Books!

My first order from Abebooks came in today. Huzzah! I paid a meager $9.25 and got four books. They are:

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I've read this before, but it was a copy my advisor, Dr. Rich, lent me. So now I've got my own copy. It's in about the same condition as the one I read before, so nothing terrible there.

I got two Moorcock books. The Cornelius Chronicles vol II and The Quest for Tanelorn. Tanelorn is book three in the Casle Brass series, so I can't read either given my lack of the earlier books. Well, I could probably read the Cornelius book, but I'll wait. I got these because I was lookng for the Stephenson book, and I checked with the bookseller for other books I wanted.

And the final book I ordered is William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic. If you know me from EKU, there's decent odds you watched the movie with me, and remember how truly (and hilariously) awful it was. So, when I found they were selling the screenplay and the original short story for two bucks, I jumped on it. And I read the short story today. It is better than the movie. Incredibly so. I don't mean in the manner of Jurassic Park, I mean in the manner of nothing before. There is literally no comparison. And for those of you who've seen the movie and read Neuromancer (to my knowledge that's just Rogue277), you'll be interested to know the dumb wired girl in the movie was, in the short story, Molly. Yes, Molly of the burgundy nails and scalpels.

Interesting. Electric armor!

Ever wanted to electrify the side panels of you car? Now you can. The British army is testing a system that will (theoretically) vaporize projectiles on contact, reducing the threat to nothing. Apparently an APC survived scads of RPG fire, when usually one shot can destroy the things. Hrm.

"thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning..."

Well, I suppose I'm the picture of enervated psycho at this point. I've been trying, quite desperately, to go to sleep since around five this morning. Clearly, I have failed. At first it was the normal difficulty I have going to sleep (I rarely nod off as quickly as anyone else I've observed). But then I was forced to light a candle in the twilight, because lo! I had an idea for my book. So I wrote it down and extinguished the light (I have a table full of candles and matches next to my bed, including a large black candleara in the floor nearby).

Then it happened again. And joy, that time it was light enough to do it without the fires.

And again.

And again. Suddenly the entirety of my story is outlining itself in my composition notebook. Everything from spirit animals to recluse primitives, I'm refining everything and figuring out where to go next. I'm close to parsing out the death of the protagonist (mythological, not necessarily literal), and I'm probably looking at a Waste Land style, Parzival-worthy climax setting. Woo. Or something. Now why couldn't these things have come at some sort of reasonable hour?

Incidentally: anyone have suggestions for a sneaky, thiefy, backstabby animal that isn't a raccoon, a rat, a snake, a raven, a crow, a possum, or a mouse? Most of those are overused, and would hurt me. And the possums are just smelly. Ick.

I added a cute librarian girl that'll probably be tagging along. I named her Asphodel. Whee for names. I need a better name for the first town. Something that's not jackape stupid... Suggestions for that, if you've got 'em...

God, I needs the sleep. For to live...

Visual Thesaurus is quite an interesting little web site. Check it out.

In other news, I went to the comic shop in Morehead today. Nothing makes you feel like the truest of the true geeks like braving an hour of biblical flooding to get your nerd on. I bought The Doll's House, volume two of the Sandman collections. I paid twenty, and found when I returned home I could have paid thirteen for it from Amazon. Of course. So I have now determined that I'm buying the rest from Amazon. But in hardcover. Given that if I buy two at a time I can actually save money over buying them, in paperback, from a store, I think that's a good deal.

I also bought the first volume of a series of books Dr. Pierce, one of my fencing instructors, gave me. I was missing only this first book, so reading was thus impossible until now.

And finally, I bought these glorious plush dolls of Morpheus and Daniel. Because, who doesn't want to cuddle up to a selfish anthropomorphic personification? (It's a joke from the series - some of you might have read it.) And maybe we're going to Lexington this weekend. That could be nice - though buying books from abebooks is certainly cheaper, I can't really browse too well there.

This is pretty exciting

The BBC has this article about a project to put up newspapers online, starting in 1801 (up until papers are still covered in copyrights, presumably). They may be digitizing the Morning Post, a paper that had articles by writers such as Samuel Coleridge (Kubla Kahn, Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads and Michael).

A few links of note

Interested in Vin Diesel? If you're not, you'll at least like him a little more after this interview. He's gotta be one of the biggest DnD geeks I've ever heard. And I didn't know he produced Chronicles of Riddick. I am still much excited about that movie, by the way.

If you hadn't heard, Hayden remindes us all of Harlan Ellison's plight over at Making Light. A short version: Ellison found out some smacktard was pirating all his books, and hosting them online. Still retaining the copyright for that, he protested. Two of the three parties settled - AOL's still fighting him to some extent, though there are noises of settling there as well. Or something.

