James

I love this cat.

I still don't really know what I think of BSG. I appreciated the overall tone of it, but I spent almost my entire time being incredibly annoyed by at least one character, and not in a good way that's somehow arises out of strong characterisation and story-writing or whatever. There was a fair amount of good stuff in it, I don't think I have much interest in seeing any prequels. Regarding the trailer itself, I thought it was pretty cheesy that they matched up the line about "ice and snow" with the first shot in the snowy and icy environment. Yeah, it is pretty excellent. It originated in a very different Radio 4 series called 15 Minutes of Misery that I happened across when downloading Bill Bailey stuff at university. I enjoy that as well, but it's got a very different feel to it: there's a live audience who Locke addresses directly as a kind of in-character host, and the whole thing is more overtly whimsical. I'd say the TV series is certainly better. I believe there was also a radio series called 15 Stories High in-between the two, but I haven't been able to track that down, so I don't know what it's like.

I found the end of that Pratchett documentary quite uncomfortable and a little troubling. While I respect the man's right to assume control of his own life and the cessation thereof, it seemed to me that the matter was still very much unresolved with his wife. Obviously any outcome would be tragic, but I found it almost painful to watch his eagerness to die juxtaposed so cruelly with her distress at seeing him go. After the husband has died, there's a shot of the wife on the phone, apparently organizing something unrelated. Pratchett saw a touching display of Britishness; I saw a tragic display of denial and avoidance. What made it worse was that the woman had to watch her husband die in someone else's arms (I wondered at the time whether it had been established beforehand that it would happen that way), and that his last action was to have a request for water rejected; the latter I found particularly creepy – how much discomfort was he in? Did he have that last moment of panic as he realized the total finality of this action? (The concept of a sensation of helplessness in the last moment before dying is something I've been thinking a little about recently, incidentally.) I don't mean to undermine the man's right to choose his own fate, but the way in which it played out left me feeling very conflicted.

My friends and I did so much of that. If you play the DLC in the mansion Chris has all the same ones ("barks"?), except the "SHEVA!" is replaced with a noticeably more sedate "Jill." We were very amused by the incongruity, possibly because we are simpletons.

That's one hell of a compilation. I appreciate it. A while back I was briefly into bombarding my friends with terrible animated GIFs in IM conversations. Lots of flames and rotating skulls and flapping American flags and so on. I'd probably still do it if Steam chat supported inline graphics.

One time at university (so a few years ago now) I downloaded a bunch of stuff from micromusic.net. I'd never heard of any of the artists, and assumed they were all tiny Internet entities. Very occasionally I will see one of them somewhere else, and it surprises me. Binärpilot is one of those artists.

Those do a good job of connecting a scene with its larger context. One minute the camera's at eye level, the next you can see for blocks and blocks. It's a great effect. It makes me wonder how that sort of thing could be used in cinema.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited. I'm really hoping it's an indicator of the tone of the film. Incidentally, I'd say 2023 is way too soon for the kind of world they're depicting, but that might be more a matter of earlier fiction painting them into a corner. I guess you can explain it all with divergent universes or something, anyway, and ultimately it doesn't matter a great deal. I always kind of assumed AvP was non-canon, in as much as canon means anything anyway. Perhaps that was more just internal editing to suit my own preferences, though. EDIT: Looking more closely at the TED Blog page for the video (I'd previously seen it elsewhere), the biography for Weyland states he was born "at the turn of the Millennium". Either they're being very loose with that phrase, or Weyland is in his twenties. That doesn't seem appropriate for the character or the actor. Weird.

Thants.

This got me thinking: do the robots see themselves as fulfilling a heroic role? If so, it's only natural they should announce themselves with a hero's theme. That would be pretty excellent. Somebody teach them Ride of the Valkyries.

It would have been better if he'd shot the fire.

In light of Chris' earlier post, this is kind of a moot point, but I was kind of stunned and a little annoyed at the response to brkl's suggestion, so here's some stuff: Have you? They totally do. In Desert Island Discs (here's an episode on YouTube, for those of you outside the UK), for example, the interviewer is mixed slightly to the left, and the interviewee slightly to the right. It's not a particularly pronounced effect, because that would be jarring, but it's enough to give a sense of space (provided you're listening with stereo equipment – a lot of radio is listened to through single-speaker devices). Anticipating any "that's an interview, those are different" responses, but insisting to refer exclusively to BBC Radio 4's output, Thinking Allowed is a discussion programme that does exactly the same thing. Front Row, too, although only for portions of it. And Start the Week. Pretty much everything on Radio 4, in fact. Granted, these are all from one source, but I would have thought that the BBC is a pretty good model for proper audio recording. I believe their engineers are pretty well regarded. (Unfortunately, I don't believe iPlayer is accessible to anyone outside the UK, so these examples might be mostly useless. If people are interested enough I could record and upload some clips.) I'm not sure precisely how prevalent stereo separation is in radio (outside of the BBC, I guess), but it's worth noting that the radio is a medium primarily listened to through speakers without much concern for stereophony (unless you're listening on your hi-fi), whereas podcasts are more often listened to on portable devices through earphones or headphones, which are automatically perfectly positioned for stereo (unless you're experiencing technical difficulties such as those mentioned by Miffy). I guess [citation needed] on both of those claims, particularly the former, but that's the impression that I get, anyway. Also, AM radio is generally mono anyway for technological reasons, so there's that. My point is that there may be more to gain through stereo separation in a podcast than on the radio. As somebody already mentioned, stereo separation could help distinguish voices when everyone is speaking over one another. I can't say I have much of a problem with distinguishing voices most of the time, but "if it's ain't broke don't fix it" must surely apply to everyone's experience of the show, not just your or my own. Well, within reason – if it's going to fuck it up for everyone else in some way, don't do it. The bandwidth concern is probably the best argument against it: introducing another channel should pretty much double the file size, I believe. And I'm not sure there's necessarily enough of a problem for it to be worth the extra effort. Still, I think the vehement reaction against the suggestion was unfair and pretty knee-jerk. There are perfectly rational reasons to implement it, and if done properly it wouldn't be at all horrible; certainly not this nightmare scenario some people seem to be envisioning (if one can envision an entirely auditory thing).

Well, I said it was a tendency, not a universal law. I guess it could also apply to cultural capitals and most populous cities.

Congratulations Mr and Mrs Vanaman DESPITE THE SOCKLESSNESS. I didn't realize there were ethnically-targeted socks.

They don't seem to be quite up to season three on the website, anyway.

It really is excellent. Annoyingly, they only have the first two seasons on Netflix, which is where I was watching it, so I went from a voracious diet of four or five episodes an evening to nothing instantaneously. I think I got whiplash.

Isn't there a tendency of some sort of resentment towards the capital city within most countries? You know, with it being the seat of power and so on. At least, that was the impression I got. Me too. My excuse is that the "sch" and phlegmy sounds are usually a pretty good indicator of German, and they're all over the place. But it's probably actually because my knowledge of other languages is shameful. The numbers sound pretty German too, though.

The French language.

How terrible is it that until I read Tanukitsune's comment, I assumed you meant a television? Anyway, congratulations, guys. Enjoy my money!

Pancake Day! I forget it every year.

I've never seen such noble deviousness!

I have donated DESPITE the Van Man's famous socklessness.

Yeah, that was pretty great.

That's a tough one. Strawberries, I guess.

Boondongle.