I'm hoping for a good birthday celebration. I guess I'll see how it goes.

Tags: holiday

Another World is a weird film with several parallel stories. The parallel stories seem thematically related, but the connection between them is unclear through much of the film. A common element is the threat that "seeds of evil" will sprout in people who carry unresolved rage, and if they grow large enough they can transform a person into a Wrath, a terrible monster.

I'm cautious about spoilers, and I'm staying cautious in this review. Although there's a lot of information in these summary paragraphs, it's barly enough to describe the film's elaborate premise. I don't think it comes close to counting as spoilers. (The Wikipedia article has a more detailed plot description that does include spoilers.) If you want to skip the summary anyway, skip to "comments" below.

Premise

Yuri (voiced by Christy Choi Hiu Tung) is a girl who died, but doesn't understand that she's dead. She meets soul guide Gudo (voiced by Chung Suet Ying) in Another World, the afterlife between death and reincarnation. She's searching for her lost little brother, and demands that Gudo help her with the search.

When the king of Flower City dies during a war with the Nyer enemy, his daughter Princess Goran (voiced by Goofy Yeung Nga Man) is horrified. Her uncle (voiced by Raymond Fung Chi Fai) accuses the king's greatest general, Mok (voiced by Antonio Cheung Chun Shing), of murdering the king. Mok claims innocence, and says that the gravely wounded king killed himself, which Goran finds unbelievable. Gudo tries to console Princess Goran, and the Goddess (voiced by Kay Tse, who voiced Gudo in a 2019 short film version of the story) grants Gudo the power to see into the past to help Princess Goran.

Wheat farmer Keung (voiced by Will Or) of Wheat Village wants to lead a rebellion against the Nyer, who demand half of their harvest. He thinks that the power of a Wrath might be what his people need to defeat the Nyer. Gudo tries to persuade Keung that a Wrath will destroy everything it can, not just the Nyer, but also Wheat Village.

Gudo's frequent companion is the Wrath-hunting warrior spirit Dark Sky (voiced by Louis Cheung), who has pledged to the Goddess that he will protect Gudo. Although he's a grim warrior, Dark Sky also has most of the film's few comic relief lines. ("T" said that Dark Sky was his favorite character, and I'm inclined to agree.)

The Goddess later accepts a thousand-year pledge by Gudo, which displeases Dark Sky because it makes his pledge to protect Gudo more difficult.

Comments

The inspiration behind the story is almost as strange a story as the film itself. Hong Kong screenwriter (and producer) Polly Yeung was mourning the death of a young friend, and read a book by a US psychiatrist who used hypnosis and claims of past lives to treat mental illness, which she credits as the inspiration for some aspects of the story. She based the film on the Japanese novel Thousand Year Ghost by Naka Saijo. Director Tommy Kai Chung Ng drew inspiration from a Tibetan "skull dance" ritual and Buddhist philosophy. They made a short film in 2019, which helped gain funding for this feature.

As spectacle, the film is excellent. The art is wonderful in both Another World and the "human world" (as Gudo, Dark Sky, and the Goddess call it), with a look that mixes the humanity of hand-drawn and the immersive feel of 3D graphics. (Hand drawn art was somehow bent into the third dimension, according to some sources.)

It's not easy to distinguish the directing of an elaborate animated film from the art. Some of the fight scenes are confusing, either as an artistic decision to show the confusion of combat from the combatants' point of view, or simply because the pacing was too fast. I'd call it good overall.

I think the story itself was excellent, but I thought the jumps between the stories of Yuri and Princess Goran were confusing at times. I think it would have worked better to either tell one story through, then the other, or else cut between them more frequently to tell their stories more in parallel. Overall, I rate it good.

It's hard to judge voice acting in an unfamiliar language; the film was in Cantonese. I understand a few hundred words of Mandarin, which is enough to recognize scattered words and occasionally even a complete sentence. The general sounds of the languages are similar, but I don't understand any of the film's Cantonese. The subtitles were self-consistent and made sense.

