A lot of ads on the Internet are now generated dynamically, in a feeble and pathetic attempt to fool particularly ADVANCED individuals into thinking the ad is somehow relevant to them. (For example, you will see very poorly done faux-news articles claiming to be about someone in your local region, as determined by your IP address.) Of course, these ads are assembled out of databases of pieces, and the sleazeball scumwads behind these ads don't exactly hire competent programmers...
Well, did the 22nd Abyss layer... the Plains Of Iron. Also did Real Work TM. Working my way through Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters... probably be easier if I'd ever read the original.
Tonight was our anniversary dinner, so we went out to Cheesecake Factory. My plan was to have the beef ribs, on the grounds that they're only the second place I've found which SERVES beef ribs here, but the waiter basically told us they were t3h suxx0r, so, I got the (much cheaper) Thai Chicken & Shrimp dish, which was beaucoup de yummy. As it turns out, there's a game store in the mall near to CF, a pretty nice one, actually, which had the new Warhammer FRPG (which I worked on, and which I have not yet received my authors copy of), and the 4e version of Creature Collection, which I'm credited in since one of my contributions to the 3e version made the "upgrade" to 4e -- the Blood Moth. (Which *I* called Blooderflies. Much cooler name.)
And I got the Turkinator achievement in WoW, which, unlike an awful lot of them, actually took some effort. The semi-bad news is that my Cooking is now capped at 300 until I hit level 50.
Yesterday, we had Beth's sister, Jane, and her girls over. The girls are cool. Anyone who demands to watch anime only in Japanese w/subtitles and is more familiar with Japanese holidays than I am wins major Lizard points. I sent them off with some DVDs of Urusei Yatsura and a stack of What's Michael? manga.
And my beloved wife did not just get me the new Star Trek movie on Blu-Ray, she got me the new Star Trek movie on Blu-Ray in the *box that turns into the Enterprise*. In turn, she got a Totoro DVD, shipped straight from Malaysia via llama express.
OK, so, Beth and I saw 2012 on Saturday. I can say, without a doubt, that this film surpasses even "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus" in quality of plot, acting, and dialogue, and how many films can say that?
As with so many movies, it was very educational. Contains mega spoilers!
Things I Learned From 2012 1)The ancient Mayans apparently knew about neutrino emissions. How they knew is never mentioned. 2)A "blog" is the same as a flash video. A *bad* flash video. 3)Umpty-thousand people can be hired to work on Giant Ships and no one will mention it to anyone else. 4)You can sell umpty-thousand people billion dollar tickets to escape on the giant ships, and they won't tell anyone. 5)Anyone who plans to tell someone will first announce his plans to tell someone on a bugged phone so he can be executed by the super secret assassins. 6)Even though you didn't expect a giant tsunami from the east, you'll build your ships so that they're perfectly positions to go floating on the giant tsunami from the east. 7)When Yellowstone park erupts due to a supervolcano, the resulting surge of superheated gas, smoke, and ash will not in any way impede the flight capacity of a single prop airplane. 8)No matter how much someone protests that they are barely learning to fly, the truth is, they'll fly better than Luke Skywalker on a midichlorian bender. 9)A stretch limo is the single most maneuverable vehicle known to man. Furthermore, it has magic tires which can cling to a road which is bucking so hard that quake-proof buildings are falling like dominos. 10)Trillion dollar super-arks designed to save humanity's best and brightest (and richest) can be rendered completely useless by a few feet of rubber hose. 11)Neutrinos turn into microwaves, which melt the Earth's crust. Or maybe they boil the magma. Or, something. Whatever they do, though, they don't do it until they're deep in the Earth, so the people on the Earth don't get roasted. 12)Only Evil Fat Russian Billionaires are incapable of accepting Death With Dignity; everyone else calmly accepts their fate and stoically/tearfully watches the oncoming death wave/earthquake/aircraft carrier. 13)It's a sign of pure and absolute evil that, given limited space on the aforementioned super-ships, preference is given to young scientists over 70 year old Chinese peasant farmers. 14)When the Earth is facing a truly global disaster and your prediction of "How long do we have?" are unstable and guesswork ridden, it's perfectly sensible to build all of your escape ships in one location. 15)If your boyfriend is horribly mangled saving the lives of you and your kids, it's all good, because now there's no reason not to get back with your ex-husband. 16)If you wrote a book that sold <500 copies, you'll still keep running into total strangers who have read it. (Hey, someone on my block has some of the stuff I wrote for Mongoose, so anything's possible!) 17)Natural disasters not only have a tropism for landmarks, they also have a sense of dramatic timing. For example, when someone complains that they and their partner are "drifting apart", that's when the giant fault line appears between them. 18)The Chinese government routinely lands fleets of helicopters next to random groups of strangers wandering in snowy mountains, just in case one of them has tickets for the Golgafrincham "B" Ark. 19)Whackjob fringe radio nutcases are always right. 20)There's no reason to expect that Africa would *mind* suddenly getting a bunch of arks full of spoiled rich first worlders who plan to resettle there, as if the continent has no, I dunno, existing nations, governments, borders, and laws.
I have also been watching the new "V". Overall, I'm enjoying it, but it, too, teaches some interesting lessons. 1)You can grow any kind of human appearance over your own scaly hide, so your spokeslizard to every nation is an attractive Caucasian woman. This apparently works perfectly well in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Africa. 2)You have spent decades infiltrating every level of world society with your agents, but apparently no one said, "Hey, why not a newscaster?" 3)Once you go scaly, you'll be back daily.
How the Star Wars "rebel pilot briefing" computer sequence was created:
Long, but worth it.Lizard's Exciting Trivia Fact: Star Wars was not the first mainstream movie to feature computer-generated graphics. That honor goes to Westworld.
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