And that was the week that was
I've been really terrible about commenting. I'm in the midst of the pre-release crush at work, and this last week was full of deadlines, with more to come in the next few weeks. But I feel like I'm making progress is my goal to achieve better life/work balance, because I'm getting through this cycle:
* without dropping off the face of LJ completely for several weeks
* while maintaining a modicum of RL social life
* with my schedule to ramp up exercise intact
* without working a single moment on the weekends
* while eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and getting (mostly) enough sleep
Okay, so Friday night I might have passed out at 9:30. Still.
SG-1 10.10 - "The Quest Part 1"
* I am continuing to enjoy the easy camaraderie the team has had this season, the way Cam and Teal'c are casually going out to dinner, the way Vala leans up against Sam without thinking, and Sam just goes on with what she's doing. But I'm confused by Vala's sleep mask, because I thought sleep masks were not supposed to have eye holes
* This episode is aptly named, because this is a straightforward quest with measurable tests. I guess if you're going to go the Arthurian legend route, you might as well go all the way.
* I love Cam's "That is quitter talk!" and general impatience with anybody who doesn't share his bounding optimism.
* Not only does the village look like the one on the Camelot planet, the library is the same set. Oy. They really are getting a lot of mileage out of the village.
* You can tell how incredibly evil the Ori are because they're BURNING BOOKS. Bad, bad, bad.
* Cam automatically translates Sam's technobabble into familiar myths; her talk of a path through the time distortion field becomes "It's a maze."
* That's it? They felt their way through by tossing rocks?
* I knew we'd be seeing Baal in this episode because at Dragon*Con Cliff Simon told a story about how the coat he's wearing here is so tight in the arms that when they were rolling around on the ground for a fight scene, he couldn't pick himself up afterwards. And of course he insinuates himself into their quest.
* Ha! Vala packs a hair dryer on offworld missions.
* The sangraal is hidden in a cave beneath a lone mountain and guarded by a dragon named Smaug?
* The librarian was twelve kinds of shady, but I was surprised that he was actually Adria. I am just not feeling the menace from Morena Baccarin, though. She does well with the relatively subtle creepiness, like when she told Daniel the Ori had plans for him, but I don't think she pulls off being overtly threatening.
* I'm a little disappointed that Adria implanted the idea for locating the planet in Vala's dreams rather than having Vala just be clever. For one thing, it implies a degree of power over Vala that surely she could put to more effective use, and has the quality of something pulled out of the writers' asses. For another, Vala is being pretty roundly violated and invaded in this Ori storyline to further plot points and the writers aren't really acknowledging that.
* Every single member of the group contributes at some point to passing the tests-even Baal and Adria-which is interesting, because none of them could have succeeded individually. Adria could answer a riddle, but never would have stopped to help the child. Daniel didn't have the answers to most of the riddles, but he had the faith.
* Is it me or was that the lamest dragon ever? They only showed it against the cave background, so there was no way of determining scale, and it just looked small.
* To be continued! And not for six months. SciFi is really killing us with the extended cliffhangers this year.
SGA 3.10 - "The Return Part 1"
In what is shaping up to be a disturbing trend, I actually really enjoyed this week's SGA too. It's crazy. It's like when the writers have the characters making good decisions and caring about each other, the show is much more fun to watch or something.
* This gate bridge still seems dodgy. They had to take the stargates in the first place, and Rodney's macro for forwarding people seems error-prone and likely to have problems.
* This show really gives pretty CGI. The shot of the galaxy through the gates mounted on the space station is lovely, as are the later Atlantis skylines.
* I am going to handwave the way they're sending their ranking military officer on a test of the gate bridge, since they're not even trying to explain it.
* Jack!
* I really, really like the way the reality of the Ancients doesn't match up to the hype. The Athosians have been awaiting the return of the Ancestors for so long, and the Earthlings have built up such an esteem for the Ancients' technological abilities and role in guiding humanity's development, and the real Ancients they meet are private, distant, and kick them out of the playground. The Ancients have been so important to the humans, and it's not reciprocated at all.
* And that's on top of the way the Earthlings have to deal with losing a place they have come to think of as home, and the glue that kept them together. It's horrible to watch the team get split up, Teyla and Ronon staying in Pegasus, everybody else returning to separate lives on Earth.
* Wow, Jason Momoa can basically pick Joe Flannigan up and toss him around like a tennis ball.
* Jack must be going crazy, stuck on Atlantis with Woolsey and a bunch of Ancients.
