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Post by Kiwi on Feb 3, 2008 5:55:09 GMT -4
Speaking of different cultures...
Heaven and Hell
Heaven is where the English are the police, the French are the cooks, the Italians are the lovers, the Swiss are the administrators, and the Germans are the mechanics.
Hell is where the English are the cooks, the French are the administrators, the Italians are the mechanics, the Swiss are the lovers, and the Germans are the police.
;D
How could we fit the Dutch into this?
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Flying
Jan 26, 2008 7:31:59 GMT -4
Post by Kiwi on Jan 26, 2008 7:31:59 GMT -4
May it be the first of many flights. And landings. The same number of landings. Congrats Ajv. Pity there's not an airstrip behind my house. Do keep in mind that those things land differently to a lunar module.
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Post by Kiwi on Jan 24, 2008 7:25:26 GMT -4
Moon obviously Sir Edmund's next destination That wasn't Sir Ed's only connection to Apollo. He met Jim Irwin and had a good chat with him: "My study is absolutely jammed with papers... I also have a lot of photographs in here. James Irwin who walked on the moon gave me that one. He was very interested in all my adventures and I was very interested in his. I'd love to go into space but I think I'm too old for that now." -- NZ House and Garden, October 2005, page 87. Twenty years earlier, on 6 April 1985, Sir Ed was one of a group that landed in a Twin Otter airplane at the North Pole. This made him the first person to stand on top of Mount Everest, at the South Pole, and at the North Pole. Among others in the group were Pat Morrow -- the first person to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents -- Sir Ed's son Peter Hillary, Steve Fossett, and Neil Armstrong. Armstrong recently wrote regarding Sir Ed: "I found him to be a remarkable man, enthusiastic, humorous, thoughtful, and profound. I soon recognised how he was able to accomplish so much in his life of mountaineering, exploring, and humanitarian works. I am genuinely appreciative of having the privilege of knowing him and being his friend. "All of us had previously travelled to remote places, destinations beyond those of even the most avid tourist. Yet here, at the northernmost reaches of the planet, we all experienced the exhilaration of being at places different from any we had seen before. "In this unique environment I came to appreciate the exceptional qualities of Ed Hillary." That sense of humour was never far from the surface and it got plenty of mentions during the funeral service on Tuesday. A quote in my local paper about him being a reluctant historical figure is one of my favourites. It has lost some of its impact now, but I have no trouble picturing the big man saying this with his big smile, and finishing it off with his deep, booming laugh: "Because my name is in history books, children are incredulous when they meet me. They think I should be dead."
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Post by Kiwi on Jan 11, 2008 7:06:25 GMT -4
Sir Ed always said what he thought: Manawatu Daily Times, Tuesday 7 January 1958, page 10 Hillary tells why he decided to push on to the South Pole New York, January 5 The New Zealand explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary, yesterday told his reasons for going to the South Pole, the New York Times reported today. In a dispatch from the South Pole, the New York Times quoted Sir Edmund as saying: "I came to the Pole because I wanted to come to the Pole. Some people have to have a scientific reason. Not me." The New York Times said Sir Edmund planned tentatively to return to McMurdo Sound tomorrow, after conferring by radio with Dr Fuchs, the British leader of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It said Sir Edmund admitted that he had harboured the idea of the Pole trip for nearly a year, but that he added: "I do not believe in calling my shots in advance." And I particularly like the clipping about him in the previous day's paper that relates to Apollo: Manawatu Daily Times, Monday 6 January 1958, page 7 Moon obviously Sir Edmund's next destination (Received 11 p.m.) Washington, January 5 Two newspapers in editorials yesterday suggested that Sir Edmund Hillary's next objective was the moon. The Baltimore Sun said his next destination obviously was the moon. The conqueror of Everest and leader of the first party in 45 years to make the overland journey to the South Pole was only 38 and fit as a fiddle, and the problem was to find something to do in the next 50 years, it said. "Obviously, his next destination must be the moon. It is apparently very cold, when not excessively hot, and full of craggy mountains, and should suit him. Who is there more suitable than Sir Edmund to be the first man on the moon?" The New York World telegram said Sir Edmund Hillary is "a man to be proud of — a cool professional who knows the risks and faces them unafraid. We'd like to see Sir Edmund and others like him given responsible roles in an allied programme to send an expedition into outer space," the newspaper said. "If we don't do it, the Russians will. And if the free world is going to succeed first, it will take the combined courage and brains of men like Sir Edmund, whether they come from New Zealand or New Rochelle. "How about it, Sir Edmund? Why not make your next stop the moon?"
