Happy birthday, nora_chan!

Happy birthday, sandoz_iscariot!

Am now running under Snow Leopard, also known as Mac OSX version 10.6. There is really very little that's outwardly different from regular Leopard (10.5), other than a better interface for fooling with folder stacks in the Dock. You can also play movies inside Cover Flow view, which I never use and neither does anyone else I know, so who cares. However, it's also supposed to have plenty of bug fixes and general efficiency improvements, and that's something I support (my favorite Adobe Photoshop upgrade ever was, I think, 5.0, when they did very little beyond making the whole thing much faster.) So there we go.

It's probably worth mentioning that installing Snow Leopard doesn't automatically upgrade your development environment, for those of you using Xcode. You need to install Xcode 3.2; I'm given to understand it's on the Snow Leopard disk, but you can also download it from the Apple Developer Connection if you want to be sure you have the absolute latest version. After I did so, I was able to load, compile, and run my old game engine project without trouble -- beyond, that is, the awkward fact that a few things I was using, such as functions needed by my .WAV file loader, are seemingly deprecated and nonfunctional under Snow Leopard. Ah well, who needs sound, right?

...Apparently not OSX game developers, given how much of a pain in the butt it is to work with sounds if you're programming in straight-up C++. Well, anyway.

Also saw Sherlock Holmes today. I'm not sure I'd say it's a classic of the modern cinema -- you know, like Die Hard or Con Air -- but it was a good time. Longstanding Sherlock Holmes fans, in particular, should relax, as the movie does a pretty good job of being faithful to the characters. I did have to laugh, though, at the presence of Irene Adler, turning up once again like a bad penny. (For those not aware, Irene Adler is the only woman to ever get the best of Holmes, and in the course of the original stories the only woman he ever seemed to have even the remotest interest in beyond that of a detective-client relationship. Given the dearth otherwise of important female characters in the canon, she perforce appears in just about every modern Sherlock Holmes story.)

For a while now (okay, many years), I've been meaning to read Maurice Leblanc's stories of Arsene Lupin. A couple of years ago, I noticed that a half dozen or so of his books are now in the public domain and available on Project Gutenberg, so I downloaded them, but never got around to reading them. Over vacation I've been toying with my new netbook, but mainly trying to get some decent ebook software on it. After a lot of testing, I'm using FBReader -- it's not ideal or all that pretty, but it works the best for me.

Yesterday, we had a conversation at work about old properties that have been turned into movies decades after they were popular, and the movie versions being more inspirational than the fiction to even later adaptations (Sherlock Holmes, of course, but Conan and Tarzan were also mentioned). Based on that, I remembered that Maurice Leblanc wrote a number of unauthorized crossovers between Lupin and Sherlock Holmes, and I was vaguely curious to much his presentation of Holmes diverged from Doyle's vision. Plus, I read on Wikipedia that Lupin himself spawned a number of movies and TV spinoffs. Since I was mostly[1] unfamiliar with Lupin, I decided to sit down with the first set of short stories and read up on him a bit. I expected to read one story and then maybe get some more work done that night.

By the time I went to bed, I had downloaded the same book to my iPhone so I could finish the last story, because I was not going to be able to sleep without knowing what happened.

For those who don't know, Arsene Lupin is one of the original "gentleman thief" characters that inspired many similar characters (most notably, The Saint). He is a master of disguise, incredibly intelligent (sounds familiar?), and possessing of a certain sense of humor and nobility that puts him into bad situations, but also gives him a flair that makes him engaging. The first nine stories generally follow a kind of timeline, although there's some jumping back and forth in Lupin's career -- it's somewhere between an anthology and a novel. I read the English translation provided by Project Gutenberg, which has some errors and redundancies, but the stories are still quite engaging and easy to read despite that. I mean, this guy manages to steal from someone's locked and guarded manor while he's still in jail.

