Wednesday 30 November 2011

The Universe Museum

by Timur Kulikov

At long last, Timur is reunited with the PC and Adobe Illustrator. This drawing is an idea of the video game he is designing. One part of the game takes place in The Universe Museum: some creature (naturally, created by a villain) takes control of the clock and then you have to fight it.

The tree in front represents life, the red atom represents matter, the goblet represents water, the black orb represents space and the clock represents time.

Sunday 27 November 2011

Veiga Serantes, Rías Baixas DO 2010

I bought this limited edition Veiga Serantes Albariño (bottle no. 0457 — of one thousand?) in Marumba. And it was a nice bottle of wine. At 13%, it is a bit stronger than Oro Valei, although twice as expensive, so probably not the best value bottle of vino blanco. The search for truly great Spanish white wine continues...

More photos of white wine @ Shutterstock.

Sunday 20 November 2011

Lucía y el sexo

a film by Julio Médem

Last night, I watched this film on Spanish telly, without any subtitles, either English or Spanish. I can’t say that I followed all the dialogue, but when you see the movie for the fourth time it’s not that important. What is important then? I don’t know. This time I paid more attention to the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias. I was expecting the film being re-edited for television (as many features shown here are, and rather heavily), but it was shown in its entirety, except for the end credits.

Sex and Lucía is not exactly an erotic movie, but the love scenes between Lucía (Paz Vega) and Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) are both funny and touching and as erotic as could be.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Zelig

a film by Woody Allen

Last night, or rather in the small hours of Sunday morning, I watched Zelig once again — this time, with Spanish subtitles (which amused me a lot). I find the protagonist of this “mockumentary” more touching and, well, more believable than other Allen’s characters.

The clip below contains one of my favourite scenes in the movie, viz. the escape of Zelig and Fletcher from Nazis on the airplane upside-down.

Zwei fanatische, idiotische, amerikanische Dummköpfe, kriminelle Schweinehunde, die Zelig und Fletcher heißen, ruinierten in einer wichtigen Rede unseres Führers Adolf Hitler den besten Witz...

Das ist fantastisch. Absolutely brilliant.

Saturday 5 November 2011

iRiver iHP-140 jukebox

by iRiver
First published 5 November 2011 @ zumbafuerteventura

I bought this amazing piece of kit seven years ago and it is still alive! I even have a few gigabytes of its (40 GB) disk space left. Back in 2004, this was probably the best gizmo of its kind. Granted, even then it did not look as sexy as iPod, but it can do so much more. Most of my music there is in OGG format. It also is a surprisingly good-quality dictaphone. There is a (still unreleased) recording of a bass/drum/guitar trio (eventually becoming a duo as the drummer left the building) in the basement of my old workplace. (When I grow old and famous, I may want to release it to raise some cash.) Also, from time to time I used it just as a portable hard disk that it is.

And here’s a problem: where to get a replacement when (or, better, before) it crashes? iHP-140 is not available in shops any longer. According to Wikipedia, this player is discontinued and succeeded by iRiver H300 series, which is also unavailable. Most of affordable MP3 players for sale now have no more than 8 GB memory. In the meantime, I hope it does not die a sudden death just before my Zumba class.