Leo Laporte's going to Canada. Sort of. He's getting a new show for TechTV. Not G4TechTV, but TechTV Canada. Does that mean we'll get to see him here in the States? No one has any idea. Blah.

I've been mucking about with these things most of the day. Whether you like Macintosh computers or not, most people will admit the interface looks nice. And someone compiled all the tools you need to mimic that look. Just now I've got the theme going, so my menus and windows look the part. I've also got the nice calendar program, just cause it's a nice date-keeper. I'm downloading the .zip full of icons. I tried out one of the docking programs before, and tried another today, along with the objectbar, which is the taskbar at the top of the screen. I'm not too keen on those. The bar looked weird and all "safe mode," like it was in a different resolution. And the object dock was slow and annoying. Maybe I'll try the other program again, but I think I prefer the taskbar I'm used to. More updates later, probably with screenshots.

Nerdboy's archnemesis, Mr. Cool! *gasp* Played by Kyle Lewis. 

Nerdboy Rides Again!  (Yes, I'm popping out of the bus restroom for that picture.)

I thought everyone might enjoy a picture from my junior year in high school. It was on the bus coming back from Tenn. and I was having some fun with my cheesy Drew Carrey sunglasses, along with some friends. Probably more pictures later. Oh, what did I say as I struck that pose? Nerdboy! 

Er, well... I'm nice anyway, yes?

Here's a list of questions having to do with "literature abuse." That's the same sense as "drug abuse," not "child abuse."

The first person who answered in the forums got frightened because they answered 24 "yes." I answered 50 "yes." Welcome to the lair. Don't let the door strike you as you run screaming. Come again.

Oh, also. We'll see how far my patience can stretch, but I'm going to try and use w.bloggar's function of multiple accounts to post to my blog and my LiveJournal. Unfortunately, I can't hit one button and post to both, so I have to copy-paste the text to the field twice. Bleh.

If you like Harry Potter, this picture might interest you: (Katie Leung and Emma Watson, playing Cho Chang and Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Writing update

The book, oddly enough, goes swimmingly. I used two wonderful words in the span of three pages (ponce and asperse) and segued into the prerequisite dream sequence without realizing what I was heading towards. It's quite rewarding to find oneself hitting all the marks for the standard plot without ticking them all off apurpose. Rewarding indeed.

SuperOpie mentioned is his blog an occurence with his transportation, so perhaps he'll be visiting tomorrow. I hope I don't leave and miss him, but I'm getting a bit tired of the cooped up feeling. He has the day off, I think he said, so I could just call or something. We'll see.

I found that my first order of books shipped from New York today, and that's as good a time as any to tell everyone about abebooks.com. It's a wonderful database site for used books. You can find nearly anything, and they have a great search system, so you can find exactly what you want. You can even search exclusively for hardcovers, or try to find books signed by the author. And usually the seller tells you the condition of the book, so there's no risk there. Paperbacks, even paper copies of discontinued books, can often be found for a dollar.

pool eddies...

My head's all swimmy again. I really should be in bed, you know. I was sick last night and couldn't go to sleep for hours, so my body's mimicing last night. Thankfully, without the sickness of doom.

I've meant to mention for a while now what I've been downloading recently. If you haven't heard of OCRemix.org, you're missing out. It's collection place for all sorts of remixes - video game soundtrack stuff, specifically. Check it out. Especially for two Legend of Zelda mixes. "Ancient Hero" and "Pirates of Dragon Roost Island." Even if you haven't played the game (Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker) listen to them, they're great pieces.

So Four Swords Adventures should be out by now... It's a bit maddening, really. I get the feeling it's another game that will really shine in multiplayer. But I'm not sure I'll have anyone to play with. It looks like SuperOpie is pretty durn busy with work and his band stuff, which he really should tell everyone about (glares), so he probably won't have time. I'll hit him up anyway if I get it before summer's out. I mean, I've already got Rebel Strike, which is supposed to have great co-op stuff available. And Tales of Symphonia's coming out next month. It also has interesting multiplayer options. Sigh, and all. And when I get back to school... Hm. Well, Russdur is purportedly not coming back to school, and n8 doesn't live on campus. Those are all my options. I should really get ahold of Zach, too. There are few people I know around here who are available, but he might be. If nothing else, it'd keep me from going the stir crazy.

This is a crazy mix... DJ Pretzel's final take on Revenge of Shinobi.

Of late I can feel the crazy stir coming on. I should play more Rebel Strike. I can't seem to get any gold medals. Damn it, I was the biz on Rogue Squadron. Curses...

