I don’t know whether I like Season 1 or Season 2 better. Apples and oranges.
See below for thoughts about the show and the making of the show.
Continue reading Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (Season 2)
Month: June 2025
IMAX How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
After watching the 2025 remake of How to Train Your Dragon and reading people’s reactions on Reddit, I conceived a desire to see the movie on an IMAX screen. Siqi humored me, and we bought tickets and went and watched the movie again, at a slightly-father-away theater.
See below for a detailed save-the-cat beat sheet plot summary of How to Train Your Dragon (2025). Beware SPOILERS.
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
This work, published in 1722 and attributed to Daniel Defoe but set in 1600s England with interludes in Virginia, is a fictional first-person account of the life of the narrator, “Moll Flanders” (not her real name), the daughter of a Newgate prisoner. Although she is penniless as a child, she manages to give herself the appearance of a gentlewoman. Her fortunes and her identity pass through a number of transformations during the course of her life, which is marred by a series of deceptions and misdeeds, which she eventually comes to repent of.
Wikipedia says this novel, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (which I enjoyed very much), is an example of “spiritual autobiography.”
See below for what I thought. (I am not a fan.)
Continue reading Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
When and Why I Read Moll Flanders
Another famous book by the author of Robinson Crusoe, which I enjoyed.
Genre: English literature
Date started / date finished: 09-Jun-25 to 15-Jun-25
Length: 307 pages
Originally published in: 1722/1995/2023
Source link: Moll Flanders
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
This movie is a remake of the 2010 animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. That means it’s time once again to play Spot the Differences!
Although there are some changes that I personally don’t like, I think they did a great job overall. (Still, the original was better.)
DreamWorks did less revamping than Disney has been doing in their live-action remakes of animated classics. It may be that few changes seemed necessary because 2010 wasn’t that long ago (the live-action Cinderella movie was made 65 years after the 1950 original), or it may be because DreamWorks made a conscious decision to change as little as possible, or it may be both. (Often it’s both.)
So what did change, and why?
You probably don’t want to read this post if you haven’t seen the new movie, and it won’t make sense at all if you haven’t seen the new movie or the old movie. Instead, please enjoy this photo of the counter where I bought gelato after exiting the cinema.
EDIT: I added some notes after I watched it again.
Short trip to Shenzhen
I was invited (with my boss and another colleague) to the International Quantum Academy in Shenzhen to give a talk after I edited Single-Electron Spin Qubits in Silicon for Quantum Computing, a paper written by some researchers who are based there. Siqi came with me, and spent Friday as a tourist on his own. (He went to Huaqiangbei electronics market.) Then we spent Saturday as tourists together.
- Thursday, June 5 – flight from Hangzhou to Shenzhen
- Friday, June 6 – talk at the International Quantum Academy
- Saturday, June 7 – visit to Dafen Oil Painting Village and Sungang Home Furnishings Market
- Sunday, June 8 – return flight from Shenzhen to Hangzhou
Chevron amethyst sphere
Item description / significance
This is a natural purple polished amethyst ball with a white zig-zag line (chevron pattern) of white quartz running around it.
Bought where
in Shenzhen, in a shop in the home decor part of the Sungang Market
Age and origin
As far as I know, this piece is “new” (not previously owned by an individual). I don’t know where the amethyst was mined. Brazil?
What I like about it
It’s amethyst! The chevron pattern is clean and the purple is deep. I’m glad I got to see this sphere in person, because it meant that I could evaluate the quality of the stone in real life.
See below for more thoughts on and photos of this sphere.
International Quantum Academy
I was invited (with my boss and another colleague) to the International Quantum Academy in Shenzhen to give a talk after I edited Single-Electron Spin Qubits in Silicon for Quantum Computing, a paper written by some researchers who are based there.
See my other post about the trip to Shenzhen for what my husband and I saw as tourists on our visit.
See below for photos of my visit to the International Quantum Academy.
