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It does seem that posting about new films seems to be only thing that drives me to make a post on livejournal these days, but what the hell.
I saw Van Helsing last week, and Troy last night, and thought I might as well share my feelings about them here, since I've had a couple of people ask what I thought of them. Hell, you might find the info useful, who knows.
Anyway, here's the Van Helsing mini-review I wrote just after seeing it:
"I just came back from watching Van Helsing and I have to say, I enjoyed it rather a lot. The audience and myself laughed a number of times.
It's basically the Mummy set in the world of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Certainly not a serious horror film; it has a flying cow, gas powered repeating crossbow and Faramir-actor David Wenham playing a cross between Q and your normal hero's sidekick.
I think it could have done with being a bit shorter, it definitely dragged a little while they setup the characters to be in the right places, and while they explained the plotline in the build up to the finale.
It's not a typical action film either; it's more of a humerous horror film, with it's tongue firmly in cheek. Sadly, I think both Van Helsing and Anna (Jackman and Beckinsale) were somewhat lost; they both did better in similar roles (tortured hero and spunky, yet vulnerable heroine) in X-Men 2 and Underworld respectively.
However, the film was definitely saved by the supporting actors such as Frankenstein's monster, sidekick Wenham and Igor, along with the gloriously hammy Roxburgh as Dracula, and of course, the pace and scope of the effects. The early fight between Van Helsing and Mr Hyde was especially good, as was the fight between Beckinsale and the werewolf.
Definitely fun, and I certainly didn't feel robbed coming out of it. On top of that, there's a number of memorable scenes, including several homages to other films. A reasonable night's entertainment if you set your expectations appropriately."
And now for Troy, the hot off the press review:
"For those who haven't seen the blurb, Troy is the hollywood adaptation of Homer's Iliad, specifically the events where Paris, a Trojan prince, falls in love with Helen, Queen of Sparta and spirits her away to to his home of Troy. Her enraged husband Menelaus convinces his brother Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, to lead a mighty army to crush Troy and take back Helen. The siege of the city follows, including the struggle between the two great warriors of each side; Hector, elder brother of Paris and Achilles, said to be the best fighter ever born.
When the city fails to fall to force of arms, the Greeks try trickery in the form of a great wooden horse...
Well, the film certainly lives up to the blurb. The film is definitely an epic, clocking in at nearly 2 1/2 hours. It definitely departs from the Ilyad in places, especially in the who-kills-who department. Pretty much all the right people die, just not always at the hand of who Homer orginally said. Still, when you already have a cast of 8 major characters, and a host of lesser ones, you can forgive them tidying it up a little. They've also dropped the interactions with the Gods, and generally shorted the story down to just the main siege against Troy itself. The storyline has been altered somewhat too, to enhance the motivations of individual characters, especially Achilles and Hector.
Anyway, back to the film.
It reminded me a little of The Two Towers in scope, specifically that the film is basically one very big, very long battle, with some love interest too. So if that's not your cup of tea, then this probably isn't the film for you.
The film is very bloody in places, so if Braveheart or Gladiator turned your stomach, then Troy is probably going to disturb you too.
If, on the other hand, swords, sandals, and very, very impressive effects and fights are your thing, then you'll love this film. The battle scenes are incredibly realistic, and none of the leads glorify war - they fully recognise its bloody nature, and mostly temper it with a strong sense of honour, especially towards the dead and the Gods.
Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Hector (Eric Bana) are very good indeed. They bring a real intensity to their roles, Pitt in particular. Their level of dedication is evident in the final fight between them, which was done without body doubles. I can't imagine the amount of training they had to go through to pull off a scene, that even if all else about the film is forgotten, deserves to be remembered.
Add in the vast range of largely British supporting talent (the excellent Peter O'Toole as Priam, Brian Cox as Agamemnon, Orlando Bloom as the less than heroic Paris, Sean Bean as Odysseus) and the film is well acted indeed.
The film does have it's weak points. The plot is tweaked so far, that the final ending does seem too neatly tied up. They compress the entire 10 year siege into a couple of weeks. There are also a couple of glaring errors, such as Hector's son having blue eyes, when both parents are brown eyed. They also seem to have lifted large parts of the soundtrack from Gladiator.
All in all though, a very good film. One I'll certainly be renting on DVD, and may even go to see again in the cinema once it hits official release.
