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A few more things I can do without

More in my continuing series of stuff and people I can do without.

1. People who apply the same solution to every problem…

Complaint: I have a cold.
Answer: Have you tried Yoga?

Complaint: I’ve been constipated.
Answer: Have you ever tried chiropractic?

Complaint: My car is making a weird noise.
Answer: Have you prayed about it?

2. The need to work. Even though I like my job, c’mon…this is 2013. Aren’t we supposed to be beyond the need to work and toil for our daily bread? Aren’t we supposed to be served by robots, and be able to spend our days making art and otherwise improving ourselves and enjoying our limited time on Planet Earth with our friends and family?

3. Crazy people. Man, I am so done with crazy people. This presents a small problem, as there still seems to be an oversupply of them. Goal for 2014 and into the future. Minimize contact with the crazy, the stupid, the misguided. Avoid, evade, be invisible to the stupid, and let them not be part of my universe.

4. Southern bullshit.

5. Miami

6. Flip-flops at the store or on the airplane. Especially on the airplane. Put some damned shoes on.

7. People who are against ever giving some kind of participation award to little kids playing sports. This was a big news story here for a few nights, and was so stupid I couldn’t believe anyone cared. But the more I heard about it, night after night, the more I came to hate the people who were so concerned that their peewee football kids might “learn a wrong lesson” if they got a trophy but it wasn’t for winning.

Really. Really? We’re talking about little kids. You already have them playing a sport in which they learn to run over each other. So right there, you’ve already got the main lesson of the game being pretty bad unless you are preparing them for life in Conan’s Hyborian Age.   Why not give the kids who got their asses run over the most — just got the crap knocked outta them, lost, but kept playing — a trophy to show that they kept at it and didn’t give up. Oh no, these redneck and jock-sniffer parents won’t have any of that! Screw those little losers!  What kind of small-hearted, weak-minded, human vermin are that serious about 8 year olds playing football?  Well, we have our answer. End of mini-rant!

OK, that’s it for now.

 

 

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Cheap stuff

For the last couple of month’s I’ve been mostly using my Samsung Google Chromebook for my internet/blogging/multimedia activities. It cost $250.

It’s certainly true that I would rather have a new MacBook Air, but as I have stated before I couldn’t see spending that kind of money right now. Too many other things I want and need to spend money on.

The more I use this little machine, the more comfortable I am with it. True, it is kind of cheaply built, but hell, look at the price. The only thing I’ve found it really doesn’t do that well is video display. I guess the graphics card, or whatever you call the part of this machine that processes video, isn’t super good. But it isn’t horrible either.

I guess there is on other issue that has come up, and that is video editing. While there is some reasonable cloud-based software out there for video editing, the challenge is in the uploading of your video footage into the cloud to work on it. HD video creates such big files. It just isn’t very feasible to upload hundreds of megs (or multiples gigs) unless you have a much faster upload speed than most people. There needs to be some app that will load locally on the Chromebook and process the video locally. Perhaps there already is and I just haven’t found it.

I’ve had good enough luck with this Chromebook that I’m tempted to apply the same “making the most out inexpensive equipment” ethos to the rest of  my computing activities. I hardly every use a real “camcorder” for shooting video. Almost all mine is done on a simple point ‘n’ shoot digital camera. I use a GoPro HD Hero sometimes, but overall the point ‘n’ shoot seems to be my favored device.

In a world of skateboarders using expensive and cutting edge cameras, I like the idea of shooting good pics, video, and audio using inexpensive stuff, on an inexpensive computer. While I’ve been thinking very seriously about getting a nice digital SLR, maybe just getting a better point ‘n’ shoot — one that will shoot video in HD — might be a better choice for me.

OK, yes, this is kind of one of those rambling blog posts that no one will want to read. Whatever.

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Night Mission

A couple of pics from Friday night’s skate outing. Just put the point ‘n’ shoot down on the curb or ground in a few places and shot some video. These are unaltered video captures.

I love skating at night like this. Wish there were more fun places to roll around after-hours. Need to go on the hunt.

There are too many crystal clear videos and pics out there these days. I miss the grainy shittiness. I like the way video captures are almost always a bit blurry, and capture the movement.

bankcarve

 

blurcarve

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Quote of the week

From Henry Rollins in his LA Weekly column, describing Ted Cruz.

The thing that bugs me the most about people like Ben Carson is that even before push comes to shove, they can’t hack it. They prove it over and over. They have not the vision, the moral strength, the patriotism or the guts to really walk their talk. They are veal in suits. One look at their heroes tells you all you need to know. Ted Cruz, a soft man who always looks like he’s about to cry, is their poster boy.

I am on a Ted Cruz news blackout, but Henry snuck this mention in under my radar. It was worth a momentary lapse.

 

 

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Let’s be honest…

 

Admission: On a bad day on the stock market, I enjoy seeing the pictures of dejected brokers and traders. I imagine them all going out and jumping out of high windows or jumping in front of subway trains.  I like seeing the people who leach money out of the system have a bad day. Don’t you?  If you say “no”, you are a liar!

 

 

 

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Vera

Soon I’ll write a bit more about the Philly Freestyle contest I was in back in September, but right now I want to post a video of this kid Steven Vera, who rides for Bustin Boards. Steven is rad, and has the added good quality of being a nice young dude and not prick. He entered the freestyle contest on a longboard, and really threw it down. It was nice to see someone (besides me) enter a flatland contest and NOT do what is expected. Killer.

Here’s a little intro to Vera’s skating. Good kid. Give him some propz yo.

