Anotherblog

Weekend

Triosk
Anna and I went with Alistair & co. to the Opera House to watch some improvisational Jazz on Friday night. There were three acts: Freedivers, Band of Five, and Triosk, the latter being the headline act and a favorite of Alistair’s. And Triosk were great. One thing that occasionally shits me about improvisational jazz is that the flow of the music becomes very predictable. All three bands had tunes that started quiet, gradually built up to a cacaphony, and then died down again, all without recognisable melodies. These pieces, especially in the quieter moments, can be very evocative and interesting despite that, but after an hour, I found myself wishing for a surprise - something sudden and different to happen. Improvisation is more suited to slow changes in mood: I prefer improvisation to have a bit of choreography here and there, to fade between improvisation and prepared material. And Triosk did that, and they did it very smoothly. It didn’t hurt that they had a bit of melody, too.

Hellboy

Hellboy
The next Film Forensics topic is “Hellboy”. Who’s up for a proofread?

Curious co-incidence?

Curious co-incidence?
Every month at work we have a cake day, at which various company announcements are made, such as new starters, etc. Today, much to my surprise, I recognised one of the new starters from a link that Dave posted. So I said Hi.

So, Dave - how’d you get that link? Do you know this guy?

Film Forensics: The Two Towers

Film Forensics: The Two Towers
The latest film forensics is up, as you’d expect. I haven’t gotten around to putting up a comments section yet. Hopefully this weekend.

Thanks to David C, David V and Alistair for their critical feedback, all of which was used.

Bowling, badminton, karaoke, and mindless destruction

Karaoke
It was a big weekend: first, on Friday, Nola’s farewell Karaoke evening. She’s going to China for six months to teach English, before going back to Uni to get her Honours Degree in the philosophy of science. Anna + Nola + Karaoke = mayhem, in a good way. I had to flee to avoid getting called up. I really wasn’t up to Karaoke on Friday.

Bowling (and Karaoke)
Second, John D.’s buck’s party: ten-pin bowling at the Manhatten Superbowl, possibly the most extreme-themed bowling club I’ve ever seen. Dominant 50’s theme, except for the disco lighting and the revenge of the Karaoke machine: I arrived to hear someone half-way through Bohemian Rhapsody. They were, of course, completely unable to hit the high notes, or even (as it turned out) the medium notes, but made up for this with volume and enthusiasm. The operatic interlude was a highlight.

After that was over, they closed the karaoke machine down. I don’t think it was ever meant to cope with such strain. We bowled three rounds on some rather dodgy scoring machines - one of them always counted the front pin as being knocked down, even if you did a gutterball, and another got confused about when it should sweep the remaining pins away. I managed 129 on the first round, thanks to a technique of extreme power, and then my arm gave up and I got 85 on the second and third rounds. Gutterball to the left, gutterball to the right. I was still satisfied, however, because whenever the ball did manage to go straight, it often resulted in a strike.

Mindless Destruction
Sunday was the games day with David, Kyla, Iain and Llyn, while Anna and her friend Maria did a marathon GodfatherI,II,III and Sopranos Season 1 session. We played Apples to Apples, Roborally, Spree, Bang, and Bluff. All good.

Writing
Between all these activities, I have only barely been keeping up with the writing. I started on a Film Forensics review of “The Two Towers”, but didn’t get around to converting the website to using wordpress (which should allow comments - such as Ted’s excellent rant about Equilibrium - to appear under the film being reviewed.) And I’ve fallen way, way behind on Lorenzo’s journals. Again. I’m hoping to finish the Two Towers review tonight. Who’s interested in sanity checking it?

Badminton
…and finally, today I played an hour of singles badminton against Ian B. at lunchtime. It was terrific fun, and a hell of a lot more of a workout than doubles - we played six games, winning three each, and I’m utterly stuffed. Between badminton and bowling, my right arm is almost incapacitated.

Solar power

Solar Power
“The energy that it takes to make a solar panel is never recouped in its lifetime.”

