Pixel Scroll 12/3/16 I Pixeled A Scroll In Reno, Just To Watch It Cry….

new-york-ghost

(1) HATCHED BEFORE YOUR EYES. Mashable reveals “All the ‘Harry Potter’ Easter eggs you missed in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ opening”.

Fantastic Beasts is the type of film that has so much going on it’s all too easy to miss the little things — particularly when you realise how much effort goes into every single prop.

From the posters that pop up along the streets of New York to the books that line the shelves in people’s houses, everything has been carefully considered and crafted to slot neatly in to J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world.

The company behind these details — or “hero props”, as they’re known in the industry — is a graphic design studio called MinaLima. If you’ve ever seen a Harry Potter film, you’ve seen their work.

“Anything that’s scripted — in this case say the Marauder’s Map; The Daily Prophet; any of the books or letters or magazines — so anything that’s scripted that helps tell the story and keep it moving along, we would have to design them and usually make them as well,” Miraphora Mina, a graphic designer at MinaLima, told Mashable.

(2) YOU WON’T BELIEVE NUMBER 4. MeTV lists “8 mean, green facts about ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’”.

3. Boris Karloff is the narrator.

One of horror’s most respected actors voiced the children’s special. Originally, Geisel didn’t like Karloff’s casting because he feared it would make the program too scary.

grinch

(3) THE MUSIC MAN. Theater-goers are hearing someone else’s music in a Star Wars movie this month, but the maestro will be back on the podium soon. ScreenRant reports “Star Wars: John Williams Begins Recording Episode 8 Score This Month”.

Series spinoff, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, releases later this month and will be the first film in the series not scored by Williams. That distinction will instead go to Michael Giacchino (Doctor Strange), who took over for Alexandre Desplat (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) after reshoots delayed the start of the process. Unfortunately, this left Giacchino with only four weeks to finish the score.

In a recent discussion with John Williams for a piece in Variety, it was revealed that Williams will begin the process of scoring Star Wars: Episode VIII this December, and expects to continue the process through March-April of 2017. That leaves a 4 to 5-month time span for Williams to make the score really shine and potentially more time to spare since the film doesn’t release until December.

(4) TAOS TOOLBOX. Walter Jon Williams says applications started coming in on the first day.

December 1 is the first day to receive submissions for Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy, taught this year by Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, along with guests George RR Martin, Steven Gould, and Emily Mah Tippetts.

And in fact applications have started to arrive right on schedule.

If you think you want to do this professionally, you can do yourself no bigger favor than to send us your application.

(5) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #8. The eighth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for an Autographed Book (Print or Audio) by Nicole Kornher-Stace.

Today’s auction is for an autographed copy of either the paperback or audio CD (your choice) of Kornher-Stace’s Norton-nominated YA novel ARCHIVIST WASP.

archivist-wasp-cover

About the Book:

Wasp’s job is simple. Hunt ghosts. And every year she has to fight to remain Archivist. Desperate and alone, she strikes a bargain with the ghost of a supersoldier. She will go with him on his underworld hunt for the long-lost ghost of his partner and in exchange she will find out more about his pre-apocalyptic world than any Archivist before her. And there is much to know. After all, Archivists are marked from birth to do the holy work of a goddess. They’re chosen. They’re special. Or so they’ve been told for four hundred years.

Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won’t survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.

(6) A GOOD START ON RECOVERY. Sarah A. Hoyt phrased her health update like this:

So, for the record, I’m still not dead.

While I did have some sort of a heart event, with continuing irregularities after, it is not in any way a “conventional heart attack.”  Those are the good news….

And she provides more diagnostic details in the post.

(7) FLINT NOT WELL. Eric Flint shared alarming health news of his own in a public post on Facebook today.

I’ve been quite sick for the past three months, with the kind of symptoms that are not easy to sort out. The main ones were: constant fatigue, getting tired easily, occasional dizziness, frequent shortness of breath.

I finally went to the doctor earlier this week, and he did some blood work that showed that my hemoglobin and iron had dropped through the floor. So, he send me to a gastrointestinal specialist and yesterday he did an upper endoscopy on me. (Which they call an EG…D for reasons that escape me.)

Anyway, great news! I have a bleeding ulcer in my stomach!