Overall, the confusing storytelling diminished the film somewhat. It was also a long film, particularly for animation. Overall, I rate it good.

Theater: SIFF Cinema Uptown, large theater, mostly full.
Snacks: popcorn, and Greek food afterwards.

Tags: review 202x, siff 2026

SIFF short film series are usually fun. One great thing about short film series is that if a short is a dud, it's short, so there's not much wait for the next one, which is likely to be better.

Unfortunately this year's Animation for Adults series was mostly a disappointment. The presenter was the lead programmer for the series, and very good as a presenter. But they said that they tried to pick a common theme for the series – things that could only be done in animation – and most of the series were similar enough that the "wait for the next one" benefit of short film series didn't work as well.

Both "J" and I liked the film "Carcasonne–Acapulco" (France) best. It was funny, and had a clear narrative path. It started with an airliner flight attendant reporting to the pilot and copilot that someone was knocking on the boarding door, and was similarly weird throughout. The stop-motion animation style added to the entertainment.

We both thought "Brown Morning" (Luxembourg) was good too. The artistic style was bold, and the plot had solidly dramatic menace.

I mostly liked "At Night" (Iran), and at only four minutes it didn't wear out its premise.

"Hugs" was OK, and had a nice ending, but at seven minutes it felt too long.

Others in the series (in alphabetic order because I don't remember the presentation order) were various degrees of disappointing:

• "Dog Alone" ("Cao Sozinho", Portugal)
• "Holy G Thy Angel" (US)
• "Murmur" ("Murmure", China)
• "Once in a Body" (Colombia)
• "Ordinary Life" (France)
• "With Tapes and Toasts in the Car" ("Im Auto Tapes und Butterbrot", Germany)

Tags: review 202x, short film, siff 2026

Today was another SIFF preview day for me: three more films. Unfortunately, "J" had conflicting obligations: a meeting with "E" in the morning and an appointment in the afternoon.

The three films were:

• Trial of Hein (Der Heimatlose)
• One of Our Own: A Tribute to Joan Roca (Uno de los nuestros: Legado Joan Roca)
• Beat the Lotto

I asked whether I can release reviews on a SIFF social media page, but haven't received an answer, so I'm not sharing my reviews yet.

I also worked on a 3D graphic design project; I decided that trying to do the one I had been drawing in Inkscape needed to be converted to FreeCAD, because working in two dimensions is just too limiting. I've made a lot of progress already.

Tags: 3d modeling, generic initials, siff 2026

I wasn't sure about the first two SIFF preview films today, based on the descriptions, but the third sounded good. "J" give me a ride to the transit center, and from there I took the bus to SIFF Cinema Uptown.

I'm hesitant to write about the film itself, until I get clarification on the rules about writing about preview screenings. (This link is supposed to go to the final paragraph of the "About Preview Screeninngs" section, but browser results may vary.)

The film was Deadline, a drama from Taiwan, by a Hong Kong director.

After the film, I talked with a few film festival friends. One, who speaks and reads Chinese fluently, noted that the English language title is completely different from the Chinese original, Zìshā tōnggào or 自殺通告. I think the English language title is an improvement on the original title, both because the original translates inaccurately, and because it gives away a bit too much about the plot.

I had considered an early dinner with other friends, but I wanted to get home. I headed home on the bus, and J was waiting for me at the transit center.

Meanwhile, "T" repeated his accomplishment of yesterday, walking from school to the dojo for his Tuesday private karate lesson. Then he topped it by walking from the dojo to a Pokémon event, about 0.9 mile (1.4 km), slightly farther. Later, I gave him a ride home.

Given how much freedom my generation had to walk places alone, it's kind of ridiculous to regard the walks as milestones. But the world is different; although crime is much lower today, fear of crime is worse.

I noticed that it's almost the deadline to buy membership for LA Con, the 2026 World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim at the early purchase price. So I bought one.

