Castle (2009) [/] This is a network television crime mystery comedy-drama series. NY Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) is at first forced then is resigned to having mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) as her partner he's very good at inventing scenarios and noticing unusual clues but it grates on her no-nonsense style of detective work. Later on a romance develops which runs throughout the series. I've been watching this series on-and-off for years and this last stretch was season 5 to 7.4 which is not that much different than previous seasons since this is an episodic show (i.e. the episodes can be played in any order and you don't miss much other than the Beckett-Castle romance progressing). It's a nice background show in that you can watch it while doing something else, miss half the episode, and still roughly know what happened.

Starhyke (2009) [/] British science fiction comedy series of six 45-minute episodes filmed in 2004 but not released until 2009. In the far future humans have purged all their emotions and conquered or exterminated all other races in the galaxy. Captain Belinda Blowhard (Claudia Christian) of the Nemesis tries to stop a Reptid ship from going back in time to destroy humanity. But the Nemesis is caught in the time jump whilst the Reptid compassion bomb infects the crew with emotions. Now in the 21st century the Nemesis still has to stop the Reptids whilst the crew struggles with human emotions (mostly leading to a lot of sex jokes and sex). The series parodies other science fiction tv and movie media (e.g. chief of security is the always angry Wu Oof played by Rachel Grant). It’s funny at times and rather low brow humor. The 45-minute format allows for longer single-episode stories

Pro Snooker & Pool 2025+ (2022) [/] Play one of various versions of pool/snooker with a variety of tables. You control shot power, can spin the ball, and the UI shows you where the first ball hits goes. Feels more like a computer game port in that the graphics are not great and the UI is not great. But seems like a serviceable simulation.

Moonshot - A Journey Home+ (2022) [/] A gravity game. The anthropomorphic moon went through a wormhole and is lost and trying to get back to Mother Earth. In each level you fling it around gravity wells (and if planets you can enter orbit and then another fling) and into the exit wormhole. Pick up coins and probably do other things. Cutesy game but not that interesting.

The Roasted Crab, Santa Clara [+] Went here for lunch with my brother (the location is at Mercado Shopping Center). Catfish basket ($18) was delicious with lots of catfish and standard tasting French fries. Also garlic noodles ($11) which was also quite good. Would like to come here again next year during DDC.

The Interpreter is a Chinese romance drama running 42 45-minute episodes.

The setting is Shanghai's IAI (International Academy of Interpretation?) where Cheng Jiayang (Huang Xuan) is the young hotshot Chinese-French interpreter who is very demanding of his students. In the new trainee class is aspiring interpreter Qiao Fei (Yang Mi) who already had a bad run-in with Jiayang a couple years ago in Switzerland.

He already thinks she's not cut out to be an interpreter so he's especially hard on her but she perseveres and slowly a romance develops. But it turns out she used to date Jiayang's older brother Goa Jiaming (Gao Weiguang) and left Jiaming without saying goodbye and taking $100k (though that's a misunderstanding that is not cleared until halfway through the series). In any case that means Jiayang's mom is against Qiao Fei having anything to do with her sons.

On the good side the leads make a good looking couple (though in the Switzerland scenes Jiayang has an awful haircut) and Qiao Fei's roommate, small time actress Wu Jiayi (Li Xirui/Sierra Lee), is also quite attractive and has her own romantic subplot.

Unfortunately the series has lots of annoyances. Naturally a lot of translating into French which is obviously dubbed because it's out of sync with the mouth movements and the voices are different people. Several times they go to Switzerland but that must have been filmed at one time since Jiayang has a different haircut and actually kind of looks different so it's funny when he's in Shanghai looking great in one scene then travels to Switzerland and looks like his old self in the next scene.

There is a lot of skipping ahead and then barely referencing what was omitted. For example Jiayi meets a famous actor who gives her a ride in his van and then a couple of episodes later they're breaking up with no appearances in between. Or when another character gets married and a few episodes later we get back to them and her husband is abusing her and apparently it's been going on for a while. The main plot also sometimes seems to skip things.

As for the main characters they're both too secretive, especially Qiao Fei. In order to spare the other's feeling they'll both lie. This always backfires leading to people thinking one or the other is doing bad things or they are discovered in the lie. But apparently they don't learn and keep lying to each other. And the whole Qiao Fei breaks up with Jiayang to spare him in case she dies in a 50/50 brain surgery yet the breakup is also quite cruel to him.

So I did watch the whole thing and there are whole episodes and parts of episodes which are quite good. But this is really not a well produced series and has lots of flaws and lacks polish. If not for Yang Mi and Li Xirui I wouldn't have watched it all the way. Would not recommend watching this series.

The Andromeda Evolution by Daniel H Wilson is a sequel novel to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain which I haven't read but seen in movie format. In the first story a NASA probe crashes at a remote Arizona town and the probe carries an alien virus that kills humans within three days except two people. A team of scientists is sent to find out how to stop the virus and it's a fairly tense medical techno thriller without any bang bang action.

