So my new laptop did not arrive early enough to do write a Warhammer posts (the last couple of posts were written on my work laptop and I was told that was no-no), so I decided to do something a little bit different and is about two shows that helped my become the SF nerd I am today (the Python nerdiness needs no explanation). Looked at through the lens of society today, they definitely could not be made today without some stylistic and character changes. Those shows are Space: 1999 and UFO, both had interesting characters, costumes, vehicles, and sets. Those sets were responsible for my continuing disappointment in the interior design trends of today.
Per wikipedia:
Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television programme that ran for two series from 1975 to 1977.[2] In the premiere episode, set in the year 1999, nuclear waste stored on the Moon’s far side explodes, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it, as well as the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, hurtling uncontrollably into space.
Space: 1999 was the final production by the partnership of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and was, at the time, the most expensive series produced for British television, with a combined £6.8 million budget.[3] The first series was co-produced by ITC Entertainment and Italian broadcaster RAI, while the second was produced solely by ITC.
Space: 1999 was supposed to be a spin off from UFO and would focus on the moonbase, which to me would have been fantastic so we could have more of the moonbase uniforms plus the purple wigs (I cannot get fucking Win11 to allow me to download pics).
Pics : https://greghealeywords.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/img_0236.jpg?w=690
As you may remember, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were top billed and were cast based on the studios wanting big names and both actors had just come from doing Mission Impossible for American television, so they were big names. To get around some of the science facts, the moon traveled through black holes, worm holes, and any other plot contrivance to get the moon to a new planet. I was too young to care about how factual the science was (shit I was 9 and had just gotten in trouble for cutting my cousin to see if she was actually made of sugar and spice and everything nice – as she was being a raging bitch at me). But the show looked cool and even if the plot went a bit over my head at the time, it has given me a new layer of the show to appreciate. I still love the Eagle transporter, the Hawk fighter – not so much, and have a model I plan on doing as soon the manufacturer finally sends me the instructions. To me, the Eagle was exactly how a transport vehicle for a low gravity planet would look and feel. The interiors were amazing and they allowed me to more easily visualize the stories I would make up as I played.
Again, per the impermanent encyclopedia – wikipedia: UFO
UFO is a 1970 British science fiction television series about the covert efforts of an international defence organisation (under the auspices of the United Nations) to prevent an alien invasion of Earth. It was created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade‘s Century 21 for Grade’s ITC Entertainment company.
A single series of 26 episodes (including the pilot) was filmed over the course of more than a year; a five-month production break was caused by the closure of MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, where the show was initially made. Production then moved to Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. UFO was first broadcast in the UK and Canada from 1970, and in the United States from 1972.[3]
When you get down to it, UFO is a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because that is what the aliens want, they want to steal human bodies for the organs. It seems the aliens are a dying race due to polluting their planet and just so happen to be humanoid and be genetically compatible, which is a bit more of a stretch than flying saucers. So, I loved the vehicles and the action scenes as a kid and as I got older I appreciated the costumes more and more. I would have never believed that fishnet clothing would be all that comfortable, but it sure did a nice job of showing off the women’s figures. The series too me stands up somewhat, as long as you take the time it was made into, there are levels to the story telling, the plots make sense with the setting. This show is the only one I saw as a kid that almost scared me as much as Dark Shadows did. Man, I still remember some of the nightmares I had about that show. But the thought that a UFO could land in the woods (and as we were on top of a mountain and backed up on the Pisgah National Forest) there were a lot of woods, kidnap me, and steal my organs was scary as hell. Now, you just have to visit some sketchy places in Asia or Tijuana.
Ugh, lots of words. Anyway, according to the World Wide Leader in suck – actually I don’t care what sports are on as the Stanley Cup starts Saturday.
Oh, one more thing, Windows 11 is absolute shit, like my new laptop though.
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were the masterminds behind that space puppet show, Thunderbirds too! I just watched the pilot episode of Mission Impossible last night. Barbara Bain was very beautiful back in the day. Wally Cox, who was a super nerdy comic actor and spent many years as one of the Hollywood Squares, was also in the pilot, but he wasn’t in the series otherwise.
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Got a (shitty) ticket to the Bears@Niners game. Working on the assumption of continued unemployment or at least mostly remote, what other game should I go to this year?
My contribution to all that is space nerd…
Double fisting has a new mental image for me now.
