Reviews for January 2024

Updated on Saturday, January 27, 2024

Spoilers!

Movies

Leave the World Behind

Leave the World Behind

This movie hangs on the fact that dealing with the owners of your Airbnb showing up and needing to stay there is way harder to deal with than the actual end of the world. This is totally true and pulled off in a masterful and cringeworthy way. I loved Sam Esmail's Mr Robot and there are similar vibes and shots at work while leaving the world behind. I think it's supposed to be more explicitly about race, but nearly every line would work without that dynamic. The social awkwardness here is universal. The ending is great as well. Highly recommended.

Level 16

Level 16 is about a residential school for girls who will get adopted soon. Of course something darker is going on and it's pretty dark. It's super derivative but nicely done and worth a watch.

Rebel Moon – Part One

Review:Movies:Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire

Rebel Moon has an incredible visual style, a disturbing bad guy and some off-brand lightsabers. The dialog is clunky and I have already forgotten the plot. I'm sure I'll watch the second part and maybe it ends up going somewhere but this installment is just pulling the gang together in the style of the first few minutes of an A-Team episode with a decent SFX budget.

Music

Lazy

I love a lot of Baby Queen. This one is an anthem for my current Saturday morning.

TV

Doctor Who 2023 Specials

Doctor Who 2023 Specials

I drifted out of watching Doctor Who at the start of the Jodie Whittaker / Chris Chibnall era. It has always been an uneven program with some silly concepts occasionally punctuated by enough sci-fi genius to make it all worthwhile. With Chibnall that equation changed for me and it just seemed boring. I was pretty excited to see that Russell T Davies was back at the helm and the four specials were pretty good, an unexpected encore for David Tennant and Catherine Tate and a brief introduction for Ncuti Gatwa. I'll be tuning in next year to see how Davies and Gatwa do once out of the confines of Christmas Special land. I couldn't be happier that the TARDIS is recognizably the machine from my youth even if it is filled with questionable ramps. What was great about the 80's TARDIS is that it was bigger on the inside but only a little bit. You have complete control over time and space and you just move the walls over a foot to fit in a hatstand (I know, there was more behind another door, but that rarely came into play). I really hated the steampunk control room and I hope it never comes back. My fondest wish for the program is that the Doctor drops his sonic screwdriver down a wormhole and has to start relying on his wits a bit more. An occasional plot device has become almost the only plot device and he's a Time Lord not a superhero Anyway, fingers crossed for the next series.

For All Mankind Season 4

For All Mankind Season 4

For All Mankind is getting into middle age, but it's still a great series. This installment is all about an uneasy Mars base and the future of space exploration. Also some moonshine.

Slow Horses Season 3

Slow Horses Season 3

Slow Horses just keeps getting better. A must watch series.

(All images included with ITHCWY reviews are the property of their respective owners and are used to illustrate reviews only.)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Reviews for January 2024 #reviews #video Reviews for January 2024 )

Miami

Sunset over Miami from South Beach

Timelapse of Miami from South Beach. One cloudy night and then a nice sunset. At the end you can see a night departure of the Icon of the Seas, the new largest cruise ship in the world.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Miami #timelapse #video #miami Time lapse video of Miami shot from South Beach, including Icon of Seas. )

L Taraval Track Replacement, The Movie

Track Construction on 15th Avenue, San Francisco

My poor street has had the works over the past few years. PG&E upgraded the gas lines. Then everything got ripped up for new water mains. We got two new poles. And then new sewers. I'm a little surprised the houses are still standing.

Over the last couple of months the train tracks for the L Taraval have been replaced. They're only two years younger than me, but I'm happy to report that they looked in much worse shape. Here's a time lapse of the whole process:

You'll see that they opened a chasm right in front of my garage early in the project and the plan called for it to be almost the last hole to fill in at the end. I'd be more excited if the L Taraval went anywhere useful. When I moved into my house it stopped right in front and then whisked you quickly downtown. Since then that stop was removed, and then the L terminated at West Portal to make room for M and N people and has been replaced by a bus for the duration of the pandemic and track replacement service.

With perfect comedic timing we also just got a letter from PG&E saying that they now need to dig everything up all over again. Probably we need medium rather than high pressure?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: L Taraval Track Replacement, The Movie #timelapse #video #muni #sfmta #taraval #sanfrancisco Time lapse of the SFMTA MUNI L Taraval track replacement project on 15th Avenue in San Francisco. )

Embarcadero

People walk along the Embarcadero in San Francisco

I have a tradition of making a time lapse of San Francisco on New Year's Eve. This year I focused on the Embarcadero:

The time lapse opens with a view of the Bay Bridge from Cupid's Span in Rincon Park. Then behind the Ferry Building for two departures and one arrival. Next is a view of downtown from the middle of Pier 7. From there some Embarcadero proper from the perspective of the glass tiles looking towards the Exploratorium and then looking across the street at Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid from Pier 35. After that we have the Richmond Bridge visible behind Alcatraz and Angel Island and the SkyStar Wheel in its new home, both shot from the end of Fisherman's Wharf. Finally the Golden Gate Bridge with some brave swimmers in the foreground at Aquatic Park. This is just past the Embarcadero but I broke the theme a little to get all three bridges.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Embarcadero #timelapse #video #sanfrancisco Time lapse of the Embarcadero in San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2023, from Cupid's Span to Fisherman's Wharf. )

Reviews for November 2023

Updated on Thursday, November 30, 2023

Spoilers!

