Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

Hey, it's me. said:

Because the liberal Muslim shadow MP Keith Vaz was sharp enough to go on TV (the BBC I might add. Shock! Horror!)  to berate these two people as wanting to come and incite hatred, but was mysteriously silent about Al Arefe. Who has condoned wife beating, secterian violence and all manner of nasty things. Vaz himself has a particularly murky past. Now you tell me. Is this liberal hypocrisy? 

Ok, so one liberal responded to one and not the other.  Your posts made it seem like a movement.

Yeah, the auction said they didn't know if it was working or not.  Hopefully it is, or that it doesn't need too much repair.

I had an unusually heavy ping pong table shipped from China once, and the shipping cost about $500.  I had to rent a truck and pick it up at the Oakland port myself.  2.5K sounds a bit high from Korea, but then this item might be bulkier or take up more space.

Hey, it's me. said:

No you misunderstand. Never mind who posted the stories, they are what they are. The fact is two people (irrespective of their views) were recommended by a (Muslim) shadow MP to be refused entry to the UK, whilst an extreme Saudi hate preacher who condones sectarian violence amongst Muslims was allowed entry to sermon at UK mosques without so much as a whimper. That's my point.

And your basis for blaming this on the liberals is...?

Hey, it's me. said:

http://tellmamauk.org/call-on-home-secretary-to-ban-visit-by-pam-geller-Robert-spencer/

So, where were the same voices asking for this man to be banned? 

http://huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/19/Saudi-preacher-Mohammad-al-arefe_n_3465941.html

Hypocrisy in action.

I'm a little confused.  Are you saying that it's a good thing the conservative Huffington Post brought this to our attention?  Liberal media would sweep this sort of thing under the rug?  Or are you bemoaning our hypocritical relationship with Saudi Arabia, caused by liberals?

I wonder if he wooed her with the "I hate sand" thing?  I hear it works every time.

Wow, I went over and checked their forum for the first time. Seems more like an official "anti-Frink" forum.  Didn't notice them talking about much else.  Frink, you're famous!

stretch009 said:

There's only one problem with version 2.1 though.  Unlike 2.0 there's only an AVCHD and not a higher bitrate version.

Still looks unbelievably awesome on my 58" plasma.

It's really not that complicated.

Right now:

2.1 = SW
1.0 = ESB
1.0 = ROTJ

Personally, I don't see any reason to wait for 2.5 for SW.   Version 2.1 looks awesome and 2.5 will only have minor tweaks that I rather doubt I would even be able to notice.

By the way, a lot of craziness that is blamed on liberals can actually be traced back to rich lawyers who aren't liberal at all, just greedy.  (and greedy politicians who maintain the system that supports it, because they are in bed with the lawyers)

pufnstuf said:

What kind of image quality can you expect from EIAJ recordings?  Better or worse than VHS, U-MATIC, etc?

The best EIAJ footage I've ever seen are the 1972 captures I did for Drum Corps World a few years ago.  Some low-res samples are on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKkONJpzU5w

Although color exists, the vast majority are black and white.  Most are worse than VHS, although some are well-preserved.  Playback is very sensitive to the quality and performance of the playback deck.  It generally requires a lot of maintenance, and a bevy of time base correctors and proc amps to get the most out of a tape.  They also have their own set of artifacts to fight.  I've gotten a lot of help from the olvtrs Yahoo forum.

Nowhere near UMatic.  Sound is mono.

imperialscum said:

The main job of the liberals is to protect the intolerant and label "racist" anyone who has reasonable complaints. A first class hypocrites.

I wish you guys would stop lumping all liberals into one boat.  I'm a liberal and I think it's ridiculous that he wasn't allowed to wear the shirt.  I'm pretty sure that most liberals I know would feel the same way.  Liberalism at its best means being supportive of people's freedom to live their lives as they want, as long as they aren't hurting others.  Of course there are some high profile people absconding with the liberal label, just as there are some high profile conservative whackos twisting what conservativism represents.