Why yes, I can see the appeal.
Indeed. Most compelling.
So I stayed in this B & B last year, give it a look, and who knows, maybe a dfo con could be there someday…. so fucking far from everything else..
https://youtu.be/8SChsQ75RUI?si=UlGurH_vz3qfSGyN
Looks like a good time.
Guys… wear those flare bottom jeans.
Ladies… tub tops please.
FUCK YEAH ROUND BED!
I have a great shot of the groom to be passed out on it, face down, ass-up….
Wearing a sweatshirt, and I’m pretty sure naked from the waist down
Wow! That place looks great!
It was really cool to visit, I got a random email from the owners asking to share the video
I slept in the “laugh-in” room
That’s the one I would have picked!
1. I had to do some work in the Antelope Valley today. It’s interesting that as soon as you cross the pass into Santa Clarita, the June gloom vanishes. Hopefully I’ll be able to get stuff wrapped up before the heat dome hits. I met a nice British lady who let me put a noise monitor in her yard; I am going to bring her some of my favorite tea as a thank-you.
2. For as long as I’ve lived here the neighbors have had an orange tree that grew next to dan over our fence and I could pick as many oranges as I wanted all season. Yesterday they cut it down because the roots were threatening to damage their foundation. My heart is broken and now I’m going to have to pay for oranges like some kind of sucker. At least they left me like a dozen of them as a farewell.
1) I’m curious as to why you needed to put a noise monitor in her yard, but also I will laugh like hell if she’s super nice and polite until you give her the tea and then she goes on some crazy rant about Americans and tea
2) You must have other orange trees in your neighborhood fruit obtaining network?
Microwave the water for the tea. DO IT.
While I have no compunction about microwaving water to boil it (and indeed, I will steam greens NO OTHER WAY) I do have an electric kettle and consider such to be a necessity. I’m pretty sure Brexit was caused by the cold war era habit of eastern europeans to boil the fuck out of generic tea bags and nescafe.
I like Nescafe about twice a year for nostalgia.
I’ve never sought it out, but when I encounter it I feel surrounded by the love of family I can’t talk to due to a language barrier while sitting in a Soviet apartment block made cozy by a huge number of cross-stitched pillows and wool floral blankets
I had to go to Vietnam on some official business in 2002 and when I got to the very nice modern business hotel in Ho Chi Minh City they gave me Nescafe instant coffee. Later, a staffer from the American Consulate explained that they have very good real coffee in Vietnam, but since I was American and/or European (we all look alike to them) they thought Nescafe was “sophisticated” and they were trying to impress me. Later I had the real coffee and it was great.
Honestly we’ve never really scouted orange trees because our needs were always completely fulfilled.
3. Oh I forgot to mention, the Jack in the Box up there had ice in the urinal. Ice! It was like some kind of classy high-traffic nightclub bathroom!
Found a funny:
When my wife catches me eating something directly out of the fridge
Later that day…
a) Clarkson is too tall for that car
b) Neither of them is too sexy for their cars
c) I would much rather have a beer with May than Clarkson
d) They both suck at dancing sexily
respect commas, always
Smh
In other news, nuns everywhere pissed off that Jesus hasn’t been as supportive a husband to them as he has been to her. But what do they expect? She’s an engineer and he’s a carpenter, of course they get along
https://vimeo.com/709912465
I posted this same video in my LinkedIn feed, and I wrote a nice description of its. LinkedIn offered to rewrite my post with AI. Here’s my original post:
Early most mornings in May of 2022 I’d go down to San Pedro, overlooking the Los Angeles Harbor breakwater, and shoot a cruise ship coming in. They move on a clockwork schedule, departing in the afternoons (I also shot a bunch of those). Note the cruise ship does a 180 and backs up the channel.
When I first did time-lapse in college (I made a short film inside the Washington Cathedral) I shot 35mm film in an Arriflex-IIC with a Norris Intervalometer hooked up to it. Now I use a Sony A7R3 mirrorless digital (I have cherry prime lenses, by Sony and Leica), but these tests were actually shot with an iPhone.
This is a cruise ship arriving on May 13, 2022:
Now here’s the AI rewrite. It’s fucking terrible!
