The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret

I have a very clear image of a video for this song in my head. It amuses me, so I thought I would share.

It opens on Davros, black stage, spots from behind, flanked by Daleks. Opening verse intercut with gentle clips from series. All very moody and serious.

When the beat kicks in, the front of Davros' chair snaps open, as does the front of the Dalek casings; from each Dalek steps a squiddies in spats. Opposing him, emerging from the shadows, are several different regenerations of the Doctor^[1].

There follows a West Side Story style danceoff. Choreography by Stomp.


I didn't say it was funny, I just said it amused me.

[1] All parts to be played by lookalikes

5 months of comics arrived at the weekend, so I am catching up on my Blackest Night (not to be confused with Final Night, from off of the 90's).

It is genuinely creepy and disturbing at points, and Geoff Johns' writing is pretty much above and beyond the very high standard I've come to expect from him - not just as a piece in itself but as a tapestry of interlocking sequential fiction. The core "EVENT" series seems to stand by itself, even though key events and developments appear to take place in the main Green Lantern (and the supporting tie-in spin-offs) - those events are summarised and expanded on at various points, the two series enriching and informing each other while not at any point becoming either dependent or redundant. There is, I will allow, the occasional moment where you think "Hmm, that sequence lifts right out" - for example, the issue of GL covering a fight scene which begins in BN and isn't resolved until the next BN - but even then the rich detail of the art and environs makes you glad you read it anyway. To continue the example above, during the fight the Bat-Signal is seen shining in the sky in the background; at the start of the following BN issue Hal crashes into said Signal. You don't need to see the fight (you're brought very quickly up to speed on who's involved and how badly it's going) but it interlocks so nicely that it's very satisfying.

I've always liked the way Johns takes disparate elements of history and weaves them together into a whole that seems not only plausible but natural - almost logically inescapable - and yet I'm still kind of wary of what he's doing with the Hawks (Hawkman and Hawkgirl, not Hawk and Hawk and Dove). I am pleased that I did see the secret of the Violet Power Battery coming, but I'm not sure if that means I'm getting better at spotting his curve balls or if he's just moving from "obvious in hindsight" to just plain "obvious". Maybe you just have to know that Johns has a massive hardon for the Hawks. Whatever the case, it's starting to feel like a slightly smaller universe when everything ties together.

The big disappointment, though, is the number of people who are dying. It's starting to be Johns' calling card at the moment - the massacre of second-string and/or obscure characters - and it is rather contradictory given his obvious love for the material. I know the series is supposed to be about death - it's about making death in comics serious again, and perhaps to some degree permament, though Lord knows the sheer number of dead characters that were already available to form a Black Lantern Corps puts the lie to the notion that death never sticks in comics. And yes, some of the murders - in contrast to the offhand backhand from Superboy Prime that saw to a few old favourites - are spectaculary executed (har) to the greatest emotional impact. It's a horror story, and as horror goes, the notion of watching helplessly as your dead hero uses science pillaged from your own mind to kill your one true love is pretty much up there. But still, I have always of the opinion that you shouldn't kill a character until they are more useful (narratively) dead than alive, and if your characters get to that point then you have failed. Alive is always more interesting. (And anyway, why did it have to be the girlfriend?)

New favourite UNIX command:

> du -sh *

pronounced "Douche".

I am now heartily using Google Chrome at work. (Well, I'm using something like five browsers^[1] regularly, by nature of the industry, but Chrome is my idle browsing tool of choice.)

Recently I took the bold step of switching off the bookmarks toolbar - something I never really used (and indeed used to disable) before Firefox, but I have rather got used to opening a favourite with a single click (or even in a new tab, with a middle-mouse-button click).

Happily, the cunning folks at Google have arranged the 'new tab' window such that if you have the Bookmarks switched off, your bookmarks show up at the top, under their principle of "When you open a new tab you're making a statement of intent - you want to go somewhere." It is also a neat way of training people to open new tabs and close old ones, preventing the risk of ongoing memory leaks. So it's all still available, without even toggling the bookmarks bar on and off, and as part of your new and improved natural browsing methodology.

Now I basically have to decide whether the extra window space is worth one extra click...

[1] For those interested: Firefox 3, IE 7, IE 6, Google Chrome and Lynx, though Lynx is just for convenience when I'm in a shell and isn't part of our normal cross-browser testing. Paul (lead developer) also uses Safari.

Why you need Google Chrome in your life

EDITED TO ADD: I'm liking it so far, though this "each tab as a separate process" business does seem to make your hard disk a bit choppy when you're opening and closing a lot of them.

Geoff has reminded me that the Spellthief basic class also gives you a Sneak Attack, and though it gives you one or two fewer skill points per level, it is vastly more interesting. So, screw Rogue.

Everyone is all excited about this-or-that Age of Conans and Warhammer Beta Bla Di Bla games that are coming out and stuff.

Me, I'm more intrigued by this "On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness" offering.

Four Gods wait on the windowsill,
Where eight Gods once did war and will,
And if the Gods themselves may die,
What does that say for you and I?

Bullet points while I'm here:

• Saw Iron Man; it was good
• Had a wisdom tooth extracted; am reasonably certain pliers were involved
• batelf got older; there was much rejoicing
• Read The Pearls That Were His Eyes; it was quite entertaining but hard to rate objectively, being as how I have some passing familiarity with the source materials.

More in-depth reviews may be forthcoming, or not.

Yesterday I tried to install my new motherboard.

Why do they tell you not to touch any part of the board, and then give you these little tiny screws that have to go right into the board next to sensitive components that your fat fingers can't help but brush against? And then you drop the screws and have to fumble around in the dark, whacking yet more sensitive components with the screwdriver in your other hand?

This is exactly why I knew I'd be better off buying a pre-built machine.