Wow.

Tags: korean music you can't buy no matter how

...that I just created a basecamp account to help me organise my life. Basecamp is this online project management package that I use at work to coordinate work allocation in my department and I liked it so much that I set up a personal account to track stuff like my japanese language practise and my trivial personal commitments. Which is practical and sensible, but also daggy beyond belief.

Tags: dorkiness, project management software

Ok, I have copy and paste bound to buttons on my mouse so copying and pasting is kind of like picking things up and putting things down, and anyway so I I'll be multitasking between windows and I'll have copied a URL or whatever to the clipboard to post it into a blog post or something and then I'll get distracted with YouTube or MySpace or something and then suddenly I'll remember in this creepily tactile way that I can't copy or paste because I've got a handful of URL and I need to put it down somewhere safe before I forget. There needs to be a word for that feeling.

Tags: weird feelings

Point form to keep me from getting too verbose.

• The second series is better than the first - better story, better artwork, better characters, less of the needlessly-fanservice outfits for the major.
• The second movie is one of my favourite movies of all time, but I didn't really fall in love with it til the fourth time I'd seen it. I'll spare you the passionate description of why I like it so much because I'm just going to gush and that's icky.
  
• I'd go as far as saying the second series is better as an overall work and as a rumination on AI and the nature of the soul than the first movie. I found the tachikoma storyline from the second series intensely moving, and the one from the first series only marginally less so.
• I'm glad I had the foresight to buy two of the soundtrack CDs when I was in Japan, and disappointed I wasn't bright enough to get the other two. The soundtrack to the second movie is also one of my favourite compositions ever, totally kicks the ass of the first one which was still pretty good, and as usual if you want a copy just ask.
• I even bought the Official Log (which was my one discretionary purchase for last week; God Emperor of Dune was this week's and I've already finished it; I guess I need to get into Sudoku if I'm going to have something to do on the train).
• Motoko Kusanagi's voice actor, Atsuko Tanaka, is the first person over 40 I've developed a crush on.
• You can get a plastic model of the totally sweet Jigabachi (wasp) AI attack helicopter. I'm very tempted.

Tags: anime, approval

Half the point of Curse of the Golden Flower is seeing it on a big screen. The external night photography is arguably more beautiful than the indoor scenes of wonderful clothes and heaving bosoms (yes. No bodice-ripping though), but the clothes are still wonderful and the color is right up there too. A good part of the narrative is the implication of the shocking extravagance of imperial china, and that just doesn't come through quite as strongly on a dodgy VCD as it does on an IMAX screen.

So, go see it, and don't be disappointed that the plot isn't something overwhelmingly new, because that's only the lesser part of what makes the movie good. Also, it doesn't have Zhang Ziyi in it - and movies of this type are to be treasured.

Tags: approval, color, extravagance, movies

I finally finished my Winged Tyranid Warriors. Now I don't have to worry about my fleet-of-claw low-morale troops getting out of synapse range. I'm sure you're as relieved as I am.



The one in the middle with the masculinity crisis is carrying a Barbed Strangler. His more practical companions are carrying Devourers.

And here's a carnifex I finished earlier. Isn't he scary.



"Raaaa," he says, "I'm going to eat you. Without condiments!" Scary indeed. And yet somehow - somehow - I'm still single.

Tags: grainy photos, tyranids

• She sounds like a horrible, horrible, horrible person.
• But it's soooooo catchy. I wonder if I should buy the CD.
  

Tags: commodification of sexuality, tata young, weapons-grade r'n'b

The two neatly capped, prefilled and carefully labeled skinny syringes in the shallow green tray contain adrenaline. Just the thing if you took a few hits from some zombies and need to kick your health bar back up out of the orange and into the green. Saw this when I was in at the allergy clinic at the Alfred getting my next batch of immunotherapy stuff, geeked out, took a photo.

Tags: health, immunotherapy, pickups, zombies

Favourite film of the year so far. Probably going to go see it again. It was so extraordinarily visceral. The last thing I saw that impressed me as much was Children of Men. And it had themes! Substantial, significant, meaningful, ambiguous themes! Thank god the 'contact with aliens' angle they played up in the trailer was a red herring. The closest 300 came to themes was spelling the word 'liberty' correctly in the script.

Oh, and it's pronounced 'Killy-an', apparently. There's also a prop auction running but I know I don't have a hope of outbidding the famous-actor-sweat-fetishists.  Oh well.

EDIT: One-hundred-sixty US dollars for Hiroyuki Sanada's sweatbands! I told you so.

Tags: approval, big spaceships, lens flare, movies, sunlight

Download and listen to the opening orchestral flourish and Rudie's Calypso (those are links; right-click, save as). Then support the original artists or, failing that, the current rightsholders by buying the very expensive soundtrack CD off Japanese Amazon and, what the heck, the two-disc DVD as well.

I took the DVD along with me when I went to Japan last time and my friend's two nieces:



spent several days straight watching it over and over again on my friend's laptop. That's how awesome it was - even Japanese people like it.

Tags: umbrella corporation, viral marketing