Edmonton Commonwealth Stadium – August 17th, 1987

Five of us packed in to my friends cousins Fiesta (I think) and drove three hours to Edmonton to see David Bowie, Duran Duran, and Georgia Satellites.

#Edmonton #history #BlastFromThePast

The secret sauce is in the COLOR

Inverse color transform using the BG plates:

1. Using a Levels effect on the BG plate apply an Input Black and Input White move + Gamma to create a decent looking plate.

Input Black and Input White are somewhat negotiable, but Gamma must be .454.

Don't touch the Output Levels at this stage, only Input.  2. Work with these plates in your in comp. Integrate 3D elements using exposure and other tools to make sure the black & white points visually match the BG plate.

Create a new comp for export of the shot. I do the scale-to 3.8K in this new comp as well as applying letterbox bars to mask any layers that extend beyond the image area.

Apply a Levels effect, this time using the inverse of the previous Levels;

If you applied Input Black levels of 0.0667 then apply the same to the Output Black. Same with the Output White. Set Gamma to 2.2, which is the inverse Gamma of .454.

Don't touch the Input Levels at this stage, only Output.



This is a frame of what you would see in your comp. The BG has been leveled to live in a “normal world, and the rendered object plays nicely;



This is a frame of the output, the BG plate and CG elements have been transformed back into the original plate's color levels;



This is a frame of the above image with the view Levels applied looking just like our comp view ;

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#art #vfx #workflow



for 53, today has presented some challenges.

Effervescent at times, tar-ish at others. Unexpected weights but thanks to kind words from friends, manageable.

Sometimes I think how nice it would be to climb into a good memory and just exist there until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I suppose, in some ways, I already do so.

Time for a walk and maybe movie… something funny I think. Or, an evening of music. Yeah, music would be nice.

And a beer.

some days are just harder than others.

Getting angry is a reaction, but remaining angry is a choice

This Too Shall Pass (OK Go)

A gem as fresh today as it was 15 years ago

https://youtu.be/qybUFnY7Y8w?si=O-rK7wwmHRzUddOg

[Verse 1] You know you can't keep letting it get you down And you can't keep dragging that dead weight around If there ain't all that much to lug around Better run like hell when you hit the ground

[Chorus] When the morning comes When the morning comes

[Verse 2] You can't stop these kids from dancing — why would you want to 'Specially when you are already getting yours? 'Cause if your mind don't move and your knees don't bend Well, don't go blaming the kids again

[Chorus] When the morning comes When the morning comes When the morning comes When the morning comes When the morning comes When the morning comes

[Bridge] Let it go, this too shall pass Let it go, this too shall pass

[Outro] You know you can't keep letting it get you down No, you can't keep letting it get you down (Let it go, this too shall pass) Hey! Is it really all that much to lug around? Oh, you can't keep letting it get you down (Let it go, this too shall pass)

When the morning comes (You can't keep letting it get you down) (You can't keep letting it get you down) When the morning comes (You can't keep letting it get you down) (No, you can't keep letting it get you down) When the morning comes (You can't keep letting it get you down) (You can't keep letting it get you down) When the morning comes (You can't keep letting it get you down) (No, you can't keep letting it get you down) When the morning comes!

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I got bad news this afternoon. Not world-ending, just upsetting. That was insult-to-injury'd with emotional attacks from trusted sources. Just the kind of stuff that is hard to shake off and go. A couple of beers helped. A couple of more will only tip things the wrong way. So, I'll call it even.

Patience. This too shall pass. But man is it heavy to carry while it's here!

It doesn't always feel like it's passing. The scale of things is so huge that even though they are moving, to our human mind, they appear still. Pain and fear are two of those things that seem to always hang in time. Meanwhile joy and happiness seem hardly longer than they are in real time.

Made harder when you just keep clinging and clinging to the thing. Bend like the reed, grasshopper.

Breath.

Breath.

Breath.

Thank all that is good for joys like OK Go.

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#music #confession 2025-05-03 22:00:00

Los grandes acontecimientos no dependen nunca de ti. Puede que los pequeños tampoco exactamente.

