Geekmas 2018: Epilogue.

Christmas having come and gone, I can only say that I was overwhelmed by the generosity displayed by the gifts that I received - my heartfelt thanks to everyone involved.

However, to my mild surprise, I received only a single geek-oriented gift - a mug from my friend Chris that commemorates the ill-fated Pabodie Expedition of 1930, sent forth by Maine's Miskatonic University in order to secure deep-level specimens of rock and soil from various points of the antarctic continent (as detailed in H.P. Lovecraft's The Mountains of Madness).  Thanks for keepin' the faith, Chris!

Well, as the saying goes, if you want something done, do it yourself.  I received a good range of Amazon™ gift cards - which I can certainly see as a sensible alternative to trying to coordinate selections from my gift list - and as such, I decided to pick out a few things from that list on behalf of those people.

As a result, currently en route from various locations in Amazon™'s far-flung mercantile empire are: a box set of N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy; Seed of Destruction, the first Hellboy omnibus collection; The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson, a novel which has been sitting on the wish list for a couple of years; and a DVD copy of The Sword and the Sorcerer from an Amazon™ affiliate located in Germany - hopefully I correctly ordered the NTSC version.  To describe this 1982 epic fantasy as a classic really doesn't do it justice on a multitude of levels, and I'm quite looking forward to revisiting this trashy 80s TV-star vehicle.

As a spontaneous selection that was NOT on the list (prompted by Boxing Day pricing) I ordered Season One of The Expanse, the Syfy series* based on the novels and novelettes by James S. A. Corey, AKA Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.  The books are a remarkable combination of creativity and realism, and although I had some minor issues with casting, I'm hopeful that the positive fan responses that I've seen indicate that the series has managed to redeem Syfy's somewhat unfortunate record for adaptation.

Once again, my thanks to the various friends and relatives who made these purchases possible.  I hope everyone reading this had a merry Christmas, and my best wishes to all for the New Year.  Here we are again, half way out of the dark...

- Sid

* To be accurate, Syfy for the first two seasons, now an Amazon Prime™ property.

Earthrise.

Apollo 8: December 24th, 1968.

- Sid

The Birthday Trilogy, Part 4.

Photo courtesy of MasterClass

Through the combination of a real sense of purpose and an enormous amount of work on behalf of a lot of people, we can make impossible things happen.

Chris Hadfield, Masterclass

Dear Colin:

Hello again!  Sorry to hear about your cold - I hope that you can take some time off over the holidays to recover.  Also sorry to hear about the Ralph and wine disaster, which, somehow, sounds like another typical episode from the Campbell Brothers Chronicles.

It's been a few months since my thank-you note regarding your birthday gift, so I thought I should take a few minutes to bring you up to speed on progress.

I'm a little behind on the schedule that I laid out at the time, but, as John Lennon points out, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I strongly needed a break from scholastic activity after my online safety course*, and as such didn't sign up for the Chris Hadfield Masterclass on Space Exploration until just Thursday of this last week.  However, I'm now part of Commander Hadfield's virtual classroom, and I have to say that I have absolutely no regrets about my purchase.

The course is made up of just over seven and a half hours of video**, a downloadable 97 page PDF workbook which also links the student to a wide variety of pertinent content, an online discussion group, and an Office Hours module for submitting questions to the Commander.

(And, to be honest, it's the last two that really make the investment worthwhile - I'm more than confident that a quick search through the shadier parts of the Internet would have revealed an archive containing downloadable copies of both the videos and the workbook.)

I'm quite impressed by both the quality and the quantity of the course material, and as you know, I set high standards for this sort of thing. The production values for the videos are superb, and with over seven and a half hours of content, I'm looking forward to hearing the Commander's experienced and anecdotal viewpoint on being an astronaut and space exploration in general.  At this point in his career, Hadfield is a seasoned professional speaker, and his manner in front of the camera is natural and sincere - he's the perfect instructor for a course like this.

The accompanying workbook is well laid out, and the photos are an excellent bonus.  I don't think that any of the linked content is unique to the course, but the manner in which it's tied into the lesson structure gives it more relevancy than it would have as the results of a random Web search.