* It makes sense for John and Carson to stay in the stargate program (and surely John runs into Vala at SGC, eh?) and for Rodney to go to Area 51, but Elizabeth isn't dealing at all well-she's not moving on, she's living in the past. Finding new work, seeing her friends here on Earth, means accepting what's happened.
* Also, I totally covet the red cabinet Elizabeth has in her living room.
* It's nice to see that the Ancients' hubris is a live and kicking and keeps them from seeing the replicators as a real threat. Although in their defense, they have not yet realized the awesome power of Dr. Rodney McKay to screw things up very badly without meaning to as he lurches from crisis to crisis.
* Landry's right that destroying the Atlantis gate is the only way to keep the replicators from using the gate bridge to reach the Milky Way, but I love that the team leaps to defend the city, especially if it means going back and reuniting with Ronon and Teyla. They have a plan! And it's actually a pretty good one.
* Oh Dr. Lee, you sad, sad man. World of Warcraft?
* It's interesting that the Genii want to recruit Teyla and Ronon-and it's a tempting offer for them. I doubt the Genii would be as careful with their lives as the Earth people were.
* * * * *
I'm dogsitting this weekend. Between being distracted and juggling too many things in my hands while walking the dog to the mailbox yesterday, I almost put a bag of dog poop down the mail slot. I'm pretty sure that's a federal offense.
* * * * *
I had profound things to say about the last few episodes of Life on Mars, but I can't remember what they were any more. Gene Hunt is just the most fascinating character, the dark reflection of all Sam's ideals. I loathed him so much in the episode where he the young man died in custody, and in the end, he was the one who manipulated Sam into investigating the death, and he was the one who knew the commissioner wasn't going to do anything with the results, and you could see how well he knew how much that loss of idealism hurt Sam. Hunt seems to see Sam's idealism as something to be cherished on the one hand and broken on the other, that making him deal with reality is a form of protection for him, and the writers walk the line with the contradiction, never stepping over one way or another. But the final test of Sam's idealism isn't Hunt; it's dealing with the reality of his father, with the fact that his father killed Annie and ran away, that he was, contrary to Sam's golden memories of him, a selfish and mean little man. Sam is so focused on the way his father left the family, and the fact that he can't prevent it, but the thing he does prevent is his father killing someone, killing Annie, and that's maybe the thing that was eating him up down deep inside, not the abandonment but the murder. I'm not sure where the show is going to go from here; it could be that Sam is reliving his life, trying to get past all of the most painful junctures, and this was only the first.
* * * * *
This video shows a lawyer giving some background on copyright litigation from the VCR lawsuits through Napster up to YouTube. My favorite part is that he delivers his entire spiel while wearing sunglasses.
* * * * *
I finished a sweater. I have actually finished the knitting part of several sweaters (I swear, knitting keeps me sane when work is stressful), but the finishing part is more painstaking, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I set one of the sleeves of this sweater in before The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques arrived, and did an okay job despite not really knowing what I was doing, but I'm only about 75% happy with the way the sleeves came out.
Pattern: Regine
Yarn: The recommended Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% cotton, 20% merino wool) in Candy Apple, most of 6 skeins, on US 6 straight and US 5 16" circular needles.
Skills acquired: Picking up stitches.
Comments: This was a good pattern for a novice sweater knitter; it's relatively straightforward but has the simple lace pattern around the cuffs, neckline, and hem to make it interesting. The yarn is pleasant to work with, relatively inexpensive, and comes in a lot of nice colors; I hit perfect gauge on the recommended needles. Supposedly, the wool content keeps it from having the sagginess of cotton; we'll see. I made the size that would give me an inch of ease in the bust, and the shoulders are too big, though it's still wearable. I think it's going to be a recurring problem that sweaters sized to fit my chest are meant for taller women with broader shoulders; they also seem to be too big in the waist. I think I'm going to have to knit sizes with 0 or even negative ease in the chest to get a better overall fit.
Anyway, now that I've finished this and am armed with The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques, I'm feeling motivated to attack that bag of sweater parts. This making sweaters thing is actually not that hard!
* * * * *
M. just bought a thermometer/hygrometer with a Japanese package insert and emailed me a scan to translate, so I busted out the Nelson Kanji Dictionary (mine is the old one, alas-that universal radical index sounds useful). It's surprising how much I still remember, and depressing how much I've forgotten. I have spent so much time in my life poring through the pages of that book, scanning the 214 historical radicals in the front cover for the one I needed, counting out the remaining strokes with my index finger, and using it again was almost like tapping into a body memory.