Tú solo intentas entender qué podría pasar. Buscas un lugar propicio. Buena compañía. Y esperas. Que pase lo que tenga que pasar. A veces se nubla y no se ve la corona ni nada que no sea una noche repentina. Un silencio. Un algo contenido. Gente que aplaude porque no sabe qué hacer con lo que está pasando. Gente que lloramos porque siempre lloramos cuando hay algo enorme oprimiendo el pecho. Ponerle nombre a esa enormidas es saber que somos enanos. Que el universo es infinito y sigue sus ritmos ignorándome. A mi hace mucho que entender eso de verdad me da paz.

Un niño detrás de mi con una madre incapaz de entender el sistema solar. Desinformada de miedo “pónganse las gafas”. Entender de pronto el privilegio. Siempre fuiste una niña con al menos un adulto capaz de explicarte el mundo con una precisión suficiente. Parece una tontería. Lo cambia todo. “Mamá, con las gafas no veo nada”

Me giro. Le digo: como las nubes tapan al sol sólo vamos a ver que se hace de noche muy pronto, de golpe. Y luego de día otra vez igual de rápido. Sonríe pero sigue sin entende nada.

A veces el eclipse se nubla pero da igual porque ha sido un día precioso, porque hemos subido por las escaleras que comunican las dos playas riendo con restos de salitre en la piel. Porque el aperol tiene el color del atardecer. Porque dentro de muchísimos años diremos “tú y yo vimos aquel no eclipse en Los locos” y eso significará mucho más que un fenómeno astronómico rarísimo.

Vivir es esperar al eclipse total y disfrutar de la noche repentina. Volver conduciendo de la playa, ducharte con agua caliente a presión, el mejor disco de Iván de fondo. Que eso sean las vacaciones.

Tags: #random

Today's MLB Game in the Roscoe-verse is joined in progress. The Phillies and Cardinals are playing in the 2nd inning, and the Cardinals are leading 1 to 0. I'm following the game's scores and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

Today for some reason, I felt terrible.

Don’t know what set me off but it was just feelings of anxiety and a sadness which I don’t know from where it came but it was like just this distraction irate behaviour I couldn’t focus just sat for five minutes, made code, then back and then out again five minutes with the dogs, try to focus 20 min then coffee.

It’s the feeling of something very unspecific being wrong

I really tried

Having spent the workday in this weird state of mind, I went to the neighbours to help their son with his computer and I might’ve fixed it or maybe I didn’t; maybe it’s broken still, but at least it booted

And my black mood lifted too, late now I’m having dinner, watching Supernatural. Without spoiling anything I’ll say that the notion of the soul being tied to the conscience I think it’s spot on.

Tomorrow I’ll go running, it’s to keep the wolves at bay

It’ll prevent me from feeling bad

I used to think that that’s all there was to it, mere chemistry of the brain

Imbalance of the humours I used to think

But now I think that there’s something unhandled psychologically with is making these terrible feelings appear in the first place

And that the training is just a way to handle operating this broken machine in this world, which I love.

Typical Day in the Life of an Average American- Part VII, Retrospective

So, I was going to also have Grok take a crack at the prompt, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to sign up for it. Same way I don't use X. If I thought there was a chance Grok was a superior alternative as a Chatbot I'd swallow my pride and try it out, but alas, I highly doubt it is. Also, the Chatbots were all converging around similar themes with their summaries so I figured we had seen enough.

With that said, apparently the average American is male. I tried out 5 Chatbots and all of them gave me an employed male adult. Considering 49.1% of Americans are male, just randomly selecting you'd only have a 2.85% chance of selecting a male all five times. Definitely some implicit bias happening in the background there.

Four out of five worked in an office, where Claude's average American worked in a distribution center. Three of them ate a granola bar at some point during their day. Data I pulled showed 24% of Americans eat a granola bar over a 3 month period, so that was mildly interesting. Only one of them had a pet, a cat, and that guy did not have any other nuclear family members mentioned. Every prompt mentioned using a phone at least a few times, with Chat having nine references to the word “phone.” They all ate remarkably healthy considering the propensity of unhealthy foods in the U.S. In fact, the only real vice mentioned at all was the bowl of ice cream that ChatGPT's “Michael” ate at the end of the day. And calling a bowl of ice cream a vice is a stretch. 3/5 listened to podcasts, and data shows 58% of Americans listen to a podcast in the last month so that is not as unusual as the granola bar.