Glorious.

I finally came up with the idea to save my frigging capital city (in my story, you fools). I'd planted the whole city in a ring of small mountains, just for a bit of setting. I realized what I could actually do with that. Today I added a creepy fairy intimidating the hell out of the characters, popping out of the forest on the hillside and making cryptic comments. The native girl was familiar with it. So I just happened to think: the mountains can be a fairy ring. A huge, powerful, scary fairy ring. Why else would a city constrain itself like that? Woo.

That's about it. In the day events category, I watched a crapload of Invader ZIM today. Several episodes, with and without the commentary. Several neat facts: the line "radioactive tiny pants" was supposed to be "radioactive tiny ants." And the person who originally voiced ZIM? Mark Hamil. And then Billy West. (They never said it directly, but I suspect a tiny budget forcing them to pick their third choice.) I do prefer their third choice though. I can't remember his name. Rick something. He did Dagget in Angry Beavers. Billy West was far too recognizable, and not really crazy enough. (His voice remains in the unaired pilot that's on the DVD.) I haven't heard Mark Hamil's rendition, but I wonder how much like his Joker voice it sounded like? I could see the two sounding similar, and that wouldn't be good at all.

Here's an interesting article with an idea I grow to like: abolishing the FCC It makes a lot of good points. A scientist thinks he's got information that can settle the Atlantis quandary. Wondrous.

The perils of shopping.

I bought quite a bit, really. Most things the peoples are interested in nowadays.

At Sam Goody's:

First, I bought a book of short stories collected by Diana Wynne Jones, entitled Fantasy Stories It has everything from the Brothers Grimm to C.S. Lewis.

Then, the manga. I finally bought the second volume of Trigun, along with the first volume of Trigun Maximum. They don't seem to have any real info. though, so check Amazon.com if you need more. I also picked up the first volume of Tsubasa. That's by CLAMP, which means you should be afraid. And because I got so much manga, they gave me some promo goodies. I got the Tokyopop Sneaks, but haven't read it yet. It includes (among other things) samples of Saiyuki and D N Angel. They also gave me a sampler DVD from Geneon, which is part of Pioneer. It has episodes from Last Exile, L/R, and Haibane Renmei, among others.

I also bought the first volume of the Happy Tree Friends. Wondrous!

Then we went to Wal-Mart. I got some rechargable batteries, along with The Bad Beginning, the first Lemony Snicket book. I mentioned it in an earlier post. And I bought the first volume of Invader ZIM! The glory!

And I finally got a copy of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike. Mmm, happy. The speeder bike level is fantastic.

The center of my lizard brain is swimming...

As it is rather late, a full consensus of my shopping gamut will come tomorrow. Or later today, depending on how you view such things. However, I did want to jump online and mention that I finished The Bad Beginning, being the first book of Lemony Snicket's series. It was very good, though nothing extraordinary or spectacular. Even though it is quite humorous, it is also quite serious when it warns that you must have a tolerance for bad things happening to nice people to read it. I would also recommend never reading more than one without a good break between.

Comments and bad English majors...

Well, here's an awfully odd thing: Student suing school because he plagiarised. Well, that's not quite the whole thing. Michael Gunn spent a hardy three years at Kent University plagiarising, mostly from critical internet sources. Then he got caught, months before his graduation. He's claiming they should have caught him sooner, simply. To be a bit more complex, he claims that he didn't quite know where the lines were on plagiarism, and if they had mentioned it with his first paper, legally he'd be fine. He's setting up a rough, simplistic Laches defence (the only reason I know what that is would be this site, where they're discussing it in detail). Hayden, the writer of the site, who is also an editor for TOR, feels what he is asking, which seems to amount to a "do-over," is relatively justifiable. Mostly, she's enraged that the school couldn't catch him for three years until they ran his paper through a piece of software that does their job for them. An interesting problem, really.

For the most part, I have viewed Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books as an author and publisher riding J. K. Rowling's coattails through the dust. (As of this moment, I've no idea if they were being published first, second, last, or what. I'd just seen them in stores.) But I've bought the first book, and I shall let it inform my opinion, as I should have before. Honestly, it seems like the sort of slightly odd, vaguely Gothic horror/fantasy thing-bob I'd love. (See Neil Gaiman's Coraline. Snicket's books are getting a fair amount of press, at least from where I sit. Sehmket seemed to like the first book. It's being made into a movie. And it seems that my favorite angst bubblegum rock band, the Gothic Archies do the music for the audio books. Simply brill band, incidentally. All one of them.

For the curious, the BBC has more information about Venus' transit of the Sun.