Thoughts For Today

Thoughts For Today

I read the July 7 Publishers Weekly this morning. There was an interesting title listed for graphic novels. It is War Eagles by Carl Macek. There is an introduction by Ray Harryhausen. Ray Harryhausen currently is working on a new animatronic film called War Eagles. This is the graphic novel adaptation of the film.

Also, we had a Dominican lady come in and talk about her new poetry book. We may be doing a poetry reading in Spanish which should be quite interesting. We just have to make the arrangements for the program.

I am almost done reading The Public Domain.

I have a copy of Usagi Yojimbo Tomoe's Story, Volume 22 by Stan Sakai. I think this is my favorite manga and possibly one of the best comic series I've ever read. I love the story and the style of the artwork. Usagi Yojimbo means "rabbit bodyguard". The main character is Miyamoto Usagi, a wandering rabbit ronin inspired by Miyamoto Musashi. It is an anthropomorphic or furry comic book. Stan Sakai was inspired to write the story while he was a letterer for Groo the Wanderer.

It has numerous elements from Japanese folklore including ghosts, tengu, spirits, and demons. There are also ninja, assassins, bandits, and other adventures which Usagi runs into. He fights numerous duels with the sword. There are also different furries some of them present unique challenges. Stan Sakai has a website at: http://www.usagiyjojimbo.com/

Morning Thoughts

A bust of Homer in the British Museum in London.

Morning Thoughts

Good morning. I had my morning coffee, so I am not feeling too bad. I watched a little bit of the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It is much better than Harryhausen's other films. I rather like the Valley of the Cyclops. The animation for the cyclops is quite interesting. I like the way it uses a tree to smash several of Sinbad's companions.

There is a lot in this movie so far which is quite interesting. Sinbad often creates his own problems when he hires criminals who would be facing the gallows to voyage with him to the Vally of the Cyclops.

The special effects, even if they are old are quite interesting. The miniature princess that is three inches tall is entertaining, so is the scene of the four armed snake woman.

The way the story is told reminds me a little bit of the Odyssey. It is an old fashioned adventure story with gold, magic, and monsters. I will write more about it as I watch some more of the film.

I took a break from the movie and am reading a bit more of Acacia: The War With the Mein. The story is interesting, it seems to draw from African myth and legend, as well as North African history. The scenes with pirates remind me a bit of the pirates of the Barbary coasts from North Africa. The setting is a bit different than your usual fantasy setting. It seems to mix a bit of African history with Roman history.

I also like some of the themes in the novel so far. For a while, the Acacians ruled the known world through a combination of a drug called the mist and various forms of slavery including child slavery. Now they are being attacked by the Mein who consider the Acacians unjust and dishonorable.

I finished reading the novel this afternoon. It has a rather interesting and surprising ending. I will write up a review later this week.

Entrecard is still having some problems. Apparently Amazon S3 which provides remote memory storage and other applications to Entrecard is having some problems with their cloud computing system. Cloud computing is a form of distributed computing.

Amazon S3 rents applications and memory to other companies through the internet. In other words you can rent chunks of memory, internet bandwidth, and complex computer programs by the hour at reasonable rates.

Unfortunately when Entrecard added Sezwho and Diggit, it looks like the new applications disrupted the cloud computing system on Amazon S3. It is rather interesting to follow.

It is a bit annoying. It means that I will be getting less blog traffic through Entrecard. Hopefully, Entrecard and Amazon S3 will fix this soon. Still, it is rather fascinating to follow the process. I am learning something about how social networking systems can have problems.

I am trying to understand this stuff in terms of Occam's Razor, otherwise it would be completely over my head. "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

While I was at the laundromat during the evening folding clothes, I was watching television. I have a television but it doesn't work properly, you have to subscribe to cable to get any channels so I don't watch it at home. The television I have at home has a built in VCR and DVD player which is easy to use. I watch movies on my television but not any television shows.