Each morning in May 2022, I captured stunning footage of cruise ships arriving at the Los Angeles Harbor breakwater in San Pedro, including the mesmerizing moment when they perform a 180-degree turn before backing up the channel in the afternoons.
Back in college, I delved into time-lapse videography, using 35mm film in an Arriflex-IIC with a Norris Intervalometer. Fast forward to today, I’ve transitioned to a Sony A7R3 mirrorless camera paired with cherry prime lenses from Sony and Leica, although these recent tests were skillfully shot using just an iPhone.
Witness the beauty of a cruise ship arrival on May 13, 2022, in this captivating video:
That is indeed horrible. I hate the use of “delve”.
I never delved into anything; I always crashed through the wall at high speed.
I’m not a delver either.
Of the many things I appreciate about you, it turns out the ability to construct coherent sentences that don’t utilize the highest probability sequences of tokens is pretty high up there
I’ma hafta’ look up some of them words, but . . . Thank you!
Tokenization is essential to how LLMs (Large Language Models like the one that suggested the rewrite) work. The super super short version is that the model breaks down all the training text into smaller pieces, then learns patterns as to how they are combined and uses that to create text. It doesn’t have to be letters or words, and the AI doesn’t think or learn like we do, but it can learn rules like a ‘u’ usually follows a ‘q’ because that’s the pattern from the training data. This also explains why hallucinations are inherent to generative AI. Even with longer tokens you lose context. If you want to keep anthropomorphizing AI, you could say it’s incredibly stoned and has no idea what it said 2 minutes ago. Some of this could be fixed with post processing, but as far as I can tell most commercial AI releases don’t backcheck anything, probably because they were rushed to market in inappropriate use cases.
It’s kind of a shame, because there actually are good use cases for this stuff, and the backlash from trying to shoehorn LLMs into all sorts of idiotic places will probably delay their implementation where they could do well. It’s enshittification on top of enshittification. We need a next gen that’s actually dedicated to helping people and being satisfied with making a profit without massive growth each year.
Anyway, here’s an article that talks about tokenization in a way that is technical but (I think) still accessible to people without a CS background: Understanding “tokens” and tokenization in large language models | by Michael Humor | Dev Genius
Oh dear. Should I go ask ChatGPT to tell me a story about a black youth growing up in a white town?
Barf.
“Once upon a time, in a quaint town nestled within the picturesque mountains of Colorado, there lived a young boy named Marcus. Marcus was one of the few Black youths in his town, where the population was predominantly white. Growing up, Marcus always felt like he stood out, not just because of the color of his skin but also because of the cultural differences he observed between himself and his peers.
From a young age, Marcus had a deep love for the outdoors. He found solace in the towering trees, the rushing rivers, and the majestic peaks that surrounded his town. However, he often noticed the curious glances and occasional whispers from some of the town’s residents when he ventured out to explore.
Despite feeling like an outsider at times, Marcus never let it dampen his spirit. He embraced his uniqueness and found ways to connect with his community through his love for sports. Marcus was a talented athlete, and he excelled in both basketball and track. His skills on the court and on the track field earned him respect among his peers and admiration from his coaches.
But even in the world of sports, Marcus faced challenges. He encountered subtle instances of racism, like being passed over for opportunities or receiving unfair treatment from referees during games. However, Marcus refused to let these obstacles define him. Instead, he used them as fuel to work harder and prove his worth on the field.
Outside of sports, Marcus also found refuge in music. He taught himself how to play the guitar and spent countless hours strumming melodies that resonated with his soul. Music became his outlet for expressing his thoughts and emotions, providing him with a sense of freedom and belonging that he sometimes struggled to find in his everyday life.
As Marcus grew older, he became increasingly aware of the importance of representation and diversity in his community. He became an advocate for change, speaking out against injustice and inequality whenever he could. Through his activism, Marcus inspired others to confront their biases and embrace diversity, gradually fostering a more inclusive environment in his town.
Despite the challenges he faced as a Black youth in a majority white town, Marcus thrived. He grew into a strong, compassionate young man who never lost sight of his roots or his dreams. And as he looked out at the mountains that had always been his home, Marcus knew that no matter where life took him, he would always carry with him the lessons he had learned and the strength he had gained from his upbringing in Colorado.”
No doubt he played a bass guitar.
