Category Archives: Ikke kategoriseret

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. [Spoiler Free]

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As a long time fan of Tolkien’s work I have read the main books (The Hobbit and the three volume The Lord of the Rings) several times, and in recent years also listened to the audio books.

Of course I have seen the two movie trilogies, and I agree with many saying that The LotR films are superior to the Hobbit films.

It was with some trepidation that I started watching the first season of The Rings of Power.

The first few episodes felt a bit off, but through the series I did get to appreciate what they were doing. Being well aware that this is not directly material from the books, it is an imagining of things that have been hinted at in the books.

Through the episodes there are some clues laid out, and also some misdirection. My initial guess of one particular character turned out to be correct, but one other character I missed identifying until the season finale.

As a whole I enjoyed the season, and I may re-watch it before a (possible) second season arrives.

I will rate this as 7/10 on the Lurker’s scale.

A Wish Come True.

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As you may already know, when I found Babylon 5 I also found its creator J. Michael Straczynski.

I did get to meet him almost 10 years ago at Phoenix Comicon, at the 20th anniversary celebration for Babylon 5 (B5), where I attended the “Promise Panel”, where he told, for the first time in public, the background story of Michael O’Hare who played the lead, Commander Sinclair, in the first season, and his struggle with mental illness.

If you don’t know the story, and want to, just go on Youtube and search “straczynski promise panel”. Please be aware that this contains spoilers for the B5 series if you have not seen it.

Having followed him for quite a while, I know a bit about his writing career.

He has worked as a journalist, writing for much else:

  • animated TV, like The Real Ghostbusters long ago
  • Live TV, like Jeremiah and, of course his epic science fiction series Babylon 5. There is a new secret Babylon 5 related project, not known in which format, but it has been made and should  be presented at the San Diego Comicon next year. Then there is the possibility of a reboot series of Babylon 5, not a remake but a re-imagining. This could be very interesting if it is given the green light. Then there is the Neflix series Sense8 that he co-wrote with the Wachowskis
  • Comic books like Superman Earth One, Spiderman, and some originals of his own
  • Film, like the Clint Eastwood directed Changeling, a historical drama
  • Novels, both genre and more general
  • He also wrote an autobiography

I have had the wish to meet Straczynski in Europe after he was involved in Sense8, so I did not have to go to the US to do it.

I, and others, have suggested to invite him to Fedcon in Bonn, but for some reason unknown to me, it did not happen.

Today I saw an announcement from the Danish book fair (Bogforum) that they are going to have Straczynski as a guest at this year’s fair in Copenhagen in November this year. I also saw the announcement by Straczynski himself on his Twitter feed.

Now my wish comes true. Straczynski visiting, not just Europe, but within 20 minutes drive from my home.

I am excited.

Fantasticon 2022 in Copenhagen

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This week end I went to join Fantasticon in Copenhagen.

This is a small-ish convention organized by Danish fans, and usually has a few writers as guests of honour, some Scandinavian, and usually a one or two English (or American) writers.

They have two tracks of presentations, interviews, writer Q&A etc.

Apart from this we have several writers attending, so there is more than enough opportunities to talk about writing.

The convention covers the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, and this year we had about 100 registered members/attendees. Not bad for a small country with about 6 million people.

For me, I only went to one or two of the presentations, and stayed in the main room having some long chats with other fans. This was the first Danish convention I have attended since the start of the pandemic, so there was a lot of catch-up to do.

I am happy to have met several “first-timers” and got the opportunity to welcome them into our part of fandom. Most often, when meeting a “new” (to me) fan I start asking them for their favourite story, and of course giving them my own preferences. A nice way to get a conversation started.

So I had a drive into the centre of Copenhagen on Saturday and Sunday, this ended being two long, but very enjoyable days.

After such a long absence it is really good to be back in the convention activities again

Stuff From The Joe Store

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A few weeks ago I ordered some stuff from Straczynski’s collection. Today the package arrived. It took a little while because the web store was overloaded when it went online. This is not an unknown occurrence when something new is announced from JMS (Straczynski).

Edit:
The Joe Store was set up, just for this occasion, and is no longer active.
End Edit.

I ordered a few items, and some bonus items were added :

All of Dream Police (comics)
All of Apocalypse Al (comics)
Book : Tales From the Twilight Zone
Book : Demon Night (Vampire story)
Set of fridge magnets
B5 note book
Bonus : Shooting script : Sleeping in Light
Psi Corps ID card
B5 Starfury Qualification card
B5 Bookmark w/Season 4 intro text
Joe’s Comics bookmark
Joe’s Comics Badge

Nice bonus collection

The Shooting script is a neat thing to have signed if I get to Fedcon in 2019. Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furlan have been announced as guests there, and both of them deliver stellar performances in that final episode of Babylon 5.

The Psi Corps ID card goes nicely with my Fan Club Psi Corps badge when going to conventions.

