On the nature of Facial Recognition

There are lots of facial recognition stuff around. Phones have it. Computers have it. Takes an image of your face, checks it against whatever stored scanned image it has, and says okay or not.

But the basic function of that is the computer takes an image. With a camera. With just one camera. Which can only take a 2D image. So there is no 3D image taken of your face.

I don't know what exactly goes on behind the scenes, but clearly it processes the image to recognise some features and extrapolate points, and what have you... but it does this from a 2D image.

Which suggests that if you have a suitably fitting photo, you could use that instead. The image would need to take into account that it is also a 2D image and might need to do some manipulation in order to be demanipulated by the processing computer to meet requirements, but it should be possible.

And certainly recognising any adult, no particular one, would be even easier.

Which has been done!

Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act.

Not just Death Stranding, but I suspect any realistic photo mode would work. Lara Croft? Aloy? William "B.J." Blazkowicz? Computers do so many pixels these days, other computers thing those are enough pixels.

But how long before any photo could do to unlock specific computers?

[END]

Read more!

Dance it out!

Girl Talk did some great mashups, one of which is All Day. And then I found this amazing video of someone who did a whole dance choreography movie to it!

[END]

Read more!

Generic Train Shuttle Robot Toy...

As a kid, I had an Astrotrain. Great 'bot. Is it the size of a train? The size of a shuttle? Who cares! But that was then... and this is now. Where knock off versions are available!

Who's the mean machine in grey and green.. er, purple?

Could you, would you, fight him as a train?

Could you, would you fight him as a plane? (okay, a shuttle, but that doesn't rhyme as well).

Well, he'd fight a Dalek for ya!

[END]

Read more!

Movie Red Flags

There are three (that I can think of at the moment) aspects of movies that often point to the movie being not very good. Of course there are plenty of good movies that have these, and there are more than enough bad movies that don't have these. But if these are present, I am immediately suspect of it and more than likely going to reach for the fast forward button...

Multiple Studio Logos. This is easy to spot. If the first things you see are production company logos, and there are many of them... odds are, the producers had to go to a few places to get money, and none of the studios believed in the film enough to finance it fully.

Multiple Titles. Can be harder to spot without checking IMDB or similar. But when you see a film titled one thing, but the title that comes up on screen when you hit play is something else... I get concerned. Changing the title is either the producers can't decide... or they are changing it to try to appeal to other people (or make people mistake this for something they haven't heard bad things about). Either way, they aren't committing to their ideas.

Runtime between 60 and 90 minutes. And this can be seen before even pressing play! Can there be short movies? Of course! And I don't count documentaries here. But if the movie is just not quite long enough, then either the plot, what there is, is spread thin, or there just wasn't anything there to begin with. A lot of amateur films sit here, ones where you go "was this someone's student project?" Now, they made a movie, and I didn't, so they are already far ahead of me there. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, and if it isn't a full movie, and it isn't a tv episode, most likely they couldn't make it work.

No doubt you are thinking of counter examples, but I don't have infinite time, so I hit these flags, I start thinking of what else I could be doing.

[END]

Read more!

On the ocean waves

Aside from going places, I was on the boat. They try to make it interesting and there is plenty to eat, but they do try with events. I can't say I was that enthralled by them all, but did some trivia events. In the James Bond trivia... I kinda got more than double second place. And helped another team win at 80s music songs. So woo that!

I also ended up going to one of the fancy restaurants, Sabatini's, which is Italian. It was a five course meal that I enjoyed over two hours, so delicious, but very full. Fortunately, I had the drinks package, so fluid wasn't an issue, although I stayed with soft drink.

The boat wasn't that full, although the general age was retirees. People were even staying on for the next cruise the boat did, but you have to get off some time and get back to work (at least, I did). I am Platinum status, which gave me a few benefits, but nothing that amazing.

Getting to and from the boat was a thing, as I got hit with security screening going over, and if I had going with the time the shuttle suggested I would have missed the plane coming back. That could be more enjoyable.

One last thing, I spotted this while out and about.

The full photo album is available here.

[END]

Read more!

Chronch

Went to a few places in Tasmania.. and of course I did want to check out the wildlife. Indeed, check out these cuties!

