Daily Archives: June 28, 2009

Cinema and Television

OMG!

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Summer                  Waxing Summer Moon

I’m a sucker for sci-fi catastrophe movies.  Well, ok, for a lot of other kinds of movies, too, but the sci-fi catastrophe so often get made for tv.   The scenario is pretty straightforward:  an unsolvable problem emerges much to the surprise of the scientific establishment.  A renegade scientist, long ago discredited and/or fired by the VERY AGENCY now wanting him or her back resists, then with reluctance agrees to try to save the world.  Once they’re back in the good graces of the system, that is, people have begun to listen to them, a military expert comes up with a solution to the problem–no matter what it is–that involves an atom bomb.  After much hooing and hahing, the chief decision maker decides against the renegade scientist becauses atom bombs always seem so damned convincing.

The bombs go out or in or over depending on the source of the problem:  the moon, the earth’s core, the magnetic field, an incoming asteroid or alien invader.  They fail.  The chief decision maker, chastened by experience returns humbly to the renegade asking again for their help.  Well, you see where this goes.  There are no On The Beach endings on TV, nor in a lot of movies either.

Tonight, in the strange way TV has of reshuffling actors, the old JAG leading man joined up with the female lead of a new show about lawyers, and built a machine that electro-hemishpherically supercharged the whizzidizigit, thereby expelling the brown star that had collided with the moon.  This, trumpets and then a sappy romantic flourish, saves the earth.  Again.

I know.  So why do I watch them?  Because I find the notion of uber competent scientists who have our back as compelling as the next guy.  THre’s always something to cheer for and a romance seen through to completion.  What’s not to like?  Oh, all right.  A decent script, maybe.  Often the technical affects are cheesy.  Sometimes, well, usually, the acting is atrocious.  Oh, hell, I don’t know why I watch’em.  I just do.

Reminds me of that song: I don’t know why I love you, I just do.

Garden, GeekWorld

Gremlins or Demons or Bugs, oh my

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Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

This morning the temperature has fallen back to 65.  Good garden weather for moving mulch and repairing netaphim.

Electronic gremlins have given me fits for weeks now.  Not strong fits, but sure annoying.  A while ago my computer refused to recognize my disk drives.  On a day to day basis this is not a problem, but on those days when I want to play a CD or reload software or look at photographs saved to disc, on those days it’s a total frustration.

Then, sometime after returning from the trip to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida my photoshop elements photo organizer seized up.  It opens with a large rectangle in the upper left of the screen and a smaller slice vertically to the far right.  Nothing happens after that.   Again, on a day to day basis, not a big problem, but when I want to manipulate photographs, something I do often, particularly to make them smaller so they’ll fit on this website, I’m shut out completely.

In all these cases and the one below I try to sort stuff out myself.  I have a pretty good, but not perfect track record at this.  I never could figure out how to set up our wireless router, for example.  Geek Squad.  I may have to take my computer over to best buy.

The last couple of days, too, I’ve been bothered by a diminished stream.  No, nothing that Flomax could cure.  I’m talking about irrigation system.  I’m very familiar with the amount of water that comes out of a given spray head.  When it comes out in a weak flow, something is wrong.  It happened last week and I called the well guy to check the well reservoir.  Works fine and he did not charge me.  Whoa.  Again, this morning a weak flow.  Hmmm.

Kate said, “I know why it’s weak.  The front sprinkler is on.” Now that’s just strange.  This should never happen, two zones on at the same time, unless two different programs are scheduled for the same time.  Nope.  I checked that, not the problem.  Zones run in sequence.  1 runs, shuts off, then 2 runs, shuts off, then 3 runs and so on.  Why this should happen, I don’t know, but I hope the folks at Rainbird can explain it to me.