Overall these fictional peoples lives felt empty. They were productive members of society conforming to norms and living a generally middle class lifestyle. It felt more like what the average user of an AI Chatbot would be like than the average American, though AI use was not actually referenced at any point. I suppose when you average everything out it should seem pretty bland, but I was hoping for something a little more interesting. Maybe down the line I'll try a different prompt. For now, I'd say the highlight, or maybe lowlight, of the entire thing was: “He eats his packed lunch at his cubicle while watching a 10-minute YouTube tutorial on Excel pivot tables.” Pretty bleak, and I'm pretty sure I had a similar experience at a past office job, though we weren't even given the privacy of a cubicle.

Not sure I'd want to pull this thread any further, but if I did, here are some ideas:

-Modify the prompt, have it give a specific vignette of a random American rather than the average one -Have it focus on different demographics -Try the average day in different countries

Anyway, that's all for now.

Thank God! A 5-man hvac crew arrived a little after 9:00 AM, and they drove away in their pickup trucks a few minutes ago: roughly half past Noon. They were friendly, efficient, and cleaned up after themselves very well. I sit here now enjoying cool air blowing through the vents, with a brand new central air unit, a brand new furnace, and a new little wall thermostat.

And the adventure continues.

My impressions of the pre-release event for The Hobbit set.

The Hobbit is the latest Magic the Gathering set, a sequel to the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) set from a couple of years ago. As the fantasy universe is common to both Magic the Gathering (MTG) and LOTR, the set was quite successful and even left us with some very powerful cards like The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters. Last week, Wizards of the Coast released The Hobbit. The set is on the smaller side, and it's too new to tell what cards will shine and which cards will be quickly forgotten.

One of the best ways to get your hands on the new set and have some fun at the same time is a pre-release event at a local game shop. You get a pre-release kit, which is a sealed box that includes 6 booster packs, a small promo pack, and a 20-sided die. You build a 40-card deck from the 6 packs of cards, and battle other players. Pairings are random, and since everyone starts with 6 packs, one's success comes down to skill, and a little bit of luck too. You play 3 rounds, and each round is best out of 3. I won 1 round and lost 2 rounds, because I am still new to the sealed format and still learning the tricks of assembling the best 40-card deck from a pool of cards I have not seen before. So, I'm OK losing some games for now.

While the gathering part of Magic the Gathering is fun, especially when you go with friends, another big draw for me has always been the artwork on the cards and the fantasy themes of the game. The Hobbit did not disappoint! I am a fan of elves in MTG, so I built and elf deck out of the 6 booster packs. Specifically, I built a green-blue landfall elf deck. I ignored the new mechanics in the set in favor of my preference for elves. I also did happen to have quite a few elf cards to make this work.

The highlights of my deck were Beorn, Reluctant Host, Silvan Reveler, and Thranduil's Company. Silvan Reveler alone won me the games I did win. She gets me a land card upon entering most times, and can come back from the graveyard for 3 mana, which in this deck is a pretty low cost. Beorn's adventure spell, Till and Tend, triggers landfall and helps me ramp. Thranduil let me play yet another land and pumps a creature for the turn, giving it vigilance too. This enables safe attacks without losing a blocker on my opponent's turn. Once ramping is compete, the 5 mana Beorn can come in, and he's a 5/5 with trample, a pretty serious threat even if he's not an elf.

A selection of support cards helped the strategy along. Bilbo Baggins, Burglar is not an elf, but he's a good support character. For one blue mana, Take a Glance lets me decide what my next card will be (Scry 2). Then, when cast, he lets me draw a card. Card draw is so important. Then, Down in the Valley is a saga that ramps on the first turn it enters, then gives you an elf token (or more, if I manage to play multiple lands that turn). Very useful! Wood Elves is a reprint on an older card. The fact that it lets you play an extra Forest untapped is key and significantly better than untapped.

