Archive for April, 2006
Paranoid
Listening to Danny Baker radio shows from February, he brought up the topic of numbers printed on the inside of toilet rolls, and their ultimate purpose. Clearly they are some sort of batch number, but why? Do people return toilet rolls, go back to the store and say that the roll failed to live up to it’s purpose?
People started phoning in with the numbers from the inside of their rolls, in the attempt to find a pattern, but none was found. Clearly, it’s some sort of conspiracy, a secret underground organisation is using the numbers to communicate with it’s disciples. Somebody suggested putting the number into your VCR’s Videoplus+ system, which will make it record the programme that will ultimately unveil the secret.
You know they’re watching.
Assistant
Dr. Who was the televisual surprise of last year, pretty much the only British drama that actually made me switch on my TV, and far better than I ever expected it was going to be. And it’s pleasing to see that now we’re a few episodes into the new season, David Tennant taking over the role of the Doctor hasn’t caused the show to skip a beat.
I particularly enjoyed this weeks episode, where 1970’s assistant Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) returns to continue the story she left off 30 years ago, after being dumped in Aberdeen. It’s the kind of story no other show could do, the amount of time and history they have available to them from all the years the show has been on gives them a huge back catalogue of ideas to mine, and this took huge advantage of that. What happens to an assistant after the Doctor leaves them? How do they get on with their lives? And how will Rose feel when she realises that eventually, she’ll be left behind too? The episode covered all of this, and even threw in an evil Anthony Head for good measure.
Next week, a Steven Moffat episode, who almost always writes the best stuff.
Capture
I decided I wanted to do something with video, but lacking a video camera and lacking any talent to share even if I did have one, I came up with the idea of doing videogame reviews instead. Then I’d only have to show my voice, rather than my face. But not for up to date titles, oh no, I have no money to buy them. I do however have a large collection of old games just begging to be committed to depths of YouTube or Google Video. Everyone needs online video reviews of Mega CD games.
Of course this means a way to capture the video is necessary, which is easy enough with new fancy consoles that output a composite or s-video signal (I already have something that can convert that to a firewire output), but not so easy for all those that only output via RF/aerial/coax. So yesterday I bought a box from Maplin that claimed to be able to convert from RF to composite.
But it can’t.
In fact, it’s useless. Despite spending hours flicking through every one of it’s output modes and every one of the available channels I could select using the buttons on the front, I couldn’t get it to output a single video signal, leaving my N64 feeling neglected as I was unable to see anything it was doing. Just about to give up, I looked at the connector on the back of the N64 and found it familiar, like I’d seen that shape before. A quick trip to the cupboard where my Gamecube was, remove the video output from that, and would you believe it, exactly the same! Except the difference is that the GC comes with composite output by default, making Nintendo lovely people all round. Within minutes I was able to get a signal from the N64 and was capturing full screen video hitch free.
You can therefore expect my first video review, Mario 64 of course, in the coming weeks. And I’ll think of another way to convert RF signals, so eventually I can do an Atari 2600 game or two as well.
Wii
Sometimes a story comes along in which the jokes write themselves. The Nintendo Wii is one of those times.
Let’s just say that again, savour the moment. The name of the next Nintendo console, launching later this year, is Wii.
Wii.
Pronounced, in case you were wondering, as “we”. Which, especially for us in the UK, is piss.
Now it’s true to say that everyone thought Dreamcast was a pretty silly name as well and we all got used to that, and Mega Drive and Playstation and Game Boy all sound pretty ridiculous when you look at it. But Wii? Really? What names were on the list below that one, what exactly did they turn down before settling on this?
There’s been universal condemnation of Nintendo across the whole Internet, and all the good favour they had curried with their fancy controller and the name Revolution has almost been wiped out overnight, with interest in the system having significantly dropped since the announcement. You imagine that teams of people did focus group testing when they were picking the brand, but if so, who exactly did they ask?
At the end of the day, it’s the games that count, and we shouldn’t care what the thing is called, however ridiculous it might be. That’s why Nintendo have announced it now, a couple of weeks before E3, so it doesn’t overshadow everything else, and that was probably a smart thing to do. Whether they call it Wii or Puu, I’m still more excited for it than I am Playstation 3.
Shambles
Why do the papers keep publishing and the news keep reporting stories about Pete Docherty?
