By All Means Come Visit

Tourists running naked through the streets of Barcelona have sparked protests from local residents fed up with “tourists who do whatever they want”.

Tourists often outnumber the city’s 1.6 million residents, with 7.4 million visiting in 2012. Read more

Photo: Vicens Forner

Not really sure what the problem is here. I mean… if guys like these want to run around naked I'd probably follow them.

Happy Birthday, Indeed

So many well-wishings from wonderful people. I'm terribly happy.

Now to find horses for all of them.

Robin Williams

Was really surprised when the flood of announcements came in Monday about Robin Williams' death. Immediately I felt old as he is one of my favorite actors. And when your favorite celebrities start to move on you know your time is fast approaching.

Then I found out it was suicide. It was hard to believe at first then I remembered stuff about the substance abuse. Even his personality made it somewhat reasonable... all the mania had to mean some pretty substantial lows. Still it's difficult when someone I so admired makes this kind of choice.

His comedy is undoubtedly defines him but his films won't soon be forgotten. There were a number of important ones to me. The way What Dreams May Come brought to life much of my spirituality. His paternal role in Good Will Hunting was passionate and heart-warming. The skill and humor he exhibited in Mrs. Doubtfire. The child-safe insanity of Batty Coda in Fern Gully and the genie in Aladdin. And so many more.

*sigh*

So Much Fishing, No Guts

Can't believe there are sites out there that still try to do this shit…

Was looking up some Hearthstone deck while building one, so wasn't paying attention at first. The browser suddenly got focus and this page came up. I just re-minimized it to get it out of the way.

 When I went back there I noticed it had automatically downloaded its installer. Yet the color scheme was all off and the bottom links didn't align. Then I laughed when I looked at the URL.

The thing is, I'm not sure where it came from. Only had Hearthhead and gog.com open. Might be a bad ad on Hearth but I suppose I better check for some kind of Chrome virus.

Damn Russians. Or Chinese. Or whomever…

Running Circles in Circles

Signing in to watch the inauguration a couple of friends noticed me on the Google+ Circle or whatever it's called. The notifications popped up saying they invited me into their circle. Yet there was no accept button. I clicked on an arrow to the right of the notification and got an even smaller, more useless window.

I then went to the profile page of the person who invited me. There was no invite notification. There was no means to accept their invite. There was no button allowing me to invite them to my circle. I then clicked on a Settings link and got this:

Wow. So I went over to Chrome to do things and suddenly... things were working. *sigh* Understandable to my cynical side yet still damn annoying. Oh well. Not like I will use it. Social networking is a plague.

That's Synergy

Making the second term official on MLK Day—pretty exciting, little exploitative. Been trying to watch the YouTube live things but all the streams are slammed. All except Al Jazeera. *lol*

Avatar (2009)

♥♥♥♥♥ • PG-13 • 162m • Netflix • IMDB

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

Not exactly sure why it took me so long to see this. The title does bother me as it's the moniker of the protagonist in the Ulitma series from the fourth onward. And it conflicts with Nikelodeon's amazing animated series (not Shyamalan's failure). Naming aside, definitely a breathtaking movie.

Could only come up with two issues I had with it. First it was completely transparent. As each character is introduced you know exactly their role and ultimately what they'll do within five minutes of meeting them. The major plot points are known within ten minutes of the film. Meh. And the second was the blatant activism. While I'm sure it grated on any “compassionate conservatives” that watched, which is a plus, the heavy-handed allegory was cloying.

Those two sticking points aside I couldn't deny the full 5 ♥s. The world was richly imagined—from the geography to the flora and fauna to the Omaticaya. The technology was sufficiently advanced/believable but not in the way of the story. Pacing, dialogue, lighting, costume and production elements were all spot-on. And what glorious casting. I mean really…Lt. Ripley mixing it up with aliens again!

“It is hard to fill a cup which is already full.” — Mo'at, 46m