If you're into mass Ancient Greek battles, with incredible bloody effects, lots of heroic duels, interspersed with soul searching and several shots of good-looking naked people, then this is the film for you. If not, well, I hear Shrek 2 is out soon..."Current Music: Troy - 03 - Achilles leads the myrmidons |
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OK, it's 4AM and I'm still up. What an ungodly hour of the day to be posting...
Well, I have an excuse, of sorts. Just finished my Lord of the Rings double DVD marathon, i.e. I've just watched Fellowship and the Two Towers back to back.
Guess what I'm going to be doing later today?
*Fan Boy Alert. Fan Boy Alert*
Yes, going to see Return of the King on it's opening day. What do you expect?
I've been waiting desparately for this film since last year, which is terribly sad, really. That, or it shows how bad most films are these days. The Star Wars prequels - *shudder* Matrix Revolutions, *wince*.
Phone Booth was good, but that's the only non LOTR film I can think of that I've seen in the last year that wasn't just a forgettable way to spend a couple of hours. Hell, I've managed to walk out of the cinema, and had to struggle to remember what I've just seen. Which is rather depressing.
But Lord of the Rings has been well, salvation. A great story, turned into truly epic films. I know some people laugh at them, or find them incredibly dull, and I can see that if you're not interested in that sort of thing, or find keeping track of the details tricky, they might not be your cup of tea.
But the depth of story, the commitment of the actors, the incredible effects, Andy Serkis playing Gollum, the beautiful score; they win it for me. Even the odd jarring bit of added populist script (lets kill some orc, FFS) I can live with, which is unusual for me.
The best bit is, I know that ROTK is more of the same, and then some. Having just finished the Two Towers (theatre version) I'm sooooo twitchy waiting for tomorrow to come! It's like being in bed on christmas eve when I was much, much younger. I've had the flutter since at least last friday.
What with that, and waiting for my new camera (more on which later) it's been a tough time surviving these last few days worth of anticipation. I know I shouldn't wish time away, we certainly don't get it back, but I've been sooooo looking forward to this, counting down the days. It's rather a nice feeling though, I can't remember when I was last looking forward this much.
*crosses fingers* Here's hoping it really is as good as it's supposed to be.Current Mood:  restless Current Music: Howard Shore - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Foundations Of Stone |
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Ok, Ok, I actually love my drive to work. Had the camera in the car from where I used to take the pumpkin photos the other day, and when I saw the sunlight coming through the autumn leaves, I just had to stop and take some photos.
I'll be the first to admit I'm not a great photographer, but I'd say these came out ok.
Click on the image, or here to see the gallery.
With this little lot I think that means I've taken more photos in the last 2 days than the whole of the last 5 years. I've never been much of one for taking photographs, but I see so many things and times and places now where I think 'If only I had a camera...'
I'll have to see if I can scrape together the readies in order to get myself a half-decent digital camera; my dad's one is a fairly standard 3 Megapixel camera, but it does make taking decent snaps very easy...
On a slightly different tack, I said I'd post a little about what I got up to on halloween. Not a huge amount, to be honest; got home, put the aforementioned pumpkins out, along with a large bowl of chocolate...
Had a couple of groups of small kids with parents hovering nervously in the background. Average plastic mask and painted bedsheet costumes, but still, they looked like they were enjoying it. They must have been surprised to see the pumpkins, I didn't see a single other halloween decoration in Wimborne the whole night. Dull lot, down here. Apart from the fireworks. They do like those. Good thing I don't have any pets, it must be murder for them trying to survive the fortnight of bangs and screeches.
Anyway, after that it was down the pub with a couple of friends for a few drinks, though I think it's probably wise if I draw a veil there - so you don't find out it was a perfectly ordinary friday night out.
On the plus side, there was plenty of chocolate left for when we got home :)Current Mood:  peaceful |
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Well, It's been a long time since I last posted an entry. Kinda defeats the object of having a paid account, really! Oh well.
Halloween was pretty good this year. If I get round to it, I'll post some bits tomorrow.
