This site is currently getting bombarded with spam. The Akismet filter is catching most of it, but the spam filters are filling up faster than I can review them. This means that the spammers appear to have figured out how to beat the math captcha. I’m not sure if I’ll be switching to a different captcha or simply removing the captcha entirely.

Either way, this means that if your comment hits my spam filter (i.e., doesn’t show up within 5 minutes of you hitting the “post” button) then it’s almost certainly been lost forever. This generally only happened about once every six months, so I’m not too worried about it. But I hate to see anyone take the time to write up a response to something and then have it disappear into the ether. Please e-mail me if you’re having persistent problems with a particular comment you want to make.

I’m also testing out a social sharing bar that will appear at the bottom of each post. What do you think?

As I’ve mentioned previously, there’s a bug in WordPress that periodically closes all comments on the site. Worse yet, I can’t see that comments have been closed when I’m logged in.

I just fixed the problem again, but this has been happening a lot lately. I’m not sure if it’s due to the lack of posting on my part, because the site is currently getting hammered with spam, or if it’s just WordPress being random.

But if you see it happen, drop me an e-mail and I’ll get it fixed ASAP.

Rani Sharim has been translating articles from the Alexandrian into Hebrew.

Check ’em out: Three Clue Rule and Don’t Prep Plots.

(Or you can read the English originals at Three Clue Rule and Don’t Prep Plots.)

As I mentioned awhile back, the Russian spammers figured out my math captcha. The intensity has died down again in the past couple months, but I’m still scanning through a couple dozen spam messages per day that slip past the captcha and hit the Akismet spam filter.

Usually it’s pretty easy to spot the false-positives and restore comments that should be seen by the world at large, largely because the spam comments are always complete non sequiturs that have nothing to do with anything I’ve ever talked about here on the Alexandrian. But a couple days ago I ran into this:

On the topic of AC being movement based, etbolusaly NOT!! While Dex does affect AC, AC is not dependent on Dex. AC is based on the ability of the armor to prevent damage to the wearer; which is why plate is better than chain is better than leather is better than clothing In the real world in medieval europe, clothing was a layer of wool on a layer of linen, leather was boiled (hardened) leather on a padded jacket (basically a moving blanket), chain was riveted iron rings on a padded jacket and plate was 1/32 to 1/16 inch think steel plate with small ring chain at the joints all on a padded jacket.Sheilds ranged from all but disposable Viking duelling sheilds (see the duel in 13th Warrior) to seriously stout wooden rounds and tear drops (kites much better for fighting from horseback, but very useful on foot too) to proper steel traditional shapes in late periods.Your dexterity might make you move a bit more fluid in your armor, but it did little for the actual defensive ability of the armor. If you get hit with a mace, the blunt force impact can still break bones in lessor armors (chain, leather, cloth). If you are stabbed, you are almost definately getting hurt in lessor armors (chain, leather, cloth). If you get knocked down in plate, you aren’t just jumping back onto your feet and returning the attack, you might even need help to stand again.Watch some YouTube videos of SCA combat to get a decent idea of what D&D combat would be like.

A little on the ranty side, but my first impression was that this was a legitimate comment. But then I noticed that it had been posted on the page for “Opening Your Game Table“… which has absolutely nothing to do with armor class. A little digging around then confirmed that the user name was linking back to a known spam domain.

So, apparently, the spam bots are playing RPGs now. Which, frankly, I’d be fine with: They just need to stop posting random comments on my website and start running some games on Google+. Ya know, contribute something to the community.

Comments are now open again. They’ve been going down quite a bit lately (after having been stable for a good long while). Unfortunately, there’s still no indication that WordPress intends to fix this problem. If you ever see the comments closed on a post here at the Alexandrian, please drop me an e-mail and let me know.

March has proven to be a horribly dismal and frustratingly unproductive month for me. (And the silence ’round these parts has only been one small part of that.) My fingers are crossed that I’ll get things turned around and April will be better in all respects. At the very least, I can promise that things will be more active here at the Alexandrian as I’m currently laying in a full slate of content that will launch on Monday.

While I’m here, let me chat about a couple of movies I’ve seen recently…

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

John Carter has become another victim of the “nobody saw it opening day, so it must not be good” fallacy that plagues the toxic combination of Hollywood’s front-loaded marketing schemes and the cult-like worship of the box office in media news.

Were the trailers terrible? Yes.

Have the mainstream reviews been mediocre? Of course. (Mainstream reviewers will always rip apart a genre movie if they’re given free rein to do so.)

But what about the actual movie? It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good.

If you’re a fan of science fiction adventure stories — particularly ones which are mind-blowingly beautiful — then you owe it to yourself to give John Carter a chance to wow you on the big screen before it disappears from theaters entirely.

THE HUNGER GAMES

Recently re-read the books and then watched the movie.

The film is a very good adaptation of an excellent novel. If I had any quibble whatsoever, it would be that Katniss ends up being a slightly weaker character in the movie. This is partly the result of needing to push exposition out of Katniss’ head and into the mouths of other characters (which results in other characters taking away some of her decisions and insights), but it’s also a minor structural issue in which Katniss remains almost constantly reactive and is never allowed to capture the initiative or take control of her situation. (Which is in marked contrast to the book, where I’d argue that Katniss’ unique quality is her ability to force her will onto situations over which she should have no control.)

Despite this, however, Katniss remains one of the strongest female protagonists in film history. (Which is kind of a sad indictment of female protagonists in film. But I digress.)

I have a general rule of thumb about adaptations: If the only thing I didn’t like in the movie were my favorite moments from the book, then the adaptation is a good one. (Why? Because they’re my favorite moments. The odds of the film perfectly capturing my personal vision of those moments is almost nonexistent; and because they’re my favorite moments, any deviation is going to come up lacking in my judgment.)

The Hunger Games passes that test, and also clears another important hurdle: Instead of just regurgitating the book onto the screen, it takes the opportunity to explore the story in ways that the book couldn’t and didn’t.

(This assumes, of course, that the book was good in the first place. In a situation like Field of Dreams — where the original book, Shoeless Joe, was mediocre at best — a different set of rules applies.)