#also them both having 01 on their design was an interesting coincidence (?)

[atethemango]

transgender cosplay duo idea: hatsune mike x ikari shinjette

yeah sure why not

[fantasticallyfoolishidea]

So, bath scenes. Amirite?

The Witcher fandom is quite blessed. Over the course one season, the showrunners decided to gift us with not one but two scenes of Henry Cavill, naked in a bathtub, two episodes in a ro-

Wait a minute.

Two back-to-back episodes featuring drawn out bath scenes that go on for 2-3 minutes each. That's a lot of time to dedicate to fanservice when you only have 8 episodes to get your point across. Unless, of course… No. They wouldn't. Or would they?

I re-watched these scenes more times than I care to admit. For science. They’re interesting for numerous of reasons (Henry Cavills’ pecs being only two of them). But you know what’s even more interesting? Some sexy, sexy cinematic and narrative parallels and contrasts.

(Obligatory linebreak for your protection. You thought I went overboard analysing Her Sweet Kiss? This is worse. If you’re on mobile – I apologise. Now’s the time to scroll fast. It’ll take longer than you’re expecting, trust me. I’m sorry.)

Bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Bath in “Bottled Appetites” Please excuse the terrible of the second clip. It’s the only one I could find that had the whole scene in it.

First things first,

the setting

The scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” takes place in an inn. The room is dark. Throughout the scene you can hear chatter from the bar. Candles are the only visible light source, although, at the beginning of the scene you can see more light coming in through what’s presumably a window outside the shot. Due to the lighting, the majority of the room has a noticeably blue tint, except for the cabinets on each side of the room where most of the candles are placed. Apart from the cabinets, the bathtub Geralt is sitting in is the only area that’s properly illuminated.

The room itself seems big enough, although we only get to see the bathing area which is separated from the rest of the room by blue curtains, but due the way the scene is shot – frequent close ups of the actors, wider shots frequently partially blocked by the curtains – it appears smaller than it actually is. Geralt stands out against the background due to his skin appearing orange in the candle light; in wider shots he usually appears centred.

In contrast, Jaskier moves from one side of the room to the other a lot and doesn’t remain in either light source for long. Unlike Geralt’s skin, the colour of his clothes matches the background. This is somewhat unusual because in many of his scenes Jaskier and his colourful outfits tend to stick out like a sore thumb – the red outfit in “Rare Species” probably the most visually distracting out of the bunch – but in this scene, the exact opposite happens. Whenever Jaskier’s not the focus of the shot he frequently fades into the background or even gets obstructed by the curtains.

(While I’d love to add visual references for every single point I touch upon, honestly, the amount of editing that’d require is astronomical. Jokes on me though, because it already is. Watching the scenes should give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, though. Also, full disclosure, screenshots and gifs had their brightness an colours altered slightly for better visibility.)

Now, on the other hand, we have the room inside the mayor’s house, which – while also dimly lit by candlelight – appears open and spacious. Due to the candles, the room appears tinged only in colours on the orange/yellow spectrum. No curtains to obstruct parts of the shot, and unlike the inn, this room has got visible windows one of which sits behind Geralt. That window in particular lets in a stream of blue light that, in wider shots, often appears to frame either Geralt alone or both, Geralt and Yennefer. However, the blue light remains behind the characters, neither Geralt nor Yennefer are ever directly illuminated by it.

Why is she going on and on about the lighting you might ask? It’s because there’s basically a whole science to colour theory, colour grading, and the ways they’re used in visual media. It’s one of the reasons why, for example, Guillermo del Toro movies are always such goddamn feasts for the eyes. TV Tropes also has a page dedicated to it, if you wanna get a rough idea of what’s going on here.

Both bath scenes in the Witcher (2019) are gorgeous examples of colour grading and set design. You can tell that a whole lot of thought went into it. “Bottled Appetites” even takes it a step further, carrying the orange/blue colour scheme over into the next scene and directly contrasting the bed frame that’s bathed in amber light with the blue windows it’s framed by.

Fun fact, while colour grading can be used to give colours that certain “pop”, you can also achieve the exact opposite effect. See how washed out and grey Jaskier and his blue clothes appear on the orange bedding in this shot? It becomes even more apparent later on in the scene.

He might as well be one of the pillows for the way his clothes make your eyes just kinda slip over him. Honestly, I wanna marry whoever was in charge of doing colour correction on the Witcher. That person is a fucking artist. I’ll get back to the matter of colours and backgrounds in a minute. For now, let’s talk about

body positioning

Or in other words, yet another reason I’d sell my immortal soul to directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Charlotte Brändström.

One thing the scenes have in common (apart from the copious amounts of eye candy) is that Geralt remains mostly stationary at the centre throughout the scene. Jaskier moves around a lot. He dries his hands behind Geralt, moves in front of him to fiddle with the bath salts, sits down next to Geralt, sets Geralt’s mug down on the cabinet behind him and only stops his continuous back and forth motion when the conversation takes a turn for the serious and he settles down in front of Geralt.

Yennefer, on the other hand, starts off at Geralt’s right hand side, slightly to the back of him. She briefly lies down, stands up, and moves to Geralt’s left while taking off her gown. Same as the other scene, Yennefer settles down as the conversation is about to grow more serious. However, unlike Jaskier, Yennefer is far less restless, once she’s moved to Geralt’s left she settled down and doesn’t get up again.

What’s really interesting about this scene is that throughout the entirety of their interaction, Yennefer and Geralt never look at each other at the same time. They both alternate between staring off into the distance with varying degrees of wistfulness and/or melancholia and turning to look at the other. But their eyes never quite meet, not even when Geralt turns around in surprise after Yennefer says she won’t be taking any payment. The conversation ends with Geralt abruptly getting up and out of the tub and Yennefer turning around to watch him leave (dry up? get dressed? who knows what he’s getting up to in that moment). Notably, when the shot focuses on Yennefer alone in the tub, a significant portion of the room that previously appeared mostly orange suddenly is tinted almost all blue.

However, where eye contact is conspicuously absent in the scene in “Bottled Appetites”, it’s a vital component of the scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials”. Eye contact is a significant part of Geralt and Jaskiers communication. Mainly because Geralt spends a significant amount time sending glares Jaskier’s way with Jaskier paying him varying amounts of mind, even poking fun at his “scary face” when the opportunity presents itself. Jaskier is all over the place in every sense of the word. His attention is divided between Geralt, the bath, the banquet, etc. before it eventually turns back to Geralt and the whole cycle begins anew. The shift in conversation, from the banquet to Geralt, coincides with a shift in Jaskier’s behaviour. He stops moving around the room and his attention settles on Geralt. He then kneels down and holds Geralt’s gaze until Geralt abruptly switches the subject.

Look at the screencaps above. See how, even in a screencap, the lighting is capable of creating an entire visual narrative all by itself? Yennefer and Geralt are sitting in the water together with their backs to each other in a room full of orange light but their immediate surroundings are tinted blue. Jaskier and Geralt are facing each other directly but despite the orange light surrounding him Jaskier appears shadowed as he kneels in front of the tub while Geralt who is sitting inside the tub glows orange against a blue background.

There’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in that juxtaposition but I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.

edit 12/01/20: I actually got a submission from odense who elaborated on the blocking of the scenes from a theatrical perspective. Go read it for even more meta on the bath scenes.

Anyway, moving on. Next on my list is

the matter of service

What, no more Film Studies for Fandom 101, I hear you ask? Well. Originally, I wanted this part to be about the conversation as a whole but that would’ve gone on for too long (ha! too long, she says like that means anything) so I divided it.

Both scenes deal with the performance of service in one way or another. Jaskier is trying to convince Geralt to act as his bodyguard for a night, while Geralt asked Yennefer to break the djinn’s curse and they’re still settling the matter of payment.

In a way, you could look at both scenes as very, very unusual forms of negotiation. Jaskier may spend a lot of time talking about himself but his actions are almost all focused on Geralt. He douses him with water, “rubbed chamomile onto his lovely bottom” at some point (decide for yourself what you wanna make of that statement), prepares the bath salts for Geralt’s bath, and – also at some point – arranged for Geralt’s clothes to be washed. All throughout the scene, he’s performing a variety of services. He’s taking care of Geralt, whether Geralt likes it or not, and does so like it’s the most natural thing in the world, to the point where it just kinda comes across like more of Jaskier’s usual antics and theatrics.

Geralt may claim he needs no one and doesn’t want anyone needing him but there is some form of reciprocity in their relationship – big things like the shared adventures and the ballads about which made both of them famous in their own right, but then there are the little things like drawing your friend a bath, or watching his back at a banquet so he doesn’t get stabbed by a jealous husband, which Geralt eventually agrees to do despite all of his grumbling and glaring protests.

Which is one of the reasons “And yet... here we are.” is such a brilliant line. Just from this context, you could read it in a number of ways. Jaskier could be calling Geralt out on his bullshit like, e.g. “You might not like it, but yeah, you do need me and I need you.” or he could be asking him to make a decision, e.g. “I know you don’t like it but I really do need your help. What will you do?” or it could be an affirmation, e.g. “I know you didn’t want it but somehow we still ended up here.” etc., etc. And you might have guessed, there’s still more to come regarding this line. Later.

So while Jaskier’s scene is about getting Geralt to perform a service, Yennefer’s scene is about figuring out the cost of the service Geralt asked of her in the previous scenes. Where the first bath scene was about persuasion, this one is about payment. The initial negotiation has already happened, the service been rendered, what’s left to do is figure out the price. And Geralt already offered to pay whatever the price.

Since Geralt seems intent on honouring his promise, that creates a bit of a power imbalance between Yennefer and Geralt at the start of the scene because Yennefer could ask for whatever she wanted, Geralt even brings up that he’s worried about “having agreed to indentured servitude”. (That being said, he does not seem too bothered by current the situation or Yennefer’s company. Quite the opposite, he actually seems quite comfortable talking to her.)

Aside from the payment they haven’t agreed on yet, Geralt’s also got a second promise to make good on since he initially offered Yennefer to “indulge her curiosities” (take that however you will). It’s quite apparent that Geralt is a lot more forthcoming with his thoughts and emotions (actually, his words in general) with Yennefer than he is with Jaskier. In Yennefer’s scene, she and Geralt talk about equal amounts whereas in the other scene Jaskier mostly carries the conversation by himself while Geralt reacts.

However, Jaskier also reaches out where Yennefer keeps to herself. She occasionally teasingly bumps her back against Geralt’s as she’s washing herself but other than that she makes an effort to keep out of sight, even magically turning away a mirror to hide herself, whereas Jaskier touches, quite literally gets all up in Geralt’s “scary face” and just generally repeatedly puts himself in Geralt’s line of sight going so far as to kneel down until they’re at eye level.

Despite the matter of coin coming up repeatedly (mostly in the form of harmless teasing about brothels and prostitution, but also on a more serious way when Geralt accuses her of making a profit off the townspeople), Yennefer eventually decides not to ask Geralt for anything in return for saving Jaskier’s life, determining his “company and conversation payment enough”.

Interestingly, in the scene preceding the bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Jaskier also broaches the topic of coin as he’s setting up to ask Geralt for help. In a sense, Jaskier initially attempts to use that thing about reciprocity I brought up earlier to convince Geralt to do him a favour. He lectures Geralt on his role in making him famous and that he should be making money off their arrangement in an attempt to make the favour he’s about to ask off Geralt seem irrelevant in comparison, like “Look at everything I’ve done for you. Please do this tiny little thing for me.” Obviously, that approach doesn’t work. The (un)holy trinity of “food, women and wine, Geralt”, on the other hand, seems to do the trick. Or maybe it’s the bath and a heart-to-heart. Kind of like Geralt’s company and conversation were payment enough for Yennefer?

While we’re still on the matter of conversation, let’s talk about one of the components that make up part of the emotional core of the scenes. Let’s talk about

the matter of past and future

Geralt has lived a long, long life and its history is written on his body in a web of scars. What struck me is how differently the bath scenes deal with those scars.

With Yennefer, the scars are on full display. She notices and scrutinises them as someone seeing Geralt naked for the first time can be expected to. The scars on his shoulders and back are placed front and centre of the shot several times.

In contrast, with Jaskier, you, as a viewer, barely notice the scars. Most of the time they’re simply not visible to the camera. They’re never in the foreground of the shot and you never even get to see Geralt’s back. The scar on Geralt’s shoulder that Yennefer noticed could easily be mistaken for remnants of dead selkiemore. There’s only one moment that draws attention to the scarred shoulder and that’s when Jaskier pats it as he’s getting up to put away Geralt’s mug of ale.

Again, I feel like there’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in there but what do I know?

Back to the point. While Geralt and Yennefer are talking in the bathtub it immediately becomes obvious that they have a connection. They’ve both had unhappy childhoods, lived long lives and as Yennefer points out Geralt was “created by magic. Our magic.” They have an understanding that quickly let’s you forget that they’re virtual strangers at this point in the Witcher canon.

In the other scene, Jaskier and Geralt have known each other for quite a while already, yet the conversation seems to be restricted to superficial topics at first, mainly Jaskier’s prowess as bard and lover. However, Jaskier unwittingly steers the conversation in a more serious direction when he asks Geralt about retirement, what he wants to do when “all this... monster hunting nonsense” is over and done with.

So far, there’s a pattern in the show that when Jaskier talks to Geralt about serious matters, he starts making plans for the future. After the incident with the elves in Posada he promises to work hard to change Geralt’s reputation. In the infamous scene in “Rare Species” he’s trying to figure out what to do with his own future and offers Geralt to go to the coast with him. Here, in this scene, he’s trying to work out what Geralt wants from his future. Even if Geralt claims to want nothing.

At that point, Jaskier’s already made good on his promise to change the public tune about Geralt. The people in the beginning of the episode are talking about the White Wolf, not the Butcher of Blaviken, which makes for such an interesting parallel when paired with Yennefer’s comment about “Our magic”.

Yennefer’s magic created the Witcher; Jaskier’s song created the White Wolf.

Which, in all frankness, would be a good point to end this post but what’s the point of doing anything if you’re not gonna overdo it? I said the matter of past and future makes up part of the emotional core of the bath scenes. So there must be other parts of that supposed emotional core, right? Of course, there’s still

the matter of want and need

While discussing Geralt’s lack of retirement plan, Jaskier and Geralt keep tossing the word “want” back and forth. Jaskier tries to find out what Geralt wants; Geralt rebuffs him, he wants nothing; Jaskier turns it around on him by saying, well, maybe someone will want you. You could, of course, read that as your run-of-the-mill “just wait, the right person will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – if you’re wearing shipping goggles)” shtick but the thing is, that’s the kind of reply you usually offer someone who’s bemoaning the fact that they’re single, the exact opposite of what Geralt is doing, and Jaskier strikes me as someone who’s emotionally intelligent enough to know that wouldn’t work on Geralt. I think Jaskier might be very literal when he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” As in, “even if you want nothing, maybe someone who wants you will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – again, if you’re wearing shipping goggle).” But Geralt changes strategies and rebuffs him again, he needs no one. And the last thing he wants is someone needing him.

What’s interesting about this bit is the body language. I mentioned Jaskier and Geralt communicating a lot via eye contact. And Geralt is looking at Jaskier quite intently right up until Jaskier kneels down in front of him as he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” The camera cuts to Geralt and he’s looking off to the side while he says “I want no one.” Then, a pronounced pause follows before he turns to look Jaskier directly in the eye as he finishes, “And the last thing I want is someone needing me.” (I really want to say that this looks so much like he’s warning Jaskier to reconsider whatever he’s building up to say. But alas, that’s just fantasy.) The camera cuts away again and we see that Jaskier’s now looking down behind his clasped hands before looking up and answering “And yet... here we are.” Geralt acknowledges his answer with one of his famed “Hm”s. Then, he immediately changes the subject to the whereabouts of his clothes which Jaskier sent away to be washed.

In the other scene, Geralt and Yennefer breach the topic of “want” and “need” while talking about coin. Geralt claims she’s profiting off the political situation, whereas Yennefer claims she’s working in the interest of the people, “filling a need. Ever heard of it?” Which, yes, Geralt has, literally one episode ago, and he pulls a face that’s simply beyond words. (btw, kudos to Henry Cavill for cramming like five different emotions into one expression.)

Geralt and Jaskier had an entire conversation about how Geralt wants nothing and needs nobody. Jaskier even references that conversation when he yells at Geralt while they’re arguing over the djinn. “You always say you want nothing from life, so how was I supposed to know you wanted three wishes all to yourself!” he screams.

(Also, upon rewatching that scene, I literally just realised that Jaskier was drinking at the beginning of the scene. Combine that with the fact that he repeatedly brings up the Countess de Stael, and flat out states he’s currently heartbroken, and yeah, that explains a lot about his comparatively sour mood and short temper; also, why his speech comes across as much more chaotic than usual. Seriously, compare it to the way he speaks to Geralt after he’s gutted the selkiemore. He talks a lot in both – ok, Jaskier always does – but in the selkiemore scene, or basically any scene that isn’t the djinn scene, his diction is eloquent, artistic, florid; in the djinn scene, it’s all over the place, repetitive, and often bordering on the nonsensical. Frankly, you could probably make a whole post about that scene by itself. I’ll get back to that some other day.)

(Also, am I implying that Jaskier seems bitter over the fact that Geralt apparently keeps telling him he wants nothin from life? ...Yesn’t. Hard to pretend I’m not wearing shipping goggles when I’m literally almost 4000 words deep into a meta post. But remember, nothing but speculation!)

Anyway, and now there’s Yennefer broaching the subject, asking him if he’s ever heard of “filling a need”.

The conversation carries on until Geralt is blindsided by Yennefer telling him that his company and conversation are payment enough. He whirls around but Yennefer isn’t looking at him so he hurriedly gets out of the bath. In the next scene, he emerges with a new set of clothes he doesn’t like, which his companion from the previous scene procured for him. Now why does that feel familiar?

In conclusion...

honestly, I don’t even know where I was going with this originally. This started off as a joke but then things inevitably escalated and now I’m really tired and I wanna go to sleep. (Also, the whole djinn thing is giving me feels now which kinda puts a dampener on the humour in the episode. Jaskier’d already been having a bad day and things just. Keep. Getting. Worse. Ugh, my heart.) But I feel like this post needs a proper conclusion.

I feel like, in the context of these scenes Jaskier and Yennefer could be seen as foils to each other? They’re two of the few people Geralt lets close, very close, actually, since getting naked in front of someone is frequently equated with showing vulnerability to someone. In a lot of ways, Jaskier and Yennefer’s roles work in ways that are the exact opposite of that of the other. Jaskier tries to be seen where Yennefer wants to remain hidden, yet Jaskier gets obscured by the environment while Yennefer is exposed. Jaskier is asking Geralt for a favour, Yennefer did Geralt a favour; Jaskier insists on taking care of Geralt where Yennefer gives him space. Yennefer sees Geralt’s past, Jaskier his future. Jaskier touches the scar but doesn’t look, Yennefer looks but doesn’t touch. But both find a way to scratch at the emotional walls that Geralt’s put up and both times Geralt reacts by immediately trying to escape the situation. Both times, he ends up wearing clothes he doesn’t like in the following scene.

Speaking about nudity and emotional vulnerability, maybe that’s kind of part of the conclusion as well? Sorta? Especially, since Geralt seems to start looking for his clothes or for a way out of the tub the moment someone gets too close. Furthermore, afterwards, he never seems comfortable in the clothes he’s been given, which you could read as a metaphor of sorts, I guess? Like something inside Geralt getting knocked loose in the conversation with his companion and Geralt consequently having to arrange himself with an uncomfortable truth in the aftermath? Does that make sense? Have we finally reached the point where I’m getting too cerebral? Or did we sail past that point like 4000 words ago? God, my brain hurts.

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x12 “Prophet and Loss”

me: (◕︿◕✿)

i’m too soft™ for this

03:26pm

i am NOT READY in any way, shape or form

but i have a standard-quality video file and a 720p one is downloading slowly

i saw the promo video thing, dean’s phone battery died and i swear my heart died with it

i’m with cas on the “no suicide please” train

on the one hand, this is a deadly duo episode and i don’t trust them. BUT, they have been less awful recently. so. i’m like. expecting some gay. but that gay is ultimately gonna feel like queerbaiting, right?? LET’S HOPE NOT

fingers crossed for real gay, just in case i jinx it by doubting it

-

03:29

HERE GOES

-

03:31

the box underwater

THIS BETTER BE A DREAM

-

03:32

THE TERROR ON DEAN’S FACE IS MAKING MY HEART POUND I DON’T LIKE THIS ONE LITTLE BIT

-

03:33

the blood on the walls from his fingers

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

;~;

-

03:34

so far enjoying the directing here

dean’s got a red light saying nope, not changing his mind

sam’s behind him every step of the way

now sam’s trying to build a bridge between them (art on the wall)

-

03:38

just............ sitting here............. recoiling constantly from the screen while this dude does whatever he’s doing to his girl

deeply uncomfortable

-

03:41

so dean hasn’t even told cas and jack

oh man

-

03:42

OH MAN SAM ALREADY TOLD CAS

OH MAN

-

03:42

the fact dean shoulders open the bathroom door without touching it and dries his hands on his jeans is a) so beautiful, and b) so relatable

-

03:45

the guy with the knife again

i winced away from the screen so hard i pulled a muscle in my neck

goddamn i forget how wearing earbud headphones means i can’t just close my ears or move away from the distressing noise

-

03:39

sam: “if we could not have conversations that sound like deathbed apologies, i would really appreciate..”

i fricking cannot with my emotions right now

also john winchester is an asshole

-

03:56

THE SMILE

;A;

“it’s so good to hear from you!!!!”

