The Pipal Tree

Can't stop the Rock

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:24:40 GMT

Rock Band 2 Set List: http://www.ebgames.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?Product_ID=71886

Gotta say, I'm reasonably impressed. And, though I'm quite certain I'm going to get mocked here, especially from one Canadian quarter in particular, YAY TULL.

Can't sleep

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:36:40 GMT

Nope, no clowns threatening to eat me. First day of work dawns today. I am abuzz with excitement. BUZZ, I tell you. BUZZ.

Photos

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:05:15 GMT

http://picasaweb.google.com/bronzemountain/SouthOfFranceJune2008

Le Meme (La Mème?)

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:00:35 GMT

Just to show that mindless meme obedience applies even in France:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (well, most of them)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Théoule-sur-Mer

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:31:35 GMT

Pictures will be forthcoming once I get home and pull them off my camera. For now, it is enough to say that the cote d'azur has been magnificent and langorous. More upon my return!

Probably old news

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:03:04 GMT

For MST3K fans, apparently Mike Nelson and the dudes who voiced Tom Servo and Crow (2.0) went ahead and created kind of a cool business model involving do-it-yourself MST3K style features. Basically, you download their commentary track. And they have a little player widget that'll sync the commentary to the DVD (which implies you must have the DVD in your possession already, of course).

The really slick thing about the model is that they don't have to worry about rights, so their commentaries can be as topical as they want and associated with big budget new movies. And at $2.99/track, the commentaries themselves are pretty cheap. It's probably not something I'd spend money on but I bet fans certainly would.

Anyway, the url is: http://www.rifftrax.com

Or half NOT a billion dollars!

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:02:12 GMT

The Daily Show's writers on the WGA strike:

Heroes: The adventures of Emo-Man

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:51:57 GMT

There might be some spoilers in here. If you think there will be and if you're afraid of such things, well, you know what to do.

Okay, so I'm sick of lazy writing on Heroes. I'm loving about half the show right now, which is enough to keep me watching. But the other half is, well, half-assed. I've never made any bones about the fact that I don't like Peter Patrelli. I don't like the character, and I don't like Milo Ventimiglia. And, after watching the last episode, I came to a clearer understanding of why.

Peter is the Superman of the Heroes universe. And I don't mean that in some Nietzchian manner. I mean he's the Man of Steel, the Smallville slugger. He's the unassailable powerhouse with a strong moral center. It's that moral center that is what big-blue brings the DC universe. His powers, after all, are god-like and therefore largely uninteresting (except when they are taken away). The problem is that Peter fails us in both ways. That is, despite being insanely powerful, he acts like an impotent adolescent. When faced with any, and I do mean any problem, he has a repertoire of two reactions: (1) Mope, (2) Freak the fuck out. He literally has 0 reasoning ability. I understand he's lost his memory, blah blah blah. But it wasn't like he was any different before the memory loss. And even if we DO blame his memory loss for this behavior, it's bad writing. The writers want us to think X is important, and the way they try to convince us by having Peter, well, freak the fuck out. Every time. As to his moral center, well, he was a nice guy as a care-giver. That was groovy. But he's not that anymore. And his whole moral quest thing was basically to prevent millions of people from dying. Which, in all honesty, all non-insane people would do.

The lazy writing doesn't stop there. We're now faced with a SECOND vision of a desolate and broken NYC. Gosh, this sure feels surprising. And here, the writers have hamstrung themselves by having Peter, whose memory they killed, be the vehicle for the reveal. I could accept NYC being blasted yet again if the character who saw it actually voiced that same opinion. If Peter (or, ideally, someone else) showed up and went 'Oh COME ON, we STOPPED this shit already' then at least there's some versimilitude. Someone in the world has a sense that this is ridiculous. But no. We have Peter. And what does he do? Wait for it. Freak the fuck out. And mope.