For the moment, since it's so late, I thought I'd just throw up a couple of pictures of the jack o'lanterns I made this year; rather special moment for me, as these are the first pumpkins I've ever carved! (Only 27 - better late than never)
Don't ask me why, I just suddenly felt in the mood for doing some soft vegetable mutilation. Oh, I know, the spirit of Samhain took me over, and made me do something different, that's it. Yes, I know it's hardly up to American wackiness, but got to build up to it you know. Next year, there may even be odd clothing.
Now, you'll have to forgive my pumpkins, I was only able to grab a camera today, so they've been drying out for a couple of days. Poor dessicated things, they worked so hard...
Anyway, click on the images for a larger one.Current Mood:  pleased |
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Ok, Ok, it's been a looooooooong ass time since I last filled in a journal entry. *checks* Eep! 8 months!
Ok, I've been busy. Really busy...
I've come up with a ton of posts in the last couple of months, I even got as far as starting typing with some of them. But you know how it is, last thing I want to do is type some manky boring post. That, and beer was often calling, and I think you can guess which tended to win.
Anyway, I'm sure there's lots of stuff that's happened to me in the last 8 months that I'd like to share with the world. Err. Probably. Later.
No, the thing that spurred me to post tonight was a catchy little guitar riff. You know the sort, the one that gets in your head and just... won't... get... out.
I heard it, not for the first time (I think it's been doing the rounds on an advert, blowed if I can remember which one). Anyway, I heard this tune on the radio today, as I was driving into town. And I was humming the riff all the way in to town, all the time I was in town, and all the way home from town.
In fact, I was humming it pretty much all damn day. Come 10 o'clock, I was getting desperate. I was thinking of ringing up a radio station (any radio station) and humming at them down the phone to see if they recognised it - which I'm sure they get a lot, but I'd still feel a bit of a prat doing it.
"Hello, do you think you could recognise this tune for me?"
"We'll give it a go sir"
"doh.. do do do dooh.. doh, doh.. do do do dooh.. doh"
"Sorry sir, could you do that again?"
"doh.. do do do dooh.. doh, doh.. do do do dooh.. doh"
"Theme tune to the Simpsons?"
Maybe not, eh.
Anyway, I went looking for it on the net. Since I've heard it a fair bit recently, I hit the top 40. Not there. I listened to every damn clip to see if it was there, but no.
I went to look for the program that was on when I heard it (before it went totally viral in my head). Great - except that wasn't one that was available to re-listen to. Bugger.
So, having checked a bunch of 'now playing' stations, and not catching it, I started trawling through the various shows on radio 1, figuring it was probably one of the A, B or C list tracks - just no idea which one, and there were no 'try this' links for the list tracks, just the chart tracks.
So I'm checking through god knows how many different sessions, skipping through at 5 minute intervals to see if I can hear a snippet of this one track that's been stuck between my ears all day.
Eventually, I stumble across the last few seconds of the track on the sunday surgery, and thank god, they tell me who the track and artist are. It only took an hour and a half, sigh.
And in case you hadn't guessed, it was White Stripes, Seven Nation Army.
I'm not sure what instrument kicks off, it sounds like a double bass, with the same riff picked up by guitar. Definitely catchy.
So anyway, I kazaa the little fellow (having got kazaa lite running this very day) and am listening to it as I write this. Fairly rough 128kbs mp3, but it's enough to scratch the itch in my head.
Going on previous form when I get hit by such a riff (which does happen periodically) I'll check out a few more tracks by this guys, and If there other stuff is in similar vein, then that's at least one album they'll be selling, Elephant, and if that's good, then there's likely to be three more album sales, of their previous stuff. Of course, having admitted to downloading off kazaa, I'm likely to be locked up now long before I get the chance. Still, no guilt here - they've been playing the track on the radio, so if trying out music before I buy it makes me a criminal, lock me up and throw away the key...
But you know what the biggest irony of all is? They were playing it on radio 1 about 5 minutes before I started looking. If only '24' had finished a few minutes earlier, I would no doubt have heard it and saved myself an hour and a half of looking....Current Mood: satisfied Current Music: White Stripes - Seven Nation Army |
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I'll fill you in on how my week went later. For now, here's a little press release that's worth publishing more widely. I think I'll probably be at the Bournemouth Rally. (And yes, I know the date is wrong on the LibDem demo. I'm still waiting for the right date)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 20, 2002
Press Contact: Julian T. J. Midgley <jtjm@uk.eurorights.org>
Phone: 07713 166000
Demo Organiser: Martin Keegan ?<mk270@cam.ac.uk>
Phone: 07779 296469
CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS RESPONDS TO PATENT OFFICE PAPER
PLANS PROTESTS AT PARTY CONFERENCES
On the 7th August the UK Patent Office released a consultation paper
detailing its plans to implement the European copyright directive. CDR
believes that this legislation is flawed and will have disastrous
effects on British research, innovation, music recording studios and
software development.
