Snow day.

Stacey and I got up early this morning to see some snow. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten significant snow here in Birmingham, Alabama, and a minor winter storm rolled in around 1 a.m. today. We were afraid we’d miss the snow if we waited too long, but it turns out it stuck around. As of 1 p.m., it’s about 38 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast, and there’s still a lot of snow on the ground, parked cars, and buildings.

Most of the actual snow happened while we were sleeping. When we went out around 7 a.m. we saw some classic Alabama “wintry mix” — sleet, snow, and cold rain. Actually, maybe it was a wintry mix the whole time — it looks snowy at a distance, but if you grab a handful, there’s a lot of ice in there.

Wide-angle photo of a nearby park. The ground is covered in snow and there’s some snow in the trees.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ranking classic STAR TREK.

Image
The classic 1960s STAR TREK TV series is one of my favorite shows of all time. In the 1970s and ’80s, STAR TREK reruns were one of the best sci-fi things available. Especially to a youngster like me who lived in a rural area with no cable TV. I’m somewhat obsessive about the show. Especially now, since I have my DVDs of it ripped and readily available on my home media streaming server. Having watched every episode a few times (and favorite episodes several times), I have opinions. I decided I’d start making... The classic 1960s Star Trek TV series is one of my favorite shows of all time. In the 1970s and ’80s, Star Trek reruns were one of the best sci-fi things available. Especially to a youngster like me who lived in a rural area with no cable TV. I’m somewhat obsessive about the show. Especially now, since I have my DVDs of it ripped and readily available on my home media streaming server. Having watched every episode a few times (and favorite episodes several times),...
Read more

Some other reasons movies are so long these days.

Image
In the 1980s, CDs became the music industry standard for album releases. Even though CDs were smaller than the vinyl LPs they replaced, they could hold more music. A twelve-inch record can hold 45 minutes (give or take) of music, while a CD can hold more than 70 minutes of music. Some musicians decided that their albums needed to fill up a CD, even if they didn’t have 70 minutes of good music ready, and we got a lot of hour-long albums that would have been a lot better if they’d been edited down to 40 minutes. I’ve been thinking about the overlong albums of the ’80s and ’90s lately because of the overlong movies of the 2020s. I am certainly not the first person to complain that movies are too long these days. Vanity Fair published a piece on the subject last year. The Vanity Fair article mentions that producers and cinema owners and audiences complain about long movies. But those complaints don’t carry as much weight as they used to, and I can think of a couple of reasons for...
Read more

Shot on iPhone (and Panavision).

Image
Apple likes to brag that a lot of their commercials and promotional videos are “shot on iPhone.” But of course Apple can afford some wild accessories for their iPhones, including Panavision lenses! Stu Maschwitz wrote an excellent blog post about how one attaches a pro cinema lens to an iPhone. Blackmagic has created a dual-lens 3D camera for making immersive video for Apple’s Vision Pro VR goggles. I’m not that interested in VR, but I think VR goggles would be fun for watching old 3D horror and sci-fi movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space . And it might be fun to shoot a movie in the style of those classic 3D movies with this new Blackmagic camera. Ben Pearson wrote a lengthy and revealing article about the modern state of film scores over at Slashfilm . It was revealing to me, at least. Among other things, Pearson tries to figure out why we have fewer memorable musical themes in modern movies. No details yet, but apparently Kino Lorber i...
Read more