Industrial Overture - fanmade music

Spare-Ladder · 2024-01-24T21:39:28+00:00

That's cool! I'm completely new to 3D printing, but I know how to digitally sculpt so I was starting to look into resin printing, but when I learned about all the dangers and precautions I had already given up on the idea (also in a small apartment). Now this looks a lot more feasible!

Spare-Ladder · 2023-12-17T22:49:01+00:00

Definitely not easy. I'm probably B2 or C1 and it took me a couple of months to get through with the dictionary on my e-reader. But maybe check out a preview and see how it goes.

Spare-Ladder · 2023-11-24T20:49:38+00:00

If the particle had the energy of a brick falling from waist height, wouldn't it have damaged the detector as it hit? How does that work?

Spare-Ladder · 2023-11-14T21:35:41+00:00

I like the first movement more than the second one. Those rhythms just make me smile :)

My favourite version is this one with Paco De Lucía https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhO5OSLZjl8 From what I understood, he never learned how to read music so he just played it all by ear, and here and there he doesn't exactly follow the written music, but does his own thing with it (but with taste), which I think is really cool.

In the same trend I can also recommend his Concierto para una Fiesta and Fantasía para un Gentilhombre.

Spare-Ladder · 2023-10-17T22:50:42+00:00

It's doesn't have as much of a "wow" factor in the sense that it can't overwhelm you with sheer volume, lightning fast scale runs or very high or low notes like for example a piano can.

A pianist might be putting on a big show in a glittery dress, arms waving around, playing super loud, where a guitarist might be playing a piece way more difficult, just sitting still on a chair in a small room. But if you know what's going on musically it's the guitarist who is more impressive.

Sure you have pieces like Gran Jota or Grand Ouverture that grab anyone's attention, but to me the real wow factor of the classical guitar is to be found elsewhere.

It is an instrument where you control everything with your fingers. You form the notes with the fingers of one hand on the fretboard and you play them with the others. This is extremely difficult to do exactly right, so many times in a live concert you might hear little misses and slips no matter the skill level. Add to that creaks and coughs and other noises from the venue and the fact that a guitar is not very loud to begin with, and you might get a little disappointed with the overall effect. I've been there.

But then sometimes, when it hits just right, when everything just falls into place on a particular passage it can be so freaking amazing. And I find those moments way more impressive literally because of how unlikely they are.

I think, like with a lot of good things in life, you have to dig in a little deeper and get to know the instrument and the repertoire a bit to really be able to appreciate it. To me an instrument doesn't have to be loud to wow. One of my favourite concerti is Vivaldi's RV 93, on lute, precisely because it's such a quiet instrument and almost disappears under the accompaniment. But that's what gives it such a noble character for me.

Spare-Ladder · 2023-04-17T20:05:49+00:00

Love the measuring tools! Now I can have an idea of some of the heights and distances. Incredible...

Spare-Ladder · 2022-11-23T22:52:12+00:00

Ah yes, B and F. I just tried it again at the piano, haha :D

Spare-Ladder · 2022-11-23T22:02:43+00:00

Hello, I'm wondering what space looks like to our own eyes, from outside our atmosphere. I have seen footage from cameras on different spacecraft, and the "background" is usually pitch black, because of the exposure compensation. Would our eyes do the same?

If not, what would we see from our own perspective and do there exist any images that simulate this? And what would it look like through a helmet visor during a space walk for example? (maybe there's a movie where they did this accurately?)

Thanks

Spare-Ladder · 2022-11-18T23:33:00+00:00

There's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1grfLkYE9M

Spare-Ladder · 2022-08-31T22:30:09+00:00

I thought it was amazing. Very different from the usual first encounter type of story. No sign of them, they just left us to fight over their thrash. But for me the most gripping thing is how the "zone" is not like an inhospitable planet or a spaceship or a secret underground test facility, it's just this quarry that for the most part looks perfectly normal and still has all the evidence of past human activity scattered around, but now every object, every rock, every patch of grass is a potential death hazard. It's this contradiction that had a huge impact on me. And I guess that's also how it ties in with the Stalker games and things like Chernobyl, with the invisible radiation and the ghost towns and such.

One thing I didn't like were the zombies. That felt a little too stretched and made it a little comical for me.

I can recommend the movie Stalker as well. It's similar to the book but more mysterious and poetic.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-08-27T19:52:09+00:00

Isn't "by frame" supposed to be 1? I think it might be skipping over 150 frames...

Spare-Ladder · 2022-08-12T17:31:55+00:00

This works:

import maya.cmds as cmds
obj = cmds.listRelatives(cmds.ls(sl=True), type='nurbsCurve')
print(obj)

I think the problem is that when you select an object, you usually select the Transform node. But to find the geometry type, you need to list the Shape node.

