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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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8:07 am - Torchwood: Children of Earth
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Entry is spoiler free. Comments, you read at your own risk. Oh, and for people who don't know what I'm talking about, Season 3 of Torchwood is a 5 part mini-series that just finished airing last night. I have the torrents, if anyone needs them.
I liked it. I liked it a lot. My favorite thing about Torchwood is how they deal with moral ambiguity in that show. Doctor Who often wraps things up a little too neatly, to the point where I find it unrealistic. Torchwood doesn't do that.
In Children of Earth, I wasn't surprised so much that it Went There, it was more the sheer number of Theres where it Went. Still, it hung together. It didn't feel gimmicky or exploitive, it felt like a lot of generally competent but imperfect people, trying to deal with extreme badness.
Though the bit about why the aliens wanted the stuff was stupid. They should have just left that vague.
Also, as a public service announcement, as you might guess from the title, much of the badness involves children. If that particularly pushes your buttons, this mini-series is not for you. Viewer discretion is advised.
But I liked it. Feel the angst.
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| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
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10:57 pm - firstfrost's Five Words for me
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So there is this Five Words meme, which I shall be posting my answers to here. The idea is someone gives you five words that reminds them of you, and then you post them and what they mean... to you I think. Not what you think it means to them. Anyway, I shall not be handing out words because it's a holiday and that sounds too much like effort, but I shall at least reply to my five words. :)
( Decision, Style, Geekery, Voice acting, Communication )
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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6:54 pm - Oh-bla-di, oh-bla-dah, life goes on.
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I gave a lecture this morning that was supposed to be about user interface design, but actually turned out to be about psychology. It's what I thought they most needed to know. I did this little activity where I found weird objects and had people who didn't know what they were come up and try to figure out what they were. I had an apple corer, a really weird-looking peeler, and an eyelash curler. I totally guessed wrong about what people would sort out most easily. Most people didn't know what the apple corer was, but almost everyone knew about the eyelash curler. I guess they're more ubiquitous in Singapore. Who knew?
I am settling into my new apartment. It's kinda nice to have cool people in my living room to talk to whenever I like. And speaking of, lokiect has somehow missed the John Hodgman news correspondents dinner thing. And I am just that dorky that instead of just showing her the clip, I'll blog it and make her read my journal. ;)
It warms the cockles of my nerdy little heart, it does. And shout out to Brookline, yo.
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| Sunday, June 14th, 2009
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5:47 pm - Davis! Yay!
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Packing is done and I'm at my new place. My stuff arrives on Tuesday, but I am here now. Woo!
Also, Davis Square seems to have acquired new sources of temptation since last I checked. Your Move Games and Comikaze were there last time I lived here, but we've now got When Pigs Fly bakery, the dairy bar, and Kick A$$ Cupcakes. At least I'll be walking more too.
Ooo. The bakery's open on Sundays. Off I go! :)
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7:21 am - Packing, Day 1
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Ok, that wasn't too bad. desireearmfeldt and frederickgermain came over around 7pm to help pack. My goal for the evening was to get the bedroom done—sans the bed, which I wanted to sleep on. Not only did we get that done, we also packed the bathroom, hallway, and two closets. And that was all done in an hour and a half. Woo! Really, we could have pushed and finished the whole apartment in another few hours, but I've got more people coming to help today, and it seemed a good stopping place. We went to Christina's for ice cream instead. Strawberry champagne sorbet. Num.
It's 7:30am, and I feel like I should pack more, but really, there's not much left. I already set aside a suitcase for the next few days. The only packing left to do is pulling apart the bed, odds and ends in the living room, half the kitchen, and remembering any last minute stuff (towel from the bathroom, etc.) There's some subjective stuff, like various sundries from the pantry and cleaning supplies. marcusmarcusrc is encouraging me to err on the side of taking stuff, but his mum is going to be staying here a while longer, and wants some things around (and is slightly hard to talk to about what it is she would actually like to have around, alas.) A good compromise might be to leave stuff his mum might use, then offer to take it when they actually give up the apartment a few months from now. We shall see.
It also occurs to me that maybe I shouldn't actually turn in my keys like I was planning to, just so someone in town can get into the apartment if something happens. Marcusmarcusrc, what do you think?
Anyway, I think I shall have a leisurely, guilt-free morning of breakfast and Leverage, then finish the packing this afternoon when Voriig and chenoameg show up.
Yup, it's a plan.
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| Monday, May 25th, 2009
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11:21 pm - I am exhausted from living up to your expectations.
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I went to the Labyrinth Singalong at Coolidge Corner. It was hilarious. :)
quillion organized the mob, and I wasn't sure what to expect, since there actually isn't that much singing in Labyrinth. There were some props and such too—bubbles and balloons and finger puppets—and the audience was encouraged to quote along with the movie. I remembered more lines than I have any right to.