Julian Midgley has produced a paper detailing our objections and
proposing some solutions. It is available at:
http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/eucd/ukimpl/
None of the three main political parties has yet expressed an opinion
on this issue. We intend to hold a series of peaceful demonstrations
outside each of the party conferences to bring it to the attention of
delegates and members of the public. Anyone is welcome to join
us. Full details of the planned event are on our website
(http://uk.eurorights.org/). Here is a summary:
Liberal Democrats Conference, Brighton
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Protest on Monday 22nd September from 12:30 PM outside the Brighton Centre.
More information:
http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.general/section.conference
Labour Conference, Blackpool
----------------------------
Protest on Sunday 29th September from 1:00 PM outside the Winter
Gardens Theatre. More information:
http://www.labour.org.uk/conference2002/
Conservative Party Conference, Bournemouth
------------------------------------------
Protest on Sunday 6th October from 1:00 PM outside the Bournemouth
International Centre. More information:
http://www.conservatives.com/conference/2002info.cfm
The Campaign for Digital Rights
-------------------------------
The UK Campaign for Digital Rights has formed to ensure that by the
time that the EUCD is passed into law, it has been revised to the
extent that it no longer threatens academic research or the public's
ability to make fair use of electronic books, music and videos.
It is important to stress that we respect absolutely the principal of
copyright; many of our members are programmers and authors whose works
enjoy the traditional protections of copyright - we do not condone
copyright infringement in any form. ?However, we firmly believe that
by making the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms a crime,
laws such as the DMCA and EUCD threaten legitimate academic research
and the work of respectable computer programmers. ?Furthermore, by
effectively prohibiting discussion of the weaknesses of particular
copy protection schemes, these laws practically guarantee that copy
protection mechanisms will be weak and easily broken, to the detriment
of the very authors and musicians whose work they are designed to
protect.
The Campaign for Digital Rights is working together with industry,
academics, the Foundation for Information Policy Research
(http://www.fipr.org/), and similar organisations throughout Europe
and America. ?For more information, mailing lists, et al, see:
http://uk.eurorights.org/
Sep. 20th, 2002 @ 11:47 pm
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| » Ahh nostalgia, nothing quite like it |
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My parents had all my old gamers consoles and computer bits stashed away for me for years. My old spectrum 48K+ and 128K+2; my sega mega drive; even several ancient pc's. However, they ran out of space, and basically gave em back to me to do with as i wished.
They all sat in a pile under my desk, taking up a big chunk of space for over 6 months, while I decided what to do with them. Anyone who knows me knows I'm somewhat of a packrat, and find it very hard to throw ANYTHING away, let alone stuff that was tied up so intimately with my childhood. The number of hours I spent having fun with friends, driving or beating each other up (virtually, of course); or the hours working through an RPG or a platform game.
Eventually, having done nothing with all this stuff for months but take up space, I just packed it all up, and took it down the tip. It was very cathartic. After all, it was all obselete junk, right? Sigh. I *could* have sold it at auction, or given it to charity, or sold it at a car boot sale, but charities don't take electronic goods any more (safety regulations and all that) and a car boot sale would have been far too much like hard work for the little value the stuff had. And I had to move house, so I just didn't have the room to store it any more, so it had to go.
Of course, I just found out that the cartridges for the megadrive games alone are going at 7-8 quid a pop online, and i had a couple of dozen of them. With the spectrum stuff as well, I probably had a couple of hundred quids worth of nostalgia for someone, and I just gave it away down the tip. If I'd realised that at the time, mutter.... Still, it was good just to get rid of it. It was easier to just get rid of it all in one go, I just didn't have the time to try and sell it in dribs and drabs.
