Re-organizing the blog to include teaching related content. Found a plug-in that sort of meets my needs for uploading stuff, but it is designed for regular files and not lessons.

It is called WP-FileBase.

If you click on Teaching Resources in the top bar, you can see a file I’ve attached using FileBase. I’ve been trying for the past few hours in vain to add new fields to the plug-in on the Dashboard end and the upload end on the blog.

I need there to be a field for Grade (Options 9, 10, 11, 12), Level (University, College, Workplace, Academic, Applied, Locally Developed/Essential), Subject ([can be custom added]). These would look best if they appeared in the unexpanded form on the webpage (before you click details and expand it).

I’ve gone through all the plug in files (and there were many) and tried to edit the various fields. But, even after changing the Language field into Grade, it didn’t result in any change anywhere.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I mean, how can I remove every reference of the Language field and it still persists? :S

If you (anyone) can help, I’d greatly appreciate it. Also, next post will be 1000. I’ll try to make it more important.

Very funny sketch from SNL this week made to parody the new music video from the Insane Clown Posse (linked to in the description of that video).

So, I haven’t been on here in ages. I was teaching more than a full teaching load on my one practicum (including a physics course, which meant I had to prep demos and mark labs).

Now, I’m working at our old stomping ground in their Alternative Education program, and it is a lot more one-on-one help with students and less extensive lesson planning. The freedom is savoury.

Anyway, Nintendo recently announced a new handheld is on the way - the Nintendo 3DS will provide 3D (yes, the Cameron-3D) on a handheld system.

I’d post a link to a news site but they tend to say less about the handheld than I have. There is very little information so far, because the big announcement is supposed to come around E3. Still, the reveal of integrating 3D technology into a handheld is worrisome. Don’t people remember the Virtual Boy?

This allows me to address Liam’s month old question about my dislike of 3D. In the comments of the last post, Andrew pointed out that UP was in 3D in theatres. I saw UP. I loved UP. I wept like a little (albeit hairy) girl during UP. But I barely noticed the 3D aspect of the film except for when my eyes started to hurt and I had to move the glasses to rub my eyes.

I do not like 3D for a number of reasons. Some are selfish, others are not. The primary reason relates to the integrity of your sight. People keep talking (or whispering) about how 3D movies - which cause your eyes to focus unnaturally on non-existent objects and perceive depth where it doesn’t exist - can cause eye strain in people who are fairly young. Apparently, the risk is minimized as you age because your eyes become “set in their ways” and are less susceptible to damage. I’d rather not have all media come in an eye strain causing format.

Another reason (and this is the selfish one) relates to my own eye sight. The part of your eye that refocuses when you switch from looking near to looking far is broken in my eyes. Whenever I spend a lot of time reading, and then get up to walk around, I cannot see well at all because my eyes take a good three minutes to refocus. After any final exam at UW, I stumble out of the PAC blind. 3D movies tend to be just frustratingly annoying if I can perceive the effect at all (otherwise, stuff is just kind of blurred constantly). 3D just doesn’t work for me, and I think it would suck if all television, movies, and now video games began to drift towards a presentation style that I am largely unable to view with clarity.

More importantly, I just don’t want the price on everything to sky rocket for this novelty 3D. If there is a time when 3D holograms like Cortana appear in the room around the viewer as they act out scenes in the movie, I could consider being in favour of that type of 3D film. When people have home entertainment rooms with projectors that display detailed 3D images, I could support that. The technology as it stands is just crude, and I cannot believe companies are designing high definition televisions with 3D capabilities. I also hate how most big movies in theatres are also in 3D now.

This post is probably nonsensical (I haven’t written anything in weeks and weeks, and when I have, it is always about teaching). To sum it up, I dislike how it strains your eyes, I dislike how my eyes are non-compatible with 3D films, I dislike the price increases that follow the technology, and I dislike how crude and trivial the technology is. The movie industry is slowly gearing up with their own Virtual Boy, which turned out to be a joke of a product for Nintendo. But it didn’t cost thousands of dollars like a 50” 3D television would.

I feel the technology is overrated and unnecessary for enjoyment of a movie.

Headlines claim that Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time. It has reportedly grossed $2,240,712,214 worldwide. At this point, I cannot help but wonder why that is. Having seen the movie with Katie last night, I cannot express anything but disappointment at the quality of the film. Although it has made undisputed advances in technology and the visuals of the film are sublime, it was not a very exciting movie in any way.

