Category: Misc

May all your Christmas dreams come true.

Incidentally, I’m probably not up yet.  Much to the kid’s chagrin.  My duty as a Dad.

I’ve known it was on for awhile now, but I only just started watching Person of Interest with more, well, interest this Fall. I’d watched a few episodes here and there over the past couple years and I never saw a bad episode, but it never really hooked me. I don’t watch much network television, but I think I’ll keep up with this show for a bit.

I’m sitting here watching the final 30 minutes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and trying to figure out if I like the Azok story line. In a nut, it’s a subplot within the movie, and I suspect the next 2, where an old enemy of Thorin son of Thrain’s tries to settle old scores. It’s also entirely the creation of Jackson, as far as I’m aware.

I suppose something like this was made necessary when the decision was made to create 3 movies, instead of 1. The Hobbit as told by Tolkien is a short book and pretty fast paced as I recall. There just isn’t 3 movies worth of material there.

But I suppose there is the framework for that much if enough “seasoning” is added to the plot, and the Azok storyline certainly fits that bill. I might even be tempted to say it fits it well. The final confrontation in this movie is certainly riveting.

It’s certainly a less offensive modification than Jackson’s epic blunder in The Lord of the Rings where he completely hosed the Ents. I can’t speak for the rest of the LOTR fans out there, but the Ents were one of my favorite characters from the source material and seeing Jackson completely screw them up was a pretty shocking offense considering all the other things Jackson did so well.

How did Jackson screw them up? For starters, he made them seem stupid and they were anything but in the book. Treebeard’s line to Pippin in the movie when Pippin tricks him into going by Isengard with “The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm” is “That makes no sense, but then you are very small.”

Say what? A being that has lived for centuries is tricked like that?

Also, for a keeper of the trees, how does Treebeard not know that Saruman has been strip mining that area? Worst of all, in the books Treebeard and the other Ents recognize that the war is there business and that if Sauron is allowed to return to power there will be no where safe for them either.

Jackson uses a cheap emotional trick to get them to fight and repeatedly makes the Ents seem oafish and foolish. How long did it take to call the Entmoot in the movie? Then, Treebeard sees the desctruction Saruman has wrought, screams, and just like that Ents are crawling out of the forest? Where’s the consistency?

There are other modifications that I thought unfortunate as well. He changed Aragorn’s character from a confident “My time has come” king-to-be to a hesitant and troubled man whom almost seems afraid to act. The book’s version of the character was clearly superior, in my opinion. The love story modification also soiled the Elves, I felt. Elrond isn’t the sort to play the “you can’t marry that guy ’cause I don’t like it” card. It’s behavior that doesn’t fit the character. And the scene in The Two Towers where Frodo is almost turned into a snack for a Nazgul? What the heck was that about?

I suppose that, overall, it says a lot about the source material that in spite of these transgressions, and there are others, the story is still awesome to behold. The scene with the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring is absolutely perfect, right down to “Fly! You fools!” I didn’t mind some of the made up confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf prior to Gandalf’s becoming “The White” either.

Perhaps all this means is that, somewhere down the road, we’ll get a remake where they fix some of these poetic license decisions. While I’ve enjoyed all 4 movies immensely, they aren’t perfect.

Farewell’s like this:

Don’t happen very often. I’m not a baseball fan. Even so, watching something like that is something any sports fan can appreciate.

I spent the afternoon flinging arrows at targets. It was fun. What more is there to say?

Well, if you start poking around the internet at all, the answer is “plenty.” Frankly, I had no idea archery as a hobby was so popular. That doesn’t include all the hunters and sportsmen and women out there flinging arrows. Really, participating in archery is hardly a unique thing at all.

My setup isn’t complete yet. I’m still waiting for my limbs to come in. But the setup I have now is more than enough to start developing some impressions and technique. A not unimportant part of the experience are the arrows, which need to be the right length in order to start developing any technical prowess. I’d been shooting arrows that were a bit short for me because we didn’t have the right nocks to fit the shafts we got. Now that the new nocks are in, I can use arrows of the appropriate length for me.

