Nearing the end

Of the year, that is. This will be the last post on this blog for the year 2007. I've finished packing my stuff, and I'll be leaving for my hometown in approximately 7 hours. I'll have my laptop with me, but no access to them Internets, so there won't be any real updates for the next ten days or so.

I had initially thought of doing a "Year in Recap" sort of thing, but eh. Everybody does that anyway, and my own effort wouldn't really add anything special. I can however make a quick mention of my favorite "things" of the year.

Music: Magic - Bruce Springsteen
Movie: The Bourne Ultimatum
Videogame: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: And Justice For All
Book: Harry Po... hah, as if! Didn't really read any books that came out in '07. Had I finished the Greek novel "Του φιδιού το Γάλα" ("The Snake's Milk" or something along those lines) already, that would have been my choice.
TV Show: House M.D.
Comic book: Thor

One year ago this day, I was thinking that 2006 was a decent, but seriously uneventful year. Well, 2007 was anything but uneventful... And that means that lots of bad happened along with the good. This condition has a name, you may be familiar with it. It's called "Life."

2007 was certainly a bad year for my country, Greece. But that goes beyond the point of this post. I might get back to it in '08.

Regrets for '07? Not managing to finish the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I started all the way back in late January '07 with A Game of Thrones, as I'm still 600 pages away from finishing A Feast for Crows. Unless I go on a total reading binge in the remaining two days, which has happened in the past. Also, never managing to finish those damn articles for this blog, I hope I'll get back to them eventually.

Things to look forward to in '08? Lots. Metal Gear Solid 4, the Dark Knight, new Indiana Jones and X-Files movies, A Dance With Dragons (fingers crossed) to name just a few. Hopefully a live gig here or there too. Shame I won't get to enjoy most of those as I'll be stuck cleaning toilets and sweeping yards in the army. Such glorious times to come!

Ah, but this is no time to whine. No matter how forced it may seem at times, 'tis the season to be jolly. Smile ya bastards, it's free.

Have a happy new year.

One last...

YouTube link for the year. Mainly because I want to have 20 posts for the month, but also because since this blog is more or less a repository of things I like, I felt like it belonged here.

It's a collection of art inspired by the series A Song of Ice and Fire, scrolled through with the 300 and Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks playing in the background. I would have preferred a more suitable soundtrack, but it does its job.

Obvious spoiler warnings apply to those who haven't read the books, but I truly believe that if you haven't read the books, you won't really enjoy this video either. Not all the artwork is of the same level, but a great part of it is nothing short of stunning. That image from the Red Wedding however, while brilliant... I could have done without it. I still haven't gotten over that one.

Because I said I would

Even thought it's been more than a month since I did. I did remember about it yesterday though, since these are the last days of the year and you tend to go on full "The Year in Retrospect" mode.

What am I talking about? The last few minutes of Veronica Mars, my favorite TV show of recent years. Many people hated the series finale (it was only designed as a season finale, after all) but for me it works wonderfully. It's a sad ending, but VM was never the most cheerful of shows to begin with, and it fits with the Noir-atmosphere of Season 1.

Nothing but spoilers from here on.

From the first moments of the series you get introduced to the main themes; life and loss go hand-to-hand, the people will love will eventually let you down, and yet you still cling to them regardless of that. Not because it's all instinct, but because we choose to do so.

All these ideas are so beautifully put together in the following scene. Veronica has let her dad down and vice-versa, and the future is mainly uncertain, except for the fact that Keith is not going to be re-elected. What happens from there on is not as important, as we now know that Veronica's bond with her father, one of -if not- the defining aspects of the show, is as strong as ever. Nothing else is writ on stone, anything is possible. After all, it even rains in California sometimes...



I'm fairly certain the music theme from the scene where the Mars family has dinner is the same as in the scene where Veronica first talks to the viewers about her mother, in the very first episode of season 1. A very nice reference, if so.

Obama's "Our Moment is Now" Speech

I may not be American, but I take special interest in American politics, if perhaps only so that I'll be up to date with Jon Stewart's jokes.

In any case, I've been trying to follow Barack Obama's campaign closely, as I feel there's something different about the guy. Being European, I'm mostly interested in his foreign policies and on that respect he's not that different from what we Europeans have come to expect from a would-be American president. Still, his domestic policies do seem to be rather different, on paper at least.

His "Our Moment is Now" speech which I'll link to below is definitely powerful, and I liked how he avoided pointing too many fingers at the rest of the candidates (something all too common in Greek politics) and rather called the people for unity. Naturally, nobody's that idealistic and you should never, ever trust a word a politician says, but you never know. He might actually do a good job if he's elected.



(This post is seriously lacking. I'd re-write it but I'm too stuffed with food to do such a thing.)

AHHHHHHH! (Street Fighter 4)

I already had several updates planned for tonight, since as of today I'll be away for Holidays and won't update for a while.

But then I found out about the new in-game Street Fighter 4 videos that were released yesterday (hey, I'm slow) and well, my priorities had to change.

Some people complain about the art direction of this game. I want some of what they're smoking. Don't expect any other sort of critique from me, I'm as biased as a fanboy can be when it comes to Street Fighter. I grew up with the damn genre, screw you and your objectivism.

Video #1:


Street Fighter IV `Hadoken` HD (WMV)

Find the second video here.

Re-Domination

I like subtle humor, especially irony, as much as the next guy. Humor doesn't have to be lolololroflmao funny in order to work. Hell, if somebody put a gun to my head and asked me to choose, I'd probably choose subtle humor over say, a fart joke. Not that I'd appreciate being threatened by a gun and being asked such inane questions, mind you.

At any rate, despite any personal preferences, there's times when ridiculous, over-the-top, obnoxious humor works so damn well. Take for example the Powerthirst video, which I posted in September. It's utterly silly, but I find it hilarious.

All of the above is just an elaborate way of saying that I found out that there's a Powerthirst 2 video out, and my justification on why I like it.

"If God gives you lemons, YOU FIND A NEW GOD."

And subtlety be damned. No, not the rogue talent tree in WoW, I can't live without Dirty Tricks.

You buy Doovdé?

I wasn't familiar with the Fonejacker, but apparently he's something of a phenomenon on the Internets. I generally find pranks a bit retarded, and not always that funny, but there's something in this Doovdé thing.

I might be reading way too much into this, but I find that the following video is a wonderful satire of a certain aspect of today's societies. This obsession with technology and related abbreviations is really getting out of hand. And while I understand the bit about technology, why is it that it's necessary all of a sudden to memorize myriads of acronyms that might mean a billion different things, depending on the context? And why is it that someone is considered an idiot for not knowing said acronyms?

It doesn't affect my generation that much, and definitely not the one following mine, but people like 30 years ago barely had a TV and/or a radio in their house while growing up, especially in countries like Greece. How are they supposed to learn all these things? What's even better is that in most cases, even the people laughing at others when they don't know how to pronounce "DVD" don't really know what the acronyms actually mean, they just memorize them. For example, do you know what "NTSC" stands for? I do, but my mind has endless capacity for useless information.