;A; ;A; ;A;

-

03:58

dean: “so thank you, and, um........................ it’s good to hear your voice”

;~;

-

04:01

why do people say “you don’t have to do this” when tied up and in danger

i find that a strange thing to say? idk

-

04:50

more red lights

a lot of red lights in this

-

04:07

another one

-

04:14pm

switching to 720p because the download’s finally done

also do women actually wear those kinds of frilly night gowns??? or is that just what people imagine “lady life partner who died violently in the night to further the manpain” to wear

-

04:17

sarah: “you wanted him... you still do.... you didn’t come here to find peace, you came here to the place where you became one with him”

sounds gay and evil

-

04:19

sarah: “you can’t.... because you are him”

i mean that makes sense, if an angel is in a host for a long time and does the same acts over and over and feels certain emotions, the host’s brain pathways would form that way, to continue doing and feeling those things

but also i guess nick said yes in the first place, and continued to allow lucifer to use him, because he was that way inclined to begin with

......you know, by the same logic, jimmy probably had feelings for dean tbh

-

04:22

i kept expecting sarah to explode in a justified ghostly rage and set the walls on fire

but here we are..........

not with a bang but with a whimper

-

04:23

kjasdufshfsdhfhFDSKJGJDSJGSJDKGJKDJGJDJGJKGJKGDFJKKJG

this screenshot of cas is a screenshot of me reacting to this screenshot

(also the noise dean’s brain is making)

-

04:25

“doctor”

this screenshot doesn’t show the subtlety of all his movements  BUT HE’S FUCKING trying not to look THRILLED LOOK AT THAT ALMOST-SMILE OMG.

just a hair’s breadth from flustering and looking down the way he did with dr. sexy maybe??? tbh he also looks sad, he would be a lot happier if he weren’t about to lock himself in a box for eternity

the lil gulp as well ?

definitely lowkey flustered, i’m calling it

-

04:29

yup, cut to sam and the real doctor WHILE DEAN AND CAS HAVE A SILENT CONVERSATION OFF SCREEN yes/yes?

-

04:32

“oh, no. no, please don’t compare this with your suicidal plan. just stop.”

he SO MAD

i love cas more than words can say

-

04:34

cas: “so then.......... this is goodbye?

THE LOOK IN THEIR EYES

MY HEART IS BREAKING OH NO

-

04:35

And then SAM INTERRUPTS

ARE YOU KIDIDNG ME

ARE YOU FSDUFVJSDGVJ ING KIDDING ME

well at least that means there’s still something to be said between them, still eternally unsaid

-

04:37

cas: “dean, if there’s a spark, a hope, then i have to try”

aaaaaaand there’s the parallel again, if cas can save donatello then he can save dean

-

04:38

YELLOW LIGHT GREEN ROOM

WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE

and of course cas was the one who, by appearing, changed everything

-

04:43

this is so stinking cute i love seeing them together doing ANYTHING AT ALL i love them both so much

-

04:44

also they talk v close and it feels v intimate

i can feel their body heat from here

-

THEY GOT CLOSER

-

04:45

I HAVE MISSED SEEING THEM TOGETHER AND NOT ANGRY OR ACTIVELY DYING

-

CAS’ LIL SMILE

-

04:47

dean: “cas’ll catch you up”

BUT IS DEAN GONNA LEAVE FOREVER AND LEAVE CAS OH NO

-

04:50

sam: “donatello never quit fighting, so we could help him, because he never gave up”

OH MAN THAT GOT ME RIGHT IN THE DEPRESSION FEELS

I LOVE THAT THEY GAVE JARED THOSE LINES

-

04:51

sam: “i believe in us” *punch*

okay but i laughed and i probably shouldn’t laugh

but i did laugh

-

04:52

dean: “okay sam. let’s go home”

ok time to cry

-

04:52

dean: “but i do believe in us”

(cas walks up)

“i believe in all of us”

P E R F  E C T

-

04:54

the end screen is white from the impala lights and i’m crying this was beautiful and perfect and HOW THE FUCK DID THE DEADLY DUO PULL THIS OFF

thAT PARALLEL BETWEEN DONATELLO AND DEAN THOUGH

THAT WAS LIKE...... ACTUAL WRITING

this was great??????/ and i’m emotional??????/ more emotional that i have been for ...um, pretty much every episode for like... 2 or 3 seasons, maybe

this was a 10/10 easily

jeeeez the suicide thing and sam talking dean out of it

look

y’all know how much i love dean and cas, and seeing them in the same place at the same time

but sam’s moment at the end was the best part of this whole thing

.........but. also.

i feel like dean and cas had a scene cut. as always. there was something missing there that i feel we were promised and didn’t get. please god let us get an actual conversation between them??? about their feelings for each other????????? it kind of sickens me that we haven’t had that yet. and it’s clearly almost happening, again and again and again and it’s definitely a romance trope, interrupted before they confess their feelings

a high point: dean and sam saved the asian kid from being killed by fire, that was both good and cool and i was very relieved

i’m a bit frustrated that nick is still ... happening

but at the same time, i find nick like 350% more interesting and enjoyable to watch than lucifer

there was a lot going on in this episode, as there always is in the buckleming episodes, but i watched in stops and starts because of cats and food and the wind slamming my door and my sister texting me, so if there were pacing issues i didn’t notice. it seemed pretty smooth to me idk

but i did really enjoy this, besides the gruesome murders and latino murdery guy (who was the best friend of the older twin brother (dean parallel), technically making the murdery guy a cas parallel?) killing people in horrible ways and then killing himself :/

also dean saying the guy was a psycho and then punching him out felt a liiittle bit like “people with mental health issues are evil and dangerous” and that felt uncomfortable EVEN THOUGH the guy WAS a bad murdery sort, and the whole episode was clearly also about helping people with depression or suicidal designs for themselves.

(now i type all this out, i’m realising the underlying messages of this episode were kind of messy. just a bit.)

edit: OR maybe that was dean’s self-hatred talking

(how and why did the next prophet in line have an enochian tattoo, if the pick is random? was it just coincidence? or did he get that tattoo after donatello started whispering to him?)

sarah...... she was clearly angry, and ghosts that’ve been around a long time tend to get verrrry angry, as i recall? she could’ve done some angry ghost stuff, that would’ve been more satisfying maybe (but on the other hand, the quietness of nick’s exit was also impactful)

i enjoyed the transition of red lights and backdrops throughout the episode to yellow and white, and then the green in the room at the end

anyway. yes. really did expect more on the dean-and-cas front, but i also expected to be let down, so i don’t really know where i stand on that. i just want more of them interacting in general ;~;

next week: MORE EMOTIONS!!!! YAY

[cosimaballettithomas-blog]

Blog No. 1

As explained in the syllabus, the purpose of this introductory course is to present students with a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary understanding of environmental issues, with respect to both their causes and effects. The structure of this course involves several disciplines, chief of which are natural and social science, and the humanities. It also helps to prepare students for the upper-level courses they will take later on in their environmental studies major/minor. According to its website, the environmental studies program at the surface presents students with opportunities to become ambassadors of the earth. And more specifically, as laid out by the “Major Concentrations and Career Tracks” page, students can engage in more specialized conversation about their specific interests through concentrations such as environmental politics and regulation, environmental law, urban planning, and environmental communications. Moreover, the course places students in a dialogue about environmental issues allowing them to form their own perspectives and worldviews based on class readings and discussions.

Equally comprised of both summary and evaluation, the purpose of the blog is to motivate students to ponder what they have learned from the assigned readings with the intention that they will also present their own assessment of the information. The “Blog Composition Suggestions” slide from Professor Van Buren’s PowerPoint also suggests that students make use of the Miller textbook’s Table of Contents and devise a “thematic entry title/question” to help guide and unify each blog entry. The PowerPoint also helps to specify the three general disciplines used in this course, as they are very broad and comprised of a multitude of more specialized sub-disciplines. For example, as laid out by the Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studiesdiagram, the Humanities discipline is comprised of but not limited to environmental history, philosophy, theology, etc. Similarly, social science can include environmental economics, politics, sociology, anthropology, etc. The PowerPoint also demonstrates how integrated and involved the disciplines are with one another, using the example of environmental problems which in their addressing require the collective efforts of multiple disciplines. Some cases might also involve less recognized disciplines such as environmental psychology and art/literature where the former can be used to explain how people understand an environmental crisis and the latter to educate people about said crisis. In response to the “Critical Thinking Question,” I would argue that the discipline from the Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studies that is most important for motivating a “sustainability revolution” in the next 50 years is the general field of Applied Arts and Sciences with respect to environmental engineering, architecture, business, public health, and especially urban planning that tends to inevitably absorb several disciplines into the planning process of large cities which have huge carbon footprints and thus are major exacerbators of the world’s environmental issues. Environmental politics and law under the Social Sciences discipline is also very important but again I think that they are already involved in urban planning in that any urban infrastructural planning project must coincide and cooperate with environmental policy for funding, approval, endorsement, etc.

A major or minor in environmental studies can lead students to a variety of career paths. In New York City alone, the “Internship and Job Opportunities” page of the program site offers a long list of opportunities that past students have had including working at the Bronx River Alliance, the Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club, the NYC Million Trees Project, and many more. I, for example, have a double minor in Urban Studies and Philosophy because I am really interested in how cities are designed with respect to characteristics such as sustainability and flood protection and I also intend to go to law school where a background in philosophy can be of great use. Moreover, on the “Research” page of the program site, students interested in conducting research can obtain further information about the process and get in touch with faculty members who have conducted their own research.

Miller’s Living in the Environment textbook is another excellent and important resource for students in the environmental studies program. Based on the Table of Contents alone, one can understand just how extensive, encompassing, and relevantthe field of environmental studies is as it has chapters on everything from evolution (Chapter 4) to environmental politics (Chapter 24). It's important to understand this as speakers for the environment in that, regardless of the path or concentration one chooses to pursue, one will come to find that even a basic understanding of what may seem like peripheral disciplines will actually be of great importance to any career associated with the environment. For example, an urban planner must not only be well versed in environmental design and architecture but the laws and zoning regulations of the city they are designing, the specific biodiversity and ecological characteristics of that city, the actual and perhaps urgent needs of the public, the environmental impact and risk assessment of their plan, and so on. This also calls on and assigns responsibility to public figures to take into account every variable when it comes to urban functions such as introduced bills, design and infrastructure proposals, tapping into new resources, and other processes that will have some kind of effect on the environment. It also explains why environmental impact reports can and should be requested for any project proposal to ensure that its endorsers are not acting environmentally negligent.

A relevant example of this is detailed in an article from the Environmental News Network titled “China’s War on Particulate Air Pollution is Causing More Severe Ozone Pollution.” For several years now the Chinese government has been working hard to reduce its air pollution and specifically, its particulate matter emissions (PM 2.5), that have been posing a huge threat to public health (pictured below). Some strategies include placing restrictions on “the number of cars on the road” and the emissions of “coal-fired power plants,” as well as replacing coal with natural gas (ENN 2019). Since 2013, “PM 2.5 concentrations in eastern China have fallen nearly 40 percent.” While this is a huge feat considering that China is one of the most congested cities in the world with respect to both population and pollution, the government likely did not take into account, or perhaps ignored, the complex chemistry associated with its environmental crisis, which has led to an increase in tropospheric ozone. As it turns out, the high level of particulate matter in China actually helped to block the production of ozone in the troposphere; therefore, China’s mission to reduce PM 2.5 caused a shift in the atmosphere’s chemistry allowing for easier ozone production. This example is relevant because it shows how a city’s seemingly innocuous mission to combat climate change can actually put it at greater risk due to inattention of each individual variable. It also offers insight into just how extensive and all-encompassing the field of environmental studies is. While its reduction of PM 2.5 reflects well on the government, the chemistry of the environment is a vast and complex force, so when one variable is altered as quickly as it was in the case of China, it can impact the entire system.

                                                                                                       (Phys.org 2016)

Word Count: 1189

Discussion Question: How should environmental issues be weighed in a time of global climate emergency, i.e., what is more urgent and who decides this? For example, should China be applauded for its efforts on the one hand of reducing PM 2.5 or held responsible on the other for its neglect to consider the entire ecological system thus ultimately aiding the facilitation of faster ozone production?

Work Cited

Van Buren, Edward. “Syllabus.”

Fordham. n.d. “Fordham Online Information | Academics | Academic Departments | Environmental Studies.” Fordham University. Fordham University. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20920/environmental_studies.

“Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studies.”

Van Buren, Edward. “Prof’s PowerPoint Notes.” https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RMjVGYUwwZlBXa28/view

“China’s War on Particulate Air Pollution Is Causing More Severe Ozone Pollution.” 2019. Environmental News Network. Harvard University. January 2, 2019. https://www.enn.com/articles/56327-china-s-war-on-particulate-air-pollution-is-causing-more-severe-ozone-pollution.

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Table of Contents.” Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

“Most Chinese Cities Fail Air Quality Standards in 2015: Greenpeace.” 2016. Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology. Phys.org. January 20, 2016. https://phys.org/news/2016-01-chinese-cities-air-quality-standards.html.

[acsversace-news]

At times it feels as though Ryan Murphy has an overwhelming number of shows, but there’s something special about American Crime Story. The first season of the anthology series, The People v. O.J. Simpson, swept the world by storm, dominating both critical conversations and achieving stellar ratings. For its second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace may not be as all-encompassing as the first season of the show. However, there’s a sense of urgency, consciousness, and care about the portrayal of these real-life people baked into the DNA of Versace that makes this season a worthy sequel to the O.J. season of the show.

The creators of American Crime Story know the show’s reputation and strengths and are cautious about capturing the perfect balance of pulpy drama and socially conscious storytelling. As we’re in the middle of the first big show of 2018, Decider had the opportunity to Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, executive producers for American Crime Story and FX’s upcoming musical drama Pose. The duo discussed the importance of telling the Versace and Cunanan story, the challenges of Ryan Murphy’s brand of storytelling, what it’s like working with FX, and what’s going on with the Monica Lewinsky and Hurricane Katrina seasons of American Crime Story.

“The first thing that Ryan pulled for was that we shoot in Miami, which is hard to do on a basic cable TV show,” Simpson said when asked about The Assassination of Gianni Versace‘s gorgeous cinematography. To achieve the show’s highly stylized and bright look, the team brought in two directors of photography — Nelson Cragg, who also directed Episode 2 “Manhunt” and worked on the O.J. season, and Simon Dennis, who worked on six episodes of the series.

“There’s a consistency [to the look of the show], but the show is darker and less vivid as we go back in time and see some of the murders. But also Ryan really wanted pink to be a central color of the show,” he said. “It’s important metaphorically because the show is in many ways about being gay, and pink is associated with that, but also we thought it was important because it was a big color in Miami, and it plays throughout the show with very clean lines.”

Simpson also revealed that the team used American Gigolo and the original Miami Vice for inspiration. “We hope that people enjoy the look while also getting more and more unnerved by it,” Simpson said.

The real story of Andrew Cunanan‘s murder spree was fairly sensationalized. However, the team was careful to be sensitive to these victims’ stories and portray them as people first. “The only victim that people really knew anything about was Versace and we wanted — to the best of our abilities — to tell the story of these other lives that were lost and for them to not sort of be lost in the shuffle of the celebrity victim who was the final victim and the one that everybody knew about,” Jacobson said. The team wasn’t able to learn much about William Reese, the victim who was murdered for his truck. However, they were able to expound on the stories of three of Cunanan’s other victims —Lee Miglin, David Madsen, and Jeff Trail.

“They had such complex stories to be told,” she said. “So much of what they experienced, the themes of homophobia and shame, the policies of being out at that time [are relevant], and we actually felt that rather than sensationalizing those murders, we wanted to humanize those victims.”

Though FX’s series largely sticks to its source material, there is a key difference between Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. While Orth outlines police missteps and the media’s response to this case, Versace largely glosses these details. When asked why these elements were excluded, Jacobson pointed to editing.

“A lot of details from the book were in our script and were shot. And then through the editorial process we found that sort of where you wanted to be was you with the people who were the center of the story,” she said. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together. So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”

Just as The People v. O.J. Simpson was just as much about race relations as it was about national scandal, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is equally about these horrific murders as it is about homophobia and what it was like to be gay during this time. The Versace season is one of the best forms of socially conscious television, a brand Murphy has perfected. However, there are challenges that come with creating TV this way.

“I think the central thing is that you can’t start with the issues, you know? We like a good page turner, in terms of our movies, in terms of our TV shows. Ryan understands, and in a weird way he’s sort of been able to cloak shows that actually have a lot of radical change under just really good storytelling,” Simpson said. “I think Glee did a lot of hurrying up the acceptance among millennials and teaching their parents about difference and homosexuality.”

Simpson admitted that when Murphy first presented the Versace story to them, they weren’t very familiar with all of Cunanan’s murders and didn’t fully see the larger meaning. “As we got into it we realized this is a show about what it was like to be gay during this incredibly complicated time in America. People were trying to come out of the closet across the country, and half the people were trying to shove them back into that closet,” he said. “We’re able to tell that story because it’s a really griping story about this really griping thriller. And I think that’s the secret sauce for Ryan and what we’re interested in too. This sort of literary pulp is compulsive, but it has something to say.”

Simpson expects Pose, FX’s 1980s musical that currently has the largest transgender cast ever announced for a scripted series, to have that same balance. “What Ryan’s doing essentially is telling a musical about people’s hopes and dreams. I think that’s the reason an audience is going to connect to it,” he said. “That’s exactly what makes for compelling TV.”

Jacobson also explained how timeliness has effected both seasons of American Crime Story. “So many of the cases of black deaths at the hands of police were unfolding just right when we were writing and producing O.J., so it felt incredibly immediate even though it was a period piece,” she said. “[Versace] too is a period piece, but this was a time when I was coming out.”

“Versace is the first, really the first major designer to come out not because he was visibly ill with AIDs, which the only other out designers were dead. They had come out because they were visibly ill, and that was the final image that people had of them,” Jacobson said. “Ellen wasn’t out yet. Elton John was out, but very few other celebrities were. And certainly I would say I remember few women were out at that time and how few role models there were. You tend to tell stories that you identify with, that speak to you in a way that moves you, and for us this was a story that moved us.”

Speaking of timely stories, when asked if there had been any talks about moving up the Monica Lewinsky season of American Crime Story in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Simpson those conversations have happened, though nothing is official yet.

“I think we’re kind of glad that we didn’t do Monica right after O.J. I think that this conversation [in Hollywood about sexual misconduct] will inform how we do it. I think that it will inform our perspective on it in a way that’s probably good and cause us to explore issues of consent and what it means to be in a relationship with a powerful man and a younger woman that maybe wouldn’t have been as nuanced before this conversation,” he said. “We might have focused more on the politics. But all of these [shows], we handcraft them … the reason we haven’t been rushing things on the air and pressed pause on Katrina is because we want them all to have resonance.”

As for Katrina, the Five Days at Memorial season is still happening, but there are no official developments yet. “We have a writer working on it,” Simpson said. “We decided to stop announcing when we’ll in production on things because we’ll be in production when the scripts come in, right? We’re hopeful that this new approach is going to be the right one.”

For FX’s part, from Donald Glover to Noah Hawley, the network has been outspoken about allowing its creators to take their time when it comes to producing quality seasons of new shows. “We put a lot of work into a few things, and they’re appreciative of that. They only make pilots that they think they want to program, and they’re not throwing things against the wall,” Simpson said. “I think it’s the smartest group of people working in TV. And it’s been great because our first couple of seasons of working on TV and working with Ryan, who’s also been a great mentor to us, has also coincided with John Landgraf’s team really getting recognized for what they do. As we watch shows like The Americans and Atlanta get noticed along with our shows, we feel like we’re in great company.”

As for FX’s future, the executive producers seemed optimistic about that as well. When asked how she thought Disney’s acquisition of Fox might effect FX, Jacobson said her former employer likely bought Fox because of its content. “It’s been a long time since I’ve worked there, and a lot has changed since I’ve worked there,” she said. “The offerings, I think, from Fox and FX are quite different, and I would assume that … they want those differences in terms of launching Hulu as a major competitor to Netflix and Amazon. But I have to assume they bought Fox because they see the talent that’s there and the library of great shows, and they want some of the differentiation.”

[armeniaitn]

Morning Coffee with Raffi Krikorian: On Twitter, Uber, Politics and Everything in Between

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/morning-coffee-with-raffi-krikorian-on-twitter-uber-politics-and-everything-in-between-28425-01-07-2020/

Morning Coffee with Raffi Krikorian: On Twitter, Uber, Politics and Everything in Between

Edited by Katrina Shakarian

Whether managing the team that repowered Twitter, leading the charge towards self-driving cars at Uber or maximizing political reach at the Democratic National Committee, Raffi Krikorian has forged a career combining two of his personal passions — technology and making the world a better place. 

Last October, the New York City native and MIT-graduate was in Armenia making his rounds for Tech Month. On a rainy morning between the World Congress on Information Technology and FAST Foundation Summit, Krikorian sat down with Hetq to discuss Armenia’s burgeoning tech scene and his personal ascent in the industry, including his current role as Managing Director of the Emerson Collective.

Describe your role as Vice President of Engineering-platform at Twitter. 

