Continuing the space theme, some people go to the ocean and see ships. Bernard Gigounon goes to the ocean and sees hidden starships everywhere. The video is quite slow paced, but check out especially the night shots towards the end of the video.

…reminds me of this 2004 Spongmonkey classic We like the Moon from Rathergood:

…the moon
it is up in the sky
it’s up there very high
but not as high
as maybe
dirigibles or zeppelins

or lightbulbs.

I never realised that the stretching of time in dreaming was also built into the music score: Basically, every level of sleep in the film stretches the time – 5 minutes of sleep gives you 1 hour of dreaming time in the first level of sleep (12 dream minutes per 1 real minute). On the second level, one gets 1 hour for every 5 minutes spent in the first dream, which means that 5 minutes in the real world turn into 12 hours at dream level two.

So,  Hans Zimmer used the same slowing down with the Édith Piaf song “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”, the song used as a countdown marker for the team. Pieces of Piaf’s interpretation of the song were stretched, manipulated and woven into Zimmer’s score. The following YouTube video shows how it works:

“You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next,” Zimmer says. Simple and yet such a brilliant idea! Great film on many levels – well worth watching.

Here’s a video of Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr perform live in the Inception premiere:

These guys are not only supertalented but also superheroes: if you wanted to show your support or enjoyment of the album then they ask you to make donations to Burma Campaign or Refuge (the domestic abuse charity).

Since every good album needs at least one Star Wars related tune:

04 Every Death Star Has Its Exhaust Port

Lyrics: EVERY DEATH STAR HAS ITS EXHAUST PORT.
(This song will mean nothing if you haven’t seen, memorised and quoted Star Wars (ep. IV, V, VI) or The Last Starfighter. The word FRAK comes from Battlestar Galactica. I’m saving Quantum Leap for the Q album.)

Are you gonna let them talk to you like that?
Live your life under tyranny…well FRAK THAT!
I ain’t standing for this bubble of shat,
You’re incredible, right? It’s time to be incredible.
They aren’t the dogs with the biggest teeth no more,
You need to use your noddle if you wanna win a war,
This is what rebellion is for,
We’re invincible, right? It’s time to be invincible.
And you can start by singing a song like:

YES THIS BATTLESTATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL,
JUST REMEMBER THAT KICKING ASS IS AS SIMPLE AS SHOOTING WOMPRATS BACK HOME!
(they’re no bigger than two metres, they’re no bigger than that!)

“Greetings Startfighter you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier agaist Xur and the Ko-Dan armada,”

A-Team, Airwolf and Street Hawk too,
Taught a little boy what he really had to do,
And that’s to help get the message through,
That you’re incredible, right? It’s time to be incredible.
And now I’m getting a chubby for justice.

YES THIS BATTLESTATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL,
JUST REMEMBER THAT KICKING ASS IS AS SIMPLE AS SHOOTING WOMPRATS BACK HOME!

There is no try, only do or do not…Karl.
You gotta STAY ON TARGET!
Come on, Kid.
Let’s blow this joint and GO HOME!

MANY BOTHANS DIED TO BRING THIS INFORMATION TO US.
(Ewoks! UNITE!)

First there was the feast outside the Kinship house, Opale is playing lute:

Preparing for the group photo – I am the ginger one in the front row. I made the classic mistake of choosing the same party dress with Jordetta

All stay still…

…and catch fire. Weird things do happen in hobbit parties.

I’m talking about Animal Crossing, City Folk, the computer game that has a never ending storyline, days and seasons passing in real time. A character moves to a town and begins to live like a villager: house mortgage need to get paid, harvest gathered and friends visited. Activities and events take place same time they happen in real life and there is not an ultimate goal. Life is what one makes of it.

Season had changed, but the villagers are still adorable nutters. Here is a selection of screenshots of what happened.

Baabara was standing outside her house – way past her bedtime. She told me her key fell in the river (even though I am sure they throw it there on purpose).  I fished for over an an hour. When I finally found it and rushed it back to her, she thanked me:

Next I bumped to Merry, a new cat in town. She was wearing a pink daisy shirt and carrying a watering can, so  I expected her to talk about furry things. But the looks are deceiving in Piippola. Her first words to me:

Derwin is my favourite character, an insecure nerd house full of fossils and junk. He approached me sweating the huge drops of anxiety. Big boys had been bullying him again:

It is absolutely ok to talk about vulcans, I told him. Relieved, he went back home  and I continued to look for Harry, the bully. I put on a hockey mask and bun wig to look more intimidating. Finally I found him, an old hippo with  no fashion sense and who mostly comes out at night:

Hmm, seems like he has adapted the word himself. Great, no problem there.

I was happy to see that Buck was sporting DS9 Julian Bashir uniform I had designed. And boy, was he feeling frisky in it:

I have to admit the shirt looks great on him.

Next one out and about was Twiggy, who seemed to have a great night. The canary bird chick seems to have lost all his marbles. Note that it’s not even full moon yet:

Before I finished the game for the night, I bumped to Baabara again, who commented my new style:

Six mad villagers. Piippola nights out, of course I am excited

This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.

The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.

I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:

Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.

Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect

Now I am bald and still stuck.

Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.

Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.

I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.

I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.

I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.

I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.

I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.

I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate

Here’s a spoiler:

This species failed. No s**t, Sherlock.

Viacom is currently taking all-too-familiar action removing all the clips from Youtube quoting their usual copyright issues. And more cold water to the Finns – I tried link to the full episode in South Park website, but got this message instead:

Fingers crossed South Park manages to get rid of those pre-existing contractual oblication jerks asap.

The recent promise about the full movies and TV shows to be made available in Youtube sounded great, but don’t believe it, wrote Mark Hachman yesterday in PCMag:

Partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz made thousands of TV episodes and hundreds of movies available on Youtube for consumers to watch for free beginning on Thursday, in a bid to challenge Hulu for dominance in the online video space.

Don’t believe it. Google has amassed a TV lineup only a sick old retiree could love, with movies that belong in the dollar VHS bin. At this point, the shocking lack of content only highlights how competitors like Hulu can and will succeed in a cutthroat market where content is king. Quite frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.

The full episode isn’t available in Hulu either, so it looks like Viacom is simply trying to prevent earthlings from watching online how Finland gets nuked. Luckily, all Scandinavians are taught in elementary school where to search for the full South Park episodes.