Anyway, it's exactly these reasons why I find this "Jerk" video so damn funny. Watch it and make up your mind for yourselves:

Alizée is back

This isn't exactly news, as her new album has been around for a while. But it makes for a nice Christmas-present story, plus I needed a filler post for today.

She's as stunning as ever, and I still like her music, for some strange, unexplained reason.



If you don't know who she is, I pity you.

A Christmas Carol

This is a bit late, but I had a few drinks earlier and then I was dragged into a heroic Mechanar run (that being a dungeon in WoW. Yes, I played WoW on Christmas day. I am doomed). On the bright side, I'm three badges away from my Ninja boots.

In any case, it was Christmas today. A lot of people are ranting about how commercialized it all is, how the only point of these celebrations is to get you to spent money and how it's all useless and all that. Well, I find that it's only useless and meaningless if you spent your money on shit you can neither afford nor really need. Yes, the use of the word "shit" really is needed here. However, there's nothing wrong with buying a little gift that's gonna make you a little happier than usual (*hint hint, nudge nudge* Buy me Guitar Hero 3 please.)

Which brings me to the other thing; people complaining about being forced to be happy over the holiday season. I do agree that you're practically forced to be "cheerful and merry" over this time of year, but let's face it: Being happy is much more fun than being all glum. I see the holiday season as an excuse to forget about the things that bring me down on a daily basis, and try to be a little less gloomy than usual. That's all there is to it.

Don't forget, you might get on some people's nerves by being happy, but at least you won't bore them silly, which will be the case when you're being all depressive.

On a related matter, one of the movies I loved as a kid and tried to watch on every single year was Mickey's Christmas Carol. I was a huge fan of Disney movies and comics as a kid, but this one was special to me. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it on YouTube earlier this week. I'm not quite sure how long it will remain there, but for now I'm just going to watch the movie, reminisce about the past and try not to be gloomy. It ain't that hard, you should try it too.

Watch part one here:



The rest can be found here: Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

Merry (belated) friggin' Christmas people.

The Page 69 Test

Things have kinda been messy for the past week. This meant that my mood was too horrible for me to do anything else than stay in front of my PC and listen to music/play WoW all day, but look on the bright side: My character has epixx purpleness now.

The situation I was in is sorta better now, though not yet solved. On the real bright side of things, it means I may have to finally leave Greece. Definitely no bad thing.

And since I'm whining, I'd like to say this: Reading through the post I made exactly one year, at this time there was Die Hard on TV. This year, there's a guy with a bad English accent butchering Sinatra songs. God hates us!

*ahem*

Anyway, I did pick up a few things worth noting these days, for example, ever heard of the Page 69 Test? It's an idea put forth by literary critic and media theorist Marshall McLuhan. The gist of it is, if you read through page 69 of a random book and you like it, you'll end up liking the book itself and we should buy it. I guess he chose 69 because it's such a catchy number, not to mention that the plot will have probably started rolling by then. There's also a blog dedicated to this theory.

I'm not too sure about this, as for example when it comes to the first part of the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, 150 pages seem to be the magic number for most people. Usually no-one is impressed until that point, but when you reach page 150 it becomes too hard to put the book down. In my case, it took me like two months to read through the first 150 pages, and after that I read 150 more in one day. True story.

Still, it's an interesting theory, and worth looking into it. I'll do the test on American Gods and some other of my favorite books.

And speaking of the ASoIaF series, I came across a hilarious video combining both the series and the famous Leeroy Jenkins WoW fan-made character and video. In order to understand what's going on you have to be really familiar with both the ASoIaF series and the Leeroy video, and as such it has a limited target group, but I thought it was hilarious so that's all that matters. Here's the video itself:

13

And in case you missed it...

Led Zeppelin reunited (sans John Bonham of course, who passed away in 1980) for just one concert, exactly one week ago. I was really bummed I wasn't there, but so were most others. I don't think there was a concert place big enough to hold all the Led Zeppelin fans that wanted to attend this concert.

At any rate, if you belong in that category, and even if you don't, here's Stairway to Heaven, taken straight from that gig. Not the same as being there, but it's the next best thing. Don't expect any comments on the quality of the concert, it's a fracking Led Zeppelin reunion, it's awesome by definition.



(My English -and Greek- is so broken these days, I blame the lack of sleep.)

Why So Serious?

Okay, why are you here? Didn't you hear that the first trailer for The Dark Knight has come out? Go watch it now!

Back already? Alright, let me tell you why I liked it that much then. First of all, I'm not even going to try and hide the fact that I'm a huge fan of the Batman Begins movie. In fact, I'm a total nerd for it. But a lot of people were worried about the decision of Christopher Nolan, director of that film to cast Heath Ledger as the Joker, Batman's iconic adversary. That's the same Heath Ledger that was in Brokeback Mountain, yes. If there were any moronic jokes you'd like to make, now would be the time.

Anyway, I never doubted Ledger's talent as an actor, so I always believed he could pull it off. This trailer has proved me right . And the Joker was what was going to make or break this movie from the beginning. The reason? It's a character that's so difficult to portray for what he is, a sociopath and a murderer, with no reservations about... anything, really. Yet he's been presented as a simple clown with a penchant for killing all too many times, essentially more amusing (in a sick way, but still) than frightening. But the real Joker is exactly that, frightening.

He's frightening in a way that few (comic book or otherwise) villains can be. Not because he's physically imposing, he's pretty much an average Joe in that department, and in a physical fight Batman would wipe the floor with him. Nor is he really that intelligent. I mean, he is pretty damn smart, but Batman is still smarter than him, heck I doubt anyone is smarter than Batman.

No, what makes the Joker frightening, and such an excellent villain for the control-freak Batman, is the fact that he's a total nutjob of a killer. He'd kill anyone without one shred of remorse, he never feels fear about anything, he is completely amoral and chaotic and simply does not care. About anything. He's so removed from what our usual definition of a person is, that it's simply unnatural, yet still in a plausible way. And unnatural things are always scary, after all. He is almost the polar opposite of Batman, who has his own strong personal moral code, likes to have complete control over everything and go into any fight after a long and careful period of planning and preparing.

To make a gross generalization here, if Batman is supposed to be the personification of Fear (as so successfully presented in the Batman Begins movie) -then the Joker is the personification of Insanity.

And then there's the laugh... Oh gods, that laugh. Even though I'm a fan of Ledger, I was amazed that this usually low-key guy was able of pulling off that demented, hyena-like laugh that is guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.

I know it's just a trailer, but given the quality of the first movie and Nolan's successful movie record so far, the quality of the Joker's portrayal was the major concern for most people. And if anything, the trailer has shown that it's a successful one. Just pay attention to the scenes where the Joker is licking his lips while Maggie Gylenhaal (so glad to see her replace Katie Holmes) or the scene where he sticks the upper part of his body outside of a police car. Especially that last scene, he seems so serene and carefree, almost like a child, while maintaining a rather sick expression on his face. All that while presumably trying to escape the police. Flawless.

I'm probably going to be in the army by the time the movie comes out, but what can you do? If worse comes to worst, I'll spend a few days in the army jail for bailing out of the camp. Hurr.