Well… okay, it’s not technically an ulcer because the stomach lining hasn’t been completely perforated. They’re calling it something like “erosion,” But what it means is that I’ve been losing blood internally, probably over a long period of time until the symptoms became noticeable.

Why do I call this “good news”? Because the alternative was a hell of a lot worse. I do have heart disease — quite mild, but it’s there –. and those same symptoms (fatigue, getting tired easily, shortness of breath, dizziness) are the classic symptoms that your heart’s starting to fly south for the winter.

I’ll take a little blood loss, thank you. My Viking ancestors would have spit the blood into their mead cups and kept partying. (One of their few saving graces.)

Tomorrow, Lu and I are going on the Sail to Success cruise for which I’m one of the instructors. (Yes, the doctor told me it was okay.)

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 3, 1973 — Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas star in Horror Express.
  • December 3, 1993 — Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos opens in Del Toro’s native Mexico.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born December 3, 1960 — Daryl Hannah
  • Born December 3, 1968 — Brendan Fraser

(10) THESE AREN’T THE ROOKIES THEY’RE LOOKING FOR. The Fort Worth Police Department is using a Star Wars theme in its recruiting videos. Applicant Darth Vader takes an interview in the first video.

And from Facebook, here’s FWPD’s introduction to the follow-up video:

The Galactic Empire’s second attempt at getting into a Fort Worth Police Academy class. The next civil service exam dates are Jan.10-11, 2017. We are accepting applications until Dec.12, 2016.

Visit http://fortworthtexas.gov/hr/PoliceRecruitment/ for more information. “Good luck and may the “force” be with you.”

 

(11) THE EXPECTED FANNISH INQUISITION. Representatives of three seated WSFS conventions gave updates and responded to questions at SMOFCon 34, the annual SF/F genre conrunners conference, December 3, in Rosemont (Chicago area), Illinois.

SMOFCon 34 Fannish Inquisition: 2017 NASFiC San Juan (16:00)

SMOFCon 34 Fannish Inquisition: 2017 Worldcon Helsinki (17:29)

SMOFCon 34 Fannish Inquisition: 2018 Worldcon San Jose (13:41)

(12) BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. Gotta love that Finnish sense of humor. Wonder if they’ll do something special for Worldcon travelers?

(13) SUSPICIOUS PUPPY VOTING TREND. A post on the Merriam-Webster blog caught my eye — “In a Time of Uncertainty, a Divided Nation Searches for Puppies. So many puppies. But none of them will be Word of the Year”.

Words that trended this year: Fascism. Misogyny. Acrimonious. Nasty. Bigot. Puppy?

…But people didn’t just suddenly begin searching for puppies. Both puppies and flummadiddle began to trend after we observed that our top lookup has been fascism for the past several weeks.

[Thanks to JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

46 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/3/16 I Pixeled A Scroll In Reno, Just To Watch It Cry….

  1. Medical issues are rough, I hope for better health for Hoyt and Flint.

    For 1 I love that kind if stuff it adds so much by just keeping a consistency ti all the visuals.

  2. Surely someone’s done…. GONNA BE A PIXEL HERO (GOT SCROLLS IN HIS EYES)

    (2) YOU WON’T BELIEVE NUMBER 4. I don’t! Also, I’ve never even heard of the two sequels mentioned (the animated ones from the 70s/80s).

  3. Flint and Hoyt need to understand that they are required to recover. I have no more openings for “deaths, 2016.” This is not negotiable.

  4. @Lis: Well said.

    I hope Flint and Hoyt both enjoy a full and speedy recovery. And I’m sorry for even not-immediately-threatening medical uncertainty; that’s scary as hell 🙁

  5. “(12) BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. “

    I am officially a badass.

    Also, I wish both Hoyt and Flint a speedy recovery.

