Backbyrner

…this is why Al Gore invented the internet.

…after Jimi’s death.

I went to the Roger Waters concert last week and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I did set my expectations ahead of time that it was going to be quite political and VERY anti-Trump.  Now that’s ok, everyone’s entitled to his own opinion and if you have a pulpit from which to preach…well more power to you.

So it was fine, and in fact I quite enjoyed the whole Trump/Pig part of the middle of the show.

I did come to a realization though.

It actually happened during the song, “We don’t need no education.”  The realization was: Roger Waters is still an 11 year old boy inside.

That song, when you hear it today, when every and all teachers are so immersed now-a-days in proper PC interactions with students, it falls flat.  I mean its a catchy tune, but really?  “exposing every weakness, however carefully hidden by the kid.”  That line in the song and many others, roll of the tongue great, but would any teacher anywhere (except the extreme exception) do anything like this in 2017?  In the US?  In the UK?

Well like I said, it’s a catchy tune, and I still like it, but understanding where his emotional age got locked in (1964 primary school), sheds a lot of light into the bands lyrics.

Oh one other thing, the hackneyed use of the non-white shoolkids as props was just aweful.

But the backing vocalist ladies just rocked it in the “Great Gig in the Sky”.  I’ve always wanted to see that performed live and they were great.

Here’s the problem.

Even though the Machete order improves the experience of watching the Star Wars series, it still forces you to sit through 10 + hours of movies, of which 4 hours or so suck.

Question: How do you improve your experience while still getting your full Star Wars Experience?

Answer: You don’t watch the whole thing.

All we need to do is identify the best and most important scenes from each movie and watch those.  This will allow you to plow through the whole thing in about 2 hours or less. (unless you choose to watch one of the movies as a whole.)  It also allow us to bring in a couple scenes from Episode 1 just for fun.

• Episode 4: All of it. (but if you were to trim it)
• Burning Skeletons,
• Falcon escapes Tattooine,
• Death Star Escape,
• Final Death Star attack run up to and including “the Force will be with you…always.”
• Episode 5: All of it. (but if you did trim)
• Speeder finds Luke and Han
• Escape from Space Worm up to Falcon latching onto Star Destroyer
• Luke and Darth fight
• Episode 1 (yes one)
• Pod Race
• Lightsaber duel
• Episode 2
• Jango and Obi wan fight
• ….. er ….
• Episode 3
• I like the opera scene actually
• Senate battle between Yoda and Sidious.
• Episode 6
• Blow up Jabba
• [optional] Luke and Leia talk
• Luke and Darth Talk
• Luke and Darth fight for the Emperor’s kicks.

Done.

You could be in and out of the Star Wars Razor order in less than 2 hours this way.  And still have a great time.

Thoughts?  What am I missing?

1. videopad : http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html

   Microsoft has, up until recently, had a very simple movie editing software available for you to use: MovieMaker.  It has sadly been discontinued.  So off I went looking.  Here is a great alternative, free, easy and packed with even more functionality.

   VideoPad.  It’s a bit more complex (but not much) and has a lot more functionality.  I was able to ramp up and rip out some home movies with only about an extra half our of learning time.  4 stars so far.

2. ShareX:  https://getsharex.com

   What I want in a screen capture tool is simple.  Hook to the PrintScreen hotkey, give me a selectable rectangle, and copy to clipboard.  No extra windows, no extra dialogs, no nothing.  I used to use Gadwin Print Screen tool, but they added features and made it worse.  The tool built into windows makes you open the app first and, well, that is slow.  ShareX does what I want.  FAST FAST FAST!

3. Open Live Writer: http://openlivewriter.org

   This is another replacement for a great little Microsoft tool Windows Live Writer.  Which is also discontinued.  This replacement is not perfect yet, but it is pretty good (I am using it for this post) and Scott Hanselman is involved, so its gotta be good.

4. Posh-Git: https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git

   So you wanna work with GIT on windows?  Go install this and PowerShell becomes the ultimate windows GIT shell.  Just Awesome.

5. Robomongo: https://robomongo.org

   Makes Mongo db work easy peasy.

6. keepass: http://keepass.info

   Actually some of you probably have heard of this, but be sure to check out the cloud integration plugin.  Keep your kdbx file up on the cloud and make it accessible from anywhere.  Perfect!

7. Vivaldi: https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en_US

   If you haven’t heard of this browser go and get it and give it a spin.  It’s awesome.  Faster than chrome, and no google spying.

8. ConEmu: https://conemu.github.io/

   Command Line Emulator.  This tool is spectacular.  Lets you wrap any command window with itself allowing you to do a bunch of great stuff like tabbed windows.  Great for the power PowerShell user.

The Best Scenes from Movies! – 2

Charles Bronson.  ‘Nuff said.

You didn’t know a bike could do this did you?

The Best Scenes from Movies!

1.

I’ll just start here as its as good a place as any.

Jim’s Ride in The Man from Snowy River is an epic scene.