Well, I managaed to royally hose my OS last night. I was trying to upgrade from Fedora 6 to Fedora 8, but when I tried to boot it after the upgrade finished, it said that it can't find any of my RAID arrays, and went into kernel panic.

Fuck.

Fortunately, I at least had the good sense to back up my /home directory beforehand. So most of my stuff still exists. And, actually, I think I may be able to access my arrays when I boot from the rescue disc, so once I get a new external HD (my current one is full), I can probably slurp down my /usr directory and then just do a fresh install.

But still. Fuck.

I'm planning on being in town July 17-19 for the JAA- USA Tomiki Aikido National Tournament. Between events, nursing wounds, and trying to stay rested despite rock-hard hotel beds and/or sleeping on the floor, I probably won't have a whole lot of time to hang out, but it'd still be cool if you could drop by to say hi or maybe watch!

I need to be better about updating with stuff I've done reasonably close to when I do it. It's been a week since WonderCon!

I went all three days, but only have pics from Saturday and Sunday. Oh, I brought my camera on Friday...it just refused to turn on! Batteries were fresh too. I was a little put out, since I'd lugged the damned thing to work with me (I work just a few blocks from Moscone Center), and I'd just had it fixed (I just hadn't bothered to try it out since I got it back from the shop, and it'd been too long since then to just bring it back and get it fixed again for free). I borrowed my folks' digital camera for the rest of the weekend

( Dr. Who, Cobra, and Girl Genius )

( Art Adams, Silent Hill, and Cartoon Network graffiti )

( By the gleamin' gates of funky Asgard! )

( lol wut )

( Street Fighter, Star Wars, Mike Mignola, Johnny Depp, and Batty bad girls )

( The Dark Horse panel, plus criticism )

( Violet Incredible, Dan Brereton, Halo, and MST3K )

( Above ground: R2D2, Link, Cassandra Cain, and a monster )

( Boba Fett, Green Hornet, the Clone Wars, Mike Royer, and ROB! VAN! DAM! )

( Boba and Boushh, Gandalf, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon )

( Kurt Busiek, manga maestro Jason Thompson CHARGIN EYE LAZOR, Sergio Aragones and Steve Leialoha )

I also attended the latter half of the DC panel, saw some Bleach, and saw a couple of movies. One was the 3DCG anime Appleseed: Ex Machina. The semi-cell-shaded look took some getting used to, but it was pretty fun. Although it's kind of hard to believe that Deunan is an "unmodified human" when she's pulling off crazy Matrix gun-fu acrobatics. And it's produced by John Woo, so naturally there are flocks of doves everywhere (later it's revealed that the doves are actually robots broadcasting a mind-controlling signal. At this revelation, the entire theater broke out laughing). The other was the animated Justice League: New Frontier, based on Darwyn Cooke's revisionist (but not "superhero deconstructionist") take on the Silver Age DCU. I missed most of the first half, but what I saw was pretty good (I don't think there was any need for Hal Jordan to be abducted by a UFO to find Abin Sur rather than just being led to him by the ring, because blowing up the room he was in makes his secret identity a little harder to justify, but then by the end it seems like a lot of folks, including Rick Flagg of all people, know his ID, so it hardly matters). Both are worth checking out, JL:NF more than Appleseed (unless you're up for some fairly mindless explodification).

And to sum up, here's all the stuff I got:

( Con haul )

Thanks to derakon (damn his eyes), I've gotten somewhat addicted to Dwarf Fortress, a freeware "sim" game with elements of roguelike adventure games (like Nethack). Basically, you're in charge of a group of dwarven pioneers in a fantasy setting, and your job is to lead them to create a successful fortress. But not just a fortress. It starts out as a small outpost, but over time it grows with the influx of migrants (and eventually, children), whose presence demands ever greater production, until the thing is basically one enormous city. You have to manage not only digging and building, but food supplies, farming (which can be done underground! mushrooms are delicious), brewing (even more important than cooking), trading with caravans from the elves, humans, and other dwarves, little dwarfy justice, defense against monster and goblin attacks, keeping nobles happy, making clothes, felling trees, and and and and.... It's ridiculously in-depth, but you can't micromanage (you can't just tell specific dwarves to go specific places, you can only set their tasks and tell them where certain things should be put). And you have to keep them happy, because surly dwarves sometimes go on rampages! It's like an intricate dollhouse full of dolls with minds of their own. And there's even a wiki with articles on all of the different aspects of the game.

