Zorac's LiveJournal

So, I've had a look over the casting choices for the movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. I can't argue with the acting ability of most of the choices, but the producers seem to have (in most cases) chosen people who completely fail to fit [my mind's eye view of] the characters. What do you think? Obviously, it would be rather pointless to try filling out this poll if you haven't read the book. The actual cast are listed after the character name for your mocking pleasure. Folks who haven't read the book may want to stay clear of the comments in case of spoilers.

1. Four day weekends are good. Especially when they cause a pair of four day weeks.
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4. I've just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's latest science fiction epic, ( Collapse )
5. GIP! Yes, I have been known to perve over Nala at this particular moment in The Lion King. What about this surprises you?

Sometimes, a piece of spam comes through that seems to have been specially designed to catch my attention, almost as if the Evil Spammers have been spying on me or researching my interests. For example, I had one come through this morning from "Tammy Pierce" - one of my all-time favorite authors - but it turned out not to have been sent to me directly; rather to a generic address which ends up in my mailbox. Still, this sort of thing is enough to make a geek paranoid...

1. I've just reached a fair approximation of feature completeness for the all-new code for RS, Now comes the fun part - testing and debugging - and the really fun part - importing and verifying all the old data. Still, at least it's concrete progress and gives me hope that I'll be finished in the not-too-distant future.
2. Along the way I ended up re-reading my (largely unfinished) Big Giant Fic O'Doom and rather enjoying it. I really must get around to writing the other 80% at some point...
3. I was going to go and see Much Ado About Nothing yesterday, but as it's an outdoor performance, I decided to put off seeing my favourite Shakespeare play until the weather conditions were a little more favourable.
4. Instead, I went to see Shrek 2 again, in its slightly tweaked British incarnation (Jonathon Ross' voce in place of Larry King's, and someone other than Joan Rivers playing Joan Rivers). Still very, very funny.
5. In 13 days time, I'll be listening to my 'Current Music' in person. W00t!
6. Managed to drop one of my shopping bags coming up the stairs in my flat. There was an unpleasant breaking glass sound, and an iceberg lettuce made an impressive break for freedom. Thankfully, the broken bottle was a small one of juice, and not a litre of Bombay Sapphire.
7. In related news, my stairwell now has a fresh lime scent.
8. I've recently been re-reading James P Hogan's Giants novels (from whence my LJ name came). Am much with the loff for zorac (and also visar, but mostly zorac).
9. I'm also in the process of re-watching Babylon 5. Only the first season at the moment, but even so I remember why I love this show so much...
10. There is no item 10.

As promised, I did indeed spend all of Sunday in the T00blerone. I even managed to be productive, getting a large slab of work done on my back-end code for RS.org - the author listings pages are now generated automatically (well, kinda. I haven't finished the management code yet, so it still requires a manual import-export, but the pages don't have to be hand-crafted any more). In preparation for the imminent arrival of The Two Towers extended DVD, I also re-watched Fellowship. I won't bore you all with further squeeage beyond saying "Oh, my, that surround sound system was a good investment."

Alas, TTT did not arrive today (but tomorrow is the official release date, so fair enough). I did get a package from Amazon, though, containing The Complete Far Side. This weighty tome (and I'm talking 1¼ stone/8 kilo weighty - so I probably won't be taking it to read on the 'plane next week) contains all 4,337 cartoons from its 14 year run in fantastic quality, 3 or 4 to a (very large) page. I've only looked at the first month's strips, but already the quality shines through - never less than a chuckle, and at least once a page I've been reduced to laughter liable to disturb the neighbours (for more than one definition of 'disturb') - a higher hit rate than Dilbert or User Friendly. At under tuppence a cartoon, the very hefty price tag actually looks pretty reasonable...

GIP idea shamelessly stolen from owlman, but it's one I should have done ages ago. I've had a great love for M.C. Escher's work ever since a perceptive art teach suggested I might like it way back in secondary school. This will probably come as no surprise whatsoever to people who know both me and Escher's pictures - impossible figures, nifty tesselations, etc. Relativity is probably my favourite work (I don't have the T-shirt, but I do have the jigsaw puzzle - and a right tricksy bastard it is too), and certainly one of his most famous - some of you (waves at marysiak) may recognise it from Jim Henson's Labyrinth. Also available in LEGO.

Cor blimey, it were fair parky this mornin'. It's bad enouigh trying to persuade oneself out of bed at quarter past seven in the morning without one's limbs being frozen off the moment one pokes them out from beneath the duvet.

My copy of wilwheaton's Dancing Barefoot finally arrived. Apparently I was one of the unfortunate people whose orders went astray. Anyway, I'll be pushing that onto my stack of Books To Read.

And finally, in another not to my cunning purchase timing, Apple have just revised the iPod with bigger disks. Ah, well. C'est la vie. etc. I would GIP, but the GI is on my PC at home so I can't P it.

Update: GIP! Oh, and they updated the iMac too. Must resist...

In case you hadn't realised just how virulent the SoBig-F email virus is, our virus scanner logs show that we've found more than twice as many copies of SoBig-F in the last week as we found all viruses in total for the preceding year.

Last night's movie was A Knight's Tale, a film I knew was going to be fun the first time I saw it - when Queen's We Will Rock You starts up, it manages not to be incongruous with the medieval setting, and it takes you a while to realise that the amassed peasants (and indeed nobles) are stamping, clapping and singing along. This interweaving of the modern and the historical continues throughout the film to good effect.

Re-watching that was inspired by my re-reading of Tamora Pierce's swords and sorcery novels - some of the later of which feature jousting. I've been reading these books for the best part of twenty years - they are "Junior Fiction", aimed at a slightly older age group than Harry Potter - and the three Tortall quartets continue to be among my all-time favourite books. Happily, I can see from Ms. Pierce's site that she has plenty more books planned for the next few years.

Have been quoted by the (not so) mysterious somebodies.