Random wibblings of an insane science fiction fan

 
Oh, Heroes, how very glad I am that I stuck with you. Who knew you were going to get this good?

And I was right, you are totally making Lost look bad, in terms of the, y'know, actual plot progression and the general sense of the writers having a clue where they're going. Not to mention your ability to establish more characterization with one set of flashbacks than Lost has done with entire seasons' worth.

You are now totally my favorite current American TV show. Just don't go screwing it up, now, 'kay?

Labels: tv shows

posted by Betty at 1:15 AM [8 comments]

 
Random Kitten Generator: Because some days, you just need a random kitten.

A public service announcement from George Takei: Takei takes on homophobia in his own, utterly inimitable way. Hee!

Trailers for the Simpsons movie: Man, I may have to break my "no more going to theaters until asshole movie-goers become extinct" rule for this one.

Geek Test: I am so astonished by the fact that I pretty much instantly got this question right that I immediately became convinced I must be wrong. I wasn't though. I find this slightly frightening... That's pretty damned geeky even for me.

Mythbusters quotes: Because I've been on a huge Mythbusters kick for months now. Sadly, many of these are not nearly as amusing if you can't hear their delivery.

Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel Rant: I found this extremely funny, largely because Pachelbel's canon in D is one of the few classical pieces I really love, and because I have noticed that it seems to be everywhere. Actual musicians are likely to find it even funnier.

Labels: random links

posted by Betty at 8:21 PM [3 comments]

 
Speaking of TV shows that don't deliver answers as promised by their marketing, I think this the ads and previews for the most recent Lost should have said, "This week, we spend an entire hour answering one question nobody actually gives a rat's ass about."

Honestly, is a little truth in advertising too much to ask?

Labels: tv shows

posted by Betty at 8:18 AM [3 comments]

 
Note to self: "I feel much better today" should really not be followed immediately by "therefore I will go and do lots of housework," or you are likely to feel the sudden need to lie down halfway through the vacuuming.

Sigh. Possibly I really just need food, considering that I haven't eaten anything yet today.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 1:41 PM [0 comments]

 
I feel much better today. Still kind of stuffy, but far less craptastic. I think it's having had a full night's sleep that makes the entire difference. Which made me think, man, this must be another sign that I'm getting older, this inability to deal with not getting enough rest. But then I remembered that, honestly, I've never functioned well on too little sleep. Which is kind of a comforting thought, oddly.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 11:37 AM [0 comments]

 
Ugh. Woke up this morning -- well, not technically "morning" as the sun wasn't even up yet -- after about three hours of sleep, with a head full of snot. Took a decongestant, which dried me out not quite enough to get back to sleep, but just enough for my bad eye to once again do that thing where my cornea tries to stick to my eyelid.

The eye doesn't hurt so much now, and I can mostly breathe OK, but I still feel like warmed-over crap. And I just had such a nice, happy three-day weekend, too.

I may just give up and call in sick this afternoon. Certainly at the moment I am kind of... minimally functional. Sigh.

Labels: bits of my life, whining

posted by Betty at 8:52 AM [0 comments]

 
So, the ads for next week's Heroes promise that we'll finally get answers to some of the show's mysteries. Rather surprisingly, given that pretty much every time any show's promised me that it's turned out to be a big, honkin' lie[*], I find I totally believe them. Unlike, say, Lost, which I'm still enjoying, but which tends to pile mystery on top of mystery without ever making anything any clearer, Heroes is doing a very nice job of feeding us genuinely relevant information as we go along, and slowly bringing things together in a way that feels like it's building to an actual, sensible conclusion, however far down the line that may be.

I doubt, however, that they will in fact give us the answer to the one, burning question that I have, namely: how is it possible that Hiro Nakamura gets even cuter with every passing episode? Forget stopping time, that's got to break the laws of physics somehow.


[*] Not that I'm still bitter about the final episode of Quantum Leap or anything. Much.

