Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

Some things do not hold up over time.

I remember being COMPLETELY ENCHANTED when I first saw The Neverending Story in theaters. The puppets! The characters! The story! Magic breaking into the everyday world, or someone Very Like Me escaping into a world of magic! It was all just amazing and wonderful and transportive at the time.

With those fond memories in mind, I put it on again last night (currently on Netflix). I discovered that the eyes and experience of a 40-some year-old are very different from an 11-year-old.

From an adult point of view, the story is one that I've now read or seen in a few hundred books and movies. This particular iteration of the Hero's Journey isn't very deep or very involved. The dialogue is simple and not particularly witty. The puppets were probably pretty impressive at the time, but lip-synching is an issue and they're just not very convincing anymore compared with today's CGI wonders. It was a film of its time, and it was aimed squarely at kids. Which was fine when I was eleven, but sadly doesn't work so well now.

In contrast, while I haven't seen them all that recently, I believe films like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal hold up better to adults, perhaps because they're targeted more towards teenagers than children. Similarly, The Princess Bride, while pretty goofy, is still very watchable.

My husband and I are considering signing up for streaming Netflix.  I've poked a little bit at their selections and am impressed, but slightly skeptical.  While looking for a different film (which they don't seem to have), _The Pirates! Band of Misfits_ came up... which is still playing at my local theater, having only opened a month ago.

I note that there isn't any indication as to _when_ it will be available on Netflix, nor yet whether it'll be available as a stream, disc, or both.  WTH? 

How far can I trust the not-yet-a-member browsing feature?  What's your experience with streaming Netflix and its catalog?

There's hints that a movie is being made based on my beloved Phoenix Wright series of video games. 

If they do it right, it could be really cool.  If they do it wrong, it could be... really wrong.  Hence the "I think?" in the title post.

(Meanwhile, when is Miles Edgeworth 2 getting an English translation?  Huh?)

Enjoying Professor Layton.  I tend to play it in bits; I'll load up a puzzle, and if I can't solve it quickly, I'll put the system aside (sometimes still running, sometimes not) and think about the puzzle for a while.  I learned last night that this playing it right before bed is an EXCELLENT way to give me something that's engaging, distracting, and not emotionally loaded to think about as I fall asleep (or alternately, ponder if I wake up in the middle of the night).  Must remember that.  :)

And still enjoying Okamiden, now roughly 20 hours in and ready to go back to the plot for a while.  Still only ~1/2 way through the game plotwise, I think!

Just watched Monsters, Inc.  *happy sigh*  What a brilliant, funny, and exceptionally sweet film.

I should have posted about this ages ago, but haven't. 

Christopher Salmon is a fan of Neil Gaiman's work.  In particular, he's fallen in love with Gaiman's short story "The Price", enough that he wants to make a movie of it.  (You can see this post in Gaiman's blog for a bit more detail.)

Here's the lowdown and dirty: Salmon is asking for funding from fellow fans and artists to make his movie over on kickstarter, which allows individuals to make donations, large or small, through Amazon (weirdly enough).  Here's the thing: with kickstarter, if the entire amount requested does not get raised, no money is given by ANY of the sponsors.  For Salmon, that's $150,000 or nothing. 

His deadline is the end of November (which is why I ought to have posted much earlier!).   He's about $27,000 away from his goal, and he's got some nice goodies for donors who sign up now.  Please consider making a small donation to this neat project!



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EDITED to add: He did it!  Wow!

Hmm, I don't seem to be posting all that much...

I've been busy!  Work continues to be very busy - I'm in the middle of a spin-off project from the interactome that should be really interesting if the results come out cleanly.  I'm also working on The Interactome Part II/III: working on extracellular proteins that have LRRs, FnIIIs, and other interesting domains.  I haven't started cloning yet (waiting for our collaborators to do primer design and synthesis), but I've been toiling away looking at domain boundaries for some of those 'other' domains - there's a quite large list of the things - and determining whether our collaborator has usable clones.  Yeah, I know it sounds like technobabble; sorry 'bout that.

The past weekend was really nice (apart from the &^#!&%! California poplar tree in our neighbor's yard, which goes into bloom about now every year and which produces copious amount of pollen to which I am horrendously allergic).  We had skating class for the first time in about three weeks on Saturday, and did things both useful and pleasant the rest of the day, including getting the rear driver door of my car fixed such that it locks along with the rest of the doors when it's supposed to.  (Metroid Prime ice beam, you are mine now!)  Sunday we went to the early bird showing of Toy Story 3-3D.  We really enjoyed it - I want more of the hedgehog! - though, like ladybird97 , I would be very cautious about what small children to bring to it, for the same almost-incredibly-traumatic scene near the end.  I have to admit, I'd really wondered whether Pixar would find anything new to say or do in this world... and, well, they did.  They're brilliant.  It was a little weird coming out of the movie at 1 PM and realizing we had the entire rest of the day to do with as we liked/needed.

