Nobilis; Sluggy

Well, my Nobilis review just went up on RPGnet this morning. No comments yet, though. And here I'd looked forward to being a center of controversy. Oh well. I guess the flamewars have died down. Still, I'd like to take another opportunity to plug the game to people. Read my review, follow the links, see what you think of the whole idea. It's a very literary sort of game, and one that people who don't like or who've never tried ordinary role-playing games might find worth looking at.

My, my, my, didn't Sluggy Freelance take an interesting turn last night? (If you haven't read it, start at the beginning...not at today's strip.) The culmination of elements that have been a long, long time in the making...or at least are set up to make it seem that way. Either way, it's probably the biggest surprise revelation ever to hit that strip. It will be...interesting to see what happens next.

Matrixy Things

Last night, I watched The Matrix Revisited again. For those of you who don't know, it's the documentary film which was released on DVD a few months ago, taking an in-depth look at the making of the film. The documentary is actually longer than The Matrix itself, in fact. I think of this as what should have been disc 2 of a 2-disc Matrix set...it goes much more in-depth than the documentary included on the original movie's disc.

It's really fascinating, and it keeps moving, keeps the interest up. It has some amusing moments, too...like a shot of Lawrence Fishburne, wearing the gi from the dojo scene, sitting in a canvas chair and playing blues harmonica as one of the nearby set staffers nods in time to the rhythm. Or one of the agents in the drenched office scene, standing in a puddle of water, doing a little "Singin' in the Rain" puddle splash. Actors being themselves. Also amusing was when they showed the cameras filming the scene where the actor drops the probe-worm onto Neo's chest. It just hit his chest and rolled off, and then I realized that I was subconsciously expecting it to turn into the little CGI tentacle-worm, just the way it did in the movie. Bizarre.

Also, I found out that there's one point where Carrie-Anne Moss didn't quite tell the truth in the audio commentary...

Another Matrixy thing that came across my event horizon today was...the latest Warner Brothers shockwave cartoon, The Matwix. It's amusing, yet it somehow seems deeply wrong to see such old familiar characters as Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd parodying such a new movie.

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Someone pointed out to me today an interesting article from the Boston Globe. Or perhaps tragic. It seems that people in England can be arrested for daring to defend themselves with even a toy gun.

Friends of Friends

Been playing with my friendsfriends feature. For those who don't know what it is, you can put "friendsfriends" on the end of a paid account's URL (mouse over the link above to see what I mean) and instead of their friends, you get a view of all the friends of their friends. It's kind of funky, even though you'll only ever see a small fraction of the journal entries of all of them if you have very many friends with friends--and you'll also see any posts to communities of which they're members. Then, if you're curious, you can bring up the info page of the people and look for the bolded names in their friends/friend of lists, to see who you have in common.

I've been trying that with a few random people in my friendsfriends list lately, and...to my lack of surprise...most of them are friends of malver. (Hi, Malver!) I swear, that guy must be friends with half of everybody on LiveJournal! I did an incest map on him once, and it was the fullest I'd ever seen one. I don't know how he keeps up with them all.

The Mountains of Mourning

A quick post to note that Lois M. Bujold, one of my favored SF writers, has put one of her novellas, The Mountains of Mourning, in the Baen Free Library. It's a pretty good story, from the point of view of focus on its character (Miles Vorkosigan), and from being a mystery story. Short enough to read on-screen, too. Definitely worth a look.

Kind of interesting that she put it up, though. According to a NY Times article from last year, she and her agent weren't certain that making a book available for free was a wise thing to do. Perhaps she's testing the waters by this release.

Anyway, it's a cool story.