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Post by Kiwi on Apr 2, 2008 4:06:30 GMT -4
Your spreadsheet is perfect. Thanks. Only the spreadsheet? Did you also get the 19-page word-processor file of 88 recording sessions, personnel, and details of overdubs that goes with the spreadsheet? Ginnie: Thanks for that info about compression -- I hadn't heard of it. I think that might be the problem with some CDs I bought from a British company that has re-issued some of Buddy Holly's LPs on CD. They are definitely loud and sounded a bit distorted in places, so I'll compare them with vinyl and other CDs sometime. I've often heard people say that CDs are inferior to vinyl, but those articles point out that technically it's not true. But it does depend on how they are engineered, and I've sometimes wondered if companies deliberately issued poor-quality CDs so they can later do a "New, Improved (and expensive)" edition that we should have got in the first place. It's certainly frustrating to buy the CD of a favourite LP and find that it's not up to the same standard. One LP I've never found a CD of in N.Z. is Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Op.61 (with cadenzas by Kreisler), Yehudi Menuhin (Violin), New Philharmonia Orchestra, Conductor Otto Klemperer, 30 January 1966, London. I have CDs of other performances of this concerto but they're not as good, in my opinion. Not as lively and gutsy, although I've read one critic who said this particular one is not a very good performance. It obviously comes down to taste. One CD I returned for a refund because it had traffic noise in the background. Who the hell wants that? Apparently there are now three CDs of this performance available, by HMV, EMI Classics, and Capitol (details below). I don't really care about the price -- what I want is the quality. Does anyone know how I can find out about that -- which of the three is best? Compression could ruin the performance, which goes from quiet to thunderous. Beethoven: Violin Concerto: Consecration Of The House: Klemperer: Menuhin (Vln): Philh: Release date: 19-7-1999 Catalogue Number: HMV5734452 Label: HMV CD £5.99 Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Romances 1 & 2 / Menuhin CD Label EMI Classics Studio Plus CDU Part# 2508924 Catalog# 64324 Street Date Mar 01, 2005 ADD Re-Release US$9.95 Beethoven: Violin Concerto Label: Capitol Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 Ludwig van Beethoven Yehudi Menuhin New Philharmonia Orchestra Conducted by Otto Klemperer US$15.95
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Post by Kiwi on Mar 30, 2008 21:16:47 GMT -4
I wish all the relevant parties would get their act together and release a box set of all of Buddy Holly's works including the demos and the radio shows. And in decent quality. I have the double LP "A Rock & Roll Collection," bought on 31 January 1974, and except for the noises that well-used vinyl makes, the sound quality is far superior to many of the CDs I have. The first Buddy Holly CD I bought was "From The Original Master Tapes" by MCA and because it was expensive I expected it to be high quality, but it's muffled garbage. If you're interested you can download transcripts of Buddy Holly interviews, session lists and lyrics that I wrote up at this web site: buddyholly.user.fr/Page down to the link "Free Downloads - The Doug Bennett Corner" near the bottom, where there are four files you can download. The session lists are a bit out of date with additional information now available about the session players on some tracks, but they're still useful.
