Geek Girls Unite! blog award

I know I just posted about my first blog award, but I've actually just been given a second blog award. It's the Geek Girls Unite award from RAY J at Point Me to the Sky Above, an awesome geek girl who I only recently discovered as she was doing a giveaway on her blog to celebrate five years of World of Warcraft playing (a real veteran!). As a proud geek girl, I am very honored! The award was just created by Angela of High on Life, another geek girl I recently found--see, we geek girls are uniting!

And here are the rules:

List ten geeky facts about yourself and...

Pass this award onto your favorite female geeks!

Now my geeky facts. Some of these I've talked about on my blog before (one of my blog's themes is celebrating my geekiness, after all) but some are new little geeky gems!

1. I didn't start loving to read until I read Brian Jacques' Redwall series about woodland animals who (mostly) live in an abbey and take up swords and slings and bows and arrows when their peace is threatened by cruel invaders. It was my invaluable introduction to fantasy.
2. I've always enjoyed math and science. Now I'm working towards a PhD in physical oceanography (i.e., the physics of the ocean). Field work is all well and good, but what I really like is modeling--and I don't mean strutting down the runway. Computer programming is fun!
3. I can speak a little bit of Quenya (one of Tolkien's Elvish languages). Not much, but more than just direct quotes from Lord of the Rings; I know some grammar and a small vocabulary and can make my own sentences. What's more, I learned it for a self-tailored high school project which culminated in a presentation to my class. (All the gory details can be found here.) And I can write in the tengwar script.
4. Of course, my high school classmates already knew I was a geek. I was the president of my high school's Fantasy Reader's Guild. I even got our guild's picture in the local newspaper as we stood in line, in costume, waiting to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
5. I love musicals and I love memorizing songs from musicals. I can sing from memory all or most of the songs from Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Into the Woods, Wicked, Avenue Q, Guys and Dolls...
6. I'm a huge fan of Firefly, among many other sci-fi- and fantasy-related TV shows. In college, I got a bunch of friends hooked on Firefly, and when we watched the movie Serenity, I threw a theme party with Chinese food, ice-planets, and costumes. (I did a post on that one here.)
7. In my Ivy League civil engineering course called Mechanics of Solids, I did my term paper on The Bridge of Khazad-dûm: A structural analysis of a bridge of Dwarven engineering (that is, the bridge that Gandalf and the fiery Balrog fall off of in LotR). I got an A+. (Find the full story here.)
8. Up until I was 24 years old, the only boyfriends I'd ever had were non-player characters in my computer games: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect. (Get the juicy details here.)
9. Once I did get boyfriend, I proceeded to geekify him. So far we've covered Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Horrible, Fringe, and The Guild, and our current projects are Big Bang Theory and Pushing Daisies.
10. Last but not least, what has been until now a closely guarded secret: When I was in 9th grade, I was in a youth bowling league. Not geeky enough? We named our team the Rolling Voltorbs. Yes, a voltorb is a Pokémon. Shaped like a ball. We were clever.


Now, I bestow this noble award upon these lovely geek girls:

Hezabelle - A Canadian studying towards a master's degree in the U.K. and enjoying her travels in Europe, she knows a lot about Greek history and mythology. She's also the only other girl I know who says she knows a tiny bit of Elvish.

Holly of Sorcery and Glue - Another girl who shares my love of BioWare games, she makes awesome costumes related to her favorite geeky things. Current projects: Mass Effect N7 armor and a Grunt costume with animatronic head!

Megan of Hollywood Jane - A fantasy and sci-fi fan and Joss Whedon lover trying to make it as a writer in L.A. She has a funny web series called "Quest for Comic-Con."

Geek Girl Diva - She keeps us geek girls updated on news to make us squee and geeky merchandise to make us drool.

My first blog award!

So it's taken me a while to post about it, but last month I got my first blog award, the Sunshine blog award from Kara at Crayons and Cylons! I only discovered her blog relatively recently, but it was clear from the start that we share a lot of similar geeky interests--Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and the like.

As part of the award, I'm supposed to pass it on to twelve other bloggers--kind of chain letter-like. My attempt to come up with twelve bloggers to give it to has made it clear to me that I need to follow more blogs, because twelve is, well, most of my blogger friends. I have come to the conclusion that if I were to choose twelve winners, that would leave out just a few of my other lovely blogger buddies, which would be sad. So I'm cutting the number of awardees to six. It's my blog. I can do that. So here I am, passing the Sunshine Award on to some lovely bloggers who add sunshine to my day.