Anyways, I was watching the news on television at the laundromat when I saw a rather interesting advertisement. Apparently T. Boone Pickens the oil billionaire has an energy plan which he is advertising on television. I went to the site and it was very straightforward. Invest in wind power, solar power, and natural gas. Straightforward, easy, something which we can definitely do. I liked it enough that I looked at the website. He says some things which are quite correct. Oil peaked in 2005 and we are sending too much money to foreign powers. Here is the link: http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Morning Weekend Thoughts

This is a path in the grounds of Down House. Darwin regularly walked along this path for exercise of body and mind. He called it his "Thinking Path". Ted Grant took the photograph and released it into the public domain.

Morning Weekend Thoughts



I am at the library sitting here at one of the computers. I am fifty minutes into my alotted hour. While I was looking around on the internet, I got a blocked site. I must have been looking at something quite spicy. I am really not sure why I was blocked. I wasn't even aware they had filtering software on my local libraries computers.


I visited a number of social networking sites. Entrecard is very slow today. I should not be obsessive about these things. Apparently, they partnered with a company called http://www.sezwho.com/ , a company that has comment management software for blogs. I am not sure if it is working right now. It did not work out too well. Now Entrecard is quite slow.

Sezwho was not properly prepared for a large volume of blogs to manage. For Sezwho to index a single blog for comments takes about two to three hours. Imagine if they suddenly have thousands of blogs to index.

I also returned my book, The Other Wind today. I dropped it in the book slot. Not very exciting.

Today seems like it is just starting and it is almost noon. I had my morning coffee already, so I am awake.

Sometimes you want to do nothing. I certainly am in one of those moods. I feel pretty relaxed. Right now, I am the only one sitting at the computers in the library. It is quiet and peaceful. I will be walking down the hill soon to go back home. I still haven't looked around for things to read.

I didn't find anything to read at the library this morning. There is a heat advisory outside until after six o'clock so it is a bit hot outside.


I did however, have a chance to read Iron Man by Peter David. It was a nice lite read with all the trappings of what should go into a superhero novel. I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if it is an exact match. Still it was fun to read this afternoon. It took me about two hours to read. It is the kind of book which you can read in a single afternoon.

I also watched part of another Ray Harryhausen film, 20 Million Miles to Earth. It was about a creature from Venus that grows into a giant creature from Venus which terrorizes the Sicilian countryside. At least, the monster had the good taste to go after a coliseum. The movie was light entertainment. It was basically a giant bipedal lizard.

Unfortunately, I could not watch all of it because the DVD was scratched. It is hard to know if the DVD works sometimes. People who return the DVDs often don't tell us that they are damaged. We have a machine downstairs at the library which is supposed to fix most scratches on DVDs. I will bring the movie in to get it fixed.

I am preparing to watch these slightly cheesy films for the grand finale of Harryhausen films, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad tomorrow. There are supposed to be several animatronic fight sequences between Sinbad and various monsters.

If you are wondering if I did anything constructive today, I did go shopping for groceries this afternoon. I know it has very little to do with books.

Thoughts for the Day

"We Don't Call Them Monsters"



Thoughts For the Day



I am taking a break from reading today. I need to clear my head a bit. No newspapers. I am, however, watching a few films. I watched Read or Die in the morning.



I have something equally silly to watch. It Came From Beneath the Sea. The box says Ray Harryhausen presents. I really like Ray Harryhausen, he made King Kong and numerous other classics possible. This is a colorized version of the film released in 2008. Ray Harryhausen is supposed to do commentary on the film. A giant radioactive octopuss attacks San Francisco.

It was enjoyable watching It Came From Beneath The Sea. It was very much a B Movie, but still compared to a lot of modern monster movies, it was excellent. The plot flowed from one scene to the next in a very logical manner. Much more logical than todays films. However, the acting was not the best. I really watched the film because I wanted to see how Ray Harryhausen did the stop motion for the giant octopuss.

