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45 results for “jvschrag”
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I’m finally watching season 2 of Andor and I have a question about Imperial Stormtrooper armour. What is it for?
It doesn’t stop blaster bolts. It doesn’t stop gunfire. It doesn’t even stop a good punch.
So what does it actually do? Lock in freshness?
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I’m finally watching season 2 of Andor and I have a question about Imperial Stormtrooper armour. What is it for?
It doesn’t stop blaster bolts. It doesn’t stop gunfire. It doesn’t even stop a good punch.
So what does it actually do? Lock in freshness?
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I’m finally watching season 2 of Andor and I have a question about Imperial Stormtrooper armour. What is it for?
It doesn’t stop blaster bolts. It doesn’t stop gunfire. It doesn’t even stop a good punch.
So what does it actually do? Lock in freshness?
-
I’m finally watching season 2 of Andor and I have a question about Imperial Stormtrooper armour. What is it for?
It doesn’t stop blaster bolts. It doesn’t stop gunfire. It doesn’t even stop a good punch.
So what does it actually do? Lock in freshness?
-
I’m finally watching season 2 of Andor and I have a question about Imperial Stormtrooper armour. What is it for?
It doesn’t stop blaster bolts. It doesn’t stop gunfire. It doesn’t even stop a good punch.
So what does it actually do? Lock in freshness?
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I just finished reading “The Pushcart War” by Jean Merrill. Written fifty years ago, it’s an amusing faux history of a war in New York City between the pushcart vendors and the big trucking companies. I first heard about this book when it was mentioned on the podcast “The War on Cars”.
In the story, traffic is getting worse and worse as thousands of trucks clog up the streets of NYC, and the trucking companies decide to deflect blame from themselves by vilifying the pushcart vendors, kicking off a war between the two. In spite of being a slightly silly book for young people, what it’s describing is pretty much exactly happening here & now (in Toronto where I live) where bicycles and bike lanes (which reduce traffic and increase road safety for everyone) are being blamed for road congestion caused entirely by cars.
It’s a short book at 233 pages, and I’d say aimed at young people (but not little kids). There’s no romance and no one dies, and while there is some violence it doesn’t result in much injury. It’s a quirky read and I enjoyed it.
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I rode my bike across town today to see the Sakura (cherry blossoms) in High Park. I knew it would be crowded on a Saturday at peak season.
What I was not expecting was the furries. Among the throngs of people there were at least 50 and maybe 100 people in fursuits, milling about with everyone else and enjoying the day. Mostly the non-fur-suited people let them be, but a few asked for photographs, which the fur suited were happy to provide.
I also thought I saw a woman holding a baby in a fursuit, which seemed excessive, but on closer inspection she was just holding her dog like a baby.
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I just finished reading “A Desolation Called Peace” by Arkady Martine. This book is the sequel to the also excellent “A Memory Called Empire”. I like Martinez’s writing because alongside the main plot with space fleets, palace intrigues, a mighty empire and mysterious alien enemy, there is also a layer exploring deeper themes — in this case, what it means to be a person, and who is deserving of empathy. Martine also makes all of her characters relatable, flawed, and human, whether they are the Emperor or a low-grade functionary.
Bonus points for tons of strong female characters, including the main ones, some of whom are not straight.
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It was cancelled, but now it’s back! I am so happy to see that the legal documentary of the year is getting released this summer!
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I just saw the new movie “The Christophers”, starring Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. McKellan plays an aging painter who has fallen from grace; Coel plays an art forger hired by the painter’s greedy children to forge completion of some of his old paintings, so they can get an inheritance. McKellan’s character is an annoying and difficult elderly man, but who is also witty and somehow both charming and off-putting. A lot of layers to the character, and McKellan shows his mastery of those kinds of roles. Coel’s performance is much more interior, but also masterful. The film is directed by Stephen Soderbergh. I loved it - it was serious but never maudlin, and often funny.
