Darkoshi

When watching things like the Olympics opening ceremonies (and also various music competition TV shows with a lot of special effects) in the last decade or more, I can't tell how much of it (if any) is computer generated graphics which are only visible on the TV screen, versus what is being shown and seen by the participants in person.

The giant LED screen on the field of the birds-nest stadium, I can understand. I still wonder how much more (or less) wondrous it looks in person. How clear is it? How real? Does it look pixelated up close? Is it real enough to seem like you're looking over a cliff?

But other parts like the "ice cube", I can't even figure out. Is it something physical or not? What do the people in the stadium see? It is a cube of LED screens that rises out of the floor? Is it a cube of glass that has images projected into/onto it? Or is it only a 2-D image on the floor which looks like 3-D from a certain angle? I need to know, in order to be able to appreciate it! Otherwise it seems like just any other special effect in a movie.

Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony: One World, One Family

A virtual ice cube emerges from the stadium floor, where 24 laser beams carve and engrave the names of the 24 previous Olympic Winter Games hosts before projecting the name of Beijing 2022.
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A projection display shows previous Winter Olympic games information during the Opening Ceremony...

What does that mean? What is a virtual ice cube? Are the laser beams real or virtual too? If they are real, what are they pointed at, and how does it work? The next part calls it a projection display, but still, where is the video explaining how it is all done? Maybe I should be doing YouTube searches.

Even the Olympic rings leave me guessing. I guess they are made of some kind of translucent plastic or glass, and are hanging from wires? They are at least a real physical object, right?

I've had a realization, after many times noticing how Fox News in almost every "news" story bashes (and/or subtly or not-so-subtly puts down) Democrats and liberals - even when Republicans are/were in charge of the government.

Fox News isn't only a channel geared towards Republicans and conservatives. Its intention is to sway and convince people to *vote* (and keep voting) for Republicans and conservatives.

If you are a very wealthy conservative Republican, how can you influence elections in a democracy? Among other things, you can give money to candidates and PACs, and you can fund advertising in hopes of swaying the electorate.

Fox News is basically an on-going 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week political advertisement, designed to convince and keep people voting for Republicans (or whoever they choose to laud on their shows) and against Democrats. It is only disguised as a "news" channel.

Perhaps that is obvious, and perhaps it has been apparent to me in the background of my mind before. But in general I try to pay as little attention to Fox News as possible because of how much it upsets me when I do pay it attention.

I bought a FireTV stick and set it up today. Installed many apps. Mostly wanted it for some German news and shows, but also installed other apps to try out.

One app is iQIYI, and on it I watched the first episode of I Don't Want to Be Friends With You. It's a 2020 Chinese series, free to watch, with English subtitles. The first episode was cute, funny and entertaining. I don't want to spoil it for anyone by describing the plot, as I had no idea when I started watching it. But this page has some details if you want, and lists its genres as: Comedy, Romance, School, Youth, Fantasy.

I admit, one thing that appeals to me about the show is the androgynous appearance of the lead character, a teenage girl.

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Recently I installed the Audials Android app on my phone. It's got radio stations from all over the world. Unlike some apps, the radio links all seem to be up to date, no hunting just to find stations that will play ok. It also lets you record songs/shows to your phone. (This feels like taping songs from the radio to cassettes like in the old days, except it's to your phone instead.) That can be useful for stations that don't list which song is playing. If I hear a good song, I can save a clip to help in figuring out what song it was so I can later buy it and support the artists.

The "record songs" option didn't work for me when I tried it. With that, the software looks for distinct gaps between songs before it will record or save them. But the "record show" option worked fine - you can select that and then click to stop the recording whenever you want.

Now I find myself listening to our local college radio station WUSC more often again, as I can simply tap on my phone to start playing it.

I'm also getting to listen to college radio station WUML again. I used to listen to it in Massachusetts during my high school years, when it was called WJUL.

I've been streaming the show "A Million Little Things" on the abc.com website.
I used the MS-Edge browser for it at first. But there was a problem - except for the ads at the start of the show, the ads did not play. At the ad breaks, the playback simply froze and didn't continue even if I waited for several minutes. I got past the problem a few times by reloading the page but later even doing that didn't help.

So that day I switched to using the Chrome browser. It had some problems too, but at least the playback didn't freeze and I was able to watch the show.

But today while watching another episode, my Chrome browser froze up at the ads like MS-Edge did last time. Reloading the page multiple times didn't help.

So then I tried playing the show in a Chrome incognito window. That way, the ads played fine and I was able to finish watching the show. So hopefully this method will work next time too.

I finished watching the first season of Resident Alien, and quite enjoyed it. It's amusing but also quite touching.

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I stopped watching Mr. Mayor after the first few episodes, as the comedy became too absurd for my taste. I still haven't figured out which (other) child actor the Arpi Meskimen character reminds me of.

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Almond Breeze has a quite good banana almond milk, made with real bananas and no added sugar. It tastes the same as banana milk I used to make myself, but blended all smooth.

