Obviously, I don’t use Ubuntu much, so I’m a little late to the party, but better late than never. Upgrade from 11.10 went smoothly enough. Do you want to download 700000 packages? Sure, why not.

Now, after the upgrade, I’m greeted by the following dialog. “Sorry, Ubuntu 12.04 has experienced an internal error.” I click continue because, hey, why not. “Invalid problem report: Could not determine the package or source package name.” Great. Who’s the fucktard responsible for this I wonder.

Finished reading all ten books of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Started reading in late 2006 (first two books), read two more in early 2011, then finished the remaining six summer 2012. My thoughts on the series are somewhat scattered, I don’t think I’ll finish a complete review, this is more like a rough draft.

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As a side note, I listened to this as an audiobook, which makes it hard to remember names and particularly dates, and I also don’t have a good way to flip back and review key passages. I don’t have a precise chronology, therefore, but it’s not a deal breaker.

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I order my Windows 8 upgrade and get an email receipt. “See this email online here: http://localhost/NeptuneEmail/Templates/Confirmation.aspx?cid=...”. Hey, that’s a neat trick. They put a copy of the email on my computer for me so I can view it online even when I’m offline!

I have lots of Kindles.

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Maybe it works now. With correct links even.

The first time travel movie that actually makes sense. Probably because there’s not actually any time travel in the movie.

“We thought we were going to get superheroes; instead we just got a bunch of assholes.”

I’m reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis about Jim Clark and his ventures, and was struck by some parallels to Google, assuming one squints through properly aligned polarized lenses. In 1981, Clark tried to sell his graphics tech to a couple of the big computer companies, but none were interested and so he had to go it alone, much like Yahoo passed on the chance to buy Google. Then in 1991 or so, SGI partnered with Time Warner to build a telecomputer for TVs and wire them up via cable. The future of interactive media had arrived. They were going to transform Orlando, FL with high speed digital awesome. Sounds a lot like Google and Google TV and Kansas City. They even built a computer for the TV that nobody bought, like the Nexus Q. Clark himself, after agitating to launch this telecomputer craze, decided that interactive media wasn’t the future, the internet was. It’s funny to think that Google has decided the internet isn’t the future, interactive TV is the future.

For today’s double movie review, we take a look at the world of cage fighting and what happens when you mix it in with a classic movie framework.

Warrior

It’s like Rocky, but the square ring is an octagon ring. There’s the rather incredulous idea that two long separated brothers are going to meet in the last round of the ultimate ultimate fighting tournament, but the storylines individually are pretty reasonable. Of course, we have unknown underdogs defeating the reigning champions, but isn’t that a requirement for these movies? I think a little more of Tommy’s motivation should have been explained, but in the end, he’s more there to provide a little excitement and the foil for his brother.

Haywire

Initially I was comparing this to The Bourne Identity, but after a little more thought, it’s really Mission Impossible with the gadgets replaced with figure fours and arm bars. Gina Carano is probably the most impressive special agent I’ve seen in a while. She looks like she could really beat people up, because, well, she really can. I would have been scared to tangle with her for one of the fight scenes, which is also something the actors mention in a special feature (actually worth watching for once). As a movie, the story is so so, and there’s nothing imaginative going on here apart from casting Carano, but that’s impressive in its own right.

Today Yuengling is having a customer appreciation toast, where you can walk into basically any bar in the city and get a free bottle, because they’re now the largest American brewery, even though they still only sell regionally. A reminder that success sometimes takes a long time. Yuengling is also the oldest brewery in America, since 1829, but much of their growth has occurred recently after the introduction of the lager. Never know when you’re going to release a homerun product.