Month: June 2013

Categories
Music Television & Movies

Kasatochi: The Original Trilogy

Kasatochi Wars!To be fair, this is not a franchise that’s short on awesome video game music, but with this release, Kasatochi rolls the tape back a bit and beeps up the music of the three movies of the original trilogy, with an emphasis on the first one. Yes, there will be a prequel trilogy album; no, I’m not sure exactly when just yet.

Go grab it from the dedicated Kasatochi page; you can see the track listing after the jump. … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Television & Movies

To WHO it may concern, GREETINGS!!1!

Who goes thereThe past week or so has been interesting in the world of Doctor Who fandom. Honestly, I’ve almost forgotten that we’re supposed to be taking bets on who replaces Matt Smith at this point. On the off-chance that you’re not really a Doctor Who fan yourself… well, first off, what on Earth are you doing at this web site, which is fairly dripping with Doctor Who?

But, beyond that, all you really need to know is this: during the 1960s, Doctor Who was produced in black & white on video, and the series was made almost year-round to the tune of one 25-minute episode per week. The videotapes were transferred to a more universal medium – film – and sold abroad, often dubbed into the local language. From various points in Europe to the Middle East and beyond, these films were “bicycled” from broadcaster to broadcaster, a practice that was still in force as recently as my early years in the TV biz (I distinctly remember that, at the station where I worked in the early ’90s, episodes of Mama’s Family were bicycled from station to station; no, I don’t know why either).

And then, in the late ’60s, staring down the barrel of an impending change of video format with little reasonable expectation that programs recorded in the older, lower-resolution format could ever be exploited commercially, and knowing that yet a further new format would be introduced in due course (namely, color television), the British Broadcasting Corporation issued internal instructions to its videotape archive: get rid of these old shows. Get rid of everything that isn’t of obvious historic value (such as footage of the Queen’s coronation). In the BBC’s view, there was no point in wasting all of that valuable space to preserve programming which had no commercial future.

If only they’d known. … Read more

Categories
And Beyond The Infinite

The storm at the top of the world

WARNING! GIGANT-O-GIF AFTER THE JUMP!

Remember the delightfully huge aniamted GIF of the polar vortex at Saturn a while back? Cassini recently completed another relatively close pass of Saturn’s north polar region, effectively initiating another staring contest with the huge hexagonal eye that sits there spinning at the top of the ringed planet. The results were simply too awesome not to animate.

Be warned that the GIF animation here runs about 22 megabytes and will take a minute or two to load and run through once, after which it will run at full speed. This is a cropped, reduced-size version; you can click on the link to see the full-size, 84 megabyte (!!) animation to best effect. … Read more

Categories
Music

Just can’t get enough of Kasatochi?

KasatochiSo you just can’t get enough of Kasatochi, and you need something to do? Fine, fine, but not tonight. How about today? How about an Expansion Pack EP of chiptune covers centered on a particular group whose sound has always been on the electronic side of things? This ought to be interesting. It might even breathe some new life into things, or it might annoy some fans of said group, who harbor a kind of strange love for everything they do. There’s only one way to find out. … Read more

Categories
Critters Funny Stuff Should We Talk About The Weather?

Weather wake-up call

One of the cats woke me up shortly before 2am. She was very insistent about it. She then led me into my room and jumped up on my desk, drawing my attention to the giant bow echo that’s on a beeline for us by way of Tulsa and OKC. Fascinating. Is the weather radar display on enough that even a cat has some inkling as to how to interpret it, just from sheer repeat exposure? It’ll be interesting to see if this is a recurring phenomenon.

Olivia is all over it
And yes, it was actually this cat

Cute kittehs with awareness of severe weather could really shake up the TV WX biz, too. *rubs hands together greedily* Contact me the Green Agency for more information. We have a variety of photogenic weather kittehs available to do custom forecasts and weather cut-ins.… Read more

Categories
Music

Kasatochi: Analog Sunset

KasatochiKasatochi is back yet again, this time with a full-CD-length collection of tunes that doesn’t slow down a whole lot. This one also has the first cover that’s actually fairly recent (check out track 6!).

Next week you’ll get another EP, and the following week another full-length download for the soundtrack fans out there. And you will enjoy it [waves hand in the air cryptically]. And somewhere in there may be a surprise.

In the meantime, let’s look at this track list, shall we? … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

Combustible

Huh what?A brief encounter with someone who was on the other side of the gas pump a few nights ago. Encapsulated within this conversation is everything that’s wrong with America today.

The person on the other side of the gas pump was a lady (I think), perhaps in her 50s but possibly not, with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, looking like it was about to drop out at any second, which, as you know, is always good news at a gas pump. She was extremely obese. I’m obese too, but damn. She looked like someone who has openly declared war on her body from every available front.

Me, I was minding my own business, trying to top off the tank of my wife’s work vehicle so she wouldn’t have to worry about it the next morning. This involved repeatedly squeezing the “trigger” on the nozzle until I got to the next whole-dollar amount.

HER: You need to stop doin’ that. Yer gonna cause a spill and blow us all up.

[awkward pause as I realized she was addressing me]

ME: Okay… but the cigarette’s okay?

HER: Whut?

[not “what”, but indeed “whut“]

ME: It’s a combustion source. You’re not supposed to smoke while you’re pumping gas, last I checked.

[awkward pause as she realized I was addressing her]

HER: Some people just need ta mind their own bidness.

[yes, indeed, it was “bidness”]

End of conversation.… Read more