Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

A perfect ending.

( May contain spoilers - especially in comments )

Beware the vengeance of Dr Horrible! Captain Hammer is indeed a Tool!

Act II of Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is well worth watching too.

Part the First

The Tom Smith Fund Raiser:
"Mr. Smith Goes To The Hospital: A Fast Fund Raiser For A Fast Filker"

Core FuMPer, filk legend, self-employed professional musician, and all around nice guy Tom Smith recently suffered a leg injury that will keep him off his feet all summer, simultaneously forcing him to cancel gigs while also racking up hospital bills. So Rob Balder and DJ Particle rallied the filk and comedy music scenes to submit over 40 Tom Smith cover songs by the likes of the great Luke Ski, Sudden Death, Worm Quartet, Possible Oscar, TV’s Kyle, Art Paul Schlosser, Odd Austin Aeschilman, ToyBoat, Steve MacDonald, and dozens more for an MP3 album to help Tom Smith get on his feet (pun intended, this is about Tom Smith after all). The price of this downloadable MP3 collection? As much as you feel you can afford right now, it’s up to you. To donate, follow this link. Thank you everyone.

Part the Second

The Tom Smith "Dead Again" Video Contest!

Create a fan-made video for Possible Oscar's cover of Tom Smith's "Dead Again", and you can win an MP3 player loaded with the entire Discographies of Tom Smith, Possible Oscar, the great Luke Ski, Rob Balder, and the Funny Music Project: Volumes 1 through 9! For details and rules, follow this link.

Via muskrat_john

Oh dear. Earlier this morning we had Steven Brust on his way to Mehicho for a cheap hernia operation and now this. And who says the US Health system is the best in the world? <cough> Anyway, this is a very worthy cause. If you haven't heard his stuff you can at http://www.tomsmithonline.com; it's good. And purchasing copies of his stuff helps too, of course.

Incidentally Dead Again tied with Still Alive for my favourite song of last year.

The Idea of North are back in town on the weekend of August 29th to 31st. Playing The Gov on Friday 29th (8pm, $28/$22, 8340 0744 to book [The Gov]), Barossa Arts Centre, Tanunda on Saturday 30th (8pm, $30/$22/$16, 8225 8888 to book), and Elder Hall (7:30pm, $28/$23/$15, 131 246 to book [Bass]). I'll probably attempt to make the gig at The Gov myself, if anyone is interested in joining me.

Other gigs or passing interest to me include Cock-Eyed Molly on July 18th, Spiral Dance on August 9th, September 13th, and 11th October, and Holly Throsby on September 6th. Then again I haven't really been paying attention to whose playing when recently.

Merde! The Idea of North gig conflicts with the next Abney Park gig. What am I to do? Oh well, putting something steampunkish together in time probably wouldn't happen anyway.

Finally managed to see Act I of Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Is well worth the effort. Definitely hoping for Dr Horrible to triumph. But then, I would have even before I heard of the show. After all, am I not on the Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow card?

One nice thing about gamemastering Superhero games is that you get to play the supervillians. Although I did enjoy the idea presented by Neccessary Evil, where the villians have to band together to stop the alien invasion after all the heroes are wiped out.

Quite enjoyed Appleseed Ex-Machina. Then again, we saw the Japanese (subtitled) version, rather than the dubbed English version, which is always an improvement when watching anime. Well worth catching whilst the Anime Festival is on at the Palace-Nova. Then again I've also been a long time fan of Masamune Shirow and his works. Now I'm just miffed that there is no readily available image of Yoshino (the CEO of Poseidon Industries) to convert into a convenient icon, and I'll have to wait until September to do a screen capture. I'm in icon love.

Meanwhile Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog has fixed it's problem with non-US viewers (who apparently got fairly irate that they couldn't watch it because of IP filtering software), only to encounter the problem of overload from too many people wanting to see it at once. Can't win on the roundabouts and can't win on the swings. So it's off to the slides for me. I'm told it's good by several disreputable sources.

And Sanguine have finally released a new Jadeclaw supplement: Loot the Burning House. Available via Lulu as either a POD or PDF. In case anyone hasn't realised I really like the Ironclaw/Jadeclaw system for mid-level (neither completely realistic nor completely high fantasy) fantasy campaigns (essentially replacing 2nd ed Runequest in my heart).

