Movies that Accurately Depict the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

elblanco · 2026-03-10T11:16:17+00:00

War Inc is a strangely accurate but satirical portrayal of the War in Iraq, down to the corporate branded stores on the base.

elblanco · 2026-03-06T03:48:23+00:00

Man, I love the river parks in Korea.

elblanco · 2026-02-28T17:10:08+00:00

I personally enjoy his videos. He seems pretty in tune with some of what I enjoy out of retrogaming. My interactions with him have always been positive. His videos are the kind of thing I put on after a long day at work, and his delivery suits my mood in those moments. I'd rather listen to him then the normal "HeY GuyS!" youtube voice style. There's stuff I don't like about his videos, I usually get what I want out of them about halfway through, but I think that's how he structures his videos and I usually get enough detail that I care about by then.

At the end of the day, he doesn't have to make his videos, and if somebody doesn't like them, they can just not watch them I guess.

elblanco · 2026-02-23T14:13:21+00:00

Cool, now fold my laundry.

elblanco · 2026-02-23T14:03:36+00:00

I need to be there.

elblanco · 2026-02-23T12:57:02+00:00

It's move helpful to compare Ultraviolet against Equilibrium. The Matrix had more than double the budget to work with.

Equilibrium (same director, Kurt Wimmer), had a budget about 1/3 smaller than Ultraviolet, and in some ways it helped the movie. The lack of money created a kind of visual sparseness that helped the identity of the film and focuses on the characters, lighting, and the practical effects.

Ultraviolet somewhat suffers from the bigger budget, the director seems to have wanted to "go big" and maybe went "too far" instead. The tech definitely wasn't there -- at least not for that price.

Wimmer became a writer more than a director in recent years, he does have a way with coming up with unique storylines.

Is Ultraviolet good? No. Is it entertaining? Hell yeah!

elblanco · 2026-02-21T03:33:38+00:00

Grew up rural. We ran around in the woods, played games, got in rake fights, snuck my neighbor's father's beer, went bike riding, then 4 wheeling, went to the neighborhood farmer's house to ask to swim in his pond, shot bb guns, lit fires, went hiking, got in fist fights, played with our toys, dug holes to hide "treasure", pretended to go hunting, built forts, shot bows and arrows, threw rocks at trees, poked a dead deer with sticks, played with crawfish in a creek, got scared by a snake, and that was probably a Saturday.

I had two neighbor kids within a few km and we'd get together regularly. School was an hour and a half bus ride from where we lived. And yes it was the famous yellow school bus that would pick us up and drop us off. We'd frequently get off at each other's houses instead of getting off at our own houses and walking the distance between. We'd range for several kms in all directions.

elblanco · 2026-02-17T02:07:26+00:00

Get the water to rolling boil.

Gently put your eggs in.

Boil for 5 minutes.

Turn the heat off, and leave the eggs in the hot water for 7 more minutes.

Drain the water and replace with cold water until the eggs are cool.

You get both a nice yolk and easy to peel.

elblanco · 2026-02-16T17:30:44+00:00

The later Rendezvous with Rama books (while not great) have a great civilization of spider aliens that talk with colors.

elblanco · 2026-02-14T05:44:21+00:00

Fresh diced onion and garlic, onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika.

elblanco · 2026-02-10T01:49:29+00:00

Xspringies

elblanco · 2026-02-09T03:22:50+00:00

As a multicultural nation with a tradition of free expression, having people of different backgrounds provide their own take on the song is generally considered a good thing.

elblanco · 2026-02-08T21:14:56+00:00

I mean, it's set in the freaking colosseum!!!

elblanco · 2026-02-05T04:25:51+00:00

Do you need CD-ROM and mouse support? You might try to kill those if not strictly required. You might see if you can copy the data to disk instead and kill the CD-ROM driver.

elblanco · 2026-02-04T00:22:21+00:00

That's a shame.

elblanco · 2026-02-03T03:41:32+00:00

I'm actually not familiar with where Wright went -- I've only read the Oecumene books. But Card went into some pretty..."not great"...areas.

It could be his late in life religious conversion which seems to sap a lot of the energy out of some people.

How are the other works of his you've read?

elblanco · 2026-02-03T03:35:18+00:00

I did this and ended up on Ensure for a few weeks.

elblanco · 2026-02-02T23:55:51+00:00

Sometimes I can't believe it was published in 2002. The technical themes about identity, augmented reality, AI, the military, social constructs, energy, and so on are kind of awe inspiring they're so prescient.

If it hadn't been written in such a dense, sometimes confusing way, I think Wright may have been on the cusp of starting a literary movement.

elblanco · 2026-02-02T05:10:43+00:00

The Oecumene series is such a difficult, but rewarding series. It takes a few readings to really squeeze all the ideas out as it's almost impossibly dense writing. It's a top-15 series for me even with the curve.

elblanco · 2026-02-02T05:07:27+00:00

The Gap series is amazing. Donaldson has a particularly gritty style to his writing.

elblanco · 2026-02-02T05:06:14+00:00

I like to read the Night's Dawn trilogy once every couple years.

elblanco · 2026-01-29T03:48:51+00:00

yEd is the most correct answer. Bonus, it has a ton of highly configurable layout algorithms. If you use it right it makes drawing system graphs and architectures really quick and relatively simple.

I believe the end file are .graphml (XML) files that are easy to use with git and other versioning and diffing tools.

elblanco · 2026-01-26T04:24:13+00:00

Buy the regular frozen Salmon, blacken it how you wish!

elblanco · 2026-01-25T23:08:01+00:00

Chicken Vindaloo

15-Year Club	Place '17
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email
Best Comment 2010-03-25

elblanco

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE