Leverage Quote
February 25th, 2009
Nathan: Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?
Elliot: I don’t know, maybe.
Archive
Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Images
February 10th, 2009
So I’ve been doing some art like stuff for Nephilim’s Song. These are images I did in Gimp. They are released under a creative commons license. Go to my Deviant Art page for full sized versions and licensing information.
Serpent’s Tooth by Jessica Darago
January 21st, 2009
A friend of mine from college is a few weeks into a literary contest to get her book published. She’s been working really hard on this for a long while so if you like historical romances or if you just want to help out a friend of mine, go to her livejournal, pass the word around… hey maybe even win a scarf.
Help promote the American Title contest and win a handknit gansey scarf! Visit contestant Jessica Darago’s blog at http://justjayj.livejournal.com/275687.html to find out how.
Apparently payola is alive and well in the publishing industry 
Creative Commons
January 5th, 2009
I recently was looking for Creative Commons images to put into some of my Nephilim Song stuff. This seemed like a perfect use for such work, I was producing freely distributed game supplements that had no budget and would be greatly enhanced with some images to break up walls of text and my art skills are limited at best.
One of the places I went looking for images was Deviant Art since they have a proper Creative Commons tag easily searchable using a google site search if not their built in search. What surprised me is the number of times I encountered something to the effect of:
Licensed under the Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license. You can not use my work ANYWHERE without my express written permission and if you do, you are a thief.
I also encountered something along the lines of:
This work protected by copyright and creative commons.
This led me to believe that a sizable part of the Deviant Art community that was releasing works under the creative commons license, simply didn’t know what they were doing.
My understanding without being a lawyer is that the creative commons licenses are just that licenses, not protections. When you license your work under creative commons you are giving your express written permission for your work to be used without further consultation under limited conditions laid out in the specific creative commons license.
The creative commons license does not offer any additional protections above straight copyright, in fact it is a formal release of some those rights so your work can be used by the culture. There are very good reasons for doing this, it is only with a rich public exchange that we stand on the shoulders of giants.
If you do not wish to participate in that exchange, I do not wish to use your work without your blessing which is why I found the mislabeling so distressing. Some people made it obvious despite releasing their work under the creative commons that they did not wish for others to use their works, others made it clear that they did wish for others to be able to build new things using their work as a building block.
The ones in between worry me. They licensed the work, but my survey doesn’t fill me with confidence that they knew what they were doing.
I messaged a few of the artists who’s comments made it clear they did not wish to license their work and tried to inform them of what the license meant and I wrote this trying to further the educate the Internet.
Batman Begins as Sodom and Gomorrah
September 5th, 2008
Over at the Atheist Experience blog they do a wonderful comparison of the Batman Begins movie with the Sodom and Gomorrah story. It’s a bit long but the argument that Batman Begins is a retelling of the story with a humanist twist is fairly complelling.
Captain’s Fury
February 17th, 2008
I just finished Captain’s Fury by Jim Butcher and I’m going to have to give it a hearty thumbs up. There were sections in the middle where I was concerned. Jim Butcher is on my short list of authors I follow, but his forte is not really action, its more politics and maneuvering. I think that’s why I love his work so much.
The middle of the book is sort of an action scene/travel log that lacks the political pressure that I look for in Butcher’s work. But the climax delivers in spades.
I’d grown a bit concerned, because his last Dresden File book, White Knight, felt like a set up book. Which I’m okay with, you do ten books in a series and occasionally you need to move some pieces around to set up what comes next. While reading the middle of this book I was made to wonder whether White Knight was a set up or if Butcher lost his touch, but I once we got passed the middle, the Butcher I’ve come to know and love was back.
With minimal spoilers the middle consists of flipping back and forth between Amara and Benard slogging through a swamp and Tavi traveling to and from (and the actual) prison break. During that whole period of time there wasn’t really any tension and no meaningful conflict. All the foes were nameless mooks, and I never really thought either group would ultimately fail at their tasks. The events had to happen for the end to come together, but it should have been edited down or some meaningful conflict added.