Just say it's wrong and stop aligning everyday people with it.  Politicians are doing this, for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with the interests of their citizens.

The hijab doesn't bother me at all (although I feel a little sorry for the athletes that have to compete in a hijab).  The burka, however, is so extreme.

And the burka is not just a fashion statement.  Is is one part of a whole litany of behavioral rules that include things such as not being able to go out in public without a male chaperone.

Warbler said:

I when it happens behind closed doors, I would suggest that victims leave that house and go to the police.

I'm sorry, but that is an incredibly naive over-simplification, on many many levels.

It doesn't help to broad-brush "liberals" as having a single mindset with regards to these issues.  I consider myself extremely liberal, but I and most liberals I know (actual people, not the ones that get all the attention) struggle with where to draw the line and often disagree with each other.

I certainly am against Sharia law being allowed in the U.S., because I believe in the rule of law and living in the U.S. means being protected by its laws, not some other set of laws.  I'd be just as against it if some group were coming in here trying to get permission to live by Amsterdam's laws.

The burka - when worn in the U.S. - also bothers me.  Not because it is a symbol of Islam (I don't even know if it is), but because it represents severe inequality being introduced into a country in which everyone is supposed to have equal protection.  You know that if some of these women stopped wearing the burka, they'd be punished or worse.  Yes they are choosing to wear it, but the reality is that some of them are being denied choice, living under an intimidation they can't easily escape and dare not admit publicly.  By American standards, that isn't fair.  We probably can't ban them outright, but they could be banned in areas where security is a potential concern, such as airports, government buildings, schools, etc., because of the inability to reasonably confirm the identity of someone wearing it.  Religious freedom isn't absolute.

This isn't about liberals versus conservatives - it's about trying to reason through where to draw the lines.  It's why I hate extreme media on both sides, because they squelch discussion and problem-solving rather than facilitating it, by propping up ridiculous straw men and convincing their viewers that is what the other side believes.  The vast majority of real people fall closer to the middle, and if the FOX's and MSNBC's weren't fanning the flames, we'd probably be making a lot more progress and our government might not be at gridlock.

Well, there's always Blair Witch Project.

Elements that are a consequence of the technique used at the time, such as matte lines, should stay.  Elements that were simply something they missed, such as a hair or a smudge, has no historical relevance and I am fine with it being fixed.  I just don't see things like that as part of the movie, whereas something like a visible string holding up a spaceship, is.

Are you sure you don't mean a 3/4" UMatic machine?

It is highly unlikely to be CV.  CV was popular in the late-60s until about 1972, by which time EIAJ had pretty much supplanted it.  The latest CV tape I have ever encountered was from 1971.  EIAJ had so many advantages over CV that most people who had CV switched to EIAJ.  It's hard for me to imagine anyone making a CV recording in 1977, but I have seen numerous EIAJ tapes from that time period.  And anyone who for whatever crazy reason was still using a CV deck in the mid-70s, would likely have made the jump straight to VHS by 1977.

I also have a good CV deck and a myriad of time base correctors.  Although in the highly unlikely event that this does turn out to be CV, and if it turns out to contain anything of interest, it would be advisable to try it on multiple CV decks.  CV doesn't have tracking control, so different machines play and record with different tracking alignment.  EIAJ allowed for tracking control.  (Also, later-era EIAJ decks had onboard dropout compensation and other features that greatly improved picture quality)

Hard to imagine, but manufacturers of CV decks didn't include tracking control because they hadn't envisioned people wanting to play back tapes on a different machine!

Looks like EIAJ, the closest thing to home video format which had some popularity from about 1969 to 1976 when VHS supplanted it.  I digitized about 75 EIAJ tapes for commercial release a few years ago, and I have a nice late-era EIAJ deck.  My EIAJ transfers are better than every commercial house I know of - although I know one guy on the east coast who has a modified deck that produces slightly better transfers.

The only other similar format I know of is CV, but that's about 5 years earlier.  I also have a good CV deck.

If it is a larger format, I should be able to find someone who could transfer it.  I'm a member of an old-vtr's forum and there are people there I could probably cajole into helping.