Books

The Secret

The Secret

The Secret is Jack (None) Reacher installment #28. It's one of the handful that flashback to Reacher's MP days which are usually high value. It's a little thin - goes through all the right motions but there isn't that much to it. If you're a Reacher fan you're going to read it. If you're not then it's a bad place to start.

Music

Go Your Own Way

This Cranberries cover of Go Your Own Way is pure joy.

Podcasts

Shiny Bob

Shiny Bob

Scottish legal scandal around an alleged cabal of gay judges.

The Bugle

The Bugle

The Bugle is a news comedy show, a more discursive and less organized but often very funny version of the News Quiz which Andy Zoltzman has also started hosting.

TV

Still Up

Still Up

Still Up, is a romedy about two insomniacs, one also agoraphobic. At moments it's very funny, and snort your drink out your nose funny not funny because it's so naff. That's worth watching for. It sometimes goes too long between nose cleaning but given the dearth of good sitcoms at the moment that's pretty easy to forgive.

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2

More Lincoln Lawyer. It's about the same as the first season, worth watching and a little more comfortable in its skin but also very conventional.

(All images included with ITHCWY reviews are the property of their respective owners and are used to illustrate reviews only.)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Reviews for November 2023 #reviews #video #leechild #andrewchild Reviews for November 2023 )

Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023

Updated on Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Air pollution on July 4, 2023

The video below shows PM2.5 air pollution in the United States from February to November 2023. The frame above is the impact of fireworks on the 4th of July. It's a blink and you miss it moment in the video but a pretty incredible impact.

I started this project in February expecting it to be more of a long term thing. Unfortunately, Purple Air started charging for their API in November, more than I was willing to pay for this project.

In terms of wildfires this year the big story in the continental US has been Canada belching plumes of smoke down across the East Coast. I didn't include Hawaii or Alaska in the map and so there is nothing for the tragic Lahaina fire on Maui.

To make the video I had a Google Apps Script running that pulled the Purple Air sensor data hourly. I then wrote an app to periodically render the data to frames using my shapefile library to plot the US and then interpolating the air quality for each pixel from the nearest sensors. The frames are stitched together at 60 frames per second using ffmpeg and final production was in DaVinci Resolve with music from Filmstro.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023 #etc #video #purple Video showing US PM3.5 air pollution in 2023 using Purple Air sensor data. )

Hunter's Moon Time lapse

The Moon and Jupiter on October 28, 2023

A time lapse video of the Hunter's full moon of October 28, 2023 with Jupiter and three Galilean moons rising right behind it. The photo above shows the moon with Jupiter below and to the right. The video has close ups of both.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Hunter's Moon Time lapse #timelapse #video #moon #jupiter Time lapse of the Hunter's full moon and Jupiter with Galilean moons. )

BLR SFO

Updated on Saturday, October 21, 2023

BLR SFO

Google Pixel 6 Pro 19mm f3.5 1/357s ISO32

AI175

Updated 2023-10-21 21:25:

Timelapse of AI 175, an Air India 777-200 flying from Bangalore (Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru) to San Francisco. Take off, landing and a mercifully short in flight segment of this sixteen and half hour odyssey.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: BLR SFO #photo #plane #blr #sfo #video #bangalore BLR SFO )

SAF PHX

SAF PHX

Google Pixel 6 Pro 7mm f1.9 1/8,696s ISO46

AA3270

Updated 2023-09-30 20:04:

Time lapse of AA 3270, a Canadair CRJ-700 flying from Santa Fe Regional Airport (SAF) to Phoenix Sky Harbor (PHX) at sunset.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: SAF PHX #photo #plane #saf #phx #video SAF PHX )

Sunset #12

Sunset #12

4K Time Lapse of sunset over the Pacific shot from San Francisco.

I made this with a Sony A7C, 40mm F2.5 G and a GR-120QD slider. It's taken a while to work with this combo as Sony decided to omit a wired shutter trigger from the A7C. It took a long time to come to terms with this - surely I just had the wrong cable or settings, but no, it doesn't support this super basic function. In case you're struggling with this Hypoxic sells a bluetooth to 2.5mm adapter, although it's actually the other way round - the 2.5mm port causes the bluetooth shutter to activate. It's a little baroque as you're working with a camera (and battery), a slider (and battery) and an adapter (tiny coin battery and no idea how much power is left...). It works though.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Sunset #12 #timelapse #video #sunset #pacific #4k #slider Sunset #12 )