Ongoing Process

I confess, I watch The Dresden Files. It’s a very mediocre show, but things have been slow on TV lately.

But while it’s a mediocre television show, I did find the main character and general setting interesting. Then I noticed in the credits that the show is based on a series of novels. I thought that I might be onto something if the books featured the same basic setup but with better writing, so I ordered the first book. Storm Front by Jim Butcher arrived yesterday. I finished it at 1:30AM this morning.

Basically it’s a classic noir detective story. The detective just happens to be a wizard in present-day Chicago. If that sounds appealing, you’ll probably really enjoy this (and if it doesn’t, you’ll probably hate it). It’s a lot of fun. Butcher manages to thread together all the corny noir stuff with a serious plot and tight mythology. It’s not high literature by any measure, but I found it really engaging. It has a feel of old-fashioned adventure and who-done-it that’s spun to work very well in a modern context. And Dresden is an excellent lead with a great blend of cynicism and do-gooder.

My only complaint is that it feels like it’s watered down a touch. It’s sort of “angst lite”. I get the impression that the story being told is just a little bit darker than the words that convey it. Maybe that’s part of the noir thing or maybe they’re trying to appeal to a wide audience. Whatever the case, it’s a minor detraction but I do notice it.

On the whole, it was totally enjoyable. I just ordered the next seven books, so I should be set for wizardly crime solving for a while.

That’s right, it hit 80 degrees in Burlington, VT today. I’d say it’s been seven or eight months since it’s been that warm here. Hell, we’ve barely seen anything that starts with a 5 in four or five months.

I have a mild sunburn.

Yay for solar radiation!

So I just watched the first episode of season four of Hustle to discover that Adrian Lester has left the show. So no more Mickey Bricks. It was a good ep, but his absence was quite noticeable. Not to mention that means Danny has now been promoted to leader, which is not an improvement. It’s just not the show it used to be.

*sigh* All things truly are transient.

I’d really like to know who decided that Doctor Who is supposed to be campy. Doctor Who is not campy. At least, it never was. I’ve been watching some of the classics and they are never campy. Cheesy, sure. It’s low-budget 1970’s production style all the way. But they take it seriously. They try their best to create real drama. They didn’t always succeed, but they always tried. But the new Doctor Who is abysmal. Season one was a waste. Season two was a big improvement, but still way off the mark. Now we’re three episodes into season three and it looks like they’re trying to recapture the lost magic of season one. It’s just dumb. Awful. The only thing that makes less sense is why I’m still watching it…

Update:
I did in fact stop watching shortly after I wrote this post.

After playing The Lord of the Rings Online a bit longer, I can update my original impression.  There is one thing that really stands out from other games I’ve played: they’ve changed the treadmill.  They haven’t actually removed the treadmill, but it’s a start.  The way they’ve done this is quite simple, yet effective.  The experience point rewards one gets for completing quests is much larger than the the experience one is likely to make killing monsters for the same duration of time.  The rather immediate effect of this is that one spends one’s time completing quests rather than camping a spawn point.  Now, doing an endless series of quests isn’t a perfect solution by a long shot.  There’s only so many variations of “fetch this” and “kill that” one can go through before it starts feeling repetitive.  However, it has far more staying power than killing the same monster over and over and over again (or even different monsters, for that matter).  So cheers to the designers.  Good call.