( New England is ... )

( Oasis is... )

And speaking of Oz SF conventions, don't forget Wastelands II, Age of Iron on October 18 and 19th at the Good Earth Hotel in Perth, WA.

I think this is probably the first attempt at a Steampunk convention in Oz. At least I can't remember any other attempts to do so. Although presumably there was a Wastelands I. Sometime.

For those people interested in massCon next Sunday (July 20th) at the SA Writers Centre on Rundle St, we have the following event schedule:

All transcription errors mine. The stuff in italics seems to be small interstitial sessions between the main sessions.

Today was the inaugural gig of Spiral Dance's new residency upstairs at the Director's Hotel (on Gouger opposite the Central Mail Exchange [near West Terrace]). It was a nice and relaxed gig (although this may be the influence of the spacious Chersterfield lounges), with a lot more slower numbers than the recent Yule Feast, which probably means I didn't break myself as much as I did at the Yule Feast (True! This time only my ankle is black from haemotomas, rather than the entire lower leg). Also, with comparatively few attendees (there were effectively only two new faces and many missing old ones), there was lots of room on the dance floor, so I could have fun with interpretive dance. Which probably scared or nauseated a few people. Although I had to stop singing along through much of the third set (my endurance is nowhere near what it used to be, so something had to give), few people to have fun dancing with and improvising off of, and a rather unexpected Metal influence from the Wing Chung Academy next door, which I shall be prepared for next time.

These gigs will continue every second Saturday for the rest of the year, so do think about coming along and dancing with a mad dancey thing. There is a $5 entry charge, but eating a meal gets you free entry, and if you do go you get a $2 voucher for the next gig (and a $1 voucher for merchandise).

Meanwhile Cock-Eyed Molly is playing at the Brecknock this Friday (18th).

Also Spiral is playing at the Green's Halloween Ball on 1 Nov at the Queen's Arms. And Nick has a Minion of his very own! We are trying to teach her to lisp and walk with a limp and say "Yeth Mathter," but it is yet to take. I think it's time to introduce some more people to My Life With Master.

I have to admit that the following fan video, Caan & Company, did remove a lot of the sour taste from the ending to the latest season of Dr Who.

( Very limited spoiler (in the fact it reveals the villians), but much funnier if you have seen the last few episodes... )

Via drjon.

<sigh> Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

But do I like it so much because it is a romance or because it is a hopeless romance?

I think, perhaps there is too much truth in that question for me.

One of the nastier parts of the d20 GSL [Game System Licence] (Wizards of the Coast's replacement for the d20 OGL [Open Gaming Licence]) is the restrictions on continuing to publish 3rd edition stuff if you want to publish 4th ed stuff. According to a strict interpretation of the licence, you can't continue to publish an established product line of 3rd edition stuff once a conversion document or 4th edition product in that line has been produced. Whilst recent FAQs have commented that this is simply a reasonable expectation on the part of Wizards of the Coast that the game publishers will not produce combined 4th and 3rd ed modules/games, there is one subclause to this contract (and the SGL has become a formal licencing contract now, rather than simple conditions of use), that I find rather objectionable as an archivist and collector. And that is, the publishing company is allowed to sell the physical product they have on hand, but after that (and this clause survives termination of the licence), they may never again offer that 3rd ed product, even in electronic form.

Goodman Games is the first to announce that they are eradicating their 3rd ed line in accordance with the new licence conditions. So if you want to finish playing the Classic Dungeon Crawl series of adventures, I suggest you might want to hurry.

Then again, the CDC series is ideal for 4th ed, which to my mind, has become a tactical minatures game rather than a role-playing game (not only because of the required use of the battleboard, but because almost every class ability is designed for use on the battleboard).

This pain thing is slightly ridiculous. Haven't been able to catch more than a quick 40 winks for a couple of days now; each time I fall asleep I move and wake up. Can't even hold a paperback book to read it, let along do anything else with my hands. Can just barely type (because I cheat and don't move my joints when doing so). Yesterday nearly vomited from the pain (and lost count of the sudden crying jags). And all this is under the effects of extensive analgaesia (not just by my mental pain control techniques).