Finally, T and I finished reading Poppy and the Spy Cat. It was great fun! I need to thank the author for the complimentary copy, and write a review.

Tags: books, siff 2026, t, worldcon 2026 anaheim

Livejournal customer support

The first thing this morning was an e-mail from Livejournal customer support. Why? On Friday, it looked like the HTML posting and editing page had disappeared. I looked all over the FAQs, and found nothing. I looked though some Livejournal forums, and none had been touched in years. So I went to customer support and posted a request for help.

And much to my surprise, I had a reply waiting for me, with a time stamp of 07:17:43 GMT – 12:17 AM here in Pacific Daylight Time. (I'm guessing their customer support is in Europe, based on the GMT time stamp on the e-mail.)

Thank you for contacting us.

You can switch to the Old editor by disabling the "Use modern post editor" setting at https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display#LJ__Setting__Post2017_post2017.

Regards,
Agata
LiveJournal Community Care

SIFF preview screenings

It's been a busy day for me and "J". After getting "T" ready and on his way to school, we drove to SIFF Cinema Uptown for the first day of preview screenings (which used to be known as "press screenings" but press are getting scarce). I got really lucky on parking: first a four-hour metered spot about two blocks from the Uptown, then after I moved the car, a two-hour spot one block from the Uptown.

These were today's films:

• American Doctor
• Hen (Kota)
• Gaua

SIFF requests that preview audiences withhold reviews until after the first regular screenings, which gives me an excuse to finish what I've written later. I've created drafts as entries today, but they're hidden as private messages for now.

Between the first and second film, I picked up our festival passes. Between the second and third films, I moved the car, and went to Safeway for snacks (apple turnovers).

free range T

Meanwhile, T had a karate private lesson and a group class today after school, as usual for a Monday. But for the first time, J and I decided that he was old enough to walk from school to the dojo on his own. (He's much older than either of us were when we walked on our own.) He had no trouble with 0.7 mile (1.1 km) walk. I think his first free-range walk of that scale counts as a minor milestone for him.

I gave our friend "D" a ride home (and a couple of the apple turnovers), then went to the dojo to give T some food (another apple turnover and some leftover breakfast J had made). He was quite pleased with the food.

After the three films J and I both attended, she stuck around to see a fourth film, The Christophers. She said it wasn't quite as good as she had hoped. She took transit home; I picked her up from our usual transit center.

(Or was it The Drama or The Stranger?)

Tags: customer service, livejournal, siff 2026, t

Today "J" and I got up fairly early to go to an African violet sale at the Volunteer Park Conservatory. There were lots of nice plants for sale there, but she restrained herself and bought only two plants. They're wonderful, rather expensive, and few enough that she can keep up with caring for them.

I took "T" to his usual Saturday karate group class, and he seemed to have fun. The class started with a warm-up outside, which is the first time this year that a class T is in has been outside, though other classes have been outside a few times.

I spent much of the day working on my 3D design project. It's going well; I'm making excellent progress.

Livejournal posting is still broken (as far as I'm concerned) on the desktop view. I wrote this mostly on a computer, but I was only able to do so by creating a stub message in my phone in mobile web view, then editing it on the computer. That risks loss of edits if the computer freaks out, but at least I can have my HTML input. I suppose I could use the new post-and-edit page, but I don't want to deal with it.

An interesting thing I discovered about the mobile web view is that editing a message in HTML view produces a message that says, "Editing of this post in a new editor will be impossible after publish" – so I can't use the new edit page after editing it in the HTML view. Good; I don't want to. Nice to have a work-around.

Tags: 3d modeling, garden, livejournal, weather

Note: This is a duplicate became, when I switched from desktop view on a computer to mobile web view on a phone, Livejournal recovered the message that was waiting as a saved draft. Edit: I see that it looks slightly different, because none of my formatting was lost.

Today was a fun shopping day for "J". First, she went to a plant sale looking for African violets. I'm not sure what she ended up buying. Then she went to Costco to fuel up the car; hooray, I don't have to go to Costco on a Saturday!