I mean, it WOULD resonate with his soul in the hours that he’s not excelling at basketball
Plus the AI is factually incorrect. This was shot in the morning, not afternoon; the 180-turn is not “mesmerizing” unless you’re really high; I’m proud of it but I’d never call my own work “stunning” (that’s your job); shooting 35mm motion picture film is “cinematography” not fucking low-rent “videography;” these tests were not “skillfully shot” they were actually “masterfully shot;” etc etc.
Fuckin’ stupid AI.
Not-quite-riot on Pitt’s campus between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli camps.
Of all the causes for college students to be protesting about, this wasn’t on my bingo card.
What was?
“Less filling” vs. “Tastes great”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4dX21Fzmw&pp=ygUXc2ltcHNvbnMgcGl0dCB0aGUgZWxkZXI%3D
They’re not out of school yet?
Cincinnati is so desperate for football to return that it may have manifested an actual tiger who is prowling the streets as I type.
Tomorrow’s headline: “Newly drafted O-lineman unable to protect Burrow from mauling by actual Bengal Tiger”
Twist in Plot: It’s Burfict and Pacman in a tiger suit.
Kimo von Oelhoffen has been asked to come take out the tiger’s knee.
Read/loved all the Michael Crichton books, though quality declined at the end as he got politically weirder. Some of his best books were such dohshit moviefilms (Congo being prime example).
Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man are very good novels.
Agreed. My #1 and #2, in some order. I re-read Andromeda Strain, and I never re-read anything.
I loved Andromeda Strain. He did get weird as fuck later in life.
I wonder if there is some way to tell who is going to go off the rails as they age? It seems pretty random, I can think of famous people and non-famous people I personally know who have gone both ways. Don’t know much about his personal life, maybe he didn’t feel loved?
Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson.
I really liked his books around 6th – 9th grade. Fell out of reading them after that, I think ‘Disclosure’ was the last one I read. I still remember ‘A Case of Need’ making a huge impact, I’m glad Roe covered the majority of my reproductive years even if I never needed it
Yeah, that was a pretty powerful tome. Took the issue head on, pulled no punches.
A good essay on Crichton. https://www.filfre.net/2013/10/michael-crichton/
And I read The Andromeda Strain about 20 times from 1975 or so until 1990. Great movie, too.
As much as it isn’t supposed to affect anything, I still decline to answer when job application include sexual orientation in the demographic info they collect. It’s completely irrelevant, and unlike gender and race it’s pretty damn unlikely that your name or anything else on your resume is going to provide hints on who you like to rub genitals with. I get the urge to collect data, but, speaking as a data professional, some data is just stupid and pointless to collect
Asking sexual orientation is a YOOGE violation of privacy. Except at the Vatican and Chick Fil A
They stick it in with all those other questions at the end. At least they don’t peek at your genitals until AFTER you’ve been elected pope.
I always put other and say “I’m always oriented north when around female subordinates”
My big British TV show influence:
Benny Hill
My second was Dave Allen At Large, with Benny Hill being 3rd as my father insisted I watch it with him and he constantly harassed and embarrassed me through the whole viewing, the only reason it is not higher.
And Top Gear
I am a bit too old for that one, but Jeremy Clarkson is a shining example to me of how to be.
I hope you mean early Clarkson and NAWT crotchety hit people because they didn’t get you hot food on time late Clarkson
More Clarkson’s Farm
Ah, the “I was unaware sheep could jump” Clarkson
Wandering through life blissfully unaware…..
I introduced my Chicago Friend to Top Gear with one of the specials, I think Bolivia. About 10 minutes in he goes “Oh, I get it, they’re idiots!”
Nope, just British.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the UK and definitively say that they are idiots above and beyond being British
I enjoyed AbFab and Fawlty Tours despite being too young for most of the jokes.
AbFab was great, I should go back and watch and see if I actually understood the jokes or just thought I did
I never quite got Benny Hill, but loved Monty Python
I still use, “What’s that in the road, a head?”
Two words:
Mr
goddamn
Bean
Mr. Bean is very much cringe humor, I don’t like cringe humor. I tried, I tried because it was Rowan Atkinson and to me that man could do no wrong.
The IT Crowd
I wore a Friendface t-shirt to my Facebook orientation
The thing about Rikki is that he always tries to shoehorn IT Crowd jokes in…
Don’t think I haven’t noticed your many rephrasings of the S3E2 blurb from bluffball.co.uk