DivX Pro 6 for free

Since the previous post of this day was about some really bad news, here's some good news for a change.

For an apparently limited time ("holiday download" is what they are calling it) you can get the DivX 6 Pro bundle for the bargain price of... not a single penny.

With it, you get the DivX codec, file converter, video player and web player (ie. what Stage6 is using.) I'm not the biggest fan of DivX, but it's hard to argue against that price, really.

My guess is that this offer won't be around for much longer, Christmas would be a good bet, so if you're interested in getting a copy just click here.

This can't be life V.2

Terry Pratchett, the famous author of the Discworld series, is reported to be suffering by Alzheimer's.

Pratchett, 59, arguably one of the funniest people in the world/universe comment on his situation was the following:

"I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think."

This has only added to my respect for the man. I first came across his Discworld universe in the eponymous adventure game that came out in 1994, followed by a few Discworld novels and Bad Omens, which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman (and which I've shamelessly stolen from you, Tom.)

Alzheimer's disease is such an unfair situation to go through, both for the person and the ones near him or her. My best wishes to you and your family Mr. Pratchett.

Lost Season 4 trailer

I was away for 4-5 days, as I paid a short visit to my hometown and saw some friends there. Also played a lot of Assassin's Creed and more Guitar Hero 3 than I ever thought I'd do. That is to say, I never thought I'd play any game of that series, at all.

But sometimes it just happens, you're sitting there, watching your friends play songs which you know but never could be bothered to try and play in a faux-guitar controller, and suddenly one of them unlocks Pearl Jam's Even Flow. After that, all you can think is "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD AND HOLY IN THIS WORLD, GIVE ME THAT DAMN GUITAR AND LET ME PLAY!"

It kind of goes downhill from there. But it's so fun you don't give a damn.

Anyway, the point of this post is the new Season 4 trailer of Lost. It's short, around 30 seconds of actual footage, but it's at least it's something! I'm really looking forward to seeing where they'll go after the complete mindfuck that was the Season 3 finale.



Was that Charlie..?

Cassandra and her Dream

This will be a little post on Woody Allen's latest film, Cassandra's Dream, I didn't want it to be lost in the randomness that was the "SUPRISE BUTTSECKS" earlier post.

Cassandra's Dream is the spiritual sequel of sorts to Allen's '05 film, Match Point. Similarly to that one, there's a significant lack of humor, New York, jazz music and Woody Allen himself in this movie. Some people didn't really warm up to this, having been used to Allen's movies of the last 30 years. Still, Match Point was a bigger success with the critics than Cassandra's Dream it seems.

I was never one to pay much attention to the critics, though, especially when it came to badly-received Allen movies. I openly admit to being a Woody Allen fanboy, I've loved a lot of his so-called "failures", including the Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Holywood Ending, and last year's Scoop. They're funny, witty, feel-good movies, and I genuinely have a good time watching them. I don't see why I shouldn't like them, even if they are not as deep or sophisticated as some of Allen's better movies, like Annie Hall or Hannah and her Sisters.

On a side-note, if for Allen filming one movie every year is a form of therapy, then watching said movie is a form of therapy for me. End of side-note.

Back to Cassandra's Dream, the lack of all the usual Allen trademarks doesn't hit you as bad as in Match Point, in which for the first 30 minutes I wasn't quite sure what I was watching. In Match Point it honestly felt that Allen himself wasn't quite sure where he was going either, as those first 30 minutes kind of dragged along without really going anywhere. The rest of the movie made up for that, though.

Anyway, seriously back to Cassandra's Dream now, the first thing that should get your attention is the cinematography, which is brilliant and beautiful, and the music. For the first time in ages (if not ever), Allen used original music in a movie of his, created by the acclaimed composer Phillip Glass. It really makes a difference, and helps elevate the most important parts of the movie.

As for the script of the movie itself, which has been the most criticized, while not without its faults, it's still really good. It may be somewhat predictable and perhaps not that original, but it's very deep, with a lot of allusions and metaphors, not to mention that it deals with some of Allen's (and mine) favorite themes. Death being, quite unsurprisingly, one of them, but also irony, on a cosmic level. Death because deciding who is to live and who is to die is tricky, risky business and comes with a lot of consequences, and irony because there's always a little detail that we have no power over that may very well affect the entire outcome of an event.

What came as a bit of a surprise to me was the main characters, portrayed by Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrel. While not as two-dimensional as some critics might have you think, they're still not that well-developed and feel sometimes as a little more detailed stock character, especially Farrel's Terry. This may have to do with the fact that Farrel is a terrible actor, but there's no excuse for McGregor's Ian. Ian, while brought to life by a good performance by McGregor, still feels a little like the generic ambitious underachiever.

On the other hand, the secondary characters are wonderful, and often catch you by surprise. I was especially fond of the character of Uncle Howard, an opportunist with his own moral rules. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but he's the main driving force behind the story, he is the one that sets the brothers Ian and Terry to kill a man they don't even know, after all. I also enjoyed the father of the two boys (called simply "Mr. Blaine, we never learn his first name), he's pretty much Joe Average, but with a lot of conventional wisdom to share. Some of his lines really did catch me by surprise. And then there's Hayley Atwell's character, Angela Stark, who really makes an impression on you. I guess the character must be interesting, but Ms. Atwell is so damn beautiful you won't even care. I mean it!

All in all, I find that Cassandra's Dream is a good drama, though Match Point was indeed the better movie, and Crimes and Misdemeanors is still Allen's finest in that regard. But in its own rights, Cassandra's Dream is a fine movie, that should be enjoyed by everyone, be they Allen fans or not.

As for me, would I prefer it if Woody Allen went back to New York and filmed comedies there, under a Jazz soundtrack? Yes, I would. But I like this different batch of movies he has released lately as well, so I'm not complaining.

More on Facebook (and Heroes)

In an earlier post, I briefly talked about Facebook and its more shady sides. This is a few days old, but recently the New York Times had an article on another "interesting" new feature, namely a new advertising program.

What does this program do? It sends messages to users' friends about what they're buying on other websites. If that's not a violation of privacy, I don't know what is. Now all your friends will find out about that inflatable sex doll you just ordered!

*ahem* Anyway, I won't spend more time on this than I should. I generally don't jump on bandwagons, in this case the Facebook love/hate, but this felt important enough to note.

As for the TV show Heroes, it's really getting dangerously close to getting a second Notice, meaning it will become dead to me. Seriously, this second season is nothing short of a disaster. Horrible plots that seem to go nowhere, ridiculous characters, every single cliché in the book... Even when compared to comic books, it's become less Uncanny X-Men and more West Coast Avengers. Unoriginal, drab, dull, just plain bad.

The reason for this? Well, something comes to mind. Since the first ten episodes of season one or so, there was this rumor that there would be a whole new cast of heroes for season two, since the original bunch would have their storylines completed at the season finale. Which they did. But then the show started becoming more and more successful, and people started loving the characters. Why, I do not know. But that's besides the point, as the season progressed, we started hearing rumors than few, perhaps a lot, of the heroes would remain for season two as well.

