kane_magus: (Default)
A post on WIL WHEATON dot NET.



"Wil Wheaton on His Star Trek Family and His New Podcast Storytime with Wil Wheaton"

"Hi everyone, happy Tuesday! I am so excited for this week’s episode. I’m talking to the one and only Wil Wheaton! You know Wil from his roles as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: Next Generation, Gordie in Stand By Me and his appearances on The Big Bang Theory. Wil is also a super-nerd and a prolific audiobook reader. He has a new podcast called Storytime with Wil Wheaton, where he reads a new short speculative fiction story each episode and I highly recommend it! We had such a lovely conversation— Wil is a deep thinker and one of the kindest people I know. I can’t wait for you to get to know him a little bit better! Stick around after the interview for the hindsight, where my producer Jeph and I talk about the episode, as well as some upcoming live podcast recordings, our new Patreon and oh yeah, time travel!"



Apparently the only thing you have to do to get me to watch an entire hour and a half episode of your podcast is simply to have Wil Wheaton on as the guest for that episode. Like so.

Also, it's kind of funny, because I'm sure most other geeknerds (or is the proper term "nerdgeeks"? *shrug*) like me would know Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica. Here's the thing, though... I have never seen anything of Battlestar Galactica, either the 2004 version or the original show or anything else, outside of maybe an occasional clip on Youtube or something that I don't even remember now. (I always tend to get it confused with Babylon 5, as well, which is another geeknerd show that starts with the letter "B" and of which I have yet to see a single episode. How far in the toilet is my geeknerd cred now?) Nor have I seen any of that other nerdgeek stuff like all that Star Wars stuff mentioned on her Wikipedia page there. What I have seen a fair bit of her in, though, is Longmire, because there is an over-the-air TV channel which I don't recall the name of right now that my sister watches, and it airs a metric assload of Longmire episodes, back to back, on at least a weekly if not daily basis, and I see bits and pieces of it whenever I happen to exit my room to go the kitchen or something (also stuff like Stargate SG-1 and The Closer/Major Crimes and Rizzoli & Isles and NCIS and whatever else that channel [those channels?] tend to air, but that's beside the point). Beyond that, I have no other experience with pretty much anything Katee Sackhoff has done, unfortunately. At least as of right now. So far. Yet.

Okay, so...

There's a fair bit of overlap here with what Wil said in the Mayim Bialik podcast and what he has said on his own blog, but there's a lot of stuff that's new, too. That's one of the cool things about Wil is that even if he's telling largely the same story as one he's told before, elsewhere, he's still able to put a new spin on it. It's not just the same thing, over and over.

At one point, early on, Wil says that if he could give up all of his acting success if it meant that he would instead have a normal childhood where he had parents who weren't terrible, he would do it in a heartbeat. However, later on, about halfway into the episode, when asked about if he could time travel and change something, would he do it, he says that if he could go back and change the bad things about his childhood, he would not do it, if it meant that it led to him never meeting Anne, his wife. It was an interesting contrast. His acting career he would sacrifice in a moment, if it meant he could instead have had a good childhood with loving parents, but not his wife and her kids that he later adopted as his own. By the way, his stories about his wife's children, separately, asking him to formally, officially adopt them when they were each 18 was very touching.

Oh, and the short story they were talking about is Wikihistory. I'm glad Wil mentioned it because it gave me an excuse to read it again (this will be the fourth of fifth time now). In fact, I literally paused the video, then went and read it again, before returning to the video. It's definitely as good as he says it is (though he did get some of the details about it wrong, i.e. there was no "baby Schlimmel" or whatever).

And the fish story is this one or one of several like it told by Michio Kaku.

Finally... I haven't gotten around to it as of yet, but I think I'm going to start actually making the time to go through It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton now. Perhaps even getting started right now, in fact.

"There's always going to be shitty people in the world, that's just how it is, but we can choose whether we're going to be one of them."
kane_magus: (The_Sims_Medieval)
I looked through my LJ archives for the post that I was certain I had already written about Playing For Keeps but I can't find it. I can only assume that I never actually got around to writing it. What a 'tard. As such, I'll be remedying that oversight right now.