I was talking with someone the other day, and they brought that old one up. I assured him that this was old news; that modern solar panels definitely recoup their energy cost (not to mention their monetary cost) within five or six years of their thirty-odd year lifespan. Then it occured to me that my own information is somewhat out of date. I think I first heard it five or six years ago. So I looked it up on the web and found:

The US Department of Energy

“The energy payback period is also dropping rapidly. For example, it takes today’s typical crystalline silicon module about 4 years to generate more energy than went into making the module in the first place. The next generation of silicon modules, which will employ a different grade of silicon and use thinner layers of semiconductor material, will have an energy payback of about 2 years. And thin-film modules will soon bring the payback down to one year or less. This means that these modules will produce “free” and clean energy for the remaining 29 years of their expected life.”

Which I found to be tremendously encouraging. We may already be at the point at which it makes excellent economic sense to get as large a solar panel as you can afford, in the knowledge that it’ll pay itself back - pure profit - after a couple of years. All we need now is the ability to feed power back into the grid and get energy credits from it.

More film forensics

More film forensics
I’ve posted up the review of “I, Robot” - thanks to Al, Owen and especially David C. for sanity checking. I made lots of last-minute changes thanks to David’s perceptive meta-critique.

Weekend

Weekend
A weekend of little event and less consequence, mostly plonked in front of the TV watching the Olympics. I got my writing done, both of Fork and Film Forensics (the next review will be of “I, Robot” - if you’re interested in proof-reading it, bung me an email) and I made enough progress with the no-sugar thing that I can now have sugar again. However, I have decided that for the moment I shall avoid softdrinks, particularly caffeinated ones. It may have been the result of watching “Supersize Me”. I haven’t been to a takeaway since we saw it last week, and we’ve cooked dinner a lot too. One of those films that, even when you’ve read all about it, is still very powerful.

Time And Tide
The film “Time And Tide”, a Hong Kong action flick by Tsui Hark, greatly impressed me when I first saw it last year, particularly the scene in which a character jumps through a window and abseils down the side of the building - and the camera follows them. Unfortunately, we saw the film on VCD, which is of somewhat lower quality. Yesterday I found a copy on DVD and rented it, and watched that scene again. I think there’s a cleverly concealed cut at the point that the camera turns downwards to go down the outside of the building, but it’s still a remarkable shot.

Writing

Writing
More ideas for the dramatically different second draft of Fork - this one to try and involve the main character a little more in the proceedings, and deal with the power vacuum caused by the absence of the Doctor.

Also, tonight, I will hit 130k words. You’d think I’d be close to finishing.

Destruction!

Destruction!
A house a little down the road from us was demolished this morning. When we went outside to see what was causing the racket, we were blessed with the sight of a great big backhoe with a snapping-jaw shovel, attacking the house. It was in the front yard, and it was ripping into it: sometimes, shutting the jaw and just biffing the roof in, other times, grabbing a wall and pulling it inwards into the growing pile of rubble in the middle. A man stood next to the backhoe, ineffectually squirting water over the debris to stop dust from rising. Evidently, there had been a fire in the house some months before (we didn’t see the fire, but we heard about it). The fire hadn’t obviously damaged the outside, but we got to see the extent of the damage as the backhoe peeled back layers of the house.

First, my favorite moment was when it grasped the wall above the front door, roof already gone, and tossed it into the pile in the middle. Huge wall, tossed. This was superceded when the backhoe started driving onto the rubble of the front section, and carefully pulled the side walls in using it’s teeth. The next-door houses were right there… less than a metre separated them from the graceful destruction of their neighbour. And apart from a couple of loose boards landing in the yard, there was no collateral damage.

Both these moments, however, were superceded when the backhoe grabbed the water tank from the attic, squeezed it in its jaws, and used the torrents of water (the tank was quite enormous, much larger than a typical hot water tank, for example) to help out the poor guy spraying the debris. Then, dropping the still half-full tank, closing the jaw, and sucker-punching it, making it burst in two like a ripe melon. Both Anna (who has a strong destructive urge) and I instantly wanted to become demolition people, operating backhoes. Just awesome.