Then season two came along, and we found out that all the characters had remained. Even Sylar, the main villain, who only survived thanks to the age-old cliché, "Why check the bad guy's dead body to make sure he's dead? That'd make too much sense!" Oh, except D.L. I guess, who never figured out how to phase through a bullet. I mean, seriously. Once, I'd understand it. But being shot twice?

At any rate, season two progressed, with most characters never really going anywhere. After all, they weren't really meant to, their stories were over. Their quests were finished.

And then people started resurrecting. If there's one thing you can do to make people lose interest, is killing characters and then bringing them back like it's no big deal. This isn't Dragonball Z, people. Not only it makes their deaths/sacrifices meaningless, it's also incredibly lazy. It's the easy way out of a tough situation for a character, and also the less interesting one.

I'm ranting, so the last thing I'd like to say is that if you thought the castaways of Lost act like morons sometimes, then the cast of Heroes must be really flippin' retarded. Honestly, you're about to make one of the biggest, most important, revelations in human history, you have not one but two mind-readers with you, and you fall right into a sniper's trap? Are you kidding me? Even if there will be an explanation for it (the killer could "cloak" himself) there's better ways to kill off Nathan Petrelli (Spoilers, hah!) than this. If he stays dead, nobody seems to do anyway.

Ah, nothing like letting loose of your frustration through blabbing mindlessly. It's oh so sweet.

Last thing for this post would be the following video, a good title for it would be "SUPRISE BUTTSECKS" and it's not really suitable for work. It's not really that funny, and I cannot imagine why the person filming didn't put down the camera to help... But if this happened to every snot-nosed kid that just won't shut his damn mouth when playing an online game, the internets would be a much better place.

Does history repeat itself?

Never one to keep up with news stories as they come up, I only recently found out about the draw for the qualifying groups of Euro 2008. That's the one England didn't qualify for.

Reigning champions Greece (42 months after the fact, it still feels wrong to read/write this) have been drawn with Spain, Russia and Sweden. Definitely not an easy group to qualify from, as all four teams are at about the same level of quality.

What's interesting to note, however, is that this is almost the same group as the one Greece was in the Euro 2004 tournament, from which they qualified and went on to win the championship, with the exception of Sweden which has replaced 04's Portugal. And Portugal is the better team, not to mention that they were the hosts that year.

I'm not saying that things will happen the same way, but the games Lady Luck plays are funny sometimes. Moreover, Greece generally tends to do well in a group when either Russia or the former USSR is there too. Is this mere coincidence? Probably, but who cares, little trivia like this make sports more fun to watch.

For the record, in 2004 Greece defeated Portugal 2-1, had a 1-1 draw against Spain and lost to Russia 1-2 in the last group game. It was the only game we lost, and it almost was enough to miss out on qualifying from the group. Should be really interesting to see the rematch.

The first game against Sveden will take place on June 10, so still a while to go. Let's see what happens.

28 years ago...

(and one day, this post is seven minutes late, shh!)

On December 2, 1979, Nikos Galis played his first game ever with Ares Thessaloniki. This was a milestone not only for the team of Ares, but for Greek basketball in general. Thanks to these guy (and a few others) the Greek national basketball team stop being a decent team, and became an excellent one, among Europe's finest.

If not for Galis, who knows what would have happened. The current coach to the Greek national team, Panagiotis Giannakis, was perhaps almost as good a player, but Galis was a showman. He was the guy that everyone went to watch, the one that everyone was speaking about. And he was one hell of a scorer, rivaling even the late Drazen Petrovic.

Sadly, Galis was playing at a time when non-American players weren't that popular in the NBA, so it was hard for him to play in a team of that league, even if he were Greek-American himself. Had he been born twenty years later, he'd probably be a major player in the NBA right now. My only concern would be the fact that he was rather slow, while NBA players are generally quite fast. Anyway, not much use in discussing what-ifs, except for the fun of it.

Here's some highlights from the 1987 European Championship final, the game is Greece V. USSR (Greece won 103-101.)

Filler material

Those of you that follow TV shows know all about filler episodes. They serve no reason than to fill a need, something random in the middle of a big storyline. Some are good, some others are mediocre, others yet are terribad. This post falls under the latter category. Its only purpose is to make sure that I hit 15 posts this month

To sweeten the pot somewhat, here's a great move by Tony Parker in a recent Spurs game:

A Song of Ice and Fire

Haven't really been inspired when it came to writing these past few days, rather I've been enjoying my job-less life again. I've also almost reached my goal of 15 blog posts for this month, so no need to rush either.

However, it's kinda frustrating that I've never really posted about my favorite fantasy literature series yet, A Song of Ice and Fire. What's so great about this series? I usually like to say how brutally realistic it is, if not for the (limited) fantasy elements, it could have been considered historical literature instead. Its scope is also something awe-inspiring, and it features some of the best characters I've ever come across.

Yet, unsurprisingly, the author of the series George R. R. Martin sums it up much better than me:

It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it. If I was a soldier going to war, I'd be pretty scared the night before a battle. It's a scary thing. And I want my readers to feel that fear as they turn the page. I want them to feel that no one is safe — that if my character is surrounded by three people with swords, he's in serious trouble, because he's only one guy against three.

It's so refreshing to read a story like this. How many times have you cringed when an important character survives an impossible situation just because he or she "has to"? No such thing in ASoIaF. It's what keeps you on your toes at all time while reading, it really is a scary thing. And most, if not all, characters are so wonderfully "gray", and the different perspectives you get on each one are really unique.

Speaking of perspectives, each chapter is narrated from one of the main characters, who gives a different view of things every time. A character that at first seemed a complete S.O.B. when seen through the eyes of one person may become a noble hero through the eyes of another. In other words, be prepared to be surprised by certain characters, and don't be too quick to judge them.

Entertainment Weekly recently had a Q&A session with George R. R. Martin, it's where that previous quote is from, and it's really interesting for fans of the series. No, there's no release date for the next chapter, A Dance with Dragons yet. Be patient.

A series of minatures based on characters from the series has also been released lately, if that's your thing. I really like the Jamie Lannister one, I think it captures the essence of his character nicely.

"How long have you known me?" - Still the best damn show on TV right now.

May I take a message?

I just caught a Tom Waits song on the radio, and I just realized that if you're caught off-guard by one of his songs, listening to it is an almost orgasmic experience. No joke.

The weirdest idea also crossed my atheist mind: "Tom Waits is proof that God exists, only he's nothing like we ever imagined him to be."

Not quite sure where that came from, I'm also still an atheist for that matter, I just felt like sharing it.

Intermission: so far Pavlos has maintained a solid 4.0 in his M.A. courses. What do you think his final GPA will be? Taking your bets now!

End of Intermission.

Anyway, here's a video of a Tom Waits song which I find is kind of fitting for this post, and is also what the title is referring to, God's Away On Business.

So what's the big deal about...

...Facebook? Really. Seems like everyone has an account there these days, it's an even bigger phenomenon than MySpace, which I hate by the way. Even Greek PC-gaming mags are having special articles covering Facebook, when it doesn't really have anything to do with gaming.