I mean really, who is this person? He’s in a band called Babyshambles, and I couldn’t name or even recall one single song they’ve ever done. Before that he was in the Libertines, who split up in 2004 and had some mild success, but really, who the fuck cares?
Day after day, week after week there are stories about his drug use, being arrested, his time with Kate Moss, and is there anyone out there that actually finds this newsworthy? After it’s happened to so many times, do we really need to hear of it all the time? Can’t we just accept that the guy is messed up and move on? I’m sick of hearing about it.
Consolevania referred to him as a “waste of skin”. I couldn’t have put it better myself. The quicker he lapses into a drug induced coma the better off we’ll all be.
Stowaway
*Warning, 24 Season 5 spoilers lie within.*
With just five hours remaining, season 5 of 24 has yet to miss a beat, consistently offering up some of the finest drama television has to offer. This week, with the introduction of a new group to which even the President seems to be a puppet of, underlines the fact that with only a short time remaining, this story could go anywhere.
So many questions still remain. You just know that the German intelligence agent has got to make a reappearance, and what really happened to Aaron Pierce, surely he can’t be another notch on the already very high body count this season. Is Zombie Tony going to make a comeback? Who is really on that airplane? Why will Robocop go to any length to protect the secret, even now? Did Audrey’s father survive the car accident?
There is a fear that none of this is going to wrap up nicely, plot holes are bound to start showing through and the conclusion is going to be a disappointment. But as always, next week can’t come soon enough.
Chanelling
It was almost as if the writers of this weeks West Wing were chanelling Aaron Sorkin, as Rob Lowe returned as Sam Seabourn for the first time in three years, and spoke words that could have been written by the aforementioned great himself. The rest of the episode was equally Sorkin, meaning it was one of the few episodes I’ve really laughed out loud since he left. That’s been one of the biggest changes in the past few years, all the lightness and humour the show originally had has been completely drained.
There’s only three episodes remaining, only one more of which contains Lowe, but as Josh hires more staff to run the Santos White House, I can’t help but wish there’d be an eighth season so we can see it all happen for real.
Remix
Never one to turn down the suggestion of a good domain name, I registered mybearpage.com a couple of days ago. There are possibilities for a domain like that, mostly to do with user published content.
I was also reminded this week that I own the domain generationremix.com, based on a Jeff Gerstmann comment that we were all living in this age now, what with the mobile phone covers, Xbox 360 replacement faceplates, mashups and other user-customisable content.
For those keeping score, here’s what I believe to be the current complete list…
alertbear.com, allapple.com, averagecomputeruserbob.com, bearemail.com, bearkey.com, bearkeyalerts.com, bearkeydollars.com, bearscript.com, bearthing.com, blogbear.com, chatbear.com, chatbear.net, chatbear.org, chatbear.co.uk, chatbearextreme.com, chatbearstore.com, diamondleague.com, doomplayer.com, emailbear.com, filebear.com, gamecube365.com, gamesplayer.com, generationremix.com, hostbear.com, imagebear.com, ircbear.com, joshuacalledme.com, listbear.com, mailbearer.com, marketbear.com, mybearpage.com, planetgroovy.com, pookart.com, square8.com, squareeight.com, suctionpups.com, thelinkseffect.com, theonewith.com, todaysmeal.com, webdog.org, whatalbum.com, whatbook.com, whatfilm.com, whatfilm.net, whatinterest.com, whatvideogame.com, worldoflifecraft.com, yourtings.com, quakerally.com
Lease
I don’t know the true legality of the situation, but in just eight short days I shall be homeless, as I have yet to sign a new lease for this place.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried, I filled in, signed and sent back the letter requesting a lease extension, but yet nothing has been received for me to sign. Phone calls will have to be made in the coming days to rectify the situation.
I have checked however, and so far the flat hasn’t been listed on the letting agent website. But it does add an air of excitement to each day.
Rock
I went back today for the operation and had my nuts removed, a new set put on, and the new tyres. Total cost, £155. Which isn’t too bad I guess, but it would have been far cheaper had I taken better care of things.
While I was sitting in the waiting area I got to see Rock School, the Gene Simmons presented reality show where he takes a group of school kids and tries to turn them into a rock group in a month, when they will then play a show. I’ve never seen it before, but I found it very entertaining.
It was the last episode in the second series, the one where the band members would be chosen and they would go play the show. What I liked about it was how the natural drama of the situation was allowed to come out, rather than being pre-conceived or setup. Big Brother was entertaining back when they simply chose people they thought were interesting, but as soon as they started favouring those that would create good conflict (”we have a gay guy, so let’s put in a homophobe too!”) it all became too engineered and dull. Rock School was good because of it’s reality.
