And Slaters Go Plop

Fight!

Sal and I like to avoid TV shows while they are, er, showing on TV and, instead, like to get them out on DVD and blob out for days on end without the constant stream of adverts and without the delay of a week between episodes.

For many years, people who’s opinions on films I value greatly have been telling me I really ought to get into Battlestar Galactica (BSG). I’ve never been into watching sci-fi but enjoy the occasional well-written sci-fi novel so it made sense to give it a go. And so we did.

Now, for fans of BSG this is probably going to hurt a little. I apologise in advance.

The coolest thing about sci-fi (as compared to, say, fantasy) is that you sort of have to work within the limits of the known laws of physics which is not all that limiting as it leaves the imagination wide open for some really creative concepts. Sure, some boundaries are overstepped, mainly the whole issue of getting around in this giant universe of ours where almost every sci-fi writer will invoke some form of instantaneous zipping from place to place. But, other than these understandable exceptions, most of the concepts should be plausible.

BSG is a bit quirky in that people still use telephones with cords aboard their space craft but are capable of teleporting willy-nilly across the universe. I quite like this aspect though. It works. It’s also got some interesting interplay between characters. And for those who have not already given thought to what makes a human a human and whether a being that is made qualifies there are some intriguing concepts too. However…

A good friend of mine said “the coolest thing is the way the space fights don’t make any noise!!1!”. But, Simon, they do make noise. All the time. Even their little side-puffers make little side-puffing noises. For frack’s sake, they managed to get this right back in 1968. Perhaps the lack of noise is only in comparison with the skwarking of the fighters in Star Wars but they definitely still make noises in the noiseless vacuum of space in BSG.

And what’s with the fact that every bit of paper has it’s corners clipped? Is the printing ship run by bored-but-OCD staff? I’ve operated a guillotine in a print shop and there’s a very valid reason for why books and other forms of paper have corners.

There is a scene where Lee has landed on a windy and forsaken planet and is dragged along the ground by his parachute, painfully hitting his legs against rocks. He struggles to cut the cords of his parachute and finally manages to do so before breaking any more bones. You can feel his sense of relief. I turned to Sal and said, “well there’s something, if this had been any other cheesy sci-fi he’d have narrowly avoided a massive precipice”. I spoke too soon. Right then the camera pans out and up… strike three, you’re out.

So, I’ve reached the end of season one. Sal abandoned it halfway through but I feel I’ve given it a fair trial.

And in the red corner. We’ve just got out the first DVD of season one of Dexter, we’re only two episodes in and we’re hooked. Dexter is a sociopath (or is that psychopath? I never remember the difference) who lacks feelings but charmingly, yet insightfully, understands the social niceties ordinary people need to get along. Oh, and he butchers people who’ve (literally) gotten away with murder.

I feel a little bad for bagging BSG. It’s got a lot going for it and my frustrations are slightly exaggerated for the sake of the telling. But, alas, it’s up against Dexter for a share of our viewing time and Dexter has neatly dismembered BSG and kept a drop of its blood on a slide as memorabilia.

Dexter wins.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Here’s a video that has been on the InterTubes for a while now but it’s a good example of tilt-shifting done properly. Well, almost properly; the helicopter during the rescue should have remained in sharp focus as it was on the same plane as the section of water which was in focus. I also like the fact that it’s sped up a bit as it adds to the feeling of the surreal. Nice song too.

Tilt-shifting is a photographic effect where a faraway shot is artificially blurred in such a way as to give it a depth of field effect usually only found in close-up photography. This is because lenses (cameras and eyes) have different depths of field depending on how far away the object is. [A good demonstration of this depth of field effect is to move your head closer to the screen, close one eye and hold your finger up halfway in between your eye and these words. Focus on the words and you'll see that your finger is fuzzy. Now, leaving your finger where it is in relation to the screen, gradually move your head back and you'll see that both the screen and the finger become reasonably sharp.]

When used properly it can produce surreal shots with a hint of cutesy nostalgia.

Now, wind the clock back to the mid-nineties and to the glory days of lens flares.

