§ A busy week of celebrations. Our bridal shower, Mother’s Day, and my birthday.
§ Did you know “zip ties” are called “zap straps” in Canada? I spent three long days this week with a new friend from British Columbia installing 1,500ish linear feet of smart lighting strips all around the ISS project. Does all of this lighting make the structure look more like the actual International Space Station? No, but it is super cool and that’s more important, right?
The deadline to complete this whole project is next week. Let’s all hope I’m able to talk about it more eloquently before then.
§ I watched Full Metal Jacket after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey last week. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s command to “get up, get on your feet” immediately brought to mind “Thieves”. I guess I had unknowingly heard that line so many times, in my occasional industrial music moods. Hearing it in the film for the first time was jarring.
Speaking of “Thieves,” its chorus is exactly the same as “Mr Suit.” Who knew?
The cinematography was gorgeous. Each shot was ornately detailed, well lit, and carefully considered. Although the choice to shoot everything in black and white admittedly read as a bit pretentious.
The sound! A restrained use of non-diegetic music combined with richly textured environmental sounds was a revelation in designing immersive scenes.
The pacing felt a bit slow, particularly during the first few episodes and the characters were all necessarily mysterious and untrustworthy. The payoff was worth it, come the final two episodes, which were unrelentingly foreboding, claustrophobic, and tense.
§ I met a leonberger puppy. What an amazing, enormous, fluffy dog.
§ Micro.blog launched some new commenting features. I’ve enabled them here.
§ Everywhere I look, people are talking about the aurora that was visible over much of the United States and Europe. After the solar eclipse last month, I’m more interested than ever in rare celestial events. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to catch the aurora myself, probably due to either clouds, light pollution, or some combination of the two.
