seelevarcuzzo

High fantasy has never been my thing, I have always been a hard core SF geek. It was only after reading Harry Potter that I tried the magic thing. Sergei Lukyenko's Watch series and Jim Butcher's Dresden Files are by far my favorites. Yes, I've read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series too, but that is a discussion for another day.

Jim Butcher's five book series, Codex of Alera, is growing on me. After constant nagging from a fellow Dresden Files fan, I finally gave Furies of Calderon a go. It was alright, but I wasn't impressed with it. The Pokemon meets historical Roman Empire fiction seemed a bit strange at first, but the characters didn't seem as rich as Butcher's Dresden Files and story development was slow.

A while after finishing Furies of Calderon, I finally got to Academ's Fury. This was a definite improvement over Furies of Calderon, and the characters began to develop more depth. However, the story still seemed to be sluggish and it wasn't until the end did I realise the exciting stuff just happened. A little disappointed with how hard it was to read (because of the slow story), I put the series down once again.

Then, last week I decided to give Cursor's Fury a go. An amazing thing happened -- I couldn't put it down! It seems like Butcher developed the story from the middle out and he used Furies of calderon and Academ's Fury to design the world in which Cursor's Fury and later books were set. The characters, the story, the plot twists, oh my! The plot twists in particular reminded me a lot of his development of the Dresden Files story, which is one of the attractive things I find about that book series.

I am midway through Captain's Fury and the same amount of excitement I got from Cursor's Fury still holds. Even by revealing answers, Butcher has only made me ask more questions. For a series I was ready to lock in the closet, I am glad I struggled through the first two books.

I am looking forward to Princep's Fury and the conclusion of the Codex of Alera.

Despite my cool exterior, I'm a bit of a geek.


OK OK, I get it, you already know that.


However, I've got a hobby I don't like mentioning in public.


A guilty pleasure.


What is it?


*pause*


Fan fiction.


Haha, all that suspense for something like that?


But really.. fan fiction.


I eat the stuff up.

( Naruto spoiler for those only following the anime or behind in the manga... )

YES! YEEEEES!!! Kakashi lives!

I like blogging and I like reading my friends' blogs. However, for the past few years, I don't feel like I've actually been blogging. If you look at my current blog you'll see that almost everything I write is professional, exact, and on a specific topic. If you go back a few years in the archives (for the articles I haven't locked), my blog entries were much more fun and personal in nature.

The problem is, my blog is popular. I often blog about usability in open source which is a very interesting and popular topic. It is read by hundreds+ people, 99.9% of which I don't know. Over the years, I've felt less incline to talk about myself to all of these strangers. Why do they care what Harry Potter character I am or why I'm having a shitty day? They don't, and they really don't care for me to fill their RSS inbox (hah, my RSS feed) with content they don't care about. I also don't care to share my personal side with a bunch of strangers.

As a result, I'm going to try and make a greater effort to get back into blogging. From now on I'll use my LiveJournal as that personal space.

I feel like I'm re-joining the interwebs after a long time away :)

~ Seele

I saw something very unexpected/beautiful/unbelievable/etc. the other day while I was waiting at a light on Old Georgetown in Rockville:

A middle-aged woman in a green Jaguar handing a homeless person a $20 bill.

I don't know what about that surprised me. The woman in a Jaguar? The woman in a Jaguar handing a homeless person money? The woman in a Jaguar handing a homeless person twenty dollars? The entire act seemed surreal as if a cliche. The wealthy giving alms to the poor. If I believed in God I would call her a Good Christian in the sense it is supposed to mean (non-derogatory). I hope the money went to good use. This act of charity certainly renewed my hope for humanity.

asdf