Update & book reviews
Update
Well, my computer problem from earlier has been resolved. It was actually problem one: my AGP graphics card had gone and died on me. I don't know why this kept me from booting up my computer at all. Thinking my motherboard dead, I took the graphics card out to donate it to prototaph's Frankenstein monster of a machine (It's built from the discarded components of multiple previous PCs). However, after he installed it he called me up and reported a very similar problem as mine. I bounded over to my now sans-graphics card box and turned it one and it booted up normally, with some incessant POST beeps indicating that I had no graphics card. So I drove over to Circuit City and got a nice-but-cheap card and now my PC is back up and running. Hooray! The only downside is that I was starting to get excited about upgrading, but to get what I actually wanted would cost atleast $600-$700, and just replacing the graphics card was MUCH cheaper.
Book Reviews
At the end of the year I finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. It was well written and well worth it. However, the ending was extremely abrupt; there was absolutely no denouement, which apparently is very characteristic of Stephenson. I'm not sure how I feel about that. And the story kinda diverged somewhere around the middle and never really came back together again. However, like anailia commented last night about the movie "Dreamgirls", I may have my criticisims. Yet it was definitely a work worthy of criticism, just like I learned to criticise books in English class back in high school. I've even changed my LJ subtitle to "A Young Gentleman' Illustrated Primer" (even though it's not usually illustrated like agent_scott's entries often are)
wikith lent me the "Camulod Chronicles" series of books by Jack Whyte, and I rapidly devoured (atleast for me anyway) the first in that series, The Skystone. The series takes a historical look at the founding of the Arthurian legend, and the Skystone takes place at the very end of Roman-controlled Britain with Arthur's great-grandfathers as the main characters struggling to survive in a crumbling Roman world. I loves me some historical fiction, I've found. Highly recommended to anyone else who also does.
Then prototaph lent me his copy of Kingdom Come, a graphic novel that he's been gushing about for a while now. He's also been gushing about a comic artist named Alex Ross, and I don't think I ever connected in my head that Alex Ross illustrated Kingdom Come. Now I know better. He would show me some of Ross' art and I would think, "Yeah, he does an awesome portrait, but people don't do art like that in comic books". Boy, was I wrong. The art in Kingdom Come is easily the best I've ever seen in a graphic novel. So while the story wasn't on the same level as "The Watchmen" (probably one of the best stories ever told, graphic novel or not), I spent most of my time reading Kingdom Come just looking at the fantastic, amazing, friggin awesome art. And yeah, the story was fairly good too.
This weekend: Planar Chaos prerelease!
Well, my computer problem from earlier has been resolved. It was actually problem one: my AGP graphics card had gone and died on me. I don't know why this kept me from booting up my computer at all. Thinking my motherboard dead, I took the graphics card out to donate it to prototaph's Frankenstein monster of a machine (It's built from the discarded components of multiple previous PCs). However, after he installed it he called me up and reported a very similar problem as mine. I bounded over to my now sans-graphics card box and turned it one and it booted up normally, with some incessant POST beeps indicating that I had no graphics card. So I drove over to Circuit City and got a nice-but-cheap card and now my PC is back up and running. Hooray! The only downside is that I was starting to get excited about upgrading, but to get what I actually wanted would cost atleast $600-$700, and just replacing the graphics card was MUCH cheaper.
Book Reviews
At the end of the year I finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. It was well written and well worth it. However, the ending was extremely abrupt; there was absolutely no denouement, which apparently is very characteristic of Stephenson. I'm not sure how I feel about that. And the story kinda diverged somewhere around the middle and never really came back together again. However, like anailia commented last night about the movie "Dreamgirls", I may have my criticisims. Yet it was definitely a work worthy of criticism, just like I learned to criticise books in English class back in high school. I've even changed my LJ subtitle to "A Young Gentleman' Illustrated Primer" (even though it's not usually illustrated like agent_scott's entries often are)
wikith lent me the "Camulod Chronicles" series of books by Jack Whyte, and I rapidly devoured (atleast for me anyway) the first in that series, The Skystone. The series takes a historical look at the founding of the Arthurian legend, and the Skystone takes place at the very end of Roman-controlled Britain with Arthur's great-grandfathers as the main characters struggling to survive in a crumbling Roman world. I loves me some historical fiction, I've found. Highly recommended to anyone else who also does.
Then prototaph lent me his copy of Kingdom Come, a graphic novel that he's been gushing about for a while now. He's also been gushing about a comic artist named Alex Ross, and I don't think I ever connected in my head that Alex Ross illustrated Kingdom Come. Now I know better. He would show me some of Ross' art and I would think, "Yeah, he does an awesome portrait, but people don't do art like that in comic books". Boy, was I wrong. The art in Kingdom Come is easily the best I've ever seen in a graphic novel. So while the story wasn't on the same level as "The Watchmen" (probably one of the best stories ever told, graphic novel or not), I spent most of my time reading Kingdom Come just looking at the fantastic, amazing, friggin awesome art. And yeah, the story was fairly good too.
This weekend: Planar Chaos prerelease!