Cloud 10 Jvc Reviews
Brayan Jacobsen
In a previous article I wrote a comparison between three of the most popular and talked-about consumer laser cutters on the market today (Glowforge, XTool Pro, vs Gweike Cloud) but today I want to focus on the Gweike Cloud and explain why I think it could be a great option for anyone out there looking for a laser cutter to use in your home or small workshop/studio.
The Gweike-supplied materials, much like Glowforge, come with a QR-code sticker. This sticker works with the cloud-based software to set speed, power and material depth. Yep, as I will complain about below, the Gweike does not have auto focus. Another area where Glowforge wins.
Most reviews, mine included, gives Gweike extra bonus points for allowing the user to operate the machine without an internet connection. As one of the workshops we are looking to rent is a former barn, this can be a very important consideration.
Better for now instead to use the offline software which seems a rebadged package from the controller manufacturer. It does what it needs to. You do lose the camera preview, however, as mentioned below.
Due to my moving from Canada to the UK and part of that move involving renting an apartment, I decided to perform an experiment with the Gweike laser I was loaned from the company and I got my friend John to set it up at his place instead. He is renovating a large property so has space to spare and thought he would get chance to tinker in-between working on his house.
On regular laser cutters with manual focus, you would have a disk or some other guide to place between the lens and the material to work out the required offset. For example the Full Spectrum muse has a puck, and the Trotec has a little stick you hang off the laser head. On the Xtool there a bar that flips down.
Other than some software gripes, which I am sure will improve over time, the only place I feel like I would use a caveat is there will be a steeper learning curve than the more cuddly Glowforge experience.
If you can put up with more bumps in your journey then the Gweike is very worth checking out, and I am sure the effort will pay off handsomely! If you prefer to have an easer time of it then the Glowforge might still be for you for now.
Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made. The little world of film criticism has been alive with interpretations of it, which propose to explain something that lies outside explanation. Any explanation of a work of art must be found in it, not taken to it. As a film teacher, I was always being told by students that a film by David Lynch, say, or Warner Herzog, was "a retelling of the life of Christ, say, or 'Moby Dick.' " My standard reply was: Maybe it's simply the telling of itself.
Yet "Cloud Atlas" cries out for an explanation, and surely you've noticed that I've been tap-dancing around one. I could tell you that it relates six stories taking place between the years 1849 and 2346. I could tell you that the same actors appear in different roles, playing characters of different races, genders and ages. Some are not even human, but fabricants. I could tell you that the acting and makeup are so effective that often I had no idea if I was looking at Tom Hanks, Halle Berry or Jim Broadbent. I could tell you that, and what help is it?
I could tell you that each segment is a refashioning of the story contained in the previous one. That the same birthmark turns up in every period of time. That a repeated motif is that all lives are connected by a thirst for freedom. That the movie was inspired by the much-loved novel of the same name by David Mitchell. That in the novel, the stories were told in chronological order, and then circled back again from end to beginning. That the movie finds its connections through the reappearances of the same actors in different roles and deliberately refers to one story from within another.
Now are you wiser? I'm treading water. And now could follow a very long paragraph introducing and describing the different characters played by the actors. But you would lose your way all the same, because many of the performances and disguises are so cunningly effective. I could tell you that Halle Berry's work as a mid-1970s investigative reporter works well for me, and the gnarly wisdom of Tom Hanks as an old man telling tales is the most impenetrable.
I despair. I think you will want to see this daring and visionary film, directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski. Anywhere you go where movie people gather, it will be discussed. Deep theories will be proposed. Someone will say, "I don't know what in the hell I saw." The names of Freud and Jung will come up. And now you expect me to unwrap the mystery from the enigma and present you with a nice shiny riddle?
Sometimes the key to one movie can be suggested by another one. We know that the title refers to early drawings of the shapes and behavior of clouds. Not long ago I saw a Swedish film, "Simon and the Oaks," about a day-dreaming boy who formed a bond with an oak tree. In its limbs, he would lie reading books of imagination and then allow his eyes to rest on the clouds overhead. As he read a book about desert wanderers, the clouds seemed to take shape as a ghostly caravan of camels in procession across the sky.
I was never, ever bored by "Cloud Atlas." On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in "Cloud Atlas" take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it "means," is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.
But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema. And what an opportunity for the actors. And what a leap by the directors, who free themselves from the chains of narrative continuity. And then the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames makes perfect sense.
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