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My arm was still a little sore Thursday, but by Friday evening it felt completely back to normal. No other side effects so far.

Any of you watching this new show on SyFy?
Resident Alien

Came across it today while watching TV at Qiao's house, episodes 3 and 4... it seems quite weird and funny so far. I'll have to go back and watch the first 2 episodes, unless something turns me off of it in the next half hour.

Times Square had a car commercial behind the count-down numbers. Very tacky if you ask me. But the music performances were nice.

The local virtual event's headline act (Arrested Development) wasn't live, and didn't even look specially recorded for the occasion (the part I saw looked like a music video, filmed outdoors in the daytime with a pretty yellow-leaved tree in the background). I wonder if there was a technical problem that resulted in something else being shown than what was planned.

I banged my drum. A rumpa pum pum.

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I love this new Geico commercial, "Scoop, there it is!".

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My small over-sofa laptop desk broke; a weld at the bottom came apart. Today I drilled holes through the square steel metal tubes, and bolted on angle brackets to attach it back together. I hadn't expected to be able to drill through the metal, but it wasn't very difficult at all. Finding enough nuts and bolts and washers of an acceptable size among my collection was more tricky. My first try, a single angle bracket on the broken side, made the desk feel lopsided and not sturdy enough. So then I stacked 2 angle brackets on both sides, and now am very pleased with it. I sure hope it proves to be a lasting fix.
That's my New Year's Eve accomplishment.


So many things have been breaking lately:

The porch lamp; I fixed it by putting up a new one. Looks and works good.

The deadbolt lock; I fixed it by replacing it with the old matching deadbolt lock from the other door which I'd replaced a few years ago, and rekeying it to match the current key. Not sure how long this one will last, but replacing it with a new lock would be difficult as the distance from the edge of the door to the hole is non-standard, and the hole is also too small for new locks.

A connector under Qiao's kitchen sink leaks when the warm water is turned on. So for the last week, I've only been using cold water to wash dishes. I don't want to try tightening it and end up with water spraying everywhere. The water meter in the front yard was changed last year; I'm not even sure we can turn off the water to the house out there anymore.

The caulk on my tub; I recaulked it on 2 sides.

The outlets... I wanted to replace a couple of 2-prong outlets with 3-prong ones, and tried installing a GFCI one... but it doesn't work right; it indicates there's a wiring problem somewhere in the rest of the circuit which unfortunately connects to a bunch of different things, so is not easy to figure out. Especially if the problem is in the crawl space, because I went down there again, and yeah, NO. I can not convince myself to crawl flat on my belly under the HVAC duct while bringing along camera and tools and flashlights and cringing at how much dirt I'm getting all over myself, unless it's REALLY an emergency, maybe.

That storm door. I FOUND the retainer strips in the garage, yahoo (so glad I didn't throw them away years ago, not knowing what they were back then), and the glass panel is now securely in the frame.

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Ooh. #Dancelikeadad. That was a good commercial too.

Oh shucks, the Dick Clark NYE show ended before the Pacific time zone reached midnight.

Well, I suppose I should go to bed.

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A few days ago, I noticed a small rash on both my outer forearms near the wrists. The skin was red and dry, with a couple of small bumps. Not at all itchy or painful. The dry skin feels like it got a rug burn. I haven't ever had rough dry skin in that location before.

(Of course, I'm wondering if it could be a COVID symptom, even though the COVID rashes I've read about don't present like that. It's more likely to be some other virus, or an actual rug-burn scenario that happened without me remembering. Or an allergic reaction, but what could I have touched with only that part of my forearms?)

Suddenly I remembered this expression:
Up and at'em.

Maybe I'm familiar with it from this cartoon:
Atom Ant (Theme song with lyrics)

Wikipedia indicates Atom Ant had only 26 episodes, from 1965 and 1966. If that is true, I must have seen re-runs, the same as The Jetsons and many other shows of my childhood. Or maybe I saw him on "Yogi's Gang" and other such shows.

I thought there weren't going to be more episodes, but lo and behold, another 4-part season was filmed and already aired in the UK earlier this year. Something to look forward to.

Last Tango in Halifax series 5 gets US air date

The Sally Wainwright drama will premiere in the USA on Sunday, September 20 at 8pm ET on PBS.

PBS food show, "Somewhere South": https://www.pbs.org/video/dumpling-dilemma-wxy3aj/
Mostly not vegan food, but still interesting.

The above episode is about dumplings, but also talks about people from China who settled in Mississippi back in the 1940s. The one older lady's stately Southern accent is very much like how Qiao's older sisters speak. (It's unlike how most younger people speak.) I know very few people with an accent like that, so it surprises me in a nice way to see & hear someone with Chinese ancestry speaking that way too. The part in the video with her speaking starts at about 16:20.

The show also featured Kool-Aid Pickles.

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This YouTube channel has funny videos about the South:
It's a Southern Thing


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What N.Y.C. Sounds Like Every Night at 7