So, I just read the Honor Harrington novel series. Yeah, all thirteen of 'em.

Well, first off, I should qualify "just". I've been working on them on and off for like a month now. Additionally, all but the most recent one is available freely and legally at baencd.freedoors.org. Baen has gone ahead and made a lot of its fiction available for ( Read more... )

I also took the opportunity to see The Great Gatsby this weekend.

It's no secret that I like Moulin Rouge!: it's frenetic, funny and has decent music and acting. And it's no secret that I like The Great Gatsby for its wonderful prose styling. The problem is, how well are the two really going to fit together?--one depends on words on the page, the ( Read more... )

This week started out rainy and cold, but by today it was overblown scorching hot, so that I came home to a room that was not substantially cooler than the outdoors. So, partially on a whim and partially to get into some air conditioning, I went to see White House Down.

I don't recall if I wrote anything about Olympus Has Fallen, which I also ( Read more... )

So. Star Trek: Into Darkness.

When the 2009 pre-boot came out, I was impressed by the special effects and the excellent treatment of the characters: I felt like it was very respectful to the cast of the original series, but not so much to its spirit. Some of the best episodes of Star Trek are the quiet, thoughtful ones--"Duet," a meditation on ( Read more... )

Just completed my first playthrough of Torchlight II. It took about 26 hours but could probably have been done a bit faster.

I never played the original Diablo; in fact, I've never played any of those games. I started with FATE, followed by Mythos and then the first Torchlight, and can say with some authority that I am just as susceptible to the ( Read more... )

The reason I like this season for action movies is that this is when the actually good ones get made. Dredd is possibly the perfect bang-boom shoot-'em-up film.

I saw the first Judge Dredd on video--I think we were in Vegas. I would've been still in high school. If I recall correctly, I also saw the original Stargate on this trip. This is the ( Read more... )

So, I think I mentioned a while ago that I was actually a little bit excited over the Total Recall remake. I've never seen the original, and didn't really have hopes that this one would be an actually good movie with, you know, "artistic value" or whatever. I did hope that it would at least be engaging, with enough special effects to draw you in ( Read more... )

So yesterday I got to see The Dark Knight Rises in a theatre. No, we did not get shot. Amelia lives down the street from the Grand Lake Theatre, a gorgeous 50s-style movie place, and we just walked right up and got tickets.

Given the runaway success of Batman Begins and, especially, The Dark Knight, this film had some pretty big shoes to fill. ( Read more... )

Now, further thoughts in my stuffy voice from my stuffy head.

So, having lots of time on my hands, in addition to an Internet connection, means I end up consuming a lot of video media. And one of the things people put on YouTube are the "Let's Play" videos: a single person (or group of people, if it's a multi-oriented game like Left 4 Dead) posts ( Read more... )

I was at the bookstore a few weeks ago to buy reading material. This in itself is a mistake, because brick-and-mortar bookstores are surcharging like no one's business. But anyway, in addition to the two latest Temeraire novels, I also grabbed Mistborn: the Final Empire, which I finished just now ( Read more... )