Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Mulder, Scully, Carey Grant, and Max Schreck

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Just thought I’d put up a quick note of the new movies I picked up this week…I may start doing this from time to time as I add to my already extensive collection. This weekend I picked up two that had come in while I was off on vacation, then one today that we rarely get into the store, so I figured it was worth grabbing when it showed up.

X-Files: Season 2: I’d never seen any of the X-Files until just a few months ago, when I picked up the Season 1 box set purely on the strength of what I’d heard people say about it. Have to say, I’m glad I did…one of the few downsides to my policy of not watching television is that I do occasionally miss out on a show really worth watching, and X-Files is definitely one of those. I got really sucked in to Season 1, and the show just keeps getting better. So far I’m 4 episodes into Season 2, and realizing that I’m going to have to wait until March for Season 3 is really starting to hurt.

His Girl Friday: This has been one of my favorite classic comedies for a long, long time. This adaptation of the play The Front Page with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell moves at a mile a minute, and is absolutely hilarious through and through — this is one comedy I’d recommend without reservations to anyone. Just make sure you can listen quickly, this is one of the fastest moving films I’ve ever seen.

Nosferatu: This is the one that I grabbed on a whim, as it doesn’t appear in the store very often — the original 1922 version of the classic horror film Nosferatu. This is almost a legendary adaptation of the Dracula story, and I’m currently really looking forward to the upcoming film Shadow of the Vampire, a highly fictional (but fascinating looking) account of the making of Nosferatu, starting John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. If you haven’t seen previews for this one yet, track them down….

And that’s it for my post-vacaition binge…thank goodness I get paid on Tuesday, there’s another good batch coming in then!

Quick update from Seattle

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I’m actually still in the midst of my vacation, but while sitting here at a friends house checking e-mail, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to get a little updating done here. If nothing else, just to get something changing on here to assure people that I am alive, and have survived my travels so far.

I’ve stripped out the last of the manual updates from this mainpage…from now on, all updates and archives of old posts should be handled by this CGI script — assuming I’ve got it set up correctly.

Which may be a pretty big assumption…we’ll see.

In any case, I’m back in town this Thursday, so things should start getting back up to speed sometime around then. See you all soon….

Colophon

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Just a minor change here — took the machine/server/system info box out of the sidebar and created a colophon for the site. Since this isn’t really of major import to most people, it’s not linked in the main Contents listing, but is available through the links at the bottom of the page.

Parallax1

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Went out to catch Parallax1‘s show tonight. Very cool, they’re a great bunch, and keep doing very interesting stuff with their music.

Not much other than that…stayed up to late chatting at VI again. Ah, well — one more day of work at Suncoast, and then I’m officially on vacation for the next three weeks. It’s about time!

NewsPro up and running

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Okay — looks like this is up and running. Rock on. :) From now on, I’ll be using this script to update the main page of the site, rather than diving into my main HTML file every time I need to throw some little thing up here.

I’m really beginning to enjoy actually running my own server more and more as I dive into the tricks I can play…

[From Usenet: 2.18.99 0000]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.tv.star-trek.voyager Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

  1. THE MUSIC WAS LACKING BIG TIME! Music is a powerful tool to help a movie have depth, feeling and emotion. The music could have been so much more deep and could have added so much more to the feeling of the movie.

I’d have to watch it again (hurrah for VCR’s) to really make a judgment, but there was at least one instance where it really caught my ear. During one of the shots of the shuttle approaching the borgplex, there were a couple low, twangy notes like someone plucking two of the lower strings on a piano. Caught my ear mainly because the last time I can remember hearing that theme used was in ST:TMP as the Enterprise is making its entrance into V’ger. Visually similar shots (though the one in ST:TMP was much more visually impressive (okay, and about half an hour longer) than VOY:DF’s borgplex entrance), good use of old themes. Which brought another thought into my feeble little brain. In advance, please forgive me if this has been hashed and re-hashed many times over in the past, I just subscribed to these groups after watching VOY:DF.

