Category: looky

something cool I found on the internets

Pulp 1930, Red Heat, and Prokofiev

looky

Worked on soundtrack with Jack last night- it was very productive. Initally when he played what we had I started to panic- what happened to all the work we did already?! He assured me it was all saved- all except for that day’s progress, which he had lost due to a configuration problem. Due to the crash, some of the instruments were set incorrectly as well- for example, a phrase which had previously used horns now used “Funky Bass Magic”, which made everything sound really screwed up.

One thing that is odd for me working for Jack is our age difference- I would estimate he’s in his 40s, and I’m in my 20’s- so cultural references I make frequently fly by him. Since I have very little training in musical composition, I have to sort of wave my hands when I describe the sound I want, or bring in an actual recording of something that sounds similar.

Example: I want to try one part sounding like Mr. Burns’s theme (from The Simpsons), for example, when he describes blocking out the sun, or routing all the beer trucks around Springfield… It’s not even a melody, just two chords, but it’s used pretty often. However, since Jack doesn’t really WATCH “The Simpsons” this becomes a problem.

The newest problem: the patriotic music for the soviets. Jack hasn’t heard the Soviet National Anthem, and it’s not really as over-the-top as I’d like. So I remembered the music that played over the credits in the movie “Red Heat” (yes that Jim Belushi movie where Arnold Schwartzeneggar, the canonical Teuton, is playing a Russian cop. Absurd!). However, if you surf a little bit you will find that piece is not written by the soundtrack’s author (James Horner- he wrote the score for “Titanic”) at all- it’s actually an arrangement of Prokofiev’s “Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution,” one of that composer’s more obscure works. There is apparently some controversy about this cantata, since Prokofiev was not a Stalin fan and made this work somewhat satirical, and so it was never performed in the composer’s lifetime, only recently being recorded and then released on CD.

Neither work is well-known enough to be on the file-sharing networks. Not that I would ever dream of doing that, since even listening to music you haven’t paid for is illegal.

Back to the point: Do I buy the soundtrack to this god-awful movie? Or do I buy the Prokofiev CD, assuming I can even find it? The “real” cantata may not sound the same, since by definition it’s a different arrangement than the “Red Heat” version. I’ll probably just rent the movie and bring it to Jack since I don’t really want to hear this thing over and over.

You Should Make Movies

looky

No Media Kings has this small collection of articles about making movies. The basic message: spend no money; it’s better to finish a ghetto project than to never finish your unfunded blockbuster.

From No Problem : “This is the steel trap that has apprehended thousands who have confused “making a really good movie when I have the time” with not making a movie at all.”
Web link of note: You Should Make Movies
(At http://nomediakings.org/youshouldmovies.htm)

Haiku #1

looky

Today’s news-inspired haiku:

big scissors cutting
hurried discharge of patient
oops! the baby’s toe!

ORLANDO, Fla. — There was a medical mistake
at an Orlando hospital Monday as someone
accidentally cut off a baby’s toe.

According to the family, newborn Amirona
Simmons was about to be discharged from
Arnold Palmer Hospital when someone, while
trying cut an ankle ID band, accidentally
cut off the newborn’s toe.

Risk vs Vegas

looky

What are the odds of winning a battle in Risk ? (I’m talking about “classic” Risk now, not “Risk 2210“).

I was actually calculating all these out myself, and then I realised- “duh- this is the internet- someone has definitely already done this and posted it online!”

So here’s the info, taken from the Probabilities section from the RISK FAQ.

Defender rolls 2 dice
(2 or more armies)		 Defender rolls 1 die
(1 army)
Attacker rolls 3 dice
(4 or more armies)
  • Att lose 2: 29.26%
  • Def lose 2: 37.17%
  • Both lose 1: 33.58%
  • Att lose 1: 34.03%
  • Def lose 1: 65.97%
Attacker rolls 2 dice
(3 armies)
  • Att lose 2: 44.83%
  • Def lose 2: 22.76%
  • Both lose 1: 32.41%
  • Att lose 1: 42.13%
  • Def lose 1: 57.87%
Attacker rolls 1 die
(2 armies)
  • Att lose 1: 74.54%
  • Def lose 1: 25.46%
  • Att lose 1: 58.33%
  • Def lose 1: 41.67%

If you’re more of a completist, there is Scott Bartell’s RiskOdds Calculator, which shows you the complete odds for an entire battle, with an option to choose how many armies have to die before the attacker gives up.

See also Scott’s FAQ about the calculator.

3vs2.gif 3vs1.gif
2vs2.gif 2vs1.gif
1vs2.gif 1vs1.gif

Strange Change

looky

One of the weirdest toys I ever had? Easily the Strange Change. It was an electric heater with plastic monsters… you warmed up the monsters and when they were soft you compressed them into little cubes. Then when you heated the cubes up at a later date they expanded again into the monsters!

Recently I’ve discovered that you got a bunch of the creatures with the set… but you could also buy more creatures in little cardboard-backed blister packs. Sometimes the creatures would be in their square “Time Capsule“ form so I guess you wouldn’t necessarily know what kind they were!

Virtual Vikki has a great description with pictures, and there’s another good set of photos at Sam’s Toy Box. And yes, I still have this thing in my garage.

KIRBY: ya ever notice how these things have a dangerous resemblance to now’n’laters?
BRIAN: I have noticed that. Funny isn’t it?
KIRBY: maybe that’s why they stopped making them
KIRBY: too many kids were either eating the plastic, or caught the set on fire by putting a now’n’later on the hot plate
KIRBY: where’d we get our set anyway?
BRIAN: temple garage sale
KIRBY: oooh
KIRBY: yea I didnt think the parents would shell out for that
KIRBY: it was probably $20 new or something
BRIAN: besides it was a toy from the 1960’s!
KIRBY: oh
KIRBY: I didn’t realize it was that old
BRIAN: yeah when we were kids most of the really dangerous toys were gone already

Sterling Holloway

looky

Today’s trivia: Sterling Holloway, voice actor.

Yes, you know him. He’s the original voice of Winnie the Pooh.
He was the narrator on tons of Disney cartoons, like say Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Here’s an article about him with a picture. An intersting snippet:

Ironically, for the actor whose voice was to be his fortune, it was the advent of sound that drove him, however temporarily, from Hollywood. “I came to Hollywood at a bad time. The movies were in a state of turmoil,” he later recalled. “Sound was coming in and silents were going out. I made a silent two-reel comedy called The Fighting Kangaroo. Then I did a silent feature, Casey at the Bat, with Wallace Beery for Paramount, and all of a sudden I was a has-been. Nobody thought I was suitable for talkies. I didn’t feel so bad when I heard about John Gilbert. So I returned to New York.”