Aris Katsaris

Google Chrome
Gave Google Chrome a few minutes' try when it first came out, but some oddities gave me a bad first taste of it -- bookmarks only appearing when you click the "new tab" button for example. I wasn't in the mood of fiddling with it, so I dropped it and went back to Firefox.

A few days ago I gave it another try. This time I fiddled with the options -- added the things that were not present in the defaults: bookmarks now appearing as a toolbar all the time, homepage icon added. And voila -- I'm suddenly loving it. Chrome is fast, elegant, and I keep loving that Google-style simplicity of its interface. I made it my new default browser.

Only one major failing compared to Firefox, and one minor one. The major failing is that when I'm downloading a file it doesn't seem to store the location for my next download -- that makes it a burden when I'm e.g. downloading five dozen wallpapers into one particular folder - I ended up switching to Firefox for that task.

Minor failing is some search-engine oddity. I've not seen yet as easy way to search wikipedia as there was in Firefox.

Mystery series
Ended up downloading several crime/mystery series lately. "Jonathan Creek" - a British series about a magician's assistant solving mysteries. "Numb3rs" - a series about a mathematician using the power of um, mathematics to solve crimes. And "Medium" - a series about a psychic using her own powers to solve (or prevent, or punish) crimes.

I abandoned Numb3rs after a few eps, once I realized that the *only* thing I liked about it was the application of the math, skipping everything that wasn't math. I disliked pretty much every character, with the possible exception of the mathematician's physicist mentor.

Jonathan Creek had both great and lame eps -- at its best an ep has several interconnected mysteries, none of them with obvious solutions (or with several obvious solutions, none of which are actually workable), and punctuated with humor. At its lamest (and the writers' laziest), an ep only has one mystery that I solved in five secs flat -- and it was utterly implausible that Creek wouldn't solve it even faster. Creek's female co-protagonist (Maddy) is utterly unlikeable to me though -- a lying manipulative scumbag who lies more often than tells the truth, even to Creek himself. I'm glad they switched her away eventually, though I'd have been even gladder if they'd had her, you know, apologize to him, grow as a person, forgo her evil ways, etc.

I've only seen five or six eps of Medium so far, but up to this point I seriously like: Much more likable characters than either Jonathan Creek or Numb3rs -- the medium's daughters especially are cute as hell. But in that series there's *nobody* I don't like so far. The medium, her boss at the DA's office, the husband, the kids... all great characters.

Sea of Insanity
Sea of Insanity is back. This was one of my top favorite webcomics some years back -- but it suddenly and inexplicably stopped updating. Turns out the reason was the creator's personal life meltdown. Anyway, it's back now. Enjoy.

This amused me: Hillary Clinton's path to victory

On other news, I'm getting back into interactive fiction -- past few weeks I've tried some of the best games that have come out (and I've therefore missed) the last few years, at least as judged by the results of the annual IF competition, the XYZZY awards and the Spring Thing.

Next few weeks I'll try to start again on a rather *big* idea for a work of interactive fiction that I've had for several years now.

Somewhere in between the two, I'll be writing a lengthy criticism/suggestion list for Inform 7, which despite its several flaws will almost certainly be used by me in aforesaid game, as it's pretty much the defacto replacement for Inform 6, which is the only IF language I'm familiar with.

As an addendum to the previous post about improving the last season of Buffy...

( Brief thoughts on Angel's 'Smile Time' )

New default icon -- I colored the version that Jason Waltrip drew of me (alongside a few dozen other fans) for the anniversary strip of Fans!

Also finally updated the European Union icon - more than a year late. :-)

Three movies, all of them adaptations of books, which I saw the past December/January. HEAVY HEAVY SPOILERS for both movies and books to follow:

( The Golden Compass )

( Stardust )

( The Bridge to Terabithia )

Yay earthquake.

Barack Obama's win in Iowa makes me more hopeful of American politics than I've been in a long while.

On the Republican side, I'd have probably marginally preferred McCain, but at least it wasn't one of the more openly pro-torture politicians (like Romney or Guilliani) that came in first.

Bah, keep on thinking of updating this and I never do...

Kinda depressed over the coming elections -- they mean less than they ought to mean on any supposedly democratic nation. Anyone can tell me *any* issue that the major parties truly disagree on? And by major parties I mean any of the five big ones (including LAOS).

One longs for the days of Simitis. Back then they accused us of being part of some sort of Jewish/Masonic/Enlightenment conspiracy, and we accused them of being medievalist bringers of the Dark, and everyone was happy. We accused them of being chauvinists, they accused us of being traitors, and everyone knew where to stand. It may not have been nice or intelligent or calm, but it existed -- the choice of where to stand.

But now, with Karamanlis in charge, there's nothing but what I see as a four-headed establishment (soon to become five-headed).

Could write for paragraphs and paragraphs about how just in the last few years this four-headed establishment has proven to:
- support the murder of children, when convenient, as shown in the case of the Albanian boy "Alex"
- support gang-rape, as shown in the case of the Bulgarian girl -- and the events that followed (including a group of fascists violently breaking up those parents and other citizens that protested in support of the girl -- and most media not even bothering to mention this)
- support athletic violence and murder, as shown in the cover-up of the murder of that Panathinaikos fan by the Olympiakos mob under the guidance of that team's own management.
- support ethnic pogroms under excuse of athletic fanaticism, as shown in the case of the murders and beatings of Albanians in the night when the Albanian team had the bad luck of *winning* over Greece.

I could write pages for the above things. For the facts concerning them alone, let alone any analysis thereof -- I could also write pages for my hypothesis that the arsons that enveloped Greece a few weeks ago are as much establishment-tolerated (and thus in the bottom-line establishment-supported) as any of the above crimes were -- as much establishment-tolerated (and thus establishment-supported) as the terrorist murders were up to the point that September 11th made the continuation of November 17th too awkward and embarrassing. No terrorist was ever caught or punished for decades, no arsonist is ever punished even if caught.

But there's no real point in all this. Greece is moving down its path of self-destruction and nothing I'm gonna say will change that.

Anyway, for the first time am gonna be shifting away from the major parties and be voting for the Liberal Alliance (Φιλελεύθερη Συμμαχία) instead.

I wonder if anyone else has even heard of it.

It's been a while. Ten months or so? Given that, I wonder how long it'll take for *anyone* to notice I made a new post. So I guess I'll just have make this post bright and shiny to increase people's chance of noticing. ;-)

A couple days ago I finished compiling the following, fanart of sorts to one of my three most favorite webcomics, Penny & Aggie and partly inspired by another one of my three most favorite webcomics, The Order of the Stick.



A couple details still irk me on this, but on the whole I think I like. :-)

Too bad I didn't have colored versions for enough of the characters in an appropriate size -- as such for most of them I was forced to resort to their largely expressionless "cast pictures". Ah well.

I think I'll try to be updating my lj a bit more regularly from now on. But we'll see. :-)

To my American friends...

<sing-song>
We-beat-you-at-basketball, we-beat-you-at-basketball, nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah! *sticks out tongue*
</sing-song>

That'll be all. ;-)