When I joined Twitter, I was about the 50th employee. It was still a small team thinking about how to grow Twitter to be a force in the world. They were transitioning between CEOs, specifically, to focus on growth and making the platform a big thing in the world. So, my mission was to build a system that would be responsive and manageable, to deliver services that Twitter users needed. In a short period of time, I grew my team and we built the entire infrastructure that powered Twitter. We re-examined every line of written code and rethought how to scale all of our systems. It took us two years to do this re-architecture.

At that time, Twitter grew from 50 to 3,000 people and my team grew from 1 to 500 people. It was a humbling experience to be part of that massive growth and to think, not only about technology, but also the team and how to hold them together under fast-changing circumstances. There is a difference between being a member of a small team and being the leader of a decent percentage of Twitter’s staff. Out of 3,000 people, 500 worked for me. Surviving that kind of growth — starting as an engineer and then quickly becoming a part of the executive team — was an interesting and super challenging experience. 

Why did you leave Twitter?

I quit my job for two reasons. First, I was tired. Second, I did everything I had set out to do. We had made Twitter reliable and its management cost-efficient. I’m not saying I was done, but we reached some major milestones. So, it seemed like a good time to leave. 

When I left Twitter, a part of me never intended to work again. Those five years at Twitter were the most intense of my life. I’ll never do anything like that again. I ended up taking six months off because I really needed rest. I needed time to remember who I was as a person. I also have a wife and two kids and everything is a matter of priorities. Time spent with them is my priority right now. 

My time at Twitter was something I’ll never regret. I learned so much in that intensity. There is something about surviving a storm that prepares you for other things. I was able to do it at that point in my life. If you are younger and can afford to spend time working on a problem intensively and see what you can get out of it, you should do it. But never on the account of your health. You should sleep, eat, exercise — it’s about self-care. 

How did you become Senior Director of Self-Driving at Uber?

When I left Twitter, I ended up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Six months later, it turned out that Uber was opening a center there. Through a bunch of coincidences, I got connected to the leadership and received an offer. It was a kind of unknown position at the time. No one knew exactly what to do with me. 

There was Uber’s 1-year-old self-driving car team — everyone had a Ph.D. in robotics and had been working together on different projects for about a decade. I had no Ph.D. in robotics, but I was the person with experience in product and running a very large team. So, I took a senior role in building teams and advising leadership. In the beginning, I was in charge of the software infrastructure that powered the cars — data centers, backend engineering, connectivity, everything except the robot itself. Then, I was the senior guy around helping to craft hiring processes and organizing in the background. 

What motivated you to join Uber? 

The main criteria for choosing a job is the mission and the problem. A self-driving car — this is super awesome, something that would fundamentally change the way cities are built. I had the feeling that it was going to have a huge impact on human life. That was my motive for joining Uber. 

How did management at Twitter and Uber compare to each other?

Both at Twitter and Uber, engineering failure was treated pretty well. Everyone had the realization that it takes a certain number of months to build a project. So, your assumptions at the beginning of a project are different from those when you finish it. When you get to the end, it might not work and that’s normal. But let’s say upper-level failures are more problematic. 

Twitter’s team was very experienced and I had the chance to learn a lot there. I would say Uber was much more hierarchical than Twitter was. During my time at Uber, the CEO was Travis Kalanick and everything was run by him. In my first few years at self-driving he was not very involved in what I was up to. I had the chance to manage the way I wanted to. Travis was a “just move fast today” kind of person. At one point he started paying attention to what I was running because he didn’t think we were moving fast enough. So, it’s another experience when a person in my role — a leadership role — clashes with another person in leadership. Being that fast was dangerous and I didn’t want to do it anymore. That’s why I quit my job at Uber.  

What led you to become Chief Technology Officer at the Democratic National Committee?

I knew nothing about politics. On Trump’s Inauguration Day, I watched him become president and thought about quitting my job and finding one that helps get him out of office. In the past, I had turned down amazing opportunities to work in government. And I feel like, given the results of the election, that I had missed those opportunities and I wanted to help fix what was happening in the U.S.

Being a CTO at the Democratic National Committee means finding the right channels to “talk” to people and analyzing the situation for better planning. American politics is unique because they spend a lot of money on elections. So, it’s basically about how you raise money, how you pursue people and how you make sure they vote. These are the top three things you do. My job was to use technologies to superpower that. 

How did working in politics differ from working for tech companies?

The first challenge was that the language of politics is completely different. The second challenge was that tech is not as revered in politics as it is in IT companies. As a VP at Twitter or running self-driving at Uber, every department wanted to talk to me. In politics, no one wanted to talk to a person like me. For them the tech people are people around printers. So it took longer to reeducate them on what the technology team is. 

In Silicon Valley, when we say “this isn’t working,” it doesn’t insult. It means we need to solve this problem right now. But when you say that kind of stuff in politics, everyone takes it as an insult. It took me six months to realize that I was insulting everyone. All in all, it took another six months to a year for me to learn how to talk to people and communicate the importance of the tech department and tech people in politics. I went through these challenges because I thought that we needed a different president and that was my way of contributing to the change.

What does being Managing Director at the Emerson Collective entail?

I joined the Democratic Party to get Trump out of office. I also hoped, naively, that I could impact the way technology is thought about in the U.S. It turned out that wasn’t the case. It was purely about politics, which is fine. At the Emerson Collective, we think about immigration, healthcare, the environment, climate change. My job is thinking about how to use tech to our advantage and trying to make all those issue areas better. I spend a lot of time making tech investments, doing tech philanthropy stuff, and slowly trying to figure out how to build products that we can deploy to create change in those areas.

Why did you join the board of the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies? 

It’s been almost seven years that I’m a Board Member at TUMO and it’s for the same reason that I’m at the Emerson Collective — there is nothing better than investing in kids and having an impact on social issues. TUMO is a free educational center for teenagers specializing in technology and design. It’s specifically set up to figure out how we can augment the education of children, renormalize it, make it normal for them to have access to amazing people from around the world that come and teach them. I view it as an investment in the future of the country. 

In the U.S., my sister and I went to an Armenian school twice a week to learn the language and culture. All the books there were about Armenian villages. When I had the opportunity to come to Armenia six years ago, I remember coming to Yerevan expecting to see what I had read in those books. I remember calling my father and saying, “You didn’t tell me the whole story.” I didn’t expect to see a big thriving city. My first meeting in Yerevan was at TUMO center. I was just puzzled. There is no place in the world that looks like TUMO. That’s when I became more interested in what it means to do tech ecosystem development in Armenia.

What are your impressions of the Armenian tech ecosystem? 

There are some interesting technology companies that I would like to introduce to a global market and get investment for. I am interested in how we learn about this ecosystem, how this ecosystem fits, and what it takes to get from point A to point B. I feel like Armenia is set up around science and technology in such an amazing way, that if we mix it with global thinking and product design thinking, we can build game-changing products here instead of outsourcing.  

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[sounds10thapr1976-blog]

Onto the actual text this time, including a Contents page so you should be able to work out how long you have to wait for the articles you’re interested in.

Page 2     SOUNDS     April 10, 1976

CONTENTS

FEATURES David Bowie 12-14 Bill Bruford 16 War 17 PFM 18-19 Kate and Anna McGarrigle 19 Led Zeppelin 20 Bachman Turner Overdrive 27 Clive Davis 30 Guitar Special 32-39 Miracles 45

REGULARS News 2-4 Charts 6 Wax Fax 7 High Society 8-10 Jaws 11 Albums 20-24 Singles 40-41 Reggae 41 Fair Deal 42 Letters 44 Steppin’ Out 46-48 On The Road 49-51 New Sounds 54

SOUNDS

EDITOR Alan Lewis

DEPUTY EDITOR Alf Martin

FEATURES EDITOR Barbara Charone

SPECIAL PROJECTS Phil Sutcliffe

NEWS EDITOR Hugh Fielder

EDITORIAL Geoff Barton Dave Fudger Susanne Garrett Vivien Goldman Jonh Ingham Tony Mitchell

CONTRIBUTORS Mick Brown Giovanni Dadomo Flip Fraser Jerry Gilbert Dan Hedges Robin Katz Dave Laing John Peel

PHOTOGRAPHER Mike Putland

IN AMERICA Toby Goldstein 212 672 3166 Al Rudis Steve Rosen Ted Joseph Peter Crescenti

ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER Jonathan Ward

TELEPHONE SALES MANAGER Eddie Fitzgerald

ADVERTISEMENT PRODUCTION Len Driver

MANAGING DIRECTOR Jack Hutton

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Mike Sharman

ADVERTISEMENT DIRECTOR Peter Wilkinson

Spotlight Publications, Stoplight House, 1 Benwell Road, London N7 7AX. Telephone: 01-607 6411.

NEWSDESK

KISS MAYHEM Three attacks by the US destroyers

KISS, US kings of heavy rock in heavy make-up, are at last to play three gigs in Britain next month.

Despite the transatlantic publicity they have so far made little impact on record here but their fourth UK album ‘Destroyer’ will be released on Casablanca to coincide.

The label also plan to back up the full frontal assault on the British market with giveaways at the concerts including arm bands and Kiss masks and a TV advertising campaign.

The dates are: Manchester Free Trade Hall May 13, Birmingham Odeon 14, Hammersmith Odeon 15. The band may use their own jet-liner on the tour.

‘UNOFFICIAL’ FLOYD A PINK FLOYD single taken from ‘Wish You Were Here’ is being released in this country in a special limited edition of 10,000.

It will be ‘Have A Cigar’ b/w ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ and comes through an exclusive distribution deal arranged by Lightning Records with the Dutch company who originally released it.

The last of the official Floyd singles released in the UK was ‘Point Me At The Sky’ and they have recently again vetoed any further single releases here, though they put them out in every other record buying country, because of what they regard as the lightweight pop image of the charts here.

ALVIN, FAIRPORT IN FOOTBALL FEST BANK HOLIDAY Monday is now set to be the biggest day ever in live rock in the UK – another huge football ground festival probably starring Alvin Lee has been announced, coinciding with the Who and Co. putting the boot in at Charlton (see opposite page).

The Southend Charity Festival Committee say that contracts are expected to be signed this week for a line-up starring Alvin and Friends, Budgie, and the debut of the new Fairport Convention.

Support acts planned are The Dave Bromberg Band, Magna Carta, the Mickey Jupp Band and Crossbreed with our very own John Peel compering.

Confirmation came from the business end Alvin and the Fairports that they were likely to do the gig though it was still being negotiated – neither band’s line-up has yet been announced.

The Festival is run for the benefit of Christian Aid relief and development projects in the third world.

It starts at 11 am and runs through to 9pm at Southend United Football Ground. Tickets are now on sale from the ground in Victoria Avenue at £2 though they will be £2.50 on the day. Postal applicants should send an SAE with cheques and postal orders made out to ‘Southend Sounds ’76.’

SOME OF THESE KNIGHTS GLADYS KNIGHT And The Pips will tour Britain later this month doing two shows a night in five venues, her last visit for some time as she is pregnant.

The dates are: Bournemouth Winter Gardens April 23, Manchester Palace 24, Southport New Theatre 25, London New Victoria 27, Birmingham Odeon 30.

They will be bringing their own rhythm section and the tour coincides with the UK release of their States hit ‘Midnight Train To Georgia’.

Gladys is also starring in a movie titled ‘Pipedreams’ due for release in Britain in the autumn.

STILL NO TUBES Tubes’ record company A&M say that they cannot tour the UK in May as their new album ‘Young and Rich’ (produced by Ken Scott who worked on the Supertramp albums) will be released then and they will be touring the States to promote it.

But they have been trying to arrange a London venue to do a possible week of shows later in the year as well as provincial dates and A&M said they were “virtually certain” to come to Britain in ’76.

RECORD NEWS

JON DOES THE LOT Jon Anderson, who plays just occasional acoustic and percussion with Yes, has been a one-man band on his solo album ‘Olias Of Sunhillow’ released by Atlantic on May 7. He wrote the words and music and plays all instruments including keyboards and harp.

He will perform excerpts from it on OGWT on May 11 and get a spot in the Daily Telegraph colour supplement on the release date. Yes start a three-month tour of the States in late May.

REAL THING release a single in mid-May to tie in with their guest appearance with David Essex at Earl’s Court on May 15.

BARNEY JAMES, ex-drummer with Rick Wakeman’s English Rock Ensemble, has his first solo single out on April 9 on the Solddon label. Titled ‘All The Prizes Taken’ it’s from his album ‘Koneg – The Second Coming’ scheduled for May release.

JOHNNY TAYLOR’S US number one hit ‘ Disco Lady’ has been rush released in the UK by Columbia. Taylor is a soul black veteran who first recorded in the 50s and had a string of hits on Stax during the past decade, including the classic ‘Who’s Making Love’. He joined Epic after the recent Stax collapse.

FREDDIE MACK, who played ‘Mr ‘Superbad’ in the K-Tel TV ads for the album of the same name last year, has a single of the same name out on Contempo on April 23. It’s called ‘Mr Superbad’.

LINDA LEWIS, whose current single on Bell is a Van McCoy song ‘Baby I’m Yours’, is heading for New Orleans to record with Allen Toussaint. Later in the summer she will co-star with John Miles in a Mike Mansfield TV special.

GRAND FUNK have signed to EMI International for the world outside North America.

NANARETH’s single ‘Love Hurts’ and album ‘Hair Of The Dog’ have both gone gold in the States.

ANNE-KARINE THINGNAES, Norwegian Eurovision Song Contest entry ‘Mata Hari’ is being released by DJM in the UK.

MOON WILLAIMS new single on DJM ‘Every Time I Take The Time’ will be ‘endorsed’ in radio ads by admirers including Deep Purple, The Rubettes, Angie Bowie and Biddu.

SHIRLEY BASSEY has a single called ‘Natali’ released on April 9 by United Artists. It’s taken from an Album ‘Love Life And Feeling’ out on April 23.

BONNIE DOBSON is recording a new album for Polydor and tracks so far completed include ‘Morning Dew’ (which she originally wrote) ‘A Taste Of Honey’, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’. The album is scheduled for July release.

URIAH HEEP have finished work on their new album, ‘High And Mighty’, which is the first that the band have produced themselves. It will be released in May.

ARISTA RECORDS have taken over Haven Records in America which gives them such artists as the Righteous Brothers, Gene Redding, Willie Harry Nelson, Eve Sands, and Rob Grill and the Grassroots. The Righteous Brothers and Willie Harry Nelson have albums due for release shortly.

‘THE HAPLESS Child And Other Inscrutable Stories’ is the title of an album released by Virgin next weekend. The music is by Mike Mantler and lyrics by Edward Gorey and among those taking part are Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley, Terge Rypdal, Steve Swallow and Jack De Johnette.

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Next time: page three

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Inside Alfred Hitchcock’s Art Collection, from a Fake Picasso to Authentic Paul Klees

Alfred Hitchcock plays with a magnifying glass on the set of his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1956. Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images.

The decor was unusual, to say the least, at Norman Bates’s 12-room motel in filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror movie, Psycho (1960). Menacing taxidermied birds framed the walls of the office parlor, hovering above an assortment of painted female nudes that included a reproduction of Venus with a Mirror (ca. 1555) by Renaissance artist Titian. A strategically placed copy of Susannah and the Elders (ca. 17–18th century) by Dutch artist Willem van Mieris concealed a peephole used for peering into room number one. Like a Baroque version of Psycho’s famous shower scene, Susannah and the Elders pits a vulnerably nude bathing woman against the violent voyeurism of a male predator.

The motel office interior and its display of portentous art was envisioned by Hitchcock, who designed detailed sets for the more than 50 films he directed during his six-decade career. “In many of his films, Hitchcock gave very specific indications to production designers and set decorators [about] what to use,” said Steven Jacobs, an art historian specializing in connections between film and the visual arts, and the author of The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (2007).

A landscape by French 19th century painter Rosa Bonheur hangs above the bar in Dial M for Murder (1954), framing the murderous husband’s silhouette as he pours an inquiring police inspector a brandy. The psychiatrist’s office in The Wrong Man (1956) is aptly decorated with Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne’s The House of the Hanged Man (1873), visible when the lead character learns his wife will be committed for her catatonic condition. A Pablo Picasso still life hangs above the fireplace in the home of the wealthy socialite couple in Suspicion (1941), suggesting fine—albeit inscrutable—taste.

All onscreen details were important to Hitchcock, and he wanted audiences to notice both the background scenery and the foreground characters. After all, his fans were trained to look for the director’s famous cameo appearances in nearly every film (even when they came after the one-hour mark, as in 1946’s Notorious). The artworks integrated into his set designs always serve to underline and amplify the themes of his films.

How the famed director chose to decorate his own abode was another story. One might imagine interiors reflecting his British upbringing or, alternatively, a love of the macabre. But offscreen, the artworks Hitchcock chose to surround himself with were incredibly eclectic and more conventionally bourgeois; perhaps unexpectedly so, given the master of suspense’s infamous penchant for murder and intrigue.

A collection “of variable interest and quality”

Susannah and the Elders, . Willem van Mieris Capsule Gallery Auction

Venus with a Mirror, ca. 1555. Titian National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

A painted portrait of his daughter, Patricia, hung above the fireplace of the Bel Air home he moved into during the early 1940s shortly after relocating to Hollywood, and lived in until his death in 1980. The portrait of Patricia shared living room real estate with a mahogany grand piano and a Salvador Dalí drawing, Le Chevalier de la Mort (1944), inscribed to the director as a gift after the two collaborated on the dream sequence for the psychological thriller Spellbound (1945). In the hallway and bathroom, a Chinese terracotta figure stood near a lithograph by Expressionist painter Georges Rouault, an artist Hitchcock admired because, just as he repeatedly made films around the same themes, he felt that Rouault “was content with judges, clowns, a few women, and Christ on the Cross.”

In the master bedroom, an angular floral still life by modern artist Bernard Buffet joined the company of Persian miniature watercolors of maidens preparing ladies for bath and bed. The guest room had an opera scene attributed to FauvistHenri Matisse and a crayon sketch of a young girl by figurative artist Marie Laurencin. A Pablo Picasso still life also hung in the director’s home for decades, until a 1970 art appraisal revealed that it was a forgery; the artist himself reviewed a photograph of the work and scribbled faux (French for fake) across the print. A multitude of stylistic plots were interwoven throughout the Hitchcock home.

The House of the Hanged Man, 1873. Paul Cézanne Musée d'Orsay, Paris

“The Hitchcocks’ collection reflects a wide variety of styles, artists, and subjects, more indicative of a lifestyle than a deliberate approach,” noted Nathalie Bondil, director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, who collaborated on the exhibition “Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences” (2000–01). “Works in their eclectic collection are of variable interest and quality.”

This hodgepodge collection began around 1944, and Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, chose new acquisitions together. The selection criteria were straightforward and loose. “Mrs. H and I never acquired a painting unless it was liked by both of us,” Hitchcock told one of his biographers. Thankfully they had similar tastes, leaning mostly toward colorful modernists. Alma’s favorite artist was Parisian painter Maurice Utrillo (the couple owned two of his painted street scenes), and Hitchcock singled out Swiss modernist Paul Klee (by whom the pair owned three works). “Klee could have made good storyboards, you know,” said Hitchcock.

Hitchcock was an art connoisseur, an interest that began when he took art history and painting classes in London as a teenager. His first film industry job, in fact, was as an illustrator of intertitle cards for silent films. And he was an avid collector of art books, stockpiling them at home and at work. “His office at Universal Studios contained a surprising number of art books, which Hitchcock liked to regularly consult, often choosing some illustration or other to show his art director and/or his cinematographer to indicate what he wanted in a particular shot,” explained Ken Mogg, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story (1999). “Undoubtedly Hitchcock’s lifetime interest in art fed directly into his filmmaking.”

“Above all it is the picture which is the thing”

ALFRED HITCHCOCK, 1964. Bob Willoughby Huxley-Parlour

Hitchcock understood art, incorporated artworks of historical significance into his films, and was a collector. And his approach to filling the blank canvas of the silver screen was that of an artist. “[I]t’s just like designing composition in a painting,” Hitchcock said. “Or balance of colors. There is nothing accidental.”

Accidental or not, Hitchcock’s critics accused him of favoring image over content and compared his films to live-action comic strips. (The director didn’t disagree.) Scriptwriters sometimes complained about working with him because he imagined visually powerful scenes, but was less concerned with how they connected to each other in a convincing narrative.

Alfred Hitchcock and his Sealyham Terrier, 1974. Philippe Halsman °CLAIR Galerie

Alfred Hitchcock, An Englishman spends a winter evening at home, 1939. Peter Stackpole Heritage Auctions

“A film has got to be ocularly interesting and above all it is the picture which is the thing,” Hitchcock wrote in 1936. “I try to tell my story so much in pictures that if by any chance the sound apparatus broke down in the cinema, the audience would not fret and get restless because the pictorial action would still hold them!”

At home, the pictorial action of Hitchcock’s personal art collection must have held his attention. He liked selecting paintings about which he could make up stories, perhaps mentally constructing a sequence of storyboards to follow—the image of an ominous tree by French artist Chaim Soutine that hung in his dining room, for example, or the mosaic of birds designed by Cubist George Braque that he commissioned for his garden.

It is tempting to imagine that Hitchcock planned his famous film, The Birds (1963), while enjoying a sunny day on his patio and studying that mosaic, but the director never spelled out any direct link between his personal collection and his work. It remains a bit of a Hitchcockian mystery.