  6. 7) had one of those back in the late 70s…my issue wasn’t fatigue, it was nascent beri-beri and scurvy (yes, I was a scurvy dog!)
    Tagamet took care of my problem (before it was OTC); as an armchair medical professional (now specializing in cancer) I’m pretty confident that Eric will be fine – perhaps a transfusion to deal with anemia and a prescription strength drug like tagamet for a 30 or 60 day course; depending on his doctor’s, he may be encouraged to have his gut bacteria analyzed (and/or his diet); they may prescribe antibiotics as well.
    Hoyt, on the other hand, seems to me they’re looking for an arythmia, which could stem from a number of sources and may not manifest sufficiently to be diagnosed; she’ll likely get a blood thinner and/or a statin…
    On the home front, we seem to have gotten a handle on Karen’s digestive troubles…lactaid milk. 24 hours after eliminating that from her diet, no more symptoms.
    It was either the lactaid milk itself, or, shes developing sensitivities to foods that she is taking in frequently. We’re going to try to vary her diet more to cover that possibility (last night she ate a filet minon dinner – the first “real” meal she has had since this past June. Yay! She’s feeling pretty good today, which means I’m feeling pretty good this morning.
    FYI – I do Trademark and provisional patent applications too… 🙂

  7. 3). I’ve been a fan of Giacchino (and Desplat) ever since his days scoring video games. He has an incredible way of being original yet embracing seemingly any genre. Some might call it derivative, but I think it’s more that he has such a vast knowledge about the compositional elements of multiple styles (as well as the styles of past composers) that he’s able to mimic them or pay homage at will. For me, his standout piece will always be “Kronos Revealed” from The Incredibles. His ability to capture the style of John Barry as well as the arrangements of a mid-60s film score is really, well, incredible.

  8. (1) HATCHED BEFORE YOUR EYES

    Went to see this yesterday. Enjoyable enough, but went down better with the 13yr old than with me. There were some areas where it felt like it’d been cut down from a bigger story, which is understandable for a Harry Potter adaption but not for an original story.

    In line with the article, the setting and props work was excellent as ever. I went to see the Harry Potter studio tour a few years ago, and along with the big props and sets there’s some really interesting looks at the smaller props work. They had a demonstration going by the broomstick makers for the series, and it was fascinating to see how much effort went into the close-up props, and how the lesser versions (made of latex, rubber, etc) still looked really impressive from a short distance. I was particularly taken by the ones for stunt work, which had to look really good in close up from the front while simultaneously being
    made of safely squishy material at the back. (Also, the prop makers had just come off a stint working on The Force Awakens, but as it wasn’t out yet they were studiously close-lipped about what they’d done.)
    —-
    Some reading:
    I finished off Books 3 and 4 of Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series (which started with The Thousand Names) from the sub-sub-genre of gunpowder fantasy, so Napoleonic army action with a side-order of magic and demons. This is fast-paced, compulsively readable stuff, and the story has ramped up nicely for what I assume will be a fifth and final instalment. I think this is a good example of how series work can be great without the individual novels necessarily reaching brilliance – although Wexler does a good job of making each book fairly well self-contained and satisfying – it’s all in the build-up of the story and the anticipation of where it’s going to end up.

    Normal: A Novel by Warren Ellis – not actually a novel, because it’s about 31k words. From the genre of “so near-future that it’ll be overtaken next year”. Our protagonist is a futurist, who’s gazed into the abyss too hard and has been sent to a mental health facility filled with other futurists who have the same issue. I have to say that I have no way of judging if the mental health issues are portrayed in any way appropriately or sensitively; other reviews may have much more to say. The ideas come thick and fast, landing somewhere between William Gibson and Charles Stross, and often don’t get properly developed, for example the schism between those who work for non-profits trying to improve the world and those working for governments trying to stave off the end of the world is mostly played for laughs. It was originally published earlier this year in 4 parts, and it shows in a slightly jumpy narrative. So, great ideas and concept moderately let down by execution, but worth a look.
    (Content note for na nggrzcgrq fhvpvqr nggrzcg)

    (Hat tips for the original recs to Kyra and Simon Le Gros Bisson respectively)

  9. YOU WON’T BELIEVE NUMBER 4. I don’t! Also, I’ve never even heard of the two sequels mentioned (the animated ones from the 70s/80s).

    They aren’t very good, and pretty much deserve their obscurity. I never saw them on TV, and don’t remember how I learned about them, but I’ve watched them on Youtube.

    Halloween is Grinch Night.

    The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat.

    (And somewhere out there Carl Slaughter is feeling a disturbance in copyright law, as if two unauthorized video links have been shared, and silently weeps for the future.)