Not to mention that according to an "insider" (called Pavlos, who has nothing to do with Facebook or anything at all, really), the C.I.A has partial ownership of the site or something. Edit: Source can be found here.

Mildly amusing, at the very least. Furthermore, the Facebook people are free to use your picture without your consent. Some scary shit there.

I'm sure there's a deep sociological observation to be made here, but I'm not really sure I can be bothered. I'll wait until someone else does it and then quote it here, signing with an /agree.

As with most successful things, there's bound to be a sort of copycat-I-hate-this-idea-but-I'm-doing-something-similar thing. In this case, it's called Hatebook. It's supposed to be a place where you can vent out your irrational hatreds, but it reeks of so much generic anger. I think I'll contain my 100% irrational, unjustifiable hate in this blog for now.

If you're wondering, yes I also have an account of Facebook. However, I've forgotten my password, which in retrospect may have been a subconscious choice.

Last thing for this post, in case you missed it, a pretty sad and weird tale about Animal Crossing.

My bad

In a previous post, I mentioned that I'll be rooting for two teams in the NBA this year, the Washington Wizards, and the Chicago Bulls. I also said that one of my favorite players in the championship at the moment is Gilbert Arenas.

Less than a month later, what do the standings tell us? The Bulls are at a 2-8 record, probably affected by all this talk about acquiring Kobe Bryant during the off-season, which at the end never happened. For some reason, most teams don't recover all that well from such a change. Or lack of a change. Or something along those lines, anyway.

The Wizards are at a 6-5, which is pretty decent, considering they started with a 0-5 (or was it 0-4?)

The thing is, Arenas was recently injured and will be out for two to three months. How will the Wizards fare without their superstar, especially now that another key player, Power Forward Antawn Jamison has been under-performing lately?

Man, talk about jinxing it, I feel kinda responsible. My apologies, kind gents.

That'll be all for today. Still too tired for a huge post.

It was Lupus!

Heroes, you're on notice.

I could go on ranting for a while on why I found the latest episode of Heroes to be such a disappointment, even though apparently most people loved it. Instead, I'll just say that the show is now officially On Notice.

Remember, that's one step away from being Dead To Me. Careful where you tread now, Heroes.

Zzz...

I hate waking up early. It should be made illegal.

I may be spoiled, yes. It should still be made illegal.

To end this immensely constructive post today, here's a fucked up story concerning a MySpace hoax and a young girl committing suicide as a result of said hoax. Sickening is all I have to say.

The Last Alterac Valley

"What's this, George? Are there no movies left on the internets besides WoW-related ones?"

There are, but this one is different. This one is from the server I'm playing, and you can even see my character in it. For a second or so. But that's besides the point.

Last Wednesday, a new patch introduced several changes to the World of Warcraft, including massive changes to the battleground everyone loves to hate, Alterac Valley.

For the uninitiated, Alterac Valley (AV for short) was designed as the most "epic" of all WoW battlegrounds, with 40 players on each side fighting over a large map, with several NPC's (non-playable characters) to fight along the way. It didn't always work, as it has been changed half a million times already, and it's always a pain to fight when you don't know anyone in your group. Even more so when everyone else is speaking Italian.

But it was a great place to fight when you had a lot of friends on your side, and especially when there was a leader than could organize attacks. Stealth teams, gathering reinforcements for the Wolf Riders (think cavalry) or the War Riders (think bombing runs), and let's not forget the huge boss that you could summon after significant effort, which got stronger with each player it killed.

Yes, AV was fun. After the last batch of changes was announced however, some of us were disheartened to hear that most of these NPC's would be removed. For that reason, we decided to have one last fight in the "old" AV, one in which we planned to completely dominate.

More than 30 of us joined, the fight lasted a little over two hours (it might sound like a lot, but the old old AV fights sometimes lasted more than twenty) and it was an almost flaweless victory, though we did lose one Lieutenant near the end. He was properly mourned.

All in all, it was tremendous fun, the kind of conflict I had in mind when I first heard about PvP battles in WoW, and not the low-impact skirmishes we get nowadays, but eh, what can you do? I'm just happy I took part in this one.

The forum thread (including some screenshots) dealing with this can be found here, and the movie page here. You can see my character a couple of times in the movie (look ma'!) though it's always at the graveyard, after I had died yet another time :P. My character is Gilraukoris, a Blood Elfette, in case you're curious.

Just Because

Heard the song on the radio a few moments ago, thought I'd post the video here.



Remember to smile, you bastards.

Ever had...

...one of those days when you just can't write anything at all, no matter how hard you try? That's how my week has been, I couldn't write to save my life.

I still can't, for that matter. So here's a few tidbits from around the 'Net (O.o) to tide you over until I manage to write an actual update. Which will happen eventually, don't forget that everything in this country has changed since George Papandreou won the PASOK elections. Seriously, who saw that coming?

*groans*

Anyway, here we go:

A surfer dude apparently came up with the Grand Unified Theory(reference). I'm not sure what's going on here, or how this is possible, but it's random enough to be true. It'd definitely be hilarious.

I've never read the His Dark Materials books, but from what I've been told it's pretty much Narnia for atheists. Which is fine by me, naturally. Kinda wish I could have read those books when I was younger, in fact. A movie based on the first book, The Golden Compass, is coming out on December 7, and although it's supposed to be a lot more tame than the book, the trailer is really impressive, I find. Watch it here.

Lastly, details regarding a movie based on the popular fighting game Tekken have surfaced, and pretty much every sane human being left on this planet (alongside several not-so-sane ones) wished they hadn't. Just for shits and giggles, here's the description of Jin Kazama, probably the most famous Tekken character, and one of the central protagonists of its story:

JIN – Hero supreme with a serious drug problem, he’s hooked on ZEN and does what he can to get his next fix.

What does that even mean? I've played all Tekken games and I don't know what the Hell this "ZEN" thing is, and I seriously doubt they're referring to Buddhism. A Buddhism-addict would be pretty interesting though, now that I think of it.

I really don't understand why the people adapting all these gaming franchises for the big screen decide to radically alter them. It's the perfect way to alienate your fans, which makes no sense as those are the ones interested in watching the movie in the first place, casual viewers are easy to dismiss movies based on videogames due to their bad rep. Which they deserve, of course. Talk about a vicious cycle.

Oh well, looks like another movie to catch on a DVD with a few friends and some beers on some idle Tuesday. Which isn't that bad, of course.

In other news, House M.D. has been abso-fucking-lutely brilliant so far this season, definitely my favorite show on TV at the moment. It even keeps getting better with each episode, when you think they could never top last week's episode. Amazing.

On an unrelated note, I'll be working for Greenpeace, starting Monday.

And now for something completely original

To make up for the lack of a post on Saturday (argh!) here's yet another movie based on World of Warcraft. Hey, it's hilarious so shush!

Warrior V. Paladin, the musical!

I said what what?

