Saturday 30 January 2021

Sibelius duet

Stayed up for the entire Sibelius stream by Twosetviolin! I was nervous at first, but then it was clear quite early on that they had kept to the 40 hours routine... Great stuff, great fun! I should join more live online concerts. More than anything though, I gotta practice myself...

About to start on some origami pangolin scales. Some 200 or so re-ordering folds, I need to find the time to lose myself in that.

I also don't understand why some people complain about FFP2 masks, they're a lot nicer with their stiffer structure so they don't plaster your face. Do your cardio to have strong lungs and you'll be fine, force that air through.

It's 4:34, I require sleep.

EDIT 2021-01-30: Blade Runner 2049 returned to Netflix, I've wanted to have a 2nd go at it for a while. Why is such a vapid film so highly praised? I love sci-fi and the original Blade Runner was amazing. In this new-fangled thing, the opening already puts me off, the world feels so very different from the original yet the film insists on reproducing devices and sounds, it does the obvious follow-up story with birthed replicants (the one thing I liked about "Arrival" was its original take, too bad it was so silly), the "antagonist" Herr Wallace-san is like cartoon Ren, Joi is some symbolism about the tech safe zones/prisons we make ourselves or whatever, and it's all just banal and meh. I cannot care about what anybody in the film feels or dreams of. I'll finish it because a couple of times the film gets it just right for half a minute and gives you that sense of mysterious warmth (good cosmic horror?) that the original did, even though the world was cold and wet. Terrible insight from me, but I just don't like it so I'm not gonna spend any more time explaining why not, and who cares anyway :p It's shit out of ten, Tucker & Dale vs Evil has more depth.

EDIT 2010-02-10: That score at the end of my last edit was a bit harsh, but I stand by it. Watched Sunshine a few days ago, a film I've wanted to see for a good while, but for some reason I didn't think it would be this good. It's one of those highly praised but unsuccessful films that gather a devout following, but leave many untouched unfortunately. Now, ignoring a wild explanation for the dying sun, too much artifical gravity (I only thought of this towards the end, I should hand back my Ph.D.), and a silly ending act (the "extra" should've been an error to seed paranoia, then this film would have been 10/10), this is absolutely stupenduous sci-fi. "Kaneda, what do you see?!" That scene will stay with me forever, like no scene in Blade Runner 2047 will. The main focus in sci-fi for me is not hi-tech, lazer blasterz, or the next obvious step. To me, in simple terms, fantasy is about a different reality to act in, drama is about people in societies or communities, thriller is about lurking danger, and sci-fi is about the limits of our perception. Just think about the word combo "science fiction", and what has made great science. This is why Arrival was interesting except the main subject turned out to be a single mother-daughter relationship (nothing bad with that, it's just so small for sci-fi) and the sci-fi part was the ride, and Annihilation had a nice mysterious premise except everything in there was or became stupid, but Sunshine... Oh Sunshine, most of it is super solid, among my top sci-fi:s now. It's like if Event Horizon was great.

Friday 1 January 2021

Zozi

zozi ~= susy -> finally evidence for super symmetry this year? Let's hope!

As for 2020, hum not much to say is there? Shows how well the previous "happy new year" worked :p

I don't do resolutions, not sure what I've written about that before, but we should all keep looking above the horizon and aim there. The angle shouldn't be too steep, but it should be upwards!