What I'm Watching: Godzilla Singular Point

Netflix animation mashing up Godzilla, Jet Jaguar (!), Scooby Doo (Mei is such a Velma it's… whoo; and Barbell is Freddy, and if the other nerd isn't Shaggy I dunno who is). "Haunted" house, weird signals that sure sound a lot like the Mothra fairies, renegade electricians, giant flying monsters, and it gets more so every episode. I might do an episode analysis later, but if you like what I like, just watch it right now.

Rick & Morty S5

So, Nimbus. Goddamned Sub-Mariner wrecking homes and, uh, having his own solution to surface cops. So, are cops fish in this? Fish was a cop, so why not… Casual reference to "destroying mermaid puss" from the Ricklantis Mixup episode, which has never made sense since human-top mermaids don't have… anyway.

But what I want to point at is the two visual uses of The Fountain, and Jessica's journey there.

The Fountain is Aronofsky's only great-film-but-badly-edited. Pi and Requiem for a Dream are perfect as they are (tho I'll never watch Requiem again, fuck you, man). But all his other films are kinda trashy. The Fountain should be his best work, but jumping back and forth in time wrecks the message, halfway thru you know where it's all going, just have to wait it out.

If The Fountain was edited correctly, say 3/4 of each story in linear order, and then a coda for each in the same order, with the future part LAST, you might actually follow the character's enlightenment. As it is, I just get drunk and yell at the screen. And that's about how Jessica's enlightenment goes.

SPOILERS










Morty's enemy culture in this is a good development. Like every D&D party picks a fight with some stupid NPCs, and ends up razing their village and getting enemies for life (I know it's not just me, the Knights of the Dinner Table do it all the time… which is maybe a bad sign). The progression from a family of barbarian idiots who don't understand the consequences of a magic door, to medieval civilization built around hating Morty, to increasingly technical and apocalyptic focus on the one horrible thing that keeps happening to them. I want these to keep showing up, tho that's the kind of continuity they don't really do.

It's been a long damned time since S4.

★★★★★

Still Fixing Sublime

Minor notes on customization, all files are in Preferences > Browse Packages.

I fixed Dracula to be a little more pit of utter darkness:

UI: Customize Theme, file is User/Default Dark.sublime-theme:

// Documentation at https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/themes.html
{
    "variables": {
        "base_hue": "black",
        "base_tint": "#99ddff",
        "ui_bg": "#222222",
        "text_fg": "white",
        "sidebar_bg": "#111111",
        "sidebar_row_selected": "#666600",
    },
    "rules": [
    ]
}

UI: Customize Color Scheme, file is User/Dracula.sublime-color-scheme:

// Documentation at https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/color_schemes.html
{
    "variables": {
    },
    "globals": {
        "background": "black",
    },
    "rules": [
    ]
}

And some keys I use, file is User/Default (OSX).sublime-keymap: ^O as Open above is incredibly useful if you write "paren code enter paren open-above tab" over and over. Cmd-Y is lambda λ in a bunch of my editors and iTerm2; using the actual lambda symbol is awkward but cool, so of course I do it.

[
    { "keys": ["ctrl+o"], "command": "run_macro_file", "args": {"file": "res://Packages/Default/Add Line Before.sublime-macro"} },
    { "keys": ["shift+ctrl+o"], "command": "run_macro_file", "args": {"file": "res://Packages/Default/Add Line.sublime-macro"} },
    { "keys": ["super+y"], "command": "insert", "args": {"characters": "λ"} },
]

Obvious missing feature is piping thru shell. I'm going to tackle that fully later, but for now I just needed to number lines, so added a package Number, containing:

Number/Number.py:

import sublime
import sublime_plugin

def numberLines(s):
    out = []
    i = 0
    for line in s.splitlines():
        i += 1
        out.append("%d. %s" % (i, line))
    return "\n".join(out) + "\n"

class NumberCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
    def run(self, edit):
        for region in self.view.sel():
            if not region.empty():
                s = self.view.substr(region)
                out = numberLines(s)
                self.view.replace(edit, region, out)

and Number/Default (OSX).sublime-keymap:

[
    { "keys": ["shift+ctrl+n"], "command": "number" }
]

This makes a nice template for doing additional filters. Of course there's no damned examples for the current version, the old samples are missing arguments.

When developing a plugin, you can open the console with ^~ and type view.run_command("number") and see some print statement debugging, which helps.

