My New Website, Celebrating Life, Driving to/from NC, and Good-vs-Pathetic Movies

Ta-da, my newly redesigned website is live. It's now a hub, a portal to take you to my various online presences, instead of being a "refrigerator door" of miscellany.


"Aiee aiee ya-hah / Aiee aiee ya-hah / Aiee aiee ya-hah
C'est dans la joie là qu'on va bouger oh-oh-ohhhhh!"
...the chorus to the song "C'est Dans la Joie" by Mokobe, in French. This translates to "It is with joy that we will move" [ie, DANCE!] and pretty much sums up why I dance (swing just being my preference) and my thoughts on living -- celebrate it!


Fun times in NC with my cousin Joe this weekend. As usual!
Even though it's a long 4.5-5 hour drive down there, I enjoy the alone time. It's just me & my music, cruising down the highway. I prefer it at night too, because there are even fewer cars around, especially on the 2 hour stretch on Route 85 in southern VA and into NC.


"Quantum of Solace" was a great movie. Story-wise I particularly liked that it was continuous from Casino Royale, and wasn't just a "oh, new adventure from outta the blue" sequel. I do like Daniel Craig as James Bond, and I like these 2 latest 007 films' style of feeling realistic -- he does have blood on him after he kills someone, he does get dirty.
The only thing I didn't like was that the action scenes were filmed in the very-modern "camera cuts every other second" style. I *really* like long, no-cut action sequences -- it lets you see what's actually happening.

Joe & I watched "In the Name of the King" -- the movie based on the computer game (we love) Dungeon Siege. Being a Uwe Boll production, we knew it would be bad. We expected it, and braced for it.
So lemme break it down as gently as I can... the game is a classic style fantasy RPG. Of the 4 paths you can develop your character, 2 are entirely magic-based. Two of four, that's half. Half is 50%. 50% is much higher than say, 5%. And you know of RPG magics: fireballs, lighting bolts, creature summoning, healing spells, misc curses & spells of destruction.
The ONLY lightning "bolts" or fireball (ball not balls, it was ONE) from hands occurs right at the end, and is barely on camera. Bad guy is killed, roll credits. NO denoument at all.
There were three good things about this movie:
1. The telekinetic sword fight between the two mages, while their hands were behind their backs and they taunted each other. Very cool.
2. All of the towns/places in the game were mentioned or visited in the movie. Yay.
3. The... ummm... wait, ok, there were only two good things about it. ...sigh...

Any resemblance to the game Dungeon Siege is simply with the names used; the towns, and the enemy as "Krug". Else it could've been a summary of "Lord of the Rings", or just "Eragon" v2.0.
We just wanted to see some hot fireball-on-fireball action! Was that too much to ask from a theme that's half -or more- magic?! o_O