Redirection Frustration
You might notice that we’re back on this old WordPress site, one that I’d stopped using about 10 years ago when I got my own domain. That’s because there’d been some major screwups with the wordpress install on there, and it wasn’t working right, and so I did a backup, and then made sure it was a working backup by importing it back into here. It’s not idea, but it does.
I’ve taken full site downloads, and will be trying to get it fixed, but until then, it’ll be redirecting to here. Of course, if you’re good at wordpress and sql, and want to help me fix the fuckup, my contact info is right there!
Missing Posts
For some reason, there’s quiet a few missing posts here starting August 2017
That will be rectified as soon as I figure out what happened to them, and rescue them. Sorry for the inconvenience.
50 Episodes of Lobsang Ludd
So we just hit the 50th episode of The Temporal Adventures of Lobsang Ludd, and while I’ve also had to take a temporary break from filming (computer issues) lets take a quick look back at the series.
So, why ‘Lobsang Ludd’? Well, a Temporal Agent, who is told unexpected things, starts learning he has more power than he thought. So why not the embodiment of Time’s son for a play through of temporal messing about in Star Trek. To see the rules and the episodes, you can go to the page for them.
Read more…Buggrit & Snart – Exploding Planets
So for Dragoncon 2022, I had the idea of making a spoof advert. A lawyer advert, and what’s a good disaster that lawyers are keep to profit from? Well that nice scifi trope of planetary destruction of course.
i wrote this in a few days, and filmed it in 2. The lawyer (Mr Buggrit) is played by my good friend William Crawford, and we had the fun of trying to do greenscreen stuff when neither of us had done it before. He was also coming in cold on the script, so had trouble remembering the nuances, especially as he was shooting it on his own at the same time I was shooting the testimonials.
The planet at the start is actually Venus. and by that I mean I created it as a model from an actual NASA map of Venus, and then blew it up. Also, as a fun side-note, there are references to 11 different scifi franchises in there, and to date no-one has guessed them all.
Copyright Consultation on ContentID
Automated takedown tooks are a pain. They’re very much a case of "If X = Y Then do Z"
As such, they’re really unsuitable for anything beyond automated detection of something, and they certainly shouldn’t be used as a means of automated enforcement of anything.
Shira Perlmutter doesn’t think like that though, as we discussed in Episode 4 of Tetch Talk, when she was lobbying heavily for SOPA/PIPA on behalf of the IFPI. As the Register of Copyrights for the US though, she’s now in a position to do something about it now.
That something is to use a letter by Sen Patrick Leahy (who, again, we discussed as being behind SOPA/PIPA) as an excuse to try and push automated tools on to more services, like the EU ‘upload filters’ requirement in the shockingly bad Article 17.
Read more…Tetch Talk Ep 4 – 10 Years After SOPA/PIPA
Ten years ago, the internet, including this site, blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the PROTECTIP Act. In this special episode I talk about the history of the protest, and what led to it. Long Time readers here would know that, prior to the protest, I called SOPA supporters A WIMP (Advocating Welfare for Influential Media People.) and I covered the response of my local rep, who basically said he’d do what he was told.
I also touched on some other topics, and protests since, including ACTA, and Net Neutrality.
Read more…Some more Comet Leonard photos
So one of the big news things has been the comet Leonard, and since my first attempt wasn’t great I thought I should try again when I got the chance.
So I did. (This time I’m going to embed from Instagram, as that seems to look nicer)
Read more…Comet Leonard photos
Comet C/2021 A1 – more commonly known as Leonard – is making its closest approach to the sun right now for about 80,000 years, so it’s a rare sight unlikely to be seen again.
I’m being kinda lazy about things, so I’m just going to embed the twitter post of the image, because it’s easier that way.
Read more…Lunar Eclipse Videos
It took a bit of time to do, but here – finally – is my footage of the lunar eclipse.
It was cold as hell out there, so I was trying to keep me warm and motivated, and the camera operating (cold shortens battery life) and aimed.
So I started at 1:05am, and finished around 4:32am, with a photo every 15 seconds, for around 410 photos (some were missed because of battery changes, and some were blurred). Generally, you want to avoid touching the camera whenever possible, because if you touch it as it’s taking a shot, it’ll blur it, and I was aiming to align them all in post.
Read more…
Politics and P2P 