[HN Gopher] Tales from the Far Side
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       Tales from the Far Side
        
       Author : nikbackm
       Score  : 163 points
       Date   : 2024-08-19 13:43 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.kleefeldoncomics.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.kleefeldoncomics.com)
        
       | aaron695 wrote:
       | > Neither of the two specials, either in their original or
       | editted forms, are online.
       | 
       | They are on The Pirate Bay and there are videos, but I guess they
       | mean Netflix. The videos are kept alive off the torrents
       | normally, as the video sites go down, torrents are quite the
       | internets backbone.
        
         | thanatos519 wrote:
         | Now that I know about it, I'm seeding this torrent forever.
        
       | OccamsMirror wrote:
       | I wish I had never found out that these specials exist. Because
       | now I _need_ to see them and they 're not available.
        
         | defrost wrote:
         | The second animated collection is the internet archive:
         | https://archive.org/details/tales-from-the-far-side-ii_20240...
         | 
         | Good chance the first is kicking about there also.
         | 
         | Addendum: Yep - Books & both animated series
         | https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Gary+Larson%22
        
           | metadat wrote:
           | If only the first video were archived, this is amazing! Thank
           | you.
        
             | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
             | Uncertain about ripping and post-processing used, but both
             | volumes can be found here:
             | 
             | https://archive.org/details/gary-larsons-tales-from-the-
             | far-...
        
               | metadat wrote:
               | Lammy's seems like a super hi-fi rip:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41326459
        
               | Lammy wrote:
               | Thank you and tbh I could do even better if I re-did it
               | today. This one is from 2020 and since then I've gotten
               | into doing my DVD encodes at 540p for that sweet sweet
               | integer-scaling to 1080, 2160, etc avoiding the shitty
               | scalers built in to most modern displays.
        
               | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
               | Ah cool. I've been buying few various obscure movies in
               | 4:3 PAL/NTSC and 16:9 DVDs in various regions and
               | converting them to h.265 using slow processing. As I
               | don't trust ffmpeg and handbrake to perpetually be
               | superior, so I'm always keeping around at least
               | unencrypted VOBs if not the DVD .iso. Including pristine
               | source artifacts along with prettified ones is important
               | for archival. (My inner archivist is a choosy beggar
               | Karen.)
        
               | Lammy wrote:
               | Same here -- I always always keep the untouched DVD image
               | and usually even keep the physical discs. I tend to leave
               | CSS intact in the name of doing as exact a copy as
               | possible since it's so fully broken.
        
               | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
               | Decrypted VOBs are nice to have(tm) additional
               | intermediate products because nearly all players and some
               | transcoders are idiotically region locked but will
               | generally accept decrypted VOBs (same field data) just
               | fine.
        
           | kragen wrote:
           | thanks!
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | Thanks for the link.
           | 
           | Watching the second one is almost depressing, because there's
           | some good jokes in there that are just ruined by the scene
           | dragging out for way too long. Several of them got a smirk
           | out of me but then it's like, "Oh...we're still going, are
           | we?"
           | 
           | If they had just had a decent editor who could've shortened
           | them to have the punch of a Family Guy cutaway gag, I think
           | they would've worked better. Larson's comics certainly had
           | that punch--I just don't think he was quite prepared for how
           | to translate it successfully to the animation medium.
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | Here's my personal x265 encode: mega dot
         | nz/folder/It0CwI6I#ty1ux-A9HDeGi8gkDbzjjw
         | 
         | t00lz:
         | 
         | -- Pioneer DVR-108 (RPC-1) + DVDfab Passkey + MakeMKV
         | 
         | -- Vapoursynth (crop, denoise, deinterlace, resize, colorspace
         | conversion)
         | 
         | -- x265 (custom SD tune) + FDK-AAC
         | 
         | -- ScanMaker 9800XL + Photoshop CS3
         | 
         | -- MKVToolNix
        
           | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
           | Thank you, kind human!
           | 
           | Suggestion: Anonymously mirror on archive.org with the
           | original and decrypted VOBs.
        
             | Modified3019 wrote:
             | One thing to note that don't know, when "anonymously"
             | uploading to IA, the email you use for the account will be
             | visible in the archive manifest. Or something along those
             | lines, it's been a while.
             | 
             | So make sure to use a throwaway email for the throwaway
             | account.
        
               | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
               | Exactly. Limits any possible DMCA claim to the one
               | thingy.
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | Awesome
        
           | devoid31 wrote:
           | bless you sir
        
           | TheCraiggers wrote:
           | Thank you so much for helping to preserve this!
        
         | cwillu wrote:
         | Not available, except on all of the major torrent sites.
        
