By Roy Mathur, on 2021-12-05, at 23:11:29--00:47:59 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
I'm finally back, later than expected... again... sorry.
Listenership is down, so if you're new to this, you'll almost certainly missed out of some great content, including many Doctor Who revisits, the last of which being 414 Doctor The Androids of Tara, and two in-depth reviews: 412 Dune and 413 Midnight Mass.
As if all that Old Who wasn't enough, shortly before taping, I watched the New Who finale episode of the Flux arc. It's so complicated!
Running my car is an endless money pit, but at least I have wheels again. I felt physically sick without it.
I had the booster. I am glad and grateful, but boy, was I sick for a week. I'm only just about recovering now. High temperature and the chills, bone-deep aches, feeling extremely nauseated, headaches... the works.
The nausea was so bad that my appetite disappeared and I rapidly lost too much weight, to the point when I didn't feel hunger any more. I'm still not one hundred percent, but I'm getting better now.
What worries me is that, with the new variant, they are saying we're going to need boosters regularly.
Still, a week of sickness, with only a few people like me suffering side effects, is a small price to pay compared with death. Also, if I'm putting up with these symptoms, both for my benefit and for those around me, I don't see why those without valid medical conditions can't get vaccinated.
In this 2021 film, Ryan Reynolds is a disposable NPC in a video game. What a hi-lar-ious concept.
I watched the first 10 seconds, but thankfully the quality of the copy was so bad, I had a reason to discontinue.
Low budget, sci-fi film by Nicholas Ashe Bateman, initially executively produced by the amazing Shane Carruth, who has sadly given up filmmaking. Tangent: Watch Upstream Color and then listen to pod 22 (2014-01-10). I miss Shane Carruth. Come back to filmmaking, Shane.
A young woman is a resident of a colony planet divided into the haves and have-nots. She is one of the have-nots, hoping to follow the annual export of horses to the hopefully rich land of milk and honey. That doesn't happen, but it might (or might not) for her daughter.
Technically, this is sci-fi, but I saw precious little of the sci, and it definitely did not make me want to emigrate on one of Elon's wunderships for, "a chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure."
Remember A Boy and his Dog; that perverse post-apocalyptic film starring Don Johnson? This is not it. It's a gentle story about an old man and his dog, escaping the storms of a solar ravaged America, with a dog and a robot.
It's competent, looks good, but it's sad and not much happens. My mother liked it, though it left me very very depressed.
What's Rami Malek's character's name? "Lyutsifer_Safin"? "Lucifer Satan"? What? What?! Ha ha ha! Can you just picture the table read? Bet there was giggling. The Belmarsh prison scene with Blofeld on a little choo choo train did actually set my thrusters to giggle overload.
Stung from ridiculous Bond science of Skyfall, they at least got the dioxin poisoning right; almost certainly based on the case ex-President of the Ukraine, Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko.
The whole family at Castle Royenstein has now seen No Time to Die. Collectively, we were not impressed, but personally, that ending knocked me sideways. I remember my mum taking me to see The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 at the Elephant and Castle ABC Cinema. It has been quite a ride over the years---I grew up with all those Bonds and Bond girls---so I'm still reeling.
Final conclusions? It's an average Bond film, but the stunt performers' set pieces were mind-blowing and, blimey, that was a long running time.
Since watching Dune (2021), I've had the David Lynch Dune (1984) theme by Toto earworming through my head to the extent that I can't remember the music from the new film soundtrack, even though I'm a Hans Zimmer fan.
I've been whistling the tune through a mic plugged into my PA with lots of reverb/delay. Sublime.
The forensics expert and serial killer is back for a mini-series sequel to Dexter, after years, and years, and years... I'm watching it, more from a sense of completion than wanting the show to return.
At the end of the last series, Dexter settled into the cold north, an environment I know quite well, and has also adapted well, until...
UFO a new documentary from is J.J. Abrams.
Oh, how I do love good UFO/conspiracy theory. I used to read The Unexplained. Weirdly, our school library had a complete set of the collected volumes of the conspiracy theory magazine. Props to them for otherwise being a wholly unremarkable, miserable, overpriced school, full of entitled little darlings.
I found the first episode engaging, until I noticed that some of the interviewees were believers, rather than objective experts, and then my interest waned.
I watched the end of ITV's Angela Black, but the tone shift at the end, from a traumatic and upsetting thriller to campy Hitchcock, was jarring and undermined the seriousness of the story.
It seemed similar to a lot of other ghost stories; The Others, Haunted, etc. That's because it is an early story (based on Henry James's 1989 novella, Turn of the Screw) that has influenced so many others, so it should and does get a pass.
My accent fascism aside, I liked the series and it ended in much the way I expect all Mike Flanagan shows to end. He's a chap after my own heart.
The first season if over. I found the FX, the acting, the production, the script, etc. excellent, if only tangentially related to the Foundation books.
I would have been willing to stick it out for a season or two, until I read that the adapter/writer, David S. Goyer, wants to string this out for several seasons just to get to the big, bad Mule. No thank you.
What a sad and depressing ending.
There's also the promise of another adventure, but there is no way in hell that series is returning. I simply cannot see rising star Ashley Zukerman investing more time in the decidedly average tomb raiding. Neither is Eddie Izzard, no spring chicken, going to waste more time on this.
Gamesmaster is back on E4, with Trevor McDonald replacing Patrick Moore as the iconic title character. I found the first episode inoffensive and the golden joystick's just as naff as before.
I am glad gaming has returned to TV, though I think they should have pushed the boat out a little and updated it for a younger esports/Twitch audience, instead of aiming this at middle-aged blokes.