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I just saw the new movie “The Christophers”, starring Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. McKellan plays an aging painter who has fallen from grace; Coel plays an art forger hired by the painter’s greedy children to forge completion of some of his old paintings, so they can get an inheritance. McKellan’s character is an annoying and difficult elderly man, but who is also witty and somehow both charming and off-putting. A lot of layers to the character, and McKellan shows his mastery of those kinds of roles. Coel’s performance is much more interior, but also masterful. The film is directed by Stephen Soderbergh. I loved it - it was serious but never maudlin, and often funny.
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I just saw the new movie “The Christophers”, starring Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. McKellan plays an aging painter who has fallen from grace; Coel plays an art forger hired by the painter’s greedy children to forge completion of some of his old paintings, so they can get an inheritance. McKellan’s character is an annoying and difficult elderly man, but who is also witty and somehow both charming and off-putting. A lot of layers to the character, and McKellan shows his mastery of those kinds of roles. Coel’s performance is much more interior, but also masterful. The film is directed by Stephen Soderbergh. I loved it - it was serious but never maudlin, and often funny.
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I just saw the new movie “The Christophers”, starring Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. McKellan plays an aging painter who has fallen from grace; Coel plays an art forger hired by the painter’s greedy children to forge completion of some of his old paintings, so they can get an inheritance. McKellan’s character is an annoying and difficult elderly man, but who is also witty and somehow both charming and off-putting. A lot of layers to the character, and McKellan shows his mastery of those kinds of roles. Coel’s performance is much more interior, but also masterful. The film is directed by Stephen Soderbergh. I loved it - it was serious but never maudlin, and often funny.
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I just saw the new movie “The Christophers”, starring Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. McKellan plays an aging painter who has fallen from grace; Coel plays an art forger hired by the painter’s greedy children to forge completion of some of his old paintings, so they can get an inheritance. McKellan’s character is an annoying and difficult elderly man, but who is also witty and somehow both charming and off-putting. A lot of layers to the character, and McKellan shows his mastery of those kinds of roles. Coel’s performance is much more interior, but also masterful. The film is directed by Stephen Soderbergh. I loved it - it was serious but never maudlin, and often funny.
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The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has a stunning collection of art and artifacts from Mesoamerica. Toltec, Olmec, Aztrec, Maya, and Mexica peoples along with so many others.
But the more I looked at Olmec carvings, the more they reminded me of Jack Kirby art — especially characters like Galactus, Kang, or the Sentinels. Now I’m wondering if Mesoamerican art was a big influence for him.
(A quick web search tells me that I am not the first person to notice this)
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The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has a stunning collection of art and artifacts from Mesoamerica. Toltec, Olmec, Aztrec, Maya, and Mexica peoples along with so many others.
But the more I looked at Olmec carvings, the more they reminded me of Jack Kirby art — especially characters like Galactus, Kang, or the Sentinels. Now I’m wondering if Mesoamerican art was a big influence for him.
(A quick web search tells me that I am not the first person to notice this)
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The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has a stunning collection of art and artifacts from Mesoamerica. Toltec, Olmec, Aztrec, Maya, and Mexica peoples along with so many others.
But the more I looked at Olmec carvings, the more they reminded me of Jack Kirby art — especially characters like Galactus, Kang, or the Sentinels. Now I’m wondering if Mesoamerican art was a big influence for him.
(A quick web search tells me that I am not the first person to notice this)
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The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has a stunning collection of art and artifacts from Mesoamerica. Toltec, Olmec, Aztrec, Maya, and Mexica peoples along with so many others.
But the more I looked at Olmec carvings, the more they reminded me of Jack Kirby art — especially characters like Galactus, Kang, or the Sentinels. Now I’m wondering if Mesoamerican art was a big influence for him.
(A quick web search tells me that I am not the first person to notice this)
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The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has a stunning collection of art and artifacts from Mesoamerica. Toltec, Olmec, Aztrec, Maya, and Mexica peoples along with so many others.
But the more I looked at Olmec carvings, the more they reminded me of Jack Kirby art — especially characters like Galactus, Kang, or the Sentinels. Now I’m wondering if Mesoamerican art was a big influence for him.