* without dropping off the face of LJ completely for several weeks
* while maintaining a modicum of RL social life
* with my schedule to ramp up exercise intact
* without working a single moment on the weekends
* while eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and getting (mostly) enough sleep
Okay, so Friday night I might have passed out at 9:30. Still.
SG-1 10.10 - "The Quest Part 1"
* I am continuing to enjoy the easy camaraderie the team has had this season, the way Cam and Teal'c are casually going out to dinner, the way Vala leans up against Sam without thinking, and Sam just goes on with what she's doing. But I'm confused by Vala's sleep mask, because I thought sleep masks were not supposed to have eye holes
* This episode is aptly named, because this is a straightforward quest with measurable tests. I guess if you're going to go the Arthurian legend route, you might as well go all the way.
* I love Cam's "That is quitter talk!" and general impatience with anybody who doesn't share his bounding optimism.
* Not only does the village look like the one on the Camelot planet, the library is the same set. Oy. They really are getting a lot of mileage out of the village.
* You can tell how incredibly evil the Ori are because they're BURNING BOOKS. Bad, bad, bad.
* Cam automatically translates Sam's technobabble into familiar myths; her talk of a path through the time distortion field becomes "It's a maze."
* That's it? They felt their way through by tossing rocks?
* I knew we'd be seeing Baal in this episode because at Dragon*Con Cliff Simon told a story about how the coat he's wearing here is so tight in the arms that when they were rolling around on the ground for a fight scene, he couldn't pick himself up afterwards. And of course he insinuates himself into their quest.
* Ha! Vala packs a hair dryer on offworld missions.
* The sangraal is hidden in a cave beneath a lone mountain and guarded by a dragon named Smaug?
* The librarian was twelve kinds of shady, but I was surprised that he was actually Adria. I am just not feeling the menace from Morena Baccarin, though. She does well with the relatively subtle creepiness, like when she told Daniel the Ori had plans for him, but I don't think she pulls off being overtly threatening.
* I'm a little disappointed that Adria implanted the idea for locating the planet in Vala's dreams rather than having Vala just be clever. For one thing, it implies a degree of power over Vala that surely she could put to more effective use, and has the quality of something pulled out of the writers' asses. For another, Vala is being pretty roundly violated and invaded in this Ori storyline to further plot points and the writers aren't really acknowledging that.
* Every single member of the group contributes at some point to passing the tests-even Baal and Adria-which is interesting, because none of them could have succeeded individually. Adria could answer a riddle, but never would have stopped to help the child. Daniel didn't have the answers to most of the riddles, but he had the faith.
* Is it me or was that the lamest dragon ever? They only showed it against the cave background, so there was no way of determining scale, and it just looked small.
* To be continued! And not for six months. SciFi is really killing us with the extended cliffhangers this year.
SGA 3.10 - "The Return Part 1"
In what is shaping up to be a disturbing trend, I actually really enjoyed this week's SGA too. It's crazy. It's like when the writers have the characters making good decisions and caring about each other, the show is much more fun to watch or something.
* This gate bridge still seems dodgy. They had to take the stargates in the first place, and Rodney's macro for forwarding people seems error-prone and likely to have problems.
* This show really gives pretty CGI. The shot of the galaxy through the gates mounted on the space station is lovely, as are the later Atlantis skylines.
* I am going to handwave the way they're sending their ranking military officer on a test of the gate bridge, since they're not even trying to explain it.
* Jack!
* I really, really like the way the reality of the Ancients doesn't match up to the hype. The Athosians have been awaiting the return of the Ancestors for so long, and the Earthlings have built up such an esteem for the Ancients' technological abilities and role in guiding humanity's development, and the real Ancients they meet are private, distant, and kick them out of the playground. The Ancients have been so important to the humans, and it's not reciprocated at all.
* And that's on top of the way the Earthlings have to deal with losing a place they have come to think of as home, and the glue that kept them together. It's horrible to watch the team get split up, Teyla and Ronon staying in Pegasus, everybody else returning to separate lives on Earth.
* Wow, Jason Momoa can basically pick Joe Flannigan up and toss him around like a tennis ball.
* Jack must be going crazy, stuck on Atlantis with Woolsey and a bunch of Ancients.