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Post by Kiwi on Mar 30, 2008 5:17:35 GMT -4
What albums have you heard in your life that are 'perfect' albums. That is, an Album (or CD nowadays) from an artist that have no filler or mediocre tracks on it.? The rarity where all the songs are either very good to excellent. Since I started buying CDs in 1991 I've catalogued all 544 of them, giving each track a rating of 1 to 5 based on how much I dislike/like it. It's something I started long before with LPs for making up my own tapes. I've never before done a list of the 46 CDs on which every track scored a four or a five, so here it is. BluesMy Home in the Delta - Otis Spann Midnight Blues - Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee Country & WesternPat Garrett & Billy the Kid - Bob Dylan I Can't Stop Loving You - Jerry Lee Lewis Trio - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris ClassicalPiano Concerto No 1 Op 15 - Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5 Op 73 - Beethoven Trios, Opus 97 & 121A - Beethoven Violin Concerto Op 61 - Beethoven Violin Concerto In D, Op 77 - Brahms Symphonies 94 & 101 - Haydn Concertos - Mozart German Dances - Mozart Milanese String Quartets 1-4 - Mozart Serenades & Dances - Mozart Violin Concertos Nos 1, 3 & 5 - Mozart Piano Quintet Op 114 "Trout" - Schubert Easy Listening Scottish Tranquility - Phil Coulter General, RockLove - The Beatles Revolver - The Beatles Rubber Soul - The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles A Meeting by the River - Ry Cooder & V. M. Bhatt Chicken Skin Music - Ry Cooder Into the Purple Valley - Ry Cooder Paradise & Lunch - Ry Cooder Hot August Night 1 - Neil Diamond Hot August Night 2 - Neil Diamond Irish Heartbeat - Van Morrison & The Chieftains It's Too Late to Stop Now 2 - Van Morrison Foreigner - Cat Stevens Tea For the Tillerman - Cat Stevens Teaser and the Firecat - Cat Stevens JazzJazz - Ry Cooder Dixieland Favorites - The Firehouse 5 Plus 2 Rock 'n' Roll (Guess my all-time favourite artist) For the Love of Buddy - Texas Mike Bell Buddy Holly - The Hollies Buddy Holly (Original) - Buddy Holly The "Chirping" Crickets - Buddy Holly Holly in the Hills / Giant - Buddy Holly Reminiscing (Remastered) - Buddy Holly That'll Be the Day - Buddy Holly That'll Be the Day / Remember - Buddy Holly Holly Days - Denny Laine Tribute to Buddy Holly - Stars At Studio 99 Down the Line [Covers of Buddy Holly songs] - Bobby Vee
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Post by Kiwi on Dec 9, 2007 1:03:56 GMT -4
...because the interpretation of faces is so innate, it's difficult for the artist to acquire the proper detachment... This is very important in photography too -- I called it "being unromantic." Before pressing the shutter, it's a good idea to inspect what's in the viewfinder in a very cold, critical and analytical manner. The more we like our subject, the more likely we are to miss something important that needs our attention. That is, we get "romantic" and if we miss that important point, can finish up with disappointing photos. When taking portraits I would get the subject, lighting, camera -- everything -- ready in whatever way I thought best suited the subject, but before pressing the shutter, would tell him/her I was about to do my final inspection to check everything out, and this could easily take 30 to 40 seconds. A lot of the time everything was okay but it's quite amazing how often that inspection -- coupled with my experience and noting of things I shouldn't do -- would show up something that had to be done. Sometimes it was just a single out-of-place hair, or a minor change in the lighting, camera placement, makeup, or in the angle of the subject's face. Beginners particularly need to learn to do this, and it's also important to think "frame, frame, frame." That is, to make sure the entire frame looks good, is filled up, and the subject properly composed. Don't just look at the centre of the viewfinder and ignore the rest.
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Post by Kiwi on Dec 5, 2007 6:18:41 GMT -4
Anyone have any helpful hints on photographing my larger works using no studio, no budget and a 3.2 megapixel digital camera? Maybe someway I could deflect the flash made out of homemade materials or something like that? Or is it better taking a picture further away - it seems like I can't get a proper rectangular shape to my frame when I'm close. When I had a studio I used to photograph lots of photos and paintings etc. for artists, but I had a simple set-up that almost anyone could duplicate. Requirement No. 1 is soft, even, natural light. I never used even the big studio flash units and soft boxes etc. My studio was built around the early 20th century and had a large, frosted, south-facing window (north facing for you northern hemisphere folks), and I just set up the artwork at right-angles to it on the opposite side of the studio, against a wall, level with the right edge of the window and facing to the left. This produced no appreciable drop-off in light intensity from one side to the other of large artworks. Setting up at right angles to the window meant that neither I nor my camera cast shadows onto the subject. But you don't need a window like that. Outside on an overcast day will do nicely. Open shade on a sunny day is fairly useless for colour work because you'll get a blue cast from the sky or casts from other colours that the light bounces off, and any passing clouds will make exposure difficult. However, you might be able to fix that with filtration on