random bits: links, work, new-to-me TV show

[cellio]

Hummingbirds from egg to flight, courtesy of otterblossom.

Scott Adams speaks sense about flag-burning.

Lesson learned: interns go where you point them. :-) They'll do exactly what you tell them to do, and they haven't been out in the world long enough to encounter nuance, so don't give vague directions. (In this case: swap in this new logger class, and while you're at it get rid of the direct calls to System.out.println(). Um, yeah -- I should have said explicitly to replace them with calls to the logger where it made sense to do so. I didn't mean wipe them out entirely. Fortunately, that's why we have change control.)

I recently picked up (at deep discount) the first season of a TV show called Jeremiah, pretty much entirely because J. Michael Straczynski wrote it. (Well, he wrote the episodes; the story is based on a comic book by someone else.) The show ran two seasons on Showtime c. 2002-2003. Only the first is available on DVD, so there is disappointment down the road for me, but so far I'm really enjoying what I've seen (six episodes). The premise is that 15 years ago some mega-virus wiped out everyone on earth past puberty; the kids who survived are now adults living in the aftermath. Jeremiah and his sidekick Kurdy are two of the guys in (figurative) white hats; my one-word characterization of Jeremiadh is "paladin". Jeremiah is trying to find a place his parents named before they died, though he's not sure why it's important, and the few people who've heard of it won't talk about it. We've seen glimpses of his back-story (particularly that he feels responsible for his brother's death) and I assume more will be forthcoming. So far the show seems to be episodic with a loose arc, but it's early yet.

What I currently think is going on: the virus was a biological weapon that got away, and Jeremiah's father either worked on it or got wind of it ("worked on it" would fit better with the redemption theme that seems to be emerging). His parents and other people "in the know" fled to a place called "Valhalla Sector" (the place Jeremiah is hunting for now) to wait it out. They might still be alive and working on an antedote or vaccine lest it come around again.

Comments

[jducoeur]

Lesson learned: interns go where you point them. :-) They'll do exactly what you tell them to do, and they haven't been out in the world long enough to encounter nuance, so don't give vague directions.

So one should treat them like programs? That actually makes a perverse kind of sense...

I recently picked up (at deep discount) the first season of a TV show called Jeremiah, pretty much entirely because J. Michael Straczynski wrote it.

The most interesting thing about Jeremiah is that it's the story Joe *desperately* wanted to tell. The mega-plague story was the background for one of the better B5 episodes; it was the primary plot of Crusade; it clearly *would* have become one of the primary plots for Legend of the Rangers given the way that series fit into the timeline. There's something in there that resonates very deeply for him, I think.

The series was quite interesting, especially as it went along. It gives no real spoilers to say that it's typically JMS: it starts out looking pretty episodic, then turns very arc-heavy as you find out more of what's really going on here. The second season is rather different from the first in style, tone and plot. On the up side, the story did not simply get dropped on the floor -- while the early termination did leave much unresolved, and the ending is a smidgeon abrupt, my recollection is that the immediate plot threads did get tied up.

(And yes, we have the whole thing. It may be possible to arrange a copy of Season 2 if you get desperate, but it will take some work to dub it -- tell me if it looks necessary and I'll kick that higher on the dub priority queue...)

[cellio]

So one should treat them like programs?

Good observation. But neural networks, not static programs. Ours is doing a good job of adapting and improving his routine.

The most interesting thing about Jeremiah is that it's the story Joe *desperately* wanted to tell.

That's a good point; the motif does show up several times in the greater B5 universe. Thanks for the tentative offer on season 2; I'm trying to find it locally, but if that and a net search fail I'll be in touch.