Archive December 2006

A fine string of text ads spotted on SomethingAwful:

Buy Molestation on eBay!

First tip for Stranger Safety - don't buy molestation on eBay. IT IS NOT A STATION FOR MOLES. [13:06] [0 comments]

Tuesday 26 December 2006

Why do I like Korean movies? I just watched Gwoemul, which is a combined disaster/monster movie, a genre I'm usually not fond of comprised of two genres I'm not that fond of individually either. It wasn't particularly fast-paced, which I've previously thought was a trait that made Korean movies tend to appeal to me. It didn't do very much in the way of comedy (it did make me laugh several times, with things that were probably intentionally funny, but not lots of times). Despite this, I still found it an enjoyable movie that was mostly able to hold my attention. Why?

New hypotheses, given that pacing and comedy have been shot down by this. Subtitles? No, Japanese movies are subtitled and often very boring. Acting? Possibly. Everyone is very exaggeratedly expressive. Korean voices? Maybe, they are also exaggeratedly expressive, while also being mostly English-familiar phonemes. Likeable characters, perhaps. Maybe it's a big melange of all of these things, and also the tendency of Korean movies to deviate from genre clichés and overlap their genres. It makes me wonder whether Korea itself is different in the same way - would I find it strangely compelling instead of tedious and hateful like everywhere else?

Anyway. Gwoemul. Recommended for people who like, hm, the old "The Blob", "The Stuff" and "Godzilla" (not the Hollywood one obviously). Not recommended for people who like any stereotypical French movies, or movies of the genre "suspense thriller". [10:33] [0 comments]

Saturday 23 December 2006

An amusing game that isn't even a game, for anyone who has a microphone attached to their computer - examining your voice pitch with Voiceprint. Switch it to "Pitch/SPL", press record, make noises, it will show your pitch on a graph in blue, volume in white, and in the top right will tell you what note it is you're making, if any.

My voice is seemingly capable of singing all the notes from B2 (the top, last note of octave 2) to E5. What I can actually sing is just the single note F3, as the only one I can consistently hold without occasional erring on the flat side (except for many of the flat notes, which I tend to err on the sharp side). Or alternatively I can't sing any notes, in that I can't hit a target note spot on at all. I can increase my range by the power of whistling, which starts at D5 and runs up to F6. Clearly I am Pop Idol material. [03:57] [0 comments]

Sunday 3 December 2006

A conceptually amusing game that nobody would ever actually make the effort of playing; Chinese Charades. Person A mimes the title of a movie or what-have-you. Person B, the only one who can see Person A, duplicates the mime. Person C, the only person who can see person B, duplicates from that. And after that, the people trying to guess what is being mimed. Ideally the guesses are also narrated back along the line to give Person A only distorted clues as to what they need to change in their mime. [00:47] [1 comment]