Random photos, comics, etc.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It's buried under the big doubleyou I tell ya.... a big doubleyou... 50 G's... Now go get it...! (Kicks bucket)

@ Stadium 8, St George, UT

[Leo Enticknap]

The time I got caught unable to get anything to eat was during a 2.5-hour layover followed by a one-hour flight back to Ontario, and about an hour from there to walking in the front door. This time I was flying Ontario > Oakland > Honolulu, and Southwest don't serve anything except little bags of pretzels actually on the plane. Actually, I needn't have bothered with the sandwiches this time, because there were plenty of places open and with reasonable lines. I think the entire aviation industry was taken by surprise by a sudden surge in passenger numbers last fall: as the more serious covid restrictions started to be lifted, a lot of delayed business and leisure flights took place, hence staff shortages in airports. Interestingly, the flight to Hawaii yesterday was barely a third full - I had a row to myself. All the others I've taken (which were nearly all around the same time on a Monday) have been completely full, or not far off it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Speaking of how one gets to the next service call, this was one of my routes. Can only be taken in the summer though.... This is the Chief Joseph Highway, or Wyoming 296... It connects to Highway 212, The Beartooth Highway. I used to go from servicing the theaters in Cody, WY over to service the theater in Red Lodge, Montana the next morning.. It actually took considerably longer to go the normal route when this one was snowed shut. Highway 212 goes up to about 13,000 feet give or take a few inches....

The deepest gorge in Wyoming runs across the middle of the picture. You can see the bridge at the left, Sun Light Basin Road diagonals up at the left side Then the switch backs... couldn't take those too fast in my Expedition.... At the right is Table Rock. BTW, I never did find the end of Sunlight Basin Road. And I went over 60 miles down it one Sunday morning...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The last time I did an out-of-town work trip, I ended up very hungry on the return journey, because there was only one restaurant open at Oakland Airport when I was changing planes there, and it had an horrific line to get in, which I didn't have enough time for.

So for this trip, also involving a connection at Oakland, I made myself some smoked salmon sandwiches to eat during the layover, because I don't fancy the idea of a six-hour flight subsisting on nothing but one or two tiny bags of Southwest Airlines peanuts. After packing them into my carry-on, they attracted quite a bit of interest!

kits_small.jpg
Meanwhile, at Ontario (California) airport:

chickfila_800p.jpg
eat_a_cow_800p.jpg

With reference to Frank's piece about the music criticism note ("Neighbor finally loses patience..."), there was an April fool story in one of the British newspapers many years ago, reporting that a noise abatement order had been served on a pianist who was keeping his neighbors up by repeatedly practicing John Cage's 4'33".

I think you could have driven back from Oakland in less time than the plane took!! I've done it many times! If traffic is normal, then it's about 4 hours.

[Leo Enticknap]

The last time I did an out-of-town work trip, I ended up very hungry on the return journey, because there was only one restaurant open at Oakland Airport when I was changing planes there, and it had an horrific line to get in, which I didn't have enough time for.

So for this trip, also involving a connection at Oakland, I made myself some smoked salmon sandwiches to eat during the layover, because I don't fancy the idea of a six-hour flight subsisting on nothing but one or two tiny bags of Southwest Airlines peanuts. After packing them into my carry-on, they attracted quite a bit of interest!

kits_small.jpg
Meanwhile, at Ontario (California) airport:

chickfila_800p.jpg
eat_a_cow_800p.jpg

With reference to Frank's piece about the music criticism note ("Neighbor finally loses patience..."), there was an April fool story in one of the British newspapers many years ago, reporting that a noise abatement order had been served on a pianist who was keeping his neighbors up by repeatedly practicing John Cage's 4'33".

[Jim Cassedy]

EyePad.jpg
Merry Christmas!

[Van Dalton]

Technical note regarding my last post: The lighting of some items, like the plastic candy canes and the "Season's Greetings" sign, appears inconsistent in the photograph because of the LED duty-cycle blanking against the camera's exposure time. Everything is completely lit when observed in person. This is the biggest problem with photographing LED light sources that use low-persistence phosphor, apart from visual flicker when your eyes scan quickly across them.

Merry Christmas to you as well, and welcome to the Film-tech nuthouse.

Oh, trust me, this BBS isn't nearly as much of a nuthouse as others I've observed.








......... yes, I'm pointing fingers at YOU, City-Data .........

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Merry Christmas to everyone from County Tipperary, Ireland!

Merry Christmas to you as well, and welcome to the Film-tech nuthouse.

If all goes to plan, I hope to be in your fine country next summer for the Isle of Man TT races....

[Christopher Markiewicz]

Merry Christmas to everyone from County Tipperary, Ireland!