  10. I sympathize with Eric Flint. Last week, my doctor sent me to the dermatologist to see if that funny spot might be skin cancer. The relief of learning it’s something else–almost anything else–is hard to overstate. Even better when there’s a decent treatment. (E.g. a lotion that makes it go away.)

    I see Sarah Hoyt is home now, and I wish her a speedy recovery. Kudos to her husband for making her go to the ER!

  11. Karl-Johan Norén: (11) All the three inquisition videos link to the Nasfic video; the Helsinki and San Juan videos are in the Youtube playlist.

    Fixed now — I hope.

  12. @Greg Hullender: “Kudos to her husband for making her go to the ER!”

    +1 million. And if you or your loved one have an appointment scheduled but start feeling dodgier, try to get the appointment moved sooner. Don’t mess around with heart, brain, et al. Don’t let yourself or your healthcare professionals put you off. (I know that can be tough, though!)

  13. Yes, indeed. Don’t hesitate! Don’t tell yourself it’s probably nothing and you don’t want to worry people.

    It’s many years ago now, but my dad starting having chest pains, and didn’t want to worry anyone. He did make an appointment.

    Then he started having very serious chest pains the night before his appointment, which by the way he hadn’t told my mom about. Mom called 911, the ambulance came, and they decided he had a hernia and he should see the doctor in the morning. The pain passed.

    And then it came back. You think it’s easy to get an ambulance to come again, when they’ve just left you half an hour before, having decided you didn’t need an ambulance?

    I held my dad while he washaving the heart attack that was killing 95% of hi heart tisue and my mom was on the phone explaining to emergency services that no, really,we did need the ambulance to come back right now.

    He spent a week in the hospital not getting angioplasty which possibly might have saved him, because this was over forty years ago and angioplasty was brand new and there was one machine in the Boston area and they didn’t think he’d survive the transfer to the hospital that had it. With what was actually available where he was, he died after eight days.

    But it is forty years later now. Not only will angioplasty be available to you if you need it, there’s a lot of other things available now that weren’t even thought of then. So if you’re feeling concerning symptoms, even if you don’t think it’s your heart, don’t do what my dad did and make an appointment for a week or so out. Do what Hoyt did, whether or not you have a partner to make you do it, and get it checked now.

    And now you know where my mind goes when people talk about hearts not working properly.

  14. @Mike

    Yes, sigh.

    If he wants to run some sort of petty feud b/c he thinks you should have “no platformed” the puppies then I’d suggest following the tactic he is so enamored of and ignore him.

  15. Mark: It’s an old complaint, but with a shiny new 2016 paint job. Two years ago there was a lot of this “He Who Must Not Be Named” behavior happening in the sf field after Theodore Beale was expelled from SFWA, and therefore a slight gasp of breath when I started reporting by name all the people who were organizing Hugo slates. But by last April, people were pleased to find (through the comments on the roundups here) quite a few fans and writers were determined to resist the appropriation of the Hugos. I’m still doing it this year, for the same reasons as last year.

    And can you imagine how silly it must sound to Vox Day that somebody thinks I am “platforming” him — when Day gets at least 100x as many pageviews at his site as I do?

  16. @Mike

    Agreed. There are times when denying the oxygen of publicity is the best tactic, and times when shining a great big light is necessary. Slating was the latter, because it’d already had an effect that needed an active response. This year’s spoiler tactics are a good example – without info about how finalists had got there then reactions might have been very different.

  17. Can’t make good decisions without good information.

    Mike’s efforts helps to keep me informed, and I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike.

  18. @ Mike Glyer
    He wants to increase your visibility and stature by making himself look like an idiot? What a peculiar hobby, and how odd that anyone else should want to take it up after seeing what a nitwit the first guy made of himself.

  19. Mike Glyer: I see Jonathan McKrampus has appointed himself to do for me what Vox Day does for John Scalzi.

    After he demanded that we all give VD veto power over the Hugo ballot by requiring all nominees on the Rabid Puppy slate to withdraw from nomination and to not vote for them if they don’t, I’m pretty much done with Mr. McKrampus.

    I’m sure that whole non-confrontist ostrich-head-in-the-sand thing works for him, but I prefer to fight evil by bringing it out in the sunlight where it can be seen for exactly what it is, and dealt with appropriately.

