.return .entertainment 2/3

Obviously many days have passed since I last wrote anything about books or movies or games I've played, so this post is dedicated to that area.

Those who have really paid close attention might have noticed a few changes in the navigation. IGN have done some major changes in their users.ign.com service, firstly they changed the name to club.ign.com and more importantly added an option to add DVDs, books and UMDs (PSP movies) to your collection.
So a while back I went and added DVDs I have on my shelf to my collection there, although there are still a few movies missing from their lists. The listed DVDs are Region 1 (as the service is in the US), but most of mine are Region 2 or 4, so there are alot of wrongish versions, but clicking on "show public notes" you can see my comments on what's different with which.

Also I try to keep my games list up to date with changing game statuses when ever I play them and rating them after I've finished etc. The links can be found there >>>

The Book Worm

The last few months I haven't read quite as much when compared to the average book / month rate back in '05. I guess school takes it's toll in a way, eventhough I haven't spent that much on homework or such. This is what I've read in the last five months (quite hard to comprehend how it has been such a long time already):

Isaac Asimov:

• The Caves of Steel (Robot series I) 01/06 - I've read the second part before
  

• Foundation & Empire 12/05

• Second Foundation 02/06

Arthur C.Clarke:

• A Fall of Moondust 12/05

• Earthlight 12/05

Philip K.Dick

• Bladerunner 12/05-01/06

Ursula K. Le Guin

• The Disposessed 03/06

Harry Harrison

• Deathworld 1 04/06

First I have to say that Asimov's Foundation series has been a very entertaining to read so far. Special thanks to the person who suggested I should read it - if he happens to read this some time. So far I've read the first three books, which are also called the Original Foundation Series, then there's the Extended Foundation Series which adds four more books to the same story. The extended series books are a little harder to come by in the public library, but I'll keep an eye out for them. The Robot Series will most likely prove to be worth reading, as atleast the first two books were entertaining.

Arthur C.Clarke is an author I've heard alot about, but hadn't really read anything from him so I thought I'd read a few atleast. Can't say I didn't like the books, but I wouldn't say I was too excited either...will read more of his books at some point.

Who doesn't know Philip K.Dick and his Bladerunner because of the movie?
The book was surprisingly different from what I can remember of the movie, not that it's really that big of a surprise when thinking about it. So far I've read around 10 of his books and I do like all of them in some weird way. He has a very peculiar way of writing and the ideas are just...mind twisting at times. It's almost like Science Fiction on acid or something at times =]

Ok then there's Ursula Le Guin...I'm a bit embarrased to admit that I hadn't heard of her before as I concern myself to be atleast moderately aware of imporant names of the Scifi scene. Wrong was I obviously. In the beginning, The Disposessed wasn't that interesting or catching, but as I read on I was really surprised about the impact it had on me, as I started to dream about it and sometimes I felt the book was somehow...writing itself while I was reading it according to my wishes or...such. It's very hard to explain in any language, so I'll just say that it felt good to read that book. I have to recommend this book to everyone who's interested in reading good Scifi! I'll most certainly want to read more of her books!

Then there's my all time favourite author, Harry Harrison.
Deathworld wasn't really a surprise, as always, a very capturing book that I just had to read "a bit more" each time I started. I never pass on a chance to read his books, his style has something in it that I'm very fond of, I don't even much care trying to explain it really =]


Staring Eyes

Lately I've been watching alot more movies than for a long time. It's been pretty nice actually to get back into the ol' groove. Some of them good and some not that good, I'm not much of a critic so I'll just comment briefly.

Rented:
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Fantastic Four, Million Dollar Baby, The Island,
Cinderella Man, Serenity, Chronicles of Riddick and Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire

Haven't got much bad to say from these, except Fantastic Four wasn't that fantastic at all. I have previously seen Chronicles of Riddick, but felt like watching it again after watching Pitch Black from the TV.

