By Roy Mathur, on 2023-03-27, at 23:54:49--00:43:37 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show, Listen
Welcome to British Summer Time.
I'm back on the Shure SM7B tonight thanks to the nightmare of click removal during the last three editing sessions.
As from tonight, the main SFFH content comes first and I have moved off-topic subjects to the aftershow, which, if you wish, you can skip as I am quite capable of talking the hind pods off an Arcturan zingbat.
The Colony is a 2021 English language German-Swiss science fiction film produced by a few companies I've never heard of, and available on Netflix. It stars French actress Nora Arnezeder and Scottish actor Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones) and has average to low reviews.
Elite, but irradiated and sterile spacers, who abandoned the dying Earth to live on Kepler-209, send a survey to see if the planet is again inhabitable. The first astronauts go missing, and so a second expedition is sent. They crash land on an endless shore and one drowns. Another is badly injured when primitive natives attack and later dies, while the last is taken prisoner. The survivor and her captors are attacked by raiders with modern weaponry, who work for a one of the original expedition. He is a fanatic who calls the natives "muds" and sees them only fit to supply healthy female breeding stock for use by his fellow Keplens when they return. The survivor reunites with her father, another astronaut of the first party, imprisoned because he sided with the natives. She decides to doe the same, defeats the megalomaniac, and rescues the native captives. We are left to ponder what will happen when the Keplens arrive.
For all it's liberal, green ideals, and female protagonist, an Asian woman and black man still die first. That annoyance aside, it is a grim, grey, cold, wet land of endless mudflats and rusty wrecked sea vessels; I felt I needed a tetanus shot while watching it. It also twanged a lot of anxieties I have about how the rich are messing up the planet and how some would rather leave and start again elsewhere. Please do that, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and when your descendants return, mine will eat their elite flesh with my blessing.
2022 Disney animated film, influenced by Weird Tales-type pulp magazines of the 1920--40s.
A farmer, who's discovery of Pando plants that powers his civilisation of Avalonia, is recruited to find a solution to declining energy levels. He continues the expedition his father led before going missing many years ago while trying to find a route through the impenetrable surrounding mountains. Their airship is immediately imperilled after falling into an dangerous alien underworld. They eventually discover that Avalonia is set into the back of a giant turtle, that Pando is killing, and realise that they have to give up their reliance on the toxic plant.
Very diverse, very representative, but the protagonist, pleasant as he is, is a still a straight white guy. Come on Disney, you're usually better than this. The air cycles and vehicles were too Star Wars speeder bikes and land speeders, Splat was very similar to Gru's minions, and the story was simply, "How do we fix the batteries?" However, it is also very colourful, very psychedelic, very sweet (perhaps even too saccharine), I liked the silly, but loveable and fluffy, three legged dog, I enjoyed the variant of the Hindu Kachhapa world tortoise myth, and I appreciated the ecological metaphor of how our own over-reliance on oil and gas is poisoning our world; Willow Project, Biden?! I loved the idea of how some people---like the grandson, who takes after his explorer grandfather---have, at their very core, a need to explore, "...beyond that horizon."
Another Life is a 2019 Netflix sci-fi series, filmed in BC, Canada, and stars BSG's Katee Sackhoff.
A metallic Mobius strip-shaped spaceship womps down on future America and begins transmitting a powerful signal. Initially unable to communicate, we send a crewed ship to the destination of the alien ship's transmissions. The ex-commander mutinies because he deems Sackoff too cautious. He cocks up after taking over and Sackoff takes charge again. When he then attempts to murder Sackoff, a nicely executed Muay Thai push kick from her sends the mutinous miscreant into a sparking electrical conduit, where he is flash broiled like a Thanks Giving turkey.
Film references most transparently include Alien, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Contact, Event Horizon, and Arrival. It's not a bad series, but---needs must..., other fish..., etc.---I'm out after two episodes.
In 479 I said I boosted the centre channel---where speech is recorded---by 20% globally, allowing me to hear dialogue.
My mistake was saying that it enabled me to cut overall volume by about 50%. I don't think that's right. While the overall level might have gone down, the centre produced more volume.
If you do this, please be careful with your hearing. Measure the actual overall dB with a free dB meter like phone app Bosch iNVH.
I said in 479, "I hope my new mixer works". The new Yamaha MG10 arrived and ran hot. I thought I'd avoided the overheating problem with the MG series by buying an analogue one, but it turns out the issue is with all of the MG10 series. According to a warning in the instructions, it can reach more than 50C (122F). It's a heater! What a complete pain in the bum, Yamaha!
Remember the MG06 I sold?. Well, I bought another one. It runs on a boring old barrel 12V connector not the three pin locking 18.5V of the MG10. From experience, I know it runs a lot cooler. And, yes, I feel very very stupid.
What I'll eventually do is use the mixer for music and an entirely separate USB interface for podcasting.
I get so much wrong; news, tech, music, life, money, health, everything. I fess up when I do, so I'm not leading you down the garden path with my advice or reviews. You'll hear how wrong that in the aftershow follow up.
The older I get, the more fallible I feel. That's supposed to be a sign of wisdom. I don't feel wise though, hence this post's image of Merlin falling arse over tit in Boorman's Excalibur.