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the weblog of adrian j. watts

House hunting

by Adrian J. Watts on May 4, 2013, no comments

Looking for somewhere to live sucks when you’re unwell and have only three weeks to find somewhere. All my stuff is stored at my brother’s house (but only for three weeks) and I’m sleeping on my sister’s couch (but only for three weeks) which is a bit funny, as I sold her the couch when I worked as a furniture salesperson. :P

I’ve only ever lived with my family or on my own, and the latter only came about because everyone, including my parents, moved out of the family home and Ijust stayed and took over the lease. Having a ginormous four-bedroom house all to myself was great!

I’m not in a position to rent solo at the moment, so I have to find some sort of shared accommodation. *grumble*

Meanwhile, I made it to the second stage of an application process for a job with a multinational Japanese company. That isn’t adding to my stress at all, he said sarcastically.

Anyway, off to go have another night without sleep due to stress. Victory!

Minifigure #002 – Quickslinger (Kreon MC Series 1)

by Adrian J. Watts on May 1, 2013, no comments

Kreon MicroChanger Series 1 #3

Kreon MicroChanger Series 1 #3

I picked up this little fellow a while ago; I had gone in search of Power Rangers Samurai Series 2 Minifigures, and found the Series 1 Kreons instead.

I’m excited about Quickslinger because apparently he and the other aerialbots can combine to form Superion. Oddly, though, he reminds me more of one of the G1 Technobots than he does G1 Slingshot.

Pack number: 23821 44

About the pack numbers: the pack number is embossed on the back of the bag, up the top in the red space; just to the right of the “2 in 1″ symbol. The pack numbers in Australia are different to the US and UK. The number I present is the Australian number. Find this number, you find this figure.

Sentinel Vol.2

by Adrian J. Watts on April 29, 2013, no comments

Sentinel Vol.2

Sentinel Vol.2

Writer: Sean McKeever
Art: UDON
Publisher: Marvel Comics (Marvel Age)

Note: This review covers Sentinel Vol.1 #7-12.

Trying to make up for the trouble he caused when using his found Sentinel to scare kids at his school, Juston Seyfert finds himself using his Sentinel to covertly help people, saving a truck driver and later rescuing survivors from a plane crash. But elsewhere, agents from the Commission on Superhuman Activities are out hunting the Sentinel, and the Sentinel is increasingly ignoring Juston’s commands and acting for itself. By the end, we learn one of the CSA agents has a very surprising secret, and Juston makes a decision he can’t easily undo.

There isn’t a whole heap of substance to this book. It is very kiddy – the language is light, there’s flirting, that sort of thing. The entire volume, and the six issues of Vol.1, could easily have been a single, dense issue.

What is amazing about the book is the art. Take a look at the cover – all of the art is like that. The Sentinel looks amazing, all the time. Also, the mention and presence of the Commission on Superhuman Activities is really surprising, especially for such a light read – it is an unnecessary, but greatly appreciated, touch of depth, knowledge and continuity.

The book isn’t bad, but it isn’t good, either. It is worth a few minutes to look at the pretty art, at least.

TPB AFK (2013)

by Adrian J. Watts on April 28, 2013, no comments

TPB AFK (2013)

TPB AFK (2013)

Directed by: Simon Klose

It took me awhile to get around to watching TPB AFK (The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard) and I’m not entirely sure that I didn’t waste 82 minutes. More, actually, since despite downloading the movie from its official source at The Pirate Bay, I found it incompatible with my media player, and had to go download another one, install it, configure it and watch it, just so I could have sound. Le sigh.

The documentary follows three of The Pirate Bay’s chief people – Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Niej and Peter Sunde – from shortly after Swedish police raids on The Pirate Bay’s servers, through a criminal trial and a subsequent appeal. The film is shockingly one-sided, spending months closely following the three, but spending no more than three or four minutes interviewing the other side.

What I learned in the film did not do anything to persuade me that the three were anything other than what the prosecutors claimed. They were extremely rude and arrogant, refusing to take the legal process seriously until they were convicted and sentenced to prison (and even then, only Sunde took it seriously, as both Warg and Niej had already fled to countries that would not send them back to Sweden until after a five-year statute of limitations had passed).

The film tried to sell concepts like “kopimism”, but failed entirely by interviewing people involved at the highest levels of such fads, whose statements showed it was nothing more than trying to disguise theft.

The only point at which the film was fair was when showing a small amount of email evidence, taken absolutely out of context, showing The Pirate Bay staff abusing, insulting and threatening people who tried to contact them regarding copyright violations on their website. Not that we needed any more evidence at this point that the three were offensive and abrasive.

