- The first part of the Wizard Of Oz (the black and white part) is much longer than I remember. Also: the scarecrow is the best of the three.
- Winter really does get cold in ways I always forget. That bone-deep ache you get when your toes are cold for a long time is always shocking, when it happens.
- RC airplanes are much harder to fly than you might imagine. It takes a lot to get used to the fact that the plane's left isn't always your left and that the plane doesn't just stay in the air magically; you have to work to keep it aloft if there's any wind, or if you try turning, or if you climb too fast and stall, etc..
Cruising along... Oh shit, a tree, turn left! (turns to your right, plane's left, loses speed) Oh shit! No, the other left! (turns to plane's right, loses more speed, noses down) Oh shit! Climb! (nose goes up, but the rudder's still to the plane's right, so you start to pitch over) Fuck! Rudder left, just a little! (plane levels, but it's going too slow, air stall coming up in 3...2...1) Oh shit! Elevator is still up, which means you can't get enough speed to pull out of the dive you're in. Elevator down, falling fast now. Pull up! (up it goes! misses the ground by inches, little engine screaming) No, not that much! Stall. Spin. Crash. Arrgh! (elapsed time, 4 seconds)
Also: a plane weighing less than 3/4 of an ounce, running on an electric motor smaller than a honey bee, can easily snap a steel propeller shaft, if you land nose-first.
- "Stop Making Sense" really is the best concert film ever made. Also, Tina Weymouth is a beast of a bass player - just fantastic. It's hard to tell this from the Rome show because there are so many people on stage (including a second bassist), and the footage and sound aren't as clear. But in "Stop Making Sense", her greatness is obvious.
- Vaporizers. What a swell idea.
- Dragon's Milk is good in bottles, but the draught version is 6.48 times better.
Learn anything interesting lately?
“Stop Making Sense” is indeed a fine movie. It should be watched as a double-feature with “Storefront Hitchcock” for maximum impact.
i think we ran out of evening. maybe this week!
Stop Making Sense is incredible on the big screen. When it came out I saw it at the Harvard Sq. Cinema, which was small for a big screen, but still phenomenal. Also too, being surrounded by others almost makes it a concert experience.
Gas powered RC planes are in many ways trickier than the modern electric park fliers, but on the other hand they tend to be insanely overpowered (like nothing close to scale) which can sometimes get you out of (and into) trouble. Crashing them is much more heartbreaking. Watching dozens of hours of doping tissue over balsa crash is much worse than prefabbed plastic.
Your description of flying the plane is strongly reminiscent of Jonathan Livingston Seagull BTW
(Except for the naughty language that is.)
Crashing them is much more heartbreaking.
i can imagine. i’m glad i started with the little Ember for that very reason. overall it’s pretty sturdy (so far), but i’ve still replaced the prop twice and the prop shaft once. on three flights. i know a balsa plane would’ve been in splinters, given some of the crashes i’ve given the Ember.
got a gas powered RC car, though. that thing’s fucking crazy. and loud. and fast!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
never read it.
should i?
Learn anything interesting lately?
That there is DVD cloning/ripping/copying software that claims that it can do so in a way that doesn’t violate the law. I’m dubious but am betting that if I use it just to put my DVDs on my hard drive for personal use while keeping the original disks, the MPAA and/or FBI won’t care.
Speaking of, can anyone recommend a good external hard drive with lots of space and a way to hook it up to an HD TV?
Speaking of, can anyone recommend a good external hard drive with lots of space and a way to hook it up to an HD TV?
does the TV know how to play movies off an external drive?
should I?
Depends, are you between 12 and 16?
Sort of Zen-And-the-Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance-for-little-kids
does the TV know how to play movies off an external drive?
Probably not, pretty sure I need something like Popcorn Hour (www.popcornhour.com) but looking for something less expensive and recommended (I know Western Digital sells something similar, as well as Roku, and there is Apple TV but that only works through iTunes, I believe).
