Thing 76 Done!!!

This morning I finished reading Bone by Jeff Smith, which I've been working my way through for the last month since getting the complete collection in one volume. With planning and preparing for my road trip I don't have the time to say too much about it now, other than to say that I thought it was utterly brilliant from start to finish. I really believe that the work as a whole is on a par with The Lord of the Rings.

The road trip begins on Monday; I'll be making notes and taking lots of pictures as I'm going across the USA, but not sure if I'll be on email or internet very much. In case I don't get back on here until the middle of August when I'm back, I hope that your summer is great and happy and full of good weather.

16 out of 101 things done... Time to pick up the pace!

Thing 92 Done!!!

For my US Road Trip - which is now only two weeks away!!! - I bought myself a wind-up torch yesterday... And then it suddenly dawned on me that that was one of my 101 things, Thing 92.

I guess that there's not much you can say about it apart from that. It's a nice little torch. And it's powered by me! So yeah.

I fly to New York two weeks tomorrow. Where did the last ten months go?

Terminator Salvation

The absolute best thing about Terminator Salvation is the flawless digital cameo towards the end of an actor who was associated with the first three films but not with this new franchise.

I say new franchise, because there is absolutely no way that I will ever think of it as being part of the original franchise (I have a hard enough job considering Rise Of The Machines to be canon sometimes). Previously the films - especially T2, my personal favourite - were about fantastic sequences and special effects welded with interesting, dynamic ideas and plot. Salvation had the effects, and at times it even had the ideas but the plot and script let the whole affair down with huge gaping chasms of logic and some terrible, terrible dialogue.

I wasn't even going to write about the film (the old adage, if you can't say anything nice...) but watching the magnificence of T2 yesterday really threw Salvation's shortcomings into stark relief.

Haiku

It's been some time since I posted haiku, but it doesn't mean that I've not been writing them. Here are the recent ones from the last month or so, which takes us up to 27 in total now.

A trick of the light,
The smile I thought I saw
Was not meant for me


We gambled our love
For the sake of a bad debt
And came up snake eyes


The end of the world
Is different for each man.
A personal fate


Your reassurance
And then my ego is maxed!
I can play outside


Faster and faster
And faster, resulting in
Your own disaster

Star Trek

Three weeks after I saw it, I finally get around to writing my thoughts on Star Trek. I've not been to the cinema as much as I would have liked so far this year, which means that when I say Star Trek is the best film I have seen so far this year it doesn't really have the impact that it should.

From start to finish, I really enjoyed it; I've seen it twice now, and on both occasions it was just a total joy to watch. The casting is very strong, and I think that the characters in the main roles all hit the bullseye when it came to performances, none of them straying into caricatures or impersonations, but still delivering what the audience expects and remembers in terms of the qualities that make up the characters. Zachary Quinto, in particular, excels as Spock - as does Leonard Nimoy, who binds together the franchise with an appearance that is more than merely fan-pleasing.

Criticisms can be made about the plot, particularly about the effects of red matter - whose properties could be helpfully summed up as "doing whatever the plot requires" - but in some ways that misses the point of the enterprise (pun intended). This is Star Trek, not hard sci-fi space opera - a criticism levelled at plot holes in the film also hits the many, many occasions over the years where Star Trek has put the story and the people ahead of the plot holes, and which have been successes because of it.

If it doesn't quite hit the emotional highs of Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country it is certainly not for want of trying. This is a bold, primary colours, optimistic view of the future, a rebirth of a fantastic franchise and could very well go on to be my favourite film of the year.

The big question for me now is whether or not I can squeeze in a third trip to the cinema to see it again...

Three Weeks!!!

I don't really know why it has been three weeks since I've posted; have entered a bit of a holding pattern I guess. Planning for the USA trip is going well, and the trip is only 40 days away!!! Crazy stuff.

I've not been able to make the progress I wanted on some of the other things I was thinking about doing in May. I thought that June was going to be really quiet as well, but have now got a pretty big project to work on as a Course Manager for a Career Skills Workshop which is at the end of June. Lots of prep over the next four weeks. Am beginning to realise that this is a huge job, and there's plenty to do right now. Problem is that it is heavily contingent on me being given information, and the information is not forthcoming at the mo...

Stress! But oh well. Things are moving on... As they always are. Am thinking of starting a new blog just to post little bits and pieces of writing on. I like that I write about my 101 things here, but want to write about other things too.

Anyways. Am going to post more in the next few days. My belated thoughts on Star Trek and some haiku I think. Maybe other things too!

Eastern Standard Tribe

As any regular reader will no doubt have noticed from my reading list, I am a bit of a Cory Doctorow fan. I like the kinds of things that he champions on Boing Boing, and while I think I first heard of him through the short story When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth it was reading Little Brother for the first time last year that really made me like his work a lot. Little Brother is a really great near future thriller that young adults can really get their teeth into and get something out of since it deals with such interesting ideas as civil liberties and digital freedoms.

If Little Brother is a mini-masterpiece then Eastern Standard Tribe is an early sketch, a rough drawing that shows a lot of promise but which ultimately falls short for the reader. The ideas - derived from circadian rhythms and being culturally connected to people not physically close to you in the digital age, as well as a slew of well-handled ideas on things like new media and a more bureaucratic society - are cool and interesting, and no-one can doubt that Doctorow has a great ability for taking interesting ideas and dropping them into stories. However, in this earlier work it shows in the plotting that he is still developing as a writer. The build up of the story is interesting, but the end appears so quickly and happens so fast that you have to blink in case you miss it (much like in Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom).

I've just realised looking back over my first two paragraphs that I've not really told you much about the plot, but I think that's OK, that's something that you can discover for yourself. As a springboard for an interesting future that has some well thought out ideas playing in the foreground, Eastern Standard Tribe does not disappoint. The plot is fast-moving, and though I felt a bit cheated at the sudden end it is a great ideas novel and well worth reading as an example of an author with a brilliant mind for speculating about the future.

Eastern Standard Tribe is available to download for free under a Creative Commons license.