Wednesday, November 30, 2011

2011 November Reading List

Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn – Good conclusion for the trilogy, decent as a whole. 3/5 stars

The Dark Tower: Waste Lands by Stephen King – I liked the second book better. 3/5 stars

Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead – I was down with a bad cold for an entire week and this is what I read. In my defense, it reads better than Twilight. :P 3/5 stars

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Story: Navigating Through Fog

It's time for another story. The action is taking place in Shanghai and... well, you'll see.

Navigating Through Fog

This one is part of the SRSFF monthly contest, so please read, comment and vote. Thanks.

Update: Reviews in Nautilus and SRSFF.

Monday, November 28, 2011

2011 Rostelecom Cup

24-27.11.2011
Moscow, Russia

Full Results

Men

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Yuzuru HANYU

JPN
241.6622
2Javier FERNANDEZ

ESP
241.6341
3Jeremy ABBOTT

USA
229.0815
4Michal BREZINA

CZE
226.3533
5Artur GACHINSKI

RUS
221.4354
6Andrei ROGOZINE

CAN
197.8577
7Sergei VORONOV

RUS
197.1986
8Konstantin MENSHOV

RUS
192.6898
9Brandon MROZ

USA
185.4969


Ladies

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Mao ASADA

JPN
183.2511
2Alena LEONOVA

RUS
180.4522
3Adelina SOTNIKOVA

RUS
169.7533
4Sofia BIRYUKOVA

RUS
166.0744
5Kiira KORPI

FIN
160.9255
6Haruka IMAI

JPN
154.7666
7Agnes ZAWADZKI

USA
149.3878
8Amelie LACOSTE

CAN
148.4897
9Rachael FLATT

USA
147.6389
10Christina GAO

USA
117.771010


Pairs

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY

GER
208.6911
2Yuko KAVAGUTI / Alexander SMIRNOV

RUS
197.8422
3Stefania BERTON / Ondrej HOTAREK

ITA
168.0233
4Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV

RUS
149.6645
5Katarina GERBOLDT / Alexander ENBERT

RUS
148.9474
6Ashley CAIN / Joshua REAGAN

USA
138.0256
7Brittany JONES / Kurtis GASKELL

CAN
136.5467


Ice Dance

FPl.NameNationPointsSDFD
1Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE

USA
179.0611
2Kaitlyn WEAVER / Andrew POJE

CAN
161.1822
3Ekaterina BOBROVA / Dmitri SOLOVIEV

RUS
156.8333
4Ekaterina RIAZANOVA / Ilia TKACHENKO

RUS
132.7345
5Isabella TOBIAS / Deividas STAGNIUNAS

LTU
130.4754
6Pernelle CARRON / Lloyd JONES

FRA
126.0476
7Ekaterina PUSHKASH / Jonathan GUERREIRO

RUS
124.5367

It was nice to see Hanyu, Fernandez, Brezina, Asada, Leonova, Savchenko/Szolkowi, Davis/White again. And now we get a two weeks break until the Grand Prix Final.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

2011 Bolero - Alexei Yagudin - Vampires



Well, I guess it had to be done since vampires are so fashionable these days. I'm still amazed by his speed and stamina.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Venus - Erotic Sci Fi Stories

This is it, my first collaboration with SRSFF (Romanian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy). They publish a yearly anthology on a given theme and have done it for three years in a row so far. This time around the theme was love.

The anthology is titled "Venus - Erotic Science Fiction Stories", compiled by Antuza Genescu and published by Eagle Publishing House.

Table of content:
Foreword - Marian Truta
"The Alphabet to Venus" - Cristian Mihail Teodorescu
'The Crippled People's Conspiracy" - Stefana Cristina Czeller
"A from Amsterdam" - Silviu Genescu
"The Truth in their Sights" - Ioana Visan
"Emanoil Popescu, Superhero" - Stefan Ghidoveanu
"The Lost Toys" - George Lazar
"White Stain, Silver Knight, Blonde Panther" - Liviu Radu
"A Temporary Phenomenon" - Antuza Genescu

The official launch will take place during Gaudeamus International Book Fair (November 23-27, 2011) and then during the ProspectArt meeting on December 16, 2011.

Me happy and can I say that I just love the cover?

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Breaking Dawn or Where were the Spice Girls when Bella grew up?


Why am I writing about Twilight? I have a cold. A medium to bad one. As usual, when I’m sick, I can’t work, I can’t write, and I get all these weird ideas. Oh, and how else am I supposed to draw traffic to the blog? :)

So Twilight… well, it’s called Breaking Dawn these days, but it’s the same thing. I can’t find the mini-review I wrote about the first movie when it came out, so maybe I never posted it. Anyway, it was merely one paragraph long, no loss there. Besides, this isn’t supposed to be a review of the books or the movies, I have better things to do than that.

