Timewaster's Guide Archive

I played with one once and I didn't like it so much.

I suppose (simple matters of taste aside) it depends on your perspective. I'm coming from a Palm Centro running the old and busted Palm OS, so to me, the Pre feels like the ultimate new hotness. But, compared to (for example) an iPhone, it probably doesn't look like anything special.

I liked it a lot more than the Android phones I played with. The Pre felt slick, intuitive and natural, whereas Android felt clunky and cobbled together. Android has a tone of potential, but in its current incarnation I just wasn't seeing it.

Those were pretty much my only choices, since I'm stuck on Sprint. No way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks would I even look at a Windows Mobile phone, and the iPhone, locked as it is to AT&T, is simply unobtainable for me in this stage of my life. But, for now, I'm quite happy with the Pre. It's a really nice device.

How many episodes have you watched?

Oh, um, y'know...13. Yes, I'm that pathetic.

Thoughts on Cowboy Bebop so far:

• Yay! Actual stories with decent writing and real fights!
• Pretty high production values..
• Possibly the best music of any TV show ever. I was really surprised by that one.
• They keep collecting party members, just like a JRPG, which I thought was kinda funny. I was disappointed in some of them, though. I mean, they get a dog, right? But it's not just any dog, it's a "data dog", whatever that means, and is supposedly super intelligent and worth millions. Except...it's just a dog. That's all they do with it.
  
  Then they pick up Edward, the super hacker genius who is actually a ~10-year-0ld girl with serious hyperactivity issues. They show her effortlessly pulling crazy hacking stunts all the time before joining the party. Post-party-joining, she becomes little more than comic relief. Disappointing.
• They almost never actually collect any bounties, yet somehow still have money. This puzzles me.
• Only 26 episodes? D'oh. I suppose that's the price of quality. Still, when something like Naruto gets over 400 episodes, it's sad that something like this is so short.

I'm pretty sure that's Reg Shoe, the zombie watchman. Don't remember what book though.

Good point about Interesting Times. It's definitely the best Rincewind book.

Rincewind is in the worst Discworld books. That said, some of them are pretty good, and keep in mind that the "worst" for Discworld still means "pretty good" most of the time.

Also, everything involving wizards in the other books is a lot funnier if you get the background on Unseen University from the Rincewind books.

Huh. I guess I'll be checking out some Cowboy Bebop then. Hard to get past the feeling I'm being set up to watch a Western-themed musical with all country songs.

I know there was a dark period where Pratchett wasn't putting out very high-quality stuff. It was thankfully short. It's true that some are better than others, but the worst are usually merely good instead of his usual phenomenal. The only Discworld book (that I've read) that I recommend skipping is (Faust) Eric. When I got through with that one, I put it down and thought, "That...actually wasn't very good. How unlike you, Terry!"

In the first couple books Pratchett was still finding his voice. However, they explain details of the world in more, well, detail than you get from other books, so they're worth reading if only for that.

This reading guide may help. Read them all. I need to read them again; my main problem is that I've read so many that I don't rightly remember which I've read and which I've not.

And if you do all those things, what you'll have is an American cartoon.