5 Things I Liked About Lost Season 3

These are just some of the elements of Season 3 that I enjoyed. And they mostly happened in the last couple of episodes (re. my memory is poor).

5.

Jack did the wrong thing again. Okay. Whether this was just a device to introduce the new "Bad Bad Guys", I liked it. I loved Jack facing off against Locke. Locke’s walking off. Jack talking to the fellow on the other end. But mostly, I love that Jack stubbornly, and stupidly (because seriously, how much crazy "that can’t be true" stuff has to happen before the characters realise that YES, it can happen?) went ahead with his intent. 

4.

They did a Flash-Forward. This was cool. Jack’s zombie-like flash forwards. All the questions it raised. Who was "He"? Who died? What was on the paper? Was it a future that CAN happen, or was that the future, singular?

3.

Charlie Died. Okay. Even though I’ve since found out that Dominic Monaghan (spl) actually wanted to leave the show, I still think this was an awesome event. It would have been extra better if they had planned it all along, because death is a pretty powerful element, and important in a good epic story, but still. See, at the start of this season, I was sure Charlie was an Other .. or at least bad. He was giving greasies all over the place, and the camera focussed on them more than once. I guess either it was some half-baked foreshadowing that never eventuated .. or it was Mr. Monaghan just being grumpy that he wasn’t getting enough story time.

2.

Locke saw Jacob. Okay. Fantastic event. Obviously the writers are gearing up for three more seasons. We got just a glimpse, and bunch of questions with no answers. Jacob seems more prisoner than leader, but then that would mean Ben is bigger and badder. Which is wierd. But possible I guess. Anyway, Locke seeing Jacob, hearing his plea for help, was just fantastic.

1.

Sawyer killed Tom. Okay. Who else was freaked out? Sawyer’s awesome, my favourite character, but now I’m scared. In a good way. Where are they taking him? Are him and Jack gonna go Cain/Abel on us over Freckles? Speaking of which, what the! Jack telling her he loves her, after pashing Juliet. Ahem. Anyway, this reigns at the top because Sawyer is just cool, and seeing him descend into crazy darkness seems very important. I hope it is, in the bigger story.

Ten Reasons Why Mal Is Better Than Luke

10. 

Mal would shoot Jar Jar in the leg, at least the leg.

I know, Jar Jar and Luke probably never met. But still.

 

9. 

Mal has a big brown coat, no robes.

The Matrix proved that big coats were better than robes. Unless Raistlin or another awesome magic user was wearing them. And just because Luke was technically a magic user doesn’t mean he escapes .. Coats >> Robes for heroes.

 

8. 

Mal has River as his foil.

 

7. 

Darth Vader would be better in the Firefly universe. He could be king of the Reavers.

This doesn’t really make sense as a reason .. but i’m putting it in anyway because how awesome would that be.

 

6. 

Mal has crew.

Han had crew. But we are talking bout Luke.

 

5. 

Mal loves his crew.

I’m not sure Luke ever had this dimension. I mean, that George actually thought it through more than a couple of seconds.

 

4. 

Mal can take an absolute beating and still make wisecracks.

This is, obviously, not limited to Mal, many heroes pre and post have had this powerful ability. But Mal is pretty awesome at it.

 

3. 

Mal hangs out with Jayne.

 

2.

Mal says stuff like "Shiny" and "Misbehave" in ways that make me want to be cool and say them too.

 

1. 

 

Mal named his ship Serenity.

 

Naturally, some of these points aren’t very water tight. The Coats/Robes one especially reeks to me. Robes are cool. Especially Jedi’s wearing Robes. But because we got to understand the importance of Mal standing there in a big brown coat (the importance of the coat itself, the meaning of it all), then it trumps robes just for robes sake.

How To Evangelise Clarion (2), The Walk-Off

Part 1 was the previous post about taking a video camera onto university grounds.

Remember in Zoolander (if you don’t find movies about totally vain male models, cameos, billy zane saying "It’s a Walk-Off" to anyone and noone, listening to JitterBug while models are having a gasoline fight at a petrol station .. funny, then you’ve probably never watched or liked Zoolander) when Billy Zane says, "It’s a Walk-Off".

Well, what I’m proposing as a particularly effective way of evangelising Clarion is to have our own Walk-Offs, or as they will be known from here out, Code-Offs.

Instead of prancing about on a catwalk, attempting to pull our undies clean off, we start with having timed competitions, where we have a particular goal, we limit ourselves, we get a finished product, and possibly someone judges it.

(I’m going to get to the two different paths we will take with these in a second)

For example, it is decided that the object of the current Code-Off is to create a system that effectively solves a certain business model within a period of say, 4 hours (keeping it short, especially at the start, is a good way of maintaining enthusiasm).

