Author: Scott Macdonald
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A fitness/lockdown journey
If regular resistance training was a drug, it’d do gangbusters.
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Ring Fit Adventure
From the wild gymnastics of Super Mario, exploring The Legend of Zelda’s Hyrule, WarioWare’s wacky motion control mini-games, and exercise entertainment products like Wii Fit, Nintendo mascots and characters want their players to be active. I’m a gamer, flabby and prone to jogging injuries. And with gyms still high-risk – blending low-impact exercise and cheerful…
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Queer liberation means trans equality
Queer liberation in Britain has a chain of successes: partial decriminalisation, age of consent, adoption rights, employment equality, the Equality Act, abolishing Section 28 and winning same-sex marriage. With exceptions on the left, its early radicalism has been defanged. Capitalism treats LGBT+ people as a mature advertising market. Plugs for supermarkets, banks, bars or violence-monopoly…
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The gauntlet of shame that is life in modern Britain can be overcome
THERE is a harmful, shameful sense that your value as a person is how desirable you are. In this atomised and broken society, you’re not alone in feeling put on. Throughout our lives, we run through a gauntlet of shame – of always feeling like less than our fullest selves. Our modern Britain is defined…
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Skywalking for all: The Last Jedi soars
The Last Jedi may have been the Star Wars film I really wanted but didn’t know I did until I saw it. Which, on revisiting it on Blu-ray for the Voice, is one of the best compliments I can give it. It remains a complex, tersely written and beautifully performed space opera – which pulls…
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Works to nourish the uncolonised mind – Ursula K. Le Guin
I generally do not weep when my heroes die. But I do for Ursula K. Le Guin, speculative fiction writer, poet, scholar and genius, who left us at the age of 88. Not all tears are wrought of misery – mine are of joy that her work, writing, wisdom was shared to me, enriched me,…
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George A. Romero – Land of the Dead reconsidered
Fans of American pulp horror cinema mourn the loss of George A Romero, leaving us after 78 years after a mercifully brief battle with lung cancer. In his early years, Romero went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and stayed there after he graduated, making shorts and TV documentaries, scraping together the cash to make a…
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Conservative Prospectuses won’t cut it – Outflank Corbyn
There’s been two and a half years of non-campaigning on independence other than marches and rallies to keep spirits up. Instead of campaigning for independence, we’ve had four SNP elections with milky non-confrontational anti-politics full of slogans like “Stronger For Scotland”. To which I would ask, which Scotland? And how does this strength manifest –…
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Video Production: a series
The democratisation of our media – including the continuing work of the Scottish Socialist Voice – has given birth to high-quality internet streaming video and affordable camera equipment, often in the form of broadcast quality high-definition video in the palm of your hand. This liberates creators, broadcasters and filmmakers. Cinema bears its fruit; one of…
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Video production – Exposure
Getting an acceptable image on a DSLR is generally not difficult. Getting a professional, consistent, stable image is occasionally very hard. Exposure The single greatest aspect of achieving a pleasing image is ensuring the image is exposed well. Exposure is the process in which light reaching the camera’s sensor is absorbed, quantified, converted to an electrical signal…