Last week, after a span of about three weeks, I finished listening to the podiobook version of Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana (Remastered) by Tee Morris and Lisa Lee. And in the couple of weeks before that, I went through the podiobook version of Playing For Keeps by Mur Lafferty.

Both of these are awesome. I highly recommend them.

Next up is something by Philippa Ballantine. Not sure which it will be yet, but it'll be either Weather Child (podiobooks link) or Chasing the Bard (podiobooks link), as both of these were next on the list of things recommended to me by Starla Huchton. For what it's worth, I'm already a fan of Ms. Ballantine, due to her voice work on the above mentioned Morevi, as well as in Starla's The Dreamer's Thread.

(EDIT)

I've downloaded both Weather Child and Chasing the Bard. I'm in the process of trying to Replay Gain-ify them, but Winamp isn't being very cooperative.

(EDIT 2)

Note to self: next time, try copying them over to the HDD first rather than trying it with files located on the USB thumb drive. It'll go a lot faster.

(/EDIT 2)

(/EDIT)

Needless to say that for all of these which I don't yet already have a physical book copy, and for which such is available, I will be procuring it soon, likely before I go to NC for Christmas in a little over a month.
kane_magus: (Default)
Not too long ago, I posted about reading the book. Well, yesterday I finished listening to the podcast of the book. It, too, was pretty awesome, though it was definitely a different sort of experience. All of the voice acting was excellent. I liked the choice of theme music, as well. It was very fitting.

Honestly, though, I'm glad I read the book first. This is not a criticism of the podcast, mind you. Not at all. It's just that, as with any other medium into which a book is adapted (though, in this case, I think the podcast actually came first), something is lost if you listen to/watch/play the podcast/movie or TV show/video game before reading the book. Well, lost isn't really the right word. It's just that, well... ...for example, in the podcast Stephen and King Cyrus (who were voiced by the same person) didn't sound anything like I had imagined them as I was reading the book. But now, if I go back and read the book again, I won't be able to not hear them as they were in the podcast. That's what I'm getting at here. It's not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but... yeah. Different. It's like if I ever go back and read Lord of the Rings again, I won't be able to not hear Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and the rest. Same with Harry Potter and Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, etc. It's just not quite the same after that.

Still, if you didn't go for the book for whatever reason, I'd recommend at least checking out the podcast. All it will cost you is your time, and it's time well spent.

If nothing else, it has caused me to reevaluate my stance on audio books. Well, if you can even call it a "stance", given that this "stance" was mostly just "vague acknowledgment that they existed, somewhere out there in the ether, but not much beyond that".
kane_magus: (The_Sims_Medieval)
I finished reading The Dreamer's Thread last night. It was quite good.

(Oh, and here's the official website, which I forgot to include before for some reason. Hmm, it looks like that page isn't valid anymore, but here is the author's page itself, which is just as good.)

Copy/paste of the Amazon blurb:

"Everyone Dreams. But what would you do if you suddenly found out that you were one of the few who creates dreams for the whole world? Would you use your power to harness the light and weave it into beautiful tapestries of magic and wonder, or would you fall prey to the seductive siren song of darkness and nightmares? For tattoo artist Aura Mayville, this becomes a reality as she is ripped from her life of art and music and thrust into a realm where good and evil struggle for control over the minds and hearts of men. With a sarcastic sorcerer, a mercenary, and her Spirit Guide as her only companions, Aura must journey through the dream realm to discover both her power and where her heart truly lies. In a place where anything is possible, can she find the strength to hold on to herself, or will she be lost to the shadows forever?"

Oh, and Aura happens to live in Seattle. It's not a major plot point or anything, aside from mention of Pike's Place Market early on, but I thought I'd point it out as it's of particular interest to me.

Despite this being the author's first published novel (as far as I am aware anyway), I think it's still as good as anything from more established Big Name™ authors, be it Harry Potter or something by Stephen King or whatever. She's working on a second book now as well, which is something on which I'll definitely be keeping an eye.

Oh, and for those of you who were in the OtakuWars!, you might recognize the name of the author, as she was the writer for Amara Alexander. I saw echoes of Amara in Aura as I read the novel, which was pretty cool I thought.

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