“Oh by the way,” Hitchcock did say in his trailer for Psycho, while pointing to Susannah and the Elders and looking directly into the camera, “this picture has great significance because…” The director paused, averted his eyes downward, and then looked back at the camera. “Uh, let’s go along to cabin number one.” The meaning is never quite made clear.

Of the paintings he chose to spend his life with at home, Hitchcock said simply, yet cryptically, “they become a part of you.”

from Artsy News

[nancydsmithus]

A Detailed Comparison Between WordPress And October CMS

A Detailed Comparison Between WordPress And October CMS

Leonardo Losoviz

2019-03-18T12:00:28+01:002019-03-18T11:37:39+00:00

Three months ago, WordPress finally released React-powered Gutenberg to power its default content editing experience, triggering many people who are not happy with this change to look for alternatives. Some folks decided to fork and release pre-Gutenberg WordPress, however, for me this doesn’t make much sense since it still carries 15 years worth of technical debt. If I were to find an alternative to WordPress, I would try to avoid being stuck in the past, and aim for a clean cut through some mature platform built on modern foundations.

This article compares WordPress to the arguably similar yet more modern October CMS on a wide arrange of both technical and non-technical topics. The goal of the article is not to convince people to stick to WordPress or to switch to October CMS, but simply to demonstrate what aspects must be taken into account before concluding the move to a different platform. The same comparison could (and should) also be done with other platforms before making a sensible decision.

Why October CMS

I found out about October CMS when it won an award, after which I went into research mode and spent a good deal of time digging deep into this CMS — from the perspective of both a user and a developer. As I gained knowledge on this CMS, I felt confident that I could provide an objective evaluation of its features as contrasted to WordPress. I chose this CMS for the comparison over alternative options such as Grav, Statamic, ButterCMS, Joomla, Drupal, Jekyll, Hugo, and others, for the following reasons:

I know how this CMS works (unlike Grav);

It is free and open source (unlike Statamic and ButterCMS);

At five years, it is “relatively” new (unlike Joomla and Drupal);

It is a dynamic (not static) content generator and based in PHP (unlike Jekyll and Hugo).

I believe that October CMS is a good candidate because it is based on Laravel which is a framework used for building modern applications. After seven years of existence, it has received positive approval from developers (as evidenced by its sizeable community and ecosystem), and marks a distinct contrast over coding in WordPress, i.e. WordPress is mostly procedural programming while Laravel is decidedly object-oriented programming.

What’s The Difference Between The Two?

Below I will compare WordPress and October CMS on different categories and highlight what, I believe, is good and not so good about them. However, I will not pick a winner, since that’s not the objective of the article and, in any case, there is no “best” or even “better” CMS: each CMS has its own set of strengths and weaknesses that will make it more or less suitable for each task, project, company, team, and anything else. Moreover, a project may benefit from using more than one CMS, such as using some CMS to manage and provide data, and another CMS to render the view. To decide which of the dozens of CMSs out there is most suitable for your own needs is entirely up to you.

In addition, this article could never draw definitive conclusions since it is only concerned with a subset of all possibilities. For instance, we can also find online comparisons such as “WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla”, “WordPress vs Static Site Generators” and even “WordPress vs Medium”. Because none of these articles sees the full picture, then none of these comparisons can ever be conclusive, and should not be treated as such.

Let’s start with the comparison.

Philosophy And Target Group

It is no coincidence that WordPress powers nearly 1 in 3 websites. Ever since its inception, it has strived to be extremely user-friendly and has done so successfully, removing friction for technical and non-technical users alike as well as for people from all backgrounds — irrespective of their education and economic levels. WordPress’ founder Matt Mullenweg expressed that WordPress’ motto of “Democratize Publishing” for the current era meant the following:

“People of all backgrounds, interests, and abilities should be able to access Free-as-in-speech software that empowers them to express themselves on the open web and to own their content.”

WordPress is easy to use for everyone and its inclusivity is evidenced on the development side too: It’s not uncommon to find people without a programming background (such as marketers, designers, bloggers, sales people, and others) tinkering with their WordPress installations, designing their own themes and successfully launching their own websites. WordPress is user-centric, and the needs of the users trump those of the developers. In WordPress, the user is king (or queen).

In contrast, October CMS is more geared towards the developer, as explicity established from its very first release:

“October makes one bold but obvious assumption: clients don’t build websites, developers do. The role of a client is to manage the website and convey their business requirements. The web developer, and the industry itself, revolves around mediating these factors.”

In the words of its founders, the CMS’ mission is to “prove that making websites is not rocket science.” Being based on Laravel, October CMS can claim to have strong foundations of reusable, modular code that can produce properly-architected applications, maintainable in the long term and fully customizable without requiring hacks — the type which attracts serious programmers. October CMS can also provide a great user experience, however, it is not as simple or frictionless as that provided by WordPress. Users may need to be explained how to use certain functionality before being able to use it. For instance, embedding a form from some plugin has a lengthy explanation on how to do it, which is more cumbersome than the self-evident, drag-and-drop functionality provided by several form plugins in WordPress.

Installation

WordPress is famous for its 5-minute installation, even though many people point out that (taking into consideration all the plugins that must be installed) a typical installation requires 15 minutes or more. In addition, WordPress also offers the Multisite feature, which allows us to create a network of multiple virtual sites under a single installation. This feature makes it easy for an agency to administer the sites of multiple clients — among other user cases.

Installing October CMS is also very smooth: The Wizard installation itself takes even less than five minutes, and if you install it through the Console installation, it is even faster. You can do the latter by simply navigating to the target directory and then executing curl -s https://octobercms.com/api/installer | php (after which we need to input the database configuration, otherwise it behaves as a flat-file CMS). Once the installation has been completed, we will have a fully functioning website, but still quite bare (if you add the time needed to install and configure the required plugins, you can expect it to take at least 15 minutes).

Installing October CMS with the Wizard is a breeze. (Large preview)

Security

WordPress has been accused of being insecure due to the high amount of vulnerabilities that are constantly found. This forces users to have the software for the CMS and all installed plugins always up to date to avoid security exploits. Among the main issues is WordPress’ support for older versions of PHP which are not supported by the PHP development community anymore (WordPress currently supports PHP 5.2.4, while the latest fully supported PHP version is 5.6). However, this problem should be resolved in April 2019 when WordPress will officially start supporting PHP versions 5.6 and upwards.

Otherwise, WordPress is not necessarily insecure because of itself, but because of its high popularity, which makes it a primal target for hackers. However, this plays both ways: WordPress ubiquity means that its security team must really take their job seriously by constantly looking for exploits and fixing them as soon as possible, otherwise up to a third of the web is at risk. The stakes are just too high.

October CMS, on the other hand, doesn’t have a reputation of being insecure. However, since there are roughly 27,000 live sites that use October as compared with WordPress’ millions, we can’t judge the two of them on the same terms. Nevertheless, the team behind October CMS does take security seriously, as evidenced by the Wizard installation’s prompt to input the CMS backend URL, set as /backend by default but changeable to anything else, as to make it more difficult for hackers to target the site. In contrast, changing WordPress’ login and backend URLs from /wp-login.php and /wp-admin respectively to something else must be done through a plugin. In addition, October CMS can function as a flat-file CMS (i.e. without a database) and avoid database-related vulnerabilities such as SQL injection.

Technology Stack

Both WordPress and October CMS run on the traditional LAMP stack: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. (However, only PHP is fixed: we can also use Windows, Nginx, MariaDB, and others.) October CMS can also behave as a flat-file CMS, meaning that it can do without a database, however, at the cost of forgoing many functionalities (such as blog posts and users) the only functionality that is guaranteed is pages, which is considered to be the basic unit for the creation and publishing of content and shipped as a core feature.

Concerning the language stack, sites built with both WordPress and October CMS are based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (note that PHP is used to generate the HTML). October CMS also makes it easy to use LESS and SASS files.

Programming Paradigm

WordPress follows a functional programming paradigm, based on calculating computations by calling functions devoid of application state. Even though WordPress developers do not need to stick to functional programming (for instance, for coding their themes and plugins), the WordPress core code inherits this paradigm from 15 years of preserving backwards compatibility, which has been one of the pillars to WordPress’ success but which has the unintended consequence of accumulating technical debt.

On the other side, October CMS follows an imperative programming paradigm, based on calculating computations by manipulating objects’ state. October CMS sits on top of Laravel, a web framework fully founded on Object-Oriented Programming principles that enable the production of modular applications based on concepts such as the Model-View-Controller to decouple the user interface from the application data, Dependency Injection to configure class dependencies, and the Interface Segregation Principle to define the core services provided by the framework, among many others.

Hooks/Events

Programming in WordPress could be characterized as HDD which stands for “Hook-Driven Development”. A hook is a mechanism that allows changing a default behavior or value and allowing other code to execute related functionality. Hooks are triggered through “actions” which allow executing extra functionality, and “filters” that allow modifying values.

Hooks, which are widespread across the WordPress codebase, are one of the concepts that I most like from coding in WordPress. They allow plugins to interact with other plugins (or with a core or theme) in a clean way, providing some basic support of Aspect-Oriented Programming.

Good news is that Laravel (and in consequence October CMS) also supports the concept of hooks, which is called “events”. Events provide a simple observer implementation, enabling code to subscribe and listen for events that occur in the application and react as needed. Events make it possible to split a complex functionality into components, which can be installed independently yet collaborate with each other, thus enabling the creation of modular applications.

Dependence on JavaScript Libraries

The latest version of WordPress incorporates React-powered Gutenberg for its default content creation experience. Hence, WordPress development now relies by and large on JavaScript (predominantly through React), even though it is also possible to use other frameworks or libraries (as evidenced by Elementor Blocks for Gutenberg which is based on Marionette). In addition, WordPress still relies on Backbone.js (for the Media Manager) and jQuery (legacy code), however, we can expect the dependence on these libraries to wither away as Gutenberg is consolidated as the new norm.

October CMS depends on jQuery, which it uses to implement its optional AJAX framework to load data from the server without a browser page refresh.

Pages, Themes and Plugins

Both WordPress and October CMS treat a page as the basic unit for creating and publishing content (in WordPress case, in addition to the post), support changing the site’s look and feel through themes, and allow to install and extend the site’s functionalities through plugins. Even though the concepts are the same in both CMSs, there are a few differences in implementation that produce somewhat different behavior.

In WordPress, pages are defined as content and stored in the database. As a result, page content can be created through the CMS only (e.g. in the dashboard area), and switching from one theme to another doesn’t make an existing page become unavailable. This produces an overall frictionless experience.

In October CMS, on the other hand, pages are static files stored under the theme directory. On the positive side from this architectural decision, page content can be created from an external application, such as text editors like Sublime or Visual Studio Code. On the negative side, when switching from one theme to another, it is required to manually recreate or copy the pages from the current to the new theme, or otherwise, they will disappear.

Significantly, October CMS resolves routing through pages, hence pages are used not just as containers for content but also for functionality. For instance, a plugin for blogging depends on a page for displaying the list of blog posts under a chosen URL, another page to display a single blog post under another chosen URL, and so on. If any of these pages disappear, the associated functionality from the plugin becomes unavailable, and that URL will produce a 404. Hence, in October CMS themes and plugins are not thoroughly decoupled, and switching themes must be done carefully.

October CMS enables the creation of content from external applications. (Large preview)

Core vs Plugin Functionality

WordPress attempts to deliver a minimal core functionality which is enhanced through plugins. WordPress relies on the “80⁄20 rule” to decide if to include some functionality in its core experience or not. If it benefits 80% of the users it goes in, otherwise, it belongs to plugin-land. When adding plugins to a site, they can lead to bloat if too many plugins are installed. Plugins may also not work well with one another, or execute similar code or load similar assets, resulting in suboptimal performance. Hence, whereas launching a WordPress site is relatively easy, a bigger challenge is its general maintenance and being able to preserve an optimal and performant state when adding new features.

The WordPress plugin directory claims to have almost 55,000 plugins. (Large preview)

Likewise, October CMS also attempts to deliver a minimal core functionality, but on steroids: the only guaranteed functionality is the creation and publication of pages, and for everything else we will need to install one plugin or another, which is expressed as:

“Everything you need, and nothing you don't.”

The objective is clear: most simple sites are only composed of pages, with possibly no blog posts, users or login area. So why should the application load resources for these when they are not needed? As a consequence, functionalities for blogging, user management, translation and several others are released through the plugin directory.

Searching for 'Rainlab' in October’s plugins directory displays plugins created by October CMS' team. (Large preview)

October CMS also includes certain features in its core which (even though they are not always needed) can enhance the application significantly. For instance, it provides out-of-the-box support to upload media files to Amazon S3 and accesses them through the Rackspace CDN. It also includes a Media Manager which is mostly used through plugins, e.g. for adding images into a blog post. (Pages can also use the Media Manager to embed media files, however, the CMS also ships with an Assets section to upload media files for these which seems more suitable.)

I believe that October’s opinionatedness can perfectly enable us to produce an application that is as lean as possible — mostly concerning simple sites. However, it can also backfire and encourage bloat, because the line of what is needed and what is not is an arbitrary one, and it’s difficult to be set in advance by the CMS. This difficulty can be appreciated when considering the concept of a “user”: In WordPress, website users and website admins belong to the same user entity (and through roles and privileges we can make a user become an admin). In October CMS, these two are implemented separately, shipping in core the implementation for the website administrator which can log in to the backend area and modify the settings, and through a plugin the implementation of the website user. These two types of users have a different login process and a different database table for storing their data, thus arguably breaching the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle.

This problem arises not only concerning the behavior of an entity but also what data fields it must contain. For instance, should the website user data fields be predefined? Is a telephone field required? What about an Instagram URL field, considering that Instagram got kind of cool only recently? But then, when building a professional website shouldn’t we use a LinkedIn URL field instead? These decisions clearly depend on the application and can’t be decided by either CMS or plugin.

The October CMS plugin called User implements users but without any user field, on top of which plugin User Plus adds several arbitrary user fields, which are possibly not enough, so plugin User Plus+ adds yet other user fields. When, where and how do we stop this process?

Another problem is when there is no room to add new capabilities to an entity, which leads to the creation of another, extremely similar entity, just to support those required capabilities. For instance, October CMS ships with pages, and allows to create “static pages” through a plugin. Their nature is the same: both pages and static pages are saved as static files. The only difference between them (as far as I can tell) is that static pages are edited with a visual editor instead of the HTML editor, and can be added to menus. In my opinion, only structural differences, such as having one entity saved as a static file and the other one stored in the database, could justify creating a second entity for a page (there is a pull request to do this), but for simple features, as is the case currently, it constitutes development bloat.

In summary, a well implemented October CMS application can be very lean and efficient (e.g. by removing the database when not needed), but on the contrary it can also become unnecessarily bloated, forcing developers to implement several solutions for similar entities, and which can be very confusing to use (“Should I use a page or a static page?”). Because neither WordPress or October CMS has found a perfect solution for removing bloat, we must design either application architecture with care to avoid down-the-road pain.

Content Creation

Gutenberg makes two important contributions to WordPress: It uses components as the unit for building sites (which offers several advantages over coding blobs of HTML), and it introduces an entity called a “block” which, once Gutenberg Phase 2 is completed (presumably in 2019), will provide a unified way to incorporate content into the site, thus enabling a simpler user experience as opposed to the more chaotic process of adding content through shortcodes, TinyMCE buttons, menus, widgets, and others.

Since WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg is the default content creation experience. (Large preview)

Because Gutenberg blocks can produce and save static HTML as part of the blog post, then installing many Gutenberg blocks doesn’t necessarily translate into bloat on the website on the user side, but can be kept restricted to the admin side. Hence, Gutenberg can arguably be considered a good approach to produce websites in a modular way, with a simple yet powerful user experience for creating content. Possibly the biggest drawback is the (unavoidable, but not easily so) requirement to learn React, whose learning curve is rather steep.

If React components are the basic unit for creating content in WordPress, October CMS is based on the premise that knowing good old HTML is enough for building sites. Indeed, when creating a page, we are simply presented an HTML (Markup) editor:

Creating a page in October CMS. (Large preview)

If the page were solely static HTML, then there would be no need for a CMS. Instead, October CMS pages are written using Twig templates which are compiled to plain optimized PHP code. They can select a layout to include the scaffolding of the page (i.e. repetitive elements, such as the header, footer, and so on), can implement placeholders, which are defined on the layout to allow the page to customize content, and can include partials, which are reusable chunks of code. In addition, pages can include content blocks, which are either text, HTML or Markdown files that can be edited on their own and can attach components which are functionalities implemented through plugins. And finally, for whenever HTML is not enough and we need to produce dynamic code, we can add PHP functions.

The editor is all about HTML. There is no TinyMCE textarea for adding content in a visual manner — at least not through the default experience (this functionality belongs to plugin-land). Hence, having knowledge of HTML could be considered a must for using October CMS. In addition, the several different inputs for creating content (pages, layouts, placeholders, partials, content blocks, components, and PHP functions) may be very effective, however, it is certainly not as simple as through the unified block interface from WordPress. It can even get more complex since other elements can also be added (such as static pages and menus, and snippets), and some of them, such as pages and static pages, seemingly provide the same functionality, making it confusing to decide when to use one or the other.

As a result, I dare say that while pretty much anyone can use a WordPress site from the admin side, October CMS is more developer-friendly than non-technical user-friendly, so programmers may find it a joy to use, but certain other roles (marketers, sales people, and the like) may find it non-intuitive.

Media Manager

Both WordPress and October CMS are shipped with a Media Manager which allows adding media files to the site effortlessly, supporting the addition of multiple files simultaneously through a drag-and-drop interface and displaying the images within the content area. They look and behave similarly; the only notable differences I found are that WordPress’ Media Manager allows to embed image galleries, and October’s Media Manager allows to manually create a folder structure where to place the uploaded files.

October CMS ships with a powerful Media Manager. (Large preview)

Since the introduction of Gutenberg, though, WordPress’ media capabilities have been enhanced greatly, enabling to embed videos, pictures and photo galleries in place as compared to within a TinyMCE textarea (which only provides a non-accurate version of how it will look like in the site), and unlocking powerful, yet easy-to-use features as shown in this video.

Internationalization

WordPress core uses gettext to enable the translation of themes and plugins. Starting from a .pot file containing all strings to translate, we need to create a .po file containing their translation to the corresponding language/locale, and this file is then compiled to a binary .mo file suitable for fast translation extraction. Tools to perform these tasks include GlotPress (online) and Poedit (downloadable application). Conveniently, this mechanism also works for client-side localization for Gutenberg.

Poedit allows to translate strings for themes and plugins for WordPress. (Large preview)

WordPress currently doesn’t ship any solution in core to translate content, and will not do so until Phase 4 of Gutenberg (targeted for year 2020+). Until then, this functionality is provided by plugins which offer different strategies for storing and managing the translated content. For example, while plugins such as Polylang and WPML store each translation on its own row from a custom database table (which is clean since it doesn’t mix content together, but slower since it requires an additional INNER JOIN of two tables when querying the database), plugin qTranslate X stores all translations on the same field from the original database table (faster for querying the data, but content mixed all together can produce wreckage on the site if disabling the plugin). Hence, we can shop around and decide the most suitable strategy for our needs.

October CMS doesn’t ship the multilingual functionality through its core, but as a plugin created by the October CMS team that guarantees a faultless integration into the system. From a functional point of view, this plugin delivers what it promises. From a development point of view, it is not quite ideal how this plugin actually works. In WordPress, a page is simply a post with post type “page” and there is a single translation mechanism for them, but in October CMS, there are entities “page”, “static page” and “blog post” and, even though quite similar, they require three different implementations for their translations! Then, the content from a “page” can include message codes (e.g. codes called nav.content, header.title, and so on), each of which contains its translations for all locales as a serialized JSON object in database table rainlab_translate_messages. The content from a “static page” is created into a new static file per locale, however, all translated URLs for all locales are stored not in their corresponding file but instead on the default language’s file. The content for the “blog post” is stored as a serialized JSON object with one row per locale in database table rainlab_translate_attributes and the translated URL is stored with one row per locale in database table rainlab_translate_indexes. I don’t know if this complexity is due to how the plugin was implemented or whether it is due to October CMS’ architecture. Whichever the case, this is another instance of undesired bloat on the development side.

Plugin Management

Both WordPress and October CMS offer a sophisticated plugin manager which allows to search for plugins, install new plugins, and update currently-installed plugins to their latest version — all from within the backend.

October CMS enables to keep all plugins up-to-date effortlessly. (Large preview)

Dependency Management

October CMS uses Composer as the package manager of choice, enabling plugins to download and install their dependencies when being installed, thus delivering a painless experience.

WordPress, on the opposite side, hasn’t officially adopted Composer (or any PHP dependency manager) because the community can’t agree if WordPress is a site or a site dependency. Hence, if they require Composer for their projects, developers must add it on their own. With the switch to Gutenberg, npm has become the preferred JavaScript dependency manager, with a popular developer toolkit depending on it, and the client-side libraries being steadily released as autonomous packages in the npm registry.

Interaction With The Database

WordPress provides functions to retrieve database data (such as get_posts) and store it (such as wp_insert_post and wp_update_post). When retrieving data, we can pass parameters to filter, limit and order the results, in order to indicate if the result must be passed as an instance of a class or as an array of properties and others. When the function doesn’t fully satisfy our requirements (e.g. when we need to do an INNER JOIN with a custom table) then we can query the database directly through global variable $wpdb. When creating a plugin with a custom post type, the code will most likely be executing custom SQL queries to retrieve and/or save data into custom tables. In summary, WordPress attempts to provide access to the database through generic functions in the first stage, and through low-level access to the database in the second stage.

