The first of a few old mix sessions I’m re-posting. I hope to have something new to post in the not-terribly-distant future, but for now, this will get things started.
End of 2012
Well, a fair amount went on in my life this year…not that you’d know from this blog. This is one of those things that I hope to change for 2013. While it isn’t one of those things that I’d call a formal “new year’s resolution”, I do hope to spend a little more time babbling on here than I have over the past year or two.
We’ll see how I do. It’s a good goal, at least…and since I only made four posts in 2012 (this will make five), beating that shouldn’t be terribly difficult.
I have tweaked the design of the site a bit. New year, new look, though still focusing on a nice, clean, simple presentation. Black text, white background, not a lot of flash to get in the way of the content. Just the way I like it.
Norwescon 36
DJ Wüdi will be DJing the Thursday Night Dance at the upcoming Norwescon 36 science fiction and fantasy convention in SeaTac, Washington!
Thor’s Day Night Dance!
We call it Thursday night, but we used to know it as Thor’s Day…and you can kick off your weekend of saving the world with a celebration worthy of Asgard itself! Join DJ Wüdi for an evening of tunes new and old for gods and mortals alike. Come dressed as your godlike representation or as your mortal alter-ego. Requests are not just welcome, but encouraged!
Any songs you know you’d like to hear? I’m already taking requests!
Christmas 2012 Wishlist
Dad asked me to post my Christmas wish list, so here I go. As usual, what follows is links to four separate Amazon wish lists, as my occasional OCD tendencies mean I categorize my greed. Though I don’t expect anyone other than my parents to get me anything…I’ve been surprised in the past, so feel free to indulge! ;)
In order from “least expensive and most realistic” to “most expensive and I don’t really expect to get anything from these lists, but it sure would be cool!“…
Part the first: Print media. Books! Words on paper! Physical entertainment that doesn’t need plugs, batteries, or anything more than a little free time and a comfortable place to sit. Any books that got added as hardback are perfectly acceptable as paperback if available; I often add these from reviews from when they first come out and hardback is the only option, but we can fit more paperbacks on our shelves.
Part the second: Movies and Music. Audio and audio-visual stimulation. What’s here is a mix of stuff we don’t have and older stuff that I’d like to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray, but can’t do on my own because I promised Prairie I wouldn’t spend any money on Blu-ray versions of stuff we already own on DVD. Hence, putting those items on a wish list for when Christmas or birthdays roll around.
Part the third: Electronic Gadgets and Gizmos. Just a few things on here. The top two most recently added items would be nice additions to my DJ kit—I’ve got a great setup for iPad DJing, either of those gadgets would interface with my Mac and let me play there as well.
Part the fourth: Photography Bits. Mostly lenses I’d love to add to my kit, but also a couple accessories that would make playing with video a little easier and higher quality.
So there you are: My (sometimes-)biannual “gee, I wonder if anyone feels like blowing money on someone they may or might know over the internet” post!
Man’s Natural State
Men should be offended when someone claims that women should prevent rape by not wearing certain things or not going certain places or not acting in a certain way.
That line of thinking presumes that you are incapable of control. That you are so base and uncivilized that it takes extraordinary effort for you to walk down the street without raping someone. That you require a certain dress code be maintained, that certain behaviors be employed so that maybe today, just maybe, you won’t rape someone.
It presumes that your natural state is rapist.
— Original source unknown, seen on an uncredited image file being shared all over Facebook and Tumblr.
Political Compass (the third)
This is the third time I’ve taken this test, though it’s been a few years — the first time was in 2002, the second in 2003, and now, nine years later, comes the third time. It seems I’m moving ever further towards that bottom left corner…
2002: -6.12/-5.90
2003: -6.62/-6.41
2012: -7.12/-7.33
Things I Will Not Do
Things I will not do, in no particular order (a list that can be revised at any time, though such revisions are likely to be additions, unless there’s a very good reason for removing an item):
- Refer to Prairie as “my woman”. I do not own her.
-
Use “bitch” as a generic term for women. I reserve the right to occasionally describe someone as “a bitch” or “bitchy” when appropriate, but women in general are not “bitches” (or sluts, hos, or any other demeaning term).
-
Share any cute, funny, poignant, political, or any other kind of image on Facebook that uses improper grammar. Not that I share many images, but if they’re made without proper use of the English language, they’re not getting shared (with occasional, very rare exceptions for obviously intended humorous butchering of the language by people who know what they’re doing and why it’s funny).
-
Share any image that denigrates one body type in favor of another. I find skinny women attractive, I find curvy women attractive…basically, I find women attractive. No one body type is better than any other. As long as someone has a body, I’m good with that.
I’m sure this list will grow over time. These just popped into my head this morning based on things I’ve seen posted recently.
Sheldon Cooper’s Holographic Laptop
So I noticed something that amused me while watching Big Bang Theory the other night — apparently Sheldon has a holographic display on his laptop.
Obviously, some evidence in the form of screenshots is in order (all from Season 4, Episode 15, “The Benefactor Factor”, though I noticed this in Episode 14, “The Thespian Catalyst”, as well).
First up, a shot of Sheldon videoconferencing with Amy. This is mostly to set the scene, there’s nothing much to see here.
Next, a POV shot of what Sheldon sees while sitting directly in front of the computer.
Finally, here’s the shot that caught my eye — a shot over Sheldon’s shoulder.
