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Miyagi: Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.
Oh this movie. It’s a classic, but somehow I’ve never actually seen it. Right now is the second best time though, so here we go!
In a nutshell, it’s a pretty straight forward coming-of-age / underdog sports movie from the 80s. Really. Daniel moves to a new town, gets beat up, meets the girl, gets beat up some more, meets the mysterious mentor figure, learns (but doesn’t realize it), learns (but does), loses the girl, gets her back, and, in the end, wins the day.
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It took a while (relatively speaking) to get to this one. And, while this one has a lot of great individual scenes, I think it’s the weakest of the series.
This time around, we’re in the 70s, with the introduction of Beyoncé’s Foxxy Cleopatra. I enjoyed her role, especially her introduction, talking (so obviously) through a third party. She seems like she’s having fun and is a good counterpoint to Austin.
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Onward in Harry Potter. And still without making it back to the first.
Plotwise, this is one of my favorites. It’s an action packed story with a lot of mystery going on and a twist to the plot that (long ago) I did not see coming–and which actually pulls the last part of the story together very well. Even if, in the broader world Harry Potter lives in doesn’t make any sense.
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He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.
With the recent release of the Project Hail Mary movie, I decided to reread the Project Hail Mary book. So of course I also had to re-read The Martian (I’ll watch it at some point too!). But the last time I read it, I wasn’t writing reviews yet… so here we are!
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This is it! The Last Battle. Kronos and his army of titans, monsters, gods, and demigods is about to reach New York City and Mount Olympus. And, because of a rampaging Titan coming across the country, the city is almost entirely undefended.
So it’s up to Percy and the demigods of Camp Half-Blood to save the day!
Oh, did I mention that Percy is about ot turn 16 in this book? And that there’s a certain prophecy all about that?
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I watched (and reviewed) Despicable Me 2 years ago, in theaters. We watched those movies over and over again for so long when my children were younger. But now, it’s back in favor, so it’s a good time to review it!
Gru, criminal mastermind, has a glorious plan.
Gru: …we are going to steal… pause for effect… THE MOON!
To do that, he needs cookie robots and three little girls to deliver them. And oh, the girls are a delight. Margo, serious and holding everything together. Edith, agent of chaos. And Agnes. Just, cute.
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I probably should have skipped this one.
I do like the three short stories well enough.
We get The Bronze Dragon–a game of capture the flag and a new guardian for the camp. Plus we get more of Silena (child of Aphrodite) and Beckendorf (Hephaestus) who are a fun couple.
Then the Sword of Hades–I do enjoy stories with Nico in them. He’s a nicely complicated character. Plus more Thalia! It’s also fun to see Hades and Persephone bickering.
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A rewatch for me, but that’s just a fun movie. More than a bit 80s feeling, but it works. I love the characters, especially Andrew the Giant’s Fezzik and Wallace Shawn’s Vizzini. They’re just fun throughout the movie.
And man is this movie quotable.
Even if you haven’t seen, it I’m sure you’ll have heard some of these.
Inigo Montoya: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
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The Labyrinth. Daedalus. Return of the Minotaur. Oh, this book has a lot going for it.
I love the setting. It’s interesting seeing more of the ways demigods can go–and have gone in the past. Not all demigods are heroes–which we’ve already seen–but they’re not always villains either. And the same with monsters; we’ve already met Tyson. And for that matter, gods and titans.
There are still good guys and bad guys. But everything is starting to get just a bit more complicated, which I appreciate in the series.
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Annabeth is missing and a goddess is in chains! It’s time for a quest!
Only this time, it’s not Percy’s quest.
Oh, and apparently not everyone is fated to survive.
Percy is growing up–ever nearer to that fated 16th birthday. So of course, he’s got more than just demigod problems.
“Love conquers all," Aphrodite promised. “Look at Helen and Paris. Did they let anything come between them?”
“Didn’t they start the Trojan War and get thousands of people killed?”
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Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related for better or for worse…and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.
After the events of The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson is starting to settle into his world of gods and monsters. So of course, things have to get complicated.
This time around, we get a new friend (Tyson, a 6'3" seventh grader who’s a bit slower and absolutely obsessed with Percy), a new quest (the borders of Camp Half-Blood are failing!), and a whole new adventure: The Sea of Monsters.
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The Harry Potter films have some problems, but they came out just at the right time to be a large part of my growing up. I’ve seen them all and, while I think the books are better in a lot of ways, the movies have a lot of charm. Especially the first few.
They’re just done in such a magical way, really capturing the fantastic feel of the world. It makes you wish you could just hop right in and explore the world, Hogwarts castle especially.
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El Principito. En español. ¿Por qué? ¡Por qué no!
En serio, porque estoy aprendiendo español. Un libro fácil es bueno para aprender.
Pero El Principito es un libro raro.
Es un libro sobre serpientes. Y planetas. Y flores.
Y volcanes.
Y baobabs.
Como dije. Un libro raro.
Pero lo disfruté. [[TODO:El Ojo del Mundo||La próxima vez]], debería leer un libro en inglés y luego en español.
Voy!
Where Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was a delightful, raunchy, vulgar parody of spy flicks and the 90s, The Spy Who Shagged Me turns everything up a notch–for better and for worse.
It all starts out where the previous movie ended. Austin and Vanessa married and on their honeymoon. Except, surprise! Fembot. Which makes absolutely no sense. But I do appreciate that we get Heather Graham’s Felicity Shagwell out of it!
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Austin Powers: Allow myself to introduce… myself.
Austin Powers. A riff on 60’s culture and especially the genre of spy movies (James Bond especially) absolutely loaded with a particularly rauncy, vulgar sort of humor.