My impressions so far are, I’ve got a ton to learn. In addition to the vocab, and archery has a very extensive vocabulary, I’ve got to develop a feel for drawing (not the pen and paper kind), target picture and consistent anchoring.

In fact, consistency clearly is the key to archery. That point is repeated often enough in any reading on the subject, but it’s quite another to experience it. Because of the distances involved, minor changes in angles lead to major differences in where the arrow strikes- assuming it strikes the target and not the surrounding land behind the target. Every draw can feel a little different: the bow shoulder might be a little too stressed, the bow hand might not be in the same position, muscle fatigue, trying to draw with the arm instead of the body and shoulder, fingers not quite aligned properly. Plenty of things can happen to make things feel a bit different from arrow to arrow. It’s a bit surprising considering the act of pulling a string seems such a simple thing.

I think it’s the simplicity that keeps people coming back. Really, what can be harder than putting a stick on a string, pulling it back and letting go? It seems so simple that I don’t think the mind can accept that so much can go wrong on every shot. So one shot follows another shot follows another shot and before too long, there’s an afternoon spent practicing archery.

I recently got a new bow.

I’d had a chance to play with archery while at the boy’s Scout camp and realized it was the sort of thing I could sink my teeth into. Fortunately, my Texas-born neighbor is an archer and has some coaching skills to boot. So after talking with him, I was all setup with a nice recurve style bow. We ordered it last week; it arrived yesterday; he brought it over today to set up.

The only caveat was the limbs we had ordered are on backorder. Fortunately, the Neighbor is a generous chap and he’s loaned me a spare pair of limbs for the interim. So, after mounting the limbs in the riser and then stringing the bow, I went and grabbed the boy’s target and went outside to take a few shots.

Here are the results of my first shot:

The shot was from roughly 10 yards away. I missed the target high and hit the slide. There was an impressive BANG from the impact. It was one of those moments where my first thought was “I didn’t really just do that, did I? … Yes, I did.”

Here’s the piece, it’s about 1/4″ thick as well:

The arrow itself was unharmed. It’s flight path seemed basically unaltered as well as it buried itself in the dirt a few feet beyond the slide. I was astonished. The arrow shafts are thin tubes with thin walls. The points are somewhat beefier, solid with about 1/2″ exposed and then another inch-and-a-half or so stuck back into the arrow shaft. While I was sure it could pierce things easily enough, the level of power demonstrated here was unexpected. I suspect a direct shot on a bone would result in a pretty severe fracture, among other things.

Several shots later, and with the target moved over so I wouldn’t hit the slide, I missed high again and buried an arrow in one of the timbers I used to frame a sandbox for the kids. We couldn’t pull it out. I ended up having to drill into the timber in order to release the arrow. It had buried itself about an inch into the wood.

After that we completely changed course and placed the target in front of a hill. Now, when I missed, the arrow would go into the hill immediately behind the target. That area of the lawn will get well aerated.

One of the tricks my Mom pulled on us was reading books before we read them. In fact, probably any book that we read growing up, she had read as well. There were 2 reasons for this, the first was she wanted to make sure the content wasn’t overly objectionable and the second, and arguably more important, was it gave her something in common with us. It was one more thing we could sit and talk about. Her being a former English teacher just made it easier for us to learn how to read a book.

With that in mind, I decided to read Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief. The boy had started it a few days ago. I started reading it yesterday and finished it today. It is a kids book through and through, leveraging Greek mythology to create an interesting story. The book clocks in at about 350 pages, but we’re not talking about George R.R. Martin levels of detail here. It’s fast paced and the action keeps on going right to the end. In short, it’s a perfect book for a 4th grader.

But if you enjoy Greek mythology, then even an adult could gain some entertainment. There are clever twists on the old Greek myths and the way the author uses them to build his story. In the process, he creates his own modern day Greek hero. It’s definitely worth the few hours it takes to plow through it.