Labels: tv shows

posted by Betty at 10:45 PM [4 comments]

 

Labels: stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 4:17 PM [1 comments]

 

Micah Sanders You scored 66 Idealism, 25 Nonconformity, 54 Nerdiness

Can we play Scrabble tonight? Congratulations, you're Micah Sanders! You're good-natured, intelligent, perceptive, and naturally inclined toward technology. You're also quite innocent and loving. You've got a fondness for computers and Scrabble. Your best quality: You're extremely perceptive Your worst quality: You can be a little demanding at times

Link: The Heroes Personality Test written by freedomdegrees on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

(I've decided to start removing the "how you compared to other people your age and gender" thingies from this OKCupid tests, by the way. They seem to be broken anyway, or else nobody my age and gender ever takes them, because they always say 99% for everything.)

Labels: stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 5:29 PM [0 comments]

 
It appears that I now have so many DVDs on my Netflix queue that it will no longer allow me to add any more.

Sigh.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 12:27 AM [5 comments]

 
Dear world,

I wish it to be known that I am not wearing a red sweater in honor of Valentine's Day. I am wearing it because I want to get through enough bright-colored clothes to make up a full load of laundry.

Non-mushily yours,
Me

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 3:15 PM [2 comments]

 
I've been watching Heroes and enjoying it a lot, but there's one thing about it that is driving me absolutely crazy. Every time Christopher Eccleston's character comes on the screen, or even any time I think about him, I get Freddie Mercury singing in my head:

I'm the invisible man
I'm the invisible man
Incredible how you can
See right through me!

Stupid Queen's Greatest Hits album.

And while watching the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, which features a character called Dr. Roberts, I kept finding it nearly impossible to pay attention because of the immensely distracting Beatles performance inside my brain:

You're a new and better man,
He helps you to understand,
He does everything he can: Dr. Robert(s)

I really, really wish I knew how to get that sort of thing to shut off.


(Note: I still haven't seen Monday's episode of Heroes, by the way, so no spoilers, please!)

Labels: inside my brain, tv shows

posted by Betty at 2:28 PM [4 comments]

 

Haiku2 for maximumverbosit
matter entirely still i'll be interested to see what he was
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

I'm sure that's actually very profound and philosophical, somehow.

Labels: stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 1:01 PM [1 comments]

 

The Freethinker Way
Take Which Pantheon is Best for you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

Phaa! You need no stinking gods! You are an Atheist, a Freethinker, a Disbeliever, an Agnostic you have tossed out all the old ghosts & boogiemen and are set to march boldly into the future. Unless of course you are a stone fundamentalist Debunker and are spending most of your time bashing those not on THE way, but hey, to each their own.

Labels: religion, stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 12:46 PM [0 comments]

 
Yeah, I'm several days later with this regular meme-thing than I usually am. I told you that time was getting away from me lately. But here we go:

Current clothes: Blue pajama bottoms with little pictures of sheep on 'em. Extra-large black pocket t-shirt. Dinosaur slippers. I'll get dressed for real later.

Current mood: Good. This last week has been pretty stressful, for a number of really stupid reasons, so yesterday was my designated day to catch up with all the stuff I was behind on, and then just quietly unwind. It worked very well: I now have clean clothes and groceries, and I feel much more relaxed.

Current music: Most recently, yet more randomly-generated playlists. I think the iPod was leaning heavily towards Gordon Lightfoot and Rush, which I suppose is an interesting combination. Last album played was Carbon Leaf's Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat, or at least part of it.

Current annoyance: I don't know whether it's just my allergies, or whether I actually have a cold, but either way, there is snot, especially when I wake up in the morning. I do not like it.

Current thing: Getting all stressed out about random stupid stuff. Although hopefully yesterday hit the reset button on that one.

Current desktop picture: A Cyberman smashing through my monitor again.

Current song in head: Leonard Cohen's "Democracy."

Current book: Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose. This is the last of the Eighth Doctor books before I start hitting gaps in what I can find. Unless amazon.co.uk actually comes through with Time Zero for me, that is, but I'm not holding my breath. I don't suppose anybody reading this knows where I can find a reasonably-priced copy of that anywhere? I don't even care what kind of shape it's in, as long as it has all the pages. I just want to read the damned thing.