This is at the Tasmania Unzoo, which is basically a wildlife sanctuary where you can more interact with the animals, such as birds and kangaroos. But not the devils, they are fenced off. During the devil talk, the person had meat on a leg bone, and when you hear the chronch of devil biting through leg... that stays with you.

I also visited Hobart, walked around the town, and then in Devonport went to some locations, including riding the train.

This is a short 10 minute trip that goes down to a bay... and goes back. Also a maritime museum, and Home Hill.

And some general scenic viewing as we cross between towns.

Otherwise, seas days and other things I'll talk about shortly.

[END]

Read more!

Cruisin'

Amongst the not a lot I did over the past month, I did go on a cruise. From Brisbane, I went down to Tasmania and back. But first... I had to get to Brisbane.

Somehow, I was wearing a sign that said "Give me every security check". It was just as well I wasn't in a hurry (although I was very tired) as it took ages for them to decide to look through my bag and check that I wasn't carrying (unproscribed) drugs and the like... although at least I wasn't in the queue behind me waiting for the one guy to be free. Note: it doesn't help when you think of one set of arrival card questions when they actually ask you something different.

Due to travel fun, it's always advised to get in at least a day early, so I did, then spent another hour or so the day of getting from one side of Myrtletown to the other. There is no public transport, but there are shuttles, which would prove to be useful later.

On the boat itself, I got a Premium Balcony room which, as far as I can tell, involves more balcony space than normal balcony room, so that was nice that I could stretch out.

I would be nearly two weeks in that room, so the space was nice. I wouldn't say I need a balcony room everytime, but the big window letting in outside light was wonderful.

Our first port of call was Sydney, but I couldn't be bothered getting off.. which was just as well. For whatever reason, instead of getting into a port, the ship used a water shuttle to transport people to and from, and due to the number of personal craft in the harbour, there was only one shuttle running and it took people over an hour to get on shore. Not fun.

The next port was Eden, and we docked, so I could get a nice walk in. And see some nice sights.

But I wasn't here for those ports, but for... Tasmania!

[END]

Read more!

one Dara Ó Briain

In my (apparently) continuing trek to see British (and adjacent) comedians, I attended the show of Dara Ó Briain!

Now I'm not going to repeat his material, because a) it's his, and b) I would do it crappily. But there were two hours of laughs, so in short, it was great! It was basically a few big stories, but he had plenty of time to talk with audience members, which made me glad I wasn't in the front row. I hope those people had an expectation they might be picked on, because if you are there, you are in the firing line.

He said this wasn't one of his usual shows (because of a certain world wide event that interrupted his usual process of gaining material - basically by living it), so I guess I need to check out one of his "usual shows" next time he is in town.

As expected, a great show, so if you have the chance...

[END]

Read more!

Bula!

So last week... I was in Fiji! (See full photos here!) This was for my step-father's birthday (hence the cake you will see).

While we were there for a week, it took us a few days to get to Plantation Island, due to how flights operate, and a full (as in busy, with delays) day to get back. The joy of international travel! While there, we ended up in large two room bures each, due to our original planned places being under renovation. Nice upgrade, but it did put us further away for those of us with trouble walking. We had meals incorporated into the full package we had, and spending money, although there was a lot of confusion over what came under spending money. (At the end of the trip, there was a small bill to pay, that we might have had covered anyway, but wanted things sorted the night before we went.)

Our two main problems are a) Fijian time. "We need transport" "We're on it!" ... some time later "Is transport coming?" "Just wait"... some time later... "okay, we seriously need transport" "sure, we'll sort that". Caused not zero consternation.

The other problem.. it was very wet. Okay, this was the rainy season, but... We were away when Cyclone Gabrielle hit, but it affected weather in a large area, including over in Fiji. At one point, near the end of our trip, we were under consideration of being evacuated! Fortunately not, but certainly plenty of flooding (went everywhere in jandals, feet got a good wash), and part of my bathroom ceiling fell in (no major damage).

It's a very hot place. (And wet.) And... completely swamped by Western Civilisation. English was the default everywhere. And while you pick up a word or two, Fijian culture is a sprinkle to add exoticness on a place that is overwise been converted hard to appeal to Westerners, to the detriment of their own way of life in many places. Not great.

I'm not planning on going back any time soon, but I can finally tick off another country visited that isn't New Zealand.

