Had to setup an earth sciences expo this morning, fairly routine. Though for an expo featuring so many key players in the mining industry, Rio Tinto, etc, there wasn't any flashy booths which is a surprise. Got out of there at about 12pm and by the time I got home I had leave again because we had another home open.

Didn't have a chance to pop online before I left so I headed straight to the cinema to see if they had anything interesting on and saw that they were doing an advanced screening of Forbidden Kingdom (signboarded as Forbiddon Kingdo) so I saw that and now here's my review of it:

Now in theory any movie that contains both Jackie Chan AND Jet Li is bound to be awesome, but in practice Forbidden Kingdom doesn't hold up to this. The movie is paced poorly, a quarter of it is training montages and Jackie Chan and Jet Li only fight each other ONCE. Despite the fact that they claim they will kill each other later and that at one point Jet Li's character actually pees on Jackie Chan's character while he is praying for rain in the desert, it's easily dismissed by poor writing. The movie suffers from having too much exposition in some parts and practically no exposition in the other parts. The ending is practically given away in the first ten minutes of the film if you're paying enough attention.

A quick consult with IMDB.com shows that the script had 5 re-writes, most of those happening during filming and it shows. Don't bother sitting through the credits either, you'd expect it being a Jackie Chan movie to have a blooper reel at the end, but alas nothing worth sticking around for unless you want to find out that some of the sound effects were produced in Australia, though now you don't because I just told you.

The film does have some redeeming features, like the opening credit sequence being a homage to old kung fu movie posters, the fight sequences are pretty high quality, especially the one fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Some of the other fight sequences do get a bit ridiculous like the fights between the Monkey King and the Jade Warlord are more like a fight between two Ancient Chinese Jedi.

One of the best things this movie had was continuity, the main character, Jason Tripitakas, has his hair actually grow longer throughout the film. Though that's probably the only indication of the passage time this film actually has as it's pretty much we're in forest, now we're at the start of the desert, hey we need some water... hey look the exit of the desert, another forest, some monks, entering evil palace, boss fight, ?????, teleported home. He spends an undisclosed amount of time in Ancient China, between him falling off a building and him landing on the ground and when he has landed on the ground he totally knows Kung Fu.

The film lightly tiptoes around romantic interests. When Jason firsts lands in China he can't understand Chinese, but after a few minutes with Jackie Chan he suddenly and without explanation can hear Chinese as English, except in certain parts of the film where certain characters are talking to each other in Chinese with english subtitles, which I think happened only when Jason couldn't actually hear those conversations.

To sum up the film it's pretty much Star Wars meets Dragon Ball meets the boring part of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (which has the same Cinematographer as Forbidden Kingdom) starring Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Some White Guy and a Chick Who Talks In Second Person Perspective.

My suggestion would be to RENT this if you want to see it.

Hi everyone,

This year UniSFA is turning 30 years old. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we're having a dinner!

It's on Friday August 1st at 730pm at the Nedlands Yacht Club on the Nedlands foreshore and will be catered for by WA Spit Roast.
Vegetarian and Vegan options will be available, but please note this on your ticket request so we can make special arrangements.
There will be a cash Bar available through the Yacht Club with various drinks so if you're going to be drinking, bring some extra money (and if you look young enough, ID).

Tickets are STRICTLY Pre-sale and available from NOW until Friday 25th of July when we need to confirm final numbers.

They are available online through a direct transfer into a bank account for the dinner (or via PayPal if NECESSARY) at a cost of $35 each. Of course, any committee member can take payment in person if you'd prefer that, you'll just have to set up a time to meet with one of us!
If you would like to purchase a ticket, please send ME an email (drayke@gmail) with
-your Name
-the years that you were a club member for
and I'll send you my account details with further instructions.

Tickets will *NOT* be available after July 25th except under special circumstances and will definitely not be avalable at the door.
Any further questions can be directed to committe at unisfa.asn.au

What: UniSFA's 30th Birthday dinner
Where: Nedlands Yacht Club, Nedlands foreshore
When: Friday August 1 - 7:30pm-Midnight
Tickets: $35 each, PRESALE ONLY.

-Ewan
UniSFA President 2008

Why am I such a boner? :(

...

...because I have teamed with a few of them (they have always been few) and in their teens, they could not tank for a team. In fact, I once had the joy of watching a team with an Ice tanker and an Inv tanker. The Ice tanker drew all the aggro and did not last long enough to get healed. After each fight she was rezzed, and in the next fight it all happened again. Without using taunt, they made a beeline for her, and down she went.

Now I know how it feels. At level 17, my Ice/Fire tanker just barely survived against -1 Tsoo. (Of course, Tsoo are pretty bad, but even so.) That's with lvl 15 IO in almost every slot. I know Ice tankers are awesome in the endgame, but I wonder when that happens. My best guess would be Hibernate, since judicious use of this power seems very important to them. In any case, I am glad @Swiss Army Wife had 3 support characters on Pinnacle. I do the radio missions for one of them until she is -1 to me, then switch to another.

Unlike our pal Jackal, however, I vividly remember that it was just as bad when the game was new. Actually, it was worse; this is the first Ice tanker I have got past 13. ^_^

I spent the last day and a half mostly in bed with a crippling headache and the sensation that someone was shoving an ice pick into my ear. I thought I was getting an ear infection, but last night I had a couple of glasses of Diet Pepsi, and within an hour all the pain was gone. I had to for-the-most-part quit drinking caffeine earlier this year for health reasons, and I guess I accidentally had a little too much recently. That was simultaneously the weirdest and most severe caffeine withdrawal headache I've ever had.

Beware, kids: caffeine is a harsh, addictive, and unforgiving mistress.

I enjoyed The Dark Knight, very much so.

