Messages

1

/dev/random / Re: The Official Inclusive Non-denominational Holidays 2020 (and forever) Thread

« on: December 02, 2025, 01:20:20 PM »

The older I get, the more I enjoy Christmas. These days, I go out of my way to decorate the outside of the house with lights and stuff (maybe I'll get some pics soon).

No pics of the outside yet.

But I did spend a few hours taking out my old It's A Wonderful Life Christmas village and train set. They used to sell these pieces at Target from about 1987 until about 1997 I believe. My mom started collecting it and would display it on top of the upright piano in the living room every Christmas. By the early 2000's, she had collected so much Christmas crap that she didn't have the room to store all of it, and she considered throwing the village set away. I always enjoyed it as a kid so I held on it to it. But I've never gotten it out to display at christmas time because... I have kinda the same problem: TOO MUCH STUFF. By the time I get everything else set out, I have no more table space big enough.

But this year I was feeling nostalgic, so I said I'd finally break it out and let it see the light of day after more than 20 years being packed away. Unfortunately, I'll have to put it all back into boxes and pack it away again before christmas day so the family will have a place to eat when everyone gets here that morning.



My cameras really old and it sucks.

The train runs on 4 AA batteries that are stored in the coal car just behind the engine (you can see the little red switch on the top rear of the coal car that turns it on and off). My mom had packed it away with batteries still inside. When I opened it up, they were of course crusty and corroded. The expiration date on the batteries said 2011. Amazingly, none of the little figurines or cars were broken even though they were all packed into one single big ziplock bag inside a box. I've moved the container in and out of the basement 20 Christmases, dropping it, bumping it, beating it around, not knowing how poorly the ceramic figures were packed, and somehow it all survived.

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/dev/random / Re: The Official Inclusive Non-denominational Holidays 2020 (and forever) Thread

« on: December 01, 2025, 06:23:10 AM »

Note:

I started to rename this the "Christmas in perpetuity thread" but... whatever.

It was called "The Official Inclusive Non-denominational Holidays 2020 Thread (and 2023)", but since the forums won't let me add enough to the Subject of the first post to just keep adding years every year (lol), I just put "and forever".

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I've mentioned horror movies and westerns around here before. But I also like Christmas movies too, especially the classics.

I love Christmas movies. Maybe not as much as I love horror and Halloween movies.

Meh, I take that back. I guess I like them just as much. The older I get, the more I enjoy Christmas. These days, I go out of my way to decorate the outside of the house with lights and stuff (maybe I'll get some pics soon).

Anyway, back to movies...

I love all the various Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol movies - Reginald Owen version, Alistair Sim version, George C Scott version, and the Patrick Stewart version. There are others too. Most people think the one with Reginald Owen and Gene Lockheart is the oldest one (1938), but there's actually an even older but lesser known British-made one from 1935 called Scrooge starring Seymour Hicks. For the longest time, the only surviving copies available were all no bigger than about 360p and in pretty bad shape with cloudiness in some parts and LOTS of scratches on the film. People did their best to clean it up and piece together the most viewable version possible from several different sources. And alas, finally a couple of years ago, a professional outfit got ahold of some original film and remastered it to a very decent looking colorized 4K 2160p version. There are other "colorized 1080p" versions on youtube, but they look like crap. This is the best one to watch. I'm normally not a fan of black and white colorization (I prefer the original black and white version of It's A Wonderful Life), but with the improvements and clarity in this version compared to the old commonly available versions, this one is far superior and I can gladly overlook the colorizing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eotS-FnRJE

In some ways, I think the 1999 Patrick Stewart version might be the best version in that it follows the actual Dickens story the closest. A few years back, I was at Barnes & Noble and picked up a book that was a collection of Dickens' Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol, and I actually read A Christmas Carol in several hours start to finish. All of the movie adaptations follow the biggest points of the story, but there are a few small details that you don't see included... the biggest one I can think of is when Scrooge arrives home, he sees Marleys face on the door knocker. Usually you see him go up the stairs to his room... and thats it. But in the story, as he is going up the stairs, he is terrified to see the ghostly apparition of a horse-drawn hearse going up the staircase. Dickens clearly intended the idea of ghosts and haunting and terror to be a theme throughout the work, and I don't think any of the adaptations do a good job of reflecting that. Anway, back to what I was saying about the Patrick Stewart version...

