taladel

I posted this over on the Spooky Outhouse forums, but figured I'd throw it here too. I'll put in a cut somewhere.

Dedicated to DFW


"Are you aware of how hard it is to make a parachute that's intended to fail?"

Q.

"It's not nearly that simple. Taking out the main chute entirely makes the whole thing far too light. These things have to have a certain degree of weight, you know, for realism."

Q.

"That requires that I tell you a bit about how parachutes actually work. Most chutes operate with a ripcord, where you pull the cord, the cord pulls out one or two pins, and then POOF! Parachute."

Q.

"Well yeah, it's a bit more complex than that, but it's enough to go on. Anyway, what I ended up doing was tweaking a pin, not the pin attached to the ripcord mind you, but another pin that keeps the chute attached to the deployment bag, so it doesn't open as soon as you jump out. This happens with some regularity in parachuting, the malfunctioning of the pin, So the whole thing was very realistic. It had, um...verisimilitude. At least when I planned this job out.”

Q.

"Usually there's a reserve chute, you're right. Very observant! I didn't actually account for that in the original plan, but it worked out in the end."

Q.

"So what happened was, I actually screwed up when I tried to tamper with the pin. I know jack shit about parachutes, but it's the way the client wanted it done, so I did a little research and did my best. When the mark jumped out of the plane and pulled the chute, the goddamn thing actually worked. I was a little surprised at this--"

Q.

"A very particular telescope and a good vantage point. May I continue?"

( Moar... )
-------------------------------------

Thank you for reading! Your comments and criticism would be appreciated.

Quentin Tarantino is an interesting director. He takes film archetypes he loves and really stylizes them, adding his own panache to the mix.

Almost all of his films are this way. Pulp Fiction is his homage to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave, Jackie Brown is obviously blaxploitation, the Kill Bill movies are his tribute to japanese pinku/female vengeance movies (even Basterds has this, with Shoshanna). The grindhouse idea has pretty obvious roots, and Reservoir Dogs is essentially dedicated to John Woo (mexican standoffs, skinny ties, and heists).

Basterds is Tarantino's love letter to Spaghetti Westerns, to directors like Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and Sam Peckinpah, with a few references to war films like The Dirty Dozen and mixing genres in ways that continually surprise.

The opening scene of the movie really is just incredible. The shots are all composed extremely well, the casting was spot-on. The tension that's built just in the opening scene ("chapter") is fantastic. The Jew Hunter (Cristoph Waltz) steals the show in my opinion. He's so scary while at the same time as smooth as can be, and speaks 4 (FOUR!) languages with fluency through the film. There's a reason he won best actor at Cannes this year.

Basterds was fantastic. It does require a bit more from its viewers than most (read: any) other summer blockbusters (part of the fun of the movie, was pointing out references to other films, and trying to remember sources from the soundtrack. It's Tarantino's best script to date, and the cinematography is just out of this world. The shot composition is unlike anything else I've seen in quite a while. I think film buffs will get the most out of this picture (or they'll hate it voraciously because Quentin wears his influences on his sleeve). It's quirky, dialogue-driven, with gore/violence at moments of tension (which is what I expect out of Tarantino's flicks).

But the way it mixed languages and shifted perspective effortlessly, along with the characters all being played to the hilt, Tarantino has outdone himself. By the end of the movie I couldn't get 'In a Wicked Age...' out of my head. It seemed like the PCs chosen were:

The Jew Hunter
Shoshanna
Aldo Raine
Fredrick Zoller (maybe)

I'm inclined to think that if basterds was a Wicked Age game it would have only 3 players, but I digress.

Fantastic movie, I'm inclined to say the best movie I've seen in 2009.

UNRELATED NOTES:

School started last week, and I'm satisfied with my classes. Taking 9 hours of english and lit is going to be pretty intense, but I'm really excited about it.