Some utility cards helped me in a few specific scenarios. Confusticate and Bebother is a great option because I was able to use it either as a counter-spell, or as card draw. Mirkwood Nurturer was interesting. I had it return Enchanted River's Grasp to my hand, then cast it again, resulting in 2 enemy creatures being tapped before my attack phase. A great move to end the game and swing for lethal damage with a couple big creatures like Beorn.

Overall, the strategy was to ramp as much as possible, so that the landfall triggers made my board stronger, and the extra mana helped me cast the spells I needed to protect my own creatures and keep the attackers at bay. Silvan Reveler was a very cool card. Between this pre-release and the recent Stixhaven set, I find myself very happy playing blue-green. I always liked green, but I am finding blue adds some much-needed interaction (counter-spells, card draw, etc.). Happy with The Hobbit, thought I don't see myself buying many more cards from this set. The 40 card deck will be enough to provide some fun playing my friends.

Thanks for reading!

#story #mtg

#gyushuaabo22yl

Senja kian tenggelam di ufuk Barat. Dengan penerangan yang agak redup, Choi Yido menatap cermin di hadapannya dan wajah yang bak pinang dibelah dua dengan ibunya pun menatap balik. Rambut hitam tertata rapi. Mata gelap yang memukau. Pipi tinggi, rahang tirus, bibir tipis tanpa cela. Paras yang cantik dan tampan sekaligus—androgini. Tubuhnya melesat tinggi ketika pubertas menyapanya lima tahun yang lalu. Sayangnya, ia tetap tidak bisa mengalahkan tinggi badan rival abadinya, Kibum.

Mengesampingkan bayangan Kibum yang membuat lidahnya sepat, Yido mengusak rambutnya ke belakang dengan tangan, mengacaukan tatanan yang telah diusungnya sejak ia memulai hari. Tidak ada kewajiban untuk tampil formal di muka publik malam ini, jadi ia tidak memedulikan penampilannya sama sekali.

Surat telah dilayangkan ke rumah Paman Mingyu. Sang utusan telah melapor pada ayahnya bahwa tugas telah selesai dilaksanakan. Namun, hingga detik ini, tak ada balasan dari rumah keluarga Kim.

Gelisah? Tentu. Bukannya Yido tidak mengetahui bagaimana perasaan Paman Mingyu terhadap prospek dirinya melamar Gyuri. Sejak awal, Paman Mingyu jelas-jelas menentang mereka. Paman Joshua selalu bilang kalau Paman Mingyu hanya orangtua menggelikan yang kelewat sayang pada putrinya (yang mana menurut Yido sangat masuk akal; Toh ini Kim Gyuri yang mereka bicarakan). Tetapi, separuh hati sang Alpha muda gelisah kalau-kalau alasan Paman Mingyu menentang adalah karena Yido dianggap tidak pantas bersanding dengan putrinya.

Ego Alpha-nya terusik. Jika ada yang pantas mencintai Gyuri, maka seharusnya pangeran kerajaan penerus negara ini adalah kandidat nomor satu, bukan? Sedari kecil ia ditempa oleh pelajaran di bidang tata negara, sosial politik, militer dan sejarah kerajaan, selain etiket dan budaya. Dirinya lah yang paling paham apa yang dibutuhkan negara ini beserta masyarakat di dalamnya. Ayahnya tidak mengajak Yido turut serta dalam pelaporan para warga setiap paginya sejak ia remaja untuk menjadikan pengetahuannya sia-sia belaka. Ia bahkan berhasil mengimplementasikan taktiknya dalam mengenyahkan potensi pemberontakan di sisi Utara dekat perbatasan beberapa bulan yang lalu.

Semenjak Kak Seongso menunjuk Kak Nara sebagai pengantinnya, orangtuanya telah mempersiapkan Yido sebagai penerus utama tampuk kepemimpinan.

Tapi kenapa Paman Mingyu masih saja merasa itu tidak cukup?

Apa lagi yang harus Yido lakukan agar Paman Mingyu bersedia memberi tangan Gyuri kepadanya??

