The Case Against Robin

Will there be a Robin in the future installments of the Nolanverse Batman saga? Some arguments have been tossed around in the media. Christian Bale threatened to quit the franchise if they ever introduced Robin. Jeph Loeb, however, defends Robin. I can see where both of these guys are coming from, though I must admit I've never liked Robin.

The idea of Robin as Batman's little teenage sidekick has always bugged me. Why would a crazy loner vigilante hang out with some kid? There's Batman, a terrifying figure wrapped in a black cloak stealthily lurking in the darkest shadows...and then there's his teenage sidekick, dressed in bright primary colours and sticking out like a sore thumb. The original rationale for his introduction was to "brighten up" the gloomy atmosphere of the original Batman comics, which were seen as being too grim for its time. There was also a need for Batman to discuss his detective work with, like Watson for Holmes. Neither of these two points are relevant in the Nolanverse.

Ever since Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns became a huge hit, we've seen comic book characters become darker and grittier. Granted, this isn't always a good thing, but for Batman it just suits the character. The dark, grim Batman lives in a world populated by insane people, and whether or not our hero is just as insane as the criminals he catches is open for debate. It's this darkness that was captured so well by Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. There is no place for a colourful sidekick in that world. It would just break the subdued, realistic picture that Nolan brilliantly painted as a backdrop for the world of Batman.

Secondly, Alfred already serves as a great sounding board for Batman. The Alfred we see in the Nolanverse is wise, insightful and sarcastic. The banter between Bruce Wayne and his butler is brilliant and funny, and serves both for exposition and character development. Alfred is the voice of reason, the foil to Bruce Wayne's single-minded craziness, and has saved Bruce's life on more than one occasion.

Robin can be a good character when written well, in the comics. He works well as a standalone character too, if ever there is a movie to be made with him in it (perhaps a live action Teen Titans?). However, I sincerely hope Christopher Nolan leaves Robin out of his Batman movies. Perhaps it's time Robin is dropped from the Batman mythos. There is no reason canon can't be revamped.

This has been your Batman-related post for this week. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, check out Kirsty's article on the Joker for more Batman goodness.

Computer Woes

Last week wasn't a good one. I've had to put up with an annoying cold and even more annoying computer problems.

On the 21st I had bought an LCD monitor for my desktop. It's a nice 19" widescreen Syncmaster 943NW. When I reached home, I encountered 2 problems with it. Firstly, the hinge on the stand just couldn't move. I couldn't adjust the viewing angle, which is frustrating. Secondly, Debian Etch refused to correctly display the native resolution. It works fine in the latest Ubuntu, so it had to be my X server being too ancient.

The solution is simple, in theory. All I had to do was return the stand thing to the shop to have it replaced, and then upgrade Debian from Etch to Lenny. I went to the shop first. The sales attendant did offer to replace or repair the stand, and it'd take 2 weeks (although he frowned at the thought of having to do this for me). My LCD monitor is now in a box and is unusable for the next 2 weeks.

Next was the problem of upgrading Debian. The official way to do this is to change all references of etch to lenny in the sources.list file. Then just do an apt-get update and an apt-get dist-upgrade. Simple, right? What could go wrong? Apparently, plenty. The installed borked, and now I can't even login.

Rather than spending hours to try to fix the problem, I just decided to wipe my root directory and install from a beta Lenny CD. However, the process of downloading updates to Lenny on this awful Malaysian internet line is estimated to take more than eight hours. Right now I'm just waiting for it to be done while typing this entry on a Mac, eating pizza. I love the pizza delivery service. At least that works right. Here's a safety tip though, the soda that the pizza guy delivers is going to be well shaken on the bike ride to your house. Opening it may lead to fizzy stuff flying everywhere.

My cat's asleep. I had to write this blog entry on my own. Sigh. It hasn't been a good week at all.

On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Cat

It's true. I don't blog anymore. I leave the writing to Schröder. I just take the pretty pictures. Someday I'll let my cat do even that, and I'll just sit back and watch the site magically update itself.

If you find any factual errors in any of my posts, you know whom to blame.

Lunar Photography Attempt II

I'd say this is better than my first attempt. Too bad I missed the full moon, though.

F value at f/3.7, 1/640 seconds shutter speed, spot metering and ISO 200. I used my tele lens attachment to get a better shot so the focal length is 432*1.7 mm.

