Movies in 30 seconds

Go and have a look at this site for some rather amusing animated versions of classic movies including Jaws and Alien, recreated in just 30 seconds. By bunnies.

John Peel

I've just read on the BBC News site that John Peel has died of a heart attack whilst on holiday in Peru. This news has really knocked me sideways, and I can't quite believe that I won't hear his voice on Saturday mornings any more, or even rhapsodising over some new record that has caught his imagination on one of his Radio One shows. Radio is the most intimate medium by far. I usually listen when I am alone in the car, or perhaps when I'm in the bathroom or doing the washing up in the kitchen. There is not the same artifice as with the television - legend has it that BBC news readers used to put on formal dress suits for reading the news, but with John Peel you always had the feeling that he was presenting the show in a comfy jumper and an old pair of jeans.

He will be missed.

ColorQuiz

Following this link from Billy took me to a personality quiz based on choosing 'colors' (presumably it's Merkin in origin). I was expecting the usual result from personality tests of this sort - you know the sort of thing 'You are Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer' or 'Your Halloween treat is an apple with a razorblade in it' - but this test was spookily accurate.

Here is what it said about me:

Your Existing Situation

Orderly, methodical, and self-contained. Needs the respect, recognition, and understanding of those close to him.


Your Stress Sources

Has an unsatisfied need to ally himself with others whose standards are as high as his own, and to stand out from the herd. This desire for preeminence isolates him and inhibits his readiness to give himself freely. While he wants to surrender and let himself go, he regards this as a weakness which must be resisted. This self-restraint, he feels, will lift him above the rank and file and ensure recognition as a unique and distinctive personality.


Your Restrained Characteristics

Egocentric and therefore quick to take offense.

Wants to broaden his fields of activity and insists that his hopes and ideas are realistic. Distressed by the fear that he may be prevented from doing what he wants; needs both peaceful conditions and quiet reassurance to restore his confidence.


Your Desired Objective

Considers the existing circumstances disagreeable and over-demanding. Refuses to allow anything to influence his point of view.


Your Actual Problem

The need for esteem--for the chance to play some outstanding part and make a name for himself--has become imperative. He reacts by insisting on being the center of attention, and refuses to play an impersonal or minor role.

Snake!

Last night I awoke at some unearthly hour to see a large python sinuously coil itself over my leg. I sat upright in bed, barely able to speak other than to croak in a terrified squeak "Snake!". Jan woke up at this point too, and said something like "Oh god, not again" and went downstairs to sleep on the sofa.

Of course, there wasn't really a snake there. I had been having a very lucid (and probably freudian) dream after watching Predator on dvd (and the last 20 minutes again on tv), woken up and in my sleep befuddled, short sighted daze interpreted the pattern of brown and cream circles on the blanket at the end of the bed as some sort of scaly creature seeking to crush me where I lay. I've had these sort of dreams before. I am very short sighted and when I wake up there is a brief moment where my brain struggles to make sense of the visual jumble that my eyes are feeding it.

I can vividly remember waking up one Christmas Eve as a child to see Santa Claus standing by my door. I was terrified, partly by the prospect of a stranger in my room but mostly by the thought that if he realized I was awake I wouldn't get any presents. I lay quietly for what seemed an eternity, hardly daring to breath, until the dawn light started to filter into the room and suddenly the patterns of light and shade shifted and I realized that the cloaked figure was actually my dressing gown hanging on the door handle.

In my old house there was the time that I awoke to see a doorway to a parallel dimension opening in the wall at the foot of my bed. I could just see an outline of the door as brilliant, blinding light spilled through the crack. I fumbled for my glasses as the door snapped shut and I put the bedside light on. My heart was racing and I felt as if I had witnessed some sort of genuine paranormal revelation. It took me a while to figure out that the mirror on the wall must have caught the reflection of the 500 watt halogen security light on the house opposite that had filtered through a gap in the curtains.

Oh, and we won't mention the incident of the tentacles on the ceiling or the mechanical butterflies on the duvet.

