Sidney Blaylock Jr.'s Blog, page 57
July 26, 2017
Comic-Con Week: Thor Ragnarok
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So, just like DC, Marvel also released a trailer for Comic-Con. Their big focus this year, now that Spider-Man: Homecoming has been released, is Thor. Thor Ragnarok seems like it is going for fun over a dark gritty storyline (which was the mistake that Thor: Dark World made).
As you can see in the trailer–Thor Ragnarok Trailer—much of the action is peppered with quips and fun set-pieces. This trailer seems to bring back the fun characterization that made the first Thor movie such a surprise.
The only problem (if you can call it a problem) is that it releases in November (the same month that Justice League releases) so both of these movies are going to be fighting for much of the same audience. Assuming that school and classes go well, I’m most certainly going to try to see both movies.
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July 25, 2017
Comic-Con Week: Justice League Trailer
Image Source: SDCC Blog
Readers of the blog will remember that I didn’t dislike Batman v. Superman like many other reviewers did. I was engaged and thought that, while darker than the Marvel movies in both tone and style, it was a worthwhile movie-going experience. DC released a new trailer for their upcoming Justice League movie and it has me excited.
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Image Source: NME.com
The trailer–The Justice League Trailer–seems to contain much of the same gravitas as BvS, but it works to lighten the mood through quips. There are quite a few lines that are either amusing or laugh-out-loud funny, whereas BvS was light on those elements. For this reason alone, I’m cautiously optimistic that this movie will be received better than BvS. I’m also interested in seeing the interaction of various super-heroes on-screen together. The idea of the ensemble is not new, but the idea of clashing personalities along with clashing powers is what, I think, makes the superhero genre so compelling (well, that and the cool special effects that help aid in the “suspension of disbelief.”)
I’m hoping that this movie will be as good as Wonder Woman in terms of both story, characterization, and visual effects. A great Justice League will a shot in the arm, I hope, for a public that is beginning to tire of the “comic book movie” as a genre. Me, I’d like this genre to continue as long as possible and hopefully, JL can help continue the trend.
July 24, 2017
Comic-Con Week–Stranger Things Season 2
Image Source: SDCC Blog
So the San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) or Comic-Con as it is usually referred to, happened this week and this is a celebration of all things comic book related, but also it is a huge intersection for Science Fiction and Fantasy. While I’m not really a “con” guy myself, I still have found myself drawn to Comic-con because of all the announcements and trailers of upcoming Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Comic Book movie properties in the past few years.
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Stranger Things Season 2 (Image Source: CNN)
So this week, like E3, I’m going to take a moment to highlight some of my favorite announcements/trailers from the convention. Today it’s going to be Stranger Things, Season 2. My understanding is that this series (Netflix only) appears on Halloween (Oct. 31) and I’m pretty stoked about it.
Even though I’m linking the trailer in this blog post–Stranger Things, Season 2 Trailer–I haven’t watched it all the way through. In fact, I’ve only seen about the first 10 seconds (the very first scene in the trailer). If you watch those 10 seconds, you’ll see the kids peering into an arcade cabinet and playing a video game, Dragon’s Lair (pictured above). That video game is one that I played when I was a kid (& bought on my PS3 when it was offered for sale digitally). To steal a line from popular culture, “They had me at Dragon’s Lair.” I’m in. I’m hoping that it won’t veer too far into the realm of horror and that it will stay creepy and thrilling without getting to gory, but we’ll see.
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Image Source: Steam
I’m excited for show and based on just the first 10 seconds of the trailer. Job well done, Netflix marketing department. Well done. *Slow clap.*
July 22, 2017
Commodore 64 Nostalgia
Image Source: Oldcomputers.net
So we are going to be reading an essay on next week that deals with a line of code for the Commodore 64 and the way in which that code expresses itself as “art.” I had a Commodore 64 as child and it was my very first computer. I learned how to program in BASIC and I have very fond memories of the system. I dug out some of my old manuals (both programming and gaming) and I’ve been having a blast reliving some of the nostalgia from a bygone era.
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C64 1541 Disk Drive Image Source: Wikipedia
Watch out–whatever you do, don’t use the “Scratch” command unless you really mean it! As I recall, the Scratch command erased the data on your disk. It also made a really, bloody awful noise in the process as if it was eating your disk. As I also recall, the big beige box was also a pretty noisy beast under the best of circumstances, whirring and chunking and clunking away.