  20. (Hmm, I don’t think “McKrampus” is particularly edifying.)

    So, I’ve been watching some of Westworld, and I’m on the fence about it. Can anyone tell me (without much spoilers) whether the plot goes anywhere satisfying, or is it smoke and mirrors and five seasons of not explaining what’s going on?

  21. Fran Wilde has a 2016 post up with a treasure trove of recommendations.

    One rec is for a novel called Jane Steele with the tagline “Reader, I murdered him”, which made me chuckle and click simultaneously.

  22. I just finished Revenger, by Alastair Reynolds. It’s a nice enough story, in a creative setting. A bit like Terminal World, in that we have a civilization using cool technologies they don’t even understand anymore. (To a degree, that’s an excuse to sneak magic into an SF story.)

    Plot was okay, although it sure felt like it left a lot of loose ends. Also much like Terminal World.

    Has anyone else looked at this one?

  23. Mike Glyer on December 4, 2016 at 11:46 am said:

    I see Jonathan McKrampus has appointed himself to do for me what Vox Day does for John Scalzi.

    His argument makes no sense at all. He’s confusing denying fascists a platform with pretending that they don’t exist at all.

  24. I read Revenger in November and liked it a lot — it pressed pretty much all of my (far future reconstructed solar system space pirates scavenging ancient tech) buttons. Must read more Reynolds — so far, it’s just been Revenger, House of Suns and a couple of novellas.

    But for the time being, I just started Guy Gavriel Kay’s River of Stars, which I expect will keep me happily engaged for at least the next couple of weeks.

  25. @Greg

    Someone I can’t remember persuaded me to put it on my tbr in the last few weeks, but I haven’t got to it yet.

    One of Wildes short story recs was All the Colors You Thought Were Kings by Arkady Martine which I just read and thought had a really interesting scenario, although I’m not entirely sure if the ending needed something extra.

    ETA: I guess the someone I can’t remember is probably Joe!

  26. @Lis Carey – I’m sorry about what happened to your father.

    I’m a modern example of balloon angioplasty & stents. I was having a racing heart and shortness of breath. When doing my regular exercise walking I sometimes (but not always) would have enough chest pressure that I had to slow down or even stop. Checked a couple of things (no lung issues). After two different heart tests, they found I had 90% blockage.

    They did a balloon angioplasty & put in 2 stents. I felt better 24 hours after surgery than I did going into surgery. My color was better 12 hours after surgery. It took a bit of time for the incision to heal (they go in through your groin), but I was back walking within a week. Within 14 days I felt better than I had in 3 years. Today this is a routine surgery. Two of my friends have had the same procedure with similar results.

    The recovery for this is much, much easier than the recovery for any sort of joint surgery including just getting scoped to clean up damage to an elbow or knee.

    You are so much better off having this done before you have a heart attack or need bypass surgery.

    My Dad (like Lis’s) had multiple heart attacks. My Dad survived to have bypass surgery. This was before they developed the current diagnostic tests and the balloon angioplasty/stents.

    So if you have these symptoms – get the tests. If you need to have the surgery – get it. Before you have a heart attack, the recovery is a breeze. I was in good shape (other than my heart) and I ended up having no rehab at all. They just told me to skip weight training for a month and resume the weight training going down two weight levels afterwards.

    One buddy had a heart attack before the angioplasty & stent. It took him 3 months to get better. My other buddy had the same recovery process that I did.

  27. Yes, yes, yes. Airboy has clearly demonstrated the upside of getting in quickly when you have heart symptoms.

    Saw Dr. Strange. Good movie.

  28. @Darren Garrison:
    I’ll admit I still primarily remember Hallowe’en is Grinch Night for the scene at the start where the child convinces his parents to let him out of the house by referencing the outhouse in the back yard and saying “I have to go to the euphemism.”

    (Cue chortling parents explaining to a rather younger me exactly what the word ‘euphemism’ meant…)

  29. I’ll admit I still primarily remember Hallowe’en is Grinch Night for the scene at the start where the child convinces his parents to let him out of the house by referencing the outhouse in the back yard and saying “I have to go to the euphemism.”

    That was the point where I thought, “That’s cute, but not remotely Seussian.”

    Then again, it’s the only part I remember any more.

Comments are closed.