Also, we had a season that was about ordinary people coming to terms with their extraordinary gifts and their new place in a world that was suddenly more mysterious than they realized. We don't need a second season of it. I don't need Parkman, who started off very nicely this season, having more whining fits about what he can and can't do. I don't need to see Peter go through his power-control arc a second time. It was the least interesting part of the first season. They should have nixed his powers, not his memory. And they should have left Sylar dead, so they didn't have to worry about doubling up the same story. Sylar and Peter, fully powered, are problem characters. They ferociously limit the number of challenges that can be realistically thrown at them. And Sylar was a one-trick pony, dramatically. He's crazy in a very adolescent way and, well, one of the fundamental themes of adolescence is outgrowing it - which he is not even remotely doing.

Anyway, I had to rant somewhere. I'm still watching Heroes and, like I said, I'm still enjoying the hell out of some of it. But the parts that suck are pissing me off!

TETSUO! KANEDA!

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:05:31 GMT

In retrospect, the only thing I really still love about Akira (apart from nostalgic fondness) was the motorcycle. This thing isn't quite that but my god, it is absurdly sexy:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/vroom/suzuki-biplane-pities-harley+davidson-314483.php

For the girl who has everything

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:08:23 GMT

Half-inched from dirque, because it's hysterical and most of you don't read his lj and so wouldn't have seen this:

Courtesy of http://www.glamguns.com

On Vox: A proportionate response

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:02:04 GMT

Door To Door Atheists Bother Mormons

Courtesy of Cori.

Originally posted on bronzemountain.vox.com

I must see this movie

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:53:09 GMT

I've seen the teaser/trailer for this before, but New Line just made an utterly ridiculous music video style trailer with some block rockin' beats and it's too absurd for me not to absolutely love it. Also, Clive Owens (being badass) + Paul Giamatti (being ... badass+funny) + Monica Belucci (being the MILF [Madonna I'd like to etc.]) = AWESOME. The preview does imply that this movie has some of the best trash-talking in recent history. I mean, they have a gun fight that turns a neon trucking sign into 'Fuck U Too' and Paul Giamatti talks trash in Dr. Seuss rhyme.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3975914297

Also, what the fuck is with this Escape from New York remake? I mean, I don't actually hate the whole 'remake everything' trend as virulently as some others, but they're remaking a movie made in 1981. Maybe there needs to be a 3 decade rule or something.

Countdown to Joy: 30h55m!

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:36:22 GMT

binarykitten arrives tomorrow! Hopefully we'll be able to hang out with as many of you as possible. I'll try to keep folks posted on what we're doing and so on but feel free to give us a call or drop an email when you want to hook up.

In other news, like msteleute, I have a new Nissan Versa. It is a black 5-door SL and it is adorable. It's not manly, I suppose, to have an adorable, rather than powerful, car, but fuck it. I love it.

Also, thanks to Aidan, the best rant of all time: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/1368-Zero-Punctuation-Psychonauts

Revisionist History

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:54:33 GMT

Everything I needed to know, I learned from CivIV

Who watches the Watchmen?

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 04:35:42 GMT

Movie cast revealed.
We're not the only ones who geek about this stuff.

Rock Band

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:58:14 GMT

http://www.tv.com/users/VixDiesel/profile.php?action=show_blog&entry=m-100-25040201
(Pictures of the guitar, drum and microphone controllers).

And, just for binarykitten, tapping the microphone causes it to act as a tambourine.

Maybe new secret weapon revealed!!

Tue, 29 May 2007 16:42:40 GMT

Posting a link because the embed is just refusing to work for some reason:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/587507/microwave_technology_homemade/

Now I just need me a Subtle Knife

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:16:00 GMT

On Vox: Media Interlude: Mindstorms + Dhamaal

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:16:17 GMT

WiigoBot: The Perfect Game

This video is long and boring, but if you like lego, and you like the Wii, then watching the first bits of it, at least, are entirely worthwhile. Hrm, do I know anyone who likes both Legos and the Wii? I BELIEVE I DO. Anyway, this is, in fact, footage of a Lego Mindstorms construct bowling the perfect game of Wii Bowling. So, just in case you're not just too lazy to actually bowl, but too lazy to VIRTUALLY bowl, this is the robot for you!