Babylon 5 20th Anniversary, Not the Book

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A few years ago I was able to pick up the B5 20th Anniversary book at Phoenix Comicon, in 2013. The book is since then out of print, and will not be available again.

However, a multimedia edition is now available from B5Books.

Today (PST, I think) is the last day to purchase at the reduced price of $37. Tomorrow the fast response price will be the double.

If you have discovered Babylon 5 since the book went out of print, or you missed the print book for whichever reason, here is an opportunity to get the material in electronic form.

On top of that, there is some additional video material in the multimedia edition.

If you want to get it, you can go to

b5books.com and order.

Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with B5Books, but I have been a happy customer to many of their releases.

Have fun !

More on the low powered netbooks and writing etc.

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The last few days I tried mini install of Debian on ther small Acer A110 machines with 512MB Ram
Looks like a change has been made in file permissions after update, because a simple X with OpenBox refuses to start, server refusing connection.
So this is written on the A110DK machine with a minimal install + XFCE. Writer’s Cafe just installed and registered.
With Chrome/Gmail and this program the RAM is well used, Htop shows about half of the RAM available, and the machine seems reasonalbly responsive.
The last few days I have found some of my old phones and MP3 players to see how they respond to a charge. Most of them work, one seems to need a new battery, or the phone is all dead.

Gmail and low powered (older netbook) computers.

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This is all about getting Gmail to run on a low powered processor without the machine grinding to a halt.

I have a 1 1/2 generation netbook, the Acer Aspire One A110.

The netbook has low RAM, 512MB, and adding more is a massive task involving taking the whole thing apart. A new SSD, on the other hand is more manageable. The processor is an older Atom single core, 1.6GHz.

The original SSD is just 8GB, so I may try mounting a larger one. The machine came with a Linpus (as far as I recall (Linux)) system, and some standard apps.

I want to use this with a relatively modern Linux distribution, but the easy choice, Ubuntu or the like) simply cannot run properly on such a low powered machine.

What to do? I tried with Xubuntu, and while it is running, an update broke the screen driver, so it could only show 800×600, not the original 1024×600 screen resolution. Discarded. I became aware that the Raspberry Pi folks had made a version of their Raspbian system for Intel type processsors. This works with a relatively low demand on the 512MB, and the screen works properly in the 1024×600 resolution using about 100MB for the system with its running processes.

So far, so good.

I intend to use the machine for non-demanding stuff like writing for this blog, managing ebooks etc. Now, the system comes with a Chromium web browser, but in my experience this is a massive memory hog, so not really feasible with the low RAM.

The Thunderbird email client is also quite memory intensive, so I tried out a terminal email client, Alpine, which is fairly user friendly if you are not afraid of a text mode screen. This installed and following the manual for setting up Gmail, and at the authentication it failed. The thing kept asking for a login every time I tried to enter the password.

Google the problem. Yes, it was known. I should change the setting accept “less secure clients. This works. But (there is always a “but”) suddenly my phone kept asking to login to Google, and kept doing it. Also they keep sending mails about “upgrading security”.

Text mode browsers were tested, but not accepting Javascript the Gmail site refuses me a login.

I tried to find a text mode app that Gmail will accepts as “more secure”, but nothing found.

Update :

Here is what I do now with that machine :
Thunderbird and Chromium use about the same amount of memory, even if 2 tabs are open in Chromium. Wo when it is open there is gmail and this blog in 2 tabs. That works with a bit to spare for the writing programs.

 

Second update 13 August :

That netbook does not have the power for a writing program. Fortunately I have a newer, and with a larger screen, Acer with 4GB RAM and a quad core Atom processor. Runs the writing programs easily with a bit to spare. That will most likely end up as my computer for writing what I want.

Danish Rocket Launch

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Today was a good day for the Danish rocket builders Copenhagen Suborbitals.

They launched the small rocket Nexoe (Nexø) 2 this morning Danish time from a self built sea launch platform about 35km West of the island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. The rocket fired perfectly and burned for 33 seconds, and reached an altitude of 6.500 meters, the parachute unfolded beautifully and the rocket was recovered nicely.The launch was streamed with a somewhat interrupted stream via Youtube. The interruptions in the streaming are due to the distance, and some rising water vapour in the warm (for the time of the year) Baltic Sea, and also due to the large distance and wide bandwidth of the signals.

I followed the stream from about half an hour before launch, until the rocket was recovered and brought to the launch control ship.

The planned maximum altitude of 13000m was not reached, because the burn time for the engine was only 33 out of the planned 45 seconds, but never the less I consider today’s flight a strong success, many new systems were tested, and functioned well.

Congratulations to Copenhagen Suborbitals with the successful launch.

Redshirts

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I just finished reading “Redshirts” by John Scalzi.

Redshirts is, of course, a term used by Star Trek fans, because in the original series, anyone, unknown, not in the main cast, in an episode was likely to die horribly or in a meaningless way.

Scalzi makes a nice satire over Redshirts who realize that this is a problem, and decide to do something about it.

A fun and enjoyable read, I will rate it 8/10.