After the 4 hours, contestants submit their projects, and after a period of judging, the winners are announced.

You might not even have winners, just comments on each project. But definately have some kind of competition.

Of course, this particular example is internal. Just amongst the Clarion Community. It will be used to raise the profile of Clarion in the outside world, but it’s main effect will be to bind the current community together (well, hopefully together, you’d have to be careful with the judging and the competing and the egos and all that).

The second path is an external Code-Off.

This is where it really gets interesting. You’d contact various communities, talk to them about holding a (it might be a little longer, say 24 hours) Code-Off between various development tools. Each community would submit a judge, and each community would submit a (maybe set) number of contestants.

The competition would begin as soon as the Object (the subject, the thing that we are doing) is announced. 24 hours later, all projects would be submitted, and the judges would go to work.

This would be a HUGE opportunity to evangelise Clarion. It wouldn’t even matter if we didn’t do that well. Although i’m confident that we could, given the right people, blow everyone away.

Actually, this would work really well in teams. Like they do with gaming. The Aussie Quake 3 team, that sort of thing.

Just imagine some of the team combinations we could have. Ha ha. Nice.

Anyway, that’s my next idea for how to evanglise Clarion. As waffly as the post is, there’s still a lot more that could be fleshed out, but I’ll leave it to you guys to see if it excites you enough to comment your own ideas on the matter.

Rasping For Air

So after a discussion with The Colleagues Of Clarionness yesterday, I decided to get stuck back into Rasp. I’ve been working on (and has been mentioned) a very cool project, but am getting it looked at currently, so Rasp seemed like a good idea.

And it was.

Rasp is pretty cool. And I didn’t realise just how cool a proper Tracking log is. In Rasp it’s called Workflow, but however you name it, there’s just nothing like seeing what’s been happening in the system, blow by blow.

And NetTalk makes it super easy to retrieve stuff. Client IP, Session ID .. easy peasey.

So I’m going to get the "Pages" concept done and dusted before releasing the new version. I need to break it down simply, and worry about making it all things to all men later on. Just get out the ability to create Pages, which are written inside the web interface, stored in the same Folders as the Files, and served by NetTalk.

Sleek interface can come in the next version i think.

BUT .. I’d still like to get a sound .. structure. And not just structure, but think through some of the paradigms.

Although a browse/form is going to work to some extent, it’s still not the main way of showing Pages. I’d like more of a Blog style, where Pages are shown where and when the User wants them shown.

Anyway. More later.

Proof My Wife Is Smarter Than I

Last night I discovered that all the lights were out in the big garage down below. Of course, for some awesome, albeit unknown, reason, our electronic garage door is on the same circuit, and so wasn’t working.

This morning, because the family caravan had to move out of the station to school, I went outside looking for a fuse box type of thing.

After a few circuits outside the units, front and back, I came back up. And got quite annoyed, because my beautiful wife said she’d have a go.

Ten minutes later, she’s back, and the problem is fixed.

What did I miss? Well, everything. I wasn’t really looking. My beloved spotted the meter box straight away, got the key for the door, and bam. Problem solved.

I walked past that meter box at least three times. And not once did I even look at the door that has METER BOX (or something like that) in big letters.

This illustrates most definitely that I am the lesser in tracking skill and searching algorithms.

A Weekend of Abundance

Well. Although my yesterday was taken up with compiling and setting up stuff, I have not lost any of my desire to note down a couple of things about this past weekend.

First. The Rugby. It was a sad, sad evening. Actually, more grumpy than sad. I wonder what it is about losing like that that makes me so .. unpleasant. Hmm. Perhaps I think I could do a better job. Ha ha. Hardly. I do dream still about playing for the Wallabies, and some little part of me will probably hope for the next couple of years, but seriously ..

Second. Harry Potter. Horcruxes or Hallows? What a finish. What a book. Amazing. Just awesome. Sad. Awesome. Sad again about fifty times over. And still, satisfying. Almost too many events, giving the writing a slightly rushed feel .. but that’s okay .. i like that about this book. It’s rushing to the end, the final battle .. the meeting of Harry and Voldemort for the last time.

I’ll probably write some more a little while after, give at least one of the readers of this blog time to finish the book :). You know who you are ..

Third. There is no third. Like the spoon. I’m just fishing for something creative to spark. But it’s not. Maybe later.

Pidur Picur

My eldest, who’s six years old, recently wrote a story for Papa about Spiderman.

Ahma was asking about a character called "Pidur picur" .. little guy. He’s got such an awesome phonetical imagination, just works it out with the knowledge he has.

So can you guess? Pretty obvious I spose.

Pidur picur .. Peter Parker.