07 Twilight Creeper

02 Oppaari

I'm also throwing two Dhamaal tracks up here. These are off their first album, and their sound has changed a bit since then (more vocals, the addition of non-southasian elements, etc) but still, good stuff. If you don't like electronica of some stripe, you probably won't like this. But if you are, in fact, a fan of some mad oontz, I think you'll be pleased.

Originally posted on bronzemountain.vox.com

On Vox: Vox Hunt: Weekend Results

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:51:28 GMT

Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.

» Read more on Vox

On Vox: Howling Spartans and a Paper moon

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:16:56 GMT

So, the original plan was to hit the 8:10pm showing of 300 with the boys, down in Columbia, but lady luck took a giant dump in my cornflakes and that show (and ONLY that show) was sold out. So, the...

» Read more on Vox

Sub Swara

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:55:58 GMT

Here's a little teaser/montage for my brother's club night/music experience in NYC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qurzi760QRM

Diversion

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:46:47 GMT

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury*
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe (I keep meaning to read this and never quite get to it; doh!)
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov*
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett*
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman*
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut*
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester*
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

In retrospect, there are ways that I felt about these books when I read them and ways that I feel about them now and they are different. And really, I have actively hated very little that I read. There are some exceptions to this but none of them are really on the list. The two Heinlein bits up there are the two bits that I don't hate, for instance. And while I really don't particularly like or respect Interview with the Vampire or the Sword of Shannara, I sure did like them at least a little when I was younger, when I read them.

Ekaantha Seetha

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:32:09 GMT

My mother's dance production will be in Washington, DC, on Friday, 10/27. The show is Ekaantha Seetha and I think you can call 202-247-1292 for details. Anyway, let me know if you're interested in going and I'll try to get you more details.

Lady of the Floating Houses

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:24:47 GMT

So, last post, I described some rough thinking I had about character generation based on NPC pools. Rather than actually flesh out a useful system, I decided, instead, to sketch up an imaginary character for an imaginary game with no real system mechanics or ideas save for the NPC Pools model.

Let us use, for our imaginary setting, a fantasy world similar to 17th century Europe, with dashing swashbucklers, venomous intrigues, diabolical bishops and, specific to our purposes, a highly developed set of courtesan families called the Floating Houses (named after their buildings, which float in a bay or in a river or some such). The courtesans are an accepted part of the class structure, and are well educated and reasonably respected, though they occupy a difficult space between the aristocracy and others. Think Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, here.

We want to make Evangeline, a clever and alluring courtesan.

We have four stats: Cunning (which modifies all rolls involving cleverness, subtle dexterity, stealth, deceit and such), Ardor (which modifies all rolls that require passionate commitment, like stabbing people, leaping chasms, persuading with honesty or seducing with intensity, passionate debate, and is our general offensive stat), Grace (which deals with gross dexterity, poise, beauty, movement and aesthetics) and Patience (which covers all defensive applications, more or less).

All stats start at 1 and can be modified by the following Innate pools: Talent (5 points) and Breeding (3 points)

We assign the points thusly:
Cunning: 4 (Talent 1, Breeding 2)
Ardor: 2 (Talent 1)
Grace: 4 (Talent 2, Breeding 1)
Patience: 2(Talent 1)

We don't have to come up with any details for Talent point - they're just inborn ability and potential. But, we do have a Breeding 2 and a Breeding 1 to deal with, here. We could combine them all into one big link but Evangeline's story is a little more complex than that. Certainly, she bred true to the Codex of the House of Saffron Dreams, with her almond eyes and golden skin (Grace: Breeding 1), but she is also the daughter of the notorious and clever Gaspar le Brut, bastard brother of the current King (Cunning: Breeding 2)

Now, we come to skills. We have some imaginary list chock full of skills and from it, we pick the following: Courtly Arts [Day] (Heraldry, falconry, flower arrangement, chess, art, among others), Courtly Arts [Night] (Poetry, music, dancing, and the sensual arts), Conversation, Unarmed Combat, Academics, Insight, Perception, Persuasion, Stealth and Small Blades.