Theater:
Jarhead, Constant Gardener, Lord of War, M:I:III and V for Vendetta

Jarhead was interesting in some ways, Constant Gardener ... was worth watching.
Lord of War was definetly worth the money, enjoyed it alot. M:I:III was surprisingly good on many levels, eventhough I didn't expect too much of it. Still I think V for Vendetta is the most enjoyable of all of these, the acting, the music, the way it's filmed and the story most of all. Highly recommended if you ask me!

TV:
Spider Man 2, Blood Work, Pitch Black, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Untouchables

Lil' spidey I watched one night when I was in Oulu. I hadn't seen Blood Work before, it wasn't exactly a winner but..ok still. Pitch Black has got many thing going for it, but somehow it just doesn't quite come together. The Thomas Crown Affair I had seen previously but didn't remember it before I started watching. Not much to say about it, not bad, not too good. Hadn't seen The Untouchables before either and I'm glad I watched it this time, liked alot in it.

DVD:
Leathal Weapon 1, 2, 3 and 4, Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innosence, A Beautiful Mind and Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury

Got all the Leathal Weapons so I had to watch them too =] Fun movies.
I think I've now seen Gits for atleast four times and it's still a great movie!
Having seen Gits 2: Innosence in a theater last..autumn I think, I had to get it as soon as possible. Watched it twice on concecutive days...a beautiful movie!
From one beautiful movie to another; I've seen A Beautiful Mind several times, but it still is very touching on several ways...*tear*. CoR: Dark Fury was just because I wanted to know the story between Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick. It was worth watching but not too spectacular.

More sore eyes - or some series I've recently wached or am currently following:

Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica Miniseries, Farscape, CSI, CSI:NY, Alias, The 4400 and The Next Generation

Lost is sort of an odd child with it's slow pace and a setting that's more than confusing most of the time. It's a pretty interesting quest on a style to make a series that hasn't been much seen around here before - as Asian series haven't quite made it here yet. Nice series for sure, the Finnish channel four (Nelonen) deserves a big thanks for airing it! And to continue on the same theme, airing the new version of Battlestar Galactica is a great gift for the fans of SF, so far it's been very much worth the watch and surprisingly it's a show that I find I'm anxiously waiting to see the next episode of.

How about Farscape then? This is THE series for me. Back in the days I too used to download alot of series, those days I watched up to Season 4 Episode 13. At that time, I had started to consider my habits of consuming series and after a while I decided it was time to stop warezing it and thus I deleted the rest of the episodes. It took quite a long time to get back to it, but finally in January I ordered the fourth season box and a few weeks after that got the first two Starburst Editions of the first season. At the moment I've got the full first season and 2/3 of the second season as Starburst Editions. Started watching the series from the beginning and I'm at 1x15 at the moment. The funny thing is that I haven't watched the rest of the season 4 episodes yet eventhough I have the box. Why? Because it's been such a long time, I thought it's better to watch the whole thing again to be safe =]

The original CSI has been a series I've liked since the beginning, and now that Finnish channel 3 (MTV3) started airing CSI: New York I've tried to watch it. So far it hasn't quite had the same effect than the original series, not that it's bad though, but time will tell if it's worth watching or not.

Alias is sort of a leap off the regular series I watch, it's sort of a snack in between, so that I have something to watch for each day =] At the moment I'm one episode short of finishing the second season. Have to sell the box as I have no intention of holding on to it.

So far I've just seen one episode of The 4400, so it's very hard to say much about it yet. Thanks to Nelonen again for bringing such a great series to Finland!

Star Trek...it's the basic rations of all SF fans, isn't it? =] It's a universe I'm interested in knowing better, eventhough the episodes aren't all that good. At the moment it's Season 3 on The Next Generation...two discs left and then the box will be sold for a reasonable price.

As this post turned out to be quite lenghty, and I'm sort of out of fingers, I'll post the last 1/3 separately - about games.

