A dose of new dope music! And some other stuff. Have at it with the Hex...

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Aaand I'm back again! To work and all that normal stuff. Took my third January trip this weekend, to Östersund and back, to ski with my bro like a pro or a baller, and snowball and fall by the tall fir... but it was a great visit. I'm learning. My brother caught a cold and my nephew entered a session of winter depression due to some unforeseen complications with life and its lessons but... that's another story (and not one for the blog).

A story for the blog: my host suddenly told me I was moving to a new server again (last time was just about a year ago this very day), and so... we moved! It took less than an hour. January 26. I had all domains redirected within an hour after, and the old account closed shortly thereafter.

It took my ISP over a day to flush their DNS, but hopefully you have a better ISP so there was no unintended downtime for you.

I probably spent an hour trying to flush my DNS locally, wondering if something had gone wrong, then I tried a proxy and realized the site was working fine... just not for me. Must be the ISP. If the issue had persisted I found a workaround though: Google DNS. Good to know for the future.

Last time the site was moved it took a couple days, going back and forth with my host trying to sort out some problems with the shared and dedicated IP... so I'm very happy with this year's turnout, and ready to start recommending WHB as one of my favorites again. If you need a host feel free to use my referral link (much appreciated if you do! I get a cut).

The only difference I can see in the server specs after the switch is a change from 8 to 24 cpus... which doesn't say much about performance considering I have no idea how many others I share said server with - now or before, but if things are loading faster than they did then maybe that's the secret. :) Always nice with an upgrade.

I'll be back to posting reviews and what-not in a bit. After this weekend trip - and a crazy busy January overall, it seems like things might finally be calming down, and I might get some spare time to sort an assortment of sordid things out... some updates here are looong overdue.

Shift of months! *ping* It's the cue.

How about a bout of action starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Claire Forlani as criminals in a strange love-hate relationship, with mainly Jenna B. Kelly as good company. Bruce Willis plays a big bad crime boss who doesn't really have a say... but that's OK, because the movie's not that great anyway.

It's not bad, but I feel like they didn't dare give Bruce enough playroom. Didn't dare to request anything particular from him. Or they didn't have the budget. He comes across as a tough guy who... just... doesn't accomplish much. Doesn't pose that big a threat. Is mostly talk and little acting.

The action's not bad, acting neither, the script's alright and the setting is nice, but... what's the point? What are they getting at here? Feels like another one of those movies with so much wasted potential, that could've been great but just didn't take it all the way. IMDB sums it up as:

A crime boss tries to make off with loot that belongs to another thief.

It sounds pretty simple, and yes, it is.

The relationship, however, is complicated in comparison. It doesn't end like it usually does, and it's not just the main character relationship that takes a few turns, but some of the surrounding ones as well. They're all refreshingly untypical. Flawed. Human.

It's leaning towards a two but...

 rated 3/5: not bad

Funky music and epic space battles? Why not! And this time Love trumps Ego once and for all. They're one messy, angry, issue-riddled crew , but they're all family after all, and I do love this family. Only Bautista's character feels a bit simplified this time around. Both foes and friends come in to redeem themselves as well, and new foes take their stead...

I love the special effects too, I love the action, and I sure do love these movies! It's still packed with adventure, violence, unexpected (some expected) twists, creative alien life forms, epic showdowns and unspoken emotion... and Groot grew pretty cute too. Won't ever beat the original - neither Groot nor the movie, but it gets pretty close.

What really sets this series apart from other spacey adventure epoques is they really make things fun! Not just with the wit, but with... everything. It's colorful and creative and unrestricted in ways the other series don't seem to manage - even if Star Trek is starting to get pretty close. Yet it's unrestricted with class, and at the same time it's epic.

They got pretty close to the Gods with this one! I can't wait for the next.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

That's how ut begins, with the words of the dark-haired daughter Elizabeth Bennet, one of five waring daughters living out in the land outside London, where since many years now zombies have been a major pain in the buttocks.

Old England and zombies, a ball, love and death, romantic letters and lots of intrigue... it's an odd combination, but there's really not much not to like here! The action's classy, the brains are plentiful, and the love letters are posh and poetic.

I haven't seen Pride And Prejudice, but it's apparently a movie just like this - based on a book with the same name... but without the zombies.

I wonder if I'd like it. This is soap opera. This is true love. This is like Titanic, but on land, with the undead, a century earlier. And you know what? It's actually not that bad...

 rated 3/5: not bad

I haven't posted anything all Manga-related since this have I? Oh, this too.

Since then I've read out the rest of the Ranma 1(2 books I had, and the books of Death Note I was missing (I actually bought the whole series again just to get my hands on the two I was missing - 1 and 6). I managed to get the final two earlier, and an English variant of Death Note titled #13... that I was hoping would delve into what happened AFTER all that... happened. It didn't. It contained a shitton of character summaries and Q and A though, so that was interesting too. Early promo and four panel comics as well.

I've picked up a few more Detective Conan books, the last segments of Ranma 1/2 (hoping to get the ones in between before I pick it up again), and maybe I didn't mention I managed to get a batch of Naruto, Dragon Ball Z and Bleach in English, and before that the whole Dragon Ball series (in Swedish)? And before that the final numbers of One Piece (which I've now read) along with a bunch of duplicates, and the last number of DNAngel, also with a bunch of duplicates, and some Keroro, .Hack, Rebirth and Ragnarok?

The first of the latter three was easy to read through. With the other two I'm still missing a few. Right now I'm making my way through Naruto, which considering how downhill the anime went I've been positively surprised with so far! Hope the manga doesn't go the wrong way too.

And then, guess what.

Also here's an alternative picture since I didn't realize I'd made one. It's not as good. Thus the alternative.

So that should probably last me a while huh. Manga Mania (coincidentally the name of a now discontinued but at a time very popular manga magazine over here). Hopefully this'll last me all summer, and winter... and then some. And leave me with plenty of duplicates to trade for the ones I'm currently missing.

...and over half a year since I first started writing up this draft, yupp, it really has lasted. There's still plenty to read, and trade, and a few ones missing too... I caught up as far as I could with Naruto, but priorities shifted and me and manga took a break, for a while. I read out the first book of Keroro at an airport recently, but that's about it.

To be continued, whenever surprise amounts of spare time might appear and my maniac manga obsession returns anew...