The beginning that establishes Tavi as a capable commander and tactical thinker was good stuff. The series has come to a place that reminds me of the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. At the center of both series is a crazy little bastard who finds himself in the center of trouble, always with more than himself at stake and manages to pull it out of the fire by will, audacity and cleverness. Miles was practically incapable of physical action, while Tavi is at a serious disadvantage compared to his allies and enemies (though he’s catching up). They both deal with threats which can’t just be swatted away by physical or magical power. The more I think about it the more similarities I see between the two heroes.
Despite the hiccup in the middle of this book, I give it a thumbs up. I recommend this book and have no reservations about recommending the whole series.
Live Free or Die Hard
January 8th, 2008
I saw Live Free or Die Hard, the latest installment of the Die Hard series over the weekend and it was awesome. Awesome in the sense that it had plot holes big enough for the 18 wheeler being chased by jet fighter to easily fit through but thoroughly entertaining. I usually don’t go in for the purely action movies and so threw it in while I was doing other stuff figuring occasional explosion in the background would keep me entertained.
I completely failed to do any of the other things I was intending. It was a quality rollercoaster ride. Keep in mind that I’m a computer person and they bent tech over and did some unseemly things things to it to create their story and I still enjoyed it greatly.
I’ve been reading Spirit of the Century in preparation to possibly running it and I think Live Free or Die Hard has a lot of similarities to the pulps which the game were based. You have your two fisted hero doing increasingly improbable things. You had jeopardy to his loved ones and quite a number of ticking clocks. More property damage than you can shake a stick at and generally awesome fun.
The only thing that was missing, that I thought really should have been there was one of the times the Big Bad declared McCLane dead his hostage daughter needed to at least once say something to the effect of, “you don’t know him very well, do you?” It wouldn’t have matter if she believed it or was just saying it for bravado, it was a missing trope.
I sort of thought that there was bit of footage involving the daughter that got left on the cutting room floor. But since I thought the movie was great for what it was perhaps I shouldn’t question that decision.
If you’re looking for an action move Live Free or Die Hard delivers.
The Covenant
December 29th, 2007
My movie watching has been stymied for the last little while by having in my possession The Lost (Season 2, Disk 3 I think), Lady in the Water (which was actually pretty good) and The Covenant.
I knew the Covenant was going to be bad, I think Netflix gave it two stars. And so I just couldn’t get behind watching it. The only reason I got it was because as a genre I think urban fantasy is interesting and was hoping it had an interesting element or two.
I was actually doing other things while watching it and I’m usually less critical of movies that don’t have to absorb my entire attention. Given that I still thought it had some potential, they failed to deliver on any of it, but it could have been conceptually interesting.
The real downfall was the end. When two mages face off it should not include one charging the other on a motorcycle like a jousting match. When you see that scene that is when the writer or directors or someone stopped trying to be imaginative. The final battle is all energy bolts with a little TK thrown in for flavor. Some times the shimmering bolts would hit and people would get hurt, othertimes identical looking bolts would be shrugged off. The whole battle just became tedious.
The real problem with the ending is the lever. I’m evil and gone through the trouble of abducting your love to force you to relinquish your power to me. You show up at the appointed place and the chick is suspended in air in some sort of undefined peril and you decide to fight me because your that kind of guy. I now have the choice of fighting you fair or giving the lever a little kick.
Since I’m evil I decide to fight you fair. What?!
Aparanlty counter magic for anything more subtle than a telekenetic blast is just unheard of. It seems once you tag someone with a spell there is no way magic could undo those effects.
Anyway if you like the genre and you need something playing in the background sure, otherwise probably skip it.
Sleep
July 31st, 2006
Movies
May 8th, 2006
Don’t normally go in for posting the results to quizes, or taking them much, but this one seemed interesting. There were several movies I wouldn’t put on a top list, but even Apocolypse Now I didn’t really hate, it was more a what ever. I didn’t coun’t movies that I recall seeing bits of on TV but don’t recall a lot about. Far too often that’s just from seeing clips on other things.