Random crap with Uno.

[Bertilak]

Actual Latin rocks.

I wish my high school teacher had understood that I worked as hard on that as about any course ever - just, if you slept through English all those years because you speak the written form like a native and it's a waste of your time?   Latin has intricate grammar, and no way to learn it if your mastery of the grammar of English is not book-learned; languages are taught in the classroom on the assumption that you were awake in English and know the book rules and terminology, and nailing the vocabulary doesn't teach conjugation and parts of speech, of which Latin has half again as many.

I have heard college-level Latin is one of the few foreign languages in our country that does not require students to speak it extensively in order to pass the course.

[Buster's Uncle]

You know, the actual pronunciation of any of it is a mystery, for one thing.

[Bertilak]

I find that hilarious comment about the Latin language buttresses your statement.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno, in observation of the first day of Autumn, the default theme's been changed to Halloween until midnight.  I'd be interested in your reaction to what I did to the AC2 logo for it.

[Unorthodox]

Is it just subtle enough I'm not seeing it?  I see AC2.info and Planet. 

The big box of info with the avatars is...interesting... I don't think it was that big in other themes.  Overall it's much improved from what I remember, but some things don't quite line up on this older version of explorer. 

[Buster's Uncle]

...I may have been TOO subtle in the effect on Planet; I didn't just turn it orange.  -I know it's there, and can't unsee it...

Otherwise, I can't claim all the credit in the world for this one.  I tightened up the top-space a lot, toned down much of the orange to be not so retina-burning -I've always wondered if most people aren't a little color-blind- and the not lining up is probably not your browser, but a problem I introduced and can't lick.  The breadcrumbs/navigation tree was in an orange box I can't move or get rid of - that's the double line at the top of the page "« previous next »" is crowding into.  Looks terrible, but I think, worth the saved time scrolling down in the long run.

That's just standard, the cramping up the top elements for the sake of user friendliness; I worry about the esthetics of it, but every time I check CFC, my resolve to minimize the time users spend scrolling down hardens.  You go into their Site forum, and the first thread not a subforum is a whole page-and-a-half scrolling down on my monitor...

The intertwining flame pattern in the postbits -I don't know how they did that- I had nothing to do with aside from turning down the color saturation on the flame image it uses.  I love the look of it, but I do notice that it makes my vertically-long postbit significantly longer.  It shouldn't be longer than a relatively long post like this one, but just look.

[Unorthodox]

Ok, the header thing is a lot more clear on the phone. 

Clever.  I could nitpick, but it's more a personal thing than anything if I did.  Somewhere, sometime I need to make proper digital stencils of the ones I made when I was 12 and have yet to deviate from much.  Handfull of mix and match bits

[Buster's Uncle]

I'd like to see that.

I'm pleased to note that against black, the PRIMAL HORROR items have just the effect I was going for when I darkened it and fiddled the shading on that version of the image.  Looks fine in a light theme, but better like this.

I can't decide if this context makes my avatar look more 'fallen' or less.  The ambiguity is part of the fun of it, though, I think.  I didn't go in intending the creepiness of the eyes, but noticed it early and left them that way - it works for an angel, especially an armored one, either way.

Did you like Prophesy, Uno?

[Unorthodox]

Christopher Walken?  Of course I do.  Though I haven't sat through all the series.  Wasn't even AWARE there were so many till noticing some on netflix, but without previewing such rated material, I can't openly watch them in front of the kids, so I haven't had time. 

[Unorthodox]

Unless you're talking about the lesser known biohazard flic that features a mutated bear going on a killing rampage....

Then I love that too, but for totally different reasons. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Christopher Walken, indeed.  BRILLIANT movie.  Works as horror, works as a story that asks interesting theological questions.  -They are actually interesting if you buy into the base assumptions behind them.  Dogma had a little of that, too.

Walken, a better actor than he gets credit for, but a profoundly strange-of-affect person -privately, I hear, as well as on screen- was born to play a killer literally without a soul...  (Came on my radar with ... [thinks] what was that Steven King flick?  The book was a lot better, but he was good as John Walker in the movie.)  And was that a pre-Aragorn Viggo Mortensen as Satan?  -Ah.  IMDb says I clocked that one.  He was very good, too.

I've only seen the first of the sequels - more evidence that people don't know they're already finished when there's money in not being...



Vaguely aware of the existence of the Love Canal mutant in the snow one, but mostly because of remembering the title when the angel one came out - also, I think there's a book I never read, it was probably based on, been lying around somewhere in the basement for decades...

[Buster's Uncle]

The Dead Zone.  It just came to me as I was about to post the following.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114194/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu
The IMDb quotes page for Prophesy is full of gold...

[Unorthodox]

Yes, Lucifer was indeed a most interesting take on the character in The Prophecy.  One of the better "creepy" takes on Lucifer.  Right alongside Lucifer from the Millenium series. 


Speaking of the devil...

! No longer available

[Buster's Uncle]

Based loosely on the DC comic.  It was a long riff on something Neil Gaiman did with Lucifer in Sandman, (which I have and cannot recommend too strongly).  I didn't follow the spinnoff, not being written by Gaiman, but I gather the biggest departure from the source material is that their Lucifer didn't smile - he's one of the very oldest beings in creation, more powerful than any but God himself, and the very weariest.

That Lucifer wouldn't have threatened a threatening angel with Dad.

I wonder who'll play Elaine Belloc, and I wonder if they'll even DO that plotline.  They're automatically going to take enough crap just for doing the show.


Viggo Mortensen's Lucifer was pretty brilliant in the blend of ethereal beauty and black brutality, both as written and as he performed the part.  There's definitely commonalities in the concept with Gaiman's take and what carried through to that trailer...