Pikirannya kalut oleh berbagai suara yang saling bertentangan. Sekali lagi, pemuda berusia sembilan belas itu menghela napas. Kemeja putihnya yang terbuat dari sutra kualitas terbaik itu kini nampak acak-acakan, hasil kebiasaan buruknya yang suka berjalan kian-kemari ketika tenggelam dalam pemikirannya sendiri—mengelilingi peraduan, bahkan satu istana, tanpa sadar. Ibunya bahkan pernah menyadarkan putra tertuanya itu dengan menepuk kepalanya kuat-kuat, mengejutkan ayahnya yang tak sengaja menyaksikan kejadian itu.

Setiap detik terbuang tanpa jawaban dari keluarga Kim adalah setiap detik keyakinan akan bobot dirinya tercungkil mengenaskan. Ia perlu tahu reaksi Paman Mingyu dan Paman Joshua atas surat itu dan berdiam diri di istana tidak akan membawakannya jawaban yang ia cari.

Tugasnya sebagai pangeran kerajaan untuk hari itu sudah selesai. Saatnya Choi Yido menyelinap keluar dengan memanjat tembok istana dan mengganti mahkota emasnya dengan topi pet sederhana yang senantiasa dikenakan anak penjaja koran di jalanan tengah kota.

Ah, ya, lihat kan?

Bagaimanapun, Choi Yido adalah anak ibunya.

“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”

Soundtrack:

Pieces of Eight – Styx (1978) The Promise Ring – Jon Anderson 1997

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There are so many terrific and enjoyable creative minds in the world. I don't think man was made to function at the intellectual or creative speed we are asked to. And it's mostly a request by the monied, the powerful, the technocrats—they need us more than we need them.

The Machine and the Muse

A creative mind can be just that with nothing more than imagination, a pile of rocks, or a marking tool. But we've been driven to believe that for our creativity to be valid, it must be packaged promoted and sold.

Enter social media.

We make, make, make and the techbro's take our work, which we give FOR FREE, in the hopes of some kind of recognition or validation. But, we can't keep up. There just aren't enough hours in the day to feed the damned algorithm with content, so we're all looking for an edge, the thing to get us just one more post, one more video, one more—thing. Maybe THAT will be the one to move the masses to love us and support what we are doing.

What a joke. What an abomination of a joke.

In desperation, we start looking for tools to help us make faster. You can't speed up creativity, it happens at the speed of thought. It always will. Producing the song, dance, prose or painting is the part that takes time.

No problem! Tech-bros to the rescue: here's A.I.! It will solve the pesky problem of not being able to produce FAST enough by shortening the gap between your idea and clicking upload.

The Digital Demon

It started with spell-check, now it's writing our songs, playing our music, drawing our pictures and making our videos. We just have whisper to the digital demon our invocation of creativity and ZAP: our idea exists. Only slightly bastardized, a bit off. Still very cool looking and if we're honest, better than we'd have done without the electric god.

So faster and faster we go. Years became, months. They became weeks. And now those weeks are days, hours and minutes. Humanity is pumping out creativity faster than we never conceived.

The irony, the rub, the kick in the god damned teeth: Every ITERATION is just more REPETITION.

When was the last time you saw something that didn't remind you of another thing. And not in an easter-egg-I-didn't-notice-it-at-first kind of way (think X-wing battles in Star Wars and the delight you had when you learned they were modeled after WWII dogfights). I mean every 'creative' product is now just reconstituted thing from before.

Oh, there's the occasional spark. But mostly, we're just retreading the same vehicles created in the first three-quarters of the 20th century.

Everything has been said before. Ironic, I know.

In Praise of Simple

The rambling preamble is to comment on the delight of minds like Austin Kleon.

He's written a clutch of books like Show Your Work!, Steal Like an Artist, and the one that put him on the map, Newspaper Blackout.

The thing Mister Kleon nailed was: Simplicity, he was ahead of the people-don't-read-anymore curve and his reconstituted work felt like anyone could do it.

Newspaper Blackout in particular felt like something anyone could achieve. I tried it. Anyone cannot.