The story was subpar, and the characters were so one-dimensional that I could not really relate to them at all. Their motivations were all incredibly basic. From my point of view, Jake Sully came across as a reckless idiot who was willing to ignore the safety of his own race and the indigenous Na’vi all because he had regained the use of his legs. It was not even immediately clear to me while watching that the Earth was apparently barren of greenery in 2154 because it wasn’t stated clearly until the last third of the movie. Had I known that his appreciation for the jungle was derived from the fact that he had never seen vegetation before, I might have been able to side with him more, but he was really just a bizarre character.

More importantly, the world of the Na’vi did not make sense to me. The whole “bonding” thing between creatures seemed thoroughly bizarre. For some reason when Jake Sully bonds to his dragon creature, it forgets how to fly. What does that mean? Is it essentially a brainless creature with no survival instinct now? Has it become nothing more than a tool for his use, in the same way that the gunships could never function optimally without a pilot? And if that is the case, how is a race of indigenous blue cats that de-brains native life forms any better than mankind? If there is truly no de-braining, then how the hell did that fucking dragon forget how to fly? Did Jake happen to grapple with the one mentally handicapped dragon? (Also, for my girlfriend’s sake, I should also point out that after all that sentimentality of one dragon-one rider, Katie was thoroughly disappointed that Jake just abandoned his dragon for that bigger deadlier one. Classy.)

Another thing that confused me is probably only something that was present to appease the horny and loveless fans of science fiction, but the Na’vi sex scene was a huge issue for me. It seems completely counter-intuitive to me that a race that is entirely different and from a planet in a completely different star system would be stimulated sexually in the same way as a human. I half expected when he was kissing her that she would freak out because the Na’vi mated by joining their hair/tendrils together or some shit. But no. Apparently the Na’vi have sex the same way that we do. Perhaps some of our pornography that was bounced off into space influenced their sexual culture. All-in-all, if the race acts the same way that we do, it doesn’t really seem terribly alien to me. I was digging the whole connected to the planet, the whole planet is connected, hive-mind thing that was going on. It brought back fond memories of Asimov’s concept of Gaia. But it all just fell apart when that sex scene happened.

Did anyone else find it odd that the village shaman woman somehow knew how to transfer the consciousness of an individual from one body to another? Where had that ever come up before? Did they frequently transfer the brains of injured people into one of those black rottweilers or those horses from Phantasy Star Online that sounded like velociraptors from Jurassic Park? I cannot understand how this procedure ever came up before because it wouldn’t be like they had empty Na’vi bodies lying around. It seemed like a very contrived plot device to let us know that Jake could get transfered permanently into an Avatar body at the end of the film, and live happily ever after with his woman. Which begs the obvious question, why didn’t they do this switcheroo to Jake before the big battle? Having your real body lying somewhere else running the risk of getting offed while you’re fighting isn’t a smart move, especially if you don’t guard it. Moreover, it just sends the impression that if the battle goes south, you’d be content bailing out into your human body and fleeing for your life. I’m not buying the logic here. Jake seemed reasonably sensible. He saw that the procedure was available. So, although this plot device to switch bodies was annoying enough, it was even more annoying that they didn’t make use of it in any practical way.

The fact that this movie has been nominated for Best Picture is a huge disservice to the medium. It should get technical awards, and maybe even have a shot at Best Director, but a Best Picture nomination is degrading. What bothers me more than that is it will overshadow the far better movie District 9. If there was any relatively mainstream movie that has the makings of a best picture candidate, it was District 9. The story was compelling, the acting was phenomenal, and everything truly felt legitimate. The interaction between the aliens, their mannerisms, and everything about the prawns was so fluid. Discounting the miracle exception of that fluid that transformed the guy, this movie was a well-contained and well-written piece of science fiction.

Avatar was a waste of time and money. And the fact that it is making 3D into a valid presentation style for films (where it had previously been reserved for novelty shows at theme parks) seems ridiculous to me. 3D should not be the future.

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse is finally over.

The first season was a little rocky. It picked up around the 6th episode (“Man on the Street”), and really intrigued me during the super-secret season finale, “Epitaph One”. With high hopes for the second season, I tuned in again to see what would happen. And the show continued in its downward spiral. It seemed impossible that the show could take all of that forward momentum that built up to Epitaph One and throw themselves out the window, but they pulled it off.

Season Two started off on the wrong foot by reverting back to the status of Season One. Boyd took the role of Mr. Dominic. Ballard took the role of Boyd. And the newly introduced Senator Perrin took the role of Ballard. Nothing terribly inventive. It was a mere shuffling of roles and nothing new was injected into the series until the big reveal that Perrin was a Doll.

But then everything started to get bad again. Quickening of the pacing of the story, huge inconsistencies in character behaviour and motivations, and - on occasion - complete disregard or disrespect of series canon.

