Gotham Trailer

Gotham Trailer
IGN

MAX. Pretty good show. Good production values, mostly realistic, but the characters and their actions are exaggerated, like somebody turned the dial up a couple of notches.

We've got all the standard Batman elements, 

• a young Bruce Wayne, 
• the murder of his parents, 
• Alfred, the ever faithful butler, 
• Jim Gordon, the straight arrow detective, 
• the Maroni 
• and Falcone crime families, and of course, the sleaziest weasel in all of gangster land, 
• the Penguin.

I've been kind of avoiding all the Batman movies. I mean, I've seen a couple, back when the Batmobile was the star, but that was enough for me. Funny I don't remember the story from either of those two, other than what I related earlier. But I am enjoying this show and Penguin. It's kind of like Perry Mason, you get to see the same characters over and over again. Probably part of the attraction of Soap Operas.

 

A good show for me has to have some continuity. Actions in one need to have plausible consequences in another. It may take a while, but when so and so falls off the cliff, we need to know what happened to him, or at least know that someone went looking for him. You can't just run a car full of characters off a cliff and just forget about it. One problem with soap operas is they will just conjure a problem out of thin air, and any normal people would easily deal with it, but soap operas use this made up problem to provoke a small war which is somehow brought to a truce by the end of the episode.

I dunno how accurate any of that was, I was just attempting to set down my feelings on the matter.

Ship Bending

ship bending due to wave motion
Bastardo

YouTube blurb: 

Container ship msc busan underway in heavy seas. Please note 00:11 when she hits significant wave of height approx. 7-8 meters

Marine Traffic reports:

MSC BUSAN (IMO: 9289087) is a Container Ship and is sailing under the flag of Portugal. Her length overall (LOA) is 324.86 meters and her width is 42.8 meters.

Some Liberty Ships had a problem with cracking when they were bent.

 

Big Gun

Russian servicemen of the 20th Red Banner Guards Combined Arms Army of Zapad (West) group of forces fire a 2S7 Malka self-propelled howitzer towards Ukrainian positions amid Russia's military operation in Ukraine, at an unknown location, Russia.

I think it was the colors that caught my eye here. They look slightly off, like you might see in a science fiction fantasy. Or it might be that the bright light from the muzzle flash distorted the color palette.

Just for grins, here's another little bit of science fiction:

End Stage Capitalism

Tim Walz

Tim Walz

What is this exactly? I suspect it is a parody of some sleazy tabloid, but given the amount of insanity running around loose, maybe they're serious. Anyway, it got a laugh out of me.

Jump Rope

Esto es sincronizacion ALIENIGENA chicos muy talentosos para la Danza
Salsa Brava Academia de Baile

It's jump rope, but half the time his feet don't appear to leave the ground. Pretty cool.

Recovering Silver From Old Refirgerators

Incredible Scale! Pure Silver Extraction Process from AC Motor Compressors | How it's Made Recycling
Asian Skills Media

This must be a hobby for these guys. With all the fuel, oxygen and acid they use for the small amount of silver they recover, I can't see how they are making any money.

Compare to the modern American method of recycling refrigerators. The Americans might recover some metal, but I suspect they make their money from the charges they impose to dispose of the refrigerators.

Piggy Bank

Front View

Bottom

Poking around in the hidey-hole, my wife uncovered this little coin bank. As you might expect, there was no key. Poking around on the internet I found several similar banks. Some were listed for sale for not much money, but no keys. Well, what's the point of having a bank like this without a key? I tried picking it, but no luck. So I took it to a locksmith and they weren't able to open it either. Okay, fine. Get out the drill and drill out the two rivets holding the lock and we now we have it open. Found two quarters of the sandwich variety.

Now the inner workings are revealed. I remount the lock with a couple of screws and find that I can operate the latch with a small screwdriver held at an angle. Okay, can I make a key? Sort out just what I need, find an old, thin steel key and applied the Dremel tool to it and carved a new key and it works.

Key Width

Key Length

Lock