Current DVD in player: Nothing at the moment: I've opted for catching up on the backlog of stuff on the TiVo instead lately. Most recent disk in the player was season one of Coupling, a British comedy series that was recommended to me by a couple of people. It's pretty funny, I guess, but it has much, much more of an American sitcom sensibility than a British one, which I found kind of disappointing. I don't much like American-style sitcoms, in general, and the exceptions are usually the more intellectual ones, with strong, quirky characters. Think, say, Frasier. And Coupling... is really not Frasier. It's pretty much nothing but a series of sex jokes, and six episodes in, I still know absolutely nothing about these characters that doesn't directly involve their sex lives. It's well-done if you like that sort of thing, and I'm not sorry I gave it a try, but I probably won't bother with future seasons. Next up on DVD is season two of Stargate SG-1, a series which, based on what I've seen so far, is way more entertaining than it has any legitimate right to be.

Current refreshment: My morning coffee. Hey, I work late. It's still morning to me. *slurps coffee* Damn it, it's getting cold. *wanders off to kitchen briefly in search of more, warmer coffee*

Current worry: I had tons of them last week, but I've forgotten most of them now. Told ya I had a successful Saturday!

Current thought: Mmmmm, coffee.... *slurp*

Labels: currently, meme

posted by Betty at 1:56 PM [2 comments]

 
Burning a Candle at Both Ends: What happens when you burn a candle at both ends? Visual proof that physics is really cool.

Handmade Star Wars: The Death Star battle, re-enacted by, uh, hands.

The Face Transformer: Upload a picture of your (or someone else's) face, and see it rendered into a variety of styles.

KOMPSAT-2 image of VLA telescope: Terrific picture of the VLA taken from space.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: A 50-minute interview with Richard Feynman, filmed, I think, in 1981. Illustrates beautifully just why this guy is one of my personal all-time heroes.
posted by Betty at 2:57 PM [4 comments]

 
So, today I bought a 1 GB USB flash drive for $14.49. One gigabyte of data, in my pocket, for less than fifteen bucks.

Damn, but living in the 21st century is cool.
posted by Betty at 8:58 PM [15 comments]

 
How the hell is it the fifth of February already? Where is the time going lately, and how do I get there so I can take some of it back?

Labels: inside my brain, random thoughts

posted by Betty at 2:10 PM [3 comments]

 
OK, that last entry was actually meant to be posted ages and ages ago, but I made the mistake, when I went to update the blog, of checking to see whether perhaps Blogger actually meant it this time when they said they were ready for me to switch over to the new version. Surprisingly enough, they said they were, so I figured, hey, cool, I've got a little while before work, I can get that set up, make my post, play around with it a bit, see how it is.

So I told 'em to go ahead and was informed that it would probably take a few minutes, maybe a little longer if I had a large blog. A few minutes later I was told to be patient, it was still going, it'd be just a little while longer. Nearly six hours later, long after I'd already left for work, I got the notice that it was finally finished. Way to start me off on the right foot, Blogger. Sigh.

Anyway, everything looks slightly different now, which is throwing me off a bit, but I think the improvements noticeable so far may actually be improvements. Posting does seem to be a bit more convenient, at least, and they've adopted something very much like gmail's spellchecker interface, which I was practically begging them to do a year or so ago. So, yay for that, at least!

And I can tag posts with labels now, as you may notice at the bottom of this entry and the last one. That might be useful, somehow. (But, no, I'm not going to go back and retroactively tag the 2,000+ earlier posts. I'm not that obsessive.)

Do let me know if anything suddenly looks broken or weird. (In bad new ways, that is, as opposed to my usual weirdness.) I may do some experimenting with the layout, etc. at some point in the future, but that's certainly not happening tonight. Not after I had to wait six hours to get my stupid blog back.

Labels: about this blog, annoyed ranting

posted by Betty at 12:35 AM [10 comments]

 
I'm trying to convince myself that the fact that I'm having trouble finding some of the BBC Eighth Doctor books, now that I'm within a dozen or so books of finishing the series, does not, in fact, actually constitute an emergency. I'm having a little trouble doing it, though.

Sometimes I worry a little bit about my sense of priorities.

Labels: books, doctor who, inside my brain

posted by Betty at 12:33 AM [5 comments]