Has anyone ever thought much of the possibility that the planet that transformed the Voyager probe into V’ger was the Borg home planet, before they got to the point of striking out on their own and assimilating everything that sneezed twice in their general direction? The general purpose seems to be very similar — it’s not that big a step from “learn all that is learnable, collect all the possible knowledge in the universe, then merge with the creator” to the Borg’s assimilation of other species and knowledge bases into their own. Additionally, it was hypothesized in ST:TMP that the Voyager probe had fell through a black hole to this ‘machine planet’, been repaired/reprogrammed there, and sent away. Mix in a little time distortion along with the black hole, and V’ger could have been sent on its voyage back to Earth long before the Borg advanced to a point where they could move out on their own, and still have time to fill its databanks and make it back home. Just a thought…would be interested to hear if others have explored this line of reasoning. Would love to see it explored in a show at some point, but that may just be fanboy drooling (grin).

Incidentally, what happened to all the knowledge that V’ger transmitted to Earth?

And while I’m at it, I suppose I could throw in the Transformers homeworld/Borg homeworld parallels, too…. Are there any? Probably…I’m just blowing smoke out of my ass at this point, but if I can think of it now, it’s probably been beaten to death before now…

[From Usenet: 1.19.99 0000]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the rec.music.industrial Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

In article <77v6ki$eo...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, diakon_rad...@newempire.com wrote:

She is the Mariah Carey of the Jihad! :-)

If you go to any gothic clubs you have probably heard her voice on back up on the remix / latest version of Sisters Of Mercy track “Temple Of Love”.

She is one of few artists who managed to cross the barriers between Hebrew and Arabic listeners in the Middle East.

Incidentally, she just provided the voice for one of the supporting characters (unfortunately, I can’t remember which one) in the animated film ‘Prince of Egypt’ – I figured it was her when I heard her sing, then checked the credits to be sure.

[From Usenet: 12.26.98 0000]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the rec.arts.startrek.fandom Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Need help from someone out there – found somthing in my family’s house, trying to figure out if it’s worth anything.

Star Trek Book and Record set from Peter Pan Industries/Power Records (catalog #BR513), featuring the stories A Mirror for Futility and The Time Stealer, copyright 1976, still in it’s original shrinkwrap, unopened. One small (less than 1cm square) notch taken out of top right hand corner, otherwise undamaged.

Any ideas? Please e-mail me at djwo…@geocities.com, as I don’t frequent this newsgroup.

[From Usenet: 8.22.98 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.music.nin Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

In article <6rl9d0$fv...@news.doit.wisc.edu>, Mother’s Little Helper <val...@stoned.com> wrote:

RaumKatze2 <raumkat...@aol.com> wrote:

> You can play any music with any movie or tv show, and there are bound to be syncronicities with lyrics, dynamics, rhythm, and other stuff.

One of the scariest exqamples of this was one day in 1995 when we noticed that Sesame Street was perfectly synched with the Sir Mix-a-Lot album we were listening to…it was scary.

One of the funniest I’ve seen was watching Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” in fast forward while listening to nin’s broken album. Fit way too well…funny as shit, too.

[From Usenet: 7.20.98 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.music.techno Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

In article <6p2df9$k3...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, mats...@statcan.ca wrote:

So does anyone know the song I am talking about? :) I have a small mp3 that is a minute long of this Antiloop Megamix.. “Dr. Jones” If anyone has the full song in mp3 format, or knows if its obtainable on CD , please let me know…

Much as spending money on Aqua hurt, I know the track…I found it on a japanese import CD called Aquamania: The Remixes Vol. I – picked it up at a local Camelot, of all things. Truthfully, the disc surprised me…a lot of the remixes are pretty good. Those songs can acutually get decent when you strip out the vocals and tweak the remixes enough… “