Machinima

I mentioned the art of making movie out of video games, and Peaceful Blade reminded me of the correct term for it, "machinima", and pointed to this funny and raunchy example.

Obviously you can't make good movies with this tool, it is made for gaming, not movie making. I don't see a great leap to a tool which is made for movie making though. Software with relatively easy-to-use tools for amateur film makers, so they don't have to get a degree in 3D animation, but can simply ask the characters to do what they should, and so on. This software could be sold with extra modules for various characters and settings for what you need. Maybe you could buy a complete model of 42nd Street in NYC, for example.

If somebody made this, I think we could see quite interesting movies being made by single authors. What William Gibson called "the garage Kubrick", and sort of made the focus of his wonderful novel Pattern Recognition, except that one was based on the technology of around the millennium, and so one person couldn't do it.

Actually exceptionally clever individuals are already sort of getting there, witness Till Nowak's Delivery. This short film is pretty damn awesome, it's hard to believe it's made by one man, more or less. I have a 96MB version of the whole nine-minute film, which I downloaded a couple of years ago, but it seems it's not available for free download anymore, they are selling it on DVD. (If it were me, I'd sell it as a download, much more interest in that, rather than wait for a DVD.)

Update: Alex points to this interesting movie.

The Artist Once More Known As Prince

The Artist Once More Known As Prince may not actually be the person behind this attack against his own fan sites. I hope so, for otherwise it must be one of the dumbest moves in public relations ever.
Some of the fan sites are uniting.

I think even just legally he is on shaky ground here, to say the least. Normally the copyright to photos of a person belongs to the photographer, not the subject, and I doubt very much that Prince has bought the copyright to all the photos ever taken of him. And to assert that the copyright to tattoos of his likeness belongs to him is just plain idiotic.

TTL injected:
His case, if he has one, would be about trademark rights. Not copyright. He does own the trademark to his likeness. Registered or not.
The question is what constitutes a violation. Use of his likeness in news, encyclopaedia or documentary context? Probably not. Pushing a product or service based on or exploiting his likeness? Probably yes.

Hey, how come there's no Prince photo decorating your post? ;-)

You're quite right, I have corrected it now.

Big Brudder

Do we need to fingerprint all school kids?

Pascal said:
This is not enough. All humans should be rounded up and exiled on some small planet from which escape is near impossible, too remote from other planets anyway. Then intelligent life in the Universe would be safe from those barbaric mad hairless apes.

Maybe this already happened?

Security Notice for Mac users

Security Notice for Mac users.

10MP-hurrah

This is ridiculous, now you can get a ten-megapixel camera for under $200. It's only a handful of years ago you couldn't get a ten-megapixel camera for love or money, and a five-megapixel one cost tens of thousands of dollars.
OK, admitted, ten megapixels in a cheap pocket camera is not the same quality as ten megapixels in a bigger camera, but even those you can get for $600 now. I never predicted we'd see Moore's law enter my favorite hobby.

Transparent butterflies

Update:
TTL said:
This almost begs the question: Why didn't God think of this before? For surely transparency beats camouflage colouring any day.

Perhaps we are surrounded by lots and lots of creatures who are completely transparent?

----
They're apparently for real. Amazing.

Pippi Longstocking

I am rewatching Pippi Longstocking. I haven't watched it since I was a child almost 40 years ago, but I remember a lot of it.
The show* is a great pleasure. It's so full of life and fun, and often very funny too.

I found the theme song on YouTube. I had actually forgotten that not only was I (and everybody) fan of the TV show, but also of the song, and I think this single was played so often the grooves were worn through to the other side. (The Gilmore Girls are fans of her too.)

I found two later and different versions of the Pippi theme song, and I braved my iMovie software, and put them on top of a clip from the first Pippi episode. The first one is a hard rock version, I think that's funny for a song from a kids' program. (I actually have a long standing ambition of making hard rock versions of kids' songs. I have one or two good ones in my head.)

*It is not clear, but I think the first "movie" on the DVD box set is actually compiled from the TV series.