If you've finished up the Sherlockian canon and are looking for some new turn-of-the-20th-century action/crime stories, you can't go wrong with Lupin.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

All of Leblanc's work on Project Gutenberg

Footnote 1: I did actually listen to an audiobook reading of the first story, "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin," so I wasn't going in totally blind.

Happy birthday, cadhla and cassildra!

Here.

In conclusion, I give you the most adorable Burly Brawl ever.

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

Agent of Whitechapel Alex Cochrane — who I mercilessly murdered in Episode 7 — has started translating all of the Whitechapel episodes in French! I’ll post links to each French version at the bottom of the English episodes, but you can follow along at the blog here:

Projet: Whitechapel

Épisode 01 – La cellule

Happy birthday, dlgood!

Is there a better way to spend New Years' Eve than alongside some of your closest friends, watching bad movies with the aid of the Cinematic Titanic guys?!! At this point in time I am kind of doubting it. If Cinematic Titanic comes to your town, you need to see it. I am not stating an opinion, nor making a recommendation; this is simply a rock-solid scientific fact, up there with evolution and universal gravitation. The DVDs are enjoyable, but seeing Joel and co. do their thing live is on a totally other level.

(Additionally, I have a certain professional interest in this topic, since I'm part of the crew that performed Mystery Anime Theater for several years at Otakon. As a chance to see the true masters at work, this event did not disappoint.)

Happy birthday, mouserr, pnh and victoria_lane! (And w4, wherever you are.)

Well, really for yesterday, but I was kept too busy to post it. I was in the shower that morning when, as the culmination of a train of thought I no longer remember, I found my mouth pronouncing the name "Ichigo Kurosaki" as 'IchIgho' quroSa'qIy'. And wondering, in general, how a tlhIngan Hol translation of Bleach would go over. (Transliterating the names is my main obsession so far. I haven't found any real use for capital Q, except maybe in ghImjow' jaghajaQ and SunSuy' Qora'qu' [and 'IQaqu' maDarame'.)

Believe it or not, it was for this post that I finally broke down and made that Ichigo minifig I've been contemplating. Yeah, I'm going through the Gate of the End when my time comes.

Happy birthday, ficbitches, graceano, pecunium, pingback_bot and my very own md_donighal! And... some kind of birthday, bad_god.

Happy birthday, bsquad, ryuutchi and siliconshaman!

A/N: After a really, really long break, I have returned to writing. Here's chapter eight of Boy Bride. I think I've improved as a writer! Yay! ^__^

Title: Boy Bride
Fandom: Original
Genre: Romance, angst, drama, fantasy, mythology, humor.
Pairing: OMCxOMC
Rating: M
Author: Angel_Gospel (aka, TheLadyPendragon)
Disclaimer: Mine. Roar!
Warnings: Language, sexual content, violence, slash, relationship with a minor, mentions of mpreg, etc.
Summary: A gay prince, an unintentionally sexy foreigner, and the meddling Wizard who just wants them to get laid. Everyone else is just along for the ride. A fairy-tale unlike any you've ever read. MxM, Slash, Yaoi, Possible Mpreg.
 

--Prologue--Chapter One--Chapter Two--Chapter Three--Chapter Four--Chapter Five--Chapter Six--Chapter Seven--

I have a lot of strange things on my hard drive. In the process of moving things over from my modestly-large drive on my big laptop to my surprisingly-larger hard drive on my netbook, I've been going through some of the more unusual selections (with a healthy dose of "where the hell did I get this from?"). I decided to start another irregular feature on here called "Shit On My Hard Drive" so I can start sharing them with you. (In this case, "shit" means "hobby game of some sort," but it might be anything else I find weird on my computer -- songs, video games, software, whatever.)

Here are three RPG selections on my hard drive right now that are... a bit odd.

Joe in Ten Persons: I found this via the Free RPG Blog. It's a game about a guy named Joe who meets a man named Keeton who allows him to interact with a variety of alternate versions of himself who are all obsessed with affecting the decision of one particular Joe, Joe Prime. SImple, right? It's a one-shot shared-narration competitive RPG with a clear winner and a weird kind of board game vibe featuring stick figures.