It's not just the star who can only do despair or ecstasy, it's everyone. And why does everything have to be universe ending? I hope the new Star Trek show gets back to slightly less high stakes exploration.
The ultra-annoying Wesley Crusher-type character, Adira, is now a permanent fixture.
Dean Stockwell, the prolific character actor known for Blue Velvet, Dune, Quantum Leap, etc. died at 85 reported Variety on 2021-11-08.
RIP Dean Stockwell.
The microphone upgrade has become a fiasco. Summary: there's too much choice. I may be a techno-geek, but after all this testing I'm developing a hatred for podcasting gear.
The SM7B has a slightly lower noise floor, records slightly more information at the top end, sounds slightly smoother, is slightly easier to use for beginners because of the built-in shock mount and wind screens, its propensity to pick up quite well even if you move your head, and some built-in switches.
Is it worth it?
No! Although I own one and like it---it is part of the equipment I'm earmarking for my new studio when we move---did you notice how many times I said, "slightly"? Many other mics sound only fractionally worse than it does, and at a fraction of the cost. By the time you process your audio through a DAW or audio editor, the differences will be even less. However, it looks nice on a desk boom arm.
My tip is to find a mic that produces audio that requires the least editing for your voice and the environment in which you record. I'm not saying this isn't the ideal mic for you---it may well be---but don't base your purchasing decision on how the damn thing looks.
Finding mics to upgrade my studio setup was quite the trial, which was why I have ordered and returned several pieces of studio and musical equipment recently. As far as mics go, I selected an SM58 and SM7B because I chose to sacrifice the bright clarity of my Behringer XM8500 in order to lessen the clickiness of my mouth.
If I ever get fancy, I might use my XM8500s as guitar cabs mics, as they sound really good for that purpose. My AT875R shotgun remains my outdoors field mic.
This desk-mounted high rise boom arm is about the same price as the Rode PSA 1, but not quite as smooth moving and a little more plasticky, but...
It's high enough, with the supplied extension tube, to dangle over your monitor, it's clamping system forms a more solid attachment to the desk, the arm doesn't wiggle in it's post like the Rode, and the positionable mic screw adapter is more versatile, easier to move, and locks into position. There is also an included weight to make the arm suitable for lighter mics, and a tensioning adjustment system too.
Would I recommend the Elgato? I'd say decide between it or it's low rise sibling, or the Rode PSA 1. All other options are either much cheaper and much worse; Neweer, etc., or much better and much more expensive; Yellowtec, O.C. White, etc. As for long-term reliability? The venerable old-fashioned Rode has proved itself with many other podcasters, whereas the Elgato is new, so I'll let you know how I get on with it. I'm going to be using it in the new studio I mentioned above, so it might be a while until I update you about it because until then I'm using a floor mic stand to hold my SM58.
Why am I stockpiling this gear if I'm not immediately going to use it? Fluctuating prices and, something I hate really despise: surge pricing.
I bought 2nd hand copies of the sed and awk, and vi pocket references, and a QBasic book recently.
Annoyingly, I've got lots of other hacker books I need buried in storage and totally inaccessible.
While looking for those books, we found a huge cache of CD-ROMs, floppy disks, and old mobile phones instead.
Would that be a good subject for YouTube?
I was also far too proud of myself for fashioning a handcuffs lock pick from a paperclip to free my floppy disks from a locked disk box. How hacker is that?
Strangely, I found the key for the box locked inside the box?!
Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi no longer support FTP for some security reason (I think).
No FTP in browsers sucks as I've been browsing through old MS-DOS archive mirrors of defunct sites like simtel.net. Luckily, many mirrors uses HTTP instead of FTP. Unluckily, many of the mirrors do not seem to have complete copies of the old sites.
We're losing the past as we speak. Think about digital preservation before closing down your site!
After about a decade, I finally upgraded from Vim 7.3 (2010) to 8.2 (2019).
I've always been put off because jumping so many versions, I worried some change in file location s would louse things up. There were problems, but I solved them with a bit of batch file scripting and Vimscript hacking.
I was very happy that after such a long time not using my decades of computer skills, I'm slowly starting to regain them.
I also upgraded Busybox, but found problems redirecting command outputs to file.
That is why I'm looking for the old GNU file, text, and shell utilities for Win32 and MS-DOS. Those used to be my go-to tools when I was an ETL consultant, but many years ago I lost track of them and never bothered to keep copies.
I again did some backyard astronomy using my crappy, misaligned binoculars. My 8x40 binoculars are nice and bright, but a tiny bit too shaky and don't have enough magnification. Still, there're okay for casual stargazing. I thought of having them realigned, i.e. fixed of collimation errors, but the job would cost much more than the binoculars are worth.
I got a very good look at the moon. I also saw the Capella constellation, until it was blocked out by clouds. As usual, I used the excellent SkyMap app to find objects and then to pretend I'm a space genius.
Here's some correspondence, some of which are from listeners I'm assuming. Let me know if you listen to the show in your Tweets and emails.
dyzurnyklasowy (@dyzurnyklasowy) Nov 15, referring to Firefox dropping FTP support, said, "Honestly it's not as painful as dropping gopher support :/"
DrMars (@sgarnell) Nov 16, referring to an exchange about musical instruments, said, "Yes I play electric bass. It's a Music Man Sterling I think. Need to check now ...."
AngelaBerelli (@AngelitaGreen68) Nov 21, referring to Angela Black, said, "Criss-cross! Watched ep6 last night and yes, a nice reminder of the classic Hitchcock/Patricia Highsmith movie. But nowadays it would be very odd for someone to sit opposite you on an empty train carriage Face with raised eyebrow"