21:55
I went to see the movie Kick-ass today. For a comedy, I was surprised at the amount and level of violence, implied and actual. But then again, I guess it was about right for a K-15 movie. Nevertheless, it was pretty good and everything seemed to make sense!
23:58
One of our TV channels (YLE Teema) showed a dramatized series about Estonia's way to independence (well, not all the way, but I think years 1913–1941 anyway) called "Tuulepealne maa". It had 12 parts and the last one just came out today. I remember starting to watch the first episode just because I thought it would be cool to listen to some Estonian. Then the story started getting interesting, and even after the independence war was over and it went more in the direction of human drama, I wanted to keep watching to see what would happen. I've never been too big on history. But this series was good!
22:07
This is truly a fantastic game! http://woodgea
23:31
And then I finished the seventh Harry Potter book too. Yay!
00:23
I finished the sixth book too. I just saw the movie when it came out and damn, nothing of it caught on me and the book was largely a surprise. It was also better than the fifth one, so at least this far the quality has been increasing with the number. Let's hope that holds true for the last one too.
03:07
Damn it's late. Anyway, inspired by the Harry Potter fanfic I told about earlier, I started reading the latter books which I haven't read, just so that I won't be terribly spoilered by the fanfic. Then again, now that I read the fourth book and half of the fifth, I started wondering whether it WOULD be better to read the fanfic first anyway...
23:35
I finished the fifth book too. I think it was better than the fourth, and things sort of make sense now.
13:57
I moved my computer out of my room for the summer since it generates way too much heat. I instantly noticed how much quieter my room is without it! That video card fan sure makes a lot of noise...
19:01
I went and got myself a last.fm account. I guess you could blame peer pressure but it was more like "why not". Anyway: http://www.las
22:13
As amazing as it is, I've been reading a Harry Potter fanfic. I'm not a particular fan of HP – the books are well-written, certainly, but I don't really like the characters nor the holey plot (though I'm pretty good at ignoring that especially when it comes to human flaws). The books are good enough that I want to read them, and I think I'll finally read the four last ones this summer.
Anyway, the fanfic. http://www.fan
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is quite excellent in its attempt to bring some sense into the HP universe! It's also well-written and even I can ignore the few missing commas. And the humor is great.
22:16
I went to see Iron Man 2 today. Nice crashing around, though it wasn't exactly exceptional. The social/talking scenes were strange but realistic in a way. Stark nearly always talked over somebody and it amazes me how they keep the massive company from crashing when it sounded like they have nothing but problems...
Also, making video game characters older: http://www.exa
12:53
http://www.the
20:12
I started reading the Keychain of Creation webcomic. I tried a couple of times a few years back, but back then I had no clue about the Exalted game system, which was what I needed to become interested in the comic. Anyway, lol! http://keychai
18:05
My brain feels sort of warm and fuzzy. I just finished reading this unfinished Harry Potter fan fiction: http://www.fan
It is rather awesome and intellectually stimulating, though I don't think I actually read anything (scientific) in there that would have been new for me.
01:06
I went to see H. R. Giger's Alien exhibit in Tampere art museum some days ago. It was pretty interesting and all the art was pretty cool. And apparently I don't have anything more intelligent to say at the moment... cough.
21:59
Regarding the wound I typed about in <blog:1105208>; it left quite a nice scar. It's red and all, and might eventually fade away. By now I also have plenty of similar-lookin
I finished watching Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis in February. Good series!
I've been updating Veltzeh's reading list.
Yet another awesome song: http://www.you
00:12
I think this link came from a nanowrimo channel. I thought it was awesome. http://www.sal
This was also awesome: http://www.you
Hmm, it seems like it's my birthday tomorrow.