Update: this video has been up now for like half an hour, and already 130 people have watched it. Holy crap! (By comparison, the Vampire Killers clip from yesterday has only been viewed 50 times in a whole day.) I wonder if all that traffic comes from here or from searches on YouTube, or what.

Pascal theorized:
Or it could just be that the words Sweden and Denmark immediately make some people hope there'll be beautiful naked viking blondes? "Longstockings, isn't that some erotic actor? If she chose that name, perhaps she's only wearing that. CLICK."

Actually you might be right. Hard as it is for me to imagine anybody not knowing Pippi, I guess most don't, and after all most new readers here come by way of Domai and may be looking for all that stuff.

Tea And Music

I saw this poster on Will & Grace. Isn't it wonderful?
Some of the best use of negative spaces I've seen. The black parst are positive spaces in the outer parts and negative spaces in the inner parts. And the orange parts are positive spaces in the inner parts and negative spaces in the outer parts!

Also the bravery of the positioning of the elements. The teapot and the cup are bundled together at the bottom, and parts of the pot are cropped off. And the flowers are bunched together at the upper left, there are only four, and two of them are cut in half. There's only a small amount of blue, in the vase, which just saves the whole of the composition from becoming too warm.

Work of a master. I wish I knew who the artist was.

Angelina and talk shows

Angelina is the hottest thing on two legs. And she's bi and into S/M. Gotta love that.

This evening I've watched a few talk shows on YouTube. Is it just me or are they getting more and more brief and superficial? People come in for six minutes and nothing at all is said about anything. It's too weird.

Every Day Is Halloween

(The title is taken from one of my favorite songs by Ministry.)

Wonko said:
My wife (MGLW) [My Good Loving Wife. - the editor] was brought up with the Scottish tradition of Halloween, "guising", sticky buns on strings, spirits and the Celtic New Year. Trick or treaters there have to earn their sweets by singing a song or reciting a poem. As a result it's probably her favourite time of year. She really goes to town with decorating, carving pumpkins and so on. I've always hated it and used to either be out or pretend to be. Now I just let MGLW open the door and give out the sweets.

I don't wish this to be seen as Yank bashing, because it's not, I just really wish we'd never imported this North American style of Halloween to the UK. It's become a commercial exercise, promoting tooth decay, obesity and extortion with menaces by minors.

Funny, I almost posted exactly the same thought on Oct 31, but for some reason I didn't. In Denmark there isn't, or wasn't, any Halloween, but there is a similar tradition in February, "fastelavn". And in that one too the kids have to earn their keep by singing a song. And I think that makes for a healthier attitude to the whole thing than just going around demanding treats for no good reason.

Update:
Fastelavn is not related to death or horror like the Mexican or American customs, but the customes can be anything.

But Honey?

I just bought a squeeze bottle of honey for my tea, and on the label is this warning:
"Unsuitable for infants under 12 months."
I can just see somebody handing the bottle to their six-month old baby, saying "here, Honey, put this on your pancakes."

kronostar said...
Honey can be harmful to babies undeveloped immune system. Before I thought it was just they could get allergies, but from the linked article it seems that the honey could be deadlier. Of course got to wonder how much of it is hype...

Alex said...
We took precautions with honey and nuts on our kids. We also did the phased introduction of foods too. Paranoia is certainly great, especially in these days of increased awareness and learning. There are a few kids in the school have nut allergies, and a neighbours kid had allergies to heaps of stuff, barely a thing he could eat.
Honey is best on toast, or mead, or in rosehip tea.

Robert Kits van Heyningen said...
Having had 2 children, I can confirm that honey can be dangerous to infants. Once their immune system is developed then it's fine. I wonder if this is a recent thing or has always been so.

Fearless Vampire Killers

Fearless Vampire Killers, Count's speech on roof.
(A.k.a. Dance of the Vampires.)
Roman Polanski.
Ferdy Mayne, who should be much better known, gives one of the best speeches ever in a movie. The accent, the rhythm, the threat, the fun. Wonderful.

This film is one of the best examples ever of successful semi-abstract film making. It's billed as a comedy (problem of marketing, you have to focus on one thing), but it's so much more. You'll notice people talk funny in this film, but because they all do it, it just works.