Well, I finished reading my pre-ordered copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” so I guess it is about time for me to give my obligatory, amateur critique. Don’t worry though, no spoilers here. It’s not like I write for the New York Times or something.
I enjoyed this book quite a lot — probably much more than the last few in the Harry Potter series. It did have one or two slow sections, but all in all the editing was done a lot better than say, “The Goblet of Fire,” which in my opinion could have done without about 200 pages or so. For the most part, it stayed high pace — occasionally a little too high paced, and I had to go back and reread sections so I could catch all the subtleties. I was really impressed at how a lot of seemingly insignificant characters and episodes from previous books were picked up on and used in this book. Some of them were simply a nod the fanatics, but a lot of them actually had there place in supporting the main story line. I also loved the way Snape’s character played out. Snape has always been one of my favorite characters, just in that he is always presented as being so conflicted and complicated in comparison with the others. This book presents a surprisingly simple, slightly unexpected back-story for him that fits perfectly, and to me it was really impressive.
All in all, there were a few leaps of logic and flow that seemed to be a bit distracting (one of them being a primary requisite for the climax) but they wern’t so bad as to distract from the fun. The logical perfectionist in me wanted a couple of details to have been closed tighter than they were, but for a seven book series, I have to say it closed pretty damn tight. One thought though: the very last section of the book? Didn’t fucking need it. It really should have been scrapped in my opinion. Of course then again it isn’t my book so what can you do.
In short, if you like Harry Potter, I think you will really like the new book. Then again if you like Harry Potter, you have probably already bought it and read it by now.
So, um, why am I writing this again?
After getting finished with my last bolg entry, I went outside to smoke, came back in, and was greeted by the notorious BSOD (”Blue Screen of Death”). No problem I figured, I’m a Windows user so I’m used to it by now. I turned off the power to my computer, turned it back on and, um, the fucker wasn’t booting. Tried a few more times with the same result. Played around with some disk tools as well but no luck. My RAID array is totally fucked. And it took with it about 5-6 months worth of data that I hadn’t backed up yet — that I had actually planned on backing up that night before I went to sleep.
Did I mention I hate fucking computers?
Here is the kicker: I had just got finished with taking over 100 pictures with the wifey that day. And of course I had already formatted my memory card after copying the photos over to my PC. Absoulutly magnificent timing I tell ya.
So, I was of course in a pissy mood all night and the next day, but I think I have finally gotten over it. That’s about all I can do though. Being pissed off isn’t going to get my data back anyways.
Gurr.
I have been terribly busy with work and life in general lately. Luckily I had a three day weekend to catch myself up a bit, and I even managed to get a little bit of down time. It seems to have got me in a more positive mood anyways. I was honestly dying by the time work got out on Friday.
I ended up watching a few movies this weekend. The ones worth noting are “The Departed” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, both which were excellent in my opinion. They really took a lot of liberties with the plot-line in the new Harry Potter movie, but to be honest, I think it was really for the best. The movie ran a lot smoother than the previous two did. From a cinematic perspective though, I still think “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” was the best. I just enjoy Alfonso Cuarón’s style so much. The camera work in the new movie was, um, pretty crappy. Just way too “Hollywood” for my tastes. The opening scenes where so cliche I wanted to stab myself in the eyes. But all and all I thought the movie came out pretty good, and the effects of course were amazing.
In dork news, I think I finally got the photo gallery on this page working halfway decently. I switched from Lightbox 2 to Slimbox, which is basically a light-weight clone of the previous. This got rid of the bigger bugs I was seeing with IE. From there, I just dropped the resolution on the photos a bit to improve the loading time. Hopefully all is good in the world for now.
Otherwise, I have just been taking care of some random chores. Went shopping with the wifey today, took some pictures, organized some files on my computer, blah blah blah. Now it is like 2:00 in the morning but for some reason I am still not tired. Argh.
You know, I’ve noticed that my life seems much more interesting in photos than it does to me in person. Maybe because it feels like I’m looking on from the outside? I don’t know. Maybe I should just stop writing and just post photos all the time. By the way, these photos are all from my new little digital camera. I played around with the settings a bit and got them to look decent enough, but they still look rough to me. I think my SLR has just spoiled me rotten. Bah.
I got utterly sick of fucking with Gallery 2 so I trashed it. The whole reason I started using it in the first place was so I could have an easy way to upload photos without having to spend a lot of time on them. And being that I have been messing around with it for close to a month now without getting it working correctly, I figured it was just time to retire it and try to find something else. I thought I had the solution this weekend. I started using Lightbox 2, which is what is up right now. It looks wonderful on my system using Firefox 2 at a high resolution, but it utterly dies on IE. I think I’m really starting to see a pattern here. Anyways, I’ll probably play around a little bit more and if I can’t get it looking good, I might just have to look into writing something myself. I would like to avoid doing so if at all possible though. In the meantime, just know that the pictures on this page may be screwy for a while.
You know, I realized today that I really need to be getting more sleep. I went to sleep at around ten o’clock last night and I actually feel halfway alive for once. And my mind is clear. On a typical day I usually get to sleep around one or later and I wake up with my head already full of garbage. It’s like I’m not getting enough time to flush it all out. But sleeping is never easy for some reason. I’m tired as hell at about nine o’clock after work but after I pass that mark, I go in to insomnia mode. No good, no good.
Well, I finished up with recording this weekend. All in all it went pretty well I guess. We pretty much took the rhythm track in one take. We went back and gave it another try or two but we realized we weren’t really going to top what we already had, so rather than wasting a bunch of time pushing for an extra percent, we just went with it. I think the track came out pretty good for the most part. The drums could be a hell of a lot better, but then again I think that way ever time I finish a recording. There is a part or two in the first “loud part” that bugs the shit out of me, but the people who have heard it so far claim they don’t notice. Of course then again, Masato mentioned to me that the bass intro at the beginning bothers him, but to me it sounds really good. It has character. I guess musicians are just pretty fucking intolerable when it comes to their own parts. That’s the way it goes.
