Have an old Pentium III or Pentium 4 gathering dust because you can’t stand the 20 minute wait while it slowly boots an obsolete version of Windows? You can now turn it into a fast (or at least faster) useful machine again using Legacy OS 2.1, a Boot From CD (most of the computers from 2000 to 2006 didn’t have DVD drives in them, so a bootable CD is your best Live Disc option) Linux build. The latest version was released earlier this week, and comes with over 200 software packages ready to run right off the disc. That includes all the usual web tools, media players, office software, and everything else a modern computer should have. Of course, after you have tested the Live version to make sure it recognizes and can use your hardware properly, you can always install it to the computer’s hard drive and get it to run even faster, as well as be able to update or add new software, if you like. Another variation this Australian build came out with last October is Legacy OS 2.1 Gamer, with over 100 classic games, including the Open Source version of Doom. It is always good to make something useful and fun again, and this project does that nicely.
I picked up Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam when I was in the UK for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebration last November, it is a wonderful book you really ought to read. Now they have put together a great little collection of the characters and objects from that story as PDF files that you can download, print, cut out, and fold into their 3D likenesses. Hop on over to Raising Steam 3D and get your free downloads, so you can create your own collection. Thanks to Jenn for the heads up on this one.
The short list of nominees for the 2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel has been announced, and I am sorry to say I haven’t read any of them; time to go hit a favorite bookstore. The titles that beat the other 115 titles to actually make the final cut are:
God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann (Gollancz)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)
The award will be handed out as part of the SCI-FI LONDON Film Festival which runs from the 24th of April to the 4th of May this year.
I am so looking forward to this one, which is a bit surprising since I am not a Tom Cruse fan, or at least wasn’t. But recently he has been doing some tasty Sci-Fi stories with interesting twists, and it looks like Edge Of Tomorrow may be another one. This movie is based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel All You Need Is Kill. Since the film will be on the big screen on June 6th in the US, May 30th in the UK, you have time to read the book first and get ready for it.
There aren’t any real genre films this week, although the borderline horror film Awakened has some potential, as a young girl gets help from beyond the grave as she tracks down her mother’s killer. It won some awards while on the film fest circuit, and has a few actors I like, so it has possibilities. It is also in limited release, so don’t expect to see it everywhere. Even more not genre and of equally limited release, The Raid 2: Berandal is a violent martial arts police procedural out of Indonesia that may be worth checking out if you are an action fan. For myself, I will try to catch up with one of the genre movies of the last several weeks that I wanted to see but haven’t managed to make quite yet.
The winner in movies this week is Odd Thomas, the first big screen implementation of Dean Koontz’s wonderful series. But it is not our only entry; Walking with Dinosaurs is a quality first-person (first reptile?) animation that explores life in that epoch. And Jackie Chan dishes out his own style of channeling Indiana Jones with Chinese Zodiac, although his character is torn between having his monster payday and restoring his cultural heritage. And then there is The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna, a documentary with teeth.
In TV, Continuum: Season Two continues the story of time-hopping criminals and the unlikely collection of people who might (or might not) be able to stop them.
For western animation, Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher is worth looking into. Well, western animation except for the detail that the animation work itself was done by Mad House, the Japanese animation company. But the characters, background, story line, plot twists, and everything else about it is pure Marvel comic book all the way.
In Anime, Mardock Scramble: The Third Exhaust brings the final chapter in Rune Balot’s struggle to bring the man who killed her to justice. It has taken quite a while for all three feature length presentations to be released, since they came out with a full year or better between each one. Now that I finally can get the end of the cyborg revenge story, I think I am going to have to watch them back-to-back so I get all the details fresh.
Fairy Tail – Part 9 continues that excellent saga, complete with all the collateral damage you have come to know and love. In Robotics;Notes: Part 2 the members of the Robot Research Club have finished building their giant combat mecha, only to discover their work is far from over. Just to keep things interesting there is also a robot uprising and a renegade AI rampaging across the countryside.