It's definitely got its problems. The pseudo-ASCII "graphics" have their charms, but are frequently cryptic (What is that @ sign and what's it doing wandering through the storerooms?!). Recent versions have 3D landscapes, but earlier ones were all on a single plane, and the interface for dealing with the z-axis seems tacked on and hard to deal with. The game is so complex that you really have to read all of the introductory articles on the wiki (especially Quick launch, Starting builds, What should I build first?, and Your first fortress) plus the articles on the basic workshops, buildings, and items, and the one on noise, before you start or you'll find that you've screwed yourself over from the beginning (and remember to always check the wiki on any given building before planning it, so you don't put the only door to the room in a place that's blocked off by the contents!). And it's keyboard-only, which is clunky.

But damn, once you start playing it's hard to stop!

( Plans for teh futare )

(For lulz, and to see what got me to check out the game in the first place, see this "Let's Play!" of an earlier (2D) version, by some Something Awful goons trading off being in charge of the legendary fortress "Boatmurdered". It's a laugh riot.)

I went to see Cloverfield after work today. The verdict: it's way more effective than a giant monster movie has any right to be. Holy shit.

I went in expecting a big dumb monster movie. I didn't expect it to actually be, you know, scary. I was in for a big surprise. That movie is intense! It's sort of like how all those kids were dropped off to see a matinee of Night of the Living Dead by their parents, thinking it was just a harmless spooky movie, only to come home shellshocked and shaken*. The premise is basically "Godzilla from the POV of the poor bastards getting stepped on", but Manhattan has never felt more like the Nostromo from Alien. As I walked home from the BART station, I still felt claustrophobic, despite being out in the open. When the huge creature is rampaging through town, tossing rubble and crushing everything in its path, being able to run is no protection—you're just as trapped as if you're hiding in a cardboard box.

Speaking of which, it really hits on all of the big fears: claustrophobia, acrophobia, arachnophobia, agoraphobia (big time! it's practically the whole movie), fear of the dark, and a touch of body horror. Large things crushing you. Small, fast things clawing and biting you. Even gephyrophobia and aviophobia get in there. If you suffer from any of these fears, you will probably end the movie in the fetal position.

A lot of critics have pointed out that the movie has a shaky camera for pretty much the entire running time. It's true, and if you find that shaky cameras in movies make you motion sick you should probably sit this one out. I found it irritating in the beginning, when it's mostly just people talking, but when the main action starts (just when the shakily filmed conversations have really worn out their welcome), you don't even notice the shakiness, and the "verité" approach just works. You feel like you're there, looking at what the cameraman is looking at, seeing only what he can see (and, more importantly, not seeing what he can't).

The dialogue was a bit whedonesque at times ("Another something. Also terrible."), but it didn't detract.

( spoilery conclusion and footnotes )

P.S. Did anybody else who watched the movie also notice that the ending theme was a total homage to the classic Godzilla score?

The creepy Pink Elephants sequence from Disney's Dumbo, sync'ed to a version of the tune by Sun Ra! It doesn't always sync exactly, because the Arkestra extended some bits and shortened others, but it works surprisingly well.

The Dumbo animators clearly owe a great debt to Fleischer Studios and their weird, drugged-out jazz cartoons.

Great post-rock song. It starts out quiet and low-key, then about halfway through switches modes to epic and soaring.

And there's one point that reminds me of ursulav's Biting Pear of Salamanca (perhaps better known by the intartubes as the "LOL WUT" Pear). You'll know it when you see it.

EDIT: Deepest Sender ate the entire contents of my post. I hope it works this time.

Today's installment of People With Too Much Time On Their Hands On The Internet Theatre...

Until 4chan went down recently (RIP), I'd been spending a lot of time on /x/, the paranormal board. I don't believe in that stuff, but it's occasionally a good source of creepy stories (what they call "creepypasta", after "copypasta", which is stuff that's frequently copied and pasted). I've saved some of the good stuff.


