Via MetaFilter: Mr Squiggle turns 50 today.
From all the people, of every gender, race, or creed, tired of films transparently developed to address a demographic:
You seem to know what you’re doing. Please keep doing what you’re doing.
Thank you.
Never have I felt more justified in my decision to f* off and be somewhere else when this series - the series I’ve followed since I was two years old - finally dies. This isn’t Doctor Who. It isn’t even sophisticated enough to qualify as fan-fic.
Lawrence Miles weighs in on “Planet of the Dead”. See, this is why I have been and will continue to hold my tongue over the new Star Trek movie. I would sound batshit insane and any rational person would ask the question: Why do you even care anymore? So the series has moved on and rightly or wrongly it no longer represents what it once did to you.
But eh, crazy is still fun to read.
Progress is achieved by taking part, not by switching off.
Just a note to all you lovely Internet folk: The moment you start calling people sheep, whatever argument you were trying to make lost all credibility and interest.
Really. It’s old.
Things are changing
I meant to launch into a redesign of the website back in January, but for some mysterious reason that never happened. In the coming months however I’ll have a few things I want to publish to the site, so I’ll be instituting some gradual changes to the site as that forthcoming stuff goes up. The focus of the site will be shifting away from a forum for my occasional rants and towards a showcase of my work and a discussion upon it. The rants will still be around somewhere and in some form, but probably not plastered on the front page for days on end.
The first of these changes is the rotating slideshow of images on the front page, highlighting my various projects. As I complete more of my project pages, writing at least one interesting thing about each project, I’ll add them into the rotation as well. I deal with pictures, so perhaps I should be showing them off more often.
More coming soon…
The final episode of Battlestar Galactica has gone to air. All involved should be congratulated for creating such a satisfying conclusion to what has been in whole a brilliant series. That is all. Now let the Internet do it’s thing and ruin everyone’s fun.
UPDATE: People can be so boring. A common complaint from fundies with regards to many movies (especially science-fiction) is that they do not portray a world in subservience to a higher power. That is, these people demand that their view of the universe be reflected in all areas of life, fictional creations included. For people to complain simply about the inclusion of supernaturalism in BSG is hypocrisy. Boring “Internet Atheist” hypocrisy.
MORE: A response:
Whilst reflecting this morning upon the absolutely and exhilaratingly satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest television series of all time, I found myself mulling over the very issue you singled out. It’s strange that I, as an atheist, accept BSG’s heavy spiritualist slant with such enthusiasm. I guess it’s all in the way they handle it: their approach is unwaveringly agnostic - they refuse to categorise or define the higher power which guides the characters through their journey, a truly refreshing attitude to behold when contrasted with common real-world views on religion.
What it comes down to is the show’s creators have crafted a universe in which the existence of a higher power is virtually undeniable, but have done so with such guile, intellect and pathos that where you in the shoes of these characters, even the hardiest of non-believers would be forced to see the truth permeating all the events which brought you to where you are.
Reality 1, Deluded Jerktards 0
Anyone want to know where to find some primo kiddie porn? Ask everyone’s favourite uber-pedophile Stephen Conroy and his buddies at ACMA. Their secret stash has been made not-so-secret anymore by the fine freedom-loving folk at WikiLeaks. Says Senator Shitheel:
“No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.”
I don’t know about that. From earlier in the article:
“The list itself should concern every Australian - although plenty of the material is unsavoury or even illegal, the presence of sites like YouTube, MySpace, gambling or even Christian sites on the list raises a lot of questions,” [Colin Jacobs, EFA] said.
Cue bleating insistence from Conroy that by the time the list affects all of Australia it will be pruned to only the kiddie porn they insist the list is for, and won’t also block sites that are objectionable to the moralist assholes who have sway with the stuffed shirts who run the country.
I suppose I’m not interested in “cyber safety” though. Partly because anyone using the word “cyber” should not be trusted. Mostly however it’s because I don’t think the Internet should be made kid-safe at the sake of adult freedom. If parents don’t want their kids to see “bad” content, parents can supervise their children.
This program is not about “cyber safety” however. It can’t be, because it does not limit access to the objectionable content. It is about the Labor Party buying the votes of lazy, paranoid parents who are convinced that the world is out to corrupt their sweet, innocent little lambs of god. And if the last election went the other way, it would be about the Liberal Party doing the same. They’re all a bunch of morally corrupt whores.
Except for Nick Xenophon. Turns out the only person I voted for at the last election might not actually have shit for brains. For now.
The trailer for Michael Mann’s new movie Public Enemies starring Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, and the batshit-insane Marion Cotillard. It is truly bizarre seeing a period of history that has in the past been so well filmed be given the digital video treatment. IMDB says a Sony CineAlta F23 was used. It’ll be very interesting to see how the film (can we still call them that?) looks on the big screen.
UPDATE: I’m hearing now that while most of the movie was shot on the F23, a small amount was shot on the smaller EX1. Cool.
Apple is hosting a preview of the new iPhone OS 3.0 early next week. As an iPod touch owner, I’m already familiar with the sting of selective upgrades (apparently I’m not allowed to have Google Maps Street View). Hopefully I won’t be deprived of the worthwhile upgrades to come.
It occurs to me however that as someone who types words into a computer that are then published to a (somewhat) public-facing website, I am obligated to offer up a set of features I hope to see included in 3.0, and to then assert my imagined authority by calling them “predictions” instead of “wild guesses I just extracted from where I keep my poop”. So here’s one thing I’d like to see in iPhone OS 3.0:
Voiceover.
“With Big Rubber Cocks”: a new game from the boffins at Cook’d and Bomb’d.
Robert Mugabe is reported to own long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.
The President of Zimbabwe apparently possesses tapes of some early episodes of the science fiction series that could be thirty or forty years old, according to The Sun.
The Sun wouldn’t make something like this up would they?
My fellow 2008 HBCA graduate Ari Crellin discusses his graduating film, The Human Prism for Channel 9.
“South Australian Film Sampler”, the collection of 16mm films which I cut down into a 60 minute presentation (58m34s to be precise), will be getting its one and only public screening tomorrow 12 noon in Palace cinema 7. It’ll be followed by a panel discussion with the project’s producer Mike Walsh, local eccentric personality Peter Goers, film director Mario Andreacchio, and others who are not me. I managed to avoid it thankfully. I can’t imagine I’d have much interesting to say other than “Do you like how I kept in as many instances of casual racism as I could?”
I’ll post something of a post-mortem shortly.
The classic Amiga game, Pinball Dreams, has made its way to the iPod touch and iPhone. Brilliant.