Evolution takes place four decades later. All governments have been conspiring to keep the Andromeda virus a secret so as not to panic the world. There are two variants: AS-1 that kills people and AS-2 that eats plastic astonishingly quickly. Taken together it's an alien weapon designed to keep intelligent life confined to their home planets.

An Andromeda structure appears in the middle of the Amazon jungle and a team of scientists is sent to find out how to stop it because it's growing and growing. It's an international team and it means at least one of them has a secret they can't divulge. There's also the jungle to contend with (though that's glossed over) and the indigenous tribes which have had almost no civilized contact (and that becomes important later).

There are two significant plot twists. There's also some elaboration as to how the Andromeda virus (not sure the original story specified but this one indicates it's more like nanotechnology) has been designed as a weapon. I like how Wilson adds that the Saturn hexagonal storm is actually a big Andromeda virus storm (formed after the events in Evolution) and it's started to emit a radio signal aimed outside our solar system which may lead to a sequel novel.

It's a pretty engrossing story. Very talky and thinking about things and not much action except once in the middle and then more at the end. Rather good sequel considering it's by another author, Crichton having died in 2008.

Star Wars Rebels (2014) [+] Animated series that ran four seasons. A decade-and-a-half after the Galactic Empire is formed rebel resistance cells start to spring up. One such cell is led by Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall) and consists of Jedi not-quite-Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr), his eventual protege Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), Mandalorian weapons designer Sabine Wren (Tiya Sircar), Lasat former honor guard Zeb Orrelios (Steve Blum), and the irascible astromech Chopper (Dave Filoni). Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) makes some guest appearances and later on Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) is the Big Bad. This series makes the Ahsoka live-action series make more sense — not that it was particularly confusing but a lot of back story stuff in Ahsoka is developed in Rebels. Chopper is of course the best character in Rebels.

Flow (2024) [/] Animated film with no dialogue. A feral cat is caught up in a flood that drowns his homeland. He manages to escape on a small sailboat inhabited by a capybara. As the boat moves along they pick up a lemur, a dog, and a big white long-legged bird (secretary bird). The boat moves along the flooded land and they have adventures. And then the waters recede and the four (minus the bird) find themselves together perhaps lifelong friends… It’s not bad animation. Gets a bit psychedelic at times. At the end I’m not sure there was a point to the story other than this cat experiences this world-ending event.

Gear.Club Stradale (2022) [-] Apple Arcade. Italian driving game with pretty realistic physics such that in the first race — on a two lane mountain road — it's really hard to pass much less pass half a dozen cars to qualify. Not the game for me. But it is a nice looking game.

Sonic Dash+ (2022) [-] Apple Arcade. You play Sonic the Hedgehog running down a three-lane track. Pick up gold, zoom over monsters, jump and duck, activate powers. It's like an endless runner turned into levels. Maybe too much of a kid's game.

Pho Hoa & Jazen Tea, Mercado Shopping Center, Santa Clara [/] Came for dinner during DDC. Standard food. Was fine with a loud kid. Apparently part of a sizable chain. Was fairly full of people when we ate there.

The Last Kingdom is a five-season British historical drama set during the early 10th century following the course of uniting the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into England whilst those same kingdoms are beset by Viking invaders coming to conquer and make a new home in the British Isles.

Based on Bernard Cornwell's novels (who also wrote the Sharpe novels which I love and I think he has another series set during the American Revolution) the main protagonist is the fictional Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon). HIs father is betrayed, Uhtred is sold to the Vikings and he loses his ancestral home (in Northumbria, which borders Scotland) to his uncle. Uhtred is raised from about 10 years old as a Viking so he grows up a man of two worlds (a big theme of the show is the struggle of Christians vs Pagans).

After his adopted family is betrayed (again instigated by Uhtred's uncle) he ends up going to the Saxons and serving under the Wessex King Alfred (David Dawson) as a mercenary and Viking expert and as the seasons go on he rises through the ranks to become a minor lord. Meanwhile there is politics amongst Wessex (in the southern coast), Mercia (in the middle), Northumbria (in the north) and the various Viking domains and Uhtred is in the middle of it all. He also has many loves who tend to die or go mad or other bad ends to make room for his next love.

Lots of outdoor scenes and middle age structures. British production so they try to make it historically accurate (and Cornwell also writes his novels to be historically accurate but with some fictional characters) and many of the characters are historical (though to be fair the histories are not that detailed). Good battle scenes and I like the tactics shown. I like how the "major" cities are really just walled towns or partly walled towns.

Each season follows two novels so plot progresses fairly rapidly over the course of an 8 or 10 episode season. I did find the last couple of seasons less good possibly because I was used to the series so it was getting old hat. But it's also nice that at the end of the series there are conclusions and Uhtred's story is done.

I like the setting and I think it combines nicely with Pendragon RPG. Although Pendragon is more set in the mid to late Middle Ages and it's Anglo vs Saxon there the theme of invaders is much the same. The Vikings here have their own codes of honor vs what the Christians have and that's very Pendragon. Politics and the various adventures in The Last Kingdom can all be brought into a Pendragon campaign.

The Last Kingdom is a good not great series but I'm glad I watched it because it gives me a resource for the next time I run Pendragon.