F&C1927: It

This DVD had a soundtrack, but it was kinda annoying, so I switched to Coil again.

I’ve heard Clara Bow’s name, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a film before. She’s rather smashing, eh?

The film is rather nonsensical.

It. Clarence G. Badger. 1927.

This post is part of the F&C series.

F&C1928: Jeanne d’Arc’s lidelse og død

This is amazing and utterly riveting. All those close-ups and the rapid editing… I had no idea that this was going on in the 20s.

I watched the completely silent “newly discovered” complete version, so I had to supply my own soundtrack. I chose the Hellraiser Themes by Coil.

The Passion of Joan of Arc. Carl Theodor Dreyer. 1928.

Scotch Hot Toddy

This post is part of the F&C series.

F&C1929: Cocoanuts

Hey! We’re getting pretty close to the silent age… If I were to guess, I would guess that all the dancing scenes and the general “overview” scenes were filmed without sound. But when they talk, they talk. Mostly.

And it’s funny. Some of the jokes are kinda, er, dated. Radius – WJZ? I mean… (Yes, I googled it.)

It kinda wonkily made, but just for sheer funnyness… And the music and dance routines…

Cocoanuts. Robert Florey. 1929.

Orange Pisco Hot Chocolate

This didn’t go so well last week when I tried, and my cold is still lingering, but I’m giving it another go.

This post is part of the F&C series.

Useful Consumer Review

I have several small USB-powered monitors for various things. They’re all from Mimo Monitors, and they work very well. Haven’t had a problem with any of them over the years.

The only problem is that the displays suck. The viewing angle is horrible on them, and the contrast is worse than you can imagine. That is, the black bits of the monitors are very grey.

This is a major problem on the 10″ one I use at the alarm clock in the bedroom:

_1310126
That’s very much how it looks like in real life. It’s slightly exaggerated by the camera.
_1310127
With the door closed and all lights off, the screen is a major source of light.
_1310129
And the viewing angle is so bad that I have to sit up in bed to be able to read the alarm time.

But now Mimo has released a new batch of monitors.  Mimo Vue.  That are supposed to be, like, good.  IPS screens and everything.  So I ordered one, and it came today.  I unpacked it excitedly…

_1310124Only to find a large … blob … in the middle of the screen.  I thought it was probably completely ruined, but I fired it up, anyway.  And it works!

_1310130
If you compare with the first picture up there, you can see that the black levels are way, way better.
_1310133
End the viewing angle is better, too.

So, it’s better.  The camera exaggerates how much light it gives off, but it’s still not what you’d call “good”.  The black bits still aren’t particularly black.  It’s much better than the older models (and the resolution is higher), but it’s not sufficiently good for me to run out and replace all my screens.

I guess I’ll have to wait for somebody else to get in on the USB-powered screen game…  It’s just so convenient to have one single cable to the screen.  No fuss, no muss.

And, yes, the Mimo Vue monitor worked in Linux without any twiddling.  Just plug it in and point X in the direction of /dev/fb0.