Here are a couple articles about why these shoes are awesome, as well as reasons for ditching traditional shoes for VFFs (or other barefoot-style shoes), or for no shoes at all.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/barefoot/

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/07/vibram-five-fingers-shoes/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/your-shoes-are/

http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Today I turned out a 'Professional Judgment' form in order to get my financial aid re-evaluated because of my mother's recent layoff from Cessna. Anyone familiar with Wichita at all will know that this is an aircraft town, and Cessna's one of the biggest employers in the area. It sucks, but the silver lining is that my school is most likely (based on info I got from a source on the inside) going to pay my way for this year and possibly next. I was also told by this same source that I'll likely have some leftover aid money after books and such. Yay for that, and I'll be paying my credit card off, and possibly getting a netbook.

Looking beyond junior college, I'm in pretty close contact with the Admissions advisers at Naropa University, a private, fully-accredited university in Boulder, CO that emphasizes contemplative education. From the site:
These include sitting meditation, T'ai Chi, and other contemplative disciplines. It's founded on essentially Buddhist principles, and I feel that I would fit very well in that environment. I'm currently talking to them about their application process, and how my WSU experience will affect my admission/aid.

So overall my journey is ongoing, and positive.

I fell asleep (as I some times do) listening to John Hodgman's audiobook version of 'The areas of my expertise' last night.

At the end of the book, he reads 700 hobo names while Jonathan Coulton plays a song in the background. This takes quite a long time, as you can surely imagine.

So in this dream last night, I was hanging out with these dudes (faceless, nameless) playing video games, and they spoke in normal sentences, except every sentence started with a number, and they went in sequence. I participated in the numbering of my sentences as well, and I woke up a bit later, listening to John Hodgman reading hobo names, with numbers in front of them.

I had a dream in the recent past when I fell asleep listening to Henry Rollins read a poem called 'Everything', and in my dream that night we were walking through a shitty neighborhood, Henry and I and a few other people, just listening to him talk about our surroundings, as he does in the book. It was easily the craziest-slash-best dream I've ever had ever.

http://www.wwoofusa.org/

WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and it allows people to exchange their time and labor doing farm-related tasks for 25-30 hours/week in exchange for room and board. No real experience farming is required, and all you have to do is set up arrangements with farms seeking volunteers, and get yourself there.

This looks really cool, and I've read a ton of positive experiences. I also love seeing the country, so packing some shit in my car and driving to wyoming or northern california or some such place is an awesome prospect. I can see myself doing this for months at a time going from farm to farm, working for food.

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com

I found out about these babies through Tim Ferriss, author of 'The Four Hour Workweek' and prolific blogger.

He really talked them up as an alternative to shoes in almost any context. I've been wearing them consistently for about 6 weeks now and I can definitely say that they are awesome. My posture has improved, my feet feel better, and they're just fun to wear.

Everything you used to do with your feet now has added fun. Driving and shifting in my car feels more natural, I can actually feel the ground underneath my feet, giving walking around outside (normally a pretty banal activity) another dimension of sensory experience. Lifting weights in these shoes has been interesting, and my form is better than when wearing shoes.

Excuse my hyperbole please, I just really dig these shoes. Pics of my feet after the cut.
( Read more... )

Trying ping.fm. Thanks @tferriss!

I've been spending a lot of my time at ted.com lately. It's a conference that stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and it's about bringing speakers from all over the world together in order to share ideas and collaborate, and give "the speech of their lives" in 18 minutes or less. Usually they're a little over, but it's all good.

There were two talks in particular I wanted to highlight, but there are /so/ many great talks by some people you will recognize, and a lot that you won't.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/adam_savage_s_obsessions.html

and

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

The first talk is by someone all of you who read my infrequent ramblings know of. Adam Savage of Mythbusters tells a story of obsession and inspiration. The second is about happiness, and how losing oneself in challenging work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks about states of 'flow'.

One more, and programmers/web designers like bafadam will hopefully enjoy this one:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html

This short talk-slash-techdemo, is about how we can use internet social networking combined with photographs to create something truly amazing. It must be seen to be understood.

This, I think, has been a replacement for the kinds of intellectual stimulation normally exchanged in a university lecture or with good friends and a few beers.

God damn, I can't wait to go back to school.