         | detourdog wrote:
         | Before the internet any town I visited I would comb used record
         | stores looking for songs, albums, or artists I had read about
         | but never heard.
         | 
         | I would also comb used bookstores. Around 42nd in NYC there
         | were huge used magazine stores. One could go looking for Jan.
         | 7th 1954 Life magazine and find it. That was the early 90's and
         | I miss it.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | There's an entire universe of small press books and magazines
           | that it is even hard to find evidence existed - let alone a
           | copy of them.
           | 
           | I know of a few from personal connections and there's some
           | really good stuff in them!
        
             | detourdog wrote:
             | I obviously went through a book ephemera collecting phase.
             | Just getting to the point at looking at all the things I
             | came across I once thought were important.
             | 
             | Information used to be hard to find and small magazines
             | always developed around subcultures.
             | 
             | I'm surprised how ancient magazines in box have more
             | intrigue and accessibility than archive.org's search box.
             | Archive.org represents a much broader reach and depth of
             | information.
             | 
             | I wonder what I would have done if I wasn't actively
             | physically searching for something.
             | 
             | I look forward to cataloging it.
        
       | mccolin wrote:
       | A VHS of this I taped from broadcast is bopping around my
       | parents' basement somewhere. I need to find that.
        
         | kennyloginz wrote:
         | Awesome! Please share if you are able to recover it.
        
         | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
         | I wonder if content on VHS tape can be read and/or post-
         | processed better than the best Toshiba or Sony (PAL|NTSC) VCR
         | in history using fancier techniques and modern technology.
        
           | Sesse__ wrote:
           | https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
        
             | actionfromafar wrote:
             | Was about to say that.
        
             | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
             | Awesome, thanks. I guess one just needs benchmarks of the
             | sensitivity of various compatible hardware solutions.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I wonder if the newer reading technology offsets the
           | degradation of the magnetic tape, or whether it's better to
           | digitize X years ago, using the older digitizing technique,
           | but with a stronger magnetic signal.
        
             | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
             | Every time it's played, there is mechanical wear on the
             | tape surface and mechanical stretching to place it under
             | tension.
             | 
             | Probably always best to digitize it then because there's
             | quite a bit that can happen to tape magnetically and to the
             | plastic tape itself.
        
       | ericzawo wrote:
       | My orthodontist growing up had these books in the waiting room
       | and I found them hilarious as a kid even though I only understood
       | maybe 30% of them.
        
         | CoastalCoder wrote:
         | > My orthodontist growing up had these books
         | 
         | When I first read that sentence, I thought you were talking
         | about your orthodontist's upbringing.
         | 
         | I eagerly anticipated hearing about how that affected his work
         | with you :)
        
           | SamBam wrote:
           | Dentist eschewed traditional drills and explorers for
           | handmade stuff that looked like _Cow Tools_.
        
         | talldayo wrote:
         | > even though I only understood maybe 30% of them.
         | 
         | My parents got me a _Far Side_ collection when I was younger,
         | and I understood maybe 15% of the comics _tops_.
         | 
         | But it's still a great read; as an adult I'm stupefied by how
         | much mileage Larson squeezed out of single-pane comics. He was
         | willing to run the gamut of sight gags to double-entendres even
         | to the coming-of-age _Calvin and Hobbes_ style comedy. There 's
         | also a pervasive disdain for humanity that lovingly graces most
         | of his comics. Humans are portrayed as baser and stupid
         | compared to talking cows and sapient insects. Children
         | regularly endanger themselves in outrageous situations and
         | their caretakers respond in even stupider ways. Scientists and
         | doctors are portrayed as self-congratulating frauds that care
         | too much about their work to notice or interact with the
         | consequences.
         | 
         | Larson's cynicism is what connected me to his comics as a kid,
         | even when I couldn't get the jokes about taxes and car
         | maintenance. That, and his incredible knack for illustration.
        
       | UberFly wrote:
       | I remember watching this on TV. It was a big deal at the time due
       | to the massive popularity of the strip, but didn't translate
       | well. The whole thing kinda fell flat.
        
       | NickC25 wrote:
       | Larson is an absolute national treasure.
       | 
       | Some of my favorite memories of my youth were reading and re-
       | reading some of the Larson books my uncle handed down to me -
       | _Far Side Gallery1, 2, 3 & 4 _, _It Came From The Far Side_ , and
       | _Tales From The Far Side_. Some of the jokes I didn 't understand
       | until I was older, some I understood right away, and some of them
       | I remember so fondly I could re-create them in my sleep.
       | 
       | A genuine master of his craft, sheer brilliance.
       | 
       | My all-time favorite: https://i.redd.it/my-daily-farside-dump-
       | caw-caw-v0-l7k98dab4...
       | 
       | Another gem:
       | https://i.pinimg.com/736x/26/b4/21/26b421ae077069c6de1f2da18...
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-23 23:01 UTC)