for N = 1 or P = 0, at least.

so finally i was working at the agency, as us space types call it. when i had lunch that day, i sat at a table with the captain. hadn't really started with my regular job yet, so i told him about my recruitment. they liked my cv, the interview was a piece of cake, but the simulator ... boy, that was hell. for one hundred days straight, i got artificial light, half of it blinking all the time, spoiled food, random blackouts, long repairs in the scheduled sleeping time – stressful and boring at the same time – random changes in mission plans, and not even the most basic form of entertainment. the captain said, you are one lucky systems administrator. you have no idea what they put us astronauts through.

if she could just start using a gamma of 2.2 like the rest of the world, i'd stop flinging the calibrator puck at her.

everyone who can manage to save just one euro every day can afford a rolls royce, after 950 years.

so, you know, he said the beamer – any beamer, really – was just way too weak for that huge screen and it would never look good, but if there was any way to transfer the footage to 35mm stock or maybe just 16mm stock, he could get one of the film projectors out and show it on that. and they actually did it! they were so enthusiastic about the sheer hack value of this project that they used some custom tweaked automated morphing software to make the resampling to 24 pictures per second smoother. once they had it converted to 24 pps, they modded an old analog imager, they attached, i actually haven't got an idea what, some bad ass light gun from the early eighties or maybe it was even something with lasers. they went completely nuts. the thing must have weighed like two hundred kilos and it was covered in lots and lots of black plastic foil and gaffer tape. cray-cee. so they promised he'd get his film. you know, the theatres in his house aren't all that big, nowhere near multiplex dimensions. so the projector was underpowered as well, but this he could fix. he got a brighter bulb, checked out its power consumption, installed a second power unit to get the wattage up to the right amount, and bolted in two or three more fans to move the heat out. so i asked like, you overclocked your projector, and he said, why no, i overcandled it. now, there were about 30 hours to go and all looked well and swell. but they had no idea that if they played the sound off a notebook or DAT or whatever, it would never stay synchronized to the pictures anywhere near the required precision. and he had no idea no one had told them yet. only when he was about to pack the equipment on a trolley, ready to haul it outside, he phoned them and asked wheter they were printing dolby sound onto the footage or just dts time codes to sync to a laserdisc. after a good deal of confusion had been settled, they told him there was no way to make the russian (as they had cristened their black plastic foil and gaffer tape monster) put proper (as they said) 'simpty' codes on there, let alone decipherable digital audio. more confusion ensued. later, with 20 hours to go and everyone pretty much convinced they'd have to play the audio off a notebook and manually try to keep it synced as much as possible, they had that brilliant idea that – if they'd do something that would require some kind of DJ software anyways – they could go for the full monty and use the stanton software. they said, if that box can read time codes mutilated by scratching vinyl, it would also be able to read time codes mutilated by the russian. and it worked! the film rolls arrived on time, the picture was bright and colourful (if not exactly as crisp as you'd expect from hi-def progressive scan material), the audio was ... well, you know, it was open air, so there was the occasional ambulance car in the distance with sirens set on stun, two or three motorcycles with illegal 'sports' exhausts, and of course the big fireworks display ... but as far as the audio signal , as sent to the PA, was concerned, it was perfect. during the public screening, that is. afterwards they discovered, with the stanton gadget still hooked up, that when they switched off the projector's motors and pulled the film through by hand, they could scratch the footage back and forth. which was the point at which they went completely nuts again.

takila, that's french, the n is silent. you absolutely cannot offer them Poupon like that.

[my daughter] found a new apartment. windows to the courtyard, lots of light, really lovely hitler-building.

choose life. choose an airline. choose an island. choose a party. choose a fucking big jacuzzi. choose watersports, cocktails, pool or ocean view, regular or clothes optional. choose BYOB and wondering who you fucked last night on a racing yacht. choose sitting in that deck chair watching artificial, plasticky bodies, stuffing caviar into your mouth. choose retiring at the end of it all, drinking tea in your extravagant mansion, nothing more than a role model to the aspiring, slick bootlickers you trained to replace yourself. choose a future. choose life ... but why would i want to do a thing like that?