Oct 062023
Oct 032023
Why everyone’s phone will alarm at 2:20 pm ET on Wednesday
“Everyone” in the US, at any rate, will supposedly receive a text message stating “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” Additionally, some sort of weird alert noise.
OK, fine. Here’s the weird bit:
The test will be broadcast by cell towers for approximately 30 minutes beginning at 2:20 pm ET, FEMA said. During this time, all compatible wireless phones that are switched on, within range of an active cell tower, and whose wireless providers participates in WEA tests should receive the text message.
The test will run for half an hour? I *assume* it means the system will try for half an hour to reach out to all phones for half an hour to send that one message. As opposed to blatting the siren out of your phone for half an hour. That’d be nuts. That’d be stupid. That’d be annoying and frustrating and disruptive. That’d also be the sort of thing that some dimwitted bureaucrats would sign off on.
Sep 232023
Well before the BBC fell into ruin and self-parody, it had a moment of undeniable awesomeness. Nicolas Winton was a British banker who rescued nearly 700 mostly Jewish children from the Nazis just before the outbreak of WWII, getting them to new lives in Britain. Afterwards, he did little to nothing to glorify himself or his deeds; it only really came out in 1988 when his wife found an old notebook with the names and passed them on to a Holocaust researcher. There followed a couple TV programs culminating in an episode of “That’s Life” where, unbeknownst to Winton, the *entire* audience was filled with the children and descendants of children he’d saved.
That’s how you fricken’ do it.
And now there’s to be a movie about Winton starring Anthony Hopkins.
Sep 222023
Memorial sculptures should not only make fairly clear what they’re memorializing, they should also not be especially mockable. Butt perhaps that point of view is old fashioned and out of date.
Sep 212023
Both technically well done *and* freakin’ hilarious. When “300” came out nearly two decades ago, these parody edits would not have made a lick of sense. Now, they are far, far too familiar.
BGV EDITS
Sep 202023
Specifically, deep fakes. Here’s the pinnacle.
Sep 192023
This YouTuber has a *lot* of incredibly mundane videos that are surprisingly interesting. They are largely videos shot in public places over the years… stores, malls, etc. on average days and remarkable days.
https://www.youtube.com/@vampirerobot/videos
For instance, shopping at a mall in 1984 is a fundamentally different experience than any mall I’ve seen in over a decade: there are a lot of people there.
And then there are the videos shot on unusual days:
And then there are the videos that presage what we’re going to get to live through again:
Sep 182023
It turns out that Peter Jackson filmed about 1,300 *hours* of footage for the Lord of the Rings. Seven million feet of negative is sitting in a Warner Brothers vault, not doin’ nuthin’. Granted the majority of this is alternate takes and bloopers, but almost certainty there is enough quality additional scenes there that the already massive Extended Version could be greatly further extended. Guy in the video below suggests that Warner Bros cutting Jackson loose to create six-hour miniseries from each movie for release on HBO/Max would be the way to go for the 25th anniversary of each flick, in much the same way they gave “The Justice League” back to Zack Snyder. I can’t say as that I disagree: a proper Ridiculously Extended Cut, overseen by Jackson, would be a dandy way to get over the nightmare of “the Rings of Power.”
The legalities of such things elude me. I *assume* that Warner retains all the rights to do with their stuff what they see fit, but who knows.
Sep 172023
Normally people are impressed with aircraft going higher, faster. And that’s certainly worth getting impressed about. But prepare to be impressed with aircraft going *incredibly* slow…
Someday it will be practical to 3D print structures of incredibly lightness using carbon fiber, with structures decimeters long and hair-thin, while still rigid. With skins of graphene and “rubber bands” made out of… well, I don’t know what, imagine the wondrously impractical ghostlike aircraft that will be built. With equally advanced optics and electronics, such aircraft could have cameras and transmitters. carried aloft by high altitude balloons, they could be released at the edge of space to fly for potentially days, covering hundreds or thousands of miles, their weak signals picked up by ground or space based receivers. I don’t know if cameras and transmitters will be good enough to make them useful intelligence gathering systems, but they are very unlikely to be detected by IR or radar. With their carbon constructions and extreme surface area to volume rations, when they are done they will likely degrade away to almost nothing very quickly.
Sep 102023
He returns to review “The Northman” and “Prey.” One he liked, one he hated. Agree with him or not, can’t argue that he’s not entertaining.