Stardust

Posted October 28, 2007, under books, films
No comments yet

Is very good indeed – I haven’t (yet) read the book, but I was generally impressed with the film. Excellent cast, pretty sets with unobtrusive CGI, lots of comedy moments and believeable characters. High points for me would be a stick-wielding old guy, Robert De Niro and a man with breasts. Low points would be Ricky Gervais and, well, that’s about it. An additional high point, though unrelated to the film itself, was watching from the posh seats of the Leicester Square Odeon. Expensive, but the overall experience is exactly like going to the cinema ‘ought’ to be, i.e a huge auditorium, comfy seats, awesome sound, top-quality projection and art-deco surroundings. Not worth it to see ‘Generic Action Movie – The Sequel‘, but a nice treat to watching something special.

I blame either Final Fantasy or possibly just ‘Japan’, but this is yet another film of recent times to feature an aerial ship/airship thing with vaguely steam-punk overtones. I know that they fullfill the criteria of ‘being really cool’, but it’s going the way of lens flares.

And now I need to read the book.

Leave the first comment ▶

Historically Natural

Posted , under geek, history
No comments yet

Saturday afternoon was spent wandering the halls of the natural history museum in London. Somehow I’d never been before, though the related sections of the museum in Edinburgh are similar in concept – skeletons, taxidermy, fossils. The building itself is architecturally impressive (and vast), with some beautiful details, such as monkeys climbing the columns. Prior to museums becoming ‘cool’ in the 80s, I imagine it would have been pretty much the stereotype for a huge, echoey building full of glass cases.

Yesterday however, the echoes were not audible over the screaming of children of all sizes and flavour, accompanied by their owners. It’s interesting to note that in a world containing video games consoles, a life-sized animatronic T-rex or blue whale skeleton can still captivate impressionable young minds, and be used as a vehicle to sell countless stuffed toys.

An aside – skulls of elephants (complete with tusks) are not the ideal thing to gaze upon having just been reading Lovecraft. I’m pretty sure I only screamed on the inside. Fhtagn.

Leave the first comment ▶

How?

Posted October 22, 2007, under Uncategorized
No comments yet

Freak accident indeed.

Leave the first comment ▶

Rat A2E

Posted , under films
2 comments

The latest Pixar offering is pretty good, you should probably go see it. Random thoughts:

  • The preceding short (‘Lifted’) is brilliant; nothing mind-blowing from a technical perspective, but hugely funny non-verbal humor.
  • The main film has a few too many sequences which seem designed to be really easy to turn into a video game. (The Incredibles had the same problem, but to a lesser extent)
  • Visually it’s stunning, with a nice balance between realism and comic observation. It’s more realistic / less stylized than The Incredibles, but given the more mundane setting, it works well, without falling into the uncanny valley.
  • The pacing is a little off in some places – not to the point of boredom, but it doesn’t flow quite as smoothly as most previous Pixar films. Perhaps this is because it’s a full two hours in length? (it certainly felt that way)
  • Kids’ films have kids’ adverts, which are truly frightening. Seeing phrases like ‘healthy nourishing goodness’ being used with complete disregard for actual evidence depresses me, though I realize the Milkybar kid, Cocoa the monkey and many other fountains of wisdom have been doing this for years.
2 comments so far, add yours ▶

Holonomic Drives

Posted October 16, 2007, under geek, toys
No comments yet

Staring at the container-handling equipment at Schipol last week reminded me to dig up some information I’d promised to a friend, concerning some moderately cool wheels which can move sideways, rotate on the spot, and so forth. Rather than trying to explain the concept, it’s probably easier to read this, or search for ‘holonomic’ or ‘Mecanum‘ on Google or YouTube and you’ll find lots of interesting hits, especially the guys who built such systems using LEGO Mindstorns. These guys have the US patent rights to the Mecanum design, and some good videos of their production vehicles, which apparently the US navy find handy for movings heavy equipment around their aircraft carriers.

Leave the first comment ▶

I would do anything for love. But I probably shouldn’t do that.

Posted , under geek, music, toys
No comments yet

New SingStar, ‘Rock Ballads’, with an odd selection of tracks, but a handful of personal favourties: Waiting for a Star To Fall and How You Remind Me in particular. But one track dwarfs them all, and probably occupies 50% of the disc, given the length of its intro: Meat Loaf’s, uh, masterwork about the many things he would do for love, and some notable exceptions.

Leave the first comment ▶

Never where?

Posted , under books, tv
No comments yet

I recently read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere for the first time – in particular the ‘author’s preferred version’. It seems that since the BBC TV series was made, there have been a couple of iterations of the text. Inevitably some things work better in prose than a BBC-funded drama series, although my (hazy) memory does recall Neverwhere being rather good at the time.

The book is well-written, and the plot follows the TV series closely, but with some additional detail and insights into the characters – I haven’t read many other adaptions from screen to prose, but it seems to work well. It’s  not my favourite Neil Gaiman work, compared to Sandman or Anansi Boys, but well worth reading and pretty imaginative. My only remaining problem is whether to re-watch the TV series; I assume it will have aged to a degree, and also seem rather terse and cut-down compared to the novel I just read. Hmmm.

Leave the first comment ▶

Making Money

Posted October 15, 2007, under books
No comments yet

… is good, but not quite as good as Going Postal. Of course you’ll read it anyway, because it’s still a good Terry Pratchett book.

Leave the first comment ▶

Die Puny Humans

Posted , under comics
No comments yet

Recently read: ‘Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E’ and ‘Desolation Jones’, both by Warren Ellis, the man behind The Authority and Transmetropolitan. Which is relevant because Nextwave is very much in the style of The Authority, but even more nakedly silly and funny. Highly recommended.

Desolation Jones is Transmetropolitan set in contemporary LA (so a bit less pleasant than the City of TransMet), and is pretty good also, though it lacks the instant brilliance of the earlier series. I suspect it will grow on me over time, and I’ll certainly pick up the next paperback.

Leave the first comment ▶

Maximum brake application

Posted , under aviation
No comments yet

Returning from Holland late on Friday, the flight was delayed an hour (due to a late inbound), which resulted in arriving at Edinburgh after the main runway (06/24) was closed for scheduled maintenance. The co-pilot explained this en-route, and noted that we’d be using the shorter runway and hence maximum auto-braking. Approach was over the Firth of Forth, with a smartish touchdown (floating would have been profoundly bad, probably instant go-around time), and pretty dramatic braking, especially when the flare finished.

Conclusion: a 737 can stop really, really quickly if it needs to.

Leave the first comment ▶
◀ Older Entries
Newer Entries ▶