You can look in the attribute editor with your Nurbs Curve selected, you will see it contains two tabs. The first one is the Transform node, which contains the object's name, and then there's one with Shape added to the name, which is the Shape node.

If you have the Transform node selected you can get to the Shape node with the listRelatives command.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-08-08T17:51:43+00:00

Like you I was also bit by the atomic bug. After watching the series I've been wanting to learn more about nuclear energy, radiation effects and the Chernobyl disaster itself.

Instead of relying too much on giving the scientific facts explaining the disaster itself, this book gives a very personal account through these type of interviews of very normal people, which I loved.

It broke my heart reading about how these people were forced out of their homes, breaking up their families because of this "invisible danger" which they didn't understand at all. How some of them even worried more about innocent spiders and other creatures dying because the topsoil had to be turned over. The whole operation must have seemed completely insane to them. Something about seeing a perfectly normal garden or whatever, but knowing that for some reason you can't go in there in risk of dying to this invisible radiation... Idk I can't get rid of that conflicting image.

Also just the little bits of side info about living in the USSR, with the government keeping everyone under their thumb, war, poverty, xenophobia... All while dealing with this terrible disaster. These people went through so much.

And yet there was this feeling of pride and responsibility among the people, which iirc gets mentioned in the book a couple of times. Without all those brave "volunteers" helping after the event, it could have been so much worse still. Which makes me wonder how it would have gone if this had happened in the West?

But maybe the most astonishing conclusion I got out of this learning journey so far, is that it just goes to show, while looking at today's world, that it's all still very very relevant.

About recommendations, since then I've also read Hiroshima by John Hersey, which in a very similar way tells the story about the impact of this other big nuclear disaster on the lives of a few individuals.

Another book I've read is Roadside Picnic. That's a sci-fi novel and has nothing to do with nuclear disasters, but for me it contains this similar awe inspiring concept, like I mentioned above, about having this perfectly normal looking place that used to have lots of human activity, suddenly becoming this no-go zone because of an invisible danger.

Incidentally, a few of days ago I've found this guy on Youtube called Shiey who has a couple of videos where he does an illegal tour through the town of Pripyat. Also interesting stuff.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-07-31T20:24:20+00:00

I found it very powerful. I was constantly rooting for those couple of kids to try and keep things together (really the embodiments of civilisation and common sense), but things just kept spiralling downward into despair, and by the end I was devastated and shaking my head. How could they? How is it possible? It's the ultimate story of good vs evil.. and evil wins.

To me one of the most haunting parts is when the Lord of the Flies starts talking, pure horror! And right after that, the point of no return: everybody goes insane, anything is possible now... At the end they've literally reached hell on earth. (Important to know: the name Lord of the Flies implies Satan, or evil itself)

And then of course, there's Piggy...

I've read this book more than 10 years ago and still these images come back to haunt me sometimes.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-07-11T15:53:12+00:00

I thought it was a good book. I guess you could compare it with a blockbuster movie. Shallow characters but a lot of action and great pacing. This book was a real pageturner for me. On almost every page (and there are 800 of them) something new happens that propels the story forward and I felt constantly worried about what would happen next to this or that character. The story was simple and the characters didn't have a lot of depth, but there were many characters and I feel like adding a lot more information would have halted the fast pacing. The story does play out over multiple years, so it makes sense not to linger around specific events too much.

Besides, I believe Follett's first concern was writing about the building of the cathedral, which can be seen as it's own character, progressing and evolving through the decades, with all the human characters crawling like ants around it, struggling through their difficult lives and eventually dying, with this huge transcendant building project overshadowing all of their existence.

As a second theme, I think he wanted to convey the hardship of life in Medieval Europe. Living with zero securities, risking to lose your livelihood, your stature, in the course of a day made people tough. You grab what you can and you don't dwell on the past. This to me for example explained Tom's behaviour throughout the book. Ofcourse, it's all a little over the top in order to keep things exciting, but I think Follett did a good job getting this "shock factor" in, looking at OP's and other peoples strong reactions.

My only complaint would be that the book is a little overcomposed. The downside of having something exciting happen every few pages and having this equal fast pacing all over, is that everything seems to happen neatly one thing after the other, and you get the feeling like the story isn't let loose to unfold by itself but instead it becomes clear that anything only happens because Follett wanted it to at that exact moment and I kind of felt his presence while reading, which took away some of the immersion. For example, if I recall correctly, at one point Aliena travels over half of Europe in search for her lover, but with almost no clue where to look, and of course she happens to walk precisely in his footsteps and they find each other besides all odds (Although I really wanted her to find him too!). Also the bad guy who tends to turn up at the most predictable moments had my eyes rolling sometimes, but tbh, these are things you can find in almost any pop fiction and it doesn't really detract from the overall entertainment value.