Maybe this is a common phenomenon that might explain why some people are convinced that they have seen ghosts and the like. The expression "I couldn't believe my eyes" has some truth behind it. Our brains do an awful lot of processing of the raw visual signals that get sent along the optic nerve before we actually see an image and interpret it. Optical illusions prove how easy it is to trick us into seeing something that is not actually there - coupled with a dream fugue or (as with ghost spotters and ufo hunters) a propensity to want to see something gives rise to the most convincing illusions.

Either that, or I'm going mental.

Wings of War

I don't buy all that many video games. I'm am invariably cautious in my purchases - I will umm and ahh for ages, read reviews and comparative scores, look for comments and opinions on newsgroups and then wait until I see the game going cheap before actually parting with any money. Why did I buy this game on spec, knowing nothing more than the general theme?

Partly it was the theme. I love flying games for a start, and world war one is an appealing era. The planes were slow and therefore any combat was a close up affair - no fire-and-forget missiles targeted from beyond visual range here. The price helped too - it was a budget release, which means less than half the price of any other new game.

So, what's it like? Let's start with the bad. This is not a flight simulation by any stretch of the imagination. The flight model is very forgiving - you can chuck your plane around without fear of ripping the wings off and it is practically impossible to stall it. The action is non-stop - you are given multiple objectives, with an awful lot happening at one time, with orders barked at you over the radio (hmmm, spot the historical inaccuracy #1). You have a radar screen (that's #2). You swap planes in the middle of a mission by jumping from one to another in mid-air (#3 and counting). Oh, and there are power ups, shields and health bonuses (oh, that's it - I'm not counting any more).

OK, so let's look at the good points. Taken on it's own terms as an action shooter, this is a very good game indeed. The graphics are fabulous - the landscapes of war torn France are expansive and detailed. You can skim over the trenches and towns, with a huge amount of detail to be seen and more importantly blown up. The weather ranges from clear blue skies, to fog, cloud, rain and snow with thunder storms and sunsets to marvel at. The piece de resistance are the planes, though. All of the usual suspects of the time are on offer, immaculately recreated and with numerous camouflage options for each one. You can actually get close enough to see the struts on the wings, and then watch them disintegrate as you fill them full of lead.

As previously mentioned, the game is relentless. From taking off on a mission, you are likely to be patrolling, balloon busting, dog fighting, bombing ground targets, strafing armoured trains, escorting bombers and even taking aerial photographs. There are automatic save points at regular intervals, but they do not interrupt the flow of the game. If you are shot down, you do not usually lose more than a couple of minutes of game play. There are instant action missions, which are effectively deathmatch dogfights, but there is no Xbox Live play which is a real missed opportunity.

If you can overlook the more far fetched aspects, this game is well worth getting hold if you want a good, budget priced action game for the Xbox.

Politicial Meme Time

Go to Constituency Locata and send an email to your local mp asking them to start writing a blog. Be polite, but make sure you point out that if Boris Johnson can do it, so can they. It will be interesting to see who replies and how many are shamed into action.

Boris the Blogger

Well, who'd have thought it - Boris Johnson MP the very model of a crusty, tory technophobe is now one of a handful of MPs that not only blogs on a regular basis, but actively responds to comments and questions from constituents and fellow bloggers. Whatever you may think of his politics, not to mention his being forced to publicly apologize for an article that he didn't even write, his blog seems a highly laudable excercise in public accountabilty and I commend it to the blogosphere. Three cheers for Boris!

The dark explodes with a yellow light

Last night wasn't fun.

It started badly with a walk in the woods just as the rain started to fall. It picked up in intensity as I reached the half way point and then the entire sky was lit up with a series of lightning flashes. I couldn't remember whether it was more dangerous to be under trees or in the middle of an open field during a thunderstorm, but my walk home was nicely split between the two. I counted the seconds between the flashes and the following crack of thunder and worked out that the storm was still a ways off, but I picked up my pace just in case. The air felt oppressive even though the rain was now pelting down, leaving both man and beast wet, muddy and sweaty by the time we got home.

I was looking forward to a sit down, a meander through my blog roll and perhaps a mug of coffee to settle my storm addled nerves.

One problem though. The newpoot was refusing to boot up. I did the usual run of checking the connections at the back, switching off and on quickly, leaving it for a bit and then switching it on unexpectedly with no joy, not even a solitary beep from the power on self test. We worked out that the computer had been left on this afternoon and had gone into hibernation, whereupon it had stayed like some sort of computerized Blue Peter tortoise.