The film comes with English subtitles… but you may as well ignore them. They “translate” many things incorrectly, and ignore entire statements. Even when people are speaking English, the subtitles get it wrong. This is mostly to the detriment of the three main subjects, as a few fairly sensible statements, made primarily by Sunde, are missed, or mistranslated, making him seem much worse.

There is a very telling point in the film, though, in which Neij gets drunk and basically admits to being a scumbag.

I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time watching this – it isn’t really about The Pirate Bay, and it is so poorly constructed that it isn’t even useful as an examination of Warg, Niej and Sunde; you’d learn much more spending twenty minutes on Google.

Actually, there is a very cool bit, in which we see the two data centres which house The Pirate Bay servers. They look like super-villain lairs! They are so, so, so very cool!

Marvel’s X-TERMINATION

by Adrian J. Watts on April 26, 2013, no comments

If you haven’t read it already, Marvel’s X-Termination crossover (between Astonishing X-Men, X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse) is fantastic.

It’s funny – the massively-hyped crossovers, the Secret Invasions and Age of Ultrons and whatnot get all the marketing but none of the quality. (I do realise that the fact that BENDIS! is responsible for those may be why they are so hyped, not the quality.)

This is tucked in about as obscure a corner of the current X-verse as you can get, but the end result is a major event in the X-books’ history. But, as the series itself shows you, it isn’t always the important events that shine and get noticed – sometimes the big stuff happens, and only one guy sitting in the corner ever knows.

Also? It carries on the gayness from X-Treme X-Men. :)

Essential Iron Man Vol.3

by Adrian J. Watts on April 24, 2013, no comments

ESSENTIAL IRON MAN Vol.3

ESSENTIAL IRON MAN Vol.3

Writers: Archie Goodwin, Allyn Brodsky and Gerry Conway
Pencillers: Various
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Note: This review covers Iron Man Vol.1 #12-38 and Daredevil Vol.1 #73.

This volume does something very good… but in a very bad way.

One of the perils of sequential storytelling with a popular character is that you need to make it seem like things are happening and have consequences, without actually allowing anything to change, so that if a reader finds something appealing they can return to the book with confidence that that will be there.

This is a very difficult balance to achieve, but this book does it. And best of all is Allyn Brodsky.

Up until Allyn, Iron Man had been driven by a piece of shrapnel in his heart. His armour was, first and foremost, designed to keep the shrapnel in his heart from moving and killing him. He had to always keep his chestplate on and always keep it charged – and of course, it would run out of power right at the peak of any super-battle.

Allyn did something shocking. At one point, a LMD of Tony Stark becomes sentient and tries to take his place, including his role as Iron Man. This forces Stark to return to his original armour to fight him – and the armour fails in its primary duty. Stark undergoes radical surgery, replacing the damaged tissue with experimental, synthetic material; material which may not cope if he undergoes too much stress.

This keeps that driving force – he must always worry that his heart may fail – but opens Stark up to all the stories he could not have before due to always wearing his chestplate. Things get really cool, then, with a simmering rivalry between Stark and SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell for the affections of Whitney Frost (who we learn survived the explosion in which she was last seen, but has become disfigured). We also get a lot of pure Stark time – whole adventures where his armour is a side story. Great stuff…

… until Gerry Conway starts writing, and changes it back. The synthetic fails and he goes back to needing the chestplate all the time. Sigh

The art in this volume is universally good, but the pencils in Daredevil #73 by Gene Colan are absolutely exceptional.

This volume also introduces a couple of mainstay Iron Man villains: the Controller and Spymaster.

A quick update on my health

by Adrian J. Watts on April 23, 2013, no comments

Those who follow me on Facebook will already know this, but my health has taken a very unpleasant turn in the last few days. Just to put things in perspective, though, there’s no risk of my dying or anything like that (except, perhaps, as a side effect of medication). I am just completely unable to do some very basic things, and those I can do are 10x (… or 100x, more likely) difficult for me than they are for you.

I’ll give y’all a little background. Two years ago, I was so stressed out that my physical health began to suffer. However, the things that were causing this stress needed my attention, so I kept at them, thereby increasing that stress. My logic was that a) it’s only stress; and b) I don’t have much choice about the situation. So my health kept getting worse.

Now, my physical health is improving – but when I get stressed, regardless of the reason, it upends that improvement and I become very ill again very quickly.  And again, I have very little influence over the situations causing this stress.

So, yeah. Stress = sick, sick = stress. And we just keep going on and on. Le sigh!

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