Well, as if the last episode of Doctor Who and the final goodbye of the Ponds didn’t cause me enough grief already… Here’s 4.3 minutes of unshot scenes by Chris Chibnall. This is what happens after Amy and Rory are gone… again, *sniff*….

A friend was asking me today if I finally read “Inheritance“, the last book in the “Inheritance Cycle” by Christopher Paolini, and what I thought about it. I remembered I never wrote anything about it…

So yes, I read Inheritance some months ago and actually like it quite a bit too. As I wrote here before, the trilogy was not exactly among my favourites. But the 4th instalment really did save the whole thing. Even though the very end left me somewhat unsatisfied, but the 4th book was able to give a new depth and direction to the cycle.

I truly enjoyed reading the 4th book, and now I’m hoping that Christopher Paolini will, as he said, at some point go back to Alagaesia and show us a bit more about the future of the main characters. I don’t want to give spoilers here since a couple of friends are going to read the book soon, but lets just say that I would like Eragon to reconsider his choice of residence location eventually. 😉

After about a decade and a half of using various other mail clients, the latest one of which was Windows Live Mail, I’m back to using Thunderbird again. Throughout the years I’ve checked back on the development of Thunderbird, but every time I gave it a try, I came across various usability issues… until now. Right now Thunderbird looks like it’s finally baked properly and ready to be served.

My biggest reason for switching to Thunderbird now, is the large collection of pretty useful plugins that allow things like integration with Google calendar, Google contacts, Google reader and so on that are pretty important to me.

The only thing I’m not currently enjoying about Thunderbird is that the client still doesn’t have 2 line preview for emails… and apparently due to a million and one technical reasons, on one hand the devs don’t like to work on this issue and on the other hand no one has been able to write a plugin to fix this. Smallest silliest thing…. oh well. Everything else is good, so for now I think I’ll be sticking to Thunderbird. =)

Not exactly a new idea, but I get the feeling this one could get interesting/useful.

“We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Anyone can contribute and each person who does makes us stronger. Together we can continue to drive innovation on the Web to serve the greater good. It starts here, with you.”

Check out WebPlatform.org.

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Is this awesome or what? =D 

“Hello old friend. And here we are, you and me, on the last page.”

*sniff*

*sigh* 

Well, that was quite a sad and terribly abrupt end to the Pond story. Left me with teary eyes. =/ The story itself was pretty great of course. But still, I have a feeling that the end was a bit… “blah”. More could have been said/done with the Ponds’ final appearance. Not the saddest goodbye in the Who universe so far [that one was Rose’s… always… at least for me…], but still pretty tragic. Why did they have to end up entirely out of reach anyway?

So thanks to my tablet, I was able to watch the whole presentation regarding the earlier version of Mona Lisa, live yesterday. And I must say it was extremely cool! The proofs that were presented, both historical and technological, were VERY interesting! Check out the Mona Lisa Foundation website which now has a good  load of info to offer. This little documentary is also pretty cool.

Blue blazes!! Wow! I find this quite exciting! So apparently the Mona Lisa Foundation has finally found enough evidence to prove that the “Isleworth Mona Lisa” is actually an earlier version of Mona Lisa, by Da Vinci himself! They’re going to present the painting and the evidence tomorrow at Geneva. Anybody know how I can get in there by any chance? =)

In fact I have not been able to find any info about where in Geneva this is happening, or what is the title of the book that’s going to be released! I think they’re being pretty secretive about the whole thing… even the foundation’s website is only going to go live on the 27th, so there is no info on there right now.

According to RT.com:

“The opinion of art historians is split. American scientists are skeptical, saying that it is not the first time researchers have tried to attribute the ‘Isleworth Mona Lisa’ to Leonardo. All previous attempts failed, and they do not believe this time will be any different. Moreover, the Mona Lisa is one of the most copied and imitated paintings ever.”

Full article here.

So, for a few friends of mine who are apparently keeping scores on my movie reviews… unfortunately here’s another one for the “disappointed” list! Yes, sorry, I had such high hopes for this one… didn’t work out! =P

Sitting down to watch this movie, I actually had no idea that this was going to have anything to do with the Alien franchise. That was probably for the best because I’ve never been a fan of those movies. As much as space ships, aliens and androids are very much my thing, the Alien franchise have always lacked too much on the plot side for me. [Perhaps with the exception of “Alien Resurrection”.] Well, now it seems I have a very similar problem with Prometheus!

Prometheus isn’t without a plot, but it’s without a proper plot! The plot is like a puzzle with so many shiny pieces, put together so badly that the big picture doesn’t make any sense what-so-ever. I found the whole idea of finding those cave paintings and going after the “Architects” very interesting. Seeing them actually find the remnants of the Architects et all was also very cool. “Elizabeth Shaw” deciding to go after the Architects at the end, very very cool. And there were a lot of other very interesting “pieces”… but that’s the thing, the whole plot is in pieces! And these pieces neither go too well together nor with the rest of the Alien franchise that supposedly follow this one.

So a bunch of advanced aliens go around architecting new species… except once they create one that is not actually monstrous, they turn against it and decide to destroy it. And they do go about that in the most weird impractical backwards way possible. Oh, and the other handy work of theirs that’s monstrous and turns against them, somehow ends up in continuing conflict with humans, whereas we basically end up not seeing anything at all about the origins of the architects in the following movies…. and that’s just to bring a couple of examples.

Anyhow, I think the only way to fix this “prequel” is with a proper sequel that actually straightens a few things out and offers some answers. We’ll see if that’ll happen….