James

Two things: 1) Good video. 2) He actually uses the word "skynet". Robot apocalypse approaches.

Further confirmation that I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to music.

Just smash it. You will be both symbolising the deconstruction of the patriarchy and also opening an unobstructed point of ingress and egress (save for all the shards of glass).

I'm glad you agree. Of course, this was his finest composition:

It's a couple of months since I first posted about him, but I'm still mainly listening to Jan Johansson. When I first heard this one it just about brought a tear to my eye: Jazz på ryska is a pretty great album, too: Weirdly that video is, in a very broad sense, the opposite of what I've been picturing recently when listening to music. For a bunch of stuff I imagine a camera pushing very slowly forward through a fairly static scenario. There is no significance or interest to this. It's just a small coincidence. Everyone who isn't a Mogwai fan complains that the music is too loud in this: Fortunately I'm a Mogwai fan. (For those who do find it bothersome, though, I do recommend watching another version, such as . The words are well worth hearing.)

While the main attraction is obviously the delightful prospect of robots sneaking in to murder you in the night, it's also quite fun to imagine one locking you in, let's say, an office supply cupboard, leaving you a prisoner while it goes about its merry apocalyptic duties. Perhaps it will return to claim your life later; perhaps you will starve to death in the dark. Either way, you're powerless to prevent it. How jolly!

I've been a bit obsessed with a few Jan Johansson pieces for the past couple of days:

Excellent! It could do with an enable/disable button on the toolbar, though, for the occasions when I want something that's only in the UK catalogue.

That's crazy! How log until we have software that can do the translation in realtime, and I can converse entirely with pianos?

Oh, I actually meant the two mice. I should have quoted my context.

I was hoping it was just the fruit of a slavish dedication to symmetry. EDIT: That was I reference to the two-mouse thing, not the unusual keyboard thing.

That guy thinks what I think! He also thinks some slightly more subtle and observant things, but among that stuff is the problem I had with that film. It was still quite good, but it let itself down.

I saw Zero Dark Thirty. I thought the middle felt overly dramatized, and left me pretty irritated with Maya (perhaps that was the point), but the beginning and end quite effectively portrayed the ambiguous ethics of war - is it justified to do a wrong to prevent a greater wrong? How about if you only think it will prevent a greater wrong? Those are thoroughly obvious questions, of course, but it did get me thinking about them, and there's something to be said for confronting the audience with an actual depiction of the things they may otherwise be inclined to consider as more abstract concepts. Or perhaps that's just me.

I have nothing useful to say about the actual content of the film. I just thought the found footage motif was pretty pointless. They didn't stick to it and it didn't contribute to the plot at all.

Last time anyone offered me games it was all pretty low-level stuff that I already had. Perhaps I could get something good for some of that stuff, but to be honest there isn't much on Steam I really want and don't have.

http://youtu.be/nR6CY3pFjYM

I have a fairly dog in the manger attitude to TF2 trading: I don't play the game at all, but since I know I don't understand the value of my items and have no interest in taking the time to work it out, I refuse to trade them with anyone. I'm not enjoying them, and I'm not letting anyone else enjoy them, but at least I'm not letting some shitty opportunist benefit from my ignorance.

You felt it was fine if ultimately unremarkable, and that the combination of found footage shots with a documentary aesthetic for the non-diegetic camera work was initially confusing and intellectually distracting -- whilst it by no means ruined the film for you, you feel they should have just picked on or the other and stuck to their guns. Disclaimer: The above thoughts might not actually be Orv's.

That can't be a fish eye lens. There aren't any skaters. (I agree with Osmosisch.)

Hey, I was just recently looking up Middle-earth timelines on Wikipedia. Not that the timing of that is at all surprising, but... whatever. That thing's nicely presented.

Sorry, I completely missed your mention of the rule of thirds. Funnily enough, that's one of the very few composition guidelines of which I am aware, but in this instance I felt it would be better if the gull was looking over the width of the image, so I didn't want to much space behind it. I'm not sure how well that works, but I quite like the effect. No, that was the original colour, which I later corrected (see Thrik's comment and my response). You actually posted just as I was editing the original post, I think. I'm afraid I don't tend to spend much time fiddling with the settings when taking photos, in part because I worry the moment will pass, in part because I feel rather self-conscious doing so, and in part because I only have a very basic familiarity with them, but I know I really ought to be doing more of it, not least because I'll never learn how if I don't.

Genuinely spectacular. I love it. Me too. Then, cruelly, I introduced a friend to it on a phone with earphones during the adverts in a cinema. Laughter has never been stifled as hard. (Anticipating righteous vitrol, I reiterate: during the adverts. As in the product commercials before the trailers. No artistic content was ruined. Unless you're a huge appreciator of pretentious car ads or trying-too-hard phone ads or something.)

Yes, that does work rather well. Out of interest, is there something in particular that inspired that? Is it that there's too much empty space around the subject in the original, or perhaps that the patch of sky in the top-right is a bit distracting? I don't really know anything about composition (as is probably quite evident), so I imagine your version is probably more universally appealing (and I do like it myself – I'm not really sure which version I prefer), but I do have a bit of a fondness for big empty spaces around the subject for some reason.

Pedantry: I the Queen were to interfere, would it not be better described as despotism rather than fascism?

I know, that's just how the JPEG version came out of the camera (it was later in the day and the light was going). I'll fiddle around with the RAW this evening - I did some of that over the weekend, but the was getting very late). Oh, and thanks, I appreciate the compliment. EDIT: OK, I've increased the temperature a whole bunch. It took me quite a few tries — I kept thinking I'd got it spot on, only to realize through comparison that I was still pretty blue. Now, of course, I'm concerned that I might have taken it a bit too far.