Archive for August, 2005
Press
I ordered the first season of Press Gang on DVD today, an absolutely fine piece of televisual entertainment.
At least, I hope it is. I watched this back in 1989 on a 5 inch black and white TV in my parents bedroom, so it’s been a while. I’m not sure why I used to watch it through there, but I have distinct memories of having my face almost pressed against the glass to see it properly (not only was it tiny and B&W, it wasn’t the highest quality five inches either). From what I remember, this was childrens television at it’s very best, with many moments I remember even today.
While we’re on the topic of Steven Moffat (writer of this and the very fabulous Coupling - UK version that is), where is Joking Apart on DVD? One of the most forgotten about comedies of all time, I remember this being classic stuff. I also remember it being a lot like Seinfeld, with plots that married together many strands in the final few minutes to make things even sweeter.
In fact a consistent thing in Moffat’s writing seems to be jumbling things around, he doesn’t just like A to B plots, he likes resolution before conflict, as anybody who has watched Coupling will have seen.
Anyway, let’s hope Press Gang is good. Then I’ll buy the rest.
Rutles
I watched All You Need Is Cash again at the weekend, more commonly known simply as The Rutles.
A 1978 Beatles parody, written by Eric Idle, it’s honestly not all that funny. Sure there’s some good moments, and the number of celebrities involved is of course impressive, but it’s not really laugh out loud at any point.
But it was a good reminder of just how good Neil Innes music is, which I haven’t really listened to in a while. His ability to write songs that you think sound like copies of existing Beatles songs, but yet aren’t, is quite incredible. It’s the soundtrack that makes the film worth it, which is why I’m glad I got it from Mark years ago. The follow up album Archaeology is also worth a listen. Fool your friends by telling them they’re all long lost Beatles tracks.
I’d find it interesting if Innes did the same for other artists, like a whole album of cover versions, except he’s covering the sound rather than a specific song of each artist featured. I’ll get on the phone to him now.
Threw
I just realised it’s been just over a year since I threw myself out of a plane in the name of… well nothing really.
So how has my life over the past year fared when compared to this moment of daring and adventure? Has anything come close to repeating that moment of pure danger, where I took my life in my hands (or where, to be honest, somebody else took my life in their hands) and threw myself towards the ground from a distance of 2 miles? Have I managed to achieve that adrenalin rush again even while faced with the harsh realities of my every day existence?
Meh.
Chunks
Not feeling good today at all, threw up in the bathroom this morning, head is splitting like a mother-fucker with no painkillers in the flat and feeling too awful to actually go out and buy some.
One of the worst things about feeling like this is you get to a moment where you don’t know if your stomach feels funny because you’re hungry, or because you need to throw up again. It’s a dangerous moment, so easy to misjudge.
Virgin
I don’t want to say too much, in case I get the urge to review this for whatinterest, but The 40 Year Old Virgin is a funny film.
It’s nice to see that Hollywood is capable of producing a comedy which isn’t a gross out teen sex comedy. And sure, it still is a sex comedy, but not the way all the others are. This one actually has a plot, and a lead character you can actually give a shit about.
Worth a watch.
Audacity
Ever looking to let people hear just how much of an idiot I sound when recorded, I added an audio version of one of my recent whatinterest articles. It’s the one about WarGames, which for the lazy people is here.
The software I’m using to record is Audacity, a nice bit of open-source software that’s usable even by an audio retard like myself.
It’s something I’ll probably continue with future articles, anything to make the site a little bit different. I’m sure video can’t be far away.
War
Inspired by some cool screenshots of the Winter Assault expansion pack, I downloaded the demo of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.
Now there’s a theory that says that any game with a colon in it’s title is aimed at nerds, and considering this is based on a table top role playing game, I’d say that holds true. But the PC version is a RTS very much in the Command & Conquer style, and a lot of fun it is too.
I found the tutorial particularly confusing, because it made it seem much harder to play than it actually is. But once I was through that and on my own, it did make a lot more sense. It’s still got a much more complicated interface than the original C&C had however, which is strange considering the range of options available to me seemed much the same. You spend too much time rolling your mouse over each icon and reading the tooltip to see what it is rather than just recognising the image. Since I’m also used to left click move and right click attack method, the left click select, right click action did seem a bit counter-intuitive, but that’d improve with more play.
It’s graphically great, with a full 3D camera that you can use to zoom right down into the action. Although I have to admit that I left it almost exclusively in the default top down view. Since the game is now almost a year old I had no problem running it with every graphics setting slider ramped up full.
Overall an enjoyable RTS, with an incredibly good bit of intro CG, and something that I’m sure would be good as multiplayer. I recommend you check out the demo.
Talk
First Desktop, now Google Talk.
A lot of people have been underwhelmed by Google’s entry into the instant messaging market, not seeing anything that it does differently from anyone else. There’s not a single feature we haven’t seen before, in fact there’s some features (searchable and browsable chat history) which isn’t there at all.
But I’m a fan simply because of the things it does do, it does them well, and no more. Instant messaging clients, especially ICQ, have become nothing more than bloated advertising conduits. The amount of extra crap added to the ICQ interface over the past 5 years is quite incredible, while each version of AIM adds even more ads, tickers and search boxes. Google Talk is as simple as a list of names and a very simple chat window with two buttons at the top, Email and Call. There’s no colours, no fonts, no graphical emoticons, just plain chat. Exactly what I’m looking for.
If I want to voice chat, I click the Call button, wait until it’s answered and start talking. I hang up with one button. No extra popups, no microphone setup wizards, no mess, no fuss, great sound quality.
It’s an elegant interface which reminds me a lot of iChat, except with extra polish like dockable and collapsable windows, a very low key notification sound and a plugin for the Desktop sidebar that allows it to neatly tuck away.
From Google’s point of view the most important part of the release is their use of Jabber, the open-source IM protocol, as their base of communications. This means that a lot of existing IM clients can already connect to their servers (like the aforementioned iChat), and will probably result in AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! having to add Jabber support as well, breaking the monopoly they have on who their users can talk to. This has got to be good for everyone, and will hopefully finally end the deadlock caused by AIM not wanting to open up to anyone.
And if you want to add me, my Gmail username is ricsmith.
Ruin
I finally got around to listening to the new Supergrass album Road to Rouen, and I’ve got to say I’m not impressed.
There’s nothing wrong with growing musically as a band, and of course it would be daft to expect them to continually repeat themselves, but this is an album which simply does not sound like Supergrass.
It’s a much more mellow album, which is fine, they’ve had plenty of good mellow tracks in the past, but all of them were still painted with the same brush. Now all the sparkle is gone, there’s none of the catchy choruses, interesting base lines or lyrical fun of previous releases. In fact for the majority of it, I couldn’t even work out what Gaz was saying.
Nobody could say that Life on other Planets sounded like every other Supergrass album, that it didn’t have a different sound, but you could still be sure it was them. I hope this isn’t the end for them, I just hope the next sound they go for doesn’t remove any remaining lick of style they had.
For any of you who don’t know their work, get a copy of their 10th anniversary collection and hear one of the best single compilations around.
Desktop
Google released version 2 of the Google Desktop today, their personal search tool. I’ve found the first version invaluable for searching through all my work email, but had never found much use for it at home yet.
That is, until now. Thanks to the new sidebar and it’s plugin system, I’m already finding the notes, todo list, RSS reader, news, weather and email checker incredibly handy. In fact it’s the first RSS reader that doesn’t make me want to uninstall it after 10 minutes, with it’s very Bearkey Alert like ways.
With three screens, it’s nice to be able to just pin it to the left side of my right one and leave it there, always being able to see what needs done. Like what blog posts I’m meant to have written this week (*cough*).
Flower
So it appears I’m back on the Bearthing path, after deciding that launching Blogbear first really wasn’t the route I wanted to go down. That means taking all the Blogbear admin work I’ve been doing and combining it with all the existing Bearthing admin work.
This, much like the first paragraph, is incredibly dull. So instead, here’s a picture of a bee on a flower.
Found
Rather than wait for each show to appear on Channel 4, I sat down and watched every episode of Lost during the past couple of days, ready for the new season starting.
I thought it started off quite slowly, the first few episodes, while still good, didn’t make me want to see the next one with quite the urgency I would have liked. But once it got to be about episode 5, I found it really picked up the pace and became eminently more watchable as time went on. Hopefully people give it enough of a chance and keep going with it.
It’s structured very much like a book, with each episode being a chapter in the story, so it’d be interesting to know how much they planned in advance and how much they’re just making it up as they go along.
Ultimately, more great US television. But still just behind 24 in the edge of the seat, must watch the next one stakes.
Runaway
I lost the dog today.
For half an hour at least.
It’s normal on our twice daily trips down the park to meet other dogs along the way. These encounters usually result in three outcomes, either Fury sniffs at the other dog and then keeps walking (maybe after barking a bit), keeps as far away as possible like a terrified child (the common one) or either chases or gets chased in a circle. This one started out like the latter, but ended up with the circle becoming a straight line away from where myself and the owners of the other dog were standing.
The park is a circle, and they had run towards the path, so we followed that way. I was a little more panicky than the other owner, so moved a bit ahead and found myself running around the place rather than simply walking, but she was nowhere to be seen. I shouted, there was no reply. After a bit I met the daughter of the other owner who had found their dog up the path which I use to enter the park, so I went looking up there (while her father continued to look elsewhere) but still couldn’t see her. I went around and around getting ever more slightly worried about where she had gone, and what I would do if I couldn’t find her (especially since the phone number on her collar is out of date).
On about my sixth trip up the path I met the daughter again who said her dad had found Fury back on the street again and was trying to catch her without much success. I walked back up the road (we don’t live far from the park) and could hear her barking. I found her sitting on the top step of the entrance to the building, barking as loud as she could at the guy whenever he tried to come near. Thankfully she’d had the sense to come home, and she was certainly excited to see me.
It was nice of the other owners to keep looking even after they’d found their own dog, especially since I’d never even met them before. And it was good that Fury had used what little sense she has (she’s a bit retarded) to go home, but she’d obviously been terrified by the other dog (who was smaller than she was) which is why she ran off in the first place. Hopefully she won’t be doing that again, because it stressed me out no end.
And I’m still not fit enough to be running around the park.
Snippets
I still haven’t had a chance to listen to the Supergrass album, but I did pick up the Paul Anka album, Rock Swings. Chris Moyles played snippets of a couple of tracks earlier this week, and it sounded good, so I figured why not (plus AllOfMP3 makes things cheap).
It starts off strong, the first five or six tracks are great (Eye of the Tiger especially), and in full swing both the band and the voice sound great. I did find it going downhill a bit towards the end, but further listenings might change that opinion.
The trivia I learned from following the Paul Anka thread is that he wrote Frank Sinatra’s most well known song, My Way. I’m sure knowing that will come in handy on some quiz in the future.
Smoothie
In an attempt to get myself to eat more fruit, I bought a Kenwood SB307 Smoothie Maker which arrived today.
Firstly, it’s huge. Far larger than I imagined it would be and therefore not really able to go where I wanted it to in the kitchen. I’m sure most of that size is simply so the tap sits above the glass. Setting it up was a case of just plugging it in, and the controls on the front are nice and simple (Mix, Smooth, Pulse, Off - a retards dream).
My first drink was something I just made up rather than following any of the particular recipes in the included book, it was a mix of strawberries, raspberries and milk - but I threw in far too much fruit and ended up with something far too strong, thick and frankly, minging.
I’ll get better I’m sure, and I’m sure the taste will improve once I start throwing some bananas and vodka in there.
Comments
I finally got around to adding comments to the articles on whatinterest, so now there’s an easy way for people to tell us how bad we are at writing.
We’ve also been adding more content on a regular basis, so be sure to check us out.
Supergrass
Still working my way through episodes of Scrubs, I expect to have finished all four seasons by mid-week. Maybe afterwards I’ll get some work done.
Mark surprised me yesterday by saying there was a new Supergrass album out today, as if out of nowhere. So I’ll have to get myself a copy of that. Still one of the most under-rated bands in music.
If the new album sucks, I’ll edit this post to reflect the change.
Painful
Considering the amount of exercise I’ve been getting over the past few weeks, you’d think my back would be in better shape. But instead the complete opposite is happening, and I have pain and a lack of strength in my lower back that makes sitting up in the morning a painful experience.
I knew all those reports over the years about exercise being good for you were nothing but nasty, nasty lies.
Lost
The US TV series Lost started here tonight on Channel 4, and I watched the first two episodes. I’d seen the first part before, having downloaded the entire series, but that was as far as I’d gotten.
It was good stuff, and you could see why it cost $10 million to make the pilot. The scale of American television is just so beyond what anybody manages to do here, there’s no way that a British channel could have somebody getting sucked into a plane engine without making the whole thing from puppets and paper mach
Discovery
Took a moment at lunchtime today to watch the landing of the Shuttle Discovery live via the BBC’s web feed. Since they had to switch to California and make it a night landing, it wasn’t quite as nice to watch (where were the giant floodlights?), but I still can’t help but geek out over the whole Shuttle experience.
Sure, it’s badly designed, antiquated, and dangerous, but there’s something just inspiring about a brick coming into land. Hoping there’ll be some coverage of it’s return to Florida next week, I’d like to see it being strapped to the back of the 747.
