Nerdramblingz

You know how 2pac keeps producing albums, even long after his death? It seems like Douglas Adams may be on the way to being that for books. The latest book, though not officially written in his name, is a continuation of his famous Hiktchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, titled And Another Thing…

(Warning, spoilers be ahead)
The book is written by the author of the Artemus Fowl series, Eion Collfer. It starts off with Ford, Aurthur, Trillian, and Random all dragged into an alternate dimension after the destruction of all Alternate Earths at the end of Mostly Harmless. After that, various things happen, Wowbagger shows up, and convinces Zaphod to convince Thor to kill him. Eventually, things happen, and the gang ends up with the last refugees from Earth as Thor smashes the imortallity out of Wowbagger, Random decides to go to school, and Aurthur ends up scouting out said school.

The Deus ex Machina of the Hitchhiker’s Guide 2.0 saving everyone kinda pissed me off, but other than that, the book is fairly solid. One of the big gripes is that it reads more like a fanfiction officially published than a continuation, and I don’t really agree with that. My biggest complaint is the flanderization of many of the characters. Ford goes from being a goofy, lackadaisical guy always on the lookout for a party to a drunk druggie who couldn’t give two wet slaps about such things as standing up. Random goes from slightly weird and pouty to a full-on Cloudkookooland goth. Aurthur goes from a slightly poorly adjusted worrywart to full-on neurotic paranoid. And, most annoyingly, Zaphod goes from clever but goofy party animal to being actively stupid in every way possible, to the point that he almost literally forgets how to pilot his ship, which he’s been using for years. Indeed, the only character who seems to come out of this with no major changes to their personality is Trillian, who, let’s face it, has not exactly been used a lot since Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They’re annoying changes, but not anything that got me to put down the book in disgust.

The plot is a bit wishy-washy, switching between various characters on a whim, such that at one point we’re with the usual gang on Nano, another time we’re on a Vogon ship watching as a single Vogon tries to save the reminder of the human race, and another point we’re on Asgard, watching Zaphod try to convince Thor of something. However, that’s pretty like the originals, which often lept around randomly before getting to the main plot.

What I can say actually pissed me off about this book is the ending. This is the only really spoilable thing about the book, so if you haven’t read it and intend to, come back to here after you’ve done so.

Ok, so my big problem with the ending is basically it’s just another excuse for Aurthur to get the world dumped on him. Aurthur gets on a hyperspace ship (which, if you read Mostly Harmless, you’ll know is not something that is good for beings from the Plural Zones like Aurthur is) and goes off to preview a school for Random. The ship blips, and Aurthur ends up next to Fenchurch, his one true love, as if they had never been apart. This all sounds well and good until you read that Aurthur is effectively trapped between dimensions, meaning nobody can see him. This was just an unnecessary, poorly written downer ending. There was no reason for that to happen, and Aurthur, knowing what he knows after losing Fenchurch and spending the better part of two years trying to make the same accident in hyperspace happen to him so he could find her, would never get on a hyperspace-bound ship, especially not after finally having the happy earthy family life he always wanted. It’s a bullshit “Oh, Aurthur, your life sucks so” ending that really ruined the book for me. Really, it pissed me off so much that I actually said, out loud, after reading it, “Fuck this shit”. It was just such a lame, contrived ending. Would it have hurt Eoin to just end it on a happy note?

Here’s a list of the anime that were shown during Will’s panel, “Craziest Moments in Mecha”.

Note: For GaoGaiGar, to avoid confusion, I felt the need to differentiate between the TV series, which is licensed in Region 1 and has been released in full, and GaoGaiGar FINAL, the OVA that ends the story, which has not.

Gurren-Lagann- Sci-Fi airing of the dub’s last scene. AKA Lagann Sandwich

Big O – Beck’s RX3 Fail

G Gundam –  Master Asia Intro

G Gundam – Love Love Tenkyoken

Mobile Suit Gundam – Brightslap

Victory Gundam – Tactical Nudity

Space Runaway Ideon – Death Montoge

Dai-Guard – Makshift Rocket Punch

Mazinger Z – Breast Missles

Xabungle – ICBM Toss

Macross 7 – Listen to my song! (Bassura jams out)

Macross 7 – Magical throat lasers restore voices. This is science.

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar (TV) – Various Mic Sounders the 13th system change clips.

Gundam 08th MS Team – Man vs Mech

Gundam 08th MS Team – It’s not the man, it’s the machine. (Gouf Custom)

Overman King Gainer – Opener

Aquarion – Combination sequence

Aquarion – Gen Fudo introduction

One Piece – Pirate Docking Six: Big Emporor

Getter Robo G – General Hidler fight

Getter Robo Armageddon – Stoner Sunshine

Getter Robo Armageddon – Texas Mack

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar (TV) – Mic Sounders 1-12 test

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL (OVA) – TenRyuJin Symmetrical Docking

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar (TV) – Mic Sounders the 13th plays Disc P

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL (OVA) – Mic Sounders the 13th plays the London Bridge

Gunbuster 2 (A.K.A. Diebuster) – Nono, the 7th buster machine, strikes!

Gunbuster – Combination and Fight

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion: Complimentation. (Not shown due to time constraints)

The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL (OVA) – The final fight between Genesic GaoGaiGar and Palparepa, and the Goldion Crusher.

It’s interesting to think about how things seem like a good idea until you actually have to use them in practice. Features that you don’t put in to something, ideas you don’t think quite through, things that don’t seem to matter but do.

I’ll use, as an example, the dinky little MP3 player sitting next to my computer, charging. As MP3 players go, it does everything it needs to. It plays MP3s, it can charge, and it does, in general, everything an MP3 player should.

However, it’s interesting to see the ways in which it fails. It’s never anything too big, but the small annoyances add up to an amazingly annoying experience.

For one thing, you can’t rewind past the beginning of one file to the end of another. That may not be a huge failing, except for the fact that I listen to a lot of podcasts. Podcasts are significantly longer than an average song, even a short one. If I accidently hit ’skip forward” or “skip backward”, which I’m doing all the time thanks to another annoyance, the fact that this device doesn’t have a “lock” switch, then I have to fast forward through the song at a rate of about 1 second of “real time” for 5 seconds of “song time”. That means if I’m say, 20 minutes into the podcast and hit “skip forward”, that means I have to deal with 4 minutes of songlessness while I’m walking to get back where I was. Petty? Yes. Minor? Yes. Annoying as all fuck? Hell yes.

Then look at the iPod. I would not be at all surprised if a significant amount of time was spent at Apple headquarters debating exactly what the right speed was for fast-forwarding and rewinding. You’re never left sitting, wondering what the fuck you’re supposed to do to get something to work. It’s laid out in an intuitive fashion that your brain can immediately parse.

Creating an interface or something of the sort isn’t as tough as people love to make it out to be. If you just spend some time thinking about it, it’s not that hard to figure out how things are going to be used, and figuring out how the most people are going to like it.