* It makes sense for John and Carson to stay in the stargate program (and surely John runs into Vala at SGC, eh?) and for Rodney to go to Area 51, but Elizabeth isn't dealing at all well-she's not moving on, she's living in the past. Finding new work, seeing her friends here on Earth, means accepting what's happened.
* Also, I totally covet the red cabinet Elizabeth has in her living room.
* It's nice to see that the Ancients' hubris is a live and kicking and keeps them from seeing the replicators as a real threat. Although in their defense, they have not yet realized the awesome power of Dr. Rodney McKay to screw things up very badly without meaning to as he lurches from crisis to crisis.
* Landry's right that destroying the Atlantis gate is the only way to keep the replicators from using the gate bridge to reach the Milky Way, but I love that the team leaps to defend the city, especially if it means going back and reuniting with Ronon and Teyla. They have a plan! And it's actually a pretty good one.
* Oh Dr. Lee, you sad, sad man. World of Warcraft?
* It's interesting that the Genii want to recruit Teyla and Ronon-and it's a tempting offer for them. I doubt the Genii would be as careful with their lives as the Earth people were.
* * * * *
I'm dogsitting this weekend. Between being distracted and juggling too many things in my hands while walking the dog to the mailbox yesterday, I almost put a bag of dog poop down the mail slot. I'm pretty sure that's a federal offense.
* * * * *
I had profound things to say about the last few episodes of Life on Mars, but I can't remember what they were any more. Gene Hunt is just the most fascinating character, the dark reflection of all Sam's ideals. I loathed him so much in the episode where he the young man died in custody, and in the end, he was the one who manipulated Sam into investigating the death, and he was the one who knew the commissioner wasn't going to do anything with the results, and you could see how well he knew how much that loss of idealism hurt Sam. Hunt seems to see Sam's idealism as something to be cherished on the one hand and broken on the other, that making him deal with reality is a form of protection for him, and the writers walk the line with the contradiction, never stepping over one way or another. But the final test of Sam's idealism isn't Hunt; it's dealing with the reality of his father, with the fact that his father killed Annie and ran away, that he was, contrary to Sam's golden memories of him, a selfish and mean little man. Sam is so focused on the way his father left the family, and the fact that he can't prevent it, but the thing he does prevent is his father killing someone, killing Annie, and that's maybe the thing that was eating him up down deep inside, not the abandonment but the murder. I'm not sure where the show is going to go from here; it could be that Sam is reliving his life, trying to get past all of the most painful junctures, and this was only the first.
* * * * *
This video shows a lawyer giving some background on copyright litigation from the VCR lawsuits through Napster up to YouTube. My favorite part is that he delivers his entire spiel while wearing sunglasses.
* * * * *
I finished a sweater. I have actually finished the knitting part of several sweaters (I swear, knitting keeps me sane when work is stressful), but the finishing part is more painstaking, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I set one of the sleeves of this sweater in before The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques arrived, and did an okay job despite not really knowing what I was doing, but I'm only about 75% happy with the way the sleeves came out.
Pattern: Regine
Yarn: The recommended Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% cotton, 20% merino wool) in Candy Apple, most of 6 skeins, on US 6 straight and US 5 16" circular needles.
Skills acquired: Picking up stitches.
Comments: This was a good pattern for a novice sweater knitter; it's relatively straightforward but has the simple lace pattern around the cuffs, neckline, and hem to make it interesting. The yarn is pleasant to work with, relatively inexpensive, and comes in a lot of nice colors; I hit perfect gauge on the recommended needles. Supposedly, the wool content keeps it from having the sagginess of cotton; we'll see. I made the size that would give me an inch of ease in the bust, and the shoulders are too big, though it's still wearable. I think it's going to be a recurring problem that sweaters sized to fit my chest are meant for taller women with broader shoulders; they also seem to be too big in the waist. I think I'm going to have to knit sizes with 0 or even negative ease in the chest to get a better overall fit.
Anyway, now that I've finished this and am armed with The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques, I'm feeling motivated to attack that bag of sweater parts. This making sweaters thing is actually not that hard!
* * * * *
M. just bought a thermometer/hygrometer with a Japanese package insert and emailed me a scan to translate, so I busted out the Nelson Kanji Dictionary (mine is the old one, alas-that universal radical index sounds useful). It's surprising how much I still remember, and depressing how much I've forgotten. I have spent so much time in my life poring through the pages of that book, scanning the 214 historical radicals in the front cover for the one I needed, counting out the remaining strokes with my index finger, and using it again was almost like tapping into a body memory.