Great.

I eventually tried booting off the recovery cd and quitting the restore process which got me to a desktop where I wrote a backup dvd with The Blogs on it, just in case. I then kicked off a scan disk which called for a reboot which, you've guessed it, wedged the machine again.

Just to make things worse, the internet connection was being seriously weird. I could get an intermittent connection to some sites (blogger and on-line scrabble), but nothing from anywhere else including hotmail, news.bbc.co.uk and the berlin news server.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

I was quite taken aback by my reaction to the lack of connectivity and the problems with the computer. I felt really anxious, snappy and irritable, like an addict denied a fix of crack or an alcoholic waiting for the bar to open. Not good. I was starting to worry about not being able to connect to work in the morning and missing the news and trivia that normally occupies my surfing time. I couldn't even settle to watch tv, without wondering if the connection had come back yet. I went to bed in a fractious mood, and slept badly.

The happy coda, is that the connection was fine in the morning and that a five minute call to the technical support number provided a solution (take the power cord out, hold down the power button for 30 seconds, plug everything back in and reboot).

Thank goodness for that.

Twilight Zone

This is seriously weird.

Our new computer won't boot, at all. I've got a connection to the internet, but blogger is the only site that is responding. Lightning is flashing outside, and the rain is pouring down.

End of the world, film at 11?

The Wind's Quarter

The storm was howling last night, rattling the grill on the extractor fan in the bathroom. I was woken by the noise three or four times before lapsing into strange dreams of sailing on a roiling, black sea. By the time I left the house at half past six, the wind had ripped the storm clouds away, leaving ragged wisps with ice bright stars visible beyond. I am starting to get used to walking in the dark in the mornings, the beam of my torch picking out the path in front of me which was strewn with broken branches, leaves and conkers as evidence of the night's fury.

Blimey, it was chilly. The nominal temperature on the weather station was five degrees or so, but the wind chill left gave the impression of being well below zero. Winter draws on ...

It was a dark and stormy night ...

Well, not night precisely, but if you count that interlude just before the dawn as night, then night it was. Stormy, certainly. I was wearing my rain coat, hood up. My universe was restricted to a meagre pool of light at my feet cast by the torch that I held in my right hand, and the beating of the rain upon my head. No fencing last night, a mix up with the days, but it was probably just as well as my shoulder still hurt when I stretched it too far.

I trudged along, lost in thought, plots and characters competing for attention. I am going to have to spend next week putting an outline together to give me something to aim for. It's like a programming project - a large problem needs to broken down into discrete chunks that can be tackled one at a time. I can see where the starting point is, but I don't yet have an end point. Terry Pratchett once compared writing a story as being like digging a railway tunnel. You have to work from both ends at the same time, and hope that if you have planned it correctly you will meet up in the middle somewhere.

Eye say

Alicia had an appointment for a checkup at the eye clinic this morning. Twenty past nine was the time on the card, so I strong armed her out of the house just after twenty past eight - that gave us an hour, plenty of time for a journey that was not much more than five miles, at least in theory.

I was expecting the ring road to be slow, but we were stationary for what seemed like ages, until the traffic suddenly cleared somewhere just past Hillsborough and started moving freely. Although it is a nice wide, straight bit of duel carriageway the speed limit is 30mph and I was being careful because I usually am, and also there are speed cameras and police along that stretch. Any fans of the Traffic Cops programmes will recognize the bit I am talking about, that gives the chavs a chance to pick up a bit of speed in their stolen XR3is. Consequently, I picked up a taxi travelling right behind me as the road turned to head up to the university. There are a series of four or five traffic lights one after the other, and I could see them starting to change just as I was passing the first of them. I knew I wasn't going to get past the last one before it turned red so I put the brakes on, and being ABS and new they are pretty damned efficient. Needless to say, the taxi driver came within a whisker of running into the back of me, and he looked a little, shall we say, perturbed that I hadn't just run the red light. Hmmm. At least when the lights changed to green I was able to demonstrate that my car accelerates even more efficiently than it brakes ... :-)

We got to the hospital at around five past nine, but the direct route to the car park had a no right turn, so we had to do a loop and come back along a service road through the middle of the hospital campus. It was stationary. We crawled along at a snail's pace until we came to the road heading back down to the car park, which was similarly stationary and nobody looked like they were going anywhere. I nipped round the corner and spotted a gap in the queue for the car park and snuck in at 9:19 exactly.