The nostalgia kicked back in a couple of days ago when I was perusing my ambient section of my mp3 collection, and I suddenly remembered the very first ambient music I'd listened to - the soundtrack to one of my old Mega Drive CD games, Ecco the Dolphin. I'm sure I'm not the only generation X person who remembers that game, and the cool soundtrack. The best bit was, the CD could be played in a normal CD player, so I used to play it occasionally.
Of course, I binned Ecco, along with all the stuff months ago. Thus I went looking on the net to get a copy of the music :) Copyright infringement? Pretty likely. Can I buy it in the shops? Not a chance. So I don't feel too bad about getting copies of the soundtrack. It's not like they're losing revenue off of it...
So basically, I found this place, an Ecco fan site. Complete with mp3s of the tracks. I'm listening to them right now, and chilled out nicely.
Sometimes, a little nostalgia is a good thing...
Sep. 15th, 2002 @ 11:31 pm
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| » I soooo need a camera |
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I've never been a big fan of taking pictures. For the first twenty years or so of my life, I had pretty good recall. My brain was somewhat like a grey sponge, soaking up information. It still is like that a lot, it just leaks a lot more now, and it's going a bit manky in the middle. Ok, enough with the dodgy metaphors methinks. But the point remains that I rarely took photos of anything because I could remember it in my minds eye. Now, I don't even own a camera, and haven't for years.
But finally, I think I might be seeing why other people carry cameras with them at virtually ever moment of their lives. First, a little background.
There's a HUGE spider living in the frame of my living room window (on the outside, thankfully, I don't think I could live with him inside). I checked, his body is about the size of a 20p piece. When you factor in legs, he's a fairly scary fella to see sitting on a web in the middle of your window. I'm on the first floor which makes it hard to clear him out, but I think I'll let him stay for a while anyway; he's doing a great job of keeping the flies away when I have the windows open, even though he's sitting on the pane that doesn't open. I'll have to see how it goes though, as he seems to have brought three little mates with him, and they like to make their webs on the other, opening window.
The second bit of background is that the weather has been glorious. The last few days, there's been hardly a cloud in the sky. This is great during the day, with stunning clear blue sky and a strong autumnal sun means that it's still pretty summerlike at work recently. In the mornings though, when the sun is only just over the horizon, and the chill is still biting the air from the night before...
That's why I wanted a camera this morning. Sitting drinking my coffee, the morning light filtering round the houses on the estate, shading from light grey to a clear deep blue, the tree branches rocking in the gentle breeze, the slight nip of the morning air through the open window - and one perfect giant web in one window, three equally level and symmetrical webs on the other, all the threads glittering as the droplets of morning dew refract the growing light of the day.
It would have been a great picture.
Sep. 13th, 2002 @ 11:45 pm
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| » woooh - where does the time go? |
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I'ts been over a week since I last made a post. Doesn't seem like anywhere near that time. Hereafter follows a tale of computer woe and work angst and stress....
First, a little background. I work for a school, I'm the IT Engineer. This week was the first week bak too skool. That meant that last week was the last week before the start of term. As non-faculty staff, I work through the holidays. This summer, the new science and IT building was finished, and in the last few weeks of the hols, kitted out with furniture and new computers. Things were going pretty much to plan to have as much ready as possible in time. The labs were going to be fully setup and operational, the network running, a temporary internet connection rigged until the broadband line was laid in.
Come wednesday last week, things were starting to break down that had worked previously. The internet connection was very slow and kept dropping line, the network was running slow, the printers were playing up. But we persevered, and come friday, things were ready to roll, a few bugs and bits still to do outstanding, but overall in good shape ready to roll. After all, you don't completely build a new three story building, install three labs worth of kit and merge a new network into an old one without a few snafus. Friday night, just about ready to wrap up and go home, ready for the weekend; and we spot the network is dead. Nothing works. I check the server, it's ok, but not able to see anything. None of the servers can ping anything. I swap some points, some cables, nothing. I try two machines connected to adjacent points on the same switch. All dead. I powercycle the switch cabinet. And the power trips out. You know that sinking feeling you get when the doorbell rings, it's your mum popped by for a surprise visit and the sink is full of unwashed plates? Well, that was pretty how i was feeling. I won't go into all the nitty gritty details of how we fixed it, but it involved a trip to the pre-term party to get the master building key from the headmaster, several phone calls to the owner of the company that fitted the switches (kudos to the man for providing tech support from his mobile at 9pm on a friday!), and much rewiring. To cut a long story shorter, the uplinks on the back of the switches appear cooked, so we've crosslinked on the front instead, and re-enabled the fibreop uplink.