the lens, or with coloured reflectors. On the other hand, I might be years out of date. Colour casts like that may not even matter with digital photography, although I suspect they could for accurate results. They do with film. Another way is to make your own "frosted window" of tracing paper, a lightweight white sheet or other materials fastened to a frame of wood or PVC pipe that could be used as a diffuser in direct sunlight. Requirement No. 2 is a simple way of getting the camera dead square to the artwork, and I had a simple setup of a board that was fastened to the wall and had regular patterns of squares, rectangles and diagonals radiating out from the centre, with a line on the floor lined up with the centre, over which I first placed the camera on a tripod, then used the pattern on the board for squaring up the view in the viewfinder. Most artwork could be temporarily stuck to the board with Blu-Tack, but heavy pieces in big frames needed some means of being propped up at the bottom. Requirement No. 3 was a soft white reflector for the right-hand side of the artwork for using if the window-light cast too much shadow on 3D artworks or acrylic paintings, but I hardly ever had to use it. A large sheet of polystyrene worked well for the reflector. On even fewer occasions I used a large mirror on that side to reflect the window light back if I needed a "hard" reflection. Requirement No. 4, which was rarely required but important when needed, was a polarising filter to remove specular highlights from acrylic paintings and other shiny artworks. Too much reflection can kill the colours. I never used a circular polariser so don't know how useful they are, just the conventional lined type. It's important to carefully ascertain just how much you must polarise a particular scene. Overdoing it can completely remove moisture on objects or kill off foliage by removing its sheen, so experiment to get to know how to best use one. A final accessory that's useful is a set of Kodak colour patches, grey scale and 18% grey card, or even some colour patches and greys that you've made up, but avoid glossy materials. These will help get the colour right in a reproduction if you don't have the original with you. Relying on eyes and brain only can produce very irate clients. Check your reproductions under natural light too -- tungsten and flourescent viewing-light can make you get them wrong. Dunno anything about using a 3.2 megapixel digital camera -- you'll need someone who's not such an old fart to help with that. Just don't use flash on the camera because it's about the crappiest lighting ever, and don't use a wide-angle lens setting because you'll get distortion. Normal focal length to moderate telephoto is best for rectangular artwork, such as 50 to 100mm on a 35mm camera. I'd like to get a digital camera some day -- have taken very few photos since becoming an invalid. Moonlit landscapes are one subject I'd like to tackle.
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Post by Kiwi on Oct 1, 2007 6:02:24 GMT -4
You can see 4 Galaxies from the earth with the naked eye, 2 in the northern and 2 in the southern hemispheres. North is the Milky Way and Andromeda and in the south you can see the2 Magellanic clouds. Here in New Zealand we can see all four naked-eye galaxies: The Milky Way, Andromeda and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Around the end of October it's possible to see all four in the early evening. Andromeda is low on our northen horizon, so is not always a naked-eye sight and it's nucleus is often only visible in binoculars, but it is a naked-eye sight under ideal conditions.
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Post by Kiwi on Aug 3, 2007 9:00:01 GMT -4
On 1 December 1975 I caught an overnight ferry from Lyttleton, near Christchurch, to Wellington and before going to bed went up on deck to look at the view. There was a bright red glow out near the eastern sea horizon that scared the hell out of me for a while -- the cold war was still full on and I had always been terrified as a young kid at the thought of the Soviets blowing us up with an atomic bomb. Maybe they'd had a trial run, disposing of our Chatham Islands. Luckily I soon saw the red limb of the moon appear and was very relieved to see it -- it was two nights after full moon. I was 26 at the time and had never seen or heard of that bright red glow, but I don't recall ever seeing the moon rise over the sea on any other occasion. As soon as it was fully above the horizon it started reverting to its usual orange then yellow colours.
I live on the west coast and earlier this year when comet McNaught was here I watched the moon through binoculars as it set over the sea, and the last portion of the limb that was visible was only a dark orange. I've seen many other moon-sets, but never a red one.
As already mentioned it depends on atmospheric conditions. With very little land around we have very clear air in New Zealand, but back about 1991 when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew its top our sky was so polluted that it was possible to view the sun in binoculars as it set. I remember marvelling at the sunspots that were clearly visible.
One other phenomenon that's said to be extremely rare is the green flash as the sun disappears below the horizon, but soon after learning of it I saw it on three out of four consecutive nights, and the third was too cloudy to see the sun. I've seen it about eight times altogether. Some green flashes are very faint, but I've seen about three bright emerald-green ones.