The show they were to play, in front of 20,000 fans at a Judas Priest concert, was in LA, and was only revealed to them after the band had been chosen. They acquitted themselves quite well considering, I didn’t think they were going to be able to pull it together at all considering the state of them in rehearsals. Even the crowd seemed pleased.
What was more interesting was how much this trip affected them all, and what the whole journey had taught them. Most of these kids had never stayed in a hotel before, let alone been out of the country, so the trip to America was a revelation, opening their eyes to new possibilities and for the first time giving them hope that they weren’t just going to be stuck in a dead end job somewhere in Lowestoft. These weren’t privileged children, these weren’t deprived children, they were simply average kids in an average school , and it was sad to see how little aspiration any of them had.
Nuts
I was informed today that I need to have my nuts cut off.
I took my car to the garage to get two new front tyres, since one of them was below the legal limit in it’s baldness, and after ten minutes of waiting someone came out and asked me where my locking wheel nuts were. I have alloy wheels, so one of the nuts is locked so they are not easily stolen. Now I remember having the thing that allows these to be removed in my glove box, but apparently it was not there. Nor was it anywhere else in the car, for they had looked in all the places it might be (including ones I wouldn’t have even though of myself). Ultimately I was informed that in order to get the wheels off, I would have to get my nuts cut off, and then eventually replaced.
So I get to back tomorrow for the operation, and my total bill probably just went up by another £60. What I did with my previous set, I do not know.
Vista
I installed one of the recent betas of Windows Vista on my laptop and it’s quickly apparent why this has been delayed until early 2007 - this is a shocking mess of an operating system.
Despite five years of development, Vista is ugly, unpolished, slow, it’s worse than using Linux. Not once did I come across a feature that made me go “that’s nice” or make me think at any point this was a system upgrading to. Now of course I am aware that this is still in development, but after all this time, and with probably only six months to go before it has to go gold, this seems like a shocking position to be in.
My laptop doesn’t have the fastest graphics hardware either, it’s an Intel integrated graphics chipset, but it is however perfectly capable of playing a game like World of Warcraft. Vista on the other hand finds this hardware unsuitable for the Aero Glass UI, meaning I get no transparencies or other nice effects. That’s right, a graphics card that is perfectly capable of playing an online multiplayer game at a resonable maintained framerate is apparently incapable of drawing some transparent rectangles on the screen.
Something is just wrong about that.
Mat
I like to remind people occassionally that there is Chatbear Store, for all of you that want to walk around bear chested.
I got myself one of the new black t-shirts, which work much better than the white ones ever did. Plus a new mouse mat, it’s quite horrible when you compare it with my old one and realise just how much dirt rubs off your hands over the space of a few years. You wouldn’t eat your dinner off it, that’s for sure.
Go forth and shop.
Calendar
The Google Calendar is now out in the public, and it’s another excellent example of what you can do with AJAX given enough time and imagination. There are many well realised features, like the way you can drag a range of dates on the small calendar on the left and have the larger view change to just show those days, or how easy it is to drag a range on the main view in order to create an event that spans multiple hours or days. The Quick Add button is also a nice touch, although any attempt at natural language processing only makes you wish it could understand more.
The interface has clearly been inspired by Apple’s iCal, in fact it’s almost like the developers made a concious effort to create a web version of just that application, but the end result is something that’s actually easier to use and understand. I had expected to see a Google Maps style interface from them, where you’re able to click and drag around the view of your calendar as if you were looking at a giant yearly wall chart.
The coming soon section of the Bearkey homepage showed a calendar and Bearkey Alert reminder system for years, but it never happened. Just one more of a million ideas I’ll get around to eventually.
Cross
I didn’t manage to continue my good Look & Feel work into today, I merely flirted with the process, tweaking what I already had.
You wouldn’t believe the hours (yes, hours) that went into the screenshot I posted yesterday. As I moved things around, suddenly recalled whole sections that I’d missed off the page, changed font sizes, borders, spacing, split it into two sections and so on. And that’s all just for one menu, not to mention all the work and ultimate changes that have gone into the pages behind each of those links.
Perfectionism is a terrible cross to bear.
Feel
A bit of work on the Chatbear v3 Look & Feel section this weekend. Admin UI takes so long.