Yeah, there's no easy way to describe it. But it's worth at least a glance. And it's free.

Download it.

Read a review.

The Agency: Take the height of 60s super-spies. Stir in a healthy portion of monster stomping, and you get The Agency. It has a lot of the fun of a game like Bureau 13, but with a system that focuses on high action and camp (with some interesting incentives to fail entertainingly). It was originally designed for the No Press Anthology, but it's now released by the author for free.

Download it.

Read a review of an earlier version.

Super Console: Tired of playing fantasy RPGs? Now you can play a video game RPG... as a tabletop RPG... which is primarily focused on fantasy. Well, you know what I mean. This straddles the line between "faithful reproduction" and "shameless parody," but more than once it's inspired me to run a game where mages and ninjas level up multiple times a session and buy equipment from identical-looking stores while fighting in two opposing rows. There's nothing to handle situations outside of combat, but given the kinds of games this is emulating, that's not surprising. It's a buck on DriveThruRPG, but you can find free (legal) copies on the net if you dig around a bit.

Buy it.

Read a review.

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

Listen to this episode

 

Download this episode in MP3

Previously on Whitechapel

Six escaped from the Whitechapel Project, thanks to the help of the mysterious Mister Rich. Although Six got some clues to the nature of his past, he had more questions than answers when Mister Rich was shot by a man masquerading as a police officer. A high-speed chase with real police officers and a van with two unknown men led to a showdown at a hospital, during which Six was knocked unconscious. He awoke in an expensive hotel room with a note from someone named “Elizabeth” and a wake-up call from the front desk that referred to him by an unfamiliar name.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

A quick note to detail the cool presents I got for my birthday/Christmas this year.

Birthday

• Fairyland Brownies from CCP (quite tasty!)
• An Optimus Prime bobblehead from mithras 
• A $75 Best Buy gift card from garchangel and greebotrill 
• A DVD of the new Star Trek movie from my mom
• The Welcome to the Jungle Dresden Files graphic novel, also from my mom
• And $50 in cash from my grandmom-in-law

Christmas

• Flip MinoHD from CCP
• Gateway LY3103u Netbook from garchangel and greebotrill 
• And another $100 in cash from my grandmom-in-law (which went toward a copy of Windows 7 for the netbook)

Note: As people comment here and in other places, I plan to update this with footnotes providing citations for various points (for and against). Because I love playing with Sherlockian research, even if I'm not that awesome at it.

To preface this, I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan for twenty-five years, since my father gave me a water-stained and dog-eared copy of the "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," containing the first twelve stories of the canon. I have read everything by Doyle, probably read an additional two dozen pastiches, listened to close to a hundred audiobook and radio versions, and watched a variety of television and movie renditions of the master detective. While I by no means consider myself a Sherlockian scholar, Holmes is certainly my first and most persistent fandom.

It has been with equal parts excitement and trepidation that I've been awaiting the Guy Ritchie vision of Sherlock Holmes. I planned to see it at a midnight showing on my birthday (because that would have just been awesome), but it turns out that the nearest theater to where we were in Tennessee was well over an hour away. So I waited until Sunday, when we got back. I had a terrible cold, and didn't want to go out -- until David asked if I wanted to go see the Sherlock Holmes movie.

Because that's different, you see.

Interestingly (and to a great extent, flatteringly), a number of my friends have been waiting on my opinion of the film before going to see it themselves. They know of my obsession fanaticism interest in all versions of Holmes, and since I gave my brief review on Twitter, a number of people have contacted me asking for a more detailed review.

If, however, you just want the short version, here it is: I thought it was a very fun and enjoyable update to Sherlock Holmes that keeps to the core of the canon, although casual audiences might not realize that.

( More detailed thoughts (minor spoilers) )