Saw Happy Feet, was impressed

It’s funny, but if I were to sit down & list the parts I enjoyed, I think it would come across very yawn, but the real experience was quite inspiring. One positive factor was the outcome from sticking with something and following it through.

Amongst other things, some of the scenes were very spectacular (some beautiful, some unbelievably action-packed, a few tender, many hilarious), but they also had dozens of different penguin characters, & somehow managed to get them to mesh “harmoniously” together (yes, even the dis-harmonious ones).

There are countless one-liners & short-but-odd conversations, for example (Mumble is the lead penguin, Gloria is his intended):

Mumble: Gloria, ever since I was little I’ve been wanting to tell you that you’re so. . .
Gloria: Fish. . .
Mumble: Yeah, fish. You’re so fish.
Gloria: No. [laughs] Look, Mumble! Fish!

There’s also Mumble calling a great big penguin-eating seal “fatso”.

These characters are the “Latin” adele penguins:

Lombardo: What are you gonna do? Subject him to cruel and unusual punishment?
Raul: Unimaginable torture?
Lombardo: Imaginable torture?
Raul: Your singing?

Back to the animations again; these worked very well, everything from individual characters coming across well to thousands of penguins dancing together. Even odd things like the helicopter or the ice-breaker integrated seamlessly & interestingly.

Yes, I would definitely recommend seeing it. There are a few very brief scarey parts that young children wouldn’t cope well with, but in general the mood & tone are excellent.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

Search This Blog