random incoherence and infantile meanderings

I am finally up to page 26 of the 4E Player’s Handbook.  And so far it feels like a fun and simplified way to get new players and new DMs into the game and running faster than ever before.

It also feels more like a combat simulator/strategy game than like actual role-playing.

Isn’t it cute how they renamed the Bard class to Warlord?  I can actually imagine people wanting to play the class now that it doesn’t bring up burning nightmares of bad poetry.

Subscribed: A Christmas Podcast about Christmas Podcasts

Dungeons & Dragons Podcast 23: A Paragon Tier Adventure
A 40+ min video ‘cast demonstrating the initial six rounds of a combat encounter at Paragon level. I found it highly instructive, and very entertaining.

The Bear’s Grove Podcast 32: Movies and JC Hutchins
JC is a bit of a self-promoting whore. He’s rather good at it. But this one with Sam is simply the best JC interview EVAR! While perhaps not as mindlessly entertaining as some of the other interviews I have heard with JC, this one had real substance and real depth. Very good job!

The Voice of Free Planet X 146: Chains of Commerce
A very interesting prologue that left me wanting more. It felt a little like the E.E. Knight vampire earth tales.

Wingin’ It 3-D 040: Best of WI

The Voice of Free Planet X / Aliens You Will Meet: The Flusians

The Totally Rad Show: Winners

Astral Audio Experience 1

Buzz Out Loud 751: No big black hole deal

12 Volt theater / Down the Road 11: Doorways
As usual, Down the Road was disturbing and dread-filled. I found it a little more confusing than usual and I had to listen to the first half of the episode twice in order to catch on to what was happening.

Slice of SciFi 165: Voicemail Show
Gnome, gnome on the range…

Nuketown Radio Active 68: Geeking out at Balticon
Slice of SciFi 164: Voicemail Show
Slice of SciFi 165: Interview with Trevor Roth & David Reddick
The ScapeCast 57
Better Late Than Never 31: Stargate the Ark of Truth
Random Signal 75: After three years, we have finally achieved a Maryland-qulity podcast!
The Crave Podcast 90: Gadget lovers are arrogant? Get lost
Philosphy Bites: John Dunn on Lock on Toleration
iFanboy.com Pick of the Week 137: Local #12

This was the first episode of Nuketown for me.  I liked what I have heard so far.  I may, if time allows, go back and do the backlog.

Random Signal was good.  I really do like this style of podcast, the ramble casts.

And this was my first episode of Philosophy Bites too.  A very interesting little nugget.  I’m not sure if I’ll stay entertained, but it seems like a really interesting and useful podcasts.

PenChaft: Although I wish there was more Firefly, I’m glad that it didn’t go so
long as to get as tired as Buffy did.

Then again, if there had been more, there wouldn’t have been Serenity,
which was one of the shittiest pieces of full-length feature shit I’ve
ever had the misfortune to be subjected to.

Nomad Scry: You don’t watch many movies do you? Did you happen to see Riddick? Or The Horse Whisperer? Or … oh what was that fucking horrid movie… Steve Martin in… Novacaine, I think. That was WRETCHED. Serenity was not the best thing ever, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I mean, it didn’t have Jar Jar in it. Or Short Round. It was better than Iron Man. But then again, I just can’t connect to that character, so I am biased. Heh.

PenChaft: Riddick was fine, because I was with a friend and we were laughing at
Eomer’s hair.

I don’t watch films like The Horse Whisperer.

Serenity was just… it was Joss Whedon SHITTING on his fans. It was
one of the most disrespectful films – to the characters as well as to
the fans – that I have ~ever~ seen. ~Also~, the Reaver thing was SO
GODDAMN DUMB.

Iron Man was excellent! Its biggest flaw was a lack of action/srs bad
guys, not TOTALLY RETARDED STUFF HAPPENING FOR A FEW HOURS.

I’ve only seen episode 3 and half of… A New Hope? I think? The Death
Star blew up, I saw that bit.

Nomad Scry: I, uh, respectfully disagree. Riddick was the shitting on fans. Pitch Black was a brilliant film that has held up over numerous visitations. Someday I will rewatch Riddick as a FANTASY movie and it may be okay that way. But, as a sequel to Pitch Black, it is a travesty.

Another shit on the fan movie was The Bourne Supremecy (or whichever the second one was.) The entire premise of the trilogy is Jason/David and Marie surviving each other and surviving together. Killing Marie in the first act of the movie was, according to the director’s commentary, supposed to shake Jason out of the happy complacent place. !!?!?!!!??!! That’s why Ludlum had her kidnapped! ARGH.