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C64 Tape Drive Image Source: YouTube
That’s right–cassette tapes could be used for more than music back in the day. Most people didn’t realize that cassette tapes could also hold data (0s and 1s) that the computer could magnetize on to the tape and read it back. The tape drive didn’t last long in the product cycle, however. It was too bloody slow. Loading in all but the simplest programs meant sometimes a four to five minute wait–heaven help you if it was a game you wanted to play–you could pretty much double that time frame in some instances. We howl today if a game’s level take longer than 15-30 seconds to load.
Ah, memories.
July 21, 2017
VR Hype!
Image Source: UploadVR
So this post is late for a reason–I went to the MTSU’s Library and to there Maker Space and scheduled time to use their VR Headsets (for a presentation on technology on Wednesday). I scheduled 1 hour with Oculus Rift and 1 hour with the HTC Vibe. These are 2 of the 3 VR Headsets that are currently on the market and after today’s demonstration, I want to get a PSVR (Playstation VR Headset).
It was incredible!
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Image Source: Bestbuy
I tried Oculus Rift first and this was the best starting point. It allowed me to get used to the VR space. It is mostly a visual and auditory experience. It is true and full 3D VR, but movement in the demos was limited. You can mostly stand in one area or move one or two steps to see all of the content. The content is fully 3D and moves all around you so that you can look up, down, around, and behind you. I saw several demos that were really immersive.
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Image Source: YouTube
Moving on to the HTC Vibe, it has a headset like the Oculus Rift, but it also has handsets that are tracked in realtime by two cameras and it allows you to have space to move around and this really opens up the “play” environment. I was able to look at spaces, but I was also able to look in spaces as well.
Whereas Oculus Rift shows you the potential of VR, the Vibe allows you see how that potential will be realized once the technological limitations are addressed.
I’ll talk more about VR in upcoming post, but I just wanted give a quick impression of these two VR systems. They look really awesome and change the nature of the interactive experience. I’m looking forward to getting a PSVR sometime in the near future!
July 20, 2017
Not Enough Time
Image Source: Lifehack.org
So this will be a (much) shorter than usual blog post, but readers may realize that I missed a blog post yesterday. Simple answer: too much work for class. I did all my readings, but I needed to post a response to the readings on the class discussion board. That response (written at breakfast time) took up all my time and I had no time left for writing a blog entry. Sorry about that.
Time just seems to get away much quicker than I realize on days that I have class. I’ve tried alarms, notifications, even SIRI to help me be more productive, but sometimes the readings take longer than I anticipate or sometimes it takes longer to write the responses.
Perhaps if I dictate my blog entries as I’m preparing breakfast, then I won’t have to lose that “creation” time if I still have something else to work on in the morning (I try to only have the blog to work on in the morning, if possible) as I can only seem to complete one or two writing tasks while doing my morning routine. Perhaps as I struggle through this summer course, I’ll find a process that works for me creatively and consistently.
July 18, 2017
Finished–The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams (Book Review)
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I finished The Heart of What Was Lost (THoWWL) by Tad Williams over the weekend. I’m going to give a short review today and I’ll probably paste and cut this review on to Goodreads.com (which also reposts my blog, so if you’re seeing this blog there, you might get a “double post”) and LibraryThing.com
Final Grade: B+ (or 4 stars out of 5)
Having read the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn Trilogy late in high school and early freshman and sophomore years in college, I always hoped Tad Williams would return to the world of Osten Ard and tell more stories in this world. However, after George Lucas’s Prequel trilogy and seeing the mess made by sequels of my other favorite stories (for instance, the original Karate Kid sequels, Alien 3 and up, Terminator 3 and up, and Jurassic Park 2 and up), I slowly soured on the idea. So, when Tad announced he was returning to Osten Ard, I was filled with both excitement and trepidation.
THoWWL is a short book, by Tad Williams standards, but it contained a story that seems to function in two ways: a coda for the original series and a prologue for the new series. It functions as a coda as it picks up directly after the events of To Green Angel Tower and tells what happened to Isgrimmnur and his warriors. At first, I didn’t think I would like the (I think) new characters of Endri and Porto as their banter seemed forced, but as the story went along and their complications grew, I warmed to the pair. The same is true for the Norns, Viyeki and Yaarike, in that it took the complications of the plot for me to truly like them as characters. The first third of the book, I didn’t like so much, but after the introduction of the Norn General, that is when I feel the book hit its stride and the relationships between all of the main players really coalesced into a strong narrative. I can say truly that by the end, I was totally invested in the outcome of the Endri/Porto and Viyeki/Yaarike storylines.