Compare those last two shots. In the first shot, from Sheldon’s POV, we see Amy from directly ahead. She’s looking directly into the camera, as would be expected. However, in the second shot, she’s turned slightly to her right, giving us a slight profile shot (and while it doesn’t really translate in still shots, this isn’t because she was shaking her head or momentarily turned her head for some reason — she holds her head in this position through the entire shot).
The final impression is that as the camera switched from Sheldon’s POV to the over-the-shoulder shot, the perspective changed in our view of Amy, so that we see her from the same angle as if the two characters were speaking face-to-face rather than over video chat…but the only way that could happen would be if Sheldon’s computer had a holographic display!
With our normal, flat, non-holographic computer screens, of course, even when moving to the side of a computer screen, we would still see the other party looking straight into the camera…so we’d see the image something like this:
Of course, in the visual language of television, that looks odd. We expect characters to look at each other, and we know that Sheldon and Amy are looking at each other, so the technically correct shot seems a little odd, as Amy is still looking directly out of the screen, apparently at the viewer instead of at Sheldon. The solution, then, is to have her turned slightly to her right when filming those sequences so it still appears that she’s looking directly at Sheldon, even though it gives the somewhat amusing impression that Sheldon has a laptop far more advanced than any currently on the market (as does Amy, as she’d have to have a laptop that can both film and broadcast 3D video chat streams) — but then, would we really expect anything less from Sheldon Cooper? ;)
I have no idea how often this technique is used on other shows, as this is one of the few times I’ve noticed it. In fact, the only other time I can think of that I noticed this technique being used was in Star Trek (TNG comes to mind, though I can be relatively sure that it was also done this way in DS9, VOY, and ENT). However, in the Star Trek universe, it’s known (at least to the more geeky technobabble obsessed fans) that the main display screen on the bridge of the Enterprise is a holographic display, and it’s not that far-fetched to believe that the smaller displays might be as well, so the conceit was never as jarring when I noticed it there.
So…there’s my ridiculously over-analyzed geek moment of the day.
Trolling Middle Earth
First off, the gorgeous new trailer for the first part of The Hobbit has just been released:
Now, a slight digression. Back when the internet was new (and I’m not entirely exaggerating with that), the Jargon File was created as a living encyclopedia of words, phrases, terms, and events common to the geek communities of the day. In that document are the original definitions for the term “troll” as used in the electronic world.
- v.,n. [From the Usenet group
alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase “trolling for newbies” which in turn comes from mainstream “trolling”, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT.n. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand – they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, “Oh, ignore him, he’s just a troll.” Compare kook.
Where today, “troll” is almost universally understood as the second of the above quoted definitions — a person solely out to provoke annoyance — I’ve always preferred the first definition. In that sense, a properly constructed troll is something I’ve always respected.
The comments for yesterday evening’s io9 post about the Hobbit trailer contain a beautiful example of trolling in the old sense (“…a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”). This comment gave me a good laugh this morning:
Yawwwn, sequelitis strikes again.
Hey Hollywood, how long’d it take you to come up with yet another unnecessary backstory?! Do we really need to go with Frodo’s dad on his quest to find the ring?
I bet they’ll dumb it down and make it all kiddy too. Hard R or I ain’t watchin!
How much you wanna bet they’ll figure out a way to shoehorn half-a-dozen giant spiders to compete with the one they had in LOTR2.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a troll is supposed to be done.
Essentially
Part 1: The Event
Part 2: The Spin
Gawker: ‘It’s a Food Product, Essentially’: Fox News Starts Spinning Pepper Spray Cops
“I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police,” O’Reilly says, “particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.” God forbid! We’d never want to question Lt. John Pike’s decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus! And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn’t we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O’Reilly, that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially”?
Part 3: The Science
Scientific American: About Pepper Spray
…commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.
Part 4: The Humor
Product Reviews
Amazon: Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray
Accept no substitutes when casually repressing students: Whenever I need to breezily inflict discipline on unruly citizens, I know I can trust Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray to get the job done! The power of reason is no match for Defense Technology’s superior repression power. When I reach for my can of Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray, I know that even the mighty First Amendment doesn’t stand a chance against its many scovil units of civil rights suppression.
More than just pepper spray!!!: First, this baby has everything you would expect from Defense Technology brand pepper spray. It burns like hell. Whether you’re spraying directly into eyes or mouths – this will cause excruciating pain.
Second, and I know it’s not explicitly listed as one the uses on the can, but it’s also an amazing human arm de-linker. So if you have this gigantic public space and a dozen people are sitting there with their arms linked – this will really help in your effort to de-link those arms.
#MegynKellyEssentials
The #MegynKellyEssentials tag is worth watching on Twitter. It seems to have grown out of the comments to the Gawker post linked above. Some choice bits snagged from the Gawker comments:
Megyn Kelly on fire hoses: “It’s a sports beverage, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on rubber bullets: “It’s a pencil eraser, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on hand grenades: “It’s a Fourth of July firework, essentially! God bless America.”
Megyn Kelly on nightsticks: “It’s an olive branch, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on waterboarding: “It’s a Neti Pot, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on genital mutilation: “It’s a Brazilian wax, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on zip-tie handcuffs: “It’s a Livestrong bracelet, essentially.”
Megyn Kelly on HIV: “It’s a common cold, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on the rack: “It’s a chiropractor, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on mustard gas: “It’s a hot dog condiment, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on nuclear weapons: “It’s a microwave dinner, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on sound weapons: “It’s a boom box, essentially!”