An often unwanted effect of photography in bright light was that little orbs  (i.e. lens flares) would appear on the photo due to the source of the light hitting the lens directly. It wasn’t long before photo editing programs like PhotoShop realised that some artists were using this effect to give a shiny thing a bit more ‘bling’ and before you could say “Bob’s your sugardaddy” wannabe artists (myself included) were putting lens flares on anything and everything. Including things that didn’t shine. Like fur for example. Want to make your cat look more expensive? Put a big ol’ lens flare on its shoulder.

Return to the present and we have the same thing happening with tilt-shifting.

If you have, say, a photo like the above, the tilt-shift effect works pretty well because when you track vertically up the image the actual horizontal depth of field is fairly consistent. But imagine the same photo where one of the people in the crowd in the foreground is holding up a banner that takes up half of the right side of the photo. Applying a gradual blur-everything-vertically-away-from-the-middle will mean that the bottom of his banner will be blurred (as it should be because he’s in the foreground and the focal point is somewhere out on the field) but the middle of the banner will be nice and crisp which simply never happens in real miniature photography.

The crux of the matter is, inappropriate use of tilt-shifting is exactly as silly as whapping a lens flare on your cat’s shoulder. Learn from my lens flare crimes. Just because it can be done it doesn’t mean it should be done.

I’ve only recently discovered LibraryThing. It’s a website where you build a library of books you own (or have read), rate them and then receive useful recommendations based on what others with similar tastes like.

It’s noice and I loike it. I loike it a lot.

The Otago Bike Trail takes advantage of a decommissioned rail track that used to run from Middlemarch up through Wedderburn and down into Clyde from 1879 until 1990. The rails and cycle-unfriendly rocks have been removed and it now provides the perfect gradient and stunning scenery for leisurely cycling.

It’s relatively inexpensive, relaxing, safe and the perfect way to see some of the most beautiful countryside New Zealand has to offer.

Sal and I did the trail a couple of weeks ago. Read on if you’d like to know what we thought were the highlights, lowlights and, most importantly, how not to win at curling.

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(If you love to ‘tweet’ and this raises your ire, please don’t leave me angry comments, k thx bye)

Yes, yes, we all know that blogging is really quite sad and self-indulgent. It’s bad enough that we all get to babble our opinionated nonsense to the world in a way that wouldn’t be possible if we required a paying audience like times gone by. But what’s with this disturbing trend to blog about blogging and the obligatory monthly stats-round-up of your own position among your fellow bloggers? C’mon.

(I realise the delicious irony that in order to make this comment I also am forced to do it. I apologise.)

If you’ve never heard of the Monty Hall Problem before, here is a brief summary.

You are in a game show where you are faced with three closed doors. Behind one of the doors is a brand new car and the other doors hide a goat each. You then choose a door in an attempt to win the car but before the door is opened the host (Monty Hall) opens one of the remaining doors he knows contains a goat. You are then given the opportunity to choose whether to stay with your original selection or switch to the other, remaining closed door.

Intuitively most of us tend to think that it doesn’t really matter because we think there is a 50/50 chance either way but the reality is that statistically you have a greater chance of winning the car if you switch. In fact you stand a 2/3 chance of winning with the switch strategy as opposed to a 1/3 chance with the stay strategy.

If you remain unconvinced feel free to try it out for yourself with a friend or a die and a piece of paper.

Anyway, the point of this post is to say that in the two years or so that I’ve known about this I’ve never heard a concise and easy-to-understand explanation for why this is so. But now I have one…

You have a 2/3 chance of selecting a goat instead of a car. This means that two thirds of the time Monty Hall will reveal the last remaining goat which means that two thirds of the time if you use a switch strategy you will win.

To highlight how this works, imagine the same scenario but with 1000 doors and only 1 car. You have a 1/1000 chance of selecting the car or a 999/1000 chance of selecting a goat. If Monty Hall opens 998 other doors with goats behind them it is extremely likely (999/1000) that the last remaining door will have the car. (Thanks A3!)

You have two strategies: switch or stay. Using the stay strategy, if you accidentally choose a car first off (1/3 chance) you will win but if you choose a goat (2/3) you’ll lose. Using the switch strategy you’ll reverse these odds giving you statistically a 66.6% chance of winning every time.

Simple huh?