My back is getting better, though sitting in front of the PC to write long articles is still not something I can do without some pain, so no big post for today either. Instead, here's a collection of strange/obscure/retarded happenings from around the world:

Firstly, you know how sometimes parents forbid their kids from playing videogames and/or watching TV when their grades go down the shitter? In most occasions, this isn't a solution to the actual problem, but it's a quick and easy solution. Kids usually complain or hold their breath in anger, but 16 year old Cory Ryder decided to be original and hired a hitman. As you can read in the article, he even stole money from his sister's piggy bank too, in order to pay the guy. I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry. Thankfully, the kid was caught.

Secondly, if you're into media in the least, you've probably already heard about the Hollywood Writers' Strike. Cynics around the world proposed a collective "Hollywood has writers?!" but that's besides the point. The first big casualty of this strike is the action-drama show 24, which will not air at all this season. A major disappointment for fans of the show, but personally, I've stopped caring about it since last year's disastrous season. Alright, maybe I'm being too harsh, I would have liked to see how much of a revamp this season would be. But I'm still not hyped about it in the least.

Thirdly, a 13-year old girl in Mascoutah, Illinois got detention for... hugging two of her friends. Apparently, as the school student handbook suggests,

“Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved.”

This is obviously open to interpetation, but I'm sure it was written with situations like kids making out and groping in public view, not hugging. Smiling is a public display of affection too, why hasn't anyone gotten detention for that? Not that I'm against kissing in public, mind you, but I could understand a rule against it in a school with specific "moral" (let's not start defining morality right now) rules. But come on. Detention for hugging someone? These people giving out such punishments need to get laid more often, quite frankly.

Lastly, and the most outrageous, downright frustrating news of the recent days is this: In the near future, all mages in World of Warcraft, regardless of specialization, will get Iceblock as a trainable spell!

What.

WHAT?

Revolting. Shocking. Scandalous, even! THANKS FOR LETTUCE GNOMES BLIZZ.



In all seriousness, it just shows that Blizzard cannot balance this game for both PvP (Player Versus Player) and PvE (Player Versus Environment), especially since the day they decided they want WoW to be an e-sport. And this talk suggesting that this change will happen with PvE in mind is just bull. People playing mages have complained about their survivability in PvP forever, and instead of coming up with something original (while also neglecting that mages have always been designed as glass cannons instead of survivability monsters like druids or paladins) they just decide to bite the bullet and give them complete invulnerability for a certain number of seconds every five minutes. Shut up about Cloak of Shadows already, it's fine.

*Phew* I really wanted to get that off my chest. Hey, if a man can't rant on his own blog, then what? Anyway, it's changes like this that make me think that at times not even the people at Blizzard are sure where they're going to with their game, or at least that at some point in the early/mid designing parts, they had no idea how it would evolve in the process. Which is kind of understandable, since MMORPG's are a very special kind of gaming genre, but still not the way to go if you're really trying to brand your game as an e-sport.

The PASOK presidential elections are on Sunday, in which even 16-year olds will be allowed to vote. Interesting, that. Still not quite sure what to make of it. I just hope they'd get over with it already, it's all a big publicity stunt, and we all know George Papandreou is going to win in the end.

Ow

I have a terrible, terrible headache today, and my back is killing me as well. Suffice to say, there's no real update. Which is a shame, as I want to write something about the new Thor comic book series that relaunched recently. Not to mention finishing that MMORPG article. Oh, well. I'll have at least one of them ready within the week.

In the meantime, here's yet another video to tide you over. It's from World of Warcaft, and it won't make much sense to those not playing the game (Hell, it makes little sense to me as I've never seen the dungeon it takes place in) but I like the old-school videogame references.

Watch Kitten Rescue:

Catching up

I'm back in Athens, after a relatively fun weekend (despite the fact that I hurt my back and it makes me feel like an old guy right now) which I spent playing... Halo 3.

I played through the whole thing in two days, on heroic difficulty in co-op mode. It was an amazing experience, the co-op helped of course, but the game felt so well-designed throughout, with definitely fewer low points than the previous two games of the series. The battle with the two Scarab tanks was epic.

There's a few valid criticisms about it, such as its length. Honestly, the game feels (and probably is) shorter than Halo 2, which was pretty short for an FPS as well. Still, I'd rather have a shorter game than one filled with filler missions such as Halo: Combat Evolved, its name was uh... something about a Library. My memory isn't what it used to be.

I really can't understand how people are criticizing the game's graphics. While it might not be significantly better than everything else in the market right now, or as (I guess) as good as its fans have hoped for... They are still really fracking good. Some of the textures are insane, and you can't argue with the draw distance of the game, as with all Halo games.

I haven't had the chance to play the multiplayer part of the game online, but even the offline mode is good fun, I can only assume it's even better online.

Lastly, I loved the amount of options you're given when fighting. Close-quarters combat with machine guns or melee weapons, sniping fools from afar, a combination of the two with the Carbine/Battle Rifle, it's there. Personally, I love sniping people and then finishing them off with the Elites' energy sword, I love this combination of both long-distance and close-up combat. It's actually kind of funny in a sad way that an FPS can offer you such level of customization, when RPG's force you to specialize in a specific way (hello, World of Warcraft.)

In other matters, the local media have finally caught up with Stephen Colbert and his presidential run, even if the Democrats have already declined him. The person writing the article in the local "Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia" newspaper had his facts about Stephen a bit messed up as well, but I guess it's good enough that they actually had a report on this.

This is also the 100th post in this blog, didn't quite make it in time for October, but better late than never, no?

And I'm off

I'm still not sure what it was I wanted to write about two days ago. Probably something about Frank Sinatra and the 4-cd collection I picked up earlier this week. I guess that'll have to wait.

I finally managed to watch Stardust yesterday, I thought it was thoroughly entertaining, and not that different from the book, unlike what most people were suggesting. I'm aware of the fact that some Gaiman fanboys make the rest of us look bad. I wasn't too fond of a couple of changes (the unicorn not dying, at least it's not made clear it does, the "twist" and the overall fight at the end) but the rest all made sense from a cinematic point of view. Overall, it's exactly like the book, simple (not simplistic) but really charming.

Back in the real world, Stephen Colbert's presidential bid has been rejected by the Democrats, with a vote of 13 to 3. Boo, hiss! How could you do that to the man?

I'm leaving for my hometown in a couple of hours, so now I'll have an actual excuse for not updating for a few days. Le gasp! In the meantime, here's another video from my favorite World of Warcraft machinima series, "Snacky's Journal", Roberto's Halloween Special. It even has Sinatra!

So, uh...

I had initially planned to write three different posts today. I had figured I'd write two of them early in the day and then finish the third one in the night, after returning home.

However, a few beers later, and I have to shamelessly admit I have no idea anymore what it was I wanted to write about. No friggin' clue. It's kind of hilarious. I'm sober, in case you're wondering, it's just my memory that's not working.

So instead, I'll just say that today a new world record was made in volleyball as one set in the match of PAOK Thessaloniki V AEK Athens ended at 54-52. For reference, nine times out of ten, a set in volleyball ends when a team reaches 25 points. I'd really like to know how long that set lasted.