[END]

Read more!

Nabu PC

So the Nabu PC is an interesting piece of history. It's from the 1980s US, and while it is a computer, it links directly to cable TV and downloads programs from there. A lot of them were made available recently, and people got interested.

One small problem... while the computer runs, there is no longer any cable network for it to connect to. But does that stop people these days? Heck no! DJ Sures talked with Leo, a technician who worked on the Nabu, and put together code to talk to the Nabu and to link up to a repository of the cable programming. Great stuff!

(He has a lot of other videos about how to hook all this up.)

If you get a Nabu, go to https://nabu.ca/.

[END]

Read more!

Classic at any scale

[END]

Read more!

Catching The Bus

Last week was Desert Bus... so it's gone. But you can still watch what happened.

This is all thanks to the Video Strike Team. So named because within minutes of something happening on the bus, they have a clip on the YouTube channel.

But so much happened! If only there was some way to sort the highlights!

There is a spreadsheet listing basically everything that happened during the run, from Coffee Pong to This or That to interviews to just chatting... and there are links to all the video clips. So browse and click through to anything interesting.

And then there's the poster. M Lee Lunsford creates it each year, putting on key highlights. But because this is the internet, this is an interactive poster. See something weird or draws your attention? You can click through to see where that come from!

And if that is still not enough... after about a month, there will be a full torrent of the entire run! Lately in both high and low def, but these are chonky bois these days (as the kids call it). Thicc! But it is everything you can want.

And this is all available for all DB runs, although prior to DB5 it's more hit and miss as to what got archived. But hey, it's more than you have at the moment!

[END]

Read more!

With Pictures

I do have some photos from my cruise. Here is the closest I get to the "Bay of Isles" as they call it.

And the middle of the interior part of the ship had some nice decorations.

Full photos at Cruise Oct 2022.

[END]

Read more!

Marc Spectator

Since it was a Disney tv series, I grabbed a lot of Moon Knight comics and read them. Okay, skimmed them, but I was wanting to know something specifically, to whit: where did his Dissociative Identity Disorder come from? Ie, when was it made "canon"?

When Moon Knight starts in the 70s, Marc Spector is a mercenary, dies, and is brought back by Khonsu to be the Moon Knight. He takes on the guises of Stephen Grant to control the money and Jake Lockley as a cab driver to get the low down dirt, but they are just other guises. Like how Batman has Bruce Wayne and Matches Malone. Marlene refers to him as "schizophrenic", but mainly because he gets into each part rather than they really are other personalities.

This goes on over a few different volumes. Depending on the writer, he could just be Marc Spector, or sometimes the other guises come up, especially as one "dies". Any hints of DID is peripheral at best, but again as if he is getting really into those parts rather than they are other identities in his head.

And then we get to Bendis in the 2010s and suddenly, yep, he has full on DID with other personalities being Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America (don't ask, Bendis gonna Bendis). But from that point on, he is just assumed to have always had DID, with later series getting even more into that space.

So no real moment, just a slow canonisation of that aspect of the character.

[END]

Read more!

Get STOMP!ed

So, last night, I STOMP!ed. I like hardcore rhythm so I was already going to like this.

There were, as you would expect, a number of pieces during the show. A slow building start. A few quiet pieces. A few raise the roof pieces. Some comedy characters getting a few turns (which helped keep the mood of it all light) and some interesting takes on audience participation. And, of course, a stonking great loud finish and an encore!

Great stuff, and I recommend trying to get some of the last tickets available online. Although there were quite a few empty seats towards the back (I was in the second row!!), so I'm not sure if they kept tickets back for door sales or if many people just forgot/couldn't make it. (I see the same thing when I go to movies. There are a number of seats booked when I look online ahead of time, but by the time the movie starts those seats are empty.)

Oh, and I worked out the secret to Stomp! ... It's Tap Dancing. Yes, there's a lot of banging of things on other things and hand clapping and so forth... but there is also a lot of footwork that is exactly tap dancing. It's simply tap dancing taken to another level where they are tapping other things, but if you want to get into Stomp!, besides being strong enough to hoist an actual kitchen sink, I recommend some specific dance style lessons.

Anyway, big noise, much enjoy, you should go!

[END]

Read more!

