Monthly Archives: March 2022

Television

Moone Boy

Series 1

Moone Boy is an Irish sitcom created, co-written by and co-starring Chris O’Dowd (The IT crowd).

The series is semi-autobiographical of O’Dowd and focuses on a young boy Martin and his life growing up in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the west of Ireland in the late 1980s.

Martin, aided by his imaginary friend (O’Dowd) has a unique perspective on life. His imagination comes into play in his childish drawings which come alive through animation.

In the first episode, Martin celebrates his 12th birthday. He is thrilled with his Readybix bike from Mum and Dad, although it doesn’t last long when the local bullies intervene.

It’s rather charming, in a stereotyped Irish way. The humour comes from the characters and the ridiculous things they get up to.

The stories take from events of the  day. The falling of the Berlin wall and Mary Robinson becoming first female president of Ireland.

Steve Coogan puts in an appearance as a sleazy businessman.

And it all ends with a story about Altar boys behaving like the Mafia.

 

 

 

Technology

Sbarro Challenge

Sbarro Challenge

Wedgecar #12

Sbarro is a small Swiss replica and sports car company founded by Franco Sbarro in 1971.

The first Sbarro offered was a replica of the Lola T70, powered by a 5.4-litre Chevrolet V8. Since then, the company has produced small-series replicas of a variety of models including the BMW 328, Ford GT40, Bugatti Royale and Mercedes-Benz 540K.

They produced the Challenge, which dispensed with traditional mirrors and may have been the first car sold with a reversing camera.

It had a tubular frame and a turbocharged Mercedes-Benz 5-litre V8 engine. Claimed power was 279 kW and the top speed 310 km/h.

Music, Technology

Swamp

Swamp is old VST unknown from an unknown time and place.

Powered by 2 PCM wave oscillators and a Ring modulator generating the sum and difference of the input signals, it can give low rumble with weird effects.

No presets, but changing it’s two wave tables and hitting the randomize knob produces interesting effects, like this one.

The track Three Mellons uses the VST, along with some samples.

 

Books

Uncommon Stars

Light from Uncommon Stars
by Ryka Aoki (2021)

 

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate.

 

A strangely compelling story, with donuts, music and science fiction. The main character is transgender and has lots of issues. At times the plot seems slow and plodding, but the writing and characters just keep you going.

And in the end, it comes down to Bela Bartok’s Sonata for violin..

Music, Technology

3 Cheese

Triple Cheese from u-hu

Triple Cheese, winner of the 2006 KVR Developer Challenge is a freeware synthesizer.

It claims no traditional oscillators or wavetables, no FM or phase distortion and no analogue modelled filters. Despite this it has lots of interesting presets for a wide variety of sounds.

See Tsunami Cheese

 

 

 

Music, Technology

Golden Aset

Golden Aset

Golden Aset is a synthesizer for Pads, Textures, Soundscapes and Atmospherics.

This software synthesizer offers a lot of weird soundscapes and pads. It comes with plenty of sound band for all sorts of effects.

This one was done just using Golden Aset.

 

Movies

Pixie

Pixie is a 2020 British comedy thriller film directed by Barnaby Thompson.

A woman and two men find themselves on the run in the Irish countryside after a heist gone wrong.

The film stars Olivia Cooke, Ben Hardy, Daryl McCormack,

The big stars here are Colm Meaney and Alec Baldwin. Colm gets to be the dad, be gruff and ultimately take on Baldwin.

After the heist, two guys with one brain between them join up with Pixie, a troubled young woman. She leads them on an adventure, and as the bodies stack up behind them chaos follows. It all ends in a big encounter at a church, where you reach the conclusion that all Irish are somehow involved in the drugs trade.

While it is  wild rise, it’s a bit too dark to be funny. But it does pay off in the end.

The Kermode review:

Movies

Unextinctable

Extinct is a 2021 film directed by David Silverman, and co-directed by Raymond S. Persi, from a screenplay by Joel Cohen, John Frink, and Rob LaZebnik.

It features the voices of Rachel Bloom, Adam Devine, Zazie Beetz, Ken Jeong, Catherine O’Hara, Benedict Wong, Reggie Watts, and Jim Jefferies.

The story following two flummels, an extinct rabbit-like species, that find themselves transported from their island home in the year 1835 to modern day Shanghai.

Another fun fast paced film for all the family. There isn’t much in adult comedy, but that doesn’t detract as the jokes and gags come thick and fast.

No hidden meanings (as in a Pixar movie) just a fun 90 munites.

 

 

Music, Technology

Harvest

Harvest is a MIDI sequence generator. It’s a VST Plugin that can produce melodies, chords, and drum patterns.

Put it in the Reaper effects chain before another VST instrument and it will drive that instrument. Very handy for coming up with unique sequences, notes and chords.

In this track, I get it to drive Synthmaster and DSK Ethereal Padz 2.