Seven sub-series

I just finished playing the first Mass Effect, and I have been working through some thought about Ashley Williams, who many on the internet seem to hate. I really liked her as a character, and found this post to be very illuminating. But I wanted to capture the way the game made me feel, and the way it affected me more like a book or a TV show, rather than just a video game.

One thing that struck me, and one thing that has burrowed into my head, is how similar she seems to Kara Thrace from Battlestar Galactica. It may be a confluence of the ways in which I like and respect and root for Starbuck and Ashley both conflated into one thought. Both of them are badass fighters, both put up tough veneers, but both have depth and creativity at their core: Kara Thrace with the music of her father (a piece by Philip Glass) and music in general, and Ashley with her love of poetry. They are complete characters in media where that can be in short order a lot of the time. You don't like them all of the time because you don't like anyone all of the time, but you take them faults and all. As an aside, that scene with Starbuck and Helo in her apartment, where Glass's Metamorphosis One is playing is one of my favorites in TV history.

Both are also quietly religious, but not in a way that they push on anyone (well, Starbuck does a little more than Ashley). I'm not a religious person, but I am spiritual and find no judgment over those who are religious. And, for some reason that is probably a mixup of my brain chemistry, both create in my a longing. Not anything sexual, but more of a nostalgia, an empathy, a respect, or a connection.

But the tigers come at night

Nothing like sleeping on a bed of nails

Nothing much here but our broken dreams

Oh, baby, if all else fails

Nothing is ever quite what it seems

Amazon has introduced a cloud based dark archive service, called Amazon Glacier. Let's leave behind the irony that all the glaciers are melting and focus on the product. The trend in libraries has been towards hosted solutions instead of maintaining your own servers, and this is a logical progression. This could serve well as the offsite backup for dark archives that many institutions already have, something which most places haven't been able to implement yet.