October CMS employs a different approach: Instead of connecting to the database straight away, the application can use Laravel’s Eloquent ORM to access and manipulate database data through instances of classes called Models, making the interaction with the database also be based on Object-Oriented Programming. It is high-level access; just by following the rules on how to create tables and set-up relationships among entities, a plugin can retrieve and/or save data without writing a line of SQL. For instance, the code below retrieves an object from the database through model Flight, modifies a property, and stores it again:

$flight = Flight::find(1); $flight->name = 'Darwin to Adelaide'; $flight->save();

Upgrading The Data Model

Another reason for WordPress’ success (in addition to not breaking backward compatibility) has been its database architecture, which was engineered to enable applications to grow over time. This objective is accomplished through “meta” properties, i.e. properties that can be loosely added to a database object at any moment. These properties are not stored in a column from the corresponding entity table (either wp_posts, wp_users, wp_comments or wp_terms), but instead as a row in the corresponding “meta” table (wp_postmeta, wp_usermeta, wp_commentmeta or wp_termmeta) and retrieved doing an INNER JOIN. Hence, even though retrieving these meta values is slower, they provide unlimited flexibility, and the application’s data model rarely needs to be re-architected from scratch in order to implement some new functionality.

WordPress provides unlimited flexibility for upgrading the application’s data model. (Large preview)

October CMS doesn’t use meta properties but instead can store several arbitrary values, which are not directly mapped as columns in the database tables, as a serialized JSON object. Otherwise, when an object needs some new property, we need to add a new column on the corresponding table (which is the reason behind plugins User Plus and User Plus+, mentioned earlier on). To update the application’s database schema, October CMS relies on Laravel’s Migrations, which are sets of instructions to execute against the schema (such as add or drop a column, rename an index, etc) and which are executed when upgrading the software (e.g. when installing a plugin’s new version).

Headless Capabilities

Both WordPress and October CMS can be used as headless, i.e. treating the CMS as a content management system that makes content accessible through APIs, which allows to render the website on the client-side and can power other applications (such as mobile apps). Indeed, WordPress is steadily heading towards headless, since the Gutenberg content editor itself treats WordPress as a headless CMS (and, as a consequence, Gutenberg can also work with any other CMS too, as Drupal Gutenberg demonstrates).

A headless system needs to implement some API to return the data, such as REST and GraphQL. WordPress supports REST through WP REST API (merged in core), exposing endpoints under some predefined route /wp-json/wp/v2/...; October CMS supports REST through plugins RESTful and API Generator, which allow to create custom endpoints and, as a consequence, support versioning as part of the endpoint URL and can offer a better security against bots. Concerning GraphQL, WordPress supports it through WPGraphQL, while October CMS currently has no implementations for it.

Quite importantly, a headless system needs to offer powerful content management capabilities. As mentioned earlier on, WordPress has a very solid database architecture, offering a plethora of data entities (users, posts and custom posts, pages, categories, tags and custom taxonomies, comments) over which the application can be reasonably well modelled, meta properties to extend these data entities (enabling the application to upgrade its data model accordingly and without major changes), and with plugin Advanced Custom Fields filling the gap to construct relationships among the data entities. In addition, plugin VersionPress allows to version control the database content using Git. Hence, WordPress is undoubtedly a good fit for managing content, as demonstrated in several projects in the wild.

On its part, and as mentioned earlier on, October CMS can omit the database and behave as a flat-file system, or it can have a database and behave as a hybrid, storing the content from pages as static files and blog posts (and others) on the database. As a consequence, content is not centralized, and its management involves a different approach. For instance, while we can use Git to version control pages, there is no support to version control the database per se; the solution to this is to populate data into the database through Seeders which, being code, can be put under version control and executed upon deployment. In addition, October CMS doesn’t offer a baked-in database model featuring predefined data entities that can support the needs of most applications. Hence, more likely than not the application will need custom development to implement its data model, which means more work, but also means that it can be more efficient (e.g. accessing a property from a column is faster than from a row in another table through an INNER JOIN, which is the case with WordPress’ meta properties).

CLI Support

Both WordPress and October CMS can be interacted with from the console through a Command Line Interface (CLI): WordPress through WP-CLI and October CMS through Laravel’s Artisan. In addition to Laravel’s commands, October CMS implements several custom commands for updating the system, migrating the database, and others. These tools make it very convenient to access the site from outside a browser, for instance for testing purposes.

Managed Hosting

It is not a problem finding a managed hosting provider for a WordPress site: given WordPress’ market share, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of providers out there vying with each other for the business, constituting a very dynamic market. The only problem is finding the most suitable provider for our specific sites based on all of their offerings, which can vary based on price, quality, type (shared or dedicated services), bandwidth and storage size, customer support, location, frequency of renewal of equipment, and other variables which we can navigate mainly through reviews comparing them (such as this one, this one or this one).

Even though nothing near as many as WordPress, October CMS still enjoys the offering from several hosting providers, which allows for some consideration and selection. Many of them are listed as October Partners, and several others are found DuckDuckGoing, but since I haven’t found any independent review of them or article comparing them, the task of finding out the most suitable one will take some effort.

Marketplace, Ecosystem And Cost

WordPress’ commercial ecosystem is estimated to be USD $10 billion/year, evidencing how many people and companies have managed to make a living by offering WordPress products and services, such as the creation of sites, hosting, theme and plugin development, support, security, and others. Indeed, its size is so big it is even bloated, meaning that it is very common to find different plugins solving the same problem, plugins that underdeliver, underperform or have not been updated for years, and themes which seem to look-alike each other. However, when creating a new site, the size and variety of the ecosystem also means that we will most likely find at least one plugin implementing each of the required functionalities, enabling us to save money by not having to develop the functionality ourselves, and the availability of customizable themes enables to produce a reasonably distinctive-looking site with minimal effort. As a consequence, we can easily create and launch a WordPress site for less than USD $100, making WordPress a sensible option for projects of any budget.

Being relatively new (only five years so far), OctoberCMS certainly doesn’t enjoy anything near WordPress’ marketplace and ecosystem sizes, however, it has been growing steadily so its size is bound to become bigger. Currently, its marketplace boasts 600+ plugins, and only a handful of themes. Concerning plugins, the October CMS team is requesting the community to put their effort into the creation of original plugins, delivering functionality not yet provided by any other plugin.

Hence, even though 600+ plugins doesn’t sound like much, at least these translate into 600+ different functionalities. This way, even though it is not possible to choose among several vendors, at least we can expect to have those basic website features (such as blogging, comments, forum, integration with social media, e-commerce, and others) to be covered. Also, since October’s founders are personally reviewing all submitted plugins and judging them according to quality guidelines, we can expect these plugins to perform as expected. As another plus, October plugins can incorporate elements from Laravel packages (even though not all of them are compatible with October, at least not without some hacks). Concerning themes, the low number of offerings implies we will most likely need to develop our own theme by hiring a developer for the task. In fact, I dare say that the theme in October CMS will most likely be a custom development, since themes and plugins are not thoroughly decoupled (as explained earlier), with the consequence that a market for easily-swappable themes is more difficult to arise. (This is a temporary problem though: once this pull request is resolved, pages will be able to be stored in the database, and swapping themes should not disrupt functionality.)

In my opinion, because of the smaller offerings of themes and plugins, creating a simple site with OctoberCMS will be more expensive than creating a simple WordPress site. For complex sites, however, October’s better architecture (Object-Oriented Programming and Model-View-Controller paradigms) makes the software more maintainable and, as a consequence, potentially cheaper.

Community

Being a part of and having access, WordPress’ community represents one of the most compelling reasons for using WordPress. This is not simply as a matter of size (powering nearly one third of all websites in the world, there are so many stakeholders involved with WordPress, and its community is representatively big) but also as a matter of diversity. The WordPress community involves people from many different professions (developers, marketers, designers, bloggers, sales people, and so on), from all continents and countries, speaking countless languages, from different social, educational and economic backgrounds, with or without disabilities, from corporate, not-for-profit and governmental organizations, and others. Hence, it is quite likely that, for whatever problem we encounter, somebody will be able to help on any of the support forums. And contributing to WordPress is pretty straightforward too: The Make WordPress group congregates stakeholders interested in supporting different projects (accessibility, design, internationalization, and many others) and organizes how and how regularly they communicate — mostly through some dedicated channel on its Slack workspace.

Furthermore, the WordPress community is real and tangible: it doesn’t exist just online, but it gathers offline in WordCamps and meetups all over the world; in 2018, there were a total of 145 WordCamps in 48 countries with over 45,000 tickets sold, and a total of 5,400 meetup events from 687 meetup groups. Hence, it is likely that there is a local chapter nearby which anyone can join to ask for help, learn how to use the platform, keep learning on a regular basis, and teach others as well. In this sense, WordPress is not just a CMS but, more importantly, it’s also people, and considering to leave WordPress should never be done only on its technical merits but on the power of its community, too.

WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017 drew more than 200 attendees, coming from several countries. (Large preview)

October CMS’ community is nothing near in size or diversity as WordPress’, even though it has been growing steadily following the increasing popularity of the software. October provides a support forum to ask for help, however, it is not very active. A Slack workspace exists which is pretty active and where, quite importantly, October’s founders participate regularly, helping make sure that all enquiries are properly addressed. This channel is a great source for learning low-level tips and tricks about the software, however, it is geared towards developers mainly: There are no channels concerning accessibility, design, internationalization, and other topics as in the WordPress community, at least not yet. Currently, there are no conferences concerning October CMS, but there is Laracon, the conference for the Laravel community.

Maintainers And Governance

Can we trust that the software will be maintained in the long term, so that if we decide to start a project today, we will not need to migrate to some other platform down the road? How many people are taking care of developing the software? And who is deciding in what direction the software moves towards?

Powering one-third of all sites in the world, WordPress is not short of stakeholders contributing to the software; hence we need not fear that the software will fall into decay. However, WordPress is going through internal deliberations concerning its governance model, with many members of the community expressing that decisions concerning WordPress’s direction are being taken unilaterally by Automattic, the company running WordPress.com. Center stage of this perception was the decision to launch Gutenberg, which many members disagreed with, and which suffered a lack of proper communication by the project leads during its development and release. As a consequence, many community members are questioning the role of “benign dictator”, which has been historically granted to WordPress’ founder and Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg, and researching different governance models to find a more suitable one for the future of WordPress. It is yet to be seen if this quest produces any result, or if the status quo perseveres.

Decisions concerning October CMS’ direction are mainly taken by founders Alexey Bobkov and Samuel Georges and developer and community manager Luke Towers, which keep the project going strong. October CMS doesn’t have the luxury of having a governance problem yet: Its current concern is how to make the project sustainable by generating income for the core software’s maintainers.

Documentation

WordPress documentation in its own site is not extremely comprehensive, but it does the job reasonably well. However, when taking all of the documentation about WordPress into account from all sources, such as general sites (Smashing Magazine, CSS tricks, and many others), specialized sites (WPShout, WPBeginner, and many others), personal blogs, online courses, and so on, there is practically no aspect of dealing with WordPress that hasn’t already been covered.

October CMS doesn’t enjoy anything near the many third-party courses, tutorials or blog posts about it as much as WordPress does, however, the documentation on its site is reasonably comprehensive and certainly enough to start coding. October founders also regularly add new documentation through tutorials. One aspect that I personally enjoyed is the duplication of Laravel’s documentation into October’s documentation for everything of relevance, so the reader must not fill the gaps by him/herself and having to guess what is October’s domain and what is Laravel’s. However, this is not 100% perfect. October’s documentation uses terms originating from Laravel, such as middleware, service containers, facades and contracts, without adequately explaining what these are. Then, reading Laravel’s documentation in advance can be helpful (luckily, Laravel’s documentation is decidedly comprehensive, and Laravel’s screencasts, Laracasts, are another great source of learning, not just concerning Laravel but web development in general).

Conclusion

I set out to discover what features may be enticing for developers looking for alternatives to WordPress by comparing WordPress to a similar CMS, which I defined as being free and open source, based in PHP and producing dynamic content, and enjoying the support from some community. From the CMSs fulfilling these conditions, I chose October CMS for the comparison because of the knowledge I got about it, and because I appreciated its clean and modular coding approach as provided by Laravel, which could offer a fresh and modern perspective for building sites.

This article did not intend to pick a winner, but simply analyze when it makes sense to choose one or the other CMS, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. There is no “best” CMS: only the most suitable CMS for a specific situation. Furthermore, anyone looking for a CMS to use on a particular project with a specific team and given a certain budget, should do some research and compare all the offerings out there to find out which one is most suitable for the particular context. It’s important not to limit to a few CMSs as I’ve done here in this article, but instead give a chance to all of them.

On a personal note, as a developer, what I found in October CMS is really appealing to me, mostly its ability to build modular applications as provided through Laravel. I would certainly consider this CMS for a new website. However, in the process of writing this article I also “rediscovered” WordPress. Being so popular, WordPress receives more than its fair share of criticisms, mostly concerning its old codebase and, since recently, the introduction of Gutenberg; however, WordPress also has certain excellent features (such as its super-scalable database model) which are seldom praised but should be taken into account too. And most importantly, WordPress should not be considered on its technical aspects alone: in particular, the size of its community and ecosystem places it a level or two above its alternatives. In a nutshell, some projects may benefit from sticking to WordPress, while others may better rely on October CMS or another platform.

As a final note, I would like to remark that exploring how another CMS works is a very rewarding activity on its own, independent of the decision reached concerning whether to use that particular CMS or not. In my case, I had been working for years on WordPress alone, and delving into October CMS was very refreshing since it taught me many things (such as the existence of PHP Standards Recommendations) which I had not been exposed to through WordPress. I may now decide to switch CMSs, or stick to WordPress knowing how to produce better code.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

Caching Smartly In The Age Of Gutenberg

Improving WordPress Code With Modern PHP

Lessons Learned While Developing WordPress Plugins

How To Use Heatmaps To Track Clicks On Your WordPress Website

Be Watchful: PHP And WordPress Functions That Can Make Your Site Insecure

(rb, ra, yk, il)

[updatedc-blog]

New Post has been published on https://www.updatedc.com/2019/01/04/rotolight-anova-pro-2-hands-on-review/

Rotolight Anova Pro 2 Hands-On Review

Rotolight’s Anova Pro 2, is a bi-color (a daylight only version is also available) LED fixture that is color temperature changeable from 3150K to 6300K. The light is also flicker free at any output and is a good option for anyone who does both photography and video. I reviewed the original Anova Pro back in 2016 so it will be interesting to see if the sequel is better than the original.

How is it different from the original Anova Pro?

The Anova Pro 2 is the follow up to the companies Anova Pro. At first glance the lights look to be identical, so what has changed? Most of the changes are under the hood and are related to increased output, but there are also plenty of other new features. Rotolight claims that the Anova Pro 2 has 70% more power output than its predecessor. To get this power increase the light now draws 72W compared to the 48W of the original Anova Pro. The Anova Pro 2 can also flash at 250% of its maximum continuous output when used in Flash Sync Mode. This is up from the 150% that the original Anova Pro was capable of.

A lot of this increased output has to do with the fact that Rotolight is now using 960 LEDs instead of the 576 that are in the original Anova Pro.

There is also more special lighting effects, 14 in total, including a ‘chase’ mode which uses DMX to control a line of lights to simulate a moving light source such as streetlights. There is also a new Exposure Effects (X-FX) mode that lets you create a stroboscopic effect for creating multiple exposure images.

Speaking of DMX, the light now includes DMX which can be used to control up to 512 wireless slaves from one Anova Pro 2. There is also an RJ45 DMX (in/out) socket and an Auto set-up function for quickly configuring channel settings when you are using large numbers of lights.

A few other nice new features in the Anova Pro 2 are:

TECH menu/FINE dimming mode – allows perfect smooth dimming to 0% across the color range

CNTL menu / BASE / AUTO – auto setup mode, allowing you to set up ANOVA / NEO2 and AEOS slaves with one button push

CNTL menu / BASE / AUTO / NEXT- auto DMX addressing mode, allowing you to set an individual DMX address on each ANOVA / NEO2 and AEOS slave with one button push

CNTL menu / BASE / AUTO / LOCK- prevents accidental over-writing of configured ANOVA / NEO2 and AEOS slaves with one button push

If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Despite all of these new additions, I like that Rotolight hasn’t tinkered too much with the Anova Pro 2. It still retains every feature that I originally liked about the original Anova Pro, but addresses my biggest complaint, which was output.

According to Rotolight, the design philosophy with the Anova Pro 2 was to “Deliver a light that out of the box produces a very flattering, soft light source that almost gives the effect of a naturally diffused light.” The rationale for making the light round is to create a catchlight effect in the eye, and to give it a flattering ‘wrapping light quality’.

It’s not hip to be square

I’ve never quite understood why so many companies continue to make a square or rectangular light. In my opinion, it makes a lot more sense to actually use a circular-shaped light, especially for interviews or when shooting faces. Our heads aren’t square, either are our eyes. A lot of softboxes are also round, so why not make a light that is also round. I have found from prior experience that the circular Rotolight fixtures create really nice catch lights in peoples eyes.

It’s nice to see that Rotolight has continued to keep their lights round, especially since most lighting companies continue to pursue making 1×1 or square/rectangular LED fixtures.

Different versions

The Anova Pro 2 is available in several configurations. There is a bi-color version that is available with a 50-degree beam angle, or you can choose to get the 110-degree beam angle model. There is also a daylight only (5600K) version available. The LEDs used on all of the models are carefully spaced to ensure that each individual LED beam overlaps. The benefit of doing this is that the hundreds of individual LED elements give the appearance of coming from one source, to deliver one single uniform shadow. The problem with a lot of LED lights with a wide beam angle (over 90 degrees) is that the individual LEDs end up creating weird shadows.

The light I will be reviewing is the 50-degree version.

CineSFX

The light has a built-in set of CineSFX lighting effects that allow you to recreate effects that normally would require specialist equipment. These include Strobe, Lightning, Fire, Cycle, Throb, Police, TV, Spin, Weld, Spark, Film, Neon, Roto, Gunshot, Film, Paparazzi, and Chase. While some of the effects are the same that can be found in the original Anova Pro, not only has the company added a few more options, but they have also given users the ability to further fine-tune their parameters.

These CineSFX can be remotely triggered using either a wired DMX trigger or wirelessly triggerable using the PC sync port on the back of the light. There is also a feature called FX slave which allows the Anova Pro 2 to act as a DMX master controller for not only previous generation Rotolights but also third-party light sources with DMX inputs. This eliminates the need for additional DMX controllers or expensive flicker boxes on set. Rotolight says you can control up to 512 channels in a single DMX universe. The CineSFX effects really are impressive, and they can come in very handy for creating lighting situations in the field that would otherwise be very difficult to replicate. Rotolight was arguably the first company to offer special effects in a portable LED light, and since that time many other manufacturers have followed suit.

Along with the CineSFX, there are also True Aperture Dimming and Designer Fade effects. True Aperture Dimming calculates and displays the correct aperture (F-Stop) for your subject at a given distance. In theory, this eliminates the need for using a light meter in certain situations. You can also adjust your brightness level, to coincide with your desired aperture (F-Stop). It is unfortunate that it doesn’t also show T-stops for those using the light with proper cinema lenses. The Designer Fade effect lets you dial in preset times for custom fade up / fade downs which can be handy for certain projects.

There is also Exposure Effects (X-FX) mode for stroboscopic effects for creating multiple exposure images. This is primarily for use for photographers.

Great for photography and video

If those features weren’t enough, the Anova PRO 2, just like the original Anova Pro, are the only bi-color LED lights in the world that has a built-in flash sync port. This means that for a stills photographer, you can replace your strobe (in certain situations) and it does so with no recycle time with high-speed sync capability. When in flash sync mode, the light is able to flash at 250% of its maximum continuous output. This is up from the 150% that the original Anova Pro was capable of.

Unlike the original Anova Pro, the Anova Pro 2 has a built-in Elinchrom Skyport receiver that provides wireless triggering plus brightness and color adjustments at distances up to 656′. You can control up to 10 lights in 4 groups.

Rotolight recommends the following triggers: Rotolight HSS Transmitter (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic) Elinchrom HS Transmitter Plus (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic) Godox X1T (use with Godox X1R receiver) Pixel King Pro (Sony, Canon, Nikon) Flashpoint R2 Phottix ODIN II  (HSS) (canon, Sony, Panasonic) PocketWizard (HSS) Cactus VI II (HSS) (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus)

For those who are shooting both stills and video, this product eliminates the need for two separate purchases and removes many of the constant downsides of shooting with strobe (e.g. your flash not firing because of recycle time). If your job calls for both stills and video, or you’re working in multimedia, this function alone should put the Anova Pro 2 right at the top of your list of lights to look at.

I’m not going to do any in-depth testing of the photography features of this light as Newsshooter is primarily aimed at video shooters. There are plenty of examples online if you are interested in seeing how the light performs specifically for photography use.

What do you get?

The Anova Pro 2 comes with a LEE 6 piece filter set (3 x diffusion, 3 x magenta). This is nice to have and gives you a lot of creative freedom for making subtle adjustments to the light. You also get a built-in V-lock battery plate, built-in Elinchrom Skyport receiver, built-in DMX, and a 110-240V power supply unit. I was reviewing the Masters Kit, which comes with everything I just mentioned, plus the addition of a hard flight case and barn doors.