I'm too lazy to retype it, so here's a screenshot of some pretty effective creepypasta.

Last night I dreamed I was watching a video (movie?). It was like a third-person dream (which is how they usually go for me), except it felt like I was specifically watching it on a screen. The movie was about my mom and her old friend Carolyn on a trip to Monterey* with Ikumi (a character from Infinite Ryvius, an anime series a coworker loaned me). They came by train, and stayed at a Coke vending machine at a crossroads--they'd put in a quarter, open the front panel, and walk in. The interior was made of bare sheet metal with a few shelves attached to the wall, and about the size of a closet (but apparently big enough for 3 people to stand comfortably).

After resting for a bit, my mom and her friend went by bus to the woods, drinking tea and talking along the way. Strangely, they were both invisible to me, the viewer, during this trip--in fact, I don't recall actually seeing them at any point in the dream, but here it was obvious because the teacups and saucers were visible, and floated in the air as they held them. They then hiked back through the woods, talking about how a large skyscraper being built on an island in the bay (the island had a name, although I don't think it was a real one in the area. I can't recall what it was) was a bad idea to build in earthquake country, because if it fell it would wipe out everything around it, and a tunnel being built to the island was likely to get flooded. It was a very talky dream, actually. They walked by a BART train (BART doesn't go down to Monterey), and even at one point walked over it as it went through a crevace that left the roof level with the surrounding ground in the forest. Ikumi was back with them at this point (I recall there was some sort of subplot with him that the "video" would cut back to at points, but I can't remember it). They got back to the vending machine, packed up their stuff, and left.

As an interesting note, at some times the "video" was animated. Ikumi is of course an anime character, and also the bus trip was done in a sort of Miyazakian, painterly style.

I thought the video was really good, and woke up wanting to reccommend it to people. It took a while to sink in that I'd only dreamed it, which was kind of disappointing.

*It was supposed to be Monterey, CA, but it didn't look much like it. It looked more like way to the Sierra foothills, with rolling hills of golden dried grass next to green wooded areas. Apparently my subconscious is just as bad as Hollywood studios when it comes to scouting locations.

But I have been writing more stuff on my Last.FM journal than here. I've decided that my music-related posting is going to go in my Last.FM journal (and since I've been going to more concerts and buying more CDs lately, I've had more to say about it). Although I may start cross-posting, because my LJ is looking a little dead these days.

These are my journal posts so far (with the exception of a repost of that Van Halen blooper jokermage posted a while back). My CD reviews:

• Recent acquisitions, reviewed (Mogwai, Sufjan Stevens, Lou Harrison, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Link Wray, The Bad Plus, Györgi Ligeti, Mastodon, Behold... the Arctopus)
  
• CD reviews: King Crimson, Four Tet, Ruins, Slough Feg, Tony Levin, Barenaked Ladies, Buckshot LeFonque, French Frith Kaiser Thompson, BulletBoys

And reviews of shows I've been to (these were all within one week. I was pretty dead by Friday):

• Ornette Coleman at SFJAZZ
• I rocked with a zombie: Roky Erickson @ The Great American Music Hall, Oct 31
• Battles @ The Great American Music Hall, Nov 1

Enjoy!

Listen to this mp3 with headphones. It sounds like an invisible person is shaking a matchbox around your body. It's eerie when it seems to go behind you. And when it goes in front you can actually track where it "should" be with your eyes.

This is what you get when you point a video camera at a monitor connected to the camera:

But it was long and probably not that interesting to anybody who wasn't already into it. So, in a nutshell: it was awesome, I had a great time, caught up with people I hadn't seen for a while and made some new friends, got my ass kicked by a man in his 60s, learned a lot, and was really tired by the end.

Now with that out of the way, an awesome video by The Avalanches (no, it's not Frontier Psychiatrist):

Early tomorrow morning I will be off to Ohio to be thrown about like a rag doll by men in pyjamas. Since I'm not going to risk having my laptop mistaken for a bomb, I will be sans intarwebs until I get back Sunday evening.

So, in the meantime, I leave you with an image to ponder in my absence:

You've seen them perform the Pythagoras Switch Algorithm March. Now, 1500 inmates of a Phillippine prison perform the video to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"!

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test