Fortunately the Opthamology department is exactly opposite the car park, so we got in bang on time, to find that at least four other people were booked for exactly the same time with the same consultant. How much did you say the NHS is spending on IT, exactly?

Anyway, we got seen eventually, and it turns out that the nerves at the back of Alicia's eyes are fine, just a little bunched together because she is so short sighted, and we were out after five minutes with the consultant. Shame that they couldn't look at my eyes at the same time, so I'll have to do the same trip when I get my appointment at the clinic to get my retinas examined.

Karon Viscome

Who on Earth is Karon Viscome, and why am I getting her spam? I check my spam filters every couple of days before clearing the folder and I've noticed a lot of spam from different addresses but all with a header of "Confirmation for Karon Viscome" or "Special offers for Karon" or something along those lines. I've googled for "Karon Viscome" with no luck, although "Karen Viscome" returns a bewildering list of Spanish sounding names.

Perhaps there is a genuine Karon Viscome out there somewhere waiting to buy a house or have his/her penis/breasts enlarged (delete where applicable) and wondering where all of the junk they signed up for has gone? As Toyah once sang, ith a mythtery ...

Comfort

It's cold outside and my shoulder still hurts from the other day when Barney nearly yanked it out its socket trying to chase a particularly cheeky squirrel, so excuse me while I indulge myself slightly. I've hoovered (well, dysoned) the lounge, so it's nice and tidy, I've got my feet up with Biddy warming my legs, the small light in the corner provides just enough illumination to type by as the sun sets outside, I've got a mug of strong columbian coffee with just a dash of Whittard's chocolate syrup to sweeten it a little and I've got craggy faced Michael Palin's Himalaya taped from last night to watch. Ahhh.

There's some good stuff on the telly at the moment. The new Battlestar Galactica series looks promising, Green Wing on Channel 4 is a good, innovative comedy, and the series that has just started about the history of Venice has given me some possible ideas for my novel. The only problem is finding time to watch it all - I've still got this week's Green Wing and the Bob Geldof documentary about family law to watch, and I'm going to be out at Rapier training tomorrow night, so tonight is the night to be square eyed I think.

I must be mad

Hmmm, why did I sign up for this?

I have feedreader running all of the time on my notebook, and one of the feeds that I keep an eye on is slashdot - it's usually geek related stories on technical issues, although they do cover popular culture and politics on occasion. I usually just skim the stories but one headline made me click through for more information on 'Kamikaze Novel Writing'.

The idea is simple and beguiling. You write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That's it. Never mind the theme or the quality. Don't agonize and rewrite. Just get the words down on paper, or bytes in a document, regardless of quality, before the deadline. That's a little under two thousand words a day, allowing a little leeway for slow days.

I have always thought about writing a novel, but never actually seem to have acquired the necessary circular tuit to get started. The regular habit of writing is one of the reasons for doing this blog, so this is something that I can't really pass up. Having signed up, I now feel a little like the author with writer's block in Neil Gaiman's Sandman story Calliope - although I hope I don't need to find my muse in such a brutal or literal fashion.

What am I going to write, given a universe of possibilities? Fantasy or science fiction would seem to be natural choices for a geek like me, although something historical with a bit of rapier based sword play is tempting. Perhaps a modern day story looking at an incident or event from multiple perspectives? A cyberpunk near future dystopia? A civil war in a plague wracked city?

I don't know, but I'm going to ponder the options between now and Halloween. This could be interesting ...

