Posts by Joe Wylie
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Far out. Apology from Chch police?
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to James Butler,
Back when "Landslide Reg" Boorman won Wairarapa by a majority of one, those whose right to vote in the electorate seemed questionable were required to appear before an electoral court. The presiding judge expressed scepticism when a gent of markedly unathletic appearance claimed to visit the electorate regularly for "sport".
What sport would that be, then?
"Darts."
I think they allowed that one. -
Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Ngaire BookieMonster,
Awww Sesqui. We remember ye fondly.
SOUVENIR T SPOON NZ SESQUI 1990
The auction closed and did not sell. -
Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Russell Brown,
A big dog owner is just a Marxist who's been mugged for firewood.
+1
A couple of lurkers were thwarted by more modest means in St Albans on the weekend. Firewood had been moved in order to reveal a cracked wall for the EQC's visit, and was visible from the street. Next door's guinea pigs figured that footsteps meant dinner and gave voice, rousing the household in the manner of the Capitoline geese. Lurkers mumbled something about wrong house & left in a ute that already had a half-load of don't know who's wood on board.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Here's a best-of-both-worlds solution:
King Solomon's minors! -
Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Che Tibby,
cheap "double-glazing".
Sounds like the effect induced by the non-dynamic duo of Roger "charisma king" Sutton and the Pie Guy, with their soporific CERA media briefings. They build to a comfy drone, you can sort of nod along.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Sacha,
. . . the foodstamp card is an Aussie idea too.
According to Job Services Australia's site, part of its role is "to provide immediate services for workers made redundant in the recent global recession through no fault of their own." While the conciliatory tone is a world away from the Howard era, when Tony Abbott famously announced his intention to "take a stick to" the long-term unemployed, there's been a determined rightward drift under Gillard.
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. . . private contractors who will receive cash bonuses if they are able to place their wards in work or training.
Was something like that tried in the Shipley era? I wasn't here, but I'd heard there was.
If simply putting people into training is enough to earn a bonus then the scheme sounds like it's as open to rorting as the privatised Australian Job Network Provider farce that flourished under John Howard, particularly when Tony Abbott was Minister for Employment Services.
One of Kevin Rudd's greatest achievements was to largely put an end to the punitive farce of churning the unemployed through pointless training schemes that benefited only the providers, many of whom were Liberal Party donors. There can be few things more demoralising for someone on a survival budget than to have to travel across town on peak-hour public transport fares on the false promise of being "evaluated" for training, only to spend an hour with some privatised bubblehead who'd get all chatty about their divorce, before sending the victim on their way with a voucher for yet another CV seminar. It happened all the time.
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Muse: A Friday Kind of Linky Love, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
. . . can’t really imagine trying to hit a mark on a green screen while wearing a unitard covered in reference markers is every actor’s dream.
Given the degree of subtlety that high-end motion capture seems capable of transferring, I'd imagine that Olivier would have been busting to give it a go if he was still on deck. While the results mightn't have been to everyone's taste (remember his blacker-than-black bling-bedecked Othello?), they'd certainly have been interesting.
I guess that the simple motion capture rigs used in game design are a lot easier to suit up in than the level of smart that captures facial expressions. From my humble past experience of witnessing such stuff, drama students on basic equity rates would be expected to "play" several characters in one session. No voice stuff, nothing much for your CV. Because they were probably cheaper than the computer folks who'd post-process their work, everything in the storyboard that could possibly be mo-capped was slavishly grabbed, right down to close-ups of simple hand actions.
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Muse: A Friday Kind of Linky Love, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Here's an example Steve. Seems they did further episodes after I bailed out. It was a living of sorts. Ancient stuff I know, but motion capture's been around for a while.