Category Archives: MicroRant

A Cautionary Tale

Posted on by
Reply

It probably happened a while ago but the realization just hit me.  I just found out that I’m a serious, over the line Star Wars fan.  POW, RIGHT IN THE FEELINGS!

This morning I was reading a blog post review of a recent episode on a Star Wars fan blog.   You can watch that episode for free online here.  A sometimes reviewer posted that he thought the episode was so good that he couldn’t possibly write a full.  I snapped and wrote the following comment:
(be warned that this is some nerdy shit)

    • Huh, I guess I’m the only one who thought it was mediocre. The whole thing was wrought with plot devices which made no sense. Ashoka is able to fend of Grievous while he wields 4 lightsabers but has trouble with bumbling pirates. The location of illum is secret, how did the pirates even know the ship was going to be waiting in space at those particular coordinates? Why wasn’t the ship traveling back to the jedi temple in hyperspace? Furthermore, why was the jedi training ship just floating in space without shields? And why would it have no weapons in war time to defend against a pirate attack? Why don’t the pirates shoot grievous before he could have potentially killed ashoka? Why did a hit from the pursuing pirate tank destroy a much larger space vessel but not a tiny tank the younglings were in? Grievous’s fleet control’s the “whole system” that florrum is in, how could they escape? Maybe they are just totally incompetent.

      None of this makes sense if you think about it for one second. It’s the hallmark of poorly thought out, sloppy writing. Someone said, hey we want an episode where younglings rescue ashoka and didn’t bother to think of something that might fit logically. For instance, the pirates can’t overpower ashoka (because at this point she’s basically a jedi knight apprenticed to one of the most powerful jedi in the galaxy), but they could capture a youngling and use them as a hostage. Since petro is such a hot head, one of his schemes going awry would be good. His angst over having lost ashoka would be critical character development. See, this isn’t hard but the writers and director don’t seem to know how.

      The whole last episode was predicated on the notion that a large training ship couldn’t just squash a tiny speeder tank chasing our heroes. Sure, the animation is better and the action is good but the story itself is sucrose and poorly written.

    • My comments above are only directed at obvious, gaping plot holes. The arc also ignores incredibly basic storytelling techniques. For instance, when Katooni is trapped behind the ice wall at the end of the gathering Petro decides to leave her behind the ice so that he can selfishly find his own crystal. The shot order shows him walking away from Katooni, reconsidering and then returning back. His change of heart is a piece of character development that shows he is dynamic character learning to care about others rather than being so self centered. Then the shot cuts to Katooni sobbing because she has no way out. Because we see Petro has already turned back, the viewer knows she’s about to be rescued and Katooni’s anguished emotional response has no feeling for the audience. Similarly, seeing Petro reconsider and turn back robs him of the surprise entrance against the ice. It’s kind of a major mistake to go to the trouble of setting up a shot and then flubbing the dramatic irony at the climax of a story. The TCW writers managed to steal both of the characters performance and development. All that had to be done was to just cut out the part where petro turns around and it could have worked.This isn’t a minor mishap in logical analysis, it is extremely basic storytelling technique. Sherlock holmes doesn’t reveal the mystery before the final confrontation. James Bond doesn’t learn the insidious plot after he escapes from the clutches of the villain. Comedians don’t tell the punchline before the end of the joke. All this stuff is very simple pacing and TCW writers are still younglings if they can’t handle it.

      But I guess I’m totally alone on this. I could also say that every other piece of star wars media has shown padawans (not younglings) building their own lightsabers with the help of their jedi master but whatever, with Dunc’s advice about canon I’m learning to ignore that stuff.

I’ve seen this happen to other people, even close friends.  I’m saying this now.  Be careful, Star Wars is a lot like Twilight except there are like 200 books, 1000 comic books, 8 movies (soon to be more) and five seasons of a television show.   Luckily there is still a chance for me.  I haven’t started writing fan fiction or participating in forums.  I guess this isn’t any different than people watching other shows and talking about them online but I somehow feel very dirty.

found luckily I’m not this bad:

 

Anti-Quote of the Day: Robert Heinlein

Posted on by
6

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein

No.  This is just wrong and actually wrong on a lot of levels.  Let’s start with the easy part first.  Specialization is, in fact, for very smart people who want to develop specific, useful skills.  Like computers and the internet?  Specialization.  Like delicious food from all over the world?  Specialization.  Cars, Airplanes, or any form of transit?  Specialization.  Awesome  Hollywood movies with amazing special effects?  Specialization.  Basically, any non minimum wage job?  Specialization.   Heinlein lists 21 things a human should be good at, many of which are examples of specialized skills!  Gah!! How are you people not noticing this!?!?

