Merry Christmas!

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Conference Calls

Todays B.S. was brought to you by the letters C, Y, and A!

It's interesting how somewhat loose business acronyms frequently stand for foul language, especially where it butts up against the geek realm.

Why I Write

At least this most recent Brian Singer film falls short of being overtly self-congratulatory (unlike some films); and that's about the best thing I can say for it.

I was greatly disappointed by the picture. It made frequent un-subtle alliteration to the original motion picture, attempting to attach itself to the bygone sentiment and show its "roots." However, said roots were completely disconnected from the meat of the new narrative and incompatible with the advancement of the story, feeling tacked-on and pointless.

Everything went downhill from there: The original Christian allegory (as voiced by Brando and reused verbatim) was taken too far in both imagery and recitation (especially given that the Man of Steel apparently fathered an illegitimate child), feeling disrespectful in light of the fact that nothing in the film made me want to care about, respect, or hold any affection for the characters and thus their association with those things I do respect sullies the esteemed principal rather than redeems the character. The new plot, attempting to portray itself as epic in scope, moved slowly and never once inspired a sense of danger or immediate peril (nor long-term peril). The displays of physical jeopardy were trotted out and predictably resolved, even re-using gags in the process and holding all of the supposedly tense moments for several beats too long. Physics, of course, were completely disregarded - which is fine in a superhero flick, but I do expect some measure of internal consistency and found none here.

Which brings me to Why I Write: too often I cross paths with this kind of mediocre creativity and find it frequently lauded as success. I'm a terribly harsh critic, though not because I lack compassion or a desire for entertainment: there are those works which satisfy and I deeply enjoy them. Most simply fail to live up to my expectations of quality and originality (read nothing penned by Kevin J. Anderson, I beg of you). My goal is to compose something which does meet with my standards for approval, if only to put my money where my mouth is and justify my armchair editorials. Once I walk that shodden mile I hope to be either humbly corrected or vindicated in my judgments.

In the mean time, to anyone with $204MM laying around: there are far better investments than handing it over to the likes of Brian Singer. Please do collective humanity a favor and put culture ahead of profits.

Lessons Learned

Apple's default keyboard sports 55 screws and a surprisingly low tolerance to even small amounts of regurgitated formula (which, coming back up out of a 6 month old, would only contain traces of mild acid).

Homebrew Tameshigeri

While not a "nut," per se, I have been somewhat of a martial arts enthusiast for some years. This includes a combination of Japanese styles, both soft and hard, and their respective weapons. A favorite of mine amongst these weapons is the sword, the traditional Katana.

Learning to wield one of these competently without doing serious harm to oneself or others is best attempted using the training analogues, the bo ken or shinai (depending on whether one is practicing kata or kendo). On occasion though, there's no substitute for some live steel.

A favorite among my personal collection is this sword, the unfortunately named Samurai 3000 Katana by United Cutlery. It has its pros and cons: a high-carbon, flexible blade with laser cut die and even bevel to a very sharp edge. The balance is beautiful despite departing from the traditional placement, putting the pivot at a point within the top of the hilt instead of 1/3 the way out on the blade at a defensive position. This does change the muscular dynamics of some of the movement, but also makes the one-handed equivalents much more effective.

In the con section, some of the highest leverage cutting surface has been abandoned for decorative purposes, and despite the handle-biased weighting they still went with a rat-tail tang. Almost nobody produces a full-tang katana, and this one makes up for that short coming in small measure through the tight tolerances of the orthogonal tension in the hilt. The traditional curvature has also been altered, and while the carbon content is high it is not technically "combat grade" - which wouldn't cause it to shatter under the blows of a higher grade opponent (at these concentrations the true strength differences can only be expressed by either deliberately abusing the weapon or exerting more force than humans are typically capable of), but it would certainly lose its edge faster.

That's all just the boring preamble meant to indicate that "yes, I know my sword and I know what I'm doing with it." Anachronistic or not, it's a fun skill to have.

Tameshigeri is the art of cutting with the katana. Targets are usually standardized around rolled straw mats, but I felt like finally doing something useful with The Pumpkin. I never did get around to carving it, instead leaving it intact as a nice fall decoration for my wife to use. I'm surprised it lasted this long: the specimen was still ripe and firm, giving no indication of spoilage or bruising (and it was on the floor in an area which is high-traffic for our young daughters, so that's saying something).

Time to turn it into deer food.

The gourd was placed there on the edge of the retaining wall at chest height, in the position and attitude shown here, and not touched with hands again until it was time to dispose of it. I faced it flat in a right-forward stance, blade raised between medium- and high- en garde (chudan- and jodan- no kamai). I lightly touched the offensive last-quarter of the sharpened edge against top of the pumpkin before drawing it smoothly back and around in somewhat of a lateral 'J' directly through the target from right to left.

Most of the way through the cut, the sword began to level out to a more perpendicular angle with regard to its travel. This made its incision less efficient and as a result, imparted some of its force into the rind on the left interior. This caused the detached cap to lift slightly and shift in the direction of the sword, pulling it off into the leaning position in the picture (with added black-bars for a more "cinematic" effect). It's a cool place to have it land, but I was honestly hoping to leave it perfectly undisturbed and later move it manually to demonstrate the wickedly sharp edge. Perhaps, had I more time to practice, or had I remembered to step into the cut or to kiai, I may have maintained both angle and speed sufficient to do exactly that.

The astute observer will also notice that the hemisection does not appear to be perfectly level, even self referentially. That is, the back is raised up in a fashion not indicated by the attitude of the closer portion. This is due to "winging" - the distortion of the flexible blade in response to the whipped movement (reviewing these sorts of things from high-speed video capture reveals an astonishing amount of unintended flexion). Simple put, the sword was slightly bent as it passed through. The back (of the pumpkin) also has a bit of a flat face, bringing it visually closer and exaggerating the effect.

Speaking of video, I have none. Which is all well and good, since the reality of this performance is quite dull and short. Perhaps, had I made repeated successive passes through the ever decreasing remainder, it would be worth while. Or, had I succeeded in capturing high-speed close-ups. Instead, I performed all the photography for the event using my wife's discarded Olympus E-20n (a well performing camera that she has since upgraded in her Wedding Photography business). I took only 5 pictures, and didn't even think about shooting directly down into the bowl of the pumpkin until someone asked if I had. Darnit.

That's pretty much it. Yes it was one swipe (most frequently asked question), and no I didn't have to put it somewhere else to do that well.