Know what I'd forgotten about that movie? David Bowie's pants. Wow. He got cat calls whenever he was on screen. Also, when he's tempting her ("Fear me, love me, and I will be your slave!") everyone was yelling, "Do it!" She didn't though, alas.
Anyway, I guess they'll be having more of these in the future, so I'll have chances to return. Though I already missed the Princess Bride one, drat.
And maybe this is the year to go to the Esplanade showing of Casablanca. The one were the audience chants the lines along with the move and gets into fistfights and stuff? I've never been to that. Could be fun.
current mood: amused
current music: Dance Magic Dance
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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8:51 am - More Trek, No Spoilers
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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009
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9:57 pm - Star Trek
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| Monday, April 13th, 2009
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6:05 pm - As I continue to angst about housing...
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I clearly wasn't conflicted enough about housing, so I've started looking around for singles. Because I might as well.
And so there I am trying to find apartments on the red line that are neither sketchy nor too expensive, and I had the strange revelation that the red line extends beyond Park Street. There are other stations, with names like Andrew and JFK/UMass, in strange lands known as "Dorchester" and "Quincy." Should I be considering those? What's even there? Do I want to live there?
Discuss.
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| Monday, March 23rd, 2009
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8:15 am - San Francisco!
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I have arrived! And I'm jet lagged! And I forgot when the conference started, so I'm two hours early!
Instead of figuring out what I'm doing for the rest of the conference and seeing if there's anything in the swag bag I actually want, I shall blog.
Travel was long, though fairly uneventful. I refrained from murdering my lovely coworkers, though I did send the occasional uncharitable thought in their directions. I was put in charge of half of the cat herding, and some of them were better about being herded than others.
Saw Pendulums last night! Benedikt, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) djfanboy, dalefarwalker, and sfpanda all came to hang out. It's always so funny meeting the other Pendulums. We're all so clearly ourselves, and yet not, because there's actual people sitting there, which is disconcerting. Also learned some more of those things directors look for from voice actors that tend to go unsaid, so now I can think about them. Two years in Pendant and still learning, yay! Next year I should clearly just plan on staying the weekends before and after the conference. I know enough people in the area now, I'm sure fun things would happen. And heck, I could do something crazy, like actually see some of San Francisco.
In other news, I've noticed the panhandlers in SF are much more aggressive than I'm used to. The usual east coast trick of avoiding eye contact and completely ignoring them doesn't work so well. Must recalibrate how to politely but firmly say no. Which may in fact be to politely but firmly say "No."
Ok, off in search of breakfast.
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| Friday, March 20th, 2009
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9:13 am - Signal Boost: IGF Audience Choice Awards
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The Independent Games Festival is having its awards ceremony next week, and today's the last day to vote for the audience choice. I think this is also the first year they opened it up to the Internets.
The URL for voting is http://www.igf.com/audience.php
And I humbly suggest you check out CarneyVale, done by our Singaporean office.
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| Monday, March 16th, 2009
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9:51 am - Status Update
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So quick update: I'm back from hosed to merely busy. The triage worked well and I got a lot done this weekend. w00+!
The movie "Chocolate" turned out to be merely ok, not fantastic. Same problem as Ong Bak; they're probably doing lots of cool physical stuff, but the cinematography is such that it's not really showing off the fantastic martial arts to its best.
Audition for the Mask of Inanna went pretty well, I think. It was funny when the director stopped me and carefully explained how I should not do my 1950s overacted voice for this particular scene, as if this would be a very difficult direction for me to follow. I must have some sort of reputation.
And today's xkcd pleased me immensely. Be sure to read the mouseover text.
http://xkcd.com/556/
I knew he was good for something. :)
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| Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
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10:58 pm - Manual memory management? For reals?
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So I've been messing around with programming for the iPod Touch. The syntax is sort of funky, but that's not what blew my mind. There I was, Hello Worlding in that way that one does, and there in the tutorial was an alloc.
Wow. I don't think I've seen an alloc since freshman year. Kickin' it old skool.
Oh, and if anyone out there thinks they could help me get the misspelling of my name fixed in the Apple Developers database, I would appreciate it. It was this crazy thing where I applied, and they auto-filled in my name but misspelled, then wouldn't let me correct it. I think it can all be traced back to a "Genius" who worked on my old iPod a year or so back and overwrote my name for some arcane reason. It is extremely irritating.
Though in other news, vorpalbunny pointed out her name's been misspelled on our office door for about a year. It's funny, I'm usually careful about her last name, because there's all these tricksy double consonants. The error was in the vowels, though, so I never noticed. :)
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| Friday, February 27th, 2009
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8:04 am - Yup. This could work.
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Met with Mean People last night to talk housing arrangements. Sounds like it's going to work out. I had reservations at first, mostly about what it would do to my commute, but it turns out it's only about 30 minutes if the footing's good, which isn't bad at all. There is the adjustment of going from a 1.25 person apartment to a 4.75 person apartment, but it sounds like all involved are sensible people committed to making it work, which goes a long way. Another issue was how my silence-requiring hobby would interact with various people's noise-generating hobbies, but it looks like there's a closet that would actually do quite nicely converted into a mini sound booth. And all other issues seemed like things that could be solved with the appropriate technology (armoir, loft bed, extra mini-fridge, etc) so I'm not terribly worried about it.
Still keep your ears to the ground for me, especially since the one who's moving out is feeling a bit skittish and I sense a low but nonzero chance that she'll balk, but yes, as Plan A this seems quite solid.
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| Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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5:30 pm - Our students are insane.
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As if our usual mad scientist h4x0rz aren't enough, we've started importing artists, who it turns out have their own brand of crazy. Here's one of them's final project for their Music Video class (there's Music Video classes? Who knew?)
Oh. It does contain a rather severe expletive. But only one. You're disappointed, I know.
Of course, all I can keep thinking is "Where's the second guitar?"
Followed by "DON'T PUT THAT BLOCK THERE!!!"
Heh. :)
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| Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
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9:52 pm - Holy Recording Studio, Batman!
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Ha! I have finally conquered Batman episode #41! And now my voice is toast.
I've been putting it off for a while. Last week, I realized the reason I was putting it off was the rather intimidating Scene 2, so I called in the Red Hood for moral and technical support. The Red Hood (does he have an LJ? I'm not sure) has access to recording studios in Waltham and had mentioned being psyched to run sessions for people, so it seemed a good time to take him up on it.
Getting to Waltham involved the commuter rail, which was a new experience. It's not quite as straightforward as one might like, but luckily in situations like that I seem to have some sort of sign automatically appear over my head that says "Halp! I am Cute and Charmingly Befuddled!" so no less than three people stopped to help me unasked over the course of the journey, and I got there just fine.
The infamous Scene 2 took a whole hour to finish, then almost another hour for the rest of the script, though we were getting punchy by then. And by the end of it, my voice was fried, so I figured we should record the scream for a different script and call it a night. Not like my voice could get much worse. Besides, finding places where it's socially acceptable to scream yet with little background noise is difficult. Figured I'd strike while the time was right.
All and all, it was pretty fun.
Oh, and I'm supposed to brag to you all about the impressiveness of the microphone we used. Alas, I do not remember the string of numbers and letters he rattled off while explaining how this microphone was entirely different than the two microphones we had previously tried, so I don't know what kind it was, but if you could feign some envy in his general direction, it would be appreciated.
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| Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
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4:36 pm - Your Britishism for the day.
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We're hiring an audio director at work. I got a resume today that mentioned "creating music, sound effects and speech for fruit machines." I was extremely baffled, imagining some sort of juicing appliance that spoke and had theme music for some odd reason. There's a market for that? Enough of one that a person could make a living off of producing audio assets for them?
A quick google search revealed UK "fruit machine" == US "slot machine". Ok, that I'll believe. :)
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| Sunday, February 8th, 2009
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1:47 pm - "P" is for Pendant!
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| Friday, February 6th, 2009
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7:35 pm - Hrm.
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philiptan: So what shumashi didn't mention in her update was that the EA thing she got was a scholarship for being awesome!
Everyone: *smiles and approval*
Me: Um, actually, as far as I can tell, I got it for being a girl.
Grad Student: Way to go, being a girl! Keep it up!
Heh. :)
So yeah, the conference people contacted me and said that EA had donated some money to be used for scholarships, and I was a recipient. Basically they pay the conference fee and I am acknowledged as an "EA Scholar." What that means exactly is somewhat unclear. Probably I will have a sticker on my badge and there will be some kind of reception, and someday if I become fantabulously famous they will point at me smugly and say, "She was an EA Scholar!"
Anyway, as the e-mail went back and forth, it turned out that it was part of a diversity initiative. And now I feel kind of weird about it.
I mean, I get it, seriously I do. It's been the white boy industry for forever and a day, and it's hard to turn that over on a dime. It's a systemic problem, and if one of your tactics for change is to find some role-models and make sure they're visible and getting the support they need, I can't fault the reasoning.
Plum: It'll look good on your resume.
Me: Yeah. And free money's good. Still, I was more psyched about it when I thought I got it for writing a cool paper.
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| Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
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4:53 pm - Orlando
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