Mood:

I just watched two fan films with jaw-dropping special effects. If fans can do this now, it won’t be long before we throw off the Hollywood yoke and get some really good “communist” entertainment going!

Here they are:

- Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning
Despite the silly name, the acting in this spoof is passable and geeks get the answer to a long-standing question: who would win, Star Trek or Babylon 5 (including Crusade)? Unfortunately in Finnish, but with subtitles. Full-length feature!

- Star Wars: Revelations
Takes place between the first and second trilogies. Acting’s not great, but nice (if dark) special effects.

While I’m thinking about it, have a look at these other favourites of mine:

- 405 - Created on home computers. Holy crap!

- Grayson - What if Batman was murdered and Robin wanted revenge? Keep an eye out for the guy playing Superman…exactly what an older Superman would look like.

- Legacy of the Jedi - First Star Wars film to show dual-wielding light sabres. Also, a surprise!

- TROOPS - The one that started it all!

Mood:

I’ve been offline since Sunday. I got a new 200 GB drive and decided to install my recently-bought version of Windows XP Pro fresh on it, and pass my extra 40 GB drive on to my wife for the same treatment with a new XP Home installation. What followed was several days of hell as both computers kept blue-screening after the main installation screens were about to come up.

It wasn’t hardware-related. After attempts to bypass the problems via boot discs were thwarted with other weird errors, I finally just made a copy of the original install CDs and it all just worked as it was supposed to.

I don’t know if it was just that the hologrammed discs just weren’t compatible with my drive or what, but goddamnit I was pissed off and ready to chew nails. Both computers are now up and running properly.

Mental note for next time: disconnect the original drive that’s going to become the secondary before installing Windows or the new boot drive will not be drive C:. I should have remembered that from last time, but it was a couple years ago; WinXP, you have spoiled me!

Another rant: the Automatic Updates kick in and download stuff, then when they’re loaded they want to reboot my computer. Later, I said, as I was copying all my MP3s and myriad other files from my old drive to my new one. It estimated over two hours so I left it and went to bed. In the morning Windows happily informed me that it had rebooted because of updates. I checked — sure enough, it rebooted before the file copy function had completed. I don’t know who the fuck decided to build an automatic reboot into the automatic updates, but I’d like to kick him in the nuts a few times. I’ve since changed the setting to auto-download but don’t install until I say so.

In other news, I found that people from work are reading my blog so now I have to second-guess anything I might post about myself. I don’t know what would make them think me so interesting; I guess I’m an enigma…