Sorry, that one … I walked out of the theater angrily appologizing to Jade for “forcing her to see that pile of shit.” I was livid. Literaly.

Serenities biggest flaw was being predictable. It was telegraphed all over the place. It needed to be. It had to wrap up the entire universe in two hours. Pretty rough road when you just spent (how many episodes in the series?) hours opening the story world up and up… and then two hours to tie all the stories and characters together.

And the Reaver thing… was simply predictable. As long as Whedon didn’t want to introduce straight up magic, that is.

I don’t agree, obviously, about Iron Man. it was pretty. And shiny. Like metal shiny, not like Firefly shiny. But ultimately boring, because I simply don’t give a shit that a molly-coddled uber-rich jackass got pissy and used his inheritence to build himself a fighting suit. What a fucking wanker.

Which is utterly hipocritical of me, I know and don’t care, because I LOVED Batman Begins.

PenChaft: I didn’t view Chronicles as a direct sequel to Pitch Black. It was
more of a… spin off? I guess? in my head.

Haven’t seen any of the Bourne movies.

The Reaver thing’s not predictable, it’s ~DUMB~. When we walked out of
the cinema (I saw Serenity as a special preview screening surrounded
by fellow SF fans) we started dicussing how utterly dumb the Reaver
planet, the Reaver band, the Reaver backstory etc. was. NOT GOOD LOGIC
OR SCIENCE AT ALL ARGH.

But he didn’t HAVE to wrap it all up (and kill it all off at the same
time). He could have just had a glorified episode and WE WOULD HAVE
BEEN OKAY WITH THAT. And it’s not just the plot that annoys me and
makes me think he just didn’t care. There’s no touching on any Jayne
subplot/characterisation, several of their accents were ~horribly~ off
in the first third of the film. OH YEAH, AND THERE WAS ALSO (arguably)
RETCON.

Iron Man was fun! I saw it twice (first time was a free screening). It
was just ~fun~. And they’re going to deal with the alcoholism and
stuff in the next movies, and I can respect their reasons for leaving
them out of the first one, and it was just so ~fun~.

Batman Begins is, however, ~~~THE~~~ superhero origins movie. <3 <3 <3
You might like these videos:
http://greyreviews.livejournal.com/16936.html (also check out the
other I’m a Marvel/I’m a DC, they’re all funny)

I don’t like Superman, though. Now THAT’S a boring character.

Nomad Scry: http://www.epinions.com/review/Superman_Returns_44832383/content_301537005188

That’s what I have to say on Superman.

PenChaft: I’ve never liked the character, and then when I saw that travesty of a
film? UGH. Lex Luther was the only (mild) saving grace.

That kid was such an awful, awful, AWFUL plot device.

Nomad Scry: Did you watch any of that Kevin Sorbo scifi show? Andromeda or something? I don’t think there is much else that could have been done with the Reavers that wouldn’t have simply turned them into the Maggog. Which would have been pendantic and boring because it was just done. (And from the little I saw of it, done well.)

PenChaft: I haven’t, no.

Nomad Scry: One of the neat things about Serenity is that you can very clearly imagine it as the story told over a session of the Firefly RPG. So yeah, some of it is pretty geeky lame… which is what makes it better. Walsh dies, for fucks sake. Why, man, why! Heh.

The other day I got an email from Netflix to let me know that they are removing Profiles.

“Oh, okay,” I thought, “it’s not like I used that other profile anyway.”

Besides which, it was a pain in the butt having to enter the password each time I switched between the two profiles.

I didn’t really consider the power users or rather, the power using families.  Listening to acedtect (on today’s BOL) promise to cancel his membership BECAUSE of the loss of profiles seemed a bit… harsh.

Turns out that the reason it was such a pain to change profiles was because each profile could be rating limited, like a parental control lock on your DVD player.  Turns out that the ratings and recommendations were going to be reset, as if I were a brand new user.  Turns out that while I might be a power user… I’m not in a power user family.

So this change really isn’t a big deal for me personally, but I can certainly see why acedtect is really rather miffed about it.  And when you look at what an evangelist he is… If the other power user families are made up of people of equal influence levels to a acedtect and bigepaz, well, Netflix just screwed themselves.  Netflix just lost the best and most powerful advertising that they could buy.