In closing, this is one Futurama video I've wanted to post for weeks now but never got the chance, now's a good a time as any, I'd say.


You know it's true.

[Greek] Imagine 89.7

(To my international readers [lol who?], this post is about shruberries. It's also official, I'm going straight to hell, I mispelled "shruberry" in my original post.)


Το σκεφτόμουνα από καιρό τώρα να κάνω ένα post καθαρά στα ελληνικά, αλλά γενικά προτιμώ την αγγλικήν ακόμα και όταν μιλάω για πράγματα που έχουν να κάνουν με την ελληνική πραγματικότητα. Ο λόγος; Εδώ στην Ελλάδα λίγο-πολύ ξέρουμε πως έχουν τα πράγματα (με την υγεία, την παιδεία, κ.λ.π.), νιώθω ότι θα έκανα αυτό που οι Αγγλοσάξονες λένε "preaching to the choir" -τελικά δεν τα αποφεύγω τα Αγγλικά όσο και να θέλω!

Από την άλλη, αν μέσω της αγγλικής γλώσσας κάποια από τα θέματα που ταλαιπωρούν την κακόμοιρη αυτή χώρα μας μαθευτούν και προς τα έξω, ίσως τελικά αναγκαστούμε να αφήσουμε την απάθεια που μας χαρακτηρίζει στην άκρη και κάνουμε κάτι, οτιδήποτε, τέλος πάντων. Φρούδες (φλούδες;!) ελπίδες θα μου πείτε, αλλά από το ολότελα...

Μετά από αυτή την υπέρ του δέοντος μεγάλη εισαγωγή, ας περάσουμε στο κύριο θέμα του post, το νέο ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό του Αντώνη Κανάκη και του Γιάννη Σερβετά, τον Imagine 89,7. Ο σταθμός ξεκίνησε την Κυριακή που μας πέρασε και πέραν των δύο πολύ γνωστών και αγαπημένων Α.Μ.Α.Ν, το πρόγραμμά του περιλαμβάνει και άλλες cult φυσιογνωμίες του ραδιοφώνου και της Θεσσαλονίκης γενικότερα όπως ο Στάθης "Σκύλος" Παναγιωτόπουλος. Ο σταθμός βρίσκεται βεβαίως στην αγαπημένη Θεσσαλονίκη, αλλά υπάρχει και live αναμετάδοση μέσω των Internets στο site του σταθμού, η οποία μάλιστα είναι εξαιρετικής ποιότητας.

Το μότο του σταθμού είναι "το ραδιόφωνο όπως το φαντάστηκες" και μέχρι τώρα πραγματοποιούν αυτή την υπόσχεση. Είμαστε σε μια εποχή (πω-πω με πιάνει η σοβαροφάνεια πάλι!) όπου το ελληνικό ραδιόφωνο έχει καταντήσει εντελώς άνευρο, ανέραστο, με ελάχιστους παραγωγούς με άποψη και πολλή, πάρα πολλή, playlist. Λέει πολλά το γεγονός ότι την καλύτερη μουσική παίζουν οι αθλητικοί ραδιοσταθμοί, όχι οι μουσικοί. Radio Nowhere που λέει και το Αφεντικό, ο Bruce.

Ακόμα και οι περίφημες έρευνες για το ραδιόφωνο που κάνουν οι εταιρίες φαντάζουν αστείες. Προσωπικά με είχαν ρωτήσει στο τηλέφωνο σε μια τέτοια έρευνα αν ακούω τρεις συγκεκριμένους σταθμούς, οι οποίοι παίζουν αποκλειστικά playlist. Τους απάντησα "όχι, ποτέ" με ευχαρίστησαν και μου το έκλεισαν στη μούρη. Ρώτα ρε γιατί ενώ μου αρέσει το είδος της μουσικής των σταθμών αυτών, προτιμώ να ακούω άλλους σταθμούς, ρώτα γιατί προτιμώ αυτούς που προτιμώ. Αλλά εδώ δεν κάνουμε έρευνες για να βρούμε την αλήθεια, κάνουμε έρευνες για να βρούμε την πλευρά της αλήθειας η οποία μας αρέσει και μας ταιριάζει.

(Φόρα πείρα ο αναθεματισμένος, δεν είναι να αρχίσω να γκρινιάζω.)

Από την άλλη, ο Imagine μέχρι τώρα (και μακάρι, μακάρι να παραμείνει έτσι) είναι όντως το ραδιόφωνο όπως θα έπρεπε να είναι. Ένας σταθμός καθαρά ροκ, αλλά στη νοοτροπία του, όχι με την όποια περιορισμένη άποψη έχει ο καθένας για το τι είναι πραγματικά ροκ στη μουσική. Ένας σταθμός καθαρά της παρέας, χαβαλεδιάρικος, με μουσική την οποία κατ' αρχάς γουστάρουν οι ίδιοι οι παραγωγοί του να παίζουν.

Και φαίνεται αυτό, βγαίνει στον αέρα. Χαίρεσαι να τους ακούς, ακόμα και όταν δεν μιλάνε για κάτι συγκεκριμένο, ακόμα και όταν βγαίνει ο κάθε ακροατής και απλά λέει τον πόνο του ή την καψούρα του. Και, για να το θέσω κομψά, άντε και γαμηθείτε εσείς οι κυνικοί, το ραδιόφωνο ήταν πάντα το πιο ανθρώπινο μέσο, τέτοια πράγματα είναι πάντα ευπρόσδεκτα σε αυτό το χώρο. Η εκπομπή ειδικά του Αντώνη Κανάκη χθες το βράδυ (δυστυχώς έχασα την εκπομπή της Δευτέρας...) η οποία ξεκίνησε στις 11 το βράδυ και τελείωσε μετά τις 3 το βράδυ ήταν συγκλονιστική. Από πλευρά μουσικής, από πλευρά καλής διασκέδασης, χαβαλέ, επικοινωνίας, τα πάντα. Δεν πρόλαβα ποτέ τις παλιές εποχές των πειρατικών σταθμών, λόγο ηλικίας, αλλά από ό,τι λένε όλοι, θύμισε πολύ τις εποχές εκείνες.

Μπράβο ρε παιδιά, πάντα είχατε το χάρισμα να ξεφεύγετε από τη μιζέρια που μας πιάνει συχνά-πυκνά σε αυτή τη χώρα, και χαίρομαι πραγματικά που καταφέρατε για μια ακόμα φορά το ίδιο. Πάντα τέτοια, και εις ανώτερα.

Tip Off time

Expect a flurry of updates today, as I think it's a nice way to end the most productive month this blog as ever seen. I also have a lot of things I'd like to speak about.

First of all, happy Halloween if you celebrate it, you godless heathens! Halloween is always a fun time, or at least that's how it seems like to a guy who has lived all his life in an Orthodox Christian country.

Anyway, after a long wait, the NBA season has finally started. Kobe Bryant hasn't been traded yet, but he seem to be eager to show that despite not liking the team he's in, he's still a professional. Kobe scored 45 points against the Rockets last night, which still weren't enough for his team as they lost 95-92 with a clutch three-pointer by Rockets forward Shane Battier. I still can't understand how a Phil Jackson team can be so mediocre as this Lakers team of the last couple of years.