Depends, are you between 12 and 16?
sometimes.
Sort of Zen-And-the-Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance-for-little-kids
i read that when i was 16. didn’t understand much of it. probably for the best.
pretty sure I need something like Popcorn Hour
yeah. you’ll definitely need something with a video playback system in it. not familiar with any of the things out there, though.
if you find a good one, let me know. right now i’m, umm, getting the last five Caprica episodes that SyFy showed on Tuesday, but didn’t tag them as new episodes, so my DVR didn’t catch them, and their web site doesn’t have any repeat showings listed. so, i’m downloading the episodes, which i have to covert to some format, then burn to DVD, carry downstairs, stick in the DVD player, blahblahblah. would be so much easier if i could read them right off the HD. or if SyFy didn’t do stupid shit like playing the final five (ha!) episodes of a show all on one Tuesday night and never show them again.
Ugh: I think you’re right; the “What You Need” section of the AppleTV manual says:
I find that annoying, but I’m expecting to give AppleTV a whirl at some point anyway. Because I’m a money-burning dumbass.
Cleek: I was really pleased with the DivX capable Philips DVD player I bought several years ago, because it eliminated the most tedious of the steps you list (“convert to some format”). And it was only 60 bucks or something.
But that’s only if you’re already in the market for a new player, which I was at the time. (And am again, I think the Philips is nearing the end of its life.)
pretty sure an iTunes store account is free. it’s just a username/password. maybe you need to tie it to a credit card, in case you want to buy something. but it’s free otherwise.
the DivX capable…
oh yeah. forgot about that! wonder if my DVD player knows what a VOB is …
There’s something I haven’t done, and I don’t know why. My dvd player plays divx and has a usb port on the front. I’ve plugged many a thumbdrive in, but never a HD. I may have to go to costco and get one of those 2tb external they sell for a nickle apiece.
sometimes
well if you could arrange for those times to overlap with the reading then yes, I would recommend it strongly. It made a strong impression on young me and it took me a little while in college or so to figure out, it does not mature well. (Z&taoMM I have similar feelings about except the age range where it’s appropriate is like mid high school – early post-college.)
I dig Stop Making Sense, but I luv, luv, luv True Stories.
Stop Making Sense is indeed the greatest concert film ever made. Not playing an instrument (other than Fruity Loops and messing around with vintage synth plugins) I always wondered how good Weymouth and Franz were as musicians.
It’s a couple years old now, but I still love to death my Cowon A3. Not only the best sound in the business (along with playing virtually any music codec you can think of, from ogg to ape to FLAC)but it will play most video files as well and comes with cables and everything needed to hook to your TV. I end up downloading lots of stuff that just doesn’t get shown here and the Cowon is invaluable as a video player. Plus, seriously, wicked good sound.
/Cowon fanboy advert
or if SyFy didn’t do stupid shit like playing the final five (ha!) episodes of a show all on one Tuesday night and never show them again.
Wait, the show is like, over, as in end of series? Didn’t it just start? I was gonna start watching so am curious.
Wait, the show is like, over, as in end of series?
done. kaput. is no more.
they stopped like 6 months ago but saved 5 episodes till last week.
Didn’t it just start?
it was still officially in season 1, i think. though they stretched it over like 2 years.
Did it end up being any good? And did it have an “ending” such that I’m not going to wonder what happened?
IMO, it’s kindof a mixed bag. it’s far more character-driven than BSG. there are no spaceship fights, and not very much action. it juggles what seems like far too many plotlines which do not very much for a long time. but, the ending is starting to look like (haven’t seen all of the final 5 yet) the writers might have actually thought it all through. things are coming together in ways i didn’t expect.
i liked it. but i don’t know if i’d have cared, if not for the BSG tie in.
Thanks, guess I will check it out. Also, I think you said you were watching the V remake? If so, any good?
yeah, V’s good.
Cool, I was hoping so.
update: last night’s episode sucked