This trend of enjoying every movie I've seen recently is disconcerting me. What happened to the me who thought the entire medium was overrated? I'm even liking movie trailers, what the hell.

Lol haven't played in over a year. Just had a 1 vs 1 game just then. I was NE and the person was UD. The game went on for 45mins. At one stage I could had won but I didn't push and instead retreated to improve my army. Later when he was raping my base I was at his base raping his and decided to TP back to protect mine when I should had gone all the way and destroyed him first, ah well. I had a lvl9 Keeper of the Grove only and my army was dyads + mountain giants with max upgrades, I just loved using root on the person's Dark Knight then smashing it to bits with those tank giants :D A 1 vs 1 shouldn't have gone on that long, at the start I was playing seriously coz I was waiting for eat and his friends to finish their game so I just made Ancient Protectors all over the place, person must have been intimidated XD

Warcraft 4 plz Blizzard?

The Pelican meet up, originally set for Noon Eastern today, has been pushed back to 1pm Eastern.

In case you haven't seen it: Dr Horrible's Sing along blog: Supervillain musical by Joss whedon. Free right now. Will cost money tommorrow (Sunday. In America, I assume, which may end up being mid-sunday here. Unless you're in America, obviously. I think. Um...) Watch now!

And then watch "The Dark Knight".

!!COMMENTS HAVE SPOILERS FOR DR HORRIBLE!!

Anyone interested in running the ITF on Guardian tomorrow around 1pm eastern? I'll be running it with Foudre Bleue, my level 38 DM/SR Scrapper. 

Let's plan to meet at Imperious

Line up

1) Foudre Bleue, lvl 38 DM/SR Scrapper gatorclix
2) BubbleMint, lvl 47 Ice/Sonic Controller kwsapphire
3) Dr Corona, lvl 42 Blaster thatnickguy
4) Tank, thomasyan
5) Vily, lvl 35 Storm/Archery Controller jillbamfette
6) Your name here
7) Your name here
8) Your name here

IS AWESOME GO SEE IT NOW. NOW!!

That said, two non-spoilery things I think should have been in the film but weren't:

1)Commissioner Gordon's kids play a small part in the film. The son gets a few lines and all the attention, and is shown looking up to Batman. That character? Has, afaict, absolutely no interesting canon backstory. The daughter had no lines and may as well have not been there, despite the fact that she goes on to become batgirl (and her backstory involves the Joker!). It would have been much cooler to focus on her in a foreshadowing/reference sort of way, but nooo the golden haired boy is more engaging >:/

2) The posters for the movie showed a giant flaming bat symbol on a skyscraper, and there was none in the film. I WANT MY GIANT FLAMING BAT SYMBOL.

EDIT: suddenly realises this is a perfect opportunity to use my old default icon :)

( And now some spoilers.. )

Played for a little over an hour, and went from lvl 49 to 50!
switched to my 34 and played for another hour, got 2 levels.
I could get used to this...

After 225 hours my kin/rad defender Chester Neutron dinged in the second mish of the Imperious TF.
After I tried an empath aeons before I decided never to play a defender again; being an empath wasn´t the right thing for me because I stressed myself to look after the people and what if they die...
So I started Chess as a test toon at the same time as my fire/kin controller because I didn´t know if I rather want to play a kin controller, or a kin defender... I kept both and it was a wise decision. I love this crazy Pixie to bits.
I can solo him on invincible and he´s always in the middle of a fight and so much fun to play - and speaking of heals he´s doing a great job on that too.
Thank you so much Chester for the fun, more work´s waiting now!

In the heat of battle I missed the ding pic, but I got one of his new roman costume in crazy Chester-ish colors.

Was the sound I made has took a sledge hammer to my computer because it lagged me out whilst I was on a fabolous team.

Going to restart the damm computer and see if they are still there.


On a positively geeky note one of my team members has a power called "Neutron Bomb" and the awesome thing is, wait for is, you'll love this, I did, I thought it was fabolous. The neutron bomb sounds like like the photon torpedo sound effect from Star Trek! Squeeeeeee, How awesome is that.

**Slinks off to his geek corner to find out the episode that sound effect starred in!** **Thinks it might be Romulan**


Squeeeee

Joyce and Walky!: May scar your mind's eye.

When I got my other two Indiana Jones figures, I felt something wasn't right. Something was missing!

It was the tie! He needs the tie!

The strongest mental image I have of Indiana Jones is his appearance in Last Crusade, in which he started out in more formal wear, later adding the jacket and hat. It's that tie, man. He was missing it. I found two of the Last Crusade Indy the other day, the only dregs remaining of the elusive third wave. WHERE IS MY GRAIL KNIGHT? WHERE IS MY HENRY JONES SR?! Oh well. I have a better Indy. Better to my mental recollection, anyway.

He comes with a sub-machine gun, so he's the "DON'T CALL ME JUNIOR" scene Indy. Sweet! I especially like the giant starburst call-out on the packaging that advertises the gun. He also comes with the whip and his satchel and a belt to hold the whip. Not bad. Hat doesn't come off, unlike the Older Indy I picked up, but I don't mind. Likeness is a little better, too, I think.

SERIOUSLY WHERE IS MY GRAIL KNIGHT

Second last prompt (out of order because I'm still pondering a germ of an idea for edible_hat's one)

An octopus carrying a weapon in every hand (including spear, maul, katana, wakazashi):


Why yes, this is a role playing character dreamed up by a male geek :D

Painted before my morning shower (it's still morning!) in a vague attempt at japanese ink painting, since the character is japanese. And now, to get dressed, and then lie on the couch watching dvds for several hours, and then see Batman :)

LICD taking a stab at emos. quite ammusing.