Associations: Fringe vs Shogun

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I’m watching Fringe these days, a TV show that started in 2008 and is now in the middle of its third season. Currently I’m almost finished with the second season. The show is somewhat inspired by the old X-Files show. A special unit is pursuing and unraveling supernatural accidents or crime scenes. Usually the episodes are more or less isolated, but sometimes they also return to a main storyline that slowly unfolds and intrigues. Just like X-Files.

I must admit that I wasn’t completely won over by the show in the first season. Walter Bishop is a bit too eccentric and they repeat too many of his odd habits. In the second season there are too many episodes where he dominates completely, leaving the other protagonists as mere bystanders. Nevertheless the show is still starting to grow on me as the episodes in the second half of the second season got better. Especially the episode with a younger Walter Bishop was magnificent.

Sam Weiss

In the second season, Nina Sharp suggests Olivia Dunham visits Sam Weiss, a bowling alley owner that also helped Nina regain use of her new cybernetic prosthetic arm. Olivia goes to him but finds his advice oblique and frustrating, although often helpful.

Almost immediately as soon as Sam Weiss (Kevin Corrigan) appeared on the screen, he reminded me of Father Martin Alvito (Damien Thomas) in the old Shogun TV mini-series from 1980.

Sam Weiss (Fringe) and Father Alvito (Shogun)
Sam Weiss in Fringe and Father Alvito in Shogun.

The resemblance is almost uncanny. Not just because the two actors look so much like each other, but also in the way they act. Both Sam Weiss and Father Alvito have this stoic way about them.

Casual in Cataclysm

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Cataclysm for World of Warcraft arrived in December 2010, and just like all the previous releases I rushed to the local shop and bought the box so I could play on release day (I’m still a little old fashioned when it comes to software – I like to have a physical disc in my mitts). I played the original game in 2005 as it arrived and I was enthralled. I soloed, I grouped, I crafted, I raided. It was fascinating and I played regularly. This repeated itself as the next two expansion packs were released. Maybe the game was starting to grate a little, but I still soloed, grouped, crafted and raided. In other words, I was still dedicated.

Vashj'ir
Vashj’ir owes a lot to Pixar’s Finding Nemo.

This time around I just haven’t been able to capture that feeling again. I have been playing my Paladin in the high-level zones – Mount Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm and currently I’m level 84 in Uldum. It’s indeed very pretty and the quests are often hilarious and sometimes ingenious. The blocky low-polygon graphics annoys me, but it also did that in 2005 so that hasn’t changed. It looks like the textures have improved, however, which makes it a little easier to tolerate the lack of polygons. The underwater zone in Vashj’ir felt very different and the atmosphere in Deepholm was really good (it reminded me Mines of Moria in LOTRO, the best interior zones I have ever seen in an MMORPG).

What I’ll Be Writing About

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This is my only blog and I intend to write about all the stuff that interests me and not just keep to one subject. It may seem logical at first, but I’ve noticed that many bloggers keep to one subject per blog and instead have more than one. I understand this from an SEO point of view, but I’m not all that concerned about that (at least not to begin with). As long as I keep topics separated in logical categories, I think it will work out just fine.

Typing

Here are some of the ideas I have for frequent topics in this blog.

Welcome to Chordian 2.0

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Addendum: Note that most of the sections mentioned below does not exist in the 2015 edition of this blog. The post also references my first WordPress theme, Anachronox, which was more tight and used shadow effects. In this and the following 2011 posts I have changed all links that are now obsolete to show a red color.


Welcome to the second version of my web site! The old metallic design (which I started in 2006) is history and the new one is now a genuine WordPress blog. Quite a lot have changed since I now have access to PHP and MySQL. Don’t worry, the good old sections are still there, I just revised them a bit. In fact, I completely rewrote some of them to make use of a server database instead.

WordPress Logo

Introducing these technologies feels a little like finally growing up. WordPress supports a great comment system and I intend to start writing real blog posts. I’m very excited about the overhaul and I hope you like the minimalistic design. Instead of just using an existing theme I decided to create my own. This gave me complete control and also taught me how to develop for WordPress.

So, what has changed?