Hurricane Hunters?

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XKCD - Hurricane Hunters Comic
Flying into the eye of a hurricane is dangerous, especially if your passengers were planning on flying to Saint Louis.

I love xkcd comics! With the recent hurricane, I thought this was rather timely.

Me being me, if I were an inadvertent passenger on a hurricane chaser flight, I expect I’d utilize all the flights barfbags. Yes, that’s where my mind went!

Anyway, you should subscribe to them. Now!

 

A Star Wars Fan Montage You Need To See

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As a long time fan of Star Wars, I delight in my discovery of this video. A fan montage, it really does a great job of taking the “The greatest teacher failure is” phrase of Yoda’s and reinforce it well. It really adds some interesting insights into The Last Jedi.

I appreciate considering the importance of failure, not only in the lives of fictional characters but also in ours.

YouTube Video Unboxing of an iBook G3

I just stumbled upon this video with iJustine and Marques with MKBHD from 2018. I don’t know where they found an unopened iBook G3 in 2018, but that’s particularly cool to me.

Anyway, what’s particularly fun for me: I had one of these! I loved this! And I enjoyed the odd stares from my techy friends. That was especially true when I used the handle. Though that was convenient, especially when I was moving a short distance (didn’t need/want to load it into my backpack), in hindsight, it was rather weird.

Kinda weird that I’ve lived so many of these historic tech moments. I’m not old!

 

 

Politics, The Death Star, And The Place Of Memes

Saw this thread today:

My mind immediately pictured the scene in A New Hope where Obi-Wan senses the destruction of Alderaan. Doesn’t seem like a positive message about a candidate to me. Anyway, I whipped out this meme in response.

Obi-Wan & Alderaan
Obi-Wan & Alderaan

A little cheesy and amateurish, but thought “what the hell”. I might regret it as there possibly will be an explosion of crankiness. Or maybe not. Might be one person who likes it and it fades into oblivion. In the end, I thought this silly little meme sums up my feelings succinctly.

May the Force be with you All.

Surveillance and Culture

In my Human Relations class we’re discussing corporate surveillance. In one of my responses I brought up my concern about how companies, tracking their employees, are then responsible for securing that data. In response, one of my classmates shared this video with me that’s quite relevant. As he described it, it’s a 20-minute Socratic exploration into data security and social surveillance. Some very interesting discourse, for me at least. Powerful questions to ask as technology’s ability to track our every move grows daily.

A Behind The Scenes Look At The Clone Wars: The Phantom Apprentice

I have really enjoyed the final season of Star Wars: Clone Wars. The animation is amazing, and the stories, well, for me at least, perfect. I’ve reconnected with the characters enough that it’s going to hurt when Order 66 goes down.

Last week’s episode, The Phantom Apprentice, was powerful. Part of that was bringing back Ray Park, who performed Maul in the Phantom Menance, and an exceptional martial artist. The team used motion capture to create this dynamic, engaging piece of film (can I call it film if it’s only digital?).

Below is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the episode. Well worth watching if you’re fascinated by the production of movies and tv.

The Power of Simplicity

Several years ago Google’s Creative Lab came up with this video to showcase Google. So often I see people get caught up in the technological minutia of video production (or any other creative initiative), of any aspect of storytelling. Insecurity about their camera, their editing software, lighting…on and on. And here’s a video, needing none of this, just a bunch of text typed into a browser, and a few other shots of Google pages. I’m pretty sure all that was needed was a browser, OBS, and an editor (iMovie might’ve been powerful enough to create it).

The tools don’t matter. Only the story has value. You can tell a story with the most minimal gear. And, to be blunt, if you can tell a compelling story with the most basic tools, you’ll be more likely to be entrusted with bigger and better tools.

So, go, create! Tell your story with whatever you have. Your audience, your tribe awaits.