It's obvious that I'm not going to walk away from the last lesson and expect that NASA will add me to the next mission to the ISS, but I don't think anyone would expect that - the course is intended to offer some privileged insight into the process from the viewpoint of someone with a lot of experience from a wide variety of involvement, and as such, it's exactly what it should be.

In the case of my planned swordplay class at Vancouver's Academie Duello, procrastination actually ended up working well for me.  The centre is having a Christmas sale on their classes, and I was able to purchase a gift coupon for a Longsword Fundamentals course that brought the normal $135 fee down to $99 plus tax.  As you know, I was originally going to sign up for a January course, but the last couple of months have not been terribly cooperative in terms of gym attendance, so my new plan is to take January for a month of preparatory workouts, and then switch to longsword in February.

And that's the news, my friend.  Take care of yourself, and happy holidays to you and Jennifer!

- Sid

* Just for the record, I managed an A, with an average mark of 92%.  I might have done better if it hadn't had so much overlap with my honeymoon.

** A total which I added up on my own for 29 videos ranging in length from just under three minutes to almost 30 - and honestly, base 60 math is a nuisance.

Geekmas 2018: "... if all else fails, surprise me!"

In my Geekmas 2018 gift list posting, I provided the usual list of possible gifts, but, in a bit of a departure from previous years, I urged potential gift buyers to surprise me.  After all, it’s a big marketplace, and I’m not buying as many books as I used to, picking a novel that I don’t already own is not the challenge that it once was.

In the case of Brennan, this year’s workplace Secret Santa, he successfully accepted the challenge, and presented me with a copy of Mage Against The Machine, by Shaun Barger. It’s his first novel, and from what I can gather it’s a possibly young adult genre mix of magic and technological post-apocalyptic AI warfare.  Because it’s a first novel, I’ve got nothing to go on regarding Mr. Barger’s work, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s come up with.

Now all we have to do is work on the "secret" part of the process -  thanks again, Brennan, but writing your name on the gift tag does somewhat take away from the mystery of it all.

- Sid

"Oliver Queen is a hero."

My lovely wife Karli recently spent a four day weekend in Palm Springs with her family, but other commitments prevented me from going with her, so I headed out to YVR on the Sunday night she returned so that I could greet her when she got off the plane, as one does when one is in love.

In the fullness of time, the plane landed, taxied to the gate, and so on, so I left my seat in the lounge and moved to the railing beside the exit to the secure area corridor so that I could see her as soon as she came through the automatic doors (again, as one does when one is in love).

As the first person from the flight came through, a bearded man in his 30s, a group of about a dozen people rushed to the railing and he stopped to chat with them.

I was initially a bit puzzled as to what was going on, until I realized that the passenger in question was Stephen Amell, the Canadian actor who plays Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on CW's flagship DC Comics show Arrow*. As they crowded to the railing and he worked his way along the group, I suddenly realized that I was now part of the lineup, and, feeling a bit embarrassed, actually moved away from the railing so as to avoid having to explain I was just there to meet my wife should he offer to pose for a photo.

That aside, I have to give him full credit for rapport with his fans – he's much more pleasant in person than YouTube™ clips of him breaking bones in Star(ling) City would suggest. At 10:45 at night, after getting off a delayed flight from Palm Springs, he cheerfully signed photos, comics and action figure packaging (including some Funko boxes), posed for selfies, and graciously accepted a vintage Green Arrow comic book as a gift from one obviously dedicated follower. If anyone in the entertainment industry is looking for a role model on how to interact with their fan base, they could do a lot worse than taking some lessons from Mr. Amell.

 

Some research demonstrated that his generosity extends past late-night selfie sessions.  Over the past few years, he's worked closely and constantly with a variety of charity groups to raise over a million dollars for causes ranging from cancer to mental health and children's hospice care. Full points, Stephen - I know it's a cliché, but it's gratifying to see that someone playing a comic book character can be a hero in real life as well. 

Which only leaves me with one question – how did they know he’d be on that flight?

- Sid

* I don't really follow the Arrowverse, but as with a lot of things, I just sort of keep track of what's going on as part of my general geekness.

