Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

Thyme Laps Video

I bought a new tablet. I installed Lapse It Pro onto the tablet, and this afternoon the clouds were rather pretty and scudding across the blue sky quite nicely and… this happened:

Not bad, eh? Now, for this video I basically just propped the tablet up on top of one of the living room bookshelves, opened the window, started the recording and walked away for an hour or so.

And walked back, and walked away, and walked back, and finally decided I should go play a game or something for a while because otherwise I was going to be tempted to tinker with things while the recording progressed. Ahem.

I’m hoping to do more like this, but I’m mostly looking (once the tripod mount arrives) at doing some time lapse “build” videos, such as for assembling one of the very small Gundam models whose boxes have been collecting dust for a couple years now. (A devoted modeler I am not, apparently.)

Why not use the Pentax? Because I don’t want to assemble these videos from a pile of raw images by hand, that’s why. The additional expense of shutter timer equipment is also a factor.

So here we are. A guy needs a hobby, right? It’s not so much about the Gundam model as it is about what kind of video I can make out of the process of building the model…

20 September, 2015
Besides the B-Sides

Sitting here at work, my random playlist is churning out favorite after favorite to keep my musically steady through the day, and I found myself realizing that my favorite songs from each of the last two Phil-Collins-fronted Genesis albums are not, in fact, on those albums.

Let me explain. No, there is too much; let me sum up.

The Invisible Touch album is a fun piece of work, with some of my all-time favorite songs, let’s be fair. Heck, it was the start of my Genesis fandom. And yet, the song I love most is “Feeding The Fire,” which was a B-side on the “Land of Confusion” single.

Note that by the time the next Collins-led album arrived, vinyl singles had mostly gone the way of the Dodo(/Lurker).

While I’m at it, I think “Do The Neurotic” is a better instrumental than “The Brazilian,” though it’s a close thing and I’m happy listening to either one.

Many years later, the We Can’t Dance album arrived. When the single for “I Can’t Dance” hit the stores (oh, how some Genesis fans hate that song) it came with a wonderful gem of a companion track: “On The Shoreline.” I’m certain that I’ve listened to that one track more than any song on the actual album, probably more than all of them combined.

Is it the allure of the bonus hidden special gem? The curiosity over what didn’t make the cut? Who knows? It probably doesn’t matter. I know what I like.

(“And I like what I know…”)

21 August, 2015
The Church of the Flaming Dove

See? There it is. Their logo (icon, symbol, whatever) is a dove going down in flames. What in the world…?

6 August, 2015
It’s been a long month. Here, have some memes.

The move into the new apartment is (largely) over with (for me, not yet for Kyla) but I’m too worn out to go into great detail about much of anything. So, instead, please enjoy a couple of recent meme-type imagery I cranked out over the last month or so.

Wasn’t that fun? Thank you, and do come again.

23 April, 2015
The Great Way trilogy – by Harry Connolly

Chalk this one up to word-of-mouth (well, social-media mostly-Twitter) marketing, but I purchased an entire trilogy from this fellow Harry Connolly, someone I’d not heard of before, over the past couple weeks. I saw the series billed as “fantasy adventure without the dull bits” and “non-grimdark” and at that point I perked right up because, lemme tell ya, I’m more than done with the grimdark in current fantasy novels nowadays.

(Joe Abercrombie’s first trilogy was “hurled with great force,” in the Dorothy Parker parlance.)

So. “The Way Into Chaos,” “The Way Into Magic,” and “The Way Into Darkness” make up a single, self-contained, it-begins-and-it-ends story. No plot hooks dangle for interminable sequels, what you read is what you get. It’s not that Mr. Connolly couldn’t write more in this world, but there’s no sense of urgency to have this happen. And I’m okay with that. It’s nice to get a complete story with no dangly bits hanging on at the end. (more…)

15 March, 2015
I Quack To Believe

This is what happens when I have a few minutes at work, access to FireWorks, and someone posts an action shot of a rubber duck on Tumblr.

26 February, 2015