I believe I have the original DVD version somewhere in the basement in a box of christmas movies, but I never dig the DVDs out anymore - I have everything on MP4's on a portable hard drive. I can transfer them to a USB stick and then pop that in my mini blu ray and MP4 player in the living room, or I can transfer them to the video folder on the pc itself and then stream it any other tv via the media player app on my XboxOne. But for a long time, the only version I could find was the 480p version that someone copied from the DVD. This year I've found a 1080p version that was apparently ripped from the TBS streaming app, and it seems to be 4 minutes longer than the DVD version... so maybe it's got some bonus scenes, I dunno yet. I also found another version where someone AI upscaled it to 4k from the 480p DVD source. Both look much better (obviously the 4k one looks more well defined), but they both have frame rate issues. There's a very small bit of choppiness to the frame rate, whereas the old 480p version is very smooth with a constant steady 24fps. Perhaps the original files were MKV and someone encoded them to MP4 poorly.

At any rate... I've found this particular version that also seems to be remastered or upscaled to 4K from the original 480p DVD source, and this one has a nice and smooth frame rate. Note that this is not the TBS version with 4 additional minutes. I'll try to watch both versions at some point this month and figure out where the extra 4 minutes are coming from. I can already tell that the TBS version is definitely different because the font for the opening credits from the DVD source is a yellow script style font, and the TBS version has white plain letters similar to Arial or Helvetica font.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5qrGM1Nx5k

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/dev/random / Re: UFO SPACECRAFT CONFIRMED BY USA

« on: November 19, 2025, 07:48:27 PM »

There is a documentary film coming out in late November with 34 senior officials detailing UFO encounters and secrets.

They even say they have seen the bodies ...

Then again, didn't somewhere in the ballpark of 34 senior officials say the Steele Dossier about Trumps Russian Collusion was legit? How'd that turn out? When it comes to the government, "senior officials" are as honest and reliable as "elementary children".

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Trouble Shooting / Re: Hacking client?

« on: November 19, 2025, 07:43:17 PM »

A LEGIT QUESTION.

That's all I'm gonna say about it. *cough cough*

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Quake / Re: invite! spam

« on: November 07, 2025, 09:35:28 AM »

The users whine about insufficient management and whine again when the hammer drops.

 

why not grant admin privs to someone who is at least somewhat active? Focalor maybe?

I'm actually not active. I'm active on the forums here, but I never visit the servers anymore.

There are fewer players on the servers these days, and fewer admins. Come here, post a condump, maybe someone will see it within a few hours... but maybe not - folks are busy these days.  I would recommend using whatever ignore feature your client may have to block any individuals chat spam in the meantime if it gets too frustrating.

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/dev/random / Re: What games are you playing ?

« on: November 03, 2025, 10:38:00 AM »

The Google doodle game for Halloween was really cool: a Halloween/trick-or-treat themed version of Pacman. Addictive, just like the original arcade game.

https://doodles.google/doodle/pac-man-halloween-2025-edition/

I remember playing the original arcade version a few times at one of the local roller skating rinks when I was a kid. As the 80's progressed, Ms. Pacman tended to be the one you'd see in arcades more often. I also had (and still have) the Pacman cartridge for the old Atari 2600 system. It was not like the arcade version. The levels were simpler looking solid block walls rather than designs with rounded corners, and it was a good bit harder to play than the arcade version due to the joysticks that didn't function the same way as the arcade stick. The ghosts seemed to move faster on the 2600 too. It was pretty frustrating. Not quite as fun as the arcade.

I guess someone saw how much the old atari systems are fetching these days and decided it was worthwhile to design and release a modern system to capitalize on the retro gaming craze.

https://atari.com/collections/atari-2600-plus

Compaible with old 2600 and 7800 cartridges. I have probably a good 20 or 30 cartridges for the 2600. I have 2 of the original 2600 consoles - one that was my dads back in the early 80's, and one that I bought used at a video game trading store back in 2001 or 2002 for about 20 or 25 dollars... back when nobody really wanted them and stores were selling the games for about 1 dollar each just trying to get rid of them ASAP. Unfortunately I didn't go on a game buying spree back then.

