Darkoshi

Video title: Start Your Impossible | Never Stop | Toyota
Posted by: Toyota Global
Date posted: May 30, 2021


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I'm back to watching the Olympics opening ceremony. That was in one of the commercial breaks. It caught my eye enough that I stopped fast-forwarding thru the commercials and backed up to watch it.

I'm also back to cringing internally when seeing people on TV not wearing their face masks properly, or wearing ones that aren't fitted properly to them. So many masks slipping below noses. Quite a few purposely pushed down.

The male Iraqi flag bearer was wearing a face mask but the female flag bearer was smiling broadly without a face covering. What's up with that? My web search didn't find an answer on her masklessness, but instead found this:
Mask-shy Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan rain on COVID-compliant opening parade


The way they have the stadium seats randomly covered in different colors sure makes a good imitation (from a distance) of the stands being filled with people.

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Oh gosh, this cat commercial is good too :D



Video title: 2021 Chevy Silverado – Cat | Chevrolet
Posted by: Chevrolet
Date posted: Jul 23, 2021


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Well, I'd better stop the recording again for now and go to sleep.

I missed the first broadcast of the opening ceremony last night. When I checked the NBC website, it wasn't yet available for streaming. But the TV schedule showed that it was being re-broadcast at 12:30am, so Qiao recorded it for me.

About half-way through watching the recording tonight (I fast-forwarded through some of the parade of athletes), one of the announcers said that what was being shown had some parts edited out, but that the full version would be available online "in the morning". Also, the online version wouldn't have the narration from the announcers.

Yay, because I really don't like hearing announcers talking over everything. And I did want to see the full version of the artistic performances. So at that point, I switched to the online version, streaming it to the TV with an HDMI cable. (I had tested out using MiraCast last week, but it didn't work well for me.) The NBC site lets you watch 30 minutes for free, and after that you have to login with a satellite or cable TV account (luckily Qiao has one of those too) to watch more. It seems the IOC is blocking other sites from showing any videos of it.

I rewatched the part with Kim Nam-Ki's haunting rendition of the song "Arirang" (it starts at 1:18:30 in the online version above); it was much better without the announcers talking over it.

After the part with the synchronized lighted flying drones, I temporarily switched back to the TV version to find out of those really were drones (they were, over 1200 of them!), and not just an edited video effect (because the announcers had earlier said there was some of that too). This part of the broadcast was pre-recorded, but it was still awesome. This was a part of the drone segment, but not the whole thing. A scaled-down live version of the drone show did not take place as had been planned.

The ceremony had a lot of fireworks and other dazzling light shows, very pretty to watch. (Though I wonder how long the fireworks smoke will linger in the area, and if it will affect the athletes.)

The best moments from the 2018 Olympics Opening Ceremony - this is a 3 minute clip with highlights from the ceremony - worth watching if you can't watch the whole thing. It doesn't have the original music, but shows a lot of the fantastic visuals.

I was watching a bit of gymnastic floor exercises on TV, and for the first time ever, noticed that the floor seemed to be bouncy. Not simply padded, absorbing shock, as I had always assumed, but springy, giving the gymnast added bounce.

Then I wondered what was under the padding; how complicated is a gymnastics floor? It turns out that it is called a spring floor, and it really does have short metal springs under it.

This Slate article provides some history of gymnastic floors. They didn't always have springs, which partly explains why gymnasts can do more complicated jumps nowadays than in the past.