A wish a good rest of the week to all who find this =]

.return .iSkol

It's quite difficult to describe the feeling of being betrayed by myself...on what you ask?
Well, looking at the date of my last post... I can't quite understand how I haven't been posting anything. Anyways, quite alot of things have changed since last time which is maybe one reason why I haven't been writing anything.

Definetly starting school is one major factor in not having so much time to do things like writing here.. The first period was pretty...weird because of the christmas and newyear holidays being right smack in the middle. Subjects I had were Chemistry 1, Philosophy 1, Geographics 1 and Finnish 1. Being "new" to the system and not being very aware of the...quality of examns I didn't exactly put much effort into the studying, but still got pretty decent grades - eventhough I did miss the Chemistry examn =] So on a gradescale of 4 to 10 I got 9 from Philosophy and 7 from Finnish 1 and Geographics 1 which in my opinion were satisfying compared to the amount of time spent studying outside of sitting in the class and listening / writing.

The 2nd period (actually the fourth, since I started on third) just reached it's end, and again I'm quite happy with the grades. A full 10 from English Course 1, 9 from English Course 3, 8 from Math 1 and 8 from the chemistry I missed last time - went to all the classes eventhough I didn't have to because I thought it would help...most likely did.

One thing worth mentioning is that on the first class of the English Course 1, in the middle of a talking excersize, the teacher came to me and asked bluntly that "what are you doing on this course?" which ofcourse confused me for a second before se went on saying that "from what I can hear, you shouldn't waste your time on this or the following courses if you don't want to, because you obviously have a solid feel to talking english already". Of course I replied that eventhough I know how the language works by just...feeling it, I'm not too good with the structure of the language if I would need to explain it to others or so. After the lesson we had a good talk about what I should do and decided that I'd go the the third course instead and only attend the examn of the first course. The third course teacher and I got along pretty well too, when we recieved our examns after the period, I went to ask him about my essay, basicly just looking for negative and constructive advice on what to do better, but instead of telling me about what to do better, he basicly just praised how good it (the essay) was and so on...well sure, it's nice to get positive feedback, but it's hard to accept that much of it at once, especially since I know I could be alot better.

So, 3rd period going on now, with courses: Math 2, Biology 1, Finnish 2 and English 2.
Eng teacher I didn't like too much, but as I don't have to attend the classes, it doesn't matter.
Math 2 teacher is good, the woman whos classes I was on for Chemistry 1 and Math 1.
Finnish teacher is amazingly inspiring and enthusiastic, not exactly the typical Finnish teacher from what I know. Biology teacher is also pretty nice, an elderly woman with obviously interest in the subject and a good sense of humor =]

The first period was all day classes, but on the second I decided to try evening classes and it proved to be a good choice, since the majority of students on evening classes are less childish, adults or retired, so there is less fuzz and more time spent on the actual subjects. Talked about it with one of the teachers and she quite clearly expressed that teaching day classes isn't exactly the most...fulfilling thing to do. So for now it would seem I'll be attending evening classes.

That pretty much covers school I think, just have to add that so far it's been really nice and stimulating, might just want to go through the whole thing. Three years would be quite easy, but 2½ wouldn't be too hard either so most likely that will be my aim, if nothing else comes up.

Summer holidays coming after this period, I'm seriously considering of perhaps taking a few classes on the summer, depending on if I find / feel like finding some work...

I decided, that rather than posting everything at once, I'll do myself and possible readers a favor by posting several independent and thus more clearly on-one-subject sort of posts.

Soon again

(edit: the date was all wrong)

Inside the physics of eternity

Eventhough I said I would revise the previous post, I decided not to.

The BBA thing didn't happen that I applied to, but maybe better luck in the spring.
So as I didn't have anything better to do, I decided to go back to school, upper secondary school that is. The week before last I went to talk with the studies coordinator and as it turned out, a new perioid was just about to start the next week (incase I'm confusing you, that's week 50) so it was a bit sudden but all for the best. Pretty easy start too because only 6 days of school before x-mas holidays (it's part of a adult education system and classes are only on Mon-Thu) I wouldn't have minded going to sit an listen about things in between but I guess a holiday after months of holidaying doesn't make much of a difference. After tomorrow, the next "school day" will be on 9th of January, which makes me realise that this year my happy-who-cares-'cause-I-don't birthday is on friday...not that it would make any difference though =]

Books books, have read these in the last few months:
- Douglas Adams - Dirk Genty's Holistic Detective Agency (11/005)
- Kurt Vonnegut's - Sirens of Titan (started several months ago, finished in beginning of 12/005)
- Isaac Asimov - Foundation (9/2005)
- Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (10/005) and Ubik (also 10/005)
- Operation Eichmann - pursuit and capture (9-10/005)

So I finally got started with Asimov's Foundation trilogy (or actually it does have 5 parts but the two newer have been written several years after the first three), the first book was pretty good actually and I'm looking forward to starting on the second. Operation Eichmann was also increasingly interesting towards the end of it, seemed realistic enough to be true. At the least, I got some more interest towards history related books now thatn before.

At the moment I'm reading Arthur C.Clarke's Earthlight, almost finished it though. Others I have from library are: Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, Philip K.Dicks Bladerunner and Asimovs second book of the foundation trilogy, Foundation & Empire. Also my grandfather (from my mothers side) loaned me a book about the history of the universe called "The five ages of the universe - Inside the physics of eternity" written by some fellows named Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin. Don't know who either of them are but I'm most likely going to find out before I read it. Anyways, should be interesting read, eventhough the basic things are pretty familiar to me already since I've always been facinated about astrology and related.

The book listing is going pretty well too, 75 books so far, including almost all I own currently.
Should be uploadable some time soon.

Some computer related things also happened, and still have alot of things I haven't written to .pwer...but it's not a very high priority. In short, installed OS again and last weekend installed Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow to maybe finish it some time soon. Every evening I'm looking forward to playing it but so far not an appropriate moment for it, always too late or too busy writing something...it's been rather nice to have alot of things to do lately =]

I'd like to wish everyone who might read this a Merry Christmas and as the tradition requires, a Happy New Year! =] Sincerely, hope everyone has a good time where ever you are...untill the next post.

Good night

About watching movies and related

My angle in the Viewing Angle:
I used to pay attention to every little detail in movies and be bothered about them and at one point, I realised that I was ruining my own viewing experience (and sometimes others') by focusing on the problems one at a time and not trying to grasp the whole essence.
During the last few years I've gotten rid of the habit quite much, and I do feel that I've learned how to enjoy, watching movies and series and such, even more than I used to back when I was more focused on the nevative aspects and what not.
Some might consider the lack of critisism to be something like giving up and just taking things as they are...to think of it as lack of character, I can understand that but I won't agree. I surely don't like everything, but nobody does. Perhaps my taste is based on another perspective or something (not better, just different!)?

Spoilers and Critics:
Also I've tried to avoid any kind of spoilers and critisism before I've seen something myself, this has been to prevent preconsieved ideas and false expectations, and generally I think it's been a good thing. All this has come from realising that if I don't know the person , their comments / critisism can sometimes be understood wrong and that will set some expectations...whether good or bad, doesn't matter. From trying to avoid general spoilers and such and telling others that I would very much appreciate if they could talk such things elsewhere, I've also learned how to avoid saying things that could make a difference in others expectations. It's been pretty useful to stop and think carefully about the situation and what would be the proper thing to say, I'm pretty sure it will be useful in other contexts as well (most likely because some might consider me to be pretty agressive in expressing myself).

Time-of-thought:
There's this tradition that you're automaticly expected to talk about films you've watched with someone right after it's finished, either when you've been to a theater or in your / someone elses home. I don't like it, usually I'm pretty quiet for some time after the movie - might be 10 minutes, 30 minutes or several hours, on rare occansions even untill the next day - before I feel like talking about it and people I go to see movies with generally know this and accept it. They know that when I feel like it, I'll talk about. Surely there are times when this time-of-thought isn't required and I feel like talking about it right away, but that's not so often. This process is something that I feel is important for me, it's about looking at the movie from different angles and finding out what things mean. It's pretty much a thing that happens somewhere in the subconsious and thus it's difficult to explain. For some reason I thought this would be important...I can only hope that it would help others, but perhaps it offers another angle...perhaps not.

History:
I can't really say how many movies I've seen since I haven't even tried to make any kind of list, but maybe I'll get to that in some point in time. However, I've always been interested in movies and watched them very often. To have a rough idea of how many I've seen altogether, I could do some simple math: if since I was 7 or so I would've watched a movie per week, total amount would be 780 movies so far, but as it's alot more than one per week for sure, I think the total amount is far more than that. Maybe even twice as much, but anyone's guess is as good as mine, might be more than 2000...but can't really say so.

Recently:
Been recently experiencing an increase in the amount of movies I've been watching, discovered a new habit for myself, decided to rent a movie every thursday because it's a day when movies are 2e 50c in the rental place I go to (Makuuni). Also been watching some from the normal Finnish tv-stations (no I don't have Sub-tv, damn it). On top of this, there's now a special campaing going on in Makuuni, in which they are aiming to get a new Finnish record in movies rent within 10 days and because of this all dvd's are rented for 2e each (started Friday 2th of December and ends on Sunday 11th of December). Not too bad if you have alot of movies that you haven't been able to watch yet =]

Some movies I've watched lately, most of them new:

Theater: Ghost in the shell 2: Innosence, Appleseed and Doom,
Rented: Robots, Sin City, Interpreter, Troy, Man of Fire, Hostage, Starwars III: The Revenge of the Sith, Kung Fu Hustle, Cube Zero and Batman begins. Got Sahara for tomorrow. (last four encouraged by the record hunt)
From TV: L.A. Confidential, Angel Heart

I was planning on saying a few things about each movie, but it's getting late so I'll edit this post another day, other things to write about too, laters!

.thoughts

A brief reminder of...

This morning while I was still in bed reading one of my magazines (Tiede), my mom got a phone call from another family she's known for a quite some time, and has spent alot of time with them - I've also seen them several times but actually haven't spent much time in their presence. Anyway, her phone rang and I heard her say "now I haven't heard from these people for a while now" before she answered, right after answering I heard that something was wrong but obviously I couldn't hear anything other than my mother sounding terrified and...didn't want to eavesdrop so I continued reading knowing that she would tell me what the call was about.

After the call she told me the news, and eventhough haven't had much to do with them, I too was shocked. It was the husband / father of the family, calling in total shock...because 10 pm this morning, he had found his wife in the bathroom, dead.

I don't know much about their lives from the last few years but I know she was always working very much and also had a taste for alcohol...But what I do know is that she was very nice to talk with - eventhough I wasn't old enough to be much of a conversationalist the few times I / we were spending time with them, and from what I've gathered a very good person. She was around 50 I think, but I overheard something that she had just been to see a doctor the day before, but I don't know what for so...who knows.

To say that this doesn't touch me at all would be a lie, but I wouldn't either say that it would have affected me alot. I just think about what the husband must be going through, eventhough it will take time for him to even recover from the shock and then after that...must be hard.

Sometimes I feel that we take life for granted and don't remember to cherish the moments we have with our loved ones. - Yeah I know that's such a cliché but I find it to be rather accurate. Just saying what someone means to you, doesn't matter who it is, your friend, a member of the family, maybe just someone you know and like for any reason. One day they'll be gone, or you'll be gone and and with a few simple words you can make a difference to what remains. Try it!

For me it's hard to say these things to some people, like my friends...but it's a very nice feeling.
Who wouldn't want to know they are important to someone?`

Sadly, this post will be buried beneath all that I have to write about. Even made a list of things, but that's another time...

And what not...

Spent a good hour or so editing my site (not this one, the normal site which nobody knows about). It's starting to come together slowly, eventhough I've had a nice six months break in making it =]

And also in between decided to fix a couple of layout issues with this, the post titles were a bit too close to the actual text and lists in the post were a bit on the tight side...I think it's a bit better now. Changed the url of audioscrobble to last.fm in the navigation, no more redirecting.

On the not so techy stuff, last night got an application done for a BBA degree programme to a school named Helia Polytechnic. The courses will be in English, hence the name "Bachelor of Business Administration" (IT-tradenomi in Finnish), the degree has a strong focus on software developing and also the business side of it...might be just the thing for me!
Now just thumbs up I get to the entrance examination. I'm pretty confident that if I get invited to the exam. I'll be selected...but more on that when there's something new about it. Oh yeah, the BBA programme lasts about 3½ years full time, so that would clear things out for a while =]

About half way through the Operation Eichmann, so far it's only been about the background story - as I told in the previous post. Starting to get into it more, peaking interest.

Till another day, tidldoo

Lists of life

Greetings, the before mentioned book list has been stuck after one afternoon of hard listing work. Still alot to add to it, so I'm keeping it to myself for the time being. On a related subject, started reading a book I got from my grandmother. The book itself wouldn't have interested me too much if it hadn't been for her letter that came with the book. In the she told me a bit about the book and why she thought I might be interested, one of the reasons being that we have had discussions about the subject and as she's aware of my everlasting curiosity towards most things...well it adds up.
So what's the book about then? It tells about the tracking and capturing of a man called Adolf Eichmann, who was one of the most important people involved in the Nazi's cruel desing to wipe out all Jews. It also tells about the agents of Mossad (Israel secret police - if I remember correctly) , a bit about their past experience and how they came to be the ones to track him down and capture him. In my grandmothers letter, she also tells me that these kinds of things are the sort which shouldn't be forgotten and I must agree with that, and that doesn't mean I consider germans to be in anyway less valuable than me or any other country, just that their history has some pretty dark stuff - which shouldn't be hidden and forgotten just because it's the past.

I have to say that history generally hasn't been of great interest to me so far, but I think reading this book will be for the best of me - eventhough it doesn't go too much into the subject of holocaust, although I've just read the first 50 pages on which there is a lot of information about how the holocaust and the most important factors. It's a bit 'heavy' to read (it's written in english), but I guess after a while it won't matter.

Also made a trip to the library the other day and got two books from Philip K.Dick which I haven't read yet - Ubik and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Some interesting reading ahead during the nights of this month I'm sure.

This next thing has been bothering me a bit...should I or should I not publish a list of the games I own currently? It's bothering me because I don't want to be a source of information for the ever-downloading-bastards out there, not that I truly believe that my lists would make any difference really. But even the idea of that maybe happening...well, it just bothers me a bit.

Ign has this nice service where you can list all your games easily, rate them and have handy links for faq's and discussions and such. They even go to such lengths with it that when you go and check out about the registration to their site, they list the most important reasons for getting your own list to be:

• Show off your game collection
• Receive Email Alerts on the hottest games
• Keep track of the games you can't wait to own!
• Weekly entry into WIN YOUR WISHLIST sweepstakes

Had a laugh about that when I first saw it =]
It does look like a lot of bullshit reasons to create your own login. But actually the system works pretty well (like a charm compared to dvdprofiler for an ex.) and don't worry about spam
, you can select what sort of notifications (if any) you would like.

The registration was a bit difficult to find at first but the good thing about the site is that it uses some sort of automatic indentification for logged users so you don't have to log in each time (I guess it's some sort of bisquit). It might have some tracking abilitys...which isn't exactly what anyone would like, but hasn't bothered me so far.

But, no more about it, here is Mindseas' Game Collection (Sathy was taken, damn!)
I'll add the url to navigation too.

Dvdprofiler seemed such a huge amount of work that it'll have to wait for now.

Have a nice weekend =]