And that's the point of this semi-screed: The simple stuff is the hardest, but it's also what we enjoy best. The simple song lyric which hits just right (I Love you drawn to a crescendo), the simple image (a banana taped to a wall). Like Miles Davis said, it's not the notes, it is the space between them.

The Keeper is learning that simplicity isn’t silence — it’s restraint. And restraint is the hardest art of all.

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2025-10-06 13:02:00

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#essay #100daystooffset #writing #rant

A Brief Summary: Abbreviated book reviews for summer reading recommendations.

• “What Did Dinosaurs Think About?” by Jean Le Loeuff: this book was initially on the 14 day loan display, but I renewed it 3 times because I liked it that much that I kept re-reading portions of the book! Please note that the author of this opus is a world renowned paleontologist and museum director, which is to say that this is not written by a dimwitted Guardian columnist “science communicator” – and while this book is written at an accessible reading level, it does presuppose the reader has some basic knowledge regarding dinosaurs and their unique biology. One of the better takeaways that I got from this book was that the encephelation quotient of the triceratops was commensurate to that of a dolphin, making triceratops the smartest (best) dinosaur. Educational & Entertaining, 5/5 Stars
• “Magic in Islam” by Michael M. Knight: I have apparently been tricked into reading a book on Islam by a white American, Allahumma irhamni. Oh look a degree from Harvard, that's not suspicious at all! Now if I'm done with the ad hominem, we can go back to reviewing books. The most salient points in this book are made towards the beginning by examining the cultural frameworks going back to Alexander The Great's employ of Babylonian magos (priests) for celestial navigation, and the heuristics of applying the label of “magic” to any system not properly understood. The book goes on to explain the linear cultural history of Islam, the tautology of it's theology, and accounting for cultural exchanges. This book is okay beginners material for new converts to Islam, but contains very little information about actual sorcery; useful source material for disproving stupid Wicca & Thelema. 2/5 Stars
• “The Vanishing Church” by Ryan Burge: I often recommend the book “Bowling Alone” to people, because it was written about 20yrs prior to everything it predicted coming to fruition. Mr. Burge's book is written in a similar vein, examining the weaponization of Christendom by the political class, trends in declining membership attendance, statistical extrapolations and potential solutions to the problems. Refreshingly objective and absent of superstition. Useful for intel re: church planting . 4/5 Stars
• “Letters To The Human Race...From The Cat” by Vicky Hall: there needed to be a fun book on this list. The author, Ms. Halls, is a veterinary nurse and feline specialist belonging to the Association of Pet Behavior Counsellors, and has published a surfeit of books on caring for cats. However, this book is not a thick tome of interpreting the nuances of kittens – it's a series of missives written 'in-character' from the perspective of cats, and their waxing philosophies thereof. It's also got cute cartoons in there! I read fun stuff too. It's cheery and whimsical. 5/5 Stars

And you nodded in admonishment and felt their pity

stare out from their screens and screams and the girls and their

hearts used their eyes as hands, bobbling through their TVs like

you must be the manager and that’s a really important job, so here’s to

being

shot

down

the table makes drink so appealing because apparently killing yourself is about

loving life  its liquid lunch so you can put it back in the sun to sleep,

until you wake in a stupor to find the meeting is still happening and it’s ok to not

want.life

begging across the wires.

There’s no fight left here, no war on these shores.

The surveyors, the predators, they’re still sipping coffee on the oak as you

plan your exit.

Run.

#poetry

Well today was a little more productive, though my congestion is still feeling really bad. I tried going to urgent care today, but the wait time was over two hours. Maybe I will try tomorrow.

My mom tried all sorts of home remedies on me. While it did not get rid of the issue itself, it did alleviate a lot of my symptoms. I feel a little better, but not great entirely.

I got a bit of a productivity kick. I finally cleared all the clean laundry that has been piling up on my bed, cleared the dirty laundry that had cluttered my floor and cleaned up my nightstand. I hope tomorrow I get another kick and finish painting my trim project, and clear the top of my dresser. Those are my goals before I leave for two weeks – besides packing, of course.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.