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Post by Kiwi on Jul 19, 2007 2:51:28 GMT -4
Has anyone else noticed the slightly-squashed Space Invaders character in the moon picture on the home page here? It is the character which has a broad head, holes for eyes and mouth, and little legs and feet. It is dark gray and rotated nearly 90 degrees clockwise, with the top of its head and its eyes not quite vertical. The left side of its head is elongated. It's best viewed on the home screen and might depend on whether your particular screen and its resolution show it the same as mine, but where I see it, its mouth is just under one centimetre left of the top left corner of the Google advertisement bar and it's right eye is immediately under the ApolloHoax.net bar, the light-gray part with the Home, Help… Logout buttons. Below its mouth (from our point of view) is a light-coloured ring from a crater, which nearly touches its left eye. It's little legs and feet are visible to our left. The character is made up of genuine formations on the moon and only visible during a similar moon phase, but is more visible in this particular photo than a few others I have. Edited to add link to illustration of Space Invaders screen. He's on the bottom two rows of evil aliens.
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Post by Kiwi on Jun 21, 2007 9:46:14 GMT -4
Top 20? Amadeus American Graffiti Back to the Future The Buddy Holly Story Close Encounters of the Third Kind Cocoon Crocodile Dundee The Dish ET: The Extra-Terrestrial For All Mankind Gandhi Ghost Great Balls of Fire Jurassic Park La Bamba Little Big Man Men In Black Raiders of the Lost Ark The Right Stuff Star Wars IV to VI I've always been a movie fan and it was a childhood dream to have movies at home, but I thought I had to have a big, hot projector; heavy, bulky cans of flammable film, and a big screen. Also that I'd be lucky to be able to afford 20 films. We had a guy in my little village who used to show 35mm movies at home when I was a kid, plus there were screenings on Saturday night in the local hall up until about 1963. I never bought any movies on video tape due to the lousy quality and just recorded a few off the TV, but DVDs changed everything. I'm not in a suitable location to hire them, so over the years I've bought 314 at an average price of only NZ$11.88 (US$8.91) each. You guys have just persuaded me to buy "The Princess Bride" which is now selling here for only $7 -- the soundtrack was the first music CD I bought, years before I had a player. My latest purchase, yesterday, was a three-disc set of "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Full Metal Jacket" and "A Clockwork Orange" for $30. "2001" has been selling for around that price on its own. I have 189 films on DVD I haven't watched yet, so the list might change, but I find it hard limiting myself to just ten favourites and would probably prefer doing a Top-50 list. The movie I've watched the most times is "For All Mankind", being such a wonderful work of art about Apollo, and I will no doubt watch it a few more times over the years. The first movie I bought on DVD was "The Right Stuff", which was soon followed by "Amadeus". 1950s Rock 'n' Roll is a favourite subject on DVD and music CD and about as much of an interest as Apollo is, so I have movies about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Jerry Lee Lewis, plus "American Graffiti", "Back to the Future" and "Peggy Sue Got Married". (There's a Doug Bennett Corner -- my name -- on a website in France where you can download free Buddy Holly information I compiled. buddyholly.user.fr/ ) I also have all the Sean Connery James Bond films (good fun, and very cool in my teenage to early 20s years) and a few by Peter Jackson. Not into blood and guts and horror movies, although I have some of the better war movies, "Patton", "Gallipoli", "Saving Private Ryan", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Longest Day", "Tora Tora Tora", and four U.S. Civil War movies, "Cold Mountain", "Gettysburg", "Gods and Generals" and "Glory" -- an interest that arose through finding I had a great-great-uncle who fought at Antietam, Gettysburg, Petersburg and a few other important battles. In the 1970s I was a great Dustin Hoffman fan and always said you only needed him and a good director to have a great movie. Will probably buy a few more of his. "Little Big Man" is a Hoffman classic with a great mixture of comedy and drama.
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Post by Kiwi on Jun 14, 2007 22:59:11 GMT -4
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Post by Kiwi on Jun 13, 2007 5:59:35 GMT -4
"Discombobulationist" -- must deserve being slotted in somewhere for people in spin-doctoring and similar fields such as public relations.
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