Oh, and I managed to get to the pub round the corner for a pint just before closing time (literally!), and chilled out with a few of the staff from the school. Which was nice.
The weekend was fairly quiet, except for my XP going belly up due to a phantom swapfile. It's taken me several days to work this out, but when XP tells you you can adjust the size of your swap file, it's lieing. You change it, it accepts it, it reports the right values as being set, it just doesn't actually reduce the swap file size. It continues to whinge that it doesn't have enough space on c:, despite the fact that it's using 17% of the drive for it's illegal swapfile. Try it, see if *you* can reduce your swapfile below 512Mb On C, because I sure as hell can't make it do it. In the end, I gave up and increased the size of the partition by a few gig which should hopefully shut xp for a while. Until it turns system restore back on without telling me, anyway. Don't believe me? http://www.theguildhouse.net/graphics/mem.jpg
Why am I, a linux nut, using XP anyway, I hear you cry? Well, it's simple. Two reasons.
1) my broadband adsl usb modem doesn't work on linux yet (i've tried some friench drivers, but no luck yet)
2) i need something to keep my addiction to Unreal Tournament and Civ III satisfied...
This week? Well, it's been a week of bug fixing and network tweaking, lots of effort going into finishing those machines which haven't been finished yet (individual machines scattered throughout offices everywhere), and trying to set the network ghosting up so it doesn't nobbled the network with multicasts everytime I build a workstation.
And the whole week is almost gone already...
Oh well, that's where I've been recently. Knackered and offline, mostly. I did think about making the obligatory post about the anniversary of September 11th, but so far i've resisted the temptation. Perhaps I'll be the of the few bloggers NOT to mention it. Except that I just did. Oops.
Sep. 12th, 2002 @ 11:46 pm
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| » Sigh. Midnight again. |
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Trawling through copyright and having lots of arguments about the details of it's implementation is simultaneously dull, and very frustrating.
It's also very tiring :(
If you want to know where I've been the last few days, just check out http://www.xenoclast.org/free-sklyarov-uk/
Sep. 3rd, 2002 @ 11:58 pm
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| » More starsigns... |
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I'm not exactly into astrology, but it seems a number of my friends are.
Anyway, check out http://www.aniblack.com/ani_signs.html for some interesting body art zodiak.
Sep. 1st, 2002 @ 11:59 pm
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| » saturday night again |
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Today was a very lazy saturday. But I got invited down the pub by some mates who were in town. Yay! Had some shit to finish, but managed to squeeze down there in enough for time for a couple pints and some chats and giggles. Fun.
On the stroll back home (only 10 minutes walk from the pub, handy) I noticed how many lights were on, windows open, some with curtains open. Just made me think a little about how many people are living here, each with their own intricate lives and stories they could tell. I only glimpsed them for a second walking past, if I saw anything at all...
I'm not sure how to put it into words (great journalist I'd make, huh) but still, it was just interesting to walk home, through so many time slices of other peoples lives, whether they were at home and seen just for a second, or when they were chatting and giggling as the walked back as a group from the takeaway, or the bloke umm, releasing himself against a phone box.
As you get older, you know fewer and fewer people. When you're at school, you know and meet hundreds of kids every day. As you leave and go to uni, you maybe know and speak to a few dozen. At work, little cliques develop, and you socialise with a small bunch. You lose touch with most of the friends you've had before, so you only regularly see a small number of them. Tonight, walking home, I got just a touch of what it used to be like when everyone was a potential friend, and the huge number of connections you could make if you just went and knocked on the door.
Sometimes, usually, I forget that a little. And I regret that, I think.
Aug. 31st, 2002 @ 11:56 pm
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| » webcams |
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Looks like I might be joining the hoards of the webcam equipped generation. Maybe not permanently yet; I've only got the camera on loan for a bit, so we'll see how it goes.
I'm in the process of setting up the cam so you can view piccies of my pretty mug any time of the day or night (lucky, lucky you!), assuming i'm actually at my terminal which is er, unlikely during the day.
