I Shall Wear Midnight (Tiffany Aching #4) by Terry Pratchett The last of the Tiffany Aching books and an excellent ending to the series. Besides the first, I think this might be my favorite book of the four. Tiffany has finished her “apprenticeship” and is now the resident witch of her hometown. This means she’s taking care of the community the way true witches do — helping the sick who have no one to take care of them, easing the elderly to the next stage of life, fixing domestic disputes so no one knows she’s really doing it. She’s confronting anti-witches and land-grabbers and old fundamentalist ladies who simply don’t…
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Why Am I So Damn Fascinated By Five Nights at Freddy’s?
I think it got popular because of the Let’s Plays. It’s always fun to watch people freak out. Bill Cosby said when a person is scared, that’s the only time they’re really being themself. I’ve been watching Let’s Play’s, reading the entire FN@F wiki, playing the memes. Yet I don’t own the game, and don’t plan to. It’s all jumpscares. I hate jumpscares for two reasons. They’re cheap and meaningless ways to control the audience. And I hate the way jumpscares make me feel, like a weak little kitten, manipulated, afraid of everything. Just like elementary school. Yes, I have a double standard. Deal with it.* So why am I…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2014
vN by Madeline Ashby In the first chapter, a five-year-old child robot eats her estranged grandmother, python-style, and goes from kindergartner to adult in an instant from the additional biomass. Good opening, and there are some interesting WTF circumstances (like robots were created to fill out the Earth after the rapture) but the rest stagnates. Once again, it’s a book where the robots don’t act like robots. They act like people. The only difference is they know they were artificially created. But other than that, they eat, they fall in love, they procreate. You can’t tell the difference. The interesting things are just background — they don’t come into play…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2013 (Part 2)
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett The second in the “Tiffany Aching” series. I read and really enjoyed “The Wee Free Men”. But I have to be honest: this one is not as good. Maybe because there’s not as much wee free men. No Granny Aching. Maybe because it suffers from “sequel syndrome” where, since her first goal was already accomplished, now the story struggles with achievements. It’s about Tiffany living with the witches, and now she has to go to “witch school”. She meets colorful characters, but suffers from annoyances and problems. Rather than something to achieve, to reach for. On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner(unfinished)…
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My Top Ten Favorite Robots
1. Johnny 5 My favorite robot. Hands down. The robot I think of when I think of how robots should be. Number/Johnny 5 should be at the top of everyone’s best robot list. It looks anthropomorphic, but that’s as human as it gets. It has binocular eyes, wires for a neck, an angular body, full of control panels and spindly hydraulic arms, ending with tank treads that are rather impractical when you think about it. It wobbles dangerously when it goes over terrain. Its three-pronged hands look like they have the gripping power of a claw machine. And a multi-tool in a hip holster that can’t reach anything beyond waist…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2012
Columbine by Dave Cullen I don’t know what you can say about a book like this. Columbine was the word poised on the lips of any high schooler. Everyone asked themselves if they were a potential victim. It got to the point where my sociology professors refused to read any papers about Columbine because they had read so many. Everyone spent the next 2-3 years asking why, how, and what can we do to prevent it from happening again. No one got any answers. And now it seems like everyone’s almost forgotten about the small-town tragedy. It’s especially important to me because it happened in my senior year of high…
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Real Life WALL-E!
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, there is a real life WALL-E in Disneyland. If they can make this, can anyone get started on a real life Johnny 5? Please?