I also see on Amazon that they have a special yellow PacMan edition of the 2600 Plus.

Might have to ask Santa Claus to get me one for Christmas. I don't have a power adapter that will run the old consoles anymore, plus, I think they were only able to connect to a TV via coax cable, which none of my TV's have anymore. These modern ones have HDMI as well as wireless controllers which would be SUCH a welcome addition. With the old ones, the console had to be pretty much on the floor in front of the tv, and with the cable length on the controllers, you were always forced to sit on the floor right in front of the tv.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: October 21, 2025, 01:29:17 AM »

As the Halloween horror marathon continues...

Watching another old one...



Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056687/
starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

This one was famous because, as people know, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford HATED each others guts, and SOMEHOW they were brought together in this one glorious movie to oppose one another, and it came off brilliantly.

A kind of funny, kind of fucked up tidbit I read while looking up some info about this movie...

Joan Crawford died in 1977, and Bette Davis died in 1989. When Bette Davis heard that Joan Crawford had died, she said, "You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good."

 

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Quake / Re: invite! spam

« on: October 21, 2025, 01:14:05 AM »

If the goal is to spam and annoy people because it's fun, why would you stop just because someone asked you nicely to?

YOUR m.o. is to annoy people because you think its fun. Solipsism at work.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: October 15, 2025, 01:26:22 AM »

  I didn't get that far. For certain, Anthony Perkins was a better "mother".



Black Sabbath (1963): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057603/

ENGLISH version streaming: https://play.xumo.com/free-movies/black-sabbath/XM0EOHWGA22VZT
ITALIAN version streaming (turn on subtitles): https://tubitv.com/movies/100008899/black-sabbath

One of my sort-of favorite horror movies is the old Boris Karloff narrated Italian-made Mario Bava film, Black Sabbath (1963). Apparently it's the film that Geezer Butler saw that gave him the idea to name their band Black Sabbath. And... apparently not too many people saw it back in those days, as it was a commercial flop in Italy and internationally. According to wiki, it did decent sales on home video, although I'm not sure if they mean once it was released on vhs and betamax in the 80's (which is doesn't mention at all) or when it was later released on dvd in the 2000's.

I've had a lower quality 480p version for many years, but this year I was finally able to track down a full 1080p English language version. It wasn't easy. It's easy to find a 720p or lower English language version... or a 1080p Italian language version. But one single place had the 1080p in English.

Boris Karloff is just a cool creepy dude, I love his movies. His narration intros help make this movie better than it otherwise would be... and in fact he actually STARS as a character in one of the three stories presented. It should be noted that the English language version is a good bit different from the Italian version. They edited out things like any mentions of lesbian relationships or prostitution (which were key plot points in "The Telephone" segment in the Italian version, as well as clipping out some of the more violent and bloody scenes. Also, according to wiki, the color mastering techniques they used differ from the Italian to the American version. Which is odd, because one thing I always notice about the film is the great usage of colored lighting effects to create eerie atmosphere in the backgrounds and to accentuate faces and parts of the foreground in key moments.

For example... the faces in the window at the end of The Vurdulak story:



And most especially on the face of the old dead woman in the Drop of Water story:



There's almost no horror movies that legitimately scare me... but lemme tell ya... you watch this part late at night with all the lights out... and the part where the dead lady with the freakish face shows up will give you legit chills, it's pretty good. The best part of the movie in my opinion. I guess thats why in the original italian cut, they saved that story for last.

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Quake / Re: invite! spam

« on: October 15, 2025, 12:18:06 AM »

It's 2025, and some people STILL do this. 

I don't play anymore, but for the sake of others, I'm gonna do something crazy that probably won't work, but you never know until you try: I'm going to simply ask nicely and hope they're excellent enough to listen. And so I humbly ask this person to please cease with the chat spam and just play the game and enjoy the miraculous fact that this many people still bother coming to these servers to play this very very ancient game.

