hikingofthenoldor

[hikingofthenoldor]

curious to see if this holds up compared to the songs submitted..

[hikingofthenoldor]

Best Blind Guardian song tournament!

Welcome to the 4th of 32 tournaments for symphonic and power metal artists. In this tournament we're looking for the best Blind Guardian song!

Rules

Any song can be submitted as long as it was released under the name of Blind Guardian. Whoever was part of the band at that time does not matter. Songs released by solo (ex) members of the band are not allowed in this tournament.

Collaborations with other artists are fine (but mention this on the form)!

You can submit multiple songs, but use a clean form for each submission.

Do not submit the same song more than once (this is spamming and can get your submissions disqualified)

If you want a specific version of a song that is not the original album version, specify this on the submission form. This way, it would theoretically be possible to have a poll with the same song album version vs live version (for example). However, I don't expect to see a lot of this. (Only do this if you think this version is so much better than the original).

Read the rules? Great! Submit your favorite song(s) here!

Submissions will be open until the 24th of July (unless I get overwhelmed or underwhelmed with submissions 😅).

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an ask or dm!

[hikingofthenoldor]

I did indeed predict this. And had almost forgotten about it and thus I was simply not surprised by Armata Strigoi winning. To me it's just so iconic. Others songs are just as good. But maybe less iconic. It is a true Powerwolf icon.

Powerwolf Bracket - Winner!

And the winner of the Powerwolf Bracket is....

Armata Strigoi!

From the tags on several posts I concluded that there has been a Powerwolf tournament before, and one tag (I think on the song submission post) said something like 'I can't wait to see people being surprised when Demons Are A Girl's Best Friend wins again!'

Well... I guess you are surprised now 😂 (to be fair, I hadn't seen that other tournament, and I also expected Demons to win)

Armata Strigoi will be added to the Hall of Fame and will represent Powerwolf in the final bracket. Keep your eyes open for the next tournament!

[hikingofthenoldor]

I am still unsure what to think of my colleagues - both personally and professionally. But I sure hate being in the office alone. I feel more stressed, less concentrated. I procrastinate and I get distracted. The time does not pass. I am unsupervised. I feel unproductive.

So no matter what I make of my colleagues, I need them for body doubling purposes. I don't want any regular home office days.

Help.

[hikingofthenoldor]

rednote is the only good social media because its the only one that consistently shows me lambs from xinjiang in little hats

[hikingofthenoldor]

A friend of mine from around here who is Very Christian and has never had a Jewish friend before was asking me some stuff about antisemitism today, and it made me realize that the ways people talk about various types of bigotry and racism are so designed to stump people about the nature and purpose of systems of oppression. "Why do people hate the jews so much?" is such a common refrain and while there have been many books and articles written pulling apart all the important contextual and historical things that can help people understand antisemitism SPECIFICALLY, what I ended up saying to my friend was this:

"Something to understand about antisemitism is it isnt just ideological. The expulsion of jews from various countries was very often a method of "legally" seizing their wealth when the church needed money. It has been historically an incredibly convenient source of both a group of people to blame and also an easy way to just... Be able to steal from people, lmao. It has served very concrete material purposes for churches and governments throughout history. Sometimes you have to approach asking those questions from a different angle because it often isnt about the hatred so much as it is about ... Redirecting energy and attention, right, like upholding structures that benefit those in power. The hatred is convenient because it allows those in power to take actions that would not be tolerated if the group in question were not considered to be Exceptional in their inhumanity. Like the undocumented immigrants now, asking "why do they hate the immigrants so much" isnt always a productive avenue of thought because the hatred is usually just... Useful. Rather it is more helpful to ask "Who does it benefit for these people to be treated this way" -> "what do they need to make the general public believe about that group of people in order to justify this treatment". I think sometimes we are made to think hatred of jews is special and rooted in something different than other hatred... It's not. I mean all types of racism etc are unique. But it very much is about justifying actions that benefit a ruling class in all instances, imo."

And she like totally got it!!! She was like "OH I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT LIKE THAT BUT THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE THANK YOU" I am very proud of myself lol :')

[hikingofthenoldor]

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 20,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!

[hikingofthenoldor]

prince and peasant

[hikingofthenoldor]

So genuinely stoked to (soon) push my players into a mystery years in the making

[hikingofthenoldor]

Powerwolf Bracket - Finale!

Please listen to both songs before voting!

[hikingofthenoldor]

Me n the mutuals

[hikingofthenoldor]

Corum of the Silver hand

[hikingofthenoldor]

one day i'll translate this one but so far i've been too lazy

bluesky | ko-fi

[hikingofthenoldor]

I'm a Buddhist Inverse Solipsist. I believe that I am the only guy still in samsara, and all of reality is a truman-show-like act by billions of bodhisattvas who are just humoring me.