elemantary my dear watson

Avatar
I’m not Sherlock’s sidekick nor that shop you buy tissue paper from!

I was just ‘glancing’ through the list of torrents for the day when I came across eztv offering “Jeopardy: IBM Challenge” for download, coincidentally the game was brought up again during the end segment of video podcast ‘The Totally Rad Show”.  Naturally, this aroused my interest, so I checked out what exactly is going on… turns out, IBM had invented their latest AI, nicknamed Watson.

Being a non-tech head, I can only explain Watson is really er…smart.  Watching it compete against two of Jeopardy’s best players ever totally blows your mind.  I’ll give you a spoiler, Watson won.

No, it didn’t just win.  It blew away the competition.

You really gotta take your hats off to the folks at IBM for being able to create this…but on the other hand, you kinda wonder when it’s gonna come ‘online ‘ and set the nukes on us. ha!

The wiki entry says that Watson will be used for advancing medical science… but why just limit it to that?

Here’s a few TSC suggestions of our own :

  1. Let Batman finally have his Batcomputer!
  2. let it crack the DaVinci Code
  3. teach George Lucas how to direct movies
  4. show us the tactics to defeat FC Barcelona
  5. what women REALLY want from men
  6. run for our next General Election
  7. fansub all anime
  8. tell us if the world really ending in 2012?
  9. predict the Toto
  10. explain what does “42” really mean?

 

R.I.P. John Barry

In the midst of all the insanity of football transfer news over last night, I actually didn’t realise the passing of the great composer, Mr John Barry.

You won’t find me blogging much about music news as I know nuts about this subject, but Mr Barry is kinda different.  Probably best known for his works in the James Bond films, John Barry probably created what is best described as the “Bond Sound”.

Mixing a blend of horns, jazz, strings, brass (I’m not entirely sure what I’m listing here is even correct, so don’t get pissed if I got them wrong), his influence in the soundtrack of future Bond films which he does not even contribute can be felt.  (Don’t believe me? Check out the Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace songs.)

I guess I would probably want to list down one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. One that I actually bought (in cassette tape, no less) because I had a thing for a-ha when I was a boy, but ended up loving for the rest of the instrumental tracks when I grew up.

The album, as you would have guessed correctly by now, is “The Living Daylights” (1987).  The soundtrack would turn out to be Barry’s last contribution to the Bond franchise.  Fusing a bit of disco, a bit of classical music and  lots of that ‘Bond Sound’, this soundtrack when listened today brings a very retro-futuristic vibe to it.

I have included my favourite track of the movie’s soundtrack below, which I just found on youtube, which is I guess my way of honouring the passing of the great composer.

John Barry – The Ice Chase (from The Living Daylights OST)

JAMES BOND - ICE CHASE ( The Living Daylights )

Published
Categorized as Movies, Music

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 3: Filler scenes is filler

NACHOOOO!
Sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room. It's for fun.

One of my early hopes for the season is turning out to be a little underwhelming. The pace seem to have slackened after that inspired first episode. Episode 3 has a few fine comedic moments and a little plot development. Unfortunately the rest of it feels like a too large chunk of fan service filler. Not something I’m opposed to but given the potential the series has exhibited so far it felt unnecessary and thus disappointing. I have to wonder what liberties the adaptation took with the light novels source (having never read the books, and not having a desire to).

Still, it was a decent enough episode (it’s not Beelzebub) and it is early days yet. A lot of time to turn things around and I certainly hope that it does.

Beelzebub 1 and 2: Baby, I am disappoint

Beelzebub
Yeah well…I feel like crying too

Beelzebub was perhaps the one show I regarded as a safe bet prior to the start of the season since the manga is one of the stronger WSJ titles (not that impressive of a feat, let’s be honest). This is a show that got just about everything wrong. Its biggest sin is clearly failure to stick to the source material. How difficult can that be? The story is already there dammit! Instead, we get inferior and incoherent changes to the story, some truly retarded filler scenes in front of the school food stall (the bread and the milk scenes…), and never mind in the first minutes we already have the electric shock joke and the pee joke.

There are other problems. Sub-par art (crying Baby B’el’s pacifier looks like a clown nose, why?), poor casting (Baby B’el sounds bad, a problem when he “speaks” all the time) and poor pacing. Hilda’s introduction to the family was probably the best scene but only because it was played completely straight. Problem though, Oga slept for three days before that and Hilda and Baby B’el were presumably already staying in his house for that period of time. Like I said, incoherent.

This attempt at adaptation is like aiming for the moon with the rocket in Jules Vernes’ novel, and already off by a mile before exiting the atmosphere. Disappointing and heartbreaking. Just go read the manga and forget about this mess.