The real reason I borrowed it was cos i wanted some more piccies of me (there are virtually none in the last few years. for some reason, I'm always the one *taking* the pictures, so you often get lots of shots of my feet when I've got the digital vidcam). So, since it's quite hard to hold a digital camera in one hand, and take the photo with the other, I thought a webcam would be far easier.
And so it has proved. Expect lots of new 'zany' photos in my gallery and mugshots on livejournal in the near future.
Whether the webcam experiment lasts or not kinda depends on how many people take the mickey out of my lack of hair, and whether I encounter any nubile young vixens with a webcam willing to umm, swap...
Aug. 30th, 2002 @ 11:38 pm
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| » What is with macs these days? |
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There seems to be another pissed off mac user story going down. (what is it with all the mac stories anyway? I didn't know there were that many mac users out in the real world, but anyone would think they were as common as windows boxen the amount of online media coverage they get)
Basically, a Firewire DVD company was shipping a patch to iDVD that allowed their DVD to work with it, not just the apple sanctioned superdrive. The advantage to the customer is obvious - they get to upgrade their old mac with an external drive, and use Apple's nice free iDVD software to burn it with. The disadvantage to apple is obvious too. People buy a firewire DVD drive, not a superdrive, and to add insult to injury, they hack apple's software to do so.
So apple have invoked the DMCA, stopped the patch, and garned a crapload of bad publicity as a bonus.
What I don't get is why people are complaining quite so much. Breaking iDVD's licence to reverse engineer it, and then distribute that patch for profit and at apple's expense had to be illegal before the DMCA, but doubly so afterwards. There's a whole slew of other DVD burner software out there for macs, which the superdrives work with. According to the reviews of roxio's toast i've seen while looking into this, it's a far better bit of software, but you do have to pay for it.
As a linux user, i'm hardly a fan of software patents, proprietary formats or the DMCA, but I think i'm actually on Apple's side on this one. It'd be different if Apple had a monopoly, but they definitely don't. They make virtually all their money out of hardware, not software, because they give most of the software away for free (apart from the stupid full priced upgrade to OSX 10.2). Expecting people to use apple hardware with apple software is kinda the founding principle of a mac. If you could plug any hardware into it willy nilly, then a mac would be as unstable as a windows boxen. And more importantly, apple would quickly go broke. (Which is why you'll never see an x86 version of OSX)
Having said all that, I doubt Apple have done themselves any favours. They are constantly trying to make market share up on Microsoft, and their recent practices have hardly helped to spin them as any different to that money grabbing behemoth from Redmond. And that can only hurt them in their hunt for customers.
If you want to get stuck in on this one, there's already a barnstormer of an argument going on between jmz and me ;)
Aug. 29th, 2002 @ 11:49 pm
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| » well, wishful thinking obviously works... |
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Update: My isp is back up, along with site, email, and ftp. Apparently, it was an upstream network outage. So that's alright then. I think I still might be taking an offline backup of my databases tomorrow though...
Aug. 29th, 2002 @ 12:35 am
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| » gulp... |
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Sometimes, we get too used to the status quo. *I* do, anyway.
Tonight, my website and email account are offline. The Hosting company that provides both is totally offline too. Given that they've been off all evening, I'm beginning to get a little worried.
They're not exactly a mom-n-pop affair, they have multiple main servers, lots of accounts. I'm sure it's just a technical problem, and it'll be sorted tomorrow. I hope.
There's something rather worrying when all your digital eggs are in one basket (more or less). I have *most* of the site backed up, but the latest database backups I have of the forums is over two months old - and they are the heart and soul of my site. There's so much useful stuff in there, It'd be devastating to lose it all.
Still, I'm sure that it's not a webserver problem as such, but a router or connectivity problem, otherwise why would everything go down at once? Even FTP is out...
Hopefully the company hasn't just folded either. It's so frustrating not knowing what's going on, whether my data is safe or not. I know I'm being paranoid, and it'll all be sorted soon - I just have that little bit of doubt gnawing awaying saying 'so what if it isn't fixed tomorrow?'
Fingers crossed.
Aug. 28th, 2002 @ 11:53 pm
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| » bubblewrap schmubblewrap |
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What is it about bubblewrap? I've just spent the last 10 minutes wandering about, trying to decide how to proceed on a particularly sticky problem, while constantly popping a piece of bubble wrap.
