Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex

This is the first TV Series based on the famous Ghost in the Shell of Masamune Shirow. It is a mind-bender. Too many stories and ideas to have a go at right now but, I will talk about that which, as a Librarian, hit me most. That is how information is acquired, processed and used. In this world there really is no privacy, everyone is wired and can be watched in many ways. They, the powers that be, either already know everything about you or quickly can acquire that information. In the name of security, mind you. There is simply no way to avoid being caught in this world's electronic web/surveillance. Scary really.

You think the current web is fab, it is by the way, this world's has to be at least two to three orders of magnitude greater in scope. Truly it is all out there, somewhere. Think of all the digital book initiatives happening now are done and continued to expand? Not beyond the realm of possibility, barring a planetary meltdown of catastrophic proportions these initiatives will only continue and become ever more comprehensive, here is UPenn's listing of online books. Think of the variety of databases out there. These will only increase people. (No doubt I or folks like me will simply exist as people at the end of a video/chat reference interview, providing links and/or pertinent documents. Not a bad thing but face reality, human librarians are expensive creatures and I believe currently exist because traditional library users don't want to do without, we're part of a tradition and people like this tradition but money talks, sad but true. Let's all enjoy while it lasts!!!)

Wow, I digress.

Add in pervasive cybernetics and the possibilities for hacking humans implicit in that tech and off you go. The politics of privacy, human augmentation, religion, economics and well, pick a topic out the news and this series and the follow-on second season touch on it. Really these series underline for me what an amazing world we could create with all our tech and just how dangerous that tech could be when used for good old human things like greed, power and the usual amusements. Think of how much more vicious our world could get as we create all this amazing tech that theoretically is there to make our lives more convenient but demands that we share more of our-selves and our private lives in order to gain access to these conveniences.

Friday Film Fest, love lazy fridays!!

So what did I watch? Basilisk, Ghost in the Shell (yes again), Final Fantasy VII, and Animatrix (yes again). Also I played around a bit with Suse Linux live cd on the Sony and it worked well.

But first the movies:



Basilisk

Basilisk is an animated tv series. It's a Romeo and Juliet set in feudal Japan. The warring families are, you guessed it, Ninjas. Yup that's right and it brings all the standard requirements for that sort of tale, and it is great fun. Looks fantastic, great animation and it is well plotted. A few flashback episodes slow things down but the background stories are needed. If you like this kind of stuff, then it is a great example of period storytelling genre, if you don't well, it could be a good introduction.



Ghost in the Shell

If you like anime and you haven't seen this yet, Go Away and Don't Come Back until you do! That's it, step away from the computer and GO GET THIS MOVIE!!! Yes it is important. It is gorgeous combination of traditional animation with digital. The color palette in this movie is stunning and a great soundtrack. Interesting characters and excellent plotting tells the story of an individual in search of meaning. Really if you have any interest in anime and have not seen this, please do! If you don't like it, fair enough, but I think you will.



Final Fantasy VII

NOT a sequel in any way to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It is a movie of the game with the same name. It's a cool flick, great to look at, enough story to keep interested (post apocalyptic world, planet in ruins, good guys save world but must resolve personal issues first - c'mon you know the plot). Get some beer in and enjoy some harmless fun.



The Animatrix

Yeah Yeah it's been around forever, like its the Matrix dude, whatever, get over it. This is good stuff, Matrix or not. Again,see Ghost in the Shell, if you have any interest in anime and have not seen this, Go Away and Don't Come Back until you've seen these various shorts. For me this is not a money making spin-off of The Matrix, these are almost all quality works that stand on their own, mixing a variety of styles and techniques. Renaissance or whatever the heck the name of the background story is a bit weak.




Suse Linux.

I used this a long time ago on my ol' 333 Pentium MMX, which I thought was the greatest box ever, man, and now I think my phone has more computing power less than six years later. So anyroad, I was playing with a live cd of 10.1. Nice stuff. I must say it was a clearer process of interaction than using Ubuntu. To be fair, it could be my familiarity with Suse rather than any problem with Ubuntu, tried Ubuntu thursday and I just couldn't get comfortable with the information it was feeding back to me, not enough and vague. That said, playing with the two definitely got the Linux bug back. But I've decided to hold off installing on my laptop. Speaking of my laptop, I've got Vista tweaked the way I think it should run ( about 3/4s effeciency of OS X is the about as good as I've got it running) and well, if it ain't broke...I think I'll see if can't find a refurb job and play with that.

By the way, Vista, from an avowed dis liker of all things MicroSoft, is the easiest Windows I've used (I have used 98, 2000, ME, NT, XP). My Mac blows it away for usability, memory management and other features too numerous to mention, but for a Windows OS, well it only took a little time to tweak it the way I want and I didn't have to replace everything on it to make it work. Now is that Windows or is it Sony, honestly seeing as Sony send patches, 3 so far, to make Vista work better with the hardware I have to lean towards it being Sony. Anyway, for what its worth, if you've got Vista on your machine (by choice or otherwise), look up "vista tweaks" online and use which ones you feel comfortable applying, they really help and they don't take long to put in place.