Can You Keep Your Voices Down? I've Got a Visitor...

"A falling apart" or "appalling; a fart", which one?

The Irony: I needed a semi-colon to make that one work...

Greetings, y'all. OK, I officially want to go in a half-dozen directions at once... SO MUCH ground to cover! That means, of course, I'll likely forget some stuff, which is fine, in a sense... cuz when I remember it, I'll just wedge it into the Director's Cut of this post over at Wagnervana! Plus, the October Movie Quote Contest starts today! Whew, do I have my work cut out for me! I will need my spectacles and a clear head. Let us begin!

Post-Apocalypse is big these days... not only with gaming (Fallout 3, Rage, Borderlands, etc.), but also in cinema. There's a couple big-name movies coming soon that are set squarely in a post-apoc future... both with great casts and big budgets... the first one called The Road, starring my man Viggo, along with Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall...



Looks a bit too bleak for my taste, actually. It's based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, the guy that wrote No Country For Old Men. It opens October 16th; I don't know if I'll see it or not. I will, on the other hand, likely see the next film, called The Book of Eli, starring my man Denzel and Gary Oldman, who always rocks...



Now that one looks a little more my style... more comic-bookish and less unsettling realism. The Book of Eli doesn't come out until St. Bryan's Day (January 15). Besides, if it has Oldman in it, it has to be worth watching. That guy is not just a great actor, but such a chameleon... you should take a look at his filmography some time and marvel at the scope of the roles he's played... humble dude, too... his dad was a welder.

Moving right along...

Check out this cool Tilt-Shift Video of a day at Walt Disney World...



Tilt Shifting is the process of increasing contrast and sharpness in a video or photograph, and forcing the focus strongly in one area while blurring out the rest of the shot to differing levels. As you can see from the video, the result is that it makes it look like the video clip is actually insanely-detailed stop-motion animation using miniatures. Of course, doing something like *any* of those shots using miniatures would take a ridiculous amount of time and money, but simulating the effect is really rather easy. In fact, you can (apparently) buy a tilt-shift lens for your camera... I've dabbled with tilt-shift in Photoshop... if I can do it, anyone can! You have no idea how powerful madness can be!

If you're up for it, go here to see a tutorial and learn how! Then you can make the big bucks, like me.

Next!

Go to this website and this is what you'll see...

Why is that interesting? Look, you're going to have to trust me on this one... anyway, when you pass your mouse over the colored circles, they start dividing and changing color. After two seconds, this is what I got...


I realize you're thinking "big whoop," but again, trust me on this one! It is mesmerizing! If you've ever found yourself staring with a slightly open mouth at screen saver, or at the built-in random visualizer in Windows Media Player than you'll love this. Just go there, drag your mouse around the screen for a few seconds... if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back... your reputation for hospitality is fast becoming legend.

Next! Krista is having a great book give-away! She's giving away not one, but four books! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post saying which book you'd like to win and your email addy. On October 31, she'll give the books away, presumably at random. If you become a follower of her blog, she'll enter you more than once, increasing your odds.

Krista! How did you get so many followers so quickly? Your blog has been up for what, a month maybe? 68 followers! What's the secret? Don't get me wrong, I love every one of my followers (especially the ones that actually comment!), as well as all those that regularly comment that aren't official "followers"... still, added up, it's nowhere near 70! Well, the Good Book says not to despise the time of small beginnings... I certainly don't despise it... I guess you're just infinitely cooler than I am... but I love my peeps... there comes a time when the best reputation you can have is with your family...

Oh, the books! Krista's giving away these books:
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- Warbreaker by Branden Sanderson (gimme gimme gimme gimme!)
- Lamentation by Ken Scholes
- The Naming by Alison Croggon
- Pastworld by Ian Beck

So go enter! Cuz then if you end up winning Warbreaker, I can borrow it from you! I fear you have burdened me with a debt I can never fully repay...

Speaking of Branden Sanderson, I finished The Well of Ascension last night, and it ended up being quite good. I'm still wrestling with whether I should write a review of it, and I think I will. I'm going to throw caution to the wind and just write it without worrying about inadvertent spoilers. If you're planning on reading the book at some point, don't read my review! Skip over it! You are warned!