ALL HAIL

Last year I got into Nightvale. It's a podcast series about a radio station set in Nightvale. It's a comedy horror series, and I binge listened the lot of it.

So when I found out they were doing a live show in Wellington... well, I flipped and flopped and eventually decided... yep, I'll go!

This was "All Hail to the Glow Cloud". The Glow Cloud being a large cloud that hovers in Nightvale, drops dead animals, and is the president of the school committee. This is presented as a radio show in which various guests come in, and the whole thing is hosted by Cecil Baldwin.

And it's really funny and great, and you should get into it. Go binge listen, and you can buy copies of the live shows to listen to them yourself. Not quite the same as seeing the show and the various gestures and such, and get to see the weather live (you'll understand that when you listen to the show).

If it comes back, I'll say it's worth it to go. And definitely easy enough to listen to the free shows.

[END]

Read more!

On This Day In History

Today marks ten years of me writing this blog... with my first post being about removing freckles. Hard hitting! Anyway, this blog has largely been a way for me to express my creative energies and talk about things I want to talk about. It's not been to get an audience (which is just as well), and now it's taken on the aspect of being my external memory store of things I've seen.

However, after ten years, of nearly a post a day... that's a lot of writing. And now it's beginning to feel like "I need to feed the blog, I can't do this other thing, I need to do something to blog about." And when something starts to feel like work...

I'm not getting paid for this. And I want to do other things, things which don't automatically need to be translated into a blog post. I want to put these creative energies elsewhere.

So, I'm not giving up the blog, indeed I already have some posts lined up, and I want to continue some things, such as the TV series. But I won't be posting a post a day. There will still be posts, popular movies (I still have things to sync with other blogs!), terrible movies I inflict on myself, books I read, games I play, etc... but not everything will be up here, and posts will be when I want to do them.

Ten years... that's a lot, but time for something else.

[END]

Read more!

Titus Jones

I've said before that I like a good mashup, and one artist I've come across is Titus Jones. And one of the best things is you can easily download his entire output from his site (probably because making it free avoids certain pesky legal issues).

He tends to go for multiple songs. A lot of mashups are just the lyrics of one song to the music of another, but he layers lots of tracks together. I like that.

Here's one, for example. Easily made by collecting the various videos together, but I'm glad someone did that for me.


[END]

Read more!

Overthinking Highlander Immortality

Highlanders are immortals in that they do not die from any wound... except if their head is cut off. Which raises two interesting questions.

How much can be cut off before the head is considered removed? Cut off an arm or a leg, fine, people have survived that, so Highlanders can too. But how about cut them in half at the waist? Their heads are still around and intact, so they survive? How about through the rib cage? Just above the heart? Cut a Vee mark from their shoulders down, so some chest is there, is that all right? One inch below the neck? Half an inch?

And from the other direction, how much of their head can you cut off before it counts? The eyes and ears, fine. Top of their head? A bit of the brain? Random brain surgery? Everything above the medulla? Just on the spinal cord?

Which brings up the other question: how much head cut off counts as being cut off? Just cut the spinal cord? Just a nick on the neck? How about slicing through half the neck but leaving the other half alone? Is the Highlander fine then?

Some of these might have been answered in comics and such, but it does get quite silly when you think about it.

[END]

Read more!

One more thing to say...

Okay, I guess I do have something else to add in about the YouTube speed thing. I've mentioned before that I tend to watch at speed, in particular around Let's Plays. While this could say something about my personal habits, I like to think this says more about informational content.

When watching LPs, or any computer game, there's a lot of just fighting or walking around. So basically there isn't much going on that you need to pay attention to. So double speed is an easy to have it go by without needing to wait through every damn minute.

I also felt this lack of informational content when I watched anime (although mainly towards the end of my time watching, which might be related). The scenes were either fighting, in which nothing much story wise is happening, so I don't need to pay attention; or it's mainly characters just standing around espousing tons of plot without it actually mattering because it's all exposition without emotional relating to the characters. Either way, it doesn't mean much to me, so double speed it is. (Otherwise, when I am paying attention, I can read fast enough that I can go with subtitles watching at double speed and keep up with the story.)

And now I can do this with YouTube without needing to download them and interrupt other things I'm watching with VLC... not that I would of course...

[END]

Read more!