Adelle’s character fluctuated wildly, and - in my mind - she should have been the one to sacrifice her life in the end to restore the world, after giving away the remote wipe tech to Rossum. Honestly, what was she thinking?

The character of Echo became increasingly annoying. Her ridiculous pompous attitude and the absurd mess of her messianic spinal fluid was ridiculous. Madness. Even the fact that Caroline’s original memory was important seemed ridiculous. First, how did no one know who the CEO of Rossum was? A huge pharmaceutical company with multi-national interests has a CEO that no one knows about? How is that even possible? Second, Caroline is the only one to know who the CEO is? That seems awfully coincidental. And why didn’t she recognize Boyd during the events of “Need”?

The whole series stumbled like a legless Felicia Day towards its disappointing conclusion, and was - ultimately - a huge disappointment following Joss Whedon’s show Firefly and the tremendous success of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

But is the problem Joss Whedon? I cannot help but think that the creative potential exists within him to make something good again, but since Dr. Horrible, there have been two names plastered across all of “Joss Whedon’s” creations: Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen. Mr. and Mrs. Whedon, if you will (because I believe they are married or engaged or something).

But I have to say, I think Maurissa Tancharoen is something like the Yoko Ono of the Whedon family. Zack seems talented. Joss is clearly talented. Jed might even have potential. But every single thing that I have seen Maurissa do has been pitiful. Her part in Dr. Horrible could have been filled by a stump, her Dollhouse acting has been pitiful (Kilo was a ridiculous character, especially in the finale), and every episode that she and Jed wrote together was disappointing. “Stage Fright” and “Haunted” were among the worst episodes of Season One and “The Attic” and many of their Season Two episodes were equally disappointing (and nonsensical).

The only episode that they have a writing credit on that wasn’t garbage was Epitaph One, which has Joss Whedon on a Story credit, meaning that he was - for better or worse - running that episode.

In my opinion, Jed and Maurissa are a terrible pair of writers, and I feel like Joss could have done so much more with the show if he had stuck to his guns and worked with Tim Minear and Jane Espenson on most of the episodes. Look at the episodes of Firefly. A lot of the episodes were written or directed by those three. Look at Dollhouse. Joss Whedon wrote three episodes throughout the whole series! So incredibly disappointing.

In short, I blame the failure of the show on several factors. 1. Eliza Dushku’s terrible acting. Also, for the record, I feel that having her as a producer of the show from the outset had the entire thing geared to be very self-serving. Miracle Laurie wasn’t that great either. 2. The poor writing. Whether Jed and Maurissa were the weak links is still beyond me, but I hope that Joss’ next project does not include them on the creative team. 3. Poor character development. (Half the main cast were non-entities for most of the series). 4. Misused premise. Seriously? Echo has a cure in her spinal fluid that makes people immune to imprinting. But Boyd wants technology that can imprint everyone. So, he doesn’t want to imprint himself, but why imprint everyone else. His motives made no sense. I cannot even fathom what his endgame was.

The show did have a few good things going for it:

1. Boyd was a really good character (until the end) and Harry Lennix is a great actor. And - despite being blank slates - Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachman were phenomenal. No matter what “imprint” that they were required to play, they performed flawlessly. It was incredible. If only Dichen Lachman had been the main focus, the show would have easily been hundreds of times better. Reed Diamond was also pretty good.

2. Very interesting premise. Until they started dabbling in some ridiculous spinal fluid cures and magical memories retaining themselves post imprinting. Still, the idea of the Dollhouse, its purpose, the technology, etc was incredibly interesting.

The one problem with this is that they never expanded on the premise. When Mr. Ambrose transplanted his consciousness into Victor talking about anatomical upgrades, I was truly taken back. Of course! It made perfect sense. You’ve got a bunch of old decaying wealthy men running a company that has the technology to imprint minds into other bodies. They’ve found the “Fountain of Youth”. Better than that. They’ve found a way to get live forever AND be better than you’ve ever been. I wouldn’t want to live forever in my body. But if you give me the offer to take over Enver Gjokaj and live looking like that for a few decades, I’d say “Sign me up!”

After that, you can explore all the immorality of human trafficking and the complexities of the technology. It could have been tremendously interesting. The exploration of the premise that they followed was truly disappointing.

1. Fantastic set design. (That’s all I can say.)

Anyway, I’m sure that Brendon will come back and say that he found it fantastic and compelling. But no. This entire series was terrible. An incredible disappointment. Completely shakes my faith in Whedon, but I hope that his next project redeems him. The favour that he created with Firefly has been depleted.

Somebody’s birthday and I know who.

Cheers to you for catching up to me. Again. But I was in the lead for a solid 13 days or so.

Happy Birthday Andrew. I’ll be sure to meet your Facebook challenge before the end of the day.