• 23:28 Haven't been twittering much lately. I can't breathe through my nose. This is awful. #
• 23:29 Plus side though I haven't had a cigarette in 4 days. Woo not getting lung cancer! #
• 11:40 @Talulla Shit's about to get real. #
• 14:35 throwing up is no fun. Allergy meds + cold/flu meds + french toast for lunch = bluuuh #
• 16:55 Tony Reali's got movie quotes today on ESPN. Pulp Fiction, Matrix, Indy, etc. #

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• 03:24 @cory_ Heya #

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• 18:46 shitty day + nothing to do = stewing. :( #

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• 23:25 @jephjacques Your comic is great, but you're a bastard. #
• 23:39 #lastfm #love Atlas by The Wood Brothers bit.ly/3ROmn #
• 00:40 @Drdrew Basic health coverage should be an entitlement as a US citizen. No question #
• 11:21 in line for quake live. Position in queue: 29390 #
• 11:21 I'm going to go to work and see if I'm in when I get home. #
• 18:22 RT @neilhimself: A very nice memorial to Philip Jose Farmer by his great-nephew. bit.ly/zsTNQ #

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• 01:24 Trying to Be Here Now. #

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• 11:09 @bafadam Are you kidding? Mickey Rourke was the favorite by a lot, and I felt his performance was far more powerful than Penn's. #
• 11:11 @bafadam No offense to Frank Langella but it wasn't in the cards for him this year, methinks. #
• 11:12 @bafadam Dude, it's great. As soon as it comes out on DVD, get that shit. #
• 11:22 Playing with TweetDeck now that I've got AIR installed. It's pretty neat. #
• 12:43 @bafadam I'm still getting database errors all over the place on the SOP forums. ;_; #
• 12:54 @bafadam Firefox 3.0.6, Windows 7 build 7000. #
• 14:13 @AFineFrenzy And a beautiful day to you, Alison. #
• 15:32 Cleaning my room for the first time in ages #
• 15:51 Any tweets have tips on what to do with spare rubber bands? #

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• 19:51 #oscars Penelope Cruz - Best Supporting Actress. @highmoon Did you catch what she said? My spanish isn't good. #
• 19:51 Glad they're not showing clips from the films. Last year spoiled Michael Clayton for me. #oscars #

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• 17:53 Slumdog Millionaire was a great movie. Story was told very well. I don't know if the academy will pick it though. We'll see on Sunday. #

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I've been thinking these past few days about music and how I interact with it, and how I might find a career with it.

In middle school (grades 6-9) I played the saxophone, and enjoyed it. I left, as I do most things, for a stupid reason. But, no accidents.

So I've been watching a lot of TED talks in the past week or so and several of them reference classical music, or the piano. I've also been reading Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia.

The idea of playing the piano appeals not only because it's part of the requirements for the University of Kansas's musicology/music history, but also because it expresses such a wide variety of emotions and it's an excellent medium for powerful, powerful stuff.

It's been a little more than 2 years since I graduated high school in the winter of 2006.

In the fall of 2007 I attended a nearby state university and commuted from home. This, frankly, sucked. I didn't get much out of the experience except a waste of $3500, and a semester of failed classes. Between Thanksgiving Break and Christmas I didn't go to class at all. (I know, a stupid decision.) I haven't been back to school since. I've been working full time for a while now in retail, but my hours are slipping.

I want to go back to school, and I'm considering going to a university 3 hours away, in-state, and living there completely on student loans/scholarships and whatever part time job I come up with. I feel this intense desire to learn and experience things with my peers, and I think the best way to do that is to go to a place where you have very few real responsibilities and a large group of people in your age bracket.

I work at a bookstore, and I see that there's not a career in brick-and-mortar bookstores, because I think that the way we interact with media will change irreversibly in the next 5 years (but that's another post entirely), and I want to be doing something that's still viable in 20 years. I'm thinking Computer Science, with a minor in Communications (for audio production, web design, etc.)

Is living the college life for 4 years and getting a degree worth the $80-$100K student loans?

Man Note: An option that hadn't occurred to me in my state of excitement may be more effective. Community college. Pros are cost, lack of pressure to succeed (because it's relatively inexpensive and there's not a lot of risk), and it might also wipe away the shitty semester at WSU. Just transfer out after 2 years to finish the degree. Thoughts?