I had no idea! I was sabotaging my minimalistic approach towards this blog entirely by using the Ubuntu font all wrong.
I implemented it via @font-face and had nothing but problems with getting f#ing Firefox to display it correctly. Yesterday, I spent several hours and finally got it fixed. The joy didn’t las long: Since December of 2010, the Ubuntu font is available via the Google Font API, and I just discovered today that’s a good thing. What did I do all the time instead of using it? Let my visitors load some nice 1,5mb of font data. Yay.
Loading a font equals loading a font you might think: Google has to load it too, stupid! - Wrong. Well, yes but: I don’t know whether github (where I’m hosted) slowed it all down, being free and and offering correspondent performance, but sure is: Now, with the Google Font API, this site loads amazingly fast.

Literally, one new line of code and 3 or 4 adjustments in my stylesheet was all it took. The latter solely due to my poor CSS skills and huge amount of technological debt I created. In case this is news to you - Everything necessary is to find here: font.ubuntu.com/web.

This post is intended to be spoiler-free till the last paragraph
Damn, what a great first season. Basically, medieval times aren’t my favorite genre, but this world is more vivid than some of the worlds pictured in series with modern setting. I’m glad I began to watch ‘Game of Thrones’ when the 9th episode was already about to air, I don’t know how psyched I would’ve got if I would’ve had to wait a whole week in between the single episodes.

Sometimes I thought I had recognized a change of scene and anticipated the next, but the current would continue and last almost twice as long as your average scene in films or other TV Series. To recognize how conditioned we are in these matters, I found quite shocking. However, the long lasting scenes and dialogues result in serious storytelling¹ and deeply drawn characters. They die like flies, but you get to know them very well beforehand. ‘GoT’ isn’t called ‘The Sopranos with swords’ for nothing.
For not falling behind on whose sister sent a raven about whose murder to whose sister’s husband, check out HBO’s Viewer’s Guide, it keeps you from googling and finding yourself on a wiki(pedia) page full of potential spoilers.

This series’ dialogues are a joy to listen to, and they have a certain self-awareness to them. I also really like their humor. In one scene, King Robert Baratheon and his despised wife, Queen Cersei Lannister ask themselves what it was that held together the Kingdoms all these years. ‘Our marriage?’ he asks. Silence.
In other TV Series, this would’ve been a moment of weakness, in which the wannabe-sentimental moment had been cheaply exploited for a kiss, so the masses could relax in their chairs and join the characters in their fake world, dreaming of theirs to be that simple. No, ‘Game of Thrones’ doesn’t do that. After Robert asks the question, he and his wife burst out laughing and quickly settle on their hate to having held it all together. I almost applauded, but I couldn’t, I clenched my fists in silent expression of gratitude to the writers and producers who didn’t go down that road.

I also like the violence in this series. It’s not omnipresent, but when it’s there, it’s raw, bloody, sometimes quite unexpected² and most of the time totally approved by everyone, even by the casualties-to-be. And you say our society is depraved about this.

What about the rest? Some supernatural content and magic is beautifully justified with the world of ‘Game of Thrones’ being another universe than ours, adding other nice touches like seasons lasting for several years. Huge fan, out of pure longig for this fantasy world I already bought the first of the books³ the series is based on. Maybe this one gets me to read novels again.
Can’t wait for the second season. I just attention, spoiling 9th episode wonder if they casted Sean Bean solely as ‘cart horse’ for the first season. Otherwise I can’t figure out why you’d slaughter the most popular actor of the cast, i.e. cast him for a (main) character who is decapitated in the first season, literally by the book. I’m not arguing his death, it’s okay, GeekDad is absolutely right: Letting the honest and honorable die makes the story, be it TV or novel, so good. Plus: In my opinion, Ned Stark was too whiny and naïve for King’s Landing anyway. I mean, who has half his guard slaughtered more often?

Do watch this.

1. Medieval people seem to scheme like masterminds, unimaginable for my modern age, lazy brain.
2. Well, the unseathing of the swords gives you an idea. I’d like an instrument like this nowadays. Imagine you walking down the street, someone gets in your way. Instead of walking by, doing nothing, you unsheathe your sword. Depending on how sophisticated you pull it off, you got yourself a slave, get offered a match with his daughter or lose your head in duel.
3. eBook, of course. Interesting: the English kindle edition is 5,67€, but in Germany there’s a fixed price for books (hooray), so even the German eBook is 9,99€. Almost as twice as much. The German publishers really must hate progress.

A plug-in for Totem (Ubuntu’s standard movie player), released in January, allows to stream video via Apple’s AirPlay. I checked it out immediately, and it worked. With the release of Ubuntu 11.04, it stopped working. The plugin couldn’t be activeated and Totem gave out the error message
Unable to activate plugin AirPlay Support
Then, I found the solution, a comment on the very same article I linked to above. Like Paul Kehle says, once you install ‘avahi-discover’, it works. Run
sudo apt-get install avahi-discover
in Terminal and you’re fine. Thanks, Paul.
I just wanted to share this because I’d given up hope and just came across it by accident.

On a related matter:
Patrick Rhone for one:

“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Rhone for two:

Now, of course, the question you must ask yourself is this: Are you doing work worth doing?