The Rules:

1. Put the logo on your blog within your post.

2. Pass the award on to twelve bloggers.
3. Link to the nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and the link to the person from whom you received this award.
***I will say, though, that my recipients should feel no obligation to pass this on to twelve--or any number--of other bloggers. I have no expectations :)

And the winners are:

Andhari of Insomniac Lolita - An Indonesian rapper and law student, she blogs about her exciting life and other fun things.

Floreta of Solitary Panda - A poet who on her road to find herself has recently been staying at a Buddhist monastery.

Pink Jellybaby - A beautiful Brit with a cat named Liz Lemon, she's a sweetie who sometimes gives us a little sauce on Fridays.

Sam of Things, Just Things - A cool, happy girl who recently went on a road trip to New Orleans.

Seb - A great geek who takes lovely pictures and writes thought-provoking pieces that I love to argue with, but only because I respect him.

Soft Nonsense - A funny, geeky guy who caught my eye by eating half of a pretzel so that the remainder looked like a bat'leth.


Thanks, Kara, for spreading a little sunshine. I should note that (Spoiler alert!) I have another round of winners for a second blog award coming up later today...

We have mangoes!

After a couple days of slightly more meaty posts, I figured I'd do a more, uh, fruity post today.

We have a mango tree at our house. Unfortunately, at the time we moved in last summer, it only had three tiny mangoes (three inches long--max) on it. Other mango trees around town were still going strong, so we figured we just had a bad tree. It is relatively small, and it's on a slope. Maybe it didn't get enough water? We resigned ourselves to having no mangoes.

But now, we have lots of mangoes! Not as many as the good mango trees have, but a lot more than I expected. I see breakfast! And smoothies! The Housemate has this amazing recipe from his Indonesian stepfamily for a dish called sepat that uses green mangoes (as well as grilled shrimp, eggplant, tomatoes, and candlenuts, plus lime, chili peppers of course, and lots of other yummy things--this is our favorite dish), so we even have something great to eat with the mangoes while we wait for them to ripen. Lots of free mangoes! It's wonderful.

I don't know how long the mangoes will last, but I'm ready to make the most of them while we have them. Yay!

Prince of Persia: Can video game movies be good?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opens in the U.S. this Friday. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace), Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina, and directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter 4), the movie is based on the video game of the same name in which a prince must save the world with the help of a dagger that can send its user back a short period of time.



I have never played the Prince of Persia games, but still I have a considerable interest in how the film turned out. As I discussed in one of my earliest posts on this blog, not a single theater-released movie based on a video game has been widely considered to be any good.
My post on movies based on video games
The video game movie with the highest IMDb user rating is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, with a weak 6.4. And the only thing about the movie that is based on a video game is the title! But, apparently, all other video game movies are worse. In that previous post, I wondered when, if ever, we'd get the first good video game movie--when we'd finally get a movie to validate (and justify) the genre and stop disgracing us video game fans in the eyes of the general public.

Could Prince of Persia be this movie?

A review at Variety said that the movie was enjoyable enough, but forgettable. Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a lukewarm to favorable review at EW, summing it up with a respectable grade of B. The film has already been released in some markets abroad (in countries where lots of people watch the World Cup, studios want to release their films early to avoid the competition), so it already has (as of 4pm Hawaii time 5/26/10) 3916 votes on IMDb. The user rating currently stands at 6.8 stars, which is a bit above FF: The Spirits Within, but a movie's IMDb rating tends to fall considerably after initial high ratings from the fans who saw it opening weekend. Still, the 6.8 may not be fairly considered an initial high rating because the film hasn't even been released in the U.S., its largest market. So really, it's still too early to tell if Prince of Persia will be considered the first good video game movie, or if it will join all the others in the genre junk pile.

The issue of whether or not movies based on video games can be good is especially relevant to me at the moment, since it has now been officially announced that one of my favorite video games, BioWare's Mass Effect, is being developed into a movie by Avi Arad and Legendary Pictures (BioWare forum announcement, more details at Heat Vision blog). Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend, Thor) is in talks to write the movie script.

I had a lot to say about the prospect of a Mass Effect movie back when I first heard the rumors of the project.
My post on Mass Effect as a movie
I'm not sure I'd say all the same things I said back then, but my main ideas hold. Mass Effect is already pretty movie-like, but it gives the player the freedom to make choices about who the main character is and what decisions he or she makes that influence the progression of the plot (and the galaxy). How will I feel with a movie, where all of those choices are made for me (and surely for most players they will make a number of "wrong" choices)? And, if the movie is bad, will it degrade the image of the video game? Of all video games? (This is based on my fear that movies based on less-well-known media are the general public's ambassador to that media. So, if a prime example of some niche media genre--be it video game, graphic novel, or fantasy book--is translated into a trashy movie, it might make the entire genre represented by that movie look bad.)

Now Mass Effect 2 has come out, and it's even better than the first game. That's a good sign, but it brings with it new worries. Are they planning on doing a trilogy? Can they keep it fresh and interesting for three whole movies (I mean, if no movie based on a video game has ever been good before, what are the chances of them striking gold three times)? How unfortunate would it be if they make the first film and it doesn't do well enough to make the second, better game into a movie?

Anyway, as a video game lover and movie enthusiast, I definitely hope some day to see a movie based on a video game turn out to be good. Or great (but let's not be too hopeful). Prince of Persia, I wish you well.


Update: My follow-up post after seeing the movie on its opening weekend is here.

Goodbye to Lost

No spoilers (and not just for the finale, but any episode of Lost) except for the section between the warnings.

Whoa. Lost is over. It feels...strange.

I can safely say that Lost is the TV show that I've been the most invested in for the longest period of time. It's had its ups and downs, its hits and misses, but I've been a fan all along. I even followed some of its "alternate reality" material (the Lost Experience) one summer (I actually stuck with that Simon-like game to figure out what DHARMA stands for) before I decided that, well, it wasn't really worth it--the show was perfectly enjoyable without it.

I sometimes forget, but I didn't actually follow the show until its second season. I think I watched the pilot when it started in the fall of 2004, but this was during my first two years in college when I didn't follow any TV shows (hard to believe I once did that, now). By the summer after the first season I had figured out that this was a show I should be following, and a chance encounter with Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) gave me further star-struck reason to start watching. I bought the Season 1 DVDs, and by the start of Season 2 I was all caught up. I then proceeded to get my roommate hooked on the show. She was caught up by Season 3, which we watched together.

That year I bought the DVDs, I think I watched every episode in Season 1 at least four times; I could list them all by name in order and had a very good sense of the events and flashbacks in each episode. I also co-founded a facebook group at my school (ah, back when Facebook wasn't a giant monster, when you had to be in one of the listed colleges to join and Facebook groups were a new thing and were limited to people in your own school...) which enjoyed relative success in its first year (until Facebook groups went "global" and all school-specific fan clubs became dwarfed and outdated). This was the golden age of Lost's popularity, when even non-geeks were fans, and you had to watch it the night that it aired or you'd overhear people discussing it the next morning and the surprises would all be ruined.

The show got a little lost in its second and third seasons (though I never gave up hope), but once they set an end date--three more seasons with 16 episodes each (with maybe a little flexibility)--in the spring of 2007, Lost found its direction again. It seemed that every episode had purpose, with important character and plot developments packed into it. In Season 4, they really let out the geeky sci-fi side of Lost, alienating some (lesser) fans, though show runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof said that if any fans didn't think the show was sci-fi all along, they were kidding themselves.

When they set the end date during the third season, it seemed like a lot of time. The show, after all, was only half over at the time. Somehow, three years have passed. It may be hard for me to believe it, but the epic tale of Lost is finally over. Spoiler section ends after the picture, so skip down there for my spoiler-free final thoughts.

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SPOILERS FROM THE LOST FINALE
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Since the finale aired on Sunday, there has been a lot of discussion over whether it was good or bad. A lot of people, it seems, are disappointed about the questions that the show never answered. They had three years to tie it all up! And they never told us why ____?! I bet they never knew the answer. That's bad show-making right there!

There are indeed things that it would have been nice for them to tell us (to name a few: What was special about Walt? Why did Aaron have to be raised by Claire? It didn't seem so disastrous when Kate was doing it. And why can't women have babies on the Island?). I think it was sloppy for them to bring these questions up, make a big deal out of them, and then forget about them. But somehow, I'm OK with it. For now, at least, I can forget about those questions, too. Their answers are not required for me to be happy with the show. At the moment I'm satisfied with all the mysteries they did solve for us.