Vanessa Kensington: Mr. Powers, my job is to acclimatize you to the nineties. You know, a lot’s changed since 1967.
Austin Powers: No doubt, love, but as long as people are still having promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection while at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment, I’ll be sound as a pound!
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What if the Greek gods (and the rest of that mythology) were not only real… but still around?
“Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?”
Oh. And what if they all had a bunch of half-human children. Demigods as it were. Because that’s just what the Greek gods did/do.
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Man. I forgot how good this season is. Eleven with Rory and Amy. The Silence. It opens with the Doctor dying–and just gets so much crazier from there. It’s one of the best season-long plots (in my opinion) with a lot of solid episodes along the way.
A Christmas Carol - Skipping through time, with a cloudy sky full of flying fish. Delightful.
The Doctor: [Pointing to frozen Abigail Pettigrew] Who’s she?
Kazran Sardick: Nobody important.
The Doctor: Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.
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Information is like water—without it you won’t live long, too much and you’ll drown. And there’s a difference between truth and information. Even correct information is not the same as truth—truth does not mislead—correct information bereft of context can be more dangerous than a lie.
Another book that I feel like I reviewed but somehow seem to have lost it.
Overall, I really liked how this series started. It’s such a cool idea, an eternal Library spanning through time–and even between worlds. And the story of two very different people, more different than they even imagined.
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“They’re turning on us!” cried one of the sailors, voicing a panic that threatened to sweep through all the humans on board.
“Jesus fucking wept, you cowards,” said Berenice. “Try not to splash the rest of us when you piss your pants, you dickless shitbags.”
The finale.
I feel like I reviewed this book already, but seem to have lost it (or never wrote it in the first place).
Still. It’s always good to finish a series.
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Well, I’m just about to Alien vs. Predator, so… I guess I should catch the Predator movies, along with Alien!
Much like Alien, this is a movie that came out a bit before my time, so I’ve never actually seen it. And just like Alien (Aliens even more so), I was kind of amazed at how many lines I’ve quoted any number of times came from this movie…
Dutch: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
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It started more than a decade ago now (2012!). I was catching up to 30 new releases in a year in theaters and reviewing them. Then at some point (2014), life happened and I didn’t make it to the theater as much anymore.
After that, starting in 2015, I realized I could do the same thing with books! And I started writing a review of every book I read. And I read a lot. Since then, I’ve reviewed over 1300 books–and I still have over 1000 on my to read list. So that isn’t likely to stop any time soon.
It’s mostly fantasy and to a lesser extent scifi, although I do get a few horror novels in there, along with a couple non-fiction or poetry anthologies a year. I’m always looking for more to add though. Hit me up!
Then, starting in 2021, I started again with the movie reviews, this time mostly ignoring what was in theaters, instead watching whatever seemed interesting, much like my book reviews. And this time, I added TV reviews as well.
And… here we are. Really, it’s as much a memory aid for me as anything. I love being able to look back at all the covers I read in a year, pick one at random, and use my own writing to remind me of a particular book/movie/show. And if anyone else is inspired to read something out of it? Well, all the better!
Current book bingo: 2025 Book Bingo
The earliest memory I have of ‘programming’ is in the early/mid 90s when my father brought home a computer from work. We could play games on it … so of course I took the spreadsheet program he used (LOTUS 123, did I date myself with that?) and tried to modify it to print out a helpful message for him. It … halfway worked? At least I could undo it so he could get back to work…
After that, I picked up programming for real in QBASIC (I still have a few of those programs lying around), got my own (junky) Linux desktop from my cousin, tried to learn VBasic (without a Windows machine), and eventually made it to high school… In college, I studied computer science and mathematics, mostly programming in Java/.NET, although with a bit of everything in the mix. A few of my oldest programming posts on this blog are from that time.
After that, on to grad school! Originally, I was going to study computational linguistics, but that fell through. Then programming languages (the school’s specialty). And finally I ended up studying censorship and computer security… before taking a hard turn into the private sector to follow my PhD advisor.
Since then, I’ve worked in the computer security space at a couple of different companies. Some don’t exist any more, some you’ve probably heard of. I still program for fun too, and not just in security.
But really, I still have a habit of doing a little bit of everything. Whatever seems interesting at the time!
… other things I currently haven’t put into a category!
I love to take things apart and put them back together. It’s one of the reasons I work in computer security for a living. But more recently, the dropping prices of 3D printing and entirely not dropping prices of wood working have led to a few new hobbies. :D
I’ve always had a soft spot for photography. I borrowed my mother’s camera in high school and eventually bought my own. These days, I mostly use my phone (it’s amazing how good those have gotten), but I still pull out my years old DSLR from time to time.
Mostly, I have pictures organized by photosets, but I’ve started adding a few ‘meta sets’ like Mini Worlds, Bugs etc (macros), and Fungus Among Us.
Recent Photos
Another hobby I’ve been getting into more recently is Home Automation! Previously these posts would have been in Other, but it’s nice to have them all in one place.
I am a writer–I just don’t always remember it.
I wrote my first novel in 2011. I’ve started 14 more since then, finishing about half of those. One of these days I’ll actually try to find someone to publish them (or just do it myself). Onward!
(If anyone would like to be a beta reader, feel free to drop me a line).
Once upon a time, I was on track to get a PhD in censorship/computer security.
I was ABD (all but dissertation) when my advisor decided to leave and go into the private sector. When that happens… you either find a new advisor or you go with them. I decided to go with them, move to Silicon Valley, and join a startup. It was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. While I sometimes regret not having the extra letters after my name, I love the practicality of working in the ‘real world’. Not to mention the job prospects are better. :)
So for the most part, these posts are archival, but there are still a few gems in there.