I also like that Rotolight includes a proper manual with the light. Too often these days companies don’t include a manual. It’s really nice to have an actual paper reference for a product and not have to go searching for one online.

Build Quality

The overall build quality of the Anova Pro is very good. It is certainly well made and feels like a professional product that would stand the test of time. The light is as well made as other Rotolight products and doesn’t have the cheap plasticky feel of so many other lights on the market. The dials and switches have been well designed and feel solid to use.

My only gripe is that I didn’t feel like the yolk angle adjustment knobs tightened sufficiently enough. No matter how hard I tried to tighten them I could still always move the light. This is something that shouldn’t happen with a light of this quality.

The barn doors attach via four heavy duty locking knobs so there is no chance of them rattling around or falling off.

The light weighs in at 3.34 kg/ 7.36 lb (Including Yoke). As a comparison, the Litepanels Astra Bi-color weighs 3.4kg (7.6lb), and the KinoFlo Celeb 200 weighs 6.8kg (15lb). The Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW weighs 3.7kg (8.15lb), and the Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW tips the scales at 3.15 kg (6.96lb)

Filters

Rotolight uses a nice quick solution for installing and securing filters. A wire ring with six inward-facing metal rods holds the filters in place. A small removable pin on the latches allows for the ring to be lifted and a filter inserted. Once the filter is in place you just push the frame down and secure the pins. I found from using the light I only had to remove one pin to put a filter in. This makes it very quick and convenient for swapping filters in and out.

The nice thing about the filters is that you can easily stack multiple filters together if you need to. The filters themselves are very thin and quite fragile. While they do the job they are supposed to do, you need to take care when handling or transporting them. If you do happen to rip or tear any of them Rotolight does sell replacements.

No RGB

With so many manufacturers now moving towards making RGB LED lights I wondered why Rotolight hadn’t decided to go down that route. When I asked Rotolight about this they told me “Rotolight is currently developing other products around the latest RGB technology. We have made so many improvements to the Anova Pro 2, and its user base like the characteristics of the light (Naturally soft light output, round catchlight, exceptional CRI, etc). This is now the 4th generation Anova, and we have been selling them for 5 years now, so we have kept the initial design philosophy, added much to it, improved the output and the color reproduction.”

Whether you actually need an RGB light really depends on the type of work you do, but most of the current offerings feature a host of additional features such as +/- green correction as well as an increased Kelvin color temperature range.

Having the ability to control green and magenta is huge. Being able to match other fixtures as well as getting rid of any green or magenta that you may see when using the light is a very handy real-world feature that I personally use a lot.

As far as the RGB color and effects modes go, while they are great to have available, I don’t tend to use those features that much in my line of work. In saying that, being able to generate different colors is handy for lighting up backdrops or creating color separation during interviews. It’s also nice to be able to use the light to help illuminate green screens very easily.

These are features that you won’t find on the Rotolight Anova Pro 2.

No smartphone/tablet control (yet)

Rotolight used to have an IOS app called Magic Eye that gave you wireless control over your light. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to exist any longer, so the Anova Pro 2 can’t be controlled via an app. This is a real pity as so many of the lights that are now on the market can. I would have liked to have seen an app for controlling the Anova Pro 2. As the light has so many features, it would have been nice to be able to control them and make adjustments without having to physically keep walking back to the light.

In saying that, now that all the Rotolight products have an Elinchrom Skyport chip built in, you can use the Rotolight transmitter to wirelessly control color temperature, brightness, trigger SFX and fades (and get a real-time display of those colors and brightness levels), set up groups etc, which somewhat negates the actual need for the app.

When I asked Rotolight about why there wasn’t an app, I was told “The Magic Eye APP worked with ANOVA V1 and V2, using 802.11b wifi from an iOS controller. In iOS 8.1 Apple broke the rules and changed the way iOS devices negotiate with third-party devices, their system handshakes a couple of identifiers at 802.11b and for no good reason then starts talking only at 12Ghz, which was beyond the range of the wifi chip we used. The exciting news is that we are working on a revised version of the APP which we hope to launch early in the new year, and this will be able to control any of our products wirelessly with a range of 200 meters, as well as third-party products using wired DMX via a nifty Basestation called ‘The Magic Box’. The APP will be a free download.”

Low power draw

The low power draw of the Anova Pro 2 is perhaps its most impressive feature. The light draws just 72W watts at 100% output, which gives it a huge advantage over most other battery-powered-capable lights on the market. As a comparison, the Litepanels Astra Bi-color 1×1 draws 110W, the KinoFlo Celeb 200 draws 100W, the Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW draws 200W, and the Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW draws 120W. This low power draw allows you to run the Anova Pro 2 at full power for a considerable amount of time using a 95Wh battery. This makes the light a very good proposition for news and documentary shooters who often need to set up lights in remote places and run them off camera batteries. Knowing that you can power the light and get sustained runtime gives you piece of mind if you’re shooting live crosses or long interviews.

Rotolight also makes their own 95Wh v-lock batteries with cells sourced from Japan. The battery weighs in at 725g (25.77oz), and has a built-in d-tap output that can also be used to charge the battery. A single battery costs $314.16 USD and a d-tap travel charger can be bought for $64.99 USD. If you buy the masters kit, which includes barn doors and a flight case, there is a nice cutout spot to keep a battery and the charger.

Output

A big factor for a lot of people when buying a light is how much output it can produce. I tested the lights output at 3200K and 5600K using a Sekonic C-700 at a distance of 1m (3.28ft) in a controlled environment; you can see the results below.

Rotolight Anova Pro 2 output at 3200K

At 3200K the Anova Pro 2 (50-degree version) recorded an output of 4480lx at a distance of 1 meter. This was a pretty good output. The original Anova Pro (50-degree beam angle) version that I tested put out 3790lx at the same distance and Kelvin color temperature setting. Rotolight claims that the Anova Pro 2 light is 70% brighter than the original, but from my testing, I found that when used at 3200K, the Anova Pro 2 was only 18.2% brighter than the original 50-degree version that I reviewed.

  Rotolight Anova Pro 2 output at 5600K

At 5600K it recorded 4600lx, which was a 2.67%% increase over what the light outputs when used at 3200K.  Again, this was a pretty good output for a LED light that can be powered off a camera battery. The original Anova Pro (50-degree beam angle) version that I tested put out 3400lx at the same distance and Kelvin color temperature setting. I found that the output of the Anova Pro 2 (50-degree beam angle) was 35.3% higher than that of the original when used at 5600K. The light’s output at 5600K was impressive given its size and low power consumption.

Rotolight Anova Pro 2 output at 4110K

As the Anova Pro 2 uses a combination of daylight and tungsten LED’s, the lights maximum brightness is obtained when it is set at 4110K. Above you can see that when I tested it at 4110K it produced an output of 7580lx. This is certainly a very impressive output for a light this size, but again you need to keep in mind that this sort of output is only available at this Kelvin color temperature. In saying that, you can still get a similar output if you use the light within a few hundred Kelvin degrees of 4110K. Rotolight claims that the lights output at 4110K when measured at a distance of 3ft. / 0.9m is 10,700lx. When I measured the light at the same distance I found it had an output of 10,000lx.

So how does the output at 3200k and 5600K compare to other competition? Well, below you can see.

3200K Rotolight Anova Pro Bi-colour 50 degree: 3,790lx Rotolight Anova Pro 2 Bi-colour 50 degree: 4,480lx Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1 (90 degree): 2,200lx KinoFlo Diva Lite 200 (90 degree): 2,980lx Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW (72 degree): 3,560lx Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW (115 degree): 4,150lx

5600K

Rotolight Anova Pro Bi-colour 50 degree: 3,400lx Rotolight Anova Pro 2 Bi-colour 50 degree: 4,600lx Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1 (90 degree): 3,000lx KinoFlo Diva Lite 200 (90 degree): 3,060lx Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW (72 degree): 3,380lx Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW (115 degree): 4,380lx

As you can see, the Rotolight Anova Pro 2 output at both 3200K and 5600K is very impressive. The light even manages to top the high output of the Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW. In saying that, it is important to note that the Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW, Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1, and the KinoFlo Diva Lite 200 have built-in diffusion panels and a lot wider beam angle than the Rotolight.

Kelvin Color Temperature Accuracy

As far as color temperature accuracy is concerned, the Anova Pro at 5600K gave me a kelvin reading of 5696K and a ⊿uv (the value to show how much this light is away from being an ideal light source) of -0.0028. At 3200K it recorded 3256K and a ⊿uv of -0.0043. These are excellent results and give you peace of mind that when you set the light at a certain color temperature, that’s the color temperature you’re actually going to get.

Color Rendering

After testing the output and color temperature accuracy I then wanted to test the Anova Pro 2 for color accuracy. Has color accuracy been compromised to deliver more output? Below you can see the results for the light at 3200K.

Rotologht Anova Pro 2 color rendering scores at 3200K

At 3200K the light recorded an average CRI (R1-R8) of 95.6 and an extended CRI (R1-R15) of 93.1. As far as replicating accurate skin tones the Anova Pro recorded 89.3 for R9 (red), 98.4 for R13 (closest to caucasian skin tones), and 98.4 for R15 (closest to Asian skin tones). The score for R12 (blue) was a little lower than I would have expected, but the overall results for proper skin tone reproduction were very good.

Rotologht Anova PRO color rendering scores at 3200K

So how does this compare to the original Anova Pro? Above you can see the results. At 3200K the light recorded an average CRI (R1-R8) of 93.0 and an extended CRI (R1-R15) of 92.09. As far as replicating accurate skin tones the Anova Pro recorded 76.4 for R9 (red), 95 for R13 (closest to caucasian skin tones), and 94.3 for R15 (closest to Asian skin tones). The Anova Pro 2 has a slightly better extended CRI that that of the original, but most importantly, the scores for R9, R13, and R15 have all improved. It’s good to see that Rotolight has been able to improve the color rendering from the original and also increase the power.

Rotologht Anova Pro 2 color rendering scores at 5600K

When I tested the light at 5600K the scores were almost identical to those at 3200K. At 5600K it had an average CRI (R1-R8) of 94.6, and an extended CRI (R1-R15) of 91.9. For replicating accurate skin tones it recorded 97.3 for R9 (red), 98.6 for R13 (closest to caucasian skin tones), and 95.4 for R15 (closest to Asian skin tones). These were excellent results, but again, the light seems to have a problem with R12 (blue), scoring just 61.2. To be fair to Rotolight, the KinoFlo Diva Lite 2000 also struggles with R12 (blue), recording just 72.6. In saying that, I tested the light by shooting a color checker chart and didn’t find that this low score for R12 didn’t make any noticeable difference at all.

Rotologht Anova PRO color rendering scores at 5600K

So how does this compare to the original Anova Pro? Above you can see the results. At 5600K it had an average CRI (R1-R8) of 94.7, and an extended CRI (R1-R15) of 92.09. For replicating accurate skin tones it recorded 97.7 for R9 (red), 98.4 for R13 (closest to caucasian skin tones), and 95.7 for R15 (closest to Asian skin tones). At 5600K the Anova Pro and Anova Pro2’s results are almost identical.

Below you can see a head to head comparison of color accuracy between the Rotolight Anova Pro, Rotolight Anova Pro 2, Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1, Kinoflo Diva Lite 200, Luxli Timpani, and Superpanel 1×1′ Full Color 30 RGBW.

3200K

Rotolight Anova Pro Bi-colour 50 degree Average CRI (R1-R8) – 93 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 89.66 R9 (red) – 76.4 R13- (closest to caucasian skin tones) – 95 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 94.3

Rotolight Anova Pro 2 Bi-colour 50 degree Average CRI (R1-R8) – 95.6 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 93.1 R9 (red) – 89.3 R13- (closest to caucasian skin tones) – 98.4 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 98.4

Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1 CRI (R1-R8) – 98.6 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 97.32 R9- (red) – 95.5 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 99.5 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 98.4

KinoFlo Diva Lite 200 CRI (R1-R8) – 96.8 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 95.22 R9- (red) – 91.6 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 96.1 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 98.5

Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW  CRI (R1-R8) – 96.5 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 95.45 R9- (red) – 92.6 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 96.1 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 96.3

Lupo Superpanel 1×1′ Full Color 30 RGBW CRI (R1-R8) – 94.3 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 91.86 R9- (red) – 76.3 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 95.1 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 93.4

5600K

Rotolight Anova Pro Bi-colour 50 degree Average CRI (R1-R8) – 94.7 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 92.09 R9 (red) – 97.9 R13- (closest to caucasian skin tones) – 98.4 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 95.7

Rotolight Anova Pro 2 Bi-colour 50 degree Average CRI (R1-R8) – 94.6 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 91.9 R9 (red) – 97.3 R13- (closest to caucasian skin tones) – 98.6 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 95.4

Litepanels Bi-Color Soft 1×1 CRI (R1-R8) – 94.7 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 92.51 R9 (red) – 86.9 R13 (closest to caucasian skin) – 95.8 R15 (closest to asian skin tones) – 95.8

KinoFlo Diva Lite 200 CRI (R1-R8) – 96.1 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 93.09 R9- (red) – 89.7 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 94.7 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 92.6

Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW  CRI (R1-R8) – 97.8 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 96.2 R9- (red) – 97.9 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 99.6 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 97.0

Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW CRI (R1-R8) – 95.3 Extended CRI (R1-R15) – 93.4 R9- (red) – 86.2 R13- (closest to caucasian skin) – 97.3 R15- (closest to asian skin tones) – 94.4

If you look at the data from the head-to-head comparisons, the Rotolight performs extremely well at 5600K when it comes to reproducing accurate skin tones, despite its overall color reproduction numbers being slightly lower than the other lights. Any numbers over 90+ are truly excellent and you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between any light that has average scores in the 90s.

At 3200K the Anova Pro 2 is very comparable to the other lights in this group, and it’s good to see that the lights scores at both 3200K and 5600K are very close. This tells me that the lights overall color rendering performance remains very consistent no matter what Kelvin color temperature you are using.

Spectral distribution

  Above you can see the Rotolight Anova Pro 2’s spectral distribution when used at 3200K. While the light does have a nice full spectrum it certainly has a slight push towards green.

Above you can see the Rotolight Anova Pro 2’s spectral distribution when used at 5600K. The light has a push towards green as you can see.

Just as a comparison lets look at the Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW light that I recently reviewed. Above you can see its spectral distribution when used at 3200K. Its color spectrum isn’t as full as the Rotolight, but it is a bit more linear.

Above is the Luxli’s spectral distribution when used at 5600K. As you can see the Luxli has a far fuller spectrum at 5600K than the Rotolight and it’s not missing nearly as much information around the 460-500 nm wavelength. The Rotologht’s inability to reproduce information at these wavelengths is evident when you look at both the lights color rendering scores and spectral distribution. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t find this affected the lights real-world performance in any way.

REAL WORLD PERFORMANCE AND QUALITY OF LIGHT

As I always say, photometric scores only tell you part of the story. So do the scores from the Rotolight Anova Pro 2 translate into real-world performance?

In the example footage that you can see above, I simulated an interview style set up. The Rotolight Anova Pro 2 was used as the key light with the Lupo Superpanel Full Color 30 being used as the backlight. A white poly board was also used on the right-hand side to add some fill. I then filmed the exact same scene with the Luxli Timpani 1×1 RGBAW and the Lupo Superpanel 1×1 Full Color 30 RGBW. I chose the Luxli Timpani as I firmly believe it is one of the best value portable LED lights on the market. I also wanted to see how the Rotolight faired against the Lupo.

For my tests, I kept all the lights in the exact same position, height and distance from my subject. I set all three lights at 5600K and then set the camera to a preset 5600K white balance. I also manually balanced all three lights to see what differences there were. The output of the lights was adjusted accordingly to get the correct exposure.

Even though all three lights looked good, they all had different looks. The Luxli was a little warmer than the Rotolight and the Lupo was a little colder. Technically if you want to go off scopes, the Rotolight was the most neutral of the three. I found that all three lights produced nice results and the skin tones all looked good. With a few minor tweaks, I’m pretty sure even the most novice of colorists could get all three images to match. In saying that, both the Lupo and Luxli offer +/- green adjustment so you could easily make minor adjustments to correct any color casts.

I liked the catch light that you get when using the Rotolight. Being a circular source helps in this regard and I found the catch light looked just a little bit bigger and more pleasing compared to the Lupo and Luxli.

I also did a test where all of the lights were set to their maximum brightness at 5600K so you could see the differences. The Lupo has a much wider beam angle than the Rotolight and the Luxli so it was no real surprise that it was capable of lighting up more of the room.

The Anova Pro 2 does produce a really nice quality of light, but as it doesn’t feature any in-built diffusion, so do you need to use a softbox to create flattering light? I found that even without using a softbox it was very capable of producing nice results. The Lupo Superpanel Full Color 30 has a built-in diffusion panel, and the Luxli Timpani only has a very light diffusion screen (which is there for getting rid of the individual shadows caused by using multiple LEDs).

I tried out Rotolight’s own Anova Softbox Kit with the light and it worked really well. The softbox is nice and large and it creates a really nice source of light that wraps around your subjects face. Unlike most other softbox solutions that are available for 1×1 style panel lights, the Rotolight softbox has a nice amount of depth. This means it is able to create a softer source because of the distance from where the front of the diffusion that goes on the softbox to the actual light source is quite deep.

The softbox comes with both diffusion and frost, as well as an egg crate. I like that Rotolight gives you two different types of diffusion and that the softbox kit is very reasonably priced at $157.49 USD. This is considerably cheaper than a lot of other softboxes that are available on the market.

I did some measurements with the Sekonic C-700 to see how much output the light could produce with the softbox being used. With the frost on and the Anova Pro 2 set at 100% output (5600K) it recorded 2990lx at a distance of 1 meter from the front of the softbox. That’s a 35% decrease in output over using the light with no softbox and the frost. With the diffusion on under the same conditions, it recorded an output of 1830lx, which is 60% less than if used without. Both the frost and the diffusion produce really nice, soft light. I found that the frost was probably the better way to go if you are using the Anova Pro 2 for interviews. The diffusion cuts the output so significantly that you would need to have the light fairly close to your subject in most scenarios.

There are, however, two downsides to the softbox. The first is you need to purchase the optional barn doors to be able to use it.

The second is that I found it difficult to put on as it needs to fit over the top of the barn doors and its a very tight fit. This is not a quick or easy process and I don’t like wasting valuable time mucking around trying to get a softbox to fit. Putting on a softbox should be a quick and easy process and if takes longer than a minute to do then there is something wrong with the design.

If you don’t have a high enough output to begin with, and then attempt to heavily diffuse that lighting source, often the brightness of that light is reduced to a point where it’s only usable when placed very close to a subject. If you do use the Anova Pro 2 in this way you will have to have to have it a little closer to your subject, but I still found it had enough output that I didn’t have to put it as close as say the Luxli Timpani. The output of the Anova Pro 2 is pretty impressive for a portable LED solution, especially one that only has a power draw of 72W.

The Anova Pro 2 is a little on the heavy side, but it’s not so heavy that you should rule it out if you are a solo operator or traveling cameraman or woman who needs a light that is quick to set up and can be powered remotely in the field from a camera battery. The lights 50-degree beam angle does make it suitable to use for interviews without the light source spilling everywhere. From my experience using the light, I would still recommend going with a softbox if you are using the fixture for interviews. The beam spread of 50-degrees is a lot narrower than the 115-degrees of the Lupo Superpanel Full Color 30, and the 72-degree beam angle of the Luxli Timpani. I’m not the biggest fan of panel lights with narrow beam angles, I much prefer to have lights that have a wider beam spread, as I find them more versatile.

The Anova Pro 2 also looks also looks like it could be used effectively for news crews doing live crosses as the fixture can be run off a camera battery and it’s powerful enough (as long as you aren’t trying to match a bright background) to provide a nice amount of fill. If you are trying to match a bright background there are better solutions available.

Usability

As I have mentioned in other lighting reviews, the numbers only tell part of the story. You can have the most color accurate light in the world, but if it is difficult to use and operate then you are going to leave it at home. Thankfully, the Anova Pro 2 is very quick and easy to use. I love lights that you can take out of a case, throw a battery on the back and turn on. If you are a solo operator time is always crucial. There is nothing worse than taking 5-10 minutes to set up a light before you can turn it on.

As far as using the lights controls, making changes to the output and color temperature are very straightforward and the LCD display lets you accurately monitor and see any changes that you make.

If you are familiar with any of Rotolight’s other offerings, you will know that the physical design and layout of the controls is standard across all of their models. This is not such a bad thing as you can jump from one model to the next and know exactly how to use and control the light. If you haven’t used a Rotolight before, the control over color temperature and output are easy, but it may take you a little bit of time to get used to using the light’s more advanced features.

Changing filters is quick and hassle-free and the built-in v-lock battery plate and low power consumption allows you to run the light off a camera battery for long periods of time. This also makes it easy to move the light around, as you’re not having to look for power outlets and run long extension cables across the floor.

Getting into the menu is straightforward but I still struggle sometimes with remembering how to make changes to the SFX features. In fairness, this is probably something that could be overcome by using the light on a more regular basis, and news and documentary shooters are unlikely to be using these features that often. This is where a dedicated iOS app would come in very handy.

The light can be adjusted from 3150K up to 6300K in increments of 10. You can also hold the dial down and move it if you need to do it quicker. The light can also be dimmed from 100% to 1% in 1% increments. Again if you hold down the dial and move it does it a lot quicker.