It's very much more of a "developer's toolkit" than a real editor sometimes. It reminds me a lot of hacking on E/PM in REXX on OS/2, where the entire editor was just a big REXX script and it was trivial to make it circle all search results, or some such. But it's been better for doing my Scheme hacking than anything else so far.

What I'm Watching: Manifest

Just started, dunno how long. They did 3 seasons and cancelled, so now I know I can actually watch the whole thing without 'flix cancelling it on me.

Watched first two eps. Plane flight from Jamaica to NYC vanishes, lands 5.5 years later without time passing inside, nobody mentions Langoliers. They start having auditory hallucinations which lead to saving lives or solving crimes or standing outside at night to stare at a plane, some of them think it's God, others are relentlessly sane. Again nobody bothers to mention Stephen King. The government investigates them. Nobody mentions The Shop, from multiple Stephen King books about traumatized, time-lost psychics investigated by the government like say The Dead Zone or Firestarter.

The writing's nowhere near Stephen King level, but the family dramas are all tightly interconnected, the rather obvious bad guys are rather obvious, it's an enjoyable enough popcorn show ripoff of his books. I could do with less "God" from the stupid, life-disaster NYPD lady who's often the protagonist.

I'm tagging this "horror" but that's really not accurate. They don't have the balls to show anything dark and terrible, this aired on NBC for weak-spined old people who don't have streaming, so a young man in prison is just beaten up a little, not… The girls in a cage are… cared for off-screen, so you don't have to hear what happened. Fake sex is done with lingerie and taffeta sheets, not sweaty people boning just short of real porn. There's a murder… shown only as bloodspatter cut away from the victim.

The amazing world of the future of 2018 from 2013 doesn't seem to phaze anyone, just minor notes that their iPhones don't connect to obsolete 2G towers or long-cancelled phone accounts. Medical research girl's work has gone on without her. Nobody so far has noted that they went from a bright, hopeful America with President Barack Obama, to a war-torn hellhole dystopia under Traitor Tr@mp. If I found out I'd skipped over half of Barry's term and into that shit, I'd be pissed.

★★★½☆

What Are You Doing, iCloud?

I often use Pythonista for automation or just code goofing off on the iPad. And unfortunately, the only ways Apple has allowed to get files into it are:

  1. Download with some other app (Dropbox or Readdle Documents, mostly) and share, one-way into it and no way out like a roach motel, or
  2. Put the file in iCloud, and it "should" sync automatically.

This is 100% an Apple policy problem, #1 demonstrates other apps can use networking just fine.

So on Mac I open iCloud (only in Finder, it's a stupid long path in shell), Pythonista3, try dragging the now-annoying disappearing proxy icon… can't drag it. So up a folder and I can drag THAT into shell.

Now in my CodePy folder, ln -s LONGICLOUDPATH icloud and voila, convenient access. Move my working project in there.

Make changes to a file, look in Pythonista, and it's all good. Make a new file, wait… it never shows up. Finally I open Files app on iPad, see if it's there, and NOW it syncs.

Maybe Pythonista is getting old and missed a notification, I notice the keyboard row isn't coming up, but Apple's incompetent garbage service iCloud/MobileMe/iTools has been failing to sync files for 15 FUCKING YEARS NOW, and I'm goddamned sick and tired of it.

This is why I give Dropbox money every month, because their syncing always works.

Mornin'. Nice day for fishin', ain't it? Hu ha!

  • Epic NPC Man: Playlist of 182 (and more all the time) little skits from "The World of Sky-craft" aka "Aze-Rim". Some nail exactly what the MMO experience is like, frustrating and amusing at once, some are less so. But I watched most of these in the last 2 days, totally worth it. My brain has melted.
  • Baelin's Route: Movie of the silly fisherman with one line of dialogue, dragged off to adventure. The actor does a LOT with that one line and a fishing rod (that turns into a staff with a knob on the end during fights). If he earns a tiny bit of XP every time he fishes, and he's been fishing nonstop for 20 years since launch, he's probably the most powerful being in Azerim. I don't like the inevitable plot twist 2/3 thru, but fucking Witcher did it, why wouldn't these guys?
  • NPC Dungeons & Dragons: Playlist of the nerds playing D&D (5E, not at all my favorite edition and I dislike the kind of story-driven modules they're been funneled thru, but the play's the thing)

Makes heavy use of New Zealand's fantasy aesthetic and loudly plays celtic music like a certain set of movies set there. Their costumes, props, and film editing "magic" are simpler, but better than those movies. They do OK at getting diverse casting, it's not all honkies.