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Pen Pic

Posted this on my photoblog this morning, but was kinda stoked about the way the flash lit up the orange notebook, so I’m posting it here. Shot on Macro setting. No manipulation of image. Was really just testing the macro on this beat up old point ‘n’ shoot camera. Still seems to be getting the job done.

pen pic
Lamy Safari fountain pen on Rhodia notebook.
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Thoughts on Man of Steel

I can’t believe I haven’t gotten to this yet…well…here it is…

Marvel has been KILLING IT with their superhero movies. Every one of them has been great. I’m talking about the ones from Marvel Studios, not the shitty ones like the two horrible Fantastic Four movies. So, to be clear, let me list the killer ones…

  • Iron Man
  • The Incredible Hulk
  • Iron Man 2
  • Thor
  • Captain America: the First Avenger
  • Marvel’s The Avengers
  • Iron Man 3

OK — that’s out of the way. Marvel Studios has done a great job of 1)creating a cohesive cinematic universe for their characters to inhabit, 2) they’ve done a great job of making live action costumed super-heroes not look stupid, and 3)they’ve more or less kept the characters’ personalities and abilities like those of the comic book characters. No huge deviations, and the deviations that are there tend to improve the films.

Sooooo…where the heck is DC Comics?

Overall, the recent Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale was pretty good. I have no complaints about it. I enjoyed all three of those films. Again — the writers and director took existing comic story lines and did a nice “real world-ish” adaptation of them. I would love it if one of them had showed Batman being “the World’s Greatest Detective”, as he is depicted in the comics, but let’s face it — the general public is waaaaay to stupid to enjoy something even a little bit cerebral. Remember, we’re talking about a population dumb enough to elect people like Ted Cruz, and who think that requiring people to buy insurance from private companies amounts to a socialist takeover of health care. See what I mean?   And you don’t make multi-multi-multi-million dollar movies for smart people only. So there you go. We got what we got, and it was pretty good. We were lucky on these Batman movies.

Oh – if you were offended by my Ted Cruz remark or the healthcare comment, I don’t give a shit and please go kill yourself. Thanks.

Hmmmm…now after three successful Batman movies, what character should DC do next? The answer is quite obvious — a certain Kryptonian who escaped a certain doomed planet called Krypton. Yeah.

So with heavy involvement by Christopher Nolan, of the aforementioned Batman movies, they crank out Man of Steel, a very much needed reboot of the Superman mythos. I say very much needed because the old Superman movies as well as the attempted relaunch by Brian Singer entitled Superman Returns, well, they were all stupid. Yes, stupid. As beloved as at least the first two of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies were and are, and as much as they got a few things very right, they simply don’t hold up well in the world of the 2000s. Superman Returns might have succeeded but fell victim to its attempt to carry on a long-dead storyline. It was a beautiful movie, with some really fantastic scenes, but sorry — we want to see Superman go up against people with super powers. Lex Luthor sucks.

The creative team got it right on Man of Steel.

They modernized the character without stripping away what makes him great. He is a demigod walking among us, and they made this clear. They didn’t waste time with a linear origin story, but worked that stuff in via flashbacks.  They gave him enemies of his own power level to fight. And then — the let them fight! Glorious, city-leveling, violent, super-being combat. Lots of flight? Check.  Super speed? Check. Heat vision? Check. Super Strength on a proper Superman level? Check and check.

I’ve read some complaints by people who need to get a life and/or settle down that 1)there is too much collateral damage in the big fight scene (that people would have died) and 2)Superman kills Zod at the end. Well, hell yes people would have died! What would you expect. Do you blame Superman for not saving all of them? Dude is trying to save the entire planet. OK? Got it? And at the same time, two or three or four other Kryptonians are trying to beat the shit out of him and kill him. So lay off.

As far as his killing of General Zod at the end — well hell yes he kills him. The guy is about to incinerate a whole family with heat vision. First the mamby-pambies complain because Supes doesn’t save everyone and their uncles from getting crushed by falling buildings, then they complain because he kills the guy who wants to destroy humanity and re-engineer the plant and is about to smoke an entire family to do it. What’s he supposed to do? Reason with the guy?

No, this isn’t Chris Reeves’s Superman. He KILLED a dude. It is part of his character development in this new movies series (at least I hope it’s a series).

Oh – the special effects in this film were incredible and flawless. Finally they show super-speed. It was cool.

So to sum up…

  • Movie – great
  • People who got mad because Superman doesn’t save everyone and kills a villain — stupid
  • Do I hope there are more of these? Yes.

There is now talk of a new Batman/Superman team-up type movie. If they can work these two together, using the kind of atmosphere they have achieved with the Batman trilogy and Man of Steel, I say they should go for it. There is always talk of a Justice League movies. I’d love to see it down right, but I’m not convinced they can do it yet. They need to get at least two more characters done right in their own movies. Green Lantern was not very good. They need to scrap that one. I’m gonna say Wonder Woman and the Flash. At a minimum they need those.

Actually, maybe they don’t. If they can get the characters right, I don’t think they need an origin story. We all know who all these characters are. Just go for it.

 

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Electronic Music Goal

I’ve been fiddling around with electronic music for a while now. I’m working to do some collaborative stuff with others who are into it, and also with a couple of real-life drummers.

My stuff so far is here.

While I enjoy listening to a variety of electronic stuff, I’ve decided my goal is to make electronic music that is impossible to dance to. Make it interesting, geeky, and/or ugly. I hate seeing rooms full of drunk people dancing. Makes me want to sick.

Not that I’d ever be in such a situation. Just a point of reference.