The Book of Jamus

1. In the year of our LORD two thousand and four a mighty deluge was inflicted upon the tribe of Hopkins, in the land of Burncross.
2. For lo, Jamus son of Jan, hadst been in the bath and by swimming up and down hadst visited the waters upon the floor of the bathroom, even unto the furthest corners.
3. In his shame, Jamus didst not confess his sin and tried to conceal it from the eyes of the LORD.
4. The following morning, the LORD was going about his business in a mysterious way, collecting the clothing that had been strewn hither and yon by the children of the LORD when he didst notice something passing strange.
5. "Why do these towels wringeth with water, even the large beach towel, and why art the spare toilet rolls in a state of watery decay?"
6. The LORD didst call Jamus to account, and he didst confess what had transpired.
7. The LORD waxed wroth and was mightily tempted to smite Jamus upon his fundament, but in his mercy he didst banish him to his room, yea even until the very last building block and manuscript had been moved from the floor to their appointed places.
8. The LORD then repaired the damage wrought by the waters and walked in the woods of Foxfield whilst he pondered the nature of family life, and lo his temper was assuaged.
9. The LORD didst return to his dwelling place for a nice cup of tea and to write his holy scriptures, that are known as The Blog.
10. And it was good.

Down the drain

I had a strangely disturbed night. I had an apocalyptic dream of a series of meteors crashing into a film studio somewhere near my mum and dad's house whilst a F-15 fighter was trying to shoot them down with Maverick AGM missiles. I woke up just as the live coverage from the studio showed one of the meteors glowing red and apparently about to explode.

I turned over in bed, but noticed a damp, mildewy smell from the bathroom. I checked round the floor and behind the sink and the toilet but I couldn't work out where the smell was coming from. I went back to bed and had waking dreams of floods and damp walls. The first bedsit I lived in had horribly damp walls as the shower and the kitchen area were one and the same and the ventilation was limited to a draughty sash window that grew mold as quickly as I could wipe it away. I sincerely hope that I never have to live anywhere like that again.

On further investigation in the morning, the smell turned out to be coming from the plughole in the shower tray and not from any damp on the walls. I cleaned out as much of the gunk as I could and then went out at lunchtime to get some Mr Muscle cleaner which did the trick and cured the problem.

Things normal children don't say #4

"Dad, can we put Radio 2 on, please?"

Absolute power

If you've ever fancied trying your hand at running a small country then head on over to Nation States and have a go. You answer a few questions about what sort of government you want to have and then you'll get daily political decisions to make that will affect the lives of your populace.

The Most Serene Republic of Burncross in the region of Ugvm is described as :

	The Most Serene Republic of Burncross "We may not be right, but at least we're relaxed"
UN Category: Left-wing Utopia Civil Rights: Excellent Economy: Fair Political Freedoms: Superb
Location: UGVM The Most Serene Republic of Burncross is a tiny, socially progressive nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 5 million are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whoever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives. The enormous, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Healthcare, Social Welfare, and Education. The average income tax rate is 35%, but much higher for the wealthy. A substantial private sector is led by the Gambling, Retail, and Beef-Based Agriculture industries. Crime is moderate, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Burncross's national animal is the kakapo, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the pobble bead.

Orange bills and climate control

I was worrying about my mobile phone bill today. I had an odd experience on Monday when I plugged my phone into my car kit and noticed that it was completely discharged with no power left in the battery at all - it never dips more than one or two bars as it usually gets recharged every time I go somewhere in the car. Thinking a little harder I rang to check how many of my free minutes I had left and found I had zero minutes and zero seconds left as at 12:24 am. Curiouser and curiouser.

The last call I had made was to Alicia just before seven o'clock on Sunday night, and I had a sudden panic that I had not terminated the call and somehow left it connected for five and a half hours before the battery had died. Fortunately this proved not to be the case, and checking my bill on line today showed that I was only a few minutes over my normal allowance. It doesn't explain the mystery of the dead battery though, unless a button had been left pushed down keeping the light on or something.

It was my first trip to Dudley in my new car today, and although it is much the same as the old one there are a couple of important differences. This one doesn't have a sunroof, but instead it has a climate control system which is fab. You dial in the temperature you want on your side of the car to the nearest half a degree, and the system works out what combination of fan speed, air conditioning and heating will achieve the desired result and goes about its duty automagically. There is even a 'clear screens' setting which puts everything into demisting the windscreen and melting any frost as quickly as possible before switching back to normal operations. Very nifty. I haven't dared touch the cruise control yet - I guess I will have to RTFM for that one ...