I continued my 3D design project, and I think I've reached a milestone, finishing the major components. It went fast partly because I was working from an earlier design that was strictly meant to be 2D. There's more to be done, but it's going well.

I took "T" to his karate sparring group class. It looked like everyone was having fun. One of the instructors made an announcement: in May and June, parents of enrolled kids can have free instruction! Parents even get a gi, on the house. One thing he didn't say was whether that meant private lessons, group classes, or both. I asked him, and he said it was both. Cool! I think I'll join in, and maybe try to interest J too.

We also treated T to some screen time. In recent days, he has been watching "scuba Jake", a scuba diver who shows off the interesting stuff he finds on dives. I initially found the show banal. But scuba Jake has grown on me. I particularly like it that when he finds treasures of identifiable ownership, he returns them for free. That's a good moral lesson for T.

A bit bonus about scuba Jake is that it means that T is not watching the Yu-Gi-Oh television show. I can't stand that show. Every character seems to be made of hubris, and they yell almost constantly.

Afterthought: It's possible that the Yu-Gi-Oh show isn't so awful in the original language. But the dubbed English language version is miserable.

Tags: 3d modeling, karate, livejournal, scuba, television 202x

Today was a fun shopping day for "J". First, she went to a plant sale looking for African violets. I'm not sure what she ended up buying. Then she went to Costco to fuel up the car; hooray, I don't have to go to Costco on a Saturday!

I continued my 3D design project, and I think I've reached a milestone, finishing the major components. It went fast partly because I was working from an earlier design that was strictly meant to be 2D. There's more to be done, but it's going well.

I took "T" to his karate sparring group class. It looked like everyone was having fun. One of the instructors made an announcement: in May and June, parents of enrolled kids can have free instruction! Parents even get a gi, on the house. One thing he didn't say was whether that meant private lessons, group classes, or both. I asked him, and he said it was both. Cool! I think I'll join in, and maybe try to interest J too.

We also treated T to some screen time. In recent days, he has been watching "scuba Jake", a scuba diver who shows off the interesting stuff he finds on dives. I initially found the show banal. But scuba Jake has grown on me. I particularly like it that when he finds treasures of identifiable ownership, he returns them for free. That's a good moral lesson for T.

A bit bonus about scuba Jake is that it means that T is not watching the Yu-Gi-Oh television show. I can't stand that show. Every character seems to be made of hubris, and they yell almost constantly.

Note: I tried to post this about 40 minutes ago (07:58 UCT), but refused to post correctly. Fortunately, I had used the "preview" button before posting, and didn't close the preview window. I managed to recover all of my message except some custom formatting that I wrote in HTML. Maybe if they fix whatever they broke I can put it back. See also my recent messages tagged "livejournal".

Update: it looks like editing messages works on mobile web view too, but all I changed was the width of the dividing line and adding this update.

Tags: 3d modeling, karate, scuba, television 202x

Url: https://www.livejournal.com/post/

I've looked all around in the FAQs, and they say that the "old entry editor" still exists. But every link I've tried to get to the old entry editor takes me to the new one that says "Title" in huge light gray text and "Start typing, add images or just press '/' ".

Some other FAQs say that it should be possible to edit already-posted messages with the HTML editor. That would be a tolerable work-around, since I could post a few characters of filler then edit in the full message. But that doesn't work either.

Sometimes I write fairly complicated stuff in HTML, such as tables. But not any more.

Posting worked normally less than an hour ago. The failure appeared to have happened on 2026 April 25, at almost exactly 08:00 UCT.

Update (Monday): I'm impressed with Livejournal support. They changed the post and edit page to a new page late on a Friday night, and I complained soon after – and they sent me a solution first thing Monday morning. More details in my main Monday entry.

Tags: customer service, livejournal

I received this message from SIFF. (I modified it slightly to follow Livejournal HTML rules and because some of their font choices are a bit hard to read.)