The additional barn doors are nice, but they can’t be moved in a circular rotation around the light as they are locked down. I also found that because there are six doors, instead of the usual four, they can be a little fiddly and awkward to use. The barn doors do tend to end up hitting each other when you start closing them down to control the light. The other minor downside of the barn doors is that if you are using them, they end up hitting the light’s yolk frame if you try and angle the light down. I found this very frustrating when trying to use the light to illuminate something that was lower than the height of the light. The only way to overcome this is to use a light stand where you can place a spigot horizontally and not vertically.

The flight case that comes as part of the Masters Kit is beautifully designed and made. It is a great option for transporting the light around. The only slight negative is that the case is quite large and weighs around 11.5kg with the light inside. Some shooters may find that not to be a problem, but again it really depends on what you’re used to traveling with and how much kit you normally take. The nice thing about the flight case is it actually makes for a nice platform if you need to get you reporter a little higher off the ground for a live cross or piece to camera.

If you want to go lighter, Rotolight does make a Travel Kit that consists of barn doors and a soft bag for $292.49 USD.

Competition

When the original Anova Pro came onto the market it had a host of features that other lights didn’t have, but the industry has changed a lot since that time. There is now a host of lights on the market that offer features not found on the latest Anova Pro 2. While the Anova Pro 2 is still the only light to feature an HSS mode, just about everyone else now offers special effects. A lot of the current crop of lights are now RGB, and some such as the Luxli Timpani offer inbuilt filters, color picking technology, +/- green adjustment, and very clever iOS apps for controlling the lights features. The Anova Pro 2’s main competition is from lights such as the Litepanels Astra series, KinoFlo Celeb 200, KinoFlo Diva Lite 200, Lupo Superpanels, and the Luxli Timpani.

Price and availability

The Anova Pro 2 ($1,799 USD) is around $500 US more than the original Anova Pro. This makes it quite expensive, especially compared to some of the competition. I asked Rotolight why the price had increased so much and was told, “I think that the extra 384 LEDs , extra beefy PSU, and built-in Elinchrom Skyport HSS receiver are fairly good value. You also need to bear in mind that the UK£ dropped in value from $1.55 down to $1.30 against the $USD during the Anova Pro 2’s development making many of our components 16% more expensive.”

As I mentioned earlier, the Anova Pro 2 comes in three different versions. There is a standard Bi-colour 110- degree beam spread, which is the one I have been testing, a Bi-colour 50-degree beam version, and a 5600K fixed daylight version. All three of the lights can be purchased separately and there are various accessories that are also available. These include barn doors, flight case, soft case, v-lock batteries, softbox kit, rain cover, and a diffuser. The 50-degree Bi-color, 110-degree Bi-color, and 5600K only versions are all $1799 USD. The Masters Kit is an additional $433.87 USD.

Rotolight also makes a light stand that has a maximum load carrying capacity of >15KG and a height capacity of 285cm. At $71.99 USD it makes for a nice option for the Anova Pro 2.

As a price comparison, the Litepanels Astra Bi-color Soft 1×1 is now available for $999 USD  (it was $1350 US). The Litepanels Astra Bi-color Soft 1×1  doesn’t come with an inbuilt V-lock battery plate, that is extra. The Kinoflo Celeb 200 retails for $2373 US, and barn doors are $398.50. The Luxli Timpani retails for $999 USD, and the Lupo Superpanel 1×1′ Full Color 30 RGBW is $1,598 USD.

Conclusion

The Anova Pro 2 certainly does offer a lot of functionality, but it is considerably more expensive than the original. The build quality is superb, and the power output is exceptionally good given the light’s small power draw. For news and documentary shooters, the ability to run the Anova Pro 2 off camera batteries that are under 100Wh for long periods of time is a huge selling point.

The light isn’t RGB like a lot of other 1×1 panel options that are now on the market, and that is something you have to carefully consider these days when making a purchase. The Anova Pro was ahead of its time, but now there are plenty of other lights on the market that offer a lot of features that the Anova Pro 2 has to compete against.

The light is color accurate and very good at replicating skin tones correctly. It is also excellent at reproducing the correct color temperature across its 3150-6300K range. It’s good to see a company not follow the market trends and stick to creating a good old fashioned light that is color accurate, has good output and is reliable and robust. Not everyone needs an RGB light. The only downside for me is the price. At $1,799 USD it is expensive considering that lights such as the Luxli Timpani are almost half of the price.

Despite the increased competition from other lights that are now on the market, I still like the Anova Pro 2. The low power draw and high output are both killer features that should make the light a very popular choice with news and documentary shooters. It’s also a very good option if you are doing a lot of multimedia work where both stills and video are required.

With good functionality, color accuracy, and a strong output, the Anova Pro 2 is a light that is worth considering if you are looking for a portable LED solution that can be run off smaller, travel safe v-lock batteries.

[taeguboi]

INTERN PART 01

“Oh no! I’m going to be late!!” exclaims the purple haired boy, glancing down at his watch. Rushing across the town centre, he legs it across the streets, almost getting hit by a car at one points as he fails to look both ways upon dashing across a zebra crossing.

Breathlessly, he enters the office building and heads over to the elevator door to press for the lift upstairs.

Good thing I ate well this morning.

Jeongguk swivels restlessly on his office chair, bored out of his mind. For him, this is just another day at work and he is here simply because he has to be. Working as a magazine writer is just too elementary for Jeongguk; not challenging or mentally stimulating in the slightest… but at least there is a decent wage and he guesses that has to be enough to drive him to continue.

The office is of a reasonable size, equipped with sufficient computers for the team of about 30, plenty of space to roam up and down, even a kitchen available for when one is in need of refreshment. But to Jeongguk, it is nonetheless dull with it’s lack of colour or taste for interior design as the ugly faded white walls stare back at him in whichever direction his turns in his chair.

He didn’t ask to be innately exceptional at this area of work; it is true, his literacy skills are outstanding but… what is the fun in basically recycling other people’s words? Back in the day, when Jeongguk was studying for all these impressive journalism qualifications he now possesses, he never really imagined he would be hidden away from the world, cooped up in an office… He wanted to travel, explore the world, learn something new everyday, and this was something he was promised when applying to work here, but it has appeared in recent times that even the biggest bunch of qualifications with the highest possible grade don’t mean escape from some mundane repetitive 9-5 office job.

Meanwhile, as Jeongguk daydreams of a more promising and fulfilling life, writing articles for disinterested, most likely pompous, readers absent mindedly to fill up that bank balance...

An unanticipated noise from across the room pulls him away from his train of thought and before Jeongguk can even properly glance over to the doorway, all he can see is a blurred figure stumbling onto the floor down the small set of stairs leading into the office.

The figure scurries to his feet and Jeongguk immediately notices one distinct feature about the stranger; it is apt to note here that in Jeongguk’s short moments of giving up on life at home, he would just lounge on the couch watching cartoons…

“Oh! Nice hair! Like Leela!... Dimples too… I wonder who you are, Leela?”

And just like that, Jeongguk is drawn into the appearance of this unfamiliar face. The bold, unique hair colour suggests a fun and animated character, not just animated in the sense of a cartoon-like appearance, but personality too.

Jeongguk isn’t quite sure why he had given the stranger such a feminine name, but it somehow suits him, or at least in Jeongguk’s mind it does. He not once takes his eyes off the purple haired guy as the flustered individual scrambles for the items rolling about on the floor that his bag had so conveniently discarded upon his fall.

“Should I go help him?” Jeongguk asks himself, one eyebrow raised in interest, observing the guy’s struggle to regain composure and co-ordination, soon wondering whether ‘Leela’ has any co-ordination in the first place, noticing the disorientation in the klutz's expression as he scurries across the workplace towards the main editor’s office.

“Maybe work will be fun today after all.”

The purple haired klutz’s name is not Leela of course, but Namjoon... and he is one extremely nervous Namjoon as he enters the boss’ office, having read the name that hangs on the door probably more than 1000 times in the lead up to this moment, still willing for coincidence to take its place.

His heart sinks upon the sight of the man sitting behind the grand desk; deep brown eyes and pink full lips within a somewhat long face and held up by a chiseled jaw line, still recognisable under the blonde hair. His childhood friend.

Yet Namjoon has to question his conclusion because there’s something different about the once lively features held by the man. Those chocolate coloured eyes are not all that appetising as the eyebrows that rest above them are almost knitted together, and his lips are held up so tightly that they no longer take advantage of a handsome smile to create the most attractive ray of sunshine character Namjoon can ever remember.

When waking up this morning, Namjoon had so badly prayed that if just one thing should go right today in his clumsy life, it would be that his colleagues were all unfamiliar to him… He had learned the name of the editor when applying for this internship, and all that bullshit he told himself, that the name was just common enough for it to be someone else, hasn’t paid off.

This guy was the very same Jung Hoseok he knew through his childhood.

Godammit.

“Hey! Oi! Leave him alone!” Namjoon exclaimed at the sight of the other children mocking his friend, surrounding him as they throw every insult under the sun at him.

“Hey! Twiggy!” one cooed, pushing Hoseok into the firm hold of another bully.

“Woah, he has such strange features!” exclaimed another one rudely, watching the victim boy get his head roughly monkey scrubbed as the bully holding him makes a comment that would stick with the boy for years.

“Hey guys! What do you get when you cross Hoseok’s mom with a horse?”

It was the first day of high school, and already Hoseok was at the runt of the most hurtful comments, foreshadowing the harsh reality of the life that Hoseok would have to live in for the next 3 years.

“Shut up nerd!” boomed one of the kids, to Namjoon, this kid in particular appearing to be the ‘gang’ leader.

“At least I’m talking with my mouth rather than spewing shit!” Namjoon argues. “Man, you should go straight to the doctor’s after school; that’s not healthy,” he continues, pulling his helpless friend out from the middle of the crowd and escorting him home.

“Ah, Mr. Kim, take a seat” Hoseok instructs bluntly, leaning back into his chair casually. “Right, so as you know, your job will be to assist in researching, reporting, yadda yadda yadda… But my team out there can be very self-proud and generally awkward, so don’t be too surprised if at first all they send you out to do is to get coffee and whatnot… But of course, I’m sure you knew this anyway, right?”

Namjoon can’t believe the audacity right now; the editor is speaking to him so coldly. Does he really not recognise him? And the way this guy is speaking about his workers? Huh, perhaps he isn’t the same Jung Hoseok from school, just someone with a similar face and the same name…

“Yes, of course…”

“You are definitely the successful applicant with the Bachelor’s degree in journalism, yeah?” Hoseok rudely questions, eyeing Namjoon up and down, and the latter could not feel more offended, especially since there is a solid chance that this man spent the most of his younger years around the other... Did Hoseok not have faith that Namjoon could do well in his life?

As the new guy, he could swear that back out there, people were already judging him also, but why? Of course, he comes to a swift conclusion based on general societal judgements combined with his previous experiences of work.

It’s the hair.

It was always the hair. It was always the colour of his hair that somehow meant people didn’t take him seriously. In his last job, he was literally forced to quit because of the constant disagreements between him and his boss about his appearance, the peak of Namjoon’s frustrations being after changing his mind from a more natural looking brown, to a green colour and the boss had the cheek to compare him to some alien type creature. The job before that, he had pink hair, but had to resign for the sake of his mental well being after all the snide remarks questioning and mocking his sexuality.

The world is so fucking unfair.

“You have all my details, and you know my name; why wouldn’t I be?”

He’s probably pretending not to know me so there aren’t talks to ridicule him around the office.

“I-i-it doesn’t matter” Hoseok stutters. “I’ve wasted enough of your time with this unnecessary meeting, you can go.”

What happened to the Hoseok that Namjoon knew and developed a close bond with in school? He was actually so rude right now that he was almost unrecognizable.

But only almost.

Hurrying out of the office, through the work area and into the corridor, Namjoon finds the water fountain and decides that a cool drink might calm him down. He fills the plastic cup, willing the flow of water to hurry up, and, when the cup is finally full, he takes a sip, savouring the cool temperature it brings to his warm and flustered body.

“What do I do? What do I do? What DO I do?!” Namjoon repeats to himself. “How do I get my head around this?”

Unfortunately for Namjoon, most of this body does indeed get to actually feel the cool temperature of the water as he is made to jump out his skin as someone creeps up behind him, ‘zapping’ his sides.

“What are you doing?!” Jeongguk exclaims cheerfully, not yet realizing what he has caused.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Namjoon exclaims - not so cheerfully, more angrily in fact. He swears he has had enough of this place already before even beginning as he turns around to meet the face of the mischievous git who has just made him spill water all over his shirt and trousers.

When Namjoon’s eyes meet Jeongguk’s he almost feels inclined to be the one to apologize instead, immediately registering the docile, unintentful* aura that oozed from Jeongguk’s cheery expression.

“Oh, I’m sorry Lee… stranger…” Jeongguk apologizes, only just managing to correct himself. “I just wanted to say hello.”

“What is with you?! Don’t people normally wait until they naturally have the stranger’s attention to say ‘hello’? Why did you instead get all up in my personal space?!” Namjoon whines with a pout.

“I’m sorry, I… I like your hair, it’s cool” Jeongguk decides to respond, suddenly somewhat shyly.

“Look, I’m assuming you’ve gathered I’m the new intern... now what is it you want?”

“I want to introduce myself; I thought that was obvious.” Jeongguk pouts in return, tilting his head to one side and his gesture remind Namjoon of some sort of meerkat… Kind of cute, yet not at the same time, given the circumstances that patches of Namjoon’s clothes are soaked because of him.

“Not really, when you go scaring the life out of innocent people minding their own business! What do you do anyway? Are you the cleaner?” And Namjoon could swear he didn’t mean to be so rude, but it’s kind of a chain reaction, and this guy just so happened to be the first person he spoke to since that brief unpleasant meeting… Namjoon doesn’t even blame himself for snapping at the guy; this guy approached him first, so it’s kind of his own fault.

“No, I’m Jeongguk. I’m part of the editorial team” he informs, reaching a hand out for a handshake.

“Okay, Jeongguk, I apologize” Namjoon replies, pushing the younger’s hand away, rejecting his handshake. “I’m just stressed out and…”

“Ah, that little act there didn’t really help did it?” Jeongguk rhetorically questions, gathering the correct answer, tilting his head to the other side now. “I just wanted to make friends, I’m sorry…” he apologizes again, popping his head back upright and raising both hands in the air, as if in defeat or as if just spotted by a cop and asked to drop his weapons.

“Is this how you always make friends?”

“Well no, but I felt like this time I needed to do something you’ll remember so you don’t forget me.” Jeongguk states, leaning against the door frame situated near the fountain.

“And why would that be?”

“I saw your big entrance back then. I guess you just sorta came across as the type that doesn’t know what day it is.”

“It’s Monday, and I don’t appreciate this... You’re the second person I’ve spoken to in here and I’m feeling very uncomfortable already about the idea of working here, so maybe you should get back and do your job.”

“Only if you get back in there and start yours. Come on,” Jeongguk instructs, returning his balance to his feet from the door frame and guiding Namjoon to walk on “I can introduce you since it seems the editor won’t be around any time soon.”

“Why would I need you to do that for me? And what about my shirt?” Namjoon questions, beginning to place one foot in front of the other, nearing the workplace unsurely, looking down at the patches of water scattered all over his clothes.

“Oh, just let me, to make up for scaring you…” Jeongguk playfully replies, sneaking a hand around Namjoon’s shoulder, the one further away from Jeongguk himself, and tapping him abruptly, causing Namjoon to screech in fright and soon forget about his damp clothes.

Jeongguk simply chuckles “You’re fun Leela,” walking ahead of Namjoon, leaving a very confused intern to follow him.

“Who is Leela?”

“Yo guys! This is the new intern!” Jeongguk hollers boisterously across the room, making his way back to his workstation, earning some snide, annoyed glances from his work colleagues, clearly busy trying to reach the next deadline, and it soon becomes apparent to Namjoon why this Jeongguk was so keen to introduce himself and get to know the new guy.

This room is highly concentrated in a bunch a of try-hard workaholics with no sense of chill or fun.

“Um, I’m Namjoon, pleased to be working here… I, um… If you need anything, just ask I guess” he shyly announces to the room. His shyness of course being unnecessary since no one is paying the slightest bit of attention… If only they looked up, Namjoon thinks to himself, fully aware that his appearance alone is usually enough to give people an opinion of him.

Of course, the colleagues had indeed already noticed Namjoon earlier upon his clumsy arrival, and not one of them cared for the ‘joke’ of a new guy who couldn’t even balance on his own two feet and clearly had nothing better to do with himself than to waste time and money on making himself look pretty.

How wrong they are.

“I promise to work hard during my time here, and I hope to get as much out of this experience as possible!” Namjoon enthusiastically declares, desperate to grab someone’s attention so that he can be given a task and just start work, anything. He foolishly adds a “Fighting!” with a forced smile and clenched fist to show encouragement and enthusiasm, but it goes wasted on the dull souls whose faces are only illuminated by the light of the computer screens.

With a sigh, Namjoon goes to sit at an empty chair behind an inactive computer, ‘ah, at least no one looked up to see my clothes,’ he thinks, and it seems as though he’s just going to be sat on his butt until the editor comes out and fires him for slacking off... until he gets another tap on his shoulder.

He feels stupid for even wondering who it is.

“Hey, Leela!” Jeongguk exaggeratedly whispers across from his chair, situated behind Namjoon’s.

“Seriously, who the heck is Leela? I already said, I’m Namjoon!”

“But it’s more fun to call you Leela!” Jeongguk whines, his pout going unnoticed by Namjoon who is still facing away with his back turned to Jeongguk, making Jeongguk tap the elder on the shoulder once again. “Look anyway, I think I have a job for you!”

Only now does this cause Namjoon to swivel around in his chair to face Jeongguk, so he can ask “You think you have a job for me? Do you or don’t you?”

“Woah, Leela is so feisty...” Jeongguk mumbles to himself, but probably not quietly enough to be out of Namjoon’s hearing distance. Returning to normal speaking volume - normal for Jeongguk that is… many a time he has been scolded for his use of projection - he crosses his arms in an over-dramatic sulk and cries out “Yah! Why must you be so indifferent towards me? At least I’m talking to you!”

“What’s the job, writer Jeongguk?”

“Ooh ‘writer Jeongguk’... I like that…” he cheekily smirks for a moment. “Well, here’s the situation which I hope you can help amend.”

‘Finally, my first challenge… Well, task,’ Namjoon thinks, with very little faith that whatever Jeongguk is about to explain is going to be all that complex or troubling, probably just some proof-reading job or a missing piece of information.

“See, I can’t decide which is better; the red, orange, yellow, green, or purple skittles. Which one do I eat next?” Jeongguk asks with genuine concern, as though the decision he makes will have a massive impact on his life.

“Are you for real?” Namjoon questions with the annoyance of the insignificance of the problem he has been asked to solve.

“Yah, again Leela! So sassy with me!” Jeongguk blurts with a squeak, earning the biggest eyeroll from Namjoon. “This is a genuine concern for me, and it’s your job as intern to ensure my mental well-being and happiness… You’re going to get asked stuff like this often around here, it’s more important than you think!” Jeongguk states, managing to stay as genuine as possible in his tone, and surprisingly, it works.

“Really? I’m sorry, in that case, I think you should go with the red.”

Jeongguk lets out a giggle as he reaches his hand into the bag of skittles, pulling out a purple sweet and rolling it between his index finger and thumb, with Namjoon noticing the ‘mistake’.

“Um writer, that’s not…”

“Oh intern, you are very fun!” he coos, throwing up the sweet into the air and successfully catching it in his mouth. “You know, I kind of don’t want the next 6 months to pass by so quickly as the last… I feel like my time here with you around is going to be good.”

PART 02

[nothingman]

In situations where most people get angry, I mostly get depressed. Today I feel like hiding under a rock.

Yesterday President Trump made good on his campaign promise to halt immigration of Muslims into the United States "until we know what's going on." An explicit ban on Muslims would be illegal, of course, even considering the president's broad authority over immigration, so instead he picked seven Muslim countries and banned their citizens from entering the US for 90 days—by which time, presumably, Trump will have figured out what's going on. He also banned refugees from everywhere for 120 days. The result has been rampant chaos and pointless suffering.

A friend writes: "I'm amazed at how badly Trump, et al. have been handling the executive orders they've been churning out. Don't they know the orders are legal documents, not corporate memos?" That's a good question. As near as I can tell, Trump is treating his executive orders the same way he treats his tweets: they're designed as communiques to his fans, and that's about it. The actual consequences hardly matter.

What else can you make of this latest bumbling fiasco? Consider:

Not a single Muslim extremist from any of the seven designated countries has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil.

But residents of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and other US "allies" are exempt, even though their citizens have committed acts of terrorism here. By coincidence, these are also countries where Trump has commercial interests.

The executive order mis-cites the relevant immigration statute. Ed Whelan wonders if this means the Office of Legal Counsel is out of the loop:

If this error signals that White House is bypassing ordinary OLC review of EOs, that would be bad news. Important to get EOs right. https://t.co/iObtMa1QjK

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) January 28, 2017

The refugee ban is heartbreaking, especially for folks who have sold everything and were literally in the airport waiting to board a plane when they were turned back. But the order also applies to green card holders. These are legal residents. If they were overseas at the time the ban went into effect, they can't return home.

There's no excuse for this. The EO could have exempted green card holders. At the very least, it could have gone into effect for them after a warning period. But nobody in the White House gave a damn. So now airports are jammed with legal residents who are trying to return home to their families but are being denied entry.