Factory
It was nice after two days of films I didn’t find particularly compelling to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on DVD tonight and find the whole thing thoroughly entertaining.
The first thing I have to mention is the truly excellent performance from actor Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, he grabbed the role by the horns and was just brilliant. In fact, the cast all round were great, every character was brought to life properly, also a testament to the strong script.
Johnny Depp took a lot of questions at the time about whether his performance was inspired by Michael Jackson, but beyond the pale face, I didn’t find anything that made me think that. He hits all the right notes and creates something very different from Gene Wilder, proving once again how versatile he is.
The factory looked great, the town looked great, the Bucket house looked great, the Oompa-Loompa’s looked great, the songs were great… can you tell, it was just great.
Slightly disappointed over the addition of Wonka’s father, but otherwise, highly recommended.
Kong
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is just too long, OK. I’m sorry, it just is. It doesn’t need to be nine hours long, and it certainly didn’t need the extended cut either.
King Kong is just further proof that Peter Jackson needs to learn where the scissors are, as he presents a three hour movie that’s just dying to be a two hour one. So much could be trimmed back, cut down or just removed completely without missing a moment of story, a story which, let’s be honest, isn’t the most complicated to start off with.
I’ll be honest and say that I just didn’t buy the relationship between Kong and Ann, I don’t think it makes sense at any point in the movie. Let’s ignore the fact that all the bones in her body would have been shattered the moment she was picked up by Kong and he ran away, tossed about like a ragdoll as she is, but despite Kong obviously protecting her from the dinosaurs, I didn’t for a moment see any reason why she would suddenly fall in love with this creature. And then at the end, after Kong falls, she turns to the Adrien Brody character because she’s in love with him too?
The wonderful Jack Black is sadly mis-cast and every special effect involving the actors looks completely out of place (Kong climbing the Empire State Building for example looks amazing, but as soon as you see Ann in the shot with him, it looks totally fake, ditto for the dinosaur stampede).
It’s not all bad, 1930’s New York looks amazing, the scene with the dinosaurs fighting Kong and them falling down through all the vines is a classic movie moment, and Kong bursting out of the chains in the theatre, scaring everyone and chasing Driscoll is fun too. But there’s just not enough here to warrant the running time.
I haven’t seen the original, I wanted to do this the opposite way and see the remake first, but it’s something I plan on doing soon. The original is a one hour, forty minute movie, and this would have been a tighter, much more enjoyable experience if it had been near the same.
Inside
I went to see Inside Man at the cinema tonight, and having done so, I suggest you don’t.
For about the first hour, you’re likely to be sitting there waiting for something to happen, but it never does. Situations and characters are introduced, plot markers are placed down in the hope they’ll be picked up later in some sort of interesting way, but they never are. The ultimate conclusion is such a let down that the already boring build up just comes off as even more tedious and pointless.
I like Jodie Foster, I like Clive Owen, and I don’t have much experience of Denzel Washington, but the script asks little of any of them. Foster’s character is never properly explained, she’s clearly well connected, but it just doesn’t come off as believable. She seems to be a character like Pulp Fiction’s Mr. Wolf, but even though his back-story was never given, you still believed him, not so here.
She’s not the only character mis-step in the film, the owner of the bank, the man who ultimately hires her, must be at least in his 90’s in order to have performed the actions that ultimately lead to the conslusion of the movie, but little effort seems to have gone into making us believe Christopher Plummer is that old. And then there’s Willem Dafoe, a great actor, in a role that gives him absolutely nothing to do.
Overall, a complete waste of time, a weak script, no thrills and a sleep-worthy conclusion. Although the scene where Denzel Washington gets dragged across a street on rollerskates is guaranteed to raise a smile.
Combo
I bought a TV/DVD combo for the bedroom, keen as I am to enjoy lying in bed with a film, or watch crap morning television on days I don’t have to work. Amazon were kind enough to sell me one, complete with multi-region capability, for the silly low price of £69.99. It’s made by Akura, a brand I wouldn’t say I was familiar with, but the five star rating and low price made me take the plunge, especailly when more expensive models from the likes of Philips weren’t getting the same positive responses.
And you know what? It’s darn good. Setup was simple, picture quality is excellent, and it’s handled every disc I’ve thrown at it so far with nary a whimper. Disc access is quick too, no waiting around for things to happen. For this price, you really can’t go wrong.