While the action isn’t necessarily on the same scale as in the main MST books, I feel that the action that is there is great and more than appropriate to help change the characters in meaningful ways. A cousin who has also read the book remarked that she saw this much like a World War 2 narrative following a “band of brothers,” and I can definitely see echoes of this in the storyline. It is a shorter, more compact, and more empathetic look at the nature of war than most fantasy novels give us and I, for one, am grateful that the characters took center stage over the action.
Having finished this first book, I can say that I’m excited that Osten Ard is back and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series, The Witchwood Crown.
July 17, 2017
What’s in a Name?
Image Source: Creative Indie
I was once told by a Creative Writing professor to just use your real name when you are trying to publish your work. Her reasoning was thus: it is hard enough just getting published, why shouldn’t you get the credit instead of some made up, fictitious persona? That reasoning sounded fair to me, so I chose my real name–Sidney Blaylock, Jr.
This is seems like a reasonable name–nothing to exotic, right? A first and last name, or in the parlance of naming, a given name and a family name. My father, for whom I’m named, is still living, so the suffix Jr. (for Junior, aka Sidney Blaylock “Junior”) is literally what my name translates to.
However, if you wanted have a complete bibliography of my work, you’d need to look under the following names: Sidney Blaylock, Sydney Blaylock, Sidney Blaylock Jr., Sidney Blaylock, Jr., Sydney C. Blaylock, and Sidney Blalock. All of my published work, be they short-stories, comic books, or articles have been published under one of these variations on one simple name: Sidney Blaylock, Jr.
Normally, I wouldn’t care–when I see my name misspelled on letters and such, I don’t generally make a big issue out of it. I simply raise my eyebrow and note that the person or entity doesn’t know me as well as they they should (esp. if they’re trying to solicit me for money) and move on. In the days of computer assisted sites for bibliophiles (such as Goodreads or LibraryThing) it makes a difference as Sidney Blaylock Jr. (without the comma between the last name and suffix) is an entirely different author than Sidney Blaylock, Jr. (with the comma in between).
My later publications have been much better about the standardization of my name, but some still miss the comma and that means that I have fewer publications listed on Goodreads and LibraryThing than I actually have published, which in turn makes it hard to build up an audience/fanbase of readers.
So I urge you, next time a name comes across your consciousness–take a moment to look at, to really look at it, and make sure that your idea of what the person’s name is actually matches what they wrote.
July 15, 2017
Yardwork
Image Source: Active Care Atlanta
Word for Today: Yardwork.
That is all.
July 14, 2017
Potpourri
Just a little bit of everything (don’t worry–it’ll be bite-sized)
AMC 18 Chattanooga: Not happy. They add a 6:15pm Imax 3D showing Spider-Man: Homecoming, but that’s all. They seemed determined to squeeze every dollar they can out of the movie-goer in the name of profits as 6:15 is not a matinee and they don’t have to charge matinee prices, but the full Prime cost. Looks like I’m not going to see Homecoming, after all. AMC 18 Chattanooga may have just lost a customer as I refuse to give them anymore money just because they are a monopoly (only Imax 3D theater for popular movies in the city). Competition (i.e., other Imax 3D theaters in the area) wouldn’t allow them to pull this type of stunt as customers would just go elsewhere.
*Note to all politicians (current and future): THIS is why monopolies are bad. Capitalism ONLY works when there’s CHOICE in the marketplace.
174 Days and Counting: That’s how long a story of mine has been under consideration with a particular market that I’ve not submitted to before. I personally consider 90 days to be my limit, but I recently saw where this particular market had responded to someone else’s submission in about the same time-frame (although it was an outlier), so I waited, but that has passed and still no response. Queried them about it today. If no response by August 1st (perhaps sooner), I’m withdrawing and moving on to the next market. Personal comment (it is a short-story, not a novel. It shouldn’t take half a year to make a decision on it).
The Heart of What Was Lost: Close to finishing this book. Not sure if I’m going to review it yet. If I do, I’ll post it here or at Goodreads.com (or both).