The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security are allowed to issue exemptions on a case-by-case basis. Does this mean either of them can, or that both have to sign off? Because there is no Secretary of State right now.

Republicans are mostly too callous, or too craven, to speak up about this debacle. I don't need to bother checking to see what Breitbart and Ann Coulter think. I'm sure they're thrilled. But even mainstream conservatives are largely unwilling to speak up about this. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been unable to rouse itself so far to express an opinion. Ditto for the Weekly Standard. I thought the same was true of National Review, but no: they roused themselves to mostly approve of what Trump is doing. Paul Ryan, who once thought this kind of thing was terrible, is also on board. So is Mitch McConnell. And Mike Lee. And most of the rest of the GOP caucus. This is how we got Trump in the first place. Is it really worth it just for another tax cut?

So now airports are jammed with stranded travelers. People who have lived in the US for years are unable to return to their homes. Nobody knows if any exceptions will be forthcoming from our Secretaries of State or Homeland Security. It's chaos everywhere.

And for no reason. Refugees are already extremely tightly vetted. Visas are tightly vetted too from the countries on Trump's list. The green-card chaos could have easily been avoided if anyone had cared enough to think through the executive order before issuing it. Or if Trump had thought that any high-ranking Republicans would make him pay a price for being so ham-handed.

But they didn't. As always, Republicans are ruled by a mean-spiritedness that's just plain nauseating. They're perfectly willing to go along with a plan that will cause tremendous hardship for other people even though they know perfectly well it will do nothing for national security. Its only real purpose is to send a message to the GOP base. Is that worth the cost of causing other people tremendous pain? Sure. As usual, they just don't give a damn.

via MoJo Blogs and Articles

[11thhourreport-blog]

New Post has been published on http://11thhourreport.com/index.php/2017/01/25/pentagon-pursues-locust-drone-swarm-technology-precursor-revelation-9/

Pentagon Pursues "LOCUST" Drone Swarm Technology - Precursor To Revelation 9?

The Pentagon continued it’s quest to unleash a 21st-century version of locusts on its adversaries this week after another successful test of drone swarm technology was completed using 103 Perdix micro-drones.

This large scale drone army is made possible by advancements in artificial intelligence, which allows groups of robots to act together to demonstrate advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying and self-healing.

“Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said William Roper, director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office.

“Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”

Such drone swarms could change the face of modern warfare and some prophecy watchers find both the technology and name of the US Naval program behind it perhaps more than coincidence.

A few months ago the US navy also demonstrated its Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology (LOCUST) program by putting 30 drones flying together in perfect formation.

These drones are launched from a special tube in less than a minute to create a vicious swarm designed to overwhelm an adversary autonomously.

What makes the swarm unique is that any hostile aircraft, manned or unmanned, can be brought down by a single missile, but a swarm can take multiple hits and keep going.

The drones are self-reconfiguring so that if one drone gets taken out, the others autonomously change their behavior to complete the mission.

Several test simulations by the Navy have shown that drone swarms are consistently able to get past ship defenses that are geared towards shooting down single planes.

This weakness means it makes sense to attack an enemy ship with a large number of cheap drones rather than one missile costing the same. Ironically, the best counter to drone swarm attacks being studied is a defensive drone swarm that can intercept the offensive ones.

The aim is to have thirty or more drones flying together without having to be individually controlled, maintaining separation safely like a flock of birds. They are different from any other drone in that the operator does not control an individual aircraft, but pilots the whole swarm as a single unit.

With manned aircraft and ships, the pilot’s life counts for a lot; but swarming drones are expendable and high “casualties” do not matter as much. This is a very different world to the dogfights that, historically, have made up modern warfare and could drastically alter the course of air warfare forever.

Experts predict that as drone swarm techniques are perfected they will expand both in number and use.  The Office of Naval Research has already experimented with a swarming configuration of 13 robotic boats on Virginia’s James River. The boats were able to perform a variety of tasks to protect a high-value ship from incoming craft.

Some prophecy watchers find it interesting that the Bible describes “locust” type creatures that play a significant role in end-time conflict.  Revelation 9 describes them this way:

[thebourbontruth]

Whiskey Zoo, what's a brand to do?

I’ve said this before in other posts (especially the post on Bookers Rye paying $300), Im not a fan of higher prices, who would be? BUT, at the same time I’ve always felt I would be fair on both sides and say it as it is. The current whiskey climate is fickle. A good quality AND available Barrel Proof bottle can be counted on one hand. Really folks, it can! There are just a few ways a brand can adjust to what’s going on. First–reduce quality (maybe by putting your barrels that would normally go into lesser brands) into your more expensive and better brands. Second, you can and get younger in addition to/or instead of the first. Either option isn’t good. Third, just go with a shortage solution keeping them sporadically on the shelf, risking losing shelf territory, and now, have the store artificially raise the price on their own anyway.

Lastly, you can throw yourself under the bus knowing that it won’t hurt much (if at all) and raise prices. You’ll come out better then when the prices were lower. That is until the glut hits in a few years. This last option is where I see the new Bookers pricing at $100 at even though you can still find it in many places still at $50 and certainly under $60. If a brand made $20 on a $60 bottle they make maybe $40-$50 on $100 one. Even if sales are down making 2x-3x the money makes up lots for any sales decrease and has got to improve the overall profit. Bookers was the first of the Beam Small Batch collection started in the early 1990’s. It sort of started it all. Blanton’s came along and it all went from there. Beam is no stranger to the experiments in price and barrels having done the Distillers Masterpiece Bourbon with a Cognac and then Port finish Barrel (around 18 and 16 years ago) for $200. For about 12 years it seemed like a white elephant failure but now they are selling on the secondary market for $1000. It now seems they might have just been a sign of things to come. The chicken and egg argument can be made if price drives what’s going on or is it true/implied rarity. In either case, just 5 years ago $100 bottles was acceptably unheard of except for Pappy. $100 now barely brings pause if not being the actual buying trigger to many.

As a bit of late breaking news as I post this it’s reported Beam back tracked to a Bookers increase of $70-80-ish now that shelves stock is depleted. Not sure what to think on that now. http://www.fredminnick.com/2017/01/02/beam-suntory-backtracks-bookers-pricing/

I’ve been saying for a long time that Beam’s Small Batch collection’s been ignorantly under marketed but it seems like they’ve caught on. This leads me to if Beam’s Old Grand Dad 114 is going away. I say that from paying attention, the rumors, and usual empty shelf slots where it used. There’s a real good chance it is. The only high Rye bourbon brands of Beam are Basil Hayden (he’s the inspiration on the Old Grand Dad Label and the actual “Old Grand Dad”). High Rye is cool and hot right now. Elmer T. Lee (made by Buffalo Trace) is another example of a favorite that’s gotten harder to find. I’ve noticed lots of movement in the marketing of the sleepy Basil Hayden line. Where does the excess supply come from as they sell more of the relatively the same juice watered down from 114 to 80 Proof? Maybe it doesn’t go away in the manner that Weller 12 year, now a shelf ghost, comes out in tiny releases a couple times a year. Maybe it doesn’t go away like Old Fitzgerald and only released in a few states. In both cases Sazerac uses the Weller for Pappy, the Antique Collection WLW and Heaven Hill uses the Old Fitzgerald for the Larceny line and its distribution expansion. I asked Beam about Old Grand Dad 114 Proof going away. They wouldn’t say it was or not and under discussion. I pointed out if the item was ordered by a store and told there wasn’t any, it was gone. They had no answer for it being unavailable and out of stock now. They also would not confirm it was going to be used for increasing the Basil Hayden Brand. Chuck Cowdery says its “official”. I remember this article from three a bit over two years ago. http://whiskyadvocate.com/2014/04/18/burning-down-the-rumor-mill/ Tough to believe anything now.

This trend in the industry is clear to me. It started in 2012 when Heaven Hill pulled the $30-$40 Elijah Craig 18 year due to shortage only for it to reemerge a couple years latter at 3x that price as a Limited Edition. I asked Beam if Old Grand Dad would be released at a high proof again as a rebranded ultra premium. As expected, I was told it was possible as it is for anything but they don’t comment on such things. I asked what percentage of overall Beam Bourbon production was of the limited High Rye Mashbill (used by only OGD and Basil) but they were tight lipped.

I wondered if they caught wind of the current resurgence of the older National Distillers Frankfort Kentucky bottles. Its common to see a 1960’s-1970’s bottle (that sold for $5 when released) on the secondary market a couple years ago for $200 now at $800. This is mainly the Bottled in Bond but still, from something no one cared about a couple years ago to jump to $800 a bottle? I have to wonder if Beam is that smart and pay that close of attention to see the value and resurgence of the brand? I happen to know the story of where this seemingly started. A very well-known chef was at his good friends restaurant when they pulled a sealed bottle of 1970s Old Granddad bottled in Bond (OGD BiB) from the shelf and started drinking it. It blew their minds and at that point the chef started to buy every possible bottle he could popping up on the secondary market. Prices have since gone through the roof where they have stayed. This was about a year ago and I have a hard time believing in such coincidences.

There is no doubt in my mind we will be seeing a High Rye Mashbill Ultra Premium regular or limited version in the near future for much much more. They did it for Bookers at $100 and and the formally none existent Bookers Rye at $300. Its logical something “special” or “limited” with the Old Grand Dad or Bookers High Rye Bourbon moniker and a $300 price tag can be far away. Will I buy the regular Bookers at $100 a bottle? I’m not sure, but a lot of people will buy it now that might not have before. As crazy as it sounds, it becomes more attractive at a higher price. I recently spent about an hour in a very popular liquor store in their whiskey aisle and droves of people (that had no clue what they were doing) wanted to buy gifts for people. I didn’t work at the store but helped lots of people and very few we’re going for a low price for gifts, most were going for something closer to $100. When you consider that Whistle Pig, some Jefferson and many others are approaching the hundred dollar range, paying that for a Bookers suddenly becomes an option and reality. Consider at $100, people still don’t know for sure where the Pig, Jefferson and 10 year Chatham (aka Michters) is coming from. With the Bookers you know where it’s coming from, what you’re getting, and that it’s a high-quality solid product that you won’t be embarrassed to buy or gift. It’s also a genius move to raise the price now and clear the shelves before the end of the year especially during gift giving time. Then having large orders come in at a higher price after the new year ain’t dumb. Blanton’s has been running short also and the very popular Straight From the Barrel version at Barrel Proof is import only. I can easily see it at about a current USD equivalent of $80 be brought Barrel Proof to the USA at $150 and sell very well. ABV goes up 10% and potentially can double in price. No brainer right? Nice way for Age International (that owns this High Rye mashbill brand) to do what was done with Bookers’s. The similarity in the two can’t be lost on Beam or Age International (aka Takara Holdings) as they are both Japanese companies owning very similar Bourbon Brands.

One last thing that I find very interesting. Unless you’re on an in-depth tour of Beam your not likely to know they change distillation for specific brands. As far as I know, they are the only major distillery doing this. This means that when they make the mash and it’s distilled, stills are specifically adjusted for a brand such as Bookers. Unlike other brands, its not distilled then proofed down (water added) going in the barrel but rather comes off right from the still and in the barrel at the same 125 proof. “Barrel Proof” isn’t when it goes in, its when it comes out. Beam thinks this is a big advantage over other brands. It then goes into a barrel that is stamped “Bookers” and it’s stored/treated as a Bookers until bottled. For this reason, it’s much easier to control the quality and that the quality was designed into the product from the very beginning. This process is opposed to taking something like Buffalo Trace’s regular Wheated Mashbill and designating it as Van Winkle or WLW Antique Collection (as supply demands after the fact). All things aren’t this rosy at Beam however. Even with the special treatment, Bookers reuses around 40% of their mash in the next batch (Back set, Sour Mash) considerably higher than other distilleries. With only around 60% new grain I wonder how good it could be if Bookers used only a typical of around 20 % old Mash. This used 40% is inclusive of all Beam Bourbon brands. How would your coffee taste with 40% vs 20% of the grounds reused? We shall see what happens in 2017 but it’s going to cost us folks, I hope we get more for our money than just the price increases smacking our wallets.

[lamurdiparasian]

A new videogame about piecing together drunken memories

Is it a coincidence that autobiographical games are the ones that seem to experiment with new storytelling ideas the most? Look at the infinite scrolling world of life and death in Passage (2007), the collage of frustrations in Dys4ia (2012), the awkward online conversations of Cibele (2015), and the interweaving of emotionally-charged 3D spaces in That Dragon, Cancer (2016).

We can now add to this list the latest game by Jenny Jiao Hsia, which recalls a night out drinking with friends, or at least the part where she had to look after one of them and get them to hospital. It’s called and i made sure to hold your head sideways, and was made for the FLATGAME Annual 2016, which tasked people with creating games that are played strictly by moving pieces around on a flat plane. The challenge also required the participants to make physical art for their entry, use no sound effects, and make it in a short time (a few hours, ideally).

Hsia’s game works by recalling the events of that night a scene at a time. It’s as if she’s relaying the information to her drunk friend the day after it all happened, as they can’t remember most of the night. It feels personal, intimate, and the scrappiness of the artwork helps with that—as the intended audience is a friend, and both of them are probably groggy, there’s no need for the lines to be drawn straight or the faces to be recognizable.

What i made sure to hold your head sideways is about, then, is piecing together fragments of memory. Each scene is found across the flat surface the camera pans across, but their arrangement is chaotic. While the camera moves from one to the next in chronological order, without its guidance you wouldn’t know where to even start, you’d be staring at a disjointed mosaic of messy lines and shapes. You’re totally dependent on the narrator to direct you through this jumbled map of memories.

visually represents the difficulties of recollecting a drunken memory

The most interesting part of the game, however, is how your interaction with each scene reflects the nature of the story itself, and how it is being told. The idea is that you’re piecing together the separate components of a picture, bringing text, lines, colors, and shapes into unison so that they make sense. You do this by pressing the arrow keys and finding which one can be held to unify the image. As you do this, you press the three incorrect keys, and when you do this the parts of the picture shimmy, fidget, and shuffle. The overall effect is one that visually represents the difficulties of recollecting a drunken memory.

Hsia manages to double down on her design here too, as she uses the same method to represent the total opposite. Most the time you’re required to piece an image together, but sometimes the image starts out complete, and you press the arrow keys to send it into disarray. This reversal is used when the narrator is talking about how drunk someone is, so that they their outlined form is lost to the same kind of destruction their brain is undergoing while under the influence of alcohol. Another instance of its use is when an ambulance doesn’t show up, so rather than piece an image of one together, you press the arrow keys to take one apart.

All of this is, obviously, much better experienced that it is having it explained to you. So make sure to check out i made sure to hold your head sideways for yourself on itch.io.

The post A new videogame about piecing together drunken memories appeared first on Kill Screen.

from Blogger http://lamurdis.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-new-videogame-about-piecing-together.html

[eldritchsurveys]

934.

5k Survey XLVI

2351. If you realize that a student at your school or a colleague from your job has plagiarized part of their work from the internet. What do you do? >> This would have nothing to do with me. 2352. What does your computer look like when you aren’t looking at it?? >> What?? 2353. If you aren’t looking at it, how do you know it’s still there when your back is turned? >> Ah. Yeah, I don’t know, man. I learned object permanence a long time ago and it’s done me well enough so far, so I’m sticking with it. 2354. If you hit an animal with your car would you get out to try and make sure it was okay? >> I don’t drive, so... 2355. If it was someone’s cat (collared with address) would you knock on their door and apologize for hitting the cat? >> I imagine that’d be the best possible response. Whether I’d do it or not depends on whether I feel like giving the best possible response at that time.

2356. How do you feel about the people who are teased in high school suing the bullies who teased them for emotional damage? >> That strikes me as a little strange. But hey, if it works, it works. 2357. Do you have an interest in any of the following: guns: They’re interesting in theory, but I don’t know how interested I’d be in actually using one. explosives: Meh. marilyn manson: I love Marilyn Manson’s music. trench coats: ...I see where this is going. Regardless, I’ll keep answering. I’ve had trenches on and off throughout early adulthood. I’d love to get a new one. the mafia: Nah. death: Certainly. satanism: Mild interest. nazis: I’m good. I do like some WWII movies, though. that doom game: Nah. 2358. Do you believe that people live in their own worlds or realities or do you think we all share the same world/reality? >> I think it’s both. Consensus reality is the one we all share, and subjective reality is that which belongs to the individual. I have layers to my own reality that no one else has to participate in or believe in, but it’s 100% real to me. At the same time, I’m not going to insist that my subjective reality completely supplant consensus reality, or try to impose my subjective reality on other people. 2359. Do you believe that Nazism was a characteristically German thing, or do you think a similar type of government could spring up in any country? >> I don’t think it makes any sense to describe it as characteristically German. I mean, it was German in that specific example, but the social conditions and demagoguery and authoritarianism and large-scale manipulation that led to and fed Nazism could happen anywhere.  2360. Is your diary in the internet archive wayback machine (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php)? >> --- 2361. When do you get your most peaceful and satisfying sleep? >> I don’t know. Certainly not lately. I think it’s gotten to the point where I need summer to lay off now (especially considering my room doesn’t have an air conditioner...). 2362. What thought gets you out of bed in the morning? >> The thought of having to pee. 2363. Do you get along better with guys or girls (as friends)? >> --- 2364. What does tx81z stand for? >> I don’t know. 2365. How many points is the letter Z worth in Scrabble? >> I don’t remember. Gonna assume it’s 10. 2366. In poker, which hand is better: four of a kind or a straight? >> *shrug* 2367. What is the official language of Australia? >> English? 2368. On what continent would you find British Columbia? >> I’m not Google. 2369. Have you been to homestarrunner.com? >> No, but I know of it. 2370. What promise could you never keep? >> I don’t know. I just don’t make them, normally. 2371. No cat has 8 tails. Every cat has one tail more than no cat. How many tails does every cat have? >> Nine.

2372. What are you a member of? >> --- 2373. If you and your mate were stranded at sea on a scuba diving trip like in the movie Open Water, how would you survive? >> Well, like... I can’t swim. So, you know. 2374. Do you feel confident that you would know what to do under emergency circumstances? >> It depends on the nature of the emergency. There are some I feel more prepared for (either because of prior experience or extensive research) than others. 2375. Have you ever been stood up? >> Yeah. 2376. Use a similie to describe yourself. >> I don’t want to. 2377. Good. Now use a metaphore. >> ^ 2378. Have you ever had an unusual piercing? >> I don’t think any of my piercings were particularly unusual. Oh, I did have a bridge piercing for a short period of time (it fell out when I was sleeping and it was still kind of new so I ended up being unable to put it back in). That’s not terribly common, in my experience. 2379. Have you ever experienced culture shock? >> More or less. 2380. Imagine you were trapped in one of the world trade center towers on 9/11/01. Who would you call and what would you say to them in those last few minutes? >> I can’t imagine that. First of all, in September of 2001 I was all of thirteen years old, so, like... 2381. Do you ever go to school or work when you feel like you do not look your best?? >> --- 2382. Does doing this effect your whole day? >> --- 2383. What was the last movie you watched and what did you learn from it? >> Nightingale (not to be confused with The Nightingale, which I’ve also seen and appreciated). I didn’t learn anything from it, I just thought it was a fascinating story, particularly in the way it was told and the way it was acted. 2384. Do you believe that everyone who doesn’t believe in your religion is going to hell? >> I don’t have a religion, so, figure that one out. 2385. What is the best thing about winter? >> Hmm... well, a good blanket of snow tends to make things quieter. I remember going to a tree farm when I first moved out here and just standing in the snow staring at the lines of trees and hearing... almost nothing. Just this vast grey-white and pine-green silence. It was glorious. Also, I can wear all my comfortable hoodies and sweatpants, and I can use my weighted blankets. 2386. Do you ever shovel your neighbor’s walk? >> --- 2387. How often do you hold back from saying what you are thinking? >> Relatively often, because a lot of the time I assume whatever I’m going to say is unwarranted or unnecessary. Or also, I just don’t feel like dealing with any responses to what I’m thinking about saying. 2388. Have you ever looked back at someone you loved and wondered ‘what attracted me to THEM?’ >> Yes. (Although “loved” might be a strong word in some of those cases.) 2389. What do you think of Drew Barrymore? >> I don’t think of Drew Barrymore. I haven’t even heard that name in years. 2390. Name one thing you refuse to ever do. >> Anal. 2391. Name one place you refuse to ever go. >> An active warzone. 2392. Do you think people see you more as who you are or what you are? >> ??? 2393. Pick 3 random letters: >> V, X, Z. Now think of the first 3 things that pops into your head that starts with each letter. >> Vampire, Xylophone, Zither. 2394. Do you dress more revealing or more to cover up? >> I prefer most of my body to be shrouded and inscrutable. 2395. What does it take to be a 'real gentleman’? >> I don’t know. 2396. Where would you go if you were going somewhere you don’t usually go? >> Er, what? 2397. On the first sept 11th anniversary, the new york lottery’s winning numbers were 9,1 and 1. Do you believe this is fate, coincidence or a conspiracy/plan? >> Ha, that’s kind of funny. I don’t have any feelings about it. My one personal 9/11 conspiracy has to do with a thing from the Dark Tower series, lol. 2398. Have you ever noticed that there is a lie in the middle of the word believe? >> Yeah. It’s one of those things that gets abused in graphic design a lot. 2399. When (and if) people (or animals) go to heaven, do they become angels? >> I’m the wrong person to ask about heaven, I’m not interested. 2400. What is your most important body part? >> Meh.