Big Stick Physics

Author: Richard Nestoff (Page 7 of 64)

The Die Hard soundtrack is all Christmas music.

December 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

National Geographic: In Japan, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is a Christmas Carol.

In Die Hard it’s a nice touch that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, ‘Ode to Joy’ is a recurring musical theme in the movie.  Since NatGeo says “Ode to Joy” is a Christmas carol, then you’d have to be anti-science to disagree. 

Yes, I understand that NatGeo says “in Japan”.  To that, I say, “Nakatomi Plaza”.  Within the context of the movie, it’s a Christmas movie.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

Here is a nice Japanese rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” sung by 10,000 Japanese at Christmas.

Die Hard for Christmas.

December 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Sparky and I watched another Christmas movie.  Die Hard is so good, that we also watched the corresponding episode of  The Movies That Made Us.   It was a leap of faith to take Bruce Willis from Moonlighting and turn him into John McClane, but not such a big leap since everyone else turned down the role.  Frank Sinatra had right of first refusal, but he was too old and rich to do it.  Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, and a bunch of other actors wouldn’t go for it.

For the science deniers who can’t accept that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, here is definitive proof.

The Die Hard soundtrack is all Christmas music.

Old Photo Project

December 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

My current project is to digitize all of the photos I’ve ever taken.  That sounds daunting, but for the first half of my life, film had to be purchased and developed.  Figure 25 cents per photo, which would be 75 cents in today’s money.  

A photo scanner works well for loose photos.  A flat bed scanner will be used for the photos that are too big or attached to a photo album page.

Once a photo is scanned, GIMP is used to rotate or crop the photo.  GIMP has a couple of auto-functions to correct typical issues.  “White Balance” often helps quite a bit, as shown in the photo at the top.  “Color Enhance” may help, make no difference or make the photo over saturated.

GIMP is powerful open-source software.  It’s intimidating since it’s so powerful, but I just goggled the functionality that I need.   For video, I have Topaz Video AI to enhance movie film that’s been digitized.  They also have software to enhance photos.  I’m not going that far.

After the photos are digitized and processed, I name the photo files to capture any information on the back of photos, on the envelope or that I can ascertain from the photo.  The program, Bulk Rename Utility, is also open-source and helps with renaming.

My goal is to pack away the old physical photos, and forget them. 

Falling Skies is a 7.0

December 21, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Falling Skies is okay.  Not great science fiction, but good.  The special effects are convincing, but there isn’t much of it.  Most of the action takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth.  I haven’t watch much of The Walking Dead, but it’s along that line.  The good guys are fighting the monsters in addition to a few bad guys.  The best thing about it is the series runs to completion, wrapping up the story. 

Do we even have a president right now?

December 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

WSJ: Biden isn’t in the game.

WSJ: Biden isn’t in the game.

Shouldn’t that headline be in the present tense?  Nancy Pelosi coerced Biden into dropping out of the 2024 presidential election after the debate with Trump showed that Biden was too mentally feeble to continue with the campaign.  If Biden is too frail to run for president, he is too frail to be president.  We haven’t had a function president since July.

Perhaps the WSJ is suggesting that since the election, Trump has been in charge.  Everyone acts as if he is.   While Trump was in Paris, meeting global leaders, Biden was sleeping through meetings in Africa.

I don’t want to hear another thing about the January 6th self-guided tour of the Capital building being a threat to democracy.  The corporate media and Democrat handlers hid the fact that Biden was running out of juice so they could cling to power.

Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.

Read the WSJ article if you are interested.  Spoiler Alert:  These three people have effectively been running the country since Biden was elected.

Sparky and I are thinking about the future.

December 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

 

Maybe your brain works better.

When we go for walks, a recurring thought comes to mind.  Sparky likes to lead.  That’s good, his confidence is admirable.  I can’t help thinking how much Sparky, from this angle, resembles the X-ACTO model 1744 electric pencil sharpener I bought for my classroom. 

It’s not like I am ever going to get Sparky stuffed, with an electric pencil sharpener inside.  That’s crazy, right?  Still though, that would be a great pencil sharpener.

Sparky and I have a nice setup, but he thinks stupid, morbid shit all the time too.  When he looks down on the compound, he can’t help thinking about how he’s going to change things when I’m gone.

He wants to put in a creek that goes from the road to the land bridge, with some big rocks and a bunch of drain pipes that go off to the sides.

That’s all to say that Sparky and I are not sentimental, but appreciate the little moments as they come.

If I go first, I hope Sparky gets his creek and doesn’t get his fat ass stuck in a pipe.  If Sparky goes first, he said I can make him into a pencil sharpener if it isn’t too loud, but he wants to chew on the tail if I don’t need it for the pencil sharpener. 

Again, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about with that last part, but he seems content.

Sparky wants to get a bunny.

December 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been scanning and organizing old photos.

Sparky was getting bored with the project until we got to these photos from when I was an RA during my senior year at Ohio State.  I and the other new RA’s in the Barrett Complex where the fun group.  Lisa thought it would be a good idea if we got a pet rabbit.  Pets weren’t allowed in the dorm, so it seemed a little subversive.  Only a little because the dorm director and assistant dorm director were also new and in favor of fun.

It didn’t take much for Lisa to convince us.

We named him Travis, and rotated him around our rooms so housekeeping wouldn’t catch on.  He was smart.  Since we were RA’s, our residents came by pretty often.  We trained Travis to run into the bathroom if someone thumped on the floor.  He also did his dirty business in there.

Sparky thinks we should get a bunny.  I’m not so sure. 

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