[Van Dalton]

Buchanan House; Vancouver, WA, 45.626065, -122.515326 (WGS84)

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I drive past this house every day on the way to/from work. They usually start installation the weekend after Thanksgiving and it usually takes about a week to get it fully functional (weather permitting). This shot doesn't show it well but they also have a giant lighted candy cane they install on the east roof slope (left side in this view; mostly obscured by blue tree) visible from a couple houses' worth south on Countryside Drive. It's also hard to see but the neighbours to the west (right) usually put up a little "ditto" sign above their garage, with an arrow pointing towards this house (below Santa; obscured by green tree).

His dad started doing a very similar installation (including the candy cane) sometime in the very early 90s, which was when I first remember seeing it as a small child. They started using LED lighting maybe 10? years ago. There was a period of several years in the early 2000s when his dad's health began failing and the installation shrank considerably, then it disappeared entirely for a couple years.

http://clarkcountytalk.com/2021/12/0...-clark-county/
Picture source: KATU; https://katu.com/resources/media/d29...1captioned.jpg

"Vancouver home brings Christmas cheer | KATU

Thu Dec 03 2020
Brant Buchanan's house has a way to bring you some Christmas cheer. Buchanan says he remembers, as a kid, his dad going all out for Christmas. Now as an adult, Buchanan has picked up the mantle, continuing a tradition that's been going on for 30 years. The Buchanan's holiday home includes this countdown clock to Christmas.

An engineer by trade, Buchanan says he uses the holiday display to put his dreams into reality. "People were so thankful to see all the bright lights to brighten their day, he said Thursday night. "Everyone's just been so grateful to see the Christmas lights."

The display consists of 100,000 lights, a suspended sleigh with all nine reindeer and a giant 35-foot candy cane. If you'd like to check it out in person, head to Northeast 7th Street at Countryside Drive in Vancouver. The lights are on from 4:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
https://tinyurl.com/56zrh26d

(Political language removed from article)

[Frank Cox]

ditto.jpg
This is in Warman, a town near Saskatoon Saskatchewan.

The "ditto" people said they weren't sure what the reaction would be but everyone loves it, including the neighbour.

[Frank Cox]

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[Randy Stankey]

Erik Satie was a strange, little Frenchman who wore wire rimmed glasses, a beard and a funny hat.

George Lucas is a strange, fat American man who wears wire rimmed glasses and a beard but doesn't wear a funny hat.

Satie.png Lucas.jpeg

Even if you gave Lucas a funny hat, Satie would still win.
Back in Satie's day, men could wear funny hats and write odd music without time signatures and people would think you were cool.
Today, if you did things like that people will think you are just strange.

Strange as he may have been, Satie did all of his own work. He wrote his own music and crafted his own image and lifestyle.

Lucas, on the other hand, could not have succeeded if he didn't have all of the people at 20th Centruy Fox backing him up. Yes, he created Star Wars but, if the movie was done his way, it wouldn't even have gotten off the ground. I've seen clips of scenes from Star Wars before the people at Fox fixed them up and they looked about as good as something you'd find on YouTube, today. In fact, there are a lot of YouTube videos that are probably better than Lucas' original cuts.

As far as I can tell, Lucas never really thought about what would come after the original Star Wars trilogy. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure that he thought much about "Empire" and "Jedi" until after the original Star Wars became a hit. It was only after the original trilogy was a success and people wanted him to make more that he even began. It took him twenty years, probably, because he hadn't thought that far ahead.

Satie published "Gymnopiéde #1" and #3 in 1885 but waited until 1898 to publish the second. He did it on purpose just to mess with people's heads. He wanted to make them wonder what happened to #2. That's way cooler than what Lucas did.

In his later years, Satie drank absinthe and ate only white foods. Lucas smokes weed and eats hamburgers.

Satie wins, hands down, in my book!

[Marcel Birgelen]

There are three versions of "Gymnopédie." They were published in the order #1, #3, then #2. Satie could be a bastard like that, making people wonder what happened to #2. All three versions are really just variations of each other, changing chord progressions, etc., to sound dissonant or harmonious in different ways.

I'm still waiting for Sierra to release Larry 4.

George Lucas needed more than 20 years to deliver his missing parts to some space opera and some still claim to this day it never happened.

Regarding "Gymnopédie", especially #1, it's one of those compositions that has been used in movies, commercials and whatnot so many times, most people will recognize it after just a few notes, but ask anybody what it's called and who wrote it, almost nobody would be able to give you an answer.

[Leo Enticknap]

I could not imagine listening to somebody practicing Satie, over and over, for years, especially when played badly, at the wrong time signature.

That's the maddening thing: there is no wrong time signature in the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, because there is no time signature. For example, on a first, superficial listen, Gymnopédie #1 sounds like a waltz, but by changing the measures on which you put the emphasis, it's possible to play it in common time or even 2/4. Dave Brubeck's Take Five (as its name flags up, in 5/4 time), or The Unsquare Dance (7/4, so physically impossible to square dance to) have J.S. Bach level of simplicity counterpoint by comparison! Even large scale classical pieces that have unusual time signatures (e.g. the scherzos in Tchaikovsky's sixth and Bruckner's ninth symphonies) are easier to get your head round, IMHO.