About 1/3 of these skills are functionally useless.  I will never, ever need to know how to plan an invasion.  I’ve never built a wall because I’m not a stone mason.  Nor will I ever be.  I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years, even in the unlikely event that I ate meat I would never need to butcher a hog.  Designing a good building takes about 10 years of serious and intense study to even begin to get it right.  Why would I ever need to pitch manure?  Etc, etc, etc.  Another 1/3 of these skills would be useful if they involved a hobby of your choice.  If they are optional though, there is no reason that you should be able to do them.  Conning a ship is good if you’re into sailing but the vast majority of people aren’t.  Ditto on sonnets, equations, and programming.   If Heinlein is insisting that I need to be able to write a sonnet to be a complete human being, that’s just kind of weird and nonsensical.

The remaining 1/3 of these are so broad that they are kind of gimmes.  Cooperation, comforting the dying, cooking.  Great, I’m all for those things.  However, if you think that conning a ship is comparable in importance to being able to analyze new problems, well, you’re probably not very good at analyzing new problems.

I’ve read about half of Robert Heinlein’s books and he was kind of a kook (as any great science fiction writer should be).  For instance, he seriously believed that the only people who should be allowed to vote were people who had done military service…which is insane.  Aside from being fascist, undermining the core principles of democracy, and presupposing a military industrial complex that could accomodate 300 million workers at some point, it’s a notion based on the idea that only someone who has worked in the military is competent enough to comprehend outcomes from complex democratic procedures.  Rifuckingdiculous.

Common Issues:

Posted on by
Reply

So you have a great idea, hooray! it’s time to start a business. Here are some easy mistakes to avoid:

Don’t form a partnership based on a word of mouth agreement. This becomes more true and important the more money is involved. Easy tip: If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t matter. Business plans, they work motherfuckers.

Also, you should be aware that almost all businesses fail for two reasons
1. Lack of capital.
2. Lack of business skills.

If you have a ton of capital (savings or loans) but no business skills, you’d actually be better off just burning the money. If you don’t have money but do have business skills and a viable business model you will be able to get the money together from investors. There are four critical business skills, without them you will fail and it will be miserable the whole time.

1. Sales
2. Accounting
3. Investment
4. Leadership



I would definitely like to improve this post by adding the top three books on each of the four skills. Any that you would recommend?

Weird but Possibly Brilliant [the book of faces]

Posted on by
2

harvard-girl.png

Just checking a message on facebook and saw the this ad. Initially it struck me as deeply absurd but I’m coming around to the idea that she might be on to something. A lot of people don’t really realize that if you want to do something difficult you can save yourself a lot of time and ensure success by simply asking people that have already done it. If you’re nice, generally grateful and ask interesting questions the people you ask will become mentors. It’s seems a lot of people would rather puzzle through a process the long and hard way while risking failure than simply doing things the easy way. Which is cool I guess but not necessarily smart or useful most of the time. Finding mentors is largely a numbers game so it makes a lot of sense that she just placed a facebook ad.

The interesting part is that the Ad links to her blog instead of some way to contact her. I did a facebook search and found 37 people named leslie bradshaw. I sleuthed around on her blog until I found enough info about her to do a relevant facebook search and send a query about the success of her campaign + advice on how she can get a better response. {have the ad link to the about page on her blog, place her email at the top of the page and then add a direct link to her facebook profile. I am continually baffled by people who don’t understand that making a task even marginally more difficult will substantially reduce it’s possible success. but whatever, it keeps me employed}

My view is that if you don’t have any mentors you’re probably not doing anything hard. Heads up, this is a possible sign that you are stagnating and becoming lame.