I was a little disappointed by the way they ended the "flash-sideways" story. They had set it up as a sort of alternate reality where the bomb had gone off in 1977, the Island had been destroyed, and thus the lives of the passengers on Oceanic 815 were never touched by the Island's craziness. I guess with everything we learned about the Island in Season 6, a hydrogen bomb may not have been able to wipe away the issues that the Island had, but still... I liked the idea of this alternate reality. When Juliet said, in her last dying breath, that "It worked," I assumed she meant that the bomb plan had worked and that, in the new alternate reality, none of them would come to the Island. Even though that reality existed, they still had to keep playing through their own reality, which was also real. I don't know where I thought this would lead (War between the two alternate realities! No, wait, that's J.J. Abrams' other show...), but I hoped that the Lost show runners had a good idea.

But it turns out the sideways world wasn't real. It was just a fantasy in which all of our favorite characters, who touched each other's lives in such monumental ways, could find each other in the afterlife and have a big get-together before moving on. It was very sweet and touching, and I liked the sentiment, but, well... Why would this fantasy created by the people brought together by the Island take a form that looks so much like how their lives might have been if the Island had been destroyed in 1977? The only reason I can think of is, so that it would trick viewers into thinking it was an alternate reality. And that makes me a little sad. If anyone has a better reason, please share.

On Island, though, I was very happy with the way they ended it. I'm still sad that both Jin and Sun died a couple episodes back (what about their daughter?!), but other than that, I liked how they tied up the characters. Jack--and Kate!--take down Smokey. Jack sacrifices himself, and passes the guardian role on to Hurley (I believe in you, Hurley--*sniff*). Ben becomes Hurley's new second. Lapidus is alive! And the plane has a runway! And he takes Richard (no longer ageless), Miles, Kate, Sawyer, and Claire off the Island (see, Desmond was right, if Charlie died Claire would get off the Island...eventually). Now Claire gets to raise Aaron and wash her hair. Rose and Bernard live out their days happily on the Island, with Vincent (Hurley should make Vincent ageless--he's a nice companion to have around). Desmond hopefully, with Hurley's help, gets off the Island. And then the last scene, mirroring the very first scene in the pilot: Jack lying in the bamboo, visited by Vincent, then the closeup of his eye closing...It was beautiful. I couldn't have asked for more.

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END OF LOST FINALE SPOILERS
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So I have slightly mixed feelings about the Lost finale, but overall I thought it was great. It was a fitting ending to an awesome show. Lost's place is firmly cemented on my list of favorite shows of all time. It was an important show both in my life and in the world of TV. It helped make sci-fi cool and start a movement in new TV shows (mythology-heavy, serialized, sci-fi related shows), which unfortunately hasn't really spawned many successful successors but is still appreciated nonetheless.

I will miss the show, but strangely not as much as I've missed other favorite shows of mine that have ended. I guess, in the case of Lost, I feel like it was time. They told their story, and now it's over. It was great while it lasted, and I am happy with the experience. It was one hell of a ride.

Happy Geek Pride Day!

Apparently, today is Geek Pride Day, a day for geeks to celebrate their geekiness. It is a fairly new unofficial holiday, first celebrated in 2006. The date of May 25th was chosen because it was the day in 1977 when (as Star Wars geeks know) the first Star Wars movie was released.

I didn't actually know about Geek Pride Day until I got to work. Luckily I am a proud geek every day, so today I happen to be wearing an appropriately geeky t-shirt. The dragon on the side isn't just any dragon, but the dragon logo for BioWare video game Dragon Age: Origins.


Anyone recognize the board in the background? Since finals I haven't had reason to use the board again, and I like to leave the equations up there to scare away the biological and chemical oceanographers who might wander into my office. They should fear us physical oceanographers. We are mighty.

There was a very monumental event recently in geek world, and by that I'm referring to the Lost series finale that aired on Sunday. I will have some words to say about that soon enough, but I may want to combine it with reflections on the season finales of a few other shows, so I might wait until after FlashForward has its finale. Or maybe I'll decide Lost should get its own post. We'll see.

Now I'll just have to think of something geeky to do this evening. Play more Portal? Watch The Guild? Big Bang Theory? (I'm trying to get The Housemate caught up on both.) It shouldn't be a stretch for me to find a geeky way to celebrate the day. If you're reading my blog, chances are you are also a geek in one way or another. So happy Geek Pride Day! Have a good one.