For our pools, we have Formal Training, which has 15 points to be distributed among Academy, House, Mentor, Church and Military with no one type allowed more than 10 points, and Defining Moments, which has 5 points to be distributed among Rescue, Contest and Battle, with no one type allowed more than 3. Just to make things zany, I decided that 1 Defining point can be exchanged for 2 Formal points, and, going the other way, 3 Formal points can be exchanged for 1 Defining point.

Evangeline's skills look like this:
Courtly Arts [Day] 1 (House 1)
Courtly Arts [Night] 3 (Academy 1, House 1, Contest 1)
Conversation 3 (House 2, Rescue 1)
Unarmed Combat 1 (House 1)
Academics 2 (Academy 1, House 1)
Insight 4 (House 2, Mentor 1, Battle 1)
Perception 1 (House 1)
Persuasion 4 (House 1, Mentor 2, Battle 1)
Stealth 1 (House 1)
Small Blades 1 (Mentor 1)
Evangeline trades one of her Defining Moments in for 2 House points.

Adding it up, we have Academy 2, House 11, Mentor 4, Battle 2, Contest 1, Rescue 1.

As all children of the Saffron House, Evangeline was sent to the Mont Prieur school, where she got into all sorts of trouble with her two best friends, Chloe (the daring leader of their trio) and Pierre (the patient and studious one, just free enough of spirit to get roped into their games).

Well assign 4 of the House points to Madame Lisette, head of the House of Saffron Dreams, and leave the other 7 free for now. They can always be assigned to fellow conspirators, courtesans and clientele from the House when needed.

As a young courtesan-in-training, Evangeline was accosted by some bravos in the street. Guy du Parnasse, captain of the House's small guard, drove them off and, taking a shine to the girl, taught her a bit of self defense (Small Blades: Mentor 1). As Evangline matured, she was taken in as the protege of Lady Mercere, a subtle but reknown political figure (Insight, Persuasion: Mentor 3).

So, now we get to the Defining Moments. The Contest is the easiest, and we'll say that Evangeline was invited to court, where she engaged in a rhyming competition of poetry and wit with Armand de Gavrilac, the court's poet. She won that day and, though Armand has taken it with reasonably good grace, he took her on the next time and won. Since then, the two have continued to engage in pointed, poetic exchanges, vying for the court's admiration and victory over each other (Courtly Arts [Night]: Contest 1).

At the Midwinter Masque, Evangeline recognized the black cygnet as Beatriz di Menzano, a notorious young foreign widow, and also recognized the fox king as Guillaume d'Elysie, the princess's champion (Insight). To avoid an international incident, Evangeline, herself, seduced Guillaume into retaining her company for the evening (Persuasion), as courtesans pose no official breach of decorum, especially at the Midwinter Masque. In doing so, however, Evangline won the undying, and potent enmity of Beatriz (Insight, Persuasion: Battle 2).

Evangeline's rescue of Guillaume from certain shame led to introductions wherein she found herself falling in love with his brother, Michel, a Knight of the Winter Order (and thus unable, by oath, to consummate his love for her). While attending a salon, Evangeline was pinned in conversation by Lady Margot, who was part of a plot to frame Michel and thus shame his family. Cunning in conversation, however, Evangeline managed to trick Margot into revealing key details of the plot, with which she was able to clear Michel's name (Conversation: Rescue 1).

I'll summarize the relationships in the reply to this post, as it's already enormously huge, but this was a neat little exercise.