Tsundoku.

Oh great, there's a word for it...

- Sid

Time is what it is.

Amelia Folch: But what's the plan?
Jaime Blanch : We are Spanish, aren't we? Improvise.

El tiempo es el que es, El Ministerio Del Tiempo

Remember in the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy when Marty McFly, faced with trouble in 1885, threateningly announces that his name is Clint Eastwood, starting a joke that threads through the entire movie? The joke is obvious, but only if you know who Clint Eastwood is (and that part of his fame derives from doing spaghetti Westerns for Sergio Leone in the 60s).

To which you reply, "But of course I know who Clint Eastwood is - everyone knows that."

But what if you've never heard of Clint Eastwood?

I've recently enountered exactly that situation while watching a show called El Ministerio del Tiempo on Netflix™. It's a Spanish time travel series that my friend Chris recommended, and so far I'm quite enjoying it - but not entirely for the reasons that the show's creators intended.

The show deals with a branch of the Spanish government which manages unwanted changes and alterations in history. Originally created by Queen Isabella I in 1491, the Ministry of Time's representatives rely on literal doorways into other times to visit the past and restore the status quo - or more accurately the status quo ante. The Ministry's staff is recruited from a wide range of historical milieux: the trio of agents who feature in the first season is composed of a 16th century soldier, a female intellectual from the late 1800s, and a contemporary paramedic.

As with most time travel series, the show relies heavily on historical references and anachronisms, except in this case, they're primarily referenced from Spanish history and popular culture.

 

As an example, at one point the head of the ministry is showing a new recruit some of the doorways into the past.  The two stand stand silhouetted for a moment in a doorway, looking at an oddly mixed group of people and an unfinished painting, and the guide grunts, "Velázquez is always late" after he closes the door. The Velázquez in question is acclaimed 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, and the painting is Las Meninas (The Ladies in Waiting), his best known work and one of the most analyzed paintings in history. Interestingly, the doorway in the background of the painting is the one used by the Ministry.

 

Velázquez turns out to also be the Ministry's forensic sketch artist  - there's an entertaining little background scene where Velázquez is shown in the Ministry's lunch room, grimacing at a book on Picasso and attempting to draw an apple in the same style.

Researching these little Spanish cultural Easter Eggs has added unexpected interest to the show for me. For example, in the first episode the agents are asked for their names when renting rooms in 1808, and they reply one by one:

"Amelia Folch."

"Alonso de Entrerríos."

Julián Martíne, the 21st Century paramedic, smiles broadly and says, "Curro Jiménez."

 

Wait, who?  There has to be a reason he's used a different name...

A little investigation through Google™ reveals that Señor Martíne has taken his nom de histoire from a 1970s Spanish television series that explores the adventures of, you guessed it, Curro Jiménez as he fights in the guerilla* war against the French during the War of Independence** - making it a bit like saying that your name is Clint Eastwood in 1885.

 

The first episode also features a running gag with Alonso de Entrerríos, the soldier from the 16th century,  being referred to as Captain Alatriste. Again, research tells us that Captain Alatriste is the 17th century soldier-of-fortune hero of a series of novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - surprisingly, there's also a 2006 movie adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen.

I don't know if I'd recommend El Ministerio del Tiempo to everyone.  Ignoring the barrier of subtitles, the non-Spanish viewer is either faced with doing history homework or just missing a lot of the subtext. On the other hand, the show is well written, well acted, and shows a lot of potential in terms of its treatment of the perils and temptations of time travel on a personal level, over and above the consequences of changes to the historical timeline. 

If you do decide to give the show a try but you're not interested in researching the last five hundred years of Spanish history, don't worry, there were at least two Terminator references in the first episode - although I'm not convinced that this makes Arnold Schwarznegger the Clint Eastwood of international time travel references.

- Sid

* In case you've ever wondered, this is the origin of the term guerilla: literally, the little war.

** This is actually another little historical sidebar.  To the rest of the world, it's not the War of Independence, it's the Peninsular War, where Lord Wellington first takes the field against the armies of Napoleon.