  

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: October 08, 2025, 02:30:13 PM »

Watched the Psycho collection - there's 4 movies total, although theres technically 5 because theres one in the late 80's between parts 3 and 4 called Bates Motel. I skipped that one. It was a made for tv thing (not a theatrical release as far as I know) that had Lori Petty in it. Um, NO THANKS.

Psycho is pretty much a horror masterpiece. I have to assume that Alfred Hitchcock never intended for it to have any sequels. Hitchcock never made any sequels to any of his movies, and I think what says it all is the fact that it wasn't until a couple of years right after he died that they dared to make the 2nd one. I don't think he would've approved of it. Nevertheless... it happened, and I watch them sometimes, and they aren't too bad. They don't compare to the original obviously, but sequels very rarely do.

But if you want to get REALLY technical... there were 6 Psycho movies... if you include the 1998 remake they did starring Vince Vaughan, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, and William H Macy.

I think I had seen it before a long time ago on HBO or The Movie Channel. I had forgotten all about it until I started looking up some info about the Psycho movies while watching them. I didn't remember anything about it so I tried watching it...

I got about 50% through it, right to the shower stabbing scene and the part where he pushes the car into the bog... and I turned it off, I couldn't take anymore. There was NO POINT TO IT!

This is precisely why YOU NEVER MAKE REMAKES. Psycho was a masterpiece, people love it, so if you change it, people are going to complain. And changing the work of a brilliant director like Hitchcock is probably considered blasphemy among Hollywood folks. So obviously when they started to make this movie, they had no intention of changing it and having everyone say that they ruined it. So instead... they pretty much copied it shot for shot. The credits looked the same, the music was the same, the camera angles were the same, everything the same. So... what's the point of making the movie at all? Why should I sit here watching the remake when I already saw the original? Maybe there's someone who hasn't seen the original before. Why should they bother seeing this remake when they can just watch the original?

This is the problem you have with doing remakes. If you change it around, people complain that you changed it too much. If you don't change it at all and you do a shot for shot copy... then there's no point. You're honestly better off braving the complaints and revamping it with some modifications to things. Either way it's gonna suck, but at least it'll be something that sucks that I haven't already seen before.

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Science / Re: The Baloney Detection Kit

« on: September 30, 2025, 05:11:21 PM »

The original author of the so-called Baloney Detection Kit was Carl Sagan in his book The Demon Haunted World.

The 9 tools in the Baloney Detection Kit part 1...

• There must be independent confirmation of the facts given when possible.
• Encourage debate on the evidence from all points of view.
• Realize that an argument from authority is not always reliable. Sagan supports this by telling us that "authorities" have made mistakes in the past and they will again in the future.
• Consider more than one hypothesis. Sagan adds to this by telling us that we must think of the argument from all angles and think all the ways it can be explained or disproved. The hypothesis that then still hasn't been disproved has a much higher chance of being correct.
• Try to avoid clinging obdurately to your own hypothesis and so become biased. Sagan tells us to compare our own hypothesis with others to see if we can find reasons to reject our own hypothesis.
• Quantify. Sagan tells us that if whatever we are trying to explain has numerical value or quantitative data related to it, then we'll be much more able to compete against other hypotheses.
• If there is a chain of argument, every link in that chain must be correct.
• The use of Occam's razor, which says to choose the hypothesis that is simpler and requires the fewest assumptions.
• Ask if a given hypothesis can be falsified. Sagan tells us that if a hypothesis cannot be tested or falsified then it is not worth considering.

Part 2 - 20 logical fallacies that must be avoided...