Over the past few days, "J" and I have been thinking about plans for me to attend this year's Worldcon, in Anaheim. Worldcon is the science fiction convention that presents the Hugo Awards, generally regarded as the most prestigious awards in science fiction and fantasy. I had been wondering when the Hugo nominees would be announced, so I could start reading. Answer: today!

    2026 Hugo Awards

I've read about ten of the nominees' previous works. I've seen one of the dramatic presentation nominees: Sinners.

I'll have to start reading! Or maybe I'll consider audio books.

In other business today, I took "T" to his Tuesday private karate lesson, then afterwards to a game store with a Pokémon event. He won four of seven games!

I also resolved the pharmacy problem from yesterday, and picked up the prescriptions that went wrong yesterday.

Tags: books, film 202x, worldcon 2026 anaheim

This morning I pranked "J" by saying that the company that runs the bicycle "camp" we take "T" to had gone out of business. She looked shocked for a moment, then remembered what day it was.

She said, "I would have figured it out even sooner if I had my coffee."

I was going to try it on T, but I forgot. He probably would have been on guard anyway, after an entire April Fools' Day at school.

At home, T has been playing chess a lot on the computer. While J and I try to limit his screen time, we think chess is a good thing to do.

I took T to his usual Wednesday karate group class. He seemed to have fun there.

On the way home, I took a detour to our favorite independent book store. I wanted A Sorceress Comes to Call in hardcopy; I had read an Epub edition from the Hugo Awards voters' package, but I wanted it in hardcopy. Why? Because the author, Ursula Vernon (often credited as "T Kingfisher") is guest of honor at this weekend's Norwescon science fiction convention. I loved the book, and I can't get the Epub autographed.

My craft project was finishing the laser cutting project I just glued. I used Danish Oil – which may or may not be a Danish invention, but almost certainly wasn't Danish made. I asked for advice from the maker space people, and was told it's good stuff. It's drying now. I may apply a second coat to the top, but I think the sides are nice enough already.

Tags: books, craft, fantasy fiction, holiday, t

Today I did some gluing on the project I laser cut yesterday. I started with some hidden gussets, which was a good move, because I glued them slightly wrong, and had to do them over. Then I glued brace blocks to the top and sides, which was complicated because I had to keep the top and sides in position together with clamps on the outside, then also press the brace blocks into the joints between top and sides with diagonal force. I'll take a look at them before I go to bed.

I took "T" to his karate private lesson and his Monday night group class. He was cheerful about it.

Athough T is quite old enough to read for himself, I've been reading The Adventures of Poppy and the Spy Cat: Theft at the Dead Letter Hotel, by L Ana Ellis, to him most nights before bed. I missed reading to him yesterday, so tonight I asked him whether he'd like two chapters tonight. He thought about it for a moment, and decided, "No, just one so I can keep enjoying the book longer." The book was a gift from the author; I'll have to write to tell her about that when I tell her we finished it.

Tags: books, craft, t

Santa Claus: "Be sure to leave out milk and cookies for Brutus tonight."

William Shakespeare: "You can leave out as many cookies as you want, but he'll only et two."

Tags: humor

My main project today was playing with Deepnest, which I had been meaning to do since a guy at the maker space suggested it on Monday, or at least since I decided both of my laser cutting projects were ready to cut. It's pretty amazing, but rather slow on the Windows machine I usually use. I got a bit frustrated with the speed, and tried it on our fastest machine, but the Linux installer didn't work. Back to the Windows machine.

Anyway, I've only managed to finish the layout of the project I plan to cut from wood. Maybe I'll get the other one done too. Ingenious as Deepnest is, however, I ended up figuring out a better layout myself – but only after getting ideas from the layouts Deepnest produced. It probably never would have found the layout I found, because I had parts laid out about 1.75° out of vertical. If the wood grain were absolutely parallel, that might be visible, but I don't think it will show on the actual wood. I'm hoping to test it tomorrow.