I just want to write some thoughts on Bella. *gasps* Yep, not Edward. Movie Edward looks nothing like the Edward I imagined while reading the books *embarrassed smile* so there’s no comparison there. All I’m saying is that my Edward looked less creepy and less clown-like chalk-white than Robert Pattinson does in most of the scenes. This is the advantage of reading books, you can imagine anything you want. With movies, you’re stuck watching images meant to give you nightmares later on during the night. That’s why I prefer books, but back to the point.

Bella. I’ll skip over the part where I should complain about the mannerism used by Kristen Stewart to portray Bella. She’s usually a good actress, but all she succeeds here is to make Bella even more annoying than she is in the books. No, I’m going to complain about the way Bella thinks. You see, Bella is a coward. Even worse, she’s a selfish, stubborn coward. She doesn’t want to learn, go to college, expand her horizon, she doesn’t want to work, have a family, a life. She has no aspirations for herself. The world moves around her, but she makes no impact on it. It’s like she doesn’t even exists.

She thinks she wants Edward, but what she really needs is a fairy godmother, who can snap her fingers and make her instantly beautiful, physically perfect, and a good match for her prince without any effort from her part whatsoever. She takes the easy route and jumps directly to the accomplished stage. And even then she shows no sign of self improvement, she still wants just one thing: to be with Edward.

I dread to think what such a mother’s influence could do to that poor child. Child protection should look into that, both parents are completely off the rails. They should both undergo a decade or two of therapy before having anyone entrusted into their care. Come to think of it, I’m not sure Bella should even be legally allowed to get married considering how immature she is. Ah, no worries, no one in their right mind would want to marry her in the real world… except for a controlling freak who can’t get anyone better. So she’s screwed either way. Do we really care? I think not.

Personally, I still have some hope left for her character to get interesting in part 2 of Breaking Dawn, and get some cool action scenes at least, but given how long and tedious the previous movies have been so far I better not hold my breath.

OK, end of rant. Send in the hate mail. It will make my recovery more entertaining. Tee-hee!

Monday, November 21, 2011

2011 Trophee Eric Bompard

17-20.11.2011
Paris, France

Full Results

Men

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Patrick CHAN

CAN
240.6011
2Nan SONG

CHN
224.1022
3Michal BREZINA

CZE
218.6034
4Adam RIPPON

USA
217.8943
5Florent AMODIO

FRA
201.3455
6Alexander MAJOROV

SWE
190.6086
7Nobunari ODA

JPN
167.2079
8Romain PONSART

FRA
160.4598
9Chafik BESSEGHIER

FRA
160.39107
WDKevin REYNOLDS

CAN

6


Ladies

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Elizaveta TUKTAMISHEVA

RUS
182.8912
2Carolina KOSTNER

ITA
179.3223
3Alissa CZISNY

USA
179.1531
4Kanako MURAKAMI

JPN
161.3144
5Viktoria HELGESSON

SWE
154.9055
6Mae Berenice MEITE

FRA
145.4466
7Sonia LAFUENTE

ESP
136.3278
8Yretha SILETE

FRA
135.9087
9Lena MARROCCO

FRA
126.9799


Pairs

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Tatiana VOLOSOZHAR / Maxim TRANKOV

RUS
194.1311
2Vera BAZAROVA / Yuri LARIONOV

RUS
184.9132
3Meagan DUHAMEL / Eric RADFORD

CAN
176.6223
4Amanda EVORA / Mark LADWIG

USA
169.5844
5Jessica DUBE / Sebastien WOLFE

CAN
150.6856
6Huibo DONG / Yiming WU

CHN
147.7565
7Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV

RUS
137.0678
8Vanessa JAMES / Morgan CIPRES

FRA
133.3187


Ice Dance

FPl.NameNationPointsSDFD
1Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR

CAN
176.9311
2Nathalie PECHALAT / Fabian BOURZAT

FRA
164.5622
3Anna CAPPELLINI / Luca LANOTTE

ITA
153.7633
4Elena ILINYKH / Nikita KATSALAPOV

RUS
140.3244
5Madison CHOCK / Evan BATES

USA
130.9455
6Xintong HUANG / Xun ZHENG

CHN
126.6966
7Kristina GORSHKOVA / Vitali BUTIKOV

RUS
118.4877
8Sara HURTADO / Adria DIAZ

ESP
103.7588

Eurosport screwed up big time this weekend. The Men's FP was supposed to be broadcasted live and they ended up showing only the last three programs. The feed from the gala also had some weird cuts.