Link Dump

Yes, again, links from the uncharted depths of the internets:

  • What Is the Time Signature of the Ominous Electronic Score of The Terminator? – I love the score for The Terminator. It’s one of my favorite movies, and the score is a big part of that (the pop music hasn’t quite aged as well, but Burnin’ in the Third Degree brings back some memories). Composer Brad Fiedel intentionally used all electronic instruments for the score, thus emphasizing the artificial nature of the threat. I have no real formal knowledge of music, but I know I like weird, and this score really hits that. Apparently one of the things that drives that weirdness is the time signature:

    As the score kicked in, I immediately recognized it was in a strange time signature. I’m a (very) amateur musician, and my ears are attuned to bizarre beats. This was as jarring as it gets. A disorienting rhythm – in particular the driving, industrial-sounding beat that gets louder and more prominent as the opening theme progresses. It wasn’t in 5/4 or 7/8, both of which I can generally suss out with not much difficulty. I tried to count the beat in my head, and by tapping on my thigh: “DAH-doonk, dah-doonk, dah-doonk, gonk gonk.” But for the life of me I couldn’t make anything fit. My world had been ripped apart, much like Sarah Connor’s when she discovered she was being hunted by an implacable killing machine from the future.

    I won’t tell you the time signature, but I will note that there actually is an answer in the article (I was a little worried at some point that it wouldn’t be solved).

  • Shot: The Wolf of Sesame Street
  • Chaser: The Worf of Starfleet (thanks Don)
  • The amazing invisible spacer GIF hack – Flashbacks. Not to the horrors of 1×1 gifs, but rather the horrors of converting 1×1 gif layouts to CSS. Incidentally, Kaedrin is still partially on 1×1 gifs. I’ve slowly CSSified things, but the bulk of this design was done in 2001 and used tables and spacer gifs. I actually did find a way to convert the layout to CSS, but I never went through the trouble of updating it in my templates. Someday? Probably not anytime soon. Everything here is custom built, so updating the templates is a pain. But perhaps someday I’ll hook into the newer templates that are out there (and that would allow me to switch up designs on a whim – I can kinda do that with the beer blog, it’s just that MT has so few designs available)…
  • Warner Bros. Logo Design Evolotion – It’s a thorough recap, and it’s funny how often the design changed, sometimes dramatically. And it’s funny how even movies from 2012 would use “throwback” logos.

That’s all for now…

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *