The children of the night

It is Spring and as it is often the case, there is snow. The llama hates snow but I don't mind, I have no schedule, no rush to shovel snow that will just melt away in a few days. I heed not time changes, like the llama I get up with the dawn regardless. I grow fat.



I have a fresh book to read I haven't started it. I've been building a collection of translations of My Little Pony fanfiction stories in multiple languages as a reference library or resource. There are over 1,000 now and counting. There are a dozen languages to choose from but the overwhelming majority of the translations are in Chinese, Russian, Spanish and French.



The only flowers around here are indoors. My amaryllis bloomed last week and is now busy making seeds. Maybe this time I'll succeed in germinating them. My azalea is winding down after months of pink blooms. I have hope that the fertilizer spike I stuck into the soil will be what it needed as the leaves are rather brown for the most part.



I'm still building up the nerve to dump Windows 10 and replace it with Linux of some flavor or other. My USB keys weren't working on the new machine, messing up any plans of saving stuff prior to wiping the disk, but the USB SNAFU mystery cure seems to be use a new USB with (I assume) an intact installation code. I probably had deleted it off the older USB sticks as I am wont to do with any suspicious software. Maybe. The 32 GB USB keys I bought recently works. 2 for $10! Not too shabby. So the USB Linux installation route is go! When I'm ready to bite the bullet.

One thing I want is a Linux Wordpad document clone. It was looking that Ted was just the thing! But it stopped getting updated about 13 years ago and doesn't seem to be readily available. It might not even work on recent iterations of Linux. LaTeX is probably overkill but now I've learned that there's LyX. I hope it's WorpPad compliant. I had expected that freeware would get better and omnipresent over the years, especially painting software. Instead software just keeps getting more bloated, difficult to use and the stuff that worked well just vanished. All the more reason to not update and to hold on to old software.



Yesterday I tried to update ComfyUI and instead of working well it stopped working altogether. Probably because I didn't download the three checkpoints it offered. That was because the bandwidth total was about my allotment for the entire month (Bell Canada sucks) and I already have a bunch of checkpoints. Somehow copy/pasting them into what looked like the correct folders did not work. Oh well, I already have hundreds of alien horse pictures, dancing, swimming, sleeping and whatnot.



I had a few gift cards retaining a residue of value but expiring in January of this year. So, panic time, I ramped up my Search for Stuff on eBay. I'd not seen the Barbie movie, despite hearing good things, but I live in a movie desert where the only oasis skips most unadulterated versions of movies and Barbie en version originale was one such omission. I'll drive an hour to see the My Little Pony Movie, but that's about it. So, I had an unrequited desire to see Barbie. I found it on eBay, on Blu-ray, UK import, Canadian seller (or just a Canadian division), free delivery, and delivery by mail. Mail! Oh yes, le gusta.

It arrived fast, two weeks early. It wasn't terrible. It had a very funny (and disturbing) 2001 A Space Odyssey spoof, a great Barbie world, plausible Quest, and then it slid a bit with the Real World and Ken takeover, kidnapping/deprogramming interventions and the Long Walk in the Snow. Not literal snow. 'Tain't Canada. So worth it enough to also watch the "making of" extras but otherwise. It was alright. Except the CEO bunch. There must be a CEO line of dolls I've never heard of.

Last year I saw Predator: Badlands, it was everything I hoped it would be. The perky killer synth was a riot, the extreme deadly ecology was great, and everything else was just icing. I'd heard that Prey, which is another Predator movie, is also good, so I ordered a copy off eBay and watched that. It was alright, kinda. Like, the Comanche have only the _one_ dog and the dozens of French traders are hauling a ton of bear traps out into the far frontier... by canoe? IIRC, the money was in beaver pelts, not bear.

I also saw Tron: Ares last year and it was worth it. The fact that not only do I remember that I saw it but that I still remember the story confirms that it was good. Not great, but good. The whole '3D laser printing plus simulations = instant cure for disease and hunger' plot device is a tough pill to swallow, as is the use of eye searing lasers to print or disintegrate tissue at the molecular level without cooking it. I wouldn't see this movie twice.

Dvd's from goodwill watched in 2025:

Book of Life, Guillermo del Toro animation, carved from wood/pop-up book style, exaggerated caricatures, so interesting visually. Story-wise, OK, somewhat predictable, no big surprises, I've already forgotten some of the plot points. Worth keeping.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Not good. Forgettable even. I saw the remake last year and it was only marginally better, suffering from Disney's family/children theme template. I should drop it back into the Goodwill bin.

More: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (hokey, failed equality), Tangled (I liked the horse), Cowboys and Aliens (worth seeing once), Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter (surprisingly good), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (surprisingly bad), Trolls World Tour (worth it) and Monsters VS Aliens (worth it). I have a few seasons of Teen Titans on DVD, but after half a season I'd had enough. It's going back to Goodwill pronto.