There was a second disk included with the film dvd. It had an opening interview with Ray Harryhousen, a photograph gallery of lobby cards and movie stills, and an interview between Tim Burton and Ray Harryhausen. The interview between Tim Burton and Harryhausen was very fascinating. Ray Harryhausen said he preferred that his films were colorized because at the time they simply did not have the budget to shoot the films in color.



Ray Harryhausen is considered to be one of the fathers of Stop Motion Animation. He has an official website here: http://www.rayharryhausen.com/

Happy Fourth of July.

Ray Harryhausen, Red Riding Hood

Hello,
I was watching Ray Harryhausen tonight, the collected works of one of the first famous animators. He is best remembered for creating the early animated Sinbad, animating King Kong, and the Clash of the Titans. I watched several fairytales, Kind Midas, Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, and Mother Goose. It was quite wonderful to watch, because it was like watching old fashioned dolls being used as animated creations. The sets were quite entertaining. One of the shorst Red Riding Hood reminded me of the Charles Perrault version of Red Ridinghood. I thought I would take this out of Project Gutenberg for you to read. In this version, the wolf eats Red Rdiding Hood. Sometimes the monster wins.

Charles Perrault, Mother Goose, 1696
LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD.
Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature that ever was seen. Her mother was very fond of her, and her grandmother loved her still more. This good woman made for her a little red riding-hood, which became the girl so well that everybody called her Little Red Riding-hood.
One day her mother, having made some custards, said to her:—
"Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother does, for I hear she has been very ill; carry her a custard and this little pot of butter."
Little Red Riding-hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother's, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met Gaffer Wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up; but he dared not, because of some fagot-makers hard by in the forest. He asked her whither she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and hear a wolf talk, said to him:—
"I am going to see my grandmother, and carry her a custard and a little pot of butter from my mamma."
"Does she live far off?" said the Wolf.
"Oh, yes," answered Little Red Riding-hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, the first house you come to in the village."
"Well," said the Wolf, "and I'll go and see her, too. I'll go this way, and you go that, and we shall see who will be there first."
The Wolf began to run as fast as he could, taking the shortest way, and the little girl went by the longest way, amusing herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and making nosegays of such little flowers as she met with. The Wolf was not long before he reached the old woman's house. He knocked at the door—tap, tap, tap.
"Who's there?" called the grandmother.
"Your grandchild, Little Red Riding-hood," replied the Wolf, imitating her voice, "who has brought a custard and a little pot of butter sent to you by mamma."
The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out:—
"Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
The Wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened. He fell upon the good woman and ate her up in no time, for he had not eaten anything for more than three days. He then shut the door, went into the grandmother's bed, and waited for Little Red Riding-hood, who came sometime afterward and knocked at the door—tap, tap, tap.
"Who's there?" called the Wolf.
Little Red Riding-hood, hearing the big voice of the Wolf, was at first afraid; but thinking her grandmother had a cold, answered:—
"'Tis your grandchild, Little Red Riding-hood, who has brought you a custard and a little pot of butter sent to you by mamma."
The Wolf cried out to her, softening his voice a little:—
"Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
Little Red Riding-hood pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.
The Wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes:—
"Put the custard and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come and lie down with me."
Little Red Riding-hood undressed herself and went into bed, where she was much surprised to see how her grandmother looked in her night-clothes.
She said to her:—
"Grandmamma, what great arms you have got!"
"That is the better to hug thee, my dear."
"Grandmamma, what great legs you have got!"
That is to run the better, my child."
"Grandmamma, what great ears you have got!"
"That is to hear the better, my child."
"Grandmamma, what great eyes you have got!"
"It is to see the better, my child."
"Grandmamma, what great teeth you have got!"
"That is to eat thee up."
And, saying these words, this wicked Wolf fell upon Little Red Riding-hood, and ate her all up.