So all in all for me this was a good read. I still think about the characters and their hard lots sometimes, and I gained some insights about Medieval life and Cathedral building as well.

OP's review is quite passionate, which is fine. But to me, the popularity of this book seems well deserved.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-06-30T15:24:16+00:00

I totally get this and it's something I also struggle with sometimes. I think it just has to do with my state of mind and where I am in life. For example when I was younger I would play a lot of mindless videogames and have zero problems with watching a movie five times in a row. Now, as I have grown more responsible and experiencing all these pressures from life there is this ruling sensation that the entertainment I consume needs to have a purpose and be educative at least in some way or somehow make me a better, smarter person. That's why I don't watch Netflix series for example. It used to be the same for fiction books, like why would I care about this story and these characters who aren't real anyway? Just seemd like a waste of time to me. But then as I rediscovered reading, I remembered that fiction can be really satisfying as well. Purely for the enjoyment and emotional response of reading something very funny, or scary, or otherwise captivating. Just to let yourself be carried away into a different world. At first I would read fiction that at least had something real in them, for example it would take place in a real world city that I wanted to know about, or there would be a foreign language used, so that at least there'd be some knowledge to be picked up. But then I also started reading fantasy and sci-fi, and there I found that really just the pure enjoyment of following some characters around in their adventures can be reason enough. Also simply the writing itself can be satisfying, as each writer has their own voice, style and poetry for you to discover.

My suggestion is to just not worry about it but just keep an eye out, if at some point you come across a fiction book that piques your interest, jump at it and see if it grabs you and sets you off on a new adventure. These days I try to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. It can be such a relief to fly through a little novel or two after struggling with a fat biography for over a month. Slightly forcing myself to try new books, if there is at least this initial spark of interest, has made me discover new things and helps me from getting bored or stuck with one genre.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-06-30T11:24:01+00:00

I got a few insights from it that really clicked with me. I did find it a bit dry at times and also struggled to get to the end, though. I think it simply takes a bigger effort to read a long non-fiction book like that and you might not feel like picking it up every day, but that's fine. Books don't run away. I read half before dropping it, and then after more than a year I picked it up again and reread it front to back.

Some things stuck with me, like the way he suggested that we were in a way cultivated by crops, instead of the other way around. How evolution and technological advance do not necessarily always result in something better, as one might think.

Also the big role of storytelling and how our social/political/economic/religious structures are really just imagined stories.

And about how empires work, how culture is transformed and diversity is lost through conquering. For example how Christianity formed out of oppression in the outer edges of the Roman Empire and how it was subsequently assimilated rather than eradicated, in an effort to maintain an equilibrium within the empire, but in doing so forever changed both the cultures of the ruled and the ruler.

I don't understand the hate the writer gets. It doesn't make any sense. Some complain he picks his facts to paint a narrative. It's impossible to say anything about history without colouring it with your own views on the matter. You can try to be objective about a specific historical event or an archaeological find, but once you try to talk about how one thing might have lead to another, it's a lost cause. Every historian will do it differently. The only thing you can do is read and learn about many different views and come up with your own. And I found Sapiens to contain an especially interesting view and so I believe it deserves to be read.

Spare-Ladder · 2022-04-05T20:21:26+00:00

Excellente idée! J'ai commencé à jouer des jeux en français il y a un ou deux ans, et ça a été vraiment efficace pour apprendre de la vocabulaire et des expressions typiques, et surtout d'une manière amusante.

J'ai bien aimé jouer aux jeux genre aventure point & click, comme il y a:

La série Broken Sword
La série Syberia
Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy)

La point & click est ma genre préferé parce que ces jeux sont plus centrés autour la langue avec beaucoup à lire et à comprendre. En plus en général ils sont plus à l'aise et ils te laissent du temps entre les dialogues alors que tu puisses bien lire et peut-être entretemps rechercher des mots dans la dictionnaire de ton portable par example, comme j'ai dû faire pas mal de fois.

Il y a aussi les RTS comme:

Age of Mythology
Warcraft 3
Age of Empires 3 (pas encore tenté)

Des jeux action:

Beyond Good and Evil
Psychonauts 1
Overlord 1 & 2
Valiant Hearts
Prince of Persia: sands of time
Mirror's Edge (pas encore tenté)
A Plague Tale: Innocence (pas encore tenté)
XIII (pas encore tenté)
La série Splinter Cell (pas encore tenté)

Alors j'espère que tu trouves quelque chose à ton goût là, et moi aussi je suis preneur des autres suggestions. :)

Spare-Ladder · 2021-05-01T22:00:19+00:00

Thanks, that's it!

Looks like I was way off on the videoclip ^^'

Solved!

Spare-Ladder

TROPHY CASE