(A quick web search tells me that I am not the first person to notice this)
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I’m sorry to hear that Bud Cort passed away today. “Harold and Maude” remains one of my very favourite films. Probably time to re-watch it.
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CW: Tron: Ares very minor spoiler
Of course, the film isn’t perfect.
In Tron: Legacy, Sam goes into Flynn’s abandoned arcade and turns on the lights. And I thought “Who’s been paying the electricity bill for the last 18 years?” In Ares, the arcade is still abandoned, with a secret room that still has power and a working laser. This is the most unrealistic part of the film. A parallel world inside a computer is more believable than an abandoned urban building that sits around for 43 years without being made into a condo.
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Well, I finally watched “Tron: Ares”. The three Tron films sort of bracket my career; the first one came out in 1982, when I was just starting University. It was one of the films that inspired me to study computer graphics there. After I graduated my second job was working at Alias Research where I spent a decade working on one of the major CGI/VFX platforms that was used to create “Tron: Legacy” (which came out in 2010). I eventually retired after a long career in CGI, and now in retirement get to watch “Tron: Ares”. 43 year span.
And I know I might get blasted for saying this, but in my opinion Ares is the best of the three films. I started watching it expecting it to be the usual lame second-sequel crap, but was pleasantly surprised. Compared to the previous two films, the characters have more depth and more interesting relationships, and the production design and VFX are just beautiful. Plus, it had a more interesting plot. And Gillian Anderson. I understand that some people have Opinions about Jared Leto, but I know nothing about his personal life, so I do not.
Of course, what it lacks is the emotional glow of nostalgia and the novelty of the original production design, but – it’s a sequel.
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Fun Friday Fact:
(I learned this back around 1990 when I had to write a decoder for TIFF image files for the product I was working on.)
The official format specification for TIFF mandates that the third and fourth bytes of the file are always the number “42”, which the spec describes as an “arbitrary but carefully selected number”.
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On November 26 I will be speaking at a meeting of the Visual Effects Society (Toronto Chapter) along with a group of my ex-colleagues from Alias Research about the early days of computer graphics in Toronto, the secret origins of Maya*, and what a weird and wonderful company Alias was. The event is open to the public but tickets are limited.
*Okay, it’s not a secret but most people don’t know it.
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On November 26 I will be speaking at a meeting of the Visual Effects Society (Toronto Chapter) along with a group of my ex-colleagues from Alias Research about the early days of computer graphics in Toronto, the secret origins of Maya*, and what a weird and wonderful company Alias was. The event is open to the public but tickets are limited.
*Okay, it’s not a secret but most people don’t know it.
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On November 26 I will be speaking at a meeting of the Visual Effects Society (Toronto Chapter) along with a group of my ex-colleagues from Alias Research about the early days of computer graphics in Toronto, the secret origins of Maya*, and what a weird and wonderful company Alias was. The event is open to the public but tickets are limited.
*Okay, it’s not a secret but most people don’t know it.
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On November 26 I will be speaking at a meeting of the Visual Effects Society (Toronto Chapter) along with a group of my ex-colleagues from Alias Research about the early days of computer graphics in Toronto, the secret origins of Maya*, and what a weird and wonderful company Alias was. The event is open to the public but tickets are limited.
*Okay, it’s not a secret but most people don’t know it.
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Inktober Day 15: “Ragged”
This is a day late because it took me a long time to draw, even using a lot of references. I really love this style of pen drawing, but I really need some crosshatching lessons.
Inspired by a scene from @tiesselune ‘s incomplete web novel “Echos d’Autre Part”, this features an intrepid adventurer hunting with a bow in a magical forest that mysteriously appears around Nantes, France.
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Inktober Day 12: “Shredded”
Of course I drew my most shredded friend @gairdeachas
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While visiting the Titantic Museum in Belfast yesterday I learned that the original captain of the Titanic was, in fact, Captain Haddock. He turned over command to Smith at the first port stop.