MircoRant – eVites [rot in hell]

Posted on by
Reply

The next person to send me an evite invitation will get slapped. And this should be glaringly self evident but: evites make everyone (not just me) want to cry while vomiting. please, please stop.

use facebook instead. people who don’t use facebook, you are like those people 5 years ago who thought cell phones and email were stupid. That’s fine if you want to live in the 90′s, here’s some hyper colors and a bell biv devoe compact disc hopefully you’ll hear about the party with awesome people via word of mouth.

DJ's, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG [use me]

Posted on by
2

My olde chum Adam Fangsrud just sent me word of an excellent dubstep mix called Devotional Dubz by Grievious Angel. Download it here from the Blackdown Soundboy blog if that sort of thing does the stuff for you. But the thing that I really love is the way the tracklisting is setup, excerpted here for your (but especially my) usability pleasure.

00:00: Jill Scott: Slowly Surely (Grievous Angel’s Erzulie Edit)
02.20: Craig Mack: Brand New Flava (Grievous Angel’s Iron River Edit)
05:19: Grievous Angel: Lady Dub
08:07: Jill Scott: Watching Me
09:30: Vaccine: Wishful Thinking (VIP Mix)
12:03: DJ Abstract: Touch
15:18: Jill Scott: Crown Royal (Grievous Angel’s Fucking In Sunshine Edit)
17:07: Jill Scott: My Love (Grievous Angel’s Deeper, Tighter Edit)
19:29: HorsePower Productions: Gorgon Sound

Look, it lists the times the tracks start!! Holy shit. Rather than this:

1 Jill Scott: Slowly Surely (Grievous Angel’s Erzulie Edit)
2 Craig Mack: Brand New Flava (Grievous Angel’s Iron River Edit)
3 Grievous Angel: Lady Dub
4 Jill Scott: Watching Me
5 Vaccine: Wishful Thinking (VIP Mix)
6 DJ Abstract: Touch
7 Jill Scott: Crown Royal (Grievous Angel’s Fucking In Sunshine Edit)
8 Jill Scott: My Love (Grievous Angel’s Deeper, Tighter Edit)
9 HorsePower Productions: Gorgon Sound

yes! yes! see? COUPLED INDICATORS MUST BE RELEVANT!! You see, knowing how many tracks on a mix is largely irrelevant. But knowing when tracks start without having to count the number of tracks is very important IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE NAME OF THE TRACK YOU”RE LISTENING TO. ie the whole damn point of a listing of tracks.

Ranty McRanterson: I really just don't care about the Olympics

Posted on by
7

++ I wrote this in an airport while it was still relevant but then couldn’t get wireless access to post. ++

Personally, I just can’t bring myself to care about sports in general, but the olympics specifically. I mean, it’s certainly impressive that a fucking dolphin disguised as a man won 8 gold medals but I don’t think it’s really worth more than a passing nod of recognition. I’m sure this is an unpopular opinion but usually the ceaseless pandering commercialism of the olympics is just the regular tedium of televised spectator sports on overdrive. Today at the airport I saw a headline that a famous chinese runner hurt himself and that he will now lose millions worth of endorsements.

First, the idea of a celebrity endorsement is a goddamn psychological trick employed by advertising hacks. Companies that use it should be shunned. It is of zero bearing on the quality of the product that the world curling champion likes the new brand of swiffers. And anyone seeing it should know that any meathead would endorse anything for a million dollars. That this transparent fraud is somehow seen as persuasive is deeply troubling to me.

Second, the corruption of pure sport for “endorsements” is disturbing. Whatever, I could rant about this for a while.

///That is all

Seriously: Number Based Marketing

Posted on by
4

When will companies realize that naming their entire product lines using an externally random* string of numbers and letters is not a good idea.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just look at printers (or anything!)

• HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer
• Canon Pixma Pro9500
• HP Officejet Pro K5400dtn Color Printer
• Xerox Phaser 6360DN
• Canon Pixma Pro9000

TOP SELLERS:

1. Hewlett Packard LaserJet 1018 Printer
2. Canon PIXMA™ MP600 All-In-One InkJet Printer

*externally random is a term that I made up. It refers to something that seems to make no sense from an outside perspective. A good and annoyingly frequent example is using acronyms without defining what they refer to first. these acronyms *have* a meaning but to the outside observer they are as good as random. in short: not effective.