What else?  I've started a new solo project over at Librivox.  It feels great to FINALLY  be recording again, after literally months of not doing so.  (I think the last time I'd made a recording before this past weekend was back in very early March, before the whole recent series of adventures started.)   We have an upcoming D&D game with cerebralpaladin  and co. this weekend.  I'm almost finished writing thank-you notes for Important People who came to Mom's memorial service last month.  There's still buckets of things I need to take care of that got shoved into the "After June" category: dentist appt, doctor's appt (annual checkup), calling United to get into my electronic account info, learning to drive a stick shift, calling a lawyer to formally put wills together... 

But it doesn't all have to be done today.  'Specially since it's our 14th wedding anniversary.  No, we're not doing anything much special today; the New Zealand trip was our anniversary gift this year.  But as noted, I am eternally grateful to and in love with my Huz, for everything he does and everything he is for me.  <3

...is that Viking adult males speak in a kind of Highland brogue.  Huh??!?

I saw How to Train Your Dragon with a good friend last night.  It was just the thing as distraction and entertainment from what I've been dealing with for the last week or so.  Furthermore, Mom would have approved of the whole thing start to finish:

- We went to a late (9:20 PM) showing
- We bought movie junk food (which I NEVER do, EVER)
- The movie was really quite charming - she would have liked the film itself
- Oh yah, and she really liked the person I went to see it with, so bonus there too.

It's a pleasant diversion.  In general, you should probably see the matinee rather than the full-price, but you should also see it in 3D, which is nicely done.  Or you can wait and it will generally stand up to DVD home viewing, it just won't look quite as impressive.

• This has been a pretty busy work week-and-a-bit.  After some initial kerfuffle with the cells we needed to transfect, we started The Transfection Part only a few days later than originally scheduled.  With one person being responsible for maintaining, splitting, and aliquoting cells, and two of us doing the transfections, we got through all 264 transfections in the projected time.  And early Western results show that we're getting good expression of the proteins we're trying to make.  Yay!  We will be able to embark on the actual screen for novel binding partners within the Ig superfamily (IgSF) within Drosophila sometime next week.

• Huz is on the last section of Metroid Prime, having defeated Meta Ridley with the help of a walkthrough.  I am nowhere near done, being just about ready to get the Heat Visor.

• Tried out the demo for Miles Edgeworth last night.  Walking around to examine things feels kind of klunky - at least using the interface they had in the demo.  But the story and characters look to be their usual crazy, marvelous selves.  (Who knew Edgeworth was a fanboy of the Steel Samurai?)  Will keep my eyes open for a used copy.

• Speaking of which, someone thought it would be a good idea to write a musical using the characters and concepts of the Phoenix Wright games.  Youtube of the first segment of the musical is here.  Weirdness: all the characters seem to be played by females -- eh, whatever.  From the little bit that I've seen (the equivalent of the 'intro' section of one of the cases), I can't tell whether it's any good or not.

• Our New Zealand trip is coming right up!  I went and got new sneakers today. At least I have that concern out of my mind now.

• We have a bunch of Meyer lemons, thanks to a labmate of mine.  Meyer lemon bars for D&D tomorrow!

We've had a great last few days.  It started with my younger brother arriving Friday night after a work conference the previous few days in San Francisco.  We picked up nezumiko  and went for Japanese/sushi for dinner, then came back to our place and hung out for a while.  Kiddo spent the night on the futon with a couple of our indoor cats. 

Saturday was - amazingly - bright and sunny and fairly warm.  He took a look at our can't-be-turned-on lawnmower, replaced the spark plug, and exhorted me to get a new container of fuel plus some fuel stabilizer.  We went for a walk around the neighborhood so he could enjoy the lovely January sun and warmth, had lunch, and then went to see Sherlock Holmes with nezumiko , which was fun.  I found the plot kind of silly but pretty well constructed, and really enjoyed the interplay among Holmes, Watson, and Irene.  Any chemists out there who could tell me whether the science-ish explanation of How It Was All Done made sense?  (I do know that Holmes must have gotten his hands on a Rod of Lightning Bolt, 'cuz ain't no way you're getting three zaps out of a standard piece of metal after only one charge!)  We went back, chilled, had dinner, and I took Kiddo to the airport for his overnight flight.

Today I went to church in the morning, and then our D&D group met at our house.  The session was remarkably streamlined, as we had four (count 'em, four) combat encounters, where we've normally had two at best.  And boy, did we whup some goblin backside!  We've recovered the bulk of the gold that the goblins had, plus a handful more, and a handful of magic items.  Now we need someone short who can wear nice magicked chainmail (better than 'standard' +1 stuff), and someone who can use a nice magicked battleaxe (also nicer than +1).  And we killed a lot of goblins, including getting the goblin king to surrender (after whacking on him for a while) and the goblin high priest (whom the king was willing to trick into the room, allowing us to kill him, in exchange for his and his favorites' freedom). 

After the session, we went out to dinner with our GM cerebralpaladin , his wife orichalcum , and their two boys, which was also pleasant.  We are now, however, entirely ready to be quiet for a while and then head to bed.  Yay weekend!

I haven't seen it.  I don't quite dare, somehow.  But hopefully those of you who saw 2012 (and even those who didn't) will enjoy The Editing Room's abridged script for 2012.