In other games, the reigning champions San Antonio Spurs edged out the Blazers and Utah defeated Golden State, neither of which results should surprise anyone. I'm wondering if Kirilenko will see any more playing time than last year, after his less-than-favorable comments about the Jazz coach last September. He probably won't, which is a shame as he's a great player.

I think I'll be rooting for the Bulls this year, as I really like their younger players and I'm a Ben Wallace fan. I also really liked Scott Skiles (their current coach) as a player, and he's not a bad coach either. I don't really see them doing any better than last year when they reached the conference semi-finals, but you never know with the East conference. Hell, if the Cavs can make the NBA finals, anything is possible.

I'll also be rooting for the Washington Wizards since Gilbert Arenas is really damn awesome. His blog is really entertaining to read, and he's just as good as a basketball player too. He has amazing confidence in his skills and for that reason makes for an excellent clutch shooter.

Closing this first post for the day with an advertisement for the NBA, starring no other than Gilbert Arenas.

Veronica Mars in the FBI

I finally managed to see the oft-discussed about "pilot" of Veronica Mars' fourth season, which proves that this was indeed the direction that the show was heading to. That being Veronica becoming an FBI agent, with most (all?) of the regular cast being removed. Sadly, the "pilot" (putting this word inside quotation marks because it's only 12 minutes long) did not convince the people of the CW network, so the show was canceled for good.

I can see why this happened, though. There's a lot to like, of course, the new ambiance was really good, the more mature approach worked well, the cinematography was beautiful, and Veronica is the same character that made the show so endearing. But... Everything else feels so bland. The new characters are pretty uninspiring, the dialog seemed kind of forced at times, and well, I can't help but think that there was no big, significant, change from the school/college version of the show. It felt kind of samey, not quite school-girl-amongst-adults as some of the criticism stated, but not too far off either. Perhaps I was expecting something more CSI/X-Files-esque.

Of course, it's kind of unfair to criticize the entire effort on a mere 12 minutes of video, but when that's all the time you get in order to impress people (especially executives), you have to bring out the big guns, so to speak. Horrible, horrible expression, but it's the only one that comes to mind. *d''oh*

That being said, watching this pilot made me realize how much I miss this damn show. I watched the series finale again, and my gods is it ever beautiful. It doesn't matter if it weren't intended as a series finale, it works great for a show which always had loss as one of its main themes. I'm thinking of adding a link to it soon.

If you want to watch the pilot, take a look here and here for part 2.

In other news, according to this source, Firefox has apparently overtaken IE6 and IE7 as the leading web browser. This is somewhat of a false statement though, as if you were to combine the IE6 and IE7 percentages, they overtake Firefox. I can only assume that the IE6 users are casual, "OMG how did this end up in here I'm not good with computers" users, which is the only explanation why they haven't upgraded their browsers yet.

Still, that's quite an achievement for Firefox. Hopefully that won't mean that Firefox will have a lot of security leaks in the near future.

Odd and the Frost Giants

The title refers to Neil Gaiman's latest story, which in his own words will be a "novelette". Anything that Mr. Gaiman writes is essential reading, and yes my opinion is completely unbiased. Seriously. If you haven't read his works yet, what are you waiting for? Start with American Gods and the Sandman comics, and go on from there.

You can read more about this new story, including the introduction to Chapter 3, in his blog. I personally cannot wait. Now if only I could find a copy of Fragile Things here (I don't want to order it from Amazon at the moment for a variety of reasons) everything would be great. Oh, well.

I've been trying to write a long post about the concept suggesting that MMORPG's are all about immersion and escapism, and how that is a lie, but so far I'm not happy with the result. Fingers crossed, it should be ready within the week.

Last thing for today, another of my favorite Daily Show segments of the year so far, Language Burier:

Well, frack

Just when I finally realized how awesome the current version of Battlestar Galactica is, and a few days after I managed to find season 3, bad news just had to surface.

Turns out, according to this source, that season 4 (also the final season for the series) of the series has been delayed until April 2008, three months later than its original planned premiere of January 2008. It also means that the show will re-appear on television almost a year after the season 3 finale.

And since I'm joining the Greek army for a one-year run in May 2008, that means I'll miss almost the entire season. Oh well, hopefully BSG will go out with a bang and it'll be worth the wait.

Fight or Flight? I'll just stay here and watch

This post contain nothing but spoilers.

I suck at witty references. The one in this post's title is a play on last night's Heroes episode, which was the best episode of this season. That doesn't mean it was better than decent, but hopefully it will set a trend for the episodes to come.

First of all, there was no Claire-stalker boy nonsense, finally. Teen melodrama is not what we're looking for in a show with super heroes. And be "we", I mean geeks. We want more superpowers, and better use of whatever powers characters in the show already have, no more recycling of the same ones. Seriously, how many more people can we have who are copying others?

On the subject of superpowers, it was great to see the writer's to explore telepathy on a deeper level that Parkman's usual, simple, mind-reading. The way his father uses that same power provided for the best, and darkest scenes of the season so far, as nothing beats a good mindfuck. Pardon my language, but it's true.

Naturally, this being Heroes, the writing was again pretty mediocre at places, with some scenes being so bad they hurt. So it takes two whole episodes for Peter to open that damn box, and when he finally decides to open it, what's inside? Nothing of importance, of course. Fantastic. And then his prophetical power kicks in just in time. How convenient. Writing like this really makes me cringe.

Still, Kristen Bell's appearance makes this episode worth watching (yes, I'm a fanboy) as she was kicking ass and taking names. Always good to see her again, as she's a great actress. Not sure about her being Electro, but at least she's not a flyer or copying other people and their powers.

All in all, as I said earlier it was a pretty decent episode, but there's still a lot of room to improve before they catch up with the quality of certain season 1 episodes, like "Company Men". I'll be sticking with the show for the time being, I guess. But I'm not going to call myself a "fan" or anything of the sort.

P.S.
That whole scene with the "Scary Door" in papa-Parkman's apartment reminded me of a certain Futurama video... Probably wasn't intended, but said video is hilarious so it's worth embedding it:



"Saw that coming."
Bender.

P.P.S.
Why was Taskmaster-girl watching Dragon and not an actual Bruce Lee movie?

Evo moment #37

No Daily Show video today, but since there's a lot of buzz about Street Fighter lately, it's the perfect opportunity to revisit one of the most memorable fights from the latest game of the series, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike.

During the semi-finals in Evolution 2k4, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, perhaps the most recognizable Street Fighter player in the world, fought Justin Wong, famous for his turtling (read: highly defensive, low-risk taking) style. Daigo was playing Ken, Justin was playing Chun Li.

The result was perhaps the best example of "skill" in videogames, as Daigo's comeback parry-sequence/combo is just insane. If you've never played the game it won't impress you as much, but just think that between each parry of Chun Li's/Wong's super move (that flashy thing), Daigo had less than a second to react.



You can find the complete video of the fight here.