20:45
Here's an interesting post: http://www.cod
I'm one of those who can program and I find it pretty easy. I never really thought much about it until I took a course called utilization of data structures (and I'm sure I've mentioned that before too). On the course, we were supposed to find algorithms most efficient at searching or sorting. They said that the first, intuitive guess at the algorithm would never be the best, but I always got it "right" on my first guess for some reason. Then again, it could've been because I actually thought about it and didn't just go "oh, linear sort is always the best way to go".
Programming is like grammar and laws. I'm good at following their rules, be they "meaningless" or not. :D
11:47
I didn't turn on my computer at all yesterday, even though I had the chance. I thought that was odd enough to make a journal post about it. I didn't do it in the morning because I'd only have been on the computer for about fifteen minutes before leaving, and since I would be at the university for at least six hours, I didn't think I should leave the computer on, so I just didn't turn it on at all. Saving energy and all that. It would've warmed up my room though. When I returned from the university, I didn't have time to go to the computer before I started watching Stargate. By the time we were finished with Stargate, it was time to go to sleep, so there. No computer for a day.
I did use my laptop a few minutes during a lecture though.
22:52
It's been quite cold for over a week now and approximately below zero for almost a month. Specifically, it's been about below -10 during the day and around -20 during the night. Winter is awesome! There's also a quite nice amount of snow.
08:19
I went to watch the fireworks of Joensuu at midnight. It was quite spectacular-lo
00:20
A video was linked in the Order of the Stick forums. I usually don't watch videos, but in this case, I'm really glad I did. (The scene specifically worth seeing starts at about 2:55, but it's good to watch and listen the stuff before that, too.) http://www.you
Damn I laughed. XD
In other news, I cut a pretty big wound on my finger with the bread knife because of an obnoxiously hardened loaf of rye bread. That hasn't happened for quite a while, so I guess it was overdue. I wonder what kind of scar it'll leave.
23:28
I went to watch Avatar today. It was a movie about how humans come to exploit blue humanoids called navi on their home planet Pandora. I liked it, and while I admit it could've been done a little better, it was quite fine as it was. For once I thought 3 h 45 min wasn't enough to tell the story (though, granted, I mostly wanted more technobabble about how things work).
An issue of more discussion would be another review I read – after seeing the movie. It was in Aamulehti (Finnish morning newspaper) and said how "digitally produced images that are estranged from realism feel just as natural to the young people who've spent their youths at the computer as real, comforting people's faces in films feel to the older people". That statement felt wrong to me, but I don't think I can say much more about it without some actual research. I like both real faces and the digital ones, though of course the situation depends. If something is supposed to be very alien and non-humanoid but still has to be played by a human, it just doesn't work. And humans don't have to be digitally rendered. Anyway, I'm probably just missing something from that review statement.
I got stuck on the mention about realism, though. Whatever I've read and heard, everybody always says how we young ones should realize that movies and such are FICTION. They are NOT REAL (and you can't just shoot people like that). Well, to me, that's been pretty obvious. Then suddenly, in comes how movies, and especially sci-fi ones, are supposedly allegories of the present day. That was really emphasized in the Avatar review in Aamulehti. So who's saying what's real now? That all fictional but still allegory probably makes sense, but mostly it just feels like cheating to me at this point.
I'm not really getting why all/most/best sci-fi should be allegories of present day anyway. I do understand it's a way of telling the story in another way than it happened in real life, but... I'm just not really seeing the point in emphasizing sci-fi's allegoriness. It could be done in a regular, non-sci-fi film just as well, even if differently, I bet.
Yet another thing was how close game-making and movie-making have become. The reasoning was that they're both just coding on the computer. WTF? I don't even know that much about 3D stuff, but I'm pretty sure they still need humans for body movements, though they can just record that and then use it endlessly. The story, plot, dialogue and such need to be discussed among people; I don't think those plot generators work quite that well yet. An artist has to draw stuff for the coders, because even though I'm a coder and an artist, that doesn't mean every other coder is. And I don't even do computer generated stuff like that.
Okay, rant done. It was still a quite good movie. Maybe less Hollywood would've been nice. I'm just not sure.