Cross The Streams

CERN's Large Hadron Collider has successfully come online! With a circumference of 27 kilometres, this is the world's largest particle accelerator. Located deep underground near the Swiss-French border, scientists will be able to shoot protons at mind-bogglingly high speeds and make them collide. One of the goals of these experiments is to find that elusive Higg's boson, the elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model but has never been observed.

For a nice cliff-notes overview of the LHC, there's an ongoing series of comics by Jorge Cham over at Piled Higher and Deeper about his trip there (Part 1 starts here). Also, check out the highly amusing LHC rap video.

The title of the this blog entry comes from the 1984 movie "Ghostbusters", which incidentally featured high energy proton streams being used to catch ghosts (yeah, I know, fake science). Interestingly, the character Dr. Egon Spengler warns against colliding the streams ("don't cross the streams!") because it would be "bad". However, they eventually have to cross the streams at the end to defeat the Big Bad (spoiler, sorry).

To the team at CERN, good luck!

The photo above is derived from The Large Hadron Collider by Sarvagya Kochak, distributed under the Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic).

Squirrels!

A friend of mine once told me that my blog "needed more squirrels". So here they are, in their full squirrely glory! Behold, the plantain squirrel (Callosciurus notatus), scurrying around in the trees outside the garden. At least I think that's a plantain squirrel.

Bug Eyes

Also out and about in the morning was this praying mantis. It looked me right in the lens as I took its photo.

Urban Monkeys

I was in Kuala Lumpur for the weekend, and I spent independence day at my friend's house in Damansara. In the mornings, monkeys climb all over his backyard.

They have Spock ears!

I am no good at identifying monkeys. Can anyone tell me what species they are? Are they the same as these Penang monkeys? I'm guessing they're Macaca fascicularis but then again I'm no Jane Goodall.

Wall-E

Pixar can't seem to make a bad movie (so far). Once again they've come up with a moving and delightfully cute tale; this time with a trash-collecting robot. Wall-E is the movie's titular protagonist, one of a series of garbage-disposal robots that's been doing his job for over 700 years. The story takes place in the future where Earth has been overrun by garbage, and all the humans have long since left in spaceships.

Wall-E seems to be the only robot left still running, patiently cleaning up the mountains of garbage. He looks like a little worn-down cube with cutesy eyes and treads, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. He gets his power from solar panels which charges him up daily, and he gets replacement parts from other Wall-E units long since shut down across the trash-filed landscape of Earth.

Over the centuries Wall-E has developed a personality, and a sense of curiosity. During his garbage-collection duties, he sometimes finds trinkets which he likes, and he takes them back to his little hideout where he keeps his little treasures. His only companion is a little roach sidekick who lives with him and accompanies him to work. One day, a probe robot lands on Earth, a girl bot named EVE whom Wall-E takes a liking to immediately. EVE looks like a shiny Apple product, with a badass arm-cannon that looks kind of like a USB stick. EVE and Wall-E strike up a friendship, and one of his treasures hold the key to EVE's quest and to humankind's return to Earth.

The first part of the movie is done almost entirely without dialogue. In fact, the robot protagonists hardly speak at all. It's great storytelling by Andrew Stanton, and this part of the film has been praised by every film critic. Wall-E's misadventures lead him into space along with EVE, and we get to see what humanity has turned into during the long voyage out in space. The humans have become bloated, helpless baby-like creatures entirely dependent on the spaceship's automation system to survive. Wall-E, EVE and the captain of the human starship must steer the spaceship back to Earth, and free humanity from the shackles of automation. It's harder than it sounds; the spaceship is run by an intelligent robot AI that has plans of its own.

The movie has an obvious (although not heavy-handed) ecological message, and warns us of the pitfalls of the excesses of consumerism. Wall-E is an intelligent, charming and thought-provoking movie that I'd highly recommend viewing.

A Dedicated Batman Fan Builds His Own Tumbler

A guy named Bob Dullam has built his very own Tumbler, the Batmobile from Chris Nolan's Batman movies. The estimated cost is around $50,000 to $70,000. He sure has a lot of time and patience. I wonder if the rocket booster works or if the cops will let him drive it on the roads of wherever he lives.

Fans without that kind of money to spend on a custom Batvehicle can always attempt something like this.