<sigh>

Having resorted to the highly controversial method of actually taking part in singing happy birthday to you on your birthday (and you were kind, as you didn't run fleeing in terror with your hands over your ears, which is the normal response when I attempt to sing), I find myself curious as to what picture I would have gotten if I had sent birthday wishes via LJ...

So, belated happy birthday freyaw!

massCon

a small sf convention
SA Writers centre
9am Sunday July 20th 2008
membership at the door $10/5

massCon is the latest in a series of small sf conventions organised by Critical Mass.

massCon offers talks, panels, games and presentations on a wide range of topics, including:

• Pat MacNamara on creating The Last Realm, a new lavishly illustrated fantasy
• Adam Jenkins on the Ultimate War of the Worlds
• Paul Downton on Cities of the Future
• Roman Orszanski samples Blood Noir on TV
• Jeff Harris on Escape from the Green Planet: the real Space Age

Panels on modern Australian SF, debates on sf/fantasy films, modern radio drama and more....

The strand-and-a-half programme includes short 5 minute talks on Fandom, Clubs, Fanzines, Conventions, SF Online, Fan Funds and Fan Fueds!

More details from the convention website: http://kwoll.wordpress.com

Critical Mass meets on the first Wednesday of each month at the SA Writers Centre, 2nd Floor, 187 Rundle St, Adelaide

Ouchy.

Spiral Dance just celebrated the Winter Solstice with their somethingth Yule Feast. The theme of this one was the Black Ball, primarily because Spiral was out of the country, and the person organising the decorating likes loves black. So no real theme, just lots of music, dancing, and the traditional Yule log and Mummer's play (although this one was done in the dark with lots of Jedi references as they were using toy lightsabres for the epic battle between the Soldier and the Turkish Knight and was very disappointing as it meandered on an in-joke for far too long; plus they blinded people by shining strong flashlights into their faces).

The were lots of new faces, although I wasn't particularly in the mood to do my normal Golden Retriever impersonation, although since many of the new females were apparently established all-female covens this does make it more difficult to introduce oneself. One has to wait until someone says "Oh that's just Ian. He's harmless." I'm still trying to make them revise it to "mostly harmless" as a sop to my ego, but so far I'm encountering considerable resistance to their opinion of the validity of this change. Grummph. Can't they at least pretend that I'm dangerous.

Then again the pain was making serious inroads into my abilities to survive the night. By the end I was really deaded. Then again, I was the first one dancing (to Woman of the Earth too, which I know miffs some people intensely <grin>), and didn't stop all night, although I did rather slow down. Then again, by that point the dance floor had become so crowded I had to curb my natural step to avoid stepping on people (and when you are my size it's more likely that they will break than you will).

I'm still rather ouchy at the moment, which is why I'm spending time to type this up – I really am not looking forward to taking down the pain blocks. <sigh>

Anyway, apart from this minor and known side-effect the Ball was lots of fun. People got birthday gifts, Nicole and Jamie bought their new babies (she "popped" three weeks ago) to be oooed and aahed over [I did mention that she can now threaten her previous children with the fact that they are obsolete if they misbelieve! <grin>] and one got to enjoy some serious dancing (some of which was with people that could actually dance and do so at a competitive level, rather than just wriggle on the dance floor [not that I'm complaining about the ability to do that either] [1]).

Anyways, lots of fun was had, even though I'm going to regret it for the next day or so. But it was all so worth it.

Ouchy. <grin>

[1] Still, it would be nice to find someone in Adelaide that does Finnish Tango (the schools here do Trad and Argentinian almost exclusively, and I fell in love with the laconic style of the Scandanavian version a long time ago. Although I do want to attempt Zavulon's Wedding Tango from Day Watch at some point.]

Edit: Haighs had a sale. Too late now.

Another Book Read meme. Same identifiers as before.

( Once more into the library )

78% read. Must do better next time.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
5) Put a star next to those you've only partially read.

( This probably won't surprise many people... )

63% read. Pathetic, but I really detest Regency romances.

Yoinked from motokomaharet