tkdguy

Having grown up in the Philippines, I feel that New Year's Eve isn't complete without fireworks, preferably when you can set them off yourself. I had a few fireworks myself, but the wind has been blowing really hard all day. I couldn't light anything, so I had to content myself with watching the fireworks across the bay and setting off a few poppers.
 
On that note, Happy New Year to all! I hope 2019 is a good year for everyone.

The flyby will happen at 31st December/1st January. And we will have a high resolution image on earth about 1 day later. Currently taking a look at the twitter feeds:
https://twitter.com/nasanewhorizons
https://twitter.com/JHUAPL

A good way to begin.I'm listening to Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, "From the New World". He wrote the work while he was living in New York working as a conductor and head of the New York Conservatory. He seemed to enjoy his sojourn in the US, and it meant that he was beyond the reach of Austrian conservatives. The American influence in the work if often touted, particularly the hymn featured in the lyrical second movement, but the Czech influence is ever stronger. (Dvorak was a persistent advocate of Czech independence from Austria. He found Austrian arrogance hard to deal with and defiantly wrote an opera in Czech and premiered it in Prague. Sadly, he didn't live long enough to see the collapse of Austria and the Czech independence he longed for all his life.)

I'll be biting the bullet and taking acting lessons this new year.

Killing Eve. Sandra Oh plays a member of British Intelligence hunting a mysterious female assassin. 8 x 42 minute episodes (no adverts). Kim Bodnia who was in the first two series of The Bridge is the assassin's handler. This was very good and I thoroughly recommend it. Available on BBC iPlayer if you can get it.
 
Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema Christmas movies. Mark makes the case that Die Hard is a Christmas movie despite as he himself says Bruce Willis says it is not. Mark goes into the various tropes. Very entertaining.
 
Scrooge. This is the 1951 black and white film which some (me included) believe is the definitive version. Alistair Sim plays Scrooge. This is just simply wonderful.
 
The ABC Murders. This is the new version of the Poirot story which has the detective portrayed as a fraud. Inspector Japp dies at the start in disgrace and you have Rupert Grint playing his replacement. Funny thing is that the David Suchet version was on as well over the break. And that is better. This version has an origin for Poirot being played by John Malkovich. He was not a detective but a priest whose congregation was murdered by German soldiers in WW1. The basic plot is still the same so the killer is the same.
 
Goodness Gracious Me. 20 Years Innit. A look back to the Asian comedy series that started 20 years ago. I remember it well. And I liked it.
 
Roy Orbison and Friends. A Black and White Night. Roy Orbison sings backed up by Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen.If you like Orbison this is a real treat.

Fifty years ago tonight I was at home in our apartment in Bremerhaven.  The Boy Scout troop had had a winter camp in which I had participated; it began the morning after Christmas, and ended early the afternoon of the 31st.  We had got there and very shortly thereafter the snow began falling, and it continued to fall until after dark, leaving us with about four inches on the ground that persisted all week and beyond.  It was much colder that week than my gear was made for; not surprising since we had arrived in northern Germany the previous August from the warmer climes of eastern New Mexico.  I stuck it out the whole week, but I did have early stages of frostbite in my feet, as my folks pronounced once I got home.  
 
Our family was never much for carousing, so we stayed at home, doing a large jigsaw puzzle on the dining table, and listening to the bizarre end-of-year radio programming on BFBN (British Forces Broadcasting Network), which introduced me to the Wurzels (I admit, though, that it wasn't until the late 1990s and the burgeoning young World Wide Web that I was able to identify them and sample other bits of their repertoire) and other oddities of British popular (but not rock and roll) music.  It was all a fund-raising situation, taking donations and playing requests from military personnel and, often, units.  Mom and Dad had drinks due to the cheap booze from the Class VI store; I was the oldest kid (albeit 12 years old) so we had soft drinks out of steel cans opened with a church key.  We stayed up past midnight, listening to both the Last Song of 1968 and the First Song of 1969, both of which were sappy enough that I immediately forgot them.  A hot water bottle at my feet assisted in frostbite recovery once I'd been ordered to bed.  I did not, however, go out and play in the snow for several days, which suited me just fine.
 
We had no TV so the very recent imagery from Apollo VIII did not reach us until magazines arrived from the States a week or two afterward (though the best versions had to wait a few months for the National Geographic with those to reach us); the reading of Genesis from the Apollo capsule happened in our wee hours so we missed that as well.  Still, it was a great time; I would attend my first school dance on the 17th of January; I was enjoying absolute academic supremacy in my class in the tiny American school; and I was doubly sheltered from the American domestic upheavals of the terminal 1960s.  AFAIK, the building we lived in there still stands, which cannot be said of either place we lived in Berlin.

The Cat came back
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-46723408

Next time get the full orcs.

A round up of 2018’s Space News: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/year-space-falcon-heavys-first-flight-solar-systems-farthest-frontier/

Hi guys i'm a newbie. Nice to meet everyone

Get the suppressors to make a "pew!" sound and I'll start buying tracer ammo in bulk.

And then he punched its lights out.

Here's a Christmas battle report for you:
 
Battle of 6 Armies

Emperor Akihito gives final birthday address before he resigns in April
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46666229
 
The biggest stories on the BBC website this year
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46566544

Carcharoth! (Gesundheit.)

Death is all a part of life. 
 

Sharks versus Jets, Cretaceous Era version

Seen all around California. Unfortunately, I was teaching at the time, so I missed out yet again.
 
 
 

Brand new steel toed boots for less than $10!