Oh sure, daily routines, weekly schedules, and five year plans often fool me into thinking that I have a pretty good handle on the ol’ life business. Easy to sit back and go yup, this is what I expected, what I planned for. It might not necessarily be the ideal situation, but at least it’s the one I anticipated.

But then, sometimes, things happen that I totally didn’t expect. Often amusing, frequently frustrating, other times tragic, occasionally awesome, and very, very rarely – superamazinglybeautiful.

It’s times like these you learn to live again.

your voice can take me there

Anyhow, so ya, San Diego Comic-Con is this week. Man I’d love to go check it out someday. Obviously I can’t go this year, but maybe next?

I’d certainly relish the opportunity to meet many of the geniuses behind most of the webcomics I enjoy. Plus there are always random “celebrities” (usually not in the mainstream, but famous/recognizable for having starred in an awesome sci-fi show or something, and thus heroes of geekdom) who I’d enjoy meeting / getting an autographed picture from. “VICTORY!!!” Haha, subtle reference: props if you got it without clicking through.

And it’d be cool to hang out with tens of thousands of other, like-minded comic fans. Although I imagine most of them are considerably more h-core than me (my knowledge of anything non-webcomic is extremely limited, and don’t even start with the anime…), I think it’d be an excitingly entertaining environment.

Heck, I’d even wear a costume.

Ok, maybe not that one. But definitely this one. Although there’s something to be said for anonymity.

there’s no sleep on the journey away from time

*Spoiler alert!*

The intro-song was alright, but not spectacular. I liked the idea of the Captain Hammer groupies, but not the execution. The visual of the second, untouched frozen yogurt was a poignant touch.

Fillion’s speech/song was well-done and clever.  A few great, reusable lines, including: “Justice has a name, and the name that it has, besides ‘Justice’” and “it’s not enough to bash in heads, you’ve got to bash in minds!”

I didn’t really like Harris’ comeback solo. For the first time Horrible came across as being completely unlikable, but I guess that was foreshadowing. Then Hammer’s loss of powers tantrum was kinda annoying. It was in that moment when I grimaced and expected the ending to be rather mundane, some sort of Dr. Horrible change of heart and a Billy/Penny reconciliation/romance.

But no! Tragedy! “Captain Hammer will save us”. Ouch.

And suddenly the tale becomes much deeper – the loss of the only truly good thing in his life pushes the protagonist over the edge into darkness, with but a glimpse of his shattered humanity in the final moment. It’s, it’s…

horrible.

this darkness which you know you cannot fight

No spoilers!

One word review: Wowza.

Definitely lived up to the hype, and surpassed even my very high expectations. Haha, I’ve already seen it twice tonight, and have plans to see it in theatres at least once more this weekend. And then I’ll probably see it again, in IMAX this time, sometime in the coming week.

It really is that good. (Plus I’m a huge nerd, haha). So ya, I give it an “A” ranking (not quite the rare “A+”, due to my minor issues – see below eventually). But best superhero movie ever, no contest.

Once again, Bale is incredible in his role. Definitely one of my favourite actors. He’s great both as Batman – dark, violent, yet maintaining control of those inner demons – and as Bruce Wayne – alternately douchebag playboy and noble, struggling hero. I really like how the jerk version of Wayne was done. I won’t spoil anything, but ya, highly amusing.

Underwire described Ledger’s version of The Joker as “the most exciting movie villain of the decade”, and I fully agree. He’ll probably get a posthumous Oscar nod for this role. I certainly think he deserves it. One of the most perfect examples of acting I’ve ever seen, he literally becomes the character. It was disturbing, almost terrifying at points, and yet wonderfully villainous. And the hero/villan dichotomy (what is one without the other?) was also extremely well-played.

But I had a few beefs with this movie. Firstly, the facial CGI. You’ll see what I mean. Even really good computer imagery can still look obviously fake, I would have prefered make-up – less disturbing, but more realistic. And secondly, how Gyllenhaal’s character, Rachel, was supposed to be the same person as Holmes from Batman Begins. I realize that Holmes kinda screwed them over by declining the project, but still, I would’ve rather they written Rachel out of the story and introduced a new leading lady. But I guess this would have ruined the plot arc. Still, it just annoys me whenever actor-switches happen to characters.

Plus I find Katie Holmes to be way more attractive than Maggie Gyllenhaal, heh, so I missed her absence. But I really do think Holmes was the perfect casting choice for the role, and I wish she’d have seen it all the way through.

Some of Batman’s abilities/technologies were a bit too deux ex machina, as awesome as they were. But hey, I guess comic books are all about the hero’s powers being exactly what’s required for the given scenario, so I really shouldn’t complain. It’s just because Dark Knight rose so far above the “comic book movie”, to become a genuine crime drama, that such things became really noticeable. This is a movie rising above it’s genre to become something on a whole higher level.

Caine was, once again, an absolutely perfect Alfred. Freeman just seems way too obvious for anything he does, he’s so over-used, but still, he’s good.