I don't consider myself a particularly addictive personality, unless of course it's trying to solve an oddball techie problem, but then I *am* an engineer. No, despite this, I still found myself unable to put the wrap down, or even stop popping until I had finished squishing every single last bubble. Despite the fact that my fingers were starting to hurt. Despite the fact that I needed to type some stuff into a machine.
No, I wasn't going to rest until I finished the popping first. I'm not the only one prone to this bubblecrushing need either. Everyone I know can't put bubblewrap down.
It's time this addictive menace was stopped, and it was banned! I propose a petition to the Home Office, online obviously, a march on Downing street to get our point across, and a national boycott of this pernicious stuff. Otherwise, who else will think of the children?
In fact, I'll just get started on that as soon as I've finished that new piece I just found under the desk...
Aug. 27th, 2002 @ 04:26 pm
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| » Should I get a mac? |
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As anyone who knows me knows, I'm a linux fanboy these days. But having looked at my desktop, people have suggested perhaps I should go buy myself a imac.
Why? Well, I'm using mofet's liqud theme for kde (which has the main effect of transparent windows), a bunch of osx icons, and an osx windowbar theme. The upshot is that all kde native apps are *very* osx looking.
I've even gone so far as to put the 'start bar' along the top of the screen.
I can't say I've ever been a fan of macs, but now they mention it judge for yourself...
Still, I think I know who to blame - a friend of mine who shall remain nameless for his own safety, who has osx'd everything he can lay his hands on, despite the fact that he's a diehard windows fan, and doesn't even own a mac. And all I wanted to do was prove that linux can do everything that xp can in terms of skinnability, and then some;)
So yes, I'll blame it all on him! That's the ticket...
Aug. 26th, 2002 @ 11:41 pm
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| » so... what sign are you? |
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Makes a change from the usual claptrap...
Cisco, the Router (February 19th ~ March 20th)
The router serves to bridge the gap between two worlds, a "gatekeeper" between our day-to-day earthly plane and the higher realm of the spirit or between the local intranet and the campus backbone or internet.
Persons born under the sign of the router feel an enhanced connection to planes other than the physical and can help bring enlightenment to others by filtering and guiding packets of spirituality to the people around them. The vulnerability of Ciscons (people born under the sign of Cisco) is that they may unwisely pick up evil packets from the other side as well and be subject to their influence and even fall victim to Denial-of-Spirituality (DoS) attacks coming from the darker planes of existence.
What Nerd sign are you?
Aug. 26th, 2002 @ 09:45 pm
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| » Good weekend |
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I must admit, it's been a pretty good weekend so far. Went out friday night, which is pretty rare for me; if i'm out, it's almost always on a saturday. Usually the last thing I want to do when I get home after a long hard week is to go out, and do lots more stuff. After 8 hours banging my head on a keyboard, plus an hours drive, I just want to veg out with minimum effort. Dull, huh. Still, we can't all be 24 hour party people. Not without the help of 'enhancement' drugs, anyway!
So, back to last night. Fairly simple do; meet up with a couple of old friends, and go down to Bournemouth for a few drinks. End up in a bar open till 2am, which wasn't bad considering we were specifically not going to go clubbing, and I had jeans on beside. Letting someone wearing jeans into a late night bar? Very unusual!
The night was the usual after that - lots of conversations barely heard over a throbbing back beat; half hour wait to get to the bar; far, far too many people in a small space; lots of lovely young ladies, as my dad puts it, and all of them taken or not interested (or at least the ones I came across, anyway); the genial haze you get after lots of vodka based drinks; overall, a generally pleasant way to spend an evening.
The drive home was, well, interesting, considering the non-drinking friend ferried us home in a souped Impreza, and it corners likes it's on rails. I want one...
The funny thing is that after yet more beer (while watching a DVD at 1 in the morning) we finished off the evening playing on my mates XBox, Project Gotham, and I caned the mate with the Impreza ;) Just goes to show, nerd skillz beat rl skillz every time.
Saturday was nice too. A leisurely lunch in a quayside cafe watching the world go by outside, the sunlight bright on the lapping water of the harbour, followed by an easygoing afternoon.
So basically, this weekend is shaping up very nicely indeed. Which is nice.
Adios for now amigos.
Aug. 25th, 2002 @ 12:40 am
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jaxom's journal
