The second trailer for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is out:
When this was first announced, it was disclosed that it was set in the Alien universe, but it wasn’t clear whether the xenomorphs themselves would make an appearance. After this trailer, I feel pretty safe in saying that they will.
Howard Waldrop and I will review this when it comes out.
So I saw this video on Fark on how to peel garlic in ten seconds by shaking the cloves between two steel bowls a while back:
I make fresh salsa from time to (and have won some honorable mentions at a local hot sauce competition for same), and one of the biggest pains in the ass is peeling 4-5 whole bulbs of fresh garlic (the jar stuff just doesn’t work as well). So I thought I would give it a try.
What do you know? It works. Not 10 seconds, or quite as well peeled as in the video, but my two steel bowls are smaller than this guy’s. Even so, this easily cut about 80% of my garlic peeling time, which adds up to over an hour in the course of a year.
This may be an old tip for many of you, but I thought I would share it for those who regularly have to peel garlic…
Try to avoid getting stabbed today.
In celebration, here’s an extremely abbreviated version of Julius Caesar, performed at a Little Caesar’s:
Never let it be said that my blog is short on highfalutin culture…
Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is the music Bruce Sterling would put on at the end of the party after every Turkey City Writer’s Workshop held at his house, mainly so people would leave. It worked too, not because it was bad, but because the waltz tempo, echoey steel guitar and smoky vocals make it the perfect “chill out at the end of a long day and feel your eyelids getting heavy” song. I bought the single off iTunes, but I think I might need to pick up the entire album, So Tonight That I Might See, as I’ve developed a craving for Hope Sandoval’s voice, which combines that smokey, chill tone of a classic jazz/blues chanteuse with peak-period Sinatra’s last-second, end-of-the-measure timing.
Is Mazzy Star shoegazer? I think they’re more sui generis, but I’ve seen “Fade Into You” on several Best of Shoegazer lists, and that’s good enough for me…
Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond theme:
This was done at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science‘s Vijay Kumar, Daniel Melligner and Alex Kushleyev. The quadrotors are under computer control.
It’s not a particularly good version, but I’m sure they’ll have time to improve before the final enslavement of humanity. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I have to write a quadrotor heist novel…
(Hat tip: Derek Johnson)
Although I usually let Dwight cover the catastrophic failure front, my visit to the Norwegian Petroleum Museum made me want to discuss something that wasn’t covered there (only mentioned in passing): the Piper Alpha disaster. Piper Alpha was not only the worst disaster to occur in the North Sea oil fields, it’s the worst oil-related disaster ever, with 167 men killed, and is an important lesson in cascading failure.
Also, it blew up real good:
That’s what happens when you start pumping 15-30 tons of natural gas into an existing fire every second.
Because the rig was completely destroyed, and most of the personnel on it killed, exactly how the disaster actually unfolded is unknown, but the official report reconstructs events.
Piper Alpha was originally an offshore oil rig that was converted to natural gas production. On July 6, 1988, technicians took one of two gas condensate pumps offline for routine safety valve maintenance, but weren’t able to complete repairs before a shift change, and thus left a temporary plate in place. Though they had filed paperwork to this effect, the information was not communicated properly to the next shift, and when the other pump failed, the crew activated the pump being repaired. This resulted in a high pressure gas leak when the temporary plate failed, and shortly thereafter by an ignition and explosion.
Though the rig had firewalls, because it was a former oil rig they were designed to contain fire, not explosions. Fire and smoke blocked access from the rig accommodations area to the lifeboats. The switch for the automated firefighting system was below deck and not activated, and the two crewman sent off to activate it were never seen again. The fire got so bad the control room was abandoned and no evacuation announcement was made over the rig’s loudspeakers. The fire would have gone out after the rig’s emergency shutdown switch was activated, except for the fact that Piper Alpha was being fed oil from two other nearby rigs. Worse still, Piper Alpha was still being fed pressured natural gas from two 24 to 36 inch pipes, which melted and burst in the fire, resulting in the huge fireball in the video above. (The gas feeds from the connected rigs hadn’t been shut off, but even if they had been, the lines were so pressurized that it would have taken hours for them to bleed off.) The explosion was so powerful it killed five rescued rig workers and two crewmen on the rescue ship, and guaranteed the complete destruction of Piper Alpha.
Time between the pump being switched on and the giant fireball: 25 minutes.
Only 59 rig workers survived.
Lots of factors contributed to Piper Alpha’s demise: multiple elements of poor design, an inadequate retrofit, inadequate lockout/tagout procedures, and insufficient safety and emergency training procedures. Together they resulted in a devastating series of cascading failures, creating a disaster far more deadly than any single one of them could have produced.
Piper Alpha changed numerous design and safety practices in the oil industry, ensuring that the series of failures that destroyed Piper Alpha can’t reoccur. But offshore oil rigs still remain one of the most dangerous and demanding working environments in the industrial world.
Howard and I will review Brave, Pixar’s animated film this year, for Locus Online.
Given that it’s Pixar, we fully expect it to fall somewhere between “really good” and “totally awesome.”
Like Supercar, Plastic Girl in Closet is another Japanese band treading the boundary between Shoegaze and J-Pop. Also like Supercar, their dress sense seems to come from The Beatles circa 1964.
Second up for Howard Waldrop and I to review in 2012 is Pixar’s first live action film, John Carter (based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars) due out March 9.
The first trailer had me worried, because there were no four-armed green dudes. This trailer? Four-armed green dudes everywhere. Also, since Michael Chabon had a hand in the script, I’m really looking forward to it.
Just for the record, I should note that the John Carter of Mars in this film is not my U.S. congressman, John Carter of Round Rock.
Howard and I signed up to review a number of films for Locus Online this year, and I thought i would put up some trailers for them. First up on the list is Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, due out February 17.
We’re review it because: A.) Someone has to, B.) We reviewed the first one, and C.) I’m hoping with Crank directors Neveldine/Taylor at the helm it will be good, stupid, over-the-top, sleazy exploitation fun.