If anyone here wins it, I'll have a look at it and digitize it if it is of interest.  But of course I suggest coordinating so y'all don't bid against each other.

The not-so-secret meeting between me and Harmy happened last week in Prague and was both productive and fun.  It was great chatting with Harmy and hearing his thoughts on all things SW.  He was very generous in taking the nearly 2-hour train ride from Pilzen(?) just to meet me.  I found Harmy to be a lively, artsy, very upbeat guy, both sharp and with a lot of common sense.

We spent about 2 and a half hours, most of which in a cafe, looking at the ROTP raw footage on my laptop and discussing strategies for color-correcting it.  That evening he emailed me some quick-and-dirty samples that looked fantastic, so he is already working on it.

Here's a picture of us at the cafe:

We were both keenly aware of the danger involved in us both meeting in the same place.  In fact, I frequently had this feeling we were being watched.  Oh well, nothing bad happened.  Here is a picture of us at the train station:

Burdokva said:

Also, the robes... agh, the robes! It made sense for Ben (Obi-Wan) to wear one in the desert. It actually fit with the rest of the Tatooine clothing.

Yoda pretty much wore rags. The only one who wore an actual robe was the Emperor but he is a kind of evil space wizard, in all honesty...

The robes... that's another thing that bugs me about the PT.  Before the PT, I always thought that Obiwan and Yoda were wearing rags because they were in exile, not because that's what they wore as Jedi.  In SW, every pilot we see is wearing a cool pilot's uniform (except Darth).  And we learn that Obiwan and Anakin were pilots.  So why should we assume that the Jedi wore rags when they weren't in exile?

During SW, I pretty much assumed that an assemblage of Jedi wouldn't look that much different than some of the hangar scenes.  It made sense to me that the very best warriors/pilots would become Jedi as they gained wisdom and strength in the force.  ROTJ to some extent, and then the PT, turned them all into Merlins.

I agree that in the PT-based version of Jedi knights, Wedge may not make a good Jedi.  But have a look at Dennis Lawson today, and see if you don't think that an older Wedge would make a great SW-style wise Jedi:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0493200/

Burdokva said:

To be honest, I'd be glad if Wedge was not a Jedi. I'm tired of lightsabers, robes and the Force

Given PT-style Jedi, I would agree with you.  But the Jedi in the OT were Yoda, Obiwan, and Luke, the coolest characters of all.  And they were down-to-earth fighters - knights.  Right before the attack on the death star, the leader said "may the force be with you" to the pilots.

Also, pilots are way cooler than Jedi.

In SW, the only Jedi we knew WERE pilots.

I guess now, with the PT in the loop, non-gaggy Jedi may be impossible.  Shame.

Hey, it's me. said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I'd like to see Denis Lawson return as Wedge, as an elder Jedi along with Luke.  He didn't get enough credit in SW and ESB.

How the hell is Wedge a Jedi? 

He isn't one during the OT, but given his valiant and effective piloting, could he not become one?

I don't think of the Jedi as they are portrayed in the PT.  I think of them as the Jedi Knights as they are described by Obiwan in Star Wars - great fighters in tune with the good side of the force.  Knights in the classic sense.  And by that description, Wedge strikes me as someone ideally suited to becoming one.

Unfortunately, since the PT pooped all over how I envisioned the Jedi (based on the OT), I suppose Wedge couldn't ever be a Jedi.  He didn't get picked as a Youngling based on his midichlorians, and end up in a monastery with wierd rules and Yoda hovering a ball over his head when he was 3 years old.

Well, there need to be at least a FEW jedi.  And Wedge seems a good candidate, just like Obiwan/Anakin were initially star pilots who fought alongside each other (I'm refering to the REAL anakin as described in SW by Obiwan, not the PT jerk "anakin").  Wedge was the real deal and fought successfully alongside Luke.  I can't think of a more worthy Jedi-to-be outside of Luke, than Wedge.

Just so long as they don't call him "Wedgie-wan".