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A Review of The Well of Ascension by Branden Sanderson

As most of you know, I expressed concern at the outset of this book about what I perceived to be a noticeable lack of polish and focus and quality, as compared to the first book in this trilogy (The Final Empire), which I raved about until I almost fell out of my chair. There were several typos, which always bothers me (I'm anal like that), and there were scenes early on that just didn't really feel like they served a purpose other than filler. And the rehashing of the events from the first book seemed a little too much.

But once I got past (say) the 100-page mark, things settled in and then took off like a dart. The Lord Ruler is dead! Freedom from tyranny, right? Wrong! You don't break free from a thousand years of cruel leadership and transition seamlessly into utopia... there will be hiccups. Elend Venture, heir to the Venture Estate, is now King in Luthadel, the capital city of the Final Empire, and the place the Lord Ruler called home. It may sound like a happy situation for Elend and Vin, the Mistborn heroine from the first book that found the way to defeat the Lord Ruler... but it isn't. Problems within and without.

Without, other kings have sprung up in the vacuum left by the Lord Ruler's death, and laid claim to whole sections of the Final Empire that are beyond Elend's ability to reach at the moment. In fact, armies are moving against Luthadel itself, to lay siege and conquer it. What is Elend and his crew doing at this point? Well, King Elend has poured himself into creating a system of government that grants equal say and protection to all citizens, be they nobility or commoners. Rather than simply proclaim himself King and rule with an iron fist, he felt it more noble to try and give birth to a true representative republic, with himself as the figurehead. Needless to say, confusion abounds, as the somewhat naive King struggles to find out why his ideal form of rule is having such a hard time taking hold.

And to make matters worse, the mists are returning stronger and malevolent, lasting into the daylight hours now, and even randomly killing those caught out in it. Vin is concerned, especially because of the last words the Lord Ruler said before he died...

"You don't understand," he wheezed. "You don't know what I do for mankind. I was your God, even if you couldn't see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves."

As events unfold in The Well of Ascension, Vin begins to realize just what the Lord Ruler meant when he said that. But her powers are increasing as well...

I read on Sandersons website a quote; I'm not sure how recent it was. He said that this particular book was the most difficult book he's ever written. There was so much he wanted to do with it, making it work was daunting, he said. I believe it. I could see his struggle in places... slightly forcing an outcome here, tweaking a scene a bit too far there, it definitely had some bumps here and there, including occasional eye-rolling dialog. BUT overall, the story was great, the action non-stop, the twists and surpirses legit and satisfying, and the ending Grade A, setting up the third and final book of the series perfectly.

In spite of its hiccups, this is a worthy successor to the highly-recommended first volume. If you read and enjoy the first one, then you will enjoy book two as well. Although if you fit in that category, then you are skipping this review and not reading these words!

Summary: Recommended 4/5

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A month or two ago, I posted a video clip of a bald, ripped tumbler/acrobat/parkour nut called Damien Walters, which was (I thought) quite amazing. Anyway, I found this cool interactive video clip game that he and another street tumbler named "Livewire" created that is really cool (in spite of the other dude's lame nickname... "Livewire". lol, what a tool. Wolverine's goofy cousin!). Anyway, I'm going to embed it here and hope it works.



Anyway, this first clip is a quick pan that swings behind the two Parkouristas, and at the end, two little boxes pop up on the screen that will let you "choose" one of them. Click it and a new clip pops up and the dude you chose takes off running and tumbling... then he'll pause at a cross-roads and you can choose what you want him to do next. It proceeds like that until he ends up back on the roof. It's pretty quick, but I'd never seen anything like it before. I hope you enjoy it, for what it is. I just found it fun and fresh. Oh, you are going to love him... and by love I mean cower in terror from...

Here's the direct link if the embed doesn't work for you.

OK, I think I'm going to go now. If I have to write anymore, I'll go nuts and probably trepanate myself, which would not be pleasant...

Until tomorrow, remember, I will bring you hope, old friend, and I ask only one thing in return - don't get in my way.