’t seen Toradora in a while, but since I was searching out videos on youtube and found plenty of anime, I thought I would post this in the spirit of the season.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Although, you have to wonder what type of Christmas spirit occurs in Japan, a mostly non-Christian nation.

Tron: Legacy

broderic on December 19, 2010

At work, I had to take a training class on writing good requirements. Although, not directly involved with writing requirements, my software functional manager believed that it would help us lowly software engineers to identify terrible requirements that make our lives difficult. Once done the training class, I am now able to identify good requirements.

Good requirements are succinct, feasible, and unambiguous. Tron: Legacy makes a case for good requirements. Flynn says to CLU, “Let’s make the perfect world!” Those are terrible requirements. And from there, you have the downfall of the Grid.

Like the seed, I too am not totally bowled over by Tron: Legacy. The seed notes that the narrative was thin at times. It’s like they had the idea of making Tron 2, but never got around to understanding they needed a story for it. If you’ve seen the original, you’ve seen most of the latest iteration. Get sucked into the Grid. Check! Play games to the death. Check! Ride light cycles. Check! Hot computer chick. Check! Go to i/o! Check!

Lots of story beats from the original movie showed up in this movie. Problems arose when it tried to find its own way to tell the story. Is this an adventure film? Is this a father-son reunion film? Is this the Matrix? It’s all and none and the audience is left to marvel at awesome action set pieces, but can’t fathom the main story line. In the original, Tron there was a thread of a plot: get out of the Grid while attempting to find out the mysteries of Encom power. This movie pulled at one too many threads and didn’t place one in the forefront. Is this about the Grid or about the younger Flynn finding his father. Is this about father Flynn and his creation? Is this about playing Grid games? It’s all and none.

I am a fan of the original. This one gives us something short. Its not as innovative as the original. It needed a better story. I wish we had gotten one.

3 of 5 stars.

The Death of the DVD

broderic on December 18, 2010

I sent in my latest Netflix DVD yesterday and remembered that I have only a couple of movies in my queue. I decided to fill it out to the minimum 6 movies. Hitting up the Netflix site I am greeted with all their recommendations. I find some movies look interesting. I like the fact that the genres and categories it shows me are super specifc. I hate the fact that the major action you can do with each recommendation is to instantly stream a movie.

Listen, Netflix, you know that I am on the cheapest plan and that plan limits my streaming to one movie. Why would I want to stream when I just want to add DVDs to my queue? I just want DVDs. Two a month if I can watch them.

So I have to click on the movie title to get the “add to queue” feature back. Too many clicks. I may have to just cancel.