http://www.look-themovie.com

A movie shot entirely through surveillance cameras. I gotta see this when I get the chance. Be sure and check out user uploaded videos on this site. Watch the trailer first though.

The photos here I had to take with my cell phone. They are not exactly clear but you can get a general idea.

I must tell the story of our adventure into the Sprint Center, the new Massive Glass Bubble in downtown Kansas City. This was our first venture into the place, and it looks good from the street but… Anyway, more on the Sprint later. This story is about our seating. When we scanned in our tickets an alarm went off. We went with a friend of Lucy’s from work and her husband. He went in first and the scanner buzzed with a warning, saying that our seats had been “reassigned.”

We had heard stories from earlier events – the place only opened a few months ago – where people were somehow sold seats that didn’t exist. You know how these things only happen to other people. Well I don’t know if our seat numbers didn’t exist or were somehow double sold. I tend to think the latter. Anyway, we had to go to the box office and get our new tickets. By the time we sat down we’d missed about 10-15 minutes of the show.

We were pissed that we had to get new tickets and missed the opening, but the seats to which we were reassigned were 14th row on the floor – center. And nobody sat in front of Lucy. She’s not very tall and she doesn’t like floor seats because Wilt Chamberlain’s relatives tend to sit in front of her. So, once we got to our seats we had a prime location to really enjoy the lasers and pyrotechnics, not to mention the music.

I’m not a construction expert, I just play one on the internet, but I was not impressed once we got inside the Bubble. We agreed that there was evidence of shoddy construction. However, the place served our purposes well today; maybe I’m just getting caught up in the general dissatisfaction as reported by the KC media. I’ve read complaints in the KC Star more than once about the manual toilet flushers. Some folks can’t believe that they didn’t put in automatic flushers.

The Sprint was built for basketball though, and I would love to take in a hoops game there sometime. The TSO guy said that they sold out 24,000 seats for the show this afternoon. They did a second show that same evening at 8pm. So I guess they’ll take home some cash.

I wonder if the nickname will simply be “the Sprint?” I think they should call it “The Bubble.” That’s what it looks like – at least to me.

The idea is you take the month of November and write a 50,000 word novel. All you do is write it and upload to verify the word count. Nobody reads it or judges it. The only goal is that you spit out 50,000 words and call it a novel. If you click on that banner you will find my current word count. As I type this I'm about halfway there. I'm not sure if I'm going to let anybody read my novel or not. The story isn't that bad, but I'm sure I'll want to give it a serious edit before putting it out for consumption. This is fun. The website is a community and you can make contact with others in your area who are participating. According to the site there are 71 people in Lawrence writing a novel right now.

The comments still don't work. If I turn off the comments then you won't be able to read the comments that were successfully entered.

"Yes?" she asks, compressing so much data in the the twenty-four-bit monosyllable that if you could patent the algorhythm, you would be set for life.

A bampot is a crazy person. A ned is a non-educated delinquent. A scunner is something that makes you sick or depressed. If you don't know UK/Scottish slang any better than I do you might want to have the Urban Dictionary open while you read this. The UD is quite useful when it comes to acronyms too. Like ARG (Alternate Reality Game). Which Mr Stross (Charles, the author) uses liberally. I'm sorry but I really don't enjoy having to stop and try and figure out what a MOP is.

If you can deal with the dialect and the abbreviations, you will probably really enjoy this story. Reading this novel reminded me of my frustration with British films. I can barely understand the dialog because of the slang and bloody accents.

Halting State is set in the near future, circa 2018, and somebody pulls a bank robbery. Bank robberies aren't that remarkable content for a suspense/mystery novel, except that this one takes place inside of an online Everquest-type role-playing game. The robbery is carried out by a gang of orcs, who have brought along a dragon. The bank they rob consists of safety deposit boxes for players' treasures and weapons. This wouldn't seem like such a big deal, excepting that if enough players quit the game, the managing company's IPO could seriously tank.

Hayek Associates, the managing company, is located in Edinburgh, but the auditing team hired by Hayek's parent company is brought in from "the south", AKA London. The auditors learn that Hayek has a work-at-home programmer whom they haven't seen for a few days.

The main characters are an Edinburgh policewoman, who the CTO mistakenly calls immediately after the virtual heist. (He should've called the white-collar cops instead of the blue-collar.) Elaine, the forensic accountant brought in from London, who likes medieval swordplay, and who turns out to like the local programming consultant her firm hires to help out. You get the story from each of the three alternating points of view. I liked this method of storytelling.

Halting State by Charles Stross is ultimately a fun read. Like I said above, I had a little trouble with the language but that just made it educational, once I looked up the terms. William Gibson fans and others who like "speculative fiction" should really dig on this book.

I seem to be more into novels these days than movies. Perhaps I need to add a form of media to my header graphic. I've always liked that header but it's been up there for a while. The comments still don't work.