I also took "T" to his karate group sparring class, which I think he enjoyed, and stopped in at a grocery store for chocolate chips. And thanks to the chocolate chips, "J" made us some bar cookies, which were delicious.

Tags: computers, craft, food, geek appeal

Today we had a nice Festivus at home. We didn't really do any Festivus celebrations; we normally do our "airing of grievances" promptly when we have them, and "feats of strength" as needed. But I had a Festivus pole set up for the occasion. We couldn't find our usual pre-wired Christmas tree, so the Festivus pole is doing double duty.
I took a photo that I might get around to adding to this page.

Yesterday I sold books at Twice Sold Tales, and apparently the reason the owner was so pleased with the load was that at least a few of the books were rare. She paid a lot more than I had expected, and now they're on the store's web page, priced at a lot more than she paid. Our friend got a respectable payment, and the store got valuable books. Although our friend got a chunk of money for the books, I really wish she had planned ahead better, and sold the books on-line instead.

Several months ago, I bought a bunch of Usagi Yojimbo graphic novels in digital editions from Humble Bundle for "T". I downloaded them onto his computer and largely forgot about them. But yesterday I remembered them and suggested that he read them. He didn't, yesterday, but today he dived in, and is really enjoying them. I'm glad he's enjoying them.

I really have to monitor T if I want to limit his screen time. He's really clever at (partially) defeating Windows parental controls. For the Usago Yojimbo books, I half watched what he was doing, and kept extending his screen time allotment. I wish I had a better parental control system, with web site whitelisting and internet lockout hours. If all he did was read graphic novels on the computer, I'd be fine with unrestricted hours.

Tags: books, computers, holiday, note to self

This adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! falls far short of the 1966 version.

This version features Jim Carrey as the Grinch, but it often feels more like Jim Carrey in a truly excellent Grinch costume than the Grinch; he was just two manic a lot of the time. Christine Baranski was excellent as Martha May Whovier, who is an atypically sympathetic wealthy character. Taylor Momsen, then age seven, was impressive as Cindy Lou Who.

The directing by Ron Howard was solid. The script by Jeffrey Price M & Peter S Seaman felt very stretched – which makes sense, given that it was 105 minutes, the 1966 version was 24 minutes, and the book as read by Dr Seuss himself was about 13 minutes. Some of the expansion is good comedy, but a lot of it just feels like filler.

Overall, I rate it fair. Maybe I'd rate it better if I weren't comparing it to the excellent 1966 adaptation, but I kind of doubt it.

Audience: 3 (streaming, with one annoying ad break)
Snacks: none.

Tags: film 200x, review 200x

This morning at 7:03 am PST, the Sun reached its southern extreme. We were asleep.

Today I took "T" to his usual Sunday appointment. It went well.

Meanwhile, "J" baked brownies. They were delicious!

This evening, I went to my Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding libraries, looking for things for T to read on our ancient tablet. The tablet is so old that it's difficult to complete the downloads; it limped for while a while before I finally got one file to load. It might be time to retire this one, but using it as a PDF reader is a good way to get a little more life out of it.

Tags: fantasy fiction, food, gadgets, holiday

Today I took "T to karate group class, as usual. He likes the older kids' class better than the younger kids' class. While he was in class, I went to the post office to mail a holiday gift to my friend "K"; postage was about twice the cost of the nominal gift. On the way home, T and I stopped at Staples to pick up the printed graphic design project, but it wasn't finished printing yet.

Later, I drove "J" to an in-person holiday get-together with several of her friends. I didn't want to intrude, so I just parked myself halfway down a flight of stairs and read Locus for a while. Her friends invited me to the snack table afterward, and thanked me for driving J there. They're nice people.

While we were on the way to the get-together, I got a robocall from Staples to say that the print job was finished, so on the way home J and I stopped in to pick it up. The job was done by the same guy who took my order the other day. I think maybe he had doubts about explaining how to do it right to another employee and did it himself. Anyway, it was exactly right. J was thrilled.

Tags: graphic design, holiday, t