Tag Archives: movies

Star Wars Stuff, Perspective on Numerous Levels, Cool Looking Hobbies, and (of course) Politics

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This entry is part 51 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I’ve spent far too long reading stuff and watching YouTube videos. Between that and hitting a meeting down in Silver Spring proper after work tonight, my “free time” has all but vanished, leaving me, once again, at the “Oh, crap, I should probably be going to sleep now-ish” point.

My “normal” sleep schedule really doesn’t fit well with the “normal” world. There’s really nothing close to normal about it. It rotates oddly if I’m left to my own devices. And, while I’ve found plenty of documented cases of variously odd natural sleep schedules. documentation doesn’t really help solve the problem of it not at all matching with a typical work schedule. (Let alone when anything else is going on.)

This has been the case for pretty much as long as I can remember.

And it really shows no signs of changing for the better. No matter how much I try to tweak it.

So, here’s the feed from today and the weekend. Enjoy it. I did. 🙂

Birdman, Open Source Cars, Facts of Life, Fashion WTF, an Awesome Ghostrider, and Bunches of History

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This entry is part 45 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Was just on a trip down memory lane with a friend I met long ago in a hotel.

She’s one of the handful of people I’m still in touch with that I met during Key Club conventions in high school. Those weekend-long conventions were some of the best times I ever had in high school. Definitely some of the few times I was really able to start figuring out who I really was back then.

Only a handful or so of those meetings turned into friendships. A few of them faded over the years… but some, despite some periods of prolonged silence, have held strong and show no signs of really fading.

In fact, because of things like Facebook, I’m interacting with these scattered kindred spirits more now than I have… ever.

This is why I dig the Internet so much.

It makes stuff like this possible.

That’s why I so badly want everyone to have it… and for it to remain as open and wild as it is right now.

Anyway, here’s the other highlights from today’s feed… mostly news that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise for days, if ever. (Another point for the Internet!)

More Than a Weekend’s Worth of Stuff

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This entry is part 38 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Missed another Friday of posting the (week)daily feed. Ended up out and about late into the night catching the “best of” showings of the 48 Hour Film Project films. Some very, very impressive things were made in that weekend. (And, hey!, I even know some people who made one of them! You can find that in the feed below.)

The rest of the weekend was ridiculously low-key. Mostly spent catching up on some shows, a backlog of email (lots of YouTube video notifications), and playing a few too many hours of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat (both nostalgia-fueled Steam purchases, since they were on sale when I bought them… I’ve been reminded why I stopped wasting quarters at the arcade).

The quiet weekend was shaken out by another high-stress day at the office, thanks to near-impossible deadlines and technology seemingly conspiring against me at every turn. And totally capped off by the bus I normally catch not even showing up and the second one on the route running just slow enough to make me miss my connecting bus to home by about three minutes (gotta love it when you can see the bus pull out of the pickup area and onto the main road).

Oh, and my sunglasses broke. (And, apparently, they were my backup pair… I usually have two pairs hanging around, just in case… seems I forgot to restock last time.)

It hasn’t been that great of a day.

https://www.facebook.com/kierduros/activity/10152073399765981

Sleep, Misogyny, Sun, Movies with and by People I Know, and Kids Today

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This entry is part 35 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

There’s… a lot going on. Not directly with me, mind you–work is busy and stuff–but in general, with people I know and things that I follow, there’s a lot going on.

Just saw a movie tonight made by and full of people I know. And I even had the chance to help make it happen via their crowdfunding campaign. I’ll have to do an expanded review over on Toob Talk (eventually), but, suffice to say, if you get the chance to see Of Dice and Men at a convention or film festival, do.

Then there’s all the hubbub going on about the culture of male entitlement, misogyny, rape culture, and the like. I do have a lot to say on the issue–most of it not even related to the recent mass shooting (which specifically targeted women and was perpetrated by a dude who, while obviously a bit crazy, was at least somewhat representative of an undercurrent in male culture in specific and American culture in general).

And then there’s ongoing talk about the attributes of different generations…

Basically, I have to make a whole lot of time to just write about all of this stuff.

But I also have to sleep… but I can’t do that on my own schedule because of various cultural norms that dictate when a “typical work day” starts and ends.

Food, Real Heroes, Diversity in Comics, Movie Trailers, Net Neutrality, and some Randomness

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This entry is part 30 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

It was a busy weekend. One that probably should have been busier, as I still didn’t get everything accomplished that I wanted to. Almost caught up now… almost.

My college and my home town have both made the feed recently. The first for being named “geekiest” by (DC) local nerd mecca Think Geek. The second for being the host of a full on rave-type festival this coming weekend. That second one is kind of surreal… as that’s exactly the sort of thing that would have never even been considered before the performing arts center on the Woodstock site (Bethel Woods) was put in place by a “local boy who done good” (by making a few million dollars in the cable TV industry (he sold his local empire to Time Warner over a decade or so ago).

More important news has come up, of course. There’s still the ongoing net neutrality fight. But the FCC is also dealing with a spectrum auction for wireless space. It’s going to be all former TV broadcast spectrum–so it can mostly make it through concrete buildings–and is reported to open the door for better cell service because of it. The words “super wifi” were also thrown around in a few articles. Very interesting, indeed.

And, returning a little to geeky news, the new trailer for Marvel’s next blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy, dropped today. I think it’s looking pretty amazing. Every time I see something new about this film, I love it more. It’s going to have an full on action/comedy feel and (director) James Gunn is looking like he’s pulled it off perfectly. That’s not much of a surprise. The man has a great grasp of genre and how to twist it just right to add the perfect amount of humor (check out Slither to see what he did with horror and Google PG Porn to see what happened when he took all the sex out of porn film ideas).

There’s also a new version of Dungeons & Dragons on the way in July. It’ll be the fifth edition. I played about one and a half sessions of 2nd Edition AD&D in college (before we abandoned it for Cyberpunk and RIFTS) and a handful of sessions of 3.5 a few years back when a friend was running a custom world setting using those rules. I’ve dabbled in it a little (as the OGL) while looking at some other game settings, and I can firmly say I’ve never cared much for the D&D system. So I’m thoroughly unimpressed that we’re getting a new version (priced at about $50 per core rule book, at that!).

In the past few years, I’ve checked out over a dozen different role playing systems and I’ve liked most of them better than D&D. Of course, I’m more story and character oriented than a lot of the classic D&D stuff seems to be… and I’ve never been interested in fully optimizing a character to just kick ass like a lot of people I know who played D&D seem to (at least once upon a time) be into. I like flaws in characters and games where combat doesn’t necessarily happen every session.

Ah, well… guess we’ll see how that all plays out. I expect some mighty nerd rage (just like when 4th edition came out).