There were genuinely-surprising plot twists and random moments throughout that really impressed me, such as a great example of Prisoner’s Dilemma that I was totally expecting to go one way, but instead went another.

Anyhow, you’re going to go see it yourself, because everybody is, so I won’t even bother trying to summarize everything and keep it spoiler-free at this point. Maybe in a week or so I’ll write more of my thoughts, including hopefully a review of the IMAX experience.

In the meantime, do yourself a favour and check out Dark Knight. You will not be disappointed.

(instrumental)

The whole geek anti-hero aspect of the story is definitely what makes it entertaining – so strikingly cliché, and yet told from an opposite perspective. And delightfully musical.

The crescendo intro duet was great, as was the outro rock-ish tension builder. Harris has a really great “abject dejection” face, and the blink-twitch is a nice mannerism touch that emphasizes the whole socially-inept-genius element. I especially enjoy the visual of him in the goggles and labsuit, awesome costume work. Haha, both Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible remind me so much of Freedom Force.

“The hammer is my penis”. Hahaha. Instantly classic.

I’m looking forward to the third and final act, which drops on Saturday.

over rivers, farms, and state lines

No offense to my C-town posse (great to see you guys again/eventually), but I’m already looking forward to going back to Texas soon.

I think it’s especially ironic that, a while ago, I was excited about the opportunity to return “home” at some point. But things change ever-so-quickly, and suddenly you find yourself heading away from where you most want to be, instead of towards it.

But hey, despite this ironic scenario I really can’t complain. I’m ridiculously fortunate, on so many levels, and I can’t let myself forget that. And despite futilely wishing I could be in Texas next week, I really do have a lot to be happy about :)

such a strange situation

Ok, so it wasn’t actually that great. But for a < 15 min. musical comedy vlog, it was worth my time. Neil Patrick Harris came across surprisingly good (I hate Malcolm in the Middle, for the record, which affects my judgment). Uber-cool Nathan Fillion was actually kinda douchey, but I guess that’s his character. Although, it was amusing to hear both of them sing (Harris – again, surprisingly good). Felicia Day I don’t really find attractive at all, which kinda ruins her hero’s-romantic-interest potential in my books, but she has massive geek cred so it’s ok.

Overall it was campy but enjoyable, quirky but watchable – and touched actual emotions just enough (laundromat scene/song) to make me want to watch Act II when it drops tomorrow.

The inflated-popularity is hugely attributable to fellow browncoats looking for some of that Whedon+Fillion magic to be revived again (that was my reason for tuning in), and although Firefly can’t be bested, seeing Fillion again, in anything with Whedon’s name on it, is almost good enough. The key word being “almost”.

’twas the twelving day of Everfair

So I stumbled across this Calgary-based acoustic folk indie babe through a Facebook invite, and after checking out her myspace page I gotta say I’m sufficiently captivated to go see her live sometime soon. She has tons of local shows, and beyond satisfying my new-found fandom, it’s nice to feel (or at least to intend to feel) like I’m helping the local indie music scene. I mean, Feist and Tegan and Sara were probably in rather similar positions at some point, and look at them now. Not saying Amy Thiessen is as good as those other ladies (who are amazing), but she has potential.

So I’m a sucker for melancholy, folksy female vocals and simple acoustic accompaniment. (Ladies: take note :P)

left all my regrets back home with my cigarettes

Anyhow, this was back when I actually had to use VB (2005) for mech engg in Edmonchuck (dark days). I noticed this interesting thing:

Say you’ve got two combo boxes, A and B, and the value of A is “1″ and B is “2″.


Redim myArray(cboA.Text + cboB.Text - 1)
myArray.GetLength(0)


And you’ll get 12 for the array length.

But, like this:


Redim myArray(cboA.Text - 1 + cboB.Text)
myArray.GetLength(0)


You’ll get 3 for the array length.

Which totally violates the possibly-expected commutative property of add/subtract, because f(a + b – c) != f(a – c + b).

But, I guess what’s actually happening is that the “+” operator, when given String + String, simply appends the two strings together, thus “1″ + “2″ = “12″. Then, the String – Integer ends up being implicitly converted to Integer – Integer, so we get 12 – 1 = 11, and an array length of 12.

In the second case, the String – Integer ends up doing the same implicit type conversion on the String to make it Integer – Integer, so we get 1 – 1 + 2 = 2, and an array length of 3.

I guess it all boils down to VB being rather weakly typed. It’s progammer-friendly in that it doesn’t require a lot of typecasting, but also dangerous in that it gives you zero feedback on what it’s implicitly converting. In this case, I think I spent at least a few hours being super confused about some calculations messing up, before I realized my mistake.

Anyhow, that’s my random VB tale for today. C# ftw!

it’s not me, it’s not my family

It’s pretty cool to be able to visually express text in this sort of format, and instantly recognize certain key words and concepts that stand out.

For example, here’s the word-cloud for my blog feed (click to expand):

“Like, really?” Haha.

can’t help but think of yesterday