Project: Telstar

It must be said that the folks at AdHouse love books, although as a "boutique juggernaut" that's not many people. I still wish they'd print a few more, or perhaps that's reprint a few. Still, I have gotten hold of the book that inspired my previous rant (Project: Telstar) for only somewhat above cover price. I also got hold of another of the set (Project: Romantic) for my regular discount. I will not be getting the last of the set (Project: Superior) unless it is reprinted. At $50 for a library copy (ooh, it's come down), I'll just have to be happy with my free comic with part of it from a few years ago. It's the Joel Priddy part anyway.

So I hold in my hands a copy of Project: Telstar, which is A Spacial Robotic Anthology. The detail that has gone into this is just delightful. There's a busy little scene of robots and workers bustling about on the cover. Over the subtitle, little ones and zeros are printed in clear, a reminder for those who look of what makes a robot tick. Cute rounded corners, but heavier than it looks because it's actually printed on good paper. It all gives a good feeling, and so you open it up.

And there's more art on the end pages. In fact, it turns out that the front cover was the first page of a wordless story contained on the covers and end pages of the book. The book itself is printed in two colors, traditional black and a metallic blue. It's a choice that just makes sense.

The various authors utilized the two colors to varying degrees. There is some wonderful work in this taking advantage of ink. I do particularly like the work by Jay Geldof and Rob Ullman. There's also a few that would have been better off to have the colors printed in the opposite order.

There's almost nothing I didn't like in this. There's three portfolios contained in the book, which I didn't care for although I felt my heart softening for the third one. Still, they're not stories! Meanwhile, lots of wonderful, creative robot stories.

shirt of Tee

I have found the greatest tee shirt offered by the internet. So many are offered here and there, but so many aren't very good. There are a few good ones, like xkcd has some nice ones in the store.

Ah, the regular expressions shirt... except that the whole swinging in heroically to apply them rather made the comic. And I don't really use them enough so any time I really want to do something fun with them, I seem to have to look up bits.

Ooh, the sudo shirt... even though it always felt like a joke I'd tried before. Odd thing is, the systems I might try it on rarely have the command installed and even fewer seem to have given me sudo permission on the particular command in question.

Hum, the one titled "stand back (science)" is getting there...

This is the greatest tee-shirt on the net. It has a wonderful mix of alienness and childishness and simplicity. Also fun is the related web comic.

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to see a pointless movie meant to be mainly (kung-fu) action film stars you thought were retired already doing what they do best. There is a subtle difference between the movies Jackie Chan and Jet Li can be found in, so they'd never actually been in the same movie until Forbidden Kingdom. It's fun to see the drunken whatnot that seemed to be what made Jackie Chan famous (at least here) again. They really managed to make the two actors from different kinds of movies work without making their style change.

Meanwhile, someone had the bright idea of actually adding in something like a plot to this whole thing. They wrapped it around a whiny, weak willed teenager (well, I think he was supposed to be about that old) who thought that knowing the names of flashy movie kung-fu made him knowledgeable about the actual thing. He gets pulled back in time to an age of myth where he's got to go on a quest. He is the stick holder while everyone else works. He also sort of gets to learn, um, well, movie kung-fu but we're to believe it's real even though he still seems to be a weak willed and whiny sort-of-like-a-teenager. If you beat him up enough at the end, he'll at least eventually remember he could try not to be so weak.

But it was a meaningless and fun romp so long as you ignore the main character. A silly monkey with a wild bit of wire work (and his... fur) and an absurd drunken fellow who always seems to be in the right place already get up to much joyous fighting. Though it could be a little faster.

Where the stunt bloopers at the end at?