• Ad hominem. An arguer attacks the opposing arguer and not the actual argument.
• Argument from authority. (aka appeal to authority) Someone expects another to immediately believe that a person of authority or higher knowledge is correct.
• Argument from adverse consequences. Someone says that something must be done a certain way or else there will be adverse consequences.
• Appeal to ignorance. One argues a claim in that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa.
• Special pleading. An arguer responds to a deeply complex or rhetorical question or statement by, usually, saying "oh you don't understand how so and so works."
• Begging the question. An arguer assumes the answer and makes a claim such as, this happened because of that, or, this needs to happen in order for that to happen.
• Observational selection. Someone talks about how great something is by explaining all of the positive aspects of it while purposely not mentioning any of the negative aspects.
• Statistics of small numbers. Someone argues something by giving the statistics in small numbers, which isn't very reliable.
• Misunderstanding of the nature of statistics. Someone misinterprets statistics given to them.
• Fallacy of inconsistency. An arguer is very inconsistent in their claims.
• Non sequitur. This is Latin for "it doesn't follow". A claim is made that doesn't make much sense, such as "Our nation will prevail because God is great."
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Latin for "it happened after, so it was caused by". An arguer claims that something happened because of a past event when really it probably didn't.
• Meaningless question. Someone asks a question that has no real meaning or doesn't add to the argument at all.
• The excluded middle. An arguer only considers or mentions the two opposite extremes of the conversation and excludes the aspects in between the two extremes.
• Short-term vs. long-term. A subset of the excluded middle, but so important it was pulled out for special attention.
  
• Slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits…).
• Confusion of correlation and causation. The latter causes the former.
• Straw man. Caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack. This is also a short-term/long-term fallacy.
• Suppressed evidence, or half-truth.
• Weasel word (aka anonymous authority) A word or phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "it is thought", and "researchers believe".

With all of the podcasters and people on social media these days having such... interesting... opinions and theories about things, these tools are now more necessary than ever. Just because someone is charismatic and speaks confidently doesn't mean they really know what they're talking about.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: September 06, 2025, 01:21:15 PM »

October is horror movie marathon month for me. I've downloaded probably 60 or more movies to watch. I won't list them all but here's some of them:

...

• Vampyr (1932) old black & white 1930's German-made vampire movie... if you couldn't tell from the title. No idea what it's about, will be the first time I've ever seen it. Watch it here.

I am somewhat of a horror movie fan, but at the same time, I find most of the movies labelled as "horror" to be pretty ridiculous, so I also tend to avoid horror movies... until October rolls around, and then I binge the living hell out of them, assuring that I don't feel the need to watch them any other time of the year unless I really want to.

It's not October yet... but I'm starting my yearly Halloween Horror Binge a month early this year. I downloaded a CRAPLOAD of movies, and I probably won't get through them all by Halloween.

Some good ones I've seen so far that I would recommend...

House of Wax (1953) - Starring Vincent Price.
The Body Snatcher (1945) - Starring Boris Karloff, a smaller role played by Bela Lugosi
The Mummy (1959) - Starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as the Kharis/The Mummy - Hammer studios got permission to do remakes of the old Universal classic monster films, such as Frankenstein (Hammer version: Curse of Frankenstein), Dracula (Horror of Dracula), and The Mummy with Boris Karloff - not sure if they did any others. I'd recommend all 3 of these Hammer remakes, especially Curse of Frankenstein.

Watched this one for the first time:

White Zombie (1932) - Starring Bela Lugosi - Not great, but not terrible either... considering its a movie from the 30's, and also considering the star is Bela Lugosi (I'm not a Lugosi superfan) - Its awkward and silly at parts, but like I said, that's just how some movies were back then. It was "the style".

And one that I DO NOT RECOMMEND.



Satan's Cheerleaders (1977)
It's very bad. Some movies are so bad that they're good. NOT THIS ONE! This one is just plain bad. Stay away! The dialogue is fucking terrible. The story is terrible. The cast is mostly terrible. It has Yvonne DeCarlo in it. Even her part is horrible because of the dialogue. She obviously didn't give a shit about what roles she took around that time. I saw another horrible one with her in it that she did right after this one in 1979 called Nocturna. It was SO BAD. One of the worst bad b-movies I've ever seen. Well now it doesn't stand alone as the single worst halloween/horror movie, I'd put Satan's Cheerleaders right beside it. Trust me, you CAN'T BE bored enough to make watching this movie worth it.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: August 26, 2025, 10:36:56 AM »

RIP Brent Hinds.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA70S4b-ofM

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